To the MMs and Beyond

by John M. Floyd

Like most of you who read this blog, I like mysteries. Mysteries of any kind--shorts, novellas, novels, plays, movies. And one good thing for those of us who write and read mystery short stories is that there are a number of magazines that specialize in that genre: AHMM, EQMM, Strand Magazine, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, Flash Bang Mysteries, Over My Dead Body, Crimespree, Mysterical-E, and so on. I submit stories to these publications on a regular basis, and sometimes, when the stars line up just right, I get stories published there. FYI, one of the best lists of these short-mystery markets can be found at my friend Sandra Seamans's website, My Little Corner.

I should probably mention here that a lot of the MMs are no longer in business. Examples include Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine, Red Herring Mystery Magazine, Mystery Time, Orchard Press Mysteries, Detective Mystery Stories, Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine, New Mystery, HandHeldCrime, Mouth Full of Bullets, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Nefarious, The Rex Stout Journal, Crime and Suspense E-zine, Blue Murder, Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, Black Mask, Whispering Willows Mystery Magazine, Raconteur, and Crimestalker Casebook. I have fond memories of many of these, because they were extremely kind to me and my creations.

Genrecial profiling

Here's the rest of the story. As you know from the other columns at this blog over the past several days, mystery publications are not the only markets for our shorts. There are a number of general-interest magazines, sometimes even the literary journals, that occasionally publish mystery stories. (On the other side of the coin, there'll always be those who consider mysteries and other genre stories inferior, but that's another matter.)

The saving grace here is that, thankfully, not everyone thinks mysteries are limited to whodunits. Elmore Leonard, who won the Edgar Award and was recognized as a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America, once pointed out that he had never in his life written a story or novel in which the identity of the villain remained unknown until the end. He wrote crime/suspense fiction, not traditional mysteries.

Otto Penzler's definition, clearly stated in the introduction of each edition of his annual Best American Mystery Stories anthology, is that a mystery is any story in which a crime, or even the threat of a crime, is central to the theme or the plot. If you write a story that fulfills that requirement, you've written a mystery. This rather broad definition can apply to a lot of unlikely stories. One can write a romance, a science fiction tale, a Western, a horror story, even a literary piece, and if a crime plays a major role in the story, it can--theoretically at least--also be categorized as mystery fiction.

Crashing the party

What are some of these "other" markets? I'll let real life be an example: most of my mystery stories are and have been published in the mystery magazines listed above--but my mysteries have also appeared in the following NON-mystery publications, some of which are still around (Google their sites for more info):

Thema
Spinetingler Magazine
Prairie Times
Western Digest
Amazon Shorts
Grit
Champagne Shivers
Ancient Paths
Star Magazine
Pleiades
The Big Adios
Thirteen Magazine
Short Stuff for Grownups
Writers' Post Journal
The Atlantean Press Review
Eureka Literary Magazine
The Copperfield Review
Yellow Sticky Notes
Scifantastic
Sniplits
Woman's World
Desert Voices
Phoebe
Writers on the River
Dogwood Tales Magazine
Ethereal Gazette
Cenotaph
Scavenger's Newsletter
The Oak
Dream International Quarterly
Kings River Life
Star*Line
Apollo's Lyre
Medicinal Purposes
Pebbles
The Villager
Short Tales
Futures
Seeds
Green's Magazine
The Saturday Evening Post
Roswell Literary Review
Flashshot
Untreed Reads
Taj Mahal Review
Just a Moment
Reader's Break
Writer's Block Magazine
Illya's Honey
T-Zero
The Mid-South Review
Pages of Stories
Ficta Fabula
Spring Fantasy
Lines in the Sand
Mindprints
Anterior Fiction Quarterly
Mythic Delirium
Flash Tales
Lost Worlds
Simulacrum
Listen Magazine
Penny Dreadful
Hadrosaur Tales
Pegasus Review
Outer Darkness
Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind

Some of these are paying markets and some pay only in copies--and I've had multiple stories published in most of them (19 at Amazon Shorts, 4 in Dogwood Tales, 4 in Flashshot, 7 in Reader's Break, 5 at The Saturday Evening Post, etc.).

I also have a mystery story ("Flu Season") in the November 4th issue of The Norwegian American, another ("Survival") in the November 26 issue of Kings River Life, and a third mystery ("A Green Thumb") coming in January in Seeds, edited by my old buddy Michael Bracken. Again, in keeping with the theme here, none of these three publications deals exclusively with mystery shorts.

NOTE 1: My reference to The Saturday Evening Post is its print edition, which is published every two months. That's where my five stories for them have appeared--and three of those five fit the criteria for mysteries. BUT . . . the SEP also has an online version that I'm told specializes in mystery fiction. I've not verified that and I've never submitted to the online edition, but it might be worth checking out.

NOTE 2: I didn't mention anthologies. I've sold a lot of stories to both mystery and non-mystery anthos. Sandra's My Little Corner website also lists anthology "calls for submissions," and so does Ralan.com. As you probably know, anthologies--like magazines--are among the markets that are examined to determine Edgar nominees, Best American Mystery Stories candidates, etc.

Chick fic

Several references have been made this past week to Woman's World, which of course is not a mystery magazine (WWMM?) but which has always included one romance and one mystery in each weekly issue. These mysteries are a little different in format from most that I write: for one thing, they're very short--700 words max--and for the past dozen years or so, they've been "interactive," which means the solution to the mystery is provided separately at the end of the story so the reader has a chance to solve it herself/himself.

Their November 28 issue featured my 82nd Woman's World story (all but two have been mysteries), and I recently sold them my 83rd, which is scheduled to appear shortly. Almost all my mysteries for WW have included the same two co-protagonists--a retired schoolteacher named Angela Potts and one of her former students, Sheriff Chunky Jones--which is probably why I've been fortunate enough to sell so many of them. Readers AND writers seem to like "series" stories because of the familiar characters: readers know what to expect, and writers are able to get quickly into the plot without much need for backstory. Feeling adventurous, I deviated from the path a few years ago and sent Woman's World a mystery starring two other main characters--a female sheriff named Lucy Valentine and her nagging mother Fran--from another of my series. WW bought and published the story, but when I asked if I should continue on that track for a change, the editor said no. "We want more Angela stories," she said, and I saluted and obeyed. I'm not very smart, but I'm smart enough to write what they tell me they like.

WW specifics

For anyone who's interested, Woman's World pays $500 for mystery stories, and the fiction editor is Patricia Gaddis. Longtime editor Johnene Granger retired at the beginning of this year. FYI, the email address to use for submissions is FictionPro@WomansWorldMag.com if you've had a contract with WW in the past; if you've not had a contract with WW before, the submissions email is Fiction@WomansWorldMag.com. For problems only, you can contact Patricia at her personal email address, Prose@dnet.net.

More guideline info: Put "mystery submission" in the subject line of your email, and attach your story as a Word document, double-spaced, 12-point font. You should receive an auto-reply confirmation that your story's been received, but you won't get any further responses unless your story is accepted. If you've heard nothing back in four months, assume it was rejected. You should submit holiday-themed stories two to three months early, and snailmailed submissions will still go through if you don't have access to email--but again, be aware that you'll only get a response if your story is accepted. (Most of the above info is paraphrased from WW's "unofficial guidelines for 2016," which are the only guidelines I've seen.)

If you decide to send them a mystery, remember that 700 words is the absolute limit, and be sure to include the "solution" in that wordcount. Stay away from too much sex and violence (at least in your story) and also avoid politics, religion, or anything controversial. And whatever you do, don't put a pet in jeopardy. Seriously.

Final thoughts

I'm told that we'll soon wrap up this "themed" week about writing for non-mystery magazines, so it might be appropriate to mention several different sources of market information. They are (1) the Internet, (2) the print reference Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, (3) trade magazines like Writer's Digest and The Writer, and (4) the publications themselves. Any of these should tell you whether certain markets would be receptive to mystery/crime submissions.

Another option for getting your short stories published is of course to ignore the traditional venues altogether and--although I've not personally waded into those waters--self-publish them via Amazon and elsewhere. Steve Liskow, our latest employee at the SleuthSayers asylum, posted an extremely helpful column recently, on the subject of self-publishing--here's a link.

In summary, you can sell mystery stories to mystery magazines, non-mystery stories to non-mystery magazines, or (as in my long list above) mystery stories to non-mystery magazines. The only thing I've not yet done is sell a non-mystery story to a mystery magazine. So the only formula that doesn't work is NMS = MM.

Main thing is, don't let your completed mystery manuscripts sit there in a drawer, as I once did. If they're good enough, they'll find a home and a readership. And if you do choose to submit them to traditional markets, remember that there are also places other than the big mystery mags that might take them.

Go ye, and procrastinate no more.

Past or Present: A Tense Situation

by John M. Floyd





Western actor: Are those our teepees?
Director: We've upsized to wigwams. Teepees are past tense.

Consider this. You've come up with a great idea for a short story. In fact, you've been thinking about it awhile, you know who your POV character is, you have a pretty good feel for the plot, and you've even picked out a catchy title. But when you sit down to start typing the opening, there's something else you'll have to decide on, something you might never have thought about, only a few years ago:

Will your story be told in past tense or present tense?

The truth is, I don't think about it at all. I prefer past tense, and so far that's how all my stories have been told.

Feeling tense?

Here's the strange thing: I don't mind reading stories written in present tense. I just don't like to write them that way. I don't think I'd feel comfortable doing it, and besides, I would probably always be accidentally reverting to past tense and having to correct myself. (As Dirty Harry Callahan once said, "A man's gotta know his limitations.") I sure don't need to be bothered with doing any more self-editing than I already have to do.

Obviously, many of my writer friends don't share this preference. Stories written in present tense seem to be everywhere, nowadays--and, as I mentioned earlier, that was not always the case. The first novel I remember reading that was written in present tense was, I think, Presumed Innocent, back in the late 80s. No criticism, there; it's still one of my favorites. And I think all of John Updike's Rabbit novels were written in present tense as well. I can't recall many old-time novels written that way, though, except Charles Dickens's Bleak House.

Pitching tense

Why is present tense so popular in contemporary fiction? Most writers say it's because it lends a sense of immediacy to the story--a sense that this is happening right now, at this very moment, and we're all witnesses to it. When the robber turns away, the security guard draws his gun and fires. BAM.

That's not a bad idea, and when done well it works well. But writing in the past tense--when the robber turned away, the security guard drew his gun and fired--seems more natural to me. I like feeling as though I'm telling the reader what happened, not what's happening, and I'm not convinced that I give up any suspense by doing it that way. Past tense is traditional storytelling, the old classic once-upon-a-time approach. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Upsides and downsides

From what I've been able to find, it seems that there are several big advantages and several big disadvantages to present-tense fiction. On the plus side of the writing ledger are (1) the aforementioned "immediacy" and vividness of the action and (2) the fact that present tense probably makes it easier for the reader to feel a connection to the protagonist. On the minus side, present tense supposedly makes it harder to (1) manipulate time, (2) generate suspense, and (3) create complex characters.

Arthur Plotnik (what a great name for a writer, sort of like Francine Prose) says, in his book Spunk & Bite, "Present tense . . . imparts a live-camera mood that is relatively new to literary prose, as well as to journalism." Then he adds, "But in lesser hands, present tense can diminish the spell . . . It can seem affected, breathless, and flighty." He says it can be used to keep readers on edge, but that it can also "grow tedious if the inventiveness flags."

The key phrase, there, seems to be "in lesser hands." Maybe present-tense fiction is one of those don't-try-this-at-home endeavors. If you're a novice, proceed with caution. If you're talented enough, full speed ahead. (But watch out for those inventiveness flags, on the side of the road.)

NOTE: It did occur to me, while putting together this column, that there are at least two forms of writing that are and have always been done in present tense: jokes ("A guy walks into a bar . . .") and screenplays. I've never written jokes, but I have created several screenplays--and strangely enough, writing those in present tense seems correct and natural. Go figure.

My tense-sense summary

I would, as always, be interested in hearing your opinions. Do you enjoy reading stories/novels written in present tense? (I do--or at least I don't object to it.) Do you ever write stories/novels in present tense? (I don't. But only because I doubt I'd be good at it.)

He types the last sentence of the SleuthSayers post, clicks "Publish," closes the Blogger program, and pushes back from the computer. His Saturday column is finished and scheduled. "Guess it's time to rake leaves now," he says to his wife.

He typed the last sentence of the SleuthSayers post, clicked "Publish," closed the Blogger program, and pushed back from the computer. His Saturday column was finished and scheduled. "Guess it's time to rake leaves now," he said to his wife.

Different keystrokes for different folks.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

by John M. Floyd

Even though it's not yet October 31, I'm told that some folks will be celebrating Halloween tonight instead (since it's Saturday, I guess). To me, that's goofy reasoning, but if trick-or-treaters can bend the rules, why can't I? I am hereby posting a Halloween-related column two days early.

I got the idea last week, when I was in Walmart looking for a roll of packing tape and happened to wander through the electronics section of the store. (I always wander through the electronics section of the store, but that's another matter.) Gravitating as usual to the DVD shelves, I noticed a huge display of Halloween movies--or at least scary movies. Or at least what the Walmart geniuses (genii?) think are scary movies. The point is, it got me to thinking about my favorite horror films.

Strangely enough, I don't consider zombie movies and teenage-summer-camp-slasher movies scary. They're just too unbelievable. What creeps me out the most are the two extremes: (1) insane people who seem all too real, and (2) otherworldly horror involving science fiction and/or fantasy elements. (I know, I know: that second item isn't believable either--but I love it.) Anyhow, that's just me. To each his own source of goosebumps.

Having said that, I offer the following list of my ten picks for scariest feature films:



1. Psycho. We'd probably agree that this is more mystery/suspense than horror, but tell me your sphincter didn't do some serious tightening when Norman popped into the root cellar wearing Mom's dress and a gray wig. I mean, what's scarier than a crazy guy with a butcher knife? (Honorable mentions, in the needs-to-be-fitted-for-a-straitjacket category: Misery, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Shining.)

2. Alien. I thought its sequel, Aliens, was a far better film, but it was better because of the action, not the creepiness. In the first movie, the steady buildup of suspense to the final standoff with the monster was wonderful.

3. Poltergeist. I first saw this in a theater in Dallas in the early 80s, and I loved it. I fact I love most Spielberg movies, whether they involve evil trucks or the Holocaust or a parkful of dinosaurs--but I thought he outdid himself, here.

4. Halloween. Many of the chills in this film came from John Carpenter's soundtrack. If you don't believe me, listen to it again sometime.

5. The Sixth Sense. I think TSS is at its spookiest when the kid is seeing the dead people and nobody else can. I also had to include this one to prove I didn't choose only movies with one-word titles.

6. Candyman. This weird film, based on a Clive Barker short story called "The Forbidden," is a little different in that I didn't particularly enjoy it. But boy is it scary.

7. The Others. Okay, here I go with two-word titles. I promise, there is a moment in this movie--I won't tell you which one--that's absolutely leap-out-of-your-seat terrifying. Don't watch it alone.

8. Cat People. I admit, I mostly liked Nastassja Kinski (is she really Klaus's daughter??), but I think this is a truly spooky film, beginning with a spinetingling opening-credits scene.

9. The Exorcist. I saw this in L.A. in 1974 with a bunch of fellow IBM trainees, and found myself thinking about it nonstop for weeks afterward. The final scenes between Father Merrin and the demon are especially nightmarish.

10. The Thing. John Carpenter again. In this one, like Alien (which wasn't Carpenter), the buildup is as good as the payoff. Everyone always talks about the original (The Thing From Another World, with James Arness as the creature), but I consider this a better film.



I'm thinking I'd better stop right here, and publish this before my list changes. (It's already changed a dozen times--at various points I included Silver Bullet, The Omen, Trollhunter, The Mist, The Blair Witch Project, The Village, The Mothman Prophecies, Cloverfield, and many others.) As always, please chime in with your own personal favorites. My Netflix queue awaits your recommendations.

And on whatever night you choose to trick-or-treat this year . . . don't stop at the house on the hill above the Bates Motel. Nobody's home anyway.




BREAKING NEWS -- Tune in next week in this time slot for a great guest post by my friend Michael Bracken. (Unless you're watching one of the ten movies I suggested. Michael will understand.)

Anthopology

by John M. Floyd



An-tho-pol-o-gy: The study of various aspects of writing stories for books that include the work of several different authors.

Okay, I made that up. There's no such word. But maybe there should be.

I like to tell my students that there are two primary markets for the short stories they write: magazines and anthologies. Personally, I tend to explore magazine markets first, because some anthologies are receptive to reprints, and I like to get double duty out of my creations--but anthos can be profitable also, in both payment and exposure. And recently I've found myself sending a fair number of my stories, original and reprints, to anthologies. (There are actually four markets out there for short stories: (1) mags, (2) anthos, (3) self-publishing, and (4) collections of your own stories. I've not yet self-pubbed anything, but I have had five collections published, plus a sixth that was released this past week.)

Besides the fact that there are anthos that take reprints and those that don't, there's another distinction that should be made. (1) Some anthologies send out "calls for submission," where writers can submit stories for consideration in much the same way they would to a magazine market, and (2) some anthologies hand-pick and invite certain authors to contribute stories. A few anthos do a little of both: they invite a few specific authors and they also put out a call for unsolicited work.

As a writer, I've recently placed stories in anthologies that I "auditioned" for after being told they were seeking submissions (examples: the Blood on the Bayou Bouchercon antho, We've Been Trumped by Darkhouse Books, etc.) and I have other stories uncoming in books that I was asked to contribute to (examples: a Private Eye anthology by Down & Out Books and a horror antho by a Bram Stoker-winning editor I've worked with before). And sometimes even that can be a combination of processes. I submitted an unsolicited story to editor Tom Franklin for Mississippi Noir (Akashic Books) that didn't fit his guidelines (it was a reprint, which was stupid of me), so he asked me to send him an original story instead, which he accepted and included in the book. Writing and publishing, as I've said before, is a strange business.

NOTE 1: One advantage of anthologies that issue "calls for submission" is that there's always a deadline. The stories have to be sent in by such-and-such a date because the antho needs to be published by such-and-such a date. And that sometimes-narrow window of time automatically cuts out part of the competition, and ups the odds for acceptance/inclusion. Some writers won't even be aware that there is a call for submission until it's too late to send a story in, and even those who do see it and are interested might not have a story available (or enough time to be able to produce one) that fits the guidelines.

NOTE 2: I'm not talking here about annual "best-of" anthologies like Otto Penzler's Best American Mystery Stories. When your already-published story winds up being selected for and reprinted in one of those, that's great, but that's also pretty much out of your control. I'm talking more about anthologies that either request stories from certain writers or choose from the unsolicited submissions of others.

The best situation, obviously, is for the editor to contact you and ask you to submit a story. It's flattering, it involves no marketing effort, and when it happens you can be fairly certain that your "solicited" story will be included. But the funny thing is, even though I'm always honored to be asked to contribute to an anthology (who wouldn't be?), I'm also one of those odd folks who find it harder to conform to someone else's idea for a story than to dream up an idea of my own. So when the theme/mood/genre of an anthology is very (sometimes too) specific, I often find it more difficult to write a story that I'm satisfied with. Don't get me wrong: I do it. And I work on it until I am satisfied. But I still think it's easier to come up with my own ideas, make up stories from those ideas, then search for matching markets than to create stories with the pre-set themes and ideas of others.

What are some of your experiences and opinions on all this? Do you actively seek publication in anthologies? If so, how do you find them? Have you always been able to squeeze through the submission window in terms of time and story-theme? Are you often asked by an editor to contribute to an antho? Have you ever turned down such a request? Do you find it easy to write a story-on-demand? Have your published stories ever been selected for some of the "best-of's"?

On the subject of Best American Mystery Stories, let me again congratulate my SleuthSayers colleagues Rob Lopresti and Art Taylor on making the newly-released 2016 edition of B.A.M.S.--Good work, guys! (And I noticed that R.T. Lawton, David Edgerley Gates, and I managed to make the "close-but-no-cigar" list in the back of the book, this time. It's not the Top 20 of the year, but it's the Top 50; when I saw my story in the list, my head swelled until I had to adjust the strap on my baseball cap.)

Since I seem to be wallowing in self-congratulatory mode, I have another announcement: my latest collection of short mystery fiction was released on October 10, with a launch at Lemuria Books here in Jackson, Mississippi. It's hardcover, thirty stories, 352 pages, 90,000 words, and titled (appropriately) Dreamland.

And yes, a few of the included stories previously appeared in . . . anthologies.

I'm not an anthopologist for nothing.

Boucherconfessions, 2016

As pretty much everyone knows by now, the annual Bouchercon world mystery conference was held in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago. I attended, and my wife Carolyn went along also (many spouses did, I'm told--probably because of the location). We had a great time.

Thankfully, many current and former SleuthSayers and Criminal Briefers were in attendance as well, and although I didn't connect with every single one, I found most of them, and thoroughly enjoyed the chance to visit and catch up a bit. Among them were R.T. Lawton, Bonnie (B.K.) Stevens, Art Taylor, Deborah Elliott-Upton, James Lincoln Warren, Steve Steinbock, Melodie Johnson Howe, O'Neil De Noux, and Terry Faherty. Somehow I missed running into Jan Grape and Susan Cooper, but I'm hoping our paths will cross soon.

Highlights

There were too many different experiences to go into here--certainly too many to hold even the most patient reader's interest--but one that I must mention was the opening ceremonies, on Thursday night. All I can say is, my hat's off to the people who planned this event. They know how to put on a show. All the dignitaries, dressed in suitably flamboyant outfits, rode in on floats that deposited them on the stage amid strobing lights and blaring music. Afterward came several hours of awards, presentations, and speeches, but the hosts somehow managed to keep things entertaining. One of them was O'Neil De Noux, who did a great job.


I also want to point out three other events that were fun, for me. One was the signing of the annual Bouchercon anthology, Blood on the Bayou, edited by Greg Herren and produced by Down & Out Books. Some of the folks whose stories were included in the antho are friends of mine, so we had a good time there, and the process was a bit different from previous years: each of us was given a separate table in one of the ballrooms, and the purchasers of the book filed past and stopped at each table to get our signatures (some on the story page, some on the title page in the front, some on both). It not only made the lines seem shorter, it gave the writers a chance to talk with each reader for a moment more than we might've, in a more crowded setup.

Another delight for me was the annual get-together of members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. With the guidance of O'Neil De Noux (he was everywhere, at this conference), we were herded up the street to the Napoleon House for lunch one day, and I was able to see a lot of old buddies and meet some new ones. I didn't take a headcount, but I figure there were around two dozen of us present, for a good meal and good conversation. Writers of short stories sometimes feel like the Rodney Dangerfields of the fiction world, and it was great to get together with a group that loves that form of storytelling.

The fourth thing I'll always remember was a panel called "Murder by Numbers: Ellery Queen, Their Words, and the Magazine." My old friend and hero James Lincoln Warren was the moderator, and the panelists were a stellar group of EQMM experts: Janet Hutchings, Otto Penzler, Steve Steinbock, Ted Hertel, Shelly Dickson Carr, and Brendan DuBois. I had to sneak out a few minutes early to go to the aforementioned lunch meeting, but it was both entertaining and informative to hear this discussion of the history of one of our leading mystery magazines. Well done, you guys!

Chance observations

One thing that surprised me was that there was such good attendance at most of the panels I went to. Don't get me wrong--the panels were excellent; they always are--but we were, after all, in NOLA, with all the wonders of the city beckoning to us just outside the hotel doors. I can easily recall the conferences and conventions I attended with IBM, and when they happened to be held in places like San Francisco or Miami Beach or New Orleans or Anchorage or Honolulu there were always a lot of empty seats at those indoor concurrent sessions (the equivalent of our "panels"). I specialized in Finance, and during the banking conferences there was a standing joke: anytime someone discovered a colleague was absent from one of the business or technical sessions and inquired about his whereabouts, the answer was "He's studying float management." Which of course meant that he/she/I had opted to go out to the hotel pool instead of in to the meeting.

I wound up with only two complaints, about the four days and nights we spent at Bouchercon 2016. One was the sky-high parking fees at the Marriott--I mean, jeez Louise!--and the other was the unique smell of the French Quarter streets on Sunday morning. The first was unexpected; the second was not--I've spent a lot of time wandering the Quarter, over the years, and occasionally not at the best times of day/night. The good thing is, the positives outweigh the negatives, and New Orleans will always be close to my heart.

A final point. As always, one perk of attending Bouchercon is the chance to meet with your publishers, editors, etc. One morning Carolyn and I had breakfast with Janet Hutchings, Linda Landrigan, and several fellow writers for EQMM and AHMM; that night we shared a meal with Strand editor Andrew Gulli at Cafe Beignet; and the following morning we had Eggs Benedict with Linda Landrigan at Brennan's. Where else can you have the opportunity to spend time in a casual, non-business setting with the folks who are kind enough to publish your creations? B'con is also a good place to meet authors you've always admired and loved to read: in my case,  Joe Lansdale, Harlan Coben, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Lee Child, Harley Jane Kozak, Ace Atkins, Lawrence Block, and Michael Connelly. And I'll always treasure the long visits I had with friends Michael Bracken and Deborah Elliott-Upton (shown at left), Vy Cava, R.T. Lawton, Melodie J. Howe, O'Neil De Noux and Debb, Bob Mangeot, James Lincoln Warren, and others.

Wrapup

I realize all this is old news. Because of the timing of this column--my previous piece was posted during the conference itself--several of my fellow SleuthSayers have already shared their New Orleans memories and experiences. But I must ask: For the rest of you who attended Bouchercon, what were the events, interviews, panels, sights, restaurants, off-campus meetings, etc., that you enjoyed the most? How would you compare this B'con with those in the past? Were you able to track down everyone you wanted to see? Did you play hooky from the panels often enough to get out and explore the area? Did you wind up in any unfortunate late-night Facebook photos? Did you survive the heat and humidity? Are you going to Toronto next year? (If you are, and plan to park at the event hotel, you might want to start saving now.)

If you've never attended a Bouchercon at all, I do hope you'll find time for one in the future. Other, smaller conferences are good as well--I've heard many writers say they're even better--but the special thing about B'con is that (1) it IS so big (you can be sure there'll be a lot of A-list authors there and a lot of your old writer friends) and (2) it's a fan conference, which means it includes readers as well as writers. That affects the topics of many of the panels, yes, but that's not always a bad thing.

Go, and you'll see what I mean. You'll be poorer financially but richer professionally.

Excuse me now, while I go treat my severe credit-card burns . . .

Namedropping

Something I've always enjoyed, when reading novels and short stories, is finding things in the story that are familiar to me. Things like street names, restaurants, movies, quotes from movies, quirks of regional dialect, etc. When authors insert those into stories, it seems that it can establish an instant connection between writer and reader.
Because of that, I suppose it shouldn't have been surprising to me to find, after I'd published a number of stories, that readers sometimes approached me (usually friends, and often jokingly) with the suggestion that I should someday use them in a story. Or at least use their names.

You know, that's not a bad idea …

My reaction to that was Why not? We writers dream up names all the time for our characters; it would be easy to stick a real name in, now and then. Especially if you know that those folks already like what you write and would enjoy seeing themselves as a part of it.

I don't do it all the time, of course--most of my character names continue to come from the same place my plots do: my overactive and usually scary imagination. But when the situation's right and it fits the character and I can remember to do it, I try to plug in a familiar name.

Examples:

- Teresa Garver, an old friend and avid Woman's World reader who lives in Georgia, made an appearance a couple years ago as a high-school English teacher in one of my WW mini-mysteries.

- Chuck Thomas, one of my customers during my IBM days (and one of the smartest programmers I've ever known) showed up as one of three schoolkids who captured a python that had escaped from the zoo in a story called "Not One Word." It first appeared in the now-defunct Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine in 2002 and has been reprinted several times since.

- Charlotte Hudson, a former student in my writing classes, has been featured in two of my Woman's World mysteries. In one of them, she and her real-life husband Bill were farmers who owned a pond where the main character liked to fish.

- Cheryl Grubbs, a dear friend from my high school days, will be the deputy of Sheriff Ray Douglas in a story called "Trail's End," coming up soon in AHMM. She's also on hand in the next installment of that series, which I sent to AH a few months ago. Whether they decide to buy it is (pun intended) another story …

- Charles Heisley, an old Air Force buddy who lives in Honolulu (I visited him there once, back when I was globetrotting with IBM), became a Louisiana state cop in my story "The Blue Delta," which is included in the Bouchercon 2016 anthology Blood on the Bayou. (Note to all readers: Invite me to Hawaii and you get featured in any story you want.)

Sometimes the mention of a name can be oblique, and subtle. In honor of my friend and fellow Mississippi writer Larry Chavis, my lead characters in a Strand Magazine story a few years ago were passengers on the Chavis Island Ferry--in fact the whole story took place on that boat. And a lady in one of my many stories for Futures was Janet Bailey, a combination of the names of two of my writer friends, Janet Brown and Carole Bailey. I have also often used the last names of friends in stories, when those names were interesting and/or unusual: Denbroeder, Prestridge, Cash, Bishop, Wingo, Higa, Liggett, Valkenberg, Pennebaker, Zeller, Bassett, McClellan, Fenwick, Boatner, Fountain, Parrott, Stovall, Stegall, Blackledge, LaPinto, Tullos, Crowson, Burnside, Moon, Speed, Fetterman, Lindamood, etc.

Other writers, other approaches

All this is, of course, nothing new. Fiction writers use real names for fictional characters a lot, and it might be worth noting that Nelson DeMille--one of my all-time favorite authors--has taken that practice a step farther. In the Acknowledgments section of most of his novels, DeMille mentions those people who have made generous contributions to charities in return for his using their names as characters in the book.

My favorite memory of this kind of thing is of something my SleuthSayers colleague Rob Lopresti once did in "Shanks Commences," a story which appeared in (and on the cover of) the May 2012 issue of AHMM. At the time that Rob created that story, he and I were among seven writers who did weekly columns for the Criminal Brief mystery blog, and he chose to put all of us into the story. I still remember how much fun it was to read it--and how pleased I was to find that I didn't turn out to be the murderer. Rob talks about that story here.

How about you?

The obvious question is, have any of you tried using real people's names in your stories or novels, either as themselves or as characters? I know some writers are afraid that might backfire, but I think the chances are slim. As with statements about real places or real companies or real products, you'll get into trouble only if you say bad things about them, and if the mentioned characters are friends of yours, they'll almost certainly be pleased. If they're not pleased--well, maybe that's a good way to find out who your friends really are.

According to one of my writing buddies, part of the fun of being a fiction writer is being able to look at someone and say, "Be nice to me. If you're not I'll put you in a story and kill you off."

Fair warning …

A Literary Lawn Party

Two weeks ago today, while my friend Elizabeth Zelvin was entertaining our loyal SleuthSayers readers far better in this timeslot than I could've, I was in the middle of another kind of literary endeavor. From 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on August 20, at the height of our summertime heat and humidity, I participated in what was billed as the state's biggest lawn party: the second annual Mississippi Book Festival, held on and around the grounds of the State Capitol Building in downtown Jackson. Also known as the state's Largest Gathering of Sweaty Writers and Readers.

A quick word of background. As some of you might know, Mississippi has more published writers per capita than any other state. In other words, you can't open your car door around here without bumping into another writer. (A lesser-known fact is that the Delta town of Greenville, Mississippi, has more published writers per capita than any other city in the nation--past and present examples include Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, Ellen Douglas, Hodding Carter, Beverly Lowry, William Alexander Percy, Jim Henson, and so on.) We might spit tobacco juice and talk like Forrest Gump and dodge alligators when we mow the back yard, but the ghosts of Faulkner and Welty will forever live in our libraries and bookstores.

My point is, there are a lot of writers here, and I think most of them--at least most of those who are alive and still pushing keys or pencils--came to the recent Book Fest. In fact we had plenty of authors from elsewhere as well. The number of attendees expected last year, at the first annual festival, was 1,000; more than 3,000 showed up, including John Grisham. This year, according to the official figures, some 6,200 people attended the many panels throughout the day, and several hundred more were outside and around the grounds. And, like last year, several attendees DFOed (in medical terms, they succumbed to the heat; in Southern terms, they "done fell out").

This time, more than 120 authors served on 30 different panels held in and around the Capitol Building (I was on the panel for the recently-released Mississippi Noir), and about 70 more were featured in an "Authors' Alley" venue, an area where self-published writers could display and sell their wares. Also on the grounds were tents for different publishers and bookstores here in the state--I was part of Dogwood Press's tent, along with our head honcho Joe Lee and fellow authors Randy Pierce and Valerie Winn. There were also additional activities for panelists, including a cocktail party at the Old Capitol Museum the night before, an authors' breakfast the morning of the festival, and an after-event celebration at a nearby restaurant/bar.

It was a long day, and as hot as Satan's pitchfork, but that surprised no one--this was, after all, mid-August in the Deep South. And I think everybody had a good time. I met a great many interesting people, renewed old friendships, sold and signed some books, guzzled a dozen bottles of water, and gave and received a lot of damp hugs. At the signing tent after my panel, I was fortunate enough to sit beside one of my longtime heroes, John Hart, who's written some of my favorite mystery/crime novels.

Now for my question. I've heard that a number of states have annual literary festivals like this--last year at Bouchercon I visited with a lady who was in the process of organizing a debut bookfest for Virginia. Have any of you gone to and/or participated in one of these, or something similar? Was it state-sponsored? Was it well attended? Did you find it worthwhile?

With this year's Bouchercon drawing ever nearer, our event the other day reminded me how much I enjoy this kind of gathering--being in the company of fellow writers and readers, and spending hours on end talking about nothing but stories and books and writing and the magic of fiction. And the great thing about B'con is that the focus is on mystery writing. What could be more fun than that?

I hope you'll be in New Orleans, I hope we'll be hurricane-free, and I hope it'll be drier and cooler than usual. And if it's not, I hope you won't DFO on Canal Street.

Either way, I'll see you there.

Southern Mysteries

This past week, Akashic Books released another anthology in their award-winning series that began in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir and that has since included Boston Noir, Miami Noir, New Orleans Noir, and many others. According to the publisher, "Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct location within the region of the book." This one, Mississippi Noir, contains (insert drumroll, here) one of my stories.

Tom Franklin, the editor of this anthology, did an outstanding job of putting the book together. For those of you who don't know him, Tom--who was a Guest of Honor at last year's Bouchercon--is a great guy, an excellent writer, and a teacher in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi. I first heard of him when his short story "Poachers" won an Edgar Award in 1999 and then appeared in that year's Best American Mystery Stories. Since that time, he's had five books published: Poachers (a collection containing the title story); Smonk; Hell at the Breech; Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter; and The Tilted World. He and his wife Beth Ann Fennelly, also an author and also an MFA teacher at Ole Miss, co-wrote the latest novel.

The anthology, which had its launch signing this past Thursday at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, features stories by sixteen writers, including Ace Atkins, Megan Abbott, William Boyle, Michael Kardos, Mary Miller, and Michael Farris Smith. Here's a link to it on Amazon.

NOTE: Also released this week was St. Louis Noir, which contains a story ("Deserted Cities of the Heart") by my friend and fellow SleuthSayer Paul D. Marks.

A pit stop in kudzu country

My story in Mississippi Noir is a bit different from the others. For one thing, it's the longest story in the book--10,000 words and 33 pages; also, it's a little more . . . optimistic, let's say, than some of the other stories. Kirkus Reviews, which spent awhile discussing the despair and poverty and heartache that accompany most of these tales, said, "And every now and again, there's a lucky soul who does manage to triumph over the trouble she gets herself into, like Anna in John M. Floyd's 'Pit Stop.'" Whether that's a good thing, in a book of noir fiction, is another matter--I'll leave that to the reader to decide. But I liked the story, and had great fun writing it. (Not that it matters, I guess, but I liked all the other stories too--and as always, it was fun to meet the other authors, at the launch on Thursday.)

A quick word about my story: Its original title was "Route 25," because the entire piece is set in a section of that highway, between Jackson and the town of Starkville, some 120 miles to the northeast. Later, though, after it was accepted for inclusion in the book, I was told that since each story would reflect a different region, and since State Highway 25 would be listed in the Table of Contents as the area where my story takes place, I was asked if I could come up with another title for the story itself. I decided on "Pit Stop" because it has a double meaning: most of the action takes place near a gas-station/convenience-store on the road trip that the main characters take, and the plot also involves an abandoned well. And yes, somebody winds up in the well. I don't think that's revealing too much; according to Anton Chekhov, "If you show the reader a gun in Act 1, it better go off in Act 3."

A good story is hard to find

My inspiration for this tale, by the way, came from the opening paragraph of one of my favorite shorts, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," by Flannery O'Connor. That opening features a man from Atlanta proposing a family road trip to his mother, who tells him they shouldn't be traveling in that direction (Florida) because of a killer that the newspaper says is on the loose there. Immediately after finishing that paragraph, any savvy reader knows that before the end of the story those poor vacationers will almost certainly meet up with the killer. I think it's a great example of the art of foreshadowing. Or maybe of setting expectations.

I try to do the same kind of thing in this story. Here's the situation, in "Pit Stop": a young lady and her date are headed out on a two-hour drive to a college football game, after which they plan to stop and hike awhile in the autumn countryside. They already know that the section of highway they'll be traveling is the site of several recent killings, and that whoever committed the murders is still at large--but they're young and they're invincible, right? Well, as you might imagine, they meet some unexpected folks along the way, and things quickly grow complicated.

The book's first review on Amazon, received a week ago, says "Pit Stop" is a fun and satisfying read, and "is a story that likely would have warmed the heart of Alfred Hitchcock." That extremely kind statement warms my heart as well.

Neither south noir north

I recently spoke with a fellow writer who said one of the items on her Bucket List was to someday appear in Akashic's noir series. I had hoped that one day I would also, and I'm truly grateful for this opportunity.

Strangely enough, I had already sampled a few of the books in the series, including New Jersey Noir and Los Angeles Noir, and I enjoyed them. (Have any of you read some of these?) This one, like the others, seems to have a little something for every taste. Greg Iles, author of The Bone Tree and a native of Natchez, says, in a cover blurb, "So kick back, pour yourself a drink, and find out whether Mississippi Noir may be the darkest of them all."

I hope it's also the most fun to read.




BY THE WAY, two weeks from today, on Saturday, August 20, my old friend and former SleuthSayer Elizabeth Zelvin will post a guest column in this time slot. I assure you that her post will be both shorter and better than this one, and I hope you'll join me in welcoming Liz that day. Meanwhile, best to all of you, in your writing AND your reading.

Rising Stars

by John M. Floyd



A few weeks ago, I did a SleuthSayers column called "Crime (and Other) Scenes," in which I listed some of my favorite movie moments. In the readers' comments that followed that piece, my friend Mary Ann Joyce mentioned the fact that I should do a piece on famous actors' early appearances, sort of an answer to the question "When did you first realize the person on the screen was going to be a star?"

Never let it be said that I cannot take advice given by the readers of our blog--especially when it sounds like fun. And though I've never known that anyone "was going to be a star," I have put together a list of some of the actors/actresses I've seen in movies that were made before their names and faces became immediately recognizable. These aren't necessarily debut performances; they're just roles that I happened to notice during the re-watching (I do a lot of re-watching) of movies I first saw long ago. Even now, I turn to my wife occasionally and point and say, "Look! You know who that IS?"--after which she usually gives me an eye-roll and goes back to doing something productive.

Some of the roles I've listed below are no more than bit parts that you'd miss if you blinked (they'd be called "cameos" if the actors were well-known), and some are too familiar even to include in the list, like Ron Howard in The Music Man or Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street. Long or short, though, and memorable or not, I think those appearances are fun to watch.

Here are a few of the sightings I remember most:



Tommy Lee Jones as a college student in Love Story (1970). It's been said that author Erich Segal based Ryan O'Neal's character on two roommates he knew while attending Harvard: Jones and Al Gore. Is that true? Who knows--but it sounds good.

Viggo Mortensen as one of the Amish farmers in Witness (1985). In one of my re-viewings of this movie I saw him in several of the crowd scenes and realized that his was a familiar face, but it took an IMDB search to turn the lights on.

James Gandolfini as one of Christopher Walken's henchmen in True Romance (1993). He looked suitably Sopranoish even back then.

Kirstie Alley as a skinny and gorgeous rookie crew member on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). I remember Shatner telling her wisely, "You have to learn WHY things work, on a starship." So she could tend bar at Cheers, I guess, a few years later.

Jeff Goldblum and Denzel Washington as thugs in Death Wish (1974). They were onscreen at different times, and not for long. The thug mortality rate was unusually high in this film.

Harrison Ford as one of the drivers cruising the strip in American Graffiti (1973). Get in, but don't sit on the Wookiee.

Bryan Cranston as a paramedic in Amazon Women on the Moon (1987). Yes, I watch movies like Amazon Women on the Moon. What can I say?

Ray Liotta as Melanie Griffith's creepy ex-boyfriend in Something Wild (1986). Jeff Daniels was the current boyfriend.

Anthony Edwards as Tom Cruise's best bud in Top Gun (1986).  This was before Goose went to medical school and became Mark Greene on ER. Meg Ryan was even on hand, as his wife.

Frances McDormand as a young wife doing battle with a hired killer in Blood Simple (1984).

Leonardo DiCaprio as a disabled teen in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1983).

James Earl Jones as Lt. Zogg, the bombardier, in Dr. Strangelove (1964).

Ethan Hawke as one of Robin Williams's devoted students in Dead Peets' Society (1989).

Clint Eastwood as a lab technician in Revenge of the Creature (1955). This was even before Rawhide went ahead and made his day.

Keifer Sutherland as the two-bit hood in Stand by Me (1986). Backstory, maybe, for Jack Bauer?

Robert Duvall as a cab driver in Bullitt (1968) (and of course as Boo Radley in TKaM).

Kevin Bacon as an ROTC cadet in Animal House (1978).

Jake Gyllenhaal as Billy Crystal's ten-year-old son in City Slickers (1991).

Tom Cruise as the hero's friend in an endless movie called Endless Love (1981).

Matt Damon as a teenager in Mystic Pizza (1988). I think he had one line of dialogue.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as a prep-school student in Scent of a Woman (1992). He also looked really young in Twister, four years later.

Bill Paxton as one of several punks who pester (and wish they hadn't) Ahhnold in The Terminator (1984).

Johnny Depp as the ill-fated translator, Lerner, in Platoon (1986).

Scarlett Johansson as a disabled thirteen-year-old in The Horse Whisperer (1998).

Amy Adams as Leo DiCaprio's love interest in Catch Me If You Can (2002). Elizabeth Banks was in there, too.

Daniel Craig as Kate Winslet's love interest in A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995). His name in the movie was Kane, Master Kane.

Tom Hardy as a soldier in Blackhawk Down (2001). His combat training would pay off later, on Fury Road.

Elijah Wood as an eight-year-old playing a game in a video arcade in Back to the Future II (1989). Probably looking for Gandalf.

Steve Buscemi as a waiter in Pulp Fiction (1994). 

Hugh Bonneville as a bumbling stockbroker in Notting Hill (1999). What's Lord Grantham doing in a Julia Roberts comedy . . . ?

Season Hubley as the girl her then-husband Kurt Russell runs into in Chock Full o' Nuts, in Escape from New York (1981). 

Vince Vaughn as a football player in Rudy (1993).

Ryan Gosling as a football player in Remember the Titans (2000). I do, but only barely.

Josh Brolin as one of the Goonies (1985).

Helen Hunt as Kathleen Turner's and Nick Cage's daughter in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).

Jack Lord as Bond's pal Felix Leiter in Dr. No (1962). Jack later went to Hawaii to chase other villains with funny names, like Wo Fat.

Raymond Burr as the spied-upon murderer in Rear Window (1954). This wasn't really an early role--it was just surprising to see Perry Mason as a bad guy.

Kevin Costner as the dead friend whose funeral brought the old gang back together in The Big Chill (1983). Reportedly, his flashback scenes were all cut, so he appeared onscreen for only a few seconds, as a corpse.

Robert Redford as a prison escapee being chased in The Chase (1966). Butch, who are those guys?

Brad Pitt as the hitchhiking cowboy in Thelma and Louise (1991). Thanks, Earl Staggs, for reminding me of this one.

James Coburn and George Kennedy, as low-level criminals in Charade (1963).

And my all-time favorite long-ago celebrity appearance:

My friend and fellow Criminal Briefer Melodie Johnson Howe, as the lady in the bathroom love scene with Clint Eastwood in Coogan's Bluff (1968). 



Okay, faithful movie addicts, who are some actors and actresses you've spotted in the early days, before they attained fame and fortune? How many did I miss? Are there any you remember seeing and didn't recognize? Did you think, at the time, that they were destined for greater things? Do you ever find yourself watching for appearances like this, especially in the really old movies? Do you have more important things to do? (I'm a lost cause, but there might be hope for the rest of you.)

Something else I like, although this is a bit off topic, is that actors are sometimes cast in parts far different from their usual roles. Such surprises were: Gene Hackman, Young Frankenstein; John Travolta, Pulp Fiction; Robin Williams, One-Hour Photo; Henry Fonda, Once Upon a Time in the West; Charlize Theron, Monster; Harrison Ford, Cowboys and Aliens; Liam Neeson, Love Actually; Paul Newman, Nobody's Fool; Jack Palance, City Slickers; John Lithgow, The World According to Garp; Sean Connery, The Untouchables; Glenn Close, Fatal Attraction; Nicolas Cage, Raising Arizona; Lee Marvin, Cat Ballou; Steve Martin, The Spanish Prisoner; Robert DeNiro, Meet the Parents; Jack Nicholson, Batman; Kirk Douglas, The Man From Snowy River; Al Pacino, Dick Tracy; Denzel Washington, Training Day; Jeff Bridges, True Grit (2010 version); Ted Danson, Body Heat; and Burl Ives, The Big Country. I love to discover performances like those.

Back to the subject: As Mary Ann suggested in that SS comment, I've put All About Eve into my Netflx queue so I can check out a younger Marilyn Monroe. Ah, the sacrifices I make.

One last thing: I've heard that George Clooney played a slasher victim in Return to Horror High, that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was an eleven-year-old kid in A River Runs Through It, that Jack Black was Sean Penn's brother in Dead Man Walking, and that Robert DeNiro showed up as an uncredited diner in a restaurant in Three Rooms in Manhattan--but I think I might pass on those. Besides, I saw River and DMW in theatres before I even knew who Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jack Black were, and watching them again doesn't sound all that thrilling.

Maybe there's hope for me yet.

I Like Short Shorts

Two weeks ago, I was sitting in a rocker on the back porch of a beach house on Perdido Key, with sand in my shoes and "Margaritaville" on my mind. In fact I was half-dozing to the soothing sound of the incoming waves when I also heard the DING of an incoming text message. This was the sixth day of our annual family getaway, but since we never completely get away from technology I dutifully dug my cell phone out of my pocket, checked the message (from one of our kids, a hundred yards up the beach), and replied to it. I also decided to check my emails, which I hadn't done in a while. I was glad I did. At the top of the list was a note that had only just arrived, informing me of the acceptance of my 80th story in Woman's World magazine. Not a particularly round number or notable milestone, I guess, but I'll tell you, it made my day. It also reminded me how fortunate I am--a southern guy raised on cop shows and Westerns, who in school liked math and science far better than English--to have sold that many stories to, of all places, a weekly women's magazine based in New Jersey.

WW, as some of you know, has been around a long time. What makes it appealing to writers of short stories is that it features a mystery and a romance in every issue, it pays well, and it has a circulation of 8.5 million. Since I'm obviously more at ease with mysteries than romances, most of my stories for that publication have been in the mystery genre. I've managed to sell them a couple of romances too, but the truth is, I'm the great pretender: my romance stories were actually little twisty adventures that involved more deception than anything else.

Figures and statistics

Although I've been writing stories for Woman's World for seventeen years now, 50 of those 80 sales have happened since 2010, and I think that's because I have gradually become more comfortable with the task of telling a complete story in less than a thousand words--what some refer to as a short short. (At WW, the max wordcount for mysteries is 700, and mine usually come in at around 685.)

Many writers have told me they find it difficult to write stories that short. My response is that it's just a different process. I think some of the things you can do to make those little mini-mysteries easier to write are: (1) use a lot of dialogue, (2) cut way back on description and exposition, and (3) consider creating series characters that allow you to get right into the plot without a need for backstory. My latest and 79th story to appear in WW (it's in the current, July 25 issue) is one of a series I've been writing for them since 2001.

Remember too that stories that short are rarely profound, meaning-of-life tales. There's simply not enough space for deep characterization or complex plotting or life-changing messages. They seem to work best when the goal is a quick dose of entertainment and humor.

I should mention that writing very short fiction doesn't mean you can't keep writing longer stories also. To be honest, most of my stories lately fall into the 4K-to-10K range. My story in this year's Bouchercon anthology is 5000 words, the one in an upcoming Coast to Coast P.I. anthology is about 6500, and my story in Mississippi Noir (from Akashic Books, to be released in August 2016) clocks in at 10,000. Magazinewise, I've had recent stories in EQMM and Strand Magazine of 7500 and 8000 words, respectively, and my story in the current issue of the Strand (June-September 2016, shown here) is around 4500. (NOTE: As we are all aware, publication is an iffy thing at best, and I'm not implying that everything I write, short or long, makes it into print. It doesn't. But I'm a firm believer that the practice you get writing short shorts can help improve your longer tales as well. It certainly teaches you not to waste words. Besides, it's all fiction; some stories just take longer to tell.)

Current Events

As for Woman's World, there have been a couple of significant changes at the magazine that, if you decide to send them a story, you should know about.

First, longtime fiction editor Johnene Granger retired this past January. That's the bad news, because Johnene was wonderful, in every way. The good news is, I also like the new editor, Patricia Gaddis. She's smart, professional, and a pleasure to work with.

Second, WW recently changed over to an electronic submission system. As we've already seen at AHMM and EQMM, this makes it far easier for writers to send in their work. I'm not at all sure it makes it easier for editors--emailed submissions always means more submissions, which means more manuscripts to read--but that's another matter, for another coiumn.

Questions

To those of you who write short fiction: Do you find that you gravitate toward a certain length or a certain range? Are you more comfortable with a long wordcount that leaves you room to move around in, or do you like writing shorter, punchier stories? Does the genre matter, in terms of length? Do you already have certain markets in mind when you write a story, or do you prefer to write the piece regardless of length and genre and only then focus on finding a place to which you might submit it? Do those of you who are novelists find a certain pleasure in occasionally creating short stories? When you do, how short are they? Have any of you tried writing "short shorts"? Has anyone sent a story (mystery or romance) to Woman's World?

Final question: In the Not-So-Current Events department, are any of you old enough to remember that "I like short shorts" was a line from Sheb Wooley's "Flying Purple People Eater"?

Unfortunately, I am …

Edit As You Go?

As I mentioned in my column on defining mysteries a couple of weeks ago, there are a lot of questions that always come up when writers get together--and some of the answers depend not so much on knowledge or experience but on the individual quirks of individual writers. Some of our methods and practices seem to be done or not done simply because that's the way our brains are wired, like whether to squeeze the toothpaste from the end of the tube or the middle, or whether we're always early to appointments or always late, or whether we prefer to unroll the T.P. from the front of the roll or from the back. For writers, one of those questions is do you edit as you go. or do you edit only after the first draft?

Some authors feel it's necessary to make each page (or each paragraph) as perfect as it can possibly be before proceeding to the next; others don't worry much about rewriting or refining until the entire piece is complete, whether it's a poem, a short story, or a novel. (NOTE: I'll concentrate mostly on shorts here because that's mostly what I write, but the process can apply to longer works as well.)

For the record, I fall into the second group. My first drafts of a project are not only first drafts, they're rough drafts. And I mean really rough. In my first drafts, I don't worry about style (grammar, sentence structure, paragraph structure, spelling, capitalization, word choice, word usage) at all. I just write down a stream-of-consciousness summary of the story, sometimes plugging in place-holders like D for detective, K for killer, V1 for first victim, LND for lady next door, etc., and laying out the plot from start to finish. Then I go back and start rewriting and polishing and assigning names and personalities. I've often said that if I'm run over by a truck, anybody who later finds one of my first drafts would think I'd lost my mind, because those yet-to-be-edited works-in-process are truly unreadable to anyone but me.

Again, though, many writers I know choose not to postpone the task of editing. They go ahead and edit their current output, whether it's a hundred words or five thousand, in order to be ready for the next day's work. Some even edit their sentences and paragraphs as they create them. One writer friend of mine is so efficient at doing that, she says that when she's completed editing the final page of her book, she's done. There's no need to do any more editing on anything. I can only imagine that, and in fact I'm in awe of those who can do it. And--for most of us at least--I'm not sure that's the best approach.

My reason is simple. If I did that, if I studied and corrected the words or pages I've completed today
and kept on editing until they're as perfect as I can make them before proceeding, and if I continued to do that day after day . . . what would happen if I suddenly decided, later on in the project, that I need to add something to the plotline, or take something out, or otherwise change the flow of the narrative? I'll tell you what would happen: I'd have to go back and rewrite what I've already rewritten. And I'd wind up wasting a great deal of time. (I should mention here that I use the same edit-only-after-the-first-draft process for nonfiction pieces as well; in fact that's the way I wrote this column. I typed some overall points I wanted to make, all the way to the end, and when all that was finished I went back and tried to fine-tune everything until (hopefully) it made sense.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. I know because if you were telling me this, it's what I would be thinking. I would be thinking, If you find you're having to go back into the story and correct so many things, structurewise, maybe you should plan a little more carefully before you start, and then you wouldn't have to backtrack and change things so much. And that'd be good advice, if it worked. For me it doesn't always work. I do plan, and pretty carefully, before I start. Matter of fact, as I've said before at this blog, I'm an outliner rather than a seat-of-the-pantser. I try to map things out all the way from the opening to the ending, at least in my head, before I begin writing. But (which might mean I'm not very good at it) I do often find, during the heat of battle, that I want to improve something or introduce another character, or maybe even change the POV--and when that happens I go back into the story and insert, remove, or rearrange words, phrases, paragraphs, or pages. And when I do that, I don't want to have already edited that part of the story to the degree that I'm satisfied with it. I want instead to plug in the new material and/or remove the old and only then do my final editing. But that's just me.

My edit-as-you-go pals tell me there are several advantages to their way of doing things. One is the fact that (as I've already mentioned) when you're done, you're done. If you're finished, and you've competently edited your work after each page all along the way, let's say, then your story is now complete--no extensive rewriting is required. Another advantage is that you might feel a little more enthused about starting the next day's writing if the previous day's is already edited and near-perfect. And a third reason, I guess, is that if you are constantly editing, improving, and correcting, nonstop, then maybe you're staying sharp(er) and consistently doing what will turn out to be a better job in the end.

I can see that. I can understand those reasons. But I still can't, and won't, do it that way. To me, the advantage of first putting the entire rough story down on paper (or onto your hard drive) is that when that's been accomplished, the hard, creative, most important work is already done. All that's left is the playing around and the polishing, and I'm one of those weird purple who actually likes to rewrite. I like to adjust and refine and tweak a story and try to make it shine--and I'm not at all put off or bored by that process, or by doing it all at one swoop. But I can see that some writers are. To each his own.

A couple more opinions. In a review published in The Writer several years ago, Chuck Leddy wrote: "Irish novelist Anne Enright says, 'I work the sentences and the rhythms all the time. I can't move on from a bad sentence; it gets more and more painful, like leaving a child behind you on the road.' Curtis Sittenfield, however, completely disagrees: 'I strongly feel that trying, in a first draft, to make every sentence shine and be perfect before moving on to the next one is a recipe for never finishing a novel.'"

Which brings up the inevitable questions: Do you prefer to edit your manuscripts as you go? Or do you like to write it all down first, warts and all, and then do the editing? Does it depend on the category (or the length) of the manuscript--short/long, fiction/non? Do you see a distinct advantage to either approach? Do you think the preference is by choice, or that it's already ingrained in our DNA?

And the best question of all: If the final product is good . . . does it really matter?

That's a Mystery to ME

There are several questions that always seem to come up, at conferences, classes, meetings, signings, and wherever else writers get together with readers or other writers. You know the ones I mean. Should fiction be outlined? Do you edit as you go? Which is more important, plot or character? Where do you get your ideas? Do you assign yourself a page/word quota? Do you write in a certain location, or at a certain time of day?

And one that I hear really often: What, exactly, IS a mystery?

What is it indeed? Does it have to be a whodunit? Must it include a murder? Must it always feature a detective? It's one of those arguments that could be called, well, mysterious.

Criminal activity

To me, the answer is clear. I agree with Otto Penzler, the man who founded Mysterious Press, owns the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, and has for the past nineteen years edited the annual Best American Mystery Stories anthology. Otto says, in every introduction to B.A.M.S., that he considers a mystery to be "any work of fiction in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the theme or the plot."

NOTE: In looking over the Amazon reviews for The Best American Mystery Stories 2015, I notice that several reviewers said they didn't like it because it included stories that weren't mysteries. My response would be that they didn't read the intro. It doesn't leave much room for doubt.

Why is such a definition important? Does it even matter? I think it does. It's important because writers need to know what they've written in order to know where to submit it. If a magazine (or anthology) editor or a book publisher or agent says he or she is looking for mystery stories/novels, then you/I/we need to know what to send and what not to send. And, again, Otto's definition seems logical. I think mysteries can be whodunits, howdunits, whydunits, etc. (Much has been said at this blog recently about the TV series Columbo, and while I think all of us would classify those episodes as mysteries, none of them were whodunits. All were howcatchems.)

Consider this: If a character spends an entire story or novel trying to murder someone and is stopped just before doing it (The Day of the Jackal, maybe?) does that story or novel fall into the mystery category? Sure it does. A crime--the threat of a crime, in this case--is central to the plot. And I can think of a few mysteries aired on Alfred Hitchcock Presents that didn't even involve a crime. One example is Man From the South, featuring Steve McQueen and adapted from the short story of the same name by Roald Dahl, and another is Breakdown, starring Joseph Cotten as a paralyzed accident victim whose rescuers believe he's dead. Some of you might've seen those, and if you did you'll remember that they were more suspenseful than mysterious.

I'll take Stephen King for 100, Alex

Another thing that always seems to surface in a discussion like this is the fact that some literary authors and publishers look down their noses at the mystery genre and mystery writers. At least two successful crime writers have told me there are certain upscale independent bookstores that aren't terribly receptive to having them come there to sign. The store owners allow it, because--uppity or not--bookstores must make a profit, and successful genre authors usually sell more books than successful literary authors. But there's still a bias. It's been said that Stephen King was for years accused of writing nothing but commercial/popular/genre fiction, until the publication of "The Man in the Black Suit" in The New Yorker and his pseudo-literary novel Bag of Bones. After that, critics began acknowledging that his work is occasionally (in their words) meaningful and profound.

To get back to the subject of this column, though, I also find it interesting that King, who is of course best known for horror fiction, won a well-deserved Edgar Award last year for the novel Mr. Mercedes and another Edgar this year for his short story "Obits." Neither of them fit into some folks' idea of a mystery. The novel was more of a suspense/thriller, and "Obits" was firmly entombed in the spooky/otherwordly/paranormal category. My point is that the Edgar is awarded by Mystery Writers of America, and that in itself means those two works should be considered to be--among other things--mysteries.

Check the label

I remember something Rob Lopresti said to me years ago, on this "what is a mystery?" topic. He said "Definitions tend to be more useful for starting arguments that for ending them." In fact, with all this talk of which cubbyhole to put what in, I'm reminded of a poem I once wrote (and sold, believe it or not), called "A Short Career." Like all my poetry, it tends to be more silly than useful, but I think this one happens to (accidentally) illustrate a point:

Eddie knew that a detective wears an
Overcoat and hat,
But he lost his pipe and magnifying
Glass, so that was that.

What Eddie didn't understand is that very few things in this life are simple and elementary, my dear Watson. Sometimes the prettiest colors are those that are blended, or at least mixed-and-matched. I think mystery is a broad category, and--IMHO--hybrids are welcome.

It's probably worth mentioning that Elmore Leonard--who was once recognized as a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America--was always quick to point out that he'd never in his life written a traditional mystery. His stories and novels were about crime and deception, not detection. Even so, the best place to find his work is in the MYSTERY section of the bookstore.

Final Jeopardy question:

What's your take, on this particular argument? Do you think books and stories that lean more toward "suspense" or "thriller" should always be so labeled, or at least identified as a subgenre of "mystery"? Or do you agree that the inclusion of a crime qualifies any such story to be called a mystery?

Investigative minds want to know.