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Text of the page (random words):
his income tax and because his office was in our house he had ready help available in the persons of his eight children i took a typing class in high school ostensibly to help me more quickly execute term papers but my new skill also made me a very convenient office resource my bedroom only a few yards from my father s desk and typewriter thus would i be recruited a handcuffed volunteer as my father put it to type invoices and job proposals usually addressed to general building contractors or engineers from the major oil companies most of our contracts involved installing underground tanks piping and pumps for gas stations these experiences and the settings of my father s office and various job sites informed the details of my latest rick peters story murder on the job published in the march april 2026 issue of ahmm the inspiration for the crime itself came one evening when the company s pipe fitter and informal foreman named louis drove me home from a job site we rode in his truck south on a main thoroughfare toward oak park the chicago suburb where i lived i was exhausted achy sweaty and covered with gas station grease dirt and caked glops of clay but grateful to be on my way home as we waited at a red light about five miles north of my house louis gestured to a line of nicely maintained yellow brick homes along a shady tree lined street and told me that the former owner of the company lived on that block and then he told me how he died to relate to you exactly what louis said that evening would spoil a dramatic i hope passage of the story so please pick up a copy of ahmm march april 2026 and read murder on the job as well as the other excellent mysteries in the issue another bonus is you ll learn how a very young rick peters got involved in his very first mystery and you ll meet his high school girlfriend maxine a character i plan to bring back in future rick peters stories i hope you enjoy my story and its settings full of pipe wrenches and long handled shovels and huge storage tanks and heavy earth moving machinery in the meantime i m digging back into those buried memories from decades ago hoping to uncover another inspiration 2 comments filed under uncategorized february 27 2026 11 19 am al onia on deferred sentence deferred began as many of my short stories do as a situation in search of character other stories arise as character in search of situation originally titled the piper i realized the plot was a hoary one in need of much creativity to bring a new spin to outwitting the devil so often the protagonist wins or at least gets a draw because of their natural homespun wisdom i knew i had to vary that so i chose an educated protagonist one used to dealing with the cleverest and most devious opponents for andrew it was time to pay the piper but what if he embraced the challenge rather than the normal cycle of refusal denial and victory defeat the bones of the story were quickly fleshed in early drafts i asked a lawyer acquaintance to set me right on legal assumptions revised again and submitted to my wonderful critique group for their vetting another revision then off to market and finally acceptance by ahmm right on the heels of an acceptance by its sister magazine analog good month my mystery influences range from hard boiled hammett chandler john d macdonald to soft boiled harry palmer archy mcnally the inspiration for my own feet of clay mystery novels to british cozies my expanded reading is mainly in science fiction and heroic fantasy five of my sf novels are noir ish combining two favorite genres my first published fantasy novel barnaby s luck is more anti hero driven inspired by the concept of how would characters relying on brain and guile survive barbaric times my writing process is simple write every day the words and ideas which flow sitting at the desktop or with a notebook and clipboard in our sunroom are often unexpected and delight me no end these unbidden creative gems may be the highlight of my labors the other great reward is seeing my words in print knowing an editor shares my vision when i m not writing i m thinking or running or exploring our corner of vancouver island on foot or up on two wheels powered al onia s short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines including analog on spec and mystery weekly al s latest mystery novel have a nice trip was released in april 2025 follow al onia on facebook and linked in or visit https ajonia com leave a comment filed under uncategorized february 19 2026 1 04 pm fish bowl by marcelle dubé marcelle dubé makes her eighth ahmm appearance in our march april issue on sale now in this blog post learn all about the unique thought process that led to the premise for marcelle s latest story fish bowl usually i can pinpoint exactly what inspired one of my stories a single kid s running shoe in the middle of an empty highway a song from my youth a reckless driver on a gravel road inspiration is everywhere like wild yeast what i ve only recently realized is that often my stories are inspired by fear or rage at first barney s diner my story in the march april 2026 alfred hitchcock s mystery magazine didn t seem inspired by either fear or rage it appeared fully formed in my mind one day i didn t know why but i knew the characters and i knew what was going to happen to them barney s diner is about a lonely waitress in a lonely diner during a snowstorm only when the story was down in black and white did i realize what made julie the waitress so very vulnerable the diner s picture windows in the darkness of a snowed in highway the diner became a brightly lit fish bowl julie was completely exposed to anyone who happened to be hiding in the dark outside those windows it appears i had transferred my own not phobia really let s call it reluctance an intense reluctance to be in a lit room with no curtains on the window when it s dark outside i always marvel at how many people don t seem to mind being on display you can see into their living rooms see how they are dressed what they are doing anybody could be out there waiting watching so what happens if you place a vulnerable young woman in an environment like that alone at night as for the rage it s in there too it s a quiet rage the kind that builds up over years of helplessly watching bad things happen the kind of rage that finally says to hell with it and acts much to my delight barney s diner marks my eighth appearance in the pages of alfred hitchcock s mystery magazine marcelle dubé has published 15 mystery and fantasy novels including two series and one collection her short stories appear in a number of anthologies and magazines including alfred hitchcock s mystery magazine ellery queen s mystery magazine and saturday evening post she is best known for her mendenhall mystery series find out more at www marcellemdube com where you can also sign up for her very infrequent newsletter leave a comment filed under uncategorized january 30 2026 12 28 pm prove it by ron ginzler the electrician s helper was based on a true incident though we didn t find a dead body but having worked in the building trades for decades i ve rubbed shoulders with some interesting characters and odd situations this one was ripe for a murder mystery though my background as a writer is more science fiction and fantasy but i ve read everything by raymond chandler i could get my hands on and a lot of elmore leonard and robert b parker in my younger days i d always watch alfred hitchcock presents and perry mason and sherlock holmes was always lurking in the background one story in my collection the iron apples of the stars is a grisly double murder mystery with horror and alternate history elements and another is a mock chandler story set in la with an sf twist but there s something about a pure mystery that appeals to one s logical sense in college i majored in math and a mathematical proof is a lot like a mystery only presented backwards let me explain a mathematical proof states what is to be proved then takes one step at a time each step easily seen to be true until one gets there a mystery however starts with an unexplained situation then takes one back through clues until one arrives at the end with the true explanation the clues must all be consistent with the conclusion the explanation the whodunit but the art is in making it not obvious until the very end when the reader goes oh yeah that s right why didn t i think of that you didn t think of that because the writer was careful to serve up the truth one tantalizing morsel at a time working behind the scenes like the wizard of oz until the very end when the curtain is swept aside the witness breaks down under perry mason s cross examination and sherlock says elementary my dear watson ron ginzler is a writers of the future contest winner and has published a book of mixed genre short stories the iron apples of the stars 1 comment filed under uncategorized january 21 2026 11 44 am the lodger something completely different by katherine hall page katherine hall page discusses the origins of her latest story the lodger from our jan feb issue on sale now much as i take pleasure in writing about faith fairchild amateur sleuth mother wife caterer over a series now numbering twenty six books going in a completely different direction is satisfying i spend part of each year living in maine the same place but a jaunt to spain norway japan and more always brings new perspectives the lodger is that kind of voyage akin to other nonseries short stories and books i ve written my same eyes but they are trained toward new landscapes the idea for the story began with a sentence i overheard on the subway in boston eavesdropping in restaurants restrooms pretty much any public spaces is invariably fruitful you know one old guy looks like another a woman commented to another who nodded in agreement was this true i immediately wondered i looked around at the people and there weren t any elderly gentlemen that might have provoked the remark the two must have been talking about two other men during the rest of the ride and out on the street i thought about men i knew or noticed around me the observation began to ring true were there generic old guys just as supposedly married couples began to look like each other as they aged did men too i tucked the idea away it jumped out months later when a doctor friend whom i asked about heart disease for one of the books told me about the lazarus syndrome return of spontaneous circulation rosc in one case death was declared and then fifty minutes later the family noted a subtle eye movement the deceased wasn t rare of course yet a plot device tailor made for a mystery writer an ending worthy of any of my favorites my two old guys both came to life as the characters the setting remained somewhat ambiguous except for the location on the east coast although the victorian house is very like my aunt and uncle s in south orange new jersey down to the in law apartment on the former servant s top floor mary roberts rhinehart wrote a small tome writing is work where she expands the title describing the process as hard work and it is but the lodger was not putting together what i d overheard earlier with the fascinating lazarus syndrome information into a dark short story a departure from my usual was well fun i find short stories more difficult than full length books agreeing with henry david thoreau who wrote to a friend not that the story need be long but it will take a long while to make it short poe wrote a short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build toward it taken together these are a fine summation of the challenge posed by short story writing that paring down process the examination of each word essential for a satisfactory result honing the lodger became a pleasurable task aside from the crime or mystery fiction writers that have influenced me notably agatha christie and that master of both the novel and short story robert barnard i have been inspired by the short stories of poe o henry william sydney porter and saki h h munro reading all three as a young teen i trembled with fearful delight the tell tale heart the last leaf and the open window rereading still invokes the same feeling saki is an author i find too often overlooked he was killed by a sniper during the battle of the ancre in wwi at age forty three had he lived longer his legacy would be undoubtably richer occasionally i ll meet someone who says they never read short stories that they are unsatisfying and not to be classed with a real book something of substance unlike shorter works of fiction so many bon bons for the less discerning reader is implied i ve never been able to understand this as it shows both a want of taste and certainly imagination these opinionated readers lack of the ability to expand that paring down process into something that may well stay have stayed with them for the rest of their life think saki s sredni vashtar s last sentence this interview with barbara peters poisoned pen press is one i like very much katherine hall page the body in the web it and much more is available on my web site www katherine hall page org i am also on fb katherine hall page is the author of the faith fairchild amateur sleuth mystery series currently numbering 26 books and other works the body in the belfry was the 1991 agatha award winner for best first mystery novel other agathas include the body in the snowdrift 2006 and best short story for the would be widower 2002 she has been nominated for the edgar macavity mary higgins clark awards and other agathas the body in the web 2024 won the 2024 maine literary award for crime fiction page has also published a collection of short fiction small plates morrow in 2014 and her series cookbook have faith in your kitchen 2010 in addition to her adult fiction page has published a middle grade mystery series christie company and a ya club meds katherine hall page received malice domestic s lifetime achievement award in april 2016 and mwpa s crime master award in 2022 she was awarded mwa s grand master edgar award in 2024 leave a comment filed under uncategorized january 2 2026 12 42 pm creating glass beach by michael bracken several years ago i saw an anthology call for mysteries set in california and my wife suggested i write about my childhood though i have lived in many places and now live in texas i spent much of my early life in california and i graduated high school in ft bragg a town on the pacific coast almost two hundred miles north of san francisco so at temple s urging i wrote a paragraph about my stepfather collecting scrap metal in the old town dump while i was in high school and about how i believe he played a significant role in transforming the dump into the tourist attraction it later became today the old town dump now known as glass beach features an abundance of sea glass broken glass worn smooth by the oce...