Dot Dead Diary

Adding Two (Audiobook) Covers to The Mix

The reading world is in the midst of a war over formats. We've all been following the back-and-forth between Kindle/Nook partisans and those who defiantly hold on to their paper-and-ink books. Here's which side I come down on: both.

Don't you think we authors should strive to ensure our novels can be read however our readers want to read them -- whether as words on a paper page or on an LCD screen? And what about those who might want to use their ears rather than their eyes to "read" a book? Fine with me. Let's add one more option to the mix then -- audiobooks.

My first two books have just hit the format trifecta. Dot Deadand Smasher are now available as audio downloads for iPods, MP3 players, and such on both Audible.com andAmazon.com. (You can listen to samples here and here.) Both are still available as ebooks and trade paperbacks. (Readers, pick your poison.) My third novel, Drop By Drop, is currently available only as an ebook, but if it continues to sell well (fingers crossed), I'm hoping it will be offered in print and as an audio book as well.

One side benefit to all these different formats is a flowering of covers. Dot Dead has one cover doing double duty for the ebook and trade paper and another for the audio version. Smasher -- lucky fellow -- has a different cover for all three formats. Drop By Drop is available in just the one format and hence has only one cover at present. If my arithmetic is correct, that makes a total of six covers. I'm pretty fond of all of them, but I do wonder which ones you prefer. Please let me know in your comments below or over at Inkspot!

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Confessing the Truth

In my last post, I listed one true and six false statements.  Now I'm 'fessing up.  My comments on the veracity of each of the seven statements are in italics below.

1. I dated Stephanie Zimbalist of the Remington Steele TV show.
No such luck.  (I am ignoring Diana's comment.)  Loren figured this one was true, saying he knew I struck out with Ali MacGraw.  Two things, Loren: 1) she was married to Robert Evans when I met her and 2) I do have a handwritten souvenir of our "relationship" on my office wall.

2. I flew on a small plane with Paul Newman.

 

Bingo!  I was taking a late flight from DC to Boston.  Noise abatement rules had already kicked in at Logan, so I climbed on a petite turboprop which made little noise compared to a jet.  We were going to be polite and not awaken the slumbering Hub.  Anyway, just about the only other passenger was Mr. Newman.  There were a number of flight attendants, but I don't recall being attended by any of them; they all hovered around him.  (Richard B picked this as the correct statement over on Facebook.  You win, Richard!)

3. I was lost for over six hours in the sewers of Paris.

 

In the summer of 08, I was stuck in King Hezekiah's 2700 year-old tunnel under Jerusalem.  But nope never been in the Parisian nether lands.

4. I went to a garden party at Buckingham Palace and met the Queen.

 
I did go to a party at the American Embassy in London where I noted a Picasso over the loo, but, nope, Her Majesty never invited me over for a cuppa and crumpet.

5. When camping, I found a rattlesnake cuddled on top of my sleeping bag when I awoke.

 

Diana says I'm not the camping type.  Say what?  I was a boy scout.  Still this is a whopper.

6. My first marriage lasted less than three months.

[Not posting a photo here!]

I didn't get married till I was 35.  So, I just skipped the first marriage and went right to the trophy wife.

7. Vice President Mondale asked for my input for Jimmy Carter's infamous malaise speech.  (That's me on bottom right)

 
Deb says she thinks the guy in the bottom right is indeed me.  She is correct, but we were discussing intelligence legislation, not the malaise speech.  (That's Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner to Vice President Mondale's right.)

Thanks everyone for playing along.  Your guesses were inspired!

"SFO-BOS-NYC-SFO" or "To ThrillerFest and Back"

Monday, July 13, 2009

My voyage to ThrillerFest and back this year took a week all told.  I left on July 5 and didn't come home till last night.

 The Kennedy Library

 

#1 is spending the summer in Boston.  So on the way to NYC for my third ThrillerFest, I stopped by to spend some quality time with my oldest and say hi to old friends.  The way I said hi was telling Larry in Manchester-by-the-Sea that #1and I wanted to stay with him for two days and then Bill and Susan in Belmont we'd by stopping for -- two days again.  All great hosts.  #1 and I did a few tourist-y things, but also stopped by the JFK Library where we spent an afternoon sifting through archives exploring an idea for a thriller.  She served as my research assistant, but also snuck a look at JFK's Harvard report cards.  I know there's been grade inflation but I don't think a D+ in European History was a sign of genius even back in the 1930s.

 

I left Boston Thursday morning on the #1-recommended the Bolt Bus which left the train station in Boston at 10.30 AM Thursday and delivered us to Penn Station in NYC four hours later. I really lucked out by sitting next to Hallie Ephron, who is as good a conversationalist as she is writer and reviewer. I also managed a few pages of the terrific Prime Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan. The time whizzed by. (Did I mention the ticket cost $10?)

 

With Sophie Littlefield, Alex Sokoloff, and Jim Rollins at ThrillerFest.

(I'm drinking regular iced tea. Honest.)

 

Thursday night the opening reception at ThrillerFest was sponsored by Writers House, my literary agency. While everyone else was imbibing, the other Writers House authors and I (I was next to fave M.J. Rose) were signing books. That night my agent Josh took me and James Phelan, who is plotting world literary domination from his base in Melbourne, Australia, out for sushi.

 

The next morning I met with Carol Fitzgerald and Erin Quinn of The Book Report to discuss revisions to http://www.keithraffel.com/. Good things are coming. From there I toddled over to see old pal Rick Wolff of Grand Central Books. Friday afternoon I managed to hit a couple panels, one with Simon Lipskar of Writers House acting as a family counselor between authors and editors and the next with Hallie, Doug Preston, and more on creating great villains. After, I bought Joe Moore, co-president designate of International Thriller Writers, a drink, but one without the umbrella that I thought he favored. Two beers with tip ran $23. That's the downside of NYC. Joe and I finished our brewskis at 5.45 at the bar in the Grand Hyatt at Grand Central. I was supposed to meet friends Ian, Lexa, and Sam, my much put-upon hosts when I visit to NYC, at Telepan at 6. God bless the subway. I was seated at 6.04, although there was the incident when the subway doors shut on my glasses along the way. Great to spend some time with them and enjoy that sublime smoked trout appetizer.

 

Saturday morning I had the best of intentions. I got to the Grand Hyatt with the panels I planned on attending all picked out. But I sat down for a minute in the lobby with homegirl Sophie Littlefield, whose Bad Day for Sorry is out next month, and with old bud Alex Sokoloff, who would win a Thriller Award later that night. Then came Sophie's Shamus-winning brother Michael Wiecek and then Maggie and Sheila.... Well, you get the idea. Never quite made it to any morning panels. I did sneak in to hear most of Doug Preston's interview of Sandra Brown, who is charming, beautiful, and articulate. She sold me. I'm going to give one of her 57 New York Times bestsellers a try.

Any hope of making it to the afternoon sessions started to evaporate when I ran into Becky Cantrell, whose A Trace of Smoke has been garnering praise everywhere. We gathered up Andy Peterson, Bobby Rotenberg, Pam Callow, C.J. Lyons, Shane Gericke, and more and found a place that would serve us sandwiches. Shane's theory about thong underwear and female police officers was pooh-poohed by the women at the table. Just as we were going to split up, Jim Rollins strolled by. Jim's The Doomsday Key is #2 this week on the NY Times bestseller list (not shabby). (#4 loved the autographed copy of Jim's Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow that I brought home for him.) We retired to the hotel bar with Jim, his partner David, and Sophie. We managed to stumble across Alex again and ITW co-founder Gayle Lynds whose terrific The Last Spymaster I read just last week. Gayle and I compared notes. She's busy writing about the tunnels underneath Moscow while I'm writing about what's under the streets of Jerusalem. We got so caught up in the conversation, I almost missed my own panel.

The panel was scheduled at 4, in the last slot before the pre-awards banquet reception. Other panels we were up against boasted writers like Eric Van Lustbader, Karin Slaughter, Joe Finder, David Hewson, David Liss, Brad Meltzer, and M.J. Rose. I was amazed to find 30 people ready to listen to us prattle on about "Do We Need Another Hero?" Under Tony Tata's expert guidance, Andy Harp, Ward Larson, Paul Wilson, and I talked about what writers needed to do to make their protagonists shine with appeal and originality. My first suggestion was to make them bald. Anyway, I did voice my opinion that we don't need another protagonist who is consumed by work, is divorced but with strong feelings toward an ex, and has problems with alcohol and a precocious child.

At the banquet I was at the Writers House table with, among others, agents Simon Lipskar and Dan Conaway, James Phelan, Charlie Newton (whom I'd interviewed about his Calumet City, nominated for both an Edgar and Thriller Award, but never met face to face), Josh Gaylord whose Hummingbirds will be out this fall and whom I'd met on the phone without knowing who his wife was, and that very wife, the brilliant Megan Abbott. I was so tickled with Alex's win for best short story.

Last year, after the banquet I found myself in a midtown Irish bar with Dusty Rhoades, Tom O'Callaghan, Tasha Alexander, and Sean Chercover, among others. When I suggested to Sean we do it again, he was up for it, but I was bluffing. Home by 1.30 this year

 

Liz Berry, Kathy Antrim, Shane Gericke. Shirley Kennett, Steve Berry, and the whole ITW team did an amazing job. In the face of this economy, attendance was up.

Display at airport bookstore

 

At the airport on Sunday went to the book stall to pick up a paper and saw the display of Jim Rollins' The Doomsday Key. There it is above. Terrific. Not a nicer guy in the biz. On the flight itself, I was on American to SFO, seat 37G. Guess who were in 37 H and J? The effervescent, Bruce Alexander Award-winning Kelli Stanley and partner Tana. I read the Sunday Times, did the crossword, discussed the previous three days with my seatmates, and listened to some of the compelling things Kelli had turned up in her research. Also promised Tana that Dot Dead wasn't too dark for her tastes and that no dogs were hurt in the book.

Home now. Beat but with a pile of to-dos as high as an elephant's eye.

 

A condensed (but still too long) version of this posting can be found on InkSpot.  Lots of comments there, too.

Research on Small Places

Barry Eisler just got back from doing research in Istanbul.  On a research jaunt for her upcoming Granny Apples series, Sue Ann Jaffarian headed to Julian, California and had a ball staying at a quaint country inn.

And where do I get to go for research?  Paris?  Bali?  Samarkand?  Nope. The Los Altos, California branch of The Santa Clara County Library, just a few miles from the Raffel homestead. 

Why there?  the answer can be traced back to high school where I neglected to take physics.  I skipped it in college, too.  Well, my sins of omission have caught up with me after all those years.  For the sequel to Dot Dead, I need to grock the science of subatomic particles.  (If I told you why, it would kinda ruin the mystery.) Anyway, while you all are enjoying the holiday, I will be doing penance for my academic shortcomings by reading the eight books I picked up at the library this afternoon:  The Particle Hunters, The Elegant Universe, Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction, The God Particle, The Oxford Guide to the History of Physics and Astronomy, From Clockwork to Crapshoot: A History of Physics, Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century, and Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions. 

I have a feeling I could have absorbed all this better when I was twenty.  OTOH, much of what I need to learn about had not been discovered back in those dark ages.  And to tell the truth, I might be looking forward to the reading after all.

Church of Books

#1 sent me an email entitled "Let's go!" with a link to this site which contained photos of a new bookstore in the Netherlands.  As soon as the euro goes down a little more, maybe I'll say yes.  It looks like they really worship books in Maastricht, doesn't it?                                  

The Thrill Is Not Gone -- Report from ThrillerFest

   Writing on Sunday morning from seat 23C on a JetBlue flight from JFK to Oakland.

   As we do when heading to the Big Apple, #1 and I took off at the crack of dawn (on Wednesday) so as to get in on time for a scrumptious dinner with Ian and Lexa, our Upper West Side hosts.  ThrillerFest didn’t kick off till Thursday at 6, so the next day I paid off on a promise and trailed after my daughter through the twisting alleys of Soho and the Village.  The various clerks at clothing boutiques kept giving me a “what are you doing here” look.  I jauntily explained that I was arm candy.  Along the way I picked up a wicked sunburn and a delicious Mexican meal at a hole-in-the-wall on Hudson Street.  We ducked in to Partners & Crime, said hi to Steve, discussed old thrillers, bought a copy of Eric Ambler's A Coffin for Demetrios, and hand-sold a copy of Dot Dead to an unsuspecting patron of the store.

   At 4 we met the mega-talented Brett Ellen Block, author of the Macavity-nominated Lightning Rule, at a midtown café that #1 had checked out on the Net. The establishment took the literal meaning of café to heart and served no tea.  It turns out that Brett and I aren't coffee drinkers at all, so we were relegated to watching #1 slurp down two of those fancy flavored concoctions.  Brett was gallant enough to say she liked the décor, and we both congratulated #1 on finding a great place to while away a couple of hours.  We escorted Brett to a signing at a nearby Borders and then headed to ThrillerFest, still burdened by shopping bags filled with #1’s booty.  At the opening reception, #1 learned that she would not be the youngest attendee – that honor was seized by Greg, the son of Carol Fitzgerald of Bookreporter.com, who was playing Jimmy Olsen with his Minolta.  Among many others, said hi to Joe Hartlaub, the ace reviewer for Bookreporter.com and to screenwriter Alex Sokoloff, whose The Harrowing is doing so well.

   Getting together with the anarchic Inkspots, those of us published by Midnight Ink, for a group dinner was not easy.  Planes were late, emails went unread, children whined.  Bill Cameron, author of Lost Dog, and Mark Combes, author of Running Wrecked (which sold out of the book room before I could buy one), #1, and I headed over to a Greek restaurant, just around the corner from the hotel.  Joe Moore of the hot-selling Cotten Moore series said he would make it eventually despite Continental’s efforts to hold him hostage, so we munched on pita and appetizers till he miraculously appeared.  And then Joe’s co-author Lynn Sholes and husband Tommy showed up.  Next time we’ll make sure we invite that Luddite Tim Maleeny via phone and not anything as new-fangled as email.  The restaurant cut us much slack and we had a ball.

   The first panel on Friday morning, moderated by Steve Berry, might have been the best of the conference even if I was sitting next to an 18-year old daughter while M.J. Rose, Barry Eisler, and John Lescroart, discussed sex in thrillers.  They chatted while standing in front of the audience, passing out mimosas to one and all (except for not-yet 21 #1).  A refreshing change from the talking heads of so many convention panels.  Interesting to note that both men on the sex panel call Northern California home.

   I’ve said before that these conventions remind me of summer camp and I spent a fair amount of time Friday saying hi to campers I’d met at previous sessions.  At the book signing I had a chance to meet a hero of mine, Vicki Hendricks.  JB Dickey of the Seattle Mystery Bookshop loaned me his personal copy of her Miami Purity last year and I’ve been afraid to visit a dry cleaner since.  Sometime during the day, #1 took a prolonged lunch while Steve Torres, author of the Concrete Maze, and I snuck over to the Grand Central Market where we lost track (!) of each other when he went off wandering in search of a glass of milk.  That evening #1 acted as cicerone and guided us through the labyrinthine  twists and turns of the subways tunnels as we headed for cocktails in.... no not Siberia, but close – Brooklyn.  Hilarity broke out amidst tutorials on taxidermy, the Ruthenian language, and the romance world taught by, inter alia, our host, Otto, and Romantic Times's Liz, Stephanie, and Elissa.  #1 and I shared a car back to civilization with MWA Exec VP Dan Hale and the gifted conversationalist Twist Phelan.

   Saturday was more panels.  At the morning’s first, under prodding from Kristee Montee, aka P.J. Parrish, private eye and novelist Carolina Garcia-Aguilera admitted that her guilty pleasure movie was Love Story.  I couldn’t stifle myself.  I blurted out to the crowd that I was an extra with Ali MacGraw in the hockey scenes of said movie.  #1 and I would certainly never miss any panel with one of the keep-'em-in-stitches author, fisherman, traveler and comet lovin' guy Brian Wiprud.  In the bookroom afterwards we saw fans scrambling for his books.  Picked up Bill Cameron’s Lost Dog for summer dog days reading.  He was signing next to Laura Caldwell and we started bantering with her, too.  Her The Rome Affair sounded great, so we picked it up (and paid for it, too). 

   Had a chance to talk with the courtly Fred Rea who lives in Vero Beach, Florida.  A critical scene in Two Graves takes place down there, and he pledged to read the chapter to ensure accuracy.  On my last visit to NYC, I stopped by Black Orchid where they had one copy of Dot Dead.  Kathy, an inveterate reader of crime fiction, bought the copy while I was there.  She stopped me in the hall Saturday afternoon.  She told me she’d only bought the copy because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings.  (I’ll take it.)  She figured it was some kind of computer thriller.  Knowing she might see me at ThrillerFest, she read it last week.  To her surprise, she told me, she loved it!  Couldn’t put it down.  She’s recommending it to friends.  So there I was in the Grand Hyatt, accosted by a crowd of fans numbering one.

   Saturday night #1 and I ensconced ourselves in the virtual nerve center of the conference – the downstairs bar.  The ThrillerFest folks had provided a hospitality room upstairs, but with a teabag and a cup of hot water running four smackers, it couldn’t compete with a place that served booze.  We relaxed with the Big D contingent, the aforementioned Dan Hale, Harry Hunsicker, whose newest, Crosshairs, is out next month, his charming wife Alison (who talked over the intricacies of NY shopping with #1), and James X(?), a Yalie working for a hedge fund who wasted no time in dissing his alma mater’s rival up in Cambridge.  Not sure of his last name but he’s got a top-notch agent who's shopping around a manuscript that uses what James has learned in his working life – sounds pretty good.  I'd left a note on Sarah Weinman's blog promising to buy her a drink; didn't see her in the bar so I guess I still owe her.

   Funnily enough, as #1 and I were walking down Broadway on a mission to load up on H&H Bagels to smuggle into California, we ran into Joel and Margot, friends from Palo Alto.  They were with Margot’s sister-in-law and brother, a Yalie working for a hedge fund who wasted no time in dissing his alma mater’s rival up in Cambridge.  Are Yale grads especially suited for the rapacity of the hedge fund world?  Do they have some kind of inferiority complex in re to that Cambridge institution?  Hmm.  Maybe I can use that in a future thriller.

Bathed in Sweat and Nostalgia

Last night I saw #1 graduate from high school.  The cooling fogs have disappeared and the sun beat down on us as though we were lost travelers on a caravan bound for Timbuktu.  Along with us, my brother Wes and his family watched the proceedings.  My mind wandered back to my own graduation from Palo Alto High a few decades ago.  I remember best holding up the girl in front of me who had tippled a little too much to handle this task on her own.  Strict steps are taken nowadays to make sure that alcohol doesn't impinge upon the festivities.  Immediately following the ceremony, the grads were whisked away by bus to a secret location which turned out to be an auditorium in San Francisco.  The school gym had been good enough for us.  We celebrated #1 in absentia with pizza and soft drinks and a Fat Tire for me and Liz, my sister-in-law.

Even more nostalgia-ridden was my trip last week to my alma mater for a reunion.  I brought #4 with me and we stayed in an undergraduate dorm.  He went to camp each day; they must have been doing some early recruiting since he came back determined to return in a decade as a freshman. 

As college grads, my classmates and I were sassy, disrespectful, and smart-alecky.  This new generation seems to have their heads screwed on a little better.  As my reunion class wended our way through them, they seemed   with their achievement and each side congratulated the other for making it to this milestone.  The ceremony itself was stately and well-organized.  My only objection -- and it's not a small one -- is that the attendees gave a standing ovation to the world's richest man and not to others including Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars, one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the last century.  We were at a graduation at a center of academic learning, not at a People's Magazine award dinner, for goodness sake! 

I had two dinners with long-time buddies who had children graduating -- amazing.  We had panel discussions where we reviewed clips from seminal movies.  An old friend, now a prof at Wellesley, was astute, cogent, and funny in discussing the original MASH, which upon re-viewing is misogynistic at best. 

When I saw one woman, an ex of a good friend, I gave her a hug before it became clear she didn't remember me.  When I told her what I recalled, she looked at me like I was a stalker -- how could a stranger know these long hidden facts about me?  Thankfully for my ego, there was only that one misplaced hug.

We went to a memorial service for those classmates who'd died -- very moving.  I only found out about the death of one classmate whom I'd also gone to grad school with a couple of months ago. 

It was disconcerting to discover among my classmates a law professor who lives two blocks from here, a physicist whose kids go to the school where my wife works, the head of the English Department at that very school.  They're good company, too.  Do you remember that old Liza Minelli song about having to go to Dubrovnik to meet the guy in the apartment next door?

One classmate had read Dot Dead and called it an inspiration.  She's going to try to write her own mystery in the next twelve months.  I chatted with classmate William Martin whose first novel Back Bay spent 14 weeks on the NY Times bestseller list and whose newest is The Lost Constitution. 

A couple of months ago I'd asked my old buddy Dave if he was coming.  When he balked, I told him I would stop in DC and pick him up.  That didn't prove necessary and he thanked me for my bullying.  Just chatting with my classmates was the highlight of the four days.  The reunion reminded me of wrtiers' conferences.  There's a summer camp aspect to the whole thing.  All these people with something in common get together and talk and drink.  Then, poof, it's over and back to everyday life.

After the reunion, #4 and I walked Boston's Freedom Trail.  He was on a quest for the site of the Boston Massacre and obtained great satisfaction in finding it.  Then we traveled up to Manchester-by-the-Sea to stay with physician, polymath, and mystery author L.M. ("Larry") Vincent and family.  (Larry has written two mysteries, Final Dictation and Pas de Death, the only two ever written with a radiologist as the amateur detective. He's also the author of the seminal Competing with the Sylph: The Quest for the Perfect Dance Body.)  #4 frolicked in the ocean, we celebrated the birthday of Sharon, Larry's wife, checked out Motif #1 in Rockport, ducked into bookstores, and enjoyed seaside living.

The kids will be done with school tomorrow and after more than a week off, I'd better turn back to draft #3 of Two Graves.  A highlight this weekend will be the new Nancy Drew movie -- #3 and I are chomping at the bit.

Don't Stop

Just JetBlued back from New York City late last night and then this morning posted what's below on Inkspot.  (Sorry to regular readers for any repetition.)

In the city, booksellers from all over the country were streaming to Javits Center where BEA, Book Expo America, started yesterday. Hundreds of publishers are showing what they have on the way to the buyers for thousands of bookstores. Last year’s BEA was definitely one of the highlights of my life as a writer. One day I signed ARC’s (advanced reader copies) at the Mystery Writers of America’s booth. Margery Flax and team managed to recruit a queue of autograph seekers. Then the next day I did a general signing. The line was 50 people long! I kept asking people why they were waiting for Dot Dead, a book they hadn’t heard of by an author who was obscure. Not celebrity behavior I guess, but the experience was the zenith of my writer’s high.

Of course, after last year’s BEA, Dot Dead was published and started showing up in bookstores. In two months after publication I visited bookstores in Seattle, Portland, Southern California, Colorado, and the Bay Area. I had a great time being driven around Seattle by author and friend Ann Eisenberg as though I really was somebody. At High Crimes Mystery Bookstore in Boulder, the proprietors told me that when Joe Konrath was there, he went out into the street and recruited people for his talk. I wasn’t about to be one-upped and did the same; the result was a listing on the bestseller list of the local paper, the Daily Camera. Mary Nam, the anchor at KOMO-TV in Seattle, interviewed me live and when we were done, turned and gave me a look of utter amazement. “You’re good,” she said in a voice tinged with incredulity. Ann’s husband Matt congratulated me for getting some talk of sex in a one minute interview. Dr. Johnson once said, “The prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.” And that’s what happened to me when I was on live TV or radio. (You can hear an interview here.) There were a couple of stops where just a person or two showed up, but those bad memories were pretty much wiped away by the culmination of the tour at my hometown store, Kepler’s, where 75 people, including some I hadn’t seen since high school, showed up.

So then my tour was over and everything stopped? Not hardly. This spring, I have:

• been the April Fools' Day guest reader at a meeting of Sisters in Crime LA,
• signed and signed 50 copies of Dot Dead at three different booths at the LA Times Festival of Books,
• arranged for a table at the local Borders where I hand sold 19 copies of Dot Dead,
• done a signing at the San Francisco Mystery Bookstore with Steve Hockensmith, Simon Wood, and fellow Inkster Tim Maleeny,
• presented to the mystery readers’ group at the Menlo Park Library,
• had the right to name characters in my next book, Two Graves, auctioned off by two charities,
• been the guest of honor at a fundraiser for a local private school (copies of Dot Dead came with the tickets),
• appeared as a featured writer during authors’ week at two high schools,
• showed up at Kepler’s book club night to be introduced and sign books,
• signed books at the re-opening of Bob and Bob,
• attended the sessions of five book groups, and
• been interviewed for an article in an upcoming issue of Gentry Magazine.

Oh, back to the beginning of this post. I was in New York this week the week of BEA to attend a Meet the Authors Night, sponsored by the Jewish Book Council. A hundred authors, including me, had two minutes to pitch ourselves as speakers to the volunteer staffs of Jewish book fairs around the country. One expects authors to be less than articulate when moving lips rather than writing words. Wrong. Of the 30 pitches I myself heard, at least two dozen discussed books that sounded terrific to me. Not much fiction was presented, though, and no other mysteries. I schmoozed with people from Maryland, Austin (including a fellow Palo Alto High grad), Indianapolis, D.C., Rockland County (NY), Richmond, Ann Arbor, Rochester (NY), Atlanta, and Detroit. If all goes well, I'll be on the road visiting some of them during their book fairs in November. The first time I met the classy and friendly Jewish mystery writer Rochelle Krich it was at one of fairs, and she recommended them highly to me.

I’m still learning about book promotion, and I’m nowhere near halfway up the learning curve. But one thing I have learned is that it never stops.

What are other authors doing after the initial post-publication round of bookstore visits and interviews?

I [Heart] New York

I'm writing from the kitchen of my friends Ian and Lexa on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  They insist they enjoy putting me up when I'm in town, and I love staying with them. 

In keeping with my new gig as a full-time writer, I've become more frugal.  I took the Airtrain from JFK instead of a cab.  You have to make two transfers and it's kinda hot and sweaty, but I did save $35.  As always, Ian, Lexa, and I spent my first evening here at a restaurant, Telepan this time, and it was scrumptious.  I managed to gobble down a smoked trout appetizer, asparagus, halibut, and a sorbet dessert.  All highly recommended except the raspberry sherbert (the mango sorbet was fine).

Yesterday I had lunch with my college buddy Rick, who's now a muckety-muck at one of the big publishers in town.  I hadn't seen him since graduation.  Yet he was recognizable.  He gave me even more insight into the tricky game of the 21st century book business.  Old school ties can be great.

Last night I, along with three dozen other authors, got two minutes to pitch the volunteer staffs of Jewish book fairs around the company.  The Meet the Author Program is sponsored and run like clockwork by the non-profit Jewish Book Council's Carolyn Starman Hessel, Miri Pomerantz, and Joyce Lit.  One expects authors to be less than articulate when moving lips rather than writing words.  Wrong.  Almost every book sounded worth reading to me.  Not much fiction, though, and no other mystery writers.  Spoke to a few fellow authors too including Ann Kirschner, author of Sala's Gift and a colleague of the aforementioned Lexa, and Mia Fontaine, co-author with her daughter of a harrowing memoir of redemption that was recently a "Bookmarked Club Pick" at Target.  The poor book fair people who'd come in from around the country looked a little shell-shocked.  Who could blame them?  They had listened to pitches the night before us and will be listening to more tonight.  I schmoozed with people from Maryland, Austin (including a fellow Palo Alto High grad), Indianapolis, D.C., Rockland County, Richmond, Ann Arbor, Rochester, Atlanta, and Detroit.  If all goes well, I'll be on the road some during Jewish Book Month in November. 

Flying home today (with a coupla dozen H&H bagel) and starting work tomorrow on Draft #3 of Two Graves.  As much as I love New York, it will be good to get back to a place where the temperature goes down at night.

700 Miles

Put 700 miles on the odometer driving to LA and back this weekend.  Naomi promised that the LA Times Festival of Books would be worth the trip or I could hit her in the head.  She's not getting a concussion from me.  It was fun and exhausting.

Friday night was the authors and fans party at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood.  I saw plenty of the former and very few of the latter in there, but it's always fun catching up.

Saturday and Sunday mornings I signed at the Sisters in Crime LA booth.  Great to see Sue Ann and company.  There were a mess of authors signing there, but Susan Beery kept things running smoothly.  I asked passersby if they liked mysteries and with a positive response, went into sell mode.  Managed to offload 27 of the 31 copies on hand to the unsuspecting.  Women from 30 to 70 were the best demographic by far.  Signed next to the estimable Robert Levinson Sunday. Bought his Ask A Dead Man and think I promised to go to ThrillerFest this summer in NYC.

Saturday afternoon I signed in the Mystery Bookstore booth along with George Pelecanos, who let everyone know he was from the East Coast by wearing a sport coat, and Stuart Woods.  I have a feeling they signed a few more books than I did, although I kept pretty busy.  Sat next to Larry Karp.  When we weren't chatting, I'd get the passersby to stop and he'd give them an earnest and compelling pitch for his newly published The Ragtime Kid. 

No time to eat lunch myself on Sunday, but I did watch my witty and charming pal Jennifer Colt take care of a hot dog.  Then off to the Book'em booth where I sat alongside S.F. Chronicle bestselling author Cara Black.  We had a ball!  She's a salesperson after my own heart.  We'd entice attendees to come over.  I'd tell them how good her books are, and she'd do the same for Dot Dead (which she'd blurbed).  We sold out the stock on hand in about half an hour.

I wasn't the only one drifting down south from the Bay Area.  Simon Wood, Cornelia Read, Clare Langley-Hawthorne, Mark Coggins, and the aforementioned Cara Black, all made the trip, too, but were wimps and flew.  For me, the drive there and back whizzed by thanks to my #2 who loaded up my iPod.  On the way down I listened to short stories by Raymond Chandler, Sue Grafton, George Pelecanos, Dick Lochte, and Michael Connelly off the Mean Streets USA collection.  On the way home I got into Connelly's new Echo Park. 

I never remember to take pictures.  You can see the few I took below.  Click here to see what Mark Coggins and his monster camera captured.

The party at the Mystery Bookstore

Clare Langley-Hawthorne and I

The SinCLA booth