Mixing Crime and Coming-of-Age Stories

I have never set out to write a coming-of-age story. When plotting, I usually don't think in such broad terms. I focus on the trees--who my characters are and what I want to happen in the tale. Only later, after I finish a story or near its end, do I realize what my forest looks like. And what a lot of my forests have looked like in recent years--to belabor the idiom--are coming-of-age stories.

I didn't major in English in college, so forgive me if I mess up this definition. A coming-of-age story is one in which the main character matures from childhood to adulthood (emotionally, not necessarily in age) because of a journey or perilous situation the character lives through. Because crime/mystery tales often involve perilous situations, they are tailor-made for stories in which children, teenagers, and young adults grow.

The character development in these stories doesn't have to be positive. The stories don't have to end with the good guys living happily ever after. But the journey or perilous situation should cause the main character to see things differently by the end, to be a different person.

It was only recently that I realized how many coming-of-age stories I have written. In order of publication:

• "Truth and Consequences" is about a teenager determined to find out where her father goes each Saturday. The answer breaks her heart. This story was originally published in the anthology Mystery Times Ten, republished in my collection, Don't Get Mad, Get Even.
  
• 
  "Ulterior Motives" is about a teenager who volunteers for a political campaign. There's a mystery in this small town, and a secret, and a teenage girl at the middle of it all who doesn't think the adults around her understand much--which maybe they don't. This story was published in the anthology Ride 2.
  
• "Evil Little Girl" tells the tale of a bullied girl at sleepaway camp and what happens when her figurative cries for help fail. This story originally appeared in Don't Get Mad, Get Even.
• "Alex's Choice" is about a twelve-year-old’s quest to stop a family tragedy long after it happened and the unexpected hard choices the child faces. This story was published in the crime, time-travel anthology I edited, Crime Travel.
• "Second Chance" is a story about identical twins forced into foster care, who find each other again several years later, at age eighteen. The older brother--by eight minutes--had always known it was his job to protect his little brother, but now, the enemy he faces is someone he never expected. This story was published in the anthology Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir.
• "Wishful Thinking" is a ghost story with four tweens who creep into an old abandoned house, searching for a million dollars of stolen money. They don't believe in ghosts when they go inside, but maybe they should. This story originally appeared in issue 6 of Black Cat Weekly. It also can be
  
  purchased as an individual story.
  
• "Beauty and the Beyotch" is a tale about three girls told from two perspectives about one thing--their struggle to make their deepest desires come true. What happens when those dreams collide? This story was published in issue 29 of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.
• "For Bailey" is about a town with a pending vote to ban consumer fireworks and the teenager determined to have the vote pass, for all the scared animals and people. She comes up with a plan, but she doesn't foresee the consequences. This story was published in the anthology Low Down Dirty Vote Volume 3: The Color of My Vote.
• "Real Courage" has four point-of-view characters, three of them teenagers. The story opens in the 1980s with a teenage girl facing ostracism. It moves on to her son in the 2010s. After promising his dying mom he would always stand up for the awkward girl who lives next door, he finds himself in a situation no one could have anticipated. This is a story about people making bad choices with the best intentions. It was published in issue 14 of Black Cat Mystery Magazine.
• 
  "Teenage Dirtbag" tells the story of a teenage guy infatuated with a girl who already has a boyfriend--a boyfriend who doesn't treat her--or anyone--with respect. The infatuated guy comes up with a plan to rectify that. This story was published in the anthology (I Just) Died In Your Arms: Crime Fiction Inspired by One-Hit Wonders, Volume 1.
• "Never Have I Ever" is about a college student playing her favorite secrets-sharing drinking game with her friends. But she has secrets she’ll never share--because she's obsessed. Because she's haunted. Because she has a plan. This story was published in the anthology Murder, Neat.
  

Eleven stories. Maybe I should put them together in a collection with a new one or two. After all, it sure seems I have a predilection for this type of tale. If you haven't read "Real Courage," it is available on my website. The story is a current finalist for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, and it was a finalist for the Agatha Award earlier this year. You can find it by clicking here.

If you have any favorite coming-of-age crime/mystery stories, I would love to hear about them in the comments. My friend and fellow SleuthSayer Art Taylor certainly has a few great ones.

Ginger Snaps and Wolfbane

The Premise

Teen girl angst, goth and drama… Sisters’ suicide pact, everything is soooo dramatic… Death scenes staged for a school play project… That day when first period doesn’t refer to school…

For Halloween, a teen girl horror flick, a bildungsromans, a coming-of-age tale.

The cleverly titled Ginger Snaps is a 2001 horror movie for those who don’t like horror movies. It released much too soon after Columbine, which caused distribution problems at home and abroad amid fears of teen violence. A number of theatres banned it outright. The scheduled five and ten year anniversary re-releases failed to materialize, but nevertheless it developed a fan base and ‘cult’ status. I’m convinced anything labeled ‘cult’ refers to creative works with more depth that hurts critics’ limited brain cells.

The Promise

Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald are sisters, 16 and 15, in the same grade at school. Unpopular and bullied, they develop a fascination with death, morbidly filming gruesome death scenes for their school project. If they can’t manage to flee their small town when Brigitte reaches 16, they promise to die together.

Their father, Henry Fitzgerald, dotes upon his daughters, but he’s utterly clueless in the estrogen cauldron of his household. Mother Pamela is marginally better, wavering between complicit and the sole disciplinarian. At one point, she tells her husband, “Go back into your own world; this one only confuses you.”

The Plot

Halloween and the night of a full moon approaches.

Local dogs are found torn to pieces, presumably victims of the fanged Beast of Bailey Downs. The girls factor the legend into a plot against the school bully, but before they can act, Ginger is attacked by a creature and dragged into the woods…

Thus opens the story. A prim editor left the best potential tag line on the cutting room floor, but it made it into the movie’s mythos. In an unused clip, Brigitte tells her sister, “PMS is the least of your problems.”

Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald

The Practice

Conventional horror movies confuse time in the makeup chair with characterization. What makes Ginger Snaps special is the bond between the sisters. After months of fruitless auditions, the prospective leads happened to try out on the same day. When screenwriter Karen Walton saw the results, she said the young actresses were exactly who she was looking for. Coincidentally, the girls were born in the same hospital, attended the same schools, worked out of the same talent agency, and had appeared in separate episodes of Supernatural and The X-Files. Their chemistry was perfect.

Their parents are well-drawn and probably frighteningly close to how real teens view their folks. The school jock, Jason, makes another interesting character. He shows more moral fibre than we might expect. Rather than slut-shame the girl he just slept with, he merely tells his friends, “She rocked my world.”

When’s the last time you encountered an edgy teen drama that classy?

A mediocre sequel and a slightly more interesting direct-to-DVD prequel followed in 2004.

Thanks to Haboob for a list of where-to-view sources in time for Halloween. Enjoy the show.

Ginger Snaps (2001) Crackle Favesome Filmrise Plex Roku Tubi Vudu Wow Now paywall… Amazon iTunes Microsoft Roku YouTube

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed Movie Sphere Plex Roku Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning Movie Sphere Plex Roku Tubi

The Moments We Remember

Jim Howard, a former Hartford police officer whom I see more often than not at open mic gigs, is one of those rare people who can play harmonica and guitar simultaneously. Today, he turns 71 (Happy Birthday, Jim), which makes him almost exactly six months older than I am.

But that's not how I remember his birthday.

We all have a handful of days we remember, and they change from generation to generation. Some are good days: meeting your future spouse, for example, or the day you won some award.

There are other days we remember because they changed the way we look at the world. Forever.

One Friday afternoon in 1963, I sat in my Latin III class when the principal came on the PA to tell us that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. The next few minutes are hazy. I remember feeling like the floor had dropped out from under me, and the gorgeous German exchange student whom I never had the nerve to ask for a date turning to the boy next to her and asking him what "assassinated" meant. He answered with tears pouring down his face and most of us cried along with him.

I was sixteen. That may be the moment when I began to comprehend what I now identify as "evil."
Years later, my wife and I met Laurent Jean, a fine actor and director with whom we worked on many theatrical productions. Laurent's mother went into labor on November 22, 1963 and he was born the next day. I remember his birthday easily, too.

Five years later, I was shaving for a date with, coincidentally, another young woman from Germany when my next-door dorm neighbor burst in to tell me Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot. I watched the play that night, but I don't think either my date or I could have told anyone about it the next day. By the time I walked her back to her dorm, we could see the orange glow dancing in the sky over Pontiac, Michigan as the town went up in flames five miles away.

Barely two months later, Robert Kennedy was shot, too. The year I turned 21 featured both those killings and the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (Where former CT Governor and JFK Cabinet member Ribicoff infuriated Mayor Daly with his comments about police "Gestapo tactics" against demonstrators), not to mention the escalating Vietnam War.

By then, most of the shaping had been done and I was probably about 90% of the person I am now, for better or for worse.

One of my former students was in pre-med classes at George Washington University hospital when the Secret Service rushed Ronald Reagan into surgery after John Hinckley wounded him. He wrote me later to tell of his shock and horror when men in suits rushed in waving weapons and badges. This was his first life shattering event.

In January, 1986, I was producing a play and sat in the lobby of a local theater trying to reach my set designer on the pay phone (remember them?) and watching a portable TV replay the Challenger explosion. My director, a former Vietnam pilot and then an aeronautics engineer, watched a dozen replays and finally called the local news station to suggest what might have gone wrong. The subsequent investigation confirmed his suspicions. We didn't rehearse that night. A few people may have wired up speakers or focused a few lights, but most of us sat in the half-assembled gallery and cried for the astronauts and their families.

In September, 2001, I was teaching five classes--two for the first time--and still learning the names of 125 students. I cut through the media center toward the teachers' lounge and saw dozens of people jammed around the TV set near the AV department. They were still telling me what had happened when we watched the second plane slam into the World Trade Center.

To my students in 2001, the World Trade Center was what Kennedy's assassination was to me, and I remember feeling the curriculum shift slightly for the rest of the year.

Every generation has a horrific event that shapes it. Right now, we're dealing with several natural disasters: Harvey and Irma, the earthquake in Mexico City, tropical storm Katia, the fires in the northwest (Nope, no climate change, uh-uh). But I tend to give the man-made events more weight. We know that Nature is immense and implacable, but the assassinations and explosions remind us over and over (and we never learn, do we?) of our own hubris.

And that's what we all write about. No matter whether we write crime, romance, sci-fi, poetry, or anything else, our material is the shattering events in peoples' lives. The events that force them--and us--to surmount and survive.

The events that make us remember for too short a time that we are all human.