books you’d give as gifts…

by Toni McGee Causey

I am just now (as I write this late Saturday evening) back from vacation, and it’s the first vacation we’ve had in… um…. what year is this? Oh, wow. 2010? Okay, let’s just say a while, because I can’t really remember the last one that was an actual vacation where I set aside work the whole time. I’m not really a vacation-y type, because I’m kinda… and I know this will come as a complete shock to all of you… a control freak. I know, hard to imagine, huh? I hide it well. And I’m also maybe a little teeeeeeeeny tiny bit of a workaholic. You just passed out from shock, didn’t you? You poor dear, here’s the smelling salts. I’ll wait.

So, anyway, vacation. Whereupon I have utilized almost every known method of public transportation known to man, I think. Save ferries (although that was an option at one point). I’ve been on airplanes (4), trains (3), monorails (2), busses (1 billion), trams (6), shuttles (2), and, if we’re counting, conveyors (18 1/2)(don’t ask). In amongst all of those things were miles and miles and miles and MILES of walking. Or at least a couple of miles, I maybe exaggerate, but my feet would not agree with that.

My long way of saying: folks, I didn’t know you could fit this much exhaustion into one body. It’s a really great exhaustion, given that I got to see so much of my family at the same time. [Oh, trivia question answer here: the thing I learned from the nice Travelocity guy that sort of scared him when I asked, which I mentioned but did not explain on Facebook: yes, you can actually board a plane with an expired driver’s license but a valid concealed carry permit as a second form of identification. It took twenty minutes to explain that having the permit did not mean anyone was actually going to attempt to carry a weapon on the plane.] [Ironically, no, we were not selected for any pat-downs or scanner experiences, although I sort of figured when we showed our IDs, bells and whistles and “Hoooboys” and “Hot damn, we have live ones” would sort of go off all around us. We actually sailed through without waiting.]

Aaaannnnyway…

I want to know what five books you would give as gifts, [no, I did not even try for a segue there, did I? EXHAUSTION], but if you would, I’d love it if you’d tell me one from each category below. You can stick with one genre or mix genres–you can list/explain more than one in any category if you’re having trouble narrowing it down. (I did.)

1) Favorite book that changed your perspective about something in your life (and if you can, what that was)

2) Favorite “great escape” book that took you completely away from your problems, worries, or exhaustion, and is probably one that you re-read

3) Most recent favorite absolutely-could-not-stop-reading-it book, the one that you stayed up until you were finished

4) Favorite book that you did not expect to love or enjoy, which ended up grabbing you anyway.

5) Just a favorite, no particular category. :D

Prizes: 5… as you could win one of FIVE $30USD gift certificates to an online bookstore of your choice. If you’re not a US resident, then an online bookstore that I can send you a gift certificate from is important–if you don’t have one, we’ll work out an alternate plan. DEADLINE: next Saturday, noon, US Central time. CHECK BACK NEXT SUNDAY FOR THE WINNERS.

The last time I posed these questions, I answered with [mostly] romance / action choices, because I can’t pick one all time favorite for each question–I can only do it by genre because I have too many favorites. I’m going to post this now and come back here in the morning when I’m slightly more coherent and answer these myself. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear your answers!

Cute Story, Cute Story…

By Cornelia Read

Mom and I

I have long been fond of and amused by George Burns’ very wise observation that, “The secret to a happy life is to have a large, loving family in a distant city.”

And that’s pretty much why, I think, having cousins is so awesome–and aunts and uncles and all that goes with them. You get to hang out with people who totally get your jokes about family stuff, because you’ve all spent time keeping an eye on the big pot containing the soup of communal backstory. Taking turns stirring, keeping the fire going, occasionally adding a bay leaf, asking if everyone’s okay with a little onion or garlic, and will the little kids want a small bowl of the stuff.

My second-cousins-once-removed by marriage

And a really fine and profound Thanksgiving is one at which everyone has taken their turn stewarding that rich potage, and you all get to sit down together around a long table and take communal strength from the finished product, breaking bread and pouring each other wine and sharing stories about the soups of years past and the soups yet to come. Gorgeous stuff, what the best parts of life proceed from, how we survive the kinds of fear JT was writing about yesterday.

This is the second year in a row that my kid Grace and I have been lucky enough to share in the Thanksgiving celebration of my Aunt Julie’s extended family. Julie’s my mom’s sister–my aunt AND my godmother–and her husband, Uncle Bill, has long been one of the greatest mensches in my life, through thick and thin. Well, both of them have, since I am going to extend mensch-dom to chicks, because it’s eminently true in the case of these two.

Uncle Bill and Grace

I was the flower girl at Bill and Julie’s wedding, on September 14th, 1968.

I wore a little ankle-length organdy dress–through which you had a hint of of the ice-blue silk petticoat beneath–and a tiny pair of ballet slippers that had been dyed to match the rich, clear emerald green velvet sash tied around me at a sort of Jane-Austen altitude above my waist.

I remember tons of details about that day, although I was only five. Aunt Julie’s bridesmaids, including my mom, getting dressed in a birdlike flurry upstairs in my grandparents’ house. The little bouquet I carried, walking up the aisle of Christ Church in Oyster Bay…

My Grandfather Thurston gives away the bride

…standing in the receiving line with the large buoyant wedding party on my grandparents’ verdant lawn, overlooking all the sleek boats that bobbed at their moorings on the sparkly cut-glass surface of the wonderfully protected little harbor below us… how young everyone was, in retrospect, though they were literally giants to me and so immensely sophisticated at the time, inhabiting the grownup world that seemed to shimmer at such an impossible distance I couldn’t fathom ever assuming a place in it….

And I remember everyone gathered at the bluff-edge of that lawn, every last guest coming forth from the stripe-tented dance floor, laughing and egging on Uncle Bill and his brothers Charlie and Tony and all the ushers as they clambered and jostled and tumbled over one another for the traditional Hoyt Family wedding-day pyramid.

This effort was captured for posterity by the wedding photographer right exactly at the Hoyt-boys-et-al’s final, brief, teetering moment of communal geometric triumph over the entropy of physics and gravity, high spirits and camaraderie and champagne–back when the latter was still served not in flutes but in those wide, shallow stemmed glasses which could themselves be stacked into a pyramid of celebratory translucence, allowing one of the white-jacketed bartenders to show off his professional chops by pouring from a magnum into the upper-most glass, the straw-gold liquid cascading downward from rim to rim until each vessel below veritably brimmed with its own portion of the bubbly.

Thurston and Julie

And both sets of parents were so happy, that day, because the moms had been friends since childhood themselves, and couldn’t have been more pleased that Bill and Julie had chosen one another as companions for the bright road ahead.

Betty Hoyt and my Grandmother Ruth

So–here and now–my daughter Grace and I have been staying at Bill and Julie’s house in Vermont these last couple of days. Cousin Allison is here, and yesterday we all drove half an hour over to Uncle Tony’s house–the place that was built by Great-Uncle Win and Aunt Lynn, no longer with us–for the day’s official culinary event. 

I made the sweet potatoes, having been emailed the perfect James Beard recipe by Uncle Charlie’s most fabulous wife Deborah. Uncle Bill took on creamed onions and the turnips. Cousin Victoria (Charlie’s daughter) was there with her excellent husband John and their two little kids. John was perfecting the mashed potatoes as we all tumbled into the warmth of Tony’s chic but cozy kitchen. Tony had brined the turkey and ordered the pies, then made hard sauce.

Bloody Marys were consumed, iPads shared and discussed (I shilled for a couple of pal’s books, which Charlie downloaded from Amazon),

 

the little children were charmingly well-behaved, and various distant relations called up on various cellphones and landlines. We even Skyped with Cousin Winthrop and his sublime wife Barrie, who were in their new place in Brooklyn with their brand-new baby, young Master August Elias.

August Elias

The wine was superb, the white-linened table arrayed with candelabra and beautiful plates, the forks and knives old family stuff polished to glory, and the talk was familiar and lovely and effervescent, overflowing with shared old jokes and joint beloved reminiscence of the two generations who’d come before all of us, now absent in body but never in spirit.

Uncle Bill had brought a big manila envelope of old photos that were passed from hand to hand, eliciting more stories and laughter and “Whatever happened to….” And at various intervals throughout this jollity, someone would pipe up with Great-Uncle Win’s favorite way to introduce any anecdote, no matter how dire: “Cute story! Cute Story!”

But I think that my absolutely favorite part of this most excellent day was when Uncle Bill looked around us all at the table with a dry wicked grin and said two words: “Mr. Whitney…” then paused for a sip of wine.

Aunt Julie said, “Jesus, Bill…” from the table’s far end.

And then Uncle Charlie said, “How is Mr. Whitney?”

And Uncle Bill said, “Oh, he died. Terribly sad. Hit by a car, dontcha know.”

And Uncle Tony asked. “And what happened to Mrs. Whitney?”

Whereupon Uncle Charlie confided, “Oh, she married Mr. Knott.”

Uncle Bill asked, “And Mrs. Knott?”

“She married Mr. Moseley,” said Tony.

“What about Mrs. Moseley?” asked Charlie.

“Well, she married Mr. Shields,” offered Bill.

“Mrs. Shields?” pondered Charlie.

“Married Mr. Galston,” Tony replied.

“And Mrs. Galston?” asked Bill.

Tony lifted his wineglass, rolling the ruby liquid around in it. “She married Mr. Von Briesen.”

“Good God,” I said, unfamiliar with this cherished litany, “what became of Mrs. Van Briesen?”

“Oh,” said Uncle Bill, twinkly of eye, “Mrs. Van Briesen lives down the road.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Oh, yuh,” said Uncle Bill, pronouncing that second syllable sound with the dryness of Old Vermont. “All happened over the course of a single year, when we were kids on Long Island. Quite a ruckus. You’d go to a friend’s house and never know which other friend’s parent you’d find there.”

“Jesus, Bill…” Aunt Julie said once again from the other end of the table, the other end of the forty-two-plus-a-little-bit years it had been since we’d all spent the afternoon of September 14th, 1968, together on my grandparents’ lawn on Centre Island in Oyster Bay. 

She was smiling, though.

Cute story… cute story…

I love these guys. They are awesome.

And of course, being me, I have to wonder whether Mrs. Van Briesen was driving the car that hit Mr. Whitney.

Tell me an old story you love, oh excellent ‘Ratis…

 

Fear is Not An Option

by JT Ellison

This year at Murderati has been one filled with pain, with joy, with sorrow, with compassion. Though we’ve been in business for five years, honestly, this has arguably been our best. Because we’ve all been facing our fears. Dusty covered the idea of true, earth-shattering emotional reaction to fictional things that go bump in the night. Tess talked about her incredibly personal panic reactions to events out of her control. Stephen is facing the unknown, and I daresay Louise is as well. We’ve covered phobias, frustration, anger, change.

We haven’t talked a lot about fear.

If you think about it, fear is truly what drives us sometimes.

Fear of loss. Fear of death. Fear of success. Fear of failure.

Ah, yes. Fear of failure.

For writers, that term is an all too familiar companion. Yes, there are probably a few who are so confident that they never worry about their work, just plow ahead and damn it all. Their work is often soulless, but they aren’t up all hours of the night, fretting.

Fear of failure is my constant companion. Not just as a writer, but as a woman, as a wife, as a human being. It’s what drives me to focus, to write, to love. To jump off cliffs, headless of where I may land.

Failure, to me, is fear. I’ve failed before. Colossally. I’ve had jobs that I wasn’t any good at. I suck at friendships. I’m too frank, too impatient. I’m damn good at the wife thing, most of the time, at least, but when I was first married, I was terrible at that too. Practice made perfect, that and a very, very patient husband. I’ve learned to cook, to manage a house, to handle issues I’d never dreamed of. I think I have it down pretty well, though there’s always room for improvement.

I’d like to think I’m decent at the writing part. Not great. Oh no, far from that. But capable. Getting more and more confident. Learning the things to fret about and the things to let go.
Controlling the things I can control.

It’s amazing, though, that after writing all the books I have, that I hit a point in every book where I decide it’s a hellacious mess that has no business being finished, much less published. I hit that moment last week, minutes before I was due to get on a plane to Scotland to finish the research. I say finish — when we made plans for the trip, I was supposed to be done, and the trip would be a way to finalize little details: smells, sounds, looks. We’d been in July and I was convinced it was going to look so much different — which it did, and didn’t.

Instead, I’m not done, not remotely close enough to being done for my liking, as a matter of fact, and the trip, while brilliant, was too helpful. I know have a glut of information that needs to go in that I didn’t realize before, which is slowing things down at the exact moment I need to be gaining momentum.

And this is the moment when the fear sets in.

You should HEAR my brain.

You’re never going to finish. You suck. This book is too much of a stretch. Why did you break form? What are you thinking? Serial killer books are so much easier to write. Why did you decide to make this a gothic suspense? You’re an idiot. This will be the end of you.

Yeah. Lovely little blackbirds, aren’t they?

But at its most basic, all this is is fear. Yes, I’m taking a chance writing a book that might not “fit” with the previous six. But the desire to keep my series fresh and inviting dictates change. I can’t change the characters too much, but I sure can change the way I tell a story. And sometimes I bite off more than I can chew.

But conquering fear is what every writer faces every day. Steven Pressfield calls it resistance, and it’s true—when you’re scared, you will find anything and everything to distract you from actually putting your ass in the chair and writing the book. But all that does is get you stressed that you’re not living and breathing every moment of the book, and works on the part of your fragile psyche that feeds on negative thoughts.

I daresay that anyone who has had success is well versed in these moments of fear. And let’s face it, all fear and indulgence aside, the idea that you’re going to fail is a great inducement not to.

I’ve spent most of the past two days thinking about all the things I’m thankful for. Getting home safe from Scotland. My health. The love of my family and friends. The success of my novels. The simple joys of my life–petting the cat, watching a crackling fire, sipping a glass of wine, reading a book, talking to a friend on the phone. My husband, en totale, everything about him. The freedoms we enjoy in this country. That God gave me a gift and allowed me to put words to the page and tell you stories. The world we’ve created here at Murderati — all fourteen of us, and all of you — where we can share our joy and fear and success and sorrow among friends.

And I am also thankful for the fear. Because if I didn’t have anything to lose, I wouldn’t have much to live for. After a week delving deeply into the lives of Randy’s and my Scottish forebears, of seeing what they had to lose if they gave into the fear that must have plagued them constantly, the fact that their decisions were based in courage, in a desire to better themselves and the lives of their families, that the wrong decision meant an almost certain death, and the right one did too – all my “fear” seems a bit silly.

What about you, ‘Rati? What puts fear in perspective for you?

Wine of the Week: I did it the last time we went to the UK, but this one is such a winner, I’m recommending it again. Côtes du Rhone “Heritiers Plantin” Mont-Redon 2007

Thanksgiving

Zoë Sharp

Today is Thanksgiving, which leaves the solitary Brit among the ‘Rati members at a bit of a loose end. We don’t celebrate the fourth Thursday in November as anything special in the UK, although we’ve had another lot of snow here this morning, if that’s cause for celebration?

But, the turkeys here are safe for another month, and today is just another working day. As it is in Canada, where I understand Thanksgiving was last month. Or Japan, where Labor Thanksgiving Day, the holiday of Niiname sai – which apparently came from the Emperor dedicating the year’s rice harvest to the Shinto Gods – was on November 23rd.

Today I understand my US friends will be sitting down to turkey, stuffing, cranberries, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, candied yams, popcorn, pecan pie, apple pie, ham and gravy. Not, I hope, all on the same plate.

Probably followed by some of this:

I, on the other hand, will probably be having something spicy from one of Nigel Slater’s cookbooks with my Other Half, watch an episode of Supernatural on DVD, and then carry on scribbling into the night.

So, a very brief post on this Thanksgiving Day.

What did you do today?

Who did you spend the day with?

Who would you LIKE to have spent the day with?

What did you eat?

What would you LIKE to have eaten?

What’s the worst/best Thanksgiving or other holiday you’ve ever had?

Any good Thanksgiving jokes?

Here’s one to start you off:

Fred in Dallas calls his son Bill in New York just before Thanksgiving and tells him, “I’m sorry to spoil your day, but I’ve called to tell you that your mother and I are going to divorce.  I just cannot take any more of her moaning. We can’t stand the sight of each other any more. I’m telling you first, Bill, because you’re the eldest, please tell your sister.”

When Bill calls his sister Susan in San Francisco, she says: “No way are they getting divorced, I’ll go over and see them for Thanksgiving.”

Susan phones her parents and tells them both “You must NOT get divorced. Promise you won’t do anything until I get over there. I’m calling Bill, and we’ll both be there with you tomorrow. Until then, don’t do ANYTHING. Please, wait until we’ve talked to you face to face!” and hangs up.

Fred puts down the phone and turns to his wife. “Good news,” he says. “Bill and Susan are both coming here for Thanksgiving and they’re both paying their own way.”

Lame, huh?

Come on, ‘Rati, you must be able to do better than that…

This week’s Word of the Week is autopsy. It’s common knowledge that an autopsy is an examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to assess any disease or injury. The word is from Greek autopsia, a combination of autos, oneself and opsis, eye – thus to see for oneself or with one’s own eyes.  On this side of the Atlantic, we tend to use post-mortem, which is Latin for after death. Since this is a compound adjective, it should strictly be followed by a noun – post-mortem examination. 

 

Goodies

by Rob Gregory Browne

If you believe Wikipedia—and I generally do—the first Thanksgiving or harvest festival was held by the Spanish on September 8, 1565 in Saint Augustine, Florida.

Who knew?

It wasn’t until the 20th century that the November observance became customary, and the fourth Thursday wasn’t written in stone until Franklin Roosevelt made it a national holiday in hopes of giving the country an economic boost.

Maybe he was thinking of all the things he’d be able to get dirt cheap on Black Friday.  

So do we blame him for the crowds?

But I’m not here to talk about Thanksgiving.  I only threw that in because my wife said I should, considering tomorrow is the big day.  I’m becoming increasingly convinced that she should be the one writing these posts—but that’s not something we’ll get into right now.

What I want to talk about is something you might be able to buy on Black Friday at a reduced price.  So if you loathe technology, now’s the time to his the door marked EXIT.

OKAY, OKAY, GET TO THE FRIGGIN’ POINT ALREADY

I have always been a gear slut. When I was younger and trying to figure out how to build my own recording studio, I was the first guy in line for the latest gear, sometimes spending more money than I should have.

I don’t know why on earth my dear wife allowed me to do that, but I suppose she must have loved me or something and wanted to see her insane husband happy, even if it meant dipping into the savings account.

I was the same way with computers.  I bought my first one back before hard drives even existed and have bought a couple new ones every couple years.  I think I’m on my fifth or sixth laptop as we speak, and thinking about getting a new one.

But for some reason, there’s one piece of hardware I didn’t jump on when it first came out.  While the technosphere and the world were all abuzz about the iPad, my response was meh.

I have an iMac that I love.  I have an iPhone that I love.  And I have to admit that the iPad is a gorgeous piece of hardware.  But while I can put up with the limitations of the iPhone—because it’s a phone, for crissakes—it seemed to me that the iPad was nothing but a giant iPhone and didn’t attract me.

Had Apple put OSX on the iPad, I would have been first in line.  I think OSX is one of the finest operating systems going.  It’s elegant, runs apps beautifully, is virus-free, and is a great and robust experience for the user.

Unfortunately, Apple chose to use the iPhone operating system for their pad, and that makes it extremely limited in what it can do and how it can be used.  So, again, it didn’t attract me.

Now, if all you want is a device that allows you to surf the web, watch some movies, send a few emails, then the iPad is a great device, if you’re willing to except the fact that a large number of websites will not be viewable, because iPads don’t play Flash.  You also have to forego any kind of file system, and there are limited ports on the thing.

The iPad isn’t the first tablet to show up in the marketplace, of course.  But like the iPod, it’s the first of its kind to capture the imagination of the buying public.  Apple’s products may not be the best or most powerful devices you can buy, but the company does do two things very well:  1) make stuff look pretty; and 2) convince people they have to have it.

The iPad is also ideally suited to people who are new to computing.  Especially older people who are still trying to figure out how to adapt to the 21st Century in a rapidly changing world.

And thanks to competition of the marketplace, the iPad isn’t the only touchscreen tablet that will be available this Christmas season.  There are a number of competitors for the iPad, with more to come next year.  And the great thing about this new crop of computer tablets is that they run on Google’s Android operating system, which is open source.  And because it’s open source, it’s not under Apple’s draconian restrictions and anyone who can write code can create new and powerful versions of the operating system—and the applications that go along with it—which opens a whole new world of possibilities for these devices.

While I’m not all that attracted to the iPad, I have seen a couple of new tablets that I find very compelling.  So before you make the plunge into Apple territory, I consider looking at these alternatives.  You may find them more suitable to your needs.

First up is the Archos 70 Internet Tablet, which retails at a considerably lower price than the lowest priced iPad, coming in at $275:

 

 

Next we have the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which retails at around $600:

 

 

And this is only what’s available now.  The future will bring even more.  Of course, we could wait forever for the least expensive, most powerful device to come along, but at the rate technology changes, anything you buy today is obsolete tomorrow, so if you’re interested, you might as well take the plunge.  

Despite the beauty of these products, I’m still left wondering if I would be able to find a use for them. I have a netbook, which I love, and it allows me to not only browse the web, watch movies, etc., but to write on it as well, a task I know is not that easy with these devices.

But then I see myself lying in bed with one of these things, watching a movie or reading a book and suddenly the possibilities seem endless…

And being the technonut I am, I’m bound to have one in my hands before the year is out.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Not Coming Soon To A Bookstore Near You

 

By Louise Ure

 

I had an email chat with an old friend a couple of weeks ago who said that her scheduled signing at a local bookstore on election night did not turn out as well as expected. “There was one person there, and I think he was homeless.” This from a woman who has published dozens of books in our genre.

I can understand her disappointment. The economy has taken a toll on the purchase of new hardcover books for many folks, the bookstore had not done a good job of publicizing her appearance in advance, and frankly, there were probably lots of people who just wanted to stay home that night and watch the election results. And who needs a signing to sell an electronic copy of a book, anyway?

Her signing failure is not uncommon. I remember attending one event for Laura Lippman several years ago that had only five attendees; all but one of us budding mystery writers ourselves.

The terror of my first book signing event is still with me. Yeah, me, the girl who had for three decades given hundreds of budget and strategy presentations to senior level clients all over the world. But that was easy by comparison, because all those years I was talking about/selling somebody else’s ideas or product. This time the product was all mine and I was selling myself.

Kirk Russell, sensing my angst, came over and said quietly into my ear, “Remember there is no one here that doesn’t want to be here. They’re happy to be here.” Kind of like that job at Dairy Queen I wrote about a couple of weeks ago: everybody who came in was happy to see me.

It got easier after that, whether I was doing solo signings, partnering with another author, attending conventions and panels or signing at libraries, clubs or festivals. I know I’ve done well over a hundred … maybe two hundred … appearances like that now.

But that doesn’t mean I like them.

I’m perfectly happy to converse with readers and get to know them as well as having them get to know me and my work. But I’ve become such a hermit these days that even telephone conversations – let alone a real social interaction – have become difficult.

And then you add in the money.

With my first book, published by Time Warner’s Mysterious Press (now Grand Central), I was treated like royalty. My book tour was set up and paid for by their PR team, and they even included media escorts to drive me around each city. My current publisher (St. Martin’s) does not offer those same kind of perks to many of their authors. My guess is that the big name authors still get a fair amount of PR support from their publishers, but ninety percent of authors pay their own freight on publicity tours. In my case, that’s meant thousands of dollars of contribution for gas, flights, hotels and meals, for little reward.

Is the two-person turnout in Portland or the one-audience-member-who-bought-six-books in a Seattle suburb justification for all those dollars spent? Not for me it isn’t. Not anymore.

And I’m not even sure who I was reaching with those book tours. With the first book, there were a preponderance of friends, acquaintances and family members who showed up. For the more recent books, many of the attendees already knew my work and came prepared to buy the next book. I don’t think it’s the way to reach a lot of new readers.

If I publish again, I doubt that I would do a book tour. Maybe I’d concentrate on conventions or libraries or a massive internet effort.

So what say you, ‘Rati ‘Riters? Do you continue to think book tours are integral to your marketing? Do you go to the same places with each book or different geographies? And does your publisher help with any of it?

And for our ‘Rati ‘Readers: are personal signing events important to you? Are you attending more or fewer of them these days?

 

PS: Have a great Thanksgiving everyone. I’ve got 31 people coming here. It will be the last of three decades of Ure/Goronsky household Thanksgivings. It’s somebody else’s turn now.

 



The Things People Say

by Alafair Burke

I’ve been accused of being an eavesdropper.

I deny the allegation.  Eavesdropping is rude, after all.  From my perspective, I simply pay attention to the stuff that loud strangers hoist into my involuntarily captured ears. 

It’s amazing what one overhears if one simply listens.

Yesterday in the gym locker room, one young woman told her friend (loudly) all about some guy who was obviously unhappy in his relationship and just biding his time before dumping his dull, undeserving girlfriend.  “I think he hopes she’ll figure it out on her own.”  The woman who was speaking was apparently all ready to move into his apartment once the breakup happened.  “There’s even outdoor space.”  Hopefully she hasn’t given up her lease yet.

The stuff I overhear in the locker room at Bikram Yoga always makes me feel guilty.  “Are you doing a double today?” “No, I did one yesterday and will do one tomorrow.”  (Mind you, this is a 90 minute class in a 105 degree room with 40 percent humidity.  The only kind of double I’m thinking of when it’s over is a double-long nap.) 

My favorite overheard exchange after yoga went like this: “Are you doing anything for your birthday tonight?” “X is taking me to Y.  I can’t wait.  I’m going to let myself have a glass of wine.”

Based on these overheard conversations, I should have known better last week than to try to strike one up with the familiar face next to me.  Me: “If I’d known it was going to be so warm out, I would have gone running instead.”  Her: “Just do both.”

Thanks to bad cell phone etiquette, the elevator’s another place I hear stuff about strangers (or I guess neighbors), and it’s always stuff I’d rather not know.  Business deals.  The scheduling of appointments.  Those endless, “Where are you?  What are you doing?” phone calls that women of a certain (young) age just can’t seem to help themselves from making — on crowded elevators.

Overhearing people on the street is best of all, because all you get is a two-second clip of some larger conversation – a conversation that, if you’re me, you’ll be left wondering about for the rest of the day.  For a while, I even kept a list of crazy stuff I overheard on 14th Street, the busy street where I live in Manhattan.   Here are some of the more interesting, humorous, or simply odd gems (verbatim, seriously): 

“You ought to try that space out. During the day? Looks like it could be pretty cool.”
-one panhandler to another

“How socially aware.”  “Yeah, those guys totally deserve to get stabbed.”
-an exchange between two high school kids after they passed two idiots wearing blackface on Halloween

“She said excuse me. I was like, excuse me? Excuse you! I’m standing here. You can walk around.”
– Dude blocking the Union Square subway entrance


“I ended up crawling on the ground looking for all kinds of shit. Like, shit I don’t even have. Like, I knew I’d find a jar of peanut butter”

“All he wants to do is go to these daddy parties.”

“That wretched, ungrateful wench.”

“I’ll trade this girl for some Taco Bell. Any takers?”

“I don’t do porn.”
– sidewalk DVD vendor to customer

“No use lie-ing. I just want a beer.”
– Okay, technically, I saw that on a panhandling sign.  I didn’t hear it.

“Every time I think something’s going to happen, it doesn’t happen. This has been my year of, like, …nothing.”

“They skype, like, everyday.” “Oh My God, they have to work out. We have to make sure they work out.”

“My ex-wife is cheating on her current husband to be with me.”

“That dog is not going to eat broccoli.”
– OK, technically I didn’t overhear that one either. Someone said it to my face when I stopped to let Duffer try to eat a piece of brocolli dropped on the sidewalk.

“…with some man who said he wanted to kidnap me!”
(See above comment about odd, out of context conversational snippets)

“Just get a bunch of product and make it messy Kate Moss hair.”

“Don’t you even try to say a word to me. You the one got two babies by two first cousins.”
(Yep, that was the one that prompted me to start keeping a list.)

My apologies, but only fans of Arrested Development will understand the relevance of this picture

So, how about it?  Do you “eavesdrop”?  What have you overheard lately?

How do you read?

By Allison Brennan

 

E-books and e-readers are topics of conversation everywhere, and no place more so than among authors.

 

I could discuss any number of things related to e-books, but the topic could fill a novel—far more than I want to write on a Saturday night!

 

I think that there are two truths that most people can agree with, to differing degrees. One, e-books are here to stay and they’re a growing market. And two, print books will continue to sell.

 

I honestly don’t care how readers read my books. If they enjoy them electronically or in print or listening to them on tape or download. Truly, my job is to entertain by telling a good story.

 

At some point—when, I have no idea—there’ll be a balance between e-books and print books, just like there is a balance between hardcover and paperback releases. This unknown is one of the reasons that publishers are in a tizzy—it’s nearly impossible to plan print runs and create marketing plans when readers are all over the map. When an author like myself—a mass market commercial fiction author—has a book out there was a plan. But those plans are constantly in flux because of the unknowns.

 

We can say that ebook sales are increasing exponentially, but every author—with a particular eye to format and genre—is affected differently. My ebook sales are still in the single digits of total books sold. I know a lot of people who are selling upwards of 35%–most, if not all, of these authors are published in hardcover. Some of my mass market friends are seeing low two-digits—10-15% e-book sales, but most mass market authors aren’t getting the near half sales electronically.

 

So there are a lot of unknowns!

 

One of the problems everyone is having is with statistics. Numbers mean something, but methodology is crucial when looking at the stats. We’re hearing that Amazon is selling more digital books than hardcover books—but the problem with that statement is that they don’t tell us whether they’re selling more digital copies of books that are also available as hardcover, or are they selling more total digital copies than hardcover books.

 

I’m not discounting the quantity, because I know that hardcover authors are selling very well electronically, but we need to compare apples to apples if we can possibly plan for future books as well as know our audience.

 

For example, according to “Self Publishing Resources,” the average POD (which I am assuming includes self-published books, but I can’t be certain based on the wording) sells 75 copies, and Author Solutions reports that they sell on average of 150 copies of each of their self-published novels. According to a New York Times report in early 2009, when Bertram Capitol merged with Xlibris, they published six times more titles than Random House—the worlds largest publisher.

 

Quantity of titles doesn’t equate to success. Well, the vanity press companies are certainly successful, for one article on the Self Publishing Resources website states that 81 percent of the American people believe they have a book in them. And with the ease of getting that book published, there are now over 480,000 titles published today (2009.)

 

But the vast majority of those titles are selling less than 1,000 copies. One report I remember reading (but can’t find though I searched!) is that only 25,000 titles have a print run in excess of 5,000.

 

My point is that the big sellers are driving the digital train just like they drive the high print runs. I think when the New York Times starts their ebook bestseller list, that’s going to prove that it’s still the John Grishams and Lee Childs and Nora Roberts and Stephen Kings of the world that are dominating the sales. There will be new up and comers for certain, just like on the traditional print lists, but as more digital titles are available, readers will still gravitate to their comfort reads and proven authors.

 

I’m certain that there will be a lot of changes to come, some exciting and some scary. We don’t really know what’s going to happen, only that more people will move to reading some or all of their books digitally. And because this is technology based, it happens faster than other changes.

 

Decisions based on fear and not fact will only hurt authors—and, in the long run, readers. We need statistics that make proper comparisons, such as comparing e-book sales to print sales on those titles that are available in both markets. Unknown authors who think that they can break into digital publishing and make it big have a lot of work ahead of them—just because you can keep more money from each book sold doesn’t mean it’s the right decision. Or the wrong decision. Because of the potential for entrepreneurs who have both talent and marketing sense, there will be success stories. It’s inevitable. And I think that’s great.

 

But none of that means death to print publishing. 8% of the reading public owns an ereader—and that is expected to double within the next six months. And those who own ereaders are more likely to read more books. But there are still a lot of people who state they will not be buying an ereader in the next year. According to Harris Interactive (which I hesitate to quote because it’s an opt-in poll of people who are online and thus not a cross-section of all readers) the two demographic groups least likely to own or buy an ereader in the next 6 months are the 65+ group and the 18-33 group. That these are people who are active online and not moving over to ereaders is significant—I only have my unscientific poll of my teenagers who, when I offered them an ereader, said, “Hell, no.” (And I have an iPad, so I’m not opposed to ereaders!)

 

Their reason? They spend so much time on the computer, they don’t want to read books on it or any electronic device. Their textbooks are on the computer. They have assignments on the computer. They text and facebook and chat on the computer. Is there going to be a small technology backlash in the younger generation? Maybe. Maybe not.

 

But that’s the point—everything is changing so rapidly and data is incomplete. That’s why taking in the big picture and making smart, strategic decisions—both for authors and for publishers—is so important.

 

One experiment that my publisher is trying is releasing an exclusive electronic novella between the first two Lucy Kincaid books. Love Me To Death, the first Lucy Kincaid book, will be out on December 28, hopefully everywhere books are sold. Then on January 24, 2011, a novella Love Is Murder will be available everywhere electronic books are sold. Then Kiss Me, Kill Me, the second Lucy Kincaid book, will be out on February 22. I’m very interested in seeing the numbers—whether having an e-exclusive story increases e-sales of KMKM over LMTD, among other things.


Yesterday, my editor sent me two printed copies of Love Me To Death. When I opened the package, the same warm, happy feeling came over me that I had five years ago when I received the first two copies of my debut novel The Prey.

 

So to celebrate the pending publication of my fifteenth book—which happens to fall on the five year anniversary of the release of my debut novel—I’m giving away a set of my first trilogy: The Prey, The Hunt and The Kill. If the randomly chosen winner already has those books, I’ll send them any set of my trilogies that they want. In print—because I have the copies.

 

So tell me . . . have you converted to reading ebooks and if so, are you mostly reading books published exclusively as ebooks; ebooks that are also available in print; or a mixture of both?

 

 

More scary monsters: Sense And Sensibility

by Alexandra Sokoloff

In Stephen’s wonderful post yesterday he was asking about great thrillers – in the context of comparing and contrasting two of my favorite books and movies:  Thomas Harris’s masterpieces Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs.

When I teach, I use those two books all the time – to the, um,  horror, of the aspiring romance writers who often take my workshops, who wouldn’t be caught dead (sorry, I’ll stop now) reading those books.   But I always try to get new writers to understand that they can learn just as much from stories outside their own genre, because the elements of story – and suspense – are the same no matter how many bodies are or are not falling or how many creatures are or are not lurking in the basement.

And for us darker types, there’s a lot to be learned about storytelling  from classics in other genres.

I am lately on a Reacher binge and at the same time obsessed with the Ang Lee/Emma Thompson film of Sense And Sensibility.   Which makes a warped kind of sense because my experience with romance is more along the lines of what you get in the Reacher books, and I find serious horror in Sense And Sensibility.  But I’m not joking about the horror in Sense and Sensibility (or any Austen book), and it’s not a horror of romance, either.    I am, however, horrified at the Netflix description of the film as “Austen’s classic tale of 19th century etiquette”.  This story is more about monsters in the basement than it is about etiquette.   

Actually, it is about an evil much bigger than a monster in the basement.

The film opens at the deathbed of Mr. Dashwood, the father of our heroines Elinor and Marianne (Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, one all “Sense” and the other all Sensibility” – ie, passion.).    Mr. Dashwood has called in John, his son from a previous marriage, to whom Dashwood’s entire fortune and houses will pass under the law of primogeniture, which bars women from inheriting property and keeps both the patriarchy and the aristocracy intact by mandating that family fortunes pass undivided to the eldest son of a family, with only minimal livings carved out for any remaining male children.

Before he dies, Dashwood extracts a promise from John that he will take care of the present Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret, who by law are only allowed to inherit 500 pounds.

John’s original intention is to give the Dashwood women an additional 3000 pounds so they can live comfortably on the interest, but in the course of a carriage ride up to Norland Park, where John and his wife will take over the Dashwood house, John’s harridan of a wife, Fanny whittles John’s gift down to nothing at all:  “Twenty pounds here and there should be ample.   What would four women need with more than 500 pounds?”

This series of scenes is a beautiful – and funny –  dramatization of greed in action, and Fanny makes a detestable villain.   But more importantly, the scenes introduce the real villain of the story, and every Austen story: primogeniture – which kept the rich superrich, the poor practically or literally indentured as servants to the rich, and women enslaved to men, for centuries.

Stylistically, Jane Austen was writing comedies, but the stories are built on social outrage, and I believe it’s that canny blend that made and keeps these books classics.

The whole next sequence introduces us to the extremely sympathetic Dashwood women as they are reduced to guests in their own house – in the midst of their deep grief over the loss of their father and husband.   While Fanny steamrolls through the house claiming everything in it as her own, the Dashwood women scramble to find other living arrangements on their tiny inheritance.

And then, enter Edward Ferrars – Fanny’s intelligent but very reserved brother (Hugh Grant at his diffidently charming best) who instantly understands the pain of the Dashwoods’ circumstances, bonds with and draws out youngest daughter Margaret, and falls hard – abeit reservedly – for kindred soul Elinor.   Of course, a match made in heaven – but there’s more to this than love.   In her circumstances, Elinor’s life and her family’s lives depend on her making a good marriage, because women are prohibited from earning an income.   So a happy marriage to a well-off man is the dream, the best possible outcome– but the stakes couldn’t be higher, and Elinor’s situation is more than tenuous – she has not the slightest power over the outcome.   Fanny and Edward’s mother (offstage, but very present in the form of threat of disinheriting Edward if he makes an “unworthy marriage”) immediately go about preventing this match, and the Dashwoods move from their home to a cottage on the estate of Mrs. Dashwood’s wealthy cousin, without a marriage proposal from Edward to Elinor. 

In their new home, younger sister Marianne catches the eye of the county’s most eligible bachelor, wealthy and cultured Colonel Brandon  (a completely dreamy Alan Rickman).  Marianne scorns Brandon’s attentions, thinking him too old (he’s 35 in the book), and falls hard for the dashing Willoughby, who also seems very well-fixed financially and outspokenly shares Marianne’s passion for poetry and music.   Elinor, though, has doubts…. 

All of this set up (the first act of the film) makes for huge stakes emotionally.   We hope that Elinor will make her happy marriage with Edward.   We hope Marianne will also make a happy marriage, but are uneasy with her choice of Willoughby (over Alan Rickman???   Surely that’s wrong…)   We fear that Edward will not marry Elinor because of his mother’s threat of disinheritance.   

Elinor is very much in love with Edward; we know she will never find as perfect a mate elsewhere.  But even beyond that – her life without him is clear and endlessly grim – spinsterhood, poverty, or perhaps a loveless marriage that at best would turn her into some version of Fanny, and at worst – well, put any ribbon you want on marriage, but at the time women were property of their husbands. (And we’re not all that long out of it, ourselves.)

Marianne’s possible fate is spelled out even more graphically by Colonel Brandon.   As a youth he fell in love with his family’s young ward, but they were forbidden to marry because she was penniless.   Brandon was shipped off to war, and the young woman was turned out of the house and reduced to prostitution;  Brandon returned to find her dying in a poorhouse.

It’s all reported very discreetly, but it’s clear this is exactly what could happen to the passionate, impetuous Marianne if Willoughby throws her over.   And throw her over he does…

Now of course, after some hair-raising reversals, there is finally a brilliantly happy ending; all the right people marry.  But underneath all of that is the undercurrent of the horror that might happen if it doesn’t end happily – the stakes are just about as high as they can get.

And it’s not just the women who suffer under the system of primogeniture and complete control by the property owners of the society.  Willoughby is disinherited and reduced to marrying for money, when his true love is Marianne.   Edward is disinherited by his mother when he chooses to marry “beneath him” and only saved from poverty by the sympathetic Colonel Brandon, who offers him a clergy position in the local parish.   And we also see the miserable marriage of a couple of minor characters – wonderful performance by Hugh Laurie as a man who married for money and is drowning in his own bitterness.

Austen’s work is so often called “drawing room comedy”, but I don’t read or see many thrillers that have anywhere near this level of tension, suspense, and truly horrific stakes – it’s my most fervent hope that I can create characters and situations anywhere near this emotional gripping.

So how about it, Rati –  what books or movies have gripped you lately?   Any examples of huge emotional and/or thematic stakes you weren’t expecting in a particular genre?

I’d especially love to hear about emotional and thematic stakes in thrillers and mysteries, but any gerne is fine with me.)

And of course I have to ask –  Hugh Grant or Alan Rickman?

– Alex

LAMB SLAYS DRAGON

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

So I’ve been rummaging through the undersides of things in my effort to consolidate the clutter of my life before moving from house to apartment, occasionally jumping when the call of “Spider!” comes from one of the other rooms, from one of the other family members, and my life-saving skills are required to take the thick or thin or hairy or spindly eight-legged offender out to the outside of the domicile where we, ourselves, will soon be outside looking in.

It’s a bitch of a time to get any writing done, and a few weeks after I started my third novel I find myself just ten pages in, ten solid pages, re-written ten times, but ten pages nonetheless.  My focus has been on the move and the day job and on finishing my tour for BEAT, which took me back to my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, last weekend.  Writing will again commence Thanksgiving morn, when I’ll be looking at four ten-hour writing days in a row.

But I have during this time made time to read.  I tackled the works of Thomas Harris, picking up SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and RED DRAGON.  I was getting tired of being the only writer on the planet who couldn’t say that RED DRAGON was the best thriller ever written.  I’ve seen the title pop up in just about everyone’s Top Ten List, and I was at this year’s Men of Mystery when Greg Hurwitz was asked to name the best thriller ever written, and he said it would have to be RED DRAGON.

I read the books back-to-back, but backwards, diving into LAMBS first only because I was able to acquire it before DRAGON.

I was just a few pages into LAMBS when I got the cozy feeling that I was in the hands of a master.  It was revving up to be the perfect reading experience and I felt myself trying to slow things down, afraid I’d run into a bump along the way, something that might derail this wonder-train and break the illusion I was getting that LAMBS might in fact be the golden elixir of thrillers.  I zipped through the novel and was not disappointed.  It was brilliant, and in my opinion, a perfect novel.

I eagerly leapt into RED DRAGON, expecting the same.  And it was great, it was wonderful, but it wasn’t SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. 

Both novels are compelling studies of characters in duress.  Perhaps what makes DRAGON stand out so much is its depiction of semi-retired FBI profiler/forensic analyst Will Graham, the physically and psychologically wounded man responsible for capturing the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter.  Asked to return to the FBI to pursue another brutal killer, Graham first visits Lecter in jail, hoping to obtain a little insight.  Lecter asks him the question, “Do you know how you caught me, Will?”  He answers his own question thereafter, saying, “The reason you caught me is that we’re just alike.”  This statement haunts Graham through the rest of the book, and Harris does a bang-up job convincing us that Graham fears he has what it takes to be another Hannibal Lecter.

All of DRAGON’S characters are complex and believable and the science and procedural aspects of the book are spot on.  It’s a really great book, but it’s not SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

What is it about LAMBS that captures me so?

First of all, it’s tight.  I’m a big fan of tight.  I’m a student of Jim Thompson, and his writing is honed down to the bone, and it moves.  We talk here at Murderati about “cutting out the stuff no one reads,” and Thompson’s work stands out as a shining example of that.  I read Thompson continuously as I was writing my last few drafts of BOULEVARD, and his writing taught me to constantly tighten and trim my prose.  His work proves that less is often more.  I’ve noticed that BEAT is a tighter, faster ride than BOULEVARD, and my new book is tighter still.  Soon I’ll be writing mystery-thriller haikus.

LAMBS is rich with detail.  It’s obvious that Harris has done his homework.  But the volume of research is presented with amazing restraint.  There’s no need to take the reader on long tangents into the history of profiling or forensic science.  No need to give us more than the very basics about Clarice’s boss, Jack Crawford.  Just enough to bring out character, without drowning the reader in backstory.  One beautiful little character touch comes in a narrative line about Crawford that reads, “Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading.  He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.”  There are little brushstrokes like this everywhere in the novel.

And don’t even get me started on the rich character descriptions of Clarice, Hannibal Lecter, Chilton and Buffalo Bill.  Every character, even the walk-ons, is unique and bursting with dimension. 

Clarice herself is exceptional.  There is such complexity to her, in that she is a young, female, FBI trainee with a troubled past and a chip on her shoulder.  She’s refreshingly original and her sense of pride and justice are things to admire.  Match that with Lecter’s eerie, uncanny ability to peer into the recesses of everyone’s psychology, and you’ve got two of the best characters ever written. 

In LAMBS, Lecter is a slippery guide and mentor, and, while he’s always out for himself, he finds joy in helping Clarice along on her path.  He plays a slightly different role in DRAGON, by actively helping the antagonist in Lecter’s own quest to destroy Will Graham.  This doesn’t feel like the Lecter I know from LAMBS.  It’s cleverly done in DRAGON, but it reduces Lecter’s role to something less than his potential, which is further developed, with greater satisfaction, in LAMBS.

The pacing of LAMBS was also more satisfying than in DRAGON.  LAMBS grabbed me by the throat and shook me almost to unconsciousness, then slapped me in the face repeatedly to wake me up.  It was a non-stop ride on a jackhammer.  And yet I still felt firmly planted in the story—the speed of the narrative didn’t come at the cost of losing the story’s foundation.  I still got the opportunity to peek into the world of the FBI, to spend time in Quantico, to learn about Clarice’s early life on the farm, her run from the glue factory, her desperate wish to live in a world of silence, where the lambs never cry. 

And I had the opportunity to observe the smartest serial killer on the planet.  I don’t know if I’ll ever have Harris’ chops—Hannibal Lecter is the most interesting antagonist I’ve met.  There is more of Lecter in LAMBS, too.  He plays a more vital role in the narrative, and yet he doesn’t steal the story from its principal characters, Clarice, Crawford and Buffalo Bill.

Listen, I could go on forever, analyzing the structures of each novel, deconstructing every chapter and paragraph, explaining what works for me and why.  They are both great novels, but I clearly see SILENCE OF THE LAMBS in the top spot. 

Let’s hear some comments.  What do you think is the best thriller of all time?  Why?

                                                              *    *    *

Also, my short story prequel to BOULEVARD is now available as a FREE DOWNLOAD from my website.  It will also be available on Kindle and other e-book devices beginning December 7.

 

In CROSSING THE LINE, young LAPD officer Hayden Glass is driven to move quickly up the ranks at the department. Only one year in, he decides to pad his experience with a stint in Vice. But, with a marriage on the rocks and carrying the weight of a dark and troubled past, Hayden cannot resist the temptations he encounters on the street. CROSSING THE LINE marks the moment Hayden’s sex-addiction first rears its ugly head.