First Offenders

Move over, Henry Potty

Over the weekend, I discovered something odd while checking out Amazon. My second Annie Seymour mystery, “Secondhand Smoke,” was at No. 64 on the Books-Entertainment-Humor-Parodies list.

Parody? Really?

No. 1 in this section was “The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead” and No. 2 was “The Onion’s Atlas of the Planet Earth.”

My book was sandwiched between “Hey Ranger 2: More True Tales of Humor and Misadventures from the Great Outdoors” and “Henry Potty and the Pet Rock: An Unauthorized Harry Potter Parody.”

It seems that my book was put in the wrong category. Not that I’m complaining too much; my Amazon numbers hadn’t been that good since the book debuted last fall. And since there’s no paperback, if I’m selling even five hardcover books on Amazon, I’m happy. But I just wonder what those folks who are buying it will think. I mean, it’s not a parody. It’s a straightforward, traditional mystery with a little humor thrown in. Unless the powers-that-be at Amazon think the New Haven mafia stuff in the book is parody. They might be surprised to know the history I’ve included is all pretty much fact, gleaned from my husband’s piles of FBI files he’s collected for his non-fiction research.

Again, I’m not going to complain too loudly. I looked at the listings of mysteries, and it’s all the usual suspects: Patricia Cornwell, Robert B. Parker, J.D. Robb, Dennis Lehane. All very well-known, bestselling authors for years. 

But how many of them can say they’ve sold more books than “Henry Potty and the Pet Rock”?

Karen

P.S. Happy Halloween

Wanna see something really scary?

by Alison

Halloween is nearly here, which is getting me thinking about all sorts of things even scarier than my deadline -- fun-scary things, like rubber witch masks with big green warts on them and that Monster Mash song and ghost stories and, of course, scary movies.

I love scary movies... the scarier the better. Not the slasher ones -- those are just gross. But the ones that make you cover your eyes in fear of what's going to happen next -- those make my day. The ones you see at a theater in the middle of the afternoon and even though it's broad daylight outside, you're still so freaked out you run --- you run from 96th street all the way to your aparment on 112th without stopping, just like I did when I saw Silence of the Lambs -- I adore those. I love the ones that give me nightmares because I love nightmares -- they're like free scary movies in bed.

The thing is, I'm basically a chicken. But none of it is real.  Unlike skydiving, running with the bulls (which Karen's husband was actually considering!) or hanging out in a shark cage, there is absolutely no danger involved in sitting in a dark theater and watching a bunch of images moving on a screen. The chills are manufactured. You get that wonderful adrenaline rush -- then walk away unscathed every time. What is not to love about that?

That's why it baffles me how many people hate them. Several years ago, my husband and I met Sigourney Weaver at the screening of a film he'd worked on.  She told us she couldn't bear to watch scary movies, which absolutely amazed me -- this is Ripley we're talking about!  The woman has been repeatedly drooled on by the most terrifying aliens ever committed to celluloid, and yet she can't bring herself to watch Psycho?! And she isn't alone. I have a friend, you suggest seeing something a little dark and she looks at you askance and replies, "Isn't that scary?"  Like shes glatt kosher and the movie's made of ham.

So here's what I want to know from you scary movie haters: Why? What don't you like about manufactured thrills? Inquiring minds want to know.

And for the rest of you, what's your favorite scary movie? I love so many of them, but if I had to pick just one, I'd say Rosemary's Baby.

Happy early Halloween!

SHALLOW GRAVE is out THIS week? Okay, okay, I'll buy it!

Lori here ~

SHALLOW GRAVE is out this week - Buy my book or the kitten gets it!

My City Of Ruins

I know I promised you the top secret, never-been-done-before-here-at-FO post today, but technology is still sucking and other things have taken precedence.

Whenever I’m asked where I’m from, I automatically answer “San Diego.” Doesn’t matter that I haven’t lived there for almost twelve years now – San Diego is where I’m from and it still feels like home.

And now my home is, once again, on fire. Over three hundred thousand acres burned, nearly one million people forced from their homes, over 1,500 homes destroyed and property damage estimates upwards of one billion dollars.

Fires are a part of life in Southern California, much in the same way that I’d guess that hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding are part of life in other areas of the country. I think most people not familiar with San Diego think of it as this idyllic community situated near the ocean that basks in 75 degree weather year round. But a very small percentage of the city sits along the coast line. The majority of San Diego is built eastward from the ocean, much of it in and on long series’ of canyons. The areas to the east of the county are heavily forested and when those hot Santa Ana winds blow in from the east, you pretty much know fire is on it’s way – it’s just a matter of how big it’ll be and how far west it will get. For the past few days, it’s been bigger and pushed further west then ever before, ripping through heavily populated areas that until Monday, assumed they were safe from the annual brush fires.

In the last three years, I’ve been out to San Diego roughly fifteen times for things related to my books. Signings, speaking engagements, fundraisers, meetings with bookstore owners. Every time I go, I stay at the same place – the home of the guy I’ve been best friends with for the last 23 years. Since Monday morning, he and his wife, their three boys, their dog and their cat have been holed up in a hotel room in Anaheim, about 75 miles away (the closest hotel room they could find), waiting to hear if their home has been spared. Always obstinate and forever stubborn, he waited as long as he could, thinking they were pretty safe. When he saw a car on fire about half a mile away, he knew it was time to get the hell out of there.

For much of Tuesday and Wednesday, we were on the phone as I tried to dig up information for him. Most of the other members of his family had been evacuated also, the wireless connection at his hotel sucked, the phone lines were jammed and we figured I had a better chance of finding information then he did. From what we can tell, we think his house is safe. It appears that the fired burned right to the road across the street and that’s where firefighters made their stand. He won’t know for sure until the end of the week when they let him return home, but it looks like they will have a house to go home to.

We have dozens of other friends who’ve been displaced this week who still don’t know about the status of their homes. The odds are such that at least one of them is going to go home to bad news.

As we were searching the list of addresses that had been positively identified as destroyed by the fire, we ran across the address for one of the homes he grew up in. It was a magnificent home that they built from the ground up, with a tennis court and a swimming pool and views of the avocado orchards from every window. I recognized the address immediately because it was like my second home and it’s one of those ridiculous minute details that gets locked in your head forever, like an old phone number or an old zip code. His family sold the house about ten years ago and at the time it was tough to let it go. We talked for a few minutes about all the stupid things we did in that house over the years – jumping off the roof into the pool, hitting tennis balls at one another when we got pissed off at each other, taking girls out into the avocado groves. And we wondered who had been living there until the fire made it disappear this week and if they ever jumped off the roof into the pool and what they would do now.

If you’d like to help the victims of the fires in San Diego and throughout Southern California, you can go here.
Jeff

Last supper

I’d like to see a show of hands. How many of you writers write about a real place, use real locations, street names, restaurants, landmarks?  I ask because I’ve unfortunately come to a distressing realization:

I am the kiss of death for longtime restaurants in New Haven.

I like my city. I’ve lived here pretty much my whole life. My dad grew up here, my mother in East Haven.  New Haven’s got a lot more than Yale: it’s got great theater, amazing pizza, hopping nightlife, and, yes, good restaurants.

My editor enjoys it when I send my protagonist out to eat. In fact, when I turned in SECONDHAND SMOKE, she complained that Annie wasn’t eating out enough. So I had Annie visit a couple more restaurants.  That’s when it started.

Two months before SECONDHAND SMOKE came out, I heard that Frank & Mary’s Deli on Wooster Street was closing. After more than 30 years. You couldn’t get a better meatball sub anywhere. And Annie had done just that in the book. Too  bad anyone looking for the deli after reading the book wouldn’t be able to find it.

If it had just happened once, I would've thought it was a fluke.  But now it’s happened again.  The Rusty Scupper, the only restaurant that’s on the harbor here and where I’ve had numerous meals and drinks for years, has closed its doors.  In DEAD OF THE DAY, which will be out Nov. 6, Annie talks about the Scupper’s happy hour and has lunch with Vinny there.  What’s even worse is that they’re going to take the restaurant building down, and expensive high-rise condos are planned there. I drove by it the other day and the parking lot is blocked off.

It made me start taking stock of the restaurants I’ve put in SHOT GIRL. There’s still a year before that book comes out, so there’s plenty of time for doors to close. 

Do you think it’s a good idea to put real places in books?

Karen

Wish I'd said that!

By Alison

I'm on deadline with my work-in-progress, HEARTLESS, and I'm at that phase of writing --- sadly a long phase for me -- where those three little words keep running through my head:  "Man, I suck."

This is a bad phase, not productive at all.

To be honest, I wish I could write song lyrics instead of books. They're shorter, more instantly memorable. Plus you can sing 'em. But 've already blogged about favorite lyrics and the last thing I want to do -- in the mood I'm in -- is repeat myself. So I'm looking instead to great literature, exciting reads... books written by anyone else, other than me. I don't know if you get this or not, but sometimes, I'll be reading a book, and I'll come across a line so gorgeous, I need to share it with the world. If it's a really great line, I read it to my husband -- even if I have to wake him up to do it. I'll call friends, read it to them over the phone. And if it truly is the best line ever, I type it out, print it up and tack it to my bulletin board -- just to know that minds exist in this world that can come up with a line like this.

Don't ask why, but this is my all-time favorite line from any book ever. It's on my bulletin board and the first time I came across it (which was a while ago) I think I read it 20 times, just to make sure I got it right. It is the one line, more than any other, that I wish I'd written. It is from Joseph Heller's Catch 22, and it is as follows:

"And if that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier."

What line from a book -- more than any other -- do you wish you'd written?

I'll Get You My Pretty

Here's the Willa Cather Literary Award I picked up in Colorado Springs at the Women Writing the West Conference Saturday night. Mr. LGA and I drove 1000 miles and were only gone for 33 hours, but I gotta tell you, even driving home through the nasty blizzard from CO Springs clear to Cheyenne, WY this morning...it was worth it. The ceremony was lovely, the women in charge were fabulous, and the attendees were genuinely enthusiastic in their congratulations and in their love of books and writing.

Isn't this is a pretty award? I can't believe it's mine. I'm thrilled. Period.

Techonology Sucks

It was all set to be a ground-breaking day here at FO, where I did something that had not been done here before. I've been working on this secret project all week (okay, for a few hours yesterday - but it felt like ALL WEEK) and then this morning it all went to hell because, really, technology sucks.

Now, I can't tell you exactly what this secret, ground-breaking post was going to be because I'm determined to fix the damn thing and get it up and operational by next week. I'm not sure where it went wrong, but I will figure it out (because it was probably my fault and it'll be easy to spot my error, at which time I will utter "I am such a dumbass") and then next week's post will be incredibly awesome. Unlike THIS post.

So...in lieu of my potentially awesome post, I would ask you to finish this sentence:

"Technology sucks because..."

I'll start.

Technology sucks because it makes me feel old.
Jeff

Let's get physical

There’s been an interesting discussion going on over at DorothyL about men writing women and women writing men. It intrigues me because in my WIP, one of the main characters is a man and I’ve been trying to get into his head. 

Writing from the point of view of the opposite sex is a challenge, because even though we might not want to, we do stereotype and a lot of that stereotyping is through physical description.

I can’t say how many books about women protags (and even tough women protags) I’ve read in which descriptions of clothing and shoes are quite prominent. And women authors are just as guilty of doing this as men. Just look at our FOFO Michele Martinez’s Melanie Vargas and the shoes.  Sue Grafton always writes about Kinsey's black dress that never gets wrinkled.  I keep Annie in jeans and T-shirts and fleece. JA Konrath dresses Jack Daniels in designer suits.  Lee Child does describe Jack Reacher’s clothes — and he's always dressed very smartly — although I think that fascination, for me at least, is mostly how he gets his clothes, since Reacher doesn’t ever have a suitcase on him.

Another phenomenon (and I’m picking on male authors now) is the abundance of incredibly good looking women.  In Harlan Coben’s THE WOODS, all the women are gorgeous and have long legs.  Jim Born’s Duarte is surrounded by amazingly attractive women, as is his Bill Tasker. Wallace Stroby's Harry Rane always manages to bed beautiful, sexy women.

But women authors can’t throw stones, either.  Lori’s Tony Martinez is the epitome of hot (and if you read SHALLOW GRAVE you may find yourself blushing). Alison’s Krull may be strong and silent, but not when it counts. Michele’s Dan causes Melanie to throw caution to the wind, lock her office door and offer herself to him on the desk. In my books, Vinny DeLucia used to be a geek but now he makes Annie weak in the knees.

As a society, we are obsessed with good looking people, and it translates into gorgeous, sexy, well-dressed characters on TV and in books.  I mean, those CSI shows can't be farther from the truth when you see an actual CSI.  Can we justify feeding into that by writing these characters who take our books just a stone’s throw from the old-fashioned bodice rippers?  Can we justify this by saying that’s what readers want?  Can we justify it by saying that’s what we want?

Karen

P.S. And as expected, the Sox are choking, and the Indians are just one win away from the World Series. But the good news is, it might only be another 84 years until the Sox win the Series again.

The Quick and the Dead(line)

By Alison

I just got back from the NAIBA booksellers conference in Baltimore, which was a lot of fun. Since I love hanging out with independent booksellers and I love crabcakes, it was pretty much a win-win situation.  But, as I sit down at my desk, preparing to put the conference behind me and immerse myself in writing my next book, I'm struck by a memory that was... Well, it got me thinking.

I was at a workshop for authors about marketing your books. Most of those in attendance were either literary fiction or non-fiction writers and the theme was basically this: If you want your book to hit, you need to devote yourself to its marketing 24/7 during the six or so months surrounding its launch. When one writer raised his hand and said, "Well, that's hard  to do if you're writing mysteries. Publishers expect you to put out a book a year, so when our books come out, a lot of us are on deadline with our next ones." I was about to say, "Uh, yeah. Hello!" Until the workshop leader, a very successful literary writer, said, "I couldn't imagine that! No author should be expected to even think about their next book until at least six months after pub date, at least!" And I was struck by a wave of jealousy so strong I couldn't speak. 

Immediately, I felt guilty for feeling jealous. How long have I wanted to be a published author with a deadline? And to have a publisher that cares enough about your visibility to want you to come out with a book a year -- that's a good thing, too. But there does seem to be a perception that, while literary writers need time and space to craft their stories, we "genre writers" (as the workshop leader called us) can crank out books like flapjacks, never suffering from writers' block. Is that really fair? After all, our plots are often more complicated than those in literary novels, and many of them are populated with complex, flawed characters to boot.  In writing my own books, I feel overwhelmed much of the time, trying to concoct plot twists that make sense, as well as fully developed characters, decent dialogue and humor -- all under punishing time constraints. And I'm only on my fourth book. I look at the really successful "genre writers" -- the ones who manage to create 10, 20, 40 exciting crime fiction books with beginnings, middles and ends -- and I'm in awe. Then, I read a review which complains that their books are getting "formulaic." And I think, you just can't win, can you?

In some ways, I've found a tight deadline to be the mother of invention. Some of the best plot twists I've come up with have been at the 11th hour, born of desperation. But other times, I wonder, if I'd had a few more months, could I have come up with something even better?   

How do you feel about deadlines?