I AVOIDED CARMAGEDDON BY STAYING IN LAS VEGAS

Well, the worst has just about passed, and early Monday morning the Carmageddon panic will have subsided. Just to be safe, I scheduled my time in Las Vegas to avoid it, but how would it have affected me if I stayed?

Since I didn't have commitments in the Valley for work or entertainment, at the worst I would have been confined to my side of the hill. Not so bad. Marina Del Rey isn't such an awful place to be with its beaches, cafes, entertainment venues and more. It might have been rough to venture downtown, but then I really didn't have a compelling reason to go there. Many events were rescheduled in view of the impending closure which lightened the traffic load for those who had to traverse the Santa Susana mountains.

Okay, call me chicken for fleeing town, but actually being in Las Vegas was a bonus. I was able to drop by the Public Safety Writers Association conference yesterday and join them for lunch.

It was fun seeing many of the people I met last year, and even though I couldn't stay because of other commitments, I was glad I went. In the process, I donated a copy of my new upcoming book, Writers' Tricks of the Trade: 39 Things You Need to Know About the ABCs of Writing Fiction as one of their drawing prizes. I'll mail an autographed copy to the winner when it is released.

Back to Carmageddon. As with similar concerns when the Olympics were held in L.A., the traffic many thought would be a nightmare was much lighter than normal. According to the news---yes, it made the Las Vegas news--- as Los Angeles entered the second day in the shutdown of the 10-mile (16-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 405 — one of the country's busiest highways, work was so far ahead of schedule this morning that officials were planning to reopen the freeway later in the day.

They were elated that the public appeared to get the message to avoid "Carmageddon" by staying off the roads, though some were concerned the lack of gridlock would make drivers complacent and spur them to return to the road before Monday's scheduled reopening.

Isn't it amazing what efficiency is possible with some cooperation and a threat of a $72,000 penalty for every hour the repair work lagged behind schedule?

Special note to Congress - Hey guys---This is what working together means! Quit jockeying for political position and work out the current debt ceiling crisis instead. This isn't about how it will play in 2012 or which party will prevail. It is about addressing the impending Government shutdown as the intelligent lawmakers we hoped we elected.

Why the premise of Larry Crowne doesn't grab me

I spent some time trying to figure out what would motivate me to want to see the latest from Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. I like both of them as actors and it's always refreshing to see a good comedy. However, the operative word is GOOD.

I'd seen so many promos for Larry Crowne before all of the disasterous reviews began to rain down in buckets that I could probably repeat the trailers and ads word-for-word. At this point I have to say the opening of the trailer turned me off immediately.

Hanks' character is a valued employee for nine years. Heck, he snags the employee award every one of those years. Then he's fired because he doesn't have a college degree? It just doesn't make sense. I can see something happening that gets him fired, but if he was so valued would the company make no effort whatsoever to keep him on board? What does this say? That someone who is excellent at their job doesn't deserve to keep it without having the academic endorsement?

And the bit with the scooter. How has he been getting to work for all of those nine years? Does he not have two nickles to rub together and no credit whatsoever and therefore is forced to ride a garage sale scooter? Sorry, it doesn't fly for me.

Now if he had labored at the same job for nine years, giving it his all, and he is finally fed up with earning chicken feed while the bosses get fat, that might be a beginning. Maybe this honest guy suddenly isn't so honest, gets caught and gets fired. Now he's out in the cruel world, and that world has changed in the last nine years. He's been living it to the max with credit card payments and car payments he can no longer hack. The car is repossessed, he moves into a tiny apartment and realizes he has to get more education to land a job. The story unfolds from there.

That is an example of a scenario I could believe. Many people are tempted to go to the "sort of dark side." Of those that do, many get caught and pay the consequences. It could be funny, and it is only one possibility for a story line.

I guess I wasn't the only one who felt that way judging by the dismal boxoffice reports. What a shame to waste talent like Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts on something like this. I might watch it when it gets to DVD just to see what happens after the contrived opening, but I can't see myself shelling out up to $12 dollars to see it.

On the other hand, take something like Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen's latest. Brilliant writing, brilliant acting, totally entertaining. I'd rather pay the same $12 to see that movie a second time.

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Have a great weekend.

MORGAN ST. JAMES
www.morganstjames-author.com

There is more to it than meets the eye!

It is a definite given that our country is in a slump. Unemployment is high and in a totally normal reaction we search for the cause and solution.

Well, there are some obvious givens and politicians on both sides add their spin so they can justify pointing the finger at the other side. That's also normal--nothing more than business as usual. Let's face it, we've been through two wars, corporate bailouts of a proportion that no one would ever have imagined, both sides of congress at odds with each other resulting in a stalemate, i.e., absolutely nothing gets done quickly or without lots of yelling, accusations and logjams. We have elections on the horizon so it appears the main agenda is to make sure the other guy doesn't get elected.

Somewhere along the line I thought Congress was supposed to support the good of the people, but that seems to be nothing more than a pipe dream. Fat cats are getting fatter, the "thin cats" are on forced diets and the normal sized ones--what used to be the backbone of America--are present in smaller and smaller numbers every day.

So, with all of that said, here's what hit me like a sledge hammer on Sunday. Sure, we have sent so many of our technical and manufacturing jobs to emerging or thriving nations while ours wallows in unemployment, but there is another factor no other president had to contend with to the degree it is present today. No other generation was faced with this. Think Industrial Revolution, then hype it so many times you'll lose count. The name of the other culprit is AUTOMATION.

On Sunday we drove to The Grove shopping mall and took our ticket from the machine. A real person used to be in the booth. We checked out automatically, too. Many times when we go to the movies we get our ticket online to speed things up and make sure we have a seat. High school kids used to depend upon jobs in the movies to earn expenses. Not now. Most of it is automated.

We went to the grocery store where the scan lines were busy. Less checker's jobs. We made it a point not to use the scan, but waited for the person who was hanging onto their job. Then we filled up at the gas station and inserted a credit card. How many remember the days when gas stations actually had attendants who checked your oil and washed your windshield?

The list just goes on and on. Try to make a list of all the jobs that have been lost that will never come back. Sure we still need people to do the new customer service functions, programming, and all the other things attendant to commerce, but most of them are no longer in the U.S. Once you count the jobs that are now done electronically and multiply that by the number of stores or services across the entire country that replaced real people, it becomes scary. When you only look at one automatic checkstand, for example, it doesn't seem like that much, but what about putting that into the context of over 200,000 supermarkets in the United States. The picture looks a lot different. The big question, of course, is how do we retrain people for jobs that we can then keep in our own country?

Everything we see daily in the news is of great concern, but it is only part of the problem.

I LEARNED FROM MY OWN BOOK!

How strange is this? I had to go through the galley of the Writers' Tricks of the Trade book so many times in a quest to find even the smallest errors, that  I discovered yesterday I'd actually learned from it. What a concept~learning from your own book.

Yep. It is true. I'm happy to say that I  think the galley is now error-free - hallelujah -  of course if Murphy's Law kicks in, the minute it's in print some obscure error will suddenly become as brilliant as the marquee on a theater. I'll deal with it if it happens.

Anyway, I'm back to working on the new Silver Sisters Mystery Diamonds in the Dumpster and my "coming of age at 42" book Confessions of a Cougar.

I got to thinking about how I started my writing career with how-to articles and in writing the book I've come full circle. I must say I loved the luxury of being able to take the time to tightly edit and add to the content of many of my examiner.com columns in creating the 39 Things You Need to Know About the ABCs of Writing Fiction. I truly appreciated the ability to present sometimes complex concepts in simple, entertaining language.

So now let me tell you how I realized I learned in the process. Phyllice and I plotted the entire story of Diamonds in the Dumpster while I was in Oregon last month, and I was only waiting to finish the Tricks of the Trade project to begin writing. I'd sent her the preliminary Chapter 1 and she felt that should be Chapter 2 so she wrote a new introductory Chapter 1. I love her style and humor when she writes, but as I was reading back through the new Chapter 1 and the now Chapter 2, some of the "things" I'd been reading ad infinium in my book invaded my thoughts.

I found myself picking up slight glitches or faux pas that would have slid past before. I don't know if was my brilliant style (LOL) or if repeated reading drummed it into my already crammed brain, but were those little things that could be improved or occasionally deleted, daring me to fix them.

I'm having lots of fun with writing Diamonds in the Dumpster. It's always fun to write about my favorite twins and their feisty 80 year old mother and uncle. This time since the oldsters have a much bigger role, it is particularly fun to invade their heads and thought processes.

All that is left now for Writers' Tricks of the Trade to go to publication  is for the rest of the blurbs to come in and the final cover design. This is exciting. More to come.

MORGAN
www.morganstjames-author.com

Working on the "Writers' Tricks of the Trade" book

After I read through the plotting notes for the new Diamonds in the Dumpster Silver Sisters caper, I realized we needed to add a scene to Chapter 1. Phyllice has a slightly different idea, so I'm waiting for her to wrap her head around it so we can begin writing the book. It is so great that we decided how we would treat different approaches or ideas when we first began writing together. It is truly a delight to write with my sister.

Writers Tricks of the Trade

39 Things You Need to Know About the ABCs of Writing Fiction

This is the rough of the cover by the very talented illustrator Scott Garrett. Can't wait to see the final

The manuscript is back from the editor with a few corrections. She offered a couple of very valid suggestions that I agree with, so I've begun to read through it again and make some minor adjustments.

The book is moving along on schedule and I really feel confident it will be out before the end of the year. I've said this over and over and even devote some space in the book to the necessity to allow a manuscript to get cold. It is so important to reread it before commiting it to the final draft.

As I read through Tricks of the Trade, I spot those places where it could be one bit better, maybe something that was repititious and should be cut or adjusted or changing an example because I've found a better one. Maybe just a little tightening. Yes, there has to be a point where you stop, and I'm rapidly approaching it, but just this one more time...

Another thing. When I put the manuscript through spellcheck before sending it to the editor, I was really amazed at how many valid things were caught. Like double words, missing letters and transpositions. It is so weird how the eye doesn't always catch these. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The eye often sees what the mind thinks it should see. While some spellcheck suggestions are way off base, it's invaluable to have it catch the little faux pas you dont really see.

Okay, that said, I've got to get out of the house today! Since I got back from Oregon, I've been at the computer working on a myriad of things nonstop. I planned to do things on Tuesday and Wednesday, but all of a sudden it was evening and I was still at the keys.

Right now my mouth is watering for a Jewish delight - a nice lox and creamcheese sandwich on a good bagel. I'm heading to Noah's because theirs is wonderful and half the price of a deli. Then, back to working on Tricks of the Trade when I return.



BACK IN THE "BIG" CITY-PRAISE FOR SOUTHWEST AIRLINES

My sojourn to McMinnville is over and I'm back in Marina Del Rey CA. This is the first time in many years I've flown with Southwest, and I have to say they definitely get it right. At least for this trip. By paying a modest $10 fee each way, they automatically check you in which gives you a preferred position in line. I was number 22 coming back from Portland and got exactly the seat I love: Row 6 on the aisle. They don't charge for luggage---BTW today's L.A. Times reported that luggage fees now account for about $3.4 BILLION dollars a year.

I always look for non-stop flights, but this time I took one with stopovers in Oakland CA (don't get off the plane) in each direction Why? It was more than $200 cheaper than the competing airlines, and don't forget the lack of fees for luggage. These people have the efficiency of Disneyland when it comes to moving crowds. Within 25 minutes the Oakland passengers were off the plane, the Los Angeles ones on and we were in the air. We arrived in Los Angeles at 10:23 p.m.--7 minutes ahead of schedule. Kudos to Southwest!

This morning after setting up my laptop I realized the thing I missed the most while at my sister Phyllice's house was typing on a keyboard rather than directly on the laptop. Talk about frustration. I'm simply not used to using the keyboard on the laptop and the cursor kept jumping around creating some very unusual words like seboardtting-- see what I mean. Anyway, it's always good to go and good to come back, particularly when I'm able to come back with 30 outline pages of a fully plotted Silver Sisters mystery. We actually managed to stay on point despite gossip sessions, rerun episodes of Law and Order, Numbers and Bones, and the insanity of Phyllice's house with people coming and going. Yep. We have our plot.

When we are together, it always reinforces how much alike we are in some ways, even to the extent of events in our lives paralleling, and how different we are in other ways. As Phyllice sometimes puts it, she is the country mouse like Goldie Silver and I'm the city slicker like Godiva Olivia DuBois.

We also spent some time reminiscing about our Uncle Sol, the perennial youth. In his seventies, Uncle Sol was still going on 17 in spirit. He was the spot of sunshine in a day and could make generations of kids and adults laugh. Some of the humor in our books comes from his antics and we both agreed that as kids we didn't realize the gift he gave us of looking at situations with a positive eye, always infused with laughter. After my father died when Phyllice was 12 and I was 17, he was sort of a surrogate dad for several years. He used to call himself the voice of reason and that's what we gave the Silver Sisters' uncle Sterling Silver.

That's all for now.

SMALL TOWN EXPERIENCE

I've been in McMinnville Oregon since last Tuesday so Phyllice and I can plot the next Silver Sisters Mystery, "Diamonds in the Dumpster." We have been putting in lots of hours and today she is in her booth at the Saturday market so I have time to do some catch-up.

I'm a big city person, splitting my time between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and being in a small town like McMinneville Oregon is always a relaxing experience. Life goes at a slower pace. Phyllice lives a block from the main drag, 3rd Street, and the gallery where her artwork is exhibited is just a block and a half away. It's nice to be here during the time that she is the featured artist for the month. Her wall comes down just after the time I return to L.A. and then her work will be dispersed throughout the Currents Gallery and another artist gets the big wall.

Last night we took a nice walk from one end of the main street to the other, stopping along the way at a brew pub to have some dinner. The only movie theater in town is an intimate back room of a restaurant where they show second or third run movies. Life is definitely a different pace. There was an actual theater at one time, but I guess it didn't make it. Tonight we plan to go hear some music at the hotel on 3rd.

In addition to everything else she does, Phyllice has turned her big old house into a guest house so there are always an assortment of characters present, from the wine distributor who lives in the garage and takes care of the garden, to the cop in the attic. The house is about 4,000 s.f. and over 100 years old, and totally wonderful. She has turned the downstairs into a small boutique shop called Katz and Dawgs and uses the huge dining room as her art studio. Occasionally, people who come in to browse also buy one or two Silver Sisters books. Yesterday a couple from Astoria WA bought A Corpse in the Soup and Seven Deadly Samovars. They now have rare copies autographed by both of us. That's pretty unusual since we're not together that often.

McMinnville is the home of Evergreen Aviation and the Evergreen Aviation Museum. If you ever get into this area, that is a must see. It's where the Spruce Goose has been housed for the past several years in a building designed specifically for it. The Museum has now expanded to 3 buildings and they just added a water slide like none in the world. They hefted a 737 to the top of the building and it is the entrance and part of the slide. Imagine that. It will be a huge attraction. They take some of the vintage planes to the airfield across the road sometimes and fly them.

Well, time to get myself together and walk over to the market to see what my Sis is up to. She's a big fish in the little pond in McMinnville, and many people in town know her. I'm lucky if my neighbors on my own street know me! When we went to dinner the other night a Silver Sisters fan approached us saying she recognized us from our website photo. She had seen Phyllice at art shows as well. Ah. Celebrity!