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

Making sense of place

Lynne Patrick

We did get to Guernsey, for four delicious days. We walked on the cliff path, explored old haunts, found one or two new ones, watched a sunset, walked some more, ate far too many scrumptious things that weren’t at all good for us and came home yesterday feeling relaxed and recharged. I love Guernsey.

Something else I did was indulge in a long catch-up chat with a friend who lives there, and today’s post comes out of that conversation, albeit in an oblique kind of way.

She’s working on a project that relies heavily on her knowledge of Guernsey, which is encyclopaedic and all-enveloping. And talking about it with her made me think about the way so many TV crime dramas rely on evoking the place in which they’re set and the particular characteristics of the people who live there.

It became something of a cliché for British crime writers a decade or so ago: set your series in a beautiful place and selling it for TV serialization will be a doddle.
Midsomer Murders, based in a kind of generic Cotswold village location, is still going strong, even though it hasn’t had much to do with Caroline Graham’s novels since the first series. Wycliffe, set on the stunningly beautiful Cornish coast, pops up regularly on satellite channels, dated by the huge monitors on the computers and the brick-sized mobile phones. I’ve never seen one of W J Burley’s novels even in the library, but he gets a credit on every episode.

And of course there’s Morse and his spinoff Lewis, set among the ancient dreaming spires of Oxford with its conveniently ever-changing population of students and academics.
There’s even a Morse walking tour now, taking in the picturesque city centre locations the cameras lapped up.

I’ll probably be shot down in flames, or possibly sued, for saying this, but I do wonder if the books would have gained the fame and fortune they did without the TV adaptations. Moving pictures on the TV have a way of getting inside your head and making you come back for more, especially when they’re counterpointed by murder and mayhem in the plot.

That said, creating those pictures in words on the page is a talent some authors have in abundance. I’ve just finished reading a mystery set in the Dordogne (south-west France for the benefit of geographically challenged blog-followers), and I really felt as if I was there. And when I extrapolated on that thought, I began to wonder if one reason I can’t get along with Scandinavian crime fiction is that the authors are too damn good at getting it right; they make it feel so grey and depressing that I simply don’t want to know!

I’m conscious that, aside from the above para, I’ve focused on British crime writers and locations here. That’s because all the examples I could think of of novels turned into picturesque TV series happened to be British. And also because I know them better than their American equivalents: certainly not because America lacks beautiful places. Or writers who set crime novels in them; Tony Hillerman is well represented on my bookshelves, and a certain E J Copperman has introduced me to the Jersey Shore, which I plan to visit one of these fine years.

So now we come to the point I’ve been leading to. I may have said this before, so apologies if I’m repeating myself, but what worries me a little about gory crime set in beautiful places is the credibility factor. It was with a sharp intake of breath that I saw that Ann Cleeves, one of my favourite Brit crime writers, had been persuaded to write a fifth Shetland novel. I heard Ann speak about the Shetland Quartet several times, and she always said that crime in general and murder in particular is so rare in the Shetland islands that even four books pushed credibility a little far. And now there’s a fifth. Will there be a sixth, seventh and eighth? Do I hear the rattle of shekels in the counting house? Who said publishing was run by accountants?

Enough for now, lest I use my soapbox as a ladder to climb on my high horse.

The Greatest Thing Over The World

Josh Getzler

Every night, my wife and I record BBC World News and watch during dinner. We find that it’s the only broadcast that actually reports news, rather than hours of political commentary of one stripe or the other.

And every night, after the half hour is over, we look at each other and say “the world is coming to an end.”

Except last night. Last night, there was a long report about Commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut who spent five months living on the International Space Station. While he was there, Commander Hadfield, who is 53 and trim and effortlessly charming, Tweeted about life in Space. He didn’t talk only about the elevated scientific experiments he was performing, but how to eat spinach or brush his teeth in zero gravity. It’s amazing, riveting journalism in 140 character chunks.

Commander Hadfield returned from space last week, but before he did, he performed his piece de resistance—he recorded a music video of himself singing a slightly rewritten version of David Bowie’s 1969 song Space Oddity (Major Tom). Of course in the original, Major Tom loses contact with Ground Control and presumably hurtles off into the abyss. It’s brilliant, but ultimately depressing. In this version, Commander Hadfield sings about strapping into his pod and coming home, his time in space complete and successful. The video has been viewed millions of times now. Even David Bowie himself retweeted it, approvingly.  

What’s remarkable about this video is that it is completely, whole-heartedly positive. Space, in HD, is gorgeous. Stunning. Commander Hadfield is not commenting on President Obama’s troubles or chaos in Syria. He’s just making music, in space, floating in his tin can. It’s brilliantly uplifting. And in this time of war, famine, global warming, tornadoes in the Plains, political and religious strife worldwide, the idea of unbridled joy is even more overwhelmingly rejuvenating. Take a look. And enjoy your day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poZCINzxzrQ

PS--Back to books next week--thanks for the suggestions last week!

I'd Love to Turn... You... On...

Jeff Cohen

A few weeks ago, I asked not for suggestions on topics, but more in the area of feedback on categories that I post about here at DEAD GUY. I asked for said feedback to be posted at the DEAD GUY Facebook page as a clever way of steering loyal (and even disloyal) readers there, and because I do wonder sometimes what those who visit each week are hoping to see here.

What I got, of course, were suggestions for future posts, which were made here and not at the Facebook page. I truly do need to work on my clarity.

Nonetheless. Since one of the few topics suggested more than once was a look at the average day of the fairly average author (as far as I know; I rarely watch other authors during an average day and have no point of reference), I thought I would take a look at that idea today. I truly do want to give readers here what they come here to see... up to a point.

So let's see what the average day (not spent teaching, which is a whole other day) is like, shall we?

7 a.m. (or thereabouts): stumble out of bed vowing to work through the day, go downstairs and look at the overnight emails. This consists mostly of deleting spam. About 1% of the email you get overnight is relevant to your life. This practice is followed by going through a scan of the daily web sites, which includes seeing what Garry Trudeau has thought up today, how things are going in Major League Baseball, who the guest on The Daily Show might be tonight, and whether or not my daughter is available for a Facebook chat. (She comes home in 12 days, but am I counting?)

7:30 (all times approximates, just to save us the trouble): Check the bank statement to see what I've foolishly bought in the past 24 hours. Sometimes I forget. Also a quick check on Chance of a Ghost to see whether I can afford what I've bought in the past 24 hours. Of course, check in on DEAD GUY and the DEAD GUY Facebook page.

7:45: The New York Times. Yes, an actual tree-killing newspaper. Delivered to my home, every day. This is not a page-by-page read because it gets too depressing or infuriating depending on the day. Also because a full read would take me into somewhere around noon. Scan headlines, read articles that interest. Definitely check sports (during baseball season), the Arts (all the time) and the business section on Mondays (media and publishing). 

8:15: The New York Times crossword puzzle. Do not try to contact me then. And as the week goes on, the time spent on it will only increase. After finishing, check with Rex Parker to see whether he and I agree on the puzzle (we usually don't, because he is infinitely better at it than I am).

Let's say 8:45: Exercise with the Wii. This is considerably more arduous than you think, so wipe that giggle out of your mouth. I use a fairly strenuous program, especially for someone as massively uninterested in exercise as I am. Also spend this time listening to music, because listening to a computer-generated "trainer" tell you what to do is an intolerable activity for anyone with a functioning neurological system.

9:45: Shower (believe me, you want me to) and change clothes.

10:15: Respond to emails, particularly business related ones. If there's a newspaper assignment, make phone calls. If not, don't.

10:30: Rouse son from sleep. This is not time-consuming (for me).

10:31: Usually there's some teaching stuff to do, like grading papers or preparing for this week's classes. If not, think about writing. Don't write.

Noon: Lunch. Usually spent while flipping around channels to see if TCM has a really weird "classic" movie on or if MLB Network is counting down the 9 best lefthanded relievers whose names begin with an "L." (I hold out hope for Sparky Lyle.)

12:30 p.m.: Give serious consideration to a nap. More likely, watch a TED Talk. And fall asleep for 15 minutes. Not because the talk is boring; it isn't.

12:45: First time checking for mail today. Find none (the mail comes every day between 2:30 and 3 p.m., and you'd think I'd allow for that--I don't). If there are telephone interviews to do for a newspaper article, do them. (Time on this is flexible, like if the phone rings at anytime during the day.)

12:45 and 30 seconds: Read over what I wrote yesterday, decide it isn't as bad as I thought, and do a little editing. 

1:30: Look for daughter on Facebook again. This leads to Internet procrastination. When not actually trying to lose weight, it's possible a snack will be involved. If there is a newspaper deadline, write newspaper article.

3:00: Write beyond yesterday's installment. Probably not very much. Procrastination is so much easier when you think you have time. Read mail, which has arrived. Throw out 95 percent of it.

4:00: Get out guitar by way of "clearing my head." Play as long as nobody can hear me, possibly with headphones on, listening to real musicians and pretending I'm 1/30th as good as them.

5:15: Greet wife at door. Discuss dinner, Decide who will prepare it. Watch wife go out for a run, to show off that she cares more about exercise than I do (but then, who doesn't?).

6:00 Prepare dinner, unless wife has lost argument. Wife never loses argument, but sometimes wants to prepare dinner anyway.

7:00: Dinner with wife and son, unless son is working.

7:30: Watch last night's Daily Show. Laugh uproariously. Possibly check out other television or Netflix movie. If during baseball season, check in on game.

10:00: Get serious about writing 1000 words. Actually write 1000 words.

10:30: Say goodnight to wife, promise to be up in "five minutes."

11:30: Head upstairs vowing to work all the way through tomorrow. After exercising.

7:00 a.m. Repeat.

The Travel Library

Marilyn Thiele

Decisions, decisions. The thing I hate most about packing to go anywhere is deciding what to take. I’m leaving Monday for two weeks in the UK, and already I wish I were back in the day when the servants packed the huge steamer trunks with everything a person could need. Unfortunately, I’m limited to one bag and my carry-on. No servants either.  I spent part of today making the hardest and most important choices: what books to take. I will probably rethink these selections three times before I finally close that suitcase. After all, I’m going to be spending most of my time in London, where I may not easily be able to get any book I wish I had chosen! Having the book disease, I find it difficult to leave any of my unread collection behind. The comfort of looking through the stacks to see what suits my mood today will be missing. Or at least the stack will be limited.

I have not been able to shake the old mind-set I just described. Much as I prefer a paper book, the fact that I have both an iPad and a Sony e-reader means that I no longer have to choose between clothing and books in the suitcase. I have said that I don’t believe electronic books will replace paper, but that they will have their place when the novelty wears off. This is the place. For this trip, there will be a few traditional volumes for the airplane and my own comfort in reading, plus several on the electronic device so there is no fear of running out. And all the while, I know I won’t read even a third of what I plan.

Here are the hard copy choices at this point:

The Professionals by Owen Laukkanen. I’m trying to read as many of the Anthony nominees as I can before Bouchercon, and this one looks like it will be engrossing and fast-paced enough to distract me from my fear of flying.

The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen. I haven’t done any Scandinavians for a while, after binging on them a few years ago, and this is the start of a series that comes highly recommended.

Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure by Diane Kelly. It never hurts to have some humor available, and this one may be for the flight home, after I’ve said a sad goodbye to the son who lives in London.

Dead Simple by Peter James.  I don’t know if we’ll make it to Brighton on this trip, but this is a series I’ve been wanting to read, and I always start at the beginning.

On the electronic device so far:

Dare Me by Megan Abbott. Another Anthony nominee; this has been on the iPad since my February vacation, when, once again, I didn’t read as much as I thought I would.

The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths.  The second in a great series recommended to me by Lynne Patrick. I’m looking forward to an intriguing mystery, and anxious to know how the main character’s personal life proceeds.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I don’t always read mysteries, and historical novels are my “second favorite.”

So now it’s on to packing the clothing. And the umbrella and the raincoat. If all goes as planned, I will be posting next week from Scotland, and reporting to you on the Dead Guys “mini-reunion” Lynne and I have arranged in Derbyshire on the way north.  We’re both looking forward to meeting in person.

 

How To Escape--Or Not

Jeff Cohen

I notice I've been blogging a lot lately about respect for "light" entertainment, like the books I write but also about television and movies that aren't necessarily considered the most "important" examples of their medium.

There is a certain "middle child syndrome" that comes from growing up in New Jersey, constantly stuck between our evil overlords in New York and the cocksure wiseguys in Philadelphia (they boo their own teams there!). But this isn't simply about feeling unappreciated--I have it pretty good, myself, and I have what I think is a reasonably clear picture of the kind of thing I do. I'm fine with it.

But. There is a tendency among critics, media reporters and in some cases those in the industry to look at the supposed "light" entertainments and dismiss them as simple, empty-headed (get ready for the word of the week) "escapism." The idea is that entertainment like books, theater, film and TV (and one assumes now online things like cats on skateboards or something) help the reader, viewer, or absorber--I love it when they talk about us "consuming" entertainment; I can eat pretty prodigiously, but I don't think I could handle that--mentally break with reality and provide some way to avoid dealing with the horrors of everday life.

Let's see how many different things are wrong with that idea, shall we?

First: ALL fiction is some form of escape, in that it insists that the audience member (and that's the term we'll use for all media, okay?) suspend thinking about his/her current circumstance and pay some attention to one of the creator's design. In order for "Crime and Punishment" to work, the reader has to stop thinking about his life and start participating in the ones Dostoyevsky dreamed up. And anyone who thinks "Crime and Punishment" is "light escapism" should be kept away from sharp objects.

Beyond that, though, is the assumption that light entertainment (which is code for "anything that's not depressing or, heaven forbid, might try to be funny") is in some way secondary or inferior because it bears no resemblance to the dark, hideous truth that is human existence. 

If your view of life is that it is all misery, you should stop reading this blog immediately and seek out someone who can help you. (Or go make another movie, Woody.) And if you think that comic or "light" forms of entertainment can succeed if they don't reflect reality, you don't understand the concept of entertainment.

In order for a story, a joke, or a piece of music to be successful, it has to connect with an audience. It has to reach people, and they have to find something in it that relates to their lives. That's basic. You can write a book from the perspective of a house plant if you feel like it, but the story had better be about human emotions and human interaction, even if it's reflected in plants. Do you think "Animal Farm" is about, you know, animals?

So if Blazing Saddles makes you laugh, at least part of that laughter will be a form of recognition: "I get that because I know people who might act like that, or think that way." Sure, it's exaggerated, but don't tell me it isn't true.

Do people sometimes need a way to distract themselves from their troubles? Of course they do. Some of my favorite emails from readers have been from people who read my book in hospital rooms with desperately ill relatives or after a loved one's death. They say the book takes their mind off difficult thoughts sometimes, and thank me for that.

One of my favorite booksellers (besides you, Marilyn!) recently told me that she'd sold a copy of one of the Haunted Guesthouse books to a special customer, one who had managed to escape (not without injury) from the World Trade Center in 2001. She said her customer had been having a hard time dealing with people, but showed up for a book club meeting to discuss my book.

She said my book was the first one--almost 12 years later--this customer had read all the way through since 9/11.

Escapism? Maybe. But don't you dare tell me it's not important.

Really, It's Not You, It's Me

Marilyn Thiele

I just set a new reading speed record for myself. Not the fastest I’ve ever read a book, but the slowest – three weeks to read a 350 page mystery, the kind that usually takes me fewer than three days. I only finished it in that time because I needed to read another book for a reading group and was running out of time; the most I can handle is two books at once, the second being the audio going in my car. I didn’t finish the book for reading group in time either, although that one was Possession by A. S. Byatt and definitely slower going than my usual fare.

I kept losing track of both the plot and the characters.  Who was that guy again? Flip back. Scan. Flip back. Scan.  Oh yeah – he’s the police detective working with the main character, a private investigator, in one of the towns which may have a crime related to the main inquiry. Usually, if I need to refresh my memory about a character, I can remember the approximate place in the book where he appeared. I always claim that my mind and fingers with a paper book are faster and easier than any electronic search. But this time, I almost wished that I was using my e-reader. I often hadn’t a clue where to start looking. The character(s) just hadn’t registered at all.

At this point one might wonder why I bothered to finish such an awful book, one that obviously was not compelling or well-written. I stayed with it because I suspected that the failings were not the author’s, but mine. The author has been praised by other authors I respect (and I don’t mean just jacket blurbs), and the start of a new series was an opportunity to try her work.  This book was at least her fifth from a major publisher. None of this means that I should like it, but it does indicate that she is not an amateur who can’t handle plot or characterization. So why was it so difficult to finish this book?

My own inability to focus is the culprit. It’s one of those unsettled times when too many things are going on at home and work, most of which are incomplete for reasons outside my control but which require that I stay on top of them. My mother would have said “too many irons in the fire”; my husband says “too many windows open.” When I sit down to read and try to forget the pressures for a while, my mind starts jumping to the details of daily life that need to be remembered and soon pages have gone by with nothing retained from the reading. I’m not complaining. Life gets like this sometimes, and always gets better. I have a badly needed holiday approaching, the preparation for which (home, business, travel agenda) is part of the problem , but which I know will refresh my outlook.  It’s not fair to blame an author for not being able to penetrate my overloaded brain.

How often do we reject an author for reasons unrelated to the quality of the work? I am reminded that I refused to read Dark Places by Gillian Flynn because I found Sharp Objects so repulsive. I read Gone Girl because I wanted to know what all the buzz was about. Gone Girl is certainly unsettling, but I was fascinated rather than repulsed. I realized then that my problem with Sharp Objects was my own squeamishness about the subject matter. Another reader would not be so disturbed, and would be able to enjoy the excellent writing.  One member of our reading group could not get through Middlesex because the notion of hermaphrodism was just too disconcerting. The rest of us were not bothered in the least.

Our individual distastes for certain subjects are probably not going to change. Sometimes, though, our discomfort with a topic is situational. Years ago, I was astonished at how adamant a friend was in condemning The Horse Whisperer as a “piece of trash.” She and I usually enjoyed the same books, and although I wouldn’t have called it great literature, it was an enjoyable read with a satisfying ending (changed, I should mention, and to the detriment of the entire story, by Hollywood). I later learned that she had just discovered that her husband was having an affair. No wonder this plot was distressing! There are several people in Cleveland right now who would not find a thriller about a serial kidnapper of young women entertaining reading. Life’s ordeals can put us in a place, either temporarily or permanently, where certain subject matter does not lend itself to an enjoyable reading experience.

My own experiences have taught me that when I find a particular book unsatisfactory, I need to consider the reasons beyond  “It didn’t grab me” or “I found it distasteful.” If the writer’s style or consistent choice of subject matter is not to my liking, then I won’t waste my time in the future. But if the author happened to write one novel involving a subject that makes me uncomfortable, or if my own distracted mind or current life situation kept me from giving the work my full attention, I will try at least one more of her works. It might not be the author’s weaknesses; it may be mine.

Perspectives on Process

Josh Getzler

This week, I participated in an online conversation with author (and my client) Geoff Rodkey and Putnam editor-in-chief (and Geoff's editor) Jennifer Besser at the marvelous middle-grade-oriented website www.fromthemixedupfiles.com. I think it gives a fun insight into the three perspectives that often go into the creation and publication of a book. We aren't saying exactly the same things, but I think the idea of creativity and collaboration and thought that goes into deciding how to position a book are worth reading. So I will leave you to click onto the site here , though I also will be happy to answer any questions or comments left below.

Oh, and if you get the chance, go out and pick up Geoff's new novel, New Lands, which continues the Chronicles of Egg started in Deadweather and Sunrise (out now in paperback!).

 

 

 

 

Go Ahead. Disagree.

Jeff Cohen

There are two things you are never supposed to say out loud (actually, there are plenty of things you are never supposed to say out loud, and I believe you should say most of them): You're never supposed to say that you don't like listening to Frank Sinatra sing, or that you're not crazy about The Godfather.

Well, I'm here to say both. So you can start yelling at me as soon as you've finished reading the rest of the post. 

Sinatra: Yeah, the guy had a nice voice. It is also true that he was not a terribly wonderful human being. That's not always a deal breaker with me, but in his case it's hard to get around. Overlook the way he and his Rat Pack pals misinformed generations of young men on how to behave. Forget the treatment of women and the palling around with organized crime (we'll get to that in a minute); I'm just not that moved by his singing. It's all about technique and rarely about the song being sung; each note seems to want to draw attention to itself and say, "Listen! I'm being sung really skillfully!" Until, of course, we reach the dooby-dooby-doo period, at which time even the "nice voice" thing is in serious doubt. If I never hear his version of "New York, New York" again, I'd only be sorry because it would mean the Yankees hadn't won the game.

But more egregious than that declaration, perhaps, is the lack of respect for Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of the Mario Puzo novel The Godfather, which pretty much anybody who's ever seen a film has decided is, if not the greatest movie ever made, certainly in the top five.

Except me.

For one thing, I resent the legacy of the movie--since its incredibly successful release, I've had to deal with fictional gangsters ranging from the ridiculous to the just plain annoying. No, I wasn't a fan of The Sopranos, for the record, and not only because it helped fuel the prejudices of just about everyone about my home state. I'm not watching Steve Buscemi--an actor I usually like a lot--in his Atlantic City gangster show, either. 

Because the fact of the matter is, I'm sick of gangsters. How the hell many ways are there to dramatize organized crime from the sympathetic perspective of the criminals? And why is that a good idea? Those who think Al Pacino and Marlon Brando were bringing something new to the party in 1972 because they were showing us that gangsters are people apparently had missed 80 percent of the movies Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney ever made.

On top of that, guess what: Gangsters are not nice people. They tend to steal from those who can't afford it, kill those whom they are not especially crazy about, corrupt law enforcement and government, deal drugs (or, in the good old days, alcohol), cause pain and generally contribute to a system that doesn't need any help in making things tough for the little guy.

From a movie standpoint: The Godfather is too damn long. Its dialogue is often hard to hear. Its lighting is intentionally dark (we're making an existential point here, people, so pay attention!). Its performances are certainly compelling, but its characters are uniformly unpleasant and hard to watch. We are encouraged to side with one group of gangsters--the good ones, I guess--and against others, including the scheming Jews. (I would not for one second deny there were Jewish gangsters, by the way.) 

So don't come to me and quote chapter and verse from the sacred Book of Michael Corleone, okay? I realize I'm demonstrating my awful taste when I say I'd rather watch any of a hundred movies again before I check out the grand opera that is the "masterpiece" of The Godfather; I don't care. 

You are unquestionably entitled to believe that it's the greatest single achievement in all of Cinema. Just as I am entitled to prefer Horse Feathers. This is America. See the movie you want.

Uncomfortable Social Media

Josh Getzler

I realize this is a subject about which many people have written a great deal, but I haven't seen much on it recently, as there seem to be some established conventions. But I've been thinking quite a bit recently about the social conventions of Facebook (mostly) and Twitter (a bit), and in particular about some of the grey areas of virtual friendship.

I know that much of the image I project in my Facebook is pretty consistent. I share my clients' news; am clearly a fan of the Liberty, Knicks and Rangers; play the drums and like prog rock and The Revivalists (not just because my cousin Zack plays guitar for them...); and frequent the a Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. I'm married, and once in a while a photo of my kids shows up, but not often.

Then it gets tricky. I know I discussed civility before the election, and the fact that while I may have strong and passionate feelings about political and social issues, I try to leave them off my social media much of the time. Part of this is because I use social media for business and don't want to alienate current and possible future associates. I know I have friends and associates who have very different views from my own, and would rather be more circumspect than controversial. This is my decision, and obviously it's different from many other folks' way of thinking. And it doesn't take much, just by seeing whom I've chosen to follow or share, or some of the decisions I've made as to whom I've Liked myself, where I stand on most issues. I'm just not terribly vocal (with a few pretty clear exceptions).

So that leads me to the quandary I've been in recently. Ok, so while I want my own feed to be apolitical, others of my friends--on both sides of the aisle--have chosen to make their feeds bully pulpits. Most of the time I just let it go, but recently I've been seeing some pretty hateful stuff creeping in. My instinct is to unfriend, but I find that hard to do--some of the folks are professional friends, some are longtime real-life friends, some even relatives (and I'm not going to be more specific on this--I'm still not trying to alienate folks!). Some have great material mixed in with the stuff I find distasteful. Some would know if i unfriended them and would be incredibly offended--and i'd care about that. Tough stuff. How do other folks deal with this?

Ultimately, this is a new, interesting offshoot of the incredible, endlessly interesting world we're now inhabiting. Social mores have both broken down and become even more rigid. I think of the rules in Jane Austen or Anne Perry's early Pitt novels, or of Downton Abbey and other stories of manners and etiquette. How would Mr. Darcy deal with Elizabeth's Facebook feed?

In the meantime, I'll keep posting about pub dates and the WNBA. Happily.

Albany in September, For Sure!

Jeff Cohen

I won't be heading to Bethesda, Maryland this coming weekend. I'm a little bummed about that, but I'm sure all my pals at the Malice Domestic conference will have a swell time, perhaps lift a glass or two, go out to a lovely dinner, and participate in interesting panels with some of the warmest fans in all of Mysterydom.

Alas, I am not able to hit the trail this time, the first Malice I have missed in a few years. But the travel budget remains fairly well depleted since  Edinburgh and our good friends at the IRS took the rest. I am scheduled for Bourcheron in Albany this coming September, however, and maybe a couple of other trips next year. 

I intend to be back at Malice in 2014, with no scheduled sojourns abroad to compete. 

It's rough to stay on the sidelines when the Malice crowd (and I expect full reports--mention either one of my names to those who would care!) gathers. It is a welcoming bunch, always a fun weekend. I am hoping my ears will be burning from Thursday to Sunday.

Conferences are funny things: For we who live in Midlistia, they are not really places where we rack up huge book sales. They can be humbling experiences, as well. The ultra-successful authors who show up are sure to draw crowds and remind us of how much work we have yet to do. That's okay; it's good to stay hungry (which I have been rediscovering as I attempt to re-lose some weight).

But the flip side is that many of the readers who come to cons have actually heard of our work. I've yet to come to a convention where at least a few people didn't come up and say nice things about my books. It's an ego boost, for sure. 

And then there is the good and great companionship of the other authors. This is a very competitive industry, but you'd never know it when a group of us get together at the bar. No cold shoulders here, no hint that my book sale might mean yours sits on the shelf five minutes longer (which is not true anyway). There is much laughter when crime fiction writers gather, and it is genuine.

So I'll miss my pals like Nikki Bonnani, Parnell Hall, Neil Plakcy, Roberta Isleib (Lucy Burdette), Hank Phillipi Ryan, Toni L.P. Kelner, Jane Cleland, Con Lehane, Elaine Viets and Sheila York. It's too bad I won't be there to see Cindy Silverblatt honored as a fan, or Laura Lippman as toastmaster, which I'm betting will be wonderufl. 

And I won't be seeing my pals at the annual Berkley dinner, including my taskmistress editor Shannon Jamieson Vazquez (can you tell I'm doing revisions?), always a fun time. 

But there will be next year, and I'll be there. Promise.

Speak Out Before It's Too Late

Marilyn Thiele

If ever there was a week when I might seriously question what I’m doing with my life, this was it. It should have been a great week. Spring finally arrived: the doors to the store could be left open, shoppers were out, business was good, and people were smiling and stopping to chat in town. Yet it seemed that every time I picked up something to read or browsed on the computer, there was doom and gloom.  I don’t mean the normal news, always depressing enough. This week, in addition, I was bombarded with reports about the death of the book.

It started on Sunday. The back page of the New York Times Book Review had a full page ad sponsored by James Patterson with the headline: “Who will save our books? Our bookstores? Our libraries?” On Tuesday, Publishers Weekly arrived with the same ad, spread out over the front and back covers, inside and out, the four prime advertising locations, lamenting the demise of the printed tome. On Wednesday at a doctor’s office, I picked up the current issue of Reader’s Digest. There was another full page, not an ad but a brief article headed “Digital Trend: Bookless Libraries” and displayed as if on a screen with the logo “kindle” at the bottom. Even Facebook was at it; I got a post from Book Connections linking to an article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel “Loss of printed books means reading won’t be the same.”  I decided to take a break and clean up some of the piles on my desk. Among the items set aside because I thought I might do something (what?) with them at some time was a page from the Times Book Review of November 25, 2012, with two brief articles, one about John Grisham’s concern about the future of his favorite independent bookstore and others like it, and one about Larry McMurtry, hero of used book dealers, having auctioned off two-thirds of his inventory because he feels the book culture is “fading.”

Wow! Maybe the gods are trying to tell me something. Should I get out while the getting is good and someone might actually buy my inventory? Should I turn my shop into a museum so that children can come and see how reading was done in the “olden days”? Must I accept the reality that the one pleasure that has been consistent throughout my life, while other hobbies and interests have come and gone, will soon no longer exist? My answers: No, No, and NO.

There’s no denying that sales of printed books are down and those of electronic books are up. The question is whether this trend will continue until the paper book is no longer produced, and Jeff Bezos’s dream comes true (yes, he has said this!). A look behind the scary headlines tells a different story. The “Bookless Libraries” article points to a recent Wall Street Journal article indicating that e-book purchases skew heavily toward the “light entertainment” novels you can pick up easily in grocery stores, drug stores or discount department stores. It mentions a Pew Research Center survey showing that 90 percent of digital readers also read physical books. It also talks about “bookless libraries” that folded because the patrons wanted physical books. But if you only read the words “Digital Trends: Bookless Libraries” as you scanned the magazine, you would think that the end is near.

My real fear is that these scary headlines and the propaganda of those who want the reading world to be all digital will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who love the printed word on paper will acquiesce to what appears to be inevitable, feeling that there is nothing that can be done to stop the march of technology. Is there anything to be done? Not to stop the advance of technology. But one can  embrace the new without trashing the old. It’s not an “either/or” choice, as the attention-grabbing headlines would have us believe. We don’t have to revert to a print-only world to save the book. Instead, we need to increase awareness of what a world without the paper book would be like.

I applaud James Patterson for spending what must have been a great deal of money to voice his concern so prominently. In his ad, he implies that there should be government intervention at some level to save books, in the way the banks and auto industry were saved. I question the wisdom of this approach, and, politics aside, the efficacy of it. The loss of books, bookshops and libraries will not bring down the American economy, at least not in the short term. It will bring down the level of literacy and the marketplace of ideas, which may be more disastrous in the longer term. How will this happen if the written word is still available, only in a different format? An easy comparison is the music industry. This week I also saw a news report on how iTunes killed the album; buying only a single song for 99 cents allows one to pay for only what one (thinks) one wants, instead of many songs that are not “the best” (as decided by popularity or critics). Who hasn’t had the experience of buying an album for one song, and finding an unexpected treasure elsewhere on the same recording? Compare that to buying the latest bestseller for your e-reader, versus visiting a book shop or library and finding unexpected treasure as you browse the shelves or get a recommendation from the bookseller or librarian.

Patterson ends his Publishers Weekly ad with: “Spread the word about our endangered books! Peel off this wraparound cover and share it with a friend or post it at your local bookstore or library.” All good as far as it goes. There is probably not a bookseller or librarian who is not concerned about the loss of the printed book and who hasn’t spent a great deal of time educating her patrons on the issue and the loss to the reading world that seems imminent. A few months ago, two dear ladies who meet in town regularly for lunch came in to my shop. They announced (nicely) that they did their reading on their K*****s, and that they were just browsing. They wanted to chat, and seemed receptive, so I explained that there might soon be no stores like mine to browse in, that I, too, enjoyed my electronic reader (deliberately using the generic term), but that if no books were purchased in paper format, there would be no stores and no books. This concept was a revelation to them. Could their behavior, buying both their paper and digital books from A*****, cause them to lose the opportunity to delight in a cozy little book shop? The end result: they each bought a book, and come back whenever they lunch in town to buy one or two each. They were in my shop this week, a happy contradiction to all the gloom I read in the media. They understand that their support is important to keeping book stores viable.

I am sure that this type of encounter occurs regularly in every book store in the country. It is an educational effort that takes time, and still reaches only a few people who are receptive. Posting Patterson’s ad would not do much more. The placement of the ad in The Book Review and Publishers Weekly is preaching to the choir. (If it appeared elsewhere, I am not aware of it; if anyone knows, please let me know.) He asks at one point “Why are there no impassioned editorials in influential newspapers or magazines?” Here he finally gets to what really needs to be done, a larger effort to contradict the negative, attention-grabbing headlines that don’t tell the whole story and which are speeding the demise of the book by suggesting that it is inevitable. His ads would be better placed in mainstream magazines or even on-line media where they would be seen by a broader group of readers, those like my ladies that lunch. Those of us who are already making an effort at bucking the trend could do more. Authors are extremely supportive of independent bookstores. Perhaps they can do more in interviews and articles to point out what the loss of books, bookstores and libraries would mean to everyone, not just the publishing world. Those readers who are already aware of the problem could write “letters to the editor” or bring attention to the issue through social media. (When this information is broadcast by booksellers, it sounds a bit like sour grapes or self-promotion; the readers who don’t want to lose their books and bookstores need to speak up.)

I have just two more anecdotes from my week. 8-year-old Nick, the son of another business owner in town, came in for his typical hour-long browse. He knows what he likes, but loves to spend time looking at what seems like every book in the store, not just the children’s section. This week, he wanted something about “all kinds of animals” and selected a field guide to the northeast U. S. I wish every customer would handle the books with such reverence and replace them so carefully! Later the same day, a 5-year-old came in with his Dad, selected two early readers, and stretched his hand up as high as it would go to hand me his money. Such intensity as he watched me count his change back to him. Such gravity as he said, yes, he would like a bag. Such a smile as he held his very own books. Let’s save the books so these boys can have them to love for the rest of their lives.

On Drinking With Agents

Josh Getzler

Twice in the last week, at the end of the workday, I've crossed Broadway and entered the Dublin Inn, where I've met agent-friends for a beer and a talk.

I chose that particular pub, which is dark and narrow and feels smoky--almost like a phantom scent, as an amputee itches on the missing limb--because I just took on an author who wrote a mystery set in Dublin. (It's called A Fine Irish Wine, which is ironic, since I believe the Dublin Inn only pretends to serve wine, and I guarantee it's not Irish.) Also because it's right off the #1 train, and if I'm making my friends schlep uptown, I might as well not make them walk too far. You can have beer at the Dublin. Or, if you wish, a shot and a beer. Food is not in evidence.

I think most writers who've attended conferences or fairs have realized that agents, while occasionally competitors for manuscripts, are generally quite collegial. This makes sense. We all meet and talk to editors; we all receive enormous numbers of queries; we all are discussing terms with contracts departments. The more information we share, the more fully we understand our industry, and the better we will be at our jobs.

Incidentally, this doesn't mean we aren't collegial with editors, and very often mix our drinks with them. I just find it's a different kind of shop talk when I'm with a few agents--yes, it's gossipy, but it's also valuable. In both of my drinks with fellow agents this week I've given and received advice which was put into action within the next day or two. In many ways, drinks with an editor is more like a date, while drinks with a couple of agents is like going out with classmates or fraternity brothers.

The back of The Dublin Inn is a lovely (?) room with tables and an abundance of atmosphere. I'm thinking of the right occasion to hold a Gathering there. Perhaps when I sell A Fine Irish Wine, I'll spot a round of beers. Or perhaps a shot and a beer.

What Michael Nesmith Teaches Us About Writing

Jeff Cohen

There's wings to the thought behind fancy;

There's wings to the thought behind play

--Michael Nesmith, "Rio"

 

Those of us who traffic in "lighter" fare are used to a certain level of condescension. After all, books that might make you laugh are rarely called "important" or included on Best of the Year lists. Even the terms associated with comedy based writing--"light," "breezy," "humorous" (ugh!) or "comfortable"--are backhanded compliments. 

But by far, my least favorite is "effortless."

Let's sum that one up: An author comes up with a story idea. That is developed into a full plot, given characters to populate it, twists to its plot and words for its people to say. It is expected to have the same depth of character, intrigue of plot, pacing, believability and level of involvement that a "serious" book would have.

Now, add laughs. Legitimate ones. Not the cheap stuff that any writer might concoct. We're talking professional comedy that is aimed at a readership that could be comprised of just about anyone. And those of us who do that hope that we're reaching you with all those elements at once.

Effortless?

Believe me, there's effort involved. 

Now. When a reviewer or other observer says that the work "reads effortlessly," or "seems effortless," I am flattered. That's the goal--comedy shouldn't show the sweat; it should feel like it's spontaneous and natural. That's a good thing.

But when "effortless" is used independently--"the comedy is effortless"--that is insulting. There was effort; the craft is in not showing it. But it should be acknowledged.

Nitpicking? Maybe I am; I do tend to get defensive about this stuff. That doesn't mean the observation isn't legitimate. Respect the effort by noting its invisibility. End of sermon.

 

I don't believe in Writer's Block. I DO believe in another ailment, however: Blogger's Block. The only time I ever spend staring at a blank screen with no idea what's coming next is on some occasions when I'm facing a posting date and I don't know what I'm going to be writing about. I don't know what regular readers of this space (on Mondays) want to see, necessarily: Personal insights? Writing tips? Humor? Recipes (don't ask for recipes!)?

So I'm asking visitors who have suggestions--and I know you have suggestions--to drop by our Facebook page and offer them. Drop us a line. Let us know what you like, what you get from DEAD GUY, what you'd like to see. I can't speak for anyone from Tuesday to Sunday, but let me know what you want to see on Monday, and I'll TRY to provide it.

Just don't expect that it'll be effortless.

John Bellairs continues to be awesome

Jessy Randall

Last month I talked about John Bellairs's children's book The House with a Clock in Its Walls and said my daughter wanted to read all the books in the Lewis Barnavelt series. We've just finished The Figure in the Shadows. Like the first book, it was wonderfully creepy and spooky. Reading it made me think of a famous passage from Stephen King's Dans Macabre (1980):

“I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud."

Bellairs's work sits squarely in terror. For most of The Figure in the Shadows we only know that something scary is on the way. The scary thing only appears in the final chapters; even then it's barely seen. On page 78, Lewis Barnavelt receives a scary postcard that says, in Latin, Venio ("I come"). Such a postcard -- a POSTCARD -- should not be so scary. But it is VERY SCARY. The next scary thing, an old newspaper blowing around in the wind -- A VERY SCARY NEWSPAPER -- appears on page 119. My daughter and I were TERRIFIED.

With this book, Bellairs reminds us that a figure in the shadows can be much more frightening than, say, a well-lit monster. No one has written a full-length biography of Bellairs. I wish someone would.

Second Time Around: The Bookseller's View

Marilyn Thiele

I spent yesterday afternoon in booklovers’ heaven, our local Friends of the Library book sale. This annual event is a great opportunity to fill out my inventory of used books with items that are requested but which, for whatever reason, no one has brought to my store. The organizers of the sale have in recent years set up a “Preview Sale,” which requires a ticket purchase and is limited to 60 shoppers, on the Friday afternoon before the public weekend sale. Most of the attendees are book dealers, willing to spend a little extra to avoid the crowds and contribute to library programs at the same time.

Having a bit of time before the sale and not wanting to get involved in an extended project, I took the opportunity to catch up on the posts of my fellow Dead Guys for the week. Lynne Patrick’s post “Second time around” seemed particularly relevant to my state of mind. It was cheering to read the emotions of a true booklover expressed so perfectly: Hay-on-Wye, a place I’ve always wanted to visit, described as a “little piece of heaven on earth”; the time in a bookshop in a “golden haze”; the feeling of the purchases as being “loot”. My husband still doesn’t understand why I, spending all my working hours with books, can’t walk by a book shop without going in. Professional curiosity? Not really. I want a dose of my drug of choice.

After sharing the delight Lynne felt in being surrounded by books, I started thinking about her concerns about the morality of purchasing second-hand volumes. As someone who sells, and thereby profits from, this trade, I, too, have wondered if it’s the right thing to do. Authors should be generously compensated for their work. I am amazed at people who feel that now that the Internet is dominant, everything should be free. Information is free, ideas are free; the creative expression of either involves effort, and deserves to be rewarded. That’s what copyright law is all about, and I applaud the advent of “pay walls” on journalism sites; payment for quality writing should lead to a better product.

So how do I justify reselling books at no additional compensation to the author? The crudest view it that it’s just another physical possession; the author and publisher were paid on the first sale, the owner sold it to me, and now it’s mine to do with as I wish. No different than purchasing that designer dress at the local thrift shop. Many customers view what I do as a “green” enterprise: recycling an item rather than having it in the landfill.

There’s a little more to it with books. The resale of “pre-owned” volumes can actually lead to more sales of new books. I frequently recommend authors who are not familiar to a customer. They may be reluctant to invest the full price of a book in an unknown quantity, even taking into account my impeccable taste and knowledge. I suggest they try a used copy of one of the author’s works. More often than not they are back for the rest of the series, and will purchase the books new now that they are hooked. Since I sell both new and used books, this phenomenon benefits me either way. Books purchased at second-hand-only shops lead to the searching out of the author’s other titles in shops that sell new books, or from on-line retailers, both to the author’s benefit. I used to apologize to visiting authors who would see second-hand copies of their work on my shelves. I was surprised that they all seemed to understand that this market actually generates more sales. (Or maybe they just like to see a lot of their books on display.)

There are other justifications for reselling books. A certain number of my customers simply cannot afford new books, and the library is inconvenient for them. All libraries and book stores face a shelf-space limit, and books early in a series or popular several years ago may no longer be readily available, even if they are still in print. The second-hand book shop is the place to find out-of-print titles. The out-of-print problem may ease somewhat as publishers can make titles available electronically which they would not want to store in physical format. But for those of us (and we are legion!) who still prefer, as Lynne says, “that inimitable and habit-forming aroma of well-loved paper and print,”  there is nothing like the bricks-and-mortar shop (or the library’s book sale) for a taste of paradise.

 

Short Takes: Kindle Paperwhite; Hey, There's a Dead Guy on Facebook; and a word or two on Boston

Josh Getzler

Kindle Paperwhite: A Quick Review.

Saturday was my wife Amanda’s birthday, and one of her presents (along with a Vitamix blender she’s apparently leaving me for) was a new Kindle Paperwhite. No frills, just Wifi. She spent a great deal of time playing with it over the weekend, and even let me take the wheel for a few minutes here and there. Verdict: A terrific e-reader, both in the dark and in the light. MUCH easier to read in bed than, say, an iPad, and lighter than any other reader I’ve used.

One unexpected element that was a pro rather than a con: The ads. Somehow having an ad for the Kindle Deal of the Day was no more obtrusive than having Emily Dickinson or James Joyce on it. If it keeps the price down—and could conceivably entice readers to new books (Amanda made her way to the Daily Deal page both weekend days), then both personally and professionally I am for it.

Then this morning we had breakfast with Amanda’s sister, who thought a corollary to the Daily Deal Ad (for higher-end models, perhaps) could be to use the cover of the book a reader is currently reading as the screen saver. Would sure save myself from craning my neck on the subway to see what folks are reading!

 

Hey, There's a Dead Guy on Facebook.

So over the weekend, Hey, There’s A Dead Guy in the Living Room established a Facebook page. It’s here: https://www.facebook.com/HeyDeadGuy. It’s nice, and we’ll be sharing our posts on it. It’s going to be interesting for me to see whether it becomes more than that. Initially, my reaction to the page was “eh, that’s nice. Why do we need a page for a blog? Isn’t that redundant?” The answer, to me, is I don’t Know. It might just turn out to be a way for folks on Facebook to scroll through our archives. It would be more interesting, of course, if it turned out that the page turned into a little community of folks who like to read and/or write, with discussions transcending the particular day’s post. Now, does that make the Comments section on the blog unnecessary? Possibly. But we won’t know till we try, and I’ll be interested in seeing the results.

 

A word or two on Boston.

I grew up in Manhattan directly across Central Park West from the finish line of the New York City Marathon. During the past 40-odd years, I’ve seen it grow from a small but energetic race to an enormous undertaking. It’s one of the best days of the year in New York, just as Patriot’s Day is in Boston. I hope, after the suffering and damage, that the evil person or people who set the bombs in Boston doesn’t cause cancellations of these and other such mass public gatherings. Then he or they will have won. Sadly, we’ve all seen too many acts of terror these last years. I always hope that This One will be the last. It probably won’t be. But if you want to put your mind into a better place about Humanity and people’s better instincts, read actor Patton Oswalt’s blog post, which is simply beautiful.

http://www.upworthy.com/patton-oswalts-much-needed-love-letter-to-boston-and-the-rest-of-humanity?g=2

Demographically Speaking

Jeff Cohen

Update: Of course we are shocked and horrified by the events in Boston today. Our thoughts and wishes are with all those who are in the area or have loved ones there.

 

 

Now on Facebook: HEY, THERE'S A DEAD GUY IN THE LIVING ROOM now has its own Facebook page (and we're wondering what took us so long)! Please drop by and "Like" the page. We'll stop in and let you know when there's DEAD GUY news and what you might not want to miss each day on the blog. Please, let us now what you think!

Demographics aren't what they claim to be. Or maybe they are, if you're a male between 18 and 34.

It might shock you to read this, but lately, I've been watching a decent number of baseball games on television. It would have been an indecent number, but there have been rainouts.

Because of the miracle of TiVo, live sporting events (re: baseball games) are among the tiny few television programs during which I am forced to watch advertisements. Usually, I skip through those babies like a Ferrari passing a goatcart on the New Jersey Turnpike. Although to be fair, very few goatcarts show up on the Turnpike; I don't think New Jersey lets goats have drivers licenses. (Pennsylvania probably lets them own guns without a background check, but let's not even go there.)

If a person believes in the power of demographics, that person could no doubt predict, Sherlock Holmes style, many interesting things about me through my decision to watch baseball games, specifically by noting the advertisers who have "targeted" me by purchasing time duing such contests.

Going by what I've observed, they would think that I am a man (not bad so far) over the age of let's say 35 (again, amazingly accurate) who loves beer more than his family, has either erectile dysfunction or a lamentable drop in testosterone levels (or both), buys a new, probably luxury, vehicle every year or two, is considering a reverse mortgage on his home, and is hysterically obsessed with the appearance of his front lawn.

Let's face it: after age and gender, they're batting a dismal .000. 

This is why I'm let's-call-it skeptical about demographics that tell me the reader for whom I'm writing. First, any author who writes for a demographic and not for his/her own amusement is destined to write something uninteresting. But also, demographics are simply a tool to find out who is MOST LIKELY to do or buy something, not EVERYONE who will do so. 

I have not, I hasten to say, been asked by my publisher, my editor, my agent or anyone else in the publishing world to alter what I write or restrict my imagination because of demographics. But there is plenty of blather out there (hello, Internet!) that strives to tell us exactly who the reader of "humorous cozy paranormal mysteries" might be. Frankly, a sales category that specific shouldn't be looking at demographics; you'll come up with a lady named Shirley in Houston, Texas. (I love ya, Shirley, but you can't keep my series going all by yourself!)

My first novel, FOR WHOM THE MINIVAN ROLLS (now available as an audiobook!) was written before I'd ever heard the term "cozy" to describe a type of crime novel. So, blissful in my ignorance, I included a fairly substantial subplot that revolved around the word "fuck." By all demographic standards, that should have doomed me as an author of "cozies" from the beginning.

And to be sure, the book did not exactly set the New York Times bestseller list (or any other such list) on fire. But here I am, nine novels later--and another about to enter the torturous revisions process--still standing, published by a major company in the business. Oh yes, and I never received one email--not one--from a reader complaining about the langugage in MINIVAN. Or any of the other novels, although there hasn't been that much "profanity" (the concept itself, of one word being "worse" than another, is silly) in any of the other books. That's not because of demographics; that's because the need doesn't arise that often in the stories. 

But if it does, rest assured I'll ignore the demographics and use whatever word I please. 

Now if you don't mind, there's a game I'd like to watch, so I'll be off to the TV. Sorry, advertisers, but I'll be watching drinking a caffeine-free Diet Coke and worried about, let's say, issues other than the ones you seem to think are worrying me.

P.S. Happy Tax Day, Americans! (Ducks for cover...)

Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie knew their chemistry

Jessy Randall

According to Deborah Blum in the Wired Science blog Elemental, Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie really knew their chemistry. Read her article to get the full story! Thanks, BoingBoing, for the tip.

The Last Bastion of Privacy

Marilyn Thiele

Another exploration into the world of technology has left me a bit discomfited, it not distressed. This time it was not because I had difficulty obtaining the result I wanted or wasted hours trying to figure out how to do something. The task was accomplished with amazing speed and ease. Looking at upcoming events where I will be selling books at locations other than my shop, I decided to get a credit card reader for my iPad. I downloaded the App, and entered business and banking information with easy prompts and no problems. Then a screen popped up telling me I had ten minutes to answer three questions; they were multiple choice. What state had I lived in from 1964 to 1968? Which of these three counties had I ever lived in? Which of the following three people was someone I knew? (The correct answer to the last one was my deceased father’s name.) I was impressed that the identity verification was so sophisticated, but disconcerted to have so much information connected so quickly to my application. None of these pieces of data is particularly secret, but I had a definite sense that “big brother” knew all. Was the next screen going to remind me that the yogurt in my refrigerator was reaching its expiration date?

I am both an extrovert and a very private person. I love talking to people and thrive on the daily interactions in my shop. At the same time, I choose when and to whom I share pieces of myself. Facebook and the whole on-line universe is not a comfortable spot for me. I don’t mind telling people my political, religious, or ethical opinions, but I want to do it in a face to face environment, in a conversation rather than a statement, as part of me but not something that defines or categorizes me. My infrequent Facebook posts are usually a sharing of funny or charming photos from other sources that I think my “friends” will enjoy. The political commentary I enjoy goes no further, at least not from my page.

Another social network I joined and use even less than Facebook is Good Reads. I had read reviews there, which could be done without joining. Having a place where I could organize my books and my never-ending reading list seemed perfect. Getting suggestions from those who enjoy the same books I do would lead me to new authors. When I joined, I was immediately alarmed. The words “or sign in with Facebook” gave me a chill; everything I would write or catalog might be available to millions of Facebook users, not just other devoted readers. Of course, I already knew that anything I put on-line would be accessible to anyone who cared enough to find it, and realized that my book preferences were not going to every Facebook user’s news feed. Yet somehow the easy linkage and casual expectation that everything I did should be yoked to everything else for trouble-free access made me uncomfortable. My presence on Good Reads is a user-id and a password. No books. I’ll stick with my Excel file, easily sorted and accessed only by me on my personal computer. I’ll get suggestions the way I always have, from friends and customers; I have too long a “to be read” list anyway.

Recent news has made me glad I made the decision not to put my reading preferences somewhere where it could be easily “linked” to associated networks. That information would have become another asset of Amazon, a company I avoid doing business with whenever possible. Would they profile me and market to my perceived inclinations? You bet. I have purchased out-of-print books for customers through Amazon when they offered the best copy at the best price, and thus have an account with them, much as it grieves me. I owe my customers the best I can get for them.  When I log on, the selections they “recommend” would drive anyone but their computer algorithm to distraction in trying to understand me. I get suggestions for books on making cosmetics at home, container gardening, Bucks County, Pennsylvania colonial history and French embroidery techniques. Not one of these topics holds any interest for me. I almost enjoy the profile they have created; she must be an interesting person.  But they would know a lot about the real me if I had put my reading list on Good Reads.

The reaction in the reading and bookselling world to the acquisition of Good Reads by Amazon has been both positive and negative. Those who enjoy a “social” reading experience look forward to the integration with the Kindle so they can share their experiences while reading. Reviewers like the idea of writing one review that will appear on both Amazon and Good Reads. Many readers have quit Good Reads, anticipating the loss of autonomy and lamenting that Amazon will ruin another good tool, as they did with Shelfari. Many fear the inevitable use of their information for marketing purposes. Whether Good Reads will be destroyed or enhanced remains to be seen.  From the commentary I have read, those who have become Kindle-addicted are overjoyed; those who read in multiple formats or prefer a paper book are apprehensive, if not incensed.

Many independent booksellers, myself included, see this as another step toward (book)world domination and misuse of personal data by the giant. A blog post by the Seattle Mystery Bookshop is one of the stronger expressions of this view. The comparison of Amazon to SPECTRE is not far off the mark. More important is the concern about customer privacy.  Bricks-and-mortar booksellers do not “share” customer information; what you buy in my shop is your business and no one else’s. Any marketing function is that of making future recommendations to YOU from ME, in person, should you request that help. The local beauty salon will not be sending you ads for hair conditioning treatments because you bought a book on thinning hair. One of the few places left in this world where you can count on privacy and discretion is your local bookshop; there are professional ethics still at work here.

What’s to be done? Booksellers can blog and talk about the risks of letting one giant dominate the book industry until someday the reader will have available only the choices the master offers. It mostly sounds like sour grapes. We can refuse, as most of us do, to carry books published through the giant’s recently created publishing arms (even when heartbroken, as I was recently, to find a respected author’s latest book, which I wanted to sell in the shop, was published by Thomas & Mercer). Our market share makes our boycott a mosquito bite to the giant, if that. We can warn against the loss of privacy that allowing our book choices to be used for marketing purposes is creating. In reality, this loss has already happened, and in every area of our lives, as my first paragraph illustrates. But we booksellers are a stubborn bunch, attested to by the fact that we keep going against all odds. We will speak out. And we will protect your privacy. It’s a sacred trust.

The Pleasant Sociability of Reading Aloud

Josh Getzler

Last weekend, I was out in New Jersey visiting my in-laws with the family. It was the end of Passover, and including my brother-in-law's family and some friends, there were fifteen people (including seven children) hanging around the house.

My youngest daughter, Ita,  had an English assignment and decided that for her report she was going to read one of the books I represent--Geoff Rodkey's wonderful and clever Deadweather and Sunrise. As something of a treat, and in order for her to get into the rhythm of the story (and because, having read it, oh, ten times already, I was pretty fluent), I agreed to read the beginning to Ita, with the understanding that she'd take over after a reasonable number of pages.

Turns out that "reasonable" meant a hundred and twenty. And it was a pleasure. Beside the actual words of the story, which are funny and at times quite beautiful and poignant (when people aren't hitting each other with rocks), a fascinating thing happened: I acquired an audience. Slowly, over the course of the hour and a half or so that I read, people found their way onto the porch.

They had all read the book already--Deadweather and Sunrise was my go-to book last summer, and my son and wife had read it when it was on submission. But there was something about the whole sociability of sitting together and hearing a story that was magnetic. By the time I got to "and I realized REDACTED (read it yourself!) was trying to kill me" and closed the book, there were eight or nine people in the room.

We spend an enormous amount of time hanging out in front of screens. We write posts and emails and text messages. Particularly when kids aren't around we rarely sit together and read to each other. Heck, the Author Reading as social event at the local bookstore has almost disappeared as publishers have realized that blog tours are generally more efficient and cost effective than sending writers on the road (except--as is the case right now with Geoff Rodkey himself, coincidentally--when they send a group of authors on tour together to visit schools and bookstores en mass).

So it was particularly fun--in a retro, quaint way--to read to Ita and the greater Jersey Shore. It helped that it was a lively book, and on a holiday where we don't use electronics so the audience was somewhat captive. And everyone walked around the house smiling for a few hours at the sheer pleasantness of the experience. Ita has not, in fact, read on this week--the return to school has taken over her free time. But it's almost the weekend, and the days are long, and I think the immediate family is going to NEED to hear how Egg escapes from REDACTED.

Pressure? Moi?

Jeff Cohen

When I was in college (at a university these days best known for a basketball coach with impulse control issues, alas), I was coerced by the promise of I think $10 into participating in an experiment being conducted by some upperclass psychology majors.

I know; you think this story will explain a lot of what I post here, but no. I came out fairly unscathed.

This particular experiment was remarkably cruelty-free: We subjects sat in a classroom and were shown a picture. I assume the image was from an art print of some kind; I honestly don't remember it very well, but I think it might have had a horse in it someplace. (This is NOT IT to the right.) We were then instructed to write a very short story about the painting and to be as creative as we could be.

No, I remember nothing about the story I wrote. I'm guessing there was a horse involved.

After the stories were collected, there was a short interval during which they were (presumably) read. The students running the show--I was a freshman and they were seniors, so I thought they were grownups--walked into the room afterward with a forelorn expression on his face. The stories they'd gotten, he regretted, were not of very high quality, certainly not as good as the ones the previous group (I have no idea if there WAS a previous group) had turned in.

But lucky us, we had one more chance: Another art image was presented, this one of a boy with a violin. (See that picture below? That's not the right one, either.) We were implored to do a better job this time.

I actually do remember some of the story I handed in that time: It was about a kid name Bill Smith who discovered at a very early age that he had a talent for making violins. He had devoted his entire life to the pursuit, eventually becoming the most famous violin maker in the world. And he'd changed his name to Stradivarius "because Bill Smith was too hard to spell."

The experiment, it turned out, was about the reaction of subjects to negative feedback. Given a bad review, would the subsequent works submitted be better--there was some objective scale they had applied to determine how good the stories were, which I would not begin to apply to anything I've written before or since--because the writers were challenged?

I think it showed that we were better, but I don't really remember. I do remember my second story because, embarrassed by reaction to the first piece, I wrote something I liked and that I thought was superior work.

I was reminded of that recently when I agreed to write a piece of flash fiction for Victoria Dougherty's "Dead Cold" project, which this month is featuring some crime fiction writers offering pieces that had to include: a dead gypsy, a bottle of moonshine, a swordfish mounted on wood and a 1959 ZIL-III Soviet-made armored limousine. 

That is, I agreed to it, and then forgot until (I swear this is true) 45 minutes before I had to leave for the airport to go to Scotland. Now Vic--as she has asked I call her--is posting my effort, and it'll be up to you to see how I and some fine crime fiction authors did with the raw material.

It's about writing under pressure: I'm currently working on a novella in the Haunted Guesthouse series that will appear, if all goes well, in October. After that will come the sixth (!) Haunted Guesthouse novel, which will appear... I'm gonna say in 2014 and leave it at that. I'm also writing a little something strictly for myself, hopefully to appear under my original name, but if not, it still has to get done.

Bottom line: I've found that I work better under a deadline. If something HAS to get written, I tend to write it more creatively because I know that I won't have as much time to go back and start again if I churn out something hideous. The adrenaline kicks in and the work gets better.

Not every writer, it should be noted, works that way. Some are absolutely inhibited by a deadline. Others simply ignore them. When I hear about someone who took "years" to write a novel, it makes me smile. Years? I'll give you something in three months, and while its merits against the "years" writer would be debatable one way or another, I'm willing to bet mine will at least showcase the best I could do. 

NOT the best I could do "given the time" or "under the circumstances." The best I could do. Period. Because I had to, and that helps me. 

What about you?

 

P.S. There was a time when Hannibal Lecter was an interesting, perhaps fascinating, character. That time was in 1991, when Jonathan Demme and his screenwriter Ted Tally adapted Robert Harris's novel The Silence of the Lambs. Since then, he has become a cliche, and an unpleasant one. Last week, a television series called Hannibal, which (thankfully) has nothing to do with the sequel to Lambs (book or movie) premiered on NBC. And while its title indicated the good doctor was back, everything else screamed that he was now an extra in his own story, that he'd lost all personality (aside from some odd culinary preferences) and that for some reason he was now German. Everything that had been interesting about Lecter--his charm, his wit, his anger--has been replaced with bad table manners and a low-key demeanor, as if this guy just eats people out of boredom, or is sleepwalking through the whole thing. I will not be returning.

A Cautionary Tale

So you want a copy of the latest bestseller, or a time-honored classic, or the next in a great mystery series you just discovered? Go on-line, usually to the Big A, get it at a cheaper price than your local bookseller can offer; buy enough and get it shipped for free.

Gift shopping? If you know the reader’s preferences, you can choose a book and have it shipped directly, saving money and time. Hardly takes a moment’s thought.

But what if you want to send a book as a gift, but want it to have a special meaning to the recipient, perhaps communicate a personal message? You can spend a little more time, browsing by looking at the details. Five stars? Must be great. Read a few reviews. Looks like the perfect choice. Maybe.

A close friend stopped in my store a few weeks ago, and as we got chatting, I heard the latest in an ongoing saga about her husband and his daughter from his previous marriage. The daughter lives with her family in a western state, and the father-daughter relationship, always rocky, had reached the level of “estranged” over the last few years. The (grand)father, my friend’s husband, sends Christmas and birthday gifts to the grandchildren, and the response is a minimal “Thank You,” if that. There have been no reciprocal holiday or birthday greetings for several years.

But starting late last year, there were a couple of brief e-mails with some news. A card at Christmas.  When my friend’s husband’s birthday came around in February, he expected nothing from that quarter. A package arrived, shipped directly from Amazon, preceded by an e-mail from the daughter indicating that something was coming. The birthday boy was elated, sensing an attempt to reach out and heal the breach. It really didn’t matter what the gift was. Or did it?

The gift was a “Grandfather’s Memory Book” to a grandchild, something like a reverse “baby book.” On the surface, not a bad idea, a chance for the grandfather to convey information about himself to distant grandchildren. Apparently, however, a substantial portion of the book was devoted to the grandparents’ marriage (including space for wedding photos) and the joys of raising their own children. Whoops!

My friend said her husband wanted to put the best light on the choice, but was fighting the notion that he had received a somewhat inappropriate “homework” assignment. Surely his daughter did not want photos of my friend’s wedding to him (her relationship with the daughter is even worse!) Did she really think he still had mementos of his marriage to her mother, which ended over 30 years ago? He was granted only the minimal access the law required to his children as they grew (a contributing factor to later misunderstandings); what family events from that period should be memorialized in this book?

It occurred to me, as a bookseller who loves to find the limitations of on-line shopping, that the problem was not any nefarious intent by the daughter, but a simple lack of knowledge of what she was purchasing. My friend and I spent a few minutes on the computer, and here’s what we found:

A search on the “Big A” in the Books category using the word “grandfathers” yielded a list of subtopics, the second of which was “Grandfather’s Memories.” Clicking on that choice led to a few books, the second of which was the one chosen as the gift. “LOOK INSIDE!” yielded a view of pages headed “Occupation,” “As a Boy,” and “As a Young Man.” Innocuous enough. The page headed “My Child Growing Up” might have raised a red flag, if someone got that far. The book has a 4-star rating. Roll over the stars, and find “This is a great way to let your grandchild know about your life” and similar comments.

If one took the time (and we did) to read all of the reviews, one could find the pertinent information: this book works only for traditional families. (Interestingly, it apparently has space for elucidation of the “risks” and “choices” that Grandpa faced in life; Grandma gets to write about family and social occasions.)

If the daughter had sought out a gift book at a real bookshop, and looked through the physical book in her hand, the limitations of this volume for her situation would have been obvious. One could argue that she could have reached the same conclusion with a more detailed look at what the on-line retailer revealed. Unfortunately, the on-line world has led us to cursory viewing of information. The seller is going to put the best reviews first; the details are there, but why read forty reviews if the first few made the book sound like an ideal choice?

Now I have another incident to support my case for patronizing your local bookshop. I recall a lament on a local talk-radio show about the dearth of toy shops selling unique items. Where have they all gone? I wanted to call in and say, “You need to buy your checkers and Monopoly games there, too, not just shop for special items while getting the popular ones at a discount. They can’t stay in business that way.” You can draw the parallel. And please don’t use the shop for browsing, noting your choices, and taking your business to the on-line discounter. It happens more often that you would believe.

 

What's Playing in Your Head?

Jeff Cohen

I toyed with the idea of writing a completely bogus post and then tossing in "April Fool" at the bottom, but here's the thing: I hate practical jokes. Hate 'em. I think they're cruel and disrespectful. I wouldn't treat someone like that, and hope no one I know would do that to me.

There are times I wonder if I am actually a guy. 

That question unconsidered, let's move on:

Music is playing inside my head/

over and over again/

my friend, there's no end/

to the music

--Carole King

There is a connection between writing and music. Writing must have a rhythm to it. The words have to be read slowly in some areas, picking up speed in others to achieve the desired emotional effect. Some speeches need the right cadence to be understood. 

In a screenplay, the writer can indicate that a certain line of dialogue should be read by the actor as a sarcastic statement. So "I'm sure" becomes "I'm sure." The meaning of the words changes when that notation (in a parenthetical expression like... this one) is included.

When writing a novel, you can't tell the reader how you want the line to be read. Yes, you can add the same italics I did above, but that simply informs the reader of the word to be emphasized. There is still the danger of misinterpretation. 

Of course, there are ways to counteract this problem, and we can get into those another time. The point here is that music, particularly tempo, is closely correlated to all forms of writing. I've read contracts that could indeed benefit from some knowledge of this on the part of their authors--if the desire is to be clear and therefore understood, someone in the contracts department is in need of a course in creative writing, or music theory.

Readers and interviewers (I haven't been interviewed in a while, and I'm starting to get antsy) will frequently ask what music the author (in this case, me) has playing when writing. The question is never whether there is music playing; they assume that. Which leaves me in a conundrum, because I rarely if ever play music when I'm writing. I especially don't play music with lyrics, as my own words are commanding enough of my attention to risk being distracted by someone else's.

Suppose Alison Kerby was asking a witness about the murder of a local baker or something (I promise never to have this scenario in any book) and the witness suddenly answered the question with, "Baby's hungry and the money's all gone. The folks back home don't want to talk on the phone. Sent a long letter, got back a postcard. Times are hard." That would be embarrassing, if not actionable.

Besides, there is never--never--no music playing in my head. Things jump in and out all the time, but my inner soundtrack is never silent, and so varied and random that quite frankly, I can spend an afternoon trying to figure out where that bass line is from.

So if you're wondering what music is playing when I'm writing, I'll have to disappoint. If someone else is in the house and doing something that might distract me, I will plug my headphones into the back of the iMac and maybe put on something completely without words. I have a playlist marked "Classical" for exactly that purpose, but rest assured that along with Mozart and Bach there is the theme from "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." because my definition of "classic" differs from some.

Sometimes, I admit, I'll put on the headphones and play nothing, just to get the nominal noise reduction they provide. In winter, they're good to keep your ears warm, too.

In my head? Your guess is as good as mine. Could be anything from the Beatles to Verdi, the Alan Parsons Project or Ella Fitzgerald. Movie and TV themes. The song that was playing when I was on hold with my health insurance this morning. Whatever was in my head when I went to sleep last night. 

What was that bass line, again? It's driving me crazy.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls still holds up!

Jessy Randall

Since I'm a librarian, I frequently bring home books from the library for my kids, books that they most certainly did not request. (Of course, I also bring home their requests.) The ones I bring home unrequested are usually books I remember from my own childhood. Sometimes my choices pan out big time (the Little House series, the Mushroom Planet series). Sometimes, not so much (I cannot get my kids to read The Great Gilly Hopkins no matter how I try).

Recently I brought home The House with a Clock in Its Walls, a book I remembered only very vaguely from my own childhood. The paperback edition I got is billed as "A John Bellairs mystery featuring Lewis Barnavelt." What I remembered: it is spooky and distinctive. What I learned, reading it to my daughter at bedtime: it is definitely both of those things, with illustrations by Edward Gorey (love!) and a gothic spirit you don't usually see in children's books. This is no Goosebumps, with gross-outs (not that I'm against those). It is truly scary, and the magic in it seems very real.

At the same time, it has a heartwarming goofiness to it that made me want to hug the author. The main character, Lewis, is a chubby crybaby of a kid who, guess what, turns out to have enough inner courage to save the world. Oh, and he's an orphan, too, like a certain mega-popular wizard you may know. He writes his own spell to solve the mystery of the clock, and his made-up magic is as goofy, loving, and lovable as the main characters of the story.

I don't remember reading other books by Bellairs as a kid, but my daughter has requested ALL the Lewis Barnavelt books, so I guess we can call that a success.

Market Pressures and Chaos

Josh Getzler

So last week I had the single biggest blog post of the two years of writing on Hey, There’s A Dead Guy—and it was all because my son wrote the post for me. And it was the best feeling I’ve had in years. Thanks to everyone who commented and Liked and retweeted. We’ve managed to keep Joe’s head on his shoulders…but just barely.

I’ve seen some very interesting developments in the publishing industry as far as distribution goes.  On the unfortunate side, we’ve seen the conflict between Simon and Schuster and Barnes and Noble go public, with the reports that B&N is (depending on how you look at it) either making a point about the value of shelf space with one of its biggest clients, or cutting off its nose to spite its face. B&N is cutting its orders of S&S books because S&S is unwilling to participate in certain pieces of its co-op programs. S&S, and its writers in particular, are reacting with justifiable alarm, as they are feeling (again justifiably) like pawns in a battle they did not start.

On the upside, I’ve now had three experiences with the power of online reach. Two of the books I represent made big moves in the last month. One was a Kindle Deal of the Day; the other was a screen saver on the Kindles with ads. A third made a splash based on the authors’ combined 250,000 Twitter followers and enormous general online following.  The pushes came from different places, but now were based on physical bookshelf placement. Rather, by rising on the Amazon digital charts, these books appeared on more landing pages on their retail outlets—if you went to Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Historical Mystery, General Fiction, and top new sellers and hot sellers (in all those areas), you’d find The Fifth Knight. It’s opportunity after opportunity to click through and purchase, and it dominos in on itself like a digital self-fulfilling prophecy. Fascinating stuff.

The juxtaposition of these two examples could lead you to think that I’m simply telling another version of the Print Is Dead story. And that’s not the case. It’s actually cautionary. I think that it’s terribly vital for the parties to resolve their issues. I’ve talked to editors and authors and other agents like a broken record about the fact that the publishing industry is out of whack, far away from equilibrium. This is not a zero sum game. There can be multiple winners. But staying out of equilibrium, whether in royalty rates for e-books, co-op dollars spent in different markets, or not having any kind of industry standard for what constitutes a recoverable expense for an author to need to return to a publisher (and there should be very few of these, by the way, but that’s a different column), will only create a negative spiral. Markets hate chaos and uncertainty—it’s bad for business. And our market is, at this point—despite terrific books being written and an explosion in distribution opportunities—both uncertain and chaotic.

Multinational Musings

Jeff Cohen

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA--Greetings from wherever the hell I am.

It's been a wild couple of weeks, starting in New Jersey (the old homestead), taking a serious right turn to Edinburgh, Scotland, back (briefly) to New Jersey and now--the night before this will post--to Charlottesville, home of the Virginia Festival of the Book. 

The festival is a lovely celebration of reading and writers, and it's always a joy to attend.They know how to treat writers there. I saw some old friends and made a few new ones, talked up CHANCE OF A GHOST pretty seriously, and got to discover that traveling by Amtrak is roughly like traveling by United Airlines, except you get there slower, there are no movies (we saw lots of movies on the Scotland flights), and you can't really go across the ocean so much.

Edinburgh was lovely, even through the rain, the snow and the wind. (That's the view from our apartment window there, during one of the rare moments the sun came out.) I got a very nice Scottish fleece (probably made in China) to put under my parka, which was already over two shirts. Yep, it was that cold. But we didn't care because we got to spend time with our daughter Eve, who is studying for a semester at the University of St. Andrews as a study abroad student. 

Charlottesville is a tad less exotic to these eyes, but not that much. It is a college town (University of VA) and a nice one, the people are very friendly and accepting, and they love their books. A few too many used book stores for my taste (I prefer people buy new, so the authors get a royalty; call me crazy), but lots and lots of books. It's a reminder of the fact that there are plenty of readers out there, and the publishing industry might actually not be vanishing from the earth by the end of July. (Haunted Guesthouse fans: the picture to the right is from our block in Edinburgh; I just couldn't resist.)

Having spent a good deal of time in transit gives one a chance to do some thinking, because there just isn't that much else to do when someone else is (thankfully) driving the plane, train or bus. Yeah, we saw a lot of movies, but it's a seven- or eight-hour flight (each way), and as I mentioned, the train to Charlottesville had no such offerings.

Thinking isn't all that writing is about. I've been giving that some thought (elliptical reasoning, no?). What makes a writer? Sure, the love of story helps; writing fiction--or non-fiction, actually--requires a certain affinity for commanding and holding the reader's interest. There's no point in writing if you aren't trying to hold someone's attention. Hey! I'm writing here!

But I think it's more elemental than all that--writers like words. We like the sound of them, the nuances in choosing one over another. I can't fall asleep if music is playing, but the sound of the spoken word relaxes me almost immediately. It's not that I'm uninterested in the topic being discussed, but I have always found it hard to stay awake during lectures or even watching TED Talks online. Good voices soothe me in a way that nothing else can do as well, and it's because I love hearing those words.

Writers also pay attention to words--which ones people use, how they make a difference in the success of the speaker's attempt to communicate. Writers are born, I believe, with the ability--not even ability, more the need--to hear every word a person says and consider it. When I used to work in offices, I heard countless people, walking in day after day, asked how they were doing. They automatically answered, "fine," no matter what their mood seemed to be.

I have never said I was fine unless I believed I was. I feel that the person asking the question is entitled to the best answer I can give, so I consider it. Most people aren't even really hearing the question.

It occurred to me in Edinburgh that the Scottish have a strong affinity for the language, even if some of the accents I heard made it difficult for me to understand the speaker's intent (that was rare; most of them were lovely and added to the words rather than obscuring them). That's why there have been so many fine writers from Scotland--because they're listening and considering their words.

They know how to treat writers there, too. The largest monument I saw in Edinburgh was not for a Scottish patriot or politician, a warrior or a king. It was for Sir Walter Scott, because only a people steeped in language and enamored of story have that kind of respect for one of their best writers.

Our last night in Edinburgh, we attended a performance at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, where a number of comedians and storytellers offered tales from their lives, some funny, some not intended to be. The room was packed, the audience enthusiastic and the stories varied. But during the performances there wasn't a sound in the room other than that of the storyteller's voice. No cell phones, no gum wrappers. Attention was paid and it was paid happily.

Because the sound of the human voice is among the most glorious on the planet, and these people know how to treat their writers.

Personality is Everything

Note from Josh: My son Joe is off from eighth grade this week for Spring Break. He saw me sitting down to write the blog this evening, and asked if he could do it for me. He said he’d been thinking about character, and wanted to explore it. He shooed me off my computer, patted me on the head, and yelled a bit later that he was done and could I have a look. I tell you—sometimes good advice comes through experience and deep, thought-provoking examples. And sometimes it’s through Loony Tunes, Enjoy.

 

Guest Post by Joe Newman-Getzler  

                What’s the first thing that draws your attention to something? Color? Size? Overall flashiness? Whatever the case, these first impressions help leave an important mark, whether positive or negative. When you write a book, however, these cannot help you. Unless you’re writing a picture book, you must rely on your own writing to draw peoples’ attention to something—give an image in peoples’ minds about what this thing looks like. In terms of characters, you must look to personality, which can be incredibly difficult for many writers.

                You see, whether the character is good or villainous, something about him/her must rope you in. Some key facet must intrigue you or interest you. At best, these characters transcend the written word; knowing how they feel or what they’re doing is a major matter of importance to you, and you want to see what happens next. In the hero/heroine’s case, you want to see them defeat the bad guy and escape safely without dying (which, leave us be frank, is rare for literary characters these days). In the villain’s case, you want to see how they meet their doom, or how they are put off until the next encounter. If a character is poorly written, you couldn’t care less about what they do or what happens to them. They strike you as having no personality whatsoever.

                A prime example of personality lifting a character to superstardom is that of Bugs Bunny. Not a literary character, I know, but bear with me. The rabbit we know and love actually began life as a screwy bunny known unofficially as “Happy Rabbit”. Even his creators admitted that he was little more than Daffy Duck in a rabbit suit, with some elements of Goofy and Woody Woodpecker for good measure. Viewers couldn’t care less what happened to this irritating screwball; some may have preferred to see the rabbit hastily shot. Basically, he had no personality. He was all cartoon and no character. But, through revisions, directors began changing the bunny. Director Tex Avery completely revised Bugs, and even after that, directors added more, and within less than ten years, Bugs Bunny, as we know him and love him, reached complete fruition. And why did they not simply abandon him after his early failures? As some directors put it, while they were drawing Bugs’ misadventures, they became Bugs. If something happened to Bugs, it de facto happened to them, and they needed to be as clever as the character they drew to get out of it.

                This is an important key to giving a character a personality: you need to care about the character yourself before you get everyone else to. If a writer gets completely roped into the story-where he or she, as said before, experiences what the character experiences through their writing—they put the emotions of the character right onto the paper. You can imagine some writers catching their breath after writing a swordfight, or sighing with happiness after writing a happier scene. And this literary form of method acting pays: you care, your readers care, and the book is a success.

                Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy Gale, Peter Pan, Atticus Finch: if you’ve read the books these characters have starred in, you basically have been them for all the time you’ve read the book. They grip you and instill a bit of themselves in you. The best writers do this effortlessly, but no fear: the more trying, the better you get, even if you’re an established author. And always remember: there is no such thing as too much personality. Even a little makes a huge difference.

It Was All a Dream

Sorry, the person who usually posts in this space on Mondays is in Edinburgh, Scotland today (or Edinburgh, UK, depending on one's preference). But he did leave this note for you just before he went to the airport:

Jeff Cohen

Paul McCartney says "Yesterday" came to him in a dream.

I've heard authors say that certain plotlines were simply outgrowths of dreams they'd had. Beethoven said he could write symphonies after he went deaf because he could still hear in his dreams.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm truly a creative person. I have never had one useful dream in my entire life. 

Oh sure, I dream. I have the same mundane anxiety dreams as everyone else, like the one where you're headed for the big show or the big meeting or the big something or other and you realize halfway there that you've forgotten your pants. You'd think after the third or fourth time, that would be a tipoff you're asleep (When did I ever go somewhere and not notice on the way out that it's sorta drafty below my waist?).

I even have some dreams that I think are relatively unusual. There's a genre of dream I have where some artist I admire in music or the stage or something is about to perform and asks me to come and sit in because they need help. I call these my "ego-out-of-control" dreams, and to bring myself back to Earth, I make it a point to play my guitar through an amplifier that day so I can remember just how bad I am.

But a dream that became something I could use? A story point or character moment that came to me while my mind was riffing on its own? Never. Not once. 

Man, that sounds great. I wish it would happen to me.

Writing is hard work. It doesn't look like hard work, which is why so few authors will let you watch while they're in the throes of it. Someone just sitting there, staring at a blank screen, looks more like he's not working than virtually anyone else who is in fact working.

It's not the writing. Don't ever let anybody tell you it's the writing. That's the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what to write, and I don't just mean the next major plot idea or a new character to introduce. I'm talking about every page, every paragraph, every scene, trying to determine exactly how to get where you're going and do it in an entertaining fashion. Assuming you know where you're going.

The possibility that such answers, such pearls, such gifts from above, could simply come during one's resting hours, while you're not even trying, sounds like a scam to me. It's like one of those things that you see in cheap commercials during baseball games (the only time I'm not skipping commercials) that looks like it could really help, but turns out to be the same pile of plastic you bought the last time in a different shape. Plus shipping and handling.

So I've given up the idea that I might somehow be given a great story idea in my sleep. I've resigned myself to the fact that my dreams are dull because, hell, I'm asleep when I'm having them. And I no longer dream about dreaming something up.

Unless I decide to write a story about someone going to a big meeting without pants...

Interview with Barbara Fister

Barbara Fister is a librarian and mystery author. I, Jessy Randall, interviewed her by email in March, 2013.

Q: Do you think librarianship is a good day job for a writer? Why or why not?

Hmm... it's an enjoyable job, and a social one, so it's a good balance for the time you spend alone when writing. Also, nobody's life hangs in the balance (at least in an academic library), so there's not the kind of emotional drain that some jobs have. That said, it was actually getting too deeply sucked into conflict at work that led me to start writing on the side. I was getting far too wrapped up in the trivia of workplace politics, and decided to channel some of that negative energy into imagining dark and disturbing things that I could explore without getting personally hurt.

The downside to having an enjoyable day job is that I end up writing articles and opinion pieces about my profession. I'm grateful to have a public platform for my ideas, writing regularly for both Library Journal and Inside Higher Ed, but it seems to wear out some part of my brain that used to dream up plot twists and character developments. I've been much slower to finish my current work in progress than previous books, partly because I do a lot of non-fiction writing these days. Maybe I should look for less satisfying, more frustrating work.

Q: Have any of your library experiences made their way into your fiction?

I didn't think so until a friend pointed out that the slightly deranged, barely literate cop who digs into a suspect's past using LexisNexis is most likely sharing some librarian DNA with me. My current series character is fairly nerdy in a way that is more consistent with her background, which is a mix of higher ed and law enforcement.

Q: Did your library knowledge help you to navigate the publishing world?

You would think so, wouldn't you? No. I was a total idiot about publishing. I didn't even do the kind of research most people do. I think I was so averse to rejection, I didn't want to know how it worked (or, perhaps more accurately, doesn't work!) - in just the same way Googling that nasty thing you were just diagnosed with can make you feel worse. The extent of my planning was to limit my search of Literary Marketplace to agents who were members of the Association of Authors' Representatives with zip codes in Manhattan. I got lucky. Don't try this at home.

Q: Do you tend to keep your writing life a secret from your library colleagues? Why or why not?

I did, and to some extent still do, largely because I am a fairly private person who doesn't mix my imaginary life with public life very well. I don't want to spook my characters into hiding. (Come out, come out, wherever you are!) But when I wrote my first mystery, which is very dark and twisted, I wasn't sure what people who know me at work would think. It's funny - if they read the same fiction I was reading they would have been prepared, but they don't, so . . . There is still one professor who introduces me to his classes as knowing "more about sex and violence than anyone I know."  The number of people who assume my books will be about sentient cats and knitting librarians makes me wonder whether I project that image, or if the stereotype of librarian overwhelms my public identity. I mean, I like cats, okay, but I don't knit, and I'm much more interested in the kind of crime that happens on mean streets, not in drawing rooms (though the money-dealing and political power-grabbing that happens there might lead to what happens on the streets. And THAT'S interesting.)

Q: Do your colleagues read your books, and do they talk to you about them? Do they take advantage of having an author in their midst?

Quite a few have, and some probably tried and politely don't mention it. One of my co-workers writes fiction, but she has her own writing group, which lets us off the hook for any potential mismatch of literary tastes and aspirations. I have given generic advice (as in "don't do this at home") and try to keep up with what's happening in trade publishing, so know something about the many options available to authors today. I've also talked to classes occasionally about the writing/publishing experience. But other than that, I think they mostly forget I write mysteries. (Perhaps because I am so slow at it, and it's easy to forget when I'm only popping up with a new book every few years. Don't try this at home.)

Q: Do you know any other librarian mystery authors?

Perhaps the first person I spoke to at a publisher's reception at Bouchercon, the annual fan convention for the genre, was Marcia Talley, who said "Oh, I used to work at the Library of Congress." We now interact through Sisters in Crime, of which she is a past president. (She's a real pro who writes a gentler kind of a mystery and lives part of the year on a boat in the Caribbean, so is obviously doing something right.) Everyone else in the room seemed to suddenly need to talk to someone over by the bar as soon as it surfaced that I was a librarian. Cat allergies, perhaps. It's probably time to confess that I made a rookie mistake in my first book: I killed a cat. Nobody told me that it's okay to slay legions of humans, preferably attractive young women, but do not on any account touch a cat's whisker. Oops.  

Q: Who are your favorite mystery authors?

I used to have a short list, which featured Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, James Lee Burke, John Harvey, Elmore Leonard, and Reginald Hill. Now it's harder to keep a list because there are so many excellent writers out there. Denise Mina is fabulous. Lindsay Faye's Gods of Gotham knocked my socks off. Sean Doolittle keeps writing wonderful books that fly bizarrely under the radar. Timothy Hallinan's Bangkok series is wonderfully well-written and full of heart. I also enjoy reading a lot of Scandinavian authors and particularly like Johan Theorin, Arnaldur Indridason, and the collaboration between Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis. I know I'm leaving off a ton of favorites that will come to me later, but there's no shortage of great books out there.

Q: What advice would you give to as-yet-unpublished mystery authors?

Enjoy the imaginative and creative act of writing. Love your characters. Don't get too sucked into the competitive and self-aggrandizing business of writing if it takes all the fun out of writing itself. There are too many variables out of your control to take success or failure personally. For me the two great pleasures of writing are being able to wring out of thin air something about the world that feels emotionally truthful and becoming lost in an imaginary world of my own making. That doesn't happen as often as I would like, but when it does, it's intoxicating.

A question from a fan (from last week's post): "Barbara is great! I'm a big fan of her non-fiction writing about libraries, and I've started reading her fiction, too. I'm curious to know about inspiration and tying it all together. What comes first, the mystery or the solution? Also, does she have to code-switch between fiction and non-fiction or does she feel that each somehow informs or facilitates the other?"

For me, the mystery definitely comes first - or at least the conflict, and then the specific situation involving a crime, and the solution very late in the game.  (For example, Through the Cracks came out of my wondering what it's like for the victim of a crime when the person they thought committed it is exonerated. That has to be fairly traumatic, and it also made me think that in some wrongful convictions, the state didn't care enough about the victims to get it right, which is a double victimization. I was particularly thinking of a Chicago police commander who oversaw a number of false confessions obtained by torture - he didn't give enough of a damn about the victims to bother solving the crimes.)  (I may have already said all this, or something like it, so feel free to leave it out.)

As for "code-switching" (lovely phrase) - I do have to watch out (as I think all writers do) to avoid infodumps or any really cool stuff I found out doing research that doesn't have to be there to advance the story. Also, I need to let characters who I would disagree with in real life be as intelligent and capable as the characters who would share my politics - straw men make for boring, unrealistic characters and one of the best functions of fiction is to give our empathy a workout.

To be honest, though, I think my non-fiction writing has been influenced by writing fiction in that it made me more aware of the narrative shape and the emotional dimension of laying ideas out like a story. And I like having even my most dry academic writing to end with a zinger.

And that is the zinger on which we shall end.

A Fascinating Day

Josh Getzler

Every so often, I have a day where so many things happen in a short period of a time that I go home and my wife says "So, what did you do today?" and I honestly don't know where to begin. Today was one of those days, and I thought I'd give a sense of the different types of balls I juggle. And the interesting and cool thing is that I know (from discussions, tweets, Facebook posts, and emails) that my colleagues in agencies and publishing houses and living rooms/offices/Paneras (or the myriad other locations that writers write) that so many other folks who make publishing run are equally busy. Any time I hear that Publishing is Moribund I wonder how that is possible...

Anyway, I realized when I left that I'd emailed or spoken with 14 clients, 11 editors, both of my partners, my new assistant and my old assistant. I interviewed a possible intern to help with submissions and social media, and tweeted, Tumbled, and updated my Facebook page and Publishers Marketplace page. I submitted or discussed submitting seven manuscripts, and read and asked for more pages from two very interesting blind queries. One of the books I represent--Seven Kinds of Hell by Dana Cameron--was published today. Another, Minimalist Parenting by Christine Koh and Asha Dornfest, is in its final buildup to next week's publication. I received an offer for one of my clients to write an e-original Short, discussed the minutia of a cover for another, and prepared for a marketing strategy meeting for Geoff Rodkey's new novel before he goes out on the Endangered Authors Tour next month. Before 4, when I had to leave for an appointment.

Now typically, after I write an entry like this, I get several emails from clients saying "I see how busy you are. Do you still have time for me? Am I on the back burner?" And the answer is always no. There are certainly days where I concentrate harder on some clients than others, but I know that every client would want and expect me to tweet happily on their pub dates (and I do!). And so I beg--and (most of the time) receive--their patience (with some eye rolling). And on a day like today, when I've touched almost half my clients' projects in one way or another, I realize that I've got a terrific job, working with a LOT of interesting people. We'll get it all done. My burners are on high.

Of course, I forgot to pick up bread and milk on the way home, and the Super called wondering why I'm not meeting him at my apartment for him to get in and snake the bathtub. But, I mean, something has got to give... 

I'm In Awe...

Jeff Cohen

I am awestruck by readers. Truly, I am.

I get on DorothyL or one of the other mystery book lists I watch and occasionally heckle, and it never fails to amaze me how serious people are about their books. How devoted they are to their favorite authors. How involved they become with fictional chraracters.

How many freakin' books they read.

I am not being at all sarcastic about that. It astonishes me that people read so many books. You see that especially at the end of one year and the beginning of another (recently enough that one might remember), when some of these lovely readers--in my mind they're all lovely--list the books they've read in the just-ending or just-having-ended year. 

They are not kidding.

An author, even one like me who is contracted to produce at least one book each year (and doesn't at all mind doing so, for the record), works for weeks--months, really--crafting one little paperback that shows up on shelves on a Tuesday and hopes for some notice. 

Someone comes along, picks up that book and decides to purchase (or borrow) it (from the library), takes it home, and either reads it at warp factor six or places it on what they unfailingly refer to as the TBR (to be read) pile, which is invariably described as enormous.

And then they read it. Probably in about two hours, judging from the reports. Now, I don't have a problem with someone Evelyn Wood-ing his/her way through my novel; yes, I spend time deciding on each word, but fast reading indicates to me that the person zipping on through is engaged, interested, and hoping to see how it all comes out in the end. That's gratifying.

They keep notes, too. I'm lucky if I can remember how old I was on January 1 by the time Halloween rolls around. These readers have detailed lists of each book read, author, publisher, plot line, characters, and how well the reader liked the book. They can quote chapter (literally) and verse (not so much) from my own work better than I can.

But within two days of my book's release, I'm already getting "when-does-the-next-one-come-out" emails. You say, "Well, you're in luck. The next book in the series is scheduled for November," and they reply, "WHAT? I have to wait NINE MONTHS?" 

If we were all that impatient about everything, no baby would be born on time again.

When I was a boy, which doesn't seem like all that long ago until you learn arithmetic, I was admired and acknowledged in my family as a fast reader. I'd go through books like they were... books with big type and not that many pages. I gained that reputation and I relished it, moving on to "adult" novels (get your mind out of the gutter--we're talking books with no pictures) and polishing those off in a day or two because I couldn't wait to get to the end.

But I've got nothing on these mystery readers. Never was in their league. Two, three, four books--more--a week? I don't care if they're written by Dr. Seuss, that's a lot of books. I wouldn't even know where to keep them all, let alone when I'd read them.

So here's to you, voracious mystery readers! Not only do you keep me (sort of) employed and feed my ego, you have my admiration for stamina, interest, and perserverance. Not to mention talent. If I could write the way you read, I'd write at least a book a week, and take weekends off.

I am in awe of you.

Funny Doesn't Have To Be Fluffy

Marilyn Thiele

It’s always good to have something to look forward to when the end-of-winter weather continues dreary and threatening. For me this week it was a visit to my bookshop by Brad Parks, author of the Carter Ross mysteries. The suspense preceding the visit was worthy of a good thriller. Would the snow cripple us in New Jersey? Would the snow in Virginia and points between keep Brad from getting to his “real” home state? His appearance the night before in Richmond had to be cancelled, but the intrepid author made it to Flemington and his adoring fans, for his fourth appearance at The Moonstone Mystery Book Shop.

Brad’s fourth book, The Good Cop, was released on March 5. In preparing for his visit, I scanned the reviews by the big publications for those magic quotes to be used in my own publicity, to entice readers to attend the event. The book was reviewed by Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal (starred), and Booklist among others, all favorably. So who am I to quibble with people who review books for a living and are certainly more well-read than I? Well, I am going to quibble a bit, not with the good reviews, since I think The Good Cop is superb, but with a comparison made by Kirkus: “…makes Carter…a strong contender for the title of best Stephanie Plum male impersonator.”

On the surface, the comparison seems apt. Carter Ross, like Stephanie Plum, has a job that takes him out and about in a major New Jersey city to interact with the many weird characters a city has to offer. Carter is a reporter for the Newark Eagle-Examiner, and takes his work seriously even while having a lot of fun doing it. Stephanie works as a bounty hunter for her uncle, a bail bondsman in Trenton, and the job is something she does to earn money until she finds a better job. Both series have recurring characters whose quirks add to the humor. Both have ongoing love interests that remain unresolved and lead to awkward moments. Both have us giggling at the slapstick humor.

I am already anticipating the delights of the next Carter Ross mystery, but, given the limited amount of time I have for reading, I may skip the next Stephanie Plum. There are several reasons, beginning with the plotting. It is hard to feel invested in the crimes Stephanie has to deal with; they seem almost silly. Carter is involved with felonies that feel real. In fact, the first three books in the series were based on real events. Faces of the Gone originated from an actual quadruple murder in Newark which Mr. Parks covered as a reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger.  Eyes of the Innocent explores the effects of house flipping and mortgage shenanigans on the victims. The Girl Next Door brings home the troubles in the newspaper industry and the consequences for its employees. The Good Cop, which Mr. Parks says is the first of his books to be made completely from whole cloth, addresses the issue of illegal guns purchased easily in the south and brought to Newark to be sold on the streets. There is real evil here, balanced with humor. The characters are funny, the wisecracks hilarious, the situations sometimes farcical; but Carter is trying to right an authentic wrong.

Recurring characters in a series are both a blessing and a curse, particularly when their quirks are the basis for the humor. Janet Evanovich brings new oddballs into her stories, but the main sources of fun are the tried and true: Grandma Mazur and her affinity for wakes; Lula, her reformed prostitute sidekick, with her garish clothing and insatiable appetite; Uncle Vinnie, her cheap and lecherous boss. There is a limit to the ways in which these eccentrics can provide entertainment. Mr. Parks keeps the characters we loved in his first book: Tommy Hernandez, the gay Cuban intern who criticizes Carter’s dull wardrobe, “Tee,” the owner of a t-shirt shop who keeps him in touch with the street, Tina Thompson, his baby and exercise obsessed editor. But these characters have depth, and they grow and change as the series evolves. Mr. Parks relies on them to give the series continuity, but in each book he brings new individuals into the forefront to carry the comedy with novel traits and peculiarities. Carter always has a fresh intern to train; “Sweet Thang,” the bubbly blonde from Eyes of the Innocent is replaced by earnest but not too swift “Lunky,” who helps Carter locate an escaped bear in downtown Newark in The Girl Next Door, who is replaced by “Ruthie,” so intent on his desire to investigate the scandals in public housing that he is easily persuaded to check the water in the toilets for potential sewer backups with over-the-counter pregnancy tests.

The Good Cop also introduces us to Uncle Bernie and his brother Gene, owners of Gene and Bernie’s Warranty Emporium, who have found a unique way of obtaining goods for sale. You should read the book just for the scenes with these two. Hilarious as they are, they are solid, productive men, even if their business model is a bit shady. The denizens of Trenton with whom Stephanie Plum has contact and who provide the basis for farcical chases or “take-downs” are mostly pathetic losers whose only skill is evading capture.

The “love interest” portion of the Stephanie Plum novels has gotten both boring and sordid. Stephanie’s dilemma, trying to decide which of two men she cares for more, has led her to behavior that to me seems more using than loving. The humor in trying to juggle two suitors has long been lost, and we are left with a child trying to have it both ways. Carter, although a man with healthy appetites, does not use women nor does he allow himself to be used. I like main characters with a little moral fiber.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that Carter Ross is just a male Stephanie Plum. If you enjoy wisecracking heroes, farcical situations, and oddball characters but also want a story with substance that keeps you turning the pages to learn “whodunit,” choose Carter. He’s not impersonating anybody; he stands alone.

Perfection

Josh Getzler

 

Last night I began a column about the power of a Kindle Daily Deal on book sales, but assorted children needed attending to and I had to leave it. I realized as I was thinking about it though, that the end of the story isn't told yet--I want to see what kind of tail we get on it before discussing the results, so let's wait a week.

 

In the meantime, I had a long back and forth with my cousin Matt Resnick today. He posted on Facebook about having listened to "The Perfect Album" today, and asked what his Friends thought it was. A number of people weighed in--Rubber Soul, Aja, Beethoven's Ninth, Born to Run, Pet Sounds. And it got us into questions of perfection and what makes a perfect album. Is it production values (at which point you could make a case for Boston or Paul's Boutique) or an individual's opinion on genius of songwriting or concept or music (Freewheeling Bob Dylan, perhaps, or Dark Side of the Moon or Sinead O'Connor's The Lion and the Cobra, or the Smiths' Queen is Dead or Purple Rain or Bob Mould's Workbook or...you get the point.)

 

Of course, this is an impossible argument, as much as it's fun to do. I have perfect albums that the artists themselves don't even think is their best work (I like U2's War better than Joshua Tree, REM's Reckoning better than Out of Time, and I can listen to Terrapin Station or American Idiot for days and days). It also changes by genre--you can't compare Tannheuser to Rumours, really, or Candide to London Calling.

 

It's clear that you can do the same in books (and we do here all the time--how do you compare Pride & Prejudice to Moby Dick, or Wolf Hall to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Even within genres, a cozy is different from a police procedural (mostly) is different from a spy novel. Your idea of perfection might be The Corrections; your friend's could be Crime and Punishment or Harry Potter (but which one? Heh!) or Love in the Time of Cholera or Foucault's Pendulum or Easy Rawlings. But it's always a good time.

 

Oh, and Matt was listening to Kind of Blue. Hard to argue there... 

Aaron Tucker: International Man of Mystery

Jeff Cohen

If you live in the proper part of the world, you might want to check out a fascinating new book on your bookstore's shelves as we speak: Un Témoin Qui A Du Chien. I haven't a clue what that means, but I certainly do hope you pick up a copy and let me know what you think of the book.

I wrote it.

My old pal Aaron Tucker, about whom I started writing just as the millennium was changing, never entirely goes away. After three books in his series--the last one published in the U.S. in 2005--I bid Aaron a reluctant good-bye. I figured he'd run his course; the books were well-received, but the publisher was very (very, very, very) small and distribution was more a concept than a reality. Not that many people read the Aaron books, is what I'm saying.

But Aaron himself refuses to go gentle into that good night. Last year, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine published an Aaron prequel short story, The Gun Also Rises, which was not only my first contribution to a favorite publication of mine (and my first short story ever), but also the first work of mine to win an actual award (click here for that one), of which I am probably too proud.

I figured that was it for Aaron, unless I decide to write another short story and someone wants to publish it, but there are no such plans right now. I have been devoting my attention elsewhere, and hope to have some news to share on a few fronts relatively soon.

Aaron, however, had other plans. Or, more specifically, Alice Monéger did.

Alice, a lovely editor from France, had contacted Bruce Bortz (one of the original DEAD GUYs and my publisher at Bancroft Press back when I was wet behind the publishing ears) a number of years ago with some interest in publishing the third Aaron book, AS DOG IS MY WITNESS, in French. The book actually was translated by Claire Breton, an equally lovely translator, at the time, and was all set to go to press when...

...the publishing company went out of business.

So much for that. I once again put Aaron in the back of my mind, looked forward to another series that didn't exactly set the world on fire, and then one that sort of has, and didn't exactly forget, but didn't really think about conquering Paris again.

Until last November. One day, my hardworking agent (you might know him) emailed to say he'd received an interesting query from some French editor asking about DOG. Sure enough,Alice had been slaving away at another publishing company in France, Éditions de Masque, and hadn't forgotten about Aaron (he has a way with the ladies, apparently, which would no doubt shock him to his core). And she was interested in resurrecting our venture.

I am proud to say that Un Témoin Qui A Du Chien, by Jeffrey Cohen (there's no way to make that sound French) is a Masque De L'Année choice (that's sort of "Book of the Year," says Alice, meaning it's the book they publish once a year by an author nobody's ever heard of) from Éditions de Masque, and if it's not currently occupying bookshelf space near the Seine, it will be very soon.

Claire's translation is intact, and Alice, whom I actually met once at the Museum of Natural History in New York, is being extremely gracious. I would have completely forgotten about the whole thing and maybe never visited Aaron again, but Alice is more tenacious and very nice. 

So if you're walking down the Champs Elysees and notice a rack of books featuring a dalmatian wearing sunglasses, why not take a look? I'd like very much to tell you that the book is funny, suspenseful, warm and endearing, but I don't really know if it is.

I can't read it. It's in French.

Librarian mystery author Barbara Fister

I met Barbara Fister at a library event a few years ago. She's a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and the author of three Chicago-based mystery novels: Through the Cracks (Minotaur, 2010), In the Wind (Minotaur, 2008), and On Edge (Dell, 2002). She's working on a fourth book as we blog.

The most recent two books star private investigator Anni Koskinen. Library Journal says Through the Cracks "will appeal to Sara Paretsky fans and mystery readers who long for tough and savvy female investigators." Sounds good to me!

I'll be interviewing Barbara next week. If you have questions for her, stick 'em in the comments or email me (jrandall [A T] coloradocollege.edu).

Jessy Randall

A Great and Terrible Story

Jeff Cohen

I cherish the time I spent, back in another lifetime, as a newspaper reporter. And I include my time at the Rutgers Daily Targum, which is a student newspaper, but a really good one that publishes--to this day--five times a week when school is in session. We weren't kidding there.

At the Passaic Herald-News, my very first job out of school, I met some amazing people, a few of whom are close friends still all these years later. And I discovered, to my considerable chagrin, that I was a pretty bad reporter.

People think I'm being falsely modest when I say that. I'm not. I was a bad reporter, and for all the reasons that I hold good reporters in extremely high estimation. I was not good at cultivating sources of information among cops, politicians or for that matter, anybody else. I put in my time, but not more than my time. I didn't know where to look for news. I could write it, and I could research assignments when given to me, but I was terrible at generating my own stories.

And it's a shame, because the best story of my life, a really interesting and (I think) important book is out there, I can see it, but there's no way I could ever write it.

My first hometown, Irvington, New Jersey.

In the 1960s, when I was growing up, Irvington was a bedroom community of Newark, the state's largest city. Our suburban streets were crowded with homes and people--in fact, Irvington was (and they were proud of this!) the most densely populated town in the country. Three square miles. 70,000 residents. I'm not making a word of this up.

But it had a certain hybrid small town/city charm in those days. We walked the streets as kids without worrying about our safety. We walked from my house on Campfield Street, between Union Avenue and Chancellor Avenue, to the Dairy Queen all the way on the other side of town, and nobody thought a thing about it. Watson Bagels--still the best I have ever had, bar none, and you can suck on that, New Yorkers--was two blocks from my house. Once the 1970s rolled around, my father's paint store (which had been on West Market Street in Newark) relocated to Chancellor Avenue, across from Watson Bagel. (Readers of CHANCE OF A GHOST might get a few hints at my affection for paint stores.)

But the Newark riots of 1967 had their devastating effect on that city, and on ours. By the time I got to college in 1975, it was only a matter of time before my family was to move out of Irvington. 

And that was the beginning. Today, the town (now a township, I think) is known around the state as a center of crime, and often violent crime. The population has decreased by almost 20,000. Drug dealers are rampant, the murder rate is eight times higher than the rest of New Jersey (ac-cording to the State Police) and most of us avoid the place altogether. When we are forced to drive through it, we keep the windows up and the doors locked. I have a friend who isn't scared of anything, and he won't even consider driving by the house he grew up in.

A year or two ago, the chapter of Mystery Writers of America that I belonged to sponsored a tour of the State Police weapons lab. And in one office over our heads hung a chart representing the level of violent crime in New Jersey. Listed were three municipalities: Newark, the state's largest city; Camden, the state's poorest city, and Irvington. Three square miles, and that much violence.

I'm sure the average resident of Irvington today is a law-abiding person. I used to occasionally drive by the house in which I spend my first 20 years (except when I was living at Rutgers); it looked like it was being well-maintained and the block still looked quiet and peaceful.

Now, I look at the address on Google Earth, because I wouldn't dare drive down that street again.

There's a book in this, and a good one. But I have no desire to cultivate sources in the town, to spend nights with gang members and drug dealers in an effort to see what the place is really like today. I wouldn't risk my evenings, let along my life, to set off the childhood memories of my hometown against the reality of Irvington in the 21st century.

I'm not a good reporter. I can write, but I'm not a good reporter. I don't have the instincts. If someone out there wants to research that book, I'll be an eager interview subject about the old days, and I'll be glad to write some of it. But don't ask me to go into the war zone. Because I know my limits, and that is past it.

It's a shame--I can see the story in front of me, but I can't report it. I hope somebody does. Because it needs to be told.

Real-world unsolved mysteries involving authors

Jessy Randall

This week I thought I'd get a little meta on y'all. Instead of talking about fictional mysteries, I'm going to talk about real-world unsolved mysteries involving authors and literature.

"Theophanes" has done a good job summarizing the three biggest mysteries in literary history: the death of Edgar Allan Poe, the disappearance and death of Ambrose Bierce, and the ten-day disappearance of Agatha Christie. Read all about those here.

In "The Unicorn and the Wasp," Doctor Who fans received a possible explanation for what happened to Christie. (It won't surprise you to hear that aliens and time travel are involved.) And, guess what, Edgar Allan Poe's death figures in two Doctor Who novels published in 2004: The Algebra of Ice and The Deadstone Memorial. That leaves Ambrose Bierce's story available, BBC writers -- you should get on that!

 

 

Previously on Wednesday's Dead Guy...

Lynne Patrick

In the absence of much else of moment in my life this week, I thought I’d expand on a theme I began to play with a few weeks ago, especially since Jeff’s post yesterday reignited the theme in my mind. His point about a series making promises and its author having a responsibility to keep to the original premise hits the nail squarely on the head. He also talks about growth and change, and that’s where I’m going to pick up the baton.

I’ve never attempted to write a series, not even of short stories, so what insights I may have to offer are solely from the point of view of the reader. And I don’t really have insights – just questions about how it’s done, and a lot of admiration for authors who do it well. I discovered early in my seven-year publishing career that booksellers, and therefore publishers, like series fiction, largely because it generates sales and keeps the backlist alive; it follows as night the day that the reason for this is that readers, aka book buyers, also like them.

So my first question is, what makes a reader latch on to a series and keep coming back for more?

For me one answer stands head-high above anything else: a protagonist I can warm to. It doesn’t matter where I pick up the series: first title, most recent or somewhere in the middle; if the lead character is someone I feel I’d like to know, to have a conversation with and look for common ground, maybe commiserate with when their personal life goes pear-shaped (Merrily Watkins, Alison Kerby, Bev Morriss), or trust to get me out of a sticky situation (Jack Reacher, Eve Dallas, Andy Dalziel and possibly Peter Pascoe), or is just the kind of person who exerts a strange fascination (Tony Hill, Temperance Brennan), I go in search of other books in the series, or look forward to the next one when I’ve caught up. The ones I’ve listed are only examples; I can think of upwards of a dozen other series on my current wishlist which fit the bill. It helps if there are other characters I care about too, but it’s always the leading player who reels me in.

Or doesn’t.

More than once I’ve been hooked by one series by an author, and less than entranced by a second or third. One of my favourite authors was persuaded to abandon a series which made me laugh and cry, and for me the replacement doesn’t have the same grab factor.

It’s sad, because it could work against the author: if a reader comes to the less attractive series first, the other one may never get a look in. Fortunately it doesn’t happen often, at least not to me.

My second question requires a little more thought: how does the author of a series ring the changes, make each book different without compromising those ongoing elements which keep pulling the reader back?

Different authors achieve it in different ways. Some keep ramping up the gore factor: not my favourite approach by any means; it strikes me as lazy. But then I probably wouldn’t be reading many of the series anyway. Others introduce new ongoing characters to the mix, and bring them centre stage now and again. Yet others find something new for the character to do each time – stating the obvious, maybe, but harder than it sounds, especially with police procedurals. (Check out Mark Billingham’s Tom Thorne series as a prime example of how to get it right.) Maverick heroes have it easier in that regard.

Occasionally an author realizes that a particular series is self-limiting, and stops before it loses all credibility. I had to admire Ann Cleeves when she called a halt on her Shetland quartet without being tempted to stretch it beyond the four she intended, despite its having won awards and plaudits, not to mention a TV series. A series of murder mysteries set in the kind of place where shoplifting is crime enough to make headlines can only be strung out so far, but at least there were several different islands she could make use of. When I heard there’s now a fifth title, I blinked a little; it will take an author of Ann’s calibre to make it work.

That’s the trouble with series, isn’t it? Credibility. Big-city police procedurals with a high body count I can swallow; and itinerant PIs or maverick heroes cover a lot of distance, so the bodies can be well spaced out. But for many years, the joke around Oxford was that, with four murders a week when the TV series was running, Inspector Morse made this civilized university city the most dangerous place in England. Now they’ve even retired Morse’s sidekick, so Oxford residents (of whom my daughter is one, so I have a vested interest) can lie easy in their beds.

And don’t get me started on the sleepy villages of Midsomer, where the local constabulary must work an eight-day week to solve all the suspicious (and ingenious) deaths. I’m sure the US has similar places where no self-respecting fictional character would want to set foot in case s/he becomes a victim of random slaughter. I do seem to come across a lot of serial killer novels set in Arizona...

I think the real answers to my two questions are that there are no definitive answers. I know what works – and what doesn’t – for me. Maybe for you it’s something different entirely.

Star Trek, Star Wars, JJ Abrams, and Mystery Books

Jeff Cohen

First things first: Happy birthday, Mom!

Now: Not terribly long ago, it was announced that the Disney Company, which in addition to owning most of Florida and California had now bought the STAR WARS franchise from George Lucas (because apparently he didn't have enough money yet), had decided on a director for its first continuation of that series. And it was announced that said director was JJ Abrams.

My son Josh, who at 23 is angling to become the king of all sci-fi geeks, was appalled. Scandalized. Horrified. Apoplectic.

He wasn't happy, is what I'm saying.

Abrams, who seems like a nice enough guy when he's being interviewed, was the mastermind behind LOST, one of the most audience-frustrating television series in history. He directed an installment of the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE film series (in which Tom Cruise was apparently tall enough to be an action hero) and in 2009 gave us the latest--so far--film in the STAR TREK series.

And that's when he crossed the line for Josh.

A graduate of the Old School (and Drexel University, with a degree in film and video, if you're hiring), Josh was weaned on the first (and, for those of us who care, only) STAR TREK TV series, and saw a number of the films with Shatner and Company when he was growing up (Josh, not Shatner). So he was well aware of the "mythology" of the series, the interaction of the characters, and many of the better episodes. (I did not subject him to Frank Gorshin as the guy who's black on one side and white on the other.)

So when Mr. Abrams and his screenwriters (LOST alumni) decided that in order to "reboot the franchise"--that is, to make it appealing to people younger than, say, me, by using a time-loop storyline to essentially negate pretty much everything that had come before it, there were those of us among the long-time fans who were less than pleased (I will have to be persuaded very strongly to attend the upcoming STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, and not just because that might be the worst title in history). But Josh, being a guy with a strong sense of story and a devotion to character, might have been more annoyed than I was.

The news that Abrams is now in charge of both STAR WARS and STAR TREK for the big screen did not go down well with him.

Those of you who are not invested in such things might be wondering at this point--assuming you've hung in there this long--what the heck this has to do with crime fiction publishing. Very good question.

Storytelling is storytelling no matter what the genre and no matter what the medium. And a series is something else again--it's a contract with the "consumers" (one pictures people eating books) that if they are pleased with the type of material they find in the first book, they will not be reading something entirely different by Book #3. Or book #33.

A series makes promises. If you don't care for the overall premise of one, you should not merely assume that it will change drastically as the series progresses. Yes, there should be growth and there can be change, but a massive overhaul of the core storyline or the continuing characters should not be on the menu. 

With the publication of CHANCE OF A GHOST a couple of weeks ago (you were wondering how long it would take me to plug the new book? 530 words), I reached uncharted territory in my publishing career. This is the first time I've had a series go longer than three books.

CHANCE is the fourth Haunted Guesthouse mystery--for you sticklers, by E.J. Copperman--and there will be, contractually, at least three more. I'm very pleased to give you that information. I'm also promising that I will not, whenever the final book is contracted, inform loyal readers that it was all a dream, that the main character is insane and it was a long hallucination, or that the ghosts were just a couple of pranksters who like to hang around the Jersey shore and thought they could get free lodging with a few cheap theatrical tricks. None of that will ever happen.

As an author, I have the advantage of characters who will not age beyond the number I assign to them. Special effects in books will not progress past the style I write today. I don't have to care if the books hit a younger demographic, because younger people can start reading them today and either like them or not. 

But I see the point Josh is making about STAR TREK. The last movie wasn't just a slight change for me--I could certainly handle seeing other actors play those roles, and in most cases play them very well. But the storyline took me to a place that made me feel the filmmakers were telling me I was no longer relevant. They wanted the younger person's money, and not mine.

Which is fair. I don't have to give them the price of a ticket if I don't want to go. It was the way they did it, with the idea that all those shows and films you loved? Remember them? They never happened. We decide what happens now, and it's going to be all different. They couldn't just tell the stories that came between the ones I knew; they had to erase the ones I knew. That broke the contract with me, and with Josh.

And now, he's worried about STAR WARS. I'm not. I stopped caring about that story when they blew up the Death Star AGAIN. 

Nancy Drew for $6500?!

Jessy Randall

I can't seem to get off this Nancy Drew topic. Talking to my aunt last week made me wonder what mint-condition vintage Nancy Drew books might be worth. A visit to abebooks.com yielded some surprises. Currently for sale: a first edition of The Password to Larkspur Lane (1933), in dust jacket, for sale for $6500. Now, there's no guarantee it will sell at that price. But that's what the dealer is asking. The copy is described as in "very good" condition, which any collector will tell you is quite different from "mint" or "as new" or "fine."

The next most expensive Nancy Drew for sale right now is a first edition of The Clue in the Diary (1932), also in "very good" condition, for $2500.

I wondered if I would find any Nancy Drews claiming to be signed by the author, since Carolyn Keene didn't actually exist. I didn't find any, but I did find a book signed by Mildred Wirt, one of several authors who used the Keene pseudonym. She published, under her own name, Ruth Darrow in the Fire Patrol (1930), and there's a signed copy available for $650 right now.

 

Begin at the beginning

Lynne Patrick

I started to review for a mystery fiction website a few months ago, and when I was checking out this month’s list of books on offer, something struck me. All but one of the books I’ve reviewed so far have been debuts – and I wouldn’t cite the one that wasn’t as the best of the bunch.

Twenty-some years ago I set up an editorial consultancy with the intention of helping unpublished writers move towards the point at which they might become debut authors. Ten years ago I set up a small publishing house with the express purpose of giving debut crime fiction authors a springboard. Now I’m extolling the virtues, because mostly that’s what they make me want to do, of debut authors on the web. It seems to be a habit I can’t kick!

Not that I’m complaining. It means I’ve read a lot of debut fiction over the years, and a surprisingly high proportion of it has been remarkable. I’ve just finished the fifth novel by a writer for who, wearing my editorial consultant hat, I predicted success several years before her first went to an auction involving four major publishing houses and made number one in the bestseller lists. Several of the authors I published are still going strong with larger publishers; one in particular is also on his fifth, and the fourth was shortlisted for a major award last year.

I claim no credit; I was just there when it all began for them.

These days, of course, the discerning reader has to take care. Amazon has ensured that there’s now a high chance debut could mean self-published, and though some self-published books attain the heights of quality, not all do; statistically there’s still a higher chance of that if a rigorous selection process has taken place. And no, I’m not going to apologize for that opinion, though in the interests of avoiding litigation I should make it clear that it’s mine, and only an opinion.

Actually, that opinion doesn’t really matter; since I don’t read eBooks, my chances of coming across self-published debuts are pretty small. They’re not hard to spot in print; the copyright info page usually says something like Published by Appletree Cottage Books, which doesn’t exist on Google. So I can avoid them if I choose to. Maybe I miss out occasionally, but I’ll take that risk.

Which brings us back to that rigorous selection process. In company with every unpublished novelist I’ve ever encountered, I used to harangue publishers (not to their faces; that’s a self-destruct button) for their lack of perception when they spent their resources on yet another a celebrity biog, instead of on my debut work of indescribable genius. (Another entirely subjective opinion, you understand.) Then I crossed to the other side; I became that publisher, and made a vital discovery: publishing is a business, and in order to stay in business, a business has to make money. At least enough to cover its operating costs, and preferably enough to pay for an occasional vacation and Sunday lunch somewhere nice in the country; job satisfaction is good, but sometimes a person needs a little more out of life. And the bigger the business, the bigger the infrastructure it has to support before anyone gets a vacation or lunch. And celebrity biogs sell better than debut crime fiction. Go figure.

And in case there’s anyone reading this who wasn’t around last time I quoted the following true but little-known (and even less believed) statistic: on average, publishers are likely to make no more than seven per cent profit on any book; most debuts are lucky to break even, and more often than not make a loss. Which brings us back to that rigorous selection process. The book trade has always been a jungle, with thousands of books vying for attention; these days that jungle is positively... amazonian. In order to succeed, a book has to stand head-high above the competition. A debut, without the author’s reputation and track record to hold it up, has to stand head and shoulders high. So it has to be really special.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re going to say: if publishers marketed the debut fiction... And I’m not disagreeing. The system’s not perfect; that’s why so many people are resorting to the Amazon eBook model. (Though don’t forget that Amazon is a business too, and a very big one.) But even that isn’t infallible; for every E L James there are thousands, which sink without a trace.

But for the moment, I’m more than happy to trust other people’s judgement, and read debuts which have been through a tough selection process which I’m now all too familiar with from the other side. Every novelist’s career has to begin with a single novel; with proper nurturing, who knows where it may lead?

The Modifier Zone Redux

Josh Getzler

I spent a couple of hours going through my unsolicited manuscripts on Monday with Danielle, my new assistant. It was fascinating going through this with a new person after a year and a half, when the material has become a bit more focused (much more historical fiction, much less fantasy and literary shoe-gazing). But we were struck by the fact that so many writers were still falling into the trap we call The Modifier Zone. Therefore, as a Public Service (as well as because it is evening and I've just returned from a conference run by the writing program at Columbia), I'm reprinting an old column (hey, after a year and a half this is the first time I'm doing this--not SO bad, no?) called (uh huh) The Modifier Zone. PS--The manuscript I discussed in this column turned out to be The Midwife's Tale by Sam Thomas, which was released last month by Minotaur and is selling like crazy (and which is THAT good).

 

“Josh stretched his tired arms and wearily dragged his calloused, tapered fingers through his curly, tangled hair as he struggled to rouse his overworked body out of his comfortable bed, the tinny chirps of the chrome iHome alarm clock mocking him…chirpily. He staggered blearily past the cluttered wood desk and opened the white door to the beige bathroom, where he splashed cold water on his scruffy cheeks and shook himself awake as the minty toothpaste shocked his sleepy tastebuds into awareness. He trudged heavily into the book-lined family room, past the herringbone sofa and the orange chairs, stopping at his dark brown Jack Spade messenger bag to take out his red Dell laptop. It is 5:15, and you have entered…The Modifier Zone.”

One of the more common flaws I’ve found in the queries I read is the Modifier Dump, when an author—whether in looking to be absolutely sure that the reader knows precisely what the room looks like or the character feels, goes adjective and adverb crazy. A tree is not a tree—it’s a green, leafy tree. A person doesn’t walk down the street—he walks down the wide, car-filled, green-leafy-tree-lined, newly-paved highway.  At times it’s an excuse to show off SAT words: “The perspicacious toddler lugubriously imbibed the apple juice, perspiration trickling over his blowzy digits.”

Regardless, it’s the sure way to make me stop reading. When I am looking at the beginning of a book, I want to be hooked. That’s not a revelation—everyone wants to be hooked at the start of a book. It either needs to have action that draws the reader in, or a description of a place or character that makes you want to continue because that character or place is going to do something or be the site of something interesting. And you don’t need a lot of words to make that happen. (And you sure don’t need to describe the weather. Weather, unless we’re talking about, say, the moors or the desert or the ski slopes or the Islands, is rarely relevant; and when it is, it’s often self-evident.)

Rather, in a short space, you (typically) need to place the reader in time and location, and indicate something about the person or people involved, and what they are doing.

I was talking to my (FORMER!) assistant, Maddie, yesterday (LAST YEAR!), about an exciting query which had come in through the weekend. It had many of the elements I salivate over—foreign, historical setting, crime, class issues, badass proto-feminist protagonist, and author with a great background and the background to pull off an ambitious novel of this ilk.

“How’s the writing?” Maddie asked.

“Marvelous,” I said, and read the first sentence to her. “On the night I delivered Mercy Harris of a bastard child, the King’s soldiers burned the city’s suburbs and fell back within its walls to await the rebel assault.”

There is so much good about this—in 29 words, the author managed to convey so many things—let’s see how many:

1)      The narrator delivers babies. So the protagonist is a doctor or a midwife. Not an amateur, or it would have been “The night I helped Mercy Harris deliver her baby.”

2)      More than that, the narrator delivers bastard babies, which means that the story takes place during a time where that is important.

3)      It’s set in a city.

4)      With a wall.

5)      It’s set during a time and place where there is

1. A king
2. A rebellion

So the reader immediately knows that there are big things going on—a civil war of some kind—and also local dramas of childbirth. We don’t know where it’s going, exactly, but we want to continue. And in these 29 words, there is one modifier—bastard—and it’s vital, and evocative. It would say something very different about the book if the adjective were “illegitimate,” right? And it wasn’t necessary to say that the night was dark or rainy or dangerous, because the details given are more than sufficient to pique our interest. I don’t know if the author will be able to sustain the prose or the story, but I do know that I want to read on, and I’m inclined to like it.

So the takeaway on this I suppose is that for me the best writing is careful writing, where the pyrotechnics can be subtle, the adjectives minimal and always germane, and the weather implied. Many agents and editors talk about wanting to be transported to a different or unfamiliar time and place, with unique characters and gripping plots. That’s an incredibly tall order, and one whose difficulty is only magnified when it is burdened with unnecessary modifiers.

 

"Humor?" Nooooooooooooo!

Jeff Cohen

Something funny happens to you when you write books that are meant to be something other than bleak and depressing.

Wait.

Perhaps I should have said, Something strange happens to you when you write books that are meant to be something other than bleak and depressing.

Yeah, that’s closer.

See, if, like me, you believe that a book doesn’t have to leave you wanting to lock up the household cutlery as a precautionary measure, you realize it’s possible to write an engaging story with interesting characters doing intriguing things and still have a few laughs along the way.

But be careful—if you go so far as to write such a story and, worse, see it published so that people might actually heaven forbid read it, you might be labeled as something beneath notice, something so inconsequential as to be ignored at all costs, a creature of less societal importance than the sound board engineer who synched up Beyonce’s performance of the national anthem.

That’s right. You could be labeled a “humor writer.”

Avoid that label at all costs. People think, for reasons that are both understandable and wrong, that writing humor is a breeze, something that those infinite number of chimps typing out Shakespeare could toss off on their banana break. They think that, because humor is meant to seem—and this is a word I sort of hate—“effortless,” that it really requires no effort at all.

Um, no. Think of this: Those who write funny—one of the few words I hate more than “effortless” is “humorous,” which is the comedy equivalent of “pleasant”—novels have to do all the things the “literary” novelists have to do. That would include coming up with an idea that you might care to spend months working on, which is the hardest part in the process. It would also include developing a story that is not predictable, characters who will work their way into the reader’s mind without being simple or exaggerated, plot twists meant to deflect without being unrealistic, dialogue that sounds like real conversation and not spoken plot points, chapter endings that encourage if not demand the reader keep those pages turning, and an ending that satisfies without telegraphing itself a hundred pages previous.

For the mystery writer, add in a decent number of possible suspects, motivations, a method of murder that seems unusual without being ridiculous, a few red herrings for spice, and preferably an explanation scene that doesn’t include the villain spouting out every possible type of confession unsolicited just for the sake of convenience.

Now. Do all that and be funny, too. Organically funny, meaning the humor comes not from contrived “wacky’ situations and “wacky” characters but from the suspenseful situation and the three-dimensional characters needed to sustain believability. Go ahead. Be a riot now.

Not so easy, is it?

And yet, those who work in comedy are considered “light entertainers” who just breeze through their work between trips to the bank to deposit their royalty checks.

Do I sound bitter? Because I’m really not.

This is a cautionary tale, not a complaint: Stay out of the comedy trenches, young aspiring authors! Don’t get caught in the quicksand of hilarity and get pulled under by the unthinking assumptions of those who haven’t tried it themselves. Write something with no laughs at all, with an ending guaranteed to inspire all-night drinking binges. Because you don’t want to be dubbed a “humor writer.”

On the other hand, if you get labeled a “humorist,” you’re golden. Mark Twain was a “humorist.”

Whatever that is.

 

P.S. Pitchers and catchers report... TODAY!

Thoughts from a Nancy Drew collector

Jessy Randall

Talking to kids about Nancy Drew led me to interview my aunt Peg about her collection of vintage Nancy Drew Books. Peg is a New Yorker by all but birth and very glamorous. She is now in her sixties but you wouldn't guess it. I didn’t know until recently that she collected old Nancy Drews. 

 

 

 

 

Do you still read the books, or just collect them?

I still read them. Even now, it’s almost embarrassing to admit, the books are page turners. When you get to the end of a chapter, you MUST keep reading to find out what happens. 

Are there things in the books you notice now that you didn’t notice as a kid?

Yes, definitely. From my perspective now, though I didn’t notice these things as a kid, I see 1) what a thoroughly modern woman Nancy was. She changed her own tires on her roadster, she dried out carburetors. She was not helpless. She tackled problems fearlessly. 2) how unfortunately racist many of the books were. In The Mystery at Lilac Inn, for example, a "dark-complexioned" woman is described as "impudent," "insolent," "swaggering," and having a "sly look." In The Mystery of the Ivory Charm, an Indian man is cruel to animals and children, and “his eyes bulged with superstitious fear.”  In The Clue in the Old Album, a grandmother explains that she has little control over her granddaughter, “Perhaps…because of the heritage on her father’s side.” (Her father was a gypsy.) Throughout this book, gypsies are portrayed in a negatively stereotypic way.

Even as a girl I was aware of the absurdity of Nancy falling into all those mysteries. I laughed even then at the boilerplate writing that appeared in all the books – her “famous criminal lawyer” father; his “sparkling blue eyes” and more. Also that Nancy never appeared to go to school.

Do you read any of the new versions that are out now?

I am a Nancy Drew purist, in that I don’t want to read the revised mysteries making the story details more current. I like the 30s and 40s time frame. In re-reading one of the books, I was confused as to why Nancy felt she had to rush home from her outing in her blue roadster when it looked like there was going to be a big storm. Nancy didn’t strike me as the type who would be afraid of driving in rain.  As I read on I realized that in those days the secondary roads were not paved so a big rain would turn the dirt roads to mud. And sure enough, Nancy ’s car got stuck and so she had to go to a farmhouse for help, leading of course to a new mystery.

History? It's a mystery!

Lynne Patrick

Last night I went to see a play which first saw the light of... day? lighting rig?... back in the 1960s. Not that I saw it then, you understand. Of course not. I was too busy not being born/playing with dolls/studying for exams at high school (delete as you feel appropriate.)

Anyway, my point is, that play has now become a period piece; the set was littered with ‘60s icons like colourful beanbags, early Bond movie posters, a chirrupy phone and one of those uncomfortable leather couches with a button-back. And the equally iconic pre-curtain and scene-link music... suffice to say I almost became that woman who knows all the words and sings along.

The train of thought it set in motion was, in fiction terms, where does contemporary end and historical begin?

It depends who you ask. At a weekend workshop I attended several aeons ago, someone suggested history was anything earlier than midnight last night. I had a problem with that even then. According to the Ellis Peters Award, the UK’s leading historical mystery prize, it’s thirty-five years before that year’s closing date, which, if my arithmetic gene is working, comes out at the late 1970s at the moment. That makes more sense.

When I was publishing, I steered clear of anything post-1960s and pre-whatever year we were in. This was partly because I have a problem with calling my own lifetime history, but mainly for marketing reasons. Ask any bookseller where they shelve a book set in 1998.

In fact, when we were starting out and ran an X-Factor-style contest to find our launch titles (do you have X-Factor in the US?) one of the finalists was rejected purely on that basis: it was one of the best of the bunch: well-written, tightly plotted, with great characters and... you get the picture; but it was set in the 1990s, for reasons which made it impossible to rework into the 2000s.

But I’m now beginning to wonder if, as a marketing strategy, this is becoming outdated. The speed of progress seems to be increasing exponentially; my three-year-old laptop is practically an antique. And the publishing world has changed out of all recognition, even in the two years or so since I moved on. In my last year at the helm of a small indie, eBooks accounted for such a tiny proportion of the big companies’ sales that little guys like me could afford to ignore them. Today, the UK’s last remaining bookshop chain has reported an operating loss of many millions; add that to the way indie bookshops continue to tumble like dominoes and look for a cause, and the answer has to be... eBooks.

And the assault of technology on the book trade must have had an effect on the average age of readers. The reading demographic used to be something of a mantra. How did it go? Eighty per cent of books are bought by women between the ages of forty-five and seventy; and eighty per cent of library members are over sixty. I don’t know how accurate that was, but someone must have gone to the trouble of studying the marketplace, so surely there was some truth in it.

But now that so much reading is done not from a thick chunk of paper you keep in your backpack, but from a gadget you carry in your pocket, are those numbers changing? I know a lot of 60-plus people who have an aversion to gadgets, but I can’t think of a single acquaintance under 40 who doesn’t carry a mobile phone. To be fair, a lot of those over-60s do too, and some of them even own e-readers; but the level of resistance to technology does seem to rise in proportion with age.

I’m sure I’ll get lots of protests along the lines of ‘My 90-year-old mother is part of an online poker syndicate, and Skypes me every day from her iPad’; I’m equally sure that mother exists, and more power to her. All I’m saying is she’s not in the majority among her age group. My point is that the marriage of reading and technology has given reading a new spin, indeed a new buzz, which possibly makes it more appealing to younger generations.

Which, in turn, means that history can begin more recently than thirty-five years ago. To me, a play set in the 1960s doesn’t quite qualify as period drama. To someone born in the 1990s, 1980 is a whole different world.

Master Class

Josh Getzler

When my wife and I lived in deepest upstate New York, where entertainment  options were…limited (Sam’s Club was a hot date on a Saturday night), we spent more than a little time reading essays by Dave Barry to each other and attempting not to spit out our Stewart’s root beer. From discussions of the worst songs in the world (sorry Neil Diamond and MacArthur Park) to riding at the speed of sound with pilots and trying not to throw up, we went through his oeuvre repeatedly through the long North Country winters.

It stood to reason, therefore, that when our 13 year old son who has a liking for Weird Al and Tom Lehrer discovered our Dave Barry collections, he fell madly in love. He’d insist on reading us chapter after chapter out loud, until our 9 and 10 year olds were repeating the punchlines (“and then the cyst was gone”—HAHAHA!).

Last week, Barry released his latest novel, Insane City, and nothing short of a second Hurricane Sandy was going to keep our gang from going to B&N to watch. We don’t go to readings that often—at least all of us don’t, and not together—and Amanda and I were hoping that they weren’t going to be disappointed. We hoped that he’d be funny and charming, but steeled ourselves for jaded and phoning it in.

What we got, very simply, was a master class in book touring. Look, Dave Barry’s been doing this for years, and he’s comfortable and practiced. Rather than giving anything terribly introductory or biographical or philosophical, as most writers appropriately do, Barry started us off with 15 minutes of stand-up comedy. It was a greatest hits tour through his Miami Herald columns, and the audience (the average age of which my children reduced by around thirty years) was nodding and laughing and mouthing along and winking at each other knowingly.

Seamlessly, he then segued to a short description of the new book, adding new anecdotes and a riff on the foibles of Miami. Then he took questions, and deflected the rude and the weird with grace and humor. Finally he finished, exactly, it seemed, at the minute he’d intended to, and sat patiently as 100 or so people streamed past with books to sign, even standing and taking photos with those who wanted them. When we got to him, he signed one book to “My idol Joe” and then told him to stay sane, even when Joe told him that he knew the whole Book of Bad Songs by heart. It was utterly satisfying, and great fun.

I write about this not to be hokey or to give a Larger Message about author readings and signings. There are a great number of ways to read well in public, from providing literary pyrotechnics to appearing sweet or simply showing one’s talent, to getting up and reading and letting one’s writing take center stage. Rather, I write about last week because it is a good feeling to go to an event—whether a reading or a play or an opera or a ball game or a movie—and get exactly what you hoped to get, and leave happy.

It's Here!

Jeff Cohen

It's interesting: Albums drop. (Are there albums anymore?) Movies open. TV series premiere. Games begin. Races start. News stories break. Ships sail. Airplanes take off. Ideas germinate. Evening falls.

Books, on the other hand, launch.

Each form of art or entertainment has its own term for the beginning. And for a few weeks/months now, I've been mentioning the upcoming launch of the fourth Haunted Guesthouse mystery novel, CHANCE OF A GHOST by E.J. Copperman, which will in fact take place on Tuesday, February 5.

Well, what do you know? That's TODAY!

Yes, starting right now, Alison Kerby, the Jersey Shore guesthouse owner with the cranky dead people on the premises, will be searching for a murderer, so that she might be able to find her late father, one of the few ghosts she hasn't seen around the house lately. It's a long story. (About 87,000 words.)

The publishing process is a strange journey for an author: The idea that began (sorry, germinated) roughly 20 months ago, cooked for a while, came out on a computer screen, was (mercifully) edited and revised, was (even more justifiably) revised again, had a cover (nice, no?), cover copy, blurbs and acknowledgements added to it, was teased in an ebook novella and hyped within an inch of its life on this site is now about to find its way to bookstores, ereaders, libraries and hopefully more than a few homes to be read.

Meanwhile, the author has written another manuscript or two, is working on at least one more, and occasionally wonders which one this book was again. It's natural. If the author isn't thinking about the coming volume now, the next launch--or the one after that--might not happen on time, or at all.

Tomorrow is also notable in being the launch day for new titles from such pals as Avery Ames, Lucy Arlington, Lorraine Bartlett and Sheila Connolly. It's a difficult thing for an author to be watching the Amazon and Barnes & Noble rankings, feeling good (or bad) about them and, at the same time, wondering how everyone else is doing.

And believe me, authors are watching those numbers like a nest of hawks. This is a competitive business, as all businesses are. The other writers are usually excellent people, they are friends and colleagues and one never wishes them anything but the best. But if our numbers are not what we anticipated they might be, the question "Why me?" will inch its ugly way into the author's head. 

The author, by the way, is not proud of that.

Best of luck--sincerely--to all my pals whose books will not drop, open, premiere, begin, start, break, start, take off, germinate or fall today. Happy launch day, everybody; it's the nicest and strangest day of the year. It is to be savored.

And now, to indulge in a DEAD GUY Annual Tradition, the Launch Day List:

10 People To Whom CHANCE OF A GHOST Should Be Given as a Gift

1. Your beloved--Valentine's day is NEXT WEEK!
2. Your least-favorite in-law ("NO, I didn't forget to give you a holiday gift--I was waiting for this book to be published!")
3. Your boss--a delighted supervisor is more open to talk of a raise!
4. Your fifth-grade English teacher, the one who got you interested in reading.
5. Mel Brooks, if you know him.
6. Your favorite sibling. Let them know you're glad your parents sibled.
7. Your parents, if you can. Alison's searching for her dad, and her mom is helping. Think how you can bring your family closer together. It's practically an obligation. (Family guilt is the best guilt.)
8. Jon Stewart wouldn't be bad, either. Tell him I said hi.
9. Your doctor. They say laughter is the best medicine. This could open up all sorts of distribution possibilities for the book.
10. Yourself. After all that gift-giving, you deserve a good story.

 

Last CHANCE! The CHANCE OF A GHOST contest winner--who'll get a FREE Kindle or Nook with all the Haunted Guesthouse titles pre-loaded--will be drawn TOMORROW on Launch Day! So there's still time to enter--click here for details!

An eight-year-old weighs in on favorite mysteries

Jessy Randall

My daughter Celie is eight years old, just about to turn nine. Here are her answers to my questions about a mystery series she likes, Archie's Weird Mysteries, which are comic book versions of a television series of the same name. They are available as paperback books and as ebooks for the iPad and iPhone.

What do you like about these books?

I like the characters, because they are the same ones as in my favorite comic books. I also like the setting, Riverdale.

At what age did you first one of these?

8

Are they too scary for little kids? What age do you think they would be best for?

They would be good for all ages.

Do you need to read the books in order?

No.

What else would you say about these books?

You always want to read on.

 

Goin' Back to Cali

Josh Getzler

The day after she returned from winter break, my assistant Maddie asked if she could meet me for coffee the next morning. There she told me that, having gone home to visit her family over the break, she had decided to leave New York, leave agenting, leave this model of the publishing industry (at least for now, and at least most likely), and go back to California.

All of this was understandable, if disappointing. She has many pulls to go back West, and she’d clearly thought it through carefully. But there was a professional reason as well, which says a lot about this industry even if changing it would require blowing up a model that has existed for decades.

Let me back up a second. One of the disappointments to me for Maddie’s departure is that in fact she had been doing so well—and not just in her assistant role, at which she excelled. She had made a large group of friends and contacts within the industry—she’d networked within her “class” of junior agents and younger editors, and had been an active and competent presence with the editors I worked with on my own books. When she came to me after a somewhat shorter than usual time and said that she had been working on a novel and asked if she could represent it, I felt she would be able to do the job. She did, and had an auction on her first submission: Mary McCoy’s wonderful and chilling historical YA noir Dead To Me. She seemed to be very much on her way to proceeding—pretty quickly—toward success as a literary agent.

That’s why her professional rationale for leaving publishing made me really sit up and take notice. She is leaving, she said, because traditional book publishing the way it is set up is simply too slow-moving. She’s young and capable, and she took a look and saw that it would take years for her to see the fruits of this labor, both in terms of the satisfaction of building a list and seeing the books come out, and building up her commissions to the point where she’d be able to make a good living.

I think the turning point here was when, after a  taking on Mary’s book and selling it quite nicely at auction, she found out that Dead To Me was scheduled to be published in September or October of 2014. So it would be a year and 10 months from Deal to Shelf. That’s a hell of a long time. But because of the timing of the deal (and all the publishers time their cutoffs slightly differently), Hyperion had closed its spring and summer 2014 seasons and the first slot they had was in the fall. Perhaps they’d been buying YA more aggressively and were crowded; perhaps there were competitive titles. Whatever, it was going to be almost two years before Maddie and Mary were going to see their book out in stores.

This isn’t particularly strange, either. I’ve had three novels in the past two years be purchased and come our more than a year and a half after the deal was done. There wasn’t much editorial work or any complications. Just scheduling.

So that was a particular frustration, and it feels counter-intuitive when writers are independently publishing their books very quickly, and some e-original or e-first publishers are able to get books out with a very short lead. An example would be Elaine Powell’s historical thriller The Fifth Knight, which Thomas and Mercer published in serial form. We made that deal in September, and the first piece of the serial came out at the end of November. I received a finished book last week, and start-to-finish it was four months.

 The problem there is that The Fifth Knight received no traditional reviews (Publisher Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus, etc), and couldn’t be publicized in the traditional ways.

So Maddie’s conundrum, which I think translates to just about anyone involved in the greater publishing world, is that while there are ways to be very quick, to be very efficient in the physical production of books (particularly digital), the traditional seasonal timing of publishers’ lists creates a frustrating backlog between deal and publication. The tradeoffs are clear, and at this point (at least while there are still enough brick-and-mortar bookstores to matter) unsatisfying.

Now, is it unreasonable to want both efficiency in timing of publication and payment and effective marketing strategies that remotely resemble the traditional journalism-based review-driven campaigns? Perhaps. But I think it’s going to drive a continued wedge between traditional and independent publishing until we do, and will create a somewhat divided, inefficient industry. And it will drive more and more smart young professionals like Maddie out of the industry, to businesses with greater flexibility and speed.

So Godspeed Maddie—we will miss you. You will succeed and flourish. Thank you for everything.

 

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: further thoughts from eleven-year-olds

Jessy Randall

My post about the Mysteries in Our National Parks series, in which I interviewed my own kid, led me to talk to a few other eleven-year-olds about their mystery-reading habits. Here are Coleman Horner's thoughts on Hits and Misses, a combination Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys "Super Mystery" first published in 1993.

What did you like about the book?

I liked the action and the plots. It's quite serious and has lots of danger. It isn't funny. The slight bit of romance in it ties in well with the mystery.

At what age did you first read it?

8

Is it too scary for little kids? What age do you think it’s best for?

It's not too scary. I think 9 would be the best age.

I also talked to Coleman's classmate Hannah Svarverud, who, coincidentally, is a fan of the Nancy Drew books.

What do you like about the series?

I like that Nancy and her friends find so many clues and try to figure out the solution to the mystery. There is some danger in the books but they always get out of it. It takes a while to read each book because there are so many details.

At what age did you first read a Nancy Drew book?

10

Is it too scary for little kids? What age do you think it’s best for?

It's not too scary. 8 would be about the right age.

 

I did not tell Coleman and Hannah that the authors of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series, "Carolyn Keene" and "Franklin W. Dixon," do not exist. (The books were authored by multiple employees of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, founded 1905, which was also responsible for several other series, including the Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift.)