Ink-Stained Wretches

The Million Dollar Question and A Goodbye

If mystery/crime is still one of the top selling genres for books, why are so many mystery magazines and publishers having such a hard time surviving compared to speculative fiction markets? The demise of Down & Out Books this month, coming on the heels of other closures, sales, and consolidations, has me thinking about the continued shrinkage of the mystery market and about what really drives sales for a particular genre. (With Down & Out’s closure, two of my stories that were awaiting publication need new publishers.)

Every couple of months, someone in the short mystery community asks how to sell more crime fiction short stories to the reading public. Someone else always answers that short stories don’t sell well because they are considered literary fiction, a category which sells far less than any other form of fiction. Others say that it’s simply a well-known fact that people don’t read short stories because they prefer novels and series.

Why assume short fiction is considered “literary” when short science fiction and short fantasy don’t seem to have problems selling? Why assume few people read short fiction when the existence of so many successful short speculative fiction markets seems to belie that supposition?

Go to any writers’ submission information site, Submission Grinder, Chill Subs, etc., and you will find far more markets for short speculative fiction (science fiction / fantasy / some horror) than you will for short mystery / thriller / suspense. The markets for short speculative fiction pay their authors far better than the crime genres, too. Why do they pay more? Because they have the sales numbers to support the pay.

In the short mystery fiction community, authors are frequently exhorted to buy more anthologies and subscribe to more magazines to support our community so that it doesn’t vanish. But if authors are the only audience, something is seriously wrong. Are dancers or actors told to buy tickets to their own theatrical performances so the show doesn’t close? Are artists urged to purchase artwork to prevent galleries from failing? Are musicians told to buy as many songs and albums as possible to help keep the music industry afloat? No. In all those creative-arts-based industries, business leaders recognize that it takes more than just the creators to support the industry. It would be ludicrous to believe that the creators alone could support an industry. Ergo, no amount of chiding of short mystery authors is going to improve sales numbers. It takes fans to support a genre.

So why aren’t crime and mystery fans buying short fiction while sci-fi and fantasy readers are? Are we marketing in the wrong places? Are we failing to draw in younger readers who then grow up to be buyers and subscribers? Maybe. But I think the situation is more complex than that. The mystery genre had a heyday, a golden age when it was all the rage in the early to mid-1900s. Once upon a time, Ellery Queen was a television series. So was Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Today, we have Michael Connelly’s many works on streaming services. Craig Johnson’s Longmire and Tony (and Anne) Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee did well on screen, too. Only Murders in the Building has made a splash. The Enola Holmes movies are popular. People love the Brit Box mystery offerings. But the mystery genre offerings for the last three or four decades have been a drop in the bucket compared to the speculative fiction options available in the larger world of entertainment.

Today’s science fiction and fantasy stories are features of computer games and blockbuster movies. A glance at market offerings confirms that some mystery computer games exist, but very few are pure mystery. Most computer games with mystery plots are set on other planets, in other galaxies, in the future, or have other speculative elements.

Is there a connection between the current abundance of speculative fiction entertainment in games and movies and the thriving speculative short fiction market? Probably. Speculative fiction has been central to the cultural zeitgeist for several decades now, the same decades in which the mystery genre markets have been slowly vanishing.

What short mystery fiction really needs is a new golden age of mystery with a strong resurgence in the crime genre on screens. Until then, short mystery fiction writers will have to find other ways to reach readers. Which means we have to try the smaller-scale techniques and the more personal methods to increase our fanbase.

Some authors are trying book trailers on TikTok, YouTube videos, and social media posts in the hope of going “viral.” This month, I tried an even more direct approach to spread the word about short mystery fiction to youth. I spoke to a class at the local high school about how to revise short stories. I brought with me a half a dozen crime fiction anthologies and a handful of magazines and displayed them for the students. I told them to read, read, read. I recommended that they seek the “best of” anthologies for their genres. I recommended that they subscribe to magazines and ezine.

Will any of those kids read a crime fiction anthology or buy a crime fiction magazine subscription? I have no idea. However, I do know that we need to stop blaming authors for not buying enough magazine subscriptions to keep a magazine afloat or enough books to keep a small publisher from going bankrupt.

And now, a farewell. The Ink-Stained Wretches blog is closing, too. I will be moving over to post on the Austin Mystery Writers blog. All of the other members of this blog, except me, are already there. Look for my next post over at Austin Mystery Writers.

Thanks for reading.

Noreen

Fall Comes to Paris

By Helen Currie Foster

Travel thoughts.

It’s fall in Paris. The rows of chestnuts flanking the Seine are turning golden-brown; gingko trees sport their distinctive yellow leaves, preparing to fling down, on one afternoon they keep secret, all their leaves at once.

Fall fashion? Long hair for women, slim tan trench coats at mid-calf, midi-length swishy skirts. Anyone can wear jeans and sneakers (male, female, old, young) with a blazer-cut jacket. In the markets, apples from the Garonne (Pixie Pommes!), quantities of mushrooms, cashmere scarves. Kids scurry to school at eight while their older siblings stride down Rue de l’Universite toward Science Po.

I’m forever grateful to Madame, our wondrous French teacher at McCallum High in Austin. On the first trip to Paris over fifty years ago, fresh off the early train, my husband and I stopped at a café where I opened my mouth in fear and trembling to order in French—deux cafes et deux croissants.

To my shock the proprietor didn’t blink. And the result was magic—our first taste of croissant.

Long past high school I still say “Merci, Madame!” A Parisienne, she had (I believe) a PhD. She maintained perfect class discipline—even with smarty seniors. When anyone asks, how did you learn French? I say, “Madame! She made us sing songs!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96JRl7bER3g&list=RD96JRl7bER3g&start_radio=1

As to “à la Claire Fontaine” I suspect she omitted the first two verses—at least I don’t remember singing about bathing beneath a tree! But this song and the rest we still remember, decades later.

Sur le Pont d’Avignon…Frère Jacques…Alouette, gentille alouette, je te plumerai (le nez, le cou, et la tete, et le dos, etc.). At Christmas, Il est né, le divin enfant. Twisting your tongue around the pretty French words leaves you with life skills.

(She didn’t teach us La Marseillaise. But I still get chills when, in Casablanca, Victor Laszlo leads the crowd at Rick’s in singing it.)

And another beloved teacher taught both Latin and English. She could order grown seniors to race to the blackboard to diagram sentences, and insisted we use proper punctuation.

What was it about those favorite teachers? They made us learn. They brooked no foolishness. They could tell when we faked preparation. They thrust us into difficult novels, demanding paintings, complex unfamiliar music. Hitherto hidden histories. Concepts we hadn’t invented or come upon by ourselves.

Maybe we did learn. Maybe—that learning is worthwhile.

Yesterday we visited La Fondation Louis Vuitton to visit what architect Frank Gehry dreamed of as an iceberg with sails.

Curves, lines, water, wood… magical in their power.

The building invites you to wander and wonder. What imagination, what creativity, what a vision! I listened to the rippling water traveling down the slope—the sound took over. Couldn’t hear traffic, or talking. Just the water–in the middle of a vast city. Being there takes you back to Roman stonework (rectangles, arches, roads in straight lines), and then to the power of curved sails, moved by wind and water. People working there seemed quietly confident that visitors should and would be (but not literally) blown away.

READING: I’m very much enjoying Susan Wittig Albert’s Thyme, Place & Story website where she is now serializing the first China Bayles book–A Bitter Taste of Garlic. Many of us are fans of this series, and would be delighted to visit China’s herb shop in a town not far from Austin…!

I just finished Mick Herron’s Down Cemetery Road. I found it much scarier than the Slow Horses novels…but still wanted to know the ending. It was published over 20 years ago and apparently will be streaming in October.

On the flight over I was reading Graham Robb’s France, including some tales of Paris that were scarier than Down Cemetery Road. Like being the butt of your buddies’ jokes and winding up as a prisoner in Fenestrelle, a political prison during the Napoleonic era. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forteresse_de_Fenestrelle

Meanwhile, at home, Ghost Justice is now out! Book 10 in my Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series set in the Hill Country. Available at BookPeople on Lamar Blvd. in Austin https://bookpeople.com/ and on Amazon. https://amzn.to/4pk8WQO

Hope you’ll enjoy it!

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series north of Dripping Springs, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and prehistory and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com.

HIDDEN GEMS OF HISTORY AND THE STORIES THEY INSPIRE

By F. Della Notte

Ideas for stories are often triggered by research into family members, alive or deceased, strangers and their stories and the histories of different cities, countries, and states. The information may never appear in a book, but it gives the writer a more profound sense of historical events that color the author’s senses. And of course, the older the city, town, or state, the deeper the hidden gems that may be found.

My short story, “The Runaway Pin Boy,” was inspired by my immigrant uncle, circa 1926, who ran away from home and worked as a pin boy in the New York City Bowery until his father (my grandfather) found him. What was life like for pin boys, often called pin monkeys? The research took me from the Bowery in New York City, where it began, to the development of the sport and bowling alleys across the nation.

Then, of course, there was the period of prohibition, another explosive, compelling time in history, giving birth to the private, secret clubs called speakeasies. Lest we think speakeasies were exclusively in big cities like New York, Austin, Texas, had its own. Some are still in operation, such as the well-known Prohibition ATX on Anderson Mill Road, which is jazzy and more modern-looking than its forerunner. The Midnight Cowboy, an old brothel masquerading as a massage parlor, is now one of the oldest speakeasies in Austin.

The unlikely combination of a ballet dancer, an old Victorian house in Austin, and the myth of Confederate gold inspired much of Two Wolves Dancing. None of the American Civil War’s hidden treasures, however, have been found or confirmed to exist, including the gold Jefferson Davis supposedly hid when fleeing the Union in 1863. There is still an ongoing dispute about what happened to gold bars that vanished near Dents Run, Pennsylvania, on their way to the U.S. Mint. There is one find that may keep treasure hunting for Confederate gold alive for generations to come: The Great Kentucky Hoard. In 2023, an anonymous person using a metal detector discovered 700 Civil War-era gold coins buried in a cornfield in Kentucky. The hoard was confirmed and the coins authenticated by numismatic authorities.

As a native New Yorker who used the New York City subway system extensively, it was the stories of the hidden subway tunnels that triggered my imagination once again. While a myth of an immense hidden treasure from the turn of the 20th century does not exist in the subways of New York, there is one gem: The Subway Garnet.

In 1885, while excavating for a sewer line beneath West 35th Street, a worker dug up a massive, red-brown garnet weighing almost 10 pounds. Initially, the rock was used as a doorstop by the Department of Public Works until its identity and its value were eventually recognized by a geologist. Now, it is housed at the American Museum of Natural History.

The secrets, legends, and urban myths of the subway system are old and many. There’s the story of the pneumatic subway, constructed in the 1860s by inventor Alfred Ely Beach, beneath Broadway. Eventually, the project was abandoned and the entrance sealed. Decades later, when building the modern subway, excavators broke through and found the abandoned railcar.

The abandoned City Hall station, opened in 1904, was considered the crown jewel of the first subway line. It was closed in 1945 due to its sharp curve and low ridership, but myths of its secrets persist. Today, riders on the Number 6 train can sometimes catch a glimpse of the ornate station as the train turns around. Then there’s Track 61.

Now abandoned, Track 61 lies beneath Grand Central Terminal, running to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s custom five-car train platformed there, allowing him to enter and exit the hotel discreetly, keeping his paralysis out of public view.

And what would Urban legends and myths be without the Mole People: Dwellers who created shantytowns in abandoned tunnels. And ghost stories are a must, and so are ghost trains. Rumors persist of a phantom train that can sometimes be seen in the Astor Place station. One theory suggests the ghost train is the private car, called the Mineola, of August Belmont Jr., the financier of the first subway line, who used it to transport guests to his racetrack. Ghostly pets also have their place in the underground. Due to its connection with FDR and his dog, Fala, legends claim that the terrier’s ghost still haunts Track 61, where the dog used to accompany its master.

And so with all of these histories, stories, and myths in a nation that hasn’t been in existence for quite 250 years, how much more can we imagine from ancient empires?

In book four of the Housekeeper Mystery Series, Mrs. B., and her boss, Father Melvyn decide to take a group to Rome Italy, to study the lives of the early Roman Christians, and find themselves in the middle of a theft and murder surrounding the discovery of an ancient cross that might have belonged to Miltiades, the first bishop of Rome, in the 4th century, when Christianity was illegal and punishable by death. The legend: a special cross, was made by Emperor Constantine, in 312 A.D. after his victory at the Milvian Bridge. He had a vision of the symbol of the cross, accompanied by the words, “In this sign you will conquer,” and he did. This was the turning point for Christianity, and the beginning of the myth that a gold cross studded with gems was gifted to Miltiades, to be passed down to each succeeding prelate. But the cross disappeared and didn’t resurface in Rome until Mrs. B. and Father Melvyn arrived. The question is, why, and who would kill for this cross?

To find the answers, watch for Murder in the Cat’s Eye coming by the end of 2025.

Meanwhile, happy historical explorations and happy reading.

Naming Characters: Steve Dauchy MacCaskill

I’m working on a mystery novel—I’ve been working on it for years, but am now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel—and am faced with dilemmas too numerous to whine about in only one post, so I’ll move along.

I will instead write about the one pleasure of the writing life: creating and naming characters.

My novel is set in a little town very like my own hometown. I don’t base my plot on real events, and I don’t use real people as characters—with one exception: Steve Dauchy.

Note: One of my readers, Dr. Cullen Dauchy, knows more about Steve than I do, especially about his early life, and I hope he’ll feel free to correct any errors.

Steve Dauchy was a career blood donor at Katy Veterinary Clinic in Katy, Texas. On retirement he moved to Fentress, where he lived with his veterinarian-owner’s parents, Joe and Norma Dauchy. Joe and Norma lived next door to me; in local terms, next door meant that my house was on one corner, then there was a half-acre “patch” of pecan and peach trees and grass and weeds, then a street, and then on the next corner, the Dauchy yard and their house. The point being that when Steve visited me, he didn’t just stroll across a driveway.

Joe was my dad’s first cousin, so I guess that makes Steve and me second cousins. I have a lot of cousins on that side of the family, although most are human.

Steve is a family name, with a story behind it. As I understand it, back in the ’20s or ’30s, my Great-uncle Cull (Joseph Cullen Dauchy, Sr.), enjoyed listening to a radio program about a Greek character who frequently spoke of “my cat Steve and her little cattens.” Uncle Cull was so amused by the phrase that he named a cat—probably one of the barn cats—Steve. And for the next forty or so years, he always had a cat named Steve.

*Uncle Cull and Aunt Myrtle Dauchy’s house, home of the first Steves*

So when the clinic cat became part of the Uncle Cull’s son and daughter-in-law’s family, he became the latest in a long line of Steves.

How to describe Steve? He was a fine figure of a cat: a big tabby, deep orange, with an expression of perpetual boredom. His reaction to nearly everything translated as, “Meh.” I’ve heard that’s common among clinic cats.

Once when Steve was standing on my front porch, the neighbor’s Great Dane got loose and charged over. I was frantic, shouting at the dog, shouting at Steve. But when the dog hit the porch, Steve just looked up at him. Dog turned around and trotted home.

Some would say Steve was brave, and I’m sure he was. But I believe his grace under pressure had their roots elsewhere.

First, he had experience. He knew dogs. In his former employment, he’d observed the breed: big, little, yappy, whining, growling, howling, cringing, confined to carriers, restrained by leashes, sporting harnesses and rhinestone collars, hair wild and matted, sculpted ‘dos and toenails glistening pink from the OPI Neon Collection. He’d seen them all. He was not impressed.

Facing down a Great Dane, however, took more than experience. There was something in Steve’s character, an inborn trait that marked him for greatness: his overarching sense of entitlement. He was never in the wrong place at the wrong time. My porch was his porch. The world was his sardine.

Except for the kitchen counter. Steve thought kitchen counters were for sleeping, but Joe and Norma’s maid didn’t. Consequently, he stayed outside a lot. He took ostracism in stride and used his freedom to range far and wide. Far and wide meant my yard.

At that time I had three indoor cats—Christabel, Chloe, and Alice B. Toeclaws—and a raft of outdoor cats. The outdoor cats started as strays, but I made the mistake of naming them, which meant I had to feed them, which meant they were mine. Chief among them was Bunny, a black cat who had arrived as a teenager with his gray-tabby mother, Edith.

One day Bunny, Edith, and I were out picking up pecans when Steve wandered over to pay his respects, or, more likely, to allow us to pay our respects to him. Bunny perked up, put on his dangerous expression, and walked out to meet the interloper. It was like watching the opening face-off in Gunsmoke.

But instead of scrapping, they stopped and sat down, face to face, only inches apart. Each raised his right paw above his head and held it there a moment. Next, simultaneously, they bopped each other on the top of the head about ten times. Then they toppled over onto their sides, got up, and walked away.

That happened every time they met. Maybe it was just a cat thing, a neighborly greeting, something like a Masonic handshake. But I’ve wondered if it might have had religious significance. Bunny was a Presbyterian, and Steve was a Methodist, and both had strong Baptist roots, and although none of those denominations is big on ritual, who knows what a feline sect might entail?

Steve had a Macavity-like talent for making himself invisible. Occasionally when I opened my front door, he slipped past and hid in a chair at the dining room table, veiled by the tablecloth. When he was ready to leave, he would hunt me down—Surprise!—and lead me to the door. Once, during an extended stay, he used the litter box. Christabel, Chloe, and Alice B. Toeclaws were not amused.

*Distance Steve traveled between his house and mine. His house is way over there behind the trees.*

Invisibility could work against him, though. Backing out of the driveway one morning, I saw in the rearview mirror a flash streaking across the yard. I got out and looked around but found nothing and so decided I’d imagined it. When I got home from work, I made a thorough search and located Steve under my house, just out of reach. I called, coaxed, cajoled. He stared. It was clear: he’d been behind the car when I backed out, I’d hit him, and he was either too hurt to move or too disgusted to give me the time of day.

It took a long time and a can of sardines to get him out. I delivered him to the veterinarian in Lockhart; she advised leaving him for observation. A couple of days later, I picked him up. Everything was in working order, she said, cracked pelvis, nothing to do but let him get over it.

“Ordinarily,” said the vet, “I would have examined him and sent him home with you the first day. I could tell he was okay. But you told me his owner’s son is a vet, and I was afraid I’d get it wrong.”

Although he was an indoor-outdoor cat, Steve managed plenty of indoor time at his own house, too, especially in winter, and when the maid wasn’t there. One cold day, the family smelled something burning. They found Steve snoozing atop the propane space heater in the kitchen. His tail hung down the side, in front of the vent. The burning smell was the hair on his tail singeing. They moved him to a safer location. I presume he woke up during relocation.

At night, he had his own bedroom, a little garden shed in the back yard. He slept on the seat of the lawnmower, snuggled down on a cushion. Except when he didn’t.

One extremely cold night, I was piled up in bed under an extra blanket and three cats. About two a.m., I woke up to turn over—sleeping under three cats requires you to wake up to turn over—and in the process, reached down and touched one of the cats. It was not my cat.

I cannot describe the wave of fear that swept over me. It sounds ridiculous now, but finding myself in the dark with an unidentified beast, and unable to jump and run without first extricating myself from bedding and forty pounds of cat—I lay there paralyzed.

Unnecessarily, of course. The extra cat was Steve. He’s sneaked in and, considering the weather forecast, decided that sleeping with a human and three other cats in a bed would be superior to hunkering down on a lawnmower.

Steve’s full name was, of course, Steve Dauchy. In my book, he will be Steve MacCaskill. MacCaskill was the name of a family who lived next door to my Aunt Bettie and Uncle Maurice. Their children were friends of my father and his brothers and their many cousins. They were a happy family.

“My family had to plan everything,” my dad’s cousin Lucyle Dauchy Meadows (Steve’s aunt) told me, “but the MacCaskills were spontaneous. If they decided they wanted to go to a movie, they just got into the car and went to a movie.” When Lucyle and the other girls helped their friend Mary Burns MacCaskill tidy her room before the Home Demonstration Agent came to examine it, one of the first things they did was to remove the alligator from the bathtub.

I heard so many delightful stories about the MacCaskill family that I decided they were too good to be true. Then, at Aunt Bettie’s 100th birthday party, my mother introduced me to Mary Burns MacCaskill, who had traveled from Ohio for the party.

So as an homage to that family, I’ve named my main character Molly MacCaskill. And when choosing a pet for Molly, I couldn’t choose a finer beast than Steve.

Note: Cullen Dauchy no longer owns Katy Veterinary Clinic, but he did when Steve worked there, and the clinic was Steve’s first home, so I’m leaving the link.

And I’m so glad the Home Demonstration agent didn’t inspect bedrooms when I was a girl. I didn’t have an alligator, but she might have thought I had something worse.

***

This post first appeared in Ink-Stained Wretches in 2021.

***

Kathy Waller blogs at Telling the Truth, Mainly. She has published short stories, and a novella co-written with Manning Wolfe. She is perpetually working on a novel.

Bouchercon and Imposter Syndrome

Bouchercon is what the mystery community calls the World Mystery Convention. When I registered to attend my first Bouchercon in 2019, I didn’t place myself on the list of authors willing to be on a panel to discuss writing in front of attendees. I felt like I was a rank beginner who needed to attend the conference to learn, not to teach anybody anything. In spite of receiving encouragement to sign up for a panel from a regular conference attendee, I didn’t feel qualified.

At that time, I’d had one short story traditionally published and had self-published four novels and a bunch of short stories. That one traditionally published story, entitled “A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy,” had appeared in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact in 2012 and came in third in the 2013 Analog Readers Poll. In 2019, I was also the chapter president for Sisters in Crime: Heart of Texas Chapter after previously serving two years as vice-president. While I volunteered at the 2019 Bouchercon to sit and greet people at the Sisters in Crime table and organized meetups for my chapter members, I felt discussion panels were for distinguished writers with long lists of publications, not me. Who was I to sit on a panel?

I arrived at Bouchercon in Dallas and eagerly set out to attend discussion panels, and quickly realized that I’d under-rated myself. In several of the panels I attended, men were up on the dais, discussing their one and only short story publication. Those men felt confident enough with a single publication to place themselves on the list for a panel assignment. And that one story had indeed qualified them to discuss their writing.

“Imposter Phenomenon” was first described in high-achieving women by two female psychologists in 1978. They discovered that despite receiving recognition, accolades, or achieving success in their fields, many high-achieving women suffered from severe self-doubt, feeling that they didn’t deserve their success. Later studies found the phenomenon doesn’t discriminate, striking both men and women.

Last week, I attended Bouchercon 2025 in New Orleans, my second time to attend the world mystery conference. I learned my lesson in 2019 and placed myself on the list to be on a panel when I registered. And I was assigned to a panel discussing how authors create their authorial voices. I arrived in the assigned room to discover that I’d been placed on a panel with two English professors, a magistrate judge, and an art expert who were all mystery writers, with another mystery writer as the moderator. The line-up could have been intimidating. But I held my own and had as much intelligent information to offer about the topic as everyone else.

During the conference, I witnessed someone else suffering from “Imposter Syndrome.” I attended the Anthony Awards Ceremony and found myself seated at a banquet table with another author and her husband. The author was nominated for the Anthony Award. When an organizer of the event announced that each nominee and a guest or two of their choice should come to the front of the room to sit at tables reserved especially for them, the nominee at my table told her husband that she didn’t feel like she should go. I told her that she was nominated and deserved to be at the front. She refused to move, too self-effacing to feel that she belonged, even though she’d been nominated. The look on her face said that she doubted she would win, so she didn’t belong with those at the front closest to the stage.

When the ceremony reached my table-mate’s category, her husband began to record video on his phone. He had more faith in his wife than she had in herself. The look on her face when her name was called as the winner of the Anthony in her category was sheer surprise. She rose and went to accept her reward, no speech in hand, because she never expected to win. She managed to say a few words, thanking people while trembling slightly, and returned to our table, still in shock.

I congratulated her and told her that she deserved the award. She gave me a doubtful smile. I hope after she processes her win, she will realize that she did belong at the front of the room. I hope that she learns to accept that she is worthy of her own success.

I’ve met and heard of writers who do beautiful work, but are too filled with self-doubt to submit the work for publication or to publish it themselves. Their stories remain hidden in drawers and on hard drives. I’ve read novels that barely rose above average, but still were published. The difference in an average story that was published and a great story that was hidden away is frequently found in the confidence of the author in their own work.

What many of those self-doubting writers don’t know is how welcoming the mystery community is. The mystery community welcomes everyone at Bouchercon. By virtue of your attendance, you belong. Strangers will walk up and start conversations with you. Year round, organizations such as the Crime Writers of Color, Sisters in Crime, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society welcome aspiring writers and writers at every level of their careers, providing support and information to help them succeed.

If you are a writer, aspiring or published, of any genre, join a group and meet other writers. You belong!

*****

N. M. Cedeño is a short story writer and novelist living in Texas. She is active in Sisters in Crime- Heart of Texas Chapter and is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Find out more at nmcedeno.com.

See You…in September!

by Helen Currie Foster

It’s September 1. New school year! New shoes, after a hot barefoot summer! New outfit, for the first day of school! And then––new classes! New subjects, new teachers, new tools! New friends! New lockers, new classrooms, new hallways…. New season—new teammates, new coach, new plays.

Remember your first day back at school? Back to college, back to university? Do you remember the excitement, the nervousness, the anticipation?

Today is Labor Day. And now there will be apples, apple pie and apple crisp. There will be chrysanthemums, spilling out of baskets. Even in central Texas, leaves will change color—as Maxwell Anderson’s lyrics have it, “When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame.” Here in the Hill Country, sumac and Spanish oak turn red, sweet gum turns yellow. No, not the glory of the maples, but a change in the landscape. Because finally, after the dog days of summer, that’s what September brings: something new.

It’s time to pull up the tired summer flowers and thank them for their service. Time to dig some holes and plant new trees, and order some bulbs. I’ll be planting the Mexican plum seedlings a friend gave me, and ordering narcissus bulbs for indoor blooming.

Then the Hill Country brings its own fall excitement. Dove season began today and a down-the-road neighbor, disturbed by shotgun pellets falling on her roof, had to call the sheriff, and have officers explain to a clueless (thoughtless? lawless?) neighbor that it’s contrary to law to allow your ammunition to cross your own fence line. Also unneighborly. But hmm, that could find its way into a future book plot….

Our Hill Country holds surprises. One is the way water hides in the Hill Country—down in secret seeps and creeks, around curves and hollows. And what odd creatures live out here! For example, this fall we’ve seen again the rare and secretive rock squirrel.

(We’ve seen a solitary rock squirrel only once every few years.) We’ve heard the great horned owls that call at night, up and down the creek, and the herons who call, flying down the valley. The buzzards drone, annoyingly, from the tops of telephone poles. We treasure glimpses of the shy, gorgeous painted buntings who appear briefly at the bird feeder, then flit away. Porcupines visit. Roadrunners dart across the road.

And finally the dog days are over. (This year they were July 3-August 11, and these hot sultry days have borne their name from ancient times supposedly because it’s when Sirius, the Dog Star that accompanies Orion, rises with the sun.) https://www.almanac.com/content/what-are-dog-days-summer But during the dog days I took refuge at night reading two mystery series that were new to me, by British author Peter Grainger: the DC Smith Investigation series and the Kings Lake Investigation. http://bit.ly/4gmPsad

These wry British procedurals are set on the coast of Norfolk, providing a cool and rainy ocean-side backdrop for the appealing characters. At least I could read about rain and cool breezes. But the books offered not only a respite from ridiculous heat, but a welcome respite from writing. For the last few weeks I’ve been finishing Ghost Justice—Book 10 in my Alice MacDonald Mystery Series, set here in the Texas Hill Country. For me that process inescapably includes waking in the wee hours with my mind on plot additions and subtractions, dialogue, characters. For just such moments—when the characters wake me up at night voicing their further demands (yes, they come alive!)—I find mysteries provide absorbing distraction.

Watch for Ghost Justice this week!

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited the past keeps crashing the party. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com.

THE FELINE WITCHING HOUR

Francine Paino, a.k.a. F. Della Notte

According to BondVet.com, cats are among the most intelligent creatures on the planet. Scientists believe that cats are uniquely smart when compared to dogs and other animals, which makes it understandable that, like their human counterparts, cats have witching hours. (PetMed.) During those episodes, which generally take place at dusk or dawn, felines may suddenly have bursts of extra energy and display athletic and agile abilities.

In addition to watching my cat, Miss Millie, run, jump and stare at objects or minuscule insects that I either can’t see or don’t exist, I learned that she, to my amazement, could leap four feet up from one piece of furniture to a higher surface. (Now her middle-aged spread has reduced her airtime). And yes, I did measure the distance!

Millie has given us a few spooky behavior episodes of the midnight crazies too. She jumps on my bed at 3 a.m., stands on my chest, pokes her cold, wet nose against mine, and stares into my closed eyes, willing me to open them. On one occasion, she then ran repeatedly to the back door and shoved her head under the window covering to stare out at the back deck. Perhaps at real live prey beyond her reach. How frustrating for her, and no, I didn’t open the door and let her out! Fortunately, those episodes are few and far between since she then settles down and takes intermittent naps during the day—a luxury I don’t have. To be clear, my Millie cares not a whit for what the experts say. Her most frequent witching hour occurs almost daily between three and four in the afternoon – my time to sit and read. It’s also her way of showing who’s the boss. Hey, human, forget the book. Look at me. She runs, jumps, pounces on invisible prey (invisible to me), and she will often roll onto her back at my feet and stare up at me with shiny eyes that challenge. Try and stop me.

Suggested ways to manage these activities include creating climbing areas – but she already climbs on everything. Create hiding spots and exploration zones. Miss Millie knows every inch of this house. I think she knows spots I have not yet discovered, and she can squeeze herself into narrow spaces between furniture and the walls that amaze me. I know she has bones, but sometimes I wonder if they become cartilaginous.

Especially fascinating is how she rules, or should I say communicates. If I’m at my computer in the late afternoon, we have a problem. According to her time clock, I should be in the kitchen at that hour, taking out food groups to prepare for dinner. So, to move me, she jumps on my lap, proceeds to purr, and opens and closes her paws on my legs, kneading them as one kneads bread dough. And if I don’t acquiesce fast enough, she nips my forearms. I have even warned that I’d send her to the cat-sausage factory if she doesn’t stop, but Millie is immune to my empty threats.

“Maybe she just wants some attention and affection,” said my husband. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. Miss Millie will have none of that. She turns her head, stares into my eyes, gives a warning growl, nips my forearm, then jumps down and runs to the kitchen as if to say, Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans. (Weren’t they words to a song in the 1960s?)

And so, my cat is a fine example of the extraordinary intelligence, determination, and intuition and communication of a cat – and one who demonstrates clearly who’s the boss.

Miss Millie is the personality prototype for LaLa in the Housekeeper Mystery Series. At this time, LaLa is waiting for Father Melvyn’s and Mrs. B.’s return from Italy, but her active participation is minimal in Murder in the Cat’s Eye, A Roman Antiquities Mystery.

In the eternal city, there is a particular cat sanctuary worthy of mention. Torre Argentina (no relation to the South American country) is located in the ancient ruins where Julius Caesar’s assassination took place. The cat sanctuary was established in 1929 and provides shelter for stray and abandoned cats. It’s run by volunteers who provide care, spay and neuter services, and find homes for approximately 150 cats living within the ruins. Visitors may tour if in Rome, and through their remote adoption program, meet the cats and view their habitat. Makes one wonder what their witching hour looks like among the ghosts of ancient Rome.

In Murder in the Cat’s Eye, A Roman Antiquities Mystery, we meet two precious and precocious felines, Romo and Remo, named for the mythical founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. Watch for them and Murder in the Cat’s Eye in the fall.

Meanwhile, Happy Reading!!

Review of a Very Very Very Very Very Good Book

I’m rereading novelist Nancy Peacock’s memoir, A Broom of One’s Own: Words on Writing, Housecleaning & Life. I liked the book when I read it the first time, sixteen years ago, and I like it even more now.

I posted the following review on my personal blog in 2009. The disclaimer preceding it is a reference to a recent FTC rule designed to “provide a robust framework that curbs unscrupulous practices in the book publishing industry. By prohibiting the creation, sale, or procurement of fictitious reviews, the FTC discourages the manipulation of the book review ecosystem.” Bloggers who occasionally posted reviews—”small-time” reviewers (like me), as it were—sometimes fulfilled their obligation by observing the letter of the law while frolicking with the spirit.

Where small-timers are concerned, the rule seems to have fallen by the wayside, and that’s a shame. It stimulated creativity.

***

The backstory:

I wrote the following review to answer a “challenge.” I intended to post it at the end of September 2009. But in the process of writing, I got all tangled up in words and couldn’t finish even the first sentence.

I intended to post it at the end of October. I still couldn’t write it.

Finally, after telling myself I didn’t care, I managed to write it after the October deadline.*

In the middle of the “process,” I considered posting the following review: “I like Nancy Peacock’s A Broom of One’s Own very very very very very much.”

But the challenge specified a four-sentence review, and that was only one, and I didn’t want to repeat it three times.

So there’s the background.

I must also add this disclaimer: I bought my copy of A Broom of One’s Own myself, with my own money. No one told, asked, or paid me to write this review. No one told, asked, or paid me to say I like the book. No one told, asked, or paid me to like it. No one offered me tickets to Rio or a week’s lodging in Venice, more’s the pity. I decided to read the book, to like it, and to write this review all by myself, at the invitation of Story Circle Book Review Challenge. Nobody paid them either. Amen.

*********************************************

The review:

I like Nancy Peacock’s A Broom of One’s Own: Words About Writing, Housecleaning & Life so much that it’s taken me over two months and two missed deadlines to untangle my thoughts and write this four-sentence review, an irony Peacock, author of two critically acclaimed novels, would no doubt address were I in one of her writing classes.

She would probably tell me that there is no perfect writing life; that her job as a part-time house cleaner, begun when full-time writing wouldn’t pay the bills, afforded time, solitude, and the “foundation of regular work” she needed; that engaging in physical labor allowed her unconscious mind to “kick into gear,” so she became not the writer but the “receiver” of her stories.

She’d probably say that writing is hard; that sitting at a desk doesn’t automatically bring brilliance; that writers have to work with what they have; that “if I don’t have the pages I hate I will never have the pages I love”; that there are a million “saner” things to do and a “million good reasons to quit” and that the only good reason to continue is, “This is what I want.”

So, having composed at least two dozen subordinated, coordinated, appositived, participial-phrase-stuffed first sentences and discarding them before completion; having practically memorized the text searching for the perfect quotation to end with; and having once again stayed awake into the night, racing another deadline well past the due date, I am completing this review—because I value Nancy Peacock’s advice; and because I love A Broom of One’s Own; and because I consider it the equal of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird; and because I want other readers to know about it; and because this is what I want.

*Not caring is often the key to cracking writer’s block. Nancy Peacock probably would say that, too.

The End of a Dream?

My first published story appeared in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact in 2012. Since about 2020, I’ve been making a concerted effort to land a story in that magazine’s sister mystery magazines, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (EQMM) and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (AHMM). This has been my dream, my professional goal for years now. Thanks to changes in the industry, I may need to find a new goal.

Those who don’t follow the short fiction world may not be aware that a handful of the top paying professional mystery and science fiction magazines were sold to new owners in the last six months. Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, EQMM, and AHMM were operated by Dell Magazines which was owned by Penny Press since 1996. The magazines were purchased earlier this year by Must Read Magazines, a division of Must Read Publishing, which is owned by Paragraph 1, Inc. Paragraph 1 also purchased The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction which had been owned by Gordon Van Gelder since 2001.

What does that mean for readers?

So far, not much, other than a delay in the release of the latest magazine. My July/August issue of AHMM arrived this week, late under the previous publication timeline. The editors at the mystery magazines remain the same, which suggests that kinds of stories chosen for publication will remain the same.

What does this mean for authors?

Contract changes galore! UGLY ONES! The new owners have disposed of the old contracts, which were industry-standard short fiction contracts, and replaced them with new contracts that do not reflect the industry standard in any way.

The changes to the contracts are so extreme that authors are protesting loudly. Some, like Kristine Kathryn Rusch, have publicly announced that they will not be submitting to the magazines anymore and have pulled all pending stories because of failed contract negotiations. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America have both reviewed the contracts and entered negotiations on behalf of authors in hopes of improving the contract terms. Writer Beware has issued a warning statement on the contract terms, which included a waiver of moral rights and clauses covering production, merchandising, reprint, anthology, and other rights. The Submission Grinder formally delisted all of the magazines because of these “non-standard” contract terms.

In response, the owners of Must Read Magazines state that they are revising the contracts, supposedly replacing the moral rights waiver with other language. But even if that waiver is removed, the intellectual property rights grab involving production, merchandising, reprints, anthology, and other rights may remain.

This leaves me questioning what I should do. My last story in the queue at EQMM was recently rejected, but I have two stories submitted to AHMM right now. Do I leave them in the queue and see how negotiations play out? Do I pull them, as other authors have done, and submit them elsewhere?

If the top authors are pulling out, the quality of the magazines may decrease. Admittedly, my chances of getting a story published increase if others choose not to submit. But do I want to be in a magazine only because others decided the terms of the contract were too unfair? Does that make me a scab, willing to accept harmful terms out of desperation? Do authors stand a better chance of getting better terms if we all reject onerous contracts? We are all free-lancers with loose affiliations through memberships in writing organizations, not members of a union.

For now, this is all just a thought exercise about a dream, a goal I’d set for myself, a goal I may have to reset.

*****

READING WHILE TRAVELING

by Helen Currie Foster

Just before a trip I get anxious: is there enough stored in my Kindle to keep me happy? You constant readers know that feeling. Did you upload enough for the waiting room at the airport? For the plane? For a sleepless first night, jet-lagging? Enough to keep you happy even if weak (or no) wi-fi at the (tent, cabin, hotel, boat, campsite, rental) precludes another download? Yes, there’ll be news–but I am escaping!

We’re on a family trip to France, with children and grandchildren. I loaded up the Kindle diligently beforehand. Of course there are way too many wonderful things to do besides read…

Still, my heart sang when we entered the rental in the French mountains and spied—A BOOKCASE!

Moreover, the shelves held mysteries! Ian McEwan, Patricia Cornwell, Elizabeth George, Janet Evanovich, V.I. Warshawski, Alexander McCall Smith…

Also serious nonfiction and titles from Kazuo Ishiguro, Dostoevsky, Graham Greene, Julian Barnes and more. Then I spotted Kinky Friedman’s Frequent Flyer and thought—eclectic tastes! Perhaps some were left behind by guests. Still, the shelves made me want to meet the owners. The welcoming bookshelves and, to boot, a choice of comfortable corners where a tired tourist can flop, prop up the well-used feet, and read…what more can one ask?

(Sidebar—when you see a Talking Head on your screen, with a bookshelf behind—do you wonder if the books really belong to the Head? Or are they just a prop intended to impress? Maybe we’ll see some interviewer pose a question: “How did you like Crimes Against Humanity?” Blank stare.)

I know I’ve mentioned her in a prior blog, but have you discovered Dorothy Dunnett yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Dunnett

If you’re familiar with Dunnett’s stunning two historical fiction series, The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo, you already know she delivered powerful (and powerfully surprising) plots, magnetic characters, and vivid reconstructions of the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Using (for all that detail) an omniscient narrator.

But in her spare time she also wrote the Dolly mystery series, involving an astoundingly talented portrait painter named Johnson Johnson (yes, two), who happens to turn up in scenic locations in his yacht, the Dolly, on secret missions for the British ministry of defense. I’ve reread three of those on this trip—one set in Ibiza, one in Morocco, one in Canada. Unlike the Niccolo or Lymond historical series, Dunnett’s heroines in these first-person mysteries are in their late teens or twenties and trying to make their way in the world (as an au pair, a cook, an executive assistant, etc.). Naturally they find themselves in dangerous situations while trying to identify a murderer, and Dunnett gives each her own first-person voice—each interestingly different.

Clearly Dunnett didn’t merely set foot in these locales: she absorbed them. The action’s fast-moving, but she paints a landscape with details that place you right in the square where the villains are about to—well, here’s an example from Moroccan Traffic, in the Atlas Mountains, where Wendy, a young executive assistant, watches as Johnson and the engaging inventor Mo pursue two ruthless adversaries up perilous cliffs:

…where they had set their faces to climb was the flank of the mountain; the boulder slope rising to cliffs and ridges and rock bands interlaid with tongues of snow, and scree-fields, and stony pockets of pasture. And further up, behind escarpment and terrace, the burning forepeaks of the range.

I had seen it all from the road. Somewhere there, already entrenched, already waiting, were Gerry and Sullivan, ex-SAS marksmen.

You can also tell that Dunnett (as well as her character Johnson) was a painter:

All around us the hills, limp as blankets, glowed in soft reds, their milky hollows the colour of amethyst. The snow on Sirwa was tinged golden pink, and cast china blue shadows which were technically impermanent. A man walked by the road, a black goat like a scarf around his neck.

And from Roman Nights – the young heroine, an astronomer, battles spy dealings in Italy including the Aragonese Castle on Ischia in the Bay of Naples:

On a plateau the cathedral reared its three roofless sides like a kind of dismembered Versailles, white and flaking; the walls furnished with crumbling cherubs and statues, with rococo arches and pillars and architraves.

Dunnett gives her astronomer heroine plenty of tongue-in chic wit:

Johnson and Lenny sailed out of Amalfi, in a pure, warm air blowing about eight on the bloody Beaufort scale, and the rain lashing down. After becoming exceedingly well acquainted with the water filling the Gulf of Salerno, we fled into a fishing harbour called San Marco and spent the night offshore in a cat’s cradle of other boats’ cables.

Thank you, Dorothy Dunnett, for stupendous scholarship and for witty mysteries in places so believably described. What a gift to the traveler! Sorry, gotta go—I’m deep into Tropical Issue, set in Madeira, where I’ve never been—but it sure looks great in this prose…

What gifts they are to humans—to write, to read!

Award-winning writer Helen Currie Foster lives and writes in the iconic Texas hill country, supervised by three inquisitive and persistent burros. After practicing law for more than thirty years, she found the Alice MacDonald Greer Mysteries had suddenly appeared in her life. Book 10 in the series, Ghost Justice, is expected to debut in August 2025. Helen is continually fascinated by human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps invading our parties. Follow her on Facebook and Amazon, and in Austin at BookPeople.

https://www.facebook.com/helencurriefoster

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Helen-Currie-Foster/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AHelen%2BCurrie%2BFoster