Why I decided to publish Plastic Soldiers by WD County

When Spinetingler publisher WD County's story My Name is Priscilla in 2010 I was stunned that we were his first publishing credit. A story this assured can't be a first credit, can it? It was.

When I sent out invitations to submit a story to Snubnose for the Speedloader anthology all of the names were well known ones from the short crime fiction scene. I knew I had to invite County. That's how much of an impression his story made.

There is no way in hell that the power of "My Name is Priscilla" could prepare me for the story that he sent me.

The moment I finished reading "Plastic Soldiers" I knew I was going to publish it. I just had to.

"Plastic Soldiers" is the darkest story I've ever read. It's a story that physically makes you uncomfortable while drawing you in with it's power.

When Speedloader was released it received largely positive reviews and County's story was singled out as one of its best. It's the kind of story that you never forget and becomes a favorite (if that is the right word).

-Absolutely. Fucking. Terrifying. A story about a horrific situation and one kid’s fight for survival, and even though I never want to read it again, it’s one of the best stories I’ve ever read. Stories don’t have to be pretty to be awesome. Sometimes they can be downright brutal.

-I've never read anything so intense in my entire life. I may never again....this is almost a perfect piece of fiction...This is in my top five of all-time, too.

-It's a painful story to read, horrible is more the word. but it is now and will remain in my top five list forever. As will that cover, I couldn't see the damn thing for a long time because my eyes were and are clouded with tears. You cannot read Plastic Soldiers without experiencing every emotion there is in the human lexicon. It is as I said, a story that is horrible in content . . . but it's also a testiment to pure bravery and an indomitable human spirit. It speaks to most everything that is evil in the worst of us and the pure good in the best of us. Plastic Soldiers is so layered with tragedy and triumph that it is impossible to read without being moved to complete desolation and complete joy at the same time. If dogma keeps anyone from reading this work, they will be the poorer for what they've missed.

County manages to pack a novel’s worth of pain and desperation and hope into five of the most compelling pages you will ever read.

That's why I decided to publish "Plastic Soldiers".

The artist for Speedloader was so inspired by the story that he did an alternate cover image based on it.

"Plastic Soldiers" was introduced a big talent to the crime fiction community who are all waiting anxiously to see a WD County novel.

For the first time in my life as a publisher I find myself in the position of thinking that I published the best story of the award regardless of what the various award nominees say. It's a weird place to be in.

Dear Mr County: Should you ever, and I mean ever, decide to go the epublishing route for one of your novels please consider Snubnose Press again.

***

I just finished reading Zombie Bake-off by Stephen Graham Jones and it is a holy crap, must read book.

Currently reading: The Dewey Decimal System by Nathan Larson, Ishmael Toffee by Roger Smith, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, submissions for Snubnose

Currently listening: Heartless Bastards:



And I finally put aside unfairly preconceived notions and realized that I like Ray Lamontagne:

Please welcome our special guest Mike Cooper

Drone Tech: Wicked Powerful

Mike Cooper

Today's guest is author Mike Cooper, whose novel Clawback has just been released by Viking. He's incredibly tall, super talented and the older brother of the lovely Sophie Littlefield. Please make him feel at home here at DSD and go read his book! You'll thank me when you do. Take it away Mike!





I write thrillers, among other genres -- the fast-paced sort, with cutting edge technology. Keeping up with new gear can be a problem, given publishing cycles: describe a fancy new iPhone in your draft, say, and by the time the book comes out, it's three versions old.

That's why there aren't any quadcopter drones in my current novel ... but there sure will be in the next! Private UAVs are astonishingly capable, more so every day, and interesting not just to thriller writers. If you're at all concerned about your every move being monitored by a crowd-sourced panopticon, you ought to pay attention to these remarkable devices.

For one thing, they're agile. Look at these two, playing autonomous ping-pong:



For another, they're smart. Or they can be programmed to appear so, which is maybe good enough. The next video shows a swarm of quadcopters flying in formation:



Or this set, playing the James Bond theme.

The point is, these little drones are incredibly capable and fairly cheap. If you don't want to build one yourself, a few hundred bucks buys one right off the internet.

The next obvious step is to attach a video camera, which most of these do. Now you've got a surveillance drone of your very own! Curious about your neighbors? The local police station? Your competitor's factory, behind its razor-wire fence? With your micro eye-in-the-sky, anything can now be seen. The following Nightline clip shows just what you can do. Starting at about 0:48, you can see video shot by a realtor, showing million-dollar estates he's trying to sell:



Sure, he had permission to fly his tri-rotor through the mansion -- but it would be easy enough to get almost as close without permission. Illegal, probably, but that's not a big deterrent. Certainly not to a typical thriller protagonist, who's always ignoring bureaucratic pettifoggery anyway.

Hobbyists are also building larger UAVs, including a repurposed Army drone (they replaced the gas engines with electric motors) that can hack wifi and cellular networks from the sky.

Don't count on the government to continue restricting unmanned aerial vehicles in the US. The FAA, which has strict regulation on the use of public airspace, has issued hundreds of waivers allowing government agencies to fly drones over US soil. And Congress recently ordered that drones be allowed more freely into civilian airspace by 2015.

Backyard nude sunbathers, beware.

Apart from the privacy issues, are these drones safe? Even skilled operators can lose control -- like in Texas recently, when a sheriff's deputy crashed a police UAV right into a SWAT truck. Amateurs and DIY-ers might or might not be more competent, but if nothing else, short battery life (15-20 minutes is typical flight time) will surely lead to unexpected hard landings.

Devices like these are only going to get smaller and quieter, with longer battery life and better optics. Combined with facial recognition technology -- also improving by leaps and bounds -- "Big Data" analytics, and ubiquituous computing, physical anonymity is very nearly a relic of the dead past.

But quadcopters definitely do belong in the next novel.


Mike Cooper is the pseudonym of a former jack-of-all-trades. Under a different name his work has received wide recognition, including a Shamus Award, a Thriller nomination, and inclusion in BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2010. His next novel CLAWBACK will be published by Viking in 2012. Mike lives outside Boston with his family. More at www.mikecooperbooks.com.

Mythology in Mysteries: Myth or Reality?

by
Scott D. Parker

I am neck deep in the imagination of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Yesterday, I finished the fourth book in ERB’s Mars books, Thuvia, Maid of Mars, and am happily amazed at the mythology he created for his Barsoom, usually on the fly. Over the course of these books, ERB tells of the history, the races, and the culture of the inhabitants of the red planet. In just about every aspect of the definition of the word, he created a mythology.

Mythology. The word alone evokes visions of Greek gods and mortals traipsing about in loin clothes, swords in hands, fighting and solving riddles. In modern pop culture, it has also come to mean the inner workings of a body of work. TV shows like “Lost” and “Firefly” have an inner mythology as do books like the Twilight series, Harry Potter, Sookie Stackhouse (presumably since I’ve not read any), to say nothing of the obvious examples of Star Trek and Star Wars.

There’s an obvious theme present in the above examples: they all contain some sort of science fictional, fantasy, or paranormal component. Like the Greek and Roman versions of mythology, these examples have supernatural creatures or aliens or spaceships. Does the word “mythology” require such aspects?

Take the non-supernatural stories usually associated with mysteries. “Castle,” “CSI: Miami,” and “The Wire” contain their own versions of a common history among the characters. The same is true for long-running series featuring Marlowe, McGee, Poirot, Holmes, and Spencer.

But is it “mythology”? Does a set of characters and shared history constitute a mythology? Or does one need a monster to have a mythology?

Album of the Week: Duh Category

Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball. Very good album I'm still learning. Yet nothing on the record tops the chill-inducing emergence of Clarence Clemons's saxophone in "Land of Hope and Dreams." It is both ethereal and eulogistic. Clemons had the unique ability to put more emotional resonance into a single note than many other sax players attempt with a blizzard of tones. I have loved this song for its effortless blend of realism and spirituality since I first heard it back in 1999, but this version, for what it represents for Clemons, Springsteen, the E Street Band, and, indeed, all of us pretty much makes this my definitive version.

Album of the Week: Non-duh Category

Andrew Bird's Break It Yourself. Completely different type of album by a man I only learned about in 2009. I took the advice of the NPR guys and listened to this one with my good headphones. There is a lot of things going on and it's a pleasure to hear the nuances of the songs. It is one of those rare modern records where you just want to sit and listen to it. Weird concept, huh? Just like it used to be. Early standouts: "Eyeoneye," for its catchy chorus and, yes, whistling. "Near Death Experience" for its unexpected lyrics: "And we'll dance like cancer survivors, like the prognosis was 'you should have died.'"