The Uses of Mystery part 3: Tim Dorsey

It is probably a sign of old age, but lately I seem to get book recommendations from the New York Times's obits. Depressing as that may be, Tim Dorsey's December 2023 obituary led me to more interesting examples of the uses of our favorite genre, which in Dorsey's hands becomes the capacious satiric receptacle for obsessions and complaints, along with sex, drugs, rock and roll, fart jokes, and digressions on US policy and the CIA.

At least, that's the total for The Maltese Iguana and the opening pages of No Sun Screen for the Dead. But as Dorsey racked up 22 other novels, I am sure he found lots more of the Sunshine State to include.

In fact, that's certain. Dorsey, a former Tampa Tribune reporter, has not only a genuine love for his home state, but an encyclopedic knowledge of its history, geography and culture. Much of which he gifts to Serge A. Storms, his central character, who operates with his drugged up and alcoholic wingman, Coleman, a man with an uncanny ability to regain sentience at crucial moments.

These occur in rapid succession because the charismatic and voluble Serge combines features of two favorite mystery/ thriller protagonists: the lone avenger/ protector and the serial killer, an unusual combination that works for Serge. He's a one man consumer protection bureau, out for grifters, unscrupulous sales people, pandemic profiteers, and computer criminals, with a special look out for elderly victims.

Totally on the side of the angels is Serge, with just a little weakness for the extra-judicial punishments that, by the end of The Maltese Iguana, have left a body count to rival Hamlet. But don't expect blood spatter and weapons a la Dexter. Besides his knowledge of the weirder aspects of Florida history, Serge has science at his fingertips.

I won't spoil future reading pleasure with the details, but death by ping pong balls was never on my radar, and while the cause of the so called Havana Syndrome has eluded all experts, Serge not only knows the instrument but has his own version. 

In The Maltese Iguana, Serge and Coleman are the spine of the story, flitting in and out of the action while running The Underbelly Tours of the Florida Keys. Around them are two story lines, one, a CIA op in Honduras with a lively cast of wannabe militia types, an honest Honduran cop, and a CIA bodyguard in a sequined cowgirl costume. And two, and only slightly less flamboyant, the trials and tribulations of Reevis, an honest reporter in Miami.

How these story lines merge in a spectacular denoument involving the culminating shoot of a major motion picture is a thing of beauty, and Dorsey gets high marks for plotting as well as his marvelous titles. Who can resist monikers like Florida Roadkill, Atomic Lobster, or The Tropic of Stupid? 

The latter could, I suspect, be the title for any of his novels, for Serge, and in Iguana, Reevis, too, inveigh against stupidity in many forms, including foreign policy, the degradation of the press, corporate consultants, rampant marketing, and crowd think. 

The lively mystery is an armature for Dorsey's satiric observations, and genuine bad guys like the dubious "Colonel" come in for vicious caricatures. There are no shades of gray in this moral realm, and that is rather odd, given that Serge, himself, is equal parts White Knight and serial killer.  

But Serge is perhaps an acquired taste. While admiring the construction and the flamboyant prose of The Maltese Iguana, I did not really take to the protagonist, who, to my mind, is an irritating motor mouth of slender social skills. 

Still, conviction and energy count for much in prose, and Tim Dorsey has both in abundance, along with a lot of strong opinions and evidence of buried malfeasance. In his hands, mystery easily stretches to satire and social critique without ever losing its footing.

###

 

The Falling Men, a novel with strong mystery elements, has been issued as an ebook on Amazon Kindle. Also on kindle: The Complete Madame Selina Stories.

 

The Man Who Met the Elf Queen, with two other fanciful short stories and 4 illustrations, is available from Apple Books at:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-man-who-met-the-elf-queen/id1072859654?ls=1&mt=11

 

The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations is available at: 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-dictators-double/id1607321864?ls=1&mt=11

Three Little Words

  Occasionally I am reminded of the paucity of the written word.  Of course there are wonderful things about the written word.  As Penn Gillette noted, it's digital, or can be made so.  It is permanent in a way that spoken words cannot be.  But it has inherent limitations...

Consider the movie Forrest Gump.  I assume I don't have to put in any spoiler alerts at this late date.  In the movie whenever Forrest, a "slow" child, asks why he has no daddy in his life his mother replies "He's on vacation." This is obviously a convenient excuse for his absence.  (In Winston Groom's novel, by the way, the father died in an accident.)

But when Mrs. Gump is trying to get her son into a normal class as opposed to a "special school" for the retarded, the principal asks smugly "Is there a Mr. Gump, Mrs. Gump?"

And Sally Field, playing the mother, replies: "He's on vacation."

See? Those three written words tell you almost nothing.  But what Field gets across in her performance is: To get my son into  school I'm going to have to sleep with this bastard. And I will.

It shows what acting can add to a text.

I was thinking of this because of another scene I saw recently.

For All Mankind is an alternative history TV show on Apple.  It asks the question: How would history have changed if the Russians reached the moon first?  And the short answer is: The space race would have gotten hotter and we would have moved out into the solar system much faster than we have.

But in a third season episode called "All In" there is a stunning scene in which one character utters a three word phrase (not "He's on vacation").  Then they say it again.  And a third time.

The first two times it's a cliche.  The third time the actor makes it clear that the character has realized that their life is about to take an unexpected and very unwelcome turn.

Same words given a completely different meaning by the actor's performance.

It sort of makes me wish my characters could hop off the page and speak for themselves.

Toast

     As frequently happens on the way to one thing, I encountered something else. 

    While doing some research, I bumped into the etymology of the expression "to toast." The phrase we use for words spoken about the bride at a wedding or a guest of honor at a banquet, I learned, is directly related to that piece of bread with jam you might be consuming while perusing your morning email or skimming this SleuthSayers offering. 

    The word "toast" is derived from an Old French word, toster, meaning to grill, roast, or burn. That word is drawn from an earlier Latin word, tostare, meaning to parch or dry out. It's no great stretch to see how this word became associated with the browning of bread served with a slathering of preserves or perhaps a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar.

     Focusing on that last flavor combination gives the jump off to the use of "to toast" as celebratory words offered with a cocktail. 

    16th and 17th-century wines might be bitter and sediment-filled. Adding a piece of spiced toast to the drink added flavor, lessened any foul smell, and perhaps acted as a sponge to trap sediment particles. The toast made the wine more drinkable. William Shakespeare mentions the practice in The Merry Wives of Windsor.  Falstaff instructs his fellow to  "Go, fetch me a quart of sack;  put a toast in 't,". 

    According to accounts, the toast was not eaten but plucked from the cup and flicked to the nearest dog. 

    The offering of kind or thoughtful words to an honored guest added to the occasion's flavor, leading those praises to be called "the toast." 

    The practice of offering kind words pre-dates their designation as a toast. People have always felt the need to give speeches while drinking. 

    That's the G version. Both Merriam-Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary, my sources for this, also offer a bawdier explanation. That story centers around a woman taking the therapeutic cool waters of a pool near Bath, England. While she floated, a traveler happened along. He plunged his cup into the water and offered a wish for her good health. His traveling companion, possibly drunk, suggested that while he might not care for the drink, he would undoubtedly enjoy the toast. "Toast" became both the words of praise and the subject--the toast of the town. 

    A bit off-topic, but the same sources note that to use "toast" to mean that someone is a goner or has been destroyed owes its genesis to an ad-libbed line by Bill Murray in Ghostbusters. Some argue that it had earlier origins, but all agree that the movie brought this usage of "toast" to the public. Now you know who you gonna call when you want a word placed in general circulation. 

    Back to today's subject. I will raise my mug of morning coffee and offer a toast to 2024. It may be a bit late in the month for such things, but in the due course of the SleuthSayers blog rotation, this is my first opportunity of the year. 

    May all your writing be prize-winning and effortless. May all your reading inspire and entertain. May your every encounter suggest another story. May your life be free of your main character's pain. 

    As for me, the new year will prove life-changing. I'm retiring as a criminal magistrate at the end of January. I'm doing so partly because I want to devote more time to writing. The full-time job gets in the way. Or, at least in my mind, it does. I will be curious to learn whether I'll produce more in the months ahead. Perhaps the time it takes to accomplish something will merely expand to fill the time available. 

    I may lose my new-found time running down rabbit holes in pursuit of etymologies. 

    One regret about leaving the magistrate gig is that I'll be deprived of the steady stream of typos I've found in the case documents. Reporting on that collection has been a semi-regular blog topic for the last couple of years. Like faithful companions, these unintended misspeaks stood by me, ready to jump in whenever I needed to meet an imminent deadline. 

If mystery fiction teaches us anything, it's that actions have consequences. The decision to retire cuts me off from that rootstock. We'll see what happens from here. 

    But that problem doesn't need to be solved for another three weeks. For now, I think I'll pour another cup of coffee and drop something in the toaster. 

Until next time. 

Does anybody really know what time it is?

           Einstein taught us that time is relative.  Popular writers will say this explains why an hour in a waiting room is longer than an hour having a beer with your best friend.  This isn’t true.  These occasions feel different because your perception of passing time is highly contingent on the qualities of the experience.  Einstein’s got nothing to do with it.

    The human factor, in those cases, has mostly to do with patience.  I’m not an expert on the subject, since I have none.  For me, a dentist’s office, traffic jams, my living room while waiting for my wife to put on her makeup, my bedroom as a child waiting for Christmas morning to commence, the queue administered by the NTSB, are torture chambers. 

            Checkout lines at the food store are the ultimate gladiator combat zone of patience.  Recently, I got behind a crowd of cheerful partygoers preparing for a big night at home.  They were having a lot of fun, and the food store employees were infected by the high spirits.  There was non-stop joking and laughing.  I was dying, since I really needed to get through that line as soon as possible, since I had to flee the store for reasons inexplicable at the time.  In retrospect, I was merely impatient. 

            So I bailed out of my position and went to the line next door, where only a single elderly lady was ready to find her way through the self-checkout. This was a huge mistake.  She had no idea how to navigate the automated system, stumbling her way through every transaction.   She had also stacked her purchases to overflowing in the little bin at the rear of the cart, and having angled the thing so she was now at the front end, had a great deal of difficulty retrieving her packages, fruits and vegetables.  I rescued this effort by moving all her stuff onto the conveyor belt.  She thanked me, while complaining loudly that nothing in life worked as well as it used to.  I agreed.

The young guy in charge of helping people through the self-checkout came over about a dozen times to recalibrate the system after the woman did some novel things with the barcodes and buttons at her disposal.  The guy had to call over his supervisor at least twice with the words, “Never seen this one before.”

I became the old lady’s fiduciary for the final act of cashing out, which involved discovering that only one of her fistfuls of credit and debit cards actually worked.  I nearly wept with joy when the word “Approved” finally flashed on the little screen.   Somewhere in the middle of all this, the partygoers left the store, in full celebration.  We waved to each other.

            The lesson for me was a little bit of patience at first would have saved a huge amount of time, and stomach acid, on the back end. 

             I know several people who have virtually no sense of passing time.  Whether a blessing or a curse is up for debate, since one can easily fill in both sides of the ledger.  I have an acute sense of time, which I blame on the German side of my family, who considered five minutes early as being on time.  Not five minutes before, nor five minutes after.  None of them wore a watch, since they could tell you the exact time aligned with the GMT down to the nearest second.  So I’m almost never late, though someone I live with is never on time, unless by happy accident. 

Another relative of mine ascribes his wife’s time blindness to the perfidy of the Magic Clock.  If she needs twenty minutes to complete a task, she merely looks at the Magic Clock, which will tell her five is all she needs.  Her surprise at the actual outcome is endlessly recurring and never instructive.

  My German grandfather was a clock smith, who would translate time’s march into pendulums, springs, axels and gear sprockets.  He filled his house with about 100 clocks, most of which were strikers.  At midnight, the house would erupt with bells, chimes and ancient clackers.  His family would sleep through it all, since it was merely a cacophonous reminder that another day had just ended, a little bit of life consumed, and new days ahead, a few more bits yet to be endured. 

"Hate is as old as man and doubtless as durable."

It is with great regret that I’m writing a follow-up article to last month’s Peace and Order, where I looked at the hate laws in Canada and stated: “This dramatic rise in hate motivated crime is testing our laws, our police response, legal system and things may have to change to meet the challenge.

Well, things have certainly changed over the last month but in a most unwelcome way. We have increasing attacks on Jewish Canadian schools, businesses and homes, so much so that it’s making international news. 

To this international audience, our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said, “We’re seeing right now a rise in antisemitism that is terrifying.” 

On the same news video, Rabbi Saul Emanuel adds, “It has become accepted that you can go after any Jewish target” 

Why has it become acceptable to some people to go after Jewish Canadians? If you watch the video it is clear that the business set on fire has “Free Palestine” written on their window. There is no doubt that a segment of the protesters are using the tragedy of mounting deaths in Palestine to mount attacks against Jewish Canadians. 

That said, many reasonable non-antisemitic Canadians are also decrying the deaths of innocents in Palestine. It’s a complicated situation but what is a clear, uncontested fact is that some of these protesters are using the situation to engage in antisemitic hate crimes. Rather than argue this point, a picture is worth a thousand words and here is one of targeted arson at a Jewish-owned deli in Toronto.  The owner is a Jewish Canadian and no one who is sensible can argue firebombing his business will change anything in Palestine. It is pure antisemitic hate. 

On social media, a photo of a poster put up in a Jewish neighbourhood depicts the scale of the problem and where it can lead, so let’s break it down. 

The poster graphic looks old-school, like something you would find in a history book on the rise of antisemitism before WWII. The words harken to something more modern and warrant an analysis. 

“Imagine being so vile, sneaky and disgusting that laws have to be created to keep normal people from hating or condemning you.”

Certainly the cliche trope of the ‘vile, sneaky and disgusting’ Jew is old and a way that bigots have long justified their bigotry by suggesting it is the victim not the aggressor that is responsible. It is as absurd as robbing a store at gunpoint and claiming the store deserved to be robbed. 

The part referencing “the laws created to keep people from hating or condemning you” refers to hate laws in Canada, referenced in my previous article. They are laws that keep all Canadians safe. They also keep our democracy safe because a democracy is, by definition, a society where all can vote and participate - any attempt to sideline groups from full rights and safety is, by its nature, antidemocratic. We know that historically and in the present day, authoritarian governments attack certain groups, sideline them or murder them, on their way into power and continue to do so in power to underline that only a select few get to make decisions about that country. Targeting any group is a blatant attack on the democratic rights of all Canadians. 

Canadian hate laws, born from a 1965 Special Committee on Hate Propaganda chaired by Judge Maxwell Cohen, have been expanded to recently include online hate speech. Hate laws were created to protect all Canadians, including Jewish Canadians.

In words that are as applicable today as they were then, Cohen said, "On the one hand, there was a new emphasis on individual freedom. On the other side, there was a growing recognition that these very liberties could be dangerously abused.”

“The preface to the 1965 report warns, "Hate is as old as man and doubtless as durable." It also contains a warning that could as easily refer to the current spread of anti-Asian slurs through social media as to the anti-Semitic pamphlets and slogans that emerged in Cohen's day.

Ours is "a world aware of the perils of falsehood disguised as fact and of conspirators eroding the community's integrity through pretending that conspiracies from elsewhere now justify verbal assaults," Cohen wrote. He called them "the non-facts and the non-truths of prejudice and slander.” 

By attacking Jewish Canadians and the laws of Canada, this poster highlights the dangers we face as a nation. 

Someone with a better mind than I will have to sift through many of these issues. How do we ensure the right to protest - a crucial democratic right - while protecting Canadians who are targeted by some of the protesters? It’s complicated. What is not complicated is this: Jewish Canadians are protected by the same laws that protect us all and there is no justification for any attacks on them. None.  

A Near-Luddite Tries Bing AI

My Windows 365 updated a few weeks ago, and there on reboot was Microsoft selling hard to check out Edge’s new AI tool. Come on, Edge said. Try making a fun holiday image.

Was I tempted? A little. Mostly, I regard the rise of Big AI such as large language models with a combination of dread (look out for the bad Terminator!) and intellectual curiosity at what advances these unlocks (hooray, it's the good Terminator!). The risks and rewards of AI’s future applications are for expert thinkers. AI’s impact on writing is more in my wheelhouse, and there was my writing laptop wanting me to check out Bing's Copilot.

I’ve never Venmo-ed money. Don't know how. Don’t even have the app. I don’t know how to deposit checks by smartphone scan. I don’t use Alexa or Siri, and our newer smart appliances aren’t set up on the home Wi-Fi. I’m doing swell without all that. I’m not a technophobe, though. I use voice remote for TV and my smartphone for the usual stuff: music, news, texts, video calls, pet photos, health monitoring, and so forth. These help me stay connected and get where I want to go faster.

PART 1: I BANG ON ABOUT AI AND CREATIVE ETHICS

As with all discussions, let's start from intellectual honesty. The modern writer has long been using AI. Internet search algorithms, word predictors, spell check, Grammarly plug-ins. It's all narrow AI. What’s new is AI’s computing power and availability to the masses. AutoCrit’s AI critiques your story and gives style comparables (full disclosure: I've started using AutoCrit’s free version to spot repeated words and phrases). Sudowrite’s Story Engine handles the writing for you, including that dreaded synopsis. Other tools abound, and that number will mushroom.

I write when I can carve out time. In a productive year, I’ll write a handful of stories (I wrote three in 2023). About half of those will be publishable with effort. AI can crank out stories 24/7. They're junk. Fine, AI has almost won literary prizes. That's one in a billion, from what I've seen. People submit this anyway. As their own work. I don’t understand that justification. Someone presses a button. A prompted algorithm spitting out words is no more authorship than is copying pages straight from a Dickens novel. Hell, the algorithm may have copied Dickens.

I despair of rot. AI will evolve to produce more natural prose. Even so, AI will never be imaginative. Insightful, sure, but AI has no mind with which to imagine. And it’s a copycat, even of itself. The more AI builds its dreck into its model, the more AI will reproduce dreckier dreck. Markets will struggle for quality and even survival. There's no human effort barrier to slow the AI onslaught. Let’s stay honest, though. Many readers won’t mind so long as AI entertains.

PART 2: I ACTUALLY TRY THE DAMN THING

So in that mindset, I clicked the link to generate a holiday image. My command: a festive boiled custard drinking contest in old-time illustration style. Here’s its swing at my curveball:

generated by AI

generated by AI

generated by AI

Weird. But you know what? AI tried its robot best. And it brought fun.

Game on. I asked Edge to make a theoretical book cover of “Lord, Spare the Bottom Feeders,” a story of mine from AHMM a few years back. My prompt described the story as crime fiction with a few plot particulars about the lawyer character and let the tool rip. 

The tool returned an over-the-top cartoon cover with a generalissimo-type crime lord surrounded by central casting mafia goons, everyone armed as if up against the Untouchables and the Five Families and even the bad Terminator. Vivid, but it highlights important AI concerns. My prompt didn’t say what kind of crime ring was involved. I didn't mention guns. Fine. The tool made these assumptions. AI is teaching itself from an internet archive that, as we all know, includes significant biases and worse. Absent way more controls than we have today, AI is going to spread these biases rapid-fire.

AI is a parrot, so I re-prompted with a load more story specifics. The tool returned:

Okay, better-ish. It's still cartoonish tropes, but this one at least addresses the prompt about mussel smuggling. No lawyer, but props on the broken scales of justice. And it does grab attention, as a cover should do. 

I don’t worry for folks who design bad book covers. They need to find other gigs. I do worry for the many great cover designers on some level. Hopefully, those folks can lean into AI as a way to craft even better covers in less time.

For my next test, I took a story idea that has refused to gel in my head for months now. It’s about a guy getting initiated into the burly beard grooming life. As usual, the character came right to life. A workable plot hasn’t. So I prompted with:

Write an outline for a 3,000-word crime short story with three twists about a criminal who can't grow a beard despite trying.

AI returned (again, this is NOT my work):

"That sounds like an interesting premise for a crime story. Here is a possible outline for your short story:

• Title: The Beardless Bandit
• Genre: Crime/Comedy
• Summary: A young man, Eddie, dreams of becoming a notorious criminal, but he has a problem: he can’t grow a beard. He believes that having a beard is essential for being a successful and respected criminal. He tries various methods to grow a beard, but nothing works. He decides to resort to drastic measures: he robs a bank wearing a fake beard. However, his plan goes awry when he encounters three unexpected twists.
• Outline:
• The story begins with Eddie preparing for his bank robbery. He has a fake beard that he bought online, a gun that he borrowed from his cousin, and a getaway car that he rented. He is nervous, but also excited. He thinks that this will be his big break into the criminal world.
• He enters the bank, points his gun at the teller, and demands the money. He tries to act tough and menacing, but his voice cracks and his fake beard slips. The teller recognizes him as a regular customer and calls him by his name. Eddie panics and runs out of the bank, leaving behind his gun and his fake beard.
• The first twist is that the bank was actually a front for a money laundering operation run by a powerful crime boss, Mr. Big. Mr. Big is furious that someone tried to rob his bank and orders his men to find and kill Eddie. He also wants his gun and his fake beard back, as they are valuable evidence.
• The second twist is that the gun that Eddie borrowed from his cousin was actually a rare and antique weapon that belonged to a famous gangster, Historic Boss. The gun is worth millions of dollars and is sought after by collectors and criminals alike. Eddie’s cousin had stolen it from a museum and was planning to sell it to Mr. Big, but he lied to Eddie and told him it was a cheap replica.
• The third twist is that the fake beard that Eddie bought online was actually a real beard that belonged to a famous actor, Major Celebrity. The beard was cut off by a crazed fan and sold on the internet. The beard is also worth millions of dollars and is sought after by fans and celebrities alike. Major Celebrity himself is looking for his beard and is willing to pay a huge reward for its return.
• The story ends with Eddie being chased by Mr. Big’s men, the police, the museum security, and Major Celebrity’s agents. He manages to escape with the help of a friendly barber, who gives him a shave and a haircut. He realizes that he doesn’t need a beard to be a criminal, he just needs to be smart and brave. He decides to give up his criminal dreams and start a new life. He also returns the gun and the beard to their rightful owners and collects the rewards. He uses the money to buy a house, a car, and a dog. He names the dog Beardy."
— generated by AI

I changed one thing in AI’s summary for here. AI's fixation on famous people went as far as to use actual famous people’s names. Let’s leave them and their attorneys out of this.

AI's outline hangs together, mostly. Parts of this are even good. Resorting to a fake beard was something I hadn’t thought of, and that fake beard becoming a McGuffin is an actual twist. The stakes ramp up as stakes should, and the happy ending with Beardy made me grin.

There are problems.

AI crams in way too much plot for 3,000 words. The gun twist pulls the thing thematically out of whack. The friendly barber is funny, but fake beards don’t need to be shaved off. And you cannot run up to someone and cut an entire, reusable beard off their face. That’s either magic realism or horror.  

I didn’t ask AI to write the story. I won’t, and I won’t write “The Beardless Bandit” myself. This isn’t my idea, and I won't pretend otherwise. I do reserve the right to take inspiration from this.

I tried other story summary prompts and got repeated interesting nuggets and major plot holes. I was having fun. Did it feel like I’d created anything? No. It was like playing with a toddler while they explained their toys. I did feel creative-adjacent in a way. Using the tool forced me to consider prompt sharpness and to read the generated content critically.

In the debate about whether or not AI undermines and supplants fiction writers, I’m still in some despair. AI's expansion is a cycle that threatens to drag us downward. Downward, but not out. Fatalism is a human quality and usually a mistake. Enhanced AI tools can help us carbon-based writers. We’ll be better researchers, better self-editors, better brainstormers. These same AI tools are great at spotting missed cancers and asymptomatic Alzheimer’s. If AI can do that, there is a place for it to boost our craft.

We’ll need to find that place. Soon, because the AI debate is pointless. The technology is here. What we humans do with it– and about it– will determine whether we get good Terminators or bad ones. Until then, this near-

Luddite will get back to my Venmo-less life.

Rookies

In the past two years, I've become a professional editor in addition to writing. I'm still good at writing as a writer, editing as an editor, and reading as a reader. When I'm doing any one of these things, my brain doesn't want to do the other.

But after fifteen books for Down & Out plus a couple of freelance jobs, some things do make my inner editor scream. One is the inevitable neophyte writer's rant online about "The Rules." We're all familiar with Elmore Leonard's list. 

It's a good list. It's also written based on how Elmore Leonard wrote. Ever read Elmore Leonard? This is how he got good. But his rules and Lawrence Block's rules and Stephen King's rules are all different lists. I'm not talking about those lists. I'm talking about the temper tantrum of a newer writer getting frustrated with the editing process. I recently ran across such a list. My wife found my own "Get off my lawn!" rant toward it quite entertaining. Really, it showed the writer's lack of experience. And it's not unfamiliar to me. I used to think the same way. What were they complaining about?

• No head hopping - Now this one infuriates me, even if it took me the longest time to understand it. What brought it home was Tom Clancy, an unrepentant head hopper. Clancy would give you whiplash starting in Jack Ryan's head, bopping over to some sonar technician's POV, then ending with some admiral's or politician's. I can't read it anymore. Head hopping is disrespectful to the reader, who has to follow the writer's ADHD-inspired point-of-view shifts. Now, I violently disagree with the "One POV Per Chapter" rule. I always thought that was stupid because it makes for short, short chapters. But one POV per scene should be an ironclad rule. Only four writers I know of since World War II have managed to head hop smoothly: Frank Herbert, Stephen King, George Pelecanos, and SA Cosby. Everyone else needs to remember someone's gotta read this at some point, and more people will if they can follow along.
  
  
• No adverbs. Okay, editors need to really chill about this one, but outright rebellion? That needs to be stamped out aggressively. Mind you, I'm spoiled. I've only beta'd (but not fully edited) one neophyte writer, so the adverbs are usually at a minimum. By the time I get them, they're invisible. But my first professional editing job came from a guy who's been writing longer than I've been alive. (And my puberty began to the strains of Blondie, which was not a bad way for a pre-teen boy to get his hormones flowing. I digress.) So by the time I get most manuscripts, I'm not treated to a flood of "ly."
  
  
• No repeated words. Now let's be clear. I don't have long lists of overused words. I do a crutch word check. I'll leave about 33% of passive voice intact, either for context or because it's been about three pages since the last instance. But repeated words. Yes, you'll use a word multiple times in a manuscript. That's a given. But let's take a word like "peculiar." Unless it's a verbal gambit, that word shouldn't appear again for at least another page. Twice in the same paragraph? There's a reason we do multiple drafts. While I'm not a big fan of thesauruses--I've seen them abused too many times--you may want to pick one up if you find yourself leaning on one word to say the same thing.
  
  
• Show, don't tell. I've got a whole rant about why editors and veteran writers really need to give this one a rest. But I saw this on one of those "lists" and realized writers like this are never going to let editors or veteran writers give it a rest. My problem with show-don't-tell is overzealous beta readers who love rules lists too much and people who can't sell their fiction selling writing courses. (You know who you are.) But ignoring this rule leads to lazy writing. "I don't need to describe Sarah's reaction. I'll just say she was angry.)
  
  Oh, no. That's precisely why editors and more experienced writers won't ease up on this. The inexperienced writer tends to use this as an excuse to write less. If Sarah's reaction is a minor detail, then yes, just say she's angry. Better yet, cut the anger altogether. It will likely become obvious further into the scene. If Sarah is the POV character, we need to see her jaw clench or fists tighten, hear her growl, see her vision turn red.
  

There are others. Passive voice, which is abused by experienced writers as well, including this one. The fact that some writers use "that" to join dependent clauses too often. 

But when a writer says they're going to ignore all these rules? That just shows inexperience. I know. I used to say this myself. And a friend who started writing a couple of years ago needed to be guided, particularly in POV issues. He's now an editor for Running Wild Press. And he calls me when he gets overwhelmed by a neophyte writer who thinks the rules are, "Like, oppression, man!"

 The rules exist for a reason. They work when they're applied with nuance, which means you have to know how to use them to know how to break them.  Ignore them at your own risk.

It Is the Worst of Times...

For those of us who troll around in the darker sides of the blogosphere, it's easy to see that there are a lot of people who firmly believe that these are the worst of times, violent and savage, and there is no hope. That our country and our cities are ridden lawless violence, marauding barbarians, and a general collapse of civilization. 

And, of course, they all agree that we're just one step away from the Apocalypse. To which I reply, "Same as it ever was..." That or, "Sure, I figure in ten years we'll all be busy battling the mutant insects out of our caves..."  In certain circles, I am taken as someone who is seriously unserious, and they are so right. Except when they're wrong.  

Many years ago, yours truly posted a blogpost (Apocalypso) in which I wrote at great length about old predictions about the end of the world.  So far, there's been a 100% inaccuracy rate.  But predictions continue!  You never know!  This could be it!  

And so Nostradamus is hot again:

According to British author and Nostradamus commentator Mario Reading, 2024 will bring about the abdication of King Charles III due to 'persistent attacks on both himself and his second wife', and Harry replace him, rather than William or any of his children, as the man who has 'no mark of a king'.

And Pope Francis will die and a much younger Pontiff will be elected: 'Through the death of a very old Pontiff, A Roman of good age will be elected, Of him it will be said that he weakens his see, But long will he sit and in biting activity.'  (Daily Mail) 

Quatrain 5/23 reads: “The two contenders will unite together / When most others unite with Mars / The African leader is fearful and trembles / The dual alliance is separated by the fleet.” Reading's son, Laurie, says this is all about Elon Musk and his colonization of Mars.  (Sadly, Laurie's decided it means he won't go to Mars.  And here I had $5 to chip in on the paperwork.)  (Guardian)  

As is Isaac Newton:  

Newton, in a couple of his unpublished "occult" works, mathematically predicted the end times as coming in 2060:  

Prop. 1. The 2300 prophetick days did not commence before the rise of the little horn of the He Goat.

2 Those day [sic] did not commence a[f]ter the destruction of Jerusalem & ye Temple by the Romans A.[D.] 70.

3 The time times & half a time did not commence before the year 800 in wch the Popes supremacy commenced

4 They did not commence after the re[ig]ne of Gregory the 7th. 1084

5 The 1290 days did not commence b[e]fore the year 842.

6 They did not commence after the reign of Pope Greg. 7th. 1084

7 The diffence [sic] between the 1290 & 1335 days are a parts of the seven weeks.

Therefore the 2300 years do not end before ye year 2132 nor after 2370. The time times & half time do n[o]t end before 2060 nor after [2344] The 1290 days do not begin [this should read: end] before 2090 nor after 1374 [sic; Newton probably means 2374][26]

(Wikipedia)

(If this makes sense to you, consult a psychiatrist immediately.) 

And check out this old PBS Nova Episode, "Newton's Dark Secrets".  

Of course, it's important to remember that both Nostradamus (1503-1556) and Isaac Newton (1642-1727) were both alchemists and occultists, which was fairly common among scientists, doctors, and astronomers [remember Elizabeth I's court astronomer/astrologer John Dee (1527-1609)].  And alchemy / occultism (much less astrology) has never gone away.  Half the crackpot theories that are currently being promoted on various websites as "the real truth" about everything from vaccines to a flat earth go back to the alchemical theories and practice.  "I've done the research!" says the person who has just been poring over various websites and given you a remedy that's as weird as Newton's cure for the plague:  

"a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison"  (The Guardian)  

I'd almost rather drink bleach. 

Why are we so fascinated by this stuff?  Well, I think there's multiple reasons.

We like to think we're "in the know".  The minute you tell somebody something's secret, their ears perk up.

We like to think that there really is a plan.  

It's a nice distraction from one's ACTUAL problems.  "Well, this won't matter when the end times come..."  

It lets people off the hook.  "Don't worry about recycling, honey, the end times are coming!"  "Go ahead and buy that ____.  Don't worry about it, the end times are coming!"  OR

"Let's get ready!  The End Times are coming, and we want to have our bomb shelter fully stocked, so we can keep all the riff-raff / mutant insects / invaders at bay!"

We like to feel we're important:  it's like a hypochondria of society.  We can't just be going through a bad patch, this has to be the worst of times! And don't try to tell me it isn't!  

100% inaccuracy rate.  And, if that bothers you, we all get to experience the end times when we die.  That should cheer people up.  

You're Byoodiful in Your Wraff

 

Genghis Khan.  The name conjures up blood-lust and plunder, barbarism and cruelty.  Deservedly so, in some respects.  But historically, the Mongol horde brought a lot less proverbial rape and pillage and a lot more cultural synthesis, engineering skills, and adaptive political function than the popular imagination credits them with.  Absent the Mongols, we quite possibly would never have witnessed the Russian, Indian, or Chinese empires, or the European Renaissance – what we think of, in other words, as the birth of the modern world. 

I picked up a couple of books, lately.  Following on my recent interest in the Ottomans (provoked, I imagine, by Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague), and because nobody seems to know where the Ottomans came from, or how they got where they got, beforehand, I went back a little in time, to the nomadic horse tribes of the Great Steppe.  This biome reaches from Ukraine to Manchuria, and it’s figured for centuries in proto-European history.  In one instance, the Achaeans, the Homeric Greek warriors of the Trojan War, were driven south out of the grasslands above the Black Sea and the Caspian by somebody even more ferocious, and those Greek tribes settled along the coast, driving out or assimilating the earlier Mycenaeans, whose mother culture was Crete.  There have been successive historic waves of predatory nomad armies, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, and the peopling of Europe and India (the Celts, the Mughals) is one result.  Looking beyond a Euro-centric view of history, we see not the barbarian periphery, but a creation myth. 

The two books I’ve been reading, not back-to-back, but in tandem, are Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, and Empires of the Steppes by Kenneth Harl.  Weatherford’s book is the more readable, in part because it’s more manageable, even though it includes most of the 13^th century.  Harl’s book is more unwieldy, covering more ground, in time from Cyrus the Great to Tamerlane, but also literally, across Eurasia.  Reminiscent of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, they take it as a given that human migration – cultures, tools, and diseases – move on an east-west axis, like the animal herds before them.

I was fascinated by the Mongols after I read Harold Lamb’s bio of Genghis.  (I was ten or eleven, I’m guessing.)  They rode with their knees, their arms and hands free, and they shot from horseback with compound bows, reinforced with horn, more powerful than the English longbow that defeated the French cavalry at Crecy.  On forced march, legend had it, Mongol horsemen would open a vein in their horse’s neck and drink the blood rather than stop and pitch camp.  They were beyond imagining.  It wasn’t that they were savage, or not that alone; it was that they were implacable.

I’d be the first to admit that The Conqueror (1956) was a disappointment.  Everybody makes fun of the casting, of course.  Wayne is just not the right actor, and he was later embarrassed when anybody brought the picture up.  The only person whose dignity survives even partly intact is Pedro Armendariz, and that’s being charitable.  Still, did we expect historical accuracy?  Robert Taylor in Ivanhoe.  I rest my case.  (Or for jaw-droppingly atrocious, there’s the Omar Sharif version of Genghis, best passed over in silence.)  The real problem with The Conqueror is that it trivializes the whole Mongol thing: the blood-drinking and fermented mare’s milk; riding bareback by the age of six; surviving every season of weather, from snow squalls to burning thirst, in a single day - the Eastern Steppe has the greatest extremes of temperature anywhere in the world – because what’s so fascinating about the Mongols is that they thrived in that environment, and created a social, religious, and military culture conditioned by life on the steppe.  And as poor an imitation as The Conqueror was, I still tore the ears off my Mickey Mouseketeers hat, and pinned a square of black scarf on it to hang down in back, which was the closest I could get to the Mongol costumes in the movie. 

This recent development seems, first of all, like a kind of vindication.  Maybe we all go through a dinosaur phase, when we’re a certain age, or science fiction (which a lot of us never outgrow), but I’m pleased that the Mongols have come back around into fashion.  There are two parallel strands of historiography going on, here.  One is the movement away from Caesar and Napoleon, and an emphasis on the farriers and quartermasters that kept armies on the move.  There’s a famous French guy, Braudel, the founder of the Annales school, who believes the groundlings give us a better picture of the past than the emperors.  This idea led me to a book called The Lisle Letters, about a merchant family’s rise to power under the Tudors, and a revealing social portrait of the era.  The second shift in thinking about history is a de-emphasis of the European.  This appears to have taken hold only since around the year 2000.  We see, for example, new histories of the Americas that don’t talk primarily about what happened after Columbus and the conquest.  And looking east of the Urals, we discover our own deeper heritage.  The horse tribes of the steppe are in our race memory, back behind the curtain, and we can pull it aside. 

Who wouldn’t want to have these people in their genealogy?  It’s not just opening a vein in the horse’s neck, or the fact that they conquered the known world, it’s that they’re us.  This myth, this memory, is ours.

A Wild Ride: 2023 in Review

This past year was a wild ride, both personally and professionally. The 14-month year began in November 2022 when Temple changed employment. The day after Christmas 2022, her father’s leukemia took a turn for the worse, and he died in January. At the end of April, I left my part-time job to return to full-time freelancing. Mid-year, Temple’s daughter was diagnosed with, and had surgery to remove, a brain tumor. All these events—both positive and negative—impacted our lives in ways we will be dealing with for a long time to come.

Rather than dwell on all that, here’s what happened last year in my writing/editing life:

WRITING

Productivity was up in 2023, though nowhere near my best year (75 stories in 2009), with 14 original stories completed. This surpasses 2022 (9 stories) and 2021 (6 stories) and ties 2019.

The shortest story was 2,000 words and the longest 5,900 words, for an average length of 4,007 words. All were crime fiction of one sub-genre or another.

ACCEPTED

Although I only wrote 14 new stories, I placed 16 originals and 5 reprints.

PUBLISHED

Reprints were a significant portion of my publications in 2023, with 59 stories reprinted. Most of these appear in the collections All-American Male, Queer Bait, and Sporting Wood (all published by Deep Desires Press). Other reprints appeared in Black Cat Weekly and Illicit Motions.

Published in 2023 were 17 original stories—including a collaboration with Sandra Murphy in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and another with Stacy Woodson in Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 4. Additional original stories appeared in Happiness is a Warm Gun, Kings River Life, Mystery Magazine, Prohibition Peepers, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Starlite Pulp Review, Tough, Unnerving Magazine, Weren’t Another Other Way to Be, and Yellow Mama.

Excluding the editors of my collections, only three editors are represented multiple times: Linda Landrigan published four original stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; Eddie Generous published an original in Unnerving Magazine and a reprint in Illicit Motions; and I published two of my own original stories, one each in Mickey Finn, vol. 4 (a collaboration with Stacy Woodson) and in Prohibition Peepers.

RECOGNIZED

“Kissing Cousins” (Starlite Pulp Review, Winter 2022) was listed among the “Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense of 2022” in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023 and among “The Best Mystery Stories 2023 Honor Roll” in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023.

“Sit. Stay. Die.” co-authored with Sandra Murphy (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2022), tied for 10th place in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award.

“When Sin Stops” was included in Weren’t Another Other Way to Be (Gutter Books, edited by Alec Cizak), which was named one of the “Best Indie Books of 2023” by The Independent Fiction Alliance.

“You Like Me Too Much” was included in Happiness is a Warm Gun (Down & Out Books, edited by Josh Pachter), which was named by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as one of the three best crime-fiction anthologies of 2023.

FORTHCOMING

Including those accepted this year and those accepted in previous years, I have stories forthcoming in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; Black Cat Mystery Magazine; Crimes Against Nature; Dark of the Day; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; In Too Deep; Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked; Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine; Starlite Pulp Review; Storia.com; Tough; and Wish Upon a Crime.

REJECTED

I received 16 rejections, which is five fewer rejections than acceptances, and any year in which acceptances outnumber rejections is a good year.

EDITING

Editing occupied a significant amount of time.

This year saw the release of two issues of Black Cat Mystery Magazine (issues 13 and 14). As Associate Editor of Black Cat Weekly, I acquired and edited 60 short stories, one for each weekly issue and an extra eight when covering for another editor. This year also saw the release of the last two volumes (7 and 8) of the serial novella anthology series Guns + Tacos (co-edited with Trey R. Barker); Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 4; More Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties; and Prohibition Peepers: Private Eyes During the Noble Experiment (all from Down & Out Books).

Outside the mystery world, I edited six issues of Texas Gardener, a bi-monthly consumer magazine, and 52 issues of Seeds, a weekly electronic newsletter for gardeners that, incidentally, published five short stories. Through the end of April, I also worked part-time as marketing director of a professional orchestra, creating, editing, and managing a variety of advertising, marketing, and promotional materials for print, radio, television, and social media.

Adding all the editing projects together, I had the honor of shepherding 140 short stories and novellas through to publication.

RECOGNIZED

This year, several stories from projects I edited or co-edited were recognized:

“Home is the Hunter” by James A. Hearn, published in Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 3, was reprinted in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023.

“Ripen” by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier, published in Black Cat Weekly, was reprinted in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023.

“Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday” by Sean McCluskey, published in Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 3, was reprinted in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023.

“House of Tigers” by William Burton McCormick, published in Black Cat Weekly, was included in “The Best Mystery Stories 2023 Honor Roll” in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023.

“Death Sentence” by Bev Vincent, published in Black Cat Weekly, was included in the list of “Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense of 2022” in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023.

I had the honor of publishing several equally amazing stories in 2023 and hope to see many of them recognized during this year’s award season.

LOOKING AHEAD

Earlier this month, “The Cadillac Job” by Stacy Woodson launched Chop Shop, my new serial novella anthology series. Later this year, Down & Out will release Private Dicks and Disco Balls and Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 5.

Also this year, Level Short, an imprint of Level Best Books, will release Murder, Neat, co-edited with Barb Goffman, and Wish Upon a Crime, co-edited with Stacy Woodson; White City Press will release Janie’s Got a Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Aerosmith; and Wildside Press will release Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Devious, co-edited with John Betancourt and Carla Coupe.

In addition to my own editing projects for various publishers, Stacy Woodson and I are co-editing Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked for Down & Out Books and additional anthologies for Level Short, some of which may appear in 2024.

In February, I’ll be reading submissions for Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 6 (Down & Out Books), and throughout the year I will be reading for The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025 (Level Short). For information about submitting to either of these, visit https://www.crimefictionwriter.com/submissions.html.

Additionally, I will continue work on Black Cat Mystery Magazine and Black Cat Weekly, and, outside the crime fiction genre, will also continue editing the bi-monthly gardening magazine and weekly gardening newsletter.

I am entering my second year on the Board of the Mystery Writers of America, will attend the Edgar Awards, and will attend at least three mystery conventions this year (Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, and Malice Domestic), so if you see me at any of these events, please stop and say howdy.

BEGINNING 2024 WITH A BANG

The new year began with a bang on January 1 with publication of “Cry”—a dark, dark bit of crime fiction—at Mystery Tribune, and my story “Family Business” appears in the January/February Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.