Writing and Reading

by Steve Liskow

Last week, I met a man whose advertisement for a "personal novel writing teacher" had been passed on to me by a friend. I wasn't sure what he wanted or expected.

We only talked a for a minute or two before I asked, "What are the last five or six books you've really enjoyed reading?"

"Oh," he said, "I don't read."

I heard the first timber crack and looked for daylight. "So why do you want to write a novel?"

"I want to get rich."

I ended the interview. I'm proud of myself for not telling him where he could put his misperception.

Most writers who teach have variations on this story, and we all wonder how you can possibly want to write when you don't enjoy reading. That's like a guy who can't stand heights wanting to skydive. Colorblind artists don't get far, either. Or tone-deaf musicians.

I taught English for years, and I still believe you can teach someone to write exposition (essays, research papers, most of the conventional school assignments) reasonably well, but the best students have an innate talent and hunger that carry them beyond the rest. It includes an ear for language that you only develop by reading a lot and starting young.

 Let's face it, writing is hard work, much too hard for anyone who doesn't love words and the way they sound when they dance together. My family included teachers, actors, and journalists, and they all read to me and my sister from the time we could sit upright. We both love to read and we both write a lot.

People who don't read have no frame of reference. If they read, you can use various books, characters, or scenes as examples. You can cite Wuthering Heights, Catcher in the Rye or Gone Girl for an unreliable narrator. You can point to Dickens or Hawthorne for description. But if the student doesn't read, you spend more time reinventing the wheel than you do teaching him to drive. My school called the class "Composition AND literature" because they go together.

If you really want to write, read everything. Read novels, both literary and genre. Read history, science, philosophy, psychology, mythology, religion, economics and essays. Read the King James Bible, too. It doesn't matter if you're Christian or not, listen to those rhythms. Read poetry (preferably older verse with a rhyme scheme) and drama aloud. Read comic books (OK, "graphic novels"), cereal boxes and shopping lists. But stay the hell off Twitter. 140 characters is not language, it's code.

What writer(s) show you how to create rich, three-dimensional characters? Copy them. Who writes terrific dialogue? Steal the techniques. Who writes magnificent description, creates vibrant settings, and immerses you in tone and atmosphere? Figure out how she does it and use the same strategies. Then read your work out loud while walking around the room. Does it make you feel the way you want your readers to feel? If it doesn't, fix it.

Writing has to capture the human experience, and that's the whole point of language. We are (or not) because we read (or not). If you want to write, you can take classes too, but you'll learn more from the authors who speak to you.

Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, said that style depends on two factors: the ability to feel, and the vocabulary to express those feelings. You find the techniques by reading, and they enhance your empathy and humanity...maybe. The only book I know worth mentioning for writing style (except Strunk and White, which is better for exposition than for narrative) is Constance Hale's Sin and Syntax. If you haven't read it, pick up a copy.

Then get back to reading for joy.

Now, what's on your coffee table or nightstand?

Black Friday

by R.T. Lawton

Walking into a pawn shop in the middle of a robbery can be a hazardous experience, especially if the robber is a relative amateur in these types of situations. That's the circumstances that Yarnell, a professional burglar, finds himself in when he goes to redeem his wife's diamond wedding ring from the shop. Fortunately for him, his wife doesn't know that her ring has been hocked, and he intends to keep it that way.

Anyway, it's hands up, hands down, hands up, then hands down again for Yarnell as he converses with the robber. And just when Yarnell and the robber come to some sort of  understanding about proper procedure, in walks Beaumont, Yarnell's partner in crime, who has his own thoughts about robbery etiquette.

Meanwhile, behind the counter in the back of the pawn shop, the recipient of the robbery, Lebanese George, who is also the owner of the pawn shop, has developed a case of tired arm muscles. So now, one of his hands has slowly declined to a half-raised position while he slurps coffee out of a mug held by his other hand.

The robber soon decides he wants everybody's money, in which case Yarnell tries to hand his money to Lebanese George first in order to pay off the hock on his wife's wedding ring. George, knowing he is going to lose the money anyway, refuses to accept the cash as payment to redeem the ring. That's when Yarnell learns his wife's ring is already part of the jewelry the robber is stealing. Thus, the robbery progresses. Up to a point.

"Black Friday" is the tenth story in my Holiday Burglars series, all ten of which have been published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Short story critic Rob Lopresti has remarked that this one is the funniest story of mine that he has read to date. Who am I to argue with such a great mind?

This is Lebanese George's second appearance in one of my stories.His debut as a story character was in my Twin Brothers Bail Bond series as a crooked wine merchant. In real life, the model for "Lebanese George" was a man who sold used cars with my Uncle Dick. Stories of some of their escapades were truly scam jobs on the general car buying public and hilarious situations in the telling. In his middle years, George had to go on the run from the Dixie Mafia and did his hiding out on a houseboat which traveled up and down the river as a means of frequently changing his address. I only met George once, and that was during his later years. At that time, he claimed to own a steak house in the city we were visiting. He did invite my wife and I to his restaurant for a free steak dinner, but we never made it to his establishment. I always wondered what that free steak dinner would've cost me.

George was a likable and very entertaining individual, which probably made him successful at whatever he did. With all that in mind, I'd say if he's still alive and you happen to meet up with him, keep one hand on your wallet and be sure it stays in your pocket. You can count your money before and after, but please don't count it in front of him.

Til next time.

One More Time, From the Top

Please join me in welcoming my friend Michael Bracken as a guest blogger today. For those of you who don't know Michael already, he has written several books but is better known as the author of more than 1,200 short stories. He's recently had stories published in, or accepted for publication by, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Snowbound, Noir at the Salad Bar, Passport to Murder, Tough, Weirdbook, and other anthologies and periodicals. He is currently reading submissions for The Eyes of Texas, an anthology of private eye stories that Down & Out Books will release at Bouchercon 2019. You can find the submission guidelines here.

One more thing: Michael will be officially joining SleuthSayers next month as a regular columnist. All of us at the SS asylum are of course thrilled about that, and hoping he doesn't come to his senses in time to back out. (As for me, I'll return in two weeks.) --John Floyd

_______________________________________________________

by Michael Bracken


I've had a good run. Since my first professional sale in the late 1970s, I've sold more than 1,200 short stories, and through October 2017 I've had one or more short stories published each month for 172 consecutive months. This long streak of good fortune may soon end.

In an October 23, 2013, guest post for John Floyd here at SleuthSayers, I wrote about the ladder a short-story writer climbs from being a "write-first, market-second" writer to becoming a "market-first, write-second" writer, and I gave several examples of how I had reached a point where most of my short fiction was written to order, to invitation, or for repeat markets.

I also noted that "[p]ublishing is changing and everything I know about it may be obsolete before the year ends." I was only off by a few years.

During the past two years, the foundation of my writing career crumbled beneath me. Anthology editors who often invited me to contribute are no longer editing anthologies, and magazines I counted on for multiple sales each month have ceased publication. Some genres in which I had established myself have disappeared or are clinging to life only in low- or non-paying markets.

In many ways, I am starting over, rebooting my career by once again becoming a "write-first, market-second" short-story writer. The only advantage I have over a beginning writer is that past sales prove I can write publishable fiction. What I do not yet know is how well I can write publishable fiction in new or long-neglected genres. So, for the first time in years, I am actually nervous when I submit stories, and each time I receive a response I have a moment of trepidation just before I open the email.

I'm not taking my situation lightly, and I have a plan. Following are the key steps I'm taking to restart my writing career:


FINISH WHAT I SET ASIDE

Over the years I left many stories unfinished because there were no discernable markets for them. Rather than let these stories continue to languish, I returned to several of them, finished them, and sent them into the world, following the traditional path of submitting to the best market first and working my way down the markets as rejections roll in.

Outcome: Since the reboot I have sold a handful of newly finished stories.


WRITE WHAT INSPIRES ME

Relying on inspiration as motivation is degraded as the amateur's approach to writing because perspiration creates more work than inspiration. Even so, a working writer should never dismiss inspiration. Occasionally, a story idea comes unbidden, and I am so taken by it that I find myself driven to write. In the past, I set these inspired stories aside in favor of sure-bet sales. Now, I let inspiration take me where it will.

Outcome: Since the reboot, I have sold five inspired stories.


WRITE TO SPECIFICATIONS

This is what I advocated beginning and early career writers do back in 2013 when I laid out the steps for transitioning from a write-first, market-second writer to a market-first, write-second writer.

I spend time surfing the Internet seeking anthology open submission calls and submission guidelines from publications with which I am not already familiar. I study guidelines, read publications when they exist, and then, as best I can, write stories that fit the guidelines.

Outcome: Since the reboot, I have sold three stories written to open-call anthology specifications.


REPURPOSE OR RESUBMIT UNSOLD WORK

In addition to seeking markets to which I might send completed but unsold stories, I also continually compare submission guidelines to finished work to determine if anything I have could be revised and repurposed. Occasionally, I can.

Outcome: Since the reboot, I have sold one repurposed story and one story that had been languishing in my files before I discovered a new market.


EXAMINE THE RESULTS

Without detailing every sale and rejection since the beginning of my career reboot--and, trust me, rejections outnumber the sales--let's examine my experience with a single periodical: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

Five years passed between my previous rejected submission to AHMM and the first submission after my career reboot, and I've submitted eight stories since the reboot. Three are awaiting a decision, two have been rejected, and three have been accepted.

The first acceptance, published last year ("Chase Your Dreams," AHMM, June 2016), is a repurposed story originally written in another genre. The first third and last third are essentially as first written, but I extensively revised the middle third before submitting to AHMM, and then revised the middle third again at Linda Landrigan's suggestion to move it even further from its original genre.

The second story accepted by AHMM is an inspired story, one that came to me as an opening image with a character facing a life-altering loss.

The third story accepted by AHMM is one I began, set aside, and returned to several years later.

Outcome: Were any of these three written to specifications? Other than representing various sub-genres of crime fiction and fitting within the magazines's length requirements, no. I have yet to find strong commonalities among the stories AHMM publishes. On the other hand, the three stories AHMM accepted share something the two stories rejected do not, so I am developing a profile of which stories are more likely and which stories are less likely to be accepted if submitted to AHMM.


CHANGE MY ATTITUDE

There is a fine line between being confident and being cocky, and it was easy to cross that line when almost everything I wrote sold to the first editor who saw it. I'm still confident, but my wife tells me I'm not so cocky.

Previously, I would submit and forget, but now I fret about each submission, and I sweat rejections in a way I haven't for at least a decade. When rejections are more common than acceptances, they carry more weight, and that weight forces me to examine my stories and my marketing efforts to determine if rejected stories are flawed or if my submission targeting is flawed.

I am working harder than before because I want to regain my status as a market-first, write-second short-story writer. Alas, that may never happen. I worked for thirty-plus years to reach that point, and I enjoyed the ride for nearly ten years. Having just turned 60, I might not have another thirty years of writing left in me, and, having done it once, I know there is no shortcut back to that level.

On the other hand, I think I've written some of my best work since the foundation of my writing career crumbled beneath me. I've been forced to examine the market for short fiction from a different perspective, and I've been forced to reexamine how and why I write. While I still have my eye on the markets, I'm producing more work aimed at pleasing myself first and then hoping I find editors to publish it.

And I have a plan. If I follow it, maybe--just maybe--it won't take thirty years to climb back to the top of the ladder and once again be a market-first, write-second writer.

Capstone to a Career

By Art Taylor

Last week's Bouchercon in Toronto was terrific and memorable in so many ways, with one of the great highpoints coming on the final day, when our fellow SleuthSayers B.K. Stevens won the Anthony Award for Best Novella for her outstanding story "The Last Blue Glass."

As most folks in our community know, Bonnie passed away suddenly back in August, but her husband Dennis and their daughter Rachel were in Toronto for much of Bouchercon to represent her as an Anthony finalist—attending several short story panels and being part of the weekend generally.

In addition to sitting near them at the panel for Anthony Award finalists in the novella category, I was fortunate to join Dennis and Rachel along with author Debra Goldstein, Linda Landrigan of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (Bonnie's longtime publisher), and Linda's husband John for dinner on Saturday night—a chance to get together with friends (part of a group that had gathered at several other conferences in recent years) but also, of course, an opportunity to remember Bonnie and her work. Dennis and Rachel shared some stories from years past, the early years of Dennis' and Bonnie's marriage, theirs moves from school to school and state to state, the years of raising kids—those stories from two perspectives, of course, with Rachel looking back on her own childhood. Many stories, of course, but one image that stood out related to Bonnie's commitment to her craft: her writing days when husband and kids were elsewhere so as to give her time and space, her family committing themselves in support of her work.

On Sunday, we gathered together again at the awards brunch, sat together along with Roberta Rogow, Deborah Buchanan, Michael Bracken and his wife Temple, and then Alan Orloff who arrived in time for the official presentation. Before the awards were presented, Roberta told us that she had always been good luck at awards ceremonies—that people at her table always won. Whatever role Roberta's luck played, we all erupted in cheers when Bonnie's name was called—and fought tears too when Dennis stepped up to the podium to explain what had happened to Bonnie, to talk about her long hopes of winning such an award, and to thank people in the mystery community for their support—those connections that he said meant so much to her, those friendships with her that meant so much to us. I say "fought tears" but that fight wasn't entirely won, as you might imagine.

Bittersweet is the word that kept coming up time and again at the brunch and again in the days since then. Poignant is the word that Dennis himself used, and it's difficult not to feel great sadness that Bonnie wasn't there to accept the honor herself, to enjoy the moment.

The Anthony Award is surely a fine capstone to Bonnie's terrific career as a short story writer, novelist, essayist, and more—but here's wishing again that it had simply been the next step in a career still being built, with more of her writings still ahead.

Congratulations to our fellow SleuthSayer and our too-soon-departed friend, B.K. Stevens.

Seabury Quinn: More Popular Than Lovecraft & Howard

by Brian Thornton

With Halloween close upon us, I have been thinking quite a bit lately about Weird Tales. A contemporary of Black Mask, the early 20th century pulp magazine which launched the careers of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, and a host of other early hard-boiled and noir fiction writers; Weird Tales had its own stable of big names for whom it proved a springboard: H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth and Robert E. Howard, just to name a few.

The collected work of these authors has sold in the millions, spawned comic book and movie tie-ins, and has rarely been out of print in the half-century since the paperback publishing revolution of the 1960s. It was the advent of the paperback novel more than anything else which helped to posthumously revive the literary careers of so many pulp writers, and especially those of both Lovecraft, the creator of Cthulhu, and Howard, the creator of Conan.

And yet during their pulp heyday none of these authors was nearly so popular, year in, year out, as a New Jersey native and longtime Washington, D.C. resident who specialized in mortuary law.

Meet Seabury Quinn.

Mortuary Law Specialist Seabury Quinn

The creator of an "occult detective" who frequently comes across as a more violent doppelganger for Agatha Christie's famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, Quinn sold over ninety stories to Weird Tales between 1925 and 1950. Quinn's protagonist Dr. Jules DeGrandin ("Grandin" was actually the author's middle name) was featured in most of them.

Sporting a full head of blonde hair where Poirot was dark-haired and bald as an egg, French to Poirot's Belgian, and a man of action where Poirot seemed averse to most anything the least bit physical, DeGrandin was also short, fussy about his impeccable wardrobe, and given to repeating certain catch-phrases in French: all traits he shared with Christie's detective. He also had a faithful side-kick who narrated his stories, like Poirot (and like Sherlock Holmes' famous Dr. Watson, DeGrandin's side-kick was also a doctor).

DeGrandin's stories were initially set in a variety of exotic locales. When Quinn realized that the series was likely to have a long run, he settled DeGrandin and his friend Dr. Trowbridge in the latter's (fictional) hometown of Harrisonville, New Jersey. Over the quarter century the series ran, Harrisonville rivaled Lovecraft's creation Arkham, Massachusetts for the sheer number of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and other monsters rampaging around the local countryside.

Quinn cranked out his DeGrandin stories at a rapid clip, and it frequently shows in the writing (he was much more careful with the novels he wrote over the course of his long career): his supporting characters are often thin (frequently ethnic) stereotypes and sometimes the plot resolutions were outright sloppy, and because of their sheer number, tended to get recycled.

But what they lacked in craft they made up in  energetic prose, action, gore, and young, pretty women in distress (a fact reflected in many of the Weird Tales covers dedicated to Quinn's work). DeGrandin was handy with both sword and gun, and always shot to kill. And while the stories always seem to start out with an eldritch element to them, the monster promised by such titles as "The Grinning Mummy," "The Great God Pan," and "The Serpent Woman" almost always turns out to be all too human. Evil, despicable, villainous, sure. But human.

There was also a fair amount of thinly-disguised kink in the DeGrandin tales: several of the stories revolved around the deeds of white slavers (cue the whips and chains), for example. In fact, whips play an outsized role in much of the hazards faced by the inevitable young, white, female kidnap victims in a number of the stories. Racy stuff for the first part of the 20th century.

Weird Tales' loyal readers ate it up. Quinn's pieces provided the cover stories for more Weird Tales issues during the magazine's heyday than the work of any other author. He consistently topped the magazine's yearly reader's poll, handily beating out authors we find more famous today, such as Lovecraft, Smith and Howard.

Unlike Lovecraft, Smith and Howard, Quinn seems not to have needed the money generated by his fiction sales. He was by turns a successful lawyer and journalist (including a fifteen year stint as editor of a mortuary trade journal entitled...wait for it...Casket & Sunnyside.). Also unlike Howard, who shot himself in his parents' driveway at age thirty in 1936, and Lovecraft, who died of cancer in the family home in 1937, aged 47, Quinn lived until 1969, dying shortly after his eightieth birthday.

By this time the DeGrandin stories were long out of print. And there they largely remained, in spite of several attempts to revive interest in them. Not even the paperback revolution, so good for the work of Lovecraft and Howard, especially, could do Quinn's little French occult detective much good.

This may have changed as a result of another paradigm change in publishing: the ebook. Nightshade Books recently published all ninety-plus DeGrandin stories in a five-volume collector's hardcover edition. The were able to do this based in part on the projected revenues they'll use to recoup that expense by putting out ebook editions of the complete DeGrandin collection. (You can find a link here.).

The stories are worth a look (and the price, as is so often the case with ebook republications, is definitely right.), especially such highlights of the series as "Murder on the Links," "The Devil's Bride," and "The Gods of East and West."

And just in time for Halloween!

The Motive Motif

by Robert Lopresti

"I didn't go immediately, of course, as I hadn't made up enough reasons." - Don Berry, TO BUILD A SHIP

I recently read The Book That Changed America, by Randall Fuller.  It's about the United States' response to Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, which arrived in the months before the Civil War started, and was naturally used as a weapon by both pro- and anti-slavery forces.  It's a fascinating read although I thought at the end it got bogged down with the residents of Concord, Massachusetts.  (Granted those townies included Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, etc.)

But the reason I am writing this piece is a line Fuller wrote about another Concord-dweller (Concordian?  Grape?), Louisa May Alcott.  Fuller wrote that once the fighting started Alcott could not sell to the big magazines, because they wanted war stories.  Fuller explains:

In order to write about the war, she needed experience.  In the winter of 1862 she volunteered to work as a nurse at the Union Hotel Hospital in Washington.

That struck me as unfair, since it seemed to be saying that Alcott's only motive in volunteering for this nasty and dangerous work (it nearly killed her) was commercial gain.  No patriotism?  No desire to help the suffering soldiers?

That may not be what Fuller meant to say, but it's how I read it.  And it got me thinking about our tendency to assume that any piece of human behavior stems from a single motive.  Several people have asked me why I wrote my latest book.  Depending on the questioner and my mood I have given four different and contradictory explanations.  And they are all true.  Because people are complicated.

You may remember that in September both of my blog pieces  here featured John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and I am going back to that well one more time.  In researching those other pieces I found a blog by someone going by the name of Malnatured Snay who attempts to clarify the plot of the movie.  The piece is titled, optimistically, I CAN EXPLAIN IT TO YOU.

Snay does her/his best, but there are still plenty of puzzled questions in the comments.  (And let me salute Raheel Guillia, whose comment points out the huge plot hole in the movie, which does not appear in the novel.)

Here's the key example.  A number of commenters were baffled  as to why the character  Jim Prideaux did a certain thing near the end of the flick.  Anyone who had read the novel could have told them, but the movie didn't make the point clear enough,  for some viewers, anyway.

And so the commenters offered multiple contradictory motives for Prideaux, some of them wildly missing the point.  All of which got me thinking about the fact that people can have more than one motive for their actions, which is why I wrote this piece.

Wait.  Didn't I say I wrote it because  of the sentence about Louisa May Alcott?  Turns out people can have more than one motive.

Years ago I wrote a tale that appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  "Why" was a very short story with an even shorter title.  It consisted mostly of police officers speculating on the motive of a man who had killed several strangers.  By the end you know nothing about the killer, but a lot about the cops.

But I have been trying to think of any mystery novels or stories that play on the point that a single person could have more than one motive for what they do.  It seems like a natural thing for a mystery to discuss. After all, we're always being told that detectives look for a suspect with motive, method, and opportunity.  Doesn't motive deserve a little more attention?

The closest example I can think of is Rex Stout's Death of a Doxy, in which the murderer leaves a confession which includes an entirely false motive.  And that's not really the same thing.  Can you think of better examples?  Put them in the comments.  No spoilers, please.  And I hereby promise I am done mentioning John le Carre for a while.

Puerto Rico nostalgia

by Barb Goffman

This blog is running the Tuesday after this year's Bouchercon convention in Toronto. Since I won't return home until that Monday night (last night as you read this), I'm writing this post in advance. With the trip to Canada looming, and with the struggles of the people of Puerto Rico still in the news after the recent devastating hurricane, I've been thinking about travel lately, and especially trips my family took in the 1970s and early '80s to Puerto Rico. I hope the island and its residents recover sooner than later from the storm damage. And I hope you won't mind me indulging in a moment of nostalgia now. I'm fortunate that I created a scrapbook as a kid of some of our vacations, and my dad saved it. It's helped jog some memories, as well as provided the source of some of the photos.

I was four years old the first time I went with my family to Puerto Rico. (My dad did business there, so he went somewhat often.) We flew on a Pan Am double-decker plane. Granted my perspective is skewed since I was so small then, but I remember the jet being huge. The top level was set up with a bunch of booth-sized tables, surrounded by four comfy chairs, where you could hang out and play backgammon and other games. Flying back then was, in a way, luxurious--in sharp contrast to the way we fly these days like sardines. That plane made going to Puerto Rico seem glamorous.

These were the types of cards we had back then.

So did the hotel casinos. Each hotel always had a casino, which I was never able to see because they were super strict about not letting kids in. I remember the adults all went there at night after dinner (especially in the '70s), and everyone got really dressed up to do it.

The hotels typically ran Bingo games by the pool for probably a half hour every afternoon. I won the very first hand I played. When I called out Bingo, my mom admonished me, reminding me that you can't just yell out Bingo, you actually have it. Imagine her surprise when I did. I won forty bucks -- a huge amount of money for a four-year-old, especially in 1973.

Back then hotels also had actual keys for their doors. I know this because, apparently, I took a key from every hotel room we stayed in when I was a kid (and put them in my scrapbook). The hotels might have rightly called me a thief had they known, but I'll prefer to think of those keys as mementos.

On one of our trips we found and fell in love with the Oasis restaurant. It was billed as a Cuban restaurant, and they served a fried plantain appetizer that we loved. I've looked for fried plantains elsewhere over the years, but I've never found a place that makes them as this restaurant did. Most places serve you mushy plantains when you order fried plantains. The Oasis served them crispy and thin, like potato chips. And they were hot, too (temperature-wise). A few years ago I asked a friend who was born in Cuba if she knew a restaurant near where we both lived in the DC area where I could find fried plantains like these. She laughed and said that the Oasis restaurant might have been Cuban, but those were Puerto Rican fried plantains. Alas, there are no Puerto Rican restaurants near me. I wonder if there are any in Toronto.

And on that note, I should pack for my trip to Bouchercon. I'd love to hear about any favorite memories of trips you've taken to exotic places, especially (just to keep this on point for the blog) any places that you've used or might use for a mystery setting.