Don't Pluck a Star From the Sky

A fun thing about writing is we get to re-invent our natural world. Writing isn't just bringing characters to life. There's a whole sandbox of staged reality around those characters. A scene needs their go-to restaurant? Invent one! Then, if you're me, spend an hour sorting around Google for snazzy name ideas. And you can put this restaurant anywhere, even if it’s a terrible corner for business. In this story, somebody bad at the restaurant game opened a spot there. What matters is that the sandbox holds itself and the story together. Authors can be Near-Gods of Verisimilitude, truthful enough in purpose if not fact.

Last month, I sold my 39^th short story. In 38 of them, everything that happens could happen. The happenings are often improbable, but as Sherlock Holmes said many times, the improbable can be reality. There's gold in improbabilities. In those stories, I’ve invented towns, corporations, lost paintings, tennis legends, famous dishes, and yes, restaurants. What a story needs, I'll make.

If I can. The other part of Sherlock Holmes’ famous maxim is about eliminating the impossible. In fiction terms, eliminating what can't or shouldn't happen lets a story glimpse its golden opportunities. My fiction takes place on planet Earth in our dimension of whatever multiverse we’re living in. Physics applies. Gravity, electromagnetics. Human bodies function how they function, physically and physiologically. Our sun rises in the east and sets in the west because our planet rotates on a particular orbit around a particular star in a particular arm of the Milky Way. At any given time, the Moon and stars occupy a particular spot in the only sky we have.

You would think, if my rule was to ensure the stars traverse the sky as they must, I would have any star-reading character find constellations in the right spots. Well, I did. Eventually.

Let's rewind. 

It’s 2017, and I have just invented a fictional boat. An older boat, big enough for bluewater ocean crossing but small enough not to need much crew. And I have just thrown a guy off the boat. That seemed a pretty good way to force a bunch of action. First thing, the guy tries reading the stars to figure out where exactly he wound up adrift.

Full disclosure: The night sky looks like a web of Big Dippers to me. I’m darn good sensing my way around a new city, but if getting somewhere depends on my locating the true Ursa Major, I’m toast. 

I was not deterred. In the early drafts, I let the stranded guy see whatever sky objects made sense to him. He spotted the planet Mars, this and that constellation, and because this was the subequatorial Indian Ocean, the Southern Cross. If it didn’t work, it could get tweaked in editing.

I do edit. And I do my research. As the story formed up, I checked around for correct sky features by time, date, and geographic location. With a proper star chart, adjustments would be easy. Eventually.

What needed to get fixed? Mars: Not visible from that location at that time. Constellation this and that: Not visible. Any of them. The Southern Cross: Not visible. Honestly, it’s hard to get stuff this instinctively wrong, but I pulled it off. I’d invented a magic sky.

I couldn’t move the boat’s location. The plot hinges on a round trip to Perth, Australia, and the characters’ motivations would collide soon on the homeward leg. I was also constrained by date. Seasonal monsoon conditions would deter small boats for months at a time. I couldn’t just press the easy button and switch to daylight. The guy’s ability to sort-of navigate by the stars was core to both back and front story. And eventually, after too many writing sessions and much banging my head on the desk, after teaching myself the Southern sky and playing with geolocations and sunsets, I found an actual starscape the guy would’ve actually seen.

The immutable laws of our universe are not the fun part of writing. They’re essential, though, if we want an improbably real-world story told well. In this case, a story also sold well--"Crossing the Line, Twice," my tenth story for AHMM. I wasn't about to submit AHMM a real-world story with a magic sky.

Lesson learned? Don't pluck stars from the sky and move them around. Writers don't have that power. A wrong lesson might’ve been to skip a try at star navigation. Where is the sport and reward of writing if we don’t expand our personal horizons?

And anyway, maybe next time I’ll plop a floating restaurant out near Sumatra. I’m not saying it’s a probable location, but it’s not impossible.

Historical Mystery Revisited

With the release of my latest book, I thought it might be time to revisit my first SleuthSayers article – Writing the Historical Mystery. Since the article aired in September 2016, I have had five historical mystery novels and fifteen historical mystery short stories published.

Accuracy vs. Fiction

Joseph Pulitzer wrote on his newsroom wall – “Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy.” Excellent advise for journalists but fiction writers are not journalists and we do not write history books. Historical accuracy is important in the historical mystery but is it more important than your story? I say no.

When we write historical fiction we are writing FICTION. I have a degree in European and Asian History and have had historical articles published in academic journals.

In writing academic historical articles, I strive to be as accurate as humanly possible. Nearly all history graduate students take a class in HISTORIOGRAPHY, the study of historical writing. They know unless you are an eye-witness to an historical event – and that’s one person’s subjective observation – then you must rely on first hand accounts of other contemporary witnesses or second hand accounts complied by other historians. So why worry if you get a minor detail wrong in your historical fiction as I did when I had a character wearing a Banlon shirt several years before Banlon was introduced? Oh, yes. Someone caught me and I had to miss recess that day. Same thing happened when I put a Parker T-ball jotter in a private eye's hand a few years before Parker distributed the pen. Wrong. An easy fix.

Historians in critically-acclaimed history books also get things wrong. Ever read history books of the Napoleonic Wars? British Historians and French Historians paint nearly opposite histories of the same period. It’s almost funny.

Back to my first statement - when we write historical fiction we are writing FICTION – I have fudged on historical accuracy to write a better story because, in my opinion, historical fiction is like someone’s name. John Smith is a SMITH, part of the SMITH family, not the JOHN family. Historical Fiction is FICTION and fiction outranks history, otherwise you’re writing a history book.

“ … fairness is not the historical novelist’s first duty,” the great historical fiction writer Bernard Cornwell pens in his notes at the end of Sword Song (2008). He is correct, of course. The duty of an historical novelist is to entertain, to elicit emotion in the reader and if mistakes of fact are made (from errors in research, by omission or by design), well, it happens.

Fiction writers make up stuff. We make up characters and events, sometimes with an historical backdrop.

Artistic license was taken when I wrote my latest, Hardscrabble Private Eye. I'm not a reporter, I'm a fiction writer.

A novel set in 1935 New Orleans. A tale of buried treasures. Diamonds. Rubies. Emeralds. A priceless stolen book. A tale of treachery with alluring femme fatales, gangsters, Mafiosi, gunfights, tommy guns peppering the night and a private eye harscrabbled in the middle.

That's all for now.

A Classic Misdirection

I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.

At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.

"Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the Third Division during the war?"

"Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion."

"I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."

We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France. Evidently he lived in this vicinity for he told me that he had just bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning.

"Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound."

"What time?"

"Any time that suits you best."

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked around and smiled.

"Having a gay time now?" she inquired.

"Much better." I turned again to my new acquaintance. "This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there—" I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, "and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation."

For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.

"I'm Gatsby," he said suddenly.

— The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Subverting expectations."

That's the flashy new phrase all the cool kids are using these days, when in truth what they're referring to is your basic old-fashioned misdirection. And it's been with us at least since the Greeks invented drama.

So. You know. Thousands of years.

The excerpt above highlights one of the best examples in modern literature of this sort of thing. And linked here is a mashup of this very scene from the novel portrayed in five different film adaptations done between 1926 and 2013. And each of them plays the scene a bit differently. The best of them build up the anticipation of the first appearance of the novel's mysterious titular character.

And when Gatsby does make his first appearance, it's practically anti-climactic. In person Gatsby is so unassuming as to be nearly forgettable, at least at first blush. The mundane reality crashes hard into the soaring fantasy of the Gatsby of rumor, of myth, of legend.

With the advent of Summer, Gatsby has been very much on my mind. This happens with me every late Spring. Maybe it's because Gatsby is in so many ways the ultimate "Summer Novel."

As such, I'll be reading it again, as I have done every Summer for the past twenty-five years. Every reading brings me delight.

A large part of the enjoyment I get out of Gatsby is from the way the reader's expectations are continuously "subverted."

Gatsby, while nothing like the legend which had grown up around him, is ironically the most honest person in the novel. Furthermore, every other character takes a cue from Gatsby in one regard: none of them is as they initially seem.

Not Gatsby's lost love, Daisy. Not her husband, Tom. Not her cousin, Nick. Not her friend Jordan Baker.

So here's my question for you, the reader: which novel have you found to most consistently subvert expectations? Give your response in the comments. and let's get to talking about it.

Next time around I talk about real life subverted initial impressions of real life individuals, how those worked out, and how these real world experiences informed my fiction in the best possible ways.

See you in the comments, and in two weeks!

The Last Roadside Attraction

  

The last Howard Johnson’s in America closed this June, in Lake George, up in the Adirondacks.  There was one in Lake Placid, too, but it went under in 2015.  The following year the second-to-last, in Bangor, Maine, turned out the lights.  Once upon a time, they were a fixture across the U.S. and Canada, familiar roadside stops – there was one in Times Square - now as forgotten as the passenger pigeon.

 

They started out in Quincy, Mass., a drugstore with a soda fountain, and Howard – there was in fact a Howard – came up with a better ice cream recipe, higher butterfat, and made a killing.  The first restaurant followed.  He franchised a second down in Orleans, on Cape Cod, and popularized the fried clam “strip” (the foot, minus the belly) which became industry standard. 

 

He weathered the stock market crash in 1929, but WWII rationing nearly put him out of business.  He saved himself with War Department contracts to serve food in Army commissaries.  Then he went after state turnpikes, which had tolls, limited access, and service plazas.  He locked up Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, and Connecticut.  It was the first major nationwide chain.

 

Me, what I remember, is driving up to Maine in the summer, and back in the 1950’s, before the turnpike to Augusta, you took Route 1, along the coast.  Somewhere along the way – I’m guessing a little way north of Portsmouth, NH, or Portland - my dad would pull into the HoJo’s.  I was crazy for the hot dogs, because they nicked them with a knife, so they swelled and popped open on the grill, and they buttered the outside of the rolls, and toasted them on the grill.  It came in a paper sleeve, and you could dress it up in yellow mustard and dill relish, and not have the whole slippery thing slide into your lap.  And of course we got ice cream sodas.  

 

An interesting thing happened, though, in the 1950’s, Brown v. Board of Education.  Howard Johnson’s, and Woolworth’s, both had a lot of outlets in the American South.  Woolworth lunch counters in the South were segregated; they wouldn’t serve black patrons.  Same with Howard Johnson’s.  The fact that these were franchise operations, not corporate, made no nevermind.  There was economic leverage applied.  I used to go to the Woolworth’s in Harvard Square.  They sold everything from notions to tropical fish you took home in plastic bag, but now, I wasn’t supposed to go the lunch counter.  A boycott had been organized, in sympathy with the sit-ins to integrate Southern lunch counters.  Then a Howard Johnson’s in Delaware made the national news when they refused service to a visiting diplomat from Ghana, and there was more than enough embarrassment to go around, the Eisenhower administration trying to build bridges to the Third World as a counterweight to Soviet influence, and Jim Crow making them out to be hypocrites. 

 

It’s a little strange, and not a little scary, that we can connect that ten-year-old kid with his hot dog and an ice cream soda to a larger and more ambiguous circumstance, the Cold War and the nuclear threat, the struggle for personal respect and ordinary decency, and the realization that political change is both local and glacial, but that experience was in fact one of my earliest encounters with the wider world – an understanding that the boundaries I took to be solid as stone, family, neighborhood, tribe, were as brittle as glass, and afforded no protection.  The world could break in.  There were more than twenty-eight flavors.  The story we believed was a comforting construct, a fiction we’d chosen, just one among many. 

I don’t know that it made me apprehensive, so much.  More of an insight, that this was the world grown-ups inhabited, all day and every day.  It was a small glimpse of wisdom.

But still, admittedly, a lot to read into a hot dog. 

A Text Mess

Some weeks ago, I posted a few voice-to-text hiccups that found their way into
probable cause documents I had been tasked to review. Since then, a couple more have caught my eye and proven too good to ignore.

The other night, a police officer arrived at a domestic disturbance, separated the warring parties, and started talking to the man. The officer in the probable cause affidavit noted that from the defendant’s speech, mannerisms, and behavior, it was obvious, the report stated, that the arrestee had been “heavenly drinking.”

Without further elaboration, I could only guess that his speech involved promises to “smote thine enemy” and the mannerisms include the waving of “his rod or staff.” The police transported him, presumably not to a land flowing with milk and honey.

Jlcoving, CCBY-SA3.0, Creative Commons.org

A different officer arrested a young man and, during the subsequent search of his person, located a short glass tube blackened with burn marks. The officer, helpfully, identified the object in his possession as a “math pipe.”

The problem with these little typos is not that I can’t figure out what the officer intended to say, but rather they encourage flights of imagination. One minute I’m reading the case report and the next I’m composing a story problem.

Mark bought an eight-ball from his hook-up. How many dime bags can he get from this? Mark took a hit from his math pipe. His hand shot into the air. Thirty-five, he answered. (The answer might depend on the reliability of your dealer and is always subject to the local conditions of your market.)

Of course, interpretation errors cannot always be blamed on the software.

Years ago, I joined the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. Back then, the first stop for a newly hired prosecutor was the traffic appeals court. Defendants had the right to a trial de novo on some traffic tickets. We new kids rotated in and out, staying only until a “real” spot opened in one of the regular misdemeanor courts. We would then transfer, and our important selves would move on to prosecuting Class A and B misdemeanors. Don M. was the lawyer permanently hired into the traffic appeals court. He would remain behind to welcome the next new hire.

Don was a weathered attorney, typically in a brown suit. He had traded the stress of an active criminal practice for a steady paycheck and good insurance. (Life choices I better understand now than I did at the time.) The morning docket involved long lists of cases from around Dallas County. Don stood before the judge and stated the government’s position as each case was called. He spoke in a low voice, mumbled, and expressed himself in a code that had been refined to efficiently describe the state of each case to the presiding judge.

“Hiram Bedder,” I heard him routinely tell the judge, and the ticket disappeared.

I didn’t know who Hiram Bedder was or why he had such control over the flow of traffic ticket cases in Dallas County.

I could have asked, but that’s not the normal response of a newly licensed lawyer who’s been validated as special smart. Instead, I wondered and assumed one day I’d meet Lawyer Bedder somewhere in the office’s hallways.

I later learned that Don was saying “higher and better.” The officers had also filed a more serious charge, often driving while intoxicated, in addition to the traffic violation. The district attorney’s office would dismiss the minor charge and not allow the defense to essentially depose the arresting officers. (There was also a jurisprudential question of double jeopardy back in the day, but we don’t need to get all in the weeds on the legal issue.)

My brain went voice-to-text on Don’s speech and completely misfired. I can only imagine where it might have ended up if I’d been drinking heavenly?

Until next time. 

Crime Conn '22

Last Saturday, I attended a writing conference for the first time in much too long. The in-person attendance was sparse, but many people chose to attend on Zoom. I considered that, but I knew a few writers attending and wanted to catch up. Besides, Tess Gerritsen was the Guest of Honor and Alison Gaylin was on a panel and I wanted to meet them both, especially since Gaylin's The Collective may be the best book I've read so far this year.

The "Changes" panel getting ready

Crime Conn is now a regular event (barring the pandemic) at the Ferguson Library in Stamford, CT, about 35 miles west of New Haven. That makes it an hour's drive for me, and I got there in time for coffee and donuts and greeting a few friends before the presentations began. The program offered five 45-minute panels with time in between to buy books and get them signed. You can never have too many books and never meet too many crime writers, who are among the most generous people on earth.

The theme of this year's conference was The End of the World As We Knew It, complete with the REM track introducing the festivities. For the music buffs, the panels were "Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes," examining what's different for writers now; "The Eve of Destruction," discussing whether or not this is the Apocalypse; "Forever Young," presenting three YA authors explaining how they help young readers navigate the New Crazy; "Psycho Killer," three current or former law enforcement officers and a death investigator from the CT State Medical Examiner; and "I'll Be There For You," looking at how the last two years of isolation, hostility, and shifting rules have helped writers create or maintain relationships. The final presentation, "Doctor My Eyes," featured John Valeri, a Connecticut book critic and one of mystery writingt's best friends, interviewing Tess Gerritsen.

MWA Chapter Pres Al Tucher
welcomes the guests

I'm pretty sure Chris Knopf, one of the organizers, came up with the titles. That night, he would be playing bass in a band. He and I shared tales of how arthritis affects our guitar playing, but he's still probably much better than I am.

Rather than discuss each panel in depth, here are a few pithy comments from the writers.

From the Changes panel: Multi-racial and gender identity are important in this changing world. Roughly 10% of today's kids are multi-racial, but only 1% of the books out there have a multi-racial character. We have to represent "Different" accurately.

The Eve of Destruction panel asked "Will pandemic books sell?" The idea reappeared in other panels, but the prevailing wisdom is that 9/11 books still don't (the only exception I know might be SJ Rozan's Absent Friends), and we're still too close to Covid. When asked about upping the ante in today's world, the authors stressed that the best approach is not to amp up the crime, but to become more human. I was one of many who appreciated that emphasis on character over "stuff."

The YA writers (I bought books by two of them because they impressed me on the panel) pointed out that backstory informs character NOW. What in the past will make them afraid in the present?

The law enforcement officers explained, among other things, how Covid has changed policing. The New Haven detective observed that the streets were much quieter at first, and that she became leery of interacting with the public. All three panelists tried to minimize arrests and bringing people into enclosed cells. They agreed they'd seen an increase in domestic violence. One officer-turned-writer has not yet included Covid in his work and commented, "It's easier to read and write about adversity after it's over."

Audience at left. The tables of books for sale
in the background

Wendy Corso Staub and Alison Gaylin shared many writers' problems with trying to write when they were no longer alone all day because their hsuband was working from home and the children were learning online instead of in a school. Staub reverted to early morning writing as she did years ago. She would feed her infant child, then stay up and write for several hours before going back to bed. Over the last two years of lockdown, she has completed four novels. 

Tess Gerritsen wanted to write from the time she was seven, but her parents encouraged her to study other fields. She majored in anthropology as an undergrad, became a physician, and plays several musical instruments between writing now. She said, "It doesn't matter what you study, it matters what you LIVE."

The gathering was small enough so writers and audience mingled easily. There was a writing workshop during the lunch break for those who were interested, too.

I sat at a table with Lynn, now working on her first nonfiction book, and Chris, who has not written anything… yet. They both attended the writing workshop. As the conference wound down, they weren't the only ones who looked eager to get back home so they could resume writing.

That's what a good conference does.

Happiness is a Warm Gun

Obsessives make me cringe– drugs, religion, politics, hero worship. The literal meaning of idée fixe suggests the rational brain has locked up and passion has seized control.

In gun control arguments (the late, great ‘debate’ was strangled in its sleep), I haven’t seen admissions about feelings and the emotional relationship of gun ownership. Denial of feelings represents a fundamental dishonesty.

A rare exception is the Beatles’ song, ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ on their White Album found in an ammoerotic movement called ‘The Gunman’. Inspiration came from a May 1968 NRA American Rifleman article called, what else, ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’.

Happiness is a warm gun.

Bang, bang, shoot, shoot

When I hold you in my arms

And when I feel my finger on your trigger

I know nobody can do me no harm

Because

Happiness is a warm gun.

Bang, bang, shoot, shoot

I bring this up because from a young age, I felt comfort, I felt empowerment when I holstered cap pistols and later, a Peacemaker Colt B.B. replica. I didn’t grow up with the television exposure David Edgerley Gates wrote about, but I absorbed it in school. I’d tramp through forest and farm and field unafraid.

Industry lobbyists and politicians promote that illusion, that a gun keepa you safe, it protecta you. They like to forget that when you rode into Tombstone or Abilene, you checked your guns. The Earp brothers understood that, but a century and a half later, we fail to internalize the simple concept that we’re not safer.

1839 Colt Paterson

American engineering in the latter 1800s was brilliant and Colt Arms was no less so. The 1839 Colt Paterson had one of the cleverest safeties; the trigger remained invisibly tucked inside until the hammer was cocked. The 1847 Colt Walker that followed set the blueprint for the Navy Colt and Army Colt, and the six-guns that won the West.

They were also peculiarly seductive. The heft seemed natural. The grip fit either hand without effort, better than today’s pseudo-ergonomic designs of, say the Colt Python. I surmise its grip’s rear convex curve may help it not snag on clothing if you’re rushing to shoot your wife’s lover, but the concave tang of an 1800s Colt grip feels more secure in the hand. Like I said, seductive.

1847 Colt Walker

Some people take that literally. I'm pretty certain a squirmy little security guard at a client found great excitement and, er, pleasure in his acquisition of a dodgy Saturday Night Special. And we've written about a Florida woman who also took great pleasure in a motel parking lot with a loaded, yes, loaded automatic. If people fetishize bridges and bicycles, the leap to a Beretta might be smaller than we admit. Nothing like proximity to death to get the blood pumping.

1851 Colt Navy

Then there's the religiously obsessed, the true believers who massage warm oil into their current love and find it impossible to converse without bringing up the latest gadget to convert their AR into a fully automatic rifle. In chat rooms, they discuss which ammunition they should use to liquefy brains or flay muscle from bone, because hollow-points and explosive tips are so last season. There was a type of shotgun round that spread in flight, a whirligig of sharp metal and tiny wires that was touted to inflict incredible damage to the human body. But let us not forget the holy grail of gunnery, finding a way to encapsulate a drop of mercury in a lead slug for theorized maximum expansion.

1860 Colt Army

Many of these wishful warriors look forward to eliminating 'libtards' from the landscape, without being certain quite why. Hate radio, of course, and the venerable NRA American Rifleman regularly feature articles about 'the war on guns' or some such fear.

Most listeners and readers don't realize thirty years ago, the 2^nd Amendment of the Constitution was treated very differently. While it was never uncontroversial, a couple of events changed the terrain.

Weapon manufacturers took over the NRA hobbyist club, turning it into a political lobbyist powerhouse. And Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reinterpreted the 2^nd Amendment to mean open season.

1980 Colt Python

With a math and science background, I’m more likely to regale readers with the horrifying bullet points of American gun ownership, • how we kill nearly a thousand of our fellow countrymen a month, • how we average more than a multiple/mass shooting every day of the year (we’re way ahead this year, 233 mass shootings in 150 days), • that the US population is 330-million but every American man, woman, and child owns a total of 400-million guns– twice as many as the armies on the planet combined.

But gun control advocates overlook the heartfelt feelings of gun ownership, the deep-seated relationship between a man (or woman) and his/her gun. Statistics aren’t meaningful for them because he– or she– is different. The averages don’t apply to them.

Yet the spilling of visceral feelings are a frighteningly small step from spilling one’s viscera.

The TL;DR summary means we need to find a way to deal with the deep emotions of gun ownership.

And when I feel my finger on your trigger

I know nobody can do me no harm

Because

Happiness is a warm gun.

Bang, bang, shoot, shoot

Saving Mrs. Hapwell, Over and Over

  

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

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

The story that wouldn't give up . . .

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

Dogwood Tales Magazine, March/April 1997 issue

Mystery Time, Spring/Summer 2000

Desert Voices, December 2004

Taj Mahal Review, December 2005

Crime & Suspense, February 2006

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

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

Kings River Life, May 2020

Crimeucopia: As in Funny Ha-Ha, August 2021

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

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

The second, third, and fourth times around

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

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

105 Literary Magazines Accepting Reprints

Where to Submit Reprints

18 Magazines Accepting Reprints

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

Questions for the class

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

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

See you in two weeks.

Amish Mafia. In COLOR!

Source: Discovery Networks

 So about eight or nine years ago, Discovery ran a show supposedly about The Amish Mafia. It centered on a Lancaster, PA man named Levi who never entered the faith but was tasked with "collecting" for an Amish benevolent society. His methods were... um... questionable. Part of the show took place in Holmes County, Ohio and centered on a religious zealot named Merlin, who would declare to the camera that "Amish do not..." whatever it is had his dander up that particular moment.

In interviews, Merlin would boast about how he was a wanted man in Holmes and nearby Stark County. 

Yeah. About that.

I am tangentially related to the sheriff in Holmes County. He was the one who got word back to my family that my dad died. His niece is my first cousin once removed. And her grandmother (my aunt) grew up Amish. So, what did the sheriff of Holmes County think of one of his most dangerous citizens having a reality show?

"Honestly, I never heard of him until this show came on the air."

It gets better. My cousin knows all about the Amish not only from her grandmother but from spending a good chunk of her childhood in Holmes County. You can't not do business with them, nor would you want to try. Fire wood, food, furniture, these are things they excel at and sell to us "English". Plus, they're the neighbors. Usually, good neighbors. So when my cousin tuned into this show listening to Merlin pontificate about what is and isn't Amish (or better still, watching Levi tool around greater Philadelphia in a Cadillac Bruce Wayne would love to retrofit for his fleet of Batmobiles), let's just say her head exploded.

My personal favorite was Merlin declaring, "The Amish do not drink!"

I heard some snickering coming from the direction of a cemetery in nearby Fredericksburg, where my parents are buried. In fact, given that I was in suburban Cincinnati at the time, I'd say it was a hearty guffaw from beyond the grave by my late father. Dad once informed me that the Amish not only drank beer, but they brew their own. And apparently, steeped in German purity laws (for they are German and Swiss), their beer will knock you on your ass. (And they don't sell it, which kind of sucks as I haven't known any Amish on a first-name basis since about 1990.) The Amish do indulge in a lot of things Merlin declares are just not done. But Amish communities are so insular and segregated that guys like Levi and Merlin can make a bullshit show depicting a supposed Mafia (of which both considered themselves dons.) 

In the interest of diversity, some of those on the show were Mennonites, 'cuz Mennonites have cars and electricity. However...

Quite a few have televisions. I assume not that many watched Amish Mafia. And then there are the Brethren. The show has them wearing a lot of flannel, suspenders, driving older cars, and basically being Amish for the twenty-first century.

Uh huh.

Allow me to set the record straight. I grew up Brethren. At the age of four, I discovered Star Trek when my parents subscribed to cable (In a valley. You watched cable or the NFL wasn't happening.) and bought one of those large color TVs that were basically furniture. My dad drove a 1971 Fairlane he bought new. Mom listened to Johnny Cash and Elvis. When I came of age, I blasted KISS and Blondie.

So, how does a Brethren family get away with that if Amish Mafia says their Amish-lite?

If you haven't picked up on it by now, Levi (who is also executive producer of the show. Hmm...) and Merlin are selling a fantasy. I suspect one or both of them read a lot of Elmore Leonard. Too bad we're not getting Justified out of the deal. Now that was a show. The Brethren do, in fact, have their roots in what's called the Anabaptist tradition. Which also gave us the Baptists. Who drive new cars, stream, and listen to a lot of Blake Shelton and Imagine Dragons. The Brethren are more Baptist-lite than Amish-lite. Indeed, my parents walked away because they leaned into the hippie movement more, and they wanted to be more traditional. The pastor when I was in junior high went to Woodstock, argued about the merits of Deep Purple with me (He was more a coffee-house acoustic guy), and was trying to restore a battered Alfa Romeo in his spare time.

In other words, they were no more bizarre than your office coworkers. (Bad example. Some of my coworkers over the years have left me questioning my own sanity.) 

Amish Mafia reached peak absurdity after it was canceled by Discovery. Levi and Merlin decided to appear on Dr. Phil so Phil could mediate their "dispute." They basically took over the show, which is the only time I actually sympathized with Dr. Phil. 

More recently, I sent out a novel for a read before I do final revisions and give it to my publisher. I got the most curious note back. "Is there really an Amish mafia?"

There's probably something like it, but, as the actual Sicilian mafia would say, "Our thing is secret." The Amish struggle with the same things as everyone else, which means someone somewhere in one of the communities is exploiting the culture's rigid customs to their advantage. It's hard to say because they don't call the police until it gets beyond their capacity to deal with it. Plus, with few phones (usually a community phone or an English neighbor's mobile), 911 is not the push of a button it is for most of us. 

But most Amish I've known over the years are honest, hardworking, and shrewd. I'd venture to say that my cousins with the formerly Amish mother got their business sense from them. Two of the brothers run a thriving angus farm that took over for their father's dairy operation while the oldest is a real estate wizard.

And not a Levi in sight. Unfortunately, because Merlin prowls my old stomping grounds in NE Ohio, I'll probably run into him at some point.

Maybe I'll ask him if he can get me Dr. Pimple Popper's autograph. My young cousin will think that's hilarious.

Let's Talk About the Laws

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things— (Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight)

In the wake of the tragedy at Uvalde, I am seriously disheartened (and thoroughly pissed, I might add) by the number of people whose first reaction has been some variation of, "YOU'RE NOT TOUCHING MY GUNS!"  Cold dead hands, and all that.  

“It takes a monster to kill children. But to watch monsters kill children again and again and do nothing isn’t just insanity—it’s inhumanity.” — Amanda Gorman

The other major reaction is "We already have the most regulated guns in the world!" which is hogwash, and/or "We have lots of laws, we just need to enforce them!"

But do we really have such strict laws? I thought I'd check into it, and the short answer is "No.  No, we don't."

BACKGROUND CHECKS

Let's start off with background checks.  88% of Americans support enhanced background checks. Our not-so-friendly 2^nd Amendment absolutists tell us we already have that. So what kind of background checks do we have right now?  

The 1993 Brady Bill "prohibits certain persons from shipping or transporting any firearm in interstate or foreign commerce, or receiving any firearm which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, or possessing any firearm in or affecting commerce. These prohibitions apply to any person who:

• Has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
• Is a fugitive from justice;
• Is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance;
• Has been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution;
• Is an alien illegally or unlawfully in the United States;
• Has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions;
• Having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced U.S. citizenship;
• Is subject to a court order that restrains the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner, or;
• Has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

(Some people bring up the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007, but it was repealed by the Trump administration in 2017, so I'm not even going to get into that.)

Anyway, the Brady Bill sounds really good, doesn't it?  Except there are loopholes. LOTS of loopholes:

The Reporting Hole:

Some places don't forward the records.  

State and local agencies are not required by law to report criminal records to the FBI.  In most cases, local agencies don’t have a system in place for submitting the names of people with restraining orders or domestic violence convictions to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) — so those names simply aren’t entered.  

And, even when reported, well: Just because someone’s name is not entered in NICS doesn’t necessarily mean that a federal gun background check reviewer wouldn’t raise a red flag at the point of sale. That’s because background checkers also check two other databases, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and the Interstate Identification Index, which contain more arrest records. But those records aren’t always complete, and may require further investigation by the reviewer. For example, they don’t always indicate whether an arrest was followed by a conviction. Or a court record might not specify the relationship between perpetrator and victim. If tracking down that information takes more than 72 hours, a gun dealer can make the sale anyway.   (The Trace)  (my emphasis added)

And while Federal agencies - like the military - are required by law to report them, in 2014 the Inspector General found that the Defense Department was still not reporting them.  10 years of not reporting. In 2015, they still weren't reporting 30% of them.  And the service branches do not have a dedicated office that handles such notifications (NYTimes).  

NOTE:  Under the military code, there is no such charge as domestic violence.

Also, various city, county, and state law enforcement agencies often do not report convictions for domestic violence, stalking, harrassing, etc., specifically because they would take away the right to carry a firearm, and guess what a lot of law enforcement do every day?  Yep. So they're off the grid, too.

The National Database Loophole:

There is no national database of who's bought what gun(s).  And that's ALWAYS been opposed by the NRA. 

Meanwhile, many of anti-abortion states want to set up a state / national database of women's menstrual periods, via tapping Planned Parenthood information (which Missouri actually has already done LINK), and various smart devices and hospital records (just in case you got a D&C for a miscarriage and not an abortion, you're going to have to prove it).  No national gun registry, but by God, let's register all women's most intimate health cycles. Next thing you know, I'll have to have a doctor's notarized statement that I'm past menopause to cross state lines - oh, yeah, they're working on laws to stop pregnant women from doing exactly that.  

Call me cynical, but I get the feeling that the GOP considers all gunowners as potential heroes, but all women as potential criminals - and legislate accordingly. 

The Gun Show Loophole:

Only gun dealers have to do background checks. Private sellers don't have to do any background checks at all, whether at gun shows, parking lots, neighbors, Internet, private ads, etc. And your relatives can buy you any gun(s) they want. 

The Who You Are Loophole:

The Boyfriend Loophole - Federal domestic violence laws don’t include people who never lived with, or had a child with, the perpetrator. Known as the “boyfriend loophole,” the omission allows many abusers to buy guns even if there’s been a violent assault that leads to a criminal conviction. About a third of states have laws that aim to bridge this gap, but that leaves 2/3rds off the grid.

The Sibling Loophole - Under federal law, the abuse of a sibling doesn’t trigger a gun ban.  

The Stalker Loophole - Stalkers convicted of misdemeanor crimes are not prohibited by federal law from buying or possessing guns. According to a 1999 study, 76 percent of women who were murdered by intimate partners were first stalked by their killer.  (The Trace)  

GHOST GUNS:

"Domestic terrorists and racially motivated extremists are increasingly arming themselves with homemade, untraceable “ghost guns,” a threat that is now a top public safety concern for law enforcement, according to a leaked U.S. government report.

"The six-page report by the Joint Counterterrorism Assessment Team — a coalition of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including the FBI — warns that such extremist groups are gravitating to guns and gun accessories that can be made using do-it-yourself kits or 3D printers. Ghost guns can be acquired without background checks and their lack of serial numbers makes them nearly impossible to trace, complicating criminal investigations."  (The Trace)

73% of Americans support a plan to enforce safety measures on the sale and procurement of ghost guns.

NRA Stance: "The Constitution does not authorize the federal government to prevent you from making your own firearm. This a fact that has been recognized for 200+ years." (Fox)

My Note:  Got news for you, NRA. Our Founding Fathers weren't sitting around making their own muzzle-loaders and dueling pistols. They bought them, like everyone else did.  

AGE LIMITS ON GUNS:

72% of Americans support the idea of raising the legal age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old.

BUT:  "Federal law allows people as young as 18 to buy long guns, including rifles and shotguns, and only a handful of states have enacted laws raising the minimum age to 21. There’s no federal minimum age for the possession of long guns, meaning it’s legal to give one to a minor in more than half the country....
"44 states that allow 18-year-olds to buy long guns, including semiautomatic rifles, according to Giffords Law Center, which tracks state and federal gun laws. Only six states have raised their long gun purchasing age to 21: California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Vermont, and Washington State. Americans are meanwhile not allowed to purchase alcohol or cigarettes until they are 21."  (The Trace)

Informational:  Since Columbine, there have been 244 school shootings, with more than 311,000 students involved. 185 children, educators and other people have been killed in assaults, and another 369 have been injured.  7 in 10 of the shooters were under 18, which means some adult gave them at least one weapon, or access to it.  (Wapo) and (AP)  

Also, there are no federal restrictions on how many guns you can own. Thus, Texas has no restrictions on how many guns you can own, but it does limit ownership of sex toys to six (section 43.23 of Texas’ penal code).  

ASSAULT WEAPONS:

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was a ten-year ban enacted in 1994, which included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms that were defined as assault weapons as well as certain ammunition magazines that were defined as large capacity. When it expired in 2004, attempts were made to renew it, but they all failed. (Wikipedia)

When the assault weapons ban was lifted in 2004, a there were 400,000 AR-15 style rifles in America at that time. Today, there are at least 20 million. 

Banning assault-style weapons: Sixty-seven percent strongly or somewhat support; 25% strongly or somewhat oppose.  (Politico)  

OPEN / CONCEALED CARRY:

25 states allow permitless concealed carry.

39 states allow permitless open carry. 

RED FLAG LAWS:

Red Flag Laws permit police or family members to petition a state court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person who may present a danger to others or themselves. You would think this would be an obvious gun safety practice - Gov. Abbott (TX) and the entire GOP have been making major speeches about dealing with "the mental health crisis" in this country. 

Meanwhile, Gov. Abbott and the Texas Legislature passed a law eliminating ANY permit requirement for guns — and then slashed $211 million from Texas’s mental health budget.  

So far only 19 states have some kind of Red Flag law in place, but Oklahoma has an anti-red flag law. The law specifically "prohibits the state or any city, county or political subdivision from enacting red flag laws."  And South Dakota's own Governor Kristi Noem proudly announced:

"In 2020, I blocked bills proposing unconstitutional red-flag laws to strip citizens of their right to bear arms. The following year, I signed “stand your ground” legislation, and I further protected your right to purchase guns and ammo during emergency declarations. This year, I repealed all concealed carry permit fees for state residents, which is necessary to remain in good legal standing in other states with stricter gun laws. It won’t cost you a penny to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights." (LINK)  (Emphasis added)

NOTE: BTW, "Stand Your Ground" legislation, as I have said before, specifically denies people prosecutorial immunity under SYG if “[t]he person against whom the defensive force is used or threatened has the right to be in or is a lawful resident of the dwelling, [or] residence . . . such as an owner, lessee, or titleholder, and there is not an injunction for protection from domestic violence or a written pretrial supervision of no contact order against that person.” I.e., a victim of domestic abuse can't claim SYG if it's her husband. Or her father. 

So welcome to a major Catch-22:  Federal Background Check laws don't cover boyfriends or stalkers or siblings, and SYG doesn't cover spouses or fathers.  Ladies, you're screwed.  (Read more at Treason's True Bed.)

AND FINALLY,  A SHORT HISTORY OF THE NRA:

Up until the 1970s the NRA actually opposed private ownership of guns. 

Karl Frederick, NRA president in 1934, during the congressional NFA (National Firearms Act) hearings testified "I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I seldom carry one. ... I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses." The NRA supported both the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 (enacted after the assassinations of RFK and MLK Jr.), which created a system to federally license gun dealers and established restrictions on particular categories and classes of firearms. 

NOTE:  The 1967 California Mulford Act, which prohibited open carry of loaded firearms, was a direct result of increasing gun ownership among black people, especially members of the Black Panthers. It was supported 100% by the NRA. Governor Ronald Reagan signed the bill, and said he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons" and that guns were a "ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will." In a later press conference, Reagan added that the Mulford Act "would work no hardship on the honest citizen."  (HISTORY) and (WIKIPEDIA)

And then in the late 1970s a faction of the NRA decided to go political, heavily backing the GOP and promoting the idea of a personal right to own private weapons. It took a while, but in 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller became the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense or if the right was intended for state militias. They plumped for self-defense.  (NRA)

There's a long 200+ year stretch between the Founding Fathers and the we must have the right to own every type of firearm and carry it wherever we want to at all times line.

Sigh…

From the Conservative Response Archives:

"As harsh as this sounds—your dead kids don't trump my Constitutional rights … We still have the Right to Bear Arms … Any feelings you have toward my rights being taken away from me, lose those." Joe Wurzelbacher, a/k/a Joe the Plumber, after the 2014 Isla Vista killings (killed 6, injured 14).

I guess he warned us where this was going. But there's no way on God's sweet green earth that I'm going to agree with it.

So, gun bans and confiscation? A disarmed, defenseless, and compliant population, whose security and freedom are simply dependent on the goodwill of others? Is that where you'd like to take us?

(1) See the Reagan quote above and (2) Actually, yes, I would like to see us dependent on the goodwill of others, the way we used to be not that long ago.  And considering this was posted on a conservative Christian website, all I can say is his church is woefully poor at reading the Gospels. 

A pencil can be an assault weapon.

But you can't kill as many with one as you can with an AR-15, can you?

"More than ever, we're held hostage by the pro-life American ethos: Life begins at conception and ends with a Second Amendment execution." — Dick Polman

What the hell has happened to us?

Today in Mystery History: June 1

Today we have the 11th episode in our continuing celebration of the history of our field.  Enjoy.

June 1, 1879. Freeman Wills Crofts was born this day in Dublin, Ireland. He was a railroad engineer and an interest (or obsession) with railroad timetables showed up in many of his novels.  (Monty Python did a sketch I can't find on Youtube which is clearly a parody of  Crofts.)

June 1, 1923.  An important day indeed!  The issue of Black Mask with this date featured Carroll John Daly's story "Knights of the Open Palm." It is the first appearance by Race Williams, who is recognized as the first hardboiled private eye character.

June 1, 1929.  Thriller Magazine featured "The Judgement of the Joker," apparently the first short story to feature Lesley Charteris' immortal character Simon Templar, alias The Saint.

June 1, 1934. Dime Detective featured "The Corpse Control" by John Lawrence.  It stars New York private eye Cass Blue.  Kevin Burton Smith said the Blue stories were "all rendered in pulpster Lawrence's trademark first person, over-boiled prose style, full of gunflights and plot holes."

June 1, 1950. Michael McDowell was born in Enterprise, Alabama.  He co-wrote several mystery novels with Dennis Schuetz under the name Nathan Aldyne.  He also wrote a very weird series of detective books about Jack and Susan, who never age.  He is probably best known for a non-mystery screenplay: Beetlejuice.

June 1, 1959. Sax Rohmer died in London.  Born Arthur Henry Ward, he became famous for inventing the ultimate sinister Oriental, Dr. Fu Manchu.  For obvious reasons, his works are not held in high regard today.  Ironically (?) he died of the Asian Flu.

June 1, 1968.  Not really mystery, but maybe mystery adjacent?  On this date Patrick McGoohan's  fascinating, infuriating, spy-science-fiction-sui-generis-none-of-the-above TV series, The Prisoner, made its American debut on CBS.  It looks dated today, but it was a stunning piece of storytelling for its time.

June 1, 1969. The front page of the New York Times Book Review  was a rhapsodic review of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novel The Underground Man, crafted by famous screenwriter William Goldman.  It was supposedly a deliberate attempt by editor John Leonard to promote his favorite mystery writer to bestseller-dom and recognition as a major mainstream writer.  The review achieved at least the first goal. 

June 1, 1991.  The publication date for The Summer of the Danes, Ellis Peters' eighteenth medieval mystery featuring Brother Cadfael.

June 1, 2021.  The Bombay Prince, Sujata Massey's third novel of 1920s India, was published.  It was nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Historical Mystery.