N.M. Cedeño

WHAT WOULD YOU TAKE WITH YOU?

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By Helen Currie Foster

Those of you out here in the Hill Country know that when drought turns the landscape to a flammable crisp, we’re often warned to prepare to leave home fast—meaning, decide what precious items we can’t live without, and pack those items in a box or laundry tub, ready to grab at a moment’s notice.

The Bastrop fire erupted east of Austin on September, 4, 2011, wasn’t distinguished for 55 days, and destroyed 1600 homes while burning over 32,000 acres.

From Dripping Springs we could see smoke plumes from Bastrop. I began filling a laundry basket. Which pictures? Old ones—ancestors. Old handsewn quilts. And also—a very few books.

The original family copy of Winnie the Pooh (1949); a tattered paperback (1972!) of Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring; some slim volumes of poetry. Then I realized we needed documents: passports! Birth certificates! Wills! Deeds!

With smoke rising in the east, I worried about overfilling the laundry basket, or omitting something key. I stared around the kitchen. Most kitchen utensils could be replaced, but not the following—so they went in the basket:

*An ancient cast iron frying pan, well-seasoned, the perfect size. Maybe the same variety that settlers carried west. Indestructible, and a good weapon in time of need.

*My grandmother’s ancient aluminum cake pan, nearly a century old. The top fits perfectly on the bottom and the bottom turns up around the edges of the top, so a cake can ride comfortably on a car floorboard.

When disaster threatens, we make choices. Our decisions––what we treasure enough to carry along––are so personal, so unique. Would you grab your fanciest clothes? Or your favorite jeans, perfectly broken in? Maybe an “old blue shirt that suits me just fine,” as Guy Clark sang in his “Stuff That Works”? https://genius.com/Guy-clark-stuff-that-works-lyrics 

His distinctive voice, relaxed, restful, singing this great song, calls to mind the memory of that “old blue shirt” (long-sleeved, pale blue, washed a million times) he wore at concerts.

 But in an emergency, what about your writing?

Writers can avoid the tragedy that befell Ernest Hemingway in 1922 when his first wife, Hadley Richardson, carefully packed his early writings in a small trunk to deliver to him in Switzerland. That trunk was stolen from the train at the Gare de Lyon and never seen again. Hadley had also included the carbons, perhaps anticipating her husband would be able to present an original to a publisher and still keep a copy. She reportedly wept for years. https://lostmanuscripts.com/2010/07/31/hemingways-lost-suitcase/

Today, in contrast, confronted by fire or other threat of loss, writers have options to protect that great human accomplishment—writing.

According to linguist Dr. Ingrid Piller, writing was invented independently at least three times:   Sumerian cuneiform in Mesopotamia (ca. 3400 BCE), Chinese characters in China (ca. 1200 BCE) and Mayan glyphs in Mesoamerica (ca. 300 BCE). Of these, only the Chinese script is an unbroken living tradition.

But during this long history of writing, we’ve lost a heartbreaking trove of manuscripts, many by writers we wish we could have met. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_literary_works

Sappho? (630-570 BC) Her lyric poetry, made to be sung with music, was so accomplished she was called in her time “The Tenth Muse.” But beyond fragments, we have only her Ode to Aphrodite.

Ctesibus? I’d never heard of (much less tried to pronounce the name of) this Greek inventor, a barber’s son born in Alexandria in 300 BC. He wrote on pneumatics, and invented the water organ and an improved water clock (which became our most accurate clock until Huygens invented the pendulum clock in 1656). But Ctesibus’s Memorabilia? Gone.

Aeschylus (525-455 BC) wrote 90 or so plays—only six survive. Promethus the Fire-Bringer? Lost. Sophocles (497-406 BC) wrote close to 120 plays of which only seven (Oedipus, Antigone) survive in complete form—even though Sophocles competed over 50 years in the Athens dramatic competitions (and won 24 of 30!).

Euripides (480-406 BC) wrote over 90 plays; only 18 survive complete.

Sometimes the powerful have ordered destruction. Only four Mayan codices survive: most were burned by Spanish priests in the 16th century. Many Inca Quipus were burned by Spanish priests in 1583, on orders from the Third Council of Lima. In China, a work by Confucius, The Classic of Music, was lost during the Han Dynasty with all copies reportedly destroyed on orders of the emperor during “the burning of books and burying of scholars” in 213 and 212 BC.

Europe was also unhealthy for literature. Three works by Chaucer are missing. Only two plays remain of the Coventry Mystery Play cycle—an event Shakespeare likely attended before the plays were repressed in 1579. No copies remain of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Won, written in 1598 and published in 1603.  Of Monteverdi’s 18 operas, only three survive. Seven of Moliere’s plays are lost.

An author’s family might destroy the work. That happened to the brilliant Lady Mary Worley Montagu—her family destroyed her journals because they thought she’d included too much satire. Lord Byron’s executors destroyed two volumes of his Memoirs. Family destroyed four of Lewis Carroll’s journals.

Gerard Manley Hopkins burned all his early poetry when he entered the priesthood. Margaret Fuller’s manuscript on the history of 1849 Rome was lost in a shipwreck in 1850—as was she. Mary Shelley’s Lodore disappeared when she sent it by mail to the publisher: it had to be completely rewritten.  Thomas Carlyle sent his first draft of The French Revolution to John Stuart Mill, whose maid mistakenly burned it. Carlyle had to start over.

In the twentieth century we lost a number of Scott Joplin’s compositions. Anne Frank’s diary from December 1942 to December 1943 was never found. An unpublished novel by Sylvia Plath disappeared before 1970.

But all is not lost. Hope remains. We continue to find new fragments of ancient works.

The book club I belong to liked very much Janet Soskice’s The Sisters of Sinai. (bit.ly/4i2tquC) Soskice recounts the adventures of Victorian-era British twins, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Gibson, who braved the deserts of Sinai in the 1890’s to find, in St. Catherine’s Monastery, a palimpsest. (A palimpsest is a manuscript, parchment, or writing surface from which a later writer has scraped or washed the original text in order to use the surface for a new document—often leaving faint visible traces of the original.) Below the surface covered by a later-added manuscript on female saints, Agnes spotted a hidden 2d-3d century Aramaic copy of the four gospels. You can find her 1894 publication, A Translation of the Four Gospels, online at Amazon. bit.ly/4igo5AT

These days, writers—hoping no internet disaster occurs­­––can save drafts on computers, or on iCloud Drive (that mysterious place!).

A creature from the last century, I keep an ongoing paper copy while writing. There’s some physical satisfaction in scribbling notes to self on the paper pages of a manuscript. But there’s also a sense of power in the rapid editing the computer permits. Delete! Insert!

Currently I’m still on our human adventure of writing––in the throes of finishing Ghost Music, Book 11 in my mystery series set in the Texas Hill Country.

Keep writing!

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She remains deeply curious about human history and how, uninvited, the ghost of the past keeps crashing the party. Find her on Facebook or at www.helen.currie.foster.com. The Alice MacDonald Mystery Series is available online or in Austin at BookPeople.

Keeping Track and Making Plans

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by N.M. Cedeño

I find myself using spreadsheets far more than I ever expected when I first started writing. Back then, I had a few lists here and there in word documents and one spread sheet. That one spread sheet documented short story submissions, with stories added to the list as I submitted them.

I still have the spread sheet documenting submissions, now divided into pages by year, but I’ve created another one for published stories with a separate page for pending publications, one for unpublished stories, and one overall submission document showing all of my stories alphabetized by title, so I can easily see how many times a story has been submitted and to whom.

Cover of Black Cat Weekly issue 255 featuring a sci-fi theme with a female character in red armor and a male character holding a weapon.

The most recent addition to my collection of data is a spreadsheet tracking my private eye stories by main character. At a glance, I can see that two of my private detectives have appeared in only one story each and that I’ve written three stories featuring Dallas-based PI Cleo Jimenez, one of which, “Mirror Life Meltdown,” was published by Black Cat Weekly in issue #255 in July 2026. Another of Cleo’s cases, “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Likes,” is scheduled to be published this year in the anthology Big Tex and Suspects: Crime at the State Fair of Texas. The third is on submission. Cleo currently has about 15,000 words in her series.

My character Jerry Milam, who lives and works in Texas in the 1950s to 1970s, appears in five stories. Two went out of print with the closure of the publisher, but the editor is working to get those anthologies republished by a new publisher. One story, “The Case of the Cabochon Ring,” was published in Black Cat Weekly #258 in August 2026. Another is supposed to be published in an anthology next year. The fifth story is on submission. Jerry currently has more than double the word count of Cleo, coming in at 31,500 words.

A woman in a stylish outfit sitting at a desk in a detective agency setting, with a background featuring a city skyline. The image includes a neon sign that reads 'The Not So Frail Detective Agency 24/7 - 365' and displays various names at the bottom.

Then there’s Maya Laster, my genetic genealogy investigator. Maya beats Jerry and Cleo, appearing in eight stories so far. Four have already been published: in Black Cat Weekly #79, #110, and #242, and one in the anthology Crimeucopia: The Not So Frail Detective Agency (which was a finalist for the 2026 Derringer Award for Best Anthology and First Runner Up for a Silver Falchion Award for Best Anthology). Of Maya’s other four stories, one is pending publication in an anthology sometime next year, one is on submission, one needs to be resubmitted, and the other is in final edits. Maya’s stories currently total 49,875 words.

My investigative crew in the Bad Vibes Removal Services series, however, needed their own spreadsheet. That series beats Maya by more than double, with sixteen short stories and two novels. The short stories alone total almost 106,000 words. The most recently published story, “Wedding Vibes,” appeared in Black Cat Weekly #145. The next story is pending publication, and the word is that it will be published in the fall this year.

So why do I track this information, and what do I do with all this data?

I make plans.

The data tells me I have enough word count that at some point I could create a short e-book of Jerry Milam stories. Or that if I write five or six more stories, I’ll have a book length manuscript ready to create a collection that would work in a print or digital format.

I almost have enough short stories featuring Maya Laster to make a collection of her stories. If I write another two stories, I’ll have over 60,000 words, enough to create what’s considered a novel-length print book. The word count that I have right now would work well enough for a novella-length e-book, but would be too slim a volume in print for my taste.

Book cover of 'The Walls Can Talk' by N.M. Cedeño with a ghostly figure and an eerie house background.

The word count tells me that I could collect my Bad Vibes Removal Services short stories into a print book. Most of those stories only appear in digital formats right now and many readers prefer print. Having a print option available might be worthwhile. I have to decide if this is something I want to pursue right now.

The data suggests goals for me to reach, stories for me to write, and a path forward in time. Some writers worry about facing a blank page and not knowing what to write next. With this data at my fingertips, if I’m casting about for ideas, I can always write the next story for one of my detectives and move closer to the goal of completing a collection.

A final note: As mentioned above, I have several stories coming out soon. When I have publication dates and covers, I’ll post them here. Right now, only one of my non-PI stories has been scheduled for publication. “The Mocking Ones,” a story I wrote for Cryin’ Shame: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Lyle Lovett, is scheduled to be released in digital formats on December 8, 2026, with the print version to follow in early 2027.

Book cover for 'Cryin' Shame', featuring a cowboy hat and red teardrop graphics, with the subtitle 'Crime fiction inspired by the songs of Lyle Lovett' and 'Edited by Josh Pachter' prominently displayed.

TOO DARN HOT!!!

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By Helen Currie Foster

Molly Ivins—always a truth-teller—described the state this way: “Texas! Land of wretched excess!”

Yes, I also quoted her in a March 2025 blog. But I was describing sustained icy weather.

This time? Austin weather persons say it has not rained here this August!

And as you’ve noticed, temperatures continue to spike above 100 degrees. Outdoor house plants? In a fit of mercy, maybe you brought some back inside.

That’s what we did today for five jasmine plants, acquired in grad school, that we’ve cosseted for decades. Decades! Usually they live indoors in winter, or on the deck in summer.

But this week, walking past them, I felt a disturbance. Even with daily water, even with blossoms, I felt warning signals.

Was that just my…overheated…imagination? Plus the fact that, as eloquently sung in Kiss Me Kate, “It’s too darn hot!”?

Or was it more? I’m reading Michael Pollan’s A World Appears (2026), about today’s ongoing scientific debate over the nature of consciousness—a topic humans have wondered about for millennia. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-consciousness-science-faces-its-hardest-problem-yet/\; https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260729043829.htm

Per Pollan: “A great many mammals, several bird species, and octopuses are now generally thought to be conscious, and there are scientists and philosophers who believe that some rudimentary form of consciousness, or sentience, reaches much further, all the way to insects and, possibly, beyond the animal kingdom.” (Id., at 1.)

Beyond animals? Yes, all the way to plants!

So, are plants sentient? One plant scientist points to “all the volatile compounds emitted by a succession of plants, from poplars and tobacco plants to peppers and olive trees. Plants emit volatile chemicals for a range of purposes: to signal distress, to alert neighboring plants to threats, to thwart or poison herbivores, and possibly even to soothe themselves (many plants emit ethylene, an anesthetic gas, for reasons not well understood.” Id., at 20.) (Please to note Pollan has inserted plants in the middle of the cover.)

So maybe our jasmines emitted a volatile alarm chemical. Was the alarm intended for humans? Who can tell? But the plants made it inside…

It’s a “hard problem,” the whole “consciousness” debate that Pollan’s book describes, and we’re in for a fascinating scientific journey.  

Query for you mystery readers: would you agree that it’s premature for the unraveling of a murder mystery to depend on warnings from plants? For one thing, the science is evolving. But also, to provide a real fact-based clue in a mystery, should the plant’s warnings alert not just perhaps other plants, but a human? The detective, a witness, the victim—or the reader? The jury will be out on that for awhile.

But I ask because, in the oppressive heat, I took refuge in Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Blue Train (also titled Heart of Fire) (1928).

Woe! The author appears to have committed the sin of presenting to the reader (who, like all mystery readers, is determined to solve the mystery based on available clues) information about what appears to be a mere notion on the part of a character.  Poirot reveals, at book’s end, that Miss Grey (a sensible character) “firmly believes that she felt your daughter’s presence beside her one day in the Casino Gardens at Monte Carlo, just after she had been having a talk with Knighton. She was convinced, she says, that the dead woman was urgently trying to tell her something, and it suddenly came to her that what the dead woman was trying to say was that Knighton was her murderer!” (Ch. 35.)

What? Is this a ghost story? What actual fact, what actual clue, was revealed by an already dead person to Miss Grey? Could this apparent ghostly concern, this ghostly attempt at communication, convey a real clue? Yet in the last chapter that’s how Poirot treats Miss Grey’s interpretation of the ghost’s concern––as an actual clue.  

I’m not sure this accords with the sacred collaboration between the mystery writer and the mystery reader, where (as the 1930 Detection Club rules insist), every clue must be instantly produced to the reader.

And the notion of a character thinking she hears a dead victim trying to whisper the name of her murderer? What’s your reaction?

Still, given the (possible?) messages from the jasmine, I’m hoping we won’t relive the worst Texas drought, the drought of the 1950’s, so vividly described in Elmer Kelton’s classic The Time It Never Rained (1973).

Kelton’s dedication: “In a broad sense this book is dedicated to the old-time Western ranchman, whose life style gave him an inkling of Heaven and more than his proper share of Hell.”

The heat was indeed hellish. Corsicana, northeast of Austin, experienced 82 days of temperatures over 100 °F or 37.8 °C, peaking at 113 °F or 45 °C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950s_Texas_drought

The seven-year drought finally broke in 1957. Per NPR, “Rural Texas never fully recovered. Between 1950 and 1960, the state lost nearly 100,000 farms and ranches, and rural residents who had made up more than a third of the population dwindled to just a quarter of the population.” https://www.npr.org/2012/07/07/155995881/how-one-drought-changed-texas-agriculture-forever

Out in the pasture the grass is tan, not green. The three donkeys are disconsolate. They come to the gate to pester us for carrots.

For continued green, I’m counting on the live oaks. Cedar elms. Redbud. Peach trees. Other plant treasures—basil, sage, geraniums, lantana, plumbago, bay tree, mint––are faring okay so far. But what about the poor suffering stuck-in-the-dirt rose bushes? Water? More mulch? Crossed fingers?

I’m working now on Book 11 in my Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series set in the hill country…Ghost Music. No drought involved, so far! But as always in this series, water is an important character!

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes 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 in Heart of Texas Sisters in Crime and also Austin Shakespeare. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com

Find her books on Amazon and also at BookPeople in Austin, Texas.

“Mirror Life Meltdown” Featuring Cleo Jimenez

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By N.M. Cedeño

Meet my newest character, Cleo Jimenez, a former Marine, former police officer, and now Dallas-based private investigator. “Mirror Life Meltdown,” in Black Cat Weekly #255, is Cleo’s first published appearance, but not the first story I wrote for her. That story is still awaiting publication later this year. Her third case is currently on submission.

Cleo is non-descript, with average height, average build, average looks. She’s a thirty-something, brown-hair-in-a-pony-tail, jeans-and-t-shirt kind of woman. She’s not into fancy clothes, fussy hair-dos, or make-up. Being average makes it easier for her to blend into the background when she is following a subject suspected of infidelity. The majority of Cleo’s cases involve family drama, from cheating spouses to crimes caused by addiction, mental illness, greed, vanity, and lust. In Cleo’s world, a bird that walks like a duck is usually a duck, not a whooping crane. Her cases stem from people doing stupid things and making bad choices, resulting in blow-ups in their personal lives.

Cleo enjoys romance novels, historical or modern. She studied communication at the local community college. She can handle a gun, but doesn’t usually need to carry one, since taking photos of cheating spouses, unseen, rarely leads to conflict. She drinks Shiner Bock beer and drives an older model Nissan.

When Cleo accepts a case surveilling a professor whose wife is concerned by his sudden inattentiveness and lack of communication, she isn’t expecting a deep dive into the world of university-level bioengineering and biochemistry research. She fully expects to photograph the professor in a sleazy motel, maybe with a grad student. Then her duck turns into a whooping crane, and the case takes on potentially earth-shattering consequences. Thank goodness Cleo is resourceful, even when out of her depth!

Where did the idea for this story come from?

I saw a call for a short story of any genre that included a mention of something potentially apocalyptic. As I was pondering the guidelines, I asked my neurodiverse college student son, who is currently working as an undergraduate research assistant at the University of Texas at Austin, if he could think of any possible causes of a man-made apocalypse, excluding obvious things like thermonuclear war or robots and AI. He spouted a list. (This is a fairly normal conversation in my house.) The creation of mirror life bacteria was on his list. I asked what that was. He defined it. Fortunately, I retained enough of the chemistry and organic chemistry classes that I took in college to understand his explanation.

Then I went to the internet and read several articles on mirror molecules and mirror life. In one of those odd quirks of coincidence, I even received a newsletter from UT Austin with an article about the work on mirror molecules being done at UT Dallas around that time.

Now I had an interesting topic and a setting: UT Dallas, where my oldest son attended college. Next, I needed some characters for the story.

I have another PI character who lives and works in the Dallas area. Her name is Maya Laster, and she’s a private investigator specializing in forensic and genetic genealogy. I considered how I could place Maya in a mirror-life case, but she felt wrong for the story. Then I remembered Cleo. Cleo was perfect for the case I was imagining.

In her next adventure, Cleo is hired to stand guard over a painting at the State Fair of Texas. That case, entitled “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Likes,” will appear in the anthology Big Tex and Suspects: Crime at the State Fair of Texas which is scheduled for release later this year.

****

For more information on short fiction by N.M. Cedeño, visit nmcedeno.com

(Details) Ripped from Real Life

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N.M. Cedeño

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.

“The Assassination Game” was fun to write. I’m pleased it found in home in Inkd Publishing’s anthology Detectives, Sleuths, and Nosy Neighbors III, edited by A. Balsamo. Now available at Barnes & Noble at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/…/detectives…/1150214504 and digitally from Books to Read at https://books2read.com/u/38oBw6. And on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Detectives-Sleuths-Nosy-Neighbors-III/dp/B0H2RBRG22/

I’ve already read and enjoyed this anthology. I hope you like it too!

UNDER CLOSE OBSERVATION…

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BY HELEN CURRIE FOSTER

May 18, 2026

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

tanager, surveying its territory. https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/657490711.

And in the same tree—golden-cheeked warblers! https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/657490671

I’ve never seen one before. And finally, hiding in the branches, the ineffably gorgeous painted bunting! https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/657490695

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.

Follow Helen at http://www.helencurriefoster.com and find her books on Amazon and also at BookPeople in Austin, Texas.

The Research Rabbit Hole: Hotel Room Doors and Locks

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By N.M. Cedeño

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.

And the Winner is… Still Undecided

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By N.M. Cedeño

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

Descriptions of each book can be found on the Short Mystery Fiction Society Blog.

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!

2025 Wrap Up and Review

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By N.M. Cedeño

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.

Happy New Year!