"HOW I CAME TO WRITE THE STORY" Scott Wolven

The Story About The Story

There’s always a story about the story.

Keith Rawson asked me to write a story for the Crime Factory: The First Shift anthology. Really nice when an editor asks you to be involved in a project he’s working so hard on. And he had lined up New Pulp Press as a publisher. I told Rawson I’d do it.

I probably wrote six drafts of the story. Somewhere in the second draft, the title “Hundred Proof” stuck and seemed good to me. I knew what I wanted to deliver. The one-inch punch. Short, with a bleak internal force and darkness and a jolt at the end. Haunting the reader forever. I kept that in mind throughout the remaining drafts. I thought maybe I had hit it when I wrote the last sentence. “He was sitting in a lawn chair by the picnic table, drinking a glass full of booze with bullets and ice in it.” It seemed okay. I sent it off.

Later, I got to read the story at the Stonecoast MFA Program, where I teach. Terrific group of students and faculty – solid readers and writers – and several of them commented on that last line. On the image of the bullets in the glass with the ice and liquor.

The other day, my contributor’s copy of Crime Factory: The First Shift arrived. It’s an impressive group of writers. After the intro by David Honeybone, Dennis Tafoya kicks it into high gear and it doesn’t stop. I even saw the names of a couple writers I know – Jedidiah Ayres and Charlie Stella. I had read something by Frank Bill and he was there. Ken Bruen needed no introduction. These were some heavy hitters. Trigger men. Gun molls and femme fatales. Outlaws and enforcers. An award-winning group of contemporary crime writers.

I kept looking at the index and the stories. What is appropriate anthology reading etiquette? Do you have to read the stories in order? The editors arranged them that way for a reason, isn’t the order part of the reading experience? I have no idea. But as I looked, I realized the stories were not arranged in alphabetical order by author last name. I noticed Dave Zeltserman was close to the middle. So I looked at the last story. Which happened to be mine. So if you flip to page 260 – although, granted, the contributor bios follow – the last sentence of fiction in the book, the final image that follows all these fine writers and their masterful stories, the last scene of it all is the bullets in the glass with the ice and the booze. That’s some pretty good writer’s luck to me.

Thanks to Keith Rawson and the Crime Factory crew of Cameron Ashley and Jimmy Callaway. And thanks to Patti Abbott, who wrote a good one too. I feel lucky to have my story included.

That’s the story of the story “Hundred Proof.”

Scott Wolven is the author of False Hopes (forthcoming) and Controlled Burn, with the title story recently selected for Best American Noir Stories Of The Century. Seven years in a row, his stories have appeared in the Best American Mystery Stories Series. Wolven teaches in the Stonecoast MFA Program/University of Southern Maine.

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY": Mark Hull

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY: Mark Hull "Friday Night Dining with Marianne"

from Deadly Treats

When Theresa Weir (Anne Frasier) told me she was putting together a Halloween anthology and invited me to submit a story I was thrilled and flattered, having long been a fan of both Ms. Weir and her work. The parameters were 1000 - 3000 words, a Halloween-based theme, and we were to have fun writing the story. So, it was right up my alley except for the 3000 word limit -- I do tend to go on. And on. And on. But it would be good discipline for me, I thought, and I love discipline. So I scratched various organs of my body while I tried to come up with story ideas, and actually came up with two in very short order.

The first idea was a little (well, a lot) too gruesome for what Theresa had planned for the anthology, so I went with my other idea, which was to do a story inspired by a Halloween game we used to play as kids: we would turn off all the lights in the room, then pass around things like peeled grapes and say they were "eyeballs", boiled noodles and say they were "guts", and so forth. Of course we all needed years of therapy as adults from indulging in this pastime, but I decided to go with it anyway.

I imagined a fine-dining restaurant that served up people parts as their cuisine ("Soylent Green is PEOPLE!"), and from there it was a short step to needing a food critic to visit the restaurant. I sat down to begin the story and wrote the following opening:

"See ya, Hazel, have a good weekend!"

So said a coworker to me on his way out the door late one Friday. My name is Marianne Hazlitt, and I think that my coworkers call me Hazel in an attempt to endear themselves to me. That attempt fails. I hate my coworkers.

I have no idea where any of that came from, which is what I love about writing, but all of a sudden I had a character who I REALLY liked, and I couldn't wait to hear more of her story as it revealed itself. After some thought, I chose to write the story in a faux-Gothic manner to emphasize Marianne's repressed primness and to contrast with the more fantastic elements in the story (vampires, werecreatures, and so forth). I note in passing that I hate writing in the first person unless it really is about me, but this story seemed to call for that -- in fact, Marianne demanded that -- so I bit the (silver) bullet and wrote it in the first person anyway.

So that's how I came to write this story. The only thing I have to add is that, upon re-reading the story, I think I would alter the ending of the story somewhat for stylistic reasons, but both baby and bathwater are now in print so there you have it. Oh yeah -- my favorite phrase in the story? Glad you asked:

It had become an atramentous and tempestuous evening....

*snicker*

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY: L.K. Riegel

How I Came To Write This Story (Slurp!) in DEADLY TREATS

LK Rigel

http://www.lkrigel.com/

I met Theresa Weir in her Anne Frasier guise on Twitter – gosh, a couple of years ago now. It was serendipity. She was taking on a few coaching/editing projects at the time, and I was lucky enough to slip in.

Thank you, writing gods!

A few months later Theresa was considering starting Belfry Press and planned to edit a collection of Halloween stories for it. I was thrilled to be asked to contribute a story. I was then in the final throes of author aspiration – or expiration. I hated the submission process so much, and yet working with Theresa had revived my love of actual writing.

At the same time, I was beginning to notice how unhappy and stressed many published authors seemed to be about the whole thing. Wait a minute! Hadn’t they reached nirvana?

Slurp! is a reflection of my sense of the dark side of being an author under contract. Completely made up. Sour grapes on my part. I’m sure no one really feels like the main character:

You have to do more for less, everybody says so. Publishers don't fund book tours. Hire your own publicist. Lose weight. Be younger. Be clever on line. Have a good attitude. Contribute more. Expect less. With the last book, the advance was quartered and drawn over eighteen months. I spent it all on promotion and web design. Ha. Quartered and drawn. I made a note to tweet that.

Being part of Deadly Treats is such an honor. I can’t wait to read all the other stories.

How I Came to Write This Story: Lance Zarimba

Why I Wrote This Story…”Fangs and All”.

While I was living in Sioux Falls, SD, before moving to Minneapolis, MN, I was always looking for writing contests to enter to help get my name noticed and gain a new story for my resume. I found a cliché vampire story contest, and they wanted the writer to make the reader groan. I couldn’t do that, but…

I grew up pretending to nap on the couch as I watched Dark Shadows and all the wonderful Universal Studios black and white horror movies, Creature Feature and The Ghoul. So this was a genre perfect for me.

I took the requirements literarily and used as many clichés as I could come up with in writing the story. I brought it to my writer’s group and my friend Thea Miller Ryan read the story to the group. She ended up hyperventilating upon reading it. She was laughing too hard and reading so fast, she couldn’t catch her breath. She even had to use her inhaler. Sorry Thea. At least, I can take someone’s breath away with my writing. Needless to say, I didn’t win.

I met Anne Frasier several times at Once Upon A Crime and have loved her mysteries and supernatural thrillers, along with her Theresa Weir romances, especially Amazon Lily. So I was excited to be asked to contribute a story to her Halloween book. I sent her “Fangs and All” and asked if this is what she was looking for, and she said yes. Thank you, Anne.

I feel so honored to be included in this anthology with such great authors as Anne Frasier, Pat Dennis, Marilyn Victor, Michael Allan Mallory, David Housewright, Leandra Logan, and Shirley Damsgaard, all who I’ve read and followed their work. I look forward to reading the rest of this great list of stories and meeting so many new authors. Happy reading and I hope you don’t hyperventilate when you read my story.

Lance Zarimba is the author of Vacation Therapy, Oh No, Our Best Friend is a Zombie, and Oh No, Our Best Friend is a Vampire, along with many short stories.

How I Came to Write This Story: Pat Dennis

Why I Wrote This Story. Pat Dennis

My short story, PUCK, was published two years ago in the Once Upon A Crime Anthology. Although the plot focused on Edith Mae who hated her neighbor Puck, I fell in love with the secondary character. Relationships are often a love/hate experience for me. Although I thought Puck was fun and quirky, in real life I would have refused her entry to my home, as well. The same way Edith Mae did.

Puck was cute, energetic, always aggressively positive and totally dedicated to her 1001 causes. Just the kind of person I love to kill off in my stories. But I allowed her at that point. By the time Anne Frasier asked me write for her anthology Deadly Treats, I knew it was time to take on Puck once again.

In Dead Line we meet Puck’s sister, Kate. The two siblings have had a rivalry since birth, with Puck always coming out ahead. When Puck moves back into the neighborhood, Kate is pushed over the edge.

As I wrote Dead Line I realized I was writing about something I knew quite well, sibling rivalry. My sister is a life-long beauty. At 70, she can pass for fifty. Her looks are classic with straight, thick hair, and a straighter nose. She is movie star slim with hazel eyes that change color. I look like a Cabbage Patch Kid. Complete with curly hair, round body and a pug nose. And at 63? I look 73.

Growing up, I don’t know if I had an actual rivalry with my sister. To compete you have to at least think you can win. I wasn’t that foolish. So while I retreated into books, my sister retreated into cans of hairspray. I do love my sister, a lot in fact. But it was interesting that I found myself excited by putting two sisters at war on the same page. And in some obscure way, I think it made me closer to understanding my sister and my response to her. Perhaps we aren’t so different after all. But to be honest, I can’t see myself splurging on Aqua Net. Not when there are books to be bought.

"How I Came to Write This Story" Richie Narvaez

How I Came to Write This Story: R. Narvaez

“Juracán”

Published in Indian Country Noir (Akashic Books, 2010)

My kooky, bawdy, college-educated Aunt Terry and I had often discussed our family's Taíno roots. My family comes from Puerto Rico, and the Taínos were the Native Americans who inhabited the Greater Antilles and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean at the time when Christopher Columbus arrived to gentrify the 'hood. Some say every trace of Taíno blood was erased by the Spanish and by time. But, according to the study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA. Indeed, Taíno showed on the faces of all the women in my family, especially Terry, high cheek-boned and reddish skinned.

So, in 2009, when editors Sarah Cortez and Liz Martinez told me they were doing an anthology of Indian Country noir and asked if I had any Native American blood (since they wanted to feature some Native American writers in the book), I answered that while I didn't look it — my own face, mixed with my father's Puerto Rican but somewhat Spanish features, is hardly typical Amerindian — that, yes, I believe I did. And my aunt would back me up.

("Indian country," by the way, while sounding politically incorrect, is a term often used by Native Americans to describe Native American reservations, communities, and trust lands.)

And so I was invited to contribute a story. Now, although I was familiar with the Taínos, I am best described as a Nuyorican (a New York-born Puerto Rican), and Puerto Rico is, in many ways, a strange country to me. How could I write about a people few people knew about in a place that was nowhere near as familiar to me as the streets of Brooklyn?

First, research, of course. I found that a recent archaeological dig in Ponce, Puerto Rico (my mother's home town), had uncovered many Taíno artifacts. Así, I had my dingus. Also, Neo-Taino people had been trying to revive the culture. Conflict!

Next, I mined personal experience. I had gone to PR years before for a cousin's wedding — during hurricane season. My own dealing with family and using my choppy Nuyorican Spanish gave me some ideas as for a protagonist's issues. Also, I had visited a reconstruction of Taíno village, which gave me some insight in Taíno culture and details for a key scene. And then, ironically lucky for me, a hurricane hit when I was there. It was not an apocalyptic storm, but it did damage; the chaos that I watched outside my hotel window as the hurricane approached and the traumatized landscape I witnessed as I walked around the day after made a big impression on me. This gave me the mood I was looking for.

Then I remembered that the word "hurricane" is derived from the Taíno word "Juracán," their name for the deity in charge of chaos and disorder. And so I had a title.

Character + dingus + conflict + mood. That was enough to inspire me to come up with some darkly appropriate for the anthology.

Sadly, my Aunt Terry died of a heart attack a few months the book came out. So she never got to read my take on Taíno noir (she might have said it needed more sex scenes). But I think of her every time I think of the story and how I came to write it.

R. Narvaez has had work published by in Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery, Indian Country Noir, Mississippi Review, Plots with Guns, Spinetingler, and You Don't Have a Clue: Latino Mystery Stories for Teens.

"How I Came to Write This Story" Paula Fleming and Paul Brazill

Uncle Albert's photograph falls off of any wall it's hung on. He looks just like Phil did in his youth. We never knew the man in life but he haunts us if we let him.







Two Stories from Deadly Treats

Treats, Tricks, and Terror in Tin Lake.” Paula Fleming

Anne Frasier contacted me about a Halloween-themed multigenre anthology she was editing and asked if I would write a story for it. Saying yes was easy. I love Halloween. And I love multigenre collections, being an omnivorous reader myself. At first I thought I’d do something set in pagan Britain where the holiday has its roots. But Anne was looking for stories in the 3,000-word range, and I didn’t think I was skilled enough to develop a historical setting unfamiliar to many readers as well as tell a good story that succinctly. So I opted for a contemporary setting everyone would immediately recognize, one I wouldn’t have to devote any words to explaining.

Then I asked, What’s fun about Halloween? Costumes. Costumes are definitely fun. We can be anyone we want on Halloween. We’re granted the power to reimagine ourselves. And costumes are close cousins of disguises. What if a lizard lady from another planet wore a burka in public so she could pass as human? And what if she was stuck in a small town where a woman in a burka was just slightly less alarming than a lizard lady from outer space? I thought that was interesting. I had a protagonist.

What else is interesting about Halloween? From its origins to today, it’s a test of the bonds of community. Children, the community’s most vulnerable members, have license to demand food from the adults of the community, even adults they don’t know. Adults who deny this basic hospitality may be subjected to nonviolent “tricks.” My homesick, burka-wearing lizard lady would view Halloween as an opportunity to be accepted into her adopted community. But maybe in past years, no one let their kids go to the Muslim woman’s house. So this year, she takes a more aggressive approach. My protagonist had a goal.

And how does an unfriendly community react when confronted by outright hate? My thought is, with decency. I had a plot.

And then I wrote it, and tone and voice emerged, and the story was told.



"This Old House" Paul Brazill

Like Bukowski said, it's the little things that send us to the mad house. The shoelace snapping. The gate creaking. The leaky tap dripping. The toilet blocking.

The mundane. The everyday. Horrible, horrible things. Things that make a horrible life worse.

We've all seen it: someone buys a house or a flat which is supposed to be a bargain and then the place eats their money as they try to fix the unfixable. And then the rest of their life starts to crumble.

So this was the idea behind This Old House, the story that Anne Frasier has published in Deadly Treats. And I'm so pleased to have the story in there.

Shakin' Stevens meets Oscar Wilde would be my pitch. No, really.

Bio: Paul D. Brazill's stuff has appeared in loads of classy print and electronic magazines and anthologies, including the 2011 Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime. His noir/horror series Drunk On The Moon and short sharp story collection Brit Grit are out now.His blog, You Would Say That, Wouldn't You? is: http://pdbrazill.blogspot.com/

###

"HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY" Chris LeTray

How I Came to Write This Story:

Chris La Tray



"Vampires are Pussies"

in Noir at the Bar





It's all about being in the right place

at the right time. Last Fall I was

scheduled to be in St. Louis, and

it just happened to coincide with a

Noir at the Bar episode slated to

occur while I was in the vicinity.

So I dropped Jed Ayres a note to see if I could get on the bill. I could hear

 the heavy sigh in his return email when he said, "Yeah, I guess. If we can't get

anyone better." Apparently they couldn't, and I was on the flyer.*



Fast forward a couple months and all of us N@B readers were invited to contribute

a story to a print anthology that was being compiled to benefit Subterranean Books,

the shop just down the street from where we'd rocked the house. The idea was to use

the story we had read at our reading, or something else, whatever we wanted.



The story I'd read, "Buster Lee and the Chucklehead Who Wouldn't Stay Down,"

had just come out in Crimefactory's special Kung Fu Factory edition,

so I wanted to do something a little different. So here’s the overwritten

backstory of where my story came from.



I’ve only recently returned to doing any kind of fiction writing.

Two summers ago I’d taken a couple writing workshops, all around the time

I first started reading a lot of crime fiction for the first time.

I was also reading some great crime/espionage graphic novels;

stuff like Ed Brubaker’s Criminal and Incognitoseries,

Greg Rucka’s Queen and Country, and a great little story by Beau Smith

called Cobb: Off the Leash. All of this reading and writing inspired me to

take a shot at Nanowrimo that Fall; I wrote a mess of a novel that I realized

has sort of an Urban Fantasy vibe to it. Since that genre usually makes

my skin crawl.

I shelved it because I wasn't sure I wanted to pursue it any deeper,

nor did I know what kind of market there is for what I was trying to pull off.

It is a superhero story, with the main character being enlisted as the "official"

superhero of the US government. His "hero" name is US Idol, and he hates it.

I’d read one other superhero novel and didn’t like it at all, and wondered

if one could even work.



Then I read Christopher Farnsworth's Blood Oath, a novel where the setting

is kinda/sorta like what I envisioned, about a vampire who is basically

the President's secret weapon (the follow-up, which came out this year,

is actually called The President's Vampire)(coincidentally, I’d only picked the book

 up after getting a recommendation from Beau Smith to do so). The book kicked my ass

all over the place, and suddenly my superhero story seemed more viable. It made me

realize that something akin to an urban fantasy didn't have to be painted with the

“hot-chick-in-leather-on-a-motorcycle-and-a-katana-on-her-back-who-has-a-werevampire-

lover” brush. It could be fun, and gritty, and cool. I’d wanted to take the things

I love in crime and espionage and adventure and horror-type stories and throw them

all in one big hopper, the probe set high to near overflowing, and here was a guy

pulling it off in grand fashion. I was inspired. So I started playing around with

my idea again.



I'd considered serializing the novel online, and still might . . .

but when the opportunity to write a story for N@B came up, I thought I'd take a stab

 at something featuring US Idol. I wrote it and submitted it to Jed along

with another, more "typical" crime story. Jed was game to use either one, and

I chose the Idol yarn. It's quite a bit different from the other stories in the collection, but I'm happy with it and grateful to Jed, and Scott Phillips, for not only putting the anthology together but also for letting me participate in N@B. It's been a lot of fun. Hopefully people will survive the other tales in the book sane enough to appreciate my little yarn at the very back of the thing.



* This isn't exactly how this went down. I offered to pay for a slot.

Jed said, "Hey, ten bucks is ten bucks...." and I was in.



Chris has generously offered to provide an e copy of NOIR AT THE BAR to a commenter

who correctly identifies the city where that bar is.



All correct responder's names will be thrown into a hat. 



Bio: Chris La Tray is a rocker, a writer, and a wannabe adventurer.

His nonfiction writing has appeared in the Missoula Independent, 

Vintage Guitar magazine, and World Explorer

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY" Jack Bates

Hat tip to Rob for the Hopper picture.

How I Wrote This Story: Four Lanes

by Jack Bates

When I was an undergrad, I did an assignment for a poetry class that I based on the paintings of Edward Hopper. The poems were sharp, brief, and cut to the quick of the emotion of the subject. It coincided with an earlier assignment I’d had in an acting class where we had to study a painting and do improvised scenes based on what we saw or imagined we saw within the borders of the frame. I never forgot how both of those exercises opened and strengthened my creativity.

Earlier this past spring, Jim Harrington from Apollo’s Lyre asked me to contribute to a special summer post of writers from our crime fiction writing group. I went back to my book of Hopper paintings. I chose Four Lane Road, altering the title to Four Lanes, to be the foundation of my story. If you’ve ever looked at Hopper’s work, I’m sure you’ve noticed the stark images of people lost in thought or just lost. Nighthawks, which I recently saw ‘live’ on a trip to Chicago, is the picture of noir for me: lonely souls in an isolated location at night and no one talks but everyone has something on his or her mind and it’s probably troubling.

Four Lane Road depicts a man sitting on the back porch of a 1930’s era filling station as he stares absently down an empty stretch of divided highway. Leaning out a window behind him is a woman, presumably his wife, who appears to be giving him an earful about something he’s heard all too often from her. For me, that became the genesis of the story. The man had dreams of cars filling his pockets with cash as he filled the tanks. Unfortunately, that reality has been slow in happening and she’s not shy about letting him know it. Pushed to his breaking point by an eroding dream and a nagging spouse, he takes matters into his own hands and it is definitely troubling.

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY": Patti Abbott

"THE ANGEL DEEB"

from Deadly Treats.

As some of you may remember, on our trip to Paris in May 2010 I was quite taken by this vision across the street. Wings of some sort were propped in the window and I did a flash piece about it, but it influenced a longer story even more.



When Theresa Weir invited me to submit a story to a collection she was putting together, the entire story fell quickly into place. It was to be a Halloween story for a volume she was then calling BATS IN THE BELFRY. At the time, she planned to publish it herself, probably as an e-book



I wanted my story to be reminiscent of THE METAMORPHOSIS, but lighter in tone. I soon came up with the idea of the idea of wings appearing suddenly on the shoulders of a pickpocket.



I don’t know why I was so reluctant to tell him (a doctor). Was it fear of what he might tell me or embarrassment at my…problem’s… oddity? For several weeks, I’d noticed a growth on both sides of my upper back. Felt it more than saw it, of course, because it was in one of those places hard to spot—even in a mirror.



“I seem to have some sort of… enlargement.” The word growth seemed laden with implications I didn’t want to introduce into our conversation.



My hope with the story was to make it believable but magical at the same time. So Deeb's interaction would be with a little girl.



“What’s your name anyway?”

“Deeb,” I said, without thinking.

“That’s a funny name for a guardian angel. I suppose I can get used to it though.”

“Sure, call me Deeb.” What did it matter if we never met again?

“You can call me Princess Isabella.” I nodded. “And next time you come, try and remember to bring me a greeting gift.”

I nodded again. “I’d better be off.”

“I especially like barrettes if you can’t think of something.”



I had a lot of fun writing this story. And I am happy to have it included in this terrific collection.

How I Came to Write This Story" Jane Hammons

HOW I WROTE THIS STORY

Mapping the Territory

published in Shotgun Honey.

By Jane Hammons

When I was about 10, I was goofing around with some tin cans (don’t ask) and almost cut my thumb off. After the stitches healed, I thought if I was ever fingerprinted, I’d have a pretty cool thumbprint. In the early 80s, long before laparoscopic surgery, I was a kidney donor for my older sister. When I told people I was having the surgery, they often made comments like, “Wow, your bikini days are over.” A big fuck you was usually my response. I’d wear a bikini if I wanted to, scar or no scar.

So when I read the “I don’t really mind the scars” challenge here at pattinase, I remembered that anger. This reminded me of an article by Jessa Crispin I’d read in The Smart Set that better expresses than I can some of my concerns about representations of the female body in crime fiction. But there’s no better way to kill a story than to burden it with a bunch of “isms” and a personal axe to grind. I didn’t make the deadline to post a story for the challenge because it took me a while to get off my hobbyhorse.

Then the character—a woman who begins cutting herself as a child—came to me. My grandmother used to talk about family members who “show their Indian,” a phrase that refers to skin color, which, depending on her mood was either something to be proud of or a cause for shame. I thought of this as a “scar” that my Cherokee grandmother dealt with most of her life. I remembered that I kind of liked my thumb scar. And that helped me understand the kind of tension I wanted in this story between impulses that are deadly yet also creative. Once these things started bumping up against each other, I began looking at maps and working with Indian place names. From a long ago anthropology class on body art, Hunapo, a Maori skilled in the art of skin packing, showed up. At that point, what had been a big noisy collision in my head, started making a strange kind of sense, and I began “Mapping the Territory.”

Jane Hammons teaches writing at UC Berkeley where she is the recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award. She has work included in Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer (W. W. Norton 2010) and The Maternal is Political (Seal Press 2008). She recently received a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Story Society for Best Flash Story 2011. Her most recent crime fiction has appeared in A Twist of Noir, Crimespree Magazine, Powder Flash Burn, Pulp Metal Magazine, and Verbicide Magazine.