The Vaudeville Hook

Posted on June 20, 2024 by James McCrone

Proust has his madeleines and tea, a moment that unlocked and threw open a door of “involuntary memory.” Proletarian that I am, I have a cane. Or rather, my wife has her grandfather’s cane.

This morning in the living room, as my wife finished her morning stretch routine, she stood up and reached for her grandfather’s cane to initiate and facilitate a new stretch.

As she turned the cane sideways and gently hooked her own neck I found myself transported to Alderson, West Virginia, to my grandparents’ house in the early 1970’s.

There was a good-sized gathering of family and friends in the kitchen and in the hallway running past it. Somehow, I’d been able to stay up late to watch The Tonight Show the previous night, and I wanted to share some of Johnny Carson’s opening monologue with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles. (At about eight years old I was the youngest person in that kitchen by a good four or five decades.)

I have a phonographic memory (if that’s really a thing); that is, I remember best what I hear. In the center of the kitchen I had everyone’s attention, as I recreated Johnny’s monologue, word-for-word from the previous night. I had his timing, his pauses, his cadence–and I was killing! It was a heady feeling for a child. But after four or five minutes, I realized I was about to run out of material, and I was desperate to keep it all going. So, I inserted my own material, which was an ill-advised mix of the arcane, the illogical, and scatological. The laughter faded, but I soldiered on.

Though I sensed that my grandfather was looking uncomfortable, I had no intention of relinquishing the stage when from behind me, a great aunt reached out with her cane and pulled me backward with it, an improvised Vaudeville hook.

She had suffered a stroke some years earlier, and I don’t believe I had ever heard her speak, but she liked to be in among people. She had not laughed during the earlier portion of my performance, but then, I think the stroke rendered her physically incapable of doing so. While everyone howled with laughter at her “joke,” her body shook and tears came to her eyes. My eyes must have registered hurt and confusion. Seeing my face, she dropped the cane and drew me to her in a tight hug. Her body still vibrating.

No one who was there remembers my dazzling rendering of Johnny Carson’s monologue, but everyone remembers “the hook.” And my great aunt, bless her.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the hook lately, and not only when my wife uses it for her stretches. I’m beginning the rewriting/editing of the second full draft of Witness Tree, my “pinot” noir tale set in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Too often, as I wade through my tortured (and tortuous) first-draft prose, I find insupportable diversions, dismaying breaks with diction and tone, convoluted reasoning…and first draft cutesy-ness.

It’s slow-going, and I read each page aloud, cutting this, clarifying that, excising paragraphs wholesale and putting (*)asterisks next to words or passages that I can’t decide about, but that I think I should (re)review.

My great aunt passed away many years ago, but I could really use her right now.

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James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.

He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, and he’s the current president of the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. He lives in Philadelphia. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. His current, work-in-progress is a mystery-thriller set in Oregon’s wine country…A (pinot) Noir, called Witness Tree.

For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!

You can also keep up with James and his work on social media:
Mastodon: @JMcCrone
Bluesky: @jmccrone.bsky.social
Facebook: James McCrone author (@FaithlessElector)
and Instagram/Threads “@james.mccrone”

Questions and guessing, when the political is not political

Posted on June 11, 2024 by James McCrone

Fiction is not a letter to the editor, not an essay or a position paper, nor even a puff piece reifying one view over another. It’s stories–about character(s) in conflict, and a question–what will happen next? will the character succeed, fail, or live to fight another day?

But that isn’t quite all of it. I’m indebted to Maria Popova’s newsletter The Marginalian for helping me articulate something I felt to be true but couldn’t quite make clear.

Popova’s August 2021 newsletter “How (Not) to Be a Writer” quotes Anton Chekhov: “the task of the writer is not to solve the problem, but to state the problem correctly.” James Baldwin said something similar when he noted that the writer’s task is to “drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.”

Chekhov goes on to say: “Anyone who says that the artist’s sphere leaves no room for questions, but deals exclusively with answers, has never done any writing or done anything with imagery. The artist observes, selects, guesses, and arranges; every one of these operations presupposes a question at its outset. If he has not asked himself a question at the start, he has nothing to guess and nothing to select.”

So, is it that “Happy families are all alike; but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” as Tolstoy asserts at the beginning of Anna Karenina? We may decide for ourselves. George Eliot’s preoccupation and recurring question was, “What to do with one’s life, how to use one’s gifts for the benefit of oneself and the world?” Or, as she asks in one of my favorite novels, Middlemarch, is it true “that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been…owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs”?

I have said that I write political thrillers that aren’t political. By that, I mean that the work has no axe to grind, no point to prove. Sometimes the label “political” is lobbed around by readers or critics who are uncomfortable with a book’s subject matter, or the characters involved, and those inclusions in the story are what such people label (and dismiss) as “political.” Which is decidedly not what I’m talking about. In my work, I’m drawn to what lies behind the official explanations and stories we’re told. What is the flip side of the answer the powerful would like us to accept? What (if anything) is being concealed?

For example, a switched vote by a “faithless elector” has never altered the supposed result of a presidential election. But what if it did, what would it take? Who might orchestrate such a thing? How would they go about it? Those questions animated my first thriller, Faithless Elector, and new questions arose that drove me through the two following novels in the series, Dark Network and Emergency Powers. Early agent- and editor rejections for Faithless would praise the story, the characters (while nevertheless declining to pursue publication), but in two instances an agent wrote back, saying that “No one knows anything or cares about the Electoral College.”

I think they do now.

This isn’t too much of a spoiler, but readers are often surprised to find that neither of the parties is behind the conspiracy. Did I do it because I wanted not to offend anyone? No, when I asked the question, ‘who would do it?’ the story (and verisimilitude) dictated that it be an outside force, albeit one that is parasitic on a particular party. As a beginning, the novels I have written thus far ask, “What if?” and then go deeper:

In Faithless Elector, it was, What if a group of conspirators tried to steal the presidency by manipulating the Electoral College? In Dark Network, it was, How far might such people really go, and what happens when there is no law, only power? And in Emergency Powers, the questions was, Would Imogen have the stamina to sustain the investigation when everyone else wants to move on? (And why are those others so eager to move on?)

For my latest thriller, Bastard Verdict, I wondered, What if the first Referendum on Scottish Independence had been interfered with? How might it have been achieved? Would the conspirators be anxious to keep the lid on what they had done?

You can also read two of my recent short stories online. In “What’s Hidden,” the question is, “what do we owe to the dying and the dead?” In “Eight O’clock Sharp,” the question is, “is there freedom when the past doesn’t remember you?”

To write about one’s own time is to risk being dismissed as “political,” but to write about the here and now is always political. The beauty and substance comes from the questions we ask.

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James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.

His latest book Bastard Verdict (18-May-2023), is a noir political thriller set in Scotland. His current, work-in-progress is a mystery-thriller set in Oregon’s wine country…A (pinot) Noir, called Witness Tree.

A Seattle native (mostly), James now lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. He’s a member of the The Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, Int’l Thriller Writers, Philadelphia Dramatists Center and is the current president of the Delaware Valley chapter of the Sisters in Crime network. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle.

For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!

“Novel Tetris” and What’s Hidden

Posted on March 23, 2024 by James McCrone

Killer Nashiville Literary magazine recently published my short story, “What’s Hidden,” a mystery about a (possibly) stolen map that a son uncovers while helping his aging mother get her house and affairs in order. The story is organized around a Voltaire quote, and the idea that “To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.”

It’s my most personal published work, and I’ve been very pleased by the responses it’s getting, not least because it’s something of a departure from much of what I’ve published so far. It has a first-person narrator (all of my novels are in third-person), and while it revolves around a crime, other forces compel the narrator.

You can check out the short story here: https://www.killernashville.com/short-stories/whats-hidden

It took almost two years for ‘What’s Hidden’ to find a home, and its publication came at just the right time for me, during a depressing crisis in faith.

My novel-in-progress, Witness Tree, has been painfully, maddeningly, embarrassingly slow in coming together. I wander the South Philly streets, mumbling about plot and character, crumpled papers full of cryptic (or indecipherable) scribbled notes sticking out of pockets like old, ragged Kleenex.

Finally, early in the week that I learned the short story was coming out, I had begun hacking away at parts of the book, a kind of “novel Tetris,” as my wife calls it, wherein I cut and moved scenes–sometimes whole chapters!–fitting them into different, more apt places in the story. Upon reflection, I might have called it “novel Jenga,” because every part that I moved either backwards or forwards in the story threatened some other part, or to destroy the whole thing.

I was genuinely worried over whether the novel would ever see the light of the day…or print. I also worried that it might not be crime-y enough, even as it starts with an execution-style murder. (That’s not a spoiler, it happens on page 2.) But as well as being about exposing the conspiracy that is the heart of the story, Witness Tree is again very personal–it deals with addiction, sobriety, failure of imagination, and issues of trust. And politics…because, yeah. I can’t help myself.

As I pulled apart and reconstituted the book, I found that certain ideas or passages just didn’t work. In the end, along with all the moving around, I cut 5,000 words and two characters. Now I have to construct a new bridge between some later chapters, but I feel like I’m on the right track, and having a short story “out there,” has helped my mood and confidence immeasurably.

I’m still worried, of course, but less so.

And in my world, “less worried” feels like a win.

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For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!

Koi, Frogs and the Question Not Asked

Posted on June 16, 2023 by James McCrone

I’ve written elsewhere about how even as a child I’d see something happen and wonder whether I was seeing the beginning, the middle or the end of a story. I’d see two people arguing, or someone crying on the bus; or I’d see a toddler rapturously chase pigeons across the pavement, and I’d wonder what happened before, what would happen next. And I’d wonder what the story was. Who are the people involved? Somewhere around the age of 10 or 11 I was shocked to find out that not everyone does this.

I want to know these things because my brain is wired that way, and because I’m nosy (I admit that freely); and irrespective of where in the story we are, I want to pay attention, to make use of real details in my writing because those moments, what the people do and say, the emotion, the real quirks, verbal ticks or turns of phrase can show so much more than simple telling or hit-you-over-the-head backstory. It makes for a more satisfying story, certainly.

This past weekend we spent a lovely time by Lake Ariel, in the Poconos. On Saturday morning I took a walk around the lake with my wife and one of our daughters. It was a lovely morning as we walked in and out of dappled shade. The people we encountered seemed cheerful and friendly. As we passed one house, a man asked us if we were interested in wildlife and whether we’d like to see his pond. We said, yes.

He was retirement aged, and he lounged sideways at the rocky edge of a shallow, 10 foot by 12 foot oval-ish body of water, gazing into the water, like paintings of Narcissus. He pointed out the carp (they were mottled and colorful, like small Koi fish) and then directed our attention to the side of the pond where a good-sized frog perched. Its body was about the size of my hand, but it took a few moments of staring where the man pointed for me to see the frog because it was so still and well camouflaged.

From him, I learned about the trials and tribulations of recreating a pond that had been previously destroyed; the difficulty of moving rocks into place, in keeping frogs once they fledged, or whatever it is they do when they’re not tadpoles anymore; that the fish in his pond were carp rather than true koi because a single koi could cost as much as $65 (he had eight or ten of them). All of which was interesting and diverting, and it felt like precisely the kind of thing we ought to be doing on a lovely day in the countryside.

Then he said: “Now, the question you didn’t ask…”

My brain arced as I realized there was more for me to be paying attention to! I hadn’t asked him a single question other than “how are you this morning?” nor had my wife or our daughter. He’d supplied the whole narrative unbidden. There were a hundred questions I hadn’t asked because as diverting as his monologue had been, after about ten minutes I wasn’t sure how much longer I wanted to stand there. Which question could he mean?

“You’ll want to know how I keep the carp over the winter,” he said.

Did I?

Stupidly, I hadn’t carried my notebook with me. I hadn’t thought I might stumble upon gold. I hope I’m not seeming to disparage this man. He seemed decent and thoughtful, and I’m pleased to have met him. But the words “Now the question you haven’t asked…” utterly exploded in my writer’s head.

Will I use it in a future story or novel? I have no idea. But as a verbal tick to reveal character it seems wonderful. Or, more likely, it could do double duty and also serve as a larger motif. Indeed, it kind of encapsulates the act of writing. Probably no one who has read this far conceived of the question I was answering, and certainly no one who has read my novels told me to write them. The books hang out on the shelf, beckoning for attention, answering a question you may never have asked.

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His current book, Bastard Verdict, debuted on May 18th, a noir political thriller set in Scotland. It’s available through the link above, or wherever you buy your books. His current, work-in-progress is a mystery-thriller set in Oregon’s wine country…A (pinot) Noir, called Witness Tree.

A Seattle native (mostly), James now lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. He’s a member of the The Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, Int’l Thriller Writers, Philadelphia Dramatists Center and is the vice-president of the Delaware Valley chapter of the Sisters in Crime network. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle.

For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!

His most recent short fiction is below. The first is available for online reading.

“Eight O’Clock Sharp” in Retreats from Oblivion: the Journal of NoirCon. (free online)
Set in Philadelphia’s 9th Street Market, Thomas is a man outside of time, forgotten, but trying to do the right thing while contending with avaricious forces.

“Ultimatum Games” in Rock and Hard Place magazine issue #7
A rare book heist, bad decisions. The narrator and his partner-in-crime clash over evolving bourgeois norms.