To celebrate Halloween, here’s my book review of Fun Phantoms, an anthology of funny ghost stories, published in 1979. I’ve always enjoyed scares with laughs, and that’s what these stories deliver. All of them are fun, but I’ll highlight my four favorites below. Because it’s an old book, your best bet at finding a copy is going to your local library and searching for it through inter-library loan.
“The Water Ghost” by John Kendrick Bangs
The current head of a British family takes steps to end the haunting of the Water Ghost in a particular bedroom at Harrowby Hall. When the master asks why the ghost haunts his family, the specter replies says that she haunts the room that would have been her bedroom because her father decorated it in pink and yellow when she could only stand blue and gray.
“That night I ran from the house and jumped over the cliff into the sea.”
“That was a bit hasty,” said the master of Harrowby.
“So I’ve heard,” returned the ghost.
“The Night the Ghost Got In” by James Thurber
Although this story takes place in 1915, there’s a modern feel to Thurber’s whacky family as they deal with the possibility that a ghost is running around in their dining room at one in the morning. Thurber and his brother hear the ghost, but when their mother gets up, they tell her it’s a burglar. This unleashes a whole train of events, including Mother hurling a shoe through the window of the neighbor’s house to get their attention and tell them to call the police. When the neighbor finally gets the message, Mother gets ready to throw another shoe.
Not because there was further need of it, but, as she later explained, because the thrill of heaving a shoe through a window of glass had enormously taken her fancy. I prevented her.
“The Open Window” by Saki
This short story has one of the all-time great surprise endings. It seems like a typical ghost story until the rug is whipped out from under readers’ feet.
“To Starch a Spook” by Andrew Benedict
When Sue’s father and a developer realize they have unwittingly bought a haunted house, chocked full of ghosts that the previous owner, Mrs. Ferguson, collected as a hobby, they don’t know how to rid the property of the phantoms. Sue and her friend Bill set out to take care of the problem with a special solution and technique.
When they enter the house, they find a ghostly knight in the library.
Inside that suit of ghostly armor was a ghostly skeleton! He clashed his teeth at us with the most frightening noise. Bill and I were speechless in admiration.
“Mrs. Ferguson certainly knew quality when she collected phantoms,” Bill said.
Last week, I asked readers to pick a setting for a cozy mystery and the votes were for a small town in Ohio because that’s where I’m from. Thank you for voting! Now you need to choose a victim for a cozy mystery. Usually a victim is the most obnoxious or nasty character introduced in the first chapters, a character who irritates, hurts, and bullies so many of the other characters that there’s no shortage of suspects when the murder takes place. Of course, to put a spin on the stereotype, we could choose a very mild character, the last person anyone would think would be a target for murder.
So choose a victim from the photos below and tell me whether the character is mean or nice. That description will help form the plot.
Author and editor Michelle L. Levigne has come back for a return engagement. Michelle writes in many genres and has recently added cozy mysteries to her long list. Glad to have you back, Michelle, telling us how invisible details can be the most important ones!
In the movie, Ready Player One, the hero, Wade, plays a very early video game. He knows enough about James Halliday, who created his virtual reality world, to know the goal isn’t to win the game, but to “wander around in the dark” and find a tiny, invisible dot.
At some time in my process of writing cozies, I need to trip over those invisible dots or puzzle pieces. Well, they don’t stay invisible, of course, but I didn’t see them, didn’t know they were necessary, when I started writing the book. If I don’t find them, tiny gaps threaten the cohesion of the story. The invisible pieces slap me with those incredible “Oh, yeah!” moments between finishing the first draft and revising. During the “back burner” time, when I’m not actively thinking about the story, something I see or hear or am thinking about suddenly flips a switch and “Ah hah!”
For example, in my upcoming Book & Mug mystery, Skeletons in the Cellar (April 2025, Mt. Zion Ridge Press), I realized I needed to introduce the dead body, in this case a history student named Lyndsy, as a living person. What better way than to have her walk into Book & Mug and ask Kai about the tunnels the cousins found during their renovation of the building? This is important to the story and ultimately the motivation of the killer. Lyndsy is investigating stories about Underground Railroad safe houses with tunnels leading to Cadburn Creek.
Those invisible dots, those tiny details don’t seem so important on their own, but their absence could lead to logic holes big enough to fly the Enterprise through. (For instance, where did the watch come from in the movie Somewhere in Time? Old Elise gives it to college student Richard, and adult Richard leaves it with young Elise when he goes back in time. The book has a logical explanation, but not the movie! But I digress…)
When I sit down to write a cozy, I create a calendar. Sometimes it’s a pretty bare calendar. But you have to start somewhere, right?
First I put in the dates, and line it up with the previous book in the series, so I can have stories overlap by a few days. I like this for a sense of continuity. (My editor hates this – she’s afraid I’ll give away too much and readers won’t read the previous story. I hope I tantalize readers to read the other books, y’know?) Then I pick the day when the big inciting incident occurs. In the case of Skeletons, finding a skeleton in the cellar of a house.
Then I need to figure out the events leading up to that important plot moment. In this case, what brings my main POV character into the cellar and what reveals a fake wall?
By then, my brain is dealing with other story events that need to happen to give clues as to who put the body there. I plot out the progression of clues, and incidents where the different POV characters run into the various possible guilty parties and notice little details that they eventually share with each other. At some crucial point in the story, these details connect like a handful of magnets and lead to a satisfying ending, carefully poised between “I did not see that coming” and “Of course, the killer could only be him!”
Funny thing: in Skeletons I knew the guilty party, but as I created more characters and events/clues, I suspected my original villain was being framed. Maybe…
That calendar is important, because during the resting time between first draft and first revisions, when those invisible dots show up, I need to know what sequence of events have to be rearranged or removed, and where to insert those new details. Carefully balanced between being invisible and jumping up and down, shrieking, “Notice me! I’m important!”
Obvious is never good. The goal is for readers to slap their foreheads and groan, “Of course! How did I miss that? It was right there.” Or maybe it was invisible until readers needed to remember it was there …
Writing a cozy can be just as entertaining for the writer as we hope it is for our readers, so they keep coming back for more, and we can say like James Halliday, “Thanks for playing my game.”
When the Tweed cousins, Melba and Cilla, set out to open their candle shop, Brighten Your Corner, obstacles pop out of the woodwork. And from out of the walls and under the floor. Starting with an overbearing cousin who wants to take over, insisting the shop was her idea, a nasty former tenant with shady business associates, who insists the shop they now lease still belongs to him, and a family mystery tangled with rumors of a treasure hunt.
The cousins at Book & Mug consider the Tweeds family. Eden, Kai and Troy, with the help of Saundra and Rufus are determined to help them through the threats and contradictions and increasingly odd and frightening incidents that just don’t make sense. The situation gets serious enough that even the help of mysterious, cynical Nick West, with his powerful connections, is more than welcome.
*****
On the road to publication, Michelle fell into fandom in college and has 40+ stories in various SF and fantasy universes. She has a bunch of useless degrees in theater, English, film/communication, and writing. Even worse, she has over 100 books and novellas with multiple small presses, in science fiction and fantasy, YA, suspense, women’s fiction, and sub-genres of romance.
Her training includes the Institute for Children’s Literature; proofreading at an advertising agency; and working at a community newspaper. She is a tea snob and freelance edits for a living (MichelleLevigne@gmail.com for info/rates), but only enough to give her time to write. Want to learn about upcoming books, book launch parties, inside information, and cover reveals? Go to Michelle’s website or blog to sign up. You can also find her at www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com, www.MtZionRidgePress.com, Facebook, and Instagram.
Everyone who voted wanted our sleuth to have a medical profession. I’m choosing the suggestion that she’s a lab technician working in radiology because that will give her regular time off to investigate. Now we have to choose a setting for this amateur detective. Select one of the following:
Rural community
Small town
Small city
Big city
Resort community
Island community
If you pick big city, you have to narrow it down to a smaller community. One of the requirements for a cozy mystery is that it takes place within a group of people with a restricted membership. In a city, that could be an apartment building, a club, or a small business. And please recommend a state. A small town in Maine is different from one in Indiana or one in Alaska. If you’re going outside the U.S., please recommend a region of a foreign country.
Last week, I wrote about how thinking like a mystery reader helps me write mysteries. This week, I want to focus on playing fair with clues and red herrings. Misdirection is key and I describe below how to use misdirection in mysteries while still presenting the clues readers need to solve the mystery themselves. What is misdirection? Read on!
Mysteries and Stage Magic
I’m sure many people have noticed the similarities between writing mysteries and stage magic. One of the best descriptions of this comparison I’ve read comes from Otto Penzler, founder of Mysterious Press and editor of numerous mystery anthologies. In his introduction to a reprint of Death from a Top Hat, which features the Great Merlini, a retired magician as the amateur sleuth, Mr. Penzler writes about how both arts use ways to snatch your attention from what’s really going on.
In both arts, the audience knows they are viewing a trick. Since they know it, it makes it fun to be either impressed with the ingenuity of the writer or magician or accept the challenge of figuring out what they’re up to. In magic, a magician may wave his left hand so you don’t notice what his right foot is doing. In mysteries, the writer shows you all the clues, but the way she emphasizes them or doesn’t is the misdirection.
I’m taking a chance here and pointing out the first clue in my short story, “Bovine”. I hope you’ll still read it, but the first clue is a good illustrations of misdirection.
Elite New York novelist Harrison Sharpe stages burglary in the rustic retreat he’s renting in rural Ohio. He’s walking through the home with the sheriff.
Then he [the sheriff] frowned, staring at the fireplace with its hodge-podge pattern of heavy stones. “That’s funny. Since all the items but the TV were very small, you’d think they’d’ve gone for those.”
He stepped around a disemboweled cushion and broken lamp, staring at two flintlock pistols hanging on hooks above the mantle.
“They’re fake,” I said. “Sara told me that because she didn’t want me to think she kept unsecured firearms on the premises. I have no idea why she owns them. I’m sure she can afford the real thing. I suppose the thieves could tell.”
“I don’t know how, just by looks.” The Ox lifted one gun from its hook. “But you can by holding them. They’re too light.”
“Then they must have grabbed them and put them back.” I coughed to cover a smile.
Inferring that most of the male rednecks would possess a deep knowledge of firearms, I had decided leaving the guns in place would bolster the illusion of locals being responsible for the crime.
I present everything readers needs in this scene, but since the story is told from Harrison Sharpe’s POV, I let his thoughts misdirected the reader from the true importance of the guns, which the sheriff explains at the wrap up.
For example, let’s say the amateur sleuth is a music teacher and plays drums in a weekend band. Readers will expect that skill to play a some kind of role in the story or why else did the author give the MC the skill? During the course of the story, MC goes to a music festival and being a drummer gives him access to a suspect. Since the plot point of love of music has already served the plot, readers will probably think it won’t come into play again.
But the author then makes the MC’s knowledge of drumming a key clue to catching the bad guy. The author misdirected readers into thinking music was a minor plot point when it was both a minor and a major one.
