Fresh Golden Threads for The Emperor’s New Clothes
By Laura Oles
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” –C.S. Lewis
If you’re in search of a dark crime story, look no further than a classic fairy tale. Take a handful of jealousy, revenge, gaslighting, theft or even murder, and coat it with the sparkling exterior of a fantastical castle or a forest filled with magical beasts, and voila! You have a crystal ball full of comeuppance.
There’s a kidnap plot in “Hansel and Gretel,” attempted poisoning in “Snow White,” toxic families and unpaid labor in “Cinderella,” and several breaking and entering charges in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”
According to the BBC, fairy tales can be traced back thousands of years. Durham University anthropologist Dr. Jamie Tehrani shared that some tales like “Beauty and the Beast” and “Rumpelstiltskin” are approximately 4,000 years old. Additionally, he told the BBC, “Some of these stories go back much further than the earliest literary record and indeed further back than Classical mythology – some versions of these stories appear in Latin and Greek texts – but our findings suggest they are much older than that.”
Ah, the long tail of crime tales…
As an avid lover of short stories, I was thrilled to be included in the recently released Wish Upon a Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by Fairy Tales by Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson. The opportunity to reimagine these stories in a current context was a fabulous challenge.
My contribution, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” finds itself in the center of emerging tech hustle culture. Countless cautionary tales can be found in this world of big promises and bigger pitfalls, the brass ring always barely beyond reach for all but a few with secret access to the inside track.
Oh, to be chosen.
Daniel Hayes finds himself at a crossroads after his last investment goes bust. He knows he has what it takes to strike it big—he just needs one more shot to prove himself. One more chance to quiet the chorus of naysayers and to demonstrate, once and for all, that he has what it takes make it in Big Tech.
The universe drops a golden coin in Daniel’s palm, and he knows that he’s finally found the perfect opportunity to show his family, friends, and Instagram followers that he’s made it to the top. He may need to make a few compromises, but that’s a small price to pay, isn’t it?
Wish Upon a Crime is available now.
THE TABLE OF CONTENTS
“Hansel and Gretel” by Joseph S. Walker
“Goldilocks and the Three Bears” by John M. Floyd
“Rapunzel” by Adam Meyer
“The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Laura Oles
“Three Billy Goats Gruff” by Michael Bracken
“Beauty and the Beast” by James A. Hearn
“The Bremen Musicians” by Debra H. Goldstein
“Jack and the Beanstalk” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins
“Cinderella” by Donna Andrews
“The Frog Prince” by Josh Pachter
“Little Red Riding Hood” by Barb Goffman
“The Briar Patch” by Tom Milani
“King o’ the Cats” by David Dean
“The Gingerbread Man” by Stacy Woodson
Laura Oles is the award-winning author of the Jamie Rush mystery series. Her work has appeared in crime fiction anthologies, consumer magazines and business publications.She loves road trips, bookstores and any outdoor activity that doesn’t involve running.She lives in the Texas Hill Country with her family. (https://www.lauraoles.com).
I have a short story in the new anthology Detectives, Sleuths, and Nosy Neighbors III from Inkd Publishing entitled “The Assassination Game.” This is one of the few stories I’ve written that has been partially inspired by real events that happened in my community, many of the events taking place during my children’s high school years. I selected three unconnected events and assembled details from them like a jigsaw puzzle to create my story.
What were the incidents?
Senior Assassin!
Several years ago, I heard about the game of “Senior Assassin” being played at the high school while volunteering in the library. The game is generally played in the spring, not the winter, so I took some liberties by placing it over the Winter Holidays in my story. In “Senior Assassin,” members of the senior class sign up to play an elimination game, in which they tag each other, usually with water guns, vying for the honor of being the last one standing. The school building is off-limits for the game, which must be played outside of school hours. However, the parking lot is fair game. To move from the building to the parking lot, silly rules are employed to create safe passage. For example, to be protected from elimination, you might have to wear swimming pool floaties on your arms or a maybe a hat with animal ears. The game is generally in good fun, but it makes the news almost every spring because of someone mistaking a water gun for the real thing.
The second incident that I drew from happened over a summer, a time when bored high school students have been known to get into mischief. In this case, my daughter’s friend came over and told us about how her younger brother was riding his bike in their neighborhood when some stupid teens in a pick-up truck decided to take pot shots at him with a BB gun. He was struck in the back and bloodied. He wasn’t the only one targeted that day. A couple other children were also hit with BBs.
The third piece of the story came two years ago when I drove one of my kids two days in a row to visit a friend in the hospital, who was recovering from surgery for severe scoliosis. I learned months earlier, in the lead up to the surgery, that in some instances emergency surgery may be needed if the curvature of the spine worsens past a particular point. Unlike my protagonist, my child’s friend, to his parent’s relief, didn’t have to have emergency surgery. His surgery was done in the summer, when, I’m told, most scoliosis surgeries occur.
To be clear, the teenagers in my story bear no resemblance to the actual children at my kids’ high school, or to any of their friends or to their friends’ siblings. The story and its characters are fictional. I simply borrowed details from real life to build the story.
In “The Assassination Game,” my protagonist, JB, who is recovering from emergency scoliosis surgery, learns from friends that the seniors at his high school are playing an assassination game over Winter break. However, the game has gotten out of hand to the point that someone used a BB gun to shoot another player in the back to tag them out. JB hears that police are investigating the matter.
The story is also heavily inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. From Rear Window, I borrowed the names Lisa and Jeff, who became my protagonists. In the movie, Jimmy Stewart plays L.B. Jeffries, called Jeff by friends. My character’s name is Jeff, but his friends call him JB, and only his mother calls him Jeff. In the movie, Jimmy Stewart’s Jeff witnesses what he suspects to be a murder while recovering from an injury that has him stuck in his room in a cast up to his waist. My character JB sees something out his window that might or might not relate to the assassination game BB gun incident while stuck in his room recovering from emergency scoliosis surgery. As Grace Kelly’s Lisa did in the movie, my character Lisa visits her friend JB and becomes the active investigator, going to look for evidence of what might have happened.
Of course, things don’t go as the teens plan in their investigation.
One morning each year the bird genius, Jesse Huth, of Huth Avian Services, arrives from Wimberley to conduct our annual bird survey.
Every year I tiptoe along behind, hearing his soft announcements. “Green heron above the creek.” I look up, straining to spot the lovely heron in flight. While I’m wondering what it would be like to fly like that, I hear: “Red-tailed hawk.” Now Jesse’s facing a different direction, lifting his binoculars. Later, “American Redstart.” (I ask myself: what’s that?) We climb back up from the creek. Then, “Field sparrow. Lark sparrow.” (I peer, unsure of the difference.) Then off to the pasture. “Vireo, red-eyed.” “Vireo, white-eyed.” And “Vireo, yellow-throated.”
Those vireos?—I never spot them, whatever they are doing––flying, darting, twittering, disappearing.
Then—such elation! Sitting boldly at the top of a tree we see the brilliant crimson of a summer
Jesse’s an expert on birds. He has studied their voices, their habits, their preferences, their appearance. He knows how to use owl calls to draw a crowd of various birds. After Jesse departs, I grab The Sibley Guide to Birds to study those three vireos (red-eyed, white-eyed, yellow-throated).
So tiny, the differences! You have to see the eye, where the yellow is, and where it isn’t; you must notice whether it has the gray cap, or not…
Jesse has spent years with those birds under close observation, yes, and under closer observation, applying his knowledge of detail. He sees differences that escape me. He can distinguish their songs.
After two hours he’s observed, and recorded or photographed, 40 species.
Details! Writers also must choose details that work, that light up, that bring to life characters and setting. That phrase—“under close observation”—describes the writer’s job: finding just the right details of setting, just the right details of characters, to make the plot come to life and satisfy the reader, the audience.
We all know great examples. In Act I, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar closely observes Cassius:
“Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.” Act I, Scene II.
Reading that, did you get a glimpse of Cassius’s face, as Caesar describes it? And hear that firm conviction, “therefore are they very dangerous”? Right away we begin to hold our breath.
I confess I do want to like the protagonist, whether in a play, a novel, a mystery, biography, autobiography. I do not need to approve entirely of that character, but, whatever the genre, I prefer to spend time reading about someone I can empathize with. So, turning to autobiography, consider these excerpts from the beginning of Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen:
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold. …
We grew coffee on my farm. The land was in itself a little too high for coffee, and it was hard work to keep it going; we were never rich on the farm. But a coffee-plantation is a thing that gets hold of you and does not let you go, and there is always something to do on it: you are generally a little behind with your work.
…Later on, when I flew in Africa, and became familiar with the appearance of my farm from the air, I was filled with admiration for my coffee-plantation, that lay quite bright green in the grey-green land, and I realized how keenly the human mind yearns for geometrical figures.
With these details Isak Dinesen makes us see the farm and the Ngong Hills, then makes us feel the air at six thousand feet… with “lipid and restful” evenings. We feel her emotional attachment—“a coffee-plantation is a thing that gets hold of you and does not let you go.” Then she catches our imagination, describing seeing her farm from the air while flying, and shares her discovery that “the human mind yearns for geometrical figures.” Her own observations of detail reveal to us the protagonist, the main character in this autobiography, as a thinker, a noticer, a person with staying power, who once (but no longer) “had a farm in Africa”—and now offers to share that adventure. Her intelligence, her sensibility, her brilliant use of detail, kept me turning the page.
Another protagonist we meet and can’t abandon: Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, of Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow. We’re introduced as the Count strides back from the Kremlin Gates to his home at the Hotel Metropol. On the way he greets the fruit seller, thanks the soldiers whose prisoner (we now perceive) he is, returns to his elegant suite—and learns that he has been dispossessed. He will spend the rest of his life in a tiny room in the hotel’s attic: “a cast-iron bed, a three-legged bureau, and a decade of dust.” He’s allowed to retrieve a few possessions. He wants “all the books” and also chooses two high-back chairs his grandmother’s oriental coffee table, porcelain plates, two table lamps, and the portrait of his sister…plus one trunk which he fills with clothes and personal effects, including his sister’s tiny scissors. We watch him take a last walk through his suite, then return to his tiny new room. A pigeon lands outside:
“Why, hello,” said the Count. “How kind of you to stop by.”
The pigeon looked back with a decidedly proprietary air. Then he scuffed the flashing with its claws and thrust its beak at the window several times in quick succession.
“Ah, yes,” conceded the Count. “There is something in what you say.”
I already liked this man, his exquisite courtesy to the pigeon, his apparent ability to laugh at himself, his apparent determination to stay himself, to refuse to give the state the satisfaction of causing him despair …despite the state’s efforts to destroy almost everything he has. Then I watch while he hosts a party for his friends in the hotel staff:
“The Count was something of a natural-born host and in the hour that ensued, as he topped a glass here and sparked a conversation there, he had an instinctive awareness of all the temperaments in the room.”
Personal tragedy, but humor, civility, sensitivity, courage—and determination. Okay, I’ll definitely keep reading.
Screenwriter Robert McKee, in his book Story about principles of screenwriting, points out that a story’s protagonist must have a conscious desire, but must also have the capacities, and at least a chance, to attain that desire. Also, according to McKee, “The protagonist must be empathetic; he may or may not be sympathetic.” Per McKee, “Empathetic means ‘like me.’ Deep within the protagonist the audience recognizes a certain shared humanity.”
McKee explains: “The unconscious logic of the audience runs like this: ‘This character is like me. Therefore, I want him to have whatever he wants, because if I were he in those circumstances, I’d want the same thing for myself.’” Amor Towles certainly accomplished that with Count Rostov.
So what details have kept you reading a book? What particular description made you think—this writer’s keeping me entertained, keeping me turning the pages? In particular, are there protagonists who—when you think about it—have some appealing characteristics you enjoy? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Now, a short report. First, no peaches. Tragically, after warm weather when the blossoms opened and tiny peaches formed, two late freezes killed the baby peaches. Sigh. Second, after unusual rain, the pastures out here in Hays County are bright green. No bluebonnets this year (well, maybe six), but we still have magenta Wine Cup, lavender Passion Flower, and so many yellow flowers—Brown-eyed Susan, Mexican Hat, Golden-Eye, Coneflowers, Sunflowers, Cowpen Daisy, Golden-Wave Coreopsis, Navajo Tea, Indian Blanket. Hard to know which is which.
I’m at work on Book 11 in the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series, set in the Texas hill country. That means working on the big triumvirate—setting, characters, plot. The protagonist, Alice, definitely has a conscious desire, and the capacities to attain it—but barriers lie ahead. Yes, she’s under close observation. Stay tuned.
Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. She’s active with Austin Shakespeare and the Heart of Texas Sisters in Crime Chapter of the national Sisters in Crime (come join us! 2-3:30, Laura Bush Library on Bee Cave Road, second Sundays of the month).
June 25, 2026–Watch for the DSCL Author Showcase–Helen will be presenting, along with Jo Pellinore and Michael Baldwin! Social at 5:45, Panel Discussion 6-7:30. Contact Dripping Springs Community Library to register.
“One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do
is to have the daily miracle. It does come.” ~ Gertrude Stein
I’m having a hard time getting this post started. First I started a sentence about buying Natalie Goldberg’s The True Secret of Writing but stopped half-way through. Then I began a sentence about the book’s title, finished it, and realized it had nothing to do with my topic. I’m still trying to get it right.
For most of us, the first sentence isn’t easy. Neither is the second. Often, the third is troublesome. Sometimes the process just goes on and on.
Okay, scratch all that. There’s nothing new in it. The first opening sentence I composed seemed off-putting, so I wrote another, and it wasn’t any better. So I’ll dive right in:
But it’s only fair to warn you: This post is about writing and thinking. It isn’t about childhood or cotton or plaids or sewing or shopping. But if you’ll take a minute to read through some cottons and plaids, the point will become clear.
The post is also about miracles.
Below, in italics, is a draft I wrote for another group blog, Writing Wranglers and Warriors:
I’d planned to write about Shakespeare today, but a picture of a trench dress fellow Writing Wrangler Nancy Jardine shared stopped me in my tracks.
I confess I had to look up trench dress. I’d never heard the term. Imagine my surprise when I realized I’ve had trench dresses of my own. Although I love nice clothes, the technicalities have never interested me.
What caught my eye about this particular dress was the plaid. It reminded me of my childhood. There was never a plaid my mother didn’t love and wouldn’t wrap me up in.
And that brought to mind the annual back-to-school treks to Comal Cottons in New Braunfels, Texas, where we bought patterns, fabric, and notions to make back-to-school clothes. Friends from up the street and their mother came, too.
We made the trip in July, and started early, to get a jump on the summer heat. The outlet store, about thirty miles from where we lived, was filled with bolt after bolt of cloth. Mother walked slowly, running her hand across every bolt—it seemed to me she touched every bolt—and saying, “Isn’t that pretty,” or, “That color would look good on you,” or, “That would make a cute…” I followed along. My job was to chime in about the colors and patterns I liked, but I was bored stiff. I agreed with everything.
Next step, patterns: Opening long metal file drawers, pulling out packets of patterns… Simplicity and Butterick patterns were the best; McCall’s instructions could be confusing. Then, mentally matching styles with material we’d seen, taking patterns to fabrics to make sure, checking yardage and price, reconsidering… I was sure we re-examined every bolt.
By this time, my feet were killing me. (I was born with feet designed for sitting.) Comal Cottons had no chairs. Three bored tweens, one with aching feet, needed chairs. With chairs, girls can read books. Without chairs, girls stand around, one of them shuffling from foot to foot.
Then, decisions: making choices, stacking bolts on big tables, watching clerks cut material straight across, perfectly straight, and fold it.
And then, the notions: buttons, thread, bias tape, zippers, and lots more considering.
And finally we headed for the car, bearing loads of raw material that over the next six weeks would be made into our fall wardrobes. Which in my case would include a plethora plaids.
Now, like much else of my childhood, Comal Cottons itself is only a memory.
Thank you, Nancy. With just one picture of a plaid dress, you brought back part of my childhood.
Well. To quote one of my former high school students, BO-ring. And, So what?
But as I wrote that last line about memory, the Daily Miracle arrived: A treasured memory of a different piece of fabric surfaced. The memory I really wanted to write about.
And then, another miracle: I realized the story about the shopping trip was a warm-up. It was a seed of an idea starting to germinate. It was brain rubble that had to be expelled before the real subject could emerge.
Acting on the epiphany, I found my bit of fabric, snapped a photograph, and added three short paragraphs. Finally, I deleted the whole boring warm-up.
The final post read this way:
Fellow Writer and Wrangler Nancy Jardine recently shared a picture of a beautiful plaid dress that reminded me of some fabric I’ve saved for more than fifty years. After residing all that time in my mother’s cedar chest, it’s wrinkled but intact.
The fall I turned eleven, my father’s father, whom we called Dad, gave Mother some money to buy me a birthday present. She purchased the wool shown in the photo and made me a pleated skirt. When I was sixteen, she remade it into an A-line skirt and a weskit.
Opening the box at breakfast on the morning of my eleventh birthday was a bittersweet experience, because Dad had died unexpectedly the afternoon before. Mother told me she’d chosen the fabric because the blue reminded her of the color of his eyes.
Now, to prevent further strike-throughs, I’ll get to the point promised in the Warning:
Writing is Thinking.
A boring (bad, terrible, appalling, disgusting, abhorrent, loathsome, etc.) first (second, third, etc.) draft is not a Stop Writing sign. It’s a Keep Writing sign, signaling that brain rubble is loosening up, that something better is about to present itself—that the Daily Miracle will come.
Because the only way to get rid of brain rubble is to write it out.
To quote author Nancy Peacock, “If I don’t have the pages I hate I will never have the pages I love.”
I wish I had more time to work on this. It would contain less brain rubble. It might also be on an entirely different topic.
*
This post appeared on the Austin Mystery Writers blog in 2015. It’s since been edited. If it appears in the future, it will be edited again. That’s part of the process. It’s always something. (Remember Gilda Radner?)
Kathy Waller’s short stories have been published in anthologies and online. She is co-author, with Manning Wolfe, of a novella, Stabbed.
A native of small-town Texas, she lives in Austin but finds that cows, horses, and rivers keep showing up in her fiction, and no amount of editing can make them leave.
Recently while writing a story set in 1968 inside a fictional, historical hotel, modeled on the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas, I ran into a question about hotel doors. Finding the answer took me down a rabbit hole of research into the safety codes and regulations governing hotel doors and locks.
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In the 1800s many hotels kept room keys on hooks behind the registration desk. A guest would be given the key when they checked in. When leaving the hotel temporarily, guests would leave the bulky, skeleton-style keys at the desk and reclaim them when they returned. Desk clerks would know at a glance if a guest was in the hotel at any given moment.
With improvements in locks and the manufacturing of smaller keys, guests began to keep room keys in their possession when leaving the hotel temporarily. Housekeepers and managers had to have master keys to be able to access rooms when guests were out or lost their key. Hotel doors in the early 1900s did not close and lock themselves. For my story I needed to know at what point the regulations changed to require hotel doors to close and lock themselves.
This turned out to be two different questions because the requirement for self-closing is separate from the issue of self-locking.
On the issue of self-closing doors, I learned that hotel fires spurred building code changes. The June 5, 1946, La Salle Hotel Fire in Chicago killed sixty-one people. The Canfield Hotel Fire in Dubuque, Iowa, on June 9, 1946, killed nineteen people. And the Winecoff Hotel Fire on December 7, 1946, in Atlanta killed one hundred nineteen people. On the heels of these 1946 fires, building codes across the United States were changed in the 1950s to require self-closing, fire-resistant doors in hotels, and enclosed stairwells to protect people escaping from fire. The regulations only required the doors to self-close, not to lock.
Additionally, in many places, older buildings were not required to meet newer safety codes. After the 1970 Ponet Square Fire, Los Angeles passed regulations requiring retrofitting older buildings over two stories tall with enclosed stairwells to provide a protected path out of the building. The Ponet Fire Door ordinance required the installation of self-closing doors that could block the spread of fire for at least one hour on rooms and stairwells. But different states and localities have different rules on retrofitting of older buildings. After the 1980 MGM Grand Fire in Los Vegas, a commission was formed in Nevada to discuss the need for making older buildings comply with newer regulations.
I still didn’t have an answer on the question on whether the door self-locked. Here Mr. John Payne, a forensic locksmith, came to my rescue. He said: “The lock side of the equation was solved earlier: Walter Schlage patented the “key shutout mechanism” — the core of what we now call the “hotel lock function” — in a series of patents beginning in 1933. The typical hotel function lock had an outside handle that did not move and a key was required to retract the latch to enter from the corridor. The door would automatically latch behind every guest who entered or departed the guest room. The combination of a self-closing door and a self-latching hotel lock cylinder meant that by the mid-20th century, a hotel guest needed to do nothing at all when leaving a room — the door closed, latched, and locked itself.” Thus, hotels built after the mid-1930s would probably have these newer door locks.
But Mr. Payne pointed out, many hotels didn’t consider functional door locks for guest security to be an important responsibility until after singer Connie Francis sued Howard Johnson Hotels in 1976. Ms. Francis was beaten and raped in her hotel room. Her attacker gained entrance through a sliding glass door that was easily opened from the outside. The hotel was aware that the door locks were not sufficient and that other incidents had occurred at the hotel. A jury found the hotel liable for the assault. Prior to this lawsuit, only the assailant had ever been held responsible for such an attack in a hotel. This lawsuit (Garzilli vs. Howard Johnson Motor Lodges, Inc.) was the first to establish that hotels are required to provide adequate security for guests, which includes functional door locks.
After this deep dive down the research rabbit hole, I had the answers I needed to make my story work. My fictional historical hotel built in 1886 might not yet have self-closing, self-locking doors in 1968, especially if it was scheduled to undergo a major renovation in 1969 to bring it up to code. My fictional hotel guests would still have to manually close and lock their own hotel room doors using the original Victorian era knobs and locks. Which means, someone might forget to lock a room, allowing for a robbery to occur. Thus, the crime in my story was plausible. Now, I won’t have people writing to tell me that the fictional thefts in my fictional hotel were impossible, and more importantly, the editor who questioned the door closing and locking situation and sent me down this research rabbit hole is satisfied.
Finally, I have a new story out in Black Cat Weekly #242. “The Case of the Dead Man’s Daughter” features genetic genealogy private detective Maya Laster. I’m thrilled for her story to be featured on the cover of the magazine.
I wrote the following post ten years ago. A fellow writer said I should repost it periodically, and over the years, I’ve done so. I’ve altered a few words, but nothing else has changed.
*
So you start writing your post about the incomparable Josephine Tey’s mystery novels two weeks before it’s due but don’t finish, and then you forget, and a colleague reminds you, but the piece refuses to come together, and the day it’s due, it’s still an embarrassment, and the next day it’s not much better, and you decide, Oh heck, at this point what’s one more day? and you go to bed,
and in the middle of the night you wake to find twenty pounds of cat using you as a mattress, and you know you might as well surrender, because getting him off would be like moving Jello with your bare hands,
and you realize that not only has your own brain turned, but that your mind has become completely unhinged.
And you can’t get back to sleep, so you lie there thinking, Books, books, books. Strings and strings of words, words, words. Why do we write them, why do we read them?What are they all for?
And you remember when you were two years old, and you parroted, from memory, because you’d heard it so many times,
The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear, Public domain, via Wikipedia
And when you were five and your playmate didn’t want to sit still and listen to you read Angus and the Cat,and you made her sit still and listen anyway.
And when you were sixteen and so happy that all you could think was, O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!, and you didn’t know who wrote it but you remembered the line from a Kathy Martin book you got for Christmas when you were ten.
And when you were tramping along down by the river and a narrow fellow in the grass slithered by, and you felt a tighter breathing, and zero at the bone.
I’ll tell you how the sun rose, A ribbon at a time, The steeples swam in Amethyst The news, like Squirrels, ran – The Hills untied their Bonnets –
And when you saw cruelty and injustice, and you remembered, Perfect love casts out fear, and knew that fear rather than hate is the source of inhumanity, and love, the cure.
And when your father died unexpectedly, and you foresaw new responsibilities, and you remembered,
We never know how high we are Till we are called to rise. And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies—
And when your mother died, and you thought,
The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity –
And later,
Oh, if instead she’d left to me The thing she took into the grave!- That courage like a rock, which she Has no more need of, and I have.
Fentress United Methodist Church
And at church the day after your father’s funeral, when your cousins, who were officially middle-aged and should have known how to behave, sat in the front pew and dropped a hymnbook, and then something sharp stuck you in the side and you realized that when you mended a seam in your dress earlier that morning, you left the needle just hanging there and you were in danger of being punctured at every move, and somehow everything the minister said struck you as funny, and the whole family chose to displace stress by laughing throughout the service, and you were grateful for Mark Twain’s observations that
And when, just before you walked down the aisle, you handed a bridesmaid-cousin a slip of paper on which you’d written, Fourscooooorrrrrrre…, so that while you said, “I do,” she would be thinking of Mayor Shinn’s repeated attempts to recite the Gettysburg Address at River City’s July 4th celebration, and would be trying so hard not to laugh that she would forget to cry.
And when your friend died before you were ready and left an unimaginable void, and life was unfair, and you remembered that nine-year-old Leslie fell and died while trying to reach the imaginary kingdom of Terabithia, and left Jess to grieve but also to pass on the love she’d shown him.
And when the doctor said you have an illness and the outlook isn’t good, and you thought of Dr. Bernie Siegal’s writing, Do not accept that you must die in three weeks or six months because someone’s statistics say you will… Individuals are not statistics, but you also remembered what Hamlet says to Horatio just before his duel with Laertes,
And by the time you’ve thought all that, you’ve come back to what you knew all along, that books exist for pleasure, for joy, for consolation and comfort, for courage, for showing us that others have been here before, have seen what we see, felt what we feel, shared needs and wants and dreams we think belong only to us, that
And about the time you have settled the question to your satisfaction, the twenty pounds of Jello slides off, and you turn over, and he stretches out and leans so firmly against your back that you end up wedged between him and your husband, who is now clinging to the edge of the bed, as sound asleep as the Jello is, and as you’re considering your options, you think,
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar…
and by the time the Pussycat and the Elegant Fowl have been married by the Turkey who lives on the hill, and have eaten their wedding breakfast of mince and slices of quince with a runcible spoon, and are dancing by the light of the moon, the moon, you’ve decided that a turned brain has its advantages, and that you wouldn’t have your mind re-hinged even if you could.
Kathy Waller’s short stories have been published in anthologies and online. She is co-author, with Manning Wolfe, of a novella, Stabbed.
A native of small-town Texas, she lives in Austin but finds that cows, horses, and rivers keep showing up in her fiction, and no amount of editing can make them leave.
The finalists for the Derringer Award for Best Anthology have been announced by the Short Mystery Fiction Society. They are…
Crimeucopia: The Not So Frail Detective Agency, Edited by John Connor, Murderous Ink Press
Gone Fishin’: Crime Takes a Holiday, The Eighth Guppy Anthology, edited by James M. Jackson released by Wolf’s Echo Press
Hollywood Kills: An Anthology, edited by Adam Meyer & Alan Orloff, Level Best Books – Level Short
Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense: A Superior Shores Anthology, edited by Judy Penz Sheluk, Superior Shores Press
On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, Edited by Curtis Ippolito, Rock and a Hard Place Press
SoWest: Danger Awaits! A Desert Sleuths Anthology, Edited by Claire A. Murray, Eva Eldridge, Suzanne E. Flaig, Denise Ganley, and Sarah Smith, DS Publishing
At this time, the members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society should be reading these books in preparation for voting for the winner in a few months.
Judges from the SMFS are also reading hundreds of anonymized story submissions in four other categories to come up with the lists of finalists in those categories. The categories are flash fiction (1000 words or less), short story (1001 to 4000 words), long story (4001 to 8000 words), and novelette (8001 to 20,000 words). Finalists in those categories will be announced April 1. Then society members will read all the finalists in order to vote for the winners during the month of April. Winners for all four individual story categories and the anthology category will be announced on May 1.
I have a stake in this vote because I have a story inCrimeucopia: The Not So Frail Detective Agency. My story, “Disappearance of an Easy Lover,” features Maya Laster, a genetic genealogy private investigator. She takes a case that appears to be simple: find out why a girl ghosted a guy. But the answer to the question is far from simple, and Maya ends up traveling all over Texas to solve it. Maya has been featured in three published stories so far. The other two stories, “Disappearance of a Serial Spouse” and “A Matter of Trust,” appeared in Black Cat Weekly issues #79 and #110. Maya is scheduled to make two more appearances soon, one currently without a publication date, and the other scheduled to be published in April if all goes well.
If you missed reading any of my stories that were published in Black Cat Weekly or in the various Crimeucopia anthologies, I have good news. Black Cat Weekly and the Crimeucopia anthologies are available via Hoopla and other library services. I discovered many of my stories were available online at my local library via Hoopla. So, if, like one of my relatives who shall remain nameless, you “don’t want to buy a whole magazine or book just to read my one story,” you can log in to your library and check them out to your personal reading device for free. Then, maybe you’ll discover the value of reading the whole book or magazine!
As many authors have noted in the last few weeks, 2025 wasn’t a great year for the short mystery fiction world. Between controversies over contracts at the major publishers and the dwindling number of markets available for short mysteries, authors have had a lot of reasons to worry. Like others, I had stories left in limbo this year by the sudden closure of a publisher, and I’ve spent an ever-increasing amount of time trying to find places to submit stories. However, I’m going to take a moment to focus on what went well for me in 2025.
One goal that I set and met in 2025 was participating in a major writing conference. I attended Bouchercon New Orleans in September, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I planned to meet editors and other short mystery fiction writers in person and I did! I met Robert Lopresti, Daniel and K.T. Bartlett, Bonnar Spring, and Avram Lavinsky. I met Josh Pachter and spoke to Steph Cha and Linda Landrigan. I sat on a panel and discussed authorial voice with Daniel Bartlett, Mark Thielman, Warren Moore, and Carol Orange, with Catherine Tucker moderating. Being a massive introvert, the convention left me on people overload, but it was worth every minute.
I planned to submit at least two stories a month for publication in 2025. I accomplished that goal. I’d hoped to hit three a month, but that was not to be this year. While my submissions remained solid, my productivity dropped. Increasing my output of stories will be a 2026 goal.
In 2025, two of my stories appeared in Crimeucopia anthologies edited by John Connor. The first, “Murder by Alternate Facts,” was published in March in Crimeucopia: Chicka-Chicka Boomba!. The second story, “Disappearance of an Easy Lover,” was published in December in Crimeucopia: The Not So Frail Detective Agency. I ended the year with five additional stories pending publication. While I don’t have firm dates for any of the stories yet, I’m looking forward to most of them coming out in 2026.
2025 brought me one surprise accomplishment! My story “Predators and Prey,” which was published online in 2024 by Rusty Barnes on TOUGH, was selected by Steph Cha as an “Other Distinguished Story of 2024” in the list at the back of this year’s Best American Mystery and Suspense. The anthology came out in October, but I knew my story was on the list since someone forwarded a screenshot to me before I went to Bouchercon. When I spoke to series editor Steph Cha at Bouchercon, she confirmed that my story was on the list, and she remembered it! While it’s gratifying to have anyone remember one of my stories, to have Steph Cha remember it in casual conversation while walking down a hall was particularly pleasing. The story is available online to read here: Predators and Prey on TOUGH.
The end of 2025 also marked the end of the previous group blog to which I belonged. I was happy to receive an invitation to begin posting with the wonderful people here at Austin Mystery Writers. I look forward to writing along side them and learning from them in the coming year.
I recently read The Poisonwood Bible for the second time. It’s interesting how it’s a different experience after I’ve become a mother and after I’ve have had more life experiences. What stuck with me this time wasn’t the politics, religion, or the history as much as a mother’s fear of living in a place that doesn’t feel safe.
Years ago, we lived on a ranch where there were a lot of rattlesnakes. (I know, you’ve heard me talk about this before.) We had hundreds in the vicinity. For the first year we were there, I worried almost every single day that my small child would get bitten. And possibly die since we were far from any hospital or antivenom. I didn’t talk about it much, but it was always there in my head. Every walk outside, every noise in the grass, every moment my child was out of my sight. I truly believed that any day could be the day something terrible would happen.
After about a year, something shifted. I still knew the danger was there, but I wasn’t consumed by it anymore. I had learned where the snakes were likely to be, when to be extra careful, and when I could relax a little. The fear didn’t disappear; it just stopped running my life.
One day I told my husband how I wasn’t worrying as much. He was stunned, and frankly, kind of appalled. He couldn’t believe I had lived with that level of anxiety every day. He had no idea. We were in the same place, raising the same child, but our inner experiences were completely different.
I thought about this when reading The Poisonwood Bible. A mother, Orleanna, did the best that she could, given her circumstances, to prepare for their new life. Like bringing cake mixes for her daughter’s birthdays, only to have the mixes turn to rock in the humidity. Such a symbol of motherhood/parenthood. We do the best we can. The trials that we may face are not the ones we expected. And Nathan, so sure he was right, so focused on his mission and his authority, his divine calling, that he didn’t notice what was happening to the people around him. (Not that my husband was a tyrant or a fanatic!)
The book also made me think about living and trying to parent in an oppressive patriarchal society. A general observation, while male egos and cultures clash, it’s the citizens who pay the price. Nathan’s rigid religious authority collided with local power structures and culture. While he was so wrapped up in his zeal to save souls, trying to live by the laws in The Bible, that he missed the message of The Gospel. And he was so bent on changing the local “heathen” customs, without really looking at or connecting to the people, he was doomed to fail. No one wins when the people in power are fighting to maintain power instead of helping society. When patriarchies rule, all citizens end up paying the price. Even those in charge seem trapped by the need to dominate rather than care.
I guess I’m feeling this more than ever before. It’s what’s happening in the world. For me, The Poisonwood Bible landed as a reminder that paying attention matters and caring about people matters. And the people who notice danger, who quietly adapt, who carry the worry, so others don’t have to, are often invisible. But they’re doing the work that keeps everyone alive.
I think about that first year with the rattlesnakes sometimes. I think about how long I carried that fear alone. And reading this book helped me see that experience more clearly—not as weakness, but as awareness.
And now here is a picture of a Christmas kitten so you won’t be so bummed out.
In late October, I spoke at the J.B. Nickells Memorial Libraryin Luling, Texas. An author talk, although I feel like an imposter calling it that. I write slowly, have published only a few short stories plus a novella co-written with a real author, haven’t published a novel of my own, . . . I’m not really an author . . . Well, you get the idea.
The condition is not new, and I’m not the only sufferer. New Austin Mystery Writer Noreen Cedeno recently posted on Ink-Stained Wretches Bouchercon and the Imposter Syndrome. On today’s Writer Unboxed blog, Rachel Toalson posted The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Imposter Syndrome Crisis. Nobody looking at these two writers’ lists of publications would describe either as an imposter—they are writers. I, on the other hand, am an imposter.
When invited to speak in Luling, however, I didn’t let impostership stop me. I said, Yes. I had my reasons.
In the first place, I love talking about books. I’d rather talk about other people’s books, but since retiring as a librarian, I don’t get to give booktalks anymore. I miss that.
In the second place, I was born in the old Luling Hospital and six years later left my tonsils there. I grew up, and lived for years after, in Fentress, a very small town ten miles from Luling. I was a member of the Rainbow Girls chapter in Luling. I spent a lot of time at the Luling DQ. My maternal great-grandparents lived there; my grandmother was born there. My mother’s family lived there for two years when she was in junior high (and she and her sister were the first girls to wear shorts to play tennis in Longer Park). And two cousins on my father’s side who grew up three blocks up the street from me in Fentress married Luling natives. In short, Luling is my old stomping ground.
I wanted so much to speak in Luling that I decided to pretend I was a real author.
Note: I’m not a total fraud. I mean, I not only gave booktalks at my libraries, I once gave a booktalk at a meeting of the Seguin, Texas, Kiwanis Club. I was a professional librarian. Real.
As a professional, I arrived prepared: outline, notes, quotations, copies of the anthologies containing my short stories and of the novella co-written with Manning Wolfe. The librarian escorted me to the room where I was to speak. I laid out my books and materials.
Then things fell apart.
About a half-hour before the presentation was to begin, kinfolk arrived: Peggy, a second cousin whose family lived up the street in Fentress; Brownie, her late sister’s husband; and Brownie’s daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter. I hadn’t seen them in forever. So the family reunion began.
By the time I went on stage, so to speak, I was was having so much fun that I scrapped my notes and just talked. And talked. And talked.
Minna Katherine Stagner Veazey and Col. John L. Veazey
First, I shared some local history that has faded from the town’s memory: the story of my great-grandfather, Col. John L. Veazey, who took his wife and two young daughters to Cuba for the Spanish-American War, and who was murdered in broad daylight on Luling’s Main Street in 1904. No one in the audience had heard the story. I told other stories. I talked about writing. I had a drawing and gave away some books. I talked.
Afterward, there was more family reunion, and Fentress reunion, since one member of the audience was the daughter, and the granddaughter, of Fentress residents.
I had the time of my life.
Then speaker’s remorse set in. I had done a terrible job, just babbled, talked too fast, bored the dickens out of everyone, left my education at home, made a fool of myself—it’s not like I don’t know how to conduct myself before an audience, but I totally forgot myself, lost all sense of decorum, and was just awful. Imposter author, imposter speaker. Simply dreadful.
But. One man—actually, the only man who stayed for the program—Tom Brown Webb, Jr., familiarly known as Brownie. He married my cousin Janell Waller sixty-nine years ago, when they were both nineteen. That was just before my fifth birthday. When I was a child, I knew Janell and her sisters were princesses. She died nearly four years ago,
During the reunion, I told Brownie something I’d wanted to say for a good while—I thanked him for being so nice to me when I was a disgusting and ever-present four-year-old extremely excited about wedding plans; he always treated me as if I were a real person and not just a little kid.
He left right after I finished speaking. I just knew he’d been so bored that he couldn’t wait to get outta there. But we had all agreed to meet soon for lunch at a cafe in Fentress. I would apologize then.
Last week, nine days after we met at the library, Peggy called to say Brownie had died. Unexpectedly. She also said he’d enjoyed his evening at the library. His daughter said the same thing, that he’d talked a lot about it, said he learned things he hadn’t known, that he could “just see” everything I described, and “wouldn’t your mother have enjoyed that.” After the funeral, his son-in-law told me the same.
Imposter Syndrome. If I’d given in to it and declined the invitation to speak in Luling, I wouldn’t have seen Brownie one last time. I wouldn’t have told him how much I appreciated his kindness to a little girl. I wouldn’t have known he enjoyed listening to the stories I told. I wouldn’t have the memory of a happy time with a treasured relative.
I still feel like an imposter. But I’m finished with speaker’s remorse. Brownie enjoyed my talk. That’s all the validation I need.
***
Kathy Waller blogs at Telling the Truth, Mainly. She has almost completed a draft of a mystery novel. When she gets to “The End,” she will no longer feel like an imposter, probably.
She is grateful to fellow Austin Mystery Writer Helen Currie Fosterfor telling the librarian at the Nickells Library that she is a writer, and for not mentioning that she is an imposter,
Austin Mystery Writers 