Thursday, March 28, 2024

Tigers in Africa

 

Sunset at Tiger Canyon

Yes, there are wild tigers in Africa, and yes, there are wild rhinos in Australia. Both areas were set up as backstop conservation models. Habitat destruction in Asia and poaching have reduced the wild tiger population worldwide to some 4,000 animals. Tigers in captivity exceed that, but there are still less than ten thousand individuals alive in total. Furthermore, there are important subspecies and varieties such as the white tigers (not albinos but a genetic variety). The only two wild white tigers in the world are at Tiger Canyon, a game reserve in South Africa.

Tigo, one of the "white" variety tigers

Two of Tigo's cubs, now youngsters
Not white. The gene is recessive.

Having a rough-and-tumble


I mentioned Tiger Canyon in my blog about photographer Marsel van Oosten a few weeks ago. After seeing his pictures and hearing the story of Tiger Canyon (which I didn’t know before), we were keen to visit. We managed to stay there for one night last month on our way from Knysna up to Olifants River Game Reserve, and it was wonderful. Tigers are magnificent animals, the largest and most beautiful of the big cats, and if these were in an adopted environment, they seemed to be very much at home there. They hunt and pull down large antelope. They are used to people, but so are lions at Olifants. People are ignored - they are not food, and as long as they don’t interfere they are tolerated. But there is no doubt that these animals are wild. No one would be tempted to go near them on foot. It wasn’t always like that way.

John Varty with Tigress Julie, founding members together

A well-known South African conservationist and film maker, John Varty, was the brains behind the project. Discouraged by a visit to various tiger reserves in India more than twenty years ago, he planned a conservation area for tigers in the center of South Africa. Although the area had been used to graze sheep in the past, he could see that the farms could be regenerated. That happened, and many local species of birds and small animals have returned over time. The large herbivore species beloved of the lions in the rest of Africa were reintroduced, but obviously there was concern about whether tigers would be willing and able to hunt them. The tigers are there to live wild, catch their own food, build their own social groups, breed. They are not in a zoo. No hunting means no food.

The tigers all originate from genetically diverse individuals who were originally in captivity, and it remains essential to introduce new blood. The road hasn’t been smooth. The project attracted controversy for all sorts of reasons. Rewilding big cats hasn’t always been successful. Would local livestock be in danger if the tigers escaped from the game reserve? (Yes.) Tigers are territorial and aggressive. Would that be a problem? (Yes, two tigers were killed by other tigers and now they are in three large but isolated areas.)

The story goes that John Varty approached local sheep farmers as someone interested in farming himself. The seller whose magnificent river canyon runs through his farm carefully didn’t mention it because it’s not great for sheep who sometimes fall off the rock cliffs. So Varty only discovered after the sale that he had some magnificent landscape on which to build a lodge, and great topography for tigers who like rocky outcrops.

Tigress Julie Lodge overlooking the canyon

The view of the canyon

Two of the smaller canyon inhabitants - rock hyrax

Varty calls Tiger Canyon a work in progress. There is still a long way to go. Much more land is needed so that the tigers can spread out and maintain their territories without violent aggression. The gene pool needs to grow. There are currently less than twenty tigers over 15,000 acres. But it’s a start. And just maybe one day it will be a vital repository of wild tigers.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

When A Bridge Falls

 SUJATA MASSEY



                                                    Photo courtesy PBS



Like so many Baltimoreans, I spent yesterday on the phone telling friends and relatives that I was alive. No, I hadn’t been anywhere near the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday morning. But I was following the news from before sunrise, because my email carried an emergency bulletin from the city. A bridge had collapsed—not just any bridge, but one bearing the name of The Star Spangled Banner’s author—a man who had witnessed the British attack on the Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812 and written the song in honor of the defending Americans at Fort McHenry.

 

One of the first matters raised in the press and private conversation was whether this shocking collision had been an attack. A falling bridge reminded me of falling towers. And ships are supposed to be protected with backup systems should power be lost--so what happened?


The Dali, a cargo ship carrying containers bound for Sri Lanka, reportedly had its lights flicker off before they came back on, leading to speculation that a generator did kick in. Still, the crew realized they could not control the ship’s propulsion and issued a May Day signal. Fortunately, the alert was received and communicated instantly by the Maryland Department of Transportation. Police closed vehicle entry to the bridge just before the Dali hit one of the bridge’s major supports. 

 

That was too late for a small group of construction workers atop the bridge, because after the collision, the bridge collapsed in forty seconds. Two men were rescued from the water, and the Coast Guard has announced that it’s unlikely the remaining six workers could have survived the cold waters this long. Of course, some cars might have already been on the bridge when it was closed; so there may be more cars and bodies submerged in the water.  

 

According to a colleague who knew the crew, they were immigrants from El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala. The workers were employed by a Baltimore County contractor who supplied labor for bridge repair and construction. Baltimore is the country’s largest point of entry for foreign cars, and overall, its third largest industrial port. And it’s one of the nation’s oldest ports, dating from the beginning of the 17th century, when tobacco was the chief imported product. The early locations were Fells Point, a beautifully preserved waterfront district, and then and Inner Harbor that edges our downtown area. The original owners of the 1897 house I live in had a saloon on Water Street near that harbor, which was a bustling, rowdy locale. As decades passed, more areas to receive cargo were built further out from the city itself. The northwest areas of the Patapsco River are the location of side of the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore, the chief industrial port. 

 

The Dali was built by Hyundai in South Korea in 2016. After the Dali had an accident involving propulsion at the Antwerp, Belgium Harbor, its first owner sold it to a Singapore Company, Grace Ocean Pte Limited. The ship’s technical state was managed by a company called Synergy that reportedly has a history of three worker deaths on their vessels since 2018. The 22 crew members of the Dali are Indian, and they are still on the boat, along with many of the 4600 20-foot containers of cargo. It seems miraculous that the whole crew survived the bridge collapse. 

 

Civil engineers, boat experts, and veteran seafarers will be busy explaining the cause of the accident—ship company, bridge design, and perhaps something else--for months to come. 


Yet I imagine that the construction workers on the bridge were in the wrong place at the wrong time only because they’d had to leave dangerous homelands. Upon arrival in Baltimore, they found jobs that ensured American comfort: raking leaves, cleaning bathrooms, digging up and repaving roads.  For the Dali’s Indian crew, the motivation was likely similar. The promise of a decent paycheck sends many young Indians abroad to jobs where they work overly long hours under difficult conditions

 

Until the bridge accident is cleaned up, Baltimore’s port will be closed to traffic. The cost of the lost business, and rebuilding the bridge, are huge; even if the latter is paid for by U.S. taxpayers and shipping insurance. But it’s also a very great cost to our humanity, if we forget that those most hurt by the bridge crash are the folks do the invisible work of making our life easier. And we will likely never know their names. 

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Fasting for Renewal, Caterpillars & Renovation Update

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

Right now in Singapore we're in a 'fasting' period leading up to two big festivals:

For Christians we are in Lent, leading up to Easter. This is the time between Jesus' entry into Jerusalem and his life, death and resurrection. Lent is a time of prayer, fasting and charity and a reminder that when things seem darkest, things are yet working to bring about greater good than we can imagine.

For Muslims, we are in Ramadan, the period of fasting leading to Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Ramadan marks the time when Prophet Mohammed received the first verses of the Qu'ran. 
Fasting during the daylight hours is a private act of worship that brings about spiritual discipline and empathy with the less fortunate.

In both cases, the joy and celebration of Easter and Hari Raya Aidilfitri are preceded by periods of fasting and reflection, reconstruction and renewal. Almost as though we need to pause and prepare ourselves before we can move on.

It's a pattern that also shows up in nature as well as in our our own lives, I believe. 

This is the chrysalis phase of metamorphosis. An uncomfortable time for the encased caterpillar who isn't able to eat or even move as its body tissue breaks down and the very cells of its muscles and organs dissolve... and the imaginal discs (undifferentiated till now) develop into the wings, legs or antennae they were destined to be from the start.

The emerging butterfly or moth leaves behind in its chrysalis the gooey waste from its previous incarnation. And maybe to keep evolving towards our full potential we need to do the same?

I would really like to think so!
Because right now we are still in a state of upheaval in our current state of evolution/ metamorphois: 

Though the insides are definitely looking better!


At least we can see where the fixtures are going to go!


All the fixtures are supposed to be arriving this week, after much discussion between contractor,  suppliers and workmen on existing plumbing and the relative merits of S- traps (easier to install in existing structure) and P- traps (the latest thing in toilet technology, apparently!)

But it's all still a bit chaotic on the outside... I'm most sorry for the neighbours whose lives we've been discombobulating, but so far everyone has been very sweet and supportive and curious--at least two are interested in getting our contractor to do some work for them... after they've seen the results here. I hope we're a good advertisement for him!



I've run away from it all for now. This is where I've ensconced myself during the day-- the view from the front of the library...




This being Singapore, construction and reconstruction are going on everywhere. We know that behind the protective facade furious work is going on.

And in the library itself all is calm, air-conditioned quiet...



My current chrysalis/ cocoon. This has become my favourite spot in the library! It's quiet with a view of the sky and palm trees, there are chargers for my MacBook and phone, I can spread my stuff on the window ledge... and it's only a short walk (2 bookshelves) to the loo and a little further to the water cooler!



Sunday, March 24, 2024

The Lunatic Express Again


Annamaria on Monday

This past week, a writer friend told me that he has, in his future, a meeting with a person who is researching "railroads in East Africa!"  He asked me if one of my books takes place against the building of the railway. But that all happened about seventeen years before my stories start.  The railway is, however, an essential part in most of my stories.  My characters travel by train, beginning with the first book in the series: Strange Gods, just now out in a new edition. 


Since the new edition of that book just launched, I took that question as a suggestion for today's blog.  Here is repost of my blog about the creation of what came to be known as "The Lunatic Express."




It was called the Uganda Railway, but all of it was in the Protectorate of British East Africa, now Kenya.  It goes 660 miles from the port city of Mombasa, on the Indian Ocean, to Kisumu on the Eastern shores of Lake Victoria, across the water from Uganda.



It is credited with cementing Britain’s colonial power in East Africa.


But also with being instrumental in stopping the “trail of tears”—the route where slaves were dragged from the interior to the coast and then shipped to work in the households of Asia Minor and on the sesame plantations of the Zanzibar.

Construction began in 1896.  It cost Great Britain’s taxpayers 55 million pounds sterling: £20.1 Billion or $33 Billion in today’s money.



If the indigenous people tried to stop its progress through their territory, “punitive expeditions” were sent out to put them in their place.  Keep in mind that the King's African Rifles had firearms.  The tribal people fought with iron (not even steel) spears and swords.  Still, the Maasai won one of those battles.


32,000 Indians were shipped in from the Raj to build it.  6,724 of them stayed after the work was done and made a life there—many of their descendants remain today.  

It crosses 35 viaducts, 120 bridges and culverts.



Its engineers and construction crews braved man-eating lions and deadly scorpions.

2,498 perished during its construction.

Before the Brits built the railroad, the route from Mombasa to Kisumu was an oxcart trail.  To traverse from the coast took about three months with most of the party walking, carrying water and food.  Ordinarily around three hundred at a time, most of them tribal porters, made the trip.  People died.

A new way to travel that distance was called for.  But not everyone agreed.

Calling the railroad a “gigantic folly,” Liberals in Parliament were against the project, saying that Britain had no right to drive what African’s called the “Iron Snake” through Maasai territory.  The magazine Punch called it “the Lunatic Line.”  In 1971, Charles Miller wrote a book about it: The Lunatic Express: An Entertainment in Imperialism.  Many politicians and newspaper editors called it a waste of the taxpayer’s money.  Shaky wooden trestles over enormous chasms, hostile tribes, workers dying of until-then unknown diseases—much of what transpired seemed to support those against the idea.



But from the outset, the Uganda Railroad had its adherents.   Conservatives saw it as an important salvo in the “Scramble for Africa,” that Nineteenth Century madness of the European powers to take over whatever chunks of the African continent they could lay their hegemony on.  Winston Churchill admired it as “a brilliant conception."  He said, “The British art of ‘muddling through’ is seen here in one of its finest expositions.  Through everything—through forests, through the ravines, through troops of marauding lions, through famine, through war, through five years of excoriating Parliamentary debate, muddled and marched the railway.”



In the end it was seen as a huge achievement—both strategically and economically.  It became vital to the suppression of slavery.  Its existence eliminated the need for huge squads of human beings to carry goods.



The American President Teddy Roosevelt rode the railroad during his visit to British East Africa in 1909.  He wrote, "The railroad, the embodiment of the eager, masterful, materialistic civilization of today, was pushed through a region in which nature, both as regards wild man and beast, does not differ materially from what was in Europe during the late Pleistocene."  On his way into the interior from the coast, he often rode on a platform on the front of the locomotive, giving him a great vantage point for viewing the huge array of wildlife along the way.  According to Teddy, "...on this, except at mealtime, I spent most of the hours of daylight."  It's a view I sorely wish I could have seen.

Here is a link to give you a glimpse of the line as it passes through some of the most incredible scenery on earth, as shown in the opening credits of Sydney Pollack’s brilliant Out of Africa.

 htttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FB1LS3WhIU


Saturday, March 23, 2024

A Looming Threat for the Greek Isles

 


Saturday––Jeff

“The combination of increased water consumption and prolonged drought is depleting resources in the Cyclades.”

That’s the headline of an in-depth investigative report by environmental reporter Giorgos Lialios, published yesterday in Ekathimerini, Greece’s newspaper of record.  It’s a subject I’ve observed firsthand for over a decade and listened even longer to locals openly worry over.  

What follows is Mr Lialios’ report.  The words are all his, not mine, but I know many of the islands mentioned well (no pun intended), what with my wife and I spending much time on many of them and my setting a half-dozen of my books on those islands.  I take his article as a call to action. We shall see.


Year after year, the pressure increases. On the one hand, there is the explosive growth of tourism, followed by an increase in consumption; on the other, there is drought. The small Aegean islands are preparing for the start of the tourist season with their reservoirs empty, their boreholes pumping brackish water, and an increasing dependence on desalination. The first victim of this difficult situation is what agricultural production is left on the islands, according to the doctrine of “water for the people first and then everything else.”

In 2023, rainfall in the Aegean will be limited for a third consecutive year. “Especially in the Cyclades and southern Crete, which are the areas with the least rainfall, 2023 was a bad year,” explains Kostas Lagouvardos, meteorologist and research director at the National Observatory of Athens. “The last good year for the Aegean was 2019, with a lot of rain in the east and south. Since then, rainfall has been below average. Especially in the Cyclades, where the rainy season lasts only five or six months, it only takes two bad years to create a problem.” In 2023 Andros received 363 millimeters of rain, compared to an average of 506 mm, Tinos received 299 mm, compared to an average of 330 mm, Naxos received 270 mm, compared to an average of 306 mm, and Ios received 195 mm, compared to an average of 285 mm. 


As a result, the Aegean islands are preparing for a difficult year. “The reservoirs on the islands are empty. Many islands will have problems this year. And the first victims will be crop growers and livestock breeders. If it doesn’t rain, there is no vegetation, so the farmer has to buy fodder. Last year the farmers of Naxos bought bales of clover from Bulgaria,” explains Ilias Nokas, head of the Directorate of South Aegean Water at the Decentralized Administration of the Aegean.

“Naxos has two dams. Last year they had 375,000 cubic meters of water, this year they have 30,000 cubic meters of water,” says Dimitris Lianos, mayor of the island. “We’re going to struggle this year. It’s not just tourism that’s important to us, but also agriculture and livestock farming. The first to be affected are the farmers. Potato farmers are already thinking of not planting this year because they will not be able to water their crops. It will be a difficult year for everyone. However, compared to most of the Cyclades islands, Naxos is still in a better position. “The island has water, we have two boreholes at a depth of 171 meters with very good quality water and the level has not dropped. What the island needs is a master plan for water supply. Unfortunately, because of localism, we cannot make more rational use of the water supply – some villages exploit springs and do not allow others to be supplied with water. The town of Naxos now has a desalination plant. We also need irrigation networks and targeted policies for farmers and livestock farmers so that they do not give up; the primary sector is our added value.”


Mykonos

On islands where meeting the needs of tourism is the only priority, empty reservoirs aggravate an already difficult situation. Mykonos is a typical example. “The Municipal Water Supply and Sewerage Company of Mykonos has two dams and two desalination plants to supply water to the island,” explains the company’s chairman, Dimitris Lazaridis. “The Marathi dam, with a capacity of 3 million cubic meters, and the Ano Mera dam, with a capacity of 1 million cubic meters, are almost empty due to the continuous drought, and they are not being used.”

Drought is not the only problem. The Aegean islands have seen a surge in tourism in recent years, with a corresponding increase in water consumption. A typical example of the gradual increase in water consumption is the arid island of Santorini. According to data from the Municipal Enterprise for Water Supply and Sewerage (DEYA) of Thera, a decade ago (2013), water consumption on the island reached about 929,000 cubic meters. In 2023, it reached 2.36 million cubic meters of water (an increase of 13.8% compared to the previous year).

The huge increase in consumption is also reflected in the other “flagship” of the Cyclades, Mykonos.

According to data from the Mykonos DEYA, the consumption of water in 2020 (year of quarantine) was 955,505 cubic meters, in 2021 it increased to 1,174,254 cubic meters (+22.9%), in 2022 to 1,513,068 cubic meters (+28.8%), and reached 1,618,069 cubic meters in 2023 (+7%). In other words, if we consider that 2020 was not an ordinary year due to Covid-19, water consumption on Mykonos will increase by 37.8% in two years (from 2021 to 2023). “Moreover, the DEYA data does not reflect the whole picture, as 40% of the island is not covered by the water supply network. The total water consumption of the island is estimated at 2.5-3 million cubic meters per year,” Nokas said. “Like many islands, Mykonos is a place where people build where they want and then meet their needs either with private boreholes – which are overpumped, resulting in poor quality water – or by buying water. However, the increase in consumption also affects the areas that have networks because they are not properly designed. On Mykonos, for example, the network was originally built to serve only Hora, the island capital, and now supports all the outlying areas without any specifications. The island’s biological treatment plant, which was designed for a population equivalent of 50,000 and serves over 100,000 in the summer, has a similar problem. Everything is operating at capacity.”


Challenges

The administrative structure – i.e. the division of responsibilities for water – does not help the situation. Water management on the Greek islands is governed by a complex and deficient system. In the most organized cases, there is a municipal water and sewerage company responsible for the network and water production. In the less organized cases, the water is managed by an agency within the local municipality. The licensing and control of private wells, either for water supply or irrigation, drilled outside the network, is the responsibility of the water directorates of the decentralized administrations, where one or two people are called upon to manage everything. Finally, the regions have water management departments that deal with inspections and complaints.

“When it comes to water consumption, tourism has the last word,” says Nokas. Desalination is not enough. In Ermoupoli, on the island of Syros, when the first plant was built, it had a capacity of 1,200 cubic meters, and today it has reached 5,000 cubic meters, and it is still not enough. Moreover, with the increase in energy costs, the island’s DEYA, which a few years ago had a reserve of 1 million euros, is now 5 million euros in the red, which it cannot pass on to the water bills, since water is already very expensive. According to the Ministry of the Environment and Energy, there are currently 31 desalination plants in operation in the Cyclades and another 15 in the Dodecanese.


Illegal drilling

The problems are not confined to the Cyclades. On Skiathos, which is supplied exclusively by boreholes, the underground water level is falling every year. “The peculiarity of Skiathos is that we have water, the island is self-sufficient. The town of Skiathos is supplied by five municipal wells, while hotels and private individuals on the island have their own wells. In addition, since the water from the central well is no longer potable, we have installed 25 public taps in the town with potable water from another source,” says Ioannis Sarris, director of the Skiathos DEYA.

“The DEYA has no authority to license or control the wells. It has no idea what quantities are being pumped. We have done the best we can – in recent years we have replaced almost the entire internal water supply network and significantly reduced losses. What worries us is that every year the level of the water in the boreholes goes down, and the reserves tend to go down. At the same time, actual consumption is increasing due to tourism. A serious problem is illegal drilling – on Skiathos we have more than 2,000 illegal boreholes. In my opinion, especially on islands where the water comes from an enclosed area, the water should be controlled by the community as a whole and not piecemeal.” According to the Department of Hydroeconomics of the Regional Unit of Magnesia and the Sporades, 238 applications for private wells have been submitted for Skiathos, 11 for Skopelos and five for Alonissos.


“Our island has the peculiarity of being big and small at the same time,” notes Kalymnos Mayor Yannis Mastrokoukos. “Although we are small in area, we have a permanent population of 17,000. This means that we have a significant demand for water throughout the year. It’s not just about tourism, as our own attitude toward water has changed: in terms of using it for cleaning, watering gardens, filling swimming pools… things that were unthinkable two generations ago, when people had learned to live with much less water.” The island is currently supplied mainly by boreholes, and there is a desalination plant for the northern part of the island which is popular with tourists.

He concludes: “The underground reserves are running out and we are now forced to turn to desalination as well. There is already a tender being prepared, funded by the Ministry of the Interior, for the supply of three small desalination plants and another by the Regional Authority of the South Aegean for a large plant for the town of Kalymnos. Of course, desalination is not a panacea. Ideally, if we could expand the use of renewables to meet the demand and make up for grid leakage, it would be more viable as an option.” 


Let’s see what happens.

 

––Jeff

Friday, March 22, 2024

Pupfish

 

 
The Pupfish

Interesting facts always pop up when doing research for items to blog about.

Pupfish and Charles Manson? Not two things that naturally go together.

Pupfish look and sound like they should be fun. In America, the most famous pupfish are the Devils Hole pupfish, living, as they do in the Devils Hole on the Nevada side of the Death Valley National Park.

The Devil’s hole is a water filled cave, 500 feet deep – though how they know that I’m unsure because nobody has ever reached the bottom. The species that live there are found nowhere else, they have evolved, confined to that body of water, for 12000 years or so.  They are ‘Cyprinodontidae’ and are thought to have evolved from a common ancestor of other such fish, just one species that lived in the glacial lake,  Lake Manly (620 square miles), somewhere around 185,000-128,000 years ago. As the lake shrank and separated into smaller bodies of water, so the pupfish set about evolving.

Their cousins, on the island of San Salvador, Bahamas live in two small lakes, in very closely defined ecological environments and they have the fasted DNA evolution of any fish. If their environment changes, then so do they. The usual change is external forces altering the algae that they feed on. If that algae does not suit them, they simply evolve so that it does.

The Devils Hole pupfish is the rarest fish on earth, and the first species ( of anything I think) to be officially classed as ‘endangered’.  There were maybe only 68 of them around in 2013 but numbers seems to be on the rise again, up to 250 by 2023.

These wee guys, only ¾ inch long, enjoy a constant temp of 92 (33 in old money) and they live mostly close to the surface, foraging and fighting, playing and spawning on the rock shelves. Like their Bahamian cousins, they live mostly on algae, decaying vegetation, and the occasional insect. The best algae becomes available when the barn owls are roosting in the higher parts of the cave, and their excretions increase the  nutrition of the water hence better quality algae and fitter pupfish.

When large earthquakes happen around the planet, the water in the devils hole can slosh around, as much as two meters up the walls of the cave.  A 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Mexico (2,000 miles away) created such  a wave in the Devils Hole and that has led to the question – is there a huge subterranean network of waterways down there somewhere. There’s a similar argument for Nessie!   The term underground aquifer of prehistoric origin sounds a bit Jules Verne. But that could be exactly what is going on here.

Whether the pupfish enjoy these minor tsunamis or if they find it rather alarming is not recorded but the action of the sloshing water does disrupt life on the shallow rock shelf the algae grows on.

Now, the fish are monitored by scientists and there’s a pupfish webcam in the visitor centre at Death Valley, where you can watch the wee fish getting up to various malarky in their tiny eco environment.

And Charlie Manson? Well, I think we know of his travels around the Nevada deserts. The man himself loved Death Valley and believed that the Devils Hole might be a portal to the underworld. So he sat near the edge for three days, meditating, thinking that this indeed might be his much desired portal to hell, but he couldn’t find out how to drain it.

Which was probably a good thing.  

Thursday, March 21, 2024

TITLE PAGE

Wendall --- every other Thursday

I was having a discussion with my film students last week about the importance of titles and it got me thinking about whether their function is any different for novelists than for screenwriters. 

Did its one word title land it in the top grossing movies of all time?
 

Many studies have been done that suggest films with one or two word titles do better at the box office. When I checked a list of the 50 biggest hits in film history (adjusted for inflation) 31 of the 50 were indeed short ones, including Jaws, Star Wars, Titanic, Ghostbusters, The Exorcist, Avengers: Endgame, Black Panther, The Sting, Home Alone, Forrest Gump, Grease, and The Graduate. But that left 19 that were three words or longer, and in fact, the top four on the list are slightly longer: Gone With the Wind, Star Wars: Episode V A New Hope, The Sound of Music, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Hit book and film. Was it the single word? Or the shark?

 
Another hit book and film. Was it the two word title, or the nylons?

For me, one of the most important things, after the length, is the tone of the title and whether it suggests the genre it’s going to deliver. I remember once reading a script called The Hitler Family Reunion. You can imagine my dismay, and disconnect, to find out it wasn’t a comedy. So it needs to prepare you for what is coming, particularly in the submission stage.

 

When I began to look up this question in regard to novels, the opinions seemed to be all over the place. Some sites suggested one word titles were preferable, because they left more room for cover art. But many said the length didn’t really matter, citing the enormous popularity of books like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (or any of the Harry Potter titles . . .), All the Light We Cannot See, or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

 

Title length didn't seem to hurt this book. . .

 
Or this one.

Perhaps with novels, the writer’s name means more than the title—Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Sara Paretsky have largely varied titles (many of which I can’t recall in this moment) but I bought all of them. Of course, when you have a famous author and a title with a hook—Sue Grafton’s A is for Alibi and the rest of her Kinsey Milhone alphabet series or Janet Evanovich’s One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Stephanie Plum series—you appeal to the audience in two ways.

 

This hook worked the first time, and for almost 25 more. Sob.

 
First edition of Cornwell's bestseller-- all about the title.

 

And a later one, all about the writer.

Certainly, most of the novels by Dickens and Austen fall into the “two word” category, but Faulkner and Hemingway usually spilled over to at least three or four.

 

So, it’s hard to know what changes and compromises you need to make to your title, for the marketplace.

 

Most of my scripts and novels have gone through a few “working” (and ultimately non-working!) titles before I finally settled on the right one. My first script, about a woman who says no to a genie, started as a nod to Bruno Betelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, but on the advice of my agent, became Wishful Thinking. My second script, about the “Robin Hood” of insurance started and remained entitled Premiums for 20 years, until it was optioned by two Australian producers who wanted it rewritten for that market, and so I renamed it The Kangaroo Clause.

 

When I wrote a script about my experiences as a woman teaching Jack Kerouac novels at an all-male boarding school, it started as In Loco Parentis, then Lunatic Lit, and finally went out as Off the Road.

 

My favorite rom/com script started as Our Little Secret, then, Liars in Love, was submitted around town as A Case of You, and currently exists as 15 Reasons to Live.

 

Now that I am writing screwball mysteries, which have an amateur sleuth, but don’t obey the rules of the cozy, I needed titles that might attract open-minded cozy readers, but would also indicate a slightly zanier tone and suggest the travel aspect of the series. All four book titles have been a challenge.

 


Lost Luggage was based on my original script, Animal Instincts, which, in the end, I thought sounded too much like soft-core porn. But when I started with a two word title, it seemed I was locked into that for the series. Thank goodness, one of my dear friends came up with Drowned Under, which totally captured the Australian cruise element, but it took me months to land on Fogged Off for Cyd’s adventures in London, after testing truly horrible ideas like Thames to Die and Death Tube.

 

 

My peek into the world of endangered bird smuggling, was initially Bali,Why? until the copy-editing stage, where my editor vetoed the idea, saying everyone wouldn’t get the joke. I lobbied for The Big Tweet, until Elon Musk ruined that. Fowl Play was taken. We were right down to the wire in finally settling on Cheap Trills.  I’m really happy with it, aesthetically, but it has proved problematic, since no matter how many times I’ve written Amazon, when you type in Wendall Thomas, Cheap Trills, it takes you straight to a page full of cheap, wild-headed TROLLS! 

 

See below!

 


I have to admit, I enjoy choosing short story titles much more, since the pressure to buy the book isn’t on my shoulders, it’s down to the editors’ title choice. In Murder A-Go-Gos, where all the stories were inspired by Go-Go’s hits, my work was done for me. But I feel like my first published story, “Loser Friend,” as well as the two below, are my favorites.

 

From Sisters in Crime LA's Anthology, Last Resort.

 
From this year's Crime Under the Sun.

Readers, writers, and MIE compatriots, do you agonize over your titles? And how often do you choose a film, or a book, based on the title alone?

 

---Wendall

 

Wendall’s fourth Cyd Redondo novel, Cheap Trills, has been nominated for a Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery of 2023 and she will be attending Left Coast Crime April 10-14.

 

Please find her on the Best Humorous Panel (Friday the 12th), the “Dogs and Cats and Birds, Oh My” panel on Sunday the 14th, at the table she is hosting with James Bartlett, or stop and say hello in the hallways or the bar!