Birnam Wood and the Uses of Mystery

Ah, New Zealand, land of mountains and fjords, beautiful and isolated. What better place for a survivalist billionaire to purchase a little just-in-case bolt hole? None, it appears, and in Birnam Wood, Booker prize winning New Zealand author Eleanor Catton offers up a plausible one: Robert Lemoine.

He's about to buy an old sheep farm adjoining one of the South Island's national parks when he finds Mira Bunting trespassing. She spins him a yarn which he soon unravels: Mira is actually loitering with intent to garden. Talk about contrasts: she is an idealistic guerrilla gardener hoping to short circuit the capitalist system, while Robert became one of the richest people on the planet by purveying surveillance equipment and high tech drones.

That's the key meeting in Birnam Wood, a psychological thriller that delivers considerable suspense while presenting incisive character studies of the principal actors and a good deal about New Zealand leftist politics. It also raises interesting questions about the costs and feasibility of a quick conversion from fossil fuels and about the potential and astronomical profits for anyone in the right place with the right minerals.

Catton uses a complex structure to keep all these strands together, presenting the action via  the viewpoints of several characters, including the key Birnam Wood folks: Mira, founder and leader, whose tendency to step over the line in a good cause leads to the crucial meeting with Robert; her increasingly resentful roommate and second in command, Shelley Noakes, who proves not only more practical but more ruthless, and former member, Tony Gallo, an aspiring investigative journalist and an ideologue with some serious political ambitions. 

We also get inside the head of Jill Darvish, devoted wife of the recently ennobled Lord Owen, who sees some disturbing fissures in their long and happy marriage since her husband was raised to the peerage. The Darvishes own the old sheep farm where Mira wants to plant veggies and Robert wants a bunker – and perhaps more.

Robert is a bit of a Master of the Universe caricature, perhaps almost a necessity since his sense of his own power and intelligence drive much of the action. He is a chilly guy, never more sinister than when he is being charming and helpful.

The others are a more complex, but each has not only marked strengths but little weaknesses which become more pronounced after the Birnam Wood volunteers are settled at the farm, where their work is underwritten by Robert's largesse. Catton skillfully creates a situation where one careless decision creates a disastrous cascade. To my taste, there is perhaps more disaster than needed, but Birnam Wood is very much in the contemporary style with its splashy climax.

There is another character in the novel that deserves mention, rural New Zealand itself. Catton not only sketches in the spectacular beauty of the landscape but also the extreme isolation possible given the ruggedness of the terrain, the few roads, and the vast forests with only a few trails and even fewer hikers huts or services. It is a place where a lot can happen out of sight as the characters eventually discover.

---

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

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

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-man-who-met-the-elf-queen/id1072859654

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

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-dictators-double/id1607321864

Why we can't have nice things

To avoid spoiling the storyline, I won’t comment on this video until after the break. Zoom in full-screen and please, please watch. Please.

 

 

 

 

© www.SandyHookPromise.org

 

Absolutely chilling. As September peeks over the horizon, schools across North America are either already in full session or will begin classes within two tweets of a teacher’s tablet. No one wants to think of the horrifying scenarios played out in too many schools, but think we must. Click below to discover the clues.

The Same Old Story

  

A fact of life, in this business: a short story will sometimes take on a life of its own, after it's first published. That doesn't always happen (I wish it did), and I've never been able to predict if or when it will, but sometimes you get lucky.

 

Here's an example. A little over ten years ago, I saw a piece on the TV news about a bank that no one thought could be robbed. I've forgotten what bank it was and where it was located, but I remember the report featured a bunch of security experts giving their reasons why that particular financial institution would probably always be safe from criminal behavior. And as far as I know, it was, and still is--but their long-range outcome didn't much matter to me. I mean, I continue to wish them well, but I already had what I wanted: I had an idea for a crime story.

As I have mentioned before at this blog, I always start the writing process by thinking about the plot, not the characters or the setting or the theme, and sometime over the next several days I worked out what I thought would be a cool little story with a bunch of reversals and surprises, involving a regular guy with a smart wife (I can relate directly to that) and what might happen if she mapped out a risky but interesting blueprint for a heist.

Flash forward several days. Having brainstormed the plotline until my head hurt, I came up with a title ("Molly's Plan"), sat down, and wrote the story--the writing itself usually goes pretty fast once I've figured out the structure and flow, etc.--and submitted it to Strand Magazine, where I'd had some modest success with stories that have twisty plots. Thankfully, after a wait of several weeks, editor Andrew Gulli accepted the story, and it was published in the Strand's next issue (June-September 2014). I was happy, the editor seemed happy, both of us hoped the readers who read it were happy, and, as folks around here like to say, life went ahead on.  

Then, around the end of that year, I received an email informing me that "Molly's Plan" had been chosen for the upcoming (2015) edition of Best American Mystery Stories. This was my first time for that honor, which had been sort of a bucket-list dream for me, and at the time I didn't realize just how much exposure and feedback and recognition those selected stores later receive. The Strand has a big circulation, but BAMS reached a lot of readers who otherwise might never have seen or known about Molly or her plan. Within a month following the anthology's release in September 2015, I was contacted--mostly via my website--by (1) people I'd never met, (2) old friends I hadn't heard from in years, (3) several high-school teachers and college instructors asking if they could use my story in their classes, and (4) an agent at CAA in Los Angeles inquiring about film/TV rights to the story. (I happily put her in touch with my agent, but alas, that project eventually went nowhere.)

I think a lot of this immediately-after-the-fact interest was because the guest editor for that edition of BAMS was James Patterson, who singled out my story for special praise in his introduction to the book. He said, "'Molly's Plan,' by John M. Floyd, details the formation and execution of a bank heist so real and intense that I find it impossible to believe the tale took up only a few pages. An imaginative twist at the end of the story makes it a truly satisfying read." And no, Mr. Patterson is not my long-lost uncle--he's just one of those kind and encouraging authors who are famous but have nice things to say about writers who aren't, and for that I'll always be grateful to him.

Shortly afterward, Kirkus Reviews said, in its coverage of BAMS 2015, "In 'Molly's Plan,' John M. Floyd maps out a nearly impossible bank robbery with a twist ending that's so ingenious it's tempting to root for the bad guys." And Publishers Weekly mentioned it as well: "A never-robbed bank practically invites criminals in John M. Floyd's amusing heist yarn, 'Molly's Plan.'" All these kind words were welcome and unexpected and humbling, and made me even more thankful that I'd happened to look up from eating ice cream in front of the TV long enough to watch that news broadcast about that unrobbable bank the previous year.

Back to my story-history analysis. The following year, 2016, a sixth collection of my short stories was published, called Dreamland. (A strange name for a mystery collection, I know, but the title is from a crime/fantasy story I sold to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.) The collection featured thirty of my previously published stories, including that one from AHMM, an Edgar-nominated story from the Strand, two Derringer winners (one from EQMM and one from the Strand), and "Molly's Plan." Signings for this book were especially fun for me because copies of the 2015 BAMS were still on display at most of the bookstores I signed in, and a surprising number of customers wound up buying my story collection because of that (I might've, in weak moments, happened to mention the BAMS inclusion to them). Many even bought both books, which was pleasing to the store managers--and bookstore managers rank high on the list of folks I like to please.

Anyhow, another year passed by, and around the time any excitement about "Molly's Plan" seemed to have faded away (I was the only one truly excited about it anyway), I was contacted by an editor from Moscow who had seen my story and wanted to reprint it in Inostranaya Literatura, Russia's leading literary journal. I again called my agent, put him in touch with the editor of the magazine, and this time all went well. I got paid, thankfully in dollars and not rubles, and the Russian translation of my story appeared in IL's January 2018 issue. I still can't read the story, but the issue's sitting here on my bookshelf. 

Also in 2017, while I was getting those emails from Russia with love, another unexpected honor came along. I received a kind note from a lady at the New York Public Library, informing me that "Molly's Plan" had been selected for inclusion in their permanent digital archive, and partly as a result of that, they wanted to acquire the rights to use the story in their newly-conceived Subway Library System project, which would allow subway passengers audio access to a number of short stories read by professional narrators. They even designed what I thought was an eye-catching cover for the story--the one with the blond lady shown at the top of this post--to put in their promotional materials. I don't know if the project ever got off the ground--or into the subway tunnels--but it sounded like a worthwhile effort and I was flattered that the library folks wanted to again resurrect Molly and her husband and their illegal activities.

Finally and most recently, a full ten years after this story was first published in the Strand, my friend and fellow SleuthSayer Barb Goffman chose it as her "pick for the week" in Issue #155 of Black Cat Weekly. Thank you once again, Barb, for doing that, and thus giving this story some new readers. I'm glad you liked it and I hope they do also.

How about you, my fellow writers? Do you have stories that you wrote and sold and possibly forgot about, only to see those stories pop up again in other places, months or even years later? I know many of you have, because I've seen those stories in your own collections or in best-of-the-year anthologies or awards. If you're one of those fortunate writers, please let me know, in the comments section, about your experiences. Did you ever have a feeling, early on, that those stories might go on to gain later recognition? Or did those opportunities appear out of the blue?

In closing . . . keep in mind, everyone, that every time you put your fingers to the keys, these stories of yours that might've begun as vague glimmers of ideas in the middle of the night could just possibly be around for a long, long time. It's the exception rather than the rule, but it can happen. 

Just another reason to keep doing what we're doing.

See you next Saturday.

 

 

Crime Scene Comix Case 2024-08-026, Tracer

Once again we highlight our criminally favorite cartoonist, Future Thought channel of YouTube. We love the sausage-shaped Shifty, a Minion gone bad.

Yikes! In this Crime Time episode, only one outcome is possible.

 

 

 

 

© www.FutureThought.tv

 

That’s today’s crime cinema. Hope you enjoyed the show. Be sure to visit Future Thought YouTube channel.

“You Wanted to See Me?”: A Lazy Writing Drinking Game

Fifteen years since our first date, and my beautiful, intelligent, talented wife continues to amaze and 

The aforementioned much-loved wife

delight me. Most recently when she came up with "The Lazy Writing Drinking Game."

Robyn (the aforementioned beautiful, intelligent, talented wife) first hatched the idea while we were bingeing the USA Network stalwart Suits this summer. A touchstone of the tail end of a different era in televised entertainment, Suits has morphed into an unlikely money-making giant in the waning days of the Age of Streaming.

This in spite of the fact that Suits is not built for streaming. It's weekly episodic television, as evidenced by the recaps at the beginning of every episode. Which is a big part of what makes weekly episodic television fundamentally different from streaming television: time between episodes.

As such "Time" can be both a blessing and a curse. To the good: it affords the viewer an opportunity to ruminate on the plot as it unfolds, building it up in their imagination, filling in holes, and enriching their viewing experience. To the bad: it opens up the narrative to the temptation of relying on lazy writing. "Time" allows writers to paper over cracks in the foundation, and to use linguistic crutches and shortcuts over and over and over again.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in a show like Suits.

Back in the day this show was a staple of the USA Network lineup, alongside such other USA originals as White Collar, and Royal Pains. As such it had a lot to recommend it: solid production values, great soundtrack music, terrific dialogue and dynamite acting.

Plus, conflict, conflict, conflict, the thing on which plot thrives the most.

But watch episodes of a show like Suits in succession one after another, and the cracks start to appear. For one thing a telenovela feel often pervades the succession of emotional conflicts, blow ups, confrontations and nearly dizzying reversals of allegiances, alliances, feuds and vendettas that litter the show's season arcs. And since Suits, against all odds, leveraged a thin premise (a guy with a photographic memory who never graduated college, let alone law school, fakes his way into getting an entry-level associate attorney position at a big time New York corporate law firm) into NINE successful seasons, that's a lot of litter.

And for another, there's the lazy writing. See below for a few examples. And then watch Suits armed with this foreknowledge, and make sure to take a drink at the appropriate time!

The Fantastic Gina Torres as the Indomitable Jessica Pearson

FIRST: "You Wanted to See Me?"

For most of its nine-season run Suits would begin at least one scene per episode by having one character stroll into the office of another (whether a superior or subordinate, no matter), and intone exactly the same opening line: "You wanted to see me?"

Make sure you have your beverage of choice ready and waiting. This line will cause you to drink deep should you play the Lazy Writing Drinking Game here. In fact, your liver may never forgive you.

Rick Hoffman stealing every scene he's in as the one-of-a-kind Louis Litt

Second: "We Have a Problem."

Second only to the oft-repeated trope of "You wanted to see me?" comes "We have a problem." And it occurs in exactly the same manner: as the opening of a scene wherein one character walks into another's office.

Another perfect opportunity to get your Lazy Writing drink on!

Gabriel Macht as the trickster hero Harvey Specter

Third: "Whatever It Is, It's Gonna Have to Wait."

Third but no means last, comes this little gem, also dropped as the beginning of any given scene, wherein one character has just learned something that needs telling to another character, usually in the scene immediately previous to this this phrase opens. Only to have a second character, invariably the person who needs to be given the above-mentioned information, cut off the first character with the words: "Whatever it is, it's gonna have to wait, because...." followed up by a shocking revelation about their currently dilemma coming out of left field to smack them all down.

And there you have it: the foundations of a potentially hilarious drinking game.

Lastly, I'd like to point out that none of these flaws stopped Suits, which wrapped production in 2019, from KILLING it when it dropped on both Netflix and Peacock's streaming services in mid-2023. It topped the Neilsen ratings for twelve straight weeks, thereby allowing series creator Aaron Korsch to shop a spin-off series, entitled Suits LA. NBC bit, and the series is currently in production.

Can't wait to see whether any of Mike Ross, Harvey Specter, Donna Paulson or Louis Litt pop up as guest stars.

But hey, in the meantime, one can hope.

And drink!

See you in two weeks!

Cultures & Their Disconnects

I read a book this past week that my sister gave me, A Killer in King’s Cove, the first of a mystery series by Iona Whishaw, a Canadian writer new to me but maybe not to the rest of you – the first book came out in 2015, her most recent in 2024, eleven of them so far.  King’s Cove is set in 1946.  The heroine, Lane Winslow, an SOE courier and clandestine op in Occupied France during the war, and troubled with PTSD, has exfiltrated herself to the woods of British Columbia, wanting to leave her past behind.  Not, of course, to be.  Lane, much like her cousin in spirit  Maisie Dobbs, is fated by temperament, a sense of duty, and her fatal curiosity, to be drawn toward the flame.

I’m making it sound more melodramatic than it is.  The story-telling is relaxed and even a little shaggy-dog, not my usual preference for hard-boiled blunt force trauma.  It leans on charm - by which I don’t mean fey, or whimsical, or labored hillbilly slapstick.  Characters who present as genuine, not tics or tropes.  Round, in other words, in the use of the word E.M. Forster gives us, not flat.  There’s something, I may say, Canadian about this, as distinct from British, a very different kettle of fish. 

This is actually where I’m going, here.  Another book I read, recently – again, a gift, so not something I might necessarily have stumbled on, all by my lonesome – is The Lost Man, by the Aussie writer Jane Harper, known on these shores for The Dry.  And then there’s the thoroughly subversive In the Woods, an Irish procedural, Tana French’s debut novel, which I also picked up this year.

The mystery story is essentially conservative.  This isn’t an original observation, on my part.  It’s generally agreed to.  The social compact is broken, murder being the most grievous breach of the common good, and the cop, or the private dick, or the avenging angel, knits up the raveled sleeve, and repairs the damage.  This is the classic set-up of an Agatha Christie, or S.S. Van Dine; not that it isn’t corny, and readily parodied, but Christie, for all that she may be dated, still puts the bar pretty high.  And moving forward, to somebody like Ross Macdonald, even at his most anarchic, in The Chill, say, the larger purpose of a social good is served.

Having said that, I’ve noticed some things mysteries and police procedurals don’t have in common, when set in exotic locales: not Christie, in Death on the Nile, or Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko books, the visiting fireman, but homegrown.  We’re used to the attitudes and accents of an Inspector Morse, or an Inspector Lewis, because we’ve seen a lot of PBS Mystery, and we’ve accustomed ourselves to how the Brits present these kinds of stories.  Cable broadens the overview.  I’ve mentioned Dr. Blake (Australian), Brokenwood or My Life Is Murder (New Zealand), and Blue Lights (Irish).  I’ve also picked up on Candice Renoir, in French, and the German police series Tatort – in its many different local iterations, the Dresden version my personal favorite, the Berlin storyline disturbing and too deeply creepy, even for me.  Speaking of, I also happened on the Hindi cop show Dahaad, which I wrote about on this blog, in September of last year.  Creepy, yes, but compelling.

Here’s my point.  Watching this stuff, which can come from very different cultural biases, you can be thrown off.  The case of Tatort, for example.  The series will do half a dozen episodes per season in a particular German city, so each season you get a few in Berlin, a few in Hamburg, a few in Frankfurt, and so on.  I followed, specifically, the Dresden episodes, over three seasons.  One of the things I found fascinating about it was the hangover from the not so distant past, of East Germany.  This attitude – shame, in fact, with some of the older characters – is of course not even present when the setting is Hamburg or Frankfurt.  For a German audience, it’s a crucial subtext. 

Same thing with Dahaad, this dissimilarity, or cognitive dissonance.  If you’re used to the rhythms of Bosch, or The Wire, or Barney Miller, for that matter, watching the beleaguered but furiously obstinate Bhaati and Singh fight their corner against religious politics, misogyny, caste prejudice, and plain willful ignorance is really something to behold.  Any lesser person would cave.  And although you might harbor the suspicion that Bollywood is going to simply paper over these intransigent differences in favor of a happy ending, by the actual end, you’re pleased not to be drowned in cynicism, although the happy is ambiguous.

We find, maybe, that something’s gained in translation, rather than lost.  I know there are other examples of this phenomenon that don’t in fact work, because I’ve tried to watch them and given up, but that doesn’t signify.  What’s fascinating to me is how these shows manage as best as they do, to tell stories that only work in their own context.  It seems obvious, but it’s not, that the conventions of a narrative depend on the inner tension between discipline and chaos, and arbitrary social structures aren’t just good manners, but a survival mechanism.  In this particular narrative construct, the Western hero is often an avatar of indiscipline; that’s not the only model for a story. 

Bouchercon Bound

On the day this posts, I will be on my way to Nashville to attend Bouchercon, the largest annual gathering of crime fiction writers, editors, publishers, and fans.

Last year I wrote about the value of attending Bouchercon and other conventions  (“Make Time for Meet-Ups”), especially for writers, and then, as now, I believe much of the value comes from planned and unplanned meet-ups.

The panels and formal presentations can be educational and entertaining, but they are most often intended for fans. The real value for writers happens in the hallways, at meals, and in the bar each evening. That’s when we rub elbows with other writers, editors, and publishers. That’s when we have the opportunity to develop business relationships and friendships, find collaborators and co-editors, and discover potential publishers for our short stories and novels.

For some of us, though, being gregarious does not come naturally. Being surrounded by so many people overwhelms us because we are at our best alone in a room with a book or a keyboard. But make the effort. Introduce yourself to someone you’ve never met or ask a question you’ve always wanted to ask.

If the thought of approaching someone you don’t already know makes you want to run screaming into the night, find a wingperson. When Temple is able to attend conventions with me, she serves as my wingperson. Several times, when my wife was unable to join me, Stacy Woodson, who I met at Malice Domestic several years ago and with whom I’ve collaborated on a variety of projects, has been my wingperson.

And there’s nothing wrong with taking breaks away from the crowd. Find a quiet corner, take a walk outside the venue, or disappear into your room for a brief interlude before rejoining the action.

Over time, though, if you attend enough crime fiction conventions, you’ll have less need of a wingperson and may need fewer or shorter breaks from the action. The people you already know will introduce you to people they know, and your ever-growing circle of acquaintances will soon make it impossible to walk down a hallway without being pulled into a conversation with new friends.

And, please, if you see me, feel free to introduce yourself.

Where to Find Me at Bouchercon

Friday, 3:30-4:20 p.m.

Bayou CD Mezzanine

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

“Why is Editing so Hard?”

Moderator: Jessica Case

Panelists: Michael Bracken, Joe Brosnan, Ashley Sargeant Hagan, Otto Penzler, Luisa Cruz Smith

Sunday, 9:30-10:20 a.m.

Canal E Mezzanine

Achy Breaky Heart

“Short Stories—A Satisfying Snack Between Novels or the Perfect Bite?”

Moderator: Verena Rose

Panelists: Meredith Anthony, Daniel C. Bartlett, Michael Bracken, Don Bruns, Josh Pachter

Ode to the blank page.

           It doesn’t frighten me.  I like looking at it.  All naked, pure and brimming with possibility.  A flat field covered in snow, untrammeled.  A white void, unlike the black version whose magic is threatening and malevolent.  You’re invited to disfigure the nothingness with words, which in the age of electronic pages, you can easily wipe clean again.  You can have a conversation, first with yourself, then with a possible reader, if the words start sounding like something you’d want to share. 

There is nothing about a blank page you need to dread.  It will accept anything you wish to contribute.  There are an infinite number of blank pages waiting for you to trundle across, clumsily or with easy grace.  They don’t care.  Like your devoted Labrador, a blank page will forgive your every transgression and never love you the less. 

Nothing feels more perfect than the communion between two beings.  You and the blank page are one-on-one, a fundamental relationship that produces a third thing, nourishing the world.  And like all successful unions, the more you put into it, the better it gets.  The richness is limitless, the possibilities beyond counting. 

The blank page is the ultimate renewable resource.  Consume all you wish.  There will always be another blank page, and another after that. 

Assuming the continuation of the species, the product is eternal.  It will outlive you and other material things.  It will be reborn with every new edition, or preserved as an artifact for future observers to unearth. 

            All it asks of you is to join in the process, to convert its blankness into something real.  To shape the whiteness into a new form, unique unto itself, that allows the void to exist as a tangible thing and not just a potential. 

           When the blank page is no longer blank, it becomes something else.  Its purity has been compromised, never to be perfect again.  It can never be perfect because no two readers will ever agree on what is written there.  Including the writer, who likely has the least ability to judge the result.  Even a sonnet that wins the Pulitzer Prize will whisper possible revisions, hint at blemishes, betray compromises.  Though what should be celebrated is the almost-perfect.  Or perfect in its own way.  Perfect for me, if not for thee. 

The more the fleshed-out pages, the greater the possibility for imperfection.  Irritating for the writer, though often endearing to the reader, who may savor the nicks, scuffs and scars as evidence of the work’s unique allure, its true claim to originality.  As with any object prone to the capriciousness of time, the planned purpose, that first proof of brilliance, may dim, while the less intended, the rough shavings that litter the words, sentences and paragraphs, begin to glow. 

You don’t know, the writer, the maker of footprints across the drifts of snow.  You probably never will.  But this is no reason not to make the attempt, over and over again, as long as the hands, or voice, or blinking eyes have the ability to convey.  It’s why the act of writing is always justified, the blank page an everlasting invitation.

 What’s not to love?

In Which A Line of Dialogue is Written

 The woman came back, followed by a man Menger had seen before.  Kirby.  It came to Menger that the man's name was Kirby.

The name brought more fragments of memory.  Denver.  The jewelry exchange.  The job that went sideways.

"It's about time you woke up," Kirby said.  "I was just about ready to start digging a grave."

I stop writing.  I read back over the last few paragraphs.  The voices in my head start chattering.

"Clumsy dialogue," the Editor says.  "Wordy.  And that repetition of 'about' is just ugly."

"Blech," Distraction chimes in.  "Hey, it's been a while since you checked your email.  You never know, there might be a story acceptance.  Plus you're waiting on your Bouchercon panel assignment."

"Probably won't even get one," Doubt moans.  "Certainly don't deserve one, since this is only the sixth story you've written this year."

"You could take a break and grade some papers," Responsibility timidly ventures.  There's a chorus of boos and he retreats to a back corner, resentfully planning to wake me in a cold sweat at three in the morning.

"Everybody pipe down," I order.  "Let's take a look at this."  I lean back in my chair and read through the last few paragraphs again.

"It's about time you woke up," Kirby said.  "I was just about ready to start digging a grave."

"Quick review," Exposition offers.  "Menger and Kirby were part of a heist that went wrong, and Menger got shot.  Now he's waking up, not knowing where he is or what happened.  Right?"

General murmurs of agreement.

I read the problematic line of dialogue yet again.  It sounds, to my ear, friendly, almost jovial.  It makes me picture Kirby as a big, grinning guy in a Hawaiian shirt.  "Is this the Kirby we want in the story?" I ask.

"No," says Kirby, who isn't exactly thrilled to be living in my head but at least wants a say in how he's depicted.  "I'm a survivalist, remember?  I think the world is on the brink of complete societal collapse.  I'm not walking around chuckling at people."

"Are you absolutely sure you didn't steal that character from somewhere?" Doubt puts in, leaping at another chance to ruin my day.

"Ignore him," says the Editor.  "Remember the tone you want here.  Tense, suspenseful.  Tighter dialogue moves you in that direction."

Okay.  I put my fingers on the keyboard.  Let's get rid of that extra about.  Which one to cut?  The problem is that Kirby's first sentence needs the word to make any sense.

"Why do you need the first sentence at all?" the Editor asks.

"I was just about ready to start digging a grave," Kirby said.

I read the line out loud.

"Still wordy," says the Editor.  "That 'just' isn't doing any real work.  Neither is 'start.'  How many times do you have to remember this?  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you write that a character starts to do something, you can cut the 'starts' and just have them do it."

"I was about ready to dig a grave," Kirby said.

Everybody thinks about this.

"Still doesn't quite sound like me," says Kirby.

"It's better," says the Editor.  "Still sounds more casual than I'd like, though.  Plus, since he's no longer saying the thing about Menger waking up, it's maybe not completely clear that the grave would be for Menger.  He could just be saying that's what he was doing when Lucia came to get him."

"Sure," says Doubt, who's being especially bratty today.  "The guy just hangs around the house thinking about digging graves.  That makes perfect sense.  What ever made you think you could write?  You'll probably never finish this one anyway."

"You want me to maybe kill this guy?"  Kirby asks.  "I'm going to be living in here, I might as well earn my keep."

I wave all this aside.  I'm almost there, I think.

"I was about ready to dig you a grave," Kirby said.

The Planner, pleased, pipes up.  "Now the line has a little bit of threat to it," he says.  "Kirby's letting Menger know that his death wouldn't be a problem.  That works well, given what we know is eventually going to happen between these characters."

The Editor is almost satisfied.  "I'm not crazy about 'about ready.'  It's too passive, like he was just sitting around waiting to do something.  That's not the Kirby we need in this story, right?"

"Right," says Kirby.  He was in the shadows before, but he's starting to emerge into the light.  He's not jovial, and he doesn't wear Hawaiian shirts.  He's a hard, lean man who rarely laughs, a man who approaches the world as a series of problems to be solved as efficiently as possible.

"I was about to dig you a grave," Kirby said.

The Editor reads this a couple of times, first on its own and then in the context of the previous few sentences, listening for rhythm and pace.  He gives a grudging nod of approval.  It will do for now.  Kirby, having been entirely remade, is satisfied that this is something he would say.  The Planner approves of the slight foreshadowing of future conflict.  Doubt isn't happy, but he never is.  Distraction is momentarily silent, because, at least for the moment, I'm fully engaged, living in the world of the sentence I just wrote.

"Okay," I say.  "Onward."

The first version of the sentence was eighteen words; the final version is ten.  I've successfully written a ten-word sentence that I'm happy--or at least momentarily satisfied--with.

Now all I have to do is write ten words I'm happy with five hundred more times, and I'll have a story.  Nothing to it!

***

If you're dying to hear more of my deep thoughts about writing fiction, I'll be at the 2024 Bouchercon in Nashville, starting just a few days after this is posted.

Saturday morning at 9:30 in the Bayou E Mezzanine, whatever that may turn out to be, I'll be on the panel "Is It Over Now?: Bringing Characters to Life in Short Stories," with moderator Meagan Lucas.

Thursday night, in my capacity as president of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, I'll be presenting this year's Derringer Awards as part of the opening ceremonies.  Fellow SleuthSayer Barb Goffman is receiving the Edward D. Hoch Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement, so be sure to congratulate her if you run into her!

The Shamus Awards will also be presented at the opening ceremonies, and my story "Making the Bad Guys Nervous" is a nominee for Best PI Story.

Other than that I'll be wandering about, so feel free to say hi.  Hope to see a lot of you there!

  

Los Angeles - The Novels

LOS ANGELES: THE NOVEL(S)

by Michael Mallory

Los Angeles has long emitted a siren song for writers of all stripes, particularly mystery authors and anyone concerned with the disparities of haves and have-nots, stars and nobodies, and the powerful and downtrodden. Given such a vast, contradictory, multi-tentacled megalopolis as L.A., and taking into account all of the writers who have attempted to plumb her depths, one has to ask: Is there such a thing as the Great Los Angeles Novel?

In short, no, there isn’t.

There are instead three Great Los Angeles Novels, all of them published within months of each other in 1939, and all written by transplanted Angelenos: Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep; Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, and John Fante’s Ask the Dust. At the age of 85, none of them has lost their power over readers as great stories or as depictions of a city like no other. And so many decades worth of evolution, the City of Angels is still eminently recognizable in all three. (Whether that’s a good or bad thing is open for debate.)

Of the three, The Big Sleep has ascended to the status of L.A.’s unofficial pre-war biography. Raymond Chandler’s version of Los Angeles is the real Los Angeles of that time, the one built up and out from oil fields. Any references to Hollywood in the book refer to the actual, physical place, not the metonymic movie capital. Through his narrator, private eye Philip Marlowe, Chandler provides a Google Earth image of the city without seeming to do so. Rather than writing paragraphs of descriptive prose, Chandler offers snippets of the city’s characteristics such through off-handed remarks as one character’s “[having] a smile as wide as Wilshire Boulevard.” 

The notoriously convoluted plot (which inspired an even more convoluted film in 1946) was the combination of two of Chandler’s previously published short stories, “Killer in the Rain” (source of the A.G. Geiger blackmail subplot) and “Curtain” (the disappearance of Rusty Reagan). Both had appeared in Black Mask and featured powerful fathers struggling to control rebellious daughters. The L.A. of The Big Sleep is inhabited by the one percent: the wealthy, the powerful, the string-pullers, and the too-rich-to-jail class, who in turn are preyed upon by the city’s infrastructure of corruption, ranging from big-time racketeers to small-time blackmailers. At its core, The Big Sleep isn’t about power or ever murder, it’s about money. 

Standing in stark contrast to that is Ask the Dusk, which is about the lack of money. The book’s narrator is Arturo Bandini, an alter ego for author John Fante himself, who comes to Los Angeles with nothing but his dreams of being a great writer. He can only afford to live in a run-down apartment on Bunker Hill while he pursues both his dreams of fame and a beautiful, but emotionally unstable Latina waitress.

Something of a biography of Depression-era Los Angeles (while also laying the tracks for the darkly-populated noir novels that would follow), Ask the Dust is a jumble-tumble of thoughts, fantasies, fears and worries, all delivered by a protagonist with a desperate desire to fit in, but an even greater desire to rise above everybody else. Fante half-celebrates, half-condemns the dreamers of Los Angeles, those who possess a much sounder grip of the perceived future than the actual present. Along the way he fills the reader with the sights, sounds, smells, and ethnic tensions of the city as it then existed.  

Both The Big Sleep and Ask the Dust present the real Los Angeles; taken together, they span the city’s socio-economic range. The Day of the Locust, however, compensates for that by presenting a Los Angeles that is as genuinely real as a painted backdrop behind a Busby Berkeley musical number. 

Nathanael West’s short novel is almost exclusively concerned with Tinseltown in its Golden Age, and tells a story that could not possibly be set anywhere else. The picture of Hollywood it offers is not that of a puffed-up article in a movie magazine. Instead it’s a snapshot of fake imagery taken through a smudged and broken lens by a novelist who had already slogged through the trenches of Hollywood screenwriting.

The book’s protagonist Tod Hackett represents the kind of artist who lemming-rushed to Hollywood on the promise of fame and fortune, while striving to convince themselves that they will be the one who survives the seduction of the industry without selling out. (Todd’s very surname cynically indicates how that particular struggle will end.) 

Much of the story takes place within the confines of the studio, which allows the real L.A. to be seen only through windows, and even the scenes depicting Hackett’s life outside of work are influenced by the shadow of the Hollywood Sign. Virtually every character in the book is a Hollywood hanger-on, struggling to find the dream before it turns into a nightmare. A quarter-century later, a shot in the classic film Chinatown perfectly recaptured the host/parasite nature of Los Angeles/Hollywood, or Hollywood/Los Angeles that Nathanael West presented so well. It’s the scene where detective Jake Gittes is searching the court apartment of the murdered Ida Sessions, and while looking through her wallet, the tiniest glimpse of a Screen Actors Guild card can be seen. Poor Ida was one of the many hopefuls who straddled the fake and the real halves of the city, and lost in both. 

The Day of the Locust entwines reality, cinematic artifice, and surreal fantasizing into one troubling rope, and while not a mystery per se, the brutal murder of a child (by a character named Homer Simpson!) causes a mob to rise and incite a riot at a movie premiere, though it is hard to tell what version of reality is actually being described.

Taken independent of one another, each book delineates a different societal, economic, and industrial facet of the City of Angels, with its own rules, prejudices, and beliefs. But when read as a triptych, The Big Sleep, Ask the Dust and The Day of the Locust reveal the picture of L.A. in all its sprawling and contradictory glory, laying bare the beating heart and corruptible soul of a unique conurbation.

Home Is Where They Have to Take You In

 The Robert Frost line in the title is often how a lot of stories, particularly crime, evoke setting. In particular, when a character returns home after a long absence. Jim Thomsen, an editor friend, set me to thinking about this when he tossed out a quote from Justin Ward's An Unfinished Season:

“The Midwest was so fertile, so enormous, the horizon line stretched to the limits of the known world. But there was no space to breathe.”

Growing up in and around Cleveland as the steels mills and auto plants died, I had a different take. But Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, all those lakeshore cities, have more in common with Chicago and New England than they do the Midwest in general. It also depends on your definition of "Midwest." I grew up thinking it was Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. That could easily be called the Rust Belt and was called the Steel Belt when I was a child. The passage could just as easily apply to Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. When you get about fifty miles away from the rump auto industry along the Great Lakes, the above quote pretty much describes the rest of Ohio, most of Indiana, and southern Illinois. The slavish adherence to the evangelical creed and 1950s notions of decency die hard here.

But group think isn't limited to the heartland. Mention Texas, the deep south, New York City, or California, and you get some pretty solid notions of what the culture is like there, whether it's accurate or not. And the less someone's been to these regions, the more adamant they are about their image of it. And the more annoyed someone who lives there gets with it. Ross McDonald, a fixture in Santa Barbara (upon which he and Sue Grafton based their respective Santa Teresas), once wrote there was nothing wrong with coastal California that a sudden rise in sea level couldn't fix.

It's not all negative, of course. Ohio recently hijacked Threads for about six weeks before the election stole everyone's thunder. And it wasn't about JD Vance or legalizing pot. It was about Hocking Hills and Amish country and Cincinnati-style chili. The entire state took a page from Cleveland's playbook and said, "Screw the bad image. This is who we are."  Likewise, when you read about New York, you see the familiar (because we're all forced to see NYC and LA on television like there aren't other cities in the northeast or California), but you see what individuals do with their lives. Suddenly, the places are not monoliths. They're home.

Well, someone's home. 

Four Stories and Two Hotdishes

Every morning, I watch Good Morning America for about half an hour while I eat my breakfast, mostly for the news scroll they provide at the bottom of the screen.  There's always something to catch my attention, something that isn't necessarily covered in prime time anywhere.  

For example:

"2,300 Pounds of Meth Hidden in Celery in Georgia Farmer's Market."  

Well, that certainly gave me something to munch on mentally while eating my peanut butter toast.  

Which Georgia Farmer's Market?  (Forrest Hill, right outside of Atlanta).  

Why celery?  Wouldn't it would be easier to hide the meth in the cauliflower?  

Who brings enough celery to a farmer's market to hide 2,300 pounds of meth?  

Were they actually planning to sell the celery as well as the meth? 

Did someone pick up a stalk of celery, notice the meth, and ask if that cost extra?

New Zealand food bank distributes candy made from a potentially lethal amount of methamphetamine

"A New Zealand charity working with homeless people in Auckland unknowingly distributed candies filled with a potentially lethal dose of methamphetamine in its food parcels after the sweets were donated by a member of the public.

"The charity’s food bank accepts only donations of commercially produced food in sealed packaging, Robinson said. The pineapple candies, stamped with the label of Malaysian brand Rinda, “appeared as such when they were donated,” arriving in a retail-sized bag, she added."
(LINK)

Wow. Someone went to a lot of trouble, individually wrapping meth in candy wrappers...

And why? Especially since they were given away.  Did they think they were going to get more customers? For meth or for Rinda?

Haven't been able to find an update on this story yet, but I'm keeping an eye out.

"Hippopotamuses can become airborne for substantial periods of time, researchers discover."

So of course I instantly thought of the dancing hippos in Disney's Fantasia. Some images never leave you...

Now I don't know about you, but I would cheerfully watch airborne hippos for 'a substantial period of time'.  A steeplechase? I'm there for it.  "Le Corsaire" ballet?  Oh, yeah.  Hippo v. Seabiscuit?  Bring it on.

So I was saddened to learn that, while hippos trot, not gallop, their airborne time is only about 0.3 seconds.  (LINK)

And, if you can figure out how to slow this video down, you can probably see it:

Tim Walz Accused of Lying About His White Guy Tacos!

I love this story and the whole meltdown that's going on in a certain sphere.
(LINK)

Apparently, no one in certain circles has ever heard of "joshing", i.e., making gentle fun of oneself.  Nor do they know squat about Norwegian Lutheran Culture.

Folks, you have to understand that, up here in the Midwest / High Plains area (including both Minnesota and the Dakotas), there is indeed a Northern European (which we often call Norwegian Lutheran, in gentle joshing fashion) food culture that largely eschews seasoning.  Up here, "hot" means the actual temperature of the food, not the spice. 

"Church Basement Ladies Pale Food Polka"

For example: lutefisk, a/k/a "The piece of cod which passeth all understanding" (and no, I did not make that up).  I have been invited to lutefisk dinners, which are a highlight of the Christmas season, and do not attend, because lutefisk is basically warm fish jello. With the lutefisk comes lefse (riced potatoes mixed with flour, salt, butter and cream, cooked like thin potato tortillas, and served with butter and sugar), boiled potatoes, and (if you're lucky) the one bit of color on the whole plate:  red Jello.

Now while I hate lutefisk, I have really leaned into hotdishes.  They're filling, they're easy to make, they're comfort food in the long, long, long winters.  And they are standard fare at funerals, potlucks, and other church gatherings.

The main point of a hotdish is that they are a full meal in a baking dish: a protein and a starch, mixed with canned soup and sometimes a frozen / canned vegetable.  Tatertot hotdish!  (Generally ground beef in mushroom soup with - you guessed it - tatertots for the topping.)  Chicken with biscuits! Tuna noodle casserole! Turkey noodle casserole! Swedish meatballs in white gravy!

NOTE:  True Swedish meatball gravy has beef broth and a dash of nutmeg in it.  Mmm...  Exotic.

And more endless iterations of hotdish, using cream of mushroom soup, cream of chicken soup, cream of celery soup, cream of ____ soup, topped with biscuits or mashed potatoes or tater tots.  Of late, some people have also been doing spaghetti bake, with tomato sauce and a thick coating of mozzarella cheese.

Here's a classic Chicken and Biscuits Hotdish passed down through the ages (thank you Dark Ally!), in my modern variation (i.e., the onion and mushrooms):

1 can cooked chicken, drained and chopped fine 

1 can cream of chicken soup 

1/2 cup of milk 

1 onion, sauteed with 1 package of mushrooms chopped 

Pinch of sage 

Mix the above together and bake at 350 for about 45 minutes. 

Turn the oven up to 400 degrees. 

Open can of biscuits, and put biscuits on top of chicken hot dish 

Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the biscuits are brown.

Now here's Tim Walz' Award-Winning Taco Hotdish:

1 lb ground turkey
1 large red bell pepper (or two medium ones)
1 yellow onion
1 can sliced black olives
1 can diced mild green chilies  
1 bottle taco sauce (medium)  
1 16 oz sour cream
1 bag of frozen tots
4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
3 cups sweet corn
Cherry tomatoes
Green onions
Shredded iceberg lettuce
Paprika
Chili powder
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Dice the onion and bell pepper into 1-inch dice and sauté in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, salt and pepper for 15 minutes, until tender. Remove onion and bell pepper and set aside in a mixing bowl. Brown turkey. In a small bowl, mix 2 teaspoons each of paprika, chili powder, onion powder and garlic powder. Add half of the mixture to the turkey while browning. Reserve the other half of the mixture to sprinkle over the tots prior to baking. When finished, add the turkey in with the sautéed onion and bell pepper. Add black olives, sweet corn, chilies, taco sauce, 2 cups of cheese, and sour cream. Stir mixture until combined. Pour into a baking dish and sprinkle the remaining 2 cups of cheese on top. Add tots on top of the mixture and more cheese. Sprinkle spice mixture on top of tots. Bake in a 400-degree oven for 45 minutes or until tots are crispy and golden brown. After removing from the oven, sprinkle with shredded lettuce, green onions and diced tomato. Serve with sour cream, hot sauce, avocado, cilantro or your favorite taco topping.

NOTE that all the seasonings are "mild" or "medium".  Ain't no jalapenos in this hotdish. You want hot sauce? Cilantro? Avocado? Put 'em on top!

Anyway, that's the Church Basement Ladies way!

You can see the whole musical on YouTube, too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IEFkHAsOZs

Recharging Your Batteries

"Every other writer's process is sort of vaguely scary and appalling." - Daryl Gregory.

Since I retired a few years ago I have fallen into a new pattern for writing and I decided to share it with you.  Mostly I am inviting you to compare and contrast in the comments.

I have been writing short stories exclusively for the last few years.  I write slow (or is that slowly?) and a first draft takes me weeks to months.  I write every day and on most days I will also do some editing of different stories.  (Most of mine go through roughly ten drafts.)

But I found that when I finished that first draft I was reluctant to start on another story.  (I usually have another one ready to go - and boy, am I using up my supply on parentheses today.)

So here's what I figured out.  The day after I finish a first draft I switch to doing only editing for a week.  And after a few days this really bugs me.  Instead of being reluctant I soon find I am dying to get onto the next story.  

When the week is over my engines are roaring to go.  And that's a good thing.

Speaking of engines, your mileage may vary.  How does your work process go?