Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room

Hail and Farewell

Jeff Cohen

So that was it. We hope you liked it.

This is the 3464th post on HEY THERE'S A DEAD GUY IN THE LIVING ROOM, and unless someone else parachutes in and decides to add some thoughts, it is the last. We've had quite a good run here but it's time to shut off the lights and lock the doors before we stop saying anything anyone wants to hear.

For me DEAD GUY has been any number of things. It started when Deni Dietz and I defected from Murderati a long, long time ago and thought we'd start our own blog, but we didn't want to examine crime fiction strictly from an author's point of view. So we recruited editors, publishers, readers, librarians, reviewers, agents and booksellers, among others, to provide perspective we as writers couldn't offer. 

I'll continue to post blogs every now and again (look next Tuesday for sure) and hope you'll look for those moments, but as for DEAD GUY, this is the end of the line, and that's because we have all agreed it's better to go out while we're still wanted and not overstay our welcome.

But it wasn't all about publishing. The rule among us at DEAD GUY was that there were no rules. If you wanted to post about your section of the crime fiction world, great. If not, go for it. I have personally posted about digitizing my vinyl record collection, interviewed my daughter, had my dog write a guest post, talked about my health issues (ad nauseam), ranted about having to master barre chords, introduced a pseudonym, shamelessly promoted my work, bragged about blurbs, discussed the importance of making attractive letters when filling in a crossword puzzle, mentioned comedians I especially admire and occasionally made dives into such popular subjects as religion and politics. I recall once explaining how to deal with the atheist on your Christmas card list.

This blog has been more than a simple repository for my random thoughts. I've made good friends here. I've managed to blow off steam or express emotional truths when I had to. It served as a steam valve when I needed it. And a couple of times it served to let me write silly song lyrics. 

The most gratifying part of the weekly post was to connect with those who decided to visit us here. Hearing from readers and other writers, among many others, was a great comfort and sometimes an ego stroke when it was most needed. Writers write because we want to communicate something. Knowing that people were taking notice was a very large help at times.

For me the schedule forced me to write whether I had a great idea in mind or not. Some of my favorite posts were those that came when I was backed against a deadline wall. 

Everyone who has ever posted here will tell you that coming up with a post every week could be a trial. It's not easy to keep going and not repeat oneself. There have been nights that I've sat here looking at a blank screen for an hour wondering what would appear on the blog page at 12:00 a.m. that Monday. The closest I've ever come to believing in "Writer's Block" has been related to these posts. But I still don't believe.

The people with whom I've been part of DEAD GUY are amazing, smart, funny, warm and dedicated. I am grateful and honored to have been associated with each and all of them. I won't mention all the names here because I'm certain to forget some and that would bother me deeply even if it wouldn't rankle those I failed to cite. But assume if you've read a post here and it wasn't one of mine that it was written by someone I admire greatly, someone who inspires awe in me. I thank each of them. 

For those who have chosen to check in here every day or every week or once a year, we can't possibly thank you enough. It has been wonderful being part of your lives. Don't mourn the DEAD GUY. We stopped because we didn't want to disappoint you. You deserve our best. We hope we've given it to you. Thanks for everything.

 

 

Oh. And pitchers and catchers report in 44 days.

Pleiades Press will publish my book

(This post was supposed to go up Sunday, December 24th, but in the excitement of Xmas eve, also the eve of my 48th birthday, I neglected to upload it.)

Jessy Randall

Some happy news: Pleiades Press will publish a collection of my diagram poems, How to Tell If You Are Human, in late 2018. It will be the fourth book in their Visual Poetry Series.

This is my last post for H,TaDGitLR. It's been fun connecting with y'all here. Blog-wise, you can find me in the future at 

Library Shenanigans

Colorado College Special Collections

Colorado College Bookends (book reviews)

Angry Giraffe and Friends

Jessy Randall

The United States is making so many mistakes right now. I can't get used to it, and I don't think we should get used to it. I can't believe how stupid we are, despite all the proofs of our stupidity flying at my face every day.

I'm surprised at how much my political animals project is cheering me up. I know these cartoons don't really accomplish anything. Or anyway they don't accomplish anything big. But they make me feel like I'm doing something, even something tiny, and I encourage you all to send me animal drawings so you can maybe feel the same way. 300 dpi jpegs are ideal, but I can work with whatever you send. You do the drawing and I add the words. Email me at jessyrandall [ayat] yahoo [duh] com.

Examples (so far) are at Maudlin House, Cahoodaloodaling, and Ohio Edit.

more iPad games for poets

Jessy Randall

In 2013 I compiled a short list of "iPad games for poets." Here are a few more. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full Pipe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Frostrune 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monument Valley (duh)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Year Walk (I was late to this party, not sure why I resisted -- it's a lovely point-and-click.)

 

Broken Age

 

Rusty Lake / Cube Escape

 

 

Snakebird

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love You to Bits

 

Games along these lines that everybody likes except me: Samorost, Machinarium, The Room, Inner World.

 

Stranger Things -- stupid kissing scene -- advice for next season

Jessy Randall

Yay, Stranger Things added another girl to the gang, so along with Eleven, we got Mad Max, skateboarder, Dig Dug champ, sister of very scary dude Billy, family with a mysterious past. Cool!

But then, not cool.

SPOILERS, duh.

Why, WHY, do the girls have to be romantic objects or nothing? Can't they just be part of the gang? The Snow Ball scene really bummed me out. I wanted all six kids to go to the dance together in a big group, probably getting a ride from Steve, probably one or two stuck in the way-back so everyone can fit in the car. They should've been all goofy and hyped up on generic soda, together. They should've mostly hung out on the bleachers of the gym but maybe at one point done some awkward slow dancing. Maybe Eleven and Mike could kiss, but COME ON. Instead, they're all divided into couples?! Eleven sees Max as a rival (so lame, Duffer Brothers!!) and apparently she's right, in a way, in that the girls can't exist in the gang as equal partners, but instead must be fought over like a certain video game princess. Ugh.

While I'm at it, Duffer Brothers, let me tell ya something else. I am SO SICK of shows that end in a big battle with the big bad. BORING. So here's my idea for season three: the Mindflayer isn't evil, but misunderstood. He/She/It is from a different dimension, after all. We already know that the demodogs aren't pure evil -- they can be won over with love and Three Musketeers, and they can be loyal to those who treat them well. So, obviously the US government is going to want to weaponize all creatures from the upside-down. They've probably got a frozen demodog to torture already. The gang will come to understand that the true evil is human -- an abusive dad yields an abusive kid (Billy), and an abusive US government yields an abusive Mindflayer. So, what to do? El needs to go on a short tour of nearby dimensions and find one that's unoccupied, cold, and Mindflayer-friendly. She can open a gate to it so the Mindflayer can be safe. If any government baddies happen to fall in, sans armor or guns, so much the better for all.

 

Colorado College's Own Harvey Weinstein

Jessy Randall

When I accepted a position as Colorado College archivist in 2001, many small mysteries awaited me: had Mathias Hall been designed by prison architects? (No.) What happened to the statue of Winged Victory in the old Coburn Library? (Nobody knows, but I suspect it broke into a million pieces during the library move.) And ...

Why was William F. Slocum pushed out of the CC presidency in 1917? Was it because of financial improprieties? Was it because of a rivalry with some of the faculty at the time? Or was it because he was a serial sexual harasser before that term existed?

The answers may lie in the James Hutchinson Kerr Papers at CC Special Collections, which contain copies of some of the women's statements against Slocum. When the Harvey Weinstein story broke this month and people at the college got curious about Slocum, I wanted to make it easier for researchers to find the women's statements, which until now have not been the main focus of any scholarly activity around the Slocum story:

https://libraryweb.coloradocollege.edu/library/specialcollections/Manuscript/Slocum.html

Over the years, students have occasionally floated the idea that campus dormitory Slocum Hall should be renamed. I have a nice long list of potential new names if this idea gets any traction.

 

Big Book Move of 1962

Jessy Randall

In the spring of 1962, Colorado College students, faculty, and staff moved books and other materials from the soon-to-be-demolished Coburn Library to the new Tutt Library in what became known as the Big Book Move. Boxes traveled down a conveyor belt from an upper window of Coburn and were then hand-carried to the new building. This one-minute silent video is extracted from a 20-minute DVD (a conversion from reel-to-reel), donated to CC Special Collections by Oscar Soule, CC class of 1962.

library prank

Jessy Randall

 

Borrowing from myself over at Library Shenanigans ...

 

The best thing about this shenanigan, to me, isn’t that it takes place at my own library (I’m in charge of Special Collections at Colorado College). No, the best thing about it is that my new library director, JoAnn Jacoby, sent this link to the whole library staff saying it had gotten almost 4 million hits on youtube, whereas this other video — of JoAnn talking about libraries — has gotten — well — somewhat fewer (99 as of this moment).

Both videos show the newly renovated CC library, inside and out, including the very popular "pod" chairs, the Herman Miller orange rockers, the roof gardens, and more.

 

New Dante editions at Colorado College

Jessy Randall

Colorado College Special Collections recently acquired five editions of Dante's Commedia for use alongside the 1491, 1536, and 1822 editions (and others) already in our teaching collection. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above, an image from a facsimile of the 14th century "Dante Gradenighiano," named for Giacomo Gradenigo, the man who curated, copied, and commented on this version of Dante's Commedia. Gradenigo's name appears in an acrostic on the front pastedown of the book (not shown).

 

The 1568 edition, edited by Bernardino Daniello and published in Venice by Pietro da Fino, has an inverted wedding cake illustration of Hell prefiguring the one in our 1822 edition.

 

The 1575 edition, published in Lyon by Guglielmo Rouillio, has the commentary of Alessandro Vellutello.

The 1596 edition, published in Venice by Bernardo Sessa, is edited by Francesco Sansovino and contains two full commentaries: both Alessandro Vellutello's and Christopher Landino's.

The 1928 Nonesuch edition, published in London, was limited to 1475 copies and has text in Italian and English. It contains 42 illustrations after those of Sandro Botticelli (that is, the illustrations are based on Botticelli's but are not perfect reproductions).

Also available: comic book versions by Hunt Emerson, Christos Gage, Seymour Chwast, and Stefan Petrucha.

 

Don't Be Sad... It's Just a Blog

First: Our most fervent hopes that everyone in the path of the recent terrible storms is okay and that life will return to normal soon.

But now a bittersweet announcement: Every day here at DEAD GUY we try to bring you something that can add to your day. Most often that something has to do with crime fiction publishing, as our lineup of bloggers has been constructed to know about that category. And over the past 10 we have done our best to provide every possible viewpoint on the subject.

But, as they say, whoever they are, all good things (and the rotten ones too, truth be known) must come to an end. 

As much as we've all loved being DEAD GUY bloggers, we've agreed it's time to close the proverbial doors around here. Coming up with useful, entertaining content every day has gotten to be a little too much after all this time and we want to go out while we're still at the top of our game. 

So the December 31 post will be the last one here at DEAD GUY. While it's a little sad to think this is coming to a close, we prefer to focus on the idea that we've done good work here, people have enjoyed it, and we've kept it going since January 2007, which ain't bad. 

The cast of characters has changed over the years, but never the mission: To provide perspective on writing, publishing, reading, editing, promoting and enjoying books, mostly in the crime fiction area. We're all still committed to that concept and we'll keep expressing our opinions when we feel they're relevant. Just not here at DEAD GUY after 2017 becomes 2018. 

In the ensuing months, please know we'll keep posting as we have before, so don't tune us out of your daily web scan just yet. And along the way, we'll be hearing from some DEAD GUY alums who have graciously agreed to come back for one more visit before the lights are put out and we group-hug our way to the end of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. 

Keep reading. That's what this has always been about.

James Patterson isn't usually actually James Patterson...

Jessy Randall

James Patterson doesn't actually write the majority of his books! You guys probably already knew this, but I didn't.

My 13-year-old daughter recently got into Patterson's books (or should I say "Patterson's" books), both the Maximum Ride young adult series and the books for grownups. I was in a bookstore recently, a wonderful independent bookstore, and I bought a couple of Patterson (or rather "Patterson") books for her as a treat (we usually just borrow from the library). The bookstore manager commented on my purchases, saying "oh, I think my wife wrote one of those."

WHUT?!

He proceeded to inform me that many "James Patterson" books are written by others -- much like the Edward Stratemeyer Nancy Drew syndicate. And that his wife had been paid to ghostwrite at least two Patterson books -- maybe more -- my brain was reeling at that point. But indeed, it turns out it's a known fact that Patterson currently authors only about 20% of his books. The Telegraph reported on the situation in 2014, and the Independent did a piece this year. 

 

This fact might explain why Patterson would think it's okay to blurb his own books -- even if Stephen King makes fun of him for it.

 

 

 

So now perhaps you'd like to know how to get a job writing "Patterson" books. I'm not sure anyone gets hired as a Patterson ghostwriter, but a good first step might be signing up for his classes for a scant $90.

 

 

Adieu, Tuttlet!

Jessy Randall

My past month has been taken up with the big library move at Colorado College. My department, Special Collections, moved from Tutt South (colloquially known as "Tuttlet") to the newly renovated Tutt Main (soon to be just plain Tutt). 

The image above shows some anonymous graffiti written during the move on a wall of the soon-to-be-demolished Tutt South. It was quite an odyssey getting the books and other materials, including a huge heavy map case, from one building to the other.

     

Pictures of our new digs to come when it’s a bit more photogenic.

maybe a way forward

Jessy Randall

My friend, political scientist Kris Kanthak, delivered this sermon at a Unitarian Church in Pittsburgh this past Sunday. I felt better after reading it and feel like maybe there's a way forward in the U.S. after all.

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

I am a political science professor. For over 20 years now, I have been studying the American political system. And from that vantage point, I can tell you that things are actually crazier right now than you probably think they are. Congress is more divided than it ever has been before, and that includes the period just before the Civil War. People are more divided than they ever have been before: Political scientists have recently created a concept called “negative partisanship,” which is tied to the fact that people define themselves more by the party they are NOT than the party they are. Being NOT a Republican, in other words, is a more powerful part of many people’s identity than BEING a Democrat. The number of people who say they prefer their children not marry outside their race is at an all-time low, but the number of people who say they prefer their children not marry outside their political party is at an all-time high.

So what can I tell you as a political scientist about the state of our political system that you don’t already know? And many of you may be thinking that the phrase “political scientist” may be a misnomer. Can you really have a science of politics at all? My position is, yes, which shouldn’t be surprising since the existence of political science is pretty important to my ability to keep my job as a political scientist. But I’d like to ask you to think about the world as a political scientist for a few minutes and see where it takes us. 

--

For the most part, as a political scientist, I build theoretical models of how the political world works. I start from an assumption and see where the logic of that assumption leads me. For example, here’s an assumption: Politicians want to keep their jobs. Now politicians want lots of things, so this is a simplifying assumption, but it is a good one because the other things politicians want (power, a better job, good public policy) require politicians to keep their jobs. So how can that assumption help us to understand the world around us? 

Let’s take a fact that has been in the news of late: Senator Pat Toomey is a part of a small group of Senators who have been working privately on legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. He has been under a great deal of pressure to hold a town hall meeting, an open forum where constituents can tell him what they think of this idea. He has resisted that pressure. Why? One possible theory falls from the assumption that Pat Toomey is just a jerk. He isn’t holding a town hall meeting because he is a jerk. I have no evidence to refute that theory.

But I would pose an alternate hypothesis: Holding a town hall meeting won’t help Pat Toomey keep his job and it may make it harder for Toomey to keep his job. If he holds a town hall, a bunch of people who don’t like him will come and yell at him. This will make for good television. It will be played over and over again and will make him look bad to people who may otherwise vote for him in his next election. And no one will be MORE likely to vote for him because he held a town hall.

So in other words, holding a town hall may increase the chances that Toomey loses his job and it will be totally not fun for Pat Toomey. So one theory is “Pat Toomey is a jerk who wants to keep his job,” but another theory is “Pat Toomey wants to keep his job.” Scientists prefer parsimonious theories to overly complicated ones, so the simpler theory is, in my view, better. Maybe he’s a jerk, but he doesn’t need to be to be a jerk to be the kind of senator who won’t hold town hall meetings on Obamacare.

Now, you may think you don’t care if Toomey loses his job and he should hold the dang town hall anyway because that’s his job, but think about this: When was the last time you did something at work that both wasn’t fun and increased the chances of your losing your job? Plus, if you had a job where doing one of the functions of the job made it more likely that you lose that job, is that a problem with you or with the job? 

And then you may think, oh, term limits are the answer because then Pat Toomey won’t have a job he wants to keep. That’s fine, but it is also pretty likely that he wants A job once he is term-limited out of the one he has, and we can follow the implications of that theory to mean that if voters can’t give him that job, he will listen to the people who can: lobbyists, his political party, etc. So it makes logical sense that term limits aren’t a good way to make politicians more responsive to their constituents because it falls directly from the assumption that politicians want A job and if you don’t let them keep the one they have, they will try for another one (Being an ex-president is a pretty good job in and of itself, by they way, so term limits work OK for them).

So we can see here that the assumption “politicians want to keep their jobs” gives us some pretty good traction for understanding why our current political system works the way it does.

--

This last year, the University of Pittsburgh not only allowed me, but encouraged and supported me to engage in an experiment on the effects of political dialogue: I would take a small sub-group of students from my Introduction to American Politics large lecture class and ask them to talk one-on-one about their views on American politics. Now, these students were selected on the basis of race, gender, partisanship, socio-economic status and other factors to be diverse as possible. The theory is, if you get a diverse group of people together to talk – really talk and really listen – about what divides them politically, you may get some traction on helping people to understand that what binds us together is more powerful than what divides us. 

For example, we Americans, 240 years ago last Tuesday, decided to go in together on an experiment in democracy based on one particular assumption: All men are created equal. Now, that assumption is non-falsifiable: I can’t prove that it is true, but I can’t prove that it is false, either. But it is the basis for our democratic government and I would argue that the history of the United States is the history of us working out the implications of that simple assumption. Is the assumption that All men are created equal compatible with the institution of slavery? No, so the 13th Amendment to the Constitution got rid of it. Is the assumption that all men are created equal compatible with the idea that we should define “men” based solely on their sex or gender identity? No, so we passed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote. And the debate continues today as to what that assumption means for public accommodations for people who are trans or non-binary. So “All men are created equal” is a powerful assumption that we have made as a group, and it continues to be our touchstone, from the Gettysburg Address to Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech. It is an assumption with powerful, complicated, and controversial implications and our nation’s history is a struggle for working out those implications. All men are created equal.

So to properly test the theory that inter-group dialogue can have great benefits, I again have to start with an assumption. And in this case, it was an assumption I asked all the students in the dialogue to share with me. It wouldn’t work if we couldn’t share this assumption. The assumption was both simple and profound: We are all trying our best.

At first it sounds like nursery school pablum and really obvious that we should just give people the benefit of the doubt. But assuming people are trying their best can be really, incredibly hard. I now drive my husband crazy when we are in traffic and some idiot cuts him off. I interrupt his anger and the poor guy responds “I know, I know. We’re all trying our best.” The guy who cuts you off in traffic and then gives you the finger is trying his best. It doesn’t mean you have to be his friend and it doesn’t even mean he doesn’t have to live with the consequences of his actions. But you choose not to decide he is an awful person because of his poor behavior.

In inter-group dialogue, assuming that others are trying their best means that you have to listen to stuff you might otherwise not want to hear. It means that when I share something with you about my reality, you will use that information to try and understand me and relate to me, rather than to correct me and decide my views have no value. It means that when someone says something truly outrageous – even racist or sexist – you need to take a deep breath and remind yourself that the person is trying his or her best.

But if you are in my inter-group dialogue class, you get the benefit of that same assumption. So you can counter the outrageous statement. You can say you were offended and you can say why. And the other person is obliged to hear you out under the assumption that you, too, are trying your best.

But here’s where it gets harder: Think of the person you dislike the most in the world. Now assume that person is trying their best. Pat Toomey is trying his best. Nancy Pelosi is trying her best. Paul Ryan is trying his best. Donald Trump is trying his best.

--

I know what many of you may be thinking: Your assumption that people are doing their best is just plain wrong. Some people are just awful and they need to clean up their acts.

So what if my assumption is wrong? What if people are not trying their best? What if they’re just jerks? What if they are irredeemable? What if they are not even human? 

As a scientist, I have to admit: If my baseline assumption is wrong, everything that follows from that assumption is probably wrong, too. Ptolemy believed that the earth was at the center of the universe and he built a model of celestial movement around that assumption. It was wrong. 

But here’s the thing: Ptolemy did a lot of really excellent work based on that wrong assumption. Working through the implications of the assumption of a geocentric universe was what led us to learn a lot about how the universe works. We got closer to the truth because Ptolemy held fast to that wrong assumption that he honestly believed was right. So wrong assumptions can be valuable. You don’t have to be absolutely convinced that people really are trying their best to believe that it is valuable to make that assumption regardless.

Those of you who have dabbled in meditation may be aware of the loving kindness meditation. You start by thinking about a person you love, and sending them good and kind thoughts. You wish them well, and that feels great. But you end with choosing a person you don’t like and sending them good and kind thoughts. You wish your enemy well. “May you be happy, May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you be at peace.”

Now I can tell you from experience that it is HARD to do a loving kindness meditation and wish good things on a person you don’t like. And I should note that I don’t actually believe that sending good thoughts to people really does make that person feel better. But you know who feels better? Me. 

The same thing is true from assuming that someone you don’t like is doing their best. Reserving the assumption that someone is trying her best only for those people who deserve it misses the point of the exercise. You need to assume the best in people who don’t deserve it. Again, you don’t have to be their friend. You don’t have to work with them and you sure as heck don’t have to vote for them for president. But if you want to take the assumption seriously, you need to offer it to everyone, not just the people who you think deserve it. In fact, you especially need to offer it to the people who don’t deserve it because they are the ones you understand the least and therefore they are the ones from whom you can learn the most.

--

So here’s something that is true about me and I’m telling you this because I’m hoping you will believe that I am up here doing my best. Here’s my truth: I am mad. I was all ready to get to celebrate having the first woman president and instead I got a guy who can’t stop tweeting sexist stuff about Mika Brzezinski. I’m mad. I’m mad at Trump and I’m mad at the people who voted for him. I’m mad because I think they turned their backs on the concept of “All men are created equal” to give power to a bazillionaire who literally brags about the size of his penis. I’m mad and I really, really want to stop at just being mad. It would be so easy to stop at anger. I could stop at anger and never have to get up from my couch. Plus, I would get to feel self-righteous, which is my absolute favorite thing to do.

The Declaration of Independence that starts with “All men are created equal” ends the following way: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” It’s fine to be mad. I can’t decide that I’m not allowed to be mad, because being mad is part of me doing my best. But I am mutually pledged to every single Trump voter out there, whether they know it or not, and whether I respect it or not. The day after the election, a Trump-supporting student in my inter-group dialogue class came into the dialogue looking as shell-shocked as anyone. “I just wanted to stick it to Wall Street,” he said. “I didn’t want people to be scared. I’m sad that people are scared.”

Now I completely acknowledge that I have tons of privilege in this society, and so that privilege may be linked to my ability to believe that everyone is doing their best. My privilege allows me to look at a student who should’ve KNOWN people would be scared and see a person who needs to be told that people are scared. I need to share that with him. I understand that it is much easier for me to believe that everyone is doing their best than it is for many of you. Many of you are angrier than I am, and you have an absolute right to be angrier than me. I have no right to say you must drop your anger at the foot of some belief that people who do awful things, people who tweet awful things, are doing their best. If you can’t make that assumption, if you aren’t there yet, if you will never be there, that’s OK. I have the privilege to be able to make that assumption, and if you do to, I think you should. All I want from you, and all I believe in my heart and my soul you are giving me, is your best. I’m mutually pledged to you. I have no choice.

 

Kris Kanthak is an associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh.

Laurie R. King's Lockdown

Jessy Randall

Laurie R. King's new novel, Lockdown, is really good. I read it on the beach and on the porch during a vacation that just ended. And now I will go back to dealing with the over 300 emails that piled up while I was away.

when you're trying to write a poem

Jessy Randall

When you're trying to write a poem and your cat sits on your notebook.

How do they know? Why do they do this??

The folks at Bustle have some possible explanations.

when do literary journals usually respond?

Jessy Randall

Now and then, on Facebook, I'll see a post along the lines of "why are all the rejections arriving at the same time??". I went into my submission records to see if there are certain months when magazines are more likely to respond. (As far as I can tell, no one else has done this sort of study, but of course I could be wrong.)

Short version of my results: April truly is the cruelest month, and December is the quietest.

I have submission records going back to 2001. Here's the breakdown of responses, by month, over that period:

January 64

February 63

March 43

April 76

May 62

June 64

July 48

August 44

September 60

October 55

November 66

December 39

I didn't include magazines that responded within a day or a week of receiving the submission, since those magazines are operating in a very different way than most -- statistics for them would only show my submission habits and not their response habits. (If you'd like to find these quick-acting journals, try this list from Authors Publish or this one from Trish Hopkinson. 

For anyone who's counting, that's 684 submissions over 17 years, about 40 per year.

 

The Woman in Cabin 10

Jessy Randall

Ruth Ware is my new favorite mystery author! This book's so good. I'm gonna go back and read her first novel, In a Dark, Dark Wood, and I can look forward to her new one, The Lying Game, later this year.

The Woman in Cabin 10 is similar to the locked-room mysteries of olde, but it takes place on a luxury cruise. Lo Blacklock, our narrator, overhears a murder -- or thinks she does -- she's not sure -- and nobody on the boat seems to be missing.

I particularly like the fact that this book has "woman" in the title rather than "girl." I'm not against being called a girl, at the ripe age of 47, but the plethora of "girl" mystery novels of late is wearing a bit thin, despite the books being terrific (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, and so on).

 

Jessy Randall

I'm reading a mystery-not-mystery novel right now, Barbara Gowdy's Helpless. It's the story of the kidnapping of a preternaturally beautiful nine-year-old girl. Gowdy got into the minds of elephants in her novel White Bone and now she's in the mind of a kidnapper, his accessory, the kidnapped girl, and the girl's mother. She is amazing.

Happy Mother's Day to all who are celebrating.

J. Ryan Stradal's Kitchens of the Great Midwest

 

Jessy Randall

J. Ryan Stradal's novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest is a terrific book. It's the story of Eva Thorval, a chef with a palate described by other characters as "the most sophisticated I've ever seen" and "once-in-a-generation." Each chapter is written from a different point of view, which took me by surprise after I'd fallen in love with the main voice in the first chapter -- but I found myself experiencing serial monogamy with each subsequent voice in the book.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest includes a few recipes, and I just had to try the one for French Onion Soup, available in full from Google Books. A couple of corrections, though: I used 8 onions and 4 cups of stock and barely served four, much less the eight the recipe claims.

 

 

 

anti-trump venues for writers

I don't know about you, but lately I can't seem to write anything except anti-trump stuff. Mostly I've been taking other people's drawings of animals (send me yours, [email protected], I like jpegs) and putting leftist words with them. I know it doesn't really do anything, it doesn't stop our country from being an asshole, but it makes me feel better. And it's an opportunity to feel like a part of something, because so far 23 people have contributed drawings to the project, and the images are appearing in Maudlin House in a column called Angry Giraffe.

So anyway, I thought it might be useful to compile a list of literary magazines and small presses actively seeking anti-trump work. And then I discovered that Entropy Magazine has an ongoing list of just this kind, under "Where to Submit Your Writing" at trumpwatch.entropymag.org/artwriting/.

Not on their list:

Booth Books, Birth of the White House Cool: Reflections on the Obama Years

Light Quarterly, Poem of the Week

Passages North, Urgent and Timely Responses

Unconfirmed rumor: William Allegrezza at Moria Books will publish 100 anti-trump digital chapbooks through locofo chaps in honor of the first 100 days of the "presidency."  

 

Hanukkah Gelt by T. Lee Harris

Lorinda J. Taylor guest-blogs for Jessy Randall this week.

 

★★★★★

I've read some of T. Lee Harris’s Egyptian tales and liked them a lot, but Hanukkah Gelt is the first of her mysteries that I’ve read. It was very enjoyable and I’m sure I’ll read more of her Josh Katzen stories. The Egyptian books feature cats and the background of this short piece also includes cats – I do suspect that all of Harris’s books have felines somewhere in them, a definite plus for cat people! Also, since I have an interest in both Judaism and archaeology, I like the idea of a Jewish archaeologist/detective. A bit of parallelism also struck me – the Hanukkah gelt is fake gold (although benevolent) and the artifact is – well, it may be real gold, but it’s still fake and far from benevolent! Five stars because it’s a good example of the short mystery genre.

Lorinda J. Taylor writes novels about future history, intelligent alien termites, conlangs, speculative and psychological subjects, all with a literary slant.

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

Jessy Randall

The best detective novel / thriller I've read in months is Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters. Maybe it's not officially a mystery, not exactly, but it's definitely in that ballpark -- we have a conflicted narrator hunting down a fugitive from "justice," we have spies and double agents, violence, bad guys and badder guys. And it all takes place in an alternate reality where the Civil War never happened and four U.S. states still have legalized slavery.

In the age of lord dampnut, it's a chilling read.

I'm excited to go back and read all the other books by this author, even Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, which I gave a pass the first time around. I'm also pretty excited to tell my friend Anna about Android Karenina.

 

 

libraries respond to president drumpf

Jessy Randall

I'm the resident librarian at Dead Guy, so this post is at least semi-appropriate for the blog. Borrowing from my own work at Library Shenanigans...

Check out this sign at the library of the Howard University School of Law:

And here's a related image, from the Facebook page of The Bookloft in Massachusetts:

it's not a dictatorship...

Jessy Randall

You guys, I'm in Washington right now for the protest march. No time for blogging, so I'll just say that I thought of a slogan for the next four years:

It's not a dictatorship, it's just a dick.

2015 submission statistics

Jessy Randall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2015, I submitted 102 bundles of poems, comics, essays, stories, and other stuff to literary journals. 25 journals accepted my work. I received 70 rejections, and seven journals never responded. So, that's a 25% acceptance rate, the exact same as last year (weirdly).

I set my sights high this year, mostly to no avail (the New Yorker doesn't care for my comics one bit). The most exciting acceptance came from Poetry, which accepted a diagram poem in January of 2016 and published it in December. (In case you're curious: over the years I sent them almost 100 poems, drawings, and diagrams before they said yes.)

I can't crunch the numbers for a year of submitting until the year after that year, because many journals take a year to respond to submissions. So that's why I'm giving the 2015 statistics in early 2017.

Why should you care? You probably shouldn't and don't, but I started keeping track on this blog a few years ago and I'm nothing if not persistent -- as you can tell.

Happy My Birthday!

Jessy Randall

 

Along with being a major holiday in a major religion, today is my birthday. To celebrate it, I share with you my diagram poem in the December issue of Poetry. (This is my first time appearing in that journal. Over the past fifteen years or so, I sent almost 100 poems, poetry comics, and diagram poems before they said yes.)

I recognize that the diagram poem isn't super straightforward. It might help to know that it's part of a series of diagram poems made from illustrations in an instruction book by Sid Sackson, A Gamut of Games. I re-titled these illustrations, so instead of showing how to play dominoes or whatever, they instead depict a variety of difficult-to-understand things such as disaster plans, vaccination records, period calculators, etcetera. Poetry chose to only print one of them, and I did not argue with their decision, obviously -- though I think they make more sense in a group. Links to many more diagram poems, including some of the ones from the games series, are here:

 

https://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall/diagrampoems.html

 

 

 

Along with being a major holiday in a major religion, today is my birthday. To celebrate it, I share with you my diagram poem in the December issue of Poetry. (This is my first time appearing in that journal. Over the past fifteen years or so, I sent almost 100 poems, poetry comics, and diagram poems before they said yes.)

I recognize that the diagram poem isn't super straightforward. It might help to know that it's part of a series of diagram poems made from illustrations in an instruction book by Sid Sackson, A Gamut of Games. I re-titled these illustrations, so instead of showing how to play dominoes or whatever, they instead depict a variety of difficult-to-understand things such as disaster plans, vaccination records, period calculators, etcetera. Poetry chose to only print one of them, and I did not argue with their decision, obviously -- though I think they make more sense in a group. Links to many more diagram poems, including some of the ones from the games series, are here:

 

https://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall/diagrampoems.html

 

 

ISBN mystery in Special Collections

Jessy Randall

As Curator of Colorado College Special Collections, I recently ordered a copy of Woody Leslie's book Understanding Molecular Typography. There appeared to be a snag in the cataloging, and the following email conversation ensued:

Cataloger Amy: Hello, Jon (and Jessy),  If this link is behaving as it was for me just now, then you will see the image, with a link, to a Dr. Seuss book to the right of the title I just cataloged, “Understanding Molecular Typography.” Hmmmmmmm……..  :-/

Systems Specialist Jon: That bib record contains the ISBN for the Dr. Seuss title so it’s pulling the Dr. Seuss book cover image… Correcting or removing that ISBN should fix the problem. I also noticed that a subject heading of Humor is shown on that bib-is that correct?

Amy: I figured it had to do with the ISBN. The ISBN in the record is indeed the ISBN on the title page, so, I’m not sure how one might handle that. About humor, yes, that is correct, despite the rawther serious-sounding title.

Jon: Interesting-so it’s a humor book and they put the ISBN for a Dr. Seuss book on the title page? That’s kinda funny. WorldCat seems to have the same problem: http://www.worldcat.org/title/understanding-molecular-typography/oclc/920580763 –as do the catalogs of all of the other libraries WorldCat shows as holding this title… This is now actually hilarious.

Curator Jessy: Wow. This is fantastic actually! I wonder if they did it on purpose. Maybe I’ll try to contact the author or publisher and see.

Amy: I’d love to know what he says. It’s kind of like a library shenanigan. I mean, why “On Beyond Zebra”?? This is a first, for me.

Jessy: Dear Woody Leslie, As you can see from the email chain, your book is causing some confusion and hilarity at the Colorado College library. We think you did it on purpose. Are we right?

Artist Woody Leslie: Hi Jessy, This really made my day! Thanks for contacting me. Yes, I intentionally appropriated that ISBN number. Understanding Molecular Typography is a fictional textbook by a fictional author about a fictional science -- the science of molecular typography, which is based on the premise that all letters are in fact molecules, composed of atomic shape units known as typtoms. One of the ideas of the book is the concept of genetically modified, or invented letters. I used that ISBN number as a tribute to Dr. Seuss' book On Beyond Zebra, because it's all about invented letters. I didn't account for library cataloging of ISBNs when I used it, figuring it would mostly be ignored. I too have noticed the World Cat auto picture selecting based on the ISBN. Glad you were able to sort it all out. There's more about the book and project here.

for fans of Jasper Fforde

Jessy Randall

 

        

I don't know about you, but I'm in pretty serious need of good books right now. I want immersive, escapist stuff -- I need to get away from the inner and outer tirades, the anxieties, the sadness, the sorrow, the heartbreak, the anger, the stages of grief, the shame for the U.S. in the world, the disgust, and the feelings of utter helplessness.

What I could really use is something from Jasper Fforde, author of several hilarious goofball series. (Serieses? Whatever.) But he hasn't put out a new book for grownups in far too long. (By the way, it cheers me up somewhat to pronounce this author's name incorrectly, with both F's and the final ee, Fuh-Ford-ee.) If you haven't read any Fforde, start with The Eyre Affair, the first book in the Thursday Next series.

If you have read the Fforde books and liked them, and it seems like 2018, the expected release date of 7 Things To Do Before You Die in Talgarth, is a long way away, allow me to recommend two books to tide you over: Daniel O'Malley's The Rook (2012) and Stiletto (2016) .

I'll describe it the way my friend Shanon did: it's an alternate universe kind of thing where there's a secret society of people with really bizarre superpowers, like maybe one person can communicate with all the shrimp of the world, and another person has the ability to carry documents in her stomach, and someone else can turn invisible but only for three seconds, and so on.

Let's all have fun reading in between our bouts of nausea and dread ... right?

Michelle Cox / Jennifer Dwight interview

Jessy Randall

(I met Jennifer Dwight recently in my capacity as archivist at Colorado College, her alma mater. I invited her to participate in the Dead Guy blog, and I'm happy to say she took me up on it.)

A Conversation Between Two Award-winning Mystery Writers: Michelle Cox, Author of A Girl Like You (2016) and the forthcoming A Ring of Truth, and Jennifer Dwight, Author of The Tolling of Mercedes Bell (2016)

Michelle, I was so glad to meet you at Book Expo America in May this year and to run into you again in July on the book tours for our new books. It’s delightful to meet a kindred spirit and fellow mystery/suspense writer! I loved reading your novel, A Girl Like You, and was charmed by the set and setting (post-WWI Chicago). What inspired you to write a murder mystery set in that time and place?

Thanks, Jennifer!  It was fun meeting you as well.  And thanks for the compliments about A Girl Like You.  As for what drew me to that period, I’d have to say I was inspired by my time working in a nursing home in my early twenties.  I had heard so many great stories from that era, and I guess I just fell in love with it.  One of those stories, actually, was the basis for A Girl Like You. 

But what about The Tolling of Mercedes Bell?—which was excellent, by the way!  It really kept me on the edge of my seat—such an intriguing story.  Where did you get the idea for it?  

When I started working as a litigation paralegal in the San Francisco area, it was the early 1980s. AIDS, the crack cocaine epidemic, and homelessness were exploding. In contrast, rampant materialism infused the new Yuppie culture. It was a dark, dramatic time. I had just moved from Colorado and underwent culture shock in a fairly major way. The cases I worked on were peopled with con-artists, and many of the friends I made here later died of AIDS or had friends who did. Deception seemed to permeate my work and many of my friends’ experiences, so the seeds of my novel were planted.

Michelle, tell us about your background. How long have you been writing? What insights can you share with aspiring writers?

Although I have a degree in English literature, I hadn’t thought seriously about taking up writing—nothing beyond a clever birthday card or perhaps a witty email, anyway—until very recently.  Writing is something I always thought about but never had time for or was too afraid to try.  But with all three of my kids in school now and relatively self-sufficient, I decided it was time to test the waters.  No more excuses!

My first attempt was a sprawling, epic novel that I wrote in 2013 that subsequently went nowhere.  I started over in 2014 and happily produced A Girl Like You.  And that was it; I was off!  

I don’t have a lot of insights for writers, except to say you should try to write every day, not just when you feel like it or feel inspired.  It’s a lot like exercise.  If you wait until you “feel like it,” chances are you’ll be pretty rotund.   The same applies to writing.  You have to do it every day to see results.

Also, read a lot!

What about you, Jennifer?  What advice do you have for inspiring writers?  What does your writing process look like?  

I think it’s important for fiction writers to have good liberal arts educations. We need that foundation in order to understand our primary subject: people and the messes they make. It’s essential for writers to read as much and as broadly as possible: the classics of literature, well-researched nonfiction, current events. More important than getting an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, one must have a broad frame of reference for understanding life. We must continually cultivate the skills for expressing that understanding in words. The paramount thing is to be able to think. There is a lot of drivel being published these days because people want to take shortcuts. My writing mentor used to harangue me with this: “Jennifer, it is important to move the brains at least once daily!”

My writing process is very methodical. I develop a plot slowly and outline it in detail. I work on it daily, creating themes and characters and subplots. I spent two years creating the outline for The Tolling of Mercedes Bell. The action for each chapter and the entire cast of characters were developed before I started writing the manuscript. I was well acquainted with the personal history and idiosyncrasies of each character before I wrote the first draft (3 years). The story took possession of my life. I was kidnapped by a muse!  

So, Michelle, what are you working on now?  

Too much!  Currently, I'm working on the edits for Book 2 of the series, A Ring of Truth, which will be coming out in April, so that's keeping me busy. I'm also still doing some promotion for A Girl Like You, still writing my weekly blog, "Novel Notes of Local Lore"—true stories about Chicago's forgotten residents, and, oh yeah! — I just started writing Book 4 of the series.  So, it's basically chaos!  

How about you, Jennifer?  What's your current project?  

I am loving the indie author life, but there aren’t enough hours in the day. I start the day with an hour of yoga, to keep my sanity, then divide my time among marketing The Tolling of Mercedes Bell, making public appearances to do readings and meet with book clubs, interacting on social media, reading and reviewing books, attending other authors’ events in the San Francisco area and writing about them, and planning my next novel (which will be related to The Tolling). I write a blog, as well as for various on-line book reviews and paralegal publications, and will soon be writing as a guest blogger on the sites of some attorneys I know. All my publications are also posted on my website, www.authorjenniferdwight.com, which has links to my FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages.

What is your Book 3? You mentioned 1 and 2, then 4. Have there been any surprises in your writing ventures that you wish you had known about before you started?

Book 3 of the series has a working title of “The Sound of Wedding Bells,” but that title hasn’t been sanctioned by the publisher, so it could possibly change.  It’s all finished, waiting for its chance to come out into the world, so meanwhile I’ve started the 4^th, as I mentioned above.  No working title yet besides “Secrets.”  I keep writing, I think, because I have this fear that if I stop, I’ll never get started again! 

I think my biggest surprise so far in this writing/publishing journey is how much time you need to spend promoting.  It’s a whole job in and of itself, never mind the writing!  Speaking of, you can find me at: http://michellecoxauthor.com/; FB: https://www.facebook.com/michellecoxwrites/; Twitter: https://twitter.com/michellecox33.

What about you, Jennifer?  Any surprises?  Regrets?

Many surprises, and few regrets. I had very little understanding of the nature of the book publishing industry while I was writing The Tolling of Mercedes Bell. So I had a woefully inadequate grasp of the work that lay before me when I finished the manuscript. This made for blissful ignorance during the creation process, and unpleasant surprises afterwards. I had no idea how hard it would be to research and pitch to literary agents, as a debut novelist, or that there were only five traditional publishing houses which control 85% of the book publishing market, all five of which rely only on agents to screen out undesirable manuscripts. (Nor did I know that fewer than one-third of the authors published by “the Big Five” are female.) I didn’t know that successful agents receive hundreds of submissions per week. It seems to be arranged to thwart the writer and to pay us as little as possible, while the publishers maintain complete artistic control.

Fortunately, I found another way, a nontraditional way with a fine independent press which publishes carefully curated work with great skill. And I was also fortunate to have the resources to allocate to educate myself about publishing (go to writers’ conferences), have a website created, establish an author’s platform, hire a publicity firm, and finance the book tour.  

In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t know how hard it would be to become well published before I started writing, and I’m glad I found She Writes Press and met you! Then for us to have been finalists at this year’s Indie Next Generation Book Awards was pure icing on the cake! What joy!

So to new writers I say, if you’re writing because you want fortune or fame, you may be in for many disappointments. The odds are against you. But if you write because it is your passion, then carry on and don’t give up. If the muse has come for you, you must oblige her, and be tenacious.

Michelle Cox holds a B.A. in English literature from Mundelein College, Chicago, and is the author of the award-winning, A Girl Like You, the first in the Henrietta and Inspector Howard series.  She is known for her wildly popular blog, “How to Get Your Book Published in 7,000 Easy Steps—A Practical Guide” as well as her charming “Novel Notes of Local Lore,” a blog dedicated to Chicago’s forgotten residents.  Michelle lives with her husband and three children in the Chicago suburbs. A Girl Like You has received two starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist and placed as a Finalist in Romance in the 2016 Next Gen Awards.  It has also been listed as a top read by Your Tango, Popsugar, Culturalist, The Reading Room, and Buzzfeed and is currently enjoying its second print run.  Book two of the series, A Ring Of Truth, will be released April 2017.

Jennifer Dwight is a San Francisco Area author. She writes a blog, a series for the Portland Book Review, and regularly contributes to the several on-line and print publications. Her books include nonfiction legal works and a suspense novel, The Tolling of Mercedes Bell, which was a finalist in the 2016 Indie Next Generation Awards for Thriller and Suspense. The San Francisco Book Review called it “an unforgettable page-turner – a must-read by all!” It has also received excellent reviews from Suspense Magazine, Sunset Magazine, the Portland Book Review, Coastal Living Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Working Mother Magazine, Brit + Co, BuzzFeed, The Reading Room, and many on-line review blogs. Jennifer welcomes visitors to her website, where there are links to her writings, reviews, and social media, and information about her upcoming events.

the houses of The Haunting of Hill House

Jessy Randall

According to Ruth Franklin's excellent new biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, several houses may have served as the inspiration for The Haunting of Hill House, the novel Stephen King called one of the top two pieces of supernatural fiction of the 20th century (the other being The Turning of the Screw). Jackson collected postcards and photographs of spooky mansions, but Hill House is her own invention -- she drew her own interior plans for it, some of which are reproduced in the biography. And of course the Hill House in the reader's mind is almost certainly scarier than any real place. Nevertheless, I found myself yearning for a visual compendium of all the inspirations for Hill House. (Click on the links for sources.)

Hill House, "not sane," may have been inspired by:

The Chateau de Monte Cristo in Port-Marly, France

 

Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Germany

 

Grim's Dyke in London, England (now a Best Western hotel!)

 

Jennings Hall in Bennington, Vermont

 

The Everett Mansion in Bennington, Vermont

The Crocker House in San Francisco, California, designed by Samuel Bugbee, Jackson's great-great-grandfather

 

The Winchester House in San Jose, California

 

On a related note, the houses used for the two film versions of the novel are:

Ettington Park Hotel in Stratford-Upon Avon, England (The Haunting, 1963)

 

Harlaxton Manor in Harlaxton, England (The Haunting, 1999)

 

The 2002 TV miniseries Stephen King's Rose Red is a sort-of kind-of remake of and/or homage to The Haunting. King said in an interview that the Winchester House, above, was an inspiration for it. The house used for filming was:

Thornewood Castle in Lakewood, Washington

 

Happy Halloween!

 

Addendum, October 2018:

The 2018 Netflix series house exterior shots were filmed at Bisham Manor in Lagrange, Georgia.

Charlie Jane Anders at Colorado College

Jessy Randall

Last month, science fiction author and io9 founder Charlie Jane Anders visited Colorado College as part of our Visiting Writers series. Writers usually meet with students in CC fiction and poetry classes, and Anders was no exception. This time, though, we held the student session in Special Collections, so that we could look at rare and valuable science fiction publications with her.

It was a blast. I put out an 1869 edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a first edition of George Orwell's 1984, an Arion Press edition of H.G. Wells's Tono-Bungay, issues of SF zines such as Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and Pandora, pulp paperbacks of Slaughterhouse-Five and Doctor Who, a 17th century history of monsters, and more. We spent a happy hour or so talking about reading and writing science fiction, and as I said goodbye and gathered up the books from the tables I realized it was the first time I'd ever had all my department's science fiction stuff in front of me at the same time. Glorious!

(Anders is standing in front of a humongous painting by Sandy Kinnee, on loan to the library for one year while we renovate.)

Marisha Pessl's Night Film

Diane Westerfield guest-blogs for Jessy Randall again this week.

Night Film by Marisha Pessl is a wonderful horror-flavored mystery that should please many a reader.

The protagonist of Night Film is Scott McGrath. He had been a high-flying, arrogant journalist who wrote a few best-selling books. His life is now in shambles. Five years prior to the beginning of the narrative, McGrath attempted to investigate the mysterious filmmaker Cordova. The investigation destroyed McGrath's journalist's career and marriage.

Cordova's daughter Ashley is found dead of an apparent suicide. Our journalist, rather like a film noir detective, is drawn back to the Kordova family against his better judgement. He follows a long trail of clues with the help of a couple of misfits. The path leads the trio to strange places and people in New York City and New York state.

Is the Cordova family involved in dark doings, or is the answer more banal? Where is the line between reality and delusion, or reality and another world? Pessl has constructed a legendary filmmaker with a stable of films and repeating motifs, with such a level of detail that she could have written about a real filmmaker like Kubrick. The protagonist falls into the world of Cordova, and may not be able to free himself.

The horror element in this book is not particularly graphic. The unclear nature of the Cordova family and their activities leaves many things open to interpretation. Much of the "bad stuff", which may not even be real, takes place off-stage and at a distance of time. There is a Gothic touch with the Peak, Kordova's infamous mansion.

An interesting device in the novel is the use of pages that punctuate the text: web sites, police files, notes. These interspersed pages enhance the experience of the reader, who sees the case unfold with McGrath.

Highly recommended if you can tolerate ambiguity and a protagonist who can't escape his arrogance. There were aspects of this novel that reminded me of Rosemary's Baby and Foucault's Pendulum. If you liked both of those, you would probably like Night Film.

Diane Westerfield is a librarian by trade, currently working at Colorado College. She got her MLIS from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and her undergraduate education from University of Chicago. Among Diane’s interests are genre fiction (especially horror), music, birdwatching, gaming, and studying German. She and her husband Todd live in Colorado Springs with two elderly cats and one big dog.

Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes

Diane Westerfield guest-blogs for Jessy Randall this week.

Mr. Mercedes is a cat-and-mouse game between a retired detective and a mass murderer who threatens to strike again. This is a breezy page-turner that will keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

A man plowed a stolen Mercedes (a large, heavy, high-powered edition) through a crowd of job seekers and gets away. The police detective who failed to catch him has retired, and spends his days watching trashy TV while eating and drinking too much. He considers ending it all, but the killer sends him a taunting letter that moves him to action. What follows is a constant battle of wits between the older ex-cop and the arrogant murderer, who is hidden in plain sight. Collateral damage accumulates in the wake of their contest.

This tale has no supernatural element, but based on reviews I decided to read it anyway. I enjoyed it. There were some plot points that perhaps weren't so great, but the characters were interesting. The constant twists and turns made it hard to put down. There is of course the usual Stephen King unpleasantness, which, if you've read enough King novels is something you learn to deal with.

This is the first of a trilogy of related books. I've already begun on the second, "Finders Keepers". Stephen King seems to alternate between easy and literary novels, and true to form, Mr. Mercedes is in the easy category whereas the "Finders Keepers" is more literary - or at least based on literary themes.

Diane Westerfield is a librarian by trade, currently working at Colorado College. She got her MLIS from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and her undergraduate education from University of Chicago. Among Diane’s interests are genre fiction (especially horror), music, birdwatching, gaming, and studying German. She and her husband Todd live in Colorado Springs with two elderly cats and one big dog.

Diane Westerfield guest-blogs for Jessy Randall this week.

Mr. Mercedes is a cat-and-mouse game between a retired detective and a mass murderer who threatens to strike again. This is a breezy page-turner that will keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

A man plowed a stolen Mercedes (a large, heavy, high-powered edition) through a crowd of job seekers and gets away. The police detective who failed to catch him has retired, and spends his days watching trashy TV while eating and drinking too much. He considers ending it all, but the killer sends him a taunting letter that moves him to action. What follows is a constant battle of wits between the older ex-cop and the arrogant murderer, who is hidden in plain sight. Collateral damage accumulates in the wake of their contest.

This tale has no supernatural element, but based on reviews I decided to read it anyway. I enjoyed it. There were some plot points that perhaps weren't so great, but the characters were interesting. The constant twists and turns made it hard to put down. There is of course the usual Stephen King unpleasantness, which, if you've read enough King novels is something you learn to deal with.

This is the first of a trilogy of related books. I've already begun on the second, "Finders Keepers". Stephen King seems to alternate between easy and literary novels, and true to form, Mr. Mercedes is in the easy category whereas the "Finders Keepers" is more literary - or at least based on literary themes.

Diane Westerfield is a librarian by trade, currently working at Colorado College. She got her MLIS from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and her undergraduate education from University of Chicago. Among Diane’s interests are genre fiction (especially horror), music, birdwatching, gaming, and studying German. She and her husband Todd live in Colorado Springs with two elderly cats and one big dog.

Pokemon Go and Aldrovandi's Monstorum Historia

In August of 2016, a generous anonymous donor provided Colorado College's Special Collections with $18,000 for this important text on monsters:

Ulysse Aldrovandi (1522-1605). Monstrorum Historia (Bologna: Typis Nicolai Tebaldini, 1642).

  

We purchased the book from Paul Dowling's Maryland bookshop, Liber Antiquus. After a telephone conversation invoking Liceti, Piso, and Pokemon, Paul sent us a couple of snapshots from the Aldrovandi Studio in Bologna, showing bones and woodblocks displayed together -- a sort of 17th century Pokedex, if you will (those of you who are playing Pokemon Go probably will; the rest of you probably will not).

I told our anonymous donor that I couldn't wait to show the book to students because it was going to blow their minds.

I was right. Listen to the reaction of the first students at CC to see the book:

Monstersreveal

Interest in monsters goes back a long way and shows no sign of stopping. See Allison Meier's A Visual History of Society's Monsters for a nice overview. Her article includes a marvelous animated gif of the Aldrovandi monsters made by Kurosh ValaNejad, a film student at the University of Southern California (low-res version below, better version at Meier link):

irate woman demands imaginary book

Jessy Randall

The Generic Theater, an underground theater troupe in Virginia, made this video to promote their production of Misery in 2011. As this explanatory article says, “Why it’s gone viral four years after the play stopped running is anyone’s guess! The Internet is a strange place.”

I don't know about you, but I feel like yelling "What kind of cockadoody bookshop/world is this?" when I remember that there won't ever be any more books by Kage Baker, Jane Austen, or Charlotte Bronte. And that list is only going to grow as I get older and all my favorite authors die.

Dammit.

 

all-female Titus Andronicus

Jessy Randall

When I read Titus Andronicus in a college class, it threw me for a loop. How could this gory, jokey, Stephen-King-esque story be a Shakespeare play? It's so ridiculously gross -- and so grossly ridiculous! Lavinia, her hands and tongue cut off, spends a portion of the play drenched in blood. At one point, she is put to work carrying her father's severed hand -- in her mouth. Later, Saturninius is served a pie made with the blood of his sons. I despaired of ever seeing this play on stage, because how could it possibly be performed?

This past Thursday night, I witnessed an all-female cast KICKING ASS in a production of Titus Andronicus at the Springs Ensemble Theater. The performance was everything I hoped for AND MORE. An all-female cast beating each other up, sword-fighting, pummeling each other on the floor, screaming for vengeance? Blood everywhere, messing up the costumes and requiring multiple mop-ups between scenes? (Seriously, the mop-up person deserved an award for her perseverance and efficiency.) The women playing Demetrius and Chiron were frighteningly -- and freeingly -- obscene, making repulsive rape jokes and generally behaving like curs. All the women were amazing.

Reading or watching any version of this play, you can't avoid feeling uneasy and uncomfortable and wrong. In my opinion, an all-woman cast improves the play, heightening its black humor and making it more watchable and enjoyable. Witnessing a simulated rape when both actors are women, when the "man" is a woman acting the part of a swaggering, repulsive, physically stronger character, put my mind in a whirl. 

I thought I was digging the production, but I gotta tell ya, there were others who were even more into it. When Titus Andronicus achieved part one of his revenge, two people near me burst into applause!

Oh, and by the way, the Springs Ensemble Theater is a very small venue, similar to an off-off-off Broadway set-up. To get to your seat, you may have to walk across the performance space. This means that at the end of the show, before the final mop-up, you have to watch your step if you don't want to get fake blood on your shoes.

Sign me up for any and all female-only Shakespeare productions in the future. Since the plays were originally performed by all-male casts, I see every reason to reverse the gender bending in the 21st century.

 

handwritten notebooks

Jessy Randall

My friend Sejal Shah recently published an article in the Kenyon Review blog about handwritten postcards. Simultaneously, a discussion has been brewing on a similar topic at Cafe Blue Writers, a group I've been part of since 1998.

Poet David Graham posted about his notebooks. What he said was so similar to what I planned to post that I was able to embed my few changes, in green:

DG: Like many writers I guess I'm kind of obsessive & ritualistic. So not only do I have notebooks, I have, to be specific, 82
 
J: 59
 
DG: more or less identical notebooks, all filled with words written in black--never blue, green, red--ink.
 
J: mostly black or blue, occasionally red or green

DG: Always 2 or 3 blank ones on the shelf ready to go. Began doing this in 1975,

J: 1981 at age of 11

DG: and probably will continue till I die or become unable to write. Each notebook is 6x9", college ruled; and for the past 15 or 20 years I've favored the kind with plastic covers, because these notebooks often travel in backpacks, suitcases, and duffel bags, and cardboard covers sometimes fall off. The best are Mead 5-Star, and if they ever stop making them, I'll no doubt shrivel up & turn to dust.

J: composition notebooks, college ruled if I can get them, in early years black notebooks, in recent years green if I can get them.
 
DG: I go back & revisit old journals less & less often, I find, but from time to time I do some excavating.
 
J: I excavate journal while I'm still in it, waiting usually a month or more to see what might be worth further work. I frequently go back to older notebooks, more and MORE often, by which I mean maybe twice a year where it used to be once or nonce.
 
DG: Mostly the journals have been where I beginthings--poems, essays, lectures, even letters sometimes. Not much is diaristic: very little about my travels or what I ate or who I talked to on a day to day basis. It's raw material for my "finished" writing, random, and for my eyes only. Practically everything I've ever published has started as a daily scribble in my notebooks. First draft in journal, sometimes 2nd through 4th; but at some point it moves to the computer when I think I might have a real fish on the line.

I like the low-tech nature of writing by hand; the slowness of it; the physicality; the quiet; the portability. I don't like the fact that my handwriting has gotten steadily worse, so that sometimes I have trouble deciphering what I've written.
 
J: yup

DG: Storage is a problem. 82 notebooks take up a lot of shelf space. Not sure what I'll do with them once we are forced to downsize out of the rather large house we've been in for going on 30 years. . . .

J: I keep the older notebooks in a box in my closet. I'm actually surprised at how LITTLE space they take up. One moving-box size carton of notebooks, plus another carton filled with diaries, letters, and odds and ends, all handwritten. I hope that someday a library will be willing to accept my papers as a donation, but I'm a ways away from finding out. DG, if Ripon's library doesn't want your notebooks, I will eat my hat. Contact the archivist/curator and see what happens!

***

Writer Dwain Kitchel had this to say:

DK: i have about 30 first one is a secretarial notebook of 80 pages for 39 cents titled creative writting (yes spelled like that)and dated to 72 am sure this from a class i took in school. first entry is:
 
Traffic Court 8/30/72
The round faced man
slaps down my hand
and smiles at me
in his greed
 
'More than you can' this section has a notation by the teacher What does this mean?
 
answers the fan
sure of the guilty
I'll plead

'Sometimes it's better to forget rhyme if it restricts clear expression of thought'
 
dear teacher, thinking back i have lived by these words...thank you

***

  On a related topic, the editors at Menacing Hedge have a side project, Scary Bush, where MH authors can share their juvenalia, much of which is handwritten. As you can see, I've contributed a couple of embarrassing scans over the years.

And by the way, I'm not the only person in the world who loves green composition notebooks.

 

Lyndsay Faye and the invention of the detective

Jessy Randall

After falling in love with Jane Steele and its author, Lyndsay Faye, I've been reading The Gods of Gotham, the first in Faye's three-book series. It's soooo good! I don't talk about every mystery book I read here at Dead Guy, but I have to talk about this one because it's kinda meta. It's a mystery novel that takes place in 1845 in New York City. The protagonist, Timothy Wilde, is a member of the newly-formed NYPD.

Pause for a second here to contemplate the idea of New York City without a police force. Apparently, in the pre-1845 era, there were watchmen and guards and things, but the New York Police Department didn't exist. And when it was formed, it didn't really know exactly what its job was, or how to do that job. It had no automatic authority. The "copper stars" on the force were in fact widely mocked and disrespected.

(The Oxford English Dictionary has the first use of copper to mean police officer in 1846, probably from copperstick; it has the first use of cop in 1859 and says its origin is American. According to the the Grammarphobia Blog, the word cop doesn't come from the stars, but from the verb form of cop.)

So, this is a detective novel that takes place at the birth of the idea of the detective. I researched the history of detective fiction in an earlier post, but it didn't occur to me to think about the history of actual detecting. Faye's protagonist, a former barkeep, has an attention to small details akin to Sherlock Holmes's, and he's able to use his skills to solve crimes; in reward (spoiler alert), he's promoted at the end of the novel from plain old cop to a new kind of profession, one we readers know as "detective," but he doesn't yet.

I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, Seven for a Secret.

Ross Gresham interviews Charlie Stella

Jessy Randall

This week, my husband Ross Gresham (author of, most recently, White Shark) interviews Charlie Stella (author of, most recently, Tommy Red).

****

Raymond Chandler famously praised Dashiell Hammett: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare, and tropical fish.” Two pages into a Charlie Stella crime novel (like his latest, Tommy Red) and you can’t help but feel it: he gives murder back to the people whose lives involve murder, not the teenage models who play cops and crooks on television.  And no one does street talk like Stella. He’s George Higgins. Let’s hear him in action:

Gresham: By this point there’s a sort of national myth of the mafia, an army of guys in the same gorgeous suits, all-knowing, all-powerful, and even kind of noble. On TV they arrive in a fleet of black Cadillacs and the show is over. Your books move in and around the world of organized crime, but your depiction is of a rougher, more casual group. What’s your reaction when you see slick stereotyped mobsters?

Stella: I don’t see them anymore. There was a time the big shots dressed that way. I’m talking very higher ups. Captains and above, although I guess some wiseguys (soldiers) did if they were into it and had the scratch. The guys I knew weren’t. Formal ceremonies, yeah, but walking around all duded up? Those were the very high ups, the ones didn’t have to get their hands dirty anymore. Even those, however, traded in the Cadillacs for the foreign models. They spoke a great game of patriotism, believe it or not, and most were rightwing patriots clueless about politics in general, but then they bought Italian suits and drove foreign luxury cars.

To be fair, I went through my Cadillac/sports jacket phase. The jacket was required on certain nights, even for associates. Used to drive my wife at the time nuts that I’d get dressed to go out with the boys but never with her.

Gresham: And the cops—in your novels, the cops aren’t far from the crooks. Instead of virtuous police force, a blue wall, these are guys with names and ex-wives and mortgages to pay….

Stella: Oh, there’s a blue wall all right … it’s just a blue wall of omerta. That politically correct 99%-of-all-cops-are-heroes bullshit is just that, bullshit. Cameras (from cellphones and otherwise) are starting to show the real story. You can knock that 99% down to 60-40, and depending on where you’re doing the research, the 60-40 can go back and forth as to what percent is dirty versus clean.

Gresham: Your latest, Tommy Red, is a lean machine, at just over 160 pages. You mention that you cut it down….

Stella: It was YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE before a friend read it and said, “What the fuck, man?” Yeah, I usually overwrite, but with Tommy Red I’d started it back in the MFA program (Star Island) and went in and out of it over and over … once Gavin Borden (the friend) told me it was too much (it was making him dizzy), I cut it down to size.

Gresham: You’ve been at this for a while. What have you learned, as far as approaching a novel? How do you it differently than when you started?

Stella: Patience. Can’t be enough said for it. I was kind of turned off to writing crime novels the last few years and have engaged in several other projects, including the non-fiction Dogfella, but then immediately after Tommy Red came out I started a new crime novel that isn’t mob related. It is dirty cop related and I’ve written half of it since the end of April. Whether it comes to fruition or not is no longer an anxiety issue for me. I used to think I had to pump out one a year. I’m gonna be sixty and I enjoy reading as much as writing, so … it’s all patience and an acceptance that this writing stuff isn’t going to be my ticket to financial paradise. I made a lot more money on the street than I do from writing and working. A lot more, but I never minded working for a living and writing keeps me out of trouble. You learn patience over time, I guess.

Gresham: How about navigating the publishing world? Any advice? Lessons learned?

Stella: I’m probably not the right guy to ask about the publishing world, although I’m very happy where I am now. Stark House came through a very nice guy and terrific writer, Ed Gorman. I’d gone to battle with my prior publisher and just didn’t give a fuck if I had to start over. Turns out I didn’t, but that was all Ed. He recommended me to Stark House and Johnny Porno wound up being their first original crime novel.

I don’t do well with authority figures. I don’t do well with fraternities either. I dropped out of the MWA a long time ago and I don’t buy into the ass kissing most businesses require. I write books. That’s the deal I made with myself. I’m fortunate to have a publisher I trust, and I don’t think or care about the politics within the business. My agent does the right thing by me, especially in Europe, and my first six novels I retain rights to bring in some change with ebooks. The best advice I can give is get ahead of the publicity thing as best you can (something I’m not good at) and understand that there’s leg work involved in hawking books. Sometimes it’s pleasant and sometime it isn’t. Mostly it’s good, but be prepared for people who’ve had a bad day … or just assholes who assume they can treat every author like a used car salesman. I told one to go fuck themselves when they assumed I’d eat their condescending sarcasm bullshit. Should’ve seen the look in their face when I showed up to that convention. “Oh, you’re Charlie Stella.” “Fuckin-A, I am.”

Those are probably important, too, the Bouchercons and Thrillerfests, and whatever they call them now. I don’t go to them because the few I did attend reminded me of frat rush parties and I’m still a GDI, but they are essential to networking, I guess.

Gresham: You write about violent men. I’m thinking of Tommy in Tommy Red, or Washington Stewart, one of the leading man in Rough-Riders, or…well, it’s quite a list. When you’ve spent the morning inside the heads of some of these guys, do you ever find that it takes you a while to come out?

Stella: Never. Movies still influence me that way, but not writing. I’ll watch a movie I like, The Drop, for instance, with Tom Hardy playing Bob Saginowski, and I immediately want to write. In that case it wasn’t the character that stayed in my head, it was the memories of what goes on that makes me want to write. That was overblown fiction, make no mistake, especially as regards the take on Super Bowl Sunday (there wouldn’t be a dime in cash that night), but just the atmosphere brings it all back (memories). The guys at the start sitting at the bar, the give and take with Gandolfini’s character, etc. That’s the stuff that stays in my head, but once I’m writing and stop, I usually want something to eat.

Gresham: Is it true you wear a purity ring? On your hand or on your toe? [Editor’s note: this is a joke about jewelry available to Bernie-Or-Bust believers.]

Stella: I’m a purity MF’er, yes, it’s true. I know what corruption does over the long haul, so I’ve turned to my version of Jesus, Bernie Sanders, at least until he endorses Lyin Crooked Hillary, but my fingers and toes are too fat for rings. I’m thinking of having one tattooed around my neck, but now that I’m pretty much turned off to the NFL and in love with the NHL, my next tattoo should probably cover my Buffalo Bills logo with a Lightning Bolt. A purity Lightning Bolt.

Seriously, wisenheimer (as I step on my soapbox), we as a society have become so used to government corruption, the likes of the two frontrunners is no longer a big enough concern for revolution (the nasty kind, never mind political revolution). That said, it’s why I didn’t choose to become a police officer back in the day, because I more than likely would’ve started out like so many of those poor bastards, with a sense of moral justice and self-righteousness (purity?) and wound up a dirty cop for any number of reasons. I’m currently reading Kill Anything That Moves about the countless untold My Lai massacres during the Vietnam War, and it is a sobering reminder of how and why some of the violent shit perpetrated by law enforcement occurs. That blue wall mentality is no different than what is taught in the military. Perhaps necessarily so, but the results those mindsets yield are often tragic. How can we blame anybody when we allow the people running the show to be hardcore corrupt pieces of shit? I’m all for Bernie’s political revolution, but I’m thinking we’re headed for a much more physical one a lot sooner than we might want to believe. At some point, the toys (video games, reality TV shows, cable series loaded with T&A, the free porn, the heroin, etc., all the distractions that are American exceptionalism—sarcasm intended) just aren’t going to quell the storm. Eventually people will get bored with all the opiates and wake up.

So, yeah, to answer your question … I’m a former criminal turned purity MF’er … and you know what they say about former addicts, right? Biggest ball busters on the planet …

Charlie Stella's books:

Tommy Red (April, 2016) Stark House Press
Dogfella: How an Abandoned Dog Named Bruno Turned This Mobster's Life Around--A Memoir (May, 2015) Da Capo Press (Ghostwriter)
Rough Riders (July, 2012) Stark House Press
Johnny Porno (April, 2010) Stark House Press
Mafiya: A Novel of Crime (January, 2008) Pegasus
Shakedown: A Novel of Crime (June, 2006) Pegasus
Cheapskates: A Novel of Crime (March, 2005) Carroll & Graf
Charlie Opera: A Novel of Crime (December, 2003) Carroll & Graf
Jimmy Bench-Press: A Novel of Crime (December, 2002) Carroll & Graf
Eddie's World: A Novel of Crime (December, 2001) Carroll & Graf

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

Jessy Randall

I just finished reading a wonderful book, Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye. It's not a mystery novel per se, but it has many elements that mystery lovers will recognize and enjoy. Some reviewers have described it as a re-imagining of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, but I don't think that's quite right -- Jane Steele (the title character of Jane Steele) refers to reading and re-reading Jane Eyre and comments on the similarities and differences between her life and the life of Jane Eyre (the title character of Jane Eyre). So, to me, that isn't a re-imagining. Jane Steele is an orphan, an avid reader, and a governess, so she can't help but compare herself with Jane Eyre. She's also a murderer, the most likable murderer I've ever found in literature. I look forward to reading Faye's other novels now that Jane Steele has brought me to her work.

Ross Gresham interviews

Jessy Randall

My husband Ross Gresham's novel White Shark officially comes out May 18 (this Wednesday!).

Over at Nigel Bird's blog Sea Minor, Ross interviews himself about the book. Extras, from Facebook: Ross posted the interview with the statement "When it's an interview with self, there's no one else to blame." Friends made various comments comparing Ross's hair to Billy Idol's (since the interview is titled "Dancing with Myself"), accusing Ross of throwing himself softballs, and praising his manhood (perhaps I should say "his own" manhood since it was Ross praising his own manhood). We also got a link to the Temporary Knucksline review of the book. No one stated the obvious, so I will do that here: Ross Gresham is a hunk.

A few days later, a consortium of women mystery writers interviewed Ross at their blog, Mysteristas, asking questions such as "What’s your idea of a perfect day?" (Ross's answer may surprise you) and "If you could host a mystery-author dinner party, who are the six writers (living or otherwise) you’d include?" This last question has had me putting together an imaginary get-together of David Bowie, Prince, Frank O'Hara, Robert Rauschenberg, Judy Garland, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Not that any of them are mystery writers -- but wouldn't that be a cool table at which to sit?

Addendum, May 31: East Coast Don reviews White Shark at Men Reading Books, saying "Clever, funny, and dark; a good prescription for a beach read. So take White Shark to the beach this summer. More fun than digging moats or hunting for sand crabs . . . just keep an eye out for Nausset's shark."

Addendum, July 11: Patrica Abbott reviews the book at pattinase, calling it "a well-written, fast-moving story with a protagonist you will like."

mystery games on iOS

Jessy Randall

I've played a ton of mystery games on my iPad, so many that I could've sworn I already wrote this post. The three games below are my favorites. They're all available on iOS and they're noirish and fun. 

Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp is stylish and a bit silly. It reminds me of Broken Age -- a colorful world, a distinctive look, very polished. I'm not the only one to compare the two games -- this reviewer calls Grimoire the antidote to BA!

 

Puzzle Agent and its sequel (Puzzle Agent 2, Electric Boogaloo, just kidding it's Puzzle Agent 2) have goofy jokes and a cartoonish design. Yes, as with most point-and-clicks, you have to run back and forth between locations and talk to characters multiple times, but in this game it's not annoying, somehow.

 

Agent A has a cool, retro-futuristic feel, like the Jetsons or old Bugs Bunny cartoons. I love the fact that both Agent A and the villain, Ruby la Rouge, are women. I also love that the game advertises itself as playable on shoe phones.

 

book parties

Jessy Randall

We celebrated Ross's novel White Shark at a book party and reading this week. (The book was supposed to come out in time for the party, but it's been slightly delayed.) We were in a beautiful venue, Bemis Great Hall at Colorado College, a place where you might hold a Lord of the Rings style banquet with a troll attack thrown in:

Ross was a little disappointed because he felt people weren't laughing enough. I suspect the room, as awesome as it was, dampened the sound of laughter. (Another laugh-dampener: our fifteen-year-old son, who shushed me when I laughed during the reading. I'm not sure if this is because I was laughing too loudly, or too much, or if it was simply because I am a mom and he is a fifteen-year-old.) From where I sat, I could hear lots of laughter.

And anyway laughter isn't necessarily exactly what you want when you're a mystery author, right? Ross's book is very funny, but it's not ONLY funny -- it's a mystery, after all, with murder and various kinds of cruelty and corruption.

And sharks! Our daughter Celie dressed accordingly:

And so did our cat, Sandy, who is remarkably easy-going about costumes:

CC English Prof and terrific writer himself, the inimitable Steve Hayward introduced Ross by quoting me on this blog!

Ross Gresham reading from White Shark April 11 in Colorado Springs

Jessy Randall

If you're anywhere near Colorado Springs on Monday, April 11, come hear the amazing Ross Gresham read from his new mystery novel White Shark as part of the Colorado College Visiting Writers Series. Anyone who pre-orders his book at the reading will get a t-shirt!

Also reading that night: Ann Myers!

Hope you can come!

blog post about this blog

Jessy Randall

So, as you may have heard when I was crowing about it two weeks ago, my husband Ross Gresham has a book coming out this May. He's been gathering together a list of blogs relating to mystery fiction, and do you know what blog keeps coming up?

This one! This very one!

So, that's cool!

Here are some of the blog lists currently out there:

http://newinbooks.com/our-favorite-mystery-blogs/

http://www.blogmetrics.org/mystery_novels

http://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2010/09/50-blogs-for-mystery-readers.html

Enjoy!

Arrival of the ARCs for White Shark!!

Jessy Randall

My husband, Ross Gresham, has a mystery novel coming out this May. The advance review copies arrived from Five Star this week!

The title is White Shark, and you can pre-order at Amazon.

Response so far has been quite positive!

(That's my mom.)

why aren't you reading Camilla Läckberg's books?

Jessy Randall

Or maybe you are and I'm late to the party. (Marilyn Thiele already knows how terrific the books are.) I picked up The Drowning from my library's leisure reading section and was immediately hooked. Then found out to my delight that it was part of an eight-book series of crime novels that take place in the Swedish resort town of Fjällbacka, which is a real place that I now want to visit (even though the main characters in the series find the summer tourists irritating).

The novels have everything I want in my mystery books. Lovable characters who are interesting and flawed, a little bit of humor here and there, and the kind of pacing that makes you want to call in sick to work (even though I would never do that) (I really wouldn't -- but oh how I wish I could sometimes).

As of this writing, the official author site had been hacked, so I won't link to it. Presumably the problem will be cleared up quickly so that Läckberg's 12 million readers can find out what's next for the author.

The Love of Mystery, or, Does This Post Make Me Look Like Star Wars Woman?

Anna Bendiksen guest-blogs for Jessy Randall this week.

Some years ago, I knew a woman with an epic obsession---literally. She was obsessed with a particular epic work of storytelling. Since this digital age is prone to public humiliation and the actual title of her obsession does not matter much, I’m going to call it Star Wars.

It was remarkable: All conversations with this woman---whether they began with talk about politics, the weather, or what kind of pizza to order---could only wind up at one destination: Star Wars. Improbable, but true. It wasn’t long before I was snickering behind her back, referring to her as “Star Wars Woman,” and avoiding her like the plague.

Star Wars Woman was intent on drawing other people into her obsession, no matter what the damage to those relationships. Had she been able to kill every remark, idea, or situation that could not be turned into a pertinent allusion, she would have done it. Those who came right out and told her that she was being insufferable were met with a knowing look and a reference to the forces of evil. Those who tried to ignore her were hunted down and accosted. Star Wars Woman was at heart a fundamentalist, by which I mean a person who is angered by the mystery of other people.

Other people are mysteries indeed. They refuse to be reformed on our terms; they refuse to share our obsessions; they refuse to fall in love with us or do their homework or follow us on Twitter. Billions of people, this very minute, are busy being their mysterious selves in an already mysterious universe. Intolerable and wondrous.

It seems to me that detective novels are a creative means of dealing with the anxiety that the presence of mystery among us evokes. We all know the story of the typical detective novel. A crime has been committed and we want to know whodunit. There is pleasure, often humor, in the process of figuring out whodunit, but there is also a certain urgency, because while the person or persons go unidentified, the innocent remain at risk. In fact, additional crimes do usually happen and the clues pile up. Then, at last, the guilty party is caught. We can shut the book and (one hopes) go to sleep.

This story captivates us because we live it every day. We live in a world which is beautiful and good, but also a place where evil lurks. We want to know why. We bring the perpetrators of crimes to justice and there is satisfaction, a “sense of closure,” in seeing justice done. Wrongdoing, though, continues to happen; there are always more criminals where the convict came from. Something deeper is at work. We look to our heroes to fight that “something” and to help us fight it too.

The heroes and heroines of the detective novel come in all shapes and sizes. He may be an English lord with a fondness for poetry. She may be a frumpy little old lady of whom nobody thinks very much. They may be hard-bitten types, good-hearted Cops with a Theory Nobody Believes In, or a middle-schooler named Turtle who knows which way the wind is blowing. They come in all shapes and sizes, these heroes and heroines, like all of humanity, like us, and yet they are set apart because they have a special job to do. That job is to struggle with mystery and yet emerge whole.

I’m fascinated by people like that. Quite often, I find them reading, writing, and starring in stories. What about you?

 

Anna Bendiksen is a writer with a particular interest in the intersection of food and cultural identity. She lives in Fairfield, Connecticut with her husband and son. You can follow her on Twitter @anna_bendiksen. 

 

middle grade mystery novels

Jessy Randall

Librarian Heather Riley of the Urbana Free Library in Illinois has put together an excellent gateway to middle grade mystery novels, with sections for classics, historical, realistic, action/adventure, and fantasy/paranormal. I'm pleased to see The Mysterious Benedict Society included -- I loved that book as much as my kids did.

Thank you, Heather! But I think you accidentally left out Daniel Pinkwater's Snarkout books, in which a bunch of kids (all boys and one girl, typical Pinkwater but we love him anyway) work with the Sherlockian "Osgood Sigerson" to solve bizarre mysteries involving avocados and other things. (By the way, the name Sigerson is  Holmes's pseudonym in "The Adventure of the Empty House," a 1903 short story by Arthur Conan Doyle; it is also the name of Holmes's "smarter brother" in the 1975 Gene Wilder film.)

 

 

Jessy lets it all hang out, poetry-contract-wise

Jessy Randall

I wrote this short overview at the request of F.J. Bergman, editor of Star*Line. It appeared in the Fall 2015 issue as the "first (?) in a possible series of articles in which poets tell exactly how much money they (didn’t) make with their poetry books, with details about offers and arrangements."

*
When I lived in New York City, it was understood that you never talked specifics about your salary or your rent, not even with your closest friends. Except that sometimes you did, to help each other find a good deal or give each other a sense of what was fair and what was outlandish. That’s the spirit in which I write this article. It seems a bit uncouth to talk about the actual money figures for poetry publishing, but luckily, the amounts are so insignificant that no one will be able to accuse me of bragging; at the same time, they’re so common and expected, from what I can tell, that no one will be able to accuse me of complaining, either. Indeed, my experiences with these presses were all good, sometimes great.

 

Since 1999, I’ve published five chapbooks (two digital, three paper) and four full-length collections of poetry, with a fifth forthcoming in 2016. (I also published a young adult novel, for which I made more money than all the rest combined, and still didn’t break four figures.) The publishers were small presses: BOAAT, Ghost Road, Pecan Grove, Pudding House, 2River, Red Hen, and Unicorn. Three of these seven are now defunct.

 

Pudding House (Because Mona is in the Psychiatric Hospital, paper), 2River (Dorothy Surrenders, online and paper), BOAAT (What If You Were Happy for Just One Second, online only) chapbooks, 1999-2014:

Contract? No.

Advance? No.

Payment? 2 free copies of paper chapbooks.

 

Unicorn chapbooks (Slumber Party at the Aquarium, Broken Heart Diet), 2004 and 2006:

Contract? Yes.

Advance? Yes: $25

Payment? 2 free copies of book, more available at 60% regular price ($12). Royalties: 10% of all money received by Unicorn for this title. (Like many Unicorn authors, I donated my royalties back to the press; the total came to about $100 per book.)

 

Ghost Road, A Day in Boyland, 2007:

Contract? Yes.

Advance? No.

Payment? 10 free copies of book, more available at 60% regular price ($13.95). Royalties: $1.50 per copy purchased directly from Ghost Road, $1.00 per copy sold through Amazon, Ingram, etcetera. I received checks totaling about $180 for this book. (I also gave readings from coast to coast for it, mostly paying for my own travel and staying with friends whenever possible; for one reading I got paid $250 but mostly I got paid nothing.)

Now defunct.

 

[Side note: in 2009, BlazeVOX offered to publish Interruptions: Collaborative Poems if and only if my co-author and I provided a donation of $250. The editor told us the price of producing a BlazeVOX book was $2000 and that at the moment he required authors to donate, but that authors could then purchase their own books for about $3/copy and make back the donation money with sales. After some discussion, my co-author and I declined this offer.]

 

Pecan Grove, Interruptions, 2011:

Contract? No.

Advance? No.

Payment? My co-author and I each received 5 free copies of book, more available at 50% regular price ($15).

Now defunct.

 

 

Red Hen, Injecting Dreams into Cows, 2012:

Contract? Yes.

Advance? No.

Payment? 50 free copies of book, more available 60% of regular price ($17.95). Royalties paid in the form of additional copies beginning after 500 copies are sold, at the rate of 10% (so, 10 free copies for 100 books sold). As of this writing, fewer than 400 copies of the book have sold, so it’s unlikely I will ever receive royalties.

 

Unicorn, There Was an Old Woman, December 2015:

Contract? Yes.

Advance? No.

Payment? 4 free copies, more available at 50% regular price ($12). Royalties: 10% of all money received by Unicorn for this title.

 

Red Hen, Suicide Hotline Hold Music, forthcoming April 2016:

Contract? Yes.

Advance? No.

Payment? 10 free copies of book, more available at 40% of regular price ($11.95). Royalties: 10% of net sales after the first 250 paper copies have sold, 25% of net sales on all electronic copies.