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

The Monster Within

Jeff Cohen

Halloween! Scary, kids!

Actually, I've always considered Halloween as a day to pretend to be someone (or something) else and run around getting free candy. Never really thought of it as frightening in any way.

But since it is the day of the year we indulge in camp scares, let's examine something TRULY unsettling, something that all writers (except Julia Spencer-Fleming) experience, even if they won't for one second admit it, even to themselves. (You might want to avert your eyes if easily unnerved.)

That's right.

Envy.

I'll tell you right up front: When I see another mystery writer has won an award, made a bestseller list, gotten a big contract, been reviewed (positively or not) in the New York Times Book Review, my first thought--whether the other author is a total stranger or a close friend--is, "Why wasn't that ME?"

I know; I'm a terrible person. I freely admit that. But here's the thing--I think EVERYBODY has a certain amount of that feeling inside them (except Julia Spencer-Fleming). And furthermore (which is redundant), I think it's a helpful emotion that can spur the writer along.

Yes, I want that NYTBR review. I do. I don't care if they hate my book; I just want Marilyn Stasio (or better, Janet Maslin) to ACKNOWLEDGE that it exists. I want an award, pretty much any award (but mostly the Lefty or the Agatha) before I reach the end of a career (by the way, Agatha voters, "The Gun Also Rises" is a short story that was published in 2011; just saying). I want that enormous book contract, albeit mostly because I'd like to be able to pay my bills without taking a Tums.

And when someone else achieves one or more of those things, I get pangs. It doesn't mean that I don't like the other author, or that I think I'm a better writer than they are (I'm better than some, not as good as others), or that I begrudge them the accolades they have undoubtedly earned with at least as much hard work as I've put in. None of that would be true.

I just want it more for me than I do for them, that's all. I think that's human. (Except Jula Spencer-Fleming.)

Envy serves as a powerful motivator: If I want all those secondary things (except the contract, which is fairly essential unless you're self-publishing), I need to work harder. Think harder. Write more cleverly. Push myself into new areas.

So the old green-eyed affliction can be a positive force if it moves a writer to do better work. And if noticing that I have such feelings means I'm not as nice a person as I like to think I am, so be it. Ballplayers talk about the need for a feeling of competition. Even as gentlemanly a figure as Mariano Rivera says without question that when he's on the mound, the batter is his target, his goal. He's going to get that guy out, even if it's his best friend.

I'm not ashamed of my envy. It usually passes after a moment or two, and I'm honestly happy for the author who received the coveted (by me) prize. Unless I have met that person and don't like them at all, but that is a very rare occasion. Most of the time, I'm glad someone worthy has achieved some success. But do I wish it was me? Yes, I do. We all do.

Except Julia Spencer-Fleming.

I really wanted to like this.

  It's always a challenge to decide what audiobook mystery I'm going to listen to next, but I chose Broken, by Karin Slaughter for a very particular reason - she is a strong and very outspoken advocate for public libraries, making appearances and raising money with her Save the Libraries campaign.  She also has, on her website, a link to her excellent op ed piece that recently appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  I felt  as if I had an obligation to return the favor and give at least one of her books a try.

    I didn't realize it at the time, but Broken is a novel that combines characters from two different series that Slaughter has written, one set in Atlanta and the other  set in Grant County, a more rural part of Georgia.   The novel takes place in Grant County and begins with the  murder of Allison Spooner,  a female college student about whom we know relatively little.   Although Allison's death was initially regarded as a suicide, Tommy Braham, a local young man with an IQ of about 80, is soon taken into custody by the police where he subsequently confesses to the crime.  Not long afterwards, when Tommy turns up dead in his cell with the words "not me" written in blood on the wall, police chief Frank Wallace appears to be a little too eager to  write off Tommy's death as a suicide and to close the book on both cases.  

    There are several other characters who become tangled up in the chain of events.  Police officer Lena Adams has her doubts about Tommy's capacity to commit murder; additionally, if his death was in fact  a suicide, she  bears direct responsibility for it because she did not do a sufficiently thorough job of checking his pockets before locking him in his jail cell.   Dr. Sara Linton, the former medical examiner of Grant County who just happens to be back in town visiting her family for Thanksgiving, also gets thrown into the case and the fact that she blames sloppy police work on the part of Lena Adams to be the cause of her husband's death several years ago only complicates matters further.    Because of her personal vendetta against Lena, Sara  also calls in Will Trent, a special agent from Atlanta, to work on the  case.  As the story develops, another murder takes place, additional characters (and potential suspects) are introduced and the inevitable sexual tension develops between Sara and Will.  As the details of the crime are unraveled, the reader is also educated about the egregious practices of a particular segment of corporate America.

    Although I enjoyed the small town setting of Grant County and the attention that Slaughter paid to forensic details, I nonetheless found various aspects of the storyline to be troubling.   From the very beginning, Sara Linton's involvement in the case appeared to be a bit of a reach - I found it hard to believe that she would be allowed to perform autopsies in a jurisdiction in which she was no longer employed.     An action sequence  late in the book that involves Sara and another character turned into a literal cliffhanger and I found myself saying, "give me a break."   And when the convoluted back story of the crimes is finally revealed through a deathbed confession, the momentum of the story line comes to a grinding halt as  the reader is told rather than shown what happened.    I also became confused regarding the identity of a character who was brought into the action late in the story and realized that I probably needed to have read the previous books in the series to better understand what was going on.  

    Karin Slaughter is a best selling author with a lot of fans, so I was really expecting the story to hold up  for me better than it did.  However,since I would never consider picking up on a multi-season television drama any place except  at the beginning of its run, maybe I need to make a similar rule for myself with regard to mystery series.

       I do  however want to acknowledge the absolutely virtuouso performance of  audiobook narrator Natalie Ross who somehow managed to create a separate aural identity for each of the many characters in this book; she used the most subtle vocal distinctions to differentiate between male and female characters and never missed a beat.  It was hard to believe that there weren't at least three or four separate readers doing the voices.  I will most likely be checking my library's catalog for other audiobooks that she has narrated.

     

        

    

    

Not All Press Is Good Press

by Erin Mitchell

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and share a basic PR/publicity truth: Not all press is good press.

Some of it, in fact, can be a big fat waste of time. Time that could be spent reaching an audience that will actually be interested in—and want to buy—your book. Unfortunately, for too many people and (and around) book publicity, the goal is too often quantity.

I saw a good example of this earlier this week, when Julie Klam tweeted about having just “bombed” on Mancow. For those of you who don’t know…

Julie Klam’s latest book, LOVE AT FIRST BARK, is about people and their dogs. In it, the dogs don’t fight and nobody ends up bloody; quite the opposite.

Mancow is a radio shock jock. He was one of the first; his show morning show premiered in Chicago in 1994. And when I describe him as a shockjock, I’m not exaggerating. This is the guy who got waterboarded on live radio.

Mancow’s show is national because it’s syndicated. It airs all over the country. A lot of people listen to it. Add to this that Mancow’s website has a Featured Books page (books that have been featured on his show), it seems like an ideal book publicity target, right? Right?

No. Categorically and absolutely, no.

I don’t mean to criticize the publicist who booked Julie on Mancow. Fact is, she likely lives in New York. She’s never heard Mancow’s show. Wouldn’t know him if he came up and bit her. All she knew about it is that it’s national radio. And she must have written a helluva pitch to get Julie booked at all so she’s probably quite good at her job.

Still, it was a waste of time—hers, Julie’s, and even Mancow’s. Julie’s book won’t make Mancow’s site, either; the last book that did was in August, the story of defending John Wayne Gacy told by his lawyer. It might be a fantastic book—I have no idea—but those who update the site aren’t going to put LOVE AT FIRST BARK up there next to it. His typical listener is not one who will rush out to buy it either.

And so, back to the point: Not all publicity is good publicity. In this case, I would have rather the energy spent on arranging that interview be devoted to, say, arranging a visit to a library for Julie. That would have resulted in book sales.

So what’s an author to do? First and foremost, be sure that anyone working on your marketing or publicity efforts has read your book. Sounds like a duh, but really…just…don’t assume it. Next, talk with everyone involved about your audiences. Think broadly, but realistically. Just because you’ve written a dark noir doesn’t mean grannies won’t love it. At the same time, certain media outlets—online and radio especially—have very distinct audiences. Spending 37 minutes discussing “use cases” for your book will result in more sales.

You might well not be familiar with every media outlet with which you interview. If you don’t have time to visit each site, be sure to ask for a three-bullet summary before heading into an interview. If you see any flags—red, orange or otherwise—ask more questions. If you’re not convinced that a media opportunity is right for you or your book, it is ok—preferable, even—to decline it.

Even with all that, not every interview is going to be a home run, and not every marketing tactic will demonstrate enormous ROI. But with a bit of attention, you’ll at least minimize the duds.

 

Losing Our Reference Points

Benjamin LeRoy

Hello from 30,000 feet.

Today’s post is one near and dear to my heart about the importance of travel. I’m on my way from Madison to Boston with a brief layover in Washington D.C. Once I land in Boston I’ll hop in a rental car and I’ll go…well, I’m not sure exactly. I don’t always plan things out.

Therein lies some of my friendly travel advice that also doubles up as writing advice. If you’re able to, because you’re traveling by yourself or with a group of like-minded folks, I encourage you to find your adventure by ditching the guidebook.

Sure, there are many wonderful things you can do in the Boston area—walk Paul Revere’s famous ride, visit Fenway, eat really good pizza at Pizzeria Regina in the North End—there are a million things to do, but most of those things have already been done by lots of somebody elses and if your ears and brain are tuned to the frequency, you’ve already vicariously done some of those things. It’s our shared travel experience.

You know when you crack open a book and you meet the protagonist and two pages later some lady shows up and the next three paragraphs are all about her emerald eyes or her fiery red hair and you immediately know that this is all just a set up for the sex scene that’s going to happen somewhere around page 200? And then, when that scene shows up you’re non-plused because it doesn’t live up to the hype and because you already had a feel for it because of every other sex scene you’ve read in your life it’s just kinda meh.

Unfortunately, that’s what happens when you hit the tourist spot. The magic that you expect and hope to find is often replaced by a “oh, wait, so there aren’t laser beams and pots of gold at the feet of the Statue of Liberty?”

A few years ago when I was hanging out with Peff Dog, he told me a story about a piece he’d written for National Georgraphic featuring America’s most famous witch, Lori Cabot. He met up with her in Dogtown—an an abandoned settlement from the 1600s on the north coast of Massachusetts outside of Gloucester—for an interview and to watch her perform ceremonies. There were other people there from Cabot’s group and a photographer from National Geographic. A unique experience to be sure and when the photographs were developed there were streaks of weird light running through many of them that the photographer was unable to explain and that Kodak said was not a result of defective film.

Oh yeah, and the place is reputed to be haunted because, as the story goes, when the residents of Dogtown decided that their proximity to the water made them susceptible to a naval attack they moved to Gloucester, except for the crazy and the infirmed who stayed behind with their dogs that howled in the night and could be heard from miles away.

Well of course I wanted to go to Dogtown immediately. And since Peff hadn’t been there in decades, he was game to go again.

A lot of that legend could be bullshit, but that doesn’t much matter to me. When I went there, I wasn’t sure what to expect, so instead of coasting in tourist mode, all of my senses were heightened because it was new. I heard barking in the wind. I saw things that weren’t there. I felt alive and in control of my own course instead of one 3-d participant in a welcome center brochure.

I’m not a scientist, so I can’t offer you any facts or empirical evidence for this next assertion, but I’m quite convinced that when we, as writers, or musicians, or filmmakers, or any other chronicler of the human condition are in foreign territory and one that may trigger survival instincts—we really see things fresh. Cliches disappear because we lose our reference points. And that’s not a bad thing.

Anyway, the captain of this here plane is giving the shut ‘er down signal, so I’m going to finish this piece right here. After I’ve landed at Logan I’ll go somewhere.

I just don’t know where.

(if there are typos, incomplete thoughts, poor grammar, I'll try to address the next time I get to an internet hotspot)

Trust me, I'm an editor...

Lynne Patrick

I wonder if I really am the pickiest person in the world about the way people use and abuse the English language, or if it just feels that way sometimes.

I almost feel I should apologize – but I don’t think I’m going to – for grinding my teeth at a positive plethora of usages because they’re not just clumsy or lazy, but imprecise, inaccurate, or just plain impossible. (Though I will apologize in advance for the multiplicity of words I’m about to put in upper-case; I’m not shouting at you, really I’m not. It’s just that after my recent blog-related battles with technology, I still haven’t figured out any other way to add emphasis. All advice on how to make Typepad retain bold, underlining or italics gratefully received.)

Needless to say (so why am I saying it?), when I try to think of examples to illustrate my point, my mind goes completely blank. But not for long. All I need to do is grind my teeth...

OK, here goes. How many times have you come across an EMPTY BOTTLE OF WINE or cup of coffee? In print, I mean. In reality, if it’s empty, it’s just a bottle or a cup. It may be a wine bottle or a coffee cup, but it certainly isn’t a bottle of wine or a cup of coffee if the liquid it once contained is gone.

How about HAIR THAT WANTS CUTTING, or a fence that wants a coat of paint? Did you ever hear hair, fence or any non-sentient object actually express a desire of any kind? The hair may be obscuring the vision and therefore be in need of a trim; the fence may be close to collapsing from wet rot and therefore need the protective layer. But the difference in meaning between NEED and WANT is blurred far too often for my comfort.
Here’s another, just as frequently blurred but a little more subtle:

SHE TRIED SHOUTING.
SHE TRIED TO SHOUT.

I can sense blank looks out there. What’s the difference, you ask. What is the woman blathering on about?

Come on, guys. We’re writers, or some of us are. Isn’t the whole point of having access to a variety of parts of speech and grammatical constructions to enable us to express subtle nuances and shades of meaning?

She tried shouting – but nobody heard.

She tried to shout – but her throat was so raw it came out as a croak.

And now we come to my favourite. This is the one I always, always, always flag up when I find it in a manuscript, whatever else I leave as I found it.

WALKING DOWN THE STAIRS, HE OPENED THE DOOR.

In every building I’ve ever visited, this is, quite simply, not physically possible. Nor is Taking a final swallow of beer, he put the glass down. Or Checking in the wall mirror to see his tie was straight, he walked down the path to the car.

For this one I blame creative writing manual style guides. AND THEN is not good style, they proclaim; find another way to say it. I agree that too much AND THEN (or even AND and THEN used separately) is not good style. Repetition of any kind is not good style, unless it’s for effect. Surely the key is to know what counts as too much.

OK, enough ranting. And yes, I’m picky.

But I’d bet serious money that the best writers are pickier.

Pounding the Pavement for Elmo and Miss Piggy

Josh Getzler

The past few months have been like paradise for my son the Muppet fanatic. During the summer the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY opened an exhibit about Jim Henson’s Fantastic World, with films of interviews about the entire oeuvre and an enormous variety of Muppet paraphernalia (including the original Kermit and the Muppet designed for Mayor Bloomberg). In addition, the Muppet movie is coming out in November, and last Friday saw the release of the documentary Being Elmo, about Muppeteer Kevin Clash. Finally, we received word that Frank Oz, who is the man behind Bert, Animal, Yoda, Fozzy Bear and Miss Piggy (among many others) was going to speak at the moving image museum. It’s a good time to appreciate the fuzzy and blue (and orange!).

Now that I’ve experienced some of these events, I’ve seen some interesting things, and I was surprised at how they relate to my writers.

The Muppets movie hasn’t been released yet, though its Facebook page is counting the days (as indeed it did the weeks and months before) with interesting and not-at-all-annoying updates that don’t beat us over the head with breathless anticipation but still keep it in our heads.

Being Elmo is a bit of a different animal (hah hah!). It’s a documentary, for one, rather than a caper, and it debuted at Sundance and other film festivals. It tells the story of Kevin Clash, the incredibly talented—and tall—and African-American!—man who plays Elmo. Clash frequently tells of having people come up to him and saying “I didn’t know that Elmo is black!” to which he responds “Elmo isn’t black—he’s furry and red! I’m black.” (Side note:  A couple of years ago, we had the opportunity to visit Sesame Street’s studio in Astoria and watch the show as it was filmed. Kevin Clash was directing, and it really is amazing and disconcerting to see him act as Elmo, in that voice, finish a scene, tuck the puppet under his arm, and speak like Kevin.)

Again, I’m not sure whether it was simply a fun confluence of events, but on Sunday in the space of two blocks there was a screening of Being Elmo and the Frank Oz speaking event—the number of forty-somethings (and30-somethings, and…) in Kermit t-shirts and Fozzy caps was remarkable.

The Frank Oz event was not simply sold out—it was sold out AND the simulcast in another theater in the museum was equally packed. According to the president of the Jim Henson Legacy foundation, who introduced Oz, part of the reason for that is that he “never does this kind of thing. He never goes to the Star Wars conventions, never goes to ComiCon, never makes the rounds.” After listening for the next two hours, I think I understand better why he doesn’t. He thinks of himself as a director, a performer; not a publicist. He doesn’t feel like he needs to go on tv and be asked, over and over, to “do” Animal or Bert. He tells a great story, and is a serious artist. But the time his eyes lit up and he truly became animated was when a boy not more than eight asked if Oz would sign his Fozzy doll. Oz called him up to the stage and not only told the boy stories but showed him how incredibly difficult it is to stand there with one arm up and act.

Last night, after our weekly Sing-off watch-fest with the kids (Go Afro-blue!), my wife and I turned on Jon Stewart, who announced that his guest was Kevin Clash, who was there promoting Being Elmo. When Clash came on, he simply took over the program. He was comfortable, charming, very funny, and had no problem whatsoever telling the story, in character, of how a stewardess once asked him to tell the passengers on an airplane to take their seats, and how his daughter used to ask Elmo to ask him to buy her stuff. It was dynamite, and would have made me want to see the movie even if I didn’t have all three kids begging for it.

So where’s the lesson? Well, it’s this: I have clients who love the stage, who are willing to travel around the country to speak, who are active on social media and understand how to use it; who are effortlessly witty and charming and instinctively draw the market toward them—the Kevins, as it were. Others are more reluctant, who prefer to have their body of work tell their story, who will appear occasionally, but entirely at their own terms, who can’t stand the idea of guest-blogging or tweeting or posting regularly on Facebook or maintaining a website. The Franks, as it were. They can certainly still reach their market. You just need to look harder for them.

(For the funniest two minutes ever on the Muppet show, click below)

 

And So It Ghost? No.

Jeff Cohen

Here's the problem: As I said a couple of weeks ago, the file on my desktop is now called "Alison 4."

I haven't come up with a title for the fourth Haunted Guesthouse novel yet. That's not terribly unusual, although at 110 pages or so (okay, 114), this is a little longer than I've usually gone without figuring out what the book is going to be called. It's not terribly alarming, but it's starting to get into my head a little.

Titles are significant. Sometimes they actually help me (I can't speak for other authors) define for myself what the book is about. I was very pleased when I decided (much sooner than with this book) on the title OLD HAUNTS for the third Guesthouse book; it clarified the theme of the novel. A lot of people from the past show up in that book, each one sort of haunting one of the series characters (two of whom are ghosts, so that's a serious haunt!). I'm happy with that title.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED worked well enough, but I've never really been happy with it as the first title in this series. It sends the wrong message. If the books were going to be parodies of ZOMBIE stories, that title would work. But they're not; they're lighthearted ghost stories (try figuring out how to do THAT sometime and see where it gets you), so the title is misleading. Worse, about 7 out of 10 people think the book is actually called NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and that's a problem.

By the same token, I've gotten more misreadings of the title SOME LIKE IT HOT-BUTTERED than I ever anticipated (I didn't anticipate any, so you can imagine). People have referred to it--often when the book is sitting there in plain view--as SOME LIKE HOT-BUTTERED POPCORN, I LIKE POPCORN, SOME LIKE IT HOT (luckily, you can't copyright a title, so Paramount Pictures wouldn't be after me if I HAD called it that, but do people really think you can just appropriate the name of a famous movie and stick it on your book?), just HOT-BUTTERED POPCORN, and a few variations I can't bring to mind just at the moment. Often, it's SOME LIKE IT HOT-BUTTERED POPCORN. What does that even mean?

AN UNINVITED GHOST was an interesting title. It took a while to form in my head, and when it did, it was referring to the original premise of the book, before I knew who the culprit in the crime was going to be. I got that one, frankly, by just playing with the word "ghost," and seeing if there was something for which it would be a good substitute. Since Alison Kerby runs a guesthouse, "guest" was a natural fit. And the premise was that a ghost she didn't know--not one of the two inhabiting her place--was going to ask for help. So he'd be uninvited, see. It wasn't until later that the title could be seen as referring to another character, so I got to feel really smart without actually doing anything all that clever.

The book I'm writing now, which is due to the publisher around January 1 (so I should be writing that instead of this as we speak) and will be published early in 2013, deals with Alison's somewhat reluctant investigation of her own father's death. While she's always believed he died of natural causes five years ago, some signs are pointing to something more sinister. And that's all I'm going to tell you.

So in addition to the usual pun possibilities--GHOST, SPIRIT, SPECTER, and so on--we have some variations on DAD, FATHER and the like.

So far, no idea has really struck me. When you're actually starting to consider POP GHOST THE WEASEL, you know you've got nothing.

Something will suggest itself. It always does. And perhaps when that happens, I'll have even a clearer vision of the book I'm writing.

Stay tuned.

You know you're getting old when you can remember...

    In just a few weeks, I will be celebrating a milestone birthday that ends in a zero.   If you can remember most of the following, you're probably just as old as I am.

1.    Toys were made out of wood rather than plastic.

2.    You had to get up out of your chair to change the channel on your television; this was not a big deal as programming was available on only seven channels.

3.       You constructed your personal play list by stacking several long playing records on the spindle sticking out of the turntable on your record player; the obvious shortcoming of this method was that you were forced to choose which side of the LP you preferred to listen to.

4.        As a cost saving measure, your parents chose a party line for your home telephone service.  This meant that the family across the street and two houses up could listen in on any of your family's telephone conversations if they so chose.  Conversely, this meant that you could listen in on their conversations too although you never did.  It also meant that you sometimes had to wait for that other family to get off the phone before you could make your own call.

5.    Telehones actually had dials, hence the term "dial tone".

6.    Clothing got hung out to dry on a clothesline that ran from a hook on the back of your house to a pole on the far end of your backyard.   In winter, towels would be reeled back into the house frozen stiff as a board.

7.    Milk, soda and seltzer were delivered directly to the house.  So was bread.

8.    People with coal burning furnaces got delivery of their coal straight into the cellar by means of a metal shoot inserted through the window, making a loud rattling noise.  Basements were "finished," cellars were not.

9.    Pediatricians made house calls.

10.    At the supermarket, nobody asked you to choose  "paper or plastic."

11.    Your Mom brought home "green stamps" from the supermarket which she then glued into little booklets and which she eventually took to the redemption center and cashed in for prizes.

 12.    Window blinds were Venetian rather than mini or vertical.

13.      Roller skates  were made of metal and worn over your shoes; their fit was adjusted by means of a special key.

14.    With late autumn came the intoxicating scent from the piles of burning leaves that lined the curb, usually on the weekends.

15.    Elementary school students were sent home at lunch time where Mom often had a hot meal waiting.  Everybody walked, even when the weather was bad.

16.    Trucks with miniature versions of carnival rides (ferris wheel, merry-go-round, whip) made weekly stops by the neighborhood grocery store and a ride could be had for a dime.

17,    Candy and cigarette vending machines were common fixtures in a variety of locations.  A row of pull rods was situated beneath the display of the items available for purchase, activating a mechanism inside the machine that caused your selection to drop to the metal tray near the bottom of the machine with a satisfying thunk.

18.    A large number of adult women did not know how to drive.

19.    Going to the movies meant seeing a double feature.

20.    Fast food meant making a sandwich.

 The mystery?  

How did I get this old?

A Little Conversation

Robin Agnew

On a rainy afternoon in Ann Arbor, a guy brought a box of books into the store.  Not an unusual occurence, by any means, but this guy a) wanted no money; b) liked Lee Child but said "Does Connelly sell?"; and c) turned out to have owned stores devoted to another media being squeezed by the digitization of the world: music.  As I have trained my children to read actual books, so he has trained his to listen to actual vinyl records.  His children have met some of his favorite recording artists; mine, some of my favorite writers.  

As you can imagine we had plenty to talk about on a quiet afternoon.  The arrogance of the old Borders store's music department which he saw first hand when he was part of a music store across the street; the fact that the month Napster launched, his buinsness declined about 95%; and the idea that younger people feel content should be free.  I did point out that at least folks using the kindle or other tablet are paying for the downloads, which differs from what has happened to the music industry.

We then talked about the now infamous youtube video where the baby is trying to open a book and can't figure out how to flip the pages like you can on an ipad or kindle...I haven't seen the video, but plenty of people have.  

The talk then turned to browsing.  I had recommended a few authors as he mentioned he loved jazz (Peter Robinson, John Harvey) and he said that's what's different from shopping online.  I'm not sure Amazon would turn a Lee Child fan onto Peter Robinson or John Harvey, but i could be wrong.  Anyway his comment was, "It's not the end, it's the journey."  I.e., it's nice to enjoy LOOKING, and discovering what you might never have discovered without browsing.  He said "the end is the same for all of us", but we might as well enjoy getting there.

One of the many things I enjoy about running a physical bookstore is this very kind of interaction.  I love to recommend and discuss books and could do it all day long.  Since Borders closed, I am finding myself enjoying busier days in which to offer more recommendations.  I am enjoying this, since who knows what's next.  I am enjoying the journey.

 

 

 

The Season of the List

By Erin Mitche

Nature abhors a vacuum, but, man, it sure loves a list. Particularly this time of year….to-do lists, gift lists, lists of resolutions, shopping lists, best of 2011 lists…we’re overrun with lists.

But what does this mean for books? I think people who read and buy books are likely more amenable to lists. And readers/purchasers of crime fiction perhaps even more than those who adore other genres. This is based on nothing but a bit of my own non-scientific logic, but it works for the purpose of this post, so let’s go with it.

As List Season gets into full swing, it behooves authors (and publishers and marketers) to be aware of how they can use lists. So here’s a list (Hah! Get it? A list!) of ways to use them effectively.

1. Remember the people who loved your writing this year

No need to send extravagant gifts, but a note of thanks and seasonal greetings won’t go astray as bloggers, reporters, and readers compile their lists. It reminds them of how much they enjoyed your book.

2. Short-lead gift guides are your friends

Don’t bother trying to get into the holiday issue of a glossy monthly magazine now; they finished compiling their gift guides months (yes, literally) ago. That said, daily and weekly magazines, newspapers and online outlets are still looking for fantastic gifts. And what a more fantastic gift than a great story?

3. The best marketing starts with a story and ends with a list

Just like books, marketing that works (um, sells) is all about the story. That said, marketing tactics only work when they’re shored up with lists—media and blogger lists, lists of events, lists of indie bookstores, reader mailing lists. Now would be a good time to evaluate these lists in the context of the lifestyle stage of your book.

4. Quirky lists are made for sharing

You’re making lists of your own…so why not share them? The odder the better, a-la Best Books to Read While Avoiding Insane Family Members on Thanksgiving, Favorite Undiscovered Books, Non-American Books Everyone Should Read, or Best Cozies for Noir Lovers.

5. Social media loves lists most of all

Once upon a time (last March), TIME magazine made a list of 140 “must follow” Twitter feeds. I thought it was a dumb list, and so I made my own in answer to it. This list has been consistently—even months later—a huge traffic draw on my blog, so much so that I’m planning to update it in the new year. My point here is that any list that has a clear tie to Twitter or Facebook will get traffic—thereby raising your visibility.

So there you have it. If you’re not all listed out yet, Lists of Bests has a bunch of book-related lists that I’ve spent more time than I care to admit browsing. It’s fun.

 

Staring Ugly Right Between Its Ugly Eyes

Benjamin LeRoy

I don’t believe in absolute evil.

That becomes an obstacle when I sit down to go through the queries I receive. Invariably, there will be a few pitches that describe serial killers from central casting who kill just to be evil and are evil just so they can kill. I don’t even finish these letters most of the time. I head to the ol’ typewriter and bang out one of these:

Dear SoandThis,

Thank you for thinking of us. Best of lucking finding a home for your novel.

Sincerely,

PublisherGuy

The problem with “evil” characters is that they often feel cut from cardboard, and I don’t learn much of anything from one dimensional diagrams of 3-D objects. I read and publish because I’m trying to better understand the human condition. I am constantly in search of answers to why we’re all here and what we’re supposed to do with the precious few years we’ve got. My understanding of bad guys shouldn’t be limited to regurgitated morality tales featuring Snidely Whiplash from the old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons. Yet, there it is, in my inbox, like clockwork.  

Why?

Is it because the author’s understanding of good and evil is cartoonish in its complexity? Is it because the author is cheating on the whole “show vs. tell” thing? Is it because of the misguided notion that a reader needs the character dynamics unequivocally clear to make sure they don’t mistakenly clap when the good guy gets knocked on his ass?

If the good guy is anything like us—he can learn a lot from getting knocked on his ass. In fact, we should clap when he gets knocked on his ass, it gives him a chance to get up, to overcome or to die trying. The dramatic tension in books, as in life, is in the question of will we make it?

I’ve met people who have been accused and convicted of pretty much all the crimes I know. From battery to drug trafficking to embezzlement to murder. I wouldn’t lie to you and say that I’d invite all of them over to my house for a sleepover or anything, but I can also tell you that those people have told me stories that have changed my understanding of the world, have made me laugh, have made me see them as more than chess pieces from newspaper headlines. I make no apologies for the ugly actions of others and ultimately, if the universe works like I think it works, they’ll be held to account for their actions. Without fail, they’ve all been knocked on their ass, and they’ve all had to ask themselves the question—can I get up?

We are complex characters—as authors, as readers, as sons and daughters, as husbands and wives. Recognize that when you look in the mirror. Understand that when you hold hands with the one you love. Be mindful of it when you sit down to write your book.

You deserve it. So do your readers.

Love,

PublisherGuy

There's always one...

Lynne Patrick

The mighty Amazon was in the news earlier this week. OK, when is it ever not, but not usually in this way! It was because their eBook edition of the new Terry Pratchett was absolutely littered with errors, to the extent that readers were too busy looking for the next one to focus on the story, and complaints poured in by the hundred. They’ve issued a corrected version, but there’s a sense of arms twisted up backs: almost a sense of ‘what’s all the fuss about? Why does it matter’.

Trust me, it matters. It’s like the tiny smear at the top of the newly polished window. Or the thin patch at the bottom of the door frame where the paint had nearly run out. Or the patch of floor which didn’t catch the light, and the crumbs blended into the pattern of the carpet. There’s always someone at hand to look smug and announce, ‘You missed a bit.’?

Mostly you’d hardly notice the missing comma on page 159, or the spelling error in the middle of a big action scene. Mostly they don’t matter much; they don’t change the meaning, don’t even affect the pace or rhythm. Mostly it’s only people like me who even see them. Call me picky if you like. I really wish I didn’t. Mostly.

I don’t see them in my own writing. I wish. When the words are mine, I’m as blind to the minor glitches (and some of the major ones) as the next person. You’ll probably spot half a dozen in this post. That’s why publishers employ copy-editors and proofreaders; the most meticulous of authors simply doesn’t see every single mistake, and the computer’s spell-check has limited value. I’m working with an author at the moment who apologizes profusely for every tiny glitch and vows to make sure there are none in the next batch of work, but she always misses two or three. I keep telling her not to beat herself up; it happens.

But sometimes it gets out of hand. Like Amazon’s eBook of the new Terry Pratchett.
My scant experience of eBook production tells me that proofreading is by a long stretch the most expensive part of the process, probably because to do the job properly you need to involve real people who recognize the errors and take time to pick them up – not a guy on a computer who feeds in a hundred edited manuscripts a day. And apparently, the process of converting to eBook format actually creates errors where there were none before.

There’s a popular impression that cost-cutting measures publishers mean they simply don’t bother with proofreading any more. If that were entirely true, there’d be a whole lot more errors, but the Amazon blooper does seem to suggest it’s not done as routinely or as meticulously as it used to be. Which is a pity.

I know I’m pickier than most. It’s probably because it’s my job to notice these things. But before I’m showered with protests, try this:

What’s the difference between a CAUSAL relationship and a CASUAL relationship?
Sometimes it does matter.

Missing a week

Josh Getzler

 

It finally happened. The combination of (endless) Jewish holidays, the catch-up at work from missing lots of time, a nasty boomerang version of the Bouchercon Plague (anyone who was in St. Louis knows what I'm talking about, cough, sneeze, hack), and losing the wretched 15 minutes in the morning because of early bus for the girls has finally caught up with me. It's 4:45 PM, and I'm not going to make it this week. I just can't bring myself to write a half-assed recap of the NY Times on Amazon. Would rather just say sorry and turn the page.

Page turns. Better material next time. Have a good rest of the week.

Well Deserved Kudos (Updated a tiny bit)

Jeff Cohen

I've got to tell you about my friend Linda.

I first met Linda six years ago, but I've known her much longer than that. So have you. 

This is not me showing off that I have a friend who is a famous person. If you look hard enough, everybody is in one way or another connected to someone who has achieved some notoriety. Imagine all those people walking around with ties to Kevin Bacon. No. This is not about that. Rather, it falls into the category of "Overdue Appreciation Expressed." 

I know it's been six years since I met Linda because it was the book AS DOG IS MY WITNESS that preciptated the meeting, and that came out six years ago. I'd decided to contact Linda to ask if she's be interested in reading the book, then in ARC form, to possibly contribute a blurb which the publisher and I could then milk for all its publicity value.

That was an uncharacteristically bold request for me at the time. I've since gotten bolder because I've discovered that those who are timid are generally well thought of when they're thought of at all, but not really all that successful in getting their agendas met. I was 48 years old at the time, and felt that waiting for an agenda was probably not the best tactic if I wanted to make a living as a novelist.

While I was a fan of her work--I owned her memoir AND SO IT GOES (which I must get autographed one of these days; thanks for reminding me), and had just bought her later memoir/food book TAKE BIG BITES, and of course knew her from her television work (including an unfairly forgotten program called OUR WORLD which deserved more viewers)--I was really moved to contact Linda because my wife, who is not easy to impress, had mentioned her name when I asked whose blurb would impress her on a book.

Linda had spent at that time 14 years as writer, producer and presenter of NICK NEWS, the only network television program bringing the news of serious issues to the most important demographic there can be--the people who will inherit the mess our generation has made of this world. It is a huge task, and one I can't imagine being done more deftly than the way Linda does it. She doesn't ever talk down to children (she says she never talks down to adults either) and she doesn't shy away from topics kids are not used to considering--HIV/AIDS, war, terrorism, discrimination.

It was fairly easy to find an email address for Linda, which told me something about her. She's not afraid to talk to people. I crafted a very careful email, told her about the book, suggested it might be amusing, and held my breath as I hit "Send".

Within an hour, there was an email. Not from an assistant or a publicist; from Linda. She had found the letter amusing, and agreed to take a look at the book. Long story not as short as I should have made it, she liked the book, bought the other two Aaron Tucker novels on her own, and sent a blurb that I still read when I'm having a bad day. Then she sent an email asking me to come visit her at her Lucky Duck Productions company office in New York.

So that's when we met. And she turned out to be charming, engaging, warm, and interested. We sat and chatted for a while before she asked, "Okay, what do you want? Everybody who comes here has something to ask about. What's yours?"

I told her: One of the things Linda had commented on in DOG was the portrayal of Aspgerger's Syndrome, a "mild" form of autism. I used that as an opening. "I'm here because there must be an episode of NICK NEWS that tells the viewers why that kid in their class acts differently from everyone else," I said.

And so, a year or so later, there was. It was done beautifully, intelligently, honestly and deftly, much as I expected it would be. I'm not alone in my admiration for that segment: It won an Emmy award in 2007. (And no, I had no hand in it at all.)

We've met only a few times since then, but we do email fairly frequently about other things. Linda is interested in how mystery writers work--turns out she loves the genre--and we talk about that. My son, who in the interest of full disclosure has Asperger's Syndrome, spent two summers interning at Lucky Duck, and gained a great deal of much-needed confidence and experience in his chosen field, as well as an associate producer credit on a show he pitched called "Webstars". 

Last Thursday, Linda was honored at the Paley Center for Media in New York City commemorating 20 years of NICK NEWS and her amazing career (she became a network journalist when that was anything but the norm for women, and did it better than most anyone before or since). She was kind enough to extend an invitation to the event to my entire family. Only my daughter, who is a very active college sophomore, couldn't make it.

It was wonderful to see her again, and an honor to be among a relatively small group of people (I'm bad at estimating crowds, so I'll venture no guess) who were invited. And she displayed a capacity to make every person there seem like THE ONE she was hoping would show up. It is a great talent, and one that is elusive and sincere at the same time. We chatted a few minutes, I reminded her that my last book had a character named after her, and she said she was taking it with her on vacation, and would read it soon. (So you're on notice, Linda!)

(It was also a treat to see my son greeted by so many of the people he'd met at Lucky Duck, who seemed genuinely happy to see him. For the parent of a young man with AS, that's a real misty-eyed kind of thing; it doesn't happen a lot.)

It was truly something to be there for the event, and has been even more to get to know this remarkable woman. I'm glad I decided to be bold six years ago. No, I haven't become a household name, but I've made a very good friend. 

That's better.

Back on track

    It's been more than a year now that I have been blogging on Dead Guy and as I read or listen to more and more crime fiction, I'm starting to figure out a little more about the kind of books in this genre that I'm attracted to:

1.    While it's not a requirement, I'm definitely developing a prediliction for stories featuring a female law enforcement officer and especially those stories that focus on the challenges of being the ony woman in the department .   Maybe because I'm a librarian working in a female dominated profession, I get some sort of  vicarious pleasure from reading about an overwhelmingly male work environment.

2.    I enjoy stories that are set in small towns in geographically unfamiliar locales; aside from satisfying a certain element of voyeurism that comes from peeking in on the lives of people with a different lifestyle, I am also  more easily able to accept the descriptive details of place and character development because I am otherwise unfamiliar with them. 

3.    A certain amount of sexual tension between the characters is always fun but I have enough of an imagination that I don't need to have every physical  detail  of their relationship spelled out for me.

4.    The plot has to be believable and without contrivances.  The author loses me at the point in a plot where I find myself saying out loud, "oh, give me a break."  Unfortunately - and especially when sampling an author who is new to me - a lot of time can be invested in reading a book, only to be disappointed at the end because  the plot plays out  in a way that is so unconvincing.

5.    I have to be able to keep all the characters straight.  (Can you imagine what it would have been  like if Tolstoy had decided to write a mystery series? )

6.    I neither want nor need extremely graphic descriptions of killings or crime scenes.  I understand that there may be blood and guts, but I don't need to feel like I'm standing in the middle of it.

7.    In spite of what I  just said in point #6, I  really enjoy plot elements that  get into  descriptions of  the crime scene forensics, even including autopsies.

8.    Characters have to come across as real people who I might be comfortable hanging around with.   They should not be so attractive, brilliant or otherwise gifted that I have an inferiority complex by the time I have finished the book.

9.    Psycopaths and serial killers are really scary - I'm much more interested in reading about a criminal who is more or less an ordinary person until he or she somehow gets mixed up  with something bad.

        Breaking Silence, by Linda Castillo, an audiobook that I recently listened to, fits pretty well into the profile I've just described.   Kate Burkholder, a female police chief, is investigating the possible murder of three members of an Amish family and must work  on the investigation with a state law enforcement agent with whom she had previously been romantically involved.  The writing was good, the characters came across as real people and the story was well paced.  The book was number 3 in a series and while some references were made to events from the earlier two novels, I never felt as if I were coming in in the middle of things or that there were significant gaps in my understanding of who the characters were.   Castillo has definitely made my list of authors to look out for.

 

A Personal Fave

Robin Agnew

Everyone has favorite books from their past, books that hold you in their thrall long after you've closed the covers.  One of my favorite mysteries of all time is The Rembrandt Panel by Oliver Banks (1980).  I had remembered that my mom gave it to me when I was 12 or so, but I see I was actually 22.  I was sitting with my mom in a waiting room recently, and I showed it to her - she had totally forgotten it.

When I first read it, I was still in college, and Mom had given me the book for Christmas.  I spent that Christmas happily glued to the book. As I was growing up, my mother was a docent at the Art Institute of Chicago, and our household was an art loving one. My sister and I grew up drawing every minute (this does have a point).  The Rembrandt Panel, needless to say, is an art mystery.  There aren't too many, and not very many of them are even that great, but this one, written by an art historian, really sparkles.

As I re-read it recently, I found it combines some of the things I like most about contemporay mysteries - the combination of the gritty (two quite brutal murders take place) with the quotidian; the author's concern with the aftermath of the crime; something very specific to hang the story on; and a vivid local setting (in this case, Boston).  As a reader, you know who the killer is throughout the book, the mystery part is following the main characters as they decipher the clues leading to a missing Rembrandt, using only the frame as a reference.

The main characters - an Art Detective and a gallery assistant - are a little corny, but it doesn't really matter because Banks is such a good, natural storyteller and because his knowledge of art was obviously encyclopedic.  There's a little lesson early on on the proper way to really look at a painting - I remember going to the Met once with my mother, both of us practically in tears after walking through a room of Rembrandt portraits - and reading that passage helped me understand why.

Working now as a book dealer I also see some similarities between the gallery described in the book - something of a hodge podge, with unexpected treasures, kind of a mess - and our bookstore.  Obviously as a 22 year old I didn't foresee my future as a bookseller (I thought I would be an artist!) but it resonates for me now, adding even more to my enjoyment of the book.

Like many books held in youth to be great, this one, looking back, does have a few apparent flaws, but the story and the art details hold up really well.  As a present day book dealer, however, I can tell you that if you're looking for this book the 80's in general are a teeny bit of a black hole, with lots of forgotten authors (kind of like some of the terrific American woman writers of the 40's and 50's). However, I'm sure there are copies available on ABE books.

My own copy came back to me.  When we first opened the store, some of our used stock came from my personal collection (my Rex Stouts!) and one of those books was my copy of The Rembrandt Panel.  I always knew who had bought it - and I still remember the pang I felt when selling it to her - but when this customer died years later and her book collection turned up at the local Kiwanis sale, my husband found my old copy.  I'm happy to say it now sits in mylar protected glory on the shelves of my personal library.  If you should come across it, snap it up.  There's a second book (Banks only wrote two), The Caraveggio Obsession,  which is almost as good.  But I never liked Caraveggio as much as Rembrandt...

 

 

The Importance of Covers

by Erin Mitchell

Books are about words and our world is all digital now so covers don’t matter as much as they used to, right?

Nope. Wrong. Horribly and completely wrong.

Yes, books are about the words, the story. Of course they are. But storytelling is a visual medium—whether those visuals are on a screen or in our imaginations—and as such, a book cover is hugely important in giving people a feel for your book…and thereby encouraging readers to buy and read it.

The covers of the books I read tend to fall into three categories: images of people (usually female), abstract images, and nature/landscape images. I don’t know anything about graphic design, but I do know when a cover speaks to me. And when it speaks to readers, it tends to have an enormous impact as a valuable marketing asset.

Three covers that have struck a strong chord with me this year also belong to three of my favorite books. Accident? I doubt it. Here they are:

James Lee Burke has described FEAST DAY OF FOOLS as his finest work to date. I’m still awfully partial to JOLIE BLON’S BOUNCE, but this one is among his best by any measure. The cover is a perfect example of an abstract image that is tied to the story, recalling the medieval tradition upon which the title is based. If you asked me my least favorite color, orange would probably head the list, but it works here. Makes the book stand out. It’s also simple enough that it works in various sizes.

 

Everyone I’ve talked to about the cover of Megan Abbott’s THE END OF EVERYTHING loves the cover. In addition to being a striking image (of a girl…see?), it also uses an unusual color palette. This cover also contains a hidden meaning for readers, one you won’t know until you finish the book.

 

There would have been a certain logic in using an image of a cypress tree for the cover of Michael Koryta’s THE CYPRESS HOUSE. Some of them are quite interesting visually. But I’m glad they didn’t because this image captures several elements of the story, and like those above, does so in a striking color palette and is an image that works in just about any marketing context.

I have no idea what process a graphic designer undertakes when creating a cover, nor why sometimes they’re a home run and others they just fall a bit flat. I’ve heard some authors talk about objecting to a publisher’s first crack at a cover, and I can understand why you might—indeed, you should object if the cover doesn’t look or feel right. Practically speaking, when you get the cover, it makes sense to me that you would show it to people you trust and also play with it some. Resize it….wrap a block of text around it…print it and bring it to a bookstore to see whether it looks right on the shelf.

And if it doesn’t work, by all means explain to the appropriate powers—your agent or publisher or publicist or all of the above—why you think it’s not right and how it could be improved. Because it matters.

 

Benjamin LeRoy

I have tried starting this piece a half-dozen times since Sunday morning.

My original intention was to write a about ebook pricing and to be done before the first pitch of the Milwaukee Brewers game against the St. Louis Cardinals. I had a target. I had ammo. I had an itchy trigger finger and a bad disposition.

It also turns out that I didn’t have the whole story. So I read every single article on the internet about ebook pricing, including all of the hostile exchanges on messageboards and comment threads.

Before I go any further, it’s probably worth pointing out some personal history on the subject of ebooks. A history, I should note, that is in no way flattering and that might suggest you take anything I have to say on the matter with a grain of salt.

A few years ago Publishers Weekly profiled me as part of a series they were doing about 50 People Under 40 in the publishing industry. Here is the first line of that article—

“Publisher Ben LeRoy calls himself a “traditionalist,” insisting he'll never read an e-book…”

Whether or not it appeared in the article, during the interview I confidently said ebooks would someday be a part of the publishing landscape, sure, but not in any meaningful way and even then, not for a long, long, long time. I’d be dead and buried in the hard Wisconsin dirt before I gave up paper. And I wasn’t the only one.

And I meant it. Goddamn, did I ever mean it.

A book is bent pages. It’s that smell. It’s a cover to examine in the hopes of finding a clue to what will be inside.

Just seeing a book, even in its most generic form—on a library shelf, on my parents’ coffee table, in a reader’s hands on a crosstown bus—fills me, on an instinctual level, with incredible amounts of curiosity. I am excited about the possibilities of what could be inside, imaging, like I do, that some grizzled author on a distant shore has put an essential piece of him/herself into a bottle, and has, with the strength of Atlas, heaved the glass into the ocean. This is our rendezvous. The answers to the universe are between the covers.

If, at this point, you’d like to accuse me of being a touch dramatic about these matters, I’ll accept your charges. I will not apologize. I will drink the Hemlock. I will not deny books three times before the rooster crows.

Even if the whole of a book is so much more than paper and ink—the paper and the ink are, no doubt, an essential marrow. Right?

That Publishers Weekly interview was done in early 2008. By mid-2009 I’d left Bleak House Books to start Tyrus Books, where we made it a part of our plan to simultaneously release paper and electronic books for all of our titles. Sure, I wasn't reading ebooks, but I wasn’t so blind that I couldn’t see there was a market, and maybe that market was growing faster than I had anticipated.

It wasn’t until this spring that I got around to purchasing an e-reader, mostly justifying it to myself as a necessary component of quality control. And I did so begrudgingly. A child choking down asparagus because it was good for me.

After a week or two of using the device—storing submissions, proofreading forthcoming Tyrus titles, reading books I hadn’t read in years—I understood that things I was sure I knew, were actually different, and that most of everything I’d confessed to Publishers Weekly, was a bunch of bullshit. What I loved about books wasn’t actually missing. The musicality of the words and the connectivity of the human experience were all right there in battery operated glory.

Ben LeRoy, traditionalist was dead. Mea Culpa and all of that.

Now that I’ve come around, evolved, whatever, I think it important that in the embracing of exciting new technologies that make it faster, easier, and cheaper to produce books, we don’t lose the essence of what has always made books special.

I believe in the power and necessity of a skilled editor to make a book as tight as it can be. I think written art needs to be presented in as visually appealing a manner as art art. I know I have an over-invested interest in promoting and upholding the sacredness of books, but I always have. As a reader. As a writer.

I don’t know how pricing is going to shake out, and I’ve already given ample reasoning for why I should not make proclamations about the future, but price points of $.99 or $2.99 seem absurdly low to me. Perhaps it’s oversentimentality, but I don’t think books should be competing with lottery tickets or a Snickers as impulse items.

The only way I can figure it, for books to be sustainable at $.99 or $2.99 would be to cut back on the costs associated with producing them. Yes, printing and paper are gone, but editing and design should not follow. They are necessary. So is promotion. And most importantly—authors should get paid for the work they produce.

I know one of the current arguments is that books at a $2.99 price point make up, in volume, what they miss in per unit revenue. I am skeptical of magic bullets and this is no exception. But I’ll bite my tongue this time around and spend my time collecting bottles on the shore, doing what I can to get them to the market.

So what do you actually DO?

Lynne Patrick

It’s a question I get asked from time to time, if not more frequently. Actually, yes, more frequently. Most recently a few days ago, in, of all places, the bank. I was doing some business which entailed filling in forms (doesn’t everything that happens in banks?) and they needed to know my job. Freelance editor, said I. Cue pricked up ears. Really? How interesting, said the man in the suit. What does that mean? What do you actually DO?

Makes you think, doesn’t it? What does an editor actually DO? OK, for the uninitiated, here’s what this editor actually does. I’ll try to find something of interest to the initiated next time.

When I’m working for a publisher, what I would like to think I do is simple: I aim to make sure the author I’m working with has written the book s/he thought s/he had written in the first place. I try to pick up little holes in the plot, spot the occasional factual error, smooth out the odd bumpy sentence, make sure the protagonist’s eyes don’t change colour halfway through – the kind of thing you just don’t see when the whole thing is crammed into your head and it’s hard to tell what’s on the page from what’s in your mind. It’s a rare author who doesn’t appreciate the need for this process.

A downside is that I find myself unable to switch off editing mode when I’m reading for pleasure. The other day I noticed a highly implausible description of a rugby forward and a historical inaccuracy in the first few pages – which, of course, made me start wondering what other bloopers lay ahead, and kind of took the gloss off the book. But that’s by the way.

Occasionally there’s more to it than smoothing out the bumps. Sometimes, for reasons I kind of understand (though I wouldn’t say I like it), having been on the sharp end of book marketing myself, a publisher takes on an author who needs, ahem, a little more support. Celebrities are usually involved. I had to smile when I read the ubiquitous Katie Price’s take on her novels; apparently she has quite a lot of input to the plot.

Nuff said, I think. Except, for the record, I have never edited a book by Katie Price.
I understand why it happens; publishing is a business, and businesses have to stay in profit in order to exist. What I don’t understand, in these days of college courses leading to creative writing qualifications available on every corner, is that there are still people around who think this kind of support is also the right of the rookie writer: that someone will be there to put in the missing commas and apostrophes and take out the redundant ones, correct the spelling and ensure the grammar makes sense. Or put another way, to wield the tools of the trade on his/her behalf.

If that was ever the case, it was in days long past. The teams of copy-editors exist only in the untutored writers’ imaginations. Trust me, that is not what an editor actually does.

Or not unless there’s a healthy fee attached, from a publisher who claims a good reason for requiring it.

Telling Stories

Josh Getzler

When I was 13 I spent a month at a writing program at St. Mary’s College in Maryland. I had been at a school through seventh grade that did not emphasize writing (my mother just snorted when she read that); so while I was a rabid reader, and kind of an instinctive writer, I didn’t have experience at putting together anything longer than a thank-you note.

I remember distinctly the first class I had at St. Mary’s, sitting around in a circle with seven or eight other young teenagers, holding a pad and a pen and…waiting. Our teacher, whose name is lost to me, was a young guy with long hair and a beard and a very gentle voice. His first lesson, in its simplicity and wisdom, changed my life.

“You all tell stories to your friends, your parents, your teachers, right?” he began. We all nodded. “Well, when you want to write a story, pretend that you’re at the kitchen table or the lunchroom at school, and tell your story the same way. You’re just writing it down, rather than speaking it. But the idea is the same—if you want your friends to be interested in your story in the lunchroom, you need to be quick, you can’t be repetitive, you need to be interesting and entertaining. It’s not different when you write a story. You don’t need to worry about using big fancy words or unusual style. Just tell your story.”

Simple, right? Even tautological. If you want to tell a story…tell a story! (And this doesn’t mean Don’t write well, or Don’t choose your words carefully. Not at all. It just means that you need to keep the reader interested in what happens. One of the great tricks, in fact, is to write such interesting stories that the writing pyrotechnics are rendered subtle.)

I spent a great deal of the next ten years trying to put those tools into practice, whether it was through writing articles for the high school or college newspapers, exploratory short stories for assorted courses, or a long novel still sitting in the 10MB hard drive of my first Mac. Or a blog.

It’s now 2011. I get 20 queries a day from authors who have spent years writing their novels. But the difference between the ones who achieve representation and the chance of success and those who don’t, is that the former pass the lunchroom test, while the latter don’t. (OK fine, so sometimes a writer comes along who is SUCH a talented wordsmith that he or she can get away with fancy language and obscure structure. But not often, and even those don’t always succeed without a strong enough story to drive the plot and prop up the writing.) Often, I hear editors and agents and authors talking about writing a prologue with a particularly action-filled scene as a kind of false beginning before the “real book starts.” They’re saying what that teacher was saying in Maryland that day in 1981. Be engaging off the bat and reel ‘em in. Make them put down their tunafish sandwich and hang on your words.

The impetus for this column is that my son came home from school the other day and told me that his seventh grade language and literature teacher had allowed him to spend the Free Writing class time working on a story for the school literary magazine. He’d spent several weeks over the summer attending a wonderful, empowering writing program for children called Writopia, where tweens and teens sat around with laptops writing stories and workshopping them with supervision from young, smart teachers. The kids had to read their work out loud to their teachers and peers to determine how interesting they were. I’d talk to him after he’d come home (when I could pry him away from Youtube), and he’d describe their classes. And as I heard him recount it, it was clear that introductory writing now is much the same as it was in 1981. He’d learned the lunchroom lesson.

But this was the first story he’d written away from Writopia, where he’d used the tools he’d learned over the summer, put them together and actually finished. Thirty years after St. Mary’s, I was looking at myself, and it was thrilling.

“What’s it called?”

He looked at me with intense pride:

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and Marshmallow the Dog: An epic novella.”

 

A Bunch of Characters

Jeff Cohen

The file on my desktop is currently named "Alison 4."

Before I have a title for my book, before I have the plot points all in place and can start writing, before I even know who I'm going to bump off, I think of the story in terms of its main character. In my files on the hard drive, where I still have all the books I've ever written just in case I have to refer back to something, the folders are named "Aaron," "Elliot" and "Alison" (along with a few names you haven't met yet). 

To me, the character IS the book, no two ways around it. I write mystery novels, and I put quite a bit of work into figuring out who did what to whom and why. I look for places to include plot twists and red herrings. I can misdirect with the best of them. The top 46, anyway. And yeah, you might find a joke or two going on in my pages. You'd better.

But without a character I care about, I won't even type the first word.

I honestly don't care whodunnit most of the time. I have to decide, obviously, because the mystery needs a solution and because you can't write one without at least having an idea of who the culprit will turn out to be. I need to know where to misdirect and what clue to drop where. That's all craft and perspiration.

The inspiration comes from the character. When I started the Aaron Tucker series, it wasn't because I couldn't wait to get down a particular plot point or even that I knew who the murderer in the first book would be, because I didn't (I actually decided from a number of candidates when I wrote that page, the only time I've ever done that). It wasn't because I was dying to introduce the world to the new and fresh idea of an amateur sleuth who gets in everybody's way and solves the crime.

It was because I wanted to write Aaron Tucker. I wanted to get into his head and let him voice the story. It was because Aaron had stuff to say that I thought was amusing, and I wanted to play with him for a while.

The same was true of Elliot Freed, my playmate for the Double Feature series. Elliot came about as a sort of edgier cousin to Aaron, a little more sarcastic (if such a thing is possible) and a little more beaten down by life. He still had something he could cling to for life support--comedy--but Elliot didn't have Aaron's wife and family, the people who gave him a reason to be.

With Alison Kerby in the Haunted Guesthouse series, I found the chance to write in a woman's voice and to see what it would be like to choose an overwhelming lifestyle, even if it had one (or two) unexpected challenges that would crop up after Alison was in too deep to back away. And I wanted to see if I could maintain a sense of humor in a female voice.

The point is: The character drives the story. the character IS the story. If it's all about the puzzle, I could simply list the facts of the case at the beginning of the story and then lay out the solution at the end. All that extra stuff, like emotion and drive and humor and personality, would be extraneous.

I've never been interested in the stories that hinge on some major revelation instead of a character's world view. Give me an interesting person in an average story, and I'm happy. Give me a world-class plot and a dull character, and you'll lose me by page 50.

And interesting is what a character has to be. They don't have to be likable, they don't have to be perfect (please, no--don't make anyone perfect!), they don't have to make all the right choices and they don't always have to be on the right side. But yes, they have to be interesting. They have to be real, and they have to be human. Show the flaws. Show the strengths. Show how they get through life.

Show their character. 

When readers email or meet me and say, "I couldn't figure out who did it, and it was such a surprise," I am very gratified and pleased. But when they say, "I LOVED that character--when s/he did THAT!", then I am as happy as a writer can be. I've introduced you to a friend of mine, and you two hit it off; that's a wonderful feeling.

So right now, Alison 4 is on my desktop. I'm still in the relatively early stages, but it's coming along. Alison is still interesting. 

I hope you'll agree. In... January 2013, I believe. But don't worry. OLD HAUNTS comes in February 2012.

It's got some real characters in it, I'll tell you...

Queen for a Day

      Last week, I ranted about the reality show Toddlers and Tiaras which can be found periodically on The Learning Channel.  By the end of my rant, I came to the conclusion that shows like Toddlers and Tiaras make television worse today than it was a generation ago.  

        But then I remembered Queen for a Day which originated on radio and then was broadcast on NBC from 1956-1960, followed by another four years on ABC.  The premise of this show was to have four contestants briefly describe a life problem  that they were each dealing with, including a description of the  prizes that they hoped to win to make their lives easier.   Most contestants reported predicaments that had to do  either with financial hardship or with  the illness, disability, and/or death of family members.  Jack Bailey, the show's incredibly  glib and smarmy host, interviewed each contestant in a manner that was both patronizing and dismissive.   And while the contestants were mostly middle aged women who, in spite of their best clothes and carefully curled hairdos , exuded an aura of sheer dowdiness, the prizes that were to be awarded each episode were paraded around the stage by a group of scantilly clad young models.

    Using an "applause-o-meter" superinposed on the television screen to measure volume, the members of the studio audience showed their enthusiasm for each contestant by how loudly they clapped.  Camera shots that panned the audience  showed it to be made up of a group of well dressed women who were obviously out with their friends for lunch and an afternoon's entertainment. Even as a kid, I could tell that the scores indicated on the  applause-o-meter  didn't necessarily always correspond to what I perceived to be the loudness of the applause.  In the value system of my youth (and as an adult too ) I thought  that the needs of a sick or disabled child should have trumped just about any other problem a contestant could present and there were many times when I felt the person who was selected as queen was less deserving than some of the other candidates.  I still remember the story told by a mother who was so poor that she could not afford a crib, explaining to Jack that she was forced to  use one of her dresser drawers as a makeshift cradle for her baby.   I also remember watching a special "wheelchair day" episode in which each of the contestants was - you guessed it - dependent on a wheelchair. 

    Each week, when the winner was selected, she was escorted by Bailey to sit on a cheesy looking throne where she was wrapped in an even cheesier looking velvet cape and  simultaniously bestowed with an even yet cheesier looking crown  as a large bouquet of red roses was placed in her lap.  In addition to receiving the specific items she had requested, the winner was  also presented with an array of appliances, kitchen ware and  things like large capacity freezers and sewing machine consoles that the winner might  neither have wanted nor  had room for in her house.  A night on the town or a weekend vacation were also often  included as part of the  winner's package, in spite of the fact that her situation (taking care of someone sick or disabled) might have made it impossible for her to go on these outings, adding an additional layer of both poignancy and cruelty to the proceedings.  And assuming that these prizes were taxed as income, I can only imagine the kind of additional financial calamity that they  brought  down on these luckless women.

    And at the end of the show, no one ever pointed out to the winners that when they woke up the next day, their lives were still going to suck, albeit maybe just a tiny bit less than the day  before.

     When you think about it, Toddlers and Tiaras is really only the retrograde inversion (it's a music term literally meaning backward and upside down) of Queen for a Day.   On both shows, contestants trade their dignity for a chance to win a meaningless title along with money and some merchandise.  Replace middle aged woman competing for sympathy with little girls competing with each other to be judged who is most adorable.   And after winning the title of "grand ultimate supreme," no one points out to the young winners of Toddlers and Tiaras that when they wake up the next day, they too are still going to have lives that suck. 

 At least the winners on Toddlers and Tiaras get to keep their crowns, so maybe telvision isn't really any worse than it was a generation ago.

    For those of you who remain curious, I submit for your viewing pleasure an episode of  Queen for a Day

    I know I've meandered away from the theme of crime fiction, but I promise I'll be back on topic next week.

What's so magical about old Agatha?

Robin Agnew

At Bouchercon last month I attended an early morning panel dicsussion of Agatha Christie  - with fans on the panel as diverse as Val McDermid and Carolyn Hart, there's something magical going on.  (Other authors over the years who have personally cited Agatha as a favorite to me are Jeanne Dams, Barbara D'Amato and Louise Penny). Our store sells new and used books, and as far as used books, our bestselling authors year in and year out are Agatha Christie and Rex Stout.  While there are other acknowledged "Golden Age" mistresses of crime - Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey - Christie is the "big" one, the one that almost everyone reads, from large tattooed black men (a former customer who has sadly completed Agatha's ouevre) to foreign students polishing up their English, to professors, to tweens starting in on "grown up" mystery fiction.

While Marsh, Sayers, Allingham and Tey all have their devotees (and I count myself among them) it's still Christie that's the Big Kahuna.  I've been re-reading her lately, and trying to parse just what it is that makes her books so absolutley charming.  I started reading her first in middle school, and once started, just went ahead and read everything I could get my hands on.  By the time I started high school I was finished with Agatha, and it wasn't until college that I discovered Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers, the former at the suggestion of a favorite history professor.

Here's a few things I came up with, assisted here in some cases by other readers smarter than myself:

Humor.  Re-reading Agatha is a crash course in dry social humor.  Re-reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd recently, one of my favorite bits is the opening breakfast scene with the narrator and his sister, a woman who her brother describes thusly

"The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr. Kipling tells us, is 'Go and find out.'  If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should certainly suggest a mongoose rampant.  One might omit the first part of the motto.  Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly at home."

There's so much in that little scene, and her detailed, yet lightly humorous look at middle and upper class life is echoed today by a writer as different from Christie as Harlan Coben.  His chronicle of life in the suburbs should stand the test of time much like Christie's chronicle of day to day life in her time.

She's Organic.  Barbara D'Amato said this to me years ago, and it took me more years to figure out exactly what she meant.  When I read a book by Elizabeth George back to back with one by Agatha, I finally got what Barb meant.  While George's cleverly interlocked plots and characters are indeed the work of a very gifted writer, you can sometimes see all the work she's put into it.  With Agatha, whatever the effort it may have taken her, it all seems effortless, with each plot development appearing to arise naturally (i.e. organically) from the one before it.  Before you know it, she's got you all twisted up - if only one had as clear a view as Agatha herself!  (Again,  I would cite Harlan Coben as an author excellent at this very same skill).

She makes it look easy.  While this may seem like the same point as above, it's really a quality of her writing - one that appears simple and clear on the surface but has murky depths below.  

She's not really a cozy writer.  Her body count is FAR too high for her to be considered a cozy writer.  In Hallowe'en Party she kills off not one, but two, children.  Few authors today would dare to do that.

She inspires imitations.  Only the great inspire imitations, imitations that can have their own "series" life.  Miss Marple and Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver?  Surely they are related.  The subversiveness of Dorothy Gilman's somewhat elderly Mrs. Pollifax?  Again, she and Miss Marple are surely related to one another.  And her plots have been endlessly copied - just two examples:  Jill McGown's take on Murder at the Vicarage, Murder at the Old Vicarage.   Jo Bannister's take on And Then There Were None, The Lazarus Hotel.  I could go on.  And I won't rub it in by pointing out which of those books are still in print.

She goes down easy.  No matter what, if you're tired, distracted or have a horrible head cold, somehow you can always wrap your mind around an Agatha book.  They never loose their sparkle.  She's  gotten me through many a bout with the flu.

She's frequently deep.  Another book I re-read recently, The Hollow,  contains quite a few thoughtful meditations on the nature of creativitiy.  It's from 1946, about mid-way through her Poirot books, and well worth re-visiting if you haven't lately.

Well, what are you waiting for?  Dive in, there's 60 or so books to be had...

 

 

 

If You Can’t Say Something Nice

Erin Mitchell

Generally speaking, if I’m 20 pages in to a book and I don’t like it, I set it aside. I’ve never felt the need to fling, burn, toss or otherwise abuse a book, but I also think life is too short to read bad books.

Occasionally, though, I’ll like one aspect of a book (say, the story) and despise another (the lead character, for example). Such was the case with a book I read several months ago, and I’ve been struggling with writing a review of it ever since.

I say “struggling” because I’m fairly certain that while this book was not my cup of tea, other readers might enjoy it. I have, in fact, chatted with people on Twitter who loved it. So ultimately, I want to say something productive about the book. I want to share my opinion, yes, but also explain why I felt the way I did.

Too often, I see book reviews on Amazon that are unhelpful. Some are too long or too short. Some are venomous, without providing any helpful information whatsoever. A writer friend had this experience last August—a one-star negative review that proffered absolutely nothing helpful to other potential readers.

This is especially problematic in our Amazonian “purchase by star recommendation” world. If your book is self-published or available primarily via Amazon (read: doesn’t have big publisher marketing dollars behind it) then, yes, the star rating matters. More stars equals more sales, simple as that.

For books that have a strong presence outside Amazon, negative reviews can often have no impact at all on sales. Take The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It did not fare well in the New York Times. In my less-than-humble opinion, it is one of the worst books of this century or last. To me, it had no redeeming qualities—the story was contrived and often confused, the characters were either despicable or boring. And yet more than a few people bought it. Go figure.

So what should you do if you get a negative review? Most of the time, nothing at all. To comment on it or respond to it is only going to draw attention to it. Not every reader loves every book; accept that and move on.

If, however, you are depending on Amazon, there’s no harm asking friends who have read your book to click the “No” button next to “Was this review helpful to you.” In the case above, I had no problem doing so because leaving aside the fact I utterly disagreed with the negative review, it simply was not helpful. Not to anyone. Because it didn’t explain why she didn’t like the book.

Also, if a “review” is posted that is plainly a personal attack rather than an actual review, you can and should click the “Report abuse” link. In cases like this, Amazon will remove personal vitriol.

Just remember: Negative reviews are not necessarily a marketing kiss of death, just as positive ones guarantee nothing. Reviews matter, yes, because they are part and parcel of raising awareness of books, but they are, in the end, but opinion.

Joining the Chorus

Benjamin LeRoy

Last night we all got the news that Apple visionary Steve Jobs died. Before that had come across the wire, I was busy with a piece about the current Occupy Wall Street (and its sympatico cousins) movement. That piece is momentarily suspended so I can address the breaking news.

A confession—I’m not really a Mac guy. I’m not somebody who hangs out at Apple stores or harbors a fetish for the newest gadget that the company produces. On the other hand, I own an iPhone and an iPad, and until a few days ago when the hard drive melted, I used a MacBook for work.

The guy’s impact on our modern life would be hard to overstate.

People like that don’t come along often. Rarer still are those visionaries that do come along, significantly impact the scene, and manage to be half-understood/appreciated in their own time. I think it’s fair to say that Mr. Jobs was one of them.

A few quotes attributed to Jobs have been making the rounds of the internet. I would urge you as aspiring writers, as aspiring humans who would like to leave the world a better place than you found it, to swallow them whole and to make compasses from them.

I say all of that, not from a sensationalized place of group mourning, but because some truths are more universal than others, and Jobs, in a few words, gave clarity to some major truths.

There is nothing to be gained by adding anything to these words (and it’s quite likely I’ve already said too much). I only ask that as you work on your book, as you worry about hot trends or the size of an advance, that you really stop to think about the wisdom behind Mr. Jobs’ words.

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

The Word

Lynne Patrick

There’s a radio game show here in the UK called Just A Minute. A panel of professional wits are challenged to speak for ‘just a minute’ on a variety of subjects, without repetition, deviation and something else I’ve forgotten, and if they commit any of those sins, the other players get to challenge them and take over the subject.

Listening to it the other night started a train of thought, about a phenomenon I’ve noticed quite a few times when I’ve been editing a manuscript.

Actually make that most times.

It’s not something you’d see when you’re reading, largely because if the editor has done his/her job properly, it should have been spotted and dealt with long before the manuscript appears as a book. And the reason the radio show made me think about it is simple – it’s repetition. Of a word. Not the same word every time, obviously; but a single word that appears in the course of a manuscript just a little too often for comfort.

I’m not talking about ‘the’ or ‘and’ or even ‘said’. The Word, as I’ve begun to think of it, is a ‘strong’ word: usually (though not always) a descriptive or qualifying word, and usually (though not always) one which has several meanings or senses depending on the context. And it seems to become attached to all kinds of phrases, as if it got stuck in the author’s mind.

Recent examples are preposterous; soft; dark. I’ve worked on a couple of manuscripts in which the characters did a lot of shrugging. In another the word count dropped noticeably when I took out all the nodding and shaking of heads.

If the authors in question are reading this, they’ll (mostly) know who they are. In each case they were quick to assure me it wasn’t deliberate; in fact they had no idea they’d done it until I flagged it up.

And hands in the air, it’s something I’ve been guilty of myself – which is probably why it’s something I notice in other people’s work. A good friend who is also an editor offered feedback on my last (unpublished) novel, and right there, top of the list of comments in block capitals underlined twice was TAUT. Twenty-three times I used that word: an average of twice every chapter. It described, among other things, silences and atmospheres, the protagonist’s skin texture, a sheet on a hospital bed... it’s been a while and I forget what else, but I’m still embarrassed to think about it.

That’s the trouble with words, though, isn’t it? Writers are urged to choose ‘strong’ words, the kind that carry a lot of meaning in a small package, so there’s no need for lengthy description or explanation – then before you know where you are, one of those strong words has clung like a limpet and attached itself to far too many situations and you just don’t see it. I noticed just the other day, flicking back through a file of short stories in search of something to rework as a way of kickstarting my long-idle Muse, that I’d used ‘echo’ twice in the same paragraph. Not quite as heinous as twenty-three ‘taut’s, but not to be allowed to pass nonetheless.

Some authors tell me this is why they need an editor: to pick up on this kind of thing when their own critical eye has begun to see what’s in their mind, not what’s on the page. Now, that is the kind of author I really enjoy working with.

Schedules

Josh Getzler

I’m all messed up, and it’s all because of scheduling. For such a long time—years, in fact—I’ve been able to wake up very early in the morning, clear my head, get some work done, and then wake the kids. If my alarm went off at 5, I’d be at the computer or Kindle by 5:20 and have an hour before I’d need to get into the shower and start to wake people up and get breakfast started. The kids needed to be out of the house by 7:30, and we had it down to a chaotic ballet.

And I cherished that hour. I could email with European editors or authors, read a real number of queries or MS pages, or dig into an edit and feel like I accomplished something. I could even write a blog post, and get it up on Dead Guy (WiFi willing) before the first sleepy child asked for five more minutes. I’d get to the office and be dealing only with the current day’s crises.

This year, when we got our schedule for the kids, alarm bells went off. We had to leave at 7:15. Disaster! Everything needed to be pushed up 15 minutes, and now the little zombies need to wake up closer to 6:20 than 6:40, and my morning time would be 45 minutes rather than an hour. (As much of a morning person as I am, I have a real aversion to waking up before 5 if at all possible!) I tried to make it work. I tried to be faster. I tried to shave at the office. I tried to read more quickly. It hasn’t worked, and I ultimately gave in. For the last two weeks I’ve woken up at 6 and gotten ready, then tried to make up for lost time at the beginning of the day in the office. But it’s not working. My whole routine is blown. I’m late with the blog, my inbox is cluttered, I’m oddly tired considering that I’ve been getting more sleep. The kids at least are still making their bus.

I know I’ll figure it out and adjust, but it hasn’t happened yet. Guess I’ll post Monday nights now, after Sing-off! Sorry for the non-publishing, kvetchy post. Back to normal (!) next week.

 

The Answer You Give; The Answer You're Thinking

Jeff Cohen

Frequently Asked Questions

 

So tell us about your new book.

 Well, it continues the Double Feature mystery series, and this time, Alison has to deal with a ghostly client who thinks he might have had a hand in a murder, but isn't sure because he's blind. But it's funny. Really.

It's about 6.5x4" and has 304 pages. You didn't even read the cover before this interview, did you?

Did you always want to be a writer?

I started writing when I was a kid, so I guess so. It wasn't until I went to college and worked on the student newspaper that I started realizing you could make a living at this. Sort of.

The fact is, I've always BEEN a writer, because I've been writing since I could hold a pencil without help. Actually, I started out wanting to play second base for the New York Yankees (ANYBODY had to be better than Horace Clarke!), and then to be Superman--or was it the other way around? If I'd known how hard it would be to make tuition payments would I have chosen this job? I'm sorry, what was the question?

Where do you get your ideas?

The Lillian Vernon catalog. You buy three ideas, and the shipping is free! No, seriously, I get ideas when I'm not trying to get ideas--in the shower, waiting to fall asleeep, in the check-out line. The trick is to recognize them when they happen.

How the hell do I know where I get ideas? It's not like I sit down and go, "Okay, it's book idea time!" If I knew where I got ideas, I could get one anytime I wanted.

What's the first thing you wrote?

My first piece of crime fiction was for a course I took as an undergraduate at Rutgers College. The private eye, oddly enough, was named Elliot Freed.

I believe it was "A," on a piece of lined paper in first grade. Followed by "B".

Would you please read my manuscript? I'm sure you could get it published!

Honestly, I'd love to, but I'm under a book deadline myself, and I simply don't have the time.

We just met five minutes ago. Besides, who made me Simon or Schuster? I'm lucky I can get a blog published.

Why does the cover of your book have a big cat on it, when there's almost no cat in the book?

The black cat is supposed to signal that something ominous is going on in the story, and that danger is lurking in even the most innocent-seeming places.

Don't get me started.

Why do you write mysteries?

The genre is such a microcosm of our society, don't you think? I mean, it's so satisfying when the culprit is brought to justice at the end of the book, and the crime itself is a comment on the inhumanity we sometimes exhibit toward each other. I think crime fiction really holds a mirror up to our society.

It's what I can sell. And by the way, why do you sell insurance? Are you implying that I should go get a REAL job?

How do you add comedy to murder?

You really don't. Murder isn't funny. It's the reaction of people to the crime that can be funny. But if you try to create a "funny murder," you're doomed to write a contrived book that screams "laugh at me" instead of a real comedy.

Have the victim slip on a banana peel. That always gets a laugh.

Why aren't your books more popular?

It's a struggle to promote your own work. The publishing company is overworked, and their publicists simply don't have the time or the money to adequately make a stir over every title they put out. For an author on his own, it's very difficult to get noticed, especially in this competitive market and an economic time when people don't have as much money to spend on entertainment as they used to.

Thanks for reminding me how unsuccessful I am, pal. I think I'll go have a quick hemlock for lunch.

Which one of your books is your favorite?

Which one of your children is your favorite? Honestly, I don't have a favorite. They each offer something that I think is unique, and which one you like best will certainly have more bearing on what you like to read, rather than what I think of it. What do you like to read?

As Dog Is My Witness or A Night at the Operation. 

Which one of your books should I buy?

Well, that will depend, again, on what you like to read. You don't have to read any of the series in order. I'm very careful to make sure that someone coming in on any of the books will not need prior knowledge to enjoy it. 

The latest one. So my sales numbers will go up.

Say something funny.

Something funny.

Oh, go away.

A few thoughts about reality shows

    Although I like to think of myself as a person who does not watch reality shows, this is not an entirely a true statement.  When my daughter passed over the threshhold into her teen years, I knew she was going to watch certain programs on TV whether or not I approved of them so, for as long as she would allow me, I watched those shows with her; my underlying philosophy was that  by watching with her I could at least gently put in my own two cents about things that I thought were in poor taste or otherwise found unacceptable.   This is how I came to watch a couple of seasons of MTV's The Real World; I have to confess that I was completely mesmerized  because nobody I knew behaved the way those people did, at least not when they were around me.     Eventually, my daughter stopped watching television with me, but not before I also got a couple of seasons of The Osbournes under my belt and that show pretty much rendered me speechless.  Even as a teen, I was listening mostly to classical music so I didn't  know much about who Ozzie was or why a reality show revolving around him and his family would be so peculiarly fascinating to me.  As they say, truth is stranger than fiction, but middle aged Ozzie and his wife did seem to me to be pretty harmless, even if I could almost never understand a single word that Ozzie was saying.       

So now  here's my confession - I cannot quite explain what it was in a short coming attraction clip that made me start tuning in on a regular basis to the most recent season of Toddlers and Tiaras (gasps of shock and horror)  on The Learning Channel.  This show takes its viewers into the bizarre but apparently thriving world of childhood beautry pageants, each week focusing on the quests of three different mothers to have their little girl crowned as the "ultimate grand supreme."  This is a world where people, many of whom appear to be of relatively modest means, spend thousands of dollars on costumes, hair stylists, fake tans, smile enhancers called "flippers", pageant coaches and  entry fees, not to mention the cost of hotel rooms and  other travel expenses associated with attending a series of pageants.  It is also a world  in which little girls as young as two or three are encouraged to present themselves to the audience in ways that are overtly sexual.  These kids are  being given the message that, not only is it okay for other people to judge them by how they look, but that they are also somehow better than other children because of their appearance and very loosely defined talents.     Yes, it is really revolting, but in spite of myself, I kept coming back for more which got me thinking about why so many people tune in each week to so many different reality shows.

1.    It's easy to feel superior to just about every grownup featured on Toddlers and Tiaras; it's a sad commentary, but I think this is a major reason why people tune in to any of the shows that feature stupid or outrageous behavior.  It is a cheap and easy way for the viewers of these shows to validate their own belief systems without really having to spend much time examining their own belief systems. It's hard not to reflexively feel that you are better than the people you are watching.

2.    Reality shows that focus on a specific geographic locale (many of the people featured on Toddlers and Tiaras were from the midwest or south) give the viewer at least a little of the sense that they are watching a National Geographic special.   When done properly, these shows allow the viewer to feel like amateur anthropologists observing the strange behaviors of an alien culture.  And watching  what goes on at these childhood beauty pageants is  less disturbing than watching documentaries about infanticide or female circumcision.

3.    Watching a reality show is an activity that requires very little brain function.  There was almost no variation in terms of the sequence of events and the way people behaved from episode to episode: mothers forcing little girls to sit or stand still so that they could be coiffed, spray tanned and otherwise made up like showgirls, with one or more of the children crying or throwing a full blown tantrum at some point in the process; camera shots panning the shelves of crowns and prize ribbons on display in a 5 year old's bedroom; commentary from glib pageant promoters.   The money shot of each episode is that moment when one of the mothers  looks straight into the camera and says something so awful that one can only marvel at her complete lack of self awareness, parenting skills and common sense.   On more than one occasion, I felt like picking up the phone and calling social services.  

   So what am I getting at and what is this rant doing on a blog about crime fiction?

    In addition to knowing how to decode words and language, reading a work of fiction requires of the reader that he or she be able to follow a sequence of events that constitutes a narrative, have at least some understanding of human nature, and enough innate curiosity to want to read the book through to its conclusion in order to find out how the story ends.   These same skills are also required of anyone watching a well written dramatic television series, especially a show that is spread out over several seasons like HBO's The Wire.   However, the attraction of reality shows appears to be that viewers can tune in and know exactly what they are going to get before the opening credits have finished rolling - there's never a surprise because these shows are edited to maximize bad behavior and stupidity.    There is no story line, it's just a bunch of stuff happening and absolutely no intellectual input is required on the part of the viewer to be able to follow it.

    The last time I checked, TLC (The Learning Channel) was home, not only to Toddlers and Tiaras, but also to such programs as  19 Kids and Counting, Freaky Eaters, My Strange Addiction, What Not to Wear, Say Yes to the Dress (in both regular and plus sizes), and I Didn't Know I was Pregnant.     

    I think it's time for The Learning Channel to change its name to something else- any suggestions?

    Although the large number of reality shows on television are cause for concern about the general dumbing down of America, this trend is counterbalanced by the large number of well written and challenging dramas that are also available on the tube,  especially on some of the cable channels.

    Television is simultaneously better and worse than it was a generation ago.

            

Report from another Bookselling Front

 

Robin Agnew

I'm a member of IMBA, the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.  We're a loose association of the nearly 50 mystery specific bookstores sprinkled all over the country.  We all benefit by our member list-serv, emma-l, where we can figure out problems and issues that affect all of us.  On emma-l, we hammered out our list of "100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century".  IMBA also provides a list of 5 "Killer Books" every month - books our member booksellers recommend - and we annually present the Dilys Winn Award, given to the book we most enjoyed handselling throughout the year.

IMBA was founded by Barbara Peters, Jim Huang and Tom & Enid Schantz, and it's carried on by those of us who still remain.  Sadly, we recently lost Enid, though she and Tom "retired" from IMBA a few years ago.  I've served in all sorts of capacities - as administrator, as director for a few years, and for a long time as the Dilys award coordinator.  This year the Dilys mantle passes on to Deb Beamer from the Machanicburg Mystery bookshop in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.  Thanks to working with the enthusiastic Deb on last year's Dilys, we've forged a nice e-mail friendship.  I knew she had a big event last weekend, and I asked if she wanted to write it up.  What follows is Deb's account of what looks like a successful and fun book event.

From Deb:

Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop hosted its first mystery conference – Murder As You Like It - on Saturday, September 24, 2011.  The event was for fans of mystery, spy, thriller and horror novels.  An enthusiastic 48 people attended and 16 authors participated on panels and workshops. 

 

Authors included: Cordelia Frances Biddle, Chris Grabenstein, Kathryn Miller Haines, Robin Hathaway, Don Helin, Larry Kerr, Paul Malmont, Valerie Malmont, Alan Orloff, Marta Perry, Dennis Royer, Elena Santangelo, J D Shaw, Mike Silvestri, Maria V. Snyder and David R. Stewart.

 

Chris Grabenstein read a selection from his newest kids’ book The Black Heart Crypt and his John Ceepak book Fun House scheduled for release next year.  One of our bookshop friends interviewed Valerie Malmont and Paul Malmont while Cordelia Frances Biddle ran a writer’s workshop on “Mystery and History.” Mike Silvestri’s writers’ workshop was a “primer on writers’ technical issues and how to get the most for your technological dollar.”

 

Panels covered topics ranging from Keystone State Mysteries (mysteries that take place in Pennsylvania) to historical mysteries.

 

The hit of the conference was Cordelia, Chris and Kathryn doing improv to show how they come up with their stories ideas.

 

Numerous people came up to me after at the close of the conference and said how glad they were that they attended and how much they learned.  The conference was held at a local church and their youth group took care of the food for the event.  The morning fare (coffee, tea, rolls, etc) and the afternoon break (pretzels, cookies, etc.) were provided for a donation.  Lunch was $4 per person.  This allowed us to keep the registration extremely low ($7.50 early and $10.00 late) since lunch was not included and gave registrants the option of not buying the lunch.  Our goal with the registration fee was simply to pay for the church rental which we did.

 

The only slight problem we had was registration.  Registration was supposed to run from 9:00 am until 9:45 am.  We set up the two church rooms the night before and arrived at the church at 8:00 am to finish the registration area … connect the computer to the printer, etc.  However, people started arriving at 8:40 so we had to ask the early birds to have a seat and we would let them know when the registration desk was open.

 

From all reports a good time was had by all … fans and authors.  Now next year…