BAMS BSP

Opening my computer signaled a typical day. A radio station in England and a book club in Hartford, Connecticut, threw electronic elbows, jockeying for my attention. Both were desperate for me to appear. In elaborate detail, the emails slobbered over my first book. They warned that a collective paroxysm might sweep through their listeners and readers if I didn’t reply promptly and agree to appear. Lives were at stake.

Like the rest of the writing community, I get a lot of AI-generated scam emails these days. At first, they enticed me. Then, they entertained me. Now, they’re weeds.

So, I nearly missed the email from Steph Cha notifying me that my story, “Slow Ride,” would be included in this year’s The Best American Mystery and Suspense.

I carefully checked its authenticity before replying. They’d spelled Steph Cha,

Megan Abbott, and my name correctly. They got the story’s title right. They hadn’t suggested that my book, “Slow Ride,” had real movie potential. It seemed genuine. With trepidation, I replied. Then I waited for the follow-up email requesting credit card information. Instead, I got an author copy with my name included on the Table of Contents. (It’s there, near the bottom. That’s what happens when your last name starts with T.)

Of course, my name shouldn’t be there alone. Fellow Sleuth, Michael Bracken, had the idea for a series of novellas about a Dallas-based car theft ring. (In 2025, Joseph S. Walker scored The Mysterious Bookshop’s Best Mystery Stories of the Year for another tale in the series.) Michael invited me to submit a proposal. I threw him two. One centered on a stolen car with a space alien in the trunk. I described the other as “Charles Dickens meets Saw IV.” It felt like a good elevator pitch.

It worked. Michael asked me to write that one.

“I’ll get started right away,” I said.

But first, I had to watch Saw IV.

Thanks, as always, to Michael for turning my comma-spliced submission into legible prose. Thanks also to Betty, my traveling companion and first reader. She wouldn’t watch Saw IV with me. She didn’t need to. Betty intuitively understood the premise. Create a bad scene, then ask, “How might I make this worse?”

Thanks to Megan Abbott and Steph Cha for including my story in the collection. I look forward to thanking you in person at a conference down the road.

Proving that writers never waste anything but time, Barb Goffman emailed some months later, seeking a holiday story for a July issue of Black Cat Weekly. She said you can do Independence Day if you want, but it’s okay to feature an obscure holiday. A quick Google search taught me that World UFO Day is July 2^nd.

Barb and I have corresponded before. I knew this one wasn’t a scam.

I wrote back. “How about a thief with a space alien in the trunk?” 

As these things go, the story ended up taking a different direction than I envisioned when I originally pitched it to Michael. But the finished product found a home.

Now, I get emails from a book club in Sydney, Australia that wants to talk about it.

And I have to read them. Because every so often a surprising message lies hidden among the weeds. Finding it can make your day.

Until next time.

*****

I’m traveling during the week that this blog posts. Apologies in advance for a delayed reply.

Microexpressions and The Diplomat

I had a dream the other night that was all about microexpressions. We hear a lot these days about microexpressions: those tiny “tells” that allow an expert poker player to crack the code of another player’s supposedly inscrutable poker face.

In crime fiction, certain detectives have a gift for interviewing suspects who are determined to give nothing away. These skilled interviewers read the microexpressions that betray the suspects as they exercise their right to remain silent or reply to every question with, “No comment.” Estelle Ryan’s brilliant protagonist Dr Genevieve Lenard, in an art-themed series set in Strasbourg, and Laurie R. King’s latest protagonist, San Francisco Homicide Inspector Raquel Laing, both have this gift. On TV, the series Lie to Me (2009-2011) comes to mind.

I woke up (no, sorry, folks, not with the whole plot of a new novel) realizing that screen acting, with its many closeups and visual moments with no dialogue, relies heavily on microexpressions. This may sound obvious, but in the past, I’ve missed it. I know this because there have been many occasions on which the screen has focused on a character’s face, or the faces of two characters saying nothing to each other for an extended period, and I’ve been bored. I might have compared the pace to that of paint drying. I might even have clicked and turned off the show on the grounds that nothing was happening. The other morning, my insightful unconscious pointed out to me that I was wrong. The actors were acting, conveying what was happening within and between their characters through microexpressions. Sherlock Holmes might have said to me, as he did to Watson, “You see, but you do not observe.”

It follows that the better the acting, the more use the director and editor can make of microexpressive moments. Obversely, good actors tend to make good use of microexpressions Our appreciation as audience may not be entirely conscious, but the proof is that what’s happening onscreen engages us fully. The Diplomat on Netflix is an excellent example.

It stars Keri Russell as the American Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Rufus Sewell as her loose cannon of a career diplomat husband, both brilliant actors at the height of their careers. In the current Season 4, Hal Wyler (Sewell) has become Vice President of the US, with Allison Janney giving a bravura performance as Grace Penn, a President of the US going off the rails, making increasingly reckless unilateral decisions that put world peace in danger and off-with-your-heading anyone who disagrees with her like Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen herself. The first three seasons played on the big stage typical of a political drama. Creator Debora Cahn chose to make this season a kind of chamber opera, focusing closely on three couples: Kate and Hal Wyler; the President and the First Gentleman (Bradley Whitford); and Ali Ahn as the CIA London Station Chief and Atoh Essandoh as the Deputy Chief of Mission of the US Embassy in London.

I wasn’t sure this character-focused version of the show would work, but it did. For one thing, the dialogue crackled with life. In a sense, The Diplomat is a child of The West Wing, as I guessed the first time I heard that familiar, “Ya think?” as a sardonic comeback. Debora Cahn is listed second after showrunner and lead writer John Wells after creator Aaron Sorkin left The West Wing. And Allison Janney and Bradley Whitmore were so memorable in their West Wing roles that to this day, if I mention Janney or Whitmore to my husband, who tends to forget actors’ names, I can say, “You know, CJ and Josh,” and then he’ll know who I mean.

The story is compelling, to say the least. Apparently Cahn didn’t mean to parallel the headlines, but this season avoiding the moral questions of today’s reality “became absurd.” It wouldn’t work, though, without the superb acting of the principals.

Microexpressions come into play during scenes like a gala and a meeting of the G7 heads of state and top diplomats, when the Wylers watch President Penn across the room as she smiles, shakes hands, and kisses cheeks and they try to discern how far she’ll go to pursue her agenda. And Kate Wyler’s face is never still as she juggles the increasingly unstable balls of her loyalty to the country she represents, her obligation to the country to which she is ambassador, her marriage, her friendships, her professional relationships, many with people who are also her friends, her ethics, her impatience for solutions, and her desire to do the right thing.

Crime Scene Comix Case 2026-11-040, Fall Guy

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

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

 

 

 

 

© www.FutureThought.tv

 

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

YESes Are Like Buses

Long ago I heard the following expression: Opportunities are like buses. You wait for ages for one to come along, and then three show up at the same time. Sort of like When it rains, it pours.

Lately, it seems I've been doing a lot of waiting, writingwise. Waiting for acceptances (or rejections) of my submitted stories, waiting for the publication of stories that have been accepted, waiting for places to come along that I might want to submit stories to. Alas, not much was there. Especially acceptances. On the rare occasions when I did submit stories, I was hearing "No" a lot. "Yes," not so much. My publication list, both recent and upcoming, had fallen dead as a dodo.

Then, several weeks ago, several bright spots (buses?) came along:

- New Myths published my flash fantasy/crime story "Jumpin' Jack."

- Black Cat Weekly published my 24th story there, "Sweet Loretta Morgan."

- Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine published "Moneyland," the eighth installment of a mystery series about southern sheriff Ray Douglas

- The Bouchercon 2026 anthology, The Lines We Cross, published a blackmail/murder story, "Garden Path"

- Umbra Magazine published my short mystery/crime/adventure story "Raibow's End." 

- Crimeucopia: Objection! Overruled!! published "Nothing but the Truth," a fantasy/crime/courtroom story

Some of these publications were in new markets, some old; some were small, some large; some were magazines, some were anthologies; some paid well, some didn't; some of the stories were long, others short; most were lighthearted, a few were dark; most were original stories, two were reprints. On top of those six publications, two Josh Pachter-edited anthologies--Happiness Is a Warm Gun and The Great Filling Station Holdup--both of which contained my stories, were re-released with new covers and (in one of them) extra content.

All this spelled sweet relief to the literary drought I'd been going through. Some of my recent submissions even received YESes instead of NOs, including acceptances from EQMM, Strand Magazine, and a Santa Rage II anthology. The needle on my mood-meter finally moved up a bit. It had, for quite a while, been frozen at DISMAL.

Do you, if you're a fellow writer, occasionally go through these slumps? 

I think they're to be expected. Most of us writers suffer self-doubt now and then--I certainly do--and sometimes it's justified; despite what your mother might think, not every single thing you produce is going to be a winner (ask George Lucas about Howard the Duck). But there are also other reasons for downturns. For one thing, especially for those of us who write short mystery fiction, there just aren't as many places out there anymore to send our stories to, certainly not many that pay well. (Even some of those that do pay well seem to have lowered their rates.) Plus, some of the existing markets take a very long time to respond, which discourages some writers from submitting to them at all. (We're dying of thirst here, Lord--we need some rain!)

The good news is, marketwise, several new magazines--at least new to me--have recently appeared. Some of those I heard about from other writers, some via internet searches, some via posts on the Short Mystery Fiction Society's message board. Also, at least one publication that was about to shut down has been given new life via new owners, and one has announced that it'll soon take on more readers of submissions in order to cut down their overlong response times. Last but not least in the Good News Department--though it's not really news--is the fact that slumps will always, eventually, end.

Once again, how about you? If you write short stories, are you finding enough places to submit them to? If so, how? Are you getting yes/no replies in a reasonable time? Are you being paid enough, or paid anything, for your work? Are you--yes, I must ask--just finding it difficult to write stories that please an editor? Do all these occasional obstacles get you down?

My answer to that is, don't let them--and don't stop trying. I know I'll keep trying, simply because I love writing these stories. I'll subscribe to the places I send stories to, I'll keep up with which markets are out there and what they need, I'll attempt to promote them--and my stories in them, I'll keep looking for new markets, and I'll try to write every story as well as I possibly can. I will also count my blessings that things still aren't as bad as they could be. I'll say it again: Dry spells don't last. My favorite observation on this subject, though I don't remember where I heard it, is this: A professional writer is just an amateur writer who didn't give up.

Don't give up.

James M. Cain

James M. Cain was my gateway drug into crime fiction. Before Cain, I’d read Nelson Algren, whose novels, while often featuring criminals, would be better defined as social realism. But to my twenty-five-year-old aspiring writer self, Cain’s voice—and the reading it inspired—changed the focus of my writing horizon.

I discovered Cain through film, specifically The Postman Always Rings Twice– the original, starring Lana Turner and John Garfield, its final script written by Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch—and eventually tracked down from the library James M. Cain: Four Complete Novels (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity and Serenade). I read them in order, and quickly.

Cain’s career in fiction writing didn’t follow the path of his being a successful short story writer and novelist before heading out to Hollywood to make his fortune. Instead, the writings for which he first became known, and which led to a lifelong friendship with H. L. Mencken, were nonfiction pieces for The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and The American Mercury. His first article for Mencken in The American Mercury, “The Labor Leader,” mocked both the miner and the businessman, using the vernacular of each. These so-called dialogues gave Cain the reputation as a master of spoken word, and among his admirers was Alfred A. Knopf. If he lacked the typical screenwriter’s pedigree, it was this facility with dialogue that led to his getting offers from Hollywood studios.

When he got fed up with his job at The New Yorker, he finally accepted an offer from Paramount, believing that moving west would help him solidify his voice as an author. By 1931, Cain was indeed headed for Hollywood. Unlike some of the authors who preceded him there— Faulkner, Fitzgerald, et al.— Cain had limited success as a fiction writer before he arrived, and so the charge of being a sellout didn’t apply. In fact, the opposite occurred as his literary reputation began to expand, beginning with the short story “The Baby in the Icebox,” published in The American Mercury and then sold to Paramount.

With more confidence, Cain began writing a novel based loosely on two news stories he’d read—one about a female gas station attendant who ended up killing her husband, the other about a woman and her lover who conspire to murder her husband before turning on each other afterwards. Because of its length (35,000 words) and perceived problems with the ending, the novel, titled “Bar-B-Que,” was conditionally accepted by Alfred A. Knopf. After considerable back-and-forth between Cain and the publisher, the book was finally published as is save for the title. “Bar-B-Que” became “The Postman Always Rings Twice.”

Upon its release in 1934, Postman went—and there is no other word to better describe it—viral, with rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic and best seller status for hardcover and paperback editions, along with adaptations for serial, stage, and screen.

Cain’s next project was an eight-part serial, its title suggested by Jim Geller, his agent, and inspired by his own experience in the insurance industry. Titled “Double Indemnity,” the story was rejected by Redbook but eventually bought by Liberty. Like Postman, Double Indemnity went viral, if in a different way: people lined up to purchase the next issue of Liberty as soon as it was out.

In between these successes, Cain spent time, much less successfully, on other writings. If he didn’t see these outlets as hindrance to his novel writing, Alfred A. Knopf, his publisher of Postman did: “You can’t write fiction with one eye on the movies. … How much money would it take to persuade you to drop everything and do this book [meaning his next novel]?”

Cain didn’t answer but did eventually produce Serenade (1937), a book as sensational as its predecessors, but one that did not sell as well. Mildred Pierce, Serenade’s follow-up, appeared in 1941. Unlike the earlier three works, it was written in third person (one of only three such novels in Cain’s lifetime) and was much longer; also unlike those three, it was not initially the publishing sensation of its predecessors.

But of the four novels in the collection, I remembered details in Mildred Pierce the best. In one chapter, Mildred practices balancing plates at home to improve her waitressing skills. Far from being superficial, this scene reveals Mildred’s determination and drive, as well as her self-awareness, and it also shows that Cain, as always, had done his research.

Cain spent many years in Hollywood, but received only three screen credits. Most of his income there came from work on other scripts and from the sales of his own fiction to various studios. His last novel, The Cocktail Waitress, was published posthumously by Hard Case Crime in 2012. Cain began writing it in 1975, when he was 83, but it remained incomplete at the time of his death. Edited by Charles Ardai based on Cain’s various drafts and notes, The Cocktail Waitress represents, as Ardai points out in the Afterword, when Cain “decided to go back to his roots and write a James M. Cain novel again.”

There’s no way of knowing how many future authors Cain inspired. Ardai writes that without James M. Cain, there would be no Hard Case Crime. And without James M. Cain, it would have taken me far longer to find my way to writing crime fiction, if I got there at all. For if I’d initially embraced the laconic, cynical persona of Philip Marlow in my first crime fiction efforts, Cain’s prose and characters were surely living in my subconscious, because when I finally started writing from the perspective of people caught up in crime, I felt liberated.

Author’s note: The quote from Alfred A. Knopf and the biographical details of Cain’s writing life are taken from Ray Hoopes, Cain: The Biography of James M. Cain (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982). This article originally appeared in slight different form on the CrimeReads website.

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"Paris Street Scene," my PI story featuring Erin Ferrigno, appears in Richmond Fantastic: Shadowy Secrets from the Commonwealth's Capital. All the stories in the collection feature speculative elements, and it was fun for me to give Erin a missing person case involving a painting by my favorite artist. The whole team at Whitaker Lyon Press was great to work with. You can purchase the collection here:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/richmond-fantastic-shadowy-secrets-from-the-commonwealth-s-capital/5b238538eb266a7a?ean=9798990934078

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Halloween? No, Give me Samhain

Well, we've pulled through that time of year again.  Orange and black, skeletons and ghouls, scary movies, candy, and endless commercials that are just beginning to be replaced by Christmas commercials, and I just keep muting them all.  Especially since this year Halloween coincided with election year and it's up to you to decide which was scarier.  

Of course all the Halloween decorations are still up, while all the Christmas decorations are taking over the earth...  

Meanwhile, I don't like Halloween, because I don't like being scared.  A few reasons:

I was introduced to fear and pain very early.  When I arrived in this country, I had a very, very, very bad (cigarette?) burn on my chest, and 69 years later the physical scar of it is still there:  faint, but it's still there.  

My mother loved scary movies and watched all the ones shown on TV and took me to all the movies, despite the fact that they scared me so bad I couldn't sleep.  (I didn't mind the Dracula movies - Bela Lugosi seemed kind of ridiculous, if not downright funny, to me...  Make of that what you will.)  I remember she and I went to see "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" (1964, I was eleven), with Bette Davis, Olivia de Haviland, Mary Astor, Agnes Moorehead, and Joseph Cotton in what seemed like an attempt by everyone to kill everyone else, or at least drive them insane. 

There's a scene involving a backseat that kept me horrified all the way home, as well as a few scenes involving a severed hand, and that night, as I was trying to get to sleep, the little dog jumped up on my bed and I woke EVERYONE up screaming my head off.  

My father, on the other hand, took me to all of the sci-fi movies that came out, including Barbarella ("We won't tell your mother about this one," he said, as I ate popcorn to Barbarella stripping in  the airlock) and 2001 A Space Odyssey, which made my much later forays into hallucinogens seem ... familiar, and wondering when the Star Child was going to show up.  

Then there's two years of living on the streets of L.A., where predators abounded, in uniform and out.

Anyway once I became an adult and was able to live the life I wanted to live, I almost never went to scary movies.  Here's my list of exceptions:

The Haunting - Julie Harris and Claire Bloom together made this in my top five of scariest movies ever made, but the acting was so great that I still don't regret having seen it.

Alien - I avoided opening closets at night for a while. But damn, Sigourney Weaver was GREAT.

The Shining - Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers... Mm-hmm... Love the photograph on the wall.

Bubba Ho-Tep - Any movie with a black JFK (Ossie Davis), an old Elvis (Bruce Campbell), and an ancient mummy, set in a nursing home has to be seen at least once.  And it has its hilarious moments, as well as the ones which make me look elsewhere for a bit.

Anyway, what I really wish America would celebrate is Samhain:

SAMHAIN

It's pronounced SOW (as in cow)-in, a/k/a November in Gaelic. The early literature (from the 9th century) says Samhain was marked by great gatherings and feasts; a time when the ancient burial mounds were opened, the portals to the Otherworld.  Some of the medieval tales also associate Samhain with bonfires and sacrifice.  There was dancing.  Prayers.  Offerings.  

I like bonfires. I like dancing to the moon, the stars, and fire. I like long walks in foggy or frosty forests, and standing on hills, watching the skies.  I like rain, the scent of it - there is nothing more wonderful that the scent of wet pine, hot or cold - the feel of it, the sound of it.  I like what happens when you are perfectly still and the birds and beasts take you for part of the world.  

Granted, every once in a while Pan might show up.

He looks different in winter:

You can sometimes find him at the end of a path:

(He likes dogs)

(Credit for last two photos to Dark Ally.)

BTW, my dream afterlife is shepherd by day, paleolinguist by night, 

and a crone always.

Lightning and Sand

Is this a good day to talk about American political history? Depends on your point of view, I guess...

 I assume no one wants to hear another debate on the definition of mystery fiction.  Most of us are happy to use Otto Penzler's: fiction in which crime or the threat of crime is a major element.

It's not perfect, of course: it easily encompasses Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Great Gatsby, none of which are usually claimed by (or condemned to) our genre. 

I bring it up because I want to discuss a limited TV series I just watched on Netflix, one which no one is likely to label a mystery although it certainly fits Penzler's definition.

Death By Lightning is a four episode mini-series about the assassination of President James Garfield.  It is a terrific piece of drama with  a lot of American history weaved into it, and it will likely convince you that our politics has always been a lot murkier than Mrs. Kodwaller claimed when you were in in seventh grade.

One of the most outstanding performances is Matthew Mcfadyen as the assassin Charles Guiteau.  He is always described in history books as a "disappointed office-seeker." The show suggests that he was also a scoundrel and a megalomaniac.  

The other stand-out is  Nick Offerman as Vice President Chester A. Arthur, who agrees with most of the country that he doesn't belong anywhere near the White House.  Michael Shannon, as Garfield, is burdened with portraying a bit of a saint.

Ol' Chester

I recommend the series but, alas, I am here mainly to gripe.   Isn't that always the way?

My main complaint is that they left out Julia Sand.  I recently listened to a BBC podcast about her so I was hoping she would  make an appearance.  Chances are you have never heard of her and yet one can argue that she had more effect on American life up to the present day than all but a handful of nineteenth century women.  

Sand (1848-1933) was the daughter  of a wealthy New York family, well-educated but burdened by bad health.  She entered history after Garfield was shot and spent two long months dying.  She began writing to the vice president, who she didn't know, as follows:

The hours of Garfield’s life are numbered – before this meets your eye, you may be President.The people are bowed in grief; but – do you realize it? – not so much because [Garfield] is dying, as because you are his successor.

Young Julia

What a stunning  way to begin a correspondence!  At a time when Arthur certainly doubted himself she urged him: "Rise to the emergency. Disappoint our fears. Force the nation to have faith in you."

She wrote 23 letters and in them she encouraged Arthur to renounce the spoils system in which he had become rich and powerful and  to reform the government.  To everyone's astonishment the new president did that, signing the laws that created our Civil Service System, which has protected our interests for almost 150 years (or, ahem, created the Deep State, if you prefer).

Did Sand's letters really influence Arthur's policies?  Well, we know two things: he visited her during his presidency, and before his death he ordered most of his papers destroyed. But he saved her letters.