Over the last few months, I’ve neglected my novel-in-progress in favor of writing short stories. I’ve experimented – with some success – at writing stories specifically for certain anthologies or markets, and it’s been huge fun and very educational!

I wanted to tell you about the latest story and share some of it with you.

I belong to the Erotic Readers and Writers Association, a wonderful group of people who share their love of erotica, as well as market information, constructive criticism, and support of all kinds through their website and through e-mail lists. One of the main activities of the group behind the scenes is the posting of stories and other works for peer review. Once each month, the ERWA challenges the writers with a theme weekend.  The challenge is to write a story that fits in the genre highlighted for that theme weekend. The stories do not have to be heavily erotic but, given the common bond among the group, erotic content is pretty much a given.

The theme for August was Mystery and Suspense, a genre I’ve not written in before, but one I was eager to take a shot at. My partner Drake is a fan of hardboiled fiction and we talked a lot about the conventions of the genre and its masters, writers like Raymond Chandler (at the deep end of the pool) and Mickey Spillane (in the shallows).

I wanted to tell a story set in the 1950s, one of the golden ages of hardboiled writing, but I wanted it to have an erotic element and a hook for modern readers. Writing in first person has never been easy for me, but the best examples of this type of story are usually told in first person by a guy who wears a trench coat, drinks a lot, smokes a lot and has a distinctly world-weary view.

I learned very quickly that trying to write in a genre like this can quickly slip into parody. (“She was a beautiful dame. My eyes followed her around the room until she got mad and stepped on them…”) So I toned down the Sam Spade voice and tried to make my detective a little more sensitive than the norm – blame the romantic in me for that one! This decision led to some interesting twists in the story I was aiming for, and it didn’t take long before I realized I was writing a very different story than the one I had first set out to tell. (As an aside, I LOVE it when the characters take over!)

Excerpt "Under a Moving Star" by Angela Caperton Copyright 2008. All Rights Reserved.

The story, which I ended up calling “Under a Moving Star,” begins with a murder in Central Park on a night in November 1957.  The park is full of people who are watching the second Russian Sputnik (the one with a dog  inside) pass over. Here’s the opening scene:

        Central Park was like a vast, dark pool and I was a swimmer. Most nights the pool was empty except for bums and desperate lovers. Other nights, it was full of sharks. Tonight strange fish filled the pool, blocking the sidewalks, clumps of them in the shadows, gathered around metal tubes, goggle-eyed behind binoculars.
    All of them watching the sky.

    I swam deeper into the pool and the stars overhead watched me, but everyone else was lost in the endless pit of the night sky. The dome of heaven, they call it, but hell, it's not even a ceiling.

    Clear as Waterford, full of blue sparkles you couldn't see at all from 5th, but in the Sheep Meadow, we might have been out in the country or on a beach somewhere.  I skirted the little knots of men gathered around telescopes and avoided the press of a crowd of thirty or forty Episcopalians who had arrived together on a bus.

    "I hear there's a dog in it," someone said.

    "A red dog."

    "Must be a Setter," and they all laughed, but the laughter was brittle and sharp as my nerves.

    For November, the night was almost warm, and my gray Glen Brae jacket and overcoat were enough to keep the chill away. The Episcopalians' collective breath made wispy fog.

    I swam through, heading east toward the zoo, in the wake of a fish named Martin Goodman, who was hiding something from his wife. My client, the wife in question, was a pretty, petite blonde and she thought her husband might be in trouble. She also knew he'd been seeing another woman.  She'd hired me to shadow him and, believe it or not, to protect him.

    My name's Jack Cain, professional snoop. I work out of the same place I live, a three-room arrangement above Maxie's Diner down on 31st. I keep the weasels away and Maxie gives me a break on the rent.

    Goodman was a big man, but he was soft from too many years behind a desk. He looked just like the picture his wife had given me. Tonight he was wearing a natural wool sweater that made him easy to pick out in the dark. I stayed twenty feet behind him, keeping darkness to my back, mingling with the crowd or the shadows any time I thought he might turn around. We worked our way east and south, toward the zoo.

    When he cleared the edge of sky-watchers, I dropped back, and I wasn't surprised when a slender shape came out of the night to meet him. I smelled her perfume at thirty feet, lilacs and musk, and I could imagine how she felt, pressing against him urgently in the dark, her voice anxious and high. They passed under a lamp and I saw her face, a long nose, wide-set eyes, good cheekbones. I’d know her if I saw her gain.

    "Martin, you have to go,” she said. “You have to go now."

    They passed out of the light and into darkness, so I moved closer, trying to look up and watch them at the same time, just another stargazer.

    "I know," he said. "But not without you. I love you."

    Then I saw the sharks, just as someone in the crowd yelled, "There it is!" There was a rush of caught breath and the silence that only a crowd can create, and four big shadows rose up around Martin and his illicit lover, like a tribe of apes that had escaped from the zoo.

    The little light in the sky seemed very far away.

    Martin’s girl screamed and the noise rippled through the multitude gathered in the park, but they all had their eyes on the sky. I wanted to look up too, but the apes had my full attention.

    One of them grabbed Martin and held him close, just like Martin had held his girlfriend a moment before, and I heard the rasp of his breath like the sound an air pump would make if its hose was wet and ragged.

    Two of the others had the girl and they were disappearing back into the shadows, and then the fourth one saw me.
    He came at me like a bull, if a bull could run without making a sound. The crowd had begun to murmur with nervous jokes and even a little laughter.

    "It's just a light," somebody said.

    I did a Hemingway and sidestepped the bull, punching his kidney. I'm not big, but I'm fast and I can break a plank with my fist. He wasn't nearly as hard as a plank, but he took the punch, staggering only a little, in a disappointing way. I hit him again, right under the ear, and he went down.

    But by then the man with the knife was on me too and I felt the blade shear my overcoat under the arm. I smelled my own sweat and lilac and musk as he hit me in the gut.

    "It ain't nothing." A Bronx voice. "It's just a light."

    "But it's in space," someone yelled at him. "It's in outer space."

    Somehow my knees had fallen to my feet and the knifeman caught me by the collar and jerked me up so I was looking right into his face.

    I knew the bastard.

    Frank Dexter. He was a Fed.

    Frank put a finger under my upper lip. "Be smart, Jackie," he said, not without kindness, and then his fist came down, drowning me in the depthless pool of the sky where a single light moved silently, like God's first tear.

**

I posted the story on the ERWA list and got good comments from my fellow writers and readers.  The next thing I will do is polish the story a little and figure out where to submit it. I’ll let you know if it finds a home!

Next up on theme weekend is a horror weekend. I’ve had more experience with this genre (My vampire story “Understudy” will be in Black Lace’s anthology Lust at First Bite out this November! and I have an erotic horror story called “Springs” that I haven’t submitted anywhere yet, but I think may be the best thing I’ve written.), but I’m looking forward to seeing where the exercise takes me this time!

For aspiring writers of erotica, I really recommend participating in ERWA’s e-mail lists. The ERWA offers a peer review circle you aren’t likely to find anywhere else, and the exercises are very … stimulating.

And for those of you that just like to read erotica or just like enjoying the celebration of sexuality in all its forms, I also recommend the ERWA website.  Every month it offers new reviews, stories and articles. 

Tell ‘em Sam Spade’s dame sent you.