Author Archives: Murderati

that’s the way I like it…

It’s just been one of those days… one of those good days when all is right with the world, or at least a little piece of it, for a few minutes, and I’m happy at work on something that’s new and exciting. Which means my brain is full of that new world, teasing out the nuances, and all other subjects just seem to glance off, stones skipping over the surface.

Somewhere in all of that process, there’s the hope that the new stuff will resonate with readers, which of course, leads back to the curiosity of what makes them buy a book. I know. We just discussed this.

But this time… it’s a poll.

I know, I know. Completely original idea.

But hey! It’s easy! It shows a running total! It coordinates with the colors of the blog! What’s not to love?

(I am not guaranteeing that this thing will actually work or that you won’t break the entire internet as soon as you click “cast your vote.” Seriously. If you click and your computer doesn’t explode, we’ll count that as a success.)

A book buying poll:

So, tell me please, what book did you buy this year that was a new-to-you author? And if you want to tell… how did you find them?

And… who have you been recommending to others?

THE PRICE – in more ways than one…

Yes, finally, THE PRICE will be in fine bookstores everywhere on February 19 or 20, depending on… I’m not sure exactly what.

Don’t we love this cover? It is so EXACTLY right for the book it’s – well, spooky. Kudos to Adam Auerbach at St. Martin’s Press!!

I will be starting off my tour in Southern California tomorrow, teaching workshops at the Southern California Writers’ Conference in San Diego this weekend, then signing at the divine Mysterious Galaxy on Tuesday, February 19th at 7 pm, and at legendary Book Soup on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles on Wednesday, February 20, also 7 pm.

Yes, there will be wine, as we most definitely need to toast the successful conclusion of the writers’ strike.

(Okay, more specifics about the book at the end of this post, but first, the topic of the day…)

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So, the second book!

All the interviews have started, and as I’ve said before, there’s nothing like an interview to shock you into remembering why you write to begin with and especially why you wrote a particular book.

I wrote a blog here a few weeks ago about personal mythology and was delighted with all the thoughtful examples of ‘Rati personal myths. I was actually struggling toward a topic of theme that I didn’t quite get to that day, so I will try it from a different angle today.

I really do believe that as authors we only have a few themes that we’re working on, or working out, over and over again, and it’s useful to identify our personal themes, as people and as authors.

Well, one of mine is the deal with the devil.

This is a funny personal theme to have, considering that my parents are two of the most agnostic people I know and we really had no religious upbringing at all. My sister and brother and I were taken around to different churches and temples and mosques and encouraged to go to whatever religious service was happening in whatever family our parents had pawned us off on for the weekend (KIDDING)… but, in essence, not a religious family by a long shot.

Nonetheless, I really seem to have a thing for the devil.

I don’t like the word. "Satan" is much more, well, elegant. But even Satan is too on-the-nose a term for the core concept that intrigues me.

Which is not about temptation, so much, but about what you’re willing to do for what you want.

I honestly have no idea when this obsession started. I was always into vampires as a kid (much more than I am today) so I guess the idea of forbidden passion and the price of unchecked desire loomed large, with big teeth.

I think I was also hit hard early on by Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement, re: women artists – "The book or the baby." That is, as a female artist you have to choose between the two.

Now, obviously two of my favorite writer/friends, Heather Graham and Allison Brennan, have driven a massive and multi-pronged stake into the heart of THAT little homily, but I didn’t know Heather and Allison in my formative years and I did see an alarming number of the wildly talented women writers and actors and designers I knew in college choose the family route and never find the way back to their artistic dreams and potential, and it disturbed me. More than disturbed me, it ATE at me.

(Things that eat at you tend to turn up in your stories, don’t you find?)

And beyond all that – let’s face it. Those of us with the need to write are pretty ruthless about it. Writers aren’t particularly nice people. We are often kind, and empathetic, and compassionate – but nice? Not so much. We are focused, we are determined, we are obsessive, we are relentless. Some of us hide it better than others, but bottom line is – we have to be all those things, or we would never, never get it done.

And we make choices all the time that seem on the surface to be irrevocable. We give up one thing to get another – all the time. And… getting to the heart of it now: who here hasn’t whispered a little prayer that possibly is not meant for God to hear… about what we would really do for what we want?

So where does the devil come in?

Well, it’s partly just sex, of course – if sex can ever be referred to as JUST sex. If you’re going to sell your soul,or make a bargain that you’re going to spend all of eternity paying off, wouldn’t you rather it be to someone sort of dashing?

But also I’ve always thought that just as God is supposed to, the devil KNOWS you – knows the depths of your soul – knows the things that you want that you would never breathe a word about to another human being.

How intoxicating is that?

In fact, you could argue that the devil knows some things about you that you are going to great pains NOT to let God catch on to. And that’s intoxicating, too.

So that’s the tension that draws me again and again to Satanic characters: the idea of an overwhelmingly erotic and all-knowing figure who knows you to your core – knows you well enough to offer you your most secret desire – at a premium price.

I watched SILENCE OF THE LAMBS again last night (probably my three-dozenth time) because I’m teaching with it this weekend, and you better believe that the deal with the devil is the driving theme and force behind that book and film. A perfect depiction in every way, and not coincidentally, one of my five favorite books AND movies of all time.

Well, THE PRICE is all about the deal with the devil, too. And it won’t be my last book on the subject, either. My Satanic villain in THE PRICE knows exactly what a human being is worth, exactly the pressure points that will make them cave, exactly what every one of us is willing to do, for good or for evil.

And what would I be willing to do?

Hah. Like I said – I’ll never tell a human soul.

But I hope THE PRICE will tease readers into thinking about it.

So several questions for today, and no, you don’t have to answer in writing:

– – What have you given up for what you most want?

– – What WOULD you give up for what you most want, if someone who really had the power were offering?

– – And less drastically (!) – what’ do you feel is one/are some of your recurring writing themes?

On the road, now.

– X

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Here’s the scoop about the book, and you can read the first three chapters on my website, too.

What would you give to save your child? Your wife? Your soul?

Idealistic Boston District Attorney Will Sullivan has it all: a beautiful and beloved wife, Joanna; an adorable five-year old daughter, Sydney; and a real shot at winning the Massachusetts governor’s race. But on the eve of Will’s candidacy, Sydney is diagnosed with a malignant, inoperable tumor.

Now Will and Joanna are living in the eerie twilight world of Briarwood Hospital, waiting for Sydney to die, and both going slowly mad with grief.

Then a mysterious, charismatic hospital counselor named Salk takes special interest in Will and Joanna’s plight… and when Sydney miraculously starts to improve, Will suspects that Joanna has made a terrible bargain to save the life of their dying child.

"A medical thriller of the highest order… a stunning, riveting journey into terror and suspense."
– Michael Palmer, bestselling author of THE FIFTH VIAL

"This heartbreakingly eerie page-turner paints a vivid picture of the struggle between reality and the unknown."
– Library Journal

"A psychological roller coaster that keeps the reader on edge with bone-chilling thrills throughout."
– Heather Graham, bestselling author of THE SEANCE

"Beyond stunning, it is harrowing in the real sense of true art."
– Ken Bruen, bestselling author of PRIEST

Watch the book trailer

More tour information is here, and being added to daily.

In The Beginning

By J.T. Ellison

Oxymoron of the Week: A Good Problem

Usage: Wow, that’s a good problem to have!

How can a problem be a good thing? By its very nature, problems are just that, issues that create roadbloacks, which in turn need to be overcome. This week, I’ve been facing my own oxymoron, one of those "good problems." I’m getting started on my new book in earnest. I’m writing full-time, which is the good part (thanks, Brett, for that reminder). So, here goes with the problem side of the equation.

How do you write a book?

Because I need to confess… I’ve had a few moments over the past week that make me think I’ve forgotten.

This might sound insane to you readers, but the writers out there know what I’m talking about.

Starting a new book is a bit like climbing out onto an icy ledge in the Himalayas with a 10,000 foot drop-off. The view is beyond description, but there’s the terror of plunging to your death to contend with.

I know I’m not alone when I say I have a hard time getting started on a new book. This is the fourth "new" book I’ve begun, and I’ve had this issue with each one. I forget how to do it. I stutter, and stall, write a few pages and walk away, find a hundred other things that need to be addressed immediately, all the while telling myself, just get this one last thing done, and it’s full-steam ahead in the morning. It’s when I’ve said that for fourteen days in a row when I recognize that I’ve got the yips.

In golf, the yips are most prevalent in putting. Even the most experienced golfer has bouts of the yips — most commonly described as an involuntary movement of the wrist at the last moment in your stroke which makes the put pull or lag. It’s frustrating as hell. It also has pure psychological underpinnings, which sometimes manifest themselves physically. The more stress, the worse your yips.

And just a like a good golfer seeks help for their issues, a good writer sits down and does a mental check, trying to ascertain what’s happening. This isn’t writer’s block, mind you. Writer’s block is much more organic, much deeper. What I’m experiencing is this silly, frustrating feeling that I don’t know how to write a book.

Obviously I do. I’ve written several now. So what’s wrong with me?

I’ve been posing this question to those closest to me this week, with twofold hopes. One — reassurance, the yes, you can do it pep talks. Two — maybe someone could tell me how to fix my yips. I’ve received tons of the former, and none of the latter. So I interviewed myself, starting at the beginning. It took a few days of massive navel-gazing (also known as Facebook Syndrome) to realize the "how" behind my writing.

I dreamed the plot of the first book. The second was based on three separate scenes, full-blown mental vignettes, that popped into my head and stuck there. Strangely enough, one was simply a look between Taylor and Baldwin. I knew I needed that scene, it was vital, and strong, and important to their development. So I wrote the entire book around it. Then came the two others vignettes, and I built around those.

Okay. Now I’m getting somewhere. The third book, based in part on a real-life murder, also had these elemental building blocks, a few key scenes that gave me the tools to build the story around them. I saw them in my mind’s eyes, heard the dialogue, felt the surroundings, and went from there.

With this epiphany, I was able to start thinking about this new book in a different way. It already has a plot, already has a character line-up. The conflict and the resolution are set, the middle is still a bit amorphous, but the basic gist of the story exists. Driving home yesterday, I had one of those vignettes come to me, a scene of dialogue that I realized was coming from this new book. After my self-actualization yesterday evening, I sat down and put it on paper. As I did, a few other scenes popped in.

Phew.

So now I know how I write a book. I have two or three scenes banging around in my head, they gel and morph, and I write the story around them. This feels like a mess to me, when I look at it on paper. For a structured person, I’m certainly not when it comes to the actual writing of the book. But the relief I felt when I realized the "How" was palpable. I’ve just got one or two things to clear off my plate, and tomorrow it’s full-steam ahead. I’ve conquered my yips.

So let me know I’m not alone. Writers, tell me your "How." And to our readers, what gets you sidetracked from your goals?

Wine of the Week: Cascina Pellerino Langhe Nebbiolo

A Quick, Happy P.S.

Good thing I’ve gotten the yips under control. Yes, the rumors are true, the announcement has been made. I’m thrilled to
let you know that I’ve just signed a new deal with my incredible editor Linda McFall at Mira for three more
Taylor Jackson books. Many thanks to everyone who had a hand in this, especially my wonderful agent, Scott Miller. So to celebrate, I think everyone should head to
the store and buy a copy of BURN ZONE, from one of Taylor’s favorite
authors, James O. Born. BURN ZONE released yesterday, and is the second in the Alex Duarte series.
Trust me, it’s well worth your time. Oh, and Jim is one of my favorites
too, so if Taylor’s endorsement isn’t enough, please accept mine as
well.

Yip!

Up The Hill Backwards

I want to talk about a dirty little word a lot of writers don’t discuss in public too often. That word? Work.

I don’t mean the writing. I mean the day job. Like it or not, there are a lot of us published novelist out there that still have a day job. We yearn for the day we can ditch it, and just concentrate on the words that float through our minds and come on as stories on the screens in front of us. For a lot of writer, I dare say a majority, that day probably will never come. That’s just the reality. But even knowing that reality, we all still have the dream, the hope. You’ll notice I didn’t write “For a lot of us.” I’m holding onto the hope, and refuse to believe it won’t happen.

But I’m also very aware that without the day job, I ain’t got a roof over my head, or food on my table, or clothes on my back. So I go in every day and try to do my best.

My guess is, other writers do the same. But in public we don’t talk about the day job a lot. We prefer the illusion that we are writers, and writers only. Sure a few of us discuss it. Dusty’s a lawyer, and until tomorrow Duane Swiercynski’s still the editor at the City Paper in Philly. (A HUGE congrats to Duane for making the leap to full time writer!) But most of us keep that part of our lives is better kept to ourselves.

It’s Duane’s decision to devote himself full time to writing that got me thinking about this. I think I read somewhere that he said he wanted to focus on writing. And that’s exactly the point. With the fulltime job – which, don’t get me wrong, I’m very thankful for and we all need at some point – it is so difficult to focus.

There it is again. Focus.

I work in Hollywood. Or, to be more specific, not really Hollywood but a couple miles to the south. The company I work for is located in the middle of the Miracle Mile very near the La Brea Tar Pits. You know, the place where they dig up the mammoth and saber tooth tiger bones? If I press my face against my office window and look to the right, I can actually see the tar pits.

My job? I’m an executive producer at E! Entertainment Television specializing in on air graphics. I know…what does that have to do with writing? I mean, I’m in Hollywood after all, shouldn’t I have a job that takes advantage of my writing skills? My answer to that is no. I purposely got involved in a part of the industry that didn’t require me to write to much. I was afraid of burning out during the day and being unable to write at night. I achieved that, but there are other draw backs as you’ll see in a moment.

But my job does sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? There are many people in my line of work who would love to have my position. I know that. I know I’m lucky.

But a couple things you need to know about a job like mine. Mainly it’s effect on my focus as a writer. During the day I’m pulled in a million different directions, I have projects that come in and need to be done in an hour, and projects that will take several weeks all happening at the same time. It’s not untypical for me to be supervising 15 to 20 projects at one time. If I call in sick, or take a day off, I get phone calls. If I go to a writing conference I get phone calls. That’s a lot of work and a lot of stress and many times very brain tiring. In other words, a great destroyer of focus.

I’ve written else where – maybe even here – that my routine is to get up at 5 am and start writing by 6. What I didn’t say is that I have to stop by 8 and go to work for 10 hours. And even if I have the energy to write in the evenings, my focus is often lacking. My brain is numb. I’ll force myself sometimes, sure, but my productivity is about half that of what it is in the mornings. So basically I have to squeeze a novel out of two-hour sessions during the week, and a few extra on the weekends.

It’s hard to keep the narrative flow when the task is cut up in this way. It’s hard to pick up 22 hours later in the middle of a chase scene or an argument or even a flashback. But I prefer doing any one of those to starting a new chapter. If I’m at a chapter break I’ll try to write a few paragraphs to get things going. That way when I sit down at my laptop the next morning, I’ll at least have some sense of where I am.

In the end it all comes together. That’s what the rewrite is all about. I’m able to smooth things out and make everything work, thank God.

My friend likens me to one of those Chinese acrobats that keep the plates spinning. And it’s probably an apt description about all aspects of my life. The trick is to keep them from falling. They’ve gotten close sometimes, but so far I’ve been able to keep them going.

I’m not complaining. Not at all. The job thing is just the reality of being an author that many people don’t talk about, and I probably won’t talk much about again, either. But it was on my mind, because of my happiness for Duane, and yes a tinge of friendly jealousy.

And a hope…that someday, hopefully sooner than later, I’ll be able to do what he did. The day I’ll be able to focus only on my writing. Until then, I’ll chant the author mantra, “I will get there. I will get there. I will get there.”

I will.

I don’t want anyone to fess up their jobs, but how about a count of hands of people who know what I mean…

BONUS: I’m running a sweepstakes on my personal blog for an advance copy of THE DECEIVED. Details here.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone. Be safe out there!

The Gravel Road of Broken Dreams

by J.D. Rhoades

“Down these mean streets a man must go…”

So begins one of the most famous quotes in crime fiction, from Raymond Chandler’s essay, The Simple Art of Murder. For years, though, those mean streets were in a limited number of places, all of them big cities. Phillip Marlowe had L.A. Sam Spade had San Francisco. Mike Hammer (and most everyone else) had New York. Spenser had Boston. For the longest time, it seemed only the metropolis was where the action was, crime-fiction wise, at least on the hardboiled end of the spectrum. You’d think the only big crimes were in big towns.

Those us from outside the sprawl knew differently, of course. It’s not just urbanites who have it brought home to them that “murder is an act of infinite cruelty.” For every mean street, there’s a dozen dirt roads just as mean, if not meaner. Not to mention your mean desert highways, your mean mountain roads, and your mean bayous.

Eventually, crime fiction began to reflect this. James Crumley gave us Milo Milodragovitch and C.W. Sughrue out of Montana. James Lee Burke gave us Dave Robicheaux from New Iberia, Louisiana. Stephen Hunter gave us Bob Lee and Earl Swagger, of Blue Eye, Arkansas, and points west. The list goes on and on: CJ Box, Nevada Barr, Daniel Woodrell, the amazing Lori G. Armstrong….and let’s not forget our own Pari and Toni, who set their books in small towns in the Southwest and Louisiana, respectively, and Louise, who spends a good part of her fictional time in the Arizona desert.

And, while I’m on the subject, just let me say I’ve read a couple of as-yet-unpublished crime novels set in rural areas: Anthony Neil Smith’s YELLOW MEDICINE and Ed Lynskey’s PELHAM FELL HERE. Both of them are flat out fantastic. Dark, gritty,
and as merciless as a farm foreclosure. When they come out, grab ’em.

Obviously, this is a subject near and dear to me, because most of my books are set in rural and small-town North Carolina. That’s what I see, those are the voices I hear, so that’s what I write.

I wonder sometimes, though. While there are a lot of books set outside the major cities, and a few achieve success, the real heavy sellers—your Crais, your Connelly, your Lehane, your Pelecanos—seem to be mostly working within the classic metropolitan locales. Sometimes it seems as if the farther you go out into the country, the harder it gets to hit that big bestseller.

Is it just that there are more readers in big cities and they’re more likely to identify with an urban detective than they are with a small town or rural one? Are editors and reviewers more likely to warm to a gumshoe that works the mean streets they could take a cab to (if they dared) rather than a sleuth with mud on his boots?

City ‘Rati, Country ‘Rati: Where y’all from? And does it affect what you read? And what are your favorite crime novels from off the beaten track?

The Urgency of Shadows

By Ken Bruen

The title of today’s blog is from an email by Louise Ure.

Yes, our very own.

Louise was home in Tucson, on book tour and letting me know how it was going.

Describing being back in Arizona, she mentioned she’d forgotten the urgency of shadows. Apart from it making a hell of a title for a book, it describes her new book, The Fault Tree, too.

Rarely has blindness been better described.

It’s three years since I lived in Tucson, we’d brought my daughter there and she was entranced by the desert and cowboys.

The only cowboy she’d ever known was me, and in Ireland a cowboy is not
am … flattering.

The locals were mesmerized by this tiny wee thing with an Irish accent who had a mouth on her like Bart Simpson. Like me, she loved America and it never ceased to surprise her.

Our very first meal, in a steak house, when they brought the food, we were stunned.

Enough on the plates to feed Galway for a week.

We did our best but there was a mighty pile of food still remaining when we
cried … we’re done.

The waitress, asked if we’d like a doggy bag.

Grace said

“We don’t have our dog with us.”

I explained to Grace that you can bring the food home and she asked

“Why?’

I said you could have it later or even the following day.

Her look was beyond skepticism.

Took her a week to realize that chips were called French Fries.

Mostly, she was taken with the dry heat and not having to wear coats, jackets or search for umbrellas.

Paul Theroux gave what I think is the best advice to writers

“Leave home.”

In every sense of the term.

My previous visit to Arizona had been on tour, and in Scottsdale I finally got to meet Craig Mc Donald. We were staying in a hotel that was closing in two days. When we ordered a beer, we were asked what brand and we rattled off various fine ones only to be told

“You can have Miller or Miller Lite.”

I did a reading at the wondrous Poison Pen and got to have dinner with Patrick Milliken, Dennis McMillan, James Sallis, Craig and Debbie. We didn’t drink Miller.

It was one of those magical evenings where the company is as fine as it could be, the weather was amazing and I thought … all of this bounty because I sat down and wrote.

Craig told me he was planning a book titled Head Games.

If you’d told us then it would be nominated for the Edgar, we’d have drank a crate of Miller.

I have been truly graced with the writers I’ve met and mystery writers are the best of all.

See the sheer volume of care and warmth extended to Patry Francis on January 29th.

As writers, we might work in the shadows but when we come out in the light, watch the glow.

Which brings me to The Legacy

A poem, for Judy, Bill Crider’s wife, the way I see Bill talk not only to her but with her.

Bill’s blog, despite the harsh shadows on their lives, remains upbeat and yes, life-affirming, no matter what comes down the Texas pike.

They are usually on my mind with the urgency of shadows

… leave you

The leavings of

… an inarticulated thanks

Will to you

… the echoes of the lines

As yet unwrit

… term you the keeper of my conciliatory heart

That heart

… as mortgage

Hold.

I heard my daughter say her prayers in Irish last night.

She began, as we do, with Mhuire an Gras (Mary of Grace) and then she prayed for all the ones I’ve asked her to pray for and I’m just about to go answer the phone when I hear her add

“And God, will you let Dad get me a Big Mac today and no doggy bag.”

I’m thinking of three wondrous ladies I have the blessing to know

Susan Smiley

Honora Finkelstein

And Lisa from Delaware

All three have sent me warm and warmest emails just after I’d been castigated on a German mystery site for not responding to fan emails or readers queries.

As Honora expresses it, Hands on a healing heart.

What else do I need to know?

On Elaine Flinn’s blog, I’m laughing out loud at her responses to the comments to her Edgar remarks and she is all I love best in women

Feisty

Funny

And oh so full of true grit.

Louise Ure adds a terrific line, which applies not only to depression but to the insecurity most writers I know undergo

… I have a black belt in self-recrimination.

C.J Carpenter sends me a piece about an English coin I’d given her and mentions St. Jude, Patron of Hopeless cases and I want to phone the priest I know and tell him.

But like the true Irish he is, he’d ask

“Are you saying I need to pray to St. Jude?”

Lou Boxer reminds me of the wondrous question posed by Merton

“What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?’

I’m about to end this entry when Bukowski’s collection, "Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window", catches my eye and I open at random and light on this fitting end line.

… the only thing needed

Is a little more strength

Visions on bad film seldom

… repeat.

Exactly.

Dying to know . . .

by Pari

I’m on an airplane today, winding my way back from Birmingham, Alabama and one of the best little ol’ mystery conventions around: Murder in the Magic City.

Since the day will be filled with plasticine food, overhead announcements and no computer — for me at least — I thought it’d be fun to open up the discussion. Usually, I stimulate the repartee with a strong lead-in, but today, I’m hoping that the two-part query below will really be enough . . .

If you could talk with any mystery writer — alive or dead — and ask a single question, what would it be? (and why?)

Come on . . . don’t be shy. Let’s get a cool conversation going here. I’ll try to check in before I check out of the hotel.

sense of place

by Toni McGee Causey

I always knew we were close when we got to the silos on highway 190. Tall, white, built to house the predominate crop of rice, their domes gleaming in the sun, they were a sign that we were almost to my paternal grandparents’ home. I thought of the silos as the three soldiers, guarding a gateway to a different place in time. We would have been driving west two or so hours by that point to get to Kinder, Louisiana, (pronounced kender) — just northeast of Lake Charles — all the way from Baton Rouge, where my parents had moved so my dad could find a job.

My very first memory–I think I might have been two or three–is of me sitting in the middle of my grandparents’ living room on the hardwood floor in their small house, the attic fan rattling, dragging in muggy air from the hot spring day outside the screen door. Aunts, uncles, cousins were standing, leaning or seated in stiff ladderback chairs around the perimeter of the room. Most of the ladies wore cotten print dresses and flat shoes; the men had on slacks and short sleeve shirts, and cowboy boots, of course. A few of the men had their dress straw hats propped on their knees. My Paw Paw (for that’s the common term there, Maw Maw and Paw Paw) usually had the nicer chair next to the door. It would be years before I would realize that worn, green, stained-armed, sagging seat, broken-back chair wasn’t a throne.

Hazy cigarette smoke swirled above our heads, sucked into the attic fan and the evening light dappled through the open windows (always with screens to keep out the mosquitoes). Something played in the background, a crackly radio sawing out Cajun music, and the quiet room would ebb and flow with stories. Always the stories. Sometimes, the story tellers would be quiet, somber, sometimes picking up to a lively jaunt. Cajuns thrived on the telling, passing along reminiscences, which in turn, passed along heritage. Tales which gained in fame and embelishments with every incarnation. Cajuns loved good practical jokes, crazy lore, and it was more about the event of telling and hearing the story than the facts, anyway. It was, as my friend Kitty says, the ‘supped up version. And sometimes, in the telling, they would switch over to Cajun if they didn’t want the kids to understand, saddened, though, that they knew the kids wouldn’t understand. Most of us grandkids were far flung from our heritage already.

Like my dad, I was born there, in pure Cajun country. Unlike my dad, I would never know the language, not in its full, rich glory, neither French, nor a corruption of it, but an altered language, spoken still in old cafés with threadbare linoleum and formica countertops in small towns, dim and dusty and far from the interstate. My dad spoke only Cajun until he was in the first grade, when the teachers had been instructed to force all of the kids to speak only English, and stabbed a heritage in its soul without a single blade falling.

I remember spending time in Kinder, sometimes a week in the summer, and exploring the creek in the back, watching the crawfish build their mud huts, "fishing" for them with a piece of bacon tied to a string, running barefoot through grass and always getting stickers embedded in my toes, never wanting to put on shoes in spite of that because the loss of the feel of fresh, cool grass between my toes was a greater loss than the annoyance of the stickers. I remember watching the ceiling fans, listening to the rhythm of the attic fan, and always smelling the dark, loamy aroma of coffee brewed so strong, it practically sat up and had a conversation. I remember my Maw Maw hanging the white sheets on the clothesline that was strung from a post near her back door out toward the edge of the lawn near the creek, and the game we’d make of dodging around them, and the sweet, sunny smell we’d breathe in from them at night, as if they’d absorbed our happiness. I remember the spicy food, the rice with every meal, the constant ribbing and teasing and arguing. I remember the nights so quiet, I’d get up and walk around just to make sure I was still alive. I’d sit on the front porch, listening to the crickets and the croaking bullfrogs and the grunts of other animals not far away, sometimes still seeing fireflies dancing in the dark. I remember the biggest treat was hand-cranked ice-cream, which usually signalled our last night there, and I remember the voices in my dreams.

I haven’t kept the accent, though I fall back into it as soon as I’m around my cousins or friends back there. I haven’t kept as many of the customs, though we do have our own version of a fais do do (party) here every year, with everyone knowing what date and time and if they ever cross my threshold, they have a permanent invitation to return for the party. I haven’t kept as many memories as I wish I had, though I can still see my Paw Paw, strong as ever, approaching the porch and taking off his hat before he entered. My dad told me that since I was the oldest granddaughter and we lived with them at the time, my Paw Paw loved to come in from work and chat with me, only I’d cry as soon as he’d approach. It broke his heart, because apparently, I hung the moon, quite a feat for a two-year-old, but I was always an ovearchiever. And then one day, he took off his hat first (a straw cowboy hat), and I laughed and went straight to him. My dad said that he never had a memory of his father without a hat on prior to that, not once. I have no memories of him wearing one.

I’m usually amused by what people think of when they think of Cajuns, or horrified (may Adam Sandler die of a thousand paper cuts from the atrocity that was Water Boy, and no, I’m not even giving it the courtesy of linking to it… in fact, if you substituted any other ethnic background for that main character in that film, there would have a full-on battle cry of discrimination.)

I digress.

Cajuns are not just about the food and the accent, the fais do do, the playing hard. Yes, the food is important, because it was the social gathering. Yes, it’s spicey, and full of flavors, as befitting a people who had to flee a country and hide out in a land and learn to live off it, best they could, and use what they had to hand. No, we won’t eat everything, though many eat a few things I think are weird. Believe me, we’re pretty freaked out over you eating (drinking?) wheat grass and tofu (which I have yet to understand) or go purely vegan.

Cajuns are stuborn, ornery, argumentative, ornery, muleheaded, ornery, determined, bossy, ornery, and in case I didn’t mention it, ornery. They each are one hundred percent certain they are right, except when they’re not, and it’s your fault they weren’t anyway, so what are you arguing about? At the same time, we’ll work hard to go the extra mile, give whatever needs to be given. I grew up with people who thought it was normal to give whatever they could give and not count it as favors which needed to be repaid. It was just a matter of course that if they needed something in return, it would be done. Part of that came from being a people desperate for survival, clinging to their own cultures and traditions, knowing that to survive, they needed each other as well as their neighbors.

When we’d drive back home to Baton Rouge, the time travel reversed itself as fields fanning out to the side of the car gave way to small towns and industries and then the scary red extremely narrow Old Mississippi River bridge and finally into the suburbs of a city. There was a campaign here not so long ago, and the pithy slogan someone came up with to encourage city pride was, "We are B.R." Each time I’d see that slogan, I’d feel a disconnect, and then I realized, one day, that no, I’m not. I live here, and it’s been my home most of my adult life and the few years I spent in Cajun country shouldn’t have had such a profound lasting imprint.

But it did.

My Louisiana is a place of swamps and rivers and lakes and eating crawfish out at the fishing camp and drifting in a bateau with my dad, fishing early in the morning for the big bream. My Louisiana is a place of flavors and seasonings, a place of coffee and heat, of mosquitoes at sunset and screen doors. It’s a place of hard work, intense play and loyalty beyond life. It’s a place of belly laughs and counting on your neighbor.

And I’m glad it’s mine.

I love stories where I not only get to know the people, but the places they live. I especially love it when I get a sense of the person from what they choose to tell about the place they’re from. So if you would, I’d love it if you chose the place that means the most to you, and tell me a little about it — maybe something that only the locals would understand.

p/s…. winner of the challenges contest in a completely random dawing (I asked the waitress to pick a name out of my empty crawfish tray) is Miri… so Miri, email me at toni [dot] causey [at] gmail [dot] com so we can arrange for your gift certificate.

p/s… I’ll be having another contest at the end of Feb, which will include a Shuck Me, Suck Me, Eat Me Raw t-shirt as well as a gift certificate.

M is for Marketing

At least, this week it is…

by Alex

List of marketing tasks (I mean tools. TOOLS):

Author website
Personal blog
Murderati blog
MUSE blog
Storytellers Unplugged blog
MySpace page
FaceBook page
Crimespace page

Book trailer/COS Productions

Dark Scribe column

Bookmarks
Business cards

Personal mailing list
Reader mailing list
Library mailing list
Bookstore mailing list
Invitations to book launch

Bookstore signings/readings
Bookstore panels
Bookstore drop-ins

Posting on websites –
-Backspace
-Shocklines
-HWA
-Romantic Times
-WriterAction

Posting on weblists –
-DorothyL
-Murder Must Advertise
-Sisters in Crime
-MWA Breakout
-EMWA
-Mystery Babes
-4MA

Participation in local chapters of genre associations – each with online lists
-SinCLA
-SoCalMWA
-SFVHWA
-HCRWA

Conventions:
-Genre conventions
-ALA
-PLA
-BEA
-Book festivals
-Art festivals

Teaching workshops
TV/radio interviews

Author blurbs
Collecting reviews

And that’s just off the top of my head – no doubt I’m leaving out several obvious things.

No wonder authors are always tired and frazzled, right? The above is pretty much the list, give or take, that we all juggle all the time IN ADDITION to writing. Things fall off the list, until the moment that we hear another author talking about one of the things on the list, and then we jump back into it.

Or we wake up in the middle of the night as if the smoke alarm has just gone off: “OMG, I’m completely out of bookmarks and Left Coast Crime is NEXT WEEK.”

We’ve been talking on and off over the last few weeks about cutting down on all that and spending most of our time on writing. Excellent. Only when I had one of those reality check talks with my editor this week about whether I should cancel some of my upcoming promotional events for THE PRICE so I could get Book 3 in on time, he said, “No! Do the promotion!”

Well, that’s not too vague.

Still, there must be a better way. There must.

The thing is, it ALL works. It’s almost impossible to say what works the best, because I think that shifts, actually. You can’t predict which is going to be the best conference of the year, and you can’t predict which bookstore you randomly drop into is going to have the handseller of your dreams, and you can’t predict which random blog post is going to get you that coveted gig on Murderati. 😉

But there are some things that you start to suspect are worth moving toward the top of the list.

Of course, that may change from week to week, or it might be an idea you cling to because you can’t possibly do it all.

But this week, the two things that I’ve moved toward the top of the list are the mailing list and the book trailer.

I mentioned Vertical Response last week (I think that was last week.) It’s a direct mail marketing software that’s free to get started on and costs very little to send out a bulk e mail campaign (which they can do for you without your e mail account being shut down for spamming). There are many great things about VR:

– It has all kinds of templates with layouts and easy ways to upload book cover images, even for the technologically challenged.

– It saves all your e mails and lists in one station for easy, permanent access.

– It has features that let you separate your lists into specific segments for specific mailings so that you can customize an announcement and send it out with different information to different segments of your list (like sending out your California signing schedule to all your California readers) – without risking deluging the same people with your announcements.

Now, the thing about a program like this is that there’s a learning curve – you have to figure out how to do it and how to use it and, oh yeah – you have to take the time to build your list to begin with. But after working with it pretty intensively over the last week I can see how this is a really targeted, CHEAP way to reach people who have, after all, actually ASKED you to keep them informed about your books.

So maintaining a detailed mailing list has moved to the top of MY marketing list, and taking an hour to update the list every two weeks or so is one of my belated New Year’s resolutions.

My second big marketing ploy at the moment is the book trailer. We all hear a lot of chatter about these on various lists these days. I decided to do them for the paperback release of THE HARROWING and the hardcover release of THE PRICE mainly because of two people: our own Toni, who talked to me about how excited our mutual publisher got about her excellent trailer (and I thought – That’s reason enough to do it right there), and the wildly successful Christine Feehan, who very kindly spent a long time with me at Heather Graham’s New Orleans conference talking about how doing a book trailer was in her experience the most important marketing tool available to authors. Christine emphasized that the company that does her trailers, Circle of Seven Productions, doesn’t just make the trailer for you, but also distributes it to several dozen websites that feature book trailers. COS has also just made a deal with Barnes and Noble and Powell’s Books to put all their authors’ trailers on those websites, and COS also functions as a PR firm for their authors – they’ve already passed along several great interview opportunities free of charge.

Making a trailer is more of an investment – of either your own time, or money – than other marketing tools, but once you have a trailer there are multitudes of uses for it. You can link to the trailer in your newsletter, embed it on all your websites and blogs, send it to bookstores and libraries where you’re appearing to advertise your appearance… some conferences like Romantic Times charge a relatively low fee to broadcast your trailer during their mass signings (I found myself mesmerized by the trailers at RT).

Plus, trailers are starting to be recognized as an art forum. There’s a category for Best Book Trailer in the new Black Quill awards – and COS just won for their trailer for THE HARROWING.

I can’t say I have any evidence for this yet, but I’m starting to suspect that the additional exposure of a trailer is gold.

And it costs less to make one than the cost of going to a conference, for example. Something to think about.

So that’s my marketing report for the month. As always, would love to hear other authors AND readers thoughts on what works for them.

And anyone who can explain to us all how to do RSS feeds gets a signed hardcover of THE PRICE, hot off the press.

Deep Impact

by J.T. Ellison

Time for a deep, philosophical discussion.

One of the movie channels has been replaying DEEP IMPACT ad nauseam this month. I’ve watched it about six times, picking up in the middle, watching the end, catching the beginning. I like the movie. I like Téa Leoni; she’s one of my favorite actresses. She’s one of those people I can imagine sitting down with and having a glass of wine, and she’s probably got a plethora of dirty jokes, and she’s married to David Duchovny, who’s just shy of brilliant in CALIFORNICATION, and manages to insert the F word with such laissez-faire… okay, so fan girl motivations aside…

I like the movie because I like the choices being made. Would you give up your ticket to life so you could reconcile with someone you love? Would you give up your ticket to life in the hopes of rescuing someone you love? Would you be a hero, or would you be so relieved that you’ve got the ticket to life that you’d cower in the corner and allow the people you know and love die?

I’m not a big End of Days, waiting for the Rapture kind of girl. I’ve always had a rather pragmatic approach to life. There’s one big problem with it. You can’t get out alive. To be honest, when I was young, I had the most morbid fascination — I was absolutely positive that I wasn’t going to make twenty-one. Yes, I am a Billy Joel fan. But in all seriousness, I was living a truncated life, not quite doing all the things I should do, not entirely taking things as seriously as I could have, because it seemed a bit pointless. I wasn’t going to make it to twenty-one, did my GPA really matter? Was a laude going to make a difference? Hardly.

I was rather stupid about the whole "life" thing. I was a complete agnostic, drank much too much, fell in puppy love much too easily, didn’t take things seriously enough. Funny how different we are when we’re in college.

And on my twenty-first birthday, I drove back to school from a weekend at home with my lovely parents, stopping at liquor stores along the way. I had a trunk full of booze and never got carded. Every time a car appeared on the horizon (the road to school was a lovely meander through the Virginia countryside) I expected them to veer off at the last second, causing a head on collision, ending my life. I made it to school unscathed. No pianos dropped on my head when I was entering the dorm. No hostage shootouts ensued. And when I went to bed that night, not at all drunk because I had a final in the morning, I had a strange thought. I’d lived to see twenty-one. Which surely meant I’d either die in my sleep or immediately upon waking in the morning, in some sort of horrific shower incident.

I didn’t, of course. When I hit twenty-two, I was rather astounded. At twenty-three, newly hooked up with this awfully cute guy, in grad school, working at the White House, I begrudgingly admitted that perhaps, just perhaps, I was wrong about dying young.

I’m still pragmatic about death. I’m happy. If I weren’t, I’d probably feel much differently. But as it stands, I love and I am loved. I have great satisfaction and contentment from my career. My philosophy is to live each day to the fullest, tell those around me that I love them, and be thankful for each morning, and for each dusk.

When I watch DEEP IMPACT, I think about what I would do if I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that all life was going to cease, and it was completely out of my control. (I smell a book in there, too.) Would I get on a plane and go to Italy? Would I want to read a book, make love to my husband, be with my family, get drunk? Would I want to try things I’ve never tried before, or be content that I’ve lived my life, and sit back and wait for it to happen? Would I write?

So to that end, without being too morbid, what would you do if you found out that the world was going to end in the next 24 hours?

Wine of the Week:

Two wines today. One a lovely red that surprised me — Sacred Stone – Master’s Red Blend

And because I’m in a celebratory mood, a bit of the bubbly — Zardetto Prosecco

PS – This was another of those bizarrely prescient posts. Click here
for a slideshow that will give you an idea of what it was like here
in middle Tennessee Tuesday night. God bless those who didn’t make it through okay, and those who did.