“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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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”

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.

# # #

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 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.

“Nostalgia” in Low Down Dirty Vote, vol. 3
An armed group tries to resurrect a past that never was as they struggle with change.

Burnham and Orwell

Posted on March 23, 2023 by James McCrone

“Make Orwell fiction again!” became something of a meme during the Trump administration years. But for my sins (and unending reading pleasure!) I continue to dive into The Orwell Reader (Harcourt Brace 1956, 1984) swimming amidst the currents of his excerpted wit, insight and contrarian cantankerousness. We still need Orwell (and writers like him), pointing out corruption, bad faith, dissembling. My books are certainly very different–no talking farm animals, no aspidastra, no collectivist state, but the main characters are driven by their reaction to anti-democratic forces that try to chip away at and siphon off power. And while the conspirators in the #FaithlessElector series aren’t jack-booted thugs (yet), they are self-dealing elites who have coopted and corrupted politicians.

Recently in The Orwell Reader, I re-read Orwell’s cogent, withering critique of James Burnham’s work, The Managerial Revolution (1941). Orwell is dismayed that Burnham appears to want the militaristic state he describes as coming into being. Indeed, Orwell notes that, in Burnham’s 1941 edition, Burnham seems to be on the side of Nazi Germany. What struck me as I re-read Orwells’s point-by-point critique was that Burnam’s “managerialism” forms the intellectual scaffolding for the oligarchic collectivist state at the heart of 1984.

A bureaucratic collectivist state, like the one Burnham described as (hopefully?) coming into being in the 1940’s, “owns the means of production, while the surplus or profit is distributed among an elite party bureaucracy, rather than among the working class. Also, most importantly, it is the bureaucracy—not the workers, or the people in general—which controls the economy and the state. Thus, the system is not truly socialist, but it is not capitalist either.” [from Wikipedia]

In 1984, Orwell saw something in the lies, crimes and lack of accountability in Stalin’s, Hitler’s and Franco’s state capitalism—whatever they called it themselves—that looked like what Burnham described. Their regimes were about naked power, and in that pursuit they were prepared to subvert reality to their own purposes.

Many readers of the Faithless Elector series, (Faithless Elector, Dark Network and Emergency Powers) took the thrillers as a thematic repudiation of Trump. That’s true in a way, but Trump wasn’t even the Republican candidate for president when Faithless was published in March of 2016. The genesis for Faithless is far older than that. Rather, the background from which these books sprung existed long before Trump, and remains with us now.

We’re still living in the times depicted in Faithless and the other books, and we were living in it long before Trump barged onto the scene. What surprises readers of the Faithless Elector series (and this isn’t much of a spoiler) is that NEITHER of the major parties is orchestrating the plot. Rather, it is those who are parasitic on the parties that work the levers behind the scenes and buy useful idiots who believe they will reap the benefit.

Like housework, the job of democracy is never done, either because by its nature it’s messy and chaotic, or because power-hungry forces see a chance to supplant and usurp our role to hold our leaders accountable and to determine our own futures. I think of Bertolt Brecht’s play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui:
“Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men! Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, The bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

# # #

His next book, Bastard Verdict (out 18-May-2023), is a noir political thriller set in Scotland. Bastard Verdict is available to reviewers through NetGalley

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!

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

“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.

“Nostalgia” in Low Down Dirty Vote, vol. 3
An armed group tries to resurrect a past that never was as they struggle with change.

Chasing the elusive haggis (part 2)

Posted on January 26, 2023 by James McCrone

In part one, I wrote about a dangerous, international haggis smuggling ring back in 1997. The next year, Lisa and I were traveling, and a friend in DC where we were staying found a butcher who carried haggis. But it was not a good haggis. No “lights” and too Liver-y. My only comfort came in remembering Mrs. Wilson, as I secreted the haggis into my checked luggage for the flight home…

We were becoming connoisseurs of haggis, my friends and I, and we resolved not to use the DC butcher again. Year 3 of this heroic quest, this odyssey (though no one died), we were traveling again, this time to Philly, visiting my in-laws. My father-in-law suggested I try D’Angelo’s specialty butcher in the 9th Street Italian Market (D’Angelo’s is now, sadly, defunct).

I said to my father-in-law: “Elmer, please—Italian butcher, Scottish delicacy. No.”

I called all over Philly, but with no luck. My father-in-law suggested D’Angelo’s again. Having no other recourse, and to prove to him that I was right, I called them:

“D’Angelo’s!!!” a woman shouted rather than answered.

“Yes, hello,” I began, “I was wondering if…”

“Whaddya want, hun! I got customers here.”

“Yes, well, I’m looking for haggis. I don’t expect—“

“Hang on!” She slammed the phone down on a metal table.

I could hear her stomping toward the back, heard her shouting indistinctly at people (or was that merely the way she spoke?); heard the door of a walk-in cooler open. It was blissfully silent for a moment, until she came out of the walk-in and tromped back to the phone:

“I got one left. You want it?”

“You have one?”

“Yeah. You want it or not? We’re closing in forty-five minutes.”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you. I’ll be right there.”

La macellaia (Madame Butcher) was nicer, if no less voluble, in person. And I couldn’t help but reflect on the dulcet tones of Mrs. Wilson. It was much better than the previous year’s haggis from DC, and I carried it back to Seattle in my luggage.

Next up – haggis gourmands, and did I unwittingly assist anti-government forces?

# # #

His next book, Bastard Verdict (out 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.

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

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

“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.