Author Archives: Murderati

So it’s Sort of Social, Demented and Sad, But Social

Earlier in the week, I was seriously considering committing Facebook suicide. Can you believe that there’s such a morbid term applied to the decision to stop playing for hours on a social networking site?

I don’t know about you, but Facebook was losing it’s charm for me. MySpace never held any charm for me, it was a necessary evil that I sucked up to early on. I always feel vaguely dirty after having a series of communications there. But Facebook, the more "adult" version, is downright silly. It’s fun. Yes, I’ve found some old friends. Yes, I’ve added a 1,000 applications that have absolutely no bearing on my day-to-day work life. Yes, I’ve been guilty of throwing sheep, taking shots, drunk-dialing, and more various and sundry diversions from SuperPoke.

But is it furthering my goals to be the best writer that I can be? Is it helping me get my work done? Is it doing anything for me at all outside of wasting my time, and being able to openly spy on other people wasting their time, in turn wasting even MORE of my time? I’m exhausted even thinking about that, and I’ve only got a fraction of "friends" that some of my other "friends" have. I can’t imagine how they keep up with this social platform and still complete their work.

I read a great article a few weeks back about the Facebook suicide phenomenon. Granted, this woman’s experience is completely opposite of mine. I’ve only have fun on Facebook, and for the most part, on MySpace as well. Yes, I’ve had old beaus contact me. Thankfully, my husband is an exceptionally confident man and when I tell him (and I always tell him) he doesn’t have a freak out. And none of them are proposing that we get back together or asking me to meet them in dark alleyways, it’s all been nice and aboveboard — see you’ve written a book, good for you, I’m married/divorced/partnered now (yes, the last one gave me a moment of pause…Really? I always thought there was something — sorry, I’m getting off track.)

Crimespace I abandoned early on because I could see that it was going
to be a huge time suck — there’s just too much good information there,
but the spam was starting to get to me. Daniel Hatadi does a brilliant job of running that particular show, and I do stop in on
occasion to read what’s happening. I thought for a while there that the
blogs were going to bite the dust and Crimespace’s virtual bar was
going to supersede all of this, but that didn’t shake out the way I
expected — as is wont to happen, a few people were exceptionally strong-voiced and that took the communal joy out of it for me.

I can’t seem to abandon DorothyL; it’s fascination lies in the incessant flame wars that spring up. There’s always one or two people who have opinions about everything under the sun and feel it necessary to share said opinions. After five years there, I recognize the signs early. It’s pretty much guaranteed who is going to jump into a conversation, bite people’s heads off, get sent to review… sometimes it’s just fun to step back and watch the bloodbath. Mostly I learn, and glean, and take away fabulously important information that I use on a daily basis in my writing and my promotion, but sometimes it’s fun to watch the sharks circle the bloody bait. I mean come on already, are prologues so important/not important that it’s worth sacking London over? Apparently so. Jeez, I’m becoming a virtual sadist.

But here’s the point.

Every moment I spend in this online world is a moment that I’m not working on my material. I’m not writing when I’m glancing over friend requests on MySpace to make sure I don’t add some creep. I can’t seem to give up my blogs, but the ones I read religiously have declined in number. I bailed on my online lists months ago — outside of DorothyL, they were becoming much too time-consuming.

It’s all procrastination, really, in the guise of social networking to give it a purpose. We MUST market ourselves, stay on top of the industry, read every ounce of information each and every person has posited about life, liberty, and the pursuit of a 2,000 a day word count. And let’s be honest with ourselves. How many bestselling authors do you see trolling the lists? Not too terribly many. They’re busy writing their incredible books, are WORKING, not playing. They’ve learned the discipline of the Internet, have harnessed the creative juices to the page, rather than finding creative ways to interact or argue with their friends. This is the goal I’m shooting for.

Don’t get me wrong, I do like the communication. I’m starting to understand that I thrive on it. The Internet is our office. Instead of walking down the hall and sticking our head into someone’s cube, we throw sheep. Instead of having lunch or hitting the gym or having a drink after work, we point and click our way into each other’s worlds. It’s no longer a phenomenon, it is our lives. And I’m afraid it’s here to stay.

But I feel that tick, tick, ticking in the back of my head. I’m getting ready to start writing a new book. When I crawl under that rock, I don’t want the lure of outside temptations, the siren call of procrastination, to be there. I want to focus all my time and energy into the new manuscript. The story is a doozy, it’s going to take independent research as well as field research, including an overseas trip. I won’t have time to throw sheep, or watch my hatching egg grow into a kitten (whoever sent me that, it was adorable!), or compare movie tastes or take likeness quizzes, nor will I have time to read the results of everyone else’s activities.

Couple that with the disconcerting new situation that was bound to happen, the ultimate big brother-esque programming that shares buying habits and demographics with our "friends", and it becomes a slippery slope of privacy invasion. Where do we draw the line?

I don’t know why I’m struggling with this question. After writing this, the answer seems blatantly obvious. Yet I continue to ask, should I commit Facebook suicide? Would the "out of sight, out of mind" adage ring true for me? I certainly don’t want to give up my virtual friendships, I value the opportunity to communicate with each and every one of you. But I don’t seem to have the balance that I want. Writing, reading, Murderati, and promotion. Those are my priorities now. The priorities I should have.

Don’t stop poking me just yet. I’ll admit, every time I see those sheep, I laugh. I had a friend in college who used to read us a book, late at night, under the influence of adult beverages, called "Sheep on a Ship." If you can imagine the inserted lisp… Scheeep on a Schiip… "Scheep sail a schip… on a deeeep sea trip…" and the sheep are pirates… Dear God, I’m in tears thinking about it. So the sheep have a place in my heart.

I’m dying to hear your opinions. Is social networking out of control? Do things like Second Life truly have any bearing on our lives as writers? Are we destined to slog online in an online world, or can we go all hippie, throw out the Internet like giving up a television, trade gigabytes and fast-access DSL for Tess of the d’Urbervilles? And don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about the new delivery methods for getting books into the hands of readers, I’m simply wondering about our personal mindset.

Wine of the Week — 2003 Truchard Cabernet Sauvignon A delightful Napa Cab, and no migraine…

P.S. Hubby wants to send me to Facebook rehab, I say, No, No, No!

Not Sweating the Big Stuff

There’s a lot of gloom and doom floating around these days when it comes to the future of the printed word. People are reading less and less. Publishers are consolidating both in numbers and in authors. Technology is changing the way books are made and the way they are read. Everything is going digital. The internet has created a mentality of it has to be free or I’m not paying for it. The rise of YouTube means the world is preoccupied with people’s homemade entertainment. The book is a dinosaur. The future is a meteorite that will make the novelist extinct.

While all this has more than a little merit for it to be worrying, I don’t really care. Now, I’m not being obtuse and breaking out the fiddle while the flames are licking around Rome. No, I don’t really care, because I can’t do a damn thing about it. These things are beyond my control. I can’t halt the march of technology, despite what my pen pal Teddy Kaczynski says. I can dictate how publishers choose to run their businesses as much as I can control the tides—did that once, got my feet wet. I can’t dictate what the public does with its disposable income (but they will when I’ve perfected my mind control antenna, then we’ll see who’s the king of all media). I can kvetch all I want, but it’s not going to change anything, so what’s the point of worrying? All I can do is hope things don’t change so significantly that I find myself marginalized, then abandoned.

If the book (in all its connotations) is to change, then I will change with it. The book is a medium. It’s packaging. Storytelling is what counts. Storytelling can’t change. It’s a constant—like dishonest politicians. It’s always been there and it’s always going to be there. So what if all books go to audio? Who cares if in a hundred years the book is a pill you swallow and as it dissolves into the bloodstream, the story is carried to the brain where it is experienced as a memory? At the end of the day, a storyteller is needed—and that’s where I come in.

And that’s where I take hope. Stories need storytellers. The way stories are told may change but not the need for a story to be told. Movies and television are stories projected on a screen and told with images. Plays are stories acted out by people. These formats arose through technology. The book itself is an advancement of oral traditions. Despite these formats and advances, the story still remains.

It doesn’t matter what happens in the future, but every movie, TV show, video game, magazine, podcast, audio book and cigarette packet warning requires a writer—and that’s where I come in.

Those who need me know where to find me…

Yours for now and forever more,
Simon Wood

The Domain of Mental Disturbance

by Robert Gregory Browne

Rituals have been around for about as
long as man has walked the earth. Every culture, every religion,
every government, every sport, every one us us, have our share of rituals, many of
which are functional and some that, let’s face it, are just plain
silly.

Writers aren’t immune to such things.
Do a quick Google on "writer’s rituals" and you’ll get over
a million and a half hits. In fact, one website I found — an
education site — suggested that teachers should encourage their
students to cultivate productive writing rituals. Which only makes
sense.

They can even save your life.

In Misery (or at least in the movie
version — I confess I haven’t read the book. So sue me.), Stephen
King (or William Goldman, who wrote the screenplay) uses a
ritual in the climax of his story. Early on, the protagonist, writer
Paul Sheldon, celebrates finishing a book with a glass of champagne
and a cigarette that have been carefully laid out for that moment.
Later, Sheldon uses that very same ritual to help him overcome his
captor, the psychopathic Annie Wilkes.

I, naturally, have rituals of my own.
Whenever I sit down to write, I make sure that I have some sort of
white noise going, most often the recorded sounds of Niagara Falls.
I call it my Back to the Womb method of writing and have found that
it’s extremely difficult for me to start without it.

I even keep the audio file on my laptop
so that I can listen to it while I’m on the road.

Once I’m set with the white noise, I
spend ten to fifteen minutes checking mail, reading favorite websites
and blogs, before I finally shut the browser down and get to work.

Work means going back to the beginning
of the chapter I’m on and reading it aloud, making small changes as I
go. Then, hopefully, by the time I’ve reached my stopping point,
I’ve come up with something worthwhile to say.

If I’m stuck, it’s back to the browser
to cruise more websites or to look for the answer to some bit of
research that might help get the brain working.

While the ritual itself remains the
same, I find that the starting time changes, depending on how close I
am to deadline. At the beginning of a book, when I have months of
freedom ahead of me, I usually write whenever the mood strikes me.
Then, as I start feeling just a little crowded, I tend to go to bed
early and wake up about three a.m., when the house is quiet (except
for my waterfall) and there are no distractions.

During crunch time, like now, I find
that I can get more work done if I take a nice long nap around five p.m., get up at about eight, have dinner, then start to work and
keep working into the wee hours. This doesn’t do much for my social
or family life, but fortunately the kids are out of the house now and
I have one of the most understanding wives in the world.

My ritual is pretty tame. I know there
are obsessive-compulsives out there who have some pretty odd rituals
like checking the locks three times before they go to bed, or
smoothing the left corner of the hallway throw rug every time they
pass — and I’m sure that many writers have little quirky things they
feel they have to do before they get started.

As John Schumaker said, "Without cultural sanction, most or all of our religious beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance."

So that’s my question to you today.
What are your writing rituals? The stranger the better.

Don’t be afraid, we won’t laugh. At
least not too much.

Hula Girls

By Louise Ure

It would have been my brother’s 62nd birthday last month, but he didn’t make it that far. Sad to say, he’s been gone longer now than he was here. He died – a virgin – at twenty-nine. And I did everything in my power to change that.

Billy was the eldest of us, a jiggly, awkward child who could set your teeth on edge with his constant spoon-on-salt-shaker tapping and small petulances. A boy with no physical prowess, he became a quiet, shy man with a rich internal life and a love of music.

He was never the leader of a pack, but he had friends. A gang of dreamers whose walk and stories had no swagger to them.

He could play any instrument set before him. Guitar. Piano. Trumpet. Sitar. Flute. Saxophone. And like a dog with keen hearing, he recognized fine sounds long before the rest of us, introducing me to then unheard of Laura Nyro and Willie Nelson. The transcendent Joni Mitchell. A baby-faced Bob Dylan.

His house – one of four adobe bungalows in a creosote-studded patch of desert – was never clean, but always orderly. Dust covered record albums were alphabetized. Shirts were arranged by color and sub-categorized by sleeve length. Mourning doves and cicadas wrote their own desert symphony outside his bedroom window.

The cancer arrived when he was nineteen, a bit of bad news, but not insurmountable. Then a new word was added to our vocabulary: metastasis. A tumor near the spine. Important glands affected. A lung gone. A new addition to his brain. His young body was a sharp-crested map of scars in a terrain that should have been meadows and soft rolling hills.

He said he didn’t want to die in a hospital. We said okay.

My mother did the brunt of the work, tending him during the day, sleeping on a cot at the foot of his bed at night. My sister and I came home from graduate school on the weekends to spell her.

We made up stories to coerce his morphine-addled mind into accepting food. Beef broth was a wizard’s magic elixir. A steamed green bean became a warrior’s sword. We wrapped bean sprouts around grapes and waggled them in front of him. “It’s a hula girl.” He let them dance into his mouth.

Cousin Fred came by late at night with his guitar and played his saddest song, the one about a young bride’s haunted bed.

Don’t go away again, stay by my side
Don’t go away again tonight
This bed is where I’ll be, holding you tight
If you will stay
Tonight

That’s the night Billy told me he didn’t want to die a virgin.

I could understand it. To know that moment of total giving. And total taking. That unsurpassable pas de deux in celebration of life.

I promised him he wouldn’t.

I found a hooker on Congress Street near the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. She had a round face and flat features, but she was soft spoken and seemed kind, willing to accept my money and take on the job. I drove her back to my brother’s house and waited outside in the car.

She could have lied to me but she didn’t. “He couldn’t get it up,” she said, sliding back into the passenger seat twenty minutes later. I paid her anyway.

My friend Gretchen tried the next night with no better luck, although Billy smiled – at peace – when she fitted herself alongside him in the bed, cradling him against her soft, loose breasts.

Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” leaked from the next room.

I would have made love to him myself if I’d thought it would do any good.

He died two days later, my promise to him unfulfilled.

I twisted early Catechism teachings to ease the pain. “If he died a virgin then he was in a state of grace. Just like a child. He’s sure to go to heaven right away.”

I couldn’t admit then how wrong I was. There is no holier state of being than to love and be loved in return.

Later that year, the university created an award in his memory, to be given annually to the student who best exemplifies the traits of “courage and modesty, altruism and honesty: the hallmarks of its namesake.”

He may not have lain in the sun-kissed arms of a Hula Girl, but I think Billy did pretty well in the being-loved-in-return department after all.

L-

Writers & Respect: Where do we stand now? What of our future?

by Pari Noskin Taichert

For the past few weeks, I’ve been watching the WGA strike and thinking about its implications for all writers and other creatives. (Here’s a cool video for fans to take action and here’s even more info.)

More fodder for consideration came in the form of the Devil’s guest blog right here on Murderati last Thursday AND the release of the Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic reader. Newsweek posited that this little machine — and other technologies — will change the face of reading. Among the suppositions is that writing will become public, a community endeavor.

Does that idea send a shudder down your back? It sure makes me pause. Frankly, I don’t think creativity should be democratic. Though screenwriters and playwrights have dealt with massive input in their works for decades, I wince at how this would play out for novelists — especially if the people doing the input had no more vested interest than $9.99.

When the Devil gave his choices on Murderati, the one that was by far the most popular was: #2. Here, writers would earn massive amounts of money but would get no recognition; fame wouldn’t even get close enough to kiss their knickers.

I picked number two. My answer probably came as a surprise to some people who know how much I go out into the world and market my works. I do love the recognition and the ego-boost from fans. I like the give-and-take of personal interaction. From my video on MySpace, you might get the impression that this is what’s most important to me. But it’s not. Though I may wax romantic about my chosen profession, the bottom line IS my bottom line.

I want to make money.

Which brings me to the mish-mosh of all of those influences above — and more. Something’s in the air. Consider the National Endowment for the Arts’ study about the demise of reading, or all the WGA writers’ blogs including this poignant one from tightropegirl, and you’ll get the feeling that there’s a tilt to the world, that there’s a shift among those who write; those who review and buy our works; and those who steal or profit unjustly from our literary efforts.

I wonder . . . Has creative writing ever been accorded much respect? If the answer is "yes," it seems to me, nowadays, it’s afforded even less.

There’s a strange assumption that anyone can do it.

I think, at least in fiction, part of the reason for this shift is that ANYONE can. It used to be that vanity presses just cost too much for the average Joe. Now they don’t. There are also scads of e-publishers and small houses that will publish anything.

I’m not arguing good or bad, pro or con. I’m just saying that this has devalued people’s perception of the craft.

In addition to this change, publishing houses themselves are throwing more and more books into the market. You’d think this would be a good thing. I don’t. I think more and more books are left flailing because of the lack of attention. Consumers are too overwhelmed.

When I watched Jeff Bezos from Amazon on Charlie Rose last week, I felt a nagging discomfort.

In a few years, or a decade, how will writers be paid? If books all become $9.99, what’s the formula for reimbursement?

We’ve seen how the major studios are dealing with screenwriters. They don’t want to relinquish even pennies on the dollar. Can we expect that publishers will be more generous in the coming years? Even with the decrease in production costs, will they pass those savings onto consumers while upping the pay to the people who generate their products — the writers?

All of this makes me uneasy. On the one hand, technology will help one of my children, the one with the visual impairment. Increased font size for any book will be a glorious boon. I also like the electronic revolution for its environmental benefits — less felled trees equal more oxygen; that’s a good equation.

On the other hand, I can see a day when the creative act of writing and the execution and polishing of true craft, will be treated as if they’re popcorn — plentiful and pure fluff — with no value at all.

That’s a bleak thought.

What say you?

making it work

How do you make it work?

Think of Project Runway — the TV reality show where designers are given a challenge for each show, an ungodly short deadline, a very tight budget (usually), competitive working conditions, an experienced adviser (Tim Gunn, who intones ‘make it work’ several times each show), and the ultimate opportunity to be completely humiliated in front of prestigious judges and a national audience.

It’s the writing world in microcosm.

When you’re under deadline, you don’t always have the luxury of having the time to set the manuscript down for a while (a week, a month, etc.) and then come back to it fresh, able to re-read and make sure that you’ve nailed down the vision you had for the story. It’s a simple truth–good writing is often in the polishing, the editing, the rewriting. There is a scary balance to maintain: trying to improve with each book and yet, get the next book out on a schedule that’s probably a lot tighter than what you had for the first book, when you were writing in the hope of selling. To make matters more difficult, each book is different, (well, it should be), so the lessons learned on the first book aren’t necessarily going to completely cover everything you need to know for the second and so on.

All of the little decisions add up to the final result, and some of the wrong turns can be corrected with experience or objectivity.

A friend of mine (a very talented writer in her own right) wrote to me recently after I’d finished the second book and asked me if there was a point when it felt easier than "gee, there’s this whole alphabet thing, and it makes letters and wow, words." Does experience solve everything?

Unfortunately, no. I think I learned more on the second book than on the previous one and probably half of the other things I wrote, all put together. I have so much more to learn. But there are a few things I try to do when completing a project to double-check the work and make sure it’s as polished as I can make it, in spite of the pressure. So when the stress is high, when there are expectations (both self-imposed and inherent in the publishing process), what do you do to double-check your efforts, to try to turn in the best project possible? What are some of your tricks or tips?

Here are some (very) random items on my checklist:

One of the last things I’ll do with a manuscript, when I have the time, is work backward; this helps me cull extra verbiage, and makes sure that I’m not "reading into" the sentences more than what’s there because I’m reading out-of-order. (This is difficult to do, I’ll admit, but extremely effective when I force myself.) I’ll also break the manuscript down by acts, once it’s done, and check the turning points to see if the pacing works. Another thing I’ll check on is to make sure that every secondary character had a reason to be in the story: did they affect the outcome? did they matter? If not, they don’t need to be in there.

What’s on your checklist? How do you "make it work?" (I’d love to see anything you do project-wise, and if you’re not a writer, how you help mitigate the stress of deadlines in your own line of work.)

The Kindle (part one of two million)

By Alex

It probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to post a blog on something I have so little experience with. I guess in this particular case, as a new author, I’m desperate for other people’s thoughts and experience.

I’ve always steered away from e books and have never even tried an e book reader. For a touch-based person the very idea is anathema. But my objections crumble in the face of a delivery system like this:

There’s a very wide-ranging Newsweek article on the Kindle “> here.

View the Kindle promotional video here.

Yes, I’m Drunk, but Damn, You’re Ugly

by J.T. Ellison

Everyone stuffed and complacent today? Good. Let’s have some fun.

I. LOVE. TITLES.

There, I’ve said it. The confession everyone has been waiting with bated breath to hear.

I love looking past the words, wondering what people were thinking when they chose their title. I’ll admit a good title can entice me to buy a book, just as a bad title can influence me NOT to buy, read, or otherwise be predisposed to enjoy what’s within the covers. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, right?

That’s all well and good, but I do judge a book by its title. Someone, somewhere thought
this was the best possible title for this particular book, and I am fascinated by that decision. There are some titles that I look at and know immediately that the book is not for me. Some draw me in, make me wonder. Some have absolutely nothing to do with the book itself. Some are picked directly from a line in the novel. Some are in your face obvious, and others so delicate and subtle that I gasp in appreciation.

And I love coming up with titles. I can’t for the life of me write anything if it doesn’t have a title first.

In college I used to pick out quotations to open my papers, and I guess that’s led into this need for a fitting masthead. I’m a big fan of brainstorming, have lists of titles that I keep hidden a file that are probably terrible. I haven’t looked at them lately, because I’ve been (so far) fairly inspired in developing my work’s sobriquets.

Books and short story titles are two different beasts to me. Books have to have something weighty. What usually happens is I have a bolt of lightening, it catches my attention, and I write it down. I stare at it long and hard, trying to decide just how it will work. Does it mean what I want it to mean? How will it look on the page? How easy or difficult is it to understand at first glance? Is it literal or metaphorical? Does it trip off the tongue, or trip me up when I say it aloud? And, most importantly, has anyone else thought of it first? If I’m clear on all those points, I type it into Word and look at it in a ton of different fonts. If it still works for me, I allow myself to acknowledge that I have a story brewing that it will fit.

The first book’s title, ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, was one of those lightning bolts. Both literal and metaphorical, based in part on fairy tales and nursery rhymes, when I first came up with it, it gave me chills. Then came the frantic search through the Internet to see what other books held the title. When I saw that none did, and James Patterson hadn’t already snagged it for his Alex Cross series, I jumped. THIS was my title. I couldn’t bear to think of anything else. And luckily, my wonderful agent and editor agreed. Phew.

The second title, 14, is very literal. The third, JUDAS KISS, is purely metaphorical. Again, both accepted without a problem.

But short story and blog entries are where I have some fun. See the title of this blog post. That’s a line from a James McMurtry song. I find that I am incredibly inspired by the titles and lyrics of other artists, and commonly borrow their ideas for blog titles and short story titles. I have a lot of fun with the freedom this blog gives me, because I have to churn out a new title every week. And shorts are a great place to let my freak flag fly.

It happens all the time, too. I find myself driving along, listening to whatever I’m groovin’ on that day, and titles fairly leap out of the speakers and dance around my head. The title appears and the meat follows, and there I am, driving along… I know I’m supposed to keep a tape recorder or a pad of paper in the car to jot down these thoughts so I don’t lose them. What I do instead is call home and leave myself a message on the answering machine. Which makes for all kinds of fun if hubby gets home first.

I love that my fellow Murderati and crime fiction bloggers across the world spend time and effort to come up with catchy titles each and every day. I admit, I’m drawn to people’s topics based on the title of the piece. Look at Sarah Weinman — every Sunday she has a great new headline twist for her roundups. Declan Burke is a good at this too. Cornelia Read, The Lipstick Chroniclers, and Tasha Alexander are always good for a tempting title. To be honest, most of the crime fiction blogs do have exciting, relevant and catchy titles. I’m a sucker for them all.

Here’s a few of my obvious and not so obvious inspirations.

Blogs:

To Live and Die in Nashville (influence — Wang Chung — To Live and Die in L.A.)

Let’s Do It Like They Do On The Discovery Channel (influence — Bloodhound Gang song)

Money for Nothing and Your Books for Free (influence — Dire Straits song — and isn’t that the best band name ever?)

Changes in Latitude (influence — Jimmy Buffett)

Shorts:

Jacked-Up Charlie (Flashing in the Gutters — influence — an acquaintance with a coke problem)

Prodigal Me (Killer Year Anthology — influence — my thesaurus ; ))

If The Devil is Six (unpublished — influence — The Pixies)

Drive It Like It’s Stolen (Flashing in the Gutters — influence — Sterling Marlin, NASCAR)

Killing Carol Ann (Spinetingler — influence — Richard Stooksbury song)

Where’d You Get That Red Dress (Flashing in the Gutters — influence — James McMurtry song)

This chilly Black Friday, I give thanks for all the great titlists out there.

I’d love it if y’all chimed in with yours. What are your favorite titles, of yours or someone else’s?

Wine of the Week: 2006 Domaine Dupeuble Pere et Fils Beaujolais

We forsook the usual Beaujolais Nouveau in favor of this "remarkable" Beaujolais. Wonderfully paired with turkey this year, and it almost lived up to the praise from my wine store.

A Year to be Thankful

If you’re reading this, why aren’t you eating? It is Thanksgiving after all. Oh, you have one of those families. I see. Well, you’re welcome to hang out here.

As I said in last year’s message, it’s apt that they have an English guy doing the Thanksgiving message as Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday that I grew up with, and therefore don’t have any great connection to. I feel like a guy at a bra wearer’s appreciation society dinner. I know what a bra is and I’m happy to celebrate them, but the benefits of wearing one don’t do a whole lot for me.

That said, I have a lot to be thankful for this year. 2007 has been an incredible year. I saw the publication of two novels. I wrote three books and signed four book contracts. This enabled me to go full time as a writer, allowing me to live the dream. I launched my horror pen name with the sale of The Scrubs. I received another honorable mention in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, my third in four years. And the year was topped when I won my first major award by winning the Anthony for best short story. I’m used to being the bridesmaid when it comes to winning things, so winning the Anthony will remain one of the best, embarrassing and humbling moments of my life. All in all, it’s been a year of ricochets as one good event has spurred another. 2008 promises to be an even better year. I’m not sure I deserve it, but I’ll take it.

On the home front, Julie and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. It seems like we’ve been together much longer—and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Life’s been a rollercoaster. A lot has happened over the years. Even when we’re standing still, we seem to be moving. I’m glad to have Julie around. This year has been a tough one which has kept me confined to a room for most of the year, so I’m thankful she stuck around.

So that’s about it for this Thanksgiving. I hope you’re spending the day with people you want to be with. If not, check the bathroom, they might have a window to escape through.

I’m off to a friend’s now. They’d better have pie.

Yours ever thankful,
Simon Wood
PS: Just because it’s Thanksgiving, it doesn’t mean I’m not working. I’ll be signing at Pleasant Hill B&N on Saturday and San Francisco Mystery Bookstore on Sunday. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll drop by.
PPS: A reader pointed me in the direction of a nice review Paying the Piper picked up, so I thought I’d share.

Credited on Clapham North

By Ken Bruen

The very first short story I had published was about a young man returning to his home town for the funeral of his father

Cheerful eh?

And as you no doubt have realized, I’ve come a long way since

In the joy stakes

It’s a very Irish story — funeral, hypocrisy, priests and loss

How far I’ve traveled from such preoccupations

The narrator’s sister is one of the main loves of his life

Tess, she’s called

And he is convinced she loves Club Milk

A chocolate bar, popular back then

Now we have HERSHEY’S … as we have

Gap

Mc Donald’s

Starbucks

Etc

The story was based on my own childhood, titled

Releasing The Jackdaw

The father is a tyrant, for example, a framed Home Sweet Home is cracked from his fist

Not exactly your Waltons

There is of course the wake and the neighbors gathered around the bed, leaking homilies

Rosary beads are wrapped round the corpse like celestial cuffs

All speak highly of him, no disrespect for the dead and all that good horseshite. You want to be praised in Ireland?

It’s real simple

Die

Ireland back then was shite poor, you had no choice, you emigrated, that was it, and if you were lucky, you got to America

The Promised Land

If you were bad fooked and truly skint, you got the cattle boat to the UK

Jesus, did they love us

Right?

The Bed and Breakfast kips had the sign

No colored

No dogs

And

No Irish

Gary Phillips never tires of me recounting that story, especially when we were in London honoring Richard Widmark and trying to re-write Mannix!

He’ll kill me for saying, but when they finally wheeled Mr. Widmark out

Gary whispered to me

“When they gonna plug the dude in?”

But all in the past

We can travel to the UK now without suspicion … almost

I did one of those charity gigs recently, they asked a whole bunch of people and were delighted to get me, as I don’t ask a fee and to be honest, I was number fifteen on their wish list

I know, the lady calling told me … twice

She knows I have a sense of humor and by fook, times like that, I need it

So I did the spiel and for some odd reason, probably Halloween in the air and poison in the water … yeah … still, though they re-assure us that half the city is safe!

Which half?

I spoke about my time living in the UK

Some of the best writers I know live in the UK

Zoe Sharp

Margaret Murphy

Cathi Unsworth

Nick Stone

Martyn Waites

Bill James

Ray Banks

Charlie Williams

I’m afraid to mention Al, Tony Black, or Donna, as the Scots they have that Celtic take on stuff, like meself

And I regard them as close and cherished friends

So after me rap, a woman comes up and goes

“Why are you so angry?”

Am …

As opening lines go, I like it, say

"I only spoke about what it was like to be an Irish teacher, teaching English in London.”

She’s seriously angry now, says

“But you made sarcastic remarks about Hampstead.”

Jesus

I had made one brief reference to Kingsley Amis’s wife, Elizabeth Jane Howard, entering the fray/fracas about Martin Amis’s comments on Islam, so asked her

“Have you read any of the above three?”

Suspecting a trap, she said

“I read Irish writers … but I haven’t read you, they say you’re very dark.”

I said

“No dogs or … ”

She was about to go when I said

“I wrote a poem about the UK, won me a hundred pounds back in the 80’s, when that was serious money”

She was openly antagonistic now, asked

“Title?”

Yeah, exactly in that tone

I said

“Credited on Clapham North.”

She was delighted, finally, victory!

and times such, I wonder why the fook I bother,

I’d given way too much time to this crap already but as my dear Dad used to say, in for a penny, and she pounced as I knew she would, asked in a voice, laced with vitriol, I’ve always wanted to use that … vitriol … makes you sound learned with a trace of decency and proves how shallow words really are, she went

“And what would you know about Clapham?”

I finally got the chance to smile, not something my ex-wife says I did much of … so I grab the opportunity, said, sans-vitriol

“About as much as you do about Hampstead.”

She took one last fling, tried

“You’re not even a poet.”

Gee, that really hurt

Like the time in boarding school when the superior told me I wasn’t being considered as one of the candidates to be a priest

God, the trauma

Sometimes, you just gotta … Get fookin over it

I did

I said to her

“Thank you for sharing.”

See, manners never let you down

She didn’t give me her phone number

Which brings me back to the beginning, that poem I wrote, when I won the hundred quid,

I sent the money to my Dad and he wrote back, asking

“When are you going to get a real job?”

And in the that first published story, the father does one really nice thing, almost noble

And the question I wanted to ask was … does one decent gesture wipe out the all the other acts of senseless cruelty?

Go figure

The end of the story, the narrator, his heart shrived (and I’ve learnt the true meaning of that word from Rabbi David Wolpe, Rabbi of the synagogue in Beverley Hills, my dad would say, "at least that man has a decent job!")

He is getting on the train, back to the UK, and no, not to Hampstead, he gives Tess what he thinks she most loves, he gives her a Club Milk and she goes

“I always hated them.”

L’chaim