Dot Dead Diary

The Sunshine Girls

Theresa Schwegel and Megan Abbot brought their road show to M is for Mystery in San Mateo this evening.  Last year they competed to win the Edgar for best first novel.  Theresa won and that might have laid the groundwork for a feud.  But last fall they were both nominated for an Anthony.  Neither won that time, and they drowned their sorrows together in Madison and sometime during that lachrymose evening decided to tour together.  I just bought their second books tonight (The Song Is You and Probable Cause) so I haven't read them, but I have read their first books, and they are terrific, particularly for their atmosphere.  (Megan's books are worth buying for their covers alone.  She says people are arguing whether the woman on the cover of her latest looks more like Susan Hayward or one of my all-time favorites, Gloria Grahame.)  The back and forth between Megan and Theresa tonight appeared spontaneous enough that it must have been practiced at previous stops on the tour.  Especially enjoyable were their comments on classic noir, both books and film.  Megan said she knew the house in Double Indemnity as if she lived there, and Theresa is writing an appreciation of Double Indemnity's femme fatale, Barbara Stanwyck, for an anthology Megan is editing on female noir.  Theresa has her third book coming out at the end of the year, even though she has just finished its first draft.  Megan's third book Queenpin, a trade paper original, will be out in June.  Their prolificacy turns me emerald with envy.  Both Megan and Theresa are on their way tomorrow to Seattle for Left Coast Crime.  I'll see them up there.  (BTW, Megan assures me that her mother Patti is just as wonderful as she seems in her occasional comment to this blog.) 

Any stop at M is for Mystery is expensive for me.  In addition, to purchasing Megan and Theresa's books, I picked up Julia Buckley's Dark Backward, Lori Armstrong's Hallowed Ground, and the first in Julie Hyzy's Alex St. James series.  But I also got a couple of books that I am paying for in time and effort rather than dollars.  At M Is for Mystery at 2PM on February 20, I am interviewing two writers with books out in February:  Tim Maleeny (Stealing the Dragon, another book with a   great cover) and Peter Spiegelman (Red Cat).  Ed Kaufman, the store's proprietor, provided me with advanced readers' copies.  I'll be reading them on the plane to and from Seattle.

Barbara Stanwyck

Gloria Grahame

The Long Tail

Dot Dead came out last July.  My official "tour" really ended in September.  Yet, speaking engagements haven't stopped -- in fact, they seem to have picked up.  And I just noticed that Dot Dead was back on the bestseller list at Kepler's, the Menlo Park bookstore.

I've lived here in the Bay Area since I was eight, and I'd never been to Kensington, CA before this past Tuesday.  Anyway, Chris Sorensen, a high school friend I last saw a quarter century ago, invited me to her new Novel Women Book Club there.  Chris's sister Carolyn brought along a Palo Alto High yearbook and found what I'd inscribed to her.  Not too embarrassing.  Needless to say, the group was all women, but they only ganged up on me a little.  Lots of fun seeing Chris and Carolyn and meeting articulate women who at least claimed to like Dot Dead.

At #4's school auction last fall, my wife sold off copies of the book and an evening of dessert and discussion.  Last night was the night.  #1 made a dozen berry tarts for the guests which made listening to me worth it no matter how much I blathered.  Since everyone was from the neighborhood, we spent some time talking about how Palo Alto had been transformed from a small university town to the center of Silicon Valley.  As readers of Dot Dead know, I am of two minds about it.

This week I received a couple more emails asking if I'd come to book groups.  Of course, I would!  I'm going up to the Left Coast Crime Conference in Seattle with #1 this weekend and will be signing books at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop on Saturday afternoon.  On Sunday, February 18 I'll be at M is for Mystery in San Mateo interviewing one or two fellow authors.  And I will be speaking at three local high schools this spring, too.

Palo Alto -- Crime City

As a writer, I steal from real life.  These words or that tic or some event inspire words on the page.  Well, yesterday this was all turned topsy-turvy.  Dot Dead opens with a breaking and entering.  Yesterday the Raffel household suffered a burglary.  It was surreal to show the officer around the house to determine what was missing just as Ian did in the book.  When the officer went outside, I asked him if he was going to get the black case with fingerprinting paraphernalia out of his trunk.  He was a little surprised, but said yes.  I had a case of déjà écrit.

Of course, the family feels a little less safe today.  My camera, #1's laptop, some of my wife's jewelry, and my wedding ring (goddamn him) are gone.

Let's Celebrate - Burns Night Tomorrow

I've always felt a kinship with the Scots through my first name, a Scottish name if ever there was one.  The motto of the Keith clan is "veritas vincit," or "truth conquers," perfect for a writer, don't you think?  The Keiths were a powerful clan indeed around the time of Robert the Bruce.  According to legend, in a feud with the Gunns, the Keiths swooped down and killed the Gunn warriors while they were at prayer.  The Gunns got even over the next century.  Backing the Jacobites did not really pay off for the Keith Clan either.  Anyway, to further celebrate my faux Scottish ancestry, the hero of Dot Dead was given a good Scottish name.  The great love of Ivanhoe in the Sir Walter Scott classic was Rowena, a name I borrowed for Dot Dead as well.  Dorothy Dunnett wrote my favorite historical novels, the Francis of Lymond series, set in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots.  The female protagonist of the last few volumes in the series served as at least partial inspiration for the name of my #3.  And like all mystery writers, I am a literary descendant of the Scot, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, progenitor of the greatest of all fictional detectives. 

When I lived in the U.K., I remember my friend Dave organizing a Burns Night party on the traditional January 25, the great poet's birthday.  What happens at a Burns Night gathering?  if memory serves, the two essential requirements are a bottle of good single malt and haggis, the stuffed sheep's stomach that Mr. Burns deemed the "great chieftain o' the pudding-race."  I'll see if I can get my wife and kids interested in some Scottish food and poetry tomorrow night to celebrate our Scottish roots, such as they are.  In any case, I'll be toasting with the Scottish motto, "Nemo me impune lacessit " or in modern English, "Mess with me and you'll be sorry."

Robert Burns

Keith family crest

Me Interviewed?

For reasons known only to her, the inimitable Sue Ann Jaffarian, president of the LA Chapter of Sisters in Crime and author of the hot Odelia Grey series, decided she wanted to do an interview with me.  (?)  The results of her whim can be found at http://sueannjaffarian.blogspot.com/2007/01/all-aboard-midnight-ink-express.html.

The Papas

Years ago I corresponded regularly via an internal messaging system (this was pre-email) with co-workers in Japan.  The words in the English-language responses I received made sense, the sentences were hard a little harder to follow, the paragraphs required code-breaking, and the overall gist of the messages were unfathomable.  I worry that the book I'm working on is following an similar pattern. 

I've set February 14 as a deadline for completion of the first draft.  I have 63,000 words done and my stick-a-finger-in-the-air estimate is that the first draft will have 80,000.  Last week I wrote almost 7,000 words.  I seem to be on schedule.  I know that I've written good pages, maybe even good chapters, but does the book make sense as a whole?  I am taking comfort in a saying attributed to Hemingway:  "The first draft of anything is shit."  I have printed that out in 54 point type and taped it next to my monitor.  (But then #4 saw it and was offended that Daddy was using words like that.  So I offered to reprint replacing the obscenity with s**t, but he doesn't want me to waste the paper.)

A sad note.  This past Monday I quoted lyrics from the Mamas and Papas' "Monday, Monday."  Denny Doherty, who sang lead on that song, has died.

Initimidation

A few months ago I was invited to speak at a local book club called PageTurners.  All was fine till I was handed a list of club selections starting in 1967.  The first book was Camus' The Fall and the pages were rife with classics by Shakespeare, Lessing, local icon Wallace Stegner, Roth, and on and on.  And the last mystery choice before mine was Chandler's The Big Sleep in 2000.  Standards were inimidatingly high.  Still, I had a good time, and I'm told the club members did as well.  On a whim, I read the first chapter of my work-in-progress to the assemblage.  Not sure that was a good idea.  Book #2 is more graphic than Dot Dead, and this might not have been the audience to try it out on.  In any case, at the end of the evening, I was handed an envelope and tucked it in my coat pocket.  At home I discovered it contained a check!  Just like a Bar Mitzvah.  Am told in this case though it's called an honorarium.  Very nice, but am not counting on getting too many more of them.

Rebirth

Received an email from Ellen Bob of Bob and Bob, the Jewish bookstore in downtown Palo Alto that just closed two weeks ago.  She reports the Bob and Bob has just signed a lease for space at 4500 El Camino Real, just north of the San Antonio intersection.  Their doors apparently will open again soon, because Ellen wrote, "Can't wait to put a fresh stack of Dot Dead on our front table in a few weeks." 

This is the second time in eighteen months that a local, venerable independent bookstore closed up, only to be reborn a month later, thanks in large part to community support.  First it was Kepler's, now Bob and Bob -- both institutions that make Silicon Valley a better place to live.  Whew.  Close calls.

Monday, Monday

Monday Monday, so good to me,
Monday Monday, it was all I hoped it would be

                      The Mamas and the Papas (1966)

Here we are only two weeks past New Year's and another official day off from the job that supports the family (as contrasted to the writing one).  Sweet.  Unfortunately, it is not a day off for the construction crew next door who are building a house to rival the Hearst Castle and making enough racket to reanimate King Tut.  I think I'll walk downtown.  Faith Bell of Bell's Books said she would have more Dot Deads coming in, and I said I'd stop by to sign them.  If no kids want to come along on the trek, I'll listen to The Pale Horseman on my Nano which I admit to finding splendidly entertaining.  (I find that I enjoy listening to the type of books I liked to read at age 15.)  Then, even amidst the wintry gales, #4 and I will get out the mitts and play a little catch.  I'll spend the afternoon at the cafe sipping green tea and getting a minimum of a thousand words written.  I sure hope that those folks who say "Don't get it right, get it written" are giving sound advice.  I am moving forward with Book 2 like the proverbial shark and not going back to ensure consistency even as I make plot and character changes.  A substantial rewrite awaits.  Wish me luck.  I'll feel the karma. 

Enjoy your MLK  Day!

Success through Addiction

I need to write about 5000 words per week to finish the first draft of Book 2 by Valentine's Day.  Just now I completed that quota for the latest seven days.  (My weeks run Saturday through Friday).  But here's the price I pay.  On the way home from work, I stop at a local cafe and write.  Etiquette requires that I buy something, and this establishment can conjure up a pot of green tea that's quite delicious.  One problem -- it's caffeinated.  After a few days of drinking anything caffeinated, I'm addicted.  What do I mean by addicted?  I mean I like it and if I don't have it, I suffer withdrawal systems.  I started writing a little later than usual yesterday, and I felt as though two invisible hands were tightening a belt around my head.  A couple of Tylenol and a glass of caffeinated chai, and I was okay.  I'd given up caffeine some years ago if for no other reason that the fasting on Yom Kippur was torturous.  Now I'm hooked again, but productive.  Is it worth the occasional headache worth it?  You bet.  Gotta suffer for your craft.