The Enemy

When you read / write enough literature, you realize that almost all of it involves overcoming an enemy.  So pick a good one.  

There's the villain, the betrayer, the bully, the sociopath, the serial killer (of whom I am sick unto death), the false friend, the false lover, the rival, the Cain to one's Abel, and all the variations on the theme.  The enemy is the source of tension, that keeps everyone's attention on what the enemy will do next, and the reason why it matters for the hero to win - or lose.  

BTW:  it helps if you pick a good hero, too.

Sometimes the enemy is even more interesting than the hero, and thus the anti-hero is born.  And then the writer has to come up with a new enemy, because even an anti-hero has to have someone to outfight and outwit.  

Sometimes the new enemy is inside the hero / anti-hero:  addiction, PTSD, vampirism (the basis of the whole Twilight series), fear, past crimes, loss, obsession...  Or just self.  

Of course, sometimes you don't know who the enemy is:

Disturbing confession found in abandoned house:

"We found this baseboard in a closet of an abandoned house that recently sold and we were there to give owner an estimate for renovation. The house in an old gated lake community. Everyone there knows everyone and all people’s pasts. The HOA is calling the sheriff to see if they need to investigate further with cadaver dogs at “17” which is a vacant lot where a house once stood.... The HOA board decided to involve the sheriff’s department and 5 deputies and a detective showed up to take a look and collect the board."  (reddit)

There are rumors that this has been entirely made up, and if so, I think that Hollywood should track the person down and put them to good use, either writing or manufacturing sets for thrillers.

AND SOMETIMES YOU FIND OUT THE HARD WAY:

Irish Holiday Home Owner:

SOMETIMES THEY TAG TEAM:

Mothers and Sons:

NON-ALIVE ENEMIES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN POPULAR:

DATA CENTERS

And sometimes, a very unlikely hero:

"Former Playboy Playmate Audra Christiansen told Hefner in 2005 that she had allegedly been sexually abused and trafficked by Epstein, leading to a legal complaint in a Florida court which, sadly, was ignored until now.... The documents allege Hefner subsequently contacted the FBI several times with information about Christiansen’s claims. Yet, according to the legal complaint, the agency did not follow up with her until October 2020, which is roughly 15 years after the initial report."  (LINK)

As one commenter said:  "When Hugh Hefner thinks you’re dodgy…"

I can see it now... someone's going to start writing Hugh Hefner Investigates novels.  They'll sell a ton of them, too...  

 

You Are Entitled to Read My Story

 

I am pleased as punch to report that the September/October issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine features "Was That So Hard?" my 45th story there.  And since my first appearance in that august journal was in 1981 I can boast an average of exactly one story a year.  (We won't discuss how many years I submitted stories there before they bought one.)

The idea for this story came from Not Always Right, a website I have mentioned before. People anonymously submit reports on horrible customers.  I enjoy the site so much I use it as a reward: I won't touch it until I have written my quota for the day. It is a huge time sink but I have pulled three short stories out of it. 

"Shanks Has Reservations" (Black Cat Weekly #158) was inspired by a genuine scam that happened in a hotel. "Shanks Gets Lost" came from many tales of customers being rude to fast food clerks. (Black Cat #193) 

And now "Was That So Hard?" was inspired by many reports on rude customers, mostly in grocery stores.  (The title is something an entitled customer says, or more likely sneers, after some underpaid employee goes miles out of their way to be helpful.)  My protagonist is in charge of a high-end grocery store which, just before closing time, is invaded by a mob of the rudest, most entitled customers you could dream up.  Naturally there is a crime involved.

Finally, I want to examine a word I have used twice in this little piece: entitled.  When did it change its meaning? It used to mean that someone has the right to do something.  Now I hear it more often being used to mean that someone feels they have that right.

I checked Oxford English Dictionary and found that they traced that meaning back to Robert Coles' Privileged Ones, published in 1977.

 It is a matter of feeling 'entitled.' A child who has been told repeatedly that all he or she needs to do is try hard does not feel inclined to allow himself or herself much skeptical self-examination.

Took a few decades to get into the mainstream but now we're stuck with the new meaning and, worse, the people it refers to.  

I hope my story makes you feel a little better about it.

Double Dealing

 

    One reason I always liked going to the courthouse was the snippets you'd see or hear while passing down any random hallway. Pick a floor, get off the elevator, and wander. Think of it as trolling for dialogue. 

    Or sometimes it's handed to you. A while back, I was looking at a probable cause affidavit. A PC affidavit, is a document in which a police officer sets out the reasons why the officer believed he lawfully took a defendant into custody. They aren't intended to be works of literature. This one, however, led with the sentence, "I found the defendant, highly intoxicated, standing outside his trailer along with his mother and both his girlfriends." 

    Setting and conflict immediately apparent. I had an opening line that compelled me to keep reading. I wanted to know more about the defendant's double life.   

    Yesterday, while looking up something else, I took an internet detour and discovered the following story about an old trial. In a roundabout way, it reminded me of the affidavit.

    William Brodie lived as a respectable citizen in Edinburgh, Scotland, circa 1786. His grandfathers were lawyers, his father a deacon (president) of the Wrights and Masons Guild. William, as the eldest son, learned his father’s trade: repairing and building cabinets.

William Creech, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    When his father died, William inherited a tidy fortune and became Deacon Brodie, leader of the Guild. With this position, he also became a member of the Edinburgh City Council.

    Sadly, William possessed an uncontrolled passion for gaming and cockfighting. He kept two mistresses in separate houses where they raised the children they bore him, but were, apparently, unaware of each other. (Here, perhaps, you see the tangential connection to my PC affidavit.)

    His expenses outstripping even his successful business dealings, Deacon Brodie turned to burglary. With access to customers’ houses for his cabinet work, he would make wax impressions of their keys and return at night to steal their possessions. He personified the double life, by day a leading citizen, by night, a cunning thief. His exploits grew, and William added accomplices, including a locksmith, George Smith, an escaped thief, John Brown, and a third man, Andrew Ainslie.

    In March of 1788, he conceived a plan for the big score. He schemed to burglarize the national tax office. The plan, however, failed when, by varying accounts, Brodie fell asleep, or his nerves failed him. He fled to a mistress’s house to establish an alibi.

    One accomplice, Brown, snitched on Smith and Ainslie. Brodie, however, unaware that he had been left out of the confession, skipped the city. Once he ran, all three confessed against him.

    Brodie escaped to Holland but sent letters back to his mistress (not the alibi, the other one). These letters were discovered, traced, and he was arrested. While in Holland, Brodie had been taking forgery lessons and making plans to slip off to America.

    At trial, the prosecutors had a problem. By law at the time, a felon could not give testimony, thereby rendering Brown legally unavailable. The Crown cleared this evidentiary hurdle, however, by pardoning Brown of all crimes. The prosecution also agreed to use Ainslie as a witness and prosecute only Brodie and Smith.

    The trial began on August 27th, 1788. As if Brodie didn't have enough trouble, the presiding judge was Lord Braxfield. In the book Some Old Scots Judges by W. Forbes Gray, published in 1914, Lord Braxfied is described as: 

He came dangerously near being destitute of principle and character.    Unscrupulous, tyrannical, coarse, dissipated, illiterate, he was morally almost    featureless. He had a hard heart, a tainted mind, a cross-grained, domineering    nature, and an uncouth exterior. A noble aspiration or a lofty motive he was    incapable of appreciating. Without faith, without hope, without charity, he moved    continually in a world of sordid interests and ignoble purposes.

    One defense attorney, John Clerk, emboldened himself for final argument by drinking a bottle of claret. He then vigorously attacked “the villain of a witness [Brown] who I tell your lordships is not worth his weight in hemp.

    Against the weight of the accomplice’s testimony, the flight, the letters and evidence obtained from the search of Brodie’s home, a wine-soaked argument proved insufficient. Brodie was found guilty.

    Accounts vary, but as a city father, Brodie had either personally redesigned Edinburgh's gibbet or, at the very least, approved its construction. Either way, it was upon the gallows he helped build that both aspects of his double life came together. William Brodie was hanged on October 1st, 1788. 

Public Domain

 Robert Louis Stevenson found inspiration in the tale of Deacon Brodie’s duplicitous life. Stevenson wove elements of Brodie’s life and nature into his story of a divided human, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Incidentally, Stevenson’s father owned furniture made by Brodie.

Crime, sex, literature, and law—Deacon Brodie’s case was too cool to ignore. I am therefore making it my Trial of the Month for August.

How does my garden grow?

I think often these days of the famous closing line of Voltaire’s 1759 novella Candide: Il faut cultiver notre jardin. (“We have to cultivate our garden.”) Candide is a satire better known to modern Americans from Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 operetta of the same name. Its protagonist, a naive young optimist, learns through horrific life experience that he can do nothing about war, famine, plague, rape, slavery, torture, earthquakes, religious persecution, financial ruin, betrayal, hypocrisy, and a host of other ills. The survivor he becomes concludes that he must accept the futility of trying to sway these uncontrollable forces. He must also stop wasting his time theorizing about philosophies that claim to have answers that will vanquish suffering and evil. All he can do is make his garden grow.

We’re living through times when all the ills that Candide and his sweetheart Cunegonde experienced are still at large in the world. Of those most likely to touch me personally, natural disasters are on the rise, and global anti-Semitism is at a higher level than at any time since the Holocaust, which was still going during my infancy. In July, there was a tornado watch in New York, and we had three days of Hazardous air quality (500 AQI at its worst) in the Hamptons due to Canadian wildfires. Voltaire, who died in 1778 (during America’s revolution, before that of France), did not mention the collapse of systems of government, but that’s another force that’s spinning out of control.

So here’s my garden, twenty-five square feet in pots on my deck at the modest end of East Hampton. It’s given me enormous pleasure and peace of mind this summer. I go out first thing in the morning to talk to the flowers and deadhead a few spent blooms. In late afternoon or early evening, I give them some water if they look thirsty and feed them every couple of weeks if they aren’t as floriferous as I’d like. It sure beats watching the news.

The Power of Prepositions

The Power of Prepositions by Leigh Lundin Aladdin, getting along in years, found he was unable to pitch a tent as he had done in his youth. Smart as well as lucky, Aladdin still kept his magic lamp and, frugal with his wishes, one remained. He rubbed his lamp. When the genie appeared, he begged him. “My camel can no longer thread the needle. Can you cure my erectile impotence?” Genie said, “I can whisk away your problem.” With that, he rubbed his hands, evoking a puff of billowing blue smoke. Genie said, “I’ve dealt you a powerful spell, but at your age, you’ll be able to invoke it only once a year.” “How do I use it?” asked Aladdin. “All you have to do is say ‘one two three’ and it shall rise for as long as you wish, but only once a year.” Aladdin asked, “What happens when we’re exhausted and no longer want to continue?” Genie replied, “All you or your woman has to say is ‘one two three four,’ and it will go down. But be warned: the spell will not work again for another year.” Aladdin galloped home, eager to try his new powers of the flesh. That evening, Aladdin bathed and scented himself with oil of exotic myrrh. He climbed into bed where his wife lay on her side. Aladdin took a deep breath and said, “One two three.” Instantly, he became more aroused than he ever had in youth, a magnificent happenstance of tree-trunk proportions. His wife, hearing Aladdin’s words, rolled toward him and said, “What did you say ‘One two three’ for?” And that, dear readers, is why you should not end a sentence with a preposition.

Whoa, Look at THAT!

So far this summer, I've spent a lot of time on the computer, especially when it's hot as blazes outside, and at least some of it's been productive. I've written and submitted a lot of stories and SleuthSayers posts, I've done some research for future stories, I've read and sent a bazillion emails, etc. But I have also wasted a lot of time. I'm good at wasting time.

My most recent time-waster is watching (believe it or not) movie reactions on YouTube. Yep, you heard me right: movie reactions. Google calls it "feature creators recording themselves watching and responding to films for the first time." There are many sites dedicated to this, like Cinebinge, Totally Whatever, Cinepals, The Reel Rejects, etc.--I think my favorite might be Popcorn in Bed--and, depending on the movie they're covering, they can be a lot of fun. Instead of choosing from a list of what movies each site offers, I usually search for phrases like "Jurassic Park reactions," "Godfather reactions," "Galaxy Quest reactions," and so forth.

The way it works is, you watch parts of a movie alongside one or two viewers, whose faces are shown as the movie plays, and you can see the reactions they have to certain things in the film. Often, and especially if they're filmmakers themselves, they'll make comments about what they're seeing, and that can be interesting too. 

I need to explain something, here. I'm one of those people who has always enjoyed going again with others--friends, family, whoever--to see a movie that I myself have already seen and liked. I remember going to the theater for Forrest Gump four times in the months after it was first realeased in the mid-'90s--once by myself, and the next three times with each of our kids--all of them were teenagers then. I got a real kick out of watching their reactions and finding out what they thought of it. Same thing if I'm streaming a film at home on TV or playing it on DVD with, say, one of our children or grandchildren. I get almost as much fun out of watching their faces as I do from watching the movie. I've probably shown the grandkids all of my favorites, at least those that are child-friendly, and I have many favorites.

So why am I telling you all this, in a mystery-blog post? Here's the thing. I have discovered that these viewer-reaction videos on YouTube aren't just fun: they can be informative to me as a storyteller. I won't say they teach me a lot that I don't already know, but they do confirm for me which parts of the story are the most important and interesting and moving to the viewer. And believe me, the viewers' reactions cover the whole gamut--surprise, concentration, fear, sorrow, suspense, delight, sometimes even tears or cheering out loud. And, again, you can see exactly what it is in the story that's making them feel that way. Plus, it's entertaining.

I'm sure this is obvious, but the things that create the biggest reactions are the sad scenes, funny scenes, dangerous or intense scenes, twists, reveals, etc. You can also tell, immediately, at what point the viewer begins to like the hero/heroine, or dislike the villain. You can see the value of a gripping opening, a sympathetic character, an action scene, a mid-story reversal, a slam-bang ending, a satisfying end to a character arc. The kinds of things that might be instructive and helpful to a writer.

I've always felt that the one most important thing a story must do is make the reader feel something--whatever emotion it is--and the more intense these feelings are, the better your story/movie/novel is going to be. And, even though I know I'm belaboring the point, these YouTube videos allow you to see it firsthand, in the viewers' faces, along with the reasons for those reactions.

So that's my pitch. Have you ever bothered to watch one of those videos? (I didn't even know, until a few weeks ago, that they existed.) If you haven't seen them and want to give it try, just think of a movie you enjoyed, search for it in YouTube along with the word "reactions," and take a look. They're silly but they're addictive. 

As for justification, I'll tell you the same thing I say to my wife when she walks in with frowns and eyerolls and says Good grief, what are you watching in here? I tell her it's research. I'm learning something.

Hey, it sounds good to me.

The Gingerbread Man

In June, Level Short released Wish Upon a Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by Fairy Tales, an anthology I edited with Michael Bracken. The stories range from light-hearted to noir. Fellow SleuthSayers, Joe Walker, Barb Goffman, and Michael Bracken, share insights about their amazing stories in previous posts and are worth checking out.

Deb Goldstein, Tom Milani, and Andrew Welsh- Huggins discuss the first two pages of their fabulous contributions at Art Taylor’s First Two Pages, also great reads.

Today, I am delighted to talk about my story, “The Gingerbread Man.”

THE GINGERBREAD MAN

Imagine The Princess Bride meets The Sopranos inside a bowling alley in the 1960’s—that’s my Hollywood-style pitch for this story. It is inspired by the fairy tale and the lost world of action bowling.

The story opens with Jack O’Conner and his grandson. Jack tells him a bedtime story, his version of the fairy tale, “The Gingerbread Man.”

Jack flashes back to the 1960’s in New York City, the center of “action bowling,” games that involve small-time gangsters who make high-stakes bets on players. 

Jack “Crazy-like-a-Fox” O’Connor was one of those bowlers. He’s leveraged by the police to become an informant to keep his wayward brother out of jail. His task, to find action bowler Francesco “The Gingerbread Man” Romano, the getaway driver for the Barnyard Gang that is linked to a series of convenience store robberies. 

Action bowlers had monikers, a clue about how they “ticked.” I used these nicknames as a vehicle to retell this iconic fairy tale.

Jack’s version of “The Gingerbread Man” takes readers into the unique world of action bowling. It’s filled with quirky characters and a twist that I hope readers will enjoy. 

THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

• “Hansel and Gretel” by Joseph S. Walker
• “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” by John M. Floyd
• “Rapunzel” by Adam Meyer
• “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Laura Oles
•  “Three Billy Goats Gruff” by Michael Bracken
•  “Beauty and the Beast” by James A. Hearn
•  “The Bremen Musicians” by Debra H. Goldstein
•  “Jack and the Beanstalk” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins
•  “Cinderella” by Donna Andrews
•  “The Frog Prince” by Josh Pachter
•  “Little Red Riding Hood” by Barb Goffman
•  “The Briar Patch” by Tom Milani
•  “King o’ the Cats” by David Dean
•  “The Gingerbread Man” by Stacy Woodson

If you want to learn more about action bowling, check out PIN ACTION by Gianmarc Manzione. It’s a fun read and offers insights into the history and unique subculture of action bowling.

***

My latest story, "She Loves You," appears in Black Cat Weekly, Issue 255. "She Loves You" follows a lovesick country music singer who receives an unsolicited reading from a geriatric psychic and gets more than he bargained for in this twisted tale about loyalty, trust, and inevitable consequences.