Omnivoracious

Tony Hillerman, 1925-2008

As you've likely heard, Tony Hillerman, whose series featuring Navajo Tribal Police detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee made him one of the most beloved of American mystery masters, known as much for the atmosphere of his New Mexico settings and the humanity of his characters as for his classic plots, died on Sunday of pulmonary failure at the age of 83. The New York Times has a lengthy obituary, by Marilyn Stasio, and Sarah Weinman is collecting other links to tributes and appreciations, including one that everyone is linking to, a moving story from Deanne Stillman, a student of his when he was beginning the series and who has gone on to write her own books about the West, including the recent Mustang. Here's an attempt at a complete list of his books:

Leaphorn/Chee series:

• The Blessing Way
• Dance Hall of the Dead
• Listening Woman
• People of Darkness
• The Dark Wind
• The Ghostway
• Skinwalkers (the first to bring Leaphorn and Chee together)
• A Thief of Time (his own favorite, according to the Times)
• Talking God
• Coyote Waits
• Sacred Clowns
• The Fallen Man
• The First Eagle
• Hunting Badger
• The Wailing Wind
• The Sinister Pig
• The Shape Shifter

Other fiction:

• The Fly on the Wall
• Finding Moon

Nonfiction:

• Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir
• New Mexico, Rio Grande, and Other Essays
• The Great Taos Bank Robbery
• Talking Mysteries
• Hillerman Country
• Kilroy Was There
• Canyon de Chelly

Children's Books:

• The Boy Who Made Dragonfly
• Buster Mesquite's Cowboy Band

Anthologies:

• The Spell of New Mexico
• The Mysterious West
• The Best American Mysteries of the Century
• A New Omnibus of Crime
• The Best of the West
• The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories

About Hillerman:

• The Tony Hillerman Companion
• Tony Hillerman's Navajoland

--Tom

True Blood: An Interview with Charlaine Harris

Since the first appearance of Sookie Stackhouse in Charlaine Harris's Dead Until Dark, readers have been addicted to this exciting and charming series set in the South. But that addiction has reached fever pitch with the debut of the new HBO series by Alan Ball, True Blood, based on Harris's "Southern Vampire Mysteries" series. Earlier this year I was lucky enough to meet Harris briefly at a convention in New York, and found her to be down-to-earth, approachable, and generous to her fans.

I recently interviewed Harris about both her books and the TV series via email. She answered my questions "sitting in my office, which is across the carport from the main house. It was intended as a mother-in-law apartment. It's one large room with a bathroom and a big closet that used to be the tool shed; I had the outside door blocked and an inside door cut. It was an inadequate tool shed, anyway. My office is "decorated" with photos of New Orleans tomb art, the usual awards and stuff, and some incredible mementos. Plus, a picture of our three children, all beautiful and talented. Of course."

           
        (Dead Until Dark, original cover and "True Blood" cover)

End-o'-the-Week Kid-Lit Roundup

In this week's roundup, we look at Halloween picture books, check in with Al Roker's latest pick, and witness a very young Daniel Handler:

Harry Potter fans imitate art. Earlier this week, a British marketing academic realized that there are four distinct types of Harry Potter fans--and those types seem to match houses at Hogwarts:

His research found 'Hufflepuff' readers take the tales at a slow, steady and systematic pace and enjoy re-reading the books over and over.

'Gryffindor' readers are eager and energetic and will devour the latest Potter book in one sitting, but quickly move on to new things.

'Ravenclaws' are subversive and take the stories with a pinch of salt, while 'Slytherin' readers are not fussed about the books.

They prefer the films but pretend to have read the books when it suits them.

If you're a fan, read the whole thing. This bit was funny, too: "...the Slytherins never really liked him anyway and the Ravenclaws are too busy writing their own fan fiction or posting spoof videos on YouTube."

Halloween books on Lookybook. I always love checking out picture-books on Lookybook, and I just noticed that (not surprisingly) they have a bunch of Halloween titles up--including one of Silas' current favorites, Ghosts in the House! by Kazuno Kohara (read it on Lookybook here).

Tale of Despereaux the latest Al Roker pick. Al's Book Club for Kids consistently picks some really great kids' books, and the latest--Kate DiCamillo's 2004 Newbery-winner Tale of Despereaux--is no exception. You can read the beginning on the "Today Show" site. (The pick was foreshadowed for me when I bought a giant twin-pack of Nutella at Costco this week and there was a sticker advertising a "Tale of Despereaux Sweepstakes" for the upcoming movie adaptation. Cue the marketing deluge.)

Describing race in kids' books. Kicking off from a student question in one of her Boston College classes, Mitali Perkins has been hosting a pretty interesting and revealing conversation, a discussion of the mental acrobatics involved when authors decide how--or whether--to describe the race of their characters. (Found via Gail Gauthier.)

Bookslut's Daniel Handler interview. Because you can never have too much Lemony Snicket, i.e., Daniel Handler, don't miss Bookslut's edifying and entertaining interview with him. Among other things, amidst talk about a movie sequel and casting, he says, "Oh, I’m lousy at casting. I pretty much got thrown out of the Snicket movie casting conversation by insisting on James Mason as Count Olaf, his death notwithstanding." Thanks to Educating Alice for the link--and even moreso, for digging up Daniel Handler's high-school graduation video, as mentioned in the interview:

Three quick links:

• Canadian award shortlists (the Governor-General's Awards for Children's Literature via Achockablog)
  
• Dragons in children's fiction
  
• The 2008 Cybils nominations
  

--Paul

Behind the Scenes: Writing a Predator Tie-in Novel

Inasmuch as I'm known as anything in the writing world, it's as a "literary fantasist". In fact, my last novel, Shriek: An Afterword, was about as literary as you can get and still be published by a large New York publisher. So it came as a surprise to some of my readers that this month Dark Horse has published Predator: South China Sea, written by yours truly. This novel is unabashedly action-adventure with a SF veneer. It's my idea of the ideal third Predator movie, preferably as directed by the ghost of Sam Peckinpah.

 
The Dark Horse edition (art by Stephen Youll), the Romanian edition from Millenium, and a joke "limited edition" (John Coulthart)

Why did I take on this project? First of all, I like the Predator movies quite a bit. I think the second one is underrated simply because it has a very outdated sense of fashion. I also welcomed the opportunity to invert my normal ratio of action and experiment with cutting scenes and creating tension in ways different than in my other novels. I knew my next novel, which I'm completing now, would be a mix of fantasy and noir mystery, with an intricate plot. Doing the Predator novel would teach me a lot. Finally, the contrast to Shriek appealed to me--I hate doing the same thing twice.

As it turned out, I had a lot of fun writing Predator: South China Sea. It features a battle-tested Predator against an island full of ex-military men, spies, crooks, and pirates. I managed to reveal a little more about Predators generally, which should appeal to the core fans, and I added touches that are specific to my original work: like a fungus-based invasive species that comes to Earth as a result of the Predator's sloppy hygiene. It's got shoot-outs in ancient temple ruins, fights with 28-foot-long African crocodiles, double and triple crosses, and characters I grew very fond of by the time I'd finished writing the novel.

I got so immersed in writing this novel that I remember that about six weeks before I was supposed to turn it in, I went out to my car to run an errand and was relieved to see I had a flat tire. A flat tire meant I couldn't leave the house. So I went right back in and kept working on the novel. I didn't have the tire fixed until six weeks later. I only left the house on weekends, with my wife driving her car. I converted one room into a gym and did my weightlifting in the mid-afternoons before going back to writing.

Geoff Ryman at Omnivoracious: The Week in Review

     
  (Just a few examples of past editions of Geoff Ryman's fiction...)

All this week, we've been featuring Geoff Ryman and his new US release The King's Final Song. Many thanks for his time and effort in sharing his teaching experiences and Cambodian adventures.

Here's a quick Ryman "Week in Review" in case you missed it:

Introductions

Cambodian Tales, Part I

Cambodian Tales, Part 2

Cambodian Tales, Part 3

Teaching at the University of California, San Diego

   

Graphic Novel Fridays: Familial Hauntings

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I take the entire month of October to celebrate it with as many of my favorite scary films and books as possible.  But the real treat is discovering new favorites to add to this annually-expanding list.  Stephen King is an October staple, as his work appears in both mediums--and he’s no stranger to comics, either.  After all, he and director George Romero teamed up to deliver Creepshow, a film that paid loving tribute to the horror comics that inspired both of them as young readers.

This month, the King family makes two very dark journeys into the graphic novel genre, beginning with Stephen’s continuation of his epic, career-spanning series in The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home.  What originally began as a series of novels that tapped into many of his works has now branched further into comics.  When The Dark Tower series seemingly ended with Book VII, there remained plenty left unsaid about protagonist Roland’s early life.  Thankfully, fans were not left wanting for long.

The Dark Tower is a hefty series, and in order to ease new fans into its strangely familiar world, the first graphic novel, The Gunslinger Born, retold events from Book IV: The Wizard and Glass, while fleshing out a few details for longtime fans.  King’s reach is a long one, but he wisely left the actual comic scripting to a well-respected and seasoned veteran of the craft, Peter David (X-Factor, She-Hulk).  King served as director on the graphic novelization, and all scripts had to be vetted through him before being handed off to illustrator Jae Lee. Paired with autumnal colors by Richard Isanove (1602), Lee’s heavily shadowed and sharp artwork could very well stand on its own in terms of storytelling.

After finishing the bestselling first collection, King, David, Lee, and Robin Furth (a historian of the Dark Tower mythology) began working on The Long Road Home, which marks the first departure from previously written material .  It picks up exactly where Gunslinger Born left off and bridges together bits of history only hinted at in the novels.  In symmetry with the season, the story features a pack of villains know as The Big Coffin Hunters and King’s very own Frankenstein Monster. Happy Halloween, indeed!  Marvel Comics has a treat for Amazon customers: a limited edition, variant cover exclusive to Amazon.com (pictured above), and it is in gorgeous black and white by artist Lee Bermejo. 

By now, it’s old hat to mention that Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, but I hope he’ll forgive the segue.  Hill has proven himself under tough scrutiny and a long shadow with the novel Heart-Shaped Box and the short story collection 20th Century Ghosts.  Like Dad, Hill has begun a graphic novel horror series, and his latest also published this October.  Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft comes in a very handsome hardcover from publisher IDW, complete with sewn-in bookmark and eye-catching front and back graphics.  While the artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez is more comic book-y than Jae Lee’s, it very much fits Hill’s active storytelling and wastes no time in getting to the bloody ghosts that haunt a troubled family on the run.  It makes for perfect Halloween reading and is in a voice all Joe Hill.

Of course, both graphic novels are best read by the light and grin of a jack o’ lantern.

P.S. Stephen King fans can extend their sleepness nights into November with his latest short story collection, Just After Sunset. 

The Books of the States: Alabama (9 electoral votes)

This one's fun. After Mississippi and Illinois, which were packed as full of icons as one of those foldout Vanity Fair covers, it's a pleasure to step over to Alabama, which has its share of big names (two from little Monroeville alone), but still has some room for a few wild cards too. Some room, but not enough room, because, as you'll see, I found it hard to limit myself to the nine in the headline. At some point we'll have to make those cuts, but for now, let's keep it loose. I've just discovered some of these books, and I'd love to get a chance for a closer look at them.

So, the Yellowhammer State (really? that's the nickname? I've never heard that before):

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: The one novel that everybody has read, right? Not me! So what do you think Miss Lee has been writing all these years since?
• Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote: Before Capote turned to Kansas and New York for his subjects, he made a splash at 23 with this autobiographical novel. And just as Capote is said to be the model for Dill in Mockingbird, his childhood pal Nelle Lee was, we're told, the original for this novel's tomboyish Idabel.
• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans: We think of it as an icon of the '30s, but it was too strange to be swallowed at the time and wasn't rediscovered until the '60s. And now its very familiarity (the photos at least) makes it hard to read, in an entirely different way.
• At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 by Taylor Branch: Martin Luther King was born and raised in Georgia, but most of the central moments in his short career took place in Alabama. If his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was book length, it would be a natural here, but you can find it in the collection, A Testament of Hope, on our Georgia list. But which of Branch's great trilogy to choose? Parting the Waters covers the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but I've put it in Georgia too. Pillar of Fire includes the main Birmingham events, but At Canaan's Edge, the final volume, begins with a set piece on the bloody march in Selma that could be a book in itself.
• The Omni-Americans by Albert Murray: Murray, who was born in Nokomis, Ala., and studied and taught at Tuskegee before joining the Air Force, is a favorite of mine: Ralph Ellison's best friend (whose reputation might yet eclipse his), and a funny, swinging (both rhythmic and pugnacious) critic. The hard part is which book to choose: the very local South to a Very Old Place, the legendary Stomping the Blues, or this against-the-grain, ahead-of-its-time critical classic.
• Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington: Speaking of Tuskegee, here is the old man himself. Washington lost his historical battle with W.E.B. DuBois a long time ago, but this autobiography, a brilliant promotional vehicle like everything he did, remains a fascinating work, playing its own changes on the already familiar traditions of African American self-making.
• The Story of My Life by Helen Keller: I should mention that Illinois and Alabama make two straight states whose real quarters actually do feature writers on our lists: Lincoln and Miss Keller--reason enough to include her beloved memoir here.
• The Ants by Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler: Wilson split his youth between Washington, D.C., and the Alabama countryside before studying at the University of Alabama. You can read more about his development in Naturalist and in another collaboration with the German Hölldobler, Journey to the Ants, but this is his magnum opus: a lavish and definitive (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) guide to one of the Earth's central life forms.
• Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet by Eugene Walter: Walter's remarkable life (from Mobile to Greenwich Village, Paris, and Rome: early contributor to The Paris Review, translator and actor for Fellini, and friend to, well, everyone), found its legacy in this idiosyncratic posthumous book built from his interviews with Katherine Clark (which, amazingly, is already out of print).
• With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge: Acclaimed as one of the finest memoirs of war in the 20th century by some writers who know war, and the writing about war, as well as anyone: Paul Fussell, John Keegan, Victor Davis Hanson.
• Maybe I'll Pitch Forever by Satchel Paige: Baseball's greatest pitcher was also one of its greatest storytellers and self-mythologizers. Some more lives of bigger-than-life Alabamans: Allan Barra's The Last Coach: A Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant, Paul Hemphill's Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams, and Marshall Frady's Wallace.
• Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse: This was the first I'd come across this 1996 graphic novel of growing up gay in the last years of segregation, which arrived just before I starting paying attention to the form, but was #86 on on The Comics Journal's Top 100 comics of the century list.

--Tom

• See all of our state posts
• Read our introduction to The Books of the States: 50 States, 538 Books
• Read our interview with State by State editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey

Geoff Ryman, Author of The King's Last Song, on Teaching in San Diego

In celebration of award-winning novelist Geoff Ryman's latest US release The King's Last Song (Small Beer Press), we're running a series of exclusive short essays from the author. Check out all of Ryman's fiction available through Amazon.

Ryman currently teaches at the University of California at San Diego, and did a stint as an instructor for a week at the famed Clarion Writers Workshop, also at UCSD.

As he told Locus in an earlier interview, “Making your living from a nine-to-five job rather than from writing wears thin after a while. If your job feeds your writing...it's great. Mostly it doesn't, and then you have maybe ten hours a week to write on Saturday and Sunday. That works as long as everything in your personal and professional life is fine too. But sooner or later, all you've done for 20 years is work. When do you have time to read? These days, any job you have, you work overtime. So I've changed it, and I'm working part time as a writing teacher.”

         
         (Geoff Ryman; photo from Gaylaxicon site)

YA Wednesday: Not-urban YA, Sonya Hartnett, and Twilight (Yes, Twilight)

In this edition of YA Wednesday, we defy classifications.

"Hi, I'm Paula and I don't write urban lit..."
I enjoyed this guest post at Ypulse Books by Paula Chase Hyman, author of the Del Rio Click series (the latest of which, Who You Wit?, comes out next week) about the problems of the label "urban lit":

"Many Black authors writing contemporary fiction for teens find themselves reminding people that what they write is not urban/street lit just because they've featured an African American protagonist in a present day scenario.

The culprit here is the use of the word "urban" to describe everything-African American."

She offers some advice to librarians and booksellers for how to be more inclusive when presenting reading options to young African Americans--urban, or not.

Go ahead...try and age-band me!
Amanda at A Patchwork of Books posted a review of Sonya Hartnett's The Ghost's Child last Friday, including some questions she had about its potential appeal to young readers:

"I can see many of us adults enjoying it, but I can't see any of my patrons reading it."

I enjoyed this strange, haunting little book, and yet the whole time I was trying to pin down who its best readers would be, age-wise. YA didn't quite seem to fit. The plot is tied up in some pretty adult concerns (e.g., the doldrums of settling down with someone in a cottage). But it's also a fable, populated with magical creatures, adventures, and mystery. And when it comes to the central themes--the search for beauty, love that you can't hold onto, etc.--these seem pretty universal. 

In a review of the book, The Guardian brought up similar questions, and quoted the author, who said in a 2002 interview:

"I do not really write for children: I write only for me, and for the few people I hope to please, and I write for the story."

A guy's defense of Twilight
HARRY at AICN wrote a funny piece this week, asking guys to give Twilight (the saga and the movie) a chance. Why? It will bring its fans over to the dark side. Basically, it's a gateway to geekdom:

"I've seen it before with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, FIREFLY, BEAUTY & THE BEAST, THE BIONIC WOMAN, WONDER WOMAN, LORD OF THE RINGS and many more.

All of these phenoms led women to de-flower a geek. TWILIGHT will lead young ladies and their MILFS and Older Sisters not only to TWILIGHT, NEW MOON, ECLIPSE and the odd BREAKING DAWN... but perhaps to LOST BOYS, EVIL DEAD 2, DEAD ALIVE and on and on and on.

Fandom needs franchises and phenomenons like TWILIGHT, it brings people to the wider world of fandom. It leads them into FAN ORIENTATED STORES like Comic Shops, it takes them to the Action Figure aisles, into the video stores and... Maybe, just maybe, to you."

Quick links...
Bookgasm reviews Breaking Dawn: "overall it wasn't too bad," except when it was:

"Honestly, I was expecting to read next that a flying unicorn whisked Bella and Edward off over a rainbow while a choir of Care Bears sang the 'Hallelujah' chorus."

The Comics Reporter interviews Lucy Knesley about her new book (a "drawn diary"), French Milk.

The Cybils post their nominees (way too many to list!) for best YA, YA SciFi and Fantasy, and YA Graphic Novels of 2008.

Chasing Ray writes about light reading and Joan Aikin's The Serial Garden, the first book from Big Mouth House (Small Beer's "imprint for readers of all ages").

MTV Canada gossips with Gossip Girl author, Cecily von Ziegesar, about the show. (Jezebel)

YALSA posts this year's Teens' Top Ten. #1? Eclipse (What do you mean, what Eclipse? Sheesh).--Heidi

Mysterious Company: An Interview with K.J. Parker

Orbit continues to impress in their new US-UK incarnation, aggressively supporting a variety of strong titles in science fiction and fantasy. One of the best of their current releases is The Company by K.J. Parker. Only vaguely fantasy because of the setting, The Company is a brilliant blend of first-rate characterization and a great plot. It takes place on an island colonized by veterans of a war that they soon find out hasn't really ended. If you don't usually read fantasy, don't be put off by the fact The Company has been put out by a genre publisher. Revelations, rising tension, and the fun of watching a satisfying story unfold should captivate most readers.

"K.J. Parker" is, as my advance copy of the novel reveals, "the pseudonym of a successful writer who wanted to try something new," although one of Parker's answers below confuses the issue and Orbit, when I asked for clarification, said they could neither confirm nor deny...anything. Hmmm. Meanwhile, according to the Amazon listings "K.J. Parker" has had a slew of published novels already. And Parker's website is not particularly illuminating on the subject.

So, um, "new"? Maybe. Mysterious? Definitely. Brilliant stuff? Absolutely. Parker recently agreed to a short interview via Orbit publicist Alex Lencicki, leading me to determine: Alex Lencicki is actually K.J. Parker! Okay, maybe not...