Summer General Issue – 1st Anniversary

Following the launch of each of our issues, we cajole one or more of the contributors into a mini interview with the Trash Cat.
Here they will reveal some writing wisdom and tell you what trash critter they identify with most. Important stuff like that.

Today, we have M.E. Proctor. You can read her punchy, noirish short, Mirror on the Wall HERE

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Q: What piece of writing advice/ crafting rule would you trash?

A: “Write what you know”. The first book I wrote was dystopian science fiction. It took place in an imaginary planetary system with mutants and aliens, and some of them could read minds. I wrote it to get away from the world I knew, and go back to the childhood pleasure of making things up and the wilder the better. I write crime now, realism matters, but what makes it real is what I feel more than what I know.

Q: Which writers and magazines do you go to to find treasure to read?

A: I’m more faithful to writers than magazines, and I discover new writers all the time, which makes for a very long reading list! A few years ago, I was reading everything Bristol Noir published. The contributors’ roster was a who’s who of emerging talent in crime fiction. I still read the mag but I spend more time on Substack these days. There’s amazing fiction and non-fiction out there. For a few months, I’ve planned to do a recurring post on “The Best Story I Read this Week” but I have a hard time deciding. I’ll get to it …   

Q: What trash animal do you most identify with?

A: Squirrels make a mess of half eaten acorns on my back porch. They sit on the railing to munch and stare at me. We used to have a fig tree. Super sweet fruit. The squirrels would stuff their faces and get drunk on the sugar. You could be a foot away from them and they would totally ignore you. Like me and chocolate.

Q: When your writing mojo is trashed, how do you recharge?

A: When I get stuck and a story doesn’t go anywhere, I set it aside and work on something else. I’ve been doing a newsletter on Substack for 2 ½ years now. I post every other Thursday, like clockwork. It’s non-fiction and a change of rhythm. The discipline has done wonders for me, even if I’m sometimes scrambling to meet the deadline. It resets my brain. I might let the problematic story sit for weeks. Eventually, I’ll look at it again but my head will be in a different place by then. Maybe it’ll click, maybe it’ll have to stay in the freezer a bit longer.

Q: If you could offer three tips to writing short treasures, what would they be?

A:  
1 – Start with something visual. A path in the forest, an old boat on a river, a wasp on a curtain (I’ve used that one!) … then drop a character and imagine what they’re doing there.

2 – Don’t think about the word count. Stories are the length they need to be. Maybe 300 words will do it (if you end at 400, cutting will make it better), if it has to be 3,000, so be it. Maybe it won’t be short, it’ll still be a treasure.

3 – Find an echo of the beginning in the end. Maybe it’s a look back at the path, the river, or the wasp. Maybe it’s a feeling. Or a word repeated that now means something else. It’s great to close the circle even if there is no resolution. I love open endings but the reader should not be left hanging.

Q: What is one thing, if spotted in a crowded charity shop/thrift store, you would just have to buy

A: A big chunky barbarian bracelet, the kind Xena Warrior Princess would wear, no jewels, no gold. I love hammered metal or chainmail. I have a few and they all have a story attached to them, of unusual places.

M.E. Proctor (www.shawmystery.com) was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. The first book in her Declan Shaw PI series, Love You Till Tuesday, came out from Shotgun Honey, with the follow up, Catch Me on a Blue Day, scheduled for 2025. She’s the author of a short story collection, Family and Other Ailments, and the co-author of a retro-noir novella, Bop City Swing. Her fiction has appeared in Vautrin, Tough, Rock and a Hard Place, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Shotgun Honey, Reckon Review, and Black Cat Weekly among others. She’s a Derringer nominee. Website: http://www.shawmystery.com