Size Matters

When I first came up with my detectives for my novel, Dark Water, I wanted them to stand out. From a personality point of view, they're both strong, intelligent, and insightful characters, and the more I write about them, the more I see in them.

I also wanted the characters to contrast one another, physically. I wanted the older, more-experienced detective, Mickey Calloway, to be a towering figure, at two metres tall (more than six-and-a-half feet tall). By contrast, Erin Hayes would be just over five feet, at 154 centimetres.

When I asked ChatGPT to create an image of the detectives, I provided a full description, including their respective heights. It came up with a good first attempt, though the height differences weren't quite right and Hayes looked older than her 28 years were.

So I had ChatGPT try again, stressing Hayes' age but not so much her height. And the vertical difference between my detectives wasn't stark enough, so I tried a third time, noting the importance of getting their height correct.

What the AI took came up with threw me off, because the difference was staggering. So much so, that I deleted the image that it had created, thinking the tool had made a big mistake (it wouldn't be the first time).

In that image, it had looked as though Calloway was standing next to a little kid. The AI must have come up with the wrong proportions, I told myself, and had ChatGPT create Hayes such that the top of her head came up to Calloway's shoulders.

After a bit of tweaking, the created image looked pretty much the way I wanted the detectives to appear. I've shared this image before but here it is, again (I find I'm reusing images in my posts a lot, of late. I hope you don't mind):

But if I wanted to stick to my initial thought of having Calloway two metres tall and Hayes just over a metre and a half, I needed to know what that would really look like. So I turned to HeightComparison.com.

This handy site lets you enter the height of two or more people and will then create a 2-D shadow of that person, based on the sex that you provide. When I entered the numbers for Calloway and Hayes, the outcome was eye-opening.

ChatGPT, it seems, got the height of the detectives correct. Seeing this comparison, it was apparent that I had created a giant and a teenager. It made my characters seem comical.

There is only one reference in the book, so far, that talks about their height difference, but I don't think they have to be extremes. With the differences in height that I had created, almost anyone who would encounter the detectives would want to react in shock or make some sort of comment, and I wouldn't want that. It would become the defining characteristic and be a distraction.

I still want Calloway to be a large, broad, imposing figure, who is two metres tall. When he walks into a room, he commands attention and is, perhaps, feared by some.

But Hayes doesn't need to be so short. I want her to be someone who, when seen for the first time, is not identified as a small person. I want her to be seen as someone who is, while "ridiculously beautiful," according to Calloway, is someone who is regarded as a person of authority.

I've added 16 centimetres to Hayes. For those who still use Imperial measurements, that brings her to roughly 5' 7". To further illustrate, I put my own height into the tool and came up with this comparison:

This new height for Hayes seems more realistic to me and I think will help with how I bring the two detectives together for the first time. I initially made Calloway to be a stereotypical gruff cop who dismisses his new partner straight off. He sees her, thinks her beautiful but tiny. He questions how she'd hold up in a tough situation.

But I never wrote about how Hayes sizes up Calloway (no pun intended) on their introduction to one another. She is simply the rookie inspector who was introduced to Calloway, and I had written from Calloway's perspective only. I'd like to round that scene out and share Hayes' perspective, too.

Once I get the descriptions of my characters sorted, I'll get back to focusing on the actual story. But now that I've seen how my detectives stack up to one another, I truly see how size matters.

Feeling Blue over My Kayak

I haven't yet clicked with my new kayak. And I think it's the colour that's to blame.

I mean, paddling in my Delta 14 is a dream: it's fast, it's stable, and when I've used the rudder, it moves in a perfectly straight line.

I love paddling in it.

When DW and I decided to upgrade our kayaks, it didn't take us much convincing to go with the 14-foot Deltas. We loved our old Deltas and knew that if we wanted to explore larger waterways, we needed the extra length and the rudders. It was a no-brainer to stick with the brand that we knew and loved.

The only real consideration, after taking a test paddle at Frontenac Outfitters, was to decide on a colour. I really liked the lime green, but so did DW. I didn't want to have the same colour of kayak that I had before, even though I loved the red, and the green was the next colour that appealed to me.

Delta had come out with a new colour, a rich orange, but I felt that it looked too similar to red, and I wanted the new kayak to stand out, especially in our videos. In retrospect, I might have been happier with the orange.

I mean, I liked the Azure colour that Delta had, but I feel that I settled for this colour, rather than saying, "Yeah, I want that colour for my kayak."

When we picked up our kayaks, at the end of April, and saw them unwrapped, I liked the blue. We were looking at our new crafts in a heavily overcast, rainy light, and the blue really punched. Maybe I would be alright with this new colour, I told myself.

On our first paddle, I was overwhelmed by how well the Delta 14 performed, how comfortable I was with it. It felt strange looking down the bow and seeing such a bright colour, but I told myself that I'd get used to it.

After viewing the video footage, I wasn't so sure. The blue didn't look like the rich blue that was unwrapped at Frontenac Outfitters. It appeared pale, like a light sky blue.

If the colour that was captured by the video camera was the true blue of my kayak, I wouldn't have chosen that colour.

I've been out in my kayak five times this season, and every time we've gone out, the sky has been cloudless and the sun has shone brightly. And when I've made a video of our outing, the blue of my kayak has not been accurately captured.

Have a look at the latest YouTube video, when we paddled the Mississippi River from Pakenham to the base of the Blakeney Rapids.

Pale, huh?

DW asked me, after this paddle, if I liked my new kayak. "The kayak itself is fantastic. I'm just not feeling the azure colour. I should have stuck to red or gone with the orange model."

It's too late. There's nothing I can do about it now.

On Saturday, for our fifth paddle, we put our kayaks in the Jock River and did a 10K round-trip trek toward Richmond and back. It was late in the afternoon and a lot of time, we were shaded by trees on the western bank of the river. And for most of the paddle, my kayak looked like the blue that I saw when we picked it up.

Ironically, I decided to leave my video equipment at home. I just wanted to paddle without thinking about capturing our trip.

As the sun got low on the horizon, I took a photo with my smartphone. And for the first time, I saw my kayak by its true colour. The photo has been unedited.

I'm sure I'll get used to the colour and hope that I eventually bond with it, no matter what light hits it. After all, the kayak itself is awesome and I know that when we hit big water, there's no kayak that I'd rather be in.

Lucky 7

I've been writing for a very long time.

In the fifth grade, I wrote a short story called The Hiccuppy Monster. It was about a monster that had the hiccups and couldn't shake them, and a few friends suggested ways to get rid of them. It took a kid scaring him to end his hiccupping fit.

One friend came up with the idea, another friend drew the illustrations (he was quite talented), and I wrote the story. Our teacher liked it so much that he had me read it to kids in a couple of first-grade classrooms.

In the sixth grade, we had creative writing each week, and my teacher, Bill Townsend, encouraged me to challenge myself. He liked my writing so much that at the end of each week, he'd have me read my work to the rest of the class. He told me that if I chose to be a writer, I'd do well.

Bill Townsend was one of my most influential teachers.

In my late teens, I continued to write short stories. This was at a time that I devoured spy novels by Len Deighton, and when I created Roland Axam. I was inspired by Deighton's Game, Set, and Match trilogy and thought I would write an entire novel for Axam.

My first novel was a spy thiller called The Spy's The Limit. It featured Axam, in Berlin, as an agent with the Canadian Security Intelligence Services. He was assigned to assist his controller, Charles Townsend, who used to work for British MI-5 and who, himself, had been invited to bring a long-time agent back to the west, from the Soviet Union. Townsend had been in charge of the West Berlin portfolio and was the only person the agent trusted.

Axam was to be an observer only, but Townsend had other plans. I won't tell the story because I don't want to spoil any surprises, should I ever revive that story.

I actually turned The Spy's The Limit into a trilogy, taking Axam from Ottawa to Berlin, from Berlin to North Berwick, Scotland, and back home. When I finished the third book, Clear Spies Ahead (the second book was called Spy Will Be Done), I read everything, from cover to cover.

And wasn't happy.

I felt the story was too simple and not believable. I decided to shelve the trilogy and maybe revisited it after I had more writing experience under my belt. But I had completed three novels.

Sadly, in the moving that DW and I have done over the years, I've lost the manuscripts. I was upset but figured that perhaps I wasn't meant to be a spy novelist.

I moved on to another novel soon after. It was about teenage suicide. JT was about a teen, Joseph Thomas Smyth, in his final year of high school, and deals with the pressures that face youths. Written from the viewpoint of JT, it follows his last two weeks of life.

This novel, I thought I could get published, so I sent it to several publishing houses. Every one of them rejected the story with a lovely form letter that essentially told me to fuck off. But one of those letters was covered in hand writing around the margin, apparently by the person who actually read JT.

The person said that she actually enjoyed reading my manuscript, felt the main character compelling, and was touched by the emotion the book set. And while her company wasn't interested in this type of story, she encouraged me to keep writing.

Four books written: zero published.

The next novel that I wrote was started in 2001, after DW and I had returned from South Korea, where we taught for two years, and after we bought our first house and started a family. The book was based on our experiences in Korea but as seen through my eyes.

I should note here that all of my short stories and all of my novels were written in first-person prose. Though my sixth-grade teacher never encouraged this writing point of view, it was something that interested me.

Also, none of my books have happy endings. I just don't like them. Sorry.

It took me more than 10 years and three iterations to complete my fourth novel. I eventually brought Roland Axam into it, as the main character, complete with a sad backstory, and made him the person who experienced the things that I had while living in Korea.

Plus some fiction, for good measure.

That book did get published, although it's self-published. It's Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary.

Five books written: one published.

When I wrote Songsaengnim, I initially planned to write it to cover the span of my two years in Korea. But as the story progressed, I realized that the book was getting long, so I decided to split it into two stories: one, the first year of Roland in Korea, with his backstory as a second arc; the second story would follow Roland in his second year, where he teaches at a university.

I also decided to add parts of The Spy's The Limit—or at least what I could remember of the lost manuscript—as a secondary arc. There are actually three arcs in Gyeosunim, the sequel.

I got about two-thirds through writing Gyeosunim before I lost interest. It took 10 years to finish Songsaengnim and I didn't want to take another 10 years to write the sequel. I was bored of the characters in the main arc and needed to do something different, so I shelved my work.

For now.

Five-and-two-thirds books written. Let's say six.

My seventh book is Dark Water and is my first murder mystery, which is a departure from my other books. It's my first book that is not written in first-person prose (it's in third-person) and it's one of the few books that doesn't feature Roland Axam (JT is the only other novel that is Roland-free).

I have friends who think I'm a novice writer. Heck, I have friends who sometimes forget that I'm a writer (even though I worked for 25 years, writing documentation for various companies). I do lack confidence in my writing ability but I look back to my fifth-grade teacher, who liked The Hiccuppy Monster so much that he had me read it to younger kids (and I think he kept the only copy of that story), to Mr. Townsend, who encouraged me to write, and to that unnamed reader at a publishing company, who told me not to stop.

I'm having a lot of fun writing Dark Water and think it is probably my best work yet. Maybe, it'll be my Lucky 7.

Happy Friday!

Partially On the Wagon

If you've been reading The Brown Knowser for a while, you know that it's no secret that I love beer.

And yet, recently, I've sort of been off beer, avoiding the beer section in our friendly neighbourhood LCBO and not ordering from my favourite local craft breweries. There hasn't been any beer in my mini fridge since late May.

I still drank beer, but only occasionally. For the first couple of weeks, while attending my local karaoke venue, I gave up having my usual pint of IPA from Ottawa beer shop Overflow Brewing, opting for ginger ale to keep my vocal chords lubricated.

It threw the bartender, Kevin, who was reaching for a cold can of ale as he saw me approach. He wondered if I was okay.

I find that my overall alcohol consumption has seriously waned over the past few months. Not only have I not had the desire to drink, I also find that if I have more than one or two drinks in one sitting—depending on the beverage—I feel it the next morning.

I don't mean that I'm actually hung over: I simply feel tired, dehydrated (even though I usually drink water between drinks), and my head feels a bit heavy. Booze makes me feel weighted down.

I don't like waking up that way.

Lately, I've limited my drinking to times when I go out for a social event, like karaoke night, or meeting up with friends. And starting this month (though, we're only a couple of days into July), I'm going to limit myself to only one drink during those outings.

I asked for a G&T.
Didn't expect it to be blue.

Last night, for example, DW and I went out in celebration of our 31^st wedding anniversary. We decided to try a nice restaurant in Westboro—Brassica—which was excellent. Usually, when we dine out for our anniversary, we'll order a nice bottle of wine, which gives us three glasses, each.

At dinner, however, I didn't really want to drink, but old habits die hard and I did have a gin and tonic. But only one, and when DW suggested afterwards that we find a patio where we could watch the sun set and have a drink, I said I wasn't interested in having another drink, though I was up for finding a place to watch the sun set.

We went to the new Kìwekì Point, and it was a great venue for the sunset. More on that place in a future blog post.

On Canada Day, we had some sangria, and when we visited my folks for dinner, I was offered a pint of Innis & Gunn, which is pretty hard to say 'no' to.

Because there had been several hours between the sangria and beer, and because after the beer, I stuck to water, I felt fine the next morning (although, when we got home, that night, DW accidentally closed the rear gate of our Niro on my neck, so that was throbbing when I woke up, yesterday).

I don't need to stock my fridge with beer. For more than a month, I've filled it with flavoured sparkling water, of which the whole family goes through a lot. We prefer it to sugary drinks.

At this time of year, I would usually end my work day by grabbing a can of beer from my fridge and enjoying it on our front porch. I haven't even had the urge to do that, let alone have the beer to sip on it.

I had written all of the blog posts for this week, except for today's post, last week. Today's post was meant to be a Beer O'Clock review, that I would have gone shopping at the LCBO, brought home a new brew (new to me, that is), and tried it. But when the weekend came up and DW and I did our shopping, I didn't feel like popping into the liquor store. I had no urge to get beer.

For more than a year, I've been starting to feel my age (notice how I didn't say act my age): I have aches and pains; I'm not as strong as I used to be; and, since last year, my lungs have given me trouble. Maybe a lower tolerance for alcohol comes with the territory.

I'm not saying that I'm on the wagon. Not fully. But I can see a time where I'm no longer drinking alcohol or, at most, enjoying it rarely and sparingly.

Does this post mark the end of Beer O'Clock reviews? We'll see.

Thirty Plus One

I had to do some math.

There's no such thing as a perfect marriage but I'd say we've had a lot of fun, despite the imperfections. All of our travels, our kids, and the life we've built together.

All worth it.

We've been married for longer than I've been unmarried. I said that last year, too. We've been together for much longer than we've been without one another, and I could never imagine being without her.

Happy 31st anniversary, baby!