Omnivoracious

Obsidian Murder Mysteries Crash the Party

Niche mysteries are very popular these days, and the New American Library Obsidian series has just released a bevy of them out into the wild this month. From haunted bookshop mysteries like The Ghost and the Femme Fatale by Alice Kimberly (aka Cleo Coyle) to garden mysteries complete with gardening tips like Perfect Poison by Joyce and Jim Lavene (authors of Poisoned Petals), no matter what your interests in life, you can find a novel you'll enjoy.

Dance enthusiasts may want to pick up Natalie M. Roberts' Pointe and Shoot, a Jenny Patridge dance mystery, while clay crafters and crochet hobbyists may flock to The Cracked Pot by Melissa Glazer (okay, now, c'mon, Obsidian--surely that's a pseudonym?!) and Hooked on Murder by Betty Hechtman respectively. Both books include interesting tips and projects in addition to the fiction.

Finally, if you like mysteries about mysteries, Selma Eichler's Murder Can Crash Your Party, featuring Desiree Shapiro, might be just your thing. When Shapiro is invited as a speaker at a mystery writers' convention, she receives a truly bizarre proposition from a special fan: read my unpublished novel and if you can solve the mystery between the covers, I'll give you $25,000. What follows is more sinister than Shapiro could possibly expect.

All of this is light, harmless fare for readers looking for some entertainment, especially on vacation--on the plane, at the beach, while getting a pedicure. Mystery purists and lovers of brutal noir fiction need not apply. But never fear--a Ken Bruen or Tom Piccirilli novel can't be far around the corner. In the meantime, have a little fun--read a niche mystery in your particular area of interest. You might be surprised at what you find.

Down River wins the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Novel

Last night, at an awards banquet in New York City, the Mystery Writers of America announced their 2008 Edgar Award winners. We were thrilled to see that John Hart took home the award for Best Novel for Down River, which made our Top 100 list of editors' picks for the Best Books of 2007. Among the other terrific reads (and in-house Amazon favorites) in the winners' circle are Tana French's remarkable debut In the Woods and Katherine Marsh's The Night Tourist. Check out the full list of winners and finalists below. --Anne

Best Novel:

· Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
· Priest by Ken Bruen
· The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
· Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman
· Down River by John Hart -- Winner!

Best First Novel by an American Author:
· Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell
· In the Woods by Tana French -- Winner!
· Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard
· Head Games by Craig McDonald
· Pyres by Derek Nikitas

Best Paperback Original:
· Queenpin by Megan Abbott -- Winner!
· Blood of Paradise by David Corbett
· Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks
· Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill
· Who Is Conrad Hirst? by Kevin Wignall  

Best Fact Crime:
· The Birthday Party by Stanley Alpert
· Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi -- Winner!
· Chasing Justice by Kerry Max Cook
· Relentless Pursuit by Kevin Flynn
· Sacco & Vanzetti by Bruce Watson

Best Critical/Biographical Work:
· The Triumph of the Thriller by Patrick Anderson
· A Counter-History of Crime Fiction by Maurizio Ascari
· Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction by Christiana Gregoriou
· Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley -- Winner!
· Chester Gould: A Daughter's Biography of the Creator of Dick Tracy by Jean Gould O'Connell

Best Young Adult:
· Rat Life by Tedd Arnold -- Winner!
· Diamonds in the Shadow by Caroline B. Cooney
· Touching Snow by M. Sindy Felin
· Blood Brothers by S.A. Harazin
· Fragments by Jeffry W. Johnston  

Best Juvenile:
· The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch
· Shadows on Society Hill by Evelyn Coleman
· Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn 
· The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh -- Winner!
· Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things by Wendelin Van Draanen  

Tom Piccirilli: Award-winning Master of Suspense Pens an Instant Classic

Tom Piccirilli is one of the hardest working writers out there, selling his first book while in college and never looking back. Over the last twenty years, he's created keen psychological portraits of people in extreme situations, mysteries as noir as they come, and suspense-thrillers that'll keep you, as they say, on the edge of your seat.

Some of the most recent of his books include The Midnight Road, The Fever Kill, and, in another week, the amazing The Cold Spot, of which suspense superstar Ken Bruen says, ""[the book] is truly dazzling. Piccirilli has taken the mystery to a whole other level."  Publishers Weekly calls The Cold Spot, "a violent and dark tale in an appealingly noirish narrative style, highly economical yet bracingly intimate." As ever, Piccirilli approaches his work with honesty, humanity, and a keen sense of the traditions he's working in and with--highly recommended for anyone who loves mystery and suspense. This may just be the book that catapults him to the top of the bestseller lists. I read a lot of suspense/mystery novels and The Cold Spot has an intensity, economy, and tough lyricism that just plain blew me away. As far as I'm concerned, it's a stone-cold instant classic of hardboiled/noir fiction. (Click here for my full review.)

I caught up with Piccirilli recently and interviewed him about his perspective on fiction generally and his own work...

Amazon.com: From your perspective, how has horror and suspense fiction changed over the last 20 years?
Tom Piccirilli: I don’t know if there’s been much of a change in form or content. New subjects come to popularity of course. At the moment it seems like readers can’t get enough of the Knights Templar or Da Vinci or historical mysteries, whereas fifteen years ago it was courtroom dramas. The topic of the hour is always changing. In the field, there’s still a lot of fine and intriguing material being produced, as well as plenty of garbage. That’s just the way of all things, and always will be. So far as publishing is concerned, I think we all know that “Horror” is a despised term. I’m not even sure that Leisure Books, who was one of the few publishers with a dedicated horror line the last ten years and who actually put the word “Horror” on the spines of their books, does that anymore. The word itself is anathema although the subject matter of ghosts, monsters, serial killers, etc. is still popular. Maybe even more popular now than ever thanks to “paranormal romances” which take vampires and werewolves and inject a little erotica and Hepburn and Tracy dialogue in order to mine a whole new extremely popular niche. As for suspense, I think that nowadays writers, readers and publishers appreciate the good old crime stuff a lot more than they once did. There’s been a resurgence in reprints of pulp, noir and hardboiled material from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and that seems to have had an influence in producing neo-noir stylized writing. 

Liz Williams' Near-Future Detective Inspector Chen Novels

Looking for something different? Something immensely entertaining and yet with some depth? Something you can sink your teeth into? Well, I've got just the books for you: the new mass market paperback editions of Liz Williams' Detective Inspector Chen novels: Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, and Precious Dragon. (Night Shade Books)

In these near-future occult mystery novels set in Singapore, Chen and his demon sidekick Zhu Irzh--one of the Underworld's vice-detectives!--explore cases that involve ghosts, Chinese mythology, feng shui, martial arts, and travel between Heaven and Hell.

Booklist says readers looking "for something uniquely imaginative will find it in Williams' surreal fusion of Chinese mythology, paranormal high jinks, and satisfyingly suspenseful sleuthing," while Publishers Weekly praises the unique storylines, "colorful characters and imaginative settings extrapolated from ancient Chinese mythology...that fans and new readers will enjoy."

Whatever makes you tick as a reader, you'll something to like in this unique, well-written, and fast-paced series.

Author Fact: A British novelist with a background in magic, Williams is a past Philip K. Dick Award finalist.

The Dog and Pony Show (Guest Blogger: Lisa Lutz)

It seems that a few people are curious about what a book tour involves, so I figured I'd take a stab at describing the experience in a kind of diary form.

Let me preface everything by saying that a book tour nowadays is a rare opportunity to promote your book. They cost publishers a lot of money, and no one is entirely sure how effective they are as a marketing tool. That said, if you're sent on a book tour, it's a good sign. Authors (especially new ones like me) need to be grateful for the vote of confidence it represents. That means they have to suck it up and be pleasant. At all times. Here's just a sampling of my most recent book tour experience:

Day 1. I wake up at 4:30 a.m. for a 7:00 a.m. flight to Philadelphia. I've slept only two hours because of my anxiety about the alarm clock not going off--a theme that marks much of the tour. My flight is almost on time, but my luggage is an hour late. When I arrive at the hotel, I have only an hour to clean myself up for the event. My media escort picks me up from the hotel and we drive about an hour to the event. I've been suffering motion sickness all day and the car ride is no different. I do the event with another author, Nancy Martin, who has brought in most of the crowd, which saves me the embarrassment of arriving at a bookstore with only one or two people in attendance. The evening ends well, however. Someone has made me a cake fashioned after my book jacket.

Day 2. Happens to be my birthday, but I keep that on the down-low. This is the day I've been dreading. I have a television interview on a local morning show. The whole idea of my nervous face being broadcast into thousands of homes makes me want to wretch. What gets me through is that it's local television and I know that neither I nor anyone I know is likely to ever see the interview. In this particular instance, I went to great pains to keep my friends in Philadelphia from discovering what I was up to that morning. I complete the interview and go back to my hotel room.

In the evening I'm interviewed by a local celebrity reporter at an event that sold tickets for $15 a head. I heard they sold six tickets in advance, but only two people show up. My friends had big plans to heckle me, but couldn't work up the nerve in a crowd that small. I wouldn't pay $15 to see me either, so I wasn't offended by the paltry crowd.

Day 3. I didn't get enough sleep the night before. Maybe four hours. I catch a 9 a.m. flight to Fort Myers, Florida, for a reading festival. There's a reception in which I can't drink my allotted booze because the shuttle driver took off before the last departure time, so I had to drive a number of authors (who were also not early) to the event.

Day 4. I'm 10 minutes late for my panel because I thought I understood the map and I didn't. I arrive apologetic and harried and hugely embarrassed. I also have no idea what's going on. I say a few things, but not much. I sign some books and then I go to my next panel. I am what I like to call a panel slacker. I don't feel comfortable fighting for attention, so I often end up saying very little and drinking more soda than I planned. That afternoon, I went back to the hotel and did laundry because they had coin operated machines and I didn't know when I'd have that opportunity again.

(My publisher would probably pay for hotel laundry services, but they're outrageously expensive and I simply can't justify using them. I ranted about this in the acknowledgments section of my latest book, which will presumably not go unnoticed by the hotel industry. Stay tuned.)

Day 5. There's something wrong with the hotel coffee, but I can't put my finger on it. It's only when I'm in the middle of my two-hour drive to Tampa that I realize I've been given decaf instead of regular. My head is pounding.

I'm exhausted and when I finally get to the city of my next event, I use the GPS to find a local Starbucks. I begin to wonder how anyone ever survived without those things. It is a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Tampa and the store is lovely and the owner reminds me that on a day like today, I shouldn't expect much of a crowd. The two people who do show up are a delight, and one of them is actually named Spellman. We sit and chat for about an hour; the store gives me a free book and I head off to the airport with time to spare. I'm told that the airport is about 20 minutes from the store. The process of finding a gas station and returning the rental car takes me about two hours total. I don't want to say anything bad about Tampa, but it's so flat you can't see the exits even when your GPS is telling you to exit. I fly to NY that night.

Day 6. St. Patrick's Day. I'm allowed to sleep in, so I'm ecstatic. That afternoon, one of my publicists and I take a car service around the city, where I sign stock at variety of bookstores. We give up early because the street traffic on that day is unbelievable. I have drinks that evening with my editor and dinner with a friend.

Days when I'm not required to stand up in front of people and talk always seem kind of perfect.

Day 7. Also an easy day. I have the whole morning to write. I can't say I got much done, but I tried. I arrive at my agent's office in the afternoon. They serve me cake and strong coffee and we head off to my event. There are a few places, namely NY and LA, where I know enough people that I can usually rely on something resembling a crowd.

However, a handful of complete strangers have shown up just for the event, which is always a pleasant surprise.

Day 8. I fly to Houston. As I arrive at the airport, I realize I've caught a cold and I buy massive amounts of tissue. The flight is four hours and I'm in the very back row, feeling quite sorry for myself and cranky. The cab ride from the Houston airport to the hotel takes almost an hour. We have to stop at an ATM so I can get more money out. I have just enough time to shower and change before my escort arrives to take me to the event. I am convinced for a variety of reasons that no one--or maybe one person--will be at the bookstore. I am pleasantly mistaken.

"There are people here!" I shout at no one particular. It's moments like this that make the long travel days feel worth it.

Day 9. No sleep again. Early morning. I'm flying to Denver today. I have a middle seat and my cold is in full bloom. I blow my nose constantly, stuffing tissues into my pocket, trying not to disgust the passengers on either side of me. I feel miserable. I want to crawl into bed and stay there for a week.

My escort meets me in baggage claim. She's about 90 pounds, but she manages to lift my 50-pound piece of luggage into the trunk of her car, which is a good thing because I've discovered I can barely lift it. We drive to Boulder; I'm interviewed for an hour for a radio show; we drive back to the hotel. I clean myself up and go to a bookstore for a reading that night. I'm in desperate need of sleep. Before I go to bed, I try to decide whether a sleeping pill or nighttime cold medicine is my best bet. I go for the sleeping pill and manage some rest.

Day 10. I have a phone interview in the morning, but I'm so turned around by the time difference, the cold and maybe that sleeping pill, I completely forget to call into the radio station. I phone my publicist and apologize. I spend the day in bed, trying to get over my cold.

That night I go to another bookstore event and I get another cake.

Day 11-12. I fly to Phoenix. Because it's Easter weekend, I have the rest of the weekend free. I catch up on sleep; my cold finally goes away. I regroup for 10 more days of the same.

When I think back on the tour, it's a blur of memories that mostly involve going through security, packing luggage, meeting a variety of wonderful people whose names I'm ashamed to have forgotten, and receiving more baked goods than I ever thought possible. When all is said and done, the tour seems like it might have been good for my character. But still, I will always find it ironic that the people who get sent on book tours are typically the ones who are more comfortable being alone, in a room, writing. --Lisa Lutz

The Novel vs. the Screenplay (Guest Blogger: Lisa Lutz)

Thank you for the comments and suggestions. It looks like a number of people are curious about the topic of screenplays vs. novels, and since I have a number of things to say on the subject, I’m going to focus on that topic. Keep in mind that there’s so much information that I’m unlikely to do more than skim the surface, but feel free to post comments and questions, and I’ll try to respond to what I can.

Note: For about twelve years before I wrote my first novel, I wrote screenplays. I have written about my saga for Salon and since it’s easy to access online I won’t rehash it here, but will try to address other issues.

Before I become completely subjective, I want to begin with some objective differences between novel-writing and screenwriting, which might be obvious to some people, but still worth mentioning.

• If you have a completed novel and a completed screenplay, your chances of getting the novel published far exceed your chances of getting a screenplay produced.

This is an obvious statistic when you think of how many books are published every year vs. how many films are made.

• In terms of money, the scales tip in the other direction. If you have a major Hollywood film made you’re bound to make more money off the script sale than you would from a novel.

According to my agent, the average advance for a first novel is somewhere between $5,000 and $50,000 dollars, depending the type of material and the format in which it would be published. Most novelists have a second job. Obviously there are exceptions to that rule, but we’ve all heard the common lament about how people don’t read anymore (unless Oprah tells them to), so novelists struggle to find an audience—and therefore an income.

I then asked the screenwriters currently adapting The Spellman Files for some rough estimates on what a film script might sell for. Let’s forget about option money for now, which can start at $1, (an option is like renting a script for a period of time) and just focus on the script sale amount. For the most part, the bottom number (for a non-independent film) would be around $50,000. But the numbers shoot up much, much higher based on track record and demand (i.e. if more than one studio is interested in the script). It’s true that the numbers for a big Hollywood movie can often reach into the millions of dollars (which would rarely happen for a novelist). But, like I said before, the chances of that happening are not unlike winning the lottery.

• A screenplay is approximately 20,000 words (much of that filler—character names, scene headings, etc.); a novel can be anywhere from 70,000 words on.

The obvious point is that you can tell a lot more story in a novel. I mention this because my novel The Spellman Files, about a family of private investigators who solve their personal problems using their professional tools, was first envisioned as a screenplay. In the screenplay, the family has reached a point of crisis in which they’re essentially playing a game of cat and mouse with one another. I showed the crisis, but I didn’t have time to explain how they reached that crisis. The novel, on the other hand, was essentially about how a family could reach that point of conflict. For me, writing a novel meant that I could tell the story I wanted to tell and not just the story that there was room to tell.

• When you write a screenplay you tend to write by committee. You can get notes from anywhere between five and twenty people. (My screenwriters both estimated that they’d get notes from an average of ten people per project). When you write a novel, there may be some revisions that your agent requires, but primarily you work with one editor.

It might seem that five or six or twenty heads is better than one, but I don’t think so. In my experience (so now I’m getting completely subjective), concurrently receiving notes from several people fractures the consistency. Not all those notes will jibe, not all the people providing notes are as invested as an editor often is. Notes can be tossed around without much consideration for the big picture. It used to drive me crazy that a note that would suggest a change in Act I would not take into account that it disrupts Acts II and III.

My editor, on the other hand, lives with the book for a while. She knows it; she understands the causal effect of small changes. I can’t argue that all movie industry people are reckless with their notes, nor can I argue that all book editors have my editor’s skills—but this is my experience. While revising screenplays from producers’ notes, I’ve often been unconvinced that I’m making the project any better. (There’s that old joke where a producer asks the writer “Can you make the nun a hooker?” which rings truer than you might imagine.) However, working with my editor, there is never any doubt in my mind that we are making the novel better. Now let’s remember something: I was an unsuccessful screenwriter, so I’m happy to admit that I too could have been doing something wrong.

By now my bias is obvious. But let me finish by explaining the primary reason that I prefer writing novels to screenplays. There are a lot rules and limitations structure-wise to a screenplay. For years I always felt comfortable with these rules. I liked writing dialogue; like most people I’m an avid film consumer and so that language felt natural to me. However, at some point, at least ten or so years after writing my first screenplay, I began to feel stifled by the rules. So when I finally resorted to writing a novel, I decided there were no rules. If I could figure out a way to hold the reader’s attention, it didn’t matter to me how I did it. What I didn’t anticipate was how much more I enjoyed writing when I was free to do it the way I wanted to. It is now hard for me to imagine returning to the screenplay; I imagine it would feel something like writing with one hand tied behind my back.  --Lisa Lutz

Where to Begin? (Guest Blogger: Lisa Lutz)

When my editor first mentioned to me that Amazon had invited me to guest blog for Omnivoracious, she explained it like this: Michael Pollan was their first-ever guest blogger and now they want you! She sounded both incredulous and pleased and maybe a little bit concerned about the folks at Amazon central. Sure, this makes sense. We'll invite an Oxford-educated professor with several critically acclaimed bestsellers in his wake and just when we've raised the bar of expectation, we bring in Lisa Lutz.

Why thank you, Amazon. I admire your sense of variety.

My problem is that I have no idea what to blog about. See, I write fiction, which for me means that whatever I have to say, I like to put in the form of a story. The story I'm going to tell you about today is my struggle with blogging and self-promotion.

The following is a fictionalized version of my conversation with my editor when she told me about Amazon's blog invitation:

Me: Oh that's great.

Editor: It's fabulous.

Me: What am I supposed to blog about?

Editor: Something related to the book.

Me: Like what?

Editor: Make sure it's funny.

The following is a fictionalized conversation with a friend whom I asked the same question:

Friend: Just read other writers' blogs and do what they do.

Me: Well, I just read Michael Pollan's blog and I really don't think copying him would be a good idea. Plus, it would require a lot of prep time.

And then a fictionalized conversation with a bartender:

Bartender: Write what you know, is how the saying goes, I believe.

Me: Could you be more specific?

Bartender: Trust your instincts.

Me: When does the next bartender start his shift?

If you're thinking I stopped there, I didn't. I asked all sorts of people--friends, relatives, hotel managers, valets (I'm currently on a book tour, so I have access to a wider variety of people).

The conclusion I came to was that I should ask you (you being whoever is kind enough to get this far in the blog). I have some vague ideas of what might make some interesting topics for the rest of the month, but I thought I'd put the question out there and see what happens.

But before I pass this responsibility on to you, let me tell you a little bit about myself.*

I am the author of The Spellman Files (now available in paperback!) and Curse of the Spellmans, the first and second books in a series that chronicles the lives of the Spellmans, a family of San Francisco-based private investigators. Before I wrote The Spellman Files, I spent a good ten years writing screenplays, working odd jobs, and waiting for my big break. Thirteen years after I wrote my first screenplay, I realized that my screenwriting career would never be and I made the very wise decision to write a novel.

Now let's say you've come upon this blog without any knowledge of me or the Spellman books. I'm going to provide a short list of potential blog topics. These are subjects I might have something to say about, but I won't know until I actually get to it:

• Writing screenplays vs. novels.
• What is a mystery?
• The experience of finding success after years of failure.
• My writing process.
• The book tour experience (AKA The dog and pony show).

So please vote for a topic or suggest a new one altogether. I leave the future of this blog in your hands. --Lisa Lutz

*Note: This is an actual bio, not a fictionalized one.

Instructions: Leave a comment or send me an email at contactlisa@lisalutz.com

Amazon.com Exclusive: A Letter from Christopher Rice

Bestselling author Christopher Rice published his first novel, A Destiny of Souls, when he was just 22 years old. Since then his writing has been praised as "chillingly perverse," shocking, sexy... intricate," and "bold and ambitious." To mark the publication date of Blind Fall, his fourth novel, Rice was kind enough to e-mail us an exclusive letter to share with his readers on Amazon.

--BTP

 

 

 

Dear Amazon.com Reader,

Authors hate answering the question "what is your book about?" because deep down most of us are arrogant enough to believe that our books are about everything. Birth, death, love, grief. You name it, I probably think it’s in there somewhere, albeit sometimes only in the form a throwaway character, like a wisecracking gas station attendant who pops off a few good lines about living in the present as my main character bounces on the balls of his feet, impatient to be rung up so he can race to his next car-chase. But the longer I write for a living, the more it becomes clear to me that while arrogance is a helpful tool for dealing with one’s own negative reviews (or the death threats that have been posted alongside your promotional video on YouTube), the question “what is your book about” is one that I better have a coherent answer to long before it’s posed to me by anyone besides the ever-present critic who lives in my head. Otherwise I find myself writing entire chapters about the shape of a certain box hedge because I’ve lost my way and fallen prey to that childish belief that writing is about nothing more than filling up a page. (It is, kind of, but only when you’re past deadline.) That said, I can say with confidence that my latest thriller, Blind Fall, is a novel about self-acceptance. It’s about how we are often forced to let go of something we believed to be an absolute truth before we can treat ourselves with the same respect we would grant our closest friend. And in that sense, it is also a story about how our own visions of our past, of where we came from and what made us who we are, become incomplete and deceptive if we turn away from of those who walked the path with us and the insights they have to offer into our own personal history.

Phew! Got that out of the way. How was that Amazon.com editors? Did I win over some Jonathan Franzen readers with that one?

Please note that I referred to my own novel as a thriller. I did so with pride. As I’ve said now in numerous interviews, Blind Fall was intended to be lean, clear and forceful, a suspenseful story about gays in the military that might appeal to the broadest audience possible. That doesn’t mean I dumbed down or cleaned up a more “literary”--God, I hate that word--story that’s still sitting in my desk drawer. It means I chose to tell the entire story from the point-of-view of the character facing the greatest personal challenge of any in the book--John Houck, the battle-scarred Marine who discovers the comrade who saved his life in combat was secretly gay. Anything that didn’t serve John’s character, that didn’t ring true to who he was, didn’t make the cut. That was a challenge. I love the guy as much as I do any of my protagonists but let’s just say we probably wouldn’t end up voting for the same candidate in the Presidential election this coming November and we certainly have different CDs in rotation. (To get into character sometimes I would depart from my usual film score montages and get amped up on a little Coheed & Cambria and Incubus. Don’t laugh! It’s not that big of a stretch. I went to a Motley Crue concert when I was twelve.)

I also chose to tell you who the killer was about 70 pages in. Why? Because this novel is not a whodunit. This novel is a what-the-hell-are-they-going-to-do, but that’s got a few too many words in it so we call those thrillers. Don’t get me wrong; there are some twists and turns along the way, but I didn’t want the reader breaking sweat over who was responsible for the murder that starts off the action. I wanted the reader’s heart to become invested in the relationship between John, the straight (and more than a little homophobic) Marine, and Alex, the secret gay lover of the man who saved John’s life. How are these two very different men going to come to accept one another, if at all? This is the question that dominated my thoughts while I was writing the book, and if you decide to give it a read, I hope it dominates yours as well. Sometimes the best suspense comes not from the revelation of a previously concealed detail that’s been skillfully foreshadowed, but from wondering how a character you have come to know intimately over the course of many chapters is going to react to a seemingly insurmountable set of obstacles. That’s what I was shooting for with Blind Fall.

So there you have it, along with a few unsolicited personal details about yours truly. (Like the fact that I went to a Motley Crue concert when I was twelve.) At the very least, I hope Blind Fall keeps some of you up late at night. For the next month, my late nights will all be spent in hotels as I cross the country to promote this puppy. There’s a full tour schedule on my website www.christopherricebooks.com Maybe I’ll get to meet some of you along the way.

Best,

Christopher Rice

Plotting in the Internet Age

I've idly worried from time to time that some of the plot features that were so deliciously crucial to the classic novel (strangers coming to town, people who couldn't be reached because they weren't near a phone, letters that arrived too late to be of help) were now obsolete in the age of instant access and complete information. So many of the obstacles that could drive (or delay) the meeting of hero and heroine or detective and quarry have now been removed. How would novelists respond? Obviously the new technology presents its own potential plots, and I was interested to open up a new novel that arrived in the mail today and find that a familiar feature of our own internet retail operation can play a central role in a very modern mystery. I'll quote the short prologue to Obedience, a debut thriller by Will Lavender, in full:

Run an Internet search using the name Deanna Ward
    You will get over 275 hits. Click on the first one. This is an article by a man named Nicholas Bourdoix.
    Read this article. You will learn that eighteen-year-old Deanna Ward went missing from Cale, Indiana, on August 1, 1986. Police thought they had found Deanna four days later, on August 5, but they had not; this was a girl who simply looked like Deanna. The Deanna Ward case remains unsolved.
    Run another search: "Nicholas Bourdoix."
    You will get over 6,500 hits. Mr. Bourdoix graduated from Winchester University in DeLane, Indiana. He worked for fourteen years at the Cale [Indiana] Star before moving to the New York Times in 1995.
    Run an Amazon search for Mr. Bourdoix. His latest book is a memoir about his career as a crime journalist. It is called The Beaten Trail: My Life Covering Horrors and Hoaxes. There are exactly twelve pages given to his years in Indiana.
    There is a customer review of this book toward the bottom of the page. You will know it because it is the only review given. The reviewer awards the book one star and suggests, in rather harsh language, that readers not buy Mr. Bourdoix's "lying crap."
    The reviewer's name is Deanna Ward.

Hooked? Having seen so many of these angry reviews by people with personal knowledge of the books' subjects ("Joe Smith is my brother-in-law and I can assure you that he is nothing like the portrayal of him in Doctor of Death."), I am. Obedience doesn't come out until February 19, which explains why it doesn't have any customer reviews itself yet. --Tom

Liar's Diary Blog Day

In the space of just a few days, we've heard from many directions about a remarkable online organizing effort known as Liar's Diary Blog Day. Patry Francis is a debut author whose thriller, The Liar's Diary (apologies--I had this as "Liar's Day" yesterday), releases today in paperback. But after years of writing towards the day that every writer dreams about, she got hit by a ton of bricks. I'll let one of the organizers of LDBD, Susan Henderson at LitPark, explain:

What if you worked for years as a waitress and then went home at the end of the day to your husband and four kids, and in those rare minutes of free time, you dared to dream that one day you might write a book? This is the story of my friend, Patry - a story that leaves out years of false starts, revisions, and rejection slips. It's a story that writers know intimately, though the details are different. Every one of us is well acquainted with the struggle of getting a story on paper, of honing it and believing in it enough to send it out, only to receive rejection, or worse, silence for our efforts.

Imagine, after many years, you beat the odds. You finish that book. You find that agent who sells your manuscript. Your dream is about to become a reality. But just as your book is due to be released, you discover you have an aggressive form of cancer.

Since Patry has to focus on getting well and not getting out to introduce people to her book, a remarkable network of authors and other friends has formed to spread the word. Over 300 writers, including Khaled Hosseini, Jennifer Weiner, Neil Gaiman, and many more, have blogged yesterday and today about Patry Francis and The Liar's Diary, which Booklist has called "a disturbing portrait of a hollow family done in by secrets and lies," and we're happy to join them. See more details at organizer Laura Benedict's blog, and see a complete list of participating bloggers at LitPark. Here's Patry's own blog, Simply Wait, and here's a video trailer for the book created by another friend:

--Tom

A shout-out to Poe: announcing the 2008 Edgar Award nominees

Your reading queue may already be waist-high now (I know mine is) with all the Best Ofs and award winners that have been rolling in, but who can resist the siren songs of this year's Edgar hopefuls? I mean, really. From Benjamin Black's Christine Falls to debut favorite (and favorite of ours) In the Woods and Michael Chabon's genre-bending The Yiddish Policeman's Union--not to mention the host of delectable discoveries (Who is Conrad Hirst, indeed?)--it's been a great year for mysteries. I'm eager to see who'll be taking an Edgar home in May. Cue the drum roll:

Best Novel:

· Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
· Priest by Ken Bruen
· The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
· Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman
· Down River by John Hart

Best First Novel by an American Author:
· Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell
· In the Woods by Tana French
· Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard
· Head Games by Craig McDonald
· Pyres by Derek Nikitas

Best Paperback Original:
· Queenpin by Megan Abbott
· Blood of Paradise by David Corbett
· Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks
· Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill
· Who Is Conrad Hirst? by Kevin Wignall  

Best Fact Crime:
· The Birthday Party by Stanley Alpert
· Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi
· Chasing Justice by Kerry Max Cook
· Relentless Pursuit by Kevin Flynn
· Sacco & Vanzetti by Bruce Watson

Best Critical/Biographical Work:
· The Triumph of the Thriller by Patrick Anderson
· A Counter-History of Crime Fiction by Maurizio Ascari
· Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction by Christiana Gregoriou
· Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley
· Chester Gould: A Daughter's Biography of the Creator of Dick Tracy by Jean Gould O'Connell

Best Young Adult:
· Rat Life by Tedd Arnold
· Diamonds in the Shadow by Caroline B. Cooney
· Touching Snow by M. Sindy Felin
· Blood Brothers by S.A. Harazin
· Fragments by Jeffry W. Johnston  

Best Juvenile:
· The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch
· Shadows on Society Hill by Evelyn Coleman
· Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn 
· The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh
· Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things by Wendelin Van Draanen  

Grand Master Award:
· Bill Pronzini

Speaking of Edgar, it happens that Poe would have celebrated his 199th birthday this past Saturday. (I wonder if the nominee announcement just the day before was intended to coincide? Do tell MW of A!) In any case, we all know Poe's life was regrettably short: imagine how many more spooky stories he might have penned had drink and tragedy not gotten the best of him? What I'd like to imagine just as much is what he'd think of his heir-apparents writing today. I suspect he'd enjoy the grisly detail to be found in books like Heartsick or get sucked into the dark underbelly of Charlie Huston's world, but what about that frightful element of surprise--that unknowable dark turn into something sinister and evil--that makes his stories so wonderfully creepy? It's a primal sort of macabre you find in Poe that I think must be hard to recreate in the here and now, where (we think) we have the tools to unravel any mystery. Of contemporary authors, who do you think gets close to hitting that eerie note? Stephen King is my best guess, though it's hard to say.  But I'm all worked up now for a good scare. --Anne

Stephen Gallagher's The Kingdom of Bones

Set in the nineteenth century, Stephen Gallagher's The Kingdom of Bones is one of the more intelligent and suspenseful historical thrillers I've read recently. Pursued by Inspector Sebastien Becker, suspect and former boxing champion Tom Sayers must evade the law while trying to discover the truth behind a series of murders of possible supernatural origin. Not only does the novel manage to evoke a bygone era without overwhelming the reader with too many details, it includes Bram Stoker as a character in a way that isn't facile or gratuitous. Gallagher, a screenwriter and director in addition to the author of fourteen novels, kindly took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for Amazon. (For more information on Gallagher, visit his website.)

   

Amazon.com: Could you describe your surroundings as you answer these questions?
Stephen Gallagher: I'm in my study with a bare wood floor and a beamed ceiling that goes all the way up to the roofline. The lighting comes from a rack of spotlights on one of the beams. There are two desks back-to-back with a flatscreen monitor on each and a swivel chair so that I can spin from one to the other in your basic Evil Genius world domination setup. The house is a rural Victorian cottage about half an hour's drive from Lancaster, England, and until ten years ago this room was just space above the garage. Back then I rented an office in town, but it made more sense to spend the money creating a dedicated workspace while putting the house back to its period look.

Amazon.com: What provided the spark for The Kingdom of Bones?
Stephen Gallagher: Writing a short story called "Old, Red Shoes" for a Ripper-themed collection edited by Gardner Dozois. It was a contemporary tale but the work involved visiting all the Whitechapel locations and researching the period, and I came out hooked. Not so much on the Ripper stuff as on that whole rich and epic environment. I saw the prospect of attempting something utterly real and historically accurate, but with a genuine operatic sweep.

Amazon.com: I assume there was some research involved. Can you share a few interesting details that didn't make it into the novel?
Stephen Gallagher: It was fascinating to sort through Bram Stoker's working papers for Dracula in Philadelphia's Rosenbach museum and get a sense of another writer's process. The way he sketched out rough structures for each chapter and set a wordage target for each, striking each one out with a single pencil stroke when the chapter was done. Sudden flashes of insight scribbled on hotel stationery. None of this makes any direct appearance in The Kingdom of Bones, but it helped me get a real sense of Stoker's presence. As you probably know, he was Henry Irving's right-hand man and stood right at the heart of the theatrical and social scenes of the day. But no contemporary portrayal ever quite seems to nail him.

Stephen King's "Duma Key": Where It All Began...

"I started to imagine a little dead girl standing on that road--twin dead girls, with their hands linked. The image came from nowhere... it came around dusk, which is a spooky time of day anywhere, but particularly on the coast of Florida." --Stephen King

The quote above is from a video message from Stephen King talking about an image that had been lurking in his head for years... one that eventually found a home in his new novel, Duma Key (available January 22). In an exclusive essay for Amazon.com, King's longtime editor Chuck Verrill offers a side-by-side comparison of "Memory," a King story that appeared in the summer 2006 issue of Tin House, and the first chapter of Duma Key, the book it eventually grew into.

--BTP

In the spring of 2006 Stephen King told me he was working on a Florida story that was beginning to grow on him. "I'm thinking of calling it Duma Key," he offered.  I liked   the sound of that--the title was like a drumbeat of dread. "You know how Lisey's Story is a story about marriage?" he said. "Sure," I answered. The novel hadn't yet been published, but I knew its story well: Lisey and Scott Landon--what a marriage that was. Then he dropped the other shoe: "I think Duma Key might be my story of divorce." 

Pretty soon I received a slim package from a familiar address in Maine. Inside was a short story titled "Memory"--a story of divorce, all right, but set in Minnesota. By the end of the summer, when Tin House published "Memory," Stephen had completed a draft of  Duma Key, and it became clear to me how "Memory" and its narrator, Edgar Freemantle, had moved from Minnesota to Florida, and how a story of divorce had turned into something more complex, more strange, and much more terrifying.

If you read the following two texts side by side--"Memory" as it was published by Tin House and the opening chapter of Duma Key in final form--you'll see a writer at   work, and how stories can both contract and expand.  Whether Duma Key is an expansion of "Memory" or "Memory" a contraction of Duma Key, I can't really say.  Can you? 

--Chuck Verrill

Read "Memory"

Read the first chapter of Duma Key