Goldie Locke and the Three Barretts

There are several reasons for my post today. One was the release of a new crime anthology this past Tuesday; the second was a SleuthSayers column about that anthology posted the same day by my fellow SleuthSayer Barb Goffman; and the third was my belief that it's never a bad idea for a writer to copy Barb Goffman.

The anthology is Wish Upon a Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by Fairy Tales, edited by Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson, and my story in the anthology is "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." I might point out that the title of today's post is different from the title of my story--but hold on: it does name four of the characters in my story. Goldie Johnson Locke is a competent but bored police officer in a small town in south Alabama, and the three Barretts (Grennen, Sugar, and Teddy) are fairly new residents of the town. But there's been some suspicious activity at the Barrett home, and Goldie is asked by a colleague (who is also the Barretts' next-door neighbor) to unofficially investigate it. This turns out to be less than wise in terms of safety to Goldie's body and her job, but it does lead to a bit of mystery and fun and suspense (I hope) for the reader. 

I should also mention that the other three active characters in this story have, alas, names that are also a little odd, though more normal than those of Goldie and the Barrett family. One is Goldie's partner, Officer Joe Bob Finkter; the second is one of her friends at the police station, file clerk Precious Everett; and the third is the police chief, the stonefaced Captain Stonecipher. (I used to work at IBM with a Doug Stonecipher--a truly nice guy--and I've been intending for years to use his cool last name in one of my stories.)

A lot of the fun in writing this goofy tale came from the fact that it is goofy, and also from the theme of the anthology--fairy tales are great sources of inspiration. I also enjoyed the process of working the main points of the classic Goldilocks tale directly into the plot, while also putting together a fair-play mystery about what possible illegal activity these three Barretts are up to. I've often said, about several of my favorite novels--The Stand, Pillars of the Earth, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lonesome Dove--that I hated to read the final page because I loved the characters and wanted the story to go on and on--and while I don't mean to compare my writing to that of those novels, I did wind up feeling the same way when I wrote the final page of this story. I didn't want to stop. If you read it, I hope you'll get half as much pleasure out of it as I did.

I suspect that many of the contributors to Wish Upon a Crime had the same feelings as I had, when writing their stories. This stuff can be fun. I look forward to reading the whole book.

Now, since I seldom write a SleuthSayers post without asking a question or two, here are today's:

To those of you who have written for anthologies . . . what are some of the themes that you found to be the most fun, and maybe the most challenging? Do you find that writing to those themes is easier than writing a story from your own idea(s)? 

Personally, I've had a change of heart, on that final question. I used to always prefer to come up with my own ideas for my stories, and found it hard to do otherwise. The change in my way of thinking happened several years ago, when the aforementioned Barb Goffman edited a Wildside Press anthology about time travel, called (appropriately) Crime Travel. I had such a good time coming up with and writing my story for that book, I found myself looking forward to the occasional invitation to contribute to, or just to submit to, a themed anthology. I won't name them now, but there are several of those scheduled to be published soon that I greatly enjoyed writing for, and that I'm sure I'll enjoy reading.

So, one more time: Do you share my enthusiasm for writing for themed anthologies, or would you rather stick to stories that don't come from such specific outside inspiration?

Whatever the case, keep writing, and have a great June! I'll be back here on the 20th.