Another Professional Project Is a DANDY Idea

I'm sure you all recall my recent post (the last one?) about the difficulty of determining which literary agents to submit work to. Well, something similar, though easier in my humble opinion, goes on with seeking out markets for short-form writing. There are hundreds of possibilities to sort through. So much to read and decide which journals/sites would be interested in your work.

During Lent this year, I took on a daily short story reading project that I thought would teach me something about writing short stories. It did not. Soon after starting it, I gave up any hope that it would help me in checking markets. My efforts were totally unfocused and random, and I was just trying to get the job done.

Which I did, but for what?

So, of course, I got really excited yesterday when I came up with a similar plan for researching short-form writing markets.

The Kind-of-Daily Market Research Project

I have this Ranking of 500 Fiction Litmags by Erika Krouse. Oh, my gosh. She's got one for litmags that only publish creative nonfiction, too. Now I'm really excited. 

So, the new project is to just casually check out a magazine from the list, read a few things, look at their submission guidelines, and consider whether or not I have something I can submit there. We're going to be calm about this. Which means:

• No reading for the sake of reading. 
• No reading to meet a daily goal.
• Just familiarize myself with some new publications and be grateful for whatever I get done.

Today's Research Project: Five Points

Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art doesn't make all its material available on-line. And what it does offer isn't a complete story or essay. But it has a pretty incredible blog. Consider:

• "Help Eleanor Come Home": The Queer Horror of Hill House by Eve Clark. If I had all the time in the world, I'd read The Haunting of Hill House again. (I have a copy, so I could!) That would be for the third time, since I read it once as a teenager and once after the Netflix series.
• Pride and Prejudice & The Awakening: What is food if not domestication or temptation? by Karen Sims. This is fantastic! I didn't care for The Awakening when I read it sometime after college. Again, if I had all the time in the world, I'd read it again. (I have a copy, so I could!) Food and eating appear in a lot of my own writing. I'm going to be paying a lot more attention when I read it in other writers' work now. "Domestication or temptation."

Getting Serious About Humor: A Truly Funny Novel

Timmossholder on Unsplash

While reading humor books, I haven't come across a lot of fiction I found truly funny. Until I read A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales. The book's publisher calls it a "cozy mystery," but I think it's a parody. And not a parody of cozy mysteries, though I don't read a lot of those so I can't be sure. I think it's more a parody of the couple-historical-detective series I'm fond of and Pride and Prejudice. There's also a nod to the classic/horror mash-ups that were popular fifteen or twenty years ago. (Side note: My husband, son, and daughter-in-law all agreed to see Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with me, even though none of them had read Pride and Prejudice. We all liked the movie.) 

A Most Agreeable Murder is such a good parody, I wonder if people unfamiliar with what is being parodied will get it. Must be they do, or enough do, anyway, because a sequel is coming in June.

A Note About the Pride and Prejudice References in A Most Agreeable Murder

Many years ago, I read an essay in which the author noted that while Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is portrayed as shallow and foolish and only interested in finding husbands for her daughters, she is also entirely correct. Without husbands, her daughters will be in dire straits when their father dies. They will have no income, they won't even have a home. While Mrs. Bennet is going all over the neighborhood frantically trying to find men to take care of her daughters, because in the world they live in they need men, her husband is portrayed as this intelligent, benign soul, disappointed by his choice of wife and burdened with her. Yet he is doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to save his children, leaving all the work to their mother.

Yeah, well the Steele family in A Most Agreeable Murder are clearly the Bennets from Pride and Prejudice, and Mr. Bennet/Steele here gets the treatment he deserves. While Mrs. Bennet/Steele gets a little respect.

A Note About the Couple-Mystery-Detective Series References in A Most Agreeable Murder

The couple-historical-detective series I'm familiar with have all involved heterosexual couples, so I don't know how this would play out with same sex couples. But with the heterosexual couples, the woman is usually (but not always) the main character. The male may or may not have some kind of connection, amateur or professional, to solving crime. The two of them meet in the stereotypical hate-to- love/Pride and Prejudice manner, end up working together, and, at some point in the series, become romantically involved.

The male characters fall into a particular predictable pattern. While manly and intelligent and superior in some way, either through achievement or family status, they are always damaged. They had a bad war experience. (As if there are good ones.) They have daddy issues. They had a bad war experience and have daddy issues. They have migraines. They have migraines and daddy issues. They've had bad experiences with women. They've had bad experiences with women, and they have daddy issues.

They are damaged while the female character is not. Other than being female, of course.

I'm recovering from a couple of mild illnesses, so I'm not going to try to unravel what's going on with that situation. But, certainly, something is.

What I'm getting to here is that Inspector Drake in A Most Agreeable Murder plays to the damage business in a very obvious manner, if you're aware of the damage trope/cliche. And another less obvious manner, which I won't mention because I don't want to give it away.

Some Other Random Thoughts

The unsavory cousin who is set to inherit the Steele daughters' house out from under them and is a variation on the same character in Pride and Prejudice was terrific, though I might have found him over-the-top, if I didn't know the parody business going on with him. 

The multiple murderer possibilities were well done. 

The fart joke was excellent, in large part because it was so incongruous.

This is a funny book that also has quite a decent mystery. I definitely look forward to the next book in what may end up being a series.

So Mrs. Bennet Has Her Fans

Years ago I read an article about Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice in which the author made the point that while Mrs. B. may be foolish, she is also correct. Her daughters will be in dire straits without husbands to provide support.

I think this is why Pride and Prejudice and Zombies works as well as it does. Finding husbands is a life-and-death proposition for the Bennet daughters. Bringing in zombies is just a higher degree of risk. Little Women and Werewolves, on the other hand, wasn't as good a mash-up. The March daughters' response to the werewolves in the story doesn't make sense in the context of Little Women world.

I'm going on about this, because there was a discussion on my Facebook wall today about an article at The Literary Hub called Jane Austen's Most Widely Mocked Character Is Also Her Most Subversive by Rachel Dunphy. It's very intriguing, putting a feminist spin on Mrs. Bennet.

I like it, but I suspect Jane Austen wouldn't have a clue what Dunphy's talking about.