Tracing back, themes that repeat

TRUMPET FANFARE!!!
Congratulations to Hank for winning THE SIMON & SCHUSTER MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD for her fabulous ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS (Macmillan Publishers – Minotaur Books) !!!

HALLIE EPHRON: Most everyone knows I have a definite familial "through line." My parents were Hollywood screenwriters. My sisters write fiction and movies. I reluctantly succumbed in my 40s and started writing fiction, too.

I also do a lot of teaching, and when I talk to writers about using ChatGPT well, I talk about how concerned we all should be about how it will be putting workers (content creators, in particular) out of work.

The other day, my daughte and I sat down to watch one of my parents' movies: THE DESK SET.

It's a romantic comedy featuring Katharine Hepburn as the head of the research department for a big corporation. Spencer Tracy plays a gruff efficiency expert whose job it is to bring in an enormous computer (think: Mac truck) to take over her (and her co-workers') job.

Needless to say, sparks fly. 

I was surprised at how, even then (1957), people understood how computers and AI could end up putting people out of work. 

Then I remembered something about my father's misspent youth. Before he got himself thrown out of Cornell, he starred in a college production of THE ADDING MACHINE, a play written in 1923 by Elmer Rice.

My dad plays MR. ZERO, a lowly bean counter at a big company, who discovers (after 25 years at his job) that he will be replaced by an adding machine. And, by the way, his wife is cheating on him.

He snaps and kills his boss. And goes to jail. And gets executed. (Not a happy ending.

Here's a picture from the Cornell alumni magazine showing my dad playing the part...

I'd never put together this early dramatic role in The Adding Machine with The Desk Set screenplay he and my mother wrote thirty years later.

And now writers is struggling with the very same implications of machines replacing people. 

When I teach, we often get the how (and whether) to use generative artificial intelligence. Will a machine have written the next mystery novel you zip through and put the next generation of writers out of work. I wonder what my parents would have had to say on the topic.

Are there any through lines for you and your family, going back to parents and on to offspring? Maybe some political activism? Passion for food or travel? Music or art?? Morphing from generation to generation but still a constant.

Jamie Ding... does the name ring a bell?

AND THE WINNER of yesterday's giveaway,  a copy of A POISONOUS POUR by Maddie Day, is Susan! (Susan, please send your contact information to Edith at edith@edithmaxwell.com)

HALLIE EPHRON: Raise your hand if you've heard of Jamie Ding?

I have, I have!

For the past month I've been tuning into CBS at 7:30 and following his trajectory as a contestant on “Jeopardy!”

Episodes have followed a pattern with Jamie (he's got the kind of approachable personality that makes me want to refer to him as Jamie) gathering momentum and buzzing in first, over and over, making modest wagers, and calmly answering (asking!) correctly, question after question, on every topic imaginable... and clobbering his two opponents. 

Rarely guessing wrong and without breaking a sweat.

But last week, after 31 wins, he lost.

His streak is the one of the longest in “Jeopardy!” history and he finished with more than $880,000. His nemesis was Greg Shahade, an International Master in chess who was lightning-fast on the buzzer.

Jamie calls himself as a “faceless bureaucrat.” He tended to look faintly surprised whenever he got an answer right. And his easy banter with Jeopardy host Ken Jennings was priceless.

He has the ideal nerd pedigree, asthe son of a neuroscience professor and a high school math teacher. He competed on high school quiz bowl team. Went to Princeton and has a job (he calls himself a bureaucrat, and I'm quite sure he is meticulously great at it) where he's working to address the housing crisis (and a social conscience!)

Didn't watch Jeopardy regularly until recently. Didn't start practicing to be a contestant until earlier this year.

A true Everyman.

As his clothes attested his favorite color is orange. And he's cool, calm, collected,  with a reliable intuition about where the daily doubles lie...until this final game.

A fan on Substack opined: “Put Jamie Ding on the $20 bill." As for me, I think he should run for president. And a cocktail in his honor wouldn't be amiss.

Do you follow Jeopardy and have you been watching Jamie's incredible winning streak? 

Edith Maxwell (aka Maddie Day) asks: WHY CAN'T I? (#BookGiveaway)

HALLIE EPHRON: It's always a pleasure to welcome Edith Maxwell, in her myriad of guises, back to Jungle Red. Today she's celebrating her newest mystery, A POISONOUS POUR, the third Ceci Bartom mystery, which releases TODAY!

EDITH MAXWELL: Thanks for inviting me back to the top side of the blog, Hallie. I’m so pleased to celebrate A Poisonous Pour, the third Cece Barton mystery, which releases today!

The beautiful Alexander Valley is in the northern part of Sonoma County about ninety minutes north of San Francisco. It’s a rich wine-producing region but less well known than Napa. For this series, I made up the town of Colinas (appropriately ‘hills’ in Spanish), which I plopped down in the valley somewhere near Geyserville, Cloverdale, and Healdsburg. (Don’t look too hard at a map – another town doesn’t really fit.)

I needed to populate Colinas with businesses, restaurants, markets, and churches. By now, three books in, I wish I could visit some of those fictional places! First, I invented the Vino y Vida wine bar, which Cece owns and manages.

I pictured a cluster of antique adobe buildings backing up to the Russian River. The buildings have been reinforced and modernized. Vino y Vida (which mean, yes, ‘wine and life’) has a polished hundred-year-old redwood bar inside and an outdoor patio perched above the riverbank with a big old live oak tree shading it.

Wouldn’t you want to have a glass of wine or two there?

Two of Cece’s friends are a couple who relocated to California from cutthroat jobs in publishing and finance in New York City. Henry Cruvellier owns an art gallery in another of the adobes near Vino y Vida, and his husband Ed Ramirez, who’s from the area, owns and runs Edie’s Diner. Cece eats at the fifties retro diner a lot, and it’s good local place to pick up gossip.

My inspiration for the diner was the real Edie’s, where I ate many years ago a few hundred miles farther south in Corona del Mar, California. Ed’s version features more avocadoes and includes menu items like salmon bacon, perfect for pescatarian Cece.

My mouth waters when I think up some of the meals she orders, and I wish I could perch on one of the red stools at the counter next to her. I even include the real diner’s slogan, “God bless America and Edie’s Diner, too.”

Another fictional place Cece frequents is the Hoppy Hills brewpub. It has a side patio, and strings of hop-shaped lights give the area a warm glow. The beers are excellent, and they serve things like deep-fried artichokes. Yum.

JJ’s Automotive is featured in several of the books. Josie Jarvin only works on cars made before computers were in the engine compartment, and Cece takes her sixty-six Mustang convertible to Josie for service. As befitting California, Josie can open the back of the garage to essentially work in the fresh air. If I still had my dad’s sixty-seven VW Bug, I’d take it there.

There’s also a Japanese restaurant in Colinas run by Cece’s friend Yukiko, and a gourmet market and deli, Exchange Bakery and Gourmet Provisions. Their slogan is, “The Source for All Your Wine-tasting Picnic Needs—Except the Wine.”

Cece and friends head to the weekly outdoor farmer’s market on Sunday afternoons. In addition to year-round fresh produce, she shops at Sam the Cheese Man’s stall, picks up local olive oil and fresh bread, buys wine from the police chief, and always ends with a visit to Tia Tamale, the tamale food truck.

When I write those scenes, I don’t understand why I can’t teleport myself in space, time, and reality to grab my own fresh hot tamale in a little paper boat.

Photo credit Sharon Hahn Darlin, CC BY 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0]

Readers: What’s a favorite fictional place you wish you could visit? I’ll send one commenter a copy of the new book.

A POISONOUS POUR: At the Memorial Day weekend classic car show and wine tasting, northern California wine bar owner Cece Barton witnesses heated discussions with local vintage car owners and overbearing association director Regan Greene. After Regan is later murdered, Cece once again enlists her twin, Allie, as her partner-in-sleuthing to clear the name of Cece’s elderly but muckraking neighbor. But they have to act quickly to investigate various suspects in the case before the trail goes sour.

Maddie Day writes the Cece Barton Mysteries and other gentle and historical mysteries; as Edith Maxwell, she writes Agatha-Award nominated short crime fiction. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Originally a fourth-generation Californian, Maxwell/Day lives north of Boston with her beau and their cat Martin, where she writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at edithmaxwell.com and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.