Ellery Queen

Party Girls in December Issue of Ellery Queen

I originally wrote this story in connection to Rockstar’s LA Noire video game, then decided to write another, which is the one Rockstar ran a couple of years ago in conjunction with the video games premier. Recently, I looked at the story again and decided I liked it, updated it a bit and here it is, published in the most recent issue (December 2013) of Ellery Queen Magazine. Here’s an excerpt (hope you can pick up an issue today!): PARTY GIRLS by Jonathan Santlofer I been collecting the souvenirs for almost a year now, a lipstick that belonged to Jeanne French, a butterfly brooch worn by Dorothy Montgomery when she was last seen that I pinned to my sweater the minute I could and almost never take off, and just this morning a compact, Max Factor Dark Ecru, that was in Rosenda Mondragon’s purse the night she was killed, along with the steno pad I … Read more

Erotic Novels & Stories: Does Sex (Still) Sell?

Consider 50 Shades of Grey, the most recent entry and phenomenon in the sex book wars. I read a couple of pages at the checkout counter of a local bookstore and that was enough for me. My daughter says that she and a group of girlfriends read scenes aloud and howled. So what’s to be made of the trilogy’s 65 million in sales? Do women really crave bondage? Or is it simply that every generation needs a sex novel? When I was a boy it was Peyton Place. I was just a kid when it came out so it must have been a few years before I read it though I remember the sex scenes as if it were yesterday, bad girl Betty Anderson and rich boy Rodney Harrington on the beach, illegitimacy, incest and more. Then there was Fanny Hill, a bit flowery for my taste but it did the trick, and of course … Read more

I’m Back! The Marijuana Chronicles, Inherit the Dead and more…

I’m back. Not that I was ever away, not from my life that is. (Though I sometimes dream of escaping, buying some secluded island like Marlon Brando did, but would I have to ruin my career and gain 200 pounds? First, I’d have to get a career like Brando’s, then make enough money to buy an island, two things that are highly unlikely, so… never mind.). What I meant was that I was away from my website, but now that it’s been rebuilt I’m going to stay current and I hope you’ll follow me. I’ll be updating my activities as a writer and artist, things I believe you will find interesting as opposed to what I’m having for breakfast or my afternoon snack (though you can ask if you really want to know). So, this past year, where to start? Maybe with the books I recently put together. The first, for Akashic Books, “The Marijuana … Read more

You Are What You Read – Ellery Queen

The mystery writing magazine Ellery Queen asked me to contribute a blog post about writing the short story. Here is an excerpt: “More and more the short story has become an important part of my writing life. The other day I was thinking about the old Alfred Hitchcock TV show, one in particular where the housewife kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb then serves it to the police who come to investigate, and another about a restaurant where human flesh was the specialty of the house, and The Twilight Zone and Mr. & Mrs. North and Dragnet and Hawaiian Eye and Surfside Six and The Mod Squad, all of them running together in my brain, commingling with the detective and mystery stories I read as a boy, the Hardy Boys my favorite series, along with horror comics like Tales From the Crypt, and Classic Comics like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which … Read more