Pssst...have we got a deal for you!

Is it raining where you are? Still chilly? Is it time, maybe to grab a cup of tea, and a comforter, and curl up in a chair and read?

But, you say, I have to much to do--it would be lovely, but, sigh, my responsibilities will interfere.
No time to read a book.

Pssst. Hey. How 'bout a nice short story?

Today on Jungle Red, we are happy and proud to introduce you the five nominees for the AGATHA Award for Best Short Story. And to offer their stories for your reading pleasure.

No waiting, no traffic, no credit cards or squally babies. Just--a click or two, and you'll be transported to the holidays, or another century., or...well, you'll see. And if a couple of people get killed, well, what can we tell you. That's how it goes in mystery world.

We’ll give you the title, the description, and just the first line! And a link to read the rest. And then the JRW question.


"Femme Sole" by Dana Cameron
Boston Noir (Akashic Books)

From Dana Cameron:In 1740s Boston, Anna Hoyt owns a North-End tavern and all the local thugs—including her husband—want a piece of it.

"A moment of your time, Anna Hoyt.” Click here to read the rest.


JRW says: “What do you think about it?”
DANA says: “About the story: I'm always delighted when my work makes my friends and family nervous...”

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The Worst Noel" by Barb Goffman

The Gift of Murder (Wolfmont Press)

From Barb Goffman: When a little too much family togetherness, coupled with some professional humiliation caused by Mom, pushes Gwen over the edge, she plans a Christmas Eve dinner that no one will ever forget.

Okay, Gwen. Get ready to fake it. Click here to read the whole story.

JRW asks:”What do you think of it?”
BARB: “What I think about the story: The story has been called both funny and disturbing, which delights me because it shows the black humor came right through. "

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"Handbaskets, Drawers and a Killer Cold"

by Kaye George Crooked ezine

From Kaye George: A Chicago cop, uncovering a possible felony committed by his wayward brother-in-law, has to decide whose wrath he fears more, his wife's or his captain's, while battling a killer of a winter cold.

"If your brother screws up once more..." Click here to read the whole story.

JRW asks: “What do you think about it?”
Kaye says: “What I think about the nomination? I'll let you know when I come back to Planet Earth.”

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"On the House" by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Quarry (Level Best Books)

From Hank Phillippi Ryan: A twisty tale of broken promises, broken hearts and intricately-planned revenge proves when true love goes wrong, a woman's best friend may be her dog. Or--not.

“Do you think he's dangerous?" Click here to read the whole story.


JRW asks: What do you think about it?
HANK: “I’m so grateful for the nomination...oh, the story? Readers always argue about whether the killer will get away with it—I love that.”

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"Death Will Trim Your Tree" by Elizabeth Zelvin
The Gift of Murder (Wolfmont Press)


From Elizabeth Zelvin a not-so-typical Christmas story--Bruce wrestles with the Xmas lights, goes to the hardware store, and solves a murder.

I sat on the floor in Jimmy and Barbara's living room with a pile of blinking electrical spaghetti in my lap and ground my teeth.
Click here to read the whole story

JRW asks: “What do you think about it?”
LIZ says: Not sure what you mean by "what you think about it." You mean like does my opening still make me laugh every time I read it?

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But wait--there's more! Are you now thinking--wow, I could write a short story! Well, do! And there's still time to submit it to the Al Blanchard Award.

The Al Blanchard Award is given at New England Crime Bake which is held every November in the Boston area. The award is given for a crime story by a New England author or for a crime story with a New England setting. It must be previously unpublished and may not be more than 5,000 words in length. The story may include the following genres: mystery, thriller, suspense, caper, and horror. (No torture/killing of children or animals.)

The prize is $100 in cash, publication in THIN ICE, Level Best Books' eighth crime fiction anthology, plus admission to the Crime Bake Conference. It costs nothing to enter. The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2010. Details can be found at http://crimebake.org/Al.htm

Good luck, everyone!

Nancy Martin Explains It All: Including Chickaboomboom

"In this stellar first in a new series, Martin introduces Roxy Abruzzo, ultra-sexy Pittsburgh sleuth and owner of Bada Bling Architectural Salvage... "
STARRED REVIEW Publishers Weekly



HANK: Nancy Martin's an amazing mixture of Grace Kelly and Rosalind Russell and Dorothy Parker. That's what I think at least. With a little--hmmm...Glinda the Good Witch thrown in. (Since wonderful things seem to happen whenever she's around.) She's also none of the hardest working and most generous people in the biz.



So when Nancy Martin decided to put her hilariously best-selling Blackbird sisters on hold and go for something completely different--many of us thought--of COURSE. Genius. How did she decide to do it? (And--should we?) As always, Nancy knows all. And is here to dish.



HANK: So, Nancy. You have taken the exciting step of creating a brand new series heroine--where did Roxy (the main character in Our Lady of Immaculate Deception) come from, and why? (Set in Pittsburgh, the series stars Roxy Abruzzo, a tough girl from the Rust Belt “with a heart of black and gold.”)

NANCY: I don't know about you, Hank, but I most enjoy reading books that surprise me. And recently I decided I might scream if I read one more mystery about a sweet woman sleuth with a cat and a cop boyfriend and a meddling mother.





Sure, Agatha Christie mysteries always seemed to feature a vicar and the lady of the manor and the attractive young couple, but when do those stock characters become boring cliches?

Television was turned on its ear by the likes of Tony Soprano, Nancy Botwin and Nurse Jackie. But when I thought about our genre, I wondered: Where are our ground-breaking characters? The bad girls, for instance? The characters who take chances, make wrong choices and surprise readers? Are writers limited to only writing about nice girls? I wanted something new to read, and I figured I'd better try writing it.

About the same time I was stewing about all this, my husband and I bought a very old house which is lovely and full of character, but there's always a disaster looming. (Ex: Two weeks ago, our copper gutters fell down. Ack!) During our repairs and renovations, we have met every kind of contractor known to suckers like ourselv----er, I mean typical homeowners.

The crew we hired to fix the porch, for instance, actually included a couple of guys wearing Lojack ankle bracelets, which the contractor tried to convince me were the "latest thing" for engaged couples. The girl gets a diamond, and the guy gets an electronic locator. Needless to say, we decided to hire a different crew when our kitchen renovation became unavoidable. The woman contractor who took charge of that job got me thinking about tough women in non-traditional careers. Roxy started to grow in my imagination--a woman who considers herself an expert in architectural salvage, but actually runs a junk yard and has to be *really* tough to deal with the people she encounters. Roxy's definitely full of surprises.

HANK: The Roxy books have been described as Chickaboomboom. That is--wonderful.
Um, what does that mean?

NANCY: If you figure it out, please tell me! Publisher's Weekly came up with "chickaboomboom" for OUR LADY OF IMMACULATE DECEPTION, not me. I think it means a girl thriller--a hybrid between a mystery and a suspense novel, but with a woman driving the action--lots of action--and, yeah, there's sex, too. But any other writer who wants to try writing "chickaboomboom" should make her own story choices. Labels can force writers to pigeonhole and limit ourselves.

HANK: You've been such a fixture in the mystery world--and by that I mean a pillar, a goddess, a paragon. How do you think things have changed since you started writing? In fact, how have *you* changed?

NANCY: How have *I* changed after thirty years of keeping my butt in the chair to write books? My butt has changed, that's for sure! Otherwise, I hope I've become more generous to other writers, because we're all in this together.

How has our world changed? The publishing biz definitely ebbs and flows. I rode the big wave of the romance genre in the 80s and jumped ship just as the tide receded. I think we've experienced a similar high tide for mysteries in recent years, and now things are beginning to recede again. The marketplace gets flooded. Readers tire of us or get lost. Technology changes the game, etc, etc.

But one big factor that always drives change in publishing is . . . us.
Writers have the power to make things different. We have more control of our fates than we sometimes think. We need to push the limits, come up with new ideas, stretch the boundaries of the wonderfully flexible literary form that is the mystery novel. Take chances--that's my motto these days.

HANK: Check out Nancy's website--where Roxy even has a playlist!


It includes, of course, Naughty Girl, Bad Girl, and of course, um, Respect. (Any ideas for what she should add?) Nancy will stop by to say hi--so questions for Nancy--or Roxy? Bring it on, sistahs. (And bruthas.) As Roxy says--just keep reading, and nobody gets hurt.

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Cool stuff:
Winner of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement award for mystery writing from Romantic Times magazine, Nancy Martin is the author of 48 pop fiction novels in mystery, suspense, historical and romance genres. Nancy created The Blackbird Sisters in 2002--- mysteries about three impoverished Main Line heiresses who adventure in couture and crime --as if“Agatha Christie had wandered onto the set of Sex and The City.” Nominated for the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery of 2002, HOW TO MURDER A MILLIONAIRE won the RT award for Best First Mystery and was a finalist for the Daphne DuMaurier Award. Nancy lives in Pittsburgh, serves on the board of Sisters in Crime and is a founding member of Pennwriters. She blogs at the popular and trend-setting The Lipstick Chronicles.

PRIZES! We are delighted to offer a free personally signed copy of OUR LADY OF THE IMMACULATE DECEPTION to one lucky lucky commenter! Winner announced tomorrow...
(if you don't win, sigh, check out Mystery Lovers Bookshop, which will send you a signed copy!)

and also tomorrow...short stuff. (Clue: If you'll be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal...)

CRIME BEGINS--AT HOME

Scrabble. Are you any good at it? I thought I was—until I played with Jonathan. Early on in our “courtship,” competitive me challenged my now-husband to a game of Scrabble or two…between us here at JRW, I was always pretty good at it and figured it would show him I was not just a pretty face. (Joke, okay? Joke.)

Anyway, that lasted about two games. Game three ended with me yelling “Earthquake! Earthquake!” and shaking the board until all the tiles scattered. Jonathan was too good. No more Scrabble at our house!

So I’m gonna set him up now, mano a mano, with Stephen D. Rogers. (Two men enter—one man leaves.)

Because I have just learned that if Stephen D. Rogers asks you to play Scrabble, don’t. And you’ll see why if you read his bio. But he probably won’t have time to challenge you to beat him at triple word scores, because he’s probably writing YET ANOTHER short story!

More than five hundred of his stories and poems—five hundred!-- have been selected to appear in more than two hundred publications, earning among other honors two "Best of Soft SF" winners, a Derringer (and five additional nominations), two "Notable Online Stories" from story South's Million Writers Award, honorable mention in "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror," mention in "The Best American Mystery Stories," and numerous Readers' Choice awards.

So, obviously, there’s not much time for Scrabble. But Steve’s a member of Mensa AND the National Scrabble Association. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.

But question is—did Steve learn how to play Scrabble as a kid? He says it was only after reading a certain review that he saw a pattern in his own short stories. And it has to do with— LIFAYM. I mean: FAMILY. (But you knew that.)

Steve: I never realized something about my own writings until a reviewer pointed out that many of the stories in SHOT TO DEATH revolved around family, but they do. The mother who kills in SMOKING GUN; the father who absents himself in BREAKDOWN; the young adult who attempts to flee her parent in TENANT AT WILL.

As I consider each of the stories in the collection, recall stories that have appeared elsewhere, I see again and again the trend and theme that crime begins at home.

Of course it makes sense. From the moment we're born, we're competing with family members for emotional and physical sustenance. It is within the framework of the family unit that we first learn -- or don't learn -- how to share, how to play nice, and how to get what we want.

Our family teaches us about customs, morals, and laws. We test limits to see how far they can be bent and what happens-- or doesn't happen -- when they're broken.

Then we enter the school system and go through the process again.
Enter the workplace and go through the process again. Start our own families and go through the process again.

All of which brings several questions to mind.

How big a part does family play in what you write or choose to read?

If you write, have you found family situations and personalities slipping into your fiction? If so, was it accidental?

Also if you write, does your family ever point at your fictional situations and personalities claiming to be the spark for what's on the page? If so, how often are your family members correct?

When you read, do you find families that echo your own? For better or for worse?

And there's no need to push. Everybody will get a turn to answer the questions, assuming they've finished their vegetables.

HANK: And I want to know—is your family good at Scrabble?

(Tomorrow: NancyMartin! explains it all to us..)




Stephen D. Rogers mystery short story collection SHOT TO DEATH (31 stories of murder and mayhem!) is now out from Mainly Murder Press (http://www.mainlymurderpress.com/) SHOT TO DEATH has been described as "New England noir" (Richard Helms), "terse tales" (Linda Barnes) of "the dishonest, dysfunctional, and disappeared" (Kate Flora).