Yesterday, issue 23 of the Stonecoast Review went live, with a Zoom call to promote it. As my short story “Bleeding Blue” is part of the issue, I attended and gave a three-minute reading. Now it’s time to tell you how the story came about.
Almost a decade ago I read History in Three Keys about the Boxer Rebellion and later interpretations of it. Author Peter Cohen mentioned that the Boxers believed they had magic to protect them from bullets; when it didn’t work they had rationalizations why, such as menstruating women canceling out their magic.
Hmm, I thought … what if menstruating women did cancel out magic?
This floated around in the back of my mind for a long while, with lurid images of women simply smearing menstrual blood on things to dispel enchantments. Which is something some writers could have pulled off, perhaps, but not me. When I finally set down to write it, my concept was a little less in-your-face: women having their period neutralize magic by touch. That’s all it took.
The original vague concept of a career cop protagonist (like the one on the cover, drawn by John F. Rosenberger) faded in favor of a POV character who’s not career law enforcement, she’s a draftee. Pre-menopausal woman in a given town go through a draft lottery each month; if you get a low number, you spend the three days of your period (I know periods aren’t always exactly three days but the law says otherwise) working with cops, firefighters, National Guard to help defuse hostile magic.
My original concept of a world where magic was the norm also faded. Instead I imagined magic coming back into force with the new millennium. Then society discovered the neutralizing power of menstruating women. The initial response — let’s make them all isolate themselves when they’re bleeding! — got shot down in a wave of protests and multiple misogynist politicians losing their position. Then came the idea of putting their power to use.
I soon had my protagonist, Janice, a zookeeper who works with raptors. I got the supporting cast: Moxon, the misogynist giving her orders and two female cops currently on “shield duty.” Esquivel is a Latina who normally works cybercrime; Drummond’s on a SWAT team.
Then all that remained was the easy stuff — writing it (peals of derisive laughter, Bruce!). I wanted Janice to handle several different cases but I had to figure out how exactly the police would use her, what might go wrong and what kind of case would provide the climax. That took writing, rewriting, and then rewriting some more. Everything had to be interesting; I also wanted to shed more light on how the draft system works without info-dumping.
Finally I finished it. Then I shopped it around, getting rejection after rejection. Finally I sent it to Stonecoast and got the green light. My editor had a couple of changes she wanted me to make for clarity, such as giving a better sense of the magic rules up front. Happily the changes were simple to make and didn’t turn into info-dumps, so yay!
You can order a copy here though #23 isn’t actually out yet.
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My first published story was a Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft pastiche, back before such things became common (as I’ve said before, “Lovecraftian” is a broader description than 
But I’m not the writer I was back in ’83 — who is? — and a little light tinkering didn’t satisfy me. I wanted Watson to be on the crime scene, telling us what he saw, rather than listening to Holmes’ take. That required new scenes. I had to figure out how Holmes was going to stop a Lovecraftian monstrosity without pulling a deus ex machina. I changed the identity of the killer, though I’m not sure why (was it a problem or just aesthetics?). I completely changed the clues to the killer. I incorporated another untold tale, the unsolved mystery of James Phillimore, who walked into his house to get his umbrella and vanished for all time.
Like Where Angels Fear to Lunch, the seed of this story was the title. The Cross and the Switchblade was a 1963 autobiography about a heroic preacher leading street punks to Jesus; it went on to become a movie in 1970 (there was also a comic-book adaptation). I’ve no idea what led me to come up with a pun on the title but as soon as I did, I knew I wanted a story to go with it.
Finally I hit on a plot that worked. Ward is the guest of honor at the science fiction convention Nevercon. To his surprise, the “classic Ward Hanover film” they’re screening isn’t one of his hits such as The Unforgiving Minute but his first film, lost when the studio burned in a fire, probably arson for insurance. The thought of seeing his younger, inexperienced self struggle with the terrible script and no-budget effects makes Ward cringe but he can’t see any alternative but to be a good sport about it.
The film stars Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon as the legendary, eponymous groupies. It’s been twenty years since their glory days and Suzette (Goldie Hawn) is sleepwalking through her life as a bartender. On impulse, she looks up Lavinia (Sarandon) for the first time in two decades and discovers her BFF is now a button-down suburban mom. Hilarity ensues (not enough hilarity for me, alas) before both women end up getting a new lease on life.
However that got me thinking about using the setting myself. My protagonist was a teenage girl in ’69 “Swinging London.” Maud, a working glass girl stuck in a posh school, has impressed her classmates by pretending to be tough, wild, sexually experienced and generally outrageous. Now one of her classmates has called her on it so Maud proves herself by sneaking a few of her friends into a black Soho jazz club. It turns out the club she picked was the wrong place at the wrong time and embroils Maud in the schemes of Death’s Jester.
Several elements in the early drafts stuck through to the finished product. There’s seemingly suicidal Hilda, whom (Maud and her classmate Prue try to help; Death’s Jester lives inside mirrors; and he’s transformed Hilda’s family into monsters. The villain was based on an episode of the cartoon 
