Grabbing the Third Rail

There are a lot of good reasons not to talk about politics in my column here.

It's not really what SleuthSayers is about, first of all. We're here to talk primarily about writing and reading, mostly in the area of short mystery fiction.

It risks alienating some of my readers. In these highly divisive times, declaring any particular political stance is putting a target on your back. Sometimes literally.

And, of course, there's the fact that it rarely, if ever, does any good. There was a time when I believed a well-crafted Facebook post, drawing on sound logic and reliable evidence, could actually persuade people to change their point of view on political issues. That time is well past.

So, yep, there are a lot of compelling reasons I shouldn't talk politics here.

As you've probably guessed, I'm going to do it anyway. 

Specifically, I've been thinking a lot about this question: what's the role of the writer in these times? Is it possible for writing to exist outside politics?

What's prompting this? Well, in addition to my columns here, my stories, and my actual day jobs (teaching, in case you've forgotten), I've somehow found myself serving, for the last year and a half, as the President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society (you're a member, right? It's free! It's fun!). Mostly I'm doing this because nobody else wanted the gig, but I've tried to make a go of it with the time I have available.

The heart of SMFS is our discussion board, and one of the things the members have made very clear is that they don't want overtly political content there. This is, of course, entirely understandable. There are plenty of other places online for people to scream at each other about it, and once such discussions start, they're almost impossible to stop. Inevitably they turn hostile, sometimes to the point of rendering the entire group useless for days on end and some members walking away for good.

So one of my roles, as President, has been to police the discussion board, trying to enforce civility and head off potentially explosive topics before they build up a head of steam.

Woody Guthrie

Lately, some folks seem to think I'm not doing a very good job of it.

In the last few weeks, members have posted news about a pair of upcoming publication opportunities focused on what's happening in the US. One is an anthology called American Gestapo; the other is a periodical called the Antifa Lit Journal. As the titles indicate, these are both publications taking a decidedly left-wing stance on current issues. I don't think posting about such opportunities on SMFS is itself problematic. Notifying each other about new markets is one of the things the group is for, after all, and simply informing the group about them isn't necessarily endorsing their political stances. People who know they have no interest in such a market are perfectly free to simply scroll past the post.

That's not what happened, of course. I won't get into all the details of the ensuing mini-firestorm, and as these things go, it was relatively brief and contained. There were some posts that I could only take as attempts to bait the members into a political crossfire, perhaps out of ideology, perhaps out of sheer mischief. There were a series of posts with people instructing each other, in increasingly hostile tones, not to talk about politics. These posts, of course, only prolonged the discussion and made the intrusion of political content more likely.

Recommended Reading

Then came the inevitable complaints that the board is tilted to the left, and that those on the right end of the spectrum were being subjected to unfair mockery, vitriol, and silencing. Now, I'll freely confess that I am a liberal, but I maintain, and continue to maintain, that I've done my best to be impartial in what I allow and what I silence on the board. No doubt I haven't been perfect, but I've tried. Anybody who thinks the job is easy is welcome to run to replace me. Elections are coming up in a few months.

Finally, there were the people who loudly declared that they're sick of politics altogether, and that they have no interest in any political debates, and that both sides are equally stupid, and it has nothing to do with their life or with writing.

And that's what I found I couldn't get past, and what I find myself compelled to write about here, somewhat against my better judgment. The idea--admittedly one propagated by most media coverage--that politics is really nothing more than a kind of sport, one that you can tune out of your life in the same way you'd decide that you really don't care about the Superbowl. One side wins, one side loses, life goes on. The belief that writing, specifically, can exist in an apolitical realm that's somehow above (or at least removed from) the petty political debates of the day.

I don't buy it. And since I can't talk about it at SMFS--where my mandated role is to minimize political discourse as much as possible--I'm going to talk about it here.

Even though I shouldn't.

First: in purely practical terms, politics do have real, concrete implications for people trying to write today. Sell a book on Amazon? You've put a couple of bucks in the pocket of a billionaire who's spent decades systematically dismantling organized labor and driving small businesses under, and who's currently in the process of gutting what was once a pillar of independent American journalism.

RIP Journalism

Politics are why library budgets are being slashed in many communities, pushing small publishers--the kind who, say, publish mystery anthologies--closer to the brink. Politics are why schools are banning books and universities are cutting humanities programs. Politics are why I know more than a few American writers hesitant to attend this year's Bouchercon, being held in Canada, because they're not certain they'd be allowed back in the US. Politics are why there's been no real effort to contain or regulate the AI explosion that threatens all artists, including writers (to say nothing of its devastating environmental impacts and terrifying stunting of critical thinking skills).

Those are just some of the concrete reasons writers should be concerned about politics, but more generally, and more importantly, writing is an inherently political act. In part that's because the freedom of expression is itself a political idea, but it goes beyond that. There's a reason despotic regimes make a practice of throwing writers and other artists into cells. Roger Ebert said that "cinema is like a machine that generates empathy." I think the same is true of all art. Creating and consuming art--and perhaps especially fiction--requires and promotes the imaginative effort to see the world through another perspective, from another set of eyes. It encourages us to step outside our narrow individual experience and recognize the fundamental humanity of others. To a certain set of people, that creation of empathy is dangerous. Maybe the most famous example in American history is Lincoln calling Harriet Beecher Stowe "the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Uncle Tom's Cabin awoke Americans to the horrors of slavery in a way that nothing else had.

And America today is sorely in need of empathy.

Bad Bunny with a message that
shouldn't be controversial:
"together, we are America"

The descent of the Republican party into what can only be described as a cult of personality, one fundamentally opposed to many basic tenets of American democracy, has been a long process. It probably began with the backlash to the Civil Rights movement; recall LBJ's observation that "if you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

For the last sixty years, the GOP has been giving its voters people to look down on, and picking all of our pockets. Reagan set the pattern with his lies about "welfare queens" and the glories of "trickle-down economics." Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh sold the ideology to millions with rants about libtards and feminazis. The catastrophic Citizens United decision solidified it as inescapable policy. It's a simple bargain: give us money and power, and we'll protect you. We'll protect you from immigrants, from gays, from the trans community, from scary brown people of all varieties. We'll protect you from intellectuals and scientists who think they're better than you. We'll protect you from teachers who want to tell your kids that America isn't perfect. We'll protect you from union thugs. We'll protect you from man-hating feminists. We'll protect you from lazy poor people, stealing your money through social programs. We'll protect you from traitorous liberals who want to take your guns and make you eat quiche.

They made people afraid, and they turned that fear into hatred. They convinced millions of Americans that empathy for the other is weakness. And then came Trump, who wields and directs hatred as a weapon in the service of his all-consuming ego.

This is no longer "just politics." This isn't normal. If Trump and his many enablers are not stopped, America will slip into full-blown fascism. Many would say we're already there. And you can pin your hopes on the next election, but right now the GOP is working very hard to suppress and undermine the vote, and that's just the start. Given everything else he's done, does anyone really believe Trump won't mobilize ICE and the other forces at his disposal to "secure" voting locations? Does anyone really believe he'd accept losing Congress? Or will he do everything in his considerable power to declare the results invalid and make himself the dictator he clearly longs to be?

These are not law enforcement officers

This might all seem unthinkable, but a lot of things that have happened in the last ten years used to seem unthinkable. American children are dying of entirely preventable diseases because the American government has tossed science out the window and turned over our national healthcare to a man who brags about snorting coke off toilet seats. Children around the world are dying because American aid to foreign countries has been gutted, in adherence to the President's racism and xenophobia. Our Attorney General screeches at members of Congress that, because the stock market is up, she's under no obligation to investigate child sex trafficking. Our President . . . well, there's no need to make a list, is there? Every day he does something that would have shamed any previous holder of the office into immediate resignation. And he gets away with it, in part because virtually nobody in his party has the spine to stand up to him and in part because everyone immediately gets distracted by the next outrage.

It's not normal for the Department of Justice to try to prosecute sitting members of Congress because they told the military not to obey illegal orders. It's not normal for a Congressman to insist a Superbowl halftime performance be investigated for the crimes of being in Spanish and asserting that there are countries other than the US in America. It's not normal for a President to demand that media outlets that report bad news about him lose their licenses, or to withhold resources from states because they didn't vote for him.

Or brag about his ability to walk into dressing rooms and ogle naked teenagers. Or grab women by their genitals and expect them to accept it because he's famous. Or post disgustingly racist memes to social media. Or demand his name be slapped on any building he happens to like the look of. Or defend himself against rape charges not by saying he would never do that, but by saying the woman isn't his type. Or shred decades-long relationships with American allies while embracing and praising dictators who flatter him. Or remove references to slavery from historical sites. 

The Attorney General of the US literally
refusing to look at or acknowledge
Epstein victims

Just to make a connection back to crime--since this is a site for crime writing--we might as well acknowledge that crime is at the heart of all of it. We've turned over most of the wealth and power in the country to a small group of billionaires who are now utterly beyond accountability and consequences, even when they have committed the most vile offenses imaginable. Laws that don't apply to everyone aren't laws. They're tools of oppression. If we're going to write honestly about what crime is today, if we want our writing to be anything other than pure escapism, we can't ignore that.

So, no, I don't believe it's noble to claim to be above politics, to regard it as something irrelevant to your daily concerns. Calling yourself apolitical at this moment is a willful refusal to face the reality of what's happening. It's not being high-minded. It's complicity.

During his first Presidential run, Trump claimed he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. What seemed at the time like just another in his endless string of absurdities has become a grotesque reality. Americans are being murdered in the streets, simply for protesting against his masked thugs who claim they are not bound by the Constitution.

This is not normal, and we can't pretend it's not happening.

I don't know if it's too late to save American democracy. What I do know is that, if we're going to save it, one of the things we need is empathy, which is what brings us back, again, to writing. I hope that my little stories do some small amount of good in promoting empathy, in addition to anything else I can do to protest and resist. And I hope we all have the courage to speak honestly about what is happening.

I'll write about something a little lighter next month. Promise.

From the Wall O' Inspiration

I do most of my writing– and most of my work– since my day job is teaching online classes--sitting at a computer in my home office. I do have a laptop, but given my preference, I like a setup that feels more substantial--a big honking PC with a couple of screens, external speakers and a full-size keyboard. By today's standards I guess that makes me a bit old-fashioned. Of course I got through college using an actual honest-to-gosh typewriter, so this still feels pretty fancy to me.

Because of some peculiarities in the design of my house, sitting at the computer means I'm facing a wall that's about a foot behind my primary monitor. I'd prefer to be facing a window, but hey, I'm not the one who designed the wiring in here. Just above the level of my head (when sitting), the wall slopes sharply inward, following the roofline. So I don't have room for, say, a poster with a kitten clinging to a branch and telling me to "hang in there."

What I do have are three pieces of paper that I've taped to the wall in my eyeline. Most of the time, of course, my gaze just kind of skims past them, since they've become a part of the scene I just take for granted. Once in a while I do take conscious notice of them, though, and hopefully they provide a bit of inspiration or encouragement that's almost as good as the kitten poster.

Harlan Ellison producing

The first is a quote from Thomas Carlyle, though I got it from an essay by Harlan Ellison, the writer who made me want to be a writer. It reads:

PRODUCE! PRODUCE! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up! Up! Whatsoever thy hand findest to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; FOR THE NIGHT COMETH, WHEREIN NO MAN CAN WORK.

Cheerful, right? To put it in modern terms: get yer ass in the chair, kid, and your fingers on the keys.

The second scrap of paper is a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke, though again I cribbed it from a secondary source– in this case, the ending of Taika Waititi's 2019 film Jojo Rabbit. And it reads:

Let everything happen to you

Beauty and terror

Just keep going

No feeling is final.

This went up on the wall in the opening months of the COVID pandemic, when the world seemed like a pretty dark place and a reminder that it wouldn't be that way forever had daily value. These days, of course, all I have to worry about is creeping fascism, AI, and the possibility that we're about to invade Greenland, so everything is peachy.

The final piece of paper is the simplest. It's a single word, rendered in plain font:

REFINE

I put this up most recently, because it's a principle I've been thinking about a lot: refinement as a mode of living. It's long been part of my writing; I favor something of a sparse style, and there's nothing I love better than revising a piece of writing by carving away everything that is unneeded. I've been thinking that this isn't a bad way to approach most days: removing the things that aren't of value, that contribute no meaning. Doomscrolling, for example. Mindlessly surfing through YouTube. Distractions. "Refine" is meant to remind me to, whenever possible, make choices and take actions that are essential to the things I want to accomplish. I don't often actually accomplish it, of course, but it's something to aim for.

As for the desk itself, mostly it's cluttered with papers and mail I haven't yet dealt with--another thing I need to refine. There is, however, a small collection of rocks and shells from various trips I've taken, to remind me there's a world beyond that wall I'm facing. And there are also two Lego minifigures, there to remind me that what I should be doing is writing a crime story: Lego Shakespeare, and Lego Detective (complete with magnifying glass and red herring!).

So those are the things I've chosen to try to provide me with a bit of fortitude as I craft my little tales. What about you? Do you have inspirational images or words on your walls? How did you choose them, and what do they mean to you?

---

2025: Let's Not Do That Again

I could say I'm sorry to see 2025 coming to a close, but I fear my nose would grow so long that it would punch a hole right through my monitor.

To be clear, there are many things I'm grateful for, and many ways in which I'm lucky. I'm just not going to be talking about those particular things right now.

2025 has been a year of significant challenges for my family (I'm not going to be talking about those, either). We generally try to avoid politics as a topic here at SleuthSayers, so I won't dwell on that beyond saying that I'm not particularly happy with the direction the country is taking--or, for that matter, the direction my state is taking. I just have this weird thing about not caring for fascism, I guess.

To turn to matters we do talk about here--in 2025 I wrote only ten new stories. That's way, way, way below my average. Partly I think it's been the distractions, both personal and public, which so often have demanded my time and attention. Partly, I think, it's also been the increasing scarcity of markets. This was the year Down & Out Books went, well, down and out, and the year Black Cat Weekly announced they'll be ceasing publication late next year. I don't think I'm imagining the fact that there have been fewer interesting anthologies open for submissions. There are still markets out there, of course, but hunting for them seems to take more time these days.

(I should note that Down & Out now has a new owner, and BCW is very much open to continuing under new management, so, fingers crossed, maybe things aren't quite as dark as they seem.)

To be fair to myself, at least some of the time I would have given to writing has gone to what I think of as writing-adjacent activities, mostly associated with serving as the president of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. That counts … right?

It was also a slow year for publishing. I had eleven new stories come out in 2025 which, again, is well below my average. Now, I did have an additional five stories that would have been in Down & Out anthologies that didn't end up getting published, and I'm hopeful that those stories will see the light of day, perhaps in the very near future. 

And to look on the positive side, I am very proud of the stories that did come out. This was the first year I had stories appear in both Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. I was also honored to have a story nominated for a Thriller Award. I spent some time preparing my first collection, which should be coming out from Level Best Books in 2026. I also wrote my first collaborative story, and while I can't say anything specific about it, I will say it was a blast, and I hope to do more in the future.

So, all in all, I don't have much to complain of, but I do hope to write and publish more in the coming year. Stay tuned.

Here's hoping everyone reading this had a rewarding 2025, and may we all have a happy new year!

---

They Done Parker Dirty

One of the pleasures of mystery fiction is finding those series characters you love--the ones you can't get enough of, the ones whose adventures you snap up on sight.  We all have our own list of favorites.  Mine includes Robert B. Parker's Spenser, John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee, Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder, Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, Stuart Kaminsky's Toby Peters, Max Allan Collins's Nate Heller, Andrew Vachss's Burke, Kinky Friedman's, um, Kinky Friedman, Gregory Mcdonald's Francis Xavier Flynn, Warren Murphy's Digger/Trace, and Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley.

Anybody besides
me remember this?

If I had to pick a single favorite character from all crime fiction, though, I wouldn't hesitate.  My favorite is Parker.

If you're reading this you probably know Parker, and if you don't, you should.  Created by the great Donald Westlake (writing under his pen name, Richard Stark), Parker is a single-minded, ruthlessly efficient thief.  He'll kill if absolutely necessary--or occasionally out of revenge--but for the most part Parker is interested in only one thing: getting away with the money.  Most of his adventures see him recruited by or putting together a team to pull an ambitious heist.  It inevitably goes wrong in some way, and much of the pleasure of the books is in watching Parker deal with that.  Often this involves finding himself at odds with The Outfit, which is what the mob calls itself in Parker's world.  There are 24 Parker novels, from 1962's The Hunter to 2008's Dirty Money.  All are richly deserving of your time.

Now, a nail-biting moment of suspense for a mystery fan is finding out that one of your favorite characters is getting a movie.  Will the makers of the film get them the way you do?

Parker has been put on film a number of times (though usually under a different name), played by actors ranging from Lee Marvin to Jim Brown to Mel Gibson.  Earlier this month, the latest Parker film dropped on Amazon Prime: Play Dirty, starring Mark Wahlberg as Parker.  If you're mostly familiar with Wahlberg from his meathead roles in various comedies and action franchises, this might seem like an odd choice, but Wahlberg is also capable of doing serious work and being appropriately intimidating--witness his performance in Martin Scorsese's The Departed.  The new Parker movie was co-written and directed by Shane Black, who's made some solid films in the crime genre--Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, for example.  When I watched the trailer, I was impressed that one of the other characters was Alan Grofield, a character from the books who steals to fund his acting career (and who was popular enough to star in four spin-off Stark novels himself).  I figured that the presence of Grofield meant that real fans were behind the movie, so I approached it with high hopes.

Those hopes came crashing to the ground fast.

I'll acknowledge the positives first.  Wahlberg is, I think, perfectly acceptable as Parker, capturing the character's intensity well.  He's almost always the smartest guy in the room, but if brute force is called for he won't hesitate to use it, and he'll usually win.  LaKeith Stanfield is even better as Grofield, the more affable, but no less competent, sidekick.  Tony Shalhoub does good work as the head of the Outfit.  Several other characters from the books are part of Parker's crew--the married thieves Ed and Brenda Mackey, the driver Stan Devers--indicating, again, that somebody who knows the books well was involved at some point.

The basic setup is also solid.  Play Dirty isn't based on a specific Parker novel, but the elements of the plot are familiar (I won't reveal anything here that isn't in the trailer).  At the start of the film, Parker is part of a racetrack robbery.  One of the crooks, a woman named Zen, betrays the crew and runs off with the take.  Parker sets out for revenge.  Learning that Zen took the cash as seed money for another, much larger job, he deals himself in.  Complicating this is the fact that three years ago Parker made a deal with the Outfit requiring him to stay out of New York City--and guess where Zen's heist is happening?

So far, so good.  So where does it all go wrong?  Well, on a technical level, the special effects in the action scenes are horrendous, completely taking me out of the world of the film.  The opening racetrack heist ends up with a cars v. horses chase on the track, with such bad CGI that the horses look like something out of Grand Theft Auto.  The cheap CGI gets even worse in later scenes, culminating in a subway crash that is utterly unconvincing.

I can forgive bad effects.  I can't forgive the fact that Parker acts less and less like Parker as the film goes on.  One of the hallmarks of the character is his determination to avoid unnecessary heat and exposure, but this Parker, by the halfway point of the film, is plotting an absurdly overblown heist that would have every federal agent in the country descending on New York and result in hundreds, if not thousands, of civilian casualties.  If that wasn't bad enough, he casually kills a celebrity (in what's meant to be a humorous cameo) for no good reason in the middle of a restaurant full of witnesses and cameras.  The real Parker would shoot a member of his crew who did something so dumb.

The movie's also full of logical leaps and absurdities totally at odds with the basically realistic content of Westlake's stories.  One of the targets of the New York heist, for example, is a figurehead recovered from a sunken treasure ship.  The thing is massive, and surely weighs tons, but it's moved easily from place to place by Parker's crew and others--at one point being transported in what seems to be an ordinary NYC subway car.  Watching how they managed to get it in there would have been more entertaining than the actual film.

The second half of the movie, with the crew bantering playfully and dealing with ridiculously contrived obstacles popping up at the most inconvenient times, doesn't play like a Parker plot.  It plays like a Dortmunder plot, so much so that it feels like this must have been a deliberate choice.  If you know Parker, you probably also know Dortmunder, Westlake's other hugely popular thief character.  The Dortmunder books (which Westlake published under his own name) are comedies--for my money, the best comic caper novels ever written.  There's a reason Westlake never wrote a Parker/Dortmunder crossover (not counting the book where Dortmunder's crew draws inspiration from a Parker novel).  The ice-cold Parker simply doesn't fit in Dortmunder's farcical world.  Trying to shoehorn him into it makes both him and the plot look silly.

The end result is a film that's just over two hours long, and feels twice that.  It's a shame.  My understanding is that this was meant to be the start of a new series, with Grofield even getting his own spin-off movies.  That would have been fun--if only Play Dirty was worth watching.  About the best I can say of the movie is that it's marginally more watchable than 2020's dreadful Spenser: Confidential, in which Wahlberg played Robert B. Parker's seminal Boston PI as a brutish ex-con vigilante.  I have no idea why a significant part of Mark Wahlberg's career is suddenly ruining my favorite characters.  I suppose in a few years he'll be playing Nero Wolfe, probably as a streetwise boxer or something.

What Parker should you watch instead of Play Dirty?  The conventional choice for best Parker adaptation is John Boorman's 1967 Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin in an adaptation of the first novel in the series (which was also filmed in 1999 as Payback, with Mel Gibson in the lead).  Point Blank is a good film, and Marvin is well-cast, but for my money it's a little self-consciously artsy, leaning into impressionistic and pseudo-psychedelic style at the cost of a straightforward story.

I prefer Taylor Hackford's 2013 Parker, based closely on the Stark novel Flashfire and starring Jason Statham as Parker.  Statham is terrific in the part, believably capturing the character's intelligence, determination, and menace.  There's a strong supporting cast, including Jennifer Lopez, Wendell Pierce, and Nick Nolte.  The plot and action sequences are exciting without ever being ramped up into the unbelievable.  I really regret that it apparently didn't do well enough for Statham to return to the part, but for fans of the character, it's very much worth seeking out.

(I'll also confess to a lingering fondness for a kind of alternate universe version of the character.  In the TV series Leverage, about a crew of con artists and grifters who team up to use their skills on the side of justice, Beth Riesgraf plays a master thief named, you guessed it, Parker.  I've never seen any confirmation of this, but that's surely a tribute to Stark's character, particularly since, to my knowledge, the character's first name is never revealed.  Riesgraf has a lot of fun with the part, and I really enjoyed the first run of the series, but I've never watched the reboot, Leverage: Redemption, in which she continues the character.  If you have, let me know if it's worth checking out.)

If you're looking for a truly great Parker adaptation, though, don't look to the screen--get thee to your local comics shop.  In 2009, the writer and artist Darwyn Cooke, with Westlake's blessing and endorsement, released a graphic novel version of The Hunter that is a pure pleasure to read, or even just to look at.  Cooke's monochromatic art is stunning, and his sense of pacing and design keeps the story humming along.  He's obviously a huge fan of the novels, and his love for them is apparent in every line.  It's a very faithful adaptation, set in the 1960s rather than being updated to modern times.

Cooke went on to adapt several more Parker books--The Outfit, The Score (my personal favorite among the novels), and Slayground--and had hopes of covering the entire series, but, tragically, his own death in 2016, at the age of just 53, prevented that from happening.  His Parker adaptations are still in print.  I particularly recommend the Martini Editions, gorgeous, oversized, slipcased hardcovers that feature a wealth of bonus features and let you really luxuriate in the art.

And of course it goes without saying that if you haven't read the Parker novels themselves, you need to close this window and go do so now.  You'll thank me later.

---

Living the HI Life

This one may ramble a bit, folks, and the connection to writing mystery fiction may be a bit oblique--except in the sense that what I'm concerned about is, in part, the state of essentially all reading and writing. Earlier this month I had the chance to take a scenic train ride through the Rocky Mountains. It was breathtaking, and inspiring (in no small part because of the stories of the fierce, ongoing efforts by a lot of dedicated people to minimize and mitigate the ecological damage humans have done in that region).

One of my favorite things about it? The parts of the trip when the train was remote enough from any town, or deep enough in some canyon, that there was no Internet service. This seemed to cause some of my fellow travelers a touch of consternation, but I found it to be an almost physical relief. Being online started out as a luxury, then became a convenience, then a necessity, and now it's basically, for most people most of the time, an obligation.

For me, it was a pleasure to just sit back and watch the world go by, unconcerned with the digital "life" I was mercifully cut off from.

This experience got juxtaposed, in my mind, with the growing evidence that the use of AI is actively making people dumber. A lot of people are getting very concerned about this; there's more and more reason to think that becoming dependent on AI substantially reduces people's critical thinking and creative skills, and that it does so pretty quickly and pretty substantially. If you need a connection to writing, that's a pretty good one. People need critical thinking and creative skills to write. They need them to read, too, and the last thing we need right now is yet another reduction in the ever-shrinking percentage of the population interested in (or capable of) reading for pleasure.

I'm fifty-five years old. It seems to me that these have been, and continue to be, the dominant political and cultural trends of my lifetime, the things that have transformed the world I was becoming aware of fifty years ago into the world (and most specifically the US) that exists today:

• A massive redistribution of wealth upward, at the expense of education, healthcare, the environment, workers' rights, social mobility, infrastructure, and the arts.
• A movement away from direct engagement with the world and toward engagement with computer-driven simulations--first video games, then the internet (particularly social media), now AI, and, looming on the horizon, virtual reality.
• Skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety, and loneliness, particularly among young people.

These aren't really separate things. They reinforce and magnify each other. Depression and anxiety can start to seem like awfully rational reactions to a world in which your chances for real economic success are severely limited and you spend basically your entire life staring at screens.

I don't think there will be any real effort to mitigate the intellectual cost of AI. There's too much money to be made.

More importantly, the fact that it actively makes people stupider is, from certain points of view, awfully convenient. Critical thinking skills are inherently threatening to those who benefit from manipulating and exploiting the populace. Critical thinkers are less likely to vote against their own interests– or to choose not to vote at all. Critical thinkers don't support policies that further enrich the obscenely wealthy because they anticipate, for no coherent reason, someday being among them. Critical thinkers don't blame their problems on others because of their racial, political, sexual, or national identities.

Critical thinkers understand that fascism is not the same thing as patriotism. I'm as guilty of falling into the traps as anybody else. I, too, have the nasty habit of reaching for my phone in any idle moment. I have to actively resist buying video game systems because I know how addictive they can be for me. I know the endorphin rush of social media– something else I've learned to try to avoid, with only partial success.

Some days I swear I can feel my attention span shrinking. There's nothing I can really do to reverse all this on a cultural or collective level. All I can do is try to make decisions and take actions that move me, personally, in a different direction. All any of us can do is, whenever it's possible to do so, choose HI– Human Intelligence– over Artificial Intelligence.

So I'll go for a walk instead of falling into YouTube rabbit holes. I'll reach for an actual, physical book instead of my phone. And I'll keep writing, and have faith that there are people out there who still want to read things written by actual people. I'll try to choose, as much as I can, to lead a HI life.

There's Always A Catch

Because I work at home, I've been looking for opportunities to get out into the community and have some social contact with actual … um … what are they called again?

Right: PEOPLE.  I gotta write that down or something.

A couple of weeks ago, this quest led me to a book club meeting at my local independent bookstore (yes, those still exist, thankfully).  They meet monthly, and this month they were discussing one of my favorite books, a novel I'd rank high on the list of best American fiction of the last century: Joseph Heller's 1961 Catch-22.  Most of you are probably familiar with the book; for those who aren't, it's the story of an American bomber squadron stationed in Italy during World War II.  It's probably best known for its unconventional structure (the book jumps back in forth in time, in a way that's deliberately disorienting) and wild, slapstick humor, though the tragedy, pain and anguish of wartime are much in evidence.  In short, it's a good 'un.

I'm glad I went to the meeting, and I'll certainly be going back.  They were a charming, lively, intelligent group of about a dozen people.  They've obviously been meeting for a while and know each other well, but were welcoming and friendly with this newcomer.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly.  It turns out that getting out of the house is a good idea!

Here's the thing that surprised me, though: as a group, they hated the book.  The book that, once again, I love, and assumed most readers would.

It was too long (a number of them didn't finish it).  It was too repetitious, returning to the same events and themes multiple times.  They didn't think it was funny.  It was misogynistic.  With only a few exceptions, they didn't like the characters.  The kindest thing they could find to say about it was that it probably paved the way for later writers to handle such material better.

Now, I will concede that, in terms of gender, the book hasn't aged especially well.  Most of the significant female characters are prostitutes; those who aren't are still discussed mostly in terms of their actual or potential sexual activities and tastes.  When Heller introduces a male character, he starts by talking about the man's face and general emotional demeanor.  When he introduces a female character, he generally starts by talking about her breasts and sexual availability.  At one point Yossarian, the book's central character and most sympathetic figure, grabs a nurse in a way that in Heller's day probably counted as "harmless horseplay" and which today would be considered "sexual assault."

None of that looks very good through 2025 eyes.  On the other hand, the book is about a group of young men being subjected to the continual stress and terror of war; it's not surprising that when they get a weekend in Rome, they're not out looking for a knitting circle to join.

Rereading the book in preparation for the meeting, I actually found it even more relevant to today's issues than I had remembered.  I think it's fair to say that a fair number of the book's most reprehensible characters would be right at home in today's administration.  The book's great villain, Milo Minderbinder, is the embodiment of completely unfettered capitalism, a man for whom the only true God is profit.  Hmm.  If I thought about it real hard, that might remind me of more than a few folks regularly turning up in headlines today.

As I say, though, despite having a radically different opinion from anyone else in the group, I enjoyed the meeting a lot.  It's good to hear different opinions, and good to be reminded that there's no such thing as a text (or movie, or painting, or whatever) that is truly univerally beloved.  There are people who don't like Hamlet, people who don't like Citizen Kane, people who don't like Van Gogh, people who don't like Sherlock Holmes.  And that's okay.  As a writer, I can even see it as liberating.  You can't possibly please every reader, so just write what you want to.  The right readers will find it.

Have you had the experience of being startled by criticism of something you held in high esteem?  For that matter, do you belong to a book club?  And by all means, feel free to pass along other ideas for ways to get myself out in the world.  The walls, they do start to close in after a bit.

IN OTHER NEWS

One very social activity, of course, is Bouchercon, which will be starting its 2025 iteration in New Orleans shortly after this is posted.  To my great regret, I won't be able to attend this year, and I'll very much miss seeing all my mystery writing buddies (including a number of my fellow SleuthSayers) and the opportunity to meet new ones.  I hope everyone has a great time, and raise a glass to me if you get a chance.  With a little luck, I'll be seeing you all in Canada next year.

Now, while I won't be at the con, I do have a story in the 2025 Bouchercon anthology, Blood on the Bayou: Case Closed, published by Down & Out Books.  I'm thrilled to be included in the volume alongside a host of terrific writers, especially since, after eight straight rejections, this is the first time I've made the cut for a Bouchercon book.  My story, "Final Edit," is actually set at a convention very much like Bouchercon, and concerns a famous author who has crossed a number of moral lines.  If you're at the con, pick up a copy!  If not, there should be a way to order one soon from the usual suspects.

As long as I'm plugging stuff, I'll mention that I have a story, "High in that Ivory Tower," in the September/October issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which should be on shelves now.  Last week also saw the release, from Down & Out, of Better Off Dead: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, edited by D. M. Barr and including my story "All the Young Girls Love Alice."  Happy reading!

Guest Post: What Kind of Relationship Do You Have With Your Writing?

This month, I'm turning my column over to a guest, Eric Beckstrom. I've been friends with Eric, a talented writer and photographer, for some thirty years, and I'm pleased to have the chance to let him address the SleuthSayers audience on a topic I'm sure many of us can identify with. As Eric mentions here, his first published story appeared in the 2017 Bouchercon anthology--an enviable place to make your debut, given the competition for those spots! What's even more remarkable is that he's since placed stories in three more Bouchercon anthologies (how many other writers have been selected for four? Certainly none I know of). His latest, "Six Cylinder Totem," will be in the 2025 edition, Blood on the Bayou: Case Closed (available for preorder here). Without further ado, here's Eric!

— Joe

What Kind of Relationship Do You Have With Your Writing?

Eric Beckstrom

We all have a relationship of craft to our writing, or however you choose to put it--relationship, interaction, approach--but I find myself wondering whether other writers also think about their relationship with their writing as a truly personal one--a nearly or even literal interpersonal one, as distinguished from simply craft-centered and intrapersonal. Maybe every writer reading this column experiences their writing in that way, I don't know. That is my own experience– closer to, or, in practice, even literally interpersonal. It is intrapersonal, too, but I also relate to my writing as this other thing outside of myself, like it's a separate entity. The relationship has been fraught. Sometimes– much more so now– it is functional and healthy, sometimes less so, and, for an interminably long time, it was dysfunctional right down to its atomic spin. It includes compromise, generosity, forgiveness, impatience, resignation, joy, trust, fear, just like any other important relationship in my life. The current complexity of the relationship is a gift compared to when it was an actively negative, hostile one, defined by avoidance, fear, and resentment, with only the briefest moments of pleasure and appreciation.

That was years ago. Then, one night, I made a decision that changed my relationship with my writing forever in an instant: I let myself off the hook. More on that later. I understand, of course, there are many very accomplished writers among the SleuthSayers readership, and that perhaps everyone moving their eyes across this screen has also moved well beyond anything I have to say here; but if you ever trudge or outright struggle with your writing--not the craft connection, but the relational one--then maybe there's something here for you.

One of the most common pieces of advice or edicts offered by established writers to budding or struggling writers is, "Write every day," "Write for at least an hour each day," or some variation thereof. This advice is always well-intended, but in my view it seems awfully essentialist. Sometimes it even seems to stem from writers with--I'm being a little cheeky here--personality privilege, such as those who have never or rarely had difficulty with motivation; or from other forms of privilege, like growing up in an environment that encouraged and nurtured creativity or was at least free from significant obstacles to creativity.

© Eric Beckstrom,
LowPho Impressionism

Or maybe those edicts about the right way to approach writing aren't nearly as pervasive as I have thought, and it's more that my (more or less) past hypersensitivity turned my hearing that advice four or five times into a hall of mirrors back then, fifty-five times five in how I felt it reflected negatively on me. Back when I was struggling for my life as a writer, I heard it as judgment. "Eric, you don't writer every day, let alone each day for an hour or two. Therefore, you are not a real writer because you obviously don't have the passion everyone says you'd feel if you were. You are a piker: you make only small bets on yourself, and to the extent that you make writing commitments to yourself, you withdraw from them."

While advice around commitment, writing schedules, regularity, and habit, is, on the face of it, sound, it has a hook on which I used to hang like someone in a Stephen Graham Jones novel or the first victim in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That hook has barbs of guilt, fear, imposter syndrome (not to mention nature-nurture baggage). It also has barbs forged from practical challenges like having to work full-time and having other commitments, and being too mentally exhausted to sit down and write at the end of a day of all that. Until the night I let myself off the hook, I used to absorb those writing edicts as barbs into flesh. As profoundly, debilitatingly discouraging.

For sure, that's also on me. Also, on my upbringing. Also, on the third-grade teacher who called my very first story silly and unrealistic. But, at the end of the day, it was on me to change how I relate to writing. From the age of ten and decades into my adult life, yearning to write, but blocked by inhibitions and other stumbling blocks I'd never learned to turn into steppingstones, I absorbed the standards set by established writers as slammed doors, guilty verdicts, and commandments I had broken.

Here's what happened the night I let myself off the hook– off other people's hook.

I was sitting in front of the TV feeling conflicted, as I felt every night. I knew I ought to go into the other room, turn on the computer, and write. I longed to do so– it was a physical sensation– but couldn't bring myself to. I hadn't been writing, so I wasn't a real writer, right? And since I'd finished very few writing projects, I had limited evidence of talent anyway. All my Psych 101 childhood baggage was there, too, present, like that longing, as something I felt as you'd feel someone slouching behind you in the town psycho house, reaching for your shoulder.

Then, for some reason– and I don't know where this came from– I said out loud to myself "You know what? Screw all that. Screw the edicts and other people's standards. Screw the judgment you feel from others and screw the self-judgment. If you write tonight, great. If you don't write tonight, then don't castigate yourself. Maybe you'll write tomorrow."

In that moment, a strange kind of functional (as differentiated from dysfunctional) indifference triggered a profound letting go which permanently changed my relationship with my writing. And, finally off the hook, having made a deliberate, defiant choice to stop judging my writer self by others' standards and even by my own standards at the time, that very same night, I turned off the TV, turned on the computer, and started writing. Years later (not all my hangups disappeared in one night), after I began making the effort to submit stories for publication, one of the first ones I ever completed, over a single weekend just weeks after I finally began writing in earnest, landed in the 2017 Bouchercon anthology as the first story I had published.

Since then, I've encountered, or perhaps just become more capable of seeing and absorbing, more down to earth, approachable advice and insight offered by others. William Faulkner said, "I write when the spirit moves me." Now, he also said, "The spirit moves me every day," but his words contain no edict or implied universal standard, no judgment. Jordan Peele added an entirely new dimension to my relationship with writing, and, I will share, to my approach to life, with his suggestions to, "Embrace the risk that only you can take." One of the most practical, wise, simple, and compassionate insights I've gotten from another writer– and because of that component of compassion, this insight most clearly describes my current, far more healthy interpersonal relationship with my writing– came from a good writer friend, who, when I described my ongoing struggle with tackling large writing projects, said, "You know, I think it's just about forward progress, whatever that means to you." I also recall the wisdom of another friend who, when I told him about some life issues I was struggling with at the time, said, "That's good. If you're struggling it means you haven't given up. Don't stop moving, don't stop struggling." It's not advice specific to writing, but it sure works.

Nowadays, for me, forward progress could be a single sentence I drop into a story right before my head hits the pillow. It could be a cool ending to an as-yet nonexistent story. Or an interesting first sentence. An evocative title without even the vaguest notion of what plot it might lead to. A single word texted to myself at 2:00AM because it strikes me as belonging to whatever I'm working on. I often do research on the fly, so forward progress is sometimes a link to some article I drop into a given story doc, which I keep in the cloud so I can do that from wherever, whenever. And yes, sometimes forward progress is pages of fast, effortless, final-draft quality writing.

But I never measure my "progress"--those quotation marks are important--by the number of words or pages, though if I make good progress in that way I consciously, usually out loud, give myself credit. And, submission deadlines notwithstanding, I rarely measure my progress according to some timeline. Some days, and I hate to say, sometimes for weeks, I don't write a word, though if that happens now it's almost always due to external constraints rather than resistance; and that is in itself forward progress with respect to my relationship with my writing, upon which the writing itself, and really everything, depends. But that doesn't mean I'm not making forward progress with respect to writing itself, because during those stretches of not writing paragraphs and pages I'm still doing everything I've noted, like simmering ideas, writing in my head and emailing it to myself later, reading like a writer. It's a delicate and, yes, sometimes fraught, balance between self-compassion and self-discipline--after all, what relationship is perfectly healthy?--but these days my relationship with my writing is more characterized by compassion, generosity of spirit, and confidence. Stories have greater trust that I will finish them, and I have greater trust that stories will lead me where they want to go. Even if I don't know where a story is leading me, or I think I do but it changes its mind, or if my confidence flags, or it just seems too difficult to finish, the two-way charitable nature of the relationship between my writing and I has transformed how I approach these situations: at long last, more often than not, that is in a healthy, functional way.

And it's a good thing, too, because for reasons I won't get into here the relationship between my writing and me has become a truly existential thing that sways the cut and core of my life. This thing has been described as a need, a compulsion, a yearning. In Ramsey Campbell's story, "The Voice of the Beach," the protagonist-writer says, "If I failed to write for more than a few days I became depressed. Writing was the way I overcame the depression over not writing." I am grateful to have reached the point where writing is something I want to do, not just something I must do to reduce bad feelings. Writing has become something that I do because, yes, if I don't then I feel sad and unfulfilled, but that's no longer the principle motive. For decades, I yearned to reach a point where I would write because it brings fulfillment and pleasure, even when it's hard or I don't feel like writing in a given moment or on a given day. I am relieved to have reached that point, even if I'm not very "productive" compared to most other writers I know of. That's no longer a hook I hang on. These days, for me a hook is a good story idea, a good opening line or a great title, and the only barbs are the ones my characters must contend with.

That is what I wish for every writer, whether well-established or yearning to begin: a satisfying and healthy relationship with your writing, and, in the words of my friend, forward progress, whatever that means to you.

© Eric Beckstrom, LowPho Impressionism

Finding A Glimmer of Hope, A Thousand Pieces at a Time

Anyone who's taught writing (or, I suspect, most other topics) in the last few years would have found little surprising in the recent news about an MIT study revealing that people who make regular use of AI tools like ChatGPT quickly show a serious reduction in cognitive activity.  After only a few months, such users "consistently underperformed neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels."

Lydia the Tattooed Lady
Magnolia Puzzles
Artist: Mark Fredrickson

I've certainly seen evidence of this in my own students. (For those unaware, I teach composition and literature courses for a number of online schools on an adjunct basis.) More and more of them are not just choosing to make use of AI, but fundamentally feel they have no other option, because they lack the reading and writing skills necessary to complete assignments on their own.

The situation isn't helped by the increasing number of schools that have essentially thrown in the towel, designing courses that actively encourage or even require the use of AI while giving lip service to the idea of training students to use it "ethically and responsibly."

This makes about as much sense as training someone to run a marathon by having them drive 26 miles a day and eat a meal from every fast food restaurant they pass on the trip.  And yes, in case you were wondering, it does make teaching depressing as hell.

An aside: I want to be clear here that I'm not blaming the students, certainly not on an individual level.  They can't help growing up in a world where literacy is consistently degraded and marginalized; they can't help having screens shoved in front of their faces all day long, starting before they can talk. What I can say is that, if I was under 25 years old, I would be in a constant state of white-hot rage over the world previous generations propose to leave me: a world that is less safe, less clean, less kind, less thoughtful, and far lonelier than it should be.  I would be furious to live in the richest, most technologically advanced society in human history, while millions have no access to healthcare or secure occupations.  It's no wonder so many of them are on antidepressants.

Aspic Hunt
Art & Fable
Artist: John Rego

But to get back to today's specific crisis…

AI has, in a very few years, become a source of existential terror for writers and other artists--not to mention those in a score of other occupations it threatens to wipe from existence (including, ironically, computer programmers, since it turns out AI is great at writing code).  It's a little quaint to look back at the many giants of science fiction who confidently predicted that robots would free humanity from dangerous or tiresome tasks like mining or washing dishes.  We've still got plenty of people dying of black lung or scraping by on scandalously low minimum wage gigs, but folks who want to write or create art have to compete with machines pretending they can do the same thing.

Believe it or not, I've painted this picture of doom and gloom because I want to share a tiny glimmer of hope I've found in an unexpected place: jigsaw puzzles.

Puzzling as a hobby exploded during the pandemic, when so many of us were looking for ways to pass the time, and my household is one of many that got caught up in the craze (see the pictures here of a few puzzles we've completed in recent weeks).  Even now that the pandemic is (sort of) over, it continues to be a thriving activity and means of connecting a huge number of people.  There are puzzling competitions around the globe, popular puzzling websites and content creators online, forums for discussion and news, and a lot of companies (many small, many new) turning out high-quality, beautiful puzzles in every corner of the globe.

Princess on the Pea
Enjoy Puzzles
Artist: Larissa Kulik

Not surprisingly, some of these companies use AI to create the artwork for the puzzles.  I can't report that these companies are immediately run out of business, and no doubt they're doing fine, for the most part.  But I can report this: there are a lot of puzzlers who actively refuse to buy those puzzles, and they tend to be fairly vocal about it.  They want to know that the puzzles they do were created by real artists, they want those artists to be clearly identified, and they (or at least some of them) are willing to pay a little more for puzzles that meet those demands.

As AI writing and art becomes more widespread, maybe it's people like these we can invest a little optimism in.  Maybe there will come to be people who demand this of their fiction and poetry and essays, and who aren't willing to just hop on Amazon and download one of the 5000 AI "books" that pop up every day.  Maybe they'll be willing to pay, just a little more, for the knowledge that a real person created the thing they're looking at, and will benefit from their patronage.

Maybe there will be just enough of these people that reading and writing– real reading and writing, not a simulation– will continue to be a worthwhile, and occasionally even rewarding, way for a lot of people to spend their time.

It wouldn't take much.  After all, the number of people willing to pay money to read, say, short mystery stories has been a small part of the population for a long time.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to hope that it won't die out completely.

The Happy Sheep Yarn Shop
Ravensburger Puzzles
Artist: Nathanael Mortensen

That's my hope, anyway. In the meantime, I'll be continuing to follow my personal policy of never using AI– not for brainstorming, not for drafting, not for editing.  What possible satisfaction could I get from asking a machine to write something and then putting my name on it?

---

A Year In, A Month Off

My first regular SleuthSayers post went up in late April of 2024, so I missed the opportunity to mark the occasion of my first anniversary as a member of this crew. In that first post, I somehow tried to make a connection between writing and a specific approach to baseball strategy. Since then I've talked about ShortCon, shelf shortages, musical anthologies, Walter Mitty, writing dialogue, the creation of a new Derringer Award, and a number of other topics. Hopefully, some of you out there have enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it, and I look forward to continuing to offer my rambles for a some time to come.

This particular month, I'm finding the shoebox of ideas a little empty. In fact, I haven't really written anything this month.

 That's after writing five stories in the first four months of the year, ranging from 2900 to 5800 words. I wouldn't call what I'm going through at the moment writer's block. It's not that I want to write but can't. It's more a matter of having other things to do and no pressing need to get back to the keyboard.

There was a time when this would have bothered--even frightened--me. I would have felt like if I didn't get back to writing ASAP, I might never get back to it at all. I'd be obsessed with the opportunities I might be missing. I'd be thinking about all the interviews I've ever seen with writers who say that ""real" writers write every day. I'd be thinking about Ray Bradbury's advice to write a story every single week, on the theory that nobody can write 52 bad stories in a row.

I've never come close to hitting that mark. The most stories I've ever written in one year is 26; over the last several years, I'm much closer to a one-story-a-month pace.

OK, so I don't write as much as this guy

The difference between the earlier me, who would have been panicked at a month without writing, and the current me, who's handling it fairly well, comes down, I think, to experience. I know that I've been through periods like this before, and invariably come out of them. I know that, sooner or later, I will sit down at the keyboard again and turn something out. A little time away from writing isn't necessarily a bad thing. It might even be a good one.

I'm confident that, somewhere in the back of my head, ideas are bubbling. Sooner or later, one will break the surface. And I understand that "real" writers come in all varieties. Yes, some write every single day. Others need breaks. And that's okay.

Even if it makes for what is almost surely my shortest column so far.

How about you? Do you take breaks from writing? Do you think doing so ultimately helps you?