Dot Dead Diary

Another One Falls by the Wayside

When doing a book tour for Dot Dead, the most good ol' fashioned fun I had was at High Crimes Mystery Bookshop in Boulder, Colorado.  I was introducing myself to patrons when Cynthia Nye, the proprietor, mentioned that when Joe Konrath came to the store, he went into the street and dragged people in.  Nothing I like better than a challenge.  I followed his example and managed to inveigle a couple of passersby into listening to me.  I even got an email of thanks from one of them.  As a result of my stop at High Crimes, Dot Dead made it to #3 on the Boulder Daily Camera's paperback bestseller list. 

After my presentation, I went out for dinner with friends.  Even though I live in the land of oeno-snobs, I am a blue-collar beer-drinker.  What Napa is to wine, Boulder is to beer.  What a great night!

Now High Crimes is closing its physical store and going virtual.  Sigh.  They say that death comes in threes.  With Black Orchid and Murder Ink in New York having shuttered their stores, High Crimes makes #3 according to my count. 

A column in the Camera captures the "wistfulness" of it all:

"I learned as much from my customers as they did from me," Nye says, unable to disguise a hint of wistfulness. "There was a terrific camaraderie, and you knew from the second someone walked in the store that you had something in common. I had hour-long conversations with people I'd never met before about the definition of 'noir'."

That spirit won't quite fail when High Crimes shutters. Nye will keep her book group going, and no doubt she'll still have loyal customers. But there will be no more author signings or hour-long conversations....

I for one will sure miss stopping there.

What Makes A Good Title?

Regular readers know I have been doing some meditation (and sweating) on what makes a good book title.  Patti Abbott has been doing the same at Pattinase where she votes for titles with just a word or two.  Ben Macintyre takes us through rejected alternative titles in a column in the (London) Times.  Did you know Margaret Mitchell contemplated Bugles Sang True for her one novel?  I love the quote from a letter Raymond Chandler wrote to his editor at Knopf:  “I'm trying to think up a good title for you to want to change.”

American Idol: Presidential Edition

The TV writers have been on strike, but I haven't missed them.  That's because the most compelling reality show ever is playing itself out in a long-running series.  It's called "Presidential Primaries" where in American elections an African-American has pulled ahead of a crown princess and a war hero has risen from the dead to beat the rich, famous, and evangelistic. 

When I was a boy, I read Convention by Knebel and Bailey and The 480 by Eugene Burdick, both about presidential contests.  Although I almost always prefer the written word to what I see on the screen, the current, ongoing reality show surpasses even my memories (from an impressionable age) of those two books in drama, pathos, arrogance, earnestness, and human failings. 

Several years ago, NBC used the slogan "must see TV."  Now watching CNN on primary and caucus Tuesday nights is must see for me.  I cannot wait till March 4 for the probable climax of the show.

I wonder if the sequel, called "General Election" and coming this fall, will be as compelling.

Titular Help, Redux

I so appreciate the many comments on my dirty dozen potential titles for the sequel to Dot Dead.  Opinion was divided, with Mike and Sue Ann saying they didn't like any of the choices.  If I may prevail on your good will one more time, I have another titular idea.  What about Smasher?  The Stanford Linear Accelerator plays a role in the story and it is, loosely, an atom smasher.  Also, in the book a key character out for a run is hit (i.e., smashed) by a car.  And a corporate predator is trying to seize control of Ian's company -- kind of the Valley equivalent to a smash and run. Comments?

 

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest atom smasher, is being readied for operation outside Geneva.

Titular Help, Please!

When I sent my agent my last manuscript, she seemed pretty excited.  Just one thing.  She refused to send it out under the title Coup.  We ended up with Two Graves.

I am approaching the halfway point on Book #3, my sequel to Dot Dead, and I do not have a title.  I have found a bunch of quotations that seem applicable to the book's subject matter.  And then I've come up with some potential titles based on the quotations.  So below follow a list of a dozen potential titles and the quotations they were drawn from.  I'd very much appreciate knowing what YOU think.  Please use the comment feature and let me know. Thank you!

TITLES

1. The World Divided
2. Dancing to A Mysterious Tune
3. Invisible Piper
4. Stolen Glory
5. Worst Crime
6. More Accursed
7. Grave Robber
8. Everything Is Determined
9. The Test of Experience
10. A Persistent Illusion
11. A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion

12. Atoms and Empty Space

QUOTATIONS

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

Democritus (460 BC - 370 BC)

Of all the crimes the worst

Is to steal the glory,

From the great and brave

Even more accursed

Than to rob the grave

Robert Frost, Kitty Hawk

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.

Indira Gandhi (1917 - 1984)

The only good ideas are the ones I can take credit for.

R. Stevens, Diesel Sweeties, 11-13-06

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.

William Osler

The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit

Dwight Morrow

Let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. ... I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insects as well as for the stars, Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955),

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.

Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Albert Einstein

Rewriting, Rebirth, and Groundhog Day

My wife, two friends, and I celebrated Groundhog Day (which was February 2.  What do you mean you missed it?) by going out for burgers and coming back home to watch the eponymic cinema masterpiece starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. 

Mark Terry, my fellow Inkspot blogger, asked a couple of weeks ago what advice you would give to your 15-year old self.  "Groundhog Day" builds a movie around a similar theme -- what if you could keep repeating your life till you got it right? 

Apparently, the film has great appeal to Jews, Christians, and especially Buddhists.  A 2003 New York Times article, reports that Angela Zito of the Center for Religion and Media at New York University tells her class that "Groundhog Day perfectly illustrates the Buddhist notion of samsara, the continuing cycle of rebirth that Buddhists regard as suffering that humans must try to escape."

On top of everything else, the movie resonates for me as a novelist.  Writing gives me just the opportunity that Bill Murray gets in "Groundhog Day."  I can live in my fictional world and keep going back over and over what's happening till I get it right.  Draft 2 is closer than the first draft.  Somewhere around Draft 8 I usually get it the way I want it. When rewriting, I live in an alternate reality where the premise of "Groundhog Day" comes true.  It's all part of the continuing cycle of suffering which we writers try to escape.

Laura and Marcus

Listening to a good panel of writers talking about their craft.  Then heading to the bar to schmooze with your colleagues.  That's what makes writers' conferences a blast.

Last night I went to an impromptu mini-conference.  That vivacious flame-haired law professor, Laura Caldwell, was speaking at M is for Mystery in San Mateo and she hauled along fellow Chicagoan, Marcus Sakey.  Any fears that that Laura had forgotten meeting me and #1 last summer at Thrillerfest were instantly dispelled when she greeted me with a hug.  In front of a healthy crowd, she and Marcus plied each other with questions and writers in the audience like the irrepressible Michelle Gagnon and judicious Tim Maleeny joined right in.

Afterwards, we repaired to a sports bar across the street.  On every flat-screen in the house, the Warriors were playing the Chicago Bulls in honor of our midwestern guests.  The Warriors were even hospitable enough to lose.  I talked to Laura and her friend Rob for awhile and then found myself in a riotous conversation with Marcus and Michelle.  If conversation ever slows down and Michelle is around, have her recount some tales of her terpsichorean past.

Who knows where the time goes?  By the time I got home, the whole family was asleep.  Am definitely looking forward to reading Laura's newest, The Good Liar, and Marcus's The Good Blade and At The City's Edge.  Marcus is heading up to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop with little idea of what he's in for -- he'll be appearing there Saturday with the one and only Sue Ann Jaffarian.

Let's Get Physical

The action in the book my agent is now shopping, Two Graves, takes place far away from the Palo Alto and Silicon Valley I know so well.  I had -- the horror, the horror -- to do research.  Thus, it was a relief to start working on a sequel to Dot Dead.

But as Robert Burns wrote in "To A Mouse," "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, gang aft agley."  It turns out that the action in the sequel occurs not only amidst intrigue in high-tech companies, but also at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).  Alas!  Research.  As I've mentioned before, I've been reading books on particle physics, but yesterday I took a tour of SLAC, where I'd never been even though it's about five miles from where I'm writing this posting.

When I was in high school, we learned that the nucleus of an atom is made of spheres known as neutrons and protons.  Wrong!  Quarks were discovered by three scientists at SLAC who won the Nobel Prize for their work.  A neutron or proton is made up of three quarks, of two different types, and is mostly empty space.  Few people seem to know this.  When I asked #1 if she'd learned about quarks in high school physics, she said no.  Her class focused on electromagnetism, acceleration, etc.  Newton probably could have done a fair job teaching the syllabus.

Why don't we care about the mysteries of "inner space?"  Breakthroughs are coming to explain more about what makes up the universe, but chances are slim that Americans will be the discoverers.  The world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator is about to become operational outside Geneva, not here.  The SLAC budget is being cut by 20% next year and the mission is being redefined to focus on medical uses of high energy particles.

In a time where natural selection has become debatable, we Americans seem to be moving away from pure science -- knowledge for knowledge's sake. During a 1969 colloquy, Senator John Pastore tried to get physicist Robert Rathbun Wilson to say that reason to fund physics research was for our national security.  Pastore was just looking for a hook to hang his hat on, but Wilson would not give it to him:

Pastore:  Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security  of the country?

Robert Wilson: No sir, I don’t believe so.

Pastore: Nothing at all?

Wilson: Nothing at all.

Pastore: It has no value in that respect?

Wilson: It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending

During my tour, I stood in the hills above Stanford in the exact spot where a murky view of what makes up our universe came into clearer focus.  I stood at one end of a room that was two miles long. (See picture above).  I got chills.  There are only two tours left of SLAC.  (Sign up here.)  Budget cuts are ending them even though our wonderful and passionate tour guide has offered to give them for free.  Sigh.

What Frank Loesser Said

I was reading a Journal review of a new biography of Frank Loesser, one of the greatest American songwriters, who wrote the songs for "Guys and Dolls" and "How to Succeed in Business."  While struggling to make it in the music biz, Loesser wrote this to his brother about the trade he was pursuing:  "I said 'trade.'  It is no art. I found that out.  It is all contact, salesmanship, etc. -- not a bit different from cloaks and suits or any other industry."

Sound familiar, fellow writers?