GUEST POST: Creating a Cohesive Collection

My friend Judy Penz Sheluk has twice been a guest columnist here at SleuthSayers--once in 2021 and once in 2023. Today, at our regular two-year interval, I'm pleased to have her here for another guest post, this one to celebrate the latest book in her Superior Shores Anthology series. Please join me in welcoming her once again.

--John Floyd

Creating a Cohesive Collection

by Judy Penz Sheluk

I've acquired a few skills during my corporate life as a credit manager (among other finance-related jobs) and as a magazine editor for multiple publications, but one of the most important was a good working knowledge of Excel, spreadsheets being a good way to number crunch and manage budgets. Even so, I never thought I'd use it as a tool to help me determine the order of the stories in my Superior Shores Anthologies. But that's exactly what I've done, each and every time.

Let's take my most recent multi-author anthology, Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, released on June 18th. Admittedly, much of the heavy lifting lies in culling down the 80 submissions to a manageable number, but turning the selected stories into a cohesive collection isn't quite as simple as it might seem on the surface. That's where my handy-dandy spreadsheet comes in. Here's a step-by-step look at how it works:

1. Set up five columns: Order (1-22), author name, title, word count, and comments.

2. Select which story will be first and mark that as number 1 under the column titled 'Order.' I spend a lot of time deciding what story will be first, because that sets the stage for the rest of the collection. In the case of Midnight Schemers, I chose Charlie Kondek's 'Secretly Keith,' the tale of a cover band guitarist who decides the time is right to rob barroom bookie Big John Warmer. At just under 3,500 words, it's middle of the pack in length, and as you've probably guessed, things don't go according to plan for our scheming, daydreaming, and very misguided musician.

3. Mark 'A Foolproof Plan,' my story of a woman desperate for a new life, as number 22, the last entry--it just doesn't feel right to put my own story ahead of any of the other authors. At just over 1,800 words, it's the shortest in the collection, which brings me to...

4. Select #21: the lead-in to the final story. Preferably long, and completely different in every way. In this case, I selected C. W. Blackwell's 'Making Up for Lost Time,' which clocks in at about 5,000 words, a poignant tale of a down-on-his-luck divorced dad and his daughter.

5. Sort the remainder of the stories by word count. In this way, I can begin to vary the order by story length, i.e., long, medium, short, long, medium, short, and so on.

6. Of course, just sorting by length isn't enough. That's where my Comments column, a one-sentence reminder about the content, comes in. It wouldn't do, for example, to have Pam Barnsley's homeless man in 'The Underground,' compete with C.W. Blackwell's down-on-his-luck dad. That said, at roughly 2,500 words, it's not long enough to follow Charlie Kondek's mid-length opener. The balance? Inserting Susan Daly's 5,000 word 'A Talent for Fame' between the two.

7. The heavy lifting done, I tinker with the order until it's right. Sort, re-sort. Re-read the intro of each story until I'm finally satisfied it's as good as it's going to get. After all, even the most devoted tinkerers have to let go sometime.

READERS: Do you pay attention to the order of stories? Or do you read them based on author name recognition, story title, and/or length?

About Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense:

Desire or desperation, revenge or retribution--how far would you go to realize a dream? The twenty-two authors in this collection explore the possibilities, with predictably unpredictable results. 

Featuring stories by Pam Barnsley, Linda Bennett, Clark Boyd, C. W. Blackwell, Amanda Capper, Susan Daly, James Patrick Focarile, Rand Gaynor, Gina X. Grant, Julie Hastrup, Beth Irish, Charlie Kondek, Edward Lodi, Bethany Maines, Jim McDonald, donalee Moulton, Michael Penncavage, Judy Penz Sheluk, KM Rockwood, Peggy Rothschild, Debra Bliss Saenger, and Joseph S. Walker.

Find it at www.books2read.com/midnight-schemers

About Judy: The Past Chair of Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) and a former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk (author/editor) is the multiple award-winning author of seven bestselling mystery novels, two books on publishing, and several short stories. She is also the editor/publisher of five Superior Shores Anthologies. In addition to CWC, Judy is a member of International Thriller Writers and the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Find her at www.judypenzsheluk.com

 

Play It Again, Scarlett--and Beam Me Up a Box of Chocolates

No, that's not the title of a new movie. It's just a mix of some of the things often misquoted from movies and TV shows. Funny thing about misquotes: They're usually near-misses--very close to what was said, but not quite. And thanks to the magic of DVDs and streaming and YouTube, we can now look back at those scenes almost whenever we want. After all, Clarice, I had an old friend for dinner, and we're not in Kansas anymore.

For what it's worth, that kind of lapse is called The Mandela Effect, a situation in which a large group of people share a strong yet false memory, and remember it as a reality.  (The name refers to the belief, by some, that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s, although he actually died at his home in 2013.) It of course doesn't help our memories, in this case, that some famous movie quotes wind up shortened or otherwise changed when used again in sequels and remakes and satires.

Take a look, and see how many of the following quotes you can remember, and how many you might've remembered wrong. 

Casablanca -- No one in the movie ever says, "Play it again, Sam." Just before what might be the longest close-up in film history, Ilsa says, "Play it once, Sam. For old times' sake." And later, alone and brooding in the darkened tavern with Sam, Rick says, "You played it for her, you can play it for me. If she can stand it, I can. Play it."

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre -- Almost everyone remembers the line "We don't need no stinkin' badges." But what the bandit actually says to Bogie and his friends instead is "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges."

The Wizard of Oz -- After the tornado, Dorothy does not say, to her dog, "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." The correct quote is, "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." And yes, I realize I'm nitpicking, here. But I wanted this post to be longer than just a couple of examples.

Planet of the Apes -- At the very end, as Charlton Heston's character looks up at the ruins of the statue, he does not say, "Damn you. Damn you all to hell." All I can figure is, that's the network-TV prime-time sanitized version. What he really says is, "Goddamn you. Goddamn you all to hell."

Nowhere in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies (there were twelve of them) will you hear the quote "Me Tarzan, you Jane." In the first movie, Tarzan the Ape Man, he and his sweetie just point back and forth to each other and say their names, over and over.

The Empire Strikes Back -- I can't tell you how many times I've heard the quote "Luke, I am your father." But what Darth Vader really says, in that great James Earl Jones voice, is, "No, I am your father."

Dracula -- Bela Lugosi never says, "I vant to drink your blood." With or without the Hungarian accent.

All About Eve -- Another one-word mistake: Margo Channing doesn't say to the group, "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride." She says, "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night." A bumpy night?

Gone with the Wind -- Along those same lines, Rhett Butler's parting shot is not "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn." He says, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Dirty Harry -- Despite what most of us think we remember, Inspector Callahan never says, "Do you feel lucky, punk?" He says, "You gotta ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

The Graduate -- Ben Braddock's question to Elaine's mother is often quoted as "Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?" Instead, that should be "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me." (pause) "Aren't you?"

Jaws -- Sometimes the difference between real and remembered comes down to just one word. Chief Brody does not say to Quint, "We're gonna need a bigger boat." He says, "You're gonna need a bigger boat." Though, truthfully, all of them are.

James Cagney never says, in any of his movies, "You dirty rat." The closest he comes is in Taxi! He says, "Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat."

White Heat -- Cagney again, as gangster Cody Jarrett. He doesn't say, "I'm on top of the world, Ma!" What he says is, "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"

Hondo -- In the 1953 John Wayne Western, Hondo Lane does not say, to bad guy Ed Lowe, "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." He says, "A man oughta do what he thinks is best." (Back then, moviemakers didn't much care what women thought.)

Star Trek -- Never in the entire TV series does Captain Kirk, or anyone else, say, "Beam me up, Scotty." They come close, a lot of times, but never use that exact phrase.

Ghostbusters -- Bill Murray's character does not say, to Aykroyd's character, after an unsuccessful busting, "I've been slimed." Instead he says, "He slimed me."

The Simpsons -- Bart Simpson never says, anywhere or anytime in the series, "Cowabunga, dude." That quote came instead from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Whoodathunkit, bro?

Field of Dreams -- Most of us think the otherworldly voice says to Ray, "If you build it, they will come." It doesn't. The team does indeed come, and so do tourists, later, but the voice says, "If you build it, he will come." Meaning Ray's father.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs -- The Evil Queen doesn't ask, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" Instead she asks, "Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?' It should be mentioned, though, that in the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale it was "Mirror, mirror . . ."

Celebrity impersonators love to use the Cary Grant quote "Judy, Judy, Judy"--but he never says this to anybody, in any of his movies.

The A Team -- Mr. T's character B. A. Baracus if often quoted as saying, "Pity the fool." Actually, folks who remember that are half right: The actor Mr. T does say the line, but he says it as boxer Clubber Lang, in the movie Rocky III. The quote didn't come from The A Team at all.

The Silence of the Lambs -- Dr. Lecter does not say, "Hello, Clarice," either in the prison with her or on the phone with her at the end of the movie. He says, only once, "Good evening, Clarice." NOTE: I think he does say, "Hello, Clarice" in Hannibal, the first Lambs sequel. Although he was addressing a different actress in the Clarice Starling role.

Titanic -- Jack doesn't say, with arms outstretched, "I'm king of the world." He says, "I'm the king of the world." I know: nitpicking, nitpicking.

Wall Street -- Gordon Gekko's quote is not "Greed is good." It's "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." Maybe the screenwriter needed a bigger wordcount for the script.

Laurel and Hardy movies -- Oliver Hardy never says, "Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into." Instead, he says, in at least a dozen different movies, "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into." For the record, though, one of the films is titled Another Fine Mess.

Forrest Gump -- Forrest does not say, "Life is a box of chocolates." He almost does, but the actual line is, "Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates."

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring -- Gandalf doesn't say, to his group in the mine, "Run, you fools." He says, "Fly, you fools." And no, they don't have wings; what he's telling them to do is flee.

By now you probably want to flee, too, and frankly don't give a damn, but before you do . . . please let me know if you can think of other misquoted lines from the world of cinema or television. Did any of those I listed surprise you? Did I misquote any of the misquotes? And forgive me for wishing that someday some of my own fictional dialog will be quoted someplace, by anyone, either correctly or incorrectly. Hope springs eternal.

Meanwhile, keep watching those movies and series. It's necessary research, you know, for us writers. At least that's what I told my wife, the other day. She replied, "You're gonna need a bigger TV."

Actually she didn't say that, which makes it a misquote. What she did say was "Sure it is," and rolled her eyes. But the Shadow knows . . .

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

  

I'm not a huge fan of network television. Except for the nightly news, our TV's always off unless I'm watching a DVD or streaming a movie, which I admit does happen a lot. But in the old days, when network shows were all we had, I sat there pop-eyed and hypnotized almost every night, mostly watching cowboys or cops, but some comedies, too.

Most of the sitcoms were bad. Badly written and badly acted, although I didn't know it then, and if I did know it, I probably didn't care. I watched 'em anyway, unless I was reading. Now, in hindsight, I wish I'd only been reading.

But a few of the sitcoms were good, years ago, and I now realize they were good because they were well written. A couple of the best were The Bob Newhart Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which I think I remember aired back-to-back on Saturday nights, back in the mid-'70s. What struck me about those two was they weren't just entertaining, they were funny--laugh-out-loud, slap-yo-mama funny sometimes, and yes, part of it was because of the great characters (some of them I'll remember forever). But mostly it was because of the writing. Not just the jokes, but the whole thing, and the dialog was sharp and cool and witty.

The TV version of M*A*S*H was another example. I had already seen the movie and loved it, so when I watched the TV pilot it was with low expectations--but I was pleasantly surprised. Certainly more folks today will remember Hawkeye Pierce as Alan Alda than as Donald Sutherland, right? (Funny story, though, about the movie version: I was a green 2nd lieutenant in the Air Force when the movie came out, and it arrived at one of our two base theaters at the very same time that Patton arrived at the other theater. At first, most of us flocked to see Patton, mostly at the urging of our superior officers. But after the first night, the word got around, and for the rest of that week EVERYone was packing in to see M*A*S*H while the other theater, showing Patton, was almost empty. The base commander was not pleased and told us so, which of course secretly pleased us even more--my little group found Hot Lips Houlihan a lot more interesting than George S. Patton. Ah, those good old days of military service . . .)

Sorry--back to the main point. Around that time and in the years shortly afterward, several other good sitcoms came along as well--All in the Family, WKRP, Taxi, etc., and a little gem no one remembers called Wings. And, much later, Friends, The Simpsons, and Seinfeld. But my all-time favorite TV comedy series was, and always will be, Cheers. Even back then, I had noticed that the very best shows had a well-planned setting--MTM had a TV newsroom, Bob Newhart a psychiatrist's office, M*A*S*H a mobile army hospital--but Cheers had maybe the most promising location of all: a friendly neighborhood bar. That setting ensured that all kinds of crazy characters would be coming in and going out all the time, and with its absolutely top-notch cast, this show couldn't go wrong. I loved it from the get-go. Even after the series had been running awhile, every decision the producers made seemed to turn out right. Who would've thought the beloved character Coach, when he passed away, could ever be replaced?--but Woody turned out to be just as appealing a bartender, if not more so. And I wound up liking Rebecca as much as I liked Diane. Is it any surprise that the Frasier spinoff was funny and successful as well?

My fond memories of Cheers were the reason I felt such sadness a few days ago, when I heard of the passing of George Wendt, who played the lovable Norm Peterson in all 275 episodes of the series. I saw an old interview of him the other day, in which he was asked why his character was so popular. Part of his answer was something like: "I just said the lines the writers gave me to say." Again, the fine writing was a giant part of Cheers's lasting success. Anyone who thinks we fiction writers can't learn something from shows like that--well, they're fooling themselves. If you pay attention, you'll easily see the brilliance there. The timing, the delivery, the way every line of the script deepens the characters and delights the viewer and keeps things moving.

Maybe it's me, but I just don't see that kind of thing often anymore, in our current TV offerings. Even the camera work doesn't seem as professional. Some of the shows are good, sure, but many, many are not.

What are your thoughts, on this? Do you watch much network TV, and specifically the sitcoms? Did you watch them in the past? What were your favorites, back then? Have you now given up on them, like me? Do you agree that the writing is worse, in recent years, for that kind of programming? Has our collective sense of humor changed? All observations are welcome!

Meanwhile, I think I'll go find a YouTube episode of Cheers to cheer me up. As an example, here's an exchange I saw the other day:

Coach: "What's shakin', Norm?"

Norm: "All four cheeks and a couple of chins."

God, I loved that show.

Pass the Popcorn

I watch a lot of movies. So many, actually, that I often run out of current and recent movies and wind up re-watching those I've seen many times before. At least those are easy to find: I have three dozen boxes, each holding 26 DVDs, scattered around the house, plus God knows how many more DVDs on and underneath the bookshelves here in my home office. It's enough to make my wife scream. Thank goodness I'm a great husband in all other respects (he said modestly).

Anyhow, I recently rewatched The Quiet Man, a lighthearted John Wayne/Maureen O'Hara movie set in Ireland, which on the one hand is not my usual kind of movie and on the other hand is one that I always enjoy. And it occurred to me, when it was finished and the credits were rolling, that this well-known and award-winning film was adapted not from a novel but from a short story, first published by Maurice Walsh in The Saturday Evening Post in the early 1930s. Whoodathunkit?

That, of course, got me thinking about other film adaptations from the short stuff. And since I had an upcoming and uncompleted SleuthSayers column that needed to be completed . . .

Here are my highly-biased (and always changing) picks for the ten best movies adapted from short stories:

1. It's a Wonderful Life -- from "The Greatest Gift," Philip Van Doren Stern

2. Rear Window -- "It Had to Be Murder," Cornell Woolrich

3. High Noon -- "The Tin Star," Mark Casper

4. Bad Day at Black Rock -- "Bad Day at Honda," Howard Breslin

5. The Quiet Man -- "The Quiet Man," Maurice Walsh

6. Hondo -- "The Gift of Cochise," Louis L'Amour

7. The Killers -- "The Killers," Ernest Hemingway

8. The Swimmer -- "The Swimmer," John Cheever

9. 3:10 to Yuma -- "Three-Ten to Yuma," Elmore Leonard

10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," F. Scott Fitzgerald  

Five runners-up: The Birds ("The Birds," Daphne du Maurier), Stagecoach ("The Stage to Lordsburg," Ernest Haycox), The Tall T ("The Captives," Elmore Leonard), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty ("The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," James Thurber), Million Dollar Baby ("Million $$$ Baby," F.X. Toole)

Continuing with this idea of short fiction to screen, the following are my picks for the ten best movies adapted from novellas:

1. The Shawshank Redemption -- from Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King

2. Stand by Me -- The Body, Stephen King

3. The Thing -- Who Goes There?, John W. Campbell, Jr.

4. The Mist -- The Mist, Stephen King

5. Apocalypse Now -- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

6. Silver Bullet -- Cycle of the Werewolf, Stephen King

7. Hearts in Atlantis -- Low Men in Yellow Coats, Stephen King

8. The Old Man and the Sea -- The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

9. The Man Who Would Be King -- The Man Who Would Be King, Rudyard Kipling

10. The Snows of Kilimanjaro -- The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Hemingway

NOTE: Yes, I like Stephen King.

Five runners-up: A River Runs Through It (A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean), Minority Report (The Minority Report, Philip K. Dick). The Fly (The Fly, David Cronenberg), Breakfast at Tiffany's (Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote), Shop Girl (Shop Girl, Steve Martin)

Breaking news: I was reminded, by SleuthSayer Joseph D'Agnese's column yesterday, of several more good movies that started out short: Arrival, All About Eve, Brokeback Mountain, etc. (Joe, do great minds think alike, or what?)

Okay, which ones, Faithful Readers, did I leave out? Which do you think shouldn't have been included? Have you writers had any of your short stories or novella-length fiction adapted for the movies or TV? (For me, no.) Anything pending or promising? (No.) Any near-misses? (Yes.) Sold any film options? (Yes.) Do you have cinematic hopes for future projects? Who knows, right? 

Who knows, indeed. If you're like me, and none of your fictional creations have made it to the big screen, don't lose hope. Hold steady, stick to the plan, maintain the course. 

Anything's possible . . .

Well, That's a Different Story

  

Like most writers who've been at it for a while, I've gravitated toward certain kinds of stories. I wander off the path pretty regularly--any route you follow too often gets old--but I find that most of my stories these days involve (1) mystery/suspense, (2) a Southern setting, (3) a protagonist who's a regular, average person, (4) a handful of named characters (no more than four or five), (5) either a murder or a robbery, (6) a third-person POV, and (7) a plot with at least a couple of twists.

If you consider two of my latest published stories, you'd find all these elements, but you'd have to look at both to find them all. Each story veers some distance away from my norm, and that's something I didn't even realize or think about while it was being written. I only noticed it later.

Here's what I mean.

My latest story in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine went on sale a few weeks ago--"Heading West" appears in their May/June 2025 issue. In some ways, that story fits right into my comfort zone: mystery /crime, robbery, less than half a dozen named characters, third-person viewpoint, several plot reversals, etc. But in other ways I varied the template a bit. For one thing, this story is set in the Old West, which I have done often in the past but rarely at AHMM. Out of my 28 stories there, two have been Westerns.

NOTE 1: A quick word about writing in the Western genre. I've often heard writers say they like to do mystery stories because those always contain a crime. Why's that important? Because a crime story means conflict is already there--it's built right in--and we all know that conflict makes for a good story (usually the more the better). I think the same can be said of Westerns. Almost every Western story I can think of, except maybe Old Yeller, contains gunfights and violence of some shape or another, so . . . well, you see my point.

This story also contains some conflict that goes behind human vs. human. Much of the agony in "Heading West" is human vs. nature. Not only the rough environment, but the gradual buildup and arrival of a powerful tornado. (Living where I do, I know a bit about tornadoes, and the one in this story scores a 10 on the Wizard-of-Oz scale.) When you mix a terrible storm with a band of crazed outlaws who want to kill your protagonists, that makes things tough for the home team. It also makes things fun for the writer. If you happen to read the story, I hope you'll have half as good a time as I did, writing it.

The other recent publication I wanted to mention is my story "Redwood Creek" in Michael Bracken's anthology Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties (Down & Out Books). It appeared about the same time as my new AHMM story did, and features 13 other stories, each of them based on something memorable from that decade. I picked (naturally) "Movies of the '80s," so I dutifully made sure the early clues to the identity of the villain came directly from the movies that won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, etc., during those ten years. Putting together a plot puzzle based on Academy Awards trivia turned out to be great fun. 

Some of the things (besides the 1980s theme) that made this story a bit different from most of my creations were that it was a PI story (I don't write a great many of those); it featured 16 named characters, which is a lot for a 5100-word story; its crime was a dognapping; and it was written in first person. As for POV, I've actually found myself writing more first-person stories than I once did, especially if there's a detective working a case that I want him/her to solve along with the reader.

I also made sure my private eye was far different from the Spenser/Mannix/Spade/Marlowe stereotype. Here's an early paragraph from the story:

    My name, by the way, is Ryan Grant, and I'm a retired private investigator. I was not, however, a movies-and-novels kind of PI. No downtown office with a bourbon bottle in the desk drawer for me, no pebbled-glass window in the door, no ceiling fan, no overflowing ashtray. I didn't even smoke. For twenty years I worked out of an office that was once the guest bedroom in our home while my college-professor wife earned most of our income. I was a liberated man.

NOTE 2: Another different--and, to me, special--thing about this particular anthology is that all the other contributors are friends that I've met in person or via Zoom. That doesn't happen often, and makes me look forward even more to reading all their stories.

How about the rest of you? Do you find yourself leaning toward the same kinds of stories, the more you write? Do you find yourself breaking the mold now and then? When you do, how much do you vary your settings, plots, POVs, characters, etc.? Do you ever hop from one genre to the other, or mix them up? How often? Has that been successful? Let me know, in the comments section below.  

As for me, several more "unusual" shorts are coming up later in May--but, hey, that's a different story.

See you then.

Plotting 101

I've said before, at this blog, that the two things I enjoy most about writing short stories are plotting and dialogue. I think most of my fellow writers agree with me about dialogue---it's just fun to write--but very few agree with me about plotting. And beginning writers seem to be either confused about it or terrified of it. One asked me, "Why do I have to worry about the plot? Can't I just dream up some interesting characters and give them something to do?" Well, sure you can. But what they do is the plot.

It's not as hard as it seems. One way to address this, I think, is to talk about some plot techniques, or devices. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. Foreshadowing

Wikipedia says foreshadowing is "a narrative device in which a storyteller gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story." I like to think of it as something you put into a story, usually early on, that makes later action believable. It's not always used, or always required, but it's helped me many times when I needed to make something work in what would otherwise be an illogical sequence of events.

Example: If you want your story hero to be rescued from attacking headhunters at the last minute by a helicopter, you must at least mention that helicopter earlier--maybe there's a military training base nearby, etc. If you don't, nobody's going to buy that too-convenient ending. Or if the murderous bad guy is sneaking up on the good guy during their hunting trip and falls instead into a bear pit, be sure to have a guide warn them earlier to "Watch out for bear pits." That kind of thing. The best movie example I can think of is Signs (2002)--there are at least half a dozen instances of foreshadowing in that film, little things that are casually introduced during the story that seem meaningless at the time, but later turn out to be necessary to the ending.

There's also another kind of foreshadowing that can come in handy. Sometimes a character or a place can  be mentioned early in order to build suspense and anticipation. Example: A counselor is leading a group of campers on a hike when one of the group spots a line of scarecrows in the distance and asks, "What's that?" and the leader says, "Oh, that's the Forbidden Zone. You don't want to go there." If that happens, of course, that's exactly where the unfortunate campers will wind up, before the story's done--and the reader will both dread it and look forward to it. As for using a character for that kind of thing, think of The Misfit, in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." He's mentioned only in passing, in the opening paragraph, but the attentive reader suspects that the traveling family will cross paths with him at some point--and they do. 

2. Raising the stakes

This isn't really a device, it's just good practice, and always a smart thing to do when plotting fiction. Example: Someone comes to a private eye asking for help with a relatively minor problem, maybe to find a missing friend or to shadow an unfaithful husband. That could possibly make for an interesting story in itself, but it's far more interesting if there is then an escalation of some kind, maybe a related murder or a kidnapping--something to make matters more serious and more dangerous. I think I'm right when I say the best and most popular stories, at least if they lean more toward "genre" than "literary," will include situations and villains that are life-threatening.

I've always liked the idea that fiction is problem/complication/resolution. Get a man up a tree, throw rocks at the man, get him down again. It's not enough to just get him in trouble and then rescue him; you must make things as difficult and stressful as possible for him in the middle of the story, with steadily rising action, before his situation get better. 

I'm convinced the biggest reason the TV series Lost was so successful was that it had tension and conflict on so many different levels. First the survivors of a plane crash are trapped on an unknown island, which is scary enough, but then (1) they start fighting among themselves, (2) they're haunted by their own personal demons, (3) otherworldly things begin happening around them, and (4) just when they're getting organized and trying to address all these issues, they hear distant roars and growls and see treetops swaying in the surrounding jungle. Things just get worse and worse and worse. Viewers loved that.

3. The ticking clock

Alfred Hitchcock once said, and I'm paraphrasing, that the best way to generate suspense is to put a ticking clock in your story. In his example, several men are sitting around a table playing poker, and there's a bomb under the table that they don't know about. Hitch said it doesn't matter to the viewer what the guys are talking about--sports, movies, politics, women, anything. What matters is that there's a bomb under the table.

I've done this kind of thing many times in my own stories. It of course doesn't have to be a clock--but it should be some form of countdown or deadline or pending event. It could he a scheduled execution, an approaching asteroid, a sinking ship, a terminal illness, a pilotless airplane, a final exam, a restless volcano, a slow-acting poison, a runaway train, even a trial date. In one of my stories, titled "Twenty Minutes in Riverdale," it was a ticking clock on a bomb--in fact the story consisted of nine scenes, and the title of each scene was a specific time (8:10, 8:15, 8:18, 8:26, 8:28, etc.), counting down until the blast.

One of the best examples, moviewise, is High Noon (1952), where an old enemy is coming in on the noon train to meet his henchmen and kill the sheriff, who can find no one willing to help him stand up to them. Throughout the film there are a dozen images of clocks, ticking off the minutes until the train's arrival and the shootout.

4. Plot reversals

I dearly love this plot device, and I use it regularly in my stories. (Probably because I like to encounter those twists and turns in the stories that I read.) I think one of the best ways to keep a reader interested is to have the story change direction unexpectedly--and not just at the end. Everyone talks about twist endings, but this kind of thing is effective anywhere in the storyline. And the reversals don't only provide surprise. They generate constant suspense because now the reader doesn't know what to expect. 

The best example of this, as all of us know, is the movie Psycho. When the most recognizable actor in the cast is killed half an hour into the story, viewers are shocked, I tell you, shocked. If that can happen, they think, hold onto your lap straps--anything might happen. In fact, I can think of only several other movies and TV series where the biggest-name stars died early and unexpectedly in the story: L.A. Confidential (Kevin Spacey), Deep Blue Sea (Samuel L. Jackson), Executive Decision (Steven Seagal), Scream (Drew Barrymore), and Game of Thrones (Sean Bean). I'm sure there are others, but hey, I can't watch them all.

Other examples of mid-movie plot reversals: Gone Girl, Marathon Man, From Dusk to Dawn, and Knives Out. And even though some critics still frown on twist endings, viewers and readers love them (The Usual Suspects, Planet of the Apes, The Sixth Sense, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.).

There are plenty of other plot techniques writers can use--flashbacks, framed stories, MacGuffins, false endings, red herrings, etc.--and I have used them all at one time or another. When they're well done, they can greatly improve a story.

How about you? Which plot devices are your favorites? Which have you used the most? Which do you think are most effective? As for plotting in general, is that something you enjoy doing? Do you find it easy? Hard? How detailed is your plotting? Do you bother to outline? If you do, is it written or in your head? Do you think in terms of individual scenes?

I heard someplace--I forget where--that a plot is two dogs and one bone.

Let the contest begin . . .

We Can't Bury Her THERE

  

I don't know about my fellow SleuthSayers, but the columns I write for this blog usually come to mind only a few days before they're due, and they're often triggered by a recent event or a conversation or a new publication, etc. The idea for my post today popped into my head while I was out in our back yard this past week, when I happened to hear our behind-our-house neighbors chatting to each other in their back yard--we're separated only by a six-foot-tall cypress fence.

Anyhow, hearing those voices made me think of something out of the past--an incident that happened out there in almost the same spot (though we had different neighbors then), and it's memorable only because it proves that real life can sometimes be a lot stranger than fiction.

Here's some background. Twenty years ago, a film producer who lives about three hours north of us had contacted me several months earlier about a Western story of mine that he'd read in a Canadian magazine. He said he thought it would make a good movie, and (of course) I agreed. After a lot of discussions and negotiations he asked me to write a screenplay for it and was soon in the process of putting together a crew, equipment, casting calls, music, locations, etc. Fortunately he allowed me to take part in most of that --I've never had so much fun--and we were swapping phone calls pretty regularly. (NOTE: Alas, that movie never saw the light of day, but for a year or so it was a real possibility, one that now reminds me of the old joke about the airline pilot who announces to his passengers, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, we're lost. The good news is, we're making damn good time.") 

Anyhow, while all this was going on and we were making good time even though we were lost, my Movie Man had decided he also wanted me to come up with a second screenplay, this one a contemporary murder mystery. And here's something else you need to know: Our neighbors in the house behind ours were fairly new to the area, and we hadn't yet met them. All I knew about them was that the husband was tall like me, because we occasionally caught a glimpse of each other over the top of the board fence. 

Okay, back to my story. On this particular day, a Saturday afternoon, my wife Carolyn was in the kitchen and I was out in our back yard, talking on my cell phone with the producer about the plot of my aforementioned in-progress mystery screenplay. The call lasted a long time, as our calls usually did, and when I disconnected and walked in though our back door, Carolyn looked up at me from whatever she was doing and said, "Do you realize what you just said, out there?"

I stopped and gave her my usual clueless stare. "What do you mean, what I just said?"

She pointed to our breakfast-room window, which looked out onto our back yard and--on that day--was open to let in the cool breeze of a nice spring weekend. "For one thing," she said, "you were talking too loud. I could hear every word."

"So, what'd I say?"

"You said, 'We can't bury her there.'"

Then I remembered. We'd been discussing the plotline, and my producer friend had suggested that one of my main characters, who had murdered his wife, should plant her body in a flowerbed on their property, which I didn't think was a good idea.

Continuing, my wife said, "You almost shouted it. After that, you said, 'We should bury her down by the railroad tracks instead, where nobody'll ever find her.'"

I still didn't see what the big deal was. I said, "So?"

She rolled her eyes. "So, our new neighbor was out in his back yard, the whole time you were talking. I saw the top of his head go by a couple of times, above the fence."

Understanding finally dawned. "You think he heard what I said?"

"Unless he's stone deaf, he did."

Well, I remember thinking, Even if he did hear me, he probably thought nothing about it. Besides, what was done was done. I shrugged and asked, "What's for supper?" 

And seriously, I thought no more about it. Until two days later, when I was mowing the grass.

We live on a big corner lot, and at the place where our side lawn bordered our neighbor's lawn, outside the fence and between it and the side street, I saw a shiny new sign, about a foot square, one of those flimsy metal Ten Commandments-like signs with two little wire legs, sticking up out of the grass on our property line. The sign was aimed at our house, and it said, in big printed letters, YOU ARE BEING PRAYED FOR. 

When I finished mowing, I came into the house, hot and sweaty, and reported this news to Carolyn. As it turned out, she'd done some research the previous day, and she now informed me that the husband half of the neighbor couple was the new youth minister at the local Baptist church. For some reason that struck me as funny, but she was not at all amused. I think she strongly suspected that the police might soon show up with drawn guns and a lot of questions about my future plans for burial sites and who might get buried there.

The cops and FBI never arrived, but what did happen was that our backyard neighbors moved away the following week--I swear that's true--and to this day my wife is convinced it was because of my big mouth and my announce-it-to-the-whole-neighborhood plot plans.

Final note, just to ease your mind: Unlike my suspicious wife, I'm fairly certain that (1) our neighbor did not hear what I was saying that day, (2) that sign probably had nothing at all to do with that incident, and (3) neither did our neighbors' sudden relocation to greener pastures. And you might be pleased to hear that I do now try not to talk so loudly on the phone (especially if my immediate family is listening). 

As I said, all this happened long ago, and in all the years since, I have never attempted to use that goofy incident in one of my short stories. Why?

Because fiction must be believable to the reader--and I doubt that this story, even though it's true, would be able to pass that test.

That's one thing that's always bothered me, about writing: Nonfiction is more easily accepted; it doesn't have to be believable. If it happened, it happened, strange or not--in fact, the stranger the better. With fiction, there are restrictions. If it's too strange, it won't work. On the one hand, we as writers are encouraged to mine our past experiences to come up with compelling story ideas, and on the other hand, we have to be careful not to make it too true. Has that kind of thing ever happened to you?

Real Life, as they say, is a trip. You can't make this sh*t up.

  

Inspired by Barry and Stephen

 

We've talked before about the fact that more short-story anthologies seem to be published these days than in the past. Especially short mystery/crime anthologies and--again especially--crime anthologies based on singers and songs.

Two of these music-themed anthologies were published since I last posted here, two weeks ago, and I was fortunate enough to have stories in them.

A Fanilow of Manilow

The first of those was A Killing at the Copa: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Barry Manilow. Published by White City Press and edited by old friend Jay Hartman, this anthology contains thirteen stories and was released on March 18. My story there is called "Lonely Together," which is also the title of the song that inspired it, from the 1980 Manilow album Barry. (I suspect the reason I'm a fanilow is that so many of his songs bring back good memories.)

My story involves a man and woman who meet by chance at the bar of a Moscow nightclub. One is American and one's Russian and both are single, a situation that seemed to me to fit both the title while offering lots of chances for mystery and deceit and a twisty plot--in fact, there are several complete reversals in the storyline during the course of the tale. The whole thing is written almost entirely in dialogue between these two people, and since I love writing dialogue, that made it even more fun for me. At 2000 words it's fairly short, and includes only two scenes.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Computer

The second music-themed anthology was Every Day a Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim, published by Level Short and edited by writer/editor/globetrotter Josh Pachter. (This is the fifth of Josh's music-based anthology projects that I've been involved with--each one has been great fun and interesting, and I think I'm more excited about this particular story of mine than I've been about any of the others.) Every Day a Little Death features twenty writers, many of whom (except me) were chosen because they're extremely familiar with, and active in, the world of the theatre. It was released on March 22.

My anthology story, "I Love to Travel," is once again based on a song with the same title, this one from the Sondheim musical Frogs. This wasn't my favorite of his songs (my faves are probably "Send in the Clowns" and some of the tunes from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), but this one was fun to spin a story around. My story, about 3800 words, includes two hicks from the South Louisiana swamps who decide to rob the eccentric CEO of a chain of Walmart-like retail stores. These idiots put together a gang of misfits who travel to Florida to pull the heist, which--surprise, surprise!--doesn't go as planned. Now that I think of it, this probably was a case of sending in the clowns . . .

Questions

How do you, as a writer and/or a reader, feel about these "inspired-by-the-music-of" anthologies? Do you find them enjoyable to write stories for? To read? How does that compare to other themes? Do you tend to play the song that's represented by a certain story while you're writing it?--I know some folks do. Does it have to be music by an artist you like, for you to enjoy the anthology? Does it make no difference, so long as the stories are good? Which one(s) of these projects--there have been many--have you most enjoyed? Which have you contributed a story to? Do you have any suggestions for music on which future themed-anthologies should be based? NOTE: I'll be traveling today and might not be able to reply right away, but your thoughts and comments are always appreciated.

In closing, I hope that, wherever you are, spring has sprung. (Begone from me, coats, gloves, and longjohns.) Dust off the pollen, keep reading those anthology stories, and keep writing!

Never Surrender

  

A few weeks ago, something good--and unexpected--happened to me, publishingwise: a story was accepted by one of my favorite markets, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The thrill I got from that acceptance probably doesn't mean a lot unless I tell you this: It was my first acceptance there in three years.

Confession time

EQMM has been a tough market for me, ever since I first started submitting short stories for publication, back in the mid-90s. I like to think I work hard on everything I write, and I try to research the magazines as well as I can, reading a lot in whichever one I submit stories to, and I've had some modest success with most of the mystery markets available to us over the years. But not so much at EQMM.

I've made a total of seven sales to EQ in the thirty-one years I've been submitting stories to them, and while I'm proud of (and grateful for) each of those acceptances, I should also explain that I've received many, many, many rejections from them. In fact, it took me six years of rejections to finally break into EQMM, and that first sale wasn't even a short story--it was a 12-line poem. My next sale there took four more years, and it too was a mystery/crime poem. Since then, I've been luckier in my submissions to them--four short stories in the past ten years, three of which were recognized with awards, plus this latest acceptance--but be aware, that good fortune sits on a scale opposite dozens of rejections.

Advice

My point in telling you all this is to say DON'T QUIT.

Keep on trying, even when you wonder if you'll ever get there. This is one piece of guidance I always tried to emphasize to my students in my short-story classes. As I've said many times, I can't guarantee that you'll sell a story if you submit it, but I can guarantee that you won't sell it if you don't. NOTE: The only times that advice hasn't eventually paid off for me is with Analog and Asimov's--they've never accepted any of my stories, although I've tried often--but that's not quite the same thing. I like reading SF, and writing it too, but it's not my favorite genre. Mystery/crime/suspense is.

So . . . if you're one of those talented writers who have had tons of stories published at EQMM--I'm talking to you, David Dean and Josh Pachter--my hat's off to you and you'll always be my heroes. But if you're someone like me, who has had some difficulty in regularly sneaking past EQ's palace guards . . . keep on trying. Tote that barge, lift that bale. I think that's the key to all this. (Though I do suspect that those jokers Dean and Pachter have some kind of secret handshake that they've never revealed to me.)

Facts

In case you're interested, my published stories at EQMM have averaged around 4000 words and have included mostly non-urban settings, no otherworldly elements, straightforward plots, and truly off-beat main characters: a 75-year-old retired farmer, a teenaged chess addict, a seven-foot-tall female schoolteacher, a self-driving car named Mary Jo, etc. This latest sale was of the same length as the others but was different in a few ways: a suburban setting, an extremely twisty plot, etc.--and was also the only story I've written in a long time that began not with a plot in mind but with a title in mind. For some reason, the title "Me and Jan and the Handyman" popped into my head one day and stayed there. By the way, I have no idea when the story'll actually be published, but it's comforting just to know I have one sitting in the TBP queue.

Questions

What about your own experiences, in submitting stories to markets you admire? Do you have a bucket list? Have you been successful? Did it take a long time for you to "break in"? If so, after your first success at a favorite market, was it easier afterward? Have you been able to publish there regularly? Are there any favorite publications that you're still trying and can't seem to crack? Let me know in the comments section below.

In closing, and in case anybody wants to read that first piece of writing I sold to EQMM--it was a poem called "Never Too Late," and appeared in their August 2000 issue--here it is, in all its "eat your heart out, Robert Frost" glory:

"You're Al Capone?"

He said, "That's right."

"You're dead, I thought."

He said, "Not quite."

"Then you must be--"

"I'm 103."

"So you're retired?"

"That's not for me."

"But how do you--"

"Get by?" he said.

He pulled a gun.

"Hands on your head."

Yes, it's a crazy poem, and poses no threat at all to Mr. Sandburg or Ms. Angelou, but it allowed me to work my way into one of my favorite magazines. So--again--it IS "never too late."

To quote Galaxy Quest (doesn't everybody quote Galaxy Quest?): "Never give up, never surrender." Keep writing, and keep sending work to whatever publications you think are the best.

Good luck to all!

 

Breaches of Etiquette (Writingwise)

 

Writing for publication is a crazy business. For me, it's probably more of a hobby/pastime than a business, since I've already had and finished my career (at IBM)--but writing is certainly important to me, and I try to obey its rules and do what's acceptable and proper.

Theory

As it applies to short fiction, one of the things that I've always been told to avoid is the possibility of having two editors or publishers wanting to buy the same story at the same time. It's a result of what's called simultaneous submissions--the practice of sending a particular story to more than one market at the same time, or sending it to a second market before hearing back from the first.

On the surface, it sounds like a smart approach. How could it not be good to have more than one person considering buying what you're selling, and even better to have three or four possible buyers for what you're selling? Well, sometimes it's not. Consider this: Let's say you want to sell your car, and you can think of two different people who might be interested. So you contact Prospect #1, make your pitch, and tell him you'll give him the first shot at buying it. Then you contact Prospect #2, make your pitch, and tell her you'll give her the first chance to buy it. As it turns out, if either one of them says yes, you've probably made the other one angry with you, or at least disappointed in you. Maybe you think that's fine: after all, you've sold the car. But in the publishing world, you'd like to be able to work with these editors over and over again--and you don't want to burn any bridges.

Simply said, the advantage of simultaneous submissions is that you increase your chances of publishing a story soon, and the disadvantage is that you risk upsetting an editor. 

Which, one might ask, is the correct choice?

Reality

I'm posting this today because of something that happened to me just last week. I had sent a story in late 2024 to what we'll call Market #1 and never heard anything back from them. (That happens, right?) So after four months of getting no response, I figured it had been rejected, and I sent that story to Market #2. A month later, Market #1 contacted me and said, lo and behold, they liked my story and wanted to publish it. They even told me when it would be published, so they'd already started planning the layout. So--wasting no time--I contacted Market #2 and said, as politely as I could, that I would like to withdraw that story from consideration. 

My problem, here, was that both of these were magazines I like and respect, run by editors I like and respect. I even confessed to the editor of Market #2 that I had first sent the story someplace else and that I'd thought they had rejected it, etc. As things turned out, the Market #2 editor was extremely kind and professional, and said no problem and no worries. So that editor removed it from their queue and all was well. But . . . would that editor later remember what I'd done, and maybe be less receptive to one of my submissions? I don't know--but I know I really, really hated to have to write that email and make that request to withdraw the story. At the very least, it was an admission of failure on several levels, and something I wouldn't want to have to do often. Things would of course have been much worse if Market #2 had said they'd decided to accept the story also--that, thank God, has never happened to me--but it was bad enough just to have had to confess my mistake,

Because it was definitely my mistake. What I should have done was officially withdraw that story from consideration at Market #1, via email, before submitting it to Market #2. But I didn't, and that caused an uncomfortable situation that could easily have been avoided.

Questions for the Class

What are your thoughts on this? Does the advantage--better odds for a prompt sale--outweigh the disadvantage? Many writers feel that it does, especially in these days of longer response times. It's hard for a writer to send a story off to a market that takes from three months to a full year to make a yea/nay decision on your submission. (There are even several how-to-write books that will tell you that editors expect you to submit simultaneously, even if the publications' submission guidelines tell you not to.)

Or . . . do you err on the side of caution, and never ever have the same story under consideration at more than one market at the same time? I've found that writers tend to be as equally divided on this issue as they are on plotting vs. pantsing. What say you?

Meanwhile, have a good March (to wherever you're going), and keep writing good stories.

Just don't get yourself two dates to the prom.

 

Hey, Watch THIS . . .

 

My topic today is something I don't often talk about, or even think much about: experimental fiction.

You know what I mean. Stories or novels that are unusual in some way, most often in format, technique, or structure.

When I think experimental, I'm reminded of Faulkner writing a short story in first-person plural POV ("A Rose for Emily"), or Cormac McCarthy leaving quotation marks out of his novels, or Ernest Vincent Wright writing an entire novel (Gadsby) without using the letter e. Truth be told, I'm not fond of that kind of thing. 

But . . . what if it's not something too weird or too difficult? What if it's just writing a story in a new and different way, maybe venturing beyond your comfort zone, just to see if you can do it? (And maybe to keep from getting bored.) I doubt any of my stories will ever be written without paragraphs or quotation marks or upper-case letters--but there are some kinds of literary experimentation that are almost too tempting not to try.

So, here are a few of those. This is a list of my own attempts at experimental fiction, none of them too drastic and each one followed by an example:

- An entire story told backward, scene by scene, with the ending first and the beginning at the end. "The Midnight Child," Denim, Diamonds, and Death (Bouchercon 2019 anthology).

- A story that takes place within the span of one hour, using three different points of view: the first third is seen through the eyes of the antagonist, the second third the protagonist, the last third an onlooker. "An Hour at Finley's," Amazon Shorts.

- A story with three completely different cases and solutions within the same story. "The POD Squad" and "Scavenger Hunt," both at AHMM. 

- A story written with no dialogue at all. "Bennigan's Key," Strand Magazine.

- A story written using nothing but dialog--not even an attribute, like he said or she asked. "George on My Mind," completed (last week) but not yet submitted.

- A story with three equal parts, each from a different POV, each part beginning and ending with the same sentence. "Life Is Good," Passport to Murder (Bouchercon 2017 anthology).

- A story set entirely in one small, cramped location. "The Donovan Gang," AHMM (stagecoach), "The Red-Eye to Boston," Horror Library Vol. 6 (airplane), "The Winslow Tunnel" Amazon Shorts (passenger train), "Teamwork," AHMM (car), "Silent Partner," Crimestalker Casebook (rowboat), "Christmas Gifts," Reader's Break (elevator), "Merrill's Run," Mystery Weekly (car trunk). 

- A long, rhyming poem (256 lines) in story form. "Over the Mountains," Dreamland collection.

- A story whose title is the same as its length. "A Thousand Words," Pleiades.

- A story in letter form (epistolary). "The Home Front," Pebbles.

- A story told entirely in flashback: "Cargo," Black Cat Weekly.

- A story featuring only one character. "Windows," Land of 1000 Thrills (Bouchercon 2022 anthology).

- A story about a countdown, using a time (8:10, 8:14, 8:26, 8:27, etc.) as a title for every scene. "Twenty Minutes in Riverdale," Pulp Modern.

- A story about a historic event that's revealed only at the end (spoiler alert!): "Premonition," Pegasus Review (Lincoln's assassination); Stopover," T-Zero (Mount St. Helens); "Custom Design," Lines in the Sand (Noah's ark); "Partners," The Oak (the Alamo siege); "A Message for Private Kirby," Green's Magazine (Battle of the Little Bighorn); "A Place in History" Scifantastic (Pearl Harbor); "Tourist Trap," Pulp Modern Flash (Pompeii); "The Barlow Boys," Mystery Weekly (deaths of Bonnie and Clyde).

- A 26-word story in which each word begins with a different letter of the alphabet, in order. "Mission Ambushable," online contest. (I won!)

 

 - A story that references more than a dozen MacGuffins from other stories/movies. "Mayhem at the Mini-Mart," AHMM.

 

Have you tried any so-called experimental writing? Anything more challenging than my stellar efforts? (I would hope so.) How often have you done something like this? Did you find those stories/novels fun, or at least interesting, to write? Were any of them published? What are some types of experimental fiction that you've enjoyed reading?

And that's that. I'll be back in two weeks. Meanwhile, experimental or not--keep writing!

Five Favorite Markets

  

Much has been said at this blog lately, by me and others, about anthologies. We've talked about everything from submission calls to themes to editing to publication schedules. That's probably because there seem to be so many anthologies being produced these days--especially crime anthos. And because of that, as I have also mentioned before, I've been doing more writing for anthologies over the past few years than for magazines.  

But there are exceptions. At this moment, as luck would have it, I have short stories in the current issues of five magazines, and those particular markets have been among my favorites for a long time. I hope I've been good for them; I know they've been good to me.

Here they are, in no particular order:

 

1. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

One of the most pleasant surprises of my so-called literary career is the fact that I've been published fairly regularly in a magazine that I had read and enjoyed long before I started writing and submitting stories--and it was one of the first major publications to buy my stories, early on. My first sale to AHMM was a 1200-word short story called "Teamwork," in early 1996, bought by then-editor Cathleen Jordan--I think I ordered about two dozen extra copies and gave one to everybody I knew, including the mailman. Since then--mostly in the last ten years--I've sold AHMM a lot more stories, far less than those of my friends Rob Lopresti, R. T. Lawton, and Doug Allyn, but still enough to gladden my mystery-lover's heart. Probably because of the magazine's long response times, I don't submit as many stories to AHMM as I once did, but I still send them fairly often, and it's always a thrill when one is accepted.

My story in the current (Jan/Feb 2025) issue is called "The Cado Devil," an average-length short story that's almost all dialogue, set in the present-day Mississippi Delta. If you want details, here's a piece I did for AHMM's Trace Evidence blog that describes a little about the story. My next story, "Heading West," is scheduled for their May/June 2025 issue--it's about a young couple, a tornado, and a train robbery in the 1880s. Yes, the magazine does sometimes consider Westerns--I had another one published there a couple of years ago. As most of you know, AHMM's editor is Linda Landrigan, one of the kindest and most professional editors I've known.

2. Strand Magazine

My first sale to the Strand was in 1999, shortly after their "rebirth" here in the U.S.; the previous incarnation of Strand Magazine had been published in London for many years, featuring names like Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. I've forgotten how and where I heard about the new Strand, but somehow I did, and snailmailed them a story called "The Proposal," about a Houston oil executive who'd hired a hitman to kill his wife. The editor contacted me by phone several weeks later to accept the story--it appeared in their second issue, and was the first of the many stories I've had published there. As I've mentioned before in discussions about markets and submissions, most of my Strand stories have been in the 3000- to 5000-word range, contain no otherworldly elements, feature more suspense than mystery, and are heavy on plot twists and reversals. (I'm not saying that's what everyone should aim for, but those things seem to have worked well for me.) So far, my Strand stories have been nominated for an Edgar, won two Derringer Awards, and were selected for three editions of the best-of-the-year mystery anthologies--so the magazine has been kind to me. Also, managing editor Andrew Gulli and fiction editor Lamia Gulli are a dream team to work with. Seriously.

My story in their current issue (#74, December 2024) is a 3200-word tale called "Lizzy in the Morning." It's set in the desert Southwest and includes a bank robbery, a scheming wife, a sneaky cop, a prison guard, an escaped convict, and long-buried loot. Again, as with almost all my Strand stories, it includes multiple surprises and has a plot that's more howdunit than whodunit. I hate it when I hear writers say a story "almost wrote itself," but this one did--it was great fun to put together.

3. Black Cat Mystery Magazine

I remember well the very first issue of BCMM, almost eight years ago--I loved the cover--and the magazine remains a quality publication. My first story for them was in that issue, a long (7600-word) Western called "Rooster Creek," one that I believe was submitted to then-editor Carla Coupe. In the years since then, one of my BCMM stories was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories and another won a Shamus Award, and for those honors I will always owe a debt both to BCMM and to editor Michael Bracken. The only thing tricky to remember about the magazine is that it's irregularly published and has a relatively short submission window, so I've always tried to have a story ready and waiting when those submission calls are announced. (Sometimes I can deliver, sometimes I can't.) At least one of my stories that was accepted by Black Cat Mystery Magazine was later diverted to the also-great Black Cat Weekly instead. More about BCW in a few minutes. 

My story in the current BCMM issue (#15) is "A Cold Day in Helena," a heist tale set in a snowstorm and told through the POV of one of two bank thieves--and it'll probably be no surprise to readers that the bad guys' carefully-planned robbery doesn't exactly go as expected. This serves as even more proof to writers--and to me--that the "complication" part of the problem/complication/resolution template is usually the most important of the three. If my records are correct, I have another story, "Ship Island," coming up soon at BCMM. One final note: As many of you know, Michael is an excellent and (thank goodness) patient editor.

4. Woman's World

Yep, WW is still around, and as long as it is, I plan to send them a story now and then. Usually a mini-mystery; I've had better luck there with mysteries than with romance stories, over the years (they publish one Solve-It-Yourself Mystery and one Five-Minute Romance in every weekly issue). I first sold WW a story in the spring of 1999, back when both the mysteries and the romances were a bit longer and paid a bit more than they do now, and I've been fortunate enough to be a more-or-less regular contributor ever since. Most of my Woman's World stories have been installments in a mystery series featuring a smart, bossy, retired schoolteacher and a not-so-smart but good-intentioned sheriff who was once her student in their small Southern town--she helps him solve mysteries whether she's invited to or not, and (not so helpfully) corrects his grammar in front of his deputies. One reader told me my Angela Potts/Chunky Jones stories remind him of a Mayberry in which Aunt Bee is always trying to tell Sheriff Taylor how to do his job. I hope that was a compliment, but I'm not sure.

My story in the current (February 3, 2025) issue is called "Sure as Shootin'," and it involves a farmer, a trick-shot artist, a preacher, a computer guru, a psychic, and of course a puzzle that needs solving. I haven't yet seen the issue but found a picture of the cover, which--as expected--features an attractive lady and a pointer to weight-loss secrets. Editors I can thank for my good fortune at this magazine (and I do, sincerely) are Sienna Sullivan, Maggie Dillard, Patricia Gaddis, and the long-retired but fantastic Johnene Granger.

 

5. Black Cat Weekly

Among all these print markets, there's an online magazine that's also close to my heart. Several years ago Wildside Press began a daunting venture: a weekly e-zine featuring stories of several different genres--and it's been a great success. My first story there was called "Debbie and Bernie and Belle," back in 2020, when it was known as Black Cat Mystery and Suspense Ebook Club. I believe it became Black Cat Weekly in 2021, and has included works not only from current writers but from some long-ago authors like Jack Ritchie (one of my all-time favorites). Another difference is that BCW features a mix of original stories and previously published works--something for everyone. (Not only do I have an original story in this week's issue, I'm scheduled to have a reprint in the one coming up next week--but that is, one might say, another story.) I'm sure a big reason for the magazine's success are the folks on the masthead: John Betancourt's the publisher and Barb Goffman and Michael Bracken are co-editors.

My short story in the current Black Cat Weekly (Issue #178) is sort of a weird Southern coming-of-age adventure/fantasy tale called "The Dark Woods." It involves a couple of schoolboys, Kevin Parker and Tommy Ward, who're planning a day at the movies, but Kevin's having to hang around for a while beforehand, waiting for his pal to finish his chores. During that time, Tommy's granddad tells Kevin a long and creepy story about one of the old man's childhood adventures, and, well, it turns out to be scary in more ways than one. This story, which at 2,000 words is pretty short, was a special treat for me to write because some of it really happened to me and one of my childhood friends when the two of us were wandering the backwoods one day on an ill-fated adventure of our own. (The true or almost-true stories are almost always the most fun to write.) 

What are some of the markets that you focus on first, with your story submissions? Are they the ones that have been the most receptive to your work in the past? Are they the ones you feel more "comfortable" submitting to, and maybe more optimistic about your chances? Do you have some magazines that are high on your target list simply because they present a challenge? (Personally, I like to submit stories to EQMM but I'm not as successful there as I'd like to be: half a dozen sales out of a zillion tries. Do you have similar mountains to climb?) Do you have a bucket list of magazines or other markets? (Mine includes Asimov's and Analog, although I have few hopes of ever actually selling them anything.) Do you find yourself writing to, and submitting stories for, more anthologies than magazines? Why? If you're in a confessional mood, let me know in the comments. 

And that's it--I'll be back in two weeks. Meanwhile, keep writing, keep warm, and keep sending out those stories. Good luck to all!