Showing posts with label AHMM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AHMM. Show all posts

01 March 2013

Lost


by R.T. Lawton

One month ago today, I lost my greatest fan, Bernadean G. Carlson. She was my mother-in-law, an excellent teacher of children and a great lady. Turned out she also liked my short stories and seemed pleased to have a writer in the family, especially since she was such an avid reader. I married her oldest daughter thirty-two years ago, but I'm pretty sure that's not why Bernie enjoyed my writing. She and I discussed books and writing almost every time we got together.

As a fifth grade teacher, Bernie got copies of my 22 children's stories as they came out in Recess and Time Out, statewide publications for 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade students, over a period of years, about 4 or 5 a year. Of course it may have been a personal bias (she was closely acquainted with the author) because her classes always read and discussed those stories in the class room. Once, I even received a batch of handwritten letters in the mail from one of her classes. They were writing to say thanks and to talk about their feelings on one of those stories. I just hope they weren't writing to me merely so they could get a good grade.

Can't say that Bernie was overjoyed with my day time job, but she soon saw how some of those experiences came out in my mystery stories. She even gave me permission, one time when we came to town for a visit, so a local bookie could come out to her house where I could interview him in her dining room without all his pals seeing him out in public with a federal law enforcement officer. Otherwise, the circumstances would definitely have ruined his reputation. The information I received that afternoon about the inner workings of a nationwide gambling organization became fodder for a short story series. If it hadn't been for the fact that this interview was for the creation of stories, she'd have been mortified to have a criminal in her home. But, since I had a gun, the bookie appeared to be no more than a good boy put on the wrong path by a down-turning economy and she would be out shopping during that time, it would be okay, just this once.

Bernie had her favorite characters in my four AHMM series and would frequently ask what Theodore in the Twin Brothers Bail Bonds and the Little Nogai Boy in the Armenian series were up to next. She took great pleasure in hearing how that little boy got his own story as requested by the editor in Manhattan while her daughter and I had breakfast with that same editor. Naturally, I sent Bernie a personalized copy of each story as it got published in AHMM, and she proudly showed these publications to friends and other relatives.

Some of you may remember about this time last year when I ran a contest on the blog site for the best breakfast recipe. That was one of the times when my wife Kiti was back in eastern South Dakota taking care of her mother for a few weeks while I stayed home in Colorado and took care of two of our grandsons. Testing those recipes took a full week. Every morning, the boys got served a different recipe for breakfast before I drove them over to their local elementary school for classes. At the table, each boy had his own score card where they rated that morning's dish in several different categories on a scale from 1 to 10. These rating sessions often became loud and lively as the boys compared notes and numbers. In the end, we had to have two winners to keep peace in the family. Telling of these shenanigans helped buoy the spirits of Mom while she was undergoing recovery from the chemo and radiation treatments for her cancer. It also helped to lighten Kiti's burden too. I thanked you guys then and I thank you again now.

But, like I said in the beginning, I lost my greatest fan. The medical treatments were too harsh and had to be discontinued. She ended up in a nursing home, unable to remain in her own house. It took a year more, but Bernadean G. Carlson finally passed over at 11 PM on Friday, February 1st, in the arms of her two daughters. Bernie will be greatly missed by all on this end, and there will be a very large gap in my very small fan base.

Sad to say, but Eve Fisher lost a fan too. Bernie very much enjoyed Eve's AHMM stories set in small town South Dakota. It was like those stories were set just down the road from Mom's house.

Well, time to go.

Rest easy, Mom.

30 January 2013

A story about a story in a story


'Tis a time for great joy and merry-making, at least around my house, because the April issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine has arrived, bringing with it "Shanks' Ride."  This is my twentieth story in AHMM, and  the eighth published tale about Leopold Longshanks, a curmudgeonly mystery writer who occasionally finds himself reluctantly thrust into the position of crime-solver.

What makes this particular story special to me (although I love all the little darlings equally, of course) is that it belongs to a specific subgenre:  one character relates a story containing a puzzle and another character solves it.  It is the first Shanks story of that type I have gotten published, though not for lack of trying.

Here is the opening scene:


            “I don’t think my alcohol level is over the legal limit,” said Leopold Longshanks.  “I could probably drive home all right.  But I figure there’s no point in taking chances.”

            “I know,” said the taxi driver.    “You’ve told me that three times.”

            “Oh.”  Shanks considered.  “Then maybe I do need a ride.”

            “Hop in.”


You can probably guess that the taxi driver is the one with the story to tell.

The earliest example of this story type of which I am aware is "The Tuesday Night Club," (1927) by Agatha Christie.  It is also the first appearance of one of literature's great detectives, Miss Jane Marple.  In this story a group of friends gather and discuss a genuine crime.  To everyone's surprise the elderly spinster solves the crime.  Christie published a series of stories about this club, published as The Thirteen Problems and The Tuesday Club Murders.

Another great example is (are?) the Black Widower stories of Isaac Asimov.  He acknowledged Christie as his inspiration for them, by  the way.  These short tales featured a group of men whose meetings were enlivened each month by a guest who, inevitably, had a puzzle in need of solving.  After all the clever and sophisticated members had picked the problem to pieces Henry, the waiter, would provide the solution.

You'll notice that both of these series are not only stories-within-stories, but examples of the least-likely-detective syndrome, since Miss Marple and Henry would appear to be the least qualified members of their groups to solve a mystery.

My friend Shanks doesn't qualify for that, of course.  He is a reluctant, but highly logical choice for detective. He is so logical, in fact, that he complains the concept is ridiculous: no one could possibly get enough information from a tale-teller to figure out whodunit.  Alas, I am cooking the books so he has no choice but to succeed.

 And I think I will leave it there.  If you want to know more, you know where to find the rest of the tale.

12 October 2012

Developing the Series


by R.T. Lawton

Kathleen Jordan, then editor for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, evidently continued to like my Twin Brothers Bail Bond concept because she sent a contract for "The Bond Market," second in the series. However,  before this story could be published, she passed away and Linda Landrigan took over as editor. Linda immediately requested changes in this already paid-for story, which left me in a writer's limbo, wondering if I were starting all over again. And in a sense I was, because it was a brand new relationship between author and editor.

If I wanted to break in with this new editor, I once again had to come up with something interesting and innovative. "The Big Bail Out," third in the series, had criminals employed at a financially troubled company skydiving onto a certain property at night. Yes, all of their parachutes opened and operated as they should, however as these employees had been marked for death, they came to a different and unexpected end. Naturally, as the gatherer of clues for the mystery solving proprietor, bail agent Theodore was on scene to witness their demise and report back the details. In following with The Rules for this series, the bail firm once again made an outrageous profit during the story's resolution. As for me, I got another contract and the series continued to live.

Still searching for innovation, I decided the Executive Secretary for the bail firm had recently expired, presumably of old age, a rarity in this group. The fourth story, "The Bond Servant," therefore opens with Theodore and the Proprietor preparing to conduct interviews with twelve candidates for the position of Executive Secretary. At the end of the day, it seems there is a thirteenth candidate, one who has shown up uninvited, in the waiting room. This interviewee is a tall, thin, cadaverous Hindu with a letter of reference from the proprietor's twin brother. We never do get resolved in the running series whether this twin brother has gone off on his own after an arguement as often alleged, or did the proprietor do away with his business partner twin as is sometimes implied in the stories?

The proprietor is paranoid about hiring the Hindu, whose international police record shows he comes from an old Thuggee family, however all the other top contenders for the Executive Secretary position seem to come to an untimely demise during this story. Only the Hindu is left as the prime candidate. Now, there are several threads of tension to explore and the bodies keep on piling up. As a character tag, the Hindu frequently comes up with sayings of Mahatma Gandhi, but by using them out of context these same sayings acquire a sinister meaning rather than the one originally intended.

Skip to the Bouchercon in Las Vegas, where Linda buys me a drink in the conference bar. I'm overwhelmed and not sure how to act. Actually, I'm probably more prepared to go undercover and negotiate with a criminal carrying a gun. If I make a faux pas in front of him, the worst he could do is shoot me. I sip my drink and try to make conversation with Linda. I inquire if there is anything she'd like to see in my future writing. She suggests a Moriarity type character as a foil for the proprietor of the bail firm.

"You got it ma'am."

Fifth in the series, "The Other Bondsman," introduces Herr Morden, an ex-East German agent who has set up a competing criminal enterprise in the Bay City area. The German word "ermorden" means to murder, but Herr Morden is almost the same phonetically, so....

The proprietor's life, and therefore Theodore's existence, keeps getting more tangled as the series expands to a total of ten stories so far, all of which have the word "bond" or "bail" in the title for easy recognition of the series. You can read the first nine stories ( 9 Twin Brother Bail Bond series) at either Amazon.com for Kindle or at Smashwords for other e-readers.

By now, you may have a fair idea how my brain works when it comes to brainstorming ideas for mystery stories and series progression. There may be more than what got put down on paper, but these are at least the high spots in my mind.

I have three other series going in AHMM (two historicals and a comedy burglar series), and depending upon how "Across the Salween" does in Linda's manuscript slush pile in the very near future, a fifth series may be in the making. Cross your fingers.

28 September 2012

Borrowing from the Best


I sold my first story published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine back in 2001. It was a stand-alone set in the backdrop of the Golden Triangle. This story had been conveniently resting in inventory when I went looking for markets and started at the top with AHMM's Writer's Guidelines on their website. In part of her suggested story wants, editor Kathleen Jordan mentioned stories set in exotic locations. With the Orient having often been referred to in literature as exotic, I figured Southeast Asia was close enough for government work, especially since a lot of my story was based on articles from an English language newspaper out of Bangkok, plus some situation reports which crossed my desk over the years, not to mention that close-up experience of the twelve-month, government-paid vacation Uncle said I'd won back in the Summer of '67. Lots of background. Anyway, the story was submitted and bought.

I was ecstatic......for about ten minutes. And then, reality crashed the party. One sold story was great, BUT could I do it again? What if I was only a one-shot, flash-in-the-pan? Circumstances now called for a really good story to send in before the editor forgot me and her last purchase. The Muse of Writing forbid that I should mail in a second rate piece for my second submittal to such a prestigious mystery magazine. My brain turned, desperately seeking an answer as to what could possibly be new, original or even interesting.

Solution?

Borrow from the Best.

I had read Lawrence Block's Ehrengraf series about a crooked lawyer whose clients were always "innocent" of the alleged crimes, mainly because the lawyer did his nefarious and very unlegal work out of court and behind the scenes. This was a good starting point; I'd go with a crooked bail bondsman for my protagonist.

Let's see now, there was Isaac Azimov's Black Widower series and Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe. Excellent, I'll have the proprietor of the bail firm solve the mysteries without ever going to the crime scene. His bail agent will bring him clues like the Black Widower supper group did (unintentionally) for the waiter and like Archie did for Nero. Each story will then be written in three separated parts: the problem, the clues and the resolution.

Since this series will tend towards dark comedy, the bail agent needs to be different. How about a resemblance to Peter Lorre's character in Arsenic and Old Lace? Nice, and I'll give him a broken left pinky finger which wasn't set quite right afterwards and therefore now permanently sticks straight out like an upright flagpole whenever he squeegees his sweating bald head with said hand during tight situations. It will be strongly implied that the proprietor was responsible for the broken pinky after one of the bail agent's indiscretions while operating in the name of the firm. The bail agent's name will be Theodore Oscar Alan Dewey, in which case the acronym speaks for itself.

And then there's Dashiell Hammett who wrote some really good stories. Plus, there's an excellent biography out there with good information about his time working in San Francisco. Seems he knew two brothers who were bail bondsmen. The brothers were also crooks who knew all the other criminals and used them to pull off jobs for the two brothers. Perfect, crooked bail bondsmen, fits right in. Now what brothers do I know?

Of course, the Black Mafia in Kansas City during the '70's had a set of twins who allegedly robbed banks, dealt dope, gambled and committed other illicit activities. Let's see now, their street names were Twin and Twin Brother. After they got arrested, Twin Brother said he would cop to the fall, but then Twin had to put half of the money he made from all his future crimes into a bank account in Twin Brother's name.  That way, Twin Brother would have a bankroll when he got out of prison. Twin agreed to the deal and hit the streets to bring in some dough. That's when me and Twin got to know each other quite well before he went off to join his incarcerated brother.

Great. I'll call it the Twin Brothers Bail Bond series. However, being the criminal enterprise it is, the firm will only take "special clients" who can put up high dollar bonds, usually in the form of stolen merchandise which can't yet be fenced. The majority of these clients will never go to trial. Seems they tend to fall from high places, go deep-water swimming without proper breathing apparatus, are killed by their suddenly enraged partners in crime or get run over by an errant taxi cab… although in all fairness it should be mentioned that the victim was outside of the clearly marked crosswalk at the time. In any case, the client is somehow rendered deceased, yet the bail firm makes an extraordinary profit.

Hope you kept up with all those dark twisted corridors and squeaky closet doors which only get opened by night when the house goes silent and honest folk are fast asleep. Just know that in this series, the Reader ends up cheering for a criminal protagonist, one who preys on other criminals.

By this fashion, "The Bond that Keeps," first in the series, was born. Kathleen bought the story and it appeared in 2002.

Now, you have to wait two weeks for… The Rest of the Story.

14 September 2012

Strings and Singles


In the October 2010 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, its editor, Linda Landrigan, mentioned that approximately half the issue is comprised of series installments, while standalone stories make up the other half. She discussed some of the pros and cons of each type, which then served to arouse my curiosity.

To date, I've sold twenty-five stories to AHMM and each of them, except for the very first one, has been an installment in one of my four mystery series. It seems that when I find myself facing that vast, empty page on my computer screen, it is easier for me to begin a new story with characters I already know. These ongoing protagonists, and some recurring antagonists, are almost fully formed in my mind, which means they are ready to tell me how they will normally act at most given times, and sometimes, in advance, how they will react to a new set of circumstances in whatever is about to become my latest story. This works well for me, up to a point.

Somewhere about the fourth or fifth installment, the characters have acquired a lot of baggage to carry forward. This means I have to create a chronological cheat sheet as each character develops. Guess you could say, that lacking a certain amount of memory refreshment, the author can't tell all the players without a program.

This cheat sheet also includes some physical attributes and habit tags which allows the Series Reader to say to himself: "Oh yeah, I remember this guy." And, in that one attribute or tag, the Series Reader gets a more complete image of my continued character as if a small compressed file were suddenly unzipped. As for the First Time Reader, he gets his own mental picture of that same character, plus starts building a fuller image to be unzipped whenever he reads the next installment in the series.

To keep my writing enthusiasm at a higher pitch, I try to have three stories going at the same time, in different series. That way, if I hit a speed bump in one story, or the characters feel like they're dragging, then I can jump to one of the other stories where everything feels fresher and more exciting, and I can keep on writing instead of puzzling over what to do next in a story that's temporarily stuck. My unconscious mind can work on that stuck part.

Eventually, I do get weary of all these same characters, in which case I write something completely new. Yep, this new story starts out as a standalone. But guess what? If it sells, then it runs the risk of being turned into a series, because I already know these characters and supposedly how they will act in their normal life and how they will react when their life gets abnormal. Time for another cheat sheet.

No doubt, you have your own opinions on reading or writing strings and/or singles. So, am I missing anything here? As the English comedian Benny Hill used to say in one of his skits on TV, "Always learning, always learning."

04 July 2012

Five Red Herrings, the Second School


1.  Missed connection
On this blog and its predecessor I often write about my Work In Progress, whatever that happens to be.  On the rare and wonderful occasions when one of them turns into a Work In Print I usually mention the previous column, but this time I forgot.  My story "Shanks Commences" was published this spring, but I wrote about the process of writing it back in 2009  and I even quote a draft of it here. 

2.  Quite Interesting

This has nothing to with crime or writing, but I know a lot of us like puzzles.  Go to Youtube some time and search for QI Fry.  QI (Quite Interesting) is the most intellectually challenging quiz show you are likely to run across.  The questions are so deliberately obscure or tricky that the panelists are not expected to answer any of them correctly.  Therefore they get points for coming up with interesting wrong answers.  However, they are penalized for boring wrong answers (boring defined as any answer the show's writers predicted).    The panelists are usually comedians which keeps it entertaining. 

If one of our American networks every wants to bring their own version I know one of our citizens with the brains and wit to replace Stephen Fry as host: Ken Jennings.

3.  The Horror...The Horror
If you haven't had your recommended daily allotment of schadenfreude, let me commend you to this piece.  Mandy DeGeit writes horror fiction and she recently had her first story accepted for an anthology published by Undead Press.  She bought boxes of the book for friends and relatives and then made the mistake of opening one of them.  The title of her story appeared as:

“She Make’s Me Smile”

Okay.  So an apostrophe had wandered in where God never intended one to be.  Not so tragic if everything else is okay.  At least the editor didn't, for example, add a couple of paragraphs describing animal abuse that were not in the original piece.

Oh, wait.  The editor did that?

And more, as it turned out.  DeGeit wrote to the editor to discuss this and for her trouble she received a reply complaining about "unstable" and "ungrateful" writers.  And you thought you were having a bad day.


4.  Parks on the Road to Hell


I just discovered Richard Parks blog  courtesy of Sandra Seamans' invaluable blog My Little Corner. This is one of the best pieces about the importance of first lines I have come across.  Quite a different view than you usually hear.


5.  Dr. Doyle, call your office.

I have been reading the Mystery Writers of America Annual, which is provided to everyone who attends the Edgars Banquet, and then sent to other members.   One of the many essays is by Leslie S. Klinger, the editor of the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes.  He mentions that after giving a presentation at a library he was thanked by an enthusiastic member of the audience.

"I'm so glad I came today," she said.  "I'm a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, and I didn't know there were books!"

Hoping life holds some pleasant surprises for you as well.

27 June 2012

Time to get Brutal


by Robert Lopresti

I have said  before that I think the best part of writing – better than seeing your work in print, better than cashing a check, better than attending the opening of the film adapted from you book, surrounded by adoring fans in skimpy—

Sorry.  Where was I?    

Best part.  Right.  The best part is the moment of creation.  There is no idea and then suddenly, miraculously, there is.  Amazing.

Often I can tell you exactly when and where that moment happened.  I was driving down the road and a song came on the radio and – Hey!  That line is meant to be a book title – And I almost drove off the road.

But sometimes it isn’t that easy.  Take “Brutal,” my story currently gracing the September issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.  (On finer newsstands everywhere, and some lousy ones too.)

I can tell you that this story is a mash-up of a Jim Thompson novel and a Neil Simon movie, and that’s true.  But it doesn’t tell you where the idea came from.  I didn’t wake up one day and say: “Thompson and Simon!  Perfect together!”  No, something brought the two tales together in my head, and whatever that was Is lost in the swamps of memory.

So let’s talk about the story itself.  Coyle is a professional assassin, one of those guys, as he says, “who can kill you with one finger.”  He is in a big city going after a high-value target.  Things go well for a while and then, conflict being the heart of fiction, things go not so well. And that’s pretty much all you need to know about the plot.  Go read the thing.

But first, I wanted to tell you one more oddity.  A century ago Robert Benchley wrote an essay called “Mind’s Eye Trouble,” in which he lamented his lack of visual imagination.

I seem to have been endowed at birth by a Bad, Bad Fairy with a paucity of visual imagination which amounts practically to a squint...  This limitation of mine might not be so cramping in its effect if the few visual images which I have were not confined almost exclusively to street scenes in Worcester, Massachusetts, the fortunate city which gave me birth...  (I)t is not the ideal locale for the CHANSON de ROLAND or the adventures of Ivanhoe.

Benchley goes on to say that he pictures the entire history of the Roman Empire taking place in a driveway on the corner of May and Woodland Streets, while all the events in Dickens take place on the second floor of a house on Shepherd Street.

I suffered from that problem when I was a child, but as I saw more of the world I outgrew it.  But here’s the interesting bit…

I recently sold another story to Hitchcock’s, and, like “Brutal,” this one begins in a rundown office building.  I happen to know for a certainly that both stories are in the same building. 

How do I know?  Good question.  Neither the building nor the city are named.  The slim descriptions of the buildings don’t even overlap much.  But I am sure, largely because I based them on the same building I visited a few years ago.  

At this point some writers or writing teachers might try to draw a moral out of that.  Like: both stories sold because they were focused on a real place, real in my imagination and therefore vivid to the reader.
To me, that’s magical thinking.  But obviously I don’t know where my next story idea will come from or set itself (see the beginning of this piece).  So the fictional building manager should probably tighten security.

 Before I fold my tents I want to thank R.T. Lawton for reading "Brutal" in its earlier days and giving me the benefit of his advice.  The check is in the mail, R.T.  Not to you, of course, but you can't have everything.

29 March 2012

Your South Dakota Correspondent


by Eve Fisher

Hello, all SleuthSayers!  

I'm Eve Fisher, new contributor and correspondent from South Dakota.  Not that I'm from around here.  Actually,  I've never been from "around here," wherever "here" was - I was adopted at three from Athens, Greece, and I have moved a lot since then.
I've lived on both coasts, spent almost two decades in the South (Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina), and I currently live in small town South Dakota, along with my husband, my cat, and (at last count) five thousand books.  (So many books, so little time...)  And, along the way, I've been to almost every state in America, including every national/state park, monument, giant ball of string and iguana farm west of the Mississippi.  I even stayed (as a child) in the teepee motel on Route 66!

I've had a lot of variety in my working life, too, ranging from an early job as a part-time clerk in a seedy corner market in Atlanta (where I was the only woman to work there who wasn't robbed or shot - more on that another time), to teaching history at the university level in Brookings, SD.   I've worked for ballet companies, lawyers, CPAs, pizza places (I make a great pizza dough), judges, fabric stores, and for quite a while I was the circuit administrator for one of the South Dakota judicial circuits, which enlarged my acquaintance considerably on both sides of the law (more on that another time, too).  

I primarily write mysteries, some fantasy/sci-fi, and primarily short stories.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have had many publications in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine - I'm in the May issue along with Rob Lopresti, R. T. Lawton, and many others.  Honored as always, both to be published and to be in great company!  You can find all of my published stories (or links thereto) at my website at http://evefishermysteries.wikispaces.com/ 

So, having said all of that...  
 
Almost all of my writing -  no, I'd say all of my writing starts with either a character or a place that takes over my mind.  
For example, I was sitting in a local restaurant, where a (locally) well known and well-respected couple who shall be nameless walked in as the restaurant phone rang.  The man turned to his wife and said, "I'll bet that's for you.  I wish I had my gun, I'd shoot it."  Well, that sparked "The Lagoon".

My story "At the End of the Path", a strange mix of mystery and fantasy, is set in a half a mile long path between ordered rows of pine trees at our local state park, a path set high up on a ridge, planted a very long time ago, by persons unknown, a path somewhere between a refuge and a haunting, and the light draws you on and on until the very end.  
Then there's "Not the Type", which is based - only partly! - on a real incident, decades ago, where a girlfriend and I ran into an old boyfriend of mine and his new wife.  She took one look at me and decided that my girlfriend was the one he'd dated, and acted accordingly.  Not necessarily a good idea. 
And "Drifts", one of my personal favorites, which...  well the cover says it all:  "Winter is a season, a menace, a playground, and a weapon."

Anyway, it's great to be part of SleuthSayers.  Next time I'll share some scenes behind the scenes, or whatever curious incidents come up.  Speaking of incidents, did I mention that a couple of months ago we had a premeditated murder in our nice small town?  All because of an incident in the locker room in high school almost fifty years back:  Resentments really can kill you.  
More later,
Eve

16 March 2012

Buddy, can you spare a.....recipe?


As writers, you know all too well how it is when you're writing right along and then you get that phone call, notice in the mail or have that unexpected event happen. Some are little things, short things, like reminders of a dental appointment or notification for jury duty. And then, some are far more reaching. From other posts and comments made on this site, it appears the last few years have been tough on parents.

The way it's been here, my wife and I have been gone a lot, off and on, since Thanksgiving. Then, right after Christmas, we drove 800 miles one way for another trip, so Kiti could help her 87-year old Mom who started chemo and radiation at the end of December. I drove home alone a few days after New Years. There wasn't a lot I could do there, however back home, we have two young grandsons we do daycare for during the school year, something we've done since they were born. Normally, the boys arrive at our house about 7:30 AM, we feed them breakfast, take them to elementary school, pick them up in the afternoon and deliver them to after school activities.


January and into February had a sudden change in the lineup. Yours truly got drafted as the mess hall cook. Prior to then, most of my culinary displays were confined to the grill in the back yard. So, here's how it went. On Day One of batching it, the boys frankly informed me I didn't know how to make oatmeal. Didn't take me long to call Grandma Kiti and find out her oatmeal secrets. On Day Five, when oatmeal came around on the menu again, the boys gave me a Two Thumbs Up. Whew, I was finally getting the hang of this cooking thing.


Then, one morning I overheard the boys talking about how they liked biscuits and gravy. Hey, I could do that. So, come a Wednesday, I opened the refrigerator, popped a tube of flaky style biscuits, arranged them on an ungreased cookie sheet, stuck them in the oven and hustled to the computer. A quick Google for sausage gravy turned up a simple recipe. Racing back to the kitchen, I slid a skillet onto the stove, got out the sausage and commenced to create gravy. It was only after placing everything on the breakfast island that I learned another lesson about cooking for discriminating young-uns. The boys promptly proceeded to tease their biscuits into four flaky layers. The bottom layer got butter, the second layer got grape jelly, the third layer got ONE SPOONFUL of gravy, the fourth piece went on top of the stack and they ate it like a sandwich. Who knew? I had to eat the rest of the biscuits and sausage gravy by myself. I'm sure it was good for my figure.


In an attempt to vary the morning menu, I've also created Grandpa R.T.'s version of a bacon, egg, cheese and biscuit McMuffin. (NOTE: I put those together myself, so we don't end up with more of them multi-layered sandwiches with purple jelly oozing out the sides. Don't think I'll ever have to worry about McDonald's suing me for infringement on their version.) Gotta love the convenience of those pop tube biscuits though. Of course, the boys being the savvy grocery shoppers they are, recently informed me those biscuits do come in smaller cans, so we wouldn't have so many leftover ones ending up in the bread toaster the next morning. Good thing they know what we're doing here.


On a high note, the boys confided in me that they like my fruit smoothies better than Grandma's, but they don't want to hurt her feelings, so I can't tell her. Naturally, I cheat when I make the smoothies, and throw in some vanilla Blue Bell ice cream to get a richer taste. (Those of you residing in states surrounding Texas know what I mean about Blue Bell.) Seems only right that everybody should have ice cream for breakfast.


Anyway, March is here and Grandma Kiti is 800 miles away again for a few weeks. That elevates me once more to the prestigous position of chief cook and dishwasher. Soooo, do any of you out there have any tasty, but simple recipes for a breakfast meal you'd care to share? This is no time to be shy. Just go ahead and put them in the blog's Comments Section. That way, if anybody reading the column sees a mouth watering recipe, it's right there for the trying.
And, to sweeten the pot, I'll try all the recipes out on the boys. Sorry, judges' decisions are final. The breakfast recipe they like the best gets a free personalized copy of the July/August 2012 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine mailed to them. Hint: It will have the tenth story in my Twin Brothers Bail Bond series and I'll autograph it any way you want. Hurry up now, I've got hungry mouths to feed.

14 March 2012

Me, Hitch and Hollywood


by Neil Schofield

I was cock-a-hoop last month, well, two weeks ago, when Rob and John and everyone else was celebrating Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, because I realised I have an anniversary in February. February 2001 in fact, which was when my very first story appeared in AHMM. Actually it was a dead heat because I also had a story in EQMM that month but that's by the way and neither here nor there. 2001 was a good year for me: I had six stories published including my only ever cover story. I know how Rob feels. I was tickled to bits, and wanted to kiss the postwoman, but I didn't because you never know where that sort of thing is going to lead.

The editor then was Cathleen Jordan, whom I never really got to talk to because she died tragically and too soon. I did get an e-mail from her with a rare rejection of one story. She made it clear that she was onto me, had seen the end coming a mile off, but that she like the 'particularly good title'. I still have that title which is waiting for the particularly good story to come along to fit it. I was in Short Crime Fiction Heaven, happily getting used to the ferlap of a contract coming through the door or the flump of the complimentary copies hitting the deck.

Another anniversary comes along this month. In March 2004, I had a story in AHMM. A little story actually, no more than 4500 words. I had originally sent it to Zoetrope, who returned it with a nice handwritten note saying very enjoyable, but not for them. So, I mucked it around a little, changed the title and sent it to Linda Landrigan for her to have a butcher's. And it duly appeared in the March number in 2004.

A week later - no more - I had a phone call. From a Hollywood producer. It was a Sunday night, and Mimi was out - doing something, I don't quite know what. I never quite know what. When she finally hove up alongside me I told her I had one word to say to her and the word was Hollywood.

Tell you what, though, the paramedics are quick off the mark in France. When Mimi had been pronounced out of danger, I filled her in: a female Hollywood producer wanted to option the story with a view to making it into a feature-length film. You can imagine how the champagne flowed that night. You can imagine it if you like, but the sad truth is we didn't have any in the house and it was too late to buy any.

Anyway, the following week all sorts of negotiations went on, and to my boyish delight I was involved in long-range early morning discussions about option payments and percentages of net receipts. I had conversations with the amiable Scott Lais in Contracts and Permissions at Dell, and from him I learned that there was another production company in the frame, for whom my producer had worked.

"We're in a bitter bidding war," I said to Mimi. I had to translate and explain and that took the shine off a bit.

I spoke to the second production company and they seemed lukewarm, so I decided that all things being equal I would go with the original candidate.

A contract came, and was signed and was sent back. A three-year renewable option with staged payments. I thought I had died and gone to paradise.

The first cheque bounced.

It was then I realised that there is Hollywood and there is Hollywood.

That hiccup was sorted out after a fashion after a while. But the pattern or something like it was repeated: getting the instalments of money out of Ms Producer was like pulling teeth. Still, I stuck grimly to it, telling myself that even hotshot Hollywood producers can have little administrative problems. I invented an Accounts Person called Marsha who was the bane of everyone's life and who hated signing cheques would do anything not to sign a cheque even when she was ordered to and her job, livelihood and two-bedroom apartment depended on it.

We carried on like this, me in my fantasy world, and Ms Producer in hers, into 2005, when Ms Producer up and announced that she would be going down to the Cannes Film Festival to sell her film wares, and wouldn't it be great if, while she was traversing Paris, we could lunch. Her treat. My choice of restaurant.

I was now going through mental contortions such as only the most feeble of minds can produce. Suddenly Ms Producer was back on the A-List, the problems with the cheques had been simple Marsha-based aberrations. I resolved that I would ask - no, demand - a new clause in my contract under which Marsha would be told to hit the highway. I think I was in what psychiatrists call a fugue state. Elizabeth might be able to help me out here.

I had chosen the Closerie des Lilas, on the corner of the Boulevard Montparnasse and just round the corner from where Hemingway lived. In fact the Closerie was one of his favourite watering holes, and today it is very posh. I sat at the bar with before me a small brass plaque which told me I was in the very seat where Hem used to park it on his frequent visits. I could imagine Hemingway nailing the plaque to the bar with his very own hands.

Ms Producer made it on time, and lunch ensued. A superb lunch, needless to say, outside on the terrasse, in the sunshine. Sunshine without and sunshine within. I was being lunched by a Hollywood producer. Ms P talked about her plans, showed me the press pack - the press pack! -for the film, including a mock-up of the poster. Wine was taken, casting was discussed: names were bandied about and I remember that Hugh Jackman was the principal bandyee. I bandied for all I was worth. Ms P told me that the South Koreans were interested in the project.

"What, all of them?" I quipped, up for for anything and eager to promote my sardonic Brit humour.

"No, just the ones that matter." said Ms P tersely.

Apparently, down in Cannes, she had hired a hospitality suite, had wined and dined various film coves. And covesses, I suppose. She presented me with a bottle of her specially-labelled champagne. And, remember, all this for a fourteen page short story turned down by Zoetrope.

Ms P produced plastic, we collected our personal belongings and parted on good terms, me with my press pack and bottle of champagne and the feeling that we were that close, Ms P with her high hopes.

And it finished there; more or less. The tooth-pulling recommenced in the autumn, and as the effects of a Closerie lunch slowly wore off, the option slowly expired. There was some loose talk about renewing it, but I knew by then what anyone else would have known from the start: that I was in the hands of a wannabe who wasn't gonnabe. I knew that we weren't that close, we were that far away.

Ms Producer, when I Google her name today, is flogging wine and dating services on the Net. In a spirit of nostalgia, I Google the name of the story sometimes, and up pops Ms Producer's company site, with embedded somewhere in it the mock-up poster of a film that was not to be.

So what did I get out of all this? Quite a lot, actually.

I got several thousand bucks - however hardly won - about twelve times what I had been paid for the original story.

I got a great lunch.

And for two or three years, I had the warm winds of Hollywood fanning my cheeks and ruffling my hair.

Which is a lot, I say.

And all that because AHMM published a little story of mine. Life is full of surprises, my mother used to say. And in this, as in most things, she was right.

I haven't given the real name of Ms P. A gentleman doesn't. And in any case, one day, who knows? Life is full of surprises.

Vive AHMM. And all who sail in her.

07 March 2012

Cover Boy


by Robert Lopresti

Well, who says history doesn't repeat itself?  For the second time since the universe was created  one of my stories has shown up on the cover of a magazine, specifically the May issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  I am okay with that, if "okay" means thrilled to tiny bits.

So, let's talk a bit about "Shanks Commences."  It is the seventh published adventure of Leopold Longshanks, a mystery writer who finds himself reluctantly involved in true crime.  In this case, he is invited to his alma mater to give a commencement speech and gets involved in a murder in the campus library.

And speaking of true crime, there is a little bit more of reality in this story than in most of mine.  Not, thank heaven, that I have ever encountered death in the library, but...   You see, I am occasionally asked if I base my stuff on real people/things/events and I usually reply, no, it's easier to make stuff up.  Which is true, but in this case I did borrow a few details from the real world.
For instance, the Great Hall of the library in my story bears a certain resemblance to the Main Reading Room at the library where I work.   Some of the students call it the Harry Potter Room, seeing a resemblace to the Great Hall at Hogwarts School of Wizardry. 

The Special Collections Room where my crime takes place is not entirely unlike the Rare Book Room at the university where I used to work.  And the library director in my story, Calvin Floyd, shares some elements with the director of the library where I went to college, a heck of a nice guy who was both my boss and adviser.  I'm happy he got through the story without being killed or arrested.

You may have noticed that name: Floyd.   That's another way reality muddled with my story.  When I wrote it I was still blogging at Criminal Brief.  I had to think of a whole lot of names for characters and I thought, what the hell.  So most of them are named for my fellow CB bloggers.  I hope they don't mind making a guest appearance.

And as for you, I hope you enjoy the story.

03 March 2012

Three Amigos




by John M. Floyd


As R.T. Lawton mentioned yesterday, three of us at SleuthSayers (R.T., Rob Lopresti, and I) are fortunate enough to have stories featured in the May 2012 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. In fact they're the first three stories, lined up one after the other--Rob's ("Shanks Commences"), mine ("Lewis and Clark"), and R.T.'s ("Spring Break"). My story is distinctive in only one way: at 2200 words, it's by far the shortest in the issue.

You can probably guess which three stories in the May issue are my favorites, but I wound up enjoying all eight of them. (The final story in the magazine--"Carry-on," by Wayne J. Gardiner--provides a dandy twist ending.) What I remember most about R.T.'s story is the Florida setting and the delightful characters, and Rob's story features his usual humor and a plot involving some names that are suspiciously familiar (?!?). Believe me, it's an honor for me just to be included alongside (and in between) those two guys.

My story is a lighthearted look at a couple of Boy Scouts named Lewis Tucker and Freddie Clark. The two of them, hiking together in the deep woods, are already in deep trouble with both their troop and their parents because of a stupid prank involving their scoutmaster and a sleeping-bag full of fire ants--and if that isn't bad enough, they soon realize that they're lost. It's also late and almost dark, and if all that still isn't bad enough, they then cross paths with two bank robbers on the run. One of the boys winds up captured and hogtied while the other sits hidden high in a pine tree above the thieves' campsite. Since they can't rely on anyone else's help (their parents think they're spending the night at an uncle's, and the cops are looking for the robbers in all the wrong places), the boys know their only hope of rescue lies in their own ingenuity.

As a writer I love situations like that. A mystery novelist once told me he keeps a note taped to his computer monitor that says MAKE THINGS WORSE. A protagonist should not only be in agony, he should stay in agony while the situation around him grows steadily more hopeless, until at some point--at or near rock-bottom--he somehow manages to find a logical way out of the mess he's gotten himself into. That holds true for short stories as well as novels, and I think plotting that kind of story is at least as much fun for the writer as reading it is for the reader.

I've sold only a couple of stories to AHMM that are shorter than this one; my longest there was around 13,000 words. Most have been between 4,000 and 7,000. They've included crimes that range from bombings to ATM theft to murder-for-hire to insurance fraud, and settings from Hong Kong to Africa to the South Pacific. One story was dialogue-only, one was a locked-room mystery, and two were set in my home state. I'm honestly not sure if I just like variety, or if I can't figure out how to do any one kind of story well enough to stick to it.

By the way, I agree with Rob's comments in his column last Wednesday, regarding differences between AHMM and EQMM. AH seems to be more open to stories with humor, twist endings, unusual locations, and even occasional paranormal elements. Those are things I like dabbling with, as a writer, and that might be part of the reason my publishing record with Hitchcock and Queen is so lopsided: eleven stories in AH, two poems in EQ. I won't tell you how many times I've been rejected by both magazines, but I assure you I probably have enough of those "thanks but no thanks" notes to paper the walls of my home office, and most of our bedroom as well.

The trio of SleuthSayers stories in this issue got me to thinking about other "shared" publications with blogmates, and after thumbing through the old AHMMs on my shelf I've found that my stories have twice appeared in the same issue with Rob's, twice in the same issue with Janice Law's, once with Neil Schofield's, and (now) once with R.T.'s. I've also been featured with my fellow Criminal Briefer James Lincoln Warren on three occasions. It's fun anytime to get published in AHMM--it's a magazine I've been reading pretty regularly since my college days--and it's a special treat to also occasionally be tethered alongside friends and colleagues at the Hitching post.

Here's hoping that happens again.

02 March 2012

"Spring Break"


by R.T. Lawton

Since Rob Lopresti, John Floyd and I all have stories coming out in the May 2012 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Rob suggested that we each write a blog article about our own story. Seems our stories are printed back to back, 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the magazine. Rob's is "Shanks Commences," John's is "Lewis and Clark" and mine is "Spring Break." So, put a little something extra in your coffee and let's keep this celebratory party going.
"Spring Break" is 6th in my Holiday Burglar series. Its protagonists, Beaumont and Yarnell, got their start, or baptism of fire if you will, in a Christmas tale entitled "Click, Click, Click" (currently available in podcast at AHMM's website: http://www.themysteryplace.com/ ) when they attempted to burgle the residence of a drug dealer who concealed his illegal product and cash received in Christmas paper wrapped boxes under the tree. Unfortunately, our duo did their counting to figure out the third house from the corner while they stood at the back door they were breaking into instead of counting from the front while facing the house. Wrong corner. Thus as Beaumont munches cookies left out for Santa in the living room, Yarnell discovers they have mistakenly broken into the residence of a member of the National Rifleman's Association. Their quick departure, prodded by some of the loudest sounds Yarnell has ever heard close up, is hampered by the sudden onset of night blindness in their night vision goggles as a result of several bright muzzle blasts from the home owner's very large hand gun.
As far as the title goes, the reader is free to make his own choice as to whether the story title derives from that old Christmas carol concerning the sound of reindeer hooves upon the roof, or could it be the noise a gun makes when its hammer gets cocked.
In the subsequent episode, "Grave Trouble," our two bunglers guess-timate their distance inside a large storm water drain on Halloween night and end up breaking into the basement of a mortuary, instead of the jewelry store they had anticipated. Deciding to search for the office safe anyway so as the break-in won't be a total loss, after all a profit is a profit, Yarnell soon finds The Thin Guy sleeping in one of the display coffins. Turns out the assistant undertaker, recently divorced, has been taken to the cleaners by his ex-wife. Being homeless, needing the influx of immediate cash and having a secret yearning to be a burglar, The Thin Guy blackmails our two protagonists into him becoming their protege. In stories thereafter, The Thin Guy keeps popping up at odd times and places, always trying to make a purloined score.

Video Clips for two of the other three episodes:




Which ultimately brings us to "Spring Break." Yarnell who suffers from many psychological problems, to include "closet-phobia" ( his street psychiatrist with the folding card table and three online degrees explained this to him as the anxiety of being confined in small or tight places), finds himself in the unfamiliarity of Florida during the time period that college students consider to be their Spring Break. Since Yarnell had never been to college, he's not sure he's eligible to attend any Spring Break event, but decides to give it a try, even though Florida lets their alligators run around freely above ground instead of keeping them down in the city sewers like sensible New Yorkers do with theirs.
As Yarnell's fellow burglar explains the current job to him, this will be an easy one. All they have to do is stand at the foot of a ten story condo on the beach inthe dark of night and wait for the loot to be lowered down to them on a rope. After a few minutes of craning their necks to watch the tenth story unit, they hear noises behind them in the landscaping bushes. It seems that a crowd of Spring Breakers had earlier noticed a "spiderman" climb up the outside wall of this same condo all the way to the top, and believing this to be an anonymous college prankster, they have gathered to videotape the entire event and put it on You-Tube to go viral. Realizing that the spiderman was actually The Thin Guy, Yarnell starts looking for an exit.
Of my four series in AHMM, this is my comedy one. The way the world goes, I occasionally have to write something that makes me laugh, and hopefully another reader somewhere will get a chuckle or two for themselves. If so, then I've done my job. This is no literary or work of great literature, but then I write these to be entertaining. Laughter is good medicine, or at least a coping mechanism. Who knows, if there was more laughter in the world (naturally, this does not include the evil villian laugh), maybe there would be fewer.......murders.

Read the story, after you read Rob's and John's stories of course. I'm just honored to even be in the same issue with them.

29 February 2012

There's a Hitch in it, somewhere


Sometimes a road trip can change your life.  I took one with my parents in the late sixties to upstate New York.  I think we went to Lake George, but I don't remember that at all.  What I remember is seeing a fat, familiar face on a newsstand.
I wish I remembered which issue it was.  I looked on this helpful but incomplete page and the oldest story I can be sure I read in the magazine was from the October 1969 issue ("Scream All The Way," by Michael Collins. I remember the illustration - a dramatic drawing of  a man falling out of a building - so I know it wasn't a reprint in a book).  But I am confident that I was reading it before then.

What attracted me?  I don't think at that age (roughly fourteen) I had ever seen a Hitchcock movie, although I had certainly enjoyed his TV show, and his children's anthologies,

 and the Three Investigator books,
   and I believe I had discovered the anthologies that often included stories from the magazine. 

Quite a cottage industry Hitch had going,  huh?  All of them might as well have been gateway drugs, preparing me for mystery magazines, I guess.

There were two other features back in those days that made AHMM unique.  First, each issue began with a note in solemn tones signed by Hitchcock himself, introducing all the stories.  I don't think that even at that tender age I imagined Alfred had anything to do with writing the notes, but it was another way of tying the mag to one of the most famous people in the world.

They also used to tuck him into a story illustration in most of the issues, like his famous cameo appearances in his movies.  There would be a tubby patrolman in the back of a crime scene, or a rotund waiter in a restaurant.   Or see this one, from 1981.


 By then AHMM  had been sold by H.S.D. and was published by Davis, the same company that owned  Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.


Over the years I have heard the question a hundred times: what's the difference between Hitchcock and Queen?  My answer used to be: Hitchcock sometimes buys my stuff.  But since Queen gave in and bought one of my stories that distinction isn't as helpful anymore.  I usually say Hitchcock is fonder of humor, suspense, and twist endings.  Queen leans toward longer, darker, stories,  and is more concerned with the history of the field, so it features pastiches, fair play mysteries, and the like.

But I'm sure the main reason I have been published more often in AHMM than in EQMM (18 to 1, to be exact), is that I grew up on the former. My tastes in mystery stories were shaped by AHMM, so it is hardly surprising that my writing tends to match up with theirs.

How good are the stories in AHMM?  Well, here is a brief summary of the awards the magazine has collected:
*more than 20 Edgar nominations, including three winners.
*eleven Robert L. Fish Awards for best first short story.
*more than thirty Shamus nominations, and eight winners.
*more than twenty Derringer nominations, including three winners.
*nominations (and some winners) for the Spur, the Anthony, the Macavity, the Barry, the Agatha, the Arthur Ellis, and the Herodotus, the last of which I had never heard of.  

Impressive, you might say.  But you might also ask why I bring up this particular magazine in the first place.  If you don't already know all shall be revealed in the next few days, starting on Friday, when we will come back to AHMM in a big way. Until then, keep reading and writing.

23 October 2011

Friends and Family


black orchid Five weeks ago, SleuthSayers launched from a core of five committed (in multiple senses of the word) writers to a greater family of fourteen. Coordinating fourteen members might seem a difficult task, but my colleagues are patient with me and their fun, enthusiasm, helpfulness, and professionalism worked miracles.

I list fun first because humor flourished early and easily. For example, Neil's ironic wit and the gentle humor of Jan and Fran melded like ivy in the brickwork of our joint project. I knew Dixon and RT were tough, cigar-chompin', kick-ass guys, but who guessed how riotously funny they are? A writer could do worse modeling characterizations after the criminally sane among us.

But there's more. Behind the scenes, SleuthSayers family members exchange crime notes, music CDs, tobacco tips, and successes. More about this last item in a moment.

Friends in Sly Places

We also depend upon friends such as Jon Breen, Bill Crider, and Women of Mystery, but especially our editors, Janet Hutchings of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Linda Landrigan of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Andrew Gulli at The Strand, and Darlene Poier from Pages of Stories.

Buying your favorite magazines pumps lifeblood into the imagination incubators of our genre. If you're not familiar with Pages of Stories, it's an eMagazine available in eBook format (Nook, Kindle, iPad, etc), PDF, and on-line, where you'll find works by Fran Rizer, John Floyd, and me, to name a few. If you want to taste a classic approach, Steve Steinbock has mentioned Arthur Vidro's Old-Time Detection and Geoff Bradley's Crime and Detective Stories, affectionately called CADS in its British homeland.Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, December 2011

Readers Choice Award

Speaking of magazines, if your December issue of Ellery Queen hasn't arrived, rush to your local bookstore to grab a copy now! It contains the ballot (last page) and list (page 83) of stories eligible for the EQMM Readers Choice Award. Listed is English by Leigh Lundin (that's me!), the parable James Lincoln Warren wrote about. Also featured is Elizabeth Zelvin's lauded Navidad. You'll find Neil Schofield's Detour and our friend David Dean listed. You'll notice other names like Doug Allyn and William Dylan Powell. I can't speak for the others, but if you comment with your eMail address, Elizabeth and I will make our stories available to readers upon request.

Wolfe Pack Black Orchid Banquet

The Wolfe Pack, an organization devoted to mystery writer Rex Stout and his most famous creation Archie Goodwin, er, Nero Wolfe, will hold its 34th annual Black Orchid Banquet Weekend December 2-4. Held at the Vanderbilt Suites in New York City, the Black Orchid Banquet will feature television personality and mystery writer Al Roker, introduced by novelist and past Nero Award-winner Linda Fairstein.

The bacchanalia features presentation of the Nero Award for the year’s best mystery novel and the Black Orchid Novella Award for best unpublished mystery novella, presented in conjunction with AHMM. The winning BONA story will be published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
Black Orchid Perfume
Black Orchid Perfume– a beautiful excuse for a noir dame
Rumors and Rumours

After only a month on-line, one of our colleagues credits SleuthSayers with a major professional offer. Details are sketchy, but to the envy of Entertainment Tonight and People Magazine, we're promised a scoop if a major deal is inked.

Mark your calendar for a special guest article. On 4 December, we expect to feature a, ahem, wolfish announcement.

Next week, Louis Willis returns with a fascinating family story about bootlegging.

12 October 2011

First Faltering Steps


My name is Neil Schofield, and it’s been that way for longer than I can remember. I am an Englishman born in Yorkshire. For the past eighteen years or so, I have been living in Normandy, France, with Mimi, my partner and live-in French person. France, incidentally, is just off the English coast. (A headline from the 1940’s: “Thick Fog In Channel: Europe Isolated”) That tells you something about our thought processes.
What else? – oh yes, I write short stories.

Neil Schofield
This is me. Snapped in holiday mood in the summer, which I seem to remember happened this year on July 17. The truculent smirk I am modeling means, unless I miss my guess, that we were approaching l’heure de l’apero: Time for a Little Something, time to put up the Big Parasol, watch the garden tick over and sip a little white wine. A Muscadet, probably, because a Muscadet helps you work, rest and play.

I come to Sleuthsayers as a complete baby. I have –had– been for the 4½ years of its existence, an avid follower of Criminal Brief. Never a contributor, more a professional lurker. What interested me, and astonished me every day, was the seemingly endless stream of ideas. Who were these people who could turn out a column every week, week after week?

The invitation from Leigh and Rob to join SleuthSayers came as something of a shock: I had to be helped from the room. I have been writing crime/mystery fiction for a little over ten years. What could I have to say that might interest anyone? How was I going to manage among all these heavyweights? Although the idea of writing just one piece a month didn’t seem too difficult, the cons seemed to mount up.
  • I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of crime and mystery fiction. I’ve read a lot and I remember almost all of it, but as an authority I would lack a certain something.
  • I haven’t published a book – not even come near yet.
  • I don’t have an enormous library of reference works to call on and plunge into.
  • I’m a Brit, and I live in France, what’s more. I might be the object of derision and opprobrium.
But then I read the list of contributors, and read the first articles/posts, it occurred to me that I had a little more in common with some of the senior partners than I had at first thought.

Rob Lopresti, of course, I know. I am an enormous fan of Rob’s stories. (Well, I say enormous – I’m six foot, and 160 pounds, which isn’t really enormous, but never mind). Rob and I have conversed digitally, and sometimes bizarrely, on diverse subjects, for some time. What is more, we share a birthday, September 19. Which seems a little unfair. I’d like to have had one of my own. It was also Rob who revealed to me that 19 September is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I tried it here, with predictable results. The French don’t seem to have the right sort of soft palate you need to say ‘Aarrgh’ properly.

Then comes Dale Andrews with whom (entre autres) I shared the same Barry Award shortlist in 2008; Dale for his Ellery Queen story “The Book Case”, and I for “Murder: a User’s Guide”.

A previous Barry Award shortlist - in 2005 - I had shared with Melody Johnson Howe. But that was another story. So what’s to worry about, I said to myself. You’ve already rubbed shoulders with the great. Go and rub a few more.

What has also secretly pleased me about the Sleuthsayers, is that, reading the contributions over the past two weeks or so, I have realized that I am not the only late starter in the frame. Because ‘late starter’ is putting it mildly, in my case.

My crime/mystery (somebody tell me what to call it!) career began a scant ten years ago. Before that, in other lives, I had spent ten years in theatre lighting, first as a production electrician and touring chief, and then edging into lighting design. From that, I morphed, seamlessly and without apparent effort, into becoming a writer and producer of what Americans liked to call Industrial Theatre: conventions, sales conferences, product launches, et al. I was usually at the loopy end of the spectrum, when the client –the Suits– would accept a series of comedy sketches or even a daft two-act play as a vehicle for The Corporate Message. In the 1990s I graduated to writing ‘Tourist Rides’ for attractions around the world in France, Singapore, Australia, Berlin, and so on. Even London.

But in 2000, now living in France, (I think I was attracted by the smell of cheese) I started to write the stories that had been stacking up in my brain for years. My very first stories, to my amazement, were accepted by Cathleen Jordan and Janet Hutchings. And it still astonishes me whenever I have a story accepted by EQMM or AHMM. In the decade since, I have sold thirty stories to these two extraordinary magazines. (The current score is EQMM 17; AHMM 13, I don’t know why. I must do something about evening up the numbers) Without Ellery and Alfred, (Mimi insists on fondly referring to them though they were two members of her already extensive family) I wouldn’t be writing these words now. And whenever I was on some shortlist, or quite simply published, I would look at the names with whom I was rubbing shoulders, keeping company. And I would find it hard to believe. I still do.

I’ve never met any of my fellow-writers. I’ve never been to Bouchercon (and incidentally, it was Elmore Leonard in an interview on the BBC who taught me quite recently that it’s pronounced Bowchercon. For years I’ve been giving it a French pronunciation) I was once invited, as a Reader’s Award Finalist, to a Dell Magazines bunfight, and near as dammit went, but family matters intervened. So I never got to rub actual shoulders with anybody.

So I am very happy and proud to be rubbing shoulders with this company. And I hope– even as a once-a-month junior partner– I’m going to be able to step up occasionally and say something that interests SleuthReaders. Anyway, I’ll do my best.

Talk to you soon.