Short Stories or Novels?

Sometimes people ask me why it took so long for me to write a novel? I was writing and selling short stories. Well, the honest answer is, I was writing novels they just weren't selling. I wrote two or three novels that didn't sell. One came really close about three times to being published but the editor left or the publishing house went out of business or the novel buyer at the publishing house who was supposed to recommend my book got sick and died. Yep, that all happened. All with one novel. I think it's called being snake bit.

But in stead of giving up, I kept plodding along and because I was selling short stories, I found a editor who liked my work. That person was Ed Gorman and at that time he and the late Marty Greenberg were selling anthologies right and left and actually both of them liked my short stories, interviews, articles, reviews, etc. I was writing a regular column for Mystery Scene magazine.

In 1998 one of my short stories, "A Front Row Seat," published in the Vengeance is Hers anthology edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins was nominated and won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story.

A project came along that Ed and Marty had working. It was to be a coffee table style book about women mystery writers. There were to be interviews, articles and articles, by, about, and written by women mystery authors. They asked me to co-edit with Ellen Nehr and the book was titled Deadly Women. Unfortunately, Ellen got sick and passed away when we were about half-way into the project. Dean James took over in Ellen's slot and we continued the project. We were fortunate enough to be nominated for an Edgar for Best-Non Fiction and at Bouchercon we won a mccavity Award.

About then is when Ed and Marty formed a company, Tekno, and began working out a package deal with Five Star Mysteries. They would find the book for Five Star to buy, and once Five Star editor read and liked the book, Tekno would get the contract and get it signed, get the book copy-edited, get a cover, the blurbs, jacket copy,and whatever else was needed to get the book ready to be published.

Eventually, I had a chance to send my book, Austin City Blue, featuring my Austin policewoman, Zoe Barrow to Mr. Gorman and he recommended to Five Star they buy it. Five Star liked it and as they say, the rest is history. Soon I also had a contract for Five Star to publish a collection of my short stories, Found Dead In Texas. And soon after a contract for the second novel, Dark Blue Death, in my Zoe Barrow series.

In the meantime, I kept writing short stories and getting those published. Yet shortly after my husband passed away, and I began having health problems. I had a really rough four years. I had one novel I had written earlier which had never been published, I dusted it off, did some rewrite and in 2010 Five Star published, What Doesn't Kill You, a non-series or stand alone as some people call them. I certainly didn't do much other writing. My creative muse was trying to reassert itself I guess.

About four years ago, the American Crime Writers League, of which I was President, decided we needed to help get our name out a bit more and also wanted to earn a little money to go into our treasury. We came up with the idea of an anthology of original stories, all written by our ACWL members. I volunteered to co-edit and my co-editor was R. Barri Flowers. Barri was the one who had suggested the anthology. His agent sold the project to Twilight Times and our title was ACWL Presents: Murder Past, Murder Present. It was published in 2009. I wrote a short story for it, titled, "The Crimes of Miss Abigail Armstrong."

In May of this year, ACWLs second anthology, Murder Here, Murder There was published by Twilight Times. Again the anthology was co-edited by R. Barri Flowers and myself. My short story this time was, "The Confession." The story featured my long-time female Private-Eye characters from several short stories, Jenny Gordon and C.J. Gunn. It was a lot of fun to visit with the PIs from G & G Investigations once again.

So most of my writing career has been both short stories and novels. In some ways I like short stories better because you can usually write one in a very short time. I've had ideas and written a story in a day and the longest only took about a week. However, because you do only have a short frame work to write in you have to be more precise, more determined to have characters who seem real and you have to be ready to work and rework until the story is finally finished. It helps to have a great or even a twisted, you never saw that coming ending.

With a novel you have more room to develop your plot and sub-plots as well as develop your characters. There are many more characters and more scenes and it definitely takes much more time to write a novel. It takes me a year or so. But it's so satisfying when you get that book complete and polished and you send it out. There are more chances to make better money (at least that's what I've heard.) More chances for people to believe you are a "real" writer if you have a novel published.

I actually enjoy doing both and since my writing career first began with short stories I love doing them. But I also love that feeling you get when you go into a book store and see your novel on the shelf. Your own...the book your wrote.

I guess it's all how you feel about it. I remember an author telling me years ago, that he didn't write short stories because he only had one idea a year and didn't want to waste that idea. He felt he needed to spend his time on a novel. I can understand but I'd hate to give up either one.

How do you feel? Writers? Bloggers?

Brief Versus Short

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia

    Last week I received an eagerly awaited piece of mail – a check.  The amount of the check, paid in compensation for a 26 page document I wrote this year, may not have been huge, but neither was it all that modest.  It was, for comparisons sake, more than  my annual salary  back in 1972 when I was still programming computers.  It was also about 8 times more than I have received in total for the short stories I have sold over the past few years.  Unlike those stories, this novella length document wasn’t fiction at all.  The check was payment for a legal brief that I agreed to write in a case involving a challenge to new consumer regulations published by the United States Department of Transportation. 

    I know, I know.  I make a point here and elsewhere of being a “recovering” attorney.  But this case tempted me back into the legal arena since I was asked to defend regulations that are pro-consumer, and with which I personally agree.  Also the payment would be, well, generous. 

    The last 20 years that I practiced law I was the Deputy Assistant General Counsel in the Department of Transportation’s litigation office.  For a host of reasons I enjoyed that position much more than I had my previous 15 years of practice in the private sector.  At DOT almost everything that I did revolved around the written word.  I specialized in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, so there was no interviewing of witnesses or trial work for me.  Rather, I spent my years writing and editing the writing of others.  When I was in private practice it bugged me no end to think that every hour I spent on a project needed to be billed to someone.  Time and money were stapled together at the ankles.  Separating hours worked from compensation received is one of the greatest joys in working for the government.   While work still stacks up, there is nevertheless the opportunity to give each task the amount of time it requires rather than the amount of time that can justifiably be multiplied by an applicable hourly rate.  Nonetheless, I am human, and I like money as well as the next guy.  So I admit that it was the prospect of those billable hours that enticed me to write that brief this year.

    By contrast, each of us here at SleuthSayers, I will bet, is marching to a different drummer.  You basically can’t make anything close to a living writing short stories.  The last mystery writer who may have been able to eke out that sort of living was Ed Hoch, and I would be very surprised if there are any more of his ilk out on the horizon. 

    This was not always the case.  O. Henry wrote virtually only short stories, and apparently lived well.  Shirley Jackson left a handful of novels, but was principally known for her incredible short stories.  Faulkner, Hemmingway and Steinbeck each cut their teeth on short stories, as did Stephen King. 

    It is interesting to speculate as to what has changed since the heyday of magazine fiction.  John Floyd, in a column last week, set forth a list of outlets that currently pay for new short stories.  That list is paltry compared to the publications that were readily available at neighborhood news counters in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.  And why is this the case?  Economics teaches us that the magazines that are no more ceased to exist only because readers stopped purchasing them.  It’s pretty simple – when readers go away the market contracts.  Since the demise of many of those short story outlets coincided with the rise of television it is tempting to link the two.  Did readers leave because of the advent of television?  If so, why was that the case?  Mystery stories were a hallmark of radio programming before televisions entered our living rooms and yet the market for printed short stories thrived alongside radio dramas. 

  Thinking about this I was reminded of an episode on the Twilight Zone – actually, the 1985 re-boot of the show on CBS.  The episode, part of the 1985 Christmas show, was titled “But Can She Type?” and centered on a much-abused secretary who was transported into a parallel universe where secretarial skills were revered.  The scenario of that episode is not unlike the situation that short story authors find themselves in – we seem to be stuck in a universe that no longer fully appreciates our contributions.

    It is possible, with the advent of epublications and stories and books that are obtainable over the internet without ever being published in hardcover, that the pendulum may now be swinging back to a more amenable position.  But I still am a bit of a skeptic.  After all, the demise of all of those mystery magazines that we bought as kids was not a fluke – they left the shelves because the public stopped buying them.  Does the ability to download a book or a story heighten the public’s interest in acquiring the story?  Of course from an economics standpoint it could be that the readership market, while still narrow, is also deep, and that on-line availability of mystery fiction will appeal to those still interested in the genre who, for whatever reason, are not frequent purchasers of hardcopy books and magazines. 

    Regardless of whether these new outlets are harbingers of better things to come, at least, as John pointed out last week, there are markets that are out there right now.  But there are also strange disparities.  I spend roughly the same amount of time on a short story that I spent on that brief to the D.C. Court of Appeals.  My writing style changes somewhat when I shift from fiction to persuasive rhetoric, but it doesn’t really change all that much.  I still end up using the same words, the same organizational approach, and pretty much the same cadence.  But one of those efforts, if successful, brings monetary rewards that are probably at best only about five percent of the potential of the other. 

    In any event, no matter how the economics sort out, those of us committed to spinning yarns are in this for non-monetary gratification.  We are also in it for the long run!

My Two Cents Worth

Types of Literature

I thought for this post I’d throw in my two cents on the controversy of literary versus genre fiction. We read stories to vicariously satisfy our desire for pleasure and to sometimes explain reality. So why the separation? To satisfy our need to categorize to avoid confusion, to clarify in our minds how the world works. Enough philosophizing. On to my meditation on the subject.

The argument boils down to this: genre fiction is plot driven and literary fiction is character or theme driven. Literary fiction appeals to our intellect and emotions while genre appeals only to our emotions.

Although readers may get more out of fiction than entertainment, stories above all should entertain. But no matter whether it is genre or literary fiction, both require craftsmanship, for it is in the craft that effects on the reader are achieved. I admit in some genre stories the line between good and evil are sharp and clear and may not be so clear in literary fiction, but isn’t it possible that the clarity can make you as a reader think seriously about the human condition? And isn’t it possible that literary stories may be read for sheer enjoyment without any deep thinking about the human condition?

In an attempt to clarify the situation in my mind, I analyzed two crime stories, one literary and the other genre, by two  great writers.

In Hemingway’s story “The Killers,” two hoods, Max and Al, enter a diner and tells the counter man, George, the black cook Sam, and Nick Adams that they are there to kill Ole Andreson. The killers leave without hurting anyone because Ole, a former boxer, failed to come to the diner that day. When Nick later tells Ole about the two men, he says there is nothing he can do. He is resigned to his fate. The story certainly is not plot driven for what little plot there is suggests more than shows what is happening in Ole’s mind. The story is literary fiction.

Hammett’s “The Man Who Killed Dan Odams” is a plot-driven story about  how a woman outwits the man who killed her husband. The man who killed Dan Odams escapes from jail and takes refuge in a house with a woman and her 12 year-old son, not knowing she is Dan Odams’s widow. She recognizes him and tricks him into believing she sent her son outside to watch for his pursuers. The son in fact runs to a neighbor’s place for help. As he is dying, realizing the woman is Dan Odams’s widow, the fugitive expresses admiration for her avenging her husband’s murder. No question the story is plot driven.

Neither story enticed me to think very seriously about fatalism or revenge. I simply enjoyed reading them.

I also analyzed and enjoyed a story by a not so well known writer that made me think. In “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, John Wright is murdered in his bed. His wife Minnie is suspected since she was the only other person in the house, but the men, Mr. Hale, who found the body, the sheriff, and the county attorney, don’t find any convincing evidence in the bedroom  crime scene that would convict her. The two women, Mrs. Hale, and Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, inspecting Minnie’s things in the kitchen, find an empty bird cage. The dead bird they find in the sewing  basket suggests Minnie had taken as much abuse from John as she could and his killing her bird was the proverbial last straw. This story made me think about the perennial theme of how women and men see things differently.

Literary or genre fiction, does it really matter so long as you enjoy the story. Like Daniel Abrahams on the SFsignal website in his essay “A Private Letter from Genre to Literature,” I too plead, “Please, please, darling let us stop this.This artificial separation between us is painful, it is undignified, and it fools no one.” 

Except maybe a few literary critics. 

I'm So Confused

Your South Dakota Correspondent

by Eve Fisher

Hello, all SleuthSayers!  

I'm Eve Fisher, new contributor and correspondent from South Dakota.  Not that I'm from around here.  Actually,  I've never been from "around here," wherever "here" was - I was adopted at three from Athens, Greece, and I have moved a lot since then.

I've lived on both coasts, spent almost two decades in the South (Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina), and I currently live in small town South Dakota, along with my husband, my cat, and (at last count) five thousand books.  (So many books, so little time...)  And, along the way, I've been to almost every state in America, including every national/state park, monument, giant ball of string and iguana farm west of the Mississippi.  I even stayed (as a child) in the teepee motel on Route 66!

I've had a lot of variety in my working life, too, ranging from an early job as a part-time clerk in a seedy corner market in Atlanta (where I was the only woman to work there who wasn't robbed or shot - more on that another time), to teaching history at the university level in Brookings, SD.   I've worked for ballet companies, lawyers, CPAs, pizza places (I make a great pizza dough), judges, fabric stores, and for quite a while I was the circuit administrator for one of the South Dakota judicial circuits, which enlarged my acquaintance considerably on both sides of the law (more on that another time, too).  

I primarily write mysteries, some fantasy/sci-fi, and primarily short stories.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have had many publications in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine - I'm in the May issue along with Rob Lopresti, R. T. Lawton, and many others.  Honored as always, both to be published and to be in great company!  You can find all of my published stories (or links thereto) at my website at http://evefishermysteries.wikispaces.com/ 

So, having said all of that...  

 
Almost all of my writing -  no, I'd say all of my writing starts with either a character or a place that takes over my mind.  

For example, I was sitting in a local restaurant, where a (locally) well known and well-respected couple who shall be nameless walked in as the restaurant phone rang.  The man turned to his wife and said, "I'll bet that's for you.  I wish I had my gun, I'd shoot it."  Well, that sparked "The Lagoon".

My story "At the End of the Path", a strange mix of mystery and fantasy, is set in a half a mile long path between ordered rows of pine trees at our local state park, a path set high up on a ridge, planted a very long time ago, by persons unknown, a path somewhere between a refuge and a haunting, and the light draws you on and on until the very end.  

Then there's "Not the Type", which is based - only partly! - on a real incident, decades ago, where a girlfriend and I ran into an old boyfriend of mine and his new wife.  She took one look at me and decided that my girlfriend was the one he'd dated, and acted accordingly.  Not necessarily a good idea. 

And "Drifts", one of my personal favorites, which...  well the cover says it all:  "Winter is a season, a menace, a playground, and a weapon."

Anyway, it's great to be part of SleuthSayers.  Next time I'll share some scenes behind the scenes, or whatever curious incidents come up.  Speaking of incidents, did I mention that a couple of months ago we had a premeditated murder in our nice small town?  All because of an incident in the locker room in high school almost fifty years back:  Resentments really can kill you.  

More later,

Eve

Lovely Spring Day

by Jan Grape

Today is a lovely spring day in Central TX. We've finally had a bit of rain and lots of sunshine and the wild flowers are blooming and the Texas Bluebonnets are awesome. They are all over the place and even a few plants in my front and side yard are blooming. I've always wanted bluebonnets in my yard but this is the first time. I didn't plant them, the wind and birds must have seeded my whole neighborhood. Makes me happy to see them. So happy that I even decided to cook this evening. Now that is a rare treat because I don't usually cook a meal. I eat out at least 2 nights a week, going to my favorite restaurant and listening to local singer/songwriters and visiting with the other regular Tuesday and Wednesday night music lovers. Then at least one night a week, if my grandson, Cason, is home, we order pizza from our local pizza place. They use only fresh ingredients and make your pizza to order. The other nights if Cason isn't home, I sorta eat whatever I have on hand. Maybe only a sandwich or a bowl of soup. But today I made meatloaf and mashed potatoes and green peas. I also had the makings for a salad but forgot to do it. (Never said I was a gourmet...lol.) But it was all good and I had a nice glass of wine. Cason seemed to enjoy it all except the peas which he said he really didn't care for too much.

This week-end I've been doing some copy-editing on the anthology that I'm co-editing. R Barri Flowers and I have co-edited our second American Crime Writers League (otherwise known as ACWL) anthology. This one, MURDER HERE, MURDER THERE is due out around May 25th from Twilight Times Books. Our first ACWL anthology was MURDER PAST MURDER PRESENT. All of the stories are by members of ACWL and include such names as Jay Brandon, Kris Neri, Dakota Banks, John Lutz, Taffy Canon, Ed Gorman, Robert Randisi, Bill Crider, Candace Robb. We have as many members who are multiple winners and nominees for all the mystery awards than any organization around. This new book features some of the same authors as in the first anthology, but also Marlys Millhiser, Noreen Ayres, Valerie Malmont, Edward Marston Claire Carmichael, Jim Ingraham & Lauren Haney. Some of the finest short stories I have ever read are soon to be available to everyone.

I love good short stories and although there's not a big demand for them right now, I think they are perfect when you just have a few minutes and want to read a little mystery but don't have the time to devote to a full-length novel. My daughter, Karla, mentioned several years that because she was a busy, working mother that she really didn't have time to read a novel but she could sit down for a few minutes or an hour and really enjoy the suspense and pleasure in a short story. It's also a good way for writers to stretch their writing and play with some new characters rather than always writing about their series characters. However, sometimes a writer will use series characters in short stories but place them in a different time or place and just have a lot of fun with a shorter length.

My writing career actually began with short stories. I published around twenty-five short stories before I ever sold a novel. For this anthology, I wrote a story with my female private-eye characters, Jenny Gordon and C.J. Gunn. The story is titled, "The Confession." I haven't written anything with Jenny and C.J. in several years and enjoyed visiting their lives once again. I never had a novel published with them but wrote around a dozen short stories with the owners of G & G Investigations. In fact, one story with Jenny and C.J., won the Anthony Award at the Bouchercon in Philadelphia in 1998. The story, "A Front-Row Seat," was published in the VENGEANCE IS HERS anthology from Signet.

If you have time, read a short story and enjoy spring, where ever you happen to be today.

IN MEMORY:

A young soldier, PFC Payton Jones, from Marble Falls, TX, age 19, was killed in Afghanistan a few weeks ago and his body was brought home for services and burial. As usual with many small towns there was an out-pouring of respect for the young soldier and his family. Several hundred people, myself included, lined the street as the procession came into town from a nearby airport. The final leg of the soldier's 7,000 mile journey home.The Kiwanis Club always has flags for patriotic days and for something like this showing support and respect. The Patriot Guard of motorcycle riders, all veterans, came first, followed by Firetrucks, EMS vehicles, police and sheriff vehicles all from surrounding communities, then the white hearse carrying our hometown hero, his family and friends to the funeral home. It was a sad moment but also heart-felt as we all stood at attention along both sides of the street, hands over hearts, most of us holding a large flag on a metal pole or waving a little flag. Only a small gesture, but in some small way letting his family know, we were heartbroken with them. RIP Private Jones.

Big Shot Writers

Not a Big Shot Writer

My daughter, Bridgid, suggested that my next posting on SleuthSayers address the issue of where I got the ideas that became published stories for me. She assured me that there is a large audience of novice writers, and just plain fiction buffs, that visit authors' blog sites everyday for just such info as this. I countered that this audience was most likely for writers with a slightly higher recognition profile than my own. Strangely, she did not deny this. This was during her Christmas visit and the gifts had already been opened. Next year may be a lean one for her.

My son, Julian, the English teacher (or Professor as he likes to be addressed), gave me a huge compendium containing the works of some short story writers somewhat better known than myself. You may recognize a few of these names: Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, James Joyce, Flannery O'Connor, Edgar Allan Poe, etc, etc...blah, blah, blah. Some of them struck a distant chord with me. The name of this book is, The Art of the Short Story compiled and edited by Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn, and offering insights by the authors themselves on their stories within, or on some aspect of writing them. The 'professor' added, "You should read this." I thought I detected the slightest of smirks on his face (again, this was after the opening of his gifts from his mother and me).

It seemed to me that, perhaps, my children (who had once been so adorable) were trying to tell me something; it occurred to me that they may have been insinuating that there was room for improvement in my writing efforts, or something along those lines. It is only fair to note, that the two of them act as the unofficial editors (and unwanted critics) of most of my scribblings since they became college graduates. Their older sister, Tanya, lives in Atlanta and has children of her own and therefore no time to pile on with her siblings, thank God. The other two, however, have a certain proprietary air about them when it comes to my so-called writing career.

"I've read a bunch of these," I countered. "A whole bunch. Some of them are pretty good. That Poe dude is a little heavy-handed in the prose department though, don't 'cha think?" Take that, professor. His expression was equal parts disappointment and disdain. "Yeah," I went on, "he does guest features on SleuthSayers from time to time...we call him, 'E.A.' for short." No laughter, no smiles...nothing. Kinda like the photo below.

E.A. (Big Shot Writer)

When the critics finally went away, having stripped the house of most edibles, their mother and I were left behind once more; at least until we should be needed to provide something useful. The 'Book' rested on my nightstand...waiting. After spraining a wrist lifting it, I discovered that I had, indeed, read a number of the stories, though certainly not the majority of them. In fact, as I read, it reminded me of what a wonderful form of expression the short story really is. It also reminded me of why I've always like to write them. You can do things with a short story that just aren't possible in another medium. Imagine The Yellow Wallpaper or The Lottery as novels--they would have become bogged down and tedious with detail; diluting their impact. How about, To Build a Fire? The terrifying urgency of that story would have been lost at book-length. Even, E.A.'s stuff would have collapsed under its own weight had he not confined himself to short stories.

According to the authors of the "Art" the short story is the most recent and modern of literary forms; Nathaniel Hawthorne being credited with its introduction to the English Language in 1837 with Twice Told Tales. I did not actually know this, but I'm sure the professor did. As a testament to his genius (Hawthorne's, not my son's), many of those tales still read very well today and retain a compelling narrative power. It's astounding how really good writing can transcend the barrier of time and the hurdles of archaic language. Poe manages this pretty well, too.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (another Big Shot Writer)

Astounding, also, is the number of writers who have specialized in, or written exclusively, short stories. Heed the following roll call: O'Connor, H.H. Munro (Saki), Poe, Hawthorne, Bradbury, de Maupassant, Doyle, Henry, but to name a few. Additionally, writers perhaps better known for their novels, such as Borges, Chekhov, Conrad, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joyce, Oats, du Maurier, and Tolstoy contributed mightily to the short fiction realm. When I contemplate the undeniable fact that literary giants such as these believed the short story a worthwhile endeavor, I am heartened to persevere at my modest endeavors.

As I confided to Bridgid and her brother one day: If I only had one story, just one, that ended up being read twenty-five or fifty years from now, or even better, was made mandatory reading in some college class (hopefully one taught by my son; wouldn't that be sweet justice?), I would feel that I had accomplished something. Clearly I'm not in it for the money, though God knows I wouldn't be amiss to a few whopping big paychecks (I give to a lot to charities, you see). So for all of you, my short fiction brethren, take heart and keep writing as we, too, can become big shot writers! Don't let the narrow marketing field discourage you. After all, we write because of our love of the word and, in my case at least, in order to entertain, at my own expense of course, my wonderful children and wife.

As a postscript, I would like to bring your attention back to my photo at the top of the page. You may notice, though it has been subtly framed, that I am holding a really big book of short stories. Now that I have an even bigger one which includes a bunch of foreign authors too, I intend to have another taken. Julian assures me that there's no chance I could look any more pompous with his bigger book, but I'm willing to give it a try even so. He suggests a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches might just do the trick.

I think a pipe would help, as well.