Once again we highlight our criminally favorite cartoonist, Future Thought channel of YouTube. We love the sausage-shaped Shifty, a Minion gone bad.
Yikes! In this Crime Time episode, only one outcome is possible.
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That’s today’s crime cinema. Hope you enjoyed the show. Be sure to visit Future Thought YouTube channel.
Long ago I heard the following expression: Opportunities are like buses. You wait for ages for one to come along, and then three show up at the same time. Sort of like When it rains, it pours.
Lately, it seems I've been doing a lot of waiting, writingwise. Waiting for acceptances (or rejections) of my submitted stories, waiting for the publication of stories that have been accepted, waiting for places to come along that I might want to submit stories to. Alas, not much was there. Especially acceptances. On the rare occasions when I did submit stories, I was hearing "No" a lot. "Yes," not so much. My publication list, both recent and upcoming, had fallen dead as a dodo.
Then, several weeks ago, several bright spots (buses?) came along:
- New Myths published my flash fantasy/crime story "Jumpin' Jack."
- Black Cat Weekly published my 24th story there, "Sweet Loretta Morgan."
- Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine published "Moneyland," the eighth installment of a mystery series about southern sheriff Ray Douglas
- The Bouchercon 2026 anthology, The Lines We Cross, published a blackmail/murder story, "Garden Path"
- Umbra Magazine published my short mystery/crime/adventure story "Raibow's End."
- Crimeucopia: Objection! Overruled!! published "Nothing but the Truth," a fantasy/crime/courtroom story
Some of these publications were in new markets, some old; some were small, some large; some were magazines, some were anthologies; some paid well, some didn't; some of the stories were long, others short; most were lighthearted, a few were dark; most were original stories, two were reprints. On top of those six publications, two Josh Pachter-edited anthologies--Happiness Is a Warm Gun and The Great Filling Station Holdup--both of which contained my stories, were re-released with new covers and (in one of them) extra content.
All this spelled sweet relief to the literary drought I'd been going through. Some of my recent submissions even received YESes instead of NOs, including acceptances from EQMM, Strand Magazine, and a Santa Rage II anthology. The needle on my mood-meter finally moved up a bit. It had, for quite a while, been frozen at DISMAL.
Do you, if you're a fellow writer, occasionally go through these slumps?
I think they're to be expected. Most of us writers suffer self-doubt now and then--I certainly do--and sometimes it's justified; despite what your mother might think, not every single thing you produce is going to be a winner (ask George Lucas about Howard the Duck). But there are also other reasons for downturns. For one thing, especially for those of us who write short mystery fiction, there just aren't as many places out there anymore to send our stories to, certainly not many that pay well. (Even some of those that do pay well seem to have lowered their rates.) Plus, some of the existing markets take a very long time to respond, which discourages some writers from submitting to them at all. (We're dying of thirst here, Lord--we need some rain!)
The good news is, marketwise, several new magazines--at least new to me--have recently appeared. Some of those I heard about from other writers, some via internet searches, some via posts on the Short Mystery Fiction Society's message board. Also, at least one publication that was about to shut down has been given new life via new owners, and one has announced that it'll soon take on more readers of submissions in order to cut down their overlong response times. Last but not least in the Good News Department--though it's not really news--is the fact that slumps will always, eventually, end.
Once again, how about you? If you write short stories, are you finding enough places to submit them to? If so, how? Are you getting yes/no replies in a reasonable time? Are you being paid enough, or paid anything, for your work? Are you--yes, I must ask--just finding it difficult to write stories that please an editor? Do all these occasional obstacles get you down?
My answer to that is, don't let them--and don't stop trying. I know I'll keep trying, simply because I love writing these stories. I'll subscribe to the places I send stories to, I'll keep up with which markets are out there and what they need, I'll attempt to promote them--and my stories in them, I'll keep looking for new markets, and I'll try to write every story as well as I possibly can. I will also count my blessings that things still aren't as bad as they could be. I'll say it again: Dry spells don't last. My favorite observation on this subject, though I don't remember where I heard it, is this: A professional writer is just an amateur writer who didn't give up.
Don't give up.
James M. Cain was my gateway drug into crime fiction. Before Cain, I’d read Nelson Algren, whose novels, while often featuring criminals, would be better defined as social realism. But to my twenty-five-year-old aspiring writer self, Cain’s voice—and the reading it inspired—changed the focus of my writing horizon.
I discovered Cain through film, specifically The Postman Always Rings Twice– the original, starring Lana Turner and John Garfield, its final script written by Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch—and eventually tracked down from the library James M. Cain: Four Complete Novels (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity and Serenade). I read them in order, and quickly.
Cain’s career in fiction writing didn’t follow the path of his being a successful short story writer and novelist before heading out to Hollywood to make his fortune. Instead, the writings for which he first became known, and which led to a lifelong friendship with H. L. Mencken, were nonfiction pieces for The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and The American Mercury. His first article for Mencken in The American Mercury, “The Labor Leader,” mocked both the miner and the businessman, using the vernacular of each. These so-called dialogues gave Cain the reputation as a master of spoken word, and among his admirers was Alfred A. Knopf. If he lacked the typical screenwriter’s pedigree, it was this facility with dialogue that led to his getting offers from Hollywood studios.
When he got fed up with his job at The New Yorker, he finally accepted an offer from Paramount, believing that moving west would help him solidify his voice as an author. By 1931, Cain was indeed headed for Hollywood. Unlike some of the authors who preceded him there— Faulkner, Fitzgerald, et al.— Cain had limited success as a fiction writer before he arrived, and so the charge of being a sellout didn’t apply. In fact, the opposite occurred as his literary reputation began to expand, beginning with the short story “The Baby in the Icebox,” published in The American Mercury and then sold to Paramount.
With more confidence, Cain began writing a novel based loosely on two news stories he’d read—one about a female gas station attendant who ended up killing her husband, the other about a woman and her lover who conspire to murder her husband before turning on each other afterwards. Because of its length (35,000 words) and perceived problems with the ending, the novel, titled “Bar-B-Que,” was conditionally accepted by Alfred A. Knopf. After considerable back-and-forth between Cain and the publisher, the book was finally published as is save for the title. “Bar-B-Que” became “The Postman Always Rings Twice.”
Upon its release in 1934, Postman went—and there is no other word to better describe it—viral, with rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic and best seller status for hardcover and paperback editions, along with adaptations for serial, stage, and screen.
Cain’s next project was an eight-part serial, its title suggested by Jim Geller, his agent, and inspired by his own experience in the insurance industry. Titled “Double Indemnity,” the story was rejected by Redbook but eventually bought by Liberty. Like Postman, Double Indemnity went viral, if in a different way: people lined up to purchase the next issue of Liberty as soon as it was out.
In between these successes, Cain spent time, much less successfully, on other writings. If he didn’t see these outlets as hindrance to his novel writing, Alfred A. Knopf, his publisher of Postman did: “You can’t write fiction with one eye on the movies. … How much money would it take to persuade you to drop everything and do this book [meaning his next novel]?”
Cain didn’t answer but did eventually produce Serenade (1937), a book as sensational as its predecessors, but one that did not sell as well. Mildred Pierce, Serenade’s follow-up, appeared in 1941. Unlike the earlier three works, it was written in third person (one of only three such novels in Cain’s lifetime) and was much longer; also unlike those three, it was not initially the publishing sensation of its predecessors.
But of the four novels in the collection, I remembered details in Mildred Pierce the best. In one chapter, Mildred practices balancing plates at home to improve her waitressing skills. Far from being superficial, this scene reveals Mildred’s determination and drive, as well as her self-awareness, and it also shows that Cain, as always, had done his research.
Cain spent many years in Hollywood, but received only three screen credits. Most of his income there came from work on other scripts and from the sales of his own fiction to various studios. His last novel, The Cocktail Waitress, was published posthumously by Hard Case Crime in 2012. Cain began writing it in 1975, when he was 83, but it remained incomplete at the time of his death. Edited by Charles Ardai based on Cain’s various drafts and notes, The Cocktail Waitress represents, as Ardai points out in the Afterword, when Cain “decided to go back to his roots and write a James M. Cain novel again.”
There’s no way of knowing how many future authors Cain inspired. Ardai writes that without James M. Cain, there would be no Hard Case Crime. And without James M. Cain, it would have taken me far longer to find my way to writing crime fiction, if I got there at all. For if I’d initially embraced the laconic, cynical persona of Philip Marlow in my first crime fiction efforts, Cain’s prose and characters were surely living in my subconscious, because when I finally started writing from the perspective of people caught up in crime, I felt liberated.
Author’s note: The quote from Alfred A. Knopf and the biographical details of Cain’s writing life are taken from Ray Hoopes, Cain: The Biography of James M. Cain (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982). This article originally appeared in slight different form on the CrimeReads website.
"Paris Street Scene," my PI story featuring Erin Ferrigno, appears in Richmond Fantastic: Shadowy Secrets from the Commonwealth's Capital. All the stories in the collection feature speculative elements, and it was fun for me to give Erin a missing person case involving a painting by my favorite artist. The whole team at Whitaker Lyon Press was great to work with. You can purchase the collection here:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/richmond-fantastic-shadowy-secrets-from-the-commonwealth-s-capital/5b238538eb266a7a?ean=9798990934078
Well, we've pulled through that time of year again. Orange and black, skeletons and ghouls, scary movies, candy, and endless commercials that are just beginning to be replaced by Christmas commercials, and I just keep muting them all. Especially since this year Halloween coincided with election year and it's up to you to decide which was scarier.
Of course all the Halloween decorations are still up, while all the Christmas decorations are taking over the earth...
Meanwhile, I don't like Halloween, because I don't like being scared. A few reasons:
I was introduced to fear and pain very early. When I arrived in this country, I had a very, very, very bad (cigarette?) burn on my chest, and 69 years later the physical scar of it is still there: faint, but it's still there.
My mother loved scary movies and watched all the ones shown on TV and took me to all the movies, despite the fact that they scared me so bad I couldn't sleep. (I didn't mind the Dracula movies - Bela Lugosi seemed kind of ridiculous, if not downright funny, to me... Make of that what you will.) I remember she and I went to see "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" (1964, I was eleven), with Bette Davis, Olivia de Haviland, Mary Astor, Agnes Moorehead, and Joseph Cotton in what seemed like an attempt by everyone to kill everyone else, or at least drive them insane.
There's a scene involving a backseat that kept me horrified all the way home, as well as a few scenes involving a severed hand, and that night, as I was trying to get to sleep, the little dog jumped up on my bed and I woke EVERYONE up screaming my head off.
My father, on the other hand, took me to all of the sci-fi movies that came out, including Barbarella ("We won't tell your mother about this one," he said, as I ate popcorn to Barbarella stripping in the airlock) and 2001 A Space Odyssey, which made my much later forays into hallucinogens seem ... familiar, and wondering when the Star Child was going to show up.
Then there's two years of living on the streets of L.A., where predators abounded, in uniform and out.
Anyway once I became an adult and was able to live the life I wanted to live, I almost never went to scary movies. Here's my list of exceptions:
The Haunting - Julie Harris and Claire Bloom together made this in my top five of scariest movies ever made, but the acting was so great that I still don't regret having seen it.
Alien - I avoided opening closets at night for a while. But damn, Sigourney Weaver was GREAT.
The Shining - Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers... Mm-hmm... Love the photograph on the wall.
Bubba Ho-Tep - Any movie with a black JFK (Ossie Davis), an old Elvis (Bruce Campbell), and an ancient mummy, set in a nursing home has to be seen at least once. And it has its hilarious moments, as well as the ones which make me look elsewhere for a bit.
Anyway, what I really wish America would celebrate is Samhain:
SAMHAIN
It's pronounced SOW (as in cow)-in, a/k/a November in Gaelic. The early literature (from the 9th century) says Samhain was marked by great gatherings and feasts; a time when the ancient burial mounds were opened, the portals to the Otherworld. Some of the medieval tales also associate Samhain with bonfires and sacrifice. There was dancing. Prayers. Offerings.
Is this a good day to talk about American political history? Depends on your point of view, I guess...
I assume no one wants to hear another debate on the definition of mystery fiction. Most of us are happy to use Otto Penzler's: fiction in which crime or the threat of crime is a major element.
It's not perfect, of course: it easily encompasses Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Great Gatsby, none of which are usually claimed by (or condemned to) our genre.
I bring it up because I want to discuss a limited TV series I just watched on Netflix, one which no one is likely to label a mystery although it certainly fits Penzler's definition.
Death By Lightning is a four episode mini-series about the assassination of President James Garfield. It is a terrific piece of drama with a lot of American history weaved into it, and it will likely convince you that our politics has always been a lot murkier than Mrs. Kodwaller claimed when you were in in seventh grade.
The other stand-out is Nick Offerman as Vice President Chester A. Arthur, who agrees with most of the country that he doesn't belong anywhere near the White House. Michael Shannon, as Garfield, is burdened with portraying a bit of a saint.
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| Ol' Chester |
My main complaint is that they left out Julia Sand. I recently listened to a BBC podcast about her so I was hoping she would make an appearance. Chances are you have never heard of her and yet one can argue that she had more effect on American life up to the present day than all but a handful of nineteenth century women.
Sand (1848-1933) was the daughter of a wealthy New York family, well-educated but burdened by bad health. She entered history after Garfield was shot and spent two long months dying. She began writing to the vice president, who she didn't know, as follows:
The hours of Garfield’s life are numbered – before this meets your eye, you may be President.The people are bowed in grief; but – do you realize it? – not so much because [Garfield] is dying, as because you are his successor.
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| Young Julia |
She wrote 23 letters and in them she encouraged Arthur to renounce the spoils system in which he had become rich and powerful and to reform the government. To everyone's astonishment the new president did that, signing the laws that created our Civil Service System, which has protected our interests for almost 150 years (or, ahem, created the Deep State, if you prefer).
Did Sand's letters really influence Arthur's policies? Well, we know two things: he visited her during his presidency, and before his death he ordered most of his papers destroyed. But he saved her letters.
What are you wearing? Such an interesting question. Or at least it can be.
It could be asked in a horrified tone--imagine a mom seeing her child dressed inappropriately (at least in her mind) right before leaving for school on class picture day. It could be said in a curious tone, one girlfriend to another as they plan their outfits for a dance. And it could be said seductively, one lover to another in a phone chat--the old fashioned kind, without a video component.
There's a good reason this question can precede phone sex. What someone is wearing (or not wearing) can titillate. It also can communicate. If your long-distance lover says she's wearing "sweats," you're probably in for a different conversation than if she says she's wearing a satin nightie--or maybe nothing at all.
Wearing an inappropriate outfit to an event might tell the world that you don't care to live up to their sartorial standards. Or maybe it says you're so uninterested in fashion--or so preoccupied with something else--that it didn't occur to you that what you put on that day might be too casual or too fancy.
Of course, even if you intend to send a particular message through a fashion choice, it doesn't mean other people will grasp your point. A man might choose to wear the same style suit as the boss often wears, trying to portray an image of professionalism. But his coworkers might get the message that the guy is an ass-kisser.
The same thing can be said about a person's grooming. A woman with face tattoos might intend to send the message that she'll do what she wants with her body. A person seeing it might think she means art belongs everywhere. A man with a mohawk might be telling the world that he loves punk or appreciates nonconformity, while his neighbor might think the message is threatening or that he's a fan of the 1970s and '80s.
Where am I going with all of this? Just as clothing and grooming choices can send messages in real life, they can send messages in novels and stories, providing useful information to the reader. A character who wears 1950s-style dresses every day is telling something about herself (though one reader might think it means she has old-fashioned beliefs while another might think it means she is independent and wears what she wants, no matter what's in style). If a character who works in an office where suits are de rigueur goes into work one day in ripped jeans and a stained T-shirt, the reader might think he's sending a message that he is under stress or maybe that he wants to be fired. A woman whose husband loves her long hair could be sending a message to him--and the reader--if she cuts it short.
So, when describing a character's clothing and grooming choices, be sure to think about what you're trying to communicate or why you are making those choices. If you don't have a particular point to make or a reason to dress a character in a particular way, maybe don't do it.
I've read a number of novels and short stories over the years where characters' outfits were mentioned yet it didn't feel as if the authors were trying to say anything with the clothing choices. Rather, it felt as if the authors thought they needed to show the characters, so they randomly mentioned what the characters were wearing, even if the clothes were boring (and the authors weren't making the point that the characters were boring). Fellow authors, don't do that to yourself.
If a lot of a book's characters are wearing jeans and a T-shirt, for instance, unless you're making a point about conformity, think about cutting these boring descriptions for something more interesting (that fits with the character and plot). Give your characters more purposeful style. Just for instance, if you dress a character in assless chaps, that choice likely will catch the reader's attention and should suggest something (something interesting) about the character, especially if the character is heading into his corporate job where everyone always wears suits and ties.
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And now for a little BSP: My newest short story, "Just One Twist," was published in the final issue of Black Cat Weekly magazine--issue 270--on October 31. In this tale, the only thing standing behind an abusive husband and his on-the-run wife is an unlocked door. Who will get there first? You can buy the issue here: https://blackcatweekly.com/b/yspUh.
Steve Jobs famously designed the inside of Apple computers to exacting aesthetic standards, even if repair technicians and recyclers were the only people who could relish the results.
Most agree Jobs was a genius, and many also think he was nuts. These afflictions often accompany each other, though I appreciate his impulse. There’s a principle in sailing called good seamanship. Examples might include coiling your dock lines in a neat circular fashion rather than simply draping them over a cleat. Checking your position as you pass
through a channel you’ve traversed a thousand times. Identifying yourself by the name of your craft, even when radioing a mate across the bay to come have a beer. None of these things are entirely necessary in the moment, but the ancient principle is to make proper practice a habit for those times when the mundane turns unexpectedly lethal. Reflexively taking care of the little things extrapolates up into the significant; it becomes second nature, more a mood state than a procedure.
It seems there are a number of people
for whom this is all too much bother. It’s
not the quality of the performance, they feel, only the end result. I remember working around computer programmers
who’d describe a string of code as elegant.
You could write an application that worked fine every time, but would be
a tangled mess to the knowledgeable observer.
Or you could arrive there in a way that enlightened coders would find
aesthetically pleasing. My heart lies
with the latter, if for no other reason than their applications would be
more robust and adaptable to subsequent development. And ultimately, far less expensive when fit
into a massive project.
As an editor, I suspected any writer who disliked copyediting, or resisted fact checks. It betrayed a recklessness of mind that put in doubt their broader artistic decisions. Would that plot complication been solved with greater effort, would that character been better rendered with more respect for polish and precision?
There are plenty of bestselling
novelists whose work I’d describe as sloppy.
Often not with their first book, but as a series evolves, you get the
feeling they aren’t really trying as hard. The
logic of these writers, and their editors and publishers, must be that if the
books are selling, less care is required.
That might be true if your only criteria involves Book Scan. There’s a market for poor quality, if a casual
survey of your local Walmart is any guide, but for people like me, a well-crafted
piece of fiction and a sturdy toaster elicits the same loyalty and regard.
A popular complaint is that quality just ain’t what it used to be. Planned obsolescence is definitely a pervasive trend, though the big things, like cars and houses, are far better made now than they were when I was growing up. Other important categories, such as power tools and crime novels, tend to ebb and flow. The principal influence seems to be cultural disposition. Poor quality appears to seep in when people are too pre-occupied to notice the decline, and then rally when a brand or genre starts securing appellationas like “cheap crap.”
Mid-century pulp fiction has taken on a certain reverence by those who consider the form more authentic, unfairly denigrated in its time. I doubt these admirers have read much of the real thing, since the product’s utility as actual pulp probably exceeded its literary merit. I read a lot of it as a young person in search of elusive salacious content, without being particularly enriched or injured in the process. Today, the odds are much better that any random mystery picked off the shelves will deliver a passing entertainment without the pleasure of atrocious plot structure and ersazt protagonists.
My favorite crime novels (also my favorite novels over all) were written a while ago, though I blame that more on my reading habits – and the moments in my life when these books caught my attention – than any deterioration of the form. Getting a novel published these days is hardly a cakewalk, and those still achieving the task are closer to Steve Jobs than Mickey Spillaine.
