Baby Got Back

Tuesday!

I am trying to gradually wean myself off prescription sleep assistance–the last thing in the world I need is an addiction–and so my sleep on Sunday night wasn’t terribly deep or restful; I wound up spending most of Monday wishing I could just curl up somewhere and go back to sleep. No such luck, nevertheless, so I soldiered through the day, knowing that Tuesday would be my long day and hoping that the sleepiness I endured all day Monday would enable me to sleep deeply and restfully on Monday night.

And no, that wasn’t the case. Yay, another long day of feeling tired, sleepy and basically out of it. Huzzah.

I started working my way through Royal Street Reveillon last night, making notes and catching things that need to be corrected in the next draft–and frankly, there’s not as much as I would have thought there would be. Granted, it’s much easier as you read through a hard copy, making notes on the manuscript–going into the electronic files and making those changes and updates is a whole other story. But I am hoping I’ll get it finished by mid-September, and turned in then as well. Fingers crossed.

I also finished Part 3 of my Bouchercon homework; Eryk Pruitt’s What We Reckon:

Scan

It will end much like this, thought Grant as the fire flickering up his nostrils gave way to a slow, mellow drip down the back of his throat. No sooner had he chased away the sweats, the whispers, the steady but fevered panic that so often wrapped its fingers tight around his windpipe than did he eyeball the rest of the kilo–still shrink-wrapped with only a jagged hole, hardly big enough–and consider into what further mayhem he might find himself.

It was good coke, sure, but Grant had not reason to think it wouldn’t be. Back in South Carolina, Bobby had been his best friend and would hardly look sideways at shit that wasn’t of a particular quality. You want to put bullshit powder into your face, Bobby used to say, then go down past Decker Boulevard. Bobby had a reputation. Folks around town knew he had the good shit. They knew how to get a hold of him night or day. What they didn’t know was where he stashed it, but Grant did, so a fool and his narcotics were quickly parted.

The only thing better than good cocaine, he thought as he plucked another pinch from the hole in the package, is stolen cocaine.

Any tranquility, perceived or otherwise, came crashing to a halt with a knock at the motel room door. Grant quickly shuffled away the brick of cocaine into a hollowed-out King James Bible, then scooted it beneath the bed. He perked an ear. Listened. Held his breath.

“Hey, Grant,” called a voice from outside. “Open up. I ain’t standing out here all day.”

What We Reckon is a fun ride; a tale of two ne’er-do-wells on the fringes of society, changing names and identities as they move across the South, dealing and doing drugs; crossing people and turning on each other depending on the drug and their mood at the moment. It reads as a very raw, very 70’s style noir; a cross between Barry Hannah and James Crumley, and also very visual: I kept seeing this as one of those dark and gritty 70’s films.

Now I move on to James Ziskin’s  Cast the First Stone.

End of the Road

I started researching new markets to potentially submit short stories to–after my breakthrough that my stories cannot be described, as a rule, as ‘mystery’ tales–and I was very surprised to see how few magazines actually are interested in stories that could be considered mysteries. The stories I have–that I am thinking about sending out into the void–are technically not mysteries, but then again…will markets not looking for mystery stories consider them to be mysteries?

I guess the only way to find out it to actually submit stories.

What was also really interesting to me was that there are still markets that want you to send them hard copies through the mail, with the SASE for response. Ten years or so ago, when I was doing an open call for Blood Sacraments, I wanted hard copy submissions, and was surprised (and more than a little appalled) at some of the emails I received from authors who demanded to know how very dare I not want to take electronic submissions? Needless to say, those were writers I put on the “never work with” list; I would never presume to write an editor and demand an explanation for their submission guidelines, never ever ever ever. But with the passage of time, my own reluctance to read submissions electronically and get them in my inbox has gradually eroded away; times change and you have to change with it. If I want to submit to those markets, I will have to get large envelopes, print out copies, and purchase postage.

I am certainly not going to send them a pompous email demanding they explain why they don’t take electronic submissions.

And, FYI? Blood Sacraments was the last time I did an open call for submissions untilt he Bouchercon anthologies. And yes, the entitled attitude in the emails from people who saw the call and “had questions” about my guidelines is entirely why.

Helpful hint: editors and publishers don’t owe anyone explanations for why they set their guidelines the way they do. And when you send snarky emails questioning them, all you do is point out to them that you would be an enormous pain in the ass to work with. And unless you have the kind of star power that will guarantee lots of sales, you aren’t worth it.

Sad, perhaps, but true.

And I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with disqualifying stories that are not submitted properly or ignored the guidelines in any way, shape or form. That’s my first system of weeding out stories from “possibles” to “rejects”: did they follow the guidelines?

I won’t read anything that doesn’t–nor will I write the person back to tell them they need to. You get one chance.

I have myself submitted things and not followed the guidelines–primarily out of stupidity–and you know what? If that got me rejected without being read, it’s only fair and I have no one to blame but myself.

Next up in Florida Happens is Barb Goffman’s story “The Case of the Missing Pot Roast.”

Barb Goffman
 

Barb Goffman has no idea how to cook pot roast, but it sure was fun to write about. She’s won the Agatha, Macavity, and Silver Falchion awards for her short stories, and she’s been a finalist for national mystery short-story awards twenty-two times, including eleven times for the Agatha (a category record). Her book Don’t Get Mad, Get Even won the Silver Falchion for the best collection of 2013. Barb is thrilled to be a current Macavity and Anthony award finalist for her story “Whose Wine is it Anyway?” from the anthology 50 Shades of Cabernet.  She works as an independent editor and proofreader and lives with her dog in Winchester, Virginia. Learn more at www.barbgoffman.com.

About her story, Barb says, “My story is about a woman whose husband has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. She wants to care for him at home, but it’s proving challenging, with strange things going on, including a missing pot roast. I can’t say any more about the plot without giving things away, but I will say that I loved writing this story. It’s heartfelt but also funny and–perfect for an anthology about Florida–also a little bit weird.”

Looking back, I should have known something was wrong when the pot roast disappeared. Sure, everyone misplaces something sometime. I once searched for the remote control for an hour till I spotted it in the bathroom. And for years I’ve found my husband, Charles’s, false teeth all over the house—they’ve never fit quite right so when they bother him he takes them out and puts them down, never paying attention where. But the pot roast? I was sure I’d left it defrosting on the counter when I went to get my hair done, yet when I came home, it was gone.

I searched for it in vain. It wasn’t in the fridge or freezer. Not in the garbage. Not in the oven. Charles was clueless. There was no way he’d cooked and eaten it in the hour I was gone. So what happened to that pot roast was a mystery. In the back of my mind, I wondered if I’d only dreamed I’d bought the roast. But I couldn’t admit my faculties might be failing. So I dismissed the missing pot roast as weirdness and whipped up some pasta.

That was a month ago. Perhaps if I’d forced myself to figure out what happened to the pot roast, I wouldn’t be in this position now. But back then, I had bigger problems. Charles had started suffering from short-term memory loss and personality changes, and he was getting worse every day. One minute he’d be the man I’d loved for decades, optimistic and kind; the next, he’d be surly and paranoid, acting like a wary stranger. He’d accused me of stealing from him—me, his wife of fifty-one years. And then, in a heartbreaking moment, he’d accused me of trying to kill him.

“Alzheimer’s,” his doctor had diagnosed.

I’d figured that was the problem, but having it confirmed was a terrible blow. His doctor gave me all kinds of pamphlets and urged me to look into long-term care for Charles. I cried when he did that. I knew eventually such care would be necessary. But not yet. I was only seventy-one years old and in relatively good health. I was determined to care for Charles in our home for as long as I could. He was my husband. My love. I owed him that.

It’s easy to see why Barb’s work is so award-worthy with this tale. She really gets inside the head of her main character, who is dealing with a raeally difficult situation–complicated with her own issues of dealing with her husband’s illness in addition to questioning, at times, her own sanity and whether the things her husband says to her when in the grips of his dementia are true, real, or based in anything even slightly reality based. Can she trust the home health-care worker who is helping out with things around the house? Where are the pot roasts going?

And that last paragraph is chilling, absolutely chilling. Well done, Barb!

Go Home

Sunday morning, with lots to do and a long, relaxing day ahead in which to do it all. I woke up relatively early this morning, which was a wonderful and pleasant surprise, and feel rested. I have a short story to work on, a reread of Royal Street Reveillon to get through, and I’d also like to make some progress on my reading of Eryk Pruitt’s What We Reckon. I cleaned and did errands and read yesterday; along with some note taking on various projects as well as filing. This coming week should be interesting, to say the least; I am doing some testing on Monday and Thursday at the Blacks in Government conference at the Riverside Hilton, which will be a lovely change from my ordinary routine, and I have a three day weekend next weekend in honor of my birthday.

Yes, the old man officially turns fifty-seven next weekend; although I always change my age on New Year’s. After this next New Year’s, I’ll be telling people I’m fifty-eight. Age has never mattered  much to me; for the early portion of my life I was always younger than everyone else around me; later on I was always older than everyone else I hung around with. I learned early on that age is a relative concept.

Yesterday was kind of a lovely day for me. It rained off and on most of the day, and there really is nothing lovelier than being inside and dry while it rains outside, and our rain is do torrential and tropical–so lovely to deal with when you’re inside rather than when you’re actually outside dealing with it. As the bed linens agitated in the washing machine and the wool blankets tumbled dry in the laundry room, I was filing and getting my desk area organized, listening to the rain and looking out my windows to see all the leaves outside glistening and wet, and water cascading out of the rain spout on the house next door when a phrase formed in my head, and I scribbled into my journal, standing up at the kitchen counter: It was one of those lovely summer Saturdays New Orleans gets sometimes in August–where thunderstorms roll through the city all day, the dark clouds creating an artificial twilight at three in the afternoon. Perfect for staying inside and cleaning, the washing and drying and folding of clothes. The cat sleeps lazily in the desk chair, waking up every now and then to groom before curling up again into a tight ball of differentiated ginger stripes.

I may never use that in something I write, be it a short story or a novel, but it’s a nice piece of writing nonetheless. My notebooks and journals are filled with such scraps of writing, of ideas and thoughts and fragments and character descriptions or settings.

And next up in Florida Happens, for the Short Story Project is “The Fakahatchee Goonch” by Jack Bates.

jack bates

Goonch is just another name for a catfish. A really big catfish.  Sometimes it’s called the Devil Fish or Black Demon because it lurks deep down there in the murkiest part of the Fakahatchee Preserve. Bottom feeders mostly. They eat gator leftovers or anything else that might get tossed into the swamps. Back in the mauve and neonMiami Vice days, legend had it the Everglades was a good place to dispose of a problem quick.  People think that’s how the goonch developed a taste for meat.

Of course, the guys who trawl for catfish say those fish are just as apt to eat water weeds and such if the pickings are slim.  Sometimes they feed on their own.  Had some guys drag in twenty to thirty pounders, about three feet long. That ain’t no fish tale.

Neither is this one. The catfish I’m talking about is an eight-man goonch. Know what that is? That’s when eight grown men stand in a line, shoulder to shoulder, and that goonch lays across all of their extended hands from tip to tail. That’s how big the Fakahatchee goonch was said to be. Had a mouth like the gaping orifice of hell, or so I’m told. I ain’t never seen it, but I know it’s there.

There have been nights when I’m frog hunting where the frog croaking will go quiet and the swamp gets real still. Something big enough to rock my aluminum skiff passes through the water. Up ahead in the dark there’ll be a splash and a few ticks off a clock later my skiff will rock a second time except maybe a little more treacherously on the creature’s return pass. and I’ll have to sit down, clutch the sides so I don’t tip out. Only way I know it’s safe to leave is when the frogs start croaking again.

Sometimes though, a frog will puff its chest and blowout its braggadocio regardless of the danger it’s in.

Jack’s bio reads “Jack Bates writes some pretty good crime fiction from the comfort of his loft office. His stories have appeared all around the web, in various anthologies, and in a few magazines. Three have been finalists for the Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. He’s also written award-winning scripts for stage and screen including a short-lived web series. An incomplete list of his works can be found on his blog http://flashjab.blogspot.com/.   When not writing, he plots or travels or runs errands or chats it up with other old movie buffs on twitter. He pens the Harry Landers, PI, series for Mind Wings Audio Books. He’s also released several ebooks with Untreed Reads which launched the Hack Ward PI series with Monkey See, Monkey Murder. In 2012, his YA Steampunk novel, Colt Buchanan and the Weather Walkers, was released by Red Willow Press.”

This short story is quite fun, and in the classic mold of slightly off, wacky Florida noir. Set in a dive bar on the west coast of Florida in a nothing town on the edge of a swamp, a stranger walks in with a wad of cash and an air of mystery about him; two tough rednecks are playing pool with their girlfriends when the two men decide to win some of the stranger’s money off him–and things continue to spiral downward from there. It reminded me of John D. Macdonald with maybe a dash of Hiassen thrown in for good measure, and is a very fun and satisfying read; one that I’m glad is in the book.

And now, I have spice to mine.

I’ll Be Over You

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment. I have work to do, errands to run, an apartment to clean, and weights to lift. And rather than getting started on any of it this morning, I am rather sitting in my chair, swilling coffee, and wasting time on the Internet.

Meh, it happens.

Today I am going to spend some time writing, and reading–I want to get further along in Eryk Pruitt’s What We Reckon (#boucherconhomework) and last night I had an absolutely brilliant idea of how to structure that panel. Mwa-ha-ha. The panelists may not think it’s brilliant, but I do, and I am in charge.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

MWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

This is going to be fun.

Next up in the Florida Happens anthology is a story by Debra Lattanzi Shutika. From her website:

“Hello, I’m Debra Lattanzi Shutika, author of Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico (2011, University of California Press), an ethnography that explores the lives of Mexican immigrants and their American neighbors in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania and the transformation of their home community in Mexico.  Beyond the Borderlands is the winner of the 2012 Chicago Folklore Prize.

I direct the Field School for Cultural Documentation, a collaborative project with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.  The Field School has completed eight community-based documentation projects, including the occupational culture of Arlington National Cemetery, two years in the Columbia Pike neighborhood in Arlington, VA (2011-12) the Alexandria Waterfront (2014), Arlington County Community Gardens in 2016 & 2017. We have also held two residential field schools in West Virginia. One in Morgan County in 2012 and most recently in the West Virginia Coalfields in 2018.

I also write fiction. My short story “Frozen Iguana” will appear in the 2018 Bouchercon anthology Florida Happens, and “Mirrors” appeared in Richard Peabody’s Abundant Grace: The Seventh Collection of Fiction by D.C. Area Women.  I’m revising a novel, The Other Kate, a mystery about postmodern changelings.

My current academic projects include a book-length ethnography about a documentation project with the National Park Service on the 50th Anniversary of Summers in the Parks.

I teach Folklore, ethnographic writing and ethnographic research methods at George Mason University.”

Her website is here.

debra lattanzi shutika

And here is how “Frozen Iguana” opens:

Thunk

Jimmy turned off the water and stood in the shower, shivering.

Thunk

Thunk, thunk thunk.

He looked up at the ceiling tile expecting a dent from the last—

Thunk

He wrapped a towel around his waist and eased out of the steamy bathroom, the trailer floor creaking with every step.

Jimmy pulled the blinds back from the front door window. The thermometer read 36 degrees, the sixth day of the Florida freeze. The iguanas had started to fall out of the trees like junkies after a hit. Across the way a car door slammed. At midnight, Jimmy watched his neighbor Kate, wearing her scrubs, her auburn hair tied back in a ponytail, hop down from her truck and head for her trailer. For the next hour, he made the pilgrimage to the window to watch the comings and goings of the park. Three and a half Buds later, Jimmy fell asleep for the night on the couch.

There is nothing more annoying that the repetitive sound of frozen iguanas hitting the roof of your trailer, with the possible exception of a man hammering at your neighbor’s door. Jimmy stumbled out of bed and looked outside. It was six in the morning and there was a cop. At Kate’s door.

As the unofficial mayor of Paradise Lake trailer park, Jimmy Dickson knew every resident’s story. Jimmy stayed clear of the junkies and pushers, and he watched over the lost souls who somehow ended up here. Kate was one of his favorites.

He grabbed his hat and stepped outside.  Kate hollered, “Calm down!” Her breath rose in small clouds.

“You Kate Lucci?” The cop towered over Kate.

This is a terrific story, and I love so much that she chose to write a story around the south Florida iguana issue. I have a friend who lives on the Wilton River in Fort Lauderdale, and the iguanas–who live on an island just across from his property–drive him insane. They eat the fruit from his trees, they leave piles of iguana shit everywhere, and I have to say, in the morning when you are relaxing alongside the pool with your morning coffee, it’s a bit of a shock to see something moving out of the corner of your eye and then look over and see an enormous iguana just on the other side of the screen.

And yes, during a cold spell there a few years back there was, as Steve said, an ‘iguana holocaust’–most of them freezing to death. But it wasn’t permanent, and they are back.

The story is set in a trailer park in Broward County during a freeze–with frozen iguanas falling out of the trees fairly regularly. Kate works in a rehab facility, and one of her neighbors is in recovery for opioid addiction–and has overdosed. The cops dismiss it as just another relapsed junkie overdosing, but Kate doesn’t believe the story. The victim’s addiction had cost her custody of her kids, who were being brought over for a visit the next day–which means the relapse, at least to Kate, doesn’t make sense. Dismissed by the cops, with the assistance of another resident in the park Kate keeps looking into the strange relapse, continuing to find other indications that it may have been murder, and finally solves the case herself. What a great lot of fun!

And now I suppose I should get back to work.

Love Will Conquer All

There’s nothing like paying the bills to ruin your day, is there?

Heavy heaving sigh. But there’s nothing else to be done about it, but it certainly is depressing to think about how much work went into earning that money only to see it disappear from sight so quickly. It’s disheartening, to say the least.

I had another short story rejected this week; not a big deal, really. I don’t take those kinds of things quite so personally any more; certainly not as hard as I used to. I do have a brief, momentary flash of why do I even bother, and then I get over it. I write stories that I want to write; ideas that I want to explore in story form. And while these stories certainly fit the definition of mystery as defined by the Mystery Writers of America (“fiction having to do with the commission of, the solving of, or the aftermath of a crime”), they aren’t really mystery stories. They’re crime stories, yes, but are more dark and about what can drive someone to commit a crime, or planning a crime, and so forth. This recently rejected story wasn’t even about a crime that had already happened; it was about the planning of one, and having to readjust the time-line because of an error made by one of the co-conspirators. I liked the idea, and I still like the story, but I am going to have to broaden my base of submissions to include places that aren’t necessarily are looking for a mystery story.

I do have a couple of stories still out there at major markets…markets that I basically consider to be brass rings; or, if you prefer a sports metaphor, I am swinging for the fences. I never get terribly disappointed when those hits wind up being caught in the outfield, or get thrown out at the plate. You have to try for the fences, you know, sometimes, but more often than not it’s just going to be a pop-fly right to an outfielder waiting with his glove.

It’s still disappointing, however–don’t get me wrong. You always hope.

A lot about this business is based in hope, really.

We are continuing to enjoy both Castle Rock and Sharp Objects, but the latter sometimes feels like it is being drawn out to make the series longer. But the acting is stellar, the writing is terrific, and the production values are pretty amazing. We will continue to watch.

And I started reading Eryk Pruitt’s What We Reckon, another Anthony finalist for Best Paperback Original. It’s his third novel, following Dirtbags and Hashtags. I’m not very far into it, but it’s got a really great noir feel to it that I suspect I am going to really enjoy.

And now, back to the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, everyone!

IMG_2404

Tender Love

One of the more interesting things I’ve noticed this year about this year’s Bouchercon anthology (Florida Happens) is that three of this year’s contributors (Hilary Davidson, Barb Goffman, and Susanna Calkins) are also finalists for the Anthony in the Short Story category. (I am hoping to find the time to read the stories and talk about them on here as well; along with my on-going talking about the nominees for Best Original Paperback and the stories in Florida Happens.) Not a bad pedigree for my anthology, wouldn’t you say?

Next up in terms of our short stories in Florida Happens is Hilary Davidson’s “Mr. Bones.”

34535827_10215894075241894_7172627381826355200_o

Hilary’s bio reads:

Award-winning novelist and travel writer Hilary Davidson got her start in journalism in 1995, when she moved to New York for five months to intern at Harper’s Magazine. Afterwards, Hilary joined the staff of Canadian Living magazine in Toronto as a copy editor. Her first freelance article, “Death Takes a Holiday” — about a New Orleans cemetery — was published by The Globe & Mail. She left her day job to write full-time in June 1998. She went on to write 18 nonfiction books (17 of them for Frommer’s Travel Guides) and articles for wide array of publications including Discover, Martha Stewart Weddings, American Archaeology, Chatelaine, and CNN Travel.

Hilary’s debut novel, The Damage Done, won the 2011 Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and the Crimespree Award for Best First Novel. The book was also a finalist for a Macavity Award and an Arthur Ellis Award. The novel’s main character, Lily Moore, is, like Hilary, a travel writer. While their personal lives have little in common, they do share a few things, such as a love of vintage clothing, classic Hollywood movies, and Art Deco design. The second book in the series is The Next One to Fall and the third is Evil in All Its Disguises. Hilary’s first standalone novel, Blood Always Tells, was published by Tor/Forge in April 2014 and released as a trade paperback in March 2015. Her next novel is One Small Sacrifice, which will be published by Thomas & Mercer in spring 2019.

Her short fiction has won the Derringer Award, the Spinetingler Award, and two Readers’ Choice Awards from Ellery Queen. Hilary’s story “The Siege” was a finalist for the 2016 Anthony Award for Best Short Story. Her stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Thuglit, Beat to a Pulp, Crimespree, All Due Respect, Crime Factory, Spinetingler, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir. Her work is featured in many anthologies, including Beat to a Pulp: Round One and Round Two; Crimefactory: First Shift; Thuglit Presents: Blood Guts, & Whiskey; Pulp Ink; D*CKED; and Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen. 

Hilary has served as an At-Large Director on the National Board of the Mystery Writers of America from January 2012 to January 2016. She has previously served on the Mystery Writers of America’s New York Board as well.

Pretty impressive, eh? Not mentioned in the above is her collection of short stories, The Black Widows Club, which you can buy here. I have it, and I need to get back to it; the stories I’ve read are pretty awesome.

You can visit her website here.

And so, without further ado, is the opening of her contribution to Florida Happens, “Mr. Bones.”

I’d be the first to admit that Mr. Bones wasn’t going to win any prizes for Pet of the Year. He was a pugnacious alley cat with mouse breath and an anger-management problem, but I loved him. So when I got home from a three-day dermatology conference in New York and discovered he was missing, I was devastated.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” I pleaded with my boyfriend.

“Nothing happened. Your cat just hasn’t come home,” Andrew said.

We were standing in the kitchen, and I couldn’t help but turn and look at the door to the backyard. Mr. Bones’ three bowls were there — dry food, wet food, and water — and they were all full.

“He didn’t eat anything today?” I asked. “Was he sick?”

 “Come on, Monica. There’s always something wrong with that cat.”

“What time did he go out this morning?”

 “I don’t know. It was early. He woke me with his screaming to get outside.”

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“What do you mean?”

 “Your hand is bandaged up.”

 “Oh, that’s nothing,” he said. “I was cutting an avocado. Should’ve known not to try that without you around.” He gave me a sweet smile, which made him look even more like Tom Hiddleston than usual. “I picked up takeout from Moe’s for dinner. I know you love their Southwest Salad with tofu.”

Andrew and I had been living together for almost six months, and it was going well. But I was too wound up about Mr. Bones to think about eating. “Thanks, but I need to look for Mr. Bones. He’s probably sulking right now.”

I stepped outside onto the patio behind the house. “Honey, I’m home!” I called out. Something rustled in the warm stillness of the night, but my cat didn’t come running. If he heard me, he would have, because he was more like a dog in that way. I called for him and waited.

Andrew rapped on the storm door. “Come on, Monica. He’ll be back when he’s ready.”

Oh, pets.

We love our little furry buddies, don’t we? And losing them is always heartbreaking; something you never get over but just learn to live with. (I still get sad remembering my childhood dog, or our previous cat, Skittle, whom we lost eight years ago.)  The bond between pet and owner is always powerful. I’ve never written a story about a pet–not sure why that is; I just never have. (I gave Scotty and the boys a cat in Garden District Gothic, though.) There are also some great pet short stories by crime writers–“Ming’s Biggest Prey” by Patricia Highsmith and “Less Than a Dog” by Agatha Christie are two particular favorites of mine–and Hilary Davidson’s “Mr. Bones” certainly belongs with those two classic tales. Monica a dermatologist, returns from a convention to find that her cat has gone missing in her absence, and her live-in boyfriend’s antipathy to the situation as she searches the neighborhood for her missing pet is notable–as is the nastiness of the old cat-hating woman who tears down her fliers. So, what happened to Mr. Bones?

And now, back to the spice mines.

A Different Corner

Very tired today; a late night of bar testing got me home late last night, and so my sleep–always an issue–was not good last night. The end result is that I am very foggy and tired today, with a lot of spice to mine.

Heavy heaving sigh.

But I am very pleased to report that I finished reading Nadine Nettman’s Uncorking a Lie last night, and might I add that my Bouchercon homework is ever so much more fun than any homework I’ve ever had previously in my life?

Scan

PAIRING SUGGESTION:

CREMANT DE LOIRE–LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE

A sparkling wine made primarily from the Chenin Blanc grape, ideal for beginnings.

When bottles of wine are sold for large amounts of money, they end up in the news. Sometimes it;s because the bottle was rare and other times the final price was noteworthy or even extreme. Yet the seller is never really emphasized in the articles. It’s always the buyer.

The buyer, who paid thousands and thousands of dollars for a bottle of wine, often with the notion to safely tuck it away in a cellar where it might not be moved again. I understand saving special bottles for long periods of time, but to know that a wine would never be released from the bottle, never get to live out its purpose of being enjoyed and savored, always gave me a tinge of sadness.

This time I knew the buyer well. Paul Rafferty was a longtime customer of Trentino and although he had an extensive collection of unique bottles kept safely in his wine cellar, he was also known for occasionally opening rare wines, sometimes at the restaurant where I had the honor of uncorking the bottle and releasing the story.

I never deny the fact that I am, for all intents and purposes, a peasant. There are a lot of things about manners and etiquette, for example, that I neither know nor understand. My family has very poor, rural Southern roots; it was in my parents’ generation that the cycle of poverty was broken and our family moved from blue-collar/working class to comfortably middle class. I am always worried I am committing some social faux pas because I simply don’t know any better; I simply stick to the basic manners of being polite when a guest but there’s always that niggling doubt in the back of my mind that I am going to do something that makes my host or hostess think to themselves oh yes, I always forget Greg is white trash. Smart, but still white trash.

Wine is one of the things I don’t understand or get; something I don’t know a lot about. I am always afraid to order wine with dinner or in a bar setting because I don’t know what I’m looking for; for many years I simply differentiated between wines as “red” or “white”; I still get thrown every once in a while by all the many different varieties that fall under each color–and then, of course, there’s rose. Sigh.

Uncorking a Lie is a terrific traditional mystery, in that the main character, through whose point-of-view we see the story, is not a professional investigator of any type but a sommelier at Trentino, a nice restaurant in San Francisco. Katie has recently passed her certification exam and is studying for her Master Sommelier certification. She is invited to a special dinner at Paul Rafferty’s mansion in Sonoma where he plans on opening and serving a bottle he bought at auction for nineteen thousand dollars; once the bottle is opened Katie realizes that the bottle is, actually, a counterfeit. She informs Paul’s assistant–and less than an hour later the assistant is dead. Paul asks her to get to the bottom of the counterfeit bottle of wine, and now we are off to the races.

This was a very fun read with a likable main character; and even though I don’t know much about wine, Nettman’s discussions about wine were not only not over my head, but made me even more interested in learning more about wine.

Look forward to reading more in this series!

Dreamtime

A rare late night of bar testing has left my day free; I am going to go to the gym, do some cleaning, and maybe even some writing before I head into the office. We’ll see how it goes, shan’t we?

I am still reading Nadine Nettman’s Uncorking a Lie, and am really enjoying it thus far. I have to say, one of the most interesting thing (to me) about this year’s Anthony nominees for Best Paperback Original is how different all the books are–something I will talk about more when I’ve finished reading them all. (I am also making notes of questions to ask each writer as I read their books; best way to prep for moderating a panel!)

Next up for The Short Story Project is the next story in Florida Happens, which happens to be “There’s an Alligator in My Purse” by Paul D. Marks.

The Teaser

“She makes a beautiful corpse, doesn’t she?”

“You just kill me.”

“No, I just killed her.”

“You know what they say, live fast, die young and leave a good lookin’ corpse.”

“Or at least a dead one,” I said, with a wink.

I’m a pro. I like to do a competent job. I like to have my marks look presentable, both for themselves and for my clients. It’s good for word of mouth and getting killed is hard enough, on both the mark and their family, so at least they should leave a suitable lasting impression.

I also take a lot of pictures. Much easier in these digital days. Back in the day, it was hard to take pictures of dead bodies to your local photo store to get developed—some of them even called the cops. And I like to add a little art to my work. Give the client a little something extra for their money, so I try to shoot from interesting angles, in low key light, like in an old film noir. I find it works on two levels. It gives me satisfaction and, of course, it gives my clients some kind of closure.

Let me fill you in on some of what led us here. Someone has to tell the story and it might as well be me. I’m probably the only one who can see the big picture. True, I wasn’t there for everything, but I was there for enough of it and I heard about the rest from first person sources. How much of it you should trust, well, that’s another story. You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I like to think I’m a pretty reliable source. So, this is the tale as best I know it.

Paul D Marks -- _MG_5669Edit-2 d1.jpg

Paul D. Marks is the author of the Shamus Award-winning mystery-thriller White Heat, which Publishers Weekly calls a “taut crime yarn,” and its sequel Broken Windows (dropping 9/10/18). Publisher’s Weekly says: “Fans of downbeat PI fiction will be satisfied…with Shamus Award winner Marks’s solid sequel to… White Heat.” Though set in the 1990s, both novels deal with issues that are hot and relevant today: racism and immigration, respectively. His short stories appear in Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines, among others, and have won or been nominated for many awards, including the Anthony, Derringer and Macavity. His story “Windward,” has been selected for the Best American Mystery Stories of 2018, edited by Louise Penny & Otto Penzler, and has also been nominated for both a 2018 Shamus Award and Macavity Award for Best Short Story.  “Ghosts of Bunker Hill” was voted #1 in the 2016 Ellery Queen Readers Poll. He is co-editor of the multi-award nominated anthology Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea. You can find him on-line at his website, link right here!

When asked  about how he came up with his story, he replied:

The genesis of my story, “There’s an Alligator in My Purse,” was inspired by the theme of the Bouchercon anthology, which was originally “Sunny Places, Shady People”. So I wanted plenty o’ sun and plenty o’ shady people. I could have gone one of two ways with the story: a serious noirish mystery, which is more what I’m known for…if I’m known. Or, since people seem to make fun of Florida so much the other choice was humor and satire. I chose the latter. I thought it would be fun to get a little crazy. And though I mostly write serious crime stories, I have done some humorous and satirical stories in the past, so it was time for another shot at that.

I started with the title, which just came to me out of nowhere, as these things often do. I thought it was funny. Okay, funny. Now what? Now I have to build a story around it. And hopefully make the rest of the story have at least a chuckle or two. So I had to figure out who would have an alligator in their purse – yes, there really is one! – and why. I just let my mind wander. And had fun with it. This story was a hell of a lot of fun to write and I hope others enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The story, though he claims otherwise, is both noirish and funny. It’s very clever in the way it takes a classic hard-boiled/noir trope and spins it on its head, while turning it inside out at the same time. It’s also kind of written like a film; there are quick cuts between scenes, so the story flows in a cinematic way, which was a lot of fun. I greatly enjoyed this story–and have enjoyed Paul’s work in the past as well (we were both nominated for the 2017 Macavity for Short Story, which gave me the occasion to read his “Ghosts of Bunker Hill”, which is quite marvelous), and I am looking forward to reading his novel White Heat when it works its way up in my TBR pile.

And now, back to the spice mines.

King for a Day

Ah, Monday. Blue, blue Monday, and yet the beginning of still another work week.

I worked quite a bit yesterday, and even made it to the gym. I was one of six people in the gym, and if you guessed that at one point in my workout four of the other five people had taken up all the options for my next exercise, you’d have guessed correctly. And no one apparently notices the signs posted everywhere that read Please rerack your weights when finished.

No. One.

Back when I used to work in fitness environments, I was always amazed at how people just leave their weights on the machines or dumbbells wherever they used them rather than putting them back–as though they assumed that the staff people working were there to clean up after them. It used to happen in aerobics classes I taught, too–the attendees would finish, then leave their steps, dumbbells, and sometimes their sweaty towels there for me to put away.

It would be so lovely to one day be wealthy enough to have my own workout room in my home. All I want, really–a room that’s a dedicated office space and a workout room. Is that really so much to ask for?

Lately, so many things have been getting on my nerves that I’ve wondered if I am on edge, or if something’s going on in my subconscious that’s bubbling up by making me highly annoyed and irritated with people, or something, I don’t know what; but the more I think about it, the more I tend to think, no, you’re just sick of assholes.

Seriously. And then I remembered the most important thing of why I am a crime writer: I can kill off assholes fictionally.

I also finished Lori Rader-Day’s The Day I Died, and started reading Nadine Nettman’s Uncorking a Lie.

the day i died

On the day I died, I took the new oars down to the lake. They were heavy, but I was saving myself the second trip. The blades rode flat along the ground, flattening two tracks through the wet grass.

It was morning. The air was cool, but down on the dock, the slats were already hot. I noted a lone fishing boat out on the water. Inside, two men hunched silently over their tackle, their faces turned out across the lake. Beyond them, mist rose off the water, nearly hiding the far shore.

This moment. This is what I return to.

Later, I will note the long crack on the new oar, just before my head goes under, just before the flume of blood rises off my skin under the water like smoke. I will come back to othis moment and think, if I had just gone back up the steps to the house immediately. If I had just stayed up at the house in the first place.

If I had just.

Lori Rader-Day’s Anthony Award shortlisted 2017 novel is quite excellent. Thematically, it’s about desperation–what people do when they have no other options. In the case of Anna Winger, Rader-Day’s main character, her childhood was desolate and bleak; the child of an alcoholic abuser, she moved from there to an abusive relationship with a boyfriend before fleeing for her life and that of her unborn child. Now, she lives in a wretched little town in Indiana, working as a freelance handwriting analyst. A child has gone missing in Parks, Indiana, and the local police bring her in for her expertise, bringing her into the case sideways. The case also stirs up dark memories of her own past for Anna, and her child–now thirteen and entering that rebellious stage–is becoming more and more closed off from her, difficult to know; and she has to wonder, as a mother, if this life they’ve led of constantly moving and never establishing roots anywhere, is messing up her own child. The parallels between the missing child case of the present and her own disappearance from her own life brings her to her own breaking point–and to where she can no longer ignore or deny her past, but most confront it.

Rader-Day’s strengths–her depiction of how claustrophobic yet lonely small towns can be; her ability to create sympathetic, damaged characters–are all here, and the book is structured beautifully; each incident and scene flowing into the next until the reader has to keep compulsively turning the page.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Object of My Desire

It is Sunday, and I have again slept later than I intended. I meant to set an alarm, as I have things that must be done today but I also stayed up later than I intended and as such, forgot to set said alarm when I tumbled into bed last evening. It’s fine; I should be able to get everything done today that I want to get done. I just have to be a bit better about planning and wasting time. Clearly, I needed the sleep, don’t you think?

I am reading The Day I Died by Lori Rader-Day, as part of my Bouchercon homework, and enjoying it a quite a lot. This is the second of Rader-Day’s novels that I’ve read (the other being Pretty Little Things; I’ve not read her first, The Black Hour, and she’s just released a new one, Under a Dark Sky), and I am enjoying this even more than I did the first I read. Rader-Day writes about damaged women, makes them the center of her stories, and they work through a lot of their damage over the course of the novels. I will, rest assured, have plenty of other things to say about this novel once I’ve finished reading it.

I cleaned my kitchen floors yesterday; not as thoroughly as they need, of course, but more of a surface thing that will pass muster at a glance, but this surface cleansing would not pass muster with my mother. Her nose would wrinkle, her eyes would narrow, and she wouldn’t say anything to me–but that facial expression would tell me everything I need to know about what she was thinking. She would get on her hands and knees and would scrub the floor, probably more than once, with a hard brush and an abrasive cleanser.

I worked briefly on my story “Please Die Soon” as well yesterday; it is shaping up nicely, but I need to concern myself a bit more thoroughly with the pacing, methinks.

Today, for the Short Story Project, we move on to the second story in Florida Happens, “The Best Laid Plans” by Holly West:

June 1948

Bev Marshall waits anxiously behind the wheel of the Buick, watching for the rest of the crew to emerge from the house. It seems they’ve been gone at least an hour, but her watch shows it’s only 10:45 p.m. Less than ten minutes since they went in. The boys work fast, but not that fast.

There are four of them in the crew. Joe Scullion is their boss and Bev’s boyfriend. Alex McGovern is the brawn, and Sean Cregan is a master lock picker. Bev’s their driver. They earn their living burgling wealthy neighborhoods all over the Eastern Seaboard, coming home to Philly with thousands in cash and valuables. Five years working together and not a single arrest, not that the coppers haven’t tried.

It’s been a good run, but after tonight, Bev will be done with all of them.

She thinks she sees movement out of the corner of her eye and snaps her head toward it. Is it them? She squints into the darkness, her hand resting lightly on the key in the ignition. Everything is still and she concedes it must’ve been her imagination. Wrecked by nerves, she quashes the urge to chew a fingernail and slips her hand into her purse in search of cigarettes. Her fingers brush the thick envelope containing every cent she has—nearly five thousand dollars. Along with whatever money she’s able to get for tonight’s haul, it’s enough to keep her going for a year, maybe more if she lives modestly.

She lights a cigarette and pulls the smoke deeply into her lungs, thinking about Richie O’Neill. She’ll miss him when this is done. He runs a hockshop on Vine Street and fences most of the loot they steal. Over the years, he’s become her trusted friend, so when he let it slip recently that Joe had his eye out for a new driver, she believed him. Turns out Joe had fallen hard for some dame he’d met in Atlantic City and he wants to marry her, maybe have some kids.

Holly West is the author of two novels, historical crime novels set at the court of King Charles II of England; the period popularly known as the Restoration. Those novels, Mistress of Fortune and Mistress of Lies, sound terrific. I also love that period, and look forward to reading these novels; you can find out more information about Holly and her novels here, at her website.  She is also on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also sign up for her newsletter at her website. She is also editing an anthology called Murder-a-Go-Go’s, crime stories inspired by the music of the Go-Go’s, with an introduction by Jane Weidlin; it also contains my story “This Town,” and I personally cannot wait to read the entire thing.

36281289_10156275148680993_5425430004299202560_o

Holly’s story, “The Best Laid Plans,” is entirely self-contained but also feels like it could be the opening of a great noir novel. The main character, Bev Marshall (I also have a very dear author friend by that name; such lovely serendipity) drives the getaway car for a gang of thieves, and is a bit in love with the leader of the gang–who, however, has recently punched her in the face, changing everything. Bev is now planning on getting away from him, and the gang, and starting a new life…and Florida is a way station on her getaway plan. But things, of course, don’t go quite according to plan. A very very well-written and fun story, with a main character I personally would like to spend with.

Well done, Holly! And now, back to the spice mines.