Just The Facts
Mystery Writer's Markets

It shouldn't be a mystery who to send your latest short story or non-fiction article to. Below you'll find guidelines to today's popular mystery mags. Read the guidelines carefully and don't forget to mail a SASE. If you're a magazine publisher and would like your magazine's writer's guidelines included in this list, email them to: Netera@aol.com in the style below.

MYSTERY READERS JOURNAL
PO Box 8116
Berkeley, CA 94707
http://www.mysteryreaders.org/

Facts: 17 years old, reaches 2,000 international mystery readers. Not interested in fiction. Avoid "Why I Write Mysteries About (subject). Don't use caps for the entire article. Each quarterly issue focuses on a different theme.
Dec. 2001 - Oxbridge (Oxford & Cambridge) DL: Nov. 15.

Seeks short reviews and articles focusing on the theme of the issue. Reviews of a single book should be 200 words or less, articles about 1,000 words. Address articles to the Editor, Janet A. Rudolph.

Formats: typed, double spaced. On a 3.5" disk in Macintosh Word 98, Windows Word 97, or ASCII text format. Submit by email to whodunit@murderonthemenu.com.

Payment: You will receive a complimentary copy of the issue in which your essay appears.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE
475 Park Ave. South,
11th floor,
New York, NY 10016
http://www.themysteryplace.com/ahmm/
Sample copies: $5.

Fact: No need to query first. Send the entire manuscript. Wants only fiction. No actual crime stories. Does not accept simultaneous submissions. Stories submitted to AHMM are considered only for this publication.

Interested in nearly every mystery: stories of detection of the classic kind, police procedurals, private eye tales, suspense, courtroom dramas and espionage. Asks that the story be about a crime threat or fear of one. Prefers stories not be longer than 14,000 words. Most stories chosen are shorter. Looking for manuscripts that have not be published elsewhere, are well-told and absorbing.

Format: typed on plain white paper, double-spaced, name and address at the top of the first page. The title of the story and your byline should be on the first page of the story. No separate title pages. Do not justify the right-hand margin. Number pages on the upper right-hand corner. Don't use italics, large-size or boldface characters. You can underline to indicate italics. Leave 1" line spaces between paragraphs. Mail stories flat with the pages bound only with a paper clip. Use a SASE or IRCs if you want the manuscript returned.

CHARACTER TRAITS: AN AUTHOR'S PERSPECTIVE
by Patricia Harrrington
2001©
Readers want to identify with the  protagonist in the story.  Equally important, so does the protag's creator. One way for an author to do this is to look at his or her own character traits.  What ones will work over the long haul to sustain the main character's persona and keep readers coming back? 

Most experienced fiction writers know that their lead characters, particularly those in mysteries, embody some aspect of a writer's alter ego.  Of course, most authors are also quick to add that readers shouldn't assume the protagonist is the author in fictionalized form.

Usually readers are given glimpses of the author's personal attributes through the protagonist reacting to situations.  Oftentimes a kind of wistfulness on the part of the author shows through.  The "I wish I were more like this" quality which results in the creator's protagonist being braver, sexier, smarter.  Well, you get the idea.

This is certainly true for me and my mystery series amateur sleuth Bridget (Bridg) O'Hern, age 48.  But it is also true for two other amateur sleuths I have created: Clarabelle Gilley, 74-years young, and Stacie Mercer, 25, who is a paraplegic as the result of a skiing accident.  In looking at "myself," I came up with three character traits that I admired or coveted.  Unfortunately, I don't have them in abundant supply.  In fact, there are days, when I couldn't chase down one of these admirable qualities for love, money or the life of me.  So I  make do by giving them to Bridg, Clarabelle, and Stacie.

INTUITIVE POWERS -- My powers of intuition have been blunted by early negative conditioning.  I never developed the ability to speedily assess and compare situations using a combination of the intellectual and visceral.  I'm a plodder, not a skilled guesser. But I admire the attribute of intuition.  Bridget has this quality in the tradition of early detective intuitionists.

GUTSY/IN YOUR FACE TOUGHNESS --  My senior sleuth, who was an army nurse during the Korean War, does not take guff.  Not from anyone.  I, on the other hand, am congenitally committed to politeness.  I'll make peace at all costs.  Not Clarabelle.  She has backed down colonels, bureaucrats, the police and irascible seniors in the low income senior residence she runs. While her attitude gets her into scrapes, it also helps her to get out of them.

COURAGE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY – I suppose, given a lifetime of living, I've had moments of "courage."  Not the kind where you face down a mugger, but the kind where you endure through and then overcome the heartache of a seriously ill child or a loved one who betrays you.  It takes courage to take on life and live it to the fullest.  My youngest sleuth is doing just that–in a wheelchair.  Stacie's had her year of grief, mourning the fact that her legs are paralyzed and holing up to avoid pitying stares.  Now she's turned her competitive spirit and her analytical mind to racing in sports-on-wheels events and solving mysteries.

Just slipping into these characters' personas is fun for me.  I suspect other authors do the same with their creations.  Undoubtedly, there is a little of the "Walter Mitty" dreamer in each of us.

http://www.patriciaharrington.com/
Death Stalks the Khmer, ISBN # 1-58851-350-5
A mystery set near Seattle but with roots in Cambodia's "Killing Fields"
"Khmer Rouge war crime trials to begin by year end" ---Hun Sen, Prime Minister, Cambodia
8/27/2001