Let Them Eat Grass

I ran across this clip of an interview with Peter Thiel, multimillionaire financier of JD Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and creator of Paypal:

Apparently, the billionaire tech bros aren't sure that humans (other than themselves) should survive.  Probably totally utilitarian.  We're simply not needed, once AI and robots take over all the jobs, and create / grow all the things they need, from yachts to tomatoes.

BTW, According to the New York Times and The Guardian, Trump reportedly said in a campaign meeting that if it were up to Stephen Miller, there would only be 100 million people living in the United States, and they would all resemble Miller.  This would mean that 200 million people in this country will have to be either forcibly migrated or killed to satisfy his vision.  Last I heard, that's called genocide.  But then, the KKK, Proud Boys, White Christian Nationalists etc., want the United States to be freed of anyone of color, Jews, and anybody who has commingled with them.  

Now I have, sadly, read The Turner Diaries, and I know that its fans really are all salivating over mass murder / genocide that will take them back to a white paradise where everyone has 40 acres and a thousands guns to protect it.  One of them, after the Oklahoma City bombing, came rushing into the courthouse to crow that war had been declared and there were no innocent victims.  

But I would expect no less from billionaire tech bros like Thiel, Musk, et al, because they really don't like humans, even each other.  And as for us: we're inefficient, we require resources (like food and water), we need sleep... basically, we're grungy and unimportant.  We are the peasants to the tech bros' Renaissance Princes.  

But it has been ever thus.  In Barbara Tuchman's brilliant A Distant Mirror:  The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, she writes of how the peasants were seen by the upper classes 600 years ago, with this virulent excerpt from the contemporary Le Despit au Vilain (vilain = peasant):

"Tell me Lord, if you please, by what right or title does a peasant eat beef? And goose, of which they have plenty?  And this troubles God.  God suffers from it and I too.  For they are a sorry lot, these peasants who eat fat goose!  Should they eat fish?  Rather let them eat thistles and briars, thorns and stray and hay on Sunday and pea-pods on weekdays.  They should keep watch without sleep and have trouble always; that is how peasants should live...  It is they who spoil the common welfare."  

It's important to remember that throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and well into the 19^th century, it was the peasants who did all the hard work and paid all the taxes, not the royalty, nobility or the church.  Their rights were limited, they had no say (much less something like a vote) in their government, and their property was always at hazard of being seized.  And I mean seized, as in the clearing of the Highlands in Scotland (1750-1860) and the Enclosure Acts in England (between 1604-1904 there were 5,200 Acts passed) which drove peasants / crofters off their land and replaced them with profitable sheep...  

And then there were the peasant revolts during the Calamitous Fourteenth Century - a time when one-third of Europe died from the Black Death - as the peasants tried to get more rights and more money for their hard labor. The reprisals for the Jacquerie in France, and the Wat Tyler Rebellion in England were savage. Historians cite the slaughter of about 20,000 peasants for each revolt. Keep those peasants humble and eating black bread and beans.  Or grass.  

And, about 100 years later, during the Reformation, Martin Luther was stunned and appalled by the German Peasants' Revolt of 1525, when the peasants took Martin Luther at his word ("there is neither slave nor free," etc.) and rose up against their overlords, in search of actually being paid by the nobility / church for all their hard labor, instead of being taxed into oblivion. Instead of being on their side, Luther condemned them as un-Christian and urged the princes to crush the revolt without mercy, saying that "there's nothing more poisonous than a rebel -- killing one is like killing a mad dog." The nobles took him at his word. As many as 100,000 peasants were killed before it was all over.  

"Should peasants eat meat? Rather should they chew grass on the heath with the horned cattle and go naked on all fours."(Spielvogel's Western Civ. I text, p. 195.)  They pretty much did during the Great Famine in Ireland (1845-1849), when the potato blight killed off the main source of food for Ireland. 

 

NOTE: The reason the Irish were living almost exclusively on potatoes was because the English overlords who'd claimed all the land took all the other crops - grain, meat, etc. - for taxes. One of the great scandals of the Great Famine is that Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of government relief, limited the Government's food aid programme, claiming that food would be readily imported into Ireland once people had more money to spend after earning wages on new public-works projects (which may or may not have existed). In a private correspondence, he explained how the famine could bring benefit to the English; As he wrote to Edward Twisleton: 

"We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country". (Wikipedia)

Meanwhile British landlords continued, throughout the Famine, to export grain at a profit from Ireland while a million people died of famine and another million or two emigrated to escape.  The emigrants received the usual warm welcome:  

And now it's back (as if it ever died).  How else to interpret our current society where billionaire Elon Musk, for example, pays no taxes, while my husband and I pay taxes even on our hard-earned Social Security?  Where Congress has Cadillac health insurance and pensions, while saying the US can't afford the universal health care that every other industrialized nation has?  Where the BBBill "requires the leasing of at least 50% of public lands that private companies desire to lease for drilling, mining or logging"?  Where the estate, gift, and generation-skipping and transfer tax exemption will increase from $13.99 million in 2025 to $15 million in 2026? (LINK) If we're so damn useless, why do they need our money, our public lands, our health care?

Curtis Yarvin
photo by David Merfield

NOTE:  Curtis Yarvin, influential philosopher among the tech bros, is all about the "Dark Enlightenment", a society in which democracy is abolished and city states are back, run by corporations, with absolute rulers subject only to the corporate board.  And you will take what wages that Corporate State is willing to give you and like it, or you will be cast into outer darkness. 

But, on a good note, Mr. Yarvin is spooked.  Just last week he wrote:

The second Trump revolution, like the first, is failing. It is failing because it deserves to fail. It is failing because it spends all its time patting itself on the back. It is failing because its true mission, which neither it nor (still less) its supporters understand, is still as far beyond its reach as algebra is beyond a cat. Because the vengeance meted out after its failure will dwarf the vengeance after 2020—because the successes of the second revolution are so much greater than the first—I feel that I personally have to start thinking realistically about how to flee the country. Everyone else in a similar position should have a 2029 plan as well. And it is not even clear that it will wait until 2029: losing the Congress will instantly put the administration on the defensive." (LINK)

    Please, Curtis, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

NOTE: Peter Thiel gave private lectures on Christianity that connected government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future, according to recordings reviewed by The Washington Post. He argued that those who propose limits on technology development not only hinder business but threaten to usher in the destruction of the United States and an era of global totalitarian rule, according to the recordings. And he said that “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta [Thurnberg] or Eliezer [Yudkowsky, a prominent critic of the tech industry’s approach to AI].

Thiel, whose net worth is around $27 billion, also used his private talks to criticize financial regulations. He said such rules were a sign that a singular world government has begun to emerge that could be taken over by an Antichrist figure who could then use it to exert control over people.  “It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money,” Thiel said, according to the recordings. “An incredible machinery of tax treaties, financial surveillance, and sanctions architecture has been constructed... Wealth gives the “illusion of power and autonomy,” Thiel added, “but you have this sense it could be taken away at any moment.”  (LINK) 

MY NOTE:  Memento Mori Peter, and the world's smallest violin playing for you.  

The fact that what wealth "We, the People" (hi! remember us?) have can be taken away at any moment is irrelevant, of course.  They are the Renaissance Princes, we are the peasants, but with AI, robots, etc., they can get rid of most of us and have AI and robots do all the work.  New Enclosure Acts, new Clearances, and  AI will do all the programming, robots will build and repair all the worker robots, and all things will go tickety-boo like superior clockwork.  Whoever thought that billionaires would be the ultimate optimists?  Once you get over the idea that icky humans have got to be killed, I mean, culled. 

(LINK)

If that's the future, I'm with the Antichrist… and apparently I'm going to be in good company.

Bright Babble From The Bayou.

Two weeks ago I wrote about Bouchercon in New Orleans last month.  Here are some words of wisdom I gathered there:

"Historical fiction is very liberating because you don't have to explain why the cell phone doesn't work." -  Laura Joh Rowland

"Writing is a hobby that I don't have to buy golf clubs for, or worms for fishing." - Josh Pachter

"What if I write about that but not at all about that?" - Brandi Bradley

"I have killed my ex-husband about twelve times." - Pamela Ebel

"I love editing. I love publishing. I love bookselling. I hate writing." - Otto Penzler

"Research is a deep dark rabbit hole that I just love." -Wendy Gee

"We fistfight a lot in the South because everything's so far apart we can't wait for the police to show up." - S.A. Cosby

"I've never seen a writers' block problem that couldn't be solved by conversation with other writers." - Jonathan Maberry

"What's romance without a good murder?" - Meredith Anthony

'If you find my stuff funny it says more about what's wrong with you than what's wrong with me." - Jeff Markowitz

"I was tired of the Civil War before I was born." - Henry Wise

"A great opening line is a cheap magic trick." - Ivy Pochoda

"I've built a career on sarcasm." - Gini Koch

"You're writing a story to entertain people, not put them to sleep.  We have Ulysses for that." - Charles Todd

"What are you saving your time for?" - Polly Stewart

"How can you write about crime fiction if you don't do crime?" - William Boyle

"In school I read 'The Lottery' and it broke me.  I don't think you should read it at the age I read it." - Jason Powell

"That which we call a dead body smells the same in all time periods." - Laura Joh Rowland

"All of America has become the South." - Ace Atkins

"My editor always calls my books cozies on crack." - Rachel Howzell Hall 

"Deadlines are the writer's friend." - Thekla Madsen

"My agent and I had a difficult divorce." - Bonnar Spring

"Only Elmore Leonard was born Elmore Leonard, but we can all get closer." - Mysti Berry

"The pillars of the South are religion, class, sex, and race." - S.A. Cosby

"Can her friendship survive being a serial killer?" - Emma C. Wells

"What do you kids call dancing these days? Just dancing? You're letting us down on the slang." - Gini Koch

"If I'm stuck in the doldrums I give my characters a side quest." - Brandi Bradley

"Sometimes the tipping point doesn't tip for many years after the pre-tipping." -  Laura Joh Rowland

"I go to the library because that's where the cool kids are hanging out." - Jonathan Maberry

"The adage that it's a privilege just to be nominated is bullshit." - Don Bruns

"Write about characters, not caricatures. We're not all Boo Radley. We have shoes now." - S.A. Cosby 

"I don't think you can have a story without character development." - Steve Steinbock

"I'm very much a Joseph Campbell meets Save the Cat kind of writer." - Rachel Howzell Hall  

"A crime novel without a bar is like a day without sunshine." - Eric Beetner

"I have a lottery ticket. It proves that math education in public schools is a failure." -Wendy Gee

"Humor comes from a place of trauma. You figure if I make the guys laugh, maybe they'll stop hitting me." - Libby Klein

"Scanty-cladness is a futuristic trope." -  Laura Joh Rowland

"My grandmother made the best sweet potato pie in Virginia and I will fight you about that." - S. A. Cosby

"I was going to say something unflattering about myself but I'm vain." - James Lincoln Warren

"Everything you cede to a machine is something you are not learning to do. You are the passenger, not the driver." - Jonathan Maberry

"My Victorian series you can blame on PBS." - Laura Joh Rowland

"I was born in the 1960s, so how is that a historical period?" - Nancy Herriman

"Books that have no humor in them I find unrealistic." - Matt Goldman

"Hopefully this novel that I'm working on right now will be out before we're all dead." - Rob Byrnes

"I google great first lines. Sometimes I see my friends' lines there and I get sad." - Rachel Howzell Hall 

"Someone said I like your books but I don't like your main character at all. I said, you know that's me, right?" - Libby Klein

"Aristotle also wore a Snoopy hat." - Tim Maleeny

"If you're trying to be timeless, good luck. "We've already got Pride and Prejudice." - Elizabeth Rose Quinn 

"It's like la la la, oh shit." - Rachel Howzell Hall 

Looking for Tips about Writing and Submitting Mystery Short Stories? This is the Blog Post for You

You want to start writing crime/mystery short stories? Great. Jump right in. After all, you've gotta start somewhere. Every long journey begins with a single step. So don't be afraid to put yourself out there when you put pen to paper. But be sure to think outside the box and avoid cliches like the plague. If you do all that, before you know it, you'll live happily ever after.

If you're a new or newer writer, you may be wondering if my word choices in the prior paragraph were ironic. They were. But the sentiment behind them was not. It is important to take risks and try to achieve your dreams, and you do have to start somewhere. 

I started my fiction-writing journey more than twenty years ago by taking a workshop in writing a mystery novel. I wasn't aiming to write short stories back then, but the skills I learned were applicable. I was fortunate to have found a workshop that exactly fit my needs a five-minute drive from where I lived. I recognize that might not be the experience of everyone who is reading this now.

But here is something you all do have in common. You can sign up for a free online webinar being held this Saturday, October 18, where you can hear from some seasoned writers and editors, as well as some successful newer writers, about writing and submitting crime/mystery short stories. It doesn't matter where you live or your experience level or what your ability to pay is. If you have an internet connection and are interested in the topic, you are welcome.

You're also welcome even if you aren't new to writing short stories. This advice could be useful no matter how many stories you've had published.

The webinar, titled Mystery in the Midlands: Writing Short Mystery Fiction 2025, is sponsored by the Palmetto Chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Southeastern Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Here is the schedule (note that everything is Eastern Time):

11:15 a.m. Welcome

11:30 a.m. Plotting Short Stories

12:30 p.m. New Voices in Short Mystery Fiction

1:30 p.m. Intriguing an Editor: So Your Writing’s Remembered Even If Your Story’s Rejected

2:30 p.m. Conclusion

 

Segment Descriptions and Participants

Plotting Short Stories

John M. Floyd’s short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Strand Magazine, Best American Mystery Stories, Best Mystery Stories of the Year, and many other publications. John is an Edgar nominee, a Shamus Award winner, and a six-time Derringer Award winner.

 

New Voices in Short Mystery Fiction — Michael Bracken, moderator

N.M. Cedeño writes across genres. Her short stories have appeared in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, After Dinner Conversation, Black Cat Weekly, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and Crimeucopia. “Predators and Prey,” was selected for the “Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense of 2024” list in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025.

LaToya Jovena's crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The Best American Mystery and Suspense. She writes about the DC suburbs a lot, because that’s where she lives.

Tom Milani’s first story was published in 2022. Since then, his work has been short-listed for a Derringer Award, and he has published an additional nine stories, a novella, and his debut novel.

 

Intriguing an Editor: So Your Writing’s Remembered Even If Your Story’s Rejected — Paula Gail Benson, moderator

Barb Goffman has won the Agatha Award four times, the Macavity twice, and the Anthony, Derringer, and Ellery Queen Readers Award once each, as well as the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s lifetime achievement award. She’s been a finalist for major mystery awards forty-nine times. She has edited or co-edited fifteen anthologies with another in progress, and she received a Derringer Award for Murder, Neat.

Sandra Murphy is a Derringer-winning writer whose stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and several other publications. Additionally, she is the editor of four anthologies, including, most recently, Sex and Violins: An Erotic Crime Anthology and Yeet Me in St. Louis: Crime Fiction from Under the Arch.

Josh Pachter is an author, editor, and translator. A two-time Derringer winner and the 2020 recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement, he is the editor of more than two dozen anthologies, including four Anthony Award finalists. 

 

Are you eager to watch? If so, it's easy to register. Just click here. 

Thank you to the organizers for inviting me to participate. I hope you join us. 

Extraordinary People

Everyday New York midtown crowd

A lot of crime fiction writers I know describe their process as one of taking ordinary people and putting them in extraordinary circumstances. Such prototypical ordinary protagonists are jolted out of their comfort zone into sudden danger. The writer keeps putting the pressure on and raising the stakes. Their characters must be resourceful to survive. All they want is for things to return to normal. They want those they love to be safe and their lives to be exactly as they were before. But circumstances change them. Either they rise to the occasion and become heroes, or they are sucked into violence and criminal behavior from which there is no way back.

In cozies, the stakes are less dramatic than in thrillers—a domestic murder, a group of people under suspicion. Again, the premise is that the characters are ordinary people. The amateur sleuth is a divorcee with kids, a bakery owner, a book club or knitting circle member. The law enforcement antagonist and/ or love interest is a police chief, sheriff, or detective, also an ordinary person doing their job. The story starts when the amateur sleuth’s circle is thrown out of their comfort zone by the murder. The death has consequences, and the investigation stirs up suspicion and uncharacteristic behavior in a community that may have seemed untroubled on the surface.

Define Normal, Central Park

It has never occurred to me to say that I write about ordinary people. The great John Floyd has affectionately called my characters "zany." But John lives in suburban Mississippi, and I live in New York. My characters, like New Yorkers in general, don’t seem zany to themselves. They range from interesting to extraordinary, which is how I like them. How else could they leap off the page crackling with life and feeling? How else could their dialogue sizzle with wit? My favorite characters are clever, but they're also long on empathy. They have heart as well as humor. Like other writers’ ordinary characters flung into danger, they're resourceful survivors. But my premise is that they survive and triumph against odds because they're extraordinary from the start.

My first series, the Bruce Kohler Mysteries, has a protagonist and two sidekicks to begin with, his friends Jimmy and Barbara, and eventually a third, his girlfriend Cindy. Bruce is a recovering alcoholic with a New York attitude, a smart mouth, and an ill-concealed heart of gold. He is in the gutter in the first novel, and by the twelfth and latest short story, he's almost ten years sober. He's never relapsed, and he's grown up. He's become a mensch, as we say in New York. That's extraordinary. Barbara's a nice Jewish girl, smart and funny and a born rescuer. She's never met a needy person she didn't want to help. At first, she was a lot like me. But as a writer, I realized that didn't work. So did I tone her down? No. I took her over the top. Unlike me, Barbara never learns from her mistakes. She has to help. She has to investigate. She sniffs out murder like a bloodhound. She drags Bruce and Jimmy into danger. She's extraordinary—and hilarious. Jimmy, another alcoholic, has "been sober since Moses was studying for his bar mitzvah." He's a computer wiz, an obsessed history buff, and a New Yorker who freaks out if he has to leave Manhattan. Not ordinary. Nor is Cindy, an NYPD detective who gets her gold shield before she's ten years sober and has also done a lot of growing up.

Sultan Bayezid II welcomes Jews to Istanbul

My second series, the Mendoza Family Saga, is about an extraordinary Sephardic Jewish family. My real-life family is Ashkenazic, ie Eastern European Jews, but they inspired the Mendozas to some extent, as did Louisa May Alcott's fictional March family from Little Women. In 1492, young Diego Mendoza sails with Columbus on the same day the Jews are expelled from Spain. A year later, he and his sister Rachel join the second voyage. The family ends up in Istanbul, where the Ottoman Empire welcomes the Jews. Rachel marries the last surviving Taino and has a family. She is arguably the best traveled woman of her time. By 1520, she is working as a purveyor to the ladies of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent's harem. She is also solving mysteries in partnership with the Kizlar Agha, the Chief Eunuch of the Harem.

Esperanza Malchi, a kira who sought 
wealth and power and was murdered 
by sepahis in 1600

Rachel is my favorite character, but all the Mendozas are extraordinary. They have intelligence, resilience, flexibility, compassion, and integrity. The family's outsider perspective as dispossessed Jews allows me to explore the theme of cultural relativism in an age of absolutism. Rachel's children are brought up to be at ease with both Judaism and Islam. As Rachel tells them, “If we had not learned to tolerate a great deal of inconsistency, not a single Mendoza would have made it out of Spain alive back in 1492, much less reached Istanbul to prosper and produce such cheeky children.”

Kizlar Agha, 17th c painting
by J-B Vanmour

The Kizlar Agha, the Chief Eunuch of the Harem, is an extraordinary character in himself. Rachel's—and my—Kizlar Agha is fictional, but the office existed from 1574 until its abolition in 1908, carrying a range of ceremonial and practical duties and political power in different eras.Other than women and the Sultan himself, only he and the black eunuchs under his supervision were permitted to enter the royal harem. In my portrayal, he is a figure of great intelligence, magnificence, and gravitas, but very lonely. It is not surprising that he and Rachel begin by matching wits and come to enjoy each other's company—and their investigations—immensely.

Being the first woman to do the job doesn't mean they'll like you.

Normally, one starts a story at the beginning, but this is best understood by its ending. In 1930, Frederick Griffen wrote about a funeral in Hamilton Ontario that may still hold the record for the largest, most flamboyant funeral the city has ever seen with over 20,000 attendees.

The article seems, at first glance, full of over the top descriptions but, history has confirmed the accuracy of the details.

"She had lain in state, like a princess, for three days and nights while ten thousand people filed in to see her… The massive coffin of bronze, with heavy silver steel trimmings, was scarcely to be seen, hidden, as it virtually was, with flowers. What flowers! I am not an expert in funerals but, personally, I never saw anything to equal them."

Her two daughters "had to be borne aside in a semi-comatose state of bewilderment and woe." and from the cellar below, her German Shepherd bayed loudly.

"At the head of the coffin was a magnificent pillow of mixed flowers, orchids, roses, gladioli and other blooms, literally hundreds of them, [with] a wide ribbon of gauze. And on it in letters of gold were the words, “To my wife.”

The man who organized and paid for the funeral, Rocco Perri, sat, overcome with grief between her daughters but he was not the father of her daughters nor, despite the gold inscription he wrote on the ribbon, was the woman his wife and, although the funeral he organized and paid for was a Jewish funeral, Rocco was not Jewish but, rather, an Italian immigrant.

The woman he was burying was Bessie Starkman, the first female Canadian organized crime boss. She was gunned down, at the age of forty, in the garage of the home she shared with Rocco, who was referred to as "Canada's Al Capone" and was one of the most prominent Prohibition-era crime figures in Canada.

Bessie Starkman was born into a Polish Jewish family, immigrated to Canada at about the age of ten. At age eighteen, she married Harry Tobsen, a driver at a bakery, and had two daughters. In 1912, they took in a boarder named Rocco Perri. After a brief romance, Starkman left her husband, children and Jewish faith for Perri. They lived in St. Catharines, Ontario, where Perri had a labourer job, and then moved to Hamilton. Perri worked as a travelling salesman until the couple opened a small grocery store.

They went from ordinary, low paying jobs to becoming mob bosses with a lavish lifestyle, including diamonds and expensive cars, because of the Ontario Temperance Act of 1916; boot legging became a new money maker. Perri became the 'King of the Bootleggers' and, ignoring the rule that women can't join the mob, he made Starkman the first female crime boss. She negotiated orders of liquor and beer, laundered money and dealt with other gangs. They operated in Kitchener, Toronto, Windsor, Hamilton and Niagara, ran bootleg liquor to Detroit, Chicago and New York State and were involved in prostitution. When prohibition ended in 1927, the couple then moved on to illegal drugs and gambling.

The Italian-Canadian journalist Antonio Nicaso wrote: "Up to that time, a woman's role in the underworld was relegated to wife and mother, or mistress and prostitute. Until Bessie came along, none had been in a position of authority in a major crime gang-let alone entrusted to manage a massive flow of dirty money."

Of course, being a mob boss, even the first woman mob boss, meant that Bessie was involved in violent interactions with people. Her relationship with Rocco was also troubled and she left him and returned a number of times. Despite his progressive views of women in the mob, Rocco had an old fashioned wandering eye. He had an affair with Sarah Routledge, beginning in 1918, and had two daughters with her. He maintained a home and paid child support. Sarah, when falsely informed Rocco was married to Starkman, committed suicide in 1922.

Bessie's murder was never solved but much was written about it:

"Bessie died after being ambushed by two men with shotguns in the garage of their home, Aug. 13, 1930. She had alienated so many people, including possibly her own husband, police could not narrow the list of potential suspects to a workable number."

Though the 'alienated' husband was not married to her, he threw a heck of a funeral for her. Or was it her actual husband, who she never divorced, who killed her?

The first woman to do any job often garners respect and admiration. Not so with Bessie Starkman. The qualities that made her successful were the same as any mob boss: she was ruthless, greedy and had emotionally volatile relationships. The 20,000 people at her funeral were not devoted friends but were mostly strangers drawn to the spectacle of a very expensive funeral. The title of the article by Frederick Griffen says it all:

Grotesque Ceremony Becomes Free-For-All of Morbid Curiosity

Twenty Thousand Mill and Fight to See Bessie Perri’s Magnificent Funeral

How The Addams Family Got Their Names...Then Blackballed

The top brass was skeptical. Yes, Filmways Television had sent their head of development, Daniel Levy, on the hunt for new ideas, but they weren't sold on what he'd found. Look, Filmways was on a roll. Since jumping from commercials into the sitcom game, they'd scored with Mr. Ed (1961), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), and Petticoat Junction (1963). Their formula was simple enough, bucolic family comedy with a problem of the week. And now Levy was pitching monsters. 

No, Levy said. A family of monsters. With the same problems as the rest of us. 

Levy was selling characters from Charles Addams' New Yorker single-panel cartoons run since 1933--and not getting far. Sure, monster movies were having a Sixties revival, and sure, Addams had become known for his humorous subversions of everyday life, a traditional world viewed through a mirror darkly. He'd published multiple collections and won a special Edgar from Mystery Writers of America. 

In 1938, one of his panels introduced a femme fatale housewife and her hulking butler hearing out a vacuum salesman in a dusty haunted house. An eerie figure peers through the upper-floor balustrades. Over the years, those characters would evolve and expand into a family of grotesque archetypes. A gnome-ish father, warped children, a hag grandmother, a criminally insane uncle in a frock.

There was a problem, one that underscored the Filmways brass' concern about a series made from sight gags. Addams had scarcely bothered to name the characters.

Nor did he have much need. The characters featured in a sliver of Addams' output. Addams maintained a diverse world of inverted reality for a simple reason: Getting paid. The New Yorker prized clean-cut sophistication and creative variety. They also received a ton of submissions. Addams leaned into his vision of everyday bizarre so that his submissions stood out. He saved his family for when they packed a selling punch. 

Levy hadn't reached head of development by being bad at it. He'd already recruited a bemused Addams onto the project. Job one: developing character profiles, to include proposed names. As a starting point, in 1961 Addams and FAO Schwarz had inked a deal for limited edition dolls of two family members. One was the mother, who had evolved into a vampish caricature, now dubbed Morticia for her complexion and personal interests. The second was the death-obsessed, void-eyed daughter, who'd first appeared in 1944, now dubbed Wednesday from the child of woe in the Monday's Child nursery rhyme.

For everyone else, Addams leaned into sharp puns, with Lurch for the lumbering butler and Fester for the deviant uncle. The simple appellative Grandmama clicked for the family matriarch. That lurking presence in panel backgrounds became Thing, changed for television to be a disembodied hand.  

Levy had talked Filmways into a pilot, in part because Levy hadn't picked a loser yet and a lot because ABC signaled interest. Addams' pick of Pubert for the mischievous, dynamite-packing boy was a non-starter. Pugsley was a more refined take. Addams floated Repelli for the father. It was clever in all the wrong ways, and the name would look terrible on the merch boxes. John Astin, already cast in the role, preferred the second choice, Gomez. That was that. 

Thomas E. Dewey,
Gomez's model

Addams didn't fret the creative control. Television paid better than freelance cartoonist. Besides, he never considered the sitcom as reflecting his art. He had a vision; Filmways had a derivative product. Where Levy made this gothic gag family into mere eccentrics, Addams' version was as dark as their archetypes. When Addams drew a ghoul, it was a ghoul.

When Filmways needed an expanded family to drive new plotlines, Addams stayed collaborative. With his permission, Levy developed Cousin Itt as a comical walking shag of hair. Itt was an instant favorite. Addams knew a winner when he saw one and retconned the cousin into his drawings.

Itt, though, had a publication problem. The New Yorker. Editor William Shawn refused to accept any further artwork from Addams featuring his namesake televised family. Other submissions were welcome. The New Yorker styled itself too up-market to amplify a mainstream sitcom. They certainly weren't in the free advertising business. Shawn continued to decline Addams Family panels long after the show's 2-season run ended. 

It was only in 1988, after Shawn retired, that the now-named Addams Family returned to The New Yorker. It'd been fifty years since their first appearance and a quarter century of editorial exile. Addams died a few months later.

Today, of course, the Addams Family is big business, their names pop culture givens. Back then, Levy sensed those cartoons' broad appeal, a family that was kooky, spooky, and altogether ooky--but still a family. That was one part of Addams' message. Monsters had problems, too. Monsters loved and bonded just like anyone else.  

Like anyone else. Like all of us. That's the rest of Addams' message. If good is tucked away in evil, then evil things hide in what is held out as good. Tradition, conformity, the need to pretend life is idyllic. Addams was calling out an uncomfortable fact. Life isn't pretty. Life isn't safe. It's just weird, wondrous, and short. 

We might as well embrace the ride.

* * *

Happy Halloween, everyone!

How About a Book with that Scone?

My accountant told me I was crazy. “This is not a way people make money,” he told me. Likewise, my financial advisor said that if I blithely ignored her advice that my wife and I would probably jeopardize our retirement plans. The lawyer—who represented the other side, not me—said that the investment on offer was probably not a smart move for most people.

Just what was this crazy thing I was about to do that everyone else seemed to think was moronic?

My wife and I were contemplating buying a bookstore. It made sense to us. We were writers, after all. We wrote books. We liked books. What more did we need to know?

We planned to partner with a friend of ours, a business dude, who dreamed of being a writer. (You know the type.) His wife was obsessed with books, and planned to play a hands-on role in the business. Which was good, because we didn’t. If we went ahead with the deal, we would attend a few bookstore schools—yes, there are such things—with our new partners, but we planned to keep writing. And to our partners’ credit, they wanted us to do so, thinking it would good for “our” mutual brand. He was thinking of the well-known authors who are or were part-owners in bookstores. But I don’t think anyone has ever thought of me in the same sentence as author-proprietors such as Anne Patchett or Judy Blume.

Ultimately, though, we never went through it. Mostly because the seller got cold feet, not us. (I dunno—maybe our questions about the store’s current financials sounded too business-y?)

When the deal didn’t go through, my accountant heaved a sigh of relief that I could hear all the way from Staten Island.

And you know what? Nowadays I’m glad that we didn’t take the plunge because there is a lot I know now—about employees, about business, about myself—that I didn’t know then. Interestingly, I became a better analyst of the bookstore business after the fact.

We have since moved to a small city that has eight brick-and-mortar stores, half selling used/rare books. And there are two online bookstores based in town that also sell used and rare books.

Whenever we are in a new city, I like to visit indie stores. Almost without thinking, I find myself ticking off a silent checklist that I have internalized. Is the store downtown in the middle of the action? Do they have good foot traffic? Are their patrons likely to be locals or tourists? Is parking great—or a challenge? Do they have a decent event space, or would they need to partner with a school, university, church, or some other obliging venue? If there’s ever another pandemic, are they well-positioned for contactless pickups?

The biggest question is unknowable unless I am willing to be impertinent: How much is your rent? Another biggie is typically more visible: what’s your overall business model beyond selling books to people who just happen to walk in off the street?

The most obvious gravy train are events with visiting authors on book tours. The more of these you can drum up in the course of a week or month, the more transactions you are likely to make. When people enter the store to hear an author speak, they are likely to buy something. Even if they skip the book on offer, they will buy a picture book or a finger puppet for a grandchild...or just a cup of coffee.

I used to think all bookstores did tons of events—until I met a woman who ran a teensy hospital bookstore. In her case, her “sideline” business model was selling fresh flowers and magazines to people visiting patients. See? To stay viable, stores often offer a little something extra besides the books.

Recently, when an author friend told me that he and his wife were partnering with their business dude in their cute city in the American South, I naturally started asking questions about their business model.

There are six or so models that I have seen over the years:

The For-Profit Bookstore That Sells New Books, Holds Regular Events, and Offers a Food & Drink Venue.
I worked in New York City in the 1990s when Barnes & Noble rolled out stores that featured overstuffed club chairs and Starbucks coffee. The press ate it up for years! Now even the indie bookstores are doing coffee, with little fanfare. Although, these days, if you aren’t selling coffee and scones that are better than Starbucks I don’t know why a customer would bother. Denise and I did a book event at an adorable bookstore in Alabama one year that offered a full bakery by day, and a bar with music venue by night. (In two separate rooms!)

The For-Profit Bookstore With the Unexpected Extra Wacky Thing. I’m thinking of the tiny bookstore in Charleston that nails its nut doing ghost and history walking tours. In fact, their first iteration of the bookstore was a small space in which walking tour patrons gathered to wait for their tours to start. Naturally, while waiting, they shopped.

The For-Profit Pop-Up. I have met young authors who double as booksellers, peddling a variety of brand-new books by themselves and their author friends from rolling carts that they set up at farmer’s markets and breweries. Overhead is minimal. I have known bookstores to set up satellite shops in different cities during summers, or right after the holidays when Main Street shops go vacant and landlords are willing to strike a decent three-month deal on rent. Just recently, I heard of a used bookstore setting up racks of highly curated books inside a cocktail bar. All the books are $8, and all are chosen to “pair” with cleverly named drinks on the bar’s menu. I guess a patron who chooses a beverage called the LeGuin & Tonic just might buy a hardcover copy of Ursula’s books.

The For-Profit Upscale Tippling Used Bookstore. There’s one of these in our town. They sell high-end bubbly, wine, cocktails, coffee, baked goods, and snacks in an extensive maze of shelves stocked with tons of used books, many of them in locked cases. It is as cute as all get-out, folks! Old books have tendency to look...picturesque, shall was say, especially when paired with attractive lamps and artwork. So picturesque, in fact, that the bane of the owners’ existence are Instagramming nabobs who clutter the aisles shooting footage for their social media feeds but who never buy a thing! The copious booze and sidewalk cafe tables offset the cost of rent, but once, I happened to walk in on a particularly happy day when alcohol took a back seat to print. “We just sold a signed, first edition of Watership Down!” the owner told me. The book’s $750 price-tag was a reminder that sometimes a single sale can bring in more revenue than a $50 bottle of champagne.

The Nonprofit With Side Hustles. I specified “for-profit” stores above because I occasionally encounter nonprofit bookstores. They ensure profitability by soliciting annual donations from their community. If patrons are willing to support local theaters, museums, symphonies, and news organizations, why not local bookstores? As one owner pointed out, bookstores may often be the only public venues in a community to host authors. If you are not lucky enough to live near a local university, or in a municipality with a robust library system or a “town hall” speaker’s program, your local bookstore fulfills that function. One of the nonprofits I encountered used the strength of their endowment to lock in a decent lease in a Main Street building and run a small indie publishing house in the back. They augmented their bottom line by subletting their extra space to a bakery. (This model is different from the Alabama store I mentioned above, which operates their own bakery and bar.)

The Nonprofit Sugar Daddy. I’m being facetious, but this model occurred to me when my author friend told me that a wealthy patron was bankrolling his bookstore. Said Daddy, who hails from a family with money to burn, bought an entire Main Street building with the intention of setting up a nonprofit bookstore, event space, and co-working space for the community. For every million their family foundation spends, they can deduct $100K off their income. This does not sound like a deal to me, but what the hell do I know? In another model I was privy to, a family foundation that owned a lot of real estate struck an unbeatable rental arrangement with the local bookstore. Instead of charging market rate for the store’s downtown space, they asked for a percentage of the store’s monthly revenue. It fluctuated monthly, but they didn’t care. They were writing the whole thing off as a deduction. In the Sugar Daddy model, you have to hope that Daddy never changes his mind, or drops dead and his greedy scions quash the good times.

I love bookstores, as I’m sure many of you do. But increasingly, we (Americans) live in a nation where citizens aspire to read more but just don’t. (Link and link.) It saddens me when the existence of bookstores must be associated with alcohol, coffee, baked goods, or else rely on the kindness of deep-pocketed strangers for survival. Then again, I laugh when I think of the longtime merchant who chided me when I called her place of business a bookstore. Like I made it seem cheap and tawdry.

“It’s not,” she said. “It’s a community center!” I was leaving town, and did not have time to ask her accountant if he agreed with her assessment.

* * * 

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com