Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, the author of nonfiction books, and an award-winning prose writer whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She is the author of four novels and 150 short stories, a six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, and a world-class Halloween expert. Her most recent books include Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers 1852–1923 (coedited with Leslie S. Klinger) and Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances. Lisa lives in the San Fernando Valley and online at www.lisamorton.com.
• My grandfather loved to shoot anything with his 16mm movie camera (remember when we had cameras instead of phones?), and I inherited a box of these tiny reels of film that could have anything on them. I suspect most of them are probably pretty dull vacation footage with people I won’t even recognize, so I’ve never paid to transfer them to DVD, but whenever I glance at that box, I always wonder, What if...? What if there’s something on there that he filmed by accident, or meant to destroy after he had the film developed? He was a lifelong resident of Indiana, so it’s thoroughly unlikely that he photographed any Veronica Lake — ish movie stars (like the title character in my story). I think I prefer to let the movies remain unknown and instead imagine that they hold tantalizing mysteries.
John Sandford (pen name for John Camp) has written more than fifty thriller novels, all of which have appeared, in one form or another, on the New York Times bestseller list, including many that debuted at number one. A former newspaper reporter, Sandford won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1986 for stories about a farm family experiencing small farming’s economic and financial crisis of the mid-1980s. In addition he has written nonfiction books on art (The Eye and the Heart: The Watercolors of John Stuart Ingle) and plastic surgery (The Kindest Cut). He lives in Santa Fe with his wife, the screenwriter Michele Cook, and their Belgian malinois, Willa.
• I don’t write much short fiction, but when Lawrence Block approached me about doing a short story based on a famous painting, the idea greatly appealed to me. I’m an art history buff, the way some people are Civil War buffs, and have a special affection for American paintings of the first half of the twentieth century. I also play guitar, strictly as a hobby, and once considered writing a thriller based around L.A. pop music culture. My prospective title for the novel was “Girl with an Ax.” Maybe I still will do that, but she showed up first in this short story. And there was another thing going on. Way back when, working as a reporter, I was also trying to write novels, without much initial success, Larry Block was well known for his how-to books on writing as well as his fiction. I was looking through one of them when I encountered something to the effect of “Throw away your first chapter.” That was the only thing I ever got out of a how-to book, but it sort of changed my life. He was saying, in effect, don’t go through a bunch of tedious scene-setting and character introductions — go with the story. I threw away my first chapter and was on my way as a fiction writer. I’ve always felt indebted to him for that, so when he asked...
David B. Schlosser is an award-winning fiction and nonfiction author and an award-winning editor. His fiction has appeared in university literary journals and online magazines. His nonfiction and journalism have run in business and trade publications, academic and scientific journals, and print and online news outlets. As a political, public relations, advertising, marketing, and content strategist, he has delighted and offended people in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal as well as on Hard Copy and Inside Edition. As a teacher, he has engaged high school debaters, university writers and communicators, continuing education mystery fans, and writers and editors at seminars and conferences. Kansan by birth, he turned Texan while earning degrees at Trinity University and the University of Texas. After living and working in nearly a dozen states, he, his lovely wife, Anne, and their dogs consider Seattle home.
• “Pretzel Logic” was inspired by Steely Dan’s song of the same title. I am grateful to Brian Thornton for his invitation to submit a story to the anthologies of crime fiction inspired by the band’s music, Die Behind the Wheel and A Beast Without a Name, which he curated and edited. The concept of pretzel logic appealed to my sense that no matter how irrational a person’s behavior seems to observers, a rational human acts on motives I can understand if I peel enough layers off the onion. Part of the joy of storytelling is interpreting behavior and motivation through action. Part of the joy of Steely Dan’s music is that it’s open to so many different interpretations. The musicians who crafted the song claimed it’s about time travel. That was not my interpretation. After living in cities challenged by race issues I’d associated with prior generations before encountering them in mine, I also was inspired by the concept of minstrelry in the southland. I’ve been illuminated by more than a few light-bulb moments in which I came to understand as rational what appeared initially to me irrational. I wanted to explore my fellow humans going about routines that seem counterintuitive, counterproductive, or antisocial but on deeper consideration make not just sense but perfect, tragic sense. I also have wanted to work into a story the location of the story’s climax — one building in two states. That building exists in Kansas City, but I imagine this story’s fictional metro area is more like Charlotte, which sprawls over the line between the Carolinas. I’m optimistic that Bax will enjoy more adventures there, and I hope that you will enjoy reading about them in the future.
Wallace Stroby is an award-winning journalist and the author of nine novels, four of which feature professional thief Crissa Stone, whom Kirkus Reviews called “crime fiction’s best bad girl ever.” His previous short story, “Night Run,” was chosen for the 2017 edition of The Best American Mystery Stories. He has also written for Esquire Japan, BBC Radio 4, Reader’s Digest, Salon, Slant, Writer’s Digest, Inside Jersey, and other publications. A lifelong resident of the Jersey shore, he was an editor for thirteen years at the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger.
• Few books meant as much to me in my formative years as the novels of Lawrence Block. So I was happy to accept his invitation to contribute a short story to his 2019 anthology At Home in the Dark. The brief was simple — the stories could be in any genre, set anywhere and in any era, as long as they were at the “darker end of the spectrum.” I chose to revisit my series character Crissa Stone, a blue-collar professional thief who’d previously appeared in four novels, the last being 2015’s The Devil’s Share. Fittingly for the anthology, I wanted the story to take place over the course of a single night, with Crissa trying to hold on to $100,000 in stolen drug money while its previous owners hunt her down across a barren New York City nightscape. So I’m grateful to Larry for both the invitation to contribute and the chance to bring Crissa out of retirement, if only briefly.