Friday, March 18, 2016

Meet Jay Carey, cli-fi short story writer for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

Jay Carey (pen name of Jacqueline Carey) writes about why she is now writing mystery stories about climate change and agrees with this blogger that they can be called cli-fi stories:

''Dear Dan Bloom, 

 

OF COURSE you may call my mystery stories ''cli-fi'' mysteries, which is what they are.  (And they are stories, not novels -- at least not that are published yet.)  It is very interesting to learn where the term cli-fi originated.  I'm very happy to hear that you have devoted yourself to promoting it.  I'm surprised that anyone writes anything else!!!!!.  

I write these mysteries under the name Jay Carey because there is another author named Jacqueline Carey who produces "science fiction" (really more fantasy), and I really really did not want anyone to confuse us.  That is also why I was especially careful to separate myself from the term "science fiction."  

 

Best, Jay
 
 (Jay is my nickname as well as my pseudonym)
 
FROM HER WEBSITE:

''I've been lucky. My literary novels won some rave reviews. The New York Times chose three as Notable Books. The Crossley Baby earned me a Guggenheim Fellowship.

''But I had a strange revelation when I was writing the last, called It's a Crime. The novel is about the culture of corporate greed that lead to the financial collapse of 2008, and featured a couple of mystery novelist characters. As I described the plots of the books they'd written, I thought, "That's what I should be doing."

S''o now I am happily writing mysteries (stories for now, maybe novels later) under the pen name Jay Carey. The stories are set in the year 2048 in Sarasota, Florida, when climate change has redrawn the landscape and it is a whole new hot world.
My heroine is Detective Eureka Kilburn, who solves crimes while dealing with global warming's more lurid aspects. She is a climate refugee herself. She grew up in the Virgin Islands, which she fled as a teen after seeing a mountain slide away. Now in her 30s, she's been on the Sarasota police force for a decade. She's seen a lot of changes in that time. After a few hurricanes in the same number of years most of the townspeople moved north and the snowbirds never returned. All but three cops are gone. Eureka is in charge by default.

Imagine what Sarasota will have turned into. The town water is poisoned by the rising sea. Jellyfish clog the harbor. Floods have blackened the houses with mold. Power outages mean people often live in the dark. The courthouse roof blew away long ago.

These mysteries are not '' science fiction''. They are tomorrow's realism. [Call them ''cli-fi.'']

Det. Eureka Kilburn's visit to the half-abandoned MacDill Air Force Base exposes an unusual family secret in We Walk on Top of Guns (Alfred Hitchcock, April 2016).

In Death at High Tide (Artenol, Winter 2016), Det. Kilburn discovers an apparent suicide in a landmark building, and the reader is challenged to figure out what is wrong with the scene. (I know, I know. Where's the "We" in the title? What can I say, it's an art magazine.)

In We Are Caught in a Net (Alfred Hitchcock, Jan/​Feb 2016), Det. Kilburn kayaks out to a flooded Longboat Key, where she finds an old bone, a "ghost net," and a diver someone tried to cut out of her wetsuit.

We Are All Accomplices (Alfred Hitchcock, April 2015) features a teenage Eureka, still living in Miami, who meets a cop as they both watch furniture sailing away in a flood. Then the convenience store at which she works is robbed.

In We Are Not Insured Against Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, December 2014), a life insurance salesman come to town at a time when death lies around every corner. Det. Kilburn wonders why.

In We Don't Trust the Night (Alfred Hitchcock, July/​August 2014), a young girl is traumatized when she tries to fetch water from an urban spring and instead witnesses a particularly vicious beating. Years later, she claims she has seen the perpetrator again.

We Hate the Taste of Jellyfish (Sherlock Holmes, March/​April 2014) begins with a fortune teller predicting a suitor's death as the people of Sarasota net jellyfish for dinner on a now submerged Bayfront Drive. Curiously, the man really does die a few days later.

To read We're Upside Down and Inside Out (Sherlock Holmes, July/​Aug 2013), click on the link labeled "mystery story" above. In a post-hurricane landscape roofs, cars, and the innocent and the guilty have all turned topsy-turvy.

In We Don't Call It Stolen Property (Alfred Hitchcock, Jan/​Feb 2013) Sarasota's housing market has collapsed. You can't say the homes have any real monetary value at all. One bungalow, however, is always kept ready for buyers who never come. Then a few odd objects go missing, and a severed toe is found.

As the cover of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine puts it, Det. Eureka Kilburn is keeping the peace in torrid times.

I bet there are not many of us who have published stories in both The New Yorker and Alfred Hitchcock.
writes:
I've been lucky. My literary novels won some rave reviews. The New York Times chose three as Notable Books. The Crossley Baby earned me a Guggenheim Fellowship.

But I had a strange revelation when I was writing the last, called It's a Crime. The novel is about the culture of corporate greed that lead to the financial collapse of 2008, and featured a couple of mystery novelist characters. As I described the plots of the books they'd written, I thought, "That's what I should be doing."

So now I am happily writing mysteries under the pen name Jay Carey. The stories are set in the year 2048 in Sarasota, Florida, when climate change has redrawn the landscape and it is a whole new hot world.

My heroine is Detective Eureka Kilburn, who solves crimes while dealing with global warming's more lurid aspects. She is a climate refugee herself. She grew up in the Virgin Islands, which she fled as a teen after seeing a mountain slide away. Now in her thirties, she's been on the Sarasota police force for a decade. She's seen a lot of changes in that time. After a few hurricanes in the same number of years most of the townspeople moved north and the snowbirds never returned. All but three cops are gone. Eureka is in charge by default.

Imagine what Sarasota will have turned into. The town water is poisoned by the rising sea. Jellyfish clog the harbor. Floods have blackened the houses with mold. Power outages mean people often live in the dark. The courthouse roof blew away long ago.

These mysteries are not science fiction. They are tomorrow's realism.

Det. Eureka Kilburn's visit to the half-abandoned MacDill Air Force Base exposes an unusual family secret in We Walk on Top of Guns (Alfred Hitchcock, April 2016).

In Death at High Tide (Artenol, Winter 2016), Det. Kilburn discovers an apparent suicide in a landmark building, and the reader is challenged to figure out what is wrong with the scene. (I know, I know. Where's the "We" in the title? What can I say, it's an art magazine.)

In We Are Caught in a Net (Alfred Hitchcock, Jan/​Feb 2016), Det. Kilburn kayaks out to a flooded Longboat Key, where she finds an old bone, a "ghost net," and a diver someone tried to cut out of her wetsuit.

We Are All Accomplices (Alfred Hitchcock, April 2015) features a teenage Eureka, still living in Miami, who meets a cop as they both watch furniture sailing away in a flood. Then the convenience store at which she works is robbed.

In We Are Not Insured Against Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, December 2014), a life insurance salesman come to town at a time when death lies around every corner. Det. Kilburn wonders why.

In We Don't Trust the Night (Alfred Hitchcock, July/​August 2014), a young girl is traumatized when she tries to fetch water from an urban spring and instead witnesses a particularly vicious beating. Years later, she claims she has seen the perpetrator again.

We Hate the Taste of Jellyfish (Sherlock Holmes, March/​April 2014) begins with a fortune teller predicting a suitor's death as the people of Sarasota net jellyfish for dinner on a now submerged Bayfront Drive. Curiously, the man really does die a few days later.

To read We're Upside Down and Inside Out (Sherlock Holmes, July/​Aug 2013), click on the link labeled "mystery story" above. In a post-hurricane landscape roofs, cars, and the innocent and the guilty have all turned topsy-turvy.

In We Don't Call It Stolen Property (Alfred Hitchcock, Jan/​Feb 2013) Sarasota's housing market has collapsed. You can't say the homes have any real monetary value at all. One bungalow, however, is always kept ready for buyers who never come. Then a few odd objects go missing, and a severed toe is found.

As the cover of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine puts it, Det. Eureka Kilburn is keeping the peace in torrid times.

I bet there are not many of us who have published stories in both The New Yorker and Alfred Hitchcock.

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