A Noir Affair

Every two years, fans of the devilishly dark and the tortuously twisted descend upon Philadephia for NoirCon. As the organizers note, "The sins, moral failings and dark truths of the human condition find a home at NoirCon—a forum where writers, filmmakers, publishers, and other noir fans share the trials of uncovering the dark side of life for readers and viewers. We look into the minds of tortured fictional characters and see real people, the mirror images of ourselves, coping with deep longing and inevitable disappointment."

In addition to a varied slate of authors and panels and films, NoirCon also bestows the David Goodis Award for Literary Excellence upon such noteworthy individuals as Ken Bruen and George Pelecanos. But it's not all dark and deadly; each conference sponsors one organization that helps those in need, such as the Awassa Children’s Project, helping Ethiopian orphans battle AIDS, and Project H.O.M.E.

This year, the journal NoirRiot will be published in conjunction with the conference for the first time, featuring original stories, essays and poems. I am honored to have two of my poems included and look forward to reading all the other contributions to the publication, edited by Lou Boxer and Matthew Louis.

Some of the featured authors scheduled to appear at NoirCon 2014 from October 30 to November 2 are Charles Benoit, John Connolly, K.A. Laity, and Fuminori Nakamura (this year's Goodis Award recipient). There will also be some surprises, which in the past have included performance art and musical guests. And, since the fest happens to occur on Halloween, the Saturday night award dinner will be themed accordingly.

To keep up with all the latest NoirCon news, follow the blog or their Twitter feed. To register, click on the Society Hill Playouse venue link, print out the PDF form, and mail it in along with your registration fee. Hurry and reserve your space - attendees to previous NoirCons have remarked on how much easier and fun it is to rub elbows with authors and fans at a smaller conference like this one with a more personalized experience.

All Things Anthology

Summer is a great time to catch up on reading, even if you only have short bites of time here and there. And what better to fill those short bites than some short stories?


New anthologies that may be of interest include Faceoff, edited by David Baldacci and sponsored by the International Thriller Writers group. The volume includes eleven tales that match up two protagonists from different authors. For instance, "Rhymes with Prey" by Jeffrey Deaver and John Sandford has Lincoln Rhyme and Lucas Davenport working a case together, while "Gaslighted" by R. L. Stine and Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child pits Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy against Aloysius Pendergast.

 

The New Black: A Neo-Noir Anthology, edited by Richard Thomas, is a collection of twenty dark stories from various genres including horror, crime, fantasy, and science fiction. Sample stories include Kyle Minor’s "The Truth and All Its Ugly," about a substance-abusing man who takes his teenage son down the same dark slide after the wife/mother abandons them. 

 

Explosions: Stories of Our Landmine World, edited by Scott Bradley, has 25 stories from bestselling authors such as Jeffery Deaver, James Grady, John Sayles, C. Courtney Joyner, and Peter Straub. The stories are again on the dark side, although like The New Black, they run the gamut of genres. The connecting theme is that each story touches on landmines - proceeds from this charity anthology go to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization MAG (Mines Advisory Group).

Author R&R with Jenny Milchman

Thriller writer Jenny Milchman stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some "Author R&R" (Reference and Research):

Research is Murder: AKA How Not to Do Any For Your Book

I have a confession to make. No, I didn’t bury any dead bodies, but research often feels like it will be the death of me. When I was a child, my research projects would descend all too quickly into flights of fancy. I’m a suspense writer, and I prefer to make things up.

Luckily I don’t write historical novels, or ones with a lot of technical detail. I took part in a Skype chat once when Lee Child explained that he doesn’t do much research himself. Well, I’ve read every single Reacher novel. There’s a reason the man is a #1 New York Times bestseller. If I tried to imagine the interior workings of a gun, I would probably make it shoot backwards.

Now there’s a twist.

I buy myself out of the research problem by writing what reviewer Oline Cogdill calls family thrillers, about ordinary people who happen to find themselves in extraordinary situations. The ones none of us would ever want to be in—but can imagine all too well. You wake up in the morning and know that something is wrong. A bed is empty when it should be filled. The knock on the door doesn’t sound friendly.

This approach to constructing stories didn’t arise as a solution to my research problem, although it may have a pleasant synchronicity with my personal likes and dislikes. But the truth is that I am fascinated by the thin gray line. The horizon of the Before and After. As for heroes, I prefer constructing everyday ones. People who are a lot like you and me.

In my debut novel, Cover of Snow, Nora Hamilton wakes to find her husband missing from their bed. She discovers what happened to him all too quickly…and that is when the real danger starts. In my recently released follow-up, Ruin Falls, Liz Daniels has just set off on a family vacation when her children disappear. Liz finds out who has taken her kids in one terrifying slash of realization. Now the journey will begin to get them back.

Readers have pointed out to me that there are areas that call for research in both these novels. Nora is a restorer of old homes; Liz is an organic gardener. There is an autistic character in my first novel, and one who is dealing with a traumatic brain injury in my second. But you see, these are all subjects I know about from the inside out. I worked as a psychotherapist for ten years and saw patients with both forms of cognitive challenges. My first home was a dilapidated Victorian. No one with children these days can help but feel both the liberation and vise-like grip of the so-called organic movement.

Bought out of research…again.

I see a different kind of line coming, however. One I may very well need to cross. The new story blooming in my head will take on a subject I know nothing about. I sense a fork in the road, and am struggling with it.

Should I write this book and make everything up in the way that would best suit my story? I’ve done that in the past with unpublished manuscripts—and gotten fairly close. I’ve made up details about the law, journalism, and architecture, and when I went back and checked, they turned out to need little in the way of revision. But most of us know at least something about these topics. The one I am considering now is completely outside my wheelhouse.

It’s always a question as a writer how much work you want to put in up front, and how much you are willing to go back and revise in subsequent drafts. Part of me is tempted to let this exciting new story spin out, then go back and retrofit it if necessary. But part of me thinks that I should listen to the wisdom compiled in the pages of this blog, and do what all those other brave suspense and mystery writers do.

Research.

Don’t they say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?

Jenny Milchman's journey to publication took thirteen years, after which she hit the road for seven months with her family on what Shelf Awareness called "the world's longest book tour." Her debut novel, Cover of Snow, was chosen as an Indie Next and Target Pick, reviewed in the New York Times and San Francisco Journal of Books, won the Mary Higgins Clark award, and is nominated for a Barry. Jenny is also the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day and chair of International Thriller Writers' Debut Authors Program. Jenny's second novel, Ruin Falls, just came out and she and her family are back on the road.

Author R&R with Mike Monson

Mike Monson is co-editor of the crime e-zine All Due Respect, along with Chris Rhatigan, and also the author of his own short fiction. His latest literary creation is the noir novella The Scent of New Death, about successful, unassuming bank robber Phil Gaines who marries a young, wild, and very kinky local bar maid. When the new bride runs off with Phil's business partner and his life's savings, he pursues them across the countryside as they lose themselves in a psycho-sexual killing spree.

If you're wondering how a writer researches topics like that, Mike stopped by to take a little Author R&R (Reference and Research) to explain:

My novella The Scent of New Death, did not require a lot of special, in-depth research.

It is the story of revenge among criminals in the Central Valley of California, specifically in and around the town of Modesto and a little bit in the Bay Area communities just east of San Francisco. Since I had lived in Modesto for about 20 years when I wrote it, and lived or worked in the Bay Area even longer than that, I didn’t have to do a lot of research to capture the settings. Here, though, by bullet points, is the research I did conduct:

• Bank robbery. My main character was a career bank robber, a very successful bank robber. Now, I am not a bank robber and I never have been a bank robber. All I knew about it was what I saw in the news and on TV and in movies, or read about in books. However, I felt certain that all of that information was romanticized and inaccurate. So, I went on the internet and read every article I could about actual bank robbers. Then, I found that the FBI site has a lot of information on real-life bank robbers. From the FBI I found out that the overwhelming majority of bank robbers are drug addicts who are not professionals, and who only rob banks because they are desperate for money. These criminals almost always get caught within six hours. There was another large group as well, and these were the non-addict, semi-professional bank robbers who were often able to pull off a dozen or more bank robberies before an arrest. But, this second group, according to the FBI, would almost always get caught eventually, as long as they kept pulling robberies. This was because of a few basic errors. So, the sort of person I was writing about – a man who could make a living for 12 years robbing banks while escaping detection – may not even exist in real life. But, I figured that since I was writing fiction, I could create such a person. The person I created, Phil Gaines, was notorious in the criminal community partly for the fact that he was that rare person, someone who actually defied the odds and made a living on bank jobs. I made him a guy who was as aware as I had become about all the reasons bank robbers get caught and who made sure to not make all the usual mistakes.
  
  
• Pawn brokers. Two important characters in the book were Carl Schmitz and Jack Dixon. The two had grown up together. Carl was a rich man who owned three pawn shops in Modesto. Jack was a thief and a fence. I needed for Jack to be resentful and jealous of Carl because Carl was rich while Jack was just getting by. So, I went to various State of California sites to find out the law regarding pawn brokers. I found out that if a person has a felony record or any record involving stolen goods, they can never get a pawnbrokers license in the state. This worked perfectly for me. As I wrote it, since Jack was a felon, and Carl was not, only Carl was able to get a license, thus preventing Jack from progressing as a legitimate business man.
  
  
• Geography and hiking. I did have one major bit of geography to research. I needed my character to hide out in the mountains and forests east of Modesto, near Yosemite. He needed to ditch his car, walk many many miles off-trail and out of sight of roads; camp near a small town; have breakfast in that town; somehow get all the way to the San Francisco airport using only cash and then over to Berkley on the BART train; and then get off on the right stop where there would be a Walgreens to buy a throw away cell phone near a place he could eat a snack that would have the news on the TV. And, I needed him to get on the right street from there that would take him up to the Berkeley Hills (you know, where Grandpa Zeke and Millie live in the TV show Parenthood?) I needed him to do all of this by just after 12 p.m. Again, I was able to use the internet. I knew of a road near Yosemite called Evergreen. I had Phil drive up that road in his Jeep and then hide the vehicle about a mile from any pavement. I knew of a foothill town called Groveland and it was perfect for me. And, from the spot where he ditched the car to Groveland was about 20 miles, so I had to do research to find out how long it takes the average person to walk 20 miles off-trail. Then, I found a breakfast place in Groveland on Yelp and I found a transportation company that would drive people all the way to the San Francisco Airport. I called this company and found out how much the drive cost and how long it took. Then, the rest, the Walgreens etc., was easy. By the time I was done I felt confident my depiction of events was entirely accurate and reasonable, which is very important to me.
  
  
• Zen in America. This wasn’t too hard because I already knew a lot about the subject from my own practice in Zen centers and from voracious reading and participation in internet forums. But, I did at one point have to give a character a Japanese Zen name. It turns out that there are websites for exactly that purpose, that provide a long list of typical Zen names for monks and priests and the English translation of same. This was very helpful.
  
  
• Guns. I gave Phil Gaines a Colt .45 automatic. I didn’t know that was what it was, I just had a picture of the gun he’d use in my head and I searched the internet until I found the gun that matched my imagination. Then, I learned everything I could about the gun in case I’d need any special facts in the narrative. Also, I wanted Phil to have a small gun that he could conceal, and, again, I found the perfect one on the internet that I was able to describe with absolute accuracy.
  
  
• Lock picking. At one point I needed Phil to very quickly and professionally pick a lock. And, again, I wanted his method to be accurate and I wanted to be able to describe it in perfect detail. Guess what? There are a lot of articles about lock picking, even instructional videos on YouTube. I found a common technique using something called a ‘bump key.’ It was reasonable for Phil to know how to do this and reasonable for him to have the proper equipment with him at all times. Again, this worked out great.

For more information about Mike and his writing (what he calls his "dark and creepy crime stories), check out his website and blog, which also has links to where you can purchase The Scent of New Death and his other fiction.