Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 47
September 23, 2022
Drowned Country, by Emily Tesh
This sequel to Silver in the Wood does several things which I particularly dislike: it breaks up the couple that was formed at the end of the last book rather than continue them as a couple, and it takes characters I liked a lot in the last book and makes them unlikable.
After Henry Silver and Tobias Finch got together at the end of Silver in the Wood, this book opens with them broken up and Silver sulking in a very unattractive manner. This novella is from Silver's point of view, and he comes across extremely badly: whiny, selfish, self-pitying, needy, controlling, and lacking empathy or caring to the point of being borderline sociopathic.
I had liked him a lot in the last book, and if there was foreshadowing of how awful he was, I missed it.
The reason why he and Tobias broke up is kept a secret till near the end. It's effective as a reveal - what Silver did was much worse than what I'd imagined - but it makes the conflict between them for most of the book fall flat because we have no idea what went down between them.
( Read more... )
The actual story is that Silver agrees to help Tobias and his mom find a vanished girl, and end up in Faerie. It's... fine. Not as evocative and lovely as the first book, but it has some good moments. An ending sequence involving the dryad Bramble is wonderful. But I couldn't get past how awful Silver was.
If you liked Tobias/Silver or Silver himself in the first book, I don't recommend this. If you liked the woods, it does have some good woodsiness but mostly takes place out of them. If you enjoyed Silver's folkorist pursuits and the mythology in general, but aren't that attached to Tobias/Silver, then go for it.
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After Henry Silver and Tobias Finch got together at the end of Silver in the Wood, this book opens with them broken up and Silver sulking in a very unattractive manner. This novella is from Silver's point of view, and he comes across extremely badly: whiny, selfish, self-pitying, needy, controlling, and lacking empathy or caring to the point of being borderline sociopathic.
I had liked him a lot in the last book, and if there was foreshadowing of how awful he was, I missed it.
The reason why he and Tobias broke up is kept a secret till near the end. It's effective as a reveal - what Silver did was much worse than what I'd imagined - but it makes the conflict between them for most of the book fall flat because we have no idea what went down between them.
( Read more... )
The actual story is that Silver agrees to help Tobias and his mom find a vanished girl, and end up in Faerie. It's... fine. Not as evocative and lovely as the first book, but it has some good moments. An ending sequence involving the dryad Bramble is wonderful. But I couldn't get past how awful Silver was.
If you liked Tobias/Silver or Silver himself in the first book, I don't recommend this. If you liked the woods, it does have some good woodsiness but mostly takes place out of them. If you enjoyed Silver's folkorist pursuits and the mythology in general, but aren't that attached to Tobias/Silver, then go for it.
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September 22, 2022
Silver in the Wood, by Emily Tesh
He felt himself for a moment as the stump of a rotten old tree, putting up thin green shoots at strange new angles.
A gorgeous fairytale which I am pretty sure started out as Green Man/Male Folklorist. Tobias is the wild man of an English forest in Victorian times, patrolling his wood and conversing with dryads and letting his mossy hair grow long. He's lived like this for four hundred years, until a flirty, bright-eyed folklorist named Henry Silver shows up at his cottage in a rain storm, soaking wet and very friendly.
I love forests and trees and moss and green, and this novella is a love letter to them. All the details of the magic and the woods are beautifully worked out, and feel both very magical and very grounded. The romance is a sweet, low-key slow burn. It's mostly about what it would be like to be the Green Man of an English wood, and how it would feel to start getting drawn back into human affairs. It's incredibly atmospheric, and the characters are great - Tobias, Silver, a dryad named Bramble, Silver's slightly Granny Weatherwax-esque mother.
I loved the ending to this, and it works perfectly well as a standalone. There's a sequel which I don't recommend.
I listened to this on audio. The performance by Matthew Lloyd Davies is outstanding.
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comments
A gorgeous fairytale which I am pretty sure started out as Green Man/Male Folklorist. Tobias is the wild man of an English forest in Victorian times, patrolling his wood and conversing with dryads and letting his mossy hair grow long. He's lived like this for four hundred years, until a flirty, bright-eyed folklorist named Henry Silver shows up at his cottage in a rain storm, soaking wet and very friendly.
I love forests and trees and moss and green, and this novella is a love letter to them. All the details of the magic and the woods are beautifully worked out, and feel both very magical and very grounded. The romance is a sweet, low-key slow burn. It's mostly about what it would be like to be the Green Man of an English wood, and how it would feel to start getting drawn back into human affairs. It's incredibly atmospheric, and the characters are great - Tobias, Silver, a dryad named Bramble, Silver's slightly Granny Weatherwax-esque mother.
I loved the ending to this, and it works perfectly well as a standalone. There's a sequel which I don't recommend.
I listened to this on audio. The performance by Matthew Lloyd Davies is outstanding.
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comments
September 21, 2022
Jim Henson Company is developing All-of-a-Kind Family
And I'm a producer! (I turn up in the last line.) The article has some very nice quotes; check it out!
Jim Henson Company Developing Drama Series ‘All-Of-A-Kind Family’ Based On Sydney Taylor Books
This does NOT mean it will definitely be a series. We still have to sell it to networks, and that may not happen. But we're going to try.
I have been trying to make this happen for the last year or more, and I can finally say so.
Click on the author tag to read more about the books.
comments
Jim Henson Company Developing Drama Series ‘All-Of-A-Kind Family’ Based On Sydney Taylor Books
This does NOT mean it will definitely be a series. We still have to sell it to networks, and that may not happen. But we're going to try.
I have been trying to make this happen for the last year or more, and I can finally say so.
Click on the author tag to read more about the books.
comments
September 20, 2022
Razorblade Tears, by S. A. Cosby
Time was a river made of quicksilver. It slipped through his grasp even as it enveloped him. Twenty became forty. Winter became spring, and before he knew it he was an old man burying his son and wondering where in the hell that river had taken him.
Ike Randolph, a Black man with a criminal past, never really accepted his gay son. Neither did Buddy Lee, a white man who also has a criminal past and whose son married Ike's. When their sons are murdered (not in a hate crime), the fathers join forces to try to make up in vengeance for the love they failed to show in life.
Folks like to talk about revenge like it’s a righteous thing but it’s just hate in a nicer suit.
I LOVED this book. I loved it even more than Blacktop Wasteland. It has a lot of similarities - a killer premise, fabulous noir metaphors, and great action sequences - but it's much more emotional and heartbreaking. Ike and Buddy Lee's relationship is fantastic, and the supporting characters (including, in a way, their sons) are vivid. I loved the black comedy of Ike, who owns a landscaping company, using all sorts of landscaping tools to wreak havoc.
Chopping up your first body is disgusting. Your second is tiresome. When you're doing your fifteenth, it's all muscle memory.
Razorblade Tears is sad and funny and violent and thought-provoking and very easy to read, though maybe not in one sitting as it's pretty intense. It takes tropes from pulp fiction and buddy action movies and noir, executes them beautifully so if you like those tropes you'll love what Cosby does with them, and also uses them to tell a wrenching story about grief and love.
Content notes: Violence, a child in danger, gross stuff involving Buddy Lee's lung condition, and depictions of racism, homophobia, and transphobia.
S. A. (Shawn) Cosby was a star at Bouchercon. He's phenomenally charismatic. He said that he wrote the book because a family member who was gay left town as soon as he turned eighteen, because of homophobia from his own family and community. So he wrote this book from the point of view of those other people, in the hope of getting through to them. He felt very comfortable getting inside the shoes of Ike and Buddy Lee, but consulted with gay friends on the portrayal of the gay characters and community.
He said, "I had a version of a scene where a fight breaks out at a gay bar, and in the first draft there's just the two people fighting, and everyone else just stands around shaking their heads in sad disapproval, like monks. I sent it to my friend and he said, 'No man, a brawl at a gay bar is like any barroom brawl.'"
This was one of Barack Obama's 20 favorite books of the year, but it was a huge bestseller even before that. It won best novel at Bouchercon, and that was fully deserved.
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Ike Randolph, a Black man with a criminal past, never really accepted his gay son. Neither did Buddy Lee, a white man who also has a criminal past and whose son married Ike's. When their sons are murdered (not in a hate crime), the fathers join forces to try to make up in vengeance for the love they failed to show in life.
Folks like to talk about revenge like it’s a righteous thing but it’s just hate in a nicer suit.
I LOVED this book. I loved it even more than Blacktop Wasteland. It has a lot of similarities - a killer premise, fabulous noir metaphors, and great action sequences - but it's much more emotional and heartbreaking. Ike and Buddy Lee's relationship is fantastic, and the supporting characters (including, in a way, their sons) are vivid. I loved the black comedy of Ike, who owns a landscaping company, using all sorts of landscaping tools to wreak havoc.
Chopping up your first body is disgusting. Your second is tiresome. When you're doing your fifteenth, it's all muscle memory.
Razorblade Tears is sad and funny and violent and thought-provoking and very easy to read, though maybe not in one sitting as it's pretty intense. It takes tropes from pulp fiction and buddy action movies and noir, executes them beautifully so if you like those tropes you'll love what Cosby does with them, and also uses them to tell a wrenching story about grief and love.
Content notes: Violence, a child in danger, gross stuff involving Buddy Lee's lung condition, and depictions of racism, homophobia, and transphobia.
S. A. (Shawn) Cosby was a star at Bouchercon. He's phenomenally charismatic. He said that he wrote the book because a family member who was gay left town as soon as he turned eighteen, because of homophobia from his own family and community. So he wrote this book from the point of view of those other people, in the hope of getting through to them. He felt very comfortable getting inside the shoes of Ike and Buddy Lee, but consulted with gay friends on the portrayal of the gay characters and community.
He said, "I had a version of a scene where a fight breaks out at a gay bar, and in the first draft there's just the two people fighting, and everyone else just stands around shaking their heads in sad disapproval, like monks. I sent it to my friend and he said, 'No man, a brawl at a gay bar is like any barroom brawl.'"
This was one of Barack Obama's 20 favorite books of the year, but it was a huge bestseller even before that. It won best novel at Bouchercon, and that was fully deserved.
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comments
September 19, 2022
The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris
I loved this book so much that it was difficult to review. It was one of my favorites of all the books I read for Bouchercon. (My other favorites were Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby and Winter Counts by David Heska Wambli Weiden.)
I would never have read this book if it hadn't been for Bouchercon, as the blurb did not make it sound like something I'd enjoy. It's about the only Black woman working in a low-level publishing job when another Black woman joins the company, and the blurb was all about office politics, social satire, and racism. I really don't like stories about office politics, social satire is extremely hit-or-miss for me, and I'm a hard sell on stories about women fighting each other for scraps.
The Other Black Girl may be the only book I've ever enjoyed that's largely about office politics. However, Harris worked in a publishing house for years, and that happens to be a business I'm familiar with, so the specifics of the office and its politics were dead-on. There's a major plotline about an acclaimed white writer whose very important American novel about the opioid crisis includes a Black addict named Shartricia which is at once darkly hilarious and infuriating.
But it's about so much more than office politics. This book is a wild ride. It uses multiple timelines and POVs to achieve gasp-worthy moments that reminded me of Catriona Ward's The Girl From Rawblood. The structure alone is incredibly skillful and fun to read.
It also achieves the thing I wanted and missed in The Collective, which is a real exploration of moral dilemmas involved in doing something revolutionary. Most books dodge that by picking someone as a villain who doesn't even believe in the goals, and dumping all the bad actions on them. The Other Black Girl doesn't do that. There's villains, but not that sort, and there's people making actual morally ambiguous choices.
Looking at the blurb now, I see that either I missed the headline or they added a new one which gives you a better idea of where it's going. It was a lot of fun for me to go in completely cold, but given that most of you are probably also not into office politics...
( spoilers for premise, which you don't learn until about halfway through )
The Other Black Girl is a very original, cross-genre, hard to categorize book with elements of suspense, literary fiction, horror, satire, social commentary, and SFF. It's emotional and funny and very thought-provoking. The central metaphor really worked for me.
The book goes full meta on its readers in a scene where two Black women are talking about hair in an elevator with a white woman. One of the Black women imagines the white woman googling hair terms like "kitchen" and "4C." I felt called out as the white woman watching, I laughed, I googled. (I did know that 4C was a curl type, but not which one; I did not know "kitchen" in hair terms.)
Though this wasn't a book that was written for me, and I'm sure there was lots that went over my head completely, it was a book that got to me on a very personal level. Sometimes you love something in a way that goes beyond how objectively good something is, and I felt this way about The Other Black Girl, though it is in fact objectively good. I'm not Black and my experience of being the only woman in the room or the only Jew in the room is very different from that of being the only Black woman in the room. But this book really spoke to me, both in terms of what it was about and how it was written.
( spoilers for the entire book )
I was legit shocked that this didn't win the Anthony for best first novel, as it was far and away the best on that ballot and I'd have agonized if I'd had to pick between it and Razorblade Tears, which won best novel. The actual winner for best first novel was Arsenic and Adobo, which was an above-average cozy in a fun setting, and which I enjoyed but come on.
Black writers writing about racism were very well-represented on both the ballot and in winners overall, so I don't think that was the issue. Maybe some voters thought it was too weird, some thought it wasn't really a mystery or suspense novel (fair), and some really wanted to reward something light and fun. But come on.
ETA: I checked the reviews on Amazon and I get it now. This was a really polarizing book, and a lot of people hated the central conceit. They are objectively wrong. But yeah, I think "too weird" was the key issue.
Content notes: Depictions of the subtler kinds of racism throughout. A lot of uncomfortably relatable moments of workplace humiliation, tension, micro-aggressions, gaslighting, etc.
Spoilers for the entire book are fine in comments! You don't need to use rot.13. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read the comments.
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comments
I would never have read this book if it hadn't been for Bouchercon, as the blurb did not make it sound like something I'd enjoy. It's about the only Black woman working in a low-level publishing job when another Black woman joins the company, and the blurb was all about office politics, social satire, and racism. I really don't like stories about office politics, social satire is extremely hit-or-miss for me, and I'm a hard sell on stories about women fighting each other for scraps.
The Other Black Girl may be the only book I've ever enjoyed that's largely about office politics. However, Harris worked in a publishing house for years, and that happens to be a business I'm familiar with, so the specifics of the office and its politics were dead-on. There's a major plotline about an acclaimed white writer whose very important American novel about the opioid crisis includes a Black addict named Shartricia which is at once darkly hilarious and infuriating.
But it's about so much more than office politics. This book is a wild ride. It uses multiple timelines and POVs to achieve gasp-worthy moments that reminded me of Catriona Ward's The Girl From Rawblood. The structure alone is incredibly skillful and fun to read.
It also achieves the thing I wanted and missed in The Collective, which is a real exploration of moral dilemmas involved in doing something revolutionary. Most books dodge that by picking someone as a villain who doesn't even believe in the goals, and dumping all the bad actions on them. The Other Black Girl doesn't do that. There's villains, but not that sort, and there's people making actual morally ambiguous choices.
Looking at the blurb now, I see that either I missed the headline or they added a new one which gives you a better idea of where it's going. It was a lot of fun for me to go in completely cold, but given that most of you are probably also not into office politics...
( spoilers for premise, which you don't learn until about halfway through )
The Other Black Girl is a very original, cross-genre, hard to categorize book with elements of suspense, literary fiction, horror, satire, social commentary, and SFF. It's emotional and funny and very thought-provoking. The central metaphor really worked for me.
The book goes full meta on its readers in a scene where two Black women are talking about hair in an elevator with a white woman. One of the Black women imagines the white woman googling hair terms like "kitchen" and "4C." I felt called out as the white woman watching, I laughed, I googled. (I did know that 4C was a curl type, but not which one; I did not know "kitchen" in hair terms.)
Though this wasn't a book that was written for me, and I'm sure there was lots that went over my head completely, it was a book that got to me on a very personal level. Sometimes you love something in a way that goes beyond how objectively good something is, and I felt this way about The Other Black Girl, though it is in fact objectively good. I'm not Black and my experience of being the only woman in the room or the only Jew in the room is very different from that of being the only Black woman in the room. But this book really spoke to me, both in terms of what it was about and how it was written.
( spoilers for the entire book )
I was legit shocked that this didn't win the Anthony for best first novel, as it was far and away the best on that ballot and I'd have agonized if I'd had to pick between it and Razorblade Tears, which won best novel. The actual winner for best first novel was Arsenic and Adobo, which was an above-average cozy in a fun setting, and which I enjoyed but come on.
Black writers writing about racism were very well-represented on both the ballot and in winners overall, so I don't think that was the issue. Maybe some voters thought it was too weird, some thought it wasn't really a mystery or suspense novel (fair), and some really wanted to reward something light and fun. But come on.
ETA: I checked the reviews on Amazon and I get it now. This was a really polarizing book, and a lot of people hated the central conceit. They are objectively wrong. But yeah, I think "too weird" was the key issue.
Content notes: Depictions of the subtler kinds of racism throughout. A lot of uncomfortably relatable moments of workplace humiliation, tension, micro-aggressions, gaslighting, etc.
Spoilers for the entire book are fine in comments! You don't need to use rot.13. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read the comments.
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comments
September 17, 2022
Master
This was my third favorite of the movies I saw at virtual Sundance. It's very strong up until the end, which leaves a lot of threads hanging.
Gail (Regina Hall) is appointed as the first Black master of an elite New England university. On the surface, she's welcomed; not very far at all beneath the surface, she's a curiosity appointed to a historically deeply racist college by a lot of white people patting themselves on the back so hard, they're about to seek care for back bruises and shoulder sprains.
While she's still trying to navigate this situation, a Black student accuses her of racism, and Black students become the target of racist attacks which may or may not be supernatural. Meanwhile, there are extremely fraught tenure hearings. Gail investigates, and learns very unsettling things about the college's racist past, which may be very literally still haunting it. A woman was hanged in the area hundreds of years ago for being a witch. Was she a witch, or an innocent victim of prejudice? Either way, could she still be haunting the campus?
The horror aspects are fantastic as horror and as sociopolitical commentary, but the last act fell apart for me - it worked on a metaphoric level but not on a plot level.
( Read more... )
Master on Amazon Prime Video.
comments
Gail (Regina Hall) is appointed as the first Black master of an elite New England university. On the surface, she's welcomed; not very far at all beneath the surface, she's a curiosity appointed to a historically deeply racist college by a lot of white people patting themselves on the back so hard, they're about to seek care for back bruises and shoulder sprains.
While she's still trying to navigate this situation, a Black student accuses her of racism, and Black students become the target of racist attacks which may or may not be supernatural. Meanwhile, there are extremely fraught tenure hearings. Gail investigates, and learns very unsettling things about the college's racist past, which may be very literally still haunting it. A woman was hanged in the area hundreds of years ago for being a witch. Was she a witch, or an innocent victim of prejudice? Either way, could she still be haunting the campus?
The horror aspects are fantastic as horror and as sociopolitical commentary, but the last act fell apart for me - it worked on a metaphoric level but not on a plot level.
( Read more... )
Master on Amazon Prime Video.
comments
September 15, 2022
The Night Walkers, by Otto Coontz
I picked this up in a Little Free Library in Minneapolis. An excellent find! (I thought.) 80s YA horror with a supremely creepy cover. But, alas. (See icon.)
On the other hand, I read most of it while trapped on the tarmac on my way back to LA, so I was able to amuse myself by liveblogging friends.
The back cover says it was "developed in part from Coontz's concern for environmental protection."
While the teenage heroine, Nora, waits for her brother Tony to finish his football game, gulls fall out of the sky!
Nora is worried because she has pimples and has only lost four pounds despite "starving herself for weeks" when a Halloween party is coming up.
In the beginning, the teenagers all call each other by their surnames though this is 1980s US suburbia. Later, they forget all about it.
The town dump keeper vanishes, leaving behind a verdant garden and a bunch of leaky chemical drums full of pesticide. Mike, a teenage boy, eats some of the carrots he was growing, then gets a stomachache and goes home. A cat who ate some of the gulls goes and crouches on his chest like the wheezy troll in Catseye. They breathe in synch and a stream of luminous dust flows in and out between their mouths!
This is not what I expected from the cover.
Mike, the carrot eating boy, now gets a rash if exposed to any light. His eyelids swell up and his pupils expand. He is going around infecting his dad, the housekeeper (failed attempt, she fled) and Tony, the heroine's brother. He does this by pressing his mouth to theirs and breathing into them. This is described in a way that really emphasizes what this would actually look like, so... creepy.
Meanwhile, Nora has not been invited to the Halloween party so her BFF Maxine isn't going either.
Chapter 8: In the Month of Worms. Nora finally noticed something was up when her parents ran over the cat while rushing her mutated brother to the hospital, and the dead cat vanished in a puff of luminous dust. Unfortunately, no one believes her. (The worms are just there to justify the ominous chapter title. Nora notes that earthworms are common at this time of year, and that's it for the worms.)
Nora calls the cops because she spots the missing dump dude spying on her house. Nobody believes her.
The Halloween party goes ahead as planned without her and Maxine. Now all the boys are molemen.
Nora and Maxine go to visit the housekeeper who escaped moleman infection. The housekeeper confirms that something is up, but says it's hopeless to try to do anything about this, because no one believed her and no one will believe them. She reads the Bible.
Nora figures out that exposing the molemen to prolonged light might destroy the zombie fungus. She fails to convince anyone but Maxine of this. She and Maxine attempt to trap Mike in a well-lit room, but fail.
Meanwhile, a bunch of scientists independently figure out that prolonged light exposure might burn out the fungus, but apparently don't try it. They're basically there for a scientific explanation of how pesticides mutate fungus. I guess that's the environmental concern: leaky pesticide drums might create molemen!
Two days pass. Molemen rampage. The town is now on national news. Nora's BFF Max gets infected, and Nora saves her with lights. It's explicitly unclear, both to scientists and to Nora, whether this will work on anyone who's been infected for longer.
The housekeeper returns to make ominous pronouncements. Nora hears her moleman brother thrashing in the creek, and prepares to try to trap him in a lit room. The end!
[image error] [image error]
comments
On the other hand, I read most of it while trapped on the tarmac on my way back to LA, so I was able to amuse myself by liveblogging friends.
The back cover says it was "developed in part from Coontz's concern for environmental protection."
While the teenage heroine, Nora, waits for her brother Tony to finish his football game, gulls fall out of the sky!
Nora is worried because she has pimples and has only lost four pounds despite "starving herself for weeks" when a Halloween party is coming up.
In the beginning, the teenagers all call each other by their surnames though this is 1980s US suburbia. Later, they forget all about it.
The town dump keeper vanishes, leaving behind a verdant garden and a bunch of leaky chemical drums full of pesticide. Mike, a teenage boy, eats some of the carrots he was growing, then gets a stomachache and goes home. A cat who ate some of the gulls goes and crouches on his chest like the wheezy troll in Catseye. They breathe in synch and a stream of luminous dust flows in and out between their mouths!
This is not what I expected from the cover.
Mike, the carrot eating boy, now gets a rash if exposed to any light. His eyelids swell up and his pupils expand. He is going around infecting his dad, the housekeeper (failed attempt, she fled) and Tony, the heroine's brother. He does this by pressing his mouth to theirs and breathing into them. This is described in a way that really emphasizes what this would actually look like, so... creepy.
Meanwhile, Nora has not been invited to the Halloween party so her BFF Maxine isn't going either.
Chapter 8: In the Month of Worms. Nora finally noticed something was up when her parents ran over the cat while rushing her mutated brother to the hospital, and the dead cat vanished in a puff of luminous dust. Unfortunately, no one believes her. (The worms are just there to justify the ominous chapter title. Nora notes that earthworms are common at this time of year, and that's it for the worms.)
Nora calls the cops because she spots the missing dump dude spying on her house. Nobody believes her.
The Halloween party goes ahead as planned without her and Maxine. Now all the boys are molemen.
Nora and Maxine go to visit the housekeeper who escaped moleman infection. The housekeeper confirms that something is up, but says it's hopeless to try to do anything about this, because no one believed her and no one will believe them. She reads the Bible.
Nora figures out that exposing the molemen to prolonged light might destroy the zombie fungus. She fails to convince anyone but Maxine of this. She and Maxine attempt to trap Mike in a well-lit room, but fail.
Meanwhile, a bunch of scientists independently figure out that prolonged light exposure might burn out the fungus, but apparently don't try it. They're basically there for a scientific explanation of how pesticides mutate fungus. I guess that's the environmental concern: leaky pesticide drums might create molemen!
Two days pass. Molemen rampage. The town is now on national news. Nora's BFF Max gets infected, and Nora saves her with lights. It's explicitly unclear, both to scientists and to Nora, whether this will work on anyone who's been infected for longer.
The housekeeper returns to make ominous pronouncements. Nora hears her moleman brother thrashing in the creek, and prepares to try to trap him in a lit room. The end!
[image error] [image error]
comments
September 11, 2022
The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo (DNF)
This book was in our swag bags, as Jo Nesbo is one of the Guests of Honor. I was vaguely familiar with it from the ridiculous posters for the notoriously terrible movie version, showing a child's drawing of a snowman and the text "Mister Police you could have saved her I gave you all the clues."
I had the impression that the book was the sort of stereotypical Scandinoir with snow everywhere, dark cold weather reflecting everyone's dark cold hearts, alcoholic depressed detectives, and a general air of near-parodic grimdark and cold.
Also, his detective's name is Harry Hole. HARRY HOLE.
But then I saw Jo Nesbo on a panel. He firmly stated that he didn't think weather was important in writing (he was on a panel on weather in writing) and made a case for the crime novel as serious literature.
Perhaps, I thought, I had misjudged his book. I opened it.
Page 1: It was the day the snow came.
The entire first paragraph is about snow. Snow is weather.
A woman leaves her son in the car and walks through the snow to meet her lover.
Page 2: First, the white lovemaking. The good one. Then the black one. The pain.
His hand caressed her coat, searching for her nipple under the thick material. He was eternally fascinated by her nipples: he always returned to them. Perhaps it was because he didn't have any himself.
"Did you park in front of the garage?" he asked with a firm tweak.
She nodded and felt the pain shoot into her head like a dark of pleasure. Her sex had already opened for him.
Okaaaaay.
Page 3: Again she slapped him with her free hand, and his dick was growing in her other.
Page 4: Sarah stared at his chest. At first she had thought it strange, but after a while she had begin to like the sight of unbroken white skin over his pectoral muscles. It reminded her of old statues on which the nipples have been omitted out of consideration for public modesty.
This is not shaking my impression of Nesbo's books as not exactly serious literature.
Chapter 2: Harry Hole gave a start and opened his eyes wide.
At this point I looked up how Harry Hole is pronounced in Norwegian. Hole apparently means hill and is pronounced Hula. If I was the English translator and/or Nesbo and/or publisher, I would have either changed Hole to Hill, spelled it differently, or at least added an accent or something. If my books were translated, I would not want my protagonist's name to sound absolutely ridiculous in translation.
Harry Hole gets out of bed.
He left the news blaring from the clock radio and went into the bathroom. Regarded himself in the mirror. November was there, too: drawn, grayish pale and overcast. As usual his eyes were bloodshot, the pores on his nose large black craters. The bags under his eyes, with her light blue alcohol washed irises, would disappear after his face had been ministered to with hot water, a towel and breakfast.
Alcoholic depressed detective, looks in mirror so we can describe him, check.
He ran a hand over the short bristles of blonde hair that grew precisely 75 inches above the frozen soles of his feet.
What is with male authors and precise numbers for body part measurements?
We learn that he works out a lot.
The fat disappeared and his muscles were layered between skin and bone. And while before he had been broad shouldered and what Rakel called a natural athlete, now he had begun to resemble the photograph he had one scene of the skinned polar bear: a muscular but shockingly gaunt predator. Harry sighed. November was going to get even darker.
The radio is conveniently playing a nature program which also mentions that a study shows that about 20% of all Swedish children have a different father than the one they think. This will be plot relevant. Harry then fiddles with the radio until it starts playing Johnny Cash's desperado. There is a knock at the door
"Harry Hole?"
Some dude informs him that his apartment has fungus. This depresses him some more. It is NOVEMBER and it is COLD and DARK and he has MOLD.
At that point I DNF'd. I shall leave the book at the AirBnb, but there is a strange satisfaction in discovering that the first two chapters, at least, were exactly what I had always imagined the book to be.
Except for the nipples. No one ever expects the lack of nipples.
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I had the impression that the book was the sort of stereotypical Scandinoir with snow everywhere, dark cold weather reflecting everyone's dark cold hearts, alcoholic depressed detectives, and a general air of near-parodic grimdark and cold.
Also, his detective's name is Harry Hole. HARRY HOLE.
But then I saw Jo Nesbo on a panel. He firmly stated that he didn't think weather was important in writing (he was on a panel on weather in writing) and made a case for the crime novel as serious literature.
Perhaps, I thought, I had misjudged his book. I opened it.
Page 1: It was the day the snow came.
The entire first paragraph is about snow. Snow is weather.
A woman leaves her son in the car and walks through the snow to meet her lover.
Page 2: First, the white lovemaking. The good one. Then the black one. The pain.
His hand caressed her coat, searching for her nipple under the thick material. He was eternally fascinated by her nipples: he always returned to them. Perhaps it was because he didn't have any himself.
"Did you park in front of the garage?" he asked with a firm tweak.
She nodded and felt the pain shoot into her head like a dark of pleasure. Her sex had already opened for him.
Okaaaaay.
Page 3: Again she slapped him with her free hand, and his dick was growing in her other.
Page 4: Sarah stared at his chest. At first she had thought it strange, but after a while she had begin to like the sight of unbroken white skin over his pectoral muscles. It reminded her of old statues on which the nipples have been omitted out of consideration for public modesty.
This is not shaking my impression of Nesbo's books as not exactly serious literature.
Chapter 2: Harry Hole gave a start and opened his eyes wide.
At this point I looked up how Harry Hole is pronounced in Norwegian. Hole apparently means hill and is pronounced Hula. If I was the English translator and/or Nesbo and/or publisher, I would have either changed Hole to Hill, spelled it differently, or at least added an accent or something. If my books were translated, I would not want my protagonist's name to sound absolutely ridiculous in translation.
Harry Hole gets out of bed.
He left the news blaring from the clock radio and went into the bathroom. Regarded himself in the mirror. November was there, too: drawn, grayish pale and overcast. As usual his eyes were bloodshot, the pores on his nose large black craters. The bags under his eyes, with her light blue alcohol washed irises, would disappear after his face had been ministered to with hot water, a towel and breakfast.
Alcoholic depressed detective, looks in mirror so we can describe him, check.
He ran a hand over the short bristles of blonde hair that grew precisely 75 inches above the frozen soles of his feet.
What is with male authors and precise numbers for body part measurements?
We learn that he works out a lot.
The fat disappeared and his muscles were layered between skin and bone. And while before he had been broad shouldered and what Rakel called a natural athlete, now he had begun to resemble the photograph he had one scene of the skinned polar bear: a muscular but shockingly gaunt predator. Harry sighed. November was going to get even darker.
The radio is conveniently playing a nature program which also mentions that a study shows that about 20% of all Swedish children have a different father than the one they think. This will be plot relevant. Harry then fiddles with the radio until it starts playing Johnny Cash's desperado. There is a knock at the door
"Harry Hole?"
Some dude informs him that his apartment has fungus. This depresses him some more. It is NOVEMBER and it is COLD and DARK and he has MOLD.
At that point I DNF'd. I shall leave the book at the AirBnb, but there is a strange satisfaction in discovering that the first two chapters, at least, were exactly what I had always imagined the book to be.
Except for the nipples. No one ever expects the lack of nipples.
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September 10, 2022
Bouchercon: Wide Open Spaces: Outdoor Thrillers
Panelists: Erin Flanagan, William Kent Krueger, C. Matthew Smith, David Heska Wambli Weiden.
Moderator: Mark Stevens
This was a really excellent panel. The panelists were all great and had a very nice rapport, and the moderator did a great job.
I use quotes for more exact quotes rather than paraphrases.
Mark: "Nothing like a dark, cavelike space for talking about the outdoors."
Mark: He reads a Walt Whitman quote about how being in nature makes people better people. He asks if everyone agrees.
Matt: "I don't agree. That's Walt Whitman being a little Walt Whitman." People need nature as part of a search for completion.
Erin: "Outdoors doesn't make us better people, or we'd all sleep outside and have world peace." Her father gave up working at IBM and became a farmer.
Krueger: "Yes, I agree. I can't imagine even the worst person visiting Boundary Waters and not coming back at least a little better." He took up biking during the pandemic. Talks about connecting to nature is a form of spirituality. "A soul that is somehow redeemed."
David: Quotes a Lakota saying: "We are all related." "I'm Lakota. Land is central to our being."
Mark: How does nature affect your writing?
David: Many people will not have visited the reservation I wrote about, so I took care to describe it for them and make them feel what it was like to live there, and what the Black Hills look like.
Krueger: "Place shapes the characters' ethos."
Erin: Deer Season is based on my parents situation, but if my mother hadn't ended up adjusting and being happy with it.
Matt: National parks are under the jurisdiction of us a small FBI department, the ISB. It has 36 agents covering 800 million acres of land. They live out of their cars, in the parks, and work alone, with new partners. It attracted him because I like time alone outside. "I started with an image of my character, who was an ISB agent. She was always going to be who she was."
Mark: How do you go about creating your villains and antagonists?
Krueger: "My villains are trying to rape the land." They're environmentally destructive. It's very easy to find antagonists that way. Fox Creek is a little different because it has an antagonist who didn't choose the work he did, and he changes during the book. "No one is born bad."
David: I teach a class in how to create antagonists. My villains are dark mirrors of my protagonist.
Erin: My villains are human. Greed often motivates them. Nature can't be a villain. It doesn't have feelings. It feels contrived to have weather events that are convenient for the plot, like, [imitating Oprah] "You get a blizzard! You get a blizzard! You get a blizzard!"
Mark: Can setting be a character in its own right?
David: I also teach a class in setting. The important thing is to write from the point of view of the character, so you're not just describing the setting in a neutral way, you're describing it from their point of view. You small details. That way you can use the setting to illuminate character and also theme.
Moderator: "Okay, Professor, but can the setting be a character?"
David: "No, for me the setting is more of a supplement than a character."
Erin: "No. A setting doesn't have a motivation. The outdoors will not take revenge."
Krueger (to Erin; this was playful, not condescending): "You wrote a wonderful book and I love your dress, but I still disagree with you."
Erin (same tone): "I like your sweater too."
Krueger: "Settings have a spirit. Settings have a face. They have scents, sometimes odors. You can set someone down in Arizona with the blindfold, and don't know where they are. Though hear the wind. Go here tumbleweeds rolling. The setting doesn't need motivation. I can provide motivation. But if you believe that land has spirit, then sure."
Matt: "Land gives motives. People want land, they fight over land, they buy land, they kill for land. But I'm not opposed to dialing up a blizzard."
Mark: Do you deal with climate change in your work? Do you worry about being seen as preachy, or of losing readers?
Matt: "You can't write a realistic story without taking it into account." Weather is unpredictable now. Stories can reflect that.
Erin: "I am not anti-blizzard." I worry about being preachy, but not about losing readers. How politics comes into the story depends on how the characters think.
Krueger: "I've used blizzards." I like books that are not just mysteries. I do occasionally get emails from readers about my liberal politics, but I only once had emails from readers saying they actually will never read me again. That was because of one story I wrote about the mistreatment of refugees on the border. That really made people mad.
David: I don't write about climate change and environmentalism specifically that much. "I wanted to touch on issues that are not well known." Native American spirituality was a federal crime until 1978." Krueger wrote a book on the boarding schools, which took children away from their parents and families and abused them. That was a favorite of mine. There's a lot I want to say, so much so that I hold a lot back. The Black Hills are sacred to my people. They were stolen by the federal government. We sued and won the lawsuit, but the government refused to give them back. They offered us $100 million for them but we refused it.
Moderator: What was your most extreme outdoor experience?
Erin: "When I was 10 years old, my dad and my sister and I took a long trip to Boundary Waters, along with another family. We re-created it recently, when Dad was in his 70s. I found out that Flanagans bring a lot of liquor. The first time we did it, the parents were helping the kids carry the canoe. This time, the kids were helping the parents."
Matt: Rock climbing is the scariest. When I was a kid I did things I tell my son, "Don't ever do this." Don't go camping alone where there's grizzlies. Bear spray won't stop them.
Krueger: "When I was 17 and living in Oregon, I decided to hitchhike to Mexico. I got as far as Disneyland, then I turned around and went back. Disneyland was great!
On my way back, I was in the desert, with absolutely nothing around. I waited and waited and finally a car pulled up. I got in.
Normally I'd kind of pay for my ride by telling stories, but this guy was not responding to my stories. He didn't say anything. I noticed that when he leaned forward, his coat fell open and he had a strap across his chest. I had a friend who'd dislocated his shoulder and had a similar strap, so I thought that was what it was. Then I saw that that strap led to a holster, and a gun.
I started thinking about all kinds of things. Maybe I could lunge forward and step on the brake and then jump out and run. The guy pulled out the pistol and put it down between us. Then he picked up up and pulled over to the side of the road. So we were stopping, but not like I'd wanted. He said, 'Get out.' I got out and he got out with me.
We stood there, and then he got back in the car and drove away. I ran straight into a field of alfalfa. When I figured I was far away enough that he couldn't find me if he decided to come back, I lay down in that field of alfalfa under the stars, and I thanked God I was alive."
David: "Native Americans, we don't ski. We can't afford it. We think it's insane. But when I was younger, I had some friends who did it so I decided to come along. I put them on, I no idea what I was doing and I rolled all the way down that mountain. That was last time I ever skied."
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Moderator: Mark Stevens
This was a really excellent panel. The panelists were all great and had a very nice rapport, and the moderator did a great job.
I use quotes for more exact quotes rather than paraphrases.
Mark: "Nothing like a dark, cavelike space for talking about the outdoors."
Mark: He reads a Walt Whitman quote about how being in nature makes people better people. He asks if everyone agrees.
Matt: "I don't agree. That's Walt Whitman being a little Walt Whitman." People need nature as part of a search for completion.
Erin: "Outdoors doesn't make us better people, or we'd all sleep outside and have world peace." Her father gave up working at IBM and became a farmer.
Krueger: "Yes, I agree. I can't imagine even the worst person visiting Boundary Waters and not coming back at least a little better." He took up biking during the pandemic. Talks about connecting to nature is a form of spirituality. "A soul that is somehow redeemed."
David: Quotes a Lakota saying: "We are all related." "I'm Lakota. Land is central to our being."
Mark: How does nature affect your writing?
David: Many people will not have visited the reservation I wrote about, so I took care to describe it for them and make them feel what it was like to live there, and what the Black Hills look like.
Krueger: "Place shapes the characters' ethos."
Erin: Deer Season is based on my parents situation, but if my mother hadn't ended up adjusting and being happy with it.
Matt: National parks are under the jurisdiction of us a small FBI department, the ISB. It has 36 agents covering 800 million acres of land. They live out of their cars, in the parks, and work alone, with new partners. It attracted him because I like time alone outside. "I started with an image of my character, who was an ISB agent. She was always going to be who she was."
Mark: How do you go about creating your villains and antagonists?
Krueger: "My villains are trying to rape the land." They're environmentally destructive. It's very easy to find antagonists that way. Fox Creek is a little different because it has an antagonist who didn't choose the work he did, and he changes during the book. "No one is born bad."
David: I teach a class in how to create antagonists. My villains are dark mirrors of my protagonist.
Erin: My villains are human. Greed often motivates them. Nature can't be a villain. It doesn't have feelings. It feels contrived to have weather events that are convenient for the plot, like, [imitating Oprah] "You get a blizzard! You get a blizzard! You get a blizzard!"
Mark: Can setting be a character in its own right?
David: I also teach a class in setting. The important thing is to write from the point of view of the character, so you're not just describing the setting in a neutral way, you're describing it from their point of view. You small details. That way you can use the setting to illuminate character and also theme.
Moderator: "Okay, Professor, but can the setting be a character?"
David: "No, for me the setting is more of a supplement than a character."
Erin: "No. A setting doesn't have a motivation. The outdoors will not take revenge."
Krueger (to Erin; this was playful, not condescending): "You wrote a wonderful book and I love your dress, but I still disagree with you."
Erin (same tone): "I like your sweater too."
Krueger: "Settings have a spirit. Settings have a face. They have scents, sometimes odors. You can set someone down in Arizona with the blindfold, and don't know where they are. Though hear the wind. Go here tumbleweeds rolling. The setting doesn't need motivation. I can provide motivation. But if you believe that land has spirit, then sure."
Matt: "Land gives motives. People want land, they fight over land, they buy land, they kill for land. But I'm not opposed to dialing up a blizzard."
Mark: Do you deal with climate change in your work? Do you worry about being seen as preachy, or of losing readers?
Matt: "You can't write a realistic story without taking it into account." Weather is unpredictable now. Stories can reflect that.
Erin: "I am not anti-blizzard." I worry about being preachy, but not about losing readers. How politics comes into the story depends on how the characters think.
Krueger: "I've used blizzards." I like books that are not just mysteries. I do occasionally get emails from readers about my liberal politics, but I only once had emails from readers saying they actually will never read me again. That was because of one story I wrote about the mistreatment of refugees on the border. That really made people mad.
David: I don't write about climate change and environmentalism specifically that much. "I wanted to touch on issues that are not well known." Native American spirituality was a federal crime until 1978." Krueger wrote a book on the boarding schools, which took children away from their parents and families and abused them. That was a favorite of mine. There's a lot I want to say, so much so that I hold a lot back. The Black Hills are sacred to my people. They were stolen by the federal government. We sued and won the lawsuit, but the government refused to give them back. They offered us $100 million for them but we refused it.
Moderator: What was your most extreme outdoor experience?
Erin: "When I was 10 years old, my dad and my sister and I took a long trip to Boundary Waters, along with another family. We re-created it recently, when Dad was in his 70s. I found out that Flanagans bring a lot of liquor. The first time we did it, the parents were helping the kids carry the canoe. This time, the kids were helping the parents."
Matt: Rock climbing is the scariest. When I was a kid I did things I tell my son, "Don't ever do this." Don't go camping alone where there's grizzlies. Bear spray won't stop them.
Krueger: "When I was 17 and living in Oregon, I decided to hitchhike to Mexico. I got as far as Disneyland, then I turned around and went back. Disneyland was great!
On my way back, I was in the desert, with absolutely nothing around. I waited and waited and finally a car pulled up. I got in.
Normally I'd kind of pay for my ride by telling stories, but this guy was not responding to my stories. He didn't say anything. I noticed that when he leaned forward, his coat fell open and he had a strap across his chest. I had a friend who'd dislocated his shoulder and had a similar strap, so I thought that was what it was. Then I saw that that strap led to a holster, and a gun.
I started thinking about all kinds of things. Maybe I could lunge forward and step on the brake and then jump out and run. The guy pulled out the pistol and put it down between us. Then he picked up up and pulled over to the side of the road. So we were stopping, but not like I'd wanted. He said, 'Get out.' I got out and he got out with me.
We stood there, and then he got back in the car and drove away. I ran straight into a field of alfalfa. When I figured I was far away enough that he couldn't find me if he decided to come back, I lay down in that field of alfalfa under the stars, and I thanked God I was alive."
David: "Native Americans, we don't ski. We can't afford it. We think it's insane. But when I was younger, I had some friends who did it so I decided to come along. I put them on, I no idea what I was doing and I rolled all the way down that mountain. That was last time I ever skied."
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September 9, 2022
Bouchercon Panel Report: Anthologies
This panel had a bunch of last-minute switches, so I'm not sure who the moderator was or of the spelling of everyone's names. Panelists were S. A. "Shawn" Cosby, Alan Orloff, Mark Westmoreland, and Faye Snowden.
Bryan Quartermore, a white guy and a good panelist, is an author and an editor at Angry Robot.
Alan Orloff looks like he's a newer writer/editor. He's a white guy and was a good panelist. I think he was standing in for Hank Philippi Ryan, who couldn't make it due to covid and edited an anthology on revenge, This Time For Sure, which Alan had a story in. He read a statement from Hank saying that anyone who emailed her at her website would get a gift.
Alan: "My short story 'Killing Calhoun' has a huge twist in the last sentence. Hank suggested taking it out. Then I came up with a new twist. We had 20 emails back and forth, and then we ended up keeping it as is."
Shawn Cosby was an editor for the anthology Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, which I had planned to never read on the grounds that it would be soul-crushingly depressing. He's also the author of Blacktop Wasteland (fantastic) and Razorblade Tears (reading now, so far fantastic). He's a Black guy with a beard and is incredibly charismatic.
Shawn: "The intention of the anthology was not to mythologize the police. We did a blind submission process and a lot of people didn't understand the assignment, which was to take the point of view that police violence is a solvable problem. We got a lot of very nihilistic stories that were basically 'Everyone's gonna die, everyone's gonna get their heads caved in, goodnight." That was not what they were looking for. [Rachel: This convinced me to buy the anthology, because I'd thought that WAS what they were looking for!]
Shawn: "There were eight editors, so we had a lot of discussion. Some submissions we were all like, 'Well this is horrible.' A guy from Africa submitted, we had trouble with edits because there was a language barrier. His story was good, but it was a process."
Shawn: "Most people took edits okay, not everybody. A really good editor doesn't take away your voice, just makes it louder."
Faye Snowden is a mystery author I haven't read but would like to try at novel length, but unfortunately they didn't have her novels at the con. She wrote the short story "Chefs" in The Midnight Hour, which I did not read due to cannibalism. She's a Black woman and was on several panels; she's a real highlight and is very erudite on the history of the genre.
Faye: "'Chefs' was the funnest story I ever wrote. It's set in Modesto, and was inspired by a commute I used to make between Modesto, where I lived, and the Bay Area, where I worked." The drive featured a lot of pumpkin fields.
Faye: "Editing on Midnight Hour was very simple. I think I had one or two notes. But the story was very polished when I submitted it."
Mark Westmoreland is also a mystery author I haven't read but would like to try, but unfortunately they didn't have his books at the con. He edited the anthology Trouble No More: Crime Fiction Inspired by Southern Rock and the Blues.He's a white guy with a Georgia accent that is very nice to listen to.
Mark: "Trouble No More was a happy accident." He loves the Allman Brothers and Tweeted that he was going to do an anthology based on their music. Shawn Cosby Tweeted that he'd write for it, then DM'd him an idea.
Mark: "It was a joke!"
Another writer, J. B. Stevens, Tweeted, "I wanna write for that."
Mark: "I said, 'It ain't happening.' Then J. B. started emailing editors. 24 hours later, he tells me he has an offer. I said, 'The fuck you mean?'"
Next thing he knew, "I was emailing writers like I was asking girls in high school."
Shawn: "I was joking... I was just kinda fucking around... Then I wrote a story."
Mod: "What artist or group would you all want to base an anthology on?"
Shawn: "Bruce Springsteen. Right after I got dropped by my agent, I saw an interview with him on TV. He was making Born to Run, and he decided, 'I'll put everything I like in it.' So I wrote Blacktop Wasteland, and I did that too. Springsteen, when you're 25, you think, 'He's all right.' But when you're 45, he speaks to your soul."
Bryan: "My favorite genre of music is Motown, but I've got no business editing stories about that. But I'd do an anthology off the Beach Boys."
Faye: "Bob Seger. 'Row Me Away.'"
Alan: "Linda Ronstadt."
Mark: "Dolly Parton."
Shawn: "Whenever you think you're a really good writer, remember that Dolly Parton wrote "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" in the same day."
Mod: "What hold does the south have on us?"
Mark: "Like they say, if you can't set a crime story in the south, you can't set it anywhere. The whole history of the south is fucked up. I mean, Florida..."
Faye: "But still, there's something about it, something about the soil. There's something that you love, that gets in your soul."
Shawn: "People think a dark alley is scary. Let me tell you, the scariest thing is the world is an empty country road with no moon."
Shawn: "Every scrap of land that a boy with a Confederate flag marched over, a Black person bled on it, worked on it. I'll be damned if I let you take it for a four year hissy fit."
Mod: "Hank's anthology has a revenge theme. If you could, would you take revenge on those who wronged you?"
Alan: "Yes."
Shawn: "I would. I worked at a hardware store for twelve years. I decided to quit and work with my wife so I'd have more time to write. My manager kept saying, 'But you got such a good career.' I thought, 'If you say that one more time, I'm going to throw you into the thresher.' After I left, even after I published a book, he kept saying that to other people who worked there who I knew. I came by and gave him a copy of Blacktop Wasteland. I signed it, 'I don't think I'm coming back.'
Bryan: "I used to be an angry, petty, vindictive person. Recently I gave up on a book I was writing because I wasn't that person anymore and I couldn't get into that mindset."
Mod: "I haven't grown up as much as Bryan has."
Mark: "I'm with Shawn, I'm on Team Vengeance. My day job is in customer service. After eight hours, you just plot creative ways to do away with them."
Faye: "I tell myself everyone's just doing the best they can. Of course, we're all human, so sometimes people do get to me. But I think success is the best revenge. They see my books, they can eat their livers."
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Bryan Quartermore, a white guy and a good panelist, is an author and an editor at Angry Robot.
Alan Orloff looks like he's a newer writer/editor. He's a white guy and was a good panelist. I think he was standing in for Hank Philippi Ryan, who couldn't make it due to covid and edited an anthology on revenge, This Time For Sure, which Alan had a story in. He read a statement from Hank saying that anyone who emailed her at her website would get a gift.
Alan: "My short story 'Killing Calhoun' has a huge twist in the last sentence. Hank suggested taking it out. Then I came up with a new twist. We had 20 emails back and forth, and then we ended up keeping it as is."
Shawn Cosby was an editor for the anthology Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, which I had planned to never read on the grounds that it would be soul-crushingly depressing. He's also the author of Blacktop Wasteland (fantastic) and Razorblade Tears (reading now, so far fantastic). He's a Black guy with a beard and is incredibly charismatic.
Shawn: "The intention of the anthology was not to mythologize the police. We did a blind submission process and a lot of people didn't understand the assignment, which was to take the point of view that police violence is a solvable problem. We got a lot of very nihilistic stories that were basically 'Everyone's gonna die, everyone's gonna get their heads caved in, goodnight." That was not what they were looking for. [Rachel: This convinced me to buy the anthology, because I'd thought that WAS what they were looking for!]
Shawn: "There were eight editors, so we had a lot of discussion. Some submissions we were all like, 'Well this is horrible.' A guy from Africa submitted, we had trouble with edits because there was a language barrier. His story was good, but it was a process."
Shawn: "Most people took edits okay, not everybody. A really good editor doesn't take away your voice, just makes it louder."
Faye Snowden is a mystery author I haven't read but would like to try at novel length, but unfortunately they didn't have her novels at the con. She wrote the short story "Chefs" in The Midnight Hour, which I did not read due to cannibalism. She's a Black woman and was on several panels; she's a real highlight and is very erudite on the history of the genre.
Faye: "'Chefs' was the funnest story I ever wrote. It's set in Modesto, and was inspired by a commute I used to make between Modesto, where I lived, and the Bay Area, where I worked." The drive featured a lot of pumpkin fields.
Faye: "Editing on Midnight Hour was very simple. I think I had one or two notes. But the story was very polished when I submitted it."
Mark Westmoreland is also a mystery author I haven't read but would like to try, but unfortunately they didn't have his books at the con. He edited the anthology Trouble No More: Crime Fiction Inspired by Southern Rock and the Blues.He's a white guy with a Georgia accent that is very nice to listen to.
Mark: "Trouble No More was a happy accident." He loves the Allman Brothers and Tweeted that he was going to do an anthology based on their music. Shawn Cosby Tweeted that he'd write for it, then DM'd him an idea.
Mark: "It was a joke!"
Another writer, J. B. Stevens, Tweeted, "I wanna write for that."
Mark: "I said, 'It ain't happening.' Then J. B. started emailing editors. 24 hours later, he tells me he has an offer. I said, 'The fuck you mean?'"
Next thing he knew, "I was emailing writers like I was asking girls in high school."
Shawn: "I was joking... I was just kinda fucking around... Then I wrote a story."
Mod: "What artist or group would you all want to base an anthology on?"
Shawn: "Bruce Springsteen. Right after I got dropped by my agent, I saw an interview with him on TV. He was making Born to Run, and he decided, 'I'll put everything I like in it.' So I wrote Blacktop Wasteland, and I did that too. Springsteen, when you're 25, you think, 'He's all right.' But when you're 45, he speaks to your soul."
Bryan: "My favorite genre of music is Motown, but I've got no business editing stories about that. But I'd do an anthology off the Beach Boys."
Faye: "Bob Seger. 'Row Me Away.'"
Alan: "Linda Ronstadt."
Mark: "Dolly Parton."
Shawn: "Whenever you think you're a really good writer, remember that Dolly Parton wrote "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" in the same day."
Mod: "What hold does the south have on us?"
Mark: "Like they say, if you can't set a crime story in the south, you can't set it anywhere. The whole history of the south is fucked up. I mean, Florida..."
Faye: "But still, there's something about it, something about the soil. There's something that you love, that gets in your soul."
Shawn: "People think a dark alley is scary. Let me tell you, the scariest thing is the world is an empty country road with no moon."
Shawn: "Every scrap of land that a boy with a Confederate flag marched over, a Black person bled on it, worked on it. I'll be damned if I let you take it for a four year hissy fit."
Mod: "Hank's anthology has a revenge theme. If you could, would you take revenge on those who wronged you?"
Alan: "Yes."
Shawn: "I would. I worked at a hardware store for twelve years. I decided to quit and work with my wife so I'd have more time to write. My manager kept saying, 'But you got such a good career.' I thought, 'If you say that one more time, I'm going to throw you into the thresher.' After I left, even after I published a book, he kept saying that to other people who worked there who I knew. I came by and gave him a copy of Blacktop Wasteland. I signed it, 'I don't think I'm coming back.'
Bryan: "I used to be an angry, petty, vindictive person. Recently I gave up on a book I was writing because I wasn't that person anymore and I couldn't get into that mindset."
Mod: "I haven't grown up as much as Bryan has."
Mark: "I'm with Shawn, I'm on Team Vengeance. My day job is in customer service. After eight hours, you just plot creative ways to do away with them."
Faye: "I tell myself everyone's just doing the best they can. Of course, we're all human, so sometimes people do get to me. But I think success is the best revenge. They see my books, they can eat their livers."
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