Slightly Off the Mark

Nice People Should Finish First, the Dolly Parton Edition

Sometimes it's nice just to be ... nice.

Being nice has gone out of favor. Our heroes these days are anti-heroes, maybe even a step over, to ... well, let's call it anti-villains. I'll come up with a better term. We like our heroes in fiction and in real life to be tough, type-A personalities who hit first and ask questions later. One of my favorite characters is Mal Reynolds from the TV show Firefly and movie Serenity. Mal is many things. More good than bad, but few would call him "nice".

We like them to be funny, but how often do we hear a G rated comedian? We like caustic, put-down humor, where one person may laugh but the next person is enraged, and the one after that embarrassed. We like to laugh "at" just as much as "with". I do it myself.

Here's an example, from my unpublished novel We Love Trouble:

Prescott stammered for a moment, giving Travis enough time to break in. “Are you capable of spelling the word ‘service’, Mr. Ascot?”

“Prescott. I, um—might I ask your business here, Agent Booth?”

“Consultant Booth. As my title might indicate, I am consulting on a case.”

“Your case requires a service dog—why?”

“For service. Do keep up, Mr. Asshat.”

“Prescott.”

Travis, the good guy, is deliberately messing with a hotel manager. Granted, the manager isn't a good guy, but at this moment Travis is pretending to work for the FBI, and riling the manager up mostly for the fun of it. Also, Wulfgar isn't a service dog, and Travis' last name isn't Booth. That's not very nice.

I guess that snippet of a scene is a bad example. In fiction, conflict is required: If you have a bunch of nice people being nice to each other, you don't have much of a story.

But in real life we spend way too much time suffering not so nice people, and not being nice ourselves. No one is perfect. Even Mr. Rogers wasn't perfect, I assume, but nobody can deny he was nice. Imagine if everyone made an effort to be nice, more often than not? It would be a very different, better world.

Then maybe we'd all spend less time being offended, and less time trying to to offend right back.

I've met people in my life who earned the title "nice". I know it's possible. I try to do it myself, although I don't succeed often enough to be another Judge Robert Probst. (My former father-in-law, and the very epitome of Nice Guy, despite being a lawyer.) Few people do.

That's even more true with celebrities, who tend to be jumbles of bad habits and bad attitudes no matter how they seem in real life. It's hard to find one who does good things more often than bad things. In other words, they're just people. Taylor Swift poops; Sadie Sink gets a runny nose, now and then.

I've never actually seen either of those, mind you, but I think it's a good assumption.

But it happens. Sometimes people are so darned nice it's hard to throw mud at them that sticks, no matter how hard a few malcontents try. We should celebrate and honor those people, especially when they do nice things they don't have to, that no one would expect them to.

It's the nice thing to do.

Although not everyone in our books is nice, we still try to give you a nice read.

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

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· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

· Audible: https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

Remember: Dolly would want you to be reading.

Writing: A Glimpse Into Ian Grant's Past

Sometimes you just gotta be silly.

Well, I do. People like my humor, but up until now my books have been halves: half humor, half romance; half humor, half history; half humor, half adventure. Although The Notorious Ian Grant looks and feels like a romantic comedy, I felt like ramping it up to the level of my humor blogs, just to see if it would work as well for fiction as it did in the newspaper, back in the day. I think it does. I could be wrong.

The blurb:

When infamous party boy and b-list celebrity Ian Grant learns his sister is marrying a cop, he abandons Hollywood and drives to Indiana. His plan: to make up for all those times he embarrassed his family, by taking charge of the wedding planning. So, Ian’s never planned a wedding … how hard could it be?

But Ian's past has followed along--and may be trying to kill him.

Ian Grant isn’t exactly a type A personality, although he has the looks for it. He’s Cary Grant with a Groucho Marx brain, and he’s not ashamed of it … even if he is ashamed of a "few" youthful indiscretions. Like dancing on Charlie Sheen’s car, drag racing Justin Bieber, and of course peeing on a bouncer’s shoes. (Ian still insists Bieber cheated.) These days Ian’s on a path to redeeming himself—he hopes—but his past keeps coming back to haunt him. Here's a snippet from early in The Notorious Ian Grant, in which he meets two residents of Hurricane, Indiana for the first time:

They stopped by the intersection, where the cop now stared daggers at Ian. “Here, me first.” Beth hopped down from the horse with ease and grace, and once she’d cleared Ian managed a dismount with none of either. As he stumbled away, the animal turned toward him and made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“Good horsey.”

“His name is Honey,” the cop said, as she stepped around her patrol car.

“Really?” Ian looked back at the horse. “You hear that? All the other guy horses make fun of you.”

Honey turned his head away.

“Hey, I was kidding —“

Beth patted the horse’s flank. “It’s okay, Honey—he’s a scumbag.”

“Beth, sweetie …” Fran (the cop) hooked a thumb toward Ian. “What have I told you about picking up strays?”

“He says he needs to get into Hurricane.” Beth leaned in toward the woman. “His name is Ian Grant.”

“I don’t care if his name’s—oh.” Fran gave Ian an even closer look, if that was possible. “I’ve seen your jail book-in photos.”

“Was I smiling? Could you see my dimples?” Fran had long hair, secured in a tight ponytail, along with big brown eyes and high cheekbones that pointed toward a full Hispanic heritage. She probably had a nice smile. He almost regretted letting his agent talk him out of joining the cast of Lady Cop 3: Hollywood Vice, especially since his agent dumped him weeks later.

“You smiled, but the bloody nose and the missing tooth spoiled the effect.”

“They put the tooth back. See?” Ian gave her his most ingratiating smile, to no effect.

“Very nice. However, around here those trimmed stubbles are not in fashion.”

“I’ve driven for three days —“

“May I ask your reason for being here, Mr. Grant?”

Uh-oh. Official voice.

I love a good sequel.

Ian had better watch himself, because the girl he got a ride from is his future sister-in-law, and the cop is his future brother-in-law’s best friend. Too bad he doesn’t know that yet. That’s one of the fun things about Ian Grant: He really does want to do the right thing—but he just can’t seem to keep his mouth shut.

I wonder if Ian’s trickster spirit might have something to do with why my original publisher released the book a month before I was told they would? In any case, the updated The Notorious Ian Grant is available as print or e-book. It can be found in various formats at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F3KWHWK8

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Notorious-Ian-Grant-Audiobook/B0F27KVWMF

https://markrhunter.com/fiction

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25393144-the-notorious-ian-grant

These Photos Are For Turkeys

It's been an incredible month--incredible sometimes meaning incredibly bad--so this is just a flyby photo post; I hope it won't be too much of a turkey.

The only time I ever saw turkeys as a kid was at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. That's because over-hunting and deforestation wiped them out in Indiana. (For which I plead innocent: Despite my name, I've never hunted. I have cut down a few trees, but never mind.)

But they're back!

I'm sure most of us consider that a good thing, but not necessarily.

You see, despite the famous WKRP In Cincinnati episode, it turns out turkeys can fly. Wild turkeys can, anyway, for up to a hundred yards at 55 miles an hour. I once saw a car come within a few feet of hitting a turkey flying across the road at windshield level, which would definitely have made a mark. I don't think that driver would have been happy with his catch.

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources brought turkeys back, and they arrived in northern Indiana during the 80s and 90s. These days you can find rafters of turkeys in all 92 Indiana counties. (That's the official name for a flock of turkeys. No, I don't know why.)

I took all of these photos in northern Indiana. Most, like the one above, came from Pokagon State Park or the area of Chain O' Lakes State Park. The near-collision I witnessed was about halfway between Kendallville and Avilla in Noble County.

The one above I tried to sharpen, but just made it look worse, and then I couldn't locate the original ... so I left the rest alone. (I mean I tried to sharpen the photo, not the meat carver.)

I also took most of them from near a road, or even from the car. As if deer weren't a danger enough! But I can tell you from experience that if you're on a trail and hear a turkey crashing through the underbrush, it sounds like you're on the wrong end of a Jurassic Park movie. My wife tells me armadillos are just as loud in the woods, and they're expanding in Indiana, too. At least they can't fly. Can they?

There are now some 125,000 wild turkeys in Indiana. But the Hoosier state is also a top producer of domestic turkeys--some 20 million turkeys are produced for consumption annually, just in this state. I hope the wild ones aren't planning a jailbreak--but I'll keep an eye on ham production, just in case.

Having all of our books could be a feather in your cap.