From Green Eggs to Dark Alleys

What brought me into writing, and what keeps me there?

By Dietrich

Like a lot of us, it started with picture books. From there, I caught on to reading, growing up with the wonderful stories of Dr. Suess and E.B. White. My coming-of-age years brought new books that pulled me in even deeper: The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Outsiders. Then came the great crime writers who inspired me to write: Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, James Crumley and Charles Willeford. There was something electric in those pages, and I remember thinking, “Someday, I want to do that.”

When someday finally arrived, I didn’t jump straight into novels. I started with short stories—testing the waters, experimenting with different genres, voices and styles. When the first short was published, I was on Cloud Nine. It felt like I had cracked open a door. So I kept writing, building confidence and finding my way. The shift to crime fiction felt natural enough. I loved the tension and pace, the flawed characters making bad choices, and all those moral gray areas. 

My first novel, Ride the Lightning, came out in 2014, and I was on that cloud again. And the love of telling stories has stayed with me ever since, and it keeps me pulling me back to the blank page.

Every story begins with a spark—an image, a “what if,” or a bit of history that won’t let go. From there, it’s a matter of chasing that spark through the research, false starts, revisions and the slow build until everything finally clicks. 

Since that first crime novel, I’ve found real satisfaction in digging into different eras—like the Dust Bowl for Call Down the Thunder, or life in the Midwest during the bygone days of Dirty Little War. I enjoy putting my own twist on true stories in books like Under an Outlaw Moon and Crooked, exploring the raw power of nature in House of Blazes, and capturing the raw energy of the punk music scene in Zero Avenue. There’s something special about creating characters and selecting the right historical details that bring each world alive as the story unfolds. When it all comes together, it’s the best feeling.

The love of reading has never faded. Over the years, I’ve added many more authors and genres to the mix: James Lee Burke, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Harper Lee, and countless others.

But what keeps me coming back most of all is hearing from someone that a book of mine stayed with them, took them by surprise, made them laugh, or kept them up late turning pages. That’s the best fuel any writer could ask for.

Writing Helps

 

Terry here with our question of the week: 

 What brought you into writing, and what keeps you there? 

 I recently went through a period of distress. I’ve been politically invested my whole life, and this is such a disastrous time in politics, that I feel a continuing sense of tragedy and loss. I feel as if the things that I hold most important in the political landscape have been trashed. It’s as if a band of crazy people have come into my house and torn up all the photos I cherish, broken keepsakes, thrown sand in the appliances, smashed windows, gouged deep gashes in the floors, ripped carpets into bits, torn pages out of books, slashed art…destruction on a massive, personal scale. I know people who have lost their homes to fires, and it’s tragic, but this is a different tragedy because it is perpetrated by people I thought I had some connection to. If I didn’t agree with them, I at least respected them. No more. I’m in a wilderness created by people who don’t value the things I value. They don’t care about dignity, truth, kindness, or decency. So…I’ve been in a funk. 

 What saved me is writing. It has always saved me. Becoming immersed in a story has always been a way of keeping myself on an even keel. Long before I was published, I wrote stories, snippets of stories, descriptions of real experiences, fantasies, and dreams. Eventually, I began channeling the snippets into books, and eventually I learned the craft well enough so that the books became publishable. It isn’t as if I was writing as therapy, but instead learning to tell the story of the world as I experience it. 

Sometimes people ask why I write crime fiction. The easy answer is that there is a reckoning at the end of a crime novel. Justice gets served. But one of my favorite Kirkus reviews said, “A favorite of fans who like their police procedurals with a strong ethical center.” Writing crime fiction, for me, isn’t just about justice being served, but about the decisions people make, and why. It’s about Samuel Craddock seeing even criminals as human beings with a story that has led them to a dark place. In one of the books he even speculates that a killer carries a burden knowing he or she has made a wrong choice and that they will feel some relief at being brought to justice. 

 My parents always had books around. We were on a very limited budget because my dad went to college only after I was a toddler. He went to school by day, and worked after class and on weekends. Money was very tight. But there were two things my parents didn’t scrimp on. My mother had a piano, and she belonged to a book-of-the-month club. And at every occasion for gifts, I got books. Kid’s books. The Bobbsey Twins. Nancy Drew. The Hardy Boys. But I didn’t stick to those books I was an avid reader and I read my mother’s books as well. I never remember either of my parents taking note of what I was reading or telling me I was too young to read anything. 

So I knew about stories. I don’t remember when I first thought I could write. My dad wrote a story that was published when he was in college, and he was very proud of it, so that may have been what led me to believe that, I too, could write a story. I remember as a child making up plots. We lived on a farm when I was in the second and third grade, which meant I had plenty of alone time to tell myself stories. I vividly remember once walking in a plowed field and thinking about what I could find there that might be interesting enough to tell a story about. 

 It wasn’t until the fifth grade, when I read a classic sci-fi short story that I suddenly thought, “I could do that. I could a write a story like that.” I can’t remember actually following through at that time. But I do remember writing a story in middle school (which we called junior high school in those days) that my teacher read aloud. I was completely hooked after that, and began to scribble pieces of stories. 

 The rest is history!

The ones who brought me here... - By Matthew Greene

What brought you into writing, and what keeps you there?

Great question—who can I blame for all this? 

I'm kidding, of course. I'm incredibly grateful to be a working writer, and can only imagine what I'd have ended up doing otherwise. (I remembering hearing Harlan Coben say if he hadn't become a novelist, he would have been a duvet cover, and that's always stuck with me.) In true "butterfly effect" fashion, I could point to any number of things that nudged me in this direction.

But, in light of some recent news about teacher strikes in California (y'all, can we just pay these folks what they deserve?) I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight three extraordinary educators. Within the course of what probably felt like an ordinary day's work, each of them had a profound impact on my life and future career. 

This is not an exhaustive list, but as many teachers have urged me to do over the years, I will try to keep it brief.

Ms. Heard - Fourth Grade

Any teacher who inspires a nine-year-old boy to linger after the bell rings deserves some kind of medal. And Ms. Heard deserves that and more. It's not exactly rare to find a teacher who cares as deeply as she did, but it's a gift nonetheless. I always saw Ms. Heard as a very serious person, someone who possessed more knowledge than my little child-sized brain could possibly hold. Of course, I was just precocious enough to take this as a challenge. I am sure, looking back, that the last thing Ms. Heard wanted to do after a long day of wrangling fourth graders was to make chit chat with the young nerd who wouldn't leave the classroom. But she always treated me like I was interesting, like I had something to say. Her attention made me see myself differently. It made me believe in myself. Ms. Heard encouraged me to be creative and thoughtful at a time when I would have traded any burgeoning storytelling talent for the ability to blend in with the other boys. But I had a teacher—a smart, savvy, occasionally intimidating teacher—who made me believe that a weirdo like me was worthy of attention.

Ms. Schlaman - AP Literature

If childhood is a tricky time to navigate, teenage years can be downright deadly. By the time my young, overachieving self landed in Ms. Schlaman's classroom my senior year of high school, I'd turned into a full-fledged drama kid with dreams of singing on a Broadway stage. But something sparked for me as I met Ms. Schlaman, dissecting great works of literature and exploring a part of my brain I didn't even know existed. She embodied the joy that comes from rigor, treating my writing with a seriousness I didn't believe it deserved. When I took the stage in the school musical (not to brag, but I was the lead) she was there to support. Little did she know, she was quietly guiding me to something better. When the opportunity came to enter an essay contest for a sizable scholarship, she helped me through more rounds of rewrites than I bet she bargained for. On the eve of the deadline, I asked if she thought my essay was good enough to impress the judges. Her response: "You're impressive." Those two words—spoken to an insecure, closeted, self-loathing teen—did more for me than any scholarship ever could.

Eric Samuelsen - Playwriting 100

It took one year of college to realize that my plan to major in musical theatre performance was woefully misguided. My sophomore year found me in Eric Samuelsen's Intro to Playwriting class, a course I registered for on a whim. In the first session, he asked us to come back in two days with a short play. I stayed up all night to write a dark comedy about carpool moms, and I grimaced through every second of hearing my words out loud in class. Eric asked me to visit during office hours, and I prepared myself for a brutal reality check. What I got, though, was a warm smile, a friendly chuckle about my audacious script, and a simple bit of encouragement: "You could do this, you know." Unbeknownst to him, I'd had a blast churning out those first few pages, and I was looking for permission to call myself a writer. Eric gave me that and so much more. Playwriting evolved into other forms, eventually leading to my debut novel. None of which would have happened without him.

So, what keeps me writing? At least part of my answer would be a deep desire to make these people proud. (Along with the many other fabulous educators I didn't have room to mention.) At my first book release event back in Sacramento, I was honored to have so many former teachers in attendance. These are the people who steered my life, and I'm sure I'm one of many who feel that way.

So, here's to the teachers. May we finally pay them what they're worth.

Postcards from the Morally Ambiguous Landscape of AI by Poppy Gee

How do you see AI changing the landscape for better or worse for authors?

AI is has already changed the landscape. No one is happy about it - except the people who are using it for creative shortcuts. 

Lately I've heard some morally questionable stories coming out of the woodwork, coming from people I respect and like, about how they use AI in their professional life. 

• A self-published fantasy author uses AI to create their e-book covers. 

• A best-selling author was asked to blurb someone's new book. They used CHAT GPT to create a snappy one-line statement describing the book. They had read the book, but didn't think they could think of something catchy enough. 

• A writer didn't like the blurb her publisher wrote for the back cover of her book. She used AI to tweak it into something better.

• A writer needed their publisher to write a reference for an application for a fellowship. He emailed his publisher. The publisher said, can you please write the reference yourself, and I'll sign it. The writer then used CHAT GPT to create a glowing endorsement letter. It required a tiny bit of tweaking. The publisher signed it without question. The fellowship application was not successful. I don't know if it was because they could tell AI was used... however, I doubt the judges knew. 

• At a recent conference, over coffee in the cafe, I heard two writers discussing how they use AI to brainstorming ideas, plot holes, interesting clues, and endings for their crime novel. 

There are many reason that many writers, like me, feel emotional about this topic. The thing that annoys me the most is that it feels like cheating. Indisputably, if you don't put a statement on your work explaining why it's not completely your own work, you're lying. 

A quick google search will find interviews with authors who openly admit to using AI for a range of things from brainstorming story ideas, writing blurbs and social media posts, newsletters, proofreading and also editing their novels for consistency issues, and of course, cover art. The cover art is an interesting topic, as many writers don't see a moral equivalence between using AI art and AI words. Personally I love admiring original artwork on a book's cover, and then finding the designer on Instagram so I can see what else they are creating. 

If you're reading this, and you write a newsletter or social media posts using AI, please unsubscribe me . My time is too precious to read AI regurgitation. I'll never be enamoured by authors who use AI. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'd rather read a perfectly imperfect novel, with typos, with inconsistencies, with an ending that doesn't quite make sense, than a perfectly-packaged-sliced-white-bread-loaf-of-a-book. Do you agree? Or do you think I'm being old-fashioned, and unwilling to move with the times? Do we need to embrace technology and see what opportunities it opens up for us? I admit, I'm not an expert on AI. Maybe there are positives to it that I'm not aware of. 

There are some excellent insights on the blog this week regarding this topic. Please read them, especially if you are an author, as there's no closing the gate on AI now. If you're a writer, it will effect you - your income, your publishing opportunities, the ability to find and maintain a loyal readership, and other important things too. 

A Side of Mac, "Anatto" and Sodium Tripolyphosphate, by Catriona

How do you see AI changing the landscape for better or worse for authors?

Oof. I might not answer the question, actually. It's been answered better than I could do already this week (scroll down).

spoiler from my latest author's note.

Instead, I'll take a swing at why the environmental cost, uninvited daily intrusions, wholesale theft, sneaky lying, cheating, whining about getting caught lying and cheating, and all the rest of it are such a brain-frying, heart-sinking source of despair. I mean, it's not like we're short of those coming at us from elsewhere.

It's because it's junk. Worthless, dispiriting, empty junk. It's a lot of money and water and lawsuits for something with no value. 

I get a bit stumped when asked to back that up, mind you. It's one of those situations where if you ask the question, you might not be equipped to understand the answer. 

(The best example I've ever heard of that kind of conundrum was years back when a student nurse asked why she had to sit with a dying patient who wasn't conscious and wouldn't know whether there was anyone there or not. The boss nurse checked - "You're asking what the problem is with someone dying alone in a room on this ward instead of with someone at her bedside?" See? If you ask that question you might not be equipped to understand the answer. (Or be a nurse.))

But I'll try again anyway. Ahem. Stuff being fake matters.

There was a landmark bit of sociological research published years back that encapsulated it perfectly.

Basically, there was an investigation of levels of pilfering by staff of two different supermarkets. One lot had pockets in their uniforms and one lot didn't. Guess which cohort of workers was discreetly easing cash out of the till and products off the shelves. Yep - the ones who had to go to all the trouble of stuffing pies down their tights because they had no pockets.

So the supermarket with the theft problem decided to redesign their uniforms. But they couldn't bring themselves to actually give the sticky-fingered workers real pockets to fill with swag, so they faked them. Plackets a-go-go but no pouch. 

The theft got worse.

Stuff being fake matters.

It would be an appalling end to this long tradition of human creativity if "unregulated" market forces caused art, music and literature to be replaced by cheaper, quicker fakes because people who don't get it don't get it and they're rich. It would be like Timothee Chalomet somehow managing to shut down the Vienna Opera House and the Royal Ballet, with a Beavis-and-Butthead-style snigger of proud, affectless ignorance.  

And make no mistake. They are fakes. Every unit of extruded novel-length language-substitute, every twelve-fingered grandma illustrating a heart-microwaving tale on Facebook, every response to a Google search where you forget to type -AI into the box . . . fake.

Those AI summaries don't contain information. ChatGPT doesn't answer questions. Those pixels don't add up to a granny. What you're being served is a simulation of what information, answers, and grannies look like. 

You can check this for yourself, if you're quick. I got the chance very recently. Small Prophets, MacKenzie Crook's follow-up to Detectorists was broadcast on British telly to rave reviews. The next day, I googled "Where can I watch Small Prophets in the US". For a minute I thought I had got the answer: "Small Prophets is available in the US on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Hulu."

Wow. Crook sold it four times into the same market? That's . . . surprising. 

Silly me. I had forgotten to type -AI and I'd got a fake version of what the answer to that question would look like, using terms that turn up in real anwers to that general kind of question. Before enough people asked that specific question, about that specific weird little British sitcom, this was the best the poor AI could do. 

It's learning. Now it's reporting Amazon Prime Video and Netflix only. Utter tosh, of course. It's not available anywhere in the US, but Netflix and Amazon are just too frequent a pair of answers and it's such a niche little show . . . the slop's going to win this one every time. It will never give a simulation of the true answer to the question I asked: "I don't know" - because it doesn't know anything. It doesn't know what "know" means.

Right, I'm off to make macaroni and cheese with five ingredients - pasta, butter, flour, milk, cheese - or three if I can call pasta and flour "wheat" and milk, cheese and butter "milk". And, if the blue box people get to call what they recover from waste anatto by-product via industrial-solvent-based extraction processes "anatto", I think I probably can.

Cx

Greggs go-cup to prove I'm not *that* snooty

Is it real? by Eric Beetner

 How do you see AI changing the landscape for better or worse for authors?

This is THE hot topic for discussion any time a group of writers gets together these days.

The short answer, in my opinion, is that it will make things worse.

Not only is there already a division within the writing community among writers who abhor all things AI and the (luckily) few who are embracing it, but what constitutes  some use of AI before it is deemed “Cheating” is a vague and undefined line.

We’d all be lost without spell check, which has been an early form of artificial intelligence we all embraced decades ago. There are small ways in which assistance from the electronic brains on our desks or in our laps helps us every day. The obvious line in the sand is asking a computer to write a full draft of something. There is just no world in which that is considered writing. Same with an outline or writing prompt, if only for the fact that these systems have all learned by devouring the work of others and regurgitating it.

The argument, of course, is that we all do the same by taking in influences and inspiration from other authors all the time, but there is something quite different from being influenced by great art and then reinterpreting it through your creative process versus asking a computer to simply spit out a paint-by-numbers version of the same thing.

Recently we’ve seen the looming AI flood begin to recede a bit. Companies aren’t  thriving the way they wanted to and the public is rejecting the force-feeding of AI into every aspect of our lives. This is a good thing and I hope it continues. AI technology has so many amazing capabilities to improve our lives. The fact is, nobody asked for it to take over creative endeavors. We want improvements in medicine, automation of drudgery tasks and a million invisible uses we’ll never know about. We want our art to continue to be human and for the AI technology to open more time and creative space for that to happen.

One of the most insidious evils of AI in our lives, and one thing that is already out of the box no matter how much AI begins to shrink into the background, is the doubt it casts over what is real and what is not.

From deepfake photos, Instagram videos that are fabricated, news articles and, yes, full novels, we have doubt now about what has been computer generated and what is still being made by humans. Once that doubt creeps in, it is hard to ever trust again.

Accusations fly and when that happens, false accusations are inevitable. We’ve seen contracts cancelled already due to AI being exposed during the writing process. We’ve seen people claim that use of the em dash is a signifier of AI usage, when those of us who use em dashes sit here, innocent, but caught in the crossfire.

I have found it easy to simply avoid any use of AI tools entirely. I don’t even entertain the thought of using them. That doesn’t save me from the skeptics who start to see all writing as assisted writing. The simple fact that it exists out there makes what we do suspect and that is an awful feeling.

I don’t think I know any writers, personally, who are using AI for their work. I do know writers who are using it for cover art, promotional videos, graphic work. I steer clear of all of it both for not wanting to support an industry intent on making human effort in the arts obsolete, the environmental impacts of AI, and the soul-sucking dullness of not taking the time and effort to create something. 

Whenever I’ve heard these tech bros speak about the uses of AI in the arts – writing, music, film – it is always painfully obvious they lack the skills to do any of it and they simply don’t understand the creative process. I saw an interview with some tech guy who claimed nobody liked making music any more. He said you had to get good at an instrument, which took years of practice and effort, you had to learn production tools and music theory. Any musician knows that YES! THAT’S THE FUN PART!

Same, too, with writing. Is it easier to plug in “write my a mystery in the style of Agatha Christie” and be done? Yes. Is it satisfying? Not in the least. Certainly not as satisfying as devising a plot, creating misleads and red herrings, devising an ingenious solution, tying it all together and making it live with full-blooded characters from your own imagination. A computer could never replace that.

AI is here to stay in one form or another. How much we let it through the door of our creative arts is up to us. I say stay out, full stop. Don’t give it an inch. Don’t be tempted by the ease of it. Or if you do, don’t dare call yourself a writer.

Machines Can Lie, Writers Do Lie… Stories Tell the Truth

   

The first time I asked an AI to summarize a crime novel, it did so in about three seconds.

It took me three months to write mine.

As a crime writer, I spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about human psychology. Motive is the engine of the genre. A body on the floor is the starting point; the real story begins with How and Why it’s there.

In my own case, the novel has false starts, rewrites, and long stretches spent staring at a paragraph that refuses to behave.

That small experiment captures the current argument about artificial intelligence. Depending on whom you ask, AI will either usher in a golden age of creativity or reduce writers to gig workers polishing prose generated by a machine that has never experienced heartbreak, homicide, or a missed deadline.

Both predictions are probably wrong. Historically, they almost always are.

New technologies tend to arrive with two publicists: one predicting paradise, the other predicting catastrophe. For more than a century we have been promised that machines would free us for higher pursuits. Washing machines spared us from scrubbing clothes by hand. Email replaced letters. Television was once expected to become the great educator of the masses, bringing Shakespeare, science, and world affairs into every living room.

The promise is always the same: remove the drudgery and humans will devote themselves to more meaningful work.

Sometimes the promise even holds.

Writers once worked on typewriters, producing pages that looked like minor crime scenes—crossed-out lines, correction fluid, and coffee rings as editorial commentary. When word processors arrived, they quietly eliminated one of the great mechanical burdens of writing: retyping entire pages just to fix a paragraph.

Spell-check followed. Then autocorrect, which introduced its own genre of accidental comedy.

And yet many of us, liberated from the tyranny of the typewriter, still struggle to produce a compelling sentence.

Artificial intelligence continues that same technological trajectory. It can summarize research, organize information, propose outlines, and imitate the statistical patterns of language with impressive speed.

But stories—especially crime stories—depend on something less mechanical.

Crime fiction is rarely about the crime itself. It is about human nature under pressure: the moment someone crosses a line they once swore they never would.

Greed. Fear. Loyalty. Betrayal.

These are the emotional forces that drive the story.

A machine can describe a murder. Understanding why someone commits one is another matter.

None of this means artificial intelligence is trivial. It may reshape publishing, accelerate research, and flood the world with more text than anyone can reasonably read. Writers will adapt, just as they adapted to typewriters, word processors, the internet, social media, and the curious modern expectation that authors should also function as marketers, podcasters, and amateur meteorologists of the publishing industry.

Storytelling has survived every technological shift thrown at it so far.

That is because the appetite for stories is older than any machine. Humans want to know what happened, why it happened, and whether justice—however imperfect—will prevail.

Crime fiction, especially, thrives on that ancient curiosity.

Which brings me back to the three-second summary.

Artificial intelligence can reduce a novel to a neat paragraph. It can identify the characters, the plot, and even the twist.

What it cannot easily summarize is the thing crime writers spend years trying to understand:

why someone crossed the line in the first place.

And as long as that question remains difficult, messy, and stubbornly human, there will still be work for crime writers.

Yes, I would like a slice of that lemon pound cake!

 

 

 

How do you see AI changing the landscape for better or worse for authors? 

Let me be transparent from the start. I am firmly in the No-AI-in-the-arts camp. Even so, I had my doubts about the ability to stuff this pervasive genie back into the bottle. AI has infiltrated virtually every facet of our lives without our even noticing. Now that we are noticing, it’s too late to stop it. From the time Alexa wakes me up in the morning until my smart lights plunge me into darkness at night, AI is there, helping me cook, checking my health, directing my driving, and my steps. So then, how could I expect it wouldn’t worm its way into the arts, specifically storytelling.

Enter Afroman. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, congratulations! Somehow, you’ve managed to shield yourself from the invasive tentacles of the internet, and possibly all forms of modern communication of the 21^st century.

Afroman, a rapper, singer, poet, of a sort, was erroneously (on purpose) targeted by his local police as a possible drug-dealing kidnapper. They invaded his home, destroyed his property, and terrified his family. The result, the most brilliant series of revenge albums ever made.

You may have never heard of Afroman, may never have, or ever will, listen to an Afroman song in your life. That’s fine. But if you’re an artist, especially an artist that uses words as your medium, his story is relevant to you. Because, his ability to take a real-life situation and reshape it into creative gold can never be duplicated by AI. I just don’t believe that’s possible. Why not? Emotion. Creativity is all about emotion, in my mind. Afroman, along with every artist who’s ever sat down and created something out of nothing was inspired by an emotion. Our characters act out of emotion. Our readers react to our emotion.

AI may can write about emotion, but it can’t fake the feelings that lead to a whole song written about a rogue sheriff and his lust for lemon pound cake. Look it up and thank me later.  And we should all feel better about that.

 

                                                               

 

Do you know what month it is? | Working Other Genres into Crime Fiction by Faye Snowden

For the past several years I’ve waited with anticipation for April, and because this *age redacted* Grandma is twelve at heart, I go around asking everyone I encounter, ‘Do you know what month it is?’ in a riff off the old Geico commercial, the one with the camel talking about hump day. My husband groans. My sons pat me on the head and say, ‘That’s wonderful, Mom’ while furiously completing an application to Shady Pines. I’m quite sure those two are conspiring to put me in some version of a Shady Pines old folk home when I reach my dotage. (Yikes, maybe that’s now.)

Photo by Yana Yuzvenko on Unsplash

Let me see if I can explain my excitement every time April rolls around.

I’ll start with James Dickey’s poem, The Hospital Window. When I was first getting together with my husband, I recited this line on dates, or dinner at home, even in the movies (especially the soapy romcoms he made me watch): I have just come down from my father. My poor soon-to-be husband didn’t love it. He wasn’t the only victim. My sister-in-law got it, too. That line was just so damn good, the lilt of it. Okay, don’t like Dickey? How about the first line of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table. You read it and know this poem is about to take a serious turn.

Let’s not forget Ai (no, not AI. Come on, focus). I’m talking about Ai, the poet known for her stark and bloody monologues. Take a look at The Kid. When the poem opens, a young boy is smacking the flat tires of an old pickup with a tire iron. The monologue continues with him murdering his family. It ends:

In the house, I put on the old man’s best suit

and his patent leather shoes.

I pack my mother’s satin nightgown

and my sister’s doll in the suitcase.

Then I go outside and cross the fields to the highway.

I’m fourteen. I’m a wind from nowhere.   

I can break your heart.

 

There are more, of course, Gwendolyn Brooks’ The Bean Eaters, Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Mornings, Kim Addonizio’s What Do Women Want (hint: not a man), poems with images so sharp you’re bound to get cut. 

As for the question we’re answering this week: do I work other genres into my crime fiction? Absolutely, positively, most definitely yes. I love poetry so much that my main character Raven Burns can’t help but love it. Her serial killer father doesn’t love poetry, per se, but he does have a fondness for doggerel including The Owl and the Pussycat. And he is quite fond of quoting nursery rhymes. 

Coming, April 14, 2026

I’ve used poems as clues and in character development. I’ve turned to poetry to help me craft a mood or perfect an image or when my drafts start to sprawl and I need to be concise. Looking to explain something important in the story, but only have one or two lines to get it done? Read some poems. Having trouble showing and not telling? I head over to The Poetry Foundation at poetryfoundation.org where all of the poems I’ve discussed in this blog are hosted. I’ve downloaded the app and regularly use the spin feature to find poems on disappointments and celebrations, doubt and science, humor and aging. 

Have you guessed why I’m so excited about April? April is National Poetry Month! Every year, I delight in posting a poem a day on social media to celebrate.  So, I ask again, Do you know what month it is? If you do, join me. Read some unforgettable poems to improve your writing, and so you, too, can annoy your friends and family.  

Aliens in Love: Bending the Rules from James W. Ziskin

Do you work other genres into your crime fiction? Do you bend the “so-called” rules?

 

I had a killer idea for a time-traveling-interstellar-alien-romance-mystery-cum-bildungsroman/comedy of manners/roman à clef. But—would you believe it?—

 

SOMEBODY BEAT ME TO IT!

Other than my alien romance, I haven’t tried to write outside the overarching umbrella of crime fiction. But I have mixed elements from other genres into my books. As for bending the so-called rules, aside from playing fair with the reader, I don’t subscribe to any. That includes (excludes?) most, but not all, of the prohibitions laid out by S. S. Van Dine and Ronald Knox back in the 1920s. Only one secret room permitted in a story??? Who can write a mystery with only one secret room? No way. In fact, I have broken—not bent—several of their rules in my books, as have many writers more accomplished than I.

 

Now, have I borrowed elements from other genres and used them shamelessly in my mysteries and crime fiction? Yes, I have. And since I don’t intend to give them back, I suppose you could say I stole them. That said, my Ellie Stone novels (seven to date) fall squarely into the mystery genre. Ellie is a small town newspaper reporter in the early 1960s. Her beat is local and human interest stories until the occasional murder pops up. These books are traditional procedurals and do not stray into other sandboxes. Okay, once she nearly fell in love (Heart of Stone), but that’s about as close to romance as she’s ever come. And no sci-fi, fantasy, western, or erotica DNA to be found.

 

On the other hand, many readers of my historical thriller, Bombay Monsoon, have suggested that it’s a romantic thriller. I’m fine with that description, even if that wasn’t exactly my intention when I wrote it. Yes, my main character, Danny Jacobs, falls for a mysterious, desirable woman, and his obsession for her fuels the plot and the suspense of the book. The object of his desires is unavailable, is the lover of Danny’snewfound friend, and appears to be all wrong for him. I won’t give away the ending other than to say that while Bombay Monsoon is a love story of sorts, it’s not a bodice-ripper and it is definitely a historical thriller.

 

That brings me to my next book, THE PRANK, which comes out in July 2026 (Level Best Books). I struggle to put a tag on this story. Is it a mystery? No, definitely not. Is it a romance? Well, the main characters spend time together and one is definitely interested in the other. But, no. It’s not a love story. And it’s not science fiction or fantasy either—no robots or elves or faeries. And, no, it’s not exactly historical, even if it does take place at Christmas 1968. It’s not a comic novel, there’s no time travel, and I wouldn’t call it literary despite the fine writing.

 

(Blushes as accolades pour in.)

 

(Blushes even more as eyes roll in reaction to ill-concealed attempt to pat self on back.)

 

No, THE PRANK is not a literary novel. Finally, I’m confident it’s not picaresque, paranormal, steampunk, dystopian, or alternate history.

So what is it, exactly? 

 

Could it be a thriller? Yes, I suppose I’ll have to settle for that. But what kind of thriller? I don’t think it’s a domestic thriller, in that it’s not about a married couple or a family. Is it medical? Legal? No. It’s certainly not geo-political, military, or techno either. No spies in the story either. No, THE PRANK is none of those.

 

So, back to my previous question: what the hell is it?

 

Well, there’s a crime of sorts. And somebody dies. And we wonder what will happen next. But there’s never any doubt about who did what. No mystery. It’s more a cautionary tale about good intentions and bad decisions. The characters drive the story because they both want something. And they want it a lot. Enough to risk serious societal repercussions. 

 

I like stories like that, even if they don’t fall into neat categories, which makes them harder to sell. Kind of like that novel I wanted to write: a laugh-riot bildungsroman about alien detectives falling in love as they tumble through eons and galaxies.

 

 

 *****************

THE PRANK…enigmatic and unnerving. The pace never flags for a second. This is some masterly plotting. I loved it.”

—Liz Nugent, author of Strange Sally Diamond

 

THE PRANK. A picture clipped from Playboy magazine, a missing Swiss Army Knife, and a prank gone terribly wrong conspire to make Christmas 1968 a deadly holiday to remember.

 

“The Holdovers meets The Bad Seed,” THE PRANK features a charming but volatile thirteen-year-old named Jimmy Steuben. He befriends his seventh-grade English teacher, Patti Finch, just days after her boyfriend is killed in an electrocution accident while hanging Christmas lights on his roof. Patti desperately needs respite from her grief, and a chance encounter with Jimmy provides just that. Ignoring the dangers of a potential scandal, the mismatched pair begins spending time together over Christmas break. Patti finds solace in Jimmy’s company; Jimmy discovers desire and infatuation. But what Patti doesn’t know is that it was Jimmy who caused the tragic accident that killed her lover.

From two-time Edgar Award finalist, Anthony, Barry, and Macavity award-winner James W. Ziskin, THE PRANK releases July 2026.

PLACEHOLDER—NOT THE OFFICIAL COVER

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