What's all that stuff called

One of the most difficult things for a writer is specificity when it comes to a subject he doesn't know like the back of his hand.

I'm often envious of film makers with technical advisers who know what's supposed to be in the picture, what it's called and what it does.

Picture yourself writing a scene about about the American frontier. You've probably seen such TV shows as "Little House on the Prairie," Medicine Woman," and maybe a few oldies like "Bonanza." So you have a fair idea what a period general store looks like and what a period ranch house looks like.

What you probably can't do is list the exact things that will be there for the specific year you're writing about. You don't want to mention a specific kind of spinning wheel and then find out after the book or short story comes out that the one you mentioned wasn't invented at the time your story is set. There are hundreds of sites that talk all around the issue. Some mention stunning new stoves that showed up in general stores, but they don't say what year. Others mention how goods were wrapped, but don't say when a technique began and ended. Too vague, way too vague, these sites.

I recently faced a similar problem in a work-in-progress in which a house catches on fire. I've seen scenes filled with fire trucks and hose countless times on the news and in movies. But what exactly belongs in the scene of a standard house fire? I searched the Internet for some time and found everything from fire fighting equipment to the principles of fire fighting to the history of fire fighting. But did any site tell me what is dispatched to a house fire vs a factory fire? Not that I could find.

Fortunately, local fire fighter Malcolm Gramley considered the size house I had in mind and told me exactly what passersby would see while the fire fighters are on the scne. That was what I needed. I needed to know what all that stuff in front of the house is called.

This time out, I found a technical advisor. Thank your Mr. Gramley.

Now, if only more of the online experts would think like the creators of those visual dictionaries that explain in simple terms what makes a house, what makes a horse, what are the parts of a saddle, what's in a 1858 general store vs. what's in a 1910 general store. Writers, museum workers, students, and many others really do like knowing what stuff is called over time.

Another Novel Makes the Rounds

I knew when I completed GARDEN OF HEAVEN in March, 2008, that a 240,000-word novel by a relative unknown would be a hard sell. Nonetheless, I will continue trying to sell it.

However, I'm turning my immediate attention on a 60,000-word novel called JOCK STEWART AND THE MISSING SEA OF FIRE that began making the rounds this week. Those of you who have chanced by my Morning Satirical News weblog have already met the main character: he bills himself as a hard-boiled reporter for the Junction City Star-Gazer of the kind seen in Hollywood's noir movies of the 1940s and 1950s.

Whereas "Morning Satirical News" takes a gallows-humor look at real issues, the novel finds Jock--and some of the recurring fictional characters from the blog--trying to track down who stole the Mayor's prized racehorse Sea of Fire and who killed the Star-Gazer publisher's prized girl friend Bambi Hill.

I'm classifying the book as humor. Now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a prospective publisher also thinks it's funny.

Malcolm