It’s the End of the World as We Know It

After a troubling start to the year for writers of short crime fiction—Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine changing ownership, leading to distribution delays for print issues; Level Best Books restructuring after a partner retired, causing delays in release dates for anthologies; Tough going on indefinite hiatus; and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine changing to an annual publication focusing on Sherlock Holmes material and closing to other subgenres of crime fiction—mid-October brought a wave of distressing news: Down & Out Books, publishers of several anthologies each year, announced their closure; Unnerving Books, which published anthologies and a magazine, closed; and Black Cat Weekly announced that its last issue would be the 2026 Halloween issue unless someone takes over the publication.

There’s no good way to spin bad news. Except: Shit happens.

I’ve been writing short fiction professionally for half a century. I’ve seen genre markets contract—I’ve even seen an entire genre disappear—and I’ve seen new markets arise.

I lost three key mystery markets in the 1980s when Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Espionage Magazine, and the revived The Saint Magazine ceased publication. (I had multiple stories published in Mike Shayne and Espionage; had one accepted but not published by The Saint.)

I lost several magazine markets during the late 2000s and early 2010s as the rise of the internet led to the demise of several men’s magazines, and survivors reduced the amount of fiction they published.

Around the early 2010s, I lost several anthology markets when Cleis Press changed owners, and when StarBooks Press and Xcite Books ceased publication.

And I suffered significant loss when the last two confession magazines—True Confessions and True Story—shut down in 2017. (The confession genre had been good for multiple short story sales every month for years, but the entire genre disappeared after the last two magazines closed, leaving me with several unsold stories.)

After each of these setbacks, I took a deep breath, spent time studying the markets, and adjusted what I wrote and where I submitted. I persevered.

So, after you’ve cried in your beer or cursed the gods, or however you deal with setbacks, it’s time to get back to work.

It’s your writing career. Take charge of it.

SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE

Anyhow, in the middle of all this month’s bad news, I received some good news: I had two stories accepted—one for an anthology, one for a magazine—checked edits for a story upcoming in Dark Yonder, read page proofs for a story upcoming in Lunatic Fringe, and saw the cover for The Vigilante Crime Pulp Fiction Anthology, which contains one of my stories. I also reached an oral agreement with a publisher to take on the anthologies I had in the production pipeline at Down & Out Books.

* * *

“Black Velvet” appears in Lunatic Fringe (White City Press), edited by J. Alan Hartman.

“4:13 a.m.” appears in The Vigilante Crime Pulp Fiction Anthology (Vigilante Crime), edited by Matthew Louis and Philip M. Smith.

Elementary.

             I’m always vaguely annoyed at the expression, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”  It raises a lot of questions.  I want to know if those thousand words adequately conveyed the same information as the picture.  Would a million words have done a better job?  How about a hundred?  And whose words anyway?  What if James Joyce described a painting by Claude Monet.  Would the result be an exact facsimile, of either the picture or the text?

             The problem is a picture is a picture and words are words.  Composers are always telling you their symphonies are renditions of literature, or historical events.  The 1812 Overture has lots of percussion and heavy brass, symbolizing canon fire and the like, but I bet the Russian soldiers defending Moscow would pick the timpani and cymbals any day over the real thing.  I’ve heard The Rite of Spring, and though I think the concertgoers who rioted over the symphony’s debut might have taken things a bit too far, it’s a pretty poor substitute for daffodils, butterflies and frolicking fawns. 

            I probably lack adequate imagination, but I prefer works of art to be judged by the distinctive, and irreplaceable, qualities of their form. The best film adaptations of books render both the story and emotional feel of the original, a real accomplishment.  I’d count the film versions of The English Patient and Mystic River among those that pulled it off.  But they’re not the books.  Doesn’t make one type of work any better than the other.  I’ve preferred some movies over their inspiration. Blade Runner, for example.  Philip K Dick was a genius, but his novella that spawned the movie is so so.  The movie’s a masterpiece. 

            The greater point is that these are separate works of art with the same title, each using a distinct form of media.  How lucky we are that such things exist.

            This is a long-winded introduction to the actual thought behind this post.  I’m thoroughly enjoying TV cop shows of late, in particular nearly anything on Brit Box, which exquisitely elevates the police procedural to it’s most riveting and involving expression.  And the British actors, with their precise speech, understated delivery and stiff upper lips, are ideally suited to the task.

            I’ve never read Anne Cleeves, whose books make for first-rate TV shows, and I’m sure she’s an excellent novelist.  But there are other Brit Box shows orchestrated by creator/writer/director/showrunners that are just as compelling and addictive.  Since I’m a partisan of the mystery writing gig, I’d make a case that mysteries are ideally suited to the TV series format.  They’re taut, contained and bursting with human drama.  The stakes are usually life and death, and the potential for moral hazard is endemic to the genre.  Police procedurals also trade in conflict between established power structures, intractable bureaucracies and tangled legal conundrums opposing the valor and hardheadedness of individual players.  Lone wolves, iconoclasts, denizens of the borderland between defending the law and vigilantism are its bread and butter.

            I don’t have to convince this audience that solving puzzles is the most satisfying of intellectual pursuits.  Brit Box serves up theirs as a dish both precisely calibrated and piquant.  While never shying from a gruesome murder scene, or burst of violence when called for, the point isn’t the action, but rather the shrewd doggedness of its protagonists.  Modern technology is ever present, though in the service of the quest, never an end in itself.  The heroes are physically brave, though their courage is more manifestly moral.  I’m not immune to the charms of a good shoot-em-up, but having the fastest gun or most effective right hook is the shallowest of heroic accomplishments.  In all this, the British have the proper sensibility.

And if in the midst of the highest drama and ugliest of dilemmas someone has the good sense to put the kettle on, I’m fine with that.

A Head in a Jar

head in a jar version 1.0

Each month, we SleuthSayers exchange an internal letter, usually light-hearted nonsense in which we celebrate Rob’s dashing out another schedule to keep wheels and cogs moving behind the scenes. I happened to mention creating a head in a jar for a beautiful friend with an October birthday and a Día de los Muertos fetish.

Janice and, umm… was it Eve? … touched upon it, which gave me the idea of showing how you can make your own jarhead (not to be confused with the United States Marines). I’ll include suggestions how you might improve upon my design.

I’ve made props before for Halloween and a Jacob’s Ladder (that spark-buzzing thing in all the classic horror movies) used at the Terror on Church Street attraction. I displayed one prop in a previous SleuthSayers article.

I’ve been thinking about a head in a jar for some time and even bought a pair of 2-gallon (8 litres) glass picnic jugs, the kind you load with lemonade and has a spigot, convenient because wiring can be threaded through the hole machined for the valve stem. After pondering how I might float a brain in a jar, I concluded actual liquid in the container would become a maintenance nightmare. My solution is no solution– that is, find a coating that would give the impression of a liquid medium without using water (or formaldehyde).

In the meantime, my eye and appetite were drawn to large plastic jars at Walmart stuffed with delicious cheese balls similar to delicious puffy Cheetos. And that raised the notion of creating a preliminary head in a jar, a prototype before attempting a more ambitious floating brain.

An unfortunate fact of life is that heads to use in jars are difficult to procure since the sad passing of Burke and Hare. Finding brains in this political era is even more difficult, so I settled upon a rubber Halloween mask, available from Amazon. At least they said it was latex… it had an odd texture and a horrible smell, and a mole near the ear had hair sprouting from it. Anyway, click the following pictures to enlarge them.

Parts List

Jar

At Walmart or Sam’s Club, look for delicious giant size Utz Cheese Balls. Your jug won’t look quite like mine because the company somewhat squared their packaging design immediately after my purchase. Funny thing– the new containers contain 18% less product.

The project is nearly the same, but you can give Utz hell for inconveniencing those of us who stuff heads into bottles. In the meantime, feed your children 18% fewer delicious cheese balls and carefully peel off the label. Lick delicious cheese ball crumbs from your fingers and wash out the jar.

Mask

Besides buying the last cylindrical Utz jug from Sam’s and Walmart, I apparently bought the last mask of its kind from Amazon. That’s okay. The damned mask they sent is huge and a smaller size might look better. Also the mask really did stink to high heaven. I set it out as the flesh cured… Er, I mean as polymer vapors floated away.

Ping-Pong Balls

Ordinary tennis table balls were part of the plan, but Amazon happened to carry inexpensive glow-in-the-dark balls. Hey, why not? Perfect. When I was a grade school mad scientist (I’m not kidding), I used 3-ring binder reinforcement discs to create irises on ping-pong balls, but here I chose to leave these eyes blank giving a washed out stare.

Duct Tape

Useful against those who change their minds about donating their, well, their minds, I ordered duct tape from Amazon for the sole purpose of positioning the ping-pong eyes inside the mask. Any nearby bodies featuring duct tape constitutes mere coincidence.

Polyester

The same stuff (or stuffing) used in pillows, cushions, and rag dolls can also be used to fill out the hollow cheeks of corpses lying in state. Really. Seven ounces (200g) was good enough for my model. Once again, Amazon carried the day.

Ballast

The mask was so big, I needn’t worry about it flopping around, but I wanted to mount it stably. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time or money to create a form, but I grabbed a cylinder of baby butt wipes, about the diameter I needed. Even a can of peaches would have worked.

DIY

The plan called for positioning the container upside down for a dome effect. I’d considered using a styrofoam head like hair salon beauty schools use, but the protrusion of the nose prevented sliding the form into the jar. At that point, I switched gears and opted for a latex mask.

From inside the mask, I duct taped ping pong balls into the eye sockets. I considered drilling LEDs into the rear of the eyeballs, but the glow-in-the-dark ping-pong should suffice. I considered using heavy black thread to sew the lips, but I left that decision to the recipient. I had no idea if the device would outlast the season.

Polyester rounded out the cranium of the mask, and I worked more fiberfill around the ballast canister as I slid it into place. The nose tended to flatten, but weird creases and crevices only served to make the head look like it came from a decaying body. Neighbors began whispering the mask might conceal a real head, which would have been simply ludicrous if obnoxious Mr. Sauersnorkle hadn’t gone missing two days earlier and subsequently his widow brought me a generous tray of cookies. 

With mask, polyester padding, and ballast in place, I could just slip my hand inside the jar opening to push uncooperative bits into place. After taking the first photo above, I tucked in the dangling material seen on either side of the neck. Perfection took distant second place to [sur]realism. Once satisfied, I replaced the top and turned the gadget over, resting it on the lid.

The polyester had arrived in a cloth pouch sealed in a plastic packet. The pouch happened to precisely match the height and circumference of the jug, making it a perfect dust cover.

The head-in-a-jar seemed welcomed at the pre-Halloween birthday bash, but oddly, no one wanted to store the gizmo in their bedchambers, not the birthday girl, not her boyfriend, not her son, not her mother, not even Widow Sauersnorkle. Should I be offended?

Deja Vu All Over Again

  

NOTE: Today I'm posting, mostly because of laziness, a modified version of a column I posted here at SleuthSayers almost 14 years ago. And since I'm recycling it, its title should probably be "Deja Vu All Over Again, All Over Again." But I'll leave well enough alone. Here goes . . .

Some time ago, I heard a newsman on National Public Radio say that someone "shared this in common" with someone else. That wording bothered me. (Not enough to make me move the dial to a rap or gospel music station, but it did bother me.) I've forgotten exactly who he said was sharing something in common with whom, but--to use an example--if you and your father are both baseball fans, you either share a love of baseball with your father or you and your father have that in common. You don't share it in common, and if you say you do, you've created a redundancy. 

This kind of error can probably be forgiven more easily in speech than in writing. We writers are supposed to know better. (And so are NPR newscasters.) Not that I am guiltless. Right here in this blog, I can remember using the term added bonus--which is a little silly. If it's a bonus, it is by definition added, so to use both words is redundant. And in real life I'm always talking about something happening the exact same way it happened earlier. Other phrases I use a lot are final outcome, plan ahead, and free gift. Imagine how much time I could save and how much smarter I could sound if I cut out the words exact, final, ahead, and free.

Alternative choices

I know what you're thinking. Sometimes phrases containing redundancies are used intentionally, to add emphasis. Examples: completely surrounded, truly sincere, each and every, definite decision, cease and desist, direct confrontation, forever and ever, and so on. Redundancies also come into play when using certain abbreviations, like UPC code, HIV virus, please RSVP, iOS operating system, and AC current. My favorite is PIN number. But I still use the term. The technically correct PI number just wouldn't roll well off the tongue, unless maybe you're referring to a phonebook listing for Philip Marlowe, or how many peach cobblers your aunt Bertha made this year.

A working awareness of this kind of thing can be handy to writers, because cutting out redundancies provides us with another way to "write tight." An argument can even be made that such common and inoffensive phrases as sit down, stand up, nod your head, or shrug your shoulders are literary overkill as well, and do nothing except add extra work. Why not just say (or write) sit, stand, nod, and shrug? Where else would you stand but up? What else would you shrug except your shoulders? (Wait, don't answer that.)

Unintentional Mistakes

Even if you're not a writer, here are a few more redundancies that come to mind:

twelve noon

sum total

commute back and forth

mental telepathy

advance reservations

drowned to death

merge together

observe by watching

armed gunman

visible to the eye

hot-water heater

overexaggerate

false pretense

hollow tube

disappear from sight

myself personally

a future prediction 

safe haven

during the course of

regular routine

a variety of different items

filled to capacity

pre-recorded

a pair of twins

unexpected surprise*

the reason is because

originally created

red in color

few in number

poisonous venom

* could also mean a pair of twins

Do you ever find yourself using these (or similar) phrases when you speak? More importantly, do you embarrass yourself by using them when you write? I try to watch for, and correct, them in my own manuscript, but I'm sure some of them manage to make it through intact. Can you think of others I forgot to mention? Are there any that you find particularly irritating?

The end result

Time for a confession: I will probably (and happily) continue to use many of these redundancies in everyday conversation, and even in writing if they're a part of dialogue. Sometimes they just "sound right." But I wouldn't want to use them in a column like this one.

In point of fact, lest any of you protest against forward progress, past history reveals an unconfirmed rumor that a knowledge of repetitious redundancy is an absolute, necessary essential, and that the issue might possibly grow in size to be a difficult dilemma. If there are any questions about the basic fundamentals, I'll be glad to revert back and spell it out in detail. And even repeat it again.

Or maybe postpone it until later.

I'll close with a quote from my fellow SleuthSayer Robert Lopresti: "This program was brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department, which brought you this program."

Ha Ha! Charade You Are!

While working today, I had on Pink Floyd's Animals, probably the least known of the band's classic run. The other three are Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here. I wouldn't count The Wall because the band began its long, slow breakup during the recording of it. It's more a Roger Waters project featuring members of Pink Floyd.

The album's premise is there are three types of people in the world: "Dogs," who are go-getters, predators, and pack animals; "Pigs-Three Different Ones"-in which the rich and powerful shove their snouts in the trough to the exclusion of everyone else who needs to feed; and "Sheep." The last is self-explanatory.

But it's "Pigs…" That strikes me as the most, well, criminally oriented. "Dogs" depicts someone who is ambitious, aggressive, and greedy, but is eventually brought down by everything they attain. "Sheep," of course, while musically being the best song on the album, is yet another screed telling us that all is hopeless for the common man. But "Pigs…"? The all-consumer elites are a staple of noir, hardboiled, and thrillers.

Waters is vague in his first verse. It's the rich and greedy in general. To me, Lex Luthor of Superman fame is a classic example. Since the nineties, he's been a billionaire of various stripes, the most recent movie making him the classic tech bro with absolutely no compassion or sense of responsibility and utterly self-absorbed. Nicholas Hoult plays Luthor as a nuanced, but clearly evil, villain. You understand him, and that only makes you want to punch him in the throat harder. Last week's industrial fat cat is yesterday's media mogul is today's tech bro.

Waters gets more specific with verse 2, which is openly about Margaret Thatcher without naming her. But I think it applies more to today, where the demagogue (which Thatcher was not, though I get why people might disagree) has become a new low in leadership around the world. But even they are common villains in and out of crime: the corrupt politician or sheriff, the real estate mogul squeezing his tenants. Kingpin from the Marvel franchise is a great example. In more recent versions, he's not even a supervillain. He's the son of an abusive gangster who's actually trying to rise above his past, but that pesky Daredevil keeps messing up his illegal efforts. Vincent D'Onofrio, like Hoult, makes Kingpin much more nuanced. He's a lonely man trying to rebuild a neighborhood. We even see him meet his wife and show a human side. But he is a villain. He doesn't hesitate to use his father's tactics to get what he wants.

Waters names names in his third verse, going after moral crusader Mary Whitehouse, the subject of a LOT of satirical lyrics in British rock back in the 1970s. Whitehouse, while having a rather cheerful demeanor, was described as the classic definition of a puritan: Lying awake at night worried someone somewhere was having fun.

If you want to see a real-life version of this, look no further than Cincinnati's own Simon Leis, a man who tried to frame Barnes & Noble as selling porn to minors, then having a temper tantrum on the radio when the county prosecutor simply told the offending store, "Oh, just put that magazine behind the counter with the Playboys and Penthouses." Leis's most infamous act was to attempt to shut down the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum of Contemporary Art. It went to trial for obscenity. The museum, in famously conservative Hamilton County, Ohio, won. But Leis had a long history of such behavior. His attack on Larry Flynt was depicted in The People Vs. Larry Flynt (with Flynt playing the judge in that scene.)

 So there you have it, a classic album about three types of people who pathologically can't understand other people don't like being told what to do. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to be watching for Pigs on the Wing.

Let Them Eat Grass

I ran across this clip of an interview with Peter Thiel, multimillionaire financier of JD Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and creator of Paypal:

Apparently, the billionaire tech bros aren't sure that humans (other than themselves) should survive.  Probably totally utilitarian.  We're simply not needed, once AI and robots take over all the jobs, and create / grow all the things they need, from yachts to tomatoes.

BTW, According to the New York Times and The Guardian, Trump reportedly said in a campaign meeting that if it were up to Stephen Miller, there would only be 100 million people living in the United States, and they would all resemble Miller.  This would mean that 200 million people in this country will have to be either forcibly migrated or killed to satisfy his vision.  Last I heard, that's called genocide.  But then, the KKK, Proud Boys, White Christian Nationalists etc., want the United States to be freed of anyone of color, Jews, and anybody who has commingled with them.  

Now I have, sadly, read The Turner Diaries, and I know that its fans really are all salivating over mass murder / genocide that will take them back to a white paradise where everyone has 40 acres and a thousands guns to protect it.  One of them, after the Oklahoma City bombing, came rushing into the courthouse to crow that war had been declared and there were no innocent victims.  

But I would expect no less from billionaire tech bros like Thiel, Musk, et al, because they really don't like humans, even each other.  And as for us: we're inefficient, we require resources (like food and water), we need sleep... basically, we're grungy and unimportant.  We are the peasants to the tech bros' Renaissance Princes.  

But it has been ever thus.  In Barbara Tuchman's brilliant A Distant Mirror:  The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, she writes of how the peasants were seen by the upper classes 600 years ago, with this virulent excerpt from the contemporary Le Despit au Vilain (vilain = peasant):

"Tell me Lord, if you please, by what right or title does a peasant eat beef? And goose, of which they have plenty?  And this troubles God.  God suffers from it and I too.  For they are a sorry lot, these peasants who eat fat goose!  Should they eat fish?  Rather let them eat thistles and briars, thorns and stray and hay on Sunday and pea-pods on weekdays.  They should keep watch without sleep and have trouble always; that is how peasants should live...  It is they who spoil the common welfare."  

It's important to remember that throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and well into the 19^th century, it was the peasants who did all the hard work and paid all the taxes, not the royalty, nobility or the church.  Their rights were limited, they had no say (much less something like a vote) in their government, and their property was always at hazard of being seized.  And I mean seized, as in the clearing of the Highlands in Scotland (1750-1860) and the Enclosure Acts in England (between 1604-1904 there were 5,200 Acts passed) which drove peasants / crofters off their land and replaced them with profitable sheep...  

And then there were the peasant revolts during the Calamitous Fourteenth Century - a time when one-third of Europe died from the Black Death - as the peasants tried to get more rights and more money for their hard labor. The reprisals for the Jacquerie in France, and the Wat Tyler Rebellion in England were savage. Historians cite the slaughter of about 20,000 peasants for each revolt. Keep those peasants humble and eating black bread and beans.  Or grass.  

And, about 100 years later, during the Reformation, Martin Luther was stunned and appalled by the German Peasants' Revolt of 1525, when the peasants took Martin Luther at his word ("there is neither slave nor free," etc.) and rose up against their overlords, in search of actually being paid by the nobility / church for all their hard labor, instead of being taxed into oblivion. Instead of being on their side, Luther condemned them as un-Christian and urged the princes to crush the revolt without mercy, saying that "there's nothing more poisonous than a rebel -- killing one is like killing a mad dog." The nobles took him at his word. As many as 100,000 peasants were killed before it was all over.  

"Should peasants eat meat? Rather should they chew grass on the heath with the horned cattle and go naked on all fours."(Spielvogel's Western Civ. I text, p. 195.)  They pretty much did during the Great Famine in Ireland (1845-1849), when the potato blight killed off the main source of food for Ireland. 

 

NOTE: The reason the Irish were living almost exclusively on potatoes was because the English overlords who'd claimed all the land took all the other crops - grain, meat, etc. - for taxes. One of the great scandals of the Great Famine is that Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of government relief, limited the Government's food aid programme, claiming that food would be readily imported into Ireland once people had more money to spend after earning wages on new public-works projects (which may or may not have existed). In a private correspondence, he explained how the famine could bring benefit to the English; As he wrote to Edward Twisleton: 

"We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country". (Wikipedia)

Meanwhile British landlords continued, throughout the Famine, to export grain at a profit from Ireland while a million people died of famine and another million or two emigrated to escape.  The emigrants received the usual warm welcome:  

And now it's back (as if it ever died).  How else to interpret our current society where billionaire Elon Musk, for example, pays no taxes, while my husband and I pay taxes even on our hard-earned Social Security?  Where Congress has Cadillac health insurance and pensions, while saying the US can't afford the universal health care that every other industrialized nation has?  Where the BBBill "requires the leasing of at least 50% of public lands that private companies desire to lease for drilling, mining or logging"?  Where the estate, gift, and generation-skipping and transfer tax exemption will increase from $13.99 million in 2025 to $15 million in 2026? (LINK) If we're so damn useless, why do they need our money, our public lands, our health care?

Curtis Yarvin
photo by David Merfield

NOTE:  Curtis Yarvin, influential philosopher among the tech bros, is all about the "Dark Enlightenment", a society in which democracy is abolished and city states are back, run by corporations, with absolute rulers subject only to the corporate board.  And you will take what wages that Corporate State is willing to give you and like it, or you will be cast into outer darkness. 

But, on a good note, Mr. Yarvin is spooked.  Just last week he wrote:

The second Trump revolution, like the first, is failing. It is failing because it deserves to fail. It is failing because it spends all its time patting itself on the back. It is failing because its true mission, which neither it nor (still less) its supporters understand, is still as far beyond its reach as algebra is beyond a cat. Because the vengeance meted out after its failure will dwarf the vengeance after 2020—because the successes of the second revolution are so much greater than the first—I feel that I personally have to start thinking realistically about how to flee the country. Everyone else in a similar position should have a 2029 plan as well. And it is not even clear that it will wait until 2029: losing the Congress will instantly put the administration on the defensive." (LINK)

    Please, Curtis, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

NOTE: Peter Thiel gave private lectures on Christianity that connected government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future, according to recordings reviewed by The Washington Post. He argued that those who propose limits on technology development not only hinder business but threaten to usher in the destruction of the United States and an era of global totalitarian rule, according to the recordings. And he said that “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta [Thurnberg] or Eliezer [Yudkowsky, a prominent critic of the tech industry’s approach to AI].

Thiel, whose net worth is around $27 billion, also used his private talks to criticize financial regulations. He said such rules were a sign that a singular world government has begun to emerge that could be taken over by an Antichrist figure who could then use it to exert control over people.  “It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money,” Thiel said, according to the recordings. “An incredible machinery of tax treaties, financial surveillance, and sanctions architecture has been constructed... Wealth gives the “illusion of power and autonomy,” Thiel added, “but you have this sense it could be taken away at any moment.”  (LINK) 

MY NOTE:  Memento Mori Peter, and the world's smallest violin playing for you.  

The fact that what wealth "We, the People" (hi! remember us?) have can be taken away at any moment is irrelevant, of course.  They are the Renaissance Princes, we are the peasants, but with AI, robots, etc., they can get rid of most of us and have AI and robots do all the work.  New Enclosure Acts, new Clearances, and  AI will do all the programming, robots will build and repair all the worker robots, and all things will go tickety-boo like superior clockwork.  Whoever thought that billionaires would be the ultimate optimists?  Once you get over the idea that icky humans have got to be killed, I mean, culled. 

(LINK)

If that's the future, I'm with the Antichrist… and apparently I'm going to be in good company.

Bright Babble From The Bayou.

Two weeks ago I wrote about Bouchercon in New Orleans last month.  Here are some words of wisdom I gathered there:

"Historical fiction is very liberating because you don't have to explain why the cell phone doesn't work." -  Laura Joh Rowland

"Writing is a hobby that I don't have to buy golf clubs for, or worms for fishing." - Josh Pachter

"What if I write about that but not at all about that?" - Brandi Bradley

"I have killed my ex-husband about twelve times." - Pamela Ebel

"I love editing. I love publishing. I love bookselling. I hate writing." - Otto Penzler

"Research is a deep dark rabbit hole that I just love." -Wendy Gee

"We fistfight a lot in the South because everything's so far apart we can't wait for the police to show up." - S.A. Cosby

"I've never seen a writers' block problem that couldn't be solved by conversation with other writers." - Jonathan Maberry

"What's romance without a good murder?" - Meredith Anthony

'If you find my stuff funny it says more about what's wrong with you than what's wrong with me." - Jeff Markowitz

"I was tired of the Civil War before I was born." - Henry Wise

"A great opening line is a cheap magic trick." - Ivy Pochoda

"I've built a career on sarcasm." - Gini Koch

"You're writing a story to entertain people, not put them to sleep.  We have Ulysses for that." - Charles Todd

"What are you saving your time for?" - Polly Stewart

"How can you write about crime fiction if you don't do crime?" - William Boyle

"In school I read 'The Lottery' and it broke me.  I don't think you should read it at the age I read it." - Jason Powell

"That which we call a dead body smells the same in all time periods." - Laura Joh Rowland

"All of America has become the South." - Ace Atkins

"My editor always calls my books cozies on crack." - Rachel Howzell Hall 

"Deadlines are the writer's friend." - Thekla Madsen

"My agent and I had a difficult divorce." - Bonnar Spring

"Only Elmore Leonard was born Elmore Leonard, but we can all get closer." - Mysti Berry

"The pillars of the South are religion, class, sex, and race." - S.A. Cosby

"Can her friendship survive being a serial killer?" - Emma C. Wells

"What do you kids call dancing these days? Just dancing? You're letting us down on the slang." - Gini Koch

"If I'm stuck in the doldrums I give my characters a side quest." - Brandi Bradley

"Sometimes the tipping point doesn't tip for many years after the pre-tipping." -  Laura Joh Rowland

"I go to the library because that's where the cool kids are hanging out." - Jonathan Maberry

"The adage that it's a privilege just to be nominated is bullshit." - Don Bruns

"Write about characters, not caricatures. We're not all Boo Radley. We have shoes now." - S.A. Cosby 

"I don't think you can have a story without character development." - Steve Steinbock

"I'm very much a Joseph Campbell meets Save the Cat kind of writer." - Rachel Howzell Hall  

"A crime novel without a bar is like a day without sunshine." - Eric Beetner

"I have a lottery ticket. It proves that math education in public schools is a failure." -Wendy Gee

"Humor comes from a place of trauma. You figure if I make the guys laugh, maybe they'll stop hitting me." - Libby Klein

"Scanty-cladness is a futuristic trope." -  Laura Joh Rowland

"My grandmother made the best sweet potato pie in Virginia and I will fight you about that." - S. A. Cosby

"I was going to say something unflattering about myself but I'm vain." - James Lincoln Warren

"Everything you cede to a machine is something you are not learning to do. You are the passenger, not the driver." - Jonathan Maberry

"My Victorian series you can blame on PBS." - Laura Joh Rowland

"I was born in the 1960s, so how is that a historical period?" - Nancy Herriman

"Books that have no humor in them I find unrealistic." - Matt Goldman

"Hopefully this novel that I'm working on right now will be out before we're all dead." - Rob Byrnes

"I google great first lines. Sometimes I see my friends' lines there and I get sad." - Rachel Howzell Hall 

"Someone said I like your books but I don't like your main character at all. I said, you know that's me, right?" - Libby Klein

"Aristotle also wore a Snoopy hat." - Tim Maleeny

"If you're trying to be timeless, good luck. "We've already got Pride and Prejudice." - Elizabeth Rose Quinn 

"It's like la la la, oh shit." - Rachel Howzell Hall