2025 Year in Review: Writing and Other Things

In my previous SleuthSayers post, I discussed my year as an editor; in the following I discuss my year as a writer, and I discuss some of the other things with which I was involved.

WRITING

Productivity was up from last year, but still nowhere near my best year (75 stories in 2009) with 18 original stories completed, including a novella I co-authored with a fellow SleuthSayer. This is my most productive year since 2020, when I completed 26 stories.

The shortest story was 700 words and the longest (excluding the novella) was 6,700 words, for a total of 52,950. The average length (excluding the novella) was 3,100 words, and the novella was 19,000 words. One story was horror; the rest were crime fiction of one sub-genre or another.

ACCEPTED

Although I wrote only 18 new stories, I received—exclusive of the collections mentioned in the next paragraph—23 acceptances, all for original stories.

Also accepted were a collection of 22 of my stories and a collection of 6 stories I coauthored with Sandra Murphy that also includes one individually written story from each of us. I’ll provide more details closer to publication dates.

PUBLISHED

In 2025, 21 original stories, including a collaboration with Sandra Murphy, were published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, Chop Shop, Dark Yonder, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Gag Me With a Spoon, Guilty Crime Stories Magazine, In Too Deep, Kelp Journal, KissMet Quarterly, Lunatic Fringe, Micromance, The Vigilante Crime Pulp Fiction Anthology, Tough, and Von Stray’s Crimestalker Casebook.

Also in 2025, two quasi-reprints were published: one appeared in an anthology that was rereleased by a new publisher, and a collaboration with James A. Hearn first published in AHMM was released as a podcast.

I also wrote three articles for the Mystery Writers of America’s The Third Degree.

Five publications/publishers are represented multiple times: Black Cat Weekly with four stories, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine with two stories, KissMet Quarterly with two stories, Micromance with two stories, and White City Press with stories in two anthologies.

REJECTED

I received nine rejections, which is fewer rejections than acceptances, and any year in which acceptances outnumber rejections is a good year.

RECOGNIZED

While two anthologies I co-edited won or were short-listed for awards, and while several stories I edited won or were short-listed for awards or included in best-of-year anthologies, my own writing flew under the radar in 2025.

FORTHCOMING

Including those accepted in 2025 and in previous years, I have stories forthcoming in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, Chop Shop, Cold Caller, Cryin’ Shame, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Get Your Kicks, Kings River Life, KissMet Quarterly, Mickey Finn, Micromance, Sex & Synthesizers, Skinning the Poke, The Perp Wore Pumpkin, Time After Time, and Wish Upon a Crime.

LOOKING AHEAD

So many publishers (book, periodical, and web-based) closed in 2025, are struggling with publication schedules, or have announced their impending end that it is impossible to predict what the market for short mystery fiction will look like this year. Rather than fret about it, I choose to keep writing and keep my eyes open for whatever new opportunities present themselves. That might mean—as it was this year with the discovery of new romance publications—working in other genres.

SHORTCON

After the successful launch of ShortCon, the Premier Conference for Writers of Short Crime Fiction, in 2024, we presented the second ShortCon in 2025. The third ShortCon will be presented Saturday, June 6, 2026, in Alexandria, Virginia, and we plan to continue this as an annual event. (Learn more at https://www.eastcoastcrime.com/#/.)

MYSTERY IN THE MIDLANDS

As I did in 2024, I helped Paula Benson organize the 2025 Mystery in the Midlands, an online conference that emphasized writing and publishing short crime fiction. Paula has invited me to join her again in organizing the 2026 Mystery in the Midlands, again focusing on short crime fiction.

OTHER EVENTS

I participated—as a panelist, moderator, or presenter—in several live and online conferences, conventions, and presentations in 2025 and am already scheduled to attend or present at several events (live or online) in 2026.

MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA

I’m halfway through my second two-year term as an at-large board member of the Mystery Writers of America. I will rotate off the board in January 2027.

NEWBERRY CRIME WRITING WORKSHOP

The most exciting event on the horizon is the inaugural Newberry Crime Writing Workshop, an “intensive four-week writers’ workshop for developing crime and mystery authors, taught by major figures in the field,” which takes place July 6–31, 2026, on the campus of Newberry College in Newberry, South Carolina.

Teaching one week each are Joe R. Lansdale, Cheryl Head, Warren S. Moore, and me. Writers-in-residence will live nearby and share meals with the students, providing students with an immersive experience.

Mornings are devoted to critiquing manuscripts in a workshop setting. Afternoons, evenings, and weekends are devoted to individual writing, conferences with the current writer-in-residence, social activities, and the completion of class assignments.

The registration fee includes housing and all meals throughout the four-week workshop. There is at least one small scholarship available, and we’re working on adding more, so don’t let the $4,000 tuition stop you from applying.

Add your name to the mailing list here to be notified when applications are open.

AND THAT’S ALL FOLKS

This past year was quite a wild ride, and 2026 looks to be more of the same. I can’t predict the future, so the best I can do is buckle up and prepare for whatever comes.

I hope y’all were productive last year and that this year brings you even greater success.

* * *

To kickstart the new year, my story “Glass Beach” appears in the January/February 2026 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

Wham bam, thank you ma’am.

            The other day I spell checked the word “pfft”.  It passed with flying colors.  This made me very happy.  As with exclamation points, semi-colons and references to intimate body parts, onomatopoeia can be very effective, if used sparingly.  Tom Wolfe never thought to resist any onomatopoeic impulse, but he’s the only author I know who got away with it.  (Batman comics notwithstanding.)

            It’s not only effective, it’s loads of fun.  It’s like splashing around in the mud.  Whacking a barn with a baseball bat.  Popping bubble gum.  Swooshing down the side of a mountain on a pair of skis.

            A lot of words don’t precisely mimic their subject, but sound pretty close to what they describe.  Bullet.  Grotesque.  Punch.  Slime.  Squeeze.  Jet.  Fart.  Kiss.  Others sound like they’re off by about 180 degrees.  My favorite is Pulchritude.  How did sublime beauty take up residence on the same block as Poultice or Putrid?  How could a lovely word like Sanguine, meaning optimistic, have such bloody roots?   Other words sound worse than they are.  Phlegmatic.  Dyspeptic.  Zaftig also doesn’t sound all that great, though Yiddish speakers likely meant it to reassure the rotund.  On the other hand, I would have thought Jejune was a rather pleasant state of affairs if I hadn’t looked it up.  It’s why I’m sticking with Vapid, for its unmistakably vaporous disposition. 

        Yiddish may seem the invention of a clever stand up, but English can often feel like a practical joke.  If there’s a specific thing you should be doing that’s good for you, it’s Prescribed.  If you shouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, the thing gets Proscribed.  If you’re bathed in admiration, you’re experiencing Approbation.  If the pitch forks are out for you, it’s Opprobrium.  It’s good to know if you’re researching something’s Etymological roots, and not its Entomological, unless you want bugs floating around in your word soup.  The same crew can raze a barn or raise it, though you need to know their intentions before deciding on the spelling.  Since we have Flammable, it seems profligate to have Inflammable as well, since it means the same thing, and sounds like you mean the opposite. 

Worse is Cleave.  It means to split apart, but also to tightly adhere.  Contranyms are not only confusing, they’re simply unfair. 

A Gimlet eye is reputed to be sharp and penetrating, though I once knew a chap who had an affectionate relationship with the vodka variety, and I’d say glazed was a more apt description. 

 Pleasing notions produce soothing words to the ear.  One can easily imagine people of various origins serenely flowing together, as tributaries join a river, when they Assimilate.  Words with well-placed esses are often like this.  I never had to look up Verisimilitude.  And no other word than Sibilance could accurately express the lispy phenomenon (though disliked by recording engineers).  Only a word with a soft touch could adequately conjure a Caress, usually an act requiring some Finesse. 

            On the other hand, a few hard consonants were smartly recruited to identify a Block.  (No one stubbed their toe on a word overflowing with vowels, unless they happen to be French.)  There are probably a hundred slang terms for penis, but nothing is so instructional, or adaptable to describing a thoughtless, sadistic jerk, as a Prick.  Here, the concluding consonant is essential to the effect.  If you find yourself in a Funk, you can blame the same consonant, appropriately placed, for ruining the word Fun.   When others try to foist off obvious falsehoods as truth, it’s no wonder we call it Bunk, proving consonants’ suitability for delivering ridicule.

Some words are so perfectly contrived, that looking for synonyms feels ungrateful.  Blasphemy is custom crafted to be spoken by a crusading inquisitioner, a word you can bellow from the pulpit or whisper in dim candlelight.  The first person to pull a sticky mass off the bottom of their schoolhouse desk surely called it a Wad.  In that same schoolhouse, the anonymous word coiner likely came up with Zit, a far more evocative identification than any of its peers.

  This all may seem the preoccupation of a Logophile, and I’ll gladly cop to it, though there’s a drawback to this.  Logo also means a symbol or design used to express the brand identity of a product or service.  I’m fine with this as an ordinary practice, but when marketers think it’s wise to wallpaper the entire world with their self-serving promotion, it’s just obnoxious. 

How about, logophile declares himself an antilogoist? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The United Nations: When The Call Comes From Inside The House

This is a classic horror scenario: a vulnerable young woman is home alone, often babysitting even more vulnerable children, gets phone calls with increasing threats and the worst part is that the calls are coming from inside the house. What happens to her and the children? 

What does this have to do with the United Nations? A heck of a lot at the moment, unfortunately. 

After his actions in Venezuela, President Trump continued to threaten to invade and take over Greenland, Canada and other countries, violating international law. Trump stated, “I don’t need international law,” and the only limits to his power is, "My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, made it clear that U.S. foreign policy is now firmly in the corner of might-makes-right, saying, “We live in a world, in the real world...that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” 

These increasing threats are coming from inside the house; the U.S. is a member of the UN, the organization that upholds international law. Some may think international law and international crimes are a total yawn but they are deeply mistaken and will be yawning their way into World War III, because international law was born, in large part, to prevent world wars.

After World War I and 16 million military and civilians deaths, the deeply traumatized citizens of war torn countries demanded an organization that would prevent a future world war. From this demand, the League of Nations 1920 – 1946) was born, composed of sixty-three countries, created to provide collective security: aggression against any member would be considered aggression against all. The League of Nations ultimately failed in preventing World War II because most members claimed neutrality and many were nervous about entering the war. In short: they failed to live up to the collective security agreement.

After World War II and up to 60M military and civilian deaths, countries took another kick at the can of preventing world war; this time even more earnestly. After four years of talks and debates, delegates from 50 nations, representing over 80% of the world’s population,  established the United Nations on 24 October 1945 to preserve peace. One big sticking point in the negotiations was permanent members (China, the USSR, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) demanded and finally got the right to veto any resolution passed by the UN Security Council. Many view this as the achilles heel of the UN, giving the most powerful nations carte blanche to override international law when it applies to them; putting this on a personal level, imagine that people who are most powerful and likely to harm you are given carte blanche to ignore laws that restrict them from harming you, so your murder by them is on the table of crimes that cannot be punished.

The United Nations, now comprised of 193 sovereign states and 2 observer states, is the world's largest intergovernmental organization and, given almost every state of the world is a member, it has legitimacy as the organization responsible for developing and enforcing international law.

Fast forward to the present;  President Trump has clearly broken international law and is threatening to break it in the future. “These actions represent a grave, manifest and deliberate violation of the most fundamental principles of international law, set a dangerous precedent, and risk destabilizing the entire region and the world,” a panel of United Nations experts said in a statement Jan. 7."

The crucial law presently being discussed is Article 2 that binds all members. It's posted below but, put simply, it states all member states are equal, no member should use threats or force against the political independence of members and, if they do, all members will assist the UN in enforcing international law. Trump broke international law and that pesky veto means that no actions can be taken against him or the United States - this makes the most fundamental part of this section inaccurate since all members are not equal.

Article 2:

One of Trump's excuses is that Venezuela’s President Maduro is a dictator and needed to be removed, but he is adamant that he will take Greenland, even by military force, as well as Canada, both countries with robust democracies.

In summary: Trump broke international law because he doesn't 'need it' and is constrained by nothing but his 'own mind' and because of the U.S. veto, the UN cannot act; the call is coming from inside the house of international law. 

International law, like local laws, exists to protect us and if those administering the laws aren't able to do that, is there someone else? Both Denmark and Canada are members and NATO, along with nuclear armed UK and France. NATO has a collective defence agreement; an attack against one is an attack against all but again, the call is coming from inside the house because the U.S. is a member of NATO. In January 2025, I wrote about the dilemma of one NATO nation attacking another, 

What a difference a year makes; NATO nations have now made it clear that an invasion of Denmark will change NATO and the nations have made statements that range from diplomatic to threatening:

"While NATO's leaders have focused their diplomacy on trying to convince Trump that anything he wants can be accomplished without actually taking over the island, other European politicians have been urging a more aggressive approach.

"If you take it, we will take every single base of the Americans, from Aviano from Ramstein, from Romania to all the other military bases — [they] will be confiscated, you will lose it — if you take Greenland," Gunther Fehlinger, chairman of the Austrian Committee for NATO Enlargement, said in a podcast."

It makes sense that Austrians, one of the first casualties of Hitler's territorial expansion, have little tolerance for Trump's ambitions. 

Many have commented that an attack on Greenland by the U.S. will effectively end NATO. Trump likely sees this as an incentive to attack Greenland; since 2024, he has been frustrated by his legal inability to leave NATO stating, "The US doesn’t need Nato." Attacking Greenland, and the subsequent dissolution of NATO, may give Trump the way out NATO he has been wanting. 

The reason for Trump's disdain for the UN and NATO is simple; both organizations are built to thwart territorial expansion by preventing invasion and annexation of sovereign countries and Trump has made it abundantly clear that he plans to invade and annex whatever countries he wants. This won't, as Trump hopes, lead to the dissolution of international law that holds countries in check. This is not based on a pollyannaish view of the world but a very realistic and practical one; people have no tolerance for mass war deaths and historically have demanded organizations that prevent the invasion of sovereign countries.

How this will play out is anyone's guess. The UN may restructure to finally get rid of vetos. NATO may change into an organization sans the U.S., much like the "Coalition of the Willing" that presently defends Ukraine. Ultimately, these organizations exist only to protect us and if, like the League of Nations, they don't protect us, they will be replaced. We'll build a world order educated by the fiasco of Trump, where calls coming from inside the house don't endanger us. Why? Because the people of the world will demand just that. 

Studying Great Sentences: Hammett's Red Harvest

I came to face a hard truth when I first tried writing fiction. I mean, people always told me they liked my stuff, and I enjoyed writing that stuff. But actually writing well is a whole other proposition. I failed--a lot--before spinning around in my writing chair and seeking deeper knowledge. 

As part of that, I re-read favorite authors and acknowledged masters, studying how they strung together plot, chapters, moments, and even sentences. I flagged any passage that wowed me in some way, even if I didn't know why. After finishing a book, I went to my computer and typed out each flagged section. Each one, as if I let their shape and function roll around in my brain. 

One novel I self-studied was Dashiell Hammett's The Red Harvest (1929). No pressure, just pulling at one of the finest novels in the English language. You know, a literal prototype of the hardboiled genre. I wanted to understand Hammett's dead-on prose. 

Here are five passages I flagged that have a lot to teach.

#1: Clinical Description

She had a broad-shouldered, full-breasted, round-hipped body and big muscular legs.  The hand she gave me was soft, warm, strong.  Her face was the face of a girl of twenty-five already showing signs of wear.  Little lines crossed the corners of her big ripe mouth.  Fainter lines were beginning to make nests around her thick-lashed eyes.  They were large eyes, blue and a bit blood-shot.   Her coarse hair- brown- needed trimming and was parted crookedly.  One side of her upper lip had been rouged higher than the other.  Her dress was of a particularly unbecoming wine color, and it gaped here and there down one side, where she had neglected to snap the fasteners or they had popped open.   There was a run down the front of her left stocking. 

In 2025, many an editor would reach for the delete key if someone handed them a 130-word character description. Not so back in Hammett's day. He had more wiggle room and laced extended descriptions through the novel, all for intended effect. 

This is an epic description, and for good reason. This broad-shouldered woman is Dinah Brand, Poisonville's scuffed-up version of a femme fatale. Hammett takes his time to show Dinah--and show how the Op sees her. He assesses her methodically, directly, a parade of subject-plus-verb sentences, nothing inverted or introductory, nothing vague. He adds discerning grace notes after his eye lingers. Once he takes Dinah in as a whole, he moves downward from eye contact and lands on the run in her stockings. Nobody's perfect in Poisonville. In the spaces between his descriptors, we come to see her as a physical presence, a young woman neither beautiful nor plain but wearing down fast. 

#1a: Dinah Again

Her big ripe mouth was rouged evenly this evening, but her brown hair still needed trimming, was parted haphazardly, and there were spots down the front of her orange silk dress.

This is later on. Dinah and the Op have become acquainted, as they say, so no further epic portrait is required. The Op needs to see what is different tonight. In this case, maybe Dinah is putting more effort into her appearance. In context of the novel, this is an important shift and set-up for what is to come. Poisonville doesn't do happy endings.

The construction here geeks out a sentence nerd. Gone is the clinical march of sentences. This is a continuous and considered observation of Dinah as a whole. The sentence nerd fulcrum is the classic "but." The first conjunction pair allows her the lipstick...but. Returning to the hair regrounds her, and the spots on her dress are pure Dinah. But maybe this is Dinah really trying, or maybe she only tries so hard.

#2: Marvelous Understatement

One of the blond boys drove.  He knew what speed was.

This one is glorious, even funny if you want to read it that way. Hammett's occasional hardboiled understatement--and sometimes overstatement--spices up the narrative voice without making the Op verbose.

#3: Action Sequence

The chief's car got away first, off with a jump that hammered our teeth together.  We missed the garage door by half an inch, chased a couple of pedestrians diagonally across the sidewalk, bounced off the curb into the roadway, missed a truck as narrowly as we had missed the door, and dashed out King Street with our siren wide open.

Chaos. Hardboiled chaos. And again, the secret is that long second sentence, a 46-word marathon. The standard advice for action is to go choppy. Choppy, though, would kill the effect. They're in one hell of a hurry, such a hurry that they're veering all over the place. This mayhem is one single action ending in, finally, a beat of control.

#4: Drinkin'

When I came back she was mixing gin, vermouth and orange bitters in a quart shaker, not leaving a lot of space for them to move around in.

I'll leave the exercise in the perfect noir way. Drinkin'. The Op is back at Dinah's place, and in no uncertain terms and clever voice, we know what comes next. 

Bottoms up, y'all. And write strong in the new year!

New Year: The Crime TBR Stack

 Now that the new year posts, columns, and Substacks have died down, it's time to get down to business. In this case, reading business.

I'm currently in my annual reread of Rick Rubin's The Creative Act, but will be diving into non-fiction, crime fiction, science fiction, and whatever I did out of the local Little Libraries.

For crime, I have three books on the stack:

King of Ashes - SA Cosby

I used to start the year off with late Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor series. But now that Jack is done and Ken is no longer with us, I've picked up starting the year off with SA Cosby. Blacktop Wasteland, Razorblade Tears, All Sinners Bleed, and My Darkest Prayer were all great finds. While Cosby is not the poet Bruen was, he does have that same sense of place, its dark secrets, and characters who live and breathe on the page. Plus every book so far has been a gut punch. So I'm making his latest, about a Virginia family in a rural town who run a crematorium and must deal with criminals who want their money. 

 Hard Town - Adam Plantinga

I discovered Plantinga while researching the unpublished third Holland Bay novel. He wrote a guide for writers researching police procedure and culture, imbuing it with an unexpected level of humanity and humor. Not only are cops shown working day-to-day, but all the in-jokes among them and shared jokes between them and their brethren on the fire department came through.

And then he wrote a novel, Hard Town. Kurt Argento is a retired and widowed cop who moves to Arizona for the quiet life of a handyman. When a woman and her son show up asking for help, Argenta tells her he's no investigator. He's done with that life. But then she disappears, and like Stephen King's Derry, Maine, he discovers his new home of Fenton, Arizona is something much dakrer than it appears.

Moonraker - Ian Fleming 

A Nazi who builds rockets? Who would ever believe that?

Fleming's Bond is more of a gangster fighter, even if some of the gangsters were Soviet spies and assassins. So, while Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, and Diamonds Are Forever hued closer to the real world than the movies based on them, the book Moonraker proved as over-the-top and unbelievable as its own movie, a rip-off on Star Wars. The book debuted in the mid-1950s, when missing Nazis made convenient supervillains. The movie appeared in 1978 to cash in on George Lucas's unexpected hit.

Now? A Nazi building rockets. Was not on my bingo card for the 2020s.

Farewell Darkness, Welcome Light!

"We don't believe; we fear." Inuit spiritual healer Aua to explorer Knud Rasmussen (some time between 1921-1924).

"In the distance the dark outlines of the little hut emerge. Here, always on the same spot, I have for some time been startled by a remarkable fantasy. I imagine that something has risen out of the unquiet water in the last inlet before the hut, a dark form which is making its way towards me, bent, noiseless, and ineluctable. Again and again I try to banish this phantom, clear and sharp though its outlines may be in my imagination. How astonished I am then in the winter night, to find in an old case of books left behind by the hunter Nois an old number of Allers Familienjournal, containing an article on spectres which reproduces a faithful likeness of my own phantom. There is the hobgoblin and the legendary sea-serpent, and there also is the black figure as it rises out of the water and, stooping, slowly and inexorably approaches its victim. The caption reads: ‘A spectre of the shore which appears to fishermen.'"
— A Woman in the Polar Night (1938), by Christiane Ritter, translated by Jane Degras, p. 98.*

"Winter’s a dangerous thing to love. It’s pure and it’s gorgeous and it owns this land. It owns us. We sit in our houses with the heat turned up and think what a pretty day it is out there, with the sun gleaming on the snow or the snow dancing in the air. But a tree falls in the ice, and the power goes out and we’re ice men again. We’re out on the road and we’re full of the power of our automobiles and at the same time we know one little slip, one little mistake in judgment or speed or just the chance encounter with a pebble or a bird or a deer and there we are, with winter laughing all around us. You live up here, and it doesn’t take long to understand why crime rates drop like a stone come November. Winter takes the place of crime; winter takes the place of night; winter takes the place of the bogey-man and the mothman and the raptors and everything you’ve ever been afraid of. Winter rules everything, and if you don’t know that, you don’t know anything. And you will die."
— Eve Fisher, Drifts, AHMM (Jan/Feb 2006)

***

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
   - Traditional Scots Prayer

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
--Marcellus.

So have I heard and do in part believe it.
--Horatio.

"So says the immortal Shakespeare [Hamlet, act 1, scene 1]; and the truth thereof few nowadays, I hope, will call in question. Grose observes, too, that those born on Christmas Day cannot see spirits; which is another incontrovertible fact.

"What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks [necks], waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins [Gyre-carling], pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost.

"Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its specter, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!"

The Denham Tracts, edited by James Hardy  (SOURCE)**

Whew.  

***

Anyway, there's a reason why Christmas comes in the darkest time of the year (in ancient Rome, the winter solstice was on December 25... calendar time has changed with the centuries).  Four days after the winter solstice, when the 4-7 minutes you gain are barely noticeable, you need light, torches, songs, feasting, and and a Yule log that will burn all the way to Twelfth Night, to beat back everything and anything of monsters and death and endless darkness.  Even now, on January 8th, we've only gained 15 minutes of light.  And it's worse the further north you live in December, and in the Southern Hemisphere, the further south you live in June.  In each case, the polar night lasts around 4 months.  That's a long time to live in the dark.  

Except, of course, for the aurora borealis / aurora australis.  Light in absolute darkness...  (From Wikipedia):

The earliest depiction of the aurora may have been in Cro-Magnon cave paintings of northern Spain dating to 30,000 BC:

The oldest known written record of the wintertime aurora was in a Chinese legend written around 2600 BC; an autumnal aurora is recorded centuries later, around 2000 BC.  

The Aboriginal Australians say the aurora australis is bushfires, or a kootchee (an evil spirit creating a large fire), or the campfires of spirits in the Land of the Dead.  The Maori of New Zealand, the Dene and other northern Native Americans, all see their departed friends dancing the sky around the campfires.  Way up north, the Sami and the Inuit share similar beliefs of northern lights being the blood of the deceased, 'some believing they are caused by dead warriors' blood spraying on the sky as they engage in playing games, riding horses, or having fun in some other way.'

John W. Thompson, Jr., a Civil War survivor of the Battle of Fredericksburg, wrote "Louisiana sent those famous cosmopolitan Zouaves called the Louisiana Tigers, and there were Florida troops who, undismayed in fire, stampeded the night after Fredericksburg, when the Aurora Borealis snapped and crackled over that field of the frozen dead hard by the Rappahannock ..."

Speaking of the Lights making sound - they do. They really do.  

  

So light candles! Keep the hot drinks flowing, the sweet treats coming, and late at night, cuddle under the covers, and listen to the light crackling in the sky...  

The darkness is vanquished!  

The light is finally returning!    

*Back in 1933, Viennese Christiane Ritter spent a year on the remote archipelago of Svalbard, far above the Arctic Circle, with her husband and another hunter.  It's an amazing record, and I highly recommend it.  

**From "Folklord and Mythology Electronic Texts", edited and/or translated by D. L. Ashliman, University of Pittsburgh.  (HERE)  A wonderful source for just about any folklore you would want to know about.  Enjoy!

The Waiting Game

 We happy few who specialize in short stories obsess about the length of time our little masterpieces sit waiting for verdicts by editors. We tend to read the results like tea leaves. And so on the Short Mystery Fiction Society list you get messages like I just received a rejection after 49 days from Cozy Ax Murder Quarterly.  That is 3.74 days longer than typical from CAMQ but keep in mind there was a headwind and Mercury was in retrograde...

I have been playing with spreadsheets lately (more on that next time) and I thought this might interest you.  The chart below shows how long my stories had been waiting at magazines and anthologies on the first day of each month from December 2024 to January 2026.  The blue line is the longest number of days any story was waiting for an editorial decision.  The brown line is the average (mean) number of days. And the gray line represents the median (for those who haven't taken math in a long time, that means half the stories have been waiting longer, and half shorter).

(I wrote this on December 26.  The next day a story was rejected and I had to revise the chart. Natch.)

The number of stories ranges from 10 to 17 depending on the month.

Now, back to my tea leaves...