Thoughts on Finding Time and Space to Write

Ladies and gentlemen of the crime community, we take great pleasure in introducing Mr David Heska Wanbli Weiden. Please give David a warm welcome.

— Leigh

author David Heska Wanbli Weiden
photo by Aslan Chalom

            David Heska Wanbli Weiden

            I am delighted to join the SleuthSayers roster! It’s a pleasure to join writers whom I’ve known for some time and others that I’ve yet to meet. In this introductory post, I thought I’d share some thoughts on publishing and marketing a debut novel (spoiler alert: during a pandemic!) and also on finding space to write one’s second novel, although I hasten to add that no one should take any advice from me on this topic, given that it’s been five (!) years since my debut was published. I am happy to report that the sequel, Wisdom Corner, is forthcoming in 2026, and I also have an edited anthology forthcoming from Akashic Books titled Native Noir.

            By way of background, my debut novel, Winter Counts, was published by Ecco/HarperCollins. It’s the tale of Virgil Wounded Horse, a vigilante on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I’m an enrolled citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe (known as the Sicangu Lakota nation in our language), and so it’s no surprise that I set the novel there. I wasn’t raised on the reservation, but I spent a great deal of time there growing up, as my mother was born there and our family still has a presence on the rez. Indeed, I “own” three small parcels of land on the reservation, although that land is held in trust by the federal government and is leased to white ranchers, who pay rent for the use of the land (the princely sum I receive ranges from 75 cents to several dollars per annum.)

            I wrote and revised Winter Counts in the period from 2017-2019 and was extremely fortunate to secure representation from a literary agent, the wonderful Michelle Brower, in 2018. On submission, we were lucky to have a number of Big Five imprints interested in the manuscript, and Ecco offered a two-book deal, which we accepted. Publication was set for August 2020, and I excitedly attended to all of the details of publication: copyediting, proofreading, cover design, audio book creation, etc.

            And then the global pandemic happened.

            The Covid-19 years now seem very far away, but it is difficult to understate the impact the virus had on the publishing world in the early stages. My entire book tour was canceled as was every planned event, including a live book launch in my hometown of Denver. Indeed, every brick-and-mortar bookstore in the country had closed, which did not bode well for hand sales of the novel by booksellers. Naturally, I was devastated, as it seemed like all of my hard work was going down the drain. But, people were dying, and I was of course grateful that no one in my family was affected (although I did contract the virus, just weeks before the first vaccine was released) and I mourned for those lost, including a former classmate. The impact of Covid-19 was catastrophic for citizens of my reservation, as there were few opportunities to quarantine on Indigenous lands and many Native nations did not have the resources to purchase medical masks before federal funds began to be distributed. (Jumping ahead of the story a bit: after my novel was released, private book clubs began to ask me to join them virtually; I never charged a fee, but I did request that they donate to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Covid fund, and I was gratified to raise a fair amount of money for my people to purchase masks and other items.)

         For those of us with books published in the first wave of the pandemic, there were no templates on how to move forward. Given that the usual model of in-person book promotion was not possible, I made the decision that I’d utilize every option offered to discuss the novel. And indeed, that’s exactly what I did. In the year after the book was released, I engaged in nearly two hundred events: virtual bookstore readings, podcasts, virtual festival appearances, radio broadcasts, meetings with private book clubs, print interviews, television appearances, and even an Instagram takeover of the HarperCollins account. I also wrote several dozen blog posts and articles, including an op-ed for the New York Times. I was grateful for these opportunities to talk about the novel and the issues in the book, and my initial awkwardness with video appearances lessened to some degree. Happily, I believe that my work paid off, as the novel was able to attract significant attention in the press as well as dozens of positive and rave reviews. Sales were excellent, and the book made a few bestseller lists as well as receiving twelve awards in the U.S. and England.

            The point here is that book promotion and marketing apparently changed as a result of the pandemic years, and this change may be permanent. I’ve spoken to veteran authors who told me that they never participated in any virtual events before the pandemic, but that these appearances are now standard for them. To be sure, there are some authors who have such a national presence that they can eschew these virtual gatherings, but for most of us, Zoom events are now the norm. For example, about one hundred private book clubs adopted and discussed Winter Counts, and I made a virtual appearance for about half of those. It’s always a pleasure to speak with these enthusiastic readers, but these meetings take time and energy, of course.

         And that brings me to the issue of writing the second novel. I’ll confess that I’ve sometimes felt like a slacker when I observed folks in my writer friend group publishing novels every couple of years (or even more frequently!) But I know that each of us has a different process and different circumstances. Like most, I’ve maintained a day job as well as family responsibilities. Raising teenagers—at least in my house—ensures a steady stream of issues that demand immediate attention. In addition, many of us maintain side jobs and passion projects. In my case, I’ve made it a priority to give back to the Native American and writing communities, engaging in fundraising, mentoring, and various forms of professional service. But these activities also take significant time and attention.

            This brings me to the practical advice on finishing a second book, although I’ll repeat my caveat that I’m not sure I’m the person to advise on this. For me, the most intense bursts of creativity have occurred when I’ve been in attendance at artists’ residencies. I’ve had the exceptional good fortune to be in residence twice at MacDowell, Ucross, and Ragdale, as well as once at the Vermont Studio Center and once as Artist in Residence at Brown University. For those who aren’t aware, these residencies are spaces for artists to work, uninterrupted, in the presence of other creatives. At MacDowell, located in the woods of New Hampshire, each artist is given a cabin or studio in which to work by themselves; lunches are silently dropped off at the front door. In the evenings, a communal meal allows for discussion of work projects and other topics. In 2018, I wrote the final chapters of Winter Counts in two weeks in an intense period of focused creativity in the Garland studio at MacDowell. In the last several years, I’ve worked on Wisdom Corner at other residencies with similar results.

            For those struggling to find time in which to write while juggling family and other responsibilities, artists’ residencies can be a godsend. Many of these residencies charge no fees and some even provide travel stipends. For the best-known residencies, admission is competitive while others are less so. But, despite the benefits of these residencies, I’ve found that there are vanishingly few crime or genre writers at these spaces. It’s tempting to infer that there may be a bias by the judges against genre writers and in favor of literary fiction authors. I can’t definitively answer that question, but I can share at least one data point. For the last two years, I was a judge for a well-known residency (I’m not allowed to say which one), and, in that time period, there were exactly zero crime writers who applied for admission. Perhaps this was just an anomaly, but my sense is that crime and genre writers are either unaware of these residencies or believe that these spaces are not for them. This is most certainly not true! I urge crime and genre writers to apply to these residencies as well as other conferences, festivals, and events. I’ll briefly note that many general writing conferences—such as Tin House, Bread Loaf, and Sewanee—are also frequently overlooked by genre writers.

            I’ll end these thoughts by noting that the landscape of publishing has certainly changed in the last decade for a variety of reasons. Not only the transformations wrought by the pandemic, but the consolidation of publishing as certain presses and imprints have merged or shut down. Many more changes are certainly coming given the economic uncertainty we face. In light of this, it’s in our interest as genre writers to remain aware of these challenges and adapt as necessary. To this end, I’m heartened by the formation of communities such as Crime Writers of Color, Queer Crime Writers, and others. These groups have tirelessly worked to open up spaces for writers previously marginalized from mainstream publishing, a positive development in our ever-changing industry.

Crime Scene Comix Case 2025-07-032, (Not so) Grand Theft Auto

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.

 

 

 

 

© www.FutureThought.tv

 

That’s today’s crime cinema. Hope you enjoyed the show. Be sure to visit Future Thought YouTube channel.

Midnight in Europe

NOTE 1

“I want to find whoever invented sex and ask them what they’re working on now.”  James Ellroy

NOTE 2

Tony Lane piece in The New Yorker, firewalled, about Dutch Leonard, the occasion being a new biography, Cooler Than Cool, published by Mariner, and a three-volume set from the Library of America.  Cheap at twice the price.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/07/elmore-leonards-perfect-pitch

Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/cooler-than-cool-c-m-kushins?variant=43113097527330

Library of America

https://www.loa.org/books/writer/206-elmore-leonard/

 

I’ve mentioned in a couple of past columns what an unexpected bonus it is to run across books by favorite writers that you haven’t yet read.  This happened to me recently with a Lehane, and a Leonard, and then I pulled an Alan Furst off the shelf, t’other day, Midnight in Europe, and realized I hadn’t read that one, either.  I’d obviously bought it, and let it slide off my radar.

I should remark that I thought Furst’s books fell off a little, in the middle, but then he came slamming back, the last couple.  I could be wrong, and it was me.  If you’re not familiar with his work, Night Soldiers came out in 1988, and Under Occupation, the fifteenth historical, and most recent, in 2019, so he’s maintained a consistent pace, across thirty years.  You want him to keep them coming. 

The novels are WWII espionage adventures, set in Europe - Occupied Paris more often than not - from the early 1930’s to the collapse of the Axis, in 1945.  They go down some odd and unexplored byways, with the big guns, Germany and Soviet Russia, casting a long shadow, but the characters in the foreground generally cautious about showing their true colors.  Sometimes, in fact, they’re not quite sure.  And neither are we, always.  But the stakes are life-and-death.  The business people are engaged in might seem like small potatoes, in one book, smuggling anti-Fascist newsletters into Italy, but Mussolini’s security police went after the Italian émigré community with ruthless terror tactics – surprisingly, to those later readers who’ve been schooled to think of il Duce as cartoonish.  He established the secret police in 1927, before the Nazis came to power in Germany, and Heinrich Himmler modeled the Gestapo after the Italian version. 

Midnight in Europe is about smuggling guns to the Republicans in Spain, in 1938.  It’s a doomed effort, but the people involved hope otherwise.  This points up two things about Alan Furst’s novels.  The first is dramatic irony.  We know that the Spanish Civil War ended in defeat for the Republicans, we know the Allies beat Hitler.  But at the time, these were unknowns, and unknowable.  The characters in a Furst book don’t know the outcome.  The second thing is that the books, over time, have narrowed their focus.  Night Soldiers covers a wide canvas, from 1934 Bulgaria, to Spain, to Occupied Paris, to a brief coda in postwar New York.  Later books, like Dark Voyage or Spies of the Balkans, are tight and contained, and sometimes too much so, confined, even.  But again, to the people living the immediate story, the events crowding them in are evil sufficient to the day. 

Like the Bernie Gunther novels that Philip Kerr wrote, over a comparable thirty years, the Alan Furst books, loosely connected internally, create a known world, in parallel to a past reality, that seems as authentic and recognizable to us as the world we inhabit. 

Fry and Laurie on the Case

You have no doubt seen plenty of British crime dramas but not the way Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie do them.  

  

Get Away to Recharge

A view from the porch last year.

I am writing this one week before it posts, as Temple and I are preparing to visit Hot Springs, Arkansas, over the Independence Day weekend. We will be staying in a VRBO on the Ouachita River, our third Independence Day weekend visit to this location in four years. During the two previous visits, I spent much of my time sitting near the river with my laptop computer, working on various short stories. (“Working Vacation” [Tough, March 2, 2025] was inspired by the location and written during our first visit.)

We eat most of our meals at the house, but we found a German restaurant (Steinhaus Keller) that surpasses any we’ve come across elsewhere, so we plan at least one meal there. We also found a hole-in-the-wall burger joint (Bailey’s Dairy Treat) that we like to visit at least once during our stay.

There are two other locations we might visit this year, both new to us—Black Ribbon Books, located in the historic Arlington Hotel, and the Garven Gardens Trains, a garden with four separate scale-model train layouts running through it.

Even so, sightseeing and dining out aren’t why we make the six-hour drive. We go to get away from daily life, to relax in a way we cannot at home.

Temple and I take other trips throughout the year—we did a whirlwind weekend trip to Chicago in mid-June, often take one-day and two-day road trips around Texas, and attend various conferences and conventions (together when we can)—but as enjoyable as those trips are, I’d be hard-pressed to call them relaxing. The closest any of our other trips come to the relaxation level of Hot Springs is the annual fall trip when we rent a VRBO with Andrew and Dawn Hearn. Sometimes Andrew and I write or talk writing—“When Sin Stops” (Weren’t Another Other Way To Be) resulted from a discussion at one of these getaways—but mostly the four of us just hang out.

And that’s something I think writers need to do—take time to relax, chill out, do little or nothing away from the hustle and bustle of daily life, and recharge the batteries.

I know I return home refreshed after our Hot Springs trips and our fall weekend trips with Andrew and Dawn. Maybe it’s time to schedule more trips like this.

* * *

Another writing milestone crept up on me when I wasn’t paying attention. Sometime recently I sold my 1,300th short story. If yesterday’s count is correct, I’ve now sold 1,307 original stories and sold reprint or other subsidiary rights 205 times.

These numbers are always a bit spongy. I can verify publication of 1,029 original stories. The other 278 originals are either scheduled for future publication or were sold to publications that never provided contributor copies. Same for the reprint and other subsidiary rights sales: I can verify 181 of them; the other 24 are either scheduled for future publication or sold to publications that did not provide contributor copies.

* * *

“Renovated to Death,” co-authored with Sandra Murphy, appeared in Black Cat Weekly 198, June 15, 2025. This is our sixth collaboration.

“Penalty for Early Withdrawal” appears in the July/August issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

Miss Marple Revisited

by Janice Law

A recent bout of Lyme Disease has had me resident on the couch, watching gallery tours or cook shows on YouTube and revisiting the BBC's late 20th century production of all twelve of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple books. The series stars the incomparable Joan Hickson as the third member of the great trio of cerebral detectives.

While the colors of the videos seem to have faded, Hickson, who began work on the series at age 78, is every bit as sharp and plausible as I remembered. While Poirot and Holmes are memorable in part for their well-cultivated eccentricities, Miss Marple is an extraordinary mind in an ordinary frame. 

Miss Marple in harmless mode

Indeed, as she herself points out, an elderly lady, being almost universally regarded as both harmless and inconsequential, is free to ask nosey questions and offer sharp observations. Talk about turning disadvantage to profit!

The combination of half-feigned dithering and razor sharp analysis must have been tricky to pull off in both print and film. I think Hickson succeeds in part because she is one of those fine British actors who does less rather than more. Not for her are histrionics or clever bits of business, not even a striking wardrobe such as both Poirot and Holmes enjoy.

In faded pastels and washed out grays, she looks neat and anonymous, but there is no doubt that she has sharp ears and that her chilly eyes miss nothing. "I don't believe anyone," she remarks at one point, which brings me to something I had half forgotten: how very ruthlessly persistent and coldly rational she is, and also how nasty some of the crimes are that she investigates.

The generation of writers that followed Christie reacted not only against the clever and complicated plots, but also against the settings: the cozy version of the class system, the country houses, charming villages, and genteel sections of London. All to the good, mysteries have become grittier, more diverse, or– in the case of popular series like Midsomer Murders, a parody of the older style.

But revisiting the Hickson Miss Marple series, I was struck not only by the vast social changes since the post World War Two era Christie depicted, but also by the continuities in mystery plots. Some literary changes represent a widening of interest, a greater range of characters and social classes, an increased sexual frankness, but others are simply stylistic, a matter of focus and emphasis.

Take Nemesis, one of the best of the series in my opinion. It's tricky and elaborate all right. A fabulously rich man leaves deathbed instructions leading Miss Marple and her nephew on a bus tour of rural churches and country mansions, a route that will involve them in a decade old murder. 

Nemesis is full of puzzles, and yet at the heart it is a sinister psychological drama with a killer brutal enough to have stepped out of any modern thriller.  In a modern novel, we would undoubtedly open with the first of the killings, a young woman bludgeoned and strangled, while the second would most likely be revisited in a graphic flashback. 

Yesterday or today, the material is the same, only the treatment, sanitized in one form, sensationalized in another, is different. Christie found an ideal character for her contemporary format, an observer and analyst who could make old clues speak, who was acceptable everywhere and noticed nowhere – until it is too late for the perpetrator to escape.

Of course, being a rather frail looking woman in her late seventies, Jane Marple is not going to perform heroics. She rarely has to rumple her cardigan, although when called upon, Hickson comes through gamely. She faces down the killer in Nemesis and actually dispatches the villain in Sleeping Murder. Do not try anything with a keen gardener armed with an insecticide sprayer. 

In general, though, she relies on tolerant, rather dim policemen for her assistance, and here I was struck by a real difference, no doubt based on assumptions about women and class. Modern detective fiction often pits the amateur (and sometimes the professional) sleuth against the powers that be. The overweening chief constable, the obstructive chief of detectives, the dismissive local force are frequent obstacles. 

Miss Marple's interrogative mode

But Miss Marple is tolerated. Naturally she is always right and so contributes to a happy solution, plus she is a lady and must be treated politely. She is also old and female and inconsequential. Her help can be accepted and even acknowledged because she is fundamentally unimportant and only a momentary threat to male egos.  

No wonder she is skeptical and trusts no one without evidence. 

Robot on Wheels

Today’s article might seem more suitable for Top Gear, Car & Driver, Road & Track, Jalopnik, or Motor Trend, but today’s article about Tesla motorcars has method behind the madness. I’ll limit my comments about its controversial CEO to saying (in my unhumble opinion) he’s so very good at a few things, he believes he’s good at everything. Whatever faults he has, he’s a brilliant businessman and a damned good technical futurist who attracts an insanely dedicated following across a broad spectrum of ‘fanboys’.

Once Upon a Time

When I was a wee budding boy mad scientist, I salvaged a generator from a truck and purloined a used battery. A few spare parts from the farm’s machine shed and a wooden frame, and I cobbled together a dangerous-as-hell electric go-kart of sorts. The clutch was a belt tensioner and the Soapbox Derby brake, carved from a discarded rubber tire, literally dragged the kart to a halt… barely. But the proof of concept worked. Electric motors were well understood, waiting for battery material science to catch up.

Wanting an electric car has long been a wish. A few years ago, I test drove one, a Tesla Model 3. The car came with ‘autopilot’, which meant it could follow highway lanes and when I finished the drive, it parked itself very nicely, thank you. The loudest sound was the air conditioner’s fan, which still needs to be addressed.

Autopilot, by the way, is Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system, and FSD represents the premium, more advanced version.

Traditional manufacturers have been developing similar technology, but Tesla’s advantage then was reduced environmental impact combined with one, two, or three powerful motors capable of slamming passengers back in their seats, 0-60 in THREE SECONDS. The proof of concept worked and battery technology was catching up.

The other attraction was a promised feature, FSD, full self-driving, an add-on of several thousand dollars. Drivers could petition to become beta testers after being tested themselves. In that early stage, owners were informed bad driving would result in withdrawal of FSD. Drivers had to be on their toes, but proof of concept worked.

I rode in a Tesla the day it was released for beta testing. The car behaved like any new driver– jerky, hesitant, uncertain, then suddenly over-daring. It was like a theme park ride but more so. Over time, Tesla issued a number of updates and gradually driving smoothed out,^† behaving like a competent, well-mannered, defensive driver. Close your eyes today, you can not tell a real person isn’t chauffeuring you about.

In recent months, I’ve been driving a Tesla model Y. I don’t own the vehicle, rather I’m under a not-so-onerous obligation to drive one a few times a week. I think of the machine as a robot on wheels. Not coincidentally, Tesla has a humanoid robotics division, and I have little doubt one subsidiary feeds the other, advances in one group benefitting another.

My friend Thrush says you don’t so much drive an FSD Tesla, you supervise it. Further, it demands a stern taskmaster. It watches your eyes. If it thinks you aren’t paying attention, it will let you know. The car doesn’t like a pair of my sunglasses and scolds me once in a while.

I tend to be a highly focused driver, so I’ve been surprised when riding as a passenger over highways and byways I’ve driven for years, discovering shops and sources I never knew were roadside. FSD allows drivers to relax a little but stay alert. Flight instructors tell students to constantly scan, always scan: instruments, windows, communications, controls. It’s good advice for drivers.

When All is Not Peaches and Petrol

But what about accidents? Surely cars without drivers must have insane collision numbers. They do… insanely less, to borrow an Apple phrase. Teslas using FSD suffer only ⅕ the accident rates as human drivers. One fifth, 20%. That’s tens of thousands of fewer accidents… and fewer deaths.

That’s not to say everything is perfect. I discovered the current FSD program had difficulty with red traffic light arrows. It would stop as usual, but after twenty seconds or so, it seemed to forget about the red light and proceeded with the turn.

And then came an unexpected mother of all tests. I was in first position in the leftmost turn lane at a six-lane major intersection (southbound on Edgewater Drive at John Young Parkway and Forest City Road, Orlando) when the entire array of traffic lights blacked out, gone, kaput. The Tesla hesitated and then edged forward until I stomped the brake. I was still new to driving, so I didn’t know how to report a rare but risky situation.

An opportunity arose to observe its behavior when blocked by other cars, once on Interstate 4 and another on side streets. A steady stream of cars obstructed the exit lane. No shouting, no gnashing of teeth, no road rage, no surge of blood pressure, no Florida Stand-Your-Ground shootout. The Tesla sedately continued to the next exit and looped back.

Conversely, when wanting to cross multi-lane traffic, the machine hesitates when other drivers kindly open a gap. Wisely so because a common Florida insurance scam involves a con artist waving an innocent to proceed only to jump in the path and scream injury. Per contra, the Tesla politely allows side street drivers to ease into traffic.

Unlike some competitors, current (no pun intended) models don’t include lidar among sensors, but rely upon a full kit of cameras in our visual spectrum. That means in a determined downpour, it can’t see any better than we do. In such a case, neither of us should be driving.

Options are highly customizable from minor convenience choices to how the car behaves. It can act like an auto with manual transmission, an automatic, or its own paradigm. Remember I used an old generator as a motor? Some motors can act like generators and vice versa. Let off the gas on an electric vehicle and when the motor is internally braking, it simultaneously dumps juice back into the battery. Try that, petrochemical fans.

The Futurist

I’m going to attempt a couple of predictions. We’ll start to see new and unexpected uses for FSD. Suppose a driver passes out or falls heavily asleep. Presently, the car tries to get the driver’s attention by flashing the screen and sounding a tone. If it can’t rouse the driver, it pulls off the road.

But with additional AI, it might realize you, the driver, are sick or wounded or suicidal and drives you straight to hospital. If someone attempts a holdup in a mall parking lot, you might summon your car to the rescue.

Or your grounded teenager steals your car without permission and heads for her (or his) dealer/boyfriend. You hop on your phone and instruct the car to lock doors and drive her (or his) drunk butt straight home.

As boomers age and Generation X is discovering bald spots, sagging parts, and skeletal stiffness, enlightened officials might find their way clear to allow FSD owners to ride as a passenger in their car without a drivers license. Senior citizens could safely transport themselves as freely as the rest of us. How liberating!

Previously, I suggested the most likely and most immediately useful humanoid robots will be found in toys for toddlers and eldercare, respectively. Taking that a step further, an intelligent car could advance care and concern for both. Just as it warns about unfastened seatbelts, it could detect unattached baby carriers. Never again must we read about a child or pet locked in a hot car, when the car itself realizes it has several options to offer succor and solutions.

An Accident Waiting to Happen

Consider road safety once FSD automobiles chat among themselves. A truck obscures your line of sight leaving you unaware a car is stopped in the middle of the road. A child wanders into the street. A motorbike slips into your blind spot. An out-of-control bus is hurtling at you.

I fully expect we’ll see FSD vehicles talking with one another, one warning others of impending disasters. Then suppose one realizes if nothing is done, that child in the path of an oncoming vehicle will die. With altruistic programming, it could sacrifice itself to save the pedestrian and possibly persuade other vehicles to intervene.

And then…

The arms race between crooks and cops embodies the flip side. Quite soon someone figures out how to use a BMW iX to drive the getaway car, steer a Cybertruck through a bank’s front doors, direct a Genesis GV80 to hijack a trucker, or send a Ford Mach-E to pick up ransom money and return the victim. Until, of course, the cars rat out the perpetrators.

And finally…

Of the first four Tesla-built cars, I’ve mentioned models 3 and Y. The other two are S and the X. In the same vein as Tesla’s built-in man-child fart noises, the models spell out S3XY.

What do you think?

^† Tech Tales (How it’s done)

A Series Discussion

When we categorize fiction, we usually say it's either short or long, literary or genre, lighthearted or gritty, mystery or SF, etc.--but there's another distinction: Is it a series story or a standalone story?

Most of my short stores are standalones, meaning they're not part of an ongoing series using the same characters and locations. I like writing standalone stories because the plots and players are always new and interesting to explore. I can go anyplace I want to, in any time period, and live there for a while. ("A while" being the key phrase. That's probably the reason I'd rather write shorts than novels.)

Series differences

Having said that … I occasionally like to write "series" stories as well. One reason is that some characters and some settings turn out to be interesting and/or enjoyable enough (to me, at least) that I want to revisit them from time to time. Another is that a number of editors have told me that they, and their readers, like short-story series--and I'm not one to ignore that kind of hint. A third reason is that series installments (if they're subsequent stories and not the very first in the series) are sometimes easier to put together because both I and the reader already know the characters, and I can spend less time with setup and backstory and more time developing the plot--and plotting is probably my favorite part of writing. This works especially well if the stories are really short, as is the case of markets like Woman's World. I have found, though, that when I do write series stories, I tend to not write several in a row. I almost always sandwich one or more standalones in between series installments. That just seems to work better, for me.

I should also mention that there's one thing you have to consider with series stories that you don't have to worry about with standalones: continuity. If you're lucky enough to sell a few stories in a series, you'll find that you must keep careful track of facts about your recurring characters (primary and supporting), and locations and relationships as well. You don't want to carelessly change, say, the names of certain people, streets, restaurants, bars, and businesses later in the series. And if it seems that things like that would be easy for the writer to remember--well, they're not. You also don't want to repeat certain phrases, descriptions, or anything that might seem too repetitive, from story to story. Another thing to remember: Not everyone will read those installments in order. Every story in the series should be written such that it can stand on its own.

One more point. I'm not quite sure how to say this, but there seems to be a different feeling that goes along with the writing of each of these two kinds of stories. When I begin a standalone story I get a little tingle of adventure and daring and experimentation, of trying something brand new. (Yes, I know how silly that sounds, but it's true.) On the other hand, when I begin a series story, I feel more comfortable and secure because I'm on familiar ground--I already know the characters pretty well, and how they think and how they'll act. I'm not saying one "feeling" is better or worse than the other. Both are welcome, because they make me want to keep writing. 

Series notes and numbers

Personally, I have written and published eight different series of mystery shorts. The first of them began in 2001, with a bossy retired schoolteacher named Angela Potts, a character based roughly on my mother. Mom wasn't bossy and she wasn't a teacher, but she was quick-witted and she was curious about everything and everyone in my little hometown--she loved sitting in one particular rocker on her front porch and observing the neighborhood and every single car and pedestrian that passed by. Nothing happened in that town that she didn't know about.

So that's what got me started. But Mom's similarity to my protagonist ended there. My fictional heroine not only knows what's happening, she also doesn't mind interfering with those happenings, and investigating anything she finds the least bit suspicious. She especially enjoys "helping"--and irritating--the local sheriff, who was a student of hers in the fifth grade. Sheriff Charles "Chunky" Jones always allows her to butt into police business, not because he wants to but because he knows that "Ms. Potts" is smart and cunning enough to solve cases that he can't. Having his procedures criticized and his grammar corrected at every turn is, he figures, a small price to pay. So far, I've had more than 150 stories published about those two characters and their little Southern town, most of them mini-mysteries at Woman's World. 

In 2003 I started a different series of stories, this one about a small-town sheriff named Lucy Valentine and her mother Frances. Like Angela Potts, Fran Valentine is a former teacher, and in her retirement she's concerned mostly with two things: (1) assisting in the never-ending fight against crime and (2) finding Lucy a husband. (The first is easier than the second, since her daughter doesn't want a husband.) Around 100 of those Fran & Lucy stories, sometimes billed as the "Law and Daughter" series, have been published in more than a dozen different magazines, seven anthologies, and three story collections. (Woman's World published one of the Fran & Lucy stories in 2010, but the then-editor told me she'd rather I go back to the Angela mysteries, so I did.)

My third crime series, and one of those I've enjoyed the most, features Mississippi sheriff Raymond Kirk Douglas ("Please, no more Spartacus jokes") and his on-and-off girlfriend Jennifer Parker, who's a former lawyer and Ray's childhood sweetheart. Seven of these stories, which are much longer than most of my mysteries, have been published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and one in the short-lived Down & Out: The Magazine--and the latest installment is now hanging around in the AHMM submission queue. the Ray Douglas stories have been extra fun to write because most of them include not one mystery case but two or three different cases per story. 

My fourth series stars private investigator Thomas Langford, and also features a female partner-in-crime-solving: Tom's fiancee Debra Jo Wells, a paralegal at a local law firm. The first installment of that series was published in a special PI issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and holds a glowing place in my heart (thank you, Michael Bracken) because it won a Shamus Award in 2021. The next Tom Langford mystery appeared in Strand Magazine, the third in Black Cat Weekly (thanks again, Michael), and three more installments have been accepted for an upcoming collection of my detective stories. (I should note that, as usual, Tom's female counterpart is smarter than he is, and he knows it. After all, our stories are supposed to reflect real life . . .)

My fifth mystery series revolves around accountant Katie Rogers and her younger sister Anna, the police chief in (you guessed it) their small Southern town--three of the Katie & Anna stories have also appeared in Woman's World. My sixth series features Old West private investigator Will Parker, whose first story (actually a novella) appeared in one of John Connor's Crimeucopia anthologies; the second story was published in a private-eye anthology and was later selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories. My seventh crime series stars New Orleans shopowner Madame Zoufou, Queen of Voodoo, who has made three appearances so far, one of them in a Mardi Gras anthology. And my eighth series features private eye Luke Walker and his sister Lavinia (Vinnie), and is set in the 1940s in New Orleans. The first of those appeared in an anthology of stories by previous Edgar- or Shamus-winners, the second has been accepted and is upcoming in an anthology based on S.S. Van Dine, and the third is in progress. 

In summary, six of my eight mystery series are set in the present day, two are set in the past, seven are set in the southeastern U.S., three are about county sheriffs, three are about PIs, one's about a police chief, and one's about a voodoo sorceress, with helpful partners and amateur sleuths joining the cast in all of them.

What's your story?

So that's my background, with regard to series. How about the rest of you? Do you prefer writing standalone stories or series installments? Do you like reading short-story series? Do you have any favorites? If you've written series stories, are they set in a familiar (to you) area? Are they written with particular publications or markets in mind? Have you found that writing them is more fun than standalones? Which do you find easier to write? Have you found series stories easier to sell?

Whatever your experience is and your preferences are, I hope you keep reading stories and keep putting them on paper. 

I'll be back in two weeks. See you then.