writing

names are not easy to change

~ Anthony Lee Collins

First of all, there are more parts of The Family Murder Case posted. The new parts start here.

I've been thinking about the names of the mystery stories posted here.

First of all, The U-town Murder Case was originally called that because I thought it was going to be the only one. It turned out to be the first of a series, of course, most of which could have been called "The U-town Murder Case." It took a while to figure out an alternative name, but finally the obvious answer came to me. It should be called "The Apartment Murder Case" (since it is the only one to take place in apartments). I'll change it when I get time, but it will be fairly complex, since the names of the stories generate the URLs (such as http://utownwriting.com/2008/stories/the-u-town-murder-case-part-one). That will take a bit of work to change.

But not as much work as the other change, which is that I think I've got to stop calling them "The xxxxxx Murder Case," since some of them don't actually involve murders. This also started with "The U-town Murder Case," where I thought it was a nice touch to have a title that was a reference to the Philo Vance books (which were always "The xxxxxx Murder Case"). And I didn't think it would be a problem, since I wasn't thinking of a series.

But now I've thought of a new idea for a story, and not only will it not have a murder, it won't even have any violence or injury (well, there will be a broken arm, but that's about it). To call it "The xxxxxx Murder Case" would lead readers to expect a murder to come at some point, and that would distract them from the actual events.

However, to change all of the names, and all the links, and all of the links to the stories, would be way more work than I am going to do. So, they will remain, but the new stories (at least the one I mention above, and the ones after that) will be called "The xxxxxx Mystery" instead.

three news items

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 1 Comment

1) If you haven't been there yet, please check out the new website for A Sane Woman: u-town.com/jansleet.

2) I had procrastinated about taking down the earlier version of this blog, but I went there the other day and found out that somebody had hacked in and inserted a bunch of ads for fancy handbags. So, I finally took it down.

So, today's lesson is: if you have a website or a blog, take a look at it from time to time. You can't tell what kind of problems might have been developing in your absence.

3) As I mentioned here, I bought and read The Egyptian Cross Mystery by Ellery Queen, mostly because I unintentionally took an idea from it. I found that it was undoubtedly the inspiration for one aspect of "The Church Mystery," but it's not actually that good (meaning the book, not the idea). Clever, but not convincing. This is not surprising, since the really good EQ novels came later.

There was also a clue which was similar to the clue of the medicine cabinets in "The Hospital Mystery," but I don't think that was a direct inspiration. It's more that the hospital case was inspired by The Dutch Shoe Mystery, another early Ellery Queen book, and the solution is very typical of EQ, in that it's categorical rather than individual.

For example, it was typical of Agatha Christie to put a group of suspects together in a fairly restricted area, and then solve the mystery person-by-person, based on their individual attributes. Quite often, Queen would start with a much larger pool of suspects (a whole city, potentially), and then analyze the murderer's attributes in terms of categories (male or female, employee or guest, aware of a certain fact or not, etc.) until only one person was possible.

I have been wondering why Ellery Queen and Rex Stout (who wrote the Nero Wolfe mysteries) are such a particularly big influence on this project. I just figured out one reason this week, which is that their books are not particularly tied to their eras. Queen wrote from the 1930s through the 1960s, Stout from the 1940s (possibly the very late 1930s) through the 1970s, but you can read any of the books and forget whether it's early or late in the series. For example, The Egyptian Cross Mystery features a group of sun-worshiping cultists who follow a leader who thinks he's the emissary of Egyptian gods, and they all spend most of their time naked. I was surprised when one of the characters (not naked) traveled to a crime scene on the running board of a car, since it reminded me that this book was written in the 1930s, not the 1960s.

You can never read about Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance and forget when the stories are set. Each series is rooted in a very particular time and place.

I should mention that Jan Sleet quotes Holmes from time to time ("Come, Marshall, the game's afoot!" "the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime," "a man like you, with your experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents"), but this is her doing the quoting, not me. She is, as she makes clear, very consciously inspired by Holmes.

my brain surprises even me

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 1 Comment

I have been keeping a mental list of the influences on the different mystery stories I've written. Some of them I've even spoken about here (I've just checked and there are too many instances to link – you could search for "Ellery Queen," "Nero Wolfe," "Sherlock Holmes," and "Philo Vance").

But here's one I wasn't aware of. I know I read The Egyptian Cross Mystery by Ellery Queen at some point. I've read all of the real Queen novels (and some of the others, the ones that were actually ghostwritten or otherwise outsourced), though for some reason I don't own a copy of this one.

But I recently read something about it online, and now it's obvious where I got a key plot element in "The Church Murder Case" (I'm not providing any links – you'll have to get your own spoilers if you want them).

But now I've ordered a copy, since I'm eager to find out if I borrowed any other elements as well. I do know that the motivation in "The Church Murder Case" is one that Queen used at least once, but I have no idea if it was used in this particular book.

Damn, this is like finding a whole new EQ book that I never read before.

not a sprinter

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

In this article, the writer makes the observation, "Writers train for one length or another." Roger Ebert made the same observation when writing about his book on Martin Scorsese (I'll try to find the link at some point). He said that when he writes a book it ends up being a series of newspaper columns, because that's the length that he's trained for.

I seem to be trained for novels. Even when I set out to write shorter pieces, they end up connecting with each other in ways that I hadn't anticipated. The biggest example being this: who knew that these mystery stories would also end up being the novel of how a couple turned into a family?

(Certainly not me.)

Anyway, there's more of "The Church Murder Case" posted.

Later: The Roger Ebert piece is here. It's the introduction to his book on Martin Scorsese. The part I mentioned is near the end.

pictures

~ Anthony Lee Collins

First of all, I don't usually post pictures here, but here's one:

a sane woman

It's the cover of A Sane Woman, and you can find out more about the book here.

Here's the other graphic:

a vital clue

It's part of The College Murder Case, though it wasn't ready in time, but now it's in the episode where it belongs, here.

(Oddly enough, I had a lot of trouble uploading the file over there. This was frustrating, until I remembered the fairly obvious fact that a graphic doesn't have to be housed on the same server as the text. Then I just copied the code for the graphic above over to utownwriting.com, and now it's fine. I still have to figure out what the problem was, but this makes it less urgent.)

As I said last week, I have a few possible ideas for the next story, so I'm figuring out which one will come next. As it looks now, Jan and Marshall will go to church, Ron will hear the story of how her parents got married, Pete and another old friend will play some rock and roll, and there will be more vampires. Oh, and Ron will get in trouble, but that probably doesn't quality as news. I may skip next week's update if I haven't yet decided which story I will start first.

three quotes

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

I'm evaluating which mystery story to tell next, so meanwhile here are three quotes from Andy Warhol.

They're not as well-known as "In the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes," but they're equally true.

"An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks it would be a good idea to give them."

"[I]f you say that artists take 'risks' it's insulting to the men who landed on D-Day, to stuntmen, to baby-sitters, to Evel Knievel, to stepdaughters, to coal miners, and to hitch-hikers, because they're the ones who really know what 'risks' are."

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."