Dot Dead Diary

Self-Absorbed Writers of the Silver Screen

I watched Starting Out in the Evening on DVD downstairs last night while my wife, #3, and #4 watched No Reservations upstairs.  Any serious flick about a novelist gets bonus points from me.  Funnily enough, the film starred Frank Langella as a mostly-forgotten, self-absorbed writer living in an apartment on the Upper West Side.  (Of course, the place looks great.  Real estate porn.)  Into his life waltzes a grad student who wants to resuscitate his reputation as a way to make hers.  Why funnily enough?  Because the first movie I remember Mr. Langella in was Diary of a Mad Housewife where he again played a self-absorbed writer.  Somewhere in the 37 years between the two films he moved from dashing to decrepit.  Anyway the verdict on the movie?  Intelligent and thought-provoking.  See it for what it has to say about aging and the writer's compulsion.  I'm going to track down the novel by Brian Morton that the movie's based on.

As a sidelight, I laughed when Langella's character approached an editor he had known.  The editor tells him that no one prints literary fiction anymore.  In real life, my manuscript was turned down by an editor at a very large publisher who told my agent I'd written "a gripping book that kept me turning pages from the very start," but that what I'd written was "too firmly rooted in the genre world" for her house.  Can't win nowadays.

 

A Helluva Thriller That Ought Not Be Forgotten

Some thoroughbreds not only race fast themselves, but have the ability to pass talent along to their foals.  Maybe authors work the same way.  Patti Abbott is a fine writer who recently garnered a Derringer Award for her story "My Hero" and is the mother of this year’s Edgar winner for best paperback original, Megan Abbott.  Anyway Patti is asking some of her friends to recommend “books we love but might have forgotten over the years.”

Now I don’t want to brag about a memory which can’t always recall where a car was parked thirty minutes ago.  But....  if I love a book I don’t forget it.  I cherish the memory.  Still, the thrust of Patti’s request makes sense.  Who’s overlooked nowadays?  My first inclination was to name a book by Ross Thomas, maybe Briarpatch.  Still, I’ve blogged about him before as have others.  So I went for a stroll along the bookshelves in my office and bedroom.  I cradled this book and that one.  When I came to an old British Penguin paperback of Lionel Davidson’s The Sun Chemist, I stopped.  Now that wasn’t my absolute favorite of his books although it was terrific.  Davidson’s premise was that Chaim Weizmann, the British chemist, first president of Israel, and distant cousin of yours truly, came up with a formula for synthetic oil that had been lost and the hero of the book tries to track it down.  Wonderful.  As were The Menorah Men, The Rose of Tibet, and The Night of Wenceslas (a Gold Dagger winner).  Davidson won a second Gold Dagger for The Chelsea Murders published in 1978, wrote a children's book that saw the light of day in 1980, and then went dark for years.  Finally, like the swan whose last song is its sweetest, Davidson came out with Kolymsky Heights in 1994, one of the two or three greatest thrillers ever. 

There’s more derring-do and adventure in Heights than is typical in Davidson’s oeuvre.  Johnny Porter is not exactly your everyday kind of guy – a Gitksan Indian from British Columbia who happens to be a Rhodes Scholar, too.  A melding of the ancient and the new.  He goes on a mission for the CIA, which he distrusts, to discover a secret inside Russia of inestimable humanitarian value that had been hidden under Stalin's orders.  (As with the missing formula for cheap oil in The Sun Chemist and the original Temple menorah in The Menorah Men, something of tremendous value has been lost and our hero races to find it.)  Porter stands apart, an outsider in his own country and in Siberia an outsider again.  He falls in love or does he?  There’s arcane technological and anthropological lore, a beautiful doctor to fall in love with (or not), and an incredible chase across the frozen tracts of the far north.  In the end Porter proves his loyalty not to a country but to individual people and to humankind.  Read this book.  (You can read the New York Times review here.)

We can’t expect another book from Mr. Davidson who turned 86 in March.  But what a way to leave ‘em wanting more Kolymsky Heights is.

A Worthwhile Schlep

I've been trying to get to get to one of Cara Black's appearances for a couple of months now.  Tuesday night Libby Fischer Hellmann was at M is for Mystery, but I couldn't make that either.

Yesterday, though, I schlepped up to the City and sat in the audience at Stacey's Bookstore on Market Strret with about four dozen women and three other men to listen to the two of them along with the peppery and prolific Rhys Bowen.  What a treat!  Three masters of the female P.I. novel.  Now Cara has always written about the hip Parisienne detective, Aimee Leduc. Rhys started with police mysteries set in Wales, but her long-running Molly Murphy series features a detective in early twentieth-century New York City.  With her latest, Libby resurrected Georgia Davis, a character from book three of her Ellie Foreman series, and turned her into a P.I.   

Cara's been working hard publicizing her latest Parisian mystery, Murder in the Rue de Paradis.  She was just back from the LA Times Book Festival where the mercury stretched up into the low 90's.  Last year she and I sold together in a booth at the LATBF, and I've never had such a good time flogging books.  She bragged to passersby about blogging Dot Dead (she has a very generous soul indeed) and I snagged potential buyers for her with a line (in truth, her line) about getting to Paris for the price of a book.  We each sold out in about 20 minutes.  Cara has a huge fan base in California, north and south.  No surprise to see Murder on the Rue de Paradis on the San Francisco Bay Area bestseller list.  She deserves it.

Libby and I were on a panel together at the late, lamented ConMisterio Conference a few years ago.  Easy Innocence has been garnering terrific reviews and is into a second printing in both the hardback and paperback editions.  Her hometown Tribune wrote that Georgia Davis "is tough and smart enough to give even the legendary V.I. Warshawski a run for her money."  (BTW, I interviewed Libby myself for The Big Thrill.)  While Cara was chatting with fans, Libby was pulling on her sleeve and saying, "Cara, we have to go.  I have a plane to catch."  She was on her way home to Chicagoland for one night before heading today to the Edgar Awards in New York.  "Blue Note," a short story by the wonderful Stuart Kaminsky in the anthology Chicago Blues Libby edited, is up for an award.  As a glance at her schedule proves, Libby's working hard .

So is Rhys.  She's juggling two series and to keep her fans happy she writes a book in each every year.  Her latest Molly Murphy, Tell Me Pretty Maiden, is just out and the second in her series about Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, an impoverished British royal in 1930's, is out in July.  She's a dynamo in person, too.

Even with gas at $3.99 a gallon, listening to (and chatting with) these three was well worth the expedition north on US101.

Two Interviews That Get You Thinking

I read two articles this week that made me think some about this writing biz.

Lee Child is interviewed in The (London) Times.  Unlike most author interviews, this one seems to focus on material matters, and I am happy to report that Lee, whom I met at Bouchercon in 2006, seems to be doing okay with his Jack Reacher series.  Well, "okay," if two apartments on Manhattan and two near St. Tropez along with such trinkets as a Faberge watch and a Jag allow one to reach the okay benchmark.  So success and wealth have prompted to Lee to turn philosophical.  He says:

"When you have plenty it is really liberating but you reach a point where you realise, 'Wow. I can have anything I want.' This just prompts the question, 'Well, what is it that you want?' and I have found that actually I don’t want very much."

Easy for him to say. 

In an interview in our Times (the New York one, I mean) this week, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, known as Professor Happiness, says:

"We know that the best predictor of human happiness is human relationships and the amount of time that people spend with family and friends.

"We know that it’s significantly more important than money and somewhat more important than health. That’s what the data shows. The interesting thing is that people will sacrifice social relationships to get other things that won’t make them as happy — money."

Writing is, of course, a solitary pursuit.  Does that mean that we writers all have a tendency for melancholia?  We all know how important friends and family are.  But maybe the social relationships with fellow scriveners we foster at conferences, writing groups, in drinking establishments, and on Facebook help keep us sane and make us a little happier, too.

Gritty Noir from Libby Fischer Hellmann

The Big Thrill asked me to interview my friend Libby Fischer Hellman, the Chicago crime fiction author and past president of Sisters in Crime.  Her new book, Easy Innocence, is just out. See what she has to say here about the challenges of writing her first PI novel and the flowering of Chicago crime fiction.

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.) 

A Dirty-handed Dentist?

The Spitzer Scandal reminds me of a story my rabbi told me years ago.  He said that you don't much care if your dentist is a tax evader, your accountant cheats on his wife, and your rabbi doesn't wash his hands after going to the bathroom.  But you care alot if your dentist doesn't wash his hands after going to the bathroom, your accountant is a tax evader, and your rabbi cheats on his wife.

People, of course, are comparing the Spitzer imbroglio with the Bill Clinton fling with Monica Lewinsky.  In 1992 people knew, or at least strongly suspected (remember Gennifer Flowers?), that Bill fooled around and voted for him anyway.  (He was like the accountant cheating on his wife.)  He stayed in office.  But Spitzer made his rep on prosecuting wrongdoers.  He was the avenging angel of the law.  (That makes him the rabbi cheating on his wife.)  If true, I suspect and expect he will resign because his wrongdoing goes to the core of the reason the voters elected him.

From Chicago to Cape Town

Nine years ago, Charlie Newton had a mid-life crisis and turned to writing full-time.  A Chicagoan, he's now holed up in Cape Town, South Africa scribbling away.  His debut novel, Calumet City, is attracting notice.  Click here to see my interview with him for The Big Thrill.

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?