Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room

Putting my two penn'orth in

Lynne Patrick

Or two cents’ worth if you prefer.

Since libraries seem to be the subject du jour, I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring.

(OK, Patrick, enough with the mixed clichés. You didn’t learn those in any library.)

Life without libraries wouldn’t really be life at all. I don’t use my town’s as much as I should, or as much as I once did, but I do use it. Any attempt to close it will be met with strong opposition – and I’m getting good at that, ask anyone on the street where I live.

I can’t remember a time when one library or another didn’t play a role in my life. I joined the local public library for the first time when I was six; the official age was seven then (long, long ago – they sign babies up these days), but I escaped my mother’s clutches and went exploring while she disputed the issue with the librarian in charge, then while she filled in the form I made short work of a pile of picture books and demanded to know where they kept the big girls’ stories, so they realised they were on a loser insisting on the letter of the law.

I’d graduated to the adult library by the time I was eleven – again against the rules, but by then I’d read everything in the kids’ section except Biggles (definitely not for girls!) and the baby stuff (outgrown before I joined). And since Young Adult was a thing of the future (though not, apparently, in the US – see below), I needed access to Catherine Cookson and H E Bates.

At primary school I decided I wanted to be a librarian myself when I grew up, and at high school I took charge of junior library day when I was fifteen. I’m still not sure why I strayed from that path; a working day surrounded by books is still my idea of the right kind of working day. But when you’re at the age when you choose a career path, all kinds of influences kick in. I didn’t apply for jobs in publishing companies either; it took another ftymumble years to get there.

So what did libraries do for me?

At first they provided an escape from the real world. I was the skinny kid with glasses and a funny accent, so sometimes I needed somewhere to run from unwelcome attention in the school yard. The cool kids don’t follow you to the library.

Then they widened my horizons. Holidays abroad didn’t happen till my college days, and I didn’t visit the USA till I was in my late 30s. Cherry Ames and Kay Tracey (a precursor to Nancy Drew, and my introduction to mystery fiction) gave me a taste of a world where things weren’t at all like home (hey, showing my age or what?!).

Then came research. Essays and papers in my college years; background for fiction when I realised I was a writer. I still have pleasant memories of afternoons spent in the town library with a list of titles I needed to get the background right for a novel based in the First World War. I’m not sure which of us enjoyed those times more – me, or the librarian who hunted down every last one.

But mainly, from when I was six years old right up to last week, just losing myself in a world of someone else’s making, without running up a huge overdraft and wondering where to store all the books that won’t fit on the shelves. Or where to put more shelves...
These days, there’s the opportunity to try out new authors before parting with hard cash. I try to strike a balance between buying and borrowing; fortunately here in the UK we have something called Public Lending Right, which ensures authors get paid (though not a lot) when people borrow their books from public libraries, but I’m all too well aware that the only way to help writers keep writing is to buy them. So I try only to borrow books by unfamiliar authors, and buy all but the really hard to find titles by my favourite authors.

OK, so there’s nothing remarkable in any of that. I didn’t use the library to educate myself from the ground up; no chance of that, my mother was a teacher and achievement at school was not optional. I just used it, and still use it, the way most people do.
And the way most people want to go on using it.

Are you listening, politicians with eyes permanently on red alert for soft targets for your budget slashing?

Cheers!

Josh Getzler

Well, vacation in the Tudorverse is over, and I can only say that this was the first time I’ve ever been grateful for the grey weather of London! Seriously, I hope all of you out there made it through with only minor inconveniences, and that everything is back to normal soon.

When we decided to take this trip, we made the decision to limit the history to two eras—16^th Century Tudors (of course) and the two world wars. We basically thought we’d give our kids lessons in Henry VIII and Winston Churchill. (By going to Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, we necessarily added William the Conquerer, but only a bit; and we talked about the current royal family as well, particularly as you couldn’t turn around without running into a William and Kate coffee mug or plate or cigarette lighter.) We figured that if we started adding in Stuarts and Plantagenets and any Charles except the current Prince of Wales, we’d only confuse them.

That strategy turned out to be very useful for our middle-grade kids, as it allowed us to work around a giant figure and teach about the times he lived in through the filter of what was going on in his life. It’s also why some of the places we went to worked so well—Hampton Court Palace, the Churchill War Rooms, both of which were devoted either entirely or significantly to the particular figure (we simply ignored the William & Mary parts of Hampton Court Palace)—while others were too diffuse to be effective for kids.

Surprisingly, one of the less-exciting places for the kids was Westminster Abbey, which is always a highlight for me. Sure they were excited to see Elizabeth and Mary’s grave. But the fact that they were stepping on, say, Oliver Cromwell or Geoffrey Chaucer or Harold Wilson did nothing for them. They needed, in effect, a linear plot—one where you might have two main perspectives, but where you didn’t want to muddy the waters by getting too far into the heads of the nonessential characters.

One of the oddest highlights—for it was truly a highlight—was the London Eye. At first, we were wondering why it even exists—an enormous ferris wheel on the Thames that dominates the skyline of the South Bank, creating a strange juxtaposition with the majestic houses of Parliament opposite. My wife and I talked about it, about how it felt weird to think of it as an essential tourist attraction/symbol of the city like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty or the Coliseum. And, of course, it really isn’t THAT comparable—the Tower or the Abbey or Buckingham Palace certainly fit the bill. But it’s the first such place that can even be in the conversation, of a shiny, technology-based, modern version of something old and venerable that has proved very quickly to be fun, user-friendly, and immensely popular. It reminds me of…wait a minute, I’ll think of it.

As this was the history tour rather than the literary visit, I’ll stick to that theme, and give a few impressions of what I heard and saw regarding books next week. Hints: the current situation with Waterstone’s could have a Borders-like effect on the industry in Britain, but for a different reason; and James Patterson is REALLY popular.

 

Aaron Tucker is Back! For less than a buck!

Jeff Cohen

Okay, now that we've had an earthquake and a hurricane, let's get down to business:

Hot off the (e)-presses: The Aaron Tucker short story (and prequel to the book series) THE GUN ALSO RISES, which originally appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in the January/February issue this year (take note, Agatha nominators!) is now available as an e-book. 

You can find the story for your Kindle, for your Nook, or for any other e-reader, and if it's not available today, it will be tomorrow (some formatting issues apply). I'm pricing it cheap, at 99 cents, so anyone who wants to keep up with Aaron--or become acquainted with him--can do so without breaking the bank.

It's the first time I'm personally publishing a work for e-readers, and I'm not sure whether it's the first of many or the last of a kind. I haven't decided yet, and the publishing market might dictate later decisions. And I won't lie to you, if lots and lots of the 99-cent story sell, it will certainly influence my thought process going forward. If not, maybe not.

THE GUN ALSO RISES gives us a glimpse of a younger Aaron, father of six-year-old Ethan and two-year-old Leah, still trying to figure out why his son is acting diff-erently than the other kids, and still trying to make a living with words (Aaron's a freelance reporter). 

He starts off with a problem: Ethan has been framed for a dastardly crime--bringing a water pistol to his first-grade class--and Aaron needs to find the dirty little culprit who set up his son. But he has something else to investigate professionally: A baseball magazine has asked him to investigate the death of a minor league pitcher, who had just won the championship game and died under a pile of celebrating teammates.

Many of the series' popular characters appear, including Jeff Mahoney, Aaron's huge friend who lends him some muscle when the diminutive freelancer needs it, Anne Mignano, in this case the assistant principal of Ethan's school, and of course Aaron's beloved wife Abby, who offers him help and advice, when Aaron isn't actively lusting after her--which isn't often.

And Aaron as always narrates the story in his native New Jersey language: Sarcasm.

So if you didn't get a copy of AHMM in January or February (really November of 2010, but it says "January/February" on the cover) and you're interested in reading some more Aaron, this is your chance. Even if you don't own an e-reader, you can get Kindle for free on your Mac or PC and read it there.

Hey, it might be the beginning of a new venture. And if you like it enough, maybe Aaron will be back.

Take a look.

New Jersey Cool

    As a kid growing up in New Jersey in the '50s and '60s, nobody I knew had any sense of inferiority regarding where we came from  - the only Jersey locale that anyone ever made fun of was Secaucus, a small town nestled in the Meadowlands that had the double misfortune of having a funny sounding name along with an abundance of foul smelling pig farms.    I grew up in Passaic and  although I did occasionally encounter  folks who thought  that the sound of that name was worthy of a chuckle or two, a general reference to New Jersey usually did not conjure up expressions of hilarity or mirth.  The place that was good for any easy laugh was Brooklyn, home to tough guys with uneducated accents (Toity Toid Street, anyone?) and a general lack of couth.  Of course, there have always been portions of Brooklyn that were elegant and high brow, but that was a well kept secret, at least until the '70s brought with it a phenomenon called urban gentrification.   When young urban professionals brought their brand of respectablility to previously undistinguished neighborhoods, Brooklyn stopped being funny, at least in the way  that it used to be.

    Come to think of it, people used to think that Hoboken was funny too, but that's not  the case anymore either.

    A front page  article in this past week's  Star Ledger gives prominence to the fact that there have been no fewer than eight reality shows set in the Garden State; much of the credit for this trend is attributed to  the popularity of The Sopranos, the HBO series about the New Jersey mob that aired from 1999 to 2007.    During my childhood, New Jersey had been a non-entity on television; only in the mid '70s did a specific New Jersey presence emerge on the small screen with a short lived series about a working class family, Joe and Son, that was set in Hoboken. In 1979, a blatant rip off of Saturday Night Fever called Makin' It was set in Passaic and featured John Travolta's sister as the mother of the disco crazed protagonist.  The first dramatic series set in New Jersey that I can recall  was a cop show called Toma , based on the real life adventures of Newark undercover officer Dave Toma.  After running for only one season, Toma morphed into the more popular Baretta; although the storyline implied that the show was set in Newark, the streetscape was clearly that of Sourthern California.     According to Wikipedia, there were only two TV shows pre-Sopranos for which the New Jersey location was truly essential to the story line: The Street, a cop show from the late 80's that was filmed on location in Newark and other north Jersey cities and Down the Shore, a sitcom precurser of Jersey Shore that was set in Belmar.

    New Jersey was also mostly ignored as a literary setting until Philip Roth burst on the scene with Goodbye Columbus in 1959, making Newark the setting for a string of brilliant novels that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning  American Pastoral, The Plot Against America  and, most  recently, Nemesis, a poignant depiction of a fictional 1944 polio epidemic that  laid waste to Newark's Jewish Weequahic neighborhood.   Yet, when people think of Roth, he is associated specifically with Newark, not the entire state.

    So what does all of this have to do with mysteries and crime fiction?

    I think I  can make a persuasive argument that the whole "Jersey Cool" movement began, not in 1999 with The Sopranos, but with the appearance in 1994 of One for the Money,  the first in a series of mystery novels by a  then  unknown author named Janet Evanovich.  The series features quintessential Jersey girl Stephanie Plum, along with a supporting cast of eccentric characters whose identities are inextricably bound up with the Chambersburg neighborhood of Trenton where most of the  action takes place. The release of  Explosive Eighteen in November and the opening of the movie version of One for the Money on January 27 are only going to add to New Jersey's cachet as a place that is crawling with oddballs, loveable or otherwise. 

    When people think of Stephanie Plum, she is equal parts Trenton and New Jersey.    When people think of Tony Soprano, he is associated with New Jersey, not North Caldwell.  Maybe that's because Tony and his friends got around more.

More on Jersey Cool next week.

Libraries Matter

by Erin Mitchell

Far too often these days I hear people—young and old—saying something along the lines of, “libraries are dead/dying.” Or, “nobody uses libraries today.” Or, “libraries are a thing of the past.”

Like those who see print books’ days as numbered, I couldn’t disagree more vehemently.

Yes, libraries are in danger. They are far too often a target of ignorant—dare I say stupid—politicians and/or administrators when budgets need to be cut. But around the world, people are rallying to save and support libraries. Everyone involved in these efforts has a personal reason for doing so. Mine are below, and I’d be grateful if you’d take a moment to share yours too.

1. Libraries helped raise me.

I spent hours in libraries growing up. They were safe places where I could wander around and the most trouble I would get into is—gasp!—reading a book.

2. Libraries serve the whole community.

Libraries are perhaps the last and only truly egalitarian institutions. At the library, your ability to check out books or read newspapers isn’t impacted by whether you’re rich or poor.

3. Libraries provide internet access.

If you’re reading this, you probably take access to technology for granted, to a greater or lesser extent. But the truth is not everyone has a high speed wifi smart phone…or even internet access. Most libraries provide internet access for free to anyone who walks through their door.

4. Libraries remind us of what’s important.

Step into a library, and information is all around you. It’s such a different experience from the interwebs because, well, you can reach out and touch it. You can wander around in the stacks and pull random books out and learn…anything. Go anywhere.

5. Librarians are as close to saints as anyone you’ll meet.

I think of librarians and nurses in the same group. Neither is going to get fabulously wealthy doing their chosen profession, and both are saving lives every day. Librarians care about helping people enjoy reading. They’re as likely to put the latest Harlequin arrival in a patron’s hand as they are a Booker Prize winner. They’ll listen to what you like to read—or why you don’t—and help you find the perfect book, story, reference manual, or magazine.

If you question the value and importance of libraries, ask yourself this: Can you think of even one successful author that does not support libraries in some manner? Didn’t think so.

Some authors are going above and beyond to support libraries. Karin Slaughter is a great example—she’s just released a short story, 100% of the proceeds of which benefit libraries—and Linwood Barclay is another, who is working with the legendary Margaret Atwood and a number of other Canadian authors to defend libraries in Toronto.

So what can you do? Visit a library and ask ‘em. They’ll be happy to see you.

 

The Rearrange

 

by Alison Dasho

 

My mom is an inveterate rearranger. Furniture is practically nomadic in the house, migrating from room to room, clumping in varied seating areas, fluctuating between focal points depending on time of year -- the fireplace, the big windows, the piano, the Christmas tree. Nothing lives in the same place for too long. We used to joke that one should never try to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, as there is a high likelihood of stubbing a toe on an end table that wasn't there before bedtime.

 

But I love this trait of my mom's (and may have inherited a milder form of rearrangitis myself) -- she showed my sisters and me that though we lived in a stable home, it didn't have to be boring. Change was a part of every day, in a real and obvious sense, in our home environment. And an old sofa could take on incredible new life when moved to another room, next to a rocking chair and an uplight. (Okay, maybe I should give Christopher Lowell credit for the uplight ideas.) And no matter how large an unwieldy an object was, Mom could find a way to move it between rooms.

 

Like the time she took the closet doors off the closets and positioned them to help her -- by herself -- slide the large screen tv down the small flight of stairs between the green and white rooms. Here, my sister made a little model of the green room when she was working on her thesis. That set of six wide, carpeted stairs are what my 5'4'' mother slid a massive, I mean massive (before they were all flat-screen), large screen television down. On its back. Using hastily placed closet doors. By herself.

 

I won't even talk about the baby grand, I still don't know how she manages to get that between levels. (WinGARdium LevioSA?)

 

Anyway, what's this got to do with writing? Well I'll tell you!

 

Sit back for a second and think about what what happen if you rearranged parts of your manuscript. I'm not talking about a line here or there -- although I understand if you want to start small. I mean big, baby grand chunks of text. What happens if you put the making-him-dinner-at-her-place scene before the meet-cute-in-the-grocery-store-and-propose-a-date scene? Readers will know, during the grocery store scene, where the frozen food aisle flirtation will end up. They'll have foreknowledge that could add depth (and poignancy, if the date goes bad) to the second scene. Or, it could end up being a boring disaster -- but with the ease of cut/paste, is it worth a try?

 

Or think about your introduction scenes. Who does the reader meet first? The protagonist? Antagonist? Some poor schmuck who's about to be the dead body that catalyses the action of the story? A cat? What if you were to rearrange a bit, move some scenes around. Introduce the antagonist first, in a way that doesn't make it clear that he's, you know, out to do bad. Get readers in his corner a little, then introduce the protagonist and the antagonist's bad side, and you'll have created some investment and conflict through the structure of your story, not just your prose.

 

Now, I realize rearranging isn't for everyone. Some people have a couch and a chair and they like where they sit, and don't ever see the need to change it. That's absolutely fine, of course. But don't be afraid to move things around, create new views, toss in some festive uplights.

 

It's a wonder what a good rearrange can do.

One a penny, two a penny

Lynne Patrick

I’m not safe to be let loose in a bookshop. If you ever see me there, confiscate my Visa card immediately, before I spend next month’s supermarket bill. Or do something dreadful.

Like last week. It’s confession time. One day last week I came out of a bookshop hefting a bag which contained ten books – but I only paid a quarter of the cover price. It was that bane of small bookstores’ lives, the remainder shop. Not only that: they were having a sale. Paperbacks were crammed too tight on the shelves, stacked on the floor, piled by the cash register, and they weren’t even the usual remainder shop fare of out-of-date cookery books and biographies of minor celebs. Fiction was in the majority, crime fiction accounted for well over half, and we’re going on holiday in a little over a week. Well, what’s a girl to do? Reader, I bought them.

But not without a certain sense of guilt. Actually a very strong sense. Having lived in that world for seven years, not only do I know what a publisher pays out to turn a pile of manuscript into a glossy-covered paperback, so I bought those books for only pence more than it cost to produce them; I also know the real bookshop a few streets away was losing sales, and the authors made peanuts, if anything at all. I’m really, really sorry about that; I’ve been on the authors’ side of the fence as well, and the last thing I want is to make little of the effort and energy that go into writing a novel. I think it was the lovely Keith Waterhouse who said writing a book is akin to digging a small quarry with a teaspoon.

But... Yes, here come the excuses, I’m afraid, though I don’t expect you to be any more approving of my behaviour.

1. A market stall in my local town also sells cut-price books and I don’t have any problem giving it a wide berth; the books have flimsy covers and no prelim pages, and are poorly printed on low-quality paper. Go figure. But the books I bought were not pirate editions; they were the real thing, with covers, information pages and the whole nine yards absolutely intact, the production values comparable with anything on my shelves. So I wasn’t contributing to a major rip-off business.

2. What had clearly happened on this occasion was that a publisher or six had decided to offload some of the stock that had lingered in the back of the warehouse for years. (Though why they can’t offer genuine bookshops a good deal on them is a mystery to me.) I found eight- and nine-year-old titles by a couple of my favourite authors for which I’d previously trawled new and secondhand bookshops in vain. (Yeah, OK, I know Amazon can usually deliver those particular goods, but I’m a dyed-in-the-wool bookshop person with an acute and ongoing allergy to putting my Visa details online.) At some point in the past I must have added my grumble to the many, about the difficulty I’ve had getting hold of early titles by authors who have been around for years but whose work I’ve only just discovered. This was treasure.

I know I’ve been a bad person, and I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but I’m truly sorry. I promise I’ll try not to fall into temptation again. Well, not for a long time. And I also promise I’ll only buy cut-price books by authors who have made the big time and aren’t trying to scrape a living without resorting to punching a supermarket till.

London Calling

Josh Getzler

 

Greetings from row 60 of a Virgin Atlantic red-eye from Newark to Heathrow. It's 2:30 am, the nine year-old is sleeping on me, my knee is begging for a stretch, and there is no way I'm going to be able to get up for at least another hour or two--bless her, the nine year-old knows how to sleep. The turbulence of the last four hours has subsided sufficiently to allow me to write in the convenient-yet-awkward manner afforded me by the iPad, and I marvel anew at my son's feat, during six hours of a flight to Israel last year, of writing an entire original episode of the Muppet Show on an iTouch. Kids.

 

This is the first time we're taking our brood on an extended trip that didn't include their grandparents, a Seder, or both. It's simply a vacation, after camp and before school, during the second-slowest week of the publishing calendar (Christmas Week being the slowest).

 

We decided on London partly because we thought it would be a gentler transition to another culture for the kids if they spoke the same language as the natives; partly because my wife and I know the city well from our previous trips there; and partly because between Amanda's career as a World history teacher and my own representing a good number of books set there, the kids feel a bit like they know the place already.

 

OK, so the London they are expecting is a bizarre combination of Hilary Mantel and JK Rowling, and is filled with Tudors and Muggles. They may be disappointed on Friday to find that there are no Royal beheadings scheduled on Tower Green, or on Sunday not to find Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell at Hampton Court Palace. But they'll be relieved that the Millennium Bridge was rebuilt after the Death Eaters destroyed it in Half-Blood Prince.

 

I'm incredibly excited to experience London in a third stage of life. The first time I was there I was with my own parents on a trip like this one. I was a teenager and my lasting memories were experiencing Wimbledon; being horrified, as a New Yorker, to discover that people ate pigeon; and having my life changed by The Smiths when I heard Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now for the first time on BBC1 on the way to the Cotswolds.

 

The next time I was there was on my honeymoon. On a Saturday afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery, my new wife gave me a three hour summary of a thousand years of British history without a note or a blackboard, simply taking me from painting to painting from William the Conquerer to Diana, William and Harry. It was a revelation in two ways: I knew that Amanda's future students would be extraordinarily lucky to have her, and that I was going to spend the rest of my life, one way or another, accompanied by Stuarts, Tudors, Windsors, chivalry and Shakespeare, and Bedlam and the East End.

 

Now I return as Dad, fresh from 15 years of reading Allison Weir and Conan Doyle, Bruce Alexander and PD James; watching Prime Suspect and Upstairs, Downstairs; and seeing my kids experience Harry Potter and Mary Poppins. Recently, my son read Maile Meloy's superb historical fantasy of 1954 London,The Apothecary (coming out in October from Putnam). He was so struck by it that both my wife and I read it--devoured it, really. (It's a can't miss.) We decided to tweak our itinerary a bit, and will be hitting the Chelsea Physic Garden this afternoon before we even officially check in to our hotel, in order to experience one of the key scenes of that book. The week will be filled, we hope, with moments like that one which will entertain and--not even stealthily on our part--educate. I'll be fascinated to see what my kids' takeaways will be. Will they find the next Smiths? Become infatuated with Churchill? Obsess over the identity of Jack the Ripper? Want to follow cricket? (Nah...)

 

Tune in next week.

 

Smile, Mr. President!

Jeff Cohen

So far, I have no evidence that the President has seen this post. I'm shocked. I mean, it has his name in it and everything. Perhaps we need keywords.

This is not a political blog. Don't worry.

If there's one man (other than Muammar Gadaffi, who lost his country and can't even decide how to spell his own name) who really needs some cheering up these days, it must be President
Barack Obama. I mean, here's a guy who started out on such a high, good feelings, hope and, you know, change, and look how things have ended up so far. Some accomplishments, yes, but things are still a little challenging as we speak.

Imagine how he feels: The nation's (and, to be fair, the world's) economy is not exactly in great shape. Wars are being fought. A new political season is beginning, and his poll numbers (which are, at this point in time, meaningless) are not exactly sparkling. Here's a guy who truly must require a little bolstering.

And so I begrudge the President absolutely nothing in his choice of a time to go on vacation. Anybody who thinks he shouldn't take 10 days off and doesn't complain about Congress taking 30 days off simply isn't paying attention. 

But then comes this story, which chronicles the President's reading material--other than the work stuff he still has to carry around with him--during his "off days." And I have a message for Mr. Obama, which I sincerely hope he will see and take in the spirit in which it is being offered.

Mr. President: Lighten up.

Honestly. I understand that your job requires you to think deep thoughts, and that is your nature to begin with. But I got depressed just looking at the covers of the books you're reading. Not a smile in the bunch, and you're going to read them all in 10 days? That's pretty much a prescription for a cranky leader of the free world, and who benefits from that?

You see, Mr. President, I believe in the rejuvenative, therapeutic power of comedy. I think a good laugh does more for you than a ton of briefing memos (but keep reading those--I'm not suggesting you stop!) and "serious" novels. I think an amused mind is one that is more creative, more active, more useful than one burdened with problems both real--and you've got all of ours on top of yours to worry about--and fictional. 

Those fictional ones are the problems you can easily avoid. You need to do some REAL light reading, something that will lift your spirits and get you ready for the long slog ahead. 

So I am taking it upon myself to make a few modest suggestions for your vacation reading. Don't worry; it's not too late. Robin can have some of these to your Martha's Vineyard retreat in a flash. Others, well, I'm betting Bunch of Grapes has some, or can special order. You're the President. 

Suggested Reading for a Laugh or Two (Presidential Edition):

1. In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, by Jean Shepherd. This collection of stories disguised as a novel is not only a nostalgic--but certainly not rose-colored--look at an earlier era, it's also hilarious. Shepherd could write like a dream and had total recall. If anyone asks, you can say you're reading it because the movie "A Christmas Story" was taken from one of its chapters.

2. Tilt-A-Whirl, by Chris Grabenstein. Introducing the stand-up, unassailable, absolutely perfect Officer John Ceepak and his slacker-ish but funny partner Danny Boyle, Grabenstein's first crime novel provides a strong mystery/thriller with the unmistakable New Jersey wit of its narrator. You need some more Jersey in you, Mr. President--take it from Ceepak and Danny.

3. Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo, by Joe Adamson. I know; it's non-fiction and a professional biography at that. But Adamson writes about the Marx Brothers with such wit and in so close to the team's own style (very Groucho-influenced) that it's the fastest 443 pages you'll ever read. You can tell people you're boning up on military strategy by studying DUCK SOUP. No. Wait. Better not tell them that.

4. Flanagan's Run, by Tom McNab. Not strictly speaking a "comedy," in that it's not going for laughs, McNab's tall tale of an early-20th-Century footrace from Los Angeles to New York is a rollicking ride full of interesting characters, hairbreadth escapes, period detail and, just in case you're feeling homesick, a stop in Chicago. You won't laugh, but you'll smile. A lot.

5. Slugfest, by Rosemary Harris. Set not too far from where you are now, in Manhattan (and not the usual Connecticut setting), Harris's latest is a little more laugh-packed than her previous ones, and they weren't exactly downers, either. You can read her previous books on subsequent vacations, or on one of those nights when you inadvertantly watch Fox News and can't sleep (happens to me, too).

6. America: The Book, by Jon Stewart and the Writing Staff of the Daily Show. I know he's taken a few shots at you recently, but you have to admit, Stewart is without question the best political satirist at work today, and his "textbook" on the country is not only a dense, riotous parody, it also has some actual information you can use to wow them at cabinet meetings (the naked pictures of Supreme Court justices are probably best left unmentioned, though).

7. I could also recommend A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, but it's not the history of the Tea Party you'd probably expect from the title, and I've never thought it was all that funny, to be honest.

Well, that ought to be enough to start with. But if you're REALLY in the need for a laugh, well, I'd be an idiot not to recommend that you click here or here. If you like the books you find there, please let everyone know. If not, well, say so, anyway. I don't mind selling books to Republicans.

Best of luck, Mr. President--Have a great vacation, and come back recharged! 

Weeding, part 2

 As I discussed in last week's post, weeding the library's collection is one of those tasks that, for a variety of reasons, invites procrastination.   At its most elemental, the purpose of weeding in a small public library such as the one in which  I work is to remove from the shelves those books that are not being checked out in order to create space for newer titles that are more likely to circulate.  Think, if you will, of library shelf space as valuable real estate; library books pull their weight by being checked out and only those books that see a lot of action can afford to stay.  Or to put it another way, library books  - like groceries -  each have a shelf expiration date, albeit one that is a lot more complicated to figure out than the one found on a  bag of pre-washed salad.  For fiction, I generally use a mental algorithm that assigns a combination of weights to the following factors: length of time the book has been in the collection, the number of times it has been checked out, date of last check out, who the author is, the number of other books by that author owned by the library, and whether or not the book is part of a series.   In addition, fair or not,  I must also  pay attention to just how crowded a particular section of shelving is. 

(Note to aspiring authors - try  not to have a last name that puts you in close proximity to Danielle Steel, Stephen King, Fern Michaels or Stuart Woods, to name just a few.)

    But before you all start freaking out on me, I want you to know that I do abide by certain caveats:

1.    Whether or not they are ever checked out, the library will always retain literary classics that one would  be likely find on the syllabi for introductory high school and college courses in American, English and world literature.

2.    Unless it is literally falling apart or we own a duplicate copy, I will never weed out a book that has been in the collection for fewer than three years and in most cases I won't  weed something out until it has been on the shelf for at least five. Sometimes it takes a little time for an author's works to generate some buzz and when that happens, I don't  want to  be in the position of having to spend book budget money on replacement copies.

3.    If an author has been so kind as to pay a visit to my library, a complete run of his or her books will always be available on the shelves, at least for as long as I'm working there.

4.    I will never weed out a title if it has been the topic of discussion for the library's book group.

5.    I will always keep on hand books that I have read and feel enthusiastic about recommending to library patrons, regardless of how old they are (the books, not the patrons).

6.    Although I may not be able to keep to this rule indefinitely, I currently make it a practice not to weed out books that bear donation plates.

7.    They may not be true literary classics, but I  also like  to keep in the collection books which were made into movies that have become pop culture classics in their own right (The Godfather,  Love Story, Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange).

8.    I don't weed out books that I plan to read one day, even the ones I had forgotten all about until I encountered them again during the weeding process.

9.    Librarian's judgment - this is a wild-card category based on a combination of my knowledge of the library's collection and what people in the community are  reading along with  my  general knowledge of  authors and literary trends.

10.    Although the limited size of our library dictates that we cannot retain every title in every series, exceptions are made for such obvious cases  as Janet Evanovich or Sue Grafton.

11.    I will never weed out our library's copy of a large print  book called Jo Lane - Store Nurse, (published in 1993) simply because I think the title is absolutely hilarious.

Here are some additional observations I have made while weeding:

1.    Non-fiction is easier to weed than fiction, especially when it comes to dated material like health, finance, travel, style or memoirs by D-list celebrities (Mary Jo Buttafuco, anyone?)

2.    It's fun watching authors age on their book jacket photos.

3.    The top edge of a closed book accumulates a great deal of dust, dirt and grime that is impossible to clean.

4.    Some areas of the alphabet require more space than others; a disproportionate amount of shelf space in my library  is given to authors with last names beginning with B, C, G, H, K, L, M, P, R and S.   The shelves are especially jammed tight where Dale Brown meets Dan Brown meets Sandra Brown, where Carol Higgins Clark meets Mary Higgins Clark meets Mary Jane Clark, and where Diana Palmer,Michael Palmer, Sara Paretsky, Robert Parker, James Patterson, Anne Perry, Jodi Picoult and Douglas Preston all hang out in the same neighborhood.  I don't even want to talk about the shelving crisis created by the Kellerman family.

5.      Fair or not, many of the books that did get weeded out were those by authors who were represented on the shelves by only one title, but generally only if that one book was at least five years old and had circulated five or fewer times.  Although  books by "celebrity" authors (that means you, Courtney Thorne-Smith) sometimes fell into this category, many of the titles in this category were short story collections,  literary novels, or the lone representative of  a mystery, romance or chick lit series.  Not surprisingly,  I felt bad about withdrawing  many of these books because  they each  represented an author's  successful effort to get published.   I could not help but think about the elation experienced by these writers upon  first finding out that their books were going to make it into print.   I thought about the phone calls made to friends and relatives, the book parties and signings, and the congratulatory toasts that came with positive reviews in Publisher's Weekly and the press - these books had to have received good reviews or I would not have purchased them for the library in the first place.

    So now that I've gotten you thoroughly depressed, you are probably still wondering what all of this specifically has to do with mysteries and crime fiction.   The good news is that the close examination of my library's collection made me very much aware of the fact that a  large proportion of our fiction section is taken up by mysteries and thrillers.   James Patterson, Nora Roberts and Robert Parker take up far more shelf space than such literary luminaries as John Steinbeck, Philip Roth, Ernest Hemingway and Jane Austen.    However, this also means that mysteries and thrillers  represented the largest proportion of items weeded from the collection.  That was the bad news.

Although it focuses more on non-fiction, Awful Library Books is an entertaining website that makes a great case for the need to weed library collections.  

It's also good to remind myself that if someone is doing their scholarly dissertation on American pop fiction from the period 1970-1990, it is not the responsibility of my library to provide them with their source material.

One final thought - please don't suggest that I can create more fiction shelf space by getting rid of most of our reference section.   That was done several years ago to create more space for audiobooks and DVDS.

 

Whistling in the graveyard

Robin Agnew

As some of you may know (I've blogged about it lots) I serve on the board of a local book festival, The Kerrytown BookFest, which celebrates it's 9th birthday this coming September 11.  It's a day filled with activity - 40 speakers, 100 vendors, a kid's tent, free workshops, and book arts demonstrations, as well as the chance to letterpress print a little broadside postcard yourself.  This year's has a lovely poem and an original drawing.

Much of the festival, of course, focuses on writers and what's new.  But a slant that sets it apart are the book arts - and for me, this has been an ongoing learning process.  The book arts include book binding, letterpress printing, papermaking  - for several years there was a woman demonstrating how to make marbeled papers.  There's always a letterpress printer set up, and usually what you get to print is a bookmark.  This year it will be a little postcard celebrating our Community Book Award winner, Margaret Noori, who translates the spoken Ojibwe language to the written word.

One of our new board members, Jon Buller, was the long time owner of the Bessenberg bindery, a shop that specialized in hand book binding.  You could take (as I did) your mother's old beat up Joy of Cooking, for example, save the "guts", and get a nice new binding put on it, complete with gold stamping on the cover.  As you might expect this is a diminishing art form, but it's still one in demand by collectors.

Anyway, this past year, the bindery was acquired by local printers/publishers, Thomson-Shore, who bought and moved all of Jon's equipment into their warehouse, where Jon is training new people in his particular art form.  He's added much to the board, creating some beautiful leatherbound award plaques, for example, and he's been a part of the day for years.

As we lurch into the future, celebrating the book seems like a trickier and more difficult prospect, but we are a passionate bunch, and we find a good laugh in the oddest spots.  At this week's board meeting, Jon mentioned that he'd retrofitted an actual book to accommodate someone's kindle as folks were laughing at him while he was reading on the bus!

The kindle jokes started flying and I realized that it's important to enjoy the moment, and to celebrate what's here now.  The future will probably bring a continued uneasy alliance as Jon's recent project so vividly illustrates, but for now we are  celebrating the book, and as this year's poster proclaims "The Books are Everywhere."

And on Sunday, September 11, we'll welcome authors as varied as Louise Penny, National Book Award winner Jaimey Gordon, Stefanie Pintoff, hot off great reviews in the NY Times Bonnie Jo Campbell, Tasha Alexander, Maureen Jennings, Caldecott medalist Erin Stead, Brian Freeman, Mark Terry, Andrew Grant, Karen Dionne, and many, many more.  It seems like a great way to celebrate a grim anniversary. If you're near Ann Arbor, come join us!

 

What’s The Twitter?

I had cause this week to look at some information about Twitter, including glossaries and explanations about what it is and how one should use it, both new and old.

Most of it was pretty funny.

Did you know that, according to the venerable BusinessWeek, we could all be guilty of twittcrastination or twitterlooing? I’m sorry, but does anyone really talk like that? Certainly nobody I know. Nor would I want them to.

I didn’t find a single article or directory that warned against #using too #many #hashtags. Now that would have been useful advice. I’m all for nonsensical string-of-consciousness hashtags at the end of tweets, but more than two serious hashtags in one 140-character message? Just makes them hard to read.

Also, not a one of these venerable guides referred to taking a moment to actually talk to people on Twitter. To interact. To be…social. Can Twitter be a viable sales tool? Yeah, sure. But it’s a secondary sales tool. It’s not direct mail. Or a Sham-Wow commercial. It’s a way to interact, to point people toward content that might interest them. To find content that’s of interest to you.

I learned to use Twitter by watching people. It became clear quickly whom I should emulate. And I did. And I’ve never regretted it. The simple fact is that I didn’t learn it from a blog post or magazine article.

So…wait…what’s this, then?!?

Good point.

Perhaps it’s a conclusion. I see Twitter like a crowded airport terminal when all the flights are cancelled. You have a bazillion (approximately) people from all over the world. Some are gathered into smaller groups. And the glory of it? You can wander around overlistening to conversations. When you find someone who is interesting, you can follow her around. Except on Twitter, unlike in the airport, following is complimentary, not weird and stalkerish.

So my advice to you? Toss BusinessWeek on the virtual fire and wander over and do some active listening on Twitter. Talk to people. Click a link or two. Butt in to a conversation.

If anyone objects, tell them you saw them twitterlooing.

Movin' on in

 

by Alison Dasho

 

Well, it took a full week, but we're finally moved in to the new place. Mostly. The bed delivers next week, then the living room set (so grown up! we bought a living room set!) the week after that. The boxes are about 70% unpacked (and some I'm just putting right in the basement, no need to unpack then repack the Christmas ornaments). I successfully unboxed and used lots of our new kitchen equipment and dishes from the wedding (yay, Le Cruset!) and we enjoyed a delicious (if I do say so myself) spaghetti carbonara last night.

 

So now I'm able to get back to work, and it feels like I've been gone forever. My Google Reader is overflowing with interesting articles, my mind is bursting with notes for a freelance editorial project, and I've got some copy edits to approve for a Carina title. Plus, as usual, a slew of intriguing submissions to tempt me from my Kindle.

 

Naturally, then, I took some time yesterday to set up my office. Well, half-set up. I still need to put stuff on the walls (a cork-board, for organization!), and I'm using an old filing cabinet as a desk until we find a nice, small one at St. Vinnie's, but for the most part, my books are on shelves and my laptop is at the ready. I'm dying to dive back into work -- not just because I'm tired of hauling boxes, but because I love what I do, and too long without it makes Jack a dull boy. (Mom, don't click that link.)

 

My new office:

    

I never tire of gazing at my books.

 

 

Hmmm. Editorcat is intrigued by your query and will consider it further.

 

Editorcat may need more coffee for this.

 

Because every office needs a Unicorn, Unicorn, Unicorn & Friends Nook.

 

One thing leads to another

Lynne Patrick

Looking through my reading pile the other day in search of inspiration, I was struck by the paucity of next-in-series titles. I think at the moment it’s because I’m waiting for the latest by some of my favourite authors to come out in paperback; Susan Hill’s Serrailler series and C J Sansom’s Shardlakes come to mind, and there are probably others.

Then, as these things do, it triggered a whole new train of thought. Several of my favourite series authors have recently begun to develop a second series alongside one that’s working perfectly well, and I began to think about why that might be.

Publishers like series. When I was a publisher, I liked series. Why’s that, you ask. I can think of two reasons, one practical, the other creative. The first is a marketing thing: if readers connect with a lead character, they’ll keep coming back for more; and as more readers pick up a series three or four books in, that creates an ongoing demand for the earlier titles.

But it’s also a satisfaction thing. Watching a series protagonist develop background, layers and complexities as the author learns and grows is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job.

Which begs the question, why start all over again? If it ain’t broke, why go in search of a new one?

I asked a few pertinent questions, and again got two answers, one practical, the other creative.

Maybe not practical; try aspirational/career-minded. Publishers like series – but not many publishers will want to pick up a series halfway through. Unless the author is hugely successful, of course, in which case all rules are suspended. Val McDermid recently moved from HarperCollins to Little, Brown and I suspect will be able to write whatever she likes for them. But more generally, if an author’s series has a solid but unremarkable track record with a medium-sized publisher, and s/he has ambitions to move out of the midlist, a new series could be the answer. The track record gives the author’s agent some leverage; the new series is something to sell.

But writers, by and large, primarily write not for the fame or fortune (though both are nice if they happen), but because that’s what they do. Which brings me to the second, creative, reason. This was the answer I got from one crime writer friend who falls into the non-Val McD category above: I spend most of my life in that world (her books grew out of her day job) and sometimes I feel the need to go somewhere else.

I suspect it’s also because any creative endeavour has an element of challenge, and a few books into a series, when the lead character is so well developed that new surprises are growing thinner on the ground, some breathing space might offer a new perspective. A year or two out to explore new territory provides that. And of course the new territory may well yield up new fruit which will cross-fertilise with and enrich the old.
I suspect there are series authors out there with their own take on this, and who knows, some of them may even be reading this. If I’ve got it all completely wrong, do let me know. I’m as open to growth and development as any established author. It may even feed into my own writing, if I ever get back to it.

In Praise of Thalia Book Club Camp (Edited)

Josh Getzler

Six weeks ago, a box of books arrived at my apartment, filled with a combination of already published paperbacks and Advance Readers Copies (ARCs) of ten diverse middle-grade novels. There was the latest installation of the 39 Clues series; The Apothecary, the first children’s book by novelist Maile Meloy; graphic novel Astronaut Academy; Shakespeare’s Secret by Elise Broach; Liesl and Po, a new dystopian fantasy by Lauren Oliver…and more and more.

So what was this? A publisher trying to show off to an agent who represents middle grade fiction? No,the books were published by a wide variety of houses. A job-seeker giving a visual resume of her wide-ranging taste? No, though that would be a new one!

Nope. It was homework for my 12 year-old son, from a remarkable program he has now just completed called the Thalia Book Club Camp (TBCC). Run out of Symphony Space on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, TBCC is a series of one-week programs for either middle-grade kids or teenagers. Each day one novel is analyzed, with writing exercises, frequent field trips either to locations in the book or places relevant to it (a backstage visit to the newly constructed scale replica of the Theater at Stratford-on-Avon in the Park Avenue Armory during the Shakespeare’s Secret day, for example), and highlighted each day by a visit from the author for a Q and A and book signing.

It’s a pretty remarkable program, with an avid and growing following (the sessions sell out months in advance) and one that expects diligence and rigor from its 9-12 year-old participants. Joe was told in no uncertain terms that he was expected to have read all the books prior to the start of the session, since once of the exercises on the first day was to compare the books that were going to be discussed that week. And to his credit, Joe buckled down and stretched himself, reading books he might not have gone for naturally (high fantasy or a novel in verse) and making it through. In the end, he appreciated and enjoyed stories that he hadn’t even particularly liked for the first 50 pages but needed to finish, and he understood why they had been assigned. It was eye-opening for him, and wonderful to watch for me.

One of the other things TBCC did extremely well was to give the kids a different context when going through these books: the place that these books have within publishing. The authors, when they came in, talked about how long it took them to write, and how difficult it can be to get a book published. The kids got to understand illustration and its place in children’s books. And on one exciting day, they visited Random House, met President and Publisher of RH Children’s Books Chip Gibson, and served as a kind of focus group on covers. Then, in a big surprise, they walked into an office to find Eragon author Christopher Paolini waiting for them to talk about finishing his immensely successful fantasy series that he began when he was 14. Joe came home each day with a different perspective on the world of books and publishing, and with several new favorite authors. In fact, my wife and I needed to change part of our itinerary for our upcoming trip to London in order to make time to visit the Chelsea Physick Garden because it's featured in The Apothecary. 

Of course as a parent, one of the things I loved was the fact that it also meant that Joe spent so much of his time this summer reading a wide variety of terrific, interesting books, rather than, say, more Archie Comics, which certainly have their place but get to be a wee bit repetitive and enervating after a while.

At the end of each week, TBCC concluded with a reading of the participants’ writing, in the Symphony Space theater, by two professional actors. We had seen one of them this past winter in The Importance of Being Earnest--a fact that was significantly more exciting for us than for Joe, who simply loved that the guy had gotten Joe's super hero's voice spot on! The actors read the poems and fragments and stories and descriptions with as much humor and verve and respect as if they were reading Wilde or Shakespeare instead of a fourth grader from PS 196, playfully intoning "To Be Continued" or "The dreaded dot...dot...dot..."

This reading was one of the more interesting parts from the perspective of my own career, rather than just as a Dad. Not because of the kids’ talents (some were extraordinary, some were finding their voices), but because before each work was read, the actor gave a short bio of the author (taken from interviews the kids did with each other), where among other things they said what their favorite books were. In two weeks, so 40 or so kids (some were there both weeks, so there was a bit of repetition), more than half said that their favorite books were the Harry Potter Series. Around a quarter included the Hunger Games Trilogy (which surprised me, as I thought that would have skewed older), and a bunch of others added The Ranger’s Apprentice and Percy Jackson. And a vast majority said that if they could ask anyone about writing it would be J.K. Rowling. These are sophisticated, broad-minded kids. They ALL love that wizard.

Since Joe started TBCC, I’ve had lunch with a bunch of children’s book editors. I’ve been relentless in suggesting to them that they contact TBCC to get their talented, buzzworthy local authors to participate in future camps. Not that the curator of the  program needs help—her eye is pretty much unfailing and her list is so spot on and eclectic that she clearly does fine without my pushing editors her way! But I can’t help preaching this from the mountaintops. From its fascinating insights into the world of publishing, to the transcendent selection of novels, to its ability to entice authors to come and speak to the participants, to the interactivity of the writing and drawing the kids did, to the excitement of hearing their works read by real actors on a real stage, the Thalia Book Club Camp is a unique and extraordinary program. Joe can’t wait till next year. And neither can I. (And I have an author, who lives in the Village, with a big debut about an adventure with pirates who might be perfect…dot...dot...dot...)

 

It's All Bill Cosby's Fault

Jeff Cohen

When I was 10 years old, I discovered Bill Cosby.

Don't take me wrong--Cosby had been discovered a good number of years before that, and was already quite a successful comedian and actor. But the year I turned 10, I stumbled across a TV special he'd done and immediately became devoted to his comedy, particularly his album To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With, which absolutely changed my perceptions in any number of different ways.

I don't think I'd ever listened to a standup comedy album before. My parents had some Allan Sherman albums, and I loved them, but they were song parodies, and not just a man talking. This opened my eyes (actually, my ears) to comedy possibilities.

And it wasn't long before my mother would have to remind me every once in a while, "I don't mind if you listen to those Bill Cosby records" (they had by this time multiplied in my collection), "but stop talking like him!"

That was my problem. The rhythms of Cosby's storytelling, his timing, his choice of words--all those things were so ingrained in my head that I would unconsciously pick them up and use them in my own conversation. I wasn't so much a sponge as a mirror. If it worked for him, it would work for me. And to some extent it did; I would actually recite Cosby records at parties for my friends and match him inflection for inflection. I couldn't think of the stuff myself, but I sure could mimic it. Catch me on a good day even now and I can give you a decent approximation of "Chicken Heart" or "$75 Car."

This has recurred a few times in my life. When my wife and I would watch Mad About You early in our marriage, it would take me a half hour or so to stop talking like Paul Reiser afterward. Today, my daughter is a huge West Wing fan, so we watch quite a bit of it (thank you, inventor of DVDs!) when she's home. And the Aaron Sorkin dialogue is hard to leave alone. That man can write dialogue, and those actors sure could deliver it. It's a trial not to walk and talk when I'm taking the dog out after a few viewings.

I won't even discuss what happened when I started watching the Marx Brothers.

People ask me which mystery authors I read. And I lie most of the time, and name people I know or people I like. I do read a few, but I won't tell you which ones. And most of them, I honestly don't read. At least, not when I writing something, which I am almost all the time. 

I can't be sure I won't accidentally appropriate something. Not a storyline or a character, but a style, a rhythm. I read biographies, histories, non-fiction; that I can do. I'll read anything that doesn't bear even a slight resemblance to what I'm working on, which is generally a mystery book with laughs.

And I've had readers and other authors tell me not to worry: "You have your own voice," they say. "You won't steal something." Of course I won't. Stealing is intentional; I'd rather quit the business than appropriate something from another writer who thought of it first. What I'm talking about is subconscious. It's something that I wouldn't know I was doing, and possibly wouldn't recognize even after reading the work over again. 

I don't want to risk it. It's not an experience I ever want to have.

But if Bill Cosby ever writes a mystery novel, I'm going to be in a ton of trouble.

Weeding, Part I

    Weeding is the term generally used by librarians to refer to the systematic act of removing and withdrawing items from the library's collection.    It is a task that often doesn't get a whole lot of love from library staff members; weeding is a time consuming and more often than not dirty (or at least dusty) process that will ultimately involve the attention of at least three different members of the staff:  the librarian who makes the decision to pull the book from the shelf, the technical services librarian or assistant who removes the item from the library's electronic list of holdings, and the maintenance worker who must bundle and cart the books away for disposal or sale.   Because it eats up so much staff time, because it's  sometimes hard not to second guess yourself when making the decision to remove something from the collection,  and also because there seems to be an almost universal aversion to discarding books, weeding is often something that is avoided at all costs, or at least until the librarian's back is up against the proverbial wall.

     The library  I work for maxed out of shelf space in the adult department several years ago and, as a result, I have been forced to weed on a more or less regular basis ever since.  When I first started working there 14 years ago, the decision to weed wasn't  a matter of creating more shelf space, it was simply a matter of  removing no longer accurate non-fiction titles along with popular fiction by authors who had fallen out of favor (Jacqueline Suzann, anyone?).   I saw weeding these titles as an act of virtue, a way to improve the overall quality of the collection I was in charge of maintaining.  

    However, as is the case in just about every public library that sees its book budget grow and its shelf space remain unchanged, the condition I refer to as shelf stasis will  inevitably set in - for every book going into the collection, there needs to be a book being weeded out.   It is a situation that infuriates that segment of the public that neither uses the library nor wants to pay taxes to support it (why do we need to give the library more money if they already have enough books?).   Even people who love the library may have trouble understanding why we're getting rid of a book that they enjoyed when they read it twenty years ago but which no one has checked out in the last fifteen years. 

    There are   those who may come up with the argument that purchasing older books in e-book format might be a way for libraries to deal with their space limitations.   Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with this particular line of reasoning.   First, with so many public library budgets in free fall, there is no way that the majority of libraries are able to find room in their ever shrinking book budgets to keep up with new purchases, let alone the retrospective purchasing of older titles. (I did do a quick search on Amazon and was pleasantly surprised to see that a large number of works by authors such as Leon Uris, Howard Fast, James Hilton, and Harrold Robbins were available for Kindle.)  However, an equally serious concern for libraries is that  in the current e-book business model, libraries  rent rather than own the titles everyone believes they are "purchasing"; the actual e-book content is hosted on a server that does not belong to the library and over which the library ultimately has no control.  Additionally, Harper Collins became the first publisher to institute  a 26 "check out" limit on the number of times that a library may loan an e-book, after which the library is required to repurchase the title.   In large and busy library systems where best selling titles can easily reach check-out figures in the three digits, this is a situation that is unsustainable for libraries in the long term.

How does all this relate to mysteries?   That will be coming in Weeding, Part II 

 

Changes

Robin Agnew

As my daughter heads off to her junior year of college, I should be used to her leaving by now.  We've even "replaced" her - another teen has moved in with us for the time being.  But she was gone all summer, interning at a library up north and staying with my sister.  When she got home she decided her room needed painting so the house looks like a cyclone hit it (hard) - but her room looks great.

She's finally sorting through little girl things - old baby dolls, Clifford books, old girl scout stuff - and getting rid of it.  For some reason all of that makes her upcoming return to school somehow more final. Her "new" room even looks more grown up (and when she leaves, the new teen in the house moves off the library floor and into her room.   He travels with 3 guitars and a mandolin, so the house is pretty full).

When she leaves, she'll leave me with a (male) dog, my husband, and two boys who will be living here at least this year as they start Community College here in town.  I'm delighted to have them here and to have the house so populated, but there's something missing with the departure of the only other female. The bathroom smells like Old Spice and Axe (on a good day) instead of like Dove soap.  

The kitchen is full of pizza rolls and Sunny D, instead of her favorite fresh salsa and artichokes.  No one to watch old Jane Austen movies with.  Instead of the fairly peaceful music she plays, my son likes (loud) rap and his pal walks around strumming his guitar (beautifully, I must add).

But it's not the same.  And the evacuation of the baby doll and the old Puppy Patrol books makes it all seem more real.  This winter she's even going to Europe.  We've gotten Skype on our computer, but I'm sensing that won't be the same either.

The possibilities of life are open to her, though, and that's certainly something to celebrate.  Margaret Frances, here's to a great junior year at the wonderful Ripon College!

To Event or Not to Event

I was a bit shocked this week when someone told me that book events no longer sell books. “They did in the 90s,” he said, “but not now.”

In fairness, we were talking about nonfiction business-y books, and while I can see this being true of those types of books, it certainly is not true of fiction. Especially crime fiction. How do I know this? I’ve seen it with my own eyes…twice in recent weeks, in fact.

This past Tuesday, I went to the launch party and signing for Lisa Unger’s DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND. I’ve been a fan of Lisa’s work for a while now, but I brought along two people new to her stories, one a book blogger and the other my husband’s daughter who is visiting from Dublin. As they listened to Lisa talk about her books and her writing process, both laughed at her jokes and were engaged as she read an excerpt of DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND. They were also happy to get to chat briefly with Lisa as she signed books.

A couple of weeks ago, I was also lucky enough to go to an event at which Michael Connelly interviewed Mark Billingham. Mark is a superb author who is better known to UK than American audiences, but with his latest American release, BLOODLINE, millions more American readers will be introduced to the complicated, compelling police detective Tom Thorne. Mark has a fascinating back-story himself that involves some acting and stints as a stand-up comedian, and this was obvious through the interview. Afterwards, both Mark and Michael signed books and chatted with readers. They might have been bored silly, but it sure didn’t show, and everyone there was grateful for having had the opportunity to listen to and meet them.

At both of these events, readers—both fans and those new to the authors—connected with the writers. Each person came away feeling more confident about reading and recommending their books. And therein lies the value: recommending. According to ever study of book buyers that’s ever been done, the single most powerful motivator in book purchasing is recommendations.

Because I live in Florida, aka God’s Waiting Room, many of the attendees at each of these events were older folks. In chatting with some of the folks who have been reading since before the War, I realized too that we each have a responsibility to cultivate readers. To talk about what we read. To go to events and drag as many people along with us as we can.

As a reader, I like books by authors I’ve met even more because I’m vested. And the same way we often balk at buying a car from a pushy or rude salesperson, we are more inclined to buy the product (books) of people we like.

Many publishers have cut back (severely) on book launch tour budgets. So intrepid authors are finding other ways to connect with readers, both in person and online. If you have the opportunity, though, to meet readers in person, please do it. It’s like the old shampoo ad…that one person you meet tells two people, and she tells two people, and so on, and so on, and so on.

 

Repost: And in the morning, I'm making waffles

 

by Alison Dasho

[NOTE: This post originally appeared in January of this year, but as my husband and I are spending this week moving boxes and bookshelves and my waffle maker into a new apartment, I've pulled it out of the ether of the internet history and reposted it for your waffley enjoyment.]

 

Today I want to talk to you about how good dialogue is like a waffle.

 

(And in case you're wondering about the headline, I used to be a nanny for a toddler who was obsessed with Shrek. We played Shrek every day, and he was allowed to watch Shrek up to three times a day -- and "watching" Shrek meant having it on in the background while we acted out each scene. Obviously, the little kiddo always wanted to be the title ogre, which left me as ... No, I wasn't allowed to be Princess Fiona. I had to be Donkey. And Donkey liked to make waffles.)

 

But anyway, good dialogue. How is it like a waffle? Well, think back to your last waffle breakfast. Imagine how those tall ridges turn kindof crispy and brown on the top, and how the valleys between them are golden brown and a little bit squishy. When you put a big buttery pat of butter on top of your waffle, it melted and gathered into those valleys, and then the syrup added another layer of sweet deliciousness to each little butter puddle.

 

Waffles need those ridges and valleys, that's what makes them good. Your dialogue is the same way: it needs ridges -- the structure of the dialogue itself -- but it also needs valleys -- time for your characters to think and feel and have those reactions pool in a little puddle of goodness before they speak again.

 

Basically, I'm just talking about adding "beats" to dialogue, and I had waffles for breakfast.

 

Take this bit of dialogue:

 

"What? I'm expelled from school? But why? Well, ok, there was that time I started a waffle fight in the cafeteria but come on, that was just for fun and no one got hurt or anything. How about if instead of expelled I'm just suspended for a day, and I can come back tomorrow so I won't miss my violin concert?"

 

It all runs together without any beats added, and the character is thinking and feeling and changing tactics too quickly for a reader to keep pace. It's exhausting. (This style does have its uses, for action scenes or if a character is feeling breathless and desperate, but overuse will tire your readers out.)

 

If you write plays or screenplays, this is an easy fix. You can just add in (pause) and the actors will pause.

 

"What? I'm expelled from school? But why? (pause) Well, ok, there was that time I started a waffle fight in the cafeteria but come on, that was just for fun and no one got hurt or anything. (pause) How about if instead of expelled I'm just suspended for a day, and I can come back tomorrow so I won't miss my violin concert?"

 

But if you're writing fiction, you need to find a way to let your characters have time to think thoughts and feel feelings, and you don't want to *tell* the reader, you want to *show* them, so you have to come up with creative ways to add in beats.

 

"What? I'm expelled from school? But why?" Fiona's stomach sank when she remembered the previous Tuesday. "Well, ok, there was that time I started a waffle fight in the cafeteria but come on, that was just for fun and no one got hurt or anything." She couldn't panic. If Principle Bails saw her get agitated, he'd expel her for sure, the wicked little troll. Fiona steadied her breath and decided to negotiate. "How about if instead of expelled I'm just suspended for a day, and I can come back tomorrow so I won't miss my violin concert?"

 

The beats -- or butter puddles, if you prefer (and who wouldn't?!) -- give the reader a break and clue them in to Fiona's inner workings. Without them, Fiona comes across as flat as a pancake.

 

And everyone knows waffles > pancakes.

Not with a whimper

There I was, thinking August would be a quiet month when I could do some thinking, forward planning, maybe even a little writing – then famous last words syndrome kicks in and the world erupts around me.

Not just my own little world this time, either. First the Horn of Africa descends into famine, which, OK, happens every few years, but wouldn’t you think that will all the scientific advances we hear about we could have got it sorted by now? Then the US nearly goes bankrupt – sorry, guys, but that’s how it looked from out here, even though I think we knew deep down Obama wouldn’t let it happen and would find a way out somehow. Then global finance spirals into meltdown again, bringing back grey memories. Then the police in London shoot some bad guy whose name will probably be lost in the smoke and havoc of what ensued: riots, looting, arson and general mayhem in most of the UK’s big cities, out of all proportion to the spark that lit the tinder. One small mercy is that the smashers and looters seem to be ignoring bookshops. Maybe they’ve all got Kindles, quipped one observer. Nah – more likely they can’t read, quoth another. Whatever the rationale, long may it continue!

Once again real-life crime shows the fictional kind how it’s done. I suppose ‘twas ever thus, though when when you’re living through the Chinese-style interesting times it feels like all of history is revolving around what is actually only a passing moment.
A few years ago (eleven to be precise – the reason I remember that will be clear if you do the maths), I undertook a local history project which involved researching the big news stories in each decade of the 20th century, assessing which were the biggest and summing them up in a couple of paragraphs for a weekly feature. There was a lot of ‘oh, yes, I remember that!’ and ‘did that really make national headlines every day for a week?’; and not a little of ‘now, remind me what that was about again?’ and ‘my word, I’d forgotten all about that’. Distance lends perspective. And maybe a kind of misty sense of there-but-for-the-grace... After all, that’s in the past now; it can’t touch us.

I wonder if that’s one reason, apart from good stories and great characters, for reading crime fiction. (And maybe for watching the TV coverage of famine, riots and other symptoms of international breakdown.) Sitting in our own armchairs, protected by four strong walls, we can look at other people’s havoc-filled lives, real or fictional, with a kind of fascinated horror well laced with relief that we don’t actually have to go there and do that.

And once August’s over the hurricane season will be upon us. There are still reasons to be glad I live in the UK. I’ll be thinking of you, American friends.

Tuesdays in August

Josh Getzler

When I was working in baseball, when we would discuss our attendance projections before the season, we used to say, “Well, we know we are going to do well on Saturday nights, or fireworks nights, or games against the Mets affiliate, or Opening Day. But how are we going to do on Tuesdays in August?” That was code for “just another game,” when there wasn’t any special promotion, when it’s the middle of the week in the middle of the season, and attendance reflected the core market.

Tuesdays in August became such an ingrained part of my thought process that I ended up using it in other contexts. When I ran my synagogue for example, and we needed to plan how much food to get for the post-services reception, we had the High Attendance spread and the Tuesdays in August spread. When my wife and I would get up—even in the middle of winter—to discuss what was going on during a day that didn’t need unusual pickups or babysitting, we’d say “Eh, it’s a Tuesday in August.”

I thought of this when I got up this morning, obviously, because it is a Tuesday in August, and theoretically should be a grind-it-out, not-much-going-on kind of day. But it’s not. This whole summer hasn’t been, really. I’ve been able to start a new business, sell books of wide variety and great interest (and submit, but not yet sell, a good number more to a good number of publishers), read an enormous number of manuscripts, send two children to camp, and watch my father recover remarkably from serious illness. There is no such thing in my life any more as Tuesdays in August in the metaphorical sense.

And yet, I think I’m the happiest I’ve been in years (as long as I don’t look at things like partisan politics, my dwindling investment portfolio, print runs for non-best-sellers, and the fact that there are nightly riots in the city I’m visiting with my wife and children in two weeks). And today also marks another milestone, another non-Tuesday-in-August event: Today is the first day, as I write this later than usual at my desk in my office, that I look around our area and see the whole of Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency in one place for the first time. The Bar Exam is over for Jess, Carrie is back from her vacation and I still have time before mine, and Maddie is drinking her third cup of coffee while trying vainly to keep me organized and the HSG trains running on time. We just got logos for the company that we’re excited about, and our website is, at last, in the works. I even registered for Bouchercon, one of my favorite weeks of the year.

And tonight, I’m going with my family to see the New York Liberty (I’ll write an evangelistic post about the WNBA another time!), and it’s both breast cancer awareness night (so pink jerseys) and a night where the team is placing their former center Rebecca Lobo in their Ring of Honor. I look forward to sitting with my beer and watching the game, and wondering whether, six months ago when the marketing department was planning their promotions, they looked at the calendar at this game and said “well, we better do something fun for this one—after all, it’s a Tuesday in August…”

 

All About Eve (slightly revised)

Jeff Cohen

A few weeks ago, when finishing an interview with my wife, I jokingly suggested that if enough people responded to that one, perhaps I'd follow up by interviewing one of my children. 

At least, I thought I was joking.

My 18-year-old daughter Eve, who as with most daughters has her dad wrap-ped squar-ely around all 10 of her fin-gers, heard about the interview with her mother and when I suggested in passing that she could be next, responded enthusiastically. So I thought it might be an interesting exercise in talking a little bit to the next generation of readers about what does and does not appeal. And about what it's like to have a slightly odd father with an unusual profession.

What follows is verbatim. Believe me.

One caviat: I believe with ever fiber of my being that my daughter is a remarkable, fascinating person and a fine human being. If you think otherwise, do not bother to comment.

Jeff Cohen: So how was it different growing up with a parent who was a writer, and not, say, an insurance salesman?

Eve Cohen: You were here (in the house) all the time. I think that's why we're so close, because I saw you more often than other people saw their dads. It always seemed like that (writing) was just your job, especially the (work) that wasn't the books, for newspapers and things. The books seemed more like what you wanted, more than other people's dads complaining about their jobs.

JC: You didn't read my books when they were coming out because at the beginning you were too young. How did you feel about them when you could read them?

EC: I wasn't allowed to read them at first, and then I read (AS DOG IS MY WITNESS) because I knew it was dedicated to me. But at the same time, the (Double Feature) books were coming out, so I read those when they were new and went back to read the Aaron Tucker books later. It was kind of fun when the girl in the books did something that I thought was like me, but I knew you didn't like it when people said the family in the books was really our family, so I felt bad when I thought that. I see the girl in the new books (The Haunted Guesthouse series) doing things like I would have done at that age, so maybe it's just me. 

JC: You shouldn't have felt bad about that. I remember you telling me once that you considered the sound of computer keys being hit soothing, and you thought it was because you'd always heard that when you came home from school and I was writing.

EC: You hear computer keys all the time, and I didn't think about why I liked it at first, but when I thought about where I'd heard that most often, it occurred to me that it was here.

JC: I know you're not crazy about the concept of an e-reader, and that surprised me when you first said so. Young people are supposed to love new technology. What's your thinking on e-readers like the Kindle?

EC: I wouldn't like it for me because I like holding the book in my hand and holding the page. Sliding a finger across the screen wouldn't do it for me. I understand why people like them, but I find books comforting, and part of that is the object itself.

JC: Which of my books is your favorite now that you're old enough to have read them all?

EC: I really like the ghost ones (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED and AN UNINVITED GHOST), both of them. Alison is my favorite narrator.

JC: What about books by other authors?

EC: I loved HOLES from the time I first read it. I love the Harry Potter books and I really like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. I like dystopian society books, too. I have to like the main character, and don't like those books where you're not supposed to. 

JC: What is it about Harry Potter?

EC: Part of it is the characters. (Rowling) created an entire world and the length of the series allowed people to be in it for a while. You kept learning stuff aobut it and it's very satisfying to have the whole plot come together like that, and have a whole world you can go to.

JC: You don't like to write. Your mom is a lawyer, and you don't want to do that either. Why do you think that is?

EC: Writing makes me nervous. It's really personal and I don't like being judged on creative things so much. I don't care if I get a math problem wrong, but writing is a personality thing. I guess I didn't want to do what either of you did because I heard you both complaining about it. You both like what you do, but everyone complains about their job. I didn't have to hear other parents complain about their jobs.

JC: Do people your age like to read? Is it a myth that nobody under 30 is a reader anymore? I know both you and your brother (Happy Birthday, Josh!) like to read.

EC: My friends like to read. Even if people don't read books, they'll just read online instead. It's who you are, not how old you are. Some people like to read. I love to read.

Recurring themes

I just finished listening to the audiobook version of  Gone 'Til November, by Wallace Stroby; I place it firmly in the category of books I enjoyed reading at the time but  will remember nothing about six months down the road.  The story was decently plotted, taking place mostly in northern Florida but with some of the action occurring in easily recognizable locales in Newark, NJ.  The main characters are primarily police officers and drug dealers with motivations and behaviors that, at least to me, seemed  plausible.  Still, there were too many similarites to several other crime novels that I have recently read to be able to simply chalk this all up to coincidence.

Allow me to present the following list of recurring themes:

1.   The female law enforcement officer must be the single parent of a small child, with the father of her child no longer  in the picture.  At some point, there must be a real or perceived threat to said child.   Stroby upped the sympathy ante  in  Gone 'Til November even further by afflicting the  officer's  son with a serious but treatable case of leukemia. 

2.    The female officer must either have no living family members or else be estranged from everyone in her family because they are  alcoholics, drug addicts or otherwise dysfunctional.   A somewhat more pleasant variation is to have the officer's relatives be geographically distant.   The bottom line is that they  are not going to be of much help to her.

3.    In spite of overnight and irregular work shifts, the female cop is always able to count on the services of an extraordinarily reliable babysitter who has no  apparent life of her own and is therefore consistently available whenever her services are needed on short notice, regardless of the time, day or night. 

4.    The female officer must have had at least one affair, now over, with somebody else in law enforcement  with whom she must still occasionally deal on the job.

5.    There always has to be at least one crooked cop and often a crooked supervisor.

6.    It's pretty routine for the bad guy to have a hunting cabin in the woods or easy access to some other isolated and/or abandoned structure.

7.    The female officer is excellent at her job but must, at a critical point, make a procedural error that even the reader with no law enforcement experiences recognizes as stupid.

8.    Regardless of the intensity of the physical abuse they have received, including gunshot wounds and severe beatings, injured characters ( good guys and bad guys) are able to maintain a far higher degree of mobility subsequent to receiving their injuries than anyone I know in real life would be able to manage, even if they worked out regularly.

Gone 'Til Wednesday was not a bad book, there was just nothing that set it apart.

 

  

 

 

Bad bookseller!

Robin Agnew

I was feeling like a bad, or at least inefficient, bookseller last night, though all turned out well.  I had agreed to sell books at a library event, went on a short vacation, and promptly forgot all about it.  I came back from vacation, realized I needed books (eek) and I better get ready or else as the event was in a couple days.

As it happens, the book was one I read in manuscript for for the University of Michigan press, and it was one I liked, a novelization of a true story about a woman poisoned with arsenic in Michigan in the 1840's.  I got the books and showed up on time at the library and then proceeded to act like the most uncaring bookseller of all time.

I've noticed over the years that first time authors bring their spouses or partners along, and at those first events, the spouses or partners hang on every word.  This was no exception: a first timer with a book ten years in the making, her partner was dogging her footsteps with a look of pure delight.

After a couple more books, the spouses or partners would rather go shopping, meet with friends or just not show up at all.  I think I've reached this stage of bookselling.  I set up, sat in the outer lobby with my little pile of books, and proceeded to read my Jan Burke novel, order Indian food for dinner, and help my son decide his plans for the evening as my phone chirped away (no one inside could hear it).

In fact I had a nice chat with the author's partner, a former bookseller herself who was run out of business by Borders back in '97.  She wasn't at all sad they were closing.  We also talked about how matching the right book with the right customer was about the best thing in the world.  She still misses it.

I realized I shouldn't take my wonderful job for granted after speaking with her.  Being a bookseller IS lots of fun, mostly, even when I'm ignoring it by ordering indian food and talking to my son.  And I sold all the books but two, an excellent result.  The author had slides which in my experience is a real sales closer.  People LOVE slides.

Next event:  Julie Kramer and Sarah Zettel in a couple weeks on a relaxing Sunday afternoon.  Last event before last night's:  Loren Estleman, with book #64.  When he came in the store, he wasn't sure which book he was signing!  (Uh, the really large stack of INFERNAL ANGELS).  

As I walked back to the store with my little cart, I refelected that it was nice to be downtown, nice to be close enough to the library to walk over and sell books, and nice to have an almost sell out with an unknown, and thrilled, first time author.  

The indian food, by the way, was terrific.

Why We Buy Books

From the credit-where-due department, this post is inspired by a question Alafair Burke posed on her Facebook page.

It’s an eternal publishing question: What makes a reader pick up a book by an author she or he has never read before?

As much as we might be inclined to think, in our techno-saturated world, that there’s a “magic bullet” answer, the equation is the same today as it always has been: Recommendations + Awareness = Readers.

This means that potential readers need to hear about a book from multiple sources. Nobody wants to waste time or money on crap books, and so finding new readers means giving them a level of comfort that a book is not just good, but great. We’ve all gone more skeptical (thanks, Interwebs), and so this isn’t as simple as it perhaps once was. No one of the things below guarantees you a spot on the bestseller list, but combining these elements will give readers a much better chance of finding your work.

1. Blurbs Matter

Everyone who reads has authors they love. When those authors recommend a book, that recommendation carries a ton of weight. It’s well worth your time to foster relationships that lead to authors with strong followings—those readers trust—to read your stuff.

2. Online Reviews

Like it or not, millions of people buy books online. And when they do so, reviews and star rankings can be the difference between pressing “Add to Cart” and going back to that cute kitten video on YouTube. Not all readers understand how important these reviews are, though, and so explicitly asking readers to write reviews is a good idea.

3. Traditional Media

Visibility in glossy magazines and on morning shows builds brand awareness. If you can (afford to) get it, great—but understand that the number of books submitted vs. featured is enormous. Today’s reality is that many producers and editors get their lists from social media, and so chances are good that your effort would be better spent there.

4. Find Your Tribe

Start with book bloggers, because they know their community. Find those (or hire someone to do it for you) who write about books like yours. Ask them for reviews, sure, but also ask their opinions. Ask them how to connect with their fans. If you are asked in return for a guest post, oblige.

5. Social sans BSP

I’ve said it before, and will say it again and again: Blatant Self Promotion, especially via Twitter and Facebook, will turn off influencers, those who impact the world of readers around them. Unless your last name is King, Grisham or Martin, you must have a social media presence, but you can manage it in such a way as to attract, rather than repel, new readers. And if you’re lucky enough to have a large backlist, you can find new audiences for those stories by interacting with people online, even if you do so only a little bit.

6. Consider Your Title

I know, I know…every author agonizes over titling. I’m not sure where great titles come from, whether they’re lightning-bolt inspirations or decision-by-committee endeavors, but I know, for example, I wouldn’t be a fan of Tim Dorsey’s books had I not happened on Hammerhead Ranch Motel in a bookstore while on a jury duty lunch break in Boston. I bought it because of the title alone. I’m biased, but I think running a couple of title options by a select group of trusted people—readers, book bloggers, friends and maybe family—makes sense. Remember, too, that most people have short attention spans. More than three words is likely too long.

There are, of course, many other marketing tactics, and I’d be kicked out of the Promotion Club if I didn’t tell you that if you’re in a position to invest in professional advice about how to best use them, do it. Ultimately, though, if you’re telling a great story, you have an audience. It’s just a matter of finding them.

Blatant Promotion of Works I Have Edited

 

by Alison Dasho

 

Some of the titles I've edited over the years have recently been made available for Kindle and Nook (and okay some have been available for awhile, but I have to be completionist about this!), and I wanted to be sure to let you guys know.

 

For your downloading and reading pleasure:

 

Stein, Stoned, by Hal Ackerman    Kindle  Nook

A former hippie turning fifty. A crop of medicinal weed gone missing. A gorgeous model, and a semi-rebellious teen daughter. (And of course, a trip to Amsterdam...)

 

Getting Sassy, by DC Brod    Kindle

A reporter, her dog, her aging mother, her accountant, and their plan to kidnap a goat. Need I say more?

 

Day One, by Bill Cameron    Kindle

A domestic crisis. A skateboarding witness to more than one crime. A showdown on Mt. Tabor. If you haven't met former detective Skin Kadash yet, this is your chance.

 

County Line, by Bill Cameron    Kindle  Nook

Ruby Jane Whittaker takes center stage in this one -- by disappearing. Skin works his way across the country to find her, while she works her way through the past to rediscover the crimes she left behind.

 

Hello Kitty Must Die, by Angela S. Choi    Kindle  Nook  (Free on both for a limited time!)

I'll just quote Publishers Weekly here, "A demonic stir-fry of influences, including Amy Tan, Chuck Palahniuk, Clive Barker, and Candace Bushnell, infuses Choi's prose with passionate ferocity."

 

Innocent Monster, by Reed Farrel Coleman    Kindle

A missing young girl -- who also happens to have burst on the art scene at the age of 4 with her Abstract Expressionist paintings. If Moe Prager can solve this case, perhaps he can reestablish a relationship with his own estranged daughter.

 

Silver Lake, by Peter Gadol    Kindle  Nook

A couple nearing midlife. An unexpected guest. A sudden, inexplicable suicide. A gorgeous book that muses on lonliness, connection, and the mysteries we can never solve.

 

The Blood Knot, by John Galligan    Kindle  Nook

A maybe-rabid beaver. A clan of Kussmaul brothers. A shunned Amish woman addicted to meth, and a dead painter. A knot that's not a knot. (Editing John's series remains one of my most favorite, and most rewarding, work experiences. This is #2 in that series. I cannot reccomend it highly enough.)

 

The Wind Knot, by John Galligan    Kindle  Nook

The Big Two-Hearted, and the man who supposedly tried to teach Hemingway to fly fish. A Bookmobile librarian who idolizes Pippi Longstocking. A tanker truck full of water stolen from Lake Superior. A wonderful end to the Knot series. (This is #4 -- I'm not sure if/when #1 and #3 will be available in e-format, but I hope you'll grab #2 and #4 while they're here!)

 

The Deputy, by Victor Gischler    Kindle

A dusty, tiny town in Oklahoma. A dead body gone missing. A part-time deputy trying to catch up and stay alive. The pace doesn't let up, and neither does Gischler -- he throws all kinds of unkind things at his characters, and you'll delight to see how they stay standing (or not).

 

Young Junius, by Seth Harwood    Kindle  Nook

A dead kid near Boston's Ringe Towers. The dead kid's 14-year-old brother, making bad decisions, then worse decisions, in his quest for answers and revenge. Brutal and compelling.

 

Dead Deceiver, by Victoria Houston    Kindle  Nook

A stalker. A dead snowshoer. A computer scam. All in the dead of a Loon Lake winter. (Oh, winter sounds so nice right now ...)

 

Late Rain, by Lynn Kostoff    Kindle  Nook

A dead soda mogul. A witness suffering Alzheimer's. A vicious and cunning daughter-in-law. A beat cop mourning his former life. One of the novels I'm most proud to have worked on.

 

Double Exposure, by Michael Lister    Kindle

I'll let Booklist take this one, "A Hitchcockian thriller. A spellbinding page-turner."

 

Frozen Stiff, by Mary Logue    Kindle  Nook

A frozen, naked body on New Year's Day. A spurned ex-wife. A spoiled, jealous daughter. A chilly installment in the wonderful Claire Watkins series.

 

Listen to the Dead, by Randall Peffer    Kindle  Nook

A skeleton in very old shackles. A detective whose grandmother practices Santaria. A harbormaster with a connection he'd rather not reveal.

 

Screams & Whispers, by Randall Peffer    Kindle  Nook

From Library Journal, "Peffer's latest series entry is pure opera, a multiact tragedy enhanced with opium tea and nunchakus."

 

Chasing the Wolf, by Nathan Singer    Kindle

A romance. A time travel novel. A love letter to the Blues. It's kindof impossible to sum up this book in a pat description -- but it's worth a read. Put on a Howlin' Wolf album and sink in.

 

 

 

 

Doing it yourself

Lynne Patrick

Top of today’s to-blog list is a big thank-you, to everyone who offered support and solidarity as I prepare to lie down under the wheels of rampant entrepreneurial opportunism (great phrase – I may use that in my objection letter) and stop the bulldozers in their tracks. Um, mixed metaphors there, not to mention imperfect (actually non-existent) engineering knowledge, but the thanks are no less heartfelt and the battle continues. I’ll keep you posted.

Next up, more thanks for the sympathy and practical help from several quarters regarding Typepad’s strange behaviour. The wonderful Jeff Cohen shoehorned two possible solutions from the horse’s mouth (ouch! more mixed metaphors), and I’m trying one of them today. Watch this space!

Finally to today’s topic. I’ve probably harped on about this before, but the world moves on and technology puts a different slant on things, so here goes again.

Self-publishing.

Ebooks, of course, is (are?) the technology which has offered the different slant. It’s no longer necessary to lay out serious money to get your book out there under your own steam. Amazon will do it all for you, for a relatively modest share of the income.
What worries me, and has always worried me, is that it’s the rare cases of huge success that you hear about – not the many, many people who sell a just few dozen copies of their life’s work to loyal family and friends.

When my publishing days came to full stop, one of the loose ends we had to tie up was the eBooks agreement on the backlist. Mostly the authors were happy enough simply to sign up with our former partners-in-E. A few decided to go it alone – possibly influenced by the Amanda Hockings and J A Konraths. It’s worked well for one. He’d already struck a deal with a bigger publisher than I was, and they’d put some marketing money behind his next book. About the others I’ve heard nothing. Go figure.

After all the hype about Amanda Hocking, I had to indulge in a quiet ironic smile when I read that she’d accepted a large advance from one of the big publishing houses – and that she’d warned authors in search of the same success that they were more likely to sell a hundred self-published copies than a hundred thousand. I rather think that deep down, like every aspiring author I’ve ever been acquainted with, she felt that real success didn’t come until she was acknowledged by someone who spots bestsellers for a living.

In the good old days when a book meant a wedge of paper between card covers, I used to receive at least one such a week, accompanied by a long letter explaining that the author had explored every other option before resorting to d-i-y, and the self-published volume had proved so popular in his village/college/workplace that he was now sure it would be a huge success for my company. Etc, etc, etc. Actually I received one yesterday; the writing world hasn’t caught up with real life yet, and I still get two or three submissions a week. So as well as needing the validation of a ‘real’ publisher, there are clearly aspiring authors out there who don’t think an eBook is a ‘real’ book. (Well, I don’t either, so there! We’re off on week’s flop-out holiday next month, and my reading pile will take up more suitcase space than my clothes.)

So what am I saying here? I think it’s that nothing apart from the format and the cash outlay has really changed. You may strike lucky with a self-published eBook – but then you might have struck lucky with a self-published print book too. People do. It makes headlines.

Ask yourself why it makes headlines.

Location, Location, Location

Josh Getzler

When we talk about a successful piece of writing, we typically discuss quality of writing, character development, plot, pacing, originality, and setting. Most of the time, a novel—OK, a crime novel, since that’s what we talk about most on this blog, and it suits my purposes here—can get away with being a little shy on, say, character development, if the plot is original and moves quickly. Or an author can be forgiven an unoriginal plot (say, a foiled assassination) if the characters are fun, sympathetic, or thought-provoking. I say this because the element I am discussing today is one where originality is not always necessary, and where there are plenty of successful novels out there where it’s not emphasized. But when it works, it can be illuminating, educational, and add great value to a story.

That element, which has come up several times in compelling fashion recently in books I’ve taken on and either sold or expect to sell soon, is Setting (particularly City) as Character. This isn’t World Creation. I’m not talking about fantasy. And it’s not making up a plausible town, inhabiting it with the characters of the story, and making the reader imagine it. Rather, it’s the Venice of Donna Leon, the Botswana of Alexander McCall Smith, the Gaza of Matt Beynon Rees, the Ancient Rome of Stephen Saylor. Also the New York of Linda Fairstein or Victorian London of Bruce Alexander.

In each of these cases, the protagonist has a particular relationship with his or her city, and occasionally meanders away from the investigation in order to muse on it. Much of the time it’s full of the satisfied, still-passionate and occasionally exasperated love of a spouse or parent. One of the best examples is Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti, who feels every day that he is living in Paradise—one with murder and corruption, but also wine, canals, and a lovely apartment with a wry wife and difficult teenage VENETIAN children. Sometimes, like in Rees’s brilliant depictions of life in Palestinian cities and refugee camps, the feeling can be one of despair and frustration at beauty destroyed or potential lost. His high school teacher Omar Yussef walks the crowded, fetid alleys of Dehaisha, where three generations have lived without hope, and tries to instill humanity and education and order into a town filled with nihilism and violence.

This has come up with me because I’ve been working on several novels where the location matters, and where making the setting into a character can lift the book into a different level of commerciality. The most recent was a police procedural set in Mumbai. In the first draft the setting was very much in the background. Yes the cop needed to wend his way through crowded streets and endless traffic, and explained the juxtaposition of the skyscrapers in the business district with the slums that have more people crowding into tiny spaces than live in all of Idaho. But the book was really about a murder. And while there are an awful lot of police procedurals about a murder, there are NOT a lot of police procedurals that take place in Mumbai, and certainly not ones where Mumbai is as much of a character as any of the humans inhabiting it. I wanted to see that; I wanted to learn what cops in Mumbai ate and drank in the morning instead of donuts and coffee (or croissant and espresso…you get the idea); how the businesspeople and teenagers and shopkeepers dealt with them; how the police department there differed from Scotland Yard or the NYPD.

So I sent my client back for a rewrite, with instructions to back up, relax, allow himself to Make Mumbai A Character (but not describe the weather too much!). I told him that in this kind of a book, he could allow the pace to slow slightly if, in describing the cop waiting for a suspect to exit a building, he wanted to let him go across the street for a chai and a chapati.

I got the second draft last week and sat down to read. My author had eliminated or scaled down a number of American expats, secondary constables, and a suspect or two. In their place was Mumbai, in its fragrant, sprawling, occasionally anachronistic splendor, a character to be reckoned with.

 

 

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Jeff Cohen

I'd almost forgotten to tell you this:

A couple of weekends ago (that is, July 15-16), I spent some very special time in the hands of two great professionals. And between the two of them, they reminded me what it means to be so good at what you do that you can convince people it isn't that hard.

The first one was Paul McCartney.

(Hang in there, publishing/crime fiction readers--there will be a point here.)

I'd never seen Sir Paul in concert before, but when tickets became available to his first of two (sold-out) shows at Yankee Stadium--my home court, in a way--I had to jump. And at the age of 69, without having had a hit record in... a long time, he showed off exactly what it means to be one of the best in the business. And check out this set list. 

For more than two and a half hours, on a hot July night in the Bronx, he took no breaks. Didn't so much as sip a bottle of water. Just hit after hit, and to an audience that had to be close to if not more than 50,000 people, it seemed like he was performing an intimate show just for each of us.

I should be so good when I'm 69. (A song cue if ever I heard one...)

Here's what it looked like from my seat:

 

I know. Not exactly up close and personal. But the giant video screens made it feel more direct, which sounds contradictory, but isn't. And what a show: 35 songs from all eras, with a healthy Beatles bias, which the crowd adored and one Fab Four classic ("The Night Before") which Mr. McC insisted had never been played live before.

Hang on, crime fiction aficianados. I'm getting there.

The evening began with the band--only four other musicians, a tight group--playing an intro that was energetic, but not familiar. And you could see the Beatles fans getting nervous: "Is he going to promote some new stuff when I want to hear the classics?"

Then Paul stepped to the microphone, and the unfamiliar intro became "Hello Goodbye." And the audience was in thrall for the rest of the evening. It happened quickly, without obvious effort, and worked like a charm.

That went on for some time. Show (slated for 8 p.m.) started promptly at 8:30, and wasn't over until easily after 11.

It was hard to top that evening, but the next day gave it a run for its money.

I had agreed to do a signing/talk at the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop (in, of all places, Mechanicsburg, PA) on a Saturday because I'd been there once before, quite unplanned, and knew Debbie Beamer, who owns the place, was a terrific bookseller. So now in my E.J. Copperman disguise, I headed out with my extremely patient wife on the 3.5-hour drive to, as my brother would say, the border of Pennsyl and Vania. 

Once at the Holly Inn in Mt. Holly Springs (where the event was to take place), I was never in doubt about the success of the event. Debbie had planned everything within an inch of its life, and had made sure her many loyal customers knew about it well in advance. I'd brought some copies of titles Debbie couldn't get her hands on, and added them to the Copperman stock she'd brought along.

We sold out. Every copy, every title. The only books I brought home were a few of the Asperger's non-fiction, and even a few of those had sold. I signed enough books to ensure my signature will easily survive me, and talked to a number of the lovely people who buy books from Debbie. Many of them were actually more knowledgeable about my books than I am, which isn't easy to do.

Through it all, Debbie was gracious and calm, friendly and uninsistent. She never let the readers (or me, for that matter) see the effort. It was all about connecting an author with readers, and that was done beautifully and seamlessly.

A really good independent bookseller is a professional, and Debbie is that (as are you, Robin--I'm hoping to get out there when OLD HAUNTS hits next year!). And while some might complain that being a "professional" is impersonal and implies a lack of inspiration and creativity, I heartily disagree.

I got to see two great pros at work that weekend, and it made me hope that I am even close to being as professional when you crack the cover on one of my books. Because there is nothing more comforting and satisfying as being tended to by a pro.