Good Books and Old Movies, Part I

by Susan Rogers Cooper

I've been honored over the past few years to be asked to teach classes at Austin's Lifetime Learning Institute. This is a wonderful organization for people 55+ to take classes in just about anything and for a very nominal fee. I've taught classes on writing the mystery a couple of times, which is always fun – especially when I'm able to dazzle my students with guest speakers like Jan Grape and Joan Hess.

This semester I'm teaching a class called: “The Mystery: From Novel to Film.” We read the book, we watch the movie. And we compare and contrast. Our first book was John Buchan's “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” and, of course, we watched the Hitchcock movie version. There were a lot of differences, the main being that in the book there were no women – in the movie there were plenty. I preferred the movie myself. As did a lot of the class.

Our second movie was the William Powell and Myrna Loy version of Dashiel Hammett's “The Thin Man.” After rereading the book, I noted that the alcohol consumption was even higher in the book than in the movie, and those people could drink!

Tomorrow we watch the 1974 version of Dame Agatha's “Murder on the Orient Express,” with Albert Finney as Hercule. I'm rereading the book now and have come full circle in my appreciation of Christie's talent. She was amazing. Even knowing the ending, I'm still fascinated with how she got there.

It's going to take two classes to watch all of that very long movie, but the next, and last, movie will star two of my favorite actors in the film version of a book by one of my favorite writers: the Bogart and Bacall version of Raymond Chandler's “The Big Sleep.”

Teaching this class has given me a chance to reread some classic mysteries and re-watch some wonderful old movies. I'm already thinking about next semester and what new treasures I can share.

Any suggestions?

SOS

by Leigh Lundin

For a writer who doesn’t own a television, I’ve been watching a lot lately. Friends Steve and Sharon offered their home as an autumn retreat in exchange for house-sitting. And recently I was granted nearly unlimited access to television archives from the past decade, including difficult-to-find productions such as the 2009 update of The Prisoner.

Watching an entire miniseries or season at once offers advantages.

• Without having to wait a week between episodes and potentially forget clues that occurred in the interim, the viewer gets the full, undiluted impact of the program.
• Ads become a non-issue. Even with current, prime-time shows, I record episodes and watch them an hour or two later when I can skip ads.
• Networks have a nasty habit of cancelling series, especially science fiction, but crime-related programs as well. Far too often, these series start with an over-arching plot that never gets resolved. Occasionally long-running programs sour. By having entire seasons on tap, the viewer can decide whether they wish to vest time in watching many hours of television programming that may go nowhere.

The disadvantage is that such a viewer chatting with the water cooler set might not be au fait with the latest episode. Not just bubbly conversers, of course, because conversations continue on-line in blogs and Facebook. In this case, TV becomes a shared activity, a social glue that becomes part of our societal fabric.

It’s a choice of course, but I’ve greatly enjoyed the impact of Longmire for an hour or two, night after night for the duration.

SOS

My most serious complaint about television is what I call soap opera… well, to use the British spelling, soap opera shite. SOS is a catchall for the tacky interpersonal dramas inserted by hapless writers to pad out 47 minutes amid a dearth of ideas. While couched as characterization, SOS is a poor parody of characterization through a Bizarro ray, a devolution of unlasting relationships into superficiality, a script device that muddies everything it touches.

Among the worst offenders have been legal dramas– LA Law, The Practice, Boston Legal, The Good Wife, etc. But also consider the grand exception, the 1957 original Perry Mason series, purist plots in black and white. If the show was re-imagined today, Paul Drake would be shedding his briefs with Della Street who is having an affair with the wife of a hitman hired by Hamilton Burger who’s the father of Perry and Paul’s love child secretly married to Lieutenant Tragg, sleeping with Judge Barlow’s court reporter who’s a secret CIA operative…

To be sure, some programs are deliberately set up to explore relationships between characters, the Sherlock series offering one example and Twin Peaks another. But, as we learned, Twin Peaks followed spiraling devolution as show runners encouraged mattress mix-and-match, pajama plug-and-play. SOS relationships have less structural integrity than a politician’s promise. In another hallmark, when writers can think of nothing else, one character will be found to work for the CIA (or NSA or MI-5).

The Minimal Maxim

The axiom regarding television dramas is that creativity decreases as the number of episodes in a series increases and, as a corollary, increases the likelihood of SOS.

Over time, most television dramas descend into SOS, but a few manage to avoid the pitfalls such as the 1993 Murder One and the recent Murder in the First. True Detective also evaded the trap by devoting each season to one story but took matters a step further by completely revising season two with a new cast, plot, location, and theme music. Only its title remained the same.

Promising Premises

The premises of Limitless, Blindspot and Quantico are auspicious although the latter two show early signs of SOS peril. Viewers can hope for the best, but I want to touch upon another program.

The Player could turn out to be very, very good or really, really bad. It’s a combination of the once brilliant Person of Interest and… remember Admiral Poindexter’s Policy Analysis Market? For that alone, I’d give it a shot while wondering if something like PAM may secretly be happening. The Player's Vegas-based on-line casino gives high-rollers the opportunity to bet on the outcome of terrorism and police action, on life and death itself.

While I find the setup intriguing, the program needs to rapidly build characterization, something beyond fast cars and slow-mo fights. While star Philip Winchester has fully deployed all his first semester drama class skills, Wesley Snipes is its most interesting character. Well played, Mr. Snipes. Critics are betting against it, nearly 2-to-1, and they may be right.

Pure Escape

I mentioned Person of Interest, which co-starred Jim Caviezel as quiet-spoken John Reese along with unassuming Michael Emerson as Harold Finch. Caviezel appeared as a hard-ass prison warden in a 2013 movie, Escape Plan. I was unaware of it when it made its initial rounds, but I caught it in one of those 3AM BlahTV channel reruns.

Normally, I wouldn’t expect to recommend a film starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger but, while the Escape Plan isn’t genius (50% positive rating), it takes an intelligent stab at plotting. It’s entertaining watching Stallone, who tests security by breaking out of prisons, do his jailbreak thing.

What is your take?

Milestone

I've been writing for so long now--21 years--that I no longer have many "first-time" happenings, in this business. But I did finally reach one of my goals recently: I had my first story published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In the past, editor Janet Hutchings has been kind enough to buy a couple of my "mystery poems," but unlike many of my SleuthSayers colleagues, I had never before been able to sell her a short story. (Not for lack of trying, by the way.)

When I last saw her, Janet told me that one of the things that swayed her this time was that my story (it's called "Dentonville," in the November 2015 issue) was so offbeat. That's probably a good description. After all, one of the lead characters is a woman seven feet tall, with an attitude that's different as well--she's normally kindhearted but can be formidable when the situation requires it, and several situations in this story require it. The other main character is an easygoing accountant with a seven-year-old son and a shady past whose old enemies are being released from prison with revenge on their minds, and for most of the story he's not quite sure who (including the aforementioned giant mystery-woman) is friend or foe. The plot soon becomes complicated, with strange alliances and hidden agendas playing a big part in the outcome.

As for other reasons why "Dentonville" might've been accepted for publication, all I know is that we as authors occasionally run into a story that is just plain fun to write, and this one was. And sometimes I think that kind of enthusiasm comes through to the editor who's making the buy-or-don't-buy decision. Whatever the case, I'm thankful that this one made the cut.

Also, I received my author's copies a couple weeks ago, and I found--no surprise, here--that the other stories featured in the November issue are excellent. One of my favorites is "The Lake Tenant," by Brendan DuBois, a mystery that's told with almost no dialogue but paints an unforgettable picture of small-town New Hampshire. It also contains a lot of humor and some delicious twists and turns. Another favorite is "Ninth Caller," by Philip Lowery, from EQMM's Department of First Stories. It's a delightful account of a couple of women who decide to swindle a radio-station call-in program.

In the magazine's lead story, a group of ladies are again up to no good: veteran author Carolyn Hart spins a devious tale of murder between girlfriends in "What Goes Around." Later, in Katia Lief's "The Orchid Grower," a suburban housewife takes us on a fast-moving adventure in survival, and Brazilian author Raphael Montes's "Black Widow" introduces us--in a yarn told almost entirely in dialogue--to a suspicious but remarkable woman who has watched several husbands die after only a year or two of marriage with each. I won't spoil things by giving you a body count on any of these stories, but I will say there's plenty of misbehavior going on, and much of it by the fairer sex.

There are also stories about murder among the Florida elite ("A Killing at the Beausoleil" by my friend Terrie Moran), the ins and outs of professional women's wrestling ("The Female of the Species" by Chris Muessig and Steve Seder), and a serial killer with a Jack-the-Ripper-style M.O. ("Like Jack" by Peter Turnbull). On the lighter side, Golden Derringer Award winner James Powell gives us a story called "Guy Talk" about a private detective who just happens to be a hummingbird.

The quality of these other authors' stories in the November issue makes me even more proud to be featured among them.

Thanks, Janet, for allowing me into the party.

Breaking Out Of Solitary

My first official post as a SleuthSayers contributor—my first big deadline here!—arrives at a busy confluence of events. The Fall for the Book festival, which I've helped run for more than 12 years at George Mason University, is still underway as this post appears (and battening down, scrambling to reorganize as a hurricane looms), and next week, Bouchercon begins down in Raleigh, and just a couple of weeks back, my first book came out (with all the busyness that entails), and on the same day as the launch party, I was a speaker at the Fairfax County Public Library's Book Club Conference and....
Well, the point of all this isn't that it's a busy time, but rather that I wanted to set up a focus on one of the elements that threads through all these various events.

My role at the library's Book Club Conference was to talk about how to moderate a book group—tips and tactics to help keep discussion going, keep the focus on the book (instead of the wine!), and keep everyone involved and engaged. Before I got into specific recommendations, however, I asked people what they wanted from a book club in the first place.

I already had my PowerPoint prepared—the next slide ready to provide my answer to the question—so I hoped that the comments from the attendees would jibe with my own thoughts and expectations, and it turned out they did. "I want to learn something." "I want to read a book I might otherwise not have picked up." "I want to see what other people thought about what we read." "I like getting together with friends." "I wanted to meet new people." Or even as simple as: "I wanted to do something different, and I learned that I liked it."

Here's the PowerPoint slide that I put up at the end of that part of the conversation:

And it's those bolded words at the bottom of the slide I want to talk about now—and not just in terms of reading, but also writing, another solitary act.

In certain circumstances, reading isn't a solitary act, of course. We can attend a reading; my wife and I can read to our son; and in fact, I read to my wife pretty regularly as part of our evening routine, as I talked about in a recent column for the Washington Independent Review of Books. But most of the time, reading is one person engaging with one book at their own individual pace.

Similar, writing can be a collaborative process, of course, but that image of the writer alone with her pen or alone in front of the computer is a persistent one for a reason. We engage with the page—trying to capture in words those characters and stories our imagination has conjured up.

The connection, then, becomes this: solitary writer --> piece of writing --> solitary reader. And in the process, there's also this connection implicit in that one: solitary writer --> solitary reader.

A book club provide the opportunity to expand that solitary reading experience into a shared one. What did you take from the book? What were your attitudes about this character? What did you think of the author's decision to....? And in the process, what emerges is: What did we think of....? —not a decision that will reach unanimity, but a conversation that serves to be bigger than the sum of its parts.

During all my years with Fall for the Book, there have been two types of moments that have struck me as central to our mission—and neither depends exclusively on the actual programming we've hosted year after year. Those readings and panel discussions are part of the larger engagement, of course: hearing authors read from or speak about their works. But what strikes me as more important is when a reader comes in holding a well-loved copy of a book and meets and asks a question of the person who wrote it—making manifest somehow the connection that already exists by virtue of those two solitary experiences I mentioned above, with the book as the connecting point. The other moment is when that reader turns to another person holding another well-loved copy of the same book and says something like, "Didn't you love it when....?"

A book club or a book festival serve to turn the solitary experience of reading into a communal experience, hopefully enriching connections and perspectives and understanding.

And for an event like Bouchercon ahead, opportunities exist not just to connect readers and writers but also to connect people within the community of writer. Networking is inevitably an important aspect of conferences. (How many people will be meeting with their agent or editor next week? How many will be looking for a new agent or courting an editor? How many might ask a writer friend to suggest an agent?) But beyond those more goal-oriented aspects, there's something more important that's gained by being not so alone—by meeting and greeting and sharing anecdotes with others who have elsewhere been toiling alone over those notebooks or in front of that screen, making physical and concrete those connections and that camaraderie that already exist in myriad ways.

I enjoyed your book. I admire your work so much. What you do—it matters, it meant something to me.

I just wanted to say that.

Secondary Characters, Primary Purpose, Part Two

by Brian Thornton

(Part One of this subject can be found here.)

 Two weeks ago I began to delve into the importance of secondary characters, wherein I summed up with a series of questions and concluded with a promise:

I have been thinking of this sort of thing quite a bit lately, as I toil on my current Work-In-Progress. How do I make my secondary characters more organic? More believable? Less stock? How do I ensure that everyone who appears in my work serves a vital purpose, and isn't just some guy putting watermelons in a crate, or one of a couple of guys carrying a plate glass window back and forth across a street?

I have some answers, and I'll share them next week. If you've got ideas, drop them in the comment section, and I'll share them with the rest of the class in my next blog post in two short weeks.

The calendar confirms that it's a full two weeks later, and I'm gonna take its word for that, because it's September, and during this month, my day gig (teacher) keeps me hopping like Frogger crossing a highway, and I tend to be somewhat organizationally challenged.

That tiny, frantic flash of green you see in the screen capture above? Me in September.

And on that note, let's delve into secondary characters, what they are. what they aren't, and how you can use them to make your work better.

At best, a secondary character is a thumbnail. At worst, an iceberg.

Yup, this guy again.

Let's be clear what I'm talking about when I say "secondary characters." I am referring neither to what the theatre and film industries refer to as "supporting leads," nor to the sorts of stock characters who get a "walk-on" in your book, with maybe a line or two before making their exit, stage right.

I mean the ones who have enough screen time to be impactful, without being either protagonist, antagonist, or some sort of secondary lead. This can literally be a cast of thousands. It's easy to get lost in this sea of faces.

So how to make full, effective use of them?

My friend and colleague David Corbett says (I am paraphrasing here, not quoting, so forgive the inexact nature of the statement) that it's a mistake to think of the secondary characters in your novel (or the primary ones, for that matter) as existing independent of the work.

That makes so much sense to me that it effectively trumps all counterarguments save one: Noted critic and literary snob Harold Bloom has famously remarked that the character of Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare's play of the same name is so large, so fleshed out and so impactful, that he literally transcends the play (especially when Nicol Williamson, arguably the greatest film Hamlet EVER, plays him).

Greatest. Hamlet. Ever. And he wasn't half bad as Merlin a decade later in John Boorman's Excalibur.

Bloom is right.

Literary Sage/Crank Harold Bloom

But the melancholy Dane is the exception. And there's certainly never been a secondary character who so transcended the work of art that framed him.

For the rest of us (and this is especially true of secondary characters), they're one with their setting, appear when where and how they appear in order to suit the dictates of the author's plot/action. They do what they do not because it's in their best interests to do so, or because they're addicted to the actions in question. They don't do them because they love gay marriage or hate the color yellow.

They do the things they do in service to the story.

That.

Is.

Everything.

I realize there is a large and accomplished corner of the greater writing universe who embrace the notion of their characters having lives of their own, and doing things like whispering in the ears of the authors who created them. I've heard them speak at personal appearances and at conferences. I understand where they're coming from.

It does nothing to change the simple, immutable fact that characters do not exist outside of story.

That realization can be freeing. I know it certainly was for me once I came to it. When I heard Corbett say it out loud, he was only confirming for me what I had already worked out for myself.

And I repeat for emphasis: It was so freeing!

Now, before you start saying, "Wait a minute, what about believability? Continuity? What about making it realistic?


The maxim of service of the story takes care of all of that.

This is especially true for secondary characters.

Uberagent and successful writing guru Donald Maas has a thing he does where he has workshop denizens write down a series of observations about their characters: "What is your character's favorite color? Now write down a secret they've kept all their lives. What was the first job they ever had?" And so on.

As an exercise in fleshing out characters it is pretty effective.

And if you do it with secondary characters you'll waste time and drive yourself half out of your own skull.

That begs the question: how do we as writers give our secondary characters life without investing the sort of time/effort we do in our more fully fleshed out characters?

The answer in two weeks, when I wrap up this topic with "Secondary Characters, Primary Purpose, Part Two"!

Until then....

Popcorn Proverbs 3

by Robert Lopresti

Once again I am offering a few words of wisdom from movies in our genre.  Your job is to identify the films in question.  Because I want to make life as easy as possible for you, they are in alphabetical order by the titles of the movie.  Only one of the posters you see is from a quoted movie.  Oh, extra credit: two of the movies are based on books by the same author, featuring the same character, and by pure coincidence, they fall together alphabetically.  Can you spot them?  Answers next Wednesday.

1. Your mother mates out of season.

2. Get off my lawn!

3. You can tell, you can really tell. You must be physic!  

4. Forget it Nick... it's Sandford.

5. -There's no sacrifice too great for a chance at immortality.

-Yes sir.

6. -I got a hot date.

-Yeah?  Who is she and what did you arrest her for?

7. My name? If you knew that, you'd be as clever as me.

8. -We makin' trouble for someone?
-Yep.
Which kind?
-The forever kind.  

9. You're nobody till somebody shoots you.   

10. Yeah, it's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice.

11.  My old man used to say to me, probably the only thing we ever really agreed on, was that whoever has the money has the power. You might wanna jot that down in your book. It's something you're gonna need to remember.

12. I'm the girl they rush home from.

13. I think all those stories about you being dead are true. You're just too thick-headed to admit it. 

14. -How do you sleep at night?

-I don't drink coffee after seven. 

15. -I want to see my daughter.
-I don't think that would be a good idea.
-Why wouldn't that be a good idea?
-Because we hardly dared to look ourselves.

16. Do I ice her?  Do I marry her?

17. I'll catch up with you guys.  I forgot my bullets. 

18. No, I do not want that in the house. That is my car gun. My house gun is already in the house. Now, put that back in the glove compartment, and don't let me catch you fooling with my guns again. 

19. -Is life always this hard, or is it just when you're a kid?
-Always like this. 

20.  Well, if the woman up there is Mrs. Bates... who's that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetery? 

21. You'll never see one dollar of this money, because no ransom will ever be paid for my son. Not one dime, not one penny. Instead, I'm offering this money as a reward on your head. Dead or alive, it doesn't matter.

22. Go ahead. Jump. He never loved you, so why go on living? Jump and it will all be over... 

23. Natural law. Sons are put on this earth to trouble their fathers.

24. - You ever kill anybody?
 - I hurt somebody's feelings once. 

25. -Where you going?
-To the Lincoln Memorial.
-It's closed.  It won't be open for another hour.
-I don't understand.
-He's an old man.  He needs his sleep.

Bouchercon Anthony Award Short Story Countdown

I’m turning over my post today to the Anthony Short Story Nominees Blog Tour. (Try saying that ten times quickly.)

The five Anthony nominees in the Short Story category are Craig Faustus Buck, Barb Goffman, John Shepphird, our own Art Taylor...and me, Paul D. Marks. I’m honored to be among these people and their terrific stories.

I want to thank everyone who voted for us in the first round. And if you’re eligible to vote, people attending Bouchercon can vote at the convention until 1pm Saturday.

I hope you’ll take the time to read all five of the stories and vote. All are available free here – just click the link and scroll down: http://bouchercon2015.org/2015-anthony-award-nominees/

But even if you’re not eligible to vote, I hope you’ll take the time to read the stories. I think you’ll enjoy them and maybe get turned onto some new writers, whose Bios are at the end of this post.
So without further ado, here’s our question and responses:

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“The suggestion frequently comes up, ‘You should write a novel about these characters!’ Could you see writing more about the characters in your story, or does this story say everything that needs to be said?”

***

Craig Faustus Buck: “Honeymoon Sweet” (Murder at the Beach: The Bouchercon Anthology 2014, edited by Dana Cameron; Down & Out)

My stories are character-driven, so the fact that a particular plot comes to a conclusion means nothing in terms of my continuing interest in a character unless he or she happens to die. If a character catches my fancy, I’ll put that person in another situation in another work just to assuage my curiosity.

A case in point is my short story “Dead End” (a 2014 Anthony nominee), which starred Johno Beltran, an LAPD detective who got hungry after an all-night murder investigation and stopped home for a leftover meatloaf sandwich on his way to deliver evidence to the crime lab. This miniscule lapse of judgment was leveraged by wily lawyers into an orgy of evidence tampering that resulted in a psycho killer going free. We first meet Johno four years later, his life a shambles, living out of his car, valet parking for a living. The story takes off one night when the murderer drives up to Johno’s valet stand in a $100k BMW.

I loved Johno, and though the story resolved with an ironic twist, his fate remained up in the air. I hungered to know what happened next, so I wrote a novella called Psycho Logic to find out. I still love this guy, so I see a novel, or maybe even a series, in his future.

I feel the same way about the characters in my current Anthony nominated short story “Honeymoon Sweet.” Two newly-wedded low-life thieves break into a beach house for their honeymoon and the owner shows up unexpectedly. I’ll definitely revisit a few of these characters in some future iteration. A short story can only scrape the surface of a character, but if done well, it can scrape deeply enough to make the writer, and hopefully the reader, crave more.

***

Barb Goffman: “The Shadow Knows” (Chesapeake Crimes: Homicidal Holidays, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley; Wildside Press)

I haven’t contemplated writing more about Gus, my main character in “The Shadow Knows.” Gus is a grumpy, blue-collar guy who works his job to earn enough money to come home to watch the game, eat his weekend breakfasts at the diner, and hang out with his friends in northern Vermont. It’s a simple, quiet life, and it suits him. Characters who continue from one story to another or who grow into main characters in a novel tend to be cops or private eyes or amateur sleuths, people who face crime, find offenders, and try to achieve justice. That’s not Gus. He’s no sleuth. He’s just a normal, superstitious guy who has an extraordinary experience born from his hatred of long winters.

That said, Gus does show a courageous streak in his story. He believes his town’s groundhog controls the local weather, and he decides it’s time someone takes action to stop the groundhog from causing long winter and after long winter, and that someone should be him. Then he formulates a secret plan to get rid of the groundhog, and he’s determined to achieve it, no matter the delays he faces, no matter the problems it causes him. That tenacious part of Gus’s personality, along with his courage, could serve him well if he were to find himself in another interesting situation. Not to mention, it’s fun to write about Gus’s grumpy side. So will there be more Gus stories? I have nothing planned, but I guess I should never say never. Gus just might come up in his next adventure, and I would be happy to write it.

***

John Shepphird: “Of Dogs & Deceit” (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Nov 2014)

I write (and read) crime fiction because I prefer to explore characters with inherent flaws, especially with my protagonists. And for me, the most memorable are the imperfect. Traditionally they’re passionate and persuasive. They’re human. Will they overcome their demons before it all comes to a crashing end? I don’t know. Climb on for the ride, that’s the fun.

My aesthetic has always been a solid structure with a well-crafted escalation, but characters come first. The rest is the craft of the storyteller. Any character in conflict can be interesting, and for me flawed characters are even more so. The unpredictability keeps me turning pages. We all have a degree of blemish so we can relate. When a crossroad arrives and the characters have to make a decision -- the path they choose is what defines them.

Live and read vicariously. I prefer vintage pulp. Find your wheelhouse.

***

Art Taylor: “The Odds Are Against Us” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Nov. 2014)

To my mind, a short story should ideally be a complete statement, total on its own terms, while also hint at other life experiences and a larger world beyond the immediate pages: incorporating small details that suggest bigger aspects of character, plot, setting, etc.

With “The Odds Are Against Us,” I like to think that this single evening’s conversation and the narrator’s short walk afterwards—the immediate story—give a reader everything he or she needs to understand a larger story, one that both stretches back to these character’s formative childhood years and looks ahead into the aftermath of the decisions being made—and provides enough about the society in which they operate to understand the true stakes at the core of the story’s title. A full experience, I hope, representing some of the most crucial aspects/moments of these character’s larger stories.

That said, however, I could certainly imagine exploring the “what next” for the narrator—actually diving into that “aftermath” I mentioned, because clearly further conflicts lie ahead. No plans to do this yet, but as with how my story “Rearview Mirror” (complete in itself) ultimately grew into my new book, On the Road with Del & Louise, I wouldn’t rule anything out.

***

Paul D. Marks: “Howling at the Moon” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Nov. 2014)

Every story, whether a short story or a novel, should be complete in itself and should be able to stand on its own. But that doesn’t mean that the character in the story can’t go on to other adventures. Chandler’s Marlowe got his start in several short stories and though unnamed in those early stories that character did go on to become Philip Marlowe.

Darrell Wood, the character in my story “Howling at the Moon,” seemed to complete his mission at the end of that story. I thought that I probably wouldn’t revisit him again. But having read the story, many people have asked to see more of him. So, even though I wasn’t considering it, I’m thinking about it now.

Bobby Saxon is a character who was in three published stories and I actually did write a novel featuring that character. I’m polishing it now and hope to have it on the market soon. I also just sold a story to Ellery Queen called “Ghosts of Bunker Hill.” And I truly love the character in that one and definitely can see him in a novel.

It goes the other way too, you can have a character in a novel who you want to have a certain adventure, but that adventure isn’t worthy of a full length novel, so they can end up in a short story and then maybe a novel again or maybe even a movie. Our characters come alive and have lives of their own in some ways, so who knows where they’ll end up.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Author Bios:

Craig Faustus Buck’s debut noir novel Go Down Hard was published May 5, 2015 (Brash Books). His short story “Honeymoon Suite” is currently nominated for both Anthony and Macavity Awards (free at tinyurl.com/CFBPlanB). He lives in LA, where noir was born, and is president of MWA SoCal. http://craigfaustusbuck.com/

Barb Goffman is the author of Don’t Get Mad, Get Even (Wildside Press 2013). This book won the Silver Falchion Award for best single-author short-story collection of 2013. Barb also won the 2013 Macavity Award for best short story of 2012, and she’s been nominated fifteen times for national crime-writing awards, including the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. Barb runs a freelance editing and proofreading service focusing on crime and general fiction. Learn more about her writing at www.BarbGoffman.com

Paul D. Marks is the author of the Shamus Award-Winning mystery-thriller White Heat. Publishers Weekly calls White Heat a “taut crime yarn.” His story “Howling at the Moon” (EQMM 11/14) is short-listed for both the 2015 Anthony and Macavity Awards for Best Short Story. Vortex, a noir-thriller novella, is Paul’s latest release. Midwest Review calls Vortex: “…a nonstop staccato action noir.” He also co-edited the anthology Coast to Coast: Murder from Sea to Shining Sea (Down & Out Books). www.PaulDMarks.com

John Shepphird is a Shamus Award winning author and writer/director of TV movies. In addition to his private eye series in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, look for his James M. Cain inspired The Shill and its sequel Kill the Shill (released Sept. 15th) available from Down & Out Books. Visit www.johnshepphird.com

Art Taylor is the author of On the Road with Del & Louise: A Novel in Stories. His short fiction has won two Agatha Awards, a Macavity, and three consecutive Derringer Awards, among other honors. He writes frequently on crime fiction for both The Washington Post and Mystery Scene. www.ArtTaylorWriter.com

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

And now for the usual shameless BSP:

Vortex: My new Noir Mystery-Thriller novella out now.

“...a nonstop staccato action noir... Vortex lives up to its name, quickly creating a maelstrom of action and purpose to draw readers into a whirlpool of intrigue and mystery... but be forewarned: once picked up, it’s nearly impossible to put down before the end.” —D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

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Changes Are a Coming--Part 1

by Jan Grape

I seem to have a hard time coming up with articles lately. I  suspect I'm growing older and lazier. Been thete and said that. But don't think I'm senile yet. But aren't we the last to know? I've  been racking my brain pan all week and the only thing I thought of that remotely might be a reasonble subject was to write about the changes in publishing. There have been many changes since I first began trying to get a book published. Back in the early days we had to send our manuscripts to New York City by Pony Express.

 Oh, okay, I'm  not that old but some days it rather feels that way. However, we did have to send the mss in printed on white printer paper, double spaced, one inch margins all around.  we had to write a sparkling letter to an agent or an editor hoping our query caught their attention. Most agents and a few editors would read unsolicited manuscripts. You packaged everything all up and included a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope.) One of the best ways to keep your mss neat and make the return easier was to put it in a printer paper box, slide that into a very large mail envelope, being sure to include another SASE envelope with enough postage for the return.

I had an electric typewriter at the time and wasn't a very good or fast typist. I did have a friend or two who would type the mss for me but I couldn't ask them to do the work for free. I generally paid something. You also had to have more than one copy. What if your precious book got lost in the mail? So you went to a copy shop and ran off two extra copies. Fairly high price for such  and I certainly didn't  have much spare money in my purse. Then the postage itself wasn't cheap and you had to include enough in the SASE to get your copy back, all the time hoping the editor didn't mess up that copy so badly that you couldn't  send it out again immediately.

Every aspiring writer back then thought there was some big magic secret to getting published. I was at a writer's conference in Houston sponsored by a Houston University and a woman who was a big time editor for a major publishing house told us of talking to a writer's  group and someone asked why she wouldn't tell the secret of getting published. She told us how she made a big deal out of it. Saying we absolutely could not ever tell anyone the secret. She made sure all the doors to the room were closed and no one was lurking outside. Then she told us what she told that other group. When you put the postage on the envelope to mail the mss to NY. You must put the stamps on upside down. Everyone laughed but she told us over 50 percent of all mss that came in that summer had the stamps on upside down.

You also didn't  dare query more than one agent or editor at a time. They really frowned on such hubris. They could keep your mss for weeks or months only then, send you a form rejection slip. However, if they did like your book and had started the process of convincing the purchasing board and tried to offer you a contract only to discover you had just accepted a contract from one of their crosstown rivals. In which case, you're name would forever be mud with that editor and maybe with the rival editor. So you suffered and when you began getting rejection after rejection you realized you could paper the bathroom wall with rejections slips.

As we all know changes were coming and things were going to be easier.

Tune in next time for some wonderful remarks from my friend and fellow mystery writer, Noreen Ayers.

Queen's Quorum

[T]he only rule … I know, [for writers] is that they write and they write some more and then they write still more and they keep on writing …

                                                          Frederic Dannay 

                                                          Carroll College, Waukesha, Wisconsin 

                                                          17 April 1979 

                                                          Quoted in My Life with Ellery Queen 

                                                           by Rose Koppel Dannay 

 [A] pastiche is a serious and sincere imitation in the exact manner of the original author.

                                                          Frederic Dannay (writing as Ellery Queen) 

A picnic is more than eating a meal, it is a pleasurable sate of mind.

                                                          DeeDee Stovel
                                                          Picnic: 125 Recipes with 29 Seasonal Menus

Josh Pachter, Francis (Mike) Nevins
and Yours Truly (animation courtesy of Google+!)

      Last week, with the marriage of our younger son Colin just behind us, we waved good-by to family guests, turned on our heels, sorted out the guest room, and welcomed Francis (Mike) Nevins into our home for a three day visit. I first met Mike, an emeritus professor at St. Louis University Law School, author and scholar of all things Ellery Queen, back in 2005 at the Ellery Queen Centennial symposium hosted by EQMM. Since that time we have shared a few meals together, but never a prolonged visit. This time Mike was passing through Washington, D.C. enroute to Massachusetts to attend a memorial service for Rose Koppel Dannay, the third (and last) wife of Frederic Dannay, whom we all know as one-half of the Ellery Queen writing duo. 

       In his own blog First You Write, Mike has summed up the importance of Rose Dannay’s influence on Frederic Dannay succinctly: “It’s not going too far to say that Rose saved Fred’s life.” Dannay’s second wife had just died when he met Rose. Mike writes that at that meeting Rose found a broken man winding down his life, and Mike concludes that “[t]hat is what Rose saved him from.” Their marriage endured until his death, over the Labor Day weekend of 1982, at age 76.  

       In her later years Rose Dannay penned a memoir, originally privately published, entitled My Life with Ellery Queen chronicling her years with Dannay. The slim volume necessarily offers little insight into the early years of Ellery Queen, or into the life of Manfred B. Lee, the other half of the Queen duo, since Lee was gone by the time Rose entered Dannay’s life. But the book, which I read during Mike’s visit, is nonetheless a rich narrative of Dannay’s final years. And -- lucky us -- while the book has long been unavailable to the general public, within days all of that will change when it is re-issued together with a new (and lengthy) introduction written by Mike. 

       But enough of the past (well, sort of). One of the great things about the on-line age in which we live is the ease with which we can each reach out and connect with those whose interests we share. Those of us who are still Ellery Queen fans may be few in number, but among us the interest in Queen runs deep. And Mike’s short swing through Washington, D.C. afforded an opportunity for three of us to spend a great evening together in my backyard. 

       I knew of Josh Pachter before last week but we had never met, even though he lives in nearby Herndon, Virginia and teaches communications and human studies at equally nearby Northern Virginia Community College (where he is also an Assistant Dean). Josh is, however, an old friend of Mike’s and that proved the only catalyst needed in order to complete a "three musketeer" gathering. All three of us have not only read and studied the works of Ellery Queen, we have also each contributed our own works featuring, or inspired by Ellery. 

       Josh had his first short story published in EQMM at the tender age of 16, and has authored several Ellery Queen parodies, including "E.Q. Griffen Earns His Name" (EQMM December 1968), "E.Q. Griffen's Second Case" (EQMM May 1970) and "The German Cologne Mystery," co-written with Jon L. Breen and featuring Celery Green and his father, Inspector Wretched Green, (EQMM September/October 2005). Josh hints that he is working on yet another E.Q. Griffen story and hopes to share it with the reading world in 2018, the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his first E.Q. Griffen escapade. His most recent work is the short-story collection The Tree of Life (Wildside Press, 2015), available in paperback and (as The Mahboob Chaudri Mystery Megapack) in e-book format. 

       Mike Nevins has authored four novels, many short stories, and a number of non-fiction works offering up his take on mysteries and mystery writers. He has edited countless mystery anthologies and has won two Edgar awards, one for Royal Bloodlines, his first biography of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, and the second for First You Dream, Then You Die, focusing on the literature of Cornell Woolrich. And Mike is also famous, among other things, for his seminal Ellery Queen pastiche, “Open Letter to Survivors,” (EQMM May, 1972), which spins its narrative riff from the following passage that appears in Ellery Queen’s Ten Days’ Wonder: “. . . there was the case of Adelina Monquieux, [Ellery’s] remarkable solution of which cannot be revealed before 1972 . . . .” In addition to his upcoming introduction included in the newly re-published Dannay biography referenced above, Mike’s next work, They Called the Shots, a retrospective on Hollywood directors he has known, will be published by Ramble House within the next few weeks. Among his most recent works is the 2013 retrospective Ellery Queen -- The Art of Detection, an updated and definitive companion piece to Royal Bloodlines. 

Kurt Sercu and me last year
(doing a pictorial "one-off" of the cover of
Mike Nevin's The Art of Detection)

       Completing the trio assembled in my backyard on that Tuesday evening was, well, me. Accomplishments? Well, not all that many. But the Ellery Queen pastiches that I have authored include “The Book Case” (EQMM May, 2007), written in collaboration with my good friend Kurt Sercu, proprietor of Ellery Queen, a Website on Deduction, and featuring an elderly Ellery pulled from retirement to solve one last case involving many characters from earlier Queen novels, including principally the 1967 mystery Face to Face, “The Mad Hatter’s Riddle” (EQMM September/October, 2009), where characters from the 1938 Queen novel The Four of Hearts, reunite for the filming of an episode of the 1975 NBC Ellery Queen television series, and “Literally Dead” (EQMM December 2013), featuring a return, once again, to Wrightsville. 

       So the dinner cast was set and the evening was predictably great.

       But let’s be greedy. Who else could have been added to make that back yard dinner even better? Well my list of wished-for attendees would include the following: 

       Kurt Sercu, my friend, erstwhile collaborator and the proprietor of the aforementioned Ellery Queen website where, incidentally, you can read about all of the actual attendees in Kurt’s section discussing Ellery Queen pastiches and parodies. Kurt, who I first met on the internet in 2002, has three times made the trip across the pond from his native Belgium and knows my backyard well. Had he been here this time he could have shared stories with Josh in Flemish -- among his other accomplishments, Josh is fluent and has frequently translated mysteries from Dutch to English. 

Joseph Goodrich

       Joe Goodrich, author of Blood Relations, the collection of the 1940s correspondence between Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, and also the author of the play Calamity Town, which had a sneak preview for two days in Claremont, New Hampshire in 2013 and will have its official world premier at the Vertigo Theatre, Calgary, Canada next year.  (It will play there from January 23 through February 21, 2016.)

Douglas Greene

       Doug Greene, professor emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University, Ellery Queen scholar, proprietor of Crippin and  Landru publications, and publisher of both The Tragedy of Errors, collecting previously unpublished Queen stories and essays, and featuring the outline of what would have been the final Ellery Queen mystery, and The Adventure of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries, a 2005 collection of previously-unpublished Ellery Queen radio plays. Doug just had a birthday, so we would have added a cake to the menu!

Jon L. Breen

       John L. Breen, emeritus book review editor for EQMM, who has twice been awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Award, first in 1982 for What About Murder?: A Guide to Books About Mystery and Detective Fiction, and then in 1985, for Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction. He has written several novels and over 100 short stories, including several Ellery Queen pastiches and parodies, one of which, “The Adventure of the Disoriented Detective,” is available on Kurt’s website and another of which, “The German Cologne Mystery,” (see above) was co-authored with Josh. 

Arthur Vidro

       Arthur Vidro, yet another Queen scholar, author and publisher of (Give Me That) Old-Time Detection (a wonderful periodical dependably offering up Ellery Queen nuggets).  Arthur was the director of the first presentation of Joe Goodrich’s theatrical version of Calamity Town, and appeared in the production in a supporting role.  He is also the literary detective who (to my mind) has definitively established that Ellery Queen’s Wrightsville is modeled after Arthur’s hometown -- Claremont, New Hampshire.  Arthur has his own short Queen pastiche on-line on the EQMM website.  It can be read here.

Jeffrey A. Marks

       Each of these folks I have had the honor to meet and get to know in person over the years. And to the list I would add at least one more Ellery Queen expert and aficionado -- mystery writer and biographer Jeffrey A. Marks, an author who, thus far, I have met only on the internet. In addition to his many works, including his mystery series featuring Ulysses S. Grant, Jeff has penned biographies of famous mystery writers including Earl Stanley Gardner and Anthony Boucher.  His latest project?  Well, in the next year -- or perhaps a bit more -- Jeff will be releasing his new, and I will bet definitive, biography of the lives of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee.   (Working title -- The American Detective Story.)

       Now THAT would have been a party!

(Most of the links and some of the graphics, above, are courtesy of Kurt's website Ellery Queen -- A Website on Deduction.  Always worth a visit, folks!)

The Joy of Story (in which our intrepid Bad Girl steps out on a serious limb for a change)

by Melodie Campbell

Don’t Lecture - Entertain Me!

This post is meant to raise discussion. Please chime in!

Who doesn’t love a good story? Something that takes you out of yourself and lets you live another life for a little while. You can do me no greater honour than to call me a great storyteller.

A while ago, I was asked to comment on the purpose of crime fiction, for the inaugural issue of Noir Magazine. Should fiction always contain a moral message? Specifically, should crime fiction?

My instant answer: No! The main purpose of crime fiction should be to Entertain, and nothing should come before that.

Why? We have countless other venues that preach morality. Religions seek to teach us how to behave. Every day we are bombarded by newspapers, radio and other nonfiction outlets, that expose us to the ‘evil’ of greedy politicians, nasty world despots and out of control celebrities.

If fiction – and crime fiction in particular – was required to follow a moral code, we would miss so much. If the good guy always won – if the bad guy always got caught – wouldn’t that make crime fiction lamentably predictable?

Does that mean crime fiction can’t teach us something? Of course it can! Put me in the mind of a serial killer for a few hours. Let me know what it feels like to experience the overwhelming greed of a con artist. Dress me up as a torch singer, with a black heart and a gun in her stocking.

Let me discover something about how other people think, if only for a little while. Because isn’t that the wonderful thing about all great literature? The best literature takes us completely out of ourselves and forces us to view the world from a different perspective. If done well enough, that experience changes us.

In my own fiction, I strive to make that happen.

And I challenge you to do the same. Make me walk in another person's shoes for a few hours. But above all else, entertain me. Don’t preach at me, even from a distance. I don’t want it from my fiction.

Just tell me a damn good story, thank you. Take me out of the real world for a few hours.

That’s the joy of story.

Ever wondered what it would be like to walk in the shoes of a mob goddaughter? Check out the award-winning Goddaughter series below:

Opening to THE ARTFUL GODDAUGHTER

When I was a girl, my favorite movie was The Pink Panther.

Great-uncle Franco owned a movie theatre in town. He had a knock-off reel. We’d beg him to play that film on the big screen. I probably saw it thirty times. It became an obsession with me.

When other girls dressed up for Halloween as Princesses, I was decked out in head-to-toe black. With a mask.

“Girls can’t be cat-burglars,” my cousin Paulo told me.

“Yeah?” I yelled back. “What about Mad Magda?”

“She’s not real,” Paulo sneered. “She’s just a legend, like Santa Claus. Only boys are burglars.”

This obviously did some serious damage. Because of course, I had to prove him wrong, even if it took me twenty years to do it.

On AMAZON

The Tovrea Murder

By Dixon Hill

In my last post, I wrote about the robbery of one Tovrea wife: Della Tovrea, wife of E.A. Tovrea, who lived in the Tovrea Mansion in Phoenix.

Della died from illness in 1969, but another Tovrea wife would be murdered while in her sleep.

Jeanne and Ed Tovrea

This week, my story concerns the murder of Jeanne Tovrea, who married E.A. Tovrea's son, Edward Tovrea.

E.A. was long dead by this time, of course.  And his son Edward had already fought in a war, been married, had children and divorced before he met Arkansas-born Jeanne Gunter, a pretty woman who had taken a job as a cocktail waitress when she first arrived in The Valley but had marshalled her forces and become a successful realtor by the time she met Edward.  




The two were married about a year later, in 1973, and all seemed perfect from the outside: the couple enjoyed connubial bliss, while Valley society welcomed Jeanne with open arms and found her a person who fit right into the social set.

But, the kids weren't happy.  Edward Tovrea Jr., better known as "Hap," and his sisters, Georgia and Priscilla, considered their father's new wife to be a gold-digger who belonged behind the counter at a cocktail lounge, rather than hobnobbing with their dad.

The PV home

Roughly a decade after Ed Sr. married Jeanne, his health began to decline.  Friends say that she was with him constantly until he died in 1983.  Hap and his sisters each received $200,000 upon their father's death.  This was distributed in $1,500 monthly payments to each adult child.  But, Hap and his sisters were unhappy that their father had left the bulk of his $8 million estate -- including an expensive home in Paradise Valley (not the Tovrea Mansion in Phoenix), as well as an expensive art collection -- to a woman they considered a gold-digger.  A woman who continued her high-society life after what others termed "a suitable period of mourning" their father's death.

Jeanne was shot in this bed.

Around 7:00 pm on April Fools Day of 1988, Jeanne spoke with her sister by phone, explaining that she had been preparing invitations for a society party she planned to host.  Six hours later, she would be dead: shot in the head five times while she lay in bed.  It looked to police as if she had been shot while sleeping; there were no signs of struggle.

Entry Point

Interestingly, the killer had entered through a kitchen window -- touted as the one point that permitted an intruder to disarm the alarm system on entry.  Evidence then indicated he made a beeline straight to Jeanne's bedroom, as if he were familiar with the house. Though her costume jewelry had been strewn about the bedroom, and Jeanne's purse with her credit cards and ID was missing, expensive jewelry in the next room lay undisturbed.  That undisturbed jewelry, and one other indication marred the look of an inside job: the killer had evidently tripped the burglar alarm on exit, when he opened the Arcadia door to make his escape.

The Prints on the Window

Added to this, among the finger prints found at the scene, 18 prints had been left by a single individual, including some on the kitchen window where the killer had entered.  Those prints did not match anyone in the family, or any known associates of Jeanne.


As investigators worked the case, they also discovered that Jeanne had evidently been the victim of a stalker during the final weeks of her life.  She had been contacted by a certain Gordon Phillips, who claimed he was a freelancer for Time-Life and wanted to interview her, about her late husband's POW experiences, for Time magazine.

Ed senior had spent time as a POW during the Second World War, and was known as a bit of a hero because of this.  When Jeanne had Phillips checked out, however, she learned that Time-Life had no Gordon Phillips working for them, nor had they engaged anyone to interview her about such a story.

When "Phillips" called again, she told him she could not help him with the story.  This didn't keep him from pestering her with phone calls, though.  When she didn't answer his calls, he began leaving messages, including one the police heard on her answering machine: "Yes, Jeanne, this is Gordon Phillips, and I have some information for you."

During this time, Jeanne also told friends that she caught glimpses of a strange man when she went out.  She would spot him at a fund raiser, or on the street.  He seemed to be dogging her footsteps.

Police tried to find a connection between the man calling himself Gordon Phillips, those 18 unknown finger prints, and the murder.  They wouldn't make the connection until 1988, however.

In two weeks, I'll let you know what they found out.

Until then: WE MISS YOU, R.T.!
(Miss you sorely and hope all is well, buddy.)
--Dixon