Dot Dead Diary

A Beginning and An Ending

This week Thomas & Mercer, the mystery and thriller imprint of Amazon Publishing, is bringing out a re-edited version of my thriller A Fine and Dangerous Season. My heart is pounding against my ribcage with excitement. Does this mean more sales than ever? Does this mean I will become an author who can replace a day job’s earnings with royalties? Well, we’ll find out. But I figure at what may be a turning point, it’s also time to look back. How did I get here anyway?

Unlike so many writing friends, I never had my heart set on being an author. In fact, I never had my heart set on any one career. Before writing my first book, I worked on Capitol Hill as counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee (see photo on left -- that's me on the bottom right with Vice President Mondale et al.), ran for Congress, joined a high tech telecommunications company, and then gave up a sabbatical to jump to a small networking start-up. At the latter I loved my boss and co-workers, but after five years or so, I was feeling a little stale when I came across a course on mystery writing at UC Berkeley Extension and signed up. Margaret Lucke was a terrific teacher and gave me the impetus to start writing that first novel. However, after six months, I was still restless at my day job. So, I did what anyone in Silicon Valley would do – I started a company. No boredom there. It was years of 80-hour weeks while my half-done manuscript moldered in a desk drawer. Then the company began to get some traction, and I had a little free time. So out came the manuscript. I wrote for an hour weekdays starting at 5AM and, by packing a spare battery or two, I could rap on my keyboard for the six hours of cross-country airplane flights.

Once completed, I sent Dot Dead to agents. Lots of encouraging words, but only one word mattered – “yes” – and I didn’t hear that one from the first few dozen agents I queried. Finally, a former investment banker just starting a literary agency called and signed me up. Then it was her turn to circulate the manuscript, to publishers this time. Again the encouraging words without a contract. After around six months, though, came three yesses in the same week. We went with Midnight Ink, a prolific publisher of mysteries. A year-and-a-half after we signed the contract, the book was out. Oh, rapture! I was an author. At Book Expo America, Margery Flax and her crew of volunteers from Mystery Writers of America rounded up potential readers, and I signed dozens of copies (at left). While signing at the Midnight Ink booth during that BEA, I found myself next to a couple who had written a how-to book on tantric sex. “It really works,” the female co-author assured me.

What next? The company I had started was sold and then sold again. I decided to give this writing biz a fling and started writing full-time. Midnight Ink brought out Smasher, which made it onto a national mystery bestseller list and was even optioned for film. However, it didn’t exactly make it on to the NY Times bestseller list. Have you heard the joke about the difference between a mystery and a thriller? An extra digit in the advance. So I drew on my experience in Washington and wrote a thriller. My new agent sent it to the big deal publishers. Shades of the past. Lots of compliments but no “yes.” Well, I really am a Silicon Valley guy and it was time to try something new. I published Drop By Drop as an ebook only. And the experiment worked. I sold more copies and made more money than I had with either Midnight Ink book, but still not enough to replace what I’d been earning in my day job. Time to try again. Sitting in a café around the corner from my house, I wrote another thriller called A Fine and Dangerous Season set against the background of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After I’d finished, I went to a New Year’s Party, and the host asked if I would consider going back to a Silicon Valley job. For something different and exciting, said I. She passed the word along and a few months later, I found myself at a genetics company even though I could barely spell “DNA.” It was a thrill to be there working with doctors and researchers trying to cure cancer and other genetic diseases, but then the company was sold last March and I decided to give this writer business another try.

In the meantime, A Fine and Dangerous Season made it to #8 on Barnesandnoble.com and #34 on Amazon.com. I finished a draft of a manuscript called Temple Mount – not surprisingly a thriller set in Jerusalem. I needed something to give it an extra boost. So I tried Kickstarter, which provides a platform to crowd-source funding for creative projects. With it I would raise money to print books, do marketing, throw a launch party, and more. But most important I would gather up a cadre of fans and friends who would become advocates of the book. Well, it worked. We raised $18K from around 200 supporters. Over 50 people paid $80 or more to have a shot at editing the book. A high school friend made over 3500 comments and suggestions. Instead of relying on a publisher, we had 200 people ready to stand behind the book. (You can see the video and site we used here.)

Ah, man plans and God laughs. In September I received an email from Amazon Publishing. They were impressed with how A Fine and Dangerous Season had been doing and wanted to bring it out under their Thomas & Mercer imprint. They spelled out the marketing resources Amazon would put behind the book and I was in – pending a check with the backers of Temple Mount. I wrote to them with the news and asked if we could postpone publication of Temple Mount since it made no sense publishing the two books on top of each other. I offered to refund anyone’s pledge. I was overwhelmed with the good wishes I received. I really did have 200 supporters who were invested in the success of my writing career. That felt pretty good.

So that brings us to now. Six weeks after signing a contract with Amazon Publishing, a re-edited version of A Fine and Dangerous Season is out as an e-book and for the first time, as a paper-and-ink “real” book. The hiatus between contract and signing on Fine and Dangerous was six weeks as compared to the 16 months for Dot Dead.

Enough looking back. Right now I can’t wait to see how A Fine and Dangerous Season does as a publication of Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer.

V-Blogging

Watch me post without a keyboard!

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.

The Liar's Diary by Patry Francis

Over 300 blogs are joining together to publicize The Liar's Diary by Patry Francis, which appears in paperback this week. I don't know Patry, but I do know about her fight against cancer that is preventing her from being being on the road promoting the book herself.

Here's what Mystery Scene Magazine said about her book:  "The Liar's Diary is a dark book, engrossing from the first paragraph. Deeply textured, it is more psychological suspense than a simple mystery. The inevitable murder is the climax of the book, after which the tension relaxes, but the story still holds real surprises for the reader. The Liar's Diary is a beautifully written first novel by an author who has previously distinguished herself through her poetry and short stories."

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

You can read what Patry says about her fight against cancer here.

You can see the posting about her at Inkspot here.

And what Laura Benedict who organized The Liar's Diary Blog Day has to say here.

Below is The Liar's Diary book trailer.

God bless.

Facebook Friends?

Just thought I'd let the readers of this blog -- a select group of discriminating taste -- know that I have  signed up on Facebook.  Why Facebook and not MySpace?  Hmm....  Probably natural perversity.  And the fact Facebook is headquartered about two miles from my house in downtown Palo Alto.  Rooting for the home team, I guess. 

After doing so, I sent an email invitation to one pal to join, too.  He sent me a forlorn email reporting that Facebook told him that he had only one friend.  Since I'd invited him, it had to be me and I tried out the quality versus quantity argument on him.

Anyway, there are number of mystery types as well as Silicon Valleyites who have Facebook pages.  Why don't you try it out?  Just follow the instructions at www.facebook.com.  Be sure to invite me to be your friend via email.  If you can't figure out how it all works, drop me an email and I'll invite you to join.  Warning:  if you follow the second path, Facebook will give you the sad news that you have only one friend.

Links in the Chain

While awaiting comments on the latest draft of Two Graves, I've been reading lots both on the computer screen and on the pulpy remains of dead trees.  Here are some of the highlights.

Starting today, the New York Times has shrunk.  Following in the regrettable footsteps of the Wall Street Journal, the Times no longer needs to be held open with arms extended.  Instead, it is now best read with elbows almost touching.  Might as well read it online.  No ink smudges on the fingertips that way either.  Anyway, on Saturday top-notch reporter Gary Rivlin wrote on how tough life can be here in Silicon Valley.  (Opening:  "Nick Halsey knows it can sound strange to an outsider: How is it possible for someone in Silicon Valley to have $10 million in the bank and still not feel rich?")  Cry for us, would you?  (Will have to sell a lot of books to get to $10M, won't I?)  And on Sunday, friend Steven Torres, whose new novel The Concrete Maze is just out, wrote a subtle, heartfelt reminiscence on growing up with the exterminator.  (No, not ex-terminator.  That's our governor.  This is about Steve's dad.)

Tess Gerritsen's blog pointed me over to Marcus Sakey's piece on how to get published.  A must-read for aspiring authors.  It's a good crib sheet too for published authors who are asked the questions Marcus answers all the time.

Next best thing to being at England's premier mystery conference is reading what David Thomas (or is it Tom Cain) had to say about it.  Sure would like to get there some time.  (Thanks, Sarah, for pointing this one out.)

Back to paying bills, reading more, and twiddling my thumbs till the comments on draft five show up in my email box.

Blogito, Ergo Sum

Why do we blog?

Let me tell you why that question has been rolling around the inside of my skull.  Thanks to some instigation from my godson, defamer.com and deadlinehollywooddaily.com linked to the posting I did just two days ago on Mel Gibson and Hebrew National.  Holy mackerel! I had more hits on my blog yesterday than I typically get in a month. Thousands.

But so what? Did it mean I was selling more books? I don’t think so, at least there was no effect on my Amazon ranking. So I started to wonder whether my more typical postings did anything for sales. Do I myself buy the books of the bloggers I read every day? Yes, but largely because they are friends whose books I’d buy anyway, not because they blog.

If blogging doesn’t lead to more sales, then why blog? As Dr. Johnson once famously said, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."

Maybe we blog because it’s a way to keep in touch. When I lived in England years ago, I corresponded with friends via airmail. Blogging gives me the same kind of feeling of keeping in touch, but it’s more efficient since one posting goes to everyone I’d write to.

Or maybe we blog because writing is a solitary vocation (except for Joe and Lynn) and this is our way of crying out, “Hey out there. We're alive.” Descartes wrote, “Cogito, ergo sum,” or “I think, therefore I am.” Maybe we’re saying “Blogito, ergo sum” or “I blog, therefore I am.”

P.S.  A version of this posting is also on InkSpot with trenchant comments from some of my fellow Midnight Ink authors.

Melting Away

When my Dot Dead came out, I did the usual thing: tour with bookstore signings and radio and TV interviews. My expectations were low and at times those low expectations were met; at a Portland stop, two people showed up. But even for the highlights of the tour, 70 people at Kepler’s or a live interview on public radio in Seattle, it’s difficult to say the effect on sales overall. There might be a blip, but that’s it. What good is it to build a better mousetrap – or write a book people will enjoy – if no one knows about it?

I hate to say it, but the best and most cost-effective way to let people know about a good book is – drumroll – a newspaper review. When a review ran in the San Jose Mercury, Dot Dead leapt up the Amazon bestseller list. When Lora Robert’s Palo Alto Weekly review ran, local stores ran out of copies. There’s only one problem – reviews are harder to get than Norah Jones’s new album on eight-track.

Before publication, the PR people and I sent out around three dozen ARC’s (advance reader copies) to newspapers across the country. Except for the local papers mentioned, scarcely anything. (Exception: The Royse City Herald Banner.) Part of the problem certainly was that Midnight Ink has not been around for long and that it publishes in trade paper format, not hardback. Also, there’s the problem with me: Dot Dead was a first book and I wasn't known as an author. A reporter friend at the Wall Street Journal explained the dilemma to me: We will only give you coverage if you don’t need it.

But there’s a bigger macro issue at play here. Print newspapers are dying. Employment at U.S. papers is down by a third since 1990. As the papers cut back, the book review section is often first hit. Authors are fighting this trend but I fear they are, like Canute, ordering the tide not to come in. The National Books Critics Circle has started a campaign to save book reviews. The Circle reports book coverage has been cut back or eliminated recently at, among others, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Dallas Morning News, the Sun Sentinel, the New Mexican, the Village Voice, Boston Phoenix, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. As for the last-named, the New York Times reports that 120 authors have signed a petition to save the job of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s book editor.

Michael Connelly wrote a piece for his alma mater, the LA Times, that ran during the Book Festival last weekend. He attributes the success of his Harry Bosch series to reviews of his first book, The Black Echo. Michael then goes on to say, “I can't help but wonder, though, how long Harry would have lasted had he been born in today's newspaper environment.” Michael goes on to ask whether publishers and editors are being short-sighted as they practice a scorched earth policy on book review sections.

“In the past, newspaper executives understood the symbiotic relationship between their product and books. People who read books also read newspapers. From that basic tenet came a philosophy: If you foster books, you foster reading. If you foster reading, you foster newspapers. That loss-leader ends up helping you build and keep your base. What I fear is that this philosophy is disappearing from the boardrooms of our newspapers; that efforts to cut costs now will damage both books and newspapers in the future. Short-term gains will become long-term losses.”

Now Ed Champion offers a somewhat contrarian point of view, arguing that reviews will come increasingly from bloggers, podcasters, and other online participants. Who can argue with that? I’m a blogger myself and read 10 or 20 more every week. Pat Holt, the former editor of the Chronicle book reviewer who did some editing work on Dot Dead, wants to do something different, to take action: “Let's get out there and pound some tables about books; let's put our hearts and souls on the line, not to pander to base tastes but to start a true critical discourse with audiences and make book reviews in all their forms as riveting to read as they are essential.”

Still as a mystery writer who publishes in a format not much changed since Gutenberg, I can’t help but lament being caught in the sea change that’s going on.  The blogosphere and online worlds do not have the wide reach of traditional newspapers, at least not yet. And the book review sections of those same papers, if not the papers themselves, are – like the Wicked Witch – melting away.

(Re-posted from Inkspot)