Christal Cooper
Stuck in
the Middle:
Writing
That Holds You In Suspense
*Book
Analysis by Chris Rice Cooper and Scripted Interview with Editors David Bell
& Molly McCaffrey
On
May 9, 2016 Main Street Rag Publishing (http://mainstreetragbookstore.com) released its anthology
Stuck
in the Middle: Writing That Holds You In Suspense, edited by married
couple and literary team David Bell (www.davidbellnovels.com) and Molly McCaffrey (www.mollymccaffrey.com).
The anthology consists of short stories, poems
and non-fiction on being “stuck in the middle” which is defined by Bell and
McCaffrey in the Introduction:
When we hear the world suspense
associated with books or movies, we likely have certain vivid associations and
expectations. Maybe we think of Janet
Leigh stepping into the shower with Anthony Perkins peeping through a hole in
the wall. Or maybe we think of Jodie Foster
entering Buffalo Bill’s house wearing her weird night vision goggles.
But we wanted to push the notion of
suspense into some different directions here.
Sure, these stories and essays and poems contain their fair share of
dangerous situations. A guy who owes
money to a vicious criminal (“Righteous
Rita” by James Breeden). A family who
may nor may not be planning to gun down a Neo-Nazi (“The Idea Of Assassination. Toronto 1973” by J.J. Steinfeld). A family that struggles to forgive the person
involved in their daughter’s death. (“Blame
Game” by Jessica Levine.)
James Breeden
J.J. Steinfeld Jessica Levine
We hope most of you never find
yourself experiencing anything like that.
But let’s admit it – we all end up in sticky situations. We all come to forks in the road. We all face turning points. We all find ourselves suspended between
possibilities, unsure of what to do next.
We’ve all been stuck in the middle.
Stuck In the Middle consists of an
Introduction, Contributors Page, and is s divided into three sections: Fiction, Poetry, and Non-Fiction.
Vivan Shipley’s poem “Perennial”, consisting of 20 stanzas and ending in a couplet, is a
compelling blockbuster about a woman who learns that her neighbor was a Nazi
guard. Each stanza has its own punch –
she compares her gardening to her neighbor’s gardening, she compares his method
of feeding his pet falcon to his method of turning Jewish lives to ash in
Dachau. She also remembers those lives
whose were murdered, which include her own family members, and in the end she
gives them a voice while at the same time demanding justice.
The commemorative mass
grave dedicated to the unknown dead at Dachau
In the 11th and part of the 12th
stanza she mentions Miklos Radnoti, not by name, and his widow Fanni Gyarmati:
Taking
a widow
to find notebooks in
her husband’s breastpocket, giving
her poems she could
dry in sun, to soothe her, would
you say how ink, if
not his breathwords, has been saved?
Safari
By Nancy
Shires
A mountain lion
escaped a zoo,
the news reports,
and though we are
some miles away
lion sightings multiply.
Half-seeking an adventure,
half terrified,
we set forth to find
the beast.
Where ball fields end,
thick woods begin.
Space between the branches
grows as leaves spin down
like red and orange confetti.
Surely we could spot
an escapee.
We pause
at the forest edge.
Peer in.
Step by step
and watchful,
venture
to a weathered shac.
where once they boiled
the sap they tapped
from celebrating maples.
A twig snaps.
Their photographs along with their contact
information are at the very end of this specific feature, right after the
scripted interview with editors David Bell and Molly McCaffrey.
Scripted Interview with
David Bell & Molly McCaffrey
How did you two
meet?
We
met in college, at the beginning of our junior year. We both lived on the fifth
floor of Read Hall at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. It was a very
social floor with somewhere around two hundred people living on it, and almost
everyone knew each other after a while. It was an X-shaped building with six
floors and four wings—two wings for women and two wings for men—but you could
cross into another wing in the middle of the X.
Not only did we meet each other on that floor, we also met many other
people we are still friends with today. It was probably the best social
experience of our college careers.
Could you please
describe to me in as much detail as possible the steps into making STUCK IN THE MIDDLE come into being – from the moment the idea was first
conceived in the brain until final book form?
We
met the publisher of Main Street Rag, Scott Douglass, after he published one of
Molly’s stories—“The Other Man”—in a Main Street Rag anthology called XX
Eccentric in 2009.
After
that anthology came out, Scott asked the two of us to edit an anthology for
Main Street Rag (MSR). We agreed and edited an MSR anthology over the next year
about travel and commuting called Commutability, which came out in
2010.
Not
long after that, Scott asked if Molly would submit a book of stories for his
fiction editor, Craig Renfro, to consider for publication since Dave had
already signed a contract with Penguin for his next novel, Cemetery Girl.
Craig
accepted Molly’s book, How to Survive
Graduate School & Other Disasters, and it was published in 2011.
A
few years later, Molly submitted another book for publication with MSR—a memoir
called You Belong to Us—and Scott’s nonfiction editor, Beth Browne,
accepted that book for publication as well.
The
memoir came out in 2015, and before it came out, Scott asked if the two of us
would edit another anthology for him, this one on the topic of suspense. We
agreed, and the book—Stuck in the Middle—came out in
2016.
As
far as the steps involved in putting that kind of book together, the first
thing that happened was that Scott put an ad in The Writer’s Chronicle and on his website and Facebook page,
requesting submissions for the 2016 anthologies.
Scott
publishes several anthologies every year—all of them with different guest
editors who Scott invites, like us—and there were six anthologies that year.
The ads explained what writers should submit for consideration: poems, stories,
and essays no longer than a certain length and not published in the previous
five years.
The
writers then submitted their work via email, and the two of us read the
submissions for the suspense anthology and divided them into three piles—yes,
no, and maybe.
After
that process was complete, we decided that we had enough pieces in the yes
pile—about forty or so pieces—that we did not need to take any work from the
maybe pile.
We
then submitted the list of accepted pieces to Scott, and he had a contract sent
to each writer. The contracts were returned with the final piece and the
author’s bios.
We
then compiled all of the pieces and the bios into a desktop publishing file,
designed the book, edited the book with each individual writer’s cooperation,
and sent the finished product to Scott for approval.
This
whole process took about a year from start to finish, and we did all this while
we were both working on other projects—Dave was also writing his eighth novel, Since
She Went Away, and Molly was working on her first young adult novel.
Once
Scott approved our work on Stuck in the Middle, he printed and
bound the books and mailed them out to those who ordered them—as well as to
each person who appears in the book. And now the book is available for future
orders on his website:
Were there any portions
of the book that were compelling to you? And if so what portions?
We
found every single story, poem, and essay in the book to be compelling in some
way or, more often than not, in many ways.
The
three prize winners—(fiction story) “Righteous Rita” by James Breeden, (poem)
“Lucky” by Gwen Hart, and (non-fiction
piece) “Blue Balls” by Eric
Goodman—were obviously the pieces that we thought were the absolute best.
James Breeden
Eric Goodman Gwen Hart
RIGHTEOUS RITA
By James Breeden
for M. Rudolph
The old farmhouse faced east, and when Kralick first moved in,
plastic sheeting covered the glass over the modest picture window. He tore it
off; the view was worth the draft. The house was small—two bedrooms, one
bath—and nestled in a knoll rounded by years of plowing. The rent was low. Now,
in summer, rows of tall corn lined the fields and encircled the house. A two
track led from the county road to the small apron of gravel between the house
and the decrepit barn.
Kralick considered it a necessity to see who was driving up to the
house, and his dog let him know when someone was on the way. Moses the dog was
dead now, and Kralick happened to be standing at the picture window, watching a
Cooper’s hawk cruise the barn. A sports car raced up the two track, dust
barrels muscling up and dissipating behind it. He cussed when he recognized the
car.
He stepped to the screen door as the car skidded to a stop in front
of it.
Tripp smiled, nodded at him from behind the steering wheel, and
turned off the ignition. “Well, well, Mark‑o, how they
hangin’?” Tripp’s oil‑black hair was slicked back. He wore
a white sport shirt tucked into his blue jeans with the sleeves rolled to the
elbows, revealing deeply tanned arms.
“Not too good, considering what your boys did to me last week.”
Tripp walked up and opened the screen door. Its metallic grating
caused Kralick to tense, biting down with a grimace he hoped Tripp didn’t
notice. He stumbled back, off balance, favoring his sore knee as Tripp passed
in front of him.
“Whoa, now Mark. Take it easy. It’s just me, come to pay a visit.”
Tripp cocked a smile at him. “Gonna offer me a brewski?”
Tripp’s musk-scented cologne hit his nose like rancid butter.
Kralick said,“You know where it is.” He walked to the couch and sat down,
stretching his legs out on the coffee table. He heard the fridge open and close
and the pop of a pulled tab.
Tripp strolled in and seated himself in the easy chair across from
him. “Had to go up to DeKalb. Thought I’d pay a visit. See how you’re doin’.”
Kralick shrugged. They had been friends for six years and business
associates for half that time. At one point, early in their friendship, they
had talked on their cells almost daily. They followed Chicago sports teams and
both liked to place bets, but it wasn’t like that anymore.
“You owe me forty-two K. Forty-two point five to be precise.” Tripp
took a swallow from the beer. “Whatta you have for me?”
“Have for you?” Kralick sat up, swinging his legs off the coffee
table and feeling a twinge shoot up from his knee. “It hasn’t been a good week.
You see, I’ve been busted up. Got a fucked‑up knee. Got
these fucking cuts and bruises all over the front of my body, including my
dick. My back’s burned, my ass’s burned, I’m burned, and you wanna know what I
got for you? Shit.”
“Come now. It’s been a week.”
“I gotta a grand.”
“A grand. A fucking grand?” Tripp set the beer down by his foot and
leaned forward.
“How long do you think I’m gonna wait
for my money? I got business, boy. I need my money.”
Lucky
by Gwen Hart
There’s a reason you
can’t bear
to watch her on the
screen,
the long-legged girl
you beg
not to do it, not to
open the door, answer
the phone, pull back
the curtain, roll down
the window. She’s the
part of you that can’t resist
any sharp, shiny thing
on the sidewalk,
the part that lives to
investigate strange noises
in the garage, the one
who tells you
this time will be
different. Her problem is
she’s lucky. She
miraculously survived
the first time around,
walked away woozy
but whole, started a
new life in another city,
and she feels
stronger, smarter, safer
now that the sequel is
here. She spends a lot
of time polishing her
nails, washing her hair,
undressing slowly in
front of the mirror. And here
comes the danger, ta
da!, appearing behind her
with a ski mask or
machete, revving up
the chainsaw or the
engine, headlights
bearing down on her.
All mouth and lungs,
she has a talent for
screaming, tongue
red and soft and just
begging
to be plucked out.
When the creature
lunges, it lunges
after you, who are driven
by this stunned girl,
this bimbo
of the brain, who’s
too beautiful,
too stupid, to run. Pick
me,
she screams, love
me, murder me,
and you’d like to
smack her silly, make her
pack her bags, walk
the plank,
but without her you
know you’d never
work again, not even a
two-bit part in a third- rate
movie and the
half-price theater
on a Wednesday night
at midnight
with a wino asleep in
the front row.
You need her, this
impossible
hussy who’ll live long
enough
to let you die again
and again in new
settings, at odd
angles, with different men.
Blue Balls
by Eric Goodman
We were sixteen, but she was born in April, a month before I was.
And she would be a senior in September, while I was only a junior. So when we
met at our parents’ beach club and quickly became girlfriend and boyfriend, I
expected great things, especially when after only a week, she left me feel her
up under her bikini top. We’d walk four beaches down, slip through the fence
that marked the beach club boundaries, spread a blanket, and make out. She had
small, well, maybe medium-sized breasts—they were the first I’d seen bare, so I
had nothing to compare them to—with dark brown nipples that seemed too large
for her breasts. (But what did I know?)
I learned to tongue them, to slurp them, to tease them erect until
they became bumpy little birds’ beaks trying to take off. She’d get squirmy and
whisper my name and seem not to mind when I placed my hand against her bikini
bottom. Soon she’d be grinding her pubis against the boney knob where my hand
met my wrist and I could feel her getting WET! through the thin cloth, but as
soon as I tried to slip my finger underneath (once I succeeded, feeling with a
thrill I could not describe except as Good, Good, Very Good! what it felt like
to touch a pubic hair not my own, and that, that I thought but wasn’t sure was
the tip of her vagina, her pussy, her wet cunt), she’d push my hand away and
say, “No, Jimmy, I can’t.”
But if she couldn’t, she seemed to want to. As July crept towards
August and the tan on my back grew towards burnt umber, she began letting me
slide my hand under her bikini bottom, though she never let me remove it.
Sometimes it felt as if my wrist were cracking, but if I bent it just right and
she arched her pelvis, I could slip my middle finger inside her, slide it in
and out and in and out. She’d moan even more than before and press through the
front of my trunks against the most insistent hard-on Breezy Point had ever
known, a hard-on I relieved once and sometimes twice a day onto the truly
unbelievable tits of Miss April 1969 behind the locked door of my bedroom, but
which here on the beach Lisa would touch only through my suit and seemed to
have no idea what to do with.
One overcast August afternoon, after I’d kissed her breasts for
hours while moving my finger in and out of the wet chute of her vagina, she
moved her hand from the outside of my Speedo, where it had played concertos
against my erection as if it really were the skin flute my cousin Bobby called
it, inside that very same Speedo, where it became only the second person’s hand
(this left out the probability that my mother or older sister, when changing my
diaper had touched me there, but thank God I couldn’t recall that) to touch my
penis.
We
also found the last story—“Amputation”
by Georgina Kleinhelter—about a woman who gives birth to conjoined twins to be
especially haunting and provocative.
Amputation
By Georgina
Kleinhelter
Two years ago, I took my daughter into a hospital and paid a
surgeon to cut her in half. One half lived.
The other didn’t. The little
tombstone in the German Town Cemetery said that half was three years old. It said her name was Angela. My husband would tell me that wasn’t
true. He said things like “that’s not at
all what happened.” And “I don’t know where you go this idea into your
head.” He said he was trying to be
strong for both of us, to be supportive of me, but that I was making it
difficult for him with my looney fantasies.
Looney like Looney Tunes. My daughter used to watch them. Half of my daughter still did.
And
we also found the first poem—“Epistle of
James” by the recently deceased James Reiss—to be a timely and brilliant
meditation on mankind’s unfortunate tendency towards violence, especially as it
relates to religion.
Epistle of
James
By James
Reiss
Both Allah & Yahweh instruct us
that killing each other has fucked us.
From the day we were brought forth, half-crazy,
to our latest smart bombs – oopsy-daisy!—
both Muhammad & Moses insisted
it’s foolish, it’s useless, it’s twisted
to worship the sword. What a
hassle
it is to react like an asshole.
We Muslims & Jews deserve better.
It’s time to write both groups a letter:
When the Koran & Bible were written,
dear friends, both our people were smitten.
They smote & they stones & they strangled
whenever their mindset got mangled
& their peacenik diplomacy foozled.
Whenever no-goodniks bamboozled
each other, they reached for a cutlass
Until, armless & legless & buttless,
they managed to capture a city,
which ended up totally shitty
with all of its corpses, its rubble,
its hope3s that were pricked like a bubble.
Just think of our forebears, dear cronies:
what a passel of wackos, baloneys
who stood amid downed plinths & pillars
& bragged, Look at us, we
are killers!
Now it’s time to wise up, Jews & Muslims.
We know how to wage war & crush limbs.
We’ve taken crash courses in trashing
civilians. What nations are
clashing
because we repeat what our group did
for centuries. Friends,
we’re so stupid
we won’t use our head to protect us
from Stone Age behavior that’s wrecked up.
We won’t let plain horse sense instruct us
that killing each other has fucked us.
It’s time to start kissing, not killing.
My friends, pucker up & get willing.
Peace go with ye all, dudes & dames,
right away. Very truly
yours, James.
But
honestly we could offer the same kind of praise for every piece in the book.
That’s why we chose them. Because we love them all.
Can you go into detail
about the cover photo by C. David Jones? (Jones Photo left).
When
we agreed to edit an anthology about suspense, we made the conscious decision
not to seek only pieces that would fall into the genre of suspense. We wanted
suspenseful stories, poems, and essays, but not necessarily just those that
would be considered thrillers, mystery, or horror.
Honestly,
as we say in the introduction of Stuck in the Middle, we think all good writing is
suspenseful. Despite the fact that we
didn’t want this to be a book that was limited to one genre, we thought it
would be fun to play with the notion of genre on the cover.
We
wanted a cover that re-created the look of the old pulp fiction of the twentieth
century, and we asked our friend C. David Jones to create something in that
vein. David is a brilliant artist who has been painting figures for years, so
we knew he could create something we’d like.
By
the time we started working with David—about halfway through the year that we
worked on the book—we had come up with a name for the book, Stuck
in the Middle, which is a play on the Latin phrase in medias res,
meaning “in the middle of things,” which is, of course, where all good stories
should begin.
We
told David all of this and that we wanted an image of a woman somehow stuck in
a bad situation. David ran with this idea and put the woman on the side of a
rocky hill next to a speeding car with a license plate that read “HRD
PLC”—stuck between a rock and a hard place, if you will.
He
also added a clown and a joker card on the far side of the hill, which you can
see on the back cover, to allude to the great Stealers Wheel song, “Stuck in
the Middle,” from 1972.
David
also added another element: he put a cell phone in the young woman’s hand to
give the artwork a post-modern edge and called it “No Service.” We were thrilled
when David showed us the artwork and we learned how much fun he’d had expanding
our original idea, and we both think the final product is wonderful.
In
fact, the original artwork is appropriately hanging on the wall of our bar,
where David Jones has spent time with us on more than one occasion.
Dylan Baker
Mark
Brazaitis
James Breeden
Shelbi
Broeking
Courtney
A Butler
Carol
V Davis
Sarah
Domet
Susan
Eisenberg
Brittany
Eldridge
Eric
Goodman
Gwen
Hart
https://www.facebook.com/GwendolynAHart (in order for link to work must copy and
past)
Rachel
Hoge
Elizabeth
Iannaci
Carol
Kanter
Jason
Kapcala
Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis
Georgina
Kleinhelter
Philip Kobylarz
Sandra
Sidman Larson
Jessica Levine
Brandy
Meredith
David
Olsen
Carl
“Papa” Palmer
Kelcey Parker Ervick
Lee
Patton
James Penha
Katie
Pickens
Karen
Pullen
Casey
Pycior
Tony Reevy
James
Reiss
Vivian Shipley
Shoshauna
Shy
Laurence Snydal
Monica
Spees
J.J.
Steinfeld
Maria
Terrone
Sarah
Brown Weitzman
