Tag: Bouchercon 2018

Black or White

Sunday morning. Seriously, I got absolutely nothing done yesterday; no writing, no reading, very little cleaning, no trip to the gym.

Nothing.

I also overslept this morning. I didn’t wake up until after ten, which is completely inexcusable. I went to bed early last night (my bedside reading is Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King, and it is riveting. We so frequently (deliberately?) forget just how awful our society was before the Civil Rights movement (awful as things can be now, sadly it was much worse back then),  that this book, and others about the Jim Crow south, should be required reading for all Americans…not that the racists would take anything profound away from it. Isn’t that always the problem? The people who should read a book are precisely the people who would never read it.

Today I may or may not make it to the gym–you never know, but sleeping so late has kind of thrown me off my gameplan (which is the problem with being so anal retentive/borderline OCD; when the plan gets thrown off I generally surrender and don’t try to make any of it work), so in a moment, after finishing my last cup of coffee for the day (I don’t drink coffee after noon; or rather, don’t make a cup in the Keurig after twelve) I am going to start reading “A Whisper from the Graveyard” out loud, followed by reading “This Thing of Darkness” out loud, and possibly “The Problem with Autofill”; I think I’ve found a place for it to be published (or at the very least, considered for publication). I also came across another place to submit a story; they are looking for historical crime stories…of which I have none, and might possibly mean having to write a new one. I might be able to find one that is in progress somewhere that might work…I have some stories set in the past but I also don’t know what they mean by historical crime. Does it have to be in the distant past, or can it be in the recent past, as I have some stories set in the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s. Of course, I could email them and ask for a more precise explanation of historical. It might even be fun to try to write something very far back in the past, like during the time of Catherine de Medici, or Michelangelo.

Which of course means I could play around writing notes in my journal, which is always kind of fun.

The next story in Florida Happens is “When Agnes Left Her House,” by Patricia Abbott.

Patricia Abbott is the author of more than 125 stories that have appeared online, in print journals and in various anthologies. She is the author of two print novels Concrete Angel (2015) and Shot in Detroit (2016)(Polis Books). Concrete Angel was nominated for an Anthony and Macavity Award in 2016. Shot in Detroit was nominated for an Edgar Award and an Anthony Award in 2017. A collection of her storiesI Bring Sorrow and Other Stories of Transgression was released earlier this year.

She also authored two ebooks, Monkey Justice and Home Invasion and co-edited Discount Noir She won a Derringer award for her story “My Hero.” She lives outside Detroit. You can find her blog here.

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“When Agnes Left Her House” by Patricia Abbott

When Agnes left her house, she picked her moment carefully. Only the greenhorn oil trucker battling the steep road coiling around her house might have caught a flash of red gingham in his mirror.  He did not.

As she crossed the fields lying between the house and Haycock, her resolve hardened. A walk turned into a trot, and then into a sprint, as she moved as fast as she could toting Henry’s old track bag. She wasn’t sure where she was headed, having seldom been south of Lancaster and never east of Smoketown.

The boys would be home from school in a few hours and find the kitchen table scrubbed clean but no snacks laid out. Had there been a day in the last eighteen years when she hadn’t baked cookies or brownies, made popcorn, or cored apples? And dinner was usually half-made by one o’clock, the smell of soup or a stew welcoming their return. Today not a single pot sat on the stove and the oven was cold. The only sign of tonight’s dinner was the chicken in the fridge, lemon and thyme sprigs resting inside and garlic tucked under the skin. She’d prepared it before the idea of escape overtook her.  

 Last night’s words with Henry rankled until taking off seemed like the only sane course of action. Sane—that word was ping-ponged across the kitchen table in a battle lasting until three a.m. She’d successfully ducked the back of his hand and his reach for her hair, loosened in the struggle. Swinging wildly, he caught his foot on the table leg and fell hard. By the time he stood up, she’d locked him out of their bedroom. That was the last she saw of him. Surely, the kids had overheard some of their scuffle. She blushed with shame.

This story is a gem. Married to an abuser, and mother of five young sons, Agnes packs a bag and goes on the road, running away from her life. Florida is her final destination, and Abbott offers no sentimentality about how Agnes gets there and what she has to do to survive. It’s a shocking story in some ways, but utterly realistic and honest and painful to read. Women like Agnes–there’s not really any answer for them in our society, and her descent is terrible to read about….and yet never once does she think it would be better to head back home to her family. And there’s a lovely twist at the end. Stunning and brilliant.

And now, to read some of my own stories aloud.

I’m Too Sexy

How lovely to wake up to a terrific review of Florida Happens on the Mystery Scene website! You can read it here.

Huzzah!

I have to say I am very proud of this anthology, but even prouder that my story “Cold Beer No Flies” was also singled out for praise, which is lovely. As Constant Reader is aware, I don’t have a lot of confidence when it comes to my short stories, so those rare occasions when they get mentioned by reviewers is always a treat for me. (Which reminds me, I need to work on some this weekend. Sigh.)

It’s been a long week; I had trouble sleeping in the middle of the week but bounced back really nicely in the latter part of the week. Last night’s sleep was wonderful, long-lasting and deep and relaxing; I am still in sort of a rest-coma this morning. My kitchen is a mess–and something will have to be done about that sooner rather than later–and other than a social obligation today and a couple of errands that must be run (mail, prescriptions) the rest of the day is mine to do with as I please. The clock is running out on my Bouchercon homework, so I am going to need to curl up with James Ziskin’s Cast the First Stone in order to have time to read Thomas Pluck’s Bad Boy Boogie before Bouchercon, so I am prepared to discuss their books with the fine panelists on the Best Paperback Original panel. I also booked my rental car and paid for the  early check-in on Southwest–which apparently now is automatic; you don’t have to do anything and it checks you in thirty-six hours before your flight, which is actually kind of lovely. I need to read “A Whisper from the Graveyard and “This Thing of Darkness” aloud this weekend, and I want to start working on the revision of Royal Street Reveillon which I’ve been avoiding all month (now that the month is almost over, sigh).

So. Much. To. Do.

We started watching Kim’s Convenience last night, which is, simply put, a very endearing and funny show about a Korean family–the Kims–who own a convenience store in Toronto. I was worried, of course, that the show might deal in stereotypes, but the family dynamic and the relationships between the characters is very complex, and underlying it all is a deep sweetness; there is more to the Kims than you think at first, and the show is actually funny but not at the expense of the characters. Of course, I’m not Korean, so I can’t speak to its authenticity or to its not being offensive, but Paul and I are both really enjoying it. And Jung–the son who is estranged from his father for being a bit of a juvenile delinquent when a teen, even serving time in juvie–is sexy.  I highly recommend it.

The next story in Florida Happens is  “Frontier Justice” by John Floyd.

John Floyd’s work has appeared in more than 250 different publications, including Strand Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Woman’s World, Mississippi Noir, and The Saturday Evening Post. A former Air Force captain and IBM systems engineer, he is also a three-time Derringer Award winner, an Edgar Award finalist, and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. One of John’s stories appeared in the 2015 edition of Best American Mystery Stories, and another is forthcoming in the 2018 edition.

John is also the author of six books: Rainbow’s End, Midnight, Clockwork, Deception, Fifty Mysteries, and Dreamland.

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The car was waiting in the alley, with Eddie Stark at the wheel and half a dozen cigarette butts littering the pavement below the driver’s-side door. Eddie had flipped a seventh out the open window and exhaled a lungful of smoke when he saw Charlotte Baxter stroll around the corner and head in his direction. Even from a distance, Baxter’s face looked as calm as always. Eddie Stark’s was sweating.

Baxter climbed in, set a thick brown attache case on the seat between them, and peeled off her honey-colored wig. She also took off a pair of glasses and removed two wads of cotton from inside her cheeks. Eddie hefted the case up and over into the back seat. It didn’t feel as heavy as it had been, twenty minutes ago, and he knew why: half its contents had been left in the building across the street.

With trembling hands Eddie started the engine and steered the big Lincoln out of the alley and into the downtown Tallahassee traffic. Finally he turned to look at Baxter.

“How’d it go?”

“Fine.” Baxter leaned back and closed her eyes. “Mission accomplished, package delivered.”

“Sure nobody recognized you?”

“Would you have recognized me? What they saw was a blonde with a chubby face.”

John Floyd is one of our best short story writers; I first met him at the Edgar Symposium several years ago when he was on a panel I moderated. He was nominated for the Edgar for Best Short Story for “The Ledge,” which I thought was simply brilliant. His work has been nominated and/or won many awards, and I am always excited to read a new story from him. He contributed a great story to Blood on the Bayou, “The Blue Delta,” and I am more than thrilled to have “Frontier Justice” in Florida Happens.

“Frontier Justice” is about a heroin ring’s decision to kill the investigating district attorneys by planting a bomb in their office. Charlotte Baxter, as seen in the opening excerpt, is the woman they hired to blend in and plant the bomb. But as always with a Floyd story, there’s more going on beneath the surface than is readily apparent to the reader, and the way the story flips on itself in the closing pages shows just how much mastery Floyd has over the form.

And now, back to the spice mines.

To Be With You

So, I slept really deeply and well last night, so I am feeling very well rested this morning. I know, my sleep chronicles are probably horrifyingly boring, but it really does affect how my day goes, and how much I can write and get done every day. Yesterday I was so tired I couldn’t focus on anything, and was borderline crabby all day. I don’t think that will be the case today. Huzzah!

I’ve also noticed that being tired triggers depression in me, which is not a good thing. Depression is so fucking hideous and self-defeating…just awful.

I finally finished the second draft of “A Whisper from the Graveyard” last night, which was kind of cool. It’s taking shape, perhaps another draft and maybe a read-aloud this weekend and it might be ready to go. This is an enormous relief, as I feel like I am getting nothing done these days. Of course, I also had a ridiculously productive first half of the year. The second half of the story seemed to be okay, much more okay than the first half, but we shall see when I read it aloud this weekend how much work  it needs. I tried to work on two other stories yesterday–“Once a Tiger” and “Never Kiss a Stranger”–but I realized part of the problem I’m having  with “Once a Tiger” is because I don’t really understand the motivations of the characters, so I need to brainstorm that story a little bit more before trying to finish it, and since “Never Kiss a Stranger” is going to be a longer story–almost novella length–I need to structure it and plan it out a little better. I know how the story is going to end, but there’s another part of the story I really need to work on.

And I’ve got to get back on track. I need to finish my Bouchercon homework and organize thoughts and questions for that panel; it’s my first time moderating at Bouchercon and I want to do a good job so the audience feels they got their money’s worth. I have great panelists though, so i think it will be a lively and fun discussion.

The next story in Florida Happens is Michael Wiley’s “Winner.”

Michael’s most recent novel is Monument Road, about an exonerated death-row inmate investigating the crime that sent him to prison. He also writes the Daniel Turner Thriller series (Blue Avenue, Second Skin, Black Hammock) and the Shamus Award-winning Joe Kozmarski Private Detective series (A Bad Night’s Sleep, The Bad Kitty Lounge, Last Striptease). He is a frequent book reviewer and an occasional writer of journalism, critical books, and essays.

Michael grew up in Chicago and lived and worked in the neighborhoods and on the streets where he sets his Kozmarski mysteries. He teaches literature at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville—the setting of Monument Road and the Daniel Turner stories.

Visit his website here.

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When Missy Denners walked back into her house, she left the suitcase of money in her car trunk. Security cameras had recorded her in the Omni Hotel lobby. More cameras recorded her getting off the elevator with Marcel Beauvien at the fifth floor and getting back on without him. She figured she had an hour or so before the police connected her to his death.

Upstairs she found a duffel bag on a closet shelf and put in two changes of clothes. She wrapped a t-shirt around her pistol and put it in too. She dug her passport out of a desk drawer and assembled a kit of toiletries.

National Junior Waterskiing Champion at age sixteen, married at nineteen, widowed at twenty-two when her husband Tom made a dumbass deal with Beauvien and then didn’t come through with the cash, Missy knew her ups and her downs, the ecstasy and the agony. She called herself a Florida Girl to anyone who asked, though she lived in Jacksonville, which was to Florida what Detroit was to the beaches and northern woods of Michigan. Thing was, she pulled it off. No light seemed to shine brighter than the brilliant spray from her ski as she blasted through the first pair of red gate buoys, whooping like a wild thing, her hair banded in a ponytail, her teeth glinting.

Now, in the bedroom, she lay down on the bed she’d shared for three years with Tom. She felt no regret for shooting Beauvien. She wanted what she lost, that was all. She hated to lose. For a moment she thought of climbing under the bed covers, shutting her eyes, and trying to dream herself back into her former life. Instead, she made a mental list. Clothes, passport, toothbrush. What else might she need? She went downstairs to the garage and found a screwdriver and pliers.

This is a terrific story, and the character of Missy is perfectly drawn, with all her foibles and thoughts and motivations, and her likability, despite her flaws and faults, are what drive this story of revenge and escape and survival; Missy is a former champion athlete and she’s always been a winner–and her push to always be a champion plays out beautifully throughout the story and especially makes the ending absolutely spot on. I’d actually love to read more about Missy; I hope Michael considers making her the main character of a novel sometime.

And now, back to the spice mines.

I Love Your Smile

I’m tired this morning.

Yeah, I know. Same old same old for one now officially fifty-seven year old Gregalicious. Bouchercon looms on the horizon and I still need to read two more books to be up to speed on my Best Paperback Original Anthony panel; and I have a lot of writing and editing to do before I leave so I can go with a clear conscience and not do a fucking thing while I am in St. Petersburg.

I really can’t wait for that week off…

A mild cold front passed through overnight, so today is hot and sunny but not humid. Which is lovely, and has helped my mood. I had a bit of a sinus headache this morning, actually, because of the dramatic shift in the barometric pressure, and wound up having to take a Claritin, which I haven’t had to do as much this summer.

Heavy heaving sigh.

The next story in Florida Happens is Brendan DuBois’ “Breakdown.”

BIO: Award winning mystery/suspense author Brendan DuBois is a former newspaper reporter and a lifelong resident of New Hampshire, where he lives with his wife Mona, their hell-raising cat Bailey, and one happy English Springer Spaniel named Spencer. He is also a one-time “Jeopardy!” game show champion, and is also a winner of the game show “The Chase.” He has published over twenty novels, and  has had more than 120 short stories published in such magazines as Playboy, Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as in numerous original short fiction anthologies. In 1995, one of his short stories — “The Necessary Brother” — won the Shamus Award for Best Short Story of the Year from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the PWA also awarded him the Shamus in 2001 for his short story, “The Road’s End.” He has also been nominated three times — most recently in 1997 — for an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his short fiction. One of his short stories in 1997 was also nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Mystery Short Story of the Year. In 2010, the readers of Deadly Pleasures and Mystery News awarded him the Barry Award, for Best Mystery Short Story of the Year, for his story “The High House Writer,” which was published in the July/August 2009 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. He also won the Barry Award in 2007 for for his story “The Right Call,” which appeared in the September/October 2006 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. In 2005, he received the Al Blanchard Crime Fiction Award for Best Short Crime Fiction Story at the fourth annual New England Crime Bake, a mystery convention organized by the New England Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. This short story, “The Road’s End,” appeared in the Windchill crime anthology, published by Level Best Books.

His short stories have also been extensively anthologized, including the 1988, 1990, 1992 and 1995 editions of The Year’s Best Mystery & Suspense Stories, published by Walker Books, as well as the 1995 and 1997 editions of Year’s 25 Best Mystery Short Stories and the 1997, 1999, 2001 and the 2003 editions of Best American Mystery Stories, published by Houghton Mifflin. In addition, his short fiction has also been reprinted in the 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 editions of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, published by Forge.

An anthology of his short fiction, The Dark Snow and other Mysteries, was published in 2001 by Crippen & Landru press of Virginia. This was followed by a second anthology, Tales from the Dark Woods, published by Five Star.

His stories have also appeared in two short story anthologies published in Germany as well as in South Africa and Japan.

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Visit his website here.

“Breakdown” by Brendan DuBois

It had been a long, long time since Ruth Callaghan had suffered a flat tire while driving, so it came as a bit of a surprise when it happened.  She wasn’t familiar with the Toyota Rav 4 she was driving, and so when the tire let loose, instantly there was a heavy vibration in the steering wheel and the car, which had been driving smooth and fair, was now lurching to the right.

She slowed and pulled the Toyota over to the side of the road.  She checked her watch, and also checked the Rav’s dashboard clock.

Both said the same thing.  She had about forty-five minutes to go before she had to make her appointment.

Not forty-four.  Not forty-six.

Forty-five.

Ruth got out of the car and went to the rear.  The right rear tire certainly was flat.

“Damn.”  She wiped at the back of her neck.  It was hot.  It was incredibly hot.

She looked around at her surroundings.   She was outside of Miami, in a wooded and flat area that had seen better times, just like the old industrial sections she had earlier driven through.  Decades ago those factories had made comfortable livings for hundreds of families.  Now, they were broken, shattered, making comfortable homes only for the homeless or rogue animals living out in the wild Florida landscape.

Like one of her instructors had said, years back, systems break down if they aren’t carefully cherished and maintained.

Breakdown.

The thing I love about Brendan’s stories is you never are quite sure where they are going; he is a master of misdirection and always manages to lead the reader down the wrong path and BAM! There’s a surprise twist–but they are never out of place, and once you’ve arrived at the twist, when you look back you can see exactly how the twist was foreshadowed all along. “Breakdown” is a terrific story, about a woman on her way to an appointment who blows a tire in front of a strange house and has to change it so she can make it on time. As she works on the tire, she observes some strange behavior at the house by its inhabitants–she’s even snapped at by one of them in an incredibly rude way–and then the story changes direction and delivers a terrific pay-off.

And now back to the spice mines.

Just Another Day

So, the Saints have added a male Saintsation this year, which pleases me to no end. And of course, he’s been targeted by trash on-line; you know, the ‘keyboard warriors’ who insult and tear into total strangers from behind the safety of their computers. I am looking forward to watching Jesse perform this season, as well as the two men who are performing with the Rams. I was a cheerleader in college, and know all too well the abuse you can get from other men (and some women) for putting yourself out there. I enjoyed every moment of cheering, and that trash would have called me fag even if I wasn’t a cheerleader.

And I’d still like to see any of them try to do a string of back handsprings.

Both Animal Kingdom and Sharp Objects continue to enthrall us; both are coming to their inevitable season finales soon, but hopefully all the other shows we enjoy watching will be airing again by then; there are also some other shows I’d like to watch currently on Netflix. I watched To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before or whatever it’s name was the other night; it was adorable and sweet, if a bit predictable. But it was great seeing a young Asian-American girl in the Molly Ringwold role for a change; I also enjoyed seeing her family dynamic. I imagine the film is going to draw the inevitable haters, as such things are wont to do; but I love this new trend of representation of characters without making a big deal about it. I am, of course, conditioned to notice the minority characters–as are we all, really–but representation does  matter, and presenting it like it’s not a big deal is the best way  to go because it shouldn’t be a big deal.

I hope and pray future generations will see it that way and won’t notice.

Next up for Florida Happens is Alex Segura’s “Quarters for the Meter.”

Alex Segura is the author of the Pete Fernandez Miami Mystery novels, which include Silent City, Down the Darkest Street, Dangerous Ends, and Blackout, all via Polis Books. Blackout was listed as one of the most anticipated mystery novels of 2018 by CrimeReads, MysteryPeople and Bookbub, and included in The Boston Globe’s Summer Reading List.

He has also written a number of comic books, including the best-selling and critically acclaimed Archie Meets Kiss storyline, the “Occupy Riverdale” story, and the Archies Meet The Ramones one-shot and The Archies ongoing series.

Alex will be co-writing Lethal Lit, a new fictional crime podcast launching this fall from iHeart Media.

His work has appeared in the anthologies Protectors 2, Waiting To Be Forgotten:  SStories of Crime and Heartbreak Inspired by the Replacements, Unloaded 2, Apollo’s Daughters, and Florida Happens,  the Bouchercon 2018 anthology, and in publications including The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Strand, Mental Floss, LitReactor, and more.

A Miami native, he lives in New York with his wife and son. Check out his website here.

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“I had this weird dream,” Pete Fernandez said. “I was in a boat, but there weren’t any paddles.”

“That is weird,” Mike said, sipping his Heineken. The jukebox was playing Waits. The Bar—a grungy gastropub located in the heart of Coral Gables—was mostly empty. It was just past six in the evening. They were in a booth a few steps away from the main bar area.

“That’s not all of it,” Pete said. He took a sip of his drink—a vodka soda—before continuing. “But then my dad showed up. He was standing in front of the boat.”

“On the water?”

“Yeah,” Pete said. The thought of his dad put a clench in his throat. It’d been only a few months since they had to put the old man in the ground, forcing Pete and his fiancé Emily to return to Miami from their home in New Jersey. “He was just standing there. Looking at me.”

“What’d you do?”

The question hung over them for a moment. The bartender, a fit blonde named Lisa, nodded at Pete politely as she walked by. He’d been back in Miami for less than six months, and he already felt unhinged.

Emily.

She had left a few days ago. He was living in his father’s house and he was pretty sure the only reason Mike, his best friend, was tolerating him tonight was because he was worried Pete couldn’t last very long alone.

“Nothing,” Pete said. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Mike he’d woken up to find his pillow wet from tears.

This is a terrific story, from beginning to end; a kind of crime slice-of-life tale that made me hungry to read more of Alex’s work. I have the ebook of the first Pete Fernandez novel, and an ARC of the most recent one, and haven’t managed to get to either as of yet. Pete and his buddy are having a couple of drinks in a bar at the end of their workday, which just happens to be when some masked bandits rush in to rob the place. The rest of the story details what happens during the robbery and how the two of them manage to avert a tragedy; and the closing line is pitch perfect.

And now, back to the spice mines.

All 4 Love

So, yes, it’s my birthday. I took the day off from work and am staying home for the most part. But I do have to go to Costco AND the grocery store today; living large, right? This might be my wildest birthday ever! (Sarcasm.)

I mean, do I know how to celebrate a birthday or what?

But this is the fifty-seventh, and I wasn’t really raised to be overly sentimental about birthdays; I’ve never really made a big deal out of mine, and now all it really is, is simply an excuse to take a day off from the office. I didn’t get nearly as much done this weekend as I would have liked; yesterday was lovely–I don’t think I went outside even once, which to me is of course a lovely lovely day.

I really  do want to become a recluse. I remember someone asked me on a panel once to describe what my dream success would be, and I replied, to make enough money to  not only not have to have a day job but to be able to pay someone to run my errands for me so I’d only have to leave the house to go to the gym.

Is that really so much to ask? Apparently. Ah, well.

I hope to do some writing today as well. We shall see how that goes.

Next up in Florida Happens is Neil Plakcy’s “Southernmost Point.”

Neil S. Plakcy is a U.S. writer whose works range from mystery to romance to anthologies and collections of gay erotica. He has twice been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Men’s Mystery Novel.

Plakcy began his professional publishing career with the first of his Hawaiian mysteries, Mahu, acquired and edited for Haworth Press by mystery author Greg Herren. With the second book in the series, Mahu Surfer, Plakcy moved to Alyson Books, which continued the series with Mahu Fire and Mahu Vice, and published their own edition of Mahu in 2009. After the close of Alyson, MLR Books picked up the series, publishing new editions of the first three and then continuing the series.

Plakcy and long-time friend Sharon Sakson co-edited a collection of stories by gay men about their experiences with their dogs, entitled Paws and Reflect: A Special Bond Between Man and Dog. A frequent contributor to gay anthologies, Plakcy has also edited numerous collections of gay erotica.

With the publication of GayLife.com in 2009, Plakcy entered the M/M romance genre, basing the book on his own experiences in software and web development and his familiarity with Miami Beach.

Plakcy has been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award three times: twice in gay mystery, and once in gay romance. He won the “Hawaii Five-O” award given by attendees at the Left Coast Crime fan conference and his work has been enthusiastically reviewed by mainstream and specialty publications as well as by many fans.

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It started with a selfie, and the drag queen who photo-bombed my boyfriend Lester and me.

Lester represents single-batch whiskeys, based out of Fort Lauderdale, where we both live. His region extends all the way to Key West, and one weekend in January he had a couple of promotions set up at bars on Duval Street, in the center of the entertainment district. I had a couple of days’ vacation coming to me from the FBI, where I work as a Special Agent attached to the Violent Crimes Task Force, so I took them and went along for the ride.

And a beautiful ride it was, once we ran out of highway, then cleared the urban congestion of Key Largo. All of a sudden there was water on both sides of the road, the dark blue-green of the Atlantic to our left, the lighter green of the Gulf of Mexico to the right. The long emptiness of the Seven Mile Bridge was liberating, even with the skeleton of the old railroad bridge beside us.

We made it to Key West late on Sunday afternoon, and after we checked into a bed-and-breakfast on Duval Street, we rented bikes and cycled over to the Southernmost Point, a big marker striped in yellow, orange and black that indicated we’d reached as far as you can go on the US mainland.

“Imagine living down here,” Lester said. “Only ninety miles to Cuba, and nearly twice that back to Miami.”

“I think there’s a kind of person who likes to live at the edge,” I said. “So far from everything else. Like you can leave all the troubles you had wherever behind you and kick back with a margarita and a pair of flip-flops.”

“Thank you, Jimmy Buffett,” Lester said. “Come on, let’s get a picture of us with the marker in the background.”

This is a fun, suspenseful tale about, interestingly enough, what happens when you get photobombed by a stranger and post the picture on social media; a sly commentary, really, about how social media has reduced the size of the world and shows us, sometimes daily, how many degrees of separation we really are all from each other–which isn’t as separated as one might think. Neil does a deft job of keeping the action moving, as well as developing his vacationing gay male couple with just a few quick lines here and there, and their relationship as well through the couple-dialogue speak they share. It’s a fun story, with lots of Key West color, and I’m very glad to have it in the book.

And now, off to the spice mines.

Under the Bridge

 Sunday morning, and I must confess that other than doing the errands and some slight cleaning yesterday, I fear the day was mostly a bust for getting things done. But that’s fine; I am off today and tomorrow as well–tomorrow should include both the gym and a Costco run–and I intend to get a lot of writing done today. The kitchen and living room are still in need of some straightening as well, and I assume that I shall get to that as I pass the day. I was thinking about going to the gym this morning, but I think I shall go tomorrow instead, and then have a Monday-Wednesday-Friday workout schedule to try to stick to; with perhaps going in on the weekends simply to stretch and do cardio. I have now discovered a new show to watch for cardio–The Musketeers, and there’s at least three seasons, I believe–which will makes things ever so much easier. I certainly did a lot of cardio while I was watching and enjoying Black Sails, so The Musketeers might just do the trick. (I had high hopes for Netflix’ Troy: The Fall of a City, but it was so boring I had to give up. HOW DO YOU MAKE THE TROJAN WAR BORING?)

While I was goofing off yesterday and watching things on Amazon/Netflix/Hulu/Youtube–yes, I know–I was also reading through Bertrand Russell’s brilliant and informative The History of Western Philosophy, and I came across this:

The last dynastic pope was Benedict IX, elected in 1032, and said to have been only twelve years old at the time. He was the son of Alberic of Tusculum, whom we have already met in connection with Abbot Odo. As he grew older, he became more and more debauched, and shocked even the Romans. At last his wickedness reached such a pitch that he decided to resign the papacy in order to marry. He sold it to his godfather, who became Gregory VI.

I do find it interesting that Russell chose to word it that way: that the height of his wickedness was his decision to resign and marry.

This led me into an Internet wormhole, looking up Benedict IX, the dynastic papacy, and the Tusculan popes. As you know, Constant Reader, history always has fascinated me; I would love one day to write historical fiction, as there are so many historical figures that fascinate me, from Catherine de Medici to Cardinal Richelieu to the Byzantine empress Irene to now, Benedict IX; and the century before him, where a woman named Marozia had enormous influence not only over the papacy but on who was elected pope (Marozia, in fact, founded the dynasty of popes called the Tusculans; which concluded with Benedict.) The Fourth Crusade, which wound up sacking Constantinople, also interests me, as do the histories of Venice and Constantinople.

And one can never go wrong with the Borgias and the Medici.

Anyway, one of the debaucheries of Benedict IX was sodomy, and it appears that the historical record holds that he was homosexual; how can I not be fascinated by a gay Pope, the way I am interested in Louis XIV’s gay brother Philippe duc d’Orleans?

So, of course I am making notes for a historical fiction novel called Benedictine, the tale of the gay pope.

Am I nothing if not predictable.

Next up in Florida Happens is Eleanor Cawood Jones’ “All Accounted For at the Hooray for Hollywood Motel”.

Eleanor Cawood Jones began her writing career in elementary school, using a #2 pencil to craft short stories based around the imaginary lives of her stuffed animal collection. While in college at Virginia Tech, she got her first paid writing job as a reporter with the Kingsport Times-News in Kingsport, Tenn., and never looked back. Eleanor now lives in Northern Virginia and is a marketing director and freelance copywriter while working on more stories as well as her upcoming mystery novel series. She’s an avid reader, people watcher, traveler, political news junkie, and remodeling show addict. She spends her spare time telling people how to pronounce Cawood (Kay’-wood).

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Mona, lingering over a third cup of coffee, flipped through her collection of vintage postcards while the all-consuming sound of crunching cereal across the table grated increasingly on her nerves.

She took a sip of lukewarm coffee, gritted her teeth, and reminded herself of her husband’s many good qualities—of which turning mealtime into crunchtime was not one. Things were easier when she had to dash off her to accounting job. In those days, there was never time for another cup of coffee, much less prolonged crunching noises.

“Rodney!”

Rodney looked up from the Racing Times. “Mmmm?” At least he wasn’t speaking with his mouth full.

“I wonder if this hotel is still around?” She held up a ’50s postcard with a modestly clad bathing beauty posing in front of a diamond-shaped, brightly painted sign advertising the Hooray for Hollywood Motel. In the photo, an appealing, pink-painted building featuring a bright blue swimming pool practically beckoned vacationers. A single story structure in a horseshoe shape provided easy access to drive in and unload luggage. The fine print mentioned another pool in the back of the motel as well, as well as an onsite restaurant. Nothing about ocean front, but Mona knew the area well enough to know the motel would be right between the coastal road A1A and highway 95 in the heart of Hollywood, Florida.

Rodney perked up. “Alexa, phone number for Hooray for Hollywood Motel in Hollywood, Florida.”

Mona shuddered, once again, at having to share her vintage, mid-century kitchen with Alexa the interloper. But Rodney had retired two years before her and had spent his spare time acquiring gadgets, of which this conversational internet talkie was the latest.

This charming little story tells the tale of Mona and Rodney, a retired couple from Ohio who impulsively decide to take a trip to Florida, based on finding an old postcard. They’d honeymooned in Florida years earlier, and now that they’re retired, why not? But once they arrive at the vintage old motel, Mona finds herself helping out the crotchety owner, and soon Mona and Rodney are helping revitalize and bring the old motel back to life…until one morning they find the owner floating in the swimming pool.

And then things get interesting.

Very pleased to have this charming tale in Florida Happens, and now I must get back to the spice mines.

Tears in Heaven

Friday, and this slightly odd, off-kilter week is finally coming to an end.

 I slept deeply and well last night, but am looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. Because of the flea situation, I spent most of yesterday laundering things and cleaning and vacuuming, so the weekend’s chores are already finished before the weekend rolls around, which is absolutely lovely; and also means that, if I am feeling ambitious, I can do more advanced cleaning; i.e. the cleaning I never get to because I only have time for a surface clean–so baseboards, cabinets, ceiling fans, etc–can be gotten to this weekend.

I am still revising “A Whisper from the Graveyard,” which I hope to read aloud this weekend and thus be finally finished with the story. I am pleased with how the revision is going; how the story and the character are taking shape on my computer screen; we shall see how it turns out. I also want to finish a strong revision/read-aloud of “This Thing of Darkness,” and I also want to work on “Please Die Soon” and maybe even get back to “Never Kiss a Stranger” this weekend. “Never Kiss a Stranger” is longer; it’s going to end up as a Kindle single, which is the entire point of writing it, and it’s terribly freeing to not have that word limit that limit short stories. I am also working my way through the manuscript of Royal Street Reveillon, and may even get to work on inputting edits and revisions and changes this weekend.

We shall see.

Next up in Florida Happens is a lovely story called “Muscle Memory,” by Angel Luis Colon.

Angel Luis Colón is a Derringer and Anthony Award shortlisted author. His published works include the titles: Pull & Pray,  No Happy Endings, the BLACKY JAGUAR series of novellas, the short story anthology; Meat City on Fire (And Other Assorted Debacles), and the upcoming Hell Chose Me(2019).

His short fiction has appeared in multiple web and print publications including Thuglit, Literary Orphans, and Great Jones Street. He also hosts the podcast, the bastard title.

Keep up with him on Twitter via @GoshDarnMyLife

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“You don’t like it.” Katie gives me this look I’d swear her mother used to give me whenever I lied but it’s been so many years that a passing glance could evoke the same memory.

Got a laundry list of reasons why I don’t like it here but I keep my mouth shut. I’m sitting on a bed that reeks of old piss and medicine—room’s about the size of a nice bathroom, so it makes sense. Better than a jail cell but not much better. I don’t feel this old. I don’t like Florida.

Single window behind me with faded curtains. Laminate floor. Don’t think there’s a word for the color but if depression had a color, this floor would suffice. Wood panel walls. Framed photographs of people I love without me in them. I shift on the bed. Back hurts. Knees hurt. Head hurts. All the pills I take and not a one seems to dull things enough for me to focus.

I raise a hand and find myself wondering if I always so slow or if my perception’s fucked from the new pills. “It’s fine,” I slur, “Besides, this is where I sleep. They got a bunch of tables and shit out there where I can occupy myself.”

Katie frowns. “I tried to find a spot at the nicer place a few miles up the highway, you know, by the girls’ school. They—”

“Muscle Memory” is, as I said, a lovely story that deals with several issues, but never in a preachy way. The main character is Sean Clarke, a former criminal who did some time for manslaughter, whose wife is dead and is now reaching the end of his life. His daughter Katie has found a senior facility for him to live in, where he befriends an old gay man named Manny and he spends times missing his daughter and granddaughters and wishing life had turned out better for him–but there’s a weary acceptance there. Something is going on with Manny, and Sean is the only one who can do anything about it–or thinks he is. Poignant and sad without crossing into sappy sentimentalism, Colon captures Sean’s voice perfectly. I’d actually like to read more about him, to be honest.

And now back to the spice mines.

Save the Best for Last

Thursday!

My Bouchercon homework continues, with me now reading James Ziskin’s Cast the First Stone. I am very excited to read this; I’ve heard nothing but great things about his books, plus he’s a pretty good guy. I had bought the first in his series–still in the TBR pile, alas–so am kind of glad that this book became a homework assignment. I am really enjoying it thus far, and if it’s going where I think it may be going–well, that would be awesome, but I am sure I am going to love it even if it doesn’t.

I started watching the BBC series The Musketeers on Hulu this evening. I did a half-day today; one of my co-workers and I tested at a conference at the Riverside Hilton for four hours, after which I walked home on an afternoon in August. Heavy sigh. Any way, ’tis a good thing I did work only half-a-day, because alas we are having to clean everything in the house because Scooter had a couple of fleas. His medication is working–the fleas we’ve found were dying or dead–but it’s August and we live in a swamp, and so while there have been no signs of infestation thus far, we aren’t going to take the risk. So I’ve been cleaning all day ever since I got home; taking breaks now and then to watch something on the television, and having it on as I launder things and vacuum things and well, it needed to be done, didn’t it?

That’s a rather tired and round about way of getting to the point, isn’t it? Long story short: I’ve always been a big fan of The Three Musketeers, ever since I was a kid, and I’ve been meaning to watch this BBC series for years…but kept forgetting about it. Someone posted somewhere on Facebook last night asking people to name their favorite d’Artagnan, and as I always do, whenever I get the chance, I replied Always Michael York. Always. But someone else posted a picture of the young actor who plays him in the television series and I thought, yes, I’d been meaning to watch that, hadn’t I? So I watched a couple of episodes as I cleaned–and am intrigued. More watching is most definitely called for.

Next up in Florida Happens is “A Postcard for the Dead”, by Susanna Calkins.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Susanna Calkins lives outside Chicago with her husband and two sons. Holding a PhD in history, Susanna writes the award-winning Lucy Campion historical mysteries as well as the forthcoming Speakeasy Murders, both from St. Martin’s Minotaur. Murder Knocks Twice, set in Prohibition-Era Chicago, will be out Spring 2019. Her first short story, “The Trial of Madame Pelletier,” featuring a 19th century poisoning case, is up for an Anthony Award (and can be read on her website at www.susannacalkins.com).

Susanna says: “A POSTCARD FOR THE DEAD” is my second published short story. When I saw the call for the Bouchercon anthology, on a whim I began to read through 1920s Florida newspapers, since I was already researching the Roaring Twenties for my Prohibition-Era novels. There, I stumbled across the rather odd story of Lena Clarke, a postmistress who had embezzled huge amounts of money from the Post Office and then framed a local playboy for the crime. What struck me most about this story was how Lena gave her testimony in court using a crystal ball, having been part of a wild West Palm Beach Bohemian set, before being declared insane. Although I altered the case substantially in my version, I retained the embezzlement aspect and of course the crystal ball. After a little more digging, l discovered that Lena’s brother had died of a snakebite, which just seemed too Florida of a detail not too include. I thought about setting the story in a courtroom, but given that my FIRST short story, “The Trial of Madame Pelletier” featured, well, a trial, I thought I’d better frame it a little differently.

Calkins author photo outside

West Palm Beach, Florida

July 1921

Lily Baker peered inside her mailbox before reaching in to retrieve her mail. Back when her half-brother had been West Palm Beach’s postmaster, he had delighted in leaving snakes in mailboxes as pranks. Of course, the last laugh had been on him, when he had died of a snake bite last Christmas.

There was only one piece of mail today, though—a postcard featuring a swanky hotel in Orlando, a city she’d never been. She turned it over to read the message but was surprised to find it blank. Only her name and address had been printed on the postcard, in careful block letters.

Curiously, she studied the card. The stamp had been cancelled in Orlando two days before. July 27, 1921. Flipping the card back over, she looked at the picture more closely. The hotel was the San Juan, which the postcard informed her had been built in 1885 by C.E. Pierce. Built for the filthy rich, from the looks of it.

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Lily was still by her mailbox when she saw Officer Danny Jamison coming down the street on his bicycle.  She had known Officer Jamison since they were kids—he’d been just one year ahead of her in school. After high school they’d gone in different directions, although on occasion their paths crossed. She was about to wave as he passed by, when instead he stopped in front of her and dismounted his bike in one easy move.

“Hey Lily,” he said, leaning his bike against her palm tree. “Your sister around?”

Lily shifted from one foot to the other. Why was Danny asking after Junie? Though she and her older half-sister had lived together since their parents had passed away a few years before, Junie tended to be tight-lipped about her goings-on. But Lily would catch whispers about illicit gin, late night séances, Ouija parties, and other secret doings connected with West Palm Beach’s furtive Bohemian scene. A far cry from her day job heading the town’s Post Office, which Junie had taken over from their brother some eight months before.  “She must have left for work early,” Lily said.  “I didn’t see her this morning.”

“I see. But you saw her last night?”

Great beginning, right? It’s a terrific story, but what I think I enjoyed the most about it was the narrator’s voice; I really liked the character of Lily, how Calkins gradually let us into Lily’s life, and through character, built a very clever crime story.

Jump

Wednesday!

The week is at its halfway point. I am also taking a three day weekend to honor my fifty-seventh birthday (it’s on Monday; there’s still plenty of time to shop for a gift–although cold hard cash is always welcome), and who knows what else I’ll get up to this weekend? We shall see, but if anything I am looking forward to just having three days off from work.

I’ll probably end up cleaning a lot, which is what I always tend to do.

Last night I broke down and took a sleeping pill, so today I feel amazing and rested. I’ll try to sleep tonight again without one.

Next up in the Florida Happens short stories would be Craig Pittman’s “How to Handle a Shovel.”

Per  his website: Craig Pittman is a native Floridian. Born in Pensacola, he graduated from Troy State University in Alabama, where his muckraking work for the student paper prompted an agitated dean to label him “the most destructive force on campus.” Since then he has covered a variety of newspaper beats and quite a few natural disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires and the Florida Legislature. Since 1998, he has covered environmental issues for Florida’s largest newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times. He has won the Waldo Proffitt Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism in Florida four times, and twice won the top investigative reporting award from the Society of Environmental Journalists. Stories he has written for Sarasota magazine have won three first-place awards from the Florida Magazine Association.He’s the co-author, with Matthew Waite, of Paving Paradise: Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss, (2009), which won the Stetson Kennedy Award from the Florida Historical Society. His second book was Manatee Insanity: Inside the War Over Florida’s Most Famous Endangered Species (2010), which the Florida Humanities Council named one of 21 “essential” books for Floridians. His latest book The Scent of Scandal: Greed, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Beautiful Orchid, was just published. His latest book, Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country, hit stores in July 2016.

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The green Ford pickup truck jounced along the washboard road, a cloud of dust swirling in its wake. The radio was on. Carrie Underwood faded in and out of the static like she was about to disappear.

Billy, the skinny kid sitting in the passenger seat, peered over his shoulder into the bed of the truck to check on their load. As the truck rumbled on, the twelve gopher tortoises were all of bouncing around in their shells and probably wondering what the hell happened to them.

The driver, a heavyset man everybody called J.T., noticed what Billy was doing and smiled to himself.

“It ain’t fair,” Billy said, turning back around.

A sunburn blossomed on Billy’s cheeks. The wind from the open truck window plucked at his straw-colored hair. Sweat had bled through his  T-shirt, and globs of dirt stuck to his ragged sneakers and the sweaty parts of his shirt and faded jeans. It even adhered in spots to the sweat that had run down his face, creating splotches of salty mud.

“What ain’t fair?” asked J.T. He wore a sweat-stained camo cap pulled down low his bald head. His short-sleeve shirt strained at its buttons. It had once been dark blue but it had faded until it matched the sky. J.T. kept the shirt tail untucked to accommodate his bulk, and now it lay across his lap like a table cloth, parted in the middle for the spit cup he held between his meaty thighs. J.T.’s graying beard started around his earlobes and hung down to his belly like a pennant, and around one side of his mouth were a few stray flecks of tobacco. He kept his sun-baked elbow leaning on the truck window, steering with two fingers on his left hand. With his right, he grabbed the cup and held it up so he could spit a stream of brown juice into it, still keeping his eyes on the road. Then he shoved the cup back where it had been.

“What ain’t fair is how I’m doin’ all the work and takin’ all the risk, and you keep about all the money, that’s what,” Billy said. He knew he sounded like a whiner. He didn’t care. He was just trying one more time to persuade J.T. to hand over his money before he was forced to off the fat man.

This is a fun dark little story about two small-time crooks–redneck Floridians, which are a breed apart from other rednecks–poaching gopher turtles and the rise of conflict between them; a charming if grim little tale. Craig gets both characters pitch-perfect, and the voice is also terrific. I read his Oh, Florida book and loved it; full of insights about Florida and how the crazy state came to be the way it is, it also brought back a lot of my own memories about summers in Florida when I was a kid–back in the 1970s, before it turned into the beachfront condo hell it is now.

And now, back to the spice mines.