by JT Ellison

I am sitting in a bookstore.

Earth shattering news, I know.

I’m in between appointments—I had a fabulous lunch with members of Nashville’s Dutch Lunch crowd, where we feasted on salmon and death by chocolate cake and a delicious crème brûlée with a candle in it, for our fearless leader, River Jordan, let slip that it was my birthday week and our sweet waiter, Kyle from Charleston, with the Hebrew symbol for brother and the date of his birth and death (1986 – far too young) etched on the tender underside of his wrist, took care of the festivities.

We talked about how writers are so prone to see the littlest details, that crime fiction writers in particular would be excellent witnesses to call upon when a crime has been committed, because we invest in the details of people. Drink them up, like water in the desert. We talked about faces, how important it is to actually make eye contact when you need to remember specifics, rather than taking in a general picture of facial structures—cheekbones, noses, wrinkles. One of our compatriots doesn’t like extended eye contact, but I think that’s essential to being a good writer. If you look closely enough in a stranger eyes, you can see all the secrets being held back. Shame. Happiness. Misery. Abuse. Joy.

After lunch I had a haircut, and then an hour to kill before picking up the esteemed Mr. Ellison from the airport. He’s been gone all week. I’ve missed him dreadfully. I’m so happy that he’s making it back in time for my birthday, because while being alone isn’t the best thing for me, being alone during birthday week has been especially hard.

It’s crunch time on the manuscript too, that has also altered my mindset. I pulled out Stephen King’s ON WRITING on Tuesday night. It’s always a nice slap in the face when you start feeling overwhelmed. I’ve talked to my friends. I’ve talked to Randy. And my agent. Other writers. My hairdresser. Talk, talk, talk. Write, write, write.

Fiction has been my friend this week. Non-fiction hasn’t.

So it’s late Thursday afternoon, and I’m sitting in a bookstore, writing my blog at last. I’ve only bought three books, a fact of which I am quite proud. Two novels by Sarah Waters, recommended by my agent, and a book on Buddha and his teachings. Nourishing my mind and my soul.

I’ve been a truly empty well this week, focused solely on my new book, which I need to turn in at the end of May. It’s coming along, finally, but it’s been a slog. Sometimes books are. Sometimes they write themselves. I’m having so much difficulty with this one because I always thought it was going to be the end of the series. The last book. As some of you may have heard, that is not the case. Mira has extended my contract again, for another three books. I am overjoyed at this, because in this uncertain market, having job security is paramount. Randy and I are both self-employed, and eat what we kill, so the knowledge that I’ve helped to pay the mortgage is a relief.

It is a week for celebrations. New contract. Birthday. Unexplored frontiers ahead.

Yet every time I sat down to write this blog this week, out spilled the maudlin. Writers by nature are prone to melancholy, and fits of sheer mania when things are flowing and we’ve tapped into that alternate universe that is our minds, our stories. When I lamented to my therapist (read: hairdresser. It is the woman’s prerogative to tell her hairdresser things that no one, and I mean no one, know.) she, a particularly divine sage of a woman, let me know that Mercury is in retrograde, and will be until the 11th of May, hence my difficulty with upbeat, effusive speechifying. The relief was palpable. It is not my fault.

Then she cut my bangs.

Mercury. It’s a word with many meanings. Quicksilver. Planet. God.

Mercury is used in thermometers to take temperatures. Mercury is the God of messages, and sex. The planet Mercury is closest to the sun, and the smallest.

When Mercury is in retrograde, we are essentially moving backwards. Communications go awry, there is more stress and frustration. We are going against the natural order of things. Hogwash to some, but man, I can’t say I disagree. That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling all week, the very week I should be on top of the world.

The word mercurial is one of my favorites. It fits my personality so well. My writing, too. I never know what the day ahead will bring, and that’s one of the joys, and the banes, of my existence. I am a true Taurus, born smack dab in the middle of the cycle. A Wednesday’s Child as well. Not surprisingly, I don’t manage change well. And I’ve got a massive change ahead of me, one that scares me, and I think it has handicapped my good mood.

The day after I signed my deal, my editor called to let me know she was leaving.

Now y’all have heard me brag on my editor before. She is my marmalade. She makes the toast taste better. And with her abrupt departure from my life, I am encased in fear. Fear is a regular part of my existence: fear of failure, of success, of things that go bump in the night. But this is a new kind of fear. She’s been my security blanket for four years. Someone I’ve always had in my career that I know can make what I’m trying to do with my stories make sense, even when they don’t make sense to me. She gave me my career as a novelist. She’s made me a better writer.

I will miss her.

Admitting that fills me with an unbearable lightness of being. Truly. It’s hard for me to openly admit being scared of the future. I just want to keep moving forward, becoming a finer writer, not aging, and always being happy.

Tall order.

So, thanks to a scintillating lunch, a haircut, a wander through a bookstore, the knowledge that Randy is flying toward me and dear little Mercury is in retrograde, I have finally, finally, written my week’s post. And it’s not too terribly mawkish.

Phew.

Tell me, ‘Rati brethren. Have you been feeling stressed lately? What have you been doing to combat it? And if you haven’t, what scares you?

xoxo,
JT

Wine of the Week: I’m still on a Zinfandel kick, so let’s try a Redwood Valley Zin from Lolonis, 2005, preferably.

Please join me and the rest of the Murderati crew in a warm welcome back to our favorite editor, the Legendary Honorary (Honorary Legendary?) Neil Nyren! Neil is the Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin Putnam, and edits some of my all-time favorite authors, including John Sandford and Daniel Silva. 

Neil has been kind enough to drop by and share his wealth of knowledge and expertise with us every Spring for the past few years, and I’m so excited to have him back again today for our 4th Annual State of the Industry interview.

If you’ve missed any of our previous interviews, feel free to indulge in their excellence here (2007), here (2008) and here (2009).

Without further ado – here we go!

This is our fourth sit-down in as many years, and I’m always struck by how much the industry changes from year to year. But from our chat last year to now, the changes have been exponential – at least on the surface.

Let me ask the question that’s on everyone’s minds – will eReaders kill physical books?

No, e-readers will not kill physical books. I know that some digerati like to think so, but that’s their own particular ax to grind. Right now, ebooks are still a very tiny part of our business – but obviously that percentage is going to grow. That’s why you saw so many new devices being introduced at the Consumer Electronics show in January, some of them multi-use, some of them dedicated e-readers, and that was even before the iPad. (Of course, only some of those devices will survive – I guarantee you some of them won’t be around in a couple of years). It’d gotten to the point where the electronics people could finally see enough of a future profit to make it worthwhile to put some r&d money into it. Now what’s going to happen is that the whole market will shake down, the major players will emerge – and ebooks will come into their own, side by side with the other formats. Some people will prefer them, just as some people prefer to listen to audio books. The more formats that exist, the more ways that books become available, the more books people will buy. So, really, I’m pretty happy about it.

Do you think that eventually there will be two separate publishing models – the traditional hard/soft or mass-market original releases, and separate authors doing exclusive ebooks?

I certainly think there’ll be more authors trying out ebooks on their own, and why not? It’s a new format, a new market, a new opportunity. As to how big or important a model it will turn out to be, I can answer that in three words: No. Body. Knows. Everybody’s figuring it out as we go along, and we’ll have a much better idea in a year or two. I think most authors are still likely to prefer the benefits of the traditional publishing program, but there’ll be others who still make some very good money from ebook originals, and of course others who’ll do a bit of both. It’ll be exciting to watch, that’s for sure!

Has the new technology changed the way you do your job? For example, have you moved to Kindle to review manuscripts?

If you’re talking about ebook technology, then it hasn’t changed things much for me personally. However, a lot of our editors and assistants do use e-readers to read submissions – it’s just much easier than toting home briefcases full of manuscripts. And all of our sales reps have them as well – instead of sending them manuscripts and sell sheets, we post them all on a server and they can download whatever they want. It’s a great deal more efficient, and they actually get a lot more read, which makes them even better at their job (and they’re pretty damn good already!).

The recession has hurt everyone – from huge publishing houses to new authors looking for their first deal. It feels like things are coming back. New authors are being offered contracts, established mid-list writers are re-upping. Are you buying?

Are we buying? We’ve always been buying! Recession or no recession, you’ve gotta have books to publish. Were we careful about what we bought, did we look hard at a book’s prospects, did we give a lot of thought to what we thought it was worth in today’s market? Of course! And we did that five years ago, and we’ll do it five years from now.

Have you seen a shift in editorial perspective over the past year? Are publishers looking for a different kind of book – blockbusters, niche, non-fiction – to break out and maintain (read: fund) the remainder of the list? Freeing you up to buy smaller books that will satisfy your taste and allows the authors to build over time?

The same answer applies to the question of what we’re looking for. Each publisher has different requirements, a different mix of titles and specialties and interests – and that really hasn’t changed, recession or no recession. We’re all basically just looking for good books, and books we think we can do something with – at whatever level that turns out to be. It doesn’t mean it has to be a blockbuster. I work for a commercial publisher, and obviously I try for the big books, too, because…I’m not stupid. But I spend much of my time working on less than blockbuster books, because that’s where the bread and butter of the industry lies, that’s where a lot of the good writers are, and that’s where – one hopes – some of the prize-winners and bestsellers of tomorrow will come from.

What common mistakes do you see authors make over and over again?

I guess the mistake that often bothers me the most is when authors get consumed by irrelevancies: this guy’s sales, that guy’s advance, why another writer gets more review space, why one reviewer never seems to like you, why another writer got higher on the bestseller list than you did, and so on. It’s your life, your career – not his. Let everybody else pay attention to themselves – you just do what’s right for you. See also some of my comments on the next question.

The dreaded BSP – Blatant Self-Promotion – has become a daily part of almost every author’s marketing plan – we are expected to maintain a website, participate on Facebook and Twitter, do blog tours, attend conferences on our own dime. Carolyn Haines wrote an article last week in the LA Times wondering if it was “smart” for a new author to drop her social networking in favor of working on her book. How do you feel about authors having to shoulder so much of the load?

Ah, yes, BSP. Painful (for some), but necessary. There’s no question that one of the essential ingredients in selling books is word of mouth. Good reviews, the recommendation of a friend/colleague/family member, hearing about a book through traditional print/electronic media or on the web – as M.J. Rose always says, if people don’t hear about a book, they ain’t going to buy it. And the author is an essential part of that process. The publisher will do whatever the publisher’s going to do, and sometimes that’ll be a whole lot and sometimes it won’t. But the plain truth of it is, no matter how much the publisher loves the book…nobody’s going to love it as much as the author. It’s your baby. As a writer, you are the CEO of your own business. You should make it a point to learn that business and to do whatever is necessary to make that business succeed.

That said – you still need to find the right balance. Because a big part of that success rests in writing damn good books, and it’s tough to do that if you’re spending all of your time on promotion. Not to mention that some authors are better suited for some kinds of promotion than for others. Not everybody is born to Twitter. Find out what works for you – it’s going to be different for everybody – and learn as you go along. Observe, experiment, be flexible, don’t get hung up on trivia. And remember: The book comes first.

Vampires. Zombies. What’s the next big thing?

The next big thing, huh? If I knew that, do you think I’d be working for a publishing house? I’d own a publishing house. But, yeah, I think vampires still have some life in them (oh, give me a break, I had to make that joke!). Zombies, I never thought they had much staying power. Vampires are just sexy – zombies, with all that rotting flesh, ugh, not so much. I have heard that angels might be a coming thing, as heralded by the success of Angelology. But, kids, that doesn’t mean you should all go out and start writing angel books. By the time you’ve written it, and it’s been submitted, and somebody’s bought it, and it’s been published, it may all be over (if it ever began, of course). They may be fallen angels. Paradise Lost: if it can happen to them, it can happen to you.

In my experience, many readers (ones who don’t write books) don’t understand the vital role editors play in a novel, hence the self-published industry growth. Two parter – what does an editor do? And will that need ever be supplanted?

Oh, man, an editor does everything. His first job, of course, is to find the book, and then make it the best book it can be. That means finding out what the book wants to be, and helping it get there – and that could mean anything from reshaping the whole text to just line-editing to, in rare cases, nothing at all. The editor is the crucial professional outside eye. Everybody needs one of those, no matter what you’ve written or in what format you’re publishing it.

But after the book is done – polished and perfect and glowing like a little gem – that’s when his job really begins. Because the book has to be published successfully, and every editor has to be a mini-publisher.  He has to be aware of every aspect of its publication and what every department in the house needs to know and needs to do to make that book successful – and that’s true no matter what level of sales you’re aiming at. The editor is the liaison between all the departments in the house – publicity, sub rights, production, everything. He always has to be thinking: what does the publicity department need to do something with this book? Is there a particular hook, is there something that can get the author media, does the author have contacts to draw upon to give us quotes, write an article, set up an autographing, buy quantities – anything to help things along? What’s the author’s track record? Sales has go to know. Has he published in magazines or newspapers? Sub rights has got to know. Is there any particular look for the jacket that might help? The art department has got to know. The editor has to think about all this, in conjunction with the other departments, and act as the conduit between those departments and the author.

So will the need for all that ever be supplanted? For the editorial, never. For the other parts, we all know examples of self-published authors who have been such dynamos that their books have gone on to significant and well-earned success. That’ll continue to be the case, whether we’re talking about paper books or ebooks. But being that dynamo requires a lot more time, energy and talent than most people have, which is why (among other reasons) most self-published books don’t have that kind of success. And that’ll continue to be the case, too. Allison Brennan had an interesting post partly on this very subject last Sunday on Murderati, so check it out here.

We’ve talked before about the book that got away – your white whale. Have you ever wanted to write your own? Fiction or non-fiction?

Have I ever wanted to write my own book? Well, the thought has crossed my mind, and knowing my own propensities, I’m sure it would be crime or suspense of some kind. But I know where my talents lie. I’m very good at helping other people achieve the best from their writing. If I wrote my own, I suspect it would turn out to be…downright adequate. But you never know. One day, when all the meetings and phone calls are behind me….

On to the impossible questions:

Your favorite book last year was?

I liked too many books last year to pick a favorite. I think the one that impressed me the most, however, was Dan Chaon’s AWAIT YOUR REPLY. (Everyone reading Murderati today, be warned: it’s very dark – but breathtaking.) I also had a blast with Charlie Huston’s THE MYSTIC ARTS OF ERASING ALL SIGNS OF DEATH. And Sophie Littlefield’s A BAD DAY FOR SORRY had me at its title.

Your favorite movie last year was?

For movies, the same caveat. But I was knocked out by THE HURT LOCKER – I thought it deserved all the awards it got. AN EDUCATION was a complete delight all around. And any year that Hiyao Miyazaki releases a new animated film is a banner year – last year’s PONYO wasn’t his best, but wondrous all the same.

Who’s going to win the World Series?

When it comes to baseball, let’s put it this way: Last year, when I celebrated my 25^th anniversary at Putnam, my author Randy Wayne White sent me a present. It was a custom-made Red Sox jersey with my name and the number “25” on the back. I have Red Sox memorabilia strewn around my office, and a Red Sox symbol on my office door. So I think you can guess where I’m coming from here.

And finally, what did you do with the pink feather boa you earned at Sluethfest?

For the uninitiated among the readers, every year the women at Sleuthfest vote for the winner of the Flamango Award. This year, the five finalists included Barry Eisler, David Morrell and me. Eisler won, of course – really, it wasn’t a fair contest (and I still say there was something wrong with the returns from Palm Beach….). But all five of us were draped with boas. Alas, we didn’t get to keep them – they were on loan only and will bedeck next year’s honorees. I must say Eisler, Morrell and I looked quite fetching – not everybody can carry off that look, you know. And if people search really, really hard, they might just find some video online.

As always, Neil, it was a true pleasure having you here. Thank you!!!

Neil Nyren is the senior vice president, publisher and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons. He’s been involved in the careers of many of today’s leading authors, including Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Jack Higgins, W.E.B. Griffin, John Sandford, Dave Barry, Daniel Silva, Ken Follett, Alex Berenson, Randy Wayne White, Carol O’Connell, James O. Born, Patricia Cornwell and Frederick Forsyth. His non-fiction list reads like a who’s who as well: Bob Schieffer, Maureen Dowd, John McEnroe, Linda Ellerbee, Jeff Greenfield, Charles Kuralt, Secretary of State James Baker III, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Sara Nelson, and Generals Fred Franks, Chuck Horner, Carl Stiner, Tony Zinni and Wendy Merrill.

by JT Ellison

If this is your first time to Murderati this week, I’m sorry to tell you we’ve lost one of our own. Louise’s husband, Bruce Goronsky, lost his battle with cancer on Monday. Words are simply inadequate. Please consider making a donation to the American Cancer Society in his name, and send prayers and love to Louise.

You’ve all heard the term “underwater.” The service industry refers to it as  “being in the weeds.” It’s reserved for that moment, the perfect storm, when there is simply too much going on for one person to handle.

Yep. That’s me this week. Home from tour, FINALLY, thinking I’m going to get some time off. Not really time off, per se, since I have a book due May 1, but a little breather? Maybe a chance to catch up on Gossip Girl? Read the massive stack of People Magazines that have taken root next to my chair? Talk to a couple of friends? My parents? Heck, my mom literally started pouting yesterday when I had to get off the phone after a quick five minute call because we haven’t had a chance to just plain chat for almost a month.

Suffice it to say, I’ve had a lot on my plate. And yes, the vast majority of it I put there myself, which means I’ve got a damn sore backside from kicking myself.

The tour went great. The highlight, by far, was getting to travel with my good friend, the brilliant and talented Erica Spindler. We rocked the West Coast and Denver, and had a great time. Special thanks to everyone for dinners and drinks and rides during our coastal stay (Keith Raffel, Ken Isaacson, Michelle Gagnon, Jason Pinter, Maddie James, Steven Steinbock (though I think I bought HIS drink ; ) Jim Scott Bell… ) I even saw my dear friend Lee Child and managed not to get sucked into the vortex known as the Camel. Denver was wonderful, because I got a chance to see my family, and a couple of my dearest friends. D.C. was the same, I got to meet Katherine Neville and Robbie Goolrick, which was incredibly cool, and I made a new friend, Pickles, the Easter Bunny from Borders. Though poor Randy got food poisoning and we got stuck in Baltimore whilst he was ill. I feel sorry for our neighbors.

The Tennessee Mountain Writers conference in Oak Ridge, Tennessee was wonderful. I taught two fiction sessions, Building an Idea into a Novel and Murder Your Darlings: the Art of Revision. And I spoke to the plenary session, giving a long, convoluted speech about the joys and dangers of social networking. As always, teaching gives me insight into my own writing, and while I’m still not the best teacher in the world, I’m at least getting the hang of it so I don’t have the night terrors before I go in.

And then I came home. March was gone. The book did great. My sanity, not so much.

It’s that damn To Do List, you see.

Priority 1 – My AAs are here for my October book, THE IMMORTALS. AAs, Author Alterations, are Harlequin’s version of page proofs. It’s my very last chance to see the book before it goes to press. Being a bit of a perfectionist, I do my absolute best to catch all the little mistakes: copyedits that didn’t make it in, repeated words and phrases, typos and the like. It’s painstaking work. I’ve marked the manuscript with mini-post-its every place there’s a change, purple for copyedit fixes, yellow for my changes. I’ll compile them all into a spreadsheet and mail the whole thing to New York (today!) So there’s one thing off my plate.

Priority 1.5 – Golf started this week. Randy and I made an executive decision to join a golf club this year. Playing golf on the Nashville public courses has always been good enough for us – the municipal courses around here are fantastic. But the price has gotten completely out of control. A single round of 18 holes for two, with a cart, on the public course, was running us $90. That’s just plain insanity. When we looked at the number of times we played, and the number of times we wanted to play, we realized that it would actually be cheaper to join an actual club. And said club has 27 holes and a strong women’s league, which I promptly joined.

We had our first outing Wednesday morning – and I’ll be playing every Wednesday morning from here on out. I joined the group for a couple of reasons – 1, so I would have some accountability, would make myself get off the computer and actually get outside in the fresh air and get some exercise. You can burn 1,000 calories during a sedate round of golf. And 2, the ongoing attempt at socialization. Being an introvert means I’m perfectly content sitting in the house and not interacting with people, and I have to force myself to go out and do these things. So it should be good for me.

Yes, I took 3 hours away from the multitude of things on my To Do list (one so long it’s actually giving me hives) and played golf. I played like hell, but at least I wasn’t on the computer or staring at words. One of my personal goals for the year was to drop ten strokes off my game, and by God, I’m committed.

Priorities. I Has Them.

Granted, I haven’t read a book since I downed Robbie Goolrick’s A RELIABLE WIFE (fantastic book) last month, I have a stack o’stuff that needs dealing with, two books to read and blurb, oh, and that naggy little thing called a DEADLINE coming up.

But you know what? Life is too damn short. I’m the one who put all this pressure on myself, and I’m going to take it off. It’s my new mantra. I will not feel guilty for doing something that’s good for me. Everyone around me will benefit. My priorities have changed.

This has been coming for a while, but Bruce’s death this week really hammered it home for me. I have been trying to fathom Louise’s loss, and I can’t. I’m in tears right now just writing about it. And I’m getting to an age where loss is going to become a part of my vernacular. So I don’t want to lose a minute of the time I have left.

I hope you’ve taken some extra time this week to love the ones you love. Not just be with them, but truly reach out and let them know just how much they mean to you. Let me take a moment and thank all of you for reading this blog. It’s a true honor to write for you.

And now for some good news. April 16, our very favorite editor Neil Nyren will be here at Murderati for his fourth State of the Industry interview. It really couldn’t come at a better time – the industry is changing, and we couldn’t ask for a more more expert opinion on what’s going to happen. So plan to show up, comment, ask questions, etc. If you have something pressing that you’d like me to ask him, leave it in the comments. Otherwise, Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

Wine of the Week: In honor of our friends who just celebrated Passover: Covenent Cabernet Sauvignon, a Kosher Napa Valley wine. I want to go to this vineyard – I’ve heard delighful reports.

by JT

Brett and Louise have both done posts about going home recently. You can’t every really go home… maybe you actually can. All hail the conquering hero, right? The prodigal son. The prodigal daughter.

The prodigal… writer??? Who could have ever imagined that?

Recapturing our youth is an impossibility; finding a path back through the jumble of memories, to the sweet, steady heartbeat of love and friendship we received, the good times, the bad times, all get tempered with age. We forget the details and the edges blur. Five years go by and your core group of friends fall off, ten years and you’re only talking to a few, fifteen, twenty…

Thank God for Facebook, right? The opportunity to reconnect with all your old friends (and enemies, and exes, and teachers) and dredge up all those old horrid memories and resurrect the sweet ones, both of which get amplified into nearly mythical proportions.

I’ve taken care this tour to match up with old friends. I had lunch with a friend from elementary school who’s now a major voiceover actor in Los Angeles. In Denver, I had dinner with one of my best friends from high school and my best friend from elementary school, and my first boyfriend (yes, we were in kindergarten. What about it?) In D.C., I’m staying with the other best friend from high school. The memories are flowing fast and furious, and I’m opening myself up to a whole world I’d put out out of my mind.

Moving away from home changes a woman. My parents moved me around just a bit. We had several homes in Colorado, but the Great Schism happened when they moved me from Colorado to D.C. when I was fourteen. I moved from the land of forests and 4H clubs to the denizens of society, began rubbing shoulders with the sons and daughters of the elite class in D.C., the politicians kids. It wasn’t an easy transition (and probably why you can drop me into most any cocktail party across the board and I’ll happily makes friends with the closest smile.)

I went to high school in D.C. After a disastrous first year in a small Florida college, I transferred to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. I wanted to go on in the political arena, and decided against Harvard so I could live at home for free and attend GW. Met the hubby that first night of classes, and he turned my world upside down when we eventually moved to Nashville.

I haven’t been back to D.C. for twelve years. And here I am, doing signings, riding around in cars with boys, signing stock in bookstores, drinking in pool halls, allowing the memories to creep back in. I’d forgotten how much I love this place. When we moved to Tennessee, I wasn’t happy, but I tried to hide that because I knew my husband was. And then I fell for it: the beauty, the dichotomies, the very differentness of it. Eventually, I was totally in love with Nashville, and I began to view D.C. with the same sort of horrified reverence as I do most things in my past – a world that happened to another person.

Kind of hard to separate past from present when you’re looking through your yearbook and laughing yourself into tears at the pictures, the memories, the genuine happiness. You know?

As you can imagine, I am much relieved.

My senior year annual was called YOU WANNA WHAT? I helped design the cover, a compilation of question marks and exclamation points. (This is not a surprise to those who know me, I am a fool for a well-placed exclamation point…) This is what the title means:

YOU WANNA WHAT?!

You can do ANYTHING you set your mind to. If it means going to the moon or getting an A on your English exam. The choice is yours; your interests and dreams grow during your time here and you leave with an idea of where you are going. Look around you and enjoy yourself. Do it all; varsity letter, straight A’s, anything you want. Now is the time, before you grow up. Don’t let anyone discourage you, if when you tell them your goals, they ask in an astonished and impressed tone; YOU WANNA WHAT?

I wonder, if that hadn’t been the theme of my life during those formative years, if I would have done some of the things I have? No one ever said no, you can’t. They only said yes, you can. Yes, you will. Yes, I believe.

Full circle. It’s a strange, strange feeling.

Okay, Murderati – what were you in high school? Happy? Sad? Most likely to succeed? Most likely to think cheerleaders were brainless twits and dye your hair, or date and marry them? Insider? Outsider? Sidewinder? Druggie, freak, band geek, theater geek, radio club, debate, athlete, Honor Society??? Share. (I wasn’t anything. I was a track geek, I guess, an athlete first and foremost, but I floated like a firefly between all the groups, with a friend or two in each clique.)

Because apparently, you can go home again.

Wine of the Week: Lemon Drops and Red Headed Sluts. Don’t ask….

John Scalzi, science fiction novelist and blogger extraordinaire, had a piece a couple of weeks ago about how his manuscript creates jobs. It’s a wonderful article, one I highly recommend you read, if only for the behind-the-scenes glimpse into how a book goes from writer’s brain to reader’s brain. Scalzi sums up the publishing landscape well by pointing out what’s obvious to us writers, but perhaps not so obvious to readers – putting out books is a team effort.

As I write this, my new book has been on the shelves for a little more than a week. It’s official release day wasn’t until March 1, but it was in bookstores for a while before that (copies were leaking out all over the country.) I’ve spent the last week doing radio, television and print interviews, and signings. Five signings, to be exact. By the end of the day Friday, that number will be seven. In two weeks, the tour will be over and I’ll have done thirteen readings/signings and attended two conferences, and will be on my way to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to teach a couple of workshops for the Tennessee Mountain Writers. Today, I’m in Knoxville, TN and Forest City, North Carolina, doing my thing.

Tiring, yes. Nothing compared to the unreal touring schedules of the big dogs, but enough to wear me out. But it’s exhilarating too, because there’s one thing every single signing has in common – the kindness of strangers.

With Scalzi’s formula in mind, I couldn’t help but think about how many people, most relative strangers, have contributed to the success of this book. Store managers, CRMs, publicists I’ve never met but on the phone, reporters, the folks who work at the Harlequin distribution center in Buffalo, New York, Librarians, fans, bloggers, Twitterers, Facebookers, and of course, the non-strangers – friends, family and spouses – I can’t begin to cover them all. Add in Scalzi’s list, editors and assistants and interns and marketing and publicity and sales and management and buyers and accounts…. It’s kind of mind boggling, really, when you think about the months you spent in utter isolation creating your magnum opus, and how far-reaching the work ultimately is.

Even if one reader buys the book, just one, the cycle has worked.

And if you can imagine that cycle recreating itself for the 170,000 odd books that are released each YEAR…

Yeah. And they say the book is dead.

I had all this floating in my mind because the kindness that’s been extended to me over the course of the past week has been overwhelming. I’ve received gifts from fans – Brenda from Tennessee brought me a stunningly beautiful Vera Bradley tote, replete with glasses case, travel tools and oodles of pens and paper. She said it was an early birthday present. It was much too generous, and I’m going to treasure it always.

And then there was Beth, in Lebanon, who came in all out of breath and so happy she hadn’t missed me because she’d been very busy helping birth a foal from one of their prized Tennessee Walking Horses, a champagne filly they named Yorks J.T. Ellison. Yes, I have a horse named after me. My jaw was literally on the floor. But there was more – they also have Yorks Taylor Jackson, and are planning Judas Kiss and The Pretender. Tickled me to pieces.

Then there was Shirley Holley and Mayor David Pennington in Manchester, who rallied up the folks who helped me with the research for the book and hosted me at the Manchester Library for a signing.

Overwhelming kindness.

I’d already planned to write this post, was composing it in my head when I was running errands Wednesday. The usual haunts – Staples (to make copies of my copyedit that thankfully landed on my desk when I had three off days to address it!) Walgreens for more miniatures for travel, the post office, the laundry. After Staples, I pulled up to Walgreens and there was a small, wizened old woman out front, begging. Now, homeless folks begging aren’t something we normally get out in the burbs. I was shocked. And as per usual, I had no cash on me. I said sorry and went into the store. Bought my things, walked out. She hit me up on the way out too; I apologized again and got in my car. Sat there for a full minute trying to figure out what to do. I finally shrugged it off, I had no cash, and what was I going to do, go to the ATM? I went to the post office to mail my copyedits, and realized I’d left my credit card at Staples in the copy machine. As I went back, I couldn’t get this woman out of my head.

Sure enough, someone (a kind stranger again) had turned the card in. I went back to the post office and decided I wasn’t going to be a hypocrite. What kind of person would I be, talking about the kindness of strangers on my blog, if I didn’t walk that walk myself when faced with someone in need?

I spent five minutes agonizing over whether to get her coffee or hot chocolate, knowing that it was cold, she was old, she needed energy and ingesting sugar is a good way to do that. But would she want her coffee with cream? With sugar? Should I keep them separate and let her doctor them herself? Should I dump them in and take my chances? What if she was lactose intolerant? In the end, I went with the hot chocolate. With whip cream. I know, it’s not much, but outside of taking her home with me, it was my best-case solution. It was snowy and cold and I figured she’d appreciate something hot.

By the time I got back to Walgreens, she was gone.

But as I drove away, I spotted her in the parking lot of the Pizza Hut. She turned when she heard the car and my heart felt full to bursting. I pulled beside her, put down my window, and handed her the cup.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Hot chocolate,” I replied, beatific smile in place.

She shook her head. “I don’t drink milk or chocolate products,” she said, and turned away.

The cliché came to me immediately, – hey, beggars can’t be choosers. But that’s her right. She could have been lactose intolerant, or diabetic. Or, she just wanted money. I, on the other hand, wanted to make myself feel good. I felt guilty that I was warm in my car, with money in my bank account and a roof over my head. I guess she taught ME, huh?

When I used to work in downtown D.C., we kept Burger King coupons in our pockets for the homeless. They’d accost me as I walked down the street, and I’d hand them the coupon – they could redeem it for a free burger. A good deal, I thought. I quickly learned they didn’t want the food, they wanted money for alcohol and drugs. Sad, that. I’m hoping that my little old woman wasn’t out for a quick high, but that’s probably the case.

Like Rob, I’m tired and overworked and a bit rambly, so I’ll end it here.

This is an ode to those who make an effort, whether we realize it or not. Thanks to everyone who’s made my tour thus far so damn much fun, and for those who quietly help those less fortunate, in word and deed.

Any good stories about times you’ve tried to help people who don’t want help???

(Forgive me for being sketchy today, I’m in a car, and I get naseaus trying to type on my iPhone whilst in motion. But I’ll have several down moments, and I’ll pop in then : ))

Wine of the Week: Anything from Chile. After the recent earthquake, much of the wine was spilled, the racks broken, and general havoc wrecked throughout the Chilean wine industry. Estimates say 12% of the 2009 vintage was lost. So show your support, and ask your local wine store for a few suggestions. Chilean wines are excellent, you can’t miss with the cab, or the caremere.

This is the story about how this:

Became This:

And turned into this:

The Cold Room is a novel that underwent many changes. It started as a challenge, the tiniest spark of an idea. I wanted to write a serial killer novel that didn’t have any blood. I don’t think you need blood and gore to make a book exciting and different. The psychology behind these acts of violence are where my interests lie anyway, so I decided to try a different approach.

But of course, then I had to figure out HOW exactly the killer worked. And to do that, you start with victimology.

I was teaching a fiction weekend for the Tennessee Mountain Writers, and we were working on developing characters. Since that’s sometimes a very difficult task, I took a different tack – I gave my class photographs of ordinary people and asked them to list everything they could about them – name, age, sexual orientation, biggest shame, etc. The first female character was this woman.

There was something about her that screamed to me. Along with my class, I spent five minutes writing down everything I knew about her, but I did it in story context. You see, I needed a victim.

For the record, I have no idea who this woman is. I’m probably pirating this shot, because I have no earthly idea where I got it from. It’s been two years since I wrote that paragraph, but the words stayed with me:

There was that spark again, right there, the fourth shot. Oh, the power in those eyes. The slim jaw, the hollowed cheekbones, her clavicle sticking out like a sword from her shoulder. The hint of her breasts, just the slightest swelling. The memory of those dark ruby nipples.

Click.

The next shot wasn’t as intoxicating. The spark faded to resignation. He’d captured the moment perfectly. He preferred the righteous indignation she’d showered into the lens, though there was something to be said for the moment of truth.

Click. Click.

Click, click. Click, click.

 

Those words became the opening of a novel I had titled SYNCHRONICITY.

There were problems immediately. The concept of the book was on a scope so large that I had my doubts whether I could pull it off or not. My editor needed a new title: the word was too big, the associations to a particular band too immediate. I tossed around a few and ended up with the title Edge of Black. We all loved it. I tried to write the story, using my opening above. Struggled and struggled and struggled, knowing there was something wrong, but not knowing what it was.

It hit me in a flash of light one stormy morning. It was a single word. Dark. Those dark ruby nipples.

My victim wasn’t white. She was black.

The words came easier after that. I knew my victim was terribly thin, terribly scared, and doomed. I didn’t know why she was black, didn’t know why she was so thin. But I kept writing, moving the story forward, confident that she would tell me why.

She did.

The progression went something like this.

She’s not white, she’s black. Okay, that makes more sense. But why is she so thin? Is she anorexic? No, that doesn’t work. Oh, but he’s starving her to death. He starves his victims to death. Why would he do that? So they won’t suffer. He has no desire to see them suffer. But why… oh. Oh! That’s why. Because he wants to have sex with her, but needs her to be dead first. He’s a necrophiliac. No, he’s a necrosadist. He’s preying on small women who are easily overpowered and won’t linger too long so he can have sex with their dead bodies. And he’s left his first victim in a tribute to his favorite artist, Picasso, and his incredible Desmoiselles D’Avignon. And that opening scene isn’t the right opening. It needs to be something less obvious, something creepy. Something…

I wrote the new opening chapter on a Thursday. I was so freaked out by it that I didn’t open the manuscript again until Monday. That’s how I measure my success – if I creep myself out, I’ll creep everyone out.

Suddenly, I had a story.

And then the nightmares started.

Wicked bad nightmares, ones that drove me, shaking, out of bed to turn on lights to chase away the shadows and check the locks on the doors.

Writing about necrosadism isn’t something I necessarily set out to do. But once I realized that’s who my killer was, and that’s why his victims were so thin, the whole book came together with a crash.

I needed to do research about this, and that’s where I ran into trouble. There are a number of what’s called “sleepy sex” message boards on the Internet. I learned that necrophilia isn’t only what we think – at its basest, it’s about unresisting sex. I learned that men who use drugs to incapacitate women before having sex with their lifeless bodies are necrophiliacs, and much more common than we can imagine. I saw photographs and video of people creating sleepy sex scenarios – down to the man whose girlfriend got in a coffin so he could sneak in, take her out, undress her, have sex with her, redress her, then close her back in the coffin.

Harmless, right?

Disturbing, for sure. For some reason, it bugged me, though everyone around me loved the story.

There are times when I wish I could just write a book without doing the research, just so I can avoid polluting my brain with these kinds of images.

But then I’d be shirking my responsibility as a writer examining the human condition, and where would that leave me?

Probably sleeping better, if I’m honest. But not as satisfied that I’ve done my best to portray the bizarre philias and fetishes that exist in this particular fictional world.

The book grew from there. It became about so much more than necrosadism. It turned into an exploration of self, of betrayal, of courage. I was pleased with the results. Finally finished, it went through the usual motions.

I began to sleep again.

Edge of Black was about to go to print when my editor called. They had pulled the book. They wanted to go in a different direction, one that would ultimately benefit me and my career. We needed a new title, to start. We would get new art. We had a new release date. And I needed to go back to the book I was so happy was behind me and make some changes. Not to the crime plot, mind you, just a few tweaks to my main character. The story was so grim, she needed to have a little bit of something more to temper it out.

Cue the nightmares again. Because even when you’re just putting a few touches here and there, you’ve got to reread. And re copyedit, and re just about everything.

Ugh.

But as always, my editor’s instinct were right.

Retitling a book whose title I was in love with wasn’t the easiest thing to do. But I did it. Immediately. Because when my editor said they wanted something more concrete, I thought of a basement. There is a basement in this book. A basement with a glass coffin. And a killer who is obsessed with both art and classical music, who sings arias from his favorite operas to his victims, once they’re dead.

And you, my princess, in your cold room…

It’s a translation from Turandot. He sings it to his victim. It was already in the book, waiting for me. And that was it. I’ve never felt so strongly about a title before. Thank God everyone agreed.

And so THE COLD ROOM was born.

The book comes out this Tuesday, February 23. I have a crazy fun tour schedule in place, with lots of local events, plus North Carolina, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and D.C. I’m looking forward to spending some time with good friends on the road. We’re also giving away a free ebook of ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, and for the first time, I’ll be in audio too – with the incomparable Joyce Bean narrating. And all the books are available in ebook format for any kind of ereader.

So what do you think, ‘Rati? There’s a lot here to talk about on the road, too much to cover everything. What parts of this story do you suggest I speak to?

Wine of the Week – Well, we should probably have a bottle of Zardetto Prosecco to celebrate the birth of the book, don’t you think? Cheers!

JT Ellison

There is nothing more remarkable than the moment you realize you are no longer a struggling debut writer, but a real live working author. I’m not quite sure I’d fully grasped that concept until now, as I begin the penultimate blog before my fourth novel goes on sale.

Trust you me, when I started blogging here at Murderati on April 7, 2006, when I had an agent but no book deal, I never dreamed that I’d be at this point. I’m not being modest, I really, truly, honestly never in a million years thought that in a mere four years, I’d be doing what I’m doing.

What I’m doing is writing book six, and thinking about book seven, and getting ready for copyedits on book five, and promoting the living hell out of myself and book four, and working on three shorts for anthologies, and remodeling, remembering to breathe and beginning my foray into a bunch of foreign markets.

I am blessed.

A momentary aside: I am not kidding when I say that. I KNOW I’m blessed. Yes, I work hard, very hard. But there’s always an element of luck and timing involved in publishing, two things that have been in ready abundance for me. I don’t know why that is. I wish to God I could share it with everyone.

But that’s what happens in this crazy world. Sometimes, if you’re very good and very lucky, you get a break. Sometimes, if you’re very good and very lucky, you don’t get a break. It’s not fair. It upsets me to no end. I want everyone to be happy, published, self-sufficient. I know that’s not the case. Because there’s a downside to the good – friendships lost, sleepless nights worrying about what’s to come, the fear of a book’s complete failure. There comes a point where sharing good news can only be done with a few trusted individuals, because you don’t want to hurt anyone else’s feelings with your joy.

That’s a lonely day. And it’s especially bad when you’re in the month leading up to a book release, when all you can thinking about is you and the novel and your positioning for the next interview, and you cringe knowing everyone who knows you must be sitting back and saying my God when did it become all about HER? You find out who your friends are when things are bad. You find out who your friends are when things are good, too.

But the good, it outweighs the bad. It outweighs it ten to one.

There’s a moment in the promotion schedule that I always hit – what in the world am I going to talk about with this book? I’ve been suffering with that malady tremendously with THE COLD ROOM – on its surface, it’s a novel about necrosadism, though there is so much more to it than that. There’s a secret in the book. Something that I don’t want to talk about – that’s not true, I DO want to talk about it, but I’ll ruin it for the readers if I do – so I’ve been stubbornly clinging to the mentality that I don’t have anything but that to discuss. I’ve had a horrible mental block on this, and we’re only three weeks from launch day. I have a punishing schedule of appearances and travel, and no matter what I want or don’t want, I have to talk about this book. I’ve tried to make notes, and nothing’s coming together. I am doomed.

And then my editor needed a series of questions answered for the Polish translation of ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS.

ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS? Hell, I haven’t even thought about that book for years. Literally, years. How am I supposed to think about that when I’m trying to figure out what to say about book four? And write book six? And remember to breathe?

IAMNOTACOMPLETELYNEWAUTHORBUTIAMSTILLFIGURINGALL
THISOUTANDTHEREISAFINITEAMOUNTOFRAMINMYHEADAND…

So I got on a plane. Flew to my parents (it was a scheduled trip, but after the past month, and knowing what’s coming in the month ahead, I was really looking forward to being on a plane with no Internet for an hour and a half.)

I put on my earphones to discourage the negative Nelly next to me (note to flyers: NEVER open to your seatmate with a story about a plane crash. IT IS BAD LUCK!) settled in, and the second the bell dinged, I dove. I listened to some MUSE, some METRIC, then hit shuffle and closed my eyes. The first song that came on was Sarah McLachlan’s ANGEL.

Which is the theme song for book six.

Which I haven’t heard forever because I forgot I made it the theme song for book six.

Because I am an idiot.

And everything fell into place with one of those big huge cosmic CLICKS!

I suddenly remembered what I wanted to do with book six. I realized what I needed to talk about on the road for THE COLD ROOM. I remembered the joy and the agony of writing ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, and where I was four years ago, no deal, no books, no worries. I remembered that I have people, people who love me even when I’m being selfish, who want so much for me and put up with my nonsense.

I found my center.

I opened my Moleskine and started writing. I laid out everything I wanted to touch upon during the tour. I worked on the standalone. I worked on a short story. I made notes on THE PRETENDER. I listened to Angel over and over, and the blood, sweat and tears I’ve been putting in for the past four years just flowed onto the page.

I got off the plane feeling better than I have in months.

2009 was a rough year for many of us. Ours was particularly rough on the non-JT side of the fence, but a great one for JT. Which threw a great big rift into my ability to keep the two separate. I’ve been spinning my wheels for months now – working but not feeling wholly involved, promoting but resenting it, writing but feeling a spark missing.

That fire relit itself on the plane, because I had to think back, truly reach back in my mind, to remember something about my debut novel. I’m sitting here on my parents couch, looking at the waves, remembering how it all began.

Funny how life works, isn’t it?

Next time, I’m going to bore you to tears with all kinds of details about THE COLD ROOM. It was the most difficult book I’ve ever written for a number of reasons, and I’m ready to talk about that.

But today, let’s celebrate someone else.

My friend Carla Buckley will join the ranks of published authors for the first time on February 9, with her fantastic debut THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE. I met Carla through the ITW Debut Authors Committee, and we were fast friends right away. I am so excited that her time draws nigh, and hope you’ll welcome her with a due accord (BUY THE BOOK!!!)

Here’s the officially skinny on Carla:

Carla Buckley is the debut author of The Things That Keep Us Here (Delacorte Press, February 2010.) Orion in the UK and Wunderlich in Germany pre-empted rights to her first two novels. Carla is the Chair of the International Thriller Writers Debut Program and currently lives in Ohio with her husband and children.

A year ago, Ann and Peter Brooks were just another unhappily married couple trying—and failing—to keep their relationship together while they raised two young daughters. Now the world around them is about to be shaken again, when Peter, a university researcher, comes to a startling realization: a virulent pandemic has made the terrible leap across the ocean to America’s heartland. And it is killing fifty out of every hundred people it touches.

Food grows scarce. Neighbor turns against neighbor in grocery stores and at gas pumps. And then a winter storm strikes, and they are left huddling in the dark.

Trapped inside the house she once called home, Ann Brooks must make life-or-death decisions in an environment where opening a door to a neighbor could threaten all the things she holds dear.

Whew! That’s the way to grab our attention, Carla. Many, many congratulations!

Wine of the Week: Bogle Phantom An outstanding wine for under $20 that is full, and ripe and utterly yummy!

P.S: See how it all began! ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS is available as a free download! Stop by eHarlequin or my website to get your copy.

JT Ellison

How much do we need? How much is too much? At what point does our dependence on information supersede our creative life?

These are all questions I’ve been asking myself this week.

I will be the first person to admit that I’m an information junkie. News, current events, politics, heck, even the weather: I’m constantly updating my internal databases with the latest news. The same goes for my publishing career. I’m always asking questions, wanting the latest information. I read the industry blogs, get daily mails from Publishers Weekly, Publisher Marketplace (silly, because the information contained therein really is redundant, I should pick one and let the other go) Galley Cat; newspapers, police sites, anything that might help me research, or learn, or feel informed.

I subscribe to RSS feeds of several major publishing related blogs, like Sarah Weinman. And I subscribe to several other kinds of blogs – news oriented, productivity oriented, wine blogs, funny blogs. It takes me nearly an hour to catch-up every morning, and more and more lately, I’m falling behind because I run out of the allotted time. (Because if I don’t allot a specific amount of time, I can easily splurge and read blogs all day.) There are just so many fascinating parts of the world to explore, and many, many writers who explore them in ways that I never can. So I read and experience these things vicariously, and feel smarter because of it.

Perfect example, right now I’ve subscribed to the Crime RSS feeds of the London newspapers, because I plan to set a book there and I want to get a sense of what’s happening. Do I need to do this? No. I could wait until I get ready to write the book and do the research then. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

But why is this necessary? Why do I need to know all of these things? Need. Want. Two very different beasts.

I’ve been “complimented” in the past for being “plugged in.” I was actually introduced to a group as having my “finger on the pulse of publishing.” You can only imagine the internal cringe when I heard that. And it’s not true at all – I rely on others to feed me the most current information. Then I synthesize it and apply it to whatever project it needs to get applied to. I don’t take this as a compliment – to me it says I’m spending too much time away from my job. I’m a novelist, after all, not a journalist.

There is a tipping point, a moment when you realize that while it would be nice to know every single detail of the world, you don’t need to. Trying to know everything is incredibly, incredibly stressful. My tipping point came last week, when I realized I was spending half my allotted blog reading time slogging through Mashable. Mashable is a cool site, with lots of content. So much content that you could easily read Mashable alone and never get a chance to do anything else. It’s information overload at its finest. The day I deleted Mashable from my RSS feed was my first step toward information independence.

Here’s more irony for you—late last year I adopted a minimalist lifestyle, which included trying to have a more minimalist experience on the Internet. I just realized that in my quest to learn about minimalism, I ended up subscribed to 12 minimalism/productivity blogs, all of which basically repeat the same information over and over again. Not very minimalist. It was ridiculous, really. Anyone can talk the talk. It’s walking the walk that’s the hard part. There’s one blogger (who shall remain nameless) that I used to love. When I realized that he spent all his time talking about creativity, yet never creating, I deleted him from my feeds.

Psychology time. The most minor self-examination led me to a quick conclusion: It all boils down to the fact that I have a few small issues with control. As in, I’m a control freak. I’ve been known in the past to end up lifting heavy projects myself because I don’t trust others to do it right. It’s narcissistic, at best, to assume that my way is the best way. So the way I approach information is similar: If I KNOW all these things, then I’ll never get caught short out in the real world.

I think we all experience this from time to time – we are the ME generation, after all. We want to be smart, to be hip, to be now, to know more than the person next to us. It’s borne from the same motivation that causes us not to listen to others when they speak—the weird way our brains work in conversation, mentally composing our next sentence to sound witty, erudite, charming and funny, not fully paying attention to what the other person is saying. Come on, admit it, you’re guilty of that just like I am. Naughty, naughty.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a certain amount of information that you absolutely need to know to succeed in your business. But do you need to know everything? Every nitty, gritty detail? No. The world is not going to end if you hear about the Google Settlement the day after it happens through the grapevine. We lose days talking about publishing houses getting kicked out of writer’s organizations, authors who take on reviewers and end up in the New York Times, Twitter gossip – all under the guise of necessary information. But is it really necessary? No. Not necessary.

Deciding the difference between necessity information and curiosity information is a good place to start with this. What do I need to know to get through my day? What will niggle in the back of my head if I don’t give it a glance?

While analyzing that dichotomy, I realized that the level of information I need has changed dramatically over the years. When I was first starting out, I HAD to know as much as possible, because having a little insider information might have made the difference between getting a contract and not.

But now? Now I don’t need to be up on the latest news from agenting. I don’t need to read about creating a synopsis. I definitely don’t need to read people’s publishing stories, because no matter what, it ends up being a comparison of apples and oranges, and many of the oranges have had a rough go of it lately, and are getting a wee bit negative on their blogs. (These posts are more likely to bring me down than up, and that’s not what I want from my online reading excursions.)

I have an agent. He’s wonderful. I’m not looking for a new one. I find myself reading agent blogs, thinking, hey, that’s good advice, and passing the information along to the folks I know who need it. And while that’s nice of me, it’s really not my job to educate people about how to get an agent. (Narcissism again. Tsk.) I don’t need to be reading every detail of the DRM issue. I’ve put a team in place to work for me, to deal with these issues so I can focus on my writing. Knowledge is power, most definitely, and I don’t advocate falling off the train entirely. But ascertaining what you must know versus what you want to know can shave hours off your day.

If pushed, I would say that I felt like so many people helped me out along the way, I owe it to the next class of writers to help them up too. But then I remember that weird thing called bootstraps, which I used to pull myself to the top of the heap by doing my own research on how to get an agent. I didn’t go to a writer and ask how, I researched the living hell out of it. (Hmm. Note to self. Next time someone asks me how to get an agent – I shall tell them to Google it. That’s how I got started…)

You get my point. I’m moving on.

I took some of my own advice, and deleted a ton of blogs from my daily roundup. I installed Instapaper on my Mac so I can skim headlines in the morning and give myself the sense that I’ve covered the bases, and save the detail for later in the day, after I’ve gotten my creative work done. I changed my RSS feeds – deleting about 50 that were either redundant, inactive, or otherwise not necessary to my daily being. I deleted a bunch of bookmarked pages, streamlined my toolbar so only the vital sites are visible. I dropped ALL of my social networking sites into a folder, and stowed that folder out of sight in my bookmarks that I don’t open regularly. Out of sight really is out of mind for me.

Having so many sources of information wasn’t giving me a broad-spectrum view of my interests. It was stressing me out. So it felt very good to crash my system and start fresh with LESS.

It’s only going to get worse from here, folks. E-Readers will access the internet (and where’s the fun of escaping into another world if you’re email beeps in the background?) smartphones already do, netbooks – you know why I love to travel? Because there’s no internet on the plane. That’s X number of hours that I don’t have to feel guilty if I’m not available. When that small bit of heaven is taken from me, I don’t know how I’ll ever escape. So I’m starting my good habits early, before the world goes haywire and Google starts broadcasting into our brain chips.

I challenge you to this information duel. Skip a day. Just… skip a day. Don’t read the paper. Don’t turn on the television. Don’t read your blogs. Don’t look at Twitter. Forget about Facebook, just for one measly little day.

A note on the challenge: You’ll need to replace your Jones with something. Go for a walk. Play with your kids. Write a letter to a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. Take yourself to lunch. Read a book. Something, anything, to get away from the information overload.

And here’s the kicker. When you come back the next day, delete everything. You’re not allowed to go back and read yesterday’s news or blogs. Move forward with your life, and see what happens. I’m willing to bet cold, hard cash that the world will continue spinning on its axis.

Go forth, my friends, and free your minds.

Wine of the Week: Chateau Borie de Noaillan – a very nice Bordeaux that I plan to restock my every day cellar with.

PS: I’m running a contest to celebrate the upcoming release of THE COLD ROOM February 23. Swing by Fresh Fiction and enter for a chance to win a Barnes & Noble Nook!