I hear the noise, that deep, rumbling purr. The cat sits up, stares out the window, tail twitching in anticipation. Closer it comes, closer. My heart beats a little harder. What will it be? What is about to alter the course of my day? Will it be flat, or bulky? Will it contain untold treasures, bad news?

There! I see that flash of brown, whipping into the cul-de-sac. Screech, slide, slam!

My precioussss….

I race to the door. I realize I need to get a life, then shake it off. Excitement floods my system. What has he got for me today???

UPS is here.

Oh come on. Admit it. You get just as excited as I do when you receive a package.

By Cornelia Read 

I am currently in the Sierras, on the shore of Lake Tahoe with a really bad internet connection, slightly goofy from altitude. This is not so great for trying to post something to Murderati (apologies for any formatting screwups, I’m composing in Word because we’re illegally piggy-backing on the wireless account of someone in a nearby abode who apparently went to UC Berkeley, as the connection is called GO BEARS). 

For trying to get work done on my third draft, however, it’s been a blessing. Okay, not so much the goofiness… more the lack of wireless.

Everyone else but my mother goes skiing every morning, and I hunker down on this beige chaise thing down in the living room and spend the day immersed in New York City in 1990—most of this week mentally wandering around the oldest cemetery in Jamaica, Queens, with the fictional doppelganger of a real-life distant cousin of mine named Cate Ludlam and a fictional female homicide detective from NYC’s precinct one-oh-three named Skwarecki.

(credit: Kevin Walsh, Forgotten New York)

Detective Skwarecki got named two years ago, during an auction at my daughter’s middle school. A very kind parent donated some money to the scholarship fund and she has since become a near-daily companion of mine, in an attenuated sort of way. (Is attenuated the right word? They don’t have a dictionary in this condo. Other than that it’s a remarkably amenable and non-tacky place, which is especially nice since I remember Tahoe as being the place bad Seventies architecture goes to die.)

I’m still pretty enmeshed in the first half of the book, at this point. On this third pass, I know Skwarecki a lot better—my version, anyway. She’s speaking too formally in the early chapters for a former kickass varsity field hockey player from Queens, so I’m fixing that. 

In fact, she and my protagonist bond in the book because they both swear like drunken tanker captains, and enjoy the hell out of doing so.

I’m stealing a bit of backstory for her from a real-life former cop in Queens, who started out in the late Sixties when female police officers still had to wear skirts and little stewardess caps, and were equipped with regulation purses as holsters. 

This lady, her first day on the job, got sent out to some intensely sketchy precinct house in Brooklyn, and the guy at the front desk started swearing a blue streak the minute she reported for duty, at 7 a.m., saying he didn’t want to have to take care of any little girls, etc. He ordered her to go outside and march up and down the sidewalk, “and don’t make any trouble! Don’t even talk to anyone!”

So she did that, this lady named Georgie—age nineteen or so—and after the shift-change ruckus was over, she noticed a man sitting on the curb, head in his hands. She walked back and forth for another hour, and the man didn’t move.

Finally, he began to weep, and she could ignore him in good conscience no longer. She approached him and asked if there was anything she could do to help, only to discover he spoke only Spanish. As there was a small bodega across the street, she went over there to see whether she could find someone bi-lingual to interpret for her, shortly returning with a twelve-year-old boy who spoke English and Spanish.

“Ask him what’s the matter,” she said, and the boy did.

“Mrs., he says he killed his girlfriend.”

“Ask him when,” she said, and the boy did.

“Three o’clock this morning, he says.”

“Ask him where her body is now.”

The boy did, and said, “Mrs., she’s in that Pontiac, across the street. Under a blanket in the back seat.”

“Ask him,” said Georgie, “how he killed her.”

The boy did, whereupon the man pulled a gun out from under his shirt and offered it to her.

Taking a handkerchief from her holster-purse, Georgie took the gun from him.

“Ask him,” she said to the boy, “whether he’d come inside with me.”

The man stood up and followed along with her into the precinct house, whereupon the desk sergeant began yelling at Georgie for disobeying his orders not to talk with anyone or make any trouble.

“I’ve got a guy right here who shot his girlfriend to death five hours ago,” Georgie said. “The murder weapon’s in my purse, and the victim’s body is in the Pontiac across the street. I figured you might want me to bring him in to discuss it with you.”

And then, in the words of the fictional Skwarecki (because this is about cops in New York, after all) “the boys upstairs stole that fucking collar right out from under me.”

I met Georgie in the office of the Queens District Attorney, where I heard the story from an admiring colleague of hers, a great college pal of mine named Eric Rosenbaum, who prosecuted Special Victims cases for over a decade—cases of horrific rapes, unconscionable child abuse—the kind of grim, awful, stomach-turning acts we would all of us like to believe our fellow humans incapable of. And Eric took a seventy-per-cent pay cut from the white shoe firm he started out at, just after law school, to do it.

Here is a random thing… last night I had the strangest dream (cue Pete Seeger). I was wandering through this bamboo forest in Big Sur with a gang of people, 

and we were lost, trying to get back to the river, and at some point someone in the dream said to me, as we were climbing up this really long bamboo ladder through all that green, “you need to go read Romans 10:10.” 

Which is kind of funny because I knew they meant the bible passage, when I heard that, but at the same time thought of 1010 WINS AM in New York, the news and traffic radio station (which reports on so many homicides and stuff during the morning commute that my soon-to-be-ex once said “it was a whole year before I realized ‘bodega’ was NOT the Spanish word for crime scene…”)

And I remembered the thing about Romans 10:10 when I woke up at five a.m. (even though in the rest of my dream I lost my car on a mountain in the rain in North Carolina and had to scramble across a slimy river bank with a flood coming in the middle of the Big Sur bamboo forest {have I mentioned they don’t actually HAVE bamboo forests in Big Sur? I’d morphed it from one I used to hike through as a kid above Honolulu} and meanwhile keep my little brother’s towel from falling off {he was about five years old again} and then ended up back in Syracuse at my old apartment {though of course it didn’t LOOK like my old apartment at ALL}, where my soon-to-be-ex had thrown hot coffee all over my family china. And,well, hey, as my soon-to-be-ex once said, “dreaming is surrealist television.”). 

So, being suddenly wide awake at five a.m.–the sun not yet up over the peaks of the Sierras and with my internet connection working, mirabile dictu— I Googled “Romans 10:10” (because, hey, who am I to look a surrealist-television horse in the mouth, right?) 

Here it is, chapter and verse, King James version:

For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

So, you know, I’ve thought about THAT all day…. even though from a New Testament POV, that sentence is telling you it’s not enough to have faith in the resurrection of Christ in your heart, you have to step up and say it out loud, which is not really where I’m coming from, in a theological sense. I think for me it resonates as something I’m trying to do with writing crime fiction, which is speak up for justice—for fairness—the kind that’s all too uncommon in real life.

When my friend Eric went home and told his family that he was going to become a prosecutor in the DA’s office, his dad said, “so, you’ll be busting poor mostly black and Hispanic people in Queens,” and Eric said, “No, I’m going to be seeking justice for poor mostly black and Hispanic victims in Queens–especially children–and I can live with that.”

I’m writing this novel based on a real-life case that happened in Queens in 1990. A three-year-old boy was beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend, in a welfare hotel near LaGuardia airport. They put his body in the motel-room mini-fridge for a week, before hiding it in the abandoned jungle of Prospect Cemetery, the oldest burial ground in the borough—dating from 1660.

Twenty years ago, my cousin Cate Ludlam was clearing brush there with a group of high-school volunteers, and they discovered little Andrew’s skeletal remains. She ended up testifying at the trial.

I would like to make some confession from the mouth about what that crime has meant to me, since the first time I heard Cate describe what had happened, twenty years ago during a party at my friend Ariel’s parents’ apartment–or at least a confession from the keyboard. 

I can’t do what Eric does, or Georgie, or even the fictional Skwarecki. 

I don’t know how to keep hurt like that from happening to any other children. I don’t know how to make it right—how we can change things for good so that the defenseless aren’t hurt. But I want us all to talk about it… think about it… speak up about it. I want our passion for justice to go from our hearts to our mouths to reality.

Question du jour: What kind of justice would you most like to see in the new year? And I mean something that’s what your heart believeth unto righteousness, not politics. Give us the utmost message would you most like to speak from your conscience to the universe’s ear, and see made manifest.

Here’s mine: 

Happy, happy, happy 2009 to all of you and everyone you love. May it be the best year ever, and may all of your wishes come true. 

Ah, it’s that time of year again… when I wonder whether I should just throw in the shopping towel, wander up Telegraph Avenue here in Berkeley, and settle for buying a random three dozen tie-dyed shirts for those on my gift list and call it a day.

If you, like me, have waited far too long to get your consumerial butt in gear, and/or if you have a darkly snarky sense of the holiday spirit (and/or/or are buying for those who do), I have the following suggestions to offer. 

Granted, not all of these are gettable in time for Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan and that other holiday with the tree and everything, but you can either consider them New Year’s gifts or get a head-start on next year, mmmkay? (click on prices for ordering info links)

To begin with, my top choice for a holiday gift myself, in case you’re feeling generous:

Yes, from Glamguns.com–the people who brought you the custom pink “Hello Kitty” AK-47–it’s the “Motha T,” a Mother-Theresa-themed rocket-propelled-grenade launcher. The item bears a genuine photographic portrait of the lady herself, and a relevant quotation from her body of work:

“Be faithful in small things, because it is in them that your strength lies.

Amen to that… for just $3670.95

For the bowler in your life, here’s a great way to let them say, “Die, you moth#%$^&@ing last pin in the spare, DIE!”

Yes, a clear Lucite bowling ball with a skull inside. Doesn’t that just scream “holiday cheer”? I thought so.

Cranium tribal skull bowling ball, a mere $129.99

Continuing with the skull theme, here’s another one I’d really like to find in my own shopping, since I have decided my New Year’s resolution is to become a Somali pirate and take over a tanker filled with ice cold Veuve Clicquot–Yo heau heau!:

Three-by-five foot pirate flag, suitable for flying from the yardarm of my imaginary boat, La Pol Roger Jolie  $11.95 (CHEAP!)

For the person who does NOT believe it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, thank you very much:

Nihilist mints. These are the Omar-from-The Wire– Bad-asses of the mint world, and they have no flavor, because we nihilists don’t need no steeking flavor, you feel me?

Set of two sleek, black boxes of angst-ridden candy, a mere $4.95

And if you feel like you’re being a little skimpy, only throwing unflavored mints in somebody’s stocking, add a box of these:

Gummy maggots. What’s not to like?  If you get bored you can always pretend you’re eating palm grubs, like the Tasaday. Set of two $4.95

For the serious crime writer in your life, I offer this ineffable desktop reference companion:

I’ve found it an invaluable writing resource, and reading it’s also a great way to get a whole row of seats to yourself on just about any subway car in the world, especially if you have a companion copy of Practical Sexual Homicide Investigation resting in your lap to boot.

Lots of pictures in both. Not for the faint of heart… $99.95

For those concerned about the current direction of the publishing industry:

A compass hip flask. Sure, there’s no needle on the thing, but it comes filled with whisky, and besides which with a hip pocket full of brown liquor, we don’t need no steenking directions. £35.00, so you KNOW it’s fancy

For those who’ve never seen the aforementioned Hello Kitty AK-47 (because I know you’re wondering):

This baby fires 7.62 mm 125 or 150 grain ammunition with a muzzle velocity of approximately 710 meters per second and a maximum effective range of 300 meters. Faster pussy cat! Kill! Kill! $1072.95

For your next MWA pot-luck party, consider the classic Jell-O brain mold:

My sister has this, and she made some brain Jell-O (one package of lime, one of grape–for authentic-looking gray matter) for the disgusting-food competition at a weekend house party near Donner Pass up in the Sierras a few years ago. (She lost out to the couple who brought the meat-loaf baby in mashed-potato diapers, but got an honorable mention). Talk about brain food… $7.89

And with that, I wish you all a happy happy merry merry–or, in the immortal words of Jose Feliciano, “Police have my dog.”

Here’s a carol, just for you. Bear with me, it starts getting REALLY good about thirty seconds in:

by Pari

My parents may have done many things wrong in raising me, but when it came to literacy they were magnificent.The entrance to my childhood home — a grand hallway about 20 feet long — was lined on one side with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

Since I wasn't allowed to watch television during the school week, I'd spend hours looking at the books we owned. In elementary and junior high school, I didn't like reading. However, without alternatives, I defaulted to it most days.

When I was eight, I found a slim volume by George Bernard Shaw titled, My Dear Dorothea:  A practical system of moral eduation for females embodied in a letter to a young person of that sex. Written for his five-year-old niece, the book is a fanciful ditty. Now that I'm older, I can see that it's dated, but back then I loved its tongue-in-cheek audacity.

Among the pearls of wisdom therein is this: "If you are told any book is not fit for you to read, get it, read it."

Could there be any better advice?

I thought of that phrase last week when I read about the chairperson of the English Department at New Rochelle High School being ordered to rip pages out of the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen before giving it to students. Apparently the school district received a complaint about some of the content and that was that.

As a parent, I struggle with the issue of censorship daily. My own parents were loosey-goosey about my reading; they didn't seem concerned about it at all. I mean, my first sex education happened when Mom walked into my bedroom and handed me Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask and said, "Here. Read this. You might learn something." I was all of ten years old.

I'm less comfortable with tossing any book to my children — especially the one who is in elementary school but reads at a senior-high-school level already. I worry about her hitting certain subjects before she has the emotional maturity to handle them.

Being anti censorship is fine and good in the abstract. But when I'm facing an innocent child who doesn't know about sex or cussing or perverted violence, well I'm less cocky than I was before having kids.

Books for younger readers have changed dramatically from the days of Oliver Twist and The Secret Garden. I know. I just spent the last few months engulfed in YA lit. (I'm not talking Junie B. Jones or Captain Underpants here; my kids graduated from them years ago) 

There is an incredible range of language and topics in these novels. I applaud the experimentation and tackling of controversial issues.  But do I want my younger child reading some of them? Not yet.

However, I do what I've always done. I talk with my children about their literary choices. I'll tell them if I think the material is too adult for them. (I do the same when young readers ask about my books.) I'm not so much worried about language as I am about emotional violence — rape, incest, mutilation, extremely graphic murder scenes . . .

But I don't censor. That's my decision and I'll accept the consequences. Believe me, I've had some close calls. When my younger child was reading a fairly explicit book about the Holocaust, I was uneasy inwardly. Outwardly, I made sure to check in with her often, to help her understand and to make sure she wasn't having nightmares.

Though it was a difficult read, I can't imagine ripping that book from her hands.

The thought of tearing out the offending pages makes me nauseated. {Did you know there's a term for that? It's bowdlerizing.}

Back to the story at New Rochelle:
It doesn't end with the first article. If you haven't clicked through already, go to this link. Apparently the community — and far beyond — was outraged with the school board's decision. New books were ordered. Ah, a happy ending.

When my parents died, my husband and I took the planks of wood that graced my childhood home and installed them in our own. They're filled with books once again. Our children have the right to look at any volume they want — though I do have some on the highest shelves so that they're more difficult to reach.

I know we've discussed censorship on Murderati before, but I'd like to hear your views when it comes to children who may not have the same ability to stand up for themselves, to judge what may or may not be appropriate.

What were your own childhood reading experiences? What were your parents' attitudes toward reading?
Have you ever taken a book away from your child?
Are there books that are inappropriate for children or am I just too old-fashioned?

by Toni McGee Causey

A note from Louise Ure

To the many, many crime fiction writers who were touched by him:

I sorry to have to pass along the information that crime fiction reader and fan, Tom McGinn, died in Southern California on Tuesday, September 2.

You’ll remember him as the tall man with the Santa-like beard who came to all your signings at Mysteries To Die For, bought multiple copies of your books, and then had them autographed for each member
of his family. His wit and humor were legendary. His reading lists prodigious.

And you’ll remember him as fellow ‘Rati "Santa Tom" in his posts here.

He named a wide range of authors — from Ann Parker and Patty Smiley to David Morrell and Stuart Kaminsky as "his favorites."
I will remember him as the man who taught me that when you sign your emails with a host of hugs and kisses, Spellcheck will translate all those X’s and O’s as "tsetses."

Tsetses to you, Tom McGinn.

If any of you would like to send your condolences to his wife, Sue, please contact me at louiseure@aol.com and I’ll pass along the address.

Louise

by Robert Gregory Browne

I spent most of Saturday working on a book trailer.

For the record, I have certain reservations about them. First, I think they can be misleading in a way. And by misleading, I mean to the average YouTube viewer who stumbles across your trailer and thinks WTF is this? Is it a movie? Ooooh, it’s a BOOK.

Then he clicks away, wishing it were a movie instead, because a movie gets him excited, but a book — eh, not so much. Books require work.

Second, for those who actually like to read books and are excited by a book trailer, I think the reading experience can be ruined if the trailer in question uses faces. Once you use a face in a trailer, you take the risk that the reader has a preconceived notion of what your characters look like. Since I generally like to leave that up to the reader, showing faces — for me, at least — is a no-no.

That said, here’s a trailer that I think is VERY WELL PRODUCED, shows faces, yet makes me want to go out and buy the book:

The above trailer works very well, in my estimation. It tells the premise in a dramatic way, is fast, constantly moving, and actually gets me excited about the book.

I have seen trailers out there that are long and boring and look like they were made by someone’s twelve-year-old stepson with the beginner’s version of Flash. And authors paid money to get them made.

And that’s another reservation I have about book trailers. Many of them are poorly produced and do not reflect well on the craft. Even bad movies tend to have good trailers, and I’d say there are lot more good books than movies, so why so many bad book trailers?

Now, the following is NOT a badly produced book trailer. And I have to say the book sounds like it could be a good one. But my problem with it is that it just gives WAY too much detail. Instead of getting straight to the point, it spends too much time explaining what the story is about:

Again, WELL produced, but do I really need to know all that going in? Why not simply tease me? Yes, the artwork is nice — and apparently comes straight from the books — but, again, less is more, folks.

Finally, here’s the trailer that I made for my own book. No, it’s not a masterpiece, but it’s what I think of more as a TEASER than a trailer. No faces. A quick idea of what the book is about, a few blurbs and I’m outta there:

Now, I have no objectivity here, so I can’t say whether this is a good trailer or bad. But my publisher’s marketing people like it enough to use it, so I’m happy about that.

But then comes the next question. What do you do with a trailer once it’s done? Put it up on YouTube and its clones in hopes that someone will stumble across it? Had I not gone looking specifically for trailers, I never would have known about the above examples or the books they promote.

Do you put it up on Amazon? That’s probably a good place for it, but again, the problem is HOW DO YOU GET PEOPLE TO WATCH IT? Once they get to your Amazon page, yes, they might watch the trailer and even be compelled to buy the book, but if they’ve already gone there, they obviously already know about your book.

So, unless you can come up with some super viral gimmick, I doubt that many people WILL watch it.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from making one. Because it’s the thing to do. And it COULD help. It hopefully won’t hurt.

Because, hey — what the hell do I know?

I just work here.

by J.D. Rhoades

A good friend and colleague of mine passed away last week at the age of
83. He was a fascinating guy: a veteran of World War II and Vietnam who
retired a full Colonel from the Air Force after 32 years in. Instead of
retiring and playing golf, he  decided to go to  law school.

The more I remembered about him, the more I kept thinking, "this guy’s
life would have made a hell of a book. Come to think of it, he’d make
a hell of a character."

That’s part
of being a writer. Everything becomes potential material. You start
thinking of everything you see as grist for the mill. My usual answer
to the perennial "where do you get your ideas" question is: everywhere.

But it gets a tad problematic when your
"grist" involves real stories, of real people, and you use those
stories as the springboard for fiction.

As a practicing
lawyer in a small town in North Carolina, I see a lot of tragic things.
Some of the things I see really bug me. They stick in my mind. And when
something gets stuck in my mind, the only way to dislodge it and put it
someplace where it doesn’t haunt me (at least not as badly) is to put
it on the page.

Obviously, it wouldn’t be ethical  for me as an attorney to do a roman a clef, an exact
re-telling of a story with only the names changed, but there are some
situations that are common enough–and tragic enough–that they get
woven into my stories. The most obvious example is Jack Keller, the
protagonist of my first three novels. Jack’s a combat veteran with
PTSD. Sometimes he has, shall we say, anger management issues. He has
flashbacks. He’s a walking time bomb who’s trying real hard not to be.

Now, Jack’s story is not specifically tied to any one veteran I know.
But living in a town that’s become a bedroom community for one of the
nations’ largest military bases, and working in the court system, I’ve
seen a lot of former soldiers with PTSD over the years. And,
unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot more. One even made the national news
not too long ago when former Army medic Joseph Patrick Dwyer, who first
became famous when the papers published a photo of him carrying a terrified Iraqi child away
from a firefight, died in Pinehurst of an apparent overdose of the
inhalants he’d been huffing to make the pain go away.

That’s a haunting story, a story that cries out to be told. But
when you use fiction to tell a story like that, where does telling
something important end and exploitation begin?

It cuts even closer to home when the stories you’re telling are
grounded in your own life story. Pat Conroy, for example, reportedly
outraged his family with his portrayals of abusive fathers and
dysfunctional families  in THE GREAT SANTINI and THE PRINCE OF TIDES.
Conroy’s sister reportedly refused to speak to him for years after the
publication of PRINCE OF TIDES, but his father, a former Marine pilot,
apparently developed enough of a sense of humor over the years to begin
signing copies of Conroy’s books as "Donald Conroy–The Great
Santini."  Most of us don’t expose our family’s secrets to the extent
Conroy has, but I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of a friend or
family member asking "is that supposed to be [name of someone you
know]?" or worse "Is that supposed to be me?" It’s even worse when the
answer is "yes."

So let me know your
thoughts. What are the ethics of using real tragedy as story material?
How much real life is too much? And how do YOU  answer the question "is
that supposed to be me?"

"Uhhhh…yeah, Dusty, we’re gonna need that rewrite by Monday, not next month. And if you could make the hero a Canadian Mountie with a talking cat, that  would be great."

by J.D. Rhoades

Not long ago, I was having a discussion with another writer about hardbacks vs. paperback originals. My friend was of the opinion that unless you were first publishing in hardback, eventually readers would start to think of you as a "smaller" writer. They’d start wondering why their favorite writer wasn’t getting that shiny new hardback on the front table of the bookstore.

I had a different take on it. I told my friend that I really don’t think readers care very much if their favorite author’s new one was  in paperback original or hardcover, and to the extent they do, they’d most likely prefer the cheaper format. However, I went on to say, reviewers care, and editors care, and they, in a sense, are our customers too.

Which led me to ponder a larger question: who are we actually working for? Those of us lucky enough to be writing full time refer to themselves as "self-employed." But is anyone, really? Don’t we all have someone we have to answer to to get our paychecks? In this profession of writing for pay, who really are our clients, or, to be more crass about it, who are our customers? Is it the publishers? The booksellers? The readers?

I recall when I was studying mass media back in college, a rather pompous professor asked the class, "when it comes to television, who are the consumers, and what is the product?" The answer seemed obvious to most of us. The product, we answered, was the programming, and the customer was the audience.

No, he informed us with a smirk. The customer, he asserted, is the advertiser. The audience is the product. The programming is merely a means to deliver the human product to the corporate customer. If that delivery fails, if the audience of consumers isn’t "shipped" to the advertisers in sufficient numbers, the advertisers look to another network, station, or what have you. 

I thought at the time that was a pretty cynical and condescending way to look at the audience, but then I worked in local TV for a while and heard the higher ups talking about "delivering eyeballs" (yes, some of them did talk that way, at least in the 80’s) and I began to see that that really was the mindset.

This also may explain why I don’t watch a lot of TV.

But I wonder sometimes. Is that the way publishers see our role? In their eyes, are we there to deliver the product–the reader–to them? Are we working for them, or for the reader?

I’ve read some book-centric blogs in which the posters and commenters take the attitude that the writer is working for them. This is fine with me, because I really love readers. Hell, I AM a reader. But some of these bloggers, quite frankly, act as if writers are "the help," and woe betide the poor ink-stained wretch who acts a little uppity. On the whole, though, I’m comfortable with the idea that the reader is our true customer.

On the other hand, we first have to get the book published, and our editors are the first people we have to please. And sometimes our ideas of what the reader wants can be different. I’ve been lucky enough to have editors with whom the editorial process is a discussion, a give and take:

"We want you to try this,"
"Ah, no, that doesn’t work. But  how about this?"
"Perfect!"

But I’ve also heard horror stories about editors whose attitude was "my way or the highway," much to the chagrin of the author, who has the stomach-knotting choice between giving in or trying to face down someone who can and will get the book canned.

And then there’s the question of marketing. I think it was Joe Konrath who explained that part of the point of one of his  grueling self-funded book tours was that it impressed the publisher with how hard he was willing to work, so they put more of their own resources behind him.

So maybe we’re working for the publishers?

The problem with both of these answers–working for the reader to working for the publisher–is that it leads to endless second guessing. Will this scene work for the little old lady from Pasadena who doesn’t like it when characters, even bad guys, use the ‘F-Word"? How about my buddies who like the noir stuff? Will my editor like this one? What’s the marketing department going to do?  And first, I’ve got to get my agent on board! Will he/she like it!? OMFG!

Keep that up for long, and  you can end up like the centipede in the old poem, who, asked how she managed all those legs, started thinking so much about the process she could no longer move. After a while, having that imaginary crowd looking over your shoulder as you’re trying to write can drive you nuts. Or worse, it can make for bad, stilted writing.

So the only thing I can do is follow the age-old advice "write the book you’d like to read." In other words, as Rick Nelson once sang, "you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself."

Then pray.

So who’s YOUR boss?

(And since I mentioned paperbacks, this may be a good time to mention that the third Jack Keller novel, SAFE AND SOUND, came out in mass market paperback yesterday. If you haven’t gotten it yet, now’s a good time! Check http://www. booksense. com/ for an independent bookseller near you…
Or it’s at Barnes and Noble, Borders or Amazon.)

Pari Noskin Taichert

(Hi all,
In all the excitement of the nomination, I think we may have gotten our wires crossed about a guest blogger for today. Next Tues. will be Louise Ure and then Tess Gerritsen will alternate with her beginning on June 17.

For today, since I couldn’t find our guest’s post, I’m putting up an article I wrote during the first few months of Murderati’s existence. I think the underlying concepts still ring true.
I hope you enjoy it . . . pari )

A few years ago, I was presenting at a retreat sponsored by A Room of Her Own Foundation. Lisa Tucker, a novelist who’d just made a bundle on her first book, was the featured speaker. In an engaging, but absolutely adamant, way  — she exhorted the writers there to buy each other’s books rather than always complaining about how little money they had.

Since then, I’ve thought often about her words. During the last two months in particular — I’ve been to three mystery conventions and the L.A. Times Festival of Books. At each event, I’ve met so many authors and seen so many old friends. There’s no way I could begin to buy all their works.

So, how do I put my money and actions where my mouth is? How do I support my fellow authors, my friends in this industry? How can I encourage new authors/writers? How to do all of this while still plugging away at my own craft and the marketing thereof?

I’m not sure where the balance tips into martyrdom or a lack of generosity. Though Lisa suggested buying books as a sign of support, I simply can’t do that as much as I’d like. Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to read everyone’s works — my life is far too scattered and too full to take hours for that pleasure right now . . . alas.

But I think it’s important to consider how we can tangibly help each other in this odd profession we’ve chosen.

Here are a few ways I’ve found to do it.

I hope some of you respond to this blog with the most satisfying methods you’ve found to support your fellow authors.

1. Post formal reviews and positive comments about someone else’s books on DorothyL, 4MA and other listservs. Do the same for review sites such as Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble etc.
    Here, it’s important to be honest; I think readers of these electronic missives can smell backscratching as opposed to sincerity.

2. Cross-sell at joint booksignings. One of the most enjoyable hours I ever spent was at the LATFOB when THE CLOVIS INCIDENT first came out in ’04. I sat next to Laura Levine. We cross-sold each other’s books and had a blast. We also became fast friends that day.

3. Take your friends’ promo pieces to the conferences/conventions you attend. I try to do this as often as I can. Their bookmarks/postcards don’t weigh much and, hey, someone might find a new author to read.

4. Ask your library to carry the books of authors you care about. Though the Albuquerque Public Library system is wonderful, I often can’t find books by friends from smaller publishers — or who don’t have major name recognition.

4.a. Ask your favorite bookstore to carry the books of authors you care about. ‘Nuff said.

5. Offer marketing suggestions. Often we can’t see our own best asssets. A fresh pair of eyes might come up with a great idea that can help a friend get the word out. I’ve done this for other people and it’s been wonderful to see that click — the epiphany — when the idea is hot.

6. Talk-up authors you like. If you do, they might get invited to present at conventions/conferences/civic groups/signings. Your good word might land them an interview on television or radio. I do this frequently.
   I know it’s tempting to save all our leads for ourselves, but it also feels marvelous to share. At the very least, tell other readers you know about works you enjoy.

7. Find ways to cross-promote. Celebrate friends’ successes. We’re doing it right here on this blog. It’s wonderful not to feel like you’re alone on the publishing path.

8. Show newer authors the ropes (if they want the info). I try to be accessible to newer authors. If they want the benefit of my meager experience, I’m glad to help them avoid the mistakes I’ve made — and gain from my smarter efforts.

9. Use your websites to promote others. Yep. This gets into link exchanges and that kind o’ thing. I think these are moderately useful. One problem, though, is that strangers ask you to link as well. Personally, I don’t do that. If I don’t know the author or his/her work, I won’t exchange links because it doesn’t feel honest to recommend someone in that way.
    Related to this is posting on other authors’ blogs. It’s a good way to converse and help them attract more posters.

10. Commiserate. There are times when all another author needs is someone who understands and who can keep what’s said — or written in an email — confidential. I know this has been one of the biggest ways I’ve been able to support friends in the business. They’ve shown me the same kindness.

The ways I’ve found to support other authors abound. The ones I mention above are those that came to mind while writing this piece.

To me, it’s important to try to see beyond our own careers and to be positive citizens in our mystery community. If we do, we’ll strengthen our genre and create goodwill every step of the way.

Please, if you have other ideas about how we can support each other, post it here. We can all learn from your experience. I know I’m ready for more ideas.

cheers,

Pari