A Simple Grapefruit Seed -

A long time ago when I was living in Manhattan, I had some friends over for dinner, and we had grapefruit for desert. I happened to be reading The After Dinner Gardening Book and the author, Richard W. Langer, pointed out that I could grow a grapefruit tree from a seed I extracted from my desert. It's a great book, and my grapefruit grew. And grew. And grew. She came with me when I moved to Boston and from Boston to Cape Cod.

I kept her in my office when I was manufacturing fan systems. On one Valentines Day, some contractors walked around on the roof of my building and made a lot of holes in the roof. I had tarps stretched over everything, but the grapefruit tree loved it. I moved her with me to my home on Cape Cod, and she stretched up to the sun in my two story kitchen area. I finally had to screw up my courage and cut the top off so she would fit out the door so she could enjoy the summer sun. And she loved that too. I planted cuttings to be able to give to my children.

We call her '72'. There have been times over the past almost 50 years when she hasn't looked happy and that is reflected in the events in my life. And there are other times when she is thriving, and that's reflected there as well. I consider the spawn of this simple seed a barometer of my life. (By the way, 72 has never even hinted at producing fruit but I don't hold that against her.)

Stay well,
Paul
Paul H. Raymer
P.S there's more to this newsletter - please keep reading.

In the Ground by Jeff Carson

Jeff Carson’s In the Ground is the 14th book in the David Wolf mystery thriller series, and I have to tell you that I came into this series with this book and that was a problem for me. Both going into this story and coming out of this story are a whole lot of connections to other episodes both in the past and to come in the future. There were lot of people who were only connected to this particular story because the protagonist knew them. I didn’t know them, and I wondered who they were and why they were there.

It’s a fascinating thing about characters in a series. Some authors manage to get the books to stand clearly on their own pages. Paul Doiron does that. Patrick O’Brien, Dudley Pope, and Dewey Lamdin do that in their sea stories. Elizabeth George does it well with Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. Some authors don’t write their books in sequence but use the same characters like Agatha Christie with Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.

But it is a challenge to write the books in series, having the character age as the pages and books turn, with the risk that a new reader (like me in this case) is going to walk into the middle of it. My wife has a big family, and the first time I walked into the room and they all looked at me, I knew that I was never going to remember who they all were and how they were connected. But that was okay, because I knew that I was going to have time to get to know them. They were family and that was a reason to care.

It’s not a bad story. Wolf is the sheriff of a county in Colorado and he gets called into a murder scene when a body appears on the top of a gigantic machine in a mining operation. Wolf has all sorts of issues with his job and the people around him, while he tries to sort out who did the deed and why. In the process, another body shows up. Added to the mix is a female deputy that Sheriff Wolf finds attractive despite some disparity in their ages.

I wouldn’t call this a ‘thriller’ in the ilk of Robert Ludlum, David Baldacci, or Ian Fleming. The scenery is great and the main characters do have substance, but I felt that the plot line took a back seat to the ongoing story of the characters. As in all good mystery stories, the why drives the who. In this story, using a maze of clues in following the how, Carson does a good job of burying the why until close to the end in an explosion of revelation and gunfire.

Carson’s writing is solid and the editing is good. This might be a story line that would be worth turning back, and following from the beginning.

Pollutants

Working on the EPA's Indoor airPLUS program has allowed me to dive deeply into the array of pollutants that are floating around in the air in our homes. And there are a lot of them. Arsenic, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, PCBs, radon, and little, teeny PM 2.5 particles. When I started teaching people about this stuff, I had to introduce them to PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). Now everyone has been made familiar with it. N95 masks have become common topics of conversation. I'm glad people are more aware of this stuff, but it's too bad that it has taken a pandemic to get us there.

Jeffrey May wrote a book twenty years ago called My House Is Killing Me! (He published an updated version in December of 2020.) If you are interested in some the things that are crawling around in the corners of your house, check it out. If you want to get a more international view of the problem, check out Rob Dunn's Never Home Alone. You might think differently as you kill a camel cricket or step into the shower.

Those books are mainly about living things with legs or wings. The stuff that I am mainly concerned about are the gases and particulates that are floating around in the air. As we tighten up our houses to save energy and hide from Covid 19 particles, we are trapping many things inside.

Take for example carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide alarms that are UL listed are not allowed to alarm until the air is really bad. But low levels of CO are bad for your health as well. Just 9 ppm (parts per million) for 8 hours is the EPA action level. I've measured that on the streets of some cities. 35 ppm is high enough to get out of the house. To pass UL 2034 certification testing, the alarm must meet the following low-level thresholds:

0 – 29 PPM – The detector must remain silent. If it has a digital display, it must show a zero reading.
30 PPM – 69 PPM – If the carbon monoxide level remains in this range for a minimum of 30 days, the audible alarm may sound. If the unit has a digital display, it should display the CO level provided it is 30 ppm or higher.

The EPA radon action threshold is 4 pCl (Pico Curies per Liter). I have a digital radon monitor that shows me both the short term and longer term levels in my house. It fluctuates from day to day. There really are no safe levels for radon, but it's natural for there to be some.

Because of the pandemic, there is a lot of interest in this stuff. But be careful that you are getting scientifically clear information. It is way too easy to sell on fear and hype. Good ventilation and filtration will go a long way.

Live and Just Keep Learning

It's endless - and that's a good thing. If you ever stop learning, you might as well just curl up and die. There are dozens of people on social networking web pages dedicated to writers and writing who are in pain as they struggle with writing anything or with character or plot development or any of the million things that writers have to go through. Of course, that pain is not restricted just to writing. I had the same issues as I learned the building science trade. Every time I opened a door on another aspect, I would realize how much more there was to learn which is why I resist the term SME (Subject Matter Expert). To me, an expert knows everything about their subject. And that will never be me.
Understand I'm not complaining. Not in the least. The writing trade is certainly challenging, but there is a lot of help out there. Here are some resources that I have found useful:

Elizabeth George's books on the writer's craft Mastering the Process and Write Away
Steven King's On Writing;
Grant Richard's 1901 book How to Write a Novel;
Strunk & White's Elements of Style;
The MacMillan Handbook of English;
Roget's International Thesaurus (not the electronic version);
All of Walker Percy's books;
All of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's books;
All of Robert Coover's books;
And a million other works by great authors, past and present.

So many books and so little time.
Send me your favorites.

Independent Bookstores

In my ongoing series of spotlighting independent bookstores, I want to celebrate Titcombs Bookshop in Sandwich on Cape Cod. The following is from the description on Titcomb's webpage:

"During its 40 years, Titcomb’s has enjoyed a warm relationship with customers and authors alike. Visiting authors are asked to pose for a picture with the trademark statue. Many customers stop to see the authors’ wall where the photos are displayed (now also on their website). Philip Craig, the late author of Martha’s Vineyard mysteries, remarked 'Titcomb's Bookshop...is a charming little shop with equally charming managers and customers. It's been my pleasure to sign books there several times…. Not only have I inscribed quite a few books, I've enjoyed excellent conversations with wonderful people who love to read. They are the most interesting people in the world, and Titcomb's draws them like bees to honey.'"

I am privileged to have my books represented there.

Some Bits for Benjamin Bunny and the Rabbit Hole

Fantasy World Mapping: If you are planning out a Fantasy World story and wondering how to map it, check out this article.

Research Management Software: Zotero is an excellent tool for organizing non-fiction research.

Trello: If you’re a visual planner, Trello is a great way to organize your writing, with different boards for each of your books or writing projects. It also has lists and cards to help you organize your tasks

DokuWiki: A private Wiki to organize notes on writing and marketing.

Logitech Combo Touch Keyboard: I have one of these for my Ipad Air. I'm not much good on the screen based keyboards. I like the feel of pressing the buttons. This allows me to get away from my desk, sit on the front porch, and write stuff as the dawn lights up the sky.

The Alliance of Independent Authors - Author Member

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