Exit Interview: “I Had the Best Job in Publishing for 20 Years, and I Was Ready for More”

Although the final issue of Mystery Scene magazine reached newsstands and mailboxes in November of 2022, it wasn’t until mid-January of this year that I at last flipped it open to begin reading. That was not because I didn’t want to enjoy its contents, but rather because paging through it meant acknowledging the end of an era.

I don’t recall exactly when I was introduced to Mystery Scene. It certainly wasn’t way back in 1985, when the first, four-page edition of that publication was mailed out as a supplement to Robert “Cap’n Bob” Napier’s old “letterzine,” Mystery & Detective Monthly. Yet it was long enough ago that only the cover of the mag was in color and printed on slick stock, while inside pages remained black and white. I remember being impressed by its broad range of coverage, as well as by the confident authority of its writing. This wasn’t some vanity fan publication; neither was it a sober-sided academic journal. Instead, Mystery Scene reflected the experience and enthusiasms of its editors. As a devoted crime-fiction reader, and someone long-practiced in magazine journalism, I couldn’t help being impressed.

(Right) The last edition of Mystery Scene, Winter 2022.

Credit for founding Mystery Scene belongs to authors Ed Gorman and Robert J. Randisi, who strove to establish a bimonthly newsletter that would serve America’s crime, mystery, and thriller fiction community in a manner similar to how the older, monthly Locus benefited aficionados of science fiction and fantasy. However, it was Kate Stine, an ex-editor of that esteemed quarterly, The Armchair Detective, who—beginning in 2002, and with help from her husband and co-publisher, Brian Skupin—gave Mystery Scene the polish it ultimately boasted.

The magazine offered a wealth of engrossing contents, from author profiles and myriad book reviews to awards news, features about this literary sphere’s history, character retrospectives, television and film critiques, subgenre studies, seasonal gift guides, and even crime-themed crossword puzzles. Rare was the issue I didn’t pick up over and over again, diving into new stories I hoped would expand my knowledge of the genre. While all of its contributors promised to be entertaining, I—like probably every other Mystery Scene follower—had my favorite regulars. For instance, Los Angeles-based journalist Michael Mallory could be depended on to open eccentric windows into the field’s past, whether he was writing about the 1973-1976 late-night ABC-TV anthology series Wide World of Mystery, the 1940s Jack Webb radio drama Pat Novak, for Hire, or the 60th anniversary of Peter Falk’s introduction in Columbo. Florida critic Oline H. Cogdill proved herself to be a most prolific and adept interviewer, welcoming readers into the company of debut and veteran novelists alike, among them Amanda Jayatissa (You’re Invited), Charles Finch (An Extravagant Death), Sujata Massey (The Bombay Prince), and Adrian McKinty (Rain Dogs). Kevin Burton Smith, editor of The Thrilling Detective Web Site, could always be relied upon for thoughtful, customarily clever commentary about private-eye-related subjects, as in his feature in the Fall 2022 edition about the 100th birthday of the hard-boiled American gumshoe of fiction. And of course, I flipped immediately to the work of Lawrence Block, whenever it appeared in the magazine and whatever he was writing about, be it author Stanley Ellin, the pleasures of re-reading, or the 1947 film The Brasher Doubloon (based on Raymond Chandler’s 1942 novel, The High Window).

(Above) Co-publishers Brian Skupin and Kate Stine.

With such a breadth of talent to draw on, it was hardly a wonder that Mystery Scene racked up a shelf-full of prizes. During the 2004 Bouchercon in Toronto, Ontario, it collected the Anthony Award for Best Fan Publication. (Stine had previously won an Anthony, in 1996, for her non-fiction work, The Armchair Detective Book of Lists.) In 2006, the magazine received the Ellery Queen Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America to honor “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.” And at the 2009 Malice Domestic convention, held just outside Washington, D.C., Stine and Skupin scored Poirot Awards for their “outstanding contributions to the mystery genre.” They were later fêted at the 2011 Bouchercon in St. Louis, Missouri, as Fan Guests of Honor.

Unfortunately, accolades and a reputation for excellence do not guarantee a publication’s longevity. An early public indication that something was amiss came back in late 2019, when it was announced that Mystery Scene would be reducing its frequency from five issues per year to four. Then, in the fall of 2022—shortly after Stine celebrated her 20th year in the editor-in-chief’s seat, and with Mystery Scene enjoying a 23,000-copy circulation—she brought the sad news that the periodical was folding after 37 years in business.

“The publishing industry has changed seismically over the last two decades with the advent of the internet, publisher consolidation, the birth of social media, and the rise of Amazon,” Stine explained in Mystery Scene’s concluding edition. “It has become impossible for us to continue to offer you the high-quality print publication in which we’ve taken so much pride.”

(Left) The first, 1985 issue of Mystery Scene.

For the time being, at least, Mystery Scene is maintaining an active Web site (a refinement of its preceding online endeavors), where material that might once have found residence in the print quarterly is being posted. It also continues to offer a monthly electronic newsletter, filled with notes about fresh books and recent awards, author interviews, and “Favorite First Lines” from crime, mystery, and thriller releases. In addition, the mag’s Facebook and Twitter pages are still being updated, and efforts are underway to win advertising support for these enterprises. But the status of all this obviously remains unsettled, as Stine ponders what she’d like to do next.

I recently took the opportunity to interview Stine, now 62, via e-mail. We discussed her youthful dalliance with a psychology career, her diverse experiences in book and magazine publishing, her history at The Armchair Detective and the Agatha Christie Society, what she liked most about editing Mystery Scene, and a good deal more.

J. Kingston Pierce: As I understand it, you’re from Indiana originally. Where in that state did you grow up?

Kate Stine: I was born in Indianapolis and was raised on a small farm in southern Indiana with my four younger sisters.

JKP: What sort of farming did your parents do?

KS: [It] was more of a hobby farm for raising kids and animals. My parents generally rented out the fields to local farmers.

JKP: How did you become a reader? Was it your parents who introduced you to its abundant wonders?

KS: My mother is a big reader and spent a lot of time reading us all kinds of kids’ books. We made regular weekly trips to the library and could always pick out books that interested us. When I got into chapter books, I discovered the Bobbsey Twins and the Boxcar Children, followed shortly by Nancy Drew. My grandmother gave me my first adult book, a copy of Murder at the Vicarage, by Agatha Christie.

The first magazine article I can remember reading on my own was a Readers’ Digest “Drama in Real Life” feature titled “Bear Attack!” So thriller fiction was an early interest as well.

JKP: What most drew you to crime and mystery stories?

KS: I’ve always liked the sense of movement in a mystery. This happens and because of that this happens. Sometimes the consecutive steps aren’t described and you have to imagine how the action got from here to there. Plus, mystery fiction is always so interested in its surroundings. Most of my incidental knowledge of the world comes from reading mysteries and thrillers.

JKP: Your bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in Bloomington is in psychology, of all things. What led you to that course of study? Did you ever consider moving into psychology as a profession?

KS: I had a varied liberal arts education and eventually focused on a psychology degree. I worked on a number of research studies that involved interviewing elderly people and children of divorce. After college I worked for a couple of years at a group home for developmentally delayed people but eventually went back to psychology research. During this time, I also worked on and off at a Waldenbooks, which was extremely helpful to my later career in publishing.

JKP: How soon after graduation did you enroll in the New York University publishing program? And how long did that program last?

KS: After about four years in Indianapolis, I was ready for something new. I enrolled in the NYU Publishing Institute, an intensive summer-long program that covered both book and magazine publishing. It was a great introduction to the industry and to New York City at the same time. All the major publishers sent representatives to speak and post job notices.

JKP: I understand you spent a year working as an editorial assistant for the Book of the Month Club subscription service. What was that like, and what did you learn from the experience that helped you move up the publishing ladder?

KS: That job at Book of the Month Club was the best. I was there during its heyday in the late 1980s. It was a bird’s-eye view of the industry, because every publisher sent their books to BOMC. They had the best-read editors I’ve ever worked with. The editorial meetings where these editors sat around and talked about all the important books of the day were an education. Everyone in the editorial department wrote book reports, so it was also good, hands-on training for writing jacket and catalogue copy, understanding the market for a book, etc.

JKP: The first publishing job actually listed on your LinkedIn profile has you installed for four years as an editor at Hachette Books, supervising the paperback reprint line for Mysterious Press titles. That must have introduced you to a broad range of noteworthy crime and mystery writers. Do you have any fun or surprising stories to tell about working with or getting to know the greats of that era?

KS: Mysterious Press in the late 1980s and early ’90s was a hotbed of prestigious writers—Donald Westlake, Margaret Maron, Ellis Peters, James Ellroy, Marcia Muller, Ross Thomas, H.R.F. Keating, [and] Charlotte MacLeod are just some of the names. But, since Mysterious Press was located in the same building on [West] 56th Street as the Mysterious Bookshop was at the time, all of these writers plus hundreds of other writers were constantly in and out of the building. If you had any question about a book you could go and find it—and sometimes the author—in the bookshop. It was a great place to get a thorough grounding in the genre.

JKP: Let’s see if I have this chronology right: You went to work for publisher Mysterious Press around the time Manhattan bookseller and editor Otto Penzler sold that company. But was it still through association with Mysterious Press that you came to know Penzler?

KS: Otto was consulting for the Book of the Month Club when I worked there. He needed an assistant and I wanted to move into publishing, so I came over to Mysterious Press. The other editors there were Bill Malloy, Sara Ann Freed, and Michele Slung. That was a lot of genre knowledge and experience in one building!

JKP: You followed Penzler to become editor-in-chief of Otto Penzler Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. What’s he like as a boss?

KS: I became editor-chief of Otto Penzler Books in 1993. It was a new imprint, so literally everything had to be organized from the ground up—from furniture to logos to the lists of authors. We published 35 to 40 hardcovers a year and 12 to 15 paperback reprints. The imprint offices were back in the 56th Street building with the Mysterious Bookshop, so that was fun. Whenever I needed a break, I would go down to the shop and hand-sell a mystery or two. It was a very creative place to work, with lots of interesting challenges popping up every day. I learned a lot there.

As a boss, I think Otto Penzler could best be described as demanding.

JKP: In 1992 Penzler brought you on as editor-in-chief of The Armchair Detective, where you stayed for the next five years. As someone who remembers TAD fondly (and still has more than a few back issues), can you relate some of your experiences with that quarterly? And did you have favorites among its estimable stable of contributors?

KS: I was very fond of many of the contributors and columnists at TAD, some of whom—Jon L. Breen, Dick Lochte, Tom Nolan, Louis Phillips—I brought onboard to Mystery Scene years later. The novelist William L. DeAndrea was an outsize personality at the magazine—he wrote the opinion column “J’Accuse!” and regularly stirred up controversy. It was a tragedy he died so young.

Unlike Mystery Scene, many of the contributors to TAD were academics. This made for a slightly different feel and focus than most fan magazines. It was very interesting to work with such intelligent, highly knowledgeable experts.

JKP: One of the business tasks you took on at TAD was converting it to desktop publishing—never an easy endeavor. Was part of the motivation for that conversion to cut costs? Had the magazine been on rather shaky ground, financially? I remember it as always containing more excellent editorial copy than it did paid advertising ...

KS: TAD used a typesetter in Bloomington, Indiana, when I got there. We’d send marked-up typewritten copy to him and he’d send it back in long shiny strips of coated paper that would have to be cut and pasted down by hand by our graphic designer. One time, the typesetter just disappeared and we had to bribe a former employee to break into the office and get our articles ... Converting to desktop publishing saved us money and a lot of time and trouble.

JKP: The Armchair Detective was founded in 1967 by Allen J. Hubin, and Penzler took it over some years later. Could you remind me exactly when that change of command took place?

KS: This was so far before my time, I had to look it up in Marvin Lachman’s The Heirs of Anthony Boucher: A History of Mystery Fandom. Hubin relinquished the editorship of TAD in 1980. Otto Penzler had bought the magazine a couple of years before that. Michael Seidman, a well-known book editor in New York, took over as TAD’s editor-in-chief after Hubin. He was followed by Kathy Daniel in 1989 and by me in 1992. (I had been the TAD book review editor for several years before that.) In 1995, Judi Vause bought the magazine and acted as publisher, ad sales rep, and managing editor. I resigned in 1997 and Elizabeth Foxwell was the editor-in-chief of one issue [dated Summer 1997] before the magazine folded that year.

The closing came as a surprise to both Beth Foxwell and me, as well as the various columnists and contributors. I believe it was the result of health problems [involving either Vause or her husband], but I don’t know the details. People had a hard time getting in touch with [Vause], I know subscribers were not notified or reimbursed. It was a shame to see the magazine die. You can get into mystery magazine publishing for love—and I have—but it’s still a business, and there are hard realities to it.

JKP: I hadn’t realized until recently that, after departing TAD, one of the posts you took was as senior editor of MysteryNet. Founded as The Case in the mid-1990s, but now long gone, MysteryNet was an extensive online database of information about the genre, offering everything from author biographies and movie recommendations to games. What was that experience like? It sounds as if you were responsible for a bit of everything, including commissioning articles, marketing, and publicity.

KS: I really enjoyed working at MysteryNet. It was a San Francisco Internet company at the height of the dot-com boom and it was exciting to be part of that scene—as long as it lasted. I did a lot of content acquisition and editing and generally acted as a guide to the mystery community for [Web site founder] Steve Schaffer and his colleagues.

JKP: Another position you held between TAD and Mystery Scene was as director of the Agatha Christie Society (owned by Agatha Christie Limited), an international literary organization promoting works by the bestselling creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie is still a big name as a writer, but how big and lucrative is the Christie promotions business? Can you give us some idea of it?

KS: The Agatha Christie Society was another fun, part-time gig for me. I edited a quarterly newsletter full of Christie trivia, interesting articles, and collecting info. Working with Annika Larsson, my usual graphic designer, I created a series of very attractive (if I do say so myself) handouts, postcards, and bookmarks. We had events, including a weekend in New York with Mathew Pritchard, Christie’s grandson. The Society was international, so I got to travel to England several times and visited Christie’s daughter, Rosalind Hicks, at Greenway House before she donated it to the British National Trust.

Agatha Christie is a force in the history of mystery fiction, of course, but the intellectual property value of her work today is still huge. All of her books are in print, her plays are performed regularly, and there’s rarely a TV or film season that doesn’t offer an adaptation of her work. I worked for the Society, but it was very interesting to watch my colleagues wheeling and dealing in the worlds of publishing, film, TV, theater, merchandise, etc. They were very good at it.

JKP: How and when did you meet your husband, Brian Skupin?

KS: I met Brian at the 1996 Magna Cum Murder mystery conference at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. He was an IT manager working at Kellogg’s in Michigan and an avid mystery reader. Our first date was at Malice Domestic in 1997—at the time Brian, who is originally from Toronto, was working in England. We had a long-distance relationship, often meeting at mystery conventions, until we married in 1999. We’ve lived in New York since then.

Brian is an integral part of Mystery Scene as the co-publisher and occasional contributor. He has a extensive background in the Golden Age and in locked-room mysteries, among other interests. Even today, he’s helping us out at the Web site with both editorial and IT issues.

JKP: In 2002 you and Brian purchased Mystery Scene. Who, exactly, did you buy it from—co-founders Ed Gorman and Robert J. Randisi, or others? What was the state of the magazine then, both in terms of finances and editorial direction?

KS: When we acquired Mystery Scene in 2002, it was owned by the writer Ed Gorman and by Marty Greenburg, the well-known anthologist. Ed had done an outstanding job editorially, nursing the magazine from infancy to adolescence. Back then, Mystery Scene was targeted mainly to writers, although it did have fans as readers. There were tons of craft articles, market news, publishing gossip, as well as tributes and articles on current and vintage writers, and some reviews.

(Left) Stine’s debut edition as editor-in-chief of Mystery Scene.

Ed is one of the most beloved figures in the history of mystery fiction. In fact, our first issue [September 2002] was a tribute issue to Ed and it was awash in heartfelt submissions. However, Ed wasn’t as interested in the business side of things, and the magazine was in dire shape financially when we took it over.

JKP: How did you see the principal missions of Mystery Scene differently from your predecessors?

KS: I wanted to target the intelligent, curious, and eclectic mystery reader. One who was interested in some “behind the scenes” material, but was ultimately a mystery and crime fiction fan. We thought of ourselves as the Entertainment Weekly magazine of mystery.

JKP: I know you converted Mystery Scene from a black-and-white publication on newsprint to a four-color, glossy mag, but what were the other major changes you made to it over two decades?

KS: We completely redesigned the magazine to make it more readable and attractive. I had the help of our fantastic graphic designer, my friend Annika Larsson, who has worked at Rolling Stone, Esquire, and other publications. She also helped redesign The Armchair Detective many years ago and had a hand in the Agatha Christie Society.

In every issue we tried our hardest to find interesting author photographs, movie and TV stills, book covers, maps, and other items to illustrate the articles and reviews. Although this involved a lot of research, and not a little money, it was one of my favorite tasks. Every article about a writer had a book list, so readers could easily find titles in series order.

There are other technical things that we did, including design a hardworking database, create a large Web site with both original and reprint content, [and] arrange for bookstore and newsstand distribution through Ingram Periodicals and its later iterations. We developed a partnership with Magzter.com, which publishes digital editions of the magazine.

JKP: So what are your fondest memories of Mystery Scene?

KS: The day-to-day work was so enjoyable that 21 years just whizzed by. I loved reading and writing about books, loved talking to the writers, loved our enthusiastic readers. Some of my fondest memories involve the former owner, Ed Gorman, who was a great wit and raconteur. We’d get on the phone and just chat for an hour.

And I really love working with Teri Duerr, our senior editor. She had a background in print and digital magazine publishing when she came to us that was just invaluable. She’s about 20 years younger than me and one of the most competent people I’ve ever met. It’s been a joy to work with her and I’m happy she’s still working with us on the Mystery Scene Web site and e-newsletter.

A definite highlight was Brian and I receiving the Ellery Queen Award in 2006 from Mystery Writers of America for contributions to mystery publishing. It was quite something to look out over that applauding crowd of writers.

JKP: How long ago did you realize the magazine might not survive? And what ultimately compelled its closing?

KS: The pandemic in 2020 accelerated changes in the marketing of mystery books that ultimately did us in. We were always 60/40 on advertising/subscription income. When most book advertising went online to large corporations (Facebook, Amazon, etc.), we couldn’t make the numbers work anymore. Our print bill alone was $32,000 a year, not to mention postage, and we were always a paying market for our contributors, including all of the book reviewers.

Brian and I had always run Mystery Scene as a business. It was not a hobby; we made a decent income from it until recently. Then we had to look at the numbers and make some hard decisions.

JKP: Did any potential buyers step forward in the mag’s final months?

KS: We were approached by several groups of people. But Mystery Scene was a complex business to take over, the book and magazine publishing industry is changing, and ultimately no successors were confident enough they could make the numbers work any better than we could. I would have loved to have been proven wrong about that.

JKP: How difficult has it been to let go of the magazine? And what’s the most crucial bit of advice you’d offer to anyone considering opening another such publication?

KS: It’s been very hard to say goodbye to Mystery Scene. I had the best job in publishing for 20 years, and I was ready for more. The best advice I can offer someone thinking of taking on a mystery-genre magazine is make sure you love the field and have a lot of talented friends who will help you out. And, if at all possible, marry a handsome IT expert with a wide-ranging knowledge of the mystery field and a good sense of humor.

JKP: You’re still updating the Mystery Scene Web site. Do you plan to keep that going, or is that still an unanswerable question?

KS: At the moment we are engaged with the Mystery Scene Web site, the monthly e-newsletter, and our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Teri Duerr is handling a lot of this as well as our online advertising sales. I’m going to be focusing on it more as well, but I’m also going to take some time to just think about what I want to do now. It’s been a busy past two decades!

JKP: After so many years of working with the genre, have your crime-fiction reading tastes changed significantly?

KS: As the years go by, I enjoy crime fiction the more it closely replicates our complex world as a whole. This is not just increasingly varied settings, but culturally diverse characters with wide-ranging backgrounds and viewpoints that challenge readers to really inhabit and understand their stories. That’s not to say that a clever puzzle ever comes amiss!

JKP: Finally, I have to ask: What crime, mystery, or thriller novels are currently in your to-be-read pile?

KS: Right now, I’m reading Daughter of the Morning Star, by Craig Johnson. I have a pile of Emma Lathens waiting for me, Also, So Shall You Reap, by Donna Leon, and various titles by Walter Mosley, Richard Osman, Lindsey Davis, Louise Penny, among others. Also, I highly recommend Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman, by Lucy Worsley. I’ve dipped back into that a couple of times.