A.R. Simmons's Blog: Musings and Mutterings, page 13

Your Story is a Matter of Taste

Argue with a reviewer?

Have you ever been in a restaurant where the chef came into the dining area to argue with a diner over the merits of one of his dishes?

Me neither. Enough said.

Excerpt from Cold Fury (RC #9)

The Abyss

Interstate 55 near Cape Girardeau, MO

She glanced from the speedometer to the rearview. With no one behind and nothing in front, I-55 seemed deserted, impossible even at three a.m. Taillights appeared, far ahead, but closing quickly. She swung left, coming abreast of a northbound ABF convoy running fifteen miles above the posted speed but twenty miles slower than she. Compacted air buffeted the Camaro, tugging at the steering wheel as she broke successive slipstreams. The next to last trucker flashed a warning as she passed.

Radar? Or just, “Slow down?”

“Or what?” she mumbled as she rocked her foot, bleeding velocity until she matched the speed of the lead truck. The high whine of its tires filled her mind. Glancing right, she saw the maw yawning just back of the fifth wheel.

How easy. Just a quick tug to the right.

She tensed—and hesitated.

The spell was broken.

“Not that way,” she said, as she mashed the accelerator.

An exit.

She braked hard going up the ramp, slid past the stop sign, finally stopping on the far shoulder just short of a rubble heap. She reversed onto the road, swung around, and drove slowly in and through a nameless collection of houses. A few minutes later she parked beyond them where the pavement played out hard against a railroad embankment.

The odor of burned oil and evaporating coolant thickened the air as she got out. The abused engine pinged away heat while radiator fluid gurgled softly in the dark. Leaving her keys in the ignition, she climbed up to the tracks and then descended through heavy brush.

Finding a stone ledge sparkling in the moonlight with liquor bottle shards, she sat. A chugging came from below and to her right. A tug pushed a triple line of barges through reflected moonlight.

She sat with legs dangling over the stone and lingered until all that remained of the tug was the fading sound of its engine. Gradually she became aware of the burble of the current below.
She cocked her head as if something had suddenly become clear.

She stood, looked down, and then she stepped into the void.

Cold Fury

Bonne Femme, PTSD #1

(The following is an excerpt from Bonne Femme. For all of us, our past is prologue. This begins to define Richard Carter.)

Somalia, at least, was fading. It bothered him now only in half-remembered dreams that were unsettling, but manageable. That changed unexpectedly, and for no apparent reason, one afternoon as they all sat in a dark corner at Moon Pie’s drinking beer and waiting for pizza. Mic had paused during one of his stories, took a drag on his cigarette, and winked at him before delivering the point of some story that Richard hadn’t been listening to.
Suddenly, Richard was half a world away.

Faint gunfire off in the distance . . . the smell of sweat and urine . . . a glowing cigarette . . . that smile . . . wide terror-filled eyes in a black face.

He managed to shake it off that afternoon, but the pall remained. Later that night, he awoke in cold sweat. The “Boy Soldier” came this time. Unable to stay in bed with his ghosts so near, he fled to the bathroom.

It wasn’t my fault, he said to himself as he splashed cold water on his face. I didn’t know.

That doesn’t matter, came the inexorable reply.

He looked into the mirror, into his own unforgiving eyes. “This is ridiculous,” he grumbled in disgust.

He went back to bed determined once again to leave the past behind by sheer dint of will. For better or worse, what was done was done—and besides, he had done nothing intentionally. It had just happened. That’s what he told himself. However, ghosts are not so easily banished, especially in the twilight drowsiness preceding sleep. Later, he couldn’t decide if he had dreamed it or was just remembering.

The minaret towered above a muddy street lined with the shards of shattered tree trunks. The neighborhood retained just enough residual beauty to hint at happier times in this unhappy place, although it was hard to believe that Mogadishu had ever been very happy. The squad moved cautiously toward the next intersection, hemmed in by pockmarked off-white stucco buildings standing shoulder to shoulder. They passed beneath narrow balconies overhanging the debris-strewn street. Each dark doorway and broken window on the eerily silent street was a potential sniper’s blind.

A single shot split the air, followed by a fading zing of ricochet off concrete. He dove through an open door and rolled over and over, not stopping until his back was against the solid masonry of the outside wall. He was shaking. There was something he knew he should do, but his mind refused to work. Go to the doorway? Scan for the sniper? Lay down covering fire for the others to advance? But he only sat, back pressed tightly to the wall and shivered—he had run, and now he was hiding.

The Evolution of the Series (9) Cold Fury

[This plot was inspired by a Greek myth and a local murder mystery.]

All the main characters in the series have evolved, but none so much as Ron Guidry, who began as somewhat of a stock character in Secret Song (RC #4). In that novel, he is a burnout cop from New Orleans with a drinking problem who has washed up in Hawthorn County. He doesn’t fit in, being irreverent and acerbic, but he has years of valuable experience as a homicide detective. He is jealous, both of Richard’s position and wife.

Gradually, however, we come to realize that his brash manner is partly a cop’s emotional armor and his attempts to counterpunch fate. By the end of the story, he becomes a friend as well as a colleague for Richard. In later stories, he becomes part of the informal extended family that Jill gathers.

Readers of the series will be familiar with Guidry’s irreverent wit, cynical perspective on the world, personal tragedy, and soft spot for women, whether they be ones he admires (like Jill), victims of crime and tragedy (like Raven, introduce in Canaan Camp #3), victims of their own choices (like Shannon in Cold Fury #9), or “damsels in distress” (like Woodie Koeltz in Road Shrines #8). At first, just someone Richard can bounce ideas off of, he becomes a sort of sidekick. Guidry has sold so much of himself (he has torpedoed both his career and personal life), that he feels free to do what must be done regardless of the consequences. I find him very useful. He can do things that Richard cannot. (Check out what happens to Arley in The King Snake #5)

One of the most interesting things about Guidry’s character is that his cynicism and hard-edged manner are inextricably woven with an idealism (of sorts) and great compassion. Ron Guidry is not sophisticated, but he is smart. He is neither soft-spoken nor politically-correct, but he is soft-hearted and surprisingly open-minded. Like Richard, he displays a type of chivalry that leads to unintentional (and unconscious) sexism. If this seems inconsistent and incomprehensible, that is Ron Guidry's essence.


In Cold Fury, Guidry meets this guy, and follows a lead that takes him out of Hawthorn County and off the grid.

The Evolution of the Series (8) "Road Shrines"

The working title for this novel was “Beds of Clay.” Once you’ve read a few chapters, you’ll understand why. I changed it because the initial inspiration for the story contained the image found on the cover, a “road shrine.” We’ve all seen them. Crosses erected along the roadside to commemorate the location of a family tragedy. Like my main character, Richard Carter, I do some of my best thinking while driving alone. In this instance, I wondered about a more sinister remembrance: the reliving of a sadistic predator’s “achievement.”

We are told by John Douglas and other members of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit that serial murderers constantly fantasize about their obsession. It’s why they use trophies taken from their victims and revisit the scene of the crime (probably the only criminals who really do that), and even go back to view body dumps. I thought, “What better way to remember someone than with a road shrine?” Enough about the plot. It’s supposed to be a mystery after all.





Oh. You might want to watch for this girl as you read. She has a story to tell—if she lives to tell it.








We continue with the growth and evolution of the Carter family. His PTSD is something Richard will never be rid of, but it plays less a part in the story. Jill is Jill, the rock of the family. Mirabelle is another year older, old enough that both her parents worry about her inevitable discovery of her parents’ past, and the “crime” for which Richard cannot forgive himself. The lives of the informal members of the extended Carter family (Raven and Shane Sanders, along with Ron Guidry) have significant changes in their lives. Returning for a reprise, is a colleague of Jill’s, Cyrus Hopewell (from #6 Call Her Sabine).

Richard finally meets Special Agent Tanner (from #3 Canaan Camp) in person after years of consulting by phone. The investigation, for all intents and purposes, however, is taken over by the FBI, while Richard is shunted onto a missing person case.

Road Shrines also introduces us to Woodie Koeltz, a rookie deputy from central Missouri. She is destined to appear in a future novel in the series.

Devilry Blurb

A young deer hunter nervously waits in his stand, scanning the brush through his scope. He spots something in the pre-dawn, but it isn’t a deer. When he climbs down to check it out, he finds the bodies of a wealthy landowner and his daughter.

As Richard Carter investigates the murders, the motive seems clear—at first.

A few days later, however, an angry landowner, searching for the source of a wildfire, stumbles onto a horror scene that could have come from the Spanish inquisition.

Another body left in the woods? A second heinous crime in the space of a week?
This time the victim is a penniless nobody from nowhere. There doesn’t seem to be a motive for his murder—but there always is.
This murder was senseless, sadistic—pure devilry.

The Lore of Devilry in the Hills

Devilry was released in April, 2014.

Devilry is the story of three separate, but related crimes. Included are Civil War and Post-Civil War vignettes of pure devilry of the sort that left an indelible stain on the culture of the hills. A lesson to be learned is that it’s not always best to remember lore. 

See at Amazon

Devilry will be released in April, 2014

Devilry will be released in April, 2014

Devilry Cover Reveal

Devilry will be released in April, 2014

The Evolution of the Series (7) "Devilry"

In several of the stories, mention is made of an area in the eastern Ozarks called “The Irish Wilderness.” It’s an actual place close to where I live. It was an immigrant settlement started by a Catholic priest shortly before the Civil War. Largely due to the predation of the “bushwhackers,” it was abandoned and came to be known as “The Irish Wilderness.” Since the mayhem of those irregular Confederate and Union units occurred throughout the Missouri Ozarks (and didn’t stop with the end of the war), I decided to feature it in the seventh story, which is appropriately titled “Devilry.”

No, the bushwhackers and border ruffians don’t still run wild in the hills today. The Baldknobbers featured in Branson skits and alluded to in “The Shepherd of the Hills” are long gone. However, the lore still exists, as does suspicion and even hatred of the outsider, and “the other.” In fact, it exists everywhere to some extent. I think it’s an almost universal human trait. Shug Shively would expain it by saying that all of us are “positively inclined to evil.”

I set out to write Devilry with a single thought in mind: what a person is sure of is more important to him that what the truth is. And thereby tragedy often ensues, and evil is excused.

Brief vignettes from the war and post-war period are interspersed within the narrative. They are not there for decoration.

Devilry