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A blog for readers and writers of crime fiction
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We're so proud of Ann Parker and her fabulous Inez--they've won the 2012 Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery award at Left Coast Crime.
Well deserved, Ann!
Staci here, on my every other Saturday, thinking about celebrations. For me, the entire fall season feels like one long celebration. With my husband’s birthday happening a few days before Halloween and my oldest son’s birthday a few days after, that two week period is full of family dinners, parties, cakes, candy, and presents. Just when I think about relaxing, the turkeys show up at the grocery store and Thanksgiving arrives. As soon as we’ve stuffed our faces and waved goodbye to the relatives, my husband unpacks the Christmas decorations. December is a month-long celebration of carols, lights, and baking.
This Christmas Day gathering was a bit smaller than in previous years. My dad got his hip replaced in mid-December. The surgery went really well, but he’s on a strict physical therapy regimen with all sorts of rules on how to sit, stand, and walk. Since Grandpa’s lap is my kids’ favorite place to sit, we couldn’t risk injuring that new hip and decided to postpone our full family celebration with my parents until late January or early February. That whittled our guest list down to my sister and her husband. Until her husband fell ill Christmas morning. Really, is there a worse time to be sick? Okay, probably, but I can’t think of an example right now. But my sister still came over, and we followed our usual holiday traditions, only with less people.
Even though the holiday was a bit quieter and not what we were expecting, it was still nice. We enjoyed a hearty meal, shared some laughs, opened some gifts, and celebrated the day. The kids were completely pooped by the time seven o’clock rolled around and merrily went to bed without protest (thank goodness, since my own energy was depleted at one minute after seven).
Now the decorations are down, the kids are already bored with their new toys, and the house is once more back to normal – just in time to celebrate the new year. I can’t wait to blow that horn at midnight and welcome the arrival of 2012, the year my first book will be published. I’ll definitely be celebrating that!
Please join us in welcoming the last honored guests of 2011 to the LadyKillers: Bette Golden Lamb and J. J. Lamb, the co-authors of three crime novels. Their most recent book is the independently-published SISTERS IN SILENCE, a medical thriller about a fertility counselor who has gone off the deep end. Their other novels are HEIR TODAY…, a fast-paced suspense/adventure featuring a husband-wife team “reminiscent of Nick & Nora Charles;” and BONE DRY, a high-tension medical thriller described by PW as “not for the squeamish.” They combine collaboration and cohabitation in an air of creative exchange in their Northern California home.
When not writing with J. J. or on her own, Bette, unmistakably from the Bronx, can be found in her studio playing with clay. She is a professional ceramist, sculptor, and artist (www.bettegoldenlamb.com) whose creations appear in regional, national, and international exhibitions. She’s also an RN, and a devoted gardener. “As an RN, I wanted to write medical thrillers that put nurses smack in the center of a story,” she says. “Most such novels have MDs as the protagonist, when in reality doctors sort of breeze in and out of a hospital a couple of times a day, while nurses run and control the hospital environment.”
J. J. is a former newspaper reporter, Associated Press staff writer, trade press correspondent, and freelance journalist. His journalism career was interrupted early on by the U.S. Army, which provided him with a Top Secret clearance, locked room with table, chair, and typewriter, and time to write short stories. The stories evolved into an original paperback series featuring Las Vegas-based PI Zachariah Tobias Rolfe III. Then came collaboration with Bette on their current series of books. He’s also a proud and skilled jack-of-all-trades, typical of a born-and-raised Hoosier (www.jjlamb.com).
Between them, the Lambs belong to Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and the same writers critique group for the past 19 years. In addition to the successful launch of their latest co-authored thriller, they are looking forward to the publication of new individual novels - an Urban Fantasy from Bette, and a new Zach Rolfe caper from J. J. And there is another medical thriller in the works.
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Don‘t know why it is, but we writers have a tendency to be a gloomy lot. Nothing ever seems to be going right, from the weather when we get up in the morning, to the number of books sold (if any) at the end of the week, month, quarter, or year.
And yet…
And yet…
Here, at the end of 2011 and the start of 2012, there is true cause for celebration.
That’s right, celebration!
For all of us.
The struggle to get paid for what one writes, and the even greater struggle to make a living from writing, particularly in fiction, has been going on for a long, long time.
Until 1825, most American authors had to pay printers to publish their work, long before there was a thriving “vanity press.”
At the time, this reportedly wasn’t a problem for people of means, such as Washington Irving, or the New York Knickerbockers group, or a group of Connecticut poets known as the Hartford Wits. Benjamin Franklin, a printer by trade, could publish his own writings. While Walt Whitman set type for a printer so Leaves of Grass could see the light of day.
No surprise then that from the earliest days, trying to write fiction for a living and living in poverty were almost synonymous. Charles Brockden Brown, generally regarded as the most ambitious and accomplished American novelist prior to James Fenimore Cooper, was also the first to attempt to live from his writing. But in his 39th year, he died broke. Sort of a prequel to Edgar Allan Poe, who was also impoverished when he died at the age of 40.
But wait! We’re supposed to be talking about having cause to celebrate in this, the early years of the 21st Century.
While we’re living in a time of great consternation and transformation, for both writers and publishers, it’s also a time when we writers have been given the ability and means to control the publication and distribution of our works…through e-books and print-on-demand editions.
At very little expense and with a minimum of effort, a writer can now type “The End” on the last page of a manuscript and within a month or less, have it available to the reading public -- worldwide. Further, the price can be set at whatever the writer wants it to be.
No more waiting weeks or months for an agent to reply to a query. No more waiting months or years to find an interested publisher. No more waiting a year or more for a book to hit bookstore shelves after being accepted for publication.
The agent-editor-publisher course of action continues to be available, and there no doubt will be times when we might prefer to follow this (tortuous) route to publication.
Regardless, what’s happening today is simply amazing! The entire paradigm has shifted.
(We caution, though, that those who think giving away their writing has a certain fly-in-the-the-sugar romance about it should re-read our earlier comments about the fates of Mr. Brown and Mr. Poe.)
This thing of writers being able to be their own publisher and distributor isn’t all champagne and caviar, and maybe it never will be. Ah, but our fates are now more in our own hands than they’ve ever been.
And don’t think that agents, editors, and publishers -- the middlemen -- are not paying attention to all of this. A lot of attention. Close attention.
After a lengthy and non-productive period of pooh-poohing electronic publishing, there is now a virtual stampede by these doubting-Thomas agents/editors/publishers to offer formatting and placement “services” to current and potential clients (that’s us, the writers). It appears that once a middleman, always a middleman. But there is a price to be paid because there is no true altruism.
Are there legitimate concerns about the e-publishing phenomenon? Of course.
There is a flood of new and reissued e-books popping up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere. And currently, there are no gate-keepers, those who would attempt to point out to readers the good, the bad, and the ugly.
But we would say, without fear of contradiction, that the agents, editors, and publishers didn’t always do a really good job with those things either. (And have you noticed the increased number of typos and grammatical errors appearing in new hardbacks of late?)
Along with our new-found freedom, we need to accept the responsibility of putting out the best book possible in terms of story, language use, punctuation, and spelling…like having someone other than us do the proof reading.
So, unless you still write with pen/pencil on paper or with a manual/electric typewriter, the future is here. Otherwise, the catch-up period for joining the publishing revolution may take quite a bit longer.
'Tis the season when much media (and personal) energy seems to be focused on producing the "picture perfect" holiday. Entire family assembled in harmonious cheerfulness beside the appropriate holiday symbol. Beautifully-set holiday table with mouth-watering perfectly cooked/crafted courses and perfectly attuned dinner partners (who would never rant about politics, religion, etc. etc.). New car in the driveway with a big red bow on it. Early admissions acceptance of genius child to Stanford...
Well, you get the picture.
If nearly 60 years on this planet has taught me anything, it's that getting everyone to sing in perfect harmony around the tree turns out to be a whole lot harder (= impossible) than shoving characters around in a fictional world of one's creation. I know this to be true, intellectually speaking, yet I'm still learning and backsliding on occasion. So, when I find I'm trying to "push the river" and getting all stressed out as a result, I try to take a step back, take a deep breath, and focus on celebrating the really big and the really little things.
The really big things:
HEALTH: We are all basically healthy.
TOGETHERNESS, LOVE, RESPECT: We are together this season; we love and respect each other (in our own, imperfect, idiosyncratic ways).
WATER, FOOD, SHELTER: We are blessed with all the basics. We have clean water to drink and cook with (right out of a tap!), enough food (plenty! plenty!), and a roof over our heads.
Right there, plenty of reasons enough to celebrate and sing for joy (even if we are not all in tune).
And then, there are the little things to celebrate (i.e., "little" in the bigger scope of things...):
My fourth book is out. "Mercury's Rise" was published in November. Yay! And nice reviews are out and about as well. (Thanks, Liz, for pointing this one out on Buried Under Books.) Being a fiction author was never part of my "life plan," and I am thankful for this surprising turn of events...
A cup of coffee with eggnog, in a holiday mug, accompanied by a cheerful bowl of homemade turkey soup and some candles. (Candles not lit in this photo, because it's lunchtime. I'm looking forward to sunset and dinner, though!)
A book I've been awaiting (for research purposes) arrives in the mail! "Someday All This Will Be Yours: A History of Inheritance and Old Age," by Henrik Hartog. Can't wait to dive in.
Last but hardly least..... Tree lights and a 2-lb box of See's dark chocolate candy!
Sure, some of my list items are serious and some are frivolous (See's chocolate = frivolous?? Never!! ;-) )... but I enjoy exploring the opposite ends of the spectrum.
What about you? Care to share some of the "big and little" things that you are celebrating this season?
Ann Parker's latest Silver Rush series book, MERCURY'S RISE, is now out on Kindle! So if you received a Kindle for a holiday gift and are looking for good reads to upload... (hint hint hint). For more Kindle/eBook reads, please read on...
The wonderful Poisoned Pen Press has temporarily discounted the ebook editions of all of Mary Anna Evans' Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries www.poisonedpenpress.com, www.bn.com, and www.amazon.com. ARTIFACTS is 99 cents, and all five of the other books are at $4.99, reduced from $6.95.
Mary Anna's Christmas giveaway on Facebook ends on December 26. Just like her Facebook author page and your name will go in the hat for your choice of a free Kindle or a $100 gift certificate to an independent bookstore, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
Mary Anna is also offering her Christmas short story, "A Singularly Unsuitable Word," as a free Kindle download on Amazon through December 27. For those without Kindles (like her), it can be read on a computer, as well.
The season of darkness now turns and begins to inch back into light. Please join us as we explore the theme of CELEBRATION this week.
Wishing you all the joy of the season...
The LadyKillers
Mercury's Rise Wins Prize
We're so proud of Ann Parker and her fabulous Inez--they've won the 2012 Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery award at Left Coast Crime.
Well deserved, Ann!
