Robert McKay: Blog

Today I'm posting two short stories featuring an Albuquerque private detective named Kim Il-chae ("Juchae" and "Munchkin's Money"). These stories - as with all my stuff - occur in my Carpenter universe, but unlike the Carpenters she isn't a Christian, and unlike my other stories these aren't romances. My initial idea was that eventually Kim (she goes by her family name, since most Americans are utterly incompetent when it comes to anything foreign) would become a Christian through her relationship with Darvin Carpenter(she helps him out in a couple of the Carpenter stories), but so far all I've done with her is these two shorts, and a novel which I'll post later
on.

Writing entirely from within a woman's head proved both easier and more difficult than I thought. In some respects I did it without any effort (two or three women have looked at my Kim stuff, and they tell me that overall I got it right). But I think I tried too hard, and so there were things in all three Kim stories that weren't right, and it's only after I recently went through all three again that I'm confident that I've eliminated what wasn't right. And at that I may still not have done a completely complete job of fixing the problems. :)

But I do love Kim Il-chae. I love her sense of humor, her toughness, and her way of expressing exasperation with unusual phrases (I wish she wouldn't cuss when she's downright mad, but as I said, she's not a Christian, and I don't allow the actual vulgarities into the record). I love the fact that she's half Korean (both my daughters are, which isn't surprising since my wife is Korean). I love the way she can be utterly professional when it's necessary, and utterly hedonistic when there's time to relax. I've never cared for bubble bath, but I've got my equivalents. :)

This week I'm beginning a new non-Carpenter book (though as y'all will remember they still take place in the Carpenter universe). The name is Adown, for reasons which the story itself will make clear.

This is the beginning of what was supposed to be a single novel but grew into a series, which then stalled. I still want, someday, to finish the story, but right now I'm barely writing anything, and have no idea when or if I'll pick up the story of the Hudsons again.

This is, like all the non-Carpenter stories, explicitly Christian. In addition, this one draws from actual history - it retells, here in Albuquerque, the story of Charles and Susannah Spurgeon. You can find plenty of information about Charles (and considerably less about Susannah) in any number of places, but here are some basic facts.

Charles Spurgeon, who was born in 1834 and died in 1892, became famous as the "prince of preachers" while serving as a pastor in London. He was still in his teens when he became the pastor of the New Park Street Chapel, an old and honored Baptist congregation. The church grew rapidly, and after a remodel of the building left the people will still insufficient space the church built a brand new meeting house, the Metropolitan Tabernacle (the church took that name as well). During his ministry this church was the largest single congregation in the world, and people were so eager to hear Spurgeon preach that occasionally he'd instruct the members to stay home one Sunday, whereupon non-members would pack the building.

Spurgeon's published sermons run to over 60 volumes, and publication ceased in 1917 because of a paper shortage - there are still plenty of sermons which have never seen print. In addition he wrote many other books. Most if not all of his output is available through Pilgrim Publications of Pasadena, TX.

Susannah was a member of the church and thought poorly of Spurgeon when he first came to be the pastor. But before long she came to love him, and he to love her, and they got married. They were devoted to each other till his death. After the birth of her twins, their only children, she was largely an invalid for the rest of her life, enduring long separations later in the marriage when Spurgeon's health required him to spend the winter in southern France. Finally, in 1892, she was able to travel with him, and so was there when, after falling down a stairway, he died.

There is little information out there about Susannah Spurgeon, who surely was one of the toughest and wisest women of Christian history. She had to have been both in order to endure what she did, and be a good wife to her famous husband. Though Adown shows both POVs, in a real sense it's about Cassie Hudson, Cassie Hudson that was (in the southern phrase), who represents Susannah Spurgeon. I admire Susannah, and wish I knew more about her. By taking some liberties with history, I was able to sort of satisfy that desire in writing this book.

Every writer has his own style, of course. Faulkner didn't write like Hemingway, who in turn didn't write like Lovecraft, who in turn didn't write like Charlotte Bronte. But every writer - if he is a writer, and not a pretender - knows how to write properly.

There are books out there - with famous names on the cover, and famous imprints on the spine - which contain clear evidence that neither the author nor his editor know how to handle the English language. I'm not talking about such idiosyncrasies as odd notions of where to use semicolons, but actual incorrect English.

For instance, there's the incomplete sentence. If there's one thing English teachers inveighed against when I was in school, it was sentence fragments. But today they're all over the place, and I can't figure out how anyone can ever write or read one without instinctively wanting to fix it, by connecting it to the rest of the sentence.

In addition to problems with correct English (and no, I'm not going to multiply examples ad infinitum ad nauseum - that's not my purpose here) there is the loss of vocabulary. This is very apparent in the media, which seem to know only one word for something that has broken. During the BP oil rig leak (it's not a spill unless the material is in a container and spills, which didn't happen in this case; herein is another example of my point) I never heard a single talking head on TV speak of a burst pipe, nor a broken one, but always of a "busted" pipe. Surely someone somewhere in the vast conglomerations that constitute American media empires could have dug out a thesaurus, and provided a list of synonyms, but clearly no one did so. Nor did anyone catch the fact that "busted" is a colloquialism, a casual usage, which is incorrect English and not appropriate for people who purport to be purveyors of reality to their viewers.

I hope that no one who posts his work here on Fine Stories is incapable of using English correctly. A "writer" who can't use English is fundamentally not one whit different from a "carpenter" who doesn't know how to use a level or drive a nail - he's a fraud. If you don't know how to use English, then you're not a writer. You may do something with words, but it isn't writing - just as a "carpenter" who doesn't know how to use his tools might manage to accomplish something, but the result isn't carpentry. I devoutly hope that everyone who here presents himself as a writer is competent in the use of the language, for that is the sole tool a writer possesses.

Years ago, when the Worldwide Web wasn't even 10 years old and when people spoke of the Internet they meant ftp, gopher, and e-mail, I encountered in cyberspace someone who claimed to be a writer. On one occasion he said something to me - I have no idea what, now - and I replied to it. He sent me back an angry message, castigating me for responding to what he hadn't meant. It turned out that what he had intended to say was the exact opposite of what he had typed. That person might have been any number of things, but he was no writer; no one can legitimately claim to be a writer who is so unable to use his mother tongue that he says exactly contrary to what he wants to say.

Because of my computer situation (which I won't go into here) I'm able to post my stuff, generally on a weekly basis, but it's just not feasible for me to read others' writing (I am trying to figure out how to overcome the disability, but haven't yet conjured up a workable plan). I hope that what I'm missing is good writing, rather than poor writing. I would hate to think that people are posting here in English who just don't know how to speak English.

Of course no writer is perfect. I certainly am far from perfection. I catch errors every time I go through something I've written, even if I've already proofread it a dozen times. But we can improve.

And aside from the hackneyed advice about how to improve (practice, practice, practice), there is an invaluable aid to writer well. One must read. Someone who never reads, will never be able to write - at least not well. No matter how many classes someone takes in creative writing (I am afraid that there is such a thing as writing which isn't creative - it infests Madison Avenue; the writing in the average ad is abysmally awful), if he never reads anything, he'll never be able to write anything that's worth his trouble. And he certainly won't ever write anything that's worth the trouble of trying to read.

Therefore, read. I could name author after author, but tastes differ, and what I enjoy others might find tedious, irritating, or incomprehensible. I shall, therefore, only recommend one name, because of all the authors I've ever read he had the most comprehensive command of the English language. I speak of William F. Buckley, Jr.

Now it may be that I'm the only one who's ever been to this site or ever will come here who agrees with Buckley's politics. That's all right - you needn't even read his political stuff to learn from him (though you can certainly learn from what he wrote on politics). Read his books on sailing. Read his books on his daily life. Read his novels (they're not as good as the sailing or mini-biography volumes, but still...). Read his English. Pass over, if you wish, his occasional Latin or French phrases (that's what I do, since I don't speak French or Latin, and would rather be mute than learn French). Examine how Buckley used English. Note not merely the $64 words, of which he had an abundance, but the ordinary words, and the way he used them. Don't emulate him, necessarily (I especially urge you not to emulate his use of the passive voice - that's the most flabby, pretentious aspect of the English language), but learn from him. There are right and wrong ways to put words together into sentences, just as there are right and wrong ways to put together an internal combustion engine, and if there's anything you can learn from Buckley, it's the right way to do it.

It occurs to me that there might be one person somewhere in the world who's interested not just in my stories, but in the guy who writes them. I know I get interested in authors (though the only one I'd ever even think of asking for an autograph died when I was not quite a year old), and while I'm by no means as famous or interesting as even the least famous or interesting published author, I though I'd say a bit about myself anyway.

I was born in 1960 in Hawthorne, California, which is part of LA (but not part of Los Angeles, a distinction which may be dying out now, but which was very important when I was young). As far as I know I've never been in Hawthorne since then. I lived my first 10 years in various parts of LA - I only remember specifically McClaren Hall, which is part of the juvenile system, a foster family in Glendora, and finally the foster family who raised me from the time I was 5, in Azusa.

In 1970 we moved to Clayton, Washington, which is about 25 miles north of Spokane. We lived there for three years, and then moved to a place we'd had for years in Lanfair Valley, which is in the Mojave Desert of California. It's the desert, and especially Lanfair Valley, that I consider home, though my "hometown" is Goffs, which we could see from our "new 20" - a place we bought south of Hackberry Pass in Fenner Valley, where we moved in a trailer house, and put in a septic tank and water tank. We hauled our water 10 miles from Goffs, which was south of us - the best water I've ever tasted.

I went to school, while living in the desert, in Needles, which is famous for three things. First, it's frequently the hottest place in the country during the summer (120 isn't uncommon...and since the city's right on the Colorado River, the humidity can be 90% or higher), Snoopy's brother Spike lives there, and it got a mention in a song by Three Dog Night. Otherwise it's undistinguished, though it was, being only 40 miles from home, the closest town of 5,000 people. We shopped mostly in Needles, though we'd sometimes go over into Arizona and up the river to Bullhead City. Bullhead is across the river from what is now Laughlin, Nevada, but at the time was just the other side of the river.

In December of 1977 we moved back to Clayton. It was there that I graduated from high school (the first time we lived there I went to Clayton Elementary, in a brick building going back to 1914, but for high school I had to ride the bus into Deer Park). Two weeks after I graduated I was in the Air Force, going through basic training at Lackland AFB near San Antonio, Texas. I went to tech school at Sheppard AFB, near Wichita Falls, Texas, and then went to Osan AB, Korea.

I was in Korea for a year, and while I was there I met and married my wife, in August of 1979. We came back to the States in December of 79, and I spent the rest of my time in the Air Force at Tinker AFB, in Midwest City, Oklahoma.

After I got out of the Air Force in the summer of 1982 I got a job in Oklahoma City, which lasted a few months - until I was in two wrecks in two months, couldn't afford another car, couldn't ride the bus because there wasn't any, and couldn't ride with anyone else because no one on my shift lived anywhere near me. After some dislocations we wound up living with my aunt and grandmother in Cisco, Texas. It was while there that I became a Christian, in January of 1983. I surrendered to preach in March, and preached my first sermon on Easter Sunday evening that year.

Meanwhile we'd had a daughter, in 1980, and our second daughter was born in 1983 while we were living in Cisco. Then in October of that year we moved to Marlow, Oklahoma, where I began writing for a Christian apologetics paper. We were there until 1986, when I became associate pastor of East Tawakoni Baptist Church in Texas.

We were there for about 18 months, and then a combination of church finances and church politics caused me to resign. We moved to Garland, which is a suburb of Dallas, and I got a secular job. After a bit we moved to Farmers Branch, into a nicer apartment, because our finances had improved. We stayed there until 1989, when we went back to Marlow, to the same job.

The Southern Baptist Convention took over the organization in 1991, but my duties remained essentially the same - research, writing, and speaking. During this time I became the pastor of First Baptist Church, Rush Springs, and we moved into the parsonage there. It was a small church (the big church in town was First Southern Baptist) so necessity as well as choice kept me working full-time for the apologetics ministry. I was the pastor there for 18 months or so, resigning when it became clear that the church just wasn't interested in doing anything different than it had been doing for years. Sadly, the church disbanded not long after that.

During this second period in Marlow I began first reading, and then writing, poetry. A number of my poems appeared in an online journal called Autumn Leaves. It ceased publication when the editor died, and now that her husband has died as well the site (www.sondra.net) may no longer be up. I haven't yet found an outlet for my poetry, but I do have submissions in here and there, and hope to find somewhere I can publish again.

In 1996 and 1997 Southern Baptist politics spat the apologetics ministry out, and in 97 we left Marlow and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we've been ever since. Perhaps a year after we came here I became an elder of Albuquerque Sovereign Grace Baptist Church, while working a secular job. I was with that church for two or three years, and then moved to Heritage Christian Fellowship, a nondenominational church where I've been ever since. My last pastoral position was with ASGBC - my "preaching" has taken other forms.

In late 2004 I found myself in an emotional upheaval, one result of which was to remind me just how much I love my wife. I decided to write two or three short stories about our marriage, and resurrected a character I'd tried out a couple of years before, and gotten nowhere with - Darvin Carpenter. In his original incarnation he was much rougher, he had been in the Air Force and married a Korean lady, and was now a widower. In the new version he began never having been married, he's never been in the military, and he's emphatically not a hard boiled character. Obviously you can read all about him in the stories I've already posted, and the ones I'm currently posting. :)

Those two or three short stories turned into a furious spate of fiction that lasted until 2009. After I finished The Chief in that year my output slowed way down - I've only completed one Carpenter novel in that time, and the one currently underway has been moving very slowly for several months now, in contrast to earlier books which I wrote in two or three weeks.

Also part of what I call my fiction "spurt" were several romance novels, which take place in the Carpenter universe though they focus on other characters. Some of them are very good (or so I think), and some of them aren't so great - none of them, in my estimation, are quite as good as some of the writing I've done in the Carpenter series.

And that's my biography, such as it is, and FWIW. :)

Without planning on it, I wound up reading through most of the Carpenter novels. This morning I finished Life Is Short, the next to last finished book, and I'll soon begin reading Sweet Home Alabama, the last one I wrote.

Part of this is proofreading, of course. No matter how many times I go through my stuff, there's still room for improvement. I still find typographical errors, and I often find things that I can rewrite in a better way. I'll find things that need clarification, and stuff that's simply superfluous (Strunk and White insist that writers omit needless words, and they're right).

But I also enjoy reading my own work. I don't know how common that is among writers, but I like reading about Darvin, Cecelia, and Darlia. I don't often go back to my other stuff (that is, the stories that take place in the Carpenter universe but aren't about the Carpenters), but over the years I've reread my Carpenter novels several times, and always enjoyed it.

The benefit for y'all is that when I come to post each book, it'll have had another review, and consequently it'll be better than it was before I reread it. :)