Short Stories and Music

I'm sure all readers of this blog know by now that our own Earl Staggs won the 2012 Derringer Award for Best Novelette given by the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Earl's story is Where Billy Died. I hope he will check in here to the comments section and tell everyone how to purchase the story, or else give us that information in his blog post.

Hearty Congratulations, Earl. 

I am happy to say I read it, enjoyed and voted for it.

Here is the complete list of winners:

• Best Flash Story: "Lessons Learned" by Allan Leverone
• Best Short Story: "Touch of Death" by B.V. Lawson
• Best Long Story: Tie "A Drowning at Snow's Cut" by Art Taylor and "Brea's Tale" by Karen Pullen
• Best Novelette: "Where Billy Died" by Earl Staggs

The Derringers have been recognizing the best in short mysteries since 1998. I try to read every finalist each year because some of the best cutting edge crime stories can be found there. They have also been a source of inspiration for me. Just knowing there is an award for short mystery stories drives me to make my stories the best I can.

Speaking of inspiration, I just finished Breathing Water, a Poke Rafferty novel by Tim Hallinan. At the back of the novel he lists the music he listened to while writing it. I'd never given thought about how much the music I listen to influences my writing. When I'm at my computer, I either have NPR on the radio or a selection of music on my iTunes. If I'm doing chores such as paying bills or taxes, then NPR gives a welcome relief, but if I'm writing, NPR is a distraction and I turn to the music.

So what's on my playlist? It depends on whether I'm writing or revising. If I'm writing, I like to work with an eclectic mix of blues, rock, and classical. This morning I listened to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Joanna Connor, Santana, The Allman Brothers, The Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, The Traveling Wilburys, Jimmy Reed, Lisa Lim, John Fogarty, and the Beatles. 

For reasons I can't explain, complicated guitar pieces get my writing mojo going. I don't pay much attention to the lyrics, except for Grateful Dead songs, which I stop and listen to, just for the turn of phrase. Whenever I hear "Operator" by The Dead, I find myself in the mind of a character who is "Riding a getaway bus out of Portland, talkin' to the night."  I think someday I will write a whole story about that.

If not blues and rock, then I'm listening to classical. I find any symphony by Beethoven a great aid to writing, except for the ninth. I can't do anything else but listen while the ninth is playing. Other classical pieces that help my writing are Korsakov's Scheherazade, Prokofiev's Lt. Kije Suite, and Stravinsky's Fire Bird. I don't know why those pieces resonate with me. They just do.

You might ask, why not Hawaiian music? I listen to Hawaiian music, also Irish music, and Jimmy Buffett, but not when I'm writing. I put that music on when I'm doing the things that aren't fun, such as checking grammar and spelling. Or else they come on when the writing's done and I have a gin and tonic in hand.

Do you listen to music while you write? What gets your mojo working?

Maybe Earl will let us in on what gets his mojo working. Whatever it is, I might try it.

Mark Troy

Hawaiian Eye Blog

Check out Game Face, my collection of short stories on iPad, Nook, Kindle and other devices.

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WHAT DID IT SMELL LIKE?

by Earl Staggs

Marilyn Meredith posted here recently about the value of her critique group. I’ve belonged to one or more critique groups since I started writing and would be lost without them. Now I belong to two. One of them is long distance. We exchange critiques via email. The other one is local and we meet in person whenever we can schedule a date convenient to enough of us to make it worthwhile.

Both groups contain experienced, published writers who have become close personal friends. I love them and respect their expertise a great deal. If any of you are reading this, please know that. I never feel confident about anything I’ve written until you’ve gone over it. You point out the errors in spelling and punctuation, of course, but you also question story and plot points. You tell me if something I’ve written doesn’t make sense, simply doesn’t work, or if I’ve left out something important.

Like yesterday, for instance. I attended a meeting with my local critique group.

The chapter I submitted to the group for their slicing and dicing pleasure takes place in an outdoor market place near Kabul, Afghanistan. Tall Chambers, the main character, belongs to a secretive government agency which tracks and deals with terrorists. Tall and his team are on the trail of the worst of the terrorists who may be hiding out with a woman who runs a fruit and vegetable stand there.

I did some research and found a good place for the market to be located. I looked up what the people at the market would be wearing. I came up with the kind of stuff the different vendors at the market would be offering from their tents and lean-to stalls in the market. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, fish, meats, handmade clothing, rugs, and such as that. There would also be animals. Camels, donkeys, and goats, for instance.

So I described the market and had Tall and his team walking through it, passing all the stalls, looking for the missing terrorist.

Good job, I thought.

Then a member of the group asked, “What did it smell like?”

Huh?

I hadn’t thought of that. Naturally, all that produce and meat and fish would produce odors that would permeate the open air space. Not to mention what the animals parked beside the stalls would contribute to the immediate environment.

Duh.

Okay, back to the drawing board – make that keyboard - for me. I have to describe how all those things would smell, even to Tall and his men who are on an important mission.

I don’t think Google or Wikipedia will give me that information, so I’m on my own.

Any and all suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Earl Staggs

http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com

SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS, a collection of 16 short mystery tales on sale now for 99 cents. That's only about six cents per story. Wow.

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HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED by Earl Staggs

Once he’d figured it all out and knew whodunnit, Adrian Monk, everyone’s favorite OCD TV detective, would say, 

“Here’s what happened.” Then he would tell how the crime occurred. As he described it, the audience viewing at home saw the event take place on the screen exactly as it happened in the past.

What better way to let an audience know what happened in the past than with both a narrative retelling AND a visual reenactment?  They can do that in movies and on TV.  Writers do not have that luxury, but we still have to tell our readers, “Here’s what happened.”  

We call it backstory.

We have different ways of presenting backstory. We can have the narrator stop telling the current story and tell the backstory. If it goes on for a long time, however, we run the risk of boring readers and tempting them to skip over the “info dump” completely. Imagine Monk telling what happened without the visual reenactment. His show would never have lasted as long as it did.

One way to bring in backstory -- our version of a visual reenactment -- is to “show” what happened before, complete with dialogue and action exactly as it happened. That requires, first of all, a clear transition to the past so readers aren’t confused about where they are in the story. Once that’s done, the scene plays out just as it did before. Here’s an example, beginning with a transition:

Jane would never forget the day Dan left. She’d walked in the door and saw his bags packed in the foyer. She’d hurried into the dining room to find him sitting at the table.

“What’s going on, Dan?” she asked.
“I can’t take it anymore.  I’m leaving.”

When the reenactment is finished, another clear transition is needed, of course, to bring readers back to the present without confusion.

Another way to work in backstory, and a favorite of mine, is to bring it out in dialogue between two characters as part of the current story. Like this:

          Jane knew Margie had something on her mind and waited for her to speak.

Margie took a sip of her wine and set her glass on the table, rotating it slowly with her
hands. After several moments, she said, “Jane, you never did tell me why Dan left.”

                “I’m not sure myself. I came home and saw his bags packed and sitting in the foyer.”

                “Didn’t he say anything?”

Jane turned to the window and looked out. “I asked him what was going on.  He said he 
couldn’t take it anymore and he was leaving.”

Another method is a quick flashback.  Here’s how that might be done:

Dan had left two years ago. She’d entered the house to see his bags packed and sitting in the foyer. When she asked him what was going on he said, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving.” She still didn’t understand why.

A short flashback like that is not a major intrusion to the current story and chances are, you won’t lose
the readers. It lacks the immediacy and drama of a reenactment, however.

In a story called, “That Night in Galveston,” I used a slightly different form of flashback. Amanda Barnes is kidnapped by a crippled, disfigured man with a gun and forced to drive to a vacant warehouse. She doesn’t remember the man and has no idea why he wants to kill her. As she drives, little bits of information she’d wiped from her memory from twenty years before flash from her subconscious mind. Here’s one of them:

Darkness. . .waves crashing against a pier. . .sounds of an amusement park in the distance. . .someone down on all fours. . .screaming. . .begging. . .

Shortly after that one, there’s this one:

Three men standing over him. . .yelling. . .kicking. . .swinging something. . .

Amanda is pulled into the past even further when something flashes from before she ran away from home and hitchhiked to Galveston.

A thick, burly man entering her bedroom. . . holding a finger to his lips to say, “Don’t wake your mother. We don’t want her to know our secret.”. . unable to breathe under his weight. . .biting her lip to keep from crying out from the pain he caused her inside. . .

This altered flashback method worked well in this particular story. It was a graphic, dramatic, and efficient way to bring out the backstory. I liked it so much I gave it a name: “backflash.”

In many of our stories, we can’t get away from backstory. We have to tell our readers, “Here’s what happened.” Part of our challenge is to do it in such a way that readers are not confused or bored and with minimal interruption to the current story.

(If you’d like to know how Amanda escaped her fate, “That Night in Galveston” is one of the sixteen stories in my collection, SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS. You’ll find more information about it over on my website: http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com/)

Or go to http://www.amazon.com/SHORT-STORIES-EARL-STAGGS-ebook/dp/B004YR8D7W

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JUSTICE AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

by Earl Staggs

My wife and I don’t care for many of the new TV shows. Vampires? No thanks. Animated characters? Forget it. Lewd, crude, bathroom humor comedy? Yuck. More gorgeous cops with bikini-worthy and chiseled ab bodies? Yawn.

Instead, we watch and enjoy a lot of true crime documentary shows. We have plenty to choose from. There’s Dateline, 48 Hours Mystery, Cold Case Files, Snapped and more. There’s a great satisfaction in seeing real cops track down real criminals in the real world. My favorites are when a cold case squad pulls out a case that may be decades old and solves it.

We saw a good one this weekend. In 1985, a young mother was raped and brutally stabbed to death in her home. To make it worse, two of her three young daughters were also slaughtered. The killer left a toddler alive, probably because she was too young to identify him. The cops were at a loss. They found no evidence to identify the killer.

Fortunately, a passerby got a look at the killer leaving the house and provided a sketch artist with a good likeness. Neighbors reported seeing a strange car in the neighborhood that night. They found a suspect who closely resembled the sketch and drove a similar car. The man, a young Army sergeant, had been to the house two days before to adopt the family dog. The man was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death.

Two years later, his lawyers were successful in getting a second trial. This time, he was found not guilty due to lack of physical evidence. He went back to the Army and enjoyed a spotless and distinguished career thereafter. The case went cold, filed away in a box on a shelf.

Fast forward twenty-five years. Cold case detectives pulled out the box and found a vaginal swab from the murdered woman. DNA testing was not available or reliable enough in 1985, but when they had it checked this time, they identified the killer.

Guess who. Yes, it was the Army sergeant who had been convicted in a first trial, then cleared in a second trial twenty years earlier.

But could he be tried again for the murder? What about that double jeopardy thing? You’re right. He could not be tried again in criminal court for the same murder. I don’t agree with that law, but I’m not here to rant again about how “The Law” sometimes interferes with justice being served.

Because that’s not the end of the story.

Here’s the interesting part. The man had retired from the Army by then, but the Army stepped in and reinstated him. That made him subject to court-martial. He was tried and convicted of the triple homicide by a military court and sentenced to death.

It took twenty-five years for this man to be made to pay for what he did. In spite of that, you have to feel good about a story like this. I do.

If only I could only come up with a plot this good for my next novel.

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BIG YELLOW CRIMEBUSTING MACHINES

by Earl Staggs

Some of you may know I drive a school bus. It’s only a part time job, two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, but it gets me out of the house every day and keeps me in touch with other members of the human race. I tried full time retirement, but didn’t like it. I like having to get up every morning, go somewhere and do something. It also helps that I like kids. Most of them.

I also like the people I work with. For the most part, they’re in the mature stage of their lives like me, and we have a lot of hanging out fun when we gather in the bus barn. It’s not really a barn. Maybe they used barns back in the early days and the name stuck. We actually have a rather nice terminal building with boss offices and a large lounge area for drivers. The lounge has a kitchen, coffee and vending machines, and rows of conference style tables and chairs for group meetings. There’s a TV area at one end with comfortable nap-inducing furniture. Some drivers go home between the morning and afternoon routes, some sit and crochet or knit, some watch TV, some nap. Many of them like to read mystery books. Mine, for instance. Me, I plug in my laptop, shut out everything around me, and write.

But we take our job seriously. Our job is to get the kids to school and home again safely every day, even if it means extra time and effort. We’re all connected to “Base” via two-way radio and hear everybody’s conversations with our Dispatcher. Here’s a typical one.

“Bus 117 to Base.”

“Base. Go ahead.”

“We’re at Damien’s house, and there’s no one home to receive him. I’ll do some other stops and come back here in case the parents call and want to know where he is.”

“10-4, 117. If they’re still not home, take him back to school.”

“10-4.”

Every morning when we leave the lot, we have to report to the Dispatcher with a “ten-eight” code, meaning we’re in service. There’s a long list of:

“141 is 10-8.”

“135 is 10-8.”

And so on.

Me being me, of course, I have to have a little fun with it, so I might toss in something like this:

“117 is 10-8, out the gate, and looking great.”

Sometimes, accidental humor will occur. Here’s one from last year:

“138 calling Base. I have thick black smoke pouring out my rear end.”

It was all I could do not to jump in with, “Jennifer, I’m sorry to hear about your personal problem, but how’s your bus?”

As I said, though, we take our responsibility seriously. Here’s a recent incident.

“122 to Base. Two of my girls got on the bus very upset. They said there’s a man walking around taking pictures of them.”

“122, do you have a visual on the man?”

“Negative. They said he turned east on Brazos Trail.”

“Let me know if you spot him. I’ll call the police, but I need a description.”

“10-4.”

“Base, this is 137. I just turned on Brazos Trail and I saw him. He took pictures of three girls, they yelled at him, and he ran off toward the lake.”

“I’m on the phone with the police, 137. Can you describe him?”

“He’s about 30, medium size, wearing a black ball cap, black tee shirt and khaki pants.”

“10-4, 137. Continue with your routes, everyone. The police are on their way.”

“Base, this is 122. I just turned on Lake Drive and the police were there. They loaded him in their car and took him away.”

“10-4. Good job, 122 and 137.”

I never learned who the guy was, what he was up to, or what happened to him. They may have taken him to the nearest tree and hanged him. This is Texas, you know.

If any of you get a little perturbed when you come up on a school bus with red lights flashing and you have to sit and wait for them to load or unload, just remember this. They’re on the job, getting the kids to and from school safely, and watching out for bad guys.

SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS

16 Tales of Mystery from Hardboiled to Humor
Ebook available for $2.99 at:
http://www.amazon.com/earl-staggs/e/BOO1JS8EVA
http://smashwords.com/books/view/54502

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