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

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

Marilyn Thiele

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossing over

Lynne Patrick

I went to the theatre last night. Not an unusual occurrence – I review for the local newspaper, and it’s a rare week when I don’t; sometimes I go two or three times.

The reason last night was a) worth mentioning, and b) a suitable subject for a Dead Guy post is that the play was an adaptation of a murder mystery novel, one of a popular series which had already been adapted for TV.

Anyone remember Cadfael? It’s fifteen years since the last TV adaptation, and I don’t know if the series ever made it to the US. He became something of an institution here in the UK – a mediaeval monk who solved mysteries using his knowledge of healing as a form of early forensic science, supplemented, of course, by being an all-round super-observant, hyper-perceptive sort of guy.

Last night, a theatre I sometimes visit was staging a ‘world premiere’ of an adaptation of one of the books. Someone I know was in the cast, and anyway it seemed like a good idea. I booked seats.

Modified rapture.

At first it was hard to tell exactly what was wrong. The dozen or so actors (unusually large cast for a small company) did just fine, give or take a villain who swashed a buckle or two too many and a good guy with the same problem. I didn’t even mind that Brother Cadfael himself wasn’t wearing lovely Derek Jacobi’s face as he did on TV; the guy who played him did an excellent job.

The company had clearly laid out a substantial amount of cash on sets, elaborate special effects for sound and weather, period music and costumes. The script...

Right. Yes. That’s where things began to come apart. Lots of short scenes, each in a different, heavily staged location. Not a problem in itself; short scenes and jump-cuts work fine on TV, but this wasn’t TV. There were long-drawn-out scene changes carried out by backstage staff dressed as monks and covered by endless mediaeval-sounding music. The pace, an essential component of murder mystery fiction in any form, was shot to pieces. It dragged.

As it progressed, I realized the whole concept wasn’t working. It was too ambitious. They were trying to cram a whole 80,000-word book, characters, locations, historical background, atmosphere, subplots, everything, into a couple of hours of dialogue. They used back-projection for some linking scenes – do they call it multi-media? – and it simply didn’t fit with the mediaeval setting. A couple of elaborate pieces of scenery were brought on for one scene, which could probably have been cut anyway. And when the stagehand monks wheeled (yes, wheeled) the trees on for the eighth time, I was hard pressed not to laugh.

The denouement, when it finally came, seemed tacked on; solving murders is what Brother Cadfael does, so there had to be one, but most of the story had been about finding out who was responsible for beating up a monk who had little to do with the rest of the action and the dead nun had somehow taken a back seat.

And I was left wondering, as I have on other occasions, whether it’s ever possible to make a success of adapting a novel into a stage play. And if it’s going to work, whether the trick is to move a long way from the original, and not be afraid to lose subplots and detail.

TV adaptations can be made to work, because TV has the facilities and money to go for realism. Dickens is great on TV; his intricate descriptions of locations, often pages long in the books, can be visually portrayed in seconds, and the move from one location to the next is almost instant. These days theatre almost by definition has to be stylized; the days of true-to-life drawing-room sets are past. This production with its large cast, lots of scenery and lavish effects clearly wasn’t cheap, but throwing money at a problem doesn’t always provide a solution.

Two of my two favourite leisure pursuits in one package: a murder mystery, and a visit to the theatre. On the face of it, a great way to spend an evening. Maybe it can be done; maybe I was just unlucky with this one.

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.

a thief, not a donor

Jessy Randall

It's not often that library work involves crime of any kind, but this week we had a research question with a crime-related answer. I've changed the name of the perpetrator to protect his privacy.

First, the back story: from approximately 1903-1977, Colorado College had a small museum in Palmer Hall (now our social sciences building). Its collections included fossils, pottery, stuffed animals, and more. When the museum closed, the materials were dispersed to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and elsewhere. (The blue whale skeleton from the CC Museum, pictured below ca. 1920, now hangs in the Denver Museum.)

Recently, a Denver Museum staff member contacted me with some questions about a name she'd found associated with a box of items from the CC Museum. There were a number of named collections in the CC Museum, including the Lang-Bixby Collection, the Corwin Collection, and others. But this name -- let's say it was Dondrustim -- was one I hadn't heard before.

We checked through our files on the history of the museum and discovered that Dondrustim was indeed associated with certain materials from the CC Museum. Why? Because he stole them, creating the short-lived "Dondrustim Collection." 

James M. Dontrustim majored in art history and graduated from Colorado College in 1970. He was an honors student and won a prestigious fellowship as a senior. He worked with rare books and manuscripts at the CC library and also as a part-time guard at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the local art museum.

In 1972, he was charged with stealing more than $10,000 worth of art objects from the Fine Arts Center and the CC library. Most of the Fine Arts Center items were there on long-term loan from CC. Dondrustim pleaded guilty, saying he had no intention of selling the objects: according to an article in the Colorado Springs Sun on May 16, 1972, he intended to study the objects, catalog them, and use them "to beautify his apartment."

It took us a while to figure out this mystery, because our file on the CC Museum is thick and the top sheet of stapled pages on Dondrustim misspelled his name slightly as -- let's say -- Dontressim. But our excellent student assistant spotted the similarity and found a list of about 100 items Dondrustim stole. Some were small, easy to hide under a sweater: a Babylonian clay tablet, a carved stone scarab. Others would have been more difficult to smuggle out of the museum: a prehistoric Anasazi ladle, a pair of Plains Indians leggings, a double-headed steel spear.

How did he do it? How did he get caught? Did he feel bad about it later? These are mysteries we'll never solve. But we can tell our Denver Museum researcher not to call Dondrustim a "donor." The items in the Dondrustim Collection may have been in James M. Dondrustim's possession for a brief while, but he didn't donate them; rather, the police recovered them from Dondrustim's apartment after his arrest and returned them to the museum.

The Book That Should Have Won

by Erin Mitchell

Last night crime fiction’s glitterati came out in force for the 2013 Edgar Awards. I don’t usually give a hoot about awards of any sort, but this time, there was one book in the running that I was really pulling for.

Which is not to say I didn’t care at all about other nominees and categories. I was thrilled that reviewer Oline Cogdill was receiving a Raven. I like the TV show Sherlock, and so was happy it won. I think Karin Slaughter’s short stories are exceptional—she has a gift for the form—and I cheered when she won for “The Unremarkable Heart.” LIVE BY NIGHT is some of the finest storytelling I’ve had the privilege to read in recent memory, and Dennis Lehane is deserving of every accolade he receives. I really wanted to see DEVIL IN THE GROVE win, but (I think) I understand why it didn’t, and, hey, it did just win a Pulitzer.

That said…

The Best Critical/Biographical category included four nominees. Three of them are books about series, authors, and characters that have impacted the crime fiction genre beyond measure: Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The last nominee was BOOKS TO DIE FOR, a compendium of essays from almost 120 crime fiction authors about their favorite crime novels. It describes itself best, in the introduction to the book:

This is not a pollsters' assembly of popular novels, compiled with calculators and spreadsheets. Neither is it a potentially exhausting list of titles that winds back to the dawn of fiction, chiding the reader for his or her presumed ignorance in the manner of a compulsory reading list handed out in a bad school at the start of summer to cast a pall over its students' vacation time. What we sought from each of the contributors to this volume was passionate advocacy: we wanted them to pick one novel, just one, that they would place in the canon. If you found them in a bar some evening, and the talk turned (as it almost inevitably would) to favorite writers, it would be the single book that each writer would press upon you, the book that, if there was time and the stores were still open, they would leave the bar in order to purchase for you, so that they could be sure they had done all in their power to make you read it.

And the winner was…THE SCIENTIFIC SHERLOCK HOLMES, penned by an emeritus professor of chemistry, Dr. James O’Brien, which The New York Times described as:

…a stolid academic treatise, rife with abbreviations

Huh. Now, I haven’t read this treatise, nor do I plan to. From what I’ve read about it, I’m sure Dr. O’Brien worked hard on it, and it’s probably interesting to people who care about science and have at least a passing interest in Sherlock Holmes.

But here’s the rub: BOOKS TO DIE FOR is a book by readers, for readers. It celebrates with abandon books both famous and less well known. The essays it contains are a joy to read. A century from now, people will still be reveling in BOOKS TO DIE FOR.

Editors John Connolly and Declan Burke, assisted by the immensely talented Clair Lamb, created an extraordinary work in BOOKS TO DIE FOR, and it was no feeble undertaking. The authors who contributed are from all corners of our planet, and the finished product runs to 700-some odd pages. It documents a moment in time insomuch as each contributor approached his or her essay as a reader, but it spans our entire reading consciousness, documenting our collective.

I would like to think that ultimately, even awards handed out by industry associations and attended by insiders are about celebrating readers and the stories that thrill them. This is exactly what BOOKS TO DIE FOR does.

Luckily, it is not dependent on any recognition other than readers’ eyes and enthusiasm to do this. At Bouchercon last year, there was a signing event that included many of the BOOKS TO DIE FOR contributors that was, predictably, mobbed. The authors were in fine form—each of them patient and funny as they chatted with those in a queue that seemed never-ending. The palpable excitement that afternoon is why BOOKS TO DIE FOR should have won an Edgar, but will endure regardless.

p.s.: As much as I’m not an affable loser, I should be clear that the aforementioned editors are incredibly gracious, and when they say, “it’s an honor just to be nominated,” I’m quite certain that they mean it. The sentiments herein are mine alone.

More Q&A - May 2nd (strategies, comics, and movies!)

 

BENJAMIN LEROY

Mia ‏@arrhyth_mia I'm curious about book pricing. There seems to be much variance between retailers, digital/print, physical/online store.

I’m a business guy. Actually, that’s bullshit. But I sometimes have to talk the talk and pretend like I am. Here are some observations I’ve made from the shores of Business Lake on the outskirts of Industry Town.

(1) When you assume that a business, because it has a name you recognize, must be on top of things, you’ve only got a 50/50 chance of being right. Some of the most colossally ill-informed, uninterested, and self-deceiving people I’ve ever met, happen to be in positions of power at companies large and small. These folks ride their “gut impulses” right into brick walls. They’ll tell you something is the way it is (the price of a book, for example) because that’s what it’s supposed to be. Even if you point out that it was a keystroke error by a temp worker, ol’ Jack Welch v 2.0 will talk around the issue, assuring you it was by design.

(2) Nobody knows how this is all going to shake out. Questions about book pricing aren’t answered in any real and permanent way. Not today at least. Are you paying for content? Delivery? How does the price compare to a candy bar? Why is gold valuable? We’re living in crazy times and if we’re so inclined, we can sit around the table with a Big Gulp and Doritos and we can talk all night about value and worth and never come to consensus. We are microcosms battling the same battles that happen in macro boardrooms.

(3) Some folks are content to lose/not make much money today if they can, metaphorically speaking, stab the competition in the throat in the long term. If I had a pile of cash on hand/credit extended to me that would allow me to pay my bills for the next five years and I knew my competition was not as flush with capital, I could see a strategy in forcing them to tie up cash with keeping the lights on until it was no longer feasible. I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, but I could understand, on some Machiavellian/Sun Tzu level how it makes sense. So I’d set my prices super low, smile politely, make very little money and say to my opponent, “Your move.” Since they wouldn’t be able to match price, they’d lose business, and with the reduction in business, they wouldn’t be able to pay rent. Then they’d go out of business, leaving me to control the market, at which point I might consider jacking up my prices and capitalizing on all of the patience I showed.

 

Orion Strange ‏@Nerdy_Orion time travel or who would win in a fight... Superman vs The Sentry?

I didn’t even know who Sentry was, but historically speaking, my issue with Superman was that, besides the whole Kryptonite thing, he was a little too perfect. When I saw that The Sentry was basically Superman +1 I was like, “Meh, give me Badger and I’ll be happier” because (a) I’m trying to be contrarian, (b) dude was from my neck of the woods and namedropped places local to me, and (c) if I pull out something kinda obscure from the comics world, I’m hoping it’ll ease any blowback I might receive for dismissing Superman and Superman +1.

 

Thomas Pluck ‏@tommysalami prior to publication, what can a writer do to build a network or foundation to make publicity/promo easier for the publisher?

Be a good citizen. I don’t mean helping old ladies across the street or anything (though, more bonus points to you if you do), but be a part of the conversation. Read books. Talk about books. Publish short stories in anthologies and zines. Don’t be the overaggressive d-bag auto-Tweeting twenty times a day about something nobody cares about. There is no formula, of course. Some folks got it in higher doses than others, and no amount of jumping in front of the camera is going to make people photogenic.

 

Mark DC ‏@FilmCriticOne Okay, here is one: would publishing a book, even if sales were weak, help get a screenplay made into movie?

Man, I gotta be honest, I don’t understand the movie business (barely have any grasp on publishing) and what it takes to get something from book to screenplay to onscreen.  In the last ten years I’ve talked to producers, actors, scouts, and a bunch of other folks who were, ostensibly, connected to the movie industry. Sometimes they’ve asked specifically about things we’ve published, and I’ve allowed myself to get excited about possibilities that have ultimately fizzled out. Getting a screenplay turned into a movie takes some next level wizardry that I don’t understand. At all. 

 

I talk about a lot of things including publishing and writing and charity on my website. www.benjaminleroy.com

Motives

Lynne Patrick

The first of May. How did that happen? It’s clearly the time of year when I start to fling my hands up in horrified amazement and ask where the days/weeks/months have gone and how has it got to nearly halfway to next Christmas without my noticing.

There are those who would say it’s because I spend most of the time with my head in a book, and though I might challenge most (a girl has to eat, sleep and carry out whatever freelance projects are dropped on her desk, and there’s been some good drama on TV lately), I have to plead guilty pretty much as charged.

The one I’m reading at the moment has a protagonist who reads even more than I do – sometimes two books a day – and talks in terms of pulling the current one over her head and disappearing into it. I know that feeling well. It usually comes when the book I’m reading is part of a well-worn series; after four or five outings, the character set feels like a group of old friends, and getting to the end is akin to waving goodbye to them as they set off on a year-long journey to some place I can’t contact them.

Which puts me in mind of Meriel’s stand-in post last week, while I was failing to get to Guernsey for a few days’ break now that spring has finally sprung. (Long story – fog, cancelled flights, overnight stay at airport hotel, long drive home in heavy traffic after second cancellation. You really don’t want to know; I certainly didn’t. The plan is to try again in a couple of weeks; watch this space.)

Where was I? Ah yes, Meriel’s post. It got me thinking, as all the best blog posts do. What pulls me into a book, I asked myself. Why do I choose a particular author’s work, or if it’s someone I haven’t sampled before, keep reading beyond the 50-page test?

(Have I done this before? It’s hard to believe that in six years of Dead Guy I haven’t touched on the subject. Apologies for repeating myself if I have; I doubt much has changed.)

Is it, as Meriel says, the puzzle?

No, not really. I quite often arrive at the big revelation scene without the smallest idea whodunit, and that’s absolutely fine. In fact, if I’ve worked it out ahead of the sleuth, I feel a little cheated; they’re supposed to be the clever ones. That’s one reason I prefer reading mystery fiction to seeing it on TV. You sort of know who it is before the last (or even the first) commercial break, not because you’ve applied your mind to untangling the threads, but because everyone else is dead or too obvious, or there’s a ‘name’ in the cast who doesn’t have much else to do. In a book the bad guy doesn’t have a famous face, and if the plot is properly constructed there’s that delicious ‘Of course! Why didn’t I see it?’ moment. Unless you’ve seen it already.

Usually I haven’t. Not just because my mind doesn’t work that way, though there’s a strong element of that. It’s mainly because I’m not looking for it. I’m enjoying the ride, and getting to know the characters.

That’s what keeps me reading: the storytelling, and the characters.

The quality of the storytelling is what makes me, or doesn’t, as the case may be, hunt down more of the same author’s work. The characters are what make[s] me (is it possible to get the grammar right there?) seek out more of the same series. Two examples you may want to check out: Reginald Hill, still much missed, and Phil Rickman, who has just been longlisted, hurray, for the Dagger In the Library, the Crime Writers’ Association’s annual award to an author nominated by librarians for a body of work popular with borrowers.

I came to Reg Hill by the route most people take – Dalziel and Pascoe. I started mid-series, as I often do, and decided from the outset that Ellie Pascoe was someone I wanted for a friend. Then I found he wrote standalones as well...

Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins was someone else I itched to sit and have coffee with – still do, but she’s probably too busy. Vicars usually are, and she’s no ordinary vicar. I’ve just finished book eleven in the series, and when two regular characters almost came to grief, I found I was holding my breath until I found out whether they were OK.
And when I found an omnibus of two Rickman standalones at our holiday cottage last summer, seventh heaven doesn’t begin to cover it.

Two great character sets, two brilliant storytellers. That’s what does it for me.

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.

little everyday mysteries of library work

Jessy Randall

I fear this will be the most boring post ever, but since I am interested in the everyday lives of authors, editors, and agents, I thought maybe I should talk about my own everyday life as a librarian.

My days are often like this:

At the Desk

I spent the entire day in official details;
And it almost pulled me down like the others:
I felt that tiny insane voluptuousness,
Getting this done, finally finishing that.

-- Theodor Storm. Translated from the German by Robert Bly.

This week I had a particularly insane voluptuous triumph figuring out a small mystery. A researcher called hoping to confirm that an African-American lawyer, George Gallious Ross, born 1879, had attended Colorado College, where I work. She'd contacted us because of a reference in Who's Who of the Colored Race: A General Biographical Dictionary of Men and Women of African Descent (c. 1915):

Unfortunately, CC had no yearbook in 1899 (the first yearbook was published in 1900), so this wasn't going to be easy.

I tried all the usual things I try with a question like this. I really wanted to find him, because if he'd attended CC we could brag that he was our earliest known African-American student. (We know there were African-Americans at CC as early as 1904, but 1899 would beat that.) I looked for him in early yearbooks and alumni directories. I tried searching the early CC student paper, the newly-digitized Collegian.I called the registrar's office to see if they could find him in early student records.

No luck.

At this point I looked more carefully at the reference in Who's Who, and also at the education statements in other entries in the book:

And soon I cracked the code. It all comes down to punctuation. Can you figure it out?

(I'll pause while you work on it.)

Semi-colons separate high school, college, and further degrees. There's a comma, not a semi-colon, in Ross's entry between "grad. high school, Las Vegas, New Mex., 1896" and "and at Colorado Springs, Col., 1899." The "Col." in Ross's entry doesn't stand for college. It stands for Colorado. (Notice the "O." in other entries meaning Ohio.)

Ross didn't attend Colorado College. He attended high school in two places: Las Vegas and Colorado Springs. A call to the president of the alumni association of the Colorado Springs High School (now known as Palmer High) confirms that George G. Ross graduated in 1899. They have a handwritten ledger listing the earliest graduates, and he's in it! Here's a picture of the school then and now, courtesy of the Colorado Springs Gazette.

 

 

Speak Out Before It's Too Late

Marilyn Thiele

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beware of False Gurus

by Erin Mitchell

It’s been quite a few weeks…ones that have given social media denizens more than enough to talk about. From the unimportant, like Unilever telling women to how to think—or not think—about their bodies to hard news events that have impacted many of us directly and indirectly, one thing has become painfully clear: It is impossible to spit these days without hitting a Guru.

It’s relatively simple to trace the history of social media back more than a decade. If you’re reading this, then you have access to the vast interwebs, which means you also know that social media is in a state of constant flux. As a result, some of us use social media these days, while others gravitate toward social media.

And here’s the news flash: Neither is wrong. There are no rules. Opinions vary.

Following the bombing in Boston, as had happened after the shootings in Sandy Hook, some folks chose to let their scheduled tweets and posts run. And some took objection to this. The most famous example is self-proclaimed guru extraordinaire Guy Kawasaki, whose perfectly arrogant response to those who suggest he pause his incessant stream of scheduled tweets probably won’t affect his book sales one iota. But I was surprised how many people came out of the virtual woodwork to lay down the law as to How to Do Social Media Right.

To be fair, after Sandy Hook, I used this very platform to suggest that when tragedy strikes, scheduled marketing should be paused. I hope I wasn’t mean or school-marmish when I did so, and if I was, I apologize. Because ultimately there are no rules, just opinions.

I have no quarrel with tools that allow brands and people to schedule tweets and posts. To me, social media is just that: A form of media. It is not a party, a fete, a gathering, or jamboree. That said, I use it for social interaction quite often. But that’s my choice. If you can’t be live and in virtual person all the time in all the outlets, I don’t think this means you should forego them completely. 

You can use the tools available—including getting help with content—in a manner that is transparent, and therefore no less genuine.

I schedule posts and tweets for clients. I have no problem being up-front about this. I also schedule blog posts, and for some clients, have their Twitter and/or Facebook accounts linked to their blogging platform, so that when these posts go live, word is spread through all the (social) media channels available.

I also choose to pause these when a major hard news story breaks, mostly because at that time, nobody really cares about anything other than that news story. So posting content then is pretty much a waste of time. If you’re an author (or publisher, for that matter) who chooses to carry on with “BUY MY BOOK” tweets and posts in the face of news like this, I’d suggest you reconsider.

And while we’re talking rules, some of you might have seen this nonsense about manual vs. not retweets. Despite what this post says, it’s fine to share information however you see fit. Whomever originated the information you’re sharing should just be grateful you do.

Malice Domestic

Meriel Patrick, guest blogging on behalf of Lynne

Some time ago, I started reading a crime novel that had been on my to-read list for quite a while. Within a few pages, it became obvious that the first victim was a small child, and my heart sank. In fact, I still haven't finished the novel.

Now, on the face of it, there's nothing particularly odd about this. Child murder is a horrendous thing. But then, any murder in real life is a horrendous thing, and I quite happily read fictional accounts of all sorts of people meeting untimely ends - is fictional child murder really so much worse than the adult version?

As I pondered on this, I remembered something I heard at a crime fiction conference a few years ago: as a crime writer, you can bump off as many people as you like, and your readers will cheer and ask for more. But kill a cat - or worse still, a dog - and the chances are you'll get angry letters.

So what's going on here? Why are normal, law-abiding citizens happy to read about grisly deaths of fellow humans, but are shocked and outraged if the victim is a pet?

It struck me that in my case at least, my reactions to animal deaths and child victims in crime novels are very closely allied. It's partly that they're both helpless casualties of events beyond their control, but it's not wholly that.

The main reason I don't like these kinds of deaths in crime novels is that the victims aren't involved in the story in the right kind of way. They generally just happened to get in the way, or (particularly with animal deaths) were killed as a warning to someone else. You can't hope to solve the crime by finding out about the victim.

This all finally clunked into place in my head when I encountered the term 'malice domestic', used to describe a particular sub-genre of crime fiction. This is an umbrella term used of works where the crime is, in the broadest sense, domestic - where the victim(s) and killer know each other, and the key to the puzzle lies in figuring out the relationships between them.

This, I've realized, is a large part of the essence of what makes something a good crime novel for me: a delicate balance of a nice chewy intellectual mystery to solve, and some well-developed characters whose lives I can be drawn into. If those key relationships aren't there - if the central murders are in some way impersonal - there isn't the right kind of tension to keep me really interested. I may admire a high-octane thriller or a well-crafted serial killer novel, but the chances are it won't suck me in in the same way.

Given that there are plenty of people who do like thrillers and serial-killer novels, this is clearly at least partly a matter of personal taste. But I don't think I'm alone. That perfect blend of characters to love and puzzle to solve is a heady mixture!

On Drinking With Agents

Josh Getzler

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

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

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

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

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

What Michael Nesmith Teaches Us About Writing

Jeff Cohen

There's wings to the thought behind fancy;

There's wings to the thought behind play

--Michael Nesmith, "Rio"

 

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

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

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

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

Effortless?

Believe me, there's effort involved. 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

John Bellairs continues to be awesome

Jessy Randall

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

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

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

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

Second Time Around: The Bookseller's View

Marilyn Thiele

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Publishing Q&A, April 18

BENJAMIN LEROY

 

It's another Q&A day around these parts. I'm going to update this post throughout the day. So if it's early, and you have more questions, put your question in the comment section or tweet it to me (@TyrusBooks). It's never too early to start, so here we go.

QUESTIONS~!

@graham_powell37s asks -- What do you wish you had known when you started publishing?

I set out to answer this question with a bunch of technical stuff—how hard it would be to get reviewed in trade publications, the challenges of widespread distribution, the problem of remainders, the terrible lag time between shipping books and being paid for them. But then I realized that if I had known those things, I probably would have just given up. Maybe betting the last of my $20 on a horse named Papa Soda Pop, hoping to live the American Dream a day longer.

But I didn’t know those things, so I didn’t quit. I mean, I knew them as concepts. I knew what was said in all of the “So You Want to Start a Publishing Company” books I obsessed over for months. But they weren’t real to me.

Then I was going to answer the question by saying—“I wish I would have known that it would all work out in the end.”

But then I thought, “Why? So you would have been lazy and expected things to materialize and then nothing would have gotten done and you’d be hanging out at the racetrack cheering on ol’ Papa Soda Pop?”

So, I’ll just be glad that I knew what I did. Namely, that books are awesome and have the power to change lives. The written word is the most powerful thing I know. It lets people know they’re less alone in this life. Getting those words out to others—regardless of the challenges I didn’t understand—was totally worth it. 

 

@JarrettRush49m What are the industry's real views on self publishing? Like, what do they say around the water cooler?

Well, the first thing I’d say is that there is no consensus. If somebody in the industry has thought a thought about self-publishing, I’ve heard it across the spectrum. Some folks still give it little mind. Others are deathly afraid it’ll be the end of their career. Some folks who thought one way yesterday think differently today and will come up with something new tomorrow. Which is to say—like everybody else in the world, nobody knows how things are going to shake out in the future. Not exactly. Not at all.

There are, of course, some stereotypes about certain types of self-published authors who think “TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING IS DEAD. SELF PUBLISHING + ??? = $$$$” and occasional eye rolls when they’re confronted, for the billionth time, by the aspirant saying, “You don’t understand my genius! You’re going to regret your stupidity when you see me on the NYT Bestseller list!” and then the publishing person scrambles back to their office thinking, “Damn, maybe I made a mistake. Let me dig that manuscript out of the trash and see.” But then they dig it out of the trash and it’s a third generation knock off of the Davinici Code starring Captain Horatio Manstuff and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, now I remember, the writing in this book is terrible and has no business being in book form” and it goes back in the trash.

In the same way that every person in publishing isn’t a tweed jacket wearing Snidely Whiplash type, we recognize that there are super brilliant people who have figured out how to make a real go of it self-publishing their books. I, personally, high five those people, because all I really care about is that they’ve connected with an audience who loves what they do and people are reading books. Folks like Chuck Wendig, who employ multiple strategies (including self-publishing) are some of the people I turn to when I want to better understand where publishing is headed. The guy gets it and he’s willing to be a part of the bigger discussion.

I’ve long considered myself kinda Socratic in that I don’t pretend to know the answers to anything. When I see absolutists on either side of the argument, I pay very little attention to what is being said. It’s all noise.

Also, I don’t really hang out at the water cooler, I’m usually at the Off Track Betting place down the street from the office putting cash down on Papa Soda Pop, hoping for the big payoff so I can buy 100 acres in the middle of nowhere to set up a compound where I can subsidize the lives of a bunch of writers I love.

 

Anonymous asks...What rules should be in place for social media promotion when current events/breaking news are happening?

This is a tough one.

I’m not going to tell people how to grieve or process tragedy. It’s not my place.

That said—can you please turn off your damn auto-Tweets? I’m not trying to infringe on your First Amendment Capitalism or anything, but when there’s a serious conversation going on in the room and you’re busy letting us know that we can get 15% off your new releases and “Look at this review from some blog nobody has ever heard of!” it’s, how do I phrase this nicely? Well, it’s like, you’re an inconsiderate asshole and you’re kinda ruining things for the rest of us.

 

This question(s) came in from two people. @mcvladie and @tommysalami5h - What do you consider essential legwork for writers prior to approaching an agent or publisher? What should somebody be looking for in a book contract?

Right before I started writing this response, I counted all of the publishing companies currently in operation. I’ll assume four or five are going to start while I’m writing this, and that the count will be somewhere in the low 100,000s.

The range of professionalism and life expectancy of these companies is as varied as the books they will publish/”publish.” Unfortunately, unless you’ve done some studying of the publishing world, understand the language, and have impulse control, it’s difficult to separate wheat from the “what do you mean the cover is upside down and I’ve only sold two copies?” variations.

Here, then, is my handy guide to kicking the tires.

(1) If a publisher’s website is geared towards making you, the author, a bunch of money by letting you express your creativity, probably they aren’t a legit avenue to Publishingville. Publishers make money by selling books to readers, you know, the people you hoped to attract with the book you spent the better part of a year writing. Marketing to authors means that’s how a publisher plans on making cash—selling services (that will ultimately be near worthless) and books to the author. Move along.

(2) If you ask how long a publisher is in business and they say, “Dude, since last month!” And then you say, “Cool, but you’ve got years of experience, right?” And they say, “Experience in what?” And you say, “In publishing.” And they say, “Well, I mean, I’ve been reading books since sixth grade.” And you’re like, “Yeah, but editing and everything, you’ve got experience, right?” And they’re like, “Dude, I self-published my own book and it once got into the 300,000s on Amazon.” You had ought to walk away.

(3) Here are some more nuanced points, but things you should pay attention to because it shows immediately and right away that somebody has no idea what they’re talking about.

            (a) Unless a book is a work for hire, a legitimate publisher NEVER takes an author’s copyright. A book is copyrighted in the author’s name. Open up the books on your shelves and look for yourself.

            (b) What you/your agent is doing is licensing the rights to your intellectual property (the book) to a publisher for exploitation. The location, language, format and other things are clearly spelled out and are part of the negotiation process. North American English print. Film. Spanish and Italian translation rights. These are all things that get negotiated. Publishers will often pay a higher advance or a greater royalty rate in exchange for more of the rights. Agents (and authors) will fight to keep rights with them, especially when they have legitimate opportunities to exploit them elsewhere and get more money for the author.

            (c) How long does the publisher retain the ability to exploit these rights? That’s covered by something called the Reversion of Rights clause. It clearly spells out how/when the rights that have been licensed to the publisher will return in full to the author. Typically, in the contracts I’ve seen, reversion is tied to things like minimum sales in a royalty period or a book’s status as being out of print (none in the warehouse, readers aren’t able to get new copies). Why is it not set up on a timeline, like after 12 months rights return? Because getting the momentum going for a book and keeping it a sustained success requires effort and planning and there’d be little reason to continue pushing a book if a publisher knew it only had a brief window to capitalize on those efforts. If it is going to be tied to a timeline, then it should be a timeline that allows for the book’s life arc to play out in a realistic timeframe.

    (d) Royalty rates are through the roof because “Big Publishing rips off authors and we want authors to get paid a lot more!” It costs money to publish a book. It costs money to run a publishing company. Do I wish authors could make a bajillion dollars for their works? Of course I do. Unfortunately, business being business—overhead and production costs being real things, money has to go to paying the bills, too. Anybody pretending they can run a publishing company AND pay royalties two or three or four times what the standard range in the publishing industry is going to be out of business before long.

 

I talk about a lot of things. Sometimes publishing. Sometimes other stuff. www.benjaminleroy.com

 

Second time around

Lynne Patrick

Spring has finally sprung, complete with daffodils, many of them at last, waving in the stiff breeze – the proverbial March winds have arrived a month late – and dark murmurings about digging the lawnmower out of the back of the garage.

It arrived over the weekend, announcing its presence somewhat soggily; apparently when warm air moves in to oust the cold, the consequence is rain. We were on the road, en route for and back from a family weekend, and a minor detour in each direction took us to a little piece of heaven on earth for book lovers: a small town called Hay-on-Wye, which holds the UK’s biggest literature festival over ten days every May, and where every other shop is a bookshop all the year round.

Mostly secondhand books, but books nonetheless. I’m not safe to be let loose with a debit card in a bookshop of any kind; I confess I bought, and not just one or two. Twice.

The hours we spent there passed in a golden haze. I think lunch figured at some point, but I don’t remember much about it. At the cash desk I simply handed over the plastic and filled my shopping bag with the loot. It wasn’t until I arrived home and examined my haul in detail that I found there was comparatively little I need to apologize for to living authors. So buying secondhand isn’t necessarily a sin. Though blog-followers may think differently, of course; I’ll try to duck the hail of verbal bullets.

Buying secondhand can be like buying from the supermarket discount shelves, or worse, from a remainder shop when the title is still in print. I try not to do the latter, though I have succumbed to temptation on a very few occasions. The former I admit to. Mea culpa as many times as you like, and I don’t suppose it really makes it any better that I only buy books by people for who writing is a lucrative day job in that way. Many of my favourite authors aren’t in a position to give up whatever day job pays for food and shelter and shoes for the kids, and I figure if I pay full price in a real bookshop for their books, their publishers will be shamed into continuing to pay decent royalties, and the whole bookshop concept will survive the onslaught of Amazon for a little longer.

So how did I justify the foot-high stack of secondhand paperbacks I stowed away on our return yesterday afternoon? The big question, of course, is, can there really be any justification for not buying new and ensuring the author gets his/her rightful cut, or am I just making excuses? Let’s see.

Six were by dead authors, and I’m pretty sure two of them have been dead long enough for the books to be out of copyright, so it’s unlikely they’d receive royalties anyway.

Of the other four, two were by my late dear friend Douglas Hill – and believe it or believe it not, they were the first books of his that I’d ever seen on bookshop shelves. Libraries occasionally, and nearly six years after his untimely demise he’s still up there on Amazon. But never before in a bookshop. I don’t think royalties paid to his estate would benefit anyone in great need; so how could I resist?

That left five authors who, to my knowledge, are alive and well. Three of the books are early titles which by any non-online route aren’t easy to come by.

Which leaves two. One is by an author who I’m hoping will become one of my Names to Look Out For, and I’m pretty sure my daughter will like it as well. Can we call that one an investment? The other... well, I have a feeling the movie won’t be long, so maybe the author won’t miss the sixty pence or so he won’t be getting from me. And I do have several of his other books, all bought new and at full price.

Am I making excuses? In need of forgiveness from authors everywhere? Or just a hopeless book addict who can’t walk emptyhanded out of a shop whose shelves groan with goodies and exude that inimitable and habit-forming aroma of well-loved paper and print?

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

Josh Getzler

Kindle Paperwhite: A Quick Review.

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

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

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

 

Hey, There's a Dead Guy on Facebook.

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

 

A word or two on Boston.

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

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

Demographically Speaking

Jeff Cohen

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie knew their chemistry

Jessy Randall

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

The Last Bastion of Privacy

Marilyn Thiele

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advice Column and Other Things

BENJAMIN LEROY

I hope everybody is doing well wherever you are. I've been taking questions on Twitter this week to fill up the space on this blog right here. So, that's what you'll get below. And if you've got your own question, leave it in the comment section, and if I have time, I'll get to it.

Also of note--I'd like to give one of you $100 towards the registration fee of the writing conference of your choice. A whole bunch of details about that can be found over on my website www.benjaminleroy.com

Ok! On to the questions!

 

@JNEWMANWRITING -- What, in your opinion, is the number 1 mistake authors still looking to get their first book published make?

Being in a hurry.

Without having gone through the process before, it’s not hard to understand why some first time novelists feel like the work is done as soon as “The End” has been typed.

It’s unlikely that a book is ready to go to market after a first draft. In fact, I’ve never seen it happen.

Nonetheless, authors are excited to share the work they’ve been chipping away at for months or years, and are in a hurry to reap the cash money rewards that come to all books ever written by anybody. So, before they break out the revision machine, they bust out the SASE and start firing queries off to any publisher who has ever published any book that kinda/sorta is like the author’s.

This is an unsound strategy.

I’ve been publishing books for a dozen years or so. That breaks down to somewhere around a hundred novels. The debut novels I’ve published have been worked, reworked, and reworked again, before ever ending on my desk. After that, even when we’ve accepted things for publications, there’s still another round of hey, did you ever think about doing something like this instead? or hey, this character’s motivation doesn’t really stay consistent between these scenes, can you address?

The authors I’ve been blessed to work with, have done a lot of hard work before I’ve ever seen the book and then are willing to work on it again even after they maybe think they’re done with it.

Writing a book isn’t hard.

Writing a great book is and that's an important part of planting your literary flag. 

It takes time and perspective. It’s not a race. You only get one shot at a debut novel, it behooves you to make sure that novel is the best it can be. If that means a few months away from the book while beta readers go after it, that's ok. If that means you need to write multiple drafts, you aren't the first person. Be as objective as you can in this subjective world.

@MARRIEDWITHDEBT -- I'd like to hear your take on the novella's place in publishing today.

I’ve long been a proponent of a book needing to be as long as it needs to be to tell the story it’s trying to tell. That means that I’ve published books approaching 500 pages. It also means I’ve published books that barely make 150 pages. It used to be (or so I was told repeatedly) that a book needed to be at least 200 pages to be considered a novel. Like many bits of repeated “conventional wisdom” in the publishing industry, I’m not sure where it came from originally.

But, I do know, from having filled out dozens of profit and loss sheets over the years, that a book needs to have a good ratio of production cost compared to cover price. One of the things a publisher has to consider when deciding whether or not he’s going to publish a book is what are that work’s competitive titles and how are they priced? It might cost $.25 less/book to produce a 150 page book than it does for a 200 page book. That’s a good thing. But, if people are expecting to pay a certain price for a 200 page book and you need to charge the same for a 150 page book to keep acceptable margins, you might run into a raised eyebrow from John Q. Consumer. That’s a bad thing.

Further complicating all of this is the EXPLOSION~! of ebooks.

Actually, I think ebooks allow for all kinds of fun experiments in book length. Sure, there are still layout costs and those are based, at least in small part, on book length, but the actual raw materials of book production are not there. It’s easier to keep to margins.

What does that mean for authors? It means, depending on their market expectations, now is a glorious and transformative age that likely embraces the novella more than at any time in the recent past.

@EVANJGREGORY -- Do you think publishers could do more to court self-published successes, and build on their success in bookstores?

I’ll be the first person to raise his hand and say I don’t have any answers, just theories, about how things are going to evolve as it relates to the self-publishing world and its crossover into traditional publishing (every time I utter that phrase, a little part of me dies).

Part of the challenge facing publishers is establishing the veracity of “success.” Numbers, rankings, likes, favorites, reviews, all of these things seem prone to manipulation, some in greater magnitude than others. Until a concrete way of understanding a self-published book’s successes is devised, there’ll likely be some hesitation in making the leap.

Except, there are some folks in positions of power who are afraid of looking like they aren’t on the cutting edge and they’re afraid of being left behind. Those people are going to be prone to jumping in (cannonball, not jackknife) to the available pool. One of them will, no doubt, bust out the checkbook, throw a bunch of zeroes at a self-published project that is “guaranteed” to be a “best seller” that will inevitably fall flat (because that’s a risk across ALL publishing, nobody knows how to guarantee a hit) and then everybody will be gun shy.

For me, the challenge, historically, has been that once a book has come out (in any form), it’s no longer able to be reviewed in the trade publications, and those are a huge part of our process. Those publications (Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, and Kirkus) may have changed their policies and/or make exceptions for special cases, but I haven’t updated my thinking.

With all of the other day-to-day tasks in front of a publisher (at least one of our smallish stature), I’m not sure who would look around for self-publishing successes. I keep pretty good tabs on what’s going on elsewhere, but I’ve got an inbox full of queries from agents and others that nearly overwhelms me just thinking about it. It’d be one more thing.

Does that mean I’m going to possibly lose out on working with a super awesome self-published author who has a book that I would love to pieces? Certainly a possibility and one that I’m comfortable with at this point.

I believe we’re still in a transitional phase and the future hasn’t settled. I’m doing ok right now doing the things I’ve always done, and I’m not much for jumping just because some dude next to me is jumping. He catches a fish, I’ll give him a high five. He breaks his neck, I’ll send him a card. Either way, I’m just going to hang out on the bridge a little bit longer.

@MCVLADIE -- How do you find a good editor and/or is it standard to submit your work with professional editing? Doesn't publisher do this?

Excellent question.

I’ve got no scientific evidence to back up my first claim, so either trust me or don’t when I tell you that in the last fifteen years there has been a marked increase of freelance editors available to authors. Some of them are qualified. Others, err, not so much.

One problem authors encounter while trying to separate “good editors” from “other options” is that anybody, anywhere, at any time can hang a shingle outside his/her door and say, “I’m an editor now. And I’m available to read your book for money.”

There’s no test to take. No license to acquire. The barrier of entry to the editing market is non-existent.

Things you might ask editors when you’re trying to sort them.

(1) Can I have a list of books/authors you’ve worked with in the past? If you know the names and know something about the particulars, great! If you don’t yet, you might invest in a book or two (if available) and see what you think about how it reads. If no books are available and the names don’t mean anything to you, well, I ain’t saying it’s necessarily a dead end, but I’d definitely turn on my high beams before stepping on the gas pedal.

(2) Do you have any relevant experience in the publishing world? There are plenty of people with real world publishing experience who are available to edit your book. My old colleague, Alison Dasho, before starting her new job at Amazon this week, was doing freelance editing work. Although she couldn’t guarantee anybody a publishing contract anywhere, she does have extensive experience with getting books ready for the market, as she has been doing editing in the publishing industry for more than a decade. There are other Alisons in the world (and I've got a list of some if anybody needs one).

I’ve seen some freelance editors cite their love of reading books as, essentially, their sole qualification for being an editor. This is a super dicey proposition. Theoretically, everybody editing books loves reading. I love playing softball, but I shouldn’t be giving Major League (or Minor League) baseball players tips on how to properly field the shortstop position.

That’s my answer to the first part of your question. Now to the second, and this is one that gets brought up quite a bit at the writing conferences I attend.

Phrased differently—If Publishers aren’t going to do any editing, just what do they even do?

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been a part of the publication of approximately 100 novels. Every single one of them has been through in house editing (editing done at Bleak House or Tyrus). But it should also be noted that when we agreed to publish them (by signing contracts and paying advances), they were already in excellent shape. In most, if not all of those cases, the book was polished and edited by the author (and in some cases, the author’s agent). Books had been through multiple drafts.

Some of those authors worked with writing groups. Some of them used beta readers they’ve learned to trust. Some of them worked closely with his/her agent.

The important thing I want to highlight is that somebody, besides the author, went over the book to provide feedback, make notes, gently tear things to pieces, etc. Not all aspiring authors have connections to helpful critique groups or beta readers, and may seek the advice/opinion of a freelance editor.

Does a publisher expect an author to have necessarily paid for a professional editor to go over the book? No. But a publisher is only going to consider works that already meet a minimum threshold of quality. We don’t care how an author gets there, but it’s necessary they’ve arrived.

And then the publisher will get out a box of red pens and start the process anew...

 

Ok, that's it for this week. Seriously though, if you're even thinking about going to a writing conference, you should stop by my website and leave a comment because I'm giving somebody $100 towards the registration fee of the conference of his/her choice. Why? Because, among other things, I want to dispel myths and fears about the publishing industry and I want you to become friends with other people on similar paths.

www.benjaminleroy.com

 

Getting started

Lynne Patrick

Anyone who has ever dipped even briefly into my posts is probably aware that I have a penchant for series fiction. At a conservative estimate, about half the books in my house – and that’s a lot of books – form part of a series.

And it’s a truth universally acknowledged that all good things must have a beginning. So today’s question is, where, when, how did I first get hooked?

It’s an interesting one. In a lot of cases I simply can’t remember. Which says something about the state of my brain, but also a little about just how many series I follow.

Mostly, though, the first forays seem to fall into four categories: gifts, recommendations, meeting the author at a convention or some other way, and giveaways – goody bags or review copies.

Gifts should work best. People who know me know that a book is pretty much the best gift they can give me, so it follows that they should also know which book. Oddly, though, after a quick trawl along the shelves, I find that that appears to be the smallest category of the three. It’s balanced by the number of follow-ups and later volumes I’ve received with great gratitude; but surprisingly few introductions to series came by that route.

Recommendations are a different matter. Here’s a sample.

I make no apology for mentioning Ruth Downie’s delicious Ruso series again; I was hearing good things about it long before I dipped in and became a firm devotee.
Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Clare Ferguson is another who was imprinted on my consciousness by her other admirers.

I was introduced to J D Robb’s Eve Dallas by one of the first authors I published.

Years before I picked up one of the books, I was aware of Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe through TV; but the books came because several people kept telling me how much better they were than the televised versions. They were right
.
Phil Rickman, now up there in my top five authors, first came to my attention when my daughter brought the first Merrily Watkins when she came on a visit home, and said, mum, you must read this. I borrowed her copy – and ironically, it’s now the only Merrily I don’t possess!

And there are more. Many more.

Meeting and getting along with the author also accounts for a sizeable slice of the action. Let’s think.

Mark Billingham: generous with his time, fun to be around.

Stephen Booth: an all-round thoroughly nice guy.

Gyles Brandreth: urbane and witty, just like his Oscar Wilde-as-sleuth series.

Jeff Cohen: need I say more?

Ann Cleeves: kindness itself to a rookie publisher scrabbling for a foothold.

Zoë Sharp: vibrant, shrewd, sensitive, like her series character, and someone I’m delighted to count as a friend.

There are many more in that list too. Unfortunately it can work the other way too: meeting and not getting along with the author makes me disinclined to sample their work.
No names there.

Goody bags. Now, there’s an interesting one. How often has a book landed in your lap at a booky event, or as an unsolicited review copy, and started a whole new proclivity, if that’s the right word? In my case, more often than I realized.

Elly Griffiths’s wonderful Ruth Galloway series springs to mind right away; would I ever have discovered her if I hadn’t found the first one in an event book bag?

And now I think about it, that’s how I encountered Zoë Sharp’s Charlie Fox, months before I met Zoë herself.

John Harvey I was familiar with, but I found his short Frank Elder series for the first time in a goody bag.

Peter Robinson. I think.

Those four gave rise to at least two dozen paid-for books on my shelves, and there are others I came to by the same route. So just in case you were wondering, giving books away as a marketing ploy does work, at least on me, and I like to think I’m pretty well immune to marketing ploys.

Review copies: I’ve reviewed several books in the past few weeks which have the hallmarks of first in a new series. There’s at least one I’ll be following up. A D Garrett. Remember the name.

All the above rely on other people to come up with the goods. In case you were wondering if I have issues about trusting my own judgement - I don’t. Sometimes finding a new series to enjoy is as easy as trawling a shelf in a bookshop. I do that too; online book shopping may be cheaper, but it simply doesn’t cut it when it comes to that delicious sense of discovery.

Where did you find your favourites?

PS Daffodil update. We have open blooms! And there was no frost this morning! Sssh - don't scare it away.

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.

More thoughts on Top of the Lake

Jessy Randall

I kind of have a crush on Elisabeth Moss's character in Top of the Lake, so I was disappointed when Robin Griffin started falling apart in the most recent episode. I wanted her to be as tough as Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling, obviously. Or Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully on The X-Files (to whom Moss bears a passing resemblance). I wondered if Moss had anything to say on the subject and started digging around. I found out three things:

1. Moss was briefly married to Fred Armisen! WHAT?!
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/03/20/1740751/top-of-the-lake-mad-men-and-how-elisabeth-moss-embodies-female-anger/

2. She enjoyed the beer-bottle-attack scene.
http://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/elisabeth-moss-2013-4/

3. She was in Girl, Interrupted and a bunch of other things.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/series/top-of-the-lake/top-ten/top-ten-alter-egos-of-mad-men-star-elisabeth-moss

As I dug deeper, I was forcibly reminded that actors are not the characters they play. Apparently, Moss is a Scientologist. And she made fun of Fred Armisen for not being a normal person. So I guess she and I aren't getting together any time soon for a soda.

Well, I still have David Tennant's Doctor Who, Michelle Dockery's Mary Crawley, and James Marsters's Spike (my true fake love).

A Cautionary Tale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Ode to Serials

by Erin Mitchell

Most of the time, I'm pretty certain I was born in the wrong decade. Not that there was anything wrong with the 1970s, but in many ways I feel much more connected to the 1950s. All the Heywood-Wakefield furniture in our house, for example, as well as the house itself, is from the 50s. I'm drawn to artwork from that era. I love reading books set in and that were written in that timeframe (reference: Ed McBain and John D. MacDonald). Heck, I even prefer cars, trains, and boats to air travel. Many of my social attitudes are more suited to the 50s, too. And my love of the artistic forms of that time translates as well to my appreciation for serialized stories.

Some years back I enjoyed reading Laura Lippman's THE GIRL IN THE GREEN RAINCOAT. When I wrote to her to tell her how much I'd liked it, she mentioned that it had been originally serialized in the New York Times. While I had missed this original publication, I wasn't surprised, because the structure of the story lends itself to being read in bits.

As most things do, serialized stories are gearing up for a comeback. Considering that many of us communicate these days in 140-character tweets and Facebook photo captions, this makes sense. From a practical perspective, too, many readers do so in settings—public transportation or waiting rooms come immediately to mind—that are suited to shorter bursts of reading.

Amazon has quietly launched Kindle Serials, and I have it on good authority that they will be feeding it with some exciting content in the coming months. I also heard a reliable rumor that Crimespree Magazine will be serializing novels starting soon. These examples represent two models—paid and free—each of which has marketing pros and cons. They share one important thing, though: a serialized story builds reader loyalty.

I'm a fan of serials because they exercise a portion of my brain that modern rapid-fire short-form communication tends to atrophy. When I read a portion of a story and then have to wait a week for the next, the brain files it under "remember this." I pay more attention to details that I might otherwise miss. I feel more engaged in the story because I'm following along, pausing to consider each installment before getting to the next.

And while delivery methods have evolved, serials hearken back to a time when the world was a bit slower, more considered, we didn't necessarily need it all right now, and we took the time to revel in a great story. 

Spring, the sweet spring...

Lynne Patrick

Don’t get too excited, it’s not here yet. But the weatherman on the TV says it might arrive next week, and the icy pavements have cleared so I’m back in morning exercise mode. And there are daffodils. And crocuses. (Should that be croci? I’m never sure.) Not many, and not outside my window yet, but I’ve spotted a little row of miniature yellow trumpets and a small purple clump in other people’s gardens.

And the work famine is over, at least in the short term. I’ve nearly completed one editing job, and another is waiting in the wings. Not to mention a positive plethora of theatre reviews, some of which may even prove to be the kind of show I’d actually choose to see.

Which segués neatly into something I’ve been thinking about posting about for some time.

People are fond of telling me, with particular reference to the theatre reviewing, what a great job I have, and how I get to see all these shows for free when they have to pay astronomical ticket prices. And yes, sometimes they’re right.

Sometimes.

Not always. In fact a long way from always. But...

I’m fortunate in that I live in a town with its own small theatre, and within a half-hour drive of a larger town with two quite classy theatres. Those three venues mainly play host to the shows I review.

I’m even more fortunate in that the local theatre has strong links with several small but extremely talented production companies. Which means I do indeed get to see a lot of good shows. And yes, some less good ones too, and surprisingly often those are the ones with big names in the cast.

What tangent has she flown off at now, I hear you ask. What has this to do with crime fiction? Stay with me. It all links up.

Some of those good shows are sort of accidental: the kind of thing I probably wouldn’t see from choice, especially not after a long day at the typeface, but in the event well worth the effort of brushing my hair, changing out of my jeans and getting the car out when all I really felt inclined to do was slump in front of some undemanding TV.

And coincidentally, or possibly not, the same applies to editing. (And most of what I edit is crime fiction, so you see it did link up. Kind of.) OK, so some of the projects are a little workaday, and one or two border on think-of-the-fee. (Essential disclaimer: if I’ve edited you, and you think you recognize yourself or your work in the above, it’s probably not you I’m talking about.)

They’re balanced by others which I know will be a pleasure: authors I’ve worked with before, whose work I rate, and who can be relied on to turn in a clean manuscript in need of only a few minor tweaks to ensure it’s a worthy addition to an already exemplary canon. And sometimes an author returns with a second or third project which shows real progress, and allows me to believe I’m actually offering useful advice after all.

And occasionally there’s an unexpected gem. On average about once a year my editorial consultancy turns up a manuscript which blows me away, and which, if I were still publishing, I’d pounce on in a heartbeat.

That was why I went into publishing. I suspect that’s why most people in publishing went into publishing. Which is why it’s so sad that it now seems to be all about hype and sales figures and bottom lines and egos, at least among the market leaders.

So it sometimes comes as a relief to don my other hat, head for the local theatre for one of those small-budget shows, and find that imagination, creativity and passion for the way they’ve chosen to spend their lives are still higher priorities than fame and fortune.

Actually I think that applies to most writers as well. It’s further along the line that those priorities have got skewed.

Call me naïve. Call me a dinosaur. But I think these things matter.

Happy Passover!

Josh Getzler

Well, it's the last day of Passover, and I'm undoubtedly savoring my last matzah pizzas as you read this. I couldn't write a full-on post this week on account of the endless celebration of the Exodus, so, too anyone who's reading this: thanks for stopping by Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room. Check out Jeff and Lynne and Marilyn and Jessy and Ben and Erin, and if you wish my own previous posts. More to come next week.

What's Playing in Your Head?

Jeff Cohen

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

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

That question unconsidered, let's move on:

Music is playing inside my head/

over and over again/

my friend, there's no end/

to the music

--Carole King

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jessy Randall

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

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

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

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

What She Said

by Erin Mitchell

On Wednesday this week, an author posted a tweet that was insulting—to say the least—to both readers and librarians. I know, right? Who would want to insult librarians?

The Picky Girl, one of the smartest people (and bloggers) I am lucky enough to know, wrote an incredibly smart post in response to this tweet. There’s no way I could say what she more clearly or eloquently than she did, and so I’m using this post today to ask you to please click right here and read what she wrote. You can also follow her at @picky_girl on Twitter.

The only addition I would make to her post is to say that the author has since deleted the offending tweet, replacing it with this one, which directs reader to this post to learn how they can help authors. Professionally, I have to say this was a good move.

Personally, I find the blog post even more offensive than the original tweet because it devalues readers’ time and attention (the things on the list are not actually “easy” for most folks to find the time to do, thanks). But I’m cranky that way.

Again, here’s the post I hope you will take the time to read. And if you'd like to see an example of a tweet from an author that makes a reader's heart smile, check out this one from Joe Finder. Thank you. 

In theory. In practice.

BENJAMIN LEROY

 

Of all the endlessly debated topics about novel writing, one that pops up more often than most is the “Planner” vs. “Pantser” bit.

A planner, generally speaking, does a big outline for the book. Way ahead of time he/she knows the plot twists, all of the characters, the specifics of chapters, etc. Sometimes, books that are super planned out feel mechanical and assembly lined to me.

A pantser doesn’t know all or any of these things. The author is writing “by the seat of his/her pants.” New characters show up, weird things happen, unexpected roads are explored, and so on. Let’s be clear, for as much as I enjoy literary chaos and the exploration spirit, I’ve definitely come across many books written by pantsers that are incoherent, filled with loose ends and continuity issues, and end, for me as a reader, with great frustration.

But I’m totally a pantser in real life. As a writer and as a dude living in the world.

I don’t set an alarm. I rarely make plans more than a few days out. I trust the universe will make whatever is supposed to happen, happen, and it will all work out in the end.

Here’s an example. It’s a little on the extreme side, but it’s now and that helps with the illustration.

I am set to attend a conference in Mobile, Alabama April 4-7. I am leaving my house tomorrow, by car, to begin the journey to Mobile. For those of you unfamiliar with the Interstate and geography, if I was to drive straight through from Madison to Mobile, it would take me fifteen hours. If I left tomorrow morning early enough, I could conceivably be in Mobile by the end of the day. March 28th.

And this wouldn’t be without historical precedence. One time, a long time ago, I was speaking at a conference in Denver, Colorado and instead of waiting 24 hours for my flight home, I decided instead to rent a car and drive it all in one shot. Fifteen hours. Here’s the real time video diary of that drive and all of its hallucinating goodness.

 

But I am not driving straight through. In fact, I don’t know which of the three most logical routes (some more logical than others) I’ll take. On the first night I might sleep in Iowa or Illinois or Kentucky or Tennessee. I don’t know. It might be in a hotel. Might be in my car. Might be on a friend’s couch. I don’t know. 

And this causes me absolutely zero stress.

I’ve decided that at the end of each day, I’m going to check in on my website and the social medias (@tyrusbooks) to let everybody know where I am and where I kinda sorta hope to be at the end of the next day. And then I’m going to let any interested party pick some of my route, places, and the people I’ll see along the way.

What’s going to happen? Who knows?

In conclusion—something something about “pantser” vs. “planner” and I still remember fondly the Choose Your Own Adventure Books of my youth. 

For those of you playing along at home here are the states that I will hit: WI, IL, KY, TN, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL. Here are the states I might hit: IN, IA, MO, AR, MS, LA. If you've got suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

By the Seat of My Pants,

b.

For more about things, visit www.benjaminleroy.com

Good book weather

Lynne Patrick

Gazing through my window on this supposed sixth day of spring at a thick blanket of white over the lawn and air filled with fluttering flakes, I feel I should apologize to poor old Jeff on behalf of the UK, which offered him such a chilly welcome last week. It wasn’t just bonnie Scotland; it’s been snowing here in the middle of England as well, and the two-fleece-two-shirt outfit seems to be the latest fashion. Apparently it’s all the fault of the jet stream, which is in the wrong place for the time of year.

It’s not always like this, Jeffrey my friend. In fact, the weather forecasters on TV have been gleefully reminding us that this time last year we were sweltering in the warmest March on record. It was just about the last warm weather we had all year, but they’ve forgotten that.

It should be the time of year when new things are burgeoning. I should be smiling at the profusion of daffodils behind my office, shedding my woolly scarf and hat and beginning to think about cutting back on the choc chip cookies so I can still fit into my shorts if the sun really does come out at some point. And new ideas should be starting to stir as I stride up the hill on my morning walk.

I should be so lucky. The daffies are still cowering in their frostbitten stalks, I made a fresh batch of cookies at the weekend and I haven’t had a walk for days because the pavements (sidewalks) are covered in trampled-down snow which turns back to ice every night.

On the plus side, it’s ideal weather for curling up in an armchair with a good book. There have been a lot of good books in my life recently. Some of them have even involved snow.

I mentioned A D Garrett a couple of weeks ago. That was only the start, and what a cracker it proved to be. Everyone Lies, it’s called, and I really hope it turns out to be the first of a series. Police procedural with added politicking; a hefty dose of complex forensics, brought down to earth by a cop with a knack for cutting through the jargon; lots of interesting minor characters, and pleasingly complex major ones; a plot with lots of skilful misdirection and several just-when-you-thought-it was-all-over moments. And the mean streets of Manchester. In the snow.

After that came one of Maureen Carter’s Sarah Quinn series, which I confess I haven’t taken to as strongly as the Bev Morriss series I published, but Maureen’s ability to draw me in and keep me turning the pages means I go right on looking for them. No snow here, though.

Next up was Stephen Booth, who writes about the Peak District right here on my doorstep. Well, almost; it’s a short drive away, though not at the moment, since it’s probably under a lot more snow than we are. Dead and Buried is the latest in a long-running series, and the characters feel like old friends: I have a great affection for Gavin Murfin, stuffing his face as usual, and of course the leading players Ben Cooper and Diane Fry who seem to inhabit different universes but still strike sparks off each other. It’s set at the height of summer, but there’s still snow; the victims in the case went missing in a blizzard. And the ending is one of those shocks which feels like a punch in the chest until you realize it had to be like that.

Then there was Semper Fidelis, the fifth in Ruth Downie’s delicious Ruso series, set in Roman Britain. I’m picky about historical fiction, but Ruso is well worth a few hours of anyone’s time, and I was delighted when a far-sighted independent publisher picked him up when he was inexplicably dropped by one of the giant conglomerates. Downie has a rare talent for combining great writing, razor wit and detailed historical research, and weaving them around a sharply drawn character set in a way that brings two thousand years ago into focus as clearly as if it was yesterday. If that makes sense. It probably doesn’t. But at least there was no snow. Just rain.

And finally – I’ve just finished All Fall Down, by Louise Voss and Mark Edwards, who, unlike many writing partnerships, actually admit on the cover of the book that there are two of them. I can’t say too much about it because I’m reviewing it and the review hasn’t appeared yet, but think page-turning thriller and multiply by three. And since it’s set at the height of a Californian summer, it kept me warm right through a sub-zero weekend.

Not all bad, then. Another plus is that reading real books needs both hands, so there isn’t a spare one for the cookie tin. And you never know, maybe next week the daffodils will be out and I’ll get my morning walk...

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.

Top of the Lake and how good it is

Jessy Randall

Are you guys watching Top of the Lake? (Sundance, Mondays, 8 p.m. Rocky Mountain Standard Time, which is my time. 10:00 for you Easterners.) I read about it in Entertainment Weekly and thought it might be worth a try, mainly because Elisabeth Moss (of Mad Men) plays the main character. Two episodes in, it's REALLY good.

According to Troy Patterson in Slate, "Top of the Lake is a curiosity among crime dramas. It’s a mood piece posing as a detective thriller—and simultaneously deconstructing its genre like a feminist essay." Well, if you say so, and Jane Campion is certainly known for that sort of thing, but so far for me it's just a really good thriller.

I don't normally let out small screams of terror during TV programs, but when my husband and I sat down to watch this show and saw a little girl riding her bike shakily down a road, I started making whimpering sounds. Something bad is going to happen, that's clear, but what? When? To whom? I'm not sure if it's the camera work, the music, or what, but man, you know you are in for it from the get-go. What's the story behind this girl's pregnancy and disappearance? What is UP with her scary family? What terrible thing is her dad going to do next, and to whom?

I have no idea what's going to happen, but I feel like I'm in good hands -- and that's really all I ever want out of a mystery.

 

Of Bestselling Frustrations and Opening Day

BENJAMIN LEROY

Those of you who follow me on Twitter might have seen a little meltdown I had yesterday afternoon. I’m all better now. Thank you for your concern. For those of you who don’t or who have learned to tune me out, I was tres bent out of shape by the over and unqualified usage of the term “bestseller” and how often it pops up in author bios.  A few deep breaths and everything got better.

Anyway, on an unrelated note, baseball season is almost upon us and I, for one, am eagerly awaiting opening day. I’m a fan of the game, especially its history (the company was even named after one of the great specters of Major League Baseball’s past).

Because last week I talked your ear off about the history of the company and my own history in the publishing world, I figured I’d go brief this week and talk a little baseball. To that end, I’d like to list the three best Hall of Fame outfielders of all-time.

(1) Ty Cobb – I named the company after the guy. He was a fierce competitor, driven by family ghosts, and so singularly focused on winning that he left behind an indelible legacy. When he retired he held all kinds of records. Most important stats .366 lifetime batting average, 897 stolen bases, and 4189 hits.

(2) Ted Williams—another malcontent, another fierce competitor, and another guy that hit everything that got thrown at him. Also, the dude served in WWII and the Korean War during his baseball career, and not as an entertainer playing exhibition baseball games on base far away from conflict, but as a fighter pilot. In addition to being awarded a variety of commendations from the United States Government, he finished with a lifetime batting average of .344, 521 homeruns, and 1839 RBI. Baseball fans will always wonder what the stat line would have looked like if he hadn’t served.

(3) Jeff Taylor—the guy was a three time MVP during the years 2003-2006 and had a .453 career average. Nearly 100 points better than Cobb.

So there you go, Play Ball!, and all of that. I’m really looking forward to baseball season this year (as I always am), even though my beloved Chicago Cubs, on paper, don’t stand much of a chance this year. Oh well, I just love the game...wait...what? You’ve never heard of Jeff Taylor? You don’t remember him being a three time MVP?

Oh.

I think I see the source of your confusion.

You assumed, because I said the three best Hall of Fame outfielders of all-time that I was talking about Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame.

But  I wasn’t.

Because Jeff Taylor was a high school baseball player in the Woodhaven, Michigan area. I got his stats from his former school district’s website. And I was like, “Damn! Dude hit .453. Cobb only hit .366. Both guys are Hall of Famers, therefore Jeff Taylor has earned the same distinction as Cobb.”

Rightly, you reject that logic. To be inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame requires that you excel at the highest level of the game known to man. To be inducted into the Gibralter School District Sports Hall of Fame requires...something else.

And now I’m back to this issue of people slapping “Best Selling Author!” on their author bio when the only argument you can make is through very squinted eyes when you’re looking at a sub-category on Kindle’s hyper specific best-selling list, sometimes in categories that have very limited competition.

“Look ma! I’m #4 on the Mysteries and Crime Fiction --> Iowa setting --> Corn based whodunit --> Tractor mysteries!”

Yeah, sorry, that doesn’t count.

It’s deceitful and self-aggrandizing and just as shitty as the bulk of Saturday morning television ads for toys that don’t hold up to scrutiny (damn you, Hotwheels). I understand the marketplace is really tough and some book promotion person has told you to tout yourself as a “best-selling author,” but that term has meant something, either implicitly or explicitly, for years. It has meant that a book has popped up on a publication such as the New York Times or Publishers Weekly or USA Today’s list.

Can that system be rigged? Certainly. But it gives a general sense of a book’s popularity. Can the Kindle list be gamed? You betcha. And a lot easier than the publications above. And since nobody really knows what Amazon sales ranks translate to, knowing a book has made the Kindle best-seller list is vague at best. It certainly, at this point, draws no parallel credibility to that of placement on the other lists does.

The logical way this plays out is that every author trying to jam a foot in the door will figure out how he/she qualifies as a “best seller” and every book will be written by a “best-selling author!” and what is now a non-specific, semi-confusing term will become meaningless altogether.

Jeff Taylor doesn't sit down next to Ozzie Smith and Cal Ripken at autograph signings saying, "For $20 you can get your picture taken with me, Hall of Fame baseball player, Jeff Taylor." If he did, you'd say he was being absurd and you'd point out the whole Gibraltar School District Hall of Fame isn't anywhere near the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.  

It’s this kind of noise and static that will ultimately push potential readers away because they’re going to feel as though authors are trying to manipulate them.  One more self-perpetrated injury in the quest for a bigger audience.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game...

b.

 

For less surly ramblings about the world and publishing, visit my website www.bejaminleroy.com

 

On the other hand...

Lynne Patrick

A week or three ago I posted about series fiction, a topic in which I have more than a passing interest. When I was publishing, the potential for a series was a criterion I found myself applying to every debut novel I was offered; as a result I’ve copy-edited eight series and done a deeper development job on five. Now I have more time to read for pleasure, at least half the books on my shelves (and there are many, both books and shelves) form parts of series. And as recently as last week when offered a choice of books to review for a mystery website, I leapt on the much-delayed latest in a series I’ve been following since it began seven years ago. If I listed the authors whose latest-in-series I actively seek, I could probably fill my usual Dead Guy space with nothing but their names.

Start looking at long-running series and some of the greatest names in crime and thriller writing come up. Rebus was finally laid to rest after book seventeen, and reappeared (by public demand?) five years later. Jack Reacher is eighteen not out, and that’s if you don’t count the Kindle novellas. Dalziel and Pascoe made it to twenty-four plus a short story or two, and would surely have continued into the uncharted future had the grim reaper not intervened.

And I don’t even need to mention the authors’ names, do I?

These three have something in common aside from writing best-selling series. Their careers all began some years ago, when publishing was a different world: a world which laid less emphasis on instant gratification and short-term planning. A world in which series weren’t cancelled after book two if they didn’t sell in six figures, but were given a chance to take root in readers’ minds and build a following.

Last time I delved into this topic I expressed reservations about the credibility of some series. I stand by that; four murders a week in a civilized university city takes some swallowing, a series set against the kind of photogenic backdrop where shoplifting makes headlines in real life even more so. But ground a series in sound common sense, as did all three of the above masters of the art, and it can run and run.

If it’s allowed to.

And thereby hangs today’s mini-rant, as much on the state of the world as on the state of publishing.

In another post a week or two ago I shared a snippet of advice I was given years ago, and which I’ve passed on whenever the occasion arose: when a piece of writing is ‘finished’, put it away in a drawer for six months, and when you revisit it you’ll find it’s not finished at all.

These days that’s impractical on several levels – but most importantly because everything has to happen now! Warp speed is the order of the day; no one wants to wait, to allow success to build.

One publishing convention that seemed to work for a long time was the one book a year principle; now, though, some publishers want the next in a series after a few months. But it’s still a rare piece of writing that doesn’t benefit from, if not six months in a drawer, then at least a little distance between first draft and final version. Some authors can pull it off, but speed and quality don’t always go hand in hand.

My concern is not about smelling the roses, though that’s important too. It’s about giving things time to grow. The instant gratification approach may pay in the short term, but it’s built on flimsy foundations.

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.

Spring in My Step

Marilyn Thiele

In her post earlier this week, Lynne Patrick decided to pass on discussing the miseries of March weather, when Spring gives us a little tease before disappearing behind the clouds and snow. It sounds like the weather in Derbyshire and New Jersey is about the same, so I’ll try to fill the gap. After having a few glorious hours cleaning up my garden on Wednesday (it was only 50 degrees, but felt like a heat wave), I spent today watching the snow come down and hearing that I had better get where I was going before the roads froze over. I kept remembering words from E. J. Copperman’s Chance of a Ghost about the steely grey skies of New Jersey that last from November until the first of May. I can’t quote it exactly because I don’t have the book close by, but his parenthetical “brought to you by the New Jersey Board of Tourism” is typical of his wry look at our state. When I read it I thought he was exaggerating. Today I’m not so sure.

What struck me on Wednesday when I was able to steal a few hours of hard but enjoyable labor was how invigorated I felt afterward.  During the winter I suspect that we haven’t quite lost some ancestral need to hibernate despite our evolutionary progress and our technological ability to light the world at all times. No amount of indoor exercise generates the kind of energy I had to keep going and tackle some difficult tasks at my shop when the late afternoon cool-down forced me inside. It has to be the touch of the sun and the smell of growing things.  As usual, the weeds were first to claim their space, but I chose to focus on the crocuses, gamely opening their petals in defiance of the calendar.

Some friends have suggested that the extra energy comes from the extra hour of daylight we gained from the change to daylight savings time last weekend. How we lose an hour’s sleep and gain more time is a mystery I haven’t solved. For an early riser like me, the spring time change is no joy; the pink sky at 6 is now the pink sky at 7, an hour of light lost. No, it’s the ability to be outdoors and breathe fresh air without the wind penetrating every layer of clothing to chill the bones, and being able to shed some of those layers, that generates a sense of vitality.

Since I’m supposed to be writing about bookselling rather than the seasons, I will add some observations regarding the effect of weather on sales. When I bought my bookshop, the previous owner told me that January and February were the slowest months. I thought this had to be wrong; what else is there to do but curl up with a good book on a cold night? But it’s true; if people are reading in the dead of winter, it’s all the books they got as Christmas gifts. They aren’t shopping much. Thursday of this week, the day after the fake spring, when the gloom and cold had returned, there was a carryover effect. The local high school had a half day, for a teachers’ “in service” session. (These are normally full days for teachers and a day off for students, but in order to make up time lost in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, they are keeping the students in class just long enough to call it a school day.) That afternoon I had a store full of teenagers, something that hasn’t happened since early fall. The combination of a hint of spring and an afternoon of freedom had them looking for new reading material. Listening to them discussing books and making recommendations to each other gave me hope again for the future, especially when they talked about how much better a physical book feels than an electronic device. I sensed that they, too, were awaking, re-energized, from a long slumber.

The forecast is for another week of grey skies, cold temperatures, snow and ice. Maybe if I take the fake snow and stuffed snowmen out of the windows, get out the spring flower decorations, and make a display of gardening books, I can fool myself and generate some liveliness. Or maybe I’ll just curl up with a good book.

The Persistence of Roots and Vines

BENJAMIN LEROY

I come to you today, a bit conflicted, but generally optimistic. I can’t promise anything meaningful will show up in the following paragraphs—not from a how to standpoint at least—but it’s from the heart, and sometimes that’s the best we can do. Please forgive.

Remember 1999? That’s when this all started.

I got involved in the publishing world during the tail end of my college years, running a company that would, a few years later, be renamed Bleak House Books. The first project that I ever saw from layout to cover design to printer to bookshelf was a collection of short stories I wrote. Pretty much everything except the printing was done on my computer in my room in my house.

And it looked like it.

A few short story and poetry collections from others would follow. Another B. LeRoy work after them. Though we may have been getting the hang of it on some level, the overall quality of things was of a dubious nature.

Somehow I got in touch with a reporter for one of the two daily newspapers in Madison who was in charge of the Books/Literary section.  She mentioned the possibility of doing an article on the company. The two of us had a long conversation and she told me a story would be forthcoming.

Needless to say, we were pretty excited.

However, the article would never materialize, and after a few months of hounding the reporter, I was told, “Listen, no publishing company started in Madison by people with no experience in the publishing world has a chance of lasting long.”

I guess you could say (and I have said repeatedly over the years) those words put something of a chip on my shoulder.

But this is not a story about a chip on my shoulder.

It can’t be. Not anymore. The time for that kind of thing has come and gone, and though it may, on rare occasion flare up, I have to bury it deep in the earth.

I’d much rather hand you a story of what happens when you surround yourself with good people who are capable of great things.

In late 2001 we published our first novel, Red Sky, Red Dragonfly by John Galligan. As expected, it was hard to get noticed. The book got reviewed in the local paper, was stocked on shelves at local bookstores, but was otherwise not covered, except for English speaking newspapers in Japan who raved about the book (the novel is about an American teaching English in Japan).

Around this time I met Jon and Ruth Jordan for the first time. They came to town for an event we had at Booked for Murder, a mystery bookstore run by Terri Bischoff. We were celebrating the release of Marshall Cook’s, Murder Over Easy. I remember talking to Jon about what we were doing and hoped to do, but also remember him telling me about an idea he had for a magazine devoted to crime fiction and the people who love it. Jon, Ruth, and I bonded for life that night. We all knew there was a long road ahead of us, but that it was worth the journey.

Towards the beginning of 2003 Bleak House got our first interns. Two of the earliest interns were a guy named Alex Carr and a young lady named Alison Janssen. Both of them were, at the time, Barnes & Noble employees who I’d run into during events we did at the store.

Alex would work with me for a few months before moving to the Twin Cities to work for Consortium—a book distributor for many really awesome presses including, at that time, Soho and Akashic, two companies that I greatly admired. To know Alex had gone from our fledgling operation to a legitimate piece of the publishing industry was a satisfying thing for a 27 year old who still wasn’t sure he really knew what he was doing.

Alison stuck around.

We spent countless hours reading submissions, editing books, talking to authors, listening to a lot of music, being snarky, going to conferences, etc. In the parlance of marketing people, we “built a brand.” During the years 2003-2005 we published a bunch of crime and literary fiction, including John Galligan’s fly fishing mystery, The Nail Knot. It was the first book we ever had reviewed in one of the Big Four of publishing industry magazines.

Times were good. 

Times were also super lean. There were no paychecks. Questionable health insurance. I worked a lot of 80, 90, 100+ hour weeks because it had to be done. There was always something to do.

At one point I told Alison, “You should quit your job at Barnes & Noble and the nanny job you picked up. Work full-time, for free. If we focus all of our energy on making this happen, it will. I guarantee it.”

I believed it. I guess she did, too. Because she took out a loan and quit the other jobs.

Right when things were at their bleakest, sometime in the middle of 2005 when cash had dried up, and it looked inevitable that we were going to have to close the doors, we sat on the front porch of our office—an old Victorian house my business partner Blake had purchased—and, in desperate need of a “Win one for the Gipper” speech, I looked around for some bit of inspiration.

What I found was a stick. An ordinary, broke off the tree, stick. I said I wasn’t sure exactly how, but that stick was going to be the solution. 

Whether or not that stick wielded magic powers, I can’t be sure, but I do know that a few weeks later a company emerged from out of the blue and asked if we’d be interested in selling Bleak House and getting full time jobs with salaries and insurance as part of the deal.

We took the opportunity, of course, and continued on with what we were doing. We were fortunate to have another stellar intern—Krystal—helping us keep on top of everything.

By then the Jordans had launched Crimespree Magazine.John Galligan’s second fly fishing mystery, The Blood Knot won the magazine’s Readers Choice award for books published in 2005. We were getting regular review coverage in all of the publishing trade magazines by that point.

We also got a string of interns courtesy of the University of Wisconsin, most of whom I gave nicknames that only made sense to me. That list includes people like: Pyro, Spy, Chuter, Stompermonster, Rhombonica, Narco Polo, the Happening, Shuffles, Ez Ray (we don't play, we fight!) and Killleroy. They were bright eyed and curious, not afraid to eat a lot of candy and pizza, determined on varying levels to understand how publishing works, and a great joy to be around.

 

From l-r (top) Spy, Narco Polo, Nathan Singer, me (bottom row) Alison, Pyro, Killleroy, Stompermonster

 

In 2008 we received three Edgar Award nominations, one each in the category of Best Novel (Reed Coleman’s Soul Patch), Best First Novel (Craig McDonald’s Head Games), and Best Short Story (Stuart Kaminsky’s contribution to Chicago Blues). It was the first, and to my knowledge, the only time a small press has landed three nominations like that in one year.

Also, Publishers Weekly, once an intimidating tower in a foreign landscape named me, some dude from Madison, to their “40 Under 40” list of people to watch in the publishing industry.

By 2009 Alison and I decided to leave Bleak House, and strike out on our own with Tyrus Books. We were joined later by crime fiction fan Eric Campbell who had been a longtime supporter of Bleak House.

Time at Tyrus has been exciting. Not without its share of drama and stress. Alison left the company in 2010. F+W Media acquired most of Tyrus in 2011. The publishing industry itself is in a constant and accelerated state of change.

During all of that there were all sorts of highlights. A run of five out of six books Alison edited got starred reviews from the trade publications. Scott O’Connor’s debut novel, Untouchable, won Barnes & Noble’s Discover Award for Fiction. We launched a short story collection at Morgan Freeman’s blues club in Mississippi with Mr. Freeman in attendance. Exciting stuff.

Fast forward.

As of 2013, here’s what I know.

A bunch of interns left Madison and went to work in the publishing world outside of Madison. Some of them went to work at agencies, some got involved in literacy efforts, others are MFA students, Spy is with Random House now, Pyro works with me at Tyrus, Jaime (who never got a nickname) is at Hal Leonard, Krystal is the editor of a publication, and Alex Carr went from Consortium to Amazon where he would ultimately end up on the editorial side of things.

Terri Bischoff who was a one time co-owner of Booked for Murder--a very early supporter of Bleak House Books--eventually left for the Twin Cities where she is now the Acquisitions Editor for Midnight Ink, one of the most popular mystery imprints working today. We continue to see each other on a regular basis at conferences all across the country.

Jon and Ruth, along with all of the wonderful people who make Crimespree Magazine tick just celebrated their 50th issue anniversary. The magazine is a beloved part of the community and a hub for so many author/fan interactions. They now work with Eric Campbell, who has started his own publishing company, Down & Out Books, to make all of the old and current issues of Crimespree Magazine electronically available to readers.

John Galligan, my former creative writing teacher and the author of the first novel I ever had a hand in publishing, is now a great friend and a weekly writing critique partner. On top of that, he just finished working as an editor with Peter Brown Hoffmeister on his forthcoming debut novel, Graphic the Valley (Tyrus, July 2013).

 

On March 13th, Alison and I sat down together for the first time in over two years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Alison, the girl who leapt on faith, just announced she’s leaping again, this time towards Seattle where she has already landed an acquiring editor position for Thomas and Mercer, the crime fiction imprint of Amazon. I’m extremely proud of her and have all the confidence in the world that she’s going to do big things with her time in Seattle and wherever else she lands.

My thirteen years in publishing have allowed me to travel all over the country to meet writers and other publishing professionals, some of the most important people in my life. I’ve also had the opportunity to meet the President, hang out with Morgan Freeman, find myself at Mamie White’s birthday party, even attend a red carpet premier of a movie in Hollywood.

It’s been a trip. Even if I left it all today, it’s good to know the limbs of the family tree will continue to reach and spread. Maybe somewhere, that magic stick I found on the porch of the old Bleak House office has recycled itself into the earth and is now a growing tree. I can't be sure.

It's also impossible to forget how blessed I've been to be surrounded by such a wonderful collection of people. I'm sure it doesn't play out this way for everybody, but the fact that it did for me, should let everybody know it's possible.

The reporter said -- “Listen, no publishing company started in Madison by people with no experience in the publishing world has a chance of lasting long.”

I respectfully disagree.

 

For more insights on the publishing world visit - www.benjaminleroy.com For daily updates, follow me on Twitter @tyrusbooks

Take your partners

What to post about when nothing has happened all week.
I could have a rant about the way spring stuck its head above the parapet a couple of weeks ago, then ducked out of sight to avoid the Arctic wind that began to blow yet more snow in from the Russian steppes. But if I did, this would be a very short post.
I could also rant about the parlous quality of copy-editing from even large, well-established publishers who you’d think would have a reputation they wanted to maintain. Everything I’ve read recently without exception has been littered with minor errors and inconsistencies that any kind of editor should have picked up. But if I did that, this post would be very long and very boring.
Or I could... No, that won’t work either.
Ah. I know.
I thought the book I’m currently reading was a debut. I’m fond of debuts, especially if there’s a chance they could turn out to be the first of a new series I may want to collect, and I’d say this one has distinct possibilities.
But when I looked closely, I found it’s not a debut at all; it’s a collaboration. The author is not one person but two: an established crime writer and a high-profile expert in forensic investigation.
I’m always intrigued by this way of writing, partly because I’ve tried it myself a couple of times and found it didn’t really work. For me, writing has always been a solitary occupation. If there are other people around, I have problems producing anything more demanding than a shopping list. Even the possibility that someone may appear at my office door is enough to play havoc with my concentration and focus. Every writer of fiction will be familiar with the way we lose ourselves in the imaginary worlds we’re creating, sometimes to the extent that we wonder where the heck we are when the real world pulls us back suddenly.
So how on earth do two people inhabit the same imaginary world simultaneously, in a way which allows the story to grow?
Another no-no for me when I’m writing fiction is starting with someone else’s idea. I tense up and go all non-committal when someone at a party says, ‘Oh, you’re a writer; I have a good story for you.’ And when I was starting out and attending workshops, my mind invariably stayed quite blank when we were given one of those exercises where the tutor gave us a skeleton scenario and told us to turn it into a story. I know it can be done; I’ve provided those skeletons to countless workshop groups, and marvelled at the variety of narratives that people produced. But I can’t do it myself.
I know it’s possible to work in tandem with someone else. Nicci French does/do it. And P J Tracy. I’ve enjoyed every one of theirs I’ve read, and both partnerships sell lots of books, so something must be working for them. And so far, A D Garrett, the one I thought was a debut, is holding up with the best of them.
But laying aside the process of writing which, for me at least, requires my own brain to provide the spark of an idea, then long periods of uninterrupted solitude to add the fictional layers – don’t they argue, or at least pull in different directions? Writers tend to be protective of their work, and rightly so; however valuable an editor’s input, it’s still the author’s name on the cover. So what happens when there are two authors, and one wants to go in one direction and the other has a different view?
I was going to suggest that maybe it’s easier when the two people are family; Nicci French is a married couple, and the Tracys are mother and daughter, so maybe they find it easier to climb inside each other’s minds. But the two people who make up A D Garrett aren’t related as far as I know; and there are probably other writing partnerships with neither blood nor marital affection in common.
Maybe I should stop trying to understand how they do it, and get on with enjoying the books.
And maybe, sooner or later, it will stop snowing, and publishers will start paying more attention to detail again.

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...