An Endless Summer

by Toni L.P. Kelner

Fall is here. Days are getting shorter and nights are getting colder. So if you are already missing the lazy, crazy days of summer, here's a reminder. The Mystery Writers of America has just re-released the MWA Presents anthology A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, edited by Jeffery Deaver, as an ebook and a trade paperback.

This is the debut offering of the MWA Presents: Classics program, which is going to be great. MWA will be bringing out more of the out-of-print MWA anthologies -- and there are decades of good reading in those books. (If you want to be alerted as more are released, sign up for the MWA Classics Newsletter.)

As a mystery reader and long-time MWA member, I'd be excited about this anyway, but I'm particularly chuffed because one of my own stories is included: "Old Dog Days." I reread it before publication, and happily, I'm still satisfied with it. But when I went to look at my notes I realized that the story of how it came to be published is longer than the story itself, and involves more than one summer.

In spring of 1997, my then-agent Joan Brandt had an interesting idea for my next book. At that point, I'd just finished with the Laura Fleming series, and she suggested I write a series of interlocked short stories, each of which stood alone but together would make up an uber mystery set in my fictional mill town of Byerly, NC. I thought it would be nifty to do a story for each month of the year, and wrote four month's worth for her to include while submitting the proposal. "Old Dog Days" was August's story.

Unfortunately, the book never sold. So in June of 1998, I bowed to the fact that the project was dead, and submitted "Old Dog Days" to a magazine. It was rejected. I submitted it to another magazine in July of 1998. It was rejected again. I sat on it a while, then submitted it to yet another magazine December of 1999. I don't remember getting a reply at all. (That third magazine has disappeared, by the way. I'm sure it wasn't because they neglected to reply to me, but...) Finally, in March of 2001, I heard about the call for stories for A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, realized the story fit the parameters, and sent it in. They accepted it!

The book came out in February of 2003, and now here we are, over 14 years later, bringing out new editions. Some summers last longer than others.

 

Comments

[Mark]

It took a while, but the story finally found a home with a long life. Congrats on the new edition.

[Art Taylor]

So glad to see this reissue program underway--and not only looking forward to your story in the anthology, but also fascinated by the larger novel in stories you were considering a while back! Any plans to return to that project someday?

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Let's hear it for persistence! Great!

[Toni LP Kelner]

Mark, thank you. It's so easy for a short story to disappear, so I take pleasure in this one staying alive.

Art, I don't know that I ever will do that project. Of the four stories I wrote for it, three have sold elsewhere so I'm not sure I could glue it back together. But maybe a similar project some day.

Hank, thank you!