Deadlines

Somebody famous, Sir Walter Raleigh, or one of those guys, on his way to the block, said there was nothing like a date with the headsman’s axe to sharpen your wit.

Which got me thinking about deadlines.

Both literally, and otherwise.

For instance. We here, at SleuthSayers, all collaborated on a mystery anthology last year – titled Murder, Neat – with each of us contributing a story. I, of course, dragged my feet until the last minute. I had a title, and the set-up, which is nought but bare bones; I didn’t have a clue what kind of pickle I planned to put my guy in, let alone how to get him out of it. And then, the deadline loomed, and it was like that old joke, “With one tremendous leap… Off to the races.

In another case, though, I missed the deadline for the Black Orchid submission, at the end of May, this year. I think I can explain the difference. With the Murder, Neat story, “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” I had a tight internal timeline – the arc of the story itself is only a couple of hours – and a single setting. It was a physical trap, with the clock running out. In other words, writing the story was like winding a watch. But the Black Orchid novella was a bigger, shaggier animal. I wanted the story to open up, across a wider canvas, I wanted you to breathe in, and fill your lungs, to feel the whole of a landscape. I wanted that room to breathe, myself, to give the story interior space, as well as outside. From my immediate perspective, I don’t know whether I’ve pulled it off, I’m still too close, but my point is that one kind of story benefits from pressure, and another doesn’t.

Harper Barnes

It’s partly about narrative compression.

What is it you want to say? Say it, and get it done. This is what newspaper people always tell you. Lead with a jab, soften ‘em up with some combinations, finish with a roundhouse punch. Decades ago, I wrote a movie column for an alternative Boston weekly, the Phoenix. Often as not, I was turning in my material right as the paper was going to bed, locked in for the press run. I remember, one night, I was there in the empty offices, in the Back Bay, me and my editor – Harper Barnes, a real newspaper guy, who’d made his bones with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – with me at a borrowed desk, pounding out copy on a big Royal manual, the floor shaking, I was punching the keys so hard. Typing MORE at the bottom of each page, full caps, yanking them out, never a backward glance, and on the last page, typing em-dash, 30, em-dash. Old newspaper thing, from the days of movable type, to let the typesetters know they’d hit the end of the copy. (Even if the Phoenix was photo-typeset.)

Were those columns back then any good?

I’d like to think they were literate, at least. I’ll tell you this. Banging on that typewriter, handing my pages across the desk to Harper, no hesitating, no second thoughts, no sucking on my knuckles for inspiration, nothing but my ass in that hard chair, I felt like I was Jimmy-God-damn-Breslin at the New York Post taking on Carmine DeSapio and Tammany Hall. That good. Never be that good again.

- 30 -

Dust and Write

            I've been doing some research on the American Civil War for my next project. The notes I'm taking are stacking higher and higher. I could write a first-class term paper at this point, but I'm not ready yet to write a story.

            In particular, I’m still looking for a hinge fact.

            The hinge fact, in my definition, is the tidbit that hooks the reader and opens up the story. I assume that it will capture the reader’s interest if it grabs my attention.

            I recently read Dust and Light. The author, Andrea Barrett, writes historical fiction and has garnered numerous national prizes for her work. Dust and Light is a short nonfiction book in which she discusses finding and using facts in her writing. The book received some nice attention and seemed perfect for helping me clarify my thoughts on research and writing.

            The Devil's Kitchen, my debut novel, unfolds across dual timelines. The remaining books in the series will as well. To write the historical chapters, I need a basketful of facts. However, to progress as a writer, I wanted to consider new and better ways to utilize them.

            Dust and Light has me thinking about historical facts and their judicious use. I want to deploy the facts to tell the story rather than using the story to display the facts. That's always the goal, but it's easier to articulate than to execute.

            I also hoped the book might show me how to pinpoint the hinge fact.

            That final search didn’t pay off. As Barrett outlined her method, I kept hearing the word "chaotic" in my head. In interviews, she has described her research and writing process as odd, inefficient, even crazy. One of the book's themes is that a discussion of process isn't intended to teach a particular method of writing. Instead, the conversation teaches us that we all have our own individualized method for writing and that “we should cherish those ways.”

            Andrea Barrett may be the dictionary definition of ‘pantser.’

            Her book reminded me of a few other things. The author related a story about scientific research from the nineteenth century. Fridtjof Nansen theorized that in the frozen wilderness of the Polar Sea, ice drifted northwest. He searched for evidence to support his belief. Nansen learned of the Jeanette, a ship exploring the region that had been lost at sea. Several years after its disappearance, a pair of oilskin pants from the Jeanette washed up on the shore of Greenland. Nansen recognized their clockwise drift pattern and set off on his own largely successful expedition.

            An empty pair of pants floating onto the Greenland coast is my idea of a hinge fact. 

            To make his leap of understanding, Nansen needed this fact. But to appreciate its significance, he required a solid knowledge foundation in his field. The explorer also benefited from a community to support and challenge him. He needed resources— a crew, a ship, and time. Finally, Nansen required the courage to try.

            The scientific or explorer’s method may not be identical to that of the fiction writer, but the resource demands are similar. The entry point, an adequate base, space and time to explore, and a supportive community are all elements of successful writing.

            Barrett seriously downplays the use of facts. She acknowledges that fiction must be about something. Setting out a story about a character doing something within a specific time and place necessarily involves articulating facts. While reluctantly agreeing, she wants her facts to be dissolved into her fiction. The basket of facts she accumulates is used to inform what characters love and what motivates them rather than providing specific details about who and when. She doesn't like to overburden her stories with facts. 

            Much of Dust and Light is devoted to clarifying this idea. What Barrett wants to convey about her characters needs to be true, even if not entirely factual. Everyone who writes fiction probably thinks the same way. We write stories and not encyclopedias. 

            To write crime fiction rooted in history, I need a plot. And within a plot, I need facts. In interviews, more so than in Dust and Light, Barrett makes clear that she writes literary historical fiction rather than genre fiction. I felt the metaphorical pat on the head and the implied, 'I’m not really talking about you.' While her polite dismissal sounded a bit pretentious, the take-home lesson--to separate the cause from the result--retained value. Barrett encourages writers “not to confuse the material with the aesthetic creation arising from the material.” In fiction, the facts are in service to the story.

            We think the same way about character building. Somewhere on my computer are saved a host of surveys I’ve been given. These are questionnaires to flesh out fictional characters. When I’ve thought through what sort of dessert she likes and what pet she had as a child, I have a better picture of who my character is and how she might respond in each situation, even if nowhere in my story does she ever pause to eat strawberry ice cream with her cat. The pile of facts Barrett accumulates help her to know her historical characters in the same way.

            Dust and Light is a quick read. I didn’t find my guide to locating the hinge fact. I did, however, come away with a lesson on delicacy in selecting and incorporating facts into my stories. I got a cautionary tale about the temptation to flood my stories with excessive information. The book gave me a glimpse into different research and writing styles. It reminded me about the value of the community.

            And speaking of community. I’ll be traveling from ThrillerFest on the day this blog posts. I won’t have internet access. Please excuse the failure to reply to a comment.

            Until next time.

How Grandma’s Old-Time Songs Inspired My New Mystery Series

By Elaine Viets, Guest Blogger

Elaine Viets, our guest blogger today, is a highly popular mystery author whose fourth series launched this month. She’s won the Agatha, Anthony, and Lefty Awards and was honored with Malice Domestic’s Lifetime Achievement Award. With Sex and Death on the Beach, Elaine returns to her adopted home, South Florida.

My grandmother liked to sing. She’d sing while she cooked in her kitchen, pulled weeds in her garden, or rocked in her porch glider. On summer nights, she and her friends would drink highballs, play cards, and sing. Comforting songs from when Grandma was young, like “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” “Pennies from Heaven,” and “Blue Skies.”

But one of Grandma’s favorites sounded downright creepy to me. It began:

“Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?”
“There are a few, kind sir, but simple girls and proper too.”

Ick. Where did that come from?

I didn’t track that song down until the advent of the Internet, when I learned the tune Grandma used to sing was “Tell Me Pretty Maiden,” a showstopper in a hit musical comedy called Florodora. The musical debuted in London, where it was wildly popular, and was transplanted to Broadway in 1900.

Florodora was set on a mythical island, which produced a perfume by the same name. The characters included an evil millionaire, snooty Lady Holyrood, a ridiculous phrenologist, a stolen fortune, and of course, beautiful showgirls, the Florodora Girls.

Florodora Girls were such stunners that supposedly they all married rich men. There was also scandal. Real live juicy scandal. The notorious Evelyn Nesbit was in Florodora.

Once I knew this, I had to have a Florodora Girl in my new Florida Beach series. Except the series was set in the present, featuring Florida Men and Women. And Florodora hadn’t been on Broadway in more than a hundred years. So I gave my character, Norah McCarthy, a racy Florodora grandmother, who seemed capable of almost anything. Maybe even murder. Norah’s grandma built an apartment house in mythical Peerless Point, Florida, and Norah inherited it.

Sex and Death on the Beach opens when the body of a porn star is found buried by the pool at the Florodora apartments. Norah is the prime suspect. Worse, another body is unearthed, buried when Norah was a little girl. Did Grandma kill that person?

The residents of Norah’s building belong to an exclusive group. They must be Florida Men and Women, but the benign variety. The exploits of Florida Man often include alligators and alcohol. You’ve seen the headlines: “Florida Man Busted with Meth, Guns, and Baby Gator in Truck.” Norah’s feelings about Florida Man and Woman are “somewhere between appalled and perversely proud.” She’s descended from an early Florida Woman, her grandmother, Eleanor Harriman.

Norah’s grandma had a soft spot for scapegraces, since she was one herself. She was a Florodora Girl, a superstar chorus girl a century ago. Norah’s grandmother was in the 1920 Broadway production of Florodora before she eloped with handsome Johnny Harriman, a millionaire, back when a million was real money. She was married at sixteen and madly in love. When Norah was old enough, “Grandma told me about poor Johnny’s accidental death, which involved a champagne bottle and a chandelier.”

Like Norah’s grandmother, my own grandma married at sixteen. But my grandfather was no champagne-swilling millionaire. Grandma worked at a pickle factory. She married on her lunch break and went back to work. The bride and groom each went home to their parents. They were too poor to have their own home. They were married more than fifty years.

At seventeen, my character Norah’s grandmother was a rich widow who moved to Florida and built an apartment building, the Florodora, right on the ocean in 1923. The Florodora was quirky as Norah’s grandmother, with grand rooms, odd hideaways, and at least one secret staircase. To her bedroom. Norah was orphaned at age four and raised by her grandmother. The eccentric residents became her honorary uncles and aunts. When Norah’s grandma died at ninety-eight some twenty years ago, Norah inherited the Florodora.

The painting of Norah’s grandmother, commissioned by her doting husband when Eleanor was seventeen, displays her in all her Florodora glory. She wore a black picture hat, pink ruffled dress, long black gloves, and a frilly parasol.

Despite the modest costume, some critics were scandalized. A reviewer from the show’s first run in the US called it “one of the most uncompromisingly filthy plays ever seen in New York.”

What was so outrageous? Most of the girls didn’t wear pink tights when they danced.

That sounds quaint, but Florodora Girls were mixed up in modern crimes like murder, date rape drugs, and underage sex. Architect Stanford White was shot and killed by Harry Thaw, the husband of Evelyn Nesbit, for drugging and raping the Florodora beauty. You may recognize Evelyn from the movie Ragtime or an even older movie, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing. Don’t waste your sympathy on Stanford. He was a married man in his fifties when he seduced Evelyn.

If you drive past the Florodora Apartments on Ocean Drive, you’ll see the old white building looks much the same as it did during the roaring Twenties. The Florodora Apartments are Spanish Colonial, a white stucco structure with a red barrel-tile roof. The front windows have elaborate plaster Churrigueresque, which make the windows look like they’re framed in cake frosting. The Florodora’s almost the only old Florida building left on Ocean Drive. The rest are high-rise condos. Most look like shoeboxes standing on end. The Florodora is a reminder of Florida’s glamour days in the Twenties.

What you can’t see from the road is the beachfront. The Florodora sits on a wide boardwalk teeming with tourists and vendors selling everything from rum-filled pineapples to T-shirts and beach umbrellas. The sea air smells of salt and suntan lotion and the breeze is soft on the hottest days.

When I was nine, I realized my own grandmother lived during the roaring Twenties. Just like in the movies. I was sure my law-abiding Grandma wore beaded dresses, slammed back champagne with gangsters, and dodged police raids at speakeasies.

“What were the Twenties like, Grandma?” I asked her. “Were they fun?”

“Any time was fun,” she said. “If you had money.”

New Adventures of the Napoleon of Crime

So there I was, minding my own business when that dastardly evildoer’s name popped up on my security screen. Professor James Moriarty was up to his old habits, literally escaping the hangman’s noose in the first five minutes of a restored Lumière moving pictures Cinematograph. The case may have been part of the Moriarty Canon, but one and a quarter centuries later remains unmentioned In the official Holmes Canon.

Unfortunately, Holmes does not revert to his brilliant disguise as Jeremy Brett. Despite this, as a public service, we share with you this previously untold history titled Hands of a Murderer. If you prefer to watch this later during your own criminal pursuits, here is a link for your tablet or phone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDkkrdAsbd0

And now, Hands of a Murderer:

GUEST POST: Creating a Cohesive Collection

My friend Judy Penz Sheluk has twice been a guest columnist here at SleuthSayers--once in 2021 and once in 2023. Today, at our regular two-year interval, I'm pleased to have her here for another guest post, this one to celebrate the latest book in her Superior Shores Anthology series. Please join me in welcoming her once again.

--John Floyd

Creating a Cohesive Collection

by Judy Penz Sheluk

I've acquired a few skills during my corporate life as a credit manager (among other finance-related jobs) and as a magazine editor for multiple publications, but one of the most important was a good working knowledge of Excel, spreadsheets being a good way to number crunch and manage budgets. Even so, I never thought I'd use it as a tool to help me determine the order of the stories in my Superior Shores Anthologies. But that's exactly what I've done, each and every time.

Let's take my most recent multi-author anthology, Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, released on June 18th. Admittedly, much of the heavy lifting lies in culling down the 80 submissions to a manageable number, but turning the selected stories into a cohesive collection isn't quite as simple as it might seem on the surface. That's where my handy-dandy spreadsheet comes in. Here's a step-by-step look at how it works:

1. Set up five columns: Order (1-22), author name, title, word count, and comments.

2. Select which story will be first and mark that as number 1 under the column titled 'Order.' I spend a lot of time deciding what story will be first, because that sets the stage for the rest of the collection. In the case of Midnight Schemers, I chose Charlie Kondek's 'Secretly Keith,' the tale of a cover band guitarist who decides the time is right to rob barroom bookie Big John Warmer. At just under 3,500 words, it's middle of the pack in length, and as you've probably guessed, things don't go according to plan for our scheming, daydreaming, and very misguided musician.

3. Mark 'A Foolproof Plan,' my story of a woman desperate for a new life, as number 22, the last entry--it just doesn't feel right to put my own story ahead of any of the other authors. At just over 1,800 words, it's the shortest in the collection, which brings me to...

4. Select #21: the lead-in to the final story. Preferably long, and completely different in every way. In this case, I selected C. W. Blackwell's 'Making Up for Lost Time,' which clocks in at about 5,000 words, a poignant tale of a down-on-his-luck divorced dad and his daughter.

5. Sort the remainder of the stories by word count. In this way, I can begin to vary the order by story length, i.e., long, medium, short, long, medium, short, and so on.

6. Of course, just sorting by length isn't enough. That's where my Comments column, a one-sentence reminder about the content, comes in. It wouldn't do, for example, to have Pam Barnsley's homeless man in 'The Underground,' compete with C.W. Blackwell's down-on-his-luck dad. That said, at roughly 2,500 words, it's not long enough to follow Charlie Kondek's mid-length opener. The balance? Inserting Susan Daly's 5,000 word 'A Talent for Fame' between the two.

7. The heavy lifting done, I tinker with the order until it's right. Sort, re-sort. Re-read the intro of each story until I'm finally satisfied it's as good as it's going to get. After all, even the most devoted tinkerers have to let go sometime.

READERS: Do you pay attention to the order of stories? Or do you read them based on author name recognition, story title, and/or length?

About Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense:

Desire or desperation, revenge or retribution--how far would you go to realize a dream? The twenty-two authors in this collection explore the possibilities, with predictably unpredictable results. 

Featuring stories by Pam Barnsley, Linda Bennett, Clark Boyd, C. W. Blackwell, Amanda Capper, Susan Daly, James Patrick Focarile, Rand Gaynor, Gina X. Grant, Julie Hastrup, Beth Irish, Charlie Kondek, Edward Lodi, Bethany Maines, Jim McDonald, donalee Moulton, Michael Penncavage, Judy Penz Sheluk, KM Rockwood, Peggy Rothschild, Debra Bliss Saenger, and Joseph S. Walker.

Find it at www.books2read.com/midnight-schemers

About Judy: The Past Chair of Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) and a former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk (author/editor) is the multiple award-winning author of seven bestselling mystery novels, two books on publishing, and several short stories. She is also the editor/publisher of five Superior Shores Anthologies. In addition to CWC, Judy is a member of International Thriller Writers and the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Find her at www.judypenzsheluk.com

 

An Anthology is Born

It started with one hula hoop, eight writers drinking S.J. Rozan-inspired martinis all basking in ShortCon’s afterglow…

Dan White & S.J. Rozan with her Signature Martini

There is something magical that happens when writers gather after a conference.

Maybe, it’s because of how we are wired. Maybe, it’s because of the creative energy that still lingers in the air—and we had plenty of it this year, thanks to the incredible presentations by S.J. Rozan, Jeffrey Marks, and Michael Bracken. Being together ignites our imaginations and fosters inspiration.

At Elaine’s Literary Salon that night was no different.

Conversations about the conference turned to hula hoops. I am still not sure what sponsored the now-infamous hula hoop-moment between Dan White and S.J. Rozan and the deep dive into iconic playground games and equipment that quickly followed.

Like so many similar moments when crime fiction writers are together, snippets of story ideas began bouncing around like a gaggle of kids on pogo sticks: hopscotch and chalk-lined bodies, Double-Dutch turned deadly, butt-burning metal slides, death-defying jumps from swings, and tether ball clashes. Some, reimagined the Tony Sopranos of the sandbox-world uttering,“What happens in the sandbox stays in the sandbox.” I can still hear the New Jersey-accent playing in my head.

We also discovered just like “regional words” exist for carbonated drinks (soda, pop, Coke), names for playground equipment vary, too: Seesaws or Teeter-Totters, Monkey bars or Horizontal Ladders, Spinners or Merry-Go-Rounds or Roundabouts, Spring Riders or Spring Rockers.

And the list goes on.

Others recounted playground politics and social hierarchies, what it felt like to be fearless, what it felt like to desperately want to be accepted—all of us reliving nostalgic and not so nostalgic moments from our childhood.

Less than an hour later, short story legend (aka Michael Bracken) roughed out a proposal for a crime fiction anthology where a piece of playground equipment or a playground game plays an important role. These had to exist on old-school playgrounds, where the playground was was made of asphalt and the equipment was made of metal, which likely meant these stories would be set in the past or in the present with flashbacks or in neighborhoods that had not upgraded to modern, safe playground equipment.

Michael Bracken
exhausted by the "Idea Fairy"

And just like that, Playground Noir: For the Kids Who Never Grew Up, was born.

Michael was surrounded by his list of contributors. He also had a publisher in mind.

As I write this post today, Michael has already pitched his proposal and awaits a response.

My key takeaways from that night at Elaine's:

Crime fiction writers are all a little twisted. Thank God, we have each other.

The best story ideas happen when writers gather to enjoy one another’s company.

It’s important to stick around after conferences and connect with fellow writers. You never know what is going to happen. You may become a contributor in an upcoming anthology.

***

Stacy Woodson with Dan White

Want to make space for your own hula-hoop moment?

ShortCon 2026 is just around the corner.

Hosted by Michael Bracken, the conference will be held at Elaine's Literary Salon in Alexandria, Virginia on June 6, 2026.

Gary Phillips will lead a three-hour writing workshop on “Blueprinting Criminal Behavior.”

Michele Slung will present “Every Moment is a Story,” a behind-the-scenes look at putting together annual best-of collections.

Art Taylor will discuss “Linked, Intertwined, or Seamless: The Curious Case of the Novel in Stories.”

I will also lead an end-of-day panel discussion with the presenters. Registration opens in July.

You can find it here: https://www.eastcoastcrime.com/#/.

Hope to see you there!

Kids These Days (and ALL Days!)

I'm So Excited once again we come to the end of the school year, and with the health “challenges” I’ve faced this year, I can’t think of a better way to end the school year than by doing a call-back to a post I did nine years ago, in the midst of a divisive presidential election-also an end of the school year post, one that reflected (and continues to reflect) my unshakeable faith in this country. And here we are, nearly-a-decade later, having come through on the other side of any number of traumatic experiences, and that faith remains strong.

Which is why I'm reposting this below.

*     *     *     *     *

So, about my day gig.

I teach ancient history to eighth graders.

And like I tell them all the time, when I say, "Ancient history," I'm not talking about the 1990s.

For thirteen/fourteen year-olds, mired hopelessly in the present by a relentless combination of societal trends and biochemistry, there's not much discernible difference between the two eras.

I wish!

It's a great job. But even great jobs have their stressors.

Like being assigned chaperone duty during the end-of-the-year dance.

Maybe you're familiar with what currently passes for "popular music" among fourteen year-olds these days. I gotta say, I don't much care for it. Then again, I'm fifty-one. And I can't imagine that most fifty-one year-olds in 1979 much cared for the stuff that I was listening to then.

And it's not as if I'm saying I had great taste in music as a fourteen year-old. If I were trying to make myself look good I'd try to sell you some line about how I only listened to jazz if it was Billie Holiday or Miles Davis, and thought the Police were smokin' and of course I bought Dire Straits' immortal Making Movies album, as well Zeppelin's In Through The Out Door when they both came out that year.

Well. No.

The sad reality.

In 1979 I owned a Village People vinyl album (Cruisin', with "YMCA" on it), and a number of ElvisPresley albums and 8-track tapes. I also listened to my dad's Eagles albums quite a bit. An uncle bought Supertramp's Breakfast in America for me, and I was hooked on a neighbor's copy of Freedom at Point Zero by Jefferson Starship, but really only because of the slammin' guitar solo Craig Chaquico played on its only hit single: "Jane." And I listened to a lot of yacht rock on the radio. I didn't know it was "yacht rock" back then. Would it have mattered?

But bear in mind we didn't have streaming music back then. And my allowance I spent mostly on comic books.

Ah, youth.

Anyway, my point is that someone my age back then may very well have cringed hard and long and as deeply if forced to listen to what I was listening to at eardrum-bursting decibels, and for the better part of two hours.

That was me on the second-to-the-last-day of school a week or so back.

Two hours.

Two hours of rapper after rapper (if it's not Eminem, Tupac, or the Beastie Boys, I must confess it all sounds the same to me) alternating with heavily autotuned "singing" by Rihanna, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, etc.

Thank God we got some relief in the form of the occasional Bruno Mars song. Bruno, he brings it.

All Hail Bruno Mars - Savior of My Sanity

And through it all, the kids were out there on the floor. Mostly girls, and mostly dancing with each other.

Great album, great cover, great band.

One group of these kids in particular caught my attention. Three girls, all fourteen, all of whom I knew. All wearing what '80s pop-rock band Mr. Mister once referred to as the "Uniform of Youth."

Of course, the uniform continues to change, just as youth itself does.

But in embracing that change, does youth itself actually change? Bear with me while I quote someone a whole lot smarter than I on the matter:

"Kids today love luxury. They have terrible manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love to gab instead of getting off their butts and moving around."

The guy quoted (in translation) was Socrates, quoted by his pupil Plato, 2,400 years ago.

And some things never change.

Getting back to the three girls mentioned above, their "uniform of youth" was the one au courant in malls and school courtyards across the length and breadth of this country: too-tight jeans, short-sleeved or sleeveless t-shirts, tennis-shoes. They looked a whole lot like so many other girls their age, out there shaking it in ways that mothers the world over would not approve of.

In other words, they looked like thousands, hell, millions of American girls out there running around today, listening to watered down pablum foisted on them by a rapacious, corporate-bottom-line-dominated music industry as "good music", for which they pay entirely too much of their loving parents' money, and to which they will constantly shake way too much of what Nature gave them–even under the vigilant eyes of long-suffering school staff members.

Yep, American girls. From the soles of their sneakers to the hijabs covering their hair.

Oh, right. Did I mention that these girls were Muslims? Well, they are. One from Afghanistan. One from Turkmenistan, and one from Sudan. At least two of them are political refugees.

You see, I teach in one of the most diverse school districts in the nation. One of the main reasons for this ethnic diversity is that there is a refugee center in my district. The center helps acclimate newcomers to the United States and then assists in resettling them; some in my district, some across the country.

So in this campaign season, when I hear some orange-skinned buffoon talking trash about Muslims, stirring up some of my fellow Americans with talk of the dangerous "foreign" *other*, it rarely squares with the reality I've witnessed first-hand getting to know Muslim families and the children they have sent to my school to get an education: something the kids tend to take for granted (because, you know, they're kids, and hey, kids don't change). Something for which their parents have sacrificed in ways that I, a native-born American descendant of a myriad of immigrant families, can scarcely imagine.

(And it ought to go without saying that this truth holds for the countless Latino families I've known over the years as well.)

I'm not saying they're saints. I'm saying they're people. And they're here out of choice. Whether we like that or whether we don't, they're raising their kids here. And guess what? These kids get more American every day. Regardless of where their birth certificate says they're from.

Just something to think about, as we kick into the final leg of this excruciating election season.

Oh, come on. You didn't think this piece was gonna be just me grousing about kids having lousy taste in music, did ya?

(And they do, but that's really beside the point.)

Seems an appropriate way to tie it all together.

You Have to Start Somewhere

Back in March I started a review of a short story at Little Big Crimes as follows:

What should the opening sentence of a short story do?  The only thing it must do is make you want to read the second sentence. But it can do so much more.  For instance:

* It can set the mood.

* It can tell you something about the plot.

* It can introduce one or more characters.

I then provided the first sentence of the story I was examining, "Come Forth and Be Glad in the Sun," by Mat Coward.

"Of all the people we have ever kidnapped, you are by far the rudest."

Lovely.  But thinking about what I wrote I remembered that way back in 2009 I and some of the other bloggers at Criminal Brief created lists of our favorite opening lines from our own short stories.  I decided to update it.  So here are some of my best opening gambits from 2010 on.

Stephen Shane's gun went off twice while he was cleaning it, accidentally killing his wife and her lover.

The best day of my life started when I got arrested.

What am I?

Dr. Rayford Mason Pantell, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., current holder of the Lorenzen Endowed Chair for Biology, stared down at the naked corpse of his graduate student, Natalie Corsuch.

I am often asked who is responsible for what the Fourth Estate refers to as my “career in crime.”

When Domici walked into the office , Coyle stepped out from behind the door and hit him with a sap.

The Encyclopedia of American Race Riots.

Sean was running late even before he ran into the corpse.

"What is it," Leopold Longshanks asked, "about women and bad boys?"

The drunk made a speech as he climbed on board the All Nighter bus, explaining at the top of his lungs that he was Patrick X. Sorley, multimillionaire hedge fund manager, and the first thing he was going to do bright and early the next day when he returned to his corner office high above Montgomery Street would be arrange for the firing of the bartender who had taken his car keys and then kicked him out after pouring only one more measly bourbon.

 When Randolph was six years old he discovered he could control gravity.

Tourists wandered down the Ramblas like sheep waiting to be fleeced. 

 Lorrimer didn't realize he was in a fight until the little man kicked him.

Leopold Longshanks blamed it on a terrorist plot.

"Here's the story," said the man who's name was probably not Richard.

 

Wipe Out

Michael, standing at the ShortCon 2025
registration table moments before
attendees arrived.

“Banzai Pipeline,” published May 23 by Kelp Journal, is one of the stories I used during my presentation at ShortCon 2025 as an example of writing a story for an anthology submission call, but finishing well past the deadline.

At the conference, I presented “Writing for Anthologies: How to Slip Between the Covers,” which was an overview of the various types of anthologies, how they are conceived and assembled, things writers can do to improve the odds of acceptance, and what to do with stories that didn’t make the cut.

And I veered a bit off-track when I briefly discussed “Banzai Pipeline,” a story that exists because of an anthology’s open call for submissions but was never submitted to that anthology.

A while back there was a call for crime fiction short stories inspired by musical one-hit wonders, and I wondered what song with the fewest number of words in its lyrics could inspire a story. The answer was:

Two. Two words.

I chose The Safari’s “Wipe Out.”

(The Champs’s “Tequila,” with a single word repeated three times, might be an even greater challenge.)

The sound of a breaking surfboard, followed by a maniacal laugh and someone shouting, “Wipe Out,” provided both the setting and the inciting incident for my story.

Writing the opening proved easy enough. The surfer who wiped out dies, his girlfriend thinks he was murdered, and the private eye she hires to investigate knows nothing about surfing.

Then I wiped out. The wave of inspiration collapsed beneath me, I found myself floundering, and the file remained unfinished on my computer as I moved on to other projects.

One day, while falling into a research rabbit hole for another project, I discovered “Hawaii: Black Royalty in the Pacific,” and what I read upended everything I thought I knew about the ethnicity of our 50th state.

And I knew what my story was about, and knew it wasn’t just about investigating a possible murder.

I finished the story, changed the title from “Wipe Out” to “Banzai Pipeline” and submitted it to various publications until it found a home with Kelp Journal.

Michael, pontificating about
anthologies at ShortCon 2025.

NOT THE FIRST TIME

Something similar happened with “Denim Mining” (AHMM, May/June 2023).

I had already begun writing “Denim Mining” when the 2019 Bouchercon in Dallas announced that the theme of their anthology was denim and diamonds. Incorporating diamonds into the story I had already begun was no problem. Unfortunately, as with “Banzai Pipeline,” the wave of inspiration collapsed when I ran into a problem.

The solution, in this case, wasn’t diving down a research rabbit hole, but help from fellow SleuthSayer Leigh Lundin. He provided a few suggestions as well as information about gunpowder that gave me what I needed to finish the story.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lesson I intended to impart at ShortCon when I shared the story of “Banzai Pipeline” is to never give up on a good story even if the inspiring project’s submission window ends before you finish writing.

And if you do finish your story in time, and it gets rejected, keep it circulating. That’s what fellow SleuthSayer Joseph Walker did with “Give or Take a Quarter of an Inch,” rejected from the same Boucheron anthology to which I had intended to submit “Demin Mining.” He placed it with Tough, it was selected for inclusion in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year, and then it was reprinted in The Saturday Evening Post.

So, how about you? Have you missed a submission deadline and still sold the resulting story? Or has a story rejected by the editor of a themed anthology later appeared in a better market or received recognition?

“Yes I have them, them walkin’ blues.” Taj Mahal

            I like mysteries and thrillers where the good guys win and the bad guys lose.  I think this is true for most readers.  I know there’s a market for noir stories that end up ambiguously, or with evil overcoming earnest virtue, but I’m not interested in that stuff.  I find it depressing, or vaguely sociopathic.  And no fun whatsoever.

             That happy endings are far more common than stories with decent people being ground into dust suggests that most people are inherently good, because they want stories that reinforce their beliefs and hopes for humankind.

            This is my happy thought and I’m sticking with it.

            I know that evil exists in the world and that bad things happen to good people all the time.  I don’t need books I read as escapism to remind me of that.  I really don’t know the ultimate score card of good vs. evil – who’s had the upper hand, historically.  But since, despite our travails, the world has evolved mostly to the betterment of the human population, a reasonable guess is that the good guys have the edge. 

Movie critics seem to think there’s something intellectually deficient in a person who prefers happy endings.  This explains why so many Scandinavian movies are critically acclaimed.  As if dreary settings, low light, crystalline ice hanging off scruffy beards and babies frozen in the snow delivers some deeper understanding of the human condition.  If that’s so, they can have it. 

         I can imagine some thinking, “Life isn’t just a Disney movie.”  Have you seen Dumbo or Bambi lately?  Old Yeller? You want to talk about grim and depressing.  And Walt wasn’t even Scandinavian, as far as I know. 

            Moral ambiguity is another thing, though how it resolves decides the question for me.  In The Maltese Falcon, the most important modern detective novel, spawning the subsequent Bogart movie, we really don’t know where Sam Spade comes down on the probity scale until the end.  I and others have maintained forever that Hammet was richly influenced by Hemingway’s anti-heroes – cynical lads with robust vices who only reveal their essential morality when the drama starts to wrap up.  (The best movie version of this ethic is Casablanca, another film with Humphrey Bogart.)

            It’s sort of a triangulation.  Good and evil can only be explicated in opposition to each other.  The third point in the diagram is how one feels about what’s being contested.  The pessimists who want to be affirmed by evil’s triumph, and their cousins who delight in destruction and despair, have plenty of stuff out there to enjoy.  Have at it.  It’s just not for me.  I reject the notion that this work represents the full extent of our experience on earth, that it reveals some regrettable, but inevitable reality.  Or that this sensibility conveys upon the believer some greater intellectual facility, suggesting people like me are too dim witted to appreciate the underlying certainty of a dark existence.

            Just for the record, I’m also not a fan of pure Pollyanna.  I find it treacly and nauseating.  Everyone but me and a small, surly coterie of old curmudgeons loved the Barbie movie.  Ick.  While I cleave to the belief that humanity tilts toward the positive, at least in our hopes and desires, unfettered optimism is delusional.  The facts on the ground say there are nuances, and lots more grey than black and white, and that every day is a contest that requires clear thinking and resolve. 

           

        As a musician for most of my life, I’ve had the privilege of playing a lot of the blues.  I think underlying these compositions is a way to navigate the teetering balance of suffering and joy.  Bad things happen, which you have to face up to, but then again, there are other things along the way that can lift your spirits, even in the midst of pain.  The texture of the music itself reflects the mood of this conflicted sentiment.  It’s soulful, but fun, inspiring sorrow and contentment in equal measure.    

            “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all”, according to Albert King, who still managed to wink at us through the lament.