50th

In January 2006, I attended my first MWA Board of Directors meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. At the start of the meeting, the vice-president had each attendee sitting around the conference table introduce themselves and tell what they wrote.

Sitting there among several best-selling novelists, I told them I wrote only short stories, and concluded with I doubted I'd live long enough to get as many published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine as the famous short story author Ed Hoch had. At the time, I had only eight stories published in AHMM, whereas Ed went on to have 450 in EQMM, plus I don't know how many in AHMM before he passed two years later.

My first story ("Once, Twice, Dead") published in AHMM's November 2001 issue, was set in the Golden Triangle. Kathleen Jordan was the editor and her web page said she wanted mystery stories in exotic locations. To me, Southeast Asia was exotic, I'd seen it for myself in '67, so I submitted the story and she bought it.

Elation soon turned into panic when I realized I had no second story to submit. The next story had to be high quality, else I could be considered as a one-trick pony. After much brainstorming, the Twin Brothers Bail Bond series was born. Kathleen bought the first three in the series before she passed.

Shortly after Linda Landrigan took over as editor, she sent me an e-mail requesting some changes in that third story which had already been accepted, bought and paid for, though not yet published. I figured this was probably the end of my short career in AHMM. Since the editor is the boss, I made the requested changes and went on to sell her seven more stories in that series.

I soon branched out to The Armenian series set in 1850s Chechnya; the 1660s Paris Underworld series, involving a young, inept pickpocket trying to survive in a criminal enclave; the Holiday Burglars series;  and The Golden Triangle series, involving two feuding half-brothers vying to take over their warlord father's opium empire in the mountain jungles of Southeast Asia.

In my Prohibition Era series, "Whiskey Curb" is set in a Manhattan location where actual gangsters used to sell and trade liquor. It is my 49th sale to AHMM and is published in their Nov/Dec 2023 issue. The third story in this series was rejected with the dreaded doesn't fit our needs at the moment type comment. The fourth story in the series is currently resting in the editor's e-slush pile, waiting for a verdict.

Naturally, there are some standalone stories not necessarily conducive to acquiring series status. And, there are some potential series stories which died aborning because I had already written and submitted the second story in the series before the first one was rejected.

And now, we come to my first ever P.I. series. An earlier post talks about the genesis of my first ever P.I. story, "Leonardo." Unfortunately, it will have to find a different home, since it was rejected by AHMM. Seems that the upper brass does not want any stories mentioning teens and sex. My P.I. broke up a ring of pornographers. Nothing graphic, mind you, just the rescue scene and the mention seemed to nix the story. So, put that on your list of No-Nos and save yourself the trouble.

Here's the interesting part to go with the paragraph above. On 09/24/23, I received an e-mail from AHMM accepting the second story in my intended P.I. series. Same protagonist and sidekick, different crime. In which case, "Recidivism" becomes my 50th story sold to AHMM. Thank you, thank you.

Returning to the beginning of this blog, it appears I'm a long way from Ed Hoch's 450 stories in EQMM and I don't know how many in AHMM. Furthermore, with my fading eyesight, body parts which are showing the wear of a life well lived, and a brain like that cheese made in an European country where the natives yodel at each other in their mountains, I seriously doubt my sold/accepted numbers in AHMM will make it to as high as 100, or even to the number of years in my age.

God, I wish I were 50 again.