Jealous, who me?

Which crime fiction author are you insanely jealous of and why?

by Paul D. Marks, Robert D. Kidera, Travis Richardson, Wendall Thomas

I wish I had thought of Catriona’s title, Premise Envy for this post. I have title envy over that one 😄.

For today’s post and question I thought I’d ask three guests and friends, in alphabetical order, to offer their responses to this question. Each writes a different kind of mystery, so something for everyone. So, let’s get right to it:

***

Robert D. Kidera is the author of the Gabe McKenna Mysteries for Suspense Publishing. His first novel RED GOLD won the Tony Hillerman Award in 2015. His latest book, MIDNIGHT BLUES debuted in October of 2018. Kidera lives in Albuquerque with his wife Annette and his cat Woodrow Elvis. He has two daughters, a grandson and granddaughter. His favorite color is blue, his favorite food is New York pizza, and he hates long walks along the beach on moonlit nights. https://www.robertkiderabooks.com/ . Take it away, Bob:

“Which crime fiction author are you insanely jealous of and why?”

I’ll answer that question with another question: Is it possible to be insanely jealous and incredibly grateful at the same time? That’s how I feel toward Donald E. Westlake. How could he possibly have created such an off-center, off-beat menagerie of characters without them becoming off-putting but, instead, so downright real and even loveable? I have come to realize that he was a con-man himself, a conjurer and his written words are magic. I struggle to add some of that flavor to my work without dissipating his magical qualities. Of course, Westlake himself said “I believe my subject is bewilderment. But I could be wrong.” Maybe I should stop trying to understand his magic and just enjoy it?

I’m referring more to his Dortmunder novels, not so much the ones he wrote as Richard Stark, though they do possess their own magic (or perhaps dark magic). Dortmunder is heroic in his own way—the way it is with geniuses who endure the foibles of their comrades as well as their own. It’s the journey rather than the destination, isn’t it? And the journey isn’t just where you go, it’s the ones who accompany you along the way.

Westlake’s practice has informed the way I people my novels. My latest, MIDNIGHT BLUES, finds protagonist Gabe McKenna taking on a deadly human trafficking operation with the “assistance” of a reclusive 93 year-old World War II desert rat, a dwarf with a Thompson submachine gun, a thrice-divorced childhood friend on the run from his alimony obligations, an Apache long-haul trucker, a college professor who has lost all her grant funding, and a gimpy-legged former prize fighter who drives a hearse but serves the best barbecue in town. I blame Donald Westlake.

***

Travis Richardson lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. He has been a finalist and nominee for the Macavity, Anthony, and Derringer short story awards. His short story collection, BLOODSHOT AND BRUISED, came out in late 2018. Find more at www.tsrichardson.com, you’re up, Travis:

Oh, Hey There, Jealousy.

Paul Marks asked me to write about “Which crime fiction author are you insanely jealous of and why?” with an offer to promote my recently published short story collection, BLOODSHOT AND BRUISED. I said yes and now I’m in a position of answering a question I’m not sure about.

I can’t think of a particular author who I’m jealous of. No name immediately comes to mind. I believe many authors who have achieved success got there by talent, hustle, and serendipity. (A pop psychologist once told me that serendipity is being ready and positioned so that lucky moments will happen.) Sure there are writers who cut corners, but I usually don’t think of them as having long-term careers. And there is something sad in that. (In a former life, I worked with Faye Resnick who believed she was an author because she flew to the Hamptons to talk about Nicole Brown Simpson for 48 hours while transcribers typed away.) Also, there are machines like James Patterson or writers who have passed on, yet their names have been franchised. In many ways, that seems to be less than fair for living authors trying to stand out in an oversaturated publishing world, but I’m happy for the co-writers whose names and incomes are raised. And would I turn down an opportunity to co-write a Patterson title? Probably not. I would, however, like to break the stranglehold that many readers have who only reach out for the familiar, but I’m not sure how.

When I read prose or a scene that blows me away, I often see it as a challenge to improve to that writer’s level. No jealousy there, just more steps up an ever-steepening writing skill-set mountain. But when it comes to areas where I feel inadequate and see others thriving to the point that it may lead to jealousy, it would be in the areas of social media skills, promotion, and those who maximize their time to achieve their goals. So, yeah, I’m looking at you 7 Criminal Minds authors, you no good… Oops. Sorry about that. Let’s shove that little green monster back in the suitcase.  

I’m a bit overwhelmed in the social media arena. In the physical, non-virtual world I often do well with the nuances of conversation. Listening, adding opinion, etc. based on the person in front of me. But the anxiety of writing a spot-on pithy comment that says what I mean with the possibilities of misspellings, misinterpretations, and or missing important elements like a negation so that I come off like an idiot supporting something I hate often leads me to paralysis. I am a bit jealous of those who see something or have a brilliant thought, pull out their phones, and post. I’ve taken hundreds of photos of things assuming I’ll post them, but never do. I’ll stumble across a stimulating article and think that I should pass it on with commentary, but rarely do (and when I do nobody reads it). And oh those brilliant world-changing ideas… they come and go without any documentation. I have too many filters in place, and it inhibits me. A 20th century antique in a 21st century world. 

I also suck at promoting. Some writers do it well. Others, not so much. Some overdo it and alienate people. In the lead up to my short story collection coming out, I felt I was plastering the world with my upcoming book, but I maybe did a quarter of the promotions my wife had suggested for me. And now that time has passed, I see it is very little. To those who promote themselves and others, well done. 

The final thing that I want and find that I have very little of is time. And when I have it, I don’t always maximize that precious resource very well. There are writers who are incredibly disciplined, and my hat goes off to them. It seems like many published authors were former journalists. They don’t need to wait for a muse or certain atmosphere to write. Nope, they sit, type, and create stories. I tried reporting for one semester in college, but the newsroom drove me crazy. Too much noise and too many distractions. Perhaps if I had stuck with it, perhaps my brain would have broken through the chaos and learned to write in focused bursts regardless of the location. While I have some discipline, I can always improve and am impressed to the point of envy by those who can churn out multiple novels in a year.

So that’s it. I thought I would have nothing but I ended up with three. Thanks again, Paul Marks for the invitation. My short story collection BLOODSHOT AND BRUISED: Tales from the South and the West came out in November. 16 stories include Anthony, Macavity, and Derringer finalists. You can find it here: https://goo.gl/m5x4rH (Look, I’m promoting, Teresa!)

***

Wendall Thomas teaches in the Graduate Film School at UCLA, lectures internationally on screenwriting, and has worked as an entertainment reporter, development executive, script consultant, and film and television writer. Her novel LOST LUGGAGE was nominated for Lefty and Macavity Awards for Best Debut Mystery of 2017 and her short fiction appears in the crime anthologies Ladies Night (2015), Last Resort (2017), and the upcoming Murder A-Go-Gos (2019). https://www.wendallthomas.com/ . Hit it, Wendall:

When it comes to the mystery community, I feel more awe than envy. I’ve yet to meet anyone I admire who isn’t generous to a fault and killing themselves doing the best, bravest work they can. Any occasional flashes of “insane jealousy” come from my own cultural schizophrenia.

I’ve spent my life ping-ponging between Henry James and Sam Shepard, Earth, Wind & Fire and Joni Mitchell, Ghostbusters and The Passenger, Preston Sturges and Sidney Lumet. As a writer, I’m divided, too. Both Lost Luggage and the upcoming Drowned Under— in which Cyd Redondo joins an Australian cruise in search of her missing former in-laws and stumbles onto a plot to kidnap the last Tasmanian tiger—are pure screwball. My short stories are pure Hollywood cynicism, and my work in progress, Devilling, opens with a woman dying on an abortion table while a pianist drowns out her screams.

So I’m gobsmacked by the writers who are able to move seamlessly between genres or sub-genres, by those who’ve perfected both the comic and the terrifying, by writers like (to join the chorus) Catriona McPherson and Tim Hallinan. The thing they have I really wish for is their representation—the agent who believes in them, allows them to follow their instincts, and finds a way to sell the books, that, in this world of brutalized branding, they might have been warned not to write. So it’s really “agent envy” rather than “writer envy” that occasionally turns me into what Bobby Charles called “The Jealous Kind.” Writers, I love.

***

Thank you, Bob, Travis and Wendall.

~.~.~

And now for my usual dose of BSP:

I want to thank Colman Keane of Col's Criminal Library in the UK for the great review of Broken Windows. In part, "What I really enjoyed in addition to a joined-up, coherent and satisfying case, was the backdrop of the city, depicted both physically in Mark's referencing of cultural hot spots and emotionally in the depiction of the attitudes and mood of the time. Plot, pace, setting, characters, resolution - all ticks. 4.5 stars," out of 5. Hope you'll check it out:

https://col2910.blogspot.com/2019/01/paul-d-marks-broken-windows-2018.html

Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website www.PaulDMarks.com

Click here to: Subscribe to my Newsletter

Macavity Short Story Nominees Blog Tour

 
I’m going to deviate from this week’s question as I’m turning over my post today to the Macavity Short Story Nominees Blog Tour.

The five Macavity nominees are Craig Faustus Buck, Barb Goffman, Travis Richardson, our own Art Taylor...and me. I’m honored to be among these people and their terrific stories.

I want to thank everyone who voted for us in the first round. And the second and final round of voting is taking place right now. So if you’re a member of Mystery Readers International I hope you’ll take the time to read all of the stories and vote. The deadline is September 1^st and you should have received your ballots by now.

But even if you’re not eligible to vote, I hope you’ll take the time to read the stories. I think you’ll enjoy them and maybe get turned onto some new writers, whose bios are at the end of this post.

All five of the stories are available free here—just click the link and scroll down. http://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2015/06/read-all-macavity-short-story.html

So without further ado, here’s our question and responses:

Do you return to certain themes or ideas in your writing? How does this story fit in or differ from your other stories?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Craig Faustus Buck: “Honeymoon Sweet” (Murder at the Beach: The Bouchercon Anthology 2014, edited by Dana Cameron; Down & Out)


The common thread in my stories has more to do with character than theme. The people I create are all gasping for breath, struggling against the current in the sea of life.

In “Dead End,” for example, my protagonist Johno Beltran was an LAPD detective whose tiny misjudgment, while handling evidence, allowed a vicious killer to walk free. We meet Johno four years later. He has lost his wife, home, and career, and now lives in his car and works as a restaurant parking attendant. One night the freed murderer drives up to Johno’s valet stand in a $100K BMW and we’re off and running.

“Honeymoon Sweet” (current Anthony and Macavity nominee) stars a couple of low-rent con artists, newly married, who break into a mansion on the beach for their honeymoon. The woman is smarter than the man, and they both know it, creating an uneasy tension in their relationship. This issue rears its head when their plans go south.

One of my favorite stories, “Pongo’s Lucky Day” (to be reprinted in Kings River Life in September), stars a bumbling competitive snowboarder who can’t land the triple-flip he needs to be a serious contender or even to get laid. He stumbles on an ATM-gone-wild that spits out money. Of course, his apparent lucky day turns into a nightmare.

So in terms of recurrent themes, I’d have to say that I’m attracted to likeable low-lifes and underdogs, and the foolish decisions that doom them. Doom is, after all, the touchstone of noir.

***

Barb Goffman: “The Shadow Knows” (Chesapeake Crimes: Homicidal Holidays, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley; Wildside Press)


I don’t write with a theme in mind. My only goal is to tell a good story. That said, there are some ideas I’ve returned to repeatedly:

Child molestation. I’ve had four stories published involving child molestation. I don’t, thankfully, have any personal knowledge of this subject. So why did I revisit this topic? A crime writer is often looking for a good reason to justify murder. Child molestation more than fits that bill.

Sibling rivalry, particularly between sisters. I’ve also had four stories published in which one sister tries to kill another sister or get her sent to prison. This topic also makes sense: No one can get in your craw like your family, making murder believable. (Moreover, these stories bother my own sister, who doesn’t believe that they’re not about her. So they’re a win win. Kidding!)

Humor. I like writing funny crime stories. When I write something humorous, I don’t worry that the reader will think, “Who cares?” Everyone likes to laugh. I had this idea in mind when I began writing my Macavity- and Anthony-nominated “The Shadow Knows.” I knew I wanted to write about a man who believes his town groundhog controls the weather and has caused his area’s excruciatingly long winters, so he decides to get rid of the groundhog. That’s an odd idea, but adding humor can turn a weird story into a fun one and make a reader smile. And that’s a great thing to do.

***

Paul D. Marks: “Howling at the Moon” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Nov. 2014)


One recurring theme in my writing is that most of my characters are damaged, often dealing with or “recovering” from some physical or psychic wound. Another is the theme of memory and the past and how those things affect the characters in the present.

Ray Hood in “Dead Man’s Curve” is a man who’s lost his focus, his dreams and his purpose, and is desperately trying to get them back. The question is, how far will he go to get all of that back? Duke Rogers in White Heat is battered from growing up with an abusive father and that affects the actions he takes. Winger, the Weegee-like photog in “Poison Heart” is so desperate for recognition that he finds pleasure in doing photo recreations of grisly murder scenes...until it all gets out of hand and becomes too real. Darrell Wood in “Howling at the Moon” is jaded by war and life in general. He’s lost touch with his roots, causing him to question his priorities. He also shares a collective memory with his native American ancestors and that shapes his actions in the story. And in my upcoming novella Vortex, available on September 1, 2015, Zach Tanner is physically wounded by war and mentally changed by it. This sends him on a collision course with the past and decisions he made that he deeply regrets now.

All of these characters have to overcome their issues to survive and come out on the other side...if they can.

***

Travis Richardson: “The Proxy” (Thuglit #13, Sept./Oct. 2014)


“The Proxy” fits into my rural noir stories which constitute about half my writing. Most of the other stories take place in Los Angeles or other urban areas. Of my rural crime fiction, a few have been set in the fictional town of Lynchwood. I don’t exactly know where Lynchwood is located, only that it’s east of Oklahoma and in the American South. In a lot of my writing, I try to focus on the morality of crime. I often write about criminals who are very much human, not stone cold psychopaths. They may be in way over their heads or burdened with knowledge that their actions have devastating consequences, yet they cannot leave the life or ever undo what has happened. There is sadness combined with a sense of duty. Life continues for my characters as their wounds harden into ragged scar tissue. They must trudge on… unless they are killed in the end. I don’t think I’ve ever overtly preached that crime is bad, but I don’t make it sexy or positive either.

***

Art Taylor: “The Odds Are Against Us” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Nov. 2014)


Many of my stories seem to hinge on the idea of relationships taking a bad turn. I like to explore the kinds of responsibilities people have in relationships, the duties to others, and then look at the factors that might cause that sense of responsibility to fracture, that might threaten to cripple or even shatter those relationships (or in some cases maybe make them stronger—there’s that too). Betrayal is a common theme, the tests and temptations that we’re all subject to, and there’s a moral weight to all of this, I hope—at least that’s the thing I respond to in the short stories that have had the strongest impact on me, so I can only hope that my own stories might have a similar effect on my readers. “The Odds Are Against Us” falls pretty squarely in the middle of those themes. Two old friends seem to be having a simple conversation, remembering old times, but there’s trouble beneath the surface of that talk—and heavy stakes for everyone in the decision that one of them has to make at the end of it all. Part of my focus in the story was on how and why that decision got made—how and why the odds might ultimately be against both these characters—but beyond that what interested me was their friendship and the legacy of that friendship, the way the memory of those old times will cast a long shadow on the narrator, well beyond the close of the story.

***

Author Bios:

Craig Faustus Buck’s debut noir novel Go Down Hard was published May 5, 2015 (Brash Books). His short story “Honeymoon Suite” is currently nominated for both Anthony and Macavity Awards (free at tinyurl.com/CFBPlanB). He lives in LA, where noir was born, and is president of MWA SoCal. http://CraigFaustusBuck.com

Barb Goffman is the author of Don’t Get Mad, Get Even (Wildside Press 2013). This book won the Silver Falchion Award for best single-author short-story collection of 2013. Barb also won the 2013 Macavity Award for best short story of 2012, and she’s been nominated fifteen times for national crime-writing awards, including the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. Barb runs a freelance editing and proofreading service focusing on crime and general fiction. Learn more about her writing at www.BarbGoffman.com.

Paul D. Marks is the author of the Shamus Award-Winning mystery-thriller White Heat. Publishers Weekly calls White Heat a “taut crime yarn.” His story “Howling at the Moon” (EQMM 11/14) is short-listed for both the 2015 Anthony and Macavity Awards for Best Short Story. Vortex, a noir-thriller novella, is Paul’s latest release. Midwest Review calls Vortex: “…a nonstop staccato action noir.” He also co-edited the anthology Coast to Coast: Murder from Sea to Shining Sea (Down & Out Books). www.PaulDMarks.com

Travis Richardson has published stories in crime fiction publications such as Thuglit, Shotgun Honey, Flash Fiction Offensive, Spinetingler Magazine and All Due Respect. He edits the Sisters-In-Crime Los Angeles newsletter Ransom Notes, reviews Anton Chekhov short stories at www.ChekhovShorts.com, and sometimes shoots a short movie. He has two novellas Lost in Clover (rural coming of age crime) and Keeping the Record (violent baseball roadtrip comedy). www.TSRichardson.com


Art Taylor is the author of On the Road with Del & Louise: A Novel in Stories. His short fiction has won two Agatha Awards, a Macavity, and three consecutive Derringer Awards, among other honors. He writes frequently on crime fiction for both The Washington Post and Mystery Scene. www.ArtTaylorWriter.com

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

In other news, but having consulted with a “higher authority...,” I have a couple of announcements:


Vortex: My new Mystery-Thriller novella coming September 1^st.
“...a nonstop staccato action noir... Vortex lives up to its name, quickly creating a maelstrom of action and purpose to draw readers into a whirlpool of intrigue and mystery... but be forewarned: once picked up, it’s nearly impossible to put down before the end.”
—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review


Fade Out: flash fiction story – set at the famous corner of Hollywood and Vine – coming on Akashic’s Mondays Are Murder, Monday (big surprise, huh?), August 17^th. Here’s the link, but my story won’t be live till 8/17: http://www.akashicbooks.com/tag/mondays-are-murder/


Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and Twitter: @PaulDMarks

And check out my updated website www.PaulDMarks.com

Click here to subscribe to my Newsletter: Subscribe to my Newsletter