The LadyKillers

the book biz...off to BEA

Cara on Friday,

Well, I'm off to the airport and LA for the BEA...Book Expo of America, the publishing tradeshow. I've got comfortable shoes, will leave my roller bag at the check-in and contemplate walking my feet off today. After several of these, I still find them huge and daunting...aisle after aisle of publishers, less freebies than before and the hum of business. That's really what this is about, the reps and sales force out to make deals and then go to parties where they network and let their hair down. Authors seems to get lost in the mix. Fair enough, it's a tradeshow. work is to be done and we want the publishing world to do well. Yet I always feel lost in the glitzy displays, the quick once over of the literati who scan a badge to see if they 'know or should know you'.
Half the time, I've missed the famous NY reviewer, editor, agent only know I've walked right by them when someone nudges me...hey there's...not that I'd recognize them anyway. But hanging with friends is the best part and I look forward to seeing folks I only see once a year. Here's my list of who I know will be there whether we find each other is another thing; Kathy Daneman Soho's former publicist now at FSG, Bob Weizebahl, Scott Kemble, Bobby and Linda from the Mystery Bookstore, Margery and the MWA crowd, Linda my agent, Sarah our Soho publicist. I'm signing at the MWA booth on Saturday so I'll get to see my travel cohort in crime Libby Hellmann and Denise Hamilton is putting me up, chez elle, yet again. Another signing at the mystery autographing session in the afternoon and then Denise says she's found some parties.
Note to Rhys- admit we had fun at the nudist colony book group!
So running off and I'm determined to find the good parties, grab Lee Child's book and meet new authors and do the biz thing...schmooze and try to recognize someone famous before they pass me in the aisle this time...
have a good weekend,
Cara

The writer's angst.

Rhys on a very busy Wednesday. I'm off to England in a week and I have so many things to do in connection with the launch of A Royal Pain as soon as I return. And I'm due to speak at the University of San Francisco at noon. I'm always a little apprehensive when I speak in an academic setting. I'm scared this audience will ask about my characters' motivation and what Evan's Guinness is a symbol of. When of course I've never thought of a character's motivation in my life. I just visit my characters and watch them interact. And as for images... I guess I'm not Hemmingway. I just set out to tell a good story.

And I do sympathize with Carola and her two weird signings. We've all been through them. They are part of the self inflicted hell through which we writers put ourselves. With every book we open ourselves up to criticism. We put part of our souls into each of our books. They become our children, and it really hurts when a reviewer slams us. And not content with that stake in our hearts, we travel around to book signings and put ourselves through more torture as we speak to an audience of one earnest old woman who has come in out of the rain...not to mention store cats, store pigs, tables in shopping malls, nudist colonies and other trials.

Of course actors and musicians have it worse than us. But most other professions are not judged on a regular basis. A teacher doesn't have someone standing in the back of the room at all times, saying, "Today's math lesson was not as good as yesterdays and by the way, the teacher down the hall does it better." Nor does a surgeon have someone standing there saying, "that cut was a little sloppy and your stitching isn't as neat as Dr. x's."  If they had to put up with this, they'd probably quit.

And yet every word we write is examined and either praised or criticized. I am currently in pre-book jitters. My new Royal Spyness book comes out July 1st. (A Royal Pain, Berkley Prime Crime) I'll be speaking at 27 bookstores during the month of July. The initial print run is almost fifty percent bigger than Her Royal Spyness. I should be ecstatic, but now I'm worrying that I'll do all those signings and nobody will come and the book won't sell. It's all part of the writer's angst, I guess.

Ah yes, to be a writer is to put one's self through hell. Maybe we just work better under stress.

Rhys Bowen
(about to cut off an ear)

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Carola here. "Sublime" is a bit of an exaggeration. "Ridiculous" is not. I had two signings Friday and Saturday that were a study in contrasts.

The first was for the Eugene Symphony Guild. I was invited to be the speaker at one of their fund-raising dinners in a member's home. A couple of dozen people paid $30 apiece to hear me babble for an hour or so before they got their dinners. And 10 guild members dashed around producing and serving and clearing up the dinners. Apparently something went wrong with the prep, so I just went on talking. I've been writing for nearly thirty years, so I can go on talking about my career and my books indefinitely. What I can't do is manage the sash when I dress up in my '20s outfit. My waist is right where nature intended it to be, and a bit of silk tied around my hips very quickly descends towards my knees. Nor am I one of those people who can blithely toss a scarf around their necks and look elegant. Mine won't stay tossed. My hair did stay up, though, something of a miracle, and my hat stayed on. I won't go into the business of the tights--or perhaps I will. I very rarely wear tights/pantyhose/stockings/even knee-highs. Until I started putting them on, I didn't realise quite how rarely. The elastic had quit in the first 3 pairs I tried, and it wasn't too happy in the pair I ended up in. Daisy, of course, would have worn a suspender belt (garter belt?), and her stockings would have stayed up, though the seams might not have stayed straight.

So there was an element of the ridiculous in the Friday signing, but I had an appreciative audience (who bought quite a few books) and a delicious dinner.

Saturday night was another story. A very small local indie bookstore had invited 7 or 8 authors to a signing in aid of books for kids. The store is tucked into the corner of a pizza place cum concert venue. The bookstore owner had listened to the scheduled band online and thought they sounded quite mellow. They turned out to be so loud we were issued earplugs. It was impossible to talk to anyone about our books, which didn't really matter as no one came anyway--or at least only to listen to the band and eat pizza. I was lucky enough to sell 2 paperbacks, but one writer who came all the way from Corvallis, about 40 miles, didn't sell a thing. The guy sitting next to me sold almost enough to cover the cost of the pizza and coffee he bought.

Goes to show you never can tell. Carola

www.geocities.com/CarolaDunn/

Soldiers from the past

Ann Parker, Monday's child for the Lady Killers, staggering in late on my posting day, as usual.

Today being Memorial Day got me thinking about soldiers in general and U.S. Civil War soldiers in particular. As part of my on-going research for my Silver Rush mystery series, I spend a fair bit of time scooting around on the internet, looking at old photos of Civil War soldiers. Each image I examine, I look at the face--encased, captured in glass tha t brief moment--and wonder: Who was this person? Did he join up willingly? Did he participate as a matter of principle or because of "no other options" or because of a lark? How old was he when he enlisted? How long did he fight, what did he see, did he survive, and if so, how did the War affect him afterwards? All questions with no answers.
 
These "unknown" men-- faces only, without names--are long gone. But the least I can do is think of them and wonder, so they are not entirely forgotten.

The right to not-write

Jane here, completely in tune with Sharan and those who commented on her yesterday’s post. There are times when I’d do anything rather than write, especially when I’ve no immediate deadline looming, and I find myself doing all sorts of jobs around the house and garden instead.

But as long as these distractions only happens occasionally, I don’t think they matter. I have a right to write; I also have a right to not-write. I’m my own boss, and have been for most of my working life; and despite the frustrations, the insecurities, the fact that I’m never going to be rich, I wouldn’t change that status. I feel (it’s probably an illusion) that I’m in control of what I do. I can decide when to work like stink to meet a deadline, and I’ve burned many gallons of midnight oil without (much) complaint. If I choose to be a freelance, I must take the bad with the good.

And one of the good points is that I can, sometimes, award myself some time off, including – shock horror – a day or two not even doing useful chores; perhaps visiting or entertaining friends, going out somewhere interesting…why not?

Still, I know I can’t overdo this. If I have too many days of distraction, I’ll lose momentum. It’s important to me to write something most days. So having exercised my right to not-write, in due course I must get my boss – me – to drive me back to the word processor. These are the stratagems that work for Finnis the boss, and Finnis the malingerer.

1. Do something connected with writing, so you can feel that you’re working, and that the day isn’t wasted. There’s masses to do on the marketing side of course, but my first choice is research. I love reading about the Roman era, primary texts (but in English!) and books by scholars. And these days there’s the Internet too. More often than not I’ll find some interesting fact or new interpretation that will give me an idea for a plot twist or a character illustration, and I’ll go happily back into author mode.
2. A more drastic alternative, if the above hasn’t worked. Put yourself in a situation where you can’t write for a while. I can hear several Lady Killers hollowly laughing at this, because if you’re on the road doing book-signings or attending conventions, this must happen a good deal anyway. I bet many writers arrive home with a desperate longing to get back to their work-in-progress. I’m  not a prolific traveller, so I must manufacture a situation at home that prevents me writing for a while. I start some tedious but necessary job, like tax, or recording expenses properly on my computer, or methodically checking for broken or out-dated links on my website – we’ve all got our own boring chores that we know should be done, but we regularly put them off till tomorrow. If things are really dire, I tidy my office. My native modus operandi involves a desk and table that resemble bomb-sites, until Finnis the boss says, “Get this mess sorted. And haven’t you ever learned to use a duster?”

And if I make myself do one of these awful chores continuously, right to the end, then the contrariness of human nature kicks in: the more I tell myself I may not do something, the more I want to do it.   Hey presto! Finnis the malingerer willingly turns into Finnis the writer again.

Isn’t it lucky that the grass is always greener?

not writing

I can do almost anything but write.  I know that writers are supposed to be constantly eager to get back to their work and resentful of interruptions.  Sometimes that's true, especially on days when everything is going well.  But when I'm not sure what comes next I find that I'd much rather go to the grocery store, hoe the garden, pay bills, play solitaire, even clean the oven.  It's so easy to be distracted instead of facing the page and diving in.  Today I'd rather make a week's worth of salads, trying out a new dressing I found on line. Or finally wash all the stuff that has to be laid flat to dry.  Or write this blog.  What does everyone else do when the deadline isn't close enough to make you panic? 

Or is everyone more organized and disciplined than I?  (Note my usual workspace)

Sharan, just curious.

Cinema's take on crime of in Paris

Cara here on Friday

Ok, crime in Paris fascinates me and I watch a lot of old French films. Nothing beats how the camera captures the wet cobblestones, the dark narrow streets, that noir ambiance.
Here's a film to rent if you haven't seen it already. Note I did borrow a bit from the film title, Murder in the Rue de Paradis, Aimée's 8th investigation but apart from references to the Boulevard du Crime, it's a modern take.

In Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis (1943-45) the camera shifts east to the Paris populaire of pre-Haussmann days, zooming in on Boulevard du Temple, a paradise of escapism packed with playhouses and street entertainment in an area that now has been largely devoured by sprawling Place de la République. The title alludes to the poorer members of the audience seatedin the paradis—the French word for a theater's cheapest seating section—who interacted with the stage gullibly and demonstratively, like children. This was also a hotbed of political unrest and crime, although the nickname "Boulevard du Crime" referred to the crimes on stage rather than on the actual street. Not that there was much difference between them. No wonder Haussmann wiped everything out!

All the more reason to see the movie, which gives us back this lost slice of Paris, paradoxically re-created in a studio. It was an audacious venture, since many of the 1,800 people involved in the making of the film were members of the Résistance. Not so Arletty, who was jailed after the Libération for her affair with a German. As Garance, she epitomizes the archetypal free-spirited Parisienne, leaving her loverslusting and pure-hearted Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) pining away. There is little left to evoke the film other than the Porte St-Martin theater at 16 blvd St-Martin, where the real-life Frédérick Lemaître performed. The famous Funambules Theater, where Baptiste mimed on stage his hopeless love for Garance, stood on the northern side of Boulevard du Temple opposite Rue Charlot.

Rue Charlot has been cleansed of crime and is now currently home to trendy art galleries. Les Enfants Rouges market at no. 35—the city's oldest, dating back to 1628—existed at the time, but the lovely Square du Temple, farther west along Rue de Bretagne, is Haussmann's legacy. Its contemporary Carreau du Temple, now waiting for a new destiny, replaced an older second-hand clothes market where the boulevard's performers found a treasure trove of feathers, lace and ribbonsfor their costumes. The mairie of the third arrondissement roughly replaces the Temple Tower, where the royal family was imprisoned during the Revolution.

Have a good weekend,
Cara

Enduring prose

Rhys on a bright, blustery Wednesday morning in California.
I have been enjoying the posts this week--Ann's on food for thought, Carola's on stupid criminals and Jane's on nitty gritty history. This kind of discussion would have made history interesting to me. I always wanted to know how they could go to the bathroom while wearing all those skirts, or in all that armor but I never dared ask those kind of questions. I would have been sent straight to the headmistress for being cheeky and disruptive, I suspect.

My own thoughts this morning are turning to cyberspace and to how email has changed the world. What brought on this contemplation was a thank you note from Malice Domestic, our recent convention, for the item I'd donated to the live auction. In my case it was the right to name a character. But the highest bid of the evening went for a letter written by Nero Wolf to Peter Lovesey.

My immediate reaction was that this will never happen again. I have corresponded with some very famous writers recently. We may have even exchanged words of wisdom, but those words are all lost to my trash folder. I remember the first message I received from Margaret Maron when my first Evan book came out and how chuffed I was that an Edgar and Agatha winner should take the trouble to write to me about how much she liked my book. Unfortunately I never printed out that letter. Nor my letters from Michael Connelly when he was telling me about a hurricane heading toward him in Florida. I correspond with some pretty well known female writers on a daily basis. We offer advice, sympathy, encouragement to each other but by the end of the day it is all gone. Consigned to the trash folder and zapped out of existence.

So there will never again be those letters from one luminary to another presented on the antiques roadshow or the collected correspondence between Rhys Bowen and Jane Finnis coming out in book form for future generations to have to study. And worse than this, the art of the letter is gone. We correspond in quick notes. We use emoticons to show whether we are feeling happy or sad, and some of us (not any of us here, of course) have resorted to text messaging abbreviations. Glad U R coming. Ugghh.

When I think of the letters we still have, written by my father-in-law from various parts of the world as he helped make history with the first commercial flights to South Africa or India, I realize those reports would now be text messages or emails that would not survive for future generations. Or the letters his mother wrote to him when he was a boy at school, the complete formality of the form and the signature, Your affectionate mother, B. Quin-Harkin.

So the letter has gone the way of the dodo. Probably a cause for rejoicing for those children who had to sit down after Christmas and churn out all those thank you notes, but otherwise a great loss to the whole extended field of literature.

So don't forget to print this out. Someone writing my biography in the future may need it!

Rhys Bowen
www.rhysbowen.com

Truth is stranger than fiction

A while ago, I was wondering whether any reasonably intelligent person could behave as stupidly as the crook in my WIP, when the local paper ran this report: an accountant at the Oregon Dept. of Education embezzled nearly $1m without anyone suspecting a thing, which takes considerable cleverness; then another employee saw him stealing an office chair and reported it, leading to an investigation that brought the whole thing crashing down.

I read a lot of news stories that I wouldn't dare put into a book simply because readers would say the incidents were too far out to be believable. For instance, there was the bank robber in Springfield OR who efficiently robbed the chosen bank and ran away, only to trip when his baggy pants fell down around his ankles. He stepped out of them and continued to flee. A police dog found him hiding in the bushes in his underwear.

There were the burglars, in Glasgow IIRC, who parked their getaway vehicle in a dead-end alley. When they came out, alarms blaring, they tried to do a three-point turn and got stuck broadside across the alley.

Stories about bank robbers who write their hold-up notes on their own deposit slips--or something similar--and leave them behind when they run for it are anything but rare. A variation occurred locally when the paper used was the back of an application for a job at the bank that the man had already filled out, name, address, phone number and all.

A few years ago, a young man robbed the bank just around the corner from my house. He made his getaway by climbing over the chainlink fence between the bank and the school next door. When the cops arrived, the kids in the schoolyard all pointed and yelled, "he went that way!"--down a dead-end street, where he was found at his mother's house.

Anyone else read about the crooks in Australia who held up a restaurant? One of them accidentally fired his gun and hit the other in the buttocks. Then they grabbed a big sack and ran. What was in the sack? Bread rolls.

Murder isn't exempt from stupid crooks: What about the guy who shot his wife (age 51) and claimed it was a mercy killing because she didn't want the long suffering of her Lou Gehrig's disease? He had planned--he said--to kill himself too but didn't because her spirit returned to him and told him not to. Autopsy showed she didn't have Lou Gehrig's, in fact she was very healthy except for carpal tunnel. And the doctor he claimed had diagnosed the disease denied it absolutely.

In a mystery, your villain is supposed to be reasonably intelligent, reasonably rational, reasonably capable of hoodwinking the sleuth. Real life ain't like that!

Carola www.geocities.com/CarolaDunn/

Food for Thought

Ann Parker, Monday's child for Lady Killers, with a question: Does anyone in this corner of cyberspace associate certain foods with certain books?

Why ask? Well...

I happened to chomp into a piece of beef jerky today (preparing a sack lunch for one of the kids) and was immediately transported back to my 13th or 14th summer... Summer times while I was young were generally spent in an orgy of reading (and, I suppose, snacking). In particular, I associate beef jerky with Mary Stewart's The Ivy Tree. I recall very clearly lying across my bed, consuming nearly a pound of dried meat while devouring (so to speak) that particular book. In a similar vein, the taste of Annabelle's Rocky Road candy bars brings Ayn Rand's Anthem to mind (this must be from a later summer in which I was obsessed with Ayn Rand ...).

Anyone else have book—food connections they care to share?