Society Members' News

The following members sent in publication news this month:

• Gail Farrelly, "What are You Doing New Year's Eve?", Kings River Life (December 30, 2015)
• John M. Floyd, "Up Perscope", Flash Bang Mysteries #2 (Winter-January 2016)
• "Night Moves", Woman's World (January 25, 2015)
• Kaye George, "This Isn't the Way" Flash Bang Mysteries #2 (Winter-January 2016)
• Paul Lees-Haley, "The Therapist", Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (January-February 2016)
• Robert Lopresti's Greenfellas was picked as one of Kings River Life's Best Books of 2015
• Patricia L. Morin, Deadly Illusions, ten-story collection (December 2015)
• Mary Reed and Eric Mayer writing as Eric Reed, The Guardian Stones (Poisoned Pen Press, January 2016)
• Jacqueline Seewald, The Killing Land, a romantic Western thriller (Five Star/Cengage, January 20, 2016)
• B.K. Stevens, "Still Life in South Dakota", Mystery Weekly Magazine (January 2016)
• "A Sporting Chance", Kings River Life (January 2, 2016)
• Elizabeth Zelvin, Breaches & Betrayals: Collected Stories (January 2016)

Email news for next month's post to G_SO at YAHOO dot COM.

Society Members' News

The following members sent in publication news this month:

• Gail Farrelly, "The Ghost Who Came to Dinner", Kings River Life (November 23, 2015)
• "Tattletales", Yonkers Tribune (November 23, 2015)
• Terrie Farley Moran, "Inquiry and Assistance", Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (January-February 2016)
• Robert Petyo, "The Principal's Kids", Mystery Weekly Magazine (December 2015)
• Richard Posner writing as Miles Archer, Never Kill a Cat and Other Stories (Untreed Reads, November 17, 2015)
• Kathleen A. Ryan, "A Spontaneous Decision", Crooked Holster: Ritual ed. Jo Young and Sandra Kohls (December 13, 2015)
• John Weagly, "Knife Fight on Christmas Avenue", Shotgun Honey (December 21, 2015)
• "The Woman Who Waltzed with Ulysses S. Grant", Spelk (December 23, 2015)
• "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Goose", a play at Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, Chicago, IL (December 9, 2015 thru January 3, 2016)
• "Raccoon Pants", part of THE FIVE MINUTE MILE: THEATRE ON THE RUN, Cone Man Running Productions at Queensbury Theatre, 12777 Queensbury Lane, Houston, TX (December 9 thru December 19, 2015)
• "A Pigman Walks Among Us", part of POP UP THEATER 2015: FREAK SHOW, Panglossian Productions at the Williamsburg Library, 515 Scotland Street, Williamsburg, VA (December 11, 2015)
• "Syphilis Steve and the Christmas Miracle" and "Azzmetta Abbington's Mistletoe Meatballs" are both part of A VERY SPECIAL THEATREGASM CHRISTMAS SPECIAL Theatre ‘d Art at Cottonwood Center for the Arts, 427 E. Colorado Avenue, Colorado Springs, CO (December 11 thru December 13, 2015)
• "Azzmetta Abbington's Mistletoe Meatballs", part of HOBO ROBO 8: HOBOS WITH THEIR EYES ALL A-GLOW, Hobo Junction Productions at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Chicago, IL (December 14 thru December 16, 2015)

Email news for next month's post to G_SO at YAHOO dot COM.

Flash and Bang: A Short Mystery Fiction Society Anthology

Cover ©2015 Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover design by Ginny Glass

OCTOBER 8, 2015 - Untreed Reads has published Flash and Bang, the first Short Mystery Fiction Society member anthology, in paperback (ISBN 9781611878295), large-print paperback (ISBN 9781611878998), and ebook.

Member and Untreed Reads editor-in-chief Jay Hartman called for unpublished mystery, suspense, or thriller stories containing either a "flash" or a "bang".

Limiting submissions to one flash (300–1,000 words) and one short (1,500–3,000 words) per member, Jay received more than 300.

His selection of 19 stories ranges from historical to contemporary, cozy to hardboiled, amateur and animal sleuth to police and private detective:

• "The Conflagration at the Nameless Cotton Gin" by Bobbi A. Chukran
• "The Perfect Crime" by Herschel Cozine
• "Don't Let the Cop into the House" by O'Neil De Noux
• "Fireworks" by P.A. De Voe
• "Rosie's Choice" by John M. Floyd
• "The Wrong Girl" by Barb Goffman
• "Murder on Elm Street" by Su Kopil
• "Silent Measures" by B.V. Lawson
• "Don't Be Cruel" by JoAnne Lucas
• "A Simple Job" by Andrew MacRae
• "Arthur" by Sandra Murphy
• "Thor's Breath" by Suzanne Berube Rorhus
• "Beautiful Killer" by Judy Penz Sheluk
• "A Day Like No Other" by Walter A.P. Soethoudt (translated by Willem Verhulst)
• "The Raymond Chandler Con" by Earl Staggs
• "The Bag Lady" by Laurie Stevens
• "Fractured Memories" by Julie Tollefson
• "The Fruit of Thy Loins" by Albert Tucher
• "Sierra Noir" by Tim Wohlforth

Individuals: If you purchase the paperback ($16.00) and ebook ($4.99) at the same time from the Untreed Reads Store, the ebook cost will be subtracted from your total.

Retailers and Libraries: All Untreed Reads print editions are available to be ordered through Ingram or printed through Espresso Book Machine. Ebook editions may be purchased at 200+ retailers and library distributors. If you are unable to obtain an ebook edition through your preferred retailer, please contact Jay Hartman (JHARTMAN at UNTREEDREADS dot COM).

To order directly from Untreed Reads:

• By purchase order: Complete the Winter 2015 catalog order form (Pages 49–51) and email to Jay Hartman or fax to (866) 946-5364. You will receive a complete quote before order is finalized.
• By credit card or PayPal: Email JHARTMAN at UNTREEDREADS dot COM or phone (510) 861-0663.

Reviewers: Email Jay Hartman for ebook review copies.

• Kevin R. Tipple's review on Kevin's Corner (September 28, 2015)
• Astilbe's review on Long and Short Reviews (December 11, 2015)
• Bill Crider's review on Mystery Scene Magazine's blog (as appeared in print issue No. 143, Winter 2016)

If you decide to review or carry copies of Flash and Bang at your bookstore or library, feel free to comment below. We're glad to steer readers your way.

Independent bookstores carrying copies:

• IndieBound
• The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren St., New York, NY 10007
  

Also available through these resellers:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble
• Kobo

Library vendors:

• Baker and Taylor Blio
• Baker and Taylor 360
• Freading
• Hoopla

Subscription services:

• Oyster
• Scribd
• Storytel

You can help promote Flash and Bang by putting an image of the book cover in the sidebar of your site. Copy and paste the following HMTL code:

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a title="How to Order" href="https://shortmystery.blogspot.com/2015/06/update-on-flash-and-bang-smfs-anthology.html" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-b2sXMg2yqMM/VgQw1RS0y6I/AAAAAAAAC7o/QuaOaNNPHNQ/s1600/FaB_FinalMedium-250x375.png" width="136" height="204" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1st SMFS-Member Anthology</td></tr> </tbody></table>

The image will link to this post, just like the image in the right sidebar of this blog.

Society Members' News

The following members sent in publication news this month:

• Peter DiChellis, "Soliciting Misery", Over My Dead Body! (October 2015)
• John M. Floyd, "Business Class", Saturday Evening Post (November-December 2015 print edition)
• "Three Strangers, Woman's World (November 26, 2015)
• Kaye George, "Heartbreak at Graceland", Memphis Noir (Akashic Books, November 2015)
• William Burton McCormick, "Deadly Signals", The Saturday Evening Post (October 30, 2015)
• A.J. Pompano, "The Bucket List", Best New England Crime Stories 2016: Red Dawn (November 2015)
• Jacqueline Seewald, Stacy's Song reprinted in ebook form (Clean Reads Press, November 2015)
• "Death Hereafter", Mystery Weekly Magazine (November 2015)
• "The Heir Hunt", Over My Dead Body! (October 2015)
• C.A. Verstraete, "The Nearly Ruined Thanksgiving", Mystery Weekly Magazine (November 26, 2015)
• "Puppy Love and Zombies", Young Adventurers: Heroes, Explorers, and Swashbucklers ed. Austin S. Camacho, Intrigue Press (December 1, 2015)

Email news for next month's post to G_SO at YAHOO dot COM.

The SMFS at Bouchercon 2015 (Raleigh, NC, Oct. 8-11)

Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, took place October 8–11, 2015 in Raleigh, North Carolina, at the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel and the Marriott City Center.

Here is everything Society-related at Bouchercon 2015:

• 2015 Derringer Presentation
• Friday Meetup Lunch
• Flash and Bang Anthology
• Also at Bouchercon 2015
• Murder Under the Oaks Bouchercon Anthology 2015
• Toni Kelner sponsoring hospitality suite
• Macavity Awards
• Noir at the Bar Bouchercon 2015
• Hospitality suite signings and giveways by Forge authors
• Shamus Awards
• S.J. Rozan's Basketball at Bouchercon
• Anthony Awards
• Panels Dedicated to Short Stories
• Other Panels with SMFS Members

Members' Publication News

The following members sent in publication news this month:

• M.H. Callway, "Glow Grass", Thirteen O'Clock, also featuring stories by members Melodie Campbell, Rosemary McCracken, and Joan O'Callaghan (Carrick Publishing, September 2015)
• Catherine Dilts, "Industrial Gray", Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (December 2015)
• James S. Dorr, "Lobster Boy and the Hand of Satan", How to Trick the Devil (Erebus Press, October 15, 2015)
• John M. Floyd, "Molly's Plan", The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 6, 2015)
• "Mill Street Blues", Woman's World (October 26, 2015)
• Mitzi Flyte, "Halloween Alibi", Kings River Life (October 24, 2015)
• J. Alan Hartman, Flash and Bang: A Short Mystery Fiction Society Anthology (Untreed Reads, October 8, 2015)
• Toni L.P. Kelner, Crooked as a Dog's Hind Leg, a Laura Fleming story collection (September 2015)
• (as Leigh Perry), The Skeleton Haunts a House (Berkley Prime Crime, October 6, 2015)
• "The Real Santa Claus", Dead But Not Forgotten: Stories from the World of Sookie Stackhouse, Ace reprint (October 2015)
• "Direct Report", Sieze the Night ed. Christopher Golden (Gallery Books, October 6, 2015)
• B.V. Lawson, Dies Irae (Crimetime Press, October 13, 2015)
• Robert Lopresti, "On the Ramblas", Murder Under the Oaks Bouchercon Anthology 2015 ed. Art Taylor (Down & Out Books, October 2015)
• "Nakhshon", Jewish Noir (PM Press, November 2015)
• Edith Maxwell (as Maddie Day), Flipped for Murder (Kensington, October 27, 2015)
• Laura Childs and Terrie Farley Moran, Parchment and Old Lace (Berkley, October 6, 2015)
• Josh and Laurie Pachter, "Coffee Date", The Saturday Evening Post (October 9, 2015)
• B.K. Stevens, Fighting Chance (The Poisoned Pencil, October 6, 2015)
• Melissa Yi, "Blood Diamonds", Jewish Noir (PM Press, November 2015)
• Elizabeth Zelvin, Journey of Strangers selected for publication by Kindle Press

Email news for next month's post to G_SO at YAHOO dot COM.

James Powell accepts the 2015 Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer

James Powell sent the following remarks to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine editor Janet Hutchings, who accepted the Golden Derringer on his behalf at Bouchercon 2015 opening ceremonies yesterday in Raleigh, North Carolina:

I am very grateful to the Short Mystery Fiction Society for awarding me the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement, all the more so because Ed and I were friends. He was a frequent visitor to Canadian mystery events. I recall one Crime Writers of Canada awards dinner where he and I were chosen to present the Arthur Ellis for Best Novel and in my share of the remarks I wondered why it took two short story writers to do the job and I think he found that amusing.

We all know his tremendous output of stories. But he was also a prodigious reader. Here our paths crossed again. I had been reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s travel writing including The Amateur Immigrant and The Silverado Squatters where Stevenson described his trip to America for his health and the long train trip across the country to California. Not long after, reading one of Ed’s stories, I saw he had been reading about that trip, too, only he had found a mystery story on the way where I had not.

Most of my reading now is history and biography. Someone once wrote that the time of your father's childhood is a golden age for readers. Perhaps it is for writers, too. That would be the beginning of the Twentieth Century for me. But my principle creation, the Ambrose Ganelon family, takes me farther back into the Nineteenth. I enjoy reading about these times. But it also helps me to perform that great hat trick, the greatest fiction of all, to convince the readers you know what you’re talking about.

For example, another Holmes (not Sherlock but Oliver Wendell) describes in Our Hundred Days in Europe in 1887 taking with him two new devices he thought the residents might be interested in, the safety razor and the luminous matchbox. This last handy object allowed you, waking up in the dark, to find a match to light the wall gas fixture. I had previously read, by the way, that Pierre and Marie Curie used to amuse their dinner guests by turning out the lights and passing a lump of radium from hand to hand around the table! I used the illuminated matchbox in an upcoming story in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

I have mentioned elsewhere that my first professional published story forty-eight years ago was based on an incident I heard about that took place in Monaco on the Riviera. But I had only spent an afternoon there and was afraid of being caught in some matter of fact, so I invented my own principality with its own history and people and streets and buildings. To date I have written some thirty or so stories about San Sebastiano, as I named it. It is said that even Homer nodded. (And I have probably nodded as many times as all the Simpsons put together.) But in case some nitpicker discovers a street that doesn't run the way in one of these stories as it does in another, I have also provided the principality with a geological fault. Thus I can said, “Oh, that was before the earthquake.” Or something equally face-saving.

In the end all our stories must be too short. May yours be as happy as mine have been. Thank you again.