Stand Back and Stand By

One of the most depressing things about living in this day and age is that I have to keep saying things like:

• Nazis are bad.
• White supremacy is bad.
• People who say they plan to start a race war are often telling the truth.
• People who say only they have rights – to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, not to mention the Constitution – are dangerous.

Etc.

Look, even I know who the Proud Boys are. You can read some summaries of their "beliefs" here:

SPLC - Why are the Proud Boys so Violent?; Anti-Defamation League - Proud Boys; USA  Today - Who are the Proud Boys?

Meanwhile, we had some more proud militia types - the Michigan Wolverine Watchmen (???? - obviously they've been reading too many Marvel comics; that or they all went to UofM. Although I doubt it...) - who decided kidnapping Governor Gretchen Whitmir and trying her for treason at a kangaroo trial and then executing her on national television was a great idea, along with attacking police officers and starting a civil war “leading to societal collapse”.  (NYTimes)

NOTE:  Why, why, why do so damn many white militia types want societal collapse?  Where do they think they can buy their favorite gummy bears?  And lest you think these are rugged survivalists, remember that most of this gang was involved in the armed protest / assault / invasion at the Michigan Capitol building back in April as they sought... <checking her notes...> access to haircuts and hardware stores.  (The Guardian)

Update:  turns out the Michigan Wolverine Watchmen were planning to not only kidnap, try and execute their governor, but also the Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam.  Listen, you rugged semi-constitutionalists, if states' rights are the most important of all, what the hell gives you the right to interfere in the governance of another whole state? 

And what is that they really want, anyway?  I've noticed that most white supremacist organizations - including the Proud Boys - have quit using the term "white supremacist" (puts people off) and instead call themselves "Western chauvinists".  And there's a key right there - because the mind set of these groups is predicated on a false idea, a toxic nostalgia, for a world in which (white) Americans (men) ruled the world, we were the wealthiest and strongest nation in history, everyone did what we said (except, of course, the Russians who back then were mortal enemy #1), and life was perfect.  Gas was cheap, a man - any [white] man - could earn enough to support a family, and the women could stay home and take care of the family as God intended.  Our suburban way of life was the envy of the world, and only we had it and we deserved each and every bit of it because we worked hard for it.

Granted, people did work hard for it - but the reason for our prosperity of the late 1940s through much of the 1960s was because we were the only industrialized country which had not had its major cities bombed to rubble in the almost 7 years of WW2.  70-80 million people worldwide died in WW2. Some 60 million Europeans became refugees during the entire World War II period. According to the United Nations, a million people had yet to find a place to settle by 1951, more than five years after the fighting stopped.  There was a need for massive rebuilding all across Europe, Asia, north Africa, and the Middle East:  buildings, infrastructure, factories, homes.  After a war that long, everybody needed consumer goods:  clothing, shoes, cars, furniture, etc.  And for years, the United States - relatively untouched by war - had a monopoly on production and sales of just about everything.  That was the economic miracle of the 1950s.  Based on the desperate poverty of almost everyone else in the world.*

And that is why I call it toxic nostalgia, because to bring back the glory days of the 1950s and 60s would require a return to that level of global poverty.  Instead, what we're seeing today (pandemic aside) is a world in which poverty is decreasing, countries are increasing production and prosperity - and instead of accepting it and joining in, some Americans are waxing way too nostalgic about when we "ruled the earth".  And dreaming about how to get back there. 

And that's not even nearly as bad as the superfund toxic nostalgia about the good old days of the ante-bellum South, in which slavery wasn't so bad, and somebody needed to pick all that cotton, and at least the slaves all got converted to Christianity and were saved.  That, too, lingers on - along with all the old BS about how slaves deserved to be slaves, because they were so inferior to whites.  Iowa Rep. Steve King asked a while back, "which nonwhite subgroups had contributed more than white people to “civilization.” 

Well, I taught a year-long class every year on World Civilizations which would have answered his question; but I think he would have flunked for citing Ancient Aliens as a source.**  See also SLATE on "Why It Makes No Sense to Judge Groups of People by Their Histories of Invention."  

This, and far too many other reasons are why we have a serious white supremacist problem in this country.  Thanks to Wikipedia, here's an incomplete list of White Supremacist Groups in the United States:

• 11th Hour Remnant Messenger was a group founded by two wealthy retired entrepreneurs who believed that whites were the true biblical Israelites.
• American Renaissance, is a "race realist and white advocacy website", formerly a monthly magazine, published by the New Century Foundation.
• American Freedom Party, formerly known as the American Third Position Party, is an American political party which promotes white supremacy.[12][13][14][15] It was founded in 2010, and it defines its principal mission as representing the political interests of white Americans.[16]
• American Nazi Party, is an antisemitic, neo-Nazi organization based largely upon the ideals and policies of Adolf Hitler's NSDAP in Germany during the era of the Third Reich. It also supports Holocaust denial.
• Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is, according to the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the largest and most violent white supremacist prison gangs in the United States, responsible for murders and other violent crimes.[17][18]
• Aryan Republican Army was a white nationalist terrorist organization.
• Aryan Nations, is a white supremacist neo-Nazi organization founded in the 1970s by Richard Girnt Butler as an arm of the Christian Identity group known as the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has called Aryan Nations a "terrorist threat",[19] and the RAND Corporation has called it the "first truly nationwide terrorist network" in the US.[20]
• Asatru Folk Assembly, part of the racist ("folkish") branch of the Heathenry movement.[21]
• Atomwaffen Division, a Neo-Nazi terrorist organisation.
• Council of Conservative Citizens, is an American political organization that supports a large variety of conservative and paleoconservative causes in addition to white separatism.[22]
• Creativity Alliance, (formerly known as the World Church of the Creator) is a white supremacist political organization that advocates the racialist religion, Creativity. Mainly religious rather than political, the radical Creativity Alliance or Church of Creativity, founded by Ben Klassen in 1973, worships the white race itself rather than any deity, and advocates a radical form of white supremacism known as RAHOWA.
• EURO, is a white separatist organization in the United States. Led by former Louisiana state representative, presidential primary candidate and Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke, it was founded in 2000.[23][24]
• Hammerskins, also known as Hammerskin Nation, are a white supremacist group formed in 1988 in Dallas, Texas. Their primary focus is the production and promotion of white power rock music, and many white power bands have been affiliated with the group.
• Identity Evropa is an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization established in March 2016.
• Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as The Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present [25] organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy and nationalism. The Klan is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.[26] It is estimated to have between 5,000 and 8,000 members, split among dozens of different organizations that use the Klan name as of 2012.[27]
• National Alliance, is a white supremacist political organization. It was founded by William Luther Pierce, and is based in the Pierce family's compound in Hillsboro, West Virginia.
• National Association for the Advancement of White People, was a white supremacist organization in the United States incorporated on December 14, 1953 in Delaware by Bryant Bowles which presents itself as a civil rights organization such as the NAACP.
• National Policy Institute, is a think tank based in Augusta, Georgia in the United States. It describes itself as the right's answer to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
• National Socialist Movement (United States), a party founded in 1974. Since 2005 the party has become very active, staging many marches and demonstrations.
• National Vanguard, was an American National Socialist organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia, founded by Kevin Alfred Strom and former members of the National Alliance.
• Nationalist Movement, is a Mississippi-based, white supremacist organization that advocates what it calls a "pro-majority" position. It has been called white supremacist by the Associated Press and Anti-Defamation League, among others.[28][29]
• Occidental Quarterly, is a printed far-right quarterly journal with a web segment, TOQ Online, including interviews, essays and reviews on the website.[30]
• The Order, or Brüder Schweigen ("Silent Brotherhood") was a white supremacist Revolutionary organization founded by Robert Jay Mathews, active 1983-1984, probably best known for the 1984 murder of talk show host Alan Berg. Berg's killing was to be the first in a planned series of assassinations, followed by attacks on the United States government, all meant to bring about a race war which would result in fulfillment of White Separatist ideals (see Northwest Territorial Imperative).
• Pacifica Forum, is a controversial discussion group in Eugene, Oregon, United States. It has been listed as a white nationalist[31] hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
• Patriot Front is a neo-fascist american nationalist group and an offshoot of Vanguard America[32][33][34]
• Phineas Priesthood, is a Christian Identity movement that opposes interracial intercourse, the mixing of races, homosexuality, and abortion. It is also marked by its anti-Semitism, anti-multiculturalism, and opposition to taxation.
• Pioneer Fund, a white supremacist non-profit that funds scientific racism research.
• Volksfront, describes itself as an international fraternal organization for persons of European descent.[35] It has been called "neo-Nazi" and a "racist-skinhead group" in press reports.[36][37][38] The Anti-Defamation League has called the group "one of the most active skinhead groups in the United States."[39] The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has added Volksfront to its list of hate groups.[40]
• White America, Inc., a group founded in Arkansas to prevent racial desegregation of the state's schools.[41]
• White Aryan Resistance, is a neo-Nazi white supremacist organization founded and led by former Ku Klux Klan leader Tom Metzger.[42]

I can guarantee you that each and every member of all of these organizations knows what "Stand back and stand by" means.  

I've mentioned this before, but this incident will always haunt me.  Years ago right after the Timothy McVeigh bombing, one of our regular militia visitors at the courthouse told me, "War has been declared."  When I said the children in the day-care weren't soldiers (remember, 19 children were killed in a daycare there, as well as 3 pregnant women), he replied, "There are no innocent victims."  And he meant it.  And was not apologizing for it.  And was proud of it.  

White supremacist literature (see "The Turner Diaries") is all about "getting rid of" (i.e., killing) everyone who doesn't meet their standards, to the point where you wonder if even in our weapons-rich environment, there really are enough bullets to get that job done.  Because they are all about purity policing the world.  They really do want to create a white paradise, but of course, there are a lot of "whites" in their world who they don't consider truly white, or white enough. And as their immediate world gets whiter, they expand their list of undesirables, and make more and more "white people" non-white.  In the long run, there's no one "good enough" left. 

 

Remember, the Nazis declared European Slavic people to be non-white, and good for nothing, according to Hitler, but to be "slaves to our culture". That and be slaughtered to make room for more pure German Aryans.

 

Remember, Timothy McVeigh bombed a government building knowing there was a day care center in it full of children.  

 *I told this to someone last week, who was amazed - they'd never heard this explanation of the American 1950s before.  God knows what they're teaching about WW2 these days...

**Not to denigrate Ancient Aliens - it's a great piece of mental cotton candy. 

ALSO:  We finally got an update on the South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravsborg case - 4 weeks later - where Gov. Kristi Noem and Public Safety Secretary Craig Price on Tuesday gave an update on the Saturday, Sept. 12 crash that killed 55-year-old Joseph Boever. Noem and Price spoke to reporters from the Sioux Falls City Hall.  The audio of the 911 call made by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg was released, but otherwise, "The incident remains under investigation, and Price declined to answer some questions, saying he wants to release a full report when the matter is concluded."  (Argus Leader) 

 

Color us all suspicious.  Because if this had been anyone but a high government official, this investigation would be over and charges would have been filed.  

Crow's Life

 The special all-private-eye issue of Black  Cat Mystery Magazine is out and I am delighted that my story "The Charity Case" is in the lead-off position.  (And by the way, I just realized that this is my seventh published story this year.  I believe that breaks my previous record by two.)

The story features Marty Crow and he has been hanging around my life for thirty years.  Here is how he came to be.

I was born and raised in New Jersey. Every fall we would go down to Atlantic City for the teacher's convention Dad always attended.  Being a shore town, A.C. was not at it's best in late autumn.  

Like a lot of shore resorts it fell on hard times and in the seventies someone had the brilliant idea that the solution was legalized gambling.  None of the tacky slot-machines-in-every-diner like they do it in Nevada.  No sir.  Gambling was only allowed in casinos which also had to be hotels.  The first such house opened in 1978 and I have not liked the place as much since.  Casinos, full of bad luck, bad judgement, and bad air, depress me.

My reaction was to create Marty Crow.  He is an Atlantic City native, a private eye, and he has a gambling addiction.  That would be bad enough but what makes it worse is that he is firmly in denial, which is like having one short leg and refusing to use a cane.  A police sergeant friend called him the fourth best private eye in the city and Marty replied that he was the third best, because one of the others had gone back to parking cars.

The first three stories about Marty appeared in P.I. Magazine in 1989 and 1990.  Amazingly that journal is still going, although it gave up on fiction long ago.  Probably the best thing that came out of that for me was meeting S.J. Rozan, whose first private eye stories appeared in some of the same issues as mine.

In 1991 Marty leapt to the big time with the first of two appearances in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.  Two years later "Crow's Feat" showed up in a British anthology called Constable New Crimes 2.  That got me one one-and-only Anthony Award nomination.

When Michael Bracken announced a collection of P.I. stories related to food I sent him "Crow's Avenue," in which a bottle of soda is the main clue.  It appeared in Hardbroiled, and yes, that is spelled correctly.  (Alas, reviewers and readers assumed it wasn't.)  

Even cooler, it was one of two of Marty's adventures which the Midnight Mystery Players adapted for radio.  The Players have vanished, but thanks to James Lincoln Warren, the dramatization of "Crow's Avenue" can still be heard at Criminal Brief.

Marty then took a decade off until Criminal Element proclaimed what they hoped would be a new series title Malice Occasional. The first (and, alas, only) volume was titled "Girl Trouble," and I knew "Crow's Lesson" would be a perfect fit.  It was inspired by a story in the New York Times about a school board hiring private eyes to follow certain students home to make sure they were living in the district.   What could possibly go wrong with having strange men following little children through the streets?  I figured Marty could find out.

Not all the stories involve gambling, although I always try to mention it.  Most dramatically, in "Crow's Feat" Marty blows a bodyguard assignment because he can't stay away from games of chance.

But what about his latest appearance?  In "The Charity Case" Marty is hired by a  hardware store owner, in the City for a conference, who has given eight hundred dollars to a beggar on the street and now regrets it.  Why did he do that?  Well, read it and find out.

I suspect that this will be Marty's last dance.  I am a long way in time and space from his origin and we don't seem to connect anymore.  But I wish him well, the poor fool

Countdown to the Anthony Best Anthology Award

Anthony Award Nominees

Best Anthology or Collection

Bouchercon 2020

The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods, edited by Michael Bracken (Down & Out Books)

¡Pa’que Tu Lo Sepas!: Stories to Benefit the People of Puerto Rico, edited by Angel Luis Colón (Down & Out Books)

Crime Travel, edited by Barb Goffman (Wildside Press)

Malice Domestic 14: Mystery Most Edible, edited by Verena Rose, Rita Owen, and Shawn Reilly Simmons (Wildside Press)

Murder A-Go-Go’s: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Go-Go's, edited by Holly West (Down & Out Books)

Anthony Awards Ceremony

October 17, 2020

6:35 p.m. I’m sitting in my office in Texas and concurrently waiting in an online breakout room with Angel Luis Colón, Barb Goffman, Verena Rose, and Holly West, all of us editors of anthologies nominated for Best Anthology.

Michael Bracken
dressed for success.

We chit-chatted for a bit, but we’ve been asked to mute ourselves while we await announcement of the winner. The ceremony doesn’t begin until 7:00 Texas time, so we’re sitting in silence.

6:40. We just received word that there’s a glitch of some kind and they’ve been unable to get all the nominees into the breakout rooms for their specific categories, which explains why we’re still missing an editor.

6:43. Shawn Reilly Simmons arrived in our breakout room but does not have live video. I think all of us are here now.

6:45. We are kicked out of our breakout rooms.

6:46. We returned to our breakout rooms.

And silence has returned.

6:50. Barb’s camera is on, but she’s disappeared. Shawn still doesn’t have live video.

In the silence, I can hear my wife and our guests in the living room. Andrew Hearn (a contributor to The Eyes of Texas) and his wife Dawn joined us for dinner this evening, and they will soon gather around Temple’s computer on the far side of the house to watch the ceremony.

Waiting in the
Breakout Room
and writing this
SleuthSayers post.

Andrew and
Dawn Hearn.

The ceremony
has begun.

6:54. I took a few selfies and a few photos of my computer screen. Still quiet.

6:57. Slugging Mountain Dew as if I can actually control my bladder. My greatest fear: Being in the bathroom when our category is announced.

6:59. My wife and our guests have gone to the other side of the house.

7:00. Has the ceremony begun? I have no way to know.

7:01. We received a message that the ceremony is live!

7:04. I’m practicing my smile. I look like a serial killer.

7:05. I have my acceptance speech on my computer screen. I modified the text from my prerecorded acceptance speech. I’m wondering if I’ll get to read it.

7:07. Award presentations have begun. Barb has returned.

7:08. Now, I’m getting nervous. I can feel my heart rate increasing. Maybe it’s just the Mountain Dew. 

7:09. Our category is being announced. Shawn now has live video.

7:13. Malice Domestic 14: Mystery Most Edible wins.

Much Later. Even though The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods did not win, I still want to share my thanks. So, here’s the speech I planned to make:

Thanks to Eric Campbell and Lance Wright of Down & Out Books for publishing The Eyes of Texas, and for all they’ve done to support it. Thanks to all seventeen contributors, several of whom received awards or award nominations for their stories. Thanks also to all the Bouchercon attendees who voted for the Anthony Awards, regardless of which anthology they chose. Most importantly, thanks to my wife Temple for all she does. Without her support and encouragement, none of this would be possible. Thank you all.

Recent Presentations

On Saturday, October 10, 2020, I presented “Write It. Sell It.” via Zoom to Malice in Memphis. This presentation was geared toward beginning and early career writers of short mystery fiction. To watch a recording of the presentation and to download the PowerPoint presentation, visit https://www.maliceinmemphis.com/october-2020--zoom-malice-meeting.html.

On Tuesday, October 13, 2020, I presented “Two Sides. Same Coin.” via Zoom to MWA’s Mid-Atlantic Chapter. This was a more general discussion of writing and editing in which I addressed several questions presented in advance of the presentation, and then answered a variety of questions posed after the presentation. To watch a recording of the presentation—which will only be available until November 9—visit https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/v0Scazk7dd6644JZSxt-45jESOCGWlN_7MAENEPAAgYBuJF_9gvr41XtBdpF-Zzy.AckWigUVuSPdFlwe, with the passcode F&.x6J.+

Body Shaming and Institutionalized Contempt for Legs and Ankles

These days I always download the free sample before investing in a book by an author new to me or one I don't know well. In this case, the author was the highly praised thriller writer Zoe Sharp, the book, Killer Instinct, the first in the Charlie Fox series. Charlie is an attractive woman with martial arts skills who teaches self-defense and fitness and works as a bouncer and bodyguard. She's ex-army, drives a motorcycle, and, I'd infer, has developed a unique style as a result of her experiences. You'd think I'd like it—unless I found the violence too graphic or had finally reached my limit for female protagonists named Charlie, Sam, Alex, and Max. But no, that's not why I deleted the sample and crossed Sharp's series off my list. It was this passage, in Charlie's first person voice, that made me want to puke:

Clare's a mate...more my own age. Tall, slender, she has endless legs and a metabolism that means she can binge peanut butter straight out of the jar without putting on an ounce....I envied Clare the ability not to gain weight more than I envied her her looks, which were stunning. She had long straight hair to go with the legs, golden blonde without bottled assistance, and a sense of style I guess you just have to be born with.

Marlene Dietrich's legs

Zoe, you're killing me! Zoe, how could you? It's bad enough when male novelists bore us with the long blonde hair and legs up to here for the umpteenth time. I expect no better from hard-boiled authors like Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins. Here's a variation from Mike Hammer - Masquerade for Murder:

The hostess, a stunning redhead in a green evening dress with matching emerald eyes, intercepted me. ...She was ten curvy pounds the right side of plump and had cherry-red lipsticked lips with a bruised Bardot look that made her smile seem knowing and sly without even trying.

When I was 14, I would have agonized over which side was the "right" side of plump and known in my heart that flat-chested wasn't even in the running. I was too sheltered to have known that equating "bruised" with seductive and "sly" is a meta-message that women who are abused are asking for it. You get bruises from being beaten, not from any experience a real woman would enjoy—or at the least from "rough sex," a phrase I associate with psychopathic killer Robert Chambers's defense in the murder of a teenage girl.

My legs

How do we get from long blonde hair and Bardot lips to rape and murder? All too easily. I found a June 2020 article in The Guardian that reported that in the UK:

More than 60 victims have been forced to go to court over the past decade to deny that they consented to strangulation, assaults or violence, according to the campaign to end reliance on the “rough sex” defence.

Once the authors introduce the "blonde" (or redhead) and the "endless legs," they don't even need to develop her character. Back in July, Craig Faustus Buck wrote a SleuthSayers post on "it is what it is," calling it a "thought-terminating cliché," "figuratively avoiding creative solutions (a writer's suicide)." These non-descriptions of women are the same, bypassing the necessity of making the women characters real people.

Illusion: acceptable legs

Stuart Woods, in his fifty-eight Stone Barrington books, is a master of this. I found a typical example in Book 16, when Barrington walks into a restaurant. "An attractive blonde greeted us."

The character's literally a walk-on, and the sentence could have been deleted. But Woods commits crime after literary crime against women. In the same book, "the lights of Santa Catalina Island twinkled like the eyes of a merry whore." Now, there's a male fantasy for you, and not a very nice male at that. Woods wrote two fine books many years ago, Palindrome and Chiefs. Now who's Santa Catalina Island?

It's a short step from describing women in objectifying or shaming clichés to not describing them at all. In Book 56, Woods opens with a woman, Dame Felicity Devonshire, who's introduced as the head of MI6. What she's doing is not her job, but brokering a house deal for Stone Barrington and acting as a featureless foil for his insatiable lust.

Chapter 2 ends: "Then they went upstairs and went to bed, something to which they had both been looking forward."

Chapter 3 ends: "He followed her up watching her ass all the way."

The woman's the head of MI6. Woods has a gift for reducing potentially interesting women to profoundly uninteresting objects of his middle-aged itch.

Let's go back to Charlie Fox's friend who binges on peanut butter and doesn't gain an ounce. Clare's a compulsive overeater, a shame-based illness that's no fun even if your metabolism saves you from obesity. She may also be a bulimic paying for her slim figure and public admiration with private agonies kneeling over the toilet puking her guts out. These are not the "achievements" for which women should praise their women friends. If they do, it's because the shaming of obesity is so thoroughly institutionalized in our society. Listen to female standup comics and see what percentage of their shtik is based on body shaming of themselves.

I've wanted to throw up myself the many times I've read about a male character falling in love with a woman because she can eat like a horse and not gain an ounce. Ladies, is that really the trait you most want the man of your dreams to value you for? Gentlemen, how shallow and insensitive can you get?

Then there's the universal contempt for thick ankles that I've been coming across in fiction since I started reading novels many decades ago. I have thick ankles. Unlike "style," slim, breakable-looking ankles like those of a thoroughbred horse are something you "have to be born with." Does that mean I don't deserve love?

 

Alas, we're fair game and can be skewered mercilessly. Even Jane Austen took a shot at us. From Northanger Abbey:

Maria's intelligence concluded with a tender effusion of pity for her sister Anne, whom she represented as insupportably cross, from being excluded the party. "She will never forgive me, I am sure; but, you know, how could I help it? John would have me go, for he vowed he would not drive her, because she had such thick ankles. I dare say she will not be in good humour again this month…"

Brainwashing...identification with the aggressor...Stockholm syndrome...If women with slender ankles don't join in jeering at their unfortunate sisters, they might be thrown out of the carriage. And by post-feminist times, it's become unconscious.

Men, of course, have never questioned their right to pass judgment on women's looks. I found this in a short story in Cosmopolitan Magazine, November 1907:

"Don't be a fool, John. You must marry either a German or an English princess."

John Peters shook his head. "Impossible," he declared. "I have acquired your wonderful taste as regards the sex. To save my throne, I couldn't marry a woman with thick ankles." (Anthony Partridge, "The Kingdom of Earth")

The Queen's ankles

Queen Elizabeth has thick ankles, and The temptation to joke about this is almost irresistible—because we have all been programmed not to take women with thick ankles seriously or treat them with the respect we give women we consider beautiful. We've all read novels and seen movies about princes forced into loveless marriages with women who don't meet their standard of beauty who seek love with inappropriate but beautiful women. In America, the "princes" have all the advantages of class and money, while the inappropriate women have Audrey Hepburn's ankles.

There's a double standard at work here, and it's not disappearing any time soon. But there are a few things you can do.

Audrey Hepburn's ankles: remembered

Remember how wretched shaming feels to the person shamed, although you may never know they feel it.

Praise women for their interesting and admirable accomplishments—not for the length of their legs, the radius of their ankles, the color, texture, or provenance of their hair, or the shape and size of their other body parts.

Do not value women inversely by the pound. Love them, or don't, for their character, not for their eating behaviors, which aren't under their control and may not be what you think they are.

Ginger Snaps and Wolfbane

The Premise

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

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

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

The Promise

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

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

The Plot

Halloween and the night of a full moon approaches.

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

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

Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald

The Practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Now for Something Different …

I don't like all movies, any more than I like all novels or short stories–but I like all kinds and genres of movies. Adventure, mystery, romance, horror, western, war, sports, science fiction, fantasy, humor, drama, animated, musical, documentary, silent, foreign, pretty much anything. If it looks interesting to me, I'll watch it–or at least start it. I admit I've grown a little tired of superheroes and zombies, but I'll usually give anything a try.

I will also, occasionally, watch a movie just because I've heard it's off the beaten track. That of course doesn't always turn out well–sometimes you run screaming back to what's safe and familiar. But sometimes it does work.

Innovative, when used to describe movies, can mean a lot of things: a different subject, a different technology, a different approach–anything that might break new ground. Examples: Jurassic Park was the first movie to fully create life-like dinosaurs; Toy Story was the first feature-length computer-animated film; Superman was the first movie to use a computer-generated title sequence. In the not-entertaining-but-interesting department, Star Wars was the first movie to list the entire crew in the closing credits.

If you're into this kind of thing, here are some more "firsts":

The first movie to feature …

• a GPS device – Goldfinger (1964)
• a cell phone – Lethal Weapon (1987)
• a car phone – Sabrina (1954)
• a toilet being flushed – Psycho (1960)
• a karate fight – The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
• a rocket launch – A Trip to the Moon (1902)
• on-screen texting – Sex Drive (2008)
• an interracial kiss – Island in the Sun (1957)
• a gay kiss – Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
• sound – The Jazz Singer (1927)
• a dog in a starring role – Rescued by Rover (1905)
• a TV set – Elstree Calling (1930)
• a PG-13 rating – Red Dawn (1984)
• an NC-17 rating – Henry and June (1990)
• the Wilhelm Scream – Distant Drums (1951)
• scenes shot entirely by natural candlelight – Barry Lyndon (1975)
• a commercially-released soundtrack – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
• a rock song° in the soundtrack – Blackboard Jungle (1955)
• "Rock Around the Clock," Bill Haley and His Comets

While not necessarily "firsts," the following are a few movies I've either watched or re-watched over the past months that I can truly say are innovative:

1917 (2019) – The entire movie was filmed in one continuous, unbroken shot. This was done also in Russian Ark and, with a few subtle edits, Hitchcock's Rope. But 1917 takes the viewer on a long journey with many different locations, in one person's POV, from start to finish. I loved it.

All Is Lost (2013) – Filmed with no dialogue. Well, that's not quite right: There's one word, a familiar expletive spoken by the main character (Robert Redford) at a point when things get extra frustrating. To shoot a movie this way, involving only one man and his boat and the ocean, and still make it entertaining, is impressive.

Memento (2000) – This one doesn't just have a nonlinear timeline; it's filmed backwards. Specifically, it's in two sections, the first part chronological and the second part backward. I never saw anything like it.

Vantage Point (2008) – The same story is told multiple times, one after the other, each time using a different character's POV. (Rashomon, if I remember correctly, did almost the same kind of thing.)

The Blair Witch Project (1999) – A "found footage" movie. It wasn't the first to be filmed this way, but it was the one that made the process famous. Troll Hunters, years later, was my favorite of these, and I liked Cloverfield also. (My college roommate and I saw Cloverfield together in the theater in 2008, and we had to leave early because the realistic, jerky camera movement made him sick.)

Psycho (1998) – A remake that was faithfully re-created shot-for-shot from Hitchcock's 1960 classic, just with a different cast, director, etc. It's worth watching if only to see the way it was done.

Boyhood (2014) – Shows actors as they grow in real life. It was filmed from 2001 to 2013 and follows the life of a boy in Texas from the age of six to eighteen. To my knowledge it's the first movie ever to try this.

Executive Action (1996)/Deep Blue Sea (1999)/Psycho (1960) – Each of these is unique in that one of its biggest and most recognizable stars is unexpectedly killed off very early in the story (Steven Seagal/Samuel L. Jackson/Janet Leigh). That's risky, but in these cases it seemed to work.

Adaptation (2002) – A multiple-award-winning film about–believe it or not–the writing of the movie you're watching. Robert Ebert said, "To watch the film is to be actively involved in the challenge of its creation." Weird but fascinating.

Flags of Our Fathers (2006)/Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) – Two separate Clint Eastwood-directed movies about the same event (the Battle of Iwo Jima), told from two different POVs–the first from the U.S., the second from Japan.

NOTE: One that I've not yet seen is Timecode (2000). It supposedly features four continuous storylines in real-time split screens. It is at this moment in my Netflix queue.

Other movies that are innovative in various ways: The Wild Bunch, Dick Tracy, The Artist, Sin City, Pleasantville, Buried, Idiocracy, Big Fish, Alien, Pulp Fiction, 2001, Open Water, Airplane!, Westworld, M*A*S*H, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Rustler's Rhapsody, The Matrix, Birdman, The Lobster, Being John Malkovich, Cloud Atlas, Flack Bay, Blazing Saddles, Run Lola Run, Dogville, A Fistful of Dollars, The Exorcist, Brazil, Amelie, Melancholia, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Avatar, Titanic, Thelma and Louise, Life of Pi, Dr. Strangelove, Galaxy Quest, Across the Universe, The Sixth Sense.

There are many, many more movies that try something new, with varying results. What are some that come to mind, for you?–and what innovative things about them made them appealing to you (or not)? Any that I should be on the lookout for? Any I should avoid?

Again, different isn't always good. But it's almost always interesting.

Next time, back to the subject of writing.

The Macabre (True) Story of the Sunshine Lady, with an Appearance by Mr. Poe

It’s my unfortunate predilection to use my wife’s speaking gig and book tour absences as opportunities to eat and drink inappropriately. That alone can explain why and how I found myself a year or so ago in the darkened back bar at the Poe House in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a “quaint” town not far from where I live. The Poe House is an Edgar Allan Poe-themed tavern that is part wine bar, part music venue, part cocktail joint.

Poe and alcohol did not mix...well. Eight years before his death, Poe wrote a letter hoping to clear himself after W.E. Burton, a former employer whom Poe despised, circulated rumors of Poe’s drunkenness.

“I am temperate even to rigor,” [Poe wrote.] “At no period of my life was I ever what men call intemperate…. My sensitive temperament could not stand an excitement which was an everyday matter to my companions. In short, it sometimes happened that I was completely intoxicated. For some days after each excess I was invariably confined to bed. But it is now quite four years since I have abandoned every kind of alcoholic drink—four years, with the exception of a single deviation…when I was induced to resort to the occasional use of cider, with the hope of relieving a nervous attack.”

Whatever the truth, it has certainly not stopped barkeeps from using his lugubrious mug to decorate various drinking establishments. I’m getting good at ferreting out such places, and I’ll get to them all someday.

Red Death. In a glass.

On this occasion, as I sipped my Mask of the Red Death*—a beverage containing Tito’s, pomegranate juice, grilled lemon, rosemary simple syrup, with a rosemary sprig—I continued to peruse the Poe House cocktail menu**, which featured drinks with names like Amelia, Absinthe Drip, Virginia Clemm, Poe-a-Tree, Tales of Mystery, That Girl, Insanity, and Brewed Nevermore (your basic coffee and bourbon concoction).

“You don’t have a Sunshine Lady cocktail?” I asked the bartender. 

“Is that a Poe story?”

“No,” I said. “It’s a Hendersonville story.”

If you spend time poking around the Oakdale Cemetery just off Hendersonville’s main drag, you will eventually encounter the most boring tomb imaginable. A rectangular, above-ground sarcophagus covered on all six sides with concrete. This is the final resting place of one Lelia Davidson Hansell***, who endures in local legend as the Sunshine Lady.

Charlotte Oberver, 1926.

She was born in 1861, and hailed from a wealthy family whose name graces a nearby college. She and her husband, Judge Charles P. Hansell, lived in Thomasville, Georgia, but resided in our mountainous region 18 months before the end of her life. Judging from Mrs. Hansell’s death certificate, I suspect that her relocation was in order to avail herself of the region’s “breathing porches.”  This is where one came to sit, and to breathe mountain air, theoretically extinguishing toxins lodged in one’s lungs. In this case both air and porches proved insalubrious. In December 1915, Mrs. Hansell expired at the age of 54 from pulmonary tuberculosis.

Then things got seriously weird. Edgar Allan Poe weird.

The story goes that Mrs. Hansell abhorred the notion of being confined to a tomb for eternity. She  extracted from her husband a promise to bury her in such a way that the sun would always shine upon her face. Acceding to her request, he entombed her in a sarcophagus topped with blocks of prism glass. This is the glass you find embedded in sidewalks of great American cities. “Vault lights” allowed daylight to illuminate the basements of major buildings in the age before electric light. Prism glass was clear when installed but turned purple as its manganese content aged.

I lived in Hendersonville—aka Hendo, aka Hooterville—for a year when we first moved to the South. The Sunshine Lady became one of my brief obsessions. I’d poke around the web whenever I had a spare moment, looking for specific details, and wrote a short story inspired by the tomb.****

I learned that for decades the Sunshine Lady became Hendersonville’s most morbid attraction. I found mentions of the grave in 1930s-era WPA Guides to North Carolina. I read accounts of children selling cups of water outside the cemetery gates, instructing tourists to rub a few drops with their fingers on the scuffed glass blocks in order to better peer at the tomb’s occupant. And I’ve found articles in which longtime residents swore that when they were children themselves they’d still been able to gaze upon the corpse’s skeletal countenance, framed by a beautiful mass of auburn hair.

I have no idea if that’s true or even possible, though Mrs. Hansell’s obituary praised “her character of unusual beauty.” The examples of prism glass I’ve seen are very opaque, but admittedly I’ve only seen aged specimens.

Eventually, the town fathers got tired of this hideous spectacle. A local historian writes, “Many people expectorated on the glass and for sanitary reasons the top will be covered.”

Guess they got tired of buying water from the local kids.

The San Francisco Examiner, 1927.

But I’m sure there were other reasons they altered the tomb. If I may be permitted to speculate, wise Appalachian soothsayers probably foresaw that one day this sleepy Southern town would be a mecca for people seeking microbrews, homegrown apples, quilted handbags, homemade country pickles and preserves, antiques, and cute carvings of black bears. Hooterville could no longer be known as the place where people came to gaze upon the grinning face of death.

In 1937, the tomb was refurbished. It looks to me like a couple of thick skim coats of concrete did the trick, but it’s entirely possible they replaced the glass blocks with cinderblock. Who knows.

I do know that it’s the creepiest thing we’ve got around here, and I could not sleep the night I first heard the story in a local coffee shop. How much of the tale is true? How much embellished? I suppose at this point it does not matter. What does matter is that an enterprising bartender simply must dream up a suitable drink to honor the city’s most morbid resident—and fast. My nerves are so shot I might be forced to guzzle cider.

* * *

* “Mask” was used in the title when Poe’s tubercular nightmare first appeared in Graham’s Magazine in 1842, a month after he quit his post as the magazine’s editor. It’s been “Masque” since 1845 on.

** Alas, no Amontillado on the menu.

*** I’ve seen her forename spelled as Lela, Lelia, and Leila. The obit says Lelia, but the death certificate says Leila. I hate history.

**** My short story treats the whole legend as a ghost story. Download it free 'til the end of the month right here. And Happy Halloween!

See you in three weeks!

Why I Don't Read or Write True Crime, Part Three

This is Part Three of a three-part series. For Part One, click here. For Part Two, click here. 

I have a jack-in-the-box in my desk, at work (for those of you who don't remember, I teach middle school history). It's not a traditional jack-in-the-box. It's an Iron Maiden (the British metal band, not the torture implement) jack-in-the-box, and it's got Eddie, Iron Maiden's ghoulish mascot, as the jack-in-the-box. It's still in the box.

This particular jack-in-the-box was a gift from a former student. And the kid who gave it to me was one-of-a-kind. As a seventh-grader he'd gotten himself into a remarkable amount of trouble, and by the time I got him as an eighth-grader his parents had tossed out all of his black clothes, his guy-liner, every piece of studded black leather, all of the things that he had worn or used to drive them crazy before the final time he'd gotten himself kicked out of school. When I met him, he dressed like a preppy, because his parents picked out his clothes and insisted he shut the door on the black leather and the emo music.

So when I mentioned that I had first seen Iron Maiden in concert as a high school senior in 1982, he decided I was alright. One thing I've learned in all of my years of teaching is that people can connect over the smallest of things. British metal band Iron Maiden was my point of connection with this young man.

His family moved out of state at the end of the year, and right before he left, he gave me the aforementioned jack-in-the-box. I was really touched by the gesture, and by how happy his family was with how much better this very intelligent young man was doing in school. So when his parents sent me a Facebook friend request before they left so we could stay in touch, I was happy to agree to it.

Three years later he killed himself. Over a girl.

I had another student once who robbed a guy in a parking lot drug deal after the guy (who was his dealer) showed him the big bag of money he had made from selling pot. So my former pulled a pistol, took the money, and jumped into a waiting car (driven by another former student of mine). The robbed dealer gave chase on foot. The robber used his gun and shot out the window as they drove off. He killed the the guy.

Both he and the driver are still in jail.

Just a few years ago I had a student who had been diagnosed with O.D.D ("Oppositional Defiant Disorder"). He spent his days at my school acting out, cussing out teachers, and doing no work. Once again I got lucky. I knew who Tupac Shakur was, and had seen him in concert when he was just starting out (how that came about is a long story in itself.). This kid loved Tupac.

So we got along. 

But I wasn't very successful at convincing him to cut other people (students, staff, you know, everyone) any slack. So he was always in trouble. It was shame too, because he was a big, funny, goofy kid. A talented athlete, too. He played basketball on a really good AAU team. He just had no common sense and a get-out-of-consequences-free (for the moment) card.

He went off to high school and I wondered whether he was going to be able to stay out of jail. 

He wasn't. 

He's been busted several times in the intervening years for a string of burglaries, and recently tried to rob a convenience store late one night. The clerk he tried to rob was armed and the two exchanged gunfire. Both were hit. And my former student ran off. He has since turned himself in to police.

These are real stories. This is literally "True Crime." I find it in no way entertaining. There's a human cost here that is painful to recall. And for me there's no escaping it.

And that's why I neither read nor write True Crime.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)

I saw Tony Richardson’s Charge of the Light Brigade in London, the year it came out, and was enormously impressed.  (Apparently the U.S. release was cut by some six minutes, and the DVD is missing that footage.)  Watching the picture again – has it really been fifty years? – I recognize its strengths and weaknesses, but I think I gave it more credit than it was due, at the time.

 

For example, what is Vanessa Redgrave doing in the movie?  She was big box office, after Blow-Up and Camelot, but her character in Light Brigade is a superfluous distraction.  She sleeps with her husband’s best friend, but other than demonstrating the impenetrable superficiality of the ruling classes, it has no dramatic purpose.  For another, they don’t manage to make it entirely clear why Cardigan leads the Light up the wrong valley, and charges directly into the Russian cannon, instead of flanking them – which leaves a pretty big hole in its pretense to historical accuracy.

 

That being said, the movie has wonderful virtues.  The production design, which conjures up the dense ecosystems of David Lean’s postwar Dickens adaptions, and the cinematography by David Watkin, he of Robin and Marian, Chariots of Fire, and Night Falls on Manhattan.  But chiefly, the inspired casting.  Some of the actors weren’t even Richardson’s original choices – amazingly, Trevor Howard as Lord Cardigan, a part Richardson offered to Rex Harrison.  No disrespect to Rex, but seriously?  In a career that includes Brief Encounter, The Third Man, The Roots of Heaven, and Sons and Lovers, watching Howard chew on his mustaches in this performance is nothing short of heart-stopping.  His glaring matches with Harry Andrews as Lord Lucan (in life they were brothers-in-law and cordially disliked one another) are sulphurous.

 

Howard and Harry Andrews aside, there’s the gloriously nasal John Gielgud as Raglan; the inimitable Peter Bowles (later of Rumpole) at his most fatuous, and Jill Bennett as his lion-hunter of a wife; tragically memorable, Norman Rossington, Albert Finney’s best mate in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, the Beatles’ manager in Hard Day’s Night, as the Sergeant Major compromised by his commanding officer, Cardigan, and broken to the ranks – one of the more brutal and graphic flogging scenes in any movie.  David Hemmings, though, is disappointing in the pivotal role of Nolan, too languid and too pretty.  (And reportedly insufferable during filming.)

 

The other point to make is of course the context.  Like many pictures from the late 1960’s and early 70’s, Charge of the Light Brigade falls under the shadow of Viet Nam.  In this case, not so much metaphorically, because the Crimean War was itself a huge folly.  The mismanagement of the war, and the management of public opinion, were two sides of a coin.  Cardigan was a hero in Great Britain after Balaclava; Lucan was in disgrace.  It was years before Cardigan’s reputation began to suffer, and even after he was exposed as an incompetent, there were people who refused to believe it.  (Cardigan’s bravery wasn’t doubted, but his leadership was a joke.)  The very real benefit that came out of the Crimea’s “confusion of purpose” was the reform of the British Army that did away with the purchase of commissions and brought in a policy of promotion by merit.  Not perfect, but a start.

 

Viet Nam was often seen at right angles, or in reflection, not in our direct gaze.  Lost Command, Mark Robson’s version of Larteguy’s The Centurions, came out in 1967, and The Green Berets in ‘68.  They weren’t box-office bombs, but opinion was divided on their merits.  The more common approach was peripheral.  M*A*S*H supposedly took place during Korea.  Nicholas and Alexandra is a lot more about the year of its release, 1971, than it is about the fall of the Romanovs: it’s Nixon, Cambodia, and Kent State.

 

Charge of the Light Brigade came out in 1968, after the Tet Offensive.  The timing is coincidental, but the movie’s antiwar sentiments were sharpened considerably by what was widely viewed as an American military and political embarrassment.  (Historically, it was a defeat for the NVA and Viet Cong, but the public perception in the U.S. and Europe was quite different.)  Light Brigade, then, becomes a provocation, and a warning against foreign adventurism.  It’s not about a war a century old, but a war very much in the here and now.  And the generals bickering over who gets the blame for the slaughter remind us uncomfortably of the tone-deaf Westmoreland, with his talk of a light at the end of the tunnel.  No accident. 

 

We imagine we made peace with Viet Nam.  Not with Viet Nam per se, a country that makes us sweatshop sneakers, but with Viet Nam as an American failure, which is complete nonsense.  Missing in Action is psychological denial, Chuck Norris fighting the war over again, but winning this time.

 

Charge of the Light Brigade is a moment frozen in time.  Not the Crimea, but 1968.  It betrays its own period.  I don’t think it’s a bad picture, far from it, but I think it shows its age.  You look at a movie like The Thin Man, and admire or indulge its representation of its own time and place, but still think it has a universal charm, whether or not it’s dated.  You give it the benefit of the doubt.  Light Brigade is too much the product of its own particular period; it can’t breathe.  It’s trapped in its immediate context.  That immediacy, which made it seem so genuine and alive back then, makes it an artifact now.  It’s a fossil.

You're Invited to Check out Chesapeake Crimes: Invitation to Murder

Last week the ninth volume in the Chesapeake Crimes anthology series, Invitation to Murder, was published by Wildside Press. Donna Andrews, Marcia Talley, and I have been editing these books together since volume four, when I joined the team. The series, showcasing stories from the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime, has had remarkable success: twenty-six nominations for major short story awards (thirteen Agathas, four Anthonys, three Derringers, five Macavitys, and one Thriller) and eight wins (four Agathas, one Anthony, one Derringer, and two Macavitys). Donna, Marcia, and I are hopeful that readers will enjoy this newest volume just as much. With that in mind, I'm going to talk about the stories in their order of appearance in the book, with a brief description of each and what I think makes it special. 

The book begins with "The Dame and Thadeus Birdwhistle" by Karen Cantwell. In this story, two uppercrust Bostonians learn, to their dismay, that their brilliant and previously polite young son has begun writing a dime detective novel, and he's adopted the lingo and attitudes of his characters. When the boy's mother tries to discover how he's learned the things he knows, she stumbles into a mystery of her own. This is a quirky, delightful story, with dialogue that sings. 

"Secrets to the Grave" by K.M. Rockwood. A proper older woman finds herself the victim of blackmail. But just because she's proper doesn't mean she's a pushover. This story has a wonderful tone. While it's not set in England, I think it will appeal to anyone who enjoys Golden Age mysteries set in small English villages.

"The Mysterious Affair at the Escape Room" by Leone Ciporin. Several relatives, most of whom don't like each other, go to an escape room. The room pays homage to Agatha Christie--as do the events that transpire in that room. This story has a clever premise that pays off in the end.

"The Do-Gooder" by Adam Meyer. When it seems a rich woman isn't subject to the same rules as everyone else, a homeless woman takes it upon herself to see that justice is served. Meyer really brought the main character to life. A wonderful example of deep point of view in action.

"The Problem with Open-Ended Invitations" by Cathy Wiley. When a friend needs a place to stay for a little while, Cynthia offers her a room. And then the friend stays and stays and stays. This story's plot twists and turns in deliciously unexpected directions.

"Muggins" by Josh Pachter. Two cribbage players square off in the park, talking about the game and their lives. This story is a great example of using subtext to propel a plot forward.

"The Killing Winds" by Mary Stojak. After someone tries to kill a PI's assistant, he takes the woman on a trip to Chile, hoping to outrun the gunman. Stojak does a great job with the setting, putting the reader right there with the wind and the mist and the danger of hiking in Patagonia.

"Make New Friends, But Keep the Old" by Jane Limprecht. This is a whodunit set at a retirement home. Limprecht's plot goes in unexpected directions while addressing the important social issue of financial crimes involving the elderly.

"Good Morning, Green Leaf Class" by Sarah Cotter. This story is told entirely via emails among parents of a pre-school class whose prior teacher died, seemingly by accident. A wonderfully structured story that shows the importance of reading between the lines.

"The Great Bedbug Incident and the Invitation of Doom" by Eleanor Cawood Jones. A woman goes to London to attend an event, but when her hotel room has bedbugs and she has to get another one, she winds up in the middle of a murder mystery. Jones showcases her amusing voice with witty dialogue and exposition, including her choice of details.

"Guns and Yoga" by Maureen Klovers. When a gun store seeks to open in an upscale neighborhood, activists' tempers stretch beyond a community meeting. Klovers makes good use of multiple points of view to enable the reader empathize with characters on both sides of the debate.

"RFP/RIP" by Britt Alan. A team of government contractors is working night and day to get a proposal ready for submission. That would be enough to drive anyone to murder. And it does ... This is a story with motives as complex as the characters.

"Aumakua" by Maddi Davidson. Two surfers in Hawaii discuss island folklore while one of them tries to discover the location of missing treasure. Davidson brings Hawaiian culture to life by mixing the islands' history and language into her thriller.

"The Color of Envy" by Joanna Campbell Slan. Set in early 1900s Charleston, two teenaged cousins vie for the same man. An interesting take on the Cinderella story, with some cool science thrown into the mix.

"True Colors" by Robin Templeton. The wife of a high-powered politician takes steps to ensure her past remains a secret. Templeton weaves the main character's backstory deftly into the plot so that it pushes the story forward at each step.

"All Tomorrow's Parties" by Art Taylor. A woman with a drinking problem is determined to put her past behind her and lock down a better future--or die trying. This is another story that brings the main character to life through intricate use of deep point of view, as well as the engaging writing style for which Taylor is well known.

"Sunnyside" by Stacy Woodson. After a life on the run from the mob, Michael ends up in the same retirement home as the guy who's been gunning for him for decades. This story has a great voice, especially the contrast between the main character's dialogue and thoughts.

So that's it. Seventeen stories. I hope you're intrigued enough to pick up the book. Chesapeake Crimes: Invitation to Murder is available in trade paperback and ebook formats. If you've already read some or all of the anthology, I'd love your feedback in the comments.

And before I go, this year's Bouchercon will be this Friday and Saturday online. If you've registered to attend, I hope you'll check out my panel, What's a Weapon: Choosing Ways to Murder. I'll be talking about murder methods beyond guns, knives, and poisons with Tori Eldridge, Linda Joffe Hull, and Tessa Wegert, with Alec Peche moderating. The panel starts at 6 p.m. ET (3 p.m. PT) on Saturday. 

And don't forget to watch the pre-taped opening ceremonies, where the Macavity Awards will be announced. I'm up for best short story--fingers crossed! And then tune in for the Anthony Awards gala Saturday at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT), where I'll be up for the Anthony for best anthology for Crime Travel. Fingers crossed again!

It's Better When It Moves

Last week, Rob Lopresti offered "The Inspiration Panel," a short play that was both funny and terrifying. I told him if he could write two companion pieces to make it a trilogy, I'd direct them. Now I think about how much my early misadventures in theater taught me about writing.

Theater audiences pay more to see a live play than they do for a movie, so you better give them their money's worth; small audiences mean you might not get to direct again. Sitting in the audience when my first baby hit the stage taught me a lot that you can apply it to stories and novels.

Years ago, I showed Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder to a high school class. The first 45 minutes of the film show Ray Milland and another actor sitting at a table talking. That's it. My sixteen-year-olds went crazy. The long stretch of nothing happening was brutal. Do you have long passages like that in your book? Audiences need movement, emotion and/or action to keep them grounded.

Action perks up a static scene 

If they don't get the stimulation they need, they'll drift away. Good dialogue is fine, but does it go somewhere that the reader can notice? Nobody includes the set design in the program, so maybe you can cut back on description, too. 

If I directed that play today (I can't think of any reason I'd want to, including a large check), those two actors would mix a drink, go to the telephone, size up the room, and laugh at each other. Movement.

Twelve Angry Men was originally a teleplay, and it works better that way because the camera cuts and close-ups give the illusion of motion. Watching the play on-stage is akin to watching gangrene move up your leg. The only successful staging I've ever seen was when the director seated the audience around the jury table so the actors could move naturally and address each other without have to face front in an awkward pose. I still don't care for the play, but that made it much more watchable.

Inertia is bad, but so is too much movement. If we see lots of action early, we get lost without a context to show us whose side we're on. That guy in the cape might really be a bad guy, not a super hero. Think of the James Cagney film White Heat (1949), which opens with ten minutes of car chases and gunfights, but includes dialogue and character background so we understand what we're watching. It's good exposition without becoming static. Can your book do that, too?

Unrealistic set that HELPS actors
tell the story: Book of Days

Bill Francisco and John Hawkins, my directing and acting mentors at Wesleyan, both pointed out that nobody watches an actor or scene unless the actors make him watch it. If the audience doesn't feel like they're getting something out of it, they'll check their watch, fan themselves with the program, or play with the change in their pockets. Earn the attention. That goes for your story, too.

Beware of special stage effects. Arcane sets, odd lighting, and bizarre sound effects may work for Richard Foreman (or not), but unless they help the actors tell the story, they'll pull attention away from action and dialogue.

If you need bells and whistles to make it work, your plot or characters can't stand on their own. Fix it. It makes a better story and saves money on the special effects budget.

Think of last Wednesday night. Did you really pay attention to what Mick Pence was saying while that fly sat on his head?

---

Dr. Obenson: Doctor and Detective

Dr. Ken Obenson is one of only two certified forensic pathologists practicing in New Brunswick, Canada. He holds the distinction of being  first black pathologist certified by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in forensic pathology. 

Although he investigates deaths in deceased of all age groups from babies to adults, it is with the death of babies where, “I often need to apply all the detective skills that I acquired through training and experience. Infants don’t have the usual stigmata of disease or injury unlike adults who tend to have well documented disease histories - and infants can sustain injuries that may not be as obvious at autopsy as adults.”

“My role, in the case of a natural death, is to make sure that I make the best effort to find the explanation for the death so I can allay some of the fears of the family,” Dr. Obenson explains. “When an infant dies, the parents almost always blame themselves. It can be heartbreaking for the parents when we are not  able to  provide a definitive cause of death. Unlike some other practice groups, we don’t use the term SIDS because it is a diagnosis of exclusion. SIDS or not, the cause death is undetermined and this is what they (the parents) worry about. Not just for this baby, but for others they may have in the future.” 

One case he investigated was particularly illuminating. It was the death of an infant who was only a few days old. The CT, X-ray, autopsy, toxicology, microbiology and other examinations found no cause of death. Information gathered by the police, revealed that the baby was visited by its’ large extended family who had all held the baby. On a preliminary examination of slides of the markedly autolyzed tissue that he had sampled at the autopsy Dr. Obenson found evidence of viral infection (suspected to be parvovirus) in one section of liver. Knowing exactly what to look for, he reexamined the slides more closely  and found  further evidence of the infection in several other organs. 

Because he was able to determine that death was the result of a viral infection, Dr. Obenson was able to allay the parents’ fears that something congenital was responsible for their baby’s death and reassure them that their next baby would not be at risk of dying. It also allows them to make different decisions about how many people their next baby comes into contact with while vulnerable and perhaps they may even insist on hand washing and other infection precautions in the future. Very importantly, it saves them from unspoken accusations that they might have done something directly to cause their baby’s death, like smothering, etc. 

Dr. Obenson was quite satisfied with the outcome in this case, knowing that the finding of a lethal viral infection probably helped  the parents in dealing with  their loss.  This is why he insists that as per international guidelines, a  thorough post mortem examination be performed in infants, after a comprehensive death scene investigation with review of  radiologic, toxicological, histologic and microbiological findings. 

“My role, when there is a homicide of an infant, is collect evidence such that the law is able to hold whoever is responsible to account,” he explained. “I have been qualified as an expert witness in court which means that because of my training, certification and experience, I am able to  give opinion evidence as to the cause and manner of death, unlike 'eye' witnesses who can only speak to what they have seen or heard.” 

Although for most of us, the murder of an infant is unthinkable, it does happen. Dr. Obenson explains that if there is an adult unrelated to the infant living in the house, like a new boyfriend, they are statistically more likely to kill that child. However, biological parents also do kill their babies, with fathers being more likely to do so violently than mothers. Unfortunately the less violent the trauma the more difficult it can be to detect physical evidence of foul play. For example, Dr. Obenson points out, if a baby is smothered, petechial hemorrhages in the eye  that are often seen in, but not exclusive to an asphyxial death are less likely to occur in infants- which is why these death investigations can be so complex. 

Dr Obenson takes his role as an impartial witness seriously and derives no personal satisfaction from a conviction. His only responsibility is use all available evidence from death scene, to social circumstances to post mortem examination and ancillary tests to arrive at a reasonable opinion on the cause of death. 

Dr. Obenson has practiced forensic pathology in the United States, in Jamaica and for nearly 20 years in Canada. He says, “We don’t have as many suspicious child deaths in Canada, particularly homicides. My theory is that the social safety nets in Canada alleviate some of the social stresses families feel.” 

This is the best argument I have ever heard for supporting families: protecting children.