Going After Publicity for Your (small, precious) Book

So you've got a novel coming out? If you are with one of the Big Five publishers - Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, or Hachette - there will be a publicity machine at work for you. Your editor, or the publicity department, will let you know what they want your role to be. They may ask you to update your website, open social media accounts, or to provide a mailing list of friends, family, and fans.

If you are with a smaller press, say a university press or a small independent publisher - you should inquire, when you are offered a contract, what your role will be in gaining publicity for your book. Most small presses welcome your involvement and will be delighted if you submit your work to reviewers, arrange for readings and signings on your own, and so forth. But check! You do not want to overstep, duplicate their efforts, or - eek - embarrass your publisher.

I'm not familiar with every aspect of self-publishing, but I'd imagine the tips I'm about to offer will apply nicely to self-published authors as well.

If you are about to release a book, be reachable via a website. The primary purpose of publicity is to sell your book, and the secondary purpose is to get your name out there so that you can be contacted by fans, publishers, agents, and sponsors of events and projects you may find appealing.

Your website can be extremely simple - your name, your picture, your book cover, a release date, and a contact form so people can reach you (don't post your personal email address). A fuller website with lots of pictures and info about all of your publications is better, but at least have the minimum. You can hire someone to do a bang-up website, but that costs. Or you can do it yourself, nearly for free. My website is perpetually under construction and is never up-to-date, so don't come at me after you take a peek - but the point is I am findable. I do get a lot of spam. I also get fan letters, invitations to paid speaking engagements, requests for interviews, offers to contribute to journals and anthologies, and - since my novel-in-stories It's Not Even Past was orphaned last year when the publisher closed - inquiries from publishers.

You need some kind of social media. Something. Facebook has developed a reputation for being mostly for seniors, but their largest demographic (worldwide) is actually young adults 25 - 35. So you can reach young readers with a facebook page (and paid ads, if you want to go that route). But don't be too quick to write off the oldsters, either - seniors buy a lot of books! If you are already on Facebook, open a separate author page you are comfortable setting to "public." Keep this page for business. No pictures of lunch, cats, craft cocktails, precocious toddlers, thrifting expeditions or politics - unless applicable to your book.

Yes, cute. No, website.

A lot of writers promote their work on Instagram. Since the mass exodus from X (formerly Twitter), many use Threads. Bluesky is also popular. My advice is go to the websites of authors you like and admire, whose work is in some way similar to your own, and see what social media platforms they use. If you are new to all this, choose one - you don't have time to manage them all. (If you have that much time on your hands, you should spend more of it writing.)

Reviews on Goodreads and Amazon can be critical to a book's success. They are primary platforms for "book discovery." However, these platforms can be frustrating. Trolls may give your books bad reviews just for fun, or because they don't like you. If you do see negative reviews of your work - legit or troll-generated - ignore them. Remember the adage Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Next up: go after publicity opportunities, large and small. Ask friends and family to help spread the word about your book by putting the book cover on their social media, and by mentioning it to their book club, local librarian, and local bookstore. Include a purchase link to make it easy for them to buy your book! Consider pushing your publisher's site and bookshop.org, which allows readers to purchase online while supporting local bookstores!

If you live in L.A. or New York, it's nearly impossible to get a reading or signing at a bookstore - there are just so many writers, most more famous than you (or I). But if you live in a smaller city or town, you've got a good shot. Walk into bookstores and greet the manager. Buy a book. Tell them you're available for a signing or a reading and that you can "fill the room." If you have a friend in college, ask them to mention your book to their English professor. But don't put people on the spot - ask once, and take no - or no answer - for an answer. No everyone will want to read your book, and not everyone who does read it will enjoy it. That's life.

Your college alumni newsletter is a great place to publicize your work. Your local newspaper editor might be interested, too. Again, highly unlikely if you live in New York or LA, but far more promising if you live in Smallburg, North Dakota or Tiny Town, Georgia. Ask!

Your publisher should provide you with ARCs, or "Advance Review Copies." These are typically electronic (PDF or epub). Some publishers will also provide hard copies, but these are expensive and must be distributed judiciously. Electronic ARCs increase the likelihood that your work will be "pirated" – that is, circulated to unauthorized readers for free… but there are worse things. No one wants to be pirated, but the truth is all circulation builds word of mouth and it could result in your finding paying readers. It's important that you discuss distribution of ARCs with your publisher. They may have a do and don't list to help control unauthorized access.

These days, when writers talk about "reviews," they are often referring to individual reader reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, or on reviewer platforms like NetGalley or Booksprout. But "real" reviews - those written by professionals that appear in journals and newspapers - are the Holy Grail, and you should go after them. Thirteen million people read The New York Times each day. You probably won't get reviewed there. But a small-town newspaper, even a freebie, can easily have 5,000 daily readers, up to as many as 13,000. That's a lot of potential to sell books!

Think about books you like that are similar in some way (e.g. genre) to your own. Figure out where the books have been reviewed using your good friend google. Then contact the reviewer and ask if you can send them an ARC. Nota Bene: the more prestigious the periodical, as a rule, the earlier they want your ARCs. Many will request them four or five months ahead of publication, and your small publisher simply may not have them ready that far in advance. Wing it! If an editor agrees to read an ARC, send them a meticulously edited PDF - along with information like release date, cover price, ISBN, and whether bookstores will carry your book.

Your publisher will probably ask you for an email list - and even if not, you should have one for your own use. Way, way ahead of time, prepare a list of every single person you know who might conceivably be interested in you or your book. Have names and email addresses current, proofread and up to date. Be sure there is a purchase link (preferably, a pre-purchase link) included so that people can order your book on impulse, while they are thinking of it. If you end up sending out the email yourself, include a request that readers review you on Amazon or Goodreads.

Go after the little guys - and the medium-sized guys, too. Before It's Not Even Past was released, I hit up everyone I could think of to run a review or at least a mention. A lot of folks ignored my request, a few said no - and quite a few said yes! My alma mater asked me to teach a class. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (where many of the stories first appeared) invited me to blog for Something Is Going to Happen. Art Taylor asked me to blog for The First Two Pages, too! Dru's Book Musing ran a cover reveal and A Day in the Life feature, Victoria Leigh reviewed, and Roger Johns ran an interview on Murder Books.

Paul O'Connor interviewed me for Hourglass Author, and Bonnar Spring invited me to an interview on Crime Wave Podcast (mine aired right after Anthony Horowitz's!). And there were more.

John Loyd posted a comprehensive review of the collection. Book blogger Anne Van Doorn ran a terrific review, and Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier included It's Not Even Past in a round-up of crime short story collections published on Crime Reads. Jeremy Black of The Critic accepted a review copy and gave it a stellar review! Then he passed the book along to David Brown, a book blogger who loves mysteries, and David ran a review and invited me to an interview!

Janet Rudolph of The Mystery Readers Journal offered me a spot in Mystery Fanfare, and King's River Life, a magazine that really supports mystery writers, told me they no longer run reviews of collections - but asked me to do a guest blog! Crime Fiction Lover ran a nice mention, and Killer Nashville and International Thriller Writers both invited me to contribute to their journals! Some of these outlets are small and some are huge. But they all have readers who love mysteries and buy books, and I went after every single opportunity I could. And then…

Down&Out Books closed and my book went out of print, right after it was released. So all that work was a big waste of time, right?

No! Decidedly not! Because a couple of months later, I got an email from a guy who'd tracked me down via my website. He had heard about the book but couldn't find a copy online (of course). Seemed like a nice guy, so I offered to sell him one of the six remaining author copies I'd been hoarding for posterity. That night, I sat bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night, struck by an epiphany. Doug Greene. Douglas Greene. I know that name.

Sure enough. Mr. Greene is the (semi-retired) founder of Crippen&Landru, a highly respected publisher of mystery collections, classic and contemporary. And he loved my book! I asked him to put in a good word for me with the editor-in-chief, Jeff Marks, and a couple of weeks later, we had a deal! Crippen & Landru will release It's Not Even Past with a new cover and a new introduction in October, and are currently negotiating foreign rights for the book on my behalf! They'll release a second collection, They Look Like Angels, early in the new year. This happy ending would absolutely not have happened had I not gone all out to get publicity for my book. That is how Doug Greene found me, and it's how the foreign publishers found me, too.

Christian Gibson's cover!

So you spent a year – maybe more – writing your book, and you worked hard to get it out to potential publishers. Now spend some time ensuring that your book reaches the fullest complement of readers possible! Good luck!

---

Anna Scotti is delighted to have the next in her "librarian-on-the-run" series, When Bright Angels Beckon, included in the 85th anniversary issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (September-October '26), along with a personal essay, Sisters Reading Sisters. Bright Angels is the thirteenth story in the librarian series, and the eleventh to appear in EQMM. The next in the series, I Shall Wear Purple, will appear in an upcoming issue. Learn more at AnnaKScotti. Purchase It's Not Even Past direct from the publisher, at your local bookstore, or online. It will be available from bookshop.org soon!

Everyone - Big Five kahunas, small press authors, self-published writers and "gettin' there" authors - is invited to post comments, questions, corrections and additions in the comments. Please do!

AI Slop Slop Slop

Doing research so you don't have to, I've been taking a look at some of the AI Slop that's out there, and… it's worse than you think. And they're charging out the whazoo for it.

For example, on Facebook - FACEBOOK (!) - there's a series of "alpha werewolf shapeshifters romances". Tropes: Heroine - special, graced, chosen, white werewolf. An emotional / brutal betrayal and/or sexual excerpt. Then

"Click to read this spicy bestseller."

And if you click, and I highly recommend that you don't, basically it's the story of a pack of misogynistic alpha werewolves who proceed to reject, lock up, beat up, torture, throw out, kidnap back, etc. the heroine until she finally escapes and is found by someone who recognizes she's the future hope of the world (although she's never told that because plot reasons): and then it all starts over again, because...  The exact same plot, same dialog, same everything... only the alpha's name changes. And this same chapter, same story, shows up under at least a dozen different hosts, so many, that it's almost impossible to block all of them, though I am getting close.  Also, they charge by the chapter. WHAT a waste of money.

This is AI slop at its least fine, tarted up with… well, not tarted up at all.

This same marketing formula for human alpha romance novels is spreading all over Facebook too, whether "Blood Mafia" or "Billionaire Bosses" or "Dominant Dukes", etc. Think Harlequin or Mills & Boon, etc. but more graphic (and I'm not talking comics).    

Now it is true that romance novels have always leaned towards the alpha male.  Go look on Kindle, which provides cover illustrations - classic Shirtless Silks & Satins cover (often with a hint - or more than a hint of B&D).  There you can see alpha dukes (why are they always dukes? There have never been that many dukes in the history of England!), or Scottish lairds (extremely popular right now, probably because of Outlander), the (hellion / orphan / widow / heiress) he weds (or not) because (insert trope here), their fraught relationship until… 

"Click to read this spicy bestseller".

BTW, how long have millionaire / billionaire cowboys been trending?   

And on Kindle, of course, there's many the author who (?) posts a new book every week, if not more, more than any human being could ever write in that short a time. Romance, Westerns, Mysteries, Thrillers, Spies, Sci-Fi...

And it's all AI Slop.

Now, it's not slop because it has a formula. We all know there's a formula. Murder mysteries have to have a murder, clues, and someone has to solve the damn thing. Romance has to have a couple who meet, and then it's either friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, or instant love & a villain's getting in their way. Thrillers have constant suspense, twists and turns, and (generally) a villain who always manages to get away with everything until the very last minute. Etc.

No, it's not that it has a formula, the giveaway is that it has the SAME DAMN FORMULA in every single book: often the same stilted dialogue, and so many typos and irrational, unnecessary jumps in time/space - all mixed together as if there's an AI blender whirring our brains to mush, and all ignored as if they hadn't happened.

Thank God for delete buttons.

More satisfying than reading the damn stuff.

And before you think it's all the sex that gets me angry - I love a good smutty book.  I have quite a few.* And I think more of today's young men should read them,  because they might learn a few tricks.  

*If you'd like my list of hot authors, send a message via Velda either at the bar on the corner or in the dark alley behind it, and I'll get back to you. 

No, it's not the sex, what I HATE is misogyny & sexual assault & rape passed off as "spicy".  It's not. Not in my world. 

And there's a lot of it in AI slop, which makes we wonder if the algorithm used to produce it is from the Tate Bros, or Mad Men, or any other current alpha male influencer, especially those who are apparently promoting pheromone maxxing.  No showers, no brushing teeth, no wiping?  Dudes, you're never gonna get a date.  Except with your alpha male influencer, and he charges money.

Anyway, back in the early 1970s I read and enjoyed, God forgive me, Dan Jenkins' Semi-Tough, a satirical novel about the NFL which was full of raunch, n-words, racism, sex, drugs, and some stories that were damn funny. Twenty years later, I threw it on the give away pile and got rid of it. I literally hadn't noticed before how misogynistic and racist the book is. As an incredibly accurate review from Goodreads says:

"Shake Tiller and Billy Clyde Puckett - and Shake’s girlfriend, Barbara Jane Bookman. Barb is the daughter of the richest man back in Fort Worth, Texas. She's described – by both guys – as almost perfect, sexy, beautiful, flawless body, smart, and always knows how to be “one of the guys”. Barb, the ultimate fantasy girlfriend, who never sleeps with anyone but Shake, but is always cool with everything the boys do, whether getting blow-jobs in a bathtub by a hired hooker or drinking themselves silly or spending the pre-Superbowl night at a party where there’s drinks, drugs, and endless girls, and of course Barb never worries about get STDs or anything like that. Just cool with the guys. And in the end, after putting up with all Shake's adolescent crap, she's still dumped by Shake, who literally leaves her to Billy Clyde."

Basically, Barbara Jane Bookman was the 1973 version of Gillian Flynn's "Cool Girl" (Gone Girl) (LINK). Making women be perfect or else for over 50 years.

BTW, once streaming became possible, my husband and I watched some old 1960s and 1970s movies, and wondered what the hell we'd seen in them.

Examples:

A Woman Under the Influence – considered John Cassavetes' directorial masterpiece, where both the husband (Peter Falk) and the wife (Gena Rowlands) are insanely heavy drinkers and fighters, but she's the one put into a mental hospital. By him.  

Five Easy Pieces, in which every single woman in the movie (except for the two lesbians headed to Alaska) is for nothing but sex, and even then the guy's a jerk about it. For that matter, same with the movie M.A.S.H. – all the nurses are for sex, and the scene where "Hot Lips" Houlihan, showering, is exposed naked, wet, and crawling on the floor of the shower to the entire camp is probably one of the least funny, most humiliating moments in movies I've ever seen.  

It is not, however, the most violent towards women. That is still reserved, imho, for 1973's The Long Goodbye (starring Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe), because of the scene where the bastard Marty smashes a coke bottle in the face of his beautiful mistress, "the most important woman in the world to me" and says, "Now, that's someone I love! And you I don't even like! You got an assignment, cheapie: find my money!" Worse, later Marlowe's back at Marty's, and there she is, black eyes beneath the bandages – still with Marty. I think that's the most shocking act of violence that's ever been filmed, because nothing happens to Marty. Even Philip Marlow just walks away, and she just sucks it up and stays.

Things got better, of course. All sorts of wonderful movies have been made with and about women who can hold their own: Three Women, Fried Green Tomatoes, The Hunger Games, The English Patient, Arrival, Nomadland, etc.

And The Return, which is the reason I don't need to see The Odyssey: the whole last chapter done by Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Odysseus and Penelope, directed by Uberto Pasolini. Amazing. Hypnotic. Available for streaming.

But the AI Slop has got to stop.

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First Impressions

They say we only get one chance to make a first impression.That got me thinking about  the great characters in our genre.  What is the first thing we learn about them?  Here are the introductions to some of them.  They are in alphabetical order by the name of the character. The answers are at the bottom. Good luck. 

1. He threw soup at the wall in an Italian restaurant. 

2. She jumped a pothole in Canal Street as she dashed between honking cars and double-parked ones.

3. He sat with his pint of Bass East India moodliy watching the froth disperse.

4.He was in a chemistry lab bemoaning that he could not get someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms he had found, and which were too much for his purse. 

5. One of his core beliefs is that eventually all the New Empire restaurant will offer will be egg-fried rice and sweet-and-sour pork.

6. He was wearing a powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks, with dark blue clocks on them.

7. Her parlor was an old room with broad black beams across the ceiling, furnished with good furniture that belonged to it.

8. When a fresh-faced guy in a Chevy offered him a lift, he told him to go to hell.

9. When she first set eyes on Evelyn Barton-Forbes she (Evelyn) was walking the streets of Rome.

10. He was a little man who kissed a friend on both cheeks upon seeing him for the first time in years. 

11. He was surprised to see a white man walk into Joppy's bar. 

12. He was arrested in Eno's diner.

13.  His jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth.

14. He thought maybe he should have worn a tie to the office of the university president.

15. As she drove south along Lake Michigan she could smell rotting alewives like a faint perfume on the heavy air.

16. He left the catalogue at home.

17. He never hesitates to send his assistant running down to Murray Street for a can of shoe-polish if he happened to need one. 

1. Father Brown. Chesterton, "The Blue Cross." 

2. Lydia Chin. Rozan, China Trade.

3. Sergeant Cribb. Lovesey.  The Detective Wore Silk Drawers.

4.Sherlock Holmes. Doyle. A Study in Scarlet.

5. Jackson Lamb. Herron. Slow Horses.

6. Philip Marlowe.  Chandler. The Big Sleep.

7. Miss Jane Marple.  Christie. "The Tuesday Night Club." 

8. Parker.  The Hunter. 

9. Amelia Peabody. Peters. Crocodile on the Sandbank. 

 

10. Hercule Poirot. Christie. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. 

11.Easy Rawlins. Mosley. Devil in a Blue Dress. 

12. Jack Reacher. Child. Killing Floor.

13.  Sam Spade. Hammett. The Maltese Falcon.

14. Spenser. Parker. The Godwulf Manuscript. 

15. V.I. Warshawski. Paretsky. Indemnity Only.  

16. Lord Peter Wimsey. Sayers. Whose Body? 

17. Nero Wolfe. Stout. Fer-De-Lance.

Writing Changes

At the Merrion Hotel in Dublin
last year, telling James Joyce
how a real writer works.

As I write this, my wife and I are packing for our second trip to Ireland; when it posts, we will be wrapping up and heading home. We plan overnight stays in two locations from our previous trip—the Merrion Hotel in Dublin and Ashford Castle in Cong—but all other overnight stays and stops along the way will be new to us.

What won’t be new is how I mix travel and writing: I don’t.

Unlike many writers who adhere so strongly to the “write every day” mantra that they carve out time during their travels to pound out a few pages every day, I use travel to get away from writing, to cleanse my brain, and, to the best of my ability, to live in the moment

Oh, if I happen to have a brilliant idea—which does happen on rare occasion—I might dictate a few notes into my phone and email the file to myself, but I don’t carry pen and paper or my laptop computer with me.

STORY BLOCK

I’m uncertain when I first began separating writing time from travel time, but it has worked well the past several years, and I usually return to my computer refreshed and ready to write.

Other life events, though, sometimes conspire against me.

Late last year, for example, Down & Out Books closed up shop, leaving many of my anthology projects in limbo. I spent the last of 2025 and the first of 2026 scrambling to find new homes for projects that were finished but not yet published as well as many published projects that were ripe for republication.

(So far Audecyn Books has rereleased Jukes & Tonks and Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked, and Crimson Gate Books has rereleased Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun. Other titles are forthcoming from White City Press and Crimson Gate Books, and Level Short has some original titles in their queue that were edited specifically for them.)

What this meant is that much of my available time was spent dealing with the fallout of D&O’s closure and was not spent writing.

When I finally returned to the keyboard in earnest, I found a disconnect in my writing. I wrote good sentences, good paragraphs, and even good scenes, but the first few stories didn’t gel. In each case, the whole was decidedly less than the sum of the parts.

I was frustrated. That’s not what’s supposed to happen.

I set those stories aside—maybe I’ll return to them in the future—and I floundered around the house for several days wondering what had gone wrong. I clearly didn’t have writer’s block—which I don’t believe exists—because I was clearly capable of writing good sentences, good paragraphs, and good scenes. I had—if such a thing exists—story block, the inability to assemble scenes into a coherent whole.

A PAGE A DAY

Then, more by accident than intention, I started writing one good page a day, asking nothing more from myself than that. Each page built on the previous day’s work, and each page worked to move plot forward until I had finished drafts of stories that worked.

Between the time I stumbled into this process and now, I have produced four stories. One has been submitted, two are complete drafts which I will reread, edit, and submit after we return from Ireland, and the fourth is a nearly complete draft. (All the elements are in place but some of the scenes are rough, and I will not be able to fix them before we head to the airport.)

Is this my new process, and I’ll return to it upon return from Ireland? Is this just a temporary approach, and I’ll return to my prior, sloppier way of banging out pages? Or will I find yet a third way of writing?

AN ASIDE

One interesting—to me, at least—connective tissue these four stories share: all were begun in response to calls for submission. The submitted story was written for an invitation-only anthology and submitted well before the deadline. One I had started a few years ago in response to a submission call but set aside unfinished. One was written in response to a submission call, but I’ll not meet the deadline because we’ll be in Ireland. And the last was written in response to a heads-up about a potential anthology. (The editor is waiting on thumbs-up or thumbs down from the publisher.)

THE WAY

Regardless of which approach I take to writing in the future, one thing remains true: As a writer, I will always find a way.

* * *

Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun was rereleased by Crimson Gate Books on August 10. If you missed the anthology when it was first released, now’s your opportunity to pick up a copy.

The Dream of Pure Reason

Mysteries and their close relative, thrillers, form a complicated and diverse genre, with fashions and tastes changing every few decades. Hard drinking guys prowling mean streets give way to feminist gals with cynical eyes who are displaced by tormented souls who interrupt existential angst for a little criminology. We have golden age cozies that return, sometimes in curious forms with clever pets, and we currently have some super rational detectives, those descendants of Sherlock in his scientific mode.

What procedural is without its forensic crew with their microscopes and chemicals, their fingertip searches and studies of fibers and dust and bodily fluids?  Electronics, the net, social media, and video surveillance provide clues even the great Holmes never imagined. Detection is going scientific with, at least for consumers of mystery fiction, mixed results.

After all, how exciting are screens full of phone numbers or fuzzy CCTV footage or test tubes slowly turning colors? Fortunately one aspect of forensics remains as dramatic as it was when it made its Renaissance debut. I refer to the autopsy and to the forensic pathologists, like Dr. Quirke, the TV crew of  Silent Witness, and now Dr. Cuthbert, who recently made his American debut in Allan Gaw's The Silent House of Sleep.

 

Cuthbert learned his trade in Edinburgh, which can claim to be instrumental in both forensics and mysteries, the university's famous Dr. Joseph Bell having been Conan Doyle's inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. Cuthbert's fictional mentor, Dr. Littlejohn is very much in Bell's  mold, emphasizing careful observation, meticulous preparation, and detailed records. 

Littlejohn also emphasizes the forensic pathologist's precise role: to provide police with information. He is to discover scientific information, not to solve crimes or conduct investigations outside the laboratory.

A nice division of labor, and one that suits Dr. Cuthbert, who suffers from what his contemporaries called "shell shock" and what we know as post traumatic syndrome. He certainly has his reasons, having served in the trenches at Ypres on the Western Front. Gaw interweaves scenes from this devastating experience with Cuthbert's life fourteen years later as a senior pathologist in London.

 

I found this structure a bit disruptive initially, but I must admit it results in a fine payoff later in the novel, and both the horrors of the trenches and the exceedingly nasty case that becomes Dr. Cuthbert's focus are vividly presented and thematically related.

 

The novel's important characters are well delineated, too, and I can see them forming the nucleus of an interesting mystery series. (Gaw has written three others, and Mysterious Press promises to issue another Cuthbert mystery in '27.) We have the originally hostile, but very capable, Chief  Inspector Mowbray; the considerably friendlier D.S. Baker, Cuthbert's formidable housekeeper, Marie Smith,  a former war refugee from Belgium, and his eager assistant, Simon Morganthal. 

Cuthbert and his police colleagues need all their resources when they are presented with two bodies that have been tied together and buried, naked and without identification, in a London park. Dr. Cuthbert begins extremely detailed postmortem, and it looks for a while as if the pathologist will be able to stick to his science.

 

But his own troubled mind, the memories of the trenches and of the man he loved, and the whole messy human dimension of the case intrude. Dr. Cuthbert proves to be equally observant outside the mortuary, and he is soon employing all his considerable intellectual, educational, and personal resources on the case. 

 

Just as well. The mortuary and the doctor's increasingly well-equipped laboratory can reveal a sequence of events. But human motivation and the monstrosities of human imagination are much harder to measure or understand. Pure reason is a dream and for many of the characters there is no escape from the disasters of the Great War nor for confronting the human dimension of forensic puzzles.

The Silent House of Sleep is easy to admire in many ways, but the truly horrible crime and the even greater horrors of the war do not make for enjoyable reading. Gaw, himself a doctor, clearly knows forensic pathology and he is an effective writer. It will be interesting to see how much Dr. Cuthbert can recover from the war and what sort of cases he will handle in the future.

Dr. Allan Gaw

See You in the Funny Pages

I started collecting comic books when I was about eight, and for many years took the hobby very seriously indeed--witness the twenty or so longboxes in my basement. Keeping up with the weekly grind of new issues eventually got to feeling too much like work, but by that time collected editions had become more popular, and many of the shelves in my home are filled with them.

My first comic

For several years, however, I barely read comics, for one reason: my eyes. They had deteriorated to such a degree that reading anything required bright light and a lot of concentration, and comics--where the text is often hand-written and cramped--presented especially acute challenges. Several months back, though, I had cataract surgery, and while my eyes will never be perfect, they're good enough that I can again read comics with pleasure, which has led to me revisiting a number of old favorites--some of which belong very much to the crime genre.

Comics and crime have a long history, of course. Dick Tracy remains one of the most popular comic strip characters ever created (and his adventures were penned for many years by superstar mystery writer Max Allan Collins). Batman first appeared in a periodical called Detective Comics, which was mostly about PIs and cops. And of course the lurid crime comics of the 1950s, particularly those from EC Comics, were so heavy with sex and violence that they helped usher in the Comics Code Authority. Today, though, I want to mention a few of my more contemporary favorites (keeping in mind that, as noted above, I've missed a lot of the most recent stuff). If you enjoy crime fiction, maybe you'd like checking out a few of these.

TOP 10. Created by the legendary Alan Moore, this short-lived title was about the cops of the tenth precinct in Neopolis--a city where everyone, including children and many animals, has super powers and alter egos. The streets of Neopolis are alive with aliens, robots, mutants and gods, and it's up to the overworked men, women and beasts of the tenth to keep order. The series balances a lot of elements that shouldn't work together, but do. The art, especially in crowded street scenes, is filled with comic book in-jokes and cameos. The cases, as you might expect, are often bizarre. The cops who make up the central cast, though, and the often fraught relationships between them, are presented with the depth, complexity and nuance of Hill Street Blues or the 87th Precinct novels of Ed McBain--even if the sergeant is a hyperintelligent dog in an exoskeleton and one of the main detectives a dark elf from another dimension. There were only twelve issues of the regular series, plus a prequel graphic novel and a five-issue spin-off, Smax (about the aforementioned elf visiting home) before Moore left, and you can safely ignore the attempts to continue it without him.

GOTHAM CENTRAL. In a somewhat similar vein, Gotham Central was an 87th Precinct-style series about the police officers in Batman's Gotham City, from writers Ed Brubaker (who wrote about the night shift) and Greg Rucka (who handled the day). This one lasted forty issues. It's a solid, gritty police procedural, with the added element of dealing with a masked vigilante and the maniacs he battles. Brubaker and Rucka keep the material grounded, and there's some really great character work done throughout the series. Despite its brief run, it's been very influential on later series, and some of the characters continue to play prominent roles in the DC universe today.

SIN CITY. Not for the faint of heart. Sin City is writer/artist Frank Miller's love letter to noir and pulp fiction, heavily indebted to writers like Mickey Spillane and Jim Thompson. The black-and-white artwork is frequently stunning; the sex is usually graphic; and the violence is brutal and explicit. There's a large cast of characters, with different ones taking center stage for specific story arcs. The fact that those arcs have titles like "A Dame to Kill For" and "That Yellow Bastard" should give you an idea of the playground Miller is working in. There have been two movie adaptations. Avoid the second.

CRIMINAL. Today this is probably the best-known contemporary crime comic, and it's earned a number of awards and a devoted readership. Like Sin City, Criminal, from writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips, is a series of interconnected story arcs with many recurring characters and settings. This is a much more realistic and emotionally layered piece of work, however, and at its best it can stand alongside the novels of people like Richard Stark and Lawrence Block. Absolutely fantastic character development and dialogue, with inventive plots. Start with the first collection, Coward, about the disgraced son of a legendary crook getting dragged into a big job.

STRAY BULLETS. This doesn't get the attention Criminal does, though it started earlier and, I think, was probably a significant influence on the later work. The creation of writer/artist David Lapham, the series once again is made up of a series of stories starring an overlapping set of characters, with special attention to some of the innocent (well, mostly innocent) victims of the mayhem the criminals in the series unleash. The series started in 1995, but there was a long hiatus from 2005 to 2014 with hardly any new material. Be warned: while the series is great, there's some pretty rough stuff in some issues, up to and including child abuse.

So--do you read crime comics? What are some of your favorites? What are some newer titles I should be seeking out?

If You Don't Know Your Burro from a Burrow

For today's post, I'm updating and expanding a column I wrote for the Criminal Brief mystery blog many moons ago. If you never saw that post I'm not surprised, and if you did see it and still don't remember it, I don't blame you. I barely remember it myself, and I wrote it. But some of the points it illustrated seem to be as applicable to our writing and to our use of language now as they were back then, and I look forward to seeing what you might think of them. So here goes:

Two guys are sitting in a tavern, sipping their beers. One says to the other, "See that girl at the end of the bar? I think I'll ask her for a date."

The second guy takes a look and says, "Forget it. She won't be interested."

"How do you know?"

"Because she's a lesbian."

"So?" the first guy says. "It won't matter. Watch this."

He stands, struts over to the young lady, leans on the bar, and says, "Hi, darlin'. How are things in Beirut?"

Yes, I know, it's an old joke, and dumb too. But I think, as mentioned above, it makes a point. The point is,  most of us don't have very good vocabularies.

With the assistance of several books and articles on the subject, I have attempted to list a few word-choice and style mistakes we writers often make--and how to avoid them. Among my references are Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh, "Words That Wound" from the now-defunct Byline Magazine, and Woe Is I by Patricia T. O'Conner.

NOTE: Some of the following are firm rules, and some are informed opinions. Others are my own opinions, which are usually uninformed. As an example, I have writer friends who insist that T-shirts should be tee shirts, or just tees; I don't agree, but I do think it's good to hear and consider others writers' and readers' observations on that and on other matters of word usage. I ain't no grammar policeman, but I do know people who is.

Continuous/continual -- Continuous means without interruption. Continual means frequently or often repeated. The entire film was made up of one continuous scene. The bill died after continual objections. 

Historic/historical -- Historic means something that's famous or important. Historical just means something that happened in the past. My book launches were historical events; the Apollo launches were historic events.

Hone in/home in -- You can hone your knife or your skills, but you can't hone in on something. The investigator homed in on the fact that Judy was in town the night of the murder. Think homing beacons.

Till -- The word till is an informal version of until, not a contraction ('til), and is perfectly acceptable. We'll stay here till you get back.

Minuscule -- Spelling hint: When something's minuscule, it's minus (lacking) size.

May/might -- Sometimes they mean the same thing. Often, though, may involves permission and might involves possibility. Jimmy may go to the movies (his mom's allowing him to). Jimmy might go to the movies (he hasn't decided).

Data and media -- These are collective nouns, and should be treated as singular. The data is conclusive. The media has arrived. Bill Walsh of The Washington Post said writers who use them as plurals are educated but misguided, and Patricia O'Conner noted that data seems to have gone the way of agenda, opera, and insignia--technically plural words than have become singular nouns. By the way, as an old IBMer I prefer the pronunciation dayta instead of datta. But that's just me.

Ringer/wringer -- I've recently seen many writers refer to someone under pressure as being "put through a ringer." I think that should be wringer, because I think the expression refers to a squeezing device like the wringers on old-timey washing machines. I think of a ringer as either a lookalike, a secret substitute into a competition, or the guy who pulls the bell rope. Same thing applies to wracking/racking my mind for an answer. I vote for the w.

Toward/towards -- They mean the same thing. Toward is preferred in American English, towards in British English. So I lean toward toward. 

Hung/hanged -- Unless capital punishment is involved, hung is the correct past tense of hang. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be hanged. Where are the grammar cops when you need 'em?

Flammable/inflammable -- They mean exactly the same thing. Both describe something that can easily catch fire and burn quickly.

Invite -- This is a verb that shouldn't be used as a noun. You didn't receive an invite to Jane's party; you received an invitation to Jane's party.

Winch/wench -- A winch is a mechanical device used for pulling/lifting. A wench is an old-fashioned and insulting term for a woman, often in a tavern. I've seen this misused many times in beginners' manuscripts. 

Fellowship and dialogue -- These are among those nouns that should not be used as verbs. We'll fellowship at the church at seven p.m. Should we dialogue about that? No, you shouldn't. By the way, I'm also not wild about using impact as a verb. Our weatherman said we might be impacted by rain today. If it were an asteroid I might agree, but rain? As I've mentioned before, we have a lot of doctors and nurses in our family, and to me, anyone who's impacted is having some serious bathroom issues. (Picture that the next time a news anchor mentions it.)

Accommodate -- Spelling hint: It's big enough to accommodate two c's and two m's.

Ensure/insure -- The way I remember this is, use insure if money or finance is involved. If not, ensure that you use ensure.

Imply/infer -- A speaker implies; a listener infers.

Into/in to -- You get into your car and drive in to your office. If you drive into your office, it's time for new brakes, or new glasses. 

Peaked my interest -- Should be piqued my interest.

For all intensive purposes -- Should be for all intents and purposes.

Give them free reign -- Should be give them free rein. I suspect this misuse is because the word reign involves a king or a ruler.

With baited breath -- Should be with bated breath. Unless you've eaten a can of worms.

T-shirt/tee shirt -- T-shirt is correct. Hint: When it's spread out, it looks like the letter T.

Nauseated/nauseous -- Nauseated means you're sick. Nauseous means you're making me sick. Consider this before telling someone your wife is nauseous.

Momentarily -- It means for a moment. It doesn't mean soon. When he saw Judy, he hesitated momentarily. But if the pilot says, "We'll be in the air momentarily," get off the plane and take a bus.

When choosing whether to use a or an, the pronunciation of the following word--not the spelling--is what matters most. An hour and a half. A European vacation. Please include an SASE.

Convince/persuade -- Convince involves thought; persuade involves action. She convinced him she was right. He persuaded her to drive him home.

All right/alright -- All right is the preferred and accepted usage. Just remember, alright is not all right. 

Ironic -- A tornado during your wedding ceremony might be tragic, but it's not ironic. Getting run over by a Budweiser truck on your way to an AA meeting is ironic.

Fewer/less -- I'm sure you know this already, but fewer involves units, less involves amounts. I have fewer bills and fewer coins in my pocket, so I have less cash in my pocket.

Articles, prepositions, and conjunctions used in the titles of books, movies, etc., are usually capitalized if they contain four or more letters. Wait Until Dark, From Russia With Love, The Night Before Christmas. But I go back and forth on this one, when the preposition is only four words. Sometimes I use Gone With the Wind and sometimes Gone with the Wind.

Between/among -- We all know the rule here--but between can also be used for three or more units when talking about physical relationships. Sand gets between your toes, not among them (even if you have more than two toes).

Everyday/every day -- Everyday is an adjective, period. You don't get out of bed everyday. You get out of bed every day, and put on your everyday shoes.

Blond/blonde -- I've always agreed with Michael Bracken's submission guidelines on this one: Blond is an adjective, blonde is a noun. The blonde has blond hair. 

Straitjacket and straitlaced -- There's no gh in either one. Strait comes from the Latin strictus, which means constricted or tight. Think Strait of Hormuz.

Ingenious/ingenuous -- Ingenious means brilliant (it has the pronunciation of the word genius built in). Ingenuous means candid or innocently open (ingenue is a word for an inexperienced girl). 

Loath/loathe -- Loath is an adjective meaning unwilling. Loathe is a verb meaning dislike. I am loath to tell you how much I loathe the misuse of these words.

Comprise/compose -- Comprise means to include, and compose means to make up. According to The Elements of Style, a zoo comprises animals, but animals compose a zoo. 

If you're adding ed or ing or er to a verb, double a single final consonant only if the accent is on the final syllable. Canceled, traveled, patrolled, controlled. Words like transferred and kidnapped are exceptions because (I assume) they might otherwise be mispronounced. This is another of those rules that I sometimes obey and sometimes ignore, depending on which way the wind happens to be blowing at the time. I know, for instance, that either traveled or travelled is acceptable.

Some words, like irregardless, utilize, orientate, preplanning, preregister, and preventative, probably shouldn't be used at all. I'm fairly certain anyone who speaks or writes the word utilize just wants to sound more intelligent than he is, because use always means exactly the same thing as utilize, and is four letters and two syllables shorter. And I love this quote from The Elephants of Style regarding the phrase per se: "It means 'in itself.' But beware: Even when used correctly, it identifies the speaker or writer as a geeky, pretentious high-school student." And don't even get me started on OVERuse. I'm sick and tired of overused words and phrases like breaking news, stunning video, due diligence, deep dive, journey, amazing, paradigm, chapter, awesome, synergy, and, yes, impacted.

What are your thoughts on all this? Do you agree with any of them? Disagree? Do they make you either nauseated or nauseous? Can you think of other words/phrases often misused or overused?

I'll close with a wise note from The UPI Stylebook: "A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a writer you are expected to know the difference."