NEW #METOO CRIME FICTION ANTHOLOGY ANNOUNCED

Hard-hitting, timely short stories give voice to feminist movement

Acclaimed fiction author Eryk Pruitt (Dirtbags, What We Reckon) has announced that he is editing a #MeToo inspired crime fiction anthology with ten of crime fiction’s top authors. The collection, expected out in October, 2019, promises to “give voice to a serious problem affecting society.”

Dennis Lanana’s “Not On My Watch” features a kick-ass female protagonist who tells her boss #TimesUp when he crosses a line. Joseph T. Miller showcases a kick-ass female protagonist in his short story “Cook Your Own Dish Best Served Cold.” And Thomas Catton brings a fresh, new perspective with “One Of The Good Ones,” about a well-meaning man who is falsely accused of something horrible.

“We have to accept that, in 2019, women have a place in fiction,” says Pruitt, who was nominated for the prestigious Anthony Award in 2018. “We are so lucky to have found ten authors who can give a voice to a demographic and a situation who have previously been kept silent.”

Joe Peterson, whose story “Femme Fatale Attraction” features a kick-ass female protagonist who turns the tables on a man with whom she had been carrying on an affair. While many people think this story may mirror an actual event in his person life, Pruitt is quick to shrug that off.

“You have to separate the art from the artist,” Pruitt says. “If we held people accountable for all their past actions, then we’d have no one eligible to tell the stories of these kick-ass female protagonists.”

So far, no one has responded to Pruitt’s offer to publish the anthology.

“Traditional publishing may not be ready for a hard-hitting anthology full of kick-ass female protagonists,” says Andrew Heyrman, whose story “Murder in Stilettos” features a kick-ass female protagonist who turns the tables on a catcaller who crosses a line.

Pruitt will not be fazed. “Readers are ready. Crime fiction has been silent for too long. Time’s up.”

The New Mystique will be released in Fall of 2019, in advance of Bouchercon, the crime writer convention held in Dallas, Texas.

How to Promote a Book Without Actually Talking About It

By Holly West

I want to thank Claire Booth for inviting me to post on Do Some Damage today. I’ll admit to missing the crowd over here lately, so her request came at a good time for both of us: She was having trouble coming up with a topic for this week’s post and I have a book coming out soon. It was kismet, I tell you.

It feels weird to say I have a book coming out when all I did was edit it. The authors who contributed the stories did most of the heavy lifting. Still—and a few of the authors might tell you this—I was a hands-on editor, maybe too much so. If you ever wonder how much of a control freak you are, take a stab at editing a short story anthology.

Two paragraphs in and I still haven’t told you what the book’s called. I never said I was a genius at book promo. MURDER-A-GO-GO’S: CRIME FICTION INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF THE GO-GO’S will be published on March 25 by Down & Out Books, but the good news is you don’t have to wait until then to buy it! You can pre-order it here or wherever impossibly cool books are sold.

Now that you’ve pre-ordered MURDER-A-GO-GO’S we can move on to what I really want to talk about today: TV. It’s my topic on the Do Some Damage’s podcast, “7 Minutes With,” hosted by Steve Weddle, with Jedidiah Ayres talking film and Chris Holm talking music. But we’ve been on hiatus for several weeks and I have stuff I want to—no, need to—discuss NOW.

A brief aside: Writers who admit to watching TV sometimes get some flak for time-wasting. Like I’d have already written the next best seller if it weren’t for all the TV I watch. It’s fair criticism, but I waste far more time on the Internet than I do watching TV. I say that as if it somehow justifies my TV consumption. It doesn’t—I just thought I’d mention it.

First up is Netflix’s “Abducted in Plain Sight.” I’m not sure how to adequately prepare you for it because it’s the most crazy-pants thing I’ve seen in ages, and chances are, I’m not the first person you’ve heard say that. I’d seen it as I perused Netflix’s offerings but never stopped to watch it until a friend texted me: “I’m watching the most fucked up documentary on Netflix right now…” Jeezus, she was not kidding.

At first glance, it appears to be the story of a perfect family living in an idyllic community until their world is torn asunder by a sociopathic neighbor who abducts their oldest daughter. On its own, a horrific event, worthy of a closer look. But the details, my God, the details. I don’t want to say too much because each WTF moment is more insane than the next and you need to experience its unfolding for yourself. Just remember that the child at the heart of the story was a victim in all senses of the word and the adults responsible for her well-being utterly failed her. Utterly.

My husband just brought me a glass of rosé, so now we can really get talking. Since today’s topic is crazy-pants TV, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Fyre Festival documentaries making the rounds. We watched the one on Netflix but there’s one on Hulu, too, and I’ve heard they’re both interesting. The Fyre Festival, if you recall, was supposed to be THE event of the decade that turned out to be an absolute shit-show. The one where attendees paid tens of thousands of dollars to see Blink-182 on a remote Caribbean Island and ended up sleeping in water-logged tents and eating bread-and-salt sandwiches. It’s interesting to see how it all went wrong (it’s pretty clear from the get-go it’s not going to end well) and how “influencers” fueled the race to get tickets.

Which brings me to my final entry: “The American Meme,” also on Netflix. My inclusion of this documentary isn’t necessarily an endorsement, because honestly, your life will be just fine if you skip it. It profiles social media stars Paris Hilton, Josh Ostroversky (The Fat Jewish), Brittany Furlan (famous for her Vine videos), Kirill Bichutsky, and several other influencers, as they openly discuss the peaks and pitfalls of their fame. This glimpse beyond their vapid, often offensive, online personas isn’t enlightening so much as sad-making. Not sad for them so much as for the society (ours) that has enabled their fame. I’m not victim-blaming here, I’m only saying that we’re all complicit and it gave me a lot to think about with regard to my own consumption of social media and the Internet in general.

But not TV. I still love my TV.

Holly West is the Anthony Award-nominated author of the Mistress of Fortune historical mystery series and the editor of Murder-A-Go-Go’s: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Go-Go’s. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two dogs. More at hollywest.com.

Unloading

Guest Post by Eric Beetner

Holly's note: I'm proud to be a part UNLOADED (Down & Out Books) and thankful to editor Eric Beetner for asking me to contribute. I'll be writing a post about the origins of my own story, "Peep Show," next week, but this week I wanted to give Eric a chance to tell us about the origins of the anthology itself. UNLOADED is available for pre-order now and officially drops April 18.

I first got the crazy idea for an anthology of crime stories without any guns back in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting. I was outraged, as many Americans were, by both the inexplicable violence and also by the circling of the wagons by the NRA and other pro-gun groups to immediately make it about them and their rights to gun ownership. The idea that maybe this nut case shouldn’t have had such easy access to the weapons he used was a non-starter.

I put aside the idea, thinking that it wouldn’t make any difference to make a book and by consequence, make a statement. Then there were more shootings – at movie theaters, military bases, workplaces, shopping malls. And I realized that the argument against even doing something small played right into their hands. The argument I so vociferously disagreed with was the same argument I was telling myself. If it doesn’t stop all violence, then why bother at all? I wanted to bother.

Violence has always been with us. Gun violence has been around since the invention of the firearm. It won’t stop. I know that. Our little book won’t stop it, won’t move the dial in Washington, most likely. But to do nothing just wasn’t tenable any more.

And I noticed that other writers felt the same way. And we all felt helpless. We’d rant on Twitter, post links on Facebook. I felt we needed to do more. UNLOADED was born.

Two important things:

1) I don’t want to take away all your guns. I believe strongly in limits, in more rigorous background checks, in closing loopholes, in making guns harder to use for anyone not the owner, for more training, and for restrictions on guns clearly manufactured for military use.

2) I know a collection of short stories without any guns in them is a small gesture.

The thing is, myself and the other writers included in Unloaded began to worry that we were a part of the problem. That we glorified guns in our writing. That we added to a culture obsessed with guns. We wanted to speak out and say we know the difference between fantasy and reality, and we want reality to look a little less like the violence-filled fantasies in our stories.

The writers I reached out to came on board the project enthusiastically and without hesitation. We represent gun owners and non-owners, Democrats and Republicans. We represent the overwhelming majority of Americans who feel that some greater level of gun control is needed and that the mass shootings that occur far too regularly are a product, yes, of mental illness, but also of a culture that accepts guns and gun violence as a cost of our freedom. And we feel that our current gun culture is not anywhere near what the founders intended – a direct repudiation of the NRA position that the home stockpiles of weapons and the ease by which we can get guns would make the founders proud somehow.

We want to reduce the amount of suicides by gun, the amount of tragic accidents by guns, the amount of deaths of children by guns.

And we used the greatest weapon at our disposal – our words.

This collection is intended to thrill and excite. My intention was always for the readers not to even notice the absence of guns, and maybe in some small way, to open a dialogue that if we tried to reduce the prevalence of guns in our everyday life the way we have all done in our fiction, even for a brief time, then maybe we could see another way.

And though I know it’s small, the old arguments ring hollow to me now. Because if we can save even one tragic accident, one mass shooting, one disgruntled ex-employee, one suicidal teen…then one is enough. Even saving one is better than staying silent, because staying silent is the same as seeing someone load a gun and saying nothing.

We’ll all continue to write about guns, we’ll all continue to wonder about our own roles in the gun culture in America. But at least now we are on record and we’ve tried to inspire a rational, reasoned and civil conversation.

Unloaded is out April 18th and it contains original stories, and two reprints, from some of today’s top crime and mystery writers. All writers donated their stories and all profits will go to benefit the non-profit States United To Prevent Gun Violence (www.ceasefireusa.org)

The writers include: Joe R. Lansdale, Reed Farrel Coleman, Joyce Carol Oates, Grant Jerkins, Hilary Davidson, Keith Rawson, Rob Hart, Kelli Stanley, Alison Gaylin, Alec Cizak, Joe Clifford, Ryan Sayles, Angel Colon, Kent Gowran, Tom Pitts, Tim O’Mara, Thomas Pluck, Holly West, Trey R. Barker, Jeffery Hess, S.W. Lauden, J.L. Abramo, Patricia Abbott, Paul J. Garth and Eric Beetner.

The ebook is up for preorders on Amazon and eagle-eyed readers may notice the print version is already available early.

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Eric Beetner is the author of more than a dozen novels including RUMRUNNERS, THE DEVIL DOESN’T WANT ME, DIG TWO GRAVES, WHITE HOT PISTOL and THE YEAR I DIED SEVEN TIMES. He is co-author (with JB Kohl) of ONE TOO MANY BLOWS TO THE HEAD, BORROWED TROUBLE and OVER THEIR HEADS and co-wrote THE BACKLIST with author Frank Zafiro. He lives in Los Angeles where he co-hosts the Noir At The Bar reading series. For more visit ericbeetner.com.