Book Review: Blind Traveler’s Blues

Blind Traveler’s Blues by Robert P. Bennett starts off with events two months in the past, when a discovery is made on a scientific dig in Mexico. What happens there affects not just those at the dig site, but the entire world. With the first chapter, we leave the dig behind and move into the present day, although not our present day, but several months after the dig in the year 2021. The world has changed.

The focus of the book is Douglas Abledan, a blind businessman who is scheduled to go on a vacation, but whose boss is intent on turning that vacation into a business trip. The good news for you and I, the readers, is that we see things though Douglas’ eyes, or more accurately, his senses other than sight. It’s an interesting look into this altered future and a more fascinating look into how Douglas has adapted to his loss of sight. We see sights in Chicago through his senses of touch, hearing, smell and taste. When a woman he meets is killed, he sets out to determine why and who killed her, taking us along with him.

At times it was difficult to understand his determination to find out who killed the woman he had only known a couple of days. But I let that go and followed him as he skillfully investigated her death, unknowingly moving himself closer to the edge.

Smashwords
OmniLit
Kindle
KindleUK
KindleGE
Kindle FR
Nook

I give Blind Traveler’s Blues by Robert P. Bennett a rating of Hel-of-a-Character.

********************

FTC Disclaimer: This e-book was given to me by the author, but that did not influence my review. What did influence my review was the protagonist. Plain and simple, I liked reading a book where the main character is blind. It was interesting to be in his head, to move with him as he worked the case, to watch him stick his nose in places you and I would have avoided, to worry for him when he walked unknowingly into danger. Abledan is not timid. If anything, he’s a bit cocky, occasionally reckless, and always confident. Wouldn’t we all want to be that way?

Use Your Senses

If you're writing about a place you've never been or a setting you've never seen at the time of year you're describing, you're really at a disadvantage. You could talk to someone who lives in the area you’re describing, especially if that person is a writer and used to looking at things with a writer's eye. You can do Internet searches for information on the area. You can talk to people in chat rooms. You can look in travel books or even in other fiction books. It can be done, but there's nothing like seeing it for yourself.

That’s because the best way to get it right is to see and feel it yourself - when possible. The puffy clouds lingering among the peaks of the mountains. The white caps of the higher clouds. The light blue that radiates to a darker blue then to an almost purple.

When we describe things in our manuscripts (or our characters do), we tend to focus on what can be seen. This is natural. In a book I read, You: The Owner’s Manual, Drs. Roizen and Oz said, “Roughly 80 percent of what our brains process comes from what we see.” So, of course, we describe what we see (or what our characters see).

But sight is not the only important sense we should keep in mind when writing. We, and characters, not only see, we smell things; we feel pain, stickiness and bumps; we hear sounds, soft, loud, low, high; we taste all kinds of things, good and bad, and some in-between.

And all of these senses can trigger emotions inside. We hear a song and we’re thrown back to our teenage years. We smell bacon cooking and smile as we’re transported to our childhood. A certain unidentifiable flavor causes us to spend an hour or even days trying to remember when we once tasted it before, or it makes us gag and spit it out.

Yes, the majority of description in a book is based on sight. It’s what our brains process most. But don’t ignore the other senses, even if it means you have to go back on some round of editing and add them in.

First-Hand Research

This past week in my e-newsletter, Doing It Write!, I wrote about research. In addition to searching for information though the Internet and reading books, it’s good, when possible, to do first-hand research. Go visit places, talk to people, and accumulate all the sensory input you can. And take pictures.

I heard from some of the subscribers to Doing It Write! about how they do research. They have some good suggestions and examples which will run in the next two or three issues of the newsletter. The consensus seems to be that first-hand research is great, but you’ll have better experiences and get more useful information if you do your Internet research before you go.

And this is true. If you do the preliminary work, it’ll make your job easier and you’ll spend your time looking for the things you can’t find on the Internet or in books. You’ll also free yourself up to enjoy the first-hand experiences that might make your book better.

If I had only done book or Internet research on D.C. before I went, I might have been able to describe the color and shape of the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin. But I wouldn’t have known what they looked like after they’d been hit by a freeze. I wouldn’t have thought to describe the cold wind scraping across my face and tangling my hair in twenty directions, or the joy at finding the leather gloves tucked into a pocket of my coat. Or the rumbling of the trains running outside my hotel window. Or the brightness of the sun as you ride up the escalator from the Metro tunnel. Or the warm familiar smell of hot dogs near a vendor’s cart.

Do both kinds of research if possible – the research you can do sitting at your desk and the kind you do on your feet in the streets.

ESP: Exercise Sensory Power 2

Today we pick up where we left off yesterday in talking about Exercising Sensory Perception.

When you are describing that Florida coastline, palm trees swaying, consider letting your readers feel the grit of the sand, taste the brine, smell the car exhaust, hear the pounding surf.

I'm not saying that every time you describe something, you have to include all five senses. But, certainly, try to throw in more than just what can be seen. Yes, this harkens back to the old saying of Show, Don't Tell, but it's more than that. I'm saying, yes, Don't Tell, but also Don't Just Show. At least not in the sense of letting the reader "see" everything. There's more to life than what we can see.

You can write about a small girl in an orchard, picking a fresh peach. You can describe the trees, what the girl is wearing, the color of the fruit. Now, close your eyes and go beyond sight. How does the peach feel in her hands? How does it smell? Is the sun hot? The tree shade cool? How does the peach taste? Does it drip down her chin? Is it sticky? How does the wind sound as it ripples through the leaves? Is it loud? Whispering? Does it tickle her skin?

One way to check whether you have Exercised Sensory Power is to take a hard copy of your story or novel and mark it up. Highlight sensory words. Use a different color marker for each of the five senses. My guess is that your work will be primarily the color you chose for sight.

Count your descriptions of each of the five senses. If you're especially weak in one of the senses, go back and find areas or scenes where you could edit. You don't have to go overboard. A little added here and there will greatly enhance your writing, and the reader's experience of your words.

Transport your readers into another world, then make that world real to them by triggering all of their senses. If you use all five senses, chances are you'll also hook your readers emotionally. And once you do that, they'll want more.

So, Exercise Sensory Power.

ESP: Exercise Sensory Power

Exercise Sensory Power.

The written word shouldn't just be read. It should be felt, tasted, smelled, heard, and seen. It should be experienced.

A lot of the time, as writers, we have movies playing in our heads. Characters talk and move; scenery whizzes by; secrets are whispered; bad guys die; heroes triumph; romantic leads finally get together. We see the stories in our minds and we write the words on the page.

One problem that can occur, though, is that we write what we "see," and we forget that there is a lot in our story to tell with the other senses, like smells, tastes, the feel of things, and sounds.

I bet if you went back through your manuscript or story and marked all the sensory words, you'd find that the vast majority of them are descriptions of the way things or people look. Not too many would be about the way something tasted, or the texture of an object, or the smell, whether it's rancid or flowery, or the everyday sounds.

You don't want your readers to just drift through your book, seeing the movie in your head. A script, even a scratch-and-sniff 3-D concoction, is inferior to a book in the ability of the author and reader to explore the senses. With a book, you have the opportunity to pull the reader in, not only with the sense of sight, but with all the other senses. Make use of that opportunity and your plot will be richer.

Instead of telling the reader that Mary is angry, show us her anger. Let us hear the door slam and the glass shatter. Let us feel the bits of glass etching her palm as she reaches for the door handle. Let us hear the glass crunching under her shoes as she paces, smell and taste the bitter coffee she sips.

More on ESP tomorrow.