Get Away to Recharge

A view from the porch last year.

I am writing this one week before it posts, as Temple and I are preparing to visit Hot Springs, Arkansas, over the Independence Day weekend. We will be staying in a VRBO on the Ouachita River, our third Independence Day weekend visit to this location in four years. During the two previous visits, I spent much of my time sitting near the river with my laptop computer, working on various short stories. (“Working Vacation” [Tough, March 2, 2025] was inspired by the location and written during our first visit.)

We eat most of our meals at the house, but we found a German restaurant (Steinhaus Keller) that surpasses any we’ve come across elsewhere, so we plan at least one meal there. We also found a hole-in-the-wall burger joint (Bailey’s Dairy Treat) that we like to visit at least once during our stay.

There are two other locations we might visit this year, both new to us—Black Ribbon Books, located in the historic Arlington Hotel, and the Garven Gardens Trains, a garden with four separate scale-model train layouts running through it.

Even so, sightseeing and dining out aren’t why we make the six-hour drive. We go to get away from daily life, to relax in a way we cannot at home.

Temple and I take other trips throughout the year—we did a whirlwind weekend trip to Chicago in mid-June, often take one-day and two-day road trips around Texas, and attend various conferences and conventions (together when we can)—but as enjoyable as those trips are, I’d be hard-pressed to call them relaxing. The closest any of our other trips come to the relaxation level of Hot Springs is the annual fall trip when we rent a VRBO with Andrew and Dawn Hearn. Sometimes Andrew and I write or talk writing—“When Sin Stops” (Weren’t Another Other Way To Be) resulted from a discussion at one of these getaways—but mostly the four of us just hang out.

And that’s something I think writers need to do—take time to relax, chill out, do little or nothing away from the hustle and bustle of daily life, and recharge the batteries.

I know I return home refreshed after our Hot Springs trips and our fall weekend trips with Andrew and Dawn. Maybe it’s time to schedule more trips like this.

* * *

Another writing milestone crept up on me when I wasn’t paying attention. Sometime recently I sold my 1,300th short story. If yesterday’s count is correct, I’ve now sold 1,307 original stories and sold reprint or other subsidiary rights 205 times.

These numbers are always a bit spongy. I can verify publication of 1,029 original stories. The other 278 originals are either scheduled for future publication or were sold to publications that never provided contributor copies. Same for the reprint and other subsidiary rights sales: I can verify 181 of them; the other 24 are either scheduled for future publication or sold to publications that did not provide contributor copies.

* * *

“Renovated to Death,” co-authored with Sandra Murphy, appeared in Black Cat Weekly 198, June 15, 2025. This is our sixth collaboration.

“Penalty for Early Withdrawal” appears in the July/August issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

Miss Marple Revisited

by Janice Law

A recent bout of Lyme Disease has had me resident on the couch, watching gallery tours or cook shows on YouTube and revisiting the BBC's late 20th century production of all twelve of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple books. The series stars the incomparable Joan Hickson as the third member of the great trio of cerebral detectives.

While the colors of the videos seem to have faded, Hickson, who began work on the series at age 78, is every bit as sharp and plausible as I remembered. While Poirot and Holmes are memorable in part for their well-cultivated eccentricities, Miss Marple is an extraordinary mind in an ordinary frame. 

Miss Marple in harmless mode

Indeed, as she herself points out, an elderly lady, being almost universally regarded as both harmless and inconsequential, is free to ask nosey questions and offer sharp observations. Talk about turning disadvantage to profit!

The combination of half-feigned dithering and razor sharp analysis must have been tricky to pull off in both print and film. I think Hickson succeeds in part because she is one of those fine British actors who does less rather than more. Not for her are histrionics or clever bits of business, not even a striking wardrobe such as both Poirot and Holmes enjoy.

In faded pastels and washed out grays, she looks neat and anonymous, but there is no doubt that she has sharp ears and that her chilly eyes miss nothing. "I don't believe anyone," she remarks at one point, which brings me to something I had half forgotten: how very ruthlessly persistent and coldly rational she is, and also how nasty some of the crimes are that she investigates.

The generation of writers that followed Christie reacted not only against the clever and complicated plots, but also against the settings: the cozy version of the class system, the country houses, charming villages, and genteel sections of London. All to the good, mysteries have become grittier, more diverse, or– in the case of popular series like Midsomer Murders, a parody of the older style.

But revisiting the Hickson Miss Marple series, I was struck not only by the vast social changes since the post World War Two era Christie depicted, but also by the continuities in mystery plots. Some literary changes represent a widening of interest, a greater range of characters and social classes, an increased sexual frankness, but others are simply stylistic, a matter of focus and emphasis.

Take Nemesis, one of the best of the series in my opinion. It's tricky and elaborate all right. A fabulously rich man leaves deathbed instructions leading Miss Marple and her nephew on a bus tour of rural churches and country mansions, a route that will involve them in a decade old murder. 

Nemesis is full of puzzles, and yet at the heart it is a sinister psychological drama with a killer brutal enough to have stepped out of any modern thriller.  In a modern novel, we would undoubtedly open with the first of the killings, a young woman bludgeoned and strangled, while the second would most likely be revisited in a graphic flashback. 

Yesterday or today, the material is the same, only the treatment, sanitized in one form, sensationalized in another, is different. Christie found an ideal character for her contemporary format, an observer and analyst who could make old clues speak, who was acceptable everywhere and noticed nowhere – until it is too late for the perpetrator to escape.

Of course, being a rather frail looking woman in her late seventies, Jane Marple is not going to perform heroics. She rarely has to rumple her cardigan, although when called upon, Hickson comes through gamely. She faces down the killer in Nemesis and actually dispatches the villain in Sleeping Murder. Do not try anything with a keen gardener armed with an insecticide sprayer. 

In general, though, she relies on tolerant, rather dim policemen for her assistance, and here I was struck by a real difference, no doubt based on assumptions about women and class. Modern detective fiction often pits the amateur (and sometimes the professional) sleuth against the powers that be. The overweening chief constable, the obstructive chief of detectives, the dismissive local force are frequent obstacles. 

Miss Marple's interrogative mode

But Miss Marple is tolerated. Naturally she is always right and so contributes to a happy solution, plus she is a lady and must be treated politely. She is also old and female and inconsequential. Her help can be accepted and even acknowledged because she is fundamentally unimportant and only a momentary threat to male egos.  

No wonder she is skeptical and trusts no one without evidence. 

Robot on Wheels

Today’s article might seem more suitable for Top Gear, Car & Driver, Road & Track, Jalopnik, or Motor Trend, but today’s article about Tesla motorcars has method behind the madness. I’ll limit my comments about its controversial CEO to saying (in my unhumble opinion) he’s so very good at a few things, he believes he’s good at everything. Whatever faults he has, he’s a brilliant businessman and a damned good technical futurist who attracts an insanely dedicated following across a broad spectrum of ‘fanboys’.

Once Upon a Time

When I was a wee budding boy mad scientist, I salvaged a generator from a truck and purloined a used battery. A few spare parts from the farm’s machine shed and a wooden frame, and I cobbled together a dangerous-as-hell electric go-kart of sorts. The clutch was a belt tensioner and the Soapbox Derby brake, carved from a discarded rubber tire, literally dragged the kart to a halt… barely. But the proof of concept worked. Electric motors were well understood, waiting for battery material science to catch up.

Wanting an electric car has long been a wish. A few years ago, I test drove one, a Tesla Model 3. The car came with ‘autopilot’, which meant it could follow highway lanes and when I finished the drive, it parked itself very nicely, thank you. The loudest sound was the air conditioner’s fan, which still needs to be addressed.

Autopilot, by the way, is Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system, and FSD represents the premium, more advanced version.

Traditional manufacturers have been developing similar technology, but Tesla’s advantage then was reduced environmental impact combined with one, two, or three powerful motors capable of slamming passengers back in their seats, 0-60 in THREE SECONDS. The proof of concept worked and battery technology was catching up.

The other attraction was a promised feature, FSD, full self-driving, an add-on of several thousand dollars. Drivers could petition to become beta testers after being tested themselves. In that early stage, owners were informed bad driving would result in withdrawal of FSD. Drivers had to be on their toes, but proof of concept worked.

I rode in a Tesla the day it was released for beta testing. The car behaved like any new driver– jerky, hesitant, uncertain, then suddenly over-daring. It was like a theme park ride but more so. Over time, Tesla issued a number of updates and gradually driving smoothed out,^† behaving like a competent, well-mannered, defensive driver. Close your eyes today, you can not tell a real person isn’t chauffeuring you about.

In recent months, I’ve been driving a Tesla model Y. I don’t own the vehicle, rather I’m under a not-so-onerous obligation to drive one a few times a week. I think of the machine as a robot on wheels. Not coincidentally, Tesla has a humanoid robotics division, and I have little doubt one subsidiary feeds the other, advances in one group benefitting another.

My friend Thrush says you don’t so much drive an FSD Tesla, you supervise it. Further, it demands a stern taskmaster. It watches your eyes. If it thinks you aren’t paying attention, it will let you know. The car doesn’t like a pair of my sunglasses and scolds me once in a while.

I tend to be a highly focused driver, so I’ve been surprised when riding as a passenger over highways and byways I’ve driven for years, discovering shops and sources I never knew were roadside. FSD allows drivers to relax a little but stay alert. Flight instructors tell students to constantly scan, always scan: instruments, windows, communications, controls. It’s good advice for drivers.

When All is Not Peaches and Petrol

But what about accidents? Surely cars without drivers must have insane collision numbers. They do… insanely less, to borrow an Apple phrase. Teslas using FSD suffer only ⅕ the accident rates as human drivers. One fifth, 20%. That’s tens of thousands of fewer accidents… and fewer deaths.

That’s not to say everything is perfect. I discovered the current FSD program had difficulty with red traffic light arrows. It would stop as usual, but after twenty seconds or so, it seemed to forget about the red light and proceeded with the turn.

And then came an unexpected mother of all tests. I was in first position in the leftmost turn lane at a six-lane major intersection (southbound on Edgewater Drive at John Young Parkway and Forest City Road, Orlando) when the entire array of traffic lights blacked out, gone, kaput. The Tesla hesitated and then edged forward until I stomped the brake. I was still new to driving, so I didn’t know how to report a rare but risky situation.

An opportunity arose to observe its behavior when blocked by other cars, once on Interstate 4 and another on side streets. A steady stream of cars obstructed the exit lane. No shouting, no gnashing of teeth, no road rage, no surge of blood pressure, no Florida Stand-Your-Ground shootout. The Tesla sedately continued to the next exit and looped back.

Conversely, when wanting to cross multi-lane traffic, the machine hesitates when other drivers kindly open a gap. Wisely so because a common Florida insurance scam involves a con artist waving an innocent to proceed only to jump in the path and scream injury. Per contra, the Tesla politely allows side street drivers to ease into traffic.

Unlike some competitors, current (no pun intended) models don’t include lidar among sensors, but rely upon a full kit of cameras in our visual spectrum. That means in a determined downpour, it can’t see any better than we do. In such a case, neither of us should be driving.

Options are highly customizable from minor convenience choices to how the car behaves. It can act like an auto with manual transmission, an automatic, or its own paradigm. Remember I used an old generator as a motor? Some motors can act like generators and vice versa. Let off the gas on an electric vehicle and when the motor is internally braking, it simultaneously dumps juice back into the battery. Try that, petrochemical fans.

The Futurist

I’m going to attempt a couple of predictions. We’ll start to see new and unexpected uses for FSD. Suppose a driver passes out or falls heavily asleep. Presently, the car tries to get the driver’s attention by flashing the screen and sounding a tone. If it can’t rouse the driver, it pulls off the road.

But with additional AI, it might realize you, the driver, are sick or wounded or suicidal and drives you straight to hospital. If someone attempts a holdup in a mall parking lot, you might summon your car to the rescue.

Or your grounded teenager steals your car without permission and heads for her (or his) dealer/boyfriend. You hop on your phone and instruct the car to lock doors and drive her (or his) drunk butt straight home.

As boomers age and Generation X is discovering bald spots, sagging parts, and skeletal stiffness, enlightened officials might find their way clear to allow FSD owners to ride as a passenger in their car without a drivers license. Senior citizens could safely transport themselves as freely as the rest of us. How liberating!

Previously, I suggested the most likely and most immediately useful humanoid robots will be found in toys for toddlers and eldercare, respectively. Taking that a step further, an intelligent car could advance care and concern for both. Just as it warns about unfastened seatbelts, it could detect unattached baby carriers. Never again must we read about a child or pet locked in a hot car, when the car itself realizes it has several options to offer succor and solutions.

An Accident Waiting to Happen

Consider road safety once FSD automobiles chat among themselves. A truck obscures your line of sight leaving you unaware a car is stopped in the middle of the road. A child wanders into the street. A motorbike slips into your blind spot. An out-of-control bus is hurtling at you.

I fully expect we’ll see FSD vehicles talking with one another, one warning others of impending disasters. Then suppose one realizes if nothing is done, that child in the path of an oncoming vehicle will die. With altruistic programming, it could sacrifice itself to save the pedestrian and possibly persuade other vehicles to intervene.

And then…

The arms race between crooks and cops embodies the flip side. Quite soon someone figures out how to use a BMW iX to drive the getaway car, steer a Cybertruck through a bank’s front doors, direct a Genesis GV80 to hijack a trucker, or send a Ford Mach-E to pick up ransom money and return the victim. Until, of course, the cars rat out the perpetrators.

And finally…

Of the first four Tesla-built cars, I’ve mentioned models 3 and Y. The other two are S and the X. In the same vein as Tesla’s built-in man-child fart noises, the models spell out S3XY.

What do you think?

^† Tech Tales (How it’s done)

A Series Discussion

When we categorize fiction, we usually say it's either short or long, literary or genre, lighthearted or gritty, mystery or SF, etc.--but there's another distinction: Is it a series story or a standalone story?

Most of my short stores are standalones, meaning they're not part of an ongoing series using the same characters and locations. I like writing standalone stories because the plots and players are always new and interesting to explore. I can go anyplace I want to, in any time period, and live there for a while. ("A while" being the key phrase. That's probably the reason I'd rather write shorts than novels.)

Series differences

Having said that … I occasionally like to write "series" stories as well. One reason is that some characters and some settings turn out to be interesting and/or enjoyable enough (to me, at least) that I want to revisit them from time to time. Another is that a number of editors have told me that they, and their readers, like short-story series--and I'm not one to ignore that kind of hint. A third reason is that series installments (if they're subsequent stories and not the very first in the series) are sometimes easier to put together because both I and the reader already know the characters, and I can spend less time with setup and backstory and more time developing the plot--and plotting is probably my favorite part of writing. This works especially well if the stories are really short, as is the case of markets like Woman's World. I have found, though, that when I do write series stories, I tend to not write several in a row. I almost always sandwich one or more standalones in between series installments. That just seems to work better, for me.

I should also mention that there's one thing you have to consider with series stories that you don't have to worry about with standalones: continuity. If you're lucky enough to sell a few stories in a series, you'll find that you must keep careful track of facts about your recurring characters (primary and supporting), and locations and relationships as well. You don't want to carelessly change, say, the names of certain people, streets, restaurants, bars, and businesses later in the series. And if it seems that things like that would be easy for the writer to remember--well, they're not. You also don't want to repeat certain phrases, descriptions, or anything that might seem too repetitive, from story to story. Another thing to remember: Not everyone will read those installments in order. Every story in the series should be written such that it can stand on its own.

One more point. I'm not quite sure how to say this, but there seems to be a different feeling that goes along with the writing of each of these two kinds of stories. When I begin a standalone story I get a little tingle of adventure and daring and experimentation, of trying something brand new. (Yes, I know how silly that sounds, but it's true.) On the other hand, when I begin a series story, I feel more comfortable and secure because I'm on familiar ground--I already know the characters pretty well, and how they think and how they'll act. I'm not saying one "feeling" is better or worse than the other. Both are welcome, because they make me want to keep writing. 

Series notes and numbers

Personally, I have written and published eight different series of mystery shorts. The first of them began in 2001, with a bossy retired schoolteacher named Angela Potts, a character based roughly on my mother. Mom wasn't bossy and she wasn't a teacher, but she was quick-witted and she was curious about everything and everyone in my little hometown--she loved sitting in one particular rocker on her front porch and observing the neighborhood and every single car and pedestrian that passed by. Nothing happened in that town that she didn't know about.

So that's what got me started. But Mom's similarity to my protagonist ended there. My fictional heroine not only knows what's happening, she also doesn't mind interfering with those happenings, and investigating anything she finds the least bit suspicious. She especially enjoys "helping"--and irritating--the local sheriff, who was a student of hers in the fifth grade. Sheriff Charles "Chunky" Jones always allows her to butt into police business, not because he wants to but because he knows that "Ms. Potts" is smart and cunning enough to solve cases that he can't. Having his procedures criticized and his grammar corrected at every turn is, he figures, a small price to pay. So far, I've had more than 150 stories published about those two characters and their little Southern town, most of them mini-mysteries at Woman's World. 

In 2003 I started a different series of stories, this one about a small-town sheriff named Lucy Valentine and her mother Frances. Like Angela Potts, Fran Valentine is a former teacher, and in her retirement she's concerned mostly with two things: (1) assisting in the never-ending fight against crime and (2) finding Lucy a husband. (The first is easier than the second, since her daughter doesn't want a husband.) Around 100 of those Fran & Lucy stories, sometimes billed as the "Law and Daughter" series, have been published in more than a dozen different magazines, seven anthologies, and three story collections. (Woman's World published one of the Fran & Lucy stories in 2010, but the then-editor told me she'd rather I go back to the Angela mysteries, so I did.)

My third crime series, and one of those I've enjoyed the most, features Mississippi sheriff Raymond Kirk Douglas ("Please, no more Spartacus jokes") and his on-and-off girlfriend Jennifer Parker, who's a former lawyer and Ray's childhood sweetheart. Seven of these stories, which are much longer than most of my mysteries, have been published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and one in the short-lived Down & Out: The Magazine--and the latest installment is now hanging around in the AHMM submission queue. the Ray Douglas stories have been extra fun to write because most of them include not one mystery case but two or three different cases per story. 

My fourth series stars private investigator Thomas Langford, and also features a female partner-in-crime-solving: Tom's fiancee Debra Jo Wells, a paralegal at a local law firm. The first installment of that series was published in a special PI issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and holds a glowing place in my heart (thank you, Michael Bracken) because it won a Shamus Award in 2021. The next Tom Langford mystery appeared in Strand Magazine, the third in Black Cat Weekly (thanks again, Michael), and three more installments have been accepted for an upcoming collection of my detective stories. (I should note that, as usual, Tom's female counterpart is smarter than he is, and he knows it. After all, our stories are supposed to reflect real life . . .)

My fifth mystery series revolves around accountant Katie Rogers and her younger sister Anna, the police chief in (you guessed it) their small Southern town--three of the Katie & Anna stories have also appeared in Woman's World. My sixth series features Old West private investigator Will Parker, whose first story (actually a novella) appeared in one of John Connor's Crimeucopia anthologies; the second story was published in a private-eye anthology and was later selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories. My seventh crime series stars New Orleans shopowner Madame Zoufou, Queen of Voodoo, who has made three appearances so far, one of them in a Mardi Gras anthology. And my eighth series features private eye Luke Walker and his sister Lavinia (Vinnie), and is set in the 1940s in New Orleans. The first of those appeared in an anthology of stories by previous Edgar- or Shamus-winners, the second has been accepted and is upcoming in an anthology based on S.S. Van Dine, and the third is in progress. 

In summary, six of my eight mystery series are set in the present day, two are set in the past, seven are set in the southeastern U.S., three are about county sheriffs, three are about PIs, one's about a police chief, and one's about a voodoo sorceress, with helpful partners and amateur sleuths joining the cast in all of them.

What's your story?

So that's my background, with regard to series. How about the rest of you? Do you prefer writing standalone stories or series installments? Do you like reading short-story series? Do you have any favorites? If you've written series stories, are they set in a familiar (to you) area? Are they written with particular publications or markets in mind? Have you found that writing them is more fun than standalones? Which do you find easier to write? Have you found series stories easier to sell?

Whatever your experience is and your preferences are, I hope you keep reading stories and keep putting them on paper. 

I'll be back in two weeks. See you then.

Happy Independence Day!

 

Artificial Intelligence: 2025's Offering For Chicken Littles Worldwide

 "Y2K is gonna demolish the world's banking system."

                                                                            – Some Tech Guru to his Followers, Probably

"Ebooks will completely destroy the publishing industry."

                                                                 – An agent I met at a publishing conference in 2005

"AI is going to be the end of writing. All writing."

                                             – Far too many click-bait articles currently littering the Internet

It's 2025, and once again, the sky is falling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

See above.

Look, I get it. Doom-scrolling has practically become an olympic-level sport over the last decade. And yes, both of the examples I noted above were change events in their own distinct ways.

But Y2K didn't destroy the banking system (although it did manage to scare the pants off of multitudes of people who ought to have known better, plus, without Y2K would we have ever had the glorious piece of film-making which was Mike Judge's Office Space?). And neither has it done in online commerce, for that matter.

"Peter....whaaaat's happening...."

And ebooks haven't decimated the publishing industry. If anything, more people are making more money from writing, both fiction and non-fiction, than ever before. Not since the paperback revolution of the late 1950s and '60s, has the occupation of "author" been so democratized. And mentioning 2005 is important for context, too. Because 2005 was the year I got my first book deal. And in the six years that followed I wrote nine more books in rapid succession, all of them for money. All of them on contracts.

(And it was a good thing I had the fairly lucrative opportunity to publish so many books so quickly. Because I really needed the scratch!)

All of this is not to say that there hasn't been rapid, technology-induced paradigm change, especially in publishing. And yes, there certainly has been some consolidation among the "Big Five" traditional publishing groups.

And so what? Movies come in color, too, these days.

I am no more prepared to shed tears over the demise shake-up of the insular, competition-averse, NYC-centric "traditional publishing" system than any of those publishers would be ready to cry over the long breaks I have taken between writing projects.

And here, in a nutshell, is why I find the current brouhaha over AI "writing" so much hyperventilating.

Because, in a word, it sucks.

AI in its current iteration isn't, in the strictest sense, even the most basic form of "intelligence." AI possesses no agency, forms no opinions, sets no goals and doesn't know the sting of failure. It's really just a bunch of LLM ("Large Language Model") programs that have been fed massive amounts of data, much of it proprietary, all of it purloined. And when asked a question, it collates the data it possesses, and spits out an answer.

And, surprise, surprise, just around half the time that answer is at least partially inaccurate. Often wildly so. For straight research you're likely better off with a targeted google search. And even if it gets the facts correct, then there's its massive problem with proper citation of sources (see my own source for this contention here. Fascinating read. Well worth your time!)

Doesn't that sound actionable? Shouldn't the creators of the mass of content these AI companies stole without their consent in order to kick-start their "revolution" be compensated for their work being used for purposes for which it was never intended?

Absolutely. And the lawsuits are just now beginning to get filed.

And don't get me started on the loopy, elliptical nature of the "fiction" it will spit out on command. Aggregate all of the purple prose that is currently floating around out there, and shake it up and spew it out, and turns out, all you've done is make it even more unreadable!

Anyway, I'm currently on vacation (the Coast, natch.) with my family, so this will be a two-parter, and I'm gonna close for now. When I post again in a couple of weeks, I'm bringing examples and receipts.

In the meantime, how about you? Please feel free to share your own AI experiences, good, bad, or mediocre in the comments, and I will incorporate responses to them in next time's exposition of the myriad shortcomings of "Artificial Intelligence."

In the meantime, here's the view from our deck, courtesy of my son:

The fog rolling in at Ecola Head, with Ecola Head Lighthouse in the distance (photo: James Thornton)

See you in two weeks!

Music to Write by

I have always enjoyed having music on while I write but as I get older I find that lyrics are too distracting, so I go for instrumental stuff.

I was thinking about this because of something I discovered this week on Freegal --

A word of explanation (or explanation of a word.) Freegal is a free legal (hence the name) music streaming service which is available through some libraries.

It's a mixed bag; clearly some companies are not cooperating with it so you may find all the works of a performer and none of another, or an odd assortment  based on what shows up on, say, a compilation album from some minor company.  And before you ask, I don't know how much the artists are paid per stream.  I know at least one librarian is trying to find out.

Back to our story.  While searching for something else I found Nathan Barr's soundtrack album for Carnival Row, a fantasy TV series I had never heard of.  And, boy, it just worked for me. I tend to like soundtracks as background for writing, I guess because they are dramatic, emotional, and mercurial.

I sent a link to my sister, Diane Chamberlain, who also writes with soundtracks and she approved, so it is good to have my opinion  confirmed by a New York Times bestselling author.

Other soundtracks I like?  Danny Elfman's brooding, hypnotic work for the Batman movies.   

Also the Star Trek themes by many composers.

But there's more to life than soundtracks.  I am not a big fan of classical music, preferring early music.  One group I love is Hesperion XXI, which focuses on 16th-18th centuries, especially Spanish and Sephardic music.

Don't confuse them with the equally excellent Hesperus which performs early American music.

I also enjoy the Belgian cafe jazz of Jacques Brel. You may say that' isn't instrumental, to which I would reply: If you don't speak French it is.

So, writers, what do you listen to when you are creating your masterpieces?

And just for funsies, here is my favorite recording of a Jacques Brel song (not sung by him), complete with subtitles.

Some Great Books

The first half of the year will end in about thirty-five minutes on the East Coast of the US, so this is a perfect time for me to share my five favorite crime/mystery reads of the year so far. If you choose to check any of them out, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

In reverse order, they are ...

5. The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan - This excellent Sherlock-and-Watson-type amateur-sleuth mystery came out in 2024. It is the first in a series and was extremely well plotted with strong voices and witty, clever, and wonderfully descriptive writing. 

I wish the main character, who played the Watson role, wasn't as closed off as she was, but I expect the author did this to give her room to grow, as well as personal secrets--especially one big one--to reveal, in future books. But these are small issues in an otherwise strong book, especially considering it is the author's first published mystery (though not his first published novel).

4. Bearer of Bad News by Elizabeth Dini - This is a wonderful book, especially for an author's first published novel. It came out in April of this year. It's an intriguing story with delightful writing that often had me laughing. It has strong voice and characters, especially the main character, who has a nice arc. The writing was often insightful, with emotional depth. While mainly set in modern day, the book also has a historical component that is timely. Those sections can be dark (but not gory), but that element of the book is offset by the lightheartedness of the main character. I hope it is the start of a series.

The only drawback worth mentioning is that there were a lot of characters, and I had a bit of a hard time keeping track of who was who and who did what. I think if I had read the book with my eyes, I would not have had that problem. (That said, the audio reader was fantastic.) 

3. A Sinister Revenge by Deanna Raybourn - This is the eighth book in the Veronica Speedwell series, and it came out in 2023. It was a great read. It has a strong voice, as usual, as well as a charming setting, an interesting mystery, enjoyable characters, and the main character had a strong arc through which she grew and her romantic relationship was strengthened. 

I had some small quibbles with the resolution, which I won't go into because I don't want to spoil things. Just know they should not keep you from reading this book. If you like historical mysteries, I highly recommend this whole series, which is largely set in England in the 1890s. Start with the first book, A Curious Beginning.

2.  The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler - This book, which came out last year, is the first book in a new series by Osler. I enjoyed it so much, I read it in one day. It is set in 1898 Chicago and stars a gay female private eye. The book has a great voice, a charming main character, as well as an enjoyable supporting cast. It also has an intriguing plot. 

My concerns were minor (one scene in which the main character's thoughts went on too long for my taste, and there was one anachronism). If you like historical mysteries, you will want to pick this one up.

And my favorite mystery read of the year so far ...

1. The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter - This witty 2024 romantic cozy mystery has great voices, characters who grow, well-planted clues, a marvelous setting, and strong writing. I did have an issue with the main characters' failure to realize in a timely manner something that seemed obvious to me, but I am willing to let this issue go because I loved this book so much. 

What mystery/crime novels have you read this year that you have loved? I would appreciate your recommendations.

And, before I go, a little news. I am delighted that my short story "The Postman Always Flirts Twice" was named a finalist two weeks ago for this year's Macavity Award. This story won the Agatha Award in April. It was published in the anthology Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy. While I highly recommend you buy the book, if you would like to read my story, it is available for free reading for a limited time by clicking here.