That's a long story... or is it?

by Robert Lopresti

Recently I told a friend that I had just finished  a story, and it was 6,500 words.   She replied: how long is that?

I was tempted to say: 6,500 words long.  But I know what she meant.  Why would she know how many words make a short story, a novella, or War and Peace?

And that got me thinking,  with the following result.  I hope it informs or entertains you.  At least it may kill the time while you wait for the barista to finish your double tall skinny caramel cappuccino with shea butter and bacon drippings.

In the box below are the titles of fifty famous short stories by American authors.  I am not saying they are the best stories or best authors (and let's not go down that rabbit hole in the comments) but they are on enough best-of lists for various genres that I assume most literate Americans have read a lot of them.

So here is my challenge.  Check the list below and make note of the stories you think you know well.  At the very least, pick two.  Then ask yourself: Which is longer?  

 Further down the page, where you will find out their actual (approximate) lengths.  I was surprised to find out that one is flash fiction (fewer than 1,000 words).  I was astonished by the Crane and Hammett stories; I would have bet money on the shorter tale being the longer one.  Here you go:

A&P - John Updike "All You Zombies--" - Robert A. Heinlein Bartleby the Scrivener - Herman Melville The Beast in the Jungle -  Henry James Bernice Bobs her Hair - F. Scott  Fitzgerald Big Blonde - Dorothy Parker The Call of Cthulu - H. P. Lovecraft The Cask of Amontillado - Edgar Allan Poe The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County -Mark Twain Chrysanthemums - John Steinbeck Everyday Use - Alice Walker Gift of Cochise - Louis L'Amour    Gift of the Magi - O. Henry Gimpel the Fool - Isaac Bashevis Singer A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor The Golem  - Avram Davidson The Gutting of Couffignal - Dashiell Hammett Haircut - Ring Lardner Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I Stand Here Ironing  - Tillie Olsen I'll Be Waiting - Raymond Chandler The Jilting of Granny Weatherall - Katherine Anne Porter A Jury of her Peers - Susan Glaspell The Killers - Ernest Hemingway The Lady, or the Tiger - Frank Stockton Lamb to the Slaughter - Roald Dahl

The Last Question - Isaac Asimov The Legend of Sleepy Hollow -  Washington Irving The Lottery - Shirley Jackson The Luck of Roaring Camp - Bret Harte An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Ursula K. LeGuin The Open Boat - Stephen Crane Paul's Case - Willa Cather Pigs is Pigs -  Ellis Parker Butler Roman Fever - Edith Wharton A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner The School - Donald Barthelme The Secret life of Walter Mitty - James Thurber The Sound of Thunder - Ray Bradbury Stage to Lordsburg - Ernest Haycox The Story of an Hour - Kate Chopin The Swimmer - John Cheever Thank You Ma'am - Langston Hughes They Do Not Always Remember - William S. Burroughs To Build a Fire - Jack London The Use of Force - William Carlos Williams What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver Where Are You Going,  Where Have You Been? - Joyce Carol Oates Young Goodman Brown - Nathaniel Hawthorne

To discourage you from sneaking down the page and checking the answers without deciding which of two stories are longer, I am putting in these lovely crows to block the view.  Sorry, no ravens were available.

Made your decisions about lengths?  Okay, here are the numbers:

Approximately 600 words
They Do Not Always Remember - William S. Burroughs
 
Approximately 1,000 words
The Story of an Hour - Kate Chopin

Approximately 1,200 words
The School - Donald Barthelme

Approximately 1,300 words
Thank You Ma'am - Langston Hughes

Approximately 1,500 words
Gimpel the Fool - Isaac Bashevis Singer

Approximately 1,600 words
The Golem  - Avram Davidson 
The Use of Force - William Carlos Williams

Approximately 2,100 words
Gift of the Magi - O. Henry
The Secret life of Walter Mitty - James Thurber

Approximately 2,200 words
Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Approximately 2,400 words
The Cask of Amontillado - Edgar Allan Poe

Approximately 2,600 words
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County -  Mark Twain
 
Approximately 2,700 words
The Lady, or the Tiger - Frank Stockton

Approximately 2,800 words
A&P - John Updike
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Ursula K. LeGuin

Approximately 3,000 words
The Killers - Ernest Hemingway

 Approximately 3,400 words
I Stand Here Ironing  - Tillie Olsen
Pigs is Pigs -  Ellis Parker Butler

 Approximately 3,600 words
Everyday Use - Alice Walker

Approximately 3,700 words
A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner

Approximately 3,800 words
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce 

Approximately 3,900 words
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall - Katherine Anne Porter
Lamb to the Slaughter - Roald Dahl

Approximately 4,100 words
The Luck of Roaring Camp - Bret Harte

MEDIAN - Half the stories are shorter than this; half are longer.

 
Approximately 4,200 words
Chrysanthemums - John Steinbeck

Approximately 4,400 words
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
The Sound of Thunder - Ray Bradbury

Approximately 4,800 words
"All You Zombies--" - Robert A. Heinlein 

Approximately 4,900 words
Roman Fever - Edith Wharton

Approximately 5,000 words
Haircut - Ring Lardner
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver

Approximately 5,100 words
Gift of Cochise - Louis L'Amour
The Swimmer - John Cheever

Approximately 5,200 words
Young Goodman Brown - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Approximately 5,500 words
I'll Be Waiting - Raymond Chandler

Approximately 6,500 words
A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
Stage to Lordsburg - Ernest Haycox

Approximately 7,100 words
To Build A Fire - Jack London
Where Are You Going,  Where Have You Been? - Joyce Carol Oates

Approximately 7,600 words
The Gutting of Couffignal - Dashiell Hammett

Approximately 7,600 words
A Jury of Her Peers - Elizabeth Glaspell

 
Approximately 8,200 words
Paul's Case - Willa Cather

 Approximately 8,600 words
 Big Blonde - Dorothy Parker

Approximately 8,900 words
Bernice Bobs her Hair - F. Scott  Fitzgerald

Approximately 9,400 words
The Open Boat - Stephen Crane 

Approximately 11,800 words
 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving

Approximately 11,900 words
 The Call of Cthulu - H.P. Lovecraft 
 
Approximately 14,500 words
 Bartleby the Scrivener - Herman Melville

 Approximately 19,000 words
The Beast in the Jungle - Henry James

Taxonomy Lesson

Hey folks...  the Short Mystery Fiction Society announced the finalists for the 2016 Derringer Awards yesterday and fully 25% of the stories are by SleuthSayers!  John Floyd scored in two categories.  Barb Goffman, Elizabeth Zelvin, and I settled for one each.  Congratulations to all the finalists!

Back in November I had the chance to speak at the university where I work about my novel Greenfellas. The good folks there have put a video of my talk on the web, which reminded me of something I wanted to discuss about it.

I guessed correctly that a lot of people in the audience would not be mystery fans and since this is an educational institution, I figured I should educate them a little on the field.  When you ask someone not familiar with the genre to think about mysteries they tend to conjure up Agatha-Christie style whodunits so I explained that there are also hardboiled, police procedurals, inverted detective stories, noir, caper, and so on.

All of which is fine and dandy.  But in the Q&A someone asked me what types of mysteries I particularly enjoyed.  I happened to mention Elmore Leonard - and then I was stumped as the thought ran through my head:  What type of mystery did Elmore Leonard write?

Well, you could say, he wrote Elmore Leonard novels.  That's not as silly as it sounds.  He wrote a novel called Touch, about a man who acquired the ability to heal people by touching them.  At first publishers didn't want it because it was not a crime novel, but by 1987 they were willing to take a chance on it because it was an Elmore Leonard novel, and readers knew what that meant.

The subject was also on my mind because I had recently read Ace Atkins novel The Redeemers, which struck me as being very much in Leonard's territory.  (That's a compliment to Atkins, by the way.) And I can't exactly say he is writing Elmore Leonard novels.

So, what am I talking about?  A third person narration story from multiple points of view, and most of those characters are criminals, each of whom has a nefarious scheme going.  The main character might be a good guy or just a slightly-less-bad guy.

You know I love quotations, so here is one from Mr. Leonard: "I don’t think of my bad guys as bad guys. I just think of them as, for the most part, normal people who get up in the morning and they wonder what they’re going to have for breakfast, and they sneeze, and they wonder if they should call their mother, and then they rob a bank."

Is there a name for this category of book?  Crime novel is useless.  Suspense doesn't really cut it.

You could argue that my book Greenfellas falls into that category, but I don't think it does.  First of all, it's a comic crime novel.  It's an organized crime novel, about the Mafia.  (Leonard's characters tend to be disorganized crime.)  And - I have harder time explaining this one - to me it's a criminal's Pilgrim's Progress, concentrating on one bad guy as he goes through a life-changing crisis.

So that's three category names for my novel.  But I'm still thinking about Leonard's.

The Two and Only

by Robert Lopresti

NOTE: I wrote the first paragraph BEFORE Justice Scalia passed away.

I am sure you have noticed that a lot of celebrities have died so far in 2016.   I mean no disrespect to the rock stars and actors who have passed, but the death that meant the most to me was that of a 92-year-old comedian.

Bob Elliott was one half of Bob and Ray, who made a lot of people laugh for 40 years.  (Ray Goulding died in 1990.)  Dave Letterman once said that if you wanted to know if someone had a good sense of humor, just ask them if they like Bob and Ray.

While they occasionally dabbled in TV, movies, and even Broadway, radio was their natural habitat.  They were sketch artists (like Key and Peele, or Nichols and May) as opposed to persona comics (like Burns and Allen, or the Smothers Brothers, who always played the same characters).

Here are videos of a few of their best bits:
Most Beautiful Face
Slow Talkers of America
The Komodo Dragon Expert (Okay, it's audio only.  But it's my favorite.)

Each of those is in interview format, which is easy to do on TV (or Broadway) but on the radio they used to do dramas as well, including their own versions of some familiar crime shows.

For example, anyone who remembers a certain series that was very popular on radio, then TV - then a decade later again on TV - will recognize the summing up at the end of  "Squad Car 119."
...The suspect apprehended in that case at Rossmore and LaBrea was convicted on three counts of being apprehended and one count of being a suspect.  Apprehended suspects are punishable under state law by a term of not less than five years in the correctional institution at Soledad.

And there was "Blimmix," about a tough private eye who gets beaten up in every episode, by people such as this:
I'm with Rent-a-Thug, Incorporated.  A lot of the syndicate people are letting their regular hoodlums go and utilizing our service for machine-gunnings and roughing up and things like that.  It saves all the bookwork that goes with having full-time employees.

Or "Rorshack," about a hard-as-nails New York police lieutenant.  In this case he has misplaced ten cents:

Steinberg, search every customer in the store.  If you find one concealing a dime, kill him.  Lopez, put out an A.P.B. for anybody trying to pass a coin with Roosevelt's picture on it.  Caruso, you take the bus stations, airports, rail terminals.  Nobody goes in or out of this city until I give the word.

Bob and Ray were invariably described as low-key.  (Bob once said they were both both straight men) but I liked them best when they went, well, surreal, like in this episode of "Fern Ock Veek, Sickly Whale Oil Processor," about an Eskimo co-ed from California hiding out in the Alaskan bush:
FERN: I suppose I could go back to U.C.L.A. and hide out for a while.  So many of the students there are on the lam that they'd never notice one more.
OFFICER WISHMILLER: That's a great idea.  And even if they did find you, you'd be in another state and could fight extradition.
FERN: No.  If I recall, I fought him once and he knocked me cold in the third round.  I certainly don't want any more of that.
OFFICER WISHMILLER: Fern, I think you have extradition confused in your mind with Muhammad Ali.

I could go on, but I'll restrain myself.  Write if you get work, Bob.  And hang by your thumbs.

Five Red Herrings, Numero 7.

1.  Thuglit.  You like mysteries?  You like short stories?  So, have you read Thuglit yet?  It is a good magazine, a paying market yet, and available in paper or electrons.  Eight stories per issue, very reasonable price.  I bring this up because editor Todd Robinson has announced that, barring an increase in sales, this will be its last year.  And that would be a shame.

How good is Thuglit?  It provided six of the Best Stories of the Week I reviewed at Little Big Crimes last year.  That's more than 10%.  Two of them made my Best of the Year; 15%. 

And we're going to lose it because you refuse to chip in two bucks an issue, 25 cents a story?  Buy it here.

2. The Big Squelch.  Imagine that you submit a story to a magazine and get any of these replies from the editor:

"Lots of suspense."

"A fascinating romp through primitive territory."

"Some beautiful moments here."

"Easy to read, had a good hook, kept me interested and I loved the characters -- all of them."

You would feel pretty good, wouldn't you?  But each of these was in a rejection note received by Eric Wilder.  And in his list he tells you which editor said what about which story.  Fascinating...

3.  Going Up.  And down.  A month ago I told you about my new desk which moves to a standing position at the touch of a button.  A few people asked me to report on how it has worked out - i.e. has it been sitting in the down position since the second day?

Well, I love it.  My goal is to use it standing up for half an hour and then switch, but often I am so comfortable standing up that I don't notice how much time has passed until one of my cats demands that I make a lap. So I highly recommend it for any middle aged backs out there.

4. Wuzza wooza buzzy fuzzy!  Chuck Wendig is a writer.  Apparently he often gives writing advice.  Last November he got a bit fed up with that routine.  The result is profane and hilarious.

That’s me yelling at the clouds and shaking my fist at trees, screaming: I EARNED THE RIGHT TO YELL AT YOU ABOUT WRITING. And then I hiss at birds. Stupid birds...

You should write in the morning unless you can’t or shouldn’t or won’t or whatever.

Be more literary! Be more genre! Be less this more that wait no the other thing.

This won’t sell until it does and then it sells a lot until it stops selling and nnngh.

You should do XYZ except unless ABC or 123 or wuzza wooza buzzy fuzzy.


Read it all.

5. The haunted bookshop?  I started this piece by inviting you to spend a few bucks on Thuglit.  Here is another suggestion for those suffering from too much moolah - especially if you live in my part of the country.

The Seattle Mystery Bookshop has been supporting readers and writers in our field for decades. (Attached is a photo of me at a signing  last fall with a couple of wonderful readers.)  Like a lot of small bookstores they need some help and happily they have the sense to say so.  There is a GoFundMe to raise some dough for them, and there are cool rewards for patrons.

Nothin' But The Best

As part of my tireless effort to make the world a better place I am once again listing all the best short mysteries of the year, thereby saving all the other award judges from a lot of tedious reading.  (Well, they could add these to their assigned list. I wouldn't mind.)

I recommend that all those judges take the time they save and do something good for society.  I would help, but I have to start reading next year's stories.

This is the seventh time I have made an annual list.  By coincidence, there were 14 stories on last year's list, and the same number this time.

The big winner this year was Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, with four stories.  Tied with two each are Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Strand Magazine, Thuglit, and the Jewish Noir anthology.

Nine stories are by men; five by women.  (That's one more female winner than last year.)  Four are historical, four are funny, two are parody/pastiches.

Okay.  Drum roll, please...

Camilleri, Andrea.  "Neck and Neck,"  in The Strand Magazine," October 2015-January 2016.

Montalbano,  Camilleri's series character, is appointed Chief Inspector in a village in Sicily, and discovers that a Mafia family feud is well under well.  A member of the Cuffaros is snuffed out with an old-fashioned shotgun, and then one of the Sinagras dies the same way.

But then something highly irregular happens.  Two members of the same family are killed in a row.  How unseemly!  And Montalbano spots a way into the maze of silence...

Faherty, Terence.  "The Man With The Twisted Lip," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, February 2015.

My former co-blogger Terence Faherty is making his third appearance on my annual best of list.  Only three other  authors have scored that many times.

Faherty claims to have discovered Dr. John Watson's notebooks, containing the rough drafts of Sherlock Holmes adventures, before they were "cleaned up for publication."  This is the fourth in his series.

Both versions begin with a woman calling at the home of Watson and his wife, desperate because her husband has disappeared.  In Doyle's version the man is a drug addict and has vanished into an opium den.  In Faherty's tale the same man is a serial philanderer and is apparently staying in a hotel of bad repute. 

"My husband returns!" Rita exclaimed.
"Not a moment too soon," Holmes said.
"You don't understand.  He's insanely jealous.  And violent.  If he finds me in here--"
Holmes sprang up.  "Watson, I bow to your experience.  Under the bed?"

Gould, Heywood.  "Everything is Bashert," in Jewish Noir, edited by Kenneth Wishnia, PM Press, 2015.
I have a story in this book.  Heywood Gould's tale is about Franny and Larson, two petty lowlifes who like to spend their days at Aquaduct. And it is at that race track one day that they run into a hasidic gentleman they call the rabbi (he isn't).  The rabbi has a Bible-based system for betting on the horses, a sure thing of course, and yet somehow he is short of money.  Go figure.  Our heroes lend him some cash and, well, a wild ride commences that involves among other things, breaking into a morgue, and ends with a sort of spiritual enlightment.  A treat from start to finish.

Hockey, Matthew J.  "Canary,"  in Thuglit, 18, 2015.

Booster is a fireman with a chemistry degree, which earns him the dubious privilege of being the first into a meth lab gone deadly.  He's the one who enters in full HAZMAT gear and has to determine if all the idiots inside were killed by the poisonous brew they created or whether there might be survivors. And this time he finds  a bag stuffed with four hundred grand.  Obviously he ought to leave it where it lies, but who will know if he doesn't?  And so he takes one step off the straight-and-narrow...


Kareska, Lane.  "Big Hard Squall,"  in Thuglit, issue 17, 2015.

Abby has been brutally attacked and locked in the trunk of her car, which is now headed for parts unknown.  We stay in Abby's head as she runs through her life and concludes that there is no one who would want to do this to her.  Therefore the target must be her daughter Margaret, a prosecuting attorney.  Either someone wants to punish Margaret or else put a squeeze on her, and Abby is the pawn in jeopardy.  But when the trunk lid opens Abby and us - are in for surprises.

Lewis, Evan.  "The Continental Opposite,"  in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May 2015.

What chutzpah.  Lewis has revived Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op.

This story takes place in the fifties, decades after the Op's last appearance.  The main character is a young detective named Peter Collins (he notes bitterly that his father deliberately gave him a name that is gangland slang for "nobody").  Peter works for the Portland, Oregon branch of a national detective agency and when he accuses his boss of corruption the company sends in a retired op who used to work for the San Francisco branch ("sometime in the forties Continental had put him out to pasture, and he'd spent the years since killing a vegetable garden, sneering at golf courses, and not catching fish.").  This guy strongly resembles Hammett's hero, much older and, if possible, more cynical. A brilliant story.

Liss, David.  "Jewish Easter,"  in Jewish Noir, edited by Kenneth Wishnia, PM Press, 2015.

Al's family moved from Long Island to Jacksonville, Florida, when he was in third grade, because of his stepfather's import business.  Now he is thirteen and has begun to figure out exactly what is being imported.

But that's not his immediate problem.  There are a couple of anti-Semetic rednecks in his class and when they hear about Passover (which the sensitive teacher helpfully describes as "Jewish Easter,") they decide to invite themselves forcefully to the seder.  Let all who are hungry come and eat, right?

What I loved about the story is not the suspense but the surprising choices the characters make (especially the grandmother).  It kept me guessing right up to the last paragraph.

Maron, Margaret.  "We On The Train!"  in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 2015.  

Greg McInnis is a DEA agent who prefers to travel by train.  On a trip up the east coast he is amused by a young African-American woman who is gleefully phoning everyone she knows to tell them that she is going to visit New York with an older man she says is her Uncle Leon.

Sounds innocent enough, but this is a crime story, so something else must be going on here.  Will our hero figure it out in time?  He only has four pages...

Newman, Kim.  "Red Jacks Wild,"  in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Issue 17, 2015.

John Carmody is a psychologist in New York in 1951.  He also happens to be Jack the Ripper.

Wait a minute, you say.  He'd have to be a hundred years old.

Well, he is.  But he looks the same age he did in the 1880s when he started making human sacrifices to the evil goddess Hecate.  Which he still does, every three years.

But not prostitutes every time.  He alters his "disposables,"  choosing victims from a  group no one will care about.  Which makes him a weathervane pointing at whoever is on the bottom of the social pile.  This story is all about America's twisted psyche, and I loved it.

Opperman, Meg.  "The Discovery,"  in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Issue 18, 2015.

While studying at a university in her native Venezuela Celeste meets and marries Robert  and moves to Washington, D.C.  Robert is  a classic abusive, controlling, husband.  Celeste's every move is watched, her phone calls monitored.  When her bus home is late she is beaten.

 Reaching into a hand-carved box, I sort through the gold jewelry and select Robert's latest apology.

But what makes this story more than just a tale of domestic misery is that each scene is prefaced with a quotation from Christopher Columbus's letters or logbooks, describing his encounters with the natives of the new world.  It is no accident that Celeste and Robert get married on Columbus Day.

Palumbo, Dennis.  "A Theory of Murder,"  in And All Our Yesterdays, edited by Andrew MacRae, Darkhouse Books, 2015.

The publisher sent me this book for free.

It's Bern, Switzerland, 1904.  Hector, a clerk in the patent office, is suspected of a series of grisly murders.  Luckily a friend of his, also a patent clerk, is looking into the crimes.  And Albert Einstein is a pretty bright guy...  Wish I'd thought of that.

Ross, Gary Earl.  "Good Neighbors,"  in Buffalo Noir, edited by Ed Park and Brigid Hughes, Akashic Press, 2015.

Lou and Athena have retired after running their Greek restaurant for decades.  Lou's hobby is antiques.  He doesn't collect them, he just wants to buy low and sell high.  But then he discovers that his elderly neighbor Helen has a house full of the things.  And Helen has no relatives, no favorite charities, no one to leave her precious belongings to. So Lou and Athena set out to become really good neighbors and wait for Helen to pass away.

But then the Washingtons  move in on the other side, and it turns out that they are good neighbors too. This story is well-written, beautifully structured, and  one of those rare pieces I reread as soon as I finished it.

Rozan, S.J. "Chin Yong-Yun Meets A Ghost,"  in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March-April 2015.

This is my buddy S.J. Rozan's second story told by the  formidable mother of her series detective Lydia Chin.  When Mrs. Chin  gets a phone call from Gerald Yu she is annoyed  for three reasons.  First, Yu is a gambler and not very bright.  Second, he wants to involve daughter Lydia in his troubles.  And third, he happens to be dead.

"It's about my death, but it's not vengeance I'm after.  Also, it's not really about my death, because I'm not dead."
"Who told you that?  They're lying."

Rusch, Kristine Kathryn. "Christmas Eve at the Exit,"  in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January 2015.

This is Ms. Rusch's second appearance on my annual best list.

It is Christmas eve and Rachel and her little girl are on the run.  Many pages will pass before we find out from who, and about the shadowy support system that is helping them.

Rachel is terrified, not sure who to trust, and desperately trying to keep up an appearance of normality for her daughter who, heartbreakingly, seems mostly concerned about Santa Claus. This story will appear in holiday-themed anthologies for years to come.

Mixed Feelings, Copyright Edition

by Robert Lopresti

"There are so many grey areas in Copyright Law that the publishing industry looks like a lint trap." -Peter Berryman

I had better start this thing by saying that I am neither a lawyer nor a copyright expert, although I know more about copyright than the man on the street. (I also know it's dangerous to be on the street. Get up on the sidewalk, man!)

Where was I? Oh, yes.

It happened that I was telling a friend of mine about a story I wrote many years ago, and I wanted to email her a copy. However, it turned out I had no electronic copy (it having been born several computer systems ago). Instead of digging up a paper copy to scan for her I thought I would try to find it on the web.

That may sound odd, but it happens that the original publisher (I will call them BuyerCo) purchased it specifically to run it on the web. I hadn't seen it on their website in years, but you never know.

Well, it wasn't at BuyerCo's page, but it was up on the web. Specifically I found it on the site of a middle school English teacher in another country. She had a unit about mysteries and she had chosen my story as an example.

Talk about mixed feelings. I was honored to have been selected, and pleased that students were reading my story, but had she put it up without permission? What exactly was that teaching the students?

The more I pondered the more entangled I got. After all, I couldn't exactly complain because my story was on the web. I had sold it specifically for that purpose! Maybe BuyerCo had a legitimate complaint against her (although I don't know what the fair use rules are for educators in her country), but they weren't paying me to patrol the web, were they?

After a long thinking session I sent a note that read pretty much like this:

Hello,

I was surprised yesterday to find my story, "Title," on your website. While I am gratified to see students reading it, I am wondering who gave you permission to put it up for the public? I don't recall doing so. Perhaps it was BuyerCo, who has the right to publish it online?

In case you are interested, here is another story of mine, one that is available with no rights issues.

Best wishes,

The link connects to "Shanks Holds The Line," a story I had given Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine permission to put on their website Trace Evidence.

I received a reply the next day. The teacher explained that she had retired three years earlier and had had no idea the webpage was still up at all. A colleague had sent her a copy of the story for use in her unit on mystery and she had no idea how/where the colleague had acquired it. She told me she had just spent an hour figuring out how to get into the software, found her password, and taken down the page. And she thanked me for offering a different story to use.

I sent her a thanks for her service to all those students.

And so the story has vanished from the web once again, which brings up three questions:

1. Am I better off because the story has returned to obscurity?


2. Is BuyerCo better off because their property, which they have not used in years as far as I know, is once again hidden?


3. And isn't copyright interesting?