SATURDAY SHORTS

Is it Saturday already? Okay, to keep it short: here are the first couple of pages of “The Writer Did It!”, the short story I finished a couple of days ago:

“Wuhl holy jumpin’ cats, then!” Missy Mulholland, The Shootin’ Sweetheart of Sandler’s Gulch, exclaimed, “No offense meant.” Missy looked at the six foot tall orange and grey tabby in the gold brocade bathrobe sitting at the desk to her left; it waved a paw and purred genially, as if to say, “None taken.” Relieved, Missy continued: “If ah was of a mind ta kill someone, I’d do it the proper way: shootin’ ’em in the back with mah sixguns! Kin you see me killin’ anybody by stuffin’ a big ol’ carp down their throat? ’Tain’t mah style!”

I had to admit, Missy made a good point. And to be honest, I was hoping that she wasn’t the murderer. She was small, with rough features and tangled blond hair – my Bubbe would have asked me what I was thinking, falling for a shiksa from out west, but these were different times. Better times. Times when strong women were –

“I would imagine that changing one’s modus operandi would be a way of diverting suspicion away from oneself,” intoned Rich Uncle Moneybags, who sat on her other side. He was so short he was the only person in the room who was completely at ease sitting in the small desk/chair combinations that were available to everybody; in fact, there were times when I could have sworn the thick stogie he was constantly puffing away on was bigger then he was! The man seemed made up entirely of circles, but he looked smart in a tuxedo, top hat and monocle. Smart if you discount the fact that Rich Uncle Moneybags’ white moustache looked like he had mugged a mop, I mean.

Missy was offended. “You take that back about my modest oper…brandy, mister, or we’ll be exchangin’ more’n words!” Her frilled arms slowly inched towards her gunbelt.

The Samurai standing behind her (Samurai don’t sit. It’s a thing with them – don’t ask) grunted and spoke sixteenth century Japanese. Fortunately, I had done some work in the part of Anytown where…those people lived, and I had picked up enough Subtitlese to be able to follow what he was saying. The gist was that a true warrior does not disguise his actions in order to evade detection. A true warrior is proud of the work he does. Every second sentence out of Feng Chi’s mouth had something to do with true warriors. My shrink, Melinda Gottlieb, would have said that he was compensating for something. I don’t generally argue with people in shiny black body armour who carry swords that are almost as big as I am, though, so I saved the thought for my next session.

I raised a hand to stop the discussion. “Oy, why do you people want to give me such tsuris? Nobody is going to be killed, here,” I commanded. “I asked you to come tonight because you’re all suspects in the murder of Desmond Concannen, gentlemen inventor.” I could physically describe the dead man, but I hadn’t heard of him before his estate had asked me to investigate his murder, and when you’ve seen one urn full of ashes… To be honest, I had been on the case for several days and, although I had many suspects, I had run out of leads; a good friend of mine, Hercule Marple, had suggested I gather the suspects together in one room and shake them up to see what came loose. Did I have a better idea? Naah. So, I went with that. “Nobody murders anybody when you’ve gathered all the suspects in one room! It just don’t work that way!”

“Well, thank goodness for that,” said Jules Flippe-Flappy, the beanpole of a man with a long face and oversized ears who sat on the far left of the group of suspects facing me. Ain’t no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come out with it, already: Flippe-Flappy was black. And white. He had no colour at all. “Because…Death. Death. Death./Nobody wants to smell your stinking breath/On the backs of their necks./Especially when they’re having –”

Oh, yeah. And he frequently broke into song for no apparent reason. He was good, I’ll give him that: you could practically hear the orchestra playing behind him. Still. I held up a hand – I must have been a children’s crossing guard in another life – and he immediately stopped.

Mister Giggles, the alien cat thing, purred and looked languidly at Missy. We all understood this to mean, “Well, you do have a strong motive for killing Mister Concannen. After all, he knocked up your sister and then abandonned her.” Everybody in the room got the sense that Mister Giggles couldn’t see why such an action would be a bad thing and thought Missy was overreacting.

“I ain’t the only one,” Missy sneered. “That dang gentleman inventor done invented hisself a gizmo that made it possible to travel to distant planets. Seems ta me your planet was one of the ones we done made it to, Mister Giggles. Only, we killed alla you cat people – yer the only one what done survived. I imagine that’s a right powerful motive to kill a man.”

Mister Giggles waved a paw in her direction and made a low growling noise in the back of his throat, making the table gently vibrate. “Did that happen over four hours ago? Honestly, I can’t be bothered to purrsue anything that happened more than four hours ago!”

Feng Chi grunted. Twice. Then, he pounded his open hand with his fist for emphasis. Then, he grunted again. He either said, “The true warrior does not allow the destruction of his civilization to go unavenged!” or “The duck charger screams out to be sacrificed at Stonehenge!” Gimme a break, here: my Subtitlese is a bit rusty, and he spoke fast. Real fast. If I had to guess, though, I would say it was the first one.

The cat creature licked one of its paws and slicked back the fur on the top of its head. Then, it languidly purred: “I wouldn’t be so quick with accusations, if I were you. Or, have you forgotten the Electric Samurai?” I don’t mean Mister Giggles spoke in English with a purring voice. I mean: he purred and we understood what he meant. I don’t know, it must have something to do with pheromones or something.

The Samurai brought his fist down on a nearby chair/table so hard that it splintered into a thousand pieces. It was the third since he had entered the room. I was going to have to pay for that, but what are you gonna do? Argue with a Samurai? I like my kishkes on the inside of my body, thank you very much!

But, uhh, perhaps I should explain. Ordinarily, these things are held in the apartment of the detective, all very civilized-like. But my apartment? Oy! Don’t ask! A shoebox has more room and a sewer has a better view! If I had tried to get everybody into my apartment, only the Samurai would have fit – the rest of us would have had to meet in the hall! So, I asked my Rebbe, and he said we could use a room in Beth Tchochkes Synagogue. It was a standard Hebrew classroom, with rows of chair/tables facing a desk at the front. The brick walls were painted white and adorned with old notices of High Holidays, children’s art and posters that attempted to make you feel guilty for not sending all of your material wealth to Israel. I haven’t exactly been a pillar of faith since the Big Man and I had a falling out over the Gutman debacle of seventy-three. Whatever that was – I’m a little fuzzy on the details. One too many blows to head with a blunt instrument, probably. Still, whenever I got an eyeful of one of those posters, even I couldn’t help but involuntarily reach for my wallet.

Anyway, I was sitting behind the teacher’s desk because I’m the schlemiel who called this zoo together – no offense to decent, hard-working caged animals anywhere. I got a lotta respect for what they do. Who am I? The name’s Schwartz. Shlomo Schwartz. I’m the Kosher Detective. When something don’t smell…you know…right, you call me. Except on Shabbas. Don’t get me wrong: I got nothing against working on Saturday; as I mentioned, I wasn’t exactly Abraham or…or…or somebody else who was prominent in the faith – you see what I mean about not being a believer? However – okay, Moses. There you go. I wasn’t exactly Abraham or Moses. I got his name from a movie, but it still counts. Anyway. As Maimonides – that would be Myrtle Maimonides, my landlady – used to say, “You ask somebody to work on the Sabbath and it’s like doing it yourself. You gonna finish that potato kugel, or what? You don’t, I’m only gonna throw it out!”

I’m not really sure what that has to do with anything, but it was damn good potato kugel. It would have been a shame to have to throw it out.

OMG! The past couple of days, I actually did some writing! Remember writing? This is a Web site about writing.

Mostly, I worked on a short story for an anthology Peter Buck at Elsewhen Press is considering publishing. The story is called “The Writer Did It!”; it’s a delirious mashup of half a dozen different genres. And the best part (other than the writing, I mean)? It sets up elements of the plot of my next novel (not the one I’m currently working on – number four in the series – but the one that comes after that). If the story makes it into the anthology, great. If it doesn’t, I can rework it so that it can be incorporated into the novel.

It’s all good.

I also started doing research and thinking about a short story for an anthology that focuses on Canadian mythological creatures. I even wrote a few paragraphs. I had the basic idea for the story about a month ago, when I first saw the call for submissions, but I couldn’t do much with it at the time (for reasons which everybody here should understand). I have high hopes that this story will be a lot of fun. Either way, the last couple of days have reminded me of an important truth.

Promotion is necessary. Writing is awesome.

The other night I read a review of the new Lizbeth Salander novel, written by somebody other than the Millennium trilogy’s original author, who died before The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was published. And I wondered, not for the first time, why any self-respecting writer would want to write anything involving characters created by somebody else.

Actually, I have done this twice.

In my second novel, You Can’t Kill the Multiverse (But You Can Mess With its Head), I needed a character who was an assassin by trade and who would plausibly see destroying the multiverse as his greatest coup. Who better, I thought, than Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius? In this case, I asked Moorcock for permission to use the character, which he graciously granted.

I have also written a short story called “Portrait of a Spy in the Twilight of Empire” that features James Bond. (I could do this because Ian Fleming’s novels are actually in the public domain in Canada; unfortunately, it is illegal for me to try to sell it anywhere else in the world, which kind of limits my options.) The story is a 4,000 word deconstruction of the Bond myth which includes copious nods to the original novels, including a lot of Fleming’s stylistic tics. I’m actually very proud of it.

Notice, though, that in both cases, I used existing characters to further my own artistic agenda. The point of writing those stories was not to mimic a dead author’s style in order to fill a publishing company’s coffers (a practice you may get the sense I’m not overly fond of). There are characters I would love to work with (cough Dr. cough cough Who cough), but only if I could do it on my own creative terms. If not, I don’t see the point.