So That's How Dan Brown Does It

I haven't read Dan Brown's new novel The Lost Symbol and don't intend to. But like millions of other readers I did devour The DaVinci Code in a few sittings — although, having read the insipid Holy Blood, Holy Grail beforehand, I recognized the dark secret Robert Langdon would eventually unfold. I've always enjoyed cryptogram-laden mysteries ever since I first read Edgar Allen Poe's "The Gold Bug" in my junior high school library—but I've enjoyed them more as word games than as works of literature.

As a novelist I appreciate Brown's facility for headlong plotting, and the obvious, infectious joy he takes in telling his tales, but that's as far as it goes. I'd contrast him with someone like Arturo Perez Reverte who's just as talented a puzzlemaster but seems to have actually contemplated the human condition between chess matches and sips of sherry. That said, I don't begrudge Mr. Brown his continuing success. What's good for booksellers is good for us all.

This feature from Slate is pretty damn hilarious, though.

Scrivener Rocks

I did my revisions of The Poacher's Son using an inexpensive word processing program called Scrivener. (It's only available for Macs so if you don't have one, you can stop reading now.) It's a little tricky explaining what Scrivener is, but I'll start by quoting from Macworld's review of an earlier version (1.03):

Scrivener organizes each writing project, or draft, as a series of folders and files; each project can include relevant keywords, notes, and a brief synopsis. Outline and corkboard views provide drag-and-drop reordering of these elements, and the Edit Scrivenings button displays selected documents, or the entire draft, as a single document. It’s easy to assign custom labels for chapters, concepts, character sheets, and such, or set a status—first draft, rewrite, final draft—for individual draft items.

Another very cool thing about Scrivener is that that you don't have to switch back and forth between a bunch of applications to refer to research files. Instead you store all of your book research — image files, PDFs, movies, sound files, and web pages — inside Scrivener itself. Essentially, all of your work is available to you all the time.

Scrivener isn't exactly a replacement for Microsoft Word (although I wish it was) or Pages (which I'm lukewarm about). Eventually, you'll have to export your novel into another format, be it a .doc file or an .rtf. But it's ideal for getting your novel to the finish line. 

Maybe someday I'll start getting paid for these endorsements. 

How to Call a Moose

Just got back from the North Woods where I was enjoying the last gasp of fishing season. There's no Internet at the remote cabin where I was staying (no running water either), so blogging was out of the cards. You take your entertainment where you can find it on a frigid autumn afternoon up north. We decided to cruise around calling for moose. This is the moose rut in Maine when big bulls starting rounding up harems of willing females. You can lure them into sight by either imitating another male, which prompts a territorial challenge that involves lots of snorting and thrashing of the antlers, or by wailing like a lonely cow looking for love. With a little work we managed to summon an angry bull moose who came rampaging out of the edge of a clear cut and chased us into our pickup truck. Fortunately we all escape being trampled into the dust. Hey, what's more fun than a stupid, self-induced brush with death?

To learn how you, too, can take your life into your hands on your next Maine vacation, read this helpful guide.

 

My Favorite Knife

I've been remiss in my weekly Maine Guide Tips. This one doesn't fall into the category of backwoods folk wisdom (unless it's Swedish folk wisdom), but bear with me.

In my outdoor endeavors I'm an unapologetic gear junkie. I like tools and gadgets and have a weakness for buying stuff that promises much and delivers little. That means I buy a lot of overpriced crap.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is the Mora knife. These traditional Swedish-made knives are insanely inexpensive (you can pick one up new for less than $14 on eBay), probably because they seem cheap (in the sense of not well made). Moras usually have plastic grips and ugly plastic sheathes, for crying out loud. But their blades—which come in four varieties: carbon-steel, stainless, Triflex and laminated-steel —are just incredible. They're tough and hold an edge extremely well, and their design allows you to apply pressure with your thumb along the top, which is something you want in an all-purpose outdoors knife. The Swedes claim you can chop down a tree with a Mora, and while I've never attempted to fell a poplar with mine, I have subjected them to considerable abuse. And they've never let me down.

The more I've used my Moras, the more the brilliance of that plastic grip and sheath has dawned on me, too. Plastic is light and it doesn't rot (like leather) or corrode (like metal). Many of the styles allow you to attach a lanyard, too. Sure the plastic seems chintzy, and you'll never confuse a Mora clipper [like the one above] with a Laguiole, but for $14 you couldn't ask for a more dependable friend in the woods.

Even better, Moras are now distributed in the U.S. by a Maine company, which is sort of cool from a parochial standpoint.