Assignment 1: Story Statement Rescue the girl he loves from a gang, and do whatever it takes to keep her from leaving him. Assignment 2: Antagonist Julien is the primary face of the gang hunting down the main characters. We first meet him in the hotel lobby, with his elderly father and his younger adult brother. It is made evident that Julien is the "brawn" of the group, while his father is the "brain." Deeper into the novel the main characters find themselves in Julien's white-picket fence house, where he has a seemingly normal family (wife and two kids), despite a basement packed with firearms. When a death in his family shifts power dynamics, Julien becomes the leader of the gang, proving himself to be more than just muscle. His main goal is to find the man who had been skimming off the top of their profits. However, over the course of the novel, through his desire to keep his family safe, Julien will become more humanized, and the reader may even end up granting him some sympathy. Assignment 3: Breakout Title This Was All For You Nightshift Burning Lies From Darkness Comes Flames Assignment 4: Smart Comparables Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh - similar voice of the unhappy, crude, and sometimes gross narrator. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith - similar MMC in that morally gray becomes flat-out evil over the course of the novel. Protagonist has a suspicious/twisted outlook on people in his life, and self-pity and obsession are prevalent. The End of the Fucking World by Charles Forsman - lots of similar themes: young couple on-the-run, toxic relationship with some sweet moments, forced to stick together by circumstance. Assignment 5: Hook A troubled young man working the nightshift in a hotel lobby falls fast for a girl on-the-run from a gang, and will do everything in his power to keep her safe and by his side, even if it means sabotaging the people she loves the most. Assignment 6: Inner Conflict & Secondary Conflict Michael's life isn't great. He lives in his dead father's house alone, has no friends, and, working the nightshift in a hotel lobby, he barely even sees the sun. To make the time go by faster, he pops Xanax like it's candy. When a strange girl, Ania, enters the lobby one night asking for his help, he sees an opportunity for a little excitement. Michael falls fast for the girl and relishes in his role as prince charming. But once his assistance is no longer needed, Michael refuses to return to his dreary life. He will do anything to keep her in his life for good. - Inner Conflict: Michael sees Ania as a means of ending his own loneliness and depression. But, he has trouble distinguishing between love and obsession, and will commit horrible acts in the name of love throughout the novel. Ania was seriously wounded during her husband Rob's assassination attempt (which Michael had orchestrated), leaving Michael wracked with guilt. He never meant to get this much blood on his hands. He was only doing it for Ania, because Rob was such a bad guy! This was all for Ania. But still, he knows his actions have hurt her, both physically and mentally, and that knowledge pains him deeply. MIchael takes pills to help him cope. But he wants to change. He still clings to the hope of a brighter future with Ania and vows to make it happen. He makes a promise to himself, that going forward, there will be no more lies or secrets between them. He will be a good man. They will get their happily ever after. Michael is on the right course to turn things around, until disaster strikes, and he is forced to kill again. The question hanging at the end of the novel is: can Michael ever really change? - Secondary Conflict: Michael's love interest, Ania, had been in a sham marriage for citizenship, only she ended up falling for the man she married. Michael enters Ania's life after her husband, Rob, mysteriously goes missing, and the two grow close. When Rob (who happens to be the man that Julien, the antagonist, has been trying to hunt down) makes contact with Ania and asks her to meet, Michael protests against the rendezvous. Ania insists on going to see him, and, to end the argument, Michael finally agrees to take her. In fear of Ania leaving him for good, Michael secretly meets with Julien and sells out Rob's location. Rob is killed and Ania is traumatized, but at least she's still with Michael. Assignment 7: Setting Set in Tampa, FL, a substantial amount of the novel takes place in the hotel in which Michael is employed. We start the novel with Michael on the nightshift. The hotel feels eerie and isolated, with big sliding glass doors that sometimes slide apart even with no one around. Several details point to the mediocrity of this hotel, including the stickiness of the front desk surface, the old computer used for check-in that the owner won't replace, corny red and gold furniture, and a cheap looking clock. "We had more double beds than King suites, and we didn’t have a hotel bar, but we did serve breakfast, cold and dry was our signature dish." Other fixtures in the hotel include: Albert, the cheap, balding boss that chides Michael for getting chip grease all over the keyboard, and Marta, the flirty hotel maid who sits and watches TV in empty hotel rooms to collect overtime. Later, when it's established that it's not safe for them to stay at home, Michael uses his master key card to let himself and Ania into an empty room, and they spend several days living secretly in the hotel: "Things were rosy enough for the first few days. We’d picked up some groceries and essentials from Target, a new phone for me, and like, five DVD’s from the Redbox machine out front, so we were all set to camp out in our room for a while. We snuck into the hotel through the back entrance by the kitchen, the only person there was Marta, and when she saw us she just raised her eyebrows and turned away. From there we went up seven flights of stairs, and I was able to swipe us into 715. In Room 715, the A/C had up and quit one day, so we never booked it out to guests. Al never bothered to get it fixed ‘cause the hotel was never full anyway." We also get a good glimpse of Florida during a scene that takes place at the Courtney Campbell Causeway: “Ania rolled the windows down while I was driving and that action somehow made everything feel normal. Ania could’ve been my girlfriend. This could’ve been a romantic day-trip, taken for our six-month anniversary. The wind rustled my hair, made a mess out of Ania’s, and when we got closer to the shore it filled the car with the smell of salty ocean water. I wanted to put my arm around her, but I settled with resting it on the back of her seat. The turn of her cheek was still fresh in my memory from this morning. The causeway is a long stretch of flat highway, with turn-offs that bring you onto a narrow sandy road that you drive along until you find a pocket of sand sheltered by mangrove trees to pull into. It’s like having your own six-foot-squared private beach, complete with mushy sand and murky water, algae floating on the surface like lily pads. I pulled into a space and turned off the car.”

Story Statement: Abigail Williams is about to give up on her Hollywood dreams when she is offered a lucrative deal: star in a movie and become actor Braeden Wallace’s girlfriend. All seems well in her glamorous new life, but Abigail realizes that she has been manipulated into giving up her freedom and her family. As she begins to fight back, she finds secrets about the industry that, if exposed, could change the way the public views Hollywood forever. Antagonist Sketch: Ethan Cromwell is the agent to the stars, known for discovering talent and cultivating them into something legendary. So long as the talent listens to him, he will get them the success they’re looking for – at any cost. He tends to prey on those desperate enough to take whatever deal he’s offering, because as much as he loves lining his pockets (and he does), it’s possible that he enjoys the control even more. He prides himself on being at least one step ahead of everyone else. He not only knows how to play the game – it’s possible he re-invented it so that he can never lose. Breakout Title: Publicity Stunt Comps: The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston – A contemporary piece with romance that is seemingly set in our reality, minus something extraordinary (in this case, the magical apartment) that doesn’t need to be explained. How to Fake it in Hollywood by Ava Wilder – Similar fake-dating premise in Hollywood. (I haven’t read this book, so I don’t know how closely it compares otherwise) The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center – She straddles the line between having humor and empathic characters in a way I feel is similar to my own. Logline: After agreeing to a publicity stunt relationship, a struggling actress finds herself out of her depth in a stranger-than-fiction Hollywood where careers and relationships are at the mercy of contracts. Major Conflict: After entering into a publicity-stunt relationship in exchange for a life-changing career boost, Abigail realizes that the price of fame includes her autonomy in ways that go far beyond what is reasonable. When she finds herself unable to break out of her restricting contract, she must figure out who she can actually trust and find a way back to her freedom. Inner Conflict: Abigail’s inner conflicts consist of the fact that she develops feelings for her publicity stunt, and is unable to figure out whether his feelings are real or contractual. She is also still struggling with feelings of guilt after her ex-boyfriend and best friend were killed in a car accident after getting into a heated argument with Abigail. As a result, she is somewhat estranged from her family, and needs to work through her complicated feelings surrounding the incident. Setting: My setting is Hollywood, but not a factual one. In this version of Hollywood, what’s true and what’s presented to the public can be two different things. Examples of this include: Actors/Actresses being married for several years without the public knowing, or one actor being married to another actress while publicity-dating someone else. Actors have been known to fake their own deaths to get away from the public eye, or if a celebrity dies tragically, someone might be brought in and fixed up to fill their role. Basically, the setting plays into some of the more wild speculation and imagination of our culture through the years, in both playful and sinister ways.

I guess it’s quiz season, because I can’t stop making quizzes. By that, do I mean that it’s quiz season so I’m making quizzes, or I’m making quizzes so it’s quiz season? I don’t know, but the finer points don’t really matter. What only matters is: quiz. This particular quiz conceit comes to you from my Lit Hub colleague Emily Temple, who, in 2019, went through the Library of Congress catalog and found the subject category listings for many classic novels, and turned her findings into a delightful quiz. You can take it here. What is a Library of Congress subject category? Well, I’ll tell you! It’s a designation that helps organize the 62 million items in the library’s collection. Books often have their Library of Congress categories listed on their copyright page, so you’ve probably seen them before. But, not knowing the title before reading the subject categories can lead to some amusing guessing. Hence, our quiz! As usual, the answer key is way down at the bottom. As you take the quiz, I’d write down your answers next to the corresponding questions’ numbers (on a sheet of paper or in your notes app) and then grade yourself in one swoop when you’re done, so that you’re not constantly scrolling down and up again as you go, thereby risking seeing some of the other answers. (Also, I omitted any categories that involved character names, just to keep things less obvious.) Enjoy! 1. Private investigators–California–Los Angeles–Fiction. African American men–Fiction. Los Angeles (Calif.)–Fiction. 2. Serial murderers–Fiction. Psychopaths–Fiction. Criminals–Fiction. Italy–Fiction. 3. Traffic accidents–Fiction. Married women–Fiction. First loves–Fiction. Rich people–Fiction. Mistresses–Fiction. Revenge–Fiction. Long Island (N.Y.)–Fiction 4. Private investigators–California–Los Angeles–Fiction. Los Angeles (Calif.)–Fiction 5. Monastic and religious life–Italy–History–Middle Ages, 600-1500–Fiction. Monastic libraries–Italy–Fiction. Italy–Church history–476-1400–Fiction. Church history. Detective and mystery stories. Historical fiction. Didactic fiction. 6. Private investigators–Fiction. Murder–Investigation–Fiction. Georgia–Fiction. 7. Remarried people–Fiction. Cornwall (England : County)–Fiction. Romantic suspense fiction. 8. Teacher-student relationships–Fiction. College students–Fiction. Classicists–Fiction. Murder–Fiction. Vermont–Fiction. I. Psychological fiction. II. College stories. 9. Psychiatric hospital patients–Fiction. Inheritance and succession–Fiction. Country homes–Fiction. Art teachers–Fiction. Deception–Fiction. Nobility–Fiction. England–Fiction. Psychological fiction. Gothic fiction. Love stories. 10. Husbands–Fiction. Married people–Fiction. Wives–Crimes against–Fiction. 11. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)–Fiction. Married women–Fiction. Murderers–Fiction. Adultery–Fiction. 12. Hotelkeepers–Fiction. Families–Fiction. Occult fiction. Horror tales. 13. Private investigators–Egypt–Fiction. Belgians–Egypt–Fiction. Egypt–Fiction. 14. Korean War, 1950-1953–Veterans–Fiction. Politicians’ spouses–Fiction. Mothers and sons–Fiction. Brainwashing–Fiction. Assassins–Fiction. Cold War–Fiction. 15. Private investigators–England–Fiction. Blessing and cursing–Fiction. Dogs–Fiction. Dartmoor (England)–Fiction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley 2. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith 3. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald 4. The Big Slee, Raymond Chandler 5. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco 6. Killing Floor, Lee Child 7. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier 8. The Secret History, Donna Tartt 9. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins 10. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn 11. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain 12. The Shining, Stephen King 13. Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie 14. The Manchurian Candidate, Richard Condon 15. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle View the full article

I fell in love with Gothic fiction while teaching a night course in Gothic literature at a Midwestern college. It was winter and my drive was long and sometimes treacherous, traversing dimly lit, snow-covered roads. The journey seemed apropos of Gothic fiction’s dark themes, eerie atmosphere, and supernatural world. All those elements are present in my Gothic, historical mystery, The Darkness Surrounds Us—a decaying manor house, a wintry desolate Michigan island, and a ghostly presence that haunts the protagonist, Nellie Lester, who she fears is her dead mother. What lures Nellie to this isolated island are her mother’s secrets. As Nellie explains, “On the night my mother died, she took her secrets with her.” Eventually, Nellie discovers her mother’s shocking secrets, which in the tradition of many American Gothic novels, underscore our country’s horrific past—destruction of the wilderness, fear of the other, and slavery’s legacy. Though dead, Nellie’s mother guides the narrative and contributes to her daughter’s psychological torment. * The following four novels illustrate how maternal figures not only propel Gothic plots but heighten their terror. Whether it’s the mother committing an unspeakable act, the mother driven to madness, or the mother who refuses to stay dead, these novels demonstrate the pivotal role mothers play in Gothic fiction. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne’s sin of adultery, as personified by her daughter Pearl, dominates the narrative. Though there are no supernatural occurrences, Pearl is depicted as an unnatural being, described as an elfin child and a demon offspring. Hester, the adulterous mother, is a source of terror and dread in her Puritan community, who deem her an example of the devil’s work. Condemned to wear the letter A for adultery, Hester carries the guilt and shame of the colony’s past history of the Salem witch trials. Ever lurking near the town is the shadowy and mysterious forest, where reportedly the devil dwells. The horror of evil ever present. Beloved, Toni Morrison’s masterpiece, illustrates the haunting ravages of slavery through the character of Sethe. As a devoted and passionate mother, Sethe makes the horrific decision to kill her children, rather than have them returned to enslavement. She succeeds in murdering only one child, her daughter, whose malevolent spirit haunts her. Through the mother’s unspeakable act, the book shows how a house and a person can be possessed by the brutality of the past. With a nod to Hitchcock’s movie, Rear Window, the Gothic novel, The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn, centers on Dr. Anna Fox, a mother and a former child psychologist. She’s trapped in her New York city house not by a broken leg, but by crippling agoraphobia caused by a traumatic event. In this lonely house, the absence of Anna’s husband and daughter is a presence that keeps her riveted to her window. The house, which is beset by memories of her husband and daughter, has entombed her. Anna’s longing for her child leads her to become enmeshed with her neighbor’s sixteen-year-old son. A mistake that only a heartbroken mother would make. Carol Goodman’s latest Gothic mystery novel, Return to Wyldcliffe Heights, echoes the Gothic novels Jane Eyre and The Thirteenth Tale. A story within a story, at its core is a mentally unstable mother whose lingering effects on her daughter, Agnes Corey, have damaged her life. Agnes, an editorial assistant at a failing publishing house, is hired by a recluse author, Victoria St. Clair, to transcribe a sequel to her 1994 best seller The Secrets of Wyldcliffe Heights. The book has particular significance to Agnes, because she and her mother were obsessed with it. As St. Clair dictates, Agnes realizes that parts of her story relate to her mysterious mother. But it’s the crumbling manor house, Wyldcliffe Heights, and its aberrant past—first as a home for unwed mothers and then as a psychiatric hospital for “wayward” women—that serves as a metaphor for the mistreatment of “outsider” women. View the full article

On 14 June, prompted by the Good fiasco, Commissioners Mayne and Rowan sent to the Home Secretary a ‘Memorandum relative to the Detective Powers of the Police’. It laid out plans for a new branch of Scotland Yard comprised of two detective-inspectors and eight sergeants. The document has been lost to history, but in a follow-up letter they made clear that when not working a case, members of the proposed branch were to learn ‘the habits, haunts, and persons or parties known or suspected to live by the commission of crime, so as to prepare themselves for tracing and detecting offenders when any case occurred.’ The Home Secretary gave the proposal his stamp of approval for six sergeants, rather than eight, in the name of economy. Although the Yard kept the plan under wraps, the press caught wind of it on 12 July when The Morning Post, under the headline ‘New Police Arrangement’, reported: Several cases having lately occurred, in which criminals have not been taken into custody so promptly as the public had a right to expect, the commissioners of police have arranged that a new company shall immediately be raised out of the present police, to be called the ‘Detective Force’ We doubt not that the choice of the commissioners will fall upon men whose vigilance and industry in their vocation will entitle them to the preferment. On Monday, 15 August 1842, the Yard announced in its internal Police Orders the creation of its plainclothes Detective Branch – the first of its kind.* Inspector Nicholas Pearce oversaw the new detectives with Inspector John Haynes, a ten-year veteran and one-time chemist, as his second-in-command. In 1840, Haynes successfully tracked down a team of looters who picked clean a wrecked ship off Margate along England’s southeast coast. He calculated how fast their horse-drawn carriage could travel and deduced from that what inns they stayed at on their run to London. As the two senior detectives, Pearce and Haynes earned a yearly salary of £200 – ‘£84 more than uniformed officers’. The six sergeants included veterans of the Westwood, Good and Russell murder investigations. Two constables recently promoted to Sergeant, including Jonathan Whicher, destined to become the most celebrated and then ostracized detective of his day, rounded out the team. The sergeants earned £73 a year, £10 more than their uniformed colleagues. The branch, in its early days, went through several personnel changes that saw Pearce promoted to Superintendent of F (Covent Garden) Division and Inspector Charles Frederick Field named Senior Detective. The press, which had long criticized Scotland Yard for its lack of investigative prowess, initially paid it little attention. Some histories contend it’s because the Yard and Home Office made no public announcement, while another argues it ‘was more probably due to the dearth during this period of spectacular cases’. Not ‘until the end of the decade’ did the Detective Branch ‘come into the news with a crime of the more sensational sort.’ In 1849, a cholera outbreak ravaged London ‘with a large scale loss of life’. More than 14,000 people in the capital succumbed to violent cramps, vomiting and severe diarrhea after drinking contaminated water from the city’s pumps. On Monday, 24 September, The Morning Chronicle ran an article by journalist Henry Mayhew under the headline ‘A Visit to the Cholera Districts of Bermondsey.’ Along ‘the southern shores of the Thames’, a hotbed of disease, some 6,500 people had died ‘within the last three months’. Mayhew wanted to see for himself the conditions that bred such a ‘fatal fury’. ‘The masses of filth and corruption round the metropolis are, as it were, the nauseous nests of plague and pestilence,’ he wrote: As we passed along the reeking banks of the sewer the sun shone upon a narrow slip of water. In the bright light it appeared the colour of strong green tea, and positively looked as solid as black marble in the shadow – indeed, it was more like watery mud than muddy water; and yet we were assured this was the only water the wretched inhabitants had to drink. As we gazed in horror at it, we saw drains and sewers emptying their filthy contents into it; we saw a whole tier of doorless privies in the open road, common to men and women, built over it; we heard bucket after bucket of filth splash into it, and the limbs of the vagrant boys bathing in it seemed, by pure force of contrast, white as Parisian marble. Against this nauseating backdrop, the Detective Branch tackled its first major case. For London’s weary inhabitants, the sordid love triangle that became known as ‘the Bermondsey Horror’ proved a welcome distraction from endless stories of disease. ‘At this time,’ reported Punch that September, ‘refined, civilized, philanthropic London reeks with the foulness of the Bermondsey murder.’ It all began when colleagues at the London Docks reported Patrick O’Connor missing. An official with Her Majesty’s Customs department, he was last seen by an acquaintance on the evening of Thursday, 9 August, strolling across London Bridge from the Surrey side towards Bermondsey. The two exchanged brief pleasantries, during which O’Connor mentioned he planned to spend the evening with a couple called the Mannings. He then bid farewell and vanished into the ether. ‘Sinister apprehensions began to be entertained respecting his fate’ when, by Monday, he had not shown up for work. O’Connor made no secret of his friendship with the Mannings, although it seemed an odd relationship. Marie Manning, née De Roux, was born in Switzerland in 1821. As a lady’s maid to the aristocracy, she grew accustomed to the sumptuous surroundings of country manors, the comfort of fine clothes and the trappings of high society. She benefitted from the generosity of her mistresses, acquiring in the course of her service ‘11 petticoats, 9 gowns, 28 pairs of stockings, 7 pairs of drawers and 19 pairs of kid gloves’. Her outfit of choice was a black satin dress that accentuated her figure. She was a pleasure for the eyes with her long, dark hair. ‘She. . . is an extremely fine woman,’ notes one contemporary account, ‘handsome, and of almost muscular stature.’ She moved to England in July 1846, adopted the more English-sounding name Maria, and went to work ‘in the household of the Duchess of Sutherland’. Along the way she met O’Connor. The fifty-year-old Irishman ‘was excessively fond of money and endeavoured at all times to increase his store.’ He had in recent years acquired a reputation for wealth through shady money lending and become known as ‘The Customs’ money lender’. His stature made him an attractive proposition – one who enjoyed the ‘society of ladies.’ Although he and Maria shared a mutual attraction, he never proposed. She instead married Frederick Manning, a one-time guard for the Great Western Railway Company, in May 1847, believing he was due a substantial family inheritance. A step down from the financially secure O’Connor, Manning was not, as he claimed, destined for wealth. A failed publican, his lack of business acumen drove the couple to the financial brink. She kept them afloat as a dressmaker, but just barely. They moved into a respectable home at No. 3, Miniver Place, Bermondsey, and struggled to maintain appearances. ‘The Mannings, through their extravagance and dissipation,’ states one report, ‘had got rid of nearly all their property, with the exception of the furniture, and their circumstances became critical.’ Through all this, O’Connor stuck around and paid the couple frequent visits if only to be close to Maria. Neighbours often spotted the two smoking ‘in the back parlour window’ and ‘the small garden at the rear of the house’. Friends urged O’Connor to keep his distance, but he dismissed their concerns, to his great detriment. Police Constable John Wright of M (Southwark) Division, accompanied by one Mr Flynn, O’Connor’s cousin, questioned Maria at her home on Monday, 13 August, as to the missing man’s whereabouts. She claimed she had invited him to dinner several nights prior but he never showed up. ‘Poor Mr O’Connor,’ Maria said. ‘He was the best friend I had in London.’ Maria’s response struck Wright and Flynn as strange, as there was nothing yet to suggest O’Connor had met with foul play. They thanked her for her time and proceeded to O’Connor’s rented room at 21, Greenwood Street, where the landlord let them in. In a trunk, they found the cashbox in which O’Connor kept his cash and railway share certificates. It was empty. When police returned to the Manning residence the next day, they found it abandoned. ‘The nest was there but the birds had flown.’ Police Constables Henry Barnes and James Burton returned three days later on Friday, 17 August, to search the place. Barnes noticed a damp mark on the kitchen floor between two flagstones. Closer inspection revealed the stones had recently been moved. The two constables pried the heavy stones up with a crowbar to expose a layer of earth beneath. ‘I proceeded to remove a portion of the earth,’ Barnes said. ‘When I had got down about a foot, I discovered the toe of a man – and when I got about eighteen inches down, I discovered the loins of a man, the back of a man.’ The constables cleared away the remaining earth to reveal the naked body of a man, hogtied, covered in lime and lying face down in a pit about three-feet deep, two and a half feet wide, and six feet long. The head, slightly lower than the torso, was caked in dried blood. Breathless from their excavation, they hauled the corpse from its makeshift grave and laid it, still bound in heavy cord, on the kitchen floor. Two surgeons joined them at the house. Their examination found the victim had been shot above the right eye and the back of his skull caved in by at least sixteen blows from a sharp, heavy instrument. ‘The fractures were quite sufficient to have caused death,’ they reported. ‘And no doubt the wound from the bullet would have eventually caused death.’ One of the surgeons removed a set of false teeth from the corpse’s mouth. Checking with dentists, the Yard soon found one in Osborne Street, Whitechapel, who had sold the teeth to O’Connor. In reporting the murder, the press dredged up Greenacre and Good and argued the nation had been scared ‘from its propriety’ by the savagery of O’Connor’s death. The Detective Branch, under pressure to quickly resolve the matter and not yet tested to such a degree, moved with surprising rapidity. Detective Sergeant Frederick Shaw began knocking on doors in the Mannings’ neighbourhood and learned Maria was seen getting into a cab on the afternoon of Monday, 13 August with three large trunks. One eagle-eyed neighbour provided the hackney-cab number, 1186. Shaw traced the driver, a man named Kirk, who remembered Maria and her excessive amount of luggage. He said she directed him to the London Bridge terminus, where she deposited two of the trunks in the luggage office under the name Mrs Smith. She next asked to be dropped off at the London and North Western Station in Euston Square, which Kirk did at quarter to six that evening. He watched her disappear into the crowd with the remaining trunk and a carpetbag. Shaw returned to Scotland Yard and reported his findings to Inspector Haynes. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, 21 August, detectives located the trunks left in the cloakroom of the London Bridge terminus. Both pieces of luggage had a white label attached. Scrawled across one in green ink was ‘Mrs Smith, passenger to Paris, to be left till called for’. Across the other was ‘Mrs Smith, passenger, to be left till called for’. Haynes and his men forced the trunks open and found ‘a quantity of wearing apparel’ – including a bloodstained gown – marked with the name De Roux, ‘a quantity of articles belonging to the deceased Patrick O’Connor’ and several letters from O’Connor to Maria. Haynes hurried to the London and North Western Station and began asking porters and ticket-takers if they’d encountered anyone matching Maria’s description and going by the name of Smith. The odds played in his favour. He learned ‘a female passenger, whose luggage was marked with the name of Smith, had left the Station on the morning of Tuesday the 14th, by the 6:15 a.m. train, having booked herself through to Edinburgh in a 1st class carriage’. Haynes pushed his way through the crowd to the station’s telegraph office. Telegraphy was first used to capture a criminal in 1845, when police in Berkshire learned John Tawell, wanted for murdering his mistress, had fled by train to London. Much to the fugitive’s bad luck, ‘he was travelling along one of the only stretches of railway in the world to have telegraph wires running beside the railway lines.’ A message, alerting police and describing Tawell, was telegraphed to Paddington Station, where he was arrested upon his arrival. ‘Had it not been for the efficient aid of the electric telegraph, both at Slough and Paddington,’ reported The Times ‘the greatest difficulty, as well as delay, would have occurred in the apprehension.’ By the time Maria Manning fled by train to Scotland, electric telegraph connected ‘about a third of the railway network’ across Britain. Presently, from the North Western Station’s telegraph office, Inspector Haynes sent a message through to Edinburgh addressed to the city’s superintendent of police, cluing him into the situation and providing a description of Maria. All he could do now was be patient. He had ‘scarcely arrived at Scotland Yard’ when a messenger boy delivered the telegraphed response from Superintendent Richard Moxey. Maria Manning had attempted that very morning to sell O’Connor’s railway shares to a local stockbroker who recognized the numbers on the certificates from a printed police bulletin. She was now in custody. Moxey put Maria on a train under escort and had her back in London three days later on Friday, 24 August. Frederick Manning’s whereabouts remained a mystery. ‘Every day that passes diminishes the chance of his arrest,’ The Times unhelpfully pointed out, ‘and unless the most strenuous exertions are now made a deed of the most extraordinary atrocity may be suffered to go unpunished.’ The couple who killed together didn’t stay together. Maria told police her marriage to Frederick was a volatile and unhappy one, strained as it was by financial matters. The day she fled, Frederick had left the house to pawn their furniture. Maria, seeing her chance, took off with the railway shares and cash she’d taken from O’Connor’s room, leaving Frederick with the proverbial shirt on his back. On Thursday, 23 August, coincidence and luck intervened when the Yard received a wire from the Crown Solicitor in the Channel Islands off the French Normandy coast. A local woman who knew Manning had seen him on a steamer the previous week travelling from Southampton to Jersey. At the time, the murder had yet to be discovered, so Manning’s presence on the boat was no cause for alarm. The wire, dated Saturday, 18 August, had taken five days to reach London. Haynes, fearing Manning might be making a run for France, sent Sergeant Edward Langley to put an end to the chase. Langley traced Manning to a rented room in a cottage called Prospect House on Jersey and took him by surprise on the night of 27 August. The two men knew each other by sight. The detective had previously investigated ‘extensive robberies’ on the Great Western Railway line and interviewed Manning, who, employed as a railway guard at the time, had been a suspect. ‘Ah, sergeant, is that you?’ Manning said when Langley entered his room. ‘I am glad you are come. I know what you are come about. If you had not come, I was coming to town to explain all. I am innocent!’ Langley ordered Manning out of bed and told him to get dressed. ‘Is the wretch taken?’ Manning said as he pulled his clothes on. ‘She is the guilty party. I am innocent as a lamb.’ He had a lot to say and wasted no time blaming Maria. She ‘had caused the grave to be dug some time before,’ he said. On the night of the murder, she had laid the table for dinner and ‘invited O’Connor downstairs to wash his hands.’ As O’Connor did so, Maria snuck up from behind and shot him in the head. Of O’Con- nor’s multiple skull fractures, Frederick had nothing to say – but he expressed continued satisfaction with Maria’s arrest, as she had left him ‘in total ignorance of her destination, without money’. ___________________________________ Excerpted from Scotland Yard: a History of the London Police Force’s Most Infamous Murder Cases, by Simon Read. Copyright 2024. Published by Pegasus Books. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. View the full article

First Assignment~ After journalist Mike Royko writes a harsh article about my lawyer father's involvement in a high-profile drug kingpin case, I become the target of relentless bullying, and my high school boyfriend unexpectedly steps in as my hero. However, a year later, his life starts to unravel due to his mother’s cancer diagnosis and his father’s descent into alcoholism and infidelity. As he struggles with these issues, my life finally begins to stabilize, and he is not happy about it. His insecurities drag him down a rabbit hole of anger, resentment, and a jealous fixation on my brother. It was my debutante ball that ignited a series of confrontations, culminating in my brother's arm being severely injured, followed by a lawsuit that sparked a Hatfield-and-McCoy-style feud between our families. A few years later, at 23, the man who once protected me devises a plan of revenge against my family, resulting in my brutal rape and blackmail. To avoid causing more family drama, I buried the secret so deep that even I forgot. Until years later, when a birthday reminder jolts my memory, putting a face to the black shadowy tormentor that haunted my nightmares for a decade. Now, I’m faced with the fallout of the decisions I made at 23 only to have to face them all over again at 50. Second Assignment~ Mike was the ideal all-American boy: cute, smart, funny, quarterback of the football team, and a key player in the popular crowd. But beneath his facade lay deep insecurities about his self-proclaimed blue collar background. Mike and I fell in love our junior year of high school, becoming my hero when a scandal upended my life. As my life begins to improve, Mikes unravels. His popularity doesn’t follow him to college, his mother is diagnosed with cancer, and his father turns to alcohol and infidelity, leaving Mike and his siblings to care for their mother. Meanwhile, my parents focus on repairing their reputation, arranging for me to debut in an exclusive Debutante Ball. Despite attempts to include Mike, his insecurities deepen, fueling resentment toward me and my family. On the night of the ball, Mike’s drinking leads to a fixation on my brother, Victor, whom Mike perceives as upstaging him. A violent altercation followed, resulting in Victor’s arm being severely injured and igniting a feud between the families. The ensuing lawsuit only fueled Mike’s rage. Years later, consumed by hatred, Mike exacted his revenge by brutally raping me and blackmailing me, believing he was owed for what he saw as his family's unjust losses. Third assignment~ Memoirs of a Charm School Dropout Crossroads to Charm Ignorance Was Bliss Fourth assignment~ In comparing my book to Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley and Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself by Crystal Hefner, the similarities lie in the journey of self-discovery that follows life-altering events. Just as Sloane Crosley embarks on an exploration of life after experiencing a burglary and the suicide of a dear friend, my story delves into the deep introspection that follows significant, traumatic experiences. Both books examine how these pivotal moments force us to reevaluate our lives and the paths we’ve chosen, leading to profound personal transformation. Similarly, in Only Say Good Things, Crystal Hefner confronts the impact of trauma experienced at an impressionable age—trauma that influenced her decisions and life course, even if she didn’t fully realize it at the time. Her journey of reaching a breaking point and setting out on a path of self-discovery and self-worth resonates strongly with my own narrative. Like Crystal, I faced a moment where I had to confront the buried pain that had shaped my life and decisions, leading me on a path to healing and understanding my true self. In essence, all three books explore the aftermath of trauma and how it propels us into a journey of self-discovery, ultimately finding strength and clarity in the process. Fifth, Sixth and Seventh assignment~ Logline~A 23-year-old woman violently raped and blackmailed buries her secret so deeply that even she forgets it. Years later, unexplainable nightmares haunt her, until a birthday reminder puts a face to her tormentor. Now, she must decide: get over it or get even. Core Wound~ During my junior year of high school, my world imploded when my dad went to jail for a year on money laundering charges tied to his drug kingpin client. To make matters worse, renowned journalist Mike Royko wrote an article about a couple of my dad’s high profile clients including the drug kingpin and lumped my dad into it, making it seem as though he was personally dealing coke on the streets. Overnight, I became target practice for bullies. Mike, my boyfriend at the time, is the leader of the popular crowd and he is constantly defending me and shutting down the attacks against my family. As we headed into our senior year, Mike’s life unraveled. His mom was diagnosed with cancer, and his father spiraled, drowning in alcohol and infidelity, leaving Mike and his siblings to care for their mother after her chemo treatments. Mike and I leaned on each other more than ever, forming a bond forged in trauma and survival. I felt indebted to him in a way that ran deeper than love, a debt that I would carry for years, even at my own expense. Conflict~ Over time, I watched Mike change. His bitterness and resentment grew, fueled by his mother’s worsening condition, his father’s downward spiral, and the fact that the popularity that had once defined him didn’t carry over into college. To make matters worse, he started losing his hair. Now, he was the target of teasing, the cracks in his confidence deepened. Meanwhile, my life was starting to get back on track. My parents involved me in their efforts to restore our family’s reputation, arranging for me to make my debut an elite debutante ball. I went out of my way to make Mike feel included at all the pre-ball events, but he made each one miserable for me whenever he could. For the ball, I needed two escorts, my brother Victor was the second. Victor, a handsome rebel with a magnetic personality, naturally attracted people, which only heightened Mike's insecurities. The night of the ball, Mike’s drinking brought everything to the surface. He picked a fight with me about Victor, my family, and rich people in general, calling them dismissive and horrible. Mike stormed out, angry with me and the world. Two days later, he waited for Victor down the street from our house. Victor, thinking Mike was having car trouble, stopped to help. Instead, Mike picked a fight. Victor won that round, breaking Mike’s nose. But the fight wasn’t over. During summer break, they had another altercation on our front porch, where Victor’s arm was severely injured, requiring multiple surgeries. My parents banned me from seeing Mike, but I defied them, thinking my punishment was unjust and not wanting to let Mike down when he needed me. My father sued Mike’s family for damages, which only deepened Mike’s resentment towards my family. I do my best to try to make both Mike and my family happy but not letting on to either that I am doing so. My friends warned me about Mike’s dark changes, but I ignored them, holding onto the gratitude I felt for him being my hero during the hardest time of my life. I even lost friends over it. In college, Mike and I naturally grew apart, seeing each other less and less. Just as we graduated, his mother lost her battle with cancer. Mike wanted me with him at the funeral, but his father wouldn’t allow it. After the service, Mike came to me for comfort, and that was the last time I remember seeing him. I moved on with my life. While waiting to start law school, I took a two-month job as a nanny for the Culkin family while Macaulay filmed Home Alone 2 in Chicago. I hit it off with them so well that I decided to forgo law school and travel with the family. I also picked up work as a production assistant on films in Chicago whenever I wasn’t with the Culkins. While working on Rookie of the Year, Mike contacted me out of the blue. He told me he was struggling with his mother’s death and with life in general and needed to see me. I explained that I didn’t have a lunch hour, but I could spare 30 minutes. He said he’d find a place nearby to make it easy on me. On the day we were supposed to meet, Mike called and said he was staying at a hotel near my office because of his construction job and didn’t want to drive back to the suburbs. He invited me to his room so we could talk privately, promising to have a sandwich for me since I had such limited time. I didn’t sense any danger. I didn’t think twice about it. But within seconds of entering the room, I was handcuffed, blindfolded, and gagged. Mike proceeded to rape me with objects, taking pictures and telling me his plan to blackmail my family for the $300,000 he believed we had wrongfully taken from his. Navigating how to tell my dad I am being blackmailed. Enter Katie, the one person I could trust with my secret, because I was holding one of hers. I met her after moving back home following college graduation. She had recently relocated to Chicago from Las Vegas to start a new life and career. Katie and I bonded immediately, our personalities so similar that we answered every question the same on a 100-question personality test. As we grew closer, Katie confided in me about the tragedy that had shaped her life: when she was 13, her older half-sister Cheryl had been killed by serial killer Stephen Morin, after enduring six agonizing months missing before her body was found. Unsurprisingly, Katie’s family was never the same. But Katie didn’t want to be defined by her sister’s death. She didn’t want people feeling sorry for her or prying into the painful details of what her family had been through. Despite her disagreement with my decision to stay silent, I felt safe sharing my own secret with her. Katie moved out of state in 2001 at which time I have been married for six years and already had three of my four kids. We are both so busy with our new families that our relationship evolves into only happy birthday and holiday greeting texts. My only reminder of my rape is now gone and as time goes by, so does any remembrance of my rape. Fast forward to 2011 when I filed for divorce and left to raise my four kids completely on my own. My divorce is contentious, lasting three years during which time I start to have the same recurring nightmare that not only affects me but my children because they can not go back to sleep on the nights I wake up screaming. My kids and I are all in therapy during this time and my oldest son's psychologist in particular keeps telling me there has to be something behind my nightmares. I honestly don’t know and chalk it up to the stress of the divorce and me trying to keep myself and four kids above water. Katie moved out of state in 2001. By then, I had been married for six years and already had three of my four kids. We were both so busy with our new families that our relationship gradually dwindled to just holiday and birthday greeting texts. With Katie gone, my only reminder of the rape faded, and as time passed, so did any active memory of it. Fast forward to 2011, when I filed for divorce and found myself raising my four kids entirely on my own. The divorce was contentious and dragged on for three years, during which I started experiencing recurring nightmares that affected not just me but my children, as they frequently couldn’t fall back asleep after hearing me wake up screaming. We were all in therapy during this time, and my oldest son’s psychologist repeatedly told me there must be something behind my nightmares. I honestly didn’t know. I chalked it up to the stress of the divorce and the struggle to keep myself and my four kids afloat. Ten years passed. Life with the kids was good, and the nightmares had subsided, though they never fully disappeared. Then came February 27, 2021. It was a typical evening, with only my youngest daughter, now a high school senior, home with me. I went to bed as usual, but a few hours later, I woke up screaming. My shadowy nemesis from the nightmares had returned. I turned on the light to calm myself and checked my phone—it was now February 28th, Katie’s birthday. My thoughts drifted to her and how much I missed having her in my life, remembering all the fun we had in our twenties. From there, I thought of her sister Cheryl, and my mind spiraled into the dark details of her disappearance and death. Then, as if a switch was flipped, I was suddenly reliving it, watching someone being raped, and that someone was me. Now, I was forced to confront the fallout from the choices I made when I was 23. The grief I had buried for so long had finally imploded and it wasn’t going away. I faced difficult conversations, particularly with my dad and my brother Victor, about the truth of what Mike had done to me. I needed answers, especially about how my brain had protected me through dissociative amnesia. Had I made subconscious decisions that shaped my life because of it? I still wrestle with this today and will likely never know the answer to one haunting question: When was the last time I remembered being raped? What is the cost of gratitude, and when do the statutes of limitations expire, when the hero who saved you becomes the villain in your story? Settings~ Late 1980’s high school where Mike and I meet, fall in love and the bullying takes place. 1991, my college graduation from TCU followed by my move back to Chicago. Suburban restaurant where I meet an old friend and she introduces me to Katie. Film set of Home Alone Two, being introduced to the Culkins and moving in across the hall from them at The Mayfair Regent in Chicago. 1992, deciding to continue working with the Culkins, traveling with them through Europe, meeting Michael Jackson and staying at his ranch. Fall of 1992 production office of Rookie of Year in which I am a PA. Hotel scene where rape transpires. My dads Chicago office where I go to tell him about the blackmail. Still intertwined with the Culkins and traveling to whenever they need me which actually continues until 1995. Spring of 1993, moving to LA to get out of Chicago. Culver City sound stage, starting work on a TV series, Bakersfield P.D. January 17,1994 night of the Northridge earthquake in my cousins townhouse, waking up from the earthquake to shaking and power outage. Deciding to move back home to Chicago. 1995 Struggling with my life and purpose, I decided to quit the film business altogether to become a social worker and was assigned to the most dangerous housing project in the country at the time, The Robert Taylor Homes. Doing risky things and putting myself in danger. Fast forward to 2011, I now have a beautiful suburban home, four kids but a miserable marriage and I file for divorce. My bedroom, onset of my nightmares. February 27, 2021, I am happy living in the new house I had been living in for the past 5 years, kids are thriving and grown. In my bedroom where my final and very last nightmare takes place.

Submissions for our first short story contest are officially closed. We've had almost 300 entries so it's going to take me a little bit of time to process. All entrants should expect to be contacted by the end of the month.

When asked to think about the horror genre, most people would conjure the image of teenagers being victimized in some way. Maybe it’s by a vengeful killer at a summer camp, or a crazed man with a chainsaw or a demon they’ve made the mistake of summoning via Ouija board. Regardless, people’s first experience with horror often starts with teenagers at the center of the story. It’s a trope of course, but one that understands the best way to cause the feeling of dread and unease for which the genre is known is to watch vulnerable people backed into a corner. It’s the feeling of “they don’t deserve this” and “why doesn’t someone help them” that is the cornerstone of horror and nothing highlights this more than horror as social commentary. A current example of this would be any of Jordan Peele’s movies. While Get Out is the most well known, Nope is still dripping with commentary about the foolhardy attempt of making dangerous animals into spectacles for the TV and film industry. I recently watched a re-run of a F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode where the character Ross Geller has a literal pet monkey named Marcel. Nowadays, you will hardly see a live animal on TV that isn’t a dog or cat–have you thought about why? Social commentary creates space for horror to meet reality. It’s a bridge for you to consider the ways that your daily life is affected by a Boogeyman that doesn’t necessarily hide in your closet. The horror takes the shape of something most familiar to you–or what’s familiar to others. It doesn’t shy away from the worst of humanity, be it sexism, racism, or even the dehumanization prevalent in the service industry. In fact, it serves it back to you on a platter and asks the question: are you the scorpion, or the frog? If you’re unfamiliar with the fable, it’s simple: a scorpion needs to cross a river and asks the frog to carry it on its back. The frog hesitates due to its fear of being stung but the scorpion promises not to because stinging the frog would doom them both. The frog carries it across but halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog anyway. And as they both drown, the scorpion apologizes because it could not fight the urge; after all, stinging is in its nature. When it comes to horror as social commentary, the unfortunate truth is this: the horror presented to the status quo is what’s already happened to the marginalized. Is The Handmaid’s Tale horrifying to you? Well then, you’re not going to like the role of Black women in the history of gynecology. Have you read Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt or Cuckoo? Then you can appreciate how terrifying this world is to trans people. If you’re already marginalized in some way–if you’re the frog–it’s not hard to imagine what it’s like to be stung. If you’re already marginalized in some way–if you’re the frog–it’s not hard to imagine what it’s like to be stung. Your everyday life is uncertain, fear as intimate as your own skin. And when you encounter a horror story where the social commentary expresses that fear in a way you couldn’t, you go yes! That’s what it’s like to be me! And it’s awful! When you’re the frog, there’s a cathartic nature to horror as social commentary. You notice the increasing danger with each passing second, you feel it dig into your skin. The fear deepens because the horror is personal. You’ve seen the story play out before and it doesn’t get any easier. And yet, though the fear may be intimate and the horror may be personal, hope persists nonetheless. If the main characters survive, so can you. Or maybe the catharsis is enough to keep you going a little longer. Maybe it’s enough to know that others are watching and learning what your life is like. Fear does more than keep us on the edge of our seat–it makes us cling to life. Perhaps you’re the scorpion. You’re the white person who doesn’t care for history or you’re the cis person who’s on the fence about this whole “transitioning” business. You can’t imagine ever being victimized in similar scenarios. Except horror as social commentary doesn’t give you a choice. It forces you to grow empathy for other people and to use your imagination. There’s a reason why it’s called social commentary. It offers critique on society as a whole. The horror is drawn from our connections with each other, and makes us reconsider the roles we play in each other’s lives. And while a frightening endeavor, it can also be educational. A person may learn they have a much larger role in the world than they thought–or they realize how small they truly are. It becomes a new experience that gives them insight into other people’s lives. And it can create a new fear. Consider the typical zombie apocalypse story. It is not all about avoiding being bitten. It’s about recreating communities, prioritizing safety, and using deescalation tactics during stressful situations. People’s biggest fear in a zombie apocalypse is dying–but beyond survival, how would one live? How paranoid would you get among a small group of trigger-happy survivors? How quickly would you accuse someone of hiding a bite mark or vice-versa? What would be worse–death or complete isolation? While these questions are tailored to the zombie subgenre, similar questions could be made of any other horror stories, especially when social commentary is a prevalent element in the narrative. For the frog, the horror is already personal. For the scorpion, the horror becomes personal. The two cannot escape each other so long as they live in the same environment, and neither can you escape the critiques. So long as you live in a society, you are part of the story. The only question is: are you the scorpion–or the frog? *** View the full article

It always starts the same way. The reality show host drives toward their destination in Smalltown, USA, discussing the details of the house and its owners. We, the viewers, are shown the exterior: majestic, imposing, possibly in a state of disrepair. We meet the owners, who tell us a little more about themselves and then run through the house’s myriad problems. I’m referring, of course, to both the paranormal investigation show and the home improvement show, which in their opening beats differ only in music and lighting. On the repair show, the hosts will next walk through the house, demonstrating everything that is wrong with it to exaggerated effect. On the paranormal show, they catalogue the past hauntings and disprove one or two to show they are serious investigators. Both shows dive into the meat of the episode. In repairland, the renovations begin, dogged by trouble in the form of rotten joists or unexpected termite damage or the show’s decorator going over budget. In ghostland, they spend the night. Who is whistling? Did that shadow move? Maybe they unpack some equipment and start recording. They jump, and pant with panic, then play back the sounds of the whistling and their own panicked pants. In the end, they present their findings to the owners, who either move out or learn to live with their ghost. On the other show, the new spaces are shown to the homeowners, who will say “Oh my god!” regardless of what they think. This is where I admit I find the home improvement shows far scarier than the paranormal ones. I think part of it is the layer of removal: The investigators react to a ghostly voice, but the TV doesn’t give directionality. They say it came from in front of them, but they’re facing away from the camera, so who’s to say it isn’t one of them talking, or someone on the other side of the wall? Jump scares usually get me, but these jump scares, coming at the exact same moment episode after episode, are too predictable to terrify. I asked a friend who is a licensed paranormal investigator what she thought about paranormal reality shows. She didn’t hesitate. “They sensationalize what we do; the real process is mundane. There’s no methodology to their approach.” She went on to explain how her team would systematically checks for faulty wiring, mold, asbestos. One person sketches every room, drawing in the furniture, the type of flooring, the outlet locations. There’s a photographer, an interviewer, someone using an electricity meter. None of that is sexy or dramatic, so instead the shows force feelings that aren’t there. Not being a trained investigator myself, my reaction to these shows is not professional annoyance, but hilarity. The overwrought reactions make me laugh. I contrast that with home improvement shows, which I find genuinely distressing. “Jill is leaving town for the weekend. While she’s gone, the neighbors will secretly renovate her house.” Did Jill throw her dirty clothes in the hamper before she left? “We decided to give Jose’s apartment the upgrade it deserved.” Jose returns to find that his cozy lived-in space has been transformed into a soulless hellscape. The walls and furniture are gray-beige. The pillows say “It’s Five O’ Clock Somewhere” or “Live Laugh Love.” His bookcases are gone, as are his books. “Finally, a room where he can relax,” the host says. I scream. I scream because the result is devoid of personality. I scream because we’ve only seen the room from one angle, and the team only had six hours to work, and there is no possible way that they have renovated an entire apartment well. The room must reek of wet paint. Given the camera angle, I worry the back wall has been demolished.(This happened to a friend who went on one of these shows — they were left with one half of a beautiful room and a construction zone just outside the camera’s gaze.) The haunted house shows could learn a lesson in suspense from the home improvement shows. At the end of the day, they’re equally contrived, but the stakes seem much higher to me on the repair show; it has all the dread that the paranormal show lacks. The hauntees only have to live with a ghost in their handsome old house; the renovatees have to live in a space that has been constructed as quickly as a movie set. Are there even cabinets behind those cabinet doors? My book Haunt Sweet Home takes you behind the scenes on a combined paranormal/home renovation show. New homeowners renovate by day and sleep in their supposedly haunted house by night. The homeowners on “real” paranormal shows have lived there long enough to get to know the patterns of their hauntings; the homeowners on my fake reality show have only just moved in. They’re tiling or grouting or smashing walls all day, and just as their eyes close, they are interrupted for another interview, and another. Are they hallucinating the noises? Who knows? The audience for this show experiences the new homeowners’ terror for the first time, when they know they’re on a ghost show but they don’t know what form the haunting will take. Meanwhile, the reader sees it all through the eyes of Mara, the show’s haunt-er, scrabbling through crawlspaces and across rooftops night after night to make sure everyone in the house is properly freaked out. It’s a soft haunting: I wanted to explore the manipulation that scaffolds so many reality shows, and I liked the idea of doing that through someone who discovers herself unexpectedly in the very unglamorous role of the professional haunter. Ultimately, I thought it would be fun to play with the formulaic nature of both renovation shows and paranormal shows by letting the classic framework play out around a character whose life is not going at all to plan. Maybe we’re meant to be comforted by reality show structures: stress out along with us, they say, and eventually the ghost will be identified, the space will be tamed. That’s not the case for Mara, and that’s not the case in real life. That’s why at the end of the day, I think fiction is far more fun: I want to be frightened or moved or surprised; I want to see people transformed by what they have experienced. My real fear is that if we accept the same-old plot offered by reality shows as good enough, we’ll lose the stories that truly have the power to move us. *** View the full article

Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is itself a strange case. The fact that its initial success as a ‘shilling shocker’ was due to its thrilling conclusion is difficult to appreciate nowadays, given that the ‘punchline’ is known to all. The central revelation—Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same person—is unlikely to elicit a gasp of shock from anyone, and its fame is almost unrelated to the actual plot as it plays out in the novella. The main aspect of Stevenson’s novella that became lodged in the public consciousness is the concept of the duality of man being made literal: the phrase ‘a Jekyll and Hyde personality’ is commonly used to describe somebody with dramatic changes in mood or behaviour. Also timeless are Stevenson’s characters, which are archetypes: the upstanding Dr Jekyll and the ‘ape-like’ and violent Mr Hyde, whom Jekyll refers to as ‘the expression… of lower elements in my soul’. Yet, like many of the best-known fictional characters, they’ve become divorced from their origins. While almost everyone in the western world knows of Jekyll and Hyde, far fewer have direct experience of the original Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and reading it would almost certainly surprise most people. That’s because the novella is structured as a mystery, with the revelation about Jekyll and Hyde’s true relationship divulged only in the ninth chapter of ten. Initially, the puzzle relates to the activities of a violent, strange man, Edward Hyde, who has been witnessed trampling a child in the street and then bribing the child’s family with a cheque for £100 in exchange for their silence. The fact that the cheque was signed by Dr Henry Jekyll implicates the doctor in Hyde’s activities. Furthermore, it’s a mystery with an amateur detective at its heart, albeit a detective with a personal stake in the outcome. When lawyer Gabriel Utterson hears of Hyde’s act and the link to Henry Jekyll, he becomes involved instantly because Jekyll is his friend and client. When questioned, Jekyll is coy about his relationship to Hyde, despite the fact that he’s instructed Utterson to amend his will to make Hyde the sole beneficiary. A year later, the stakes are raised when Hyde kills an elderly MP, Sir Danvers Carew, in the street at night. Most of the novella relates to Utterson’s search for information about Edward Hyde, and the nature of his close relationship with Jekyll. While Stevenson’s initial drafts of the novella referred directly to the possibility that Hyde may be Jekyll’s son, his decision to downplay this connection results in more emphasis being placed on less straightforward relationships. Initial readers of the novella would have thrilled at the hints of homosexuality – Hyde is referred to as ‘Henry’s Jekyll’s favourite’, and Utterson notes ‘It turns me cold to think of this creature stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside’. Jekyll himself is implicated in shady goings-on, too, with references to him having been ‘wild when he was young’ and having become ‘the slave of disgraceful pleasures’. Like Dracula, Stevenson’s novella feels surprisingly modern due to its reliance on witness testimonies rather than omniscient narration, and the use of newspaper articles widens the scope by emphasising the response of Victorian society to Hyde’s crimes. As information is gathered, we learn about Jekyll’s and Hyde’s backstory in piecemeal, non-chronological fashion. The final two chapters are comprised of characters’ own accounts: first Dr Lanyon, who finally reveals to the reader that Jekyll is capable of transforming into Hyde; then Henry Jekyll himself, in what is effectively a long suicide note. At first, the critical and public response to the novella centred on its moral lesson about duality and repressed violence. What made the story into a sensation was its adaptation as a stage play starring and co-written by Richard Mansfield. With Stevenson’s blessing, the plot changed from a detective-mystery narrative to a melodrama. Audiences already knew that Jekyll would turn into Hyde, so they required other stakes – hence the introduction of Henry Jekyll’s fiancée, who complicates the situation not only because she represents a tangible reason for Jekyll to guard his secret, but also because she’s the daughter of the murdered Danvers Carew. There have been countless stage and film versions of the Jekyll and Hyde tale, but they’re almost all adaptations of the Mansfield stage play, or at least derivations of it, in the sense that the transformation aspect is placed front and centre rather than being withheld from the audience. For understandable reasons, the central sense of mystery related to Jekyll and Hyde has been abandoned. Is it churlish of me to want to reinstate it? It’s impossible to turn back the clock, of course. I can’t simply will readers to forget that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. In revisiting the characters in my own work, I decided that the primary mysteries would relate to external events, and I would reintroduce the mystery aspect by making both Jekyll and Hyde the solvers of the puzzles. The result is Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives. I loved the idea of a detective duo each with specific skills: Henry Jekyll’s cold, Holmesian intellect; Edward Hyde’s charisma and brute strength. Yet they can’t communicate with each other, and they might change from one to the other at the most inopportune moments. I’m a fan of the flawed-detective trope, and here we have two in one! (It’s always been my opinion that Henry Jekyll is a hypocrite who may believe he’s isolated his ‘lower elements’, but who remains as dysfunctional as ever, and of course he’s also severely compromised by his relationship to Edward Hyde.) And I could have my cake and eat it. While readers would be fully aware of the nature of Jekyll and Hyde’s relationship, other characters in the novel wouldn’t, particularly as a decade has passed since Hyde last terrorised London. Enter Muriel Carew, Henry Jekyll’s former fiancée – an inclusion that establishes my novel as merging aspects of the original novella and its many adaptations, which neatly allows me to sidestep a handful of canonical issues! Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives is primarily Muriel’s narrative, and she’s as eager to learn about her former fiancé and his partner as she is about the spate of crimes that they’re investigating – not least because she suspects Hyde of killing her father. As for the investigation itself… well, I won’t say too much about it. While the Jekyll–Hyde transformation is a known quantity, I’m keen that the other mystery should be discovered by readers for themselves. All I’ll say is that I thoroughly enjoyed inventing a series of crimes that relate to the themes of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella: Gothic doubles, Victorian hypocrisy, the duality and the secret crimes of men. I do hope you’ll be shocked. *** View the full article

If Dudley Clarke had done nothing else in the war, his final job in London in 1940 would have secured him a place in history. On his return from Ireland he’d been appointed as military assistant to Sir John Dill, the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Dill and Clarke were old comrades. In Palestine a couple of years earlier, they’d been flying in a plane together and Clarke had leaned out to point to something, only to be thrown from his seat in the open cockpit by a moment of turbulence. In the version of the story that Clarke liked to tell, Dill had caught him ‘by the ankles’ and hauled him back into the plane. Now Dill had been put in charge of the country’s military just as it was at its lowest ebb. The army had been defeated first in Norway and then in France and Belgium. The evacuation of troops from Dunkirk might have been more successful than anyone had dared hope, but it had still involved the soldiers fleeing, their guns left behind them on the beach. There was no escaping the reality that the German army was winning battles and the British army was losing them. Two days after the retreat from Dunkirk, Dill went to meet some of the soldiers who had escaped. He returned to the War Office troubled. Clarke followed him into his large corner office, with its view towards Trafalgar Square. For a minute or two the general stood at the window, deep in thought. It had been a pleasant summer afternoon, and in the distance behind Nelson’s Column, the barrage balloons that were supposed to deter low-flying planes glittered silver in the evening sunlight. Eventually Dill returned to his desk, and told his aide what was on his mind. The defence of Britain lay now in the hands of the air force and the navy. Unless the Germans attempted an invasion, there was little for the army to do. But his soldiers needed to recover their ‘offensive spirit’ – to get fighting again. As it happened, Clarke had been approaching this problem from a different direction, thinking about how other armies had dealt with defeat. He reminded Dill how in South Africa the Boers had retreated and then formed small bands of mounted warriors to terrorise the force that had beaten them. It was the same tactic that people around the world had adopted to make life difficult for the British. When Clarke and Dill had been in Palestine, they’d spent months dealing with bands of Arabs who struck fast and then disappeared before the better-armed British could chase them. Now they discussed how they could use the same approach against the Nazis, to launch ‘a war of continual mosquito tactics which, at small cost to the marauders, would wear down and sicken the ponderous bulk of the more powerful side’. This wasn’t how British soldiers usually fought. It was, as Clarke knew from experience, how lesser forces fought against the British. But then the British army didn’t have much experience of being the smaller force in a war. To get regular soldiers to operate as insurgents would require them to unlearn as much as they would learn. They would have to be able to act independently and without support. At Dill’s request, that night Clarke drafted a paper on the subject, proposing the formation of a small aggressive troop of soldiers who could launch swift raids into occupied Europe and then disappear into the night. He even had a name for them, taken from the South Africans he so admired: ‘The Commandos’. It was an unorthodox, eye-catching idea, exactly the sort of thing to appeal to the prime minister, Winston Churchill, who had encountered the Boers himself decades earlier. Clarke was ordered to raise a Commando force and send it on a raid as fast as possible. Clarke found no shortage of soldiers and sailors eager to strike back at the all-conquering Nazis. His idea wasn’t quite as original as he had thought: a few months earlier, a few ‘independent companies’ had been formed with the idea of training men in guerrilla warfare. These were being disbanded, and the men were keen to carry the work into Clarke’s new unit. In his recruits, he looked for ‘intelligence, self-reliance and an independent frame of mind’ as well as another somewhat nebulous quality: ‘dash’. Anyone wondering what he meant by that had only to look at one of the first officers to volunteer for Clarke’s new outfit, David Niven. Before Niven had been a movie star, he had been a bored junior army officer, the kind of man for whom peacetime soldiering had no attraction. He’d quit and gone to Hollywood, but on the coming of war, he’d immediately returned to Britain to join up. Clarke saw in him a fellow unconventional thinker, someone who could set the perfect tone for the crew of gentlemen pirates and gangsters that he wanted to assemble. But he wanted Niven on his team for another reason, too. Clarke was a snob. He liked the finer things of life, and he liked to think of himself as someone who mingled with top people. He had a flat in Mayfair that he couldn’t have afforded without his father’s help. He had a weakness for dropping names even in official reports. To have a Hollywood celebrity on his staff was an obvious thrill. When Clarke wrote later about his time setting up the Commandos, every other man was referred to by his surname. Niven was ‘David’. Stardust aside, the work of setting up the new unit was serious. If some senior officers liked the sound of giving the enemy a bloody nose, others were much less enthusiastic when it came to handing over men or equipment. In particular, there was a desperate shortage of weapons, and army units weren’t going to hand back what little they had. Clarke wanted Thompson submachine guns for his soldiers, ideal for close-quarter surprise attacks, but there were only forty in the country – the military hadn’t imagined such a weapon would be necessary a year earlier. He was given them, so long as he promised that only twenty would be taken on operations at a time, with the rest to stay in London in case they were needed to fight off a German invasion. It was a mark of how desperate the shortage of weapons was after Dunkirk that anyone thought twenty guns might make a difference to the defence of England. On 24 June, less than three weeks after Clarke was given the go-ahead, the Commandos launched a cross-Channel assault. As raids go, it wasn’t a great one, memorable only for being the unit’s first. Just over a hundred men landed on French beaches, a couple of German sentries were killed, and the only British casualty was Clarke himself, his ear nearly shot off by a stray enemy bullet. But it was a start, and meant that a month after the retreat from Dunkirk, the War Office was able to announce that ‘naval and military units yesterday carried out successful reconnaissances of the enemy coastline’. The press release went on to claim that ‘much useful information was obtained’, which reflected mainly what the Commandos had learned about the logistics of coastal raids, rather than any useful intelligence collected on the ground. But the public were delighted to see that Britain hadn’t given up. ‘Its tactical significance may be small,’ The Times wrote of the raid, ‘but the tiniest thorn thrust into the heel with which the enemy is grinding down Western Europe has a moral importance which is not to be despised.’ If the first Commando raid was a bit of a damp squib, the second, a few weeks later, was an embarrassment. The target was supposed to be the Channel island of Guernsey, but malfunctioning compasses meant one unit landed on a different island altogether. Others were let down by faulty motorboats. The soldiers that did manage to get ashore failed to find any Germans, though they did knock one islander unconscious. When it came to leaving, their boats were unable to get close enough to the shore to retrieve them. At this stage, three of the soldiers revealed they had lied about being able to swim. Left behind, they were eventually captured. It was hardly a surprise that the army should have teething troubles when experimenting with fighting in this new way, but for those in the War Office who had thought the whole idea ridiculous, these failures were all the excuses they needed to begin sabotaging the Commandos. There was a bigger problem, too. Clarke’s vision of the Commandos had been of small independent units carrying out ‘little and often’ attacks that did damage out of proportion with their size and then fleeing before the German army could bring its weight to bear against them. But Churchill now decided he disliked ‘pinprick’ raids. A senior admiral was put in charge of what were named ‘Combined Operations’ – because the navy or air force were used to deliver the soldiers to their targets. From now on, the Commandos would mount the sort of big attacks with which the top brass were more comfortable. But planning such raids proved cumbersome, and getting approval for them impossible. They required more support from other services, which meant they needed to have a great purpose. The vision of a dozen or so men nipping across the Channel to cut throats and make the Germans nervous was dead. Clarke could feel his project slipping away from him. As summer turned to autumn, he found himself sitting in meetings trying to justify the continued existence of a force that seemingly wasn’t allowed to go on any missions. It was at this point, just as he feared his unit might be strangled at birth, that he was ordered to Cairo. It doesn’t seem that anyone was trying to get him out of the way. In other circumstances, this would have been a plum posting: Egypt was the one place where the army was still fighting anyone. But opponents of the Commandos would have been pleased to see Clarke departing. He certainly feared the project might not survive in his absence. There was, however, no point in trying to resist. His presence had been personally requested by the commander-in-chief of forces in the Middle East. Clarke left London, then, in complicated circumstances, his highest-profile achievement one of unproven value. He was a maverick figure, but was he a useful one, or was he simply another crackpot whose wizard schemes didn’t survive contact with reality? Some soldiers were, like Tony Simonds, in awe of Dudley Clarke. Others found his ideas too strange. Out in Egypt, though, one very senior general thought he was exactly the man he needed. ___________________________________ Excerpted from The Illusionist: The True Story of the Man Who Fooled Hitler, by Robert Hutton. Published by Pegasus Books. Copyright 2024. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. View the full article

Assignment 1: The Act of Story Statement A self-loathing teenager finds herself in the World in the Wall, an effervescent institution within the Universe intended for the supernatural in head and heart. There, she must work against the Magistre, the school’s antagonistic faculty, to find her place in one of the World’s four creations: the Airs, the Waters, the Fires, or the Earths, if she wants to remain in the World—for at least a second term. A self-loathing teenager torn between being the Same and Different, loathed and ridiculed by both, struggles to pass her first term in the World in the Wall, the Universe's secret society in the sky intended for the special in head and heart. Assignment 2: The Antagonist Plots the Point The Magistre, the school's faculty, introduce the students to deadly extraterrestrial friends and foes, wicked games designed to kill students for sport, and a dangerous new world, Amare and the rest of the First-year students will have to overcome if they want to find their place in the World. *The antagonist shifts from external to internal as Amare realizes she is the only person who has the power to stop her from finding her place in the World. Amare must overcome her depression by learning to love every part of herself no matter how different. Amicus must control his insecurities brought up by his autism by coming to terms with his true brilliance. Viva must manage her insecurities regarding her family taken by immigration by learning that we're all still connected no matter the distance. Caerule must learn to cope with the death of his family by learning the importance of forgiveness. *Amare and friends face their inner demons head-on in climactic, surrealistic, explosive action sequences (The Earth is Viva, Fire 'N' Amicus, Caerule, The Seven Sins of Amare...) Assignment 3: Create a Breakout Title Amare and the World in the Way is the name of the first installment in my series because it introduces my protagonist, Amare, and my main setting/conflict, the World in the Wall. This also works thematically in the sense that the overarching goal of every character is to overcome the world in their way albeit Depression, Autism, Immigration, or Forgiveness. Amare and the World in the Wall (alternative choice) Amare (alternative to the alternative choice) Assignment 4: Deciding Your Genre and Choosing Comparables Lovecraft Country A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Uglies Assignment 5: The Hook Line Amare and the World in the Way by George Del Junco A belligerent teenager torn between being the Same and Different, scorned and tormented by both, struggles to pass her first term in the World in the Wall, the secret society in the sky intended for the special in head and heart. Assignment 6: Two More Levels of Conflict Protagonist's Inner Struggle: Amare’s primary dramatic conflict stems from the battle between her head and heart. Her head wants her to be the Same, a member of her society that believes in conformity, while her heart wants her to be Different, a member of her society that believes in individualism. Death is the punishment for being Different in the States that Claim to be United, but life is the reward for those who embrace the differences that make her who she is once she reaches the World in the Wall, the school for the different in head and heart. The secondary dramatic conflict lies in Amare and her friends passing their first term in the World in the Wall, the secret society in the sky intended for the different in head and heart in order to solidify their homes for a second term and more importantly, stay together. Amare is an escaped convict. Amicus is her accessory. Viva is a stowaway immigrant. Caerule lost his entire family. None of them have homes to return to so passing their first year in the World in the Wall is a matter of life and death for them. Excerpt 1: I have one reason for living, and one reason only. Prince Charming? You’re a fairy tale. You’re not living in a fairy tale, you are a fairy tale, and you need a reality check yesterday. George Clooney? I’m only thirteen, which is an acceptable age in some societies, but not this one and I’m not moving. Elvis Presley? I’m all for a hunk-a-hunk of burning love, but I mean a different species of man entirely. Standing at a whopping thirteen inches tall. Weighing in at seven pounds of pure awesomeness—under a tiara. He is the one, the only love of my life because all boys are revolting. Regina, the Pomeranian princess is the reason I’m alive. I wish I was lying, but I’m not. And I’m not sorry. Excerpt 2: Fiery hair that burns bright red when upset. Check. Doe-sized ambrosia eyes that change with the times. Check. A heart with the power to save the entire Universe. Mate. All of that would make me the Same and never Different, correct? Think again. Conflict: The entire first installment in Amare’s story is dedicated to her finding her place in the world. First, it's in the world of the Sames as a Same. Then, it’s in the World in the Wall, where she has to literally find her place as a First-year student if she wants to return in the Fall. Amare is so caught up in the self-loathing, self-deprecating nature of her character that she fails to understand that the only person keeping her from finding her place in the World is herself. It is only once she is able to love every part of herself that she hates that she is able to find her place in the World and overcome the World in “her '' way. Assignment 7: Setting Scene by Scene: 1. The Begging of the End *The Whatshername Willow, the largest orphanage in all of Woodholly, the smallest state in the States that claims to be United, which is a dystopian version of the United States, split between the Sames, a member of society that believes in conformity, and the Differents, a member of society that believes in individualism. *The Same School, the school system for those thirteen and younger run by the Sames of the Sames. *The Begging of the End, the Sames punishment, an elevator-sized glass box-like contraption comprised of the four elements designed to brutally kill those displaying characteristics of being Different. Fireworks *The Outskirts, the forbidden territory at the edge of the city, *Lucifer’s Edge, the forbidden mountain at the edge of the Outskirts, measuring 666 feet. The Spaceship to the Stars *The Spaceship, an extra-terrestrial vessel reflecting a million different colors, travels through the Universe. *The Universe, the secret world hidden above the one we all know and love, home to hundreds of deadly entities like the Stars, celestial beings composed of hydrogen, helium, and “celebrity”, and hundreds of iconic locations like, the World in the Wall. The World in the Wall *The World in the Wall, the secret society in the sky split into four major parts run by the Magistre, the school’s faculty, The Earth is Viva *The Earths, the World in the Wall’s home dedicated to the students with the ability to manipulate the Earth. This dormitory-like setting is comprised of different types of wild-life, different species of animals, and a life-sized living rendition of the planet Earth. Earth, Wind, and Amicus *The Waters, the World in the Wall’s home dedicated to the students with the ability to manipulate the Air. This dormitory-like setting is comprised of different types of water-life, different species of animals, and a larger than life aquarium. The Action in the Americas *The Americas, the World in the Wall’s classroom dedicated to the Americas. In this setting, a living, breathing, ever-changing interpretation of New York City, every nightmarish landmark comes to life to patronize Amare and the rest of the First-year students. The Unfinished * The Unfinished, the World’s annual haunted house, the old and decrepid home to the Writer’s sick and twisted nightmarish dreams. The World’s Sport *Matterhorn, the setting for this years World’s Sport: All-Star Game (the World’s highly intoxicating version of this world’s “Super Bowl”), a white snow-capped mountain (inspired by the similarly named mountain in the Swiss Alps). Caerule *The France of Fruition, the World in the Wall’s classroom dedicated to the individual. In this setting, a living, breathing, ever changing manifestation of Caerule’s greatest fears comes to life to create a monstrous hurricane dead set on wiping out the entire student population. A-lie-n *The Fires, the World in the Wall’s home dedicated to the students with the ability to manipulate Fire. This dormitory-like setting is comprised of different types of fire-life, different species of animals, and a larger than life flame that burns as long as the World lives on. The World in the Way *Outside the World in the Wall, Amare, Viva, Amicus, Caerule and the rest of the first-year students celebrate the passing of their first year and eventual return for their second.