Lawrence Block's Blog, page 8

It’s Getting Dark in Here…

My foreword to At Home in the Dark has been getting some attention, and I thought some of you might enjoy having a look at it. And if it should induce you to order the anthology, well, so much the better!

IT’S GETTING DARK IN HERE

Ages ago, Lucille Ball had this exchange on I Love Lucy with a snobbish character whose task it was to elevate her culturally:

SNOB: “Now there are two words I never want to hear you say. One is Swell and the other is Lousy.”

LUCY: “Okay. Let’s start with the lousy one.”

Funny what lingers in the mind…

Every year or so, I stub my toe on a couple of buzzwords and decide I’d just as soon not encounter them again. There are two that I’ve found increasingly annoying of late, and if Lucy were here I’d tell her that one of them is Awesome and the other is Iconic.

It is in the nature of the spoken language for words to come and go, and none are more cyclical than those we choose to indicate strong approval or disapproval. ’Swonderful, Cole Porter told us, that you should care for me. Indeed, ’Smarvelous, isn’t it? Wonderful, marvelous, terrific, sensational, excellent, brilliant—each takes its turn as a way of demonstrating great positive enthusiasm.

For quite a few years now, le mot du jour has been awesome. Now it’s a perfectly reasonable word, and means simply that the noun thus modified is likely to inspire awe, even as that which is wonderful is clearly full of wonder. If everything thus described is truly awesome, one is left to contemplate a generation of wide-eyed and slack-jawed folk gaping at all that is arrayed in front of them.

Well, okay. Periodically a word of approval swims upstream into the Zeitgeist, resonates with enough of us to have an impact, and becomes the default term for us al—or at least those of us under forty. Before too long its original meaning has been entirely subsumed, and all it means to call something awesome is that one likes it.

Deep down where it lives, awesome is essentially identical in meaning to awful. And there was a time when awful and wonderful were synonyms—full of awe, full of wonder. Now, as Lucy could tell you, one is swell and the other is lousy.

If anything good is awesome, then anything memorable or distinctive is iconic. I shouldn’t complain, I don’t suppose, as several of my own books have had that label applied to them, and perhaps I ought to regard the whole business as awesome. But iconic ? Really? No narcissist thinks more highly of his own work than I, but I have trouble picturing any of my books as a literal icon, displayed on the wall of a Russian Orthodox cathedral.

Wait, let me rethink that. Maybe Eight Million Ways to Die might make the cut. I mean, dude, that book is awesome.

Never mind. I have the honor to present to you seventeen stories, any or all of which you might well describe as awesome or iconic or both. And I want to introduce them by pointing out another buzzword, one of which I’ve tired at least as much as I have of the two of them combined.

Noir.

[image error]It’s a perfectly good word, and particularly useful if you’re in Paris and an ominous feline crosses your path. “Un chat noir!” you might say—or you might offer a Gallic shrug and pretend you hadn’t seen it. Whatever works.

Noir is the French word for black. But when it makes its way across la mer, it manages to gain something in translation.

Early on, it became attached to a certain type of motion picture. A French critic named Nino Frank coined the term Film Noir in 1946, but it took a couple of decades for the phrase to get any traction. I could tell you what does and doesn’t constitute classic film noir, and natter on about its visual style with roots in German Expressionist cinematography, but you can check out Wikipedia as well as I can. (That, after all, is what I did, and how I happen to know about Nino Frank.)

Or you can read a recent novel of mine, The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes. The protagonist, an ex-NYPD cop turned Florida private eye, is addicted to the cinematic genre. When he’s not acting out a role in his own real-life Film Noir, he’s on the couch with his feet up, watching how Hollywood used to do it.

That’s what the French word for black is doing in the English language. It’s modifying the word film, and describes a specific example thereof.

Now though, it’s all over the place.

The credit—or the blame, as you prefer—goes to Johnny Temple of Akashic Books. In 2004 Akashic published Brooklyn Noir, Tim McLoughlin’s anthology of original crime stories set in that borough. They did very well with it, well enough to prompt McLoughlin to compile and Akashic to publish a sequel, Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, consisting of reprint. It did well, too, and a lot of publishers would have let it go at that, but Akashic went on to launch a whole cottage industry of darkness.

A look at the publisher’s website shows a total of 120 published and forthcoming Noir titles, but the number is sure to be higher by the time you read this. Akashic clearly subscribes to the notion that every city has a dark side, and deserves a chance to tell its own stories.

It is, I must say, a wholly estimable enterprise. I could not begin to estimate the number of writers whose first appearance in print has come in an Akashic anthology. They owe Akashic a debt of gratitude, as does a whole world of readers.

And as do I. I had the pleasure of editing Manhattan Noir and Manhattan Noir 2, and while neither brought me wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, each was a source of personal and artistic satisfaction. And, after I’d coaxed a couple friends into writing stories for my anthology, I could hardly demur when they turned the tables on me. I’d written one myself for Manhattan Noir, and wrote another for S. J. Rozan’s Bronx Noir, and a third for Sarah Cortez and Bootsie Martinez’s Indian Country Noir. All three were about the same cheerfully homicidal young woman, and although she didn’t yet have a name, she clearly had a purpose in life. I found more stories to write about her, realized they were chapters of a novel in progress, and in time Getting Off was published by Hard Case Crime.

So I wish their series continued success. Although their stories have never had much to do with Hollywood’s 1940 vision of noir, neither are they happy little tales full of kitty cats and bunny rabbits. They are serious stories, taking in the main a hard line on reality, and any gray scale would show them on the dark end of the spectrum.

Noir? Noirish? Okay, fine. I’m happy for them to go on using the word. In fact I’m all for letting them trademark it, just so the rest of the world could quit using it.

That, Gentle Reader, is a rant. And you can relax now. I’m done with it.

So here we have seventeen stories, and you’ll note that they cover a lot of ground in terms of genre. Most are crime fiction to a greater or lesser degree, but James Reasoner’s is a period Western and Joe Hill’s is horror and Joe R. Langdale’s is set in a dystopian future, and what they all have in common, besides their unquestionable excellence, is where they stand on that gray scale.

They are, in a word, dark.

And that, I must confess, is the modifier I greatly prefer to noir.

It’s easy to see I’m partial to it. A few years ago I put together a collection of New York stories for Three Rooms Press, and the title I fastened upon was Dark City Lights. (While I was at it I fastened as well upon some of that book’s contributors; of the writers in At Home in the Dark, six of them—Ed Park, Jim Fusilli, Thomas Pluck, Jill D. Block, Elaine Kagan and Warren Moore—wrote stories for Dark City Lights.)

The title came to me early on. Years ago I’d come across O. Henry’s last words, spoken on his deathbed, and in case you missed them in the epigraph, you needn’t flip pages. “Turn up the lights,” said the master of the surprise ending. “I don’t want to go home in the dark.”

I can but hope you enjoy At Home in the Dark. I find it’s inspired me, and there’s another anthology taking shape in my mind even now. I already have a title in mind, and it’s five words long (as my titles tend to be), and it has the word dark in it.

Trust me. It’ll be awesome.

At Home in the Dark , with stories by Noreen Ayres, Laura Benedict, Jill D. Block, Richard Chizmar, Hilary Davidson, Jim Fusilli, Joe Hill, Elaine Kagan, Joe R.Lansdale, Warren Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Ed Park, Nancy Pickard, Thomas Pluck, James Reasoner, Wallace Stroby, and Duane Swierczynski, was published as a deluxe limited hardcover edition by Subterranean Press; those hardcover copies are long gone, but the book’s available now as an ebook or trade paperback.

A new trick for a very old dog…

Sometime last year I started writing a new piece of fiction. It was very dark, very nasty, and more than a little disturbing, and when I was about 15,000 words into it, I found I didn’t want to write any more of it. While I wasn’t yet ready to toss it, I decided to put it on the shelf.

It’s handy, that shelf. No matter how many projects I tuck away on it, there’s always room for one more…

And there it stayed, and a month or so ago I found myself once again thinking about that particular project. I’d sensed while writing it that it was apparently destined to be longer than a short story but shorter than a novel, and would probably wind up as a novella. That’s a length that has seemed to suit me in recent years; Keller’s Fedora is a novella, as are Resume Speed and A Time to Scatter Stones. If in fact A Man Walks Into a Bar were to come in at that length, its current run of 15,000 words meant it had reached, and very possibly passed, the halfway point.

One hates to abandon anything that close to the finish line. Could I get back in the virtual saddle and ride it out? Would I want to? Was the game worth the candle?

I printed out what I’d written and sat down and read it, and was surprised to find I genuinely liked what I’d done. It was certainly dark, and readers might well find it unpleasant, but I could live with that. I’d feel better for having finished it, and if I wound up hating it, well, there’d still be room on that shelf.

I spent a week thinking about it, coming up with ways to continue the story, deciding on each occasion that it was something I would get to in a day or so. And the days passed, and I went on thinking my thoughts, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to get started.

Writer’s block? Some might call it that, but I didn’t think anything of the sort was keeping me away from the computer. I just didn’t feel like the long slog of hammering out another five or ten or fifteen thousand words. I wanted to do it, but did it have to be today? Couldn’t I just let it go for a little while? Wouldn’t it be all the better for another day or week of contemplation?

Then I thought of my good friend Jerrold Mundis. As you can see, it’s no hyperbole to say the man wrote the book on writer’s block; Jerry invented a method for his own use and wound up with a sideline enterprise, breaking writer’s block for individual clients. Recently he began work on an introduction to a forthcoming collection of his short fiction. This was the first new writing he’d done in a while, and he used his own time-tested method to get into it, sitting down at his desk each day, setting a kitchen timer for fifteen minutes, and working only until the bell sounded. (I think he’s now up to something like fifty minutes a day, and the introduction has somehow grown longer than some of the stories, but there’s a purpose to it all.)

I thought about this, and instead of adding it to the list of things I would think about every day, I sat down the very next morning with my own kitchen timer, set for twenty minutes. I started writing, and after those twenty minutes were up I stopped on a dime, saved what I’d written, took my shower and fixed my breakfast.

And, except for a wonderful week of gluttony and sloth at the annual Rhubarb Festival in Aledo, Illinois, that’s how I’ve started every day since. I’m now putting in forty-five minutes each morning, and that’s enough of a daily stint. I don’t get all that much done each day, but I like what I’m writing and the way it’s coming together, and I don’t dread sitting down and looking at the screen and coming up with words. I’m actually enjoying it.

How long have you been doing this? A few weeks? 

Something like that. In my youth I once wrote a book in three days, and there were quite a few books that didn’t take much more than a week. And now I’ve spent several weeks, seven-day weeks at that, to produce a few thousand words.

And yet you seem to be pleased with yourself.

Uncommonly so, and it’s curious, isn’t it? You’d think I could have buckled down and knocked off that stretch of wordage in a single day, with one more day—two at the most—to finish the novella. But I’m a very different man, and a very different writer in the bargain, from the brash youth who sped through at a pace of five or six thousand words a day.

Age, to be sure, has much to do with it. The marvelous number 81, in addition to being nine squared and the fourth power of three, not to mention the atomic number of thallium and the number of squares on a shoji playing board, is how old I’ll turn come Monday. I’m of an age where it’s triumph enough to be sitting up and taking nourishment, let alone making up stories and writing them down.

Don’t they say that age is only a number?

Well, a lot they know. The years take a toll, on energy and imagination, and it’s not hard for me to understand the appeal of retirement. I might embrace it myself, but something always seems to come to mind, some idea that quickens the pulse of Ego and Avarice, the two dauntless steeds that haul my chariot. I’m able to let a lot of those ideas dry up and blow away, but not all of them, and now and then I actually find myself Writing Something.

See, I can still do it. I’ve learned a bit over the years, and haven’t had quite enough time to forget much of it. And, sitting down every morning and setting the timer and getting up after forty-five minutes, I’m evidently capable not only of sticking with it but,mirabile disctu, actually enjoying it.

There’s a quote of yours on the Internet—

I know the one you mean. I don’t know that it’s gone precisely viral, but the damn thing’s all over the place, because people who compile lists of quotes generally snatch them up from other lists of quotes. I don’t even remember writing that passage, but in it I point out that, by writing a single page a day, one can produce a substantial novel in a year.

The truth of the statement would seem irrefutable. But while that’s never been the way I’ve worked, a page a day, day in and day out, the estimable Anthony Trollope did just that, methodically jotting down 250 words a day. (Legend has it that if Trollope reached the end of a book before he’d turned out that daily quota, he drew a horizontal line under his last sentence, skipped down a couple of inches, and finished the day’s work by starting a new book. I have no idea if this is true. If you meet him in the afterlife, you could ask him yourself.)

Didn’t you write a book called Trailer Trollop? 

Indeed. That was 58 years ago, as the crow flies, and one of these days I’ll have to placate Ego and Avarice by reissuing it in my Collection of Classic Erotica. Be assured, though, that I did not compose it at a Trollopean pace. I’m sure I batted out 4-5000 words a day, and now all I can recall of the book is its title, and that it was an editor or publisher at Nightstand Books who suggested the theme, and may even have supplied the title, and—

Ha! There goes the timer, slamming the door on memory. Let’s move on to something else, something far removed from trailers and Trollope.

And what would that be?

German audiobooks. The Matthew Scudder novels, newly translated by Stefan Mommertz and Sepp Leeb, have been a triumph of self-publishing, gradually getting a foothold in the German-language market in both ebook and Taschenbuch form.

Taschenbuch? 

Oh, you’d probably say Paperback. Say what you will, Matthew Scudder’s winning new fans in Germany, and now he’s becoming available to those who enjoy reading with their ears. I’ve teamed up with Richard Heinrich, who’s narrating and producing Hörbuch versions of the titles. His rendition of—

I’m almost afraid to ask what a Hörbuch is. Oh, wait. I bet it’s an audiobook.

Indeed it is. The first Scudder Hörbuch, Die Sünden der Väter (The Sins of the Fathers), went on sale not long ago, and now it’s been joined by Matt’s second adventure, Drei am Haken (Time to Murder and Create).

I can assure you that Richard’s done me and Matthew a great service, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Listen to a sample and see—well, best to make that hear—for yourself. Here are some links: Audible  Apple  Buecher  Bookwire Claudio  eBook.de  Google Play Hugendubel  Orellfuessli  Thalia Weltbild  Amazon

It’s available pretty much wherever Hörbuchs are sold, eh?

The plural is Hörbucher, but you’ve got the right idea. Richard, I’m pleased to report, is eager to record the entire Scudder series, and is already setting his sights on Keller as his next project. Sepp Leeb, you’ll recall, has translated the first two Keller books into German—here’s a look at Kellers Konkurrent (Hit List)—and the reception the books have been getting in Germany suggests they’ve got a future in ebook and paperback form…and as Hörbucher as well.

It’s clear you’re keeping busy.

Well, at least I manage to look busy. Other hands are doing the heavy lifting—translating and narrating work I did some time ago. And then there are the anthologies, another way I manage to take credit for stories I’ve coaxed others into writing.

And yes, there’s a new anthology on the way—but it’ll be later than we’d hoped. My third art-based anthology, From Sea to Stormy Sea, is coming from Pegasus, but fall publication has been delayed a couple of months for the damnedest reason: it’s hard these days for publishers to find printers with space in their schedules. (That, I must say, is a new one on me, and I suppose it’s yet another deplorable effect of global warming. I mean, really, what isn’t?)

If you’ve pre-ordered FSTSS, you’ve got nothing to worry about; you’ll be sure of a copy, with the low price locked in, and you won’t be charged a cent until the book ships. And, if you haven’t pre-ordered, may I recommend you do so now? Click on the link and look at the book description and the line-up of writers, and you’ll be one click closer to the finish line.

At Home in the Dark, spurred by string reviews, continues to move nicely, as do both Pegasus art-based volumes, In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color. And it’s probably a little early to announce it, but a wonderful complement of writers have signed up for The Darkling Halls of Ivy; it’ll be a cross-genre collection of stories set in the world of higher education, and as with AHITD, Subterranean will bring it out in hardcover while I self-publish the ebook and paperback editions. I have five stories already in hand, and they’re outstanding, and I anticipate no less of the rest. Stay tuned—as soon as I have pre-order information, be assured I’ll let you know.

Is that how you’ll bring out “A Man Walks into a Bar?” Hardcover from Subterranean Press, while you publish ebook and paperback?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 45 minutes a day is working well, but there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to finish the thing, or that Subterranean or anyone else will want to publish it. But I have high hopes.

And, getting back to anthologies, I don’t know how many more of them I’ll perpetrate, as I keep vowing each one will be my last trip to this particular well. There have been quite a few over the years, and most of them are around in one form or another, so why don’t I close with an alphabetized list, replete with links, of just what’s out there?

Alive in Shape and Color

At Home in the Dark

Blood on Their Hands

Dark City Lights

Death Cruise

Gangsters, Swindlers, Killers & Thieves

From Sea to Stormy Sea

In Sunlight or in Shadow

Manhattan Noir

Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics

Master’s Choice

Master’s Choice 2

Opening Shots

Opening Shots 2

Speaking of Greed

Speaking of Lust

That’s, um, quite a list.

I know. It goes on and on, but then so does this newsletter, so I’ll give us all a break and wrap it up. It’s my intention to go enjoy the summer, and I can but suggest you go and do likewise.

Cheers,

The Measure of Spring

While you and I have  lips and voices which

are for kissing and to sing with

who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch

invents an instrument to measure Spring with? Is that a serious question?

It was my introduction to E. E. Cummings. in 1954 I was killing time in my high school library, and I read those four lines in an article in either The Atlantic or Harper’s.

And they stayed with you.

Through thick and thin. I read a lot of Cummings over the years, but somehow I never could find the poem with that quatrain in it. It’s called “voices to voices, lip to lip,” it’s in a well-thumbed book of Cummings’s poems I’ve owned for decades, but I somehow never read it until I broke down and googled it earlier today.

Never mind. If there was a point to this, I’ve forgotten it. It’s spring, and it’s been a long time coming, and I don’t expect it’ll last as long as we might like.

So we should gather us rosebuds while we may?

Cumming, Suckling. “I’ll take Risqué Poetic Participles for $200, Alex.” Still, not a bad idea. I’d be out gathering some myself, as long as the rain holds off, but I’ve got a thing or two to share with y’all. It’s been ages since the last of these newsletters—

Because you’ve been busy gathering rosebuds?

Lately I’m more apt to sit pondering a book title of mine. You can probably guess which one.

All the Flowers Are Dying?

Bingo. But rosebuds and dead flowers aside, and E. E. Cummings and Sir John Suckling back on their virtual shelf—

Herrick.

I beg your pardon?

Those are Robert Herrick’s rosebuds. If John Suckling mentioned them, he was quoting Herrick. But Herrick’s not a participle.

He’s not, is he? “And death I think is no parenthesis.” Look, I could go rewrite that paragraph, but you know what? The hell with it. Right now I want to let you know about what Dick Lochte said in the new Mystery Scene about the audiobook of A Time to Scatter Stones:

“It’s been a while since Block’s last Matthew Scudder novel, A Drop of the Hard Stuff (2011), but before fans of the unlicensed private eye rush to sample this new entry, they should be made aware of a few things. This is a novella, lacking the complex plotting and events of a longer work. It finds Scudder late in life (70s?), enjoying his retirement with Elaine, his wife of 20 years. And it is mainly about them, how they’re spending their golden years, rather than the crime element. The latter has Matt offering to help a young friend of Elaine’s whose attempt to curtail her call-girl career is being thwarted by a resourceful, dangerously obsessive former client. Though this allows Matt to demonstrate that he still has some hardboiled cred, listeners preferring the author in his darkest, most noirish mood may be disappointed. Others should be more than satisfied with this update on the current, comfortable state of the well-grounded, likable Scudder and his whip-smart, handsome wife, not to mention this being one more opportunity to sample Block’s elegant style and witty dialogue. Actually, the novella could easily be adapted into an appealing stage play. Most of it takes place in the Scudders’ Manhattan apartment. The cast is small. There’s a lot of conversation, most of it clever, some of it surprising. (Readers have complained that Matt’s disclosure of his and Elaine’s bedroom activities is TMI, but those of us in the couple’s age bracket may find it cheery news.) Block’s delivery is a bit dry and nasal, especially if one is expecting, say, cinema Scudder Liam Neeson’s rugged brogue, but there is a playfulness as well as moments of subtle irony, concern, and, ultimately, the proper emphasis that only an author can bring to his own prose.”

You’ve quoted the entire review.

I know. I couldn’t bear to leave out a word.

Its various mixed reviews notwithstanding, I think as highly of A Time to Scatter Stones as of anything I’ve written. It came out the way I wanted it to, and told the story I wanted to tell. I don’t expect to find further things to write about Matthew Scudder, and if this is the capstone, well, I’m fine with it.

It was all of the above that led me to make a dealbreaker of  my narrating the audio version, and happily the folks at Brilliance Audio agreed. I’m pretty sure this’ll be my last foray at narration, as I feel I’ve aged out of the game, even as Matt has aged out of detecting. And that’s okay.

I haven’t listened to A Time to Scatter Stones. I have trouble listening to audiobooks, I don’t absorb information well that way, and I can’t bear to hear to my own audiobooks—but Dick Lochte’s review pleases me beyond words.

If you enjoy reading with your ears, I hope you’ll try A Time to Scatter Stones. If you do better using your eyes, on the printed page or the screen, you have your choice of hardcover, paperback, or ebook editions. And if you’d prefer not to disturb your memories of a younger Scudder, well, that’s okay, too.

You don’t care if they read it or not, do you?

The nice thing about getting old, as my late mother observed when she was a full 15 years younger than I am now, is that every year there are a few more things about which one no longer gives a hoot.

She didn’t actually say hoot, did she?

No, the woman was given to plain speech. And, happily, she didn’t have to worry about spam filters.

Care to name a few other things you don’t give a hoot about?

Why don’t I pick a few that I do? It’s a shorter list.

1. Sepp Leeb, whose fine translation of the first Keller book (Kellers Metier) has won German fans to the eponymous hit man, has followed with Kellers Konkurrent. (English title—Hit List.) Like its predecessor, the new book is available worldwide in ebook and paperback form. And while these links are for Amazon, you can find both German Keller titles on Apple, B&N, Kobo, GooglePlay, Thalia, and more.

2. A couple of days ago I signed the limitation sheets for The Burglar in Short Order, a complete collection of Bernie Rhodenbarr’s less lengthy efforts. Short stories, op-ed pieces, essays—a twelfth book to keep the eleven novels company. As with most of my recent efforts, TBISO will be published by Subterranean Press as a deluxe signed-and-numbered hardcover—limited, IIRC, to a mere 250 copies. I’ll be self-publishing the ebook and paperback editions.

You’re probably wondering how the book came about.

I’m sure you’ll tell me.

Well, as you may know, Luigi Garlaschelli has been doing heroic work translating my books into Italian. In recent years I’ve been able to publish Italian ebook and paperback editions of various titles featuring i signori Keller, Scudder, e Rhodenbarr. A great fan of my burglar, he suggested that the four Bernie Rhodenbarr short stories might make a short ebook for Italian readers.

Way too short, I thought, and then I began looking for a way to make the book longer, and by the time I finished searching I had a table of contents with fifteen items in it—and Luigi went to work, and not too long ago I made Il Ladro in Poche Parole available in ebook and paperback.

And now you’re bringing it out in English?

Well, why should the Italians have all the fun? I don’t yet know the publication date, and it’ll be a while before the book’s available for pre-order, but when I have that information I’ll share it. The Subterranean edition’s a small one, but the number of people who want the book may turn out to be even smaller. We’ll have to see.

So your little venture of self-publishing in other languages is paying dividends?

Well, it’s a slow way to get rich. But we’re starting to get a little traction in German and Italian, and it’s gratifying. And the same is true of my co-op ventures with voice artists. Theo Holland’s latest Evan Tanner audiobook, Me Tanner You Jane, is up and running, and like all of Theo’s work in the series, it’s been getting great reviews on Audible.com.

Besides the Tanner adventures, Theo’s brought several other titles of mine to life: Resume Speed & Other Stories, Four Lives at the Crossroads, and The Adulterers. I hope to keep him busy for a long time to come.

And I gather you’re still in the anthology racket.

Do you think racket is the right word for it? It’s nowhere near profitable enough to be a racket.

The anthology business? Is that better?

It’s not terribly business-like, not the way I do it. Never mind. I am indeed still compiling anthologies, with At Home in the Dark getting a lot of good ink—which I won’t share with you because I already devoted all that space to Dick Lochte’s audio review. Suffice it to say that the hardcover—a typically gorgeous Subterranean Press volume—was sold out in advance of publication.  The paperback and ebook are eminently available.

And in a matter of months, my third art-based anthology is coming from Pegasus. Like In Sunlight or in Shadow, for which 17 writers wrote stories inspired by Edward Hopper’s paintings, and Alive in Shape and Color, with 17 different painters each giving rise to a story, the 17 paintings in From Sea to Stormy Sea are all the work of American artists, among them Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Winslow Homer, Rockwell Kent, Reginald March, Andy Warhol, Daniel Morper, and Harvey Dunn. The writers include crime fiction stars like John Sandford and Sara Paretsky and distinguished mainstreamers Jane Hamilton and Janice Eidus, and you’ll see more of the names on the Amazon page. (There’s even a new story of mine, “The Way We See the World,” but nobody says you have to read it.)

While you’re there, you might want to pre-order the book for delivery October 1. You’ll lock in a very good price. (The book’s available for Kindle, too, but as with ISOIS and AISAC, the illustrations are a powerful argument for buying the physical book—and with the ebook pegged at $20.15 and the hardcover on sale for only $1.06 more, well, it seems like a pretty easy call.)

And, even as I type these lines, 17 writers are at work on stories for yet another anthology. (Well, actually, three of them have already delivered. And my guess is that some of the others are goofing off.) Publication’s set for a year from now, and I won’t drop the names of the participating writers, or tell you the title or even the theme, because it’s way too early.

So why bring it up in the first place?

Good question. I’m just spinning my wheels, aren’t I? Hmmm. You know what? I think I’ll wrap this up and get out of here.

Cheers,

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #17—Warren Moore

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Warren Moore III is an academic, although the photo might fool you. A professor of English literature at South Carolina’s Newberry College, he’s a medievalist and a great fan of Samuel Johnson. I don’t know how many of Dr.Johnson’s enthusiasts are also aficionados of garage band rock, but Warren is; his blog posts more often than not conclude with a link to a rousing recording by some group he’d like to rescue from obscurity. He’s also a performer—a drummer, God help him—in a group that has performed regularly on and off the Newberry campus.

But Warren’s here because he’s first and foremost a writer, and Down & Out Books has recently rescued his novel from obscurity, reprinting Broken Glass Waltzes after a previous publisher did nothing with or for it; it has since amassed a veritable slew of raves on Amazon. It’s a strong novel, making good use of his musical background, but I’m even more impressed with Warren as a writer of short stories. I first published him in Dark City Lights, a collection of New York stories; his was a brutal and chilling story set in a subway, and I later learned Warren had never ridden the subway, and in fact had never been to New York. His contributions to subsequent anthologies of mine, In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color, are outstanding, and he has a third art-based story coming up later this year in From Sea to Stormy Sea, inspired by an abstract landscape painted by his late father. And here he is, showing himself very much At Home in the Dark with this story narrated by a musician—and a drummer at that.

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ROUGH MIX  by Warren Moore

I was first at practice, as usual. Okay – as always. But we had played a gig the weekend before, and I hadn’t set my kit up since we brought it back to the practice space. So I spread the rug on the concrete floor to keep the bass drum from sliding, unbuckled my cases, and put my kit back together before Gary and Josh showed up. I turned the jam box on – the local dad-rock station was playing “Turn the Page”, and the Metallica version is even shittier than the original. So I switched it off and got back to work.[image error]

I had already worked up a pretty good sweat by the time I had finished tuning my snare drum. Not surprising. The “practice space” was a corrugated steel self-storage unit at the edge of the county, where an old dragstrip had been. Everything was concrete and metal. Air conditioning wasn’t in the picture – we even had power strips and cords plugged into an overhead light fixture, and if a fire broke out while I was behind the set, I was screwed – I’d be crisp before I made it to the door. But it was cheap and far enough from anyone who cared that the cops didn’t bother us when we played late. We did have a minifridge, and I got a Gatorade out and stood outside, hoping for a breeze to break the stillness of the South Carolina summer.

But there wasn’t a breeze coming, and until the sun moved a bit farther west, I might as well duck back into the space, which at least had places to sit. There were a couple of camp chairs and a love seat by the PA board. I picked my way between Gary’s bass amp and Josh’s stack to one of the chairs – the thought of the cloth-covered sofa gave me the creeps. There wasn’t enough Resolve in the world to clean that thing.

It’s not like I’m an innocent or anything; Mandy and I had used the space as an impromptu fuckpad ourselves from time to time. But that had been some time back. As had Mandy.

We had gone out a few times the year before, after hooking up at a friend’s field party – we weren’t even playing it. But I had seen her silhouetted in the headlights, and when I got closer, her hair was between blonde and brown, almost amber. So I grabbed an extra beer, and we talked a while, and she told me about an out-of-the-way tattoo, and well, you know.

[image error]And it was good for a while – really good, thinking-about-a-ring good, but then it just seemed to run out of gas. I didn’t know why, and she said she didn’t either, and it just kind of hung there, and I didn’t know what to say or do, so I let her go. And a few months after that, she started showing up at our gigs again, but it wasn’t until one night when I saw her between sets with Josh’s arm around her waist and her hand in his back pocket that I figured things out.

I was pissed – I mean, it’s not like this was some pass-along fuck from a one-nighter at the Brass Ass or something. I thought about quitting, but I liked Gary, and I was the one who started the band in the first place. Then I thought about firing Josh, but then I’d just be the guy who broke up a band over a girl. And even though Josh was an asshole, he could play, and he drew an audience. As I had learned. We had even started to get a little interest from A & R guys at a couple of labels. I wasn’t going to just walk away and leave that for him. I tried to shake the thoughts out of my head and got back to work.

The microphone stands were already set up, but I got the mics placed. Each one had colored tape on it so we’d know whose it was. I get blue, Gary gets red, and I was putting Josh’s mic with the yellow tape into its cradle when I heard a car roll up. It was Gary’s van, and he swung out of the driver’s door and banged on the sliding door. “Come on, you guys!”

I heard Josh’s voice: “Fuck off.” And I heard Mandy’s giggle. But they got out of the van and we all went back inside. Josh was working a rockabilly look today – a black, western-style shirt with fake mother-of-pearl buttons, along with tight jeans and boots. It was gonna be hot as hell when we got going, but I knew he’d make it look good. Some people can just do that. Then there’s me. I could drop a grand on wardrobe, but I’m still gonna look like Joe Shit the Rag Man. Mandy was wearing a pale blue tank-top and white denim shorts, and she scrunched herself into a corner of the love seat. Our eyes met for a moment, but then she looked away, back toward Josh.

[image error]Josh was talking to Gary about a new pickup he had installed in his Strat – he had changed one that came from the factory for something called a humbucker. I tried to look interested, but that wasn’t really my territory. Some guitarists are like custom car guys or mad scientists – they just like to take things apart and monkey with them. Guitars, amps; rewire this, replace it with that. Drums are easier, and it’s just as well – I’m no tech guy. The other guys barely trust me to roll up the cables when we’re loading in or out.

In fact, that was why Josh started putting tape on the microphones. I didn’t sing enough to need anything fancy, but he had hotrodded his and Gary’s mics, and he was really particular about it. I told him once that I couldn’t really hear a difference, and he got salty about it, “Oh, the fucking drummer doesn’t hear the difference.” Now I’m pretty sure the issue wasn’t me as much as it was that we were playing in a steel shed, but some folks are like that.

Besides, we – drummers, that is – get a lot of that kind of shit. There are a million drummer jokes out there, but they all boil down to this one: “What does it mean when the drummer drools from both corners of his mouth? The stage is level.” You get used to it, and you know people don’t really mean it, but people kind of take you for granted. “Would all the musicians – and the drummer – report to the stage?” Stuff like that. But you don’t want to be an asshole about it, so you just laugh it off…

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ROUGH MIX by Warren Moore is just one of 17 terrific stories in At Home in the Dark. NB: Ebook and paperback editions are on sale now for immediate delivery. DON’T try to order the hardcover,  as it’s sold out at the publisher, and while Amazon is still taking orders they’ll be unable to deliver.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #16—Duane Swierczynski

[image error]“Duane Swierczynki’s ‘Giant’s Despair’ is a neat bit of Appalachian family drama with drugs, murder and cover-ups at the core, along with a main character who is hampered in his actions by carpal tunnel syndrome gone too long untreated – too real a situation with the current American health insurance climate.” So says Anthony Cardno in his review of At Home in the Dark, while Wes Lukowsky in Booklist has this to say: “Duane Swierczynski’s novella depicts a couple dealing with their adult daughter’s addiction and a criminal son-in-law who wants custody of his daughter. Swiercynski does a masterful job of shifting between past and present to tell his story.”

With his submission of Giant’s Despair, Swierczy noted that it “runs about 11,000 words. I know 10K was the upper limit, but I’m hoping you won’t mind the extra thousand words, thrown in completely free of charge. I also hope you enjoy it. It’s a dark one, but I think it’s also one of the funniest things I’ve written.”

GIANT’S DESPAIR by Duane Swierczynski

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Middle of the night is when Lonergan’s hands hurt the most. A lot of his bedtime routine entails fidgeting and turning and trying not to roll over on them. As a result, Lonergan only ever falls partially asleep. He stares at the ceiling, aware of every creak and pop and moan in the house.

So when the frantic knocking comes at 3 a.m. he’s up immediately.

[image error]Lonergan glances over at his wife. Jovie, God love her, is still dead to the world, her lips parted a little as she breathes. That is a good thing. They’d had a rough day with the kids. The baby had only gone down a couple of hours ago after much rocking and soothing and lullaby-singing. And the four-year-old continued her giddy mission of destruction throughout the house. It’s like living with a pint-sized terrorist who giggles. That said, the kids are the only things that keep them both going these days.

A second round of knocks echoes throughout the house, even louder this time.

Lonergan sits up in bed, trying to keep the bedsprings from making too much noise. His hands throb so hard he can feel his heartbeat in them. He’s only wearing skivvies, so he pulls on pajama bottoms and tries to find his slippers in the dark. No luck. Hailee takes a lot of gleeful pleasure in hiding her Pop-Pop’s things. The slippers are probably buried somewhere in the backyard under the snow.

People just don’t turn up at their house. The main road through Bear Creek is Route 115, which rolls along the top of the mountain. To find the Lonergans’ place you have to take a barely-marked gravel road—a glorified driveway actually—and follow up it into the woods. Delivery guys get lost all the time.

Longeran has a feeling who this might be. A cold little hunch in the bottom of his stomach, even as he hopes he’s wrong.

Lonergan hoists himself off the bed and hurries down the hall and into the living room. In the dead silence, each floorboard creek sounds like a scream. He prays the noise won’t wake the baby.

Before he reaches the door, Lonergan considers a run down to the basement. When the kids came to live with them, he made a point of locking up his Smith & Wesson SD9 so his granddaughter would never stumble upon it.

But Lonergan figures by the time he finds the keys, goes downstairs, unlocks the closet, unlocks the safe, unlocks the trigger lock, whoever’s out front will have woken the entire house, maybe even broken down the damn door. So he continues on.

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[image error]Peering through the one-way wide angle viewer, Lonergan sees that he’s guessed right. It’s the son-in-law.

Son-in-law is wearing shorts, a polo shirt, tennis shoes with no socks. Does he think he’s in the Bahamas instead of upstate Pennsylvania in the middle of February? Granted, it’s been a relatively mild winter up here in the mountains. But that doesn’t mean you should dress to go yachting.

Lonergan hesitates for a minute, hand on the doorknob, steeling himself for whatever bullshit is about to fly out of the boyfriend’s mouth—though he is morbidly curious about what the boyfriend might say after all this time. He flips the lock no problem, but his dumb rubber hands have a hard time grasping the doorknob. By the time he finally manages to open the door with both hands he’s already annoyed.

Son-in-law looks down at Lonergan like he’s anticipating a fight.

“Mr. Lonergan, I want to see my son.”

“Isaiah, it’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“I really need to see him now.”

Lonergan spots a late-model Dodge Charger idling in the driveway, light gray exhaust chugging out of the tailpipe. He didn’t even turn his car off? What, does the son-in-law assume Lonergan will hurry back into the house, dart into the spare bedroom, scoop up the baby and then just hand him over? With maybe some gas money and a hot coffee for the road?

Son-in-law takes Lonergan’s hesitation as an invitation. He steps forward as if to scoot right past him. Lonergan shifts his body to block him.

“Here’s what I need,” Lonergan says. “I need you to turn around and drive the fuck home.”

“You can’t keep me from my son.”

“Maybe not, but I can kick you off my property.”

“I have to see him.”

“Not tonight you don’t.”

Isaiah takes another step forward. Lonergan places a hand on Isaiah’s chest and gives him a firm push back. This should tell him: you’ve gone far enough.

But the son-in-law holds his ground, sensing that maybe he has the advantage. People have underestimated Lonergan since high school—he’s only five seven. And Isaiah is a gangly six four.

“Go home, Isaiah,” Lonergan says. “Before I call the police.”

Lonergan plans on calling the police anyway. As much as Lonergan would like to pound Isaiah Edwards into raw hamburger on the front porch, he knows Isaiah would just hire some fancy lawyer and they’d be in danger of losing the kids.

No, it would be much better if his daughter’s widower turned around, climbed back into his expensive car and drove back to Philadelphia. There’s only one route he can take: I-476, the northeast extension of the turnpike. The state troopers will have plenty of time to pick up Isaiah during his two-hour haul back to the city.

[image error]“I don’t have any problems with the police,” Isaiah mutters, but his eyes say the exact opposite.

“Isaiah, don’t bullshit me at three in the morning. You’ve been on the run for two months. You missed your Daria’s funeral.”

“I couldn’t get back home in time. But I’m here now.”

“Don’t give a shit.”

“Just let me hold him.”

“Not tonight.”

“I was stuck in China on business!”

“Good night,” Lonergan says, then pushes on Isaiah’s chest with his fingertips.

For a moment Isaiah allows himself to be pushed. But then he plants a foot behind him, grabs Lonergan’s hand, and twists.

Fourth of July fireworks blast up Lonergan’s arm and down his spine. He falls to his knees in his own doorway, not even aware that he is screaming. Crushing waves of dizziness wash over him.

But Isaiah doesn’t let go of his hand. He twists, and twists, and twists.

2

The pain started a couple of years ago, and like a typical guy Lonergan ignored it for as long as possible. But at the start of last summer, it got to the point that he couldn’t hold a hammer properly. Diagnosis: carpal tunnel, which meant the thumb and first two fingers of each hand would go numb, tingle, or ache at random intervals.

The doctor whom Lonergan had been seeing as infrequently as possible for the past 20 years said it was simple: he needed surgery. Lonergan told the doc his insurance wouldn’t cover it. The doc looked up his plan and agreed: Lonergan’s insurance wouldn’t cover it. But Lonergan needed surgery nonetheless. They went round and round like this for a while.

[image error]Finally the doc agreed to prescribe pain pills, which helped a little. Before, it felt like razor blades were grinding away at the inside of his knuckles. With the pills, it felt like butter knives. The pills did nothing, however, for the bouts of numbness. You need surgery for that, the doctor reminded him. Lonergan reminded the doc that so-called affordable care, in this case, would bankrupt them.

He tried to work through the pain, but the side effects of those pills included exhaustion, dizziness and nausea. These are not symptoms you want to deal with while building someone a full deck off the back of their house.

So Lonergan’s only option was to take time off work and pray that his hands would heal themselves. Or at least get him back to the point where he could hold his tools. Jovie still had her job at the Woodlands, even though her feet ached all the time, and Lonergan was convinced she was going to need surgery, too. They were the perfect couple. Between the two of them, they had exactly one set of functional appendages.

Had Daria told her boyfriend about Lonergan’s hands? It’s very likely. Lonergan made some of the furniture sitting in their house back in Fishtown. At some point Daria must have told him that her father built those bookcases and that entertainment center with his own two hands, and now he couldn’t work because of those hands. If Isaiah knew, that means he came up here with a plan in mind…

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GIANT’S DESPAIR by Duane Swierczynski is one of seventeen outstanding works of dark fiction in At Home in the Dark. NB: Ebook and paperback editions are on sale now for immediate delivery. DON’T try to order the hardcover,  as it’s sold out at the publisher, and while Amazon is still taking orders they’ll be unable to deliver.

Good news? Bad news?

Well, which is it? Good or bad?

That depends. Let me explain.

I wish you would.

Indeed.

As most of you know, Subterranean Press is set to publish the only hardcover edition of my cross-genre anthology, At Home in the Dark. It’s limited to 500 signed and numbered copies, and for quite some time now it’s been sold out at the publisher, with all copies spoken for well in advance of the April 30 pub date.

I’d say that’s good news for you and Subterranean.

And for those of you who managed to pre-order from the publisher. If you didn’t, it’s bad news.

Aww, too bad. Still, it all seems simple enough…

You think? Here’s where it gets complicated. Amazon has never stopped offering the hardcover for sale. They’ve even been dropping the price of late, and the last I looked they had this $50 book on re-order for the low low price of $33.06.

That’s quite a bargain. What’s the catch?

The catch? They don’t have any books. I’m sure it’s an honest mistake on their part, and that they figure they’ll get their order in before the end of April and will thus be able to fill whatever orders they get. That usually works fine, but not with limited editions that the publisher is enjoined from reprinting. Now it’s possible Amazon may be able to round up some copies from distributors, but even that’s by no means a sure thing, and I can’t believe they’ll haul in enough copies that way to fill all the orders they’ve been getting.

So if I ordered a hardcover of AHITD from them—

You may get it. But there’s an awfully good chance that you won’t.

That doesn’t seem right.

No kidding. Bill Schafer at Subterranean finds the whole prospect very dismaying, and gave me the go-ahead to start selling the ebook and paperback editions right away, rather than hold back until the end of April.

You’re saying they’re available right now? The AHITD ebook and the paperback?

The ebook’s been available for pre-order for a while. What we’ve been able to do now is move up the release date from April 30 to March 19. If you already pre-ordered it, you don’t have to do a thing; it’ll be delivered to you on Tuesday, March 19. If you held off out of a reluctance to place an order ages ahead of time, you can order now—and get your ebook on Tuesday.

And the paperback?

Amazon doesn’t do pre-orders for POD paperbacks. So it’s live right now. All you have to do is order it.

Which will set me back—

$14.99. Or $9.99 for the ebook.

Suppose I pre-ordered the ebook from another platform? Nook, say. Or Kobo or Apple or  or—

Just sit tight. I’ve been able to move up the release date on those platforms to March 20. If you’ve pre-ordered, that’s when you can expect delivery. If you haven’t ordered yet, now’s your chance.

And if I’ve ordered the hardcover from Amazon—

You may get it and you may not. Inquiries lead me to suspect that nobody at Amazon really knows. Perhaps you can obtain the information on your own. We couldn’t, and not for lack of trying.

There must be a lesson here.

I’d say so. When you want a limited edition, or indeed anything from a small-press publisher, you’re best advised to order it directly from the publisher. This may prevent you from getting the discount some platforms can offer, but it also saves you from getting shut out altogether.

And don’t start foaming at the mouth and demonizing Amazon. They didn’t knowingly do anything wrong here. The problem lies in the fact that a high-volume online bookseller like Amazon is not set up to handle limited editions and special printings. The answer, and it couldn’t be much clearer, is to order directly from the publisher.

Even then, as soon as you spot the diem, you’ve better carpe it. Limited editions sell out, oftentimes in a hurry. So here’s another piece of advice—whenever you find small-press publishers you’re fond of, get on their mailing list. (For Subterranean, email “Please put me on your mailing list” to info@subterraneanpress.com)

Um, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’s At Home in the Dark doing?

Ebook preorders have been strong. I’ve been running a 1000-word excerpt from each of the stories in turn every couple of days, with photos of the authors and their other works, and whatever else might whet readers’ appetites or increase their store of information. Here’s a link to the page where I’ve posted 15 previews to date, with Warren Moore and Duane Swierczynski soon to follow. And on the right-hand side of the page you’ll see how to subscribe to the blog and get posts of this sort in your email box.

So I could read a thousand words each of every story in the book. Isn’t that like having one bite from each of 17 desserts?

Would that be so terrible? But, due to the generous enthusiasm of Crime Fiction Lover, you can read one complete story right now. It’s free, it’s easy, and all it takes is one click and you’re good to go.

And I too am good to go, so—

Just like that? No books of your own to plug? No books by other authors to recommend? No overlooked prose masterpiece that changed your life?

Not just now. But you know what I will do? I’ll point whoever’s interested in the direction of a techno-triumph that has in fact changed my life, and very much for the better. Perhaps it will do the same for you, and perhaps it won’t. For in this instance I can’t think of a more apt phrase than Your Mileage May Vary…

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #15—Nancy Pickard

[image error]Nancy Pickard on awards: “I don’t care what anybody says–awards are nice. It’s encouraging to get one; it’s a happy, satisfying moment after the long trudge of writing. Awards have helped my career, and lifted my spirits, and given me courage to go on. I’m really grateful. I am especially grateful for the generous and warm local support I have received from readers, other writers, librarians, and other lovers of books from all over my native state of Missouri and my home state of Kansas. Actually, ‘grateful’ doesn’t begin to express it: I love them.”

And the woman has a lot to be grateful for: Nancy has won the Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, Barry, and Shamus awards for her short stories. She won the first-ever Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original Mystery for her second Jenny Cain novel, Say No to Murder. She has won multiple Agatha and Macavity awards for her novels, and is a 4-time Edgar Allan Poe award nominee. She is also a Mary Higgins Clark award finalist, and a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement award for suspense fiction from Romantic Times. In her hometown area she has received The Thorpe Menn Award from the Kansas City, Mo. branch of the American Association of University Women and the Don Coldsmith Award. Two of her novels, The Virgin of Small Plains and The Scent of Rain and Lightning have been named Kansas Notable Books. The Virgin of Small Plains was the Kansas Reads Book of 2009.

I’ve known Nancy for years, but it’s been a while since  our paths crossed. I’m delighted to have a marvelous new story from her for At Home in the Dark.

IF ONLY YOU WOULD LEAVE ME by Nancy Pickard

The problem with being married to a nice man who adored you was that you couldn’t divorce him without looking like a jerk. “Why?” her mother would ask her if Melinda actually did it. “Did he have an affair? Did he hit you? Was he verbally abusive? Did he gamble? Was he addicted to something? Alcohol? Drugs? Leon has always seemed just wonderful to me. I thought you two were doing fine! This is so sad. Your dad thinks the world of him. I do, too. Has he done something to deserve this? He’s even improved since you married him. I’ve never seen the like of it. I just can’t believe you’d leave such a nice man who clearly loves you! Is it because you don’t have children yet?”

The incredibly frustrating answer to each of those questions that could be answered by yes or no was, “No,” a definitive, wildly irritating, honest, desperate, “No.”

[image error]He hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

He didn’t have any goddamn faults, he was too good for faults. My God, he even did his own laundry.

Well, there was one major fault that he couldn’t correct.

She couldn’t say it to other people, though. That would be terrible of her to actually confide to anybody, and especially to her parents or to his. His! Oh, my god, they thought she was perfect for their perfect son. How could she say, “He’s the world’s worst lover.” She couldn’t. Never, ever. She thought too highly of him to hold him up to that kind of embarrassment. He was far too decent a human being for her to blame a divorce on the Missionary Position.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t told him, asked him, encouraged him.

He’d tried, kindly person that he was.

But his heart wasn’t in it, not any more, not even to please her.

His heart was stuck in slam, bam, thank you ma’am, as if he’d turned into a 1950’s advertising salesman with too much “respect” for his wife to bang her like he banged his secretary. Only, there was no secretary, just like there was nothing Melinda would call sex. Once every ten days. In bed. Under the covers. He hated doing it without sheets over them. “I feel so silly,” he’d admitted, sweetly, “with my butt stuck up in the air.” She’d offered to point her butt to the ceiling, instead, but he’d looked so [image error]shocked that she’d let that go, too. Oral sex was out of the question. The mere phrase, “oral sex” made his face go all “Ew.” She wondered if he was gay and either didn’t know it, or was still hiding it. In this day and age! Good grief. If he was gay, she would gaily support him and set him free.

She’d buy the condoms! She’d be their flower girl!

Please figure out you’re gay, she thought, often.

Counseling was out, because she didn’t actually want to save their marriage. She’d given up. Plus, a counselor was sure to ask, “Did you know this before you married him?” No, she could honestly say. But Leon was different then; they’d had sex between the appetizer and the entree back then, between dessert and coffee- after, to say nothing of between the sheets.

He’d liked it.

It was all the fault of the First Community Church of God.

When she thought about how her agnostic husband had suddenly got religion, Melinda wanted to push his face into a Baptismal fount. Oh, God–speaking of which–if only he’d have an affair so she could catch him. With a man, with a woman, with a pony, she didn’t care, just so long as he cheated and gave her a thank-God, socially acceptable reason to leave him. Maybe she was too caught up in what other people thought, but jeez, why should she have to go through life feeling condemned for leaving a nice man?

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Leon had hoped he could out-sweet her.

[image error]His wife loathed ooey-gooey pudding-mouthed people, especially sweet-talking, compliment-throwing men.

“You’re always so nice, Leon,” she’d said recently, in a tone in which she had also said, “Yuk. Our trash bin is sticky!”

He thought he was making progress.

Any day now she was supposed to get so fed up with his smarmy efforts to please her that she wouldn’t be able to take it any more and would leave him for a ruder, lazier man.

There was only one place he didn’t try to please Melinda.

She loved sex.

Before marriage, they’d done it three times a night sometimes. Definitely three times a week, usually more. Surely, she’d go insane any time now with his every-ten-days regimen, soon to drop to every two weeks if she didn’t get with his program.

He was surprised she didn’t suggest marriage counseling.

[image error]“Church?” she asked, dumbfounded when he’d told her he was going.

Church was his excuse for the change in him from loose and thoughtless to zipped up and punctilious. Church wasn’t where he’d met the beautiful young choir director, Staci, but it was where he’d followed her, a smitten lamb trotting along after her wagging tail.

There was nothing like naked sex in a bell tower.

Far enough away from the bells not to go deaf; close enough to reverberate like a couple of tuning forks and ring out hallelujah.

He couldn’t leave his wife; Melinda had to leave him.

The reason why she had to be driven to abandon a perfect husband was that her parents had given them as a wedding gift a million-dollar house. Leon wanted a For Sale sign on it, and a check made out to him, which he wasn’t going to get if she found out who chimed his bells…

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 IF ONLY YOU WOULD LEAVE ME by Nancy Pickard is one of 17 impeccable stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #14—Richard Chizmar

[image error] It took me a while to find a usable photo of Richard Chizmar. There are plenty out there to choose from, but almost all of them show the man wearing a hat, and it’s usually a baseball cap, and more often than not the bill casts a shadow that renders everything above the mouth essentially invisible. While that might resonate nicely with this particular book, suggesting that Richard is very much At Home in the Dark, I’d rather provide y’all with a clear view of the fellow.

Still, it’s useful to see him as a man who wears many hats. Besides writing a full complement of novels and short stories and screenplays, Richard is the editor and publisher of Cemetery Dance, the longest-running magazine in the field of horror fiction; he also founded and runs Cemetery Dance Publications, an esteemed small press publisher of deluxe limited editions and anthologies.

I’m glad he found time to write Whistling in the Dark. As you’ll see, it’s centered on a police investigation…but it’s more about the cops than the case. Richard has dedicated the story to the late Ed Gorman, and it strikes me as appropriate; the tone and theme of the story, and the interplay of the cops themselves, recall the thoughtful crime fiction of the Sage of Cedar Rapids.

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Whistling in the Dark by Richard Chizmar

“What’s up with you?”

Frank Logan, bald head, double-chin, wrinkled suit, looked over at me from the passenger seat of our unmarked sedan. “What do you mean?”

[image error]“You were just whistling. You’re almost acting like you’re…happy.”

“I wasn’t whistling.”

“You were whistling, Frank.”

“You don’t think I would know if I was whistling?”

“That’s precisely my point. You’ve been acting strange all week.”

“And you’re acting precisely like an asshole.”

“You’re a child.”

“Maybe.” He stared out the car window. “But I wasn’t whistling.”

#

A few more miles of dark highway and I spotted a cluster of patrol cars parked on the grassy shoulder up ahead, both State and County boys, their lights flashing, casting kaleidoscope shadows on the trees and cracked asphalt.

I parked at the end of the line and we walked thirty or so yards to the scene, nodding at the usual cast of uniforms standing around and pretending to be busy.

[image error]Trooper Michael Hughes saw us coming and stepped away from the fresh-faced officer he had been lecturing.

“Ben. Frank. Glad they called you guys.”

Frank grunted. “Another thirty minutes and we’d have been home in bed.” Now that was the Frank Logan I was used to all these years.

“What do you got?” I asked.

Hughes flipped open his notepad, gestured for us to follow, and started walking. “Adolescent female. Caucasian. No ID. Multiple stab wounds in torso and shoulder. Looks like she’s been there awhile.”

“Who found the body?”

“Two mowers working a road crew. They’re both still here waiting to talk to you.”

“M.E.?” Frank asked.

“Got here ten minutes before you did.”

A pair of spotlights had been set up near the treeline and a tarp stretched out between two patrol cars to block dust from the highway. A commercial riding lawn mower was parked off to the side.

Hughes stopped walking and stepped aside so we could get a better look. The body was tucked under some brush, most of the girl’s bare legs hidden beneath the thorny branches. She was wearing tan shorts and a yellow t-shirt. Her hair was long and tangled and brown. Animals had been at her face.

“Evening, gents,” Harry Marshall said without looking up at us. He was kneeling next to the body, carefully examining the young girl’s fingers.

[image error]Marshall had been Baltimore County Medical Examiner for as long as I had been on the job. He wore thin wire glasses, had a full head of wavy grey hair, and was in remarkably good shape for a man in his sixties. The women in the Eastern Precinct called him the Silver Fox behind his back.

“Heard you bowled a two-twenty last week,” Frank said.

Harry looked up and smiled. “Two-twenty-six.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Just my grandson and his friend. But I took a photo of my score up on the monitor. It was a legit two-twenty-six.”

“And I’m the tooth fairy,” Frank said under his breath.

“What was that?” Harry asked.

“You get an age on her yet?” I said.

“I’d say nine, maybe ten years old.”

“What else?”

“I counted six stab wounds—neat, the weapon was very sharp—but I haven’t moved the body yet. There might be more.”

“Defensive?”

He nodded. “Both hands and arms. She definitely put up a fight.”

“How long you think she’s been out here?”

Harry studied the body. “Week. Maybe longer.”

“What do you think did that to her face?” Frank asked.

“Could have been anything really. Deer. Raccoons. Groundhogs.”

I stared at the smiley-face on the front of her yellow t-shirt. “Sexual?”

[image error]“I won’t know for sure until I get her back to the office…” He leaned closer and reached inside the girl’s mouth with two gloved fingers. “…but I would answer no as of right now. Doesn’t have the look.”

“Any idea what—”

“Well, now, this is interesting,” Harry interrupted.

What is?” Frank asked, stepping closer.

Harry looked up. “Someone cut out her tongue.”

#

A few minutes later, I left Frank at Harry Marshall’s side and followed Trooper Hughes back to the shoulder of the highway where he introduced me to the road crew. “This is Detective Richards. He has some questions for you.” And then Hughes was gone, melting back into the crime scene.

The two men—Ronald Alvarez and Louis Vargas—were both in their late twenties. Faces deeply tan and creased from the sun, arms muscular and smeared with dirt. They were the kind of men who were used to hard work and long hours. Probably without a word of complaint. Right now, they looked nervous.

“This won’t take long,” I said, pulling out my notepad and a pen…

WHISTLING IN THE DARK by Richard Chizmar is one of 17 outstanding stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #13—James Reasoner

[image error]As you may know, this new anthology owes its title to the dying words of the great O. Henry. “Turn up the lights,” he said to the crowd gathered at his deathbed. “I don’t want to go home in the dark.” And the sole criterion for stories, aside from their excellence, was to be their positioning on the dark side of the spectrum. AHITD would be a cross-genre assemblage,with entries from the worlds of crime fiction, horror, speculative fiction…or no genre at all.

And let’s not forget western fiction. The American West has long been an enduringly compelling setting for stories and novels (and films and television programs), and if there are fewer westerns being written and read these days, the genre still has its eloquent writers and ardent fans. I knew I wanted a western in the book and I knew just the man to write it.

James Reasoner has written over a hundred western novels, including books in and out of series. In quite another genre,Civil War history, he’s the author of a 10-volume series of books that alone would constitute a substantial body of work; his Civil War Battle series amounts to a military history of the conflict,  tracking a single fictional Virginia family through the entire war, from Manassas to Appomattox, The American Revolution has also inspired novels, as has the Lewis and Clark expedition. And all the while he’s been as passionate a reader as he is a writer, blogging enthusiastically and incisively across the whole range of popular fiction.

And here he brings us his take on an archetpical Western hero, a marshal making his rounds…

NIGHT ROUNDS by James Reasoner

Dave Blake grasped the doorknob and tried to twist it, but it didn’t turn. He nodded in satisfaction. Trammell’s Hardware Store was locked up tight for the night, just like it was supposed to be. Blake moved on down the boardwalk to check the door of the next business.

[image error]This was his favorite time of day and favorite part of the job of marshal. Night had fallen over Wagontongue. Most folks were in their homes and had had their supper. Some had turned in already while others sat in parlors, reading by lamplight or singing old songs with the family gathered around the piano. The Lucky Cuss, Wagontongue’s only saloon, was still open, but on a week night like this, not many customers would be there and they wouldn’t be in any mood to cause a ruckus. Sam Dorn, who owned the place, would likely call it a night and close up soon.

Peace reigned over the settlement . . . just the way Dave Blake liked it.

He’d held down the marshal’s job for a little over a year, Wagontongue being the latest in a string of towns where he had worn the badge. Some lawmen settled down in one place and stayed there most of their lives. Dave Blake had never been that way. He’d always felt too many restless stirrings after he’d been somewhere for a while, an urge telling him that he needed to get up and go somewhere else. It was hard on his wife Clarissa, he knew, but he couldn’t help it.

The job here in Wagontongue was one of the easiest he’d had. Outlaws didn’t have any interest in a sleepy little cowtown like this. The only trouble came when cowboys from the spreads between here and the Prophets rode into town, drank too much busthead at the Lucky Cuss, and got proddy enough to start fights. Blake always managed to break those up without having to resort to gunplay.

He touched his Colt’s walnut grips now. Except for target practice, knocking airtights off fence posts, he hadn’t fired the gun in five years. As tranquil as Wagontongue was, that streak was likely to continue.

He checked the door of Bennett’s saddle shop. Locked. Blake started to move on.

“Marshal, is that you?”

The voice came from behind him, made him pause and half-turn. A man-shaped patch of darkness came along the boardwalk toward him, not really hurrying but moving along pretty briskly. Blake hadn’t recognized the voice, so he said, “Yeah, it’s me. Who’s there?”

“Jack Hargis. I ride for the Circle P.”

[image error]Blake didn’t know the name, but that wasn’t surprising. Cowhands moved in and out of the area all the time. Round-up would be coming along soon, so the ranchers were taking on extra hands.

“What can I do for you, Hargis?”

The man waved a hand in the general direction of the Lucky Cuss, at the other end of town and on the opposite side of the street.

“I think some fellas down there are fixin’ to cause trouble, Marshal. You might want to go read ’em from the book.”

“My rounds will take me that way in a few minutes. I’ll look in on the place when I get there. I always do.”

Blake didn’t mention that Sam Dorn usually treated him to a short beer, and from there he went on home where Clarissa would be waiting for him with a late supper. It was a mighty nice way to finish off the day, which was another reason Blake enjoyed making these rounds. He had something to look forward to.

“I don’t know, Marshal,” Hargis said as he stepped closer. “It looked kind of serious to me. I’m not sure you should wait.”

“I appreciate you speaking up, but I’ll get to it.” Blake’s tone was a little more impatient now. He never had cared for people telling him how to do his job.

“Well, if you’re sure . . .” Hargis said as Blake turned to resume his routine.

Blake heard cloth rustle behind him, and then pain hit him in the side like a fist, driving him a step to the right. He gasped, as much surprised as hurt, and tried to turn back and fight, but Hargis crowded into him hard and knocked him to his knees. Hargis’s left arm went around Blake’s neck and closed tight. He reached down with his right hand and plucked the Colt from its holster.

Hargis put his mouth next to Blake’s ear and said, “You feel that, you son of a bitch? Feel that blood running down your side? I could’ve gutted you, but I didn’t. Just one nice clean stab wound . . . for now. Hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”

[image error]With Hargis’s forearm clamped across his throat like an iron bar, Blake couldn’t do anything except grunt. Hargis was right, though: the wound hurt clean to Blake’s core, bad enough to spread out and fill his mind and body.

“I could cut your throat,” Hargis went on. “Still might. But not yet. No, sir, not yet.”

He was a strong man. He heaved and lifted Blake back onto his feet. Blake wanted to fight, but his muscles wouldn’t do what he told them to. All he could do was stumble along as Hargis dragged him backward along the boardwalk and into an alley.

The man was going to kill him back here and leave him in the dirt and the trash, Blake thought. And he had no idea why.

Hargis didn’t stop in the alley to finish the job, though. He kept dragging Blake along, coming into one of the small side streets and then backing toward a large whitewashed building with a number of cottonwood trees around it. Blake was dizzy and disoriented, no doubt because of the blood soaking his shirt on the left side, but he saw enough of his surroundings to realize what Hargis was doing.

Hargis was dragging him toward the Baptist church.

Unlike the businesses in town, the church was never locked. Blake heard his captor fumbling at the door, then Hargis manhandled him into the sanctuary’s dark interior. A kick closed the door behind them. Their steps echoed in the big room with its stained-glass windows on the sides.

[image error]Hargis wrestled him all the way up the aisle between the rows of pews until they reached the front where the preacher’s pulpit stood. There, Hargis dropped him. Blake’s legs buckled and he sprawled on the hardwood floor.

The preacher, Timothy Foulger, was going to be mighty annoyed with him for getting blood all over the floor like this. Blake knew that was a crazy thought to be having right now, but he couldn’t help it.

A match rasped. Orange flame spurted. Hargis held it to the wick of a lantern, and when the wick caught, he lowered the chimney and set the lantern on the pulpit. Darkness swallowed the wavering yellow glow before it reached the corners, but the light was enough to reveal Blake lying there with Hargis looming over him.

Although, as Blake looked up and tried to focus his fuzzy vision on his attacker, he said, “I . . . I know you. Your name’s not Hargis. It’s . . . it’s . . .”

It couldn’t be. The face was a lot thinner, the eyes sunken, the cheekbones sharp against the skin. But the same general lines were there. Blake forced his brain to work, thought about how the man would look twenty pounds heavier and five years younger.

And a crushing burden of grief and hate lighter.

“That’s right,” the man said. “I’m Wesley Holman.”

#

NIGHT ROUNDS  by James Reasoner is one of 17 outstanding stories in At Home in the Dark.

You can probably skip this…

Are you out of your mind?

Well, that’s not really for me to say. Why do you ask?

What kind of a header is that, telling your readers not to waste their time on your newsletter?

I just thought—

Or is it all some kind of devious reverse psychology? You tell ’em to skip it and then they absolutely have to read it. Is that your strategy?

Never occurred to me. Do you suppose it would work?

Probably not.

Then the hell with it. No, I was just being uncharacteristically candid. Nothing I’ve got to report is exactly earth-shaking, and only a small proportion of readers will be interested, so I decided to give the others a chance to move along without worrying that they’re missing something.

On the other hand, Matt Scudder’s German fans will want to keep reading. As they know, and as most of the rest of you probably know by now as well, I’ve been publishing  Matthew Scudder’s adventures in that language. Skillfully translated by Stefan Mommertz and Sepp Leeb, the books have won an increasing audience; except for A Drop of the Hard Stuff and the just-released-in-English A Time to Scatter Stones, the entire series is now available in ebook and paperback. (And so is Hit Man, the first book in the Keller series, under the title Kellers Metier.

And now narrator/producer Richard Heinrich has set about giving Scudder a voice. The first book, Die Sünden der Väter, has been selling on most German online platforms for a couple of months now, and at last it’s on sale at Audible and Amazon.

Richard is almost done with Scudder 2, Drei am Haken, with the other books to follow.

That’s pretty exciting, I’d say. Has anybody else thought of self-publishing audiobooks in translation?

I’m sure others have thought of it. They’ve just had the good sense to lie down and close their eyes until the impulse passed. But I think that’s as much as I need to say on the subject.

You’ve got a new anthology coming out. And I see you’ve been blogging again. Care to talk about that?

Why not? At Home in the Dark, a cross-genre anthology of dark stories, is slated for end-of-April publication, and for some time now the book’s only hardcover edition, signed and numbered, has been sold out at publisher Subterranean Press. (Amazon is still offering copies, and at a 16% discount from the list price. How long they’ll last is anybody’s guess.)

And yes, I’ve been posting a thousand words or so from the various stories on my blog, and those of you who signed on as blog subscribers have found them turning up in your inboxes, along with some words about their authors. Author photos, too. Stories sampled so far include those by Elaine Kagan, Wallace Stroby, Ed Park, Laura Benedict, Joe Lansdale, Noreen Ayres, Joe Hill, Hilary Davidson, Jim Fusilli, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pluck, and Jill D. Block.

I lost count. How many is that?

An even dozen. Coming up in what’s left of March are James Reasoner, Nancy Pickard, Warren Moore, Richard Chizmar, andDuane Swierczynski. If you want to make sure you don’t miss them, or anything else in my not-very-frequent blog posts, you can subscribe. Just click here or on any of the name links in the preceding paragraph; the right-hand column of the page you land on will have spots where you enter your email address to subscribe to the blog and/or this newsletter. All you have to do is key in your email address, no name required, and we never sell or lease our list.

So the only annoying and useless junk mail they get this way will be from you.

Um, right. Well, I guess that’s it, so—

Really? Weren’t you going to tell them something about the new Scudder novella?

Oops, almost forgot.

What almost? You flat-out forgot.

[image error]I would have remembered before I hit SEND. Never mind. A Time to Scatter Stones has been selling well and getting great reviews. The hardcover trade edition is sold out at Subterranean. So is the hardcover limited, but this was in a recent note from the publisher:

“We have thirty-five copies of the signed limited edition that bear slight printer mistakes, just significant enough that we’re not comfortable selling them for full price. Our pain is your gain. While supplies last, we’re selling these copies, one to a customer, for the same price we put on the trade hardcovers: $25.”

Is that a good deal, do you think?

I’d say it depends on the customer. The limited edition is deluxe—bound in leather, signed and numbered. Subterranean’s trade edition is a handsome volume, but it’s sold out, and the limited’s significantly nicer—and my guess is those slight defects are pretty minor. OTOH, you can keep it simple and pick up the ebook or paperback. Or the audiobook, for that matter.

And now I really am out of things to say, and—

Not so fast. What about including some links to books of yours you’d like to push? Like you did the last couple of newsletters. People seemed to like that.

You think? Well, okay, but instead of flogging my own work I think I’ll toss in some links to books I didn’t write—but think highly of.

Forever, by Pete Hamill. My absolute favorite New York novel.

The Unwinding of the Miracle, by Julie Yip-Williams. As involving a memoir as I’ve read in years. Maybe ever.

Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday. Two separate story lines, and what they’re doing in the same book is beyond me—but the Philip Roth dish is delicious.

And that’s enough for now. It’s not quite spring yet, on the calendar or in the forecast, but we had to set the clocks forward this morning, so just think of all the daylight we’re saving!