Little Big Crimes Review: Faith by Stuart Neville

Little Big Crimes: Faith, by Stuart Neville: "Faith," by Stuart Neville, in Blood Work: Remembering Gary Shulze: Once Upon A Crime, edited by Rick Ollerman, Down and Out Boo...

SMFS Member Honored: John M. Floyd

SMFS list member John M. Floyd has been selected by readers of  The Saturday Evening Post as one of their favorite authors in the “Most Popular  Contemporary Fiction of 2018” list. His September 2018 short story, “Music of Angels” was noted for the honor.

SMFS Member Honored: Gary Phillips

SMFS list member Gary Phillips’ book, Culprits: The Heist was Only The Beginning, has been selected by CrimeReads as one of their “10 Best Crime Anthologies.” Co-edited by Richard Brewer, the book is available in print and digital formats from publisher Polis Books, Amazon, and others.

Synopsis:

Some stories are all about the crime. These stories are about the maelstrom of what happens after...

A hard-bitten crew of professional thieves pull off the score of their lives, coming away with seven million in cash. Like any heist there are some unforeseen complications, and unfortunately they don’t get away without a few bodies dropping. But despite this, they get away with the swag. Seven million. Enough to change their lives, make new identities, start fresh. But that’s when the real trouble begins... 

In this unique, riveting, linked anthology, we follow each member of the crew of culprits as they go their separate ways after the heist, and watch as this perfect score ends up a perfect nightmare. Featuring stories penned by acclaimed writers Brett Battles, Gar Anthony Haywood, Zoë Sharp, Manuel Ramos, Jessica Kaye, Joe Clifford and David Corbett, CULPRITS examines what happens next to these criminals once they take their cut and go their separate ways, only to find that the end of the heist was the beginning of their troubles.

A Short Walk Down A Dark Street: Issue 33

As posted to our list by SMFS member Peter DiChellis…

This week’s blog chugs Champagne from morning ‘til midnight for short mystery and crime fiction. Links to an arresting assemblage of reviews, releases, and free stories.

Includes links to a collection by Patti Abbott and a Thuglit anthology ed. Todd Robinson. Plus, for the Research Folder, a veteran police officer’s new book gives readers “an intimate look at law enforcement through the eyes of a working cop.”

A short walk down a dark street (#33)

https://shortwalkdarkstreet.wordpress.com/2018/12/30/short-walk-33/

Best wishes,

Peter

SMFS Members Publishing News: Fiction River: Hard Choices

The 30^th issue titled Fiction River: Hard Choices features a number of SMFS members. Edited by Dean Wesley Smith, the issue is available at Amazon in digital and print formats.  It is also available at WMG Publishing  and other vendors.  The eight published members are:

Ron Collins for ‘Prospecting.”

Dayle Dermatis for “Girl With a Mission.”

Diana Deverell for “Clean and Godly in Denmark.”

Jamie Ferguson for “Haunted.”

Tonya D. Price with "Payback." 

Annie Reed for “Equal Justice” as well as “Killshot.”

Laura Ware for “The Devil’s Muse.”

Lyn Worthen writing as Leigh Saunders for “Tendrils.”

Synopsis:

In this latest volume of Fiction River, editor Dean Wesley Smith pulls together an eclectic but cohesive group of stories filled with difficult decisions. From a man who must question the line between justice and vengeance to a teenage fixer fighting hypocrisy to a post-apocalyptic survivor’s mission to deliver one last message, each of these stories demonstrates extremely hard choices—and some very real consequences.

Fiction River is an original fiction anthology series. Modeled on successful anthology series of the past, from Orbit to Universe to Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, the goal of Fiction River is to provide a forum for “original ground-breaking fiction of all genres.” Each Fiction River volume comes in ebook and trade paperback format, published by WMG Publishing, and features some of the best new and established fiction writers in publishing. Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch are award-winning editors, as well as award-winning writers, and act as series editors for the anthologies. For more information about the authors or Fiction River, go to www.fictionriver.com

SMFS Member Publication News: Jemma Linden

SMFS list member Jemma Linden has reported that her flash fiction story, “A Holly Jolly Christmas” appears online at Shotgun Honey. Jemma is one of our newest members having joined SMFS last month. We welcome Jemma and salute her publication news.

SMFS Short Story Saturdays: Earl Staggs

Back in May SMFS celebrated, as we do each year, International Short Story Month. The celebration led to the creation of the weekly short story segment SMFS Short Story Saturdays. Each Saturday we feature a SMFS list member whose work can be read online for free. These short stories are at least a year old and were not previously linked to during the May 2018 Short Story Month event.

Today for SMFS Short Story Saturdays, Earl Staggs shares his short story, “Caught on Christmas Eve” archived at his site.

If you would like to be included and are a member of the SMFS list at yahoo groups, email the link to your story to KevinRTipple at Verizon dot net. If you are not a member, this would be a good time to check us out at Yahoo Groups.

A Short Walk Down A Dark Street: Issue 32

As posted by Peter DiChellis to our SMFS list…

This week’s blog celebrates short mystery and crime fiction with links to an ensemble of deviously delightful reviews, releases, and free stories.

Plus, What Sherlock Holmes Can Teach Writers About Clues (from The Strand Magazine).

A short walk down a dark street (#32)

https://shortwalkdarkstreet.wordpress.com/2018/12/24/short-walk-32/

Best wishes,

Peter

SMFS Short Story Saturdays: Jan Christensen

Back in May earlier this year SMFS celebrated, as we do each year, International Short Story Month. The celebration led to the creation of the weekly short story segment SMFS Short Story Saturdays. Each Saturday we feature a SMFS list member whose work can be read online for free. These short stories are at least a year old and were not previously linked to during the May 2018 Short Story Month event.

Today for SMFS Short Story Saturdays, Jan Christensen shares her short story, “Taking Care Of Our Own” archived at Crooked: Harboiled Crime Fiction.

If you would like to be included and are a member of the SMFS list at yahoo groups, email the link to your story to KevinRTipple at Verizon dot net. If you are not a member, this would be a good time to check us out at Yahoo Groups.

Guest Post: Fiction Writing As Time Travel by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Please welcome SMFS list member Andrew Welsh-Huggins to our blog today…

Fiction Writing As Time Travel

           Nailing the details of real-life police investigation is a no-brainer when it comes to writing crime fiction. Anyone who’s read the procedural mysteries of Alafair Burke or Michael Connelly knows the pleasure of encountering accurate information about how detectives do their jobs intermixed with compelling fictional tales. Conversely, everyone has experienced the sinking feeling when a writer confuses a revolver for a semi-automatic or sentences a heartless killer to thirty years in jail, not prison.

          As a reporter by day and a mystery writer by earlier in the day, I’m accustomed to tapping experts to ensure my imagination has its facts straight. I interviewed both an arson investigator and a retired state geologist for my novel Slow Burn, took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Ohio Statehouse for Capitol Punishment, and talked to experts on human trafficking as well as ex-trafficking victims for The Hunt. Recently, I took on a new research challenge with two short stories set three decades ago in Providence, Rhode Island. Not only did I need to learn about police and court procedure in those bygone days, I enlisted another important source: my own memory of living there in the mid-1980s.

          Despite fond recollections of my wife’s and my sojourn in Providence, I had only been back once—early in the 1990s—before I started my first story last year. That lone return visit was well before the city’s downtown underwent a transformation that included the unearthing of the long-buried Woonasquatucket and Moshassuck rivers, which meant the city was more or less unchanged in my mind. Though a negative for my inner tourist, this time away turned out to be a good thing for my fiction writing, since the era was frozen in place for me.

          I had my temporal landscape; now I needed experts to fill in the blanks. Upping the ante, I wanted information not just on the Providence police homicide division, but on that division three decades ago. Initially, this proved almost as difficult as resurrecting old memories. Providence in the 1980s was still living down its reputation as the seat of the New England mob, a standing that didn’t always stop at the doors to the police station. Locating people who were in law enforcement at the time and who were willing to talk to an out-of-state reporter-slash-mystery writer proved as easy as coaxing brown bears from dens during hunting season. Weeks passed and my multiple emails and phone calls to retired Providence detectives whom I’d located on the Web met with silence. Finally, with just a few days before my deadline, a retired investigator answered an email with an out-of-the-blue call. Soon I was wondering how I would ever get him off the phone as he explained the types of cars detectives drove (Plymouth Furys), the layout of the homicide bureau (“a mish mash of desks”), and the bar that detectives hung out at after work (Christopher’s). The story that emerged from that research, The Murderous Type, appeared last year inSnowbound, an anthology of short New England crime fiction.

          I faced similar challenges locating sources for a follow-up, this time trying to find a defense attorney familiar with legal practices and court layouts in the 1980s. Again, patience paid off as after several weeks I found a lawyer willing to fill in the details, and even offer me his own spin on a possible plot twist. That story, Nice Grammar, That Guy, was published in the December issue of Mystery MagazineWeekly.

          In summary, I used three tools for researching and writing these stories from long in my past:

_ The Internet. This ‘no duh’ helper prodded my memory by providing everything from the location of the city’s paste jewelry manufacturers (in and around Grosvenor Avenue) to the names of long-gone eateries like Winkler’s steakhouse. It also helped me show, not tell, the era, as I researched ways to inform the reader we were in the 1980s, including a reference to the 1986 Bangles tune “Walk Like An Egyptian” and details of the decade’s savings and loan scandal.

_ Experts. The Web helped me find the aforementioned defense attorney and retired detective, but it was calls and emails with them that garnered the kinds of time-traveling details necessary for the story, such as the lawyer’s description of a municipal courtroom at the time: “not traditional looking at all, like a basement rumpus room.” Individuals, not the Internet, almost always provide the best details for a fiction writer.

_ Myself. One of the final lines I added to The Murderous Type came not from anyone I spoke with or online research, but from my own memory of a street we used to live on and the oceanic look of the closely placed houses, so different from the homes where I grew up in a western New York State village. I wrote: The bright red house was a triple-decker, like all the houses on the street, homes tall and solid and honestly built as nineteenth-century sailing ships. An observation that had stayed with me over three decades turned out to be one of the final pieces of my fictional puzzle.

          Of course, my task would have been easier if it had occurred to me back then that I might be writing police procedurals about Providence someday. But that’s one of the fun things about fiction writing. You never know which direction, in space or in time, it may take you.    

Andrew Welsh-Huggins ©2018

Writer, reader, owner of too many pets. Recently asked for pancakes at Waffle House. Author of the Andy Hayes private eye mystery series, including The Third Brother. Winner, 2017 Al Blanchard Award for The Murderous Type, available in Snowbound anthology from Level Best Books.

Online: https://andrewwelshhuggins.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AndyHayesMysteries/

Twitter: @awhcolumbus

SleuthSayers: Fever Dream by Robert Lopresti

SleuthSayers: Fever Dream: Courtesy Western Washington University Libraries by Robert Lopresti Before we get started: I have an essay up at Trace Evidence, the ...

Catherine Dilts Reviews: Short Story Reviews

Catherine Dilts Reviews: Short Story Reviews 

SMFS Member Publication News: Su Kopil

SMFS list member Su Kopil sends word that her short story, “The Christmas Spirit,” appears in the magazine, That’s Life! The magazine is a weekly sold in Australia. Pictures of the publication come courtesy of her blog, Su Kopil …inkspiller.

SMFS Member Publication News: Edith Maxwell

Today is publication day for SMFS list member Edith Maxwell’s new book, Murder on Cape Cod. Writing as Maddie Day, the book is published by Kensington Publishing and exclusive to Barnes and Noble in print format for one year. This is the first book in the Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery Series.

Barnes and Noble Synopsis:

First in a New Series! Print edition only available at Barnes & Noble

A Cape Cod shop owner and her book club must find a crafty killer in this charming new series from the Agatha-nominated author of the Country Store Mystery series.

Summer is busy season for Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida’s bicycle shop, nestled in the quaint, seaside hamlet of Westham, Massachusetts. She’s expecting an influx of tourists at Mac’s Bikes; instead she discovers the body of Jake Lacey. Mac can’t imagine anyone stabbing the down-on-his-luck handyman. However, the authorities seem to think Mac is a strong suspect after she was spotted arguing with Jake just hours before his death. Mac knows she didn’t do it, but she does recognize the weapon—her brother Derrick’s fishing knife.

Mac’s only experience with murder investigations is limited to the cozy mysteries she reads with her local book group, the Cozy Capers. So to clear her name—and maybe her brother’s too—Mac will have to summon help from her Cozy Capers co-investigators and a library’s worth of detectives’ tips and tricks. For a small town, Westham is teeming with possible killers, and this is one mystery where Mac is hoping for anything but a surprise ending…

SMFS Member Publication News: Debra H. Goldstein

Today is publication day for SMFS list member Debra H. Goldstein’s new book, One Taste Too Many: A Sarah Blair Mystery. Published by Kensington Publishing, the book is available in print and digital formats from Amazon and others.

Amazon Synopsis:

For culinary challenged Sarah Blair, there’s only one thing scarier than cooking from scratch—murder!
 
Married at eighteen, divorced at twenty‑eight, Sarah Blair reluctantly swaps her luxury lifestyle for a cramped studio apartment and a law firm receptionist job in the tired hometown she never left. With nothing much to show for the last decade but her feisty Siamese cat, RahRah, and some clumsy domestic skills, she’s the polar opposite of her bubbly twin, Emily—an ambitious chef determined to take her culinary ambitions to the top at a local gourmet restaurant . . .
 
Sarah knew starting over would be messy. But things fall apart completely when her ex drops dead, seemingly poisoned by Emily’s award-winning rhubarb crisp. Now, with RahRah wanted by the woman who broke up her marriage and Emily wanted by the police for murder, Sarah needs to figure out the right recipe to crack the case before time runs out. Unfortunately, for a gal whose idea of good china is floral paper plates, catching the real killer and living to tell about it could mean facing a fate worse than death—being in the kitchen!
 
 Includes quick and easy recipes!

SleuthSayers: Do You Want Cheese with That Whine? by Michael Bracken

SleuthSayers: Do You Want Cheese with That Whine?: By Michael Bracken We’ve all heard successful novelists mention the grind of hours-long book signings and months-long book tours, and many...

A Short Walk Down A Dark Street: Issue 31

As posted by Peter DiChellis to our list…

This week’s blog commends short mystery and crime fiction with links to a trouble-making troupe of reviews, releases, and free stories. Includes a link to Vicki Weisfeld’s review of The Best American Mystery Stories, 2018.

Plus: For the Research Folder -- Bullet Trajectories: Where Did the Shot Come From?

A short walk down a dark street (#31)

https://shortwalkdarkstreet.wordpress.com/2018/12/17/short-walk-31/

Best wishes,

Peter

SMFS Members Published in Gary Phillips' Hollis For Hire

Two SMFS list members are published in the just released short story collection, Gary Phillips’ Hollis For Hire. Published by Pro Se Productions, the book is currently available in print and digital formats from Amazon. The two members are:

Sarah M. Chen with “The Parachute Kids.”

Editor Gary Phillips with “Hollywood Killer” and “King Cow” as well as "The Case of the Missing Dentist."

Amazon Synopsis:

In this rollicking collection private investigator Nate Hollis, a routine visit to the dentist sends him into an underground world of addictive vices; hunts a killer in the dead of winter in Chicago; uncovers secrets from the buried past; stalks the stalker of super hero street performers in the back alleys of Tinseltown; braves the unforgiving streets of New York City to stop a killer, and more in this electric-charged assortment of stories.

New York Times bestseller Sara Paretsky, Edgar winner Naomi Hirahara, Deadly Ink nominee Sarah M. Chen, hardboiled adept Scott Adlerberg, and new pulpster Phillip Drayer Duncan along with Hollis’ creator and 2018 Anthony Award winner Gary Phillips (Black Pulp, Peepland) deliver tales of a P.I. who Kevin Burton Smith in Mystery Scene magazine said was “Slick as spit, big-shouldered Hollis walks the walk and talks the talk…” This edition also includes two previously published Hollis stories by Phillips, “King Cow” and “Hollywood Killer.”

SleuthSayers: A Series Conversation by John M. Floyd

SleuthSayers: A Series Conversation: by John M. Floyd Today's column is about reading and writing. On the reading side, I've lately found myself reading more novel...

SMFS Member Publishing News: Michael Bracken

In addition to the news today that his short story “Wishing Tree” appears in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine: January/February 2019 issue, SMFS list member Michael Bracken has short stories in two other publications. He has reported to the list that his short story, “Little Bubba Visits the Roadhouse” appears in the just published EconoClash Review #3: Quality Cheap Thrills. Available in digital book format now with a print version to be released at a later date, the Amazon synopsis is below.

Also now out in PDF format straight from the publisher is the short story, “Deliver Us from Evil” in Thriller Magazine #2. Synopsis also below.

EconoClash Synopsis:

This is the third rail of Cheap Thrills and the Quality is electrifying! ISSUE 3 is jam packed with enough law breaking to keep every defense attorney in business for the rest of the new year. This crime heavy issue also includes cannibals, crooked magicians and hideously evil things called regular people. We've got Weirdo Sex Maniacs, Hardboiled Super heroes, Hungry-Horny Werewolves, Little Bubba's visiting Roadhouses, Delicious Murder, Guilty Consciences, Brutal Magicians and so much more! ECR 3 features all new works by Michael Bracken, Max Sheridan, Sara Dobie Bauer, Kristen Brand, Leroy B. Vaughn, Rick McQuiston, Nick Sweeney, Brian James Lewis, Chris Stanley, Joe Weintraub, and Nicola Lombardi. EconoClash Review remains the wildest voice quacking loudly in the indie lit void. FOR BEST RESULTS, USE AS DIRECTED: Buy this rag! Read it left to right--cover to cover. CAUTION: these Quality Cheap Thrills may induce mind explosions, smile spasms, or independent thoughts and unwelcome rationalizations. Should not be read by the elderly, masses of sheeple, or women who are pregnant or who may become pregnant. DISCLAIMER: No part of this description has been evaluated by the FDA. BUCKLE UP BUTTERCUP!

Thriller Magazine Synopsis:

Featuring established and new literary voices comes the second issue of Thriller Magazine! This issue features short stories that will leave readers on the edge of their seat, amazing artwork, and interviews with authors. Showcasing a wide range of tales, everything from physiological thrillers, to brutal tales of murder, to political thrillers, and much more, this issue has it all!

Authors included are: Chris Fortunato, Michael Bracken, Michael Mallory, Robb T. White, & John H. Dromey.

This issue also contains interviews with acclaimed authors Robert Kidera & Steven Harms along with book reviews of each respective author's newest work.

The artwork featured in this issue was created by a new technique called “pyro-painting.” The artist, Michael Stewart, explains how he uses this technique to craft his paintings.

Be sure to check it out and grab your copy!

 You will get a PDF (3MB) file