Laurie Stolarz has the magic touch

Anyone who has sold a half million books, been on bestseller lists, and been on the Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers list, the Top Ten Teen Pick list, and YALSA's Popular Paperback list knows how to write great books.

Deadly Little Secret (A Touch Novel) is no exception. It's by Laurie Stolarz.

Description
Until three months ago, everything about sixteen-year-old Camelia's life had been fairly ordinary: decent grades; an okay relationship with her parents; and a pretty cool part-time job at an art studio downtown. But when Ben, the mysterious new guy, starts junior year at her high school, Camelia's life becomes far from ordinary.

Rumored to be somehow responsible for his ex-girlfriend's accidental death, Ben is immediately ostracized by everyone on campus. Except for Camelia. She's reluctant to believe he's trouble, even when her friends try to convince her otherwise. Instead she's inexplicably drawn to Ben...and to his touch. But soon, Camelia is receiving eerie phone calls and strange packages with threatening notes. Ben insists she is in danger, and that he can help – but can he be trusted? She knows he's hiding something...but he's not the only one with a secret.

I asked, Laurie answered
A. What's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you? Bonus question: have you used it, in any way, in a book?
L. When I was doing the research for Project 17, I went to the abandoned mental institution on which the book is based. Growing up, the former mental hospital was rumored to be haunted (there are actually unmarked graves on the premises). Once I really started delving into the research, visiting the place took on a whole new meaning (knowledge really IS power). I was so horrified that I couldn’t sleep at night. So, yes, I have used this fear to write a book.

A. Mystery writers often give their characters an unreasoning fear - and then make them face it. Do you have any phobias, like fear of spiders or enclosed spaces?
L. I’m the biggest wuss ever, even though I write this scary stuff, too. You name it – bugs, critters, haunted houses, dark places, basements, attics, creaking noises at night, horror flicks, abandoned places, the list goes on and on. I use all of this in my writing.

A. Do you have a favorite mystery book, author, or movie?
L. I love Stephen King and Robert Cormier. I also love The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and Our Secret History by Donna Tartt. As for movies, I love the Scream trilogy, though I have to watch most of it with a pillow over my eyes. I also like I Know What You Did Last Summer (but again with the pillow). I’m not into the mega-horror stuff that’s out now. If I watched any of that, I’m not even joking when I say I wouldn’t be sleeping for days.

A. At its heart, every story is a mystery. It asks why someone acts the way they did - or maybe what will happen next. What question does your book ask?
L. What happens when you fall in love with someone who could possibly kill another, including you?

A. Is there a mystery in life that you are still trying to figure out?
L. I think there are so many mysteries in one’s life. Unraveling those mysteries and getting to the answers – and finding new mysteries along the way – is what we’re meant to do I believe.

What the critics say
"[L]ively first-person narrative," raves Kirkus [full disclosure: Kirkus never raves], "CW-worthy dialogue, quirky secondary characters, romance and suspense: a winning combination." KLIATT says, "An engaging, eerie tale about the darker side of relationships - when it becomes a matter of life and death to know who your friends are.". And Teens Read Too says, “The book was full of shocking surprises and revelations, earning the book five stars. This is a must-read for fans of romance, suspense, and mystery because it won't disappoint.”

About the author
Laurie Faria Stolarz is the bestselling author of the Blue is for Nightmares series: Blue is for Nightmares, White is for Magic, Silver is for Secrets, Red is for Remembrance, and the forthcoming Black is for Beginnings. She's also written Bleed and Project 17. Do you think that it's a coincidence that Laurie was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts?

Watch the trailer

Plusses and MInuses of Boot Camp

I decided to start taking a bootcamp class my gym offers.

Pluses
- By starting now, I avoid the January rush.
- I'm home and exercised by 7:40.
- It may encourage me to eat better.
- Fantasies of being buff and thin like gorgeous Swedish-looking woman exercising on the mat behind me.

Minuses
- 5:30 a.m. alarm after 10 months of getting up when I want to (which actually has worked out to getting up at 6 when my husband's alarm goes off)
- An unbelievable number of crunches (note to self: do not go all out on first set. Because there are four more.)
- Yawning at 9:45 a.m.
- Boot camp! What am I thinking! I hate people telling me what to do. And I'm not a military type person. Although I was wooed by Westpoint the first year they started having women attend. Deal breaker for me: bathrooms were unisex and there were no doors on the toilets.

I know by the nose

Thanks to the folks over at Jacket Whys as well as Lisa Yee, I know there are at least two other books using the same photo as part of the cover art for their books. Look at the guy’s nose – it’s the same! Oh well, at least I have fire. The other two don’t have that.

Why The Hunger Games is such a great book

This weekend, I finished The Hunger Games. While it's a dramatic, fast-paced book, I also actually cried a couple of times. It was the kind of book that ideally would be read in one sitting.

While I mostly lost myself in it as a reader, I also went back later and looked at it as a writer. One thing the author did really well was to have exciting or interesting chapter endings that really made you want to read forward. Here are some examples (ones with no spoilers):

Chapter 2
Oh, well, I think. There were will be twenty-four of us. Odds are someone else will kill him before I do.

Of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late.

Chapter 4
Which also means that kind Peeta Meelark, the boy who gave me the bread, is fighting hard to kill me.

Chapter 5
But because two can play at this game, I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. Right on the bruise.

Chapter 6
I wonder if she will enjoy watching me die.

The Hunger Games is a great book for readers – and writers.

The Power of Sales

All of my adult books have kept their titles (Circles of Confusion, Square in the Face - although the publisher briefly suggested Death Squared or Be There or Be Square, Heart-Shaped Box, Buried Diamonds, and Learning to Fly.] Not so with my YA books.

Like my next book – which was sold as Fire, Kiss, Electric Chair – is now called Torched. I guess there was some worry that “electric chair” might be a turn-off.

The YA before that was going to be called Point & Shoot, because it started with a digital camera and ended with a Taser. But Sales thought "shoot" could limit sales because buyers might read it as a gun reference, especially in the school and library market. They had a suggestion for a replacement title: Panic at Peaceful Cove.

Gak! It sounded like Nancy Drew. It sounded like Jessica Fletcher. It sounded like some old people at a nursing home freaking out at the sight of a spider.

My agent and I sent back our own suggestions, including:
Prisoner of Peaceful Cove
Nightmare at Peaceful Cove
You Can Run
On the Run
Run
Hide
Gone [good thing they didn’t take that one, both a Jonathan Kellerman and a Lisa Gardner with that title came out at the same time about a year ago]
Taken
Running Scared
Darkness and Daylight
Category 5

And Shock Point, which is what it became.

Deciding for everyone

A mother in the Oregon small town of Halsy wants to have a graphic novel banned from the high school library. It's called Bunny Suicides, and it shows cartoons of bunnies taking rather elaborate steps to kill themselve, like sawing down a Christmas tree with a star on top and running so that when the tree topples the star hits them on the head.

Even though it's a graphic novel, the drawings I've seen are not particularly graphic. The librarian said they are designed to reveal to reluctant readers, although "readers" might also be a bit of a stretch, since the cartoons I've seen don't have words.

However, does the subject matter give the mother the right to keep the book? She refuses to return it (it's the only copy the library owns) so they can evaluate it. She also says that if the library replaces it, "I'll have somebody else check it out and I'll keep that one."

She also says she plans to burn the book.

When asked what bad outcomes the book might lead to, she wrote, "All different kinds of things."

Good grief! Of all the possible things to get het up about, this is one? When I was a kid we used to tell dead baby jokes, another example of jarring juxtaposition. And we turned out okay.

Your choice of words reveals your secret thoughts

A new software program and a new field of study counts how many times a person writes or says different kinds of words. Your word choice can indicate what sex you are, if you’re lying, whether your mental health is improving after a trauma, and all kinds of interesting things.

Read more here.

Laura Lippman hits the big time

I met Laura Lippman in 2000, when I went to all the big mystery conferences and learned that my first book, Circles of Confusion, had not won any of the best first mystery awards. (But it was shortlisted, which was nice. Of course, the competition for best first is nothing like the free-for-all that is “best” because the competition is so much stiffer.) I was even sitting at the same table when she won an award, so I got to hear the little started sound you make when they call your name.

Laura was and is tall, beautiful, smart, and somewhat intimidating. The kind of person who quotes Nabokov. I am more likely to quote The Far Side.

When I met her, she had already made her way up from being a paperback original mystery author (often the beginning and end of a career) and her books were being released in hardcover. Now they hit the NYT bestseller list.

To read more about Laura, click here

The Year We Disappeared

Imagine your a 9-year-old trying to cope with a new reality. Cops keep watch over your house, there's a sniper on your roof, an attack dog in your yard, and you and your brothers are learning how to shoot to kill. That's the true story Cylin Busby tells in The Year We Disappeared. Cylin's father, a cop, was shot point blank in the face. He lived, but his jaw was destroyed. He knew who was behind the attack, but because of small town cronyism, no one was arrested. Instead, the town had him and his family watched round the clock, including putting a cop on duty in Cylin's lunchroom. She lost all her friends, because their parents were afraid that to invite her over made them a target.

I stayed up too late reading it last night, because of passages like this:  
A boy I'd never seen before leaned over our [cafeteria[ table. "you know why that cop is in here?" he asked.

"Go away, Ritchie," Amelia said, rolling her eyes at me.

"Because somebody wants to kill her!" he said, pointing at me. The he whispered, "Maybe they'll come to school and shoot you, too, that's why the cop is here."

Amelia stood up. "Mrs. Maseda," she yelled over to the teacher who was monitoring the lunchroom.

"Tattletale," the boy said under his breath. As he walked away, he turned and made a gun with his fingers, pointed at me, and said, "Pow, pow."

Why not hire some decoys on Craiglist and commit a robbery?

Up in Munroe Washington, a guy advertised on Craigslist for workers for a road maintenance project. The ad promised $28.50 an hour. Those who answered the ad were told to meet near the Bank of America in Monroe, at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. They were told to wear a yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask and, if possible, a blue shirt.

About a dozen men showed up. Only there wasn't a job - instead the men were decoys. A man dressed in the same outfit, including a respirator mask, assaulted an armored car guard with pepper spray and ran off with a bag of money.

The robber fled on foot toward a nearby creek, and one witness said he floated away on a waiting inner tube.

Getting my life back

Eight months ago I did the thing I had been dreaming about for years - I spent my last day at my day job. Well, it was more like three hours, because all my projects had been parcelled out to my co-workers. All I really needed to do was box up my things and say goodbye.

My life used to be such a blur: writing a book a year, parenting, wife-ing, cooking, exercising. I spent big chunks of life in my car driving as fast as I could. Now I walk most places. It's weird. Seen this way, the trees and bushes and flowers I walk past look too three-dimensonial, like they're somehow fake, part of a movie set. I've seen flowers and birds and insects I never noticed before. 

Recently I had been puzzled by the apperance of crocuses - a flower I associate with the first few days of spring - in people's gardens. Was it a sign of global warming? But my husband says there is a fall crocus. There must have always have been fall crocuses, but I didn't have the time or the peace to notice them.

I've dreamed of these days since 1992, when I finished my first novel (which didn't sell, but that's another story). It's wonderful to have my life back. No more annual reviews, no more meetings, no more people who are above me but whom I don't agree with, no more watching yet another reorg, no more buzz words.  

And no more paychecks. This may not end up working out in the long run, but I sure hope it does. Because it's wonderful to have my life back. 

Prose says prose can't be taught

Francine Prose says writing can’t be taught, but the Washington Post still manages to find some lessons in an interview:
- You can write about what's really happened to you without being constrained by the facts.
- You don't need to know much when you begin.
- Forget plotting. It's all about the sentences.
- Don't even begin to think you can learn to write by taking an undergraduate writing workshop.
Read more here.  

A writer's nightmare - come true!

Imagine you’re working on a book. And you’ve been working on it for years. Not a novel, but a non-fiction book about a person now lost in the mists of time. Only - you’re not the only one!!  

[Full disclosure: cue screams!]

A book to love - or to hate

Some people use this writing formula to help shape their book: "This is a story about (main character) who wants (story goal) more than anything in the world, but is prevented by (obstacle) until she (does something to overcome obstacle)."

Obviously, Kathryn Davis, author of The Thin Place , has never heard of this formula. And good for her. There’s no clear main character, and while the characters all have goals, they might feel a bit ambivalent about them, or they might be transitory. And not all obstacles are overcome.

It begins with three girls finding a dead man on the beach. One of them stays behind to watch the body – and ends up bringing it back to life. But the book isn’t really her story. It’s more the story of a small town. POV shifts and skips from one character to another – including Margaret, a dog, and Gigi, the cat. There are miracles and evil and a terrible accident when a woman tries to retrieve one last Pepperidge Farm goldfish from the floor of her car. The story skips back and forth in time, including a future where all the characters are dead (even the idea was kind of jarring, although it made me realize how much I deny that will happen in real life), to the past when the very world itself was created.

It’s a magical book, like nothing I’ve ever read, like nothing I’ve ever written. Judging from Amazon, people either love it or hate it. Count me in the first camp. 

Death by Latte

I have been drinking waaaay too much coffee lately. But at least I’m not the character in Linda Gerber’s DEATH BY LATTE who turns up dead in a coffee shop. The book is a modern-day romantic mystery/suspense in the tradition of Victoria Holt and Philippa Carr.
 
Aphra Connolly, who had been living a quiet existence on her father’s secluded island resort, until Seth Mulo turns up and steals her heart… and provides information that leads her to find her mom in Seattle. But the reunion isn’t quite what she expected. Aphra’s mom, Natalie, doesn’t seem happy to see Aphra, and Natalie’s boyfriend, Joe, insists that Aphra go home. Even worse, Seth shows up, only to ask her to return the ring he had given her that summer. At least Natalie’s good-looking neighbor is sympathetic. But when Joe is found dead at a nearby coffee shop, Aphra discovers her whole trip to Seattle has been based on a lie. And now someone just might be trying to kill her. . . .

I asked, Linda answered
A. What's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you? Bonus question: have you used it, in any way, in a book?  
L. My mom won't read this, right? When I was in high school, my family was going on a trip and I didn't want to go. I had a job and drill team practice and I talked them into letting me stay behind. I was supposed to sleep at a neighbor's house but that was really awkward, so I lied and told the neighbor I was sleeping at a friend's house one night and went home. I had to be careful not to turn on any lights so the neighbor wouldn't know I was there. In the middle of the night, a noise woke me up and I realized someone else was in the house. The phone was clear on the other side of the room and I didn't dare move for fear that the person would hear me and come upstairs. But on the other hand, I reasoned, they might come upstairs anyway and I would be helpless. I eased out of bed and although I tried to be silent as I tiptoed toward the phone, the house was old and the floorboards squeaked. Fortunately, whoever it was took off when they realized someone was home instead of getting aggressive. They ran out the front door, leaving it wide open. I remember sitting at the top of the stairs, shaking, looking at that front door and trying to work up the courage to go down and shut it. 

I haven't used that experience in a book. Yet.

A. Mystery writers often give their characters an unreasoning fear - and then make them face it. Do you have any phobias, like fear of spiders or enclosed spaces?
L. I don't know what my phobia is called. I'm not exactly afraid of heights, but I am afraid of falling from heights. I've had dreams where I'm on an elevator with no walls or on a steep staircase with no railing or on this certain looong, steep escalator in the Tokyo train station, and it terrifies me. Any dream interpreters out there? What does that mean?

A. Do you have a favorite mystery book, author, or movie?  
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard - book and movie. Great stuff.

A. At its heart, every story is a mystery. It asks why someone acts the way they did - or maybe what will happen next. What question does your book ask?
L. A recurring question in DEATH BY LATTE is – who can Aphra trust? And - who is the Mole and what does he really want?

A. Is there a mystery in life that you are still trying to figure out?
L. Yeah. Why do I still procrastinate when I know it's just going to stress me out? Ongoing theme in my life!

Sky = Falling?

New York magazine has a long article about the state of publishing.

In the past dozen years, all I've heard is lamenting about the state of the industry. I'm not sure what anyone can do about it, or even if it's as bad as they say. One thing about writing YAs - at least in school there is still the idea that kids should read for pleasure. There is a lot of effort expended on coaxing the reluctant reader. The world seems to have given up on adults who don't like to read.

Some excerpts from the article:

“There used to be a reason to get into publishing,” says Carroll [formerly of Carroll & Graf. Full disclosure: I once spoke to him on the phone because he was used as a reference - but I no longer remember for what.] “Whether they know it or not, they all want to be Maxwell Perkins. It’s a kind of secondary immortality. They didn’t flock to publishing because they want to publish Danielle Steel.”

“Some people say there’s not enough marketing done for a book, and I think that’s total bullshit. You do the marketing that works, and not much is working right now.” says Peter Miller, director of publicity for Bloomsbury. He also says [and part of me agrees]that book trailers "are all the rage right now, but I would love to see an example of one video that really did generate a lot of sales. There’s a sense of desperation.”

The article discusses some facts that probably haven't changed for a while:
"The remaindering and shredding of books—a cost borne largely by the publisher—is a relic of a consignment model developed during the Depression that makes no modern sense. Publishers also pay for placement in big bookstores, which they call “co-op,” under a complicated arrangement meant to cover up the fact that it’s payola (or, as some call it, extortion). Those 300 copies of, say, American Wife stacked precariously at the entrance? Bought and paid for by the publisher. “You feel raped having to pay for placement in a store you’re selling to,” says an agent."

Read morehere.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think there will always be a market for stories. But the market might look different.

My first time

My very first signing was in early 1999 at Powells Books. Yes, that Powells Books. Where every famous authors who comes to Portland stops. And there I was, waiting in the wings, wearing a long brown velvet dress with my hair pinned up. I was sure I was going to die or at least pass out. Well over a hundred people turned up (many of them people from work who erroneously thought I would soon be a millionaire and quit). The whole time I was speaking, a little voice in the corner of my mind was yammering away that I felt sick, I felt dizzy, I should lay my head on the podium, I would soon pass out and my husband would drag my body away.

But I made it.

And now I kind of like speaking in public. And would kill for having a turnout like that when I’m the only one speaking.

Tips on how to look for an agent

I am lucky enough to have the most wonderful agent in the world, Wendy Schmalz, but I know a lot of people out there are still looking for an agent.

Here’s some great advice on how to go about doing it. And she also has some excellent tips on how to vet an agent. Using one of her tips, I found that my agent’s name was mentioned 38 times in books that Amazon has scanned.

Who is allowed to tell a story?

I have long struggled with who could or should write a story. My default character usually shares some characteristics with me – white, Protestant, and female. I have written from a boy’s POV, and a man’s, but usually for only a portion of a book. In one unpublished book, the only POV character was a man. It had to be a man, because I wanted the character to be a parent who didn’t know what happened to their child, and unless the mom gives the baby up for adoption, that has to be a man.

I think it’s good for books to be multicultural – not filled just with white, Protestant females.  

I think it’s fine to write from the POV of an alien, or a person living in 1685. There aren’t any real people you are supplanting who might want to tell that story because they own it.

What is difficult for me, I guess, is knowing when it’s okay to tell someone else’s story, a contemporary story. I remember meeting a woman, white, blond, blue-eyed, who sold film rights on a script she had written that was set on a reservation. I’m pretty sure her only experience with what it means to be Native American was through reading. That made me uncomfortable. Sure, she was using her imagination the way every writer does. But it also seemed like she had really glommed onto the spiritual side of being Native American – and is that something you can really understand and write about if you haven’t grown up with it, haven’t experienced it for yourself?

What do you think?

What really happens on book tours

Bret Anthony Johnston writes about what really happens on book tours in this funny essay for Powells. He talks about the things you’re given, the people you meet, etc.

Here's part of what he says about the people you meet:
“4. Friends of friends who often say things like "I didn't expect to enjoy myself, but I kind of did!"
5. Book collectors and rare book dealers. The former are lovely and benevolent. The latter can be a tiny bit unctuous. Both only want you to sign your name on the title page of your book. Both sort of adorably freak out if you threaten to write anything more than your name in their books. It's very unlikely that either have read your work.”

I write a YA column that appears every six to eight weeks in the Oregonian. They need to have been published in the past six months and have some kind of connection to the Northwest (set here, written by someone who lives here, etc).

Here are the reviews:

- Ten Cents a Dance.
- Shift.
- The Compound.

Got any more ideas that meet the above criteria? 

What really happens when you quit your day job

In 2001, my first book, Circles of Confusion, was chosen for the Oregonian Book Club. The paper sent a photographer to take a picture of me at my local bookstore, Annie Blooms. The photographer liked the store’s black cat and asked me to pose with it on my lap.

While I’m a cat-person, that cat is not a people-cat, not at all. In the photograph, I’m wearing the strangest expression, a pained smile that’s on its way to just plain pain. It’s because the cat has sunk his claws deep into my thigh.

On Sunday, the Oregonian published an essay I wrote about what it’s really like to quit your day job. They also used that photo from so long ago. Today when I was out for a run, a couple walking a dog stopped me and congratulated me. I kept trying to place them, but couldn’t. Did my kid go to school with theirs? Were they neighbors? It was only after I started running again that I realized they must have recognized me from that photo. Maybe I wear the same pained expression as I stagger up the hill.  

You can read the essay here. No photo, though.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity

I was looking at the stats for my website, and someone from Sony Pictures had come to it! OMG! OMG! What book were they interested in? Learning to Fly would make a great movie, and has been optioned a couple of times. And a book I just sold, Shadows Walking Backward, that's got movie written all over it. Think Wait Until Dark, only updated for teens.  

In the time it took for me to click down through the data, I was already imaginging what dress I would wear on the red carpet. 

Then reality hit. Hard. 

The search term the person used to find my site was "tuna noodle casserole."  

That's what happens when you have a bazillion pages on your website, including recipes and clever vanity plates. They are not always there because you are an author.  

Newspaper death spirals - also bad for books

So much has changed in the past decade in how we get our news. It used to be that being a reporter was a great career for a writer. Many mystery writers were once newspaper reporters. But now that career path seems nearly dead.  

I no longer watch national or local news broadcasts, which seem to have deteriorated into cute stories about llamas. The few times I might turn on the set, it’s to see pictures of devastation that NPR’s All Things Considered can’t do justice to. Judging by the commercials – for impotence drugs, and scooters Medicare will pay for – the average age of viewers is somewhere in what they call the “55 to death” category.

Newspapers seem to be faring even worse. My small hometown paper seems to be made up of foreclosure notices with a few news stories. The Oregonian has fewer and fewer pages, and on Friday announced another buyout for 100 employees. On the surface, it sounds like a good deal – two years of pay and two years of health care coverage – but there are NO jobs in the newspaper business. Once you leave, it’s over. 

Newspaper and ink account for 30% of the cost of running a paper. And I understand that classified ads used to account for 30% of the revenue. Those have all gone to Craig’s List, which has no need for newspaper and ink. Buy the paper in Seattle to find out what movie is playing near your hotel, and you won’t find the movie ads. They are all on line.

Think how important book reviews are for books. You pick up a paperback and look at the back to see what the critics had to say. But those reviews are being cut back or eliminated. I write one of the few YA columns that I’m aware of in any newspaper.  

A friend who works for a newspaper told me that they used to say that there was a certain floor below which subscribership would never fall. Now they believe that floor is zero.

But could there be hope? European newspapers seem to be flourishing? “Experts say European papers are prospering largely because they haven't followed the U.S. path of draconian — and self-defeating — cuts in scope and quality of coverage.” Read more here. [Full disclosure: ironically, I read this article in the Oregonian.]

Naughty! Naughty!

This is kind of scary. Random House UK has put this in its contract boilerplate for authors: "If you act or behave in a way which damages your reputation as a person suitable to work with or be associated with children, and consequently the market for or value of the work is seriously diminished, and we may (at our option) take any of the following actions: Delay publication / Renegotiate advance / Terminate the agreement."

In my work with Thomas Nelson, my contract included a “moral turpitude” clause. I signed.  I lead a boring life. To get bounced, I figured would take a little twist on Edwin Edwards “caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl” problem. I’m pretty sure Nelson doesn’t define moral turpitude the way the government does, where forgery is moral turpitude, and incest is not. See more here.

In Which it is Revealed that the Universe has a Sense of Humor

n the books I'm co-writing with Lis Wiehl, one of the characters works in the Mark O Hatfield Federal Courthouse. I've been trying to figure out how to see inside it - get a tour, if possible. There are few photos online. I tried emailing an attorney I knew, but the email bounced back. I asked an FBI agent if he knew anyone who worked there, but it was buried with a bunch of other questions, and he missed that one.

So what do I get in the mail today? A jury summons to the Mark O Hatfield federal courthouse for district court Sept 2. Since I'll actually be in the building, it seems like I could connect with someone much more easily. And I'll have access to the public spaces.

What do you think the chances are I'll get picked for a jury? If someone said they wrote mysteries and thrillers, and you were a lawyer, would you want them on or off?

Want to eavesdrop on some agents?

Well, now you can! Two Canadian agents interviewed each other by email over the course of a weekend.  

Here are a couple of interesting excerpts:
“Recently I'm sure you've noticed too how the so-called 'midlist' authors are being cast aside by their publishers. In today's difficult marketplace, publishers want either the sure thing or the completely untried, hoping that either one will become a bestseller. Authors on their third book who haven't yet broken out are in increasingly untenable positions, and there aren't many options in our small marketplace.”

And:
“To pick up on one of your points first, absolutely, securing the best deal for an author is about much more than the advance. It's finding the perfect combination of editor, marketing support, position within a publisher's list and timing of publication, and then trying to round that out with strong financial terms. The chemistry with the right editor is worth a significant amount - it's when you have a few wonderful editors fighting for the same book (and don't we wish that happened more often) that the dollars become more significant. Because if the rest of the publishing house isn't backing up that editor with marketing and sales support, all the editorial passion in the world isn't going to help a book get noticed by readers.”

Read more here.  

Blogging as a marketing tool (?)

One of my publishers recently sent me a pamphlet about how to use the Internet to market your book. It had lots of good info, especially if it's your first book. And even more especially, if you write non-fiction. Their example used Author A, who had no web presence at all, and Author B, who wrote a book about the environment.

We don’t need to talk anymore about Author A, because his book is for all intents and purposes remaindered in short order.

Author B, who is a very busy bee, registers both his name and the name of his book, makes sure he has an entry in Wikipedia, etc. The part that caught my eye was that he starts a blog six months before the book comes out and posts 2-3 times a wee” about environmental issues “always being sure to put the stories and commentary in the context of his upcoming book.” And then links and posts to similar Web sites and blogs.

In the happy world of the brochure, by the time his book comes out, he has a readership of thousands, is asked to guest blog dozens of times, and even gets speaking gigs conferences and seminars. The book gets written up on dozens more blogs and mentioned in numerous email newsletters for environmental groups, which helpfully link back to his site.

Well, um, maybe. For non-fiction. Although it seems hard to think of how you could think of 75 topics you hadn’t covered in your actual book-book.

But for those of us who write fiction? I’m not sure this idea would work. I post a lot. I have a readership in the thousands. My next book even has a theme about environmental activists. Extreme environmental activists. But I couldn’t think of something to blog about on this topic 2-3 times a week for six months. Especially not of the “read more in my book” variety. I’m not sure what other blogs I would be commenting on. I’m not unsympathetic to ELF’s cause, but I’m also not pro.

I just don’t think fiction lends itself to 75 posts that all reference the book in some way. Plus putting even more posts on other blogs. Even if it could be done, that’s just too “me, me, me” for my taste.

I blog about writing, the writing business, books and authors I like, and stuff that catches my eye.Probably the latter is the only topic that might interest my potential readers. Maybe not even that. But I don’t know if I have the energy to think of stuff that would solely appeal to my readers. I’m not even sure what that would be.

What are your thoughts?

Who's in charge here?

Driving with Teen earlier in the week, I was musing outloud about a character.

Me: "I know she was raped - but why did she keep the baby? Why didn't she have an abortion or give it up for adoption? That's what I would have done. But she kept it."

Teen: "But you're the writer. You decide what your characters do and then they do it."

Me: "Not always."

Teen: "Now you sound crazy."

Flat Chapter Endings

I’m a firm believer that the end of a chapter should entice you to stay up past your bedtime and read on.  

I just finished World Made By Hand , and while I generally liked it, I did not get emotionally invested in it. The book is set in the near future, after two bombs and a series of deadly epidemics have reduced the world to basically what you can walk to. 

One reason it didn’t engage me might have been the many flat chapter endings.

Some good chapter endings he had were:
- “My heart flew into my throat.” [After hearing three shots.]
- “As I pulled the cart away from the general, all I could think about was whether they would eat the dog.”

But the author had many more like this:
- “I suppose that was what she used to tell her kids back in school.”
- “Tell them eight o’clock at the old town hall upstairs.” [The main character has called a meeting.]
- “Dale Murray seemed to grasp that the jokes would continue at his expense, so he cut his losses and called the meeting to order.”
- “By then, the true darkness of night was creeping over town and stealing into the third floor of the old town hall, and since nobody had brought any candles, I moved to adjourn the meetings.”
- “Then it was a final dram, and we tucked ourselves into our bedrolls in nice cool sleeping weather, for a change, and fell out rather quickly from our day’s emotions.”

I believe a book is more enticing when a chapter ends on a note of drama, rather than summing up what has just taken place.

Ann Patchett talks about touring

Ann Patchett has an interesting piece in the Atlantic Monthly on touring. She tries to remember Alan Gurganus’ advice: “The only thing worse than going on book tour,” he said, “is not going on book tour.”

She writes, “Like the hotels, the tours all start to blend together. The books, the cities, the stores, the airports, the crowds or lack of crowds all fall under the massive heading of What Happened While I Was Away. What I always remember clearly are the times I saw other writers, the way pioneers rolling over the prairies in covered wagons must have remembered every detail of the other settlers they passed, cutting through the tall grass from a different angle. “How was it back there?” you shout out from your wooden perch.”

I’ve had experiences like that. Tim Cockey still owes me a drink, a promise he made when we passed like ships in the night in California when we were both on tour in 2001 or 2002, even though he has now morphed into Richard Hawke.  

Read more about Patchett’s experiences, including how no one wants to talk about your current book here.  

Not so perfect - but still pretty good

NPR devoted part of Talk of the Nation to "[t]wo modern-day mystery writers talk about how to create the perfect whodunit. Tana French, author of In The Woods and The Likeness, and Louis Bayard, author of Mr. Timothy and The Pale Blue Eye, weigh in on the most important elements page-turning thrillers."

I haven't read anything by Bayard. French's In The Woods was extremely well-written - but plot-wise? Let's just say that the plot had some big gaping holes in it. In fact, the central mystery was left unsolved, with a hint that something mysterious had done it. It would be like reading a page turning thriller only to learn that aliens or time travel or something like that were the solution to the who-done-it.  

Still, that didn't stop me from putting a library hold on The Likeness - even though it hinges on a totally improbable idea, that a cop discovers that a dead woman bears an uncanny likeness to her and takes her place. Unless they are twins separated at birth, I don't think that would really work. Still, I will read it for the quality of the writing, which I hope will again be stellar.

To listen to the NPR story, click here.