Art Taylor's Blog, page 75

WIROB: First Day of School!

My column at the Washington Independent Review of Books coincided with the first day of school this year—both for me, teaching at George Mason University, and for my son, starting kindergarten. Yikes! Double yikes!

Here’s the opening to my article commemorating the occasion:

Today marks the first day of school for two-thirds of our household. Our son, Dashiell, is starting kindergarten — a milestone transition — and I’m teaching my first classes of the new semester at George Mason University.

Not incidentally, the other one-third of the house, my wife, Tara, started a new job over the summer — and all of us moved to a new house in early August. We’re still unpacking, endlessly, it seems.

Dash is excited about kindergarten, but he’s also a little bit — hold your thumb and forefinger about an inch apart — scared. As I’ve explained to him, that’s normal. Mama was nervous about her first day at the new job, but all’s working out there. And we were all a mix of excited and sad about moving from one home to another. Bittersweet — that was the word Dash learned in early August. Many conflicting emotions.

Oh, and the full version includes a lot about Sherlock Holmes too. Check it out here.

SleuthSayers: Remembering B.K. Stevens

At SleuthSayers, I offer an appreciation and remembrance of my good friend B.K. Stevens, who died earlier this week. Bonnie was a great writer and a fine person, and her death is a loss to the whole mystery community. Here’s a short excerpt from the middle of the post:

It’s not just coincidence, though, that drew Bonnie and me together, but a more fundamental commonality of belief about how short fiction should work. As she and I served on panels together at Malice Domestic or even talking more casually at Bouchercon or the Virginia Festival of the Book or while sharing a table at the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival, I found myself struck by and honestly thrilled by how often Bonnie’s thoughts about crime fiction and short stories meshed with my own and by her gift for articulating those thoughts in ways that made them so much clearer to me; she came back time and again, for example, to Poe’s essay on the single-effect in short fiction—a cornerstone for both of us about the art of composition—and she spoke about it with the grace of the professor that she was for so many years. More recently, Bonnie and I had back-to-back essays on our fiction in the “First Two Pages” blog she hosted (more on that in a moment), and we both commented on how our thoughts on the beginnings of stories echoed one another—on slow beginnings, in fact, and our faith that readers would stick with them, contrary to conventional wisdom about starting quickly. The story Bonnie wrote about, “The Last Blue Glass” (originally published in AHMM and linked here), was an Agatha finalist this year and is currently in contention for the Anthony Award for Best Novella, and you can read her essay on the story’s first two pages here. As often with Bonnie, as much as I enjoyed her fiction in its own right, that joy and pleasure was always enhanced by hearing her talk about the process of writing the stories—thoughts on prose and plot and structure and more that served as evidence of her superior approach to the craft of writing.

Read the full post here, along with tributes from Linda Landrigan, Bonnie’s editor at Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; Carla Coupe, Bonnie’s editor at Wildside Press; and other fellow writers including Meg Opperman, Debra Goldstein, Paula Benson, and Barb Goffman.

Washington Post Review: The Destroyers

Don’t let summer slip past without checking out a great literary thriller just perfect for the season’s heat. I reviewed Christopher Bollen’s The Destroyers for the Washington Post—a big, dense book (I always think slimmer volumes for beach reading, I’ll admit) but one I greatly admired and enjoyed. Here’s an excerpt from the review:

Christopher Bollen, editor-at-large at Interview magazine, reveals a graceful prose style in his literary thriller “The Destroyers.” Sharp imagery and incisive descriptions bring to life both the Greek island of Patmos and the moneyed class laying claim to it: tourists “lingering between states of hangover and hunger,” “ochre bodies fashionably starved” and dancers swaying in “slow, narcotic movements.” Heat pours through “the white hole of noon,” and on the Aegean, “darkened yachts look like flies crawling on raw, blue meat.”

As the images and commentary suggest, paradise isn’t quite what it seems….

Read the full article here.

Weymouth Center Writers-in-Residence Reading

Earlier this year, my wife Tara Laskowski and I enjoyed our first residency at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities in Southern Pines, NC—or rather, our first half-residency, since our visit was cut short by a snowstorm that forced the governor to declare a state of emergency. We’re excited to return this week—ready to dive fresh into new and ongoing writing projects.

Additionally, we’re both honored to be kicking off the new season’s Writers-in-Residence reading series on Wednesday, August 16, 5:30-7 p.m. in Weymouth’s Great Room. The reading is free and open to the public, with a wine-and-cheese reception hosted by St. Joseph of the Pines.

Hope to see many friends in NC at the reading—and to making some new friends too, both with our fellow writers in residence and with others attending this kick-off event!

BOLO Books Composite Sketch

I’ve been loving the new “Composite Sketch” series at BOLO Books, short profiles of crime writers and bloggers including friends James Ziskin, Jessie Chandler, Rebecca Chance, Lesa Holstine, Dru Ann Love, E.A. Aymar, and more—and now pleased to be featured myself here!

Check out the full profile here—and thanks again to Kristopher Zgorski for including me!

Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival, Saturday, August 12

One of the highlights of last year’s book events was my first visit to the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival, and I’m thrilled to be part of the program again this Saturday afternoon, August 12, at the Suffolk Center for the Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Avenue, Suffolk, VA.

The line-up of authors this year is simply stellar, with many good friends in the mix as well: Betsy Ashton, D.B. Corey, Maya Corrigan, John DeDakis, Tracee de Hahn, Barbara Early/Beverly Allen, Diane Fanning, Gerrie Ferris Finger, Grace Greene, Jenna Harte, Maggie King, Christina Kovac, Eleanor Kuhns, Judith Lucci, Allie Marie, Nan O’Berry/Tessa Berkley, Tj O’Connor, Alan Orloff/Zak Allen, Leigh Perry/Toni L.P. Kelner, Karen Pullen, Amy M. Reade, Shawn Reilly Simmons, B.K. Stevens, Lane Stone, Marcia Talley, Christine Trent, and Heather Weidner. And our hosts for the weekend, Therese Hudson Earles and Katie Kelley with the City of Suffolk, are simply terrific in terms of hospitality, energy, and ideas.

Here’s my schedule for the afternoon—both a workshop and a panel discussion—and hope to see many folks there! And my wife and son will be in-and-out throughout the afternoon as well, so fun times and family times both!

Saturday, August 12 2017: Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival

VIP Meet & Greet, Taylor Ballroom, Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Avenue, Suffolk, VA • noon-1 p.m.
Author Signings, Art Galleries, Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Avenue, Suffolk, VA • 1:45-6 p.m.
Workshop: “Short, Sharp, Suspenseful: The Mystery Short Story,” with B.K. Stevens, Historical Classroom, Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Avenue, Suffolk, VA • 3 p.m.
Panel: “From 17th-Century Weavers to 21st-Century Chef: How Research Establishes A Character’s Professional Credibility,” with Maya Corrigan, Barbara Early, Grace Greene, Jenna Harte, Eleanor Kuhns, Shawn Reilly Simmons, B.K. Stevens, and Christine Trent, Birdsong Theater, Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Avenue, Suffolk, VA • 4 p.m.

See you there!

Forms of Poetry

In the middle of packing up my home office for our upcoming move, I found several binders with work from my graduate school days at George Mason University—including the course Forms of Poetry, led by Peter Klappert. Of all the courses I took at Mason, I believe I learned the most from Peter’s classes; each week was some new burst of knowledge or shift in perspective.

Just for fun, here are my “experiments” for our section on “light verse.” Hope you enjoy!

Epigram: Middle East Fashion Report

The sword is mightier than the pen.

Diplomacy’s out, and missiles are in.

 

Epigram: Hungry for Love

If love is neither meat nor drink,

Can chasteness be cured by sausage links?

But cravings persist, if I woo or behave —

Oh why can’t love be microwaved?

Clerihew: A Seductive Snack with Ms. Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Wouldn’t trade love for Chick-Fil-A.

But for a sonnet,

She’d give her breast or thigh for you to feast upon it.

Limerick: In the Studio

There was a musician from Fairfax

Who mastered both trumpet and bass sax.

When he practiced the drums,

He came up all thumbs,

So he stuck with the brass when they laid tracks.

Double Dactyl: Legacy

Snuggledy puggledy,

Oedipus Tyrannus

Dusted off Dad and then

Fluffed Mom’s wazoo.

Sophocles wrote it but

Freud made it bothersome:

Psychosomatically

Your eyes ache too.

Books, Not Booze

At SleuthSayers today, I follow up on my wife’s column in the Washington Independent Review of Books to share some of my own reflections on packing books for our upcoming move—reflections that zoom right past “Do I want?” and “Should I keep?” and toward time, mortality, even futility.

Moves can, of course, bring out the worst in people. If all the boxes in the picture were full instead of just waiting to be packed, we’d sure be in trouble.

Check out the full column here! And sunnier days ahead when I post photos of the new place. We’ll get there soon enough!

New Artwork for My Story at Great Jones Street

It’s been a real thrill to have a couple of stories picked up by Great Jones Street, a terrific app that has amassed a tremendous collection of short fiction, both literary and genre and everything in between. My stories “A Voice from the Past,” originally in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” originally in PANK, both appear on the site, and that latter story has just earned a nice bit of cover art!

Check out the full story here—one that has earned more comments from readers than anything else I’ve ever written.

Thrillerfest Recap & Events Ahead

I had a tremendous time at Thrillerfest this past weekend—and while I didn’t bring home the Thriller Award for “Parallel Play,” I had great fun with fellow finalists Eric Beetner and Brendan DuBois mugging for the camera (thanks, Brenda for the photo!), and the story that did win, Joyce Carol Oates’ “Big Momma,” surely deserves all honors, both for its creepiness and for the precision of its character study of the child at the story’s center. Just wish that another of the finalists, Laura Benedict, had been there to join us as well!

Highlights of the whole weekend were many. Much of the official programming was great: the Matchup cocktail party, the Saturday morning Debut Authors breakfast, the chat between Lee Child and Janet Maslin, a great panel on geography and fiction featuring friends Ed Aymar and Wendy Tyson, and then Saturday’s banquet, of course (with cocktail parties before and after!). But as always at conferences like this, it was equally fun to get together with friends and meet new people outside of the formal schedule. I enjoyed lunch with Emily Giglierano, former assistant editor at Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and now an editor at Mulholland Books, and then the next day a pre-cocktail-party cocktail with EQMM editor Janet Hutchings, in part prepping for our Bouchercon event together (see below). Other meals and in-passing chats reconnected with folks I usually only see online, including J.D. Allen, Joe Clifford, Kellye Garrett, Tracee De Hahn, Danny Gardner, Jennifer Hillier, Cheryl Hollon, Christina Kovac, Deb Lacy, Clair Lamb, Dru Ann Love, Jamie Mason, Chantelle Aimée Osman, Peter Rozovsky, Radha Vatsal, LynDee Walker (also my traveling companion on the Amtrak to and from NY!), Ray Wenck, Ingrid Willis, and Stacey Woodson (I know I’m missing folks here). And it was great to meet a few new folks, including Jeannette Bauroth and Jay Shepherd—whom I’ve known online and yet never met in person until now and now I’m really looking forward to the book he’s working on, for reasons we’ll talk about later!

In short, it was a great, great time—my first Thrillerfest but surely not my last. And a bonus: I stayed for the first time at The Algonquin (famed for the Round Table among other things) and already loosely planning another trip back there with Tara and Dash. A beautiful and historic hotel with a distinctive literary heritage, that was already enough to win me over—but the welcome gift surely sealed the deal. Love at first sight for Dash when I brought Mathilda back to him—a stuffed animal version of the real cat who calls The Algonquin home.

Looking ahead, here’s a list of other events coming up in the next few months. Next on the calendar is the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival—an event I first attended last year and am eagerly anticipating this year, such fun! And Bouchercon programming is slowly rolling out too—excited about the events I’m taking part in there too!

Saturday, August 12 2017: Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival

VIP Meet & Greet, Taylor Ballroom, Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Avenue, Suffolk, VA • noon-1 p.m.
Author Signings, Art Galleries, Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Avenue, Suffolk, VA • 1:45-6 p.m.
Workshop: “Short, Sharp, Suspenseful: The Mystery Short Story,” with B.K. Stevens, Historical Classroom, Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Avenue, Suffolk, VA • 3 p.m.
Panel: “From 17th-Century Weavers to 21st-Century Chef: How Research Establishes A Character’s Professional Credibility,” with Maya Corrigan, Barbara Early, Grace Greene, Jenna Harte, Eleanor Kuhns, Shawn Reilly Simmons, B.K. Stevens, and Christine Trent, Birdsong Theater, Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Avenue, Suffolk, VA • 4 p.m.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Writers-in-Residence Reading with Tara Laskowski, Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, 555 East Connecticut Avenue, Southern Pines, NC • 6:30 p.m.

Saturday, September 30, 2017

Character Workshop, part of the all-day craft workshop “Take Your Writing to the Next Level,” also featuring presentations by Ruth Moose and J.D. Allen, Triangle Sisters in Crime, Wake Tech Community College, 3434 Kildaire Farm Road, Cary, NC • 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

Thursday-Sunday, October 12-15, 2017: Bouchercon 2017, Toronto, Canada

Program celebrating Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine‘s distinguished contributions to the genre, as host/emcee, interviewing EQMM editor Janet Hutchings and introducing short vignettes from 15 writers with ties to the magazine • Thursday, October 12, 5:30 p.m.
Opening Ceremonies, including presentation of Macavity Awards • Thursday, October 12, 7:30 p.m.
Panel: “Meet Your Short Story Anthony Nominees” (as panelist), Grand Centre Room • Friday, October 13, 2 p.m.
Sisters in Crime Breakfast • Saturday, October 14, 7:30 a.m.
Anthony Awards Brunch • Sunday, October 15, 11 a.m.

 

 

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