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You remember the stains on your mother’s skin. Colors caked under her nails, streaked across her forehead and feathered into her eyebrows. You recall the dizzying smell of turpentine that clung to her clothes and how one night, while she whispered stories to you in bed, you reached up and pulled hardened specks of blue from her pale hair. You stood in her studio as a very young child, four, five, maybe and watched her, hovering just out of her line of sight, and you believed the colors came from her, that they existed inside her belly and flowed through her arms and out through the skin of her palms onto the canvas. You wondered if they lived in you too, if you were magic like her. Even after you became aware of the many tubes- with names like vermillion, cobalt blue, burnt sienna- you were sure that her paintings were unlike any others and she was able to alter the very chemistry of the oils. Like Jesus turning water into wine. ** When she painted, everything went away for her. She went into a frenzy. Years later, in a tent church with dirt floors you watched a woman speak in tongues and dance as if a ghost had crawled into her. It reminded you of your mother. She moved like a woman possessed, her brushes singing clairvoyance onto canvas. She knew things. She heard things others couldn't hear, saw things others didn't see. You tried to understand. You tried so hard, sitting on the floor of the closet in her studio with the door cracked. Looking back you wonder what else you were supposed to be doing. There was no nanny, no one to take care of you. You remember hunger, hard and cold, in your stomach between breakfast and dinner. She never remembered lunch. She never remembered you. Us. Charlotte would sometimes stay with you, curling her hair around a finger and sucking a thumb, reaching her legs up to move coats with her bare feet. It made you anxious, her languidness, her ability to lie there all day without looking out. She didn't seem interested. You were transfixed. Perhaps you have reason to feel neglected, to feel angry she paid you no attention. You only remember how you had to remind yourself to breathe, how you were afraid you’d would make a sound and distract her. She’d stop sometimes and look around sharply, staring occasionally at a corner or looking behind her as if someone was standing there. She painted red faces and smeared grimaces screaming out from the canvas. She painted little girls draped in trees, their legs dangling, their bodies lost in foliage. She painted stone walls in England with horses grazing in a field. Cafes in Paris. New York skyscrapers reflected in puddles. A small village in Germany with purple and green grapes hanging from vines like ornaments. She painted a church surrounded by a spiked fence with a faceless figure in the corner leaning towards it.

We all know A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella about a greedy old man whose miserly ways are changed after being visited by three ghosts, on Christmas Eve. But A Christmas Carol does not stand alone! A Christmas Carol is the most famous example of the nineteenth-century (mostly British) pastime of telling scary stories to gatherings of family and friends on Christmas Eve (and throughout the twelve days of Christmas), a fad that generally died in the beginning of the twentieth century, though the pastime is referenced in the decidedly-20th century Andy Williams Christmas song “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” And A Christmas Carol is not Dickens’s only Christmastime ghost story! It’s also not his only ghost story in general… he wrote very many. (Those interested the comprehensive list should check out Peter Haining’s amazing anthology Charles Dickens’s Ghost Stories, published in 1982.) Some of his ghost stories are embedded inside his novels, such as “Baron Koeldwethout’s Apparition” from 1838’s Nicholas Nickleby, while others were published in his periodicals, like “The Ghost Chamber,” which appeared in Household Words in 1857. And, in case you’re wondering, he also wrote numerous Christmas stories that have nothing to do with ghosts, such as the novella The Cricket on the Hearth, published in 1845, and the novella The Battle of Life from 1846. But today we’re looking at his other Christmas Ghost stories! And, ahoy, some are a lot weirder and scarier than A Christmas Carol. Hold on to your hats! “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton,” a story in The Pickwick Papers (1836) In The Pickwick Papers (which isn’t really a novel so much as a series of sketches about a group of characters; it’s very proto-sitcom), a group of friends are at a party on Christmas Eve at the farm-estate Dingley Dell, and tell ghost stories. Their host, Mr. Wardle, tells the story of a man named Gabriel Grubb, a cold-hearted gravedigger who hates Christmas and drinks and works on the day. But then, he’s kidnapped by a group of goblins who take him to their underground cave and show him the errors of his ways. (Does this plot remind you of anything? Proof that the concepts for A Christmas Carol were percolating in his brain at least seven years earlier.) I know goblins aren’t ghosts, but I do think this qualifies as a “ghost story” in the broad sense of the category. I mean, it became a ghost story, besides! “The Mother’s Eyes,” a story in Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840) This is a Poe-esque psychological horror ghost story! Our narrator, who is spending Christmas alone, meets a deaf man who tells him a story from centuries before: the confession of a murderer in prison. The man has murdered his nephew, because the boy possesses the same creepy, reprehending stare as his mother (the man’s sister-in-law, who is now deceased, but whose countenance used to terrify him). I know this is a lot… stay with me. He buries the kid’s body in a fresh lawn, but he slowly loses his mind. He has nightmares, and becomes obsessed with the spot on the ground that serves as the secret grave, and this way, gives himself away. Very, very Poe. The Chimes (1844) Goblins again! Dickens’s novella The Chimes is a thinly-veiled criticism of cultural views and practices that scapegoated and further marginalized the poor, even more radical and overt in its themes than A Christmas Carol. It concerns the family of an elderly and pretty impoverished letter-deliverer named Trotty, who has begun to assimilate ideas that the poor are unworthy and lazy and are the scourge of the nation, despite being poor himself. Trotty’s family, including his daughter Meg, are constantly being assailed with hate and criticism for being poor. Late at night, he stays up reading a newspaper article about a woman who has drowned herself and her infant, out of desperation for their abject poverty. Because he’s been brainwashed into a self-loathing hatred for people of the poor and working classes, he concludes further that the poor are inherently wicked. But then he hears the chimes from the nearby church ring loudly in his head and he’s transported in a vision to the bell tower, where he sees a bunch of “phantoms,” and among them, a large goblin, who shows him a vision of the future: in which he’s dead and his entire family has turned to alcoholism, prostitution, and other tragic fates to desperately escape and cope with their worsening poverty, and witnesses his own daughter contemplate killing herself and her baby in order to escape their horrific poverty. When he wakes up, it’s New Year’s Day and the chimes are ringing brightly. He realizes the error of his thinking and refuses to participation in a vilification of the poor. Fun fact: Dickens wrote this story while visiting Genoa, Italy, and was inspired by the sound of the Genovese church bells ringing all around him. This story also features an appearance from a woman named Mrs. Chickenstalker. The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain: A Fancy for Christmas-Time (1848) The Haunted Man is a full novella, the final of Dickens’s five standalone Christmas Books (A Christmas Carol, A Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Chimes being the others). I think it’s my favorite one, and not just because the theatrical adaptation (first performed in 1862 at the Royal Polytechnic Institution) is responsible for the invention of the ghostly optical illusion known as “Pepper’s Ghost,” which is my favorite of all the 19th century stage technologies. The Haunted Man is the nineteenth century’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Redlaw, a chemist, obsesses over sorrows and hard memories from his past. A ghost, who is a kind of twin of himself, attaches himself to him and offers him the gift of being able to forget those hard things and help others forget hard things from their past. As soon as the ghost gives him this power, a barefooted child appears and he’s like, guess I have to take care of this kid now, too. It’s unclear what the kid is doing there. But, when he goes around making people forget the hard times, he transforms their lives for the worse; not remembering bad things also makes them forget how much they appreciate the good things. Sometimes they don’t even recognize their loved ones at all. Redlaw is in agony when he realizes how many lives he’s ruined with his naive wish. Also, the kid has become very feral! The ghost explains that the child is the representation of humankind’s abilities to remember its past: when humans forget the terrible things they have done, they make themselves into animals. Redlaw puts a blanket on the kid (because what else can you do?) and begs the ghost to undo the wish which… read it and find out! “The Haunted House” (1859) “The Haunted House” is a series of short stories published in the “Extra Christmas Number” of Dickens’s periodical All the Year Round. There are eight installments and they were all written by different writers. And it’s a real murderer’s row of 19th century literary celebrity. Dickens wrote three stories, and the remaining five were written by Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, George Augustus Sala, Adelaide Anne Procter, and Hesba Stretton. It’s a story about a man named John who decides to split a famously haunted house with seven of his friends for the holiday season. I don’t know why they want to do this, but they do. So all eight move in, and they each experience different encounters with ghosts, but also encounter embodiment of their own demons and memories and anxieties. The Signalman (1866) Published in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round, The Signalman is a straight up horror story. It’s like the Stephen King short story of the Dickens canon. It’s so good that I really don’t want to spoil it… I’ll just say that it’s a story about a railway signalman who sees a mysterious specter before a grisly train accident… and then starts to see that figure and hear his warnings again and again. View the full article

Grotesque, discomforting, darkly humorous, and brilliant, these horror novels are the soundtrack in my mind allowing me to process reality’s growing discontents. Some of the following are notable for their direct confrontation with real-world darkness, while others serve as an antidote to demonization, a path towards self-love in a cruel world. All are gorgeously written, terrifyingly executed, and worthy of the old adage: art should disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed. Stephen Graham Jones, I Was a Teenage Slasher (Saga) With breakneck pacing and down-to-earth narration, I Was a Teenage Slasher is a tongue-in-cheek ode to the slasher’s heyday. Stephen Graham Jones’ shaggy dog of a story is set in the Texas panhandle circa 1989, where those few residents who haven’t left for the oilfields or the city are now at risk of becoming quickly deceased at the hands of Jones’ befuddled narrator, and his chainsaw wielding compatriats. If Tobe Hooper made a Denis Hopper film and Arlo Guthrie did the soundtrack, it might look something like this. Layla Martinez, Woodworm Translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott (Two Lines Press) This book is so creepy!!! In a visceral exploration of the absurdities of male control, a woman and her grandmother are trapped in a house of horrors, built by a husband who cursed his female relatives to be bound to the abode, only to be trapped there himself, along with numerous other spirits. It’s all pretty bearable if you don’t let the ghosts think you’re getting too vulnerable—just don’t look under the bed, and if something grabs your ankle, squash it ever so firmly. Grotesque brilliance, all the way through. John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In (Daw Books) This ace monster romance has Wyrm-ed its way into my dark heart! And poses an important question: how badly can your in-laws treat When monster hunters rudely awaken Sheshehen, a wyrm of amorphous and ever-changing appearance, and wound her grievously, she doesn’t expect to be nursed back to health by an unsuspecting human, Homily, or to fall in love with her savior. Sheshehan has always hoped to find a partner to lay her eggs in, a co-parent to sacrifice their body for the nourishment of their young, but she loves Homily too much to see her eaten. Will their love make it through the disappointment of Homily’s family and the cannibalistic needs of Sheshehan’s offspring? (I have to give my colleague Drew Broussard a quick shoutout for putting this one on my radar—Thanks, Drew!) Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays (Tor Nightfire) Chuck Tingle may have made his name in steamy-yet-absurdist erotica, but Bury Your Gays, along with last year’s Camp Damascus, cements Tingle’s place as one of the best new novelists around, horror or otherwise. Showrunner Misha is giving a harsh directive from his studio overlords: either kill off his queer characters, or make them straight. When he refuses to do either, monstrous beings from Misha’s previous cinematic endeavors start confronting him in the flesh, and even worse: they’re threatening his loved ones. This is quite possibly the best spoof of Hollywood since Get Shorty. Sophie White, Where I End (Erewhon Books) White’s novel was first published two years ago, to much acclaim and little readership, and given that I was one of the many who remained ignorant when it first graced the earth, I’m so happy this sneaky little masterpiece got another shot at messing up readers. But what is it about? Well, quite a lot, actually, but the bare bones description goes thusly: a young woman lives on a remote Irish island, where she and her grandmother reluctantly care for her comatose mother, known as the “bed-thing”. The island’s small population is convinced the family is cursed, but it isn’t until White’s Shirley-Jackson-esque narrator meets a visiting artist that she begins to understand the full wrong-ness of her short life. Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, Feast While You Can (Grand Central) In a small village, two women form an intense connection as one begins to hear messages from the town’s resident monster. There’s a lot of amazing lesbian horror being published these days, but this one might be my favorite yet, partly because the two authors are married to each other! Which lends extra credence to the badass love affair at the center of the novel. You’ll be rooting for this couple as they face innumerable challenges, including racism, homophobia, and the monster’s insatiable demands for human flesh, and emerge stronger than ever. Lilliam Rivera, Tiny Threads (Del Rey) Lilliam Rivera cuts the fashion industry to shreds in this horror-filled take on late stage capitalism. At the novel’s start, Samara is just starting a new job for a legendary fashion house; she arrives optimistic but quickly becomes aware of the classism and racism underlying the business of couture. Tiny Threads takes us into the back rooms of fashion giants, showing us the stark differences between the haves and have-nots, but there’s more to unravel in this terrifying yarn. Okay, enough with the needlecraft puns. Monika Kim, The Eyes are the Best Part (Erewhon Books) In this darkly funny psychological horror, a college student must protect her mother and her sister from her mother’s creepy new boyfriend. Like all the other men in their lives, he’s trying to reduce their humanness into stereotypes about doll-like, submissive Asian women, and Kim’s protagonist is certainly not going to let him get away with it. She’s also spending a lot of time having intense dreams about eating bright blue eyes, standing over her sleeping enemies and fantasizing their demise, and generally losing touch with reality in a way that pays plenty of dividends by the novel’s end. C. J. Leede, American Rapture (Tor) Cheeky, obscene, and brilliant, CJ Leede’s American Rapture is a revelation. Leede’s sophomore effort lives up to the promise of her shocking debut, Maeve Fly, and then some. In American Rapture, Leede’s heroine is a good Catholic girl whose sheltered childhood comes to an abrupt end when a horrifying new plague begins spreading across the country—a plague of lust. As the tagline says, the end times are coming. E. K. Sathue, Youthjuice (Hell’s Hundred) In the first release from Hell’s Hundred, the new horror imprint from Soho Press, E. K. Sathue’s main character earns all the press release’s comparisons to Patrick Bateman. Just a run-of-the-mill sociopath at first, the narrator soon gets sucked into the murderous enterprise of a wellness company with an incredibly suspicious number of missing former interns and a CEO who appears to bathe in blood. View the full article

What makes an outstanding mystery series? At a minimum, each book in the series must meet professional standards with respect to plot (especially important for mysteries), characters, setting and so on. There is much more to a top-notch series, however, than just a collection of well-crafted stories. The key lies in the ‘glue’ that binds individual offerings into a coherent whole. To tease out what makes a series work, I focus on the best series published in the last twenty years and categorize them under five headings: protagonist, location, period, genre, and theme. These are the most common literary devices for creating that sense of continuity so critical to a successful series. I select my favorite under each heading. PROTAGONIST: This is by far the most popular. Think of Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Morse. Each book about these titans was built around a cunningly crafted plot, but it was the sleuths themselves who turned clever mysteries into much loved series. The tradition has continued and my pick in the protagonist category from more recent times is Ann Cleeves’s eleven stories about Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumbria Police Force. No matter how compelling each story might be, it is Vera that you remember. She may look rather dowdy but she is as sharp as the north wind. She may speak like a kindly aunt but she can be as persistent as King Bruce’s spider. She may do everything she can to get the killer but she can also be compassionate and caring. A remarkable character. All the books in this series are superb, but for me, the best is The Darkest Evening, the ninth book, in which Vera uncovers more of her own past as she investigates the death of a young mother. LOCATION: Imagine you are strolling through the most charming village ever, enjoying the crisp Canadian air and admiring the patterns made by pine needles on the scatter of overnight snow. Then imagine you catch the aroma of straight-from-the oven baguettes and freshly brewed coffee. Where are you? Every reader of first-class mysteries knows instantly that you are approaching Olivier and Gabri’s Bistro in Three Pines. Readers of mysteries do not ask if you have read Louise Penny’s latest book; they ask if you have read the new Three Pines story. That is the measure of how deeply the location of her series has embedded itself in the public’s mind. Location is the second most frequently used ‘glue’ and Louise Penny’s eighteen-book series is the perfect example. Her first novel, Still Life, about a dead woman found in the woods, is both an enthralling mystery and an excellent introduction to Three Pines. PERIOD: Nev March’s stories travel around the world, but they are all set in the waning years of the nineteenth century. When you open one of her books you may not know where the story will be set, but you know the time frame. So far, she has set her mysteries in Bombay (book one), Chicago (book two) and even on a transatlantic liner (book three). Even so, each captures that period when Britain still ruled large parts of the globe and the whiff of colonialism was in the air. Whether the setting is India, North America, or the middle of the ocean, her immaculate descriptions of dress and behavior, of furnishings and architecture, of the cruise ship and its passengers, place the story firmly in the 1890s. Period and location are often intertwined, but Nev March’s books make clear that the period ‘glue’ can be highly effective without the location ‘glue’. The books can be read independently, so you do not have to start with book one; my recommendation, especially if you like stories set at sea, is to begin with her third book, The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret. GENRE: When I use the word genre in this context, I am referring to a mystery novel’s literary vehicle or style, such as thriller, cozy, historical, noir, police procedural and so on. My favorite in this category is the police procedurals by Cara Hunter. Her six-book series could easily fit in the protagonist category (her DS Fawley) or the place category (Oxford), but what makes her books stand out for me is the realism she brings to the ups and downs of police investigation. The efforts of the police to peel back layers of deceit and deception in complex cases are told convincingly and with assurance. In my estimation, Hope to Die, the sixth book in the series, ranks as one of the finest police procedurals in recent years, and the series itself as the perfect example of stellar individual mysteries bound by their genre. THEME: Theme is the least used ‘glue’ of all but can be highly effective. Allow me to illustrate this by drawing on my own series (The Dunston Burnett Trilogy). Dunston Burnett, a diffident, middle-aged, retired bookkeeper (think of a latter-day Mr Pickwick), is not cut out to be a detective yet circumstances invariably conspire to place him at the center of singularly complex mysteries. Therein lies the theme that binds the three books in the series – the tension between his limitations as a detective and the apparently unsolvable mysteries confronting him. Thus, in Fatally Inferior, the second book, he figures out the motive behind a woman’s apparently inexplicable disappearance from a locked-tight country house, but fails to prevent a second, related crime of vengeance. He eventually runs down the murderer, but this ‘will-he, won’t he’ uncertainty runs through the trilogy and transforms the stories into a single history. *** View the full article

You know the shpiel. Artificial intelligence will solve all our problems. It will compute our calculus, it will write our emails, it will give us the most efficient recipe for banana bread, etc. But humans will still be around, one hopes, and so, humans being humans, there will still be greed and jealousy and hate and therefore there will be crime. But surely AI will solve that too! But why use the future tense? For over a decade now, AI has been deployed in the U.S. to prevent crime. Let me introduce you to COMPAS (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions), a proprietary bit of software licensed by Equivant (a subsidiary of billion-dollar conglomerate Constellation Software). COMPAS, you’ll be delighted to learn, is used by courts across the country to measure recidivism risk in determining pre-trial and parole release. Miraculous! True, upon investigation, COMPAS does tend to demonstrate a pronounced racial bias, insomuch that “blacks are almost twice as likely as whites to be labeled a higher risk but not actually re-offend”, but a further study demonstrated that this bias is not limited to race but also gender, so…yay? But why fixate on those who have already been arrested? Let’s see how helpful AI is (again, notice the present tense) in using facial recognition software to identify criminals. You know facial recognition software. You probably used it to login to the device you’re using to read this missive. Did you know that the police regularly use it to identify suspects? Ask Robert Williams. Detroit investigators engaged this software to compare grainy footage from a security camera to DMV photographs and positively identify him as the culprit in a robbery. True, this irrefutable evidence was later refuted at an evidentiary hearing after Mr. Williams had been held for 30 hours, but it’s the thought that counts, right? But that’s a large part of the problem. There is no “thought” at all. Artificial intelligence is, lest we forget, not intelligent at all, at least by any human measurement. The Turing Test, for example, does not measure a computer’s ability to think but instead its ability to fool humans through the simulation of thought. This is not to say that AI can’t be an assistive tool. Not only has this been proven true in real-life crime investigation but also in simulation-life crime novels, be it Holly Gibney’s ease with Google or Kat Frank’s facility with holograms. The problem occurs when we rely on its “thinking” to replace our thinking. If you still don’t believe me, ask the lawyer who used ChatGPT to write his entire brief, which the AI riddled with inaccuracies (or, in preferred parlance, “hallucinations”). If I sound like a Luddite raising his fist against nascent technology, well, blame my latest novel, Assume Nothing, and the convictions held and espoused by one of its main characters, Alik Lisser. Lisser is my homage to the genius detectives of the 19th and 20th centuries such as Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe, who applied their vast, encyclopedic knowledge to solving cases. He rails against law enforcement’s overreliance on computers to do the reasoning which, he believes, can only be done by a human mind working in tandem with human intuition. And my novel takes place in 1996! Though let’s not assume Alik is completely selfless in his motivations. He is, after all, only human. *** View the full article

Not again!!!

Over the summer, I ran a flash fiction contest, where we received almost 300 short story entries and the winner was published on the blog. First I want to say that I know how difficult it was for the people who submitted stories to the UMS contest. I have been on the other end of the "slush" pile more times than I can count. I am currently going through something similar as my agent submits my manuscript to publishers. Knowing the book I spent five years on will take certain editors five minutes to judge is stressful and, at times, frustrating. I have to say, though, after judging the contest, I think I understand why editors often resort to making snap judgements. At first, I made myself read every entry in its entirety. My reasoning was that people spent time on these stories and they were short anyway. But after I got through the first hundred or so, I realized that if I didn't like the first couple of paragraphs, the chances I was going to like the rest of the story were practically zero. I began to subconsciously compile a mental list of things that would get me to put a story aside. If an entry matched something on this list, I would either stop reading or just skim. While this is highly subjective, these are the trends I ran into it and I thought it might be helpful for people: Sentence Structure - This may seem surprising, but run-on or confusing sentences in the first paragraph were the number one reason I put entries aside early without finishing them. I was expecting typos or bad grammar to be a problem, but for the most part writers actually did know how to use spell check. The problems I am talking about can't be found by spellcheck, but they still made the piece feel unpolished. To prevent this, I would suggest reading your work to yourself or a friend out loud before submitting it. If you find yourself stumbling over long clunky sentences, chances are an editor will too. Endings - There were many, many cases where I actually did feel myself pulled in by a world and a character only to discover by the end there was no real plot. The character wasn't really trying to achieve anything so there was no reveal of success or failure at the end. These stories almost felt like pitches or explorations that would be good for a longer work, but just didn't meet the needs of flash fiction. I have written these sorts of stories more times than I can count, and while they are useful writing exercises, I totally understand why they aren't publishable. Dialogue - I was a bit surprised to see that the vast majority of stories had no dialogue whatsoever. While containing dialogue wasn't a hard requirement (I actually had some finalists that were dialogue free), I often found excluding dialogue was one the things that slowed down a story and made it feel more like a "pitch." If you think of a short story like a scene in a movie, nine times out of ten, it's going to be a lot more engaging if the characters talk. Dialogue also helps visually break up long paragraphs, making for a zippier read. I would suggest if you have a short story or first chapter of a novel with no dialogue, I would examine why. If you would have to shoehorn it in to get it to work, don't. Otherwise? Probably include it. One final note is that this is all very subjective. There were times I read a story that didn't click with me, only for it to get withdrawn later because it had been picked up somewhere else. That's okay. It's one of the beautiful and frustrating things about publishing. One person's "poor sentence structure" is another person's poetry.

1. Write your story statement. Trick the gods to save the magic and the state. 2. In 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them. Dr. Javier Sanchez is a physicist from Los Alamos National Laboratory. Twenty-five years ago, he led an experiment that secretly was a method for him to gain supernatural powers. The experiment ended in an accident, killing several people. Now, Dr. Sanchez believes he has fixed the problems, but things again go wrong. Another accident displaces technology with magic within a 150 mile radius. The effect is unstable, though, and it will eventually destroy Northern New Mexico. Only a survivor of the original accident can stabilize the project, because of powers gained from the combination of the two accidents. Those survivors include Dr. Sanchez himself, and Violet, who was a student research assistant for the original experiment. The stabilization process, however, will kill whoever performs it. Dr. Sanchez tries to bring Violet back to Los Alamos. He works covertly, sending out various magical and non-magical proxies to retrieve Violet. Ultimately, he sets up a government operation that captures Violet and brings her to Los Alamos. He fakes his own death, adopts a disguise, and inserts himself into Violet’s team, all to make sure she succeeds in stabilizing the experiment. Dr. Sanchez’s true role is not revealed until the end. 3. Create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed). Violet: As one result of the inciting incident, the protagonist’s hair turns bright purple. She chooses the name Violet, in part as a way to embrace her transformed self, and in part to hide her identity from enemies she has made in the course of her career, now that the protections she has come to expect from society no longer exist. The Enchanted Zone: The region where magic has displaced technology is called the enchanted zone by its denizens. Land of Enchantment: The state nickname for New Mexico, with an obvious relationship to “the enchanted zone.” I prefer this for the series title, but it would also work as the title for the first book in the series. 4. Develop two smart comparables for your novel. Who compares to you? And why? The Wren in the Holly Library by K.A. Linde: Magic and monsters have entered the real world. The protagonist is a young woman who must learn how to use her newly-developed magical powers to protect and rescue the ones she loves. Other powerful forces want to use her for their own ends. The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown: Takes place in the modern world. Magical books, known only to a few, give the possessor a magical power, one power per book such as the ability to walk through any door in the world just by thinking about it. The protagonist stumbles upon the title book, putting herself and her friends in danger, but also giving her the power to fight against those who want to use the books for evil. 5. Write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound. A single mother must rescue her children from government conspirators after an incident in Los Alamos causes all technology more complex than a bicycle to stop functioning and brings the myths and folktales of Northern New Mexico to life. 6. Sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction. Before the inciting incident (“the enchantment”), Violet was an attorney who sued predators – stalkers, guys who made deepfake videos, that kind of thing. The enchantment transformed Northern New Mexico, replacing physics with magic. It also physically transformed many of the people within the covered area (“the enchanted zone”). Post-enchantment, Violet now looks like a deepfake image the latest defendant had made of her. As she sees it, it’s like all the predators she ever went after got their revenge on her all at once. She worries that she is no longer the same person. Those worries are perhaps confirmed when she discovers that she has also gained magical powers, but those powers sometimes cause her to lose control of her emotions and her actions. For example, Violet ends up traveling with a man (Caleb) more than twenty years her junior. Violet sees he has a crush on her. Although she is flattered, and finds it cute, she is not interested. When Caleb breaks his arm, Violet uses her newfound powers to heal him. Powers she barely understands. As a side effect, Violet’s emotions become entangled with Caleb’s, and suddenly Caleb’s feelings become mutual. For the next several scenes, Violet struggles to separate her own emotions back out while also having to deal with the physical urges the entanglement has created. Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it? Early in the story, Violet encounters La Llorona, a ghost from Spanish folklore. According to legend, La Llorona caught her husband with his mistress, then drowned her children and herself in the Santa Fe River out of spite. Now she wanders the riverside, seeking her children . . . or those of others. When Violet comes across La Llorona, the ghost enters her mind and makes Violet think she has killed her own children. The memories fade after Violet wakes up, but they recur every time she sleeps, worse every time. The nightmares start to bleed over into the waking world, putting Violet’s real children in danger. Violet eventually finds La Llorona, and they have a final showdown. “This ends here,” says La Llorona. “Yes,” says Violet, “but I’m the one who ends it.” Violet turns the tables and enters La Llorona’s memories, but what she finds surprises her. Rather than fighting and destroying the ghost, as she expected to do, Violet releases her from a curse. This ties into the inner conflict by helping Violet see that her transformation was superficial. She ended up helping La Llorona, in the same way she helped her clients pre-enchantment. Underneath the new cover, Violet is the same person she has always been. 7. Sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? The story takes place in real-world settings of Northern New Mexico. In fact, the manuscript is divided into six parts, covering Violet’s journey from start to end. Those parts are: One: Santa Fe, primarily the historical Plaza area. Two: Pueblo Country, covering the Native American Pueblos along the I-25 corridor from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. Three: Albuquerque, including the foothills of the Sandia Mountains and the arroyo that runs from the foothills (where Violet’s home is located) down to the Rio Grande. Four: Rio Grande, covering various locations along the river, from Los Lunas south of Albuquerque to Bernalillo north of the city. Five: Jemez Mountains, the volcanic range that lies to the west between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Six: Los Alamos, home to the National Laboratory and site of the story’s climax. These settings bring in details that both locals and visitors will recognize, and they also provide a variety of supernatural elements. For example, the story starts at the Santa Fe Plaza. Violet encounters her first supernatural creatures there, based on stories from the Spanish Inquisition in New Mexico. She finds temporary refuge in the historic cathedral at one end of the Plaza, but she is soon chased off because of the superstitious fears of other refugees. She is attacked by the ghost La Llorona along the Santa Fe River, which is a frequent location for many of the traditional La Llorona stories. She is then swept away in a river flood caused by a monsoon rain storm. (After I wrote that scene, I happened to get caught in a storm near the same location and took videos of the resulting flood.) As another example, Violet makes it to her home along Arroyo del Oso (Bear Canyon) in the Albuquerque foothills. She evades capture by an Army contingent with the help of the spirit bear that the arroyo is named after. The bear carries her along the arroyo on its way to the Rio Grande. When the arroyo is channeled through a tunnel under a business district, they are attacked by a monster Violet first ran into in Santa Fe. They make it through, then pass by the city’s Balloon Fiesta Park on the way to the Rio Grande. The bear leaves Violet at a sanctuary farm, which is situated in a real-life agricultural area. The farm is too close to the river, though, and Violet must flee when La Llorona shows up again.

Another terrible year for the world and another great year for books! While we have plenty of spinoff lists to come before the end of the year, it’s time to share the CrimeReads editors’ picks for the best crime and mystery novels of the year, full stop. The list below has a strong presence from a number of small presses, and as always with this list, leans into the editors’ shared love of noir (sorry not sorry). Another theme seems to be a sharply relevant combination of despair and hope (heavy on the despair, but then again, a little hope is always more useful than too much). There’s also plenty of love, mixed in with the suffering, and often, a cause of it. And there’s anger, too: fury at our current state of affairs, and righteous purpose in our quests for justice. Without further ado, here are the 10 best crime books of 2024. Karen Jennings, Crooked Seeds (Hogarth) In near-future South Africa, a woman must come to terms with her mother’s favoritism and her brother’s Apartheid-era crimes when skeletons are uncovered from beneath her childhood home. Crooked Seeds is as short as it is devastating—a perfect match for our own bleak era, and a testament to the power of fiction to help us understand our own suffering, and our own sins. Of particular note: Jennings’ elegant use of nature’s depletion to underscore the moral failures of the self.–MO Colin Barrett, Wild Houses (Grove) Barrett’s debut novel is a taut, atmospheric masterpiece: a meditation on small-town life and stuckness and the sudden moments of violence and danger that pierce the whole thing straight through. Barrett’s short stories have taken on similar material, but here, with the breadth of a novel, his writing has a new openness and as much style as ever. The story follows Dev, a young man in a small town in Ireland, leading a rather organized and quiet life, until one night that quiet is shattered by the arrival of a man who’s been badly beaten by a pair of local goons. The violence and the dread soon permeate the town. All that quiet desperation and melancholy becomes tinged with a new danger. Barrett’s prose, controlled but still electric, lights up page after page in this propulsive, emotionally powerful novel. –DM Nicola Yoon, One of Our Kind (Knopf) At the start of One of Our Kind, Jasmyn and King Williams move into a highly selective gated community catering to wealthy and successful Black families. However, despite the neighborhood’s claim to be a Black utopia, none of Jasmyn’s new neighbors are interested in social justice or, indeed, Black culture as a whole. The town’s secret, when finally discovered, is both completely logical and absolutely jaw-dropping. Joseph Kanon, Shanghai (Scribner) Nobody writes sophisticated, atmospheric spy fiction quite like Joseph Kanon, and his newest book, Shanghai, is one of the best entries in a storied career. Kanon’s story takes us into the hothouse of global politics in 1938, beginning on a luxurious ocean liner and soon disembarking in the bustling trading port of Shanghai, where a young man joins his uncle in a thriving casino business, but soon finds himself tangled up in the local conspiracies. Shanghai is vividly depicted, and the dread of an oncoming world war adds another layer of meaning to the daily bustle of a port city at the crossroads of political players. Kanon is quite simply a master storyteller. –DM Megan Nolan, Ordinary Human Failings (Little Brown) This book will haunt me until the end of time—and for good reason, given the heart-wrenching combination of desperate characters, exploitative situations, and no good ends in sight. In Nolan’s sophomore effort, a child is murdered, another child is held responsible for the killing, and a cynical hack of a tabloid journalist puts the family of the accused up in a hotel and gets them piss-drunk, night after night, trying to get ahold of the right set of details to make his story a sensation. Megan Nolan’s strength is in her “there but for the grace of God” storytelling: everything is understandable, nothing is excusable, and none of us are immune from the potential to wreck our own or others’ lives. –MO Attica Locke, Guide Me Home (Mulholland) In the culminating novel in Locke’s award-winning Highway 59 series, readers find Darren Matthews retired from the Texas Rangers but still in the crosshairs of an investigation. Though he may be dedicated to restful country living, Matthews can’t help but pull on loose threads when a new case comes calling in the form of his supremely untrustworthy mother telling a story about a missing sorority sister. Matthews takes on the case, and as always with Locke’s novels, the story becomes something different and quite profound about the state of modern America, race, and family. And Guide Me Home particularly distinguishes itself on that last count, as more than one family secret unravels and the generations wrestle with their legacies. Now complete, the Highway 59 trilogy stands as a high water mark in modern mystery. –DM Asako Yuzuki, Butter Translated by Polly Barton (Ecco) In this sumptuous tale, a gourmand hedonist and suspected serial killer becomes the object of a journalist’s fixation, and perhaps, an inspiration. The killer is known as a woman whose unending appetites for rich cuisine have led to the deaths of multiple paramours. Did she murder them, or could they simply not keep up? Why is it always a woman’s job to enforce healthy limits, to care for men? Why is it not a man’s job to care for himself? And what can we learn from these simple, rebellious acts of indulgence? This book is best paired with a multi-course meal among friends. –MO ​Christopher Bollen, Havoc (Flatiron) In Bollen’s earlier novels, he was working largely in the vein of Patricia Highsmith, bringing class tensions to light amidst mysterious and criminal goings-on in rarefied enclaves and expat communities. In his latest, Havoc, he’s using a setup that seems straight out of Agatha Christie – a luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile, a closed cast of characters – bringing a new level of psychological depth to the wildly compelling and suspenseful scenario. An elderly (and manipulative) widow bounding between luxury hotels takes up residence on the Nile, charming the staff and guests. She works her way into the lives of two new arrivals: a young mother and her eight-year-old son. But the son, as it turns out, is not so easily manipulated, and we soon find ourselves in a complex game of cat-and-mouse. Bollen brings plenty of style to the story, with a narration that takes its own twists and turns alongside the rapidly unfolding mystery. But as ever, with Bollen the psychological insight is the real star here, and Havoc proves itself to be one of the most memorable mysteries in recent memory. –DM (Ed. note – Havoc earns a special distinction: in our internal staff polls, Havoc is the first novel ever chosen as an end-of-year favorite by all three CrimeReads editors: Molly Odintz, Olivia Rutigliano, and Dwyer Murphy. We tend to have rather different taste.) Ajay Close, What Doesn’t Kill Us (Sarabande) Ajay Close uses the crime genre to examine the history of second-wave feminism and intentional communities in 1970s Leeds in this pitch-black period piece that reads a bit like Iris Murdoch had a love child with Ursula K. LeGuin. As a gruesome serial killer stalks the streets, and the city seems unlikely to ever halt the string of murders, the residents of a women’s housing collective grow increasingly fed up with the violence of the patriarchy, and ready to enact some violence of their own. Close has an incredible ear for dialogue and character, and dissects with ease the many internal disputes and blatant contradictions of the era’s politics, for a book that feels both of its time, and freshly relevant. Also, to all my former housemates: I finally found a positive depiction of a cooperative to recommend on this site! –MO Nilanjana Roy, Black River (Pushkin Press) This one received rave reviews when it came out in England, and I’m sure it will gain just as much praise on this side of the pond. Black River joins a host of great crime books coming out of South Asia, with a timely and urgent message about prejudice and injustice. At the start of Roy’s novel, a Hindu child is found dead in a remote village, a Muslim man is chosen as a convenient scapegoat for the crime; the detectives assigned to the case struggle to keep the accused man from being lynched while they search for the true culprits. —MO ___________________________________ NOTABLE SELECTIONS 2024 ___________________________________ Vanessa Chan, The Storm We Made (S&S/Marysue Ricci Books) · Kate Brody, Rabbit Hole (Soho Crime) · Thomas Perry, Hero (Mysterious Press) · Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower (Simon & Schuster) · Lea Carpenter, Ilium (Knopf) · Duane Swierczynski, California Bear (Mulholland) · Amina Akhtar, Almost Surely Dead (Mindy’s Book Studio) · Jahmal Mayfield, Smoke Kings (Melville House) · Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz (Scribner) · E.A. Aymar, When She Left (Thomas & Mercer) · Aggie Blum Thompson, Such a Lovely Family (Forge) · Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Ray (Bloomsbury) · Chris Bohjalian, The Princess of Las Vegas (Doubleday) · Joyce Carol Oates, Butcher (Knopf) · Tana French, The Hunter (Viking) · Gigi Pandian, A Midnight Puzzle (Minotaur) · Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice (Minotaur) · Sophie Wan, Women of Good Fortune (Gallery) · Sara Koffi, While We Were Burning (Putnam) · Don Winslow, City in Ruins (William Morrow) · Kellye Garrett, Missing White Woman (Mulholland) · Chanel Cleeton, The House on Biscayne Bay (Berkley) · Megan Miranda, Daughter of Mine (S&S/Marysue Ricci Books) · Robyn Gigl, Nothing But the Truth (Kensington) · Tasha Coryell, Love Letters to a Serial Killer (Berkley) · Chris Whitaker, All the Colors of the Dark (Dutton) · Eli Cranor, Broiler (Soho) · Yasmin Zaher, Coin (Catapult) · Wanda Morris, What You Leave Behind (William Morrow) · Flynn Berry, Trust Her (Viking) · Peter Swanson, A Talent for Murder (William Morrow) · Alejandro Nodarse, Blood in the Cut (Flatiron) · John Copenhaver, Hall of Mirrors (Pegasus) · Maxim Loskutoff, Old King (W.W. Norton) · Henry Wise, Holy City (Atlantic Monthly Press) · Liz Moore, The God of the Woods (Riverhead) · John Fram, No Road Home (Atria) · Nicholas Meyer, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram From Hell (Mysterious Press) · Jesse Q. Sutanto, You Will Never Be Me (Berkley) · Marcie Rendon, Where They Last Saw Her (Bantam) · Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook (Doubleday) · Jordan Harper, The Last King of California (Mulholland) · Alan Bradley, What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust (Bantam) · Danielle Trussoni, Puzzle Box (Random House) · Nick Harkaway, Karla’s Choice (Viking) · Lev AC Rosen, Rough Pages (Forge) · Hesse Phillips, Lightborne (Pegasus) · Alia Trabucco Zerán, Clean (translated by Sophie Hughes) (Riverhead) · Sarah Jost, The Estate (Sourcebooks) · Kotaro Isaka, Hotel Lucky Seven (translated by Brian Bergstrom) (Overlook) · Jane Pek, The Rivals (Vintage) · Alex Segura, Alter Ego (Mulholland) · William Boyd, Gabriel’s Moon (Atlantic) · Alice Bell, Displeasure Island (Doubleday) · Vincent Tirado, We Came to Welcome You (William Morrow) View the full article

Season’s readings! If you’ve happened upon this list (and obviously you have), then you probably agree that books make the perfect gift—both to give and receive. Alas, so many of them and such little time to read, let alone to curate. On that note, here you will find a round-up of recent releases perfect for bedside (or fireside) indulgence this winter, whether for yourself or others. England’s Alexandra Benedict should be anointed the “Queen of Christmas Crime.” She has now published three seasonal suspense novels in as many years, with the first two taking place at a manor house and on a train, respectively. The Christmas Jigsaw Murders (Poisoned Pen Press; October 8, 2024) is less about the setting than the set-up, and finds crotchety crossword puzzle compiler Edie O’ Sullivan drawn into a dastardly game when she receives a parcel containing six bloody puzzle pieces and a taunting note signed: “Rest in Pieces.” Putting them together will mean revisiting the past, even as the body count continues to rise in the present. Thematic word puzzles are included throughout so you can try to match wits with the author! Meanwhile, Ally Carter brings a peppermint twist to The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year (Avon; September 24, 2024), in which two rival American authors are invited to spend Christmas abroad at the (secret) behest of “Duchess of Death” Eleanor Ashley. But when their host goes missing, the stakes mount along with the snow outside her English estate. Whether it’s a caper or a competition remains to be seen, and “Queen of the Cozy (Cat) Mystery” Maggie Chase and “Mr. Big-time Thriller Guy” Ethan Wyatt must work together if they hope to solve their very own locked-room challenge. Romance ensues as Carter cleverly and comedically pokes fun at cliches that are sure to bring comfort and joy to readers familiar with the tropes of genre fiction. Speaking of all things cat and cozy, Cate Conte returns with Shock and Paw (St. Martin’s Paperbacks; August 20, 2024), her eight book to feature Cat Café owner and amateur sleuth Maddie James (and her menagerie of friends, both furry and fleshed). Pressured into joining Daybreak Island’s Christmas event committee, and also on the case of a local breeder profiteering from “designer” pets sold as presents, Maddie is already overextended when her best friend, Becky, falls under suspicion of murder by means of deadly decorations. It’s the stuff that headlines are made of—which is ironic, given the fact that Becky is the town’s impassioned newspaper editor (and the victim her boss). Maddie must save her from byline-to-police blotter fate in a tail—err, tale!—that reminds us cozy and cutesy aren’t one and the same. In the lean, mean serial killer department, writing partners James S. Murray and Darren Wearmouth unleash You Better Watch Out (St. Martin’s Press; October 15, 2024), a ticking-clock thriller in which a group of strangers have forty-eight hours to survive a series of fiendish traps (and each other) if they hope to see the light of Christmas morning. Just who brought them together and why serves as the central conundrum, though it’s the creativity (read: brutality) of the kills and the juxtaposition of a seemingly peaceful yet entirely perilous (and painstakingly manufactured) setting that makes the story sing like a fair-weather churchgoer at midnight mass. Think And Then There Were None … on steroids. This one belongs firmly on the naughty list. Of a more sedate nature is Murder, She Wrote: A Killer Christmas (Berkley; October 8, 2024) by Jessica Fletcher and Terrie Farley Moran, in which quaint, if occasionally crime-ridden Cabot Cove is vying for the title of Maine’s Christmas Town in a statewide competition to drum up tourism in the off-season. But when a big city business tycoon expresses interest in buying the old Jarvis home, murder ensues—and threatens to tarnish the town’s semi-sterling reputation. Chock full of seasonal cheer (carols and cider and Christmas classics, oh my!) and communal spirit to offset the bah humbug of homicide, Moran revels in surrounding iconic J.B. Fletcher with a cast of familiar and fresh-faced characters that keep the series as appealing as diner maven Mara’s famous blueberry pancakes. For those who only have brief respites from buying and wrapping (and baking and sampling), there are a few novellas of note. Nita Prose, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest, offers up The Mistletoe Mystery (Ballantine Books; October 1, 2024), in which the Regency Grand Hotel’s Head Maid, Molly Gray, finds herself as tangled up as last year’s Christmas lights. Molly’s history of misreading people leads her to believe that her adoring boyfriend, baker Juan Manuel, may be sharing his sweets elsewhere. Her distress is amplified by the hotel’s upcoming Secret Santa exchange, which has gone embarrassingly wrong in the past. Don’t expect a traditional crime story but rather a mystery of miscommunications and misunderstandings that’s as charming as it is quirky. Also on the slighter side of things is the awkward but aptly titled Everyone this Christmas Has a Secret (Mariner Books; October 22, 2024), entry 2.5 in comedian Benjamin Stevenson’s Australian-set series featuring Golden Age mystery buff turned unlikely sleuth Ernest (“Ern”) Cunningham. Here, beloved if bumbling Ern—who has a knack for finding himself at the center of real-life whodunits—comes to the aid of his ex-wife after she is accused of murdering her fiancé, a theater owner and mentor to acclaimed magician Rylan Blaze. Needless to say, the show must go on, proving that the line between illusion and reality is a fine one indeed. Structured as if an advent calendar, each of the book’s chapters reveals a clue to chew on before the Christie-like denouement. Fun, funny, and festive. If prefer slice and dice confections to the break and bake variety, horror writer Brian McAuley resurrects his sweetly sinister (and surprisingly sympathetic) boogeywoman in Candy Cain Kills Again: The Second Slaying (Shortwave Media; November 12, 2024). Picking up immediately after the events of last year’s Candy Cain Kills, the story follows survivor siblings Austin and Fiona (as well as Austion’s new boyfriend, Mateo) to the Church of Nodland, where sins will be atoned for in blood. Twice as devious and depraved as its predecessor, it’s a(nother) love letter to the slashers of yore that melds nastiness and nostalgia to masterful, merry effect. Satisfying the “variety is the spice of life” category are two new compendiums. Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop (Mysterious Press; October 22, 2024) collects twelve short stories by the likes American mainstays Jeffery Deaver and Laura Lippman to international sensations including Ragnar Jónasson and Martin Edwards. Each features the legendary Mysterious Bookshop in some capacity, and many its proprietor (and the book’s editor), Otto Penzler. Despite the (literal) shared space, the entries seldom stray into overt sameness. If you like books, bookstores, and booksellers, you’ll love this miscellany of seasonal hijinks that highlights different storytellers, styles, and subgenres. It’s also an ideal stocking stuffer for the bibliophile in your life. Keeping that in mind, you may just want to buy an extra copy—because you’ll be hard-pressed to part with your own. And while Christmas tends to dominate the season, Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir (Soho Crime; October 29, 2024)—conceived as a companion to 2017’s The Usual Santas—welcomingly diversifies things. Edited by Tod Goldberg (who contributes an amusing foreword as well as the title story), the eleven very good contributions feature literary luminaries such as Lee Goldberg and Ivy Pochoda to “noir adjacent” novelist Liska Jacobs and relative newcomer Stefanie Leder. Boasting a range of crime and criminals, it’s also a celebration of culture—and an acknowledgment of how the holidays can bring out the best, and worst, in people. Perfect for reading by the light of the menorah, and complete with sprayed blue edges—which makes it even more attractive for gifting (or keeping). Admittedly, these are but a sampling of the year’s thematic titles, but I guarantee there’s something to satisfy every craving, whether salty or sweet or somewhere in between. I wish you happy reading now, and always … View the full article

It was Mardi Gras night, and I was waiting in the wings of a glitzy hotel ballroom, dressed in a white gown and gloves, when I realized two things in rapid succession: first, it was probably too late to get out of this whole debutante thing; and second, I had to write a book about this. The metaphors had already been presenting themselves like hors d’oeuvres on silver platters: a few hours before, when I was zipping into my gorgeous, corseted ball gown, I took a deep breath to steel myself…and part of the zipper popped off, flying across the room. No room for extra oxygen, then. Later, at the hotel, at least two different people congratulated me on my wedding. Nevermind that I was a twenty-year-old student, single, and clearly horrified at the implication—from my getup, I could understand the confusion. New Orleans debutante culture, like the city itself, is wild, unique, and full of contradictions. It’s glamorous, beautiful, and a little silly, but it’s also stained with a dark history that pervades the atmosphere as thoroughly as the Louisiana humidity. I never wanted to be a debutante. Growing up in New Orleans, I had always known that it was a tradition on my dad’s side of my family, but I also knew that the history of debutante balls—a way for the social “elites” to introduce their daughters to the marriage market—made me deeply uncomfortable. Still, when my junior year of college rolled around and I was reminded how important the tradition was to my family, I caved. These are people I love, I reasoned, to whom I owe so much of my success and happiness—why not put on a pretty dress and promenade around a ballroom if it will make them proud? Of course, there’s much more to it than I’d realized. For one thing, making my debut was not a one-night commitment. It entailed a full “season,” complete with luncheons, elaborate parties, and presentations at multiple balls. Added to that is the Mardi Gras element: balls are hosted by different “Krewes,” social clubs that also run parades and other Carnival festivities, some of which are highly exclusive and even secretive. Not all balls are identical, but in my experience, debutante presentations tended to consist of a “royal court,” featuring debutante “Maids” and a “Queen”—young women, usually juniors or seniors in college—and occasionally a “King,” a middle-aged to elderly man from the Krewe. Despite this uncomfortable age gap dynamic, there were colorful costumes, masks, live music, dancing, and—because it’s New Orleans—plenty of liquor flowing. On the surface, these balls are a rollicking good time, a perfect embodiment of the laissez les bons temps rouler attitude of the city. But beneath the glitter and the champagne, there’s a more sinister history lurking. The Mardi Gras debutante tradition as we know it dates back to the 19th century, when the first Krewes were officially founded in the city. These included what are now recognized as the “old-line” Krewes—groups historically made up only of white, wealthy men of an approved “pedigree”—as well as social aid and pleasure clubs, which are rooted in the Black community. While this sort of racial division was commonplace at the time, many are surprised to learn that it wasn’t until 1991 that the city made any move to change Krewes’ restrictive membership policies. That year, Dorothy Mae Taylor—the first Black woman to serve on the New Orleans city council—spearheaded an ordinance that would deny Mardi Gras parade licenses to any Krewes that discriminated on the basis of race, gender, or religion. While most groups complied, some of the “old-line” organizations refused to integrate; as a result, those groups had to forfeit their parades. Some of them still don’t parade to this day, hosting only private balls instead. When I first heard this story, I was horrified—not only to learn that I was being presented by one such “old-line” group, but because of how it was framed to me. In their telling, this wasn’t an example of racism and prejudice pervading, but of a group determined to keep the city government from meddling in their private affairs. And maybe that’s true, at least to some extent, but take a look at any of these old-line balls today and it’s clear: nearly all of the debutantes—almost every face in the room, even—are white. Further complicating this dynamic is the anonymity of Krewe membership: while debutantes are presented openly, male Krewe members typically wear masks and costumes to hide their identity. In some cases, the Kings’ identities are never revealed, while their Queens’ are publicized. Of course, all of this begs the question: why participate at all? Even after I learned about this ugly bit of history, I still made my debut. For one thing, I was twenty and terrified of disappointing my family—but putting my naivete aside, I also remember looking around at these gilded rooms and thinking, how harmful can this really be, if it’s all so ridiculous? True, some things were said and done to me during my debut that haunt me to this day—like, for example, when the other debutantes and I were herded onto a stage while a room full of masked men shook cowbells at us (a detail that may or may not have made it into The Debutantes.) But when you boil it down, these debutante balls seemed to me like nothing more than wealthy people playing dress-up: they don sparkly costumes, masks, and crowns, dubbing themselves royalty as everyone toasts to the city’s favorite holiday. No one actually believes the illusion. Do they? When I finally sat down to write The Debutantes nearly four years later, this question was at the front of my mind. Of course, while the book is inspired by my own experiences, it’s also a work of fiction: the Krewe at its center is my own invention, and the story follows a high school debutante ball instead of a college one. Unlike the book’s protagonists, I never encountered any murderous underground cults (I promise!) The Debutantes is, first and foremost, a fun, fast-paced YA thriller with plenty of glitz, glamour, and drama. But it also wrestles with the very real questions I was struggling with then, and even now: what do these organizations really represent, and why do people feel so tied to them, despite their increasing archaism? What does it mean to grow up and understand that the communities that raised us can be deeply flawed—and what does it mean to love them anyway? There’s one more metaphor in The Debutantes that practically writes itself: New Orleans is sinking. Literally—as the characters in the book like to note, the city is below sea level and therefore under constant threat of flooding. We can’t even bury bodies underground, or else they might float back up. (Like, come on—I had to write a thriller set in New Orleans!) Toward the end of the book, one of the main characters, April, revisits this idea, asking herself, “How do you love a home that’s sinking?” She comes up with her own answer, but I think I’m still writing my own. If there’s one thing I know, though, it’s this: understanding that a place is flawed doesn’t mean you stop loving it. It only means you see it more completely—the joy and the magic, yes, but also the darkness behind the dazzle, the truth beneath the mask. And from there, you can fight—and write—for the parts you believe in. Because while the debutante gown may be collecting dust in my closet, I have a feeling I’m not done writing this story just yet. *** View the full article

Below are seven assignments that include important supplemental guidance. All of them are vital to reaching an understanding of the critical elements that go into the creation of a commercially viable literary project, whether novel or narrative non-fiction. There is more to it, of course, much more, but this is an excellent primer. Pay special attention to antagonistic force, breakout title, conflict issues, core wound, and setting. Quiet novels do not sell. Michael Neff Algonkian Conferences Chief Editor __________________________________________________________ THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT Before you begin to consider or rewrite your story premise, you must develop a simple "story statement." In other words, what is the mission of your protagonist? Their goal? What must be done? What must she or he create? Destroy? Save? Accomplish? Defeat? ... Consider the following classics. Defy the dictator of the city and bury brother’s body (ANTIGONE)? Place a bet that will shake up the asylum (ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST)? Do whatever it takes to recover lost love (THE GREAT GATSBY)? Save the farm and live to tell the story (COLD MOUNTAIN)? Find the wizard and a way home to Kansas (WIZARD OF OZ)? Note that all of these are books with strong antagonists who drive or catalyze the plot line going forward. More on that later. If you cannot conceive or write a simple story statement like those above (which will help define your story premise) then you don’t have a work of commercial fiction. Keep in mind that the PLOT LINE is an elaboration of the statement. FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. ___________________________________________________ ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT Since a true antagonist is the major driver of plot in successful genre fiction, what chances do you as a writer have of getting your manuscript, regardless of genre, commercially published if the story and narrative therein fail to meet reader demands for sufficient suspense, character concern, and conflict? Answer: none. But what major factor makes for a quiet or dull manuscript brimming with insipid characters and a story that cascades from chapter to chapter with tens of thousands of words, all of them combining irresistibly to produce an audible thudding sound in the mind, rather like a fist hitting a side of cold beef? Such a dearth of vitality in narrative and story frequently results from the unwillingness of the writer to create a suitable antagonist who stirs and spices the plot hash. And let's make it clear what we're talking about. By "antagonist" we specifically refer to an actual fictional character, an embodiment of certain traits and motivations who plays a significant role in catalyzing and energizing plot line(s), or at bare minimum, in assisting to evolve the protagonist's character arc (and by default the story itself) by igniting complication(s) the protagonist, and possibly other characters, must face and solve (or fail to solve). CONTINUE READING ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE SECOND ASSIGNMENT: in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them. ___________________________________________________ CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE What is your breakout title? How important is a great title before you even become published? Very important! Quite often, agents and editors will get a feel for a work and even sense the marketing potential just from a title. A title has the ability to attract and condition the reader's attention. It can be magical or thud like a bag of wet chalk, so choose carefully. A poor title sends the clear message that what comes after will also be of poor quality. Go to Amazon.Com and research a good share of titles in your genre, come up with options, write them down and let them simmer for at least 24 hours.Consider character or place names, settings, or a "label" that describes a major character, like THE ENGLISH PATIENT or THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST. Consider also images, objects, or metaphors in the novel that might help create a title, or perhaps a quotation from another source (poetry, the Bible, etc.) that thematically represents your story. Or how about a title that summarizes the whole story: THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, etc. Keep in mind that the difference between a mediocre title and a great title is the difference between THE DEAD GIRL'S SKELETON and THE LOVELY BONES, between TIME TO LOVE THAT CHOLERA and LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA between STRANGERS FROM WITHIN (Golding's original title) and LORD OF THE FLIES, between BEING LIGHT AND UNBEARABLE and THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING. THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed). ___________________________________________________ DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES Did you know that a high percentage of new novel writers don't fully understand their genre, much less comprehend comparables? When informing professionals about the nuances of your novel, whether by query letter or oral pitch, you must know your genre first, and provide smart comparables second. In other words, you need to transcend just a simple statement of genre (literary, mystery, thriller, romance, science fiction, etc.) by identifying and relating your novel more specifically to each publisher's or agent's area of expertise, and you accomplish this by wisely comparing your novel to contemporary published novels they will most likely recognize and appreciate--and it usually doesn't take more than two good comps to make your point.Agents and publishing house editors always want to know the comps. There is more than one reason for this. First, it helps them understand your readership, and thus how to position your work for the market. Secondly, it demonstrates up front that you are a professional who understands your contemporary market, not just the classics. Very important! And finally, it serves as a tool to enable them to pitch your novel to the decision-makers in the business.Most likely you will need to research your comps. We've included some great starter websites for this purpose below. If you're not sure how to begin, go to Amazon.Com, type in the title of a novel you believe very similar to yours, choose it, then scroll down the page to see Amazon's list of "Readers Also Bought This" and begin your search that way. Keep in mind that before you begin, you should know enough about your own novel to make the comparison in the first place!By the way, beware of using comparables by overly popular and classic authors. If you compare your work to classic authors like H.G. Wells and Gabriel Marquez in the same breath you will risk being declared insane. If you compare your work to huge contemporary authors like Nick Hornby or Jodi Picoult or Nora Ephron or Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling, and so forth, you will not be laughed at, but you will also not be taken seriously since thousands of others compare their work to the same writers. Best to use two rising stars in your genre. If you can't do this, use only one classic or popular author and combine with a rising star. Choose carefully! FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: - Read this comprehensive article regarding comparables. - Develop two smart comps for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. - Also find two comps related to TV and Film--always a good idea at this point in the 21st century. ____________________________________________________ HOOK LINES, CORE WOUNDS, AND CONFLICT Conflict, tension, complication, drama--pretty much basically related and going a long way to keeping the reader's eyes and thoughts fixated on your story. These days, serving up a big manuscript of quiet is a sure path to post-slush damnation. You need tension on the page, and the best way to accomplish this is to create conflict and complication in the plot, and narrative as well. Conflict was first described in ancient Greek literature as the agon, or central contest in tragedy. According to Aristotle, in order to ensure interest, the hero must have a single conflict. The agon, or act of PRIMARY CONFLICT, involves the protagonist and the antagonist, corresponding to hero and villain. The outcome of their contest cannot be known in advance, and according to later critics such as Plutarch, the hero's struggle should be ennobling. Is that always true these days? Not always, but let's move on. Classic drama creates conflict with real stakes. It cannot help but do so. You see it everywhere, to one degree or another, from classic contemporary westerns like THE SAVAGE BREED to a time-tested novel as literary as THE GREAT GATSBY (that would fall apart if Tom Buchanan were not a cretin). And the core of conflict can be expressed in a hook line. For example, let us consider hook lines from the following novels. Note the following hook lines are divided into two basic parts--the CORE WOUND and the resulting dramatic complication that denotes and drives conflict towards climax and resolution. The Hand of Fatima by Ildefonso Falcones A young Moor torn between Islam and Christianity, scorned and tormented by both, struggles to bridge the two faiths by seeking common ground in the very nature of God. * The protagonist is scorned and tormented, thus the core wound, and as a result he seeks to fulfill an almost impossible task. ___ Summer's Sisters by Judy Blume After sharing a magical summer with a friend, a young woman must confront her friend's betrayal of her with the man she loved. * The protagonist is betrayed by her friend and thus her core wound, and as a result she must take steps to reach a closure wherein conflict will surely result. ___ The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud As an apprentice mage seeks revenge on an elder magician who humiliated him, he unleashes a powerful Djinni who joins the mage to confront a danger that threatens their entire world. * Humiliated into a core wound by an elder magician, the story line erupts into a conflict with the entire world at stake. ___ *** Note that it is fairly easy to ascertain the stakes in each case above: a young woman's love and friendship, the entire world, and harmony between opposed religions. If you cannot make the stakes clear, the odds are you don't have any. FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: write your own hook line following the format above that includes core wound and resulting conflict. Consider also, what makes your novel distinctive? Might elements of the setting be displayed to add color? Is the antagonist noted or inferred? What do you see in the three examples above? ______________________________________________________ OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS Consider "conflict" divided into three parts, all of which you should ideally have present in the novel. First, the primary conflict (noted above) that drives through the core of the work from beginning to end and zeniths with an important climax (falling action or denouement to follow). Next, secondary conflicts or complications which can take various social forms (anything from a vigorous love subplot to family issues to turmoil with fellow characters). Finally, those inner conflicts the major characters must endure and resolve--which may or may not be directly related to the main plot line (but at least an important one should be). SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction. And relate it to the main plot line or primary conflict. Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it? ______________________________________________________ THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING When considering your novel, whether taking place in a contemporary urban world or on a distant magical planet in Andromeda, you must first sketch the best overall setting and sub-settings for your story. Consider: the more unique and intriguing (or quirky) your setting, the more easily you're able to create energetic scenes, narrative, and overall story. A great setting maximizes opportunities for interesting characters, circumstances, and complications, and therefore makes your writing life so much easier. Imagination is truly your best friend when it comes to writing competitive fiction, and nothing provides a stronger foundation than a great setting. One of the best selling contemporary novels, THE HUNGER GAMES, is driven by the circumstances of the setting, and the characters are a product of that unique environment, the plot also. But even if you're not writing SF/F, the choice of setting is just as important, perhaps even more so. If you must place your upmarket story in a sleepy little town in Maine winter, then choose a setting within that town that maximizes opportunities for verve and conflict, for example, a bed and breakfast stocked to the ceiling with odd characters who combine to create comical, suspenseful, dangerous or difficult complications or subplot reversals that the bewildered and sympathetic protagonist must endure and resolve while he or she is perhaps engaged in a bigger plot line: restarting an old love affair, reuniting with a family member, starting a new business, etc. And don't forget that non-gratuitous sex goes a long way, especially for American readers. CONTINUE TO READ THIS ARTICLE THEN RETURN. FINAL ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it. ______________ ________________________________[url={url}]View the full article[/url]