If only we could find the reason for the rhymes.

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I tried like heck to resist La Piovra, or The Octopus, a long running Italian television series from the late 80s and 90s that has been showing for on my local public television station. The multiyear series is a straight-up soap opera about the Sicilian Mafia. The first year's series made it easy for me, the central character was a cardboard cut-out detective who's incorruptible nature made him dull as dishwater to watch. The show set up a series of predictable obstacles to the central character; from the killing of his trusted assistant to corrupt policemen undermining him to the kidnapping of his daughter. His jaw clenched tighter and the detective moved onward.
 But a couple of weeks ago I tuned in out of boredom and was fascinated by a character whose presence had somehow escaped me in earlier viewings - Tano Caridda. In the episode I watched Tano explained how he had learned to live among madmen while confined in an insane asylum. Tano (and it is very telling that the series' writers emphasize this simple, memorable name) was a sort of Mafia financier in the early stages of the series and obviously modeled after Roberto Calvi. Now, as in the time La Piovra was originally on air, banking is a link between the Vatican, the Mafia and the Italian political establishment.
 In the television series, the laconic Tano stands at the center of byzantine plots and betrayals. He is ostensibly a Mafia member but is often in league with police and prosecutors when it suits his purposes. "Tano is for Tano," as the character explains in the clip above. The episode I watched showed Tano sitting in the middle of an ornate palazzo looking at a bank of computer screens mounted on a plain, white wall. The imagery reminded me of Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse - sitting in shadows and directing his elaborate schemes.

 I admit that the character Dr. MacKenzie Catalpa in Manny Tippitoes is modeled after Mabuse. He is, after all, a criminal mastermind fronting as a psychiatrist. As I've investigated La Piavra and Tano's role within the series, I've hit upon some curious aspects to the character. With each succeeding series Tano played more and more of a center role. The beginning of one year's episodes even flashed back to his youth to tell a back story - Tano is the illegitimate son of a Mafia chieftan. Thusly, he is driven both to climb his way through the criminal organization and avenge his raped mother. That's some motivation.
 What I've seen and discovered about Tano Caridda will be reflected in the portrayal of Dr. MacKenzie Catalpa in the next Manny Tippitoes book. The character's plots and ambitions will be developed, although I'm not quite certain how I can get Dr. Catalpa an abandoned castle headquarters on the slopes of Mt. Aetna.

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Catching Up is Hard to Do
Well, you know... what can I say. I've been reading some books and doing some research and then out of left field something has come up that has and will inspire a good part of the second Manny Tippitoes book. This guy destroyed some swan eggs. That, in and of itself, is senseless and destructive but also petty and pretty trivial. The Swan Pond is the center of the small town/suburb I grew up in.

Photo by Dennis Nett, Syracuse Post-Standard

People gather by it, swans are on the village seal, and it is as close as Manlius, NY will ever get to a tourist attraction. So when the two swans that live there (Manny and Faye) had eggs for the first time in awhile people were excited. When a town employee found seven of the eight eggs broken on a Sunday morning people were incensed. As one editorial from a local paper put it, it was the equivalent of burning the flag. (Thanks for the clipping, mom.)
There were rewards posted and ultimately the culprit turned himself in. It's been a little bit of home town drama for me to keep an eye on and a source of some inspiration.
 There is all kinds of mythology and folklore centered around swans. Celtic and Norse mythology abound with stories of swan maidens and Jean Sibelius entitled one of his most famous works Swan of Tuonela. There's some material there.

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Socks Make The Man
Salon confirms it: a good pair of socks can  "lend you an air of sartorial splendor" and "imbue you with a soupcon of worldly expertise..." Also; wool is the way to go. It appears that Italian socks are highly rated by this article's author and main source of information. I submit that they both need to do a little reading, and I can suggest where.

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The Airtight Garage is now closed.
Au revoir Jean Giraud. Like many other American kids in the 70s, I came across the work of Moebius in Heavy Metal magazine. Aside from the immaculately detailed renderings, what struck me then and now about his work was the way everything seemed organically and completely developed. As Geoff Boucher so rightly puts it:
The subtle paradox that tugs at the eye of his audience is that everything portrayed — the landscapes, denizens, technologies and even physics — is totally alien but also completely unified in presentation and rendered with the confident precision of a surveyor who has walked every inch of a property.
That's something to aspire to as a writer.

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Basement Find: The Portcullis Room
Valentine Williams was a prolific author of Country House mysteries in the twenties and thirties. I didn't know this when my father-in-law pulled a box of old books out of his basement. I find old books irresistible and grabbed a few that looked interesting. The Portcullis Room is one of two books Williams wrote in 1934. I was attracted by the embossed "Secret Service Series" designation that cuts diagonally across the cover.

 There's something about the also-rans and the second rates that has always interested me. Valentine Williams, at least on the evidence of this book, was no match for Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers. The book lacks any compelling central protagonist. There isn't an identifiable detective at the center of the mystery. There isn't any Secret Service agent. It's interesting that Williams wrote other books featuring a detective named Mr. Treadgold, a Saville Row tailor (and quite the exception in a genre that featured upper class detectives or policemen.)
The murder mystery in this book is investigated by two men who kinda-sorta solve the case. And the setting, a grim castle on a Scottish Isle, is almost too stereotypical to be believed. So, quite frankly, is the menace from a Swedish crime lord. Williams did not exactly presage Henning Mankell.
 So why did I read The Portcullis Room to completion? An exercise in form like this book can be very instructive to a writer. The variation on the Country House murder model, a group of people trapped in one building with a murderer in their midst, is not particularly inventive here. As I mentioned above, although the setting has the potential to be threatening the characters are leaden stereotypes of dour Scots, flighty ingenues and clumsy gangsters. Both "investigators" are described by the amount of cigarettes they smoke. Over all, The Portcullis Room is a dud. It's failures, however, tell me about what not to do.
And the cover is still cool.

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Manny at Mardi Gras

I took a trip to New Orleans this past weekend. If a vacation can be said to be productive, then last week's holiday certainly was. Not only in terms of the fun time that Mardi Gras implies, but also with the chance to consult with a very special contributor to the Manny Tippitoes opus and to look around at the varied forms of creativity that contribute to Carnival.
The chance to look over the parades and the varying approaches taken by the krewes that create floats and parades was priceless. In New Orleans, krewes take on names like Druid, Proteus, Bacchus, Muses, Comus and Thoth. They refer to themselves as Mystic Orders. Floats, beads and doubloons are rife with imagery from Egyptian, Greek and Celtic mythology. The city was awash in the stuff in a way that belies the presence of the Catholic Church that hangs over New Orleans. Throw in the fact that floats are preceded by masked riders and manned by masked attendants and you'll see how I was fascinated by the whole process. Not just food for thought - a banquet.

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While we are on the topic of Jack the Ripper...




Screaming Lord Sutch previewed and predicted much to come in rock music, but for our purposes let's just focus on the knowing grin.

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I wouldn't recommend Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell to anyone under 18 (and if you are under 18 please remove any reference to the book from your brain immediately.) If it were possible for someone to read the 40 pages Moore's annotations and appendix without any attachment to the graphic novel they would find said notes to be informative and entertaining on their own.
Or at least I did, anyway.
The book is about the Jack The Ripper murders and the subject matter provides a huge tangle of facts and theories.  What's fun is to read Moore's thoughts regarding the usage of that raw material in the creation of the book. Moore is also great at crediting friends and associates for passing along books and tips.
 And you just can't beat writing like this:
"The history of Freemasonry is an impossibly convoluted web, a situation that is not helped by the extreme eagerness of Freemasons themselves when it comes to establishing ancient precedents for their order."  From Hell - Appendix 1 - Page 12 (Top Shelf Productions, 2006)

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The exceedingly generous James Ferguson has posted a review up at HorrorTalk.  The Continuing Case of Manny Tippitoes was not written with scariness in mind but everything from Hammer Films to H.P. Lovecraft has influenced the creation of the characters and book.  I hope to integrate these kinds of elements into Book 3 of the Manny Tippitoes trilogy.  I'm already working on a place I call
The Burning Shadows....

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Cast of Characters - Demetrio Chardonnay
If the city had an award for Least Effective Criminal, Demetrio Chardonnay might very well win it. He practically defines the term "petty thief."  A hold-up man who specializes in liquor stores, Chardonnay is always caught shortly after he departs the scene of the crime.

So you can imagine the surprise when Uncle Detective found out that Chardonnay was behind the heist of a shipment of very expensive wine and beer.  Our narrator trailed Chardonnay to the abandoned Blue Plate Factory where he saw some crates being loaded into a building everyone believes to be empty.
 Has Demetrio Chardonnay been reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Criminals?  What's this Academy he talks about?
Who gets a cape when they graduate college?
And what exactly is going on at The Blue Plate Factory?

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You better believe I am going to look into this some more
The Ideal Palace of Postman Cheval was planned for twelve years and built for thirty-three. Like many of the concrete parks of Wisconsin (a topic for further posts, to be sure) it was constructed by hand with materials salvaged by the builder.  You can read more in the great Stopping Off Place blog.
As Facteur Cheval said, "Let those who think they can do better try."

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Free Short Story: The Contretemps at The Buckles Club
A Lord Murray Eames Bingle Mystery

I've completed a short story featuring the crime-stopping
aristocrat himself, Murray Eames Bingle and his butler duck Muddles.
 It's available here in the ePub format.
Lord Bingle expected a simple dinner with friends at The Buckles Club.  Instead, he was witness to a terrible murder.
How can Lord Bingle free his friend Aubrey Hide when he, and everyone else, saw Aubrey stab someone to death?  Or will Inspector Gage of Scotland Yard take young Hide straight to jail?

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Fan Mail from some Flounders

Maybe not the first fans of Manny Tippitoes, but definitely the first fans of the author.  
They get it.

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Cast of Characters - Sir Helios Tippitoes
Manny Tippitoe's father was the Lord of Stockington Island and Director of the Tippitoes Wool Concern.  The case files contain an interview between Detective Schuyler Van Stalwert from the city police force and Sir Helios conducted in 1887.
  Sir Helios left the details of running the family business to his personal assistant, Robin Goodfellow.  The mysterious Goodfellow was instrumental in the sudden growth in distribution and popularity of Tippitoes socks and stockings at the end of the 19th Century.  However, to this day there is no documentation concerning who, exactly Robin Goodfellow was.  How a relatively small wool company based on an island in the North Sea came to manufacture and sell socks across the world is, as yet, unknown.  Goodfellow himself disappeared shortly after the birth of Emmanuel Alva Tippitoes on the night of a full moon. 

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I'm not familiar with Colson Whitehead's work, and I have zero interest in zombie stories.  But this quote from an Atlantic interview on his new zombie novel Zone Out resonated with me.

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The Continuing Case of Manny Tippitoes: Now available for The Kindle
I'm happy to announce that the Kindle version of the book is
available for purchase on the Amazon website.
We've priced the eBook at $5.99 so there's no reason for you to
delay if you are a Kindle user and want to get a copy of The Continuing Case of Manny Tippitoes for yourself.  I'm very excited that the new version of the Kindle will the capacity for color illustrations.  It's nice to think that Kindle users will have the ability to see Anna Wieszczyk's illustrations in color.
  If you read books on your iPhone or iPad, I should have news on how you can get Manny for your devices within a week or so.  The eBook will be priced just as reasonably for those machines as well.
 

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Irving Klawfeld, circa 1932

Cast of Characters - Irving Klawfeld
 Irving Klawfeld is universally acknowledged as THE Broadway Producer of the 20s, 30s and 40s. His series of touring reviews, Klawfeld's Fancies, brought top level vaudeville and musical comedy acts to every corner of America and were adapted into a series of popular films that can still be seen on late night television.
  Klawfeld was praised as a discoverer and developer of talent, having been behind the careers of actors and musicians as disparate as The Old Man Shirt Band, Central State Novelty Orchestra, William Powell and W.C. Fields.  Klawfeld was also condemned as a "rank vulgarian and threat to people of good posture everywhere" by the social crusader Matilda Pearlclutcher.  Her infamous Corps of the Upright were posed to boycott the Fancies of 1933 in Los Angeles as Mrs. Pearlclutcher took vocal exception to a song in the review that encouraged people to take off their shoes.  Before a mass rally to initiate the boycott could take place, Mrs. Pearlclutcher was hospitalized complaining of chest pains and sour milk.  The record-breaking run the Fancies enjoyed at the El Camino Theater in Los Angeles that year resulted in Klawfeld's movie deal. The subsequent runaway success of the filmed Fancies secured Irving Klawfeld's reputation as the predominant showman of his era.
  The Klawfeld's Fancies of 1933 featured a mysterious performer know only as Manny Tippitoes.  His self-titled theme song, accompanied by an anatomy-defying dance routine, somehow came to the the attention of the city's children, who attended the matinees en masse dragging their reluctant parents with them.
  Irving Klawfeld was once described as "The Clotheshorse of Herald Square" by the columnist Maxine Haltertop.  He was known for his flamboyant taste in clothing.  Bob Hope noted at Klawfeld's funeral in 1963 that "the Russkies could see Irving from Sputnik."

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Now available for the Nook!
I'm very happy to announce that the first e-book version of The Continuing Case of Manny Tippitoes is out now.  You can get Manny on your Nook aet Barnes & Noble online. 

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Cast of Characters - The Continuing Case of Manny Tippitoes

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Cast of Characters - The Continuing Case of Manny Tippitoes

Marcella Higgins

Marcella Higgins is the daughter of Ward and Violet Higgins and lives with her parents in a suburb of the city in the same house where her father grew up.  Her uncle Morris is a detective in the city's police force.  Morris, who Marcella has nicknamed Uncle Detective, has given Marcella a set of notebooks and encouraged her to keep a written diary.
  Although initially skeptical of the need to record the events in her life, Marcella has recently become convinced of the necessity of using her personal journal to detail the strange events happening around the city to her and her friends.  Events that adults cannot seem to notice.
  Marcella collects books in the Magnolia Berwyn, Girl Detective series.  She recently found a copy of Magnolia Berwyn and the Poisoner's Apprentice at a church sale and found the guide to poisonous plants inside the book to be most useful in a visit to the City Conservatory.
  Marcella's favorite band is Dumbcane and she is hoping that her parents will let her see them play when they come to town. Her favorite drink is Ginger Cream Ale, which can only be found at Lucky's Diner in the city.

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The publishing process is in its final stages as The Continuing Case of Manny Tippitoes gets converted to the formatting for Kindle.  I know from my experience at independent record labels that this "going to market" time (to use corporatespeak) can be uniquely frustrating.  You know that you have a good product and you want to tell people about it, but the product is not available for them to buy.  Sometime in mid-to-late October there will be a book available on Amazon.com, the e-book will be available via the Kindle and there might even be versions ready on the Nook and Apple formats. 
  Until that happy day arrives, I'm going to post some brief profiles of the major (and minor) characters in the first book of the Manny Tippitoes trilogy.  When available, I'll use some of Anna Wieszczyk's artwork in the book.

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