World Builders

The November/December issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine proves good to SleuthSayers. Rob Lopresti graces the cover while Stephen Ross, Michael Bracken, and I help to fill the pages behind him. Simple math tells me we have a third of the titles in this edition. 

My story, "From Above," is the latest in a series about the 16th-century French attorney Bernard de Vallenchin. His challenge in "From Above" is to defend, in an ecclesiastical court, birds charged with disrupting a Catholic mass.

And yes, that was a thing. Animals could be accused of violating laws and punished in both church and secular courts. They could be imprisoned or executed. As I've mentioned in an earlier blog, while researching a different topic, I stumbled into a 1906 book, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals by E.P. Evans. He documents the work of Bartholome Chassenee, a 16th-century French jurist who described his own work in defense of accused animals. The Evans' book explores this forgotten world. 

I think of writing the de Vallenchin stories as akin to creating science fiction. The world of animal prosecution in 16th-century France is an alien place to which readers must be introduced. The age had a top-down cosmology that began with God and continued through the great chain of being to the lowest slugs. There was a patchwork of courts--royal, manorial, and ecclesiastical--that may have been involved, depending on the offense. To tell an understandable tale, a good chunk of information had to be delivered in order for the reader to know why a bird might be on trial. I needed to quickly build a different world from the one the readers inhabit. There stands the challenge. How do writers create an distant environment while avoiding a dreaded information dump. Or, in the alternative, how do writers camouflage an information dump so that it doesn't take the reader out of the story?

The standard advice is to feather the facts into the tale. With the limited word count of a short story, however, the slow accretion of details is often impossible. What then might the writer do? 

A few suggestions follow: 

Pare down the information.

In researching Europe's animal prosecutions, I acquired many fascinating pieces of trivia, odd bits that seemed really cool to me. Social historians have used GIS programs to map out the variety and overlapping jurisdictions of courts across France. But I'm not writing a dissertation. My goal was to craft an entertaining tale about fictional characters. To do so, I wanted to keep the information at the minimum level to make the story understandable. I remembered the lesson Barb repeatedly tries to teach me, in a short story, every word matters. I tested my accumulated facts and separated them into what was necessary and what proved merely interesting. The unused facts might one day become central to a future story, but they remained in the nest for this avian tale. 

Consider where to begin.

"From Above" starts in media res. From the first words, the readers find themselves in an ongoing conversation between the lawyer and a barmaid. I trusted that the readers would catch up quickly. By beginning in the middle and then going back, a writer can draw the reader into the conversation and engage their interest in the topic. The goal is to have a shared experience. If the characters were attracted to the subject, hopefully, the readers will also become interested. 

Incorporate the information into the action.

Action doesn't have to be car chases or gunfights. It may be a more subtle personal contest between two people. Bernard de Vallenchin is a libidinous drunkard and a cheap braggart. (I hope you like him in spite of his faults.) His high opinion of himself is sometimes challenged. To accomplish some earthly aim, de Vallenchin boasts about his courtroom mastery and the complexities of the subject matter. He uses his exploits to achieve an end, perhaps bedding a barmaid. In an earlier story, the scheme was to extract free food from the hotelier. The lawyer used an elaborate discussion on courts to serve as a distraction. The information became part of the action. The current story works the necessary details into the process of two characters learning about one another. 

Incorporate the information into character development.

Fans of the Harry Potter books know that Hermione Granger is the brightest witch of her age. She constantly dispenses obscure facts. These nuggets of information often prove necessary later in the story. She is an expository character. She'll tell you the things you need to know. The information dump becomes incorporated into her character development. Similarly, Bernard de Vallenchin's description of the complexities of his legal challenges helps to show readers that he is a self-absorbed trumpeter but perhaps posseses courtroom skills. The technique aids in establishing his character. 

Consider making the expository character a drinker. Who hasn't met an intoxicated person who didn't over-explain, or tell you something you already knew? Adding alcohol can allow a character to state what should be obvious to the people in the room. The writer can educate the reader not only about the necessary details but also demonstrate that the character is a sloppy drunk. 

Conversely, a writer may say something about the recipient's character, the person in the story tasked with receiving the information dump. This character acts as the portal. She is the doorway into this world. If, for instance, the listening character is drunk, she may not object to the bloviating protagonist reciting what should be commonly known information. 

As a circuit-rider, Bernard de Vallenchin travels to new cities and villages in each story. He knows little to nothing about the area's details. He is a fish out of water. Listening as another describes the local jurisdiction or corrects one of his assumptions is a necessary part of his effective advocacy. He needs to learn these details in order to succeed. The fish out of water offers another opportunity to world build and give information to the character and, also to the reader. 

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine published the second story of the de Vallenchin series in November 2022. I can't assume that anyone will remember the details of the world from that story. Every reader, therefore, needs fresh facts to  imagine a place far outside their own experience. Pouring the essential details into a brief short story required a strategy. As I consider future de Vallenchin stories, I face the same question. How might I deliver the necessary information quickly and in a way that will hold the reader's attention? 

As a writer, your issue may not be 16th-century cosmology. Every storyteller, however, needs to craft a setting. That world-building requires dropping information eggs. The challenge is to find new and different ways to open up that fictional realm. 

What strategies do you like to use? 

It's Election Day in the USA. Go vote. 

Until next time. 

True to type.

             I only write in Palatino Linotype, which is a more attractive cousin of Times Roman.  Most people can’t tell the difference, which is good, since publications often require their superannuated relative, which I find cramped, fussy and inelegant, compared to my first love. 

                I prefer to indent my paragraphs, and dislike putting spaces between them (even though I’ve occasionally done it here, when laziness trumped principle, or the blog app forces it upon me).  Nearly every book you’ve ever read throughout history follows this practice. I don’t think there’s any reason to change it now, despite the insistence of word processors and trendy digital formats. 

           Serifs are like little brush strokes at the end of straight or slightly tapered lines, flourishes that suggest a certain panache, elan, a bit of dash to the characters.  I was once told that medieval scribes saw them as tiny angels.  I’ve found no evidence of this, but the notion is enchanting.

            Times Roman can also look dated, like your grandmother’s Victorian furniture.  If disturbed by this you might select Bodoni, or Century, or my favorite Palatino Linotype, efforts to freshen up the form.  I’m fine with this as well.  All are preferrable to the execrable sans serif.     

I have no affection for any version of san serif, particularly Helvetica, which has no social charm, only narcissistic, declarative impudence.  It doesn’t care what you think, it only wants you to follow its commands.  Bold san serif is even worse:  a lout with a megaphone yelling over polite discourse. 

Or simply boring and commercial. All those straight up and down, and horizontal, lines have no personality.  It’s just a flat, soulless delivery of the words.  Serif faces have lots of smiles, frowns, intelligent observations and witty asides.  These are the Cary Grant and Noel Coward of typefaces.  The Shirley McClain and Katherine Hepburn.   Sans serifs are just pronouncements.  Demands.  Directives.  Humorless and colorless.  Bureaucratic. 
            

        You might note that sans serif faces are defined by what they lack.  Serifs.  It reminds me of Baus Haus or Brutalist architecture, which boldly erases all decorative or artistic detail, stripping everything down to right angles and plain boxes, like the ones that deliver goods to you from Amazon.  I don’t see this as an achievement.  Anyone can build a box.  Few can shape crown moldings, cornices, curvilinear arches and hip roofs. 

Digital content is often in Calibri, the slightly less school-marmish version of Helvetica.  Another cousin is Aptos, which is even worse than the other two.  Helvetica’s sadistic, stunted little sister. 

 Most of the typeface choices in Microsoft Word are novelties and nothing more.  Fun, silly and usually inappropriate comedians only useful to children and unserious designers.  Cheap invitations to the gala event, or hyperventilating car ads given to starbursts and excessive exclamation points.  The typographical equivalent of a drunken huckster screaming over the crowd noise.   

You might think that a type face shouldn’t affect your understanding of the words on the page, but that’s not true.  I spent a long career in partnership with art directors and graphic designers who brilliantly captured the essence of a headline with a deft choice of type face.  They knew the emotion the writer was trying to convey, presenting it in the precisely appropriate visual style.  (Most of the art directors I worked with were also quite capable writers.)

Art at its best conveys feelings.  Typefaces are the rare art form that bring intrinsic emotional interpretation to the meaning of the words they’re representing.  A true integration of purpose.  Digital media has the capacity for delivering an endless assortment of faces, with no sense of the mission these shapes and miniature diagrams are charged with achieving, but we can intercede and pick the face that suits our mood. 

What you are saying, of course, matters the most.  Though how you are saying it can make all the difference in the rendering. 

Día de los Muertos

Día de los Muertos

Friday and Saturday followed Halloween with Día de los Muertos, the popular Mexican version of All Souls Day. Celebrations are colorful and exciting. Like unpretty gargoyles on a church, Halloween and Día de los Muertos may confuse casual observers as to their religious bona fides.

All Souls remembers those who have come before, ephemeral passages our modern world neglects. But on this holiday of remembrance, I stumbled upon a passing you’re unlikely to forget.

Shock and Aww

For those who believe the world fosters no more eternal love stories, meet Carolyn Hamilton. She has such a gift for description, we barely resist falling into the gravitational pull of her words.

The title demonstrates truth-in-publishing still exists. Tik Tok has inured us to sensational headlines where ‘shock’ and ‘disturb’ may mean an influencer is showing off her too-transparent fashion haul so that, oopsie, nobody misses the show, yawn. Audience, please restrain your intense emotions.

Hamilton, if anything, understates shock. The White Queen told Alice she could imagine six impossible things before breakfast. Contrariwise, I found myself believing two antipodal understandings before dinner. I could comprehend a reader shocked and disturbed, and I grasped precisely how and why Carolyn… well…

I couldn’t have done it… I doubt most could. But Like Water for Chocolate, I get it. I get it. Unlike Tita’s story, Carolyn celebrates happiness.

Carolyn and Jeff Hamilton family

Here is Carolyn Hamilton’s article. Let us know what you think.

When My Husband Died, I Did Something That May Shock and Disturb…

---

For You and Me and I

  

I should probably apologize ahead of time, because this post is a complaint, and I learned long ago that nobody likes complaints. My mom's usual reply to grumbles like "Are we having peas again?" was "There are children starving in India," and when I was stupid enough to say something like "I'm bored," Dad always replied, "Oh, I can find you something to do." Having now grown old, I still complain, but my wife has become so used to it she pays no attention.

My complaint here, though, isn't about aches or pains or the weather. This one involves grammar, and language. Here it is: 

I'm tired of people saying "for you and I" or "of you and I" or "to you and I" or "from you and I," etc. To phrase it as my high-school English teacher would've, you shouldn't use a subject pronoun when it's an object, and specifically a subject pronoun after a preposition. And it happens a lot.

I think I know why. Throughout childhood, we're taught not to say "Susie and me met at the park" or "Bob and me are going fishing" or "Dad and me like movies." It's supposed to be Susie and I, Bob and I, Dad and I. So when we have the need to say or write things like "They were shouting at Jane and me," we're tempted to substitute I for me, and say "They were shouting at Jane and I." Which is wrong.

What really bothers me is when this grammatical crime is committed by people who should know better. If the farmer being interviewed on TV after his barn's blown away says "And a dern tree almost landed on Stella and I," I don't mind that a bit. Not only has the man had a hard day, he's just a regular guy. But if the reporter who's interviewing him makes that kind of mistake, that's another matter. And believe me, I've heard this kind of screwup by politicians, news anchors, teachers, talk-show hosts, pastors, and salesmen, all of whom supposedly received an education and are now paid to get up in front of others and speak. That's their job.

NOTE: As most of you already know, the handy test for which pronoun is correct ("I'm rooting for you and me" or "I'm rooting for you and I") is to change the sentence a bit and say "I'm rooting for you and for ____." The answer's obviously for me, not for I, and if you say it aloud you immediately see that.

It especially irks me to see this mistake--a subject pronoun used instead of an object pronoun--in writing. The most common crime scenes, I think, are Facebook posts and Amazon product reviews. As a fiction writer, I don't mind (mis)using it in dialog because that's my character talking, but I wouldn't want to goof up that way in the rest of my story. Thankfully, we don't see it often in published works.

But it has happened. I can remember the me/I error occurring in both a song and a play. The song was "Hungry Eyes," by Eric Carmen, who at one point feels "the magic between you and I." (I like the song, but I guess me didn't fill the bill, in terms of rhyming.) And the play was The Merchant of Venice, in which one of the characters says something like "All debts are cleared between you and I." Even when the author is Shakespeare his ownself, between is still a preposition and the sentence is still wrong.

I saw a "don't" list long ago, when I first started writing for publication, of the seven worst grammatical mistakes. I can't recall all of them, but it included things like its/it's, lay/lie, less/fewer, etc. And high on the list was for you and I. This was almost thirty years ago, and I suspect that mistake would still be a top contender.

Question: Is this particular misuse irritating to anyone else? Do you tend to shrug it off, instead? As a writer, I make plenty of grammatical errors myself, so I'm not sure why this one bothers me so. (I wasn't even an English major--I graduated in electrical engineering.) But it does.

In closing, and in recognition of the fact that we should all complain less and be more tolerant of things we don't like, here's a piece of particularly elegant poetry:

If you must say "Between you and I,"

I won't stop you--I won't even try.

So just say it; feel free,

But don't say it to me

Or I'll shoot you and leave you to die.

Okay, I'm kidding--I wouldn't do that. But, like the hungry-eyed songwriter, I needed something that rhymed.

See you in two weeks.

Teach What's Hard

 by Steve Liskow

In grad school, I had a humanities professor from Germany. His English had only slightly heavier consonants to give away his roots. The reading list was brutal, from The Confessions of St. Augustine to selected essays of Montagne, with Rabelais, Shakespeare, Chaucer (in the original Middle English) and several others along the way. It was a six-week summer course, and we turned in three papers of five, five, and ten pages. There were only ten of us in the seminar, so there was nowhere to hide.

After he returned the first set of essays, the professor scolded us for our "pedestrian" writing styles. "For you, it is your native language, so you do not think about it. It is my fifth language, so I do have to think about it."

After my career as a teacher and another fifteen years or so of conducting writing workshops, I still remember that comment. I grew up in a family of voracious readers and entered kindergarten reading at the fifth-grade level. I also had a solid feel for the rhythm and sound of Midwest American English.

My fourth-grade teacher assigned us to write a poem, and then we read each other's work aloud. I read someone else's poem and changed it as I read it because I could tell that one line had the wrong rhythm. The classmate came up to me after we all read and said, "You changed my poem."

"Yeah," I said. "I made it better."

Hubris at nine years old. Even though I couldn't explain to him why it was better, I knew I was right.

I used to play golf pretty well (nine handicap before I broke my wrist), and I often helped other players fix a flaw in their game so they ended up beating me. I was an adequate actor but a better director because it was like teaching: you prepare the lesson (production) and help the cast convey the play's ideas. I was always a better teacher than a doer, and I think it's because I was basically a kinesthetic learner. I got the feel of the activity into my body and could explain what it felt like to other people. I still do.

How does that relate to the professor's comment above? Well, if you don't have to think about something you can do well, it's difficult to explain how you do it because you've never really observed the "process." I know some very good musicians who can't read music, and they have a hard time explaining how they play something. I'll bet Aaron Judge would have trouble explaining how he hits home runs. He's 6' 7", well-proportioned and athletic, so after all the practice, it's muscle memory rather than consicous thought. The ptch comes in...right...THERE, and he swings.

When I taught composition, I used the textbooks, but occasionally disagreed with some advice because it didn't work for me. I seldom mentioned it unless many students had trouble with the concept, too, and then we'd work it out together. I'll bet those kids know that concept especially well now because they had to work harder at it. One of my warnings in fiction workshops is DON'T rely on Strunk and White's The Elements of Style too much because it's geared specifically to expository writing (essays for college). It's a good start, but it makes everyone's voice/style the same. It won't help with plotting, dialogue, pacing, irony or humor. That means that when I retired from teaching and turned to writing fiction, I knew how to write a sentence and a paragraph, but I knew NOTHING about how to plot a story or control the pace and rhythm. 

I had to learn those techniques, and I attended workshops and read dozens of books to master them.

Because I had to work so hard, I can explain them clearly and still be flexible for people whose rhythm and strengths are different from mine. I can write humor, but it's difficult to plan in advance because my sense of humor is built around the rhythms my family instilled when they read to me decades ago. It's instinctual and hard for me to explain. I've only found a couple of books on writing humor, and neither of them helped me.

Dialogue, which also relies on rhythm and a host of other factors, has never been hard for me, either. But it was hard to explain how I did it until I found two books that showed me what I was actually doing and broke it into a process. I rely on those books now, and people have told me my dialogue workshop is one of the best craft workshops they've attended.

I've wanted to play piano most of my life. A few years ago, after trying and failing with several different books, I found a set of DVDs with a booklet that uses graphics to show fingerings and techniques. It speaks to my kinesthetic learning style and I get everything more clearly. I will never be a good, or even adequate keyboard player because I'm starting 65 years too late and I have small hands and minor arthritis. But this approach makes me play the music because the recorded rhythm section carries me along. Rhythm again.

It's the same way I learned to walk and to tie my shoes. Now I do both of those fairly well.

How about you? How do YOU learn?

Necropants for Halloween

by Eve Fisher

So how badly do you want a lot of money?  What are you willing to do to get it?  And I'm not talking about the standard stuff:  trying to win the lottery, or marrying money or just finding a sugardaddy / sugarmamma, or starting a Ponzi scheme, or other financial shenanigans.*  I mean strange stuff...

Welcome to the world of the Nábrók , a/k/a "necropants" or "corpse britches", i.e., a pair of pants made from the skin of a dead human, which are believed in Icelandic witchcraft/folklore to be capable of producing an endless supply of money.  

A replica of a pair of nábrók at The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft. At the right is the magical symbol that is part of the ritual and at its feet are coins. Bernard McManus from Victoria, BC, Canada - Necropants

Now you can't make a pair of these by turning into Hannibal Lecter or Buffalo Bill. No, it's both less criminal and weirder than that:

"The nábrók is obtained by first making a (mutual) pact with a friend that if either of them die, the other can use his corpse to make a pair of necropants. The deal is that, once one of them dies, after a decent burial, the survivor digs up the body, and flays the skin from the waist down so has not to puncture any holes. The freshly skinned pants must be worn right away, and it's said to grow on/into the person, until such times as he appoints to remove the pair in order to give to someone else." 

MY NOTES:  

This may be the worst tontine I've ever heard of.  So you're making a bet, with a friend, that you're going to live the longest.  So what stops you from offing your friend, or your friend from offing you?  Other than a distaste for graverobbing and flaying, of course. 

Where do you practice skinning a corpse? Is skinning a human like skinning a pig? (And no, I don't want to know how you know this unless you went to med school.)  Also, what does it smell like?  Is there a corpse smell or does it morph into you? 

Finally, the prurient among us obviously want to know if the winner's body is entirely in working order, and will Lilja casually mention to her neighbor Gudrun that 

"You know, it's strange, but ever since Einar died, Bjarni's thing has changed.  It's gotten... bigger.  Kind of.  And he's making this strange clinking noise when he walks...." 

Back to the facts: 

"There is no wealth-giving magic in the necropants yet, because in order to activate the charm, the person must steal a coin from a wretchedly poor widow, and this theft must be performed between the readings of the Epistle and Gospel during one of the three major festivals of the year (or "between the First and Second Lesson on... Yule, Easter, or Whitsuntide"). Then the person must deposit the coin into the pungur (translated politely as "pockets" but actually denoting "scrotum") of the necropants. Some say the wearer can also choose the time of theft to be carried out on the very next day after the pants are first worn. Afterwards the breeches will start collecting coins from the living, which the wearer is free to dispense with. However, he must be careful not to remove the original coin if he wishes to keep the magic effect intact."  

MY NOTE:  Robbing widows in church and scrotum pouches...  this is getting ridiculous.

"According to recent literature, a piece of paper inscribed with a magical symbol must be placed with the coin in the scrotum sack; this particular symbol being given the name "Nábrókarstafur".

"These pairs cannot be removed by its wearer until he is at his life's end, when he has to remove his pair and pass it onto another, otherwise, his corpse will be smothered by vermin and his soul will be damned."

MY NOTE:  You mean robbing a widow in a church doesn't damn your soul enough? 

"And a particular sequence must be followed. The wearer cannot simply remove and hand over the pants, but must do it one leg at a time. That is to say, he must first "doff" the pants off his right leg, and make his successor wear the right pant leg. At that point, his successor is committed to his fate; even if he tries to change his mind and take off the right pant leg, he will wind up wearing the left leg, regardless of his will."  (Wikipedia)

MY NOTE:  So basically, once you've made all the money and you're ready to die, you have to find a greedy schmuck and make them do the leg dance, but how the hell do you get that right leg off?  Is "doff" a secret code for flay yourself alive?  And think about the position you'd be in, with your successor has his right leg in your right leg's skin, which means... how is he going to get into your left?  

I'm sticking with lottery tickets.  

*Note that I did not mention robbing banks.  They don't have the cash they used to, there are cameras everywhere, and you're gonna get caught.  

BSP:

The latest Michael Bracken anthology, Janie Got A Gun, releases November 9 at the publishers HERE and, of course on Amazon.  In my "Round and Round", lifer Cool Papa Bell tells how Mildred, the penitentiary ghost, showed up for the holidays and took care of a lot of people's business... including a particularly nasty corrections officer.  

Happy to share space with Steve Liskow, Joseph S. Walker, John M. Floyd, Jim Winter and many more!

Also, coming soon, my "Lady With a Past" in Black Cat Mystery Weekly Issue #167!

"We’re back in Laskin, South Dakota, where police officer Grant Tripp is involved with the sexiest, most beautiful woman he’s ever known. But Megan’s a Davison, an ex-con is stalking her, and her ex-boyfriend wants Grant out of the picture. And then there’s the question of where she got so much money…"

Money.  It's always a problem, isn't it?

Crimes Against Nature: Round Robin

As I said two weeks ago, I edited Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy, which Down and Out Books recently published.   I asked some of the contribu5tors to answer a few questions related to the book.  And here you go...

Give me five words about your story.

R.T. Lawton: Clandestine labs poison the environment.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Dead Bodies in Lake Mead

Janice Law: pollution, family, development, loss & revenge

Michael Bracken: Water is life. And death.

Mark Stevens: Exploiters of nature; delusional avenger.

Susan Breen: Over-tourism, volcanos, mother/daughter issues, Costa Rica and selfies

David Heska Wanbli Weiden: Wind energy on Native reservations.

Robert Lopresti: Recycling obsessions can be dangerous.

Josh Pachter: “bad neighbor,” revenge, poison, semi-autobiographical

Karen Harrington: Illegal dumping. A fight for life.

Sarah M. Chen: Influencers, beaches, responsibility, privilege, overtourism 

Barb Goffman: Comedy, neighbors, kitty-cat, marijuana, gardening

Gary Phillips: Influenced by the 1970s era, the Bronze Age of Comics. Specifically, the mystically charged Swamp Thing created by Len Wein (writer), and Bernie Wrightson (artist).

Crimes Against Nature uses mystery fiction to look at social (and scientific issues).  What is your favorite (or first-encountered) mystery novel or story that deals with social issues?

Sarah M. Chen: Because I recently read it and Wanda M. Morris is one of my favorite writers, the book that comes to mind is her latest, an atmospheric, taut thriller called What You Leave Behind. It’s set in the Gullah-Geechee community on the Georgia coast and deals with illegal land grabbing and the heirs property system that disproportionally affects Black and brown communities.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: First? Wow. Probably P.D. James, but which one, I have no idea.

Jon McGoran: Hard to remember what my first was, but when I was young, I went through an intense Carl Hiaasen phase, voraciously reading everything he wrote. I loved how he addressed environmental issues, while at the same time crafting these great crime stories, and never coming across as a scold, instead having great fun doing it.

S.J. Rozan: John Gregory Dunne, True Confessions.

Susan Breen: Walter Moseley’s novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, was the first time I understood racism in a visceral way. I wasn’t watching it from afar, but was there, with Easy Rawlins.

Robert Lopresti:  Some of Rex Stout's novels discussed social issues (A Right to Die, The Doorbell Rang, etc.) but when I first read them I was too young to absorb that.  In college I loved James McClure's The Steam Pig, which was about policing in South Africa under apartheid.

Janice Law: I can only mention some recent books, all of which dealt with child abuse in official custody of one sort or another: Fiona McPhillips's When We Were Silent, Rene Denfeld's Sleeping Giants and James McBride's, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden: Even though she likely doesn’t think of it as a mystery novel, The Round House by Louise Erdrich is an amazing book that deals with criminal justice issues on Native lands. It’s a great read that also educates and illuminates. I highly recommend it, although she has so many other tremendous novels, so it’s hard to pick a favorite.

Gary Phillips: One of the first novels I recall dealing with a social issue, an environmental one at that and its implications was Ross Macdonald’s Sleeping Beauty. His fictional take on the real-life Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 as the backdrop to a Lew Archer, private eye tale.

Mark Stevens: The Wild Inside by Christine Carbo is one of my favorites.  

Name an author who has had the biggest impact on your short stories.

 Barb Goffman: Art Taylor. I learn something that helps my craft every time I read one of his stories.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch:   Stephen King

Jon McGoran:  I’ve always straddled mystery and scifi, but I think Elmore Leonard is the author whose style has most impacted me as a writer.

Susan Breen: My love of Agatha Christie inspired me to write mysteries, but Sue Grafton had a huge effect on how I think about the women who are usually my protagonists. She taught me that they could be bold, flawed and funny.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden: I’ll always return to the stories of Flannery O’Connor, although my own work bears no resemblance to her amazing tales. For dialogue, I was heavily influenced by Raymond Carver, although I once had a well-known writer scream at me when I mentioned that I admired Carver’s stories. I still believe that Carver’s dialogue is some of the best out there—consistently expressive and surprising.

Gary Phillips: No one writer had the biggest impact but certainly short stories by Poe and Rod Serling – those Twilight Zone teleplays turned into short stories. And it’s only fair to note Walter Gibson, the pulp writer who essentially created the Shadow, turned those into prose.

Robert Lopresti: Can't stop at one: Stanley Ellin, John Collier, Jack Ritchie, Avram Davidson.

Sarah M. Chen: Patricia Abbott. One of my favorites of hers is from Betty Fedora, Issue One, a dark little gem called “Ten Things I Hate About My Wife."

Janice Law: This is difficult, because unlike most writers, I began with novels and only began writing and publishing short fiction after I had launched the Anna Peters series and a couple of history books. So, influences were the mystery writers I enjoyed: Dorothy L. Sayers, because she had Harriet Vane who was so much better than the usual female characters of the time; Eric Ambler, who was the god of suspense in my estimation, and Raymond Chandler for his irresistible style and mastery of atmosphere.

Karen Harrington: John Floyd, Stephen King, Barb Goffman and Ray Bradbury.

Mark Stevens: Patricia Highsmith

Which environmental issue is having the most direct effect on you now?

Karen Harrington: I don't know if it's a direct effect, but when I did research on illegal dumping of car oil and other car liquids, I discovered that it is alarmingly prolific. That's disturbing. There are companies that are weighing the cost of getting caught versus the damage to the environment and taking the gamble. This is from large companies to the small auto parts stores we see across the country. (And interestingly, in my research I found the attached photo describing the 1963 Popular Science method of disposing of used engine oil. What?! This practice was commonly accepted and thought to have no impact on the soil. Really shows that science is rarely settled and must continually learn and reevaluate what we think we know.)

Gary Phillips: Given I live in a seemingly now continuous wildfire state, no particular season for them as in the past, global warming is pretty dang real to me.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden: The wildfires in Colorado seem to be getting worse every year, which is really distressing. I’m now living in New York for the first time since 2013, and I still have strong memories of Hurricane Sandy and the misery caused by that storm.

Mark Stevens: Everything climate change -- dwindling water supplies, threat of forest fires, impact on agriculture.

S.J. Rozan: Global warming, which encompasses all others

Susan Breen: Climate change is the environmental issue having the most direct effect on me because it is influencing where and how I live.

August 2023

Robert Lopresti: Most summers now we have days when the air is so full of wildfire smoke that it is considered dangerous to be outside.

Jon McGoran: I think climate change is having the greatest impact on most of us, both the direct effects of it that we’re already feeling, the (inadequate) measures we’re taking to combat it, and the fear and anxiety of what is to come, but I also wonder if nanoplastics and microplastics will end up being even more damaging to us.

Janice Law:  I very much hope to be gone myself before the warbler migration fails. Living in the Northeast, we have escaped some of the most immediate effects of climate change but it is becoming clear that every civilization, including ours, is dependent on the natural world and on favorable climate conditions. We have been slow to learn this as well as careless about our pollution and exploitation of the natural world.

Sarah M. Chen: I live close to the beach so am aware of the alarming rise in sickened and abandoned marine mammals, like whales and sea lion pups. This is due to a number of things like rising ocean temperatures which increases toxin levels and pups being forced to dive deeper and further for food.     

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: The warming of the planet, since I live in Las Vegas.

Themed mystery anthologies seem to be growing in popularity. Any thoughts on that trend?

Gary Phillips: Having edited or co-edited a number of themed anthologies, South Central Noir, The Cocaine Chronicles to name two, I think if you can hook the potential reader on the subject matter, they like diving in and out of a given short story. They’re not getting exhausted if you’ve tried to turn the idea into a novel, maybe having to pad the story.

Sarah M. Chen:  They're fun and I'm all for it!

Kristine Kathryn Rusch:  I think the more mystery stories the better.

Susan Breen: Anthologies force writers to get out of their regular routines. It’s a challenge to try something new and my suspicion is that because of that, the stories will have a jolt of energy to them.

Mark Stevens: I think once the whole idea of building short story collections on rock bands took off, well, there's no shortage of material.  Waiting for the first collection based on  songs by The Velvet Underground.

Karen Harrington: I think readers and writers enjoy seeing how different minds approach the same topic. I know I do.

 S.J. Rozan: Themed anthologies make total sense -- they allow readers to watch a wide variety of writers exploring topics they're interested in.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden: Yes, I love the trend, and I’ll note that I’m editing one of these myself:  Native Noir, due out sometime in 2025 from Akashic Books. In that volume, some of the greatest Indigenous authors currently writing agreed to try their hand at a noir story, broadly defined. I hope to see more of the music-based anthologies, and I’m still salty that I didn’t know about the two Steely Dan books. Their songs are perfect, of course, for crime tales, and I’m hoping someone will put together another one (and please contact me if you do!)

Robert Lopresti: I love the fact that you can give twenty authors the same assignment and get twenty wildly different, but all fascinating responses.

Janice Law: I think it is a sensible attempt to create a new home for short fiction, which has been evicted from the newspapers and magazines that used to pay well for short stories.

 None of the authors in this book chose to write historical stories. Are there any environmental issues/events in history you think are particularly intriguing?

Gary Phillips: Interesting question. I suppose if I were to give it some thought, how the growth of the Industrial Revolution polluting the skies in England, damaging peoples’ lungs irreparably, comes to mind.

Robert Lopresti: The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was so polluted it caught fire 14 times. Publicity from the 1969 blaze lit a fuse (sorry) that started the modern environmental movement.

Sarah M. Chen: I watched a documentary on the Chernobyl disaster and found it horrifying and fascinating. I knew very little about it despite being a kid when it happened.

Susan Breen: I’m a great fan of Charles Dickens and have always been fascinated and appalled by what living conditions were like in London during Victorian times, even for the wealthy. Joseph Bazalgette’s construction of the sewer system has got to be one of the greatest environmental triumphs ever. Now that I think about it, I can come up with various murderous scenarios. Maybe I should have…

Barb Goffman: All of these historical events could be put to good use in a crime story...
        Oil spills - Exxon-Valdez, BP, etc.
        Toxic chemical dumping - Love Canal
        Water contamination - Woburn, MA, and Flint, MI
        Nuclear plant meltdown - Three Mile Island, though given recent news, Three Mile Island could also factor into a contemporary story.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch:   I've been fascinated for a long time by the Little Ice Age, as well as the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, causing more than 90,000 people to die, and inspiring one of the coldest (and darkest) summers on record in 1816, which led to lots of literary mayhem (like Frankenstein, Dracula, and some Lord Byron poetry).

S.J. Rozan:  1. The Great Flood of 1927 along the Mississippi.  2. Boston's 1919 Molasses Flood

Mark Stevens: Like, a zillion. My mind goes to all the ways mankind has plumbed nature or depended on nature for resources.  Early days of mining.  Or drilling for oil.  I'm fascinated by the idea that gigantic supertankers are ferrying oil around the globe. When was the first? Who dreamed that up? Seventy-seven million barrels of oil are moving around the globe every day.  At what cost? At what risk?  

Janice Law: We have a couple of big ones just in our own national history: the near extermination of the buffalo, the loss of the passenger pigeons, and what is proving to be the very foolish attempt to create "fur deserts" in the west. The loss of the beaver had impacted water storage in these dry areas just as the huge reduction in buffalo has had an impact on soil conservation etc on the prairies.

The trouble with these events, and with many environmental issues, is that they don't necessarily fit well with the demands of short mystery fiction, which are surprising like the old classical unities: one time, one place, one action, and that additional requirement that also goes back to the ancient Greeks: a beginning  in the middle of the action.

Is That a New Anthology in Your Pocket?

GREENBERG

Martin H. Greenberg edited or co-edited 1,298 anthologies across multiple genres, the first published in 1974. Between then and his death in 2011, he produced an average of 35 anthologies per year or one anthology every 1.45 weeks.

Releases November 8, 2024.

For his work, Greenberg received an Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America, a Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement from The Horror Writers Association, and a Solstice Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Greenberg didn’t produce all these anthologies alone. He often had co-editors, including such luminaries as Isaac Asimov and Ed Gorman. Along the way, he founded Tekno Books, a book packager that also produced novels. Denise Dietz, John Helfers, and Denise Little were, at various times, part of the Tekno Books team. Likely, there were other team members.

Clearly, Greenberg had help.

ELWOOD

Roger Elwood, who passed away in 2007, edited or co-edited at least 67 anthologies (some sources claim he edited as many as 80), the first published in 1964. Working primarily within the science fiction/fantasy genres, he produced 55 anthologies in the six-year period beginning in 1972. In 1974 alone, he produced 23 anthologies, or one every 2.2 weeks. Like Greenberg, Elwood didn’t limit his editing to anthologies. He also edited books and magazines, and he wrote both fiction and non-fiction.

There’s no indication he had staff to assist him.

LEGACY

Released October 14, 2024.

Greenberg’s death left a hole in the anthology marketplace, and no anthologist working today (or none that I’m aware of) produces the same volume of anthologies and works as broadly across genres and for as many publishers the way he did.

Elwood, on the other hand, seems to have left a bad taste in the science fiction writing community, with rumors of shoddy workmanship, poor treatment of writers, and unhappy publishers.

GOLDEN AGE

In “Is That a New Derringer in Your Pocket?”, Joseph S. Walker’s October 27, 2024, SleuthSayers post, he notes this about anthologies: “I’ve heard more than a few writers suggesting that we’re living in a golden age for the form.”

I suspect this belief comes more from younger and newer writers who didn’t experience the years when anthologies were released at a breakneck pace, when editors such as Greenberg, Elwood, and others were at their peak productivity. On the other hand, as Walker further noted, this belief in an anthology golden age may be more “due to a decline in the number of magazine markets,” which means anthologies now appear to represent a larger share of the available marketplace for fiction.

Either way, anthologies have long been important to the writing community, and writers desiring publication should spend as much time seeking anthology opportunities as magazine opportunities.

But will any of today’s anthology editors have such an outsize impact on the field—good or bad—the way Greenberg and Elwood did?

Only time will tell.

* * *

The last quarter of 2024 is filled with news:

“Stinkwater Lake” appears in Crimes Against Nature (Down & Out Books), edited by Robert Lopresti, released October 7.

“Barbed Wire Bison” appears in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November/December.

Scattered, Smothered, Covered & Chunked (Down & Out Books) which I co-edited with Stacy Woodson, released October 14 and includes my story “Windfall.”

Janie’s Got a Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Aerosmith (Misti Media) releases November 8.

Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 5 (Down & Out Books) releases December 2.

The Uses of Mystery: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

The discovery of a body in 1979. What is a more classic mystery opening than a stray and unexpected corpse? Followed up, in this case, by a police visit to an old man who looks very much like the prime suspect? Category police drama anyone?

 

In The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has some other ideas. The passage about the discovery summarizes events that were genuinely mysterious to most of those involved back when the deceased was dropped in an abandoned well at Chicken Hill, a hardscrabble section of Pottstown, PA.

In 1932, Chicken Hill was home to the newer inhabitants of an increasingly industrialized town. Blacks fleeing the Jim Crow South and east European Jews fleeing pogroms scratch out mostly marginal lives with one eye on the unwelcoming forces of law and order. 

Two of the more fortunate inhabitants are Moshe and and Chona Ludlow. He runs the local theater and has found considerable success booking Black as well as Yiddish musicians. She runs the grocery store that, with its generous credit, functions as a life line in the current hard times and gives her rapport with locals in the Black community, especially Nate and Addie Timblin.

The Timblins' struggle to keep a young, deaf relative out of the notorious orphan home enlists both Ludlows and provides a spine for the dramatic events of the novel. But even the genuinely gripping main plot line is only the armature for McBride's detailed portrait of the community, bursting with fully realized and fascinating characters. 

 

Many are engaged in some dubious hustle, as Chicken Hill copes not only with poverty but with a lack of basic services. Even a water supply is tricky; health care is a dangerous gamble, and decent jobs are basically beyond the grasp of even competent people like the Timblins.

 

The 1920's and 30's saw a resurgence of the Klan, widespread anti-Semitism, and a deep suspicion of immigrants. This was true in the north as well as the south. The Depression only deepened those social ills and a fear amounting to hatred of those on the margins.  

 

Success, or even survival, in Chicken Hill takes sharp wits, a sense of community, and a great deal of ingenuity, social, political and mechanical. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is a portrait of a community under stress: intelligent, but under educated and full of odd customs, superstitions, and rituals. 

 

Is there a mystery in there, too? Certainly, with two bona fide villains, a contract killing, a fatal assault, and some high risk schemes involving the brotherhood of railroad workers. There is plenty going on but the novel takes some familiar mystery conventions and tropes and works them into a bigger picture. 

This gives National Book Award winner McBride time to expand his characterizations and atmosphere, to indulge in some flights of fancy, and even to harken unto the supernatural. Some mystery fans may prefer a more streamlined plot. But I think most will be charmed by how some favorite devices are employed in this beautifully written and very accessible novel.

###

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.

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