I have gotten into an anthology. This is one of my crime/mystery tales of the velyr, and will be in the Sisters of Crime Triangle Chapter’s anthology entitled “Rock & Roll & Ruin.” It features Tel and Tano solving a mystery from the 1930s, using an old letter they found inside of a musical instrument. The idea was that each story needed to have music play an integral part, and there must be some sort of crime to solve. I’m not much for murdering my characters, so I decided on a spectacular jewelry robbery which was never solved. Tel and Tano must figure out where the loot is hidden, then find a way to get their hands on that loot before someone else finds it. The editors made a couple of suggestions for me, but overall they loved it, which validates my belief in my writing.
I thought about using my velyr private detective, Badi, but in the end Tel and Tano won out because Badi doesn’t really have much musical talent (that I’ve seen so far). I didn’t make it an obviously science-fiction-y tale, though it does have links and voice-activated lighting and the rest of the stuff from my universe. I’m not sure they noticed it was set in the future–but who really cares, right? They liked it enough to include it in the anthology, which is the important part. And now I’ll have something to add to a query letter besides “Well I write under other pen names in other genres…”
My local writing chapter’s critique meeting is tonight, too. This will be the first time I’ve actually got news for them. Should be fun.
