West of Here

I was driving through West Texas when a story idea struck me.

I'm speaking about West Texas, the geographically vague portion of my state that is, well, west. That landmass, by the way, does not include West, Texas, the Czech community located in the central part of the state. You'll likely pass through there if you're heading down to visit Michael Bracken in Waco. Should you be near that West, pause, pull over, and take a kolache break. They're pretty good. 

It's hard to pin down the precise borders of West Texas, the region. Some people set the boundary at the Brazos River. Others argue that the line is linguistic. The border between East Texas and West Texas gets crossed when twang slides into drawl. 

Basil the Bat Lord, Creative Commons

The boundary may be imprecise, but at some point, westbound motorists realize they've entered West Texas. 

A while back, a friend and I were driving to Lubbock. His Texas Tech football team was squaring off against my alma mater. He'd offered me a ticket. 

Many miles of semi-arid country separate the communities in that region. When you come to a town, you notice. 

Every community, everywhere, has character and characters, but I think the isolation of the towns in West Texas encourages a particular eccentricity. No town can model itself on the neighboring community because, likely as not, there isn't one. Each hamlet is a big fish. 

Lubbock came to be an urban oasis in the middle of the high plains. It fostered a music scene producing most famously Buddy Holly but also a host of other musicians from both country and rock genres. 

Sweetwater chose a different direction. It celebrates its rocky isolation through an annual rattlesnake roundup. Volunteers roam the local countryside, collecting Western Diamondback Rattlers and maintaining the local wildlife population. They bring the snakes back for milking, skinning, and eating. The high school girl chosen Miss Snake Charmer will likely have to pass by the occasional PETA protester. 

A visitor to the region needs to check out Marfa. At the far end of West Texas, this town was named for a character in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Hardscrabble farmers work alongside modernist art installations. The art crowd and the agriculture crowd don't always get along. The higher prices brought about by the hip community burden the working-class locals. A casual visitor might miss the tension, distracted by the weirdness. The town has a public radio station worth a listen, public art along a farm-to-market road, a mocked-up Prada store, and supernatural lights. Some folks say the lights betray the presence of space aliens. 

There are the towns of Plainview and Levelland, so named because they're...well, you can probably figure it out. 

Post, however, is the place that really got me thinking about a story. Given the rural setting, many assume the name derives from a fence post. The town is actually named for C.W. Post, the cereal manufacturer. He sought to build a utopian community from a ranch he purchased just below the Caprock Escarpment. C. W. Post planned the town from his office in Battle Creek, Michigan. The local chamber of commerce might better testify to whether the founder's vision as a capitalist haven for hardworking, honest, simple folk was achieved. He spent years trying to better the locals' lives. He theorized, for instance, that exploding dynamite in the clouds would generate reliable rainfall. The plan failed. 

In West Texas, communities settle bragging rights on the athletic fields. This area is the home of Friday night lights. 

Quirkiness, secrets, and conflicts hidden below a seemingly peaceful surface, the settlements of West Texas have all those things. But towns everywhere probably do. All a writer needs is a Miss Marple to ferret out the truth. 

The current issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine includes my story, "The
Experimental Theater Company of Barb Wire, Texas." In it, I try to tell a whodunit while incorporating those hints of place I see when I point my car west. 

Building a sense of place when "place" is thousands of square miles and includes hundreds of independent communities presented a challenge. I thought about the elements any representation would have to include. The story must grab the peculiar oddity of the place. It would need to incorporate isolation. A West Texas story ought to have football, not only because the sport brought me to Post, but also because it is a lifeblood of the region. The short story needed a splash of art because, I think, it's an underappreciated element of West Texas. And any story had to have some cowboy spirit. 

Admittedly some elements, such as isolation and an independent protagonist, frequent many amateur sleuth mysteries. Fortunately, they are cowboy tropes and are easy to place in West Texas. The story that emerged from that germ of an idea, I hope, not only entertains but also gives a fair flavor of the land beyond the Brazos. 

What started as a trip to a football game became a research junket. That's a win. "The Experimental Theater Company of Barb Wire, Texas" was a fun story to write. I hope you enjoy reading it. 

I'll be on the road Tuesday when this posts. I apologize in advance if I'm slow to reply. 

Until next time. 

To __, or not to ___.

My computer just developed a strange glitch.  It stopped letting me type the letter that lives right after A, and ahead of C .  It’s the second letter in that thing we learn in grade school (often sung in an cloying little ditty) that I can’t name, since the word includes the letter that my computer no longer allows.  This has resulted in moments of frustration, and creative resilience, since I need to write around the impediment. 

It's not too much to ask, I think, to have access to all the letters at the tip of my fingers.  We are accustomed to this handy array, and hardly need some censorious technical quirk to interfere with the free flow of expression.  Though here I am, tethered to the need to come up with endless workarounds that I hope make sense, and with luck, still demonstrate a facility with the language. 

If you’re still wondering which letter is now out of reach, it's also the name of a stinging insect.  Think of a creature with orange stripes that zings around flowers and often lands on your egg and croissant sandwich when you’re having an outdoor, early morning repast.  I’ve come to deeply respect the utility of this letter, and wonder if the whole experience wasn’t instigated to alert my attention to its value in written discourse. 

You don’t know what you’re missing till it’s gone.   If you want to know what it’s like to live without sight, put an opaque cloth across your eyes for an hour or two.  Try walking around with one leg pulled up at the knee.  Or try writing the expression, “With one hand tied….” without that crucial letter.   Or refer to the most significant rock group in history, whose name also gives indirect reference to a common insect. 

I’m grateful the computer didn’t rule out the letter E, which that famous word game (which kicks off with an S and has two of the omitted letters in the middle) tells us is the most common.  Indispensable.  As is true of the other vowels.  Losing S would also pose a major hurdle. Try making a plural without an S.

When I write an email, spell check is now an ally, rather than a nagging, and often presumptuous, irritant.  I write a word with the missing letter, and it often offers up the correct version.  This works, though not always.  I can also scope out older documents for the word I want, copy it, and paste it in.  This also works, though I would need a longer lifespan to compose a decent amount of text. 

When writing a Word document, I would love to go to the thesaurus function to find an alternative, yet can’t write the word I’m trying to replace.  So I just mutter, “This is all such _ullshit.”

I’ve scoured Microsoft and Lenovo help screens hoping to find a quick fix, for naught.  Try asking, “Why can’t I type the letter…?” Oh, yeah.  I can’t type it.  My Apple devices, the iPad and iPhone, have no such restrictions.  This could also provide a workaround, though I can’t type nearly as fast with the two fingers scientists claim gave us an evolutionary advantage.  Good for flipping coins and catching a ride on the highway. 

I’ve determined that the world could go on without this mislaid letter, though in a very diminished state.  We would discover new creative powers, and perhaps accomplish unexpected works of art.  Yet at the end of the day, having exhausted ourselves dodging and weaving around this lexicographical curse, how satisfied would you feel saying, “I’m so tired, I just want to fall into that piece of furniture uniquely configured to facilitate sleep.” 

 

 

Prohibition Peepers part 2 — How to create book trailer video

Love that cover!

Prohibition Peepers, the trailer how-to continues from last week. Visual presentation typically drives videos, but as described last week, ours is centered around a soundtrack of a 1932 radio news broadcast. Today I'll thread two paths, a how-to for those interested simple, quick video creation and, historical notes and thoughts as I’m constructing this castle in the air.

Tools of the Trade

Any straightforward graphics apps and video creation program will do. I chose simple apps, nothing fancy.¹

Apple’s iMovie assembled pictures along with last week’s sound track, which was handed off to YouTube. Any simple video builder should work; Windows offers several options. It should be possible to create a slide show with Microsoft Power Point, but its learning curve requires more patience than I have Adderal. I opted for a dedicated video program.

It is possible to create a presentation with nothing but YouTube, but maintaining files locally felt more comfortable.

For graphics, I used both raster (bitmap) and vector images. Abandoning high-priced Adobe, I switched to Serif’s Affinity suite. It’s a clean, easy to use, inexpensive panel of picture programs. One of the best features is that Affinity files are interchangeable, meaning any Affinity program can work directly with any Affinity file. It makes life easy.²

Finally, we’ll touch upon AI.

To Err is Human

Abruptly, I made my first mistake. In the past, I’d loaded a few items to YouTube, mainly a collection of Rocky King TV shows. Visual recordings of the era weren’t locked into any one size. Historically, aspect ratios have appeared as 1:1, 3:2, 4:3, and 16:9, but others proliferated.

I erred immediately. I had decided upon YouTube’s original default 3:2 as a compromise between stretching, cropping, and ‘letterboxing’, awkward ways of dealing with aspect ratios outside the norm. After creating an initial half dozen or so 1800×1200 images, I opened iMovie… and could not find the menu item for aspect items. Annoyed, I opened YouTube’s editor… and once again could not find the menu for screen rations. They were gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Demised.

WTF? (Lithuanian for Huh?) I googled and googled and finally learned in recent versions, YouTube and iMovie have settled upon a common aspect ratio, 16:9. Damn. Never guessing both Apple and Google had finally standardized, I’d wasted valuable time and effort. Let my error guide you.

Fortunately, the waste wasn’t as bad as first thought. Many of my source images were 1800 pixels high. I settled upon 3200×1800 as my working size in the Affinity programs. A multiple of 100 and a power of two facilitates quick, mental calculations. YouTube’s HD maximum is 1920×1080, so I was over-engineering.³

Action

I had numbered each paragraph of the script and appended that same number to graphics I intended to use. iMovie permitted me to load all at once and optionally space them n seconds apart. The final result would not be evenly spaced, but 5 minutes ÷ 28 slides allowed me to spread them across the timeline, meaning each was somewhat proximate to its intended position.

1. The first slide recognized the significance of border radio, chiefly remembered in songs by the Doors, Z Z Top and others, and at least one movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou.
2. Next we hear a sly evangelist trawling for donations. I had a little fun with the picture, an interrupted letter suggesting a small story in itself. Earlier in 1932, the post office had raised first class rates from 2¢ to 3¢. On the theory people like my mother might still have 2¢ stamps, I pasted a 1932 2¢ and 1¢ on the envelope.
3. Likewise, the $2 bill series date was consistent with 1932, but a sharp detective might notice oddities. The handwriting is feminine but looks a bit young or naïve. The Reverend asks for a dollar donation, but Prunella intends to send two dollars (value of $45 today) plus a letter. He suggests a plain white envelope, but our charming correspondent selects pink lavender stationery… you can almost catch a scent of perfumed powder in it. What might happen when the Rev read the letter?
4. Unregulated patent medicines were loaded with alcohol and opiates. Little wonder laudanum became the preferred energy drink, the feel-good medication sold by the doctor’s breathy assistant. Dr Cruikshank looks awfully familiar.
5. When I was a child, ‘Tear It Down’ and other Clyde McCoy pieces appealed to me. His lip control and wah-wah mute could almost make a jazz trumpet talk. The hotel interior pictured is the real McCoy… the actual Congress Hotel ballroom.
6. A teletype introduces the news with a silent movie news placard bearing ‘A Mixed Metaphor Production’, suggesting the irony of radio visual aids hasn’t been lost.
7. The news opening referring to the incoming president and that Congress just approved 3.2% beer is factual. The next part about Ness, Moran, and Capone appears in support of the events in my story ‘Dime Detective’. Likewise the next paragraph refers to John Floyd’s story, ‘River Road’, and the awesome Windsor Manor without giving away the plot.
8. Celebrity news comes next, homicides involving a dancer and an actress (‘Getting Away Clean’ by Joseph Walker and ‘Bearcat Blues’ by Susanna Calkins). Here we make an unusual departure. Neither pictured performer is real. Each is AI computer generated using ChatGPT teamed with Dall-E. I experienced a LOT of difficulty rendering the images. The programs has great difficulty with rendering eyes and counting fingers and arms.
9. An ad for Penny Mickelbury’s Bubba’s Gym in ‘The Devil You Know’ provides a transition to sports. The Chicago Bears playoff is factual, but of course Steve Liskow’s story, ‘Peace of Mind Guaranteed’, is fanciful.
10. Hugh Lessig returns us to a fictional page of mystery history in ‘Cloths of Heaven’, a sad tale of the first woman Prohibition casualty. Amazingly, I found a photo of an actual rum-runners boat seized in Virginia.
11. I slipped in a slide of a simple (and operational) crystal radio schematic where my real voice can be heard.
12. The wrap-up reflects the beginning. The outro pictures the actual Blackstone Hotel featuring homeboy Benny Goodman who, in 1932, hasn’t yet made a national splash. He plays as credits roll, wrapping up with the message that Prohibition Peepers can be found in fine speakeasies and bookstores everywhere.

 

 

 

  

© 2023 Prohibition Peepers

  

Done! I saved the file as an .mp4, ready to upload to SleuthSayers’ channel.

This article grew longer than I like, so next week I’ll explain how to add closed captioning.

Tables

Happiness is a Beatles Anthology

 

Earlier this week, my old friend Josh Pachter announced the publication of his latest music-themed anthology, Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Beatles (Down & Out Books). I'm looking forward to it, for several reasons. One is that I and many of my writer friends have stories featured in there, and a second is that Josh always knows what he's doing with these antho-editing projects. My third reason is that all the stories in the book are based on songs by a group whose music has good memories for me.

I was a schoolkid just learning to play guitar when the Beatles first appeared, and I'll always remember how taken I was with their music, then and over the next few years. I still believe Lennon and McCartney (and Harrison, too) created some of the best songs ever written, and I'm not at all surprised by the fact that their music is still played and performed and appreciated after all this time. When our oldest grandson--he just turned sixteen--came over to our house a couple weeks ago, he and I spent four straight hours on our guitars, picking out some of the songs from the Beatles' later years. He loves their music. (He also dearly loves movies--wonder where he picked that up?)

Anyhow, I hoped as soon as I heard about this Beatles anthology that I'd be able to have a story in it, and somehow I was fortunate enough to sneak in past the palace guards. My story is called "We Can Work It Out," which is also the title of the song that inspired it. And it really did inspire it, because in this story the plot changes direction several times and requires its two protagonists to change with it--they're constantly having to backtrack and re-draw their plans, which weren't that great to begin with. Neither of these two jokers are the brightest bulbs in the fixture (how is it that I can relate so easily to guys like that??), so most of their problems are self-inflicted, but they're still problems that have to be "worked out," and somehow they manage. (With a little help from their friends, which I guess could've also been the title.)

Quick teaser: My heroes in this story, if you could call them that, are two down-on-their-luck roommates working dead-end jobs in east Texas, who decide the best solution to their financial troubles is kidnapping the feisty daughter of a wealthy rancher and holding her for a never-have-to-work-again ransom. And believe it or not, the first part of the scheme--the snatching of the kidnappee at a high-school football game (if you're wondering why a rich socialite would attend a high-school ballgame, you don't know Texas)--works as planned. But soon after that, things start to go the wrong way. NOTE: As a reader I love it when those sudden reversals happen, and as a writer I love it even more. The road to the end should be as bumpy and twisty (and long and winding?) as possible. 

Besides the convoluted plotting, I think the thing I enjoyed most in writing this story was the hiding of Easter eggs in the form of occasional snippets of lyrics from its title song. It's fun to do that, especially in dialog, if it fits and if you don't quote closely enough to get into copyright trouble, and it's not as hard as it might seem. This is the fifth or sixth time I've had stories in music-themed anthologies (most of them Josh's) and since I often find myself humming the title song while I'm writing, those short words and phrases from the lyrics are right there in my head the whole time, waiting to be plucked and used. In fact, here's a suggestion. If you buy and read this anthology and you see in the table of contents a story-title/song-title that by chance you aren't familiar with, Google the lyrics and read them before reading the story. That'll probably make it even more fun.

Questions that come to mind: Have you been involved in any music-themed/music-inspired anthologies? If so, which ones? Did you choose the song for your story, or were you "assigned" one? To what degree did your song inspire your story? Did you incorporate parts of lyrics into your narrative? Did you use the title of the song as your story's title (that's usually the case), or were you free to choose a different title? Did you write your story from scratch, using the song as a guide, or did you renovate and retitle an existing and unsold story to fit the theme? Just wondering.

Bottom line is, "We Can Work It Out" was a story I thoroughly enjoyed writing and Happiness Is a Warm Gun is a project I'm proud to be a part of, and I so appreciate having been allowed to climb aboard. I look forward to reading every story featured, and to adding this book to my already-great memories of the Beatles and their music.

Thanks once again to Josh Pachter for the opportunity.

The Last Stephen King Post. For Now.

Stephen King © Rolling Stone

It finally happened. Last night, I finished Holly, the latest Stephen King novel, which concludes my reading of his entire canon. There was, of course, a sense of "What do I do next?" (Answer: Read someone else. Congratulations, Mark Twain. I'm already halfway through your canon.) Something tells me I'd have enjoyed this journey more if I'd have started with Carrie in 1974. My mother did, and as my eighth birthday was a month away the day Carrie debuted, Mom was not about to let her oldest boy read it. My oldest brother had just turned one. My youngest brother had yet to appear.

Mom loved scary novels. Not an out-and-out horror fan, she did, however, enjoy The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. Then again, she and Dad every Friday night religiously watched the schlock horror show Ghoulardi/Houlihan and Big Chuck/Big Chuck and Li'l John, introducing us boys to its UHF counterpart Superhost. So the spooky, despite some early religious admonitions, was always there for them. 

But The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby were a different kind of horror from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the lurid type of paperbacks King referred to as "Just Plain Books." I bought a few of those when I turned eleven and never really got through the first chapter of Hand of Cain. Amazingly, I also bought a Western from such a desolate rack and somehow held onto it into middle age. I'm glad I did. It was written by Elmore Leonard. 

Carrie fit the mold of The Exorcist, but the writing also attracted Mom. (Dad was a TV-and-movie guy and went to his grave sick to death of Star Trek. Sorry, Dad. I might have been a little overzealous.) She eagerly snapped up Salem's Lot when it came out in paperback. By then I was ten, and while again, I was not allowed to read it, I was allowed to watch the miniseries three years later. And then I saw why mom loved King.

I didn't read The Stand at that age, and missed The Shining and Firestarter. I did see the Kubrick movie. Despite King's protestations how Jack Nicholson was wrong for the part of Jack Torrance and Kubrick missed the point, there was a vibe that would inhabit all the best King adaptations and even one of the worst. Lawnmower Man retained only the title, but the script they slapped it on could easily have come out of King's trunk.

So my first King novel was actually The Dead Zone, which bewildered me. I, being a sheltered, naive teen, didn't get a lot of the adult references. I did, however, take special glee in the fate of Gregory Stilson. I went back and read Salem's Lot. Tell no one this, but I like it better than Dracula (which I've reread a few times.) My first King to be gifted was It, which I absolutely loved as I was in that stage halfway between child and adult. I even had a mental cast for the movie. I was disappointed the miniseries did not cast Marilu Henner as the adult Bevvie.

The original Mrs. Winter bought me Gerald's Game shortly after our wedding, partly knowing I loved King, partly as a gag, and mostly as a... hint. By then, I was stuck on Mr. King from Maine. I missed a few novels and came back to them over the years. Hated Christine. Found some of the 90s books meh. Was impressed by the effort of the Dark Tower Series but not really connecting to it.

And absolutely fell in love with On Writing. Harold Bloom should have been made to read it aloud to students before his death. OK, I'm still bitter about Portrait of a Lady on his novels list. 

And so here we are, in 2023. I started in 2010 to read his entire canon, minus Faithful, a collaboration about the Red Sox season in which they won the World Series. Sorry, Steve, but I came of age in Cleveland when the then-Indians were owned by a dead guy. When your team becomes a farm team for the Yankees and the Blue Jays, then you can talk to me about true sports suffering. (And Cubs fans would like a word.) But I even read the screenplay Storm of the Century. 

But I just finished Holly last night. It's a straight-up crime novel, a serial killer novel actually. There are references to Brady Hartsfield (who became supernatural in the third Bill Hodges novel) and the Holly Gibney novels The Outsider and If It Bleeds. But Holly laments her quarry is a pair of plain ol' evil human beings (and wildly off their rockers, which you figure out within the first 50 pages.) One thing odd about this particular story is King's tendency to go off into the past and tell a related story. Sometimes this works. Often it doesn't. Instead, he uses flashbacks to show the reader what horrific monsters the nonegenarian Harris's are, not to mention racists, homophobes, and intellectual snobs. You just want to punch Emily in the face despite her nearly debilitating sciatica. And Rodney? Oh, my God! Some people should not be permitted to read Jonathan Swift, and he tops the list.

That said, finishing the book, which I enjoyed very much, capped a years-long personal project for me. King is by no means done. He has a collection due out next year, You Like It Darker, and that always accompanies a novel. So what next?

Does there have to be a next? I edit. I write. And there are thousands of books out there, some of which we talk about here. Some of them we write. But I got through this author's canon, and I'm glad I did.

Now, off to read Tom Sawyer Abroad.

This Week's Barrel of Fun

The state of the world is making me cranky, so I thought I'd channel that feeling by providing a selection from Famous Insults:

Enjoy!

Why pay money to have your family tree traced? Go into politics and your opponents will do it for you. — Unknown

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages. — Mark Twain

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. — Oscar Wilde

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. — Abraham Lincoln

There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em. — Yogi Berra

Don’t give up. Moses was once a basket case. — Unknown

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. — Marilyn Monroe

I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I'm not dumb, and I'm also not blonde. — Dolly Parton

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other. — Oscar Ameringer

When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. — Elayne Boosler

Shaw: "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
Churchill, in response: "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second ... if there is one."

The problem with most women is that they get all excited about nothing, then marry him. — Cher

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. — Lao Tzu

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. — Mark Twain

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. — Winston Churchill

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. - Dorothy Parker

Man cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen. - Michel de Montaigne

I've had men and I've had women, and there's got to be something better.—Tallulah Bankhead

Americans always try to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else first. ― Winston Churchill

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet. — Mark Twain

An irate British MP: Mr. Prime Minister, must you fall asleep while I'm speaking?
Winston Churchill: No, it's purely voluntary.

A British MP: Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease!
Benjamin Disraeli: That depends, sir, on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress!

Reporter: Coach, what do you think of your team's execution?
Yogi Berra: I'm all for it.

Lewis Morris: There's a conspiracy against me, a conspiracy of silence. What should I do?
Oscar Wilde: Join it.

Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult. — Charlotte Whitton

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. — Aesop

And perhaps my favorite:

Actress: "I enjoyed reading your book. Who wrote it for you?"
Ilka Chase: "Darling, I'm so glad that you liked it! Who read it to you?"

*****

Meanwhile, one of the few pieces of good news that I found - check out this story about how scientists have finally deciphered and analyzed a 5,500 year old Sumerian Star Map which "shows that the Sumerians made an observation of an Aten asteroid over a kilometer in diameter that impacted Köfels in Austria in the early morning of 29th June 3123 BC."  (LINK)

Now if they could just find and decipher the Sumerian astronomers' diaries!  

 

My First Century

 

 Monday was the publication date for Happiness is a Warm Gun: Crime Stories Inspired by Songs of the Beatles.  My story is the lead-off, because "I Saw Her Standing There" appeared on the Fab Four's first album.

I am particularly delighted by this publication because it marks my one hundredth published story.  This seems like an excellent opportunity to crunch some numbers and look at my oeuvre, so to speak.

So let's get crunching.

 

 

As you will see here the majority of my publications have been in print magazines.  Of course, "print magazine" is a phrase that would have been completely unnecessary when I first got published, like "conventional produce" or "analog clock."

And now I feel like I am designing an annual report for a very small niche corporation.  

I was surprised to find that fully one quarter of my stories fall into the amateur sleuth category, largely because of my character Shanks.

The Other category is consists mostly of stories with so many characters I can't identify one as the protagonist and use her/him to identify the category.

 

Here we get to characters, with Shanks taking the lead.  He is still very much alive (with at least two stories coming out next year).  Unfortunately the next two,  Marty Crow and Uncle Victor, seem to be retired.  

We will probably hear from the other series characters, if the editors are willing.

 

Here are the decades in which my stories are set.  Since 8 of my tales get listed as fantasy/science fiction I was surprised that only one is set in the future.  Some were set in the future when I wrote them, but time has rolled past them.  I guess that makes them Alternative History stories by default.

 

 

And here we have publication dates.  So far the 2010s are in the lead but the 2020s are still young. 

Speaking of the future, as I was a couple of paragraphs ago, what does the future hold for my writing? 

Well, the day after the Beatles book was published the November/December issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine appeared, featuring "When You Put It That Way." It's my 101st story, so the next century is on its way.  

Let's see how far I get...

Daddy, Where Do Anthologies Come From?

“Daddy, where do anthologies come from?”

“Did you ask Mommy?”

“She told me to ask you.”

“Sigh. I knew you would ask this question someday, Little Writer, but I really hoped you’d be older. What happens is that a would-be editor spends alone time wrestling with his muse—”

“Like you and Mommy wrestle sometimes?”

“Not…exactly. We’ll discuss that kind of wrestling when you’re much, much older. Anyway, one day, about nine months after the would-be editor wrestles with his muse, the Stork of Inspiration arrives with a diaper in its beak, and inside the diaper is a nascent anthology: a concept, a catchy title, or something more.”

“Why does it arrive in a diaper?”

“Because sometimes the ideas are shi—aren’t very good and must be disposed of in the file of ideas-never-to-be-used.”

“But the good ones, the healthy ones, what happens to them?”

“That’s when the would-be editor starts feeding the anthology.”

“What does an anthology eat?”

“Writers, usually a dozen or more before it’s fully grown and is released to find its way in the world.”

“Can I edit an anthology someday, Daddy?”

“Oh, Little Writer, not everyone is experienced enough or responsible enough to edit an anthology, and that’s why you should always use protection when wrestling with some muse you pick up in the bar at a conference, especially when it’s likely to be a one-idea stand. But maybe someday, when you’re ready and you’ve developed a long-term relationship with your muse, you, too, can edit an anthology.”

“Oh, Daddy, I think I would like that.”

PROHIBITION PEEPERS

Prohibition Peepers: Private Eyes During the Noble Experiment (Down & Out Books, released September 2023) was a twinkle in my eye long before the Stork of Inspiration delivered an anthology diaper to my doorstep.

Anthology editors sometimes ask writers to commit to a concept before they pitch the concept to a publisher, and a great many years ago—so long ago I no longer have the original dated email, but likely in the mid-2000s based on some sketchy notes I made at the time—Robert J. Randisi asked if I would contribute to Club Noir, an anthology “to feature stories of night clubs in their heyday. Think of Nick & Nora Charles, martini glasses, hat check girls, cigarette girls, band singers like Frank Sinatra and Helen Morgan… and crime.”

After I told him I was quite interested, I wrote most of an opening scene featuring a cigarette girl and a private eye, made some additional notes, and stuck everything into a file to await word from Randisi that the anthology was a go.

Word never came.

In the late 2010s, while cruising through my idea file, I stumbled upon the barely started manuscript of “Cigarette Girl,” liked what I read, and started noodling with it. I completed the story in April 2020, sent it out to and, by late 2021, received it back from the two top short mystery fiction markets.

By then I had edited a handful of anthologies for Down & Out Books, so I pitched Prohibition Peepers: Private Eyes During the Noble Experiment, an anthology of private eye stories set during and just after the end of prohibition. (This is only the second time I have created an anthology specifically to utilize one of my own stories. The first was Small Crimes [Betancourt & Company, 2004], which included my story “Dreams Unborn,” a story that was my first to be included in the Other Distinguished list of The Best American Mystery Stories.)

I invited several writers with whom I had previously worked and a few I knew but with whom I’d not previously worked to contribute and, well-fed by fourteen writers, Prohibition Peepers was released to the world last month.

Contributors include Susanna Calkins, David Dean, Jim Doherty, John M. Floyd, Nils Gilbertson, Richard Helms, Hugh Lessig, Steve Liskow, Leigh Lundin, Adam Meyer, Penny Mickelbury, Joseph S. Walker, Stacy Woodson, and me.

Leigh Lundin created a cool book trailer for Prohibition Peepers. If you’ve been following his SleuthSayers posts, you know all about it. If not, watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zspr3Unrh0

Central Park in My Life and Stories

Like many New Yorkers, I have a lifelong love affair with Central Park. I've been watching, fascinated, as its iridescent pigeons court, its sleek sea lions leap for fish, and riding its classic merry-go-round since childhood. I pushed my son, now in his fifties, in a stroller many miles along its walking paths and now walk or run myself around the Great Lawn or the Reservoir almost daily. I may take a break to sit on a park bench reading while watching ducks and rowers on the Lake, listening to jazz, or enjoying the sound of birdsong, the drift of cherry and apple blossoms in spring, or the changing color of autumn leaves.

Writers of fiction have found Central Park an irresistible setting. Among the best known are J.D. Salinger, whose Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye, meditates on where the ducks in the Pond go in the winter; and E.B. White, whose Stuart Little in the eponymous book wins a race on the model sailboat pond, formally known as the Conservatory Water.

Crime fiction writers have also used Central Park as a setting. Anne Perry's A New York Christmas gives readers a glimpse of the Park in 1904. In Linda Fairstein's Death Angel, the victim of a serial killer is found at the foot of the Bethesda Fountain, one of the Park's best known landmarks.

I’ve strewn a few dead bodies in Central Park myself. In the short story, “Death Will Help You Imagine,” Bruce Kohler and his friend Barbara, finishing an early morning run in Strawberry Fields, the John Lennon memorial, find a corpse flung across the Imagine mosaic, the Park’s most beloved tourist attraction. In “Death Will Finish Your Marathon,” the winning runner stumbles across the finish line and trips over the body of a New York character known as the Ancient Marathoner. In “Death Will Give You A Reason,” Bruce’s girlfriend, NYPD detective Cindy, and her partner fish a body out of Harlem Meer, the artificial lake at the north end of the Park.

“The witnesses know nothing,” Natali said. “Coupla dog walkers. The dogs all started barking when the body bumped up against the bank.”

“Photos?” Cindy asked. Some bystander always had an iPhone.

“Professional dog walkers,” Natali snarled. “Six leashes in each hand. Labs, beagles, terriers, dachshunds. Two dozen witnesses. If we had someone who spoke Bark, we might have eyewitnesses instead of shit. By the time anyone else realized the circus had come to town, the leashes were all tangled up in each other and doggy legs and corpse’s arms.”

“What did you do, arrest the dogs?”

“I was tempted,” Natali said. “The idiots tried to pull him out—without letting go of the leashes. They seemed to think I’d give them a medal for obeying the leash law. By the time the uniforms arrived, the scene was already compromised.”

“Let’s see the deceased,” Cindy said.

“Go ahead. I already looked. I sniffed him up and down too. The pooches inspired me.”

“Anything of interest?”

“Alcohol and weed.”

“Lake or marijuana?”

“Both.”

The aroma of marijuana in the Park has increased from occasional to omnipresent since legalization. The dogs have always been there. I read recently that there are more dogs in New York City than there are people in Cleveland, and I believe it. Even though most people obey the leash law except in designated areas, the Park’s a paradise for dogs and a perfect meeting place for dog lovers. It also allows drop-in admirers like me to learn, for example, that Australian shepherds are In this year. I see a dozen of them within a week tugging different people along. Maybe one of those shaggy, alert gray-and-black-spotted dogs with brown legs will participate in an investigation one day.

Central Park is only half a mile across, and New York is a walking city. Since Bruce lives on the East Side and Barbara and Jimmy on the Upper West Side, they are constantly crossing the Park to visit each other. Bruce and Barbara run around the upper and lower loops formed by the East and West Park Drives and the 79th Street Transverse and around the Reservoir track. In the novel, Death Will Help You Leave Him, Bruce’s early love interest Luz was almost run down by a bicycle crossing the Park West Drive. This could still happen, and the offender doesn’t have to be a possible murder suspect. Cyclists—not the tourists on Citi Bikes, which didn’t exist back then, but the experts on fancy bikes with fancy gear—have a great sense of entitlement. On the other hand, today I couldn’t write the scene in which the horses that had shed their riders came galloping along the bridle path and out of the Park, where they stopped for the light at Central Park West and trotted with docility back to the Claremont Stable on West 93rd near Amsterdam. Only occasional mounted police now ride the bridle path, and the Claremont is no longer a stable—but it still was when I saw that happen in real life.

My biggest set piece in the Park was Barbara and Jimmy’s wedding near the end of Death Will Pay Your Debts, which I wrote as “under the gazebo near the lake.” I was thinking of a cross between the Ladies Pavilion, very popular for weddings, and the Hernshead Boat Landing, where a jazz band often plays, both on the west side of the Lake, south of the Ramble. So I didn’t want to be tied down to real-life details, although the “big rock” that Bruce and Cindy sit and talk on at the end of the party is the real-life Hernshead Rock. That’s the beauty of writing fiction about a real-life magical place you’ve known forever.

Prohibition Peepers part 1 — How to create book trailer audio

Gorgeous cover!

Trailer Perq

Last time, I introduced my 12yo detective heroes, Penrod and Sam, taking on Chicago mobsters at the height of Prohibition and the depth of the Great Depression. That article revealed inspirations for characters and the story, one of fourteen tales in Michael Bracken’s Prohibition Peepers. This week I’ll describe how I created the audio for a book trailer (a preview) and next week we’ll discuss the associated video.

I grew up with antique radios and still have a few. I built a crystal radio at age 8, just a few odd parts. Unsurprisingly, radio plays a major role in Dime Detective. Penrod, my little hero, nightly tunes in a homemade crystal radio. That sparked an idea…

Different anthology editors devise different promotions, so I wasn’t sure what Michael might have in mind after Prohibition Peepers hit bookstores. A book trailer by James Lincoln Warren initiated a desire to create a preview for Dime Detective built around an old-time radio broadcast. Like many solitary writers, I’m used to doing things on my own, but the anthology is Michael’s project and we had another dozen contributors to consider.

We sent out a request for participants with stories fitting the time and place of Chicago 1932. With a half dozen participants and their stories, I mapped out a script centered around a newscast.

 

 

 

  

© 2023 Prohibition Peepers

  

We begin with homage to early radio, tuning in a half million watt Mexican ‘X-band’ border station, a radio evangelist (with hints that a listener has a romantic interest), and a patent medicine ad, before launching into a Clyde McCoy rouser. McCoy is considered the inventor of the wah-wah mute, a technique imitated by electric guitarists.

The nightly news intersperses fictional and factual items. The Chicago Bears playoffs must have been one hell of a game, one that set the stage for the Super Bowl, as hinted by the commissioner.

Items that didn’t fit the December 1932 Chicago setting I cast as wire stories, a historical reflection, or an ad. For the same reason, Penny Mickelbury led sports with an advertisement, a break from the rapid string of news.

The schematic following the newscast accurately depicts a real, operational crystal circuit. The video ends in a reversal of how it began, culminating with Benny Goodman playing through the credits.

How It’s Done

I’m a rank amateur when it comes to videos and some decisions reflect that. One example: Would recording the news in one or two long continuous takes be preferable to recording each segment separately? A single take could provide simplicity and consistency in sound quality, but I chose to manage about two dozen segments separately. It gave me more flexibility in article arrangement and sound effects.

But I made mistakes. I deliberately purchased an inexpensive microphone. Duh, you might say, you get what you pay for… but not what I hoped for. Early microphones suffered tinny, attenuated audio ranges and I was seeking that sound. Instead, the surprisingly solidly made cheap mic didn’t attenuate as hoped but merely responded dully. I bought a Snowball, which exhibited excellent range for the price and I thinned the voice by restricting frequency range after recording.

Macintoshes ship with iMovie video and Garage Band audio programs. Although most Mac users prefer Garage Band, I opted for Audacity. I had experience with the program, plus it’s cross-platform if for some reason Windows became a factor. I didn’t entirely abandon Garage Band;  as mentioned a moment ago, I created the tinny newscaster effect by tweaking Garage Band’s ’telephone’ filter.

Back on Track

In Audacity, I laid out three sets of tracks, two monaural tracks for voice and sound effects, and a pair of stereo tracks for music. The project didn’t require stereo, but imported sound came in stereo and I left it.

I edited three musical segments.

Sunny Side of the Street

Ted Lewis

Sugar Boogie

Clyde McCoy

Let's Dance

Benny Goodman

Listening to the trailer, you may easily miss ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’. It plays quietly in the background of Dr Cruikshank’s breathy advert.

To give the illusion of complete songs, I edited out the middles of Sugar Boogie and Let’s Dance, reducing the pieces to 20 seconds and 45 seconds respectively.

Noise

Static, tuning sounds, and a teletype constitute primary sound effects. A telegraph key beep-beeps in the introduction of the news that overlaps the telex. The music track quiesced emptily at that point, so I placed the Morse clip there, allowing me to maintain it separately without adding a track.

During my consulting career, I communicated by telex to offices in Europe. That oddly hypnotic clatter stuck in my head. I entered the project wanting to match that distinct teletype sound in my ears.

Dozens of ‘TTY’ clips were available on the internet, but that particular tone eluded me except for one YouTube video in which the owner incessantly talked all the way through it. And talked. And talked. I wanted to scream, “STFU!” which in Bulgarian means, “Please be quiet.”

Listening to the clip a few more times, I found a little less than 15 seconds where he actually fell silent. I captured those few seconds and replicated them several times for my purposes. The resulting teletype runs in the background under the news reader.

Voices in Secret

I’d planned for a professional stage presenter to handle the ballroom announcer, but he was on vacation in Europe and, unfortunately, he didn’t return in time to complete his part. Michael called time. He said, “Go with what you got, Sparky.” I’m pretty sure he said that.

Here’s a secret: I had created vocal placeholders with Macintosh-generated voices. In fact, Mac text-to-speech appears throughout, and I admit a couple I considerably liked. I wasn’t as keen about the big band ballroom voice, but without a professional announcer, we went digital.

Audacity blended all the clips together. Michael and the gang approved the audio draft, but then what? Next week: I inveigle the video.

Before departing today, I’ve created a timeline and jotted notes of our hearty pioneers settling the Great Plains and the role of radio in that lonely landscape. A bit backward, yes, but feel free to skip.

I Recapped the Meddling So You Don't Have To

My last two October slots delved into Shirley Jackson's A Haunting at Hill House and We Have Always Lived at the Castle. For this Halloween season, let's really go creeps and crawls. Let's talk Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?

Scoob is everywhere these days. He's on Max and Tubi. He's in the cookie aisle, the t-shirt rack, the toy section. It's hard to remember that Scoob only got started as 25 Saturday morning episodes, in 1969 and 1970. The show was a hit, and Hanna-Barbera immediately set about expanding the franchise concept. Nothing clicks or brings the style like the original Scoob, though. 

Scoob almost didn't get started at all. The Hanna-Barbera writers pitched CBS the original concept as The Mysteries Five, inspired by the 1940s I Love a Mystery radio serial and Enid Blyton's Famous Five kid stories. That first pitch had a five-person Archies-style traveling rock group that solved supernatural-related mysteries. Their bongo-playing sheepdog was named Too Much.

It didn't fly. Neither did a second pass, Who's S-S-Scared?, floated after the fifth character, "Geoff," was cut to streamline the gang. Ah, Geoff, we never knew ya. Anyway, CBS thought the mock-ups were too scary. The execs already had a snoot-full of parent groups complaining that cartoons were too violent.

It was the third try that sold, with no rock band angle and Scooby-Doo as the dog. CBS exec Fred Silverman took the name from Frank Sinatra's scat closer to "Strangers in the Night," after hearing it on a red-eye flight to a production meeting. As things happened, "Fred" also replaced "Ronnie" as the leader guy. All four of this final gang were borrowed straight off Dobie Gillis. 

Original Scoob was in re-runs by when my Saturday mornings came around. I consider it a virtue that I've never outgrown this kind of good fun. And Scoob has something for the adult side, a surprisingly gothic vibe if you delve past those chase scene gags and improvised traps. Walter Peregoy, the Disney vet behind 101 Dalmatians, designed gorgeously bleak background paintings, blurred reality studies of fog and shadow and desolate places, in sharp juxtaposition to the gang's bright colors. Those hallway chase scenes pop because the place feels legit haunted. Even Velma is often creeped out that this ghost might be real. 

This is a crime blog, so let's talk the crimes in Original Scoob. Glorious, goofball crimes. Behind each supposed monster was the inevitable family treasure, land swindle, or hoax to scare away meddlers. Sometimes, the motive was just old-fashioned revenge. And each scheme was needlessly extravagant. Pay off a few locals, already. Why draw inevitable attention with the supernatural hoo-hah? 

In that spirit, I've analyzed Original Scoob's 25 monster hoaxes so that you don't have to.  

Meta-capers emerge. In classic Scoob, there's something of value in play or rumored to be nearby. Bluestone the Great, a washed-up magician, concocted a ghost scare while he searched Vasquez Castle for pirate treasure. No one else seemed to have the least interest in that lonely island, but hey, Bluestone does Bluestone. 

A lot of plain criming goes on in Original Scoob. The gang breaks up an art forgery operation (the Black Knight, aka Mr. Wickles the curator), counterfeiters (the Puppet Master, aka Mr. Pietro the theatre owner), a jewel theft ring (the Snow Ghost, aka Mr. Greenway the Inn owner and an appreciated hat tip to Sidney Greenstreet), and sheep rustlers (the Ghost Werewolf, aka, well, a sheep rustler). 

Yes, many of these monster-fakers are organized. How a crime organization decided on a cover so hard to maintain and so sure to draw curiosity need not be explained in the Scoobyverse. Still, no wonder they don't get away with it. 

But some of these schemes are downright clever, stuff you might see in crime fiction. Zeb and Zeke pose as a witch and zombie while they search the swamps for an armored car score they'd ditched there. Professor Wayne poses as a caveman to steal the rights to cutting-edge technology. Hank Buds the caretaker faked being the Miner Forty-Niner to scare the schlub of a ghost town owner into missing out on an undiscovered oil claim. 

The Scoob writers pulled a few nice switcheroos. The descendent of Dr. Jekyll confesses to the gang he might or might not be turning into a new Mr. Hyde, but it's head-casing. Jekyll dresses up as Hyde the jewel thief after he's failed at honest science. In a tweak of the formula, the gang and a phantom chase each other around a mansion over some lost family jewels. The phantom, though, turns out to be the rightful owner there looking for his property. Those knocking noises have been the other fake ghost we forgot was in Scene One. He's the real crook after those jewels.

There are a few proper ghost stories. Stewart Weatherby poses as the ghost of neighbor Elias Kingston to cheat Daphne's friend out of a fortune. The plot comes with spooky graveyards and disembodied voices and strange disappearances. 

Perhaps the most traditional ghost story hides inside one of the silliest episodes. The gang heads to bayou country--Southern goth--to collect Scoob's surprise inheritance from Colonel Beauregard. The Colonel's whole family has come for their shares, but the will has a catch: Whoever can survive the night in the haunted mansion gets the Colonel's money. Sure enough, family members start disappearing one-by-one.

Well, none of them were ghosts. 25 hoaxes out of 25 cases. Scoob and The Haunting Of Hill House have an overlay here. Way different audiences and methods, sure, but both explore how human minds can cope with the supernatural. Such things aren't even supernatural. Jackson's ghosts at Hill House were as much part of a natural order as you and I. We just don't have a scientific explanation for ghosts--yet. 

Dobie Gillis, AP 1960

In Scoob, that explanation comes and is pretty mundane. Hauntings are smoke and mirrors. 

Then again, Scoob and Shaggy did come across talking skulls and floating sandwiches that remain unconnected to the caper solution. Maybe the supernatural does exist in Original Scoob. Fine if so. Jackson would agree that humans do commit worse sins in this world than ghosts. 

Which is pretty deep, sure. You can ruin things through analysis. Not Scoob, though. Original Scoob's embrace of goofball makes it impervious to overthinking. The Rube Goldberg stuff and Scooby Snack bribes and those extravagant capers are pure fun, and those shadowy backdrops are pure art. There are a lot worse ways to spend October than to fire up Scoob and the gang. 

Eating My Words

 

Not accepted as a form of payment anywhere in the world.

I have told this story in various ways over the years, and it always makes people chuckle. So here I go again.

When I was freelancing years ago for The New York Times, I calculated that they were paying me under 50 cents a word for the twice-monthly, 750-1,000-word columns I wrote for the Sunday New Jersey section. 

I know that short story writers are accustomed to payment rates under 10 cents a word, but in the realm of journalism you tend to get paid better. Not far better, mind you; just better. Most writers know that there’s not much money in freelancing for newspapers, especially ones like the Times. Still, every month I could count on $1,000 income from this gig alone. And it was fun. I wrote about “destinations,” places to go and things to do in ye Olde Garden State.

One day my editor called with a weird proposition. They were running short, under-300-word reviews of local restaurants, and he wondered if I could contribute a few. I asked about payment.

“We used to pay about $50 each,” he said, “but now we have these coupons for pie.”

I’ve had hearing issues my whole life, and wear hearing aids. So I often second-guess myself and ask people to restate what they just said. (Not a bad practice for a reporter.) My editor explained that a fancy bakery near the newspaper had given them these vouchers and that they were using them as a way to thank people. An extra bonus, so to speak, to make up for the low $50 payment.

Or that’s how I heard it.

Of course, I misheard. Actually, instead of paying $50, these coupons were the only form of payment I was to receive.

There’s so much wrong with this picture. For starters, to write a decent restaurant review—even a capsule review—you still have to eat at the place. Ideally, you would eat there more than once, with guests each time. That’s how the pros do it; you bring as many appetites as possible so you can try different dishes. But by their action, my editors were basically saying that since they were unable to reimburse reporters for these meals, they were offering them dessert instead.

Like any brainless freelancer, I said yes and started working these capsule reviews into my reporting/writing schedule. I’d eat at a place incognito, then phone later to speak to a chef, manager, or owner if I had any questions about ingredients, menu items, or the restaurant’s history. If anyone asked, I’d say I was writing a review for the Times. It was true. They didn’t need to know that it was for the New Jersey section of the paper, how short they were, or the absurd writer compensation.

I did a bunch of these reviews. And because I had misheard the editor, believing the pie thing to be a joke or perhaps an extra thank-you, I actually invoiced them $50, plus expenses, for each review. They always paid. But after each one, I’d get a coupon in the mail for a free pie at the fancy bakery.

I had a stack of these coupons and collected a few hundred dollars before accounting caught on and my poor editor called, embarrassed, to explain the situation. I forget how we remedied the overpayment. I’m guessing they recovered the article fees from my later assignments, but let me keep the expense money. (They were always generous on expenses, covering meals, phone calls, and mileage for other stories I wrote for them.)

I redeemed the pie coupons infrequently, I must say. The pie shop was in an inconvenient location in Midtown that I rarely visited. The one time I called to claim a bunch of pies for a party I was about to attend, the baker-in-chief told me that I could only get two free pies at any one time with those coupons. To make things worse, the pies were a little on the small side. Stereotypical Manhattan meal pricing. Delicious, but minuscule.

It remains one of the strangest ways I’ve ever been paid for my work. And for a little while, perhaps a summer or so, I liked to think of myself as being the hit of parties when I showed up with two boxes of free pie and a story of professional debasement and exploitation to boot.

Now let us pray at the Church of Uncle Harlan. Apologies in advance if his language offends you. If it does, how dare you call yourself a writer? Get to a bar this very minute and practice cussing between rounds. I know you have it in you!

To which I would add, the writer must be paid in currency, not pie.

* * * 

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com