Nature's Bounty?

One of the great things about this time of year is that, even after Halloween, people are racing to give you new ideas on ghosts, goblins, and how to kill people, with or without Nature's little helpers.  Two articles from Atlas Obscura leapt out to me:

First of all, consider the Manchineel Tree*.  Related to poinsettias, it's a nice looking tree, with fruit that looks kind of like the "little green apples" of the old Roger Miller song (older than dirt). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchineel#/media/File:Hippomane_mancinella_(fruit).jpg

BUT:

You might be tempted to eat the fruit. Do not eat the fruit. You might want to rest your hand on the trunk, or touch a branch. Do not touch the tree trunk or any branches. Do not stand under or even near the tree for any length of time whatsoever. Do not touch your eyes while near the tree. Do not pick up any of the ominously shiny, tropic-green leaves. If you want to slowly but firmly back away from this tree, you would not find any argument from any botanist who has studied it.  Supposedly it killed Ponce de Leon.  (Manchineel Tree)

Gives new meaning to the Genesis admonition "if you eat of the tree you will surely die."  Now I think that the average mystery writer can think of a couple of ways of utilizing the Manchineel Tree, with the help of say, some rubber gloves and mass disposal of all cooking utensils, and I'll just leave that idea simmering away in the back of your minds.

The Manchineel tree (Hippomane mancinella) is found in the Caribbean, Central America, the northern edges of South America, and south Florida. Florida, of course, is host to other toxic plants, including the spotted water hemlock, (Cicuta maculata, a/k/a spotted parsley, spotted cowbane, and the suicide root) which looks like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicuta_maculata#/media/File:Cicuta_maculata.jpg

Occasionally mistaken for parsnips, this is considered to be North America's most toxic plant. "A quarter-inch of the stem is enough to kill a person" according to naturalist and botanist Roger Hammer, a naturalist and botanist. Unfortunately for us all, the range of the spotted water hemlock is the entire freaking United States, and I can show you a lovely crop growing up along the Big Sioux River here in Sioux Falls.

Or perhaps it's actually cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum), which grows everywhere, and is tall, herbaceous, and looks like a much larger, taller, thicker Queen Anne's Lace (daucus carota, a/k/a wild carrot).  According to Alaska's Poisonous Plants, 

"The sap of this plant contains various phototoxic chemicals that can make the skin (especially light skin) extremely sensitive to sunlight and more prone to sunburn. Skin contact with juice from the plant followed by exposure to sunlight can cause dermatitis, which can range from a mild, red rash to severe skin blistering."

Well, I'm not going to wade in to find out.  But people actually ate cow parsnips and lived.  From Wikipedia:

"The young stems and leafstalks were peeled and usually eaten raw, while early American settlers cooked the plant.[25] In terms of taste, texture, and nutrients, the peeled stalks resembled celery, which gave rise to the common name "Indian celery". The natives were aware of the toxic effects of the plant, knowing that if the outer skin were not removed, one would get an "itchy mouth" or blistering skin.[4][26] Pregnant women were warned away from the flower bud stalks to prevent newborns from asphyxiating when crying."

And this leads to (me, at least) the eternal question, how in the world did humans learn to eat some of this stuff?  

Take ginkgo seeds, from the ginkgo tree.  The ginkgo is the oldest living tree species on earth, an actual “living fossil” that's existed in their current form as far as the Middle Jurassic Period, or 170 million years ago (my emphasis added).  And they're very popular.  Their green fan-shaped leaves are aesthetic and pleasing, and turn a beautiful gold in autumn.  They can grow anywhere, through anything.  But a lot of people are severely allergic to their pollen, and their fruit stinks - "like vomit-laced poop" - and is inedible. (I would strongly advise against ginkgo supplements, no matter how hard they're pitching you.)  What you can eat is the cooked nuts - after a long, involved process requiring gloves and other precautions. And even then, the nuts contain trace amounts of a neurotoxin that can cause nausea and headaches, so you should only eat 10 nuts a day.  (Atlas Obscura)

But ginkgo is a more or less a garnish food.  What's even more fascinating to me is when people take something that is absolutely poisonous and transform it into edibility through a long, involved process of grinding, boiling, rinsing, leaching, etc. - how in the world did they survive to find out that the product would be edible?  Think about acorns and cassava.  

Acorns have bitter tannins, which interfere with the ability to metabolize protein. In order for humans to eat them, they have to be chopped and then soaked in several changes of water, until the water no longer turns brown. This can take several days. After that, they can be ground up and used like flour.

And there's manioc, a/k/a cassava.  Cassava root has cyanide in it, so it obviously has to be prepared carefully. Sweet cassava should be peeled, chopped up small, boiled until very tender, and the cooking water discarded. Bitter cassava (which is often grown because the animals won't eat it) has to be soaked in water for 4–6 days, boiled until tender, and then all the cooking water discarded.

Well, people aren't eating many acorns anymore, but cassava is the main carbohydrate for much of Africa and South America.  And people are still getting poisoned by it:  In 2017, 28 people died in Venezuela from cyanide poisoning from being sold raw bitter cassava roots instead of sweet cassava roots.  (They look alike, apparently.)  (El Pais)

Either way, whether it's ginkgo seeds, cow parsnips, acorns or cassava, what runs through my mind is a Monty Python routine:  

"Nuts, roots and seeds! Nuts, roots and seeds! Come and get your fresh nuts, roots and seeds!"

"Hey, there, my husband tried that root.  Took one bite and dropped dead, he did."

"Well, madam, we don't guarantee safety. You could try cooking it."

"Cook it? You didn't say nothing about cooking it."

"Haven't you heard? Everything's better if it's cooked. Or ground up a bit."

"My Aunt tried that. Ground it up cause she'd lost all her teeth. Took one bite and she dropped dead, too."

"Well, I've heard that some people are chopping it up, and rinsing it a few times first."

"How many times do you rinse it?"

[Shrugging] "Trial and error. Depends on the root. You got any relatives you don't like to try it out on?"

"Well, there's me husband's crowd from the shore. Bunch of clam eaters."

"And if that doesn't work, you could boil the hell out of it, and then drain it all off."

"It all sounds like an awful lot of work. Don't you have any potatoes?"

"Not for another three thousand years. Meanwhile, you get this right, and you could have a nice bowl of tapioca pud for your tea."

"Well, I suppose it would make a change...  I'll take two. But mind, if this doesn't work, I'm sticking with cattails."

Happy post-Halloween!

*Political Sidenote - the Manchineel tree is so toxic I propose calling Joe Manchin "Manchineel Joe".

Welcome to Avram Davidson's Universe

Avram Davidson was an unusual writer.  He won two Edgar Awards (mystery), a Hugo Award (science fiction), and three World Fantasy Awards.  Some of us haven't won any of those.

Born in Yonkers, NY, he was a Marine medic during WWII. He first published as a Talmudic scholar .He ghost-authored two of Ellery Queen's novels. He edited the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 

He was a shepherd in Palestine just before the birth of the state of Israel.  He spent part of his life in Mexico and Belize, and lived in Bellingham, WA, a few years before I got here, alas.

Eccentric or protean don't begin to cover the guy.

My favorite of his works is a novella called "The Lord of Central Park."  I once described it like this:

... the simple story of a young lady from New Jersey and her encounters with a pickpocket, the Mafia, the NAFIA, an Albanian Trotskyite who wants to blow up the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Hudson River Pirates, and, of course, the Lord High Keeper of the Queen's Bears, who lives in a cave in Central Park.  Okay, maybe I lied about it being a simple story.

Davidson tended toward the baroque in language and he had a ton of historical and geographic knowledge to add detail to his fiction.

I was recently contacted by Seth Davis who has started a podcast called the Avram Davidson Universe and he invited me to  be his guest on an episode to discuss my other favorite Davidson extravaganza, "The Necessity of His Condition."  You can hear a very professional reading of the story in the podcast, by the way.  That episode went live this week and it is available ffree.

Seth was kind enough to answer a few questions for me:

What is your connection to Avram?

Avram was married to my mom.  They divorced but remained very close. They continued to collaborate on many books.   Avram became my Godfather and for a variety of reasons his literary estate passed to me.

Favorite memories of Avram?

When I was 13 Avram was very involved in helping me through my Bar Mitzvah.  He made the best soups!  Later when he became wheelchair bound we had a grand time as I pushed him down Clement street in San Francisco.

Did you meet any mystery writers through him?

It wasn’t until Covid hit that I really had time to start reading his stories and understanding what an incredible writer Avram was. I knew him more as a doting Godfather than as a writer. Since my mom was a writer as well we had all sorts of authors who came by our house.  Philip K. Dick, Robert Silverberg, Greg Benford certainly came by. I never met any writers who were solely focused on mystery. Dick Lupoff was very sweet and he helped my mom publish The Investigations of Avram Davidson which is an anthology of Avram’s mystery stories.    Avram did live with us when I was younger and I know Harlan Ellison came by and I have vague memories of meeting Harlan. Michael Kurland was probably the writer I remember the most. He was and still is such a kind man.

Tell us about your podcast.

The Avram Davidson Universe Podcast is dedicated to keeping Avram’s legacy alive. In each episode we perform a reading and discussion of his works with a special guest

Plans for future publications?

Most exciting right now is Beer! Beer! Beer! will be going live on December 14.  It is a historical fiction/crime/mystery novel based on the true story of the crime boss Dutch Schultz who was piping beer under the streets of Yonkers during prohibition.  I am actually looking for a handful of avid readers especially Davidson fans for my ARC team who would get an early copy of the book to review. If folks are interested they can contact me at www.avramdavidson.com

One of my beta readers described the story as an amazing glimpse of Americana, beautifully told and that the way the characters converged with all their short stories reminded her of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row.

Unfortunately when my mom passed Avram’s literary estate was disorganized. My goal over the next 10 years it to make sure everything is organized. I want to make sure every story Avram wrote is available.  This includes some incredible unpublished stories like Beer! Beer! Beer!.  We recently published Skinny which was a semi-autobiographical short story about Avram’s time as a medic in China post World War II.  In 2022 we will be publishing Dragons in the Trees which is Avram’s exciting Belize travel journal. In 2023 we will be publishing AD 100 - 100 of Avram’s unpublished or uncollected short stories in honor of his 100^th birthday. 

Killing Dreams One Rejection at a Time, the Sequel

Michael Bracken, Dream Killer

In my April 6, 2021, SleuthSayers post “Killing Dreams One Rejection at a Time,” I wrote about my experience reading 160 submissions for Black Cat Mystery Magazine’s forthcoming cozy issue. Let me tell you, the days when I could kick back and relax with a mere 160 submissions is but a fond memory.

BCMM’s most recent submission window ran September 1 through September 30. Over the course of the month I received 264 submissions, and I responded in one way or another—rejection, hold for second read, and/or acceptance—September 5–October 26.

Of the 264 submissions, three were withdrawn before I could read them, and I accepted eight stories upon first reading. Of those eight, two were stories I had previously read when they were submitted to, but were not appropriate for, an anthology I edited.

From the balance, I held 59 for a second read and, of those, ultimately accepted 32, for a total of 40 acceptances. That’s a 15% overall acceptance rate.

But that also means I rejected 221 submissions. If you’re gnashing your teeth right now, I can safely presume yours was one of those stories.

SPACE CONSTRAINTS

Despite my best intentions, I did not read every word of every submission. Before I explain some of the reasons for rejection, let me note that all of the stories I held for a second reading, and many that I did not, were publishable as is or with minimal editorial work.

So, why did so many stories fail to make the cut? The most obvious is limited space. My goal was to fill two and a half issues, which, depending on story lengths, requires approximately 25 stories. By accepting 40, I filled approximately four issues. I won’t know exactly how many issues I filled until I have time to organize everything and schedule the stories for specific issues.

REASONS FOR REJECTION

Other editors have suggested that once submission volume reaches a certain point, they no longer look for reasons to accept stories, but instead look for reasons to reject. I found myself doing the same.

Because this was an open submission period, I read stories representing all sub-genres of crime fiction. So, I didn’t see any clear subject-matter trends, such as an abundance of stories with theatrical settings, the way I did when reading submissions for the cozy issue. What I did find were three things that weighed heavily against writers:

1. Not starting the story in the right place. Several stories began too soon or provided too much back story before anything of significance happened.

2. Bad dialog. Several stories began well enough, but the first patch of dialog kicked me out of the story.

3. Weird formatting. As I mentioned in my April 6, 2021, post, previous experience has proven that a writer unfamiliar with the fundamentals of Microsoft Word is going to be difficult to work with. In the past, I’ve been willing to suffer the pain of working with such an author, but this time I was not. Bad formatting led to rejection, even for otherwise fine stories.

RANDOM NOTES

The most stories submitted by a single author: Six.

The most stories accepted from a single author: Two—a pair of stories by a female author and another pair by a male author.

Accepted stories written by two authors in collaboration: One.

Accepted stories translated from another language into English: One.

Five accepted stories came from authors with addresses in Canada, two came from authors with addresses in the Netherlands, and the rest came from authors with US mailing addresses.

Twelve stories were written or co-written by female authors. The rest were written by male authors or authors whose bylines were not gender-specific.

I wish I had time to delve deeper into the data to determine, for example, how the ratio of male/female acceptances correlates to the ratio of male/female submissions and how the ratio of accepted stories from non-US residents correlates to the number of submissions from non-U.S. residents.

Alas, I don’t.

SUMMARY

With a 15% acceptance rate, the odds are clearly stacked against any one particular submission, so your goal as a writer is to improve your odds. If you’re submitting to Black Cat Mystery Magazine or to any project I edit, you can improve your odds considerably by doing the following:

1. Read, understand, and follow the guidelines. Though I have seen many submissions from writers who didn’t follow guidelines, this, thankfully, was not a significant issue during this submission window.

2. Learn how to properly use Microsoft Word. Seriously. A writer not knowing how to use Microsoft Word is like a carpenter not knowing how to use a hammer.

3. Don’t dawdle. Get your reader into the story as quickly as possible.

4. Master dialog. Bad dialog is a story killer.

And then let me see your stories the next time Black Cat Mystery Magazine has an open submission window. I look forward to reading them.

Pons, Derleth and Me

Jeff Baker

As Halloween wraps up, we bring you…

Jeff Baker, a columnist for Queer Sci Fi, has been a truck driver, a stand-up comic, a medical courier and a full-time writer. He has been published in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Amazing Stories and the Crippen and Landru blog among other places. He lives with his husband Darryl in Wichita, KS.

— Velma

Pons, Derleth and Me
or
The Adventure of the Icy Apocalypse

by Jeff Baker

“And bring your revolver, Parker…” —Solar Pons

Way back around 1928 one legend gave birth to another.

This was when a college kid named August Derleth wrote to Arthur Conan Doyle asking if there were going to be any more Sherlock Holmes stories, and if not, could he try writing some? Doyle’s answer was “no” to the former and vague on the latter, so Derleth created his own version: Solar Pons, the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street. A Pastiche, a loving version of the original who has taken on a life of his own and even outlived his creator.

Derleth, a fine and prolific writer began writing (and selling!) Solar Pons stories almost immediately, reportedly writing three in one day, and soon there were enough Pons stories for a book, In Re: Sherlock Holmes, and more stories kept coming. Pons has his chronicler, Dr. Lyndon Parker and his landlady Mrs. Johnson as well as his address on Praed Street, whereas Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Mrs. Hudson resided at the famous address on Baker Street.

Derleth would become far better known as the co-founder of Arkham House, created initially to publish the work of his late friend, the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Arkham House went on to publish works of Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, Ramsey Campbell and others. After Derleth’s 1971 death, Arkham House continued publishing with James Tiptree Junior, Lucius Sheppard, and Brian Lumley among its authors.

Derleth’s own work in the horror and fantasy field is worth a look as is his neglected poetry and regional writing focusing on the Sauk City region of Wisconsin where he spent his life.

Solar Pons didn’t have an early influence on me, but August Derleth did. I was in grade school during the original run of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, the early 70s television anthology of spooky tales, which adapted stories by Lovecraft and Derleth among others. Our local station aired it on Saturday nights (where SNL is now) and followed it with a couple of reruns of Serling’s Twilight Zone. Heady stuff for an eleven year old, especially one who didn’t realize how much he was being influenced by authors whose names he’d never heard.

Some twenty years later I got curious about some of the authors whose names had stuck in my head and started seeking out their work in anthologies and basically teaching myself to write fiction. Horror stories by Derleth, Robert Bloch, Charles Grant, Manly Wade Wellman and others. I think I learned something about writing and have published about twenty-five stories and written a few hundred more.

About three years ago, Derrick Belanger of Belanger Books put out a call for stories of August Derleth’s Sherlock Holmes-type detective Solar Pons squaring off against the eldritch evils of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Appropriate as Derleth added to the Cthulu Mythos himself with stories of his own. I had been reading the Arctic stories of Edgar Alan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, and I remembered Lovecraft had set a horror story at the top of the world so I jumped at the chance to write one of my own.

The resulting story, “Solar Pons and the Testament in Ice” was published in the Belanger Books anthology The Necronomicon of Solar Pons, in 2020.

The story involves Pons and Dr. Parker investigating a series of disappearances connected to an exhibit of artifacts brought back from the arctic. This leads to the power of a long-dormant entity whose plans could endanger the very Earth.

Of course, I had to conjure up my own Lovecraftian Old One (copyright, you know) and I came up with the ancient T’iabbas the Ravager, whose power is felt throughout the story, but who makes few actual appearances. I was familiar enough with the era of the story, 1930s London, in that blissful haze between wars but some of the other background required plenty of research. Research which was (I admit) fun to do.

There were a few things I knew I was going to include in the story; a reference to Pons’s brother Bancroft; Pons’s habit of “smoking abominable shag”, and Pons was going to have to ask Parker to bring his revolver into the fray, something Holmes usually didn’t ask Watson to do.

One of the challenges was in finding out how long it would take to fly from London to the Arctic Circle in the early 1930s. Another was in finding out about Dutch exploration in the early 1600s.

As for the prose, I spent time re-reading some of Derleth’s Solar Pons stories so my story would have the authentic style. I also had to fake a Seventeenth-Century Dutch manuscript.

And then I had to conjure up an unearthly horror…

I’ve made it a practice to donate signed copies of anthologies that I have stories in to the annual fundraising auction at my alma mater, Newman University in Wichita, Kansas, and a few weeks after this year’s auction a writer named Lindsey Giardino contacted me, wanting to interview me for the Newman University newsletter. Following a few exchanges of e-mails, the resulting article appeared online in early October of 2021.

Focusing more on my years at what was then called Kansas Newman College, and the idea of perseverance for writers (and others) “Newman Alumnus Publishes Short Story” has received notice from friends online as well as people I went to school with back in the days when I was saying that I “majored in Communications with a concentration in Journalism and beer.”

It was during a semester at Newman when I had classes where all the work was in class that I read through an anthology of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories as well as Stephen King’s first collection “Night Shift” over several evenings, probably around 1981, and started thinking I wanted to write fiction myself. When my planned career as a journalist fell through and I landed a job as a delivery driver and eventually began writing and submitting (and selling!) stories in my spare time.

With the Solar Pons story, it seems to have come around full circle.

I always enjoyed Derleth’s original Solar Pons stories as well as Basil Copper’s continuations of the canon, and it was a genuine thrill to be able to have my own contribution published between covers.

author at work

But…

I’m hardly the World’s Greatest Detective: Proofreading the manuscript I found I had slipped a couple of times and called Pons “Holmes” and Parker “Watson.”

The Women in my Writing World

Kathleen Jordan

Thinking to give AHMM one more try back in the year 2000, I went to their website to see what type of story they wanted. Kathleen Jordan was the editor at the  time and the website said she wanted stories set in exotic locations. I just happened to have finished a story ("Once, Twice, Dead") set in the Golden Triangle of SE Asia. I figured you couldn't get much more exotic than that, so I sent it in. She bought the story and it was published in AHMM's Sept 2001 issue.

The high of being published in a major mystery magazine quickly ran into the speed bump of reality. What next? Or, was I merely a flash in the pan, a one-trick pony?  I had no story ready to submit next. And, any story I did come up with needed to be of high quality in order to obtain a second sale. It also needed to be different from other stories already out there. So, I looked around and decided to borrow from the best.

Isaac Azimov in his Black Widower series had a character who solved mysteries just by hearing someone relate the circumstances. Nero Wolfe had Archie bring him the clues he needed. And, on the darker side, Lawrence Block had his Ehrengraf series with a crooked attorney who always got his guilty clients off by shady means without going to trial. Plus, in a biography of Dashiell Hammett, it seems that Hammett was acquainted with a pair of brothers in San Francisco who operated as bail bondsmen and used their criminal clients to commit robberies and burglaries. All of this being perfect fodder for a new story.

What to name it if it became a series? Well, let's see, back in the early 1970s, Kansas City had a gang of bank robbers, dope dealers and killers known as the Black Mafia. Two of its members were known on the street as Twin and Twin Brother. Through several incidents on some of the darker streets of the city, Twin and I got to know each other quite well before he joined Twin Brother in prison. So, for a story series, let's have an intelligent but crooked proprietor of a bail bond firm solve mysteries from the clues brought to him by his minion, a not so bright bail agent who is afraid of his boss. And, perhaps all of their clients are guilty criminals who accidently fall from high places, go deep-water swimming without the proper breathing equipment, get hit by an errant taxi cab (but hey, they weren't exactly within the marked crosswalk at the time) or somehow managed to take up temporary residence in the morgue, while the bail firm always makes a profit on the transaction. Thus, the Twin Brothers Bail Bond series was born and Kathleen Jordan bought the first two stories.

Linda Landrigan

Kathleen passed and Linda took over as the editor for AHMM. Suddenly, I was an orphan, I'd lost my rabbi. My first introduction to Linda was when she asked for some changes to the second story in the series, a story already bought and paid for. Maybe this wasn't going to be a series after all.  I made the requested changes and submitted the third story. She bought it and seven more with the same characters. I had a foot in the new door.

At the Las Vegas Bouchercon bar, Linda bought the drinks and I got bold enough to inquire what she would like to see in my future writing. She suggested a Moriarty type character to go up against the proprietor of the bail bond firm. Therefore, in "The Other Bondsman" I created Herr Morden (Mr. Murder), the German phonetic of ermorden: to murder.

Years later at breakfast in Manhattan, I asked the same question again. Linda replied that in my Armenian series set in 1850s Chechnya, she would like a story told from the little Nogai boy's point of view. This was a character who in several preceding stories never had more than three lines of narrative and zero lines of dialogue. She got her story ("The Little Nogai Boy") which then got me a sale and a Derringer nomination. Goes to show that networking and personal relationships can help keep those acceptances coming. To date, I'm at a 66% acceptance rate with AHMM and have four submissions waiting in their e-slush pile.

Pat Dennis

When I went to the Las Vegas Bouchercon, I arrived a couple of days early in order to attend Jerry Healy's all-day novel writing seminar. As I'm sitting in the front row waiting for the session to begin, a lady dragging an oxygen tank on a two-wheel cart, walks up behind me. "You're my screen saver," she says. I had never met this woman before and at the time, I wasn't totally sure how I could be a screen saver. But, I was flattered to be recognized. Turned out she was the editor of the anthology Who Died in Here?. All of the anthology stories submitted had to be set in a bathroom of some type. Payment was $25 and an air freshener. She (Pat Dennis) had accepted my story, "Flying Without a Parachute," based on a real incident where a heroin deal had gone bad and the protagonist/defendant temporarily escaped arrest by leaping from a third story window. Defendants really should know that cement driveways make for a hard landing when you are three floors up. I had a lot of fun promoting that anthology. (acceptance rate 100%, one story.)

Johnene Granger

The Short Mystery Fiction Society had a posting several years ago about Woman's World magazine buying (at that time) 900-word mini-mysteries for the grand payment of $500. I sent them one and the column editor, Johnene Granger, subsequently bought nine more. Since I had a steep learning curve as to what topics were acceptable and what wasn't, my acceptance rate with this publication hovered around 33%. Sometimes, the column editor wanted the story, but for some reason the magazine's chief editor rejected the story. However, when Johnene moved on and a new column editor took over, I could not sell a single mini-mystery to them. So, I took my five thousand dollars and faded away, leaving  that market to our own John Floyd who has now sold over a hundred of his stories to them. You just can't beat success. Good on ya, John.

Kerry Carter

I kept reading posts about authors selling stories to Mystery Weekly Magazine, so I finally sent them a humorous story ("The Job Interview") about three individuals trying to rob the same bank at the same time. The editor, Kerry Carter, bought it.

In that time period, the magazine paid one cent a word through PayPal. I will admit to some confusion when PayPal then took a small fee. Through a small amount of research, I discovered that the magazine is a Canadian company in which case PayPal charges a conversion fee when converting Canadian Loonies to U. S. Dollars.

No sweat, I subbed them a second humorous story ("The Clean Car Company") in which a criminal can obtain a "clean car" the same way he can get a "clean gun" in order to commit a crime. The magazine subsequently raised their payment rate to two cents a word. I sent another submission ("The Story Game"), also accepted. Then they put out a submission call for humorous stories for an anthology (Die Laughing), so I sent them "Blue Light Special" My acceptance rate currently stands at 57% (4 out of 7).

And, as mentioned in a previous post, Kiti is my First Reader, part-time publicist, part-time social media person, all-around mental support and wife of 41 years. Guess my acceptance rate here must be okay to make it all those years.

ADDENDUM:

I can now happily add Barb Goffman to this list. She recently asked if she could reprint "Black Friday" (10th in my Holiday Burglars series) in an upcoming issue of Black Cat Weekly: Barb Goffman Presents. The manuscript has been submitted, the edits have been made and the contract has been signed. Now, I'm just waiting to see it in print. And, I may or may not be working with Barb again, depending upon whether it is Barb or Michael Bracken who edits my submission to our SleuthSayer anthology.

It's a good life.

Movie Firsts

I am, and have always been, fascinated by movies. Al kinds of movies, although I mostly like mystery/crime and westerns--a result, probably, of growing up in the fifties and sixties, when you couldn't turn on a TV without seeing a detective or a cowboy. But I'll watch almost anything. The other night when one of our sons and his son were visiting, we ordered pizzas and watched an old DVD of Aliens (possibly the best sequel in movie history, along with Godfather II)--and I loved it as much as the first time I saw it, in a theater in Atlanta 35 years ago. And over the past month I've re-watched The Big Lebowski, Jaws, The Birds, Rudy, The Guns of Navarone, and The Princess Bride, all of which are in a galaxy far, far away from mysteries and westerns.

I also love facts about movies, some of them pretty obscure. We got to talking, during our kid-and-grandkid movie night last week, about which movies were the first to do this or the first to feature that, and I of course felt compelled to sit down later and try to put together a list. I mean, somebody has to, right? You can't just pass up a topic like that.

So . . . here are some cinematic "firsts."

NOTE: These are only those firsts that I found particularly interesting. For example, I don't much care what movie was the first to open in Saudi Arabia or to use IMAX 12-channel sound, but I do care what movie was the first to show a killer shark or time travel or a flushing toilet. Call this a low-tech, unsophisticated list.

First movie -- Roundhay Garden Scene, director Louis Le Prince, 1888

First U.S. movie -- Monkeyshines, William Kennedy Dickson and William Heise, 1889

First comedy -- The Waterer Watered, 1895

First horror movie -- House of the Devil, 1896 (a short silent film)

First Shakespeare adaptation -- King John, 1899

First Sherlock Holmes movie -- Sherlock Holmes Baffled, 1900 (produced to be viewed on coin-operated machines)

First science fiction movie -- A Trip to the Moon, 1902

First western -- The Great Train Robbery, 1903

First feature film -- The Story of the Kelly Gang, 1906

First Hollywood movie -- In Old California, director D.W. Griffith, 1910

First big-budget Hollywood epic -- Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith, 1915

First sequel -- Fall of a Nation, Thomas Dixon, Jr., 1916

First remake -- The Squaw Man, Cecil B. DeMille, 1918 (the original was in 1914)

First movie with a twist ending -- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920

First time-travel movie -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1921

First movie to cost $ 1 million -- Foolish Wives, 1922

First Hitchcock movie -- Always Tell Your Wife, 1923

First "talkie" -- The Jazz Singer, 1927

First movie to win an Oscar for Best Picture -- Wings, William A. Wellman, 1927

First musical -- The Broadway Melody, 1929

First movie to show a television set -- Elstree Calling, Alfred Hitchcock, 1930

First western to win Best Picture -- Cimarron, 1930

First movie shown on TV -- The Crooked Circle, 1933

First romantic comedy to win Best Picture -- It Happened One Night, 1934 (also the first movie to show a bride leaving her fiancé at the altar)

First Disney movie -- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

First movie to use the Wilhelm scream -- Distant Drums, 1941 (I'm thinking this might be a SleuthSayers post in the near future)

First 3-D feature film -- Robinson Crusoe, 1947

First movie to offer profit-sharing for its star -- Winchester '73, 1950 (James Stewart)

First to mention the word "pizza" -- The Band Wagon, 1953

First to use a rock song in a soundtrack -- Blackboard Jungle, 1955 ("Rock Around the Clock")

First to feature a man-eating shark -- The Sharkfighters, 1956

First to show an interracial kiss -- Island in the Sun, 1957

First to show a flushing toilet -- Psycho, 1960

First to use the fake phone prefix "555" -- Panic in the Year Zero, 1962

First to show a GPS device -- Goldfinger, 1964

First to show a karate fight scene -- The Manchurian Candidate, 1964

First to show a post-credit scene -- The Silencers. 1966

First to drop the F-bomb -- I'll Never Forget What's 'Is Name, 1967 (second bombing: M*A*S*H, 1970)

First G-rated movie to win Best Picture -- Oliver!, 1969

First (and only) X-rated movie to win Best Picture -- Midnight Cowboy, 1970 (this was of course an early rating system; MC would currently be a mild R)

First R-rated movie to win Best Picture -- The French Connection, 1971

First movie to show a condom -- Carnal Knowledge, 1971

First sequel to win Best Picture -- The Godfather Part II, 1974

First movie to make $ 100 million -- Jaws, 1975

First movie shot entirely by natural candlelight -- Barry Lyndon, 1975

First to be released on VHS -- The Young Teacher, 1976

First to list the entire crew in the closing credits -- Star Wars, 1977 (also the first to make $ 400 million) 

First big-budget superhero film -- Superman, 1978

First movie based on a Saturday Night Live sketch -- The Blues Brothers, 1980

First movie made for a cable network -- The Terry Fox Story, 1983 (HBO)

First PG-13 movie -- Red Dawn, 1984

First movie to show a cell phone -- Lethal Weapon, 1987

First to sell a million copies on home video -- Dirty Dancing, 1887

First NC-17 movie -- Henry and June, 1990

First (and only) horror movie to win Best Picture -- The Silence of the Lambs, 1991 (this is what the record books say, but I don't agree that it's a horror movie)

First movie to show virtual reality -- The Lawnmower Man, 1992

First to cost $ 100 million -- True Lies, 1994

First feature film to be made entirely using CGI -- Toy Story, 1995

First movie to cost $ 200 million (and to make $ 1 billion) -- Titanic, 1997

First movie released on DVD -- Twister, 1997

First to make $ 100 million in its opening weekend -- Spider-Man, 2002

First to use motion capture for all actors -- The Polar Express, 2004

First to show on-screen texting -- Sex Drive, 2008

First to make $ 2 billion -- Avatar, 2009

First (and only) science fiction movie to win Best Picture -- The Shape of Water, 2017

First non-English-language movie to win Best Picture -- Parasite, 2019 (South Korean)

First movie to open nationwide since the start of the pandemic -- Unhinged, 2020

First to make $ 100 million since start of the pandemic -- A Quiet Place Part II, 2021

  

I learned a few things in coming up with this list, and found I was badly mistaken about a few. Can you think of some firsts that I missed? First Chuck Norris Shakespeare adaptation? First Whoopi Goldberg western? Seriously, let me know in the comments section.

Next time, back to mystery writing--thanks for indulging me.

See you in a week!

These Stones Shall Weep

Photo by JF Martin on Unsplash

This is the month we’re all supposed to be spooked by headstones. I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but at this very moment the Target, Big Box home stores, and giant orange tent in the parking lot of our local mall are selling countless whimsical plastic and plaster headstones to people determined to transform the Modern American Halloween into as big and as outrageous a production as the Modern American Christmas.

The witches who call my area of Appalachia home say this is the time of year when the fragile veil separating the living and dead grows thin, and souls find it easier to ascend to the realm where the living dwell. (Yes, I follow the blogs of numerous actual witches in Western North Carolina. Among other things, they know a lot about gardening.)

I find most modern cemeteries a little dull. At veterans’ cemeteries, for instance, the graves look like unadorned mail slots in which human remains have been inserted, either into the earth or into the shelves of upright mausoleums.

That’s why obsessive taphophiles gravitate to old boneyards, where, I’d argue, the spookiness can be chalked up to three things—unkempt nature, the antiquated craftsmanship of the stones, and melancholy prose.

The curators of the cemetery in Charleston that I shared with you three weeks ago have chosen to let nature run wild over the handiwork of the stonecarvers. You’ll recall that it was only by a stroke of chance that I managed to snap some photos before a landscaper went to work on the graves with a weed-whacker.

Today’s visit is all about the writing.

Cody Ardell via Unsplash

Once upon a time, armed only with a paper map and a magazine called Weird New Jersey, my old roommate and I traveled from our apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey, to the Mansfield Woodhouse Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Washington, New Jersey. In the pages of the magazine, we had learned the story of a heinous murder that had taken place in this area in May 1843. The article assured us that the tombstone inscriptions alone were well worth the visit. It always drove me crazy that this fanzine, which was (and still is) devoted to the oddities of my home state, didn’t simply reproduce the inscriptions, thus saving us the trip. But in retrospect I’m glad I went.

I don’t go in for true crime. Life is miserable enough, which is why I traffic in murderous fiction. But in order to appreciate the headstones, you have to know a little of the story.

On that spring night in 1843, a wealthy farmer, his younger sister, his three-year-old niece, and his niece’s husband were all murdered—hacked with an axe or bludgeoned—in and around the farmhouse where they lived in nearby Changewater, New Jersey. Two young boys, sons of the young couple, were sleeping in another room and escaped unharmed. At the time, the US was only on its 10th president, John Tyler. The murders occurred in Warren County, which hugs the Delaware River on the far western part of the state. Nevertheless, the crimes were heinous enough to attract the attention of newspapers in Newark and New York City.

The motive was presumed to be robbery. John B. Parke, the oldest victim, was known to keep cash in the house. I’ve seen figures saying his bankroll as high as $15,000, but the true amount was never nailed down to anyone’s satisfaction. Suspicion naturally fell upon family members or friends who knew of Parke’s stash. The investigation, trials, and appeals dragged on for two years, and strike modern readers as an appalling mess. At least four men were arrested. Some were indicted, tried, acquitted, then inexplicably arrested and tried again. I count at least two instances of double jeopardy, but I could be wrong. Two men, both relations, were eventually hanged for the crime, their bodies deposited in unmarked graves at a county crossroads, which I’m told was the typical treatment for criminals.

The four victims were laid to rest in the local churchyard. On my visit in those pre-smartphone days, I never took photos of the headstones, which were tall, lean, and nicely cut. (See images here and here.) But after 150-plus years, they were painfully hard to read. Some of the text was italicized, which further complicated matters. What follows is a mix of the inscriptions I took by hand the day I visited, amended and corrected with other sources I’ve since found online. What strikes me most are the length of the verses, the heartfelt language, and the obvious passion of the writer(s).

Photo by Mark Timberlake on Unsplash

STONE #1

In Memory of 

Maria the Wife & Mary M[atilda]

the daughter of John Castner

who were murdered on the night

of the 1st of May 1843,

Age of the Mother 42 years

Age of the Child 3 years

O friends and passers by pursue

this tale of woe

and seek the guilty hands which

aim’d the deadly blow

A murdered mother’s prayer

ascends from this sad ground

That ye will never rest till all

of them be found

I turned and saw the murderer’s blow

His wild and fearful eye

And for this sad imploring look

For only one in pity took

A child was doomed to die

I could forgive my murderer

had they not slain my child. Our 

mingled blood cries out to God 

for Vengeance

STONE #2

In Memory of

John Castner

Who with his wife

and Child and John Parke

were murdered in a most

brutal and cold blooded

manner on the night of the

1st of May 1843

in the 37th year of his age

O Friends, look here upon these wounds

on my temples and on my cheeks.

Children, think often on your Sire, his agony and shrieks

And bend around my lowly grave and drop the filial tear

And as ye value life and peace and things that ye hold dear,

O, seek ye out my murderers all for naught but cruel hate

Hath hurried me along to meet so direful a fate.

The Judgement Day is rolling on and should any of

my murderers escape the eye of man the wrath of God will

abide with them forever

STONE #3 

In

Memory of

John B. Parke

who with John Castner, his wife and child

was murdered in a most brutal

and cold blooded manner

on the night of the 1st of May, 1843

in the 61st year of his age

Stop, traveler, pause a moment o’er this silent lowly grave

Here lies the dust of one who found a most untimely end.

When balmy sleep to sweet repose his careworn body gave

The murderer came, and with one blow all earthly ties did rend

And to the Judgement bar his spirit quickly made its way

To meet the Judge and the awards of that tremendous day

But in that awful day how will the murderer quail

when wrath of God Almighty shall with vengeance him assail.

Erected by Sarah Parke

* * *

Resources:

Murder along the Musconetcong: a tale of Jersey justice, by Ruth Trask Farrow (T.F.H. Publications, 1973).

The Changewater murders: a true historical account, by Sharon & Robert Meeker, (Key West, FL: S. & R. Meeker, 1998).

***

On a lighter note, this week writer Scott D. Parker reviewed a wonderful out-of-print Halloween mystery anthology at Do Some Damage that I wish I could get my hands on. Edited by Isaac Asimov, it features 13 tales by writers including Asimov, Ellery Queen, Edith Wharton, Anthony Boucher, Ray Bradbury, Gahan Wilson, Edward D. Hoch, and more. (TOC reproduced below.) It sounds like a winner, but of course locating the book online is tough, not to mention pricey. Luckily most of the stories are collected elsewhere.

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

Setting As Character: Coda

Two rounds back in the rotation, I trotted out some notions about "setting as character," and shared a few examples of my personal favorites from the writing of writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald.

This time around I'm including other examples, suggestions from writer friends which have struck me as wonderfully diverse in their collective approach. I'm posting them here in hopes of giving tangible examples of the ways in which setting is all too infrequently employed to do some of the heavy lifting of getting the author's story out there.

So read on. Hope you enjoy them!

++++++++++

“Living in Seattle is like being married to a beautiful woman who’s sick all the time.” 

— G. M. Ford, Thicker Than Water

"The blacktop road stretched empty in either direction, the sky hazy and the air heavy as a sodden sponge. The heat of the late-morning sun amplified the autumn scent of drying cornstalks, the putrid sweetness of persimmons rotting in the ditch. Insects swarmed the fermenting fruit, buzzing like an unholy plague. Sarabeth brushed away a sweat bee. She walked the long, twisting path from the house to the roadside stand alone, pulling a wagon with one bad wheel, her legs sweating beneath her heavy ankle-length skirt.

"Her little sister, Sylvie, sometimes worked the family's produce stand with her, but today she was home in bed with a fever and vicious sore throat. Their mother had spent the early-morning hours praying over Sylvie and coaxing her to swallow a concoction of garlic, cider vinegar, and honey. Mama was piling more quilts on the bed when Sarabeth left, aiming to sweat out the sickness, shushing Sylvie when she cried that she was too hot. Mama said fever was nothing compared to the fires of Hell, and maybe God liked to remind us. She said to Sylvie, but Sarabeth knew it was meant for her."

— Laura McHugh, What's Done in Darkness

"Dust when it was dry. Mud when it was rainy. Swearing, steaming, sweating, scheming, bribing, bellowing, cheating, the carny went its way. It came like a pillar of fire by night, bringing excitement and new things into the drowsy towns—lights and noise and the chance to win an Indian blanket, to ride on the ferris wheel, to see the wild man who fondles those rep-tiles as a mother would fondle her babes. Then it vanished in the night, leaving the trodden grass of the field and the debris of popcorn boxes and rusting tin ice-cream spoons to show where it had been."

— William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley

"When Chili first came to Miami Beach twelve years ago they were having one of their off-and-on cold winters: thirty-four degrees the day he met Tommy Carlo for lunch at Vesuvio's on South Collins and had his leather jacket ripped off. One his wife had given him for Christmas a year ago, before they moved down here.

— Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty

''I stared at the plaster Negro and felt a little embarrassed....Even in Cincinnati, that sort of thing had gone out with the Civil Rights Act, although I'd have been willing to bet that there were thirty thousand little Negro jockeys sitting in dark basement corners from Delhi to Indian Hill, like a race of imprisoned elves, waiting to be returned to daylight. . . . Racial prejudice didn't die in this city; it just got stored in the basement.''

— Jonathan Valin, Day of Wrath

''There's Treasure Street, and Abundance and Benefit....Humanity, Industry, and Pleasure Streets - all these in the midst of hopelessness and squalor and stone meanness....Maybe some fool put names like that on those miserable streets to give us black folks inspiration. Or to make fun of us.''

— John W. Corrington and Joyce H. Corrington (writing about New Orleans in) A Project Named Desire

"The wetlands dedication ceremony was a resounding success until the gunman showed. Alex Carter had felt happy, blinking in the bright sunlight, gazing out over the green marshy area. The gold and scarlet of fall touched a handful of trees. Where the blue sky reflected in patches of visible water, a great blue heron stood vigil, gazing down for a glimpse of fish. It was sunny now, but huge cumulus clouds were building on the horizon, and she knew that a thunderstorm would descend over the city before the day was out."

— Alice Henderson, A Solitude of Wolverines

"The sky had gone black at sunset, and the storm had churned inland from the Gulf and drenched New Iberia and littered East Main with leaves and tree branches from the long canopy of oaks that covered the street from the old brick post office to the drawbridge over Bayou Teche at the edge of town. The air was cool now, laced with light rain, heavy with the fecund smell of wet humus, night-blooming jasmine, roses, and new bamboo."

— James Lee Burke, In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

"The sun on the grass was dry and hot. So in plunging into the wood they had a cool shock of shadow, as of divers who plunge into a dim pool. The inside of the wood was full of shattered sunlight and shaken shadows. They made a sort of shuddering veil, almost recalling the dizziness of a cinematograph. Even the solid figures walking with him Syme could hardly see for the patterns of sun and shade that danced upon them. Now a man's head was lit as with a light of Rembrandt, leaving all else obliterated; now again he had strong and staring white hands with the face of a negro. The ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw hat over his eyes, and the black shade of the brim cut his face so squarely in two that it seemed to be wearing one of the black half-masks of their pursuers. The fancy tinted Syme's overwhelming sense of wonder. Was he wearing a mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything? This wood of witchery, in which men's faces turned black and white by turns, in which their figures first swelled into sunlight and then faded into formless night, this mere chaos of chiaroscuro (after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a perfect symbol of the world in which he had been moving for three days, this world where men took off their beards and their spectacles and their noses, and turned into other people. That tragic self-confidence which he had felt when he believed that the Marquis was a devil had strangely disappeared now that he knew that the Marquis was a friend. He felt almost inclined to ask after all these bewilderments what was a friend and what an enemy. Was there anything that was apart from what it seemed? The Marquis had taken off his nose and turned out to be a detective. Might he not just as well take off his head and turn out to be a hobgoblin? Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, the glimpse always unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had found in the heart of that sun-splashed wood what many modern painters had found there. He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe."

— G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

"I parked the Charger in the first available space, halfway down the block from the house. Roy Street was steep, like every other street running east-west this side of the hill. Before I got out, I turned the wheel so that the tires were wedged against the curb on the steep grade. Habit.

"I looked at my old neighborhood for the first time in over a decade. Unlike downtown, it didn't seem to have changed much. Two-story homes packed close together on small lots. Most of the cars were a few years old, but none of them showed signs of being permanent fixtures along the curb.

"It was cold enough that the dew had turned to frost on the thicker lawns, and condensation formed on my lips and jaw as I walked up the hill. Damp leaves made the sidewalk slick."

— Glen Erik Hamilton, Past Crimes

++++++++++

And that's it for this round! There are lots more wonderful examples out there. If you have a particular favorite, please share it in the comments.

See you in two weeks!

Shelf Life

There was a recent piece in the local paper about a homeless guy who was a crime victim, and the New Mexican referred to him as “unhoused,” which I’m assuming is a new locution.  Mind you, this is a guy my dad would have called a bum, plain and simple. We should take a look at some context.  There was a policy adopted a few years back – a few being relative, it might have been during the Reagan administration – to de-institutionalize the homeless.  Whatever guiding principle was involved, the proximate result was to dump a lot of people on the street who didn’t have survival skills.  What they had were serious drug and alcohol addictions, and unresolved mental health issues.  The problem hasn’t been much alleviated by successive social policies, and it doesn’t matter whether you change the descriptives to somehow humanize these people at the bottom of the food chain.  They’re still in bad shape, just the same.

I realize the anti-woke crowd would suggest that we’re getting overly sensitive to hurting people’s feelings, but it’s not about hurt feelings.  That’s to willfully misunderstand the framing of the argument.  Language is as much about the people applying the labels as it is about the people being labeled, if not more.  Spazz and ree-tard were in vogue back when we were in grade school, and they may still have currency, but if kids use them, they’d probably say they mean no insult to anybody who’s actually spastic or developmentally challenged; it’s exaggeration for effect.  The days are hopefully long past when we threw stones at the witless.  As for words (as opposed to sticks and stones), the same goes for Quentin Tarantino’s favorite noun, or any number of common slang epithets for gay guys or Jews, Italians or Irish or Arabs, and calling somebody a towelhead says more about you than it says about them.

Vocabulary goes in and out of fashion.  We use the term dial tone, but it’s untethered to physical reality, because who dials anymore?  Likewise, a word like Okie, which was specific to homegrown refugees from the Dust Bowl, and these days is as dated as The Grapes of Wrath.  (Except for those pesky refugees, the mojados who just keep coming.)

As a writer, and particularly a writer who’s done his share of period pieces, I’d be the first to admit that colorful language reinforces atmosphere, and authenticity.  Leaving aside the unhappy plethora of prithee, sirrahs in Sir Walter Scott’s medieval fables, he uses picturesque and homely lingo to honest effect in his Border stories, which are closer to his own time.  And for my part, I doubt if the Mickey Counihan stories would have the same gamy flavor if I sanitized the way he talks.  On the other hand, we recognize that even if this is “the way they talk,” common vulgarities perpetuate ugly stereotypes.  It’s not a matter of whether we say these things aloud or in secret.

Language is organic, not prescriptive.  It grows on its own.  The French have an Academy, to hand down the rules, but they can’t keep the weeds out.  I’m no big fan of eviscerating language, of diminishing its muscularity.  Why water your whiskey?  A lot of the time, there’s no real substitute for brute Anglo-Saxon invective.  But there’s a difference between talking dirty, and using language that’s offensive because it singles people out for ridicule, and diminishes them.  It cultivates lazy habits of thought: Jews are grasping, black people are shiftless, Mexicans are illiterate beaners.

We can retire usage, just like clothing.  I might still fit into those paisley bell-bottoms, but hopefully friends and family would stage an intervention.  Sentimental attachment only goes so far.  Enough with the hand-me-downs. 

In the Mood to be Scared?

It's Halloween week, and what better time to talk about ghost stories? I had one published a couple of weeks ago. It's called "Wishful Thinking," and writing it was a lot of fun.

When I sat down to write a ghost story, I concentrated on mood. You want a ghost story to be scary, and what's scarier than ghosts you see? Maybe it's ghosts you don't see. The ghosts you fear are just around the corner. As my fellow SleuthSayer Bob Mangeot pointed out two weeks ago in a great post about Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, the scariest thing of all is what we conjure in our own minds, what we are afraid is out there ... just ... about ... to ... grab us!

How did I create the spooky mood in my story? Here are some of the ingredients I mixed in:

• A graveyard
• An abandoned, supposedly haunted house overlooking the town, with dead trees surrounding it
• An urban legend about a long-dead bank robber who haunts that house, forever searching for money he stole that was later hidden from him
• Wind and thunder and lightning and rain and fog (why use just one when you can create a weather bouillabaisse?)
• Another urban legend of missing kids who went inside the haunted house never to be seen again
• Doors that creak open and slam shut on their own 
• Unexplained screams
  

Weather is a great writer's tool because, in addition to setting the mood, it can push a plot forward, such as when heavy rain pushes four tweens to seek the house's shelter—tweens who might have had second thoughts otherwise. That's just one of the ways I used the weather throughout the story to move the plot.

I also wanted to make my characters jumpy as the story went on, so I made two of them scared to go inside. Eleanor voices her fear but gets convinced that there's nothing to be afraid of (ha!). The other scared kid, Travis, who narrates the story, is too afraid to say he's spooked for fear of being called a wuss. They are easily reactive to things that happen, things other people might try to shrug off.

The other two characters want to go inside: Sean is a bully who wants to search for the missing money; Jinx is smart and logical and brave and curious. Like the weather, Sean and Jinx push the action forward. Sean proposes the idea of exploring the house. Jinx wants to stay when even Sean gets scared, determined to prove there is no such thing as ghosts.

Individually, every scary thing that happens in the story could have a logical explanation—or so Jinx would say—but add them all together, using the right wording, with the right rhythm to the sentences, and even the bravest kids might come to realize that maybe ghosts do exist ... and one is inside that house ... and it's coming for them. 

"Wishful Thinking" was published by Wildside Press in issue six of Black Cat Weekly. It also was published individually by Wildside Press and can be purchased for your Kindle or Nook or other e-reader through lots of online bookstores, in the US and other countries.

I should point out that the character Eleanor was not named in a nod to the character of the same name in The Haunting of Hill House. She was named in honor of my friend Eleanor Cawood Jones, who loves a good ghost story. There's also another name in the story, a character named in honor of my fellow SleuthSayer Leigh Lundin. (Surprise, Leigh!)

If you're in the mood for a ghost story, I hope you'll check mine out.

Here and Now

by Steve Liskow

A few weeks ago, I gave a short story one last read-through before submitting it, and I found myself wondering, "Would this work better in present tense?"

I've written nine of my sixteen novels in present tense, mostly the ones that take place in Connecticut. The Detroit stories with "Woody" Guthrie use past tense except for scenes in Megan Traine's POV. She lives in the present. Both the short story that was a finalist for the Edgar and the novel that was short-listed for the Shamus were in present tense, too. 

Some of my Sleuthsayers mates say present tense takes them out of the story, and I know at least one publisher has guidelines on their website warning writers not to use it. OK. I'm going to go out on a limb here.

I don't think the average reader notices whether you use past or present tense. I don't believe that most of them think about why they like a story or not, except in terms of the character or the plot. They probably don't notice point of view, either (Unless it's done badly). Writers, of course, pay attention to those things, but how many "civilians" even notice that Bright Lights, Big City uses both present tense and second-person point of view? 

Last week, I stumbled upon The Storytellers, Mark Rubinstein's collection of interviews with several dozen crime, suspense, and romance writers. His conversation with Don Winslow, one of my favorites, was the longest interview in the book, and Winslow says he turned to preent tense the same way I did. He was writing a book in past tense, and, at some point, he found himself getting bored. As an experiment, he wrote the next page in present tense and it was like the entire world opened up before him.

That happened to me, too. Fifty or sixty pages into the first draft of The Whammer Jammers, I hit a wall. After struggling for a few days, I decided that since the book had lots of action, I'd treat it as play-by-play, like the sport announcers I listened to growing up in the 1950s. 

Bingo.

Winslow has an astonishingly varied background, our only shared experience being directing several Shakespearean plays, and when I read his comments on working with the Bard's language, I felt like I was listening to myself. Theater is ALWAYS in the present, and Shakespeare's images and rhythms delineate the characters and guide the movement in the scene.

Winslow points out that using present tense helps the reader participate in the story and "experience" all that is happening because it removes a barrier between reader and story. If the story is in the past, it suggests that it's already over and can't be changed. Present tense removes that safety net. MAYBE you can still change something, and that raises the stakes. 

In present tense, it's more natural to use active verbs and avoid state of being ("to be") constructions and passives. Instead of static visual imagery, tactile and olfactory details filtered through the POV character bring the scene to life. Description becomes the verbal equivalent of a long tracking shot that becomes a landscape painting, but when you offer the character's reaction/response to the place in present tense, you eliminate that problem. 

Dialogue can help carry the load, too. Winslow writes excellent dialogue and vivid internal monologues in the voices of his characters. How a person says something shows more about him or her than description. Look at these two passages:

She looked down at the cute kitten.

"Aren't you adorable." She picked up the kitten, which buried its nose in her neck and purred.

We see both actions, but HEAR the second one, and almost FEEL the cuddling, so it includes us in the scene.

Here are the opening lines of several novels and short stories in present tense. See how they involve the reader in the action?

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it. It's the Day blood. Something's wrong with it. (Gillian Flynn, Dark Places)

They shoot the white girl first. (Toni Morrison, Paradise)

The baby is dead in his mother's arms. (Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog)

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. (Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City)

In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. (John Updike, "A & P")

A screaming comes across the sky. (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow)

"I poisoned your drink." (Duane Swierczynski, The Blonde)

It's never a good thing when the flight attendant is crying. (Hank Phillippi Ryan, Air Time)

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. (Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club)

They throw him out when he falls off the bar stool. (Laura Lippman, The Most Dangerous Thing)

Kevlar makes Hendrix itch. (Steve Liskow, The Whammer Jammers)

By the way, I eventually sent out that short story in past tense because I  decided the rhythms worked better. But it's a case by case issue, like all writing. 

What rules do YOU like to break?