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Chris Welty's avatar

nb: "hercules" snuck in there a couple times.

very flash. so I'm coming away with suicide as the subtly implied solution. though unfinished stories is the flash style.

how about a noir style centered on a jazz musician who finds himself wrapped up in... something ... in the basement of an new jazz club with a strange and idiosyncratic owner

Tim Teegarden's avatar

"My First Murder Mystery" suggests there will be others to follow. Alas, no Ginny Beech series. Hint: if you want to spin out a successful franchise maybe don't kill the protagonist in the first story.

ETHAN IVERSON's avatar

*makes note*

Dennis McGraw's avatar

Goofy and gutsy!! Fun!

ETHAN IVERSON's avatar

Haha thanks!

Chuck Mitchell's avatar

A new career in the offing?

Richard Thurston's avatar

Had me going. Well done.

ETHAN IVERSON's avatar

thank you!

mmmm's avatar
2dEdited

...in-the-know, tongue-in-cheek, appealing and often evanescent fever-dream somehow caught in full flight out of the ether, and then, ...light keyboard polish, hit "send", refracted facets on a mirrorball of golden era memes; perhaps a few more trenchcoats and wide-brimmed hats in the future? (or ...EI's next "short spy piece"/ "noir" sketch)?

..wish I'd more familiarity with the works that influenced and combined to inhabit work "respectfully dedicated to Vince Keenan, Ray Banks, and Lawrence Block"..., and to catch the references and sentence types...

Curious if compact series of shorts might shortly appear to entertain....

Congrats on a new "first" :) impatient to hear more new EI music...

ETHAN IVERSON's avatar

thank you for very kind and perceptive words! It took about 90 minutes to write, so you are on it about “fever-dream.” Vince, Ray, and Lawrence are friends I text with about crime fiction stuff. (Of course, Lawrence is famous.) New records coming soon! Probably not much more flash fiction in me but stranger things have happened…

mmmm's avatar
2dEdited

ooooooooohhhh, texting w crime fiction buddies, ...I'm going to savor that for a few moments. That is really the cat's pajamas..

Game for you/interested (another prose style I'd love to see "you wear the mask" for...)

Hint - Truman Capote:

Question: ...guess the movie

Petersen:

You mean Mrs. Chelm is an unqualified liar?

BD:

Well, let's say she uses her imagination rather than her memory.

***

GC:

Harry, we must beware of these men. They are desperate characters.

HC:

What makes you say that ?

GC:

Not one of them looked at my legs!

***

O'Hara:

I come from a culture which is so much older than yours. In my country, a child of 6 years old is older in his heart than you'll be at, at 60.

BD:

It smokes, it drinks, it philisophizes... at this rate I'll be 60 before you get to the point.

Sanjay's avatar

Going further out beyond the trend set by PBS's recent "Crazily sexy yet bizarrely British" Inspector Maigret

Raymond Tait's avatar

Loved this. I carelessly read it without noticing at first that it was made up. All too plausible... most of the way through that is...

ETHAN IVERSON's avatar

Haha. Yes well I put a lot of my genuine emotion into to this fiction!