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?"  

 

My tribute to John Hughes movies

When I think of the movies of my adolescence, the first name that pops up is John Hughes. I'd bet many Gen Xers can say the same. While Hughes's breakout movie arguably was 1983's funny Vacation, it wasn't a teen movie. Not that teens didn't like it (we did), but Vacation was aimed at a wider audience. Then in 1984, Hughes released his first movie aimed at kids my age. And we saw them in droves--in the theater multiple times and then on video over and over and over. 

Which Hughes movies? It started with Sixteen Candles in 1984. Then in 1985 The Breakfast Club came out. Hughes followed that in 1986 with Weird Science and Pretty in Pink. And in 1987, Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released. There were other Hughes teen movies after that, but the ones I've mentioned here were the movies of my high school years. The ones I remember most fondly. 

Hughes didn't corner the market on teen movies, of course. I couldn't write this column without mentioning 1983's Risky Business and 1985's Back to the Future and Better Off Dead ("Two dollars! I want my two dollars!"). And there were great movies that came out while I was in college that fall into this genre, including Say Anything and Heathers.

What do all these movies have in common? They're about high schoolers who had a lot of freedom with little to no supervision. While for some '80s kids, these movies might have been pure fantasy, for others (like me), they weren't that much of an exaggeration. I look back on them fondly.

It was with all of these movies in mind that I wrote my short story "Teenage Dirtbag," coming out January 9th from Misti Media in the anthology (I Just) Died in Your Arms: Crime Fiction Inspired by One-Hit Wonders, edited by J. Alan Hartman. I was invited to write a story for this anthology (thank you, Jay), and when I looked at a list of one-hit wonders, trying to find a song that inspired me, "Teenage Dirtbag" jumped out. The song was released in 2000 by Wheatus, and I've loved it ever since hearing it on Dawson's Creek and then hearing it again and again on the CD (remember those?) Songs from Dawson's Creek volume two. (Yes, I watched TV shows aimed at teens while in my twenties and early thirties. Sue me.) To me, the song's plot screamed 1980s teen movie. So I wrote a 1980s teen crime short story based on it.

I would've had a harder time making the story believable if I'd set it now. Today's teens often have more supervision than teens in the 1980s did, and other elements of the story wouldn't be workable if it were set now. (Sorry for the vagueness, but I don't want to spoil things.) Those of you who haven't heard the song might be wondering about the story's plot, so here's an overview: In 1985, Travis rules his high school, tormenting other kids and pushing his girlfriend around—until nerd Brian falls for her and devises a plan to free all the beleaguered kids from Travis's bullying ways. 

The song has a line about a gun that made it a great basis for a crime story, though even people who know the song may not realize it. That line was mixed out in versions played on radio stations, but the original version of the song can be found if you look hard enough. If you listen to the song, you'll hear some other details I worked into my story. Brian listens to Iron Maiden. Noelle wears Keds (but not tube socks—that wouldn't have happened in 1985). And Iron Maiden did play at Long Island's Nassau Coliseum in May 1985, which is why I set the story then rather than in '86 or '87.

Overall, my story "Teenage Dirtbag," based on the Wheatus song of the same name, is a crime coming-of-age story. It's an underdog story. And it's my tribute to 1980s teen movies. I hope you enjoy it, reader. And John Hughes, wherever you are (he died in 2009), I hope it makes you smile too.

As I said, the book will be released on Tuesday, January 9th, in ebook and trade paperback formats. You can pre-order it directly from the publisher by clicking here. It also will be available from the usual online sources and, hopefully, independent bookshops.

The other authors with stories in the book (and the songs they based their stories on) are, in order of appearance: Vinnie Hansen ("96 Tears"), Jeanne DuBois ("Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"), Josh Pachter ("The Rapper"), J.M. Taylor ("Seasons in the Sun"), Christine Verstraete ("Wildfire"), Sandra Murphy ("867-5309/Jenny"), Joseph S. Walker ("Come On Eileen"), Wendy Harrison ("It's Raining Men"), Bev Vincent ("Somebody's Watching Me"), Leone Ciporin ("Life in a Northern Town"), and Adam Gorgoni ("Bitch").

Do you have a favorite John Hughes movie (or 1980s teen movie)? What's your favorite one-hit wonder song, defined (for purposes of this book) as a group's sole big hit in the United States? ("Teenage Dirtbag" meets that definition, though Wheatus has had more big hits in Europe and Australia.)

"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin." - Barbara Kingsolver

I know I’ve forgotten something, I just don’t remember what it is. 

I said that once, in all sincerity.  I think it adequately sums up the mystery that is memory.  Most of us are really glad to have memories, even ones clouded by misfortune, because they are a testament that we have lived a life.  I’m referring to long-term memory, which has a much different role to play than the short-term variety.  Short-term memory is responsible for me losing countless gloves and sunglasses, a few wallets, where I’ve parked the car, the most recent line of dialog on the TV and the name of the person I was just introduced to.

Speaking of TV, fictional eyewitnesses remember the color of the gunman’s jacket, his slight limp, a noticeable Brooklyn accent and the make and model of his getaway car.  In real life, eyewitnesses can’t do any of these things, which is why they’re mostly disregarded by cops and prosecutors.

People often say, “Aunt Harriet doesn’t remember what she had for breakfast, but she remembers the smell of her mother’s fresh-baked oatmeal cookies and the look of her prom gown.”  Well, of course she can, or at least she can conjure up what she thinks she remembers, and do it with total conviction.  In fact, she’s probably close, but not nearly exact. 

This is because long-term memories are stored in a different, deeper part of the brain.  A short-term memory is only good for a few moments before the brain wants to get rid of it, which it usually does with dispatch.  

It really doesn’t matter if your old memories are precise recreations.  Because it’s more important what you feel when dredging them up again.  This, to me, is the writer’s chore, to hold on to certain emotions and impressions, to later recollect in moments of tranquility, or when overcoming temporary writer’s block to meet a pressing deadline.  

A friend of mine, whom I’ve known since we were roommates in college, likes to play a game called, “Did that actually happen?”  It’s an occasional check-in on old memories, which he usually gets close, but never exactly right, according to my memory of the same event, equally unreliable. 

But as noted, it’s the feelings that matter.  I’ve re-watched beloved movies after a few decades have gone by, and often, usually, they’re not that great.  Better to have retained how they made me feel at the time, because I’m now much older, clogged with accumulated experience (wisdom is too big a word) and concerned with very different matters.  

As with Aunt Harriet, we assemble our long-term memories out of snatches of images and narratives gleaned from the last time we tried to remember what happened.  They are never quite right, but they’re what sticks in the brain as received truth, corrupted files that perpetuate themselves, and continue to warp, over time. 

I have no way of knowing if the recollected emotions are authentic.  Context is usually a good clue.  I saw Cream play at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia when I was about seventeen.  I think it’s a fair bet that I was thrilled to hear Eric Clapton at the height of his guitar-god powers.  I also remember him wearing a black knit beanie and spending part of the concert standing behind his massive wall of Marshall amps.  I remember Ginger Baker looking like a skeleton, seconds away from early death.  He made it to 2019, so he must have just been having a bad week.  Or maybe I don’t remember it correctly.  It doesn’t matter, since I also remember his drumming to be astonishingly complex, exacting and other-worldly. 

The whole night felt great, and that’s all that counts.