LET’S LEAVE THESE THINGS TO THE FICTION WRITERS

Posted on March 26, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen

Conspiracy theories seem tailor-made for fiction. They contain all the elements a great adventure story calls for: a David and Goliath-like contest (between members of the powerful cabal and the unempowered men or women who oppose them); life-or-death scenarios (as the underdogs attempt to foil organizations that will stop at nothing to protect their interests); a stark contrast between the good and evil players in the drama; and a maze of half-truths, lies, and deceptions that must be successfully identified as misdirections in order for the heroes to arrive at the truth.

It should all make for a good yarn, and yet I don’t end up buying as many conspiracy stories as I’d expect to. Not that there aren’t many excellent novels and stories belonging to the category. My favorite at novel length is The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton, and EQMM’s contributor Brendan DuBois excels at this type of thriller at short-story length, as does James Powell (in a much more humorous vein) with his stories involving the evil Dr. Ludwig Fong. But those are the good ones. The problem I have with many of the conspiracy stories I see is that they assume a cohesiveness among, and competence on the part of, the evildoers that’s not very believable to me. And that’s fine as long as the reader isn’t expected to take it all too seriously. But a lot of these types of stories take themselves very seriously indeed.

It’s possible, though, that I’ve simply become a little biased against the conspiracy story by the growing number of people in the real world who see evidence of vast worldwide conspiracies of one sort or another in every turn in the economy, change in social values, or personal misfortune. Conspiracy theories may make good fiction, but they’re generally lousy—and even dangerous—explanations for actual events. When I first posted on this subject several years ago, nine members of the Michigan Christian militia called “Hutaree” had just been arrested, accused of planning to kill a police officer and use his funeral as an opportunity for a terrorist bomb attack. The case was never proved and, as far as I know, the organization continues to exist, inspired by the millenialist belief that Obama is the Anti-Christ and head of a vast conspiracy involving law enforcement and an attempt to create a new totalitarian world order. This particular conspiracy theory might seem easy to deride, but how different is it really from some of the conspiracy theories surrounding the JKF assassination? Take away the Anti-Christ element and belief in a vast conspiracy involving law enforcement sounds a lot like the belief many have held that the C.I.A. and the Secret Service conspired in the Kennedy assassination. My point is that many perfectly rational people believe in conspiracy theories for which there is no hard evidence at all. It almost seems as if the attractiveness these sorts of explanations of events have is hardwired in the human brain.

I turned CNN on last week and one of the myriad theories I heard offered for what had happened to the missing Malaysian Airlines jet was that Muslim radicals had taken it over with the aim of flying it to Somalia (the implication being they might have succeeded and landed there). A map was displayed showing how it could have been done—and it looked consistent with the scanty evidence that existed to that point pinning down the plane’s location. This particular theory was offered by a professor at a respected college, someone in whom I’d have expected scholarly training to have created the habit of sticking to evidence. I’m certainly not qualified to comment on whatever science (or social science) might support such an idea, but really, it seemed to me he was getting way ahead of himself. I’m reminded here of the famous line from Sherlock Holmes: ”How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” I think we can add, while remaining true to Holmes, that before entertaining the far-fetched, improbable solution, the rational thing to do is surely first to eliminate—in Holmesian terms show to be “impossible”—the more likely and commonplace scenarios. Only then must we turn to—and perhaps accept as true—the improbable.

Yet as I watched the various commentators on CNN weigh in on the missing airplane I couldn’t help feeling that—the outcome in regard to loss of life being equal—many of the talking heads would rather one of the more colorful theories involving intricate planning and conspiracy, like a Somalia landing, turned out to be true. There was an air of suppressed excitement about it all and again, it struck me that people are naturally gripped by (and inclined to believe in) the improbable, complex schemes of which conspiracy theories are made—even when they know that there are very few proven instances of successful real-life large-scale conspiracies.

In fiction, for the sheer fun of it, I’ll go along with an author and pretend to believe in secret cabals whose members are capable of acting in perfect concert, with superhuman efficiency and unwavering purpose, over vast stretches of time and space. But in real-life the type of example we have of a proven conspiracy is Watergate—and what an incompetent conspiracy that was—political slush-fund cash found on the burglars, self-taping of incriminating conversations, and all.

Of course, Islamic terrorists have been tragically successful in some of their conspiracies over the past couple of decades. That might seem a strong counter-example to what I’m arguing. And it would be, except that terrorists are rarely secretive about their purposes. They often put out manifestos of their aims and quickly claim credit once a goal has been achieved. And one of the things that intrigues the human mind about a conspiracy, I believe, is the secretiveness involved not only in regard to a particular imminent event, but in terms of who is behind it and what their motives are. Conspiracy is better left to fiction because in real life human beings are just not very good at concealing such fundamental things about themselves for long periods of time, and in conjunction with others—at least, that’s how I see it.

It’s interesting that the conspiracy thriller, one of whose emotional elements is paranoia, has historically not only reflected its times (becoming popular during the seventies, for instance, perhaps as a result of Watergate) but may have a role in reinforcing the paranoia of an era. At least, some of those who have studied groups such as Hutaree have argued that there is a correlation between the popularity of conspiracy fiction and the spread of the kinds of beliefs that animate such groups—especially the belief that secret forces are working to create a new world order.

I said at the beginning of this post that I’d expect to be buying more conspiracy thrillers than I actually do, given the suspenseful elements of which they’re necessarily composed. Since I’m not a believer in real-life conspiracy theories, I think one of the keys to reaching me with fiction on that theme is to employ a bit of humor—write it with at least a little bit of tongue in cheek. But I will not offer that as a hard and fast rule, because I sometimes buy perfectly serious conspiracy stories, and let’s face it, a really good writer can make even a sceptic believe in his or her story.—Janet Hutchings

Posted in Editing, Fiction, History, Politics, Story, Thrillers, Writers, Writing | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

“It Don’t Come Easy” (by Greg Herren)

Posted on March 19, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Greg Herren is not the first award-winning novelist who’s told EQMM that he finds the short story a more difficult literary form than the novel. Yet he has managed to add some short stories to a publication list that includes twenty-seven novels (under his own name and various pseudonyms). Two of those short stories were for EQMM, the most recent the upcoming (September/October 2014) “The E-Mail Always Pings Twice.” Greg’s most recent novel, Baton Rouge Bingo, is a Lambda Award finalist and the sixth in the Scotty Bradley adventure series. His most recent YA novel, Lake Thirteen, won a silver medal from the Independent Press Moonbeam Awards for Outstanding Young Adult Mystery/Horror. His many fans have reason to be glad that he didn’t permanently put down his pen after the distressing short-story writing experience he relates in this post.—Janet Hutchings

Writing short stories has never come easily for me.

Every writing course I took during the tragedy also known as my college career insisted that the road to becoming a successful writer lay through writing short stories. A small magazine publication here, a small literary magazine there, and we would slowly build careers as authors. Before long our reputations would grow, and then, and only then, would we get the opportunity to write novels. Short stories were simply tools to perfect use of language, dialogue, character, setting, and scene. The message being sent by my instructors was simple: “All great writers start by writing short stories, and no one can ever start out by writing books.”

This was hard for me, because I never envisioned myself as a writer of short stories. Growing up, I didn’t read short stories—I read novels. Occasionally, I would be required to read a short story for an English class, usually something like “The Minister’s Black Veil” or “The Lady or the Tiger?” Some of the stories I enjoyed, but for the most part, I didn’t really see the point to short fiction. I liked to read novels, and that was what I wanted to write.

I took a fiction-writing course my sophomore year in college. My professor was an avid Henry James scholar. His idea of teaching us how to write is something that still puzzles me to this day: he had us read Henry James’s short stories and try to emulate him. (To this day, I fail to see the point of trying to write like another writer; surely the most important thing for a writer is to develop one’s own voice?) After turning in our first stories, we had to go see him during his office hours to discuss them with him and get feedback. I was pretty confident when I went in to see him; hadn’t my high school teacher waxed rhapsodic about my talent?

I left his office seriously shaken. In a five-minute meeting, all he said was that my story was “horrendous and trite,” my characters “cardboard and unrealistic,” and my dialogue rang “completely false.” As I continued to shrink into my chair, he concluded, “Just turn in your stories, and I will give you a C. No sense failing you because you have no talent.” At this point, I mumbled something about having always dreamed of being a writer.

“Find another dream,” he said with a kindly, condescending smile, “because you’ll never be a writer.”

It took me years to get over that meeting.

As a direct result of that class, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with short stories. I love to read them, hate to write them. It always astonishes people when I tell them I’d rather write a novel than a short story; I mentioned this on Facebook the other day and another writer commented, with a smiley-face emoticon, you do know you live in opposite world, don’t you?

Short stories are hard to write for me, and I get a much bigger thrill out of selling one than I do selling a novel (and yes, I know that’s weird). I’ve tried for years to diagnose why I have so much trouble writing short stories: is it hard for me to edit myself down to meet the length restrictions? Is it because that horrible professor still lives somewhere in my subconscious, chipping away at my confidence? Or am I simply missing the short story gene?

For many years, if I wrote a good story it was purely an accident or pure luck; my mind simply couldn’t wrap itself around the concept of beginning-middle-end that all of my writing instructors over the years kept pounding into our heads (after that first horrible experience, I bounced around majors and colleges, and would up taking fiction writing courses three more times with more success); it is something I still struggle with when writing a story to this day. I can do character, I can do dialogue and setting and scene and mood—but the plot? YIKES! Nine times out of ten, when I think I have a great plot for a short story, I start writing and the plot starts growing . . . next thing I know, I have an idea for a novel (my novel Bourbon Street Blues actually started as a short story; it happens more times than I’d like to admit).

I have well over a hundred short stories in files that I’ve never finished because I didn’t know how to properly end them.

Case in point: I am currently writing two short stories, called “The Ditch” and “The Scent of Lilacs in the Rain.” One is for a submission call for Halloween stories, the other is a story that’s been festering in my head for over twenty years and I am determined to finally get it written. (I wrote a really bad fifteen hundred word version about twenty years ago; recently I decided to take a stab at turning it into something.) I did manage to finish a first draft of “The Ditch” but am struggling with the other story. The deadline for submissions for the Halloween story is in a few days, and I doubt very seriously that I am going to manage to get it into the kind of shape where I’d feel comfortable letting someone else read it—and soon enough I have to get to work on my next novel.

But I do love reading short stories, and I keep trying to write them.

Maybe someday I’ll get this figured out.

Posted in Editing, Fiction, Guest, Novels, Story, Writers, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

DIGITAL EDITION FLASH SALE!

Posted on March 17, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen

From now through March 20, enjoy 50% off a one-year e-subscription to EQMM, only through Magzter.

 

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“Barcelona Transfer” (by Peter Bush)

Posted on March 12, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Since the debut of our Passport to Crime department in 2003, EQMM has been regularly featuring translated crime fiction. In that time, we’ve been pleased to publish the work of a number of talented translators, and we’ve discovered, through them, how creative translation can be—and how skilled the translator must be as a writer. Peter Bush has been translating for us the stories of his wife, Catalan crime writer Teresa Solana, the most recent of which, “The Importance of Family Bonds,” will appear in our September/October issue. His work in the field of crime fiction also includes the translations of five Mario Conde thrillers by Leonardo Padura and Teresa Solana’s three Martínez brothers satirical noir novels. He will be in the U.S. starting March 17th to help launch his translation of Josep Pla’s twentieth-century Catalan masterpiece, The Gray Notebook. —Janet Hutchings

When I met Teresa Solana in a castle in Budmerice, Slovakia, I never imagined that within a few years, I’d be living with a woman who liked to kill—if only on paper. I directed the British Centre for Literary Translation in Norwich and Teresa was director of the Spanish Translators’ House in Tarazona. We were in the castle with colleagues from Europe to plan joint activities and the perennial assault on the EC Cultural Funding program. A voluble Russian dramatist and his entourage joined us at the barbecue by the bonfire and pursued me around the oak trees waving a manuscript of a play already translated into English. I never did find a stage for his drama, but soon we had shifted to Barcelona, quixotically resigning our full-time posts, to return to the life of the freelance translator. Teresa was about to give birth to our daughter and we could no longer live between two countries. In the run up to the big change she translated a French philosopher’s take on Plotinus and an American tome on how to deal with cancer, variety being the spice in a freelancer’s life.

Diaper-changing and breast-feeding were interspersed not by bouts of postnatal depression but by hours on the computer. Teresa had written at least three novels and a couple of short stories that I’d seen, narratives that had otherwise never shifted from her desk drawer: a family saga about a fruit and veggie seller near the market of Sant Antoni in central Barcelona, the tale of a girl working at a department-store check-out till that lurched into disquisitions on Homer’s Iliad. . . . Nothing to prepare me for Un crim imperfecte (A Not So Perfect Crime) that I was soon reading. In the three years I’d known her, I’d glimpsed no sign of any interest in noir, apart from the volumes of Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle resting on the shelves in her parents’ home. Borja and Eduard, her twin detectives, were thus born in Catalan, Teresa’s mother-tongue, and I insisted she take the book to Carmen Balcells who soon sold rights to Catalan, English, French, German and Italian publishers. So the translator would be translated, into Spanish by herself and into English by me.

Translating your wife has its advantages (I’ve yet to encounter any disadvantages). Before you ever get a contract, you have seen the novel come into shape, from first ideas and chapters to final revisions: they have been the subject of table-talk. All fiction has a very personal side, words, incidents and characters with specific resonances that are often lost on the reader and some of these I can pick up in Teresa’s fiction.

I begin when she has already translated the novel into Spanish. In the process she makes frequent changes, particularly in dialogue, because what works—wordplay and humor, especially—in Catalan doesn’t necessarily work in Spanish, so I have the advantage of being able to see these changes when I compare her two versions at a final stage in revising mine.

I’m currently translating a short story, “A Death in Barcelona”, by Josep Pla, about a death from typhoid in a boarding house. The story has an aura of mystery mixed with comedy in the most drab of places as the lodgers react to the death. It’s clear that some of the characters’ names have a symbolic import. The landlady, Esperanza Paradís, and later her pregnant daughter, is courted by three penniless boarders. Can I assume that my American readers will get the joke about their particular hopes of paradise? Maybe I can. But what about the two Swiss men who behave as orderly Swiss watch sellers should, except when they are drunkenly playing their violins in the early hours of Sunday morning. One goes by the name of Bransom and the other Pickel. Now is this Pla having a joke, naming his characters after Branston Pickle the famous English relish? I think it probably is—Pla had been in London, Leeds, and elsewhere and written about the peculiar eating habits of the English. I can again imagine that my readers will pick up the reference. But then why the spelling changes? Is this part of the fun—Pickel sounds more Swiss—or mistakes by Pla or his editor/typesetter? I feel it is part of the fun, so they can stay. Then what about the characters called Verdaguer and Albert, the surnames of two well-known Catalan writers? Is that a coincidence? Or aren’t they just common Catalan surnames? Unlikely, given Pla’s attention to detail, despite his professions of artlessness. . . . All considerations and choices in the everyday life of a literary translator! Here do I have any choice but to let the references ride? Footnotes are unwieldy and are not fun. Could I introduce something explanatory (but humorous) into the text? After all, the narrator is apparently the writer himself as student. Translators can do that kind of thing. Oh, let it ride! What I can’t do, is ask my dead author. Maybe my editor will have an opinion.

Meanwhile with Teresa, we can mull such matters over with the help of a glass of Rioja and a plate of jamón serrano . . .

Take her story “The First (Pre-historical) Serial Killers” where cavemen and women suffer a spate of killings. Who is wielding the club? The story has its Solanaesque comic twists and anachronisms with references to Sherlock and Sigmund and all the characters are named after medieval Catalan royalty. Simple translation of the latter might have been the answer. After all, Wilfred the Hairy would go down well, but not all are equally amusing and the inevitable crop of Berenguers (even another Verdaguer) wouldn’t mean much in Ohio. So I decided to move the story to England and name the characters and places after English royals and towns—Harry, Charles, Elizabeth, Philip, cannibals from Canterbury etc—and I even did an American trial run with Benjamin and Abraham but then decided that the English royals are always good for a laugh in the US. Did I consult the writer? Yes, I did and she agreed. In any case, translators should never be too reverential towards their authors . . .

Posted in Books, Business, Editing, Fiction, Guest, Passport, Translation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Solving for Sherlock Holmes” (by Dana Cameron)

Posted on March 5, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Readers of Dana Cameron’s Anna Hoyt stories for EQMM know that this Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Award-winning author, who is also an archaeologist, has a special interest in historical fiction. In fact, even when her chosen setting isn’t historical, she’ll often mix in a bit of history—as in her November 2012 EQMM story “Mischief in Mesopotamia,” in which her series character Emma Fielding, vacationing in Turkey, encounters mystery related to ancient artifacts. But Dana’s work isn’t restricted to historical, traditional, or noir mysteries (all of which she writes). She has also established herself in the urban-fantasy genre with her Fangborn series, which has new entries at both novel and short-story length coming in April (see the novel Pack of Strays from 47North and the story “The God’s Games” in Games Creatures Play). She is also a contributor to the upcoming anthology Dead But Not Forgotten, whose stories all have their genesis in Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series—and in which Dana weaves a tale around the Harris character Pam Ravenscroft. Speaking of pastiches, I only just learned from the following post that Dana is now working on a pastiche featuring Sherlock Holmes—perhaps the most challenging of all characters created by another for writers to borrow and make their own. —Janet Hutchings

In the past few months, I’ve been overdosing on Sherlock Holmes, and with more than a seven-percent solution. Between attending my third Baker Street Irregulars and Friends Weekend in January, devouring the DVDs of BBC’s third season of Sherlock, preparing for a panel at Boskone entitled “Sherlock Holmes and TV,” and starting work on my own Holmesian pastiche, I’ve been wrestling with all things Sherlockian (including “baritsu”). Catching up on Elementary, rewatching Jeremy Brett, and watching Murder by Decree with Christopher Plummer and James Mason, has given me a lot to think about. Not just about Stephen Moffat’s treatment of female characters, who plays the best John Watson, or whether House is really a Holmesian show, but considering what goes into a good Sherlockian story. Does the story need to be strictly according the canon (the 56 short stories and four novels originally written by Arthur Conan Doyle) or can it contain allusions and references? Must the relationships be the same? What makes a movie or story “Holmesian?”

Most of the panelists at Boskone said a Sherlockian story absolutely requires an otherworldly, almost alien, detached Holmes with a ferocious brain. Some said you need a worthy opponent to showcase that brain. I agree with both, and suggested, as many Sherlockians do, that the friendship between Sherlock and John is what makes the stories immortal.

So far, as I’ve been working on this project, I’ve been intimidated by many things, but most especially this: How can I write a character who is Sherlock Holmes-smart if I am only Dana-smart? Sure, I used to play “deductions” as a kid, remembering the quote “you see, but you do not observe.” I used to mess with my classmates, remarking on the month of their birthdays (based on birthstone jewelry), the make of their parents’ cars (key chains with insignias), and the like. This was a lot of fun, but they were usually pretty annoyed when I told them how I did it, because it was obvious and no one likes a smartass.

But a pastiche requires more than that.

All problems can be broken down to their component parts, so I’m starting with the obvious. I know that Holmes is a collector of facts: I can make him expert in anything and everything, as long as it serves the story. But facts alone aren’t enough: I also need to ensure that there’s a good chance other characters won’t also know those facts or won’t link together the clues the way that Holmes would. I’ve also decided that it would be cheating to use tobacco ash or bee keeping or something else that’s shown up in the canon; it has to be fresh. It has to be mine.

Any Sherlock-type character has to be clever and quick. I suffer from what the French describe as l’esprit de l’escalier, meaning I only make the right connection or think of the right retort as I find myself at the bottom of the stairs, having left the party. But I have the writer’s friend—time—on my side and can take days or weeks to think up the clever part that might only take an instant in a story. Plenty of time for the spirit of the staircase to visit me.

But can I write in the character of Sherlock Holmes?

I tell myself, I wasn’t a werewolf, an 18th-century tavern owner, or a covert operative, and I managed to find ways to relate with those characters: Gerry’s idealism, Anna’s burning desire to survive, Jayne’s avenging sense of right and wrong. I can relate to the way Holmes observes people and behavior and class, even if I don’t know anything about his analysis of secret writing and ciphers. I can use the skills of my previous professional life in archaeology to create a crime scene and fill it with clues.

But it’s Sherlock Holmes…

The remaining part of the puzzle seems to be in three parts.

Writing a Sherlockian pastiche is daunting to me because of the utterly iconic nature of the character. I know I can get around that by honoring the canonical details but making my take purely my own. I’m not trying to copy or improve on Conan Doyle’s creation—there’s no way I could hope to do either. I don’t want to compete with the character, merely play with the ideas he suggests.

That removes a lot of the burden right there. If I take elements I admire in the character of Holmes and expand on those, I can give them my own emphasis within the confines of the canon. For example, I’ll have to figure out my interpretation of the characters’ physical descriptions. To me, that would start with taking the various descriptions of Holmes and Watson et al, and looking through IMDB to see which actors I would cast in those parts. And then I’ll take something obscure that I do know about—perhaps the adventure will focus on a particular artifact or prehistoric earthwork—and make that part of the story. In the end, I’ll count it success if the story works as a mystery adventure and the protagonist feels like my Holmes in my world.

And then there’s the second step.

I’m going to cheat. But only in a manner of speaking, and only in the way that writers do.

Once I’ve laboriously figured out two or three serious deductions, I can add a few more that I won’t spell out. The character’s intellect will be established, but I won’t have to show the math every time, because, with any luck, I will have gained the reader’s trust. The writers of BBC’s Sherlock do this frequently: Sherlock deduces a character’s motives by listening to his story and then analyzing his clothing, bearing, etc. aloud for Watson or Lestrade. Later on, if Sherlock makes a completely wild assertion, say, deducing someone’s parentage from the state of his clothing, we accept that it is possible for him to come to that conclusion without knowing more.

The final step in solving for Sherlock Holmes is as elementary as it is important for any character: empathy. I find that no matter how neat a narrative I can construct, unless I love the characters for their flaws as well as their good points—and convince the reader of their veracity—the story just won’t work. That part will be easy.

Posted in Books, Characters, Editing, Fiction, Guest, Holmesian | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Devil Made Me Do It” (by Richard Helms)

Posted on February 26, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Although he is primarily a novelist, with sixteen published books—the most recent the standalone thriller The Mojito Coast—Richard Helms has made a mark in the world of short fiction too. His November 2010 EQMM story “The Gods for Vengeance Cry” won an International Thriller Award, and he’s also the winner of a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. He’s the creator of the character Judd Wheeler, who stars in a third novel-length case, Older Than Goodbye, to be released later this year. His most recent story for EQMM, “Second Sight Unseen,” is coming up in our July 2014 issue. It introduces a new character,  Bowie Crapster, and already has, we’re told, a nearly completed sequel.  Given his large body of work in crime fiction, some readers may be surprised to learn that until recently the author also had an entirely different career related to crime: He was a forensic psychologist, and it’s that career and the insights he gained from it that he talks about here.—Janet Hutchings

Most of my bios begin by citing my nearly two-decade career as a forensic psychologist, as if that lends me some sort of credibility to write mystery novels and short stories.

I never intended to become a forensic psychologist. It wasn’t in my life plan at all. I actually went to graduate school because it was the height of the recession in the early 1980s, and there weren’t a lot of jobs available for a newly minted BA in psychology grad. As it happened, I had a choice. I was offered two possible paths. One was a PhD program in Public Health at the university where I received by undergrad degree. The other was a grad program in psychology in the North Carolina mountains. I eventually chose the latter, mostly because I’m basically lazy and the idea of spending a career lounging in my office doling out advice to septuagenarian blue-hairs with Generalized Anxiety Disorder held a certain appeal.

As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens while you’re making plans.”

I got out of grad school in 1982, at the height of the Reagan-era cutbacks in social and human services. If I thought the job market was bleak in 1980, I was totally unprepared for the scorched earth that I surveyed as I hung up my cap and gown and tacked my degree to my bedroom wall. There were no jobs to be had anywhere. No cushy office. No anxious blue-hairs. Nada. I spent the first six months after getting my graduate degree working in a video store.

I did get a few interviews. The North Carolina prison system was looking for psychologists to work with inmates. Eventually, I was offered a job at a new prison in Troy, NC. All I had to do was get my letters of reference sent to the state guy in charge of prison psych services.

I dragged my heels for weeks, hoping that another job would pop up. I did get an offer from a mental health center in Caribou, Maine. I discovered that Caribou is about the farthest point north before you drop off the map and fall into Canada. The primary exports there appeared to be potatoes, broccoli, and alcoholism. I discovered that the mental health center there ran through psychologists so quickly, they had a standing help-wanted ad in the APA Monitor. I took a pass.

I finally found work in my field almost a year after finishing grad school, and in 1986 I was hired to be the clinical director in a twenty-four-bed locked facility for the most violent and dangerous teenagers in the state.

Yep. I skipped out on an adult prison job to wind up as the clinical director in a kiddie prison. Karma’s a bitch.

I was actually hired as a behavior analyst, which was sort of my specialty at the time. I walked in on the first day, and the administrative director welcomed me with open arms.

“At last!” he cried. “Our forensic psychologist has arrived!”

“Whoa!” I said. “I’m not a forensic psychologist. I’m a behavior analyst.”

“Not anymore,” he said. “We’ve rewritten your job description. Don’t worry, we’ll get you trained.”

Later that day, I attended my first sex-offender group therapy session, which was presided over by a wonderful woman who would later run the facility.

“Finally!” she said, as I walked into the room. “Our new sex- offender therapist has arrived!”

“There must be some mistake,” I argued. “I’m a forensic psychologist.”

How quickly we adjust to new titles.

I spent half of the next year working in the facility, and the other half jetting around the country to attend post-grad training sessions in forensics and sex-offender treatment. By the end of my first year there, I began to think of myself as a forensic psychologist, and that’s what I did for a living for the next seventeen years, the last decade as the court psychologist for a four-county area in North Carolina.

I retired from active practice in 2002. These days, I teach at a local community college. One of my courses is in Forensic Psychology, and all of my students know that I’m also a novelist and short-story author. Sometimes they embarrass me by bringing one of my books to class for me to autograph.

This is sort of a roundabout way of bringing up a question that one of my students posed to me in class today. We were talking about criminal profiling, and she wanted me to wax forensic on the Miranda Barbour case.

As I write this, it’s February 18th, and this case is fairly new. By the time you read this, a week or so likely will have passed. We live in a world where events spin to the tune of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, so by then we should know a lot more about this story, and I’ll either look amazingly prophetic or profoundly cynical. The good news? I’m cool with either option.

In case this is now last week’s forgotten headline, Miranda Barbour is the young woman who is accused, with her new husband, of luring a man named Troy LaFerrara to Sunbury, Pennsylvania, back in November by way of a Craigslist ad promising sexual favors for money. Once LaFerrara arrived, Barbour and her husband—a fellow named Elytte Barbour—allegedly murdered the man and left his body in an alley.

Miranda claimed in a newspaper interview that her husband wrapped a cord around LaFerrara’s neck, and she stabbed him multiple times. Her justification, she said, was that she told LaFerrara that she was actually underage, and he was still willing to have sex with her for money.

“If he would have said no, that he wasn’t going to go through with the arrangement, I would have let him go,” she said.

What makes this story truly interesting is Miranda Barbour’s statements after her arrest that she had killed more than twenty-two other people since age thirteen. Among other things, that would make her the youngest serial killer on record. She also claims to have been part of a Satanic cult in Alaska, where she became pregnant as a young teen and the cult forced her to undergo an abortion. Barbour’s mother has stated that later physical exams indicated no signs of an abortion.

“So,” my student asked in class today, “what do you think of her story?”

I told her I thought it was mostly baloney.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t doubt her admission to killing Troy LaFerrara. The rest of her tale sounds more like a bad mystery novel.

Not that there aren’t plenty of examples of murderers luring victims with online advertisements.

Kim Rossmo, a Canadian criminologist, has established four primary approaches by serial killers. Hunters actively leave their homes in search of victims, with a clearly established plan to kill someone before returning. Trollers don’t go looking for victims, but rather suddenly decide to kill when they encounter a likely victim. Poachers tend to be transient individuals who kill sporadically and opportunistically (people like Henry Lee Lucas, for instance). Finally, there are Trappers, who set out lures for likely victims, such as Craigslist ads, posts in social networks, and the like.

If we are to believe Miranda Barbour, she sounds like a typical Trapper in Rossmo’s classification system. And, if this turns out to be true, she wouldn’t be the first. One of the most famous was Richard Beasley, an Ohio street preacher who posted farmhand jobs on Craigslist, and then killed the men who responded. He wasn’t caught until one of his intended victims escaped and told the police. Beasley is awaiting execution in Ohio now.

Two issues in Miranda Barbour’s story raise red flags.

The first is her age. As I mentioned before, if her story is correct, she would be the youngest serial killer on record, male or female, as she alleges that her killing career began at age thirteen. While someone has to be the youngest, it’s difficult to imagine a set of life circumstances that would place a child on a sophisticated serial killing path at such a young age. Serial killings tend to be the product of obsessive-compulsive tendencies bound up with violent fantasies of revenge and a pseudo-Freudian defense mechanism of displacement, atypical of people barely into adolescence. While teenagers can be among the most violent of offenders, because they tend to operate mostly on emotion rather than reason, and have not yet developed the intrapsychic moral inhibitions that control behavior for most of us, they don’t tend to engage in the cyclical type of compulsive violence that we associate with serials.

The other intriguing but doubtful feature in her story is her repeated reference to her involvement in murderous Satanic cults, which she blames for most of her purported serial killings. The existence of such cults has been a romantic notion for decades.

Bill Ellis, a professor of English and American Studies at Penn State University, in an interview with Fox News, stated, “I don’t think there’s any compelling evidence that Satanic cults exist.”

He, along with other experts, say that such stories are the result of a “Satanic Panic” that began in the late 1970s, and continues—especially in evangelical and charismatic circles—to this day.

The underlying premise is always the same. Innocents are abducted by Satanic cultists and indoctrinated into an evil way of thinking that discounts human dignity and the value of life itself. In extreme cases, individuals have told stories of children being conceived and delivered for the sole purpose of being sacrificed on a Satanic altar, and the more lurid accounts claim that these murdered children are later cannibalized. As is the case with most myths, it is very difficult to disabuse true believers of their delusions, and this appears to be one of those cases.

The FBI conducted an extensive study of over 12,000 reported cases of illegal activity by supposed Satanic cults. The results of their task force study indicated no evidence whatsoever that such activity exists. Similar studies in Europe have come to the same conclusions.

So why would Miranda Barbour claim that The Devil made her do it?

At some level, it absolves her of personal responsibility. After all, if head-turning, pea-soup-ralphing demonic possession makes you kill someone, it really can’t be entirely your fault, right? It may also provide a basis for mitigating circumstances when her case eventually goes to trial. By continuing to spout delusions that have been discounted by scientists and criminologists—repeatedly!—she may begin to establish a case for diminished capacity or even an insanity plea.

And, it’s even possible that she believes her own deluded story.

According to Barbour’s own statements, none of her nearly two dozen murder victims were entirely innocent themselves. She has said that she only killed “bad people.” In that sense, she may see herself as some sort of avenging vigilante.

Barbour says she knows where all the bodies of her purported victims are buried. Between the time I write this and the time you read it, it’s possible that these bodies will surface, and I’ll have to eat the baloney I made of her allegations.

I’m betting against it, though.

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“A Few Good Words About Dead People” (by Ed Gorman)

Posted on February 19, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Ed Gorman is a recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award, the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award, and the International Fiction Writers Award. He’s the author of dozens of novels and short stories, but that’s only one side of his contribution to contemporary fiction. He’s also been active as an editor, anthologist, and publisher, and his work includes cofoundingMystery Scene magazine and editing a year’s-best anthology series. For more than twenty years he’s also been a steadfast friend to Dell’s mystery magazines: In fact, way back when, he was responsible for conceiving and helping to construct the first Web site EQMM and AHMM had, and he came up with the idea for EQMM’s Blog Bytes column, for which he was the first reviewer. It turns out that even after so many years of friendship there are important things I didn’t know about Ed. Until I read this post, I didn’t know, for instance, that his first love was science fiction, or that he’d been so deeply involved in that fan world.  It surprised me only because his knowledge of mystery is so vast—I didn’t think anyone could know so much about both genres! Ed’s latest story for EQMM, “Calculated Risk,” is coming up in the May 2014 issue, on sale soon.—Janet Hutchings

Years ago I was asked to set up a small mystery publishing company. The goal was to buy both new and reprint material.

The new material turned out to be a pleasure because several of our books in the first few years not only sold well (for us; a small line) but also won awards and even an Edgar nomination. One got a very nice Hollywood sale.

The ongoing problem was the reprints. Though my first love was science fiction, I’d always read crime novels, especially from the Gold Medal school. And I read across the field as well, everybody from Erle Stanley Gardner to Charlotte Armstrong to Craig Rice.

I bought seven or eight reprints and they tanked. Tanked.

I had made an assumption that general mystery readers would enjoy reading past masters. I learned later that a good number of them would, but that no ad budget for the revivals and no reviews doomed us.

Fortunately, times have changed and small press and online publishers are if not flourishing at least staying in business. If you sample the wares of the folks below you will find authors from the past well worth discovering. (If I missed anybody I apologize.)

Maybe it’s my age—or the fact that I’m a sentimental fool—but I’m still fascinated by those that brought us to the dance in the first place. One example is Charles Williams. He’s probably the most discussed forgotten hardboiled writer in history. He was a master whose influence can be found in the work of three generations. I once recommended him to a young writer who said he couldn’t get past “all the ’50s talk and attitudes.” By that measure we shouldn’t read anything published before 2006.

If you have any interest in perhaps the finest of the Gold Medal boys (the great publisher of paperback originals) go immediately to Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press e-books (or Open Road Media) where you’ll find many of Williams’ books. Otto did us a great favor. Williams has been out of print for years.

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding is in my top-ten list of all-time finest crime writers. Raymond Chandler called her the best suspense writer of his generation. That wasn’t hyperbole. She began by writing romances but when she needed more money she started writing mysteries unlike any that had come before. Her novels are miasmas of darkness and dread. Holding was able to mix tart social commentary (she was not exactly a fan of the wealthy) with anxiety-attack twists and turns from start to finish. Stark House Press has brought back several of her novels. The Blank Wall is her masterpiece. Chandler raved about it. You will, too.

Dorothy B. Hughes certainly learned from Holding as well. And Margaret Millar obviously read, maybe even studied, Holding’s novels.

I don’t go to mystery conventions. As I said to my friend John Boland a few years ago I just don’t belong in the company of all those great writers. I’m sure that’s moronically neurotic but so be it. The other problem I have is that I fold up in crowds. Five or six people, I’m fine. But crowds…

I mention this because I did go to two science fiction conventions. The first in Cincinnati in 1961, the second in 1984. In my teens I published a fanzine and got to know several fan writers who would go on to become prominent as writers.

The most soon-to-become prominent was Roger Ebert. We went to a Cincinnati convention together when we were twenty or so. While there I heard people young and old, and including several celebrated writers, talking about the past generations of writers we’d all read and esteemed and learned from.

Contrast this with my second sf convention in 1984. Two or three huge stars there and each quite accessible to all their fans. Because of the crowd I stayed in the dealer room savoring all those pricey old pulps and hardcovers and paperbacks. I was looking over a few of the great old Ace Doubles when a husband and wife dressed as Batman and Robin came up to me and said that somebody had told them I was a writer. They’d buy a book of mine if I’d autograph it.

I thought it was strange. There were two dozen prominent writers at the convention (which by the way was five times larger than the one in Cincinnati) while my contributions to sf had been modest at best. I mentioned this to them. The wife said, “Yes, but you write Star Trek books.”

Now several of my friends wrote Star Trek books back then but not me. When I told them this they were disappointed. I told them about the sf novels I had written but they were clearly bored. I asked them who they read in sf. I mentioned Bradbury, Sturgeon, Wyndham, Silverberg. They said none of those. “Old” sf as they called it was boring and besides, all they read was Star Trek.

A few independent mystery booksellers have told me over the years that they see similar readers come into their stores.

When I was editing Mystery Scene back in the eighties and nineties I would sometimes get letters complaining about the number of articles I ran about “old” writers. Now admittedly, whoever called my version of the magazine “Ed Gorman’s fanzine” was right. I edited it strictly for myself. Very unprofessional and why it was never successful. Kate Stine and Brian Skupin have turned it into a true popular, successful magazine with the kind of range and balance it had long needed. Not to mention it now being beautiful to behold.

But the letters I got about not liking the pieces on “old” writers always irritated me. There’s no right or wrong here. This is strictly airing my own prejudices. I know readers who stick strictly to the big sellers. I know readers who stick strictly to one subgenre or another. I know readers who read only two or three writers but dislike the genre in general. No prob.

But for readers who love the genre but have no or little interest in its past . . . again there’s no right or wrong. I just find it disheartening that they don’t want to know where the genre came from. Take Mary Roberts Rinehart. Take Dashiell Hammett. Take Eric Ambler. You can drive straight lines from them to all their descendants today. With each generation there are permutations on the style and tropes of the original. But the lines don’t lie. They were real good writers, those old folks, and well worth reading today.

I’m just grateful that so many small publishers agree with me.

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Tag, You’re It (by Chris Muessig)

Posted on February 12, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Chris Muessig debuted in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in July of 2009 with a tale entitled “Bias.” The story was subsequently selected for that year’s volume of Best American Mystery Stories—one of very few first published works to find its way into that series. Next, the North Carolina State University editor and English teacher penned several stories for our sister publication, AHMM. His return to EQMM, in March/April 2013, was in collaboration with his friend Steve Seder, but I’ll let Chris explain how that came about. Chris and Steve are, of course, following a long tradition of successful collaboration in the mystery genre—Ellery Queen being the most notable example.—Janet Hutchings

Janet makes me an offer I can’t refuse—insidiously forestalling lame excuses by dropping a theme right into my lap like a severed head, or two. Thinking of “Death Match,” the story Steve Seder and I cowrote for EQMM (and one of her choices for the latest Crooked Road anthology), she wonders whether I might consider writing about the process of collaboration.

So what engendered our particular writing partnership? For starters, friendship between my family and The Stomper’s (“Stompin’ Steve” was a handle Mr. Seder used during his wrestling career, another being the evocative “Huck Fleming”) goes back four decades. Our children are like cousins to each other, and sharing vacations with a passel of kids in need of constant amusement (Steve’s a great face painter) was certainly conducive to collaborative habits.

I did specifically tap him as technical advisor years ago for an ill-fated science fiction story in which an alien centauroid divides itself into a decidedly uncoordinated wrestling tag team (one partner brainy, one an ass) in order to infiltrate human society. Though the story never saw print—that wasn’t Steve’s fault—I still hoped one day to co-opt his ring experience and the Felliniesque characters that comprised the troupe he had once led and masterminded (think 8 1/2 or Juliet of the Spirits in the Boston Garden).

After the world’s longest writing apprenticeship ended with several mystery magazine sales, I decided to give it another go. By this time, Steve had worked up some credentials too, graduating from lively improvisations to the more formal role of writer of “The Book,” the running soap-opera that invests wrestling associations, both large and small, with cliff-hanging situations and virulent rivalries that ensure the fans’ arrival at a venue with ripe and festering attitudes—just the kind of audience feedback The Stomper reveled in. As professional storytellers, one of us dwelt in prose, the other in dramatic action: perfect.

My desire to oblige Janet, however, was immediately complicated by the fact that neither Steve nor I could clearly recall the give-and-take involved in the writing of the story (or what we had for lunch yesterday, for that matter). Consequently, I’ve resorted to digging down through layers of archived e-mails, feeling like Brewer, our plainclothesman, faced with shoe boxes full of handwritten receipts stained by who knows what.

Four years ago, Steve had kindly volunteered to ferry me back and forth to rehab (nothing sensational, just post-knee surgery). At the bottom of the PT timetable I e-mailed him, I added: “Remind me Friday to talk about a story idea.”

Apparently, I was about to make a strong pitch to get him on board as cowriter. His reply: “I’ll be there with bells on. Well, maybe not with bells on; that would look stupid and make a lot of noise”—promised an interesting experiment (1) to determine if we two could actually get from the start to the finish and (2) whether it would be a story I would not or could not write alone.

Steve had once told me about some promoters who had been known to enlist thuggish wrestlers to make fractious individuals toe the line. He envisioned a scenario in which this practice goes horribly wrong; moreover, the victim’s bloody demise takes place in the ring, before live TV cameras and an auditorium full of witnesses.

I wanted to use that premise. The protagonist I proposed was a private investigator hired by the victim’s grieving parent when the police investigation finds for accidental death. Our hero is selected not for his skills as a detective but because of a collegiate wrestling background.

We liked the early 1960s for the tale, an era before the wrestling game (and many other aspects of American life) had become a hybrid extravaganza—and before technology had become a character in and of itself. It was to have a black-and-white feel, so to speak (eventually leaning so much toward the noir, I guess, that it earned a Black Mask logo from Janet). The working title was “Death of a Babyface.”

After a couple days of car-talk, the story structure began to fall into place; I thought we were ready for a first draft. The process, I predicted, would take “a few weeks,” which was only partially accurate.

The first of those weeks ticked by slowly as Steve worked up the opening scene, but it was worth the wait. What he presented me with was the key to all that followed, a clever play-by-play description of the fatal match wherein, over the course of six minutes and sixteen seconds, “BF” (the as-yet unchristened babyface) is dealt a horrific and very public beating, every detail articulated vividly by the energetic ring announcer before he cuts adroitly to a commercial. Though still in need of deeper plotting and balance between pedantry and the magical words of the wrestling lexicon (e.g., “flying mare,” “short arm scissors”), we were off and running.

The rest of January involved a search for suitable names for victim and villain and for motives and traits that would trigger the murder—character trumping plot from the get-go. We decided to use a nonspecific geographic locale and to head each scene with a day of the week and hour of the day in a relentless march to the climax.

Steve schooled me in the lingo and culture of the old wrestling groups. We began to research vulnerable anterior arteries in the scalp (with help from my brother the nurse); but most important, I believe, was inserting the presence of the victim’s father into the opening scene. Now the reader watched through the old man’s eyes as the match literally rolled out on an aged, 17-inch, black-and-white Admiral: the doorway to ambiguity.

By this time, my digest-sized mentality figured we were on the way to a nine- or ten-thousand word story; but Steve, assessing a better return on the effort already expended and the rising tide of plot elements and characters, was thinking we should consider a novel, if not a screenplay, if not a long-running cable series. I said I didn’t have those kinds of connections, so he began to be very conscious about word counts.

February was a blizzard of activity beginning with an abrupt change: our P.I. was gone, replaced by a nondescript plainclothesman named Al Brewer, a war-buddy of the victim’s father. I forget how, but Steve had dissuaded me from using the undercover wrestler; and we replaced him with a rather nonaggressive cop, whose lack of success becomes a great enabler of the raw justice meted out by the father.

Scene after scene, almost one per day, appeared over the next three weeks. We worked tag-team fashion; each scene handed off to the other for appropriate revising (Steve learned to his dismay what a revisionist I am), critiquing, and bridging to the next. The investigation definitely worked better as collaboration between the emotionally involved insider and the professionally distanced outsider, and we thought the layered points-of-view caught the play of uncertainty vs. raw conviction that we were going for. The last major fix was Steve’s: he was pretty adamant about renaming the story “Death Match.”

The finished manuscript went out sometime in March; the rejection slip came back in early September—complimentary, but couched in terms that made it clear we needed to find another market. Steve was speechless in that moment; and I took advantage of the uncharacteristic pause and told him that, heck, we’d try Ellery Queen next (adding in an undertone that we’d probably have to trim the story even more for Janet Hutchings). He heard that remark, and it restored his power of speech.

I spent the next month tailoring the story in a way that I thought would work for Janet—adding a new scene as well as relocating what was formerly our opening segment and turning it into a secondhand account that added to the air of unreliability. Then I trimmed the new manuscript by 500 words to get it under 10k.

Steve looked it over and had some further ideas about making the jargon more accessible, reordering scenes, and verifying some technical details. I did another rewrite based on his observations, and the manuscript went out in December.

Three months later we heard from our third collaborator, who had been mulling over “Death Match” for several weeks. Janet liked it, but there was a section in the middle that was somehow off for her. She thought the announcer’s play-by-play accompanying the videotape seemed unnatural, more a commentary for an audience that couldn’t see what was going on, like radio listeners rather than TV viewers. If we could rework that section, however, she would buy the story.

The Stomper took some exception to our editor’s observations, but capitulated with, “Obviously we gotta do what we gotta do,” which was two weeks of retooling the cited scene and the similar broadcast that closes the story. Off it went; and after the Edgar Awards/Malice Convention hiatus, we at last learned we had made a sale.

P.S. Over a year later, as Janet was prepping the edition the story appeared in, she came back with one more question having to do with our use of a certain inside term. I deferred to Steve, of course; and we cleared the issue up with some firm assurances and some final word crafting. Our author’s copies showed up almost two years to the day since the collaboration had officially begun. Janet has expressed interest in another Brewer story, but it’s one I don’t think I can write alone. Are you reading this, Stomper?

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VALENTINE’S DAY DIGITAL-EDITION SALE

Posted on February 11, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen

EQMM Magzter V-Day AdTreat yourself or someone you love this Valentine’s Day with 40% off a one-year digital subscription, from now through February 15th from Magzter.

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“The Kids Are All Right” (by Steve Hockensmith)

Posted on February 5, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
For the past dozen years, readers of EQMM have been treated, at fairly regular intervals, to the witty tales of Steve Hockensmith, whose subjects have ranged from the Old West to Christmas satire to darker urban crime. Steve is the author of six books set in the Old West, starring Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer, his answer to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.  He also penned the New York Times bestselling prequel and sequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. More recently, he’s entered the field of children’s mysteries. In fact, he has a new book out today. Titled Nick and Tesla’s Robot Army Rampage: A Mystery With Hoverbots, Bristle Bots, and Other Robots You Can Build Yourself (Quirk Books), it’s described by Kirkus Reviews as “Another fast-paced mystery and treat for technophiles.” Like all effective humorists, Steve has his hand on the pulse of our culture—especially Internet culture!—Janet Hutchings

Thanks to the Internet, it’s never been easier to be bummed.

Want to convince yourself that the end is nigh? Just Google “climate change,” “doomsday clock,” or “extinction event”—take your pick! A mere .045 seconds later, you’ll have all the reason you need to abandon all hope.

Want to think the end of the human race might not necessarily be such a bad thing? Choose an online news story at random and start reading the comments. Around the 1,000th exchange of the phrases “libtard” and “Repugnican,” you’ll be praying for an asteroid to smash into the planet.

Want to smother that last little shred of faith in humanity that’s still hiding in your heart? Just click here and try not to throw yourself off a bridge 104 minutes later.

Oh, I know what’ll cheer me up, I hear you say, loyal Ellery Queen reader. A good mystery! You know—a story about someone’s violent death. That’ll chase the blues away!

Well, the Internet’s got a bummer for you, too.

You’re a dinosaur.

Here are some more Google searches for you. “Decline in literacy.” “Americans buying fewer books.” “Children reading less.”

In fact, forget the Googling. Just wait a bit, and the bad news will come to you. Because it seems like someone releases the results of a new, depressing survey of contemporary reading habits about once a week.

Here’s the latest. The gist: According to a Pew Research Center poll, the number of American adults who hadn’t read a single, solitary book in the preceding 12 months was at an all-time high. Twenty-three percent of respondents hadn’t picked up so much as a My Little Pony graphic novel in a whole year!

Now you might say, “The Pew Research Center? I bet their research stinks! HA!”

If you do say this, your comedic talents might best be put to use writing My Little Pony graphic novels. Plus, all I have to do to refute you is trot out recent stats from a source with an unfunny name. Like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, say. Try to work that one into a pun, wisenheimer.

According to the Organization for Economic Yawn Yada Yada, it’s not just our interest in reading that’s declining. It’s our ability. Reading proficiency is falling for most Americans.

Diagnosis: When it comes to reading, we’re getting both lazier and dumber.

Prognosis: DOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!

Or not.

There’s a place we can go for insights that’s not the Internet. You might have heard of it. It’s called The Real World.

No, I’m not talking about the MTV show. The only insight to be found there is “Geez—reality TV has always been horrible, hasn’t it?”

I’m talking about the real Real World. The one writers like me only enter when it’s time to take a break from our computers and get something for lunch.

Or promote a book. That’s what I was doing last month when I went to my daughter’s school to do a talk about Nick and Tesla’s High-Voltage Danger Lab, the new middle-grade mystery I co-wrote with educator and TV personality Science Bob Pflugfelder. (“Science Bob” isn’t his given name, of course. That’s just a nickname. His real name is Astrophysics Robert Pflugfelder.)

Our publisher, Quirk Books, had given me a box of copies, and originally I just meant to drop by and hand them out to the kids in my daughter’s fifth-grade class. But then the teacher asked if I’d do a presentation for the whole grade, and I said, “You bet!” (Because saying “Screw that!” to your daughter’s teacher is never a good idea.)

So there I was standing in front of 100 or so ten-year-olds who were super-jazzed to be getting a break from the daily routine. And here’s the thing. When they found out I was there to talk about a book, they stayed jazzed. Then I started my talk with this question:

“How many of you like mysteries?”

Every hand but one went up.

“How many of you like science?”

Every hand but one went up.

“How many of you like building things?”

Every hand but one went up.

“How many of you like fun?”

Every hand but one went up.

(Yes, there was a girl who didn’t like mysteries or science or building things or fun.)

“Great!” I said. “Because the book I’m here to talk about is a mystery with lots of science and building things and fun.”

And I launched into my spiel about how the book’s young heroes use their gizmo-building skills to catch crooks, and blueprints and directions are included so readers can make the gadgets themselves, and being a detective is a lot like using the scientific method to prove or disprove a hypothesis. (I was doing a sales pitch on school property, remember, so I needed to make it sound educational somehow.)

And you know what? They didn’t get bored. They didn’t get antsy. They didn’t start whispering and passing notes and picking their noses. They were into it.

We did a Q&A when my little speech was done, and those kids could have fired questions at me all day. And not just the questions you’d expect, like “Where do you get your ideas?” and “How did you become a writer?” They wanted to know about the projects and the characters and the upcoming sequels. One little guy even asked me what percentage I get of each sale, and when I told him he said, “That’s not very good.” I’m guessing in about 25 years he’ll have his own literary agency.

Of course, one of the questions was, “Where can I get the book?”

“Oh, Books Inc. [our local bookstore], online, wherever they sell books,” I said.

Because I only had enough copies for my daughter’s class, you see. And when we went back to her classroom after my talk and I opened up that box and started pulling out freebies . . . pandemonium! It was a feeding frenzy frantic enough for Shark Week.

Now you might say freebies are freebies. The kids would’ve gone nuts if I’d been handing out Geritol and moist toilettes. But I don’t think so, because I’d seen their eyes light up as I talked about the book. I’d seen their enthusiasm as they threw their hands in the air with a “Pick me! Pick me!” zeal worthy of Arnold Horshack. I’d heard their gasps and seen their grins when I said that the next Nick and Tesla book was about robots . . . and, yes, there’d be directions for building your own. And the next day—the very next day!—my daughter brought home two notes from classmates that said the same thing.

Thank you for the book. I loved it.

Is all this a testament to my awesome powers of persuasion and magnetic, cult-ready personality? Nope. It’s a testament to our kids.

Make science and reading fun—with a double dose of mystery and humor, say—and they will put down their iPads and pick up a book. Which bodes well for the future of our nation, I think. There are still going to be readers here, because there are still going to be smart, curious people.

So, books? Not going away.

The mystery genre? Not going away.

Mystery short stories? Well . . .

I might still be a little worried about that one. Here’s hoping whoever writes the next column convinces me that the future’s so bright we’ll have to wear shades (and not because the ozone layer’s gone).

Hey—I can’t be the only one with something optimistic to say on the Internet.

Posted in Adventure, Books, Business, Characters, Fiction, Guest, Publishing, Readers, Story | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments