Dumb Kids

 SleuthSayers relies on Google’s Blogger platform. Over a couple of decades, we’ve discovered a thousand thorns amid its bed of roses, bugs, errors, and omissions. This past week has been particularly harrowing with lockouts and outages affecting and infecting our outbound news feed and comments. It particularly affected Anna on Friday, so for writers especially, I recommend taking in her promotional suggestions.

But also… her article inspired today’s article.

In reading Anna Scotti’s guide, it dawned on me when I was 15-16, I came up with smart and more innovative ideas than what I use now. It began with a statewide scholarship competition sponsored by foods companies, e.g, American Dairy Association, Wonder Bakeries, Kraft, producers and canning companies– the food chain of farm to family table. They selected 200 of us, put us up in hotels, arranged lectures, arranged tours, fed us well, and even sponsored a night of music and dancing.

Participants were expected to chat up their local community about nutrition and sponsored interests in the middle of food-growing rural Indiana. The program was divided into boy and girl programs, one boy and one girl per county, one hundred girls, one hundred boys, vying for scholarships and monetary prizes. I came from a tiny rural school without a county library, so this was new to me. I appreciated being a part of it, even if I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance at a prize.

City students might wonder how dumb kids from the middle of nowhere farm country could compete with Indianapolis, population a million, or Chicago surrounds, another quarter million or more, Cincinnati bedroom communities, or university brain silos in Terre Haute, Bloomington, and Lafayette.

Easy: I had no idea what I was doing.

I started small and I owe that initial toehold to women. Gentleladies of that area and era belonged to numerous clubs– book clubs, cooking clubs, craft clubs, knitting clubs, lodges, and social clubs. Mom connected me with a couple of her societies, where I gave brief talks and the ladies politely listened.

I branched out, 4-H, Scouts, and local church groups where I spoke about matzo and manna. The mad scientist in me built a robot, not unlike R2-D2, which accompanied me to some presentations. By then, I’d acquired Albert the Alligator, who stole the show at other events and garnered more girl attention that I did.

In the meantime, I discovered local newspapers were hungry for articles. I listened and complied. Our county had no library, but the neighboring county’s library didn’t mind my taking up space where the sun warmed from a particular window. I researched, scribbled, I even dared send an essay to the Indianapolis Star which, to my surprise, printed it. (Much later I learned public cable channels thirsted for content.)

Media investors planted a radio station literally in the middle of county cornfields. Early one morning, I threaded back roads to the three towers of WSVL. They gave me a short tour before sitting down for an interview. I returned a second time for my own broadcast.

Susan, our county’s female entry, and I didn’t really interact. She was smart and pretty, and to this day, I picture Nancy Drew looking exactly like her. She was a full year older than me, an insurmountably huge age gap. She was sufficiently elderly to qualify for a driving permit; Mom drove me in her pink Rambler. Susan attended a large city school, I underwent a one-hour bus ride to a small rural 1-12. Her father ran a well regarded hardware, mine farmed and sold insurance to make ends meet. In retrospect, we could have– perhaps should have– collaborated, but the thought never occurred to either.

Meanwhile, I documented, documented, documented, every article, every talk, every presentation. At the end of summer, I packaged everything, submitted it to the committee, and gave Albert time off. I’d worked my tail off for a 1% chance at the prize. The promoters had gotten their money’s worth.

And then a letter arrived and a package. The letter announced Susan had won the girls’ division. Well done.

And winner of the boys’ division and overall winner… me! Seriously! Program directors noted both winners came from the same county. All that work had paid off.

Today, outlets have changed. The internet gutted newspapers and perhaps journalism. Gen Alpha has little use for radio and television. Substack and Reddit and Tim Tok make money in entirely different ways. We have to learn and adapt and perhaps adopt.

In a broader sense, Poe’s pendulum swings both ways. People were patient with me who might not have been as lenient with an adult, whereas a different station or magazine might have no time for dumb kids. Never know until we try.

Lesson

Thanks to Anna’s article that not only inspired today’s essay, it reminded me of what one can accomplish with few resources. Without knowing what he was doing, a dumb kid validated a couple of Anna’s ideas as achieveable and well grounded. That should serve as a lesson for me.

The Old Man and the Sand and Sea

Ever met anybody famous?

I suspect you have. Most of us, I think, have experienced--or know folks who have experienced--unique contacts with "well-known" people. Examples: When one of my writer friends was a child, his babysitter was Sharon Tate. (Seriously.) Another writer friend once did a major-movie love scene with Clint Eastwood. My former literary agent talked Robert Bloch into writing Psycho. My father's best friend flew missions with pilot Gene Autry in World War II. And so on and so on. I myself have sat next to several of my favorite movie actors on commercial flights during my IBM years, and pestered a few of them all the way to baggage claim.

Another memory is of a night when my vacationing family and I were eating dinner in my dad's brother's seaside restaurant in Pensacola, Florida. I was twelve years old, and because it was my sister's fifth birthday, my uncle (who had no children) secretly arranged for all the cooks and waiters to march out with a cake and sing "Happy Birthday" to her. As it turned out, two of the cast of the then-hit TV show Gunsmoke--Amanda Blake and Milburn Stone--were among the diners that night, and afterward the two of them came over to our table, wished my sister a happy birthday, and sat and visited with us for half an hour. This was long, long ago, but such a thing was unusual even then, and I still remember being thrilled.

My favorite story, though, of a chance meeting with a famous person came from one of the students in my writing classes.

Here's the background . . .

The student in question, the late Nick Adams, lived in Mendenhall, Mississippi, about half an hour south of Millsaps College in Jackson, where for many years I taught two night courses on writing and selling short stories. Nick was a good writer and an all-around good guy, and I grew to know him well. We worked together on a number of his stories, and he honestly enjoyed the process of writing--he wrote both fiction and poetry. 

The funny thing is, he never said anything, during all our weeks of classes, about the story I'm about to tell you. He revealed it to me only afterward, at a dinner held to celebrate the end of our two courses. (Celebrate is the correct word; my students were probably glad to be rid of me.)

. . . and here's the story:

In the early spring of 1959 Nick Adams was a freshman at Del Mar Junior College in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was a student reporter for the school newspaper, The Foghorn, and his family owned a restaurant in a Corpus hotel called The Sand and Sea Resort, on the Gulf of Mexico. After classes Nick waited tables, washed dishes, made room-service deliveries, mopped the floors, and did whatever needed doing at both the restaurant and the hotel.

One day that year he looked up from his duties and saw, standing there in the hotel lobby . . . Ernest Hemingway. The author was there with his wife Mary and his old friend and fellow author A.E. Hotchner. An avid reader, Nick recognized Hemingway immediately. Since Nick was in the vicinity, the desk clerk asked him to take the three guests's luggage up to their rooms, and Nick--in a quick whisper--asked the clerk if she realized who these people were. She said no--she'd never heard of them.

Nick took the bags up, they tipped him well, and he rushed back to the restaurant to tell his mother what had happened. She listened as Nick blurted out his story, then said, "Go call him. Now."

"What?"

"You're studying journalism, right? You write for the school paper. Call him on the phone and ask him if you can do an interview."

Nick realized that made sense. He beat feet back to the hotel lobby, phoned Hemingway's room from the front desk, and--trying to keep his voice from shaking--made the request. He did not, however, reveal his name. He was afraid that if he mentioned his name they would think he was pulling some kind of hoax, or making a joke. (As a longtime fan, he was familiar with all the Nick Adams short stories Hemingway had published, mostly in the 1920s and '30s.) To his amazement, he was told by the wife, "Sure. Come on up."

Mary Hemingway welcomed Nick into the room just as her husband was stepping out of the shower. He smiled and shook Nick's hand as he stood there naked and dripping, and in fact continued to stand there chatting until his wife fetched him a bathrobe. Then they sat together at a table, and for the next twenty minutes Nick asked questions and scribbled the replies in a notebook he'd brought along. Hemingway was gracious and helpful throughout the interview. When it was over, he asked Nick not to let anyone from the local media know he was there until after he'd left the next day, and Nick agreed to keep the secret.

The following morning the three travelers had breakfast at the family restaurant before leaving. Nick was away and in class, but his mother introduced herself to Hemingway, and he asked her what her son's name was so he could leave a card. When she told him Nick Adams, Hemingway was both surprised and pleased. The note he left said, "To Nick Adams, who will make a good reporter."

Some years later, Hotchner wrote a book called Papa Hemingway, and the Sand and Sea incident is recorded there. He got some of it wrong--I've read the book and found the account--but the essentials are there, right down to Hemingway's reaction to finding out the boy's name. 

Again, Nick never mentioned this during our many references to Hemingway's writings during the classes--he told me about it only at the final dinner, when all of us were sitting around talking about old times. And maybe the funniest thing of all is that Nick Adams (the real one, not the character) never became a reporter. He became a successful businessman instead. 

And a part-time writer. I still have a signed book of his poetry. Is that wild, or what?

NOTE: Last week I googled the hotel for the first time, and found this, among other info: In March 1959, renowned author Ernest Hemingway was interviewed at the Sand and Sea Resort Hotel by a college journalism student. 

My question for today is, have you ever met, either accidentally or intentionally, a famous writer--or, for that matter, a famous politician, actor, musician, etc? Was it a normal meeting, or unusual in some way? If it was an author, did that at all inspire or influence your writing? Did the meeting result in any fictional versions of it?

Before closing, I'll share one more story of my own. I once ran into the American pop singer Billy Joe Royal, just before one of his college concerts in the late 1960s. (Yes, I know--you younger folks won't remember him.) Anyhow, he and his group were turning a corner going one way and I was walking the other way, and I ran into him, literally--Royal was a short guy and I'm not--and knocked him flat on his back right there in the hallway outside the ballroom of the Student Union. His entourage went nuts, but I apologized and helped him to his feet and all was well. I still think about that every time I hear an old recording of "Down in the Boondocks."

Hopefully your celebrity encounters went better than that one.

Whatever it is or was that inspires you, find or remember it and keep writing! See you in two weeks.

 

Going After Publicity for Your (small, precious) Book

So you've got a novel coming out? If you are with one of the Big Five publishers - Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, or Hachette - there will be a publicity machine at work for you. Your editor, or the publicity department, will let you know what they want your role to be. They may ask you to update your website, open social media accounts, or to provide a mailing list of friends, family, and fans.

If you are with a smaller press, say a university press or a small independent publisher - you should inquire, when you are offered a contract, what your role will be in gaining publicity for your book. Most small presses welcome your involvement and will be delighted if you submit your work to reviewers, arrange for readings and signings on your own, and so forth. But check! You do not want to overstep, duplicate their efforts, or - eek - embarrass your publisher.

I'm not familiar with every aspect of self-publishing, but I'd imagine the tips I'm about to offer will apply nicely to self-published authors as well.

If you are about to release a book, be reachable via a website. The primary purpose of publicity is to sell your book, and the secondary purpose is to get your name out there so that you can be contacted by fans, publishers, agents, and sponsors of events and projects you may find appealing.

Your website can be extremely simple - your name, your picture, your book cover, a release date, and a contact form so people can reach you (don't post your personal email address). A fuller website with lots of pictures and info about all of your publications is better, but at least have the minimum. You can hire someone to do a bang-up website, but that costs. Or you can do it yourself, nearly for free. My website is perpetually under construction and is never up-to-date, so don't come at me after you take a peek - but the point is I am findable. I do get a lot of spam. I also get fan letters, invitations to paid speaking engagements, requests for interviews, offers to contribute to journals and anthologies, and - since my novel-in-stories It's Not Even Past was orphaned last year when the publisher closed - inquiries from publishers.

You need some kind of social media. Something. Facebook has developed a reputation for being mostly for seniors, but their largest demographic (worldwide) is actually young adults 25 - 35. So you can reach young readers with a facebook page (and paid ads, if you want to go that route). But don't be too quick to write off the oldsters, either - seniors buy a lot of books! If you are already on Facebook, open a separate author page you are comfortable setting to "public." Keep this page for business. No pictures of lunch, cats, craft cocktails, precocious toddlers, thrifting expeditions or politics - unless applicable to your book.

Yes, cute. No, website.

A lot of writers promote their work on Instagram. Since the mass exodus from X (formerly Twitter), many use Threads. Bluesky is also popular. My advice is go to the websites of authors you like and admire, whose work is in some way similar to your own, and see what social media platforms they use. If you are new to all this, choose one - you don't have time to manage them all. (If you have that much time on your hands, you should spend more of it writing.)

Reviews on Goodreads and Amazon can be critical to a book's success. They are primary platforms for "book discovery." However, these platforms can be frustrating. Trolls may give your books bad reviews just for fun, or because they don't like you. If you do see negative reviews of your work - legit or troll-generated - ignore them. Remember the adage Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Next up: go after publicity opportunities, large and small. Ask friends and family to help spread the word about your book by putting the book cover on their social media, and by mentioning it to their book club, local librarian, and local bookstore. Include a purchase link to make it easy for them to buy your book! Consider pushing your publisher's site and bookshop.org, which allows readers to purchase online while supporting local bookstores!

If you live in L.A. or New York, it's nearly impossible to get a reading or signing at a bookstore - there are just so many writers, most more famous than you (or I). But if you live in a smaller city or town, you've got a good shot. Walk into bookstores and greet the manager. Buy a book. Tell them you're available for a signing or a reading and that you can "fill the room." If you have a friend in college, ask them to mention your book to their English professor. But don't put people on the spot - ask once, and take no - or no answer - for an answer. No everyone will want to read your book, and not everyone who does read it will enjoy it. That's life.

Your college alumni newsletter is a great place to publicize your work. Your local newspaper editor might be interested, too. Again, highly unlikely if you live in New York or LA, but far more promising if you live in Smallburg, North Dakota or Tiny Town, Georgia. Ask!

Your publisher should provide you with ARCs, or "Advance Review Copies." These are typically electronic (PDF or epub). Some publishers will also provide hard copies, but these are expensive and must be distributed judiciously. Electronic ARCs increase the likelihood that your work will be "pirated" – that is, circulated to unauthorized readers for free… but there are worse things. No one wants to be pirated, but the truth is all circulation builds word of mouth and it could result in your finding paying readers. It's important that you discuss distribution of ARCs with your publisher. They may have a do and don't list to help control unauthorized access.

These days, when writers talk about "reviews," they are often referring to individual reader reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, or on reviewer platforms like NetGalley or Booksprout. But "real" reviews - those written by professionals that appear in journals and newspapers - are the Holy Grail, and you should go after them. Thirteen million people read The New York Times each day. You probably won't get reviewed there. But a small-town newspaper, even a freebie, can easily have 5,000 daily readers, up to as many as 13,000. That's a lot of potential to sell books!

Think about books you like that are similar in some way (e.g. genre) to your own. Figure out where the books have been reviewed using your good friend google. Then contact the reviewer and ask if you can send them an ARC. Nota Bene: the more prestigious the periodical, as a rule, the earlier they want your ARCs. Many will request them four or five months ahead of publication, and your small publisher simply may not have them ready that far in advance. Wing it! If an editor agrees to read an ARC, send them a meticulously edited PDF - along with information like release date, cover price, ISBN, and whether bookstores will carry your book.

Your publisher will probably ask you for an email list - and even if not, you should have one for your own use. Way, way ahead of time, prepare a list of every single person you know who might conceivably be interested in you or your book. Have names and email addresses current, proofread and up to date. Be sure there is a purchase link (preferably, a pre-purchase link) included so that people can order your book on impulse, while they are thinking of it. If you end up sending out the email yourself, include a request that readers review you on Amazon or Goodreads.

Go after the little guys - and the medium-sized guys, too. Before It's Not Even Past was released, I hit up everyone I could think of to run a review or at least a mention. A lot of folks ignored my request, a few said no - and quite a few said yes! My alma mater asked me to teach a class. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (where many of the stories first appeared) invited me to blog for Something Is Going to Happen. Art Taylor asked me to blog for The First Two Pages, too! Dru's Book Musing ran a cover reveal and A Day in the Life feature, Victoria Leigh reviewed, and Roger Johns ran an interview on Murder Books.

Paul O'Connor interviewed me for Hourglass Author, and Bonnar Spring invited me to an interview on Crime Wave Podcast (mine aired right after Anthony Horowitz's!). And there were more.

John Loyd posted a comprehensive review of the collection. Book blogger Anne Van Doorn ran a terrific review, and Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier included It's Not Even Past in a round-up of crime short story collections published on Crime Reads. Jeremy Black of The Critic accepted a review copy and gave it a stellar review! Then he passed the book along to David Brown, a book blogger who loves mysteries, and David ran a review and invited me to an interview!

Janet Rudolph of The Mystery Readers Journal offered me a spot in Mystery Fanfare, and King's River Life, a magazine that really supports mystery writers, told me they no longer run reviews of collections – but asked me to do a guest blog! Crime Fiction Lover ran a nice mention, and Killer Nashville and International Thriller Writers both invited me to contribute to their journals! Some of these outlets are small and some are huge. But they all have readers who love mysteries and buy books, and I went after every single opportunity I could. And then…

Down&Out Books closed and my book went out of print, right after it was released. So all that work was a big waste of time, right?

No! Decidedly not! Because a couple of months later, I got an email from a guy who'd tracked me down via my website. He had heard about the book but couldn't find a copy online (of course). Seemed like a nice guy, so I offered to sell him one of the six remaining author copies I'd been hoarding for posterity. That night, I sat bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night, struck by an epiphany. Doug Greene. Douglas Greene. I know that name.

Sure enough. Mr. Greene is the (semi-retired) founder of Crippen&Landru, a highly respected publisher of mystery collections, classic and contemporary. And he loved my book! I asked him to put in a good word for me with the editor-in-chief, Jeff Marks, and a couple of weeks later, we had a deal! Crippen & Landru will release It's Not Even Past with a new cover and a new introduction in October, and are currently negotiating foreign rights for the book on my behalf! They'll release a second collection, They Look Like Angels, early in the new year. This happy ending would absolutely not have happened had I not gone all out to get publicity for my book. That is how Doug Greene found me, and it's how the foreign publishers found me, too.

Christian Gibson's cover!

So you spent a year – maybe more – writing your book, and you worked hard to get it out to potential publishers. Now spend some time ensuring that your book reaches the fullest complement of readers possible! Good luck!

---

Anna Scotti is delighted to have the next in her "librarian-on-the-run" series, When Bright Angels Beckon, included in the 85th anniversary issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (September-October '26), along with a personal essay, Sisters Reading Sisters. Bright Angels is the thirteenth story in the librarian series, and the eleventh to appear in EQMM. The next in the series, I Shall Wear Purple, will appear in an upcoming issue. Learn more at AnnaKScotti.com . Purchase It's Not Even Past direct from the publisher, at your local bookstore, or online. It will be available from bookshop.org soon!

Everyone - Big Five kahunas, small press authors, self-published writers and "gettin' there" authors - is invited to post comments, questions, corrections and additions in the comments. Please do!

AI Slop Slop Slop

Doing research so you don't have to, I've been taking a look at some of the AI Slop that's out there, and… it's worse than you think. And they're charging out the whazoo for it.

For example, on Facebook - FACEBOOK (!) - there's a series of "alpha werewolf shapeshifters romances". Tropes: Heroine - special, graced, chosen, white werewolf. An emotional / brutal betrayal and/or sexual excerpt. Then

"Click to read this spicy bestseller."

And if you click, and I highly recommend that you don't, basically it's the story of a pack of misogynistic alpha werewolves who proceed to reject, lock up, beat up, torture, throw out, kidnap back, etc. the heroine until she finally escapes and is found by someone who recognizes she's the future hope of the world (although she's never told that because plot reasons): and then it all starts over again, because...  The exact same plot, same dialog, same everything... only the alpha's name changes. And this same chapter, same story, shows up under at least a dozen different hosts, so many, that it's almost impossible to block all of them, though I am getting close.  Also, they charge by the chapter. WHAT a waste of money.

This is AI slop at its least fine, tarted up with… well, not tarted up at all.

This same marketing formula for human alpha romance novels is spreading all over Facebook too, whether "Blood Mafia" or "Billionaire Bosses" or "Dominant Dukes", etc. Think Harlequin or Mills & Boon, etc. but more graphic (and I'm not talking comics).    

Now it is true that romance novels have always leaned towards the alpha male.  Go look on Kindle, which provides cover illustrations - classic Shirtless Silks & Satins cover (often with a hint - or more than a hint of B&D).  There you can see alpha dukes (why are they always dukes? There have never been that many dukes in the history of England!), or Scottish lairds (extremely popular right now, probably because of Outlander), the (hellion / orphan / widow / heiress) he weds (or not) because (insert trope here), their fraught relationship until… 

"Click to read this spicy bestseller".

BTW, how long have millionaire / billionaire cowboys been trending?   

And on Kindle, of course, there's many the author who (?) posts a new book every week, if not more, more than any human being could ever write in that short a time. Romance, Westerns, Mysteries, Thrillers, Spies, Sci-Fi...

And it's all AI Slop.

Now, it's not slop because it has a formula. We all know there's a formula. Murder mysteries have to have a murder, clues, and someone has to solve the damn thing. Romance has to have a couple who meet, and then it's either friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, or instant love & a villain's getting in their way. Thrillers have constant suspense, twists and turns, and (generally) a villain who always manages to get away with everything until the very last minute. Etc.

No, it's not that it has a formula, the giveaway is that it has the SAME DAMN FORMULA in every single book: often the same stilted dialogue, and so many typos and irrational, unnecessary jumps in time/space - all mixed together as if there's an AI blender whirring our brains to mush, and all ignored as if they hadn't happened.

Thank God for delete buttons.

More satisfying than reading the damn stuff.

And before you think it's all the sex that gets me angry - I love a good smutty book.  I have quite a few.* And I think more of today's young men should read them,  because they might learn a few tricks.  

*If you'd like my list of hot authors, send a message via Velda either at the bar on the corner or in the dark alley behind it, and I'll get back to you. 

No, it's not the sex, what I HATE is misogyny & sexual assault & rape passed off as "spicy".  It's not. Not in my world. 

And there's a lot of it in AI slop, which makes we wonder if the algorithm used to produce it is from the Tate Bros, or Mad Men, or any other current alpha male influencer, especially those who are apparently promoting pheromone maxxing.  No showers, no brushing teeth, no wiping?  Dudes, you're never gonna get a date.  Except with your alpha male influencer, and he charges money.

Anyway, back in the early 1970s I read and enjoyed, God forgive me, Dan Jenkins' Semi-Tough, a satirical novel about the NFL which was full of raunch, n-words, racism, sex, drugs, and some stories that were damn funny. Twenty years later, I threw it on the give away pile and got rid of it. I literally hadn't noticed before how misogynistic and racist the book is. As an incredibly accurate review from Goodreads says:

"Shake Tiller and Billy Clyde Puckett - and Shake’s girlfriend, Barbara Jane Bookman. Barb is the daughter of the richest man back in Fort Worth, Texas. She's described – by both guys – as almost perfect, sexy, beautiful, flawless body, smart, and always knows how to be “one of the guys”. Barb, the ultimate fantasy girlfriend, who never sleeps with anyone but Shake, but is always cool with everything the boys do, whether getting blow-jobs in a bathtub by a hired hooker or drinking themselves silly or spending the pre-Superbowl night at a party where there’s drinks, drugs, and endless girls, and of course Barb never worries about get STDs or anything like that. Just cool with the guys. And in the end, after putting up with all Shake's adolescent crap, she's still dumped by Shake, who literally leaves her to Billy Clyde."

Basically, Barbara Jane Bookman was the 1973 version of Gillian Flynn's "Cool Girl" (Gone Girl) (LINK). Making women be perfect or else for over 50 years.

BTW, once streaming became possible, my husband and I watched some old 1960s and 1970s movies, and wondered what the hell we'd seen in them.

Examples:

A Woman Under the Influence – considered John Cassavetes' directorial masterpiece, where both the husband (Peter Falk) and the wife (Gena Rowlands) are insanely heavy drinkers and fighters, but she's the one put into a mental hospital. By him.  

Five Easy Pieces, in which every single woman in the movie (except for the two lesbians headed to Alaska) is for nothing but sex, and even then the guy's a jerk about it. For that matter, same with the movie M.A.S.H. – all the nurses are for sex, and the scene where "Hot Lips" Houlihan, showering, is exposed naked, wet, and crawling on the floor of the shower to the entire camp is probably one of the least funny, most humiliating moments in movies I've ever seen.  

It is not, however, the most violent towards women. That is still reserved, imho, for 1973's The Long Goodbye (starring Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe), because of the scene where the bastard Marty smashes a coke bottle in the face of his beautiful mistress, "the most important woman in the world to me" and says, "Now, that's someone I love! And you I don't even like! You got an assignment, cheapie: find my money!" Worse, later Marlowe's back at Marty's, and there she is, black eyes beneath the bandages – still with Marty. I think that's the most shocking act of violence that's ever been filmed, because nothing happens to Marty. Even Philip Marlow just walks away, and she just sucks it up and stays.

Things got better, of course. All sorts of wonderful movies have been made with and about women who can hold their own: Three Women, Fried Green Tomatoes, The Hunger Games, The English Patient, Arrival, Nomadland, etc.

And The Return, which is the reason I don't need to see The Odyssey: the whole last chapter done by Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Odysseus and Penelope, directed by Uberto Pasolini. Amazing. Hypnotic. Available for streaming.

But the AI Slop has got to stop.

---

First Impressions

They say we only get one chance to make a first impression.That got me thinking about  the great characters in our genre.  What is the first thing we learn about them?  Here are the introductions to some of them.  They are in alphabetical order by the name of the character. The answers are at the bottom. Good luck. 

1. He threw soup at the wall in an Italian restaurant. 

2. She jumped a pothole in Canal Street as she dashed between honking cars and double-parked ones.

3. He sat with his pint of Bass East India moodliy watching the froth disperse.

4.He was in a chemistry lab bemoaning that he could not get someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms he had found, and which were too much for his purse. 

5. One of his core beliefs is that eventually all the New Empire restaurant will offer will be egg-fried rice and sweet-and-sour pork.

6. He was wearing a powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks, with dark blue clocks on them.

7. Her parlor was an old room with broad black beams across the ceiling, furnished with good furniture that belonged to it.

8. When a fresh-faced guy in a Chevy offered him a lift, he told him to go to hell.

9. When she first set eyes on Evelyn Barton-Forbes she (Evelyn) was walking the streets of Rome.

10. He was a little man who kissed a friend on both cheeks upon seeing him for the first time in years. 

11. He was surprised to see a white man walk into Joppy's bar. 

12. He was arrested in Eno's diner.

13.  His jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth.

14. He thought maybe he should have worn a tie to the office of the university president.

15. As she drove south along Lake Michigan she could smell rotting alewives like a faint perfume on the heavy air.

16. He left the catalogue at home.

17. He never hesitates to send his assistant running down to Murray Street for a can of shoe-polish if he happened to need one. 

1. Father Brown. Chesterton, "The Blue Cross." 

2. Lydia Chin. Rozan, China Trade.

3. Sergeant Cribb. Lovesey.  The Detective Wore Silk Drawers.

4.Sherlock Holmes. Doyle. A Study in Scarlet.

5. Jackson Lamb. Herron. Slow Horses.

6. Philip Marlowe.  Chandler. The Big Sleep.

7. Miss Jane Marple.  Christie. "The Tuesday Night Club." 

8. Parker.  The Hunter. 

9. Amelia Peabody. Peters. Crocodile on the Sandbank. 

 

10. Hercule Poirot. Christie. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. 

11.Easy Rawlins. Mosley. Devil in a Blue Dress. 

12. Jack Reacher. Child. Killing Floor.

13.  Sam Spade. Hammett. The Maltese Falcon.

14. Spenser. Parker. The Godwulf Manuscript. 

15. V.I. Warshawski. Paretsky. Indemnity Only.  

16. Lord Peter Wimsey. Sayers. Whose Body? 

17. Nero Wolfe. Stout. Fer-De-Lance.

Writing Changes

At the Merrion Hotel in Dublin
last year, telling James Joyce
how a real writer works.

As I write this, my wife and I are packing for our second trip to Ireland; when it posts, we will be wrapping up and heading home. We plan overnight stays in two locations from our previous trip—the Merrion Hotel in Dublin and Ashford Castle in Cong—but all other overnight stays and stops along the way will be new to us.

What won’t be new is how I mix travel and writing: I don’t.

Unlike many writers who adhere so strongly to the “write every day” mantra that they carve out time during their travels to pound out a few pages every day, I use travel to get away from writing, to cleanse my brain, and, to the best of my ability, to live in the moment

Oh, if I happen to have a brilliant idea—which does happen on rare occasion—I might dictate a few notes into my phone and email the file to myself, but I don’t carry pen and paper or my laptop computer with me.

STORY BLOCK

I’m uncertain when I first began separating writing time from travel time, but it has worked well the past several years, and I usually return to my computer refreshed and ready to write.

Other life events, though, sometimes conspire against me.

Late last year, for example, Down & Out Books closed up shop, leaving many of my anthology projects in limbo. I spent the last of 2025 and the first of 2026 scrambling to find new homes for projects that were finished but not yet published as well as many published projects that were ripe for republication.

(So far Audecyn Books has rereleased Jukes & Tonks and Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked, and Crimson Gate Books has rereleased Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun. Other titles are forthcoming from White City Press and Crimson Gate Books, and Level Short has some original titles in their queue that were edited specifically for them.)

What this meant is that much of my available time was spent dealing with the fallout of D&O’s closure and was not spent writing.

When I finally returned to the keyboard in earnest, I found a disconnect in my writing. I wrote good sentences, good paragraphs, and even good scenes, but the first few stories didn’t gel. In each case, the whole was decidedly less than the sum of the parts.

I was frustrated. That’s not what’s supposed to happen.

I set those stories aside—maybe I’ll return to them in the future—and I floundered around the house for several days wondering what had gone wrong. I clearly didn’t have writer’s block—which I don’t believe exists—because I was clearly capable of writing good sentences, good paragraphs, and good scenes. I had—if such a thing exists—story block, the inability to assemble scenes into a coherent whole.

A PAGE A DAY

Then, more by accident than intention, I started writing one good page a day, asking nothing more from myself than that. Each page built on the previous day’s work, and each page worked to move plot forward until I had finished drafts of stories that worked.

Between the time I stumbled into this process and now, I have produced four stories. One has been submitted, two are complete drafts which I will reread, edit, and submit after we return from Ireland, and the fourth is a nearly complete draft. (All the elements are in place but some of the scenes are rough, and I will not be able to fix them before we head to the airport.)

Is this my new process, and I’ll return to it upon return from Ireland? Is this just a temporary approach, and I’ll return to my prior, sloppier way of banging out pages? Or will I find yet a third way of writing?

AN ASIDE

One interesting—to me, at least—connective tissue these four stories share: all were begun in response to calls for submission. The submitted story was written for an invitation-only anthology and submitted well before the deadline. One I had started a few years ago in response to a submission call but set aside unfinished. One was written in response to a submission call, but I’ll not meet the deadline because we’ll be in Ireland. And the last was written in response to a heads-up about a potential anthology. (The editor is waiting on thumbs-up or thumbs down from the publisher.)

THE WAY

Regardless of which approach I take to writing in the future, one thing remains true: As a writer, I will always find a way.

* * *

Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun was rereleased by Crimson Gate Books on August 10. If you missed the anthology when it was first released, now’s your opportunity to pick up a copy.

The Dream of Pure Reason

Mysteries and their close relative, thrillers, form a complicated and diverse genre, with fashions and tastes changing every few decades. Hard drinking guys prowling mean streets give way to feminist gals with cynical eyes who are displaced by tormented souls who interrupt existential angst for a little criminology. We have golden age cozies that return, sometimes in curious forms with clever pets, and we currently have some super rational detectives, those descendants of Sherlock in his scientific mode.

What procedural is without its forensic crew with their microscopes and chemicals, their fingertip searches and studies of fibers and dust and bodily fluids?  Electronics, the net, social media, and video surveillance provide clues even the great Holmes never imagined. Detection is going scientific with, at least for consumers of mystery fiction, mixed results.

After all, how exciting are screens full of phone numbers or fuzzy CCTV footage or test tubes slowly turning colors? Fortunately one aspect of forensics remains as dramatic as it was when it made its Renaissance debut. I refer to the autopsy and to the forensic pathologists, like Dr. Quirke, the TV crew of  Silent Witness, and now Dr. Cuthbert, who recently made his American debut in Allan Gaw's The Silent House of Sleep.

 

Cuthbert learned his trade in Edinburgh, which can claim to be instrumental in both forensics and mysteries, the university's famous Dr. Joseph Bell having been Conan Doyle's inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. Cuthbert's fictional mentor, Dr. Littlejohn is very much in Bell's  mold, emphasizing careful observation, meticulous preparation, and detailed records. 

Littlejohn also emphasizes the forensic pathologist's precise role: to provide police with information. He is to discover scientific information, not to solve crimes or conduct investigations outside the laboratory.

A nice division of labor, and one that suits Dr. Cuthbert, who suffers from what his contemporaries called "shell shock" and what we know as post traumatic syndrome. He certainly has his reasons, having served in the trenches at Ypres on the Western Front. Gaw interweaves scenes from this devastating experience with Cuthbert's life fourteen years later as a senior pathologist in London.

 

I found this structure a bit disruptive initially, but I must admit it results in a fine payoff later in the novel, and both the horrors of the trenches and the exceedingly nasty case that becomes Dr. Cuthbert's focus are vividly presented and thematically related.

 

The novel's important characters are well delineated, too, and I can see them forming the nucleus of an interesting mystery series. (Gaw has written three others, and Mysterious Press promises to issue another Cuthbert mystery in '27.) We have the originally hostile, but very capable, Chief  Inspector Mowbray; the considerably friendlier D.S. Baker, Cuthbert's formidable housekeeper, Marie Smith,  a former war refugee from Belgium, and his eager assistant, Simon Morganthal. 

Cuthbert and his police colleagues need all their resources when they are presented with two bodies that have been tied together and buried, naked and without identification, in a London park. Dr. Cuthbert begins extremely detailed postmortem, and it looks for a while as if the pathologist will be able to stick to his science.

 

But his own troubled mind, the memories of the trenches and of the man he loved, and the whole messy human dimension of the case intrude. Dr. Cuthbert proves to be equally observant outside the mortuary, and he is soon employing all his considerable intellectual, educational, and personal resources on the case. 

 

Just as well. The mortuary and the doctor's increasingly well-equipped laboratory can reveal a sequence of events. But human motivation and the monstrosities of human imagination are much harder to measure or understand. Pure reason is a dream and for many of the characters there is no escape from the disasters of the Great War nor for confronting the human dimension of forensic puzzles.

The Silent House of Sleep is easy to admire in many ways, but the truly horrible crime and the even greater horrors of the war do not make for enjoyable reading. Gaw, himself a doctor, clearly knows forensic pathology and he is an effective writer. It will be interesting to see how much Dr. Cuthbert can recover from the war and what sort of cases he will handle in the future.

Dr. Allan Gaw