My Newest Short Story Is Up!!!

If you're looking for a very, very short story about a private detective profiling and following a possible rapist, then my newest short story, "Pink Lemonade," is for you.  It's free right now at OverMyDeadBody.com.  (It's also about letting people be; see: the last sentence and the title.)

And if you have a moment, please take a look at another Brad Foster story, "Everything's Connected," published last year at OMDB!, which the publisher was nice enough to link to this story.

I'm interested in what you think about "Pink Lemonade," so please send me an email or a comment and opine!

Thanks again for reading my stuff.  It means a lot to me.

BTW, I can log onto the website directly from my Microsoft Edge (Explorer) but not from my Google Chrome.  Can anyone explain this?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!!!

The Skeleton Crew by Deborah Halber -- Web Sleuths and Cold Cases

Photo: The hardcover's hardcover, from this website at Simon and Schuster.


Though a little dry at times, The Skeleton Crew is a work unlike anything I've read before: a nonfiction piece about web sleuths, people who match missing people with unidentified bodies, thereby giving closure to the families of the dead and, to boot, solving a cold case.

That such people exist is a surprise, and yet not, to me at the same time.  Mostly the web detectives are obsessed people with a personal void to fill.  Some are siblings of someone murdered, or someone missing.  Todd Matthews, the man the book revolves around the most, had siblings die very young--just a few years old--and he thinks he's perhaps trying to resurrect them, in a way.  He doesn't really know.

But he solved the now-infamous case of Tent Girl.  In this book you'll also read about the still-unsolved case of the Lady of the Dunes, from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  Another case, of a young redhead killed in the desert outside of Las Vegas, haunts me still.

And you might be surprised to know that as many as 40,000--and perhaps more--unidentified bodies take up space right now in coroner's offices throughout the U.S.  More find their way into the unidentified statistics every day.

And they're not all homeless, addicts or prostitutes, either.

One article I read today--similar to this book but not in any way connected to it--concerned a woman who lived under a ton of aliases for over thirty years before she committed suicide in Texas.  Who was she, really?  Nobody knows--including her husband.  She'd covered her tracks that well.  Her latest driver's license was of a name she'd stolen off of an 18-month old's gravestone in Idaho.

Then there was the story of a woman who was kidnapped, sold to a man who molested her and married her (yes).  She's not dead, of course, but she tells the story of a woman, from her exact same situation, who was killed by the man she'd had to marry.  Who was this other girl?  Nobody knows.  She'd just been taken off the street, sold to some guy, and re-named.  And now she's dead, and nobody knows who she is--not even the guy who kidnapped her.

So who's The Lady in the Dunes?  The woman who had her head bashed in and her hands chopped off to hinder her identification?  Nobody knows.  And there's thousands of people like her, unidentified, unknown, unburied and ungrieved-for, all over the country.

Fascinating, in a sad, morbid, I-can't-believe-it kind of way.

And definitely worth reading, if you can stomach it.

It's written by Deborah Halber in a literary-mystery kind of way, weaving interconnected stories, flashing back, coming back around again.  You have to pay attention, but it's easy to do if you care enough.  I found myself Googling some of the nicknames and some of the victims, and reading a few of the websites mentioned in the book.

I even gave a passing thought to trying it myself.  Me, the web sleuth.  But I won't. 

I know better.  It's too depressing and too addicting, and I'd never recover.

The writer in me sees a good novel in here somewhere.  I'll add it to the list of manuscripts-to-come for now.  I've got to return the book to the library, but I'll look to buy it soon, so I can own it when I start to write my web-sleuthing novel.

You Know You're A Homeowner When...

Photo: A window in my house.  Notice the wooden shims holding up the second pane of glass so there's no open space between the plastic molding of the storm window and the top of the windowframe.

You know you're a homeowner (of an older house) when...


--you think wooden shims are the bomb.


--and you have hundreds of them throughout the house, in use (like in the pic above) and in storage.


--you've just spent $45 on steel wool, window insulation and caulking.


--you spent an hour walking through the house, studying the perimeters of your windows and doors to see where you need to use that stuff.


--and you've spent an hour or so stuffing steel wool into the gaps between the just-now-rotting wood of your shed and the cement of the shed floor. 


--and you've recently spent an hour or so stuffing steel wool into the gaps between your garage doors and the cement floor of your garage.


--and you've done that more to keep out the damn mice than to keep in the winter heat.


--you start saving money in the beginning of the fall to pay for the winter heating bills.


--you actually pay attention when someone prophecies how warm or cold the upcoming winter will be.


--you feel damn proud of yourself for cleaning out just enough garage space to get your car in there.


--you're happy to hear that two dead mice were found in your shed because last winter they ate your backyard work gloves to shreds and pooped all over the second and third shelves.


--you sing the praises of house spiders because they kill smaller bugs--but they also let you know where the unseen drafts are in your house.  (They'll build their webs there, and you'll see the webs shimmer slightly in the draft.)


--you have a handyman on speed-dial.


--and your landscaper, too.


--and the guy in charge of the water heater and pipes, too.


--and the guy in charge of the heating oil, too.


--you make sure you can pay the mortgage before you think about the next food shopping bill.  (Because you know the old ladies across the street will give you enough bagels, crackers and cheese to hold you over.)


--you realize you're a wood hoarder.  (I have more wood than you'll find in many small forests.)


--you can write a long-ish blog entry about the idiosyncratic things you do when you own a house.

Innocent Men Set Free After 30 Years

Photo: from the AP article mentioned below: "In an an Aug. 12, 2014 photo, Henry McCollum sits on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C. He and his half brother Leon Brown have spent more than three decades in prison for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in 1983."

I credited the caption from the article, but what I really wanted to write was:

For every overturned case due to newly-found DNA evidence that highlights a murder conviction based solely on bias--Doesn't this photo really say it all?

For the full report, read this article at this link.  Most of this entry is copied and pasted from this article, which states the facts much better than I could have.  Below the line is where I step in.

LUMBERTON, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina judge overturned the convictions Tuesday of two men who have served 30 years in prison for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl after another man's DNA was recently discovered on evidence in the case.

Superior Court Judge Douglass Sasser ordered the immediate release of Henry McCollum, 50, and Leon Brown, 46. The half brothers were convicted in the 1983 slaying of Sabrina Buie in Robeson County.

Lawyers for the men petitioned for their release after DNA evidence from a cigarette butt recovered at the crime scene pointed to another man. That man, who lived close to the soybean field where the dead girl's body was found, is already serving a life sentence for a similar rape and murder that happened less than a month later.

Sasser ruled after a day-long evidence hearing during which Sharon Stellato, the associate director North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, testified about three interviews she had over the summer with the 74-year-old inmate now suspected of killing Buie. The Associated Press does not generally disclose the names of criminal suspects unless they are charged.

According to Stellato, the inmate said at first he didn't know Buie. But in later interviews, the man said the girl would come to his house and buy cigarettes for him, Stellato said.

The man also told them he saw the girl the night she went missing and gave her a coat and hat because it was raining, Stellato said. He told the commission that's why his DNA may have been at the scene.

Stellato also said the man repeatedly told her McCollum and Brown are innocent.

Still, he denied involvement in the killing, Stellato said. He told the commission that the girl was alive when she left his house and that he didn't see her again. He told the commission that he didn't leave the house because it was raining and he had to work the next day.

Stellato said weather records show it didn't rain the night Buie went missing or the next day.

Authorities said McCollum, who was 19 at the time, and Brown, who was 15, confessed to killing Buie.

Attorneys said both men have low IQs and their confessions were coerced after hours of questioning. There is no physical evidence connecting them to the crime.

Both were initially given death sentences, which were overturned. At a second trial, McCollum was again sent to death row, where he remains, while Brown was convicted of rape and sentenced to life.

The DNA from the cigarette butts doesn't match either of them, and fingerprints taken from a beer can at the scene aren't theirs either. The other man now suspected in Buie's killing was convicted of assaulting three other women over 30 years before his last conviction.

Lawyers for the two men said the new testing leaves no doubt about their clients' innocence.
Ken Rose, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, has represented Henry McCollum for 20 years.

"It's terrifying that our justice system allowed two intellectually disabled children to go to prison for a crime they had nothing to do with, and then to suffer there for 30 years," Rose said. "Henry watched dozens of people be hauled away for execution. He would become so distraught he had to be put in isolation. It's impossible to put into words what these men have been through and how much they have lost."

_________

I have nothing but outrage to add to this, a pity since outrage doesn't come across well in a blog.  So I'll just reiterate one point: 

"There is no physical evidence connecting them to the crime."

However, despite this, "...[b]oth were initially given death sentences, which were overturned. At a second trial, McCollum was again sent to death row, where he remains..."

How do you give someone the death penalty--TWICE--for a conviction not based on any physical evidence at all, ever?  How does a mentally deficient man get the death penalty based on a confession he couldn't possibly have given willingly, in a case in which there's zero physical evidence against him?  And this wasn't in the bigoted first half of the 20th Century.  This was in 1983--just 31 years ago.

How many times do you think a black man with a very low IQ has been given the death penalty based solely on a "confession" and zero physical evidence?

Why doesn't somebody of national relevance order a review of every single case in which a black and /or mentally deficient (because of an extremely low IQ) man has been incarcerated due to convictions based on a "confession" and zero physical evidence?

Free Contest! My Story, "Everything's Connected," Now Free at Overmydeadbody.com

Photo: The icon of Overmydeadbody.com.

Hello, readers from overmydeadbody.com--or: Hello, my loyal blog readers!

Another story purchased and published!

If you haven't already read it, please, for free, read my newest story, "Everything's Connected" at Overmydeadbody.com.  (Story's description below.)  Just click the address above.  (Firefox is having trouble with it, so please use another.  I'm using Google Chrome.)  You don't even have to download it--it just appears on the screen.  Thanks!  And I'm holding a free contest about it--so if you've already read the story, please see the bottom of this post.

If you haven't, just click this link or the one above and click on the story.  And enjoy.  The story is very short.

What it's about (feel free to skip this if you've already read it):

"Everything's Connected," is about a detective who catches a cheating spouse in the act (sort of), solves a kid's disappearance, and proves a little theoretical quantum physics--all in just a few minutes!

Reading it won't take more than a few minutes, and I'd be greatly appreciative of any comments about it that you can give.  For example, you could consider:

--Do you believe that "Everything's Connected" like Foster does?  Or that they're not, like Colleen does?

--Do you believe that the story shows that "Everything's Connected?"  Or that it shows they're not?

--Consider: If Colleen hadn't been having problems with the virus software, would Foster have figured out where his landlady's kid was?

--Was that connection, or just plain luck?

--Overall comments about Foster, Colleen, or anyone else in the story.

--Overall comments about the story itself.

--Anything else you had in mind.  I've already had a comment conversation about Chaos Theory and String Theory (and Jurassic Park), for example.

Anyway, getting this story published is very cool because Brad Foster, the main character of this short piece, is also the main character of my soon-to-be-finished novel manuscript.  He's in a different psychological space in this story than he is in the novel--this story is supposed to take place after the novel--but he's clearly the same guy.

Colleen, his assistant, makes an appearance in both as well.  She's as feisty as usual.

And now the contest.

If you haven't already, just read the story via the links in this blog, and click the blog link at the end of the story (or just come back here) and leave a comment about what you thought of the story.  Good or bad, just be pleasant and appropriate!  Everyone who leaves a comment is entered into a contest to win a free copy of Space and Time Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction, Spring 2012, Issue #116.  This issue contains many fine stories, plus my short story "Hide the Weird."  (Here's a link so you can see what it looks like.)  A description of "Hide the Weird":

A young man has the ability to see short-term into the future--just enough to see that the woman he loves is about to die in a horrible fire.  How does he save her, without letting her know that he has this curse / ability?

A number / comment will be drawn at random.  I'll contact that person (or create a blog entry announcing the winner, so check back to this blog on September 1st, especially if you didn't leave any contact info.), who needs to send me an email with a mailing address to send the magazine.  And that's it! The contest ends August 31st at midnight, EST. 

Foreign entries are welcome!  No previous winners allowed--but please comment anyway!  :-)

And please let me know if I can read a short story for you, or comment for you, or enter a contest--or all 3!

So please and thank you.  As always, readers, I appreciate you reading my stuff.

Short Story Sale--"Everything's Connected" to Over My Dead Body! The Mystery Magazine Online

Just a quick self-serving note:

The rights to my short story, "Everything's Connected"--about a detective who catches a cheating spouse in the act, solves a kid's disappearance, and proves a little theoretical quantum physics--all in fewer than 2,000 words!--has been purchased by Over My Dead Body! The Mystery Magazine Online.  There are some pretty cool stories there now--lots and lots of them, in fact.  And they're all free!  So if you like quick and easy (and short) mystery stories, or stories of murder and mayhem, check them out at overmydeadbody.com.

This is awesome for me personally for two reasons.  The first thing is that Brad Foster, the main character of this story, is also the main character of a novel manuscript, Cursing the Darkness (Working Title), that is maybe 90% completed.  So Brad Foster will see the light of day.  Though it should be noted that the short story is very light, while the novel is very, very, very (many more veries) dark, gritty and brutal.  But his character is essentially the same.

The second reason this sale is awesome is because it's a mystery story in a mystery magazine: yet another different genre for me to be published in.  So far, the stories I've published, their location (and link), and their genre:

--"Everything's Connected," in Over My Dead Body! The Mystery Magazine Online.  Mystery.  Publication date TBA.
--"The Zombie's Lament" by Big Pulp.  Anthology due April 2015.  Horror.
--"So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season," in onthepremises.com.  March 2012.  Contemporary / literary.
--"An Old Man."  Poem.
--"Someone To Come Home To."  Short nonfiction article about the benefits of adopting a greyhound.
--"Hide the Weird," in Space and Time Magazine, Issue #116 of Fall 2012.

It ain't Stephen King, but it ain't nuthin', either, I guess.

Look for a publication date soon for "Everything's Connected."

Click on the Published Work link above for more details.

As always, thanks for reading my blog, my stories, everything.  I always appreciate (and need) your support. 

Blog News

Dear Readers,

In the next few days, I will try a massive (in terms of time, anyway) undertaking: two new blogs, maybe three.  So in addition to this site and my sports blog (where I babble mostly about baseball, baseball cards, and the sports world at large), please look at my American Horror Story: Coven blog, and my Walking Dead 4 blog, both via Blogger.  If they're not up when you check, please come back.  I'll put up the American Horror Story: Coven blog first, since the season's first episode has already aired.  Walking Dead 4's blog will go up tonight, or tomorrow--most likely tomorrow.

I may also start a blog, tentatively titled Steve's Sales, that will contain photos, descriptions and prices of things I want to sell.  This would be via Blogger as well.  So take a peek at that, when it's up, and let me know what strikes your fancy.  Just send me an email at the address on the top of any of my blogs, and I'll get back to you ASAP. 

As always, thanks for taking the time to peruse my meager scribblings.  I hope my readers, friends and followers like what is to come.

Sincerely,

Steven E. Belanger

Quick Jots--Syria, and This Crazy, Dangerous World

More thoughts that don't have the steam (or maybe I just don't) to be their own blog entries.

--Completed 200 pages of my novel manuscript, and we're rolling right along.

--Sox's text polls are actually advertisements for AT&T and for whatever options are available.  For example, today's poll is for the fans to vote for their favorite non-Sox event at Fenway Park.  Options are Picnic in the Park (happening soon), Frozen Fenway (advertised heavily throughout this game), concerts (several coming up) and...well, you get the idea.  Each text is $.99 for AT&T, of course.  So the sponsor makes out, and the Sox ownership, which also owns Fenway, makes out.  A win-win.  And they show which option leads by using percent scores, so an option that has 10% could have 100 of 1000 total votes--or 1 of 10 total votes.

--I'm looking forward to seeing Boardwalk Empire and The Following.  What shows are you looking forward to?

--Just in the past two weeks, a 1 1/2 year old baby in a stroller, and a 1-year old baby in her babysitter's arms, have been shot dead, the latter yesterday in New Orleans.  What the hell is going on?  Defense exhibit 256,348 about why I mostly keep to myself and stay in my own cave.  It's a crazy, dangerous world out there.

--And, oh yeah, an 88-year old World War II vet was beaten to death by two teenagers, one of whom said the old man was trying to cheat him on a crack deal.  Camera footage clearly shows the youths beating the snot out of the old man, and does not show anything at all that would indicate a drug deal.

--Reading a good book slows down this very crazy world.  Or, it seems that way to me.

--I've got a bet with a friend that Jerry Remy will return this year to NESN to broadcast games for the Sox.  My friend says he'll never return, not even next year.  I think, and hope, that he's wrong.

--The nighttime darkness falls like a heavy curtain now, at least in my neck of the woods.

--The latest iPhone commercial is yet another example of how most commercials are better without a set, typical script.  Music and images that highlight the use of the product make great commercials.

--I don't know if striking Syria is what we wanna do.  I say this while knowing admittedly nothing at all of the situation over there.  But the latest I heard, the Syrian attack on its own civilians--while despicable, of course--have not been a danger to this country, and / or our allies.  I suspect there's something that went on, or that has been threatened, that we don't know about, but we're spreading ourselves sort of thin already.  Does Syria have WPDs, or has it threatened terrorist attacks here?  If I'm severely out of line, or misinformed, please (nicely) let me know.

--I told someone today that horror movies don't scare me.  The daily news, however, horrifies daily.

--Nice to know someone else famous felt the same way.  From Robert Frost's "Desert Places" (and, whoa!  As I type this, a car commercial's narrator says the phrase "the road less traveled."  Scary symmetry, man...):

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars–on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

(Me, again.)  Is it me, or is Frost saying that the human race is the scariest thing in the universe?

American Horror Story: Murder House

Photo: 1120 Winchester Place, Los Angeles, CA.  This is the real house used in the series.  From the show's Wikipedia page

I decided to view Season One of American Horror Story after viewing Season Two and liking it so much.  Season One was also good, though not as much as Season Two.  The writers seemed to have written themselves out of the main characters, as the secondary ones take over here, and where they go is interesting, but since they're already dead, you care less about them as characters.

At first the very dysfunctional family of husband, wife and (suicidal) high school daughter move into this (very) haunted house.  Turns out, the house has many ghosts in it: a gay couple, murdered fewer than three years before the current occupants; a surgeon who can't pay his bills, and the wife who shot him, and then herself; one of his freelance abortion patients; and, most dangerously, a teenage psychopath who had killed many students in his school before he was shot in his bedroom by the police.  He's a very angry, or still-psychotic, ghost who later kills the gay couple (and does something really nasty to one of them with a fireplace poker), and later rapes the mother, a current occupant, who later dies giving birth to what the show insinuates is Satan's spawn.  Was the killer used by Satan, or was he evil to begin with?  Or both?  The viewer can decide, but the characters themselves conclude that he is just pure evil, and the Devil's spawn angle is downplayed, though never really done away with.  And there are many, many other ghosts I haven't written about here, some of whom have little, if anything, to do.

Therein lies the problem of the first season: the writing in the last six episodes or so meanders, and seems very unsure of itself as it does so.  The Black Dahlia is introduced without reason, more as an homage to the L.A. noir style itself, and maybe James Ellroy, who famously wrote about her, and who infamously said she may his mother, or that her killer may have been his father, or both, I forget.  Other homages include Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, in the sense that the movie's music is played in almost every episode.  Other movies in the Dracula, Frankenstein, and Southern Gothic modes, as well as lots of Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, and the like are paid homage as well.  Part of the joy of the series is catching and appreciating all of them.  You don't have to know them, though, to appreciate the series.

But back to the uneven writing.  What to do with the family?  Well, the writers didn't seem to know, either.  What to do with the many very unhappy ghosts?  In a nice twist, the family of ghosts ends up a much happier trio together than they ever did while they were alive.  Is the American family unit the "horror story" of the title?  It certainly seems that way, except the adults are so caught up in their own garbage that they don't even realize their daughter is dead.  (Though, to be fair, she doesn't know this, either, until she's told.)  The most wacky thing to me was that none of the ghosts seems to care too much that they're dead.  This is especially true of the father at the end, who is the only one left alive, and who seems to have the most to live for--his new child.  When he's killed by the ghost of his very young mistress (Kate Mara, older sister of Rooney Mara, from The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo), he seems mildly chagrined, at most.  The mother also doesn't seem to mind, though she knows she's without at least one of her newborns (she's told the first one died, but it didn't, and that's the one she ultimately ends up caring for); she also doesn't know her daughter's dead until her daughter visits her and says to let go of the pain, which the mother does.  (This seemed like too much of a condoning of suicide for me, which is how the daughter died, as well.)  Anyway, if the characters don't seem to take their lives very seriously, how can the viewer?

And that's the whole point at the end: the series creator's don't want you to feel sad for the family, and you don't, as they're clearly happier and better off than they had been.

How does it want you to feel about the Jessica Lange character, the devious and unsaintly and witchy neighbor who had lived in the house with her psychotic son, her wayward husband, her loose maid and her other two children, all of whom die before the very end?  Well, good and bad, in turns, though at the end she's gotten what she's asked for--a grandchild--but does she really want to take care of Satan's spawn?  I don't know, though I doubt it.  Jessica Lange does great work with a meandering role that makes her a victim and a killer.  You feel badly for her, because most of her siblings are dead and/or psychotic (and, in one case, both), but you also see her kill her husband, their maid, and almost the daughter next door.  In that last case, the daughter and her mother are victims of three psychotic people who want to kill them as others had been killed in the house.  Luckily, one of them eats the poisoned cupcake meant for the daughter, and...here's an example of the meandering.  Turns out, this entire series of events was unnecessary to the outcome of the whole thing.

So, at the end, this was like a good horror movie.  Riveting and sometimes creepy while watching it, but the second you think about the whole thing afterwards, it is very easy to see its many flaws.  But, if you haven't seen any of it yet, I do recommend it, especially if you're knowledgeable about the genres it pays homage to.