Before introducing today’s column, I’d like to call your attention to a new feature of the website, Petition the Court, at right in the Sidebar. Leigh pointed out to all of us that it’s been some time since the regular contributors all joined in a common project or thread. After a lot of discussion, we decided that we would ask you, our readers, if there are any topics you would like all (eight) of us to tackle over the period of a week. Petition the Court is the means to do this. Click on the link and you will be redirected to a webpage email form where you can suggest topics you’d like to see us address. The generated email will be simultaneously sent to all of us for our consideration.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

As a St. Valentine’s Day gift to the Gentle Reader, I am pleased to announce that we’ve added another regular columnist to our line up. Henceforward, Janice Law will be alternating columns with me on Mondays. Those of you who read Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen are no doubt already familiar with her excellent short stories; others may be familiar with her critically acclaimed Anna Peters series of mystery novels. When I asked her to blurb (sorry about that, Steve) her accomplishments for this introduction, she modestly wrote:

“Janice Law’s short stories frequently appear in AHMM and EQMM. Her collection of her earlier stories, Blood in the Water and Other Secrets, has just been released by Wildside Press.”

Please welcome Janice and our new column, Spirit of the Law (with apologies to Montesquieu!).

—JLW

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES

by Janice Law

I’ve just had the interesting experience of readying a collection of my earlier short stories for print, and as a novelist who writes short stories, rather than a short story writer who writes novels, I’ve been wondering about the differences in the characters of each genre.

I’ve concluded that while, with few exceptions, characters in novels are friends, short story protagonists are acquaintances, and none the worse for that. Think about it: if you write a novel, you’re going to be living with the main characters for nine months or so (unless you’re Georges Simenon) and maybe much longer. Better love them, and better hope that they are people who grow and keep growing as long as you need them. If not, you’re in for some very long days at the writing desk.

The inhabitants of one’s short stories are a different matter. Like Jane Austen’s lovers, who are ushered off stage as soon as they are married, the protagonists of short mystery fiction need only to hang around until they are dead, caught, or triumphant. Usually one of those options overtakes them within 15 pages, and one need never worry about them again.

Of course, one can speculate. Were the young couple in my Bluebeard story, “The Paradise Garden,” destined for happiness? I don’t know, but I’m hopeful for them. On the other hand, the lucky young woman in “The Helpful Stranger” may find her new life no more satisfactory than her old. Do I know for sure? No way. They have not confided in me any further.

But if our relationship has definite parameters, it is not necessarily superficial. I know a lot about the obsessive producer of “Perfection” and I don’t necessarily want to know more. I find him, frankly, unsympathetic, although like all of my characters he represents some facet of my personality. Lets face it, some people we just don’t want to spend a lot of time with.

And yet, for the mystery writer, long form or short, these are just the folks essential to our business. The solution, sometimes, is to go short. I constructed a psychopathic college student once, whom I didn’t like at all, but who enlivened a story called “Lying” immensely. A whole novel with Bren would have strained my good nature. But in 14 pages or so with a different narrator, I’d have to say she fit the bill.

Of course, as in this case, one needn’t use a disagreeable person as narrator, although that can be very effective. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine recently ran a story called “The Writing Workshop,” which contains good and standard advice on writing, although the instructor is not all he might be.

In general, though, I prefer to approach evil at an angle, and while my stories are about crimes, rather than detection, bad things often happen just a little to one side. What really interests me is not the mechanics of crime—the spatter of blood, the caliber of weapon, or even the logic of the investigator—but the great narrative questions of why did something happen and what were the consequences.

For this reason I have indulged in a wide variety of characters, male and female, young and old, rich, poor, educated or not, and matched them up with a fair range of homicides. The latter come straight from that great friend of the crime novelist, the press. The means are a given, usually, and my job is to come up with characters who will bring the story to life.

They rarely resemble their actual prototypes, and I find that one only needs a certain amount of information. Too much and the Muse gets swamped by reality. Sometimes, too, it takes a good long time for the story to come together. Ellery Queen ran a story of mine last year called “The City of Radiant Brides” based loosely on a multiple shooting at a Connecticut garage.

I’d cut the story out immediately. Then it sat in my notebook for several years while I considered the right point of view and cast about for the right character: Shooter? Victim? Mobster behind the hit? Nothing worked until I focused on the woman in the case. And she didn’t work, either, until I realized that she was a thwarted romantic longing for the City of Radiant Brides, AKA the celebrity world of TV, tabloids, and the net. Then the story pretty much wrote itself.

Could I have done a whole novel with her? I don’t think so. Her obsession with the princes and princesses of pop culture was fun for a couple of pages but would have proved a strain at length, celebrity websites and People Magazine not being my particular guilty pleasure. A whole book about her would have turned into work and not particularly congenial work.

I enjoyed her while I wrote the story. She was fun to know and she surprised me at least once, the sign of a good character. But she was an acquaintance, not a friend, and I haven’t the faintest idea of what became of her after she walked out of the story.

WHY? WHY? WHY NOT?

by Leigh Lundin

Thursday, Deborah listed questions readers (and apparently non-readers) asked. John and James have written about readers’ questions, and I think Melodie may have.

Wait! Nobody asks me! But that might be my own fault when my writing turns dark.

Deborah’s questions intrigued me to vicariously respond.

• Why should we still be reading old-fashioned books when technology is throwing entertainment at us faster than we can understand all the apps before a new and improved model is announced?
  1. Betcha authors fatten electronic copy with iPadding.
  2. Orlando represents a microcosm of a larger problem: The city couldn’t keep a symphony. It couldn’t keep an opera. It can’t even keep an NPR classical music FM station. I began to realize a rule: People confuse entertainment with culture.
  3. In the 1970s and 1980s, studies determined television was an insidiously passive form of entertainment. Unlike reading, music, sporting events, stage plays, and even movies, television shut down parts of the mind. ‘Vegging’ was more accurate than viewers realized. Now parents worry about nimble-fingered game-playing children with sluggish metabolisms. Likely a few decades from now, their descendants will worry about offspring with brain implants in immersive entertainment worlds. It’s part of the cycle of nulife.
  4. So why books? They have substance. They have texture. They have scent. They have 600 years of tradition. I don’t think readers have a thing to worry about, but authors might.
  5. Velma: Shhh! I’m using my new Xoom.

• Why are some people allowed to change a revered author’s masterpieces just because they think they have a reason to censor some of the wording that was popular at the time the novel was written?
  1. Call them unwriters.
  2. They’re not allowed, they just do whatever the hell they like, but they sometimes manage to infect libraries and communities.
  3. Some people feel compelled to neuter: dogs, cats, horses, authors, morning talk show hosts.
  4. The most egregious modern case is that of Andrew Schlafly, who decided the Bible didn’t suit his agenda, parts of the Bible were a ‘hoax’, and he’d brew his own version. When floods and famine and locusts didn’t appear, he took that as a sign to proceed. His efforts make bastardizations of Twain pale by comparison.

• Why read mystery or crime fiction at all? Isn’t it non-fiction books that educate us?
  1. Velma: It’s a crime if you don’t read fiction, buster!
  2. Lightning might strike with another mention of the Bible, but much of it contains stories, fiction called parables that teach a lesson. I used to detest the Book of Job, but I think it was Rabbi Harold Kushner‘s When Bad Things Happen to Good People, who pointed out what should have been obvious– Job is a parable. The story was a lesson disguised as a story. So yes, some fiction is mindless entertainment, but other fiction delves into questions of life, death, and the universe.

• Why are some really great authors not selling as much as they used to do?
  1. Dunno. I thought John Floyd was selling more than ever.

• Why do mystery writers write about crime? Isn’t it terribly depressing writing about bad things happening?
  1. We tried writing Deborah Anne MacGillivray romances, but she kept killing off her readers.
  2. It can be relieving when a story grabs wickedness by the throat and whips it into submission.
  3. Alternatively… Say a crime novel introduces a character, Paree H, a blonde gossip columnist who sucks (used advisedly) the soul out of civilization. Enter über-villain Revengo who kidnaps and fertilizes acres of Napa Valley with the character. Already, we have a feel-good story and we haven’t gotten to the good part. Lincoln Rhyme might choose to sit this one out.

• Won’t writing crime stories just show someone how to commit a crime and get away with it since you’ll tell how they get caught?
  1. See Revengo above. (heh heh)
  2. Oh, c’mon. Aren’t more criminals caught thanks to mystery writers pointing out loopholes? I’m sure far fewer criminals read than the general public.
  3. Mothball Homeland Security and turn the MWA loose on the bad guys. As they used to say, Don’t ƒ with the Falcon!

• Why read when we can just wait for the movie — if the book’s really any good?
  1. Because SpongeBob needs the money.
  2. If nobody buys a good book, it’s unlikely to break through in Hollywood or New York. Besides, the book is usually far better and, unlike a movie, gives the author’s true view unfiltered by screenwriters’ notions.
  3. Velma: Don’t read or watch the movies if your lips move.

• Why do writers always think so much different than the rest of us? You guys are kinda crazy.
  1. Well, yes!

• You said the book was finished a month ago, so why can’t I find it at the book store yet?
  1. Publishers procrastinate worse than I.

• When are you going to write a real book? You know, one that Oprah would like?
  1. I’ve been working on The Color Violet.

• What made you think you could be a writer?
  1. After reading a ‘mystery’ in which the protagonist had an advanced degree in nuclear physics (but never demonstrated or used), owned a "fabulous Fifth Avenue dress boutique", and opened a seaside house in New England (with an address convenient for bad guys to find), I realized my brothers and I (with ages in single digits) made up better stories in the middle of the night camping in the back yard.
  2. No, the thought didn’t cross my mind I could be a writer, but I was obsessed with the thought of wanting to write. A woman on the telly said her husband ruined her life because he wouldn’t let her go to Hollywood to achieve her dream as an actress. The talk show host asked her if she craved the spotlight and glamor of Hollywood or the desire to act. "The desire to act," she said, and all of us knew she was lying. That makes a difference… the real difference with any goal.
  3. Velma: Would such be WINOs? Writers in name only?

What questions do you have for the Criminal Brief help desk?

COLLECTIBLES

by John M. Floyd

Since I know most of you enjoy not only short stories in magazines and anthologies but collections of shorts by well-known authors, I thought I’d mention a few that I have here at home. Most of the books in this list are by mystery/suspense writers — I’ve intentionally left out collections by Hemingway, Maugham, Chekhov, L’Amour, Faulkner, Welty, Twain, Cheever, etc. — but I can’t resist including those by authors like Bradbury, King, and Matheson. Theirs aren’t always tales of crime or mystery, but they’re always long on suspense.

Here are the single-author short-story collections I have on my shelves:

• Twisted, Jeffery Deaver
• Hardly Knew Her, Laura Lippman
• Coronado, Dennis Lehane
• Little Boxes of Bewilderment, Jack Ritchie
• Sometimes They Bite, Lawrence Block
• Like a Lamb to Slaughter, Lawrence Block
• Some Days You Get the Bear, Lawrence Block
• Enough Rope, Lawrence Block
• Jesus Out to Sea, James Lee Burke
• The Convict and Other Stories, James Lee Burke
• The Roald Dahl Omnibus
• Small Felonies, Bill Pronzini
• The Good Old Stuff, John D. MacDonald
• More Good Old Stuff, John D. MacDonald
• For Your Eyes Only, Ian Fleming
• Octopussy, Ian Fleming
• Long Story Short, Jeffrey Archer
• Twelve Red Herrings, Jeffrey Archer
• Driving Blind, Ray Bradbury
• Quicker Than the Eye, Ray Bradbury
• When the Women Come Out to Dance, Elmore Leonard
• The Tonto Woman, Elmore Leonard
• Ford County, John Grisham
• No Comebacks, Frederick Forsyth
• High Cotton, Joe R. Lansdale
• Bumper Crop, Joe R. Lansdale
• Mad Dog Summer, Joe R. Lansdale
• Collected Stories of O. Henry
• Duel, Richard Matheson
• Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Richard Matheson
• The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle
• Night Shift, Stephen King
• Skeleton Crew, Stephen King
• Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Stephen King
• Everything’s Eventual, Stephen King
• Just Past Sunset, Stephen King
• Poachers, Tom Franklin
• Diagnosis: Impossible, Edward Hoch
• The Lonely Sea, Alistair MacLean
• Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories, Agatha Christie
• Field of Thirteen, Dick Francis

That adds up to several hundred stories that will keep you on the edge of your seat, and (when combined with all my novels) several thousand pounds that are probably shifting our house’s foundation closer to the edge of the hill. But I’ll never stop buying and reading collections of shorts. All of them are fun, and a few — Ritchie’s, Block’s, Dahl’s, King’s — rank among the best fiction I’ve read. What are some of your favorite story collections?

I’m a firm believer that you don’t have to be a novelist to shine as a mystery/suspense writer. Hey, sometimes less is better.

Read short and prosper.

A BOUQUET OF STORIES

by Steven Steinbock

Ever wonder where the word anthology came from? Oh come on, admit it. The question has been keeping you up on these cold winter nights. You came to the right place, for in this week’s Bandersnatch dispatch all will be revealed.

Sometime in the first century before the common era (that’s B.C. to the Christians among you) a fellow with the meager name of Meleager from the town of Gadara (in the north of Hellenized Judea) edited a collection of epigrams that was called Anthologia (The Garland) and is known today as The Garland of Meleager.

If it sounds like I’m you up for a shaggy-dog story, I assure you that this is all true. Antho really is Greek for “flower” and logos in this case derives from the verb legein, meaning “to gather.” Thus began a popular genre of Greek writing; collections of sayings, stories, poems, and other miscellanea.

And where would we be without them?

Blurb This

Today I was listening to a recording of Otto Penzler’s anthology of tennis-related crime stories, Murder is my Racket. It’s a good collection so far. I was a little put off, however, by the introduction, a substantial portion of which is given over to blurbs of the various contributors. Why Otto chose not to write simple bios of the writers, I can’t say. Rather than telling us about them, he simply quoted superlative-filled blurbs that various writers had written about each of the contributors.

It’s funny how blurb had become a verb in the publishing world.

I remember when my kindergarten class went to the school library, and the librarian explained to us parts of a book. She opened the book to the front inner dust jacket flap and said, “This is the blurb,” which she then went on to read to us.

At the time I thought it was a silly word. It turns out I was right. Blurb is a totally made-up nonsense word. In a column with the name “Bandersnatches” is seems appropriate that I should be blurbing the origin of this nonsense word:

In 1907, a special edition of Gelett Burgess’s book of humor Are You a Bromide? was released. On the jacket was a goofy photograph of a woman labeled “Miss Belinda Blurb” with the heading: YES, THIS IS A BLURB. The illustration even used the term “blurbing” as a verb and hinted that it was an act of self-promotion that “All the Other Publishers Commit.” Thus the word “blurb” was born.

WHY? WHY? WHY?

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

This week I have nothing but questions. While I ponder them and find a few answers for myself, I pose a series of those that I have been asked concerning writing.

• Why should we still be reading old-fashioned books when technology is throwing entertainment at us faster than we can understand all the apps before a new and improved model is announced?
• Why are some people allowed to change a revered author’s masterpieces just because they think they have a reason to censor some of the wording that was popular at the time the novel was written?
• Why read mystery or crime fiction at all? Isn’t it non-fiction books that educate us?
• Why are some really great authors not selling as much as they used to do?
• Why do mystery writers write about crime? Isn’t it terribly depressing writing about bad things happening?
• Won’t writing crime stories just show someone how to commit a crime and get away with it since you’ll tell how they get caught?
• Why read when we can just wait for the movie — if the book’s really any good?
• Why do writers always think so much different than the rest of us? You guys are kinda crazy.
• You said the book was finished a month ago, so why can’t I find it at the book store yet?
• When are you going to write a real book? You know, one that Oprah would like?
• What made you think you could be a writer?

I wish I could say I have answers to all these questions that would be palatable to everyone who has asked them. I don’t. However, I do have a notebook where I write these down and every once in a while, I take them out and re-read them to see if I have a new insight. As of today, I do not. Many of them make me smile. Some make me shudder and a few make me want to punch someone in the mouth.

Can you guess which reaction belongs to which question?

We have a special treat today. R. T. Lawton has FOUR series of stories running in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. How many people have that many going anywhere? And he writes both light and serious, current and historic, foreign and domestic. Recently we were e-discussing our writing and he made a point I thought was worth sharing with our readers. He graciously consented to do so.
Enjoy.

—Rob Lopresti

VISUAL IMAGES

by R. T. Lawton

We’ve all read stories where a visual image leaped off the printed page and became stuck in our memory or at least found a measure of resonance. One prime example from the past is the wart on the Miller’s nose in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This particular wart had red hairs sticking out of it like bristles. Not a pretty sight, yet it created an unforgettable image for a multitude of students who were required to read Canterbury Tales as part of their English Lit assignment.

No doubt, you have your own images stuck in your head from some story or other which you have read. Go ahead, take a minute to reflect on some of your favorite stories by your favorite authors.

In any case, several centuries ago, whether it was intentional or not, Chaucer wrote a red-hair, bristly wart onto the nose of one of his story characters and it has left a strong visual image in the minds of several generations of readers. This is definitely a good ploy if an author wishes to be remembered for his writing. True, an author has to have more than just a strong visual image in his story in order to be remembered as a good writer, but we’re only talking about visual images for now.

For this blog, I propose that a good visual image is one that resonates in the mind of the reader for whatever reasons. And for simplicity’s sake, I put forth two samples of my own writing as modern day examples, not that I’ll be remembered generations from now.

In my first AHMM series short story, “The Bond That Keeps,” one of the clues for the reader to solve the mystery was a pair of tennis shoes hanging from overhead telephone wires. The dangling shoes were a picture stuck in my mind from the past, so I intentionally wrote that scene into the story. To my surprise, it was also an image already in the minds of several readers. I received lots of comments about how they too had seen tennis shoes hanging from overhead telephone wires, which they remembered upon reading the story. This image resonated with them and provided a personal bond to the story.

In my latest AHMM published series short story, “et tu Valentinus,” I purposely wrote in a Mock Orange potted plant which the main character had stolen for his wife as a Christmas present, but while he was on a Valentine’s Day “romantic cruise” with said wife, his burglary protégé was supposed to take care of this plant back at the apartment and keep it watered. However, in the story, the Mock Orange potted plant keeps showing up in disappearing glimpses on the cruise ship. Yarnell, the main character, sees this potted plant in various places, but before he can approach, it is gone, leaving him wondering.

Of course when the reader hears about the potted plant or the scent of oranges upon the air, he soon realizes that the protégé has sneaked aboard the ship and brought the plant with him. The plant has become a visual image stuck in the reader’s mind as a clue that the protégé is present. In fact, when the artist did an illustration for this story, she included the potted plant. There is another visual image running through the Holiday Burglars series, beginning with the second story, “Grave Trouble,” but I’ll let you find that image on your own and I bet you do. This image also appeared in the same illustration as the plant. Obviously it too resonated with the artist.

Now, for a 2011 Edgar Short Story Nomination example, I give you “Monsieur Alice is Missing” by Stephen E. Ross. As background to the story’s murders, Stephen provides a visual image of the Mona Lisa and refers to an incident where an artist drew a mustache and goatee on a print of the Mona Lisa. Oddly enough, the story’s killer draws a similar mustache and goatee on the face of each of his victims. Now, what reader can’t conjure up an image of the smiling Mona Lisa whenever that name is mentioned? And who hasn’t seen fake mustaches drawn on various photos as a joke? This visual image makes it very easy for the reader to remember the story. Did Stephen do it on purpose? I’ll ask him sometime.

Bottom line, it’s my opinion that a good visual image in a story makes that story more memorable, whether the author does it consciously or not. Readers, what’s your opinion? Authors, is it part of your conscious tradecraft?

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT MY WRITING WHILE WRITING

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Writing short introductions to each of my Diana Poole stories for the book that is now in production, I learned a few things about myself as a writer.

1. I am a very female-centric writer. I’m using the word female instead of woman because the later takes on a political edge. My male characters are strong and well defined, but my stories are about the relationships between women. I knew this, but I didn’t realize how consistent it was. In fact there is only one story, Killing The Sixties, that is about a man.

2. The mother/daughter theme haunts many of my stories in different variations. No matter how hard I try to move away from this, I am drawn back to it.

3. You can ask writers where their ideas come from and they’ll look at you with vacant eyes as if their souls have just left the building. Lining my stories up I was surprise to see that many of my ideas came from listening or eavesdropping. One story was created because I heard a man talking about another man and he used two words—dirty blonde. The man wasn’t talking about this other man’s moral character or hygiene, but his appearance. I turned the male dirty blonde into a female dirty blonde and her moral character became very important. Another short story came about because I overheard a mother and daughter in a department store dressing room arguing over a dress. They were ruthless. And it was the tone of their angry unloving voices that was the catalyst for The Good Daughter. Ephemeral, but it works for me.

4. There is always a dead body; but usually in my creative process the murder is the last thing I think about. Once I am emotionally connected to my characters and have them firmly placed in their own lives, I’m free to ponder what would lead this person to murder or be murdered. Even when describing the catalysts for these stories I had to remind myself to put in the mystery element.

5. What if . . . could any of us write without those two words floating around in our heads? I never realized how important they were.

6. I think a writer, at least this one, has a different facility to remember certain things. I can’t remember telephone numbers, people’s names, grocery lists, keys, etc. But I can remember what people wore and snatches of their conversations from years ago. I think this information has pushed out all the practical things I need to remember, but thank God I don’t write about the practical things

7. A mystery/suspense story needs atmosphere and a sense of place. Mine is Hollywood; but I learned that it’s my ambivalent feeling toward Hollywood that creates the atmosphere. For me the area doesn’t exist except for a sign on a hill. Hollywood is a business not a place.

8. Diana Poole is the closest I have come to capturing myself on paper and yet we are not the same at all. I won’t try to explain it.