Scrambled, Over Easy, or Hard Boiled ?

It is the season. At left, tonight's tea. I had ice pellets last night and a skim of snow on the deck table. I'm declaring the holiday season open.

You can declare whatever you please.

I hate my keyboard. I think it was fine when I did all my typing in my lap. I use the laptop on the desktop now and hate the keyboard in my own special simian way.

I'm going to spring for a new mechanical keyboard. I'll use the browns so the typing is relatively quite. I just hate this beast at this angle. Nice laptop, too. Bad ergonomics in this position.

What do you use?

Tonight I am considering the crime writing of friends. I know a couple folks who write cozy's (the over easy of the crime world). I know a couple of procedural folks (the scrambled). I don't know anyone doing hard boiled. By that, I just haven't met any in person.

I like the all well enough. For myself, crime "happens" and isn't an aim of the stories. It just seems my natural drift is towards stories where things go horribly wrong which means crime.

Surprisingly, I try to be very helpful when I am subject tot he attention of authorities. I rather like cops in person. I don't much like cops - or feds - in principle but when I meet them, I end up feeling a little sorry for them. It isn't a fun job sometimes.

I feel differently about the R.U.C. but then, so do a lot of people.

I'm personally somewhere between modern hard boiled (and , whew - that can be very hard boiled) and literary fiction. I care about the character in transition. The plot is great and I love high concept but as all politics are local (Harry Truman), all story is transformation.

He's a link to some fun hard boiled folks. I've enjoyed a great deal of it even though I've had enough ears on the floor to write much of it myself, right now. Hard Boiled

Do somebody wrong tonight. I killed some guys in text last night who were out to do someone wrong. It went wrong for them. Now, the fellow sent to take care of the mess has another problem: the intended victim isn't dead and he's clearly not the pushover that was expected. Always tense when the intel is very wrong.

Go write. Listen to Tom sing "Frank's Wild Years" and hurt somebody's feelings on the page.