A Near-Luddite Tries Bing AI

My Windows 365 updated a few weeks ago, and there on reboot was Microsoft selling hard to check out Edge’s new AI tool. Come on, Edge said. Try making a fun holiday image.

Was I tempted? A little. Mostly, I regard the rise of Big AI such as large language models with a combination of dread (look out for the bad Terminator!) and intellectual curiosity at what advances these unlocks (hooray, it's the good Terminator!). The risks and rewards of AI’s future applications are for expert thinkers. AI’s impact on writing is more in my wheelhouse, and there was my writing laptop wanting me to check out Bing's Copilot.

I’ve never Venmo-ed money. Don't know how. Don’t even have the app. I don’t know how to deposit checks by smartphone scan. I don’t use Alexa or Siri, and our newer smart appliances aren’t set up on the home Wi-Fi. I’m doing swell without all that. I’m not a technophobe, though. I use voice remote for TV and my smartphone for the usual stuff: music, news, texts, video calls, pet photos, health monitoring, and so forth. These help me stay connected and get where I want to go faster.

PART 1: I BANG ON ABOUT AI AND CREATIVE ETHICS

As with all discussions, let's start from intellectual honesty. The modern writer has long been using AI. Internet search algorithms, word predictors, spell check, Grammarly plug-ins. It's all narrow AI. What’s new is AI’s computing power and availability to the masses. AutoCrit’s AI critiques your story and gives style comparables (full disclosure: I've started using AutoCrit’s free version to spot repeated words and phrases). Sudowrite’s Story Engine handles the writing for you, including that dreaded synopsis. Other tools abound, and that number will mushroom.

I write when I can carve out time. In a productive year, I’ll write a handful of stories (I wrote three in 2023). About half of those will be publishable with effort. AI can crank out stories 24/7. They're junk. Fine, AI has almost won literary prizes. That's one in a billion, from what I've seen. People submit this anyway. As their own work. I don’t understand that justification. Someone presses a button. A prompted algorithm spitting out words is no more authorship than is copying pages straight from a Dickens novel. Hell, the algorithm may have copied Dickens.

I despair of rot. AI will evolve to produce more natural prose. Even so, AI will never be imaginative. Insightful, sure, but AI has no mind with which to imagine. And it’s a copycat, even of itself. The more AI builds its dreck into its model, the more AI will reproduce dreckier dreck. Markets will struggle for quality and even survival. There's no human effort barrier to slow the AI onslaught. Let’s stay honest, though. Many readers won’t mind so long as AI entertains.

PART 2: I ACTUALLY TRY THE DAMN THING

So in that mindset, I clicked the link to generate a holiday image. My command: a festive boiled custard drinking contest in old-time illustration style. Here’s its swing at my curveball:

generated by AI

generated by AI

generated by AI

Weird. But you know what? AI tried its robot best. And it brought fun.

Game on. I asked Edge to make a theoretical book cover of “Lord, Spare the Bottom Feeders,” a story of mine from AHMM a few years back. My prompt described the story as crime fiction with a few plot particulars about the lawyer character and let the tool rip. 

The tool returned an over-the-top cartoon cover with a generalissimo-type crime lord surrounded by central casting mafia goons, everyone armed as if up against the Untouchables and the Five Families and even the bad Terminator. Vivid, but it highlights important AI concerns. My prompt didn’t say what kind of crime ring was involved. I didn't mention guns. Fine. The tool made these assumptions. AI is teaching itself from an internet archive that, as we all know, includes significant biases and worse. Absent way more controls than we have today, AI is going to spread these biases rapid-fire.

AI is a parrot, so I re-prompted with a load more story specifics. The tool returned:

Okay, better-ish. It's still cartoonish tropes, but this one at least addresses the prompt about mussel smuggling. No lawyer, but props on the broken scales of justice. And it does grab attention, as a cover should do. 

I don’t worry for folks who design bad book covers. They need to find other gigs. I do worry for the many great cover designers on some level. Hopefully, those folks can lean into AI as a way to craft even better covers in less time.

For my next test, I took a story idea that has refused to gel in my head for months now. It’s about a guy getting initiated into the burly beard grooming life. As usual, the character came right to life. A workable plot hasn’t. So I prompted with:

Write an outline for a 3,000-word crime short story with three twists about a criminal who can't grow a beard despite trying.

AI returned (again, this is NOT my work):

"That sounds like an interesting premise for a crime story. Here is a possible outline for your short story:

• Title: The Beardless Bandit
• Genre: Crime/Comedy
• Summary: A young man, Eddie, dreams of becoming a notorious criminal, but he has a problem: he can’t grow a beard. He believes that having a beard is essential for being a successful and respected criminal. He tries various methods to grow a beard, but nothing works. He decides to resort to drastic measures: he robs a bank wearing a fake beard. However, his plan goes awry when he encounters three unexpected twists.
• Outline:
• The story begins with Eddie preparing for his bank robbery. He has a fake beard that he bought online, a gun that he borrowed from his cousin, and a getaway car that he rented. He is nervous, but also excited. He thinks that this will be his big break into the criminal world.
• He enters the bank, points his gun at the teller, and demands the money. He tries to act tough and menacing, but his voice cracks and his fake beard slips. The teller recognizes him as a regular customer and calls him by his name. Eddie panics and runs out of the bank, leaving behind his gun and his fake beard.
• The first twist is that the bank was actually a front for a money laundering operation run by a powerful crime boss, Mr. Big. Mr. Big is furious that someone tried to rob his bank and orders his men to find and kill Eddie. He also wants his gun and his fake beard back, as they are valuable evidence.
• The second twist is that the gun that Eddie borrowed from his cousin was actually a rare and antique weapon that belonged to a famous gangster, Historic Boss. The gun is worth millions of dollars and is sought after by collectors and criminals alike. Eddie’s cousin had stolen it from a museum and was planning to sell it to Mr. Big, but he lied to Eddie and told him it was a cheap replica.
• The third twist is that the fake beard that Eddie bought online was actually a real beard that belonged to a famous actor, Major Celebrity. The beard was cut off by a crazed fan and sold on the internet. The beard is also worth millions of dollars and is sought after by fans and celebrities alike. Major Celebrity himself is looking for his beard and is willing to pay a huge reward for its return.
• The story ends with Eddie being chased by Mr. Big’s men, the police, the museum security, and Major Celebrity’s agents. He manages to escape with the help of a friendly barber, who gives him a shave and a haircut. He realizes that he doesn’t need a beard to be a criminal, he just needs to be smart and brave. He decides to give up his criminal dreams and start a new life. He also returns the gun and the beard to their rightful owners and collects the rewards. He uses the money to buy a house, a car, and a dog. He names the dog Beardy."
— generated by AI

I changed one thing in AI’s summary for here. AI's fixation on famous people went as far as to use actual famous people’s names. Let’s leave them and their attorneys out of this.

AI's outline hangs together, mostly. Parts of this are even good. Resorting to a fake beard was something I hadn’t thought of, and that fake beard becoming a McGuffin is an actual twist. The stakes ramp up as stakes should, and the happy ending with Beardy made me grin.

There are problems.

AI crams in way too much plot for 3,000 words. The gun twist pulls the thing thematically out of whack. The friendly barber is funny, but fake beards don’t need to be shaved off. And you cannot run up to someone and cut an entire, reusable beard off their face. That’s either magic realism or horror.  

I didn’t ask AI to write the story. I won’t, and I won’t write “The Beardless Bandit” myself. This isn’t my idea, and I won't pretend otherwise. I do reserve the right to take inspiration from this.

I tried other story summary prompts and got repeated interesting nuggets and major plot holes. I was having fun. Did it feel like I’d created anything? No. It was like playing with a toddler while they explained their toys. I did feel creative-adjacent in a way. Using the tool forced me to consider prompt sharpness and to read the generated content critically.

In the debate about whether or not AI undermines and supplants fiction writers, I’m still in some despair. AI's expansion is a cycle that threatens to drag us downward. Downward, but not out. Fatalism is a human quality and usually a mistake. Enhanced AI tools can help us carbon-based writers. We’ll be better researchers, better self-editors, better brainstormers. These same AI tools are great at spotting missed cancers and asymptomatic Alzheimer’s. If AI can do that, there is a place for it to boost our craft.

We’ll need to find that place. Soon, because the AI debate is pointless. The technology is here. What we humans do with it– and about it– will determine whether we get good Terminators or bad ones. Until then, this near-

Luddite will get back to my Venmo-less life.

Rookies

In the past two years, I've become a professional editor in addition to writing. I'm still good at writing as a writer, editing as an editor, and reading as a reader. When I'm doing any one of these things, my brain doesn't want to do the other.

But after fifteen books for Down & Out plus a couple of freelance jobs, some things do make my inner editor scream. One is the inevitable neophyte writer's rant online about "The Rules." We're all familiar with Elmore Leonard's list. 

It's a good list. It's also written based on how Elmore Leonard wrote. Ever read Elmore Leonard? This is how he got good. But his rules and Lawrence Block's rules and Stephen King's rules are all different lists. I'm not talking about those lists. I'm talking about the temper tantrum of a newer writer getting frustrated with the editing process. I recently ran across such a list. My wife found my own "Get off my lawn!" rant toward it quite entertaining. Really, it showed the writer's lack of experience. And it's not unfamiliar to me. I used to think the same way. What were they complaining about?

• No head hopping - Now this one infuriates me, even if it took me the longest time to understand it. What brought it home was Tom Clancy, an unrepentant head hopper. Clancy would give you whiplash starting in Jack Ryan's head, bopping over to some sonar technician's POV, then ending with some admiral's or politician's. I can't read it anymore. Head hopping is disrespectful to the reader, who has to follow the writer's ADHD-inspired point-of-view shifts. Now, I violently disagree with the "One POV Per Chapter" rule. I always thought that was stupid because it makes for short, short chapters. But one POV per scene should be an ironclad rule. Only four writers I know of since World War II have managed to head hop smoothly: Frank Herbert, Stephen King, George Pelecanos, and SA Cosby. Everyone else needs to remember someone's gotta read this at some point, and more people will if they can follow along.
  
  
• No adverbs. Okay, editors need to really chill about this one, but outright rebellion? That needs to be stamped out aggressively. Mind you, I'm spoiled. I've only beta'd (but not fully edited) one neophyte writer, so the adverbs are usually at a minimum. By the time I get them, they're invisible. But my first professional editing job came from a guy who's been writing longer than I've been alive. (And my puberty began to the strains of Blondie, which was not a bad way for a pre-teen boy to get his hormones flowing. I digress.) So by the time I get most manuscripts, I'm not treated to a flood of "ly."
  
  
• No repeated words. Now let's be clear. I don't have long lists of overused words. I do a crutch word check. I'll leave about 33% of passive voice intact, either for context or because it's been about three pages since the last instance. But repeated words. Yes, you'll use a word multiple times in a manuscript. That's a given. But let's take a word like "peculiar." Unless it's a verbal gambit, that word shouldn't appear again for at least another page. Twice in the same paragraph? There's a reason we do multiple drafts. While I'm not a big fan of thesauruses--I've seen them abused too many times--you may want to pick one up if you find yourself leaning on one word to say the same thing.
  
  
• Show, don't tell. I've got a whole rant about why editors and veteran writers really need to give this one a rest. But I saw this on one of those "lists" and realized writers like this are never going to let editors or veteran writers give it a rest. My problem with show-don't-tell is overzealous beta readers who love rules lists too much and people who can't sell their fiction selling writing courses. (You know who you are.) But ignoring this rule leads to lazy writing. "I don't need to describe Sarah's reaction. I'll just say she was angry.)
  
  Oh, no. That's precisely why editors and more experienced writers won't ease up on this. The inexperienced writer tends to use this as an excuse to write less. If Sarah's reaction is a minor detail, then yes, just say she's angry. Better yet, cut the anger altogether. It will likely become obvious further into the scene. If Sarah is the POV character, we need to see her jaw clench or fists tighten, hear her growl, see her vision turn red.
  

There are others. Passive voice, which is abused by experienced writers as well, including this one. The fact that some writers use "that" to join dependent clauses too often. 

But when a writer says they're going to ignore all these rules? That just shows inexperience. I know. I used to say this myself. And a friend who started writing a couple of years ago needed to be guided, particularly in POV issues. He's now an editor for Running Wild Press. And he calls me when he gets overwhelmed by a neophyte writer who thinks the rules are, "Like, oppression, man!"

 The rules exist for a reason. They work when they're applied with nuance, which means you have to know how to use them to know how to break them.  Ignore them at your own risk.

It Is the Worst of Times...

For those of us who troll around in the darker sides of the blogosphere, it's easy to see that there are a lot of people who firmly believe that these are the worst of times, violent and savage, and there is no hope. That our country and our cities are ridden lawless violence, marauding barbarians, and a general collapse of civilization. 

And, of course, they all agree that we're just one step away from the Apocalypse. To which I reply, "Same as it ever was..." That or, "Sure, I figure in ten years we'll all be busy battling the mutant insects out of our caves..."  In certain circles, I am taken as someone who is seriously unserious, and they are so right. Except when they're wrong.  

Many years ago, yours truly posted a blogpost (Apocalypso) in which I wrote at great length about old predictions about the end of the world.  So far, there's been a 100% inaccuracy rate.  But predictions continue!  You never know!  This could be it!  

And so Nostradamus is hot again:

According to British author and Nostradamus commentator Mario Reading, 2024 will bring about the abdication of King Charles III due to 'persistent attacks on both himself and his second wife', and Harry replace him, rather than William or any of his children, as the man who has 'no mark of a king'.

And Pope Francis will die and a much younger Pontiff will be elected: 'Through the death of a very old Pontiff, A Roman of good age will be elected, Of him it will be said that he weakens his see, But long will he sit and in biting activity.'  (Daily Mail) 

Quatrain 5/23 reads: “The two contenders will unite together / When most others unite with Mars / The African leader is fearful and trembles / The dual alliance is separated by the fleet.” Reading's son, Laurie, says this is all about Elon Musk and his colonization of Mars.  (Sadly, Laurie's decided it means he won't go to Mars.  And here I had $5 to chip in on the paperwork.)  (Guardian)  

As is Isaac Newton:  

Newton, in a couple of his unpublished "occult" works, mathematically predicted the end times as coming in 2060:  

Prop. 1. The 2300 prophetick days did not commence before the rise of the little horn of the He Goat.

2 Those day [sic] did not commence a[f]ter the destruction of Jerusalem & ye Temple by the Romans A.[D.] 70.

3 The time times & half a time did not commence before the year 800 in wch the Popes supremacy commenced

4 They did not commence after the re[ig]ne of Gregory the 7th. 1084

5 The 1290 days did not commence b[e]fore the year 842.

6 They did not commence after the reign of Pope Greg. 7th. 1084

7 The diffence [sic] between the 1290 & 1335 days are a parts of the seven weeks.

Therefore the 2300 years do not end before ye year 2132 nor after 2370. The time times & half time do n[o]t end before 2060 nor after [2344] The 1290 days do not begin [this should read: end] before 2090 nor after 1374 [sic; Newton probably means 2374][26]

(Wikipedia)

(If this makes sense to you, consult a psychiatrist immediately.) 

And check out this old PBS Nova Episode, "Newton's Dark Secrets".  

Of course, it's important to remember that both Nostradamus (1503-1556) and Isaac Newton (1642-1727) were both alchemists and occultists, which was fairly common among scientists, doctors, and astronomers [remember Elizabeth I's court astronomer/astrologer John Dee (1527-1609)].  And alchemy / occultism (much less astrology) has never gone away.  Half the crackpot theories that are currently being promoted on various websites as "the real truth" about everything from vaccines to a flat earth go back to the alchemical theories and practice.  "I've done the research!" says the person who has just been poring over various websites and given you a remedy that's as weird as Newton's cure for the plague:  

"a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison"  (The Guardian)  

I'd almost rather drink bleach. 

Why are we so fascinated by this stuff?  Well, I think there's multiple reasons.

We like to think we're "in the know".  The minute you tell somebody something's secret, their ears perk up.

We like to think that there really is a plan.  

It's a nice distraction from one's ACTUAL problems.  "Well, this won't matter when the end times come..."  

It lets people off the hook.  "Don't worry about recycling, honey, the end times are coming!"  "Go ahead and buy that ____.  Don't worry about it, the end times are coming!"  OR

"Let's get ready!  The End Times are coming, and we want to have our bomb shelter fully stocked, so we can keep all the riff-raff / mutant insects / invaders at bay!"

We like to feel we're important:  it's like a hypochondria of society.  We can't just be going through a bad patch, this has to be the worst of times! And don't try to tell me it isn't!  

100% inaccuracy rate.  And, if that bothers you, we all get to experience the end times when we die.  That should cheer people up.  

You're Byoodiful in Your Wraff

 

Genghis Khan.  The name conjures up blood-lust and plunder, barbarism and cruelty.  Deservedly so, in some respects.  But historically, the Mongol horde brought a lot less proverbial rape and pillage and a lot more cultural synthesis, engineering skills, and adaptive political function than the popular imagination credits them with.  Absent the Mongols, we quite possibly would never have witnessed the Russian, Indian, or Chinese empires, or the European Renaissance – what we think of, in other words, as the birth of the modern world. 

I picked up a couple of books, lately.  Following on my recent interest in the Ottomans (provoked, I imagine, by Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague), and because nobody seems to know where the Ottomans came from, or how they got where they got, beforehand, I went back a little in time, to the nomadic horse tribes of the Great Steppe.  This biome reaches from Ukraine to Manchuria, and it’s figured for centuries in proto-European history.  In one instance, the Achaeans, the Homeric Greek warriors of the Trojan War, were driven south out of the grasslands above the Black Sea and the Caspian by somebody even more ferocious, and those Greek tribes settled along the coast, driving out or assimilating the earlier Mycenaeans, whose mother culture was Crete.  There have been successive historic waves of predatory nomad armies, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, and the peopling of Europe and India (the Celts, the Mughals) is one result.  Looking beyond a Euro-centric view of history, we see not the barbarian periphery, but a creation myth. 

The two books I’ve been reading, not back-to-back, but in tandem, are Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, and Empires of the Steppes by Kenneth Harl.  Weatherford’s book is the more readable, in part because it’s more manageable, even though it includes most of the 13^th century.  Harl’s book is more unwieldy, covering more ground, in time from Cyrus the Great to Tamerlane, but also literally, across Eurasia.  Reminiscent of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, they take it as a given that human migration – cultures, tools, and diseases – move on an east-west axis, like the animal herds before them.

I was fascinated by the Mongols after I read Harold Lamb’s bio of Genghis.  (I was ten or eleven, I’m guessing.)  They rode with their knees, their arms and hands free, and they shot from horseback with compound bows, reinforced with horn, more powerful than the English longbow that defeated the French cavalry at Crecy.  On forced march, legend had it, Mongol horsemen would open a vein in their horse’s neck and drink the blood rather than stop and pitch camp.  They were beyond imagining.  It wasn’t that they were savage, or not that alone; it was that they were implacable.

I’d be the first to admit that The Conqueror (1956) was a disappointment.  Everybody makes fun of the casting, of course.  Wayne is just not the right actor, and he was later embarrassed when anybody brought the picture up.  The only person whose dignity survives even partly intact is Pedro Armendariz, and that’s being charitable.  Still, did we expect historical accuracy?  Robert Taylor in Ivanhoe.  I rest my case.  (Or for jaw-droppingly atrocious, there’s the Omar Sharif version of Genghis, best passed over in silence.)  The real problem with The Conqueror is that it trivializes the whole Mongol thing: the blood-drinking and fermented mare’s milk; riding bareback by the age of six; surviving every season of weather, from snow squalls to burning thirst, in a single day - the Eastern Steppe has the greatest extremes of temperature anywhere in the world – because what’s so fascinating about the Mongols is that they thrived in that environment, and created a social, religious, and military culture conditioned by life on the steppe.  And as poor an imitation as The Conqueror was, I still tore the ears off my Mickey Mouseketeers hat, and pinned a square of black scarf on it to hang down in back, which was the closest I could get to the Mongol costumes in the movie. 

This recent development seems, first of all, like a kind of vindication.  Maybe we all go through a dinosaur phase, when we’re a certain age, or science fiction (which a lot of us never outgrow), but I’m pleased that the Mongols have come back around into fashion.  There are two parallel strands of historiography going on, here.  One is the movement away from Caesar and Napoleon, and an emphasis on the farriers and quartermasters that kept armies on the move.  There’s a famous French guy, Braudel, the founder of the Annales school, who believes the groundlings give us a better picture of the past than the emperors.  This idea led me to a book called The Lisle Letters, about a merchant family’s rise to power under the Tudors, and a revealing social portrait of the era.  The second shift in thinking about history is a de-emphasis of the European.  This appears to have taken hold only since around the year 2000.  We see, for example, new histories of the Americas that don’t talk primarily about what happened after Columbus and the conquest.  And looking east of the Urals, we discover our own deeper heritage.  The horse tribes of the steppe are in our race memory, back behind the curtain, and we can pull it aside. 

Who wouldn’t want to have these people in their genealogy?  It’s not just opening a vein in the horse’s neck, or the fact that they conquered the known world, it’s that they’re us.  This myth, this memory, is ours.

A Wild Ride: 2023 in Review

This past year was a wild ride, both personally and professionally. The 14-month year began in November 2022 when Temple changed employment. The day after Christmas 2022, her father’s leukemia took a turn for the worse, and he died in January. At the end of April, I left my part-time job to return to full-time freelancing. Mid-year, Temple’s daughter was diagnosed with, and had surgery to remove, a brain tumor. All these events—both positive and negative—impacted our lives in ways we will be dealing with for a long time to come.

Rather than dwell on all that, here’s what happened last year in my writing/editing life:

WRITING

Productivity was up in 2023, though nowhere near my best year (75 stories in 2009), with 14 original stories completed. This surpasses 2022 (9 stories) and 2021 (6 stories) and ties 2019.

The shortest story was 2,000 words and the longest 5,900 words, for an average length of 4,007 words. All were crime fiction of one sub-genre or another.

ACCEPTED

Although I only wrote 14 new stories, I placed 16 originals and 5 reprints.

PUBLISHED

Reprints were a significant portion of my publications in 2023, with 59 stories reprinted. Most of these appear in the collections All-American Male, Queer Bait, and Sporting Wood (all published by Deep Desires Press). Other reprints appeared in Black Cat Weekly and Illicit Motions.

Published in 2023 were 17 original stories—including a collaboration with Sandra Murphy in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and another with Stacy Woodson in Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 4. Additional original stories appeared in Happiness is a Warm Gun, Kings River Life, Mystery Magazine, Prohibition Peepers, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Starlite Pulp Review, Tough, Unnerving Magazine, Weren’t Another Other Way to Be, and Yellow Mama.

Excluding the editors of my collections, only three editors are represented multiple times: Linda Landrigan published four original stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; Eddie Generous published an original in Unnerving Magazine and a reprint in Illicit Motions; and I published two of my own original stories, one each in Mickey Finn, vol. 4 (a collaboration with Stacy Woodson) and in Prohibition Peepers.

RECOGNIZED

“Kissing Cousins” (Starlite Pulp Review, Winter 2022) was listed among the “Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense of 2022” in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023 and among “The Best Mystery Stories 2023 Honor Roll” in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023.

“Sit. Stay. Die.” co-authored with Sandra Murphy (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2022), tied for 10th place in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award.

“When Sin Stops” was included in Weren’t Another Other Way to Be (Gutter Books, edited by Alec Cizak), which was named one of the “Best Indie Books of 2023” by The Independent Fiction Alliance.

“You Like Me Too Much” was included in Happiness is a Warm Gun (Down & Out Books, edited by Josh Pachter), which was named by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as one of the three best crime-fiction anthologies of 2023.

FORTHCOMING

Including those accepted this year and those accepted in previous years, I have stories forthcoming in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; Black Cat Mystery Magazine; Crimes Against Nature; Dark of the Day; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; In Too Deep; Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked; Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine; Starlite Pulp Review; Storia.com; Tough; and Wish Upon a Crime.

REJECTED

I received 16 rejections, which is five fewer rejections than acceptances, and any year in which acceptances outnumber rejections is a good year.

EDITING

Editing occupied a significant amount of time.

This year saw the release of two issues of Black Cat Mystery Magazine (issues 13 and 14). As Associate Editor of Black Cat Weekly, I acquired and edited 60 short stories, one for each weekly issue and an extra eight when covering for another editor. This year also saw the release of the last two volumes (7 and 8) of the serial novella anthology series Guns + Tacos (co-edited with Trey R. Barker); Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 4; More Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties; and Prohibition Peepers: Private Eyes During the Noble Experiment (all from Down & Out Books).

Outside the mystery world, I edited six issues of Texas Gardener, a bi-monthly consumer magazine, and 52 issues of Seeds, a weekly electronic newsletter for gardeners that, incidentally, published five short stories. Through the end of April, I also worked part-time as marketing director of a professional orchestra, creating, editing, and managing a variety of advertising, marketing, and promotional materials for print, radio, television, and social media.

Adding all the editing projects together, I had the honor of shepherding 140 short stories and novellas through to publication.

RECOGNIZED

This year, several stories from projects I edited or co-edited were recognized:

“Home is the Hunter” by James A. Hearn, published in Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 3, was reprinted in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023.

“Ripen” by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier, published in Black Cat Weekly, was reprinted in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023.

“Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday” by Sean McCluskey, published in Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 3, was reprinted in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023.

“House of Tigers” by William Burton McCormick, published in Black Cat Weekly, was included in “The Best Mystery Stories 2023 Honor Roll” in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023.

“Death Sentence” by Bev Vincent, published in Black Cat Weekly, was included in the list of “Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense of 2022” in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023.

I had the honor of publishing several equally amazing stories in 2023 and hope to see many of them recognized during this year’s award season.

LOOKING AHEAD

Earlier this month, “The Cadillac Job” by Stacy Woodson launched Chop Shop, my new serial novella anthology series. Later this year, Down & Out will release Private Dicks and Disco Balls and Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 5.

Also this year, Level Short, an imprint of Level Best Books, will release Murder, Neat, co-edited with Barb Goffman, and Wish Upon a Crime, co-edited with Stacy Woodson; White City Press will release Janie’s Got a Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Aerosmith; and Wildside Press will release Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Devious, co-edited with John Betancourt and Carla Coupe.

In addition to my own editing projects for various publishers, Stacy Woodson and I are co-editing Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked for Down & Out Books and additional anthologies for Level Short, some of which may appear in 2024.

In February, I’ll be reading submissions for Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 6 (Down & Out Books), and throughout the year I will be reading for The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025 (Level Short). For information about submitting to either of these, visit https://www.crimefictionwriter.com/submissions.html.

Additionally, I will continue work on Black Cat Mystery Magazine and Black Cat Weekly, and, outside the crime fiction genre, will also continue editing the bi-monthly gardening magazine and weekly gardening newsletter.

I am entering my second year on the Board of the Mystery Writers of America, will attend the Edgar Awards, and will attend at least three mystery conventions this year (Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, and Malice Domestic), so if you see me at any of these events, please stop and say howdy.

BEGINNING 2024 WITH A BANG

The new year began with a bang on January 1 with publication of “Cry”—a dark, dark bit of crime fiction—at Mystery Tribune, and my story “Family Business” appears in the January/February Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

I laughed the first time I heard...

I've been thinking about the changing pace of change as the new year rolls in. Before the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840 or thereabouts), the pace of change was glacial. From then until World War I, the pace was leisurely. Since World War II, it's increased exponentially, and the paradigm shift those of us born in the twentieth century have lived through to the digital age have sent it supernova.

My Aunt Hilda, who was still alive and kicking ten years ago, was born the day the Titanic hit the iceberg (ie, the day before it sank), so a lot of this change has taken place in my own lifetime. I've been thinking about how absurd the new and different can seem to us until it arrives and we have a chance to process and get used to it.

I remember a friend's shtik, many years ago now, about the difference between Godzilla movies and American monster movies (neither of which I ever watched). According to her, in the Godzilla movies, the populace of Japan wasted no time before they screamed and ran for their lives. In contrast, it took up to fifty percent of American movies for the hero or scientists who knew the monster was real and on the way to convince the government, the military, and/or the public. Since I still don't watch monster or any other horror movies, I don't know if this is still true. My guess is that the whole world runs when they hear that zombies are on the move. And when catastrophes are reported in real life these days, we'd all better take it seriously.

My point is that I have vivid memories of laughing the first time I became aware of what in several instances turned out to be a culture-changing moment.

I laughed the first time I heard, "The fall production at the New York Public Theater will be Hair, A Tribal Love Rock Musical."
Actually, the whole audience at Shakespeare in the Park in Central Park that summer evening laughed at that announcement on the loudspeaker at intermission. It was 1967, and sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll would never be the same.

I laughed the first time I heard the phrase, "fashionable Columbus Avenue."
I'd lived on Columbus Avenue since 1967, moving in with my first husband to the building on West 86th Street where I still live. When I said I lived on the Upper West Side, people said, "Oh, yes, West Side Story." To them, the West Side was mean streets infested with rival gangs, presumably not dancing Jerome Robbins choreography to Leonard Bernstein music. Remember that Lincoln Center, the great cultural mecca a twenty block walk down Columbus, wasn't completed till 1969. My first husband used to park his ancient Jaguar XKE on the street off Columbus on West 84th, informally known as the Murder Block. There was at least one bar on every block and derelicts we didn't yet call the homeless or expect to see in residential neighborhoods sprawled on the sidewalk. By 1972, fashionable Columbus Avenue was in its heyday. Street performers abounded. I remember a string quartet that specialized in Mozart. None of the early upscale restaurants, where a special-occasion dinner cost an astronomical $20, have survived, but I remember Ruelle's at 75th Street, which was furnished in 1890s bordello, all dark red velvet and naughty black and white photos, and the Museum Café at 77th Street, with its glassed-in outdoor dining area overlooking the Museum of Natural History. That was when I stopped taking the bus or subway. Unless I have to go south of 59th Street or several long blocks east of Central Park (say, to First or Second Avenue), fifty years later, like so many New Yorkers, I still walk everywhere.

I laughed when I heard, "Filipino revolutionaries say they couldn't have conducted their last two revolutions without cell phones." Also, "They're doing online counseling successfully in Japan. The client and counselor are in the same room, but they type instead of making eye contact and talking to each other."
In this case, context is needed. At the turn of the 21st century, I became one of the second wave of pioneers of online mental health. I belonged to the International Society of Mental Health Professionals (ISMHO), along with many of the true pioneers, theoreticians, researchers, and clinicians, mostly psychologists but also some psychiatrists, counselors, and clinical social workers, who had been around since the mid-1990s. This was before everybody had a cell phone. Before we used the term "texting." When I got a lot of flak, sometimes contempt, when I told traditional psychotherapists I worked with clients online. That continued all the way up to the pandemic, when they jumped on board and became the competition.

What innovation did you laugh at—and live to see the innovation have the last laugh?

Caesar and the Hotbox

Kaiser Henry J (1951)

Last week, RT wrote about his family’s Christmas, which shared touchpoints with my family. Among other things, both families owned Kaisers, supposedly a bit ahead of the pack in styling. Of interest to mystery fans, Kaiser sponsored early Dumont Network Adventures of Ellery Queen television shows.

We experienced a somewhat different Christmas Kaiser story. I was too young to know details, but Dad scrapped one of the Kaisers. I think he swapped engines or something, but the vehicle disappeared leaving only its rugged windows which he used to make hotboxes.

Hotboxes or hotbeds (sometimes confusingly called cold frames) are miniature greenhouses, bottomless wood frames with glass lids. They trap heat, moisture, and sunlight, allowing seedlings to get an early start and extend the growing season through autumn.

Dad built a row of hotboxes between the grape arbor and the orchard. The salvaged windows were sturdy and couldn’t be broken under ordinary use. The last garden vegetables were harvested late in the year and the hotbox was tucked into its, er, hotbed until next spring. Snow came and covered the landscape, but heat retention melted it over the hotboxes, exposing the glass.

Rat Terrier ©
AnimalBreeds.com

Did I mention our farm dogs? We had two, our venerable samoyed who looked like snow itself, and a ranch terrier named Caesar. It’s unfair to say Caesar was dumb just because he never studied Newtonian physics.

Ever watch a dog catch a frisbee? To calculate the launch point, speed, angle, curvature, and interception point requires an astonishing degree of calculus, and yet our dogs execute that program routinely. Just because Caesar skipped the class on heat conductivity and expansion would not normally have impacted his life. But miss that lesson he did and therein lies the flub.

So I’m outside in the snow and the terrier is out in the snow and the samoyed is out in the snow, and the fields and forests are beautiful on that gloriously cold day where temperatures hovered near zero Fahrenheit. Although I really wanted to tramp through the woods with my Red Ryder BB gun, I milked and fed and watered the livestock trailed by the dogs.

Last step was to feed the rabbits, stationed near the hotbeds. One of the hutches housed a peg-legged Bantam pullet that other poultry tormented. Thus Peggy lived amid the much nicer Easter bunnies.

So I was tending the rabbits and Caesar nosed along the hotboxes. He sniffed, and sniffed again. He raised his leg. Did I mention Caesar hadn’t passed the science section on heat expansion? In this case, ignorance was not bliss.

So he snuffled a box and raised a hind leg. He hovered. Some of you know what hovering is all about. His nose twitched. His bladder tickled. That signal in his canine brain switched on and, well you know, the tanks pressurized and began to expel warm body temperature liquid in a hot stream against cold glass and– here comes the physics lesson– it exploded.

Not like a cannonball, not like a bomb, but it exploded like tossing gasoline onto a fire with a deep, vibrant Whumph! Like a bull rider tossed from the back of a steer, the dog levitated sixteen feet in the air.

Caesar yelped an ancestral scream that harked back to Brutus and Cassius, a baying to end all bays, a yowl that echoed across the frozen landscape. Like a Tex Avery canine, his wheels were churning before he hit earth again. He shot through the orchard, ricochetting off trees and bouncing into sheds crying pitifully, not merely because his morning ceremony had been interrupted. The terrier was terrified.

Hotbox BC (before canine)
© Gardeners.com

Hotbox AD (after dog)
© SleuthSayers.org

For the next week, he crossed and recrossed his legs, his eyes turning yellow from water retention. He slunk under one of the barns, peering out in fright.

Raccoons eventually evicted him and the day came when his urinary tract could bear no more. The samoyed and I politely turned our backs for the next twelve and a half minutes whilst Caesar drained the reservoirs and then collapsed in the snow.

The skittish dog could not be persuaded to attend our rabbits in the orchard. These were pre-cellular days, so he didn’t have to worry about anyone posting embarrassing videos on the Web. Still, word got around and squirrels would sneak up behind him, clap their paws and shout, “Bang!” and then laugh and laugh.

While he never fathered a pup, there’s no truth to the rumor Caesar went all friends-with-benefits with the cute spaniel in the next county or that her doggy-style birth control was a sharp bark.

Philologists might note that Kaiser is rooted in the word Caesar, but no one dared tell the dog. And that is the tale of Caesar and the Kaiser hotbox.

Who Put the B in the BSP? (Version 2)

 

Today my post is an updated version of a column I wrote more than six years ago here at SleuthSayers, and the reasons I'm reviving it are (1) I've been reading a lot about this subject at other blogs and forums (fori?) over the past few weeks and (2) I couldn't think of anything else to post today.

Anyhow, I started my previous rant on this topic by asking this question: How blatant should self-promotion be?

It's a problem that I think has recently grown worse. Or maybe I just notice it more.

Before I get into all that, here's a definition I found long ago at the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries site: 

BSP (Blatant Self-Promotion) is the activity of making people notice you and your abilities, especially in a way that annoys other people.

Notice the last part of that sentence. Do I do that? I don't want to be annoying, and I doubt you do either. But both of us might be, if we're in the habit of saying or writing too much about accomplishments and our supposed literary talent. All of us grow weary of looking at cell phone photos of the dogs and cats and grandchildren of our friends and neighbors, right?--and you can be pretty sure they're weary of seeing ours. If that's true, how soon do they become tired of hearing, over and over, about our new novels and stories and accolades? Probably PDQ, that's how soon.

So, why do we do it? Why run the risk of angering or alienating the very people we hope might at some point read or buy our product?

One reason is, we writers are expected by our editors and publishers to do a certain amount of marketing and self-promotion. We're always being told we need to have some kind of "platform" for spreading the word, whether it's via social media, blogs, websites, newsletters, interviews, signings, speaking engagements, whatever. This is hard for some of us to do, but I suppose it's reasonable. It's our writing, after all; the publishers are just putting it out there for others to see. And unless we're already famous, nobody except friends and family are going to know or care one bit about what we've written. Somebody has to toot our horn, if it's going to get tooted.

Another reason is that self-promotion feels good, at least to the self-promoter. And it's easy to do. Talking or writing about ourselves doesn't require any effort or research. But the truth is, nobody--including my wife and kids, in my case--wants to hear too much of that. (Well, maybe my dear mother did, but mothers always do).          

Which brings us to the real question. How much BSP can we do before we go overboard, and become a total embarrassment to ourselves and our friends and family?

The answer, I think, is some but not a lot. In other words, moderation. All of us want to put our best feet forward when it comes to things like bios, press releases, book launches, etc., but we also need to use common sense. Nobody--and I mean NObody--wants to get emails, texts, tweets, etc., every day, or even every week, about the same story or book that you've written. Same thing goes for endless emails asking folks to write great reviews for you, or follow your stellar career, or vote for you in the best-novel-cover contest.

By the way, I am not innocent of BSP crimes. Example: My post here at SleuthSayers a week ago was an overview of what turned out to be a pretty good year of publishing my short stories. I also try to post a note on Facebook when new publications come out. I justify that by whining that a number of my friends have told me they like for me to do that. (It's true that they told me, but whether they were being truthful or just kind, I don't know.) Even so, I suspect those announcements are dancing dangerously close to the edges of BSP, and if I mistakenly notify folks about the same thing more than once, it fits firmly into that category. It's one of those cloudy areas of marketing/promotion that can leave you feeling guilty if you do it and guilty if you don't. 

I mentioned, a few paragraphs ago, author bios. Just a quick word, about that. A writer's bio that goes on and on and on can give editors and readers everything from glazed eyes to headaches to gastric distress, and I've often heard it said that the longer the printed bio, the less the writer has actually accomplished--the wannabe author just writes more words about less important things. There's some truth to that, and while I recognize that bios are important and necessary, it's also important not to let yourself get carried away. Even the automatic signature you place at the end of your emails can be too much. Twenty lines of text following your name and listing all your publications and awards and nominations and third-place wins in contests might be overdoing it a bit. In fact it might be eighteen or nineteen lines too long.

Same thing goes for booksignings. I'm not saying we should sit there like a petrified log all day, but it's even worse to call out to passersby like a carnival barker at the county fair, or to chase them down and pester them with questions like Do you read mysteries? or Looking for a good Christmas gift? (I have seen that done, several times.) Again, I think moderation is what works. Smile, make eye contact, maybe stand up and hand potential customers a bookmark or brochure as they walk by. But nobody likes being hounded into a purchase, whether it's a book or a used car or a pair of sneakers.

But I'm digressing. On the subject of day-to-day, writing-related BSP, I do try to post on social media any announcements of new publications and any upcoming signings--the publisher of my story collections, who's much smarter than I am on these matters, says that's a good idea, and I know that it has occasionally steered readers to those magazines or anthologies, or buyers to whatever event I'm appearing in. I think that kind of promotion makes sense--I just hope it isn't being too pushy. I realize some of the all-out blitzes people do on Facebook and elsewhere, especially regarding book releases, can get out of hand. There's a fine line between aggressive and excessive.

Author and editor Ramona DeFelice Long once said, at her blog, that writers should keep Goldilocks in mind and do what feels right. But what does feel right? Do too little, you're shy or lazy. Do too much, you're obnoxious. You're either a wallflower that nobody knows or you're an insurance salesman that nobody wants to know. 

What's an author to do?

That's the question of the day. What's your opinion? How do you, as a writer, try to do what's expected and required without being overbearing and insufferable? What are some of your personal "rules" and taboos and experiences? Also, what makes you, as a possible buyer of a piece of fiction, uncomfortable or annoyed? When does SP become BSP?

By the way, do you read a lot? Have you seen my new book? You haven't? 

Step right this way . . .

Sherlock lives, and lives forever!

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

A military man returns home wounded from the war in Afghanistan. Desperate for lodgings but short on funds, he meets with a potential roomie slumming in a chem lab at St. Bart’s. They hit it off, despite that the fact that the guy gleefully pricks his own fingers to get blood for an experiment.

Turns out, this eccentric oddball solves crimes for a living. Blood, you might say, is his business. He invites his wounded roomie to accompany him to the scene of his newest case. An individual has been slaughtered in an abandoned building, the word RACHE scrawled on the wall—

You’re thinking, dude, I so know this story.

But you don’t, because this is not the story by Conan Doyle. It’s the story by Neil Gaiman, which means that the word RACHE isn’t scrawled on the wall in scarlet, but in a hideous green ichor.

I wish I could remember when and where I’d first read that Gaiman had written two short stories in the Sherlock Holmes universe. Whoever mentioned it did so obliquely. I’m not exactly a fan of Gaiman’s work. I read one novel of his that was not to my taste, but I did enjoy the Sandman graphic novel series. But I am a Holmes geek, so I had to investigate further. Doing so turned into an interesting reminder of the seemingly endless adaptability of short stories.

The first Gaiman story, “A Study in Emerald,” is set in an alternate Holmesian universe, melding Conan Doyle with H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology. It first appeared in a 2003 anthology of Holmes/Lovecraft mashups, Shadows Over Baker Street (Del Rey/Ballantine). Unfortunately, I can’t say more about the plot without spoiling it for you. What I can say is that the story crystalized for me that the more a reader knows about the Canon, the more pleasure they’ll derive from a great pastiche or parody. Each little reference—to a Persian slipper, say, or the letters VR or the name Jabez—brings a smile to the face of someone who holds that world dear. I shouldn’t have been surprised by Gaiman’s grasp of Holmes, knowing what he pulled off with Sandman, but I was.

The graphic novel in hardcover.

Some years later, Gaiman went out and did it again with another story, “The Case of Death and Honey,” which first appeared in the 2011 anthology A Study in Sherlock, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie Klinger (Poisoned Pen Press). This story claims to be the final chapter of Sir Arthur’s “The Adventure of the Creeping Man,” the wacky tale of a university professor who starts exhibiting simian characteristics.

In Gaiman’s tale, Mycroft has died, Watson is ailing, and the elderly Holmes journeys to China in search of an elusive subspecies of bee raised by an Asian apiarist who is likewise getting on in years. I won’t say more about this one either, but suffice to say that the story belongs solidly in the realm of science fiction and fantasy. But so did Conan Doyle’s “Creeping Man”!

A quick look at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (here and here) informs us that each of these Gaiman stories has been reprinted a bajillion times, either in Gaiman’s own collections, or in “best of” anthologies and “weird” detective anthologies, so you won’t have trouble finding them. “Emerald” alone has been pubbed in foreign anthologies, been spun out as a game, a graphic novel, and a story-specific audiobook. A small boutique publisher brought out three gorgeous editions of “Death and Honey,” at three different price points, with or without an accompanying edition of the original “Creeping Man.” Depending on the rare book dealer you buy from, you can easily spend between $500 to $800 on the Gaiman-signed volume, if goatskin binding and gold-leaf edging are your thing.

Now, yes, you could look at all this and say, well, sure, we’re talking about Gaiman, a worldwide bestseller, so of course two short stories of his would engender this sort of treatment. And you’d have a point. But I’m constantly reminded that the short stories of lesser-known or downright unknown authors can inspire better-known works of pop culture. Every year at Thanksgiving, my wife and I watch a minor Holly Hunter film called Home for the Holidays, based on a short story by Chris Radant. Mary Orr’s story in a 1946 issue of Cosmopolitan was the basis for the Oscar-winning movie All About Eve. The 2016 Amy Adams science-fiction film Arrival, which I love, was derived from a short story by Ted Chiang, a nonfiction writer and SFF short story specialist.

Hoping to inspire myself, I read one or two short stories a day between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day 2024. I was often left thinking how many of them were so rich that they could easily serve as the source material for entire movies or stage productions. (I was especially charmed by the shorts and novellas of Connie Willis, contained in her collection, A Lot Like Christmas. )

Click to download PDF.

Getting back to the Canon, since tomorrow is Sherlock’s birthday, I might mention that the two Gaiman stories I discussed are apparently so beloved by fans that you can easily find and read them online for free. If you’re the sort of Irregular scamp who respects copyright, however, I’d suggest you download the free pdf of “Emerald” that Gaiman makes available on his website. It’s designed to look like an old Victorian newspaper, and the price is just right if you’re jonesing for a January Holmes fix.

Happy New Year!

See you in three weeks...

Joe

josephdagnese.com

And Down the Rabbit Hole We Go!

Happy New Year!

Another holiday season rapidly retreating in the rearview mirror, and here I am, penning yet another initial blog post of the new year. After reading far too many "Writing Goals For The New Year" blog posts (some of them the ghosts of my own work in seasons past), I've decided to buck the "This is what I plan to accomplish this year" trend amongst early 2024 writing blog posts, and instead talk about what I've been doing as background for my current work-in-progress.

(By the way, this will be the first of two posts: this one is mostly set up and background.)

So... research!

Why does it have to be soooooooo fun??????

Ask any writer about research, and unless they make up every single "factual" aspect of their writing (looking at you, spec fictioneers!), they'll have at least one anecdote about how they were researching something, which led them to another topic, and another topic, and another, and another.... you know, human nature.

Back in the beforetimes, when there was no internet (soooooo the Dark Ages), I can recall as a boy reaching for one of of the volumes of one of my family's prized possessions: a set of encyclopedias (in my family's case our chosen beacon of knowledge came courtesy of World Book), looking up something, reading the short informational article on it, and then seeing something else interesting further down the page. And when the Internet happened, it was only a matter of time before the live linked articles at open source knowledge depots such as Wikipedia began to facilitate the replication of such behavior.

Talk about your colossal timesuck!

As I said, human nature, right?

Add in the complication of a deadline, and here we are: the eternal writer's dilemma; how far down the
rabbit hole ought one to stray? That one takes some rigorous and honest cost-benefit analysis.

Let's take my current journey down the primrose-bunny-path-hole:

My protagonist's backstory includes a deceased naval hero father who served during the Barbary Wars (1801-1815): that series of naval actions the fledgeling United States undertook against state-run piratical enterprises run out of a number of cities in North Africa. Put bluntly, it became too expensive to continue to pay protection racket money to the rulers of cities such as Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Cheaper to build a navy (which American political leaders such as Jefferson and Madison were nervous about giving too much power to) and go flatten some palaces.

The Burning of the Philadelphia by Edward Moran

(This conflict is where the Marine Corps Hymn got the inspiration for half of the immortal opening line: "From the Halls of Montezuma/To the shores of Tripoli," by the way.)

So over the course of collecting the names of as many participants in these actions as possible ("Presley O'Bannon," "Willian Eaton," "Stephen Decatur," "Richard Somers," "Edward Preble," "William Bainbridge," etc.), I came across the name of one James Leander Cathcart.

A quick thumbnail: Cathcart was born in  Ireland in 1768, sent to the American colonies to be raised by a sea captain uncle, Cathcart went to sea early, and in 1785 was taken captive by Algerian pirates while serving on a merchant brig, the Maria, out of Boston.

As with so many captives whose families didn't pony up ransom payments, Cathcart was initially put to work doing slave labor on construction projects in and around the port. Through a combination of good luck and pluck on his part, he was able to parlay a stint as a garden in the palace of the dey (ruler) into a change of his status. Over the succeeding eleven years, Cathcart managed to work his way up to working as dey's secretary responsible for translating and leading ransom negotiations with the diplomats of "Christian" nations looking to conduct business in the Mediterranean unmolested by such pesky inconveniences as Algerine raiders.

In 1796 Cathcart was tapped to negotiate his own release in addition to that of his surviving colleagues from the Maria. Once a treaty had been drafted, the dey sent Cathcart to the United States to deliver it. It is a measure of Cathcart's success as a "slave" of the dey that he actually owned the ship in which he traveled to Washington, D.C.- bought with the profits Cathcart had raked in thanks to the contacts he made while in the dey's service.

Once freed Cathcart married the daughter of a prominent Philadelphia family, began having children (the couple eventually had twelve), and embarked on a career as a diplomat, filling minor posts in places such as Madeira (where one of his sons, a future U.S. Senator from Indiana, was born).

Oh, and he kept a journal of his time as an Algerine slave.

Perhaps I ought to have mentioned that sooner?

Sailor, Slave, Businessman, Diplomat....Memoirist?

Tune in next time and we will dig beyond the thumbnail, and reap the barely dreamed of benefits of running down this line of inquiry!

See you in two weeks!

Chatting with Shanks

 

"So," I said. "When did you decide to become a thief?"

Leopold Longshanks raised his bushy eyebrows.  "Seriously?  Talk about blaming the victim."

"I don't know what you mean."

He leaned on my kitchen table, pulling his coffee cup closer. "I mean I'm a fictional character and if I steal it's because that's what you wrote."

"True enough, I suppose.  I was just trying to open the conversation."

"Sure, and make me look bad in the process." He shook his head.  "The readers will know who's responsible."

"Well, what would you have said instead?"

Shanks looked at the ceiling.  "Let's see.  I would have pointed out that  you ride a bicycle every day."

"Unless there's ice on the ground.  I'm not crazy."

"The jury's still out on that.  For one thing, you're sitting here talking to a figment of your imagination.  But my point is, it's not surprising that you thought of a way to steal a bicycle."

I reached for my own coffee.  "Well, mystery writers' brains do tend to head toward crime, as you would know."

"Correct.  But since you are relatively honest--"

"Relatively?"

Shanks shrugged.  "Just because you haven't been accused of of plagiarism yet..."

"Very funny.  Go on."

"Well, you had to think of some way to use your technique for bike theft without risking jail time.  You thought of me even though I am somewhat exercise-averse."

"You're lazy, even for a writer."

Shanks waved a finger.  "Don't insult our peers.  The point is, you  realized that you could send me on a writer's retreat and they are often held in park-like settings, where there might be bicycles available for the guests. After that, the plotting was easy."

"It looks easy if someone else is doing it," I replied.

"Well." Another shrug.  "Easy for me.  I'm a much better writer than you."

"Only because I created you that way."

"As you often remind me." He sipped more coffee. "When does 'Shanks in Retreat' come out anyway?"

"The January/February issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  It's already available."

"Excellent.  Why don't you tell all those nice readers to turn off this blog and go get a copy?"

"I think you just did."

"Clever of me." He looked across the kitchen.  "Got any donuts?"