SleuthSayers

Attending crime fiction conferences and conventions is often part of the writing life and can sometimes play a role in propelling a writing career forward. So, the decision to attend or not attend them is important, and it’s important to understand the difference between them and to be prepared for some of the things that make a conference or convention more or less successful.

Each conference and convention has a different vibe, and, if you are a writer, the vibe you feel may depend on where you are in your writing career, whether you are at a craft-based event (a conference) or a fan-based event (a convention), how appropriate the facilities are for the event, and how the event is organized.

FAN-BASED CONVENTIONS

At fan-based conventions, the superstars may be fêted, make presentations, and participate in panels. Their time off stage may be spent with agents, editors, and publishers, and fans will seek them out for autographs, conversation, and occasional fawning.

A mid-career writer will participate in a panel or two, might meet with an agent, editor or publisher, and may have a fan or two seek them out.

An early-career writer—someone with a single book from a small press or a few published short stories—will be lucky to snag a seat on a panel and will likely be among the fans seeking autographs and conversations with the superstars and mid-career writers.

A beginning writer—a writer who has yet to see publication in any form—is unlikely to participate in any panels or presentations unless they have specialized knowledge to share (medical examiners discussing autopsies, for example). Beginning writers attending a convention are, essentially, fans.

CRAFT-BASED CONFERENCES

The vibe is different at craft-based conferences. Everyone in attendance is there to teach others how be better writers or is there to learn how to be better writers. The implied student-teacher relationships reduce the differences between writers and increases the interactions between writers at all levels, especially at smaller conferences.

These are excellent opportunities to improve one’s writing skills and make connections with agents, editors, publishers, and other writers.

COMBINATION EVENTS

Some conventions offer writer-centric sessions in addition to fan-centric sessions. Even so, because the fan experience takes priority, opportunities for writers to improve their craft are limited.

At a conference with multiple sessions on craft and business, a new or beginning writer may spend much time attending sessions and learning. A superstar writer may present one or more sessions and will engage with numerous new and beginning writers interested in learning at the feet of the masters. A mid-career writer straddles the mid-point between the two ends of the spectrum. They may have little interest in attending the presentations, not because they think they know it all, but because chances are they’ve heard it all. At the same time, they have the potential for engaging conversations with writers at all levels of experience.

FACILITIES

Facilities play a significant role in how writers experience a conference or convention. If the meeting rooms are too large for the audience, if the rooms are a significant distance from restaurants and bars, if the hallways are too wide, and if it is easy to be anywhere but at the event (for example, returning to one’s room or leaving the hotel to sightsee), opportunities to meet and interact with other participants is minimized. This puts shy and socially awkward writers at a disadvantage.

ORGANIZATION

An event with one or two presentation tracks keeps attendees confined to a small area, potentially increasing interaction among attendees. While a large event with multiple tracks has attendees frequently shifting from room to room, which increases opportunities for impromptu hallway meetings, a large event spread over multiple rooms and multiple tracks decreases the odds of unplanned meetings with specific people.

VALUE

Few writers have the time and money to attend multiple conferences and conventions each year. So, how might writers make decisions about where to spend their time and money?

If the goal is to sell one’s books or to meet and interact with fans and/or potential fans, a convention is likely the best use of time and money.

If the goal is to share knowledge or to gain knowledge about the business and craft of writing, a conference is likely the best choice.

There are conventions that try to appeal to the entirely of the mystery reading and writing community, such as Bouchercon, and others that appeal to specific subgenres, such as Malice Domestic and ThrillerFest.

There are conferences that try to cover the entirety of crime writing, and others that concentrate on novel writing or short story writing, such as ShortCon.

There are both conferences and conventions that appeal to writers in specific geographic regions, attended primarily by local fans and/or writers.

COST

And then there is the cost—not just the registration fee, but hotel, travel, and meals, as well as time away from family and the day job.

Some of us earn enough from our writing to pay for the (tax-deductible!) expenses of attending conferences and conventions, but most of us do not, and the choice between attending Bouchercon and taking the family to Disneyland is a real-world dilemma.

Attending mystery conferences and conventions can have a significant impact on one’s writing career. Attending might mean meeting an agent, editor, or publisher you later work with. Equally important, attending will put you in an environment that—unlike your day job and daily life—surrounds you with people who do what you do, read what you read, and enjoy what you enjoy. That alone may motivate you and inspire you.

VALUE

So how do you determine the cost/benefit ratio when applied to your writing career?

Attending conferences and conventions has led to numerous opportunities I would never otherwise have had. I’ve created and/or pitched anthologies at Bouchercon and SleuthFest; I’ve co-authored stories with writers I met at Bouchercon and Malice Domestic; I’ve co-edited anthologies with writers I met at Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. I’ve worked in various other ways with editors, writers, and publishers I’ve met at these and other conferences and conventions.

And though I highly value these opportunities, I must be honest: The cost of attending these events is greater than the dollar value of all the projects that have come my way because of my attendance.

Ultimately, writers must weigh the costs vs benefits themselves to determine if and which conferences and conventions they should attend, if they attend at all.

So, how about you? What opportunities have you had that you likely would not have had if you had not attended conferences and conventions? What factors do you include in your personal cost/benefit analysis when considering future attendance at such events? And what makes a conference or convention more enjoyable or less enjoyable?

      For an infomaniac like me, access to the Internet is a little like an alcoholic getting a free, all-you-can-drink pass at the local bar.  Only good on weekends and during happy hour.  I’ve mostly found this to be a good thing, since I’ve been hoovering up random bits of haphazard knowledge, facts, commentary (some benighted) and all the other flotsam and jetsam floating around the cultural soup since I learned how to read.

      As you know, however, the online world makes all this lubriciously easy, which can easily result in addiction (not that I wasn’t hooked already.)  Worse, a lot of very serious people are now warning that this spew of digital effluent is rotting our brains, destroying social bonds and reducing our ability to concentrate down to a few nanoseconds.  Naturally, I don't think any of this applies to me, since I am far too disciplined and self-possessed, utterly immune to cyberspace con jobs.  You're not gonna get me, buddy.

      Though I wonder.  Somehow early on I developed my own version of speed reading, swallowing up whole chucks of material at a time.  My wife challenged me over comprehension, and after I proved my case, I think she’d sign an affidavit stating that I can, in fact, retain a lot in a short amount of time.  When information only existed on the printed page, this might have been a helpful trick, but with the speed and profusion of digital content, perhaps I’ve let the cart get too far in front of the horse.

      I used to spend all Sunday reading at least three print newspapers cover-to-cover.  Now I can travel the same terrain, plus a bunch of blogs, emails and message chats, a few magazines and a number of newsletters, some of which you might find a little obscure (Construction Physics anyone?) before dragging my ass out of bed to start the day.

      This is not Deep Reading.  More like skipping stones across a still pond.  To be fair to myself, I usually down shift when stumbling onto something I really want to learn about and try to stay attentive long enough to actually absorb the information.  I’ll also give deference to the excellent writers out there, which are plentiful despite what you might hear, since style can be just as enriching as content.

      There’s no doubt that having such abundance of information is a real service to fiction writing.  I actually enjoy clicking off into Wikipedia to fill in some detail, or fact check as I go.  As a research tool, the Internet is a Ferrari compared to the horse and buggy approach we used in the past.  (Though as a rule of thumb, I trust but verify.) Three point corroboration is a reliable standard, though sometimes I’ll let it go at two.) 

      But does all this vast abundance make one a better writer?  I honestly don’t know.  I suspect not, since the best writers I can identify accomplished the task way before Steve Jobs got that digital twinkle in his eye.  More likely, it’s given some very good writers a chance to crank out a lot more work in a shorter time.  It’s given them a far bigger universe to examine and draw from.  It’s made the pursuit less lonely, since with a single click they can connect with their true friends and colleagues, find a little encouragement or respite before diving back in again.   Though perhaps this ease of communications has created more distractions than benefits, more excuses to avoid rather than compose.  And worst of all, a degradation of their ability to concentrate on their own private, quiet thoughts, from whence derives their actual brilliance. 

     Nevertheless, whatever the pros and cons, this is the world in which we’re living.  There’s no going back. The only thing a person can do is make the best use of the situation.

      Try to extract the benefits without being corrupted by all the destructive clamor.

I’ve been following often humorous interactions between Gen Z members versus Gen X and occasionally (great)grandparents, the Boomers. Most of the jabs and jibes have been light-hearted, not overly unkind, although teachers and parents have begun to worry about Gen Zs finding their way in the world.

In the midst of these philosophical and practical concerns, I’ve become a more personal observer of the scene. Although I’ve witnessed essentials in the following vignettes, they represents a melding of characters, a Gen X composite rather than any one person. Further, no animals were harmed in the making of this scene. With that in mind…

Gen Z v Dad

“Hey, dude, I need…”

“The pronunciation is ‘dad’ not ‘dude’.”

“Whatever. I need…”

“Need is not the same as want. Neither do you need nor do you want. Consider the lilies of the field…”

“What? Lilies? What does that even mean? Dad, lemme have $6k.”

“Neither do they toil… You need $6000 maybe for heart surgery?”

“New rig for my gaming career. A professional needs professional gear. I’m getting my butt kicked on my old system.”

“Last year’s model, right? As I recall, it ran $2200.”

“Exacto. My cheapass loadout can’t compete, no cap.”

“Son, what did I teach you about work?”

“You told me never ever work a day in my life.”

“My full statement was, ‘Find a job you love, you’ll never ever work a day in your life.’”

“Job? Job? Please shoot me.”

“A good job brings income and food and shelter. How much guap has your gaming earned?”

“You can’t calculate petty capitalist concepts. This is my career.”

“What about your bank account?”

“Bruh! That thing you set up when I was twelve? Nobody uses banks anymore. It’s all Venmo, Kurv, Apple Cash app. Listen man, slide me a new card without a loser $500 limit like before.”

“That very limit allowed the family to eat that month.”

“Never mind. I’ll hit up Mom.”

“Good luck with that.”

Gen Z v Mom

“Mom…”

“No.”

“I haven’t asked anything yet.”

“No, my child.”

“Mom, give me a chance.”

“You asked your father? What did he say?”

“Uh… He said ask you.”

“Are your clothes still strewn on the floor?”

“Mommm. I can’t excel in a socialist society when swamped with minor issues like laundry. Anyway…”

“Hard working boys smell pretty bad without fresh clothes, no matter who they’re going out with.”

“What? Listen, I need six thou…”

“Isn’t that a lot to spend on a date? Are you matching on Boo?”

“Eww. Mom, I’m not dating. At all. It’s for…”

“Susan Deprez says her daughter thinks you’re cute. Clueless but cute.”

“No, the money’s…”

“And Eboni Browne’s been phoning a lot. Who are you inviting to the dance?”

“Ugh. I have no time for primitive mating rituals.”

“Well, if you like boys…”

“Seriously? C’mon, I’m into major gaming.”

“Oh, before I forget, the comic book store posted a hiring notice. You could sell Superman, deal Deadpool, push Punisher, hawk the Hulk, market Marvel.”

“No way. Labor is for losers. Look…”

“So about the primitive rite of washing clothes, rendering lye, wading into the stream, scrubbing musty shirts with stones. Son, feed the washing machine and you’ll finish in time for dinner. Now, out of my kitchen. Shoo! Move along, my child. Hustle. Consider the lilies of the field…”

At a signing in a bookstore years ago, a lady (a.k.a. potential buyer) stopped at my table, picked up one of my books, pointed to the word STORIES on the cover, and asked me, "How many?"

"Forty," I said.

"Are all of them mysteries?"

"Well – they're all crime stories."

Which, thank goodness, turned out to be what she considered a satisfactory answer. But I realized later that I could have just said– and been truthful in saying– "Yes, they're all mysteries." Why? According to most of the editors I know, certainly those of the bigger mystery magazines and the best-of-the-year mystery anthologies, any story that contains a crime can be labeled a mystery. Which makes sense. After all, both Columbo and Poker Face are considered mystery series even though not a single episode involves a whodunit, and crime novels like The Talented Mr. Ripley, Mr. Mercedes, Get Shorty, A Simple Plan, The Day of the Jackal, etc., are always found in the "mystery" section of the bookstore even though they're not traditional mysteries. I re-read Elmore Leonard's Out of Sight recently, which reminded me that Leonard, who was named Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America, once said – and I'm paraphrasing – that he had never in his life written anything in which the identity of the villain was concealed until the end.

My point is, we who write crime stories, whether they involve a murder or not and whether they're whodunits or not (most of mine are howcatchems or howtheygotawaywithits) can safely call ourselves mystery writers.

Now, having said that … the mystery genre has a number of subgenres:

Cozy

These stories usually feature a protagonist who has no professional experience but is drawn into the plot by chance. The setting is limited – a bakery, an antique store, a coffeeshop, a small town, etc. – and there's no graphic violence, sex, strong language, or controversial topics. The murder, robbery, or whatever crime it is, takes place off-screen, the title is punny and/or catchy, and the tales are often "series" stories or novels featuring recurring characters. I've had almost 150 of those lighthearted mysteries (mine are probably more "amateur sleuth" than "cozy") published in Woman's World magazine.

Example (novel): The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Hard-boiled

These gritty stores feature tough but good-hearted detectives with a strong personal code of honor and justice, who happily bend the rules and reject authority while fighting to do the right thing in a corrupt system. This subgenre is sometimes combined with the noir or PI subgenres and – unlike cozies – usually include plenty of violence, sex, and profanity.

Example: LA Confidential by James Ellroy

Police Procedurals

The protagonists here are official law enforcement folks who investigate a case and use technology, legal procedures, and forensic evidence to track down criminals. These stories are sometimes whodunits and – like hard-boiled stories – feature violence, drugs, street language, etc. They focus more on the investigation than on the criminal, and creating them usually requires a familiarity with, or a great deal of research into, the daily workings of a police department. A possible hint, here: In the procedural short stories I've written, I've attempted to hide my ignorance by setting them in fictional cities, since fictional cities have fictional police departments whose rules might differ a bit from the real world.

Example: The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

Locked-room Mysteries

These feature "impossible" crimes committed in an enclosed space with no obvious solution. Sometimes they're murder mysteries, but they might also be robberies in which there's apparently no way the robber could accomplish the theft. The fun for the reader is in the puzzle, in trying to figure it all out before the big "reveal" at the end.

Example: The Three Coffins/The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr

Private Eye

The protagonist here is a professional private investigator, not a police detective, though he or she is often an ex-cop or ex-military. This subgenre frequently overlaps with noir and hard-boiled. I've written a few of these, beginning in 2020, in response to a submission call by Michael Bracken for a special PI issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine. I was fortunate (and amazed) to later have that story win the 2021 Shamus Award (thanks, Michael!), and it introduced me to a new and fun kind of mystery writing. Not that it matters, but my favorite PI writer is probably the late Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser novels.

Example: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Noir

Noir stories and novels have protagonists who are usually deeply flawed in some way, and easily manipulated. I've heard it said that a noir story just means a dumb guy's smart girlfriend talks him into committing a crime, and that's probably a pretty good description. I've said myself that it's any crime story that includes a dark room crisscrossed with the shadows of Venetian blinds. (If you've seen those movies, you know what I mean.) I also like neo-noir, as in the movie Body Heat.

Example: Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

Caper

Caper stories are usually told from the POV of the crooks, and describe the planning and execution of a crime, like a kidnapping or a bank heist. I've written lots of these, and I love 'em. Sometimes the bad guys win, sometimes the good guys, and little attention is given to the solution to the crime. My story that was included in the recent SMFS anthology of Derringer-winners was sort of a humorous caper story, and I can tell you they're great fun to write.

Example: The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake

Traditional

Traditional mysteries feature a crime committed in a closed setting by an unknown antagonist, several possible suspects, and a detective (either police or private) who figures out and reveals the identity of the villain. I've heard these described as fair-play mysteries because enough clues are provided for the reader to try to identify the villain before the protagonist does.

Example: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

Mystery/Thriller

I've seen this listed as a subgenre but I think it's also sort of a catch-all to describe suspenseful mysteries that don't fit easily into other categories. They're crime stories with more action and tension and anticipation than some mysteries offer, and they also have faster-moving plots with lots of twists and reversals. In fact, this kind of story is mostly what I write: tales of ordinary folks, not necessarily cops or PIs, who wind up in dire situations and have to find/fight/shoot their way out.

Example: Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Paranormal

Paranormal mysteries involve otherworldly or supernatural elements. My favorites of these – as a lifetime Twilight Zone fan I have written many of these stories – often feature some kind of time travel or fantasy/telepathy/magic element. An interesting point: If a crime is involved, there are usually a few mystery magazines and mystery anthologies around that might be receptive to them, and – like humor or caper stories – they're truly fun to write.

Example: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Historical

Historical mysteries are generally set at least fifty years in the past. That of course includes the fascinating (to me) years of gangsters, prohibition, organized crime, etc., in the mid-20th Century, an era which has served as the backdrop for many of my stories. (It also includes the Old West – I've written a lot of Westerns, some of them featuring a San Francisco-based private detective – but for some reason I don't think most editors consider Westerns to be historical fiction; the Western is a genre of its own.) One thing I've heard about historical fiction that I consider interesting: Historical mysteries must be written by authors who are not contemporaries of the time in which the stories are set. In other words, the Sherlock Homes stories are not considered to be historical fiction because they're set during the time in which they were written.

Example: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

As mentioned earlier, there can be considerable overlap between these subgenres: the dividing lines get blurry pretty fast. Also, there are more subgenres that I didn't list because they're self-explanatory: courtroom, mystery/romance, humorous, whodunits, solve-it-yourself mysteries, etc.

My questions for you are:

If you're a mystery/crime writer, what kinds of subgenres do you write? Which give you the greatest pleasure to write? – have you specialized in those? Which do you like most when it comes to your reading? Have you intentionally mixed any of these subgenres? Can you think of others I've missed? Which do you think are the easiest to write, and the easiest to sell to an editor/publisher?

One final hint. If you've written a mainstream story that you can't seem to sell, insert a crime someplace within it and send it to one of the remaining mystery magazines, or a crime anthology. I've done that, and it works. Well, sometimes it works.   

 A while back, I wrote about Quantum Criminals, a book describing the recurring characters, or rather archetypes, in the music of Steely Dan. Hmm... I think we're overdue for a new pair of anthologies built around the Dan. Crimson Gate, take a memo...

Who is Mr. Steely Dan?  Like all Steely Dan characters, he's a loser, one of the ramblers and gamblers that inhabit the band's catalog. Sometimes, he's in a bad relationship with a woman, sometimes an other woman, sometimes a woman whose betraying him. Mr. Steely Dan is looking for the next score. Perhaps most disturbing, yet usually unsuccessfully, Mr. Steely Dan likes young girls. Not Lolita young, though Becker and Fagen were fans of Nabakov. 

We read and we write mysteries here at SleuthSayers (as well as other genres) for a variety of reasons, for the skill, the plots, the dialog, the puzzle, but sometimes what we're really interested in is the atmosphere. That fits our mood. Some of my favorites:

Maigret (Georges Simenon) - Paris; places like the Gai Moulon or the Liberty Bar, where no one who isn't a criminal or a policeman should dream of going; Mme. Maigret with her excellent cuisine; the team, detectives Lucas, Janvier, Lapointe, and Torrence; Maigret's pipe, his taste for beer and cognac, his intuition, and his occasional mercy to criminals...  Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful...

NOTE:  The 1960s British series Maigret, starring Rupert Davies, is available on YouTube. "Davies' portrayal won two of the highest accolades: his versions were dubbed into French and played across the Channel; and Simenon himself said of Davies "At last, I have found the perfect Maigret!" (LINK)

Nero Wolfe (Rex Stout) - The household, of course.  The voice of Archie Goodwin, the strict schedule, the orchids upstairs, the gourmet meals of Fritz (although I must confess I have the Nero Wolfe Cookbook, and I didn't like most of the recipes.  I fear they're better on the page than off it. I for one do not want apricot preserves in my omelet.).  Also the supporting team, especially Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin. Orrie Cather can stuff himself. 

Bernie Gunther (Philip Kerr) - Dark, atmospheric, scary, but... depending on the day and the mood...

Mma Ramotswe (Andrew McCall Smith) - It's the rhythm of the voice, the feel of the heat of the day, the smell of cows, the preciousness of rain, the customs, the courtesies, the myths, the secrets, the witchcraft, the traditions.  And the supporting team, her secretary and later assistant Mma Makutsi, her husband Mr JLB Matekoni, Mma Silvia Potokwani of the orphan farm, her stepchildren Motholeli and Puso, and Gabarone, Botswana itself.  As it says at the end of the first book, 

Africa Africa Africa Africa Africa

Africa Africa Africa Africa

Africa Africa Africa

Africa Africa

Africa

Spenser (Robert Parker) - To be honest, mostly for Hawk and the banter between the two of them. What drives me crazy is Susan and her perpetual wonder at the Hawk/Spenser friendship and total trust. Honey, I have girlfriends who if one of us called the other in the middle of the night, would drop everything to help, no matter what, and bring anything / everything needed, whether it's money, a bottle, a shovel or all three and more...  Why Parker wrote a woman who apparently has no women friends I don't know.

Dame Frevisse (Margaret Frazer) - First of all, it's the real Middle Ages.  Second, I really like Dame Frevisse, who is prickly, dedicated, and knows her stuff. She also sometimes gets fed up with her fellow sisters, and who wouldn't get fed up with Dame Alys? Related to Chaucer, her cousin is Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk, which gives Dame Frevisse her access to the nobility, and often gets her mixed up in their problems, mysteries, and murders. And, as I've said many a time, the motive in The Servant's Tale - well, I only wish I'd thought of it first.

Cadfael (Ellis Peters) - My second favorite medieval religious.  My favorite of the books is An Excellent Mystery.  

Brunetti (Donna Leon) - Venice. Venice. Venice. Venice. Venice.  I went to Venice and I fell in love with it the way a teenager falls in love with that sexy guy who is the LAST person she should ever be with and yes, she knows it, but she can't stop, can't stop, she's in madly, deeply, hopelessly, recklessly...  Brunetti gives me access from afar, full of its scents and sounds, especially the water lapping everywhere...  

Miss Marple (Agatha Christie) – I love her. Period. I hope to be her in my increasing old age, only with more profanity and sarcasm. 

Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle) – Straight back to my childhood.  

And thank you, Janice Law, for the amazing Francis Bacon series!  

• Fires of London (2012)
• The Prisoner of the Riviera (2013)
• Moon Over Tangier (2014)
• Nights in Berlin (2016)
• Afternoons in Paris (2017)
• Mornings in London (2017)

Somedays, there's just nothing like a seedy, louche adventurer with a nanny and a lot of bad habits to get you through the day...

Other notes:

Marion Halcome (Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White), who is the real sleuth, the real heroine. And she's up against Count Fosco, an Italian of uncertain past, huge girth, strong personality, and incredibly dangerous. "This in two words: He looks like a man who could tame anything. If he had married a tigress, instead of a woman, he would have tamed the tigress. If he had married me, I should have made his cigarettes, as his wife does—I should have held my tongue when he looked at me, as she holds hers." (Don't worry, he never manages to tame Marion. In fact, he falls in love with her, but that doesn't stop him from being excessively dangerous.) Plus I love the different voices that Collins uses to tell the tale, such as the most useless person ever to take fictional breath, Frederick Fairlie:  

"It is the grand misfortune of my life that nobody will let me alone.  Why—I ask everybody—why worry me? Nobody answers that question, and nobody lets me alone. Relatives, friends, and strangers all combine to annoy me. What have I done? I ask myself, I ask my servant, Louis, fifty times a day—what have I done? Neither of us can tell. Most extraordinary!"

I consider this the best of Collins, and I have reread it many times, with great pleasure.  

Also, thank you, Elizabeth Zelvin for clueing me in to Abbi Waxman's One Death at a Time!  The most truly Hollywood novel I've ever read.  (Let's face facts, Chandler romanticized L.A. even if it was a dark romanticism.)  

Which reminds me, I also want to see Lodge 49 again.  

Phil Caputo died this week past.  The obituaries all led with A Rumor of War, which is fine, it’s a very good book, but he wrote a dozen more.  My personal favorite of his novels is the first, Horn of Africa, and of his combat journalism, Means of Escape.  He was, of course, a Marine veteran of Viet Nam, and he went back ten years later to cover the fall of Saigon.  I think it was Bogdanovich who said John Ford was the laureate of lost causes and last stands, but Phil Caputo knew the vanities of command and the fatigue of the battlefield as well as anybody, and over the years, he went to war in our place many times. 

We might call them the Class of Viet Nam.  They were roughly of an age, and roughly my age, Caputo a couple of years older, Tim O’Brien a year younger.  They were shaped by the common experience.  If you read their stories, you catch a glimpse of something seen at right angles, not just the loss of innocence, or adrenaline and endorphins, their immediate reaction to the threat environment, but something inward and unspoken.  These are kids, or not far removed, trying to understand their own natures, but they’re not at football practice, or working a summer job at the DQ, or trying to get bare tit in the back of a ‘60 Chevy.  This is a different ordering of the world.  And what they found there, what they weren’t equipped to reason with, was the random math, the arbitrary cost-benefit ratio, the fact that it didn’t make any difference to the plot who lived or who died, because it wasn’t their storyline.    

The other thing being, that each of these people – every one of whom wrote about it later, whether or not they recognized at the time that it would later become necessary to write about it - were engaged emotionally, and perhaps not entirely consciously, with the consequences of how they each individually managed their own lived experience.  I’m not going to pretend to their self-knowledge; they can speak perfectly well for themselves.  The point of Caputo’s book, or any of the others, though, is that they’re trying to articulate that experience to themselves.  The reader is bearing witness.

Caputo suggests some men are drawn to war.  Not all, of course, and not all of them men, either.  Martha Gellhorn comes to mind, Christiane Amanpour.  But for himself, Caputo admits to a fascination with the mechanics of war, the psychological disconnect, the cautious formalities, the price of a man’s ears.  He’s in a place of heightened awareness, but he seems at the same time detached.  We suspect he’s come too close, that he needs to regard war as theater, that if he invests his feelings, he’ll weaken. 

I may be full of baloney.  We can’t truly imagine ourselves into another man’s Furies, but perhaps he can try and tell us.  Caputo and those other guys who wrote about Viet Nam came back from the dead, and they did their best to tell us how it was on the far side of the curtain.

Thanks to Rob Lopresti for first putting this idea in my head years ago when he shared quotes from, I think, Bouchercon. And thanks to this year's Malice panelists for their words of wisdom. 

And away we go!

"When I read suspense and thrillers, I think: At least my life isn't that messed up." - Jennifer van der Kleut 

"It's not necessarily the terrible thing happening--it's the threat of the terrible thing happening that propels the story forward." - LynDee Walker

"Good things can come out of rejection." - Kate Hohl 

"The most important thing you can do to be asked to submit again to an editor is be willing to be edited." - Josh Pachter 

"Learn to use Microsoft Word and learn to use track changes. Your editor will love you." - Carla Coupe

"I am not now, nor have I ever been, a eunuch." - Smita Harish Jain

"After you castrate a few people, you get a reputation." - also Smita Harish Jain 

"I don't want to kill people in a real small town because I thought people might take offense to that." - Annie McEwen

"When reading suspense, I think most people like to be mostly right but a little bit wrong. The thrill of not knowing what's going to happen is what pulls us along to keep turning the pages." - LynDee Walker 

"You don't wait for your muse. You say: Muse, c'mon, sit down." - Korina Moss 

"I do not like unreliable narrators. I just want to punch them." - Jule Selbo

"A short story is not a novel. It's not a love note. It's not a poem. They have their own rhythm." - Smita Harish Jain 

Recently I have been thinking about immortality, not the human and aspirational kind, typified by one of our billionaires who apparently wants to sleep his way to eternity, but the curious immortality of certain literary creations. What mysterious secret ingredients has kept folks like Oedipus and Antigone, David and his rival Goliath, Medea, and Orpheus, and the notables of the Hindu epics evergreen and ever present?

Sure, a strong connection to an historic religion is a big help, but not essential, considering the continuing presence of our genre's Sherlock Holmes. Not content with retelling his adventures in every medium except dance and opera, we have retired him, married him, gifted him with a daughter and saddled him with multiple bee hives.

He's been treated for addiction – by Sigmund Freud, no less; brought into the 21st century with Sherlock, and just recently restored to callow youth by Young Sherlock, wherein he works as domestic help in Oxford, crashes parties with a louche undergrad named Moriarty, and gets acquainted with a Chinese princess who is a master of both armed and unarmed combat.

Is anything new possible? Well, yes. In The Final Problem, Arturo Perez-Reverte has come up with an angle that I confess I exploited nearly a decade ago: a mystery employing not the great man himself, but one of his impersonating actors. Together, The Final Problem and my own Holmes Impersonator stories provide two more ways to exploit the great detective.

I did not have ambitions to enlarge Sherlock's already expansive realm when I ventured into Holmes territory. I had hopes of breaking into a lucrative weekly supermarket tabloid, and I had come up with what I thought was a clever plot. In the service of this idea, I needed a detective and for reasons unknown, the Holmes Impersonator arrived.

A journeyman actor, employed by regional theaters and the dinner circuit with occasional voice- over or advertising work, my detective makes some extra cash with a regular gig at The Sherlock Holmes Museum, a small private Connecticut outfit with a slim budget and a constant need for donors. I thought he was ideal; the tabloid editors thought differently.

But the Impersonator was resilient. He found a home at Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine where he proved to be a clever guy, a useful narrator for six outings, and surprisingly observant. His flaw is his appearance. As child visitors to The Sherlock Holmes Museum invariably observe, he doesn't look like Sherlock. Indeed, tapped for a PBS revival of Sherlock Holmes, the famous play that made star William Gillette rich enough to build Connecticut's one and only castle, he gets cast as Watson.

No such troubles for Perez- Reverte's Basil Osmond, who has the hawk nose and elegant physique of the famous Sidney Paget illustrations. Basil has instant credibility, because he not only looks the part but has played it in over a dozen immensely popular films.

Clearly based on Basil Rathbone, the famous 20th century Sherlock, Perez- Reverte's detective comes with an encyclopedic knowledge of Conan Doyle stories, an almost instant recall of Holmes' famous lines, and the savoir faire of having temporarily been rich and famous and on intimate terms with both London's West End and Hollywood royalty.

Such a character clearly deserves a mystery, and The Final Problem soon sets one for him. Basil has been sailing with a producer who may cast him in an upcoming television series. A storm strands them on a Greek island, one conveniently equipped with a luxury hotel inhabited by other temporarily stranded visitors.

Long time mystery fans will recognize that this setup is far from the atmospheric fogs of Baker Street. We are, in fact, in Agatha Christie territory with nine visitors, the hotel proprietor and three in staff, and very soon we have a corpse, a lot of questions, and no way to get help from the police.

Granted the authority to conduct an investigation, Basil, at first reluctantly and then with considerable flair and enthusiasm, sets to work, assisted by a fawning Spanish mystery writer and fellow Holmes buff.

The plotting, more clever than plausible, gives Basil scope, even if the somewhat awkward epilogue makes clear why Agatha Christie favored dramatic revelations before the assembled suspects.

So, here are our two alternative performers. The low- budget Holmes Impersonator, modest but effective in the compass of short fiction and a small locale, and a famous Sherlock in a luxury setting and the Christie- type plot suitable for a full length novel. Are there room for more such characters? I suspect so.

And what of the secret ingredient, the source of such characters' longevity? I am still far from a solution, but part must be the presence of what the great Scottish philosopher David Hume declared essential to knowledge: a clear and distinct idea.

Sherlock provides that in spades: the pithy phrases, the investigative dictums, and, of course, the instantly identifiable costume. Put a dog or a cat in a deer stalker and an Ulster, hand them a meerschaum pipe and either is instantly recognizable as a detective of this very special type. With a brand like this, no wonder other writers are tempted to enlist him in their literary ventures.

AI is being promoted as a tool to reduce human error in criminal investigations and healthcare but, I assert AI creates a serious harm by its very nature; AI cannot be held accountable and accountability is how we mere humans fix mistakes for fear that we will be humiliated, be disciplined, lose our jobs - none of this applies to AI who merrily trots along even when people are harmed. Further, the real benefit of accountability is not punishment but, rather, preventing the same mistakes in the future and how do we do that with AI?

Angela Lipps, a grandmother from Tennessee, was falsely identified by the facial recognition software (FRT) Clearview AI, as part of a bank fraud scheme in Fargo, North Dakota. Angela was living a quiet life, caring for her family when she was arrested, jailed first in Tennessee and then in Fargo for almost six months until she was released. By then she was traumatized and had lost her home. The Fargo police chief Zibolski said, “We’re happy to acknowledge when we make errors, and we’ve made a few in this case, for sure.” His happiness is unlikely to be shared by Angela, and the promise of an an 'overhaul' of its AI policy shouldn't hide the fact that no one was held responsible for the harm to Angela - a vague wave at AI is not the same as true accountability.

Angela's false arrest is not unique; there have been many documented false arrests. Harm from errors of false positive FRT, like in the case of Angela are one problem, but what about false negatives when a true criminal is let go - who knows how many times that has happened unless the are finally apprehended and an analysis is done showing FRT was inaccurate. Research also shows that AI is "more prone to false positive errors when applied to people of color."

Police officers are trusting algorithms that they did not create and, quite frankly, don't understand. When reasons for false positives come to light, such as low image resolution, officers can use this as a warning but, how low is too low and what about people who aren't white, when is FRT reliable? I obviously have no answers, only questions and a discomfort with people being harmed only to have people in power vaguely wave at an algorithm rather than holding someone responsible but, who can they hold responsible?

The use of facial recognition is growing not just because it *may* help correct errors (while certainly engaging in errors) but because it's a big money maker, so the answers of accountability matter:

"The global face recognition market was almost nine billion dollars in 2025, with projected growth to over 30 billion by 2034. Over a third of this market is in the U.S., but there is wide adoption of FRT around the world... Ten percent of U.S. police departments use FRT. The NYPD made 2,878 arrests resulting from FRT in the first five years of its use. The Metropolitan Police in London report 100 arrests using FRT in conjunction with mounted security cameras, including a suspect accused of kidnapping. Police in New Delhi used FRT to identify almost 3,000 missing children, and FRT has been used to identify refugee children who have been separated from their family. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has used a tool called Spotlight, which makes use of FRT, to identify children who are victims of sex trafficking. In 2023, the FBI worked with NCMEC to identify or arrest 68 suspects of trafficking."

AI in healthcare is also big business, according to a 2025 report by Research Insights: "The global AI In Healthcare Market size is projected to be valued at USD 26.6 Billion in 2024 and reach USD 187.7 billion by 2030."

AI is used in many clinical tools and embedded in medical devices - it's the latter situation that gives rise to this story:

"In June 2022, a surgeon inserted a small balloon into Erin Ralph’s sinus cavity at a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. According to a lawsuit filed by Ralph, Dr. Marc Dean was employing the TruDi Navigation System, which uses AI, to confirm the position of his instruments inside her head.

The procedure, known as a sinuplasty, is a minimally invasive technique to treat chronic sinusitis. A balloon is inflated to enlarge the sinus cavity opening, to allow better drainage and relieve inflammation.

But the TruDi system “misled and misdirected” Dean,.. A carotid artery – which supplies blood to the brain, face and neck – allegedly was injured, leading to a blood clot...After Ralph left the hospital, it became apparent that she had suffered a stroke. The mother of four returned and spent five days in intensive care [and] a section of her skull was removed “to allow her brain room to swell.” She finds it, "hard to walk without a brace and to get my left arm back working, again.”

Who is to blame?

Matt Baxter, Director, Professional Liability, states, “From an insurance standpoint, AI is not really changing the exposure, because the liability still stands with the healthcare professional,” Baxter said. “They still have the same responsibility, whether they are using AI or not, to make sure the information is correct.”

One group of researchers cited the concern that puts who is responsible in question, because AI is a “black box”, "with no way to understand the AI's algorithm. This is problematic because patients, physicians, and even designers, do not understand why or how a treatment recommendation is produced by AI technologies. … Due to the black box feature, medical AI systems might make incomprehensible mistakes."

So, the doctor who does not understand the algorithm is held responsible for AI mistakes and, worse, holding him/her liable does nothing to protect the next patient from this algorithm.

Mistakes are common so the question of responsibility is crucial: "A new study from researchers at Stanford and Harvard found that even today’s best artificial intelligence (AI) models make serious errors in a significant portion of medical cases … with the top-performing AI models producing 12 to 15 errors per 100 cases and the worst-performing models making mistakes in 40 out of 100 cases."

Would suing the AI company responsible make things safer? Maybe the loss of money would make them revisit their tech and pull those that aren't safe.

Whatever the answer, the question must be asked: when, not if, AI makes a mistake, how are the right people held accountable and what is being done to ensure the mistake doesn't happen again? 

There is a reason that AI in law enforcement and healthcare are big business: they are two of the largest institutions we have because civil society, in the Aristotelian sense, has been organized around collective survival where individuals can fulfill their potential. Derived from our empathy and ethics, our laws are designed to protect us as a society and healthcare is designed to protect us as individuals, so no wonder they are fodder for making big bucks. Do we want AI - that's devoid of empathy and ethics, causing harm without an ounce of remorse - seeping into the two institutions that we created to keep us safe or do we want a way to use our ethics, our humanity, to keep AI in check? 

If sentence construction is a story's tactics, then grammar is the rules of engagement. I'm no grammarian, mind you. I just want my words to count. That brings me to this particular sound-off and sometimes my almighty struggle: the prepositional phrase.

• The preposition (about, before, down, except, for, in, near, on, off, under, with, etc.);
• Its object -- a noun, pronoun, or something functioning as such; 
• Any modifiers to the object.

But I'm also talking about more than grammar. When I'm moving those prepositions around, I'm calculating punch, timing, mood, and sentence variety. I'm fine-tuning the action and thus the characters. Not surprisingly, I've developed a few guidelines to help minimize editing blood pressure spikes.

"The sound of laughter" is a complete grammatical phrase. "Sound" is the subject, "laughter" the modifying prepositional object. A complete thought, but indirect enough to invite the passive voice. "Was heard by all" feels almost inevitable to follow. 

What's more important here? The "sound" or the "laughter?" It could be either. "Laughter" is more specific and more powerful than "sound." If laughter is the key action and heaviest hitter, then it should be the sentence subject with an equally powerful verb. "Sound of" seems unnecessary. 

If you read a fair few legal documents, it's not uncommon to encounter mass pile-ups of prepositional phrases. A lawyer on a roll can chain four, five, eight prepositional phrases together in a single, sprawling clause. Boring, but it's doing its job. Those prepositions stack needed qualifiers to the core provision. 

Well, we're not writing legal documents here. A traffic jam of prepositions makes things blocky and turns reading comprehension into a slog. An example:

Conversation ground to a halt when McGillicuddy shot me the stink-eye that he usually did before breaking tough news in his office on the penthouse floor with the full view of the city behind him.

To avoid things getting out of hand, I self-imposed a cap of two in a row max. Two keeps me focused on key actors and actions. Any further details can be worked into a later sentence.

Conversation ground to a halt. McGillicuddy shot me the stink-eye that he usually did before breaking tough news. We were drinking Old Sasquatch in his penthouse office, the city below spreading to the horizon.

Not great, but at least these sentences behave. Once I cap the pile-up, the next problem is ordering the survivors. 

• A phrase functioning as an adjective follows the noun (sentence subject). Think: Her photo on the wall stood watch over the parlor.

• A phrase functioning as an adverb follows the verb. Same sentence: Her photo on the wall stood watch over the parlor.

• WRONG: Dave shoved the evidence in the drawer ahead of the cops under his socks.

• RIGHT: Dave shoved the evidence in his sock drawer ahead of the cops.

The first example fails its adverbial duty. The cops are not under the socks. Also, shoving is the important action, so the modifier belongs where the socks were shoved. The second example lands the sentence on that small matter of the cops.

Let's get more complicated.

• WRONG: The pirates debated their heading in the galley for raiding Port Arghh with the captain.

• RIGHT: The pirates debated the Port Arghh raid over rum with the captain. 

The first example is all over the place. Is the captain connected to Port Arghh or the pirate crew? The second example won't win any awards, but it keeps the thought line straight. The construction immediately cuts to the central rum-soaked debate and Port Arghh, giving both more primacy. Ending on "with the captain" sets the blackguard up to decide the next move. 

I default to opening sentences with the subject. English is designed that way, and I'm not going to fight that. But guidelines are just that.. Inverting prepositional phrases to open things can change the feel in critical ways:

• Traditional: "The truth looked a lot different under the streetlamps." That's effective in showing the narrator shifting as they have time to think, with "streetlamps" as a stark and atmospheric closer.

• Inverted: "Under the streetlamps, the truth looked a lot different." This time, we get the mood before we get the truth. Ending on "different" sets up an emotional or revealing next sentence. 

Done judiciously and well, the humble prepositional phrase is powerful, flexible--or ruinous fluff leading to blood pressure checks.

So I felt the need to change things up this go-round, and here’s what I did. I queried several writer friends and posed them the following question:

"I’m writing a blog post about 'How It’s the Non-Fiction You Wouldn’t Expect to Help Make You a Better Fiction Writer That Does In Fact Make You a Better Fiction Writer,' and so would LOVE your input. So maybe your pen name, title of the book and why it so helped your fiction writing?"

First, here are a few of my own favorites:

1. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The gold standard. Shirer served as CBS Radio’s “Man in Berlin” during the 1930s, getting out of town one step ahead of an SS arrest warrant in December of 1940. And after the war he pointed out who did what, where the bodies were buried, and brought receipts. And he did it all in a way that spoke directly to an American audience predisposed to disregard “just more European politics.”

2. Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why

Bloom, a well-respected literary critic, was a master prose stylist in his own right. Reading this slim volume helped remind me that language can be so much fun to play with.

3. Barbara W. Tuchman, Stillwell and the American Experience in China

Much better known for her two Pulitzer Prize winning works (The Guns of August, about World War I, and A Distant Mirror, about “the Calamitous Fourteenth Century,” Tuchman cut her teeth working for the Associated Press in Japan before World War II. As such she was deeply steeped in the goings on in China, and the perspective she brought to the conflict there was decades ahead of its time.

4. Diana Cooper, Darling Monster: the Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich (1939-1952)

Lady Diana Cooper knew everyone from the Mitford sisters to the most respected clerics in the nation, to Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Her candid, incisive, funny character sketches addressed to her son, historian J.J. Norwich (see below) are not to be missed.

5. John Julius Norwich, Byzantium (3 vols.)

Three volumes, eleven hundred years. Norwich is a master of the narrative voice. Each volume is a graduate course in writing compelling narrative while not losing sight of the larger stories

6. Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts

Once called a cross between James Bond, Indiana Jones and Graham Greene, Fermor lived a restless, adventurous life, and documented it entertainingly. At 18 he trekked from Dover to Constantinople. It was 1933, and A Time of Gifts documents the first one-third of that trip through a world that was already beginning to vanish under the pressures of Nazism, modernism, socialism, etc.

7. William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

I picked this one about the role romance played in the cultural syncretism ongoing during the early years of the British Raj, but honestly, anything by Dalrymple, the greatest travel writer of this or any age, is worth your time.

8. Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

Tey was a terrific novelist. And she was also a passionate defender of the reputation of King Richard III. As such, her panegyric raising the question of whether or Richard Crouchback bore any culpability in the disappearance of his nephew the so-called “Princes in the Tower.” She says no. The historical record is far more damning. Tey is so good she almost convinced me!

9. Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome

Turns out the greatest Renaissance genius might not have been a Leonardo or a Michelangelo, but rather an irascible builder who studied the interior dome of Rome’s Pantheon to unlock the secret of constructing an apparently unsupported dome. Short, quick and riveting.

10. Steven Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

The ancient Roman poet Lucretius theorized the existence of the atom in a poem written two thousand years ago. But that’s only half the story. How Lucretius’ poem was lost for centuries and then found again, and preserved for modern audiences, now THAT is quite a story!

And on that note, on to the thoughts of my writer friends!

Writer and Editor Extraordinaire Jim Thomsen:

Top of mind is Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser, the recent true-crime Edgar winner, about the possible links between serial killers and being raised in the shadow of lead smelters (like the one in Tacoma). While I’m not sure I buy all her arguments, and I might have wished for less Ted Bundy and BTK rehash, I find myself rereading this book over and over because of the audacity of its originality — a wild mashup of science, true crime and memoir. Fraser, who was raised on Mercer Island, plays with the rules and breaks them all in dizzying but energizing fashion, veering page to page from wonky exposition to irreverent editorializing, and not being afraid to sound silly or sophomoric. Consider this quote: “During his five years on McNeil Island, virtually everything Charles Manson eats and drinks comes out of the earth, where particulates from the Ruston plume have been drifting down to the ground since 1890. He’ll live on McNeil Island longer than he’s lived in any place in his life. Later studies on McNeil find lead in soil ranging from a low of 19 parts per million (ppm) to a high of 190. Helter smelter.”

Murderland is such a wild original that I found myself pleasantly helter-skelter with the possibilities of widening the aperture of narrative in ways I’d never imagined. And with the idea that it’s OK to look a little silly in doing so in the service of a strong writing voice.

Fellow Sleuthsayer Eve Fisher:

Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, the Calamitous 14th Century - impeccable research, amazing stories (truth really is stranger than fiction), and a prose style to die for.  

Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange - The book that made me see ecosystems in a whole new way. And how they affect(ed) our daily lives today. Very important. And very applicable to us on the micro as well as macrosystem.

Steven Mithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC.  - Humans are humans, no matter how far you go back. The emotional / mental / spiritual ideas are always there.  But it sure is interesting what we do with them!  

I guess what I'm saying is that all of these showed me the important fact that no matter where you are, or what time you're in, the styles will change, but the stories remain the same.

As far as the language - oooh, I grew up reading Shakespeare, all kinds of poetry, and I discovered Bruce Chatwin (supposedly non-fiction but he did make some stuff up) and Peter Matthiessen and Henry Thoreau, who could describe a place and a feel and a spiritual experience with such beauty...  

So yeah, reading non-fiction has great rewards!

Kat Richardson:

I started out as a journalist, so non-fiction has had a big impact on my fiction writing. There were a lot of books and lectures within that study and my early career that made an impact, not to mention the journalists dictum "write tight."  Prof. Lawrence Meyer, my Course Advisor at CSULB, compiled a collection of historically significant journalism, from 17th century British authors Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, to the "new journalists" of the 1970s, including Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Dunn, and Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem. For copyright reasons it was never published, but we used it as our primary study text in his "Journalism as Literature" course. I learned a lot about writing with style and impact while keeping fact intact and prose tight

I also read a lot of narrative non-fiction, and the work of writers like Erik Larson (whom I do not care for, but owe respect for his ground-breaking approach), Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook, and Mary Roach's book Stiff. While these authors' narrative style is occasionally flawed in terms of absolute fact and completeness, they taught me a lot about drawing the reader into a longer, realistic story while maintaining an accessible and engaging tone. They also reminded me to check my sources and not rely on the veracity of any one source or author, if I'm writing about anything outside of my personal experience, be it fiction or non-fiction.

*    *    *

What about you, dear readers? Let us know what you think, or add your own favorites in the comments. And on that note, that’s it for this go-round.

See you in two weeks!

The news may have slipped past you but last year the media was announcing the death of a familiar part of publishing.  It isn't exactly that the mass-market paperback is dead but that ReaderLink, the major distributor of paperbacks, has decided to stop dealing with them.  Which is not so much a killing blow as  a recognition that the format is fading away.

The mass-market paperback (MMPB) has been a staple since the 1930s.  I am putting up pictures of the  oldest ones I own.  One of the major publishers of them was Pocket Books, which tells you exactly what they were designed for: to fit into a man's pocket.  (Women were very lucky if their clothes had any suitable spaces.)  These were the books GIs took to the front. (My copy of Pocket Mystery Reader belonged to Sergeant Lawrence E. Hough in 1943.)

By the way, you may notice that three of the books I include here say Complete and/or Unabridged on the cover because in those early days  an MMPB often was a shortened version.  When I worked at a public library in the 1970s I had a hard time convincing an older patron that the paperback I had found her was complete.

MMPBs were so-called because they were sold in mass markets: grocery stores, drug stores, and so on.  Their competition was the trade paperback, typically the same size as a hardback, and only found in the trade, that is to say, bookstores.  Trade books are still around although ebooks continue to eat into their sales.

I have a special fondness for MMPBs, and here's why.

When I want to buy a new book, hardcover or trade, I go to my favorite independent bookstore.  But when I am going on a trip I go to my favorite used bookstore which has an amazing selection of thousands of MMPB mysteries.

So when I went to Egypt and Greece in January I headed to used-book-land with a special list of authors in my hand.  Take a look at the picture below and I am  sure you can see the factor that connected them.  And the beauty was, when I finished one I could leave it in a hotel or train and not worry about the cost.

I suspect the used book store will have old MMPBs long enough to last me out, but  you young whippersnappers may not be as lucky.

     My turn to blog has circled around again. Originally, I had planned to use this space to talk about Malice Domestic. I'd rhapsodize about the forums I attended, impart the things I'd learned, congratulate the award winners, and, naturally, laud the high-level conversation conducted at the panel in which I participated. 

    The rough draft turned out to be a pretty boring read. Consequently, I've switched directions. 

    The longer I work at writing, the harder it is to find value in the planned events at a conference. Occasionally, I glean a nugget. And I still believe there is merit to an occasional refresher course on the lessons I should already know. But the thunderclaps of insight are becoming increasingly rare. 

    That's not to say that I didn't benefit from attending Malice Domestic. Rather, at this stage, the value I gained was subtle and harder to articulate. I renewed many old friendships, established several new ones, and plotted some future opportunities. None of the details fit well to a column like this.     

    Some months back, Michael Bracken modestly proposed in a SleuthSayers blog post that writing conferences should schedule less time for panels and more time for standing in the hall. The hallway, outside the meeting rooms, he noted, was where the real business got done. 

    More than ever, I found that I concur. But it is hard to talk about afterward. 

    And perhaps, it should be so. 

    The word "hall," according to Etymology Online, comes from the Old English heall, meaning a large space covered by a roof--think Beowulf's great hall or a market hall. The word later morphed into a term for a passageway as a castle's private rooms became separated from the common areas by doors. 
National Archives College Park Public Domain

    The heart of the word heall seems to be the roof. It protected the space from the elements. In some explanations, the roof concealed or shielded the room's occupants. The hall, in its oldest form, was a place of cover, protection, and concealment; it's only fitting that what happens in the hall, therefore, stays in the hall. 

    Fully geeking on the etymology of conference words, I spent a little time researching "panel." 

    Seamstresses and fans of craft cozies shouldn't be surprised to learn that the word panel comes from a French term meaning a piece of cloth, generally a rectangular one. The same root word is used for a glass pane. 

    Sometime around the 15th Century, panel made the jump to refer to those summoned by French authorities to serve as jurors. Once called, jurors' names were inscribed upon a rectangular piece of parchment (cloth). By the late 16th Century, this notion of panel had been diluted to include any group of people who gathered together to advise and consider. 

    And now, a distinguished foursome sitting on a dais behind a cloth-covered table holding forth and sharing their insights has become a panel. But the word remains particularly apt for Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, or any of the other mystery conferences. 

    Remember the original meaning of panel as a rectangular square of cloth? Heavy fabric made a great wall covering. The word panels also developed in that direction. Panels became the term for specific wall or door sections. And it's here that things started to take a dark and nefarious turn. 

    Bordellos and other disreputable places would be outfitted with panels. In these seedy establishments, at least one could be slid back and allow for customers to be robbed, beaten, or possibly killed. By the 19th Century, a panel-house had become slang for a bordello. 

    Panel, therefore, has the twin traditions of an erudite gathering combined with a dash of thievery and bodily harm. 

    Halls and Panels--two words with suggestions of secrecy. Perfect words for a mystery conference. 

    Until next time. 

             I’ve been tying my own shoes for about 70 years, give or take.  In that time, I’ve always preferred to include a double knot following the basic bow for added security.  When my son was a little boy, he called this extra precaution a “daddy knot”.  I’d do the honors, since it took a while for him to master it. 

In all that time untying my laces, I’ve pulled a loose end, which released the whole knot, quickly and simply.  Though it often didn’t, instead, tightening the knot further.  This led me to use fingernails and grit to complete the task, in a much more laborious operation.  I frequently wondered why sometimes the free lace untied the knot, and sometimes it didn’t.  I began to believe that I must have been tying the laces in different ways at different times, and in the back of my mind, promised myself to delve more deeply into this mystery when I had a ridiculous amount of spare time.

Then the other day, on my 75th birthday, I pulled at one of the loose ends, which tightened the knot, then chose to pull the other one, which released it.  I thought, huh.  Is that the answer?  I realized I’ve tied my laces exactly the same way since early childhood.  The difference is that one end works great at freeing the knot when you pull it, and the other works at cross purposes.  It only took most of my years on earth to figure this out.  Discounting a few occasions when I went barefoot or wore flip flops, or loafers, I’ve probably had the opportunity to discover this simple truth about 24 thousand times (rough estimate by a non-mathematician.)

This was sobering.  I wondered what other solutions to common problems have been lurking there, staring me in the face for my entire life.  What else did I miss? 

I’ve written a lot of stuff since I learned how to do it.  I feel in some ways, I’ve gotten better at it, and in other ways, continue to fall short.  I’ve read masterful writers and think, how do they do it?  What do they know that I don’t?  Do I need to learn how to pull the right shoelace instead of the wrong one I’ve been pulling for my entire life?

I like to study brain science, because who doesn’t?  One of the things I’ve learned is that the brain prefers to follow pathways that it’s already established when assembling a thought or initiating a behavior.  This is because the brain consumes a disproportionate percentage of the resources we require to exist, so it’s always looking for more efficient ways to accomplish day-to-day responsibilities. Carving out new routes is harder than trekking along familiar highways, thus more energy conserving.  They call it habituation, and there’s no shame in it.  It’s just how we’re wired.

When you’re 75 years old, simple activities take on greater significance, since there are fewer important enterprises to focus on.  As a good German/Anglo-Saxon, I strive to make each of these more efficient, or less onerous, or more engaging, depending on the task.  Nobody but me cares about this, and neither should they. 

One of my favorite books from my early reading years was John Barth’s The Floating Opera.  He published it when he was in his early twenties, remarkable enough.  One of the protagonist’s practices was to intentionally make or break a habit as a matter of regular pratice.  This is the sort of wisdom that should be reserved for people far older than 20-something Barth.  He proposed that we should stop every once in a while and ask ourselves if we’re thinking something or doing something because it’s a good idea, or because our neural pathways are forcing us into lazy mental processing.

Family members in particular are threatened by sudden changes in course.  Their first thought is, “Uh-oh, Dad is getting wifty.”  But unless these loved ones are also your editors, changing up your approach to writing shouldn’t fire up any alarms.  Your family hasn’t paid enough attention along the way to notice anyway.  You’re just the granddad, or grandmother, huddled over the keyboard in your little corner of the house like you always do.

Following John Barth’s advice, I’ve been dabbling in habit making and breaking.  One of the most salubrious outcomes is realizing that some habits are very valuable and hard won.  You get a chance to recommit to certain things, because you’ve given them a fair appraisal.  You feel more secure in certain beliefs after they’ve been stress-tested and found to be worthy. 

You begin to realize that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, but so is a promiscuous sampling of all the less beneficial options available. 

Last time, we shared real life scam stories. In the interem, an acquaintance was conned out of $38,000 as part of a marriage scam. Fortunately, once he discovered his mistake, he acted quickly and was able to recover all but $2000. He was lucky.

This month, I’ll offer basic suggestions to protect yourself.

Red Flags

• Unsolicited contact (call, text, email, or social media) demanding action right now.
• Unwarranted sense of urgency: Your bank won’t collapse. Super amazing investment deals can wait. The Nigerian prince is dead or he isn't. The IRS doesn’t keep local police on speed-dial. They also don’t phone you at home.
• Pressure to pay with untraceable methods: wire transfers, gift cards, payment apps, or that dark mystery of cryptocurrency.
• Requests for personal or financial information.
• Requests for you to help catch a bank swindler.
• Offers that sound too good to be true.
• Stories that tug hard at your emotions.
• Poor grammar in ‘official’ messages.
• Discouragement toward verifying their story with a trusted source.
• URL links that may or may not look slightly off. For example,
• YoürBank.com instead of YourBank.com or
• YourBankHelp.com instead of YourBank.com.
• Be aware that emails and web pages may display a web site name with a clickable link that hides a sinister URL within the HTML. In other words, text on the web page may display YourBank.com, while the hidden web address might be www.NastyScams.com.

Practical Protection

• Pause and verify. If someone claims to be calling from your bank or the government, hang up and call back using the number on your bank statement or official web site, never one scammers provide.
• Think before you click. Hover over links to check the real address. Better yet, type in your bank’s address. Don’t trust conveniently provided URLs.
• Block and filter. Use your phone’s built-in tools to enable spam-text filtering and silence unknown callers.
• Register with the national Do Not Call list. It’s imperfect, but it helps.
• Secure your accounts. Use strong, unique passwords and monitor statements weekly.
• Better yet, use lengthy passphrases. For example: ‘Judges12:5-6SayNowShibboleth’ is much, much stronger than Shibboleth42k (or Sibboleth).
• Do not provide real answers to so-called security questions. I may be the only consultant who argues against security questions, but I’m convinced it’s critical. Never ever select your favorite color question. Lie to protect yourself. Make up a nonsense alternative:
• Favorite pet name? “Forget it, buddy.”
• Your first car? “Forget it, buddy.”
• Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb? “Forget it, buddy.”
• Most experts recommend using multi-factor authentication everywhere possible. I confess reluctance, having witnessed users losing access because of a forgotten passphrase. Nevertheless, pros urge using 2FA until something better comes along. You decide.
• Never urgently send money to ‘help’ a ‘family member’ without independent confirmation. Call them on a known number first. For example:
• You receive a call from a Mexican jail claiming your grandchild is locked up but needs bail money. That can seem funny when your young relative is safely sitting on the sofa beside you, but it’s not funny in the middle of night when the caller sounds and acts exactly like your young relative and you have no idea where they are.
• Consider creating a family ‘safe word’ for emergencies.
• Do not download attachments from unknown sources.
• Be very cautious before downloading programs outside your app store.
• Help protect your family, especially trusting older relatives who are frequent targets.
• Don’t be concerned you'll hurt suspect callers’ feelings. They’ll survive. Scammers have screamed and cursed me. I survived.
• Know that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issues monthly advisories and alerts.

What to Do If You Suspect a Scam

• Act fast, but don’t be stampeded into recklessness before you can verify a caller’s story.
• Contact your bank or credit-card issuer immediately to freeze or reverse transactions.
• Report incidents at ReportFraud.ftc.gov . The FTC uses reports to track patterns and pursue criminals.
• If you shared personal data, place a fraud alert with credit bureaus and monitor your credit report.
• For tech-support or investment scams, additional help is available through the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.IC3.gov).

Scammers count on fear, greed, kindness, and time crunches to cloud judgment. They operate by script, intent of fooling a profitable percentage of ‘suckers’. Don’t be a sucker. Slowing down, asking questions, and trusting instincts breaks their playbook. Every report you file helps shut down operations and protects others. Stay vigilant, talk openly about scams with friends and family, and remember: legitimate organizations will never rush you into sending money or sharing sensitive information.

For more resources, visit consumer.ftc.gov or consumer.gov. Awareness is the best defense. Spread the word and stay safe.

First, sincere congratulations to all the 2026 Derringer Award winners, especially to Adam Meyer, Alan Orloff, and Michael Bracken--and special congrats to Golden Derringer recipient David Dean. I'm also thrilled that Dave Zeltserman has won the Edgar for Best Short Story. Well done and well deserved, my friends!

Now, to less important matters . . .

I'm a couple of days past April, here, but this is a quick look at the stories I published last month. And I should begin by saying, yes, these are mystery/crime stories even though I mentioned a few weeks ago that I've started producing stories in other genres lately. I'm hoping that in several months some of the science fiction/fantasy stories I've been writing since then will pop up someplace. We'll see. 

Anyhow, here are my three stories that popped up in April.

"Creativity," published on April 3 at Curated by Costuic, a market I discovered via one of my friends on the Short Mystery Fiction Society list. This 1100-word story consists almost entirely of dialogue between two characters, both of them businesswomen who meet on a flight from Lost Angeles to Dallas. As I've said before at this blog, stories that are heavy on dialogue are always among the easiest and the most fun for me to write, and I remember this one coming together pretty fast. It was published many years ago and was lucky enough to be a Pushcart Prize nominee. If anyone feels the urge to read a quick little crime story, it's posted here. Many thanks once again to editor Nikita Costuic.

Speaking of SMFS, the second one of my April stories was "On the Road with Mary Jo," published April 7 in the anthology Hot Shots: Celebrating Thirty Years of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. For those of you who don't already know, this anthology features 28 stories that won the Derringer Award--one story for each year between 1998 and 2025--and editor Josh Pachter did a great job of putting it together. My story in the book was a winner for Best Short Story in 2020, and had previously appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's Jan/Feb 2019 issue. Like "Creativity," this story is mostly dialogue but is quite a bit longer, at 2700 words. As I said this past Thursday night in the Zoom meeting about the anthology, I was surprised when "On the Road with Mary Jo" was accepted at EQMM because it's mainly humor, and therefore different from any of my other EQ stories. Quick summary: It's a weird story about two nitwits who carjack a self-driving vehicle and use it as a getaway car in a bank heist. Yes, I said it was weird . . .

The last of these three stories was "Lewis and Clark," first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine's May 2012 issue and reprinted on April 16 in The Ranger's Almanac, Vol 1. As the publication's title suggests, this market wants forest/park-based stories; mine was a 2200-word tale of two young Boy Scouts who get lost on a hike in the woods and stumble upon a couple of bank robbers on the run. It's more a YA adventure story than anything else, and marks one of those times when a previously published story that's sitting around doing nothing happened to exactly fit the submission guidelines of a new (to me, at least) publication. Before I forget, I owe a big thank-you to Ranger's Almanac editors Andrew Akers and Adam Geer. Check this market out here.

I think the only unusual thing about these April stories is that none of them were in publications that I'd been in before (one, of course, was a one-time anniversary anthology) and that two out of the three were sold to paying markets I didn't even know about until fairly recently. The editors of both of those were great, and were prompt in their responses to my submissions. "Creativity" wa submitted to Curated by Costuic on 11/4/25 and accepted later that same day, and "Lewis and Clark" was submitted to The Ranger's Almanac on 1/14/26 and accepted on 1/18/26. (These were breaths of fresh air in a world where we writers often wait for many months to hear back from a submission.) 

So, here are my questions for the week, to any fellow short-fiction writers out there. Are you, in answer to our recent downturn in the number of available mystery markets, finding new places to send your work? Where are you looking, in order to do that? The Internet? The SMFS market list? (You can find it under "files" at the SMFS forum site.) Are you sending any stories to existing markets that you haven't tried in a while? Are you continuing to submit to those who have regularly published you in the past? Do any of you have, as I do, submissions queued up at those markets? Are any of them already accepted and waiting to be published? Are you, like me, writing and submitting some non-mystery or cross-genre stories, and getting any relief from that corner? Please update me in the comments. 

And then get back to writing.

See you in two weeks.

Eve Fisher

I was driving over to one of South Dakota's state parks last week, and I spotted a blue car with the following South Dakota licence plate:

I instantly thought: Well, they seem nice.

No I didn't. Instead, I thought about going to the local Walmart to buy a paintball gun and, when I saw that car again, drive up and spray it heavily. Deeply satisfying.

But I didn't.

It's all so middle school, and I've already been there. The days of 12-13 year olds going on 18 (we thought). Pimply, snarly, sarcastic, selfish little know-nothings trying desperately to learn only the bad stuff in order to grow up fast, hard, tough... Ready to throw a riot or a fit, doing anything (especially insulting the teacher - if you could get a rise out of the teacher, that just made everyone's day) - to just get attention. And betraying each other for a laugh, a sneer or just more attention. Periodically someone would burst out in tears and storm out of the room, screaming at everyone. Generally after insulting the total crap out of someone who turned around and handed it right back to them (which of course was NOT the idea).

I remember we were reading "Lord of the Flies", and almost none of us were horrified at the behavior in it. The teacher asked what would have been different if it had been all girls instead of all boys? A lot said, oh, it would have been really different, girls don't do that kind of stuff. I disagreed and said so: that it would have been pretty much the same, and in some ways worse. Mean girls start young and stay late. 

Basically, the middle school motto is FCK OFF and/or this Famous Coat Message:

But they did care, they do care, and what they really wanted / want was to piss everyone off around them and / or get them in trouble. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate all of you - WHY IS EVERYBODY MAD AT ME???"  

Or, as Thornton Wilder put it in "The Skin of Our Teeth":

HENRY: What did they ever care about me? 

SABINA: There's that old whine again. Always thinking you're not loved enough, that nobody loves you. Well, start being lovable and we'll love you. 

HENRY: [Outraged.] I don't want anybody to love me. I want everybody to hate me! 

Sabina: Yes, you've decided it's second best...

The depressing part is so many people are still there.  

For example, How dare you do something I don't want you to do?

Sergeant Dusten Mullen showed up at the ICE protest run by Hamilton High School students masked and fully armed with an exposed handgun in a holster and two extra handgun magazines. (my emphasis added) Mullen said, "My plan is legitimately to just let them all assault me and you guys arrest them all, and I’ll keep it on film. I also have other people filming from a distance." According to police, Mullen also said that more protesters in support of him were on the way, some armed with rifles (my note - this apparently wasn't true), going on to say his goal was to "get all these kids in jail if they want to break the law." (LINK)

Ahem:  (1) It's not against the law to protest peacefully - it's one of our First Amendment rights.  and  (2) In these times of endless school shootings there's nothing legitimate about an unknown (remember, Mullen didn't announce who he was) armed masked man at a school doing his best to incite violence.

This one happened when Asian Indians were mobilizing the Indian Independence Movement. Naturally, the British Raj was totally opposed to it, and passed the "Rowlatt Acts", which gave power to the police to arrest any Indian person on the basis of mere suspicion. And keep them arrested. 

On April 13, 1919, a large Asian Indian crowd gathered in the beautiful garden of Jallianwala Bagh, which unfortunately had only one exit. The local commander of Indian Army forces, Brigadier General Dyer had ordered that no Indian assemblies were allowed, but had only told his troops. Without warning, Dyer ordered his troops to block the exit and shoot toward the densest sections of the crowd. They shot for approximately ten minutes. Unarmed civilians, including men, women, elderly people and children were killed. A cease-fire was ordered after the troops fired about one third of their ammunition. He stated later that the purpose of this action "was not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience." There's nothing like killing them all to get them to obey, is there?

"How dare you not accept the deal I'm offering you, no matter what it says?"

At the end of the Second Opium War, on October 18, 1860, Lord Elgin ordered the destruction as a "solemn act of retribution" to target the Qing Emperor personally and force the signing of the Treaty of Beijing. British and French forces burned the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) and destroyed the gardens, the treasures, everything. Total destruction.  It worked, but at the cost of something that was, according to Stuart McGee, then chaplain to the British forces, "arguably the greatest concentration of historic treasures in the world, dating and representing a full 5,000 years of an ancient civilization". Charles "Chinese" Gordon, who was no stranger to slaughter in China (he fought for the Emperor / Empress in the Taiping Rebellion), wrote "You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one's heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralising work for an army."

BTW, the treaty literally gave foreign ambassadors have immunity for any and all actions and legalized the British sale of formerly illegal opium in China.  Most opium sellers instantly became foreign ambassadors.  And a few other things...

And a couple of more modern examples:

The Godfather

Recently:

"Some of the previous [Iranian] leaders are now no longer on planet Earth because they lied to the United States and they strung us along in negotiations, and that was unacceptable to the president, which is why many of the previous leaders were killed."  Karoline Leavitt, March 30, 2026.

BTW, classic middle school, all the way:   

Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth praying at the Pentagon:"They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17.  'The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.'"  (Actually, it's from Pulp Fiction.)  (Link)

The original version:  

Oh, and just last week, Chicago police had to investigate because there was a bomb threat made against the Pope's brother.  We really are in middle school, and all the nosepickers are out.  (Link)

Social media right now is just a stew of on insults, invective, lies, damn lies, statistics, and bullshit – specifically in order to get another party to react and punch back. Preferably harder. Threats are rampant.  And the trouble with threats is that sooner or later the threatener must either fulfill it or back down, and either way someone (at least metaphorically) is going to end up stuck to the flagpole with a frozen tongue thanks to a triple-dog-dare.  That's middle school.

Sigh...

Look, what I want is a return to a country, a world of adults, who actually know things, like history, science, mathematics, literature, the arts, and who have probity:  integrity, honesty, moral uprightness, goodness, virtue.  

Who really do want and work for peace, human rights, liberty and justice for all. Not profit for some.

Who really do know how fragile this planet is, and even more, how fragile we are on this, our only home.

* The beginnings of Chandler's novels.

* Elizabeth Peters' descriptions of Luxor and the Valley of the Kings  in various Amelia Peabody novels.

* Doyle's descriptions of  Dartmoor  in Hound of the Baskervilles.

* Tony Hillerman's description of the Navaho Reservation.

* Hong Bay in William Marshall's Yellowthread Street novels.

Personally I am much more interested  in interior settings: descriptions of houses and rooms.  How many full size reproductions have been made of 221B Baker Street?  Rex Stout provided a detailed plan of Nero Wolfe's famous office but that doesn't prevent people from arguing with it or (very common)  picturing it in mirror image.  

 Not quite our main subject, but I think you will see the relevance, and sympathize... - Robert Lopresti

 Today, I'm combining the wisdom of two authors I much admire, Benjamin Stevenson and John Floyd.

Two nights ago, I hosted/interviewed Australian author Benjamin Stevenson on stage at the Centennial Theatre in Burlington, Canada.  To say I was 'outnumbered' is an understatement:  Benjamin's book "Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone" has sold a million copies!  I don't believe I've sold even half that if you were to combine all my books, short stories, and comedy pieces put together.  (Okay, the newspaper columns had audiences in the millions, but that wasn't fiction.)

It was an electric night on stage with Benjamin, as we both got our start writing standup.  Lots of fun!  But some of the things we talked about have really resonated with me after the event.

Benjamin said it takes him two years to write a book.  (It takes me one year.  I sit in awe of cozy writers who can write three a year, frankly.)  We both agreed on one thing:  We have to be really excited about a book project to sit down, bum in chair, and write every day until that one project is done.

Excited.  I've thought back to my own career as a novelist, and can see that this drives me as well.

I didn't start as a novelist.  I began life as a short story writer.  But when the short story market began to shrink, I started to think about meeting the challenge of writing a novel. 

My first series is still my bestselling individual series.  Rowena Through the Wall was epic fantasy, or what they would call Romantasy these days.  It was featured in USA Today some years ago, and took off (a top 50 Amazon bestseller, all books.)  That series was great fun to write, but once I finished it, it felt that fantasy was kind of done for me.  I looked around for something that would excite me. 

This brings me to John Floyd's column from a few weeks ago, The Old Genre Switcheroo, about moving between genres or subgenres.  I realized that this is what I've been doing.  It's how I've stayed excited, while continuing to write novels.

My next series was The Goddaughter mob caper series.  You can't get more different from dark ages fantasy than that!  A contemporary mob goddaughter in Hamilton doesn't want to be one, but keeps getting dragged back in to bail out her family.  

Totally different genres with different rules.  What they did have in common?  Both series were high comedy.   

When that series ended, I looked around for another genre or subgenre that I could get excited about.  Something that would challenge me, and provide a host of fresh ideas.

Which led to The Pharaoh's Curse Murders (out this week!) and the historical Merry Widow Murder series.  Still humorous, but with the challenge of a 1929 setting and - new for me - classic mystery plotting requirements.

Challenging and therefore exciting, for this writer. 

What does all this prove?  This is what I've learned:

The secret to having a multi-decade career in fiction writing is to be versatile.  Move where the market goes.  Keep yourself fresh by exploring new genres or sub-genres.  

Versatility.  Which begs the question, what's next for this writer, after The Kennel Club Murders, out April 2027?

I'm excited to see.  

Melodie Campbell is the winner of ten awards, including The Derringer and the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence, for her 21 novels and 60 short stories.  She didn't even steal them.

NOW AVAILABLE AT B&N, AMAZON, CHAPTERS/INDIGO AND INDEPENDENTS! 

 In 1966, Truman Capote claimed to have invented a new type of writing, the non-fiction novel. The result was his seminal work, In Cold Blood. In it, he depicts the 1959 murder of a prosperous farming family in Kansas. The murder actually happened and baffled authorities for Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. The pair met in penitentiary, where a fellow inmate told them stories of working for Herb Clutter, the patriarch of the Clutter family. Specifically, he told them Clutter had a safe in his house holding $10,000. Which was not true as Clutter seldom carried cash.

The pair agreed they would rob the family once they were out of prison. They also agreed they would have to kill the witnesses to cover up their crime. But rather than simply walking in and shooting everyone in their sleep, Hickock raped the oldest daughter first, and the pair tortured Herb Clutter before killing him. The pair then fled to Mexico, pawning what they could take from the home (which did not include $10,000.) Smith had dreams of buying a boat and taking tourists out on deep sea adventures and finding sunken treasure. Hickock, stunted and slightly crippled from a car accident, just wanted to get high and debauch. The pair were cornered in Las Vegas two years later. Both men were hung in 1965.

Despite Capote's claims, In Cold Blood was not the first "non-fiction novel," or more accurately, true crime novel. There were others before it. But Capote's captured enough attention to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It also paved the way for LA District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi's book about the Manson Family murders, Helter Skelter. One thing that sets both these books apart is they don't really sensationalize the murders. Hickock and Smith are a pair of career criminals and drifters who might have been at home in Kerouac's On the Road if they were just a bit smarter and more sociable (and less violent. Merry pranksters these two were not.)  Manson doesn't need sensationalized. He and his followers brought their own flair for the theatrics, which actually makes them scarier.

What struck me about the killers in In Cold Blood is they could not articulate their motivations, especially Hickock. He was a violent thug who had vague resentment against anyone who thought they were better than him. Never mind he'd never met or talked to the Clutters before killing them. Smith seems to have trapped himself in the life, hitching his star to a more charismatic and fierce Hickock and constantly regretting it even as he goes along with the next scene. The pair was doomed from the start. The Clutters became collateral damage, as the innocent often are in these cases.

My dad has early stage Alzheimer’s. Until recently, I had been helping manage his care without doing a whole lot of reflection on what is going on with my father and how it’s affecting him, and by extension the members of his family — my mom, my brother, my wife, our son, and me.

That all began to change when I turned 61 earlier this month. Nothing like a birthday to cause a thinking, feeling person to stop and take stock of their life, of the world around them, of the situations arising in their daily existence, and how things are going for their loved ones.

One of those situations has been dogging my steps longer than I’d have admitted. But before I get into all that, I want to talk a bit about Nash Bridges.

I remember back in the late ‘90s, one of my guilty pleasures was watching Don Johnson’s wish fulfillment project Nash Bridges on CBS. The title character, portrayed by Johnson himself, had it all: cool job (police inspector/later captain of an elite investigative unit), cool car (an exceedingly rare late ’60s yellow Hemi ’Cuda convertible), cool partner/best friend (played by Cheech Marin — I mean, come on), cool girlfriend (portrayed by Yasmine Bleeth of Baywatch fame), cool penthouse apartment on the top floor of a skyscraper in San Francisco, cool ex-wife, cool relationship with his teenage daughter, and cool clothes.

Like I said: wish fulfillment. 

On the show one aspect of Nash’s life that was less than ideal was the fact that his father was afflicted with Alzheimer’s, and Nash had just begun to act as his guardian and main caregiver. This is the first time I can recall actively paying attention to a fictional arc about a character with Alzheimer’s. Before this I had seen news pieces about the disease, about dementia, and other aspects of aging that included memory loss, personality changes, mood swings, and confusion.

Nick Bridges was the first fictional character I ever remember watching deal with Alzheimer’s. But his condition was not in any way realistic. If anything, it served as more of a plot convenience than an actual portrayal of the progression of the disease. Nick would seem foggy when it served the plot, then get sharp when that served the plot too. Half the time he just seemed like a crotchety old man with an engaging, salty sense of humor. As portrayed by veteran character actor James Gammon, the character was an awful lot of fun. Kind of like the rest of the show.

So: not just wish fulfillment. Completely delusional wish fulfillment!

I didn’t think much about that at the time. I mean, it was entertainment. Nash Bridges is not a documentary. If you’re looking for clinical accuracy, you’re gonna need to seek it elsewhere. 

And yet for all that, these days I can hardly help but think about it. And that because nowadays I know exactly what the real thing looks like. 

As far back as I can remember, my father had always been the sharpest tack in the room. And by “sharp,” I mean clever. Articulate. Incisive. Precise with his language — and exacting with me on my employment of same.

If I was relating a story, talking about something that had happened to me earlier in the day: a strange interaction with a sales clerk, perhaps, and in the course of so doing, gave a thumbnail of what I said, rather than exactly quoting, my dad would tell me what I ought to have said and how I ought to have said it. He never once stopped to consider that I was giving a thumbnail. It seemed never to occur to him that in all likelihood I had acquitted myself just fine in the moment. He was constantly trying to improve my language, and by extension, me. 

Constantly. 

Exhaustively. 

And exhaustingly.

In a nutshell this is because my father is a textbook narcissist who has always worked hard to keep himself at the center of any conversation. This made for rocky times during my young adult and early adult years.

These days he cannot even really follow a conversation. Most of the time it’s all he can do to muster repeated volleys of the word “What?”, phrased eternally as a question while struggling to keep up.

Ironically, he and I have never gotten along better than we do now.

Unless he happens to be in the grip of a bout of sundowning syndrome. In those instances all bets are usually off.

Without getting too clinical: a person dealing with Alzheimer’s spends their entire day struggling with confusion, disorientation, and memory lapses. They start the morning relatively refreshed after a night’s sleep (good or otherwise). But as the day progresses, the effort of managing their all-encompassing confusion, their endless disorientation, tends to wear on them. They get tired. And when they get tired, the confusion gets worse. And when the confusion gets worse, they get more tired. It’s a vicious cycle. 

So by sundown — or sometime around then — you’ve got someone who has been struggling all day, has reached their limit, and is, for lack of a better term, cranky. They lash out. They can get mean.

My entire family deals with this. And make no mistake: this situation puts significant strain on all of us — my mom, my brother, my wife, our son, and me. I’ll leave it at that, except to say that during this difficult time we have closed ranks, are all pulling together, trying hard to support each other, and to support him.

Sometimes during all of this pulling together, I can’t help but entertain the question of whether my father’s Alzheimer’s is hereditary. I try not to spend too much time dwelling on it — on whether this might be a glimpse of my own potential future. That way lies madness.

What I find myself thinking about far more. What I find myself worrying about. What I find myself sometimes consumed with, is my mother, and the weight she carries daily.

After all, I know that I am struggling with my own emerging impressions of who my father is becoming. But I cannot even imagine what my mom is going through.

I got a glimpse of it the other day. I told her I had broken down crying over what's happening with my dad. She said, "Welcome to my world. I cry every day."

A startling admission coming from my stalwart, stoic mother. No one who knows her would ever think of her as a crier.

Watching the personality of the person she has spent her entire adult life with — sixty-plus years — be whittled away. Be carved down. Be eroded like sandstone by the wind, like granite rock on a headland worn down by the surf and the tide.

All of it a diminishing. A gradual vanishing. My father, and by extension, all of us who love and try to support him, victims of Time.

Okay, now here’s one you can sink your teeth into.  Babylon Berlin, streaming on MHz.

Germany, 1929, the Weimar Republic.  An experiment in social democracy that nobody was ready for, not after the slaughter in the trenches, and the poisonous embarrassments of Versailles.  The great political struggle of the 20th century is being played out in the streets of proletarian Berlin, as murderous performance art, the reactionaries and revanchists trying to beat back the Bolshevik menace, and in the economic and social exhaustion that comes, the Nazis will step in to pick up the pieces.

This is rich soil to cultivate, and for me, as a political junkie with a side in history, naturally fascinating.  It’s a little Cabaret - without the eye-watering phoniness of Liza Minnelli – and very reminiscent of Philip Kerr’s series of Bernie Gunther novels, but darker and more Gothic than both.  It also happens to be mordantly funny.

The show is based on a series of novels by the German writer Volker Kutscher, which I’m now interested in, and are available in English translation.  The series, though, changes the chronology.  So far, the first three seasons take place in 1929, the fourth in 1930-31, and the last – the fifth season, yet to be released - in 1932-33, when the Nazis come to power.  And, as odd and ominous as the first three seasons are, the Nazis haven’t even shown up yet, which gives you an idea just how odd and ominous the series really is.  Things are already bad enough.

The producers have also put a lot of time and effort and money into recreating period Berlin, and as somebody who’s actually spent some time there – and considering how much of the city was flattened, during the war – they’ve done a terrific job.  They do use CGI, but it’s pretty seamless.  The famous Alexanderplatz doesn’t really exist the same way it once did – Berlin Alexanderplatz is a hugely successful 1929 novel by Alfred Döblin, adapted twice to film – but it looks plenty real here, in all its prewar significance.  

This may be an acquired taste, in that not everybody shares my fascination with the place and the time, but I think it repays your attention.  It’s not a history lesson, or a documentary, although they aren’t fudging the facts - it’s more along the lines of a fevered dream, which seems like an entirely accurate representation.  Berlin, then and now, has always been a state of mind, somewhat hallucinatory.