Tag: Crippen & Landru

Spirit in the Sky

I have written another Alabama story! It will be in the Crippen & Landru anthology Double Crossing Van Dine, which you can preorder right here. My story is called “The Spirit Tree,” which was a lot of fun to write, and am very excited that the anthology will release later this month/early September. I again got an editing credit (along with Donna Andrews and Art Taylor, both of whom do a lot more work than I do on these books), and I do absolutely love that cover.

Isn’t this a great cover?

Turn right on Simmons Road and in a half mile, your destination will be on the right.

Tom Forrester slowed his official State Bureau of Investigation SUV and glanced in the rearview mirror. Nothing behind him but blacktop state highway back to the S curve he’d just negotiated. He flipped on the turn signal and made the turn onto a back road. It stretched out before him, a narrow expanse of red dirt and gravel down to the bottom of a hollow and climbing back up the other side. He was getting a headache and wished again he’d asked for someone to come with him. He’d never been to Corinth County before, hadn’t even driven through it. Yes, it was in his district, but it was remote. At least an hour to the nearest interstate. Outsiders had to want to come to Corinth County to get there.

It amazed him that there were still these random remote counties all over the deep South, seemingly untouched by the outside world.

But the county seat, for all its population of about three thousand, had a Wal-Mart and a McDonalds, and almost every house or trailer he’d seen from the road had a satellite dish either in the yard or affixed to the building. Was anything truly remote anymore?

The road wasn’t wide enough for two cars, so he hoped he didn’t meet anyone coming from the other direction. A cloud of red dust followed closely behind the vehicle. At the bottom of the hollow there was a small stream flowing through corrugated iron beneath the pitiful road. And he noticed a rusty barbed wire fence running along the front of the pine forest on the left side, caught a glimpse of a rusted tin roof surrounded by overgrowth.

It looked…familiar.

Not a bad start, right?

The anthology also has an impressive table of contents:

You can find Van Dine’s commandments (there are twenty) here, if you want to look them up.

Mine was: The problem of the crime must be solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic séances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio.

So, yes, like I did in the last anthology of this nature that I was in, chose supernatural/occult as my way of breaking said rule. I’ve done this before, of course, in novels; two subgenres I prefer are crime and horror–and I do love crossing/blurring the lines between the two of them.

Several years ago (it may have been last year; my grasp of time isn’t the best anymore) I read a book called Salvation on Sand Mountain, about snake-handlers in north Alabama (I’d also watched a documentary called Alabama Rattlesnake) which reminded me of a bit of country magic. When I was a little boy–a very little boy–I remember visiting someone in Alabama–and there was a small tree beside the front porch, with bottles slipped over the ends and catching the sun in colorful flashes and making tinkling sounds when the wind blew the branches together. I asked, and was told it was a ‘spirit tree,’–the sound of the bottles kept evil spirits and ghosts out of the house. I’d forgotten about it until I read it in the book, and I remembered it all very clearly.

So, I sat down and wrote an opening scene, in which a state investigator is going to a crime scene, and when he gets there, there’s a spirit tree beside the porch. I had no idea what to do with the story–how to finish it, who was murdered and why, etc.–and it went into the files. When I was asked for a story (and a by-line credit) for this anthology, I looked for the supernatural rule, claimed it, and pulled out “The Spirit Tree.”

Yes, it’s another Corinth County story, like Bury Me in Shadows and “Smalltown Boy” and “The Ditch,” not connected to the others by anything other than location, really, but it’s location is pretty much everything!

Hope you enjoy it–and the rest of the contributors are exceptional writers, so I know you’ll enjoy theirs, too! What are you waiting for? PRE ORDERS ARE ALWAYS WELCOMED!

What’d I Say

Tuesday morning and I slept well again. It’s kind of amazing what a change to my day getting up a mere ten minutes later can make. Yesterday morning I had to swing by the Cat Practice to get his Royal Sparkiness food when they opened at eight. I wound up getting to the office around eight fifteen, and I felt alert and awake all day. Was it a one-time thing perhaps? Well, sleeping ten minutes later again this morning and planning on leaving the house for the office a bit later so I don’t have to rush may make a difference for today too, so we are experimenting with leaving later and staying at the office later and seeing if that also makes a difference today as well. After work, I swung by uptown to pick up the mail, which included my first foray into poetry reading, Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early, a recommendation from Carol Rosenfeld, which I am looking forward to delving into. I also got my Frances and Richard Lockridge short story collection from Crippen and Landru, and the new Scott Carson (Michael Koryta) Lost Man’s Lane, which should be quite fun.

Last night we watched more of The Gentlemen and Star Wars: The Bad Batch, which is kind of fun and very well done. We should finish The Gentlemen tonight, and perhaps move on to our next show to watch.

I can’t say that I was sorry to see that the homophobic right-wing bitch Beverly LaHaye passed away. Well, I am sorry that it took so long for that horrific piece of shit to die–more proof that evil never dies, like Mitch McConnell. I really hope she suffered, and that it was incredibly painful, so she was released from the pain only to have the pearly gates slammed in her fucking face and the hell-slide opened up below her feet sending her to join her true Lord and Master Satan in the lake of eternal fire. She founded the Concerned Women for America, by the way, which was the right-wing predecessors of Moms4Liberty and the vicious hateful pieces of trash who were horrified that I dared to speak to high school students about chasing their dreams. I hope it was a slow metatastic cancer that sapped her energy, her will, and made every waking moment a misery.

She deserved worse, frankly.

Yes I am petty–and proud of it.

And no, I have no sympathy for those who might be mourning her. She was a horrible person, and when you’ve harmed that many people–when it the purpose of your life to spread hatred and bigotry using Christ’s name (the ultimate in bearing false witness) you don’t get to expect people not to celebrate your passing. In fact, you should probably rethink your life if you think people will pop open champagne when they hear you’ve finally deservedly died and gone to hell.

I did write yesterday, about three thousand or so (probably more), which felt good. The book is still sucking incredibly, I might add, so I think I need to think about it some more and where it’s going. I also started working on a short story, “The Last To See Him Alive,” which I think is a great title and it’s working….so far. We’ll see how it goes today, though, won’t we? But I think working on the book first and then moving on to work on a short story may be the way for me to balance my creativity needs while getting everything done that needs to be done, or that I want to get done.

Speaking of poetry–did I mention here that I wanted to start reading it, and understanding it? Probably, since my memory is a sieve. Anyway, I have The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe on my desk, and the other day I opened it, just for the hell of it, to any page and it opened to his poem, “Tamerlane,” and I realized I’d gotten a short story title from it:

Kind solace in a dying hour!

And that’s where the title for “Solace in a Dying Hour” came from, so thank you, Mr.Poe and your poetry. I’ve also got story titles out of Shakespeare before, too, and I am glad I am going to start reading poetry and studying it. I’ve always felt like that was definitely a missing element in my education.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, one never can be entirely sure, can one?

A Hard Knock Life

Tuesday night as I talked with Jean, Candice and Harry about my two latest books I suddenly realized–towards the end of the conversation–that technically I have a third book out in current release with my name on the spine.

To wit, this marvelous anthology:

Which, if you like, you can order right here! There are two options to choose from–the clothbound special edition with the cover page signed by all three of us, or the less expensive paperback. I believe there’s also an ebook option.

And look at this table of contents:

How is that for some amazing company to be in, eh? Not to mention the co-editor credit with Art Taylor and Donna Andrews, who are as equally lovely as people as they are insanely talented writers (and highly intelligent people). I mean, my story is sandwiched in between stories by Martin Edwards and Naomi Hirahara, for fuck’s sake.

Rarified air, indeed.

So, who is this Father Knox, and what are these commandments that had to be broken?

Father Knox himself

Father Knox was an early twentieth century mystery writer, who was also a member of the Detection Club, along with contemporaries like G. K. Chesterton and Agatha Christie–speaking of rarefied air–and he came up with the ten commandments for mystery novels:

  1. The Criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has allowed to follow.
  2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
  3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
  4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
  5. No (outdated racist term for someone of Chinese ancestry) must figure in the story.
  6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
  7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
  8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
  9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly below that of the average reader.
  10. Twin brother, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been dully prepared for them.

I mean, how fun would it be to write a story breaking any of these rules, let alone a book doing so (hmmm, tempting–this would be a great fun thing for a Scotty adventure)?

I chose commandment two: all supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course, so I wrote a suspense story that may (or may not) have a supernatural agency involved; “The Ditch,” which is also a Corinth County story and one I am particularly pleased with.

I am going to begin reading the anthology, perhaps a story a day, as part of my Short Story Project (always ongoing) as well as to help promote the anthology, which has as fine a collection of contributors as I’ve ever been associated with.

And the book itself? Gorgeous.

Alabama Pines

I sometimes wonder how dramatically different my life would be had my parents not migrated to Chicago when I was a child to provide us with a better life than we could expect in Alabama. I’ve always been somewhat grateful to them for this, because I can’t imagine or fathom what growing up in the rural South would have been like for teenaged gay Greg; Kansas was bad enough. But my heart will always have a place in it for the state I was born and where my parents grew up (and will both eventually be buried), and whenever I mine Alabama for fiction, it always comes up roses.

I was enormously pleased and flattered to be asked to participate in the Crippen and Landru anthology School of Hard Knox, and the last thing I was expecting was to get a co-editing credit. Art, Donna, and publisher Jeffrey Marks (a fine writer in his own right; check out his novels and short stories) did the majority of the heavy lifting; my contributions were more along the lines of sending an email cheering the others on or giving a thumbs up/thumbs down to a design question.

If you’d like, you can preorder a copy right here.

The premise of the anthology was that Father Ronald Knox, a scholarly clergymen, had come up with the ten commandments for writing crime fiction during the Golden Age, and each of us could chose a commandment and write a story breaking it. Obviously, it was pretty clear to me that Rule 2 was perfect for me:

All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

And I knew precisely which story in the archive I could revise and rework to break this commandment and fit perfectly into the book, “The Ditch.”

I also cannot believe who I am sharing the table of contents with. Check out this talent!

Now THAT’S a table of contents! Not sure what I am doing there with these amazing writers, but I am most pleased to be there.

And this is how my story, “The Ditch,” opens:

I‘d just finished reading my book–The Hardy Boys, The Secret of the Lost Tunnel— and was reaching to turn off my bedside lamp when my phone chirped on my nightstand to let me know I’d gotten a new text message. I frowned. It was just past ten on a weeknight. Sure, it was summer, but Mom and Dad were strict about phone usage after eight o’clock. My orange-and–-blue Auburn Tigers clock, hanging just over my desk, read a few minutes past ten [on a weeknight]. I picked up the phone and looked at the screen. My wallpaper was a photo of me standing on a white sand beach on the Florida gulf coast.

I need your help. Come over! Please! Emergency!!!

It was from my best friend, Zane Tidwell.

I closed my eyes and exhaled.  Classic Zane, always sending desperate–sounding text messages expecting me to drop everything and rush right over. Everything was an emergency to Zane, from not getting his homework done to failing a test to not having any clean underwear to having a nightmare of some kind—all of these things qualified as emergencies in Zane’s brain. He worked himself up into quite a state over the stupidest things.

“The boy who cried wolf” was all Mom would say.

The problem being, sometimes it was an emergency, like that time he broke his arm when he was home alone, or when his mother fell and hit her head, or when his dog ate rat poison.

He always counted on me keeping my head on straight and not panicking and solving the problem for him. We’d been best friends ever since we were little boys in Bible study, and things had always been this way.

I was the calm one and Zane–well, Zane was a drama queen.

He knew I wasn’t even supposed to use my phone after eight, let alone leave the house after ten.

I typed out you know I can’t it’s too late to leave the house and if I get caught they’ll take my phone and ground me forever with my thumbs.

Please you have to come I don’t know what to do I am really in big trouble now PLEASE!!!!

I stared at the screen. In big trouble? What did that mean? But if the needle on the Zane drama-meter was going up, he wasn’t above calling me on the landline.

And that would send Mom and Dad over the edge.

I sighed. I was going to have to go over there.

“You’re more trouble than you’re worth, Zane Tidwell,” I whispered, typing out Be there soon and hitting send.

“The Ditch” is an Alabama story, of course, and has a teenaged protagonist (I’m not sure why I always write about Alabama from a young person’s perspective; probably because most of my memories are from childhood, I suppose) whose name we never really know. The ditch is actually a real place; my main character’s house is based on where my aunt and uncle lived–which is where we would visit–and about twenty or so yards behind the house was this ditch–or rather, what they called ‘the ditch.’ (I’d share a photo from Google Earth, but all it looks like from the air is a line of trees.) We used to spend a lot of time playing down there, and of course to me as a child it seemed enormous, but it’s probably a lot smaller in reality than I remember (everything seemed enormous to me when I was a child). I never knew what created the ditch, or why it was there, but it’s very similar to what I describe in the story, if smaller. There was all kinds of garbage down there–broken bottles, rusting cans, and so forth, so we were never supposed to go down there barefoot. I also remember that when we were in the ditch we weren’t visible to anyone not standing on the edge–which was a bonus for us as kids. The rope swing was also there (and now I think how fucking insane was it that adults let kids play like that? You could break your neck falling off that thing!) and I’ve also included the ditch in another, unfinished longer piece. There was something creepy yet idyllic about the place, and of course whenever I think about it as an adult it’s always what a perfect place to hide a body! What a perfect place for a ghost! and so on.

I wrote “The Ditch” originally for another anthology’s open call, but I knew when I finished it and turned it in it wasn’t going to get selected. (I was right.) I also knew it needed to be revised and the ending changed as well as some other things (minor but important) but had never gotten around to getting the revision done. So when this opportunity presented itself, I was going to use a different story but had some trouble with its ending and then was despairing when it hit me: you know how to fix “The Ditch” you just haven’t done it yet, so stop spinning your wheels with this one and do that instead, so I dug back into it and really had a great time with the revision. I’m very pleased with how it turned out, and I hope you will be, too!

(Ironically, this week the ending to the other story popped into my head, so I will be working on that this week, too.)

Rocks Off

That’s a rather charming title for a blog post, isn’t it? As you may have noticed, I generally pick a list of songs to use as titles for the blog, and I am currently (perhaps obviously) now working my way through the Rolling Stones’ extensive discography, which will occasionally provide something a little off-color (the best was the Pet Shop Boys; every song title sounds like a great essay title about gay life), like today. Today’s title just makes me think of sex and “getting your rocks off”; I don’t think I am familiar with the actual song, in all honesty, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the gist of the song.

Whatever gets your rocks off, man.

Ah, the 1970s were such a different time, weren’t they? I’ve been going down a lot of 1970s wormholes lately, not just for the sake of the nostalgia afforded (all those lovely memories of the Top Forty AM stations in Chicago, WLS and WCFL, that I grew up with; WGN before it became a nation-wide cable channel) but because it’s also a bit of research, you see. Yes, after I finish writing the book I am writing and editing the one I turned in last month and then editing the one I am turning in at the end of this month, I plan on writing Chlorine and a different book I’ve been planning for a while, but after that I am thinking about a 1970’s book–or a romance; I can’t decide which I would prefer to do next. Romance is a whole new ball game for me, which is part of the appeal, but then I look at Romancelandia on Twitter and think, yeah, not so sure I want to go swimming with those sharks. I’m not even sure what precisely is going on in that world anymore, either; I don’t know if RWA ever recovered from the “burn it all to the ground” December of 2019, and I think Romantic Times has also gone away? It’s funny, though, every time I dip my toes into the waters of another genre something inevitably will run me screaming back to crime fiction, my publishing safe space as it were. I do feel like doing something completely different from everything I’ve done already–it’s always fun and challenging to go in another direction than you usually do, and I think it helps me with my mystery writing, frankly–but I am not sure if a romance is the way to go. I have what I think is a great idea for one, but….it’s not like I haven’t thought that before, either.

Of course, writing what would be best for my career and my “brand” (whatever that may be) never enters my head. Which is probably why I am not a New York Times bestseller and a household name–yeah, that’s why, Greg.

But I went to my doctor’s appointment and am pleased to report that the arm was just a pulled muscle and lingering tendonitis (he added that I should keep it wrapped until the swelling goes does–yes, there is some weird swelling), got my prescriptions refilled, and started the process rolling that will hopefully result in my getting hearing aids at long last. My weight was high, but my blood pressure was also fine and all vitals were good, so…yay for that at any rate. And now I find myself home earlier than usual and more time to work on my writing than I ordinarily would, so hurray! I also got Art Taylor’s new short story collection The Adventures of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions, from Crippen and Landru (order direct from them! It’s better for everyone!), which is very exciting–Art is one of our best crime short story writers, period, and has won every possible award in crime fiction for short story writing at least once, and I love his work. I started reading Abby Collette’s Body and Soul Food while I waited for my appointment and it’s off to a really good start, which is very cool.

I am really excited about the hearing aids, Constant Reader, you have no idea. I’ve always had trouble hearing conversations in crowded restaurants and whenever there’s ambient noise, and it’s gotten progressively worse as I’ve gotten older. (I smile and nod a lot…) And since I’ve long since stopped caring how I look, who cares if people can see me with my hearing aids in? (I wish I’d stopped caring about that a lot sooner than I did, frankly.) So once I get this done and a load of dishes in the dishwasher and a load of clothes going in the washing machine, I am going to dive headfirst into my book and see what I can get finished today.

So, best to head into the spice mines else I’ll never get started.