Texas writer smackdowns -- dial femme for murder

 Ready for another round of Texas writer smackdowns? How about the genre of true crime? In one corner we have Thomas Thompson’s Blood and Money tale of greed, lust, revenge – and, of course, money, vs. Skip Hollandsworth’s She Kills, in which the supposedly fair sex gets down and dirty for all of the above reasons and some you have to read to believe.

Thompson was born in Fort Worth, like previously spotlighted smackdown writer Patricia Highsmith. Like Highsmith, he moved left Texas but unlike her, could never quite shake off the state’s dust. He covered the JKF assassination in Dallas and went on to write about the rivalry of Houston surgeons at the dawn of the heart transplant era and later with the also Houston-based murders of socialite Joan Robinson Hill and her husband in Blood and Money.

(I have a special fondness for Blood and Money, having lived in Houston during part of the time covered in Thompson’s book.)

***

Blood and Money

If ever a woman had it all, it was Joan Robinson. She was rich, beautiful and charismatic, sought after by myriad eligible men and the adored only child of her father, wealthy oilman Ash Robinson. Maybe too much adored.

Joan went through men like a Texas tornado, notching up a couple of divorces before she fell hard for John Hill, a struggling young doctor. At first, Hill seemed equally smitten, but the marriage soon turned ugly. Aside from a quickly fading physical attraction, the pair had nothing in common.

Joan was a world-class equestrian atop her beloved gaited mare. John hoped to parlay his wife’s (i.e. her father’s) money into a home recital hall that would be the envy of any music lover. Show horses were as foreign to him as classical music was to her.

  And although daddy Robinson and Hill loathed each other, Joan was too horrified by the prospect of losing at marriage a third time to consider divorce.

Dr. Hill sought other female companionship, but he and his wife floundered along until Joan was stricken by a mysterious illness.

And the old saw  of doctors’ wives dying young came all too true. But was Joan’s death simply an illness ignored too long by her husband. Or was it murder? If so, by the doctor or his woman companion?

The next death was John Hill’s, this time unmistakably murder. He was shot at close range in his own home by a complete stranger, who was later killed while resisting arrest.

Who was ultimately behind the string of deaths? Suspicion pointed to Joan’s father. But with enough money, anything can happen. . .And although multiple parties, including Ash Robinson filed suit over the book, none ultimately prevailed.

(Thompson would later die also somewhat mysteriously – from a liver disease his family believed he contracted during a South Asian research trip for still another book.)

***

She Kills: The Murderous Socialite, the Cross-Dressing Bank Robber, and Other True Crime Tales

 Skip Hollandsworth has a long-time interest in true crime, an interest given full scope by his years of as a journalist with Texas Monthly magazine. Besides lengthier stories such as the historical Midnight Assassin, he has adapted his magazine articles for the big screen in Bernie and Hit Man.

Despite the subtitles of She Kills, a couple of its stories are of women who are simply quirky, quite possibly wronged, but nonviolent. Still, there’s a strange fascination on the subject of women who kill, sometimes by their own hands, sometimes through intermediaries.

Women such as the terribly nice nurse whose patients loved her. (Pray she’s not on the night shift during your hospital stay.)

Or the deadly dentist, the homicidal high schooler, the shady socialite, and others.

In each case, Hollandsworth provides a “where are they now” follow-up. Does it confirm their guilt or give us reasons to believe them innocent?

 The prize of the stories is “Oh, Sister, Where Art Thou?”, the tale of eight women imprisoned in the early 1940’s at the Goree State Farm in Texas, then the state’s only prison for women.

Calling themselves the Goree All Girl String Band, “. . . they were once a national sensation,” Hollandsworth writes, drawing millions of radio listeners to the musical variety show titled Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls that featured them.

These women, most of whom had no musical experience, were indeed killers – no matter how justifiable their actions may seem in hindsight.

Some received early release because of their popularity. None ever returned to show business or, apparently, discussed this aspect of their lives after leaving prison. A movie about their experiences is believed to be in development.

True crime devotees will want to make their own decision about each book’s worthiness. Hollandsworth’s is the more readily available, but with a little searching I found copies of both in my local HalfPrice Books. And, of course, there’s always the internet.

What if Conan rode in with a gun?

 Strange though it may seem, it wasn’t his fantasy characters such as Conan the Cimmerian (aka Barbarian) or King Kull who Texas writer Robert E. Howard expected to make his reputation. It was his Westerns. He was adept at mixing Westerns with his other story genres – fantasy, horror, even his comic boxing tales. Still, I did a double take when Steve Corcoran, the antihero of today’s story proved to be a physical twin to Conan, “tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, lean-hipped … (whose) unruly black hair matched a face burned dark by the sun, but his eyes were a burning blue.”

Corcoran matches not only Howard's usual physical descriptions of Conan but his psyche as well, "too direct by nature, or too proud of (his) skill to resort to trickery when it was possible to meet enemies in the open. . . "

(It's also interesting to note the similarity between Corcoran's name and that of the two-fisted sailor Steve Costigan, hero of sone of the fight stories for which Howard was famous during his life.)

***

The Vultures of Whapeton

by Robert E. Howard

As the story opens, Corcoran is peacefully minding his own business – at least in as peaceful a way as he can manage, considering that he’s just shot another gunfighter – when John Middleton, sheriff of the embattled mining town of Whapeton Gulch, happens upon him. Strangely, Middleton is not in the least nonplussed to find Corcoran’s opponent, who he had hired as a deputy to help tame the lawless elements of his town, lying shot through the heart, and promptly offers the deceased employee’s job to his killer. Not that either Corcoran or the sheriff has any illusions about the character of the dead man, whose Colt’s stock is nicked with the record of those he had killed.

 The thing is, the sheriff says, Whapeton is overrun with a gang of outlaws who call themselves the Vultures. What sheriff Middleton wants is not good character but “. . . a man who can handle a gun like a streak of forked lightning . . . I’ll offer you the same terms I meant to offer him. . . You know what to do with the really bad men. We’re not bringing any more murderers into court to be acquitted through their friends’ lies!”

Image: wikimedia commons

 And before readers can say, gee, sheriff, that offer smells downright fishy, Corcoran is installed as the newest deputy of Whapeton. The Vulture gang, he soon learns, has spies all over the little town, giving them word of any shipment of gold or goods in or out of town. And the town’s newest lawman also begins to have serious doubts about the law-abiding nature of his fellow deputies.

He manages however, to gain the friendship of some of Whapeton’s citizens, including golden-haired Glory Bland, when he prevents her from braining one of her fellow bar girls in a saloon brawl that has left Glory’s dress suggestively torn and her bosom suggestively heaving. No matter what the other woman’s offenses, Corcoran tells Glory, “(t)hat wasn’t no excuse for makin’ a public show of yourself. . . If ladies have got to fight, they ought to do it in private.”

 In spite of his sententious words, readers have to believe it’s Glory’s fighting nature as much as her disheveled clothing that has caught Corcoran’s eye and heart. And if you’re wondering whether Glory’s friendship will be enough to ensure Corcoran’s survival in the rattlers’ nest of deceit and betrayal that is Whapeton Gulch, read it for yourself here.

 (Note that although the story’s original publication in Smashing Novels spelled the town’s name “Whapeton,” the notes of Howard and his agent use the spelling Wahpeton. You’ll find it listed both ways in the REH canon.)

Is Conan the Barbarian Texas' greatest hero?

Hey, y'all -- it's time for REH Days, the annual tribute of fans of Texas writer Robert E. Howard, in his hometown of Cross Plains, Texas. This year the festival runs from Thursday through Saturday (June 11-13). It's mostly free, so drop by if you get a chance. In REH's honor, I'm re-running some of my previous about him and his stories -- including some you may  not expect!

***

People of the Black Circle

by Robert E. Howard 

Conan-creator Robert E. Howard a specialist in spunky heroines? Possibly, it's not the first characteristic that leaps to mind in considering the king of 1930's pulp fiction. But I dare you to find a single spiritless, or even resigned woman in Howard's stories. Especially not in one of his best, People of the Black Circle, whose heroine Yasmina defies protocol, not to mention loss of life and sanity, to rescue the soul of her beloved brother from wizardry.

Image by Hansuan for pixabay

And despite the racy cover of the September 1934 Weird Tales, which serialized the novella, Yasmina, in typical Howardian fashion, wins without stooping to the exploitation of her sexuality. Not even to gain the aid of the warrior Conan, turning up in a surprisingly non-Hyborian context.

Briefly, as Bunda Chand, king of Vendhya, lies dying, he reveals to his beloved sister, the Devi Yasmina, that he has been “ensorcelled by the wizards of the Himelians,” who are intent on imprisoning his soul in the body of a demon. The distraught Yasmina determines to free her brother’s soul. To do so, she travels incognito to the borders of Himelian territory, determined to find the famous Conan and force him to aid her in penetrating the wizards’ fastness.

The Devi finds the tables turned on her more than once in a typically twisty Howard plot, but she and Conan will eventually acknowledge each other as the best of enemies.

“. . . of all the Conan-girls, I have a special fondness for Yasmina,” writes the reviewer at http://www.pulpanddagger.com/conan/people.html/. “Somehow, Howard combines in her a perfect blending of imperious strength and fetching vulnerability that makes her stand out from all the rest.”

Conan thought so, too.

As the story ends (spoiler alert!) he tells Yasmina, now queen of her own country, “‘I will collect your ransom in my own way, at my own time. . . And I will come with fifty thousand men to see that the scales are fair.’”

“She laughed, gathering her reins into her hands. ‘And I will meet you on the shores of the Jhumda with a hundred thousand!’”

Where did Howard (not to mention Conan) get this appreciation for strong women? In spite of the disapprobation heaped on Howard’s mother, Hester Ervin Howard, who added her surname to the name of her only son, I suspect he appreciated her strength, both as she and his father argued famously and as she endured an agonizing death from tuberculosis.

But not surprisingly, Howard never married. And although Conan sometimes appears about to take the plunge, I can’t remember one of his stories that ended with a wedding, either.

(Want more Howard? Listen to a free audio trial of People of the Black Circle at www.audiobooks.com or stay tuned here for more!)

Texas writer smackdown: two takes on heroic fantasy

 It's another of those classic matchups -- established Texas writer Robert E. Howard versus (relative) newbie Rick Riordan duking it out for the king of heroic fantasy. But wait, you say? Riordan as a Texas writer? Wonder no more, dear friends. Back before writing his way into the land of myth, Riordan, born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, took honors for his mystery series starring Jackson "Tres" Navarre. I like to think the surname of his breakout series hero, Percy Jackson, was a nod to Tres.

In the other corner is Howard, also born, lived, and died in Texas, with almost innumerable Conan stories to his credit, not to mention the likes of a slew of other heroes, movie spinoffs, etc.

Today, I'm featuring short reviews of one of the most famous Conan stories, "Red Nails", paired with a recent Riordan entry in the Percy Jackson oeuvre, The Wrath of the Triple Goddess. Each story features that classic threesome: a guy, a girl, and the monstrous house of a witch. What could possibly go wrong?

***

Red Nails

A beautiful and dangerous woman flees through a dark forest, fearing pursuit from a band of pirates. Not that she has anything against pirates in general. She was one of their crew. But when one of them attempted to rape her, she had no choice but to kill him. And the rest of the crew didn't take kindly to that form of "no." 

REH

Hoping she's finally outrun her would-be assassins, she stops to reconnoiter, only to find one follower still on her trail: Conan. Luckily, he's more impressed with her sword work than the rest of her (not that he doesn't have an eye for gorgeous dames!). 

After polishing off a deadly dragon (impressed with their potential as food sources), Conan and the woman, who gets a name, Valeria, about half a dozen pages into the story, catch sight of a distant city and set out, seeking shelter.

The city consists of a single, enormous, multi-roomed house. But though it's immaculate and richly furnished, they find no evidence of inhabitants until they stumble upon an eerie, murderous masked figure and rescue one of its intended victims. The survivor informs them that the city/house is home to related but warring factions that have been at each other's throats for decades. (The story's title, Red Nails, refers to the nails one faction drives into a post to keep track of its kills.)

The survivor guides them to his faction's leaders, Prince Olmec and his beautiful consort Tascela, who overlooks Conan but is intensely drawn to Valeria. And as the slaughter of the warring factions drives each side toward extinction, Conan and Valeria learn the reason for their insane strife and the deadly meaning of Tascela's fascination with the younger woman,

Who will win and who will lose in what Howard himself described as his bloodiest and sexiest Conan tale?

***

The Wrath of the Triple Goddess

Teenaged demigod Percy Jackson desperately needs recommendation letters from a few more Olympian gods to gain admission to the college of his choice, where his demigod girlfriend, Annabeth, is already assured of entry. So, what choice does he have when Hecate, goddess of witchcraft and magic, offers a recommendation in return for the "small favor" of house/pet sitting her mansion while she tours the world during her annual Halloween vacation? The mansion, of course, must be in immaculate condition, ditto Hecate's strange and deadly pets, upon her return or the recommendation will be forfeited.

Luckily, Percy has Annabeth and his best friend, the satyr Grover, to keep order while he attends the high school classes he missed while out saving the world in previous adventures.

But when the temptation to taste one of Hecate's deliciously dangerous brews overcomes Grover, the resulting spell trashes the entire mansion and unleashes the witch's pet hellhound and polecat into the wilds of New York City, the three friends must seek additional supernatural aid to find the beasts and put the house back in order. Or forfeit Percy's college recommendation, possibly even his life.

Luckily, Annabeth's research reveals an entire nearby graveyard full of pioneering New York ghosts who may be able to help if the friends can secure the aid of their ghostly leader. Too bad he was a demigod himself, a son of Hecate. And he's held a grudge against his mother, and everything associated with her for oh, about the last 400 years.

***

Well, readers, who do you choose? Classic writer Howard or newbie(ish) Riordan? I'd love to hear your comments!

For me, Red Nails bears the weight of being the last of Howard's published Conan tales, not seeing print until after his suicide and the death of his mother, with whom he had, shall we say, an interesting relationship? And although I love many of Howard's never goody-goody female characters, he vented all his frustrations of money worries, race, and homophobia in ways that will seem creaky with age to some readers, or right for new readership for others.

Riordan's take on the classic story formulas is definitely 21st-century. And maybe it's just me, but I like the focus on working together as his demigod characters do than with the lone rangerishness of Conan. But I still vent at Netflix for dropping the ball about another Conan revival!

Totally by the way, but despite his disappearance from screens, lots of the Conan tales are still available. I found Red Nails in Prion publishing's Conan the Barbarian, among the Dallas Public Library's trove of Howardiana. Probably in multiple outlets as well.

Texas writer smackdown: The lure of antiheroes

 As promised, here's a smackdown -- classic Texas writer Patricia Highsmith with The Talented Mr. Ripley vs. modern writer May Cobb's All the Little Houses.

The Talented Mr. Ripley opens with a wealthy businessman Richard Greenleaf's request to Ripley to bring his son Dickie, then living the life of a dilletante writer/painter in Italy, back home to New York. Although Dickie Greenleaf was little more than a casual acquaintance, out-of-work con artist Tom Ripley can't refuse, especially when the elder Greenleaf offers to pay for his travel and expenses.

Ripley becomes enamored with Dickie's trust fund lifestyle. He soon gives up any attempt to lure Dickie back home, instead insinuating himself too deeply in Dickie's hospitality to be eradicated. How to continue the life he covets when the elder Greenleaf's expense account runs out? There's only enough trust fund for one young man, raising the question of which of the two is really Dickie, and whether he has murdered Ripley out of desperation. Or is it the other way around?

And how many more people will have to die to preserve the story's multiple layers of secrecy?

When I was in high school in a small East Texas town, the school's French teacher persuaded a local movie theater owner to give her class a private showing of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Or so she thought. 

Instead, what appeared on the screen was a tale of murder from the criminal's point of view, a movie with the bizarre title (in English translation) of Purple Noon. Our embarrassed teacher asked if we'd rather go back to class. But what teens would? We settled into our seats to watch the French adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Who would have thought Highsmith, author of such murderous masterpieces as Ripley, with its multiple film/streaming offshoots, and Strangers on a Train (adapted to cinematic fame by Alfred Hitchcock and more loosely adapted later as When You Kiss a Stranger) was a Texan?

Fort Worth-born Highsmith left the state at age six when her mother and stepfather moved to New York. She never willingly returned. Back at you, Texas said, returning the snub. As biographer Joan Schenkar writes in The Talented Miss Highsmith, "when (she) offered her archives to the University of Texas at Austin, she received a letter . . . suggesting the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars for her papers. 'The price of a used car,' Pat said bitterly and refused to let Texas have her literary bones."

Texas may have been as squeamish about Highsmith's talent as the magazines she first applied to after college graduation. Unable to get a job at what were considered respectable publications, she accepted an offer to write scripts for Cinema Comics.

In the early 1940's, "the entire comics milieu -- authors, illustrators, publishers and the improbable characters they were creating," Schenkar writes, "was alive with the same collection of crooks and cons, artists with secret identities and heroes with Alter Egos, with which the talented Miss Highsmith would later populate so much of her fiction."

***

So, how do Highsmith's rich, would-be-rich, devious, sexually ambiguous characters and bizarre plot twists stand up to those of modern Texas noir writer May Cobb's All the Little Houses?

Cobb shot to fame with her earlier, "present-day" thriller, The Hunting Wives, now streaming on Netflix (as is TTMR's latest incarnation, titled simply Ripley). Unlike Highsmith, Cobb revels in her Texas roots. Although TV-land tends to divide Texan in prairie and desert, Cobb lays her tales in the piney woods of East Texas. Fittingly, it's the region where dirt-poor Depression-era farmers suddenly shot to riches from the black gold burbling beneath their worn-out cotton fields.

In All the Little Houses, Cobb shifts the story setting to the 1980's, the era in which she was growing up in the one-time roughneck oil town of Longview, Texas. The book's title riffs on the popular '80's TV series
, Little House on the Prairie. But in Cobb's story, the vibe is far less wholesome, with a mean teen named for adolescent Little House villainess, Nellie.

In an interview, Cobb called herself a lover of the whole '80's decadent era, where big hair and big shoulder pads went hand in hand with classism snobbery and a heaping helping of homophobia. 

As well, setting the story in pre-internet times mean when things went wrong, as they so often do in the book, there's no way to call for help.

Mean girl Nellie and her bootstrap mom Charleigh are at the top of the Longview social heap, thanks to Charleigh's marriage to the richest man in town. But though Charleigh's beauty won her rich (and equally handsome) husband's heart, the longer-term wealthy look down on her nouveau status. And Nellie, who inherited none of her parents' looks, can only find a pretense of love by having her mom bribe boys to date her.

When Jane, the gorgeous new girl in town, enters high school just before summer break, even money can't buy Nellie popularity.

High school boys go for Jane, but their moms -- at least the rich ones -- lust after Jane's sexually ambivalent dad. Meanwhile, Charleigh's best -- probably only -- friend, closeted gay decorator Jackson, yearn to escape the insular East Texas vibe for his dream city of San Francisco.

All the Little Houses makes no bones about just how bad things can get, letting readers know early no that somebody -- or bodies -- gonna die. (Personally, I had a list of at least half a dozen characters I'd gladly see sacrificed.) But who the victim (or victims) will be, who the murderer, how and why, will still astonish. 

Contests to put the spring back into our writing

 For every writer whose pen/paper/keypad needs to have the pandemic dust cleared off, here’s a list of current writing contests to do just that. Why contests? To paraphrase writer/blogger Erica Verrillo, contest deadlines force us to FINISH a piece, and many of them also require a synopsis and pitch – both essential for approaching publishers and agent. Oh, and winning a contest can boost our chances of getting published! (Also see her list of free contests, because if it’s free, what is there to lose?)

April 30: Did we almost lose sight of the Writers League of Texas annual manuscript contest? Because the WLT’s annual conference has been delayed by the pandemic, the contest was also extended – but the deadline is coming up fast! No completed manuscript needed but contestants must provide a short synopsis and the opening pages of an unpublished work (2,750-word limit) in any of several fiction and nonfiction categories. Winners in all categories win free registration to the WLT conference September 17-19, meet with a top literary agent in their genre, and be recognized at the conference. All contestants can also receive specific written feedback on their work. See the site for details. Entrance fees: $55 for WLT members/$65 nonmembers. Or writers may opt out of receiving written feedback for a lower cost of $25 for WLT members/$35 for nonmembers.   

Image: Wikimedia Commons

May 7: Early bird pricing deadline for Writer’s Digest annual writing competition. The competition’s nine categories offer chances for cash prizes, interviews and a paid trip to the Digest’s 2-21 conference in New York City. Early bird entry fees: $20 for first poetry entry, $15 for additional poetry entry; $30 for first prose entry, $35 for additional prose entry. See the site for details and entry form.

May 15: Dallas-based Carve Magazine’s annual Raymond Carver Short Story Contest offers chances for publication, cash prizes and publication of prize winners in the magazine’s October issue. Winning entries will also be read by three literary agents. Unpublished literary fiction only, no genre stories! Up to 10,000 words. Fees: $17 per entry. See the site for details.

May 20: Early pricing deadline for Book Pipeline Adaptation Contest seeks published books, graphic novels, short stories and plays for film and television adaptation. No genre restrictions, both traditional and self-published works accepted. Winner receives cash prize plus film/TV industry circulation and project development. Fee: $55. See site for details.

May 30: Masters Review Flash Fiction is looking for emerging writers for fiction under 1,000 words. Cash prizes for first, second, and third-place winners, chosen by author Stuart Dybek. $20 entry fee allows for two story entries. All stories are considered for publication. 

June 1: Early pricing deadline for the Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest in several fiction and nonfiction categories. Cash prizes to winners in each category, industry circulation and more. Fee: $45. 

June 3: #PitMad is the Twitter party where writers tweet a pitch for their completed, polished, unpublished manuscripts to agents and editors. One day only, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. (Repeats quarterly.) Free. 

June 30: Need a break from the serious? Dare we try our hands at this year’s Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest ? Named for the prolific 19^th-century writer who penned the sentence that began with the infamous, “It was a dark and stormy night” and continued for more than 50 additional words. Each entry must consist of a single sentence, but the judges plead for us not to go beyond 50 or 60 words. There will be overall winners as well as winners in several genre categories – including “Purple Prose” and “Vile Puns.” For their pains, winners will receive a pittance and bragging rights. Free, with unlimited number of entries. See the site for details and to check out the stress-relieving previous winners, including North Texas writer Lisa Hanks’ masterpiece which received a “Grand Panjandrum’s Special Award.”

***

What’s missing? DL Hammons’ popular WRiTE CLUB contest is on hiatus, possibly due to the delayed scheduling of its sponsor, the DFW Writers Conference. I’ll post as soon as information is available.

As always, crazy for contests writers may check out the options at Erica Verrillo’s previously mentioned site, Ralan.com, New Pages, Reedsy, and Writer Unboxed’s
Arthur Klepchukov.

Countdown of favorite posts of 2020: day 3

Countdown of readers' favorite posts of 2020 continues with the sixth most-popular:

Should books last forever? On writing in a 'cancel culture'

Writers think a lot about how to write but, surprisingly, not always about why they write in the first place. The Writer’s League of Texas’ Becka Oliver cornered a disparate trio of writers – Sarah Bird, Varian Johnson, and Joe R.Lansdale, one Black, two white, at the WLT’s recent virtual “unconference” and bumped into a debate about the life span of books in today’s “cancel culture.”

 

Why write? “That is a hard and complicated question,” Johnson acknowledged. “I write because I’m trying to work something else (out) in the world.”

 

“I would call (writing) a happy compulsion,” Lansdale said. “I write for me. I write like everybody I know is dead and hope readers like it.”

 

“It’s a defense against all the nonbelievers who surround you,” Bird said, noting that when she first began selling stories she was still reluctant to award herself the title of “author,” and would have answered the question by saying, “I write for money.” Later, during harder times, “I wrote to cheer myself up. . . (and) to memorialize my family.” Later, she termed the writing of her most recent book, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, a fictionalized narrative of the only woman among the 19^th-century’s all-Black Buffalo Soldiers, “a calling.”

 

Then, having reached the point at which she could retire from writing, she found she no longer could abandon that calling. “I would be mentally ill if I didn’t.”

 

Nice word, that, “calling.” “Can you talk about what the calling of writing to kids,” Oliver asked Johnson, whose primarily for young readers books include The Great Greene Heist, The Parker League, and more.

 

Turns out, writing for kids is more complicated than a reader might think.

 

“Middle grade (literature) has to be written for years 8-12ish, while remembering that adults will read it too. . . The first draft is for only me, before putting the words out for an audience,” Johnson said.

 

Image: Pixabay

Later drafts are about “sculpting for that (i.e. middle grade) audience,” including dealing with such difficult issues as racial slurs. “I think my only responsibility is to be true to the story, including some of the larger themes. The characters have to be true.”

 

And there it was again. The word in the room. Race.

 

Lansdale, whose dark tales are definitely not written for school age audiences, agreed with Johnson on the need for discretion when writing for the young. But for himself, “If you’re going to address race in the past, it may be uncomfortable. If I’m going to write about racism I have to write about the ugly aspects of it.”

 

So, how do classic books about those “ugly aspects” – the Huckleberry Finns and To Kill a Mockingbirds – with their plentiful racial epithets and violence, stand up in today’s audience? Is it time, the group debated, to “cancel” books written about race by White writers for primarily White audiences?

 

Lansdale was adamant about defending Mockingbird, which he opened his eyes as a youngster brought up in deep East Texas. (Some of his own writings, such as the thriller The Bottoms have been compared to Harper Lee’s story, and his comic duo Hap and Leonard features Black and white oddball investigators.)

 

“The thing about books like To Kill a Mockingbird, which I read as a kid,” Johnson said, “(is) when people say that defines racism for the South, no, it (defines) racism for white people.”

 

But although, as Lansdale noted, “some of those books make white readers see what we don’t see,” Johnson didn't find that sufficient. 

"Why," he asked, "should a book be expected to last forever?” 

Should books last forever? On writing in a 'cancel culture'

Writers think a lot about how to write but, surprisingly, not always about why they write in the first place. The Writer’s League of Texas’ Becka Oliver cornered a disparate trio of writers – Sarah Bird, Varian Johnson, and Joe R. Lansdale, one Black, two White -- at the WLT’s recent virtual “unconference” and bumped into a debate about the life span of books in today’s “cancel culture.”

Why write? Oliver asked.

“That is a hard and complicated question,” Johnson acknowledged. “I write because I’m trying to work something else (out) in the world.”  

From top left: Oliver, Bird, Lansdale, Johnson

“I would call (writing) a happy compulsion,” Lansdale said. “I write for me. I write like everybody I know is dead and hope readers like it.”

“It’s a defense against all the nonbelievers who surround you,” Bird said, noting that when she first began selling stories she was still reluctant to award herself the title of “author,” and would have answered the question by saying, “I write for money.” Later, during harder times, “I wrote to cheer myself up. . . (and) to memorialize my family.” Later, she termed the writing of her most recent book, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, a fictionalized narrative of the only woman among the 19^th-century’s all-Black Buffalo Soldiers, “a calling.”

Then, having reached the point at which she could retire from writing, she found she no longer could abandon that calling. “I would be mentally ill if I didn’t.”

Nice word, that, “calling.” “Can you talk about what the calling of writing to kids,” Oliver asked Johnson, whose primarily for young readers books include The Great Greene Heist, The Parker League, and more.

Turns out, writing for kids is more complicated than a reader might think.

“Middle grade (literature) has to be written for years 8-12ish, while remembering that adults will read it too. . . The first draft is for only me, before putting the words out for an audience,” Johnson said.

Later drafts are about “sculpting for that (i.e. middle grade) audience,” including dealing with such difficult issues as racial slurs. “I think my only responsibility is to be true to the story, including some of the larger themes. The characters have to be true.”

And there it was again. The word in the room. Race.

Lansdale, whose dark tales are definitely not written for school age audiences, agreed with Johnson on the need for discretion when writing for the young. But for himself, “If you’re going to address race in the past, it may be uncomfortable. If I’m going to write about racism I have to write about the ugly aspects of it.”

So, how do classic books about those “ugly aspects” – the Huckleberry Finns and To Kill a Mockingbirds – with their plentiful racial epithets and violence, stand up in today’s audience? Is it time, the group debated, to “cancel” books written about race by White writers for primarily White audiences?

Lansdale was adamant about defending Mockingbird, which he opened his eyes as a youngster brought up in deep East Texas. (Some of his own writings, such as the thriller The Bottoms have been compared to Harper Lee’s story, and his comic duo Hap and Leonard features Black and White oddball investigators.)

“The thing about books like To Kill a Mockingbird, which I read as a kid,” Johnson said, “(is) when people say that defines racism for the South, no, it (defines) racism for White people.”

And if, as Lansdale noted, “some of those books make White readers see what we don’t see,” Johnson replied, “Why should a book be expected to last forever?”

***

I notice that in an earlier post I promised to provide guidance on some of the “tools” writers use in their work. But I admit, I’m now digging deeply into the virtual Thrillerfest, with its dozens of author conversations, so I’ll end here. Stay tuned for words from Virginia, Wyoming, South Carolina, and more!

A last look at ConDFW – conversation with Yoon Ha Lee

Part II:

Earlier this week, I promised to give readers a peek at the writing guests of honor from last weekend’s final edition of science fiction/fantasy convention, ConDFW. First up was the prolific, genre-bending Charlaine Harris. Today’s entry is another multi-published writer those cross-genre talents might tax even Harris’s imagination. Enter Yoon Ha Lee, the Locus Award-winning author of Ninefox Gambit and its sequels, as well as middle-grade space opera Dragon Pearl, published last month, and multiple short stories.

“I’m queer, I’m transgender, I’m bisexual,” Lee said, explaining how he foreswore his teenage allegiance to Ender’s Game after discovering the political opinions of its author, Orson Scott Card.

(For the record, Lee is a native of Houston, Texas, of Korean ancestry. He is also a former mathematics teacher, is bipolar, married to a quantum astrophysicist and parent to a 15-year-old daughter. Oh, and he has a very spoiled cat.)

“I spent half my childhood in Houston and half in South Korea,” he told moderator (and planetologist and fellow cat lover) John DeLaughter. “We came home (to South Korea) a lot for reasons my parents never explained, because they didn’t explain stuff to kids.”

Lee originally started writing science fiction with “all white characters and Western settings” because these were the models he had grown up with. But after hearing about the phenomenon of cultural appropriation he realized, “Yes, I’m Korean. I can write Korean characters.”

Yoon Ha Lee

He also, however, loves ancient Greek myths. After learning that Rick Riordan, author of the Lightning Thief series based on classical mythology, was interested in writers immersed in other mythic cultures, Lee decided to give it a try.

“I bet no one else is going to pitch Korean mythology space opera,” Lee said. “And I was right!”

Still, Lee confesses a yearning to write an Iliad as space opera. “But without Achilles, because he annoyed me, particularly because he got Patroclus killed. When I was eight, I thought Achilles and Patroclus were just friends. Then I read the adult version and realized – oh, they didn’t tell me that when I was eight in Houston.”

“They still don’t tell you that at age eight in Houston,” DeLaughter said.

Other themes of Lee work include non-Homo sapien intelligences (which he ascribes to the influence of Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz ), and societal hierarchies influenced by the Confucian culture he experienced during his childhood years in Korea. 

“We stole Confucianism from the Chinese and then became more Confucian than Confucius.”

“Is that something you would like to see go away in Korea?” DeLaughter asked.

“It’s not all evil,” Lee said. “Teachers are very respected in Korea, so they are able to manage their classrooms better than in America, but there are a lot of things that are problematic.”

And then there are the names, which often are based on jokes and numbers. “I know a lot of people say numbers are dehumanizing, but as a person who majored in math, I find numbers fascinating.”

Admittedly, what everyone in the ConDFW audience wanted to know was the prolific Lee’s advice on how to write.

“Finish your things,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how awful a manuscript is, it can always be fixed in revision.”

And given his mastery of short stories, did he find that writing them gained credibility for his novel-writing efforts, an audience member asked.

“I did the old-fashioned thing of writing short stories, which I did for 17 years, before writing a novel. Which is not time-efficient. Having that credibility from short stories helps, but if you want to write novels, you must write that novel!”

(And for readers who want to hear more from Lee, mark your calendars for this year’s North Texas Teen Book Festival, (www.northtexasteenbookfestival.com), March 22-23 in Irving, Texas, where he will appear again.)

ConDFW rides into the sunset – but what a ride it was!

Part I:

How could I not have realized that this year’s ConDFW, that grand North Texas science fiction/fantasy convention would be the last of its 18-year run? But if all good things must come to an end, ConDFW went out with a booster rocket of a blast, including discussions by literary guests of honor Charlaine Harris and Yoon Ha Lee. 

Harris hardly needs an introduction. Disdaining the epithet of “prolific” – ‘I’m not prolific, I’m just old,’ she assured her audience. “When you’ve been writing for 40 years, you write a lot of books.” Add, when you fearlessly tackle multiple genres – and combinations of genres – you don’t easily run out of ideas.

Perhaps best known for the Southern Vampire series that mixed mystery and paranormal genres with a touch of romance, and inspired TV’s  “True Blood,” Harris described her latest work, An Easy Death, to moderator Melania Fletcher as “an alternate-history Western thriller with magic,” noting, “I like to write about women who kill a lot of people, which had to be set in an alternate-history universe.” 

“Will there be sequels?” Fletcher asked. 

“My publisher surely hopes so!” Harris replied. 

She’s also written multiple mystery series, urban fantasy, graphic novels (with collaborator Christopher Golden), romances, and short stories. Pressed once as to how many short stories she’s written, Harris said she had to search her records to realize she’d written at least 40. “Short stories are so hard. Every word counts and there’s no leeway with character or description.”

Somehow along the way however, she also managed to co-edit volumes of short stories, which “really improved my own writing.”

“What do you do when you’re not writing?” Fletcher asked. “I understand you have a houseful of rescue dogs.”

Charlaine Harris

“I’m down to two now,” Harris said. “And I’m really involved with my family and – don’t look surprised – I’m very active in my church. I’m very religious.”

“Have you gotten any criticism from your church?” Fletcher asked. 

“Not from my church – I’m Episcopalian, and they’re often quite liberal,” Harris said, then deadpanned, “but when we sold our house in Arkansas to a woman with a different religious background, she was advised to have it exorcised.”

Aside from the possibility of receiving divine aid, doesn’t a woman who writes so prolifically have to be extremely well-organized, Fletcher mused, wondering if Harris prefers plotting or winging things as she types.

“I blue-sky it,” Harris replied. “People ask me what I wear when I write, and I . . . never understand why that would cross anybody’s mind. It would never cross my mind to ask Lee Child what he wears when he writes.”

(For the record, her writing uniform usually consists of jeans and T-shirts. For whoever that may inspire.)

Next time, my autopsy of ConDFW continues with a conversation with Yoon Ha Lee.

Review: A fresh entry in the state of Texas noir

Review of: The Burial Place

Author: Larry Enmon
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Source: Purchase, Half Price Books
Grade: B

The 19-year-old daughter of the Dallas mayor is missing. But when she’s white, rich, willful and pouting over her parents’ disapproval of her Hispanic boyfriend, is her disappearance a spoiled daughter’s snit or something more serious? 

Either way, it’s not good news for the mayor’s upcoming political campaign. Get her back, he tells Dallas police, but keep it quiet. Which is how a pair of detectives with reputations for unconventional investigations find the case dumped on them in Larry Enmon’s debut mystery/thriller, The Burial Place.

But with every day that passes since the girl’s disappearance, detectives Rob Soliz and Frank Pierce know the longer the case goes unsolved, the worse their chance of finding her alive. Their only clues—a Bible with the word Wormwood highlighted, and a homeless addict who has the same word tattooed across his back, courtesy of a stint in a mysterious religious cult.

Bound by their chief’s promise of secrecy to the mayor, Soliz and Pierce can’t seek help from other department members. Meanwhile, other law enforcement agencies are muscling in on the case, as clues that the victim and criminals have moved beyond the bounds of Dallas police jurisdiction. In a state as big as Texas, what are the chances that Soliz and Pierce will find the mayor’s daughter before Texas Rangers or FBI? Or before her kidnappers turn to greater violence? 

The clock ticks, political pressure builds. And each detective battles personal traumas that push them to the verge of giving up their careers.

Although The Burial Place is subtitled A Mystery, it reads like a thriller, with multiple viewpoints, including that of kidnap victim Katrina Wallace, who faces a timetable of her own as she threads her way through the deadly secrets of the cult members who have imprisoned her.

Author Larry Enmon knows crime—and policing. A veteran of the Houston Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service, he brings his inside knowledge of the gritty side of police work, from interdepartmental politics to the tedium of stakeouts, to the bond between partners willing to bend rules to protect each other. 

His way with language in The Burial Place can’t always match his grasp of tension and thrilling plot. But with a likeably quirky pair of detectives, a spunky female lead, and a keen eye and ear for his Texas setting, Enmon gives promise of more good things to come.

A writer's secrets for his not so overnight success

Having previously heard North Texas writer Reavis Z. Wortham speak, I anticipated nothing but fun from his recent appearance before the Dallas chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Did his raucous humor seem strangely at odds with his blood-soaked preferred genres—mysteries and thrillers? It's not. Before the first volume of his Red River mystery series appeared in 2011, he had spent decades pounding out award-winning humor columns for newspapers and outdoorsman magazines.

If Reavis were a power-pointer, he might have summarized his discussion like this:

1. Hold on to what inspires us
2. Take (good) advice
3. Be open to new ideas
4. Never give up!

But he’s a storyteller, not a power-pointer. So, he told us stories instead.

“I was the kindergartener who was ready to go to the library on day one,”—he said. Nevertheless, he refrained from voicing his ambition to be a writer until at age 10, an aunt at a family reunion pressed him to declare what he wanted to be when he grew up.  “A writer,” he said. Mercifully, no one in his family fainted. At least not immediately.

Reavis Z. Wortham

Maybe they thought he’d grow out of it. He didn’t.

Pencil in hand, he scrawled stories on Big Chief writing pads throughout his elementary school years, sending them to the likes of Reader’s Digest and men’s magazines, “in those days the ones with adventure stories.” (He was astonished when a childhood friend first showed him Playboy, but promptly started a correspondence with that journal as well.)

After years of fruitless mailings, he was thrilled to finally receive a rejection letter, which gave him his first piece of good advice, “kid, you need to learn to type.” He got a typewriter.

More good advice arrived in his high school years, in the form of his freshman English teacher, Miss Linda Adams, who told her students, “find your writing voice and then break the rules.”

In college, however, after years of failing to achieve publication, “I decided not to be a starving author and got a job in education.” But he never stopped writing.

During a meeting at work, (one of those boring ones, he confided) he noticed a co-worker busy with a yellow legal pad. “Writing for a newspaper,” she told him, boasting that she would be published before he was. Stung, Reavis took a stab at writing a humor column, and in the 1980’s offered it to the Paris, Texas, newspaper, whose editor snapped it up for $25 and informed him that he now owed the paper a weekly column as well.

Unable to think of a topic for a column one day, he recalled another piece of advice from his high school teacher. “If you can’t think of anything to write, just start putting words down and more words will come.” He found himself describing a character and a setting that became the backbone of his first novel, “a story that just evolved, without any thought.” His wife told him it was the beginning of a novel.

After more struggles with technological limits (remember the typewriter?), with finding an agent, firing the agent, finding a new agent (not to mention a new wife), he found he had written the first of his Red River mystery series.

At his first book signing in 2011, an older woman approached him. Did he know who she was? She introduced herself as his long ago high school English teacher, Miss Linda Adams. She had always believed he would write books, she said. She just didn’t think it would take so long. . .

Thrilled, he asked if she could stay after the signing for more conversation. Sorry, she said. She was on her way to the races, so would he hurry up and get his show on the road? Who but Reavis would end an inspirational story on that note?

Yes, he still writes humor. He’s also added a new thriller series to his still-running mysteries, and is working on a stand-alone novel, clicking out an estimated 4,000 words daily. For more about Reavis, check out his site. And for more about local mystery writer groups and their programs, or to find a chapter in your local area, click here.

And remember to keep writing!

Review: Murder amid the books – an American in Paris

Review of: The Paris Librarian

Author: Mark Pryor

Publisher: Seventh Street Books

Source: Purchase, Half Price Books at Dallas Book Festival

Grade: B+

Texan (by way of Hertfordshire, England) Mark Pryor adds a locked room murder mystery to top all locked room mysteries to the latest in his Hugo Marston series with The Paris Librarian. Wealthy American ex-patriate Paul Rogers has a posh Paris apartment, a beautiful girlfriend, and a cushy job as head of a private library, where he’s holding a special book from the library’s sale for the benefit of his bibliophile friend, Hugo Marston.

Marston also happens to be head of security for the American Embassy and an ex-FBI agent. When Rogers fails to turn up with the book, is it Hugo’s cop instincts or booklust that push him to force an opening of the locked room in the library’s basement where Rogers has spent the morning writing?

The book is forgotten, however, when Rogers’ assistant produces his own key, to find Rogers dead. With no signs of violence, the initial presumption is that Rogers succumbed to a possible heart attack. But to Hugo’s eyes, something doesn’t look right. At least he can plead unfamiliarity with the French requirements for reporting death long enough to call the one person who’s always helped him in the past when dealing with the deaths of fellow countrymen on French soil – Lieutenant Camille Lerens.  

Camille, however, works for the Brigade Criminelle, the police division responsible for investigating the city’s most serious crimes. It takes all Hugo’s charm to persuade her to visit the scene of what seems most likely to be a natural death. Fortunately for Hugo’s and Camille’s friendship – and their professional reputations – an investigation reveals that the actual cause of Rogers’ death was an exotic poison – curare.

Unfortunately for Hugo’s reputation, the poison is only toxic when introduced into the victim’s blood stream, and there’s no mark on Rogers’ body that would have allowed the poison to penetrate his system.

Worse, the library’s security cameras reveal that no one other than Rogers himself entered the locked, windowless room in which he was found. True, his assistant left a book Rogers had requested for research in his writing outside the room, but the ever-helpful security cameras show only Rogers opened the door to retrieve the book, and then only after the assistant’s departure. The police briefly consider the possibility of a bizarre suicide, but the absence of punctures or scratches on the body rules out even that. So how did Paul Rogers die?

Mark Pryor

For a brief while, it appears that the library is dogged with bad luck, when a janitor also suffers a heart attack, but is revived by a helper’s knowledge of CPR.

Red herrings swarm through Pryor’s tale, the best being a journalist’s pursuit of an aging actress who served as a spy during the World War II occupation of France, and is rumored still to possess the dagger she used to silence a too-persistent Nazi officer.

Hugo’s friendship with the comely journalist – and her equally comely girlfriend – as well as a lovely French girlfriend of his own, give Pryor’s hero a chance to revel not only in Paris but other regions of the French countryside. I found myself checking off places I want to see, or revisit, in France, much as I did for London during the reading of Deborah Crombie’s Garden of Lamentations, reviewed at this site yesterday.

Just as American-born Crombie revisits the British Isles frequently to update her knowledge of the setting, Pryor is also a frequent visitor to France. Otherwise, he divides his time between writing and his own crime-fighting duties as an assistant district attorney for Travis County, Texas.

Shades of Agatha Christie-like poison know-how, a dash of intrigue and psychological insight added to Pryor’s knowledge of his locale add up to a fun add up to a cozy with just enough gore to satisfy the more hardcore mystery fans. But why, oh why, didn’t anybody talk to the janitor? Or the workman who might have been able to identify a possible subject making his (or her) escape after a subsequent murder? And will Hugo ever stop playing coy about what he does with the gun Pryor hints he carries?

(Tomorrow I tackle a book in a completely different genre, by another Texan, Dallas newspaper editor turned novelist Michael Merschel’s Revenge of the Star Survivors.)