My short story "Sky" is one of fourteen tales by local authors that are featured in this anthology, Hard Ol' Spot which is coming in August from Creative Publishers.

I'm happy to report (this is probably the worst-kept secret in the world!) that Inspector Devlin will return! The third Devlin novel Come to Dust will be published by MLR Press of New York.

You can't know how happy I am about this. ^_________^

Further details as they materialise.

I'm feeling very optimistic these days, since my 1930s-era gangster novel, BUT NOT FOR ME has been requested for review by four publishers, one of which has made an offer! Woo hoo!

I'm not going to get TOO excited about it just yet, but it's nice to know that people like what I write enough to want to read more of it. :)

There's a forensics article by me(with accompanying photos) over on the historical romance blog, The Macaronis.

Warning: contains fake gore, which the mods have been kind enough to put behind a cut. It's tomato ketchup, but still. :)

Morocco, 1941: a dead German courier, two stolen exit visas, an American drifter, a French policeman, a lot of sand, and a lot of blood. Think you know this story? Think again...

A novel-in-progress, Because You Despise Me...


The man stepped out of the desert night as though materializing from the ethers. He was not tall, slightly over five and a half feet in height, and simply dressed in the baggy linen trousers and short-sleeved shirt that bespoke a lengthy association with the climate of Maarif. He walked with no great haste towards a rickety wooden-and-plaster structure set slightly apart from the rest of the souk and leaning on its nearest neighbour with an air of exhaustion; the hand-painted sign above the front door declared it to be Lulu's. He lit a cigarette and waited just outside the door, gazing around him with eyes perhaps overlarge for his face and not a great deal of interest. This portion of the city was known simply as the Thieves' Quarter, an area where foreigners rarely went, a collection of stinking, dirty back alleys infested with feral children, stray cats and pickpockets. He wasn't afraid of any of that. He had been here long enough to understand the way things worked, and he carried a dagger to protect himself.

A car stopped and a young woman got out, wearing the traditional djelleba with the hood pulled far forward over her face. She looked neither left nor right before stepping into the cafe. He dropped his cigarette, crushed it under his shoe, and followed her. The room was crowded; the tables near the door were occupied by groups of men, drinking strong black coffee and playing dominoes. A small, three-piece band wailed away somewhere in the back, doing fatal damage to an out-of-tempo version of "I'm in the Mood For Love." It was December, 1941, and if he were home in Roncesvalles, he would be helping them get ready for Christmas - but there was no Christmas here, and there was no Christmas anyway in the world, not anymore. Perhaps it was just as well.

He found her at a small table in the back, sitting with a cup of coffee, a cigarette crushed between the nicotine-stained fingers of her left hand. "You took your time," she said. Her voice was low and rough; her long black hair hung in greasy hanks before her face, and she smelled like dust and sweat.

"Always a pleasure to see you as well," he replied. His large eyes took her in, dissected her and tossed her back again. It wasn't her he cared about. She could do as she liked. "You have news for me." He lit another cigarette: this war was making him smoke like a fiend.

She drew a shaky "S" in the dust on the tabletop. "There will be a train coming through Maarif. It will stop long enough to put down a group of Boche, visiting on behalf of Vichy."

"Ah." He drew on his cigarette. "Coming to see how well we handle things, eh?"

"I don't like the Boche any more than you do," she said. Her dark eyes flashed at him now and then through the greasy strands of hair; her hands curled into claws. "I met a scout last week, out there in the mountains." She jerked her chin towards the door. "I knifed him in the guts and watched him die. You should have seen him, clawing at the sand."

"What a poet you are." He made a face. "So tell me."

She fished a crumpled photograph from the depths of the djelleba and slid it across the table to him. He examined it, then tore it into little pieces and scattered them on the floor under his feet. The fragments would mix with the dirt and sawdust, and in an hour or two the face of Feldwebel Horst Schein would be indistinguishable from the rest of the garbage.

"He has two exit visas, signed by General Weygand. He is bringing them to one of the girls, a blonde one named Yvonne. She has convinced him she is in love with him, and they plan to leave Maarif together. The visas are in case of..." Her thin lips twisted in a sardonic smile. "...difficulties."

"Where is Salazar? Where is he now?" It was stupid to even ask, but worth a try; she laughed at him.

"You know better than that," she said. She stood up to go. "Salazar will make contact with you at this club called Paradise, perhaps in a day or so. That's all I can tell you."

He watched her thread her way through the nest of crowded tables. The front door opened, admitting a gust of warm night air and the scent of dust.

Frederick Abaroa hugged himself, and shivered.

I have set up a (very!) rough site for my little films, over here at Canis Noir Films. Right now you can watch my first film, "The Coat," a tribute to my late grandmother, a Scottish war bride.

I was trolling the Internet, looking to see where my books were being sold online (I like to keep an eye on it - you never know who's trying to get something for nothing, cf. Google books) and I found some really nice reviews!

This is for my collection of literary fiction, The Opium Lady, which featured stories written around old photographs.

From The Edmonton Journal; reviewed by Margaret Mcpherson..
Old photographs, sepia in tone or faded black and white, are often silent on their subjects. Who hasn't found an old trunk or a shoebox stuffed with snapshots from another era? Rarely are secrets revealed. Often old photographs go the way of the garbage, particularly if no one is left to identify the subjects, share their stories. In the hands of Newfoundland author Joanne Soper-Cook however, old photographs tell a myriad of tales, most of them hauntingly morbid or with that delicious twist that keeps us turning the pages of her strange and mildly disturbing new book The Opium Lady.
Each of the 31 short chapters is illustrated with a black and white photograph, taken anywhere from 1910 until 1955. One can judge this by background only; a late-model Chevrolet, an army uniform or a bonnet offers vague decades and dates for each snapshot. In the foreground of all the photos is a person or a group of people, and each chapter starts with words like: "Here is a picture of Ruth..." or "Bertha is a housewife..." Soper-Cook proceeds to tell us the stories of the people in the photographs in astounding detail and to great emotional effect. Not only are the stories interesting, in and of themselves, but there is something in the voice of the narrator that compels the reader to carry on. The voice is strangely cool, almost distant, even though she unabashedly reveals intimate details of each person's life. In this second-hand telling, this once removed voice-over, we are offered snapshots of betrayal, scandal, heartbreak and tragedy, all tempered by an unreliable narrator.
Can we believe these tales? Who is the teller, and how does he or she know the horrors and joys of these people's collective pasts? This is Soper-Cook's ace in the hole, her clever literary device, and this mystery drives the book through to its tell-all conclusion. When the narrator is at last revealed, the photographs seem to come into clearer focus. The stories mirror the biases of the narrator's life. In turn, she (yes, I will reveal gender, but nothing else) becomes implicated. Not all the pieces of this photographic picture puzzle fit together perfectly, however. Some stories seem to hover, without a place, over the framework of the whole. How, for example, does the man who amputates his own fingers out of love for his sister fit into the book? Some of the characters in this absurd album are obviously connected. Some aren't, but that makes their stories only slightly less appealing.
There is a strong sense of relief at the end of The Opium Lady. Not only is the life of the narrator revealed more completely and, with it her motives, but at its conclusion the photographs stop, the stories halt, the gruesome histories end and we are left grounded in the present. However, like that final twist of the knife, Soper-Cook leaves us no assurance that this motley assortment of friends and relations dredged from the past aren't some version of our own kin, or worse yet, the very folks with whom we dangle our feet under the dining room table. Subtly, stealthily, in a collection of old photographs and some nimble and razor-sharp prose, we are reminded the past is never far removed.
(Margaret Macpherson is a freelance reviewer and the author of a recent biography of Nellie McClung.)

Reviewed by MAGGIE MORTIMER
An even divide of snapshot and portraiture; the family photos reside in boxes. While I'm currently between places, these images will remain in transition. Never fully documented. The stark landscape of a farmer's field, a spotted dog in mid-air, those soldiers next to those azaleas. Then there's the scribbled-on back of a snapshot: "Maddie in sunshine -- age 7." Who the hell's Maddie? Which field? The soldiers, did they, um, die? What's the dog's name? This, coupled with a writer's mind, and there is heady temptation to fill in the blanks. Newfoundland author Joanne Soper-Cook does much more than this. Twenty-eight still photos pose as backdrops to 28 meandering tales. Snapshot one: It's the forties and it's Ruth. Her "avant-garde" swimsuit is as bold as the writing to follow. The details: Ruth smokes "purloined Chesterfields," bops "blasphemously to Benny Goodman" and, on a serious note, contributes to the war effort. "In a factory that makes helmets, army helmets that come rolling down the assembly line like great gleaming eggs, their green paint not yet hosed onto their shiny-smooth exteriors. They look like naked skulls, a multitude of empty craniums, waiting for the soul to get sprayed on." Five pages in, mid-way through this incredible passage, and Soper-Cook has sold me. Ruth of the saucy bathing attire now stands assembly line. Text and image are one. The Opium Lady, the collection's title story, takes a far different course than snapshot #7 -- a calling card -- suggests. Here Jessie, "an actress in Vaudeville -- exquisitely pretty and poised" -- finds more than she bargained for in a free night on the town, where she is led from taxi to darkness to a small shack where demons await. Soper-Cook, however, does not need an actress to spin a theatrical yarn. Her past efforts include Waterborne featuring a cross-dressing bulimic, and a re-imagining of Napoleon's life in the novel, The Wide World Dreaming.
Melodrama ensues in The Goose Girls. In snapshot #8 they look like they're game for just about anything. Tales about their dead mother are always a draw. Oh, there was that drowning (the president gave her a medal), and then the war overseas, in France, where she "saved untold hundreds of soldiers." But then: "This is how the Goose Girls grow, lying in the dark and listening to fantastic stories, while Daddy sits out on the porch, smoking in the cricket song and breathing out the stars." How lovely is that?
And it's all there, pretty much, right next to each other. And this is why it works, because this writer can not only handle going over the top, she knows when and how to pull back. A stellar example is found in My Pretty Peggy, snapshot #16. "Sitting on a toy horse holding a toy bow," Peggy is three sincere pages of melancholy. The bride and groom in snapshot #23 serve as document to a troubled and darkly comedic courtship in How Phyllis Got Married.
In a exposé that crosses generations, geography (Maryland, Newfoundland) and social boundaries, it addresses, in Soper-Cook's unique way, such egghead topics as gender, sexual preference and racism. The "androgynous sea creature" caught on camera in snapshot #12 "knows she'll never be like other girls." Confrontational and creepy Desperado Deane exhibits the same sort of tension and outsider status as A Suitable Woman. In snapshot #19 it is hard to tell it's mother and daughter, cold and awkwardly staged. In the sepia tones of a less tolerant time, the younger woman's manly apparel seems questionable. In this quiet allegory (really the inner dialogue of daughter Elizabeth), revelation happens and is as quickly silenced.
It is in the silence and the ledgers of a dead husband that Mrs. Millicent's [sic] life in Neither Do They Spin takes such a turn. In her WASP, sorted-out existence (the one that made her strike that pose in snapshot #10), she hauntingly confronts a lifetime of bigotry. Bertha and Her Daughters (see snapshot #3) is a highly charged chronicle of a woman (wife and mother) who says no to abuse in a unique way. (This is no Chicken Soup for the Soul.) Suspenseful, poetic and violent, the overall structure is flawless. So there you have it. Over two dozen oddities strung together for your delight and horror. A strange microcosm of not just anyone's family album. Told with (among others) a soldier's dreams of the desert, a water witch's trade, a mother's polio, a schoolteacher's routine. Stunning. (Maggie Mortimer is a freelance writer and photographer living in Toronto.)

Review of WATERBORNE, Quill and Quire, by Elizabeth Mitchell.

Like Frederico Garcia Lorca and playwrights Sean O'Casey and John Millington Synge, Newfoundland writer Joanne Soper-Cook instinctively understands the deep-rooted relationship between person and place. No matter where people find themselves, we are told, they can never escape where they came from. Soper-Cook takes this simple, folkloric notion and weaves it into a fractious tale of alarming tones that echo the past and consume the present. Stella Maris Goulding is at the centre of Soper-Cook's third novel, WATERBORNE, a narrative storm of shifting viewpoints. The only child of Minerva Bristow, Stella lives in a small Newfoundland outport "with the fantastic name of Elsinore." After years of yearning for affection and acceptance from her mother, and filled with the selkie myths and legends her Scottish maternal grandmother told to her, Stella leaves Elsinore in an attempt to eke out an existence from the constraints of the past. What ensues is a potent, painful tale ripe with disillusion and familiarity. Soper-Cook moves effortlessly from one voice to the next, from grandmother to mother to daughter. The women's distinctive lines occasionally blur, making it difficult to discern who has taken control of the narrative. But the women and their intricately entwined lives are deftly realized, their personalities penetrating the story like vinegar - both pungent and appealing. Soper-Cook understands the power women wield, the tenacity and passion that are handed down from one generation to the next, as well as the alluring power of stories and myths and gossip and how they inform women's lives. With WATERBORNE, she has added another tale to that already rich store of material. (Elizabeth Mitchell, Toronto)

Frederico Garcia Lorca???? How cool is that? LOL!

I did it.
I finished my 100,000 word gangster novel. It took almost an entire year, working closely with ladylove72 on the concepts, the characters, and the situations. But it's done! I'm so proud!




BUT NOT FOR ME
By JoAnne Soper-Cook

In gangster NINO MORETTI’s world, death is never very far away and daily life is a series of stark contrasts between extreme wealth and abject poverty, an unstable existence punctuated by booze and bullets. For Nino, the gangster lifestyle is even more dangerous because he is a finnochio – a gay man – in a position of absolute power at the head of his own criminal organization:

“There he is.” Nino leaned back in the seat and jerked his chin at a tall, thin figure ascending the steps of the Public National Bank.

“You sure, Nino?” But the pale young man was already reaching down to the floor of the car to retrieve a violin case. He kept his eyes on the figure on the steps as he snapped the chopper together with practiced ease and mounted a drum magazine. “You sure that’s him? You don’t wanna make a mistake.”

“I ain’t makin’ a mistake!” Nino snarled. “Now go on! Do as you’re told!”

A series of deafening reverberations shook the interior of the vehicle. The man on the steps danced like a marionette before falling face-down beside a pillar.

At a tribute party for rival gangster “BIG” FRANK O’HARA, Nino rescues beautiful mob accountant STANLEY ZADWADZKI from a violent assault at the hands of his sadistic master, but this simple act of kindness draws Big Frank’s ire. Nino has stolen from him, and in doing so has crossed an inviolable line that requires blood to answer for blood. From this moment on, both Nino and Stanley are hunted men, and it is more than Stanley’s life is worth to attempt retribution. Instead, he places himself under Nino’s protection and assumes a place of trust in Nino’s organization, becoming not only Nino’s accountant but his unofficial companion:

"Nino, it ain't none of your business, okay?” Danny held Nino by the upper arms, shook him gently. “He's Big Frank's problem. He ain't your problem."

Nino shrugged him off. "Let go of me!" He watched himself, as if from somewhere outside his body; he charged forward, got between Big Frank and the kid.

The crowd parted for him, re-formed a tight little circle around him and Frank. "What's your problem, little man?"

"Don't hit that kid again." Nino slipped one hand into his coat, fingers closing around a set of brass knuckles. "Ain't none of us packing a rod in here tonight but you touch that kid again and I'll beat you to death."

But Stanley’s years with Big Frank O’Hara have left him damaged and deeply disturbed, a man torn apart both figuratively and literally – his compulsion for late-night wandering in New York’s dangerous Lower East Side district makes him a dangerous liability, one that Nino can hardly afford. When Big Frank murders Nino’s mentally-disabled office boy, Nino tracks him to Judy’s Restaurant in Little Italy, where the resulting confrontation and gun battle require Nino to shoot a nameless bystander in order to save Stanley’s life. With a gang war looming on the horizon, Nino must set aside his tender feelings, and concentrate on asserting his superiority over Big Frank O’Hara – or lose everything he holds most dear.

He found Stanley staggering down Canal Street near the intersection of Chinatown and Little Italy. He slowed the car and followed Stanley for several long moments, always keeping well back so as not to startle him. Stanley stopped in front of a store and spent some long moments looking in the window; he was soaking wet and swaying on his feet. Nino killed the engine and got out, walking quietly but quickly towards Stanley.

"Stanley?" He kept his voice quiet. "Stanley, you should come home. You're getting wet, baby."

Stanley turned and looked at him, seeing nothing. His pupils were enormously dilated, his eyes dazzled and full of protracted blinks. He reached towards Nino and took hold of his lapels. "They put me off the train," he whispered, "because I haven't got a ticket."

Inspired by such classic 1930s gangster films as Little Caesar, Scarface, and The Public Enemy, this novel focuses on the dangers of homosexual relationships in a fraught and high pressure environment: the world of the Prohibition-era gangster.


I made this video back when I started writing the novel. At that time, Nino was still called Rico, but Stanley is and will always be Stanley. :)



If I Didn't Care - The funniest home videos are here

Have finished one set of rewrites on my 1930s gangster novel, But Not For Me. It's easily the longest thing I have ever written, and I expect it will clock in at nearly 100,000 words by the time it's done.

( Look! Free samples! )

I have been offline lately, working on rewrites of my 1930s/Prohibition Era gangster novel, But Not For Me. In the meantime, I have been working on the editing of a short film about my late grandmother, "The Coat." I finally finished editing it last night and I am very, very proud of how it turned out (considering it's my first film!)

Here it is, all seven plus something minutes of it. :)