Linda L. Richards’ Blog

Stop SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T09:36:00.000-08:00

The ramifications of the proposed Internet Blacklist Legislation are numerous and potentially dire. The Electronic Frontier Foundation boils it down most succinctly:

The Internet blacklist legislation -- known as PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House -- invites Internet security risks, threatens online speech, and hampers Internet innovation. Urge your members of Congress to reject this Internet blacklist campaign in both its forms!

As the EFF points out, though it’s possible to spin both bits of legislation in a positive way, but the deeper implications require serious study:

Big media and its allies in Congress are billing the Internet blacklist legislation as a new way to battle online infringement. But innovation and free speech advocates know that this initiative will do little to stop infringement online. What it will do is compromise Internet security, inhibit online expression, and slow growth in the technology sector.

So much has been written on the topic already, with more being added every minute, rather than add to the noise, here are a series of links:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation covers the matter here.

Wikipedia explains in some detail here.

The National Post does its usual great job of coverage here.

Ditto Strombo here.

CNN covers the basics here.

The Assassin’s Tale

2012-01-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me recently why I chose to write a story from the point of view of an assassin. I’m saying that more delicately than it was asked. The tone was scathing. Maybe even a little shocked. The implication: why would anyone -- any nice person -- choose to stand on the uneven edge and look at life from a place where emotional collision is the only possible option? (I paraphrase, of course. You’ll have guessed that. The words the questioner asked were different than these.)

The answer is: I don’t really know. There must have been a moment when it was clear to me. When something fueled the question; pushed me forward to find an answer. But then, as always, the story swept me away. I became involved with the character/her special problems/challenges. And the genesis of that story becomes lost in the mists of memory, though -- truly -- it was not so very long ago.

I keep a notebook of… well, of snippets, really. Some of them are ideas for story. More of them are pieces that just fall out of my head. I write them down to keep them from drifting off. Then -- ideally -- when the time is right, I go back and harvest the snippets because sometimes they’ve taken root.

For the story that became “Hitting Back” there are two of these entries. The first:

With practice joy could be prevented. There often wasn’t far to go.

Meaningless, right? Yet it painted a whole situation for me. A whole chill feeling. It created the essence of the she who would become her. And another:

You can’t predict the moments you’ll remember. They’re seldom the ones you’ll think they’ll be. The grand gestures. The big bangs.

Neither of these lines are in “Hitting Back,” but they spoke to me about this character; about the spiritual desolation she felt.

Who was she? Someone who has hit her own bottom and does what she does in an attempt to find her own path out.

If you’ve read the story, you know the main character -- the nameless character -- in “Hitting Back” is broken and is possibly beyond redemption. Her circumstances create her as a somewhat sympathetic character, but it’s an uneasy sympathy for the reader. After all, she’s a hit woman: she kills people for money. There’s only so much sympathy we can spare. She seems to know this, too, and doesn’t ask for it, as she tells us early on:

It’s more of a temperament thing. That’s what I’ve found. More of life lining up in a certain way, showing you what you’re made of. And this probably isn’t true for everyone, but for me it was also a combination of rage and desperation. And, obviously, there’s no road back. Once you’ve taken a life for money, it’s not like you can return to whatever you were doing before. You can’t just go back to being a stockbroker or a gardener or someone’s secretary. For so many reasons, once you turn that corner, you can’t ever find your way home.

So back to the original question: why write about an assassin? I don’t know. I still don’t know. But she’s made an impression, both on me and on her readers. That much I do know. And I feel her larger story stirring. I’ll let you know about that journey when it begins.

Tis the Season...

2011-12-22T10:12:00.000-08:00

My silence over the last few weeks has been partly due to being snowed under doing the
final preparations for January Magazine’s Best Books of 2011 feature. The 2011 edition has been our biggest end of your feature ever, with selections in eight categories: fiction, non-fiction, crime fiction (parts one and two), art & culture, cookbooks, books for kids, science fiction & fantasy and biography.

You can read about January’s Best of 2011 feature here, including details about the selection process.

Still hunting for a last minute gift? Head to your favorite neighborhood bookstore with a selection from the Holiday Gift Guide.

I’ll resurface once visions of books stop dancing in my head. (Will that ever actually happen?) Meanwhile I wish you and yours a joyous 2011 holiday season.

Happy reading!

Judging Books

2011-12-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

Do we judge books by their covers? Sure we do. It would be dishonest to even pretend otherwise. When I began publishing my backlist in e-book form, I knew going in that covers were going to be an important component. I’d done my homework, plus I haven’t been knocking around this industry for so many years not to have formed a couple (!) opinions. And one of those opinions was that, if anything, a kick-ass cover is even more important for an e-book than it is for a traditional book. After all, when you’re in a bookstore you can pick up a book, feel it, smell it if you like, read a couple of pages, turn it over and read the back; the spine. There are many things you can do before making your buying decision. But with an e-book? There really isn’t much beyond the cover: it’s everything.

Also, when it comes to covers, I have a secret weapon. I’m lucky in that my partner, David Middleton, is a talented graphic artist whose work has appeared in magazines and newspapers around the world. And he’s designed book covers for other people. So I’ve been able to give him a very small design brief (“Make it look like a real book. One everyone wants to read.”) and he’s just gone off and done his thing and I know I’m in good hands because A/ He’s a terrific designer and B/ He’s my first reader, so knows my work as well as anyone and C/ He loves me and has an emotional investment in my success. Also having a physical investment in my success is not pushing things all that much. Add to all this the fact that, over the years we’ve despaired of some of the covers my books have been given by other people and so it’s been awesome to be able to do what we felt was right.

I think the covers of the Madeline Carter books came pretty easily for David. He’d disliked the original print covers and had in mind what the series should look like. In the time before I reverted the rights to the books, when we traveled, David would photograph images he ultimately knew would end up on covers of the Madeline books.

We were in New York last summer, for instance, and stayed on Wall Street. We could actually see the New York Stock Exchange from the terrace of our hotel. So when it came time for David to design the cover for Mad Money, all of the “stock” images he used were his own: the Stock Exchange from that trip, the palm tree from another, the ominous-looking sky from another still.

When it came to the short stories I’ve been publishing as e-books, it was another matter. Though many people have asked if it’s me, the image on the cover of “Hitting Back” is from stock. I could have posed for it but, to be honest, I wouldn’t have known where to get the gun and if I’d gotten my mitts on one, I doubt I would have been able to shove it down the back of my pants the way it is in that image!

Finding the stock image proved to be challenge enough. The main character in “Hitting Back” is a hired killer and David felt he wanted an image of a woman with a gun. Going through multiple stock libraries, though, David reported that he was sickened after a while. He had a hard time finding photos of strong-looking women getting ready to use their gun in a powerful way. What he did find were a lot of images of exploited-looking women holding guns in sexual ways. That wasn’t the look we were going for. At all.

He narrowed his search down to three or four strong images and we both liked the one that made it to the cover best of all. It seemed to me that the cover came together in a real straight-forward way and we were both happy with it.

The first cover for “Dearborn 9-1-1” was a different matter. It took longer than usual and, when David had narrowed it down to a final half dozen or so iterations for me to choose from, I had the feeling he wasn’t delighted.

This time out, not only had he pulled from his own stock, he’d done custom tabletop photography and even created some props: the coffee cup with the money wrapped around it, for instance. And he illustrated the broken road. I liked the cover he finally came up with and we went ahead with it back in late August of this year.

The thing was, though, that while sales of all of my e-books have increased from month-to-month, “Dearborn 9-1-1” remained a non-starter. Had “Hitting Back” not been part of the mix, I would have written the poor sales of “Dearborn 9-1-1” off to it being a short story. But, with all other things being equal, “Hitting Back” was still outselling “Dearborn 9-1-1” 10-1.

When I mentioned this to David, his response was pretty close to instant. “Let me redesign the cover.” That was on Friday. As I write this, it’s Tuesday and the cover has been in place since Sunday night.

This time, he went straight to it and, with no input from me at all, bashed out cover #2 for Dearborn. As usual, he sent me half a dozen iterations, I chose the one I liked best and he went back and tweaked it a bit, and that’s shown here, lower left.

For me, it had to be the red one, as an explosion is central to this book and it seems to imply that. I liked the euro feel of the design and David had no trouble with me choosing that one: as you can see, he’d liked it well enough to render it in yellow and red.

At time of writing, I’m not sure it will make a difference to sales of the book. With luck and a tailwind, I’ll let you know in a few days or weeks. Here’s what is amazing, though: in this brave new world, we can be so lithe! We can respond to the market instantly, make corrections as necessary, change pricing and, yes, even change covers if we want. What will all of this mean to the publishing industry in the long term? I really don’t know. But in the short term, it sure feels wonderful to be in the driver’s seat.

And Then Books Became More Beautiful…

2011-12-05T16:31:00.001-08:00

Happy fallout from the e-book revolution: some publishers are finding that, to be successful, they must make their books more beautiful, inside and out. That story is here.

As Long as it Makes You Feel

2011-12-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

Publishing my short story, “Hitting Back,” in e-book form was an enlightening journey in so many ways. For instance, I didn’t anticipate the anger the story would draw. The strong feelings.

I no longer remember where the heart of this story came from and how it came to me. I only know that one of the things I wanted to do was explore looking at things from the viewpoint of a character who was, at very least, morally reprehensible.

The nameless main character in “Hitting Back” is an assassin. A hired killer. You give her money; she’ll make someone dead. For me and my own view of the world, there is no place that she can come to this and have it be all right. But she’s a character and she has her reasons. And even though the story is told in the first person, they are not my reasons. And she? She is not me. If there’s something out there that would make me take a life, I can’t imagine what it would be. That is, I can’t conceive of the situation that would allow me to take another human life, let alone take it and continue to be me.

So coming to this character and writing her in a believable way was, at least, a challenge for me. How could you write something about someone with whom you share nothing at all? More: how could you write it from their viewpoint? Yet somehow she -- whoever she is -- came to be. Not only that, in this single story, she came to be with such veracity that she’s struck a nerve with some readers. With a lot of readers. People have written to me to tell me how much they hate the character: how they could really feel the intensity of her pain, yet still couldn’t justify what she’d done.

Here’s the thing, though: there is no justification for what she’s done/for what she does. In a way, that’s the point. You’re not meant to like her. Or identify with her. Or even, particularly, understand her. If I had any intention at all with that character -- if there’s any reaction I wanted from you, gentle reader -- it’s that I wanted you to feel. If, when you read “Hitting Back” you feel anger or if her story saddens or even confuses you, then I guess I’ve hit my mark. I wanted to explore something for which I don’t think there is a good explanation. I wanted to feel -- and have you feel -- what it is to stand on the dark side. And I wanted you to know how good it feels not to have to stay there. How good it was for both of us not to stay there.

Some people have asked me if this character will get her own book. I’m still not sure. I liked the voice in “Hitting Back.” I liked the tone and the pace. To be honest, though, I’m not sure I could spend a whole book in this woman’s company. I’m not sure I could do that to myself, emotionally. And, were I to do it, I’m not sure I could ask you to join me there.

So here’s what I want you to take away from all of this: if you read “Hitting Back” and the emotions that come up in you are strong, I’ve done what I set out to do. If you feel outrage or disagreement or even anger, that’s all okay. My intention, when I write anything, is not necessarily to make you like what I’ve written or even make you like me. I’m only hoping to make you feel.

Quote of the Week: Anne McCaffrey

2011-11-23T06:15:00.000-08:00

“The thing is, emotion -- if it’s visibly felt by the writer -- will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.” -- Anne McCaffrey

It always seemed appropriate that Anne McCaffrey, best known for her various award-winning and bestselling Pern series, was often photographed holding a cat or standing with one of her animals.

Anyone who ever read the Pern books wouldn’t have needed to be told that McCaffrey was an animal lover of the first order. The emotional connection she builds between Pern’s dragons and their keepers is so clearly an idealized version of our own connections with our pets. They probably don’t understand what we’re thinking. And, if they do, they mostly couldn’t be bothered to act on it. On Pern, though, things are different. And the dragons? They understand human hearts.

“What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids, ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food.” -- Anne McCaffrey

Sadly, there is a little less magic in the world today.

No More High School Literary Abuse

2011-11-18T08:28:00.000-08:00

If I were forced to choose one word to described Stephen Mitchell’s new translation of The Illiad, it would be “stunning.” And in so many ways. Mitchell gives the ancient poem a new clarity and verve that makes you realize what previous English translations have been missing. And more.

Yesterday, I reviewed the book on January Magazine. Here’s a taste:

If high school literary abuse makes the very mention of anything by Homer roll your eyes up into your head, you’re in for a treat. This new translation of The Illiad (FreePress) by Stephen Mitchell who starts things off on a wonderful note. “We return to the Illiad because it is one of the monuments of our own magnificence. Its poetry lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful, and it shows us how vast and serene the mind can be even when it contemplates the horrors of war.”

The full review is here.

The Edge of Seventeen

2011-11-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

I'm getting close to publishing the third Madeline Carter novel, Calculated Loss, in e-book form. As with earlier books in this series, it's been a delight to go back and revisit work I never thought I'd have reason to spend time with again. But because the Carter books are partly technical in nature -- all that stock and trading stuff -- it seemed especially important to go back and give the books a careful edit before republishing them in a new format.

The Madeline Carter books, along with being high action financial thrillers, also have a thoughtful component. I don't remember any more how that came about, but in doing these new edits its been fun to come across moments like this one and wonder what I was thinking when I wrote the words. Sometimes I remember. In this case, though, I do not. I was so immersed in Madeline's world as I wrote, I know they came out of her memories. But, considering Madeline's source material? They are, of course, at least a little bit my feelings, as well.

When I was younger, everything made much more sense. You looked at the world and what you saw was what you believed: the two things didn’t need to be so very different.

When I look back on it now, I sometimes think I’ll never again possess the wisdom I had when I was seventeen. I knew everything at seventeen. I had opinions on politics and world affairs. More than opinions: I saw the mess everyone else had made of everything in the world and just couldn’t understand how they could all be so stupid. If they’d known what I knew -- I thought -- the planet would be a much more sensible place.

The beauty -- and perhaps the curse -- of being seventeen is that you don’t see the entire spectrum. You see the blacks and you see the whites, but you haven’t developed the taste or the sensibility for all the subtle hues in between. Love was love and hate was hate. They were different and not related. And ambivalence? Empathy? Those aren’t in the seventeen year old’s palette and certainly not her vocabulary.

The edit is nearly complete and so is the cover by David Middleton (which is going to fantastic, BTW). Look for the electronic version of Calculated Loss in the next few weeks. If you want to be reminded when it comes out, you can sign up for my e-mail newsletter here.

Are Electronic Books Better than Traditional Ones?

2011-10-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

Which is better: e-books or the printed kind?

The question is both complicated and astonishingly simple. We maintain that it’s also deeply personal. Which might be true for me may not hold true for you. Mashable doesn’t agree:

Ever wonder which method of reading is better for you -- electronic screen or printed text?

The answer: There is no difference.

Well, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. For one thing, it’s not the same. For another, it’s different. The experts would not agree:

“There are no disadvantages to reading from electronic reading devices compared with reading printed texts,” according to a study by Research Unit Media Convergence of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in cooperation with MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH, operator of the ebook platform Libreka!.

Study or no, I’m holding fast on this one. What’s “better” in this instance is likely situational. Am I at my desk? In bed? On a beach? In the bath? And it’s personal. What do you like? What do you need?

In a classroom, I think the electronic version would always rock: give me random access so I can find what I need in haste! On vacation, e-books are clearly better: you can haul a whole library around the world with you if you want. But when I’m reading outside, under my favorite tree and a sudden rainshower shows up, I want don’t want to have to worry about delicate electronic parts. But, see? These things are personal, as well.

In the end, none of it matters. (And what if it did?) Here’s what does: we’re talking about reading. We’re talking about books. That’s the important thing. And the rest of it? That’s like Purolator or UPS: the method of delivery is clearly up to you, what matters is getting the package home in the way that makes the most sense to you.

Turning Books Into Pumpkins

2011-10-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

Well it’s getting to be the season, right? So let’s find this year’s pumpkin story. Here we go.

The last couple of years, it seems like everyone keeps talking about the death of the book. What no one warned us about, though: how a book might turn into a pumpkin.

Seriously, though: there’s a part of me that is appalled at this desecration. And another part can’t help but admire the innovation.

Long story short, someone else might want to use this information to turn some of their unwanted books into pumpkins, but you’d best leave my books the hell alone.

The Death of a Pioneer

2011-10-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

Was more saddened than I would have expected to hear of the passing of Steve Jobs. From ABC News:

“We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," read a statement by Apple's board of directors. "Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.”

Banned Books Week: Time to Read!

2011-09-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

I’ve been writing about banned books and Banned Books Week over at January Magazine today. It’s one of my favorite times of the year! Time to celebrate books that have been singled out for removal from schools and libraries by reading them and drawing attention to them so that they have an even wider readership than might have otherwise been possible. Canada’s equivalent, Freedom to Read Week, takes place February 26 to March 3, 2012. I hope you’ll help me celebrate then, too.

Meanwhile, the ALA’s list of most censored books of 2010 makes a fantastic reading list for you and the children in your life. Here it is:

And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: homosexuality, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language, racism, religious viewpoint, sex education, sexually explicit, violence, unsuited to age group

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit

Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
Reasons: drugs, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit

The Hunger Games (series), by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: sexually explicit, violence, unsuited to age group

Lush, by Natasha Friend
Reasons: drugs, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group

What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
Reasons: sexism, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Reasons: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint

Revolutionary Voices edited by Amy Sonnie
Reasons: homosexuality, sexually explicit

Twilight (series), by Stephenie Meyer
Reasons: sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence, unsuited to age group

When You See Dead People

2011-09-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

When you open your mind, when you open your heart, you don’t always know what will come out. Not really. You can think you see the story. See its shape and what kind of box it will be; what kind of magic it will hold. Then when you build the box, sometimes it will hold a different type of magic entirely.

Let me tell you what I mean.

I have been a writer – a B.C. writer – for most of my adult life. It’s possible that, if you’ve read BC magazines and newspapers pretty consistently for the last couple of decades you’ve seen my byline or read something I somehow had a hand in.

I’m a decent journalist and I’m a good editor but, like a lot of writers, what I’d always wanted to do was write a novel. I made several starts on topics that were important to me, but was never able to ride it through to the end. I know that writing a book is a very different journey for everyone, but for me, the novel form is… well, it’s not that it’s difficult, exactly. But it’s hard. It drains me. It takes exactly everything I’ve got. It took me a while to learn that. And it took me a while to learn how to get to that place of supreme letting go.

So there were all these false starts. Stories that were important to me. They were all too big for me, those stories. They were all too big for the writer I was then. But, one day, the shadow of a story crossed my heart and, finally, it wasn’t too big. In fact, in those first moments (hours, days) I thought the words would add up to a short story. About 7000 words in, I realized I had something different. Maybe something more. And I kept going. Not heroically; it was never anything like that. But I was curious. I wanted to know whose life I was building. I wanted to know where the story would end up.

One day – not terribly far in – I realized I had a book. More: I realized it was a book I’d never thought about writing. Some of the people died. And though there was some laughter – life always has some laughter -- sometimes bad things happened to the people in my book. I’d started out telling the story in my heart and ended up with a mystery; a novel of suspense.

Once the book was finished, I was Cinderella. I didn’t have all the pain you hear about writers going through. Once I got down and did it – once I had a finished book in my hand – it all came together in amazingly stylish fashion. Almost the first agent that saw the manuscript wanted to represent it. Within a couple of months of her taking it on, we had a six figure, three book deal with a major house.

It hasn’t all been perfect. There have been bumps: I have a different agent now and the world outside of my books has changed. But I’ve gotten better at finding the story. Better at building the box, I guess. And then delighting at the magic that sometimes – luckily – seems to flow out.

Cue the Teen Spirit

2011-09-25T19:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Nivrana’s Nevermind. A hauntingly beautiful piece in the National Post by Mark Lepage helps us remember:

It is worth remembering how left-field the success was, less than a year after a zero-profile trio from Seattle played a gig featuring an unreleased Smells Like Teen Spirit for the first time, in order to earn the gas money to drive to L.A. and record the album with producer Butch Vig.

In the autumn of 1991, you could indeed swing a dead cat without contacting Nirvana, especially in Montreal, where the band was non-existent.

Guns N’ Roses and Metallica lumbered the Earth as the dominant brontosauri, and the local rock radio station had not yet picked up on the album.

No denial.

Facebook Aiming for Maximum Stickiness

2011-09-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

Do you hate Facebook’s new interface? It’s possible you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. From Mashable a few days ago:

Details about the redesign are sparse, but two sources familiar with Facebook’s plans (who have asked to remain anonymous) have told us that the redesign is “major” and will make Facebook profiles nexuses for consuming content.

The profile changes will be part of a wider launch, one that will include launch of a music and media platform.

Mashable goes on to say that the new design is meant to make the redesigned profiles more sticky. Hmmm… the way I’m feeling right now, maybe I’ll stick, all right: to Google+. If you want to see me there, I’m here.

Canadian Women Writing

2011-09-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

I’m feeling very grown-up today. I just discovered I’ve been included in the Canadian Women Writing and Reading in Canada from 1950 Project. Though it could certainly use a good acronym, it’s a very cool and interesting project. From the Web page:

This site documents and reports on the development of a research project, Women Writing and Reading in Canada from 1950. It personalizes literary history as it explores the bond between reader and writer, world and text. MA and PhD students are partners in this research; they assist in designing surveys, uploading material, and maintaining the forums, and also create their own professional development projects.

Well, I’m a woman. And I’m a writer. And I’m Canadian. So, clearly, I belong with this group. But maybe it’s a sign of my core Candianness that makes me blush and deny and say, “What? Me?” In any case, it sounds like a deeply interesting project.

Under the stewardship of Dr. Patricia Demers of the University of Alberta, they’re focusing on the “immense productivity of women writers within the rapidly changing culture of the mid-twentieth century to the present day.”

The project embraces “writing” as a large and diverse field, including established (poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction) and emerging (graphic novels, film and song writing, cartooning) forms. Popular and elite markers of circulation, appeal and critical judgment contribute to the criteria for inclusion.

The full project seems to be on the Web and it’s here.

The Mystery Goes Postmodern

2011-08-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

Over at The Rap Sheet, I take on the idea of the post-modern mystery. While music historian and author Ted Gioia has developed a whole site around the postmodern mystery, I’m wondering if there actually even is such a thing and, if there is, if this is it:

To my mind, here Gioia is describing the recipe for really good books. (Not just good books, which are actually getting to be pretty common. But really heart-stoppingly awesome books, of the kind that keep us from sleep and bring laughter and tears. Sometimes both at the same time and, always, while on the edge of your seat. Good books, is what I’m saying. Really super duper good books that push at the boundaries of what we have come to think of the conventions of mystery while surprising and delighting us along the way.

But what the hell do I know? If either of us has the creds for looking at stuff and knowing that it’s cool (or hip or on point) it’s Gioia. While this cat clearly digs mystery, the author is a noted music historian and his area of expertise is jazz. Gioia is the author of The Birth (and Death) of the Cool and The History of Jazz, among other related titles. So, obviously, when it comes to recognizing cool, if I’m competing with this guy, I’m going to get thoroughly trumped.

At the same time -- and despite this -- I find myself reluctant to just give myself up to the idea of yet another aspect of genre. A ghetto within the ghetto if you will.

The full piece is here.

Hipster Kitty Doubts Your Indie Cred

2011-08-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

It may just be because Hipster Kitty could be my own Tiger-Lily (if Tiger-Lily got a cool lavender hoodie and became a hipster) but when I belatedly encountered the Hipster Kitty meme yesterday, it just cracked me up.

And I just had the feeling, seeing that first image, that there was more where that came from. I was right: there are thousands upon thousands of them. And each one I see cracks me up still more.

So, naturally, I had to go on a meme hunt. Here's what I discovered:

Hipster Kitty (a.k.a Hipster Cat) is an image macro series featuring a fashion-conscious kitten wearing a lavender hoodie and a pair of thick-framed glasses, derived from a painting called “Allison” by artist Craig Wheat.

These image macros are typically paired with tongue-in-cheek sayings to poke fun at the self-righteous lifestyles of vintage-lovin’, cheap beer-sippin’, Bukowski-quotin’ urban folks. To a certain extent, Hipster Kitty can be seen as a self-parody phenomenon.

You can see more (a lot more) here at Know Your Meme, a useful site to keep track of in any case.

So what does all this meme knowledge get me? Well, pretty much nothing, right? Except for laughter. And we can never have too much of that.

Tender Umbrella: Sunday Afternoon Dance Break

2011-08-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

This is a crazy good mash-up and I can’t stop listening. Rhianna vs. General Public, fer cryin’ out loud. But just terrific.

The straight Rhianna version of “Umbrella” is so self-conscious and serious and, after listening to this version by DJ Party Ben, the original sounds like a parody. (Which, when you think about it, a lot of Rhianna stuff really does.) But layering in riffs -- and more -- of “Tenderness” by 80s new wave/pop act General Public gives the resulting mash-up a swingy, ironic edge. Just the thing for your Sunday afternoon dance break!

Sarcasm Font Debuts

2011-08-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

Here’s what I think: if you need a special font to indicate where you want to insert sarcasm, you need to work on your writing skills. Written sarcasm should be self-evident. Not everyone thinks so. From The Huffington Post:

We who spend our days IMing, Facebooking, Tweeting and so on have said it time and time again: there is a great need for a sarcasm font. Well, it looks like our social networking prayers have finally been answered by a company called Twitterblitz, started by three New York interns working at Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH). The solution? Sartalics.

The full story is here.

Say Good-Bye to Camelot

2011-08-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Though the literary connection here is not as strong as it would have been had the series been based on Jack Whyte’s terrific books, I have to express my bellowing outrage at the cancellation of Camelot, a superbly acted, written and directed series. It focused on the early part of the classic Camelot tale and starred Eva Green (Casino Royale), Josephy Fiennes (Flash Forward) and Jamie Campbell Bower (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows).

Camelot: the First Season is now available on DVD and it’s well worth watching but -- alas -- it will be the only season because the network announced they won’t be ordering further episodes.

In the wake of King Uther’s sudden death, chaos threatens to engulf Britain. When the sorcerer Merlin (Fiennes) has visions of a dark future, he installs the young and impetuous Arthur (Bower), Uther's unknown son and heir, who has been raised from birth as a commoner. But Arthur's cold and ambitious half-sister Morgan (Green) will fight him to the bitter end, summoning unnatural forces to claim the crown in this epic battle for control. These are dark times indeed for the new King, with Guinevere being the only shining light in Arthur's harsh world. Faced with profound moral decisions, and the challenge of uniting a kingdom broken by war and steeped in deception, Arthur will be tested beyond imagination. Forget everything you think you know… this is the story of Camelot that has never been told before.

The series is well worth the unfortunately not terribly long amount of time it will take to watch it. One of the wonderful things here has been the costume design and art direction. I’m almost certain that I’ve seen some of the fantastic dresses created for Green in Pre-Raphaelite paintings and, in fact, the entire production seems steeped in the rich and beautiful images and textures from that particular school of art.

Though the Starz network has cited scheduling conflicts for some of the main stars of the show as one of the reasons for not continuing production, there have been rumors that Camelot couldn’t stand the heat shed by another costume-rich drama, HBO’s King of Thrones based on the best known work by George R.R. Martin. The series debuted around the same time as Camelot, but quickly picked up a rabid following.

I have yet to watch even a single episode of Game of Thrones, which stars Lena Headey, Jack Gleeson and Sean Bean. But since the series was renewed for a second season not long after its premiere, it seems likely it will be around long enough for me to sneak a peak.

Meanwhile, though, I’m still in mourning for Camelot and I’m having a tough time imagining anything will come close. Fiennes was mesmerizing as Merlin and Green was an evil nemesis worth keeping an eye on as Morgan Pendragon.

If You Like Some History With Your Mystery

2011-07-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

Fun today to see that Death Was in the Picture has been named as one of Kirkus Review’s Top 16 works of historical crime fiction. The book is in terrific company, as well: the other books that got the nod included Loren D. Estleman’s Thunder City, The Fiend in Human by John MacLachlan Gray, The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld, The Distance by Eddie Muller and Louis Bayard’s The Black Tower.

You can see the full list here.

Writing Tip #1001: Go Directly to Jail. Do Not Pass Go. Forget the Two Hundred Dollars

2011-07-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

In a terrific essay for the New York Times this weekend, Tony Perrottet (The Sinner’s Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe) posits that, even before the time of Twitter and Facebook, writers were easily distracted. In fact Perrottet writes, for the comparative work some writers produced, the place for a writer to get their best work done might just be in jail. Take, for instance, the Marquis de Sade:

From a strictly literary point of view, prison was the best thing that ever happened to the marquis. It was only behind bars that Sade was able to knuckle down and compose the imaginative works upon which his enduring, if peculiar, reputation lies.

Sade’s most impressive stint began after 1784, when he was transferred to the Bastille, which effectively operated as a literary colony on a par with Yaddo today. From a suite decorated with his own furniture and 600-book library (and tended by his valet), the marquis entered a mind-boggling frenzy of writing, cranking out thousands of manuscript pages at breakneck speed. As Francine du Plessix Gray describes in her classic biography “At Home With the Marquis de Sade,” he completed the first draft of his pornographic novel “Justine” in a single two-week-long burst, and knocked out the final 250,000-word draft of “The 120 Days of Sodom” in 37 days, transcribing minuscule letters on five-inch-wide pages glued into a roll nearly 50 feet long. By 1788, after only 11 years behind bars, Sade had churned out 8 novels and story collections, 16 historical novellas, 2 volumes of essays, a diary and some 20 plays. Whatever you make of Sade’s oeuvre, you have to envy his productivity.

Nor was the marquis alone.

The peripatetic Marco Polo got around to recording his classic travels through China only because he was captured in 1298 during a naval battle with Genoa and held in a lavish palazzo. Five hundred years later, the playboy Giacomo Casanova found time for his renowned erotic autobiography only after he had run out of money (and libido) and retreated to Castle Dux in Bohemia, where he accepted a sinecure as a librarian. Napoleon Bonaparte dictated his multivolume memoir — one of the great best sellers of 19th-century France — thanks only to his long exile on St. Helena. Even the harsh public jails could induce results. In 1897, Oscar Wilde wrote the philosophical essay “De Profundis” while locked up in Reading Gaol on charges of “unnatural acts.” And in 1942, Jean Genet wrote his first novel, “Our Lady of the Flowers,” while in Fresnes prison, near Paris, for petty theft, scrawling on scraps of paper.

To work properly, a writer’s prison doesn’t even have to be the official kind, and no crime need be involved.

“A prison is indeed one of the best workshops,” Colette declared. She wasn’t speaking metaphorically. In the early 1900s, by her own account, her caddish first husband had stashed her in a tiny room for four hours a day, refusing to let her out until she had finished a requisite number of pages — a drastic measure, but one that resulted in a novel a year for six years. “What I chiefly learned was how to enjoy, between four walls, almost every secret flight,” she later recalled, sounding almost sentimental.

Quote of the Week: Amy Winehouse

2011-07-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

I don't ever want to do anything mediocre. I hear the music in the charts and I don't mean to be rude, but those people have no soul. Learning from music is like eating a meal.. you have to pace yourself. You can't take everything from it all at once. I want to be different, definitely. I'm not a one trick pony. I'm at least a five-trick pony.

Sad this morning to read about the death of Amy Winehouse, just 27-years-old. Everything about her seemed so tortured sometimes. Everything we saw in the press, anyway. But her music was not tortured. It was lovely. And I’m so sad for all the might-have-beens.

I'm not religious at all. I think faith is something that gives you strength. I believe in fate and I believe that things happen for a reason but I don't think that there's a high power, necessarily. I believe in karma very much though. There are so many rude people around and they're the people that don't have any real friends. And relationships with people - with your mom, your nan, your dog.. are what you get the most happiness in life from. Apart from shoes and bags.

As I write this, the press is saying Winehouse’s death is “unexplained.” We’ll know more soon, I guess. For now, though, we have her music. And her words.
I don't think your ability to fight has anything to do with how big you are. It's to do with how much anger is in you.

Sesame Street. Beastie Boys. What’s Wrong With This Picture?

2011-07-22T22:07:00.001-07:00

I wouldn’t even know how to resist this one. Who could? On Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow refers to it as a Sesame Street/Beastie Boys mash-up. It’s not, actually. Though as Doctorow says, the video does “some very clever stuff with fast and slow framerates that makes the puppets appear to be perfect lipsynchers.” Oh, and it’s also rather fun.

All of this reminds me: whatever happened to the Beastie Boys, anyway? Turns out, they’re still rockin’, after all these years. Wikipedia tells us that “their eighth studio album, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, was released on May 3, 2011, and received positive reviews.” And just to show that I haven’t been paying attention, Wikipedia goes on to say this:

Beastie Boys have had four albums reach the top of the Billboard album charts (Licensed to Ill, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty and To The 5 Boroughs) since 1986. In the November 2004 issue, Rolling Stone named "Sabotage" the 475th song on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. In their April 2005 issue, Rolling Stone ranked them No.77 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. VH1 ranked them No.89 on their list of their 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. On September 27, 2007, it was announced that Beastie Boys were one of the nine nominees for the 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions.

Quote of the Week: Umberto Eco

2011-07-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

From his new book (with Jean-Claude Carriere and Jean-Philippe de Tonnac) This is Not the End of the Book, Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose), offers up some pure poetry:

The Internet has returned us to the alphabet. If we thought we had become a purely visual civilization, the computer returns us to Gutenberg’s galaxy; from now on, everyone has to read.

More today on January Magazine here.

Tuesday Night Dance Break: Ha Ha Tonka

2011-06-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough, I have Anthony Bourdain to thank for introducing me to tonight’s dance break. In an episode of No Reservations that celebrates that food and culture of the Ozarks, Bourdain does a segment of music and barbecue with Ha Ha Tonka. As always, Bourdain knows a good thing when he sees it and isn’t at all shy about sharing it with the world. I’m less confident that I’d ever try the squirrel pot pie that also makes it into the episode -- though the duck breast he prepares looks fantastic -- but Ha Ha Tonka is a keeper and, thanks to Bourdain, a lot more people will be listening to their take on contemporary bluegrass/Southern rock. This is good stuff!

A note to my vegetarian readers: if you’re at all tempted to watch the episode of No Reservations referenced here, I’d advise you to think again. In fact vegetarians might want to give Bourdain’s wonderful food and travel commentary a miss altogether.

Who Smokes in Heaven?

2011-06-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

The Next Ex, the second novel in the Madeline Carter series, becomes available in all e-book formats today. As I’ve said in this space a couple of times over the last few weeks, for various reasons, this is my favorite of my published novels. (The book I finished last week is now my actual favorite, but that tends to be the case with the youngest child, does it not?) For me, though, The Next Ex is just the right blend of a lot of things. There’s humor, but some darkness, as well. There’s some thoughtful explorations of the human condition… but not too much. Most of all, as I rediscovered when I edited it for this re-birthing in electronic formats, it’s twisty and surprising. It’s very sharp and, oddly enough, I don’t remember how that happened, it just is.

The passage below is from deep in the book. Madeline has been up to misadventures, off sleuthing on her own and nearly dying in the process. For a moment, we actually do think she has died. And then she comes to...
The first thing I became aware of was the scent of jasmine blossoms, a warm and delicate scent that always moves me. I was perhaps less surprised to find that heaven was jasmine-scented than I was to discover that there was a heaven at all. I’ve never bothered with religion very much, nor has it bothered much with me. Religion is not very useful to a stockbroker, to tell the truth. The brokers I’ve known who were devout all seemed to worship for the wrong reasons.
If I expected to see cherubs when I opened my eyes, I was in for a surprise. Basset hound eyes stared intently into mine. “Brown,” I croaked, surprised when my voice came out less strong than expected. “What are you doing in heaven?”
He smiled then and the relieved expression transformed him so utterly that all signs of the basset hound disappeared for the moment. “Jesus, Madeline, you had us worried.”
Us? I swiveled my head around, lifting it only slightly, surprised when a wave of nausea followed the movement.
Usinger was nearby, smoking a cigarette. He probably had matches. I didn’t know why matches felt so important, but they did.
“So I take it I’m not dead,” I said to Brian, indicating Usinger with my head.
“Because I’m sure smoking is pretty much verboten is heaven.” To my surprise, this teeny speech tired me out and I collapsed back with a grunt.
“No. Not dead. Not this time.” He held his fingers above my head, within sight. Two fingers, two inches apart. “About this close, though. And I’m pretty relieved to hear you sounding like yourself. The paramedics are taking their time about getting here and, you know, a deal like this -- no air -- you could have ended up with a head full of cheese.”
“Really?” I said.
“Not really cheese. Just -- you know -- some cheese-like substance. But I can see you’re pretty much your usual ornery self.”
“Ornery?” I’d never been described as ornery before. At least, not to my face.
“Well, maybe not ornery. But adamant, for sure.”
We were in the garden: away from the hedge maze, but not very far. “How’d you find me?” I wanted to know. My head was still blazing, my stomach gave the occasional heave, and my voice wasn’t coming as easily as usual, but otherwise I felt all right.
“How do you think? You left pretty clear instructions on my voicemail.”
I shrugged. Nodded. What could I say? He was right. I tried a weak smile. “I may be crazy,” I said. “But I’m not stupid.”
With a new edit that brings the book to the honed edge it was before it was first published and a wonderful cover by David Middleton, I'm excited to share the book with new readers. You can order The Next Ex for Kindle on Amazon or, in all other formats, from Smashwords.

Next on the publication list is Dearborn 9-1-1, a much shorter journey than The Next Ex’s 104,000-plus words. And one you'll have to wait a few months for.

Bloody Words 2011

2011-06-08T17:35:00.000-07:00

I had an awesome time at Bloody Words 2011, in Victoria, British Columbia, the first time this particular mystery conference has been held outside of Ontario. It was a beautiful, smooth-running convention with friendly, helpful honorees, a superb venue and even gorgeous weather. I wrote about the event for The Rap Sheet here and here.

Next year it's back in Toronto. With luck and a tailwind, I'll see you there.

Here Comes The Next Ex and some Bloody Words

2011-06-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

The electronic version of The Next Ex will be out within the next few days and I’ll let you know when it’s available. Meanwhile, I can’t wait to share the new cover with you. It was, of course, designed by David Middleton whose particular vision for this series of books has been fantastic. (So fun seeing them come to life.)

I’m particularly excited about this book. For various reasons, it remains my favorite of my published novels. (I know I’m not actually supposed to say that, but there you have it.) I had a great deal of fun with this one and there’s one whole part I still can’t read without holding my breath. (For some reason, that’s a good thing.)

I’ll be in Victoria this coming weekend at the Blood Words Mystery Conference. I’m on two panels and, Friday night, will be participating in a performance of one of the wonderful Michael Slade’s radio plays. If you see me there, please ask me to sign one of my gorgeous new postcards for The Next Ex for you. And even though this is a new electronic book, a traditionally published version will be available for sale in the bookroom.

Unbound: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

2011-05-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

I finished my most recent novel not half an hour ago. I think it is the best thing I’ve ever done. In fairness to my other books, I always think that about my most recent novel. This time, however, I think that it is true.

I'll spend the balance of the weekend polishing and burnishing, perhaps with some sanding thrown in for good measure. Some time on Monday, I’ll send it off to my agent. From there, I really am not sure what will happen this time because this particular book was an entirely new journey for me. It’s in a different genre and much darker than my work has tended to be and dealing with topics I’ve never tackled in fiction before.

This book seems overall more special to me, too. It came at me without forethought or planning and presented itself, pretty much in the form that my agent will see it, in one elegant swoosh. I started with the germ of an idea back in November and now, here I am, a finished book in hand.

While the actual writing tends to go quickly for me, the gestation period for my novels is usually much longer. Generally between the time I get a glimmer of story and when I sit down to write, there is a much longer period. Sometimes a year, occasionally more.

So this note, I guess, is a bit of self-congratulations. It’s always a good feeling, when you finish a book. You want to celebrate, but you move towards that cautiously. After all, from the last stroke of my pen to the point you’ll hold a finished book in your hands is a fairly laborious journey, fraught with danger and unexpected twists and turns.

So the book is finished. But this book’s story? It’s just begun.

The Perfect Gun for A Woman

2011-05-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday on The Rap Sheet, contributing editor Dick Adler reviewed Hitting Back, the short story I published in e-book form last month, along with an excerpt of my upcoming e-book, The Next Ex. Adler writes:

But Hitting Back is something else again--an absolutely perfect (except I want a whole book!) look at the life of a professional hit woman. Spare, cool, and totally convincing, it tells the story of a cipher (“Did you notice?--you never learn her name or where she’s from. A complete shadow figure, yet I’m fairly confident I’ll spend time in her company again ...,” writes Richards in her notes), whom the author manages to turn into a human being in a few short passages.

Not to spoil your reading pleasure, but here’s one passage from the tale that caught my attention early on:

I reach into my purse. It is Coach--authentic Coach, not something you’d buy on Canal Street--and my fingers touch the cold skin of my thirty-eight. It’s a Bersa Thunder, considered to be a good gun for a woman ...

This line from Adler’s piece made my heart sing:

Hitting Back is a genuine original, both in its writing and the imagination that went into its creation.

Thank you, Dick, for giving me one of those rare moments when you don’t know if you should weep or sing.

The Rap Sheet piece is here.

The Doctor is Listening... Just Not to You

2011-05-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

Great stuff from Funny or Die: The Sessions. “Four weeks. Four patients. The doctor is listening, just not to you.”

The Sessions are written and directed by Jaman Lloyd, produced by Carrie Wheeler and stars Michael Karl Richards, Kerry James, Liam Sproule, Zain Jamal and Samantha James.

“Catch a new episode every day, except Wednesdays. The doctor doesn’t work Wednesdays.”

The Sessions can be viewed here. Make sure you click “funny” after viewing each short.

While the Goddess Watched

2011-05-14T21:50:00.000-07:00

Aphrodite’s Temple at Histria Fortress near Constanta on the Romanian Riviera.

Some time I’ll tell you why I’ve posted this image here, but I can’t yet. It’s just too early to say. Forgive me. For Alex, then. And Austen. And because I wanted it some place it could be found.

More soon.

Madeline's Rules for the Road

2011-05-12T00:54:00.000-07:00

I'm still enjoying editing the Madeline Carter novels for publication in e-book form. Next up will be The Next Ex which, for various reasons I still don’t entirely understand, remains one of my favorites of my own novels.

One of the things I’ve really been enjoying is encountering Madeline in thought, as I did today when I came across this snippet. Here she’s about to embark on an ill-advised adventure that she really does know is ill-advised. Yet she does it anyway. But just before she does, she hands out this bit of rationalization:

There was a time in my life when I did not act on instinct. Life teaches you better, if you let it. One too many securities unpurchased. Or too many not sold. A course not taken, a road not followed, all of these -- and so many more -- can be cause for regret.

But following the path, selling the stock -- doing the thing my heart was telling me -- has never given me reason to look over my shoulder with sadness. Even when things don’t turn out as I’d planned -- even when things don’t turn out well -- it’s better, I’ve found, to take the advice my instincts give me. For me, life is just too short to do it any other way.

If you’re looking forward to The Next Ex -- and I hope you are! -- you don’t have long to wait. The edit and formatting are very, very close and the powers that be tell me the cover is almost ready. (I’ve seen it, in an early form, and it’s gorgeous. Of course.)

More soon!

Cheap or Frugal... the Difference is Perspective

2011-05-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

In the last few days, the e-book edition of my financial thriller, Mad Money, has been a selection at both Daily Cheap Reads and The Frugal e-Reader. Both sites have brought the book a fair amount of attention as well as sales.

For my readers who have been following my e-book progress and are looking forward to marketing their own e-books, I should mention that both of these sites are well worth the effort. Both sites have inclusion criteria for the books they’ll consider, as well as steps they want followed in order for you to play along. Follow the steps, and you’re golden. Another fun ride.

Show, Don’t Tell

2011-04-25T17:42:00.000-07:00

Early on, writers hear this advice. A lot. And I’ve seen the expressions on confused faces: sometimes they don’t even know what you mean.

I encountered a quote today that sums it up better that a 1000 words on the topic. If you don’t get it right away, play it back in your mind. Think about it. Think about the words and what they mean.

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” -- Anton Chekhov

Right?

Now show us that moon.

You Or Someone Like You

2011-04-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

When I meet people for the first time -- people who have read my books but have little knowledge of who I am -- I sometimes have the sense that I have disappointed them. And I’m glad about that. I’m perhaps not as tall as they’ve expected. Or quite as gamine. I’m a better cook than any of my characters. My interests and what’s important to me? Those things are different.

When people read books they enjoy and that live and breathe for them, they sometimes have an expectation that you will be your books. And it’s true: I’ve known a few authors who, if the series they write were to be discontinued for some reason, would never write another word. They’re writing themselves or some enhanced version of their lives and the things they know.

As is the case with many authors who were journalists first, that isn’t the case for me. I mean, very few women I’ve met wouldn’t like to be Madeline Carter and I’m certainly no exception. She is tall -- way tall: close to six feet -- and blonde and though she denies it, she is beautiful. She’s smart and caring and though she’s flawed, she’s flawed in beautiful ways: ways that I and her readers find endearing.

While Madeline gets tangled up in mysteries in contemporary Los Angeles, Kitty Pangborn’s world is 1931 Los Angeles, near the end of Prohibition and the beginning of the Depression. She couldn’t be more different from Madeline. Of average height and build and looks, she is also very young: younger than either Madeline or me. And she’s a redhead, though I honestly no longer remember if it was I who made that choice or the illustrater who did the cover of the first Pangborn novel, Death Was the Other Woman. In any case, Kitty is young and green and inexperienced. And me? I am none of those things.

All of that said, there is some of me in both of those characters; of course there is. Just as there is some of me in the nasty bad guys and the secondary and even the tertiary characters. If you look at things a certain way, there’s some of me in all of the people who people my books. There has to be. No matter how disconnected from my characters I sometimes feel -- how independent they seem to me to be -- everything they know about the world and about how to be human, they’ve learned from me.

When you bring your experiences and understanding of the world to your reading then -- together -- we’ve something that’s all our own.

An Easter Disturbance

2011-04-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

I’m over at Type M for Murder today talking a bit about the nature of art and the nature of disturbance. Yes, that’s right: one of my usual rants. You can find t hat here.

And, since it’s Easter, I’m sharing this very silly, very great photo of my dog, Jett because -- after all -- who doesn’t love a photo of a dog with rabbit ears?

Hope your day is terrific!

Monday Night Dance Break

2011-04-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve been weirdly surprised to discover that I’m not immune to wedding fever. I thought I was. Until a couple of days ago, I didn’t really care that Prince William and Kate Middleton (no relation) were to get married on April 29. To be honest, I’m not sure I had paid enough attention to notice.

So what changed? Is it just, as some of my Facebook friends have said, Royal Wedding Fever? And we’re still more than a week away. By the time we get there, the hoopla may be deafening.

For me what changed was the current issue of Vanity Fair (the issue with the picture of Rob Lowe on the cover, showing his ta tas). The very good coverage the magazine offered is upped by the online edition, which includes webisodes of various wedding-related stuff.

It really crystalized for me, though, when I saw a link to the T-Mobile-sponsored/created wedding dance spoof video embedded here. Not only did I click the link, I watched the goofy thing with a smile.

Some amazing Royal lookalikes here, but think the thing that struck me most -- aside from the hats that really do look as though they might have been designed by royal favorite Philip Treacy -- was the joyousness we see here. Wouldn’t it be nice if life were really like that?

The Wave No One Saw

2011-04-18T10:15:00.000-07:00

Still talking about e-books (or is it again?) I wrote a piece on same for January Magazine a few days ago talking about my path to them, my experience with them and the E-Book Publishing Workshop/Retreat I’ll be teaching at in June and how it came to be:

And so David and I started talking about that: about how some authors were feeling overwhelmed by the new roles being thrust upon them and how we could see a path through the forest, when maybe a lot of people were beating their way through the most thickly treed part. And wouldn’t it be fun, said we, to put what we know about publishing -- electronic and otherwise -- into a really enjoyable week-long intensive. Gorgeous surroundings. Good food. Camaraderie. And a lot of talk about the subject closest to our hearts: books and how they’re made.

We decided to mandate it: have people bring a manuscript and their own computer and, before the week is through, we’ve helped them design a cover, format their e-book, do all those necessary fiddly bits and upload it, ready for sale. Along the way, we’d talk about marketing and promotion and all the things that authors really do need to be thinking about these days.

You can read that piece here.

Reading: Virtual Reality Without the Dumb-Ass Headgear

2011-04-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

Going through the January archives, I came across this from a piece I wrote mid-2010:

In this space I’ve often talked about the full immersion experience of reading. Reading a novel offers an entertainment experience absolutely not duplicable by other mediums. Like virtual reality -- better -- only without all the dumb-ass headgear. And kids today? They know this. It’s why they swallow up all those Twilight and Twilight-like books as quickly as they can be spat out. And, as almost anyone will tell you, once you’ve been seduced by a sexy vampire, you’re only a very few steps from reading of other kinds: just immerse me, dammit! Just... you know... literally take me away.

I like this thought. I like it well enough to want to share it with you here. And so there it is.

I’m doing this archive-searching because we’ve put together an E-Book Publishing Intensive that we’ll teaching in June and I’m writing a piece about it for January and wanted to pull something I said that I can’t quite remember. I’ll keep searching. Meanwhile, though I’ll make a more official announcement soon, the intensive is ready to be talked about, and that link is here. If you’re interested in publishing your own e-book, join us for five days in the sun.

No Back to the Future for China

2011-04-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

Though time travel television dramas have been increasingly popular in China in the last few years, the Chinese government has put their foot down. As of April 1st, time travel drama? It’s banned. From China Hush:

The authority’s decision was made on the Television Director Committee Meeting on April 1st. – but obviously it’s not a prank to fans of the drama genre. The authority has a good reason to go against the genre. "The time-travel drama is becoming a hot theme for TV and films. But its content and the exaggerated performance style are questionable. Many stories are totally made-up and are made to strain for an effect of novelty. The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore."

Western media has had a… slightly different take. From The Hollywood Reporter:

“The rationale [for the time travel ban] is that whatever isn’t possible in the real world belongs to superstition,” said film critic and journalist Raymond Zhou Liming, who notes that time travel is untouched by censors in Chinese literature and theater.

In the electronic mass media, however, which in China reaches the world’s largest TV audience and the globe’s fastest growing movie market, the idea of time travel presents a clear and present danger.

In time-travel dramas such as Myth (Shen Hua), currently popular on Chinese TV, audiences seem to like the story of a modern man going back to ancient China where, after some adjustment, he finds love and happiness.

“Most time travel content that I’ve seen (in literature and theater, that is) is actually not heavy on science, but an excuse to comment on current affairs,” Zhou told The Hollywood Reporter.

Apparently unhappy with film and TV presenting even the fictional notion that China’s ability to provide happiness is a thing of the past for the average man, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television posted its guidance about time travel.

“Producers and writers are treating serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore,” SARFT said.

The Hollywood Reporter piece is long, thoughtful and it’s here. Meanwhile, imagine a world where the goverment gets to ban television trends that it finds disturbing or historically disrespectful. We would be left? Antiques Roadshow and reruns of Joey and This Old House.

Okay, you’re right: forget Joey.

Television Finds Kitty Pangborn’s Era. What’s That Gonna Mean?

2011-04-12T21:44:00.000-07:00

We got into watching Boardwalk Empire. It wasn’t actually much of a reach. After all, the storyline deals with a period of time about which I’ve done an enormous amount of research. Though the series takes place a decade before the adventure in the Kitty Pangborn books happens, Prohibition is a huge factor. As a result, we’re seeing events put in motion that will ultimately lead to the reason things look much as they do in Kitty’s 1931 LA. And as much as I’ve been able to research for the Pangborn books, a lot of that ultimately ends up being black and white: though for good reason. In Boardwalk Empire, Scorsese has brought it all to vivid life in amazing, HBO-quality color. That’s been a real treat for me: like seeing my dreams walk right off the page. And then, of course, it’s Scorsese. Was there even a chance we would not watch? There was not.

So we’re watching, David and I, and I see a scene that seemed to me to have dropped right out of Death Was the Other Woman. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that it did. It’s actually one of those scenes that make the era so terrific to write about, in terms of crime fiction. I mean, things like this happened to people. As they always will when you mix organized crime and a lot of money with illegal substances. It’s a deadly cocktail.

So the scene. Dex an Kitty are in a speak in San Francisco with a lot of Kitty’s old school friends. Kitty leaves the table to do some sleuthing and when she comes back, she finds all of her friends looking at Dex, “and each face held a look of sheer horror.”

“ONCE A WEEK like clockwork this guy went to his barber for a haircut and a shave. One day he goes in to get his ears lowered and his chin scraped and notices there’s a different barber. Doesn’t think anything of it. Sits down in the chair, starts talking baseball, the weather, the price of biscuits, who knows? Next thing you know, fffft.” Dex sliced his index finger across his own throat. “Straight razor. They left him in the chair in front of the big picture window as a sign.”

“What kind of sign?” Gladys asked shakily. Our other friends were just as mesmerized, their faces never leaving Dex’s. And he does so love an audience.

“The kind of sign that says: This man messed with the wrong people.” Dex shrugged his shoulders, as though acknowledging another element of the universe’s great inevitable. “There you are, kid,” he said, noticing me. “I was startin’ to get worried.”

Lately, watching television has offered me many moments like that, though that’s a pretty new sensation. When I first started writing books set in the 1930s, I sometimes had a tough time convincing people it was historical fiction. (It was. It is. But don’t get me started.) The funny thing is, I’ve been so focused on writing contemporary fiction of late, Kitty is far from my mind (though never, of course, entirely from my heart). So its fun, in television shows like Boardwalk Empire and the beautifully detailed Kate Winslet miniseries Mildred Pierce, to see the era so skillfully depicted. And, who knows? The sudden interest in the era might even pull Miss Kitty off the bench.

Quote of the Week: David Foster Wallace

2011-04-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

“We’re not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader’s own life ‘outside’ the story changes the story.” -- David Foster Wallace
I think about what Wallace is saying here. I think about it a lot. In our arrogance of creation, it’s too easy to forget about this very aspect.

A story is never mine alone. It’s ours: yours and mine. When I write a story, I bring something. And when you read it, you bring something else. How successful the story is -- in terms of carrying you away -- will be largely dependent on how much room I have given you, the reader, to participate.

Think about all of this when next you read. The stories that spell it all out -- that describe every eyebrow and every motion and every breath -- leave no room for the reader’s own creativity. When I write, I try to allow for your ownership; your participation. I don’t need to describe a the color of a character’s hair. That’s something that you will bring, even with no direction. The cleft of a chin, the swagger of a walk. A character should be defined by the impression he leaves in the world. Your job as a writer is to give your reader just enough information that this impression forms itself.

“The reader becomes God,” Wallace also said, going, I think, in the same direction, “for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I’ll hush.”

I’m thinking a lot about Wallace these days, partly because of a close encounter with The Pale King, his last novel, published posthumously this month. I wrote a somewhat heartbroken review of the book recently. That’s over on January Magazine if you care to peek.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this:

“It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good one.” -- David Foster Wallace

When a Book is Part of an Evil Plan

2011-04-08T12:34:00.000-07:00

As followers of this blog know, I’ve become a bit obsessed with e-books over the last little while. Not the assimilation of them into our culture: that’s inevitable and will take place with or without me. Rather, what’s compelling me right now is how to create them and how to vault them into a spot in the sun.

As any author will tell you, the business of creating books can be an emotionally trying process. First the book, of course. Writing the good ones make you bleed. Seriously: just open a vein, yet that’s the joyous part.

And then, in the world of old school legacy publishing (I borrow this phrase from JA Konrath and Barry Eisler, but it works), the author takes a backseat. Perhaps he is trotted out occasionally to stand at the front of a room somewhere and read or opine or maybe to speak with a carefully vetted reporter or two. Other than that, he is left alone to contemplate the weighty matters of life and to create.

So that’s in theory, right? And it’s also in the olden days. More recently, authors have been mostly doing all that stuff while also blogging, tweeting, Facebooking and whatever other thing we can think of to keep our smiling mugs in front of the folks who might buy books. But because the way legacy publishing works is to spend time and money on the authors whose careers least need it, the rest of us are sometimes investing our own time and money into doing all this stuff despite our publishers who insist on patting us sweetly and telling us not to worry our pretty little heads overmuch about matters we probably don’t know much about anyway. It’s a little frustrating (she said mildly). Especially for those of us whose backgrounds in related matters run quite deep.

All of this is part of the reason why some well-published authors are jumping rather enthusiastically on the e-book bandwagon. Finally we’re at a place where we can do something. We can do anything and we will either see direct results or not, but we will know that whatever we’ve created is the result of our creation, participation and, to a certain degree, our love.

Obviously, not every author is going to want to be this involved with their books. But for me, and those wired the way I am (I’ll call it a bit controlling. You might call it something else.), it’s incredibly freeing. Joyous. It’s like having spent more than a decade being cast around on an unwieldy sea, I’m suddenly at the helm of this fun little daysailer. And the water? It’s calm and blue. It isn’t tropical. Not yet. But I can see where I’m going.

So where am I going? I sat down to introduce you to my newest e-book, Hitting Back, just out today. I wanted to tell you about the book’s genesis and how it came to be. And I guess, in a way, I have, though the canvas I brought was larger than the one intended and the story I told had more scope. You get the idea, though: Hitting Back -- complete with another gorgeous cover by David Middleton -- is part of my evil plan, though it’s also a love child with a story of its own. I’ll get to that another day. Maybe tomorrow? But for now I’m moving more deeply into this clear, blue lake. I can’t see the other side yet but -- man! -- it’s a gorgeous day and the water looks very fine.

I Am One of the Lucky Ones. And I know It.

2011-04-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I’m really enjoying about recreating my backlist in e-book format is revisiting work that I really loved and am very proud of, but about which I’ve forgotten some of the details.

Here’s an example. I’m currently giving The Next Ex, the second book in the Madeline Carter series, an edit and freshening. It will be published in the next few weeks. Today I came across this little riff on time management that I remember really loving when I wrote the words. It’s just one of those fun little asides that you don’t think about too much while you’re writing, but that just sort of appear in your work sometimes and that you leave in because they add a human touch and deepen the backstory.

This riff happens at a quiet moment in the book. Madeline is thinking about some of the terrific aspects of the life she has created for herself. She’s congratulating herself, in a way. What she doesn’t know: all hell is going to break loose before very much more time passes.

I am one of the lucky ones and I know it.

A lot of people spend too much of their lives at work. Think about an 80 hour work week. That was a low average for me when I lived in New York. I mean, there's only a total 168 hours in a week. If you take out 42 hours for sleep -- and some would say that six hours a night wasn't enough -- and maybe another five to commute, that only leaves 41 hours for everything else. It's not enough. Forty-one hours a week to brush your teeth, shower, do your makeup, talk to your friends, make love, prepare food and consume it, go through your mail, pay and file your bills, talk to your mom, read a book or do a crossword puzzle, watch a stupid television program or the news or go to the movies, exfoliate, get regular hair and medical and dental treatment, wash dishes, make your bed, do laundry, go to the bathroom. Dust.

When you think about it that way, it's no wonder so many people lose it. It's no wonder that clocktowers can hold such attraction. And all of those antidepressants? Sure: some of them are very necessary. But some people could probably get by with regular naps and the occasional trip to a spa. That is if they could find the time, I guess.

Remember: you don't get to make withdrawals from the time bank. Only deposits. It's not such a great deal.

The Next Ex is scheduled for publication April 26th. In the meantime, if you’re digging on Madeline’s rather odd brand of wisdom, you can download the first book to feature ex-stockbroker Madeline Carter here.

You’re Invited: A Virtual Party for a Virtual Book. Actually

2011-04-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

There is a virtual party going on to celebrate the publication of the electronic version of Mad Money. It’s happening on Facebook, because that venue lends itself to shenanigans like this.

I’ve been having some fun dreaming up virtual food and drink to serve and some of the guests have been helping with this. Silly fun? Indeed. But it’s still a new enough medium that sometimes figuring out the right way to do things means just doing it.

The actual launch takes place April 7th. One of the things I’m working on right now is having a gift ready for the party goers. It will be both virtual and actual. Clearly a neat trick if you can pull it off, and I’m going to try.

Please join us for the fun!

“That’s My Crazy Ex-Husband, Isn’t It?”

2011-03-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

It doesn’t give away any plot points for me to tell you that the major bad guy in Mad Money is a corporate psychopath. When I was writing the book, I did a lot of research on this incredible phenomena. It made for some interesting, scary reading because, for various reasons, corporate psychopaths are talked about much less than your average, garden variety psycho. (Go figure.)

When the book first came out, all of my girlfriends read it, of course. It was my first novel, after all, so a clump of them got copies and started to read. And then I started getting calls and e-mail.

“Say, Linda,” said one. Let’s say her name was Jane. “I totally recognized Frank in that bad guy character.”

“What?” said I.

“You know: Frank. My ex-husband. How could you forget his name?”

“I did not forget his name, Jane. I did not forget Frank at all. But that character in the book -- Ernest Carmichael Billings? -- was entirely not based on Frank.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m very sure. I made him entirely up. He’s not even my crazy ex-husband. And he certainly isn’t yours. I created him out of the research I did: gave him the qualities I needed for it to be scientifically accurate and work with my plot.”

One by one they called: almost every one of my closest friends. And all absolutely certain that the baddest bad guy in my first novel was based on one of their ex-significant relationships. That maybe I’d been watching closely and taking notes.

I found this interesting on a bunch of levels. First, of course, it’s funny, right? That all of these women figured I’d cheerfully apprehended their ex’s worst qualities and finally put a name to something they’d suspected all along. In another way, I felt flattered because it told me that I had captured something very human in that bad guy. He wasn’t just an empty caricature of evil, which had been my greatest fear. He embodied space in a way that was significant enough that people thought they recognized him when they read the book which, after all, is what every author is aiming at when she sits down to write.

If, when you read the book, the character of Ernie reminds you of someone close to you (or who used to be) let me know. I’d love to hear about it, even though I’m pretty sure you’re incorrect.

Meanwhile, if you want to order the new e-book version, you can do so here or here.

Quote of the Week: Diana Wynn Jones

2011-03-26T14:10:00.000-07:00

“I think we ought to live happily ever after.”

So sad to lose Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle, Dark Lord of Derkholm), such a deep font of wit and wisdom -- not to mention magic -- all these many years.

“Fantasy for me as a kid was real, and I had a fantasy about what life was, whether it was sort of wicked and dire, or wholly normal, or whatever. Anything really close to home is not, it seems to me, what a good book should be about.”

Good-night, Miss Jones. We’re missing you already.

The Birth of Madeline Carter

2011-03-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

One of the things that’s been really fun about republishing Mad Money, the first Madeline Carter novel, in e-book format has been revisiting all of the really wonderful press attention the book got when it first came out. People have always loved Madeline Carter: both professional reviewers and readers. Something in the way Madeline greets the world, I think. Something in the way she confronts her challenges.

Below is a snippet from an interview I did with Ali Karim for Shots Magazine back in 2008. The interview was done around the time that the first Kitty Pangborn novel was published in 2008. However, Karim asked me about Madeline’s genesis. I thought I’d share that with you here.

In the earliest part of this decade I developed a passion for the stock market. (Peer pressure: it was 2000 and all my friends were doing it.) I had this period where I dabbled in day-trading. And I have a personality that’s faintly obsessive. When I develop a passion, I live it and breathe it and dream it for a while. It overcomes me. With the stock market, though, there are only a certain number of hours in a day when you can actually trade. (Unless you’re into the international markets, which I lacked -- and still lack -- the proficiency to tackle.) And I found myself one day, after the close of trade, with this huge store of passion and no place to put it. And I could suddenly see myself -- only a finer, better, taller and more knowledgeable me -- in Malibu, in the house where I used to live, looking out towards the ocean from a desk, but not actually seeing the waves, seeing instead the dance of the numbers and the rhythm of the market’s tide. And I just started to write. And I jammed out the first 7000 words of what would eventually become Mad Money all in one sitting. I thought it was a short story. I didn’t look at it again for about a year and when I did I said, Hey. I think this might be a book. And eventually it was.

You can read that interview here. Snippets from Mad Money’s reviews are collected here.

On E-Books, Elbow Grease and a Brand New Day

2011-03-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

I want to tell you about the perilous journey Mad Money took from traditionally published book to e-book. It’s possible you can sense how very proud I am of this publication. Something in making a thing entirely with your own hands, I think. And it delights me that my first published novel -- much-loved by readers and critics, harshly treated by the cruel realties of an industry that sometimes seems to be eating itself -- is once again available in a very significant way.

The journey began with a serious edit. There have been some technological changes since the book was first published several years ago, but that was a small part of what I was doing back there. I had always been concerned that a cautious, middle-of-the-road editor had seeped some of the heart out of the book. The things that concerned me then have been corrected for this edition. If you’ve read Mad Money before, it won’t seem like a brand new book, but there are some parts that will make your eyes widen, that’s what I hope.

Then the formatting for both Amazon Kindle and Smashwords. The latter will handle distribution for everything other than Amazon. Eventually that will see Mad Money available for Kobo in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, through Apple at the iBookstore, for Sony readers and various other formats. Some of those are available now, but I’m told it can take a few weeks to propagate through all the systems.

Even coming to the place of deciding that would be the way to go for me took several miles. And though I know there are other options, for now the Kindle/Smashwords combo seems to be the right one. I’d be happy to hear if you have other ideas. And I’ll let you know if my call was the wrong one. (Or the right one, for that matter. You’ll want to know that, too.)

My partner, David Middleton, designed the gorgeous cover. I’m going to write about that process at some future point, but I think it’s dead cool he not only conceived of this cover for Mad Money, he began shooting images for it pretty much as soon as I told him I suspected I’d be able to revert the rights back for the Madeline Carter series, enabling me to take a run at electronic publication.

As it happened, when I first set my sights on doing that, we were in New York City, in the financial district. Our hotel room boasted a terrace that actually looked out at the Stock Exchange. On the day David took this photo, we ate street meat on the stairs of the building opposite the Exchange, while hordes of teenagers clamored for the attention of the cast of Jersey Shore, who were there for the closing bell. Madness.

The photo of the palm tree was taken earlier this year when we visited San Simeon. (A trip that forced us to revisit Citizen Kane, and then The Battle Over Citizen Kane. Next up: The Magnificent Ambersons, but that’s all a story for another day.)

The sky was a local one, taken last year out on a ramble with our dog. It was taken not to be part of my cover, but because it was a gorgeous sky and it stopped David in his tracks. It was a beautiful day, too. Talent and technology make it stormy for the Mad Money cover.

There are other publication days in my future, but I suspect this one will be special. Today I feel part of something new and important. It feels like a brand new day.

Passgenger Fever

2011-03-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

New in my iPod and I can’t get it out of my head. This is now officially the best mash-up I’ve heard. (Although if you have a favorite, I’d love to compare notes.)

Brilliant! And I’d forgotten how much I actually do like Iggy Pop and what a terrific song “The Passenger” is. Now if I can only find a ringtone of it for my mobile phone! (Somehow I especially like the cowbells.)

Tip of the hat to my friend Jack.

Wearing A Lot of Hats

2011-03-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

Speaking of authors who live in Victoria and edit magazines, I was delighted to hear that my old friend and colleague, Grant McKenzie, had recently been named editor-in-chief of Monday Magazine.

Grant is a very good thriller writer, though we’ve not seen nearly enough of his work yet, I can’t help but think this is a temporary condition. His first novel, Switch, keeps being published in more countries all the time (last I heard, complex Chinese was the next translation) and, more recently, his domestic thriller, No Cry for Help, was published by Bantam to considerable acclaim.

With this new appointment to the Monday editor’s chair, it’s obvious Grant and I are overdue for coffee. After all, don’t you think that the editors of Monday and January magazines need to swap notes on occasion?

A Foodie’s Guide to Goodness

2011-03-17T00:05:00.000-07:00

In the middle of a crazy busy period, it was almost like a little break to spend some lovely hours with Island Wineries of British Columbia, published recently by Touchwood Editions of Victoria for whom this book is seriously home turf.

As much of my reading does, this ended up with a brief review for January Magazine, which ran yesterday. Among other things, I said that Island Wineries was an “interesting, well-produced and intelligent book that focuses on the the relatively new wine industry springing up on British Columbia’s ‘Big Island.’”

The book was edited by Eat Magazine editor Gary Hynes and I really do recommend it: especially if, like me, you’re ready for some wine and sunshine at the end of what has seemed like a terribly long winter.

I’m Tired of Thinking About E-Books

2011-02-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

The industry will find its way. This is a watershed moment, sure. Maybe even a tipping point. But, bottom line? People still love books; love reading. They still want their stories.

My own reality? January Magazine’s traffic has never been higher. Reader participation is high, as well. Those readers do not care about our trials and our tribulations in bringing the books to them. They want their out of body experience. They want their book, however the hell it’s delivered. They still love their books.

What I’m saying: whatever things we devise right now are interim. This song is far from sung. The industry will shudder, sure. And it should, really. It’s been due for a wake-up up call for a long, long time.

And when those shudders are complete we’ll see what we knew in our hearts would be true all along: the book, whether made by Guttenberg, Simon or Schuster or Steve Jobs will still be a bloody book.

It’s a Book! It’s a Dress! It’s Fashion Week!

2011-02-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

While there are many things you can do with an electronic book, forget making a dress out of one… or even 50. An e-book dress would be a little too ephemeral, even for Fashion Week.

The book print dress shown is from Maria Cornejo’s Fall/Winter 2011 Ready to Wear Collection. And the rest of the collection? “Unfortunately unremarkable,” opines Broke and Beautiful. “Many shapeless leather things in grey cognac and putty colors.” But the book print? It “alone deserves its own post -- if not own blog.”

You heard it here (well… and there). Though the book world fumes and fumbles over the future of the printed word, the fashion world says, “Bring it!”

The Ghost in the Machine

2011-01-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

There is little room for Deus ex machina in your writing. Contemporary readers will not stand for it. Things can not just happen: there must be motivation and the normal rules of physics must be obeyed. If you think, “Well that would be cool!” your next step is not to write it, but to research it: “Can this happen?” and “How could this happen?” and even “Are there people who know this can happen and can help me figure out how?” And that’s where, in the end, we get subtlety in fiction.

I’ll give you a for-instance: in one of my books, I had the heroine stuck in a tomb. And she nearly suffocates before she manages to get out. (It’s one of my favorite scenes ever: I could barely breathe myself when I wrote it!)

First my partner and I did the math: this much square footage + this much height = this much air. So how long would she have? It was too much time, so I wrote the tomb smaller. Then I contacted a physicist at UBC. A rocket scientist. And I got him to help me work out the details. And out of that process, I got some fantastic real life details I would never have had if I’d just made it up out of air. So after all that research, when my editor came to me and said, “I don’t think it would be this way.” I could quite easily say: “Yes. Yes it would. That’s exactly how it would be,” because I had already done all the miles.

If you’ve only gotten as far as, “Hey, that would be cool,” and you’ve written it thus, you’ve not gone far enough. Modern fiction is not made out of that. Or rather, it is much more sophisticated than that. Readers are smart and savvy and way demanding. There can be no element of your book that is not perfectly plausible. Not sure if it’s plausible? Go ask someone. Believe me: someone knows. We are writing in a world where a book that is good enough is not enough. It must be the best book it can be.

The Best Books of... Next Year?

2010-12-30T13:15:00.000-08:00

It’s been a few busy weeks around here. Between the usual wonderful madness that is Christmas in our family and the delicious annual renewal of the New Year, I had to wear my editor’s hat quite a lot.

January Magazine offered a record number of titles in our Holiday Gift Guide this year, which meant a lot of editing and quite a lot of writing, too. Then I helped put together our massive Best of 2010 feature: one of our biggest best books of the year pieces ever. Then somehow (Because I had all this free time? Ahem.) I got the bright idea of putting together a brief Best of 2011 feature for January Magazine and so, with some help from Rap Sheet editor and January senior editor J. Kingston Pierce and with some gorgeous art from January’s art director, David Middleton, we did. The piece went live first thing this morning and I think it just looks terrific.

And now we’re right down to it, aren’t we? Still not quite sure where 2010 went although, on a couple of fronts, I’m pretty glad to see the back of it. Thanks for being part of my literary life this year and thanks for sharing some of your thoughts. And dreams.

Now 2011 is looming. From where I’m sitting, it looks fantastic. See you next year!

The Best of the Season

2010-12-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

When it comes to this blog, I’ve not been the most dedicated of correspondents this last while. For various reasons, 2010 just seemed to be that sort of year. For one thing, I have a lot of things on the go just now that I just can’t talk about. Things that, when they stop being on the go, I’ll be happy enough to prattle on about but, for the moment, I have to stay mum. That’s not always the easiest place for me to be!

Something else I can’t talk about: I lost a lot of the last quarter of 2010 to a new fiction project that I am not yet prepared to say anything about. (You’re starting to see why the posts have been scant of late, am I right? I’m beginning to feel like a spy.) I feel as though this book is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. To be totally fair, I pretty much always feel that. However, this time, it actually is. When it came time to work on January Magazine’s Best Books of 2010 feature, I had to pull myself away from my work in progress, the one I can’t even give you the working title of, for fear it will give too much away or jinx it or suck away my mojo or whatever the hell it is that keeps me saying very much about a work in progress. I’ll say this, though: I love being here with you now and I’m looking forward to a wonderful holiday with family and friends, but a part of me can’t wait to lock myself back into my studio once all the holiday madness calms down. I left the story right before the denouement and the whispers of the thing stay with me. And I can hardly wait to find out how it all turns out!

Back at January Magazine, that Best of the Year feature has been rolling in segments since last weekend. I think it may be our biggest Best of ever though by the time you read this, the last segment -- fiction -- will hopefully have run and we’ll know for sure.

Suffice it to say that between the history and the mystery, 2010 has been an odd sort of year. Part waiting and hoping and dreaming. Part waiting to exhale. Thank you for joining me on this part of the ride. And for your patience. And your gentle eyes. See you in this space next year.

My Year in Status

2010-12-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

Though I tend to avoid Facebook apps, I was charmed today to encounter one I really liked. “Your Year in Status” looks back on all your Facebook status updates over the last 12 months and automagically chooses the ones it thinks were coolest. Then it makes this nifty little display of same and -- voila! -- you can look back on the year that was and share it as you see fit: like writing a blog entry around it, for instance.

It was interesting to see what it chose and fun revisiting some of those thoughts and feelings.

If you’re in a social media mood, you can friend me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter all of which -- obviously -- seem to have cut into my blogging time! (Perhaps not such a surprise?)

Note: If you actually want to read any of the silly things that amused me enough to share on Facebook during 2010, simply click on the image at left and it will make itself big enough to read.

Writing A Novel: A Horse Race. Driving Cattle. In the Dark.

2010-11-17T14:04:00.000-08:00

For me, writing a novel is like a horse race while driving a herd of cattle in the dark.

I interviewed Margaret Atwood before Negotiating With the Dead came out. When I asked her to tell me one thing about the book, she said:

I went around asking writers the following question -- and these were mostly novelists. What is it like when you go into a novel? And nobody said: What do you mean, go into a novel? They all said: It's dark. It's like a dark room. It's like a dark room full of furniture I can't see. It's like a tunnel. It's like a cave. It's like going downstairs into a dark place. It's like wading through a river. It's like entering a labyrinth. Isn't that interesting? ... Nobody said: It's like skippity-hopping around on the clouds. Nobody said that.

When I did that interview, I had not finished a novel. But in the process of writing Mad Money -- and in the books I've worked on since -- I can remember moments when I thought about what she said: moments when I felt, indeed, as though I were flailing around in a dark room. Though in my own case, I feel as though I'm in a dark room with a flashlight in my hand and the room gradually becomes more light as the book progresses.

The process of writing a book is different for everyone. It's funny (and not ha ha) but some days I sit down and everything I write smells like I have something stuck to my shoe. And everything I've written has the same smell. I mean, I just read it and go "Yuck! What am I doing? I should get a job as a plumber or something."

The very next day, I can sit down and read the same stuff and think it's all just brilliant. Sublime, even. I can bring myself to tears of pride for having created such masterly prose.

From both of these views of the same writing -- mine -- I have gleaned a very important thing or three: I am not the best judge of my work while it's in progress. More: my subconscious is a bitch. She will take the smallest insecurity and hoist it up into something glaring and ugly. She will taunt me. Tell me I'm not worthy. Tell me I'd be better off spending my time canning peaches or scrubbing the toilet. My subconscious is not nice and does not play fair.

So my version of the AOC (ass on chair) method of writing is to just plunk myself down and careen on through even when my subconscious is being especially nasty and whipping up all my insecurities. I ignore those ridiculous voices and just keep on telling my story. And even if, as sometimes happens, while I'm sitting there writing, the voices are saying: "This is crap! Why are you even wasting your time? You couldn't tell a good sentence from a mud pie!" I just keep on going. I tell myself that if it is crap, I'll junk it all tomorrow or the next day but, for now, I need the motion. Moving forward, whatever the cost.

After a while, I get caught up in the world I'm creating and the voices recede. And I very, very seldom have to go back and junk anything I've written while in this state. It's just a matter of beating down my own insecurities. It turns out I have a lot of them. And, after all this time, it doesn't seem like they're ever going to go completely away.

I just wish I could get that skippity-hopping thing down to an art.

The Music in Your Book

2010-11-02T14:37:00.000-07:00

A book is a whole song. Every note in a song is important. Every transition. None of it means anything alone. A song is about every moment, every movement. That’s what makes it a song, instead of just a bunch of notes.

It's just the same for books.

On View Corridors and One Way Stairways

2010-10-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

We’ve been hearing very little about the proposed changes to the height restrictions that have been in place in Vancouver for more than 20 years. What we do hear is couched in bland language, lending a positive spin to what such changes might do for the city. From the display boards prepared by the City and currently being dragged around to open houses:

WHY CONSIDER HIGHER BUILDINGS?
• They play a critical role in city shaping by providing landmarks in the skyline.
• They help achieve sustainability goals
∙ By building higher in the city centre, more residents and workers can be accommodated near existing infrastructure and amenities, thereby reducing the need for sprawl and the financial drain of infrastructure
expansion
∙ Higher buildings will showcase leading edge green building and energy saving technologies
• They deliver needed community benefits
∙ Higher buildings generate additional benefit capacity which helps to support the provision of public amenities

It all sounds so reasonable, even I almost buy it. Ditto the few news items I’ve seen comparing, for instance, Vancouver and Dubai (really?) and suggesting that wouldn’t it be swell if Vancouver had the sort of architectural landmarks that draw international attention. And never mind that the view that is more or less threatened here is a physical landmark for which the city is internationally known.

The thing is, like so many of the smoothly oiled building schemes that dot Vancouver’s history, a very few people stand to gain a great deal if all of this goes through. And once it’s done, this will not go away: the city will be stuck with whatever towering monsters are approved here for a long, long time. Witness, for instance, Vander Zalm’s gift to the waterfront at False Creek north, which is forever damned to look like the late 1990s.

Meanwhile the view corridor approach Vancouver adopted in 1989 is admired and emulated in other places. San Francisco, for instance, is considering a similar approach, just as Vancouver gets ready to throw hers out the window.

I’m not offering answers here. I’m only asking questions. If you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear yours, as well. But do it fast: we might not have much time.

The City of Vancouver’s Views Page is here. Details of open houses currently being held in the city are here.

Quote of the Week: Ursula Le Guin

2010-10-21T16:31:00.000-07:00

“If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don’t marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.” -- Ursula K. Le Guin

It is the birthday of National Book Award-winning author, Ursula Le Guin, born on this day in Berkeley, California, in 1929.

We mentioned her at length on January Magazine today. That piece is here. Meanwhile, another quote from this writer who has, for so many years, had so much of value to say:

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.”

If you’d like to see more quotes from this amazing author, check Brainyquotes where, interestingly enough, she is compared to Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, H. L. Mencken and other writers of that ilk.

Happy Birthday, Miss Le Guin. And many, many more!

Warning: Canuck on Bike

2010-10-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

On Sunday Galiano Island Books hosted an event featuring esteemed Canadian author, Derek Lundy (The Bloody Red Hand, The Way of a Ship). Lundy was reading from and discussing his most recent book, Borderlands: Riding the Edge of America (Knopf Canada). This author has been prolific in producing intelligent, well-researched books on a wide variety of topics. Books that cut beautifully to the very essence of the matter at hand.

This time out, Lundy did it up old school, loading his gear onto a Kawasaki 650 cc “Thumper” motorcycle and heading for the open road. The road in question was vast and daunting: in all a “15,000-kilometer trek to observe and explain the American obsession with security.”

Lundy, who is Canadian but started out Irish, brings a delicate eye and a seasoned pen to his travels as he motors along the very bottom and top of America, thinking about how things were and are and how they still might be.

“The periphery of a place can tell us a great deal about its heartland,” Lundy writes, “along the edge of a nation’s territory, its real prejudices, fears and obsessions -- but also its virtues -- irrepressibly bubble up as its people confront the ‘other’ whom they admire, or fear, or hold in contempt, and know little about. September 11, 2001, changed the United States utterly and nothing more so than the physical reality, the perception -- and the meaning -- of its borders.”

At the Mike

2010-09-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

If you’re in the vicinity of Victoria, British Columbia on Tuesday, October 5th, join me, Ron Chudley (Act of Evil) and Stephen Legault (The Darkening Archipelago) for an evening of fun and mystery at the fun and popular Fort Café, 742 Fort Street.

If you check out The Fort Café’s Facebook page you’ll see they’re billing this as Fiction Night:

“Local, national and international authors read from their books and open the floor to literary debate. FREE.”

So, obviously, if you don’t want to get completely blown away by the scintillating debate we’ll be having, you’d better get there early.

Hope to see you there!

Saturday Night Dance Break

2010-09-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Swedish synthpop princess, Robyn, performing “Dancehall Queen” at the Flow Festival in Finland this past summer.

“I still run this thing like a dancehall queen. I really don’t want no hassle.”

So stuck in my head.

Something For Your Colon (Groan)

2010-09-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

Today is National Punctuation Day. Here is January Magazine’s coverage of this momentous day. And here, additionally, is my peek at The Book of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks by Bethany Keeley, just in time for the (ahem) holiday.

Don’t take any wooden semi-colons and keep an eye on those serial commas.

There’s An App for That

2010-09-14T23:56:00.001-07:00

In case you’re ever wondering, authors are pretty much always the last to know. Anything.

Here’s Death Was in the Picture on iTunes. I think I’m happy about that.

Let’s Go Viral

2010-09-05T19:45:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the August issue of Vanity Fair still hanging around the bathroom, I’ve already had a hard time keeping this song from running around in my head. But these guys? They rock it. Check it out, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” done accapella by some mysterious -- but super talented -- guys:

“I want your ugly/I want your disease/I want your everything/As long as it’s free.”

They just don’t write lyrics like that anymore. Oh. Wait...

Tip o’ the hat to my good friend Seonaid.

Wings and Big Apples

2010-07-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

David Middleton and I just returned from a couple of weeks in New York: both the city known as The City and points quite a bit north. We were both especially taken with Buffalo, a city that came to both of us as a complete surprise. I don’t recall anymore exactly what I expected before I got there, but everything I had anticipated was completely off-base.

Perched as it is on the edge of the Rust Belt, Buffalo has certainly been chilled by economic downturn. Despite this, it continues to seem like a brilliantly livable city. Some of the best examples of Frank Lloyd Wrigh t’s early Prairie Style designs grace various Buffalo enclaves, and renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead (he designed Central Park and Prospect Park, among others) conceived a series of six interlinked parks for Buffalo in the late 19th century when the city was growing towards being one of the most important in the world.

Buffalo’s history is rich and resonant and, perhaps because of this, the city seems to take pride in its vibrant arts scene. We saw this most sharply drawn at the Western New York Book Arts Collaborative, a non-profit organization based in downtown Buffalo intent on preserving and promoting book and print arts. From the organization’s Web site:

In the wake of the rapid growth of digital texts and technologies, the printed word is all too often regarded as an archaic, if not superfluous archetype. It is apparent that the importance of traditional printed arts will only continue to increase as digital sources become more refined. The tactile qualities of a book and inherent permanence of good printing are timeless. For example, Johannes Gutenberg’s printed works are still in the same condition as when they were printed 500 years ago while digital data from 10 or 20 years ago is already irreparably damaged and lost forever.

The work WNYBAC is doing is incredible, as is the collection of historic type and printing presses they’re putting together. The WNY Book Arts Center is located at 468 Washington at East Mohawk. They have a very good small gift shop (I bought way too much stuff, myself!) and an interesting calendar of events. Visit their Web site for more information on the programs that are available and also to see what you can do to help their most excellent cause.

From Buffalo, David and I took the train to New York City, an almost nine-hour trip that passed surprisingly quickly: especially once the train started skirting the Hudson, offering glimpses of some of America’s Ca stles and passing through a surprisingly lush landscape.

In the city itself, we balanced work and fun, meeting with a small group of publishing types between trips to The Met and visits to Central Park, Bloomingdales and other Manhattan must-sees.

We enjoyed one very special evening with longtime January Magazine contributing editor Tony Buchsbaum. The three of us are shown here in Times Square, after dinner at Virgil’s, a popular barbecue place nearby. In the photo, David is on the left, Tony on the right, and I’m in the center. The photo was taken by an unsuspecting tourist who seemed neither distressed nor surprised to have David’s camera thrust at him.

All in all, a wonderful few weeks away, though we were never very far from books and the people who make them. Somehow that all seems just as it should be.

Connecting the Dots...

2010-07-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

Today is the anniversary of the first moonwalk: on July 20, 1969 Buzz Aldrin became the second man to walk on the moon.

Cormac McCarthy (The Road, No Country For Old Men) was born on this day in 1933. Could these two things -- Cormac and walking on the moon -- possibly be connected? I think not. But Writer’s Almanac also tells us that is was “on this day in 1875 that the largest recorded swarm of locusts in American history descended upon the Great Plains. An estimated 3.5 trillion locusts made up the swarm. It was about 1,800 miles long and 110 miles wide, ranging from Canada down to Texas.”

Hmmmm... Buzz?

And speaking of literary days to remember, the anniversary of Hemingway’s death was a few weeks ago, but his birthday would have been tomorrow.

Stylish and Great Fun

2010-07-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

Actually, you could carve that onto my headstone if you wanted. (If I were planning on having one: which, actually, I’m not.)

“Stylish and Great Fun.”

It seems to me there’s not a better brace of things to be than that. But it’s not a copywarmer for a tombstone. Rather, it’s from a new review of Death Was in the Picture. The review is by Tim Davis, and it’s full of things an author loves to hear. I’ll share a tiny bit:

A good, old-fashioned gumshoe novel set in the early 1930s, Death Was In The Picture has it all: secrets, foul play, out-of-control passions, quirky characters, and -- of course -- several murders thrown into the mix. The bottom line is this: Stylish and great fun, just like Richards’ earlier offering, Death Was In The Picture is first-rate entertainment, so don’t miss it.

Davis’ full review is here.

Sunburn City

2010-06-13T14:20:00.000-07:00

I’m back from the week-long mystery writing retreat on Salt Spring Island. It was an amazing experience, one I hope to tell you about soon. (I need photos!) Meanwhile I’m tired and sunburned, having spent a good part of yesterday afternoon on the patio at Oystercatcher in Ganges, drinking pinot grigio, eating calamari and talking about process and scandal.

More soon.

The Commentary and Me...

2010-05-31T15:08:00.000-07:00

I love being interviewed for radio. You don’t have to put on make-up. And you never have to edit.

Here’s me on The Commentary with Joseph Planta, talking mostly about The Greatest 100 Books of British Columbia and what that will mean in terms of future B.C. conversations about books.

Mystery Retreat

2010-05-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

During the week of June 6th, I'll be holed up on Salt Spring Island off Canada’s westernmost coast with some of the top mystery writing talent in the country. And if you’re lucky and you feel like it, you can be there, too! From the bumph:

Imagine spending a week with some of Canada’s top mystery writing minds: picking their brains, learning their techniques, and getting the how to’s of writing a successful mystery novel.

The Salt Spring Island Mystery Writing Retreat is being sponsored by Simon Fraser University’s Summer Publishing Workshop and runs from June 6th to 12th. More information here.

The photo at left is of Linda and Jett the Wonderdog, taken on a sandstone beach typical of the Gulf Islands. (Unfortunately, Jett won’t be in attendance at the retreat. She wasn’t invited and, in any case, her agent informs us it would have represented a scheduling conflict.)

On Toolboxes and Pet Peeves

2010-05-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

As writers, we have all these tools available to us to help us tell our stories in the most effective way.

As a storyteller, you make choices about those tools. Semi-colon or colon? Comma or full stop? The slight touch of description or a truckload of words? In the hands of a skillful writer, all of the chosen techniques and even the petish peeves will work very well. In less skillful hands, they'll be less successful.

One of the things I’ve heard is that readers are tired of seeing bad mother-daughter relationships in fiction. We’ve just seen so much of it that it’s become cliché. Yet we’ve all read books where it works really well. The fact is, a lot of women don’t get along so well with their mothers, especially at a certain point in their lives. Encountering that reflection of real life in fiction can really resonate with readers, especially if -- as mentioned -- the behavior makes sense within the context of the characters and their story.

In Mad Money, and subsequent books in the Madeline Carter series, I chose to give Madeline a really good relationship with her mother. Not because I’d seen so much of the other kind in fiction and certainly not because I had such a great relationship with my own mother (because I
did not) but because it made sense to me that the kind of woman Madeline had become was due at least in part to the loving and caring relationship she enjoys with her family. Madeline is strong and even and reliable and, though there may occasionally be flakiness in her world,
she has the kind of solid foundation necessary for her to get through her adventures unscathed.

I could have given the character bad family relationships, but it would have made her different. That is, she would have had to have been written differently in order for her to resonate with readers as a fully realized character.

I think this is true with all the pet peeves readers mention. You can, as a writer, include both of a character’s names in the first sentence. You can have your protagonist go to the basement to check out a noise. You can shorthand your description. You can (fictionally!) kill a dog. You
can have a prologue and an epilogue. All of these things can be done successfully if the reasons you’re doing them are authentic to your character and your story. The most important thing, I think, is not to do these things simply because you think you should. But it’s equally important to not do them because you think you shouldn’t. I think it’s all about getting to know your tools really well, then choosing which ones you need to best tell your story.

Considering What Comes Before

2010-05-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

For various reasons, I’m considering matters of style right now. What works and what, really, does not. The things that happen before your book actually begins is one of those things that needs really careful consideration. I’m talking, of course, about prologue. Does your book need one? And, if it does, what should it add?

Prologue in general is a funny animal. By its very nature, a prologue would seem to be something apart from the body of the story. Something extra. I know people who don’t read prologues until they’re done the book, and then only if they loved the story and want something a little extra. Another thought is that prologues set things up: set the stage. But, if that’s the case, what are you meant to do in chapter one?

In your own writing, you need to think seriously about your prologue before tagging on one. What purpose do you feel it serves? What are you trying to accomplish? And in what way are you hoping it moves the story forward? Be careful that your prologue doesn’t rip the reader out of the story before they’re properly settled in.

Prologue for the sake of prologue is without point. Unless you have a compelling reason to begin with something outside of the story, consider losing the prologue and beginning with chapter one. Instead of preamble, begin with action. What could be better than that?

The Baby Food Cleanse?

2010-05-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

The latest Hollywood diet trend? Celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson’s baby food diet. From Huff Post:

The diet involves eating 14 servings of baby food a day followed by a healthy adult dinner, and Jen has reportedly lost 7 pounds in the past week as she films 'Just Go With It' in Hawaii.
"I developed a cleanse where you can still eat and it's a lot of puree foods. I was very careful about the foods I chose to put in it," Tracy told Hollyscoop.com. "When you do these liquid cleanses I felt a responsibility to come up with something. Liquid cleanses do help you lose weight but you will gain more the next week. I wanted something where you can eliminate toxicity, break bad habits but still have your digestive system going. That is when the baby food cleanse was born."

So it’s like a juice cleanse? But with ... um ... baby food? Baby food followed by laxatives? Didn’t Katherine Helmond’s character do something like this in Brazil? (And if she didn’t she would have. And, BTW, if you’ve gotten to this moment in your life without seeing Brazil, walk don’t run. It’s a classic.)

The Huffington Post piece is here. If you want more information on the baby food cleanse, you are totally on your own.

Quote of the Week: Lynn Redgrave

2010-05-03T12:50:00.000-07:00

“God always has another custard pie up his sleeve.”

The dashing, talented and gorgeous Lynn Redgrave died Sunday after a seven year battle with breast cancer. She was 67.

“And yet, I suppose you mourn the loss or the death of what you thought your life was, even if you find your life is better after. You mourn the future that you thought you’d planned.”

Sadly, Redgrave’s brother, actor and activist Corin Redgrave, died of conditions related to cancer just last month.

Perhaps best known for her Oscar-nominated role in the 1966 movie Georgy Girl, Redgrave worked frequently in film, television and on the stage. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2001.

Web site, website: Let’s Call the Whole Thing Lunch

2010-04-19T00:05:00.000-07:00

Last week, when AP announced it would be changing the correct usage of “Web site” to “website” I have to admit, I had a little swoon.

This change may not seem like a big hairy deal to you. To me, though, it’s a little like feeling the earth move: the ground beneath your feet and that sort of thing. Over the years, I’ve made that correction to people’s work a lot. A writer might ask, “Why?” And, as with a many other matters of style, I could say with confidence, “Just ask AP.” And now? Well, now what was right is wrong and, like a lot of editors this week, I’m shaking my head and saying, “What’s next? Its/it’s?” From Poynter:

The change, which was formally announced at the American Copy Editors Society conference Friday afternoon, is effective Saturday and will appear in the 2010 Stylebook, which is slated to come out next month.

“We decided to make the change because ‘website’ is increasingly common,” said Sally Jacobsen, deputy managing editor for projects at the AP and one of three Stylebook editors. “We also had invited readers and users of the Stylebook to offer us some suggestions for a new social media guide that we’re including in the 2010 Stylebook, and we got a very good response and a large number of people who favored ‘website’ as one word.”

Other changes might be coming. AP is considering dropping the usage of state abbreviations (it may not surprise you that I would actually applaud that. We already always spell out state names at January Magazine), dropping the name of Canadian provinces in datelines (ie: Calgary, Canada) and changing “e-mail” to “email.” Not entirely sure how I feel about any of those but, effective immediately, we’ll be using “web site” and “web” though perhaps not without the occasional grumble.

Standing Cat Goes Viral

2010-04-07T01:15:00.000-07:00

Another cat video goes viral and this one -- forgive me -- must be shared with you.

One can see that this did not come about without a great deal of practice. I figure there’s a window he likes to look out that can only be approached from this angle. Hence...

The Greatest 100 Books of British Columbia

2010-03-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

It’s delicious when something you dream begins to take on its own life. As a novelist, I’ve gotten to experience this sensation more often than most. Most recently, though, I’ve seen this with a project David and I are working on together called The Greatest 100 Books of British Columbia. It will be published in the fall of 2011 and though we’ve been cooking it up for a while, we only announced the book and unleashed the Web site not quite two weeks ago.

What we hoped to create with this book was a conversation about books and reading that would continue through the year or so we plan on working on it and, of course, right through publication.

British Columbia has such a rich literary history, not to mention a glorious publishing present and it’s easy to forget those things, especially under the pressure of various sky-is-falling influences. And so we wanted to start people thinking and talking: about the books that had touched them throughout their lifetimes and the books that continue to bring sense and meaning and joy into the present.

The response from both the press and the reading public has been rewarding. It’s still early days, but we’ve already seen an encouraging amount of press coverage and people are sending in their lists of the books they think are greatest. They’re really beginning to pour in. It’s fantastic.

If you want to learn more about The Greatest 100 Books of British Columbia, the Web site is here.

Who Shook the Poet?

2010-03-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

This is what’s on my iPod right now. It’s funny, too, because it’s a great song, but the lyrics, when you skate up close? Not so much.

Off in the night while you live it up I’m off to sleep
Waging wars to shake the poet and the beat
I hope it’s gonna make you notice
I hope it’s gonna make you notice

Someone like me, someone like me
Someone like me, somebody

You see what I’m saying? Kings of Leon often sound profound... until you get too close. I guess sometimes? That’s enough.

Paul Anik Remembered

2010-03-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I shared my delight at Death Was in the Picture being given the Panik Award for best L.A.-based noir at Left Coast Crime 2010.

I knew that this was the first -- and perhaps only -- year the award would be given and that it was to be awarded in memory of Paul Anik, the original chairman of the organizing committee responsible for bringing Left Coast Crime to L.A. this year.

So I knew some of the basics, but it saddened me that I didn’t know more about the man, especially considering how honored I am that this book has received this award at this time: it’s such a tremendous fit and it seems likely that I’ll be saying “Panik Award” and sometimes Paul’s name for a long time to come.

I was very pleased, yesterday, when Jan Burke (author of The Messenger and other terrific books and godmother of The Crime Lab Project) brought the late Paul Anik, the warm and funny man so passionate about mysteries, to her blog yesterday, with some stories that illustrated his humor and humanity:

Paul and his wife, Barbara, traveled all the way to Santa Barbara to surprise me an appearance there, and you’ll get a glimpse of his sense of humor when I tell you that Paul, an attorney, “served” me with a “subpoena” -- an invitation to be a Guest of Honor in that format. I was so flattered -- the first mystery convention I ever attended was Left Coast Crime 1992, so Left Coast Crime has always been special to me. When Paul offered this prestigious honor to me, of course I immediately agreed!

Paul’s enthusiasm was contagious, and over the next two years I saw him make many efforts to ensure that LCC2010 was a success.

Then tragedy struck. In early 2009, Paul died of a heart attack. He was an active man, and far too young to be lost in this way, and it was a great shock to all who knew and loved him. To have someone so full of life and laughter suddenly taken from us seemed incomprehensible. (You can see a photo of him and read more about his life here.)

Thanks, Jan, for this lovely glimpse of Paul. I hope you don’t mind me sharing it here.

You can read Jan’s posting in its entirety here.

The Envelope, Please...

2010-03-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

For so many reasons, I was heartbroken not to be able to attend Left Coast Crime 2010 in Los Angeles this weekend as planned. Delighted, however, to learn that the second Kitty Pangborn mystery, Death Was in the Picture, had been named as the winner of the Panik Award for L.A.-based noir.

Also nominated were: Cemetery Road, by Gar Anthony Haywood (Severn House); Trust No One, by Gregg Hurwitz (St. Martin’s Press); and Boulevard, by Stephen J. Schwartz (Forge). All worthy books whose authors I admire. Being in such esteemed company makes the win especially sweet.

The Rap Sheet has the full list of awards given out at LCC here.

Talk to Me, Baby!

2010-03-01T13:42:00.000-08:00

I’ll be on Sean K. Berry’s Casting Couch radio program tonight at 7pm PST, 10 EST. Feel free to call in and heckle. (Well, maybe not heckle!) The show -- and information about same -- is here.

Fun in the Gulf Islands

2010-02-09T13:10:00.000-08:00

If you happen to be within easy reach of the Gulf Islands off Canada’s West Coast in the next little while, there’s a lot of fun things to do. OK: I won’t list all the fun things (just too many of them!), just the ones where I’ll be in attendance.

Later this month, the first ever Galiano Island Literary Festival runs from February 19th to the 21st. A great group of writers will be on hand, including Ann Eriksson, Audrey Thomas, Timothy Taylor, Pam Freir, William Deverell, George Bowering, Alan Twigg and about 20 others. The Festival is being organized by the wonderful local bookstore and events will be held at the Galiano Inn.

In June, I’m looking forward to being part of the faculty at a mystery writing retreat on Saltspring Island sponsored by Simon Fraser University’s Summer Publishing Workshop. The retreat runs from June 6th to 12th. Registrations are open now and I’ve been told they’re already coming in, so space won’t last. Also on the faculty: William Deverell, Gail Bowen, Dinah Forbes and Margaret Cannon. There’s more information here.

Google and Amazon Trying to Take Over the World? Shut-Up, Please. I Just Want to Read.

2010-02-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

Even mainstream news agencies are carrying stories about the Google book deal and the Amazon Macmillan electronic rights wars. I’ve read a lot of misinformed articles and cock-eyed assessments of both situations in the last week -- both in the world and on the Web. I’ll bet you have too. I’m sick of hearing about it. But the full piece is here.

History of the Internet

2010-01-28T13:52:00.001-08:00

This is a deeply thoughtful short film on the history of the Internet, including contemporary bandwidth consideration and likely usage in the future.

Tip of the hat to BoingBoing.

iWant It

2010-01-27T13:09:00.001-08:00

Finally here. The iPad. And iWant it with the optional keyboard/dock, as shown.

This is going to change some things.

Here’s my little piece about it for January.

Exactly the Same. Only Different.

2010-01-26T22:30:00.000-08:00

Westwood Village, 1934. This photo takes my breath away. So much the same. Everything completely altered. It’s like looking at an image from an alternate universe: utterly familiar, totally changed.

Writing about reasonably recent history can be like that. So much is still the same that the differences -- the sometimes vast differences -- can surprise you.

And then, when you’re looking in the other direction and are all swept away by those differences, you’re struck from another angle by how much nothing ever changes. Oh, sure: we move our hemlines, we swap our cars, and we swear in new and interesting ways, but the things that make us human -- the things that truly bind us -- those things never really change. At all.

The image included here is from The Westwood Neighborhood Council’s pictorial history of Westwood.

I don’t know who made the photo. It’s possible no one even remembers anymore.

Death Was in the Picture Shortlisted for Panik Award

2010-01-22T14:00:00.000-08:00

I am so delighted to learn that the second Kitty Pangborn novel, Death Was in the Picture, has been shortlisted for the Panik Award for L.A.-based Noir.

The Panik honors the late Paul Anik and will be awarded at Left Coast Crime in Los Angeles in March.

The shortlists for all three of the awards to be given out at LCC can be seen here.

Jack Bauer and... Health Care?

2010-01-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

Since David and I have been on a severe 24 kick of late (we got season 2 on DVD for Christmas. All right: we’re running a few seasons behind. But still.) it interested me to see this posting from Phyllis Smallman (author of Sex in A Sidecar and Margarita Nights) today on the mystery listserv, Dorothy-L:

For those of you who are fans of Jack I thought a little back story on Kiefer Sutherland would be interesting. His grandfather, Tommy Douglas, brought health care to Canada. The Canadian Broadcasting Company conducted a poll to find the greatest Canadian who ever lived. Tommy Douglas, Jack's grandfather, won. It's interesting to note that in his youth Tommy Douglas was considered a pretty good amateur actor.

So interesting, right? And while I knew the Sutherlands were Canadian (us Canucks have secret ways of knowing such things) I had no idea there was a connection to “greatest Canadian who ever lived” Tommy Douglas.

Hmmm... considering all the machinations currently happening on the U.S. health care front, maybe Kiefer will need to step up and pick up grandpa’s reins. There are certain cats in Washington who could maybe be made to see the light by a little Jack Bauer right about now.

* Note: I say all this while being blithely unaware of Kiefer Sutherland’s political leanings. I’m certain I know much more about Jack Bauer’s likes and dislikes and about his moral center than I do about Kiefer’s. That’s the way it’s meant to be.

Thoughts On Growing Up in Chandler’s Los Angeles

2010-01-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Some of my growing years were spent in Raymond Chandler’s Bay City. I lived in an old hotel on the boardwalk at 1910 Ocean Front Walk in Santa Monica. The structure -- and it’s a mighty one -- was built as a luxury hotel in the late 1920s, during Prohibition. But it was built before the crash of 1929, so make that large-L “Luxury.” It was designed to be a pretty tony place, and it was. In the late 1960s and early 1970s when I was there the hotel had fallen on hard times -- albeit hard times with a killer view -- but it wasn’t difficult to imagine what it had been.

The building was beautifully proportioned and appointed, in a way that only times of extreme excess can create. Marble this, and mosaic that and ballrooms and even a room beneath the earth that was called, simply, “the rotunda.” When you walked through to the other side, you passed under the boardwalk and were standing on the beach. That room was round, though, so the name fit well enough. As I write this, I can hear childish voices echoing off the rounded walls; hear the slap, slap, slap of a dozen small bare feet as we headed out, pulled by the sun. Would adventure lie in that direction? It might, you know. It very well might. The ghosts of youth melting into the ghosts of an era long gone. A splendid memory, somehow. One to build upon. And I guess I have.

Because the hotel was built during Prohibition, there would have been illegal goings on there at the time of its construction and earliest use. I did not know that when I lived there. Not for sure. I know that now.

The time of the building’s design and construction was a hairy, lawless one in L.A.’s history. The city was not without law, of course. But the police of the time were famously corrupt and certainly, in the moment in which I’ve chosen to set the Kitty Pangborn stories, it would often have been difficult to tell the good guys from the not-so-bad.

But the hotel. My childhood. The echoes of high voices and sand-covered feet.

We knew that rumrunners and gangsters had been taken into consideration during the design of the building. We knew this because, well, because adults said so. But also there were tunnels that ran behind walls and connected floor to floor. Not everywhere, of course, no. But in enough places that the group of us who were children together in this period made it our business to devote as much available time as possible to discovering all the hidden corridors and where they began and where they ended up. It was an activity that could have engaged us endlessly, I suspect. There would be weeks and months where we’d discover nothing at all and then we’d gain access to an area where we had previously not been given passage and something would turn up. I remember spending a lot of time tapping on walls and imagining. It seems to me that, in a way, I still do.

But anyway...

We spent time considering what purpose the various hidey-holes we found might have served. We came to conclusions -- most of them probably wrong. But it was entertaining to give consideration to these things: to think about what might have been happening beyond the rosewood paneling; to think about what dramas might have played out in these very rooms, all those years before.

Other images from that time -- and connected to that place -- have left strong impressions. The demise of Pacific Ocean Park (though we always referred to it as Pee-Oh-Pee). Playing under it and the Santa Monica pier with my friends. (Can you imagine anyone letting their kids do a thing like that now? Unsupervised?) Muscle Beach and the boardwalk in the 1960s and early 1970s, while those things were more shoddy than they had been; less posh than they would become.

There was a park next to the building and just above the boardwalk and we spent countless hours there, the park’s hilly edges becoming cliffs and mountains in our minds. We called it Cactus Park, but it’s actually called Crescent Bay Park. I don’t know if I’ve remembered it wrong or if the name has since been changed but, whatever it was called, we had strict instructions not to touch any needles we might find in the park or talk to anyone whose sleep we might disturb.

It was a different time.

There were occasional expeditions to the mall, which was what the Promenade was then called and before the actual mall -- Santa Monica Place -- was built. That was in the time that the mall-that-would-become the Third Street Promenade was new and hopeful. Before it got grotty. Before it got hopeful again. L.A. has always been a city of change and rebirth.

These odd things I remember fondly: running along the beach careful to avoid patches of oil from early coastal spills, as well as the jellyfish that had died because of those oil spills. I don’t know if stepping on a jellyfish would actually hurt you. I doubt it. But it seemed to us a potential fate worse than death. Grunion runs: silvery buckets of them right outside our front door. The river: oh! The magic of the L.A. River where it headed into the sea! We spent hours playing at that lip. Though it could not have been the river, just our own little neighborhood tributary of it, I shudder to think of that now. Playing there. Unpleasant things sometimes floated past us towards the sea. We’d close our eyes.

When I sat down to write the first Kitty Pangborn novel, none of this was on my mind. I was not thinking about my childhood. I was not thinking about secret hallways and hidden rooms and concrete rivers. But I suspect some of that stuff colored my psyche, in any case. How could it not? We’re impressionable when we’re children, and make no mistake: some of what we build then, we’re building for ourselves. We end up dragging it around.

Did I dream the first Kitty Pangborn mystery there, with those old-school LA gangsters -- gangsters in spats -- haunting the hallways? It’s possible I did though, if so, I have no recollection of it. Here’s what I do know: you can not live that sort of life without having it touch you somehow. You can not immerse yourself in the culture of those who have been reduced to ghosts without having it color your own reality. Every time I sit down with Kitty and drink heavily of her world the time I spent -- that childhood time -- running wildly through the corridors of that hotel haunt me. They make it real. Or all more real. And then I try to share that reality -- that surreal reality -- with you.

Note: this piece appeared in the Los Angeles summer 2009 edition of Mystery Readers Journal. It’s reprinted here with permission.

The Best of 2009

2010-01-03T16:00:00.000-08:00

January Magazine’s selections of the best books of the year tends to be one of the publication’s editorial highlights and has been for the last 11 years that we’ve been doing it. For one thing, the feature is so much work. For everyone. Partly because you’re walking down paths you’ve traveled before, and so now you’re rethinking something you’d already thought and put aside. It’s an interesting process.

The other thing that makes the best books of the year feature very labor intensive on the management side is just wrestling with this huge, multi-faceted piece. We talk about books in every area we cover -- which is basically everything outside of Christian and computer books -- and all of our writers have to be corresponded with, there’s a certain amount of editing involved, covers and publishing information have to be run down and placed... all in all it’s a lot of work.

And then it’s done. And you sit back on your haunches and you look it all over and you see the connections and the trends and it enables you to do a bit of crystal ball gazing, just based on the year you’ve just revisited with such intensity. It’s a fantastic process and, one way and another, it never fails to take my breath away.

The fact that contributing editor Ali Karim chose Death Was in the Picture as one of his picks for best of the year in crime fiction came as a total surprise to me and a real delight. I’m involved with all of the planning for January’s best of the year feature, but I have virtually nothing to do with the crime fiction component: all of that is lovingly slaved over by January’s senior editor and Rap Sheet editor, J. Kingston Pierce. This year I didn’t see the crime fiction pages of the feature until they went live on New Year’s eve and then it was a real gratifying rush to see that it had been included.

January Magazine’s Best Books of 2009 feature -- complete with my reflections on the year that was -- is here.

Completely Covered

2009-12-14T13:15:00.000-08:00

I am more delighted than I can say that Death Was in the Picture is part of the select group included in The Rap Sheet’s annual best crime fiction covers. There are 12 gorgeous covers among this years finalists, all of them quite different.

Cast your vote before December 28th.

He Sees Forest and Trees

2009-12-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

Today on January Magazine I write (slightly gushingly?) about Mark Leiren-Young’s new work of non-fiction, The Green Chain: Nothing is Ever Clear Cut (Heritage House).

If you like the environment and green stuff and trees and sharp writing, you’ll love The Green Chain. Oh: and if you liked Leiren-Young’s film of the same name (seen mostly at film festivals near you). My comments on the book are here.