The Joy of Collective Creativity

By Lisa de Nikolits

What’s the best thing about belonging to a writing collective? The creativity, the camaraderie––and the anthologies. That’s more than one thing and, admittedly, the list could be even longer!

The joy of writing for a collective that you trust so entirely (and who trusts you) is that you can experiment with different forms and ideas and know that it is really a case of the more the merrier. The greater the variation in the genres and styles, the more entertaining the experience for the readers.

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About us: Founded by Donna Carrick and M.H. Callway in 2013, we’re The Mesdames and Messieurs of Mayhem, a group of dedicated crime writers who share one deadly mission: to thrill readers with our passion for crime fiction. We also support each other through tough times, celebrate the wins, and simply love putting anthologies together.

Henry VanderSpek is the photographer of this signature photo. He was also the official photographer of the documentary, The Mesdames of Mayhem, by director Cat Mills and producer, Felicity Justrabo.

 

We’re all crime fiction writers but several of us are established, award-winning writers of literary, historical, fantasy, and speculative fiction. We range from experienced novelists to passionate new talent, and our stories run the gamut from light-hearted to noir. We leave no literary stone unturned!

Our sixth anthology, The 13th Letter, has just been released. “M” is the 13th letter of the alphabet (and our lucky number!) and we used “M” to stand for mayhem, mischief, mystery and of course, murder, but we’ve also come up with all kinds of creative ways to work with the 13th letter.

Image Source Carrick Publishing

In my case, I studied poetry at university, and writing poetry is still one of my greatest pleasures. My original idea for The 13th Letter was to have the blackmailer send thirteen snippets of a poem via snail mail, but sadly, letter writing has become a thing of the past, and for thirteen threats, it became too clumsy a tool. Instead, the thirteen individual threats were sent line-by-line via Facebook messenger to the protagonist at intervals. The message is a sonnet, and it’s the antithesis of a love letter, revealing instead that the sender knows the particulars of a cold crime and intends to expose the perpetrator of the decades-old crime.

A taste of some of the stories, in alphabetical order:

The Midnight Boat to Palermo by Rosemary Aubert (to whom our anthology is dedicated).

The unforgettable story about a sugar factory in Palermo where no one is permitted to taste the sweet wares and how a deadly family secret finally comes to light.

M is for Memory by M.H. Callway 

An unreliable trickster as the hero of The Boy in the Picture learns when she finds a mysterious photograph.

M is for Moolah by Melodie Campbell

Someone has trashed great-uncle Tony's crappy house in The Hammer, and who but family could know he still worked as a bookie, stashing moolah in all the wrong places?

If You Should Fall by Donna Carrick  

M is for maple syrup in this uniquely Canadian thriller, as sugarbush tapper Marlene MacDougall scrambles for her life, proving that justice can be both swift and sweet.

In a Cold Country by Lisa de Nikolits

There was a little girl
from a land far away
not a very nice little girl
she always got her way

and now that little girl
is so, so alone
in a cold country
like a dog without a bone

old dog, old dog
one day I’ll make you pay
you won’t see me coming
but you can't get out of the way

(The 13th line concludes with a date, time and location for the deadly meet-up.)

27 by Blair Keetch  

The body of a prestigious entrepreneur is found in a warehouse in the middle of the night, leading to more suspects than there are letters in the alphabet. Can a clue scrawled in blood point to the killer?

One Helluva Lady by Rosemary McCracken

It’s a Pat Tierney story, narrated by Pat in the first person.

The opening sentence: “When two Toronto police officers took chairs across from my desk, I wondered what trouble I was in.” 

The story unfolds from there. The officers tell Pat that her elderly client, Luella Cruickshank, was found dead on her living room floor the previous day. When Pat asks what happened, the officers only say that Luella’s death is under investigation. Before they leave, they hand Pat their cards. Beside their names and rank are the words “Homicide Division.” Which gets Pat thinking: Luella’s death wasn’t due to natural causes. My God, she was murdered!

Where are you, Marilyn? by Sylvia Maultash Warsh

In 1962, plain teenager Sophie moves next door to glamourous Marsha and tries to help her find her mother, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike, who abandoned her family years earlier, hoping to be discovered in Hollywood.

Scamming Granny by Lynne Murphy

 This clever title can be interpreted two ways. In this story, Charlotte is almost the victim of a "granny scammer" but her friends decide to rally round and try to defeat his nasty scheme.

Murder and Marilla by Madona Skaff

The Bell Tolls Once Again is the third instalment of the continuing adventures of ex-conman, Lennie, who solves murders... with the help of the victim. This time it’s murder on board the ghost ship, Marilla.

A Hollywood Tale by Ed Piwowarczyk

In Hollywood in the 1930s, a gossip columnist becomes entangled in the murders of a film producer and two young actresses.

On Moon Mountain by Lorna Poplak

On Moon Mountain, a vengeful bully’s attempt to push an unconscious fellow student off a cliff is thwarted by an owl.

Cardiopulmonary Arrest by Melissa Yi

Do you want to know how you're going to die? For Rainier Hetherington, M stands for a machine that will predict his manner of death, as an inheritance from his ghastly father.

The Lifted Letter by J.E. Barnard

An ancient, illuminated letter “M” goes missing from a bootlegger's library, and only Gloria Gamm, Girl Gumshoe, can get it back before there’s a bloodbath.

And that’s just 14 of the 22 stories, so as you can see, there’s more than something for everyone.

Readers, I very much hope these snippets will entice you to order a copy of the book today! We also look forward to meeting readers at conferences and festivals or online. We love chatting to our readers in person, so if you’d like us to be part of your book club, we are experts at Zoom, and we love to chat about all things bookish!

For more information about us: visit mesdamesofmayhem.com

There’s a documentary about us which reveals all our deepest and darkest secrets: gem.cbc.ca/the-mesdames-of-mayhem/s01e01

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section in Kings River Life and in our mystery category here on KRL News & Reviews. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. And check out our new mystery podcast which features mystery short stories and first chapters read by local actors! A new episode goes up next week.

You can click here to purchase this book.

Originally from South Africa, Lisa de Nikolits is the award winning author of eleven published novels (Inanna Publications). She has appeared on recommended reading lists for Chatelaine, Canadian Living, Hello!, the Quill & Quire, and the CBC. The Occult Persuasion and The Anarchist’s Solution was longlisted for a Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of The Fantastic and The Rage Room was a finalist in the International Book Awards, 2021. No Fury Like That was published in Italian in 2019 by Edizione Le Assassine under the title Una furia dell’altro mondo. Her short fiction and poetry have been published in international anthologies and journals including the Crime Writers of Canada’s 40th Anniversary anthology (2022). You can find her on Facebook and Instagram or at lisawriter.com.

Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which we receive a few cents if you make purchases. KRL also receives free copies of most of the books that it reviews, that are provided in exchange for an honest review of the book.