The Unintended Benefits of Reading Nonfiction

As readers of this blog may recall, my recent posts here at Sleuthsayers have carried a heaviness to them: my recent discussion of my father’s experience of Alzheimer’s, and how it is impacting his loved ones, and the one about plagiarism down through the centuries, fine, fine times, for sure.

So I felt the need to change things up this go-round, and here’s what I did. I queried several writer friends and posed them the following question:

"I’m writing a blog post about 'How It’s the Non-Fiction You Wouldn’t Expect to Help Make You a Better Fiction Writer That Does In Fact Make You a Better Fiction Writer,' and so would LOVE your input. So maybe your pen name, title of the book and why it so helped your fiction writing?"

First, here are a few of my own favorites:

1. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The gold standard. Shirer served as CBS Radio’s “Man in Berlin” during the 1930s, getting out of town one step ahead of an SS arrest warrant in December of 1940. And after the war he pointed out who did what, where the bodies were buried, and brought receipts. And he did it all in a way that spoke directly to an American audience predisposed to disregard “just more European politics.”

2. Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why

Bloom, a well-respected literary critic, was a master prose stylist in his own right. Reading this slim volume helped remind me that language can be so much fun to play with.

3. Barbara W. Tuchman, Stillwell and the American Experience in China

Much better known for her two Pulitzer Prize winning works (The Guns of August, about World War I, and A Distant Mirror, about “the Calamitous Fourteenth Century,” Tuchman cut her teeth working for the Associated Press in Japan before World War II. As such she was deeply steeped in the goings on in China, and the perspective she brought to the conflict there was decades ahead of its time.

4. Diana Cooper, Darling Monster: the Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich (1939-1952)

Lady Diana Cooper knew everyone from the Mitford sisters to the most respected clerics in the nation, to Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Her candid, incisive, funny character sketches addressed to her son, historian J.J. Norwich (see below) are not to be missed.

5. John Julius Norwich, Byzantium (3 vols.)

Three volumes, eleven hundred years. Norwich is a master of the narrative voice. Each volume is a graduate course in writing compelling narrative while not losing sight of the larger stories

6. Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts

Once called a cross between James Bond, Indiana Jones and Graham Greene, Fermor lived a restless, adventurous life, and documented it entertainingly. At 18 he trekked from Dover to Constantinople. It was 1933, and A Time of Gifts documents the first one-third of that trip through a world that was already beginning to vanish under the pressures of Nazism, modernism, socialism, etc.

7. William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

I picked this one about the role romance played in the cultural syncretism ongoing during the early years of the British Raj, but honestly, anything by Dalrymple, the greatest travel writer of this or any age, is worth your time.

8. Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

Tey was a terrific novelist. And she was also a passionate defender of the reputation of King Richard III. As such, her panegyric raising the question of whether or Richard Crouchback bore any culpability in the disappearance of his nephew the so-called “Princes in the Tower.” She says no. The historical record is far more damning. Tey is so good she almost convinced me!

9. Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome

Turns out the greatest Renaissance genius might not have been a Leonardo or a Michelangelo, but rather an irascible builder who studied the interior dome of Rome’s Pantheon to unlock the secret of constructing an apparently unsupported dome. Short, quick and riveting.

10. Steven Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

The ancient Roman poet Lucretius theorized the existence of the atom in a poem written two thousand years ago. But that’s only half the story. How Lucretius’ poem was lost for centuries and then found again, and preserved for modern audiences, now THAT is quite a story!

And on that note, on to the thoughts of my writer friends!

Writer and Editor Extraordinaire Jim Thomsen:

Top of mind is Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser, the recent true-crime Edgar winner, about the possible links between serial killers and being raised in the shadow of lead smelters (like the one in Tacoma). While I’m not sure I buy all her arguments, and I might have wished for less Ted Bundy and BTK rehash, I find myself rereading this book over and over because of the audacity of its originality — a wild mashup of science, true crime and memoir. Fraser, who was raised on Mercer Island, plays with the rules and breaks them all in dizzying but energizing fashion, veering page to page from wonky exposition to irreverent editorializing, and not being afraid to sound silly or sophomoric. Consider this quote: “During his five years on McNeil Island, virtually everything Charles Manson eats and drinks comes out of the earth, where particulates from the Ruston plume have been drifting down to the ground since 1890. He’ll live on McNeil Island longer than he’s lived in any place in his life. Later studies on McNeil find lead in soil ranging from a low of 19 parts per million (ppm) to a high of 190. Helter smelter.”

Murderland is such a wild original that I found myself pleasantly helter-skelter with the possibilities of widening the aperture of narrative in ways I’d never imagined. And with the idea that it’s OK to look a little silly in doing so in the service of a strong writing voice.

Fellow Sleuthsayer Eve Fisher:

Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, the Calamitous 14th Century - impeccable research, amazing stories (truth really is stranger than fiction), and a prose style to die for.  

Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange - The book that made me see ecosystems in a whole new way. And how they affect(ed) our daily lives today. Very important. And very applicable to us on the micro as well as macrosystem.

Steven Mithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC.  - Humans are humans, no matter how far you go back. The emotional / mental / spiritual ideas are always there.  But it sure is interesting what we do with them!  

I guess what I'm saying is that all of these showed me the important fact that no matter where you are, or what time you're in, the styles will change, but the stories remain the same.

As far as the language - oooh, I grew up reading Shakespeare, all kinds of poetry, and I discovered Bruce Chatwin (supposedly non-fiction but he did make some stuff up) and Peter Matthiessen and Henry Thoreau, who could describe a place and a feel and a spiritual experience with such beauty...  

So yeah, reading non-fiction has great rewards!

Kat Richardson:

I started out as a journalist, so non-fiction has had a big impact on my fiction writing. There were a lot of books and lectures within that study and my early career that made an impact, not to mention the journalists dictum "write tight."  Prof. Lawrence Meyer, my Course Advisor at CSULB, compiled a collection of historically significant journalism, from 17th century British authors Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, to the "new journalists" of the 1970s, including Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Dunn, and Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem. For copyright reasons it was never published, but we used it as our primary study text in his "Journalism as Literature" course. I learned a lot about writing with style and impact while keeping fact intact and prose tight

I also read a lot of narrative non-fiction, and the work of writers like Erik Larson (whom I do not care for, but owe respect for his ground-breaking approach), Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook, and Mary Roach's book Stiff. While these authors' narrative style is occasionally flawed in terms of absolute fact and completeness, they taught me a lot about drawing the reader into a longer, realistic story while maintaining an accessible and engaging tone. They also reminded me to check my sources and not rely on the veracity of any one source or author, if I'm writing about anything outside of my personal experience, be it fiction or non-fiction.

*    *    *

What about you, dear readers? Let us know what you think, or add your own favorites in the comments. And on that note, that’s it for this go-round.

See you in two weeks!

Emptying Pockets

My MMPB mysteries

The news may have slipped past you but last year the media was announcing the death of a familiar part of publishing.  It isn't exactly that the mass-market paperback is dead but that ReaderLink, the major distributor of paperbacks, has decided to stop dealing with them.  Which is not so much a killing blow as  a recognition that the format is fading away.

The mass-market paperback (MMPB) has been a staple since the 1930s.  I am putting up pictures of the  oldest ones I own.  One of the major publishers of them was Pocket Books, which tells you exactly what they were designed for: to fit into a man's pocket.  (Women were very lucky if their clothes had any suitable spaces.)  These were the books GIs took to the front. (My copy of Pocket Mystery Reader belonged to Sergeant Lawrence E. Hough in 1943.)

By the way, you may notice that three of the books I include here say Complete and/or Unabridged on the cover because in those early days  an MMPB often was a shortened version.  When I worked at a public library in the 1970s I had a hard time convincing an older patron that the paperback I had found her was complete.

MMPBs were so-called because they were sold in mass markets: grocery stores, drug stores, and so on.  Their competition was the trade paperback, typically the same size as a hardback, and only found in the trade, that is to say, bookstores.  Trade books are still around although ebooks continue to eat into their sales.

I have a special fondness for MMPBs, and here's why.

When I want to buy a new book, hardcover or trade, I go to my favorite independent bookstore.  But when I am going on a trip I go to my favorite used bookstore which has an amazing selection of thousands of MMPB mysteries.

So when I went to Egypt and Greece in January I headed to used-book-land with a special list of authors in my hand.  Take a look at the picture below and I am  sure you can see the factor that connected them.  And the beauty was, when I finished one I could leave it in a hotel or train and not worry about the cost.

I suspect the used book store will have old MMPBs long enough to last me out, but  you young whippersnappers may not be as lucky.

Change of Direction

     My turn to blog has circled around again. Originally, I had planned to use this space to talk about Malice Domestic. I'd rhapsodize about the forums I attended, impart the things I'd learned, congratulate the award winners, and, naturally, laud the high-level conversation conducted at the panel in which I participated. 

    The rough draft turned out to be a pretty boring read. Consequently, I've switched directions. 

    The longer I work at writing, the harder it is to find value in the planned events at a conference. Occasionally, I glean a nugget. And I still believe there is merit to an occasional refresher course on the lessons I should already know. But the thunderclaps of insight are becoming increasingly rare. 

    That's not to say that I didn't benefit from attending Malice Domestic. Rather, at this stage, the value I gained was subtle and harder to articulate. I renewed many old friendships, established several new ones, and plotted some future opportunities. None of the details fit well to a column like this.     

    Some months back, Michael Bracken modestly proposed in a SleuthSayers blog post that writing conferences should schedule less time for panels and more time for standing in the hall. The hallway, outside the meeting rooms, he noted, was where the real business got done. 

    More than ever, I found that I concur. But it is hard to talk about afterward. 

    And perhaps, it should be so. 

    The word "hall," according to Etymology Online, comes from the Old English heall, meaning a large space covered by a roof--think Beowulf's great hall or a market hall. The word later morphed into a term for a passageway as a castle's private rooms became separated from the common areas by doors. 

National Archives College Park Public Domain

    The heart of the word heall seems to be the roof. It protected the space from the elements. In some explanations, the roof concealed or shielded the room's occupants. The hall, in its oldest form, was a place of cover, protection, and concealment; it's only fitting that what happens in the hall, therefore, stays in the hall. 

    Fully geeking on the etymology of conference words, I spent a little time researching "panel." 

    Seamstresses and fans of craft cozies shouldn't be surprised to learn that the word panel comes from a French term meaning a piece of cloth, generally a rectangular one. The same root word is used for a glass pane. 

    Sometime around the 15th Century, panel made the jump to refer to those summoned by French authorities to serve as jurors. Once called, jurors' names were inscribed upon a rectangular piece of parchment (cloth). By the late 16th Century, this notion of panel had been diluted to include any group of people who gathered together to advise and consider. 

    And now, a distinguished foursome sitting on a dais behind a cloth-covered table holding forth and sharing their insights has become a panel. But the word remains particularly apt for Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, or any of the other mystery conferences. 

    Remember the original meaning of panel as a rectangular square of cloth? Heavy fabric made a great wall covering. The word panels also developed in that direction. Panels became the term for specific wall or door sections. And it's here that things started to take a dark and nefarious turn. 

    Bordellos and other disreputable places would be outfitted with panels. In these seedy establishments, at least one could be slid back and allow for customers to be robbed, beaten, or possibly killed. By the 19th Century, a panel-house had become slang for a bordello. 

    Panel, therefore, has the twin traditions of an erudite gathering combined with a dash of thievery and bodily harm. 

    Halls and Panels--two words with suggestions of secrecy. Perfect words for a mystery conference. 

    Until next time. 

  
 BSP: Panels do provide a great time to tout new works. Thanks to all who helped me release The Firefall by attending one of the launch events. I appreciate your support. 

Straight-laced hobgoblins.

             I’ve been tying my own shoes for about 70 years, give or take.  In that time, I’ve always preferred to include a double knot following the basic bow for added security.  When my son was a little boy, he called this extra precaution a “daddy knot”.  I’d do the honors, since it took a while for him to master it. 

In all that time untying my laces, I’ve pulled a loose end, which released the whole knot, quickly and simply.  Though it often didn’t, instead, tightening the knot further.  This led me to use fingernails and grit to complete the task, in a much more laborious operation.  I frequently wondered why sometimes the free lace untied the knot, and sometimes it didn’t.  I began to believe that I must have been tying the laces in different ways at different times, and in the back of my mind, promised myself to delve more deeply into this mystery when I had a ridiculous amount of spare time.

Then the other day, on my 75^th birthday, I pulled at one of the loose ends, which tightened the knot, then chose to pull the other one, which released it.  I thought, huh.  Is that the answer?  I realized I’ve tied my laces exactly the same way since early childhood.  The difference is that one end works great at freeing the knot when you pull it, and the other works at cross purposes.  It only took most of my years on earth to figure this out.  Discounting a few occasions when I went barefoot or wore flip flops, or loafers, I’ve probably had the opportunity to discover this simple truth about 24 thousand times (rough estimate by a non-mathematician.)

This was sobering.  I wondered what other solutions to common problems have been lurking there, staring me in the face for my entire life.  What else did I miss? 

I’ve written a lot of stuff since I learned how to do it.  I feel in some ways, I’ve gotten better at it, and in other ways, continue to fall short.  I’ve read masterful writers and think, how do they do it?  What do they know that I don’t?  Do I need to learn how to pull the right shoelace instead of the wrong one I’ve been pulling for my entire life?

I like to study brain science, because who doesn’t?  One of the things I’ve learned is that the brain prefers to follow pathways that it’s already established when assembling a thought or initiating a behavior.  This is because the brain consumes a disproportionate percentage of the resources we require to exist, so it’s always looking for more efficient ways to accomplish day-to-day responsibilities. Carving out new routes is harder than trekking along familiar highways, thus more energy conserving.  They call it habituation, and there’s no shame in it.  It’s just how we’re wired.

When you’re 75 years old, simple activities take on greater significance, since there are fewer important enterprises to focus on.  As a good German/Anglo-Saxon, I strive to make each of these more efficient, or less onerous, or more engaging, depending on the task.  Nobody but me cares about this, and neither should they. 

One of my favorite books from my early reading years was John Barth’s The Floating Opera.  He published it when he was in his early twenties, remarkable enough.  One of the protagonist’s practices was to intentionally make or break a habit as a matter of regular pratice.  This is the sort of wisdom that should be reserved for people far older than 20-something Barth.  He proposed that we should stop every once in a while and ask ourselves if we’re thinking something or doing something because it’s a good idea, or because our neural pathways are forcing us into lazy mental processing.

             Keeping an open mind is a whole lot harder than it sounds.  It’s almost impossible, no matter how much we revere the disposition.  Aside from the tyranny of our brain’s energy conservation there are social pressures to conform to certain established norms.  We like keeping the goodwill of our friends and family, so adventurous deviations, just for the hell of it, have their costs.

Family members in particular are threatened by sudden changes in course.  Their first thought is, “Uh-oh, Dad is getting wifty.”  But unless these loved ones are also your editors, changing up your approach to writing shouldn’t fire up any alarms.  Your family hasn’t paid enough attention along the way to notice anyway.  You’re just the granddad, or grandmother, huddled over the keyboard in your little corner of the house like you always do.

Following John Barth’s advice, I’ve been dabbling in habit making and breaking.  One of the most salubrious outcomes is realizing that some habits are very valuable and hard won.  You get a chance to recommit to certain things, because you’ve given them a fair appraisal.  You feel more secure in certain beliefs after they’ve been stress-tested and found to be worthy. 

You begin to realize that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, but so is a promiscuous sampling of all the less beneficial options available. 

 

Spam and Scam • part 2

Last time, we shared real life scam stories. In the interem, an acquaintance was conned out of $38,000 as part of a marriage scam. Fortunately, once he discovered his mistake, he acted quickly and was able to recover all but $2000. He was lucky.

This month, I’ll offer basic suggestions to protect yourself.

Red Flags

• Unsolicited contact (call, text, email, or social media) demanding action right now.
• Unwarranted sense of urgency: Your bank won’t collapse. Super amazing investment deals can wait. The Nigerian prince is dead or he isn't. The IRS doesn’t keep local police on speed-dial. They also don’t phone you at home.
• Pressure to pay with untraceable methods: wire transfers, gift cards, payment apps, or that dark mystery of cryptocurrency.
• Requests for personal or financial information.
• Requests for you to help catch a bank swindler.
• Offers that sound too good to be true.
• Stories that tug hard at your emotions.
• Poor grammar in ‘official’ messages.
• Discouragement toward verifying their story with a trusted source.
• URL links that may or may not look slightly off. For example,
• YoürBank.com instead of YourBank.com or
• YourBankHelp.com instead of YourBank.com.
• Be aware that emails and web pages may display a web site name with a clickable link that hides a sinister URL within the HTML. In other words, text on the web page may display YourBank.com, while the hidden web address might be www.NastyScams.com.

Practical Protection

• Pause and verify. If someone claims to be calling from your bank or the government, hang up and call back using the number on your bank statement or official web site, never one scammers provide.
• Think before you click. Hover over links to check the real address. Better yet, type in your bank’s address. Don’t trust conveniently provided URLs.
• Block and filter. Use your phone’s built-in tools to enable spam-text filtering and silence unknown callers.
• Register with the national Do Not Call list. It’s imperfect, but it helps.
• Secure your accounts. Use strong, unique passwords and monitor statements weekly.
• Better yet, use lengthy passphrases. For example: ‘Judges12:5-6SayNowShibboleth’ is much, much stronger than Shibboleth42k (or Sibboleth).
• Do not provide real answers to so-called security questions. I may be the only consultant who argues against security questions, but I’m convinced it’s critical. Never ever select your favorite color question. Lie to protect yourself. Make up a nonsense alternative:
• Favorite pet name? “Forget it, buddy.”
• Your first car? “Forget it, buddy.”
• Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb? “Forget it, buddy.”
• Most experts recommend using multi-factor authentication everywhere possible. I confess reluctance, having witnessed users losing access because of a forgotten passphrase. Nevertheless, pros urge using 2FA until something better comes along. You decide.
• Never urgently send money to ‘help’ a ‘family member’ without independent confirmation. Call them on a known number first. For example:
• You receive a call from a Mexican jail claiming your grandchild is locked up but needs bail money. That can seem funny when your young relative is safely sitting on the sofa beside you, but it’s not funny in the middle of night when the caller sounds and acts exactly like your young relative and you have no idea where they are.
• Consider creating a family ‘safe word’ for emergencies.
• Do not download attachments from unknown sources.
• Be very cautious before downloading programs outside your app store.
• Help protect your family, especially trusting older relatives who are frequent targets.
• Don’t be concerned you'll hurt suspect callers’ feelings. They’ll survive. Scammers have screamed and cursed me. I survived.
• Know that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issues monthly advisories and alerts.

What to Do If You Suspect a Scam

• Act fast, but don’t be stampeded into recklessness before you can verify a caller’s story.
• Contact your bank or credit-card issuer immediately to freeze or reverse transactions.
• Report incidents at ReportFraud.ftc.gov . The FTC uses reports to track patterns and pursue criminals.
• If you shared personal data, place a fraud alert with credit bureaus and monitor your credit report.
• For tech-support or investment scams, additional help is available through the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.IC3.gov).

Scammers count on fear, greed, kindness, and time crunches to cloud judgment. They operate by script, intent of fooling a profitable percentage of ‘suckers’. Don’t be a sucker. Slowing down, asking questions, and trusting instincts breaks their playbook. Every report you file helps shut down operations and protects others. Stay vigilant, talk openly about scams with friends and family, and remember: legitimate organizations will never rush you into sending money or sharing sensitive information.

For more resources, visit consumer.ftc.gov or consumer.gov. Awareness is the best defense. Spread the word and stay safe.

April Stories

First, sincere congratulations to all the 2026 Derringer Award winners, especially to Adam Meyer, Alan Orloff, and Michael Bracken--and special congrats to Golden Derringer recipient David Dean. I'm also thrilled that Dave Zeltserman has won the Edgar for Best Short Story. Well done and well deserved, my friends!

Now, to less important matters . . .

I'm a couple of days past April, here, but this is a quick look at the stories I published last month. And I should begin by saying, yes, these are mystery/crime stories even though I mentioned a few weeks ago that I've started producing stories in other genres lately. I'm hoping that in several months some of the science fiction/fantasy stories I've been writing since then will pop up someplace. We'll see. 

Anyhow, here are my three stories that popped up in April.

"Creativity," published on April 3 at Curated by Costuic, a market I discovered via one of my friends on the Short Mystery Fiction Society list. This 1100-word story consists almost entirely of dialogue between two characters, both of them businesswomen who meet on a flight from Lost Angeles to Dallas. As I've said before at this blog, stories that are heavy on dialogue are always among the easiest and the most fun for me to write, and I remember this one coming together pretty fast. It was published many years ago and was lucky enough to be a Pushcart Prize nominee. If anyone feels the urge to read a quick little crime story, it's posted here. Many thanks once again to editor Nikita Costuic.

Speaking of SMFS, the second one of my April stories was "On the Road with Mary Jo," published April 7 in the anthology Hot Shots: Celebrating Thirty Years of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. For those of you who don't already know, this anthology features 28 stories that won the Derringer Award--one story for each year between 1998 and 2025--and editor Josh Pachter did a great job of putting it together. My story in the book was a winner for Best Short Story in 2020, and had previously appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's Jan/Feb 2019 issue. Like "Creativity," this story is mostly dialogue but is quite a bit longer, at 2700 words. As I said this past Thursday night in the Zoom meeting about the anthology, I was surprised when "On the Road with Mary Jo" was accepted at EQMM because it's mainly humor, and therefore different from any of my other EQ stories. Quick summary: It's a weird story about two nitwits who carjack a self-driving vehicle and use it as a getaway car in a bank heist. Yes, I said it was weird . . .

The last of these three stories was "Lewis and Clark," first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine's May 2012 issue and reprinted on April 16 in The Ranger's Almanac, Vol 1. As the publication's title suggests, this market wants forest/park-based stories; mine was a 2200-word tale of two young Boy Scouts who get lost on a hike in the woods and stumble upon a couple of bank robbers on the run. It's more a YA adventure story than anything else, and marks one of those times when a previously published story that's sitting around doing nothing happened to exactly fit the submission guidelines of a new (to me, at least) publication. Before I forget, I owe a big thank-you to Ranger's Almanac editors Andrew Akers and Adam Geer. Check this market out here.

I think the only unusual thing about these April stories is that none of them were in publications that I'd been in before (one, of course, was a one-time anniversary anthology) and that two out of the three were sold to paying markets I didn't even know about until fairly recently. The editors of both of those were great, and were prompt in their responses to my submissions. "Creativity" wa submitted to Curated by Costuic on 11/4/25 and accepted later that same day, and "Lewis and Clark" was submitted to The Ranger's Almanac on 1/14/26 and accepted on 1/18/26. (These were breaths of fresh air in a world where we writers often wait for many months to hear back from a submission.) 

So, here are my questions for the week, to any fellow short-fiction writers out there. Are you, in answer to our recent downturn in the number of available mystery markets, finding new places to send your work? Where are you looking, in order to do that? The Internet? The SMFS market list? (You can find it under "files" at the SMFS forum site.) Are you sending any stories to existing markets that you haven't tried in a while? Are you continuing to submit to those who have regularly published you in the past? Do any of you have, as I do, submissions queued up at those markets? Are any of them already accepted and waiting to be published? Are you, like me, writing and submitting some non-mystery or cross-genre stories, and getting any relief from that corner? Please update me in the comments. 

And then get back to writing.

See you in two weeks.

Boo Hoo, Tee Hee, She Chortled

 

As a writing teacher, I spend an inordinate amount of time urging other writers to eschew clichés. This is more easily said than done (see what I did there?) as sometimes a cliché expresses one's thoughts perfectly. Nonetheless, I'm ruthless with my students, who are mostly published writers - all talented - and can take it. No nights as black as pitch, no thinking outside the box, no being sly as a fox or brave as a lion. And for the love of God, no smiles that light up a room.

So it was with some chagrin that I found myself recently "laughing through my tears."

Yep. This is an action I've read in a thousand sophomoric short stories and novels, and even in a few poems, yet one I didn't even know could actually be done. If you keep track of happenings in the mystery world, you're no doubt aware that Down&Out Books closed recently, and my newly-released collection of stories, It's Not Even Past, died along with them, just when the reviews (and orders) were starting to roll in. Now, I've published before, but this is truly the book of my heart. Most of the stories were originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and the main character, Lori Yarborough, is a librarian-on-the-run in Federal WITSEC. Lori is a mostly-better version of myself - like me, sort of, but smarter, braver, stronger, better-educated, and more resilient. She's shorter and skinnier than I am, though, and a good deal younger. In fact, the version of her that lives in my head looks an awful lot like my daughter.

There's a picture of said daughter, taken by the talented Robert Tate, in which she's striding down Mulholland Boulevard in an evening gown, strong, powerful, and stern. I call that picture "Don't Tell Me to Smile," and I keep it pinned over my desk to remind me of the tenacity and potency at my character's core.

Lori Yarborough would never laugh through her tears. In fact, she brags in a couple of stories that she never cries at all. But I do, and what drove me to enact that oxymoronic stock phrase was receiving yet another order for my DOA book. When the publisher closed, I'd hastily ordered a couple of boxes of resale copies, but more fans than expected had tracked me down to order. I was saving one copy for the coffee table and one for my grandson - and that was it. So there I was, laughing ruefully but snuffling back tears, too, as I checked the author's copy carton in my closet (still empty), thinking what a fool I'd been to order so few, to choose the wrong publisher, hell, to write a book at all.

(As it turns out, a white knight publisher rushed in - yes, inspired by one of those author's copies I sent out - and It's Not Even Past will be released anew later this year, along with a volume of short stories not from the librarian-on-the-run series. My cup runneth over! But more on that when I can share all the details.)

Meanwhile, Lori's life post-collection continues. In Traveller from an Antique Land, published in EQ in May/June 2025, she hit rock bottom, living in a tent on the streets of Los Angeles. In When Bright Angels Beckon, coming in the September/October issue, she's on her feet and back to amateur sleuthing. (Cliché count: two in this paragraph, two in the graph above. I think I owe my students a mea culpa.)

Writing a returning, evolving character is tough - as plenty of folks here on SleuthSayers can attest. There are lots of details to keep track of, of course, but there's also the simple recurring question where do we go next? I gain inspiration from the world around me, particularly from photographs.

Here's a photo I found helpful in writing about Lori's days on the street. The image of makeshift shelters over the 405 in California - a freeway that runs by Disneyland and Hollywood along the sparkling Pacific Ocean, through BelAir and into the opulent valley - while small, tragic lives play out unseen above, is particularly evocative. But there are real meat-and-potato details in the photo, too. That blue tarp - who hasn't seen them on roofs and hillsides after a heavy rain? The piles of trash heaped around something that may be the form of a sleeping person, and there, heartbreakingly, a bag of food clipped out of reach of rats, as if the unhoused were camping in the Angeles National Forest guarding their food from bears.  

I'm not alone in looking to visual images for inspiration. Photographer Horace Bristol's collaboration with Steinbeck inspired the immortal Grapes of Wrath. (Though many associate that book with Dorothea Lange's iconic photo Migrant Mother, there's not actually a linear connection between Steinbeck and Lange.)

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje was inspired by a rare photo of jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden and his band.

The epigraph to Clarence Major's gorgeous poem, Photograph of a Gathering of People Waving, reads "based on an old photograph bought in a shop at Half Moon Bay, summer, 1999." Who would not be transported by the poet's lines, "You remember your own meadow/…your grandmother’s church-folk/ gathering on a Sunday afternoon in saintly quietness."

In my series, Lori's friends Tony and Marta Morales have three kids, the youngest of whom is Camilla, named after one of Lori's alter egos. In some of the stories, the Morales family barely surfaces, while in others they play an integral role. But it's been years since I was part of a big, loud, active family, and I need my work to be up to date. I don't want to show the oldest boy bragging about his razor scooter, only to find dirt bikes are the current thing. Do people still cook out on tripod Weber grills? Are bougie toddlers wearing spaceships this year, or jungle animals, or clowns, or dinosaurs? Google can tell you a lot, sure, but to see how people really live, go onto facebook or instagram and start scrolling. Like many parents and grandparents, I don't post pictures of children or teens online. There are too many freaks out there, manipulating photos with AI. But plenty of people do post pics of little Shiloh learning to ride a bike, of Jaden's birthday party and Olivia's sixth-grade graduation, and those photos will give you a wealth of detail to work with.

You'll find that razors are still popular (along with dirt bikes, offroad bikes, and skateboards). Yes, people still burn burgers on Weber grills, and while spaceships and jungle animals are perennially popular, dinosaurs are really back - and for girls, as well as boys. But you're not going to find much by way of clowns in your local Carter's shop. Cool Millennial and Gen Z couples are tearing out carpeting, throwing down hardwood, and painting the interiors of their homes muddy browns and greys and mauvish-pinks. For the outsides, "Millennial charcoal" is still a thing, but white, grey, and pale blue are coming back strong.

You can also get story ideas from those pictures of anonymous strangers - remember the photo of little Olivia's sixth-grade graduation noted above? Perfumes of Arabia, the first story in It's Not Even Past, was inspired by just such a photo. In a shot posted on Insta by a proud mom, Olivia is beaming, her dad's arm around her on one side, Mom beside her on the other. But who's that off to the side? Could it be Olivia's younger sister, looking up at her with narrowed eyes that seem more envious than admiring?

And to see where that went, you'll have to grab a copy of the book and read the story. I'll keep you posted about our upcoming pub date.

And yes, "I'll keep you posted" is absolutely a cliché.