Tag: Double Crossing Van Dine

Julie Do You Love Me

One can never go wrong with old Bobby Sherman hits, can one? 🙂

Well, it’s Saturday morning, the apartment looks a lot better, and I am not feeling tired this morning, as opposed to yesterday morning. I had a good night’s sleep before my alarm kitty went off this morning–he let me sleep a while longer–and now I am awake, swilling coffee, and ready to get to work today. I have to get my COVID shot today (more on that story later), so am hoping for no adverse reactions so I can get some work done today. Paul is working with his trainer and then going by his office–they have to move out by the end of the month (remember the building collapse last year?), and so he is packing and throwing things away. There are football games all day today, too–including LSU-Mississippi and some other terrific match-ups, so the siren song of my easy chair and the television is going to be difficult to resist, but I do have work to do today, that I have to get done if I am going to be finished with this book on time.

Several weeks ago, I talked to my doctor about the COVID shot (I am not sixty-five yet, but I am immunocompromised), at which point I was informed that in Louisiana you now need a prescription for it and if you aren’t 65 or older you have to be at “risk”. Well, everyone’s at risk, since it spreads so easily from person to person, thank you again, MAGA garbage human beings who are seriously too stupid to breathe if it weren’t involuntary. Your doctor has to write a prescription for it, send it to the pharmacy, and you have to know which version of the shot they have. So first, you have to check with said pharmacy to see which brand they offer, and let your doctor know so he can write the scrip for the correct version. So, you can’t just can’t get a prescription–if it’s written for the wrong version they won’t give you either. Idiotic, right? This is what comes from living in a MAGA majority state filled with temporarily embarrassed millionaires. After jumping through these hoops, it turned out that CVS, my pharmacy of choice, wasn’t offering it in New Orleans at all…which meant biting the bullet and getting it at a Walgreens. I hate Walgreens. I’ve been boycotting Walgreens for the most part (other than the convenience of having one a short block away, so I might go get milk or bread from there in a pinch)and don’t spend money there if at all possible. Since the convenient one is the one I used to call the Marsten House on St. Charles, I decided to have it called into the one in the Garden District, by Breaux Mart on Magazine. When I went, they made me wait almost an hour–I had another appointment and had to leave. After leaving, about half an hour later I got a notice that my appointment was cancelled–so they expected me to sit there for an hour and half? And were rude about it when I finally asked? Yeah, I walked out and gave them one-star on Yelp. I also was more than happy to fill out the “customer satisfaction survey” they sent me because I had checked in for my appointment. I refuse to go back to that one, but still need the vaccine so had my doctor call it into the Marsten House on St. Charles. I will report back, for sure.

Paul didn’t get home until after I went to bed, and I imagine I won’t see an awful lot of him until they are finished moving into their new, temporary office space. DISLIKE.

A lovely review of Double Crossing Van Dine by Oline Cogdill in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel was published this week:

Double Crossing Van Dine, edited by Donna Andrews, Greg Herren and Art Taylor; introduction by Catriona McPherson; Crippen & Landru; 310 pages; $22

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction that launched the classic genre novel is considered to be from the 1920s to 1930s. But contemporary readers know that a second Golden Age began in the mid-1980s when the novels became more emotionally involving along with the introduction of detectives from myriad backgrounds and cultures. The genre continues to evolve, seeing several golden ages in the past decades.Going out on a limb here, many authors from the ’20s and ’30s haven’t survived the test of time, aside from a few, such as Agatha Christie. And going out on another limb here, S.S. Van Dine, the focus of this short story anthology, probably is among those only recognized by readers steeped in the history of mystery fiction.Van Dine, whose real name was Willard Huntington Wright, was an American art critic, literary editor, biographer and author who wrote the series about detective Philo Vance.

Each story begins describing one of Van Dine’s rules, then crushing it. Fort Lauderdale author Elaine Viets’ “Sweet Poison,” about two young women struggling in New York’s Lower East Side during 1921, forgets the rule that “all clues must be publicly stated,” as they deal with the unexpected death of one’s “Wall Street sugar daddy.”Barb Goffman puts aside the “no love interest” rule in “Baby Love” as a fledgling-but-broke private detective tries to launch his career so he and his very loving wife can afford a baby. Co-editor Greg Herren stifles the “no supernatural” rule with “The Spirit Tree,” in which the solution to a murder comes from beyond. The “only one detective rule” doesn’t work for Delia Pitts’ “Better Together,” which finds two heads are better than one.Boca Raton author Alan Orloff’s “The Society Set” takes a butler who has several jobs for his persnickety employer on a journey of a jewelry heist that actually embraces Van Dine’s version of a “fascinating crime.” Leigh Perry has a work-around for the “no secret societies” ban in “Guilted Lily,” in which a tight-knit group of grifters seek a score.Tom Mead dismisses the rule that servants should never be the culprits in “The Tell-Tale Thumb.” Some people, Mead writes, see only the uniform, not the person who hides in plain sight.The majority of the authors in “Double Crossing Van Dine” have either won or been nominated for awards. A handy brief bio of each of the authors may inspire readers to seek out more of their stories.

Pretty cool!

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow morning.

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!

Pour Some Sugar on Me

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I slept well again last night–didn’t want to get out from under my pile of blankets this morning, yet again–and we also had an amazing thunderstorm last night. Lightning was very close, the thunder rolled for what seemed like forever, and twice the power fluttered on and off before I went to bed. I had a good day at work yesterday–got a lot done there–and picked up the mail on the way home and there was plenty of it, too. This weather is the return of the system that was supposed to flood us this past weekend; it made a U-turn and basically came back. There’s no flood watch or anything, so it’s not as scary this time around, methinks. I did some chores when I got home before my usual catch-up on the news, and once Paul got home we started watching Untamed. We were on our second episode of the evening when the power blinked out then back on the first time, and it took forever for the wireless server to come back on line–Netflix is always slow to load, too–so we gave up for the evening. We’ll probably finish the show in another night or two, and then will have to find something new to watch again. Huzzah.

I am also still reeling a bit from how much my bi-monthly medication costs (#madness). It’s almost two hundred thousand dollars per year. Granted, that also includes the cost of the injection device that I have to attach to myself every eight weeks (I thought it was four; this is much better on me). It is on its way, and should be arriving sometime Friday at the postal service, so I can pop it into the refrigerator and keep it there until I need it in September. I have to go to the service on Friday anyway; I received the title pages for Double Crossing Van Dine anthology to sign (my co-editors, Donna Andrews and Art Taylor, have already signed them; I’m last to go) for the clothbound edition of the anthology. My story “The Spirit Tree,” is another Alabama story, for the record; yet another return to Corinth County! So one of the things I need to do either tonight or tomorrow morning is sign them.

Apparently I need to watch last night’s episode of South Park? Social media is completely abuzz with clips and general hilarity about this new episode, which targets Dumble-dumb. Something to stream while bonding with my precious Sparky tonight, at any rate. I also need to check my to-do list as well as make a more comprehensive one for the weekend. I have plenty of work to do at home tomorrow, of course, and lots of chores and writing and editing and cleaning to do around that, as always. I am trying to get my email inbox cleaned out, and I also need to do some studying on things. I don’t think I have to sign up for Medicare before I actually retire or stop working, according to what I have read, which is kind of a relief; I’d rather not deal with that frustrating red tape until I actually have to, you know?

Insurance shouldn’t be this crazy and complicated and irritating, frankly.

Neither should life.

I also want to get another newsletter out–either about the recent trend by gymbros to build up a beautiful butt1, or my one about the kids’ series featuring Vicki Barr, (pre-feminist) stewardess! I also owe a gazillion emails…sigh.

And on that note, it’s off to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will be back in the morning.

The Temple of Poseidon
  1. So much of a gym trend that Men’s Health published an article about it! ↩︎

Women

Wednesday morning blog and we’re halfway through the week. I feel decent this morning, not overly tired or fatigued or brain mushy, but awake and good. My stomach is bothering me a bit this morning, but I’m not dehydrated and this doesn’t feel like a colitis flare-up–at least not so far. I slept well, and did get some things done last night when I got home. I put away the dishes, made lunches for the rest of the week, cleaned off the counters, and did some filing. We also watched another episode of Untamed, which we are enjoying. It was a pretty mellow night, with Paul getting home later than I would prefer. I also balanced my checkbook (I have more money than I thought I did, and the more money is accurate, not my register balance–I deducted a couple of things twice), and got caught up on the news–always a depressing thing no matter how little of it I catch up on. I do love seeing MAGA being hoisted on their own petard, don’t you? The people screaming about pedophiles and grooming and Jeffrey Epstein for the last ten years are suddenly all about protecting groomers and pedophiles when their foul god turns out to be one of them…but they’ve always been all-in on hypocrisy.

There are few things I despise more than hypocrisy. I especially hate it when I’m doing it.

I dealt with the specialty pharmacy yesterday to get my injection stuff sent to me yesterday–turns out it’s only every two months that I need to use the injection device to infuse my anti-colitis medication (or whatever it is), which will be interesting. I don’t need it until September, as I have one more infusion to do first, and then a month later I start using the disposable device they’ll be sending me. (I also saw the bill they sent my insurance company –almost thirty thousand dollars! I don’t know if that is for the two infusions, or for the device they’re sending me (I suspect it is for the device, because the infusion charges would come from my GTI specialist since they are done in his office), but yikes!

Thank God that’s not coming out of my pocket…I guess uninsured people just die. I mean, it’s almost two hundred grand per year for the rest of my life, which I certainly do not have.

Sigh. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I’ve not really had to deal with health issues until I turned sixty.

I’ve also been remiss in not talking about upcoming things, haven’t I? I have about three short stories in anthologies that are all dropping in the next two months, and I am also hosting a Noir at the Bar the Thursday of Bouchercon weekend, which I should be talking about and promoting, and should be bringing more attention to the anthologies. My bad! I know I’ve mentioned the stories before–“The Rhinestone” in Crime Ink: Iconic; “The Last To See Him Alive” in Celluloid Crimes; and “The Spirit Tree” in Double Crossing Van Dine–but I should at least post a TOC and the release dates…which means actually finding out when the release dates are. I am so bad at this, oy. I promise I will get better!

I also need to start looking into Medicare and signing up for that and so on. Heavy sigh. I really hate being an adult.

Okay, on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in on you tomorrow.