Michael Bracken – Ink-Stained Wretches

Thank You, Encyclopedia Brown!

A post by editor and author Michael Bracken over at Sleuthsayers last week made me ponder my writing influences when it comes to detective fiction. Michael, who has read more than his share of detective fiction in the course of his work recently, suggested that authors need to move away from the trope of the “broke, drunk, and horny” private eye if they want to write something that stands out from the pack. He also recommended not always starting the case in the detective’s office because that can lead to too much back story and a severe delay in moving the plot forward. Reading his post, I realized that I’ve never once had the urge to write that stereotypical “broke, drunk, and horny” character. Then, I wondered why I hadn’t.

My first published short story was a detective story. And while my character, a private investigator named Pete Lincoln, was broke, his financial situation had more to do with the times in which he lived than with his own inability to manage funds. His sex life was irrelevant to the case and didn’t come into the story at all. If he drank, it wasn’t to excess, and also didn’t come into the story. Pete lived and worked in a future world in which privacy rights didn’t exist. He appeared in a story entitled “A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy,” which was first published in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact in 2012, and reprinted in Black Cat Weekly #19 in 2022.

Given that most writers, when they first start crafting fiction, write the tropes that they absorbed while reading, I asked myself what detective fiction I had absorbed at an early age that influenced my writing and that didn’t lead me straight to writing the classic stereotype that Michael was lamenting. Who was the first fictional private detective that I read?

And the answer came to me: Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective.

While the boy detective did teach me the basics for detective fiction, he wasn’t in financial straits since he was a child who lived a quite middle-class life with his parents. Everyone knew Encyclopedia liked his friend and partner Sally, but that didn’t remotely approach the trope of womanizing detective. As for drunk, no! While some of his cases started in his garage office with a client paying the twenty-five-cent fee, other times Encyclopedia solved cases for his father, the police chief, while sitting at the family dinner table. So the stories also taught me that not all cases had to start in the detective’s office.

By the time I read Sherlock Holmes a few years later, the pattern of how detective fiction worked was already firmly fixed in my head. While Holmes indulged in illicit substances, he also wasn’t a classic “drunk.” Holmes never panicked about paying the bills or complained about being broke. As for women, the only one that counted for anything for Holmes was Irene Adler. So Holmes, another of my early fictional detective influences, didn’t fit the stereotype either.

Since writing my first PI story, I’ve written many other detective stories. While I have started several of them in the detective’s office with the arrival of a client, not one of my detectives has been “drunk, broke, and horny.” For example, Detective Maya Laster is a former middle school teacher who turned a genealogy hobby into a detective business, solving mostly cold cases with the help of forensic genetic genealogy. She has appeared in two stories in Black Cat Weekly (issue #79 and #110) and will be appearing again in an upcoming anthology.

Another of my characters, PI Jerry Milam, came of age during World War II, became a police officer following the war, and suffered terrible injuries in a car wreck which ended his police career, leading him to become a private investigator. He’s a teetotaler with a solid income and chronic left hip pain who feels he missed his chance with women. He appeared in Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties and Private Dicks and Disco Balls: Private Eyes in the Dyn-O-Mite Seventies. One of my current works-in-progress sees him solving a case in the 1950s.

If my detectives managed to side-step the cliché of the “broke, drunk, and horny” private investigator, I have my early reading influences to thank for it. So thank you Donald J. Sobol for creating Encyclopedia Brown and teaching me to create private investigators who avoid falling into clichés.

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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.

Writing “Galápagos People Watching”

As some readers may already know, my husband is from Ecuador. I met him when we were both students at the University of Texas at Austin.

View of the harbor from the hotel – Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. My son being held by my husband’s cousin. Photo by NM Cedeño, 2003.

Most of my husband’s extended family still lives in Ecuador. On our second trip to visit them, in 2003, my husband’s grandmother asked if we’d like to go to the Galápagos for a few days. We said, “Yes, thank you!” So my husband, son, my brother, two of my husband’s cousins, his aunt and uncle, and I all flew from Guayaquil to Puerto Baquerizo Moreno on San Cristóbal Island. From the memory of this trip, the story “Galápagos People Watching” was born.

The boat tour featured in the story is drawn from a tour we took during that trip. We visited Leon Dormido and Isla Lobos to see blue-footed boobies, frigate birds, marine iguanas, sharks, and sea lions, just as the characters do in the story.

Those familiar with the history of the Galápagos will note the use of the surname Cobos for one of the characters. Manuel Cobos was the first owner of San Cristóbal Island and started a plantation there. The ruins of his house, left abandoned after a revolt by the prisoners he used as forced labor, can be seen on the island.

Characters’ names in the story are inspired by the Ecuadorian propensity to name people after famous historical figures. Top 100 Ecuadorian male first names include Washington, Jefferson, Lenin, Edison, Franklin, César, and Ulises. One can even find people named Stalin and Hitler.

The hardest thing about writing the story was not putting in too many details. Did I need to explain the different fees paid by foreign tourists vs Ecuadorian citizens when arriving in the Galápagos? No. Did I need to describe every activity a tourist can do on San Cristóbal? No. Did I need to mention the newer system that tracks how often Ecuadorians visit? No. My first draft of the story contained far too many details that had to be cut.

But once I cut all the extraneous information, a story of family, finding one’s path in life, and crime emerged. Editor Michael Bracken selected “Galápagos People Watching” for publication in Black Cat Weekly #164.

Eye Update

After several months attempting conservative treatment, my eye doctor sent me to a corneal specialist. The specialist formally diagnosed me with map-dot-fingerprint dystrophy of the cornea. The “fingerprint” patch on my cornea covered half my pupil, which left me seeing through the unaffected part of my cornea and the damaged part simultaneously. The result was blurred, double vision in my right eye.

To resolve the problem, in early October, the doctor performed a superficial keratectomy using a tiny laser to remove the damaged epithelial layer on part of my cornea. The procedure took less than five minutes and was relatively painless. About thirty minutes after the procedure, when the numbing drops in my eyes wore off, extreme discomfort started and lasted for about four days. My cornea took about three weeks to completely heal.

I am happy to report I am no longer seeing double through my right eye. My vision is back to normal. I can once again read print on screens and on paper without severe eyestrain forcing me to stop.

The eye condition hampered both my reading and my writing in June, July, August, September, and October. I definitely won’t meet the writing goals I set for myself this year. But at least the problem is solved. There’s always next year!

In other news, my story “Predators and Prey” was published by editor Rusty Barnes at Redneck Press! It’s free to read online.

*****

Work-Arounds

By N.M. Cedeño

As I type this, I’m seeing double through my right eye. Well, not quite double. On the screen, it’s more like printed letters have their own ghostly echoes lingering directly above and behind. This has been an ongoing issue for over a month due to a dry patch on my cornea, making working on the computer and reading an exhausting slog. My left eye is compensating, allowing me to still have twenty/twenty vision with both eyes open, but I have to take frequent breaks from screens. The eye doctor added a new medicine this past week, so I’m hoping to “see” some improvement soon. If not, the next step is to see a specialist.

I had to come up with a work-around for my current writing project because of the eye-strain. What do you do when reading long articles looking for details that you need for a story makes you tired too quickly? The answer I came up with is “watch videos containing the needed information.”

Because of eye strain, I’ve found watching videos to be easier than reading long articles. With the help of the Sisters in Crime Webinar Archive of videos, I’ve dug into the structure of the FBI, which crimes are under their jurisdiction, and which aren’t, and how cases are assigned and handled. I also watched a webinar on forensics, because why not. The archive contains a wide variety of videos on topics from writing craft to crime-solving. I’ll be watching more videos even when my eye issue is resolved because of the variety of topics and the amount of information available.

Thanks to YouTube videos, I’ve learned how to prevent the theft of a certain model of car, and I’ve learned about what features the car has to prevent the theft of a cargo trailer that the vehicle might be towing. Various videos helped me learn about the particular model of vehicle I need for a story, its security systems, and about the wide world of custom cargo trailers. Now I know how a thief might get around all of those security features to steal both the vehicle and the trailer, which moves the plot on my work-in-progress forward considerably.

Of course, I’m still reading, but far more slowly than usual. I’ve read a couple books by Donna Leon this month and a lot of P.G. Wodehouse. I read the Wodehouse to lighten my mood. Jeeves and Bertie are wonderful if you need to laugh at something utterly ridiculous. I love Bertie’s confusion as Jeeves gets him out of an unwanted engagement by making him appear to be insane. The story where Jeeves and Bertie aid one of Bertie’s friends who has gone to jail for “biffing” a policeman while drunkenly trying to steal the policeman’s helmet left me in stitches.

On the non-writing front, my middle child starts college this month. He will have moved into dorms on campus by the time this blog posts. Thirteen years ago, a neuropsychologist walked me through the challenges he was facing. I realized he had a long road ahead of him and a lot of work to do. Being what’s now called neurodivergent, he would have to fight to learn many things that are innate to the majority of people: everything from proprioception and bilateral coordination to reading facial expressions. And he did ALL of that hard work. He went from being asked to leave a private school in kindergarten and being placed in special education for three years in elementary school to finishing high school in the top 6% of his class.

He is an incredibly talented, intelligent, outgoing young man with a “punny” sense of humor. Watching him leap into a world that has frequently been unkind to him because of his differences is an emotional challenge for a mom. But I believe he will find his way. He knows how to face obstacles, pick himself up and try again when he fails, and persist in chasing his dreams.

On top of that, my youngest earned her driver’s license this summer and has started going out into the world without me driving her. She is embarking on her senior year of high school and filling out college applications.

Watching my kids spread their wings is breathtaking and anxiety-inducing. An empty nest is on the horizon. My empty nest goals include attending a writing convention or two. I’ve only been to Bouchercon once and I’d like to attend again.

Speaking of Bouchercon, the Anthony Boucher World Mystery Convention is this coming weekend. I won’t be attending, so I hope everything goes well for everyone who is traveling to Nashville to attend. If you are there, stop by the book room and pick up a free copy of the anthology Private Dicks and Disco Balls: Private Eyes in the Dyn-O-Mite Seventies edited by Michael Bracken. I have a story in the anthology called “A Woman’s Place.”

*****

New Ghost Stories

I started reading ghost stories as a child and enjoyed the chill that the best of them sent up my spine. I began writing ghost stories, with a sci-fi and mystery twist, almost ten years ago when I wrote my first Bad Vibes Removal Services story. The series features Lea, a young history graduate student, working in a new service industry. She sanitizes and neutralizes the lingering emotional history from buildings and homes using newly invented equipment. She was drawn to the job because she’s always been sensitive to emotional atmosphere in rooms and has always been able to see ghosts.

The technology she uses in her job was created by a private detective named Montgomery in his quest to create a device to read the subatomic changes in soft materials caused when sound waves pass through them. Montgomery wanted to be able to read the recordings of conversations held in rooms in order to solve crimes. He ended up being able to track the emotional energy left in walls along with the sounds. In order to put his new technology in the public eye, he started Bad Vibes Removal Services to serve as a sister company to his own Montgomery Investigations business.

Lea, with her team of coworkers, soon discovers that she can’t neutralize the lingering emotions in a house if the source, a ghost in distress, is still present. Many of the ghosts she encounters died under questionable circumstances, leading to murder investigations.

The series started with one story. But I liked the characters so much that I wrote more stories, which led me to write a novel, The Walls Can Talk, then more stories, and another novel, Degrees of Deceit, then, more stories. The series currently has 15 or so published short stories and two novels. The latest story in the series, called “Wedding Vibes,” was published in Black Cat Weekly #145 courtesy of editor Michael Bracken. The story features Lea’s wedding reception being crashed by both a ghost and thieves trying to steal gifts. Luckily, her boss, Montgomery, her coworker and Maid of Honor, Kamika, and the rest of her friends are on the case. The thieves chose the wrong reception to crash.

Another one of my ghost stories is rolling out right now, too. “A Lonely Death” is coming out in an anthology of spooky stories from Inkd Publishing called Noncorporeal II. Those who ordered the anthology from the Kickstarter should be receiving their copies shortly, and it will go on sale to the general public soon. The story begins with a cowboy digging a grave in the “middle of nowhere Texas” in the mid 1800s. Soon there after, a little boy whose home was built in what once was the “middle of nowhere Texas” meets a ghost. This story is told from the point of view of the ghost and from the point of view of the people in whose home the ghost appears.

This story was inspired by a three-year-old who was seen in his home talking to and looking up at an adult who the child’s mother couldn’t see. The family had several guests report either seeing a man who vanished or feeling “creeped out” in their guest room. The house was brand new, built on what had been farmland in Central Texas. My story answers the question of why a brand new house might have a ghost.

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Researching the 1970s for “A Woman’s Place”

By N.M. Cedeño

The 1970s! Disco! Abba! The Eagles! Richard Nixon. The end of the Vietnam War. Women’s Rights. And, umm, yeah, other stuff. I was born mid-decade and have no real memories of the 1970s. Writing about the 1970s, for me, isn’t a matter of “write what you know,” but rather one of “research what you need to know.”

When editor Michael Bracken asked me to submit a story for the Private Dicks and Disco Balls: Private Eyes in the Dyn-O-Mite Seventies (Down & Out Books, May 2024) I read the requirements, which specified including some historical event from the 1970s, and knew I would have to dive into research.

I began searching for events of the 1970s with the help of the internet and my local library card. Logging into my local library online gave me access a plethora of research material, including the archives for Time Magazine (1923-2000), Life Magazine (1936-2000), one hundred years of The Austin American Statesman (1871-1980), and access to Newspapers.com for free. I skimmed or read news articles from major newspapers covering crime, disasters, and political issues of the 1970s. Women’s rights issues, including Title IX, employment protections, and the attempts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, recurred in my search, leading me to the event I needed for the story: the Battle of the Sexes tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. The Battle of the Sexes took place in Houston in September 1973.

I even found video from the era, including video from the tennis match itself. Archived videos are fabulous research resources. I discovered news broadcasts from Houston during the 1970s and watched several segments. The benefit of video in research for writing can’t be overstated. Watching news broadcasts provided glimpses of linguistic quirks, clothing styles, hair styles, technology, and automobiles of the 1970s. The insane way (by today’s standards) in which reporters wandered into crime scenes, shoved microphones into the face of working doctors in hospitals, and even sickened themselves while reporting on chemical disasters fed into my understanding of the decade. If a reporter could get away with that much, a private investigator could do that and more.

My research uncovered regulations on who could and couldn’t be a police officer, leading me to articles explaining how, for decades, the height requirement for the Houston Police Department eliminated all the Hispanics who applied for the police academy. The height requirement was changed in the early 1970s to allow for greater diversity in the department. I learned how women’s roles in police departments were limited and about efforts to remove those limits. This research helped in the creation of one of my secondary characters for the story: a petite, Hispanic woman with quashed aspirations for law enforcement.

In researching fires and industrial accidents, I found articles on hazardous materials being routed through Houston and the dangers they posed. I read calls for the creation of hazardous material routes around big cities. Then I reached out to an expert with knowledge of industrial explosives from the 1970s to 2000s. My father worked as an insurance underwriter for a special risk program that included insuring businesses that manufactured, distributed, or used things that go “BOOM.” He had to learn a lot about explosives. He was, and is, a fount of information.

As I worked, I learned more than I needed for my story, and the research began to coalesce into a plot involving my detective, Jerry Milam, in an arson investigation that led him from Austin to Houston during the week of the Battle of the Sexes tennis match. Jerry Milam previously appeared in Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes of the Psychedelic Sixties, (Down & Out Books, 2022, edited by Michael Bracken) in a story entitled “Nice Girls Don’t.”

They say “write what you know,” but the caveat to that is “learn what you need to know.” I researched what I didn’t know and I melded it with what I already knew. I was already familiar with my setting in Houston, although I did consult a few maps. Describing Houston is easy for someone who was born there and visits the city regularly. Also, tucked into the story are details that I know because I have an affinity for trivia, including details that my PI would have known: like who was Red Adair (hint: John Wayne played a version of him in The Hellfighters) and what happened in Texas City in 1947 (hint: worst industrial accident in US History).

My local library online research resources are phenomenal and are my favorite place to browse when I need very specific historical information. Reaching out to experts is also beneficial for getting the nitty-gritty details right. Do you have favorite research sites? Where do you look when you need accurate information quickly?

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Year End Assessments 2023- A Review

By N. M. Cedeño

December again. Time to assess this year’s writing. I’ll start off by saying, the year didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, but not as badly as I’d thought either. A number of issues combined to throw me off my schedule and destroy my focus, but I have learned some new things.

For instance, I learned that x-rays and sonograms successfully diagnose kidney stones about eighty percent of the time. If that path to diagnosis fails, doctors search for other causes. It may take six or eight months of tests to explore other possible diagnoses before the problem can be correctly diagnosed. This second path to diagnosis by eliminating other options is not one that I recommend. It prolongs pain, destroys work productivity, and ruins peace of mind.

I also learned in September that baseball-sized hail falling like rain can strike with no warning. We were extremely lucky no one was outside when the assault from the sky began or someone might have been killed. Repairs are ongoing (roof, deck, gutters, garden shed, light fixtures, A/C, windows, screens, cars, etc.). As of this writing, I am awaiting yet another contractor to complete yet another repair. Dealing with three separate insurance adjustors, talking to contractors, and scheduling repairs consumed all my time for October, then half of my time for November. Trying to get active teenagers to extracurricular events with cars out of commission was another challenge.

But without some strife we wouldn’t appreciate when things are actually going smoothly. Over the years, I’ve learned to take notice and enjoy the times when everything is running like a well-oiled machine. The easy times don’t last, but neither does the strife.

Now that I’ve covered the excuses, I’ll get to the writing numbers:

Stories submitted as of late November: thirty-five.

I plan to reach thirty-six or more before the end of December. I had hoped to submit four stories per month on average, but that was not to be this year. However, submitting an average of three stories per month in a difficult year is a victory in my book.

Acceptances were low this year, too– so far only two. I have twelve submissions still pending, so maybe I’ll see more acceptances in the new year.

Publications of stories: four.

Three of my stories appeared in Black Cat Weekly courtesy of editor Michael Bracken. One appeared in an anthology-“Danger at Death’s Door” in Crimeucopia: One More Thing To Worry About from editor John Connor.

For the moment, I have one publication pending, a short story for an anthology coming out in the spring of 2024.

I did receive two invitations to contribute stories to projects this year. One I had to turn down thanks to a short deadline and the ongoing strife. The other offered a deadline far enough in the future that I could easily say yes. Also, a new editor asked me to contribute a story to a project, which I really appreciate. I had intended to reach out to new editors this year, but with the strife, that plan was postponed.

For 2024, I’m looking forward to setting new writing goals and working with more editors. I plan to watch my middle child graduate from high school in the spring and start college (!) in the fall, and see my youngest through driver’s license testing, the end of junior year, and the start of senior year (!) of high school. Also, someone else (Hooray, Pat Kelly!) will be taking over the duties of president for my Sisters in Crime Chapter, leaving me more time for writing. I’ve been on the board in various capacities since 2016 or 2017, and it’s time to bring in fresh blood. Here’s looking forward to a busy, productive 2024!

*****

The Good, the Bad, the Cleanup

by N.M. Cedeño

First, some good news! My story entitled “A Matter of Trust” was published in Black Cat Weekly #110 on October 8 via editor Michael Bracken. The story features genetic genealogy private investigator Maya Laster who first appeared in “Disappearance of a Serial Spouse” in Black Cat Weekly #79 in March 2023. In this, her second published case, Maya is working to help her client, Bob Rolland, prove that he’s an heir to a forgotten trust fund, when violence ensues. With Bob’s life hanging in the balance, Maya races to discover who might want to stop him from claiming his inheritance.

“A Matter of Trust” is my first story inspired by a click-bait title that I didn’t click. The article was something about a dead billionaire leaving everything in trust for his reincarnated self to inherit. I imagined a vast fortune sitting forever, waiting for an heir to step forward. I thought, what if someone left everything in trust for possible future grandchildren? And what if the only link to the information about the trust died without telling anyone? From those seeds grew a story of lost family relationships requiring a genetic genealogist to reconnect the missing pieces.

So, for those who always ask: yes, story ideas really do come from everywhere.

Next, the bad news. Two events within five days gave me ample material to consider for use in future stories, and I would not wish either of them on anyone.

First, The Hail.

One Sunday evening, my neighborhood was hit by baseball-sized hail. If you’ve never experienced a storm like that, it’s hard to imagine the sheer power behind that kind of precipitation. Windshields and car rear windows exploded when hit by enormous hail falling at terminal velocity. Coming down in sheets like rain, pummeling everything in its path, it left its mark everywhere, from the soil, the concrete, and the asphalt to cars, roofs, light fixtures, patio furniture, and trees. It even killed birds.

My family hid in a closet, listening to what sounded like a bombardment. The weather notification that baseball-sized hail was coming arrived on our phones five minutes after we had already retreated to the closet with the dog because of the fury of the storm. The warning came far too late to try to protect anything outside, but did confirm our instinct to take cover away from windows.

Next, The SWATTING.

Four days after the storm, someone decided to commit a crime against the community by calling in a false attack at my children’s high school. For those who don’t know, per the Oxford dictionary, “swatting” is defined as “the action or practice of making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.” Seven different agencies responded to the high school in full gear, expecting to find an active shooter.

Someone intentionally terrorized hundreds of teachers and almost four thousand students at one school. It’s an enormous high school with a dozen buildings spread over a quarter mile wide. People in one building have no idea what may be happening in another building. So when the school locked down, many kids assumed the worst was happening somewhere and texted their parents from hiding places in darkened rooms and storage areas.

The number of swatting incidents in the US rose so quickly in the past few years that the FBI has created a database to aid in tracking and investigating them. Three high schools in two districts in my area were “swatted” in one day. In my youth such incidents could be ascribed to individual teenagers playing pranks or trying to avoid a test. While that may explain a few isolated cases, evidence suggests that many of the recent swatting incidents are linked to common perpetrators, many of whom may not be in the US. Terrorists have realized that they can sow fear with a spoofed phone call.

Once I have some distance from these events and can put them in perspective, details from one or both incidents may appear in a story. For the moment, I’m still cleaning up the mess.

*****

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.

*****

Submitting Short Stories: It’s Like Baseball

By N. M. Cedeño

Many of the stories I write aren’t accepted the first time I submit them for publication. The majority have to be submitted over and over again to find a publication home. The process made me think of a batter stepping up to the plate in baseball because I may strike out repeatedly before scoring a run.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Most of the time, I write stories with no specific publisher in mind. I write the story because I want to or because the only way to get it out of my head- and make it stop bothering me- is to put it down on paper. Then, after the story is written, I begin the process of looking for a place to submit it. “It Came Upon a Midnight Ice Storm” is one of these stories. I wrote it for myself because I like light-hearted mysteries stories set at Christmas.

I first submitted this Christmas story for publication in mid-2018. It was rejected, struck out, eventually a total of eight times. I put it through workouts, strengthening it several times between ‘at bats’. Then, I saw a call for submissions that I thought it might fit, a call for cozy mysteries. On my ninth submission, the story was accepted. It will appear in Black Cat Mystery Magazine in a couple months.

Sometimes, I’ll write a story based on requirements for a specific call for submissions, and it’s not accepted. I strike out. If the call was general enough, I can turn around and resubmit the story elsewhere with no changes. It’s ready for its next ‘at bat.’ That was the case for my story, “Reaching for the Moon.” After being initially rejected, and then rejected again, I submitted it to Murderous Ink Press, where editor John Connor accepted it for inclusion in the Crimeucopia: Say What Now? Anthology.

In other cases, the call for submissions may be in such a specific niche that I need to change the story in order to submit it elsewhere. Continuing the baseball analogy, I prepped the story to face a specific pitcher and have to make changes to face a new pitcher for the next ‘at bat.’

For example, my story “Serenity, Courage, Wisdom” was written for a very specific call for submissions for stories inspired by the music of a particular group and was rejected. In order to resubmit it elsewhere, I changed the title, which was originally a song title, and stripped out the details related to the song. Stripping those details left a hole, so instead of referencing a song, I settled on referencing a prayer that hung in my parents’ kitchen my entire childhood and that I have a copy of in my own kitchen.

After making these changes, I submitted the story to Black Cat Weekly, where the editor said the story needed a little work before he’d publish it and gave me some suggestions. In this case, I made a base hit, which requires more work on my part to make it to home plate. To get to home plate, I have to listen to the coach, aka the editor. I have to review the editor’s suggestions and work on the story with those suggestions in mind. If I don’t do the work, I get left on base and never make it home. If I do the work and send the story back to the editor, and he’s pleased and accepts the story, then I’ve rounded the bases to home plate and scored a run.

In this case, I did the work to earn the run. “Serenity, Courage, Wisdom” will be published in Black Cat Weekly #37 coming out in May 2022.

Only one of my stories so far has been accepted on its first submission, which is the equivalent of hitting a home run. That story, “Nice Girls Don’t,” was written specifically for the anthology, Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties edited by Michael Bracken. I saw the call for submissions months ahead of the deadline and went to work researching material and writing the story. The anthology was published last week, debuting on April 11, 2022.

I have yet to retire any stories from the line-up. Eventually, I may have to set one aside, waiting to come out for the right call for submissions.

A Note: I’ll be participating in a panel discussion on mysteries, talking about my short mysteries, on Friday, May 13, at Hearth & Soul in Austin. Check the “Gather” tab on their website for time and location. Additional information will be posted soon.

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Writing “Nice Girls Don’t” for Groovy Gumshoes

So what if I wasn’t born in the 1960s? I can do research!

In 2020, I came across a call for submissions for mystery short stories to be included in an anthology. The anthology was to be called Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties. The editor, Michael Bracken, wanted stories set in the 1960s featuring private detectives, with bonus points given if the story included a major historical event.

The call caught my attention, but not having been born in the 1960s, I searched my brain for any specific event that I might use as starting point for a story. Two events for which I had a wealth of knowledge at my fingertips came to mind. One was the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. When you grow up in Dallas, this one comes to mind quickly. But I thought that event, given its extreme historical prominence, might be covered by too many other authors submitting stories.

So I selected the second event: the UT Tower Shooting.

The University of Texas Tower Shooting on August 1, 1966, is a dark shadow on Austin’s history. It was a mass shooting at a school that happened decades before such events became regular occurrences. The Tower Shooting, like the JFK assassination, is reviewed regularly by the local media on anniversaries of the event. And I am intimately familiar with the locale where the shooting occurred since I attended the University of Texas at Austin and walked in the shadow of the Tower daily for four years. Additionally, the shooting is well-documented. Video taken that day is even available online. I knew that finding background details for a short story set around the time of the shooting wouldn’t be hard.

However, none of that is why the Tower Shooting came immediately to mind.

It came to mind because I knew someone I could question about life in the 1960s in Austin, Texas, and about the Tower shooting in particular: my father.

My father, whose grandparents were all Czech immigrants who arrived in Texas after the Civil War, graduated from tiny Rogers High School in rural central Texas and set out be the first in his immediate family to graduate from college. He worked his way up: first attending a junior college, then transferring to a small private college, then transferring, finally, to the University of Texas at Austin. On the fateful morning of August 1, 1966, my father turned in the final paper for the final class he needed to graduate. He arrived on campus early in the morning and left to report to his job at an Austin grocery store.

He had a lot on his mind that day. With his upcoming graduation at the end of the summer term, my father should have been considering his improved employment prospects. But he wasn’t looking for jobs. He knew that his draft number was coming up in October. He had to make a decision: volunteer for the draft or wait to be drafted into the military in the midst of the Vietnam War. He volunteered for the draft in September 1966.

Twenty-seven years later, on my first day living in the dorms at UT, my father showed me where people had died near the balustrade on the South Mall. He pointed out the bullet holes marking the stone. He recounted his memory of leaving campus and listening to the shooting on the radio while at work. His story of that day, woven into the story of his life, became a piece of family lore, embedded in my memory.

And so, after picking my father’s brain and doing a ton of research, my short story “Nice Girls Don’t” came into being. The story features a private detective hired in September 1966 to investigate the death of a young woman, a UT student who died the day of the Tower Shooting. The girl’s parents believe their daughter’s case was ignored because the police were too busy dealing with the Tower Shooting to give her death the attention it deserved. The parents want the detective to find out what really happened.

After completing my story, I submitted it to the editor, hoping it might be selected for inclusion in the anthology… And the editor, Michael Bracken, chose my story to be included in Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties, coming from Down & Out Books in April 2022!

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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.