Imagine if you will a lonely pub, a neighborhood taproom caught between urban blight and city renewal, the setting for my story in the first SleuthSayers anthology, Murder, Neat. Its owner Barney and his loyal friend and assistant Grace serve those who wander in. One taciturn customer takes a table by himself. He rarely speaks and never removes his baseball cap.
As Barney locks up, baseball man thrusts a revolver in Barney’s throat. He demands Barney serve up Glenfiddich, an under-the-counter scotch far outside the affordable range of local patrons. Sipping his drink, the man commences a pattern of checking the time with his cell phone.
As menacing clues accumulate, Barney grows alarmed. He realizes robbery isn’t on the stranger’s agenda but his life is. Our bartender has minutes to figure out who the stranger is and why he wants him dead.
Plot Points
This is one of my shorter stories, weighing less than 2000 words. Almost a one-act play, it’s a quick read. The idea for it came quickly, too.
I’d been working on another story, one that hasn’t yet sold. In a flash of inspiration, I realized its crucial plot point could be applied to this new project in an almost unrecognizable way.
The original tale features a broken hi-tech genius in a gradually evolving twist. Now in a faster paced narrative, this new story in Murder, Neat centers around a bartender who struggles to count down a cash drawer. Place the two stories side by side, they are so different, few readers– including me– could identify the nexus, and yet without that plot point, the story would be entirely different.
Title Bout
John Floyd is especially adept coming up with smart titles. The hazard for many writers is the risk of an almost clever name, a title that sounds smart at first blush, but proves gratuitous and not particularly applicable.
Three miles down the street from me abides a tavern called The Bar Code. Its outdoor signage features a large scannable UPC code.
I toyed with a title of Bar Code, stretching its context to disguise the ragged gap in its meaning. It was cleverish, but not satisfactory. And then inspiration struck:
Razing the Bar
I was pleased. Best of all, you, my reader, will discover the title is especially apt. Do enjoy the read.
Sounds good! Are those images AI generated?
ReplyDeleteHi Janice. The pictures are indeed 87.532% (give or take) AI generated. I painted the bartender’s face and the portrait on the wall behind him. I added the revolver in the 1st and 2nd graphics and should have in the 3rd image. I’d worked a Glenfiddich bottle into the scene, but it didn’t make the final cut.
DeleteDIY: ChatGPT-4 (Microsoft Copilot) served as a front-end to Dall-E. I instructed it to create a noir pub scene with a wary bartender and a man wearing gloves and a baseball cap. It took several attempts and only a quarter of the images were usable. One pictured the customer exactly as I wanted, but the rest of the scene was so ‘off’ I couldn’t use it.
Funny: I just noticed I’d flipped the portrait! Obviously I used layers in my portions of the vignette. I wanted the portrait dark and subtle, and apparently I succeeded, so subtle it escaped my notice.
Bar tender is definitely more convincing than the customer!
DeleteLeigh -- I love the title "Razing the Bar." And thank you for the kind words.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward even more, now, to reading your story.
Thanks, John. That title inspiration brought home the lesson of an almost clever name and a perfect one.
DeleteI agree with John. Terrific title. Really short stories can be hard to carry off. They're almost like haikus, so much has to be perfect. Great setup, really looking forward to reading your story.
ReplyDeleteThank you much, Larry.
DeleteHaven't talked haikus in years.
We must correct that.
What fun!
ReplyDeleteAnd for Grace, I read Velma - grin. Looking forward to getting that paperback,and great reading.
There could be overlap, Melodie. You were on my mind the other day, I was thinking of running an article past you.
DeleteIt's a great title indeed. And one-act stories are super effective. Not everything has to go scene-by-scene. Big things in life happen fast.
ReplyDelete> Not everything has to go scene by scene.
DeleteThat's well put, Bob: The setting is so mundane and simple and yet we can imagine becoming caught up in an ugly situation.
I'm working my way through my Kindle version of Murder, Neat and I'm looking forward to reading it!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Eve. I wish you good reading.
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