Dot Dead Diary

Like The Energizer Bunny

Tomorrow morning my wife takes off to spend Freshman Parent's Weekend with #1.  I'll be spending the next few days doing all the chauffeuring for the other three kids -- to school, doctor appointments, soccer games, ice skating lessons, birthday parties, and more.  Saturday night, I'll see if #4 and I can make it to Kepler's to see Dave Keane, the author of the wonderful Joe Sherlock mysteries that he likes so much.

Things really start cooking next week.  After taking #4 trick-or-treating on Wednesday, I'm going to hit the sack, wake up at the crack of dawn, and wing to San Antonio to discuss Dot Dead at the Barshop Jewish Community Center Thursday evening.  The next week I'm flying to Ft. Myers, Florida as a lunchtime speaker at the JCC of Lee and Charlotte Counties.  I get back in time for Sabbath Salon at my own synagogue where Rabbi Larry Raphael, editor of Criminal Kabbalah and Mystery Midrash, and I will have a discussion on Jewish mysteries moderated by the omniscient Ellen Bob, co-proprietor of the Bob & Bob bookstore.  If you see a theme here, it's no coincidence -- November is Jewish Book Month.  The Jewish Book Council helps coordinate writers' visits to Jewish book fairs and synagogues hither and yon.  I went back to NYC to audition last June. Rochelle Krich recommended I look into this.  (Thank you, Rochelle!)

Also next month, on three successive Sundays starting at noon, I'll be signing at local book emporiums -- November 4 at Kepler's, November 11 at Borders in downtown Palo Alto, and November 18 at Borders at Santana Row in San Jose. 

After that my brother's family is arriving for Thanksgiving and no sooner will I have digested the turkey than I am off to see #1 myself and attend an engagement party for my godson.

November should be fun!

Deborah Kerr

English actors switch back and forth between stage and screen with more facility than their American colleagues.  When I lived in England, the theater was cheap and fun and amazing.  For a couple of quid, I could see Alec Guiness from the second or third row at the Oxford Playhouse (in "The National Health"), Ingrid Bergman (in "The Constant Wife"), and Wendy Hiller (in "Crown Matrimonial").  Along with these giants, I saw all-time fave Deborah Kerr in "The Day After the Fair."  When it comes to her film roles, others will remember Ms. Kerr for "From Here to Eternity with her famous beach scene with Burt Lancaster.  But for me her two best roles were in "Separate Tables" where she plays a mousy woman who defies her mother and social convention to become heroic in a small, understated way and in "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" where she plays a nun who resists the temptation offered by Robert Mitchum.  The "Separate Tables" cast also included David Niven, Gladys Cooper, Rita Hayworth, Rod Taylor, and the aforementioned Wendy Hiller and Burt Lancaster.  Among those stars she shined brightest.  Here's what the Times review said:  "Most brilliant and true of the performers is Deborah Kerr."  She once said:  "I adore not being me.  I'm not very good at being me. That's why I adore acting so much."

Deborah Kerr died Tuesday at age 86.  Read the Independent's obituary here.

Living Inside My Novel

This weekend I finished reading How I Got Published.  Lots of fun with many articles by friends.  The articles veered from homilies on stick-to-itiveness to Ripley-style accounts of an agent's unexpected call with a report on a six-figure offer. 

A couple of writers in the tome insist that writing an outline is the only way to get started on that to-be-published novel.  I reflected on this as I pecked away on my laptop at the local cafe today.  Time after time, as I work on Book #3, I am completely surprised by what happens next, what a protagonist says, or who kills whom. 

Now, many of my friends outline.  Bully for them.  Whatever works.  However, for me the joy of writing is living inside the book and being surprised by what happens.  How much fun would life be if you received an outline of everything significant that would occur between now and your (inevitable) demise?

MWA Grand Master Stephen King opined at the Edgar Awards this year that if you're going to use all your creative juices on the outline, why not just sell that?  Today I wrote an unexpected (by me) confrontation between a protagonist and an old friend.  In addition, our hero (and heroine) got lucky in the connubial bliss arena.  I didn't know either was going to happen this morning when I started and enjoyed living it all out with them.  Just hope the readers will, too.

Literary Quest

When I was in graduate school in history in England long ago, I used to alternate reading books in three categories: 1) books in my field of study; 2) novels that were good for me; and 3) mysteries.  Under this plan, I was playing less hooky than you think.  Category 1 books would take three days, Category 2 one day, and Category 3 a few hours.  I'd sit in my window seat, look out at the courtyard now and again (pretty much the view you see to the left), and devour page after page, chapter after chapter, book after book. 

When I was all done with my two years in England, I delivered my books to what might have been the world's greatest bookstore, Blackwell's, and they shipped them back to the States for a nominal fee.  I still have most of the books.  My shelves are filled with memoirs and histories by British professors, politicians, and diplomats, and I have nice mass paperback editions of Chandler and MacDonald.  (The latter's Drowning Pool was 25 pence.) 

In Category 2 I think my favorite was Doris Lessing's Children of Violence sequence that started with Martha Quest.  The series dealt with big issues like racism, relations between the sexes, and political philosophy, but I remember caring deeply for the eponymous main character.  I read the books at the right time, in my early 20's.  On my bookshelves I still have the Panther editions which sold for 50 pence, but I'm kind of afraid to re-read them in case they don't hold up.  Today it was announced that Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Bravo!

Good News in the Mailbox Plus A Fun Evening in San Mateo

I just received my royalty statement for the 6 months ending June 30 from my publisher, Midnight Ink.  As compared to the six months between publication on July 1, 2006 and December 31, 2006, the number of books sold declined by 37%.  Not so bad.  Not falling off a cliff like one of those blockbuster movies that a month later is out of the theaters. 

So now I've earned out the advance and in July the book went back for a second printing.  And I do know that the book is still selling in the third six-month period which we are in now.  Kepler's and the Borders in downtown Palo Alto have sold over 100 copies between them in the last two weeks.  Last night I signed a dozen copies at M is for Mystery.  On the way home, I stopped at the Borders in San Mateo and was dumbstruck to discover five pristine copies of Dot Dead on the shelf.  They hadn't had a copy in a year.  The Borders computer in Ann Arbor must have seen how many were being sold at other Bay Area Borders and shipped them out.  Those five copies now have autographed stickers on them and are being displayed at the information counter.

So what was I doing in San Mateo last night?  I was at M is for Mystery interviewing Macavity Award winner Tim Maleeny, whom critics and colleagues have compared to Dashiell Hammett.  (Is there higher praise?)  We had a ball discussing his newest, Beating the Babushka, before an appreciative audience.  Once done we adjourned across the street to chew the fat and some sushi with his charming (and indulgent) wife, Katherine. 

Tim and I last night before any food was eaten or bottles opened.

Extracurricular Activities

Writing mysteries and thrillers is my job.  Yet, I must admit to a bit of moonlighting.

In today's Palo Alto Weekly, I have an essay decrying the lack of mysteries with a Silicon Valley background.  Click here to read "More Dead Bodies Please."

I have friends over at Bleacher Report, and they asked me to write an essay on an inspirational moment in my life of sports fandom.  You know, it's amazing how the euphoria engendered by The Catch and the despondency caused by the Giants' collapse in Game 6 of the 2002 World Series are tattooed on my brain as many ostensibly more significant occurrences fade away.  I was reminded of this by my friend Jeff Shelby's reaction to the Padres loss on Monday.  Judging from the heartrending email he sent me, he will bear the scars to his grave.  Anyway, click here to read my piece "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29."

Finally, Writer's Digest has come out with How I Got Published: Famous Authors Tell You in Their Own Words which contains an essay I wrote called "Dayenu."  (Maybe not quite all the contributors are famous -- yet.)  It's about setting expectations the right way.  Given that other essays in the volume are written by pals Sue Ann Jaffarian, Simon Wood, Jess Lourey, Darrell James, and the aforementioned Mr. Shelby, as well as a pack of luminaries, I'm looking forward to reading the copy that the publisher promises me is on the way.

BTW, I'm floating along on my third book, which confusingly is a sequel to the first one.  (I have no title for it yet, but have nicknamed it Dot Dead 2.0.)  The amount of green tea I'm drinking while hunched over my laptop at the local café must be adding significantly to our nation's trade deficit with Japan, China, and India.