A SHORT YEAR AFTER

by James Lincoln Warren

Pop open a piccolo of champers, unscrew the lid off a tiny tin of caviar, and help yourself to some baby brie on a water cracker.

Today marks the beginning of Criminal Brief‘s 53rd week; by the lunar calendar it’s our first birthday. Our solar birthday is on Wednesday, but Rob asked me to do the birthday honors, although I reckon he’ll have something to say about it—who could resist?—so I have obliged. Thus, Criminal Brief Day has become a movable feast, henceforward, the first Monday in May, concurrent with May Day in the U.K. and the Crown dependencies.

A birthday is not just a time for celebration, though: it is a time for reflection. And reflection implies a mirror.

I had the honor of serving as the chairman of the committee tasked with selecting the 2007 Edgar winner and nominees for Best Biographical or Critical Work. In my remarks to the assembled banquet guests last Thursday, I made the following comments (more or less—at least this is what I intended to say, but when the spotlight is shining in your eyes and you are speaking without notes as I prefer to do, that searing illumination can interfere with the connection between brain and tongue somewhat):

Crime fiction is a literature of behavior, and as such, it is a reflection of society; not only of conflicts between individuals, but also of the conflicts between individuals and the very fabric of society. But to truly understand what we see in the looking glass, it is not enough to scrutinize the image before us—we also have to examine the mirror itself. That is the job of our critics and historians. They are the true detectives, the ones who shed light on dark and hidden things and make the obscure clear.

Now, of course I was speaking in the context of formal literary criticism and scholarship, and CB is at heart essentially informal. But the idea of mysteries being a reflection of society applies to every context I can think of, and anyway is hardly original with me—it is virtually a cliché. But clichés frequently survive because they are apt. And in any case, my point was not that mystery fiction is a mirror, but rather how the mirror itself influences the reflection one sees. A concave mirror shows every pore and flaw in one’s complexion. A fun house mirror distorts images in such a way that one sees things, sometimes worrying things, that one never noticed before. A cracked mirror broadcasts several images at once, each a little different than its neighbors, every one with its own perspective. A mirror obscured with dirt or moisture removes edges and blurs colors and hides what is actually there, like a skilled prevarication.

Criminal Brief is about such a mirror, and in one sense, it is such a mirror. For a number of metaphorical reasons which I won’t go into right now, I think short fiction is a compact or vanity mirror, but if this feminine image disturbs our male contributors, then they are free to think of it as a pocket mirror instead.

CB was conceived as a rotating series of daily essays advocating mystery short stories–especially my own stories, he said, blushing madly. I had tried this several times before without notable success. “The Scribbler”, my weekly column, is in its third incarnation under that name, and it had other predecessors as well. The reason it never worked, of course, was a veritable Catch-22: being a short story author meant that my profile was too low to use a web log to raise my profile.

Then the idea hit me that all I really needed was to spread the wealth, to gather together a group of writers whose work I respected, to make a magazine out of it, a collection, an anthology. That’s how short stories are read, after all. It is a strategy that has worked very well for mid-list novelists. Why not us short storyists? So I pitched the idea to Rob Lopresti and we both went to work gathering regular contributors. The next person I asked was Melodie Johnson Howe, a woman I disagree with on almost every conceivable subject but whose writing I worship and adore. Leigh Lundin was next—I had read his comments on The Mystery Place Readers’ Forum and thought that as a novice of great promise he would act as a good balance to those of us with some longevity.

Many we asked declined, most politely pleading lack of time and others candidly stating they had zero interest in the concept, but eventually we put together a group that was about as diverse as possible. (Although I still regret that to this day we have no regular contributor among persons of color, albeit not through want of trying, I assure you.) Obviously, though, four people were not enough for the critical mass we needed.

But then Deborah Elliott-Upton, with whom I had been corresponding for years, came to my consciousness in one of those “I could have had a V-8” moments—she was absolutely made for Criminal Brief—and not only did she improve the male/female balance, but she came to the subject matter with a radically different perspective than the rest of us, being first and foremost an instructor—and I must confess it was not lost on me that she already had something of a fan base.

Now we were five. I figured we needed six and could use the seventh day not so much as a rest from our labors, but as a guest spot. I know many prominent writers and I felt confident I could get them to contribute once in a while.

But who could fill that last slot? Who?

I first met Steve Steinbock at Bouchercon in Chicago in 2005. We were introduced to each other either by Janet Hutchings or Linda Landrigan (with the comment, “You two really should know each other”). We became instantaneous friends, promised to correspond, and of course I immediately lost his email address when I got back to L.A. I didn’t see him again until last year, during the Edgar Symposium, when we both listened to Charles Ardai’s interview with the MWA Grand Master-elect Steven King. Steven (Steven Steinbock, that is) lined up to get King’s autograph and accosted me as I was leaving. I smiled, not really registering who it was, told him how good it was to see him, and walked out. I got about twenty feet away when the penny dropped, and I said to myself, “That was Steve. Steve Steinbock. One of the most erudite and voluminous minds in all of mystery fandom. He knows more than the rest of us combined. As a critic and collector, he’ll see things the rest of us will miss. And I know he loves short stories with a passion. HE’S PERFECT! But will he do it?”

It turns out that he would.

And then we were six. And all six of us are still here.

On Monday, May 7, 2007, we went live. By June, we were getting two thousand hits a day. Our biggest month was last January, when we had 7750 on average every day. These days we usually we get about 5000.

But although the child had been born, it still had to grow up a little.

I soon found that trying to line up a guest column every week was taking up far too much time, and so I asked my partners if they would consent to adding a seventh regular. (I may be a verbose egomaniac, but I am a democratic verbose egomaniac. Nothing, or almost nothing, substantive happens to CB without everyone’s consent, since we all put our names to it.)

Enter Angela Zeman, another friend of mine of several years standing I had somehow overlooked, probably because I stupidly thought of her more as one half of “My Friends the Zemans” than as an accomplished author, even though of course I knew she was an accomplished author. And again, someone who exactly suited our needs magically appeared. Sadly, Angela had to bow out after less than four months because of health problems, but she’s on the mend now and I’ve told her she has a permanent home with us any time she wants. (If she takes me up on it, “The Scribbler” will become an ad hoc feature like “Mystery Masterclass”, although probably more frequent, which might also help relieve some of the stress our stalwart contributors endure while coming up with a column every week, which is greater than you might think.) Her husband Barry, the eminent mystery genre historian, filled in for Angela for several weeks until I could find someone to take over permanently—and by so bravely pinch-hitting, and with such grace and style, Barry also became a permanent contributor as far as I’m concerned.

I was unhappy with the original graphics, featuring a tan background meant to evoke a manila folder with a blood splatter on it, over which I had imposed a 3D logo in a Courier-style typeface. It was too busy, too distracting. So I designed a new, austere one in black and white using my thumbprint and a crude teletype typeface. Much better. Finally, I replaced my original abstract maroon wallpaper with legal pads. Leigh hates those legal pads but Melodie loves them—something we do agree on—and since Melodie is so much better-looking than Leigh, they’re staying. I think that’s fair.

But we were not yet done.

The last brick was put in place when we acquired John M. Floyd as our regular Saturday correspondent. John and I had had stories in a couple magazines together back in the Cathleen Jordan days at AHMM, and I knew he’d shared credit with Deborah in a recent anthology, so there was a slight connection—but what hooked me was his independent writing about the mystery short story at various spots on line. His views were informed, articulate, and tailor-made for our purposes. So I asked him aboard. I was pretty sure he would politely decline—John is nothing if not polite—and I was thrilled when he said yes. It meant that the women were now outnumbered five to two, but that was unavoidable. And anyway they’re smarter than we are.

So that is how the mirror was made, glazed and polished.

But has it worked? Is the mirror any good?

What does it show you?

You tell us. But please, between sips of champagne, nibbles of caviar, and bites of good cheese. It’s our birthday and we’re celebrating, and you’re invited.