Trace Evidence

“The trouble with being a window washer is that the better you do your job, the less you have to show for it.” -Richard Kopperdahl

I am very pleased to have a story in the July/August issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. I worked very hard on it.

I hope you can’t tell.

That’s one of the many weird things about writing fiction.  You work like crazy to try to convince the reader that you aren’t working at all.  Like the duck who is serene on the surface and paddling like hell underneath. 

Most of the time (and we’ll get around to exceptions) the writer is trying to be transparent: You don’t see me.  I’m just the lens through which you see these characters, this world . . .

My story, “Law of the Jungle,” is set in 1910 and involves hoboes, or if you prefer, railroad bums.  Before writing it I read several books on the subject and skimmed many more. 

I hope you will get the impression that I know what I’m talking about, but I don’t want to hit you over the head with it.  Math teachers say show your work but editors say: Don’t.

So I try to show you the one crucial detail that convinces you I know a hundred others.  For example, I explain how my characters travel on a freight train by riding the blind baggage and hope you understand that I have learned several other ways they could have done it.

I use a classic technique for introducing this strange world to the reader: One of my characters is a prenshun, a brand-new traveler.  (And that word is another fruit of my research.) This teenage runaway knows just as little about hoboing as you do.  As he learns, so does the reader.  I, as third-person narrator, can stay as far from the action as possible.

But as I said at the beginning, there are exceptions.  If you are writing in first person then your narrator is a character and you want what she says to express her personality.  Archie Goodwin and Kinsey Milhone are both private eyes but they have very different voices.

And, of course, some authors prefer to provide a third person narration that  expresses a view of the world.  Rather than being invisible they want you to know that someone is deliberately choosing what you get to see.  Compare a page of Mick Herron to one of Joyce Carol Oates and you will see very different omniscient narrators at work.

Generally I try not to impose myself in the story, but I will do so when it serves the tale.  My stories about Leopold Longshanks, for example, have a very opinionated third-person narrator. Consider this passage about our hero and his wife from “Shanks Goes Hollywood.” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 2005.)

She and Shanks  were visiting the left coast because a cable network had come banging on the door for one of her novels—romance, not mystery. 

And Shanks was just fine with her success, really.  REALLY.

So, transparent or highly visible? As always, the one key rule is: what works for the story, works.

And I hope “Law of the Jungle” works for you.  Really.

We’ve all had the experience—during that ruminative pre-story stage—of something catching us like a bramble during a walk in the woods. It took five years and plenty of brambles before I had what I needed to write “The Knife Sharpener.” One bramble was Jennie Wade, the only civilian casualty during the three-day Battle of Gettysburg. Jennie was kneading dough in her sister’s kitchen when a bullet found her on the third day. This interested me.

As time passed, it became clear—or what we mistake for “clear,” early on—that I wanted to exalt the poor bread-baking Jennie by making her (somehow) the reason Jeb Stuart was off raiding the countryside instead of being more usefully present at the start of the three-day battle in Gettysburg. I wanted to suggest that Jennie was possibly responsible for the Union’s winning the battle. But over time, other brambles caught at me: I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how the twenty-year old Jennie managed it, for one, and for another . . . I didn’t particularly like her.

We all know how stuck we get with a new idea, an original concept, the story as it first appears to us out of the mist. There’s a bit of love-at-first-sight about it, so it takes a lot of maturing before we can even think about letting it go. We fight to make some of it work. Did I have to reveal how Jennie managed to send Stuart and his cavalry off raiding somewhere? Maybe I could just imply it? Maybe she wasn’t accidentally shot after all, but, oh, she was a double agent, and assassinated by one of those Confederate sharpshooters who found her out? I didn’t like it, no sirree.

And no matter how I tried to exalt Jennie, nothing felt true to me—even if it was fictitious. What became truly and finally clear about the original concept was that it was oddly inert and uninteresting, despite the history-making three-day battle. I could add a lot of backstory, but for a short story, that’s risky in terms of pacing. All I had was the image of Jennie being shot dead in her sister’s kitchen while she (strangely) stuck to her routine of making bread. Where was the action of the story? Where was the development of my characters?

I was stuck. I was finally ready to come at my Gettysburg story from a different angle. But I didn’t know what that angle was. For a good couple of years, I mucked around in what felt like a need to do justice to all three days of the Battle of Gettysburg. Maybe, rather like Jeb Stuart, I was off raiding the countryside of my own mind, looking for material. For some reason, I felt responsible for putting this nation-changing event fairly and grandly on the page. But, all in ten or twenty pages? Really? Yet another bramble. A bramble bush. Something I had to let go.

And then, finally, one day I came across Tillie Pierce, fifteen years old at the time of the battle, who, twenty years later wrote a 100-page memoir, “At Gettysburg: What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle: A True Narrative.” After I read it, I knew I had my central character. It had a walloping bit of irony right up front: to keep their daughter Tillie safe, the Pierces, who lived in town, sent her three miles down the road to stay at the farm of friends – at the base of Little Round Top! Tillie had been sent right into the thick of the battle, comforting the dying, witnessing amputations. What could I do with this wonderful girl?

Slowly, Tillie’s story came to me, and the brambles lost their will and fell away when I brought a jaded, club-footed knife sharpener to Gettysburg. I had my story, but not yet my point of view, and what I managed to save from the first idea was a sense that heroism isn’t always pretty. . .or even very public. What I found, when I relinquished the first idea, was a far greater theme, one that matters to me. Over these five years, I toured the battlefield (still need to return to walk Pickett’s Charge), and when in Brunswick, Maine, for family events, I lay flowers on the grave of Joshua Chamberlain, the commander of the 20^th Maine Regiment that saved Little Round Top for the Union that day. Finally, all the pieces I needed for the story fell into place. And even Jennie Wade figures in it.

After five years, I wrote “The Knife Sharpener” in one week.

I was six or seven when I heard my uncle Bill play the piano at my great-aunt’s house, and I knew I wanted to play piano, too. Our smaller home had no room for a piano, and my parents wouldn’t let me ride my bike clear across town, especially since Aunt Sarah lived on a main drag on the East Side. When I was in fifth grade, they suggested violin as an alternative. I tried it for a year and hated it.

That was the end of my music endeavors until the Beatles erupted on Ed Sullivan. My parents hated Elvis, rock ‘n’ roll, and everything associated with him and them, too, but I knew all the words to every song on the car radio while I learned to drive.

When I went off to college, the first live act I saw was Martha & the Vandellas. More importantly, the Muddy Waters Blues Band opened for them. They played several songs I’d heard from the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, and the Shadows of Knight. But Muddy played them s-l-o-w-e-r so they sounded real dirty (heh-heh-heh). Weeks after getting my first dose of Chicago Blues, I bought a cheap guitar and the Mel-Bay guitar method and started memorizing chords. Since I was self-taught, my “technique” was mostly a catalogue of bad habits.

Then I transferred to another college, where two guys in my dorm finger-picked Mississippi John Hurt, Dave Van Ronk, and the Reverend Gary Davis. I wanted to play that music, too. Alas, my fingers were short, and I fractured my left wrist playing football. It never healed right so I have limited mobility and strength in my left hand. I still play guitar, though, and perform at local open mics almost every week. Arthritis is an issue now, but I’m still out there. It gives me an excuse to see my friends.

Much to the dismay of my wife and our cat, I found a used keyboard on sale a few years ago and am trying to teach myself piano, too, about sixty-five years late. I read music a little better now and understand theory more fully, but I will never be more than adequate. Doesn’t matter. I love it.

Music inhabits much of my writing. Chris “Woody” Guthrie, the protagonist of several PI novels, is a wannabe guitar hero, and his girlfriend Megan Traine is a former session keyboard player. I met former high school classmate Susie Woodman at a reunion years ago and learned she was a session musician in Detroit. She inspired the character of Megan and gave me lots of background details, including what it’s like to be an attractive woman in what is still a primarily male occupation.

Since Chris plays guitar, all the titles in his series are either song titles or allude to songs. Fifteen of my sixteen novels and almost half of my fifty short stories use song titles or allusions.

While I’m only adequate as a musician, two or three bass players and a percussionist who have joined me on stage at one time or another have no trouble following me because I my playing has a tight rhythm. Music is one of the two sources for that.

The other is theater.

In the early ‘80s, I agreed to fill in for someone in a production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at Wesleyan University. As an English teacher, I’d taught several of Shakespeare’s plays so I was fairly familiar with the language. My apartment also happened to be across the street, less than a hundred yards from the performance space. I was terrible in the role, but loved the experience. I joined a local community theater and helped build sets and hang lights. I performed more, too.

Eventually, I studied acting, directing, and design in grad school. Directing a play, especially Shakespeare’s work, helps you see, hear, and feel when a scene drags. Rhythm is vital on stage, and it carries over into my writing. I can tell when a scene needs cutting or more detail. Because of participating in over 100 productions between the early 80s and about 2010, I can hear when a line of dialogue works . . . or not.

Now I conduct several fiction-writing workshops, including one on writing dialogue. I constantly fall back on music and theater for examples to make my suggestions clearer to my students.

In April, my wife and I saw a performance of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at Hartford Stage Company. Yep, the same play that introduced me to theater forty-some years ago. I even directed that same play in 2003. The following night, Barb and I went to the community theater where we first met long ago and saw several friends perform the premiere of a new work. I could feel scenes dragging and knew how to fix them, but I wasn’t the director.

Later this week, I will take my guitar to another open mic. More importantly, as I write this, I have two stories in complete early drafts. I’ll be going back over them to polish the dialogue, among other things, and tighten the rhythm until those stories sing to me.

“Nero Wolfe spent four hours every day . . . up in the plant rooms on the roof and during those hours he was unavailable.”

–The Golden Spiders, Rex Stout

If we lived in Rex Stout’s fictional world of New York in the middle of the Twentieth Century and the time was anywhere between 9am and 11am, or between 4pm and 6pm, you could be assured that Nero Wolfe was on the top floor of his New York brownstone dedicating his time to his orchids. 

These plant room sessions were to be interrupted only in the case of emergencies. Wolfe would excuse himself from everything—including conversations with clients—if the clock struck 9 or 4. The plant rooms had to be tended to. 

As a long time fan of the Nero Wolfe series, I always enjoyed this characteristic quirk, but I considered this habit in a new light when I heard how Raymond Chandler approached his writing schedule.

He would dedicate time to do absolutely nothing—or write. He told himself he was allowed to sit and not write, but what he couldn’t do was anything else. No cleaning, no distractions. Considering the choices, boredom eventually overtook him, and he wrote.

And THEN I heard an interview with Neil Gaiman, in which he said he did the same thing. He has a property in Wisconsin that he says is very lovely and peaceful. And when he goes there, he also allows himself just two choices—he could sit and enjoy the scenery, or write. No phones. No distractions. As with Chandler, writing won out.

Which leads me back to Wolfe.

Why not set time for our orchids? Our own plant rooms?

Wolfe had 10,000 orchids—orchids that are notoriously difficult to maintain. They require vigilance and supervision. Any habit that requires constant attention seems relevant here.

It would take some discipline, of course, but certainly we can dictate some time to the distraction-free practice of our craft, whatever it may be. And if instead of tending orchids we simply said we could write, or do nothing—well wouldn’t that work?

The adage that an author must open a vein and bleed on the page never felt more accurate than when I started writing autobiographical fiction. (ABF)

When I retired in the early days of the pandemic, I had hoped to complete the research for my works-in-progress. Yet, most of the university libraries closed indefinitely. My chances of research vanished. The only thing I could write was my own experience during this era.

While ABF is a well-known subgenre of realistic fiction, I couldn’t find many examples of autobiographical mystery fiction. In my research, I learned that ABF is not a set formula; it’s a scale from “loosely based upon” to “only the names have been changed.” Therefore, the author has a great deal of leeway in creating the story.

Since the genre I know best is mystery, I decided to kill a few people as I shared that era with the reader. As I’m writing more stories in the series, the crimes have ranged from strict reality to could have resulted in death to I just didn’t like that person.

Plot and setting are intertwined. I chose to write about an event that took place as I ended my time at my first job at a roller disco. A man had been stabbed in the parking lot. Googling the event to learn of the crime’s motive or consequences, I found no record of any stabbing, making the event feel surreal—and fair game for my imagination.

The crime needed to be organic to the scene and era. The stabbing had taken place at a roller disco, giving me the location—and the time was 1978.

In ABF, the main character is typically yourself. So having a crime, I then needed to determine what facets of me I wanted to show the readers.

In my early days of employment, I was a very reluctant worker. The only thing that got my nose away from a book and to the roller disco was another book. In my mid-teens, I’d discovered the wonderful world of Agatha Christie—and book collecting. Working brought me money, which bought first editions, even when I couldn’t have defined what a “first edition” was.

The quest to read as many crime novels as possible in a short period of time was one of the driving forces of my teen years. In three to four years, I had devoured most of the Golden Age mysteries I could get my hands on. My favorite authors and their books became a part of the stories.   

In talking to others who have read the stories, the memories of music are a catalyst to recalling that era and various memories. Listening to same songs at the roller disco five nights a week, I was convinced I would forever remember the lyrics to six particular songs. I can still sing them at age 62. (If you buy me a drink at a future conference, I’ll be happy to prove it.) So music became another aspect of my life that would also appear in each of the stories.

Finally, I wanted to include the awkward navigation of my orientation. I have eschewed any tropes that I’ve seen so often about gay men, but I must confess that it’s been challenging to recognize and excise them from my works. Since that was one of the drivers that started my work, I wanted to include the main character’s orientation as an impediment to solving the case and other issues.

At this point, I have developed the storylines for three more crime stories based on my memories. As you progress with these projects, you’ll be amazed at the details you’ll recall about those events—and even more, crimes that can serve as the source materials for other works. I hope as I continue down this path.

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“Disco is Dead” by Jeffrey Marks appeared in the November/December 2022 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

I made my first professional fiction sale in 2011, at the age of forty-one. The story was called “The Penthouse View,” and, as it happens, the market that I sold it to was Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (it appeared in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue).  The fact that I would have a story in one of the two magazines that had enthralled me since I was in high school (the other being, of course, Ellery Queen) was stunning. I felt victorious; even if I never sold another story, I had succeeded in my lifetime goal of being that most exalted of beings, a published writer.

I rushed to share the news with friends and family, both live and via social media, and the outpouring of congratulations was highly gratifying. Some people went on to ask what must have seemed like a natural question: so now are you going to write a novel?

Cut to twelve years later. “Moving Day,” in the March/April 2023 AHMM, is my sixth appearance in the magazine.  I’ve also had three stories published in Ellery Queen. By my count, I’ve had eighty-one stories accepted for publication in various magazines and anthologies.  I’ve been nominated for a handful of awards (including, to my astonishment, an Edgar, for “Etta at the End of the World” in the May/June 2020 AHMM) and won a couple of them.  I’ve been to crime writing conventions where I’ve met and chatted with many of my favorite writers.  I’ve had, in other words, more success than I had any reason to expect when I sold that first story.

And still, it’s a rare month when I don’t get asked that question, in one way or another: so when’s the novel coming?

Implicit in the question is the assumption that this is the natural step to take, that the short stories are only meaningful as warm-up exercises, that it must be every writer’s destiny and desire to write a novel.

Implicit is the assumption that real writers, invariably, write novels.

Not true, of course. There have been plenty of hugely successful writers, both in and beyond the crime field, who wrote short fiction exclusively, or almost exclusively. Conversely, there are any number of novelists who never wrote shorts, and even profess to be incapable of doing so. And then there are the writers who have the unbelievable gall to be good at both forms, and seem to switch back and forth effortlessly, but the less said about them, the better.  They get quite enough attention, thank you very much.

So the question isn’t when I’m going to get to that novel.  The question is what kind of writer I actually am.  The graduate-to-novels kind?  The short-story-specialist kind?

And the answer is: I have no idea.

I know that right now, I’m having the time of my life writing short stories.  It fits well with the demanding schedule of my real job, but more than that, it’s just plain fun.  Whatever I’m working on at any given time, I’ll likely be working on something completely different in a couple of weeks.  My writing naturally tends to the hardboiled end of the crime fiction spectrum, but I’ve dabbled in cozies.  I’ve written Sherlock Holmes pastiches, a story guest-starring the Marx Brothers, and a tribute to Cornell Woolrich.  I’ve written stories for themed anthologies inspired by Johnny Cash, Pink Floyd, the Allman Brothers, and Roy Orbison.  I’ve written about con men and car thieves, cops and mob enforcers, and a whole lot of normal people who never saw it coming.

Given my typical writing pace, even a relatively short novel would take me, I estimate, six months to write.  Mind you, that’s the first draft.  Add another few months, at minimum, for revision.  Then there’s the hunt for an agent, where you need to get very lucky, and then for a publisher, where you need to get even luckier.  Then editing.  Cover design.  If you continue your lucky streak, the novel might be published the year after the contract is signed.  I think about the number of short stories I could write in that time, and the choice seems easy.

Maybe I just have a short story mind. It’s true that I often have the experience, when reading a novel, of feeling like it should have been a short story (in fact, many novels really are short stories in disguise, with extra incidents and characters and subplots welded on in more or less elegant ways).

Then again, maybe what I have is a short attention span.

So before I forget, let me mention again that “Moving Day” appears in the March/April AHMM.  The story is (very) loosely based on something that happened to a friend of mine, which is a good illustration of the perils of being friends with a writer.  I hope you enjoy it.  I promise you, it was written by a real writer.

I’ve got promotional bookmarks and everything.

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Joseph S. Walker lives in Indiana and teaches college literature and composition courses.  His short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, Tough, and a number of other magazines and anthologies.  He has been nominated for the Edgar Award and the Derringer Award and has won the Bill Crider Prize for Short Fiction. He also won the Al Blanchard Award in 2019 and 2021.  Follow him on Twitter @JSWalkerAuthor and visit his website at https://jswalkerauthor.com/.   

The more you read, the better you’ll write. Good words to live by. Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and numerous others have offered similar advice. From a writer’s perspective, reading a variety of stories can help you understand how to craft dialogue, plot, pacing, and how to stick the landing when you’re heading toward the end of your own work in progress. But “variety” is the key word. It doesn’t just help you to check out the classics, the greats, the bestsellers, and recommended reads in the genre in which you love to work, it might also be a big help to read stories from a genre that you’ve probably never read before or wouldn’t expect to enjoy at first blush.

I have a friend whom I’ll call Dave (mostly because that’s his name). Dave is well-read, but for years he wouldn’t touch anything if Stephen King’s name was on the cover. I’d recommend certain books, and Dave would roll his eyes. He wasn’t a fan of horror, fantasy, speculative fiction. He liked Hemingway, Faulkner, non-fiction, and crime novels. I asked if he liked the film Stand By Me. Of course, he said. I asked if he liked The Shawshank Redemption. He said yes, and added that only a moron wouldn’t like that movie. I said both were based on Stephen King novellas (The Body and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption respectively). Dave cried and begged forgiveness.

Not really, but he did check out King’s Different Seasons, the collection which included the aforementioned novellas. He liked it, and from there he read Road Work, written under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman, and a number of other Bachman books, and finally ended up breaking out of the crime and realism books of good ol’ Uncle Stevie and read It, Cujo, and even The Dark Tower series. He ended up becoming a fan, but he would’ve never known just how wonderful books like It, The Long Walk, Cell, or The Running Man are if he didn’t push himself out of his comfort zone and into The Dead Zone. (Sorry. I had to.)

It’s kind of like what your mom or dad might’ve told you when you were at the dinner table and turning your face up at asparagus and broccoli. How do you know you don’t like it unless you try it? Now, I’m not saying I’m going to treat you like you’re my kid, but if I find out you haven’t given at least one of these books a chance, you’re grounded and there’ll be no TV for a week.

Instead of King’s books, however, I went ahead and compiled a brief list of seven speculative and science fiction books that all mystery writers should check out. I might get a list together of seven Steve books we should all read, or seven horror books in general, but for now, we’re focusing on sci and spec.

Oh, and before I receive the obligatory why-didn’t-you-include-such-n-such book email, or before I read the assured you’re-an-idiot-because-you-didn’t-mention-such-n-such book comment, trust me, I know I’m leaving A LOT off this list, and, hey, what’s stopping you from writing one of your own after you’ve slogged through mine? After all, didn’t we already establish that the more you read, the better you’ll write?

See what I did there? Aren’t I cute?

Anyway, enough stalling. On with the list.

7. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

From the author of Wonder Boys and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, comes an alternative history detective novel set in Sitka, Alaska, a post-World War II Jewish settlement. Detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of a man who lives in the same rundown hotel as Landsman and as the story progresses we find there a number of people in Sitka that don’t want the mystery solved. The main character draws from classic noir detectives like Sam Spade and Philip Marlow, and Chabon himself said the book was an homage to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross Macdonald. It’s a great story that paints a vivid picture of both an evocative mystery and what could’ve been in a post-war world.   

6. The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead

“It’s a new elevator, freshly pressed to the rails, and it’s not built to fall this fast.”

Thus begins the debut novel of an amazing talent. Here we have another alternate history piece that details life of Lila Mae, the first African American female inspector for the Department of Elevators in a sprawling metropolitan city. Now, in fairness, you probably wouldn’t think the trials and tribulations of an elevator inspector wouldn’t make for a gripping spec fiction thriller, but you’d be wrong. Backstabbing, setups, intrigue, examinations of racial and gender bias, it’s all here in this amazing story.

In all, I struggled between putting this one and Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad on the list because the latter certainly deserves all the adulation it’s received since its release in 2016, winning the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in the same year. I opted for The Intuitionist because I thought it was interesting to go back and check out Whitehead at the start of his career, but, really, people should read both books. In fact, just go ahead and read anything Whitehead has ever written, speculative fiction or otherwise. Hell, the guy’s grocery list is probably better than most short stories. The man is simply the best writer working today. 

5. The Caves of Steel by Issac Asimov

To say Issac Asimov was prolific would be like saying Bill Gates has a few bucks in his pocket. If you want to be in awe of the incredible number of short stories, novels, and non-fiction books the man turned out during his lifetime, check out his bibliography pages on Wikipedia, but be careful. You might wind up with a case of carpal tunnel while scrolling.

Asimov was known primarily for his Foundation, Galactic Empire, and Robot series. The Caves of Steel is part of the latter (as well as the Foundation series later on, but that’s a very long story). The interesting thing about this novel is the fact Asimov wrote it to prove science fiction could be injected into any kind of story and not just stick to the parameters of its own genre. Hence, we have a murder mystery complete with robots and interstellar travel.

Three-thousand years in the future, Earth is overpopulated. Those left behind live under massive metal domes while the luckier, wealthier earthlings move off-world and live in luxury on newly inhabited planets with their robot servants. The trouble is, the off-world types (Spacers as they’re called) don’t exactly have much love for Earth, so when a prominent scientist winds up dead, it threatens to cause a political shift where the Spacers enforce full rule over the Earth.

New York City detective Elijah Baley is partnered with R. Daneel Olivaw to solve the case. Trouble is, R. Daneel turns out to be a robot, and Elijah is prejudiced against robots. Although the world-building in this book is unmatched, and the core mystery intriguing, the budding relationship between Elijah and R. Daneel is what makes this novel one of Asimov’s best.   

4. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Aliens, ghosts, time travelers, the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, magic tricks, a missing cat, and . . . Well, if you’re not intrigued enough by now, you’ll probably never be.

The reason I’ve included this on the list is not just because it’s a detective story (and a sci-fi story, and a ghost story, and a romance story, etc. etc.) but because it’s a humorous detective story and Douglas Adams was simply one of the funniest human beings to have ever drawn a breath.

If you want to craft a comedic mystery yarn, you’ll do yourself a lot of favors by checking out the crime novels of Robert B. Parker, Gregory Mcdonald, Carl Hiassen, Dave Barry, or Tim Dorsey, but you should also check out this book for the sheer amount of madness Adams could weave into a few paragraphs. He knew how to pace a book as well as any bestseller, but had the comedic chops of a seasoned standup comic or sketch comedy writer. After all, this is a guy who cut his writing teeth with Monty Python, penned a few episodes of the classic Doctor Who series starring the funniest, and the best Doctor, Tom Baker (and I’ll knife-fight anyone who says different), and influenced the likes of Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Sandman, Coraline) and Dan Harmon (Community, Rik and Morty) with his magnum opus The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Seriously, if you don’t want to read the guy after this, I can’t help you.      

3. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

I chose this book for three primary reasons. One, it’s a good lesson in how to pace a complex story (something all mystery and thriller writers need to learn), two, the prose is outstanding, and finally, not enough is written about the late, great Octavia E. Butler.

To put it briefly, the story concerns a young African American woman named Dana who slingshots unwillingly through the spacetime continuum between late-70s Los Angeles and mid-1800s Maryland where she experiences slavery and the journey of her ancestors firsthand. It’s unflinching, painful, heartbreaking, and brilliant. And it’s seen a bit of resurgence recently thanks to the mini-series currently streaming on Hulu.

This book breathes rarified air in the sense that it’s one of the few books that fits snugly in the science/speculative fiction category but highly regarded enough by critics and those in academia to rank it alongside George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and consider it serious literature (but those of us with taste understand already that just because a book can fit into a certain genre, it doesn’t mean that it’s kid’s stuff or lowbrow or not to be taken seriously). It should be noted that Butler was mentored early on by none other than Harlan Ellison (we’ll get to him in a minute) who sang her praises repeatedly throughout the years.

So, let’s take stock here. Asimov, Morrison, Orwell, Huxley, Vonnegut, Bradbury, and Ellison. Yes, this is the company the woman kept, and on some days I might put her above them all. She was simply that good.

Now, would anyone care to explain to me why she’s not required reading in every school on the planet?  

2. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick

The book that inspired Blade Runner. Look, there have been countless articles, essays, and, yes, books about the novel, the movie, and Philp K. Dick, and to put it bluntly, I probably can’t add anything to the conversation aside from saying I love the film and the book and would count both amongst my favorites.

Even though the noir aspect is glaringly apparent when you watch the film, it is certainly found within the text. Dick draws heavily from the influences of the classic hardboiled detective genre in terms of scene, setting, and the way he crafts Rick Deckard, the haggard bounty hunter sent to “retire” renegade androids. Religious, philosophical, sexual, and identity themes seep in as they do in many of Dick’s works, but here, with the protagonist approaching his job coolly at first and becoming more and more despondent and dour as the story chugs along, one could easily see Deckard standing alongside the classic detectives or the busted-up drunk dicks haunting the pages of a pulp mag found on the dime store racks back in the 40s. If your only experience with this world is the film, you’re in for a treat when you crack this sucker open.

1. The Top of the Volcano: the Award-Winning Stories by Harlan Ellison

Admittedly, this one’s kind of a cheat. Not all the stories in this collection are speculative fiction. Some are horror, some are crime, some are something different entirely. But the common thread between them all is the unmistakable prose that only Harlan Ellison could put together.

I could’ve picked just about any short story collection by Ellison, of which there are many. The Deadly Streets and Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation are from his early years and focus primarily on crime fiction or gritty urban lit. Paingod and Other Delusions comes right as he made a name for himself as a unique voice in speculative fiction. Shatterday, Strange Wine, No Doors, No Windows, are all good, brilliant really, but The Top of the Volcano is like a perfect greatest hits collection, hence a good intro to his career if you’ve never read him.

If author John Dickson Carr is correct in his statement that the natural habitat for a mystery story lies more within the parameters of a short story than a novel, anyone looking to refine their approach to short fiction absolutely, one hundred percent needs to read and study Harlan Ellison, no questions asked. He, in my not so humble opinion, ranks alongside Hemingway, O’Connor, Kafka, Poe, Dubus, Chekov, O. Henry, Oates, Twain, and Bradbury as one of the best short story writers the world ever produced.

Want to see a good example of how to inject heartache and loss in your story? Read “Jefty is Five.” Want to know how to craft a sense of dread and foreboding? Read “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” (which garnered the man his first Edgar Award). And if you want unrelenting terror, then you need to do yourself a favor and study “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” The story doesn’t make your skin crawl, it doesn’t make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, it reduces your nervous system to mush, melts your bones, and leaves whatever’s left in a twisted, horrible wreck. Pardon my language, but the thing is a fucking masterpiece.

There are many more stories to list from Volcano and many more examples of how Ellison influenced generation upon generation of writers, filmmakers, video game designers, TV producers, and more. I could go on, but let me put a bow on all this by stating there’s a reason why Ellison was one of the most awarded writers of his or any generation (six Bram Stoker Awards, two Edgar Awards, ten and a half Hugo’s, five Nebula’s, four Writer’s Guild Awards, and eighteen Locus Poll Awards, amongst others). He was an unparalleled talent, and although his personality could be brash, to say the very least, the literary world is worse off without him, but at the very least, we have plenty of stories to enjoy far, far into the future.

The theater is my happy place. There is almost no place I’d rather be. My favorite moment in life is that instance when the curtain, literally or figuratively, rises. It’s like being transported into a different universe—one where people might speak in iambic pentameter or break into song. I can be a fly on the wall watching a family unravel, or an onlooker as a flawed king falls from his pedestal. Sometimes I leave the theater filled with joy for the human condition. Other times I break out in uncontrollable, ugly sobs wondering how anyone can live in such an unforgiving world. The best theater has made me feel both things simultaneously.

At various stages of my life, I have been an actor, a playwright and a director. I’ve hung lights and torn down sets. I have my share of paint splattered clothing, and a library of dog-eared and highlighted scripts. I am a theater person, so it is no wonder that I have chosen to set more than one of my short murder mystery stories in a theatrical setting.

There are so many ways to kill and be killed in the theater. There are, first and foremost, the many physical obstacles. Open trapdoors, dangling sandbags, and hastily constructed set pieces could all become deadly, especially when navigating a backstage space in the dark.

There are also the emotional perils associated with the theater. Backstage romances, bad reviews . . . I’m not saying that I’ve ever wanted to commit murder when I checked my name on a cast list, but I can certainly image that motive.

And let’s not forget the unsavory characters that the theater seems to attract. Emotional actors, egotistical directors and overly ambitious understudies are just a few that come to mind. After all, what kind of people want to spend their time pretending to be other people, except perhaps those who have something to hide?

Theater and murder have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship that can be traced back to Ancient Greece. From Medea to Macbeth to Mousetrap, audiences have flocked to see murder on stage for thousands of years. Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, which served as the inspiration for “Twelve Angry Actors” is just one of many great plays that revolves around a murder. I imagine that I will continue to write murder mysteries inspired by the theater. After all, the theater might be my happy place, but when the lights go out, anything can happen.

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Nina Mansfield is a Cos Cob, CT based author, playwright, screenwriter and educator. Nina’s short fiction has appeared in a variety of publications and anthologies including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mysterical-E, Crime Syndicate Magazine and most recently Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Her YA mystery novel Swimming Alone is published by Fire & Ice YA. Nina’s ten-minute and one-act plays have received over 100 productions in the United States and around the world, and are published by Smith & Kraus, Stage Partners, YouthPLAYS, Original Works Publishing, and One Act Play Depot. Nina is a member of MWA, SCBWI, ITW, The Dramatists Guild, and she is a Co-Vice-President of the NY/Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Connect with Nina on her website www.ninamansfield.com or on  Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The older we get, the more we look back and yearn for the good old days—usually forgetting that the good old days were what we used to complain about when we were struggling through them. But for some of those people involved in writing for a living the past is beginning to look more and more attractive, the frustration with the present day’s mounting difficulties making many wish they really had left school pursuing their ambition to be bin men—or whatever they’re called nowadays.

The people looking back with nostalgia are the freelance writers, those earning a living by selling articles and stories to newspapers and magazines in the UK and elsewhere. For the freelancer, the world has changed dramatically. The freelance photographer is also affected by those changes. Suddenly, publishers who would answer quickly and pay reasonably well for articles and photographs are able to get almost everything free. Just as some people will do anything at all to see themselves grinning and capering on television, so there are millions of people worldwide willing to accept zero payment for articles or photographs. Their reward is to see their literary or photographic efforts published in the pages of a magazine—which means another letter of rejection pops through yet another hard-working professional’s letter box.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps it’s an email, pinging.

Or perhaps it’s . . . well, nothing at all.

Before I moved into novel writing, I used to concentrate on writing and selling short stories. Several were accepted by Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, bless them, and my latest will be published in AHMM in the March 2023 issue. That magazine, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, remain unchanged apart from alterations in design, format, and the number of issues published each year. The quality of their crime stories was and is exceptional (and that’s me blowing my own trumpet!). However, their response times when a story is submitted now varies greatly, from weeks to several months.

It was inevitable

We all know the reason for the sometimes long delay between submission (as in sending in, not giving up) and reply. All kids nowadays pop out of the womb with fingers punching the keys on laptops, tablets or smart phones; and, since word processors came onto the scene, manuscripts fluttering about in editors’ offices are like plagues of locusts. And another reason why work might be rejected is that magazines publishing anything that takes more than ten seconds to read can be counted on the fingers of one hand—with a calculator, of course.

Did I mention that as well as markets disappearing, standards are dropping?

This, by the way, is not a rant by a frustrated author sitting staring at a blank screen. Back in 1995, after decades of writing articles and short stories, my novels began selling. In the twenty-seven odd years since then I’ve had sixty published, plus several non-fiction books on writing technique. Most have gone to large-print editions, but although the sheer volume of work puts me in the top 3% for PLR (Public Lending Right) earnings here in the UK, I’m still undeniably a mid-list writer. Or perhaps that’s me having delusions of grandeur. But whatever it is, I mentioned all that because it does lead neatly into another topic.

Look Back with Resignation

A friend of mine (now deceased) began selling novels some 30 years ago. The genre doesn’t matter, but at that time he got a flat fee for each book he sold. Since then, let’s say it’s from 1985 to the present day, average incomes for staff in most publishing firms have probably increased tenfold—and even that might be a conservative estimate. But my friend was a writer, an author, one of those unique, indispensable talents without which no publisher would have a business. So my friend’s flat fee for his novels didn’t increase tenfold, nor even fivefold. There was no increase at all. He was getting, in his final writing days, exactly what he got in 1985, which means that his flat fee had been decimated: it really was worth one tenth of what it was back then.

Remember? The good old days?

We talked from time to time, he and I. And, as you’ve probably twigged by now, we both wrote for the same publisher (now also gone to the happy hunting ground) so everything I’ve said about my friend applies equally to me. You’ll also have worked out that I’m way past retirement age, the income from writing doesn’t really matter. A hobby’s a hobby—and I appear to be stuck on one of those horses.

I’ll stay in the saddle for the moment, because I haven’t yet mentioned the internet. Not because I don’t use it, but because it’s too damned vast to comprehend. Yes, there are new markets out there. And, yes, some of them pay quite well. But it occurred to me the other day when thinking about magazines made from paper covered in real print that if college students can download essays and paste them into their exam papers, surely magazine editors could do the same. Find articles—I’m talking non-fiction here – in the bottomless Blue Nowhere and paste them on to the pages of their magazine. Because there used to be something called the public domain. I presume it still exists. But couldn’t that term apply to the internet? There are domain names, after all. And if anything is public, surely it’s the wonderful worldwide web (wwww?).

I mentioned falling standards a little earlier, and with written work that can be difficult to judge. But I also mentioned photography and, although everything is subjective, there the decline is quite clear. In the past, the covers of the magazines we’ve been talking about nearly always used images taken with medium- or large-format cameras, and the clarity was amazing. Then along came digital cameras. Suddenly everything was so simple. Images arrived at editorial offices as digital files sent as attachments to emails, and could be pasted straight on to a magazine’s pages. Convenient, but the cost was in loss of quality. Grass and distant trees began to look like watercolour smudges. Flesh tones could be peculiar. As for definition, that’s always been limited by the magazine printing process, but it’s been estimated that for a digital file to equal the clarity and definition of even a 35mm film transparency, it must be taken by a camera with a 25 megapixel plus sensor, at the very least. Nowadays that figure is beginning to look old hat (think mobile phones), and yet . . .

Which brings us back to the writing

If magazine covers are not what they used to be, what about the inside pages? Should we assume that the same drop in standards is evident there? And not because our (the professional writers) standards are dropping, but because—and here I’ll use a word I hate—some material is sourced from non-professionals willing to work for nothing. It can be understood—barely—but it fills a space, it’s free, so it’s used.

So where does all this leave us—or, to be more specific, those who need to earn their living from freelance writing? Soldiering on is probably the right term. If looking back nostalgically is always a waste of time, surely looking forward with optimism is to be preferred—isn’t it?

I’ll let a well known writer have the last word on that:

The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much;

If he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

Mark Twain, Notebook (1935)