writers – Ink-Stained Wretches

Dream of Mystery, Mnemosyne, and Miserable Truth

by M.K. Waller

You had a dream
Well, I had one too . . .
You tell me your dream
And I’ll tell you mine.
—Albert H. Brown, Charles N. Daniels, Seymour Rice,
“You Tell Me Your Dream”

Remorse–is Memory–Awake
—Emily Dickinson

British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a dream. In October of 1797, after reading about the summer capital of the Yuan dynasty of China founded by Kubla Khan, he had an “opium-influenced dream.” When he woke, he immediately wrote down the lines of the poem he’d dreamed:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea. . . .

An excerpt from the second stanza:

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And the entire third:

A damsel with a dulcimer
   In a vision once I saw:
   It was an Abyssinian maid
   And on her dulcimer she played,
   Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
   Her symphony and song,
   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

What a dream!

But there “Kubla Khan” ends. While the poet was working, a “person from Porlock” knocked at the door–a bill collector, as it happened–and by the time the person left, Coleridge’s dream had vanished.

The person from Porlock has much to answer for. I mean that sincerely.

I had a dream, too.

Here, a brief digression: Everything you read here is the Truth. The Absolute, Out-and-out, Embarrassing Truth.

My dream wasn’t opium-induced. At my last physical examination, my doctor noted that my level of B-12 was “off the bottom of the chart”–his words–and said I should take a supplement. He said I would see “improved cognitive function.” But I’m seeing something else.

Years ago, I read that people low on B-12 don’t remember their dreams. Sure enough, now I’m remembering them.

So here’s my mystery dream:

I was on a literary pilgrimage–probably driving around New England, since that’s where my literary pilgrimages take place–visiting authors’ homes, when I came upon a large white stone building set well back from the street, surrounded by a manicured lawn: a Sherlock Holmes Museum.

I browsed through the exhibits, but the highlight lay behind the building: a faux graveyard with a white marble tombstone for each victim of murder or general misadventure appearing in a Sherlock Holmes story or novel: terrified Sir Charles Baskerville, convict Selden, murderous stepfather Dr. Grimesby Roylott, innocent Mormon John Ferrier, abusive husband Sir Eustace Brackenstall. Even Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime.

Then the Muse descended! I would take another literary journey to research every single Sherlock Holmes Museum and Victim Graveyard in the United States, and surely in England, possibly in France, and then I would write a book about them. A massive undertaking, but I was up to the task.

When I got home, I told my mother. She thought it was a good idea. Or said she did. Her face said she was thinking she would end up having to proofread the manuscript(s) and, remembering her multiple proofings of my master’s thesis, was also thinking about going missing.

Then I woke up, and the B-12 kicked in. I remembered. And I came to my senses.

How many Sherlock Holmes Museums/Graveyards are there? Anywhere?

And if there are any–who cares?

I’ve had it with Muses. That kind of inspiration I do not need.

I want a dream like Coleridge had. Not with opium, but there must be something better than B-12.

Because B-12 doesn’t stimulate inspiration. It stimulates memory.

The Nine Muses are the daughters of Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory.

Dreams like this I prefer to forget.

Read about productive dreaming at “Waking or Sleeping?” by Ink-Stained Wretch Helen Currie Foster.

Errata

*Let me be clear. Coleridge was addicted to opium. As a boy he’d been treated with laudanum, a tincture of opium, for rheumatic fever and “other childhood diseases”–English professor Dr. Thomas L. Brasher points to tuberculosis of the bone–which grew into a lifelong addiction. Laudanum was frequently prescribed at that time and was sold without prescription at pharmacies, not the best conditions under which to break a drug habit formed in childhood. In later life, the addiction broke his health and affected him socially and professionally–including a break with longtime friend, poet William Wordsworth–and has tarnished his reputation to the present day.

To that tarnishment, I say, Pish-tosh. Coleridge was not only a major poet–the 1798 publication of Biographia Literaria, written with William Wordsworth, ushered in the Romantic Movement in British poetry–he was a “literary critic, philosopher, and theologian.” And I refuse to allow him to be turned into a druggie hippie opium-eater, not in one of my posts.

“Remorse–is Memory–Awake

Image of “Kubla Khan” manuscript Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Mnemosyne (aka Lamp of Memory or Ricordanza) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Coleridge, from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Vision of Sir Launfal (by Coleridge and James Russell Lowell), published by Sampson Low, 1906. Artist unidentified, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

M.K. (Kathy) Waller blogs at Telling the Truth, Mainly. The blog might disappear briefly for a facelift, but it will return. The picture in the sidebar is not M.K., but it’s as close to a facelift as she she can manage.

Mining Family History for Characters

My father is the family genealogist. He did extensive research into both his family and my mother’s family. Dad’s family is rather straightforward—all arriving in Texas in the 1870s and 1880s from what is now the Czech Republic. My mother’s mother was Irish American. Her parents arrived in the US just before 1900, so she had aunts, uncles, and cousins in Cork. While some of my Czech and Irish relatives had life-threatening adventures in settling in the US, they didn’t inspire the characters in my short story, “Danger at Death’s Door.” That honor goes to my Danish relatives.

Lars Peter took the last name Ottosen after his step-father Otto.

One ancestor whose history I researched to create a character was one of my great-great-grandfathers on my mother’s father’s side, a man named Lars Peter. Lars Peter’s mother was unmarried when she gave birth to him in 1842 in Denmark. Family oral history says that she was employed at the court in Copenhagen, left to give birth, and was later ‘recalled’ to court. Her child, Lars Peter, was sent away to boarding school where he excelled scholastically. Among other things, he learned to speak, read, and write in both English and Danish. (We have proof of his lovely penmanship because later in life he was a US census-taker, and the names and addresses of his neighbors are recorded in his beautiful handwriting.) After leaving school, Lars Peter joined the military. He was a big man for his time, reaching over six feet tall and 190 pounds as a teenager.

In 1864, sick of Danish-German wars, Lars Peter left the military and signed on to crew a ship bound for the US from Denmark. He arrived in the midst of the US Civil War. Lars Peter jumped ship, ran for his life to avoid being forced into the Union Army by men seeking to draft newly arrive immigrants, made his way to the Great Lakes region, married, and settled on Washington Island. After presenting him with five children, three of whom survived, Lars Peter’s first wife died in childbirth along with a sixth child. The women on the island advised Lars Peter to remarry because he needed someone to care for his young children while he worked. So he crossed to the mainland on his sailboat and walked to farms, looking for an unattached female of marriageable age. He found a woman named Christine (apparently tripping and falling through her family’s front door).

Christine also features in my story, although very briefly and under a different name. She was an immigrant from Denmark of the serf class, uneducated in anything but sewing and farm/household work. She also had one eye that wandered because she was born with it fused closed, and it didn’t open until she was three years old. Christine emigrated to escape near slavery, her life controlled by the Count who owned the estate where she was born, and to escape the scandal that attached to a woman if a man jilted her, refusing to marry her after a marriage had been arranged by their families. She was visiting relatives while recovering from an extended illness, when Lars Peter asked her to come care for his children, and if she liked the situation, get married. She agreed to go with him. Christine fell for his children, and possibly him, and they were married. They went on to have seven children, the last of whom was my great-grandfather, Robert, born in 1897.

Family history states that Lars Peter admitted knowing who his father was, but he refused to name the man. That line of the family tree remains a mystery. Lars Peter died in 1924, a highly regarded citizen of Washington Island, having served as census taker, postmaster, town clerk, town chairman, assessor, and roadmaster at various points in his life.

Lars Peter’s history provides much of the background for the character named Lars Pedersen in my short mystery story “Danger at Death’s Door.” My Lars Pedersen character is also an “educated bastard” from Denmark and a widower in need of a mother for his young children. I named one of the children in the story Robbie, after my great-grandfather Robert, even though he wouldn’t have been born yet. Robert died in 1990 in Texas and lives in my memory as Great-Gampie, a tall man, several inches over six feet, with broad shoulders and a penchant for storytelling.

In my story, my character Lars takes a voyage across the Great Lakes. During the voyage, the ship’s captain hands Lars “one more thing to worry about” when he asks him to investigate a crime aboard ship. As far as I know, the real Lars Peter never encountered a mystery aboard a ship that required him to act as a detective. That portion of the story is entirely fictional.

“Danger at Death’s Door” is scheduled for publication in March 2023 in the mystery anthology Crimeucopia: One More Thing to Worry About, from editor John Connor at Murderous Ink Press.

***

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

Shattering a Vase

by Kathy Waller

[The blogger having been rendered incapable of typing with more than five fingers, she repeats a post that appeared on Austin Mystery Writers in 2015.]

*****

. . . it was like taking a vase and setting it down
so hard it shatters . . .
~ Tracy Chevalier

When I taught secondary English, grading essays was my least favorite task. I was happy to read them, but assigning letter grades? I hated that.

I hated judging. I hated trying to determine the difference between a B and an A, or, worse, between a B-plus and an A-minus.

But the worst–the part that made me want to moan like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, “Oh, horrible, oh, horrible, most horrible!”–was listening to students who believed their work merited higher grades: “But I worked so harrrrrrrd.”

Some had watched classmates complete an entire assignment during a lull in history class and then score A’s. It wasn’t fair.

“Harrrrrrrrrrd” was my signal to say that No, it didn’t seem fair, but that good writing involves more than time sheets and sweat. It’s the words on the page that matter.

Now, to my dismay, I often find myself slipping into student mode. For example, when I submit a chapter to my critique group, or a beta reader, or even a family member, and they find fault, or don’t even mention my genius, I have to restrain myself from wailing, But I worked so harrrrrrrd…

Each time it happens, I repeat to myself the old lecture about time sheets and sweat. I add that whingeing is the hallmark of the amateur.

And I meditate upon Tracy Chevalier.

Chevalier wrote the critically acclaimed historical novel Girl with a Pearl Earring. Her next novel began as a draft written in third person, with small sections in first-person voices of children. The completed manuscript disappointed her.

When I reread the first draft, she says, I cried at the end. It was boring, dead weight, terrible. Then I looked it over and thought, there’s nothing wrong with the story except the way it’s told.

She found the solution in another contemporary novel:

I had the idea when, just as I was finishing the first draft in third person, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, which uses five different voices beautifully. It’s a wonderful book, using multiple voices very successfully, and I thought, “Oh, that’s an interesting technique, I wonder if I should take the kids’ voices I’ve already written and have the three of them tell it.” It just felt right.

The revision was published as Falling Angels, an exquisite novel about a young wife and mother struggling to survive in the rigid, but rapidly changing, social structure of Edwardian England. The book is written in first person, from twelve perspectives, in twelve distinctive voices.

I came across Chevalier’s account when I was just beginning to write fiction and had become obsessed with the work. Writing an entire manuscript, setting it aside, starting all over—it had to be pure drudgery. I couldn’t imagine putting myself through that.

Later, though, I reread the article and a different passage caught my attention—Chevalier’s description of the rewrite:

I took the draft, and it was like taking a vase and setting it down so hard it shatters, then putting the pieces back together in a different way. I rewrote the whole thing in first person with all these different voices.

That passage doesn’t describe drudgery. Shattering a vase, putting the pieces back together to make something new—that’s a picture of creation, of the excitement and the pleasure and the beauty that accompany it.

I love Tracy Chevalier’s novels and admire her talent. But, on a more personal level, I’m grateful to her for sharing publicly how Falling Angels made its way into print—for reminding me that hard work isn’t synonymous with drudgery, for implying that it’s okay to cry over a bad draft and that perceived failure can turn into success, and for showing that the act of writing itself affords as much pleasure as the spirit is willing to embrace.

And—for tacitly suggesting that no one really needs to hear me whinge about how harrrrrrrrd I work.

It’s the words on the page that matter.

*****

Note: I really do love Chevalier’s novels. In fact, I love Falling Angels so much that during library duty one Saturday morning, I was so intent on finishing the book—just racing toward the climax—that I unlocked the front doors but left the lights in the reading room off, and spent the next ninety minutes parked behind the circulation desk, reading, and hoping no one would walk in and want something. I’m not proud of what I did. It was unprofessional. But patrons were understanding. And I finished the book.

*****

Information about Tracy Chevalier comes from Fiction Writers Review.

*****

Kathy Waller blogs at Telling the Truth, Mainly, and with Austin Mystery Writers. Her stories have been anthologized in Murder on Wheels, Lone Star Lawless, and Day of the Dark, and online in Mysterical-E.

Assessments 2022 / Goals 2023

By N. M. Cedeño

We’ll start with assessments:

I started 2022 with the goal of getting short stories published. In aid of that goal, I set another goal: to submit an average of three stories per month to magazines, anthologies, or contests. That’s thirty-six submissions. Why choose an average instead of a fixed monthly goal? Because I knew with travel, family responsibilities, and holidays, some months would be more difficult than others. As expected, June and July had only two submissions each. December might be the same. Giving myself the flexibility to submit four stories one month to make up for months with only two stories submitted was a practical decision. I know how these things go, so I wasn’t going to shoot myself in the foot by making the goal too rigid to meet.

End results:

I met my goal. By December, I submitted thirty-six stories to various markets to be considered for publication. I also submitted five stories for consideration for awards or recognition that includes publication. If I count those five as additional “submissions,” then I blew my goal out of the water.

Publications:

During 2022, seven of my short stories were published or reprinted in various magazines, e-zines, and anthologies. This is nothing compared to the John Floyds of the world, but pleasing for someone who only decided to focus on short fiction publication in 2020.

Six of seven covers for 2022. Seven is an awkward number!

January: e-zine, Black Cat Weekly #19– “A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy” (reprint)
February: anthology, After Dinner Conversation: Season Five – “The Wrong Side of History” (reprint)
March: anthology, Crimeucopia: Say What Now?– “Reaching for the Moon”
April: anthology, Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties– “Nice Girls Don’t”
June: e-zine, Black Cat Weekly #37– “Serenity, Courage, Wisdom”
August: magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine #12– “It Came Upon a Midnight Ice Storm”
December: e-zine, Black Cat Weekly #68– “Merry Library Murder”

Firsts for 2022:

For the first time, an editor approached me because someone else had failed to supply a story. This led to another first: I produced a story— from researching the historical background to submitting the finished product— in about three weeks. Was the final product as polished as I would have liked? No. But, in the end, the only issues left were minor.

For the first time, I had a story “featured” on the cover of a magazine. “Merry Library Murder” is the featured story in Black Cat Weekly #68, which was published the week before Christmas. Seeing that cover was a lovely surprise and a fabulous Christmas present.

For the first time, I submitted some of my stories for consideration in “Best of” mystery anthologies, which is a box checked on a list of professional goals. I wondered: Should I let the editors submit for me? Or should I submit my own stories? Many authors wait on this sort of thing and let others, like editors, decide. But, where is the wisdom in not putting your work forward, not ensuring it will be seen and considered? Just as work left in the drawer won’t be published, work never sent for consideration for awards won’t be recognized with awards.

Goals for 2023:

Increase my writing productivity.

During the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, I was surprisingly (given the stress of those years) prolific. My writing output was steady. But 2022 did not go as well. My productivity in 2022 was much less than I had hoped. In speaking to other writers, I’ve heard many say that they felt like they hit a wall at some point in the last two years. They felt their energy levels plummet, and they felt like they didn’t have the emotional energy to invest in their writing. I too felt an energy drop this year. Instead of writing new material, I frequently focused on editing and submitting what I had already written. I kept working, but not always on new words. While I did produce new short stories, I didn’t write as many as in previous years. My creative batteries must have needed a recharge.

Keep submitting short stories.

I intend to keep my focus on short fiction for now. People keep asking when I will write another novel. I don’t know. Short fiction comes far more naturally than novels for me. I have always found novel writing to be a slog. Short stories are fun. So maybe I’ll focus on writing more stories than last year and submit three per month again? Or I could try for four submissions a month. Hmm. Things to think about. Decisions to be made.

Attempt to build relationships with more editors

As a wise editor told me: editors die or retire. Writers must build relationships with many editors to ensure a steady stream of story acceptances and publications.

Delegate when possible.

I’ve been elected president of my local SinC chapter again, starting in January. I’ve served on the chapter board in various capacities over the years: as vice-president, as president, as immediate past president. The position of president can be the equivalent of taking on a part-time job, or even a full time job, if I don’t delegate. People are very reluctant to volunteer right now. I may have to beg, plead, and twist some arms, which I hate to do. But I also hate to see something good fall apart for lack of volunteers. Wish me luck.

Libraries and “Merry Library Murder”

By N. M. Cedeño

The fact that the victim in my upcoming story entitled “Merry Library Murder” is a librarian is not a sign of hidden hostility or wishful thinking. Rather, the opposite is true. I set the story in a library because I spend a lot of time in libraries. Most of my reading material comes from the library, and I am a long-term library volunteer.

Of the many volunteering opportunities available in my children’s schools, the one to which I always gravitate is the assisting in the library. At one point, when I had an elementary, middle, and high school student in the house, I volunteered in all three libraries on a rotating basis each month. I started volunteering in school libraries about fifteen years ago and am still volunteering at the local high school library.

While volunteering, I’ve labeled, weeded, discarded, scanned into inventory, removed from inventory, added genre stickers to, added series number stickers to, shelved, checked-in, checked-out, magnetized, and demagnetized books. The books I’ve inventoried probably number well over 100,000. I’ve unpacked boxes of new books, packed boxes of old books, and shifted books on shelves. I’ve helped rescue books from a termite invasion and assembled and mounted signage. I once went through almost every picture book in an elementary school library to place red stickers on the spines of the ones with reading tests available for them. That meant looking up every single book on the computer to see if it had an associated test before placing or not placing a sticker on it. In order to raise funds for libraries, I’ve operated registers at more Scholastic Book Fairs than I can remember.

Last year, I helped genre-fy the entire fiction section of a high school library. How does one genre-fy a library? One separates the books by genre and creates sections: adventure, horror, science fiction, mystery, suspense, supernatural, fantasy, realistic, romance, historical, sports, humor, and classics. Graphic novels get their own section and genres, as do the books in languages other than English. This process required me to shift all the non-fiction books to make space. Consequently, I may be the only one in the entire community who has held almost every single book in the local high school library in my hands. That’s over 30,000 books.

By far the most painful library duty I’ve ever performed is weeding fiction books. Removing fiction books from the collection that have sat on a shelf for years, untouched and unread, is a sad thing to do. But it’s something that has to be done. Shelf space is limited and new books are coming out every day.

Weeding non-fiction books that haven’t been read in years is less painful. If the material in the book is obsolete, it deserves to be removed from the library to make room for more current material. Who wants to read “How to Build a Webpage” out of a manual written in 1996? Books on teen pregnancy resources from the 1980s aren’t likely to be helpful to anyone today either. The oldest books I pulled from the shelves were from the early 1950s. They may have been useful in an archive somewhere, but not a high school library. After a day of weeding books, my hands are usually black with grime from decades of accumulated dust.

So to reiterate: I love libraries. And librarians. And Library Assistants, too. Many thanks to all the library staff I’ve worked with over the years. Sara, Becky, Maureen, Sarah, Ronda, Charity, Christina, Carole, Alyson, and all the rest, you are the best!

However, the victim in my upcoming short story, entitled “Merry Library Murder,” is a librarian. And yes, she is murdered in her own library during her town’s holiday festival. But this story is a holiday who-dunnit. Which means that justice will be served. If you’re looking for a quick holiday mystery, watch for Black Cat Weekly #68, coming out in late December. Or subscribe to Black Cat Weekly and get great reading delivered to your inbox every Sunday.

*All pictures by Pixabay.

***

Terry Shames’ Samuel Craddock Mysteries: A “Genre-Bending” Series and One True Sentence

Texas mystery author Terry Shames’ latest book, Murder at the Jubilee Rally, has been reviewed on ABC News.

To use a folksy phrase—Folks, that ain’t hay.

The ninth in Shames’ Samuel Craddock Mystery series, Murder at the Jubilee Rally focuses on conflicts residents of Jarrett Creek, Texas, experience when a motorcycle rally prepares to open outside of town—and the challenges Police Chief Samuel Craddock faces when murder follows.

Since you can read award-winning author Bruce DeSilva’s excellent review here, I won’t try to duplicate. Except to point out that—

DeSilva calls the Samuel Craddock series “genre-bending,” because the “author’s folksy prose and Jarrett Creek’s small-town ways . . . give the novel the feel of a cozy,” and yet the problems facing the town and Police Chief Craddock “give the novel the feel of a modern police procedural.”

With the term “genre-bending,” DeSilva hits upon one reason—perhaps the reason—for the series’ success. Shames joins elements of two very different genres—cozy mysteries and police procedurals—with skill and grace, into a seamless whole. That ain’t hay either.

As a reader, I enjoy Shames’ novels, but as a writer, I seethe with envy. If only I could do what she does . . .

Nevermind.

Now, for a broader view, I’ll turn from Shames’ ninth book to her first, A Killing at Cotton Hill, published in 2013.

At the bookstore, I fell in love with the cover. On page one, I fell in love with the book. Soon thereafter, I fell in love with a sentence. Here it is, underlined, in the paragraph quoted below—the words of narrator Samuel Craddock:

I head into the house for my hat and my cane and the keys to my truck. There’s not a thing wrong with me but a bum knee. Several months ago one of my heifers knocked me down accidentally and it spooked her so bad that she stepped on my leg. This happened in the pasture behind my house, where I keep twenty head of white-faced Herefords. It took me two hours to drag myself back to the house, and those damned cows hovered over me every inch of the way.

That’s what author Ernest Hemingway would call one true sentence. Cows are curious. They’re nosy. They like to observe. I’ve seen cows hover. That’s exactly the kind of thing my father might have said about his damn cows.

Shames gets it right. Every word in that sentence, and throughout the book, is pitch-perfect.

The night I read about the hovering cows, I wrote Shames a fan email telling her I loved the sentence.

But when I completed the novel and tried to write a review for my personal blog, I got tangled up in words. It came out sounding like this:

I love this book. It’s just so…There’s this wonderful sentence on the second page about hovering cows…That’s exactly what cows do…I can just see those cows…The person who wrote that sentence knows cows…It’s just so…I just love it.

That’s what happens when a reviewer lacks detachment. Wordsworth said poetry begins with emotion “recollecte d in tranquility.” So do book reviews. There’s nothing tranquil about that tangle of words.

So, with no review, I compromised. I posted the paragraph containing the beloved sentence and added a picture of white-faced Herefords.

Not long after, Shames spoke at the Heart of Texas (Austin) chapter of Sisters in Crime, and I told her how much I admired her work. A year later, in 2014, I heard her read from her second novel, The Last Death of Jack Harbin. And I’ve read all the books she’s published since.

From 2013 to 2022, that’s nine Samuel Craddock mysteries, each a great read, each just as good as—or better than—the one before.

But regarding Shames’ sentences—

It is a truth universally acknowledged that her hovering cows will always be Number One.

_____

Notes

*Shames breaks the silly rule against “mixing” present and past tenses in narration. Samuel Craddock speaks the language spoken by men like him in real Jarrett Creeks all over Texas.

**The cow sentence isn’t really about cows. It’s about Samuel Craddock. But I am fond of white-faced Herefords, and the image Shames paints of them is so vivid that it obscures the man dragging himself toward his house. For me, at least.

***I took the photo of the cover of A Killing at Cotton Hill. The fur on the right side of the book doesn’t belong there, but it was easier to just take the picture than to move the cat.

***

Image of Murder at the Jubilee Rally cover from Amazon.com

Image of Hereford cow by Lou Pie from Pixabay

***

Kathy Waller has published short crime fiction as well as a novella co-written with Manning Wolfe. For more info, and/or to read her posts on topics ranging from A to izzard, visit her personal blog, Telling the Truth, Mainly (http://kathywaller1.com). She also cross-posts her Ink-Stained Wretches posts at Austin Mystery Writers.

Writing “It Came Upon a Midnight Ice Storm”

By N.M. Cedeño

People like to ask writers, do you ever use details from your life in your writing? Answer: Sometimes. It depends on what I’m writing. If I’m writing science fiction or noir, nothing in the story may be evocative of my life. Other times, details from my life do creep into my stories. “It Came Upon a Midnight Ice Storm” is one of those stories that has a bit of my life in it.

Written originally in 2010 or 2011, the manuscript sat forgotten in a file for seven or eight years before I decided to revise and submit it for publication. The story is available in Black Cat Mystery Magazine #12, the special cozies edition, edited by Michael Bracken.

Without further ado, here are some things from my life that influenced my writing of the story “It Came Upon a Midnight Ice Storm.”

The story is set in Dallas during a Christmas Eve ice storm that traps a party of houseguests together overnight. Trouble ensues when one guest accuses the others of stealing her bracelet. I grew up in Dallas County where ice storms hit the city every few years. The city doesn’t get frozen precipitation often enough for anyone to have to drive on it with any regularity. When an ice storm hits and coats everything with an inch of ice, the city shuts down and everyone stays home for a day or two until it melts. Historical note: the first draft of the story was written about ten years before the 2021 catastrophic ice storm that hit Texas. Texans are used to ice storms hitting sections of the state. Ice storms big enough to coat the entire state in frozen precipitation for a week, as happened in 2021, are a whole other matter.

Things I’ve baked and decorated.
N.M. Cedeño

The main character in the story, Eleanor, spent the day baking and preparing for a Christmas Eve family gathering. I enjoy baking. A lot. Cookies, cakes, brownies, muffins, quick breads, scones, and scratch-made baking powder biscuits are the favorites in my house. Pies and fudge appear seasonally. As much as I enjoy baking, there have been times, usually after prepping for an event, where I have been utterly tired of baking, a feeling shared by my main character.

Eleanor’s husband Joe has three siblings with whom he is close in age. I come from a large family and grew up with two brothers and two sisters for a total of five of us, plus two parents, plus assorted dogs. Between friends and relatives our house was frequently packed. Holidays in my family have always involved a lot of people, and, thus, family dynamics. However, none of the characters in the story are like my siblings or my husband’s siblings.

As with Joe’s family in the story, my husband’s family has a Christmas tradition involving setting up a prominently-displayed, elaborate Nativity scene in their home in which the infant Jesus in the display remains covered from head-to-toe in a cloth until December 25^th.

According to the character Luke, Die Hard is a classic Christmas movie. Most of my family would agree with this statement.

Like Becky in the story, two of my siblings and my eldest son attended UT Dallas.

Among my more than a dozen nieces and nephews you will find an Eleanor, a Joseph, a Luke, a Rebecca (not called Becky), and a (middle name) Helen (not Helene). However, two of them were born AFTER the characters in this story were named and, in truth, all of the names are coincidental. I wasn’t thinking of anyone in particular when I named the characters. This isn’t the first time I have used a family member’s first name for a character. If the first name fits, I use it.

The above are all details to the story. The plot about the disappearance of an expensive bracelet during a Christmas Eve party is entirely fictional.

*****

When Submitting Short Stories to Markets, Patience is Required

By N.M. Cedeño

How long does it take to hear back from editors with acceptances or rejections of short stories? That depends on a number of variables, but in most cases in the world of short mystery fiction, patience is required.

How much patience?

I currently have stories that have been pending for 387 days, 200 days, and 190 days, respectively.

For the story pending the longest, I heard from the editor about several issues that have delayed responses. He made it clear that those who submitted are free to submit elsewhere, and, if the story is picked up by another market, to simply withdraw it from him. However, the story was written for a very specific call for submissions. I would have to re-edit the manuscript and change details to make it submittable elsewhere. So for the moment, I’ve decided to wait and see what happens rather than submit the story to another market.

The manuscript currently at 200 days post submission will probably not receive a response until a full year has passed. I know this because it’s submitted to one of the most prestigious markets in short mystery fiction, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. The statistics on how long AHMM takes to respond to submissions are available online at The Submission Grinder. The average response time is currently 371 days. I know of authors who won’t submit to the magazine because of the extreme length of response time and low odds of acceptance. My current thinking, which may change at some point, is that if I don’t submit, I’ll have no chance of getting published by the magazine. The wait is the price I have to pay for that opportunity.

The next story, submitted 190 days ago, is a bit more perplexing. I submitted it early, well before the call deadline. So although the editor has had it for six months, the deadline for submissions was three months ago. From what I can see online and from asking other authors, no one has had a response from the editor yet. Since the call for submissions didn’t give a timeline for responses, only the planned publication date, which is just a few months away at this point, I sent an email inquiring if my story was still being considered. Sadly, I haven’t received a response to my query. Unless I want to withdraw the submission and try to submit the piece elsewhere, all I can do is have patience and wait to see if anyone else receives a response or if the editor responds to my query.

These three stories submissions represent the longest wait times for responses that I usually experience from markets that actually bother to send responses. (Some markets never respond unless they want the story. And, yes, that’s REALLY ANNOYING.)

Many markets respond much faster to submissions than the above examples. Data on response times for various magazines can be found on The Submission Grinder and other places online. Waiting a few weeks to receive a response is common, as is waiting a few months. But the need for patience doesn’t end with the submission process.

And then, wait some more…

Once a story is accepted, the wait to publication begins. The longest I’ve had a short story pending publication after acceptance is currently at 16 months and counting. I’ve heard from authors who’ve waited as long as two years between acceptance and publication of a short story in a magazine. In this case, the story will be published shortly because I received the proof pages from the editor a few weeks ago. It’s coming … eventually.

To reiterate: In writing and submitting short mystery fiction for publication, patience isn’t merely a virtue, it’s a necessity.

*****

Book Review: David and Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of Battling Giants

by Renee Kimball

“Giants are not as powerful as they seem
and sometimes the shepherd has a sling in his pocket.”
— Malcom Gladwell

*David with the head of Goliath.* Caravaggio. Public domain. Wikipedia.

Malcom Gladwell is not a “new author.” He has been writing for the New York Times since 1996, and is the best-selling author of many books. But more than that, Gladwell is a one-of-a-kind writer–there is no one else like him. “. . . Gladwell’s true genius lies here, in identifying common assumptions that lie just beneath the surface—beliefs that are so widely accepted, so taken for granted, that we don’t even know we believe in them.” (Adam Grant).

Gladwell’s strength is taking the ordinary and making it interesting. (Adam Grant)

In his book David and Goliath -Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of Battling Giants, Gladwell tests our presumptions by asking us to consider two questions: When does an advantage (strong) become a disadvantage (weak)? At what point does a disadvantage (weak) become an advantage (strong)?

Gladwell shows why finding the answers is not as easy as it appears. By the end of this book, the reader finds that their once comfortable presumptions have been turned on their heads.

There is no better introduction for Gladwell’s, David and Goliath, than the story of David and Goliath – the most well-known underdog vs. giant story of all time. It is much more than we thought– David was a lucky young man who delivered a one-in-a-million shot instantly slaying the giant. David did do those things, but thanks to Gladwell, we now know there were other reasons that played a very large part in David’s victory.

No one disputes the fact that Goliath was a giant of a man for his day. He was a scary guy– overwhelmingly huge compared to others. What was not known is that Goliath suffered from a debilitating growth condition, now known as “acromegaly, a benign tumor of the pituitary gland” (Gladwell). Acromegaly caused Goliath’s unchecked growth and also impacted his eyesight–Goliath could not see well. And because of his size, Goliath’s responses were delayed, and because of his disease, he was not only slow, he could not see clearly. For this famous battle at least, these two facts substantially reduced Goliath’s chances of victory.

While Goliath was already a proven warrior, he was primarily successful engaged within hand-to-hand combat — traditional warfare. Traditional hand combat mandated certain behaviors and dress. Combatants wore a heavily armored breast plate, needed the ability to carry and wield a large and heavy sword with alacrity, must have the ability to target and throw a javelin, and all this, while wearing a heavy metal helmet.

The fully dressed combatant was restricted both in movement and sheer weight. Moreover, to be effective wielding the sword, the warrior must be very close to their opponent—face-to-face. In this story, David was at the bottom of a ravine, while Goliath was standing at the top of a slope bellowing demands while walking in a downward direction towards David. Unbeknownst to Goliath, the fight with David would not follow the familiar traditional rules of either dress, weapon, or combat, and there would be no face-to-face contact.

Unlike Goliath, the young shepherd David had never worn armor, fought hand to hand combat, or a major battle. David was small, lithe, unencumbered, and his only weapon a sling – and in that –slinging– he was an expert. David refused an offer of armor because he knew it would weigh him down. David approached the fight with excellent eyesight, a honed skill, unburdened by armor and no predisposed concepts of traditional warfare. David would not be close enough for hand-to-hand combat, and he carried no sword.

“So here we have a big, lumbering guy weighed down with armor, who can’t see much more than a few feet in front of his face, up against a kid running at him with a devastating weapon and a rock traveling with the stopping power of a .45 caliber handgun. That’s not a story of an underdog and a favorite. David has a ton of advantages in that battle, they’re just not obvious. That’s what gets the book rolling is this notion that we need to do a better job of looking at what an advantage is.” Malcom Gladwell (Interview, Inc.com)

We know the end of this story, and the underdog (weak) (disadvantaged) proves to be no underdog at all, and becomes in this situation the winner, (strong) (advantaged). This type of scrutiny is where Gladwell shines, taking a subject, stripping away assumptions, turning it on its head–making the story something else entirely.

Gladwell’s precise and skillful analysis continues on throughout the book’s nine sections, all equally thought-provoking, and all dealing with preconceived assumptions of weak and strong, advantages or disadvantages. In one of his more bewildering propositions, Gladwell questions the impact of certain types of disability and asks: Can disability ever be desirable? (Gladwell). A premise that at first blush, appears both jarring and indistinctly hopeful. We answer we cannot imagine that there is an appropriate answer.

To structure his premise, Gladwell reviews the impact of living with dyslexia – “a learning disability that makes it difficult to read, write, and spell, no matter how hard the person tries or how intelligent he or she is” (LDOnline). The root cause for dyslexia is still being studied, however, so far what we do know is that the brain’s mechanical functions are unable to link the vital connection of essential neuron transmitters that allow an individual to learn, to read, to speak, and to write.

Dyslexic individuals struggle every day, normal activities take a very long time and exhaustive concentration. Gladwell suggests that for dyslexics, the harder it is to learn, the more they excel in adulthood. The premise —they excel because they have worked so very hard from the very beginning to cope, to fit in, to make it through daily life.

This may seem improbable, but it has been found that “a high number of entrepreneurs are dyslexic” (Gladwell). Within one entrepreneurial group studied, it was found that approximately one-third of those participating had some type of learning disability. Which begs the question, would you want your child to have a disability? It is a tough question and a harder one to answer (Gladwell).

“I sat down with countless numbers of people who have been very successful in their fields who have dyslexia to ask them, ‘Did you succeed in spite of your disability or because of it,’ and every one of them said because of the disability. (emphasis added)

“In other words, these were people who, because they could not read easily were forced to develop other skills and try other strategies that proved to be more advantageous in terms of their careers.” Malcolm Gladwell, Air Talk.

The success stories of affected individuals winning over dyslexia exist because they were forced to compensate from a very early age and developed skills to overcome learning roadblocks—they were and are, flexible and adaptive and found a way to exist in a very cloudy and disorganized world. Dyslexia forced them to learn to listen acutely, memorize large amounts of information, and develop a razor-sharp ability to read people, retain complex nuances and facts, not on paper, but in their minds. So, under Gladwell’s premise, there are benefits to a disability – which may not be easily understood. (Photo: Pixabay)

While there is much, much more within Gladwell’s stories, in the end, the reader must decide which speaks to them. Which story is the most relatable, plausible? Gladwell writes simply; his premises, rebuttal, and results are presented in an easy to read format while challenging the reader to think deeply.

And if you stay the course to the end of the book, you will be given a glimmer of hope, because that is what Gladwell gives – hope. Hope that despite incredible odds, things are not as they seem –there is always more. Gladwell’s gift is to leave the reader questioning everything – and that is what Gladwell does better than anyone.

***

References

Gladwell, Malcolm. David and Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

Underdogs, Misfits & the Art of Battling Giants. You Tube Online. Microsoft Research. Published on Sep 9, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RGB78oREhM .

Air Talk. http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2013/10/09/34085/malcolm-gladwell-cheers-on-the-underdog-in-david-a/ AirTalk® | October 9, 2013.

Maslin, Janet. “Finding Talking Points Among the Underdogs In ‘David and Goliath,’ Gladwell Explores Two Ideas.” Books of The Times https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/books/david-and-goliath-by-malcolm-gladwell.html. October 2, 2013.

Grant, Adam. Linked In. Online. What Makes Malcolm Gladwell Fascinating. Published on October 7, 2013. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20131007120010-69244073-what-makes-malcolm-gladwell-fascinating

Dyslexia: What Brain Research Reveals About Reading. By: Society for Neuroscience. LDOnline. http://www.ldonline.org/article/10784/.

Photo, Photo Credit: Caravaggio. David with the head of Goliath. Creative Commons: Public Domain

Photo, Illustration, David and Goliath. By Majumwo – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45245327

Photo, Dyslexia Puzzle. Author Gerd Altmann. https://pixabay.com/en/dyslexia-learning-disorder-puzzle-3014152/

***

A former paralegal, Renee Kimball has a master’s degree in criminal justice. Among her interests are reading and writing. She is an active Animal Advocate, fosters and rescues both dogs and cats from shelters, and works with various organizations to find them forever homes.

Facing a Writing Challenge

by N. M. Cedeño

Many writers find motivation in challenging themselves in various ways. Some attempt to write a novel length manuscript each November as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Some writers set daily, weekly, or monthly word count targets as challenges to meet. Most do this because they know that when they challenge themselves, they find out what they are capable of accomplishing and learn to push themselves to accomplish more.

Sometimes we writers set these goals for ourselves, other times someone, like an editor in need of a story, provides the challenge for us.

Opportunity Knocks:

In the last week of May 2022, I received an unexpected writing challenge. It arrived in the form of an email from an editor, inviting me to submit a short crime fiction story for an anthology. The catch was that the original deadline, which the editor was willing to extend for me, was only about a week away.

I read the submission criteria, considered my options, and reviewed what was already on my schedule. Then I asked for a month, June, to submit the story, not knowing if that would work for the editor’s timeline.

Could I have said no? Sure. But I recognized that the challenge was also an opportunity to show myself and the editor what I was capable of doing. I was afraid the editor might need the story sooner than my suggested deadline and that he might say no.

The editor replied to my email, agreeing to give me until the end of June to submit the story.

Hooray! And Yikes! I had a deadline to meet.

Meeting the Deadline:

The short story had to fit the specifications for the anthology in question which meant that it had to be set during a particular time period and incorporate some historical event. The time in question happens to be the decade in which I was born, so I have no personal memories of historical events from then. I had to do research. Normally, I research until I get a good grasp for an era before writing. I’ve been known to fall down research rabbit holes and find far more material than I need. My research process had to be curtailed to cover only what was essential: the time and place where I was going to set the story.

Next, I selected a previously created character to make a second appearance in my new story. That character, a private detective named Jerry Milam, appeared in a story called “Nice Girls Don’t” which I wrote for the anthology Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties. Already having a protagonist saved me from having to create a main character from scratch.

After researching the decade and selecting a protagonist, writing the first draft took about three days, resulting in a manuscript that was missing some details. Then, I left on a previously scheduled, nine-day, family vacation, taking my laptop, but knowing I wouldn’t have time to do much work. As it turned out, I only opened the laptop twice during my trip, both times late in the evening.

Once I returned home, I went to work in earnest adding the details I knew were missing. The middle of the story felt muddled, so I reworked it in another draft the following day. Satisfied that the manuscript was complete, I emailed the story to two of the world’s best beta readers, two analytical and detail-oriented people who know that I WANT them to point out every possible error. They know I can take criticism. (I’d rather hear about errors from them than have the story rejected for those same errors!) Both returned notes on the story within a few days, for which I am extremely grateful. (Thanks, Mike and Deb!) After reviewing what errors my beta readers noticed, I corrected and completed the final draft of the story.

In the next few days, I reviewed word choices and line edited the entire document. I made MSWord read the story to me, so I could proofread by listening for errors. Finally, I submitted the story to the editor on June 18, almost exactly four weeks after I received the initial invitation to submit.

Did I hesitate before hitting “send” to submit the manuscript, wondering if I needed to review it one more time?

Yes.

Did I send it anyway?

Yes.

Results:

A week later, I heard back from the editor. The story was accepted for the anthology. I’ll provide more details on the story closer to publication.

I met the challenge and learned something. I could have done it in even less time. I’m glad that when an opportunity dropped in my lap, I was able to rise to the occasion. I’m grateful that the editor gave me the opportunity to meet this challenge.

Leave me a comment on writing challenges you’ve met!

*****