Dot Dead Diary

Blog-Jacked by Virtual Thelma & Louise

Jess Lourey's Murder by the Month series is published by Midnight Ink as was my Dot Dead.  Her latest, August Moon, is just out and has been piling up raves.  ("Move over Stephanie Plum.  There's a new bad girl in town!"  - Anthony Winner William Kent Krueger.)  I met Dana Fredsti last December at M is for Mystery's annual holiday party.  Her first novel, The Peruvian Pigeon (not, mind you, The Maltese Falcon) is also on the shelves of bookstores across the country.  A cover blurb warns us that "The ending will wash you away."  When these two gifted, witty, and insistent authors stuck a Glock in my belly and asked me if I wanted to turn my blog over to them today, I thought it over for some time.  Too long, I guess.  A nudge in the solar plexus from the gleaming carbon black weapon decided it for me.  I'd been blog-jacked!  Keith

The Troubles with Touring, by Dana Fredsti

When Jess first emailed me about doing a joint book-signing road trip from the Bay Area to Seattle, I immediately pictured us cruising up 101 in a convertible a la Thelma and Louise.  We would be two pistol-packing mamas, tempting amoral drifters and book store clerks alike with our sexy southern accents (never mind I'm from California, like, y'know?, and Jess is from Minnesota, ya, fer sure!).

Of course, we'd substitute pens for pistols (comment from Keith: "Yeah, right.") and neither of us would be stupid enough to get all our money stolen by one of those sexy drifters. And we'd be driving my Saturn SL2 instead of a convertible and probably forgo driving off the edge of the Grand Canyon since it's several hundred miles out of our way and gas ain't cheap. Oh, and no head-scarves or mom jeans. But aside from all that, it would be just like Thelma and Louise. If they visited bookstores and begged passers-by to purchase their mystery novels. 

Setting up the actual tour made me rethink the "no pistols" part, however. (Another comment from Keith:  "I warned you.")  Both Jess and I are published with small presses: Midnight Ink and Rock Publishing, Inc. And while there are many advantages to being published by a small press (lots of personal attention, a quicker turnaround from acceptance to publication, more say in cover art), being taken seriously by bookstores isn't one of them.  After dealing with rejections from several unnecessarily snotty bookstore clerks and owners, the idea of going in with a gun and snarling "You're gonna carry my book AND give me a signing AND have a cheese tray available!" is very attractive.  "Do you know how many people I talk to every day?" said one local San Francisco bookstore owner when I stopped in with a review copy of my book. He declined it because he "didn't have time to read." A friend of mine went into this same store a few weeks later and asked about my book. She was told by the clerk they didn't carry "self-published" books.   

(Note to snotty bookstore owners and ignorant clerks: having a book published by a small, un-Murdochized publisher who pays all the costs of publication, provides free marketing and review copies of your book as well as other publicity materials and support is NOT self-publication. Not that there's anything wrong with that.) 

The dichotomy here is the independents want people to support them and not buy books through the big chains such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders, where many books can be bought at a discount. However these same stores can't always support the independent publishers who give many new authors their first break because these smaller publishers don't offer the bookstores the discounts they get from the large publishing houses. Ah, the irony!

This all being said, not all bookstores are created equal and there are plenty of perfectly lovely independents willing to host new authors for signings and take a chance by ordering copies of our books. Jess and I are starting off our tour at M is for Mystery in San Mateo as well as hitting Murder by the Book in Portland. As far as the larger chains, the District Event Manager of the Seattle and surrounding area Borders stores has been fantastic and we have signings lined up at the Olympia and downtown Seattle stores. Thank you, Don! 

We'll be driving from San Francisco to Portland after two days in the Bay Area. The plan is to take a full day to drive from SF to Portland with time to meander up the coast, make pit stops as needed, visit a few wineries, and see what kind of trouble we can get into and still keep on schedule. We're still arguing over who gets to be Louise. Neither of us wants to be the naive housewife even if she does get to have hot sex with Brad Pitt. Isn't this how Janet Evanovich and Sue Grafton started out?

Jess Lourey and Dana Fredsti's pacifistic Thelma and Louise-type book tour starts in San Francisco on May 21. By then, they will have decided which of them gets to be the Susan Sarandon character. The person who makes the best case on this blog for why it should be Jess wins a free copy of August Moon, the latest installment in her Lefty-nominated Murder-by-Month series. The person who makes the best case on this blog for why it should be Dana wins a free copy of The Peruvian Pigeon, the first in her Murder for Hire series featuring warm, wise, and witty Connie Garrett. Check here for the latest tour dates and stops.

Feds Target Writers Who Use Performance-Enhancing Drugs

Passing along a story from the front page of today's Palo Alto Times.

Justice Department Sniffs Out Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Writing Industry

Palo Alto – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Midpeninsula District of California today announced that it is launching an investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) by well-known authors around the country.

“We have convened a grand jury that is taking in camera testimony from authors, editors, and agents,” said Hamilton Wiener, U.S. Attorney. “It appears that some authors have been resorting to PEDs which give them an unfair advantage over their colleagues who play by the rules.”

According to grand jury transcripts obtained by The Palo Alto Times, many authors, especially of mysteries and thrillers, do their writing under the influence of a pharmacopeia of stimulants, opiates, and such. Moreover, Times sources expect a perjury indictment this week of one prolific author who has set sales records for his books and denied using any PED while writing them.

“We’ve got this guy, whose latest book was about to be named an Oprah’s Book Club choice, dead to rights,” boasted Michael Jovert of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General. “He relaxes at night by smoking marijuana according to his mistress. He denies it but she has phone tapes. He’s going down. Oprah’s so grateful that we saved her from the embarrassment.”

"The results of this investigation show our commitment to protect the integrity of America’s reading pastime from deceptive and fraudulent practices," said Inspector Jovert. "We have an obligation to pursue and bring to justice those who prey on vulnerable readers and place profits before public health.”

Bud Taper, commissioner of the Major League of Writers (MLW), said that PED use is unfair to those authors who have been writing while “clean.” He promises to rule shortly on requests to strike the books of an authors found using PEDs from bestseller lists. With the focus of the investigation on crime fiction, such lists may be drastically altered. The New York Times list of the top 15 hardcover fiction books for the week of April 6 contains nine instances of crime fiction.

Industry observers are wondering if Taper will lend his presence to the Edgar® Awards ceremony, crime fiction’s “Oscars,” on May 1.

“He can’t win either way,” said 2007 Edgar Award nominee Cornelia Read. “If he does show, it will look like he doesn’t care which of the nominees have been smoking dope or whatever. If he doesn’t, it will be disrespecting the game of crime fiction.”

In addition to its grand jury investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice is asking for reciprocity from its English counterparts. The Times has learned that descendants of Thomas de Quincey, author of Confessions of an English Opium Eater, will be asked to forfeit the royalties the book has earned over the last century and a half.

Comments from writers have been mixed.

Jeff Shelby, the best-selling mystery author, said, “Late at night, I’ve seen my colleagues take amphetamines to stay up and hit their deadlines. It’s not fair to those of us who scrupulously follow the law and still write great mysteries. I’m sure Wicked Break would have hit the top spot on the Denver bestseller list if only my fellow writers had played fair.”

Author of the hot new mystery Thugs and Kisses, Sue Ann Jaffarian, said, “Dude. I live in LaLa Land, where we do what it takes to get the muse up off her lazy ass. Sometimes that means more than sugar and chocolate. Readers benefit. Where's the harm?”

Keith Raffel, the Silicon Valley mystery and thriller writer, has concerns about the investigation turning into a witch-hunt. “I have been questioned by the grand jury,” he told The Times in an exclusive interview. “What I don’t understand is if only illegal PEDs are being looked at or if any foreign substance that enhances your writing is taboo.”

Raffel estimates that he drinks up to 15 cups of green tea each day he writes. “If that’s outlawed, I’ll be driven back to the software industry where the rules are far laxer.”

Lush Life, Literary vs. Genre Fiction, and State of Play

Overwhelmed by the reviews of his Lush Life, I headed over to M is for Mystery yesterday afternoon to hear what Richard Price had to say.  As happens so often, Mr. Price spent too much time of his allotted sixty minutes reading from the book.  If I'm going to buy the book, I want to read it myself and not have someone else steal the juicy parts.  During the Q&A, I asked why reviews seemed to treat Lush Life as "literary" fiction rather than crime fiction.  A little explication here.  I expected him to rant about artificial lines between genres.  In fact, I wanted him to, since such words would be a balm to me who recently received a rejection from a major publisher that said my opus "is a gripping book that kept me turning pages from the very start."  Then came more compliments, before the conclusion:  "However, at the end of the day... the subject matter is just still too firmly in the genre world" for us.  All right, all right.  Enough whining.  Anyway, Price said he was treated as a literary writer because that's the way he wants to be treated.  He said that he himself doesn't read "detective stories" since you forget what they were about minutes after finishing them.  In his mind literary fiction deals with big themes and describes an important slice of the world in a way "detective" fiction does not.  (Remember I did ask about crime fiction.)  He did say he was an admirer of George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, and Elmore Leonard as well as the old-timers like Hammett and Chandler.

In response to another question, Price said what he originally turned into his editor was twice as long as the final manuscript.  He said he and the editor worked together to find the story hidden in that first draft.  How many editors do that kind of thing nowadays?

I had hauled #4 along with me -- he's nine -- since we were due at our synagogue right after the signing.  He sat in the front of the store during the reading and Q&A where he was supposed to be keeping his nose in a Tom Swift: Young Inventor book, but he confessed to listening to Price talk.  I hope the words he heard were new to him, but with three older siblings I fear they were not.

One other piece of advice that I keep forgetting to pass along.  Recently, I watched State of Play, a BBC miniseries about a murder wrapped in a political scandal.  It's available on DVD from Netflix.  Get it.  Watch it.  It's being turned into a big deal movie in 2009 with Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Robert Wright Penn and Russell Crowe, but don't wait for that.  It can't be as good (especially since they are moving it, of course, from London to D.C.) 

Closed Borders?

Yes, we writers love independent bookstores.  I myself have sold a ton of books at the independent bookstores listed below in the right hand column of this blog, but I also have done signings at Borders and Barnes & Noble.  A manager at the Borders in downtown Palo Alto was impressed with how many Dot Deads they were selling and sent an email to the managers of all the Bay Area Borders stories.  Thanks to him, I did about ten signings of up to 70 books a session at local Borders stores.

So, what's my point?  No matter how much we love the independents, it cannot be good news that Borders is in financial trouble.  Its stock is down 75% in the last year.  A story in the Times this morning cites competition from Wal-Mart and Amazon.com as a reason for Borders' difficulties.  The company took out an emergency loan at 12.5% interest to avoid "liquidity problems."

According to the news stories, Barnes & Noble, the country's largest bookseller, is the obvious candidate to take Borders over.  Such a merger/takeover would mean less competition and shuttering hundreds of bookstores, a scary prospect indeed to anyone who wants to sell lots of their books and to anyone who wants to buy them.

Should We Censor Ourselves?

My sister and I went over to Berkeley to see Carrie Fisher in her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking. What a life! Daughter of "America's Sweethearts," Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Step-daughter of Connie Stevens. (What do you mean you don't remember Cricket from Hawaiian Eye?) First film playing a 1970's Lolita opposite Warren Beatty in Shampoo. Then in a life-altering role, Princess Leia Organa. Ex-wife of Paul Simon. Novelist. (You should hear her read the audiotape of Postcards from the Edge.) Top script doctor.

In the course of the show, she chats about her drug addiction, bi-polar disorder, second marriage to a guy who turns out to be gay, and good friend's death on her bed. She lowers down from the ceiling a life-size Princess Leia sex doll. She discusses her parents' break-up (Dad ran away with Elizabeth Taylor) and her mother's ill-conceived subsequent marriages. She mentions in passing one of her mother's great ideas -- that she, Carrie, should have a child with her mother's husband. (Advice not followed.) More sex, drugs, and rock & roll. One thing. Five seats over from my sister and me sat her mother. I was aghast. Carrie addressed her mom up in the mezzanine. Debbie seemed both resigned and proud. (The night before George Lucas was in the audience, and in the dressing room after the show, Carrie finally found out why he had told her on the Star Wars set that there was no underwear in outer space.)

Someone once said you should write as though your mother is dead. Carrie Fisher wasn't even fazed when her mom was in the audience. I've told my younger kids that Dot Dead is PG-32. A guy in the audience at one local bookstore asked me why the sex scenes in Dot Dead weren't grittier. I told him I was conscious that I had four kids who would read the book some day.

So I guess I do censor myself. I could never carry off what Carrie Fisher did. (OTOH, my life has not been as "interesting" as hers -- at least from a People Magazine perspective, I mean.)

Writers, do you ever censor what you write because of what your spouse, squeeze, kids, parents, or friends might think?

One Year Later

I was sitting at services this morning and felt a piece of paper in the pocket of my sports coat.  It was a receipt from the cafeteria at the company where I had my day job dated February 27, 2007.  I hadn't warn that jacket in a while I guess.  Anyway, it occurred to me that February 28 was my last day at the company.  Therefore, March 1, 2007 was my first day in a career as a full-time writer.  It's one year later!

So what I have accomplished?  I finished a political thriller/mystery/love story called Two Graves, which my agent is selling.  This month I will complete the first draft of a sequel to Dot Dead, tentatively called Smasher.  I've said before that I have something like career ADD, but I have made it an entire twelve months as a writer with no day job.

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.

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.