What True Detective does that most mysteries don't

There are mysteries like Burning, which suggest that all mysteries are inherently layered, ultimately unknowable and perhaps even meaningless.

Then there are mysteries like, well, most mysteries, which would have us believe that dogged humans are capable of divining and articulating correct solutions.

And then there's True Detective, which suggests that mysteries are solvable, but humans lack the imagination to define them, the courage to pursue them, and the acuity to recognize the solution if we ever even find it. And yet we're incapable of walking away from them. We chase mysteries because they give our pathetic, circular lives structure and story.

It just wrecks me. Every single season.

The subtext to the subtext of The Purge is more disturbing than the text or the subtext

The Purge franchise takes place in a not-too-distant future where once a year, all crime is legal. It began as a low-budget home invasion concept. And inspired three sequels and a TV series that are equal parts Walking Dead-style gore and 24-style ticking clocks.

The government's rationale for the Purge is that twelve hours of anarchy allows America to release all its angry impulses. But over the course of the films, the real motive becomes clearer and clearer until, by the fourth installment, the text disappears and is replaced entirely by the subtext: the Purge exists to eliminate those that weigh the economy down - the poor, the suicidal, the addicts, the criminals, the crazy.

For this reason, the franchise has been hailed as a bit of left-leaning social satire. The New Founding Fathers of America are an extreme vision of where MAGA logic could lead. But there's one thing this line of thought seems to overlook.

In the series, the Purge works. Unemployment and crime have both dropped below 1%. And that, to me, is the most disturbing idea of all.

The idea we'd all act out our violent impulses if we could? That's scary.

The idea we could be used as weapons against each other? That's even worse.

But the idea America'd be better off if we killed the poor? That's just terrifying.

I've written an unpublishable mashup of a novel

Between January 3, 2013 and February 8, 2017, I put out eight novellas. That's a clip of a new book every six months. What's been the hold-up since?

The good news is I'm on my third draft of a novel. The bad news? I'm fairly sure it's unpublishable.

Mary Monster isn't going to be easy to sell. It's a mashup of urban surrealism and gothic horror. Dance Dance Dance meets Penny Dreadful. My first-person protagonist narrates the story in an awkward combination of 1976 Manchester and 2002 Manhattan slang. He drops dozens of indie music references, some explained and some that'll only make sense to the sort of person who obsesses over The Smiths. Meanwhile, the titular Mary speaks in wholly imagined accents, double entendres and literary allusions.

I tried to embrace all this artifice. In fact, I ran at it. In places I rewrote things to feel purposefully self-conscious, so readers have to slow down and make choices about what to Google and what to let go.

How do I explain this work in a query letter? And even if I could, who'd want it? Fantasy publishers will find my style obtrusive. While literary agents are going to be turned off by all the zombies.

But I can't self-publish, either. The type of people who download self-published fiction are looking for error-free genre fun. That means the first wave of consumer reviews would be terrible. Some jerk would claim my book was filled with typos. Another would drop the where-was-the-editor bomb. And snap, Amazon's algorithm would bury Mary Monster before it got a chance to find a niche.

To publish this book, I either need to find a publisher who believes in it. Or an audience ready to champion it. And I'm not sure either exists.

Buried by charlatans

I enter Writer's Digest's Self Published Book Awards every year. Even though I have yet to bring home the top prize, the judges' critiques of Sever, Regret Things and Sin Walks Into The Desert have all been worthwhile - tough but fair, complete and useful, insightful and marketable.

This year, I sent The Baby Monitor: A Novella of Family Horrors to the competition. I believe in this little book. You can unwrap layers of meaning and metaphor from every page. And its characters and foreshadowing are much deeper than in anything else I've attempted.

I had high hopes. But Tuesday I got an email informing me I didn't win and delivering the judge's critique.

It was glowing.

Beyond glowing. It was a rave review, including perfect scores in the categories for Structure, Grammar, Plot, Character and Voice. The judge went through line by line calling out favorite moments:

"You have particular flair for repetition, a musical bent to your prose... The buildup of empathy throughout the story is powerful... I don’t just admire your use of metaphor, I admire the pace of them – just enough, like spice in a well-seasoned dish. The sheer propulsion of this climactic scene is priceless. An excellent book."

Writer's Digest is a legendary publication with serious cred. I know from experience their judges aren't nice to every book they receive, so it should be validating to get such a positive critique.

But accolades like these make me want to shoot myself.

Because The Baby Monitor has sold fewer than 60 copies despite hundreds of dollars worth of advertising, raves from Indie Reader, the support of my email list, and an audiobook available on all the major podcast platforms and my personal YouTube channel. Plus I've given away hundreds of copies and gifted 40 more with only four Amazon reviews to show for it.

Meanwhile, you know who I hear is making money in publishing? Plagiarists who buy ebooks, swap out a few adjectives, and republish them as their own work. Clickfarms that boost authors' page count for a price. And frauds who steal outlines and outsource their content to ghostwriters in the Philippines.

Amazon has given writers a way to publish fiction that never would've seen daylight a few years ago. An 18,000-word novella like mine would be dead in my desk drawer. So I guess I should be grateful. But right now I'm just frustrated. I've been buried by charlatans.

What's the answer? In moments of doubt, I watch this video and am reminded.

What do you get when you cross painkillers, motorcycles and Flannery O'Connor

About a year ago, I got stuck on my couch for a week. I read the complete works of Flannery O'Connor and watched Ride with Norman Reedus. My head addled by Catholic allegory and open asphalt, I typed up a short story named "Get Along Fine."

It's an OK story, mostly valuable for the description of the highways between Denver and Albuquerque. But I hadn't the slightest idea who'd want to publish it. So I dared myself to turn it into a podcast. A year later, here it is.

The words and acting are obviously me, including Scratch's half-baked accent. All the music is me too, playing either a Fender Strat or an Akai MPK Mini. The photo is courtesy of ckirby on Unsplash.

The first episode is below. You can listen to the whole playlist on YouTube.

Flannery O'Connor only wrote one story and it could have been written yesterday

This year I read, and in some cases re-read, the complete works of Flannery O'Connor. Like a lot of artists, she only had one theme, which she hammered compulsively, tweaking it and refining it and rewriting it over the course of two novels and 31 short stories.

She had three characters. A bad guy, often a con artist and sometimes batshit crazy. An aging Southerner, settled into a strict, frequently racist code that provides a roadmap for all his or her actions. And a high-minded urban atheist, who believes the first character pitiable and the second deplorable. At the end, all three are offered a symbol of grace, reminding them they're all sinners who need God.

And I thought, "Things just don't change much."

The authors I keep giving money to

It's easy to give a mediocre book a three or four star rating and move on. I do it all the time. I don't want to tank anybody's average. A truer test of how much I like an author is whether I repeatedly trade cash for his or her books. In my library of paperback crime, here are the writers who have the most shelf space:

Six books: James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler

I can't imagine I'd get much argument if I said these three were the holy trinity of American crime.

Five books: George Pelecanos, Massimo Carlotto

I'm not sure quite why I keep buying Massimo Carlotto. One of his protagonists is disgusting and the other is dull. But his matter-of-fact tales of perversion, corruption and treachery hooked me so hard I once read three of his books back-to-back-to-back.

Four books: Duane Swierczynski, Sjowall & Walloo, Gene Kerrigan

I'd buy more Gene Kerrigan books if he'd write more! The Rage is a breathtakingly intimate study of low-level gangster violence. And the Midnight Choir is epic story-weaving on the level of The Wire, with the most devastating ending of any book I've ever read.

Three books: Joe R. Lansdale, George V. Higgins, Richard Stark, Dennis Lehane, Paul Auster

I would almost certainly have more Dennis Lehane books if they hadn't all been made into movies. He's a good writer. I just know how most of his stories are going to end.

[Ed. - For more ideas on what to read, check on my Amazon list 11 Crime Writing Cornerstones.]

Allusions and easter eggs in Regret Things

1. Regret Things (and my upcoming novella To Guns) feature a low-level mobster named Lars McKendrick. The name is an homage to Lar MacKendrick, one of the recurring characters in the fabulous crime fiction of Gene Kerrigan.

2. Nicki Kenfax-McJacob and her lover Catherine are based on characters from a short story I wrote in the late 90's. Those characters' physical attributes were modeled after Nikki Cox and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

3. While the character of El Viejo is a mash-up of three real-life acquaintances, his nickname is a reference to the retired Texas Ranger from Miami Vice season three, episode seven.

4. There are musical references scattered throughout Regret Things, most notably lyric lifts from Peace Frog and This Charming Man.

Six images for Regret Things

Even though I published Regret Things on Kindle back in November, May has been a big month for my little noir.

I finally got a print version released. San Francisco Book Review published an outstanding review. I have the price of the ebook set at ninety-cents until June 3. And I'm offering it free on Kindle to anyone who signs up for my mailing list. (The form is in the sidebar of this blog, hint hint.)

Point being, I've got Regret Things on the brain. So much so, I was scrolling through Unsplash the other day and almost every photo reminded me of moments from my book. I started putting them together, just for fun, and you can see the results by clicking to enlarge the grid.

Take the poll: What should I publish next?

Cover art for upcoming books. Which should I publish first?

“Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.”

I always assumed Sylvia Plath wrote those words. But even the Internet isn't sure. It's true, though. Writing isn't difficult. It's something you're just sort of compelled to do.

But rewriting, editing, publishing - that shit is hard. It takes money, dedication and time. End result being I have three (count ‘em) novellas finished. And zero energy to brush them up and get them out the door. I need to pick one and focus. So what do you want to read next?

To Guns is the third book in the Sin and Nicki series. It’s a full-tilt, neo-Western shootout, putting the two in a Mexican standoff with meth dealers and Italian assassins in the middle of the Colorado Rockies. Tonally, it's close to Sin Walks Into The Desert. While it makes sense on its own, Nicki's storyline is based on her actions in Regret Things.

The Last Child Missing is the third Owl and Raccoon novella. Like the others, it begins with the detectives showing up on the scene of a seemingly impossible kidnapping. The entire timeline takes place in one six-hour period, as they race to uncover how a five-year-old vanished from a crowded bus on the first day of school. It can stand on its own, but the climax will hit you harder if you’ve read the other two novellas, starting with The Single Staircase.

The third book is named Sever. It’s a new genre for me. The story is about a college campus that’s simultaneously set upon by four axe murderers, two of them serial killers. It’s a horror story, gory as hell. And it’s also a first-person love letter to those four magic years when you feel invincible, like you can drink and have sex and sleep late and lie in the sun and never die.

My marketing brain says there's no rush to publish any of this stuff. I have some good opportunities coming up for Regret Things, and it makes sense to ensure it gets traction before moving on to another book. But fuck it. What are you most excited about reading? Let me know in the poll at the top of my righthand sidebar.

Courage, whiskey and whiplash: An excerpt from an interview

I was pretty uncensored in this interview with OmniMystery. For instance:

OMN: You finished Regret Things almost a year ago. What was the hold up? 

MI: Fear. Sin Walks Into The Desert was classic neo-Western noir, filled with cool characters. But Regret Things is a hard book to categorize. I expect it to be polarizing. Grant can be perceived as sexist because he objectifies every woman he sees. But he can also be perceived as anti-male because he is so powerless in the presence of the opposite sex. It’s a running joke that he never really connects with the action in the book because he keeps getting distracted by pretty girls. And while Grant’s chapters are told in straight-ahead thriller style, I unleashed the English language for Nicki’s chapters. I wanted them to feel as wild and overwhelming as Manhattan itself. That shift in tone might be exhilarating, or it might give readers whiplash. I don’t know. It took a lot of courage and a little whiskey for me to hit the publish button.

Click here to read the rest.

Why do you write?

I never really asked myself that question. Why do I write? I don't know. Why do you breathe, jerk? But then there's this from Field Notes:



"I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now." That's just inspiring as hell. So I decided maybe I'd think about why exactly I've spent the last 40 years writing. (And it has been about that long.)

People tell me I have a recognizable voice. I disagree. The dizzying Manhattan chapters of Regret Things aren't anything like the cop dialogue of The Single Staircase, which is nothing like the haunted noir of Sin Walks Into The Desert.

And the themes of my books seem disparate to me, too. Sin is about family and violence, while the characters in Regret Things are obsessed with materialism and driven by a need to be desired.

I asked, ok, what do my books have in common, then? And I came up with this. They're all about how our lives are ruled by ghosts. About the things we do to get right with the dead. About our search for the vanished.

Owl & Raccoon are barely human. They're detectives defined by their hunt for missing children.  And they know their mission is hollowing them out, stealing their evenings and ruining their relationships, but they can't stop themselves:

Back in the Explorer a few questions later, night fallen all around. "This is what I do," Owl thought. "I get in and out of this car chasing shadows."

It's the same in Sin Walks Into the Desert. As a child, Sin spends his days in his big sister's empty room, writing her letters he will never send. And years later, he leaves his job and girlfriend to hike into the desert, guns on his belt and go-bag over his shoulder, to learn if and how and why his uncle has disappeared.

It'd be a spoiler to tell you whose death begins the cycle of violence in Regret Things. But Nicki's no dummy. She knows she's committing a terrible crime to get right with someone who'll never know what she's done. When her accomplice asks her if the dead would even want revenge, she replies it doesn't matter:

"The dead don't live through us. We live through them."

So why do I write? Maybe I'm like Owl. I got shadows to chase. Shadows I never expect to catch.

What all writers should learn from ad writers

I wrote three novels when I was in college. I’m ashamed of every one. They were navel gazing explorations of what? The coming of age of a healthy, wealthy white teenager? Whine me a river. So I shoved them in a drawer and spent the next 18 years in advertising. Then I wrote a new book. And it doesn’t suck. What did I learn?

1. Know the end. When you write an ad, it only ends one way. The reader buys what you’re selling. You work backwards from that point to build gripping copy. This is the opposite of the inverted pyramid technique journalists are trained in. And of the meandering style many novelists employ.

2. Inhabit a voice. Writing is not the linear assembly of grammatically correct and accurately spelled sentences. The best ad writers are method actors, slipping completely inside a brand and effortlessly speaking its language. Porsche and Toyota could hand you the exact same brief, and the ad that’d result would be totally different.

3. Have an idea. The events of your own personal teen romance are profoundly dull to everyone but you. Advertising forces you to be original. (Or if not completely original, at least charmingly unexpected.) And it teaches you to grab attention. Fast.

4. Learn to write dialogue. You want to write how people talk, go bust out a few dozen radio spots. Your ears will guide you. Many novels are positively unreadable because of the unrealistically structured and complete sentences the characters feel free to use.

There’s one other thing I learned over the past two decades, but I didn’t learn it from advertising. There’s a reason why there’s no such thing as a literary prodigy. Writing isn’t like math or music. It requires experience. Writers have to live. To make mistakes. To experience poverty, war and love. And then give themselves over to a story that's not even their own. You want to write well? Partially, you just got to get older.

But mostly, ad writers are absolutely killer with the written word. And there's a good reason why.

Review of Sin on crimefictionlover.com

Crime Fiction Lover is one of the best blogs for mystery and thriller readers. They feature pretty much all of the latest releases, including bestsellers by Ian Rankin, Lee Child and so on. So I was taking a bit of a risk asking them to please, please take a look at Sin Walks Into The Desert. They published their review Oct. 27:

Sin Walks into the Desert is a tense novella, a neo-Western noir with a cast of larger-than-life characters who will earn your respect and interest despite their flaws and personal vendettas. It’s a little coyote of a book that holds on and doesn’t let go. In some places, this is the best self-published writing I’ve read – original, well-edited, and filled with interesting and compelling characters. 

"A little coyote of a book." That's just perfect. Go read the whole thing.

Doting descriptions of guns: Sin and his Beretta

I got an email from IndieReader with a sneak preview of next month's review of Sin Walks Into The Desert. They're giving it five stars and awarding it the IndieReader Approved designation. Here's an excerpt:

SIN WALKS INTO THE DESERT is a short, violent story of loyalty and revenge. The dialog is terse and fits perfectly with a title character whose fluency is in his skill with a gun rather than his words... SIN WALKS INTO THE DESERT is a taut, suspenseful tale without a wasted word or scene.

Exciting as hell. I can't wait for the full review to come out.

Sin sizes up friends, enemies and strangers based on the weapons they carry. So I spent time making sure I got them right. Apparently that showed. Kirkus' review stated the book was a "sterling achievement, featuring an ultracool protagonist and doting descriptions of all types of guns." And one reviewer on Goodreads wrote:

I found myself involuntarily getting an adrenaline high as the author's descriptions of stealth tactics and firearms fluency in the face of evil forces brought back long-forgotten memories.

Sin carries a Beretta Px4 Storm. It's not just an awesome gun. It's a metaphor for the complex relationship he has with his larger-than-life uncle, who is known as el Viejo. Here's excerpt from the opening pages, in which Sin gets ready to make a late-night journey to his girlfriend's tattoo parlor.

In the hallway he stopped, extended one foot backwards, caught the door before it latched shut. Something didn’t feel right. His eyes flashed up and down the rows of doors, registered ceiling lights that had blown out and corners with indistinct shadows behind them. Nothing out of the ordinary, really.

Sin went back inside and opened up the drawer.

El Viejo had Berettas so Sin’d wanted a Beretta. But el Viejo’s were M9s, classic military sidearms chambered for 9, so Sin asked for the new model, the Px4 with a rail on it and the smooth black slide, rounded and mean, space age almost. And Sin wanted it chambered in .40, not 9. DA/SA please, with the exposed hammer. And fullsize even though he intended to carry it tucked inside skinny jeans because fuck that compact shit. El Viejo’d given him that and also a custom-molded leather IWB holster for it.

It was about the best gift ever.

Sin clipped the holster inside his jeans, brass checked the gun and seated it. He tugged his t-shirt down. It pretty much covered his belt and even if he leaned the wrong way, what was anybody going to say? This was Arizona, after all. Sin stepped out of his tiny rented hole-in-the-wall apartment and thought, “I didn’t grab a spare clip.” And then he thought, “Fuck it. For real this time.”

He let the door latch behind him and went off into the night.

In City Book Review's story about Sin Walks Into The Desert, they gave it four out of five stars, praising almost everything but dinging it for "the overuse of unnecessary expletives." I guess I see their point.

Goodreads reviews of The Single Staircase

I did a little four-book Goodreads giveaway of The Single Staircase last month. I had the copies in a box and they weren't doing anyone any good there. I wasn't expecting much. Certainly not this.

Three of the four winners have already posted reviews. One wrote, "[T]he writing style made me feel like I was reading a classic police/crime comic book with quick bursts of dialogue and intense inner monologues... I loved the interactions between the two detectives, Owl and Raccoon, and I could relate them to detectives that I have worked with over the years." Another, "[T]he author’s minimalist writing style uses these few pages to create a clever mystery that kept me guessing right to the end." The third, "[I]t's very short and definitely a page turner. The ending was completely unexpected but I loved it!"

Average rating of the three? 4.66 stars.

When you write a book, your friends and family buy copies and then the sales trickle away. You're left wondering if what you wrote kind of sucked. Having three experienced and objective readers say such nice things gives you courage to keep publishing.

I am doing a larger giveaway for Sin Walks Into The Desert and I'll share the reviews of that, too. In the meantime, I'm still giving 100% of the proceeds from sales of The Single Staircase to charity. You can get it on Amazon.

Eleven crime writing cornerstones

In this Amazon list, I write about the books you have to read to understand crime fiction. And I take a stab at guessing which may have inspired some of my favorite modern authors.

The Single Staircase barely escapes average

The average self-published book sells 150 copies. Theoretically that's the point at which an author has exhausted his friends and family, and starts to sell books to strangers who spend their hard-earned money based on reviews, advertising, and word-of-mouth.

When I published The Single Staircase, I saw that number cited a couple places. As far as I know, there's no way to prove its validity. But still, I fixed 151 in my head as the number at which I'd qualify the book as a success. Today, I finally hit it.

Of course, there are other ways to measure success. I've given every penny I've earned from The Single Staircase to charity and will continue to do so.

Thanks to everybody who bought my first novella. And especially the 10 who took the time to review it. (Even three-star reviews almost always caused an immediate bump in sales.)

Back cover copy from Sin Walks Into The Desert

I have two books coming out on Amazon next month, Regret Things and Sin Walks Into The Desert. Together they tell the stories of Nicki Kenfax and her baby brother, Sin. Here's the copy off the back of Sin Walks Into The Desert:

"Whatever you think is going on, there's always some damn dead person pulling the strings."

Sin gets a late-night call from la Calavera. She's an ex-federal agent living on half a lung in a retirement home near the border. And she says el Viejo is missing.

This is el Viejo she's talking about. Diabetes and arthritis may have the old man in a rocking chair now, but in his day he was the baddest of snipers and the bravest of private eyes. He also saved Sin's life, back when the boy was a 12-year-old punk hellbent on shooting up the school bus with his daddy's .357.

So Sin sets off to find his mentor, only to discover a nest of killers with ancient vendettas waiting for him in the desert with the kingsnakes and coyotes. 

I am publishing two new books soon

A few months ago I hinted I was wrapping up a full-length novel. Now it's close to done. It's something I've been working on, in fits and starts, for more than a decade.

Regret Things is a sweeping story about crime, consequences, ego, infidelity, and the ways our lives are influenced by those who aren't with us any longer. As one character says, "The dead don't live through us, we live through them."

But here's the wild thing.

While I was editing and re-editing Regret Things, I started scribbling on the side about one of its minor characters. And within a couple weeks, that little bit of free writing became a thirty-thousand word stand-alone novella. Sin Walks Into The Desert is about a homicidal young man searching the Arizona desert for his missing mentor. I am simply in love with it.

I've gone back and forth about which book to publish first. And I finally decided, fuck it. I'm going to try to publish them both on the same day, about a month from now. I realize this is a confusing and arrogant marketing strategy. Oh well.

These books are very different from the Owl and Raccoon novellas. Those were about dialogue and plot. Regret Things and Sin Walks Into The Desert are about character and setting. Hopefully you'll try one of them. Which? I'll be blogging about them both in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.