by Michael Bracken
Originally published at sleuthsayers.org on 10 August 2021
I owe the existence of one of my recurring characters to the kindness of a famous mystery writer.
Dennis Lynds, writing as Michael Collins, received his last Edgar Award nomination for The Horrible, Senseless Murders of Two Elderly Women, which I published in my first anthology, Fedora: Private Eyes and Tough Guys (Wildside Press, 2001).
Not long after the release of Fedora, in a letter dated April 17, 2002, Jeff Gelb wrote, “Dennis Lynds suggested I contact you to see if you’d like to submit a story in consideration for the erotic mystery anthology series I co-edit with Max Allan Collins, Flesh & Blood.” I already knew of Gelb from his work on the Hot Blood horror anthology series he co-edited with Michael Garrett. Gelb provided some general guidelines as well as the pay rate and deadline. Toward the end of the letter, Gelb notes: “I’m sorry to say I’m unfamiliar with your work, but if Dennis recommends you, that’s a pretty strong nod in your direction!”
This was, shall we say, a big break. A famous mystery writer recommended me to the co-editor of an anthology series published by a major publishing house.
I submitted “Feel the Pain,” a private-eye story featuring Morris Ronald “Moe Ron” Boyette, and after making minor revisions at the request of Gelb and Collins, the story appeared in the third book in the Flesh & Blood series, Flesh & Blood: Guilty as Sin (Mysterious Press, 2003).
“Feel the Pain” became the first of my stories to be selected for a “best of” anthology when Maxim Jakubowski included it in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4 (published in the United Kingdom by Robinson, 2005, and in the United States by Carroll & Graf, 2005).
I followed up with “Pumped for Information” (XL Girls, 2004), a sequel to “Feel the Pain” that put more emphasis on erotica and less on investigative work, before writing a string of Boyette stories where the erotic content was significantly reduced in favor of solid private eye work: “My Client’s Wife” (Thrilling Detective Website, Summer 2007), “Breaking Routine” (Hardluck Stories, Winter 2007), “News Flash” (Untreed Reads, March 2011), and “Yellow Ribbon” (Needle, 2012).
Then, nothing. I moved on to other characters and other stories until a Boyette story I’d been toying with since 2003 caught my attention again. “Itsy Bitsy Spider” (Tough, April 2018) was named an Other Distinguished Mystery Story in The Best American Mystery Stories 2019, and I followed up with “Dirty Laundry” (Tough, April 2020).
I have notes written in 2003-2004 for three additional Boyette stories, but they didn’t catch my attention when I reread them. So, I expected Boyette to again go quiet.
Then Michael Pool contacted me about his new publishing venture. I previously contributed to his Crime Syndicate Magazine, and he received his first Shamus Award nomination for “Weathering the Storm,” a story in The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods (Down & Out Books, 2019). Pool has started P.I. Tales, a new book-publishing venture dedicated to private eye novels and the Double Feature series of paired private-eye novellas.
Pool invited me to contribute to the second volume of the Double Feature series, where my novella is paired with Hallmarks of the Job, written by Frank Zafiro, a writer who contributed to and played a key role in the launch of Guns + Tacos, the serial novella anthology series I co-edit with Trey R. Barker.
I considered creating a new private eye and then thought better of it. So, Morris Ronald “Moe Ron” Boyette returns in “Aloha Boys,” the longest story I’ve ever written about him.
In “Aloha Boys,” Boyette is still adjusting to his new digs above Millie’s Tattoos and Piercings when a homeless woman hires him to find her missing half brother. Searching for the young man sends Boyette through the depraved underbelly of the local university, reunites him with a mob boss best left in his past, and leads him to question everything he thought he knew about families.
Is this the end of the road for Boyette? I doubt it, but I don’t know when or where he will next appear.
Relationships
Though I originally intended this post to be about a series character and how I continue to write about him, while researching Boyette’s history I was reminded of something more valuable: the importance of relationships within the writing community.
Boyette exists because Dennis Lynds connected me to Jeff Gelb, and the new Boyette novella exists because Michael Pool and I have worked together on other projects. In between, I’ve worked with editors such as Rusty Barnes of Tough, who once suggested I write a novel about Boyette, and his suggestion was on my mind when Pool approached me about writing a private eye novella for Double Feature.
While I’m loath to conclude that who you know is the key to success, it certainly plays a role in the opportunities that come your way.
Most of us break in the same way: by submitting manuscripts via slush piles, submitting our work on spec, hoping that editors will select our stories from the dozens/hundreds/thousands of other submissions. But once that happens, it’s up to us to act professionally, to develop relationships, and to share opportunities with one another.
And always, always, always, pay it forward.
Morris Ronald Boyette and I are forever grateful that Dennis Lynds did.
Michael Bracken, an award-winning writer of fiction, nonfiction, and advertising copy, has received multiple awards for copywriting, two Derringer Awards for short fiction, and the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement in short mystery fiction. The author of several books and more than 1,300 short stories, he has edited nine published or forthcoming crime fiction anthologies and provides editorial services to book and periodical publishers.
