GARDEN PLOT

by James Lincoln Warren

A couple weeks ago Rob gave us an insight into how his creativity gets kick-started. I guess it’s fair to say that the concept for a story has a point of inception from which it subsequently germinates.

Planting the seed, though, is not enough to make sure that an idea grows to maturity and bears fruit. There’s a lot of care to be taken along the way, fertilizing, pruning, watering, and just plain waiting for things to pop out of the ground.

Like Rob, I’m a slow writer, and I spend a lot more time refining what I write than putting it down in the first place. Things need to come together in my head, and there’s no rushing the process. Over the years, though, I’ve learned a few important things about the way my story-telling brain works:

(1) The initial seed of my story’s plot may not be the best idea in the plot. The great ideas usually flow from lesser ideas, because I’ve noticed that

(2) My best ideas come to me either when I’m in the middle of doing research or when I’m physically writing. They usually turn whatever I’m working on in a completely different direction from what I originally envisioned, although the destination is usually the same, because

(3) If I start writing a story without a clear idea of how it’s supposed to end, I’ll never finish it. My problem is never how does this story end? It is always how do I get to the end of the story from here?

So let’s grab our garden spade and our shears and all our other implements, and make a story grow.

The first thing we have to do is look at is the seed itself. What kind of plant is it? The kernel of a novel is going to take a lot longer to grow than the seed of a short story. The nature of the idea tells us how much care we’re going to have to take with it, and may give some indication of how long we’ll have to nurture it, although this is never certain. Sometimes you can look at the seed and have no idea what it is: it could be anything from a tulip to a sequoia. You won’t be able to tell until it has started to grow.

As Rob noted, ideas can come from anywhere. Sometimes it’s a something that you’ve known for a long time, but never noticed before.

Like this: cashew nuts never come with shells. In fact, I don’t know anybody who has ever even seen a cashew’s nutshell. Do you?

There must be a mystery in there somewhere. Something I can turn into a crime. A tale that hinges on the nutshells of cashews. Maybe the cashews are a clue. Maybe they’re the solution to the crime. Maybe they are the crime.

Now the seed sprouts and starts to develop. One thing, though, is obvious. We are dealing with food. Crimes involving food lead off into some specific directions. Maybe our detective is a chef, a caterer, or a gourmet. Maybe our villain is a chef, a caterer, or a gourmet. One story element that immediately suggests itself is a meal. Meals are good for mysteries: they are social events that often involve a baroque interplay among those present. A meal may be a formal occasion, or it may be a peace offering or demilitarized zone between aggrieved parties. It may a casual meeting between two close friends in the kitchen. Maybe there’s poison lurking in the salad or dessert.

There doesn’t have to be a meal, of course. The plot may involving smuggling drugs or diamonds or pre-Columbian artifacts among the cashews. Oh. Didn’t I mention that cashews only come from Brazil?

Well, they do. I know that because after I got the idea of using cashews, I started my research. Research does two things: first, it provides verisimilitude. Secondly, it gives you, or at least me, new ideas. Now that I’ve learned that the reason cashews never come with shells is because cashew shells contain an allergenic phenolic resin, anacardic acid, which is similar to the urushiol oil found in poison ivy, all sorts of possibilities open up. What looks like a poison ivy rash may be from contact with cashew shells. Now we even have a good shot at misdirection, which is always a good thing in a mystery story.

Now how do we use the rash? All right, maybe our victim is a chef, a caterer, or a gourmet. He’s murdered, strangled (we’ve decided against poison, because it’s too obvious for a foodie mystery), and he has an allergic rash on his arms. He has no known enemies, but we know he’s fond of traipsing off in the woods to find mushrooms. So the assumption is that he was out in the woods gathering mushrooms and accidentally brushed some poison ivy during his arboreal jaunt. But in fact, our victim discovered that the villain was smuggling cashews in their shells, and discovered the cache of cashews in the bonded warehouse. Once the villain’s secret was known to the victim, the victim was doomed. But the villain has made a fatal mistake: the only thing is that I haven’t a clue as to what it is yet. But I’m on the track. Maybe it’s that he has a passport stamp from Brazil in his passport. Or maybe that’s a red herring.

All right, I admit, it needs work, and if I were actually going to write a story about cashews I wouldn’t have brought it up here. I’m just showing how a story requires nurturing, how it grows in the telling, and how it can unexpectedly and fortunately take a different direction than one might originally have planned. That happens to me a lot—I’m typing away when I suddenly come up with a better idea than the one I had my heart set on. I’ve been treating it as a cucumber when it’s really a watermelon. Of course, I get worse ideas, too, but they all go into the compost heap.

Um, is anybody else hungry?

A FISTFUL of VALOR

by Leigh Lundin

Today, meet a heroine. Her name is Marisol Valles García, a 20-year-old criminology student. She’s the new police chief of Praxedis G. Guerrero in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico (near Ciudad Juarez and Guadalupe) a law officer who doesn’t carry a gun but packs two personal bodyguards.

I’m wryly fond of bad criminal news items, the inexplicable, the incomprehensible, the inexcusable. This time, I write about the intrepid, Chief Marisol and her nineteen officers, half of them newly recruited women. The town is launching a new effort in the region with the highest murder rate in the nation where police stations remain shuttered if not shattered.

God knows they have their work cut out for them and one hell of a dangerous job. They grasp the risks: intimidation, corruption, betrayal, injury, torture, death. If she gives in to bribery, she loses respect as a heroine. If she’s incautious, she loses her life.

Painting over the bullet holes that pockmark the police station is merely symbolic. Officers are mindful the previous police chief was murdered, leaving open for more than a year a job no one else wanted. Ms García’s professor, Dante Haro at the University of Guadalajara, said getting elected as mayor or police chief "is like winning a tiger in a raffle."

At the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, Professor Miguel Sarre, was even less sanguine. "Let’s hope it is not a reckless act on her part. A municipal police force cannot protect itself against such powerful forces." Likely, media attention makes her more of a target but– not that drug gangs are renowned for subtlety– her death would provoke ever greater outrage.

Four years earlier, President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels. The battle has been brutal. In the frenzy to feed America’s ravenous appetite for cocaine, the death toll approaches thirty thousand. Mayors and police have been specifically targeted, some beheaded, some tortured to death. Three weeks ago, Tancítaro’s mayor Gustavo Sánchez was found beaten to death, his hands tied behind his back. Elected in January, he’d said, "The fear is always there, but if you have courage and a desire to make a contribution, that outweighs the fear."

Before the war on drugs, Marisol’s town was once a quiet rural population of nine thousand. Presently two rival cartels, the Juarez and the Sinaloa drug gangs, fight for control of the nearby highway, a deadly Thunder Road. Residents hide in their houses from fear. Violent death lurks day and night. In the hour before finishing this article, a gang attacked yet another house of innocents in Ciudad Juarez, killing several children at a birthday party.

The town’s lionhearted mayor, Jose Luis Guerrero, knows the risks of being a public official. Eleven mayors have been murdered in recent months. After they recently took refuge in nearby Ciudad Juarez, the mayor of Distrito Bravos and the assistant mayor of El Porvenir were tracked down and killed. Undeterred, Guerrero reached out to the community. Marisol García reached back. She said,

"I took the risk because I want my baby son to live in a different community to the one we have today. I want people to be able to go out without fear. We’re all afraid in Mexico now. We can’t let fear beat us."

I celebrate their stout souls. While many authors write about the big city, I like writing about small town sheriffs and police chiefs, ‘untouchables’ on a local scale, the small heroes. Those like Gustavo Sánchez and Marisol Valles García are the real thing.

THE KING OF SHORTS

by John M. Floyd

Several of my colleagues and our readers have had much to say recently about the short stories of Stephen King. Sure, he’s best known for his novels, and I love ’em, but let it never be said that this emperor has no shorts. All of them are entertaining, and some are wonderful. And even though they can rarely be called mystery stories, they’re often crime-related and always suspenseful.

I believe I own a copy of just about everything SK’s ever written, fiction and non-, so it’s pretty easy to put together a list of what I feel are some of the best short stories in his collections.

First off, the King collections themselves (I’m not including collections of his novellas or the single-themed collection of shorts and novellas Hearts in Atlantis) are: Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Everything’s Eventual, and Just Past Sunset.

Here are my picks of the best short stories in each:

Night Shift:

“The Last Rung on the Ladder” — A very unKinglike tale, and one that will bring a tear to your eye. Probably my favorite of all his short stories.

“Quitters, Inc.” — Need an incentive to quit smoking? Or to quit anything? This is the ideal program.

“Strawberry Spring” — A story of a serial killer on a college campus in the late sixties (the same time I was in college).

Skeleton Crew:

“The Raft” — A great example of King doing what he does best.

“Mrs. Dolan’s Shortcut” — One of my three favorite King shorts. This woman and her car are forever imprinted in my mind.

“The Reach” — A dark, thoughtful tale with a setting that’s as spooky as the story.

Nightmares & Dreamscapes:

“The Night Flier” — A vampire with a private pilot’s license? Crazy, but it works.

“Dolan’s Cadillac” — A Poe-like tale of revenge, and the extent to which someone will go to achieve it.

“Crouch End” — Not a story you want to read before sightseeing abroad. Lovecraftian and truly frightening.

Everything’s Eventual:

“The Man in the Black Suit” — A meaningful story, one that made it into The New Yorker and pleased King’s literary critics.

“Autopsy Room Four” — This one reminded me of the long-ago “Breakdown” episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with Joseph Cotten as a paralyzed accident victim.

“The Road Virus Heads North” — After reading this story, you’ll think twice before a piece of art at a yard sale.

Just Past Sunset:

“Harvey’s Dream” — One of the only “dream” stories I’ve ever liked.

“Stationary Bike” — Even weirder than most of the Kingster’s tales, but a lot of fun.

“Mute” — The third of my three alltime King favorites. I liked everything about this one.

I know we’re talking about short fiction here, but you know I’m always thinking about movies as well, and I believe some of the best film adaptations of King’s work came from his novellas. For what it’s worth, my favorite SK novellas are:

• Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption — from Different Seasons

• Cycle of the Werewolf — standalone

• Low Men in Yellow Coats — from the Hearts in Atlantis collection

• The Mist — from Skeleton Crew

• The Body — from Different Seasons

• Riding the Bullet — from Everything’s Eventual

• The Langoliers — from Four Past Midnight

While we’re at it, here are my favorite King novels:

• The Stand

• The Dead Zone

• Misery

• The Green Mile

• It

• The Dark Tower series

• Salem’s Lot

And my favorite movies:

• The Shawshank Redemption (1994) — adapted from the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

• Misery (1990)

• The Green Mile (1999)

• Silver Bullet (1985) — adapted from the novella Cycle of the Werewolf

• Stand By Me (1986) — adapted from the novella The Body

• The Dead Zone (1983)

• Hearts in Atlantis (2001) — adapted from the novella Low Men in Yellow Coats

(NOTE: My pick for best title for a King short story is “Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling.” I love that.)

I know plenty of folks who say they just can’t read Stephen King because of some of his subject matter, but I always urge them to read him anyway. I honestly believe he’s one of the our greatest living storytellers, and I think he could have and would have been successful writing in any genre he chose. Besides, some of what I consider to be his best work (Misery, “Mute,” “Dolan’s Cadillac,” Shawshank, “The Last Rung on the Ladder,” The Body, etc.) isn’t horror fiction at all, and doesn’t even deal with the supernatural.

In the words of Annie Wilkes, I’m his Number One Fan.

FIELD TRIPS

by Steven Steinbock

I haven’t unpacked, so excuse the mess. I’ve been on the road for the last ten days. Bouchercon was a blast. If you haven’t already, you can read more about it on James Lincoln Warren’s, Melodie’s, and Robert’s columns from earlier this week.

Plenty of light debauchery with my mysterious friends. Terrie Moran and other Criminal Brief regulars were kind enough to attend the “Bouchercon 2010 Short Story Panel.” I’ve said it before umpteen times, and I’ll say it again, people who write mysteries and the people who read them are the nicest people in the world. (My theory is that we get so much violence, greed, and murder on the printed page that there’s nothing left but goodness when we interact socially).

Rob was quite correct in his column. Bouchercon is a good place to meet friends, learn stuff, and engage in light debauchery. But as a motivational experience it is without equal. Before I’d even checked out of the hotel I was craving time at my keyboard full of ideas and inspiration. It’s like that for me every year.

After Bouchercon, I spent two days in Stockton, an hour and a half east of San Francisco and forty minutes south of Sacramento. I visited with some old friends, ate, and hung out at The Blackwater Cafe, a Bohemian rat-hole that was once my home away from home and continues to inspire me.

I spent part of the day Tuesday and all of the day Wednesday driving up I-5 to Seattle. It was a long trip (around 800 miles that took about 15 hours), but the weather and the scenery made it painless.

A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES

Last week I wrote to you about my field trip to Riverside Cemetery. (I apologize for the big blank space that was supposed to be a map of my village). In the satellite photo below, you can see how the cemetery (at the center of the image) overlooks the Royal River and the harbor and boatyard, as well as a fair amount of undeveloped wetlands. What the image doesn’t show is how high the cemetery is and the steep dropoff to the shore below.

Riverside is not the oldest cemetery in my town. But it’s old. Filled with markers, monuments, and obelisks. Not only did it turn out to be a good spot to capture the mood and the details of the scene I was writing, but I also found it to be a great source of names. I spotted a group of stones with the name “Stoddard” and was reminded that on the old Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows,” a branch of the Collins family were the Stoddards. (I couldn’t find the crypt of Barnabas Collins, which is probably a good thing).

That’s all for today’s Bandersnatch. But a reminder, Halloween is just around the corner. Consider taking a field trip of your own to an old cemetery near you.

ANOTHER VIEW

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

I’m feeling a kinship with actor Jimmy Stewart’s character in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”. Yesterday, I fell off a ladder and hurt my leg from the ankle to knee. I’m not in a wheelchair as L. B. Jeffries was, but I am sitting life out for a few days with my leg aching enough to make me want to stay off of it as I was instructed. It’s no fun and I’m sick of the view.

I’ve been forced to leave a painting project unfinished, stay off my feet and slow down. I think it’s the slowing down I hate the most.

Why is it as soon as someone says we can’t do something, that’s exactly what we want to do?

When a contest judge told me I couldn’t write, I was determined to prove her wrong. (And I did. I won first place at that particular contest another year.)

When I was told I’d never be able to find time to write or market my work if I became president of a writing group, I worked hard and was published for the first time within six weeks of my inauguration.

I was told to choose between being a writer or instructor because “people never do well in both.” I disagreed then and still do. So far I haven’t decided which one makes me happiest, so I continue to do both whenever I can.

While sitting back watching TV or catching up on my reading is a pretty good gig when you’re laid up with a bad leg, it can get pretty boring, too. Jeffries was at a loss cooped up in his apartment, being unable to perform his job as a photojournalist. A writer can write almost anywhere as long as a scrap of paper and a pen exists. Laptops make it even easier.

My mind wanders. All of the sudden, I want to take walks, check out a new gallery and stroll through antique stores.

I know I can do all that in a few more days, but like a spoiled child, I want it now. I decided I’m being selfish and should be grateful for all I do have. That’s always humbling and I’m just cranky enough to not want to be humbled. But, I am.

I shall be complacent in this moment. Obviously, I needed to slow down. (That one change may have caused me not to fall.) I have time to reflect and to think about how lucky I am not to have broken my . . . that I will soon be able to resume my lifestyle . . . that I can plot a crime just as well propped up in an easy chair as anywhere else.

I’m going to take it easy for a few days. Join me—not with an injury, but as someone who plans to slow down once in a while, not just to smell the flowers, but to actually see them and touch them, too.

I may find the same old view isn’t what I thought I was seeing, but perhaps something I was missing.

I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS

by Rob Lopresti

I don’t have time to be writing this. Just got back from Bouchercon. Got a million things to do.

At Bouchercon they give you a big pile of books to take home. I left half of them in a pile there. Don’t have time to read them. (On the other hand I picked up some books that other people had left on the pile – and what lunatic discarded an advance copy of A Drop of the Hard Stuff, the new Matt Scudder novel by Lawrence Block, which won’t be out until next year? Gotta read it, but I don’t have time.)

Chatted with three editors there and got ideas from two of them, which may lead to stories. Gotta write them fast. No time for blogging. No time for reading.

Heard a panel with a woman (don’t have time to look up her name) who writes three books a year. I don’t write three books a decade. So, no time to waste. Gotta put the seat on the chair and the fingers on the keyboard. Everyone else is getting ahead of me.

Went to a panel on e-books. A friend has been urging me to put my book up for the world to download. (My novel, I mean. The book I edited is already up and I got my first e-moolah while I was in San Francisco. Let’s say it didn’t pay for the airfare home.)

Heard a lot of panels. Heard a lot of new authors whose books I want to read. Don’t have time, though. Got to write.

So, Mr. Lopresti, what’s the primary reason you attend mystery conferences? To see your friends, to get information, or to make contacts?

None of the above. I go to get motivated to write.

And how did San Francisco work out for that?

I don’t have time to tell you.

WRITERS GONE WILD

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Bouchercon is an event where writers, who spend most of their time in self imposed solitary confinement, are let loose in a hotel without proper supervision and begin to talk and drink, and drink and talk. Now and then they make it to a panel where they speak wisely or comically or stupidly and then go back to talking and drinking. Thrown into this mania are some genuinely wonderful moments and great camaraderie. Bouchercon is my favorite convention, not only because the writers have a grand time, but most importantly so do the fans. You can tell the fans from the authors because they carry lots of books that they read and love in their bags and their arms to be signed. Thank God for them otherwise writers couldn’t go wild.

Favorite Moments

Meeting up with Angela, James, and Steve. And finally getting to meet Rob Lopresti who looks much younger in person than he does in his CB picture. He played the autoharp filling the book signing room with the haunting sounds of Appalachia.

Harley Jane Kozak and I, in between signing books and photographs, exchanged Hollywood war stories. It was a wonderful paradoxical moment for two ex- actresses turned writers.

Speaking of Hollywood stories, the creator of Columbo and many other TV series, Bill Link was there with his wife Margery Nelson. Bones and I have known them for years and we sat around a table talking about such things as how Walter Wanger (pronounce his last name like Bugs Bunny talks), a producer in the forties, shot Jennings Lang, an agent, in the (how should I put this for you, gentle readers?) genitals because he was having an affair with Wanger’s wife, the actress Joan Bennett. The joke around Hollywood at that time was that Jennings’ last name used be Langs before the shooting. Oh, yes, talking and drinking. Parnell Hall joined us and serenaded Bill Link, Steve Steinbock and me with a song he wrote about the Kindle. He said he taped it for YouTube. Oh, yes talking, drinking, and taping.

Having lunch with the writer and critic Dick Lochte, his wife Jane, and JLW. It was there Dick reminded me that he had reviewed my play “The Lady of The House” that I’d written in the eighties. Reminiscing with Michael Connelly and his wife about a house they once lived in, in the Hollywood Hills. And Terry Moran welcoming me back to CB.

The Rex Stout dinner was held in an old darkly panelled mansion reminiscent of Nero Wolfe’s brownstone. The evening was as quirky and as eccentric as the Great Detective himself. Gayle Lynds gave a humorous informative talk about Nero Wolfe the spy. Each table was asked to create a ditty about Nero and Archie and then get up and sing it to a tune of their choice. Our table seemed to tacitly decline, but Gayle’s boyfriend, John Sheldon, wrote one. He stood and a sang a very funny parody in a beautiful tenor voice. I know his voice was good because my husband, Bones, who has perfect pitch, did not make a face as if someone were standing on his toe. The real treat was meeting Rex Stout’s daughter, a gracious woman. And yes, she was wearing golden spider earrings.

Why am I feeling like Hedda Hopper or Liz Smith right now?

The other spectacular dinner was created by James Lincoln Warren at a restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf. It was there John Lutz and I discovered that we both loved and an old movie of which neither could remember the title. So I googled William Powell, the star of the movie, on my iPhone, and found it was called “Libeled Lady.” Where upon everyone went “Uh?” This film has one of the great comic scenes, of William Powell learning to fish. John Lutz reminded me it was later made into a movie staring Rock Hudson called “Man’s Favorite Sport.” I told him that I appeared in a still photo in the titles. That was before they let me talk in the movies.

Jill Amadio did an admirable job as the moderator of our panel. Janet Hutchings and others told us that it is was one of the best short story panels they had been too.

I could go on and on but I think I’ll leave you with this: Sitting in the front row listening to our panel was a group of youngsters. They were studiously taking notes. When we finished the woman who was with them brought up young girl named Denise Marie Scott. Denise gave me a hand printed essay on my short story, “A Hollywood Ending.” The woman leaned close and told me that the children were mentally disabled, and that it took Denise some time to write her report for me. I sat there and read every word then took the girl’s hand and told her how much I treasured her thoughtful essay. Here eyes went wide and she beamed. Then she told me she liked the ending of my story because we don’t know for sure that the actress in it really drowned herself because we don’t see her die. “Maybe she lived and would return,” she added hopefully. Something I had never considered. I was deeply touched by her perception and perseverance. The essay, printed so carefully on its smudged lined paper, is now being framed to hang on my office wall.

And that is what Bouchercon is all about. And that is what writing is all about.