Your bare foot strikes a rock, and agony flashes through your tormented body. Far away across the sunlit field you’ve seen a big red barn. But it runs from you and then swims back. Is it real? It has to be. You fight to place each foot carefully. If you fall, you won’t get back up again. Not before the drug drags you into insanity. Somehow you know that.
I love you, he said. Another lie, you know that now, too. But you don’t want to know. You can’t let yourself believe it. Not yet.
Don’t fall, don’t. Keep going.
Join the fun! Just click on the frog and post a story of your own. Then read others to see how they did. It’s amazing how many different ideas pop up from one photo.
Lately I’ve been (enjoyably) studying the women writers of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. It seems to be very popular right now to bandy the term “Queen of Crime” about, and there are many arguments over who exactly deserves the title. What makes a Queen of Crime? Not necessarily bestsellerdom, nor popularity at the time of publication. Nor even popularity right now, since many arguments have developed between fans who’ve just discovered certain authors. Myself, I want good writing that’s strong on atmosphere and place, engaging characters and a plot that’s full of clues but not obvious. I have my own list — what’s yours?
I’m always looking to add to my list and depend on NetGalley and Crime Classics to give me access to authors that I might never have stumbled across on my own. I get the ebook free as long as I write a review within a reasonable time, usually the end of the month. Heavens, my TBR list never seems to go down and who has time to flounder through the overgrown weed-ridden fields that Amazon has become?
Thanks to the reviews and descriptions, I decided to give “Answer in the Negative” by Henrietta Hamilton a try. Never heard of her, but apparently someone has listed her as a Queen of Crime.
I will say that this book is an enjoyable mental puzzle in the tradition of the Golden Age classics although published in 1959, which I consider at least ten years outside the era (again, much argument but never mind). Unfortunately, it’s almost too mental. In my review I gave only three stars because the puzzle seemed far too convoluted. As near as I can figure, most of the action takes place in two separate office groupings of a single business, each with its own entrances and exits, loosely connected by various hallways and all existing within a larger office building with yet more entrances, exits and day-and-night porters. At times following the sleuths (a charming couple) as they try to pin down timetables is like watching a bedroom farce – people constantly going in and out and narrowly missing each other.
Another reason for three stars is that I guessed the killer about a third of the way through, and after that it was just a matter of watching for substantiating clues or hints. That doesn’t happen very often, and the story was engaging enough that I was quite willing to keep reading in the hopes of being proved wrong. I wasn’t, but oh well. I haven’t read any other books by this author, but based on this one, I wouldn’t call her a Queen of Crime. Maybe a second or third cousin to a Princess.
(By the way, images are, clockwise from left, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Marjory Allingham and Dorothy L. Sayers.)
(This post was inspired by Friday Fictioneers hosted by Rochelle. The challenge asks for bloggers to write a story in 100 words or less in response to the photo prompt.)
I wait in the night park, winter in my soul.
Begging you to speak to me again, like you did the night you died.
You said, “I forgive you.”
What is it you forgive? Letting him win you away from me without a word? Following you with cow-eyes whenever you were with him? Or ripping wire from the park fence and wrapping it around his neck because he drove drunk and too fast, not caring that you were in the car too.
I buried him under summer grass. And wait for you in my sleepless winter.
A 100-word story that floated up from the swamp of my forgotten past. Many thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for another great prompt. You always get my imagination going.
Will crawled out of his little tent at dawn. His eyes sagged with weariness. “Are they gone?”
“No,” I said, “but they’re quiet. Probably sleeping off all that screaming loud television. Why do people try to get away from it all by bringing it all with them?”
“Tom wanted to strafe their RV with his old M16.”
I laughed. “Better wake him. It’s time to leave if we want to beat traffic.”
“He’s gone. Said he couldn’t sleep anyway and had something to do before he went home.”
That’s when I saw the bullet holes in the side of the RV.
As always, you can join the fun! Just write a 100(or less!)-word story and post it on your website, blog or social media page. Then click on the frog and follow the directions! And read the other stories — it’s amazing how many different interpretations there can be of one photo. As many as there are people in the world!
I’m wondering if I could make this a longer story for Memorial Day. Again, thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for her thought-provoking prompts. I always think “no way” and always come away thinking, “Son of a gun!” So here’s the latest 100 word story:
Copyright Sandra Crook
They wandered around the memorial, searching out the bricks that had names. They’d found classmates lost to Viet Nam and unfamiliar names lost to later wars, the grandchildren of classmates.
“Found one,” called Beverly. “You knew this guy, right, Maizie? Did you know he died in Nam? Funny, I always thought he just moved away.”
Maizie couldn’t speak. Or think.
He’d never answered her calls or the letter telling him she was pregnant. In a rage she had put his baby up for adoption and the man far out of her heart.
Had the letter ever reached him?
Follow the frog! Click, read and comment. Then try your hand at it. It’s fun!
When Amazon was new, I thought it was a wonderful way to get people reading. I still think it’s even better than those lurid paperbacks and comic books in the mid-twentieth century which caused a lot of sniffing and sneering amongst the literary crowd but enabled folks to read things they couldn’t afford before. Now Amazon and Kindle make inexpensive (read cheap) books even more available. After all, we are a fast-food nation; fast-food-books was inevitable.
But even in the heyday of paperbacks and comics, books with more depth were still easily available too. Now Amazon is training authors to use the best system for them to make money, not for readers to experience good books. Authors are being pushed into a system of faster and faster candy mints and throw-away thoughts.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against candy mints. They have their place. But as a steady diet they really stink, and that’s where Amazon keeps trying to lead us. There are a lot of good books on Amazon. And I’ve read a lot of the millions of “bad” books. Many are no worse than the paperbacks and comic books of the old days, and most are not a bad way to spend an afternoon. But too often I feel like I’ve wasted the time and money no matter how small the amount. How do readers find the meat & potatoes if the Amazon table is drowning in candy mints?
When I’m not reading, all I want to do is write, but I don’t want to turn my books over to the agent-reader-editor-publisher-galleys-in a couple of years-‘sorry, you didn’t recoup the advance’ thing either. And then have a big-name publisher drop them into the ‘out of publication’ (i.e. author-untouchable) bin if they don’t make enough money in the first six weeks.
With Amazon, books never go out of publication. On the other hand, the Amazon system is geared toward authors who can pump books out as fast as they can. And then do all the marketing on their own or pay for it to be done. And it takes constant research to keep up with what’s the latest best thing — Ads? Newsletters? Blog posts? Blog hopping? Swapped reviews? Guest posting? Goodreads? Facebook author page? (“Add your business address so customers can reach you!” What, my bedroom? Not on Facebook!) More and more I’m seeing authors begging their readers to leave a review — “just a few words!” — because this is what the Amazon algorhythm monkey understands.
My last book to be published went up on Amazon a few years ago. You can still buy the first one. But I’m not a fast writer, and I’m never going to finish the next book if I’m spending my days trying to game Amazon and their constantly changing “bestseller” algorhythms.
The other day I listened to a young working mother refuse a free bag of fresh veggies from someone’s garden, saying “Thanks, but I like to buy stuff that’s already washed and chopped up.” One Facebook group that I follow because it discusses new mysteries and suspense novels seems to have devolved into posts listing all the books they read this month, or this week, or today, like it’s a competition.
I’m a full-on capitalist and welcome competition, but I don’t know how to compete in this new world.
Another 100-word story to a writing prompt from https://rochellewisoff.com/. Thank you, Rochelle, for providing so much fun. Isn’t it strange, though, how many of us tend to write sad stories at what is supposed to be the happiest time of year.
The snow-covered bench curved ’round the gazebo. Its posts framed the steel-colored lake and the far shore. Alice had loved the cold, had loved sitting with her father while he read the poems of Robert Frost to her. Then the stranger came, and he and her father read the poetry to each other. Alice’s anger filled her mother’s willing ear.
Her father had left them to take a different road.
Now the gazebo no longer welcomed her. She was the stranger. She brushed snow off the bench, sat on its chill surface and began to read “The Road Not Taken”.
If you’d like to join us, or read other stories and comment, follow the frog! Click and enjoy.
I stared at the dank storage cage and demanded, “Where’s my grandmother’s stuff?”
The building super chewed on a toothpick. “This is it.”
“Two beat-up boxes and a piano? Where’s the antiques she collected?”
He avoided my eyes. “I
don’t know from antiques. Your brother
took everything in the apartment right after she croaked. Management says after six months, I gotta
dump what ain’t claimed.”
“I was out of the country.”
I felt the grief again. “I didn’t
know.”
“You want this stuff or not?”
My brother hadn’t known about the storage unit. My inheritance. Gone.
“Keep it,” I said.
If you want to join the fun, just follow the frog! Click and follow the directions, and don’t forget to read the efforts of others and comment.
Or is it just me? As usual, this 100-word story is from a prompt picture posted at https://rochellewisoff.com/, the blog that gets my juices flowing. Also as usual, it seems to come from somewhere in my past.
I yank out drawers stuffed with outdated patterns, remnants
from a prom dress, seed pearls from my wedding dress that Mama barely finished
in time, because by then she’d already started weeping. “I keep losing count!”
Unfinished scarves, half-done cross stitch kits, fabric
paint with tee-shirts untouched. Macramé cords. Knitted caps missing their topknots.
“I’m making gifts for Christmas.” Then she discarded each project and spent
money on new ones, desperately hoping to find the one craft her diminishing
mind could still handle.
I can finish them for her.
I’ve got all the supplies.
Among other great benefits, the organization Sisters in Crime does a lot of things to help libraries. Here is one that I participated in, from the newsletter of Sisters in Crime National:
That’s my book in the stack in the upper left!
“ IT’S RAINING BOOKS!“
“Here’s a photo from the folks at the Durham Library in New Hampshire of the books arriving after they won our It’s Raining Books giveaway at the American Library Association Conference. Thanks to all the members who participated!”
