BOUCHERCON 2010 SHORT STORY PANEL

Posted by James Lincoln Warren

Here’s the recording I made of our Bouchercon panel on Friday, October 15, featuring Melodie Johnson Howe, Robert Lopresti, Steve Steinbock, yours truly, Tim Wohlforth, and Angela Zeman, and moderated by Jill Amadio. The title of the panel was “In Case of Madness”, which made no sense at all to any of the participants, but we found out at the Anthony Brunch that all the panels were episode titles from the old TV series The Streets of San Francisco. I guess they thought the title was too good not to use even if it had no relevance whatsoever. Well, I’m not going to use the title, because it’s misleading, so with laudable originality, I’ve decided to call it “Bouchercon 2010 Short Story Panel”. Snappy, right?

I missed the first question, but that was simply each of us describing our work, which would have been familiar to most Criminal Brief readers. Because my plane back to L.A. was late, I haven’t had time to edit in a fade at the ending of the recording before posting it, but I’ll get around to that before I link it to our Aural Argument sidebar.

We all had a wonderful time. I’ll go into more detail about the convention next week.

TRIALS and TRIBULATIONS

by Leigh Lundin

Hello to everyone at Bouchercon!

While I like mysteries designed with a solvable riddle, I appreciate realism in stories. Sometimes the realism blurs with the bizarre, the topic of today’s article. Two ghastly crimes have come up for trial, both stranger than fiction.

Collaring a Suspect

On 28 August 2003, career pizza delivery man Brian Wells entered a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania with two unusual pieces of hardware. One was a shotgun disguised as a cane, the other was a steel collar. Bank employees triggered a silent alarm and police waited for Wells when he exited.

Wells explained to police the collar was a live bomb. Finding that hard to believe, police didn’t notify the bomb squad for at least half an hour who then took more than a quarter of an hour to arrive— three minutes too late. The bomb exploded, killing Mr. Wells.

Police investigations uncovered a number of other deaths (including a boyfriend stuffed in a freezer) tied to Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, the supposed mastermind, who spent recent years in treatment for bipolar disorder and is now considered ready for trial. The believed intent of the bank robbery was to fund a hit on her 91-year-old father to gain an inheritance. (The present prosecutor is not telling the jury she was the mastermind, arguing all he must do is prove Diehl-Armstrong was part of the plot.)

As bizarre as the bomb collar scenario was, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan asserted that Wells was to a degree complicit, albeit a man who didn’t know the ‘bomb was loaded’, based upon the word of one of the conspirators, which other people dispute. Holding him at gunpoint, the gang forced Wells to don the bomb-collar, gave him a list of tasks to accomplish within a limited time, and sent him on his way. Police determined it was not possible for Wells to complete the list before the bomb detonation.

Of the believed conspirators, one committed suicide from a drug overdose, one died of cancer, one was granted immunity to testify, one received a 45-year sentence, and Ms. Diehl-Armstrong was hospitalized, now judged competent to be tried.

This was not the only time a collar bomb has been deployed. A highly-regarded but troubled Memphis medical examiner, Dr. O.C. Smith, is thought to have fashioned a bomb for himself.

Give a Flying F…

Some murders are terrifying, horrifying, involving burning, drowning, or… as we learned from Els van Doren, falling from the sky. Her nemesis and romantic rival, schoolteacher Els Clottemans, apparently cut the lines of van Doren’s parachute, causing her to plummet nearly three miles to her death. According to my calculus, that’s 90 seconds, a minute and a half, of terrifying helplessness and disbelief.

The victim’s helmet camera recorded her fall while her alleged killer also made the jump and watched the flailing victim plunge to the earth at 200 kilometers per hour.

van Doren	Somers	Clottemans

Women’s web site Lemondrop says

"We don’t have our bucket list written just yet, but two things we’re pretty sure are not going to be on it are 1) jump out of a plane, and 2) be involved in a love triangle that ends in murder. Thank you, Els Clottemans, for really (allegedly) cementing our position on that."

Judge: Bully for Bullies

Not only does the USA imprison a considerably greater percentage of its citizens than most other countries, we hand out much longer prison terms, a phenomenon called "over-sentencing". I’m not a fan of over-sentencing and some nations are presently reviewing their jail time guidelines, but a case in the UK leaves one to wonder what the hell they’re thinking. There, a judge sentenced three "bored" brutes who spent three days torturing a 17-year-old autistic boy with Asperger’s syndrome and ADD to curfews and community service.

The Daily Mirror describes the three perpetrators as "thugs" and "savages", which gives savages a bad name, but perhaps the Mirror’s column width doesn’t allow for ‘hellish sociopaths’.

Griffin	Bolton	Marshall

What had they done? Andrew Griffin, Nathan Marshall, and Jack Bolton video-recorded themselves as they tortured the lad and:

• kicked him in the head,
• punched his torso,
• booted him in the face so hard to leave an imprint of the shoe,
• clubbed him with a tennis racket,
• abraded his skin with sandpaper,
• hurled him down a steep hill,
• duct taped his genitals and ripped off the tape,
• pelted him with dog feces,
• staged a sex act upon his dog and him,
• threatened to break his jaw if he talked,
• force-fed him alcohol until he passed out.

The boy begged for mercy, of which they gave none.

While North America and other parts of the world are grappling with short- and long-term effects of bullying, apparently Judge Jonathan Geake has a tender spot toward the long-established institution of bullying. He claims he took into account the trio’s age, remorse, guilty pleas, and the fact they came from decent homes. "I conclude this was a departure from your normal, sensible selves," he stated.

Decent homes? Decent people don’t torture and torment. In fact, the bullying had been ongoing for weeks, possibly months, and the three days of torture took place in the ‘decent home’ of one of the perpetrators, Andrew Griffin, the one on the left in our photo line-up.

The emotionally and physically damaged boy dropped out of school. He and his aunt since fled the area. She said, "My lad was so scared of these boys he’d lie about his bruises. I realised how serious it was when he came home with a trainer print on his face. The judge’s sentence is a joke and I can’t tell my nephew what the sentence was or he’ll feel totally let down. This bullying scum have got away with it."

I agree. The boy was victimized once by the bullies and again by the court. Join me in wishing all of them justice, each in their own way.

A ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW

by John M. Floyd

I’ve been fascinated, in past months, by the descriptions of other writers’ workspaces. I think it’s interesting to know a little about where they produce the work they produce, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction or CB columns.

Anyhow, here’s my contribution to that “survey” of our home Fiction Factories.

On the east end of our house is a windowless room about ten feet by twelve, small by anyone’s standards. It contains floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, almost a thousand hardcover novels, a couple hundred DVDs, loads of reference books, two desks, a computer, a file cabinet, a swivel chair, and — most of the time — me. It’s my sanctuary, my bolthole, my tiny home-inside-my-home. Since the word “office” sounds far too grand for a room this size, my wife Carolyn and I have always just called it “the little room.” (“Have you seen the cordless phone?” “I think it’s in the little room.”) We also have a twelve-by-twelve outbuilding aka equipment shed that we call “the little house,” although it’s definitely not on the prairie.

Caution: Words Processed Here

I’m sitting in my little room now, typing this column. That’s not unusual, because almost all of the hundreds of short stories and features I’ve published over the past sixteen years were written right here. All of them were typed or transcribed here, although some were “written” elsewhere, mostly on notepads in hotel rooms, airplane seats, or the wooden swing in my back yard. Every piece of writing I send out, whether it’s snail-mailed or e-mailed, enveloped or attached, leaves via this room. And everything that arrives — rejections, acceptances, contracts, etc. — is opened here.

A Controlled Environment

It’s usually quiet, here in my little haven. Now and then I’ll play iTunes in the background while I’m editing and rewriting, but usually not during a first draft or during the serious plotting (also known as plodding). The only sounds I like at those creative times are the whirring of my ceiling fan and occasional noises from outside: dogs yapping, birds chirping, the wind in the trees, and so forth. Natural sounds. Comfortwise, my chair’s big and soft, the light’s not too bright and not too dim, and there’s something soothing and inspirational about having all these novels around me and towering over me as I work. They even smell good. (One downside: I think I’ve mentioned before at this blog that Carolyn thinks the reason we had foundation problems a few years ago is the ungodly weight of all the books in this room. She’s probably right.)

Does every writer need a private getaway like this, where he or she creates and polishes and finishes his or her stories and novels? Of course not. But some of us do. It sounds funny, but the truth is, when I’m in here the ideas and words and plots just seem to flow more easily. Besides, in my case my hidey-hole is on the opposite end of the house from our bedroom, so during late-night writing sessions my music and muttering and (occasional) cusswords don’t disturb my Better Half.

Rear Window?

We’ve been talking about enlarging my workplace by adding a couple hundred square feet and a window — but our plans to do that always seem to fizzle out. Part of it’s the expense, since it would require a change to everything from the foundation to the roofline, but it’s also the fact that I’m not sure if I should mess around too much with something that already works. I could use more elbow room, sure, but the fact is, I don’t require an awful lot of floor space to crank out these stories (you could do that, if you had to, with a laptop in a phone booth), and if we added more wall space I’ll just fill it with more and more books and bookshelves — an idea which is hugely appealing but not all that practical. So who knows whether my little room will one day become a big room. I doubt it.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to sit here surrounded by the work of all these bigtime authors, dreaming and typing and submitting and reassuring myself that they once went through the same kind of drill. As for this particular column, it’s a good thing I’m almost finished.

I feel a story coming on . . .

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION?

by Steven Steinbock

I was recently scouting locations. I’m lucky that I happen to live in a region that is very evocative of fictional crime. When they’re not thinking about lobsters and lighthouses and L.L. Bean, people associate Maine with Stephen King, Jessica Fletcher, and Dark Shadows.

So I studied Google Maps for a while, then hopped in the car and drove around my little village of 8,000 souls. I took a field trip to an old cemetery overlooking Casco Bay. I took pictures and thought about the people whose names appeared on the weathered stones and I dreamed.

View Larger Map

I like Stephen King, but I couldn’t call myself a fan of his increasingly overlong novels. You could argue that his style is too common, and that his unrestrained writing needs an editor. You could also make the case that those are the traits that make King and his writings so popular. You could make either one of those cases, but I won’t. Not in this venue. Not today, anyhow. A few years back I re-read Salem’s Lot,. I hadn’t read it since it first appeared in paperback back in the mid-1970s, at a time in my life when I’d never been east of Wyoming. Anyhow, during this re-reading, I was surprised at the familiar place names. No fooling, according to the geographical clues in the book, I live within easy walking distance of the undead town of Jerusalem’s Lot.

(In a map on his own website, King places Jerusalem’s Lot much further north and west. But it’s interesting that in the book itself, he describes all the towns surrounding my little village, but never mentions it by name. It makes one wonder. . .)

If you’re not a fan of Stephen King – or even if you are but have never tried his short stories – I urge you to pick up Skeleton Crew, a nice collection of his tales. It includes two of my favorite King stories, and the two that I think best evoke the culture and geography of Maine. Neither story is especially scary, in fact both are pretty gentle, and one of them is downright sweet. “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” takes that great Maine truism – You can’t get there from here (pronounced “yuh cahn’t get theyah from heyah”) – and takes it to metaphysical extremes. “The Reach” is a story of love that transcends time and tells of an elderly island resident who has never set foot on the mainland until she decides to walk across the frozen “reach.”

But as I was saying, I was scouting for a location. I needed to write a climactic sequence that began in a quiet, isolated spot from which the bay could be seen. It was a pretty, sunny day. I was walking among the tombstones and dreaming a way. I came away with an arsenal of names, a sense of the geography and topography, visual images, and practical details.

In the next week or two I’ll share some photos and describe for you what I found.

IN CASE OF MADNESS

This very afternoon (Friday, 10/16 4:30pm) several of your Criminal Briefniks are gathering on a stage to take part in a panel with the inscrutably off-topic title In Case of Madness. It’s happening in San Francisco at Bouchercon.

I’ll be there with James Lincoln Warren, Melodie Johnson Howe, Robert Lopresti, and Angela Zeman, as well as Tim Wohlforth and Jill Amadio. Our topic is short stories, but we’ll likely wander into the topic of madness at some point. Rob’s name has been mangled so many times that it’s a wonder he isn’t suffering an identity crisis.

Hope to see you there.

JUST LIKE CLOCKWORK

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

A hardbound book arrived in my mailbox a few days ago. I’m calling it a gift To me, From me, but it’s actually a gift to the world when John M. Floyd shares his stories.

I knew better than to open the book when I was rushed, so I waited until I had the house to myself. That morning it wasn’t easy waiting for everyone to get out the door. I put on a pot of coffee and waited for the brew to be ready. I didn’t want to be disturbed by empty cups and wasted trips back to the kitchen, so I filled a thermos, adding what I like best in my coffee and brought it with me into the living room. I settled into the Crunchy Chair (named after the one resembling it in the Cary Grant movie, “Every Girl Should Be Married.”) as expectant as any kid on Christmas morning, I held my breath just a little and opened the package from the bookstore.

The cover was impressive in its stark, bold design. The title graced the top edge and followed by our fellow Criminal Brief collaborator’s name in bold print in the center. The clock’s hand points at John’s name like a symbol of hope; this is the right time to expect a good read.

I opened the book and took a sip of my coffee before beginning the first story, “The Powder Room.” Actually, I was re-reading this story as I’d seen it originally in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine a year ago. I recognized the opening, but kept reading. It’s that good of a story. It’s like watching an old episode of “The Twilight Zone”. You know where it’s going to end, but you keep on reading because it is such a delicious excursion getting there.

By the end of the story, I realized my coffee had grown cold. Anyone who knows me knows that doesn’t usually happen to me. I jumped up and popped the mug into the microwave. As seconds passed like in slow motion, I found myself impatient for it to heat. I had a great book to read and only thirty-nine more stories were left.

The second story didn’t disappoint me, nor the third or the fourth. By the time I’d read a quarter way through the book, my husband was walking through the door. He looked at me all snuggly in the chair with my book. He smiled. I smiled back.

Suddenly, I sat up straight. “It’s not time for lunch already?” I asked.

“It would be for most people. Everyday. Like Clockwork,” he said.

“Yes, I do!”

He looked puzzled, so I held the book’s cover up for him to read. He didn’t get what I was saying, so I repeated, “Yes, I do! I like Clockwork very much.” I held the cover up again.

“Oh,” he said and glanced toward the kitchen. “And lunch is—”

I sighed and put the book down on the Crunchy Chair with a bookmark firmly in place. My husband is rather used to me not always having meals ready when they should be, but he’s a good sport. He often cooks if I’m in the middle of a writing spurt that needs to not be halted.

He’s quite capable of taking care of himself (and me, too), but I thought since I’d bought myself such a wonderful gift, the least I could do is make him a nice lunch. Okay, a somewhat healthy lunch that doesn’t take too long to prepare. I had a book calling my name like a siren to sailors on a long voyage.

As I put together a Dagwood-like sandwich on whole wheat and heated a mug of the homemade vegetable soup I’d made yesterday, he asked about the book.

This is one of the reasons I love him. Writers love to talk about really good stories and I had forty of them I could talk about for days. He’s a good listener.

I rattled on about the book, about how talented the author was and how John could jump from twist-ending mysteries to comical scenes, and how his characters were written so well they seemed real. “These people could show up on a reality show and be viable,” I said watching him finish the sandwich.

Quite innocently he asked which story I liked best.

I shrugged. “That’s like asking which of my children I like best? They’re all good in their own ways. I’m glad I don’t have to choose a best one.”

John’s stories aren’t cloistered in a little boxed label. Each one has its own beauty. His style and talent is envied by writers and welcomed by readers. He always leaves me wanting more. Already, I can’t wait for his next collection to be published.

I really like Clockwork. I think you will, too. Treat yourself to a copy and buy one for a friend, too.

STOUT-HEARTED MAN

by Rob Lopresti

In response to James’ recent column about phoning it in, which is to say, telling the same story in book after book, I said that I would get around some time to writing about how Rex Stout handled that problem by using plot devices exactly twice.

But before we go there, let’s talk a bit about one of my favorite authors. You probably know he created Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin and wrote 33 novels about them, and about the same number of novelettes, but here are a few facts you might not know:

• Stout was born to a Quaker family and grew up saying “thee” and “thou.”
• In the Navy he was a crewman on Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential yacht.
• He founded the school banking system, in which children brought coins to open an account and get a little interest. He was justifiably proud that no child lost a penny when the Depression started crushing banks.
• He was part of the “lost generation” of American artists and authors who moved to Paris after World War I, where he wrote psychological novels which generally got good reviews and small sales.
• He started writing his first Nero Wolfe novel — about two men who by age could have been father and son — the day he brought his newborn first child, a daughter, home from the hospital.
• Politically, Stout wasn’t easy to label. He was a firm anti-Communist who despised J. Edgar Hoover. He was a Hawk on Vietnam who swore to stay alive until Richard Nixon was out of office – and did.
• The first Nero Wolfe book begins with the end of Prohibition. The last one, forty years later, contemplates Watergate.

For what it’s worth, here are my five favorite Nero Wolfe books, in chronological order:

• Too Many Cooks (1938)
• Prisoner’s Base (1952)
• Before Midnight (1955)
• The Doorbell Rang (1965)
• A Family Affair (1975)

And the best novelettes:

• “The Cop Killer” (1952)
• “The Next Witness” (1956)
• “Too Many Detectives (1957)
• “Poison A La Carte” (1962)
• “Counterfeit For Murder” (1962)

Feel free to argue.

Once is not enough; thrice is too many

Now, let’s talk about Stout using plot devices twice. To the best of my knowledge, Stout never said he did that deliberately, and I don’t think John McAleer reported it in his excellent biography.

But I think Stout did it far too often to be an accident. And, in my opinion, he usually used the plot device better the second time around.

Twenty years ago I could have made a much longer list of examples, but I haven’t reread the novels and especially the novelettes (which aren’t as good, in my opinion) in a long time. I honestly can’t remember what some of them were about, much less the clever plot devices he repeated in them.

However, here are some of the tricks he used twice. For obvious reasons I have left out the titles of the books involved, except in one case where I had to leave out the plot device instead. If you have read the two books in question you probably know what I am getting at.

• A doctor murdering the patient he is treating
• A child witness
• A lawyer killing a client to hide a forged will
• Wolfe hiring a double
• A dog identifying a killer
• An illegitimate child having an illegitimate child
• A factor that connects Death of a Doxy and A Family Affair

Anyone have more examples?

FOR ERICA

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Like James, Steve, and Rob, I’m off to Bouchercon and I haven’t even thought about packing. I’m still trying to get off the high-heels I wore to a wedding this past weekend.

It was a special affair for our daughter Erica, whom I raised since she was six years old, and has been in recovery (sober) for the last seven years. She is now a professional drug counselor. Many of the women that attended the wedding were her co-workers, her sponsor, and friends that had traveled down the same dark street and chose to stride with great difficulty, back up that street, into life and love.

For a mother, there is nothing better than getting back the daughter you once knew and loved for her wry humor, quirky personality, and intelligence. For a long time a stranger, who at times seemed like Erica, had taken her place. That stranger was the addict.

Both the bride and the groom have been married before, raised children, and have grandchildren. They are not a young innocent couple. But in a way they are. Sobriety has given them a new way and each other.

Her father and her son walked Erica down the aisle. Her daughter was a bridesmaid. Her close friend, who had once been her sponsor, was her maid of honor. At three o’clock on Saturday she stood in a lovely satin-ivory and lace wedding gown, black laced-up tennis shoes, strawberry blonde hair pulled back and trailing down the back of her neck, and her bare arms covered with tattoos. Sleeves. Technicolor sleeves.

As I sat there holding my husband’s hand, and watching the exchange of vows, I thought about how we all tell our stories. Her tattoos were a form of speaking, of communicating. When she showed me her first tattoo, I asked, “Does it wash off?” She broke into laughter, and said, “No, mom, it doesn’t.” I have now grown to love her ink art.

The story that cascades down her arms is told with beautiful vines, birds, and flowers. The colors are in shades of green, red, pink, lavender, and blue. She has created a garden of hope, of beginnings. An untrammeled Garden of Eden.

And at that moment I beamed with pride for Erica’ s success, and her bravery to dare to tell her story of faith and the possible.