What Matters Today

I've written a number of New Year's blogs about how long it's been since I made yearly resolutions—how futile they are, how quickly broken—and how helpful it is to concentrate on living one day at a time without obsessive regret or anticipatory dread. So what's important on this day, today, that's all I've got for now?

Let's start with what it's not. It's not whether I lose weight or who won the election (not today or in any way I can influence). It's not whether someone I love says, "shoulda went" or a writer friend think it's okay to split the infinitive. It's not how many steps I walk or how many stories I write. It's not whether a small press accepts my new poetry manuscript or I have to publish it myself. It's not even whether my work sells any copies. The IRS claims writing is just a hobby anyway (unless you're James Patterson, Michael Connelly, or Lee Child), and I'm beginning to suspect they may be right.

What does matter is art, and that includes well executed fiction and poetry that connects the artist to the reader and/or listener. Art. Nature. Love. Affection. Kindness. Friendship. Belonging. Language. Emotion. Spirit. Beauty. Connection.

If I can touch another person today, I've done something of value. It may be as simple as hugging a friend met unexpectedly on the street. Mailing my annual holiday letter to the widow of the friend in Australia with whom I exchanged such letters for fifty years. Seeing by my sales for Kindle that a new reader is bingeing on my series and laughing and crying over my characters. Reading my work to an audience and knowing they are moved by the quality of the silence. And speaking of silence, shutting up and listening when that's what another person needs. I've been a therapist for forty years now, and I still have work to do on that particular skill.

It's hard to stay in the present when the future beckons. Whether that future is enticing or terrifying, it's the realm of anxiety. And thinking about it today won't make a bit of difference. A simple acronym, WAIT, may pull me back: Why Am I Thinking? Instead, I can connect with something that matters right now: someone I love, some facet of art or nature that moves me, some part of myself that connects with something deeper or higher, however I may conceptualize it. My role model for existing utterly in the moment: a breaching whale.

Our Town

Fans of Midsomer Murders and Agatha Christie know villages are dangerous places, and I’m pretty sure Miss Marple made a tidy living from hamlets paying her to stay away. But the other afternoon there I was, minding my own business, half-listening to a crime podcast… actually a video of five homicides titled ‘5 Cases Solved With The Most Insane Twists’. The episodes had little in the way of twists, but I mentally noted how many crimes take place in out-of-the-way villages no one has heard of.

Then Case 5 queued up:

Valerie Tindall was born on August 29 2005 in Indianapolis, Indiana. She had a big loving family: her parents, a brother, and four sisters. They decided to leave the big city and move to a tiny town called Arlington, about an hour's drive from Indianapolis. With only a few hundred residents, …

Wait! What? What a shock. I know Arlington. It’s my hometown, I know it well. I graduated from high school there. My brothers and I sold the volunteer fire department land to build a new fire station. In upcoming issue 17 of Michael Bracken’s Black Cat Magazine, I set a story in and around Arlington and the county seat of Rushville. But deliberate death of a teenage girl?

Proximity from eastern edge of Lundin farm (at left edge of map) to crime scene.
Fire Department sold to the town is depicted immediately to right of property.

It’s not that we’re not exposed to sudden demise. Farming is the second most dangerous occupation, a percentage point or so behind construction. Indeed, the two professions account for a third of work-related loss of life. If heavy machinery, angry horses or bulls, open field lightning, blizzards, or drowning don’t kill a farmer, then carcinogenic chemicals could bring him down… or her… Everyone pitches in. Running a small farm is a family occupation for adults and children alike.

Childhood is a litany of don’ts: • Don’t reach into moving machinery. • Don’t go near the bogs. • Don’t go near the ponds. • Don’t go near the bullpen. • Don’t go near a wild boar. Don’t flip the tractor. • Don’t play in the grain silos. • Don’t play in the hay mow. • Don’t drown in the sugar bins– that’s a real thing.

Three classmates died, a girl and two boys, one of encephalitis and another from a tractor rolling over him. We grew up with this, but no one expects a teen to be intentionally killed. I can’t compare the violence with our colleague Fran Rizer’s ordeal, but the impact shocked me. Our home had been willfully violated.

The village of Arlington is perhaps six or seven blocks wide and maybe five blocks north-to-south counting the ‘new’ addition. Census generally claim three hundred or more residents, but I’m hard pressed where two hundred of them are hiding. I suspect the census includes domestic rabbits and hunting dogs.

My mother and a handful of friends used to keep me updated on current events, but after my parents died and friends either moved away or passed away, I lost touch without realizing it. I knew a number of Scotts in Rush and Shelby counties including in-laws, but not Patrick Scott involved in the case.

I didn’t know the Tindall family at all, but it turns out Haboob knew the grandparents and probably great-grandparents. The great-grandmother, according to her calculations, taught piano lessons to Haboob.

Setting aside my work, I rewound to the beginning of the story, listening carefully. The case made national news, but for reasons unknown, I missed it entirely. Other than a few reporting errors, the homicide and resolution are well documented, so I won’t go into detail.

Summary

On the 7^th of June 2023, seventeen-year-old Valerie Tyndall left her family’s home, presumably to go to work for her neighbor and boss, Patrick Scott. He owned properties in Arlington and operated small businesses including landscaping and lawn care. When Valerie didn’t return that evening and her parents couldn’t locate her, they called Rush County Sheriff’s Office.

Soon the FBI, the US Marshals Service, and the Indiana State Police joined Rush County deputies. Authorities questioned Scott early on, who insisted Valerie was not scheduled to work.

Scott turned out to be a remarkably poor liar, and virtually from the beginning, detectives had an eye on him. For reasons unknown, he set fire to a garage he owned, but police couldn’t connect it to the case. Some news outlets stated Valerie’s corpse was found in a barrel in the burned-out shed, but that was not the situation.

Position of victim and perpetrator properties, and detail of search areas.

Cadaver dogs signaled at a nearby pond, but divers turned up nothing. However, a couple of investigators noted prevailing winds and realized a breeze might have wafted scents from Scott’s home and office.

Spade work turned up nothing, but at last the crew turned their attention to a mass of construction debris. Under a pile of dirt, they turned up a large, hand-crafted box. It turned out to contain VHS video tapes. Police have not said what the tapes contained.

But under that, they found another box that gave off an odor of decomposition. Inside, they found young Valerie.

Scott admitted killing her, claiming she tried to blackmail him. He denied having a sexual relationship, although he had strangled her with his belt. Observers noted at times he acted like a jealous lover. One article suggested another reason possibly hinted at by the mother Shena Sandefur, which I’ll leave to you to discover. Following a plea agreement, he was sentenced to 57 years.

Aftermath

No offense to city dwellers living in an atmosphere of anonymity, I’m not sure urbanites could understand the impact. At this moment, Haboob resides seven miles from the crime scene. She didn’t believe it when I first told her. She had to research it herself and then try to internalize it.

The surrounding towns mentioned in articles we know well. My cherry bedroom suite came from The Sampler in the hamlet of Homer. My high school girlfriend lived in Carthage. I loved reading in the quiet of the Rushville library. I worked summers in Shelbyville. Andrew Jackson signed the land grant for my mother’s people outside Morristown. The land and inhabitants resemble a small budget Tara, under the skin and affecting the heart.

Tindall family during happier times

Worst of all, a family moved from the big city to a village, looking for a healthier, quieter, safer life. Instead, they lost their daughter and the promise of her future. It hurts us all.

Report Card for 2024

  

Whoa, another year gone. As usual, there were ups and downs, in life and in writing. Overall, I had a good time.

In what has become my custom, inspired mostly by laziness since it requires no creativity at all, I have put together some numbers from, and thoughts about, my so-called writing career (I hate the word journey) over the past year.

As it turned out, I wasn't as productive in 2024 as I was in the past three or four years. I'm not complaining--I sold a number of stories, and I feel fortunate every time one of mine is accepted OR published.  I once heard a smart writer say that it's the height of arrogance for any of us to expect the things we dream up in the middle of the night to be read and enjoyed by people we don't even know. I agree, and believe me, I'm counting my blessings.

Statistics

- I had 33 short stories published in 2024, and 46 more are upcoming, having been accepted but not yet released. That "upcoming" number is actually 28, because 18 of those 46 are stories that'll be included in a collection of my detective tales, which the publisher tells me is scheduled for mid- to late 2025. 

- I wrote 23 new stories in 2024, about the same as last year. Six of those have already been accepted and published; seven have been accepted but not yet published; eight have been sent out but haven't yet received a response; one hasn't yet been submitted anywhere; and one was submitted, rejected, and has not yet been re-deployed. (It will be, though, and soon.)

- I submitted 52 stories this year (an all-time low for me) and got 37 acceptances and 15 rejections. 

- I had 19 stories published in anthologies this year and 11 in magazines, a much wider gap than in previous years. I think the best way to explain that is to say that many of my accepted stories for anthologies will be appearing next year. Three more stories this year were published in animated form, in a market which I consider to be neither magazine nor anthology. (More on that later.)

- Again this year, almost all my published stories were mysteries as opposed to other genres--in fact, 32 of the 33 were straight mystery/crime or mixed-genre crime. The other story was sort of humor/mainstream. As for the mixed-genre stories, two were crime/fantasy and three were crime/Western.

Ten of my published stories in 2024 were reprints, mostly in places like Black Cat Weekly or best-of anthologies, The other 23 were original stories. (This is one of the reasons the math doesn't always work--some of my stories that appeared in markets like Black Cat Weekly, Best Mystery Stories of the Year, etc., weren't actually submitted. They were instead requested or otherwise accepted outside the submission process.)

Observations

- As usual, most of my published stories appeared in AHMM, Strand Magazine, Mystery Magazine, Woman's World, Black Cat Weekly, and Black Cat Mystery Magazine. Also, three stories appeared in Storiaverse, which was a new animated concept but seems to have worked well.

- On the unusual side, I had only one private-eye story published this year, in the Strand. Eleven more PI stories have been accepted, though, and are awaiting publication.

- As in the past two years, I wrote more average-length to long stories in 2024 than very short stories. That'll probably be the case next year also, since (1) I'm writing fewer mini-mysteries for Woman's World and (2) Mystery Magazine recently (and sadly) put all four feet in the air. 

- For the second year in a row, I was fortunate enough to have a story in every issue of Strand Magazine. My story "Lizzy in the Morning," published earlier this month, marked my seventh straight story in that magazine. (And I have probably jinxed that streak by mentioning it here.) 

- Six of my published stories this year were installments from several of my mystery series. The rest were standalone stories.

- For maybe the first year since I started writing, I didn't dig out and rework any old and dusty stories that I gave up on long ago. In looking back over those half-finished efforts, I found that many were simply too bad to revisit and reconstruct. 

- Only two of my 2024 stories were set outside the U.S., and only two (not the same two) were published outside the U.S.

- Big difference, here, from last year: only about one-third of my published stories could be considered lighthearted and easygoing. The rest were more serious, and a bit violent. I think I've been watching too many of those cable series.

- Another difference: 16 of my 33 published stories were set in places outside the American South. I like writing Southern stories because I grew up here and live here and I know the geography and the people and the culture, but this year half the tales that popped into my head just happened to be set elsewhere, and relocating them wouldn't have worked. I also didn't write as many Westerns this year, for some reason.

- On a happy note, one of my stories won a 2024 Derringer Award for Best Short Story and was also selected for publication in both Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024 and Best Crime Stories 2024 (UK).

Questions for you:

Have you noticed any trends this past year in your story writing (or, for that matter, reading)? Are they about the same length, content, genre, etc.? Any venturing out of your comfort zone, with your submissions? Are you targeting the same markets, or branching out a bit? Any surprises? Please let me know, in the comments section.

As always, I hope your holidays were happy, and I wish all you--writers and non-writers alike--a healthy and prosperous new year.

Back in two weeks . . .

The Nordic Murders

 

I am always happy to find some new twist in our favorite genre, given that there are so many familiar tropes and patterns. This is especially true of TV police procedurals, where both cast and plots tend to stick to such familiar ingredients as faithful sergeant, the difficult or incompetent or overly political chief, the feisty if misunderstood detective, the serial killer and the falsely accused.

So there is something to be said for a bold move within the familiar, and The Nordic Murders, a multi-season German production now on PBS Passport, PBS stations, has indeed done something different. One of its chief, if unofficial, investigators is a convicted murderer.

Karin, the murderer

Now murderer as narrator has been around at least since Agatha Christie's Who Killed Roger Ackroyd. I even tried my hand at one with "The Writing Workshop," narrated by a frustrated mystery writer trying to improve his luck by eliminating unsympathetic editors. The Nordic Murders takes a different approach.

Karin Lossow (Karen Sass) was a prosecutor with the local police force when she impulsively shot her unfaithful husband using their daughter's police revolver. Eight years later at the start of the series, Karin is released from custody and returns to Usedom, a German island in the Baltic off the coast of Poland.

Her probation officer, many of her neighbors and certainly her daughter would much rather she take an apartment in some distant mainland town. Karin will have none of it. She intends resume to life in her fine old house and reconnect with her family, namely her daughter Julia (Lisa Marie Potthoff) and her granddaughter Sophie (Emma Bading).

Karin tells her grand daughter that she survived prison by helping and comforting others. To her daughter's understandable dismay, her mom intends to continue this good work on the outside. Given her mastery of German law and legal practices, Karin soon involves herself in the legal troubles of both criminal suspects and victims of crime. Worse yet, as far as the powers that be are concerned, she has a sharp eye for official incompetence, political grandstanding, and procedural errors. An awkward mom to say the least.

Naturally, with five seasons of The Nordic Murders, some rapprochement between mother and daughter is eventually in the cards, but the series makes quite good drama out of the process of reconciliation. It also, rather unusually, has three big female roles. Karin is the most interesting and the most complex, but her feisty, idealistic ,and impulsive

Julie, police commissioner

granddaughter also has a lot of possibilities.

Julia, a police commissioner is the most conventionally drawn. Conscientious and perceptive at work, if a bit chilly, her love for her nice husband and daughter have not kept her from a torrid romance with an attractive Polish police officer. This affair, I suspect, was devised to add interest to a character that is not as well drawn as her female relatives.

Still, big female roles are not to be sniffed at, and possibly because of them, The Nordic Murders relies less than usual on violent action, car chases and assaults. The writers also seem fond of gray areas, both moral and legal. Sometimes what looks like murder, turns out to be something else; sometimes murder results from an array of intolerable choices; sometimes the most likely perpetrator really is innocent and someone perfectly nice has done a dreadful thing.

Sophie, Julie's daughter

The Nordic Murders' sparse dialogue, German with the occasional Polish (both subtitled in English) and rather subdued acting style represent a change from the snappy repartee and non stop action favored by most English language series. But the series has a good cast, well constructed plots, and an unfamiliar setting in one of the most contentious and long suffering regions of the planet. A kidnapping victim is stashed in an old WW2  bunker and desperate refugees huddle amidst sparse conifers, for history, political as well as personal, underlies this interesting series.

Attorneys Offer Advice

I'm not endorsing these attorneys, but their advice is worth hearing.

Being Resolute

 

Happy New Year!  Since I have the honor of welcoming in the glorious new annum I thought I might provide some Resolutions for Writers.  Not for me, of course.  Perfection is for the gods alone and I already come so dangerously close I could be accused of hubris.  These tips are for the rest of you. 

* None of my characters will be shot in the shoulder and act as if it were a mosquito bite.

* None of my female characters will use their Feminine Wiles to get information they could have received just by asking, unless such behavior  is one of their characteristics.

* None of my present-day characters will go into a dangerous situation without a working cell phone or a damned good explanation of why they had none.

* None of my stories will switch from present to past tense and back again, or first to third person ditto, without a good reason.

* None of the following words will appear in the final draft without being savagely interrogated and forced to defend their existence: suddenly, very, just, had, got.

* Villains will not explain their evil plot to captured heroes without a damned good reason. 

* None of my characters will smile, smirk, or grimace their dialog, because those words describe facial expressions, not ways of speaking.  (Sneer gets a pass.)

* No headhopping.  "George thought Frank was lying. Frank wondered if George thought he was lying.  George wondered what Frank was thinking. Alice wondered why the narrator didn't pick a goddamn lane."

* My hero will not be knocked unconscious at a convenient moment.

* My characters will not hiss a sentence with no S in it.

* A supernatural event in my story will not have a rational explanation - and then be Overturned By Something Spooky, The End.

* If I have five characters I will not name them Mary, Marv, Mark, Mike, and Mickey.

* I will not let a day go by without doing something to promote mystery short fiction, my own, or others. 

By the way, I have committed at least two of these abominations, but I swear I am reformed now.

Any additions?