September 18, 2013 · 6:50 pm

What We Mean When We Talk About Voice

For years, sitting in a circle in various writing groups among my peers, I often tossed out the empty line “I like the voice of the story,” or my more insightful variant, “I liked the voice of the story very much.” Truthfully, I didn’t know what “voice” was, but I had an English degree, so I knew it was something.

As a “civilian” reader, I had encountered my share of stories, poems, novels, essays that had stuck with me—all composed of lines that came back to me over and over again. The line from Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” “ ‘She would have been a good woman . . . if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life’ ” is one that speaks to me.  And says different things at different points of my adult life. And there are so many other stories that just seemed to hum with meaning. It’s that hum that I have now come to understand is voice.

It wasn’t until I became an editor, though, that I really started to ask, What do we mean when we talk about voice?

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August 28, 2013 · 9:25 pm

Dorothy B. Hughes’ Last Novel

On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, I am intrigued to note that this year is also the 50th anniversary of the publication of Dorothy B. Hughes’s final novel, The Expendable Man, in which race is an important factor.

Hugh Densmore is a young physician interning in Los Angeles. Driving one night across the desert to his grandparents’ home in Phoenix, he picks up, against his better judgment, a young female hitchhiker. Given the time of day and the deserted highway, Hugh fears she might otherwise be in danger.

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May 23, 2013 · 10:10 pm

Maybe this is what happened: Dan Warthman

Dan Warthman received the Robert L. Fish award for Best First Short Story for “A Dreadful Day” (AHMM, January/February 2009). He introduced Jones and Akin, the characters in this month’s cover story, in “Pansy Place” in our January/February 2011 issue. I was immediately struck by the rapport between these two men and the way they work in unspoken coordination with surprising results.

1) My friend Bill visited me several times when I lived in Beijing. More than once, we went on Saturday evening to the Sanwei Bookstore and Teahouse to listen to live performances of traditional Chinese music. A woman was playing the guzheng, the music was mesmerizing, the place was hushed. And then a mobile phone rang. And the guy, who happened to be another expat, answered it. And talked. And then made another call himself. During the break, Bill said, I’m going to talk to that guy . . .

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May 14, 2013 · 10:18 pm

NAMING THE DETECTIVES: Robert Lopresti

AHMM regular Robert Lopresti is the winner of the 2012 Black Orchid Novella Award, or BONA, for “The Red Envelope,” which appears in our July/August issue. We co-sponsor the BONA contest with The Wolfe Pack, the Nero Wolfe appreciation society, to encourage the ratiocinative detective style exemplified by Wolfe. Here, Rob discusses the important matter of finding the right name for your character.

If you’re a writer creating a character, you need a name. (Oh, there are exceptions: Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op and Bill Pronzini’s Nameless, for instance, but if you fill an entire book with Anonymous and Mr. X it might get tiresome pretty fast.)

I’m usually pretty casual about names, but when I started writing “The Red Envelope,” my entry for the Black Orchid Novella Award contest, I was hoping that this might be the beginning of a series. That meant that if I were lucky, I might have to live with those characters for a long time.

So I gave a lot of thought to matching the characters to their names. Consider my detective. The story is set in Greenwich Village in 1958 and the hero is a beat poet, a bit of an oddball, and definitely a man who likes to be the center of attention. Surely his name would be unusual. Something that stood out in some way. Hmm . . .

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May 7, 2013 · 9:58 pm

All My Children: John Corrigan

In this post. John R. Corrigan meditates on the personal life experiences that can shape an author’s fiction. His story “Autumn’s Crossing” appears in the July/August issue of AHMM.

I hope you enjoy “Autumn’s Crossing.” Ironically, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent and single mom Peyton Cote owes her foray into the short-fiction genre to none other than Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine Editor Linda Landrigan.

I met Linda at Bouchercon in 2003. Her husband, John, was my book editor back then, and I was working on the second of what would be five Jack Austin PGA Tour novels. “Why don’t you write a short story?” Linda asked me at the awards dinner. I was sitting next to S. J. Rozan, whose novels and stories I adore, and I thought about S. J.’s ability to cast her series character in both short-story and book-length genres. So I considered it that evening. But after the conference I fell back into my daily routine of working on my novels in the early morning, teaching, coaching, parenting, sleeping deeply, and getting up and doing it all over again the next day. And so I forgot all about the short-story genre until a decade later, when I sent Linda a story. No longer was I working with her husband, so I sent a brief cover letter that was something along the lines of “I don’t know if you remember me, but you asked for a story. I’m ten years late, but here it is.” She bought that story and another and subsequently “Autumn’s Crossing,” which appears in this issue.

Peyton Cote is a vast departure from Jack Austin, so I was thrilled when Linda wanted the story because the sale validated a risk I’m taking. You see, the short story bears the namesake (or, rather, title-sake) of a novel that my agent and I hope will launch a new series.

All told, I’ve written three series characters, an amateur sleuth, a P.I., and a law-enforcement official, although not of the traditional ilk. Each character is unique from the others, and each has been created for a different reason. Continue reading →

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April 2, 2013 · 7:42 pm

Tom Savage: Venice, Via the V. I.

What is the role of place in a story? Tom Savage’s “Jumbie Tea” offers a strong sense of place, but as he explains in this post, that’s only one ingredient in the creative stew. “Jumbie Tea” appears in our June issue, on newsstands now.

You can also hear Tom read his Barry-nominated “The Method in Her Madness,”  from our June 2005 issue, as part of our podcast series. You can also find the stories on iTunes.

Writers are human sponges; there’s no denying it. From childhood’s earliest hour, we soak up every detail of the world around us and store it somewhere close to our brains. Then, at any given moment, the sponge will squeeze information and images into our conscious minds. The result is a story, and we don’t always know which part of our past experience inspired it. This explains our blank expressions when people ask us that timeworn question, “Where do you get your ideas?”

But sometimes we know. In the case of “Jumbie Tea,” my new story in AHMM, I remember exactly what happened. Three things:

  1. Rereading a favorite story by a favorite author
  2. Memories of my childhood in the Virgin Islands
  3. An invitation from one of my mystery writing organizations (I belong to several) to submit a story for a proposed anthology called MURDER AROUND THE WORLD

Actually, it was #3 above that activated #1 and #2. The assignment was to write a short mystery set in a specific part of the world, using elements of that place in the plot. When the request arrived, I was rereading one of my favorites, “Don’t Look Now,” the creepy 1971 novella by Daphne du Maurier. A British couple, grieving the recent death of their child, take a business trip to Venice, where all sorts of weird, supernatural things begin to happen. It’s a chilling tale with a famous shock ending, but what most impresses the reader is the description of the setting–the sights, sounds, smells, and moods of that ancient city. I’ve been in Venice, and I’ve experienced its strange allure firsthand. Reading her story, you get the distinct impression that these bizarre events could only occur there. This aspect of her work spilled onto the invitation on my desk, and they were both lapped up by the sponge in my head. Continue reading →

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March 4, 2013 · 4:57 pm

Derringer Award Nominations Announced

The nominees for Derringer Awards have been listed, and we are delighted to see three AHMM stories among those short listed. Chris Muessig’s story “The Sunny South” (March 2012) is nominated for Best Novelette and David Hagerty’s story “The Pot Hunters” (June 2012) is nominated for Best Long Story. And one of our Mystery Photograph contest winners was nominated under the category of Best Flash Story: Randy DeWitt for his winning entry “The Cable Job,” which appeared as The Story That Won in our September 2012 issue.

The Derringers are presented by The Short Mystery Fiction Society, a group that works to promote the appreciation of short crime fiction. Only SMFS members can vote for the Derringer-nominated stories, but if you are a member, you can read the stories at the SFMS site.

Congratulations to all the nominees!!

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February 28, 2013 · 11:03 pm

How’d That Happen?: Angela Zeman

Angela Zeman did such a wonderful job creating the world that Roxanne lives in for “The First Tale of Roxanne” that by the end of the story you are ready for more. And the title indeed suggests a second, and a third . . . So we asked Angela to talk to us about her creative process when starting out a new series.

A few days ago I was thrilled to read in the NY Times section of Unrequested Advice that dark chocolate is now healthy to eat all you want. Yes! Then my copy of AHMM came in the mail and my story was on the cover. I forgot chocolate. Nobody from AHMM had mentioned “cover” to me, so I was shocked and thrilled. And reminded of my very first story sale—my first sale of anything—to the late Cathleen Jordan, the editor of AHMM at that time. She phoned me to buy it, too, which made the event all the more stunning. Then, in the throes of my euphoria, I exposed the enormous amount of water behind my ears and requested that my name be put on the cover. She kindly said, “maybe another time.” From that sale came the Mrs. Risk story series and a novel, all now re-published as e-books by Mysterious Press.

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February 24, 2013 · 10:31 pm

The Case of the Copyrighted Characters

Long before the days of Star Trek, Harry Potter, and Twilight fan fiction, people were writing their own stories featuring the world’s first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. In just the past few years, this most protean of icons has been reimagined as a steampunk action hero, a twenty-first century self-described high functioning sociopath, and – a New Yorker (though an immigrant).

One of the most famous fictional characters in the world, Sherlock Holmes was the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle. Nobody disputes that.

During his lifetime, and for years after his death, Conan Doyle and his descendants retained the right to profit from the good doctor’s intellectual labor. Nobody disputes that, either.

But copyright laws exist to strike a balance between the proprietary interests of the creator of intellectual property and the benefits to society of making such property freely available as part of the public domain. A recent lawsuit argues that Holmes and Watson have passed that line in the United States.

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February 9, 2013 · 4:16 pm

Agatha Nominations Announced

AHMM congratulates B. K. Stevens, whose “Thea’s First Husband” has been named a finalist for the Agatha Award for best short story. “Thea’s First Husband” appeared in our June 2012 issue. AHM612_74820-08586-06

The Agatha Awards will be presented at Malice Domestic in Bethesda, Maryland, on Saturday May 4th. (Coincidentally, June will be the 25th anniversary of Ms. Stevens’s first story for AHMM in 1988, “True Detective.”)

Congratulations also to AHMM authors Margaret Maron, for her nomination for Best Novel (The Buzzard Table); Rhys Bowen, for Best Historical Mystery (The Twelve Clues of Christmas); and Dana Cameron, also a nominee for Best Short Story for “Mischief in Mesopotamia” which appeared in our sister magazine, EQMM.

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