Peace and War.
By E.A. Aymar
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Author's Note
New Releases (That I'm Excited About!)
Two Writers You Should Read
Events
It's Contest Time!
Other Writing
Peace and War
I had an Author’s Note ready to go about editing, but then Russia invaded the Ukraine, potentially setting off the most consequential war in the short history of humanity, and my little editing column didn’t seem to really fit the mood. I KNOW MY AUDIENCE.
That said, I’m not going to write much about the chaos overseas because, while I certainly have thoughts, I’m far from a studied expert in international relations. What I have studied is the chaos of violence, its need, and the way men embrace it. The lasting damage violence does. And I read the stories of both defiant, anguished Ukrainians and Russians with a heavy heart.
Because embracing violence, whether willingly or reluctantly, is the darkest, most unforgiveable road one can travel.
And while I have a rather dubious opinion of humanity’s morality, I do believe that most people don’t want violence. If that was the case, our society would be in chaos (even more than it is). I think most people, at their essence, want to work and study and live amongst friends and provide their children with the kind of loving world depicted in children’s books. Safe neighborhoods, warm homes, frogs in top hats. And although that sounds utopic, it is a world we do occasionally, fleetingly, touch. And then someone or something yanks it away.
I worry about my friends who are overwhelmed – some who are military, or have military family preparing for this possible conflict. A potential world war in the midst of a relentless pandemic with a country seething at itself is A LOT to deal with. And beyond those with that immediate fear, I worry about my friends who have confided about their emotional and mental struggles in these recent years.
What I can say is that, at times of crisis, and at times of peace, kindness should be our default.
I’m not naïve about this. I'm not suggesting we stick roses in guns. I know there are times when kindness isn’t possible, or advisable. Or that it’s always the path forward. Or that it can solve pressing financial or health or other overwhelming issues.
But I would argue that, more often than that, kindness offers a path we choose to ignore. And it does more long-lasting good than violence. This sentiment has little to do with, I want to note, the conflict in Ukraine. This note is for other people who are understandably struggling with the weight of the world. If you're struggling, then realize that the strength of an act of kindness saves others, and saving others nourishes you. It gives both of you strength, and a reason to continue.
(Kindness is also rather rare nowadays, and it's honestly funny to see people bewildered by an act of selflessness.)
There are times when we have to fight, and times we should fight. There is a garden, so there is a snake.
But war is always an act of hate, and it spreads quickly. Don't let hate consume you. If you're feeling overwhelmed, call someone. Reach out. Connect with someone.
We probably can't save the world. But maybe we can save each other.
EA
As a reminder, all through February Amazon has discounted Midnight Hour, a Crime Writers of Color anthology I have a story in. And stories from this anthology have been nominated for every crime fiction award and it received favorable reviews in the trades, the New York Times, and other places. You can learn more about it HERE.
The Book of the Most Precious Substance
Sara Gran
After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written--if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it-if she can. Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world's wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost?
The Paradox Hotel
Rob Hart
January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.
Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past.
Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls.
None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see.
On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.
January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders.
There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once.
But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own.
Homicide and Halo-Halo
Mia P. Manansala
Things are heating up for Lila Macapagal. Not in her love life, which she insists on keeping nonexistent despite the attention of two very eligible bachelors. Or her professional life, since she can't bring herself to open her new café after the unpleasantness that occurred a few months ago at her aunt's Filipino restaurant, Tita Rosie's Kitchen. No, things are heating up quite literally, since summer, her least favorite season, has just started.
To add to her feelings of sticky unease, Lila's little town of Shady Palms has resurrected the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which she won many years ago—a fact that serves as a wedge between Lila and her cousin slash rival, Bernadette. But when the head judge of the pageant is murdered and Bernadette becomes the main suspect, the two must put aside their differences and solve the case—because it looks like one of them might be next.
Scoundrel
Sarah Weinman
In the 1960s, Edgar Smith, in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review. Buckley, who refused to believe that a man who supported the neoconservative movement could have committed such a heinous crime, began to advocate not only for Smith’s life to be spared but also for his sentence to be overturned.
So begins a bizarre and tragic tale of mid-century America. Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel leads us through the twists of fate and fortune that brought Smith to freedom, book deals, fame, and eventually to attempting murder again. In Smith, Weinman has uncovered a psychopath who slipped his way into public acclaim and acceptance before crashing down to earth once again.
From the people Smith deceived—Buckley, the book editor who published his work, friends from back home, and the women who loved him—to Americans who were willing to buy into his lies, Weinman explores who in our world is accorded innocence, and how the public becomes complicit in the stories we tell one another.
Scorpica
G.R. Macallister
Five hundred years of peace between queendoms shatters when girls inexplicably stop being born. As the Drought of Girls stretches across a generation, it sets off a cascade of political and personal consequences across all five queendoms of the known world, throwing long-standing alliances into disarray as each queendom begins to turn on each other—and new threats to each nation rise from within.
Uniting the stories of women from across the queendoms, this propulsive, gripping epic fantasy follows a warrior queen who must rise from childbirth bed to fight for her life and her throne, a healer in hiding desperate to protect the secret of her daughter’s explosive power, a queen whose desperation to retain control leads her to risk using the darkest magic, a near-immortal sorcerer demigod powerful enough to remake the world for her own ends—and the generation of lastborn girls, the ones born just before the Drought, who must bear the hopes and traditions of their nations if the queendoms are to survive.
The Lessons We Learn
Liz Milliron
March, 1943. As the Buffalo winter ends, the father of Betty Ahern’s friend, Lee Tillotson, disappears. At first his absence is a relief, providing Lee, his mother and sister refuge from the man’s frequent drunken rages. But when Mr. Tillotson is discovered drowned in the Buffalo River and the police charge Lee with the murder, the family’s newfound peace shatters.
Worse, Lee becomes secretive and unwilling to cooperate with Betty or the police. Betty is certain of Lee’s innocence, but there she has very little time to investigate before he must enter his plea in court. To prove Lee’s innocence, Betty digs into Mr. Tillotson’s life, discovering a seamy and dangerous underside to Mr. Tillotson, and to Buffalo itself. With time running out, Betty soon learns who her friends really are, how much Lee loves his family and friends and is loved in return, and just how far the corruption leaking from Buffalo’s City Hall has reached. But can she prove Lee’s innocence before it’s too late?
Murder Take Two
Delia Pitts
When cynical private eye SJ Rook is hired to guard the set of a hot new television show filming on the streets of Harlem, he expects his toughest challenge to be corralling star-struck fans. The task is simple: keep peace between fancy Hollywood invaders, loudmouth tourists, and rowdy neighborhood regulars. The sultry presence of an A-list star lights up the set and enflames Rook's imagination.
But the detective's brush with Hollywood glamour quickly turns dark. All week, a TV big shot bids for Rook's attention with outlandish claims of murder threats. Rook dismisses these fears as dramatic excess spiced with Left Coast dazzle. But on the last night of filming, murder writes a grim finale to the production.
With his client dead, Rook's pursuit of the truth begins. Hampered by remorse, he battles a secretive killer whose motives are hidden in plain sight. After a second murder, Rook's hopes for solving the case are dashed. He must reset for take two of the investigation. But the tragic past of an alluring actress and Rook's own unspoken desires complicate his hunt. Distracted by stardust, the detective's struggle to sort fact from fantasy takes on deadly urgency when the killer makes Rook the last target.
A Fatal Glow
Valerie Wilson Wesley
Recently widowed Odessa Jones is sure the exclusive catering job she’s scored from wealthy businessman Casey Osborne will propel her catering career into the big leagues. So when Dessa’s pesky second sight warns her that Osborne is bad news, she ignores it. She wishes she hadn’t when he drops dead at his brunch after sampling her homemade preserves. Osborne’s death is declared a homicide. Dessa and the friends who helped her cook are considered suspects…
To clear her name and find the truth, Dessa delves into Casey Osborne’s life. Everyone from his sinister business partner to his tormented ex-wife has reason to kill him—and the opportunity to do it. With the help of her spirited aunt, loyal co-workers and mischievous cat Juniper, she desperately searches for answers. Until a second murder leads Dessa down a frightening path filled with insidious hidden agendas—and someone poised to change her life forever.
It's not an exaggeration to say that Nik Korpon is the reason I write crime fiction.
Years ago (more years than I like to admit) I'd finished my first book and it promptly failed to find an agent or publisher. I'd spent so much time working on it that this failure was both surprising and dejecting. And I'd worked on this novel in private, with only my wife and a friend or two aware that I was writing anything, and I had no inroads into publishing or any sense whatsoever of the writing community.
But I kept writing, and I wrote a second book that also failed, but a theme was emerging in my work. More than a theme, a sense of genre. I could see the criminal elements of my work standing out, but at the time I loved the prose and characterization and emotional complexity of literary fiction. And I didn't see how the two could co-exist.
And then I read Nik Korpon.
At the time, Nik was making a name for himself in noir circles, particularly in Baltimore, a city my writing gravitated toward, and one that still always manages to find a presence in my work. I read his early collection of short fiction, Bar Scars, and realized he was doing exactly what I admired in writing - crime fiction with memorable prose and unforgettable characters. And then I read his book, Stay God, Sweet Angel, and was a devotee for life.
He wasn't the first or the only writer to do this, and it's unfair to say that crime fiction didn't contain those elements before - it absolutely did. But he was my introduction to crime fiction writers who weave complex literary elements in their work, and through him I read Laura Lippman and Sujata Massey and Megan Abbott and I saw my path forward.
And it was a short time afterward that the rejections stopped.
One of the best things about writing for me is being able to call people like Nik friends. There's nothing quite like the moment that a hero becomes your peer, and I can't recommend his work enough. I'll always recommend it, and I'll always have reason.
And a writer Nik recommends?
Two writers you should read are Ann Dávila Cardinal and Ryan Calejo. I recently wrote my first Middle Grade book about a 13-year-old ñoño (dork) in Cali, Colombia. Only problem was, I didn’t know much about MG. Enter Ann and Ryan. Ann’s books—Five Midnights and Category Five—are set in Puerto Rico and center around supernatural happenings on the island. Ryan’s Charlie Hernández series follows middle school student Charlie, who grows feathers on page 1 and everything goes downhill from there. Both books are riveting and full of heart, but like the best stories, they’re about so much more. Tapping into Latin American folklore. Finding your place in the world. Accepting who you are. Battling corruption and facing fears and navigating family trauma. And, occasionally, teaming up with la Llorona to punch a demon in the face.
To learn more about these authors, click on the photos above.
Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival
I mentioned this last month, but I'm so excited to be back at the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival! This is such a warm and welcoming book conference, even online, and it always features a wonderful selection of mystery writers. I pre-cordered a fun discssion with two of my favorites - Alex Segura and Eliza Nellums about their upcoming and recent novels, Secret Identity and The Bone Cay, respectively. Click HERE to register and learn more about the festival.
It's contest time! The monthly contest winner wins copies of the books listed in my "Two Writers You Should Read" segment. And the winner is...
The Mancaruso Sisters
Wait, I know this winner! I can't believe, out of 5K entrants, I picked their name! I met these two through the PitchWars contest I've referenced before (my friend Melissa Colasante was their mentor), and their book is currently available for review by agents (and I know a few of you reading this are agents) HERE.
Congrats, and keep your eye out for a separate e-mail from me!
I wrote nothing other than edits this past month. Just nothing. Nada. Unless you count signing my son's field trip permission slip. And, even in that, I think I accidentally included a plot twist. WHEN I DIVE, I DIVE DEEP.
But I'll have more in this space next month.
Until next time, much love and happy reading!