Thoughts on How to Handle Future Bouchercon Controversies

 I had a post drafted for today that discussed the recent Bouchercon Otto Penzler controversy, but Anthony Horowitz’s withdrawal from this year’s conference made the topic moot. The whole episode brought to mind things that seem to come up with increasing frequency, so I’m considering them fair game.

 For those unaware, I’m not just a cisgendered white heterosexual male; I’m old. If that disqualifies my opinion from your consideration, you can stop reading now. No hard feelings. I’ll catch you next week.

 Among the benefits of being my age is – at least should be – an ability to gain context through viewing the world through the perspective of time. I’d hate to think I haven’t learned anything in sixty-eight years, so I continue to see what I might do differently if faced with similar circumstances. As a man with a temper, this comes in handy. (Those who have seen my temper know that is not a self-effacing comment.)

 There is much injustice in the world. Readers and writers conferences are not immune, and people are right to point it out when it happens. The recent Penzler controversy had to do with misogyny, but race and LGBTQ+ concerns are never far from public attention, nor should they be. The question is what to do about them. Too often the first impulse is to withdraw from the conference and talk about a boycott, but no one ever talks about what a boycott would accomplish other than making the participants feel good about their self-perceived purity.

 But what about the collateral damage? Let’s stick with Bouchercon and Penzler for a moment. Who would it harm if everyone who objected to his appearance chose to skip the conference? Certainly not Otto, but if a total boycott were successful enough it could put a significant crimp into Bouchercon’s finances and endanger future events. Is that what anybody wants?

 I’m sure there are some out there thinking “If that’s how the conference is going to be run, maybe it should go away.” Let’s step back a second and think of all the good Bouchercon does. In addition to the charitable work, the celebration of reading has value in a world that seems to care less about reading all the time. It’s also a chance for readers and writers – who are more likely than not introverts – to get together in a safe place with kindred spirits. Do we want to endanger that over a symbolic gesture not likely to accomplish anything concrete?

 So what can we do? We can express our displeasure as Lee Goldberg did so eloquently in a letter he shared on Facebook.

 But what if Horowitz hadn’t gotten everyone off the hook by withdrawing?

I think the best response would have been to go to Nashville, do everything that makes Bouchercon special, then boycott the guest of honor event. I can think of no better way to show what the crime fiction community thinks of Otto than to make him  interview Horowitz in an empty room. A conference boycott would allow him to claim martyrdom; mass avoidance of  his specific event sends a much more pointed and credible message.

 I raised this point on Facebook and Lori Rader-Day made an excellent counterpoint: How many people there either don’t know or don’t care and would go anyway? I have two thoughts on that:

 1.    If they don’t know, then it should be our job to educate them. Have pins made up for folks to wear. It could be as simple as “Boycott Otto,” though something more cryptic. “Ask me about Otto.” Notices on the bulletin boards. Arm-, wrist-, or headbands. Messages on the Bouchercon Facebook page. Whatever works.

2.    If they know and still want to come, well, it’s a free country.

Otto Penzler has a right to hold abhorrent positions. Let him come. It’s not as if he was going to give a pro-misogyny speech or hold a men’s rights rally. We could demonstrate our disdain by effectively shunning him, or by making a point of exposing how wrong his ideas about women are by showing strong, empowered women who no longer feel threatened by his Cro-Magnon outlook. To say “he can’t come or we won’t” is a form of cancelation. Seize the opportunity to expose his wrongheadedness to those previously unaware of it. To discourage such discourse is no better than banning books, which I assume is something no one reading this advocates.

 I am not defending Otto Penzler, nor Bouchercon’s invitation. (I know, it was at Horowitz’s request; the committee still formalized it.) The apology issued after Horowitz withdrew was an example of the non-apology apologies that have become so prevalent. The decision to invite him was tone deaf and insensitive. I dwell on it here because a similar situation is bound to come up again, and we should all think about what remedies we propose: Will this accomplish something? Or am I just doing it to make myself feel better?

 I don’t know Otto Penzler; never met him. Based on what I know, I don’t feel like I missed much. If folks wanted to show their disdain for him, which do you think would be better: to boycott the conference, allowing him to claim martyrdom and possibly risking Bouchercon’s continued existence? Or  to give everyone a chance to show him exactly what they think of him in person?

 I know which I’d choose.

Bad Samaritan Re-Release

 

Today is the re-issue date for the fifth Nick Forte novel, Bad Samaritan, originally published in January of 2018. This is currently the most recent novel in which Forte is the protagonist, though he does make an appearance in the Penns River novel, The Spread.

Bad Sam was my examination of men’s activist groups and the damage they cause to society at large through their refusal to accept women as equals. The inciting incident is a series of letters received by soccer mom Becky Tuttle, who writes a series of bodice-ripping potboilers under an assumed name. Becky is so concerned for her family’s privacy she hired an actor to handle all her in-person appearances and interviews; a true Remington Steele scenario. Not even her editor knows who Desiree d’Arnaud really is.

Someone figures it out, though, and is sending Becky letters addressed to her pen name at the Tuttle residence. The police stand back, as there is nothing overtly threatening in any of the letters. Still, Becky and her husband are creeped out.

While investigating Becky’s situation, Forte encounters Lily O’Donoghue, the beautiful and expensive prostitute who appeared in Forte 2, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of. She’s being blackmailed and Forte volunteers to help out of a sense of obligation to Lily’s dead mother. The blackmailer turns up dead later the same night Forte confronts him.

I spent more time researching Bad Sam than any other Forte novel, as I wanted to be sure I was fair to all sides in the men’s rights argument. That research was the most distressing and disgusting work of my writing life to that point, as what we see in mainstream media barely scratches the surface of how vile these people are, including the women who support them.

Bad Sam was a problematic book from the beginning. As regular readers know, Forte is a tough guy in the Continental Op/Mike Hammer model, though informed with 21^st Century sensibilities. While he empathizes with Becky’s and Lily’s plights, he still comes in as if he’s on a white horse, which in its way disempowers them even more. As might be expected in a story where a man feels as though he has to set things right for women regardless of what resolution they want, nothing works out the way Forte planned.

This is my most difficult book for me to write about. If you’d like more insight into Bad Sam, take a look at Benoit Lelieve’s review in Dead End Follies. It’s honest and fair and the best analysis of my work that has ever been done. I’ll let the book rise and fall on what Ben has to say about it.

Bad Samaritan is available on Amazon. Prices are $2.99 for Kindle and $9.99 for a paperback. It’s the last re-release in the Forte series. Next month will see the arrival of the sixth novel, and the first in six years, when Off the Books drops. Don’t worry that you’ll forget about it. I’m sure to remind you.

The Age of Umbrage, Part Two

 This went viral on Facebook a few weeks ago: Name ten writers you’ve read at least five books by. The responses were plentiful and it was fun to see who others come back to time after time.

Until someone decided to take offense. Too many lists were oversaturated with male writers.

This is a multi-level complaint. First, it implies women are underrepresented as writers, but are they? As of 2021, according to Wordsrated.com, 50.4% of authors in the United States are women. True, they only make 96% as much money, but that can likely be attributed to sales. As women buy most of the books in this country, I’ll leave that question open.

(I don’t know why Wordsrated uses the term “salaries,” as fiction authors generally work on advances and royalties. If anyone can show I missed something, please let me know in the comments.)

More bothersome was the implication the respondents were  prejudice against women authors. Speaking only for myself as one who named all male writers, my tastes were formed forty to fifty years ago, when not nearly as many women were published. The Wordsrated study shows the average age of authors working in the United States is 42, which means most writers working today weren’t born when my tastes were coming together.

It was deplorable that women were so badly underrepresented in so many areas; we all suffered. I recently watched a video of the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein and was struck by how few female faces were in what was/is arguably the world’s greatest orchestra. By “few” I mean “none.” Today’s orchestras are better than their predecessors, if only because until recently they excluded half the talent pool.

It only makes sense that fiction writing, and reading, is better off with more proportional representation of  women and minorities. That doesn’t change my tastes. I appreciate Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, and Laura Lippman as outstanding writers; Kinsey Milhone, V.I. Warshawsky, and Tess Monahan are enduring and ground-breaking characters. I cut my PI reading teeth on Mike Hammer and Spenser; I like my detectives to be more proactive in their case resolutions. (Yes, by “proactive” I mean “violent.”) I came to love police procedurals through reading Joseph Wambaugh and Ed McBain. I’m not apologizing for it.

Do I wish women had been better represented in those days? Absolutely. Can I do anything about it? No. Even if I were to read nothing but books by women, it would not help those who were discriminated against fifty years ago; they’re all dead. And I really can’t do anything for those who were most damaged, because their books never saw the light of day.

People tend to listen to the music they fell in love with in high school and college for the rest of their lives. Our parents listened to swing bands long after they were no longer in vogue. I fell in love with jazz when I played in my high school’s stage band; with classical while performing in my college orchestra. Now I listen to a lot of country music because that’s what I heard around the house when I was a kid. It’s musical comfort food for me. About the youngest country singers I listen to today are Dwight Yoakum and Patty Loveless. Both are my age.

The types of books men and women write also matters. I doubt there is a better writer working today, crime or otherwise, than Megan Abbott. I loved Queenpin and think Bury Me Deep belongs in college classes. Since Dare Me, though, the books she writes are about people so distant from my tastes and interests I have no connection to them and, frankly, don’t really care what happens to them.

Psychological suspense stories are immensely popular gith now. These books typically involve a middle-class or higher person or family – often a woman – who is subjected to what can best be described as psychological torture by someone who may or may not be known to them. The best of these books are well written and obviously compelling to many or they wouldn’t sell as they do. I rarely read them. I grew up working class, and my sensibilities and sympathies remain so. Working class people don’t fuck with your mind; they fuck with you personally. I am far more likely to be drawn to protagonists in novels by Dennis Lehane or James D.F. Hannah, as those are people with whom I can most readily identify. As Lehane said when asked why he didn’t write about rich people: “I don’t give a fuck about them.” The same applies to my reading.

We all like what we like. As authors, we should be grateful that people are reading at all rather than taking them to task for not reading who we think they should read, whatever the reason. I’m 68 years old and there are more books I want to read than I have time for; I’m not looking for new horizons. I enjoy stumbling onto someone new – the past two years I tripped over Don Winslow and Loren Estelman – but their prose falls into my already established wheelhouse..

Let’s agree that I won’t criticize or try to shame you into reading what I think you should, and you will show me the same courtesy.

Or I’m liable to take umbrage.

Some Critical Advice

 Some of you know I hold a master’s degree in Trumpet Performance from New England Conservatory. While I have not played for years, lessons learned through musical studies still resonate today, almost forty years after leaving the Conservatory.

Most of the day-to-day stuff came from my trumpet teacher, Charles Schlueter. Charlie was Principal Trumpet of the Boston Symphony at the time and he often found ways to relate everyday activities and principles to music; the reverse also works.

My best piece of writing advice also came from my time at NEC, from Benjamin Zander, who was then music director of the Boston Philharmonic. Ben taught a class titled “Chamber Music Interpretation” that was pivotal in how I approached all performances forever after.

The first day of class, Ben congratulated us on having chosen to dedicate our lives to music. He said it was a noble calling (he was right) and mentioned several luminaries whose paths we were following, no matter how remotely. I took the class out of curiosity but by the end of our first session Ben had me hooked.

He spoke of something else that day that stayed with me: being a musician would not be without cost. Among those costs was a discipline we would have to self-impose, of never listening to music solely for entertainment. Not that we couldn’t or shouldn’t enjoy music, but that we must always listen on a deeper level.

What did he mean by that? We could no longer afford just to hear the notes. We needed to look for some understanding of why the composer and/or performer made the choices they made. It didn’t matter if we were on an elevator and subjected to a Muzak version of “Thriller.” We should look for something to take away from it, either good or bad.

Casual musicians and other music lovers have asked if this ruined listening to music for me. The truth is the exact opposite. Listening critically opened new vistas of enjoyment, as I came to better understand which choices were available and which were more, or less, successful. It made listening a delight, though I must admit that I now listen to little music while doing anything that requires concentration, as my mind is too strongly attracted to the music.

How does that affect my writing? It affects my reading. I did not begin writing seriously until I was in my forties. I hadn’t taken an English composition class since freshman year of college, and the experimental “linguistics” education I received in junior high school gave me virtually no knowledge of grammar. I had to catch up in a hurry.

My solution was to adapt Ben Zander’s principle of critical listening to reading. As with music, once I got the hang of it, critical reading enhanced my enjoyment of what I read. I no longer read even a newspaper article without thinking of why the writer made this or that choice, what might have worked better, or what I would have done differently.

To prove this constant analysis of what I read in no way diminishes my enjoyment, I am currently reading Carl Hiaasen’s Bad Monkey. The Beloved Spouse™ will sometimes comment how she can hear me laughing out loud at various times, but I am still looking at the bits between the lines and words. “I see what he did there.” “That could come in handy for me some time.” “I wonder why he made that choice.”

If you want to be a writer, or claim to be one already, this might be the one piece of advice I would most want you to take to heart. If it sounds like too much work, then maybe writing is not for you.

Trigger Words

 

(This post is not intended for those who get the vapors from foul language.)

Now that the trigger warning is out of the way, let’s get down to business.

I probably talk about foul language more than I should, but the controversy surrounding it randomly intrudes on my consciousness until it becomes an itch I have to scratch. What some consider offensive language is still language. As a writer, I have nothing else to work with, so yeah. It’s a big deal to me.

I use (probably more than) my fair share of potentially offensive language; never for the purpose of giving offense. That is not to say the character into whose mouth I put those words doesn’t mean to give offense. Sometimes giving offense is the reason they opened their mouth at all. Whether a reader is offended is up to the reader. I have plenty else to worry about.

I submitted a story a while back in which a woman, a detestable person, called a male associate a faggot. He responded by calling her a cunt. The story was accepted, but I was asked to change “faggot” because it’s an offensive term.

“Cunt” was okay.

Here’s the thing: I meant no offense by using “faggot;” the character did. My job was to expose her for the detestable character she was, and dialog is an outstanding way to do so. I made the change – to “bitch,” which I felt was watered down in that context – but  it got me thinking.

Conventional wisdom says to avoid potentially offensive language, lest you scare away readers. Let’s look at that. Lee Child is known for not using foul language in his Reacher books, yet the streaming “Reacher” series is laden with it. Are viewers less sensitive than readers?

Maybe they are. Apparently not always, though. Dennis Lehane’s most recent, Small Mercies, is loaded with references to “niggers” by racist whites. That’s the point: these people are loathsome racists and that’s the word they would use. They wouldn’t say, “Those n-words are going to my kids’ school over my dead body” and it’s stupid to pretend they would. Lehane faces up to it and the book is critically and financially successful.

I write about crime. I do not wish to smooth the edges from a hardened criminal by having him – or her – refrain from language that might offend someone. Much of what people like that say is intended to offend.

While I do not use sensitivity readers, I do take suggestions from my editor, who I trust implicitly. When he asks, “Are you sure this is the word you want to use here?” I may not make a change, but I will seriously consider it.*

Since I brought it up, what Is the role of a sensitivity reader? To ensure the book offends no one? I hope not. If, as Lehane has said, crime fiction is the modern form of social commentary† – with which I agree – it’s not doing its job if it doesn’t offend somebody.  Maybe a sensitivity reader’s purpose is to identify when a particular group is unfairly characterized – which is worth knowing – but what are the qualifications for such a job? If you include women, gays, Blacks, Hispanics, and Innuits in a book, must you get a different reader for each? If not, who has the chutzpah to promote themselves as the universal arbiter of hurt feelings? (In case you’re wondering, my personal standard is “don’t be a dick.”)

Everything offends somebody, especially today, in what can reasonably be referred to as The Age of Umbrage. Maybe we should worry less about the potential for offense and more about the context and why someone considers the word offensive. “I don’t like that word,” or “It hurts my feelings” are not legitimate arguments.

A woman named Karen England roams the country recruiting and teaching people how to get books they consider to be offensive banned from schools, even in districts in which they do not live.‡ (Could she be more of a Karen?) By her standards, the Kathy Bates character in Misery is a potty mouth. If that woman isn’t a cunt, I don’t know who is.

---

* I will run ideas past people I know who will have insights and experience I lack. When writing The Spread¸ I contacted a couple of gay friends to ask how a gay character might resolve a situation, and why. Their input made it a better book, as they had things to say I would not have thought of. I also did not run the finished product past them to sign off on.

 † Paraphrasing. I can’t find the original quote.

‡ There is even a district in Florida where the banners seek to include dictionaries and encyclopedias.

Imposter Syndrome

 The definition of “Imposter Syndrome” from Oxford Languages is

“The persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills.”

This is followed by my author photo.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate every compliment I receive from readers and other authors. I love speaking at conferences and sharing my knowledge; if I was born to do anything, it was to be a teacher. I will never refuse a request for advice, or deny a blurb to a friend.

I also cannot help but wonder, “Why are they asking me?”

This is not unique to my writing life. As a musician I always lived in fear of my limitations becoming exposed publicly. It took several months at my first “real” job as a network administrator before I could leave at the end of each workday without quietly mouthing, “Fooled them again.”

It’s not like I’m an anxiety-riddled rodent who gobbles Xanax like they were M&Ms. (Not that M&Ms aren’t delicious.) Nor do I lack confidence altogether. I look forward to opportunities to speak in front of strangers, in part because I have seen a lot of people who are so bad at it you can sense the audience’s discomfort. (Or disgust over having their time wasted.) I confess, it is not uncommon for me to listen to a speaker and think, “Step away from the podium/dais/stage. I can do better off the top of my head.”

So I do have areas of confidence. (Arrogance?)

So what’s my problem with writing?

I think a lot of it stems from having interacted with those I consider to be my betters. I read books by authors whose writing I aspire to and am often floored by the fluidity of their language as well as their abilities to craft unique voices. (I’m not naming names, as I would inevitably leave someone out.) I don’t see any of the doubt, re-writing, and editing that went into it; the books strike me as direct pipelines from the author’s imagination to mine.

Then I look at my process. It’s well defined and I have confidence that it works for me, but I always feel like there should be

More nuance to my plots.

More dimensions to my characters.

A more unique voice.

More descriptive language.

Tighter writing.

Better dialog.

A stronger ending.

I could go on, but I’m starting to jones for some M&Ms.

It is not unusual for someone to compliment my knowledge of craft, or of my genres. I am appreciative of, and grateful for, the praise. I am also painfully aware of how much I don’t know. If I am at a conference or talking with friends, or even reading Facebook posts, and come across an author or book people speak highly of, my first thought is often I should have known about that.

That doesn’t mean I always follow up; no one can know everything. The residue of being raised by two perfectionists is I am always aware of my own imperfections. I understand no one is perfect, but it still breaks my balls that I am not, even almost sixty-eight years along the road.

I try to accept all compliments in the spirit in which they are intended, but cannot help but think of things the speaker must have overlooked, or chose not to comment on to preserve my feelings. I am often uncomfortable when I am too effusively praised, because, no offense, I know better.

Imposter Syndrome is not uncommon, and I suspect it is found more often in people with a certain amount of ability, as they have something that might be worth impersonating. (No one has Imposter Syndrome because they think they are better than they are.)

I am also aware that people who are knowledgeable in a field are also the most acutely aware of what they do not know. I get that. It helps. But after panels or public events that go well, one thought is still most likely to run through my mind:

Fooled them again.

 

 

 

Autumn's Favorite Reads

 Subtle Felonies, Austin Camacho. I’ve always had a soft spot for Hannibal Jones, Camacho’s PI character, and Subtle Felonies shows why. Jones is enough like a traditional PI to be comfortable, and different enough to hold my interest. This complex plot has a twist I did not see coming, but in hindsight was inevitable. That’s the mark of a well-written and enjoyable book.

A Stab in the Dark, Lawrence Block. I came late to the Matt Scudder books and I’m in the process of reading them in order. A Stab in the Dark is Number Four and frankly, I don’t know that I think it’s as good as the first three. That said, Block’s standard is so high, even a run-of-the-mill effort is still as good as 90% of the other books I’ve read. In my mind, Block is to PI fiction what Ed McBain is to police procedurals.

Small Mercies, Dennis Lehane. My God, what a book. Eye-opening, shocking, funny, and heartbreaking with a plot that never goes quite where you think it will even though the story is set against actual events that took place in my lifetime, namely the Boston busing riots. Lehane has a touch like none other for such things. Might be the best book he’s written, and when you stop to think about what else he’s done, that’s the highest praise I can give. (I had more to say about Small Mercies last November.)

Chicago ’63, Terrence McCauley. McCauley has written Prohibition-era crime stories, modern techno-thrillers, war stories, Westerns, and now this, a fact-based account of an unsuccessful assassination attempt on President John Kennedy three weeks before the trip to Dallas. The book reads like a cross between James Ellroy (without the sometimes distracting cadences of his later work) and Day of the Jackal. McCauley’s writing has never been smoother or more transparent. (I was lucky enough to score an advanced reader copy; the expected publication date is February 13, 2024.)