Cryin' Shame:

Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Lyle Lovett

edited by Josh Pachter

This is my ninth "inspired by" anthology, following volumes inspired by the songs of Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Buffett, Billy Joel, the Marx Brothers, Paul Simon, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, and Stephen Sondheim, and this one had a troubled path to publication.

It was intended to be my fifth anthology for Down and Out Books (after the Buffett, Simon, Beatles, and Dead ones) and to be published on October 20, 2025, just after Laurie and I finished our Gate 1 tour of Morocco and while we were spending a couple of final days on our own in Essaouira. About two weeks before that pub date, though — soon after our arrival in Africa — I got word that D&O, with absolutely no warning whatsoever, had shut down its entire operation, orphaning dozens of authors and editors and hundreds of books both already published and forthcoming.

There was nothing much I could do about the situation while we were halfway around the world, so I just put it out of my mind and enjoyed the rest of our vacation. One of the first things I did when we got home on October 23, however, was contact Open Road Integrated Media, the publisher that had rereleased my Joni Mitchell book when it had been similarly orphaned when Untreed Reads was sold to a larger company that had no interest in supporting volumes of short stories. I offered them the oppportunity to rerelease all four of the previously published D&O anthologies and to do the first release of Cryin' Shame, hoping that they might agree to pick up one or two of the titles.

To my surprise, they took all five of them! They'd changed their model since they rereleased The Beat of Black Wings, though, and now they were putting out their digital editions a few months prior to print. They came up with lovely covers for the books (with input from me), and scheduled digital releases for November 3, 2026 (Beatles, Buffet, and Dead) and December 8, 2026 (Lovett and Simon), with print releases to follow on February 9, 2027 (Beatles, Buffet, and Dead) and April 13, 2027 (Lovett and Simon).

Cryin' Shame is the second shortest of the "inspired by" anthologies, including only thirteen stories: one from each of Lyle's eleven studio albums, one from his Live in Texas album, and one from the Dr. T & the Women soundtrack. Ten of the fourteen contributing authors — one of the stories is a collaboration — live in Texas. (The collaborative story was written by the prolific Michael Bracken and — in her very first publication — his wife Temple Walker.)

As usual, I wrote the title story, and for some reason I set it in Chicago, not Texas. It's an example of what's called a "biter bit" story, in which the person attempting to commit a crime winds up hoist by his own petard.

Cryin' Shame is available from all the usual booksellers, and you can find an assortment of purchase links (along with links to my other Open Road anthologies) here.

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