Writers Only Die Twice

 

The poet Horace bragged that he built “a monument more lasting than bronze.” He was speaking of his writing, of course. But not all of his poems have survived two thousand years to reach us. Granted, he is luckier than most ancients in this respect, but maybe he should have considered etching his poems on sheets of literal bronze instead of papyrus. Or maybe he should have just found a better literary executor.

Thanks to the profusion of Halloween decorations in town, and the wraithlike fog that awaits me every morning when I let the dog out, death is much on my mind.

Earlier this year, I heard a podcast in which a young man confessed to being morbidly fascinated with death. Michael La Ronn told his interviewer that his grandfather had left his estate so tidily wrapped up that Michael was inspired to do the same.

But that is tricky, you see, because Mr. La Ronn is a writer—science fiction and fantasy under his real name, and nonfiction for writers under the name M.L. Ronn—which these days means that his copyrights will live seventy years beyond his death.

It’s easy to settle an estate that consists of personal property, real estate, family heirlooms, cash, vehicles, and investments. It is far more complicated to properly bequeath and entrust your literary output to your heirs. Frankly, it is burden that will last decades.

Just what was he supposed to do?

As I listened to this, I thought: Tell me about it, brother!

Seventy years is a long time. Just for starters, let’s say little writer you keels over today, immediately after reading this post. Your very first copyright will enter public domain in the year 2094. That’s so far in the future that your siblings or current literary agent, if you have one, will have also ceased to exist.

No problem, say you. That means my copyrights must necessarily be entrusted to someone far younger than my contemporaries. Great, let’s go with that for a second. Let’s say you and your spouse had kids at age 30, the same year you started writing. If you die at 80 years old, your 50-year-old child will be 120 years old when your very first copyright enters the public domain.

Such a revelator, math! Already it’s easy to see that by making the very selfish decision to drop dead, you must now entrust your precious copyrights to a succession of humans, who now include your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. In a sense, by trusting family, you are placing bets that they will not a) die young, or b) turn out to be a gaggle of glue-sniffing squish-heads. Furthermore, you are trusting that this lineage will have the publishing acumen when the time comes to see that your work a) stays in print, and b) is exploited properly. (In these cases, the verb exploited is a good thing.)

What if your progeny don’t care about writing—yours or anyone’s? Who can blame them? You know how some writers say that they “just want to write”? What if your successors just want to sell tires, clean teeth, do taxes, or a million other things sane people do for a living? Why should they be saddled with intellectual property that has no meaning for them?

I have now presided over or witnessed the disposition of five family estates. What sticks in my mind is how much pressure executors get—from the state, from lawyers, from siblings—to wrap this thing up already. Everyone wants the decedent’s possessions sold, donated, dumped, disappeared, and converted to cash. No one likes paying for storage facilities longer than they have to. Everyone has jobs and families to get back to.

The thought that some loved one or dear friend will have the time or energy to page through every single hard-copy or digital document to catalog your writing stretches the meaning of love—but that is exactly what a devoted literary executor must do.

Or—call me crazy—what if you don’t have kids?

The great wit of the Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker, married three times but had no children. A supporter of Civil Rights, she left her copyrights to Martin Luther King, Jr., with the proviso that should he predecease her the copyrights would go to the NAACP. He was assassinated shortly after her death. Open a book by Dorothy Parker today and the NAACP is listed on the copyright page.

That’s one way to do it. You leave your estate to a non-human entity—a corporation or org—that is likely to survive to the public domain stage. We’ve all heard of artists—usually musicians—who sell their catalogs to some entity that will profit from those rights into perpetuity. I’m sure that’s easy if you have an IP catalog that’s worth bajillions.

Some writers leave their copyrights outright to their literary agents, which always struck me as dumb. At least name an heir or charity that the agent, attorney, or literary executor must send royalties to while those people or entities you care about still live/exist, with some provision if/when they don’t.

Saying “my agent will take care of it” often feels to me like a cop-out, the “I-just-can’t-bear-to-think-of-this-crap” default decision. The agent option is nice if you have an agent now. But it’s not as if agents and agencies don’t die too.

Some literary agencies operate “heritage” departments that represent the estates of dead authors. Heck, some agencies manage the estates of dead agencies. For fun, look at this agency’s website page and see how many of their deceased authors you know.

But what if you are a mid-list writer with modest sales, zero agent, and a large output? There are no easy answers, which is not something living writers like to hear. A number of books discuss this dilemma, and offer concrete suggestions.

Michael La Ronn, the young writer I mentioned above, wrote two such books, one for writers, and another for their heirs. M.L. Buchman, who some of you will recognize from the SMFS boards, wrote a great book on estates that recommends authors write a letter to their heirs. In a podcast interview with Jo Penn back in 2017, he said that he was inspired when his daughter confessed that she dreaded him dying and leaving her with his books because she had no idea what he did and what she was supposed to do with them.

Seth Davis is the stepson and literary executor of the great short story writer Avram Davidson, who died in 1993 at age 70. When he had time during the Covid pandemic, Mr. Davis, who is an attorney, crept up to a family attic and began paging through mountains of Davidson’s published and unpublished manuscripts. He realized that he was sitting on a treasure trove of material. And if it was ever going to see the light of day—and live anew—that he would have to do the heavy lifting.

Slowly, he re-released Avram’s work in new editions as ebooks, paperbacks, and audiobooks. (He indie-published the new editions.) Next, he began sharing the stories via a delightful podcast, The Avram Davidson Universe. He did so on the hope that someone beyond Avram’s fans would notice and want to produce one or all of the stories as a movie or TV show.

I asked Mr. Davis if he could offer any advice to us. Here’s what he said:

“My first piece of advice to authors is: Get incredibly organized. Imagine having a beautiful spreadsheet with all your stories, when they were copyrighted, when they expire, and what’s under contract. In my own experience, I had to turn a very disorganized estate into an organized one, and trust me, doing it in advance is a lifesaver. Have all the agreements in one place.  Spend time going over it with your heirs.

 

“For heirs, it’s similar: If you know you’re going to be the one inheriting this literary legacy, start organizing things while the author is still around. And if you’re not sure, then just enjoy the process, keep their legacy alive, and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. And of course, reach out to others in similar situations for advice. Don’t throw anything away for a few years and take your time going through the estate.  You can’t rush it.  A little bit at a time.”

Sensible advice. See that part where he says “keep their legacy alive”? The four things he did—ebooks, paperbacks, audiobooks, the podcast—are time-consuming endeavors even for those who are comfortable with traditional or self-publishing. To a non-publishing civilian who has no interest in publishing, audio production, or podcasting, they might well seem impossible.

If such an heir receives an email out of the blue from an editor assembling a future anthology, offering a token payment and a straight-forward, reasonable contract, how will they react? Will they say, “Sure, let’s get this story out in the world again!” Or will they demand a payment so exorbitant that it ensures no one will ever see your work again?

I heard of such things when I worked with editors at Scholastic. The literary classroom magazines were always approaching writer estates for reprint rights, specifically for plays, short stories, and poems suitable for kids. They often ran into heirs who had no idea what they were asking for. These descendants dreaded hiring a lawyer to review the reprint contract, and so they declined the offer or quoted absurd payments that guaranteed that they would never hear from that particular editor ever again. Equally sad were the times those editors could not locate an heir, period.

In that beautiful spreadsheet Mr. Davis suggested, it would help if you also listed…

• blurbs that the story or book might have received
• relevant reviews
• rights that were licensed in your lifetime
• publishing houses you worked with
• names of editors you worked with
• scans of royalty statements
• scans of copyright registration certificates
• scans of contracts (foreign and domestic)
• accounts (logins/passwords) at online retailers/distributors used to self-pub your books and stories
• the bank account numbers where those royalties are wired or direct-deposited

You are creating, in other words, a story bible of the lives of each of your works, so someone who knows little about your catalog can give it the best chance of success in your afterlife. If you this correctly, your spreadsheet and its attendant pages have now grown into a chubby file of digital data. A hard-copy backup with original docs and copies of the original magazines, anthologies, or books would be nice too.

When you get the facts assembled, do what Mr. Buchman suggests and draft that letter.

Considering what has transpired recently in the world of literary legacies, I don’t think it’s crazy to tell your heirs…

• How do you feel about them publishing work of yours that was not published in your lifetime, whether intentionally or not?
• How do you feel about extending the life of your series characters after your death?
• Would you consent to them hiring ghostwriters to write in your world(s)?
• Would you consent to them editing your work to remove material that future enlightened citizens of our fair republic, ha, might find objectionable?
• How do you feel about them publishing your letters, journals, diaries? (Yeah, I know most of us reading this are not Joan Didion, William Faulkner, or Harper Lee, but it doesn’t hurt to get your directives in writing.)
• Can you offer any advice for how welcoming they should be to anthology requests?
• What advice can you offer if a small press wants to reissue all or some of your books?
• What are your thoughts on translations? Are there countries you would prefer not be published in?
• Do you object to your as-yet-unborn, great-great-teenaged nephew writing books in your series using the AI chip embedded in his brain that all the cool kids, circa 2095, use to help them think?

Hate AI? Don’t be such a stick in the mud, dirt-napper you! Naturally, when your stories enter the public domain, they will absolutely be hoovered into the maw of AI, if they haven’t already. You have no choice about that. By then, what happens to your words will be beyond the control of your heirs.

But in the meantime, you have seventy lovely years for a shot at the big time. In the 2017 interview I heard, Mr. Buchman reminded us that Lucia Berlin, who was a largely unknown short story writer in her lifetime, hit the New York Times Bestseller List twice, both times more than a decade after her death. And Mr. Buchman noted that if you ever read the novels that followed the creepy hit, Flowers in the Attic, you probably did so after V.C. Andrews quit the stage. The ghostwriter brought in to finish her last two novels has gone on to write many more V.C. books than V.C. herself ever wrote.

I am inspired personally by the tale of the sickly, acid-dropping mid-list writer whose work was mostly out of print toward the end of his life. When he still walked among the living, a movie studio acquired the rights to one of his novellas. He got to see the first few rounds of scripts—and hated them. Then the production invited him to view scenes they had shot using a revised script. He bitched all the way to the studio in the limo they sent for him. And bitched some more when they showed him around the prop shop.

Then the footage started rolling, and he sank in his seat. What he saw left the writer awestruck. He asked them to run the footage again.  It’s like they got inside my head, he declared later. In 1982, a few months before the movie release, he suffered two strokes and died at age 53.

The movie was Blade Runner, and at least a dozen of Philip K. Dick’s stories have since been filmed, thanks to the careful stewardship of his three children via a family literary trust. They are far from running out of material. PDK wrote 44 books, and more than 120 stories. 

In short, dying is a thing that happens to people, some of whom are writers. It’s sad, sure, but not as sad as leaving an orphaned estate.

If you are undead, feel free to ignore the foregoing. Happy Halloween.

* * *

The books I mentioned, alphabetical by author. The Buchman and Ronn books are small enough to tuck into your estate documents as you plan.

Estate Planning for Authors: Your Final Letter (and why you need to write it now), by M.L. Buchman. (My first lawyer—who knew nothing about literary properties—told me she would have to charge me when I suggested she read this 126-page book. Since I am not running a private law school, I found a new lawyer.)

An Author’s Legacy: A Planner to Ensure An Author’s Life Lives On, Long After Death, by Craig Martelle. (Only available as a large-print paperback, this workbook features many pages that can be photocopied and used to compile your literary assets.)

The Author Estate Handbook: How to Organize Your Affairs and Leave a Legacy, by M.L. Ronn.

The Author Heir Handbook: How to Manage an Author Estate, M.L. Ronn. (I would buy multiple copies of this book to share with my heirs.)

My thanks to Matt Buchman and Seth Davis for their kind assistance (and patience) as I researched this post.

See you in three weeks—I hope!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

How to Feed a Hungry Ghost

“The traditional view of death in China is different from the traditional view of death in the West,” says Nick Tackett, an historian from University of California, Berkeley, who studies traditional Chinese death rituals, especially those from Song and Liao periods. The spirit of the deceased separates into two parts, which one might call two souls. One of which resides—and ideally remains—in the tomb, and one of which resides in the ancestral tablet,” a plaque kept in shrines in homes or temples. After burial, souls need to be fed constantly, Tackett explains. “Regular offerings at the ancestral altar and periodic offerings at the grave helped satiate the souls of the deceased.”

But if something goes awry—forgetful relatives who neglect their feeding duties, an improper burial, or some unfinished business on Earth—a dead person’s soul can wander out of the tomb, hungry. These ghosts rarely meddle in the affairs of the living, but starting on the 15th day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar—roughly sometime in July/August—the gates of the underworld unlock, allowing flocks of hungry ghosts to roam freely for a month, the appropriately titled Ghost Month, also known as the Yulan or Zhongyuan Festival. (LINK)

BTW, in the West, the two novels (neither of them mysteries, but...) I know of that are based on hungry ghost legends (The Hungry Ghost by H. S. Norup and Peony in Love by Lisa See), both have hungry ghosts that are beautiful young girls. In Asia, not so. They're ugly, they're frightening, they're starving, even if they are your mother:

Mulian confronts his hungry ghost mother in the Kyoto Ghosts Scroll
late 12^th century. (public domain)

This is why one of my characters, Professor John Franklin says, repeatedly, that “European and Asian vampires are predators, pure and simple. American vampires are children who like to play with their food...” 

Now there's a laundry list of things to not do during Ghost Month, for fear of attracting the hungry ghost:

• Whistling
• Staying up late
• Buying a home or apartment
• Leaving clothes out to dry

But to appease the hungry ghost, you can burn

• Paper money
• Paper goods (from clothing to an automobile)
• Servants
• Houses
• Children
• Mistresses or wives

But how does one become a hungry ghost?

• Suffer a violent or unhappy death
• Neglect or desertion by one's living relatives
• Evil deeds: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct
• Evil desires: lust, greed, anger and ignorance

Especially greed, because greed is insatiable in life, and even more insatiable in death, because there's no way to satisfy it as a ghost. They are all mouth and stomach, nothing else.

Speaking of greed, Japan has its version of hungry ghosts as well:

Gaki are the spirits of jealous or greedy people who, as punishment for their mortal vices, have been cursed with an insatiable hunger for a particular substance or object.

Jikininki ("people-eating ghosts") are the spirits of greedy, selfish or impious individuals who are cursed after death to seek out and eat human corpses. They do this at night, scavenging for newly dead bodies and food offerings left for the dead. But jikininki lament their condition and hate their repugnant cravings for dead human flesh. (Sort of like Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood and others.)

MY NOTE: The Japanese also believe in the possibility of turning into a hungry ghost while alive because of jealousy and greed. This happens at least three times in The Tale of Genji when Rokujo a former lover of Genji the Shining Prince, sees Genji's pregnant wife Aoi, and her jealous spirit roars out of her body and becomes a Shiro, who possesses Aoi, makes Aoi extremely ill and in the end kills Aoi. Before that, Rokujo's Shiro might also have killed one of Genji's first loves, Yugao. And after Rokujo herself dies, her Shiro possesses and almost kills the love of Genji's life, Murasaki.

And then there's zombies and/or vampires. These go all the way back to Neolithic times. In Neolithic Greece they used to put millstones or heavy pottery shards on the neck or chest and then a heavy stone on top of the grave to keep the body in the grave and away from the living. No revenants allowed, thank you. They believed in werewolves as well, and knew that werewolves could turn into vampires. In fact, blood drinking demons are everywhere in ancient mythology, probably because it made sense. I mean, if all the gods needed blood sacrifices, why wouldn't the demons as well?

Anyway, one way my household has dealt with things that slither and slide and go bump in the night was to use one of Allan's sculptures as the guardian of our threshold. Life sized, folks. You're breaking in. You have a small flashlight. You look around, and this comes lunging at you out of the darkness.

"The Corner" by Allan Fisher

Very effective. Happy Halloween!

Six of a Kind

I had an unusual month recently, an experience I can only describe as almost John-Floydian.  It started on a Monday when an anthology was published with one of my stories in it.  That was actually expected.  But I was surprised on Tuesday when a second anthology appeared with one of my tales.  And then I was flabbergasted when it happened again on Wednesday.

A week later at Bouchercon I was delighted to sign copies of the conference anthology with yet another of my stories in it.  Since then, two more have appeared in magazines.

I assure you, this is not my usual publication record.  But let's take a guided tour of these six literary masterpieces.

"The Cage," in Better Off Dead Vol. 1: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, edited by D. M Barr.  I actually wrote about this  at SleuthSayers in August.  It's a story about a high school student having a bad day, following him class by class.  IMPORTANT: This book is published by Down and Out Books, which is going out of business, so if you want a copy grab it fast! 

"Lucky Night" in The Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy.  The shortest of six stories.  A successful businessman goes back to his hometown and attends a poker game.  Crime deals itself in... 

"The Little Death," in Celluloid Crimes, edited by Deborah Well.  A few years ago I wrote a story for Monkey Business, Josh Pachter's anthology of stories inspired by the Marx Brothers, and my protagonist was Madame Matilda, a dwarf working in a circus in the 1940s.  By the end of the story she had solved a murder and been hired by a detective agency.  "The Little Death," in which she provides security for the prizes in an art contest, is actually her third adventure.  Numbers two and four have been purchased for anthologies but have not yet been published.  I am currently polishing up on #5.

"The Unreliable Narrator," in Blood on the Bayou: Case Closed, edited by Don Bruns.  This story  is about an actor who makes his living performing audiobooks.  He's very good at his job -- except you can't count on him to show up on time and sober.  He is, you see, an Unreliable Narrator.  I was very smug when I dreamed that up.  All the stories in the book had to be set in the Big Easy so I owe a debt to O'Neil DeNoux who helped me NOLA-fy my tale.

Shanks and the High Bidder," in Black Cat Weekly, #212.  My 24th story about Leopold Longshanks, grouchy writer of crime fiction and reluctant solver of true crime.  In this one he deals with the winner of a charity auction who is reluctant to come up with the cash.  This is my second story inspired by Not Always Right, a webpage where anonymous contributors send in true tales of horrible customers. It is a huge time sink but it does provide wild story prompts.

"The Night Beckham Burned Down," in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, #16. This one was fun to write.  It was inspired by a catastrophic fire in Oregon in 1936.  Most of the bizarre events I describe really happen.  I  just had to make one of the fire victims a murder victim.  I wrote about it  at SleuthSayers last year.

But wait! There's more!  After I wrote this I learned that a seventh story was coming out in October.

"Give the Gift of Murder," in Black Cat Weekly, #216. I worked for 31 years in a university library and for some of them a campus fundraiser had the office next door.  Her job consisted of talking people into donating moolah to the university, preferably in large amounts.  It occurred to me that someone giving away money that greedy relatives might want for themselves was an obvious premise for a crime novel.  I even had the opening ready.  But my novels have not been hugely successful so I set the idea aside.  But one day I remembered my New Choice! technique and had a new thought: What if I made it much shorter?  A novella?  And immediately the pieces fell into place.  As it turned out the story is only about half as long as a novella, but I like it.  Oh, here's that opening I dreamed up:

When she found the corpse of Howard Secton III ruining the expensive Persian rug in his study, Maggie Prince's first thought was Did he sign the papers?  Her second thought was: I hate my job.

Personally, I love mine. Hoping you the same.

Old Words

     In the heart of the French Quarter, opposite the rear garden of the St. Louis Cathedral, sits Faulkner House Books. The store is named after William Faulkner, who rented an apartment in the building in 1925. In that space, he began writing his first published novel, Soldier's Pay.

    My traveling companion and I visited the store at 624 Pirate's Alley when we were in New Orleans for Bouchercon. As we neared, a pair of priests with collars askew and bags over their shoulders strolled away from the cathedral. They surprised me. I don't think about priests as coming off shift. But there they were.

    Inside, Faulkner House felt like a time capsule. The store exists in a space not originally designed for retail. It's a small store. Shelves leak into other rooms. Poor lines of sight abound. An oak table doubled as the sales counter. A stack of books had been temporarily moved to make way for a retail transaction. The store really should be encased in amber. 

    You expect to feel ghosts in an establishment like this and, therefore, you do. Outside these doors, hurricanes and plastic beads are the fashion. Tacky T-shirts promote guttural conversation. In here, literary specters silently whisper. They tell you that the muses expect you to aim a little higher. 

    While worshipping at Faulkner House Books, I bumped into a list of lost words that Joe Gillard compiled. These are terms that once occupied a place in English, have been kicked off the varsity, but, perhaps, should be brought back. The words fit the setting. Faulkner House is an ideal place for clinging to an antiquated way of practicing English. What follows are a few examples: 

    • Collywobbles--Stomach pain or sickness resulting from nervous anxiety. 

The current state of publishing has given me a case of the collywobbles. 

    • Fabulosity– An exaggerated statement or story that is entirely made up.

They loved hearing about his vacation adventures although it was all fabulosity. 

    • Honeyfuggle--To compliment or flatter someone to something you want.

We can probably all think of someone who needs to be honeyfuggled. 

    • Pelf--Money, especially when acquired through fraud or deceit.

The critic accepted pelf in exchange for the glowing review. 

    I'm going to stop listing examples. Although I tried to craft sentences outside of a political context, all of the words I selected kept forcing rumination on the state of national affairs. With each term, my spirit sagged. Time to withdraw to a happy place, like Faulkner House Books.

    If you're queasy or merely want to latibulate– hide in a corner– consider taking time for a quick holiday. Visit your local bookstore, especially if it's in an old house with creaky floors and a bready smell. The environment offers a great place to restore the soul. Although you may leave poorer in pocket, I'm convinced you'll depart chirky and gladsome.

Until next time.

---

BSP: Last Tuesday, October 21^st, was Publication Day for The Hidden River, the second in my national park series of dual timeline thrillers. This one is set in the Everglades. Thanks to all for your well-wishes and encouragement.

---

Writing the Unwriteable

Twist Phelan

It's a fine October morning in Texas and I hope you're as happy as I am to be here. I'm also honored today to introduce, my jet-setting, mystery writer friend, Twist Phelan. She just returned from Greece in time for us to put this all together.

Twist Phelan is the award-winning author of eleven mystery novels, which have been praised by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus, and Booklist.

She also writes short stories, which have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and various anthologies. Accolades for her work include two Thriller Awards and the Arthur Ellis Award, plus multiple nominations for the Thriller, Ellis, Shamus, Anthony, Derringer, Silver Falchion, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s Readers Choice, and Lefty Awards, as well as the Crime Writers of Canada's Award of Excellence and the Irish Book Awards.

My first meeting with Twist Phelan was many years ago at some mystery con, neither of us remember exactly when or where. She was introduced to me as Twist Phelan. I was introduced to her as Jan Grape. Of course, neither of us could believe our names, sort of halfway thinking "She came up with that name just to use as a writer name." It couldn't possibly be her "real name." But yeah, those are our real names. We both remember seeing each other at other years over the years and asking "Is that still your real name." And both of us saying, "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

This essay originally appeared at the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine web site, Something is Going to Happen.

— Jan Grape

Writing the Unwritable

by Twist Phelan

There’s a moment in almost every mystery writer’s career when you conceive a story so dark, so audacious that it freezes your fingers over the keyboard. The premise makes you uncomfortable. The twist feels too devastating. The concept challenges not just genre conventions but human decency itself. Your internal editor whispers: Pull back. This is too much.

Don’t listen.

I’ve written many stories that might be considered on the edge: stories about rape in a nursing home, a parent murdering a psychopathic child, forced marriage as a weapon of war. Each time, I wondered, Is this the story that goes too far?

The answer was always no, because the story was honest.

Mystery fiction has always been society’s dark mirror. We write about murder, the ultimate transgression. Yet somehow we’ve convinced ourselves there are gradations of acceptability in depicting human evil. A serial killer who targets strangers? Acceptable. A parent who recognizes the monster in their child’s eyes? Suddenly we’re squeamish.

But our squeamishness is exactly why these stories need to be written.

The best mysteries don’t just entertain; they examine. They force us to confront uncomfortable truths about human nature, societal failures, and our own moral boundaries. When we self-censor, we rob readers of fiction’s unique power to safely explore life’s darkest corners. We become complicit in the very silence that allows these horrors to flourish in reality.

I’ve had an editor hold two stories for months, a third for over a year, while she wrestled with her discomfort. In each case, the editor eventually recognized the story’s power lay precisely in its willingness to go where others wouldn’t. Those three stories went on to win or be nominated for awards. I like to think it wasn’t despite their difficult subjects, but because of them.

The key is craft. Sensationalism comes easily, but honest exploration of difficult subjects requires precision and nuance. Every word must serve the story’s deeper purpose. Shocking elements can’t be gratuitous—they must be essential to the truth you’re revealing. Rather than simply surprising readers, your twist should recontextualize everything that came before, forcing them to question their own assumptions and prejudices.

The best mysteries don’t just entertain; they examine. They force us to confront uncomfortable truths about human nature, societal failures, and our own moral boundaries.

This isn’t about shock value. It’s about value, period. When we write about a nursing home rape, we’re really writing about society’s abandonment of its most vulnerable. When we explore a parent’s unthinkable decision about a dangerous child, we’re examining the limits of love and responsibility. These aren’t just plot devices; they’re invitations to necessary conversations.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Yes, you’ll lose some readers, the ones who want their mysteries sanitized, their moral questions pre-answered. But you’ll gain others, readers hungry for fiction that doesn’t insult their intelligence or coddle their sensibilities. Readers who understand mystery fiction at its best doesn’t just ask whodunit? but how could we let this happen? and what does this say about us?

The stories that haunt me as a reader are never the safe ones. They’re the ones where writers trusted their vision enough to leap into the abyss, where they chose difficult truths over comfortable lies, where they refused to pull back when the story demanded they push forward.

So when you find yourself writing the unwriteable, remember: your discomfort is not a stop sign. It’s a signal you’re approaching something real, something necessary, something that needs to be said.

Write it anyway. Write it especially.

The world has enough safe stories. What it needs are writers brave enough to shine lights into the darkest corners, and readers courageous enough to look.

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.

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A Criminal’s Hierarchy of Crime, by Lisa De Nikolits

ALL ABOUT MOTIVATION!   Remember Maslow?  My colleague and pal Lisa has turned Maslow sideways and upside-down in this terrific chart that creates a parallel for our antagonists!  Illuminating for crime writers like us, but also lots of fun.  

by Lisa de Nikolits 

Imagine if Maslow had constructed  a Hierarchy of Crime instead of a Hierarchy of Needs.  Admittedly he didn't, but a hierarchy of criminal needs makes sense, right?

Crime. Gangsters. Drug running. con-games and con artists and those trying to outwit them. The darker side of life. The fascinating side of life. Real life, much stranger than fiction. What drives these criminals? What ladder of power do they climb. And what motivates them?

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation..." (Thoreau) and he was correct but there are also those who lead  lives of quiet violence. And by quiet, I mean apart form the norm, below the surface, out of sight and unseen by the general suburban masses unless something mistakenly bubbles up to the surface, threatening to destroy the fiercely guarded status quo.

I often wonder about my own fascination with the dark side of life but life is dark. People are weird, inexplicably violent, and they are ever-creative in ways in which they perpetrate their evil deeds.

Which is why I plotted out a fictional Criminal's Hierarchy of Needs, based on the characters of  Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon, but universally applicable to all criminal activities and novels.  And Readers, I'd love your comments and insights - did I get it wrong?  What do you think?

I love watching true crime; The Dark Side of the Ring (VICE TV), Mafia: Most Wanted (CRAVE, Canada) and of course, Forensic Files, which shows ordinary people committing heinous crime and getting away with them for years.

And as much as there is crime, there is sometimes justice.  There is revenge, validation, vindication, and the happy-ever-after of the bad guys paying for their evil deeds. 

But justice doesn't always prevail which is a harsh reality that crime writers try to address.

Much like Once Upon A Time in Hollywood in which Tarantino rewrote the Tate-LaBianca murders, we can address social discrepancies, we can right wrongs, solve crimes, bring the bad guys (and gals) to their knees and deliver a far more satisfactory happy-ever-after which is cathartic for both readers and the writers. We can, from the safety of our own homes, process our fears, make sense of the world and bring justice.

If I'm plagued by an injustice or social inequality, I find the best solution is to write a book. It's the only way I can wrestle with the issue and bring it to a  resolution. Writing books is a form of political and social protest, a demonstration of our beliefs. It's our way of getting our voices out into the world on the backs of highly engaging vehicles that will entertain the readers and keep them guessing all the way.

Of course, there is the troubling matter of the truth. For example, will Tarantino's version of the Tate-LaBianca murders be remembered with more accuracy by generations to come than the brutal  truth?

As writers, we face many challenges.  How far can we change the narrative, Like Tarantino did? How can we avoid stereotyping criminals while also recognizing that some of the tropes exist for a reason. Is it possible to write noir crime without offending readers?

At the end of the day, apart from hate speech rhetoric, which has no place in this world, I say there are no holds barred as to what we can write. As creatgive, artistic people, it's our duty to rise about "quiet desperation" (or perhaps to delve into it and into what lies behind it and the lives of those desperately trying to escape.)

As writers we have a duty to explore everything in life; the good, the bad and ugly.

BIO:

Lisa de Nikolits is the award-winning author of eleven novels (twelve, with Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon) as well as numerous short stories and poetry, garnering five-star reviews and a strong international fanbase. Originally from South Africa, Canada has been her home since 2000. Forthcoming works include That Time I Killed You (2026, Level Best Books). She lives and writes in the Beaches in Toronto.

LINKS:  

Facebook author page:
https://www.facebook.com/lisadenikolitsauthor/

Twitter:
https://x.com/lisadenikolits

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/ireadsomewherethatbylisa/

Author website:
https://lisawriter.com/

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Hollywood Kills

Filling in for me today is Alan Orloff, an award-winning author, skilled editor, and generous supporter of the writing community. I am deeply honored to be a contributor to his newest project.

— Stacy

Here's more on HOLLYWOOD KILLS.

***

Thanks, Stacy, for inviting me to guest blog today about an anthology that Adam Meyer and I co-edited called HOLLYWOOD KILLS (Level Best Books). And thanks, Stacy, for the terrific story you wrote for it!

— Alan Orloff

The Idea

Adam and I were at the Malice Domestic convention, chatting in the lobby. (FWIW, the lobby and the bar at writers conventions are where most great ideas are hatched.) We talked about putting together an anthology with a theme based around a movie. That morphed into a more general Hollywood theme, and after a few minutes batting around possibilities, we came up with the killer twist: All the stories would be written by industry insiders (show biz people!) featuring protagonists in roles that the contributors themselves had experience in. In other words, a screenwriter would write about a screenwriter, an actor would write about an actor, a stuntman would write about a stuntman, and so on.

The twist was uber cool, but it presented some challenges as we put together our list of invitees. We knew a lot of crime fiction writers, and we could have assembled a list thirty people long in ten minutes flat. But we needed people who had worked in the business. Immediately, I thought of Tom Hanks, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t available.

The Pitch

We wanted our stories to have a certain theme/tone: desperate people willing to go to extreme lengths to make it big in Hollywood. Here’s the spiel we used to solicit our invitees:

Over the years, the technology of entertainment has changed, but one thing has stayed the same: Hollywood is a place full of dreamers—from the wide-eyed actor hoping to land the role of a lifetime to the hard-working writer trying to sell that breakout script.

Whoever they are, these people have one thing in common—they are desperate to bring their dreams to fruition, hustling for opportunity, and willing to do anything to get to the next rung on the ladder. Legal or not.

These strivers are at the center of a collection of short stories by Hollywood insiders, who use their wealth of experience to turn fact into fiction. They offer a closeup look at the dark side of ambition with an all-star cast of schemers, dreamers, killers and con artists … and their stories will stick with you long after the credits roll.

L➙R Jon Lindstrom, Matt Goldman, Stacy Woodson,
Alan Orloff, Adam Meyer, Ellen Byron, Eric Beetner, John Shepphird

The Lineup

We knew a few writers with show biz experience (a number of whom were screenwriters, natch), so they were no-brainers to invite. Beyond that, we needed help, so we put out the word we were looking for potential contributors that met our narrow criteria. We were determined to have as wide an array of show biz jobs represented as possible.

Some of the more specialized roles were tricky. Did anyone know a Hollywood hairdresser who wanted to write a story? Makeup professional to the stars with an itch to pen a tale? What about a stunt driver who could write like Elmore Leonard? We tried to get creative—we even contacted several professional societies looking for recommendations (Did you know there was a Stuntwoman’s Association? There is!). Not all of our out-of-the-box ideas were fruitful, alas.

Slowly, we suckered enticed people to contribute. Now, while many of these people had great Hollywood experience, some did not have much (if any) short story writing experience. Adam and I realized that for these folks, we might have to wield a slightly heavier editorial pen.

And it was true: we got commitments from several industry veterans who didn’t have writing experience. Unfortunately, though, when it came time to actually put the proverbial pen to paper, some of these people ended up “decommitting.” Which left us scrambling a bit to fill their slots.

Best laid plans, and all that.

With some persistence, we finally assembled a killer lineup of contributors, whose roles ran the gamut: a producer, sitcom writer, character actor, entertainment lawyer, sound mixer, background actor, aspiring actor, stuntman, casting director, soap opera star, true crime writer, editor, director, production assistant, set caterer, and screenwriting team.

We ended up with three first-time short story writers, and they gave us some great work. Two of our stories were co-written, one of which was a story I co-wrote with my actor son (roles: young actor and desperate father). A definite highlight of my writing career!

We were thrilled (and mightily impressed) that our contributors had worked on such notable productions as Cheers, Seinfeld, Wings, General Hospital, Bosch, The Amazing Race, Boston Legal, Homeland, Just Shoot Me, Fairly Odd Parents, Snowfall, Spenser For Hire, True Detective, Ellen, America’s Most Wanted, Evil Kin, A Savage Nature, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, The Invasion, Young Guns, and more.

You’ll recognize many of the contributors from their screen credits: Jon Lindstrom, Gary Phillips, Phoef Sutton, Ellen Byron, Matt Goldman, Robert Rotstein, Wendall Thomas, Stacy Woodson, Tiffany Borders Plunkett, Kathryn O’Sullivan, Paul Awad, Teel James Glenn, Shawn Reilly Simmons, John Shepphird, Eric Beetner, Adam Meyer, Alan Orloff, and Stuart Orloff.

The Fires

Although this blog post dealt primarily with how the contributors were selected, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the California fires. More than half of our contributors currently live in the LA area, and they, along with everybody else, were affected by the wildfires, directly and indirectly. So, we decided that all contributor proceeds would be donated to the California Community Foundation Wildfire Recovery Fund. For a deeply personal take, I encourage you to read Ellen Byron’s moving introduction to the anthology.

If you’d like your very own copy of HOLLYWOOD KILLS, you can check it out here.

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Alan Orloff (www.alanorloff.com) has published fourteen novels and more than sixty short stories. His work has won an Anthony, an Agatha, a Derringer, and two ITW Thriller Awards. He’s also been a finalist for the Shamus Award and has had a story selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2018. He’s adapted two of his novels into screenplays, and, man, is he desperate to make it big in Hollywood.

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The Tyrant Who Sold the Philosopher Plato Into Slavery

A few years back I wrote a series of brief biographical sketches collected in a volume entitled The Book of Ancient Bastards: 101 of the Worst Miscreants and Misdeeds from Ancinet Sumer to the Enlightenment. Now out of print (it is, in fact, the only one of my books not still in print), It remains one of my favorites from among my own work. This week I've decided to share the story from this book, of how an early poet–admittedly an incredibly powerful one–dealt with harsh criticism of his work.

Plato: you expect this guy to be fun at parties?

So here he is, Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse!

When Philosophers and Tyrants Don’t Mix (ca. 432–367 B.C.) 

[Dionysius], taking offence at something [Plato] said to him . . . ordered him to be brought into the common market-place, and there sold as a slave for five minas: but the philosophers (who consulted together on the matter) afterwards redeemed him, and sent him back to Greece, with this friendly advice. . . . That a philosopher should very rarely converse with tyrants.

—Diodorus Siculus, ancient Sicilian Greek geographer and historian 

If ever there was a piece of work who could prove single-handedly that one man holding all the levers of power is usually a lousy idea, it was that real piece of work, Dionysius I, tyrant of the Greek city-state of Syracuse in Sicily. Originally a government clerk, Dionysius rose through the ranks to ultimate power based on his ability as a political, diplomatic, and military strategist. To balance this out, he was also arbitrary, capricious, cruel, and (perhaps worst of all) harbored literary pretensions. 

Bear in mind that Dionysius was a tyrant in the ancient sense of the word (Note: in the ancient Greek world the word 'tyrant' didn't necessarily carry the negative connotation it does today. It simply referred to someone who control of a city by military force and used his troops to enforce his rule.). As such he was a military man, and particularly fearsome in battle. He’d lost an eye early in life, and as a result presented a ferocious image that struck terror in the hearts of his enemies. That terror was justified, as even in victory he could be a particularly ruthless bastard: In 386 B.C., Dionysius led his mercenary army in an attack on the Greek city of Rhegium (now Reggio, in southern Italy). After a protracted and bloody siege, the tyrant, who fancied himself a cultured and enlightened man, sold the entire population of the city into slavery. 

So this was the fearsome antagonist, ruthless conqueror and all-around rough guy, who also fancied himself both a poet and a philosopher, boasting “far more of his poems than of his successes in war,” according to Diodorus. Poetry being a big deal in the ancient world, and Dionysius being the big man on campus in Syracuse, he surrounded himself with other literary and intellectual types, including Plato, who, as described in the quote opening this chapter, got sold as a slave in the public market for speaking his mind in the presence of the philosopher-tyrant. 

In another example of why it’s a bad idea for a creative type to be bluntly open and honest with a benefactor possessing no discernable sense of humor, Dionysius asked the poet Philoxenus what he thought of Dionysius’s poetry. When Philoxenus answered candidly, Dionysius had him dragged off to work in the quarries. 

Dionysius regretted the action once he’d sobered up, freed Philoxenus the next day, then invited him to dinner again. The wine flowed (again) and Dionysius asked (again) what Philoxenus thought of his poetry. In response, Philoxenus told Dionysius’s servants to drag him off to the quarries. This time the tyrant laughed. 

From then on, and for the remainder of his time at Dionysius’s court, Philoxenus promised that he would give truthful criticism of the tyrant’s work while also never again offending him. He accomplished this by basically inventing the double entendre. Dionysius’s poetry, according to Diodorus, was “wretched,” and he had a taste for tragedy, so when Dionysius would declaim a poem with a sad subject, then ask Philoxenus what he thought about it, the poet would reply, “Pitiful!” 

Dionysius is reputed to have either been murdered by his doctors to make way for his son to succeed him or to have died of alcohol poisoning from having drunk too much celebrating a win by some of his poetry at a festival in Greece. Either way, neither Dionysius, nor his poetry, proved "deathless."

And Philoxenus? He eventually left Syracuse and went on to write his most famous and successful poem, a comic piece called Cyclops, about the ridiculous passion of the mythical one-eyed monster for a beautiful goddess. Most people assumed that he was making fun of his one-eyed former benefactor. 

If Dionysius wrote a poem about his feelings on the matter, it hasn’t survived.