I have a big file of story ideas. Some of them are somewhat fleshed out. Others contain a sentence or two followed by the statement: Figure out the plot. (That's always so helpful.) Sometimes I'll have come up with only a good opening line or title, again leaving the hard work for future me. Sometimes I will have a newspaper article that intrigued me, followed by: Can I make something from this? Often the answer turns out to be no. If I had no grand story idea when I was first intrigued, an idea probably isn't going to come years later. But sometimes…
About five years ago, I read a story involving a topless bar that had a word I immediately thought had to be a mistake. At one point, the bar was described as "half-topless." How in the world could a bar be half-topless? It was such delicious wording that I knew I had to make something from it. Yet no matter how much brain power I expended, I couldn't come up with a workable story. So this half-baked idea about a half-topless bar went into the story idea file, where so many others have withered away.
But not this idea! Earlier this year, editor Andrew McAleer reached out to ask me to write a PI story for him for Von Stray's Crimestalker Casebook. After a two-decade hiatus, the magazine (previously called Crimestalker Casebook) was coming back, starting with a December 2025 issue. My first instinct was to say no. I have been so busy with work that I have been turning down a lot of opportunities over the last two or three years. But Andrew said he wanted a flash story, meaning less than a thousand words. I figured I could fit that short a story into my schedule if I had the right idea.
I delved into my story file, came across the half-topless prompt, and finally things began to coalesce--evidence that sometimes waiting does help. Suddenly I pictured a PI sitting in his car, staring at a sign that said "half-topless." And I was off and running. The story ended up set at a strip club rather than a bar. I give thanks to my friend Dina Willner, who suggested the name of the club, which in turn suggested the location and enabled me to add more humor to the story.
A couple of days later, I sent the story to some beta readers for their thoughts. Thanks to Sherry Harris for pushing me to think about my main character's arc. Thanks to Minnesotans Tim Bentler-Jungr and Michael Allan Mallory for checking if my dialogue and Minnesota references worked.
So what's the story about? It can be hard to talk about a flash story's plot without giving too much away. But it opens with a PI and his trainee sitting in their car, staring in confusion at a strip club's sign that proclaims the place is half-topless. They've been hired to find a woman named Angel Trapp, who they've heard dances there. So they go inside to see if she's there--and learn how somebody could be half-topless.
Some of you may recognize the name of the aforementioned woman: Angel Trapp. The character is named after a real person who won naming rights in a charity auction last spring at the Malice Domestic mystery convention. Thank you, Angel, for being game for anything.
The moral of this story: never throw away your story ideas. It may take years, but sometimes you'll be able to turn a wisp of an idea into a fully fledged tale. In this case, the story is appropriately titled "Half-Topless."
This issue of Von Stray's Crimestalker Casebook is available on Kindle here. I think a paper version will eventually follow. The issue includes stories by fellow SleuthSayers Michael Bracken and John Floyd and a poem by Art Taylor.
