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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Waiting To Buy Tickets At Tower Records

Josh Getzler

When I was in high school, there was an enormous Tower Records store on 66th Street and Broadway, right in front of the subway station I used to get home from school. I spent a serious amount of time in Tower Records, learning about Jimi Hendrix and Depeche Mode, Prince and The Replacements, browsing the racks of LPs and reading liner notes, which were their own metaliturature.

No, I’m not going to spent the next 500 words mourning the death of the record store (though I could) or comparing the slow death of Tower Records to what appears to be a similar death spiral of retail Barnes and Nobles stores (again, I could). But I am going to discuss, somewhat wistfully I suppose, another aspect of the Tower Records experience that is gone and which I miss: The Ticketmaster line.

I was talking to one of the guys I share my office with the other day, and mentioned that tickets for a particular concert I wanted to see had sold out at the price I wanted to pay. And I said, in a kind of throwaway line, that pressing refresh on the Live Nation website was nowhere near as much fun as it had been to wait on line for tickets to, say, Jethro Tull or Rush or the Kinks in eighth or ninth grade.

Actually, it wasn’t that much fun to wait. You had to line up around the Tower Records store up Broadway to 67th Street, then around toward Amsterdam, and couldn’t get in until the store opened at 9 in the morning. It was cold and boring and the smell of stale weed gets old. I didn’t do it often. But there was still a shared sense of community with other teenagers to wait to get tickets to a show, and you’d talk about how you hoped they’d only play Old Stuff because the new album sucked and did you see them the LAST time they were in New York—no, not the Friday night show, I heard that was terrible, but the Saturday night one when Joey Ramone came onstage for the encore and, well, looked like he was going to fall over but he was SO COOL!

And then the door would open and you’d go in and wait some more (but warm, now) and you’d hold each other’s places to (finally) go to the bathroom and talk about how you hope that they would just open the stupid register already because last time they sold out the first show in 11 minutes, but you’d get it and pay the cash you collected from your friends and get your tickets and bounce out and start the countdown to the actual show (and maybe buy the new album and see if it really did suck).

Then the next week, you’d walk past Tower Records and see another line of teenagers, for another concert, maybe dressed more metal or punk or new wave and you’d ask some tired kid “who’s coming?” and either nod approvingly or shrug, and get on the subway.

Look, it’s way more efficient to buy tickets (or books or albums or…toothpaste) on line than it is to wait all night on Broadway or shlep to the grocery store. Tower Records is out of business (a whole other column), replaced by Raymour & Flanagan, and nobody is waiting up all night for a new sofa. Teenagers meet on YouTube and Instagram to talk about whose songs suck, and take videos on their smartphones when they’re actually at the concerts. There are great advantages to our virtual world. But somehow that conversation the other day brought me back to the excitement and enthusiasm of an adolescent community experience which has gone the way of Joey Ramone sightings and liner notes.

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.

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. 

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!

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!

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.

 

An Overdose of Stupid

Jeff Cohen

In the past couple of weeks, we have been overtaken by some of the stupidest scandals ever to grace the pages of newspapers and the airwaves. And believe me, I'm a veteran of the Jim-and-Tammy-Baker era. I was there for Britney Spears and her shaved head. I even remember the "we're more popular than Jesus" rumpus that John Lennon set off while trying to make a point about how odd Beatlemania had become.

And while the latest crop of nonsense isn't by itself weirder than any of those nutty things or goofy side issues from the past (Were there pop culture scandals in George Washington's time? Was there speculation that the composer of "Yankee Doodle" was just hoping to get a cupcake named after his song?), the sheer number of them, coming one after the other, was enough to get one to sit up and take notice.

First Lance Armstrong spent hours talking to Oprah Winfrey about how he--gasp!--used to use performance-enhancing drugs to help him do stuff that no man riding a bike without them could possibly have done. This was a shocker equal in proportion to the disclosure that Liberace was gay. Really?

Lance's "confession" (apparently Oprah has taken on some sort of religious role) came on the heels of a similar brouhaha involving everyone who played major league baseball in the 1980s and 1990s. Earlier this month, the Baseball Writers Association of America (how come crime fiction writers aren't unionized?), who for reasons no one understands have been given the responsibility to populate the game's Hall of Fame, chose not to add to the population this year because some of the players eligible had--gasp!--used performance-enhancing drugs to do things that no other players in history had ever done. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were juicing? Next you'll be telling me that Paul McCartney dyes his hair.

But the nuttiness was just starting in the world of sports. Next, Manti Te'o, who apparently played college football for Notre Dame--I'm a one-sport idiot, and don't care about such things--had gained some notoriety and sympathy when, on September 12, his girlfriend was reported to have died of leukemia. Then it turned out she hadn't died. Then it turned out she wasn't his girlfriend, mostly because she wasn't a real person. And the story just got odder from there. Te'o knew she wasn't dead, then he knew his girlfriend--whom he'd never met, which is sort of an interesting scenario all by itslef--wasn't a girlfriend, that she was fictional, that there was some guy with an unspellable name pretending to be the fake girlfriend on the phone... my head hurts just thinking about it, and I'm sure I'm a number of steps behind, because to be honest, I'm really not following this one too closely.

The complete lunacy culminated at, of all events, the inauguration for a second term of President Barack Obama, when it was rumored after the festivities that Beyonce, who at one time had a last name, had purportedly lip-synched her performance of the national anthem. 

There are people who actually care whether Beyonce was singing live (she was singing live; the question is whether what she was singing is what we heard over the television), some of whom are honestly trying to make political points based on her singing.

I've been hearing Kate Smith sing God Bless America at Yankee Stadium for 11 years, and I'm pretty sure she was prerecorded, and never even bothered to lip sync, because she was busy being dead. Robert Merrill has been belting out The Star-Spangled Banner for decades since he died. John Lennon asks me what I've done at Christmas time every December. Concert performers from Madonna to Britney Spears (hair or no hair) have been known to pre-record parts of their shows and then pretend they're singing while the audience watches.

Yes, the question, "Don't we have bigger things with which to concern ourselves" leaps to mind, but hey, I'm only reporting the stupid. I don't make it up.

You're wondering what this has to do with crime fiction publishing. Well, let me explain: my CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND E.J. Copperman has a book coming out two weeks from tomorrow. It's called CHANCE OF A GHOST. And I've been trying to think of ways to promote the release, um, because E.J. is such a good friend and I like to help out.

So I'm thinking a good scandal might do it--but it has to be a creative, loopy one like the ones listed above. I can't say I've been using performance-enhancing drugs to write books, unless Caffeine-Free Diet Coke is akin to a parabolic steroid. People have actually seen me with my wife, whom I can state unequivocally is a real person, so that one's out. I could lip sync a bookstore reading, I suppose, but I don't see what the big deal is with that one, frankly.

What I'm saying is that I need a good scandal to push the book. Any ideas? (Actually doing bodily harm to anyone--including or especially myself--is out of the question.) Something that's going to get lots of attention and get my name out there into the media.

Not that any of the people discussed above would do that, of course...

 

P.S. Pitchers and catchers report in 14 days.

The New Art of the Cover

Josh Getzler

This week, I spent some time on email with my marvelous client Dana Cameron, whose first urban fantasy novel (after a lengthy series of archaeology-world mysteries and a number of award-winning short stories) is coming out in March from 47 North—Amazon’s science fiction and fantasy imprint. We were discussing her cover art, and Dana’s editor David Pomerico was very much a part of the conversation.

What I thought was particularly interesting about the conversation this week was less about the artwork itself—the artist they’d hired did a terrific job of portraying Zoe, the young, brilliant, confused archaeologist who needs to come to terms with who—and what—she is. Rather, the discussion had to do with text color and size and clarity. The two great quotes—from Tess Gerritsen and Charlaine Harris—were on the back cover instead of the front. There was conversation whether the tagline “A Fangborn Novel” should be on the front or back as well (we ultimately decided on the front). The final decision turned out to be spare, clear, sharp, and, we all think, quite lovely.

But the decision making itself was very much affected by the fact that, due to Amazon’s limited shelf space in bricks-and-mortar retailers, the most that the majority of people will see of the cover is this:

It’s the postage stamp sized image in the Amazon store: Just the front, just a stark image and some text. But even this version of the cover is striking. You can see the author’s name; you can see the title of the book; you can see that it’s a “Fangborn Novel;” and you can guess that it’s about a badass girl. The quotes from Tess and Charlaine will be on the author’s page, as will the description. It’s strong, simple, and, I think, very effective. And in March, we will see just how successful. I can’t wait. 

The Real World Intrudes Into my Social Media Post!

Josh Getzler

Yesterday 20 people looked at my Publishers Marketplace page, seeing my deal history, my client lis, and my submissions rules and what I am looking for (and what I'm not).

This morning I did a pretty big edit, changing some preferences and adding new clients and my deal for Toni LoTempio's no-longer-talking cat mysteries. I tweeted about it once. Twice, actually, when the lovely and ever-vigilant Authoress discovered I'd pasted in a broken link.

As of now, 128 people have gone to the page. Social media is amazing.

I had more I wanted to bring in here, but homework (8th grade is HARD!) and the beginnings of the January yuck are making me truncate. Back at cha next week with something more substantive.

Any suggestions? I'll take requests!

Do I Ask You to Work For Free?

Jeff Cohen

A few days ago I posted a (blurry) photograph (taken on my phone) to Twitter and Facebook. It showed an open carton of books, specifically of CHANCE OF A GHOST, the Haunted Guesthouse mystery by E.J. Copperman which will publish on Feb. 5. The points I was trying to make were: 1. It's fun for an author to open that box of promotional copies and 2. You should definitely consider buying a copy of said book when it publishes.

On February 5.

Immediately, the emails asking for free books began.

Now, don't get me wrong: I expected the requests; this is not my first book.  And I'm not trying to sound ungrateful to the readers who made it possible for a fourth installment of the Haunted Guesthouse series even to exist. I am nothing but grateful to anyone who has ever read anything I've written (except for that wiseguy who used to look over my shoulder during social studies class in sixth grade, but that's an entirely different story). 

But what's interesting when you make it known that you've received the promotional copies--which are included in a publishing contract, by the way--the requests for free books start up. And while I certainly understand the impulse to ask for something when it seems the author has an unlimited supply of his/her own work, I still find it interesting that people ask.

Three weeks from tomorrow, CHANCE OF A GHOST will appear on bookshelves all over the country (unless something goes horribly wrong). The ebook version will be available from any number of online vendors. Those who don't want to spend $7.99 or thereabouts on the book might--or might now--be able to find it in the local library. It's not like it's going to be that hard to find one if you really want it.

But the requests come in. Most of them, as I said, are very polite and understandable: "You have so many copies; could you please send me one?" Others have a rather demanding tone to them that seems just a touch bizarre: "After all, I've read all your other books." 

I completely appreciate those who read my books. I would like to go to each of their homes and thank them personally. I totally get that without readers, authors would have to actually work for a living.

But if you have your plumber's email address, do you ask him or her to come fix your leaky pipe for nothing because you've always called when you had leaky pipes in the past? Do you expect your doctor not to charge for your annual checkup because you paid for the one last year? 

Just because a writer can't agree to every request for a free copy of his/her work does not mean that writer is a nasty, bitter, pennypinching ogre. We're on limited budgets--in many cases, really limited--and giving out free books when it's not for the intended purpose (promotion of the title) means two things are happening that don't help the cause: One sale that might have been made will not happen, and the author has to pay to send out the book. Also, a copy that would be used for promotion will no longer be avaiable. Okay, three things.

An author does not have unlimited access to copies of a book when it's published. We get that one book from the publisher, and when those are gone, we have to pay for any replacements as any bookseller would. Personally, I prefer when people patronize their local bookstores rather than buy from me. And I give out promotional copies when necessary for, you know, promotional purposes. There's a limited supply--it's 25 books in this case, and that's not a lot--so I have to consider each one carefully.

If a reviewer asks for a copy, I usually ask the publisher's publicity department to send one rather than dip into the 25 copies. If a bookseller who doesn't know me wants one to determine if the book should be stocked, her or she gets one. I usually try to make one or two available to fans in a contest. Again, that's partially because I appreciate the readers, and partially because it's a good promotional tactic (for more on the current contest, which offers an ereader and all five Haunted Guesthouse titles to the winner, see here). 

I honestly wish I could give a free copy to everyone who asks. But if I did, the odds of there being any subsequent books would drop to nothing and I'd go broke on postage. So please, if you're thinking of asking, keep in mind that I'd love to send you a free book.

It's just that I probably can't.

 

P.S. Pitchers and catchers report in 28 days.

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Balls in the Air

Josh Getzler

Last week, during my recap of 2012, I did a tally and realized that I have 17 manuscripts on submission right now (with a couple of new submissions happening this week). That is a large number—larger than I even thought—and I realized it bore explanation. How is it even possible to have that number of books out to publishers simultaneously without either double-dipping editors (submitting two books to the same editor, which agents try not to do in order to keep their books from competing against each other for the editor’s affection) or submitting to inappropriate or unlikely editors in order to avoid the double-dip?

In my case, it was pure coincidence. The authors simply had finished their books in the space of a short time, and it is my job—and my fiduciary duty to my clients—to submit the books at the quickest appropriate time to the acceptable completion of a manuscript. A number of them were done in the middle of August, when a submission is less than optimal. So we were ready to roll—backed up, in fact—in September and October and well into November. It takes a certain amount of time to make a submission (it can take around 10 days from writing the query letter to putting together a list of editors to contacting them, pitching, and sending out the manuscripts). I’m fortunate, though, that I’ve expanded my client list beyond the narrow list of mysteries and thrillers I expected to focus on when I began to be a literary agent. I’m also fortunate that editors do tend to focus a little more narrowly.

My current submissions include the following: Girl Middle Grade, Boy Historical Middle Grade, YA Girl contemporary (mean girl), YA Girl contemporary (Romance), a chapter book, straight contemporary mystery, cozy mystery, science fiction, dark literary fiction, historical thriller, international thriller (techno), international thriller (ancient quest), domestic procedural, nonfiction—beauty, nonfiction—business, nonfiction—self help.

As you can see, that’s a lot of slices of genre, even when it really just includes a few: for children’s books, early reader, middle grade, and young adult. For adult books, mystery, thriller, science fiction and literary fiction. For nonfiction, all different versions of prescriptive (advice) books.

But the books range in literary ambition, straight commerciality, and target market. And my job, like that of any literary agent, is to have a large document filled with editors’ preferences so that I know that the editor who likes a young adult novel set on a boat won’t like the young adult novel featuring lots of sex and drugs—but her former assistant will! The editor who likes (formerly) talking cats might not respond to a dark serial killer novel. My wife used to ask me why I went out for lunch all the time. When I was going through my Fall filled with submissions, though, she said she understood.

In addition, a number of these manuscripts have been out on submission for a while. The best case for an agent—and author—is when a manuscript gets interest from a publisher quickly, and I can contact the evaluating editors, schedule a closing, and simply sell the book. But often times, as I tell my clients, the early readers aren’t the ones who will ultimately buy it, and we need to settle in for the Wait. Editors are so backed up all the time that, without prejudice or intent, a manuscript will languish in an inbox for what to a writer is an agonizingly long time. I tell them that No News is No News. But that’s hard to swallow. It’s a fact of life, though, however frustrating. And it’s not an editor’s fault that not only do I have 17 manuscripts out at the same time, but so do the umpteen other active agents—and we all LOVE our manuscripts and want them to read OUR books NOW.

And we do. We all have faith in our authors, in our judgment of the market and the editor’s taste. We want to stop waiting and get to contract negotiations and galleys. We are all in the business of selling books. And we all are putting constant pressure on our colleagues on the Buy Side to be fast and be positive. 

This doesn't mean, by the way, that this load of submissions means that I can't give appropriate time and attention to each one. In fact, going out with a book is incredibly concentrated time. If I have a bunch of submissions going out simultaneously, it means I'm spending many concentrated hours a day on each one. I know all of my books very well, as agents need to, and I never tire of talking about them. When I pass on a potential client for the seemingly generic reason that "I really need to be passionate about a book in order to take it out on submission" this is precisely the point at which that passion is vital. If I don't have it, I won't be able to sell the book when it's one of a large number going out in a short period. In the case of my current outstanding projects, the passion was there. Now it's a matter of finding the editor who shares my enthusiasm.

I hope that in a couple of months, I will still have 17 manuscripts on submission—but that they are a different 17, and that my Deal Card will be filled with Winter sales.

Seriously. Nook/Kindle. You Can Win.

E.J. Copperman, filling in for Jeff Cohen

Jeff'll be back next week, but I'm still here, and I have news!

To promote the releases of both A WILD GHOST CHASE (now available as an ebook in all popular formats, for about $2.99) and CHANCE OF A GHOST (coming Feb. 5 as a paperback and/or ebook for about $7.99), I'm going to be giving away an e-reader, either a Kindle or a Nook--winner's choice--but that's not all.

The winner will receive either one of those e-readers and this one will be special: It'll have ALL FIVE Haunted Guesthouse stories, the four novels and the eSpecial A WILD GHOST CHASE pre-installed! (That, of course, includes CHANCE OF A GHOST, the latest in the series.)

(I know. I'm pretty excited, myself.)

So here's the deal: If you'd like to be entered to win a stuffed Nook or Kindle, you should log on to Twitter or Facebook. At Twitter, post something about the contest or the series (we'd appreciate it if the message was a positive one, but all messages will count as entries), and be sure to include the hashtag #hauntedguesthouse AND directly mention @ejcop. That way we know you've entered. If you don't include both of these tags, we won't know about it, so you won't be entered.

At Facebook, please post a status update mentioning the series or one of the titles, but make sure to tag "E.J. Copperman" in the status. Again, that's how we'll know you entered.

Because there are five titles in the Haunted Guesthouse series (so far), you may enter only once a day, but up to five times. Please mention the series or

On February 5, the day CHANCE OF A GHOST is published, we'll choose one entry at random as the Nook/Kindle winner! The winner will receive a base model Nook or Kindle (no data plan) with all four Haunted Guesthouse book and A WILD GHOST CHASE pre-installed.

We're really excited about the contest, and hope you'll be too! And if you want to see how much time you have left, there's a countdown clock to the drawing--and to CHANCE OF A GHOST--at www.ejcopperman.com so we hope to see you there!

Just to be clear, there will be only one winner, chosen by us at random on February 5, 2013, from all entries. All decisions about the contest and the winners will be ours alone. Winner is not responsible for shipping of the prize and may request a base model Kindle or base model Nook. The five titles will be included on the unit when shipped.

Best of luck to everyone who enters! 

2012: An Agent’s Year

Josh Getzler

Last year, one of my most reshared posts was my analysis, in numbers, of the Year Just Passed. Maybe it’s the glimpse behind the curtain, maybe it’s the general love of year-end lists. But I thought I’d do it again for 2012, and see what, if anything, we can infer from it. Please note: This does not include stats from the other agents at HSG, and does not include foreign deals or publications.

Current Number of Clients: 48

Clients added in 2012: 12:

                Referrals: 8 (6 from other clients, 1 from an editor)

                Authors I knew already: 1

                Unsolicited queries: 3

                Adult Novelists: 2

                Adult NF Writers: 5

                Children’s Book Writers: 4

                Authors who submitted both adult and children’s books: 2

Departed Clients in 2012: 8

Old clients or projects revived: 3

 

New Deals: 8

                Multiple-book Deals: 2 (One for two books, one for three books and three stories)

                Digital-first or digital-only deals: 3

                Debuts: 3

                Novels: 7

                Adult Nonfiction: 1

                YA: 1

 

Number of books I represent that came out in 2012: 12

                Adult fiction: 8

                Adult NF: 2

                Children’s books: 2

 

Number of projects currently out on active submission to multiple editors: 17 (holy cow! And there are several more to come in the first weeks of 2013).

                Adult: 8

                Young Adult: 4

                Middle Grade: 5

It is this breakdown that is very different for me, and represents something of a shift for me over the past year, year and a half. I have taken on more children’s book projects (both YA and Middle Grade), and focused more on historical fiction (both in terms of commercial novels and crime) and some smart women’s fiction. I have expanded a bit into urban fantasy and even a very small toe into science fiction (on the basis of clients who have gone in that direction, not because I have solicited it—and I’m not beginning to solicit it now, either!). I’ve gone a bit away from domestic thrillers and straight procedurals (unless foreign, with the locale serving as a character), thought my weakness for cozies is unabated. My nonfiction has largely been in business/self help, though I’d love to get into history a bit more. I’ve looked for—and found—some terrific contemporary girl’s realistic YA (and continue to look for more!), and boy MG adventure novels and mysteries.

The rise of the digital imprint has been interesting this year, with some excellent results and some that have been more mixed. I’m going to be helping a number of clients publish their books independently in the coming year, and that too will be interesting to monitor. I’m nervous about the Random/Penguin merger and where that will lead, but remain unabashedly enthusiastic about the state of writing and books. I wish editors would be a little quicker, and writers a little more patient. I wish, as ever, that I had five extra hours a day to read. And I still love my job, my colleagues on all sides of the business, and the time I spend each week writing these blog posts.

May 2013 be happy, healthy, and successful—however you gauge success. I look forward to seeing what happens over the next 12 months.

Happy New Year!  

Josh

PS—Next week I will discuss how submitting 20-odd books simultaneously is possible without cannibalizing time, effort and energy from my clients (many of whom probably had heart attacks when they saw the number. Don’t worry guys! It really does work.)

 

We Interrupt This New Year's Eve...

... this post has been interrupted by an urgent message from E.J. Copperman.

Sorry to bother you. I realize this is December 31 (possibly New Year's Eve in your region), and you're expecting some grandiose statement from the blowhard who usually posts here on Mondays, about the passage of time and the meaning of life, blah, blah, blah. 

I'll bet you're really sorry you didn't get that.

But see, I have a problem. My latest effort is a special ebook novella, A WILD GHOST CHASE, which takes place in the Haunted Guesthouse universe and is told from the point of view of Paul Harrison, the resident ghost gumshoe who died in the house before the series began. And he's got quite the corker of a problem about to face him, too.

I know. New Year's Eve. Time stops (sort of). People are out buying Champagne and in dressing up to go out for a night on the town. Some sorry souls might even be planning to fill Times Square for what appears to be a night of standing around in the freezing cold but is apparently a ton of fun. The point is, everybody has plans for this date, usually for some time in advance.

And I'm asking you to stay in and read. Or at least, to stay in and upload A WILD GHOST CHASE so you can read it later. It's much like asking a nation of Caligulas about to hit the local orgy whether they wouldn't really prefer to stay in and have a nice cup of cocoa.

So let me make my plea and then you can go on your way. I don't want to stand in the way of your revelrie. 

A WILD GHOST CHASE takes Paul and many of the other Haunted Guesthouse characters on, well, a certain kind of pursuit. A young ghost, only nine years old, appears in the guesthouse at 123 Seafront Avenue in Harbor Haven, NJ--and perhaps this is the place to note that the story was written and takes place before Hurricane Sandy--and asks Paul, Maxie and Melissa to find his mother. The boy, who calls himself Eagle of the Sun, says he is a member of the Lenni Lenape nation, and both he and his mother have been dead, separately, for over 200 years. 

A stumper, for sure. But that's just the beginning.

This story, an eSpecial from Berkley Prime Crime, is fun and fast, and available only for ereaders, including Kindle, Nook and whatever else you might use to download books. If you don't have an ereader, there are programs that will allow you to read A WILD GHOST CHASE on your Mac or PC--and the programs are free.

The story will set you back $2.99.

I won't take up much more of your time, just to note that 2013 will begin literally any moment, and you might want something to read in the early days when the cold winds are blowing (they are blowing like the Dickens as I write this). Hey, what's three bucks compared to all the money you just spend on gifts, and are the holidays over now? They are!

Besides, A WILD GHOST CHASE, in addition to being a fun mystery in the Haunted Guesthouse series, also offers a sneak peek (that is, the first chapter) of CHANCE OF A GHOST, the next full Haunted Guesthouse novel--available on ebook AND paper, and everything!--which will be on its way in only five weeks, on February 5! 

So let's sum up. Yeah, you can go out and drink your way into a stupor tonight, but before you do, you might want to give some thought--and only about 30 seconds--toward A WILD GHOST CHASE, which is available today! You'll get a new perspective, a fun mystery, and a preview of CHANCE OF A GHOST five weeks in advance.

Win/win/win!

In the meantime, if you are going out tonight, please be careful and have a great time. The regulars here at DEAD GUY look forward to seeing you all through 2013!

My Ebook and The APA's Stupidity

Jeff Cohen

I am beside myself with anger.

The changes that I described here have been enacted by the American Psychiatric Association and the words "Asperger's Syndrome" will not appear in the upcoming DSM-V. It's an outrage. I'll say no more. Read the previous post.

Instead, let's examine one of the most vicious recent traditions in the holiday season. That's right, it's time for the Monday DEAD GUY holiday letter, personalized specifically for you by being as general as possible. Shall we begin?

Dear (Insert Name):

Well, 2012 has just about reached its end, and my goodness, the time seems to fly past a little faster with each passing year. Here I just got used to writing "2012" on the four checks I actually sent someone this year (isn't online banking wonderful?), and it's practically time to handicap the Oscars.

This year has been a very busy one for us. This is a subtle yet unmistakable hint that the person sending the letter has been doing way better than you have, a theme which will recur frequently throughout. See if you can spot all the insults! The books have been rolling out regularly and seem to be meeting lots of new people every day!

Obviously, Old Haunts was our adorable little debut in February, joining older siblings Night of the Living Deed and An Uninvited Ghost in the Haunted Guesthouse family. The next installment, Chance of a Ghost, is expected February 5, and we're all incredibly excited to see the new addition to our clan!

But before then, we get a visit from a very close relative: A Wild Ghost Chase, the first-ever Haunted Guesthouse eSpecial from Berkley, will be here at the end of this month (and the end of this year--December 31, or a week from today, depending on how you set your watch)! Exclamation points are overused in holiday letters to drive home the excitment the sender has in his/her life each and every minute, and you don't. 

That little rascal, A Wild Ghost Chase, is a novella, sold only as an ebook (and only $2.99), and is told from the perspective of the best dead detective in Harbor Haven, New Jersey, Paul Harrison. When Paul and his ghostly companion Maxie find a nine-year-old ghost of Native American heritage living in the haunted guesthouse, he makes a rash promise to help find the boy's mother. They've both been dead over 200 years, so that's not going to be easy.

(Just as an aside to Haunted Guesthouse fans, A Wild Ghost Chase will also include a sneak preview of Chance of a Ghost, to whet your appetite for February 5!)

Meanwhile, the year saw the Aaron Tucker series recorded as audiobooks, and they are now available on Audible as well as from Books In Motion! It's so sweet when the little ones start talking, don't you think? And then you can't ever get them to stop!

Meanwhile, Chance of a Ghost, because we're so looking forward to February 5, is certainly on our minds. It deals with the suspicious (to him) death of a very over-the-top amateur actor, Lawrence Laurentz, who comes to Alison Kerby's mother Loretta begging for a chance to find out about the circumstances of his demise. The medical examiner says Lawrence died of heart issues, but Lawrence insists he was murdered--with an electric toaster thrown into his bath.

Alison doesn't want to take the case, but Lawrence says he can offer a special fee--he can connect her with her deceased father, whom Loretta says is "missing."

But we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. After all, we need something to write about in next year's holiday letter!

Love, peace and a happy new year to all!

 

Hey! There’s An Interjection in my Subject Line

Josh Getzler

My wife Amanda is a high school history teacher, as I may have mentioned a time or two on this blog. Each year, her ninth and tenth grade students are assigned a research project, which takes them the better part of the school year to put together because it is a complex, multi-step process that Amanda and her colleagues use to teach their teenagers how to write a rigorous, research-oriented term paper in general. There are outlines, many-labelled index cards, draft after draft, and then finally a paper about, say, whether the princes in the tower were really killed by Richard III.

It’s a terrific, if painstaking exercise, and by the end those kids—if they pay attention—really know how to write a paper.

This week, one of the interim assignments was due, and for the first time Amanda asked her students to email her the finished documents, and she would return them with corrections in Track Changes. The submissions came flooding in on Saturday night and Sunday, and as I watched her open the emails, I was struck by how many of them started “Hey!” and “heres my work” and “i couldnt finish.”

This is not to slag on these students in particular. I could just as easily have been looking at my own inbox or, really, most people’s. It’s ironic, isn’t it? After decades of being a verbal society upon the innovation and dominance of the phone, we are once again a text-based world. Between emails, chats and text messages (as well as blog commentaries, tweets et al), we spend a huge amount of time typing. Now this isn’t a tut-tutting over new spelling and emoticons ruining our lives (although I’d love to tut-tut about the loss of capitalization and apostrophes…but not now.). Rather, it’s about the way to start a letter, and when it is appropriate to be formal. It’s about context.

Ultimately, what I see is an assumption that because a document is instantly delivered and digital, it somehow isn’t formal. Sometimes that’s correct, particularly when per-character charges are incurred—no need to say “Dear Josh” on a text message. (And that’s true even if you have an unlimited plan—at this point the texting rules are pretty clear.)

However, in emails, context really does matter. If I’m having a long email chat with my assistant (which I often do even though we sit at desks facing each other for eight hours a day), there’s no need to say “Dear Maddie” each time (or really at all). But I almost never begin an email to an editor, or start a chain of emails with a client, without “Hi Jason” or “Dear Sally.” It’s simply not professional. It’s not polite.

I also rarely use as my subject line “Hey” or “hi.” For one thing, again, I tend to find it more informal than really appropriate, and I like to give the person receiving the email the opportunity to prepare him or herself for the content—hence, subject. Also, given that I get and send a couple of hundred emails a day, it would make it almost impossible to organize and file my emails with any kind of hope of retrieving one efficiently if they all said “hi” in their subject.

So given all this bemoaning (and I’m really sorry if I sound like the old fart my kids claim I am), it makes sense that I was shaking my head at Amanda’s students’ email subjects. And it doesn’t matter that many of them had written pretty terrific papers or drafts or notecards (although one had in fact said “so u see…” in the actual text). It’s just not polite to address your teacher as “Hey.”

Unless you’re the Fonz, I suppose, but then it would be “Heeeeeyyyyy.”

 

How Do You Do It?

Jeff Cohen

With an ebook on its way in two weeks, normally I'd be promoting with a vengeance in this space. I will not do that today. Expect it next week.

A crime fiction writer is, in case you hadn't noticed, a weird animal. We spend our time thinking up odd ways to kill people, justifying them with motives that sometimes border on the bizarre, and call it "entertainment." We concoct puzzles in the shape of killings, and those of us who do so with a veneer of humor often see our word referred to as, among other things, "a romp."

A romp.

Most of the time, we are concerned with the mechanics of plot. We create characters, yes, but after they are established and their voices are well embedded in our heads, we can stop worrying about getting them exactly right, because they'll tell us what is and is not in their bag of tricks. We think about dialogue, but only when it's not going well,because when it is going well, it's a conversation taking place that we simply transcribe. It's plot we concern ourselves with most of the time. How did the crime take place, who perpetrated it, what made it so difficult to solve? And most of all, why?

Then comes a day like last Friday.

An unimaginable crime like the one that blackened that day is beyond description; it is a horror and an atrocity and an act so terrible it can physically hurt to think about it. We may never know exactly what happened, although even the most cursory of accounts would be unbearable. We might be satisfied that we know who brought this awful thing to our world once the evidence is clear. We might understand the mechanics of the plan and its execution. But we're not ever going to know why. There is no why. Nothing can explain this.

And if you think that it's too soon to be talking about something that can control the easy access to firearms in this country, you have missed the point entirely. It is not too soon. It is, tragically, much too late.

Often, when crime fiction writers hear of some real life act, there might be a moment--and we're not proud of it--that we'll wonder if there's something there we might eventually be able to us in a story. There's a reason we got into this business to begin with, after all. And a professional interest can take odd forms.

Not this time. 

How do you do it--how do you go on after something like this hideous moment, and go back to writing about crime in a lighthearted fashion? How can one absorb something this unconscionable and then return to plotting murders as a form of amusement? 

People have often asked me how a writer makes murder funny, and I always answer that, at least, I don't ever try to do that. I think murder is the worst thing a person can do, and I don't think ending a life is ever funny. It's the reaction of the survivors, I'll say, that can be seen as comedic.

I think it's going to take some time to get back to that place in my own head. How will I do it? Right now, I don't know, but I'm sure I will. 

It's not going to be easy. I'll tell you that.

Query Analysis

Josh Getzler

Last week I said I would do a version of Sara Megibow’s popular “10 Queries in 10 Tweets” Twitter series, where she looks through the first 10 queries in her inbox and gives 140-character opinions as to whether they are good, bad, worthy of asking for more, or hopeless. I decided, as I went through my inbox, that instead of simply cribbing the idea for a blog post, I’d take the first 20 queries and do an analysis of them—how many are adult vs kid books; how many are fiction vs nonfiction; and crime fiction vs other kinds of stories. I have a couple of caveats: First, this analysis only includes unsolicited queries—the famous slush pile. It’s not recommendations from editors or clients. Also, I went straight down the list. It happens that of the first 20, only three were children’s books. That is highly unusual for me—I’m now at almost 50/50 kids/adults, so when I went through I assumed I was just having a slow week. Then I looked down a little and discovered that 7 of my next 9 were children’s books. So it’s just luck of the draw. Anyhow, here we go:

 

Of the first 20 queries in my inbox (which takes me only through the beginning of this week, I have

1)      Eight adult crime fiction queries.  Of this, three are mysteries, five, thrillers. Two are historical, and one of those is an impossible 200,000 words. (It’s an interesting idea, too, and I will read some of it. But 200k is pretty much disqualifyingly long.) Three are foreign based.

2)      Four adult fiction, popular or literary. One seems to be a male 50 Shades, and another about aging.

3)      Four adult nonfiction. One’s about a dog’s impact on a family after a tragedy, one’s about elder abuse and the sex slave industry (which pretty much disqualifies it for me).

4)      One straight-ahead YA fiction that seems very interesting—badass girl, rock-n-roll, pretty strong background.

5)      One book that describes itself as a MG/YA crossover, then makes THE cardinal sin of MG/YA queries: The author compares it to Rick Riordan, JK Rowling, AND Christopher Paolini. First of all, what these three series have in common are that they have boys, are for children, and have sold boatloads of books. They are tonally different, though, set in different times and places, and in fact have completely different philosophies (other than that the epic hero ought to win). The author, with that one sentence, ensured that I would not read further. If you are writing a query to an agent, you should—must, really—look beyond archetypes to really comparable titles. OK, rant over.

6)       Two straight middle grade books, one of which takes place during the Civil War. It’s funny—while I love historical fiction that takes place in Europe or during the American Revolution, I’ve never really fallen for Civil War literature. It’s the same way with books about the Westward Expansion in the US—I have one Western on my list, and no Civil War books. I can’t say precisely why, but that’s the case.

So of these 20, I’d guess that I will read further on in maybe five, but really only have truly high hopes for one, maybe two, depending on the quality of writing. A couple of the authors have pedigrees—either higher degrees or previous publications with legitimate publishers—so they’ll get a look, even if their subjects aren’t particularly compelling at first blush.

 

I’ll do another set of 20 next week, in the hope that I have a bit more variety, or a novel that screams “Take Me!” that I can explain exactly why.

 

By the way, I’m on the ITW blog again this week, this time talking about writers conferences with my friend Paige Wheeler. Here’s the link: http://www.thebigthrill.org/2012/12/coming-dec-10-16-why-do-agents-attend-writers-conferences/

From the Church of Mel

Jeff Cohen

"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."--E.B. White

"Tragedy is if I cut my finger. Comedy is if you fall into an open sewer and die."--Mel Brooks

I was listening to the radio in the car this past week mostly because I didn't have any new music to listen to, and I'm going to have to do something about that. I wanted to listen to news coming from baseball's winter meetings, but there wasn't any, so it was NPR, that bastion of laugh-a-minute programming for me. I am a walking (or in this case, driving) cliche of a suburban liberal.

That's all beside the point. This particular segment included a scientist--I think he was a scientist, but if not, he was good at pretending to be one--who was asked to explain why we laugh.

If I'd had a lick of sense, I would have turned the radio off and listened to some of my old music right there. But no, I'm a masochist, I have to hear everything everyone has to say about humor, and so I went ahead and stuck with the segment.

There are few things duller than listening to--or reading--someone explain humor. Now, this particular guy wasn't telling the audience what was funny or how to dissect a joke so that all the joy is sucked out of it; he was interested in the physics of laughter. And by the time he got to telling us how it had something to do with our relationship to chimps, luckily I was in my driveway.

Laughter is the humor equivalent of sneezing; it is an involuntary process that requires as much explanation as breathing. As long as you can do it, you don't need to know anything else.

Which brings me to Mel Brooks.

Mr. Brooks, perhaps the last standing face of pre-Apatow comedy in America, is hitting the publicity trail again, at the age of 86. He's promoting a boxed set of bits and pieces of himself on television, including a British show called An Audience With Mel Brooks and an interview he did with Dick Cavett for HBO relatively recently. I have no doubt seen almost all of the six-disc set. I've probably memorized a good section of them. I can likely watch most of them just by closing my eyes.

And yet I've gotta have that set.

This is not a plea; I swear (I just realized gift-giving season is upon us). It's an explanation. Mel Brooks is as attuned to my ear for comedy as anyone I've ever seen. He was making his best films when I was a teenager and a young man (In 1979, I tried to get Rutgers University to award him an honorary doctorate so he would give the commencement address at my graduation--they did not, but I've recently forgiven them). I have followed him from Get Smart and The Producers (Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder) to Mad About You and The Producers (Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick). Completely irreverent but respectful, if such a thing is possible, Brooks lampooned things others had lampooned but did it with love, and that always makes the difference. Nobody who didn't like the James Whale and Universal Frankenstein films could have made his shining masterpiece Young Frankenstein (1974). 

He has won Emmy awards, Academy Awards, Tony Awards and Grammy Awards. He has written, produced and directed at least three of the best comedies of all time. He has held his own as a writer in a room that included Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Carl Reiner and Larry Gelbart, among other geniuses. All that, and he has been the 2000-Year-Old Man, one of the greatest comedy recording creations ever, for 52 years.

Being a comedy fan isn't always easy. People for some reason understand blind devotion to musicians or sports teams. They harbor devotion to certain actors without anyone finding that odd. Science fiction geeks are practically revered in today's society for their attention to detail and encylopedic memories. Tell someone you can recite Blazing Saddles without referring to notes and they will look at you funny. And those are the polite ones. The impolite ones might call the police.

In the 1970s, Mel Brooks approached rock star status. Early in this century, he won more Tony Awards than anybody else had ever won all at the same time. In between, he went from "that guy with bad taste" to "comedy legend." Tonight HBO runs a show looking over his career. Next May PBS's "American Masters" will feature him. The following month, the American Film Institute is going to bestow upon him its lifetime achievement award, long overdue (He still does not have a Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, a true crime against comedy). Mel Brooks is not a comedy legend. He is a comedy fact.

If I were given the choice of meeting anyone currently alive on the planet, I'd pass up the talk with President Obama, Gloria Steinem, Dame Judi Dench or Stephen Hawking. I wouldn't ask to have lunch with Paul McCartney, Nelson Mandela or Secretary of State Clinton. Derek Jeter would be on the B list, probably for the first time in his life since 1996.

I'd go straight to Mel Brooks. Because you can't dissect comedy, but you can talk about it. And there isn't anybody on the planet who can tell you more and make you laugh as much as Mel Brooks.

Those people who can make us laugh are precious. They are more deserving of our admiration and our gratitude than those who aspire to office to "do the work of the people" and then steer us toward a cliff, fiscal or otherwise. They perform a task more difficult than making us cry; they do not merely tell stories. Comedy, when done right, does everything drama does, and makes us laugh in addition. Try doing that sometime.

If it goes back to our connections to chimps, so be it. In that moment, when we are caught off guard and we react involuntarily, we are at our most human. People like Mel Brooks bring that out in us. 

Could there be a higher calling?

Double-Dipping

Josh Getzler

 

This week, I participated in a cool Agent round table on the International Thriller Writers blog. Debbie Carter, Jenny Bent, Victoria Skurnick and I all talk about our attitudes toward queries. I'm going to link to it now, and then next week will steal an idea from the fabulously talented Sara Megibow (among others) and go through the first several queries as they appear in my inbox, regardless of genre or topic. In the meantime, enjoy The Big Thrill!

http://www.thebigthrill.org/2012/12/the-all-important-query-letter/

So Your Thoughts Are Your Own, Are They?

Jeff Cohen

Inspiration is a funny thing. It is a drug, a trick, a lie, a story you tell yourself. That doesn't mean you shouldn't act on your inspiration. It means you should have no illusions about it.

Consider the concept of the Original Idea. It doesn't exist.

You want proof? I'll give you proof.

In 1989, I was a (very) struggling aspiring screenwriter. I'd written a number of screenplays, gotten a little bit of encouragement--and when I say a little bit, I mean a LITTLE bit--and was plugging away, something I'd do for another 10 years before stumbling into the mystery book writing biz, but that's another story.

I had just finished putting the finishing touches on my latest opus, a broad farce and spy spoof called CAR TROUBLE, in which a Russian translator for the State Department is unlucky enough to find a murdered person in the trunk of her car, and I'm not telling you any more. Hey, if you're that interested, the rights are (strikingly) still available.

Suffice it to say this was not a script especially grounded in gritty dark reality. And at one point, a character is thrust into that hoariest of old thriller cliches--he is being pursued by the bad guys and the police, and ends up mistaken for the guest of honor at a public function, forced in front of an audience and expected to perform.

The twist at the time was that my character had bumbled his way onto the stage of a rap concert, assumed to be the star attraction. And he knows nothing about rap music other than the basics. So he stands there speechless for a while, the band gets nervous, the DJ is staring, and eventually, SOMETHING has to happen, so it does.

He raps the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies.

Now, at the time I thought that was the very definition of an original idea. I thought I'd hit the joke right on the nose, and if nothing else worked in that script, that joke was sure to kill. I thought it was certainly proof that I could do this comedy writing thing professionally.

Perhaps it was, but not in the way I anticipated.

I gave the script to my wife, as is my habit, and she read through it and told me the usual--"it's good." That doesn't tell a writer much. But she made a point of singling out the Beverly Hillbillies rap as the best thing in the script.

And then--I swear to you--less than a week after I finished my script, and maybe a day after I'd mailed it (man, those were the old days!) to my agent, who was based in the entertainment capital of the world, Pittsburgh PA (is there any wonder I didn't become Aaron Sorkin before Aaron Sorkin did?), this was broadcast on the ABC television network.(No copyright infringement intended.)

Jessica and I looked at each other and our jaws dropped open to the point that I, at least, resembled a snake about to snack on a baby elephant. 

I have learned, since then, not to worry if someone else has an idea that might be considered similar to mine. Writing is about personality. Each writer brings his/her/its perspective to the work. That's the difference we offer. If it's strictly the plot material or the situation, trust me. It's been done before.

And if you don't think so, I will be happy to ask John Goodman to prove it to you. Oh, wait. He already has.

A Who the hell am I? moment

Lynne Patrick

This isn’t an insecure existential (or whatever) crisis about the nature of identity or the meaning of my paltry existence. Typepad won’t let me put italics on the title. It should read Who the hell am I?

So skip the existential bit, and the stuff about identity and existence; the question is, who do I think I am to question someone else’s vision of their own work?

I was at the theatre earlier this week, reviewing a play I’d been looking forward to seeing. It first saw daylight about twenty years ago, and was turned into a hit movie; I’ve seen both the film and the stage version, and greatly enjoyed both. This was a new production, big-budget with a starry name or two – well, maybe not starry, but at least known – and I’d heard good things about it.

Which just goes to show that if you don’t raise your expectations too high, you won’t be disappointed. It had a high spot or two, but mostly it simply didn’t work. It wasn’t so much that they did it badly; more that the approach they’d taken, the concept if you like, didn’t seem to get the play’s message across.

And that’s pretty much what my review said.

It was a touring show, so out of curiosity I looked up reviews at other venues on Google – and give or take a mutter or two about relatively minor details, every one I found sang its praises. A couple even said the setting, which was integral to that concept I couldn’t get along with, was a stroke of genius.

I’ve been reviewing theatre for a long time now, and I stopped being insecure about my own credentials for the job a lot of years ago, even when the critics I’m at odds with are from the big national papers rather than the much smaller regional one I was writing for. A theatre critic is only the man or woman in the stalls, and I’ve seen more than enough live theatre to qualify. Our job is to watch the show from that point of view, and give our readers our opinion; it’s up to them whether they decide to buy a ticket, or not, on the strength of that opinion. Disagreeing with fellow reviewers doesn’t worry me in the least; we’re all individuals who bring our own experience and taste to the job, and there’s no reason on earth why we shouldn’t form different views.

But it didn’t end there. Until I’d written and filed my review, I’d only glanced at the programme (I think American for that is playbill) to check the names of the cast members who weren’t so familiar. When I looked properly, I found that the author, a hugely experienced and respected playwright, was also the director of this particular production – which meant the concept which felt so wrong was actually his idea.

That’s when I had my Who the hell am I? moment.

Had I missed the point? Had I simply failed to latch on to what he was trying to say? And in the light of those other reviews, was I pretty much the only critic in the UK who didn’t get it?

OK, so my own view of how it should be approached chimed with the directors of the movie and the previous stage production I’d seen. But hey, two people among so many; maybe they missed the point as well, and maybe the author wasn’t around to tell them they’d got it wrong.

Or maybe...

Theatre is like reading in many ways; the most significant (and relevant to this post!) is that they’re both two-way processes. What the audience member/reader gets out isn’t necessarily what the author thinks s/he has put in. If that sounds too deep and complex for a damp Wednesday morning in November, I apologize – but it’s really quite simple, and goes back a few paragraphs to where I described reviewers: individuals, who bring our own experience and taste to the job.

To my mind, that description kind of sums up the entire human race.

Which is why that Who the hell am I? moment has passed. Maybe I got it wrong, maybe I just got it... different. I’m only human after all.

A Gentle Agent's Guide to the End of NaNoWriMo

Josh Getzler

So it's the end of November, and if my Twitter and Facebook feeds are any indication, the urge to complete a novel in a month remains strong in many writers, who are by this point tired, irritated, pretty much hating the sight of their computers and are thinking of ways to torture their books' protagonists, whom they despise.

That's because NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, or as most of us like to call it, November) is unnatural. It imposes an artificial deadline on a process that typically takes a more plodding determination--to start and finish a reasonably-sized novel in the space of 30 days, one of which is Thanksgiving.

But that doesn't mean it's worthless: not at all. I know many writers who have used NaNoWriMo to write up the framework, or sketchy draft, of a book that they eventually get published. And the discipline of placing butt in chair for a month straight does wonders for writers who wonder "Can I actually DO this?" That's great. And there's a wonderful, mostly online community of sufferers...er, authors (I tease because I love) who share their thoughts and headaches and struggles to make Word Count without inserting gratuitus sex scenes so they can write "Oh god Oh god Oh god" for three lines.

But here's what I'm here to say, and it's for both self-interest and for the value of giving this as advice: Please, if you have written a novel during NaNoWriMo, don't then "try it out" on agents or editors or even your best friends before you take a very hard look at it and spend serious amounts of time editing. To be fair: the very vast majority of participants know this well (and anyone who's done it more than once definitely knows). And there is a sense that December is NaNoEdMo. And January could be NaNoReWriMo. But neither, really, ought to be NaNoSubMo.

Instead, marvel at what you have accomplished--you've written all (or in many cases, really, most) of a book from scratch in a month. I've never done that. Neither have most people in the world. It's a great achievement. Seriously. And I would LOVE to get a beautifull, well-written, spit-polished submission of a manuscript that was conceived in November. It makes a great story for the pitch, and I feel like we all root for it. But the writing is only the first step. 

Now, with three days to go, get back to it! You should be hitting the climax (not the 3-line Oh God kind!) and taking it across the line. Good luck! Then go to sleep, wake up, turn on the laptop, and get to editing!

Title Madness

Jeff Cohen

I was at an anniversary party this past weekend (Happy Thanksgiving, Americans!) and, as often happens at such events, someone who knows what I do for a living asked about the next book and when it would be released (E.J. Copperman's e-book special A WILD GHOST CHASE comes December 31, which doesn't seem all that far away anymore, and then the fourth Haunted Guesthouse novel CHANCE OF A GHOST will be due on February 5). I related the information duly, and she asked what the book is called.

Now, you're going to think this next part is crazy, but only because it is. Keep in mind that I realize it's a symptom of a mental problem, but I'm not sure which one. I only mention it here because, well, it's my day to post and the well is a little dry just now. 

Anyway, this woman asked the title of my next book. And, for not the first time in my life, I pretended to have to think about it, like I'd forgotten the title of the work that I'd spent months writing and more months rewriting, that I am now in the process of beginning to publicize and that I hope will be an international success, or even a regional one, if a whole lot of people in one region buy it.

I stood there, doing some very bad acting about how I couldn't remember the name ("There are two of them, and I have to remember which is which"), until the conversation shifted.

Hi. My name is Jeff, and I don't like to say titles out loud.

It's true. I can't explain it, but I have a particular aversion to stating the name of my works (and, to be fair, almost everyone else's) aloud. I have no such problem with writing them. When I typed the two titles (those would be A WILD GHOST CHASE and CHANCE OF A GHOST) above, I did not hesitate nor did I try to change the subject. But ask me to talk about any of my books and I'll usually refer to them as "one of the movie theater books" or "a ghost book" without saying the actual printed title.

No, I don't understand it either.

This is something of a self-imposed handicap for an author. If there's one thing you should be really eager to shout from the rooftops, it should be the name of the work you're trying to make famous. I'm sure you don't find Stephen King pretending to forget Cujo or J.K. Rowling "not recalling" which Harry Potter book was which (witch?). William Shakespeare probably ran around town yelling "Hamlet!" so often that somebody came up to him and said, "Geez, Bill, if you want to live in a bigger town, move back to London."

Luckily, the Internet has made it possible to communicate with innumerable people all at the same time without having to actually use your vocal cords. So you'll be reading the titles A WILD GHOST CHASE and CHANCE OF A GHOST plenty in the coming weeks. And it's not like I'll never say one of my titles in conversation; it's just that I usually try to avoid it. 

It makes no sense. I realize that. And it's not an absolute: As Gene Wilder said in The Producers, "It's a minor compulsion; I can deal with it if I want to."

After all, they say that admitting you have a problem is the first step.