Saving Mrs. Hapwell, Over and Over

  

Last month I posted a column here at SleuthSayers about humor in fiction, and how those kinds of stories can be fun for the writer as well as (hopefully) fun for the reader. And while putting that post together, I took a look back at my published stories to see just how many were funny and how many weren't. I won't bore you with my statistics, but it turned out I've written a lot of (what I think is) humorous fiction. But a lot of it isn't. Mystery stories often contain at least some degree of lightheartedness, and I try to inject that when appropriate, but the truth is, crime is serious business, and so is crime fiction.

Even so . . . the funny stories are still the most enjoyable to write. Maybe the most surprising thing to me is that editors seem to like them also. I've been fortunate in that two of my humorous mystery stories won Derringer Awards in 2020 and 2022, one won a Shamus in 2021, and many of them from long ago have been reprinted again and again. (Many have also been rejected again and again, but that's another matter.)

The story that wouldn't give up . . .

I found that one of those older stories, a sort-of western called "Saving Mrs. Hapwell," has so far appeared in the following publications: 

Dogwood Tales Magazine, March/April 1997 issue

Mystery Time, Spring/Summer 2000

Desert Voices, December 2004

Taj Mahal Review, December 2005

Crime & Suspense, February 2006

Rainbow's End and Other Stories (collection, Dogwood Press, 2006 and 2010)

Crime & Suspense I (anthology, Wolfmont Press, March 2007)

Kings River Life, May 2020

Crimeucopia: As in Funny Ha-Ha, August 2021

I hope it'll show up in other places too, before it's finally put to rest.

I think some of the things that have made that story marketable to multiple publications are that it's cross-genre (crime, western, humor), it's short (1160 words), it's almost entirely dialogue, and it has what I've been told is a memorable ending. One editor who reprinted "Saving Mrs. Hapwell" informed me awhile back that she still receives emails that mention the final line of the story, a fact that gladdens my writer's heart, and I've often been asked to read the story aloud at library signings. An old friend of mine who is himself an author even referred to that story in a YouTube interview he did with me a few weeks ago, saying he always brings it up as an example whenever he gives talks about writing to high-school classes. Also gratifying is that our longtime SleuthSayers friend and author Anne van Doorn, who since 2016 has read one piece of short fiction every day, recently selected "Saving Mrs, Hapwell" as his pick for Best Short Story of the Week. (Thanks, Anne!) So that story's been good to me, over the years. If you're so inclined, you can read it here:

The second, third, and fourth times around

The point I wanted to make today, though it's taken me a while to get to it, is that we short-fiction writers can and should try to remarket our published stories. All of us still have the manuscripts; they might be stacked somewhere in a closet and aging like tobacco leaves, or buried in the forgotten depths of your computer--but they're still there if you look for them, and just waiting to be recycled. Find 'em, dust them off, and send them out again into the world.

There are plenty of potential homes for these old stories. As you can see from my list for Mrs. Hapwell, you can include previously pubbed stories in a collection of your own work at some point, and you can also--as long as the rights are retained--continue to sell them as reprints to magazines and anthologies. Sometimes you're even paid again for the stories, and if you're lucky you might receive a higher payment than you did the first time around. (That hasn't happened to me often, but it does happen.) Markets will also contact you occasionally to ask if they can reprint a story, and--failing that--you can find all kinds of possibilities on the Internet. Here are a few suggested sites:

105 Literary Magazines Accepting Reprints

Where to Submit Reprints

18 Magazines Accepting Reprints

I also check ralan.com now and then for possible reprint targets. (Just pull up their pages and do a search for "Reprints: yes.") It's primarily a fantasy/SF site but also includes info on some mystery markets.

Questions for the class

If you're a writer, do you actively seek out publications that are receptive to reprints? Have you been successful in that? If so, where do you usually look to locate those markets?

Whatever the answers, I wish you luck in all your writing endeavors.

See you in two weeks.