Every Breath You Take

by James M. Jackson

Are you familiar with the 1983 song “Every Breath You Take” by the Police? Thought by many to be a classic love song, Sting wrote it while going through his divorce. It’s a stalker song. Watch his facial expressions (Sting plays the bass and sings lead) in this version on YouTube. It also predicts the state of the world thirty-five years later in which many entities watch every move we make.

My mother provided many pieces of advice while raising me. Some made little impact on my day-to-day behavior, such as her classic directive to never leave the house in dirty underwear because if I was in an accident everyone could see. In the 1950s, that advice was limited to the physical boxers or briefs I wore under my trousers and was important because it would reflect badly on her if I were caught in two-day-old undies. Today, it is a metaphor for avoiding anything I don’t want to see the light of day.

As Omarosa recently demonstrated with her recording of her firing in the White House Situation Room, it doesn’t matter where you are; if someone has a smart phone, they could be recording what you say. Even from a distance, people can record your conversations. Laser microphones combined with software can “hear” distant conversations using vibrations from window glass—even “soundproof” glass. And technology has improved so even videotape of a bag of potato chips can give away your conversation.

Hiding your location and travel has become increasingly difficult. If someone wants to secretly travel from point A to point B in the US, they need to avoid (1) all license plate scanners (toll booths, red light monitors, mobile police cars, etc.), (2) refueling at any gas station with video, (3) carrying a smart phone, unless it’s in a Faraday bag, (4) any random recording by a business near a road the car travels, or (5) accidentally being caught in some stranger’s Facebook post, etc. And that assumes the individual is not already under surveillance.

If surveillance is in place, the individual needs to know how to spot and lose tails, and then hope he’s not being tracked by a drone or satellite.

Even our DNA is not private. To find a serial killer, California investigators searched over a million DNA profiles to find relatives of the unknown killer whose DNA they had as evidence.

Leaving aside personal privacy concerns and issues regarding the development of a government surveillance state, let’s consider the crime-writing aspects of these technological leaps.

Authors writing novels set in the present who want a character to be unable to communicate are forced to take extremes measures. Characters must lose their cell phones, or run out of battery power, or find remote locations without cell phone coverage so they can’t call for help. (On that account, I am lucky. Early on, I gave my protagonist, Seamus McCree, a character-fault of forgetting to take his cell phone with him or charging it up—it’s a running battle he has with his son. And his place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is still a location with very spotty coverage.)

Characters can no longer avoid having their movements recorded. Even in the remote woods where there is no cell phone coverage, trail cameras are ubiquitous and need to be accounted for in plot lines. Facial recognition software is becoming more sophisticated, allowing computers to rapidly process video recordings. Everyone and their mother uses their cell phones to record anything they think looks suspicious.

We risk diminishing our stories if we don’t make our criminals worthy antagonists by being technologically smarter. Most criminals make stupid mistakes, but other than the humor found in the how-could-they-be-so-dumb stories, these aren’t the folks we want to write or spend our time reading about.

Given these technological advances, how can our bad guys avoid becoming suspects? And, once they are, how can they circumvent surveillance? How can our good guys use technology to set traps? And how can we write all this in a way that isn’t obsolete when then next technological advance arrives?

* * *

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. Empty Promises, the fifth novel in the series—this one set in the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—is now available. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

A Protagonist Who Kills By Kathryn Lane

When I started writing my first Nikki Garcia Thriller, I did not know Nikki’s life would spawn a trilogy of books or even more.

Nikki Garcia, the protagonist of Waking Up in Medellin, grew in my subconscious and broke through my consciousness like a tigress released from captivity. Nikki took up residence in my brain where she roamed freely, lighting up my neurons with nuggets of her life. I started writing her story and the nuggets grew into a complete goldmine.

That’s not to say I did not encounter times when I struggled to write her story. My biggest challenge involved making Nikki likeable, even lovable, while also making her a strong woman capable of standing her ground against scoundrels and criminals in a foreign setting. Okay, so she can stand up intellectually to villains and henchmen with heroine qualities I bestowed on her to rise to the occasion without losing her femininity. But what happens when her life is endangered, and she must resort to a gun?

I placed Nikki in Medellin, Colombia, a city with a past. A city where criminality ruled during the time of Pablo Escobar, one of the world’s worst drug lords until his death in 1993. However, Nikki’s story takes place in current times and in a very different Medellin, a city, which has remade itself into a lovely place, even if its past still haunts the city’s reputation. And speaking of pasts, Nikki has a past that haunts her, even in her sleep.

Up to now, the reader can ride along with Nikki as she performs her work in Medellin to uncover wrongdoing at the Colombian affiliate. Readers can also be happy for Nikki when a medical doctor she meets at a party expresses feelings for her. Her travels to Cartagena, a historical Spanish Colonial town, and her hiking expedition to the Tayrona national park are episodes described in detail, allowing us to experience both sites with her. All the while, Nikki’s love interest inspires her to leave her past behind and live life fully again. But can she trust him?

As Nikki pursues her investigative work, she finds more than she expected. Her life is put in danger, and she must rise to the occasion again, not with words in an argument, but with gun in hand to protect herself.

What happens in the mind of the reader the minute Nikki uses her gun and kills? Do I lose my readers, or do they applaud her boldness? Had I built in enough resiliency in Nikki’s story and enough courage in my protagonist to carry off the gunfight without killing her likeability quotient or the solidarity between Nikki and the readers of her story?

I faced the same challenge in writing Coyote Zone, my second thriller, where Nikki is in Mexico and goes undercover with human traffickers to save a kidnapped child. And she must kill again!

This dilemma of balance in a character’s heart, I’m convinced, is faced by most writers who kill.

Author Biographical Information

Kathryn Lane is the award-winning author of the Nikki Garcia Thriller Series:

Waking Up in Medellín

Kathryn’s debut novel, Waking Up in Medellín (Pen-L Publishing-March 2016) has won:

Silver Falchion for Best Fiction Book of the Year 2017 by Killer Nashville

Silver Falchion for Best Fiction Adult Suspense 2017 by Killer Nashville

Finalist for the RONE Award (Mystery category 2017) by InD’tale Magazine

Coyote Zone (released October 2017)

The second novel in the Nikki Garcia Thriller Series, Coyote Zone (Pen-L Publishing), presents you with high stakes danger in a kidnapping and human trafficking story. Other subplots woven into the plot, such as romance, make this an exciting read.

Kathryn’s collection of short stories, Backyard Volcano and Other Mysteries of the Heart, (Alamo Bay Press-April 2017) will give you a fusion between fantasy and reality; symbolism, punctuated by hints of surrealism, and stories with unusual twists and turns.

Originally from Mexico, a young Kathryn was a painter in oils but changed to accounting and international finance to earn a living. She became a CPA and a CMA and worked for a multinational corporation where she traveled extensively for two decades. After jetting to over 90 countries, her travels gave her the opportunity to fulfill another passion – to write fiction. Now she happily writes stories and novels inspired by foreign cultures.

A graduate of the University of New Mexico, Kathryn is both a Certified Management Accountant (New Jersey) and a Certified Public Accountant (New Mexico – inactive status).  She serves on the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council and resides in The Woodlands, Texas, with her husband, Bob Hurt.

Beaver: A Model Antagonist

by James M Jackson.

He’s back!

A mile and a half before we get to our northern home, we pass over Beaver Creek. It usually travels through a culvert under the road. As we approached the creek, we saw water flowing over the road. “Expletive deleted,” I said to Jan. “The beaver is back.”

I know this is not the same beaver as the one I battled many years ago for control over this same culvert, nor is it the one whose dam at our lake’s outlet raised the water level a foot. It’s not even the one who materially changed our view of the lake by removing a dozen mature white birch, red maple, and quaking aspen from in front of our house a few years back. This is probably a bachelor youngster recently booted from the family compound who is looking to make his way in the world. Let’s treat this beaver as a reincarnation of previous beavers, all of whom collectively have become my model antagonist.

My favorite antagonists to read about are those who have their own agendas. The antagonist’s conflict with the protagonist arises from the incompatibility of their competing objectives. Each character’s motivations should drive their goals, and their competing agendas should ratchet up the conflict between the parties.

Our young Mr. Beaver has three main objectives: Stay alive, which means preparing his world to make it harder for predators to kill and eat him. Eat enough food to prosper and grow. Attract Ms. Beaver and convince her to lodge up with him. (They form monogamous pairs.) Beaver are safer in water than on land, where they are more vulnerable to predation from various canines and bears. The deeper the water, the safer they are.

Raising the water level gives them more aquatic area from which to safely collect food and allows them to construct canals to more easily gather food and bring it back for storage. To a beaver, flowing water is wasted water.

A satisfactory antagonist shouldn’t be all negatives. A mix of good and bad makes him much more interesting. Our beaver has many good qualities—so many that we even have generalized descriptions we apply to certain humans who are busy as a beaver or eager beavers. The most effective antagonists share both positive and negative qualities with the protagonist—naturally in different amounts.

When it comes to our jointly utilized landscape, I have some objectives as well. I want unobstructed access to my property so I can reach grocery stores and the library and bring my provisions back home. I want to drive over Beaver Creek, not through it. And I don’t want parts of the road washed away by beaver-caused flooding. I want my dock to be a certain number of inches above the lake. I want a mix of trees on my property to provide shelter and food for birds and animals, shade during the summer, and to block the view of the neighbor across the lake. And I don’t want those trees to fall on my house.

Taken alone, the beaver’s wish list and mine each seem reasonable. Viewed together, conflict is inevitable.

A satisfactory antagonist must be persistent. They can’t fold at the first opposition; they regroup and try again.

Piles of "construction material" pulled from
the beaver's culvert blocking project

Last week, after unloading the car and making sure our off-grid systems are all working, I drive back to Beaver Creek, and using a pitchfork I clear the thin coating of sticks and mud the beaver has used to efficiently prevent any water flowing through the culvert. When I am done, water rushes through, overflowing its downside streambed, flooding the area below the road.

I am a veteran of culvert battles and know the beaver is not going to concede me total victory after his first setback. As soon as light arrives the next day, I drive to the culvert and find it blocked. Whereas the first blockage had been minimalistic, now under attack, the beaver has strengthened the blocking materials, weaving a mixture of flexible branches, chewed sticks as thick as two-inches in diameter, grass reeds, and mud into an impenetrable composite twice the thickness of the original plug. I work steadily for half an hour to clear the obstruction.

The beaver has exhibited another characteristic of strong antagonists: adjusting its methods to reach its objective and, relative to the protagonist (that would be me), it has upped the ante. If I am going to keep the culvert clear, I need to commit 45-minutes a day (including commutation time).

Protagonists should have flaws, and an interesting conflict often requires the protagonist to address and overcome his own shortcomings to reach his objective. I prefer to write first thing in the morning; it’s when I feel most productive. Yet, since the beaver works nocturnally, to minimize the damage done by his nightly construction, I need to deconstruct as early as possible to get the water flowing again. I commit to putting aside my writing needs (or at least desires) to defeat the beaver and prevent the road from washing out.

I post on Facebook about my battle with Mr. Beaver. One of my friends gets to the heart of the matter and asks, “Who will tire of their job first?”

Each night the beaver blocks the culvert, and each night he uses larger sticks, more fresh branches, all sealed with several inches of grass and mud. Each morning I undo the work. My back is beginning to object to the strain of pulling resistant material from below my feet to keep the culvert clean. I need to strategize my deconstruction to make sure that in the process I don’t allow any of the beaver’s work to slide into the culvert and cause a blockage someplace where I cannot reach it.

One of my personal shortcomings is a strong inclination to not ask for help. Several lake neighbors and I paid for this larger culvert when an earlier version installed by the local logging company proved insufficient for the task and the road continually washed out in spring runoff and after an earlier beaver attack. Two major logging companies now own much of the property nearby, and they have agreed for one to take primary responsibility for maintaining the road. I remember that there used to be a grate preventing the beaver from plugging the inside of the culvert. Even with the grate Mr. Beaver can still stop water from flowing, but having one eliminates my biggest concern of the culvert plugging somewhere in the middle. People can be seriously injured clearing those obstructions.

The logging company guy in charge of this area is glad to hear from me and agrees to install a new grate that day. He says he will check the culvert as well when he is in the area. By overcoming one of my personal issues, I have gained an ally.

Skip ahead to today (Thursday at my composing). This morning I inspected the culvert and found no beaver activity. If this is a short story, the beaver has decided to move on since Beaver Creek is not working out as a place for him to construct his life. And in that short story, I’ve learned my lesson and will ask for assistance sooner.

If this is a novel, the beaver moves on and takes up residence on my lake, the head of which is about 1,600 feet from the site of the culvert battle. Soon the lake level will rise and trees in front of my house will be under attack. Then I’ll need to face the more existential crisis of whether my rights as a human property owner are greater than his rights as North America’s largest rodent—and whether the battle can be resolved without involving the beaver’s death.

I’m hoping for the short-story ending.

[But as of the time of posting, this will be at least a novella. The beaver renewed his energies. On Thursday night he stopped the flow aided by 3" of rain had water running over the road. As of Saturday evening, I had drained enough water from the marsh to eliminate water coming over the road. Unfortunately, Mr. Beaver does not believe in resting on the Sabbath -- I'll let you know in the comments what I find Sunday morning. ~ Jim]

CREATING OUR PROTAGONIST

I recently finished Louise Penny’s eighth and latest book, How the Light Gets In, and I felt frustrated because I had no one to discuss the ending with. I love Penny’s books and each one is better than the last, but maybe it’s because not only her protagonist, but also the characters with all their idiosyncrasies seem real enough to become my friends. So I lay awake thinking about the ending and considered calling my brother-in-law in Tacoma since he’d already read it and enjoyed it, too. But even with the three hour time difference, it was still too late to call him. A few days later my Tacoma sister and I did have an online chat about the ending and where Louise Penny would go with her next book.

Then I got to thinking about her main character, Armand Gamache, and remembered meeting him the first year Louise Penny came to Malice Domestic with her first book, Still Life, What? How could I meet a fictitious character? Well, I did sort of because Louise Penny and her husband were at my table for the beginning of Malice-go-round. She had three minutes to talk about her book and told us about Armand Gamache and how he was based on her husband, not that her husband was Chief Inspector of Quebec’s Surete, but because Gamache had all her husband’s characteristics. The expression on his face as Penny talked about her book was full of pride and love for his wife. Even in the years that followed at other Malice’s I could see the love between the two of them, just like that of Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache. It’s in their expressions and body language.

 

Although Still Life wasn’t nominated for an Agatha that year, it won numerous other awards, and five of her subsequent books won an Agatha, something no other author has done, and her book The Beautiful Mystery debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. Because I believe in starting a series at the beginning, I picked Still Life for both of my book clubs and reread them several years apart. I enjoyed it just as much the third time and maybe more because I found clues to the murderer I hadn’t noticed in the first read as well as little things that would turn up in future books.

So next I thought about my main character Catherine Jewell. A lot of people have asked if I based her on someone I knew or if she were me. She’s not really either one totally, but a mixture. When one of my sisters and I collaborated on The Blue Rose, which for years was called Murder at Elmwood Gardens, we decided on a gardening theme since our whole family of six siblings were gardeners. Our youngest sister, Catherine, is a botanist so we gave the protagonist her name and made her a botanist. My sister wanted our Catherine to be in her twenties and a very ambitious person who would expand her horizons into creating gardening businesses and a show on TV or the radio. Within a month I had taken over the writing because we lived too far apart to get together very often, and she still had kids living at home. I didn’t. But I couldn’t get into the head of an ambitious twenty something year old woman, so I aged her to forty. I also gave her a past life before coming to the little town of Portage Falls that was somewhat similar to mine. Catherine lost her husband and only child in an accident ten years before. Because my oldest son had died, I could write realistically about her loss. I am not a botanist, but I can contact my sister for anything I want to know that I can’t find in the many gardening books I have. Although Catherine has a few quirks or beliefs that are mine, for the most part she is a totally fictitious character sprung from my imagination.

I wonder how many other authors, especially of series, can write a protagonist without making them at least a little bit like themselves or like someone they know well even if they switch genders.

How much of your main character is like you?

As a reader, what main character resonates most with who you are?