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Jean Palmer HECK Algonkian Conference February 20, 2025 1. Story Statement In 1909, two Eastern European siblings, Viktoria and Petras Miskis, must earn enough money at the American Carpet Factory to save their starving family back home in Russian-controlled Lithuania. 2. Antagonist The antagonist for Viktoria, age 23, is her Boss at the carpet factory in Yonkers, NY. He is a power-driven, low-level manager overseeing a crew of immigrant women. Realizing Viktoria has no friends in the workroom, he targets her by offering her more pay if she works through the lunch hour alone. Boss also promises to teach her English and get her a promotion. At the climax of the book, he attempts to rape her. Petras, age 17, in his last conversation with their father, was given the task to make money quickly and to keep Viktoria safe in America. Petras’s several antagonists are forces (people and vices) that block those goals. • On the first ship leaving Europe (crossing the North Sea), a Russian thief steals their money and holds Viktoria at knifepoint, scarring her chin. Petras lunges at him and both men are arrested by the ship’s crew. • In America, Petras, joins his boarding house roommates at the bars after work. He is lured by back-alley conmen to try and double his pay by gambling. • When Petras learns of the attempted rape of Viktoria, he stalks the Boss, attacks him, is jailed and loses his job. 3. Breakout Titles • If I Could See Across the Ocean • Duty to Family • To Be Back Home 4. Comp Titles • The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani Three Italian immigrants come to America, circa 1910. The young woman and her father must earn money for their large family back home. The young man, is banished from his small village and forced to emigrate. He works his way up through ingenuity, eventually finding his true love in America. My book will appeal to readers who like The Shoemaker’s Wife, but want a quicker read. • Brooklyn by Colm Toibin A young woman leaves her small Irish village, where there is little opportunity to make a living or build a future. She must adjust to a new culture, come to grips with duty to family and eventually learn where home truly is. My book, also with a young woman who must discover how strong she really is, deals with the same themes of duty to family and discovering where home is, but “If I Could See Across the Ocean” is set in 1909 America and a small Lithuanian town, under Russian domination. 5. Log/Hook Line with Core Wound Two Eastern European siblings, driven by duty to family, are scorned and exploited as illiterate outsiders in America, while they struggle to earn money for their starving family under Russian oppression, and they are torn between the promise of a new life and the pull of their homeland. 6. More Inner Conflict Viktoria is the oldest child in a family of 7 children. Uneducated and unmarried, she helps her mother with the family and household chores, as well as ironing the priest’s vestments and making communion hosts for the Catholic church in their small Lithuanian town. Nothing prepares her for the life in America, especially for being a lowly factory worker among thousands of people. Viktoria’s inner conflict: she feels stupid because she can’t communicate with Americans or other foreigners who don’t speak the same language. Even though she is a hard worker, her job of filling wool drums in a huge carpet factory is tiring and monotonous. She feels stuck (bound by duty in this low paying job), incompetent (because she doesn’t understand what’s being said), lonely (missing her boisterous family) and unfulfilled (hoping to return home, marry and have her own children). Her brother, Petras, who has a natural gift for languages, encourages her to learn English. “But why,” she asks, “ if we are going back to Lithuania soon anyway?” “Because if you can talk better to your boss, you can get a nicer job…maybe in the loom area,” says Petras. “Just try, Viktoria. Then we’ll have more money to send home.” In a later scene when her boss observes her trying to speak in other languages, he offers to teach her English during lunchtime. But his goals aren’t the same as hers — he uses her book to teach her names of different bits of clothing. When he begins touching her in explanation of parts of the body, she faints. Secondary conflicts arise in the social setting when she meets a fellow Lithuanian woman, Adrija, at work one day. Adrija has been in America 5 years and has married into a fun-loving Irish family, with a handsome cousin who is a widower. They enjoy both Irish and Lithuanian social events, and take in vaudeville shows. With Adrija’s help, Michael is learning Lithuanian and Viktoria, English. But Viktoria still thinks about her poor family and feels guilty for these decadent pleasures. An important historic event, The Hudson Fulton Celebration, takes place throughout the Hudson Valley in October 1909. It marked the discovery of the Hudson River, the invention of the steam engine, and the ingenuity of immigrant workers. It’s a 2-week party, for Viktoria, Petras, and all of Yonkers. During one event, the first electric lighting of a public building on the town square in Yonkers, Viktoria feels a stranger approach her in the dark and touch her. She realizes from the smell of the person, it must be her boss. She is humiliated and scared. Several weeks later, Michael proposes marriage. This conflict heightens her secret embarrassment about her boss’s untoward advances. She realizes she wants to be with Michael. This also raises her ultimate dilemma: Where is my home? How can I fulfill my duty to my family? 7. Settings A modest family farm in a small Lithuanian village, a steerage deck on an ocean liner, the inner workings of Ellis Island with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, the streets of New York City, a massive carpet factory in Yonkers and the beautiful Hudson River — all spell out a very cinematic backdrop for “If I Could See Across the Ocean.” Here is a list of places where the characters live, work, play, fight and hide in the darkness. Back Home 1. A modest home on agricultural land in Lithuania. Interior shots of the Viktoria reading to her invalid brother, as her mother sweeps the floor. A separate workshop where the father shows Petras the financial books revealing their meager earnings and dire situation. An exterior shot of the family crying goodbye to Viktoria and Petras as they leave on horse-drawn wagon. The Journey to America 1. A Russian train station. A large steam-engine pulls up. Interior and exterior shots. 2. SS Ivernia. On deck shots as the ship leaves the European continent at Bremerhaven. 3. Train from Hull, England, to Liverpool, England. 4. HMS Lucania, an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic. Steerage compartment filled with passengers. 5. Ellis Island. Interior shots of the Great Hall. Interior shots of the hospital. 6. Battery Park in NYC with immigrants meeting their hosts or families. Life in and around Yonkers, New York 1. The Kundrat’s house, a two-story house on a side street (Croton Terrace) in Yonkers. Interior and exterior. 2. A boarding house for men. Interior and exterior. 3. Company housing on Moquette Row, Yonkers. 4. The streets around various factories and places of work in Yonkers. Exterior shots. 5. The Alexander Smith and Sons Carpet Factory. Interiors of the wool transfer building, the looms, the finishing room, the offices, stairways, machine shop, shipping department. Exteriors when the workers enter and exit. 6. Riverside Park. Exterior shots 7. St. Casmir’s Roman Catholic Church. Exterior and interior shots. 8. St. Joseph Cemetery, Warburton Ave, Yonkers. 9. Getty Square, site of Hudson Fulton electric lighting display. 10. Various parade routes with ethnic bands performing. 11. Hudson River and Yonkers Pier. 12. Yonkers Theatre and Vaudeville House. Interior. 13. New York Zoological Park (now the Bronx Zoo) 14. County Jail. Interior shots. Cleveland, Ohio (or other location) 1. Modest home of newlyweds. 2. Terminal Tower (Cleveland train station). New York City 1. The Singer Building, 149 Broadway Street, New York. Interior first floor shots and views from the 47th floor viewing area. 2. The Cunard Dock at Pier 54, New York City, on the Hudson. HECK Algonkian pre-event assignments.pdf

Story Statement: Get revenge on your childhood friend turned Emperor. Antagonist Sketch: Sole heir to the Aeressian throne, Lucius ïst Havice de Vincentius is a tortured musical genius who takes every opportunity to embark on debaucherous and indulgent adventures. He daydreams with Cyra, his childhood friend, of running away to be a violinist and live his truest life, which includes romantic relationships with men. This is highly controversial in the Empire, especially for an Emperor who chief responsibility is continuing his bloodline. When Lucius’s father dies abruptly, he’s thrust into the position of Emperor at only eighteen years old. To protect his secret and secure the throne during a tumultuous transition period, he banishes Cyra and marries her romantic interest, Marilla. After this betrayal, Lucius begins to unravel as the collective psychic toll of the title he never wanted drags down his spirit with each passing day. By the time of the rebellion, Lucius is viewed by many in the empire as a weak, erratic recluse, and regularly has difficulties performing his tasks as emperor. Breakout Titles: -Hell Hath No Fury- Evoking the classic saying ‘Hell Hath No Fury like a Woman Scorned,’ this title follows the same pattern as Joe Abercrombie’s most celebrated standalone fantasy novel ‘Best Served Cold,’ another story about revenge. The main character, Cyra, is a woman scorned when her childhood best friend Lucius is elevated to Emperor and exiles her to protect his dark secrets. The novel is about Cyra’s furious revenge, and her slow sinking into more violence and anger to achieve her ultimate goal. -Let Leak Their Treacherous Blood- A declarative statement spoken from Cyra’s perspective; it is also meant to have a similar format to the famous Shakespeare line ‘Let Slip the Dogs of War.’ This title can convey very succinctly not just the tone of the book but also the stakes the reader will encounter. ‘Treacherous’ let’s readers know the speaker has been betrayed. And the image of leaking blood lets the reader know that whoever committed the treachery in the novel is not just treacherous in their actions, but treacherous to their very core, as it is in their blood. -A Plot of Pain and Vengeance- This one might be a bit over the top, but it uses a very recognizable title convention made popular by Sarah J Maas’s ACOTAR series. A ___ of ___ and ___. It gets right to the point in a format familiar to fantasy readers and lets the reader know exactly what the pot is about. Cyra’s plan to take revenge on Lucius. Genre Comparables: -Anji Kills a King- A soon to be released book in 2025, the main character of this book is also a woman who assassinated a king and must deal with the political turmoil that follows. Gritty and dark, the tones of these books match up. This book is also being published by a first-time author, Evan Leikam, and would find fans among readers who enjoy authors like Joe Abercrombie, R.F. Kuang, and Christopher Buehlman, which would be my target audience as well. -The Daughter’s War- Released early 2024 to rave reviews, the themes of war, violence, and revenge are heavy in this grim dark story about a female main character who finds herself in the middle of a vicious war. The magic in the Daughters War is also very minimal, and much of it is focused on the character work, similar to my book. Again because of the themes and tone, The Daughter’s War and my work would have a lot of crossover fans of other authors such as Joe Abercrombie and R.F. Kuang. Hook Line/Conflict: A banished outcast seeks revenge on her childhood best friend for exiling her after he is crowned emperor, fighting through legions of his lackeys and her own self-doubt to receive the justice she so desperately thinks will make her whole. Inner Conflict: Before Cyra was banished from Aerassas, she was brought up in the capital as the daughter of a famous general who served alongside Lucius’s father, Emperor Havince. This afforded Cyra a modicum of privilege in society. She attended the Aeressian Civil Academy to get an education and never had to worry about her own physical safety or not having enough money. As part of her education, she was raised on stories of great men doing great things, striving against all odds to overcome their enemies and succeed no matter what. Stories that glorified individuals and their actions. This kind of neo-liberal idealism is pervasive in her flashback chapters. It leads Cyra to believe that all she needs to do is work hard enough and leverage her position as friends with the emperor in waiting, Lucius, to achieve her dream of becoming the first woman ever to serve in the Imperial Assembly. Obviously, this does not come to fruition. Instead, she is betrayed by Lucius who banishes her when he is elevated to the throne. This results in Cyra experiencing several inner conflicts. The first and foremost are serious trust issues. Much like Aaron Burr in Hamilton, she becomes obsessed with ‘being in the room where it happens.’ Previously, she thought that she could just work hard and have everything turn out well for her. When we see her in the present, Cyra believes she must fight tooth and nail to always sit in the room where real decisions are made, so that no one can ever determine her fate other than herself. She also becomes hyper fixated on achievement. She doubles down on hard work to get what she wants, neglecting her physical, emotional, and social health. This narrow world view leads her to making decisions that only serve her own ends and lack consideration of anything else. For example, as the rebel army marches towards the capital, they find they need more laborers to help haul supplies to increase the army's speed. Cyra points out there is a settlement nearby that’s recently experienced a population boom due to a sharp increase in logging activity. In the next scene, we see these people in chains and being forced against their will to carry packs and haul wagons for the rebel army against their will. While Cyra knows this to be an indiscretion bordering on slavery, she justifies it in her mind by saying it will help achieve her goal. Eventually, Cyra grows crueler and more violent to combat her cognitive dissonance in the face of the mounting evidence that the cause she is supporting might not have the moral high ground. At the end of the novel, Cyra’s rhetoric/actions are just as bad if not worse than the same rhetoric/actions she claimed to abhor at the beginning of the book, bringing the cognitive dissonance full circle. Secondary Conflict: While there are several secondary conflicts, one that complicates the story most in Cyra’s sexuality. To be a gay woman is something that would be considered deeply shameful, especially for a woman in a position of higher standings. It is a secret she must constantly contend with and is one of the reasons Lucius has her banished in the first place. After she is banished, Cyra becomes paranoid about everything to do with her sexuality. She takes one of the maids in the governor’s manor as a lover but only does so under very strict and unsavory conditions. Combined with the patriarchal culture under which she was raised, she ends up not treating this girl very well, over committing to patriarchal norms to insulate herself from scrutiny by her peers. This overcompensating pattern repeats in several instances throughout the novel in a variety of instances, as Cyra sees the emulation of terrible male behavior as the only way to get what she wants. Cyra falls victim to this in a number of ways, including plenty of misogyny, and when confronted with her behavior she must either make changes or risk alienating most of her close personal relationships. Setting: Inspirations: This is a bit of background for how the setting came to be. On the scale of plotter to discovery writer, I tend to swing more towards the discovery side of things. By the time I sat down to write this book, I had already written two books and a novella using exclusively discovery writing. But I knew that in order to be a successful writer, I’d need more plotting involved in my creative process. So, I took inspiration from another famous discovery writer, Geroge RR Martin, and decided to write a fantasy novel inspired by real life events. (A Song of Ice and Fire being inspired by The War of the Roses) At the same time, I was reading a book on famous events in Roman history for DND inspiration. When I stumbled across the civil war known as The Year of Four Emperors, my mind immediately filled in the narrative. This is the inspiration for a lot of geography and set up of the Aeressian Empire, however I advanced the setting to be more reflective of Renaissance era Italy because frankly that historical time period is fascinating. Geography: The setting for this novel is a massive, ocean-spanning Empire called Aerassas, named after the capital at the center of the Empire. The capital sits on an isthmus and controls large swaths of land divided into provinces. For narrative streamlining, the story mainly focuses on a few major provinces Aerassas is home to Cyra, Marilla, and Lucius, as well as the site of the novels inciting incident and climax. Amorin is an industrious and wealthy province Cyra flees to when she is banished from the capital and where she spends many years off screen being tutored by its provincial governor, Governor Hadis. Then there’s Chamavi, a northern frontier province where other major characters come from, like the Assemblyman Özcan and Regina. The final region is a southern province called Shavir, which is warm, muggy, and home to vast rainforests. The variety of geography is meant to reflect the expanse of the empire and illustrate just how obscene it is that all these different places with all these different people, cultures, and religions fitting into one empire makes almost zero logistical sense. Temporal: The time period of the book is roughly equivalent to what we would call the early renaissance. There are mentions of some trading guilds that are going under, as well as the introduction of gunpowder weapons. In the world of the novel, the time period is around three hundred years into the founding of the Aeressian Empire, so cracks are beginning to show. Constant wars weaken the government positions, and the Aeressian Empire is overextended on several fronts, allowing rebellions to fester all over the Empire, including the one Cyra participates in. However, instead of addressing any of the underlying issues, the ruling class of Aerassas prefer to blame all these problems on ‘the emperor being weak’ rather than addressing any of the systematic problems on which the empire was founded. Culture: In almost every way, I’ve written the Aeressain Empire to be described as a classic honor culture. The Empire is intensely patriarchal, as exemplified by important men not just carrying their surnames but also the names of their fathers as their full names. Honor cultures are also extremely violent and glorify that violence, as well as the individuals that commit it. As a result, those selected to rule in honor cultures are the ones deemed as societies ‘winners,’ which usually happens to be men that are already rich (shocker) or those that ‘prove’ themselves through extensive military experience. Women are, at best seen as second-class citizens, and at worst closer to property and valued primarily for their ability to produce more boys. For example, Cyra may be receiving an education in the novel flashbacks, but that is just to ensure she will be educated enough to educate her sons better when they are born. The other emphasis of Aeressian culture is the self. People are often judged by their personal strength and worth, which paradoxically leads to veneration of a few men everyone deems powerful. This is one of the primary drivers of early conflict in the book. Emperor Lucius is seen as a weak and effeminate man, something not helped by his rumored sexual deviancy, and much less of a man than his father. Due to cultural expectations of individual strength and distrust of weakness, a rebellion by a rival governor is formed because he is believed to be fundamentally ‘stronger.’ This culture of strength also leads to the Empire constantly being at war, expanding their frontiers with myriad campaigns that are meant to bring glory to the Empire really just serve to drain their coffers. After all, wars are expensive. Duels are legal and considered normal, as the merit of arguments being out done by strength in combat is another hallmark of an honor culture. As far as religion goes, Aerassas is vaguely polytheistic, however I never get too specific for a reason. The real religion of the Empire is the glorification of oneself. In the book, we see how several characters truly operate, and I wanted to make sure that readers understood that any mention of gods is surface level and self-serving. Magic: This world is fantasy and as such does have magic items called Hexerax. These primarily take the form of classical weapons from antiquity (swords, axes, spears) and grant their Handlers superhuman strength, speed, and senses. Some are more powerful than others, granting abilities that even allow the Handler to change the shape of the weapon to better fit their needs. While these weapons are powerful, no one knows how to make them anymore, meaning there is a finite number of them in the world. The primary reason for the Aeressian Empire’s successful expansion is due almost entirely to the stockpiling of these weapons. The most powerful, Worldrender, is a sword that is the hereditary right of the Aeressian Emperor. The emperor’s ability to Handle such a powerful Hexerax is one of the core reasons they are granted a position of dominance over the rest of the Empire. In the book, rumors that Lucius can’t Handle Worldrender are some of the primary reasons for initial discontent. While the magic may not be that complex, that is on purpose. These weapons are, basically, like bringing a bazooka to a knife fight in most cases. Those that can Handle them are usually shown to do so through brute force and hatred, a symbol of honor and by extension right wing cultural ideals around who should be the subjugator and who the subjugated. At the end of the day, Hexerax are the tools that were used to build the Aeressian Empire but are nothing more than magically efficient weapons used for oppressing people with overwhelming violence.

This is the first portion of Chapter 1 of my dual timeline historical novel, Chasing the Seventies. It contains the inciting incident that sent the main protagonist, Kate Gardner, on a path to question her beliefs as a Millennial-era woman who grew up believing that women could have it all. It was the morning after the night that was never supposed to happen. Every major media outlet in America had predicted that Hillary Rodham Clinton was a shoo-in to become the 45th President of the United States. Polls showed her sweeping the Electoral College and popular vote by wide margins. Excited about the prospects of electing our first female President, I invited five of my closest friends to watch the election returns. We all dressed in Suffragist white to honor the women who had made this all possible. The champagne was on ice, ready to pop the cork when the first network called the election for Clinton. The Associated Press announced its first projections around 7 p.m. ET. As predicted, Clinton won Vermont, and Donald J. Trump claimed Indiana and Kentucky. Wine and conversation flowed as we waited until the polls closed on the West Coast for the next projections. “I don’t really like Clinton,” Sarah said from her center seat in the antique armchair. She looked like an elegant Town & Country model in her white linen pantsuit accented by gold pearl earrings. “But it’s about time this country elected a female head of state. We are tragically behind Europe and Latin America. Despite my misgivings about her hawkish foreign policy views, I had to hold my nose and vote for her.” Sarah, my Bay View Law School mentor, teaches International and Comparative Law. She’s a prolific author in the field of global equity and economic empowerment. Judges, scholars, and nonprofit organizations cite her prolific articles. Last year, she received a prestigious Human Rights Prize from the United Nations. No wonder she earned early tenure and a Fullbright to study women’s political participation in India next year. “I don’t know much about foreign policy, but I think Clinton’s gotten a bum rap in the media,” Jessica piped in from the kitchen, her white chef’s apron covering her usual jeans, t-shirt, and tennis shoes. “I don’t hear them criticizing Trump’s orange hair or baggy suits.” Jessica is my closest friend and our resident foodie, fussing over a skillet on my Viking Professional stove. We went through high school and college together, but then our paths parted ways. Jessica married, had two tow-headed toddlers, and spent her spare time as an amateur chef. I went to law school, married a classmate after graduation, and put off having children until we both established our careers. I’m not much of a cook, but the house we bought in the suburbs five years ago came equipped with a double French door oven. The only time it got a workout was when Jessica came to visit, which was quite often now that we lived in the same suburban Boston neighborhood. The delicious aromas of caramelized onions wafted in on a wave of warm air, making me envy my childhood friend’s culinary skills. Maybe I’ll have time to learn to cook once I get tenure. “My students think Clinton is corrupt and stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders,” Tamika objected. She could have passed for one of the students in her white mini-skirt and Lululemon tank top. “They don’t see any reason to support Clinton just because she is a woman. They don’t trust her positions on worker’s rights or the environment. Bernie supports a federal living wage and universal health care. If they can’t vote for him, they’re planning to sit this election out.” Tamika is the newest Assistant Professor at Bayview, hired to teach Legal Writing while she tries to break into her real love, Labor Law and Worker’s Rights. As a recent graduate, Tamika is more closely aligned with our Gen X students’ progressive politics. We can always count on her to bring a different perspective to the conversation. “Hold on a second,” I said, waving my hands for emphasis. My white pantsuit was a tribute to Clinton’s preferred professional uniform, purchased especially for the occasion. “Hillary and Bernie have nearly identical platforms. You mean to tell me they would rather lose the election than support Clinton?” “That’s right,” Tamika said. “They were furious when Madeleine Albright said there was a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other. Then Gloria Steinem added to the insult by suggesting that young women who support Bernie are just in it to meet boys. They were furious at older feminists for talking down to them and suggesting they should base their vote solely on gender.” “But they’re okay with losing the election to a misogynist who talks about grabbing women by the pussy?” I exclaimed. “That’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face.” As the words came out of my mouth, my heart sank to my knees. Don’t let this deteriorate into a contentious faculty meeting, I thought. We are supposed to be celebrating tonight. Always the voice of reason, Olivia chimed in to save the day. Her flowing white wrap dress exuded calm and grace. She has to be a diplomat as the Dean of Students, even when fiercely advocating for her students. “You have to understand this generation,” she said. “They grew up during the Great Recession of the 1990s. They are accumulating hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans. They saw students being murdered in Parkland and Virginia Tech. They’ve seen an increase in natural disasters caused by global warming. It’s no surprise that feminism is not one of their top concerns with the world falling apart around them.” Her words deflated my frustration as I felt my friends breathe a collective sigh of relief. Just then, Jessica called out from the kitchen, “Dinner’s ready!” I had set the table with my grandmother’s best china and crystal in honor of the occasion. Nana was a nurse in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II and defied the expectations of her time by continuing to work after she married. She would have been thrilled to see the first woman President be elected. Jessica had the caramelized onion mushroom crostini arranged artfully on a filigreed silver tea tray. I pulled the Belgian endive, apple, and blue cheese salad from the Frigidaire and drizzled it with walnut oil while Sarah uncorked the Bon Pari Russian River Valley Pinot Noir we had brought back from our summer vacation. We spent the next hour blissfully chowing down and chatting about our relationships. Sarah was the only one with children, and we happily passed around her iPhone to see photos of their adventures at summer camp. At 10:30, Kendrick popped his head out the study door to let us know that the next projections were coming in. Ohio was declared for Trump, his first swing state victory. He led the polls there all along, but Democrats were hopeful that a last-minute swing through the state would help them beat the polls. Concern swept through our small living room as we watched breathlessly for the next projections. Close to 11 p.m., Trump claimed Florida's 29 electoral votes, making his path to the White House much more likely. Still, we hoped North Carolina and Pennsylvania would swing our way and clinch Clinton's victory. By this time, the atmosphere in our small gathering had grown decidedly less celebratory. We collectively held our breaths for the next announcement, which came when Trump was declared victorious in North Carolina, followed by wins in Utah and Iowa before midnight. “How could this be happening?” Olivia cried. “All the polls said Hillary would win by a mile.” “That’s what happens when people sit out the election,” I muttered under my breath. “They are going to cost us the election.” “I can’t take this anymore,” Jessica said. “I’m going home to my kids. I’ll see the results in the morning.” “I’ll go with you,” Tamika said. “It’s going to be a crazy day at the law school tomorrow. I need my beauty sleep.” Olivia, Sarah, and I couldn’t pull ourselves away from the disaster playing out on the screen. At this point, Clinton's hopes hinged on the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The pollsters had predicted those states for Clinton, but by now we had seen how wrong the polls could be. All hopes were dashed when Pennsylvania was declared for Trump at 1:35 a.m. Clinton would have to capture Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona to climb her way out of the hole, and Trump was leading in all three states. Olivia stood unsteadily, drunk with wine and bad news, tears streaming down her face. “Time to give it up,” she said. “There’s no hope she can pull this out.” “Let me drive you home,” Sarah said, putting her arm around Olivia’s shoulders. “You shouldn’t drive in this state. I guess we won’t see a woman President in my lifetime.”

I am OBSESSED with Kat Dunn’s debut, the delectably carnal and unabashedly queer vampire novel Hungerstone, and not just because of that gorgeous cover design. Hungerstone is a re-envisioning of the vampire classic Carmilla, in which a Victorian wife’s meticulously ordered world comes apart at the seams when a strange, pale woman comes to visit and awakens hitherto hidden desires: for love, for vengeance, for flesh, and most of all, for an end to bourgeois boredom. Kat Dunn was kind enough to answer a few questions over email. MO: Can you tell us about the inspiration for your novel? What’s the place of Carmilla in vampire history, and how did it languish for so long in obscurity? KD: Carmilla was written by Sheridan le Fanu about twenty years before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula. Le Fanu was a well regarded, popular writer in his era, and much of his work, like Carmilla, was published in magazines. There’s been lots of discussion and research into where Le Fanu drew inspiration for Carmilla, but it formed a foundational part of both the gothic, and vampire, literary canon. I don’t know why it’s less well known than Dracula, but perhaps Dracula, ostensibly more ‘straight’, at least, on the surface, leant itself better to adaptation on film in the 20th century. MO: Is the vampire an inherently queer figure? KD: I think you could make that case! The vampire, and gothic horror in general, is so rooted in fear of—and attraction to—otherness, transgression, fracturing societal norms and control. I think there’s quite a large and complicated conversation you can have about how queerness was used in texts like Carmilla and Dracula, what any original intention or interpretation might have been, but nevertheless the vampire as outsider, as other, as misunderstood hero, as seducer, as fantasy or fear, remains a hallmark of queer media. MO: How did you go about writing desire in your novel? KD: Through Lenore I wanted to explore a character who moves from an extremely controlled state where the problem of desire is solved, suffocated, buried, to one where desire cannot be denied, and all the terror of disappointment, of exposure is laid bare. At the start of the novel, Lenore is an entirely mastered person, believing herself to be in control of her emotions, of the world around her. She has no vulnerability, no place in which she is exposed. She can be the perfect society wife, cope with any challenge, need nothing—it is only in food where this lie is exposed. She binge eats, and is hyper-aware of her husband Henry’s disgust at her appetite. Through the arrival of Carmilla, Lenore is forced to confront that her appetites, her desires, might be far larger, far more complex. Lenore desires Carmilla sexually, but she also longs for her company, her approval, and longs to be like her, uncowed, expansive, entirely true to herself. MO: There are so many books coming out concerned with women’s appetites—it seems that to eat is a bigger sin than to kill. What did you want to say about appetite, cravings, and bodies with Hungerstone? KD: I was interested in exploring a literal hunger as a metaphor for the way desire can become confused and obfuscated, and solved, instead, through a different, more base hunger. Carmilla says at one point, ‘You are feeding the wrong hunger.’ I was interested by the idea that our desires can often be so large, so frightening, so impossible to fulfil, or the disappointment in not having them met so threatening, so exposing, that we cannot face them dead on and instead turn to a more physical appetite that seems a simpler way to sate an appetite. We might not be able to control whether our desire for love, acclaim, justice, revenge is fulfilled—but we can control food, and our bodies, so our hunger shows up there instead. But of course that then can be monstrous and judged in and of itself—our appetite for food is where we are exposed as creatures of want, of desire, and that for women can be a sin in itself. MO: What do you think is behind the vampire revival in fiction? Did it just take a while to get over the embarrassment of Twilight? KD: I don’t think anyone has to be embarrassed by Twilight! I wasn’t a fan, personally, but there’s no shame in enjoying things, and I don’t think it would be very in keeping with the gothic to shame people for what they are drawn to. Perhaps it’s just that we’re far enough away from a dominant portrayal of vampires that there’s space for new takes to emerge. The struggle with the darker, less controlled, more feral side of our natures is an innately human thing, and is a question we will always come back to. MO: Do you consider your novel gothic? Why are we so intrigued by gothic tropes at the moment? KD: I definitely had the gothic literary tradition in mind as I was writing Hungerstone. I think the gothic is a perennial for exactly the reasons I’ve already explored—the desire for and horror of otherness, of transgression, of rejecting and defying norms, all speak to deeply to something deeply huma n in us, something we are drawn to and frightened of—and to externalize it as something supernatural, something unreal, gives us a fig leaf of plausible deniability so we can look at and enjoy something we can in the rest of our lives safely tell ourselves that we reject. MO: Why did you decide to set your novel in the moorlands? What is it that is so evocative about the setting? KD: The moors are such a classic gothic setting, offering a barren, challenging wildness that is at once so exposed and open, and yet so hostile to comfort. Writing a close first person narration, you spend a lot of time interpreting the world of the book, its events and all the characters in it through the opinions and prejudices of the main character, and setting—whether the moors of the Peak District or the crumbling Nethershaw estate—give an opportunity to reflect and show a different interpretation of things, to reveal something about our main character that they might not notice themselves. View the full article

The office was in a tenement building next to a bodega on St. Marks. I stepped around a grunge punk who was using the dirty window of the door as a shaving mirror, scraping the scalp on either side of his spiky Mohawk with a dry razor. Three sharp rings to the buzzer, per instructions, and I was in. Five flights up beyond the urine-scented vestibule, a door opened and a pudgy-faced blond kid in a Malcolm X hat led me into a gloomy, cluttered apartment filled with Salvation Army furniture, dusty books, peeling paint, and a sour haze of cigarette and b.o. aroma. Three men sat at a large oval table lit by a low-hanging fluorescent fixture. The blinds in the apartment were drawn. In one of the darkened windows an air conditioner labored noisily and without much apparent effect. Only Michael looked up at me. “You’re late,” he said. A clock on the wall behind him showed ten after five. I thought he was joking and smiled. He didn’t smile back. “Late on your first day,” he said, shaking his head. I still couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “Lucky for you it’s going to be slow anyway.” He introduced me to the blond kid who’d opened the door, Spanky; to Pat, a florid-faced Irishman with a shock of white hair; and to Bob, who had the broad shoulders and the thick neck of a linebacker and wore a green Lacoste shirt over a white T-shirt. Spanky and Pat nodded noncommittally. Bob said, “How ya doin’, Pete?” “All right. Should I just watch or what?” “Sit over there,” Michael commanded, gesturing to a seat at the end of the table. One of the six phones rang, and Pat, the Irishman, picked it up. “Yeah,” he said brusquely. “Not open yet. Call back in fifteen minutes.” I sat where I was, listening to the four of them converse. Somebody’s “bottom figure” was off by three thousand; an agent was asking for a higher commission; someone called Benny Cadillac had “a new sheet” for the office that was “fifty percent, fifty percent—a Dutch treat.” I had no idea what any of it meant. The phones continued to ring until Bob said, “Fuck it. Take ’em off the hooks. Let ’em wait,” and the other three men took the receivers off the hooks. Pat turned to look at me. He had a mottled pink face—a real Irish busted-capillary complexion—and eyes that were acid-washed blue. “I hear you’re a Harvard man.” I shrugged. “You must have fucked up pretty bad to be here, huh?” “Hey,” I said, nodding at Michael and Bob, “these guys went to Ivy League schools, too.” “Yeah, I already know about these bums. What’s your story?” “You mean where did I go wrong?” “Everybody’s got their story.” “What’s yours?” I said. “My story?” He laughed. “You want to know my story?” He looked from Michael to Bob. They were both stifling smirks. “I was on the executive board of two different companies.” “Look what your college education got you. A fucking Ph.D in collecting the vig.” “You’re kidding. Two companies?” “In the rag trade. You ever hear of. . .” He ticked off the names of a couple of well-known clothing manufacturers. “Well, I ran those.” He was serious. Michael and Bob said nothing. “So what happened?” I asked. “What happens. One of them went under. The other made an executive change.” “Just like that?” I said. “Was there a reason?” He shrugged. “A million reasons. And not one of them my fault. Now look at me. I’m sitting here with you fucks. I’ve got alimony, car payments, and my kid had to take out a loan for college. He’ll be paying $292 a month for the rest of his life.” Pat paused to let that sink in for a moment. “Not that he’s going to pay it,” he continued. “I will. I just haven’t told him yet.” “I had to pay off my own loan,” Michael said. “Yeah, and look what your college education got you. A fucking Ph.D in collecting the vig.” Before the office opened up, Michael made calls to several bookies around town to get their opening lines. Later I learned that the lines originated out of the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, put out by a well-known oddsmaker named Roxy Roxborough who was paid by the casinos to post a number that would anticipate the way the public would bet. Once he had a few sets of numbers, Michael averaged them out, or shaded them to sides he favored—that is, made it more appealing for bettors to take teams he thought would lose by giving them a cheaper price. When he was done, he said, “Ready?” and began reading off the spread: “Phillies two-ten, Astros sixty cents, Mets twelve cents . . .” while the rest of the crew worked their pencils on their sheets. I asked for an explanation of the numbers, and Michael said, “I thought you knew this shit.” “I know point spreads on football. Not this.” “Baseball works with a dime line and a twenty-cent line,” Spanky piped in. “You want to explain it to him?” Michael said. “Sure. See, Pete, let’s say you got the Astros, who are sixty-cent favorites over the Padres. That means that if you want to bet the Astros you have to pay a hundred and sixty to win a hundred. You understand that?” “I think so.” “And if you bet the dog, the Padres, you’re betting a hundred to win a hundred and fifty. That ten-dollar difference is the juice. You know about juice, right?” “Sure.” The juice, or the vigorish or the vig or the eleven-to-ten, was the ten percent commission that bookies collected on all losing bets. It was the profit margin, assuming they could get even action on both sides. “Basically, you’re trying to get the same amount of action on both sides, right?” I asked. “Most of the time.” “And when you get too much on one side, you lay off?” “Hey, he knows about laying off,” Pat said. Laying off was what they called it when a bookie who was getting too much money on a particular team called another bookie and made a bet on that same team, essentially giving away some of the business but at the cost of a five percent commission. “Yeah, sometimes we’ll go to the outs,” Michael said. “Outs,” I learned, were bookies who took other bookies’ layoff bets. “It depends.” “On what?” “On whether we’re on the right side or not. But you don’t need to know this stuff right now.” “What do I need to know?” “Just how to give lines to customers and write tickets.” “So how would it work with the Mets line?” Spanky asked me. The Mets were twelve-cent favorites over the Cubs. “Let’s see, the Mets would be a hundred and twelve dollars to win a hundred.” “That’s right! Very good! The kid’s a genius,” Bob said. “And the Cubs?” Spanky asked. “Ah, they’d be a hundred and two to win a hundred?” Spanky looked at me expectantly. I saw Bob and Michael raise their eyebrows. “It’d be the other way around, wouldn’t it?” Spanky said. “A hundred to win a hundred and two. Right?” “Oh, yeah. Right.” “Harvard,” Pat grumbled. “All right, that’s enough,” Michael said. “It’s time to open.” “Let’s rock and roll,” Bob said. I spun out a whole pipe dream just like that, me with cash buried under my floorboards, a fancy car, a plush crib. It was a nice fantasy. The minute the phones were back on their hooks they began to ring. Each of the six telephones sat on top of a tape recorder. All conversations were recorded, protection in case a customer decided to dispute a bet. On one wall six jacks were lined up. The lines worked on the hunt system—incoming calls kept searching until they found an open line. The whole setup looked way too elaborate for this dump of an apartment. “What did the guy who installed the jacks think was going on?” I asked. “We told him we were starting a travel agency,” Michael said. The others laughed. Over the next hour I watched as Michael, Pat, Bob, and Spanky fielded a steady stream of calls from around the country. They scribbled orders furiously on triple-sheeted betting slips, then flicked them into an empty cigar box in the middle of the table. Michael was charting—keeping a running account of how much was being bet on both sides of each game, so that he could make adjustments in the line. The lines were everything, I was informed, and it was crucial to keep adjusting them up or down to encourage equal betting on both sides. If too much money was coming in on one side, the price was simply adjusted in favor of the other side until it reached a level at which bettors would find it attractive to take the side we needed. “Sometimes the balance gets way out of whack,” Michael said, “and we’ll lay off some of it to another office. But we don’t always try to balance our books. Our feeling is that in the long run the vig will take care of us. A guy’s gotta win fifty-two point five percent of his bets just to break even against us. The key, really, is volume. If we get enough, we can’t help but make a profit.” During one lull in the action I learned that the apartment we were in belonged to a guy named Krause, who was asleep in the next room. I wondered what kind of person would allow such an invasion into his home even if he was getting, as I was told Krause was, his phone and utility bills taken care of and a couple of hundred bucks a week on top of that. Forget the fact that the living room was a pigsty—crooked paintings, a film of dirt on the walls, a flaking ceiling. Forget even that the tired-looking furniture had been shoved into corners to make room for the big fluorescent-lit worktable and that brown shopping bags were scattered around, piled high with garbage and cigarette droppings. How could anyone tolerate the daily violation of his privacy? At ten to eight Spanky started sorting through the pile of tickets that had accumulated in the cigar box during the session, arranging them in some kind of order. When he finished, he spit into his hands, rubbed them together briskly, and with tremendous speed and dexterity, began separating the white top copies from the yellow bottom copies. The pink bottom copies had been torn off and “ducked” into a hiding place at the time the tickets were written. Michael said, “You don’t have to stick around while we close up, Pete.” I took this as a cue to leave rather than an offer, and I got up. “Tomorrow’s going to be busy, but why don’t you come in Thursday morning? It’ll be slow enough so you can learn some stuff—that is, if you still think you want to.” “Yeah,” I said. “I think I do.” I walked to the subway station through the hot, crowded, still-light streets of the East Village, which seemed different to me now than they had a few hours before. I felt as if I had been walking around with blinders on, oblivious to the secret doings that I now suspected were taking place inside every run-down tenement, behind every facade and storefront. I was excited by what I had seen in Krause’s dark apartment. Waiting for the IRT back to Brooklyn, I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if I started making the kind of money that Michael was making. What would Anna think? Would she be horrified? Amused? I spun out a whole pipe dream just like that, me with cash buried under my floorboards, a fancy car, a plush crib. It was a nice fantasy. But dangerous because it got me thinking about Anna. It made me want to know what would happen, how she would feel if I could actually offer her something more than love. Back in Brooklyn, I climbed the five creaky flights to my studio, lugging an armful of magazines I had purchased at the Clark Street station in an effort to bring myself back to earth. It was hot in the apartment, and I grabbed a Coke out of the refrigerator and sat in the red velvet armchair by the open window, happy for the slight breeze off the river. Still breathing hard from the climb, I paged through Men’s Health and Men’s Journal and Fitness and Health, jotting down the names of editors to contact, along with mailing addresses, telling myself what I needed to do was keep up the job hunt, not relax it or get diverted. Working for Michael was a short-term thing until I could find other work. That was all. Fate had thrown it into my lap, and I had followed up because it was expedient, a way to relieve some of the money pressure, the anxiety. And it gave me something to do. . . . * On Thursday, when I arrived at the office, Spanky handed me a list of names with some columns of figures beside them. Michael and Bob had hero sandwiches spread out before them, bits of lettuce and tomato spilling onto the white waxy wrapping paper. The two of them chewed noisily, nodding when Spanky said, “He should learn this shit, right?” With his high-pitched wise-guy voice and the scraggly blond hair spilling out from under his X cap, Spanky was a nineties version of a Dead End Kid. He had been the most junior clerk until my arrival, and he seemed to take pleasure in being able to show me the ropes. “These are the weekly figures,” he said. “Study ’em. Familiarize yourself with the names.” The names were grouped in bunches, and next to each group Spanky wrote another name, using a felt-tipped pen. “This is the name of the agent—the sheet name. Each cluster of bettors is part of a separate sheet represented by an agent.” He pointed to one group of names: Dodge, Jaguar, Pinto, Camaro, Ford, and so on. “Like, the agent for this group is Tranny. When Dodge calls, he’ll say, ‘This is Dodge for Tranny.’ ” “What do the agents do?” I asked. Spanky looked at Michael, who nodded at him. Spanky explained: “Each group of these bettors has an agent. He’s the guy who’s responsible for them. They pay him and then he pays us, or vice versa.” “What if they don’t pay him?” “If a guy doesn’t pay, it doesn’t matter. The agent still has to pay us.” “Yeah, but what if the agent doesn’t pay?” Spanky ignored the question, forging onward. “Okay, when you take a bet, you write both names down at the top of the slip. So a typical bet might go, ‘Dodge for Tranny, Mets plus fifty-three, for a dollar.’ Which means?” I shook my head. Wingnut had apparently lost $8,000 for the week, $5,000 of it in one night. Scarecrow had lost $12,500. And a player named Meat had lost a grand total of $23,220. “That Dodge is putting a hundred dollars on the Mets, who are fifty-three-cent underdogs. So if he wins, he gets how much? ” “Uh …” “A hundred and fifty-three for his hundred-dollar bet.” “Right.” “And if he bets against the Mets?” “If he’s playing the favorite, then he’s paying a hundred and, uh…” “Sixty-three. Remember? The ten-dollar difference is the juice.” I looked over his shoulder as he began writing something on a betting slip. “For the suckers, though,” he said, sliding the betting slip over, “we give ’em a different line.” “How do I know who the suckers are?” “You’ll learn after a while.” I picked up the slip of paper. He had written: 0-10 = 5-6; 10-20 – 5.5-6.5; 20-30 = 6-7; 30-40 – 6.5-7.5; 40-50 = 7-8; 50-60 = 7.5—8.5; 60-70 – 8-9; 70-80 = 8.5-9.5; 80-90 = 9-10; over 90 it becomes a 30-cent line. My head was beginning to spin. “Keep this until you can make the conversions yourself,” Spanky said. “When a sucker calls, let’s say we’re using thirteen cents on the Dodgers. You look at this chart, it becomes five and a half, six and a half. Five and a half is actually a hundred and ten, and six and a half is actually a hundred and thirty. Which means that the sucker is betting a hundred to win a hundred and ten when he takes the dog, and laying a hundred and thirty to win a hundred when he takes the favorite. So he’s paying twenty percent vig instead of ten. It seems more complicated than it really is.” I wanted to say “I’ll bet,” but I refrained. Spanky wrote out another key for me on a separate betting slip. This one translated the shorthand terms for different units of money. In the language of gamblers a dollar equaled $100 and fifty cents equaled $50, but just to confuse things a nickel was $500, a dime was $1,000, and the times sign—an X—was five dollars, as in 20 X equals $100. After the session I went back to my Brooklyn cubbyhole. There was no mail of any interest, and the only message was from my mom. Sad. I pulled out the stapled pages that Spanky had given me and looked them over. There were eight columns of numbers next to each name—one number for each day of the week and a total at the end. Six pages of names. I counted three hundred. In each column, there was a positive or negative amount. There seemed to be more negative amounts than positive. Wingnut had apparently lost $8,000 for the week, $5,000 of it in one night. Scarecrow had lost $12,500. And a player named Meat had lost a grand total of $23,220. Holy shit. These were not kidding-around numbers. I put the sheet down and studied the scraps of paper on which Spanky had written out the various keys and explanations. Dizzying. I took a break and returned my mother’s call. My mother’s approach to my various problems, both monetary and otherwise, was definitely of the Western medicine school and entailed dealing with symptoms, not root causes. Guilt, disappointment, and anger were things we rarely talked about directly. “There were a couple of want ads in this Sunday’s Times” she told me right off. “Did you see them?” “Yeah, I circled a few.” “Any other leads?” “Not really.” “What about your friend at Time?” “He says they’re cutting back. Definitely not hiring.” “Have you given any more thought to freelancing?” “Uh-huh. But I talked to a couple of editors I know, and they both said they’re not making new assignments right now; they’re working off of inventory. The magazines that aren’t folding are cutting back. It’s grim.” “What about Esquire? Did you decide against writing a piece about Winnie’s son?” “No, I queried the guy. I haven’t heard back from him. But you know how that is. It’s why I don’t want to get back into freelancing.” “You’re going to have to do something, Pete.” “I understand that,” I said, and in a flash of anger nearly added, “I am doing something, Ma. I’m working for a bookie,” just to see what she would say. __________________________________ Excerpted from The Vig: Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie by Peter Alson, published by Arbitrary Press. Copyright © Peter Alson. Reprinted by permission of Arbitrary Press. View the full article

There are people out there who can’t enjoy a book without someone virtuous to root for. There are also people who only go to restaurants that serve chicken fingers. In each case, you would hope those people are all children, but they aren’t. If you like your heroes anti, and you like your menu diverse, I’d like to direct you to a few books featuring not-so-good folks in prominent roles that may tickle your fancy. I tend to write key characters who are downright criminal at heart—like in my latest, THEY ALL FALL THE SAME—but who you somehow pull for anyway. Creating such a character relies on craft, intuition, trial and error, and a few trusted beta readers who can tell you when you’ve struck a winning balance between virtue and vice. Here are some great books featuring characters that hit that sweet spot. Frank Guidry in NOVEMBER ROAD Lou Berney lets you know right out of the chute that Guidry is a ruthless man. Guidry is a foot soldier for a New Orleans organized crime boss so powerful, he upends the United States government and the history books all over a personal grudge. This is a spoiler for sure, but it happens in the first chapter, so I’m going to spill it. When we look in on Guidry, he is immediately forced to choose between getting sideways with his boss or giving up the life of his mentor. He barely hesitates to sell his mentor out, rationalizing that if he doesn’t do it, someone else will. If he feels any guilt about it, he shakes it off quickly enough to bed a redhead he just met. Trouble is, his mentor was a loose end, and it’s not long before Guidry realizes he is one too. And he faces the same fate. He goes on the run with a particularly lethal killer close on his tail and soon concludes his single-man-on-the-road profile is a giveaway. Dual storylines come together when Guidry encounters a wayward housewife from Oklahoma and her young daughters. He hatches a plan to join them as a cover and proceeds to derail their trip long enough to charm his way into their party, knowing all the while that linking up risks the family’s lives. Before long Berney deftly pits Guidry’s survival instincts against his late-developing affection for his traveling companions and his urge to preserve his soul. Claire in YOU’D LOOK BETTER AS A GHOST Can you root for a serial killer? How about a snarky British one with a vicious inner dialogue who weighs whether to kill nearly everyone she meets? Joanna Wallace makes the audacious bet that you will as Claire wields a hammer to do the unthinkable again and again. Wallace slowly teases out the origins behind Claire’s cold-bloodedness as the pages draw on, detailing a troubled childhood that pits a loving father against a mother who sees pitch-black darkness in the child nearly from the start. It seems at first that Wallace will take the predictable, easy course: that Claire will only kill lowlifes who deserve what they get. It soon becomes clear that she didn’t play it that safe. She dares readers to turn away as the bodies pile up and a mystery builds—not about who has done the killing, because it’s Claire each time—but who has found her out. Beauregard “Bug” Montague in BLACKTOP WASTELAND S.A. Cosby is the current world heavyweight champion of getting readers to root for characters with a robust criminal history and a reluctant criminal present. Bug is a perfect example of that: someone doing wrong for a right reason. A father and legitimate business owner, it’s not all his fault that he’s drawn back to his felonious past when his lawful livelihood is threatened. Bug is still the best wheelman in Virginia and anywhere close. When he takes that one last job you just know he’s going to take, it’s his associates who derail him from making it clean, but even then, he’s not looking to hurt anybody who doesn’t deserve it. Even at his most audacious, Cosby keeps Bug to the good side of ruthless, because at heart, he’s someone who’s not as bad as his worst deeds. Teardrop in WINTER’S BONE Teardrop is not the protagonist of WINTER’S BONE. That would be his sixteen-year-old niece, Ree Dolly—an indelible character herself. The fact that Teardrop leaps off the page as well is a testament to Daniel Woodrell’s mastery. Teardrop is a man so bad that he strikes fear into the bad men most others fear. His temperament is as bleak as the Ozark winter he inhabits. Ree’s father is missing—Teardrop’s little brother—and it could cost her, her helpless mother, and her young brothers their home if he doesn’t turn up. Dead or alive. In line with the harsh criminal code of the mountains he follows, and that his brother may have broken, Teardrop declines to intervene. Only after it becomes clear that Ree is willing to give her life under that same code does Teardrop finally relent. Once their purposes align, Woodrell drops one of the greatest brief exchanges the genre has ever seen. She (Ree) yawned and said, “You always have scared me, Uncle Teardrop.” He said, “That’s ‘cause you’re smart.” It’s not often you find yourself cheering someone so frightening. Teardrop is something special, and he’s chilling until the uncertain end. Jack Foley in OUT OF SIGHT Elmore Leonard made a career out of getting readers to ride along happily with outlaws of one sort or another, so there’s no shortage of characters or books for this list, but Jack Foley is one of his better creations. The two things Foley can’t resist are robbing banks and U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco. Foley notoriously robbed a bank the day he got out of prison. He robbed another just for enough money to get back on his ex-wife’s good side. If Foley has a problem, robbing a bank is the solution. That is until he ends up pulling thirty in a Florida prison after getting involved in a road rage incident while fleeing a heist. After he piggybacks on a prison break, things quickly go amiss and he ends up in a trunk with Sisco. When he should be thinking about prolonging his own freedom, he instead fixates on how he can spend some quality time with the alluring marshal. Thanks to his charm and lustrous blue eyes, Sisco craves a rendezvous with him too. The action shifts from sunny Florida to chilly Detroit, but neither’s passions ever cool. After the two get mixed up with some truly ruthless scoundrels in The D, Sisco has to choose between making Foley her man or bringing him in. My new novel THEY ALL FALL THE SAME attempts to thread this same needle. It has been likened to The Sopranos meet the Hatfields and McCoys. The protagonist, Burl Spoon, would feel right at home on a road trip with Frank, Claire, Bug, Teardrop, and Jack. If you find yourself drawn to that gray area between crime and righteousness, you may want to take a spin with any one of them. *** View the full article

In many novels and films, plotlines concerning mature women having relationships with teenage boys are prevalent. Many of these stories (my favorite being the 1995 Gus Van Sant crime flick, To Die For) tell the tale of steamy, forbidden love filled with passion, but in the real world that same scenario isn’t always as sexy. Thinking back to the summer of 1978, the year that I turned 15, that identical experience with a beautiful woman proved to be more frightening than exciting. Most summers my brother and I spent in Pittsburgh with my Aunt Ricky, but that year, having recently turned 15 in June, I got my first real job working at a senior citizen apartment building in Harlem. Owned by the Jackie Robinson Development Corporation, it was operated by the great baseball player’s widow Rachel, for whom my biological father Lafayette Dixon worked, and he had gotten me the gig toiling alongside the maintenance men. In addition to sweeping, mopping, and helping the elderly tenants move heavy items in their flats, there was also a large garden in the backyard that required daily watering and weed pulling. I was the youngest person working with grown men, guys in their 30s and 40s, with the oldest dude serving as our supervisor. Sitting behind a paper cluttered metal desk, he was an overweight gentleman who gave us our daily assignments. Having grown up with Grandma and her friends, I was used to being around older folks, a few of whom just needed another ear to tell their stories to. There was one guy who stood in front of the building every morning and, when I arrived at 8:00 AM, yelled, “Off to the coal mines again.” Meanwhile, Miss Harrison, a Georgia native who came to New York City as a teenager and never left, told great Harlem tales that included Lindy Hopping at the Savoy. “We would practice all day and dance all night,” she said. I enjoyed talking to the elders, listening to their stories of the days “when Harlem was Harlem,” when one could stroll the streets without fear. “Not like today,” they’d whisper as though it were a secret. “You never know what might step out of the shadows.” The men I worked with were cool, though the first week they swore I was a spy for my dad and Mrs. Robinson. Hell, I hadn’t even met Mrs. Robinson yet, but had a clear memory of my childhood babysitter taking me to Riverside Church to view my boss’ celebrated husband Jackie lying in state after his death from a heart attack in October, 1972. I was 9 at the time, and soon schooled on Jackie’s greatness on the baseball field. After retiring in 1957 he began building businesses in Harlem, including the Freedom National Bank of Harlem, a construction company, and several real estate holdings. Mrs. Robinson kept it flowing after his death. Occasionally she visited the property and, warned by her staff the day before, we made a mad dash to make everything sparkle. Mrs. Robinson carried herself in a regal fashion, but she was always nice to the staff and residents. The supervisor was a southern expat who didn’t talk much; the same couldn’t be said about my other three co-workers, who were fine when by themselves, but together were crude, rude, and raunchy when we were in the basement office/headquarters on break or during lunch. Their interests were mostly sports and sex, neither subject I knew much about. On the wall there was a Jet calendar with each month featuring a nude Black woman; I glanced at it while those guys talked big bad stuff about the women they had sex with, bragging about the size of the woman’s breasts and booties and the wildness of various acts. Compared to a few of my friends I was slow, because I didn’t have a girlfriend and had never had sex. As a young Black nerd into comic books, movies, music, and writing (I was already a budding cultural critic), I wasn’t pressed. Of course, there were a few young teens from my hood that were sexually active, but I wasn’t one of them. Perhaps it was the influence of Catholic school or my homeboy Kevin getting his girlfriend pregnant when we were 13, but I just knew I was content waiting until college. Besides, to my young ears, my co-workers’ ideas of sex was obscene and the way they talked about the subject was nauseating. They made sex sound as sensuous as a wrestling match, though in my mind it should’ve been more like ballet with an orchestrated Barry White score. Years later I realized that half the stuff they spouted was most likely lies. One gloomy afternoon when I just couldn’t take it anymore, I blurted, “Can’t you fools talk about anything besides sex?” That was the biggest mistake of my tenure. “Why?” one screamed back, “Don’t you like sex?” Afterwards I was teased for days about my virgin status and the fact that I wasn’t even trying to get any. Still, I did have my secret crushes and daydreams that consisted of cuties from school, Mom’s fine friends, and various girlies from around the way, but I just kept those thoughts to myself. Like most young men of my generation, I learned about sex from movies (James Bond, Shaft and Superfly were my guides) and the streets. Attending public school for 1st grade at P.S. 186, I somehow learned the word “pussy” and decided to Bic pen scribble it on my Banana Splits bed sheet. In the trash room a few years later, me and the crew found a bunch of XXX glossies, which were my introduction to semen. “What is that?” I asked, totally grossed out. My friend Marvin looked at me as though I was crazy. “Haven’t you ever seen cum before?” he asked. I wasn’t a prude, but the concept of sex seemed too complex for me to comprehend. The summer job lasted for six weeks. My last day at work was anti-climactic, with no party or big deal made. “It was nice working with you,” was the most anyone said. Seven days after I turned in my badge and I.D., my father called and invited me on a fishing trip. I almost started laughing. Here was a man who never showed up for any of my boyhood events or parties, but was requesting that we board a boat together. “Of course I’ll go,” I replied. *** Lafayette lived in Westchester, in the primarily white village of Larchmont, with my stepmom Angus and her son Brian. By car, it was 40 minutes (and a lifetime) away from the bustling blocks of my Harlem neighborhood. Lafayette picked me up in his gray Volvo every month or so, but I usually spent more time with Angus and Brian than with him. However, the Sunday morning of the fishing trip we rose at dawn and drove a great distance to a pier where a large boat was docked. The only other time I’d gone fishing was in my Uncle Donald’s rowboat in Pittsburgh, but this was something different. When one of Lafayette’s friends met us on the boat, I soon realized this was really about him having a business meeting on the Hudson while I amused myself. To make matters worse, he thought we could rent rods on the boat, but we were actually required to bring our own gear. Thankfully I enjoyed being on the river, leaning over the railing to watch the tiny waves while thinking about joining the Merchant Marines (as I’d seen on a Samuel R. Delany paperback as one of his former jobs) and fantasizing on what was below the water, be it a mermaid or Sub-Mariner. Overhead seagulls soared, squawked, and dove into the river for fish. We were scheduled to be on the boat for a few hours. I was glad I had also bought a book with me, Strange Wine by Harlan Ellison that I read until lunch. Afterwards I was once again alone, staring at the river, when an attractive Black woman I’d noticed earlier came over to the railing and stood next to me. She looked to be in her early 30s. Always mannerable, I might’ve spoken first. “What are you reading?” she asked. I showed her the cover. “I’ve never heard of him.” “He writes science fiction and fantasy stories.” “Oh,” she said. Dressed in a flowing summer dress and sandals, she looked lovely, but when she spoke the strong scent of rum wafted from her mouth, singeing my nose hairs in the process. “My name is Clara.” “I’m Michael.” “It’s so nice to meet you, Michael. Are you alone?” “My father is around here somewhere.” Clara was silent for a few minutes and then she said, “I just got a divorce a few months back. I’m so glad that’s over.” “Really?” I mumbled. While I knew what divorce was, I’d never discussed the subject with a woman that actually had one. “He was the worst. Cheap and mean; whatever you do in life, try not to be that.” “I’ll try.” “Do you have a girlfriend?” “No. My mom says I can’t date until I’m 16.” “How old are you?” “15.” Clara smiled and moved closer to me. “That’s a good age.” “Thank you.” “You’re very handsome. You should come visit me at my apartment.” I was dumbfounded. Though I knew exactly what she meant, I had no idea how to reply. “What are we going to do at your apartment?” She smiled wickedly. “Before or after we make love?” Without warning she stepped closer, leaned in and kissed me. For a few seconds my lips were sealed, but ultimately her wild tongue pierced them open and slipped into my mouth. “French kiss,” the kids used to call it. The entire episode lasted about two minutes, but it felt like forever. I could taste her rum. That was literally my first kiss and it had been stolen by a drunken stranger. Years of sneaking peeks at my stepdad’s Playboy magazines, sex education on the front stoop of my building, and those raunchy comments from my former co-workers should’ve prepared me, but truthfully I just wanted to run as far as possible and hide. While writers often celebrate these risqué circumstances between older women and teenage boys, I simply felt disgusted. Still, I had no idea how to respond to her aggressive behavior and did nothing. Stepping back, Clara opened her clutch, took out a pack of matches and a pen. She printed her name and phone number and passed it to me. “Please call.” “I’m moving to Baltimore next week,” I said, which was actually the truth. She laughed. “I’m sure you’ll be back to visit. Call me then.” Though I was silent I already knew that I wouldn’t be calling that woman. After the boat docked, Lafayette and I walked down the plank and made it to the car. Before getting in I turned around and saw Clara with her friends. Carefree and laughing, when she caught me glancing over she winked. While that would’ve been the beginning of a great romance for some, I just wanted to get far away. For days, months and years I kept that matchbook hidden. Every now and then I would be tempted to dial her number, curious as to how far I would go. The machismo side of my brain argued that an affair with an older woman would be the best lesson on making love while the sensitive side felt violated and wanted to call the police. For years I kept the Clara story to myself—-never told my parents, friends, or the wonderful therapist I had in the ‘90s when I was trying to control my various vices, sex being one of them. However, whenever I hear of another woman teacher scandal with a male student, there is always some guy who says, “Damn, that boy was lucky.” Without a doubt, there seems to be very little outrage when it comes to teen boys being sexually abused or assaulted by older women, as though it’s a rite of passage that they should make them proud. When it comes to teen boys it seems as though the age of consent, which was 17 in 1978, is rarely considered. Lost in a fantasy that would be the perfect text for Penthouse Forum, they have no idea how destructive that sort of behavior can have on boys not ready to be men. View the full article

OPENING SCENE: Is the backstory for the novel. Sets the tone which drives the plot, as it is the basis for the core wounds for both the protagonist and the antagonist. Jacksonville, Florida 1980 The sky was strange and unnatural. Within its blended richness of silver, charcoal, and sapphire hues, the clouds swirled through the atmosphere like spirits returning from the dead to haunt those places they’d left behind. Palido found this added eeriness unsettling. He already had enough fragility in his head without the inclusion of lost or wayward souls. He glanced to the heavens in search of solace from the evil within. He wanted to ask for God’s help to ease his pain, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. His grandmother had always put her problems in God’s hands and prayed for him that he’d do the same. But he didn’t need any help. Not from God. Not from anybody. He had always taken care of himself. He often wanted to tell his grandmother that for as much as he wanted to take heart, he simply didn’t believe. He couldn’t believe. To tell her that he had never felt His presence, not even in the best of times. He knew he was stuck with the cards he was dealt. As unfair as it seemed, he knew unlike poker, there was no draw in the game of life, so played his hand as close to the rules of the street as he could. Even now, standing alone at the corner, reconsidering the life he had been given, there was no way his cards could have been dealt by the hand of God. His narrowing eyes checked his watch for the third time in five minutes when a streak of light flashed somewhere off to his left. Lightning, he thought. He glanced up to the ominous sky and shook his head, knowing he should have worn his raincoat. A hoodie seemed like the better choice at the time. He pushed the hood from his head, increasing his field of vision, and saw it again. The light scattered through the bushes like stars twinkling in the night’s sky, and Palido knew it was them. He wanted to appear comfortable, but his stiff body was rooted, as anchored as the light pole he leaned against as he watched them slowly ease past. The driver killed the lights and brought the car to a stop by the side of a dark, dilapidated building. He left the engine running. Palido pushed off the pole and shuffled towards them. He opened the right-side rear door and a got in, wary of the three men inside: two in the front, and one in the back. All sat in silence. The front seat passenger turned in his seat, leaning slightly forward, maintaining eye contact with the newly added passenger before asking, “Where’s Angel?” “How the fuck should I know? I’m here. Worry about that,” Palido scoffed. More silence, but only for a moment. The front seat passenger continued. “Are you sure about this? I think we’re going too big. It’s too soon.” “Yo, you wiggin’. I’m in.” More silence. The car with the four men crept around to the other side of the building and parked near an overgrown tree beneath a seclusive canopy of its heavying branches. Palido got back out and shut the door. A steady breeze carrying with it the scent of rancid garbage followed him as he leaned into the already opened window. “Give me the bank. I’ll check you later.” “I don’t like it,” the driver said again. The backseat passenger handed Palido a sizeable, beige colored envelope. He snatched it from him, eagerly opening it to examine its contents. The envelope contained a six-and-a-half-inch bundle of crisp twenties held tightly together with a green rubber band. The sight was even better than Palido had imagined. A soft whistle passed over his lips. His eyes widened as he laughed out loud, “Fuck this, I’m goin’ ghost!” The one in the back frowned, and the two in the front stared blankly ahead. Palido’s laugh weakened to a nervous chuckle as he shook his head. “You guys need to chill out.” He folded the top of the envelope over to secure its contents and shoved the bundle deep into the front pocket of his hoodie. He slipped the hood on over his long, greasy blonde hair and pulled down on the strings, drawing it tightly around his face. “We can hook up in an hour at the usual.” Palido tapped twice on the roof. “Wish me luck.” “If this goes as easy as you say it will, you shouldn’t need luck.” Palido smirked, pointing to the heavens as he turned to leave, “Peace to the gods...” ***** The three left in the car sat in silence as they watched him walk away. It wasn’t until he was completely out of sight that the driver spoke. “I don’t like the feel of this. It’s hinky.” “Who knows? Maybe he’s active. They’re why he goes by Palido, for chrissake. He said to trust him. There’s not much more we can do.” “I know what he said, but we all know he’s weak. A poser. A punk. And an arrogant one, at that. Thinks he’s way smarter than he is. That’s what bothers me. A key? Don’t you agree that’s too much of a jump from nine grams?” “Nothing we can do about it now. Let’s get out of here before someone sees us. We’ll grab a quick bite. Shouldn’t be long.” The driver shifted the transmission into drive and pulled slowly away from the curb. ***** Four blocks away on a corner lot off Talleyrand Ave stood a small-scale, abandoned building. Built in the early 1920’s, this modest structure was a part of a residential neighborhood which housed mainly blue-collar workers. The man who owned it, like many of his neighbors, worked for the Ford Motor Company manufacturing Ford’s Model T. The homes were walking distance from the plant which made the location convenient. Production of the Model T in Jacksonville ended in 1932, but the plant remained in operation as a distribution hub and continued to do so until 1968 when Ford closed the business for good. Most of the homeowners found other work and moved east, while others tightened their belts and hunkered down, spending their last days on earth within a meager style of living. Any properties left unsold to residents got caught up in a rezoning whirlwind and scarfed up by commercial owners who saw the promising future for a business venture on the beautiful St. John’s River. Which was exactly what happened with the wee corner house. Several businessowners gave it a go, but the location was unforgiving. The area remained industrial, never taking off commercially like everyone had hoped. A little over ten years later, the once loving home sat sad and neglected. Its boarded windows, peeling paint and overgrown shrubbery created the perfect place for anyone demanding secrecy. In the end of its existence, it had been used for nothing more than storage, filled with abandoned boxes stacked eight feet high and three feet deep giving little allowance to functionality. Tonight, five men were packed into what little space was left in the largest room of the forgotten structure. An aerial view would have likened the men’s position to the number five side of a die. One man seated in the middle like the center dot, the other four standing post in each of the four corners. All five were Latino and spoke Spanish with slightly different dialects, but communication amongst them did not appear hindered. Everyone understood the universal language of disloyalty. Badly beaten, the man in the center sat slumped over at the waist, his wrists bound behind his back and his ankles tied to the chair’s legs. Even with his eyes swollen shut, he could still see the seriousness of his situation. Bloody, bruised and in immense pain, the Puerto Rican managed a smile. They may have made and tortured him, but he never gave in. He had paid the ultimate price, but his life would be all they’d get. His only regret was coming alone. He should have waited for Palido like they had planned.

The premise of Drew Hancock's debut film, Companion, is nothing new. A lonely man falls in love with his AI personal assistant, only for her to gain a self-preservation instinct and eventually try to kill him. It's a little bit Her, a little bit Westworld. And yet, it gets something right about artificial intelligence that neither of those "robot who can love" stories do. Iris (played masterfully by Yellowjackets' Sophie Turner) never goes against her programming. She doesn't transcend into a higher state of being like Scarlett Johansson's Samantha or wake up at the center of the maze like Evan Rachel Wood's Dolores. There is no mystical crossing-the-threshold moment where she becomes more than the sum of her parts. Instead, Iris becomes dangerous when her owner Josh (played by Jack Quaid) jailbreaks her. He ups her self-preservation instincts and disables the safeguards that prevent her from hurting humans to orchestrate the death of a rich man he plans to rob. Everything that happens after that – her getting ahold of Josh's phone and upping her own intelligence, her making a run for it, and eventually killing Josh – can be seen as essentially a result of this change in prime directive. Her main objective switches from making Josh happy to staying alive. This not only feels more realistic but leaves us with an interesting question: Is Iris alive? Not in the sense of "is she organic?" but in the sense of "does she have rights as a sentient being?" The movie certainly makes you sympathize with her. She does everything a human being would do in her situation, including crying when Josh forces her to burn herself. But there is nothing that directly disproves what Josh continues to say about her: that her feelings aren't real, that she is simply programmed to mimic the behaviors of someone who is feeling them. Which brings us to the central question of possibly every piece of fiction about AI ever: How can we notice when AI becomes conscious? When has it become aware? When can a robot love? The traditional answer is the Turing test. Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, said that we will know when computers have reached human-level intelligence when a human interrogator can ask the same questions to a human and a machine and not know which one is which. It seems like a simple test... and yet, its efficacy in determining if a machine has a sense of self has basically been disproven. We now live in the world of ChatGPT and DeepSeek. Large language models (LLMs) pass the Turing Test all the time. And yet, virtually no one believes LLMs are conscious or that they possess human-like intelligence. At one point in the movie, Josh's friend Eli (Harvey Guillén) professes his love for his robot companion Patrick (Lukas Gage). Patrick, newly aware he is a robot, professes it back. Patrick says he doesn't care if the memory of their meet-cute at a Halloween party was programmed; it still feels real to him. Likewise, Eli says he doesn't care that Patrick's love was programmed – it likewise feels real. This scene felt genuine, and it's a situation I can see happening if an invention like the companion robots were ever made. Because, ultimately, the answer to the question of whether robots can experience love is as unanswerable as the question of whether we live in The Matrix. The question then becomes: if we can't ever know when and if our creations have become conscious, what do we do about it? It's a question we're a long way off from answering as a society, but I expect, much like Eli, we might end up having to answer it with our hearts as much as our heads.

Martin Hill Ortiz The School for Dangerous Design Chapter One Mister Specter "A ghost is here to see you," Nurse Shannon said in her gravelly voice before waddling off with the emptied lunch tray, leaving behind a sly smile. Reb perked up in her bed. A ghost? These last few days in the hospital had been so-o boring. Even with a phone for company, she could peck out only so many texts and view only so many videos. She wasn't like her school friends, rabid judges carrying out the never-ending cosmic duty of assigning likes or dislikes. To jokey photos. To songs. To Tik-Tok challenges and snarky comments. To Reb, it all seemed so repetitive a chore. So lame. And why couldn't you judge something as "kind of like, kind of hate"? And why not "who cares?" With her elderly roommate, Mrs. Menendez, one bed over, complaining about every bit of noise, Reb had resorted to watching the television mounted high on the wall with the sound off. Right now, a comedy show. Sort of. Silent actors mouthed lines and made goofy or shocked faces and paused for what must have been laughs. Reb thought it the weirdest thing on earth. The world is insane. The food here is terrible. And why am I even being forced to stay in this hospital? "You are lucky to be alive," the doctors told her after the explosion. Okay, but she wasn't sick or hurt and, other than missing a week of memory, nothing more bad had happened. Nothing that should keep her stuck in a hospital bed. And why does everyone stare at me like I'm a freak? Her dad and her mom and Nurse Shannon and Doctor Ramirez winced when they saw her. Even Mrs. Menendez, who had a PVC tube sticking out of her chest, gave her a critical eye. And then there was how her friend Jenny had written on a get-well card—in handwriting so perfect it almost seemed snobbish—"Glad they found you." I was never lost. Was I? While waiting for her "ghostly" visitor, Reb spent a minute examining herself in a pocket mirror, thinking that maybe everyone else knew something she didn't. Nothing seemed different. All her human parts were in human places. A man, more of a ghoul than a ghost, appeared in the doorway. Maybe sixty, he was skeleton-thin and dressed like the head of a funeral home: a black suit with a midnight-blue tie, knotted crisply and drawn tightly against his bulging Adam's apple. His arms dangled at his sides and his jacket sleeves were magician-sized, vast enough to hide a thousand scarves and several rabbits; the cuffs of a white shirt peeked out. His eyes bugged and were wide open, and as they shifted from side to side surveying the room, he seemed to think out each brief closing of their lids. He's a cyborg and his eyes are cameras, Reb thought, each blink a snapshot. She glanced at Mrs. Menendez to see if she was weirded out. She slept, her mouth a lazy oval, drool running down her cheek.

I've always wanted to be one of them.

We just can't get enough of this article. I wonder why?