What Happened to Living Forever?

I've written so many January posts about why I don't make New Year's resolutions that I'll mention only two points: one, living one day at a time works better; and two, within a few weeks, many of the most fervent resolutions, such as dieting, economizing, and refraining from smoking and other compulsive behaviors, will have been broken. Another issue, however, has come to seem equally appropriate for reflection at the turning of yet another year.

Everyone knows the young believe they're going to live forever. Why else do they take the risks they do? The moment teens age out of supervision by adults, many of them drive recklessly, drink to excess, experiment with drugs, try extreme sports, hook up with strangers, and otherwise play Russian roulette with their lives, convinced they'll be the lucky ones who'll always beat the odds and dodge the consequences. As we get older, our beliefs about our own vulnerability to death diverge, depending on a number of factors. As a healthy middle class American from a family that took few risks and had a genetic predisposition to longevity on both sides, I have lived my whole adult life confident that death wasn't coming for me any time soon—in other words, believing that I would live forever.

I was born a couple of years before the Boomer generation, and the world has changed by three paradigm shifts (if you count the one in progress) in my lifetime. As an octogenarian, I no longer say "forever." I tell my dental hygienist, "These teeth have to last another twenty years." I tell my husband, "If I live to be 100, let's go to Paris on my birthday." However, it's no longer up to me, ie how my body, mind, and DNA weather time. For me to live my full span, a couple of other things have to beat the odds. The planet has to refrain from falling apart or boiling over. The human race has to refrain from blowing itself to oblivion. I'm not as concerned for myself as my younger self would have been, having had one helluva run till now. The worst is that time needs to keep rolling out long enough to accommodate my hostages to fortune—my granddaughters.

Here are three poems from my new poetry collection, The Old Lady Shows Her Mettle, that speak to this concern. "Once Upon A Time" and "Dissonance" first appeared in Yellow Mama.

If The Plot Unravels

in 1654 the Montaukett warriors met
at the highest point of the bluff
the Naragansetts won the battle
the Montauketts were defeated
they had already sold land to the settlers
their way of life was about to unravel

today a great boulder marks where they met
Council Rock overlooks the ocean
it anchors Fort Hill Cemetery
a municipal burying ground
where all the dead are welcome
founded thirty years ago, when we
had just acquired our crumb of Hamptons heaven
and were looking for accommodations after death

no graves had yet been dug when we first visited
we walked hand in hand over the wild hill
admired the Rock and the ocean view
joked about how this six-foot double decker bed
was the classiest real estate we’d ever own
later, I wrote a poem about that day, a love poem
it felt like permanence

now the planet is unraveling
the Montauk Point Lighthouse, built
three hundred feet from the cliff’s edge
now stands only one hundred feet
from tumbling onto the rocks below
having reached an age that visits doctors and reads obits
we wonder if our plot will be there when we need it
or by then have fallen to earthquake or tsunami
wildfire or flood, some implacable disaster
one of the many that unspool, relentless
now the world’s no longer tightly wrapped

riding in the limo to my father’s funeral
I heard Aunt Hilda dither: if she sold the country house
should she dig up Uncle Bud’s ashes or leave them in the garden
that’s when I vowed I’d never be cremated
on top of all the movie sight gags, it was the last straw

but the last two in-ground plots in Manhattan went
in 2015 for $350,000, and in 2023 a single grave
in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood runs as high as $26,000
so if Fort Hill is swept away or crumbles into the sea
and the $750 plot in Montauk is a write-off
you might as well send me up in flames
with the rest of the planet, sere as dune grass
ready for a conflagration we can’t stop


Once Upon A Time

once upon a time I walked through Timbuktu
city of sand, its hushed streets sifted fine, its buildings
rounded like sandcastles shaped by tidal winds
long before terrorists destroyed what I remember
passing Tuareg draped in indigo
I watched them drift beside their camels
toward the desert, the stone well and leather bucket
the salt mines that lie beyond the sunset

once upon a time I spent a week in Lahaina
before the fire consumed it, I remember
wearing a white tuberose lei, hearing laughter
the breeze carrying music and the scent of food
sunset tinting the water, slate blue mountains rising
not far from shore, humpback whales and their young

once upon a time I climbed the tower of Nôtre Dame
ancient stone rose into darkness all around me
my young knees made nothing of the winding stair
or if I breathed a little faster at the top
it was worth it to say salut to the gargoyles
and stick out my tongue at Paris

once upon a time in Côte d'Ivoire, in Bouaké
when independence was long fought for, newly won
before the civil war, before the hate and anger
when nobody had a television and the nights
were for drinking and dancing, oh, the dancing
for two years I always fell asleep at night
to talking drums in every courtyard
all across the city chanting lullaby

it's not looking like much of a happily ever after
this grumbling planet is exhausted
me, I'm glad I had my once upon a time
now I'd like to ask for a generation longer
until my granddaughters have had their time
squeezed joy to the last sweet drop
embraced love and laughter and adventure
why is it so hard to hold back the fire and flood
that's been baying for release since they were born


Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs
when a person holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326738

if they'd only leave us in peace
how we'd relish our longevity
our gift for the unmeasured moment
the giant tortoise, the African elephant
the koi with its splashes of sunset red and gold
and humanity, the genetic booby prize
our extra burden, values and beliefs
responsibilities and ambiguities

who holds as few as two beliefs?
what two values fail to contradict each other?
the dissonance of my choices every day
would crush me if I didn’t push
with all my strength against their weight

I could spend my birthday scanning the news
read how many missiles one country launched
and the other guys shot down
grind eighty-year-old teeth, those that remain
over loss and disappointment, how we fail
and fail and fail to distinguish truth from lies

instead, I will walk in the sun
rejoice in my loves and my adventures
marvel that I've survived until today
when little girls wear fairy wings and tutus
and princess crowns in the New York streets
and grow up to be neurosurgeons and CEOs
and astronauts as if they have forever
I'll wear a sparkling tiara to my birthday dinner
and dance down Columbus Avenue if I want to
as if they have forever

CopyQuite ©

What do Nancy Drew and Miss Jane Marple have in common with Betty Boop, Pluto the pup, Blondie and Dagwood, and Albert Einstein? Or for that matter, how does Sherlock Holmes and Sam Spade relate to Winnie the Pooh and Steamboat Willie?

 

 

 

 

 

Answer: Copyrights of the first group mentioned expire sometime this year. The remainder have already recently expired.

We’re talking Einstein’s famous and much abused photograph, not the man himself. In fact, the photo’s copyright expired on the 1^st of January.

Steamboat Willie, the first incarnation of Mickey Mouse, came to public attention when Florida Governor Ron Dion DeSantis attempted to seize control of Walt Disney World and, among other things, dangled the possibility of handing out rights to the characters. That’s when some people realized Steamboat Willie was due to enter the public domain. Note that later versions of Mickey, Pluto, and other character style changes are still protected.

The United States has a frustratingly long copyright period with arcane rules, which factor in the lifespan of the creative genius. In short, U.S. copyrights extend seventy years past the death of the creator, assuming the death date is known.

Lengthy copyright periods stifle creativity and, in the US, copyrights conceivably could last as long as a century and a half. We might never have seen the film Wicked, if the Wizard of Oz copyright hadn’t finally expired.

Copyrights have lengthened over the years, thanks to greedy great-great-grandchildren who lobby and feed at the public trough. They argue that creators can rely upon transformative ‘fair use’, but in fact, authors and composers and artists can not trust fair use thanks to wildly varying court rulings and armies of attorneys supporting those avaricious descendants.

Great-great-grand-greedies of Arthur Conan Doyle fought to prevent Holmes entering the public domain even as expirations slipped past. The public eventually won the right to use character and events, but only those stories that passed their individual copyright date. The family could still prevent use of characters and events in later stories.

Nancy Drew presents another problem. The original four novels will soon enter public domain, but the Stratemeyer daughters rewrote the stories to ‘modernize’ the girl. Who knows if the syndicate could argue the original characters and plots are still protected?

So, when you see Wicked, thank the expiration of the Wizard’s copyright.

2025--The JF Year in Review

Well, it's that time again. Actually it's a couple of days past that time, but I post on the first, third, and fifth Saturdays, and sometimes those don't match January 1, so . . .

Here's a quick look back at 2025 and what I produced (and didn't) in my short-mystery-writing world. I'll start by saying I'm thankful for the number of stories I managed to sell and publish last year, but I must admit that unless you count the ones in a story collection published in November, I wasn't as productive as I used to be. The main reason, I think, is simple: I prefer to write short crime stories, and there just aren't many places out there anymore that publish them. I hope that situation changes soon, or at least doesn't get worse. Time will tell.

But the focus of this post is what happened last year, not what I think the future might bring. So here's my annual review:

Statistics

- I had 27 short stories published in 2025, plus another 18 in a collection recently released by Crippen & Landru. (The book is River Road and Other Mystery Stories, and contains 17 stories in the paperback edition and a bonus story that comes with the signed "clothbound" edition.) So I suppose I had a total of 45 stories published. Fourteen more are upcoming (accepted but not yet published), with expected pub dates ranging from next month to 2027.

- I wrote 17 new stories in 2025, way less than my average of a couple dozen. Eight of those have been accepted, five have already been published, and the rest sit languishing and lonely in various submission queues, awaiting a yea/nay response. (My stories seldom lie around the house unsubmitted--as soon as they're grown up, I send those pesky kids out into the world to try to make something of themselves.)

- I submitted 30 stories this year, received 25 acceptances, and received 13 rejections. The math doesn't work, as you can see, because some of those acceptances and rejections were for stories submitted in 2024 and some were accepted/requested outside the submission process, as in best-of selections, anthology invitations, etc.

- This year I had 18 stories published in magazines and only 8 in anthologies, a reversal of the way things have been in the past, plus one story republished in Vietnamese on YouTube (that I didn't find out about until much later), and also plus the 18 more stories that appeared in my River Road collection. Of my 8 antho stories, all of them were themed anthologies and 5 were invitation-only.

- All the stories I published in 2025 were in the mystery/crime genre, although a few were cross-genre: mystery/Western and mystery/fantasy. No romances this year, no literary stories, no purely SF stories, etc.

- Only one of my 2025 published stories was set outside the U.S., and three were published outside the U.S. 

- Seventeen of my published stories last year were original stories, and the other 10 were reprints, again a reversal of the way it usually happens. Not counted here are the 15 reprints and 3 original stories that were published in my Crippen & Landru collection.

- Only 5 of my published stories this past year were installments in a series--but if you consider the 18 stories published in River Road, 15 of those were series installments. So, said another way, 20 of my 45 were series stories. 

- Thirteen of my 27 published stories were set in the American South, and 14 of the 18 stories in my collection were, as well. Percentagewise, I'm still a regional writer.

Observations

- Most of my published stories in 2025 appeared in AHMM, Strand Magazine, Woman's World, Black Cat Weekly, and Crimeucopia. (Not counting the 18 in my Crippen & Landru collection. In that book, 8 first appeared in AHMM, 2 in The Strand, 2 in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, 1 in Black Cat Weekly, several in anthologies, and so forth.)

- Not only did I not publish as many stories last year as I usually do, I also didn't submit as many. The reason, again, is that there aren't as many mystery/crime markets out there as in the past.

- Another unusual thing: I had more private eye stories published last year, partly because of their appearance in PI-themed anthologies and partly because half of the stories in my collection feature private eyes.

- Most of my stories were longer instead of shorter. That's been my preference anyway, in recent years, but the main reason is that most of my writing these days is targeted toward markets that seldom publish flash fiction. One of those past markets that did publish occasional flash stories was of course Mystery Magazine. I still miss them.

- About a fourth of my stories published in 2025 were lighthearted mysteries, and a few were designed to be far more humorous than mysterious. Considering the kind of year it was, I (and all of us) should probably have written more funny stories. I think the world needs 'em.)

- Three of my stories received some degree of recognition last year--one was a finalist for the Al Blanchard Award, one made the "Also Walking the Mean Streets" list for The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025, and one was chosen for inclusion in Best of the Strand Magazine: 25 Years of Twists, Turns, and Tales from the Modern Masters of Mystery and Fiction. (Don't know how I squeezed into that anthology, but I'm glad I did.) Also, my recently published collection featured several stories that had won awards or were selected for annual "best-of" books. 

Questions

My questions to you are similar to those I asked last year:

Have you changed anything about your writing this past year? Did you have any notable milestones? Did you fare well in the acceptance/publication area? Any differences in the genres or word-lengths or contents of your recent stores? Any venturing out of your comfort zone, with your subjects or submissions? What were your magazine vs. anthology numbers? Were most, or any, of your 2025 anthology stories published via invitation-only, or written to a theme? Are you still focusing on the same markets? Have you discovered any new ones? Any successes there? If so--or not--please let me know, in the comments section.

In closing, I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season--we sure did, here--and I wish you great success in your literary endeavors, mysterious and otherwise. Happy New Year!

The Stranger on the Other Line

I know it is late in the season, but I have one more Christmas story for you, which I present on the grounds that we are comfortably within the 12 Days.* Buried within this story is a message all writers can take to heart in the New Year.

The weekly newspaper appeared at our house one day bearing the details for an unusual call for short fiction. They wanted holiday stories—Christmas, Hanukkah, what-have-you—with only two stipulations. Submissions had to be a maximum of 300 words, and authors could not be older than 18 years of age. Payment would be exactly zero dollars, and all the copies young contributors could swipe out of the weekly advertiser’s boxes around town.

The year was 1980. I had just hit age 16 in the fall. I wanted to place a story in this paper badly. My ego demanded it. I had been submitting stories to EQMM and AHMM to no avail. It did not matter that this newspaper mostly reported on volleyball scores, town council news, and the openings of new hair salons. I needed the win.

My parents had bought me a used manual Olivetti ages ago. I rolled a sheet of paper in it, hunched over the damn thing, and paused.

I considered the competition. My gut told me that I was probably at the high end of the submission age group. It would be my story against a slew of little kids. I probably had the technical advantage but not if I gave the editors the same old thing.

What were they going to write, these mindless, Santa-loving weenies? I just knew. Mostly likely, they would write the sort of two-beat holiday story I hated: kid wants much-beloved gift, kid gets much-beloved gift—happy holiday, yay.**

My story had to be anti-that. Was it possible to write a Christmas story that celebrated no presents? Was such a thing possible? I didn’t know, but I had to try. It might set my work apart from everything else the editors might be seeing.

I ended up with a story that described harried grownups and kids queued at a store. Everyone is cranky, miserable, exhausted—until someone smiles and says something that lightens the mood. Whatever they said—and gee, I sure wish I could remember what it was—was just the injection of magic these people needed. Suddenly, the humans started humaning again and All Was Well in Holidayland. Ta-da. The End.***

I boiled that thing hard. Had to, to stay under 300 words. What kind of monsters were these editors? Didn’t they know 300 words was barely enough words for exposition? I was crafting art here.

I mailed the story. And waited. No response.

The paper always pubbed Wednesdays, which just happened to fall on Christmas Eve Day that year. When the paper showed up on my parents’ doorstep, I flipped through it anxiously until I found an interior double truck devoted to tons of holiday stories by local kids. Leading them all, at the top of the left column, was my story. It was the longest of the bunch.

At the bottom, my name, town, and age were printed in bold.

Holy smokes! My first byline in print.

I badgered my Mom to drive me to get more copies. Considering the ambitious menu she had on tap that day, it’s a wonder she didn’t kill me. Rather than drive around town looking for the freebie newspaper boxes, she cut to the chase by driving straight to the newspaper’s offices a few towns over. We knew it well; it was located next to our favorite Chinese restaurant.

Hours passed. My father returned from the city a little early that day. He was upstairs sorting mail. Downstairs, my mother was assembling one of those multi-course Italian American fish feasts that was our Christmas Eve ritual. The house smelled perfect, looked perfect, and I felt…awesome.

Then the phone rang. My father summoned me to take the call.

“Who is it?”

“I dunno,” he said, covering the mouthpiece. “Don’t stay on long. We gotta eat.”

I pressed the phone to my ear, and said hello.

“Joseph?”

I was expecting to hear the voice of a friend or family member. But no. The person on the other end was a grown-up and a stranger. Yes, I said. That was me.

“Joseph,” she said. “That was a very…good…story you wrote.”

It was a woman. An older woman. And she’d been crying. I could tell. She sounded choked up right now.

“Um, thanks,” I said. “Who is this? Is this Mrs.—”

And here I inserted the name of a family friend whose voice this person’s resembled.

“No,” she said.

“Then who?”

“You did a very good job with the story, Joseph. You have a Merry Christmas, okay?”

She hung up. Leaving me with a fresh mystery and not a lot of clues. My father, the only other witness to this person’s voice, was more interested in getting to the bottom of the minutes-away shrimp scampi than debating the identity of the caller.

What a world it was once! Strangers called your home, asked to speak to one of your teens, and you handed the phone over to said kid without asking questions. If you pulled that stunt today, they would revoke your dad license.

I dawdled that night over the shrimp, calamari, baccalà, tuna and spaghetti because my head was occupied with questions that could not be settled with food. Also, I was probably stuffed.

What had just happened? Was this the sort of thing that occurred when you printed a story? Was it going to keep happening? If this person wasn’t a friend of my parents, then who was she? Had she really been crying? If so, why? Did my story make her cry?

Back then, I was incapable of answering any of those questions. I would never know anything more about her than I’ve just told you.

My grown-up writer brain certainly likes to speculate. It starts by reminding me that the holidays are a difficult time for many people. There was nothing terribly special about my story. For all we know, this sad woman phoned dozens of kids that day, and wasn’t it nice that the newspaper made it so easy for her to locate us all in the phone book?

Here’s what grown-up writer Joe can tell you that kid Joe would not have been able to express. If we are lucky, yes, at the end of every story of ours there is a reader. A human impacted by our words.

I know opinions on this differ, but I write to please myself first, editors second, readers third. If I’m doing a capable job, there’s a chance I’ll make all three of us happy, but I can’t predict a damn thing. How anyone will respond to your finished work is a deeply personal, practically unknowable, thing, and it’s not worth your time worrying about it.

Yes, if editors routinely pass on your work, by all means write more, work harder, and learn more about the craft. But it’s wise not to get too attached to outcomes when drafting. You want to lose yourself in the world you’ve created.

But this I know. Stories are tools for touching other people’s hearts. They are emotion transmission machines, made by one person for another. That’s a fine lesson for a kid to learn at the beginning of his writer journey. And a handy one for any writer to recall at the beginning of another year.

I wish you all a beautiful, productive 2026, and I will be phoning you all shortly to relay these sentiments, though I will probably wait till after dinner.

* * * 

* The Twelfth Night marks the day when a heavenly host appeared to shepherds in London proclaiming the coming of Sherlock Holmes.

** This is precisely the plot of the beloved movie, A Christmas Story. Shows you how much I know about writing a good Christmas story.

*** Clips of that story were lost in one of my various moves over the years, but I remember the plot.

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

The Interrogation

Happy New Year from SleuthSayers and Key and Peele!

The Resolution Will Not Be Televised

 

Happy New Year! In the past I have asked the other SleuthSayers for resolutions or generously made some up for other people, but this time I decided to invite my fellow members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society to share their solemn oaths for 2026, which I am sure will be an unbearably spiffy year. Right?  Anyway, here goes: 

"Here’s my two. They are pretty much the same every year. First is to value showing up. And that means to care less about getting it right than showing up, at my desk, to my work, and for my peeps. Second is to recognize and be grateful for the ways others show up for me, to take it to heart, and enjoy it." - Karen Odden

"I am planning to resolve to read more short stories and submit one flash per week, and one longer story a quarter…this time, to help me I hope to join someone’s course." - Joan Leotta

"More rejections! I didn't do a good job this year of keeping my stories in front of editors.  But for 2026, I vow to submit until it feels lie high school prom season, 1987! My motto? 'If I'm not crying, I'm not trying."  Chris L. Robonson

 "I don't have a resolution for 2026. But this is a story of success. Back at the end of 1992, when I had just turned 35yo, I was frustrated with the whole idea. It's too much pressure to make unrealistic promises to yourself and the community. So my resolution for 1993 was this: 'I am tired of setting myself up for failure and heartache. Therefore, for 1993, I resolve to never make New Year's resolutions again!' Guess what? THAT one I have kept for 33 years. And counting." - Linda Kay Hardie 

"My resolution: reach for a book every time I have a knee-jerk impulse to reach for my phone.  I'm always happier if I go for the book." - Joseph S. Walker

"I will stop going down rabbit roles in the name of research unless I have first spent hours wandering about in the weeds."  - Judy Penz Sheluk

 "My resolution is to keep better track of prompts and submission closing dates so I don’t waste time rooting around for them and/ or missing sub dates." - Joan Leotta

 "My resolution is to write—or edit what I have already written—every day. That's it." - Yoshinori Todo

"I hope to start focusing on writing more in 2026.  I would like to complete a story or two and send them off by the end of the year - or at least get them to MWA's Mentor Program.  I really value that service but haven't participated in a while." - Robert Daniher

"My resolution is that I will not find out where all the people who don't like my writing live and go to their homes and sing "Never Gonna Give You Up" outside their window all night long." - A.L. Sirois

"I resolve to ignore the fact that I pay for a gym membership I don’t use. And, to use the time to finish the next novel and submit at least one short story somewhere. I love my short form Mondays on Substack but that doesn’t cover the YMCA expense." - D.J. Lutz

 "I resolve to create new adventures for my favorite characters." - Paula Messina

"Next year, I hope to pull together some of my similar stories into short collections. One for sure (if it happens) will be ghostly mysteries since I realized I have quite a few of them. I think that by writing anything I darn well please, I’m missing a niche audience, and I know that’s important. In general, more supernatural elements are creeping into my stories and I want to pursue that." - Bobbi Chukran

 "My resolution is to propose to my girlfriend when we go on the big trip we're planning. Don't tell her I said that though..." - Stephen M. Pierce

"I resolve to quit buying voodoo dolls to use on editors who displease me, and instead be more frugal and repurpose already used dolls." - Dave Zeltserman

"I will finish cleaning up a book of my favorite stories and throw it in front of an editor.  Also, be neater when discarding my tea leaves." - Robert Lopresti

 "I'm going to do my best, in 2026, to not buy a single book from Amazon. We're lucky enough to have a great independent bookstore in my town (shoutout to Morgenstern Books!), and I figure if I want to keep having a great independent bookstore, I should give them as much of my business as possible.  It might take a little longer and cost a little more, but Bezos is getting more than enough of my money already, and I've got plenty of stuff to read while I wait.  Last time I was in I had them order me a copy of the new Best Private Eye Stories of the Year.  Can't hurt to get products from small publishers like Level Best on their radar." - Joseph S. Walker

"I just decided to try and walk on my walking pad (that I haven’t used in years) while I write. I’m doing it right now and haven’t fallen off yet. I guess if I wind up in traction, I will have more writing time! So, maybe commit to some time every day?" - Cindy Goyette 

"I resolve to not make any New Year's resolutions because I always break them. I plan to keep writing when I should be focusing on chores, when I should be walking on the treadmill, when I should be preparing a sensible meal. If I followed a resolution to change my dastardly ways, I wouldn't be writing as much as I want.  Thus, a happy New Year for me, no habit changing creeds, and I hope the same for many others!" - Wil A.

"Spend far less time on social media. More time reading books and short stories. Make time to work on my own writing. Wear pants." - Kevin R. Tipple