Picked for Best American Mystery Stories 2015 anthology!

I finally arrived home a few days ago after being away for three-and-a-half months and have been busy trying to dig myself out from under emails and to-dos. Now that the contract's cleared, I can announce something I've kept under wraps for a while: one of my short stories was chosen for the  forthcoming Best American Mystery Stories 2015 anthology. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will pub the anthology later this year, in October 2015. As many of you no doubt know, Otto Penzler is the longtime series editor; author James Patterson is the guest editor who made this year's picks.

The story is "Harm and Hammer," which first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine back in October 2014. (I first talked about that story here.) I'm happy because I've always been fond of this piece, which is about a woman in witness protection who takes up a strange hobby to atone for her past. If you want to check it out, you can download the ebook for free at this link, which will stay live for only a week. Please grab it while you can.

I received this excellent news back in February but was too mired in family stuff to fully appreciate it. But I am very grateful. My thanks to my editors at AHMM, Mr. Penzler, and Mr. Patterson. See you in October.

Good News for a Change

Last week I got the nicest note from a reader. This practically never happens, and with all the bad news here lately, it was nice to get this in my inbox:

At the gym today I picked up an Alfred Hitchcock Magazine that somebody had left and I began reading ... I couldn't believe how good the writing was ... one of the best, most enjoyable piece of short fiction that's engaged me since the last blue moon. You were right there with the reader. "Of course it was him." Thanks. President Street, wow.

This reader is referring to "Button Man," my first story for AHMM, which appeared in March 2013. I talked about the story here and here. President Street refers to my protag’s home address in Brooklyn, New York, of the 1950s. I’ve since published the story on its own.

The day after I got this note, I received a contract via email, informing me that Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine had accepted one of my short stories. I don’t usually take the time to announce here when I’ve sold a story, but EQMM is special. Cracking that market has been a goal of mine for nearly, oh, forty years. I first started reading EQMM as a kid, when I got hooked on the old Ellery Queen TV series, starring Jim Hutton. The Queen novels were among the first adult books I ever read. And the first rejections I ever got as a kid writer were from EQMM. So it means a lot to me to finally appear in their pages. I don't want to talk about the story they bought just yet, but I'll definitely let you know when it runs.

Two great pieces of news in the middle of a bleak winter. Not bad.

My new COVER story in Hitchcock’s Mystery Mag!

This is cool: My short story “Harm and Hammer” is the cover story in the October 2014 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (AHMM), on newsstands July 22.

You can find a hard-copy version of AHMM wherever magazines are sold. (My local B&N tends to carry it.) Failing that, you can download a single digital issue via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Magzter, Kobo, and Google Play. Just make sure you are downloading the October 2014 issue shown above. (Read a preview here.)

Submissions stats: I finished this story sometime back in November 2012. I submitted it to AHMM in December 2012, and didn’t hear from them until they bought it in September 2013, nine months later. So it’s appearing ten months after acceptance, nineteen months since submission, and about twenty months after I wrote it. Payment was $340, plus an additional $85 prepayment for the right to republish in a future AHMM anthology. That came to a total of $425, or about 7 cents a word.

What’s been your experience with submissions? I feel like anywhere from one day to a few months is typical. Hands down, AHMM tends to have the slowest response time of all the places I submit to. So I tend to mail it in, and put it out of my mind.

At some point, I’ll release an e-book version of this story, which I’ll offer free to people on my list. If you’d rather wait for the free copy, please join my e-newsletter.

Bloody Signorina now on sale

Now that the 2014 Derringer Awards have concluded, I’m releasing an “official” paid version of my short story, “Bloody Signorina.”

This edition comes with the full story, an alternate ending, and an excerpt of my upcoming novel featuring the detective I introduced in the original Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine story. I don’t normally think it’s worth doing a paper edition of short stories, but I did one for this title, just because.

The e-book’s only 99 cents. But readers of this blog can snag a free copy via Smashwords, using code LL86C upon checkout. The freebie ends in 7 days, so grab it now. (Please note: Coupon has expired.)

By the way, the cover for “Bloody Signorina” was done by designer James at GoOnWrite.com, who is a writer in his own, um, right. I read two of his "Humble Nations" shorts on the beach in SC recently, and enjoyed the hell out of them. They’re definitely unusual stories that don’t fall into a particular genre.

"Bloody Signorina" is available here:

Smashwords

Amazon USA - ebook & paperback

Amazon UK - ebook & paperback

Apple

Nook

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News—about an upcoming novel and life in general—coming soon. 

Quick 'n' Dirty News

I promised myself that this blog wouldn’t be so Denise-centric this time around, but I feel I ought to mention that her paperback hit the same three bestseller lists (NYT, NPR, Indie) in its second week. She was home this past weekend, but left quickly after for the great Midwest. She’ll be back Friday.

Meanwhile, our agent was able to sell the ghostwriting project I was working on to a Big 5 publisher. So it looks like I’ll have a paying gig for 2014, after all. They’re excited, and so is our Author. It’s his first book and he’s really itching to get started. We’re shooting for a September 1 delivery date.

For me, that means hammering out just how I’ll arrange my schedule to incorporate interviews with the Author, writing and research time for his book, and of course writing time for my own projects. Nevertheless, knowing I have a project on deck means a lot, believe me. Sometimes I just look forward to the predictability of journalistic research and interviews.

They announced the winners of the 2014 Derringer Awards early this morning, and my shortlisted story, “Bloody Signorina,” was not among them. (It remains free here for the time being. I hope to publish it more formally soon, with an alternate ending and some other extras.)

Even so, being nominated has been a beautiful experience, and I’m happy to see the work of some of my new friends—among them longtime short story writer Robert Lopresti—among the winners.

Free Copy of My Derringer Finalist

If you’re curious about reading “Bloody Signorina,” that story of mine which made it to the Derringer Award finals, you can download it free at this Smashwords page.

You’ll be able to choose the format that best fits your device—epub, mobi, or plain old PDF. Heck, you can also just read it on the screen.

If you are a Derringer Group voter, you should probably read the RTF  version of this story via the official Derringer Voting Group site.

The story will remain free on Smashwords until midnight of March 31, the last day of voting.

Read it online.

Download a free PDF.

Download a free mobi file.

Download a free epub file.

Nominated for Derringer Award

Woke up this morning to discover that one of my short stories has been nominated for the Derringer Award for Best Long Story. The Derringers are one of the top prizes for mystery short fiction. The announcement is here.

Sort of shocked right now.

The story, “Bloody Signorina,” ran in the September 2013 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Magazine. It’s the story of young, spoiled expat American woman living in Rome who acts out, to put it mildly.

Feel really…proud. Considering I ignored my fiction for such a long time, this feels good. Today, cake and beer.

Nominations rock.

Look for my short story "Nighthawks" in Hitchcock’s Mystery Mag!

Look for my short story in Hitchcock’s Mystery Mag!

Almost forgot. One of those short stories I was telling you about appears in the April 2014 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (AHMM), on newsstands now.

The story is called “Nighthawks,” after Edward Hopper’s famous 1942 painting of the same name. It’s probably the most parodied painting on the planet after the Mona Lisa. Four people sit in an oddly shaped diner in the middle of the night. What’s going on there? Well, my story offers just one scenario.

The artist Hopper said the painting was inspired by a diner on Greenwich Avenue in New York, but no one has ever located the original site. Some years ago, blogger Jeremiah Moss investigated the mystery, and has written about his search in the New York Times, the Financial Times, and on his blog. Great reading, if you’re fascinated by the painting.

You can find a hard-copy version of AHMM wherever magazines are sold. (My local B&N tends to carry it.) Failing that, in a few days you can download a single digital issue via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Zinio, Magzter, Sony, and Google Play. Just make sure you are downloading the April 2014 issue shown above.

"Bloody Signorina" in Hitchcock's!

Look for my short story in Hitchcock’s Mystery Mag!

I have a short story in the September 2013 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (AHMM), on newsstands now. Can’t believe I got a cover mention!

Truth is, I’m a little surprised how this story, “Bloody Signorina,” turned out. I’d call it an experiment. It doesn’t sound like my voice at all. It sounds like me pretending to be Jane Austen, an Italian Jane Austen, or something. Anyway, check it out and let me know. The detective who makes a brief appearance in this short goes on to bigger and more horrifying things in my next book, The Marshal of the Borgo. More on that book soon, I hope.

You can find a hard copy version of AHMM wherever magazines are sold. (My local B&N tends to carry it.) Failing that, in a few days you can download a single digital issue via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Zinio, Magzter, Sony, and Google Play. Just make sure you are downloading the September 2013 issue.

(BTW: I’ve been reading and downloading these magazines via the Magzter app on my iPad, and it’s been great. Good customer service, too. Highly recommended.)

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Speaking of magazines, my piece for Plots With Guns got a little mention on a blog by Andy Henion, who is always “searching for the perfect sentence.” I hope the other sentences in the story added up to something equally enjoyable!

Button Man reviewed on Robert Lopresti's Little Big Crimes blog

Author Robert Lopresti says some nice things about my short story Button Man, in his weekly blog Little Big Crimes. The story ran in the March 2013 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

It’s nice to get noticed by Lopresti, the 2012 winner of the Black Orchid Novella Contest, which is devoted to stories in the spirit of Rex Stout’s creation, Nero Wolfe. Lopresti’s winning novella, announced at the Edgars last year, will run in the July/August issue of AHMM. I know Lopresti only by his work. He’s a hugely prolific short story writer with credits going back to the 1970s!

I actually wrote a first draft of Button Man in a creative writing class back in the mid-1980s. I was still in college, taking a class led by Tobias Wolff. I revised the story for class, and Wolff urged me to start sending it out, but I never did. It sat around in my hard copy files for about twenty years before I digitized it and revised it once again in 2012. Interestingly, the revised version which ran in AHMM is actually closer to the original story. Prior to submission, I ended up cutting two big scenes I remember adding upon the advice of that class. They just didn’t add anything to the story. Must be a moral in there somewhere.