Kendall Hunter: In person

One of the most-read blog posts I've had this month is on Kendall Hunter, the main character in my upcoming short story, Callipygian. In my post on Aug. 2, I spoke of my love for the character. She is tall, beautiful, single, smart and very, very clever. As an FBI criminal profiler, she is one of the best and is at the top of her game. And I love writing her because she is interesting and fun, is well-dressed and has killer instincts.

Callipygian is one of 18 short stories in The Fine Art of Murder, an anthology to be published in early October by the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime. Our official launch and book signing will be Sunday, Oct. 9, at the Barnes and Noble bookstore at 86th Street and Keystone Avenue in Indianapolis. But you can pre-order the book now on Amazon ($12.99) or on Walmart ($9.41).

When I think of Kendall Hunter, I think of her as she might appear above -- in the FBI field office in Philadelphia, working to solve some horrible murder. She works hard in a what many consider a man's world and, in the process, has become very good at something historically considered as male.

Anyway, here is Kendall. Get the anthology and enjoy all the stories and characters therein. You won't be disappointed.

Thanks for reading.

WHAAAT? That can't be right!

I was in Alexandria, Va., last week in the same hotel -- Hotel Monaco on King Street -- where I stayed in August 2015. During my stay last year, I posted something on Facebook about my experience right after I arrived. And I decided on the one-year anniversary of that FB post, I'd revisit it and share it with you on my blog. It's not so much about writing as it is an experience.

It was a worrisome and stressful situation in 2015 but read what I wrote to the end. While it could use a little editing and tightening in places, it expressed how I was feeling at the time. I could re-write it but decided not to.

So here it is, from Aug. 25, 2015. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for reading.

******
So we had just registered in a hotel, some 600 miles from home, and were getting off the elevator on the way to the room when my cell phone rang. It was my dad. Now I told him I would be away – we discussed it yesterday – and I called him before I boarded the plane this morning. But when he called, he sounded confused, said he wasn’t feeling well and wanted me to come over. He sounded scared, which scared me. I told him to call 911 – there’s a hospital a half mile from his house – and I started trying to reach relatives back home.

To make a long story short, he’s okay. Medical personnel at the hospital checked him out and he’s okay, except somewhat dehydrated. I spent more than two hours trying to remain calm and keeping my worry at bay. And I’m grateful to my Uncle Arthur, Aunt Sharron, cousins Turae and Eric, and brother David for checking on my dad and keeping me informed as I considered the difficulty and possible costs of ending my trip and going home.

It was beautiful outside today and not too hot. There was no reason to sit around doing nothing but worrying while we waited to hear from relatives back home. So Angela and I went to have lunch, settling on a French-style café in the next block, where we sat at an outdoor table and enjoyed a couple of salads and watched the foot and vehicular traffic.

It was warm and pretty outside, and news was good from back home. But despite an exterior calm that I had been keeping for some time, I struggled getting my emotions in check. I felt stressed and couldn’t return to feeling normal.

 Then, I looked up at a passing truck for a food company called Warner (I think). And on the side of the truck was a picture of a grandmotherly looking woman and under the picture it mentioned something about recipes from Aunt Pussy.

WHAAAT? That can’t be right! Aunt Pussy?

I blinked and looked again. It really said Aunt Peggy.

So I also want to thank the Warner company and Aunt Peggy. They brought a smile to my face and lightened my mood.

Aunt Peggy, indeed.

The Fine Art of Murder

I had planned to blog today about lines in novels, song lyrics, plays and movies that awed or inspired me. But I learned something big today.

The Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime's newest anthology, The Fine Art of Murder, is now available for pre-order on Amazon and Walmart. (If I didn't screw it up, the links are below.) And my short story, Callipygian, is in the collection. It's about an FBI profiler who, while on vacation in Indianapolis visiting family, is drawn  into the investigation of three pieces of stolen art, including a painting called -- you guessed it -- Callipygian. Things get interesting when the prime suspect in the theft is murdered.

Edited by Brenda Stewart and Diana Catt, the collection is wonderful. I, of course, have seen a draft copy and have read the stories, and they are great. (Mine, in particular, of course.) It's a good collection and you'll enjoy it. Plus, proceeds benefit the education programs of the chapter.

The anthology's publication date is in early October but you can order it now. The pre-order price on Amazon is $12.99, while Walmart's discount price is $9.41. That's a discount of about 28 percent. (I have no earthly idea how Walmart came up with that price.)

Anyway, get The Fine Art of Murder today.

And thanks for reading.

https://www.amazon.com/Fine-Art-Murder-Collection-Stories/dp/1681570238/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1471896943&sr=8-4&keywords=the+fine+art+of+murder


https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Fine-Art-of-Murder-A-Collection-of-Short-Stories/52607722

Don't make me come over there

WARNING: I gonna get real up in here and so all my Christian readers may want to cover their ears or look away. I just saying . . .

I was in Alexandria, Va., all week, and just got back today. Had a good time. Ate well, even had a couple of glasses of champagne from the bottle the management at the Hotel Monaco sent up for our wedding anniversary. (Last time I had a drink was about three years ago.) Walked around a lot, shopped, did tourist-y things, took a boat ride on the Potomac River, went to Ben's Chilli Bowl (one of my favorite places in Washington).

Generally slept late because, after a day of just fun, I usually wrote well into the night. So it was a good time all around.

After one last walk around Alexandria today, we left for the airport, Reagan National. When we got to the departure gate, there were people standing around everywhere. The flight was both delayed and over-booked. When asked, we opted to take a later flight, which allowed a young mother from Carmel, Ind., to make the flight home. But in the end, the airline also got us on the flight we were originally scheduled to take. We departed about 45 minutes late.

It took a while to get to the runway because we were following a number of other flights out and authorities were using that same runway for incoming flights from the south that was used for departing flights taking off to the north.

When we were second in line to leave, a Southwest flight landed. And as the US Air flight ahead of us moved onto the runway, a guy on our plane across the aisle from me said, in a voice loud enough for everyone on the plane to hear above the sound of the jet engines, "This fucking airline sucks."

What did he just say? I couldn't believe it.

In this day and age, when people are normally nervous about anything out of the ordinary happening at an airport or on a plane, thinking it could be the prelude to a terrorist attack, this jerk decided to get big and bad and loud. All over a situation which, for the most part, wasn't the airline's fault.

I looked across the aisle and said, "Don't make me come over there and bitch slap your sorry ass and then throw your fat ass out onto the tarmac so we can all get going."

Well, I actually only said that it my head. Aloud, I said nothing. I did what everyone else near him did; stared at him with death beams coming out of our eyes.

I'm a fiction writer, as you know, but some of the best stuff I get is real, such as with this jerk. This situation isn't much but it would be a great part in a short story. The fat guy who gets thrown from the back of a plane. Didn't happen but everyone of the plane probably wished it did. And as a writer, I can make that wish come true.

Man, it's great to be a writer. Because the only limitation is one's imagination.

Now what I should have said . . .

Well, maybe next time. But for now, thanks for reading.



  

Rejections III -- Update

I wrote and posted a blog five days ago on rejections. Specifically, I mentioned an award I had submitted to and was waiting to hear the decision, fearing the inevitable rejection.

The e-mail rejection arrived today.

Amazingly -- and quite gratefully -- I don't feel bad about it. I must be getting old. (Stop laughing out there. I see you.)

Though I edited some of it down, back in late June I submitted the first 5,000 words of An Untidy Affair, a detective novel with private eye David Blaise, for the 2016 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, which is sponsored by the national office of Sisters in Crime. This is the third year for the award, which grants $1,500 to its recipient.

The winner this year is Stephane Dunn, whom I don't know. But congrats to her. I'm sure she is more than deserving.

The award is named after Eleanor Taylor Bland, a pioneer in crime fiction who passed away six years ago. As it says on the SinC website, the goal of the award is "to support the recipient in activities related to crime fiction writing and career development." I can use some support in both those areas. And it is all the more important given that the latest survey of SinC shows fewer than 5 percent of its members are black.

I knew it was a longshot but I had nothing to lose. And I'm sure the organization, of which I have been a member for nearly a decade, would have preferred a woman, since the stated goal of SinC is the advancement of female mystery and crime writers. But one of my favorite things about Sisters in Crime is that the organization supports and promotes female writers but doesn't discriminate against us Mister Sisters. I am proud to be a member of Sisters in Crime and currently serve as vice president of the Speed City chapter of SinC. Speed City covers all of Indiana and our next short story anthology, The Fine Art of Murder, comes out in early October.

But rejection is common in writing, as it is in more creative areas. So I'm okay. I will just keep on keepin' on. There are more novels and short stories to write and more agents and publications to submit to.

So watch out world. I'm still coming for you.

Thanks for reading.

A writer's block blocker: Someone walks into the room . . .

As writers, we have all had to deal with writer's block; that condition when we are staring at the blank page and nothing is coming out. It's a difficult and scary situation.

Writers have written about it so much -- in books, blogs, videos, newsletters, in person, etc. -- that it's a small wonder that the problem still exists. Yet it does.

And so I decided to put in my two-cents worth.

That's not to say I have the remedy. If I did, there wouldn't so many novels, short stories and essays that I have started and never finished. Plus, if I had the remedy for writer's block, I'd be a millionaire. What writer wouldn't be willing to pay me a king's ransom for the cure to a serious problem that affects us all?

For some time, I have thought writer's block is basically just boredom. You are bore with what you are writing. And if that is the case, then so will the reader.

I think the quickest cure to that is to write through the problem as quickly as possible. Instead of a lot of imaginative description and detail setting the scene -- the look of the flowers, the smell of the air, the feel of the breeze, the sound of the birds, the feel of the dying person's pulse -- just write "Helen died on a Monday afternoon" and move on. The faster you get through it, the faster you put wirter's block behind you.

But a couple of years ago, someone told me about a wonderful cure to writer's block. Obviously, it really only works in fiction, and not in all fiction. It's best probably in mysteries or suspense fiction, although it can still work in a romance or other genre.

When you don't know what to write next, have someone walk into the room with a loaded gun in their hand. Regardless of what's going on in the scene prior to that, having someone walk in with a gun will change and energize everything. There are so many possibilities. Is it a man or a woman? Are they there for good or ill? Are they even in the right room? It doesn't matter because a load gun dramatically changes everything, both in fiction and real life.

So, the next time you are blocked, try adding a loaded gun, or at least some other weapon. You will be amazed with the results.

And hopefully, it will help your story. If nothing else, it could put a smile on your face as you consider all the possibilities.

Thanks for reading.    

Rejections III

It's been a while since I have touched on this subject. Probably the last time was in 2010. But that's not to say it hasn't happened or deeply touched me since then because it has. Query letters to agents and publishers, a manuscript submission, awards and contests -- lots of rejections.

I am thinking about it now because I am expecting another rejection soon, perhaps as early as Monday. I submitted the beginning of my detective novel An Untidy Affair for an award. I should probably hear by Monday. It's not for a publication, but there is a cash award. Hooray. The submission was some time ago and I have managed not to think about it much until now.

 Now I know this is getting the cart before the horse. (Where have I heard that before?) But while the submission was strong -- it's a good book and even in rejection at the end of last year, a publisher said it was a good piece of work -- but I'm sure the competition is strong. And I guess it is easier to be pessimistic at this point so I won't be as disappointed when the news comes. (Kind of like Donald Trump has started to say the November is rigged just in case Clinton beats him.)

The novel reached the quarterfinals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest back in 2010, so I know it has potential. That was the reason I submitted it to this award.  (No, I'm not going to say which award right now. You will have to wait.)

Since in the publishing industry luck is nearly as important as talent, wish me luck. I already have the talent part handled.

Thanks for reading and don't give up.

Do you know Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

It's a joke, of course. "Do you know Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?"

I first heard it on television many years ago, as a child, actually. I think it was on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The punchline is: "I didn't know he moved."

To get the joke, you need a modicum of knowledge of U.S. history and even as a child I got it. And later, as an adult, I used the joke as the baseline (and a low baseline, at that) for determining whether a person had any understanding or knowledge of history. You'd be amazed at the number of people who don't.

As a writer, you need to hit the sweet spot between people's knowledge and understanding of your topic or subject, and your presentation of something new and imaginative. Lean too far on the former and the reader will get bored and stop reading. Can't have that.

But to lean too heavily on the latter could result in the reader lacking context. And again, the reader could stop reading. Can't have that.

My beta readers -- a select group of friends and colleagues and others -- like my writing, which is great. Members of my critique group are great at pointing out problems in both my writing and storytelling.

But as a fiction writer, I am still insecure. Am I giving my reader something new and imaginative but without a context they can understand? Am I just writing what others have written before? I truly don't know.

I was much more confident as a reporter. I generally knew what I wrote hit the mark. But fiction seems so much more subjective, although I know it's not.

 Anyway, I'm working on it. But in the meantime, do you know Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

Thanks for reading. 

A long sentence

A long sentence isn't necessarily a better sentence. Often times, it's just a long sentence.

Word.

Thanks for reading. Now get back to writing.

The ending

Last week, I wrote about the beginning of a novel or short story. Or more specifically, I wrote about the sentence that comes AFTER the first sentence, the second sentence, which must also be a grabber and keep grabbing.

Today, I want to skip past the beginning, over the middle, and go straight to the ending. Because it is the ending that the reader will most likely remember first.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a fan of my short story Miss Hattie Mae's Secret. She loved the beginning and, I admit, I do, too. Of all my published and unpublished fiction, it is perhaps my favorite opening. (As I posted last Aug. 1, in this blog, the first two paragraphs have a total of only five words. ["Miss Hattie Mae Farted. Often."] It is minimalist to say the least.) But the reader, who enjoyed the story, was upset with the ending. She wondered what happened next. And, in not knowing, was somewhat vexed.

(For those of you who haven't read the entire story, it ends with the county sheriff coming to visit Miss Hattie Mae to discuss the newly unearthed secret that she has kept for eight decades.)

One of the goals in writing, particularly in genre fiction such as mysteries which I write, is to tie up loose ends. Miss Hattie Mae's Secret started and ended with her, all 95 years of age, on the porch and farting. I originally planned to write more but when I got to that point I stopped because I thought I said all that needed to be said. Anything further I left to the reader.

In all stories, real and fictional, something happens before the point where the writer begins the story and something happens after the story ends. Fictional life, as in real life, is part of a continuum and the writer, almost arbitrarily, begins and ends the telling wherever they choose.

But as a writer, you do want to leave the reader satisfied at the end. Otherwise, they may feel like they wasted their time. You don't want to do that. Case in point, my favorite book from last year. The Martian. I loved the story and enjoyed the book. And, having read it several times, do not think I wasted my time. But I wasn't thrilled with the ending, which was just after Mark Watney is rescued and is beginning his seven-month journey home. The movie, I think, did it better. It ends with Mark back on earth and training new NASA recruits on survival.

I think I approach an ending in fiction the way I always did as a daily journalist. When I got to the end, I stopped writing. When you have said it all, just stop.

And so it is with this.

Thanks for reading.

The end.





   

 

After the opening line, what comes next?

So, what's the next line?

From writers to editors, from agents to teachers and writing coaches, from publishers to Internet bloggers, everyone in the writing and publishing industry stresses the importance of a good opening line. It's almost as if you don't nail the opening line, you might as well give up and go home. While I doubt readers care as much about this as writers do, I don't doubt its importance, which is why I -- like so many writers -- sweat that first line.

Oddly, we don't tend to get as insane with what comes next -- the second line. And why not?

That question came to mind thanks to a friend and former colleague.

The venerable sage Joe Boyce was a Chicago cop back in the late 1960s -- sit back and contemplate that for a second. A black cop in Chicago in the late 60s -- before getting the journalism bug. He spent time at the Chicago Tribune before heading off to Time magazine, and then finally to the Wall Street Journal before retiring. He's a musician now and enjoying retirement.

Last month, on his Facebook page, he started posting a one-sentence prompt -- the opening sentence -- and asked his friends to write the next line. But one line only.

Some people wrote an interesting sentence, full of thought, full of promise. But frankly, some people wrote unimaginative, boring stuff. They seemed to give it no thought at all. And other people failed to read his instructions fully and wrote more than one sentence.

But I took it seriously. And I followed Joe's  instructions.

Regardless of the prompt, I tried to write something as compelling as the first sentence. Because it's the next sentence and the next sentence and the next that makes for good, consistent writing and storytelling. I knew that, of course, but Joe just reminded me of it. Your writing can lose a reader at any point. Therefore, the next sentence is always important.

So, Joseph, thank you, as always, for keeping it real.

And to everyone else, thanks for reading. And keep writing.

Kendall Hunter

I'm in love. Deeply. Passionately. Completely.

I often get a thrill just thinking about The Woman.

Her name is Kendall. Kendall Hunter. And she is currently the love of my life. Well, kinda.

Now, this would be more than a bit adulterous, except in this context. (It still might be, even in this context, but I don't think so.) That's because Kendall is fictional. Created from whole cloth from my brain. (Am I sounding messianic?) That's not to say I didn't have some inspiration for the character from a friend, a muse who has proven to be very helpful as I develop Kendall. But all that Kendall is comes from me. I just don't know yet what's going to happen to her.

Kendall Hunter is the main character in my upcoming short story, Callipygian, which will be published this October by the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime in their anthology, "The Fine Art of Murder." Closer to the publication date, I'll drop an excerpt. But for now, I'll just say it's the story of an FBI criminal profiler (Kendall) who, while she is on vacation in Indianapolis visiting family, is drawn into the investigation into the theft of three valuable paintings, including one called Callipygian. The plot thickens, as they say, when the main suspect is found murdered.

(Callipygian. I also love that word. I was listening to an interview by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air about two years ago and her guest used the word. Terry, who is smart, well-educated and well-prepared in interviews, didn't appear to know the word, which I didn't either. When I looked it up, I decided then and there to somehow use it. So I built this short story around it.)

While this will be my first published story with this character, it isn't the first time I have written this character. The first story is called Black on Black in Black. White folks may not get that but it should ring a bell with black folks. In that story, Kendall is called in to profile a serial killer.

Kendall is a tall, beautiful, single black woman, who is smart and clever. Very clever, in fact. Work is her focus, and she does it extremely well, but she needs to get a personal life. And she harbors a deep secret from her past that could turn her life around. It's what I'm trying to explore in each new story -- there are four in total, including my current short story WIP (work in progress). Discovering who she is is why I'm so in love with her. She's interesting and fun, occasionally funny, brainy, well-dressed and has a killer body. (I like big butts and I cannot lie. What else can I say?)

But like I said earlier, I don't know yet what's going to happen to her. I can't keep her forever, even as I start publishing her stories. It'll be sad when it's over.

But I know it will come to an end, even if she doesn't. I am a fickle lover and I know in time I will fall madly in love with another fictional characters. Those I have loved in the past have just let it go and moved on. I only hope Kendall Hunter will do the same and not become  a jealous lover, willing to do anything to hold on to me. Because that WOULD be scary.

I'm having fun with her now. And after the story is published, I hope you will enjoy her, too.

Thanks for reading and keep on writing.

An excerpt of Miss Hattie Mae's Secret, published in Decades of Dirt (2015).

Hello, everyone. Many of you have 'liked' my author page on Facebook (Look for author MB Dabney, on Facebook, and like me if you haven't already.) and months ago read on excerpt from my story, Miss Hattie Mae's Secret in the anthology, Decades of Dirt. My story is the last one of 15 stories of murder, mystery and mayhem in the book, which is still available on Amazon for $9.99. And you can also get an e-book version for $2.99.
So please, if you can and haven't yet, get a copy of Decades of Dirt. And enjoy all the wonderful stories you will find there.
And for a taste, here is an excerpt from the beginning of Miss Hattie Mae's Secret by MB Dabney.
_____  

Miss Hattie Mae farted...

Often.

When anyone mentioned the flatulence, she’d blame it on the dog. She blamed most things on the dog. Only problem was, Miss Hattie Mae didn’t have a dog, hadn’t for years.

What Miss Hattie Mae did have was a secret – one that spanned decades. The secret was like a respectful traveling companion: generally silent but always present. She was one month shy of 96 and the secret had come to define her life for more than eight decades.

Her small, five-room dwelling had a distinctive, although not all together unpleasant, aroma from all the years Miss Hattie Mae had lived, cooked and farted in the house. She was born there, lived there most of her life (even after she married), and raised her children under its leaky roof.

Hattie Mae’s father Ezra Reeves built the house right after he moved to the area with his new bride Ruth the year before Hattie Mae was born. At the time, the house sat at one end of their land, which stretched 40 acres. Over time, and with hard work and careful buying, Ezra’s property grew to more than 200 acres on which his extended family farmed cotton and soybeans. A small portion of land, the part closest to the house, also held apple and peach trees. Her mother’s apple pies were legendary in the small black community outside of Clarksville, Tennessee. When she wasn’t forced to work in the fields when she was growing up, Hattie Mae liked to play along a line of oak trees visible at the other end of their property.

The house, now sitting on a small parcel of land, was all the property she had left, though it wasn’t her only financial asset. In truth, Miss Hattie Mae was a millionaire, a recent development she cared little about.

Last year, the federal government used eminent domain to take most of her land – and paid her handsomely for it, which explained her wealth. Plans were for the expansion of a four-lane highway for traffic heading to and from Clarksville. Large land movers arrived last week to start tearing down those oak trees and reworking the property in preparation for the highway construction.

 But the land held secrets; long buried secrets that were about to be exposed for the first time in decades.

Miss Hattie Mae’s eyesight was poor, but she could still distinguish the flashing lights atop the police cars among the land movers at the edge of the line of oak trees.

“Boy,” she said, her tongue licking her lips, “Betta go tel-ah-phone yo pappy.”

____

Thanks for reading.