Friday, October 24: Bandersnatches
KINKY MUSINGS
by Steve Steinbock
As regular visitors to Criminal Brief probably already know, I’m the only regular CB columnist who hasn’t published short mystery fiction. That’s a personal detail that may change at some point in the future, and regular visitors to Criminal Brief will be amongst the first I’ll tell if it does change.
But the other day, while pondering my various and sordid past, I realized that there was a short story of sorts, and it did find publication – of a sort.
Back in the days when the Internet was a new thing for most of us, when CompuServe and Prodigy were still vying for subscribers, I was a member of America Online. This was mid-1990s. I made a few friends online (and one of them helped jog my memory of this story – thanks, Neal!) and participated in a few forums. One of them was an AOL mystery group established by Mary Frost-Pierson. Mary was the proprietor of brick-and-mortar bookshop Mysteries from the Yard in Yellow Springs, Ohio (the home town of Buffalo Springfield guitarist Richie Furay).
One day Mary posted a contest to see who could write the best Kinky Friedman pastiche. At the time, I was reading a lot of Kinky’s mysteries. I had also recently discovered the historical mysteries of Lindsey Davis featuring Marcus Didius Falco. On an absurd whim, I decided to combine the styles, characters, and settings of the two authors into a 1,700 word-long joke.
I won the contest.
Not only that, Mary showed the story to Kinky, and out of the blue I received a phone call from the Kinkster himself, congratulating me on my fine style. I’m not sure about the style. I was clearly and intentionally ripping-off his. But he appreciated the story, and I hope you get a kick out of it yourself. Enjoy.
>making essene. Good scribes are meant to be essene and not heard.
I love Lindsey Davis who’s probably blanching about now.
Folks, this is the REAL Steve Steinbock. Wait til you hear about the sarcophagus.
Hi Steven -I run a little blog project on Fridays where writers and readers talk about books they think are forgotten or neglected. More than 100 crime writers, reviewers and readers have recommended a book. I wonder if you’d be willing to do one some Friday soon. Your review doesn’t have to be long or complex and you can see the previous six months worth at http://pattinase.blogspot.com
If it’s not your thing or you’re too busy just now, I understand. Best, Patti Abbott
Kinky is better at songwriting, mystery writing and whimsical writing than running for office.
I went to a performance and he was out in front of the building smoking his cigar and said what the h….I can come out here and smoke. I can drink in there. But I can’t do both at the same time.
I just laughed and said welcome to the Bible Belt of Texas.
He is an extremely witty man. I personally would have loved to have seen what he could’ve done for my state.
Maybe I could smoke and drink at concerts? Who knows.
Enjoyed your Kinky piece too. 🙂
Leigh – the REAL Steve Steinbock, huh? If I were you I’d watch my step this Halloween. (I’ll have to tell you about some of my other reckless exploits some other time).
BTW, thanks to JLW for formatting my story and converting it to a PDF. Jim cleverly appended the the word EXPLICIT to the end of my story to add a patina of antiquity. Once upon a time, before authors resorted to the abrupt “The End,” books, scrolls, and stories often closed with the words explicitus est liber, meaning “the book is unfolded” (i.e. “there you have it, folks, the story is finished”) or explicit (“unfolded”) for short.
Well, there you have it, folks.
I first encountered “Explicit” marking the end of a story many years ago in The Way of Ecben, a book by James Branch Cabell, a wonderful writer who once sat in the pantheon of American letters but has now largely fallen into an undeserved obscurity.
I used it myself to close “The Warcoombe Witch” (which, by the way, has excited more comment than any story of mine except “Black Spartacus” — I am very gratified by its reception and thank all of you for your kind words) and Linda Landrigan actually printed it in AHMM. Its use for Steve’s deathless prose seemed wholly appropriate.
Regarding your reply to my column. Where else would you eat turkey but in a Turkey cafe?
I loved your Kinky satire.
Whoa, Steve-o. Loved your Kinky piece.
And to think I’d never heard of a Maltese Falco.
Thanks everyone.
Melodie, here’s what happened in Baltimore: you thought you were ordering a Maltese Turkey, but under the skin it was made of lead.
Sounds like it was made in China.
Oh my Stevo. I had forgotten all about that story. I seem to remember that the Kinkster not only called you but sent you something? My only brush with Mr Kinky was seeing him sing with his Texas Jewboys at a cowboy bar in Manhattan during the 80’s. Oh those were the dayos.
I’ll have to stop back in later and read the story but just for the record I love Kinky. He always makes me laugh and I even voted for him when he ran for governor here in Texas.
His campaign slogan was … Why the Hell not?