Bouchercon rocks

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I’m home from Bouchercon and as always, not very happy about it, the being home part. I haven’t been able to settle down all week. Pages are being written, newsletters are being sent, my taxes got done, even – but I am not entirely back, in my own mind.

And today is my Bouchercon blog. Where to begin?

Living in California for so long, especially my years in NoCal, I’ve heard a lot of Neal Cassady stories over the years from people who actually knew him. (Cassady was Jack Keroauc’s friend who served as the model for Kerouac’s legendary character Dean Moriarty.) And one thing I’ve heard from all kinds of sources that seems true rather than legend is that the man had an uncanny ability to pick a conversation up exactly where it had left off, even if years had passed since he and the person he was talking to had seen each other.

That’s to me what Bouchercon is like. There are a LOT of people in this community who feel like my best friends in the world, the people who know me best (and me AT my best) – who I only see once or twice a year. But the connection is deeper than most of what you get in the real world, because first – as writers, we KNOW each other. We know exactly what all the rest of us do just about every second of every day, we know how we feel about it, we know what makes a good day and what makes a bad day, we know each other’s exact fears and our exhilarations – we all have the same operating system, basically. So when we see each other there are no preliminaries necessary; we pick up the conversation where we left off, and take it deeper and further than it can go with someone who is not of the same world. Not only that, but the layers and puns and references and jokes are so much more interesting than ordinary conversation; writers are hilariously funny people and we love wordplay; it’s like fencing (or dancing!) with someone of equal skill.

We work so hard all the time, and this is our chance to play.

Of course there have been a lot of BCon wrap-ups on various blogs and lists this week, and I was kind of surprised to find that not everyone is a fan of this conference – it’s my hands-down favorite, the most fun, the most inspiring. Now, I totally get that it can be intimidating – lots of people, easy to get lost or bowled over by the sheer star power walking around those halls. But even if no one ever talked to me I could still never miss it because of all I learn. I don’t understand the people who complain that the star authors get all the attention, that it’s hard to get a panel, that midlist authors get lost. Well, of course the star authors do get a LOT of the attention. I’ve always figured that when I’VE written – oh, twenty-five beloved books – I might get that kind of attention, too. But let’s get a grip! While I’m working on those books I can go to panels where I can hear people who HAVE written dozens of beloved books talk about their process, their passion, their own inspiration, and I can get better. Maybe even get worthy.

At the San Francisco Bouchercon, in the very same day, I saw Val McDermid interviewing Denise Mina, and then Robert Crais interviewing Lee Child. Excuse me? Those two hours ALONE are worth the whole price of admission. And as I sat through those two hours, a bunch of ideas I’ve had for a long time suddenly coalesced into the storyline for Huntress Moon.

If I had been totally anonymous for that whole conference, if I hadn’t sold one book, it wouldn’t have mattered in the slightest. I got not just one book, but a whole SERIES out of that one afternoon.

And I don’t think it was any accident that this year I was put on a panel with, yes, Val McDermid – AND Elizabeth George – two authors I admire so much I was actually afraid I wouldn’t be able to speak, but there I was, able to thank them publicly and professionally for how they’ve inspired me.

I think attitude might have a little to do with what you get out of the experience. I noticed, for example, that our own lovely Sarah Wesson had no problem joining conversations with any number of star authors, and people were delighted to have her. Yes, she’s a librarian and probably knows that all authors worship at librarians’ collective feet, so maybe that’s not a good example – but actually I think it is. Sarah has paid her dues, is paying her dues. That is, I think, the actual price of admission. We have to do the work before we get to play.

Speaking of playing – the theme of this conference was Cleveland Rocks, and it really did. It’s one of the most exhilarating things to me about this community that so many authors are musical (and total hams). Did you know Lee Child plays guitar, bass AND sax? That many talents in one package – I mean, person – is almost too much to take. Did you know that Joe Finder was a Whiffenpoof (the legendary Yale a cappella men’s group)? Classic Bouchercon moment: Paul Wilson and I were standing at the bar at the Hard Rock party talking about performing “The Lime in the Coconut” together (well, and just that, there – I am in a universe in which F. Paul Wilson can randomly turn to me and say, “We should do ‘The Lime in the Coconut’…) and Joe suddenly starts singing it beside us in this gorgeous second tenor voice – and I never, ever knew that about him. It’s just magical.

My friend and idol Heather Graham has roped a whole lot of us into – I mean generously provided an outlet for us to exercise those talents with each other on a regular basis. This year, she hostessed a party at the House of Blues where her Slushpile band, which this time meant Heather, Paul Wilson, Dave Simms, Matthew Dow Smith, Greg Varricchio, Shane Pozzessore, and I – were able to perform with really anyone who felt like coming up with us: Daniel Palmer, who did a smoking harmonica solo to finish up his original “Bouchercon Blues”, Don Bruns doing his best Jimmy Buffet impersonation, Joelle Charbonneau, equally lovely at torch and opera.

I can see this party, and the band, growing into a regular fixture at BCon as it is at Romantic Times and Heather’s fabulous Writers for New Orleans conference (in December this year, and everyone should come!) and it’s one of the best rewards I can imagine for keeping my nose to the grindstone for most of the rest of the year.

Bouchercon is also a place for me to get a feel for what’s really going on in our business. This year, of course, the tension between indie publishing and traditional publishing was an undercurrent, in conversations with agents, publishers, and on panels as well.

Case in point, the “Heroes and Villains” panel, featuring Murderati’s own Martyn Waites and Alafair Burke, Mark Billingham, Karin Slaughter and John Connolly.

Fantastic panel, roll-on-the-floor funny, I always love this particular combination of authors. But I do have to address John Connolly’s interesting rant at the end of it – I guess loosely filed under the idea of “villains”.

I’m a huge, I’d even say rabid, fan of Connolly’s and I understand that there was a specific subtext to all of this – but I can only deal with what was said aloud and what I and the rest of the room heard.

He was basically accusing people who have been successful in e book sales as wanting to “destroy the printed word.” I don’t know who HE might know who actually feels this way but I certainly don’t know anyone who wants that. Certainly not Joe Konrath, the obvious person Connolly was talking about.

I used to teach in the L.A. juvenile court system, teenagers, almost all gang kids, and there was a very sweet kid who took it on himself to look after me in the lockup camps, and the one time I ever saw him get truly angry was the time he pulled me out from a fight between two guys that I was trying to break up and he yelled at me – “You don’t NEVER get in the middle between Crips and Bloods.” So maybe I should just stay out of this now.

But by couching it in general terms the way he did, Connolly was grouping me into this “hatred of the printed word” category, too.

I spent some time at Bouchercon talking with other authors and being very specific about the kinds of sales I’m making with e books because I want other authors to know that there is this alternative to traditional publishing, that it is doable, that it is a whole lot easier and more logical than some people say, and that it is a much more viable living than I and a lot of my midlist – I should say “formerly midlist” – friends were making with traditional publishing.

As a screenwriter and a former Board of Directors member of the Writers Guild (including organizing for the writers’ strike) I’ve seen every kind of way a writer can be exploited. And we are. We are easy targets because the people who cut the checks know oh so very well that we will write NO MATTER WHAT. We will strive to do our best work NO MATTER WHAT. Insult us, demean us, cheat us, fire us, underpay us, don’t pay us at all – we will still write.

So when Joe talks about his sales numbers I see it as a political act, and I am grateful. Traditionally published authors have often been circumspect about how much our advances are and how much we’re making a year because it was appallingly low. Pointing out HOW low, compared to what e publishing can net a talented author who is willing to do the work, is breaking a long, long taboo that did not serve us.

I’m sure that Connolly wasn’t trying to say that authors who think about and talk about what we’re paid for e books are crass or base or somehow not real artists, but – perhaps because he wasn’t being specific about what he really WAS saying – that’s how it ended up sounding. And to say that any of us are “out to destroy the printed word” is just specious. I happen to read almost exclusively on my Kindle now because it’s so much more comfortable to hold and move around with for the five or six hour stretches I often read. But the books I read are the SAME BOOKS – no matter what the delivery system. The fact that authors get more money for those same books because of the delivery system is a good thing, if you ask me.

I could go on and on – obviously, I kind of have – but THIS is what Bouchercon does for me. It puts me in touch with myself, my friends, my colleagues, my idols, and my business.

I don’t know… sounds like a winner to me.

Thank you, Marjorie Mogg and all the fantastic volunteers who make it happen, every magical year.

– Alex

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Okay, it’s October, the busiest month of the year for me, because

1. It’s Halloween, and I write spooky, and

2. It’s the month before NaNoWriMo, and by now I feel almost a sacred duty to prep people for it instead of letting them just launch into the month on November 1 with no clue what they’re going to be writing.

So I’m doing a NaNo prep series on my blog that you can join in on here: http://screenwritingtricks.com

But also this week, I’ve made the first Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbook FREE on Kindle, so if you haven’t grabbed a copy by now, here’s your chance.

AND – for Halloween, I’m giving away 31 signed hardcovers of either The Unseen or Book of Shadows, your choice (and yes, if you win and you’d rather have an e book of something else, that’s totally fine, just say so.

Happy Halloween!

Boroondara Literary Awards

by PD Martin

In my last blog I mentioned the complete chaos in my house at the moment. But I didn’t mention I had another factor compounding the chaos of a new toddler in the house…a big freelance job!

Back in February I was asked to judge the Short Story Competition of the Boroondara Literary Awards. I knew that in September I’d get a delivery of about 300 stories (1500-3000 words long) and that I’d have a month to read them and pick the winners. No problem. I estimated it would be about 40 hours work over four weeks. Piece of cake.

Then the exciting and unexpected call came…we could organise flights and pick up MinSeok (now Liam MinSeok).

For the first week of my four-week judging allocation, we were in Korea. Then in the second week I was reading during his naps and at night, but didn’t seem like I was getting very far. That’s when I found out that this year the competition had a staggering 611 entries. Ahhh!

But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the experience of reading and judging these short stories. What makes a short story good? What separates the winners from those who don’t place?

My first pass of the 611 stories gave me a shortlist of 82 stories. Even this initial shortlist was hard to come up with, because there were many powerful stories that demonstrated the entrants’ strong grasp of the writing craft. In fact, I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but I was surprised at the quality. From there, I got it down to 36, then 26 and finally I was down to my top 12 stories, from which I chose the winners. Funnily enough, I actually culled the winning story at one point (yes, the one that got first prize), but then brought it back in because I kept thinking about it. You know those kind of stories? It stayed with me.

So, what does make a short story good? It’s difficult to describe the magic formula that makes a short story sing; however for me there are some essential elements. For a start, an opening sentence, paragraph and first page that grabs me. A short story doesn’t have much set-up time and a good short story, like any novel, will constantly drive the reader forward and take you on a journey. Sometimes the driving force is the plot. Sometimes it’s the characters. And sometimes it’s the pure beauty of the written word, the author’s grasp of the writing craft. Of course, ideally these three things come together on the page — a strong plot, intriguing characters and beautiful writing.

There’s still more to a short story than that…there’s the ending. Whether it’s resolution or a shocking twist, the story must feel complete. It was actually the endings of the stories that helped me narrow down the 611 entries to my first shortlist of 82. I found many stories started strong and kept me reading, only to disappoint me in those last few sentences.

One of the difficulties in judging a competition like this is that you’re not always comparing apples with apples. How do you compare a story that’s funny, to a story that’s tragic? Or a story that’s more literary and atmospheric to a murder mystery?

At first, I also found myself drawn to the more shocking, tragic and dramatic stories and I realised that while these stories did pack a punch, I shouldn’t automatically elevate them because they addressed horrific subject matter. These stories were often difficult to read because of their emotionally charged content, namely child abuse, domestic violence, rape and child abduction. In the end, I was mindful of giving these stories equal weighting with the other entries — not elevating them, but not dismissing them either.

Finally, to narrow down my final 12, I gave each story marks out of ten for:

Artistry
Voice and characterisation
Narrative structure
Show don’t tell
Impact

It ended up being a tight race. Unfortunately I can’t talk about the winners yet, because the official announcement isn’t until next month. But I will mention them in November.

In the meantime, questions for the Murderati gang. What makes a short story sing for you? Do you think you’d also initially feel drawn to the more tragic and perhaps impactful stories if you were the judge (or have been in the past)?

THE UNDECIDED WRITER’S SAMPLER

by Gar Anthony Haywood

The family and I just moved into a new home, and because of that, I’m sure I have the sympathy of anyone who’s ever had to place all their earthly possessions in 487 cardboard boxes and then try to make sense of them in a new location. My life is a living hell of U-Haul boxes right now, so the time to do a real, honest-to-goodness Murderati post just isn’t there.

However…

I would like to take this opportunity to seek your opinion on something. The following are excerpts from several works-in-progress that I may or may not feel inspired someday to complete. I won’t tell you much about them — I’d rather leave you guessing as to what these planned books will eventually be about, if in fact I ever get around to re-visiting them.

I think they all have promise, but only one or two deserve the time and attention it would take to round them out into full manuscripts.

Give them a read and let me know what you think.

EXCERPT ONE:

Fourteen years after he was sent to Corcoran State Prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Woodman Graham came home to discover that the only thing he’d left behind that time hadn’t changed forever were his clothes. Every stitch he owned was still there in his closet, either hanging enshrouded in dry cleaning bags or folded up neatly in moving boxes: shirts, slacks, underwear—even his three pair of shoes.

Of course, nothing but the shoes fit him right anymore. The last time they’d put him on a scale at Corcoran, Woodman had weighed a meager 207 pounds, more than twenty pounds lighter than he’d been going in, so the old shirts hung on him now like bed sheets with buttons and the pants slid off his waist to his hips, leaving the cuffs to drag aimlessly around his feet on the floor. Woodman didn’t care. Aside from his late mother’s house in Inglewood, and the few pieces of furniture his ex-wife Fiona had seen fit to abandon there before departing, the clothes were all he had, so he resigned himself to wearing them until a few months of eating real food for the first time in over a decade could render his 6′-3″ frame formidable again.

For his first few weeks of freedom, his older sister Patrice, who’d packed the clothes and taken care of the house in his absence, was a fixture at his door, as committed to keeping him alive and well as it was possible for anyone not bound by the Hippocratic oath to be. The big woman’s constant delivery of food and solace were an intrusion upon his depression Woodman found mildly annoying, but he knew better than to ask her to desist. No one had fought harder for his release from prison than Patrice, nor taken the injustice of his incarceration more personally. She was entitled to dote upon him, and he was obligated to tolerate the attention. He knew she would tire of encouraging him soon enough, in any case; all he had to do was wait her out.

Before his arrest, Woodman had been a musician. A jazz pianist and sessions player who made a comfortable living backing others in the recording studios of Hollywood. He modeled himself after Bill Evans and was often compared to Bud Powell, and he always had work. But life behind bars, and the ever-increasing prospect of dying behind them, had eventually stripped him of his need to play, and it had been over six years now since his hands had last touched a piano, despite the fact his old upright was still in the house. Either to be generous, or to save herself the bother of moving it, Fiona had left the instrument in its customary place in the living room, where it sat all day and night, beckoning to him. It may as well have been an old couch; all Woodman could do now was sit on the bench before it, arms down at his sides, afraid to so much as raise the lid away from its ivory keys.

He didn’t know if he could make music—of any kind—ever again.

EXCERPT TWO:

Journal Entry – Friday, April 4

She doesn’t know how beautiful she is. Somehow, they never do.

They look in the mirror and see only the negative. The gathering lines in the corner of an eye, the soft folds of fat ringing the waist above the hips. The nose that isn’t quite, the lips that don’t measure up, breasts too big or too small or too much the victim of time.

I don’t see any of that.

I have a gift. The capacity to find the one physical attribute every woman possesses which can make the heart race or the breath catch in one’s throat. Hair like woven silk, a mouth that pleads to be kissed, a throat as smooth and elegant as a swan’s. The magic is always there. Always. It doesn’t matter that the rest of her is ordinary. Her special beauty shines like a beacon for me, and alas, all too often, for me alone.

Some people would say I’m cursed.

But if it is a curse, it is only because my eagerness to appreciate that which would otherwise go unnoticed is so often misconstrued. It is not an illness or a disease, nor the symptoms of an untreated psychosis, as some so-called medical experts have suggested. It is merely an added level of perception I share with very few. I am stronger for it, not weaker, and had C only understood this, she would be alive today. Fearing nothing, needing nothing.

The new one will be different.

She is smarter than C. More self-assured. Like C, she will probably reject me at first, unsure of what to do with someone who could love her so unconditionally. But then she will do what C ultimately could not, allow me to prove that my devotion masks no sinister intent, and she will open her heart to me. Gladly, willingly. She will learn to love me as I love her, and I will at last have found a partner worthy of all the goodness I have to offer.

She must.

Darkness, after all, is her only alternative.

EXCERPT THREE:

The woman formerly known as “the Queen” was driving out to the clinic for her seventh chemo treatment in eight weeks when she decided to go to Los Angeles instead. From downtown Scottsdale, it was only a difference of about four hundred miles.

Exactly sixty-one days earlier, Margaret Dodd’s oncologist Henry Chow had calmly informed her that she had developed something called an “infiltrating ductal carcinoma,” which turned out to be nothing more than just long-winded doctor-speak for the Big C. The next thing Margaret knew, Chow was cutting a tumor out of her left breast the size of a dwarf’s fist, then following that up with a warning that the worst was most likely to come. If surgery had been the end of it, she might not have found this trip to Los Angeles necessary, but surgery was just the beginning of the treatment plan Chow had in mind for her. Weeks of chemo and radiation therapy were next.

She was only fifty-two years old, shit! Naturally, she was terrified, but it wasn’t death that scared her the most. It was the flight from death that really spooked her, this convoluted game of chicken the doctors encouraged you to play with whatever disease was chasing you down without ever offering you anything in the way of a guarantee. Maybe fighting would work and maybe it wouldn’t—who could say? Just swallow the poison pill and hope for the best, or pray for a miracle if you were so inclined.

Margaret had seen firsthand what could happen when the tease of remission refused to take root. She had lost her father and her sister Daphne in just that way. Between all the chemo and the radiation, they’d died a thousand deaths instead of just the one that eventually took them. Quality of life went all to hell. Food, sex, love—nothing gave them pleasure anymore. Hairless and withered, her father and sister had lived their last days in equally depressing hospital rooms, each nearly lacking the strength to breathe, let alone hold a loved one’s hand tight enough to signal a final good-bye.

Margaret wasn’t going out that way.

For all of Chow’s assurances that her particular type of cancer was beatable, she could see this thing ending only one way, with an IV needle stuck in a withered arm she’d never have the power to move again, and six sessions of chemo into her post-operative treatment plan, this vision of her passing had finally driven her over the edge. Yes, she was afraid, but she was also pissed, angry enough to chew nails and spit them out as bullets, and the combination of rage and terror she’d been fighting to quash over the last few weeks had become a beast she could no longer contain.

Weary of the vicious circle of lethargy and depression the chemo and her meds had her running in like a hamster on an exercise wheel, thoughts of her old California stomping grounds, and the plethora of scumbags she had come to know there, had been running roughshod through Margaret’s mind. She wasn’t big on retrospection but hell if the prospect of death didn’t move a person to dwell on her every little fuck up and regret. Like most people in her former profession, when she had retired five years ago, she’d done so with the sharp bones of a few demoralizing defeats sticking in her craw, and on those rare occasions she gave them any thought, the bitter aftertaste they left behind was still there. She lost little sleep over such things because they were immutable, moments in time she could neither revisit nor undo, but they irked her all the same.

Now she had an excuse to entertain the wild idea of doing something about them. She had cancer, and a better than average chance of dying sooner rather than later, and suddenly she couldn’t see where she’d have a damn thing to lose by spending the next few days of her life—maybe even the last few—trying to settle some old scores. She was, after all, utterly alone in the world. She had no husband or steady boyfriend to speak of and Early, her only child, lived seven hundred miles away in San Francisco. If she got herself accidently killed on purpose before her cancer could do the job for her, who would be around to care? And what in the way of a future truly worth living would she be giving up? Twenty or so more years of golf and volunteer work at St. Michael’s?

No. Margaret Dodd wasn’t built for a life in the slow lane and she sure as hell wasn’t built for dying in it. A big, glorious, blood-red finish—that was what she’d always wanted when she’d been on the job, and that was what she wanted now. That, and the satisfaction of blowing up some deserving asswipe from out of her past in the bargain. God knew there were plenty to choose from.

I CAN’T FORGET THIS BOOK

by Gar Anthony Haywood

I’ve written more than once about the great fear I have of being forgotten, of all my work fading from the reading public’s consciousness like a half-remembered dream the moment I take my last breath. Or maybe even sooner, while I’m still around to suffer the indignity.

I have this fear because I’ve seen it happen to others; talented writers who wrote great books but, for one reason or another, missed out on the fame and fortune they deserved. Their names were known to readers for a while and then, suddenly, they weren’t. One day, these people just vanished from what I often refer to as “the conversation” and were never heard from again.

This is what happened to a damn fine crime writer named Terri White, and hell if I can understand it.

One of the greatest compliments a book reviewer ever paid to something I’d written was calling it “the best Elmore Leonard rip-off since Elmore Leonard.” Publisher’s Weekly was referring to my 2003 standalone MAN EATER, but the reviewer could have easily said the same thing fifteen years earlier about White’s terrific crime novel, FAULT LINES (Mysterious Press, 1988). I have yet to come across another book that nails the quirky, deceptively scary flavor of a Dutch Leonard novel quite so flawlessly.

True to the often-imitated but rarely duplicated Leonard formula, White populated FAULT LINES with a cast of off-beat, complex characters and then spun a tale in which their separate misadventures would ultimately collide.

Bryan Murphy is an ex-New York City cop who, forced into early retirement by a near-fatal heart attack, now makes his home in Los Angeles, where’s he’s bored to tears. So bored that he strikes up an uneasy friendship with an ex-con named Tray Detaglio, who’s only recently gotten out of the joint. Detaglio’s trying to find his ex-girlfriend Kathryn Daily, a cold-hearted hustler and pole dancer who claimed to be pregnant with his child when he last heard from her, but his clumsy attempts to track her down only land him in jail. When Murphy bails him out, being the only person Detaglio could think of to call for help, the two strike a deal: Murphy will look for Kathryn if Detaglio will take over some home repair work Murphy’s weak heart prevents him from tackling himself.

Meanwhile, Kathryn—having aborted Detaglio’s child years ago—is shacking up elsewhere in L.A. with two more ex-cons, former cellmates Dwight St. John and Chris Moore. Psychotic career criminals who make Detaglio look like an altar boy, Dwight and Chris seem resigned to pulling one stupid, meaningless liquor store robbery after another, until Kathryn offers them a chance at something much better: the Big, once-in-a-lifetime heist they’ve always dreamed of pulling. One of Kathryn’s many ex-boyfriends, post-Tray Detaglio, was mobbed-up drug dealer Michael Stanzione, and before she left him, she learned all there was to know about where Stanzione likes to keep a cool half-million in his palatial Beverly Hills mansion. . .

Get it? It’s a terrific set-up, and White works it all to perfection. Tight plotting, solid dialogue—it’s all here. But Kathryn—hot, sexy and oh, so wicked—is the poisoned straw that stirs this drink. Bedding and playing all three men at once—Dwight, Chris and Tray—as if they were suckers in a shell game, she leads the reader on a hardcore thrill ride reminiscent of. . .

Well, yeah: a great Elmore Leonard novel.

By now, writers “doing” Dutch Leonard are a dime a dozen; you can find Leonard knock-offs wherever books are sold. But great ones? Those are still a rare commodity, which is why FAULT LINES to this day continues to occupy a spot in my top ten of best crime novels ever read. The book should have made its author famous. It’s that unforgettable.

Or at least, it has been for me.

The Right To Offend

by Tania Carver

I’m writing this just before leaving for Bouchercon in Cleveland. If all has gone to plan this should be going live while I’m somewhere over the Atlantic. Unless something horrible has happened I should have had four days catching up with friends in the States, promoting the new Tania novels, appearing on a panel entitled Heroes and Villains alongside John Connolly, Mark Billingham, Alafair Burke and Karin Slaughter, attending the signing as one of the contributors in Books To Die For (that David should have talked about last Wednesday) on Friday, carousing and generally enjoying myself. Hopefully I won’t have made an idiot of myself and come away with my reputation if not enhanced then at least not permanently damaged. At least that’s the plan I’ve got now.

I say all this because I was going to write about what I intend(ed) to talk about on my panel. Heroes and Villains (they’re all named after songs since Cleveland is the home of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame) is about just that. Everyone picks a hero and a villain and we talk about them. Interesting, maybe controversial, hopefully funny. Apologies if you’re reading this and you attended the panel and it all went according to plan and I was all three of those things because I’m going to talk about my subject again.

Or at least half of it. The villainous part. For the panel, I’ve chosen censors and censorship. I did this deliberately because this week (or last week, if you prefer) is Banned Books Week in the States. As you probably know, it’s the annual celebration of the freedom to read. This freedom is not automatically accepted, it’s not a given. It’s something that has had to be strived for and worked for. It’s hard-won and should be celebrated. According to the American Library Association there were 326 challenges to books reported to the Office Of Intellectual Freedom in 2011 and plenty that have gone unreported. These came from schools, bookstores and libraries.

For the record, here are the top ten most challenged books from 2011 and the reasons people claimed to find them offensive.

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle  Reasons: offensive language; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

2. The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins Reasons: anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence

4. My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

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

6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Reasons: nudity; offensive language; religious viewpoint

7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley Reasons: insensitivity; nudity; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit

8. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones Reasons: nudity; offensive language; sexually explicit

9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar Reasons: drugs; offensive language; sexually explicit

10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee Reasons: offensive language; racism

If this list doesn’t make you angry then I don’t know what will. I mean, THE HUNGER GAMES ‘occult and satanic’? Only if you’re a moron. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and BRAVE NEW WORLD offensive? In 2011? Seriously, some people shouldn’t be given the vote.

Looking at this list, two complaints seem to pop up more than any other. Sexually explicit and religious viewpoint. I’m not a betting man, but I’d put money on those two things being linked. The religious right has traditionally had a knee jerk reaction against people enjoying themselves and it seems to be continuing that fine tradition. They’re always the first to complain about any perceived erosion of their freedom but equally the first to curtail anyone else’s idea of it if it differs to theirs. Now when I say ‘religious right’ I’m not specifically talking about Christians, although I’m sure they make up a large part of this. I’m talking about any religion that uses its beliefs as tools for repression and censorship both against its members and those outside of its beliefs. Muslims, Scientologists (if they can be dignified by being described as a religion), Jews, Hindus, whatever. None of them have any business telling the rest of us what to think, wear, listen to, watch and certainly not what to read.

It’s only a small step from book-banning to book burning. And it’s not just something that happened in old newsreel footage from Nazi Germany. Twenty years ago in Britain Muslims publically burned copies of Salman Rushdie’s THE SATANIC VERSES. He received a death threat from the Ayatollah Khomenei and spent years in hiding. More recently, morons from the Bible Belt in the US publically burned copies of the Harry Potter novels because they said it turned children to Satan. These people are staggering in their casual monstrosity.

Because that’s what it is. Monstrous behaviour. They find these books offensive. Well we’re equal, because most decent people would find their behaviour offensive. And so what? We all have the right to offend. We all have the right to be offended. That seems to have been forgotten by some people.

If they want to think that for themselves then fine. Let them. But keep away from the rest of us. We’re literate, we’re open-minded. We’re intelligent and can make our own minds up. Because that’s another thing. These terrible books listed above not only shock and offend, but they could expand someone’s mind. Give a reader a different viewpoint. Let them ask questions, reach a different conclusion. They’re challenged because they act against rigid, dogmatic systems of control. Yes, even GOSSIP GIRL.

We should always be vigilant, we should always fight against censorship whenever it raises its head. Otherwise we let them win. So how do we do it? Well, obviously getting angry helps but make sure it generates more light than heat. I think the best way to beat them is to keep reading. Go to the library. Borrow. Go to the bookstores, to Amazon. Whenever, wherever. Read what you like. Enjoy it. Celebrate that fact. And the book burners and the censors? Laugh at them. Pity them. Be offended by them. Offend them, even. But don’t give in to them.

‘The important task of literature is to free man not censor him’. Anais Nin said that. She was a great writer who wrote about sex. I’m sure she’s on the list somewhere.

And for that reason alone we should read her.

EMPTY GLOVES

by Stephen Jay Schwartz

“It’s smokey, I think.”

“To me, it’s a burnt, sweet smell,” I say.

“It’s amazing how strong it is,” he says. Tyson runs his hand through his hair and I know he’s imagining the sweet, burnt smell coming off on his fingers.

Fingers.

We saw a bowl of them at the Coroner’s Office. Blackened, dehydrated. Jose, the Forensic Identification Specialist, had been working the fingers every hour of the past few days. They’d come off a man who’d been found locked inside a cargo container. No one knew who he was, and it was Jose’s job to rehydrate the man’s fingertips and “rebuild” the prints. He had managed to remove a thin, rubber-like layer of skin from one of the man’s thumbs, creating what looked like one of those fake magician thumbs used for special card tricks. Except this one wasn’t a fake. He stuck his own thumb into the “thumb-sleeve” and demonstrated how he was able to make a print.

I looked at Tyson for a reaction, but Tyson played it cool.

I’d been in this room before. It was a few years ago, when I was writing BOULEVARD, my first novel. I had managed to get an interview with the Chief Coroner Investigator and he gave me a tour of the L.A. Coroner’s Office as research for the book. Although I’d already written my coroner scenes, I knew I hadn’t done the boots-on-the-ground research required to get it right.

What I learned on that first tour was that seeing dead bodies wasn’t what I thought it would be. I figured I’d watch an autopsy, vomit, then pass out. What I discovered, and I’ve written it this way in the novel, is that there was no place in my brain to process the things I saw before me. Each image, each body on the table, each open cavity, seemed to carve a new place in my brain to store the information it contained.

And the bodies, they weren’t people. They were empty gloves, left behind when the soul slips them off.

That first visit had a profound effect on me and when I returned home I rewrote my coroner scenes top-to-bottom. Now the scenes were real, and they reflected the truth of what I saw.

That was a few years ago. My memory, being what it is (random electrical charges passed from one synapse to the next in a slowly eroding brain), I’ve lost many of the details of that day. I’ve been wanting to go back, if only to recapture the sense of awe and humility and mortality I felt. The fact is, I’ve been needing to go back for quite some time.

I’ve known Tyson Cornell since he reviewed Boulevard for Publishers Weekly’s Galley Talk. He was the author event coordinator for L.A.’s Book Soup, where he’d worked for something like fourteen years. After Vroman’s purchased Book Soup, Tyson lost his job then reinvented himself as the top independent author promoter in Los Angeles. His company, Rare Bird Lit, handles the L.A. press tours for authors like James Ellroy, Chuck Palahniuk and scores of others. If you want to see an impressive client list, check out his website. He also opened a publishing division, Rare Bird Books, with the imprints Barnacle Books and Vireo Books.

Tyson is always game for new experiences. When I decided to get an armband tattoo commemorating my publishing deal with Tor-Forge, Tyson said he wanted in. We got tattoos together. It was my first tattoo and Tyson’s twentieth. Tyson likes to accumulate experiences. Anything new and different excites him. Kim Dower, my publicist for Boulevard and Beat, once told me that she had to leave a meeting with Tyson to get a pre-scheduled pedicure. Tyson joined her, because he’d never seen anyone get a pedicure before. It was an experience he needed to have.

One day I was invited to attend a lavish party and fundraiser in Malibu for Writers in Treatment, an organization dedicated to helping writers afford treatment for their addictions. My invite was sponsored by an organization called The Center for Healthy Sex. I could bring a guest, so I invited Tyson.

We sat at a table that had little place-settings with our names on them, and under our names was written the title, The Center for Healthy Sex. Everyone assumed we represented the organization. We didn’t say anything to dispel the myth. At one point Tyson started talking about his new tattoo, getting everyone interested in checking it out. He opened his shirt and revealed the words tattooed across half his chest: “SEX IS NOT THE ANSWER, IT’S THE QUESTION. YES IS THE ANSWER.”

A famous quote from Bob Crane, apparently, and Tyson had to have it inked across his chest. I’m not sure how well we represented The Center for Healthy Sex that night. Then again, it might have been exactly the kind of message they wanted to convey.

When I started talking about a return trip to the Coroner’s Office, Tyson’s ears pricked-up. He asked if he could tag along. I couldn’t think of a better co-conspirator for the job.

The Chief Coroner Investigator was again very gracious with his time. He gave us a comprehensive, two-hour tour of the facility, explaining every facet of what the Coroner’s Office does and how it benefits the community. The Department of the Coroner is responsible for the investigation and determination of the cause and manner of all sudden, violent, or unusual deaths in the county of Los Angeles. It is also responsible for determining the identity of all bodies under its care.

The facility has changed a bit since my first visit. It is undergoing a major renovation to improve and update the offices, labs and autopsy rooms. As we walked through the halls we saw holes in the ceiling where tiles had been removed, revealing the skeletal joists and silvery ducts above. Walls and ceilings were encased in opaque plastic, not unlike the plastic used to wrap the hundreds of bodies we saw in the morgue’s brand new Crypt.

When I took my first tour, the Crypt, or Cooler, was about half the size of your average Starbucks and filled top-to-bottom with bodies wrapped in white plastic sheets. The new Crypt is the size of a warehouse and, if you replaced the human bodies with wooden crates it would remind you of the scene at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie. It’s kept at a chilly 35 degrees Fahrenheit; much cooler than the previous Crypt, which rarely dipped below 50.

I’m quite aware that my description of this experience sounds a little procedural. My intention in writing this post was to re-examine my feelings about viewing dead bodies. The reason I took the tour was to push myself to face the thing we all fear, the thing that drives me to ponder everything I’ve ever pondered. I wanted to poke the part of me that might have fallen asleep.

The profound effect I experienced after my first tour eludes me. Maybe I’m still in shock – my tour was just this morning, after all. Perhaps, as my twelve-year old son tells me, the images of death are waiting to populate my dreams tonight. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case; I’ve been known to experience post traumatic stress days or weeks after witnessing a tragic event.

And the things I saw today were definitely gruesome, conjuring images of films like Re-Animator, Alien and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I saw numerous autopsies being performed, saw bodies open and upended, with empty cranial cavities and chunks of skull on the side. I saw a woman’s body unrolled all about her, a medical examiner’s arms set deep inside her small frame, while two masked and gowned homicide detectives took notes beside them. I saw a man baked from fire, the flesh on his arms colored red and yellow like the fire itself, skin rippling off bone, fingers missing but for the burnt nubs of the middle knuckles that remained. I saw victims of car accidents, suicides, homicides.

I saw one tiny drop of what the over two hundred employees of the Los Angeles Department of Coroner see every day of the year except one – Christmas. The only day they have off.

And maybe that’s why I didn’t vomit and faint. I was aware that these people came to this place all the time, that this was their job. Three hundred bodies in the Coroner’s Office every day. This death was their life. The least I could do was take a sympathetic, if objective, look at the world through their eyes.

After the tour, Tyson and I went to a cafe to share our experiences. We were all-too aware of the smell that permeated our clothes, hair, and skin. A smell set so deep that nothing could displace it.

“You still smell it?” I asked him on the phone at the end of the day.

“Yeah, it’s heavy. I had to change my shirt.”

“I keep thinking everyone is looking at me,” I said. “Wondering what it is about me they want to avoid.”

When I go home I kiss my wife and she takes a step back, her eyes open wide.

“Straight to the shower,” she says, then points at the spot on the floor where I am expected to drop my clothes. She tells me to gather some quarters for the laundry I’ll be doing tonight.

In the shower, I use a half-bottle of shampoo and a full bar of soap.

Clean, now, and to the rest of the world I seem fine.

But still, I smell it. It’s not on me, it’s in me. Maybe tonight, in my dreams, I’ll see the things I wouldn’t face with my open eyes today.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…

Never leave home without …

Zoë Sharp

Travelling these days is not a simple business. Airline regulations and heightened security have made sure of that. Ever-restricted luggage allowances have compounded things. Gone are the days when I could travel with my Swiss Army knife and a full bottle of water. But there are still things—beyond the obvious like passport and credit cards—I never leave home without.

The first of these is eyedrops. Something about air conditioning on planes and in hotels makes my eyes resemble a pair of fried tomatoes. As a teetotaller, looking like I’ve had a very heavy night on the beer is not the best thing for me, so I always travel with a (tiny, of course) bottle of Visine.

A square scarf. Not what you might immediately think of, but it has so many uses. Not only does it keep my neck warm when the plane ventilation system seems uncannily accurate at squirting icy air down the back of it, but it’s also useful for keeping the sun off slightly scorched shoulders, and would even double as a sling. Should that occasion ever arise, I realise things will have already gone Horribly Wrong. But you have to bear it in mind.

A rubber doorstop. I know, you were expecting me to say lip gloss and moisturiser, but you should know me better by now. Some hotels have locks on the doors that are disengaged by a housekeeping master key, without an independent bolt arrangement as well. Not that I’m casting aspersions on any housekeeping personnel, of course, but on anyone with nefarious intent who happens to get their sticky mitts on that master key. A doorstop, kicked firmly under your side of the door will keep just about anyone out unless they’re prepared to make a hell of a lot of noise in the process.

A flashlight. I used to carry one of those little Maglites, but since I swapped to a new smartphone, one of the features is a three-brightness flashlight app. I’ve been in hotels where the power’s gone out, and also in a ladies’ restroom when some joker thought it would be fun to turn off the lights on the way out, despite knowing there was somebody else inside. I stayed in a hotel on the outskirts of Tokyo where there was a flashlight clipped to the wall in case of earthquake.

An empty metal water bottle. Again, this sounds like a weird one, but since they stopped you being able to carry a bottle of water through airport security—and also since people keep telling me that plastic water bottles are really not good for you—I’ve carried an empty container when I travel. Get through security and fill it from a water fountain and you’re done. It also clips to a belt or slides into a bag and I know it’s not going to leak.

Breath mints. Travelling seems to do something to your mouth, and talking a lot does a whole lot more. As conventions are all about travelling and talking while standing close to people, I usually take a pack of Extra Strong mints with me. Just sayin’…

And the final item—the key on the chain? Well I’m not going to tell you what that’s for, on the grounds that I may incriminate myself!

So, ‘Rati, what do you never leave home without?

As I write this I’m in Cleveland Ohio for the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, and I have all of these items with me, as you can see. The only one not pictured is the flashlight app, because that smartphone also means I don’t need to carry a pocket camera. (Don’t you just love technology?) If you’re attending Bouchercon, please come and say “Hi!”

This week’s Word of the Week is a total blank, so help me out here, would you? What’s your favourite word of the moment?

And the Nominee Is: Books to Die For

By David Corbett

Due to numerous ungodly demands, I’m unable to do justice to a new post this week, but in celebration of the award nominations — including the Edgar and the Agatha to date — being extended to Books to Die For, the compendium edited by John Connelly and Declan Burke, I thought I’d offer it again. For those of you who haven’t yet picked up this book, it really is an indispensable guide to crime fiction by the women and men who love it so much they write it.

Last year, John Connolly asked if I wanted to take part in an anthology he and Declan Burke were planning, with the invaluable aid of Assistant Editor (and esteemed Answer Girl) Ellen Clair Lamb.

The premise: Ask some of the best crime writers in the world today what book within the genre—whether a classic, a modern masterpiece, an overlooked gem, or a long-forgotten pulp—most influenced them, inspired them, or otherwise led them to want to shove a copy into the hands of every unsuspecting reader they came across.

Compensation: A pittance, or a bottle of whiskey—Midleton Very Rare Blended Irish Whiskey, to be exact.

Guess what my answer was—both as to whether I wished to join the scrum and what form of compensation I preferred.

Turns out, I was in excellent company.

The result: Books to Die For, a compendium (love that word) of almost 120 pieces from writers around the world that hit bookstores in the U.S. yesterday. (It came out in the U.K. last month.)

It’s truly a must-read for the crime aficionado on your Christmas list—or, as John and Dec put it perfectly in a word of appreciation sent out to the contributors:

Quite frankly, we don’t think there has ever been a line-up quite so starry in any previously published anthology, and the quality of the contributions was exceptionally high. In the end, the book functions not only as a reading guide, but as an overview of the genre.

That’s an understatement. Treated to my own copy, I’ve been reading the entries and marveling at the books chosen, the insights and historical perspective provided (the books are arranged chronologically), as well as the personal statements of awe and fascination and devotion—even envy.

To give you some idea of who some of the contributors are, just check out this list of those attending the promotional event at Bouchercon (Friday afternoon at 4:00 in Grand Ballroom A of the Cleveland Marriott Renaissance):

Linwood Barclay, Mark Billingham, Cara Black, Lee Child, Reed Farrel Coleman, Max Allan Collins, Michael Connelly, Thomas H. Cook, Deborah Crombie, Joseph Finder, Meg Gardiner, Alison Gaylin, Charlaine Harris, Erin Hart, Peter James, Laurie R. King, Michael Koryta, Bill Loehfelm, Val McDermid, John McFetridge, Stuart Neville, Sara Paretsky, Michael Robotham, S.J. Rozan, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Kelli Stanley, Martyn Waites, and F. Paul Wilson.

And that list neglects Elmore Leonard and Joseph Wambaugh and Marcia Muller and Rita Mae Brown and George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane and Karin Slaughter and Laura Lippman and Jeffery Deaver and Bill Pronzini and Tana French and Louise Penny and Ian Rankin and Jo Nesbo and Megan Abbott and Sara Gran and John Harvey and Ken Bruen and Minette Walters and Kathy Reichs and Scott Phillips and Joe Lansdale and Chuck Hogan and Lisa Lutz and Patricia Cornwell and Eddie Muller and Meg Gardiner and Adrian McKinty and Margaret Maron and James Sallis and …

For a complete list of contributors and the books they chose, as well as Bonus Materials from some of us who had other books we wanted to champion but space would not permit—the book already clocks in at an impressive 730 pages—check out the Books2Die4 website.

Some of the entries are gems of critical appreciation. Some read like fan letters. Every single one I’ve read so far has taught me something I didn’t know.

Karin Slaughter selected Metta Fuller Victor’s The Dead Letter and makes an airtight case that the overlooked Victor—a woman writing voluminously in the mid-to-late nineteenth century—was far more influential to the subsequent development of the genre than Edgar Allan Poe:

Victor’s novels were not driven to immediate climax, but filled with reversals, twists, and misdirections that both prolonged the denouement and arguably made the climax that much more rewarding. Victor didn’t just set out the facts of the crime: she explored social mores, distinguishing between the upper and middle classes with a subtle reference to clothing or manner. She described atmosphere and scenery in careful detail, giving her stories an air of grounded reality. The characters in Victor’s books were not cynical about crime. They felt loss and tragedy to their very core. For these reasons and more, it seems that the Victor formula, not Poe’s, is the convention to which modern crime fiction more closely hews.

Megan Abbott makes a similar argument for Dorothy B. Hughes’s In A Lonely Place—“the most influential novel you’ve never read”—a serial killer tale from the murderer’s point of view that preceded Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me by five years.

Hughes hoists her killer on the autopsy table, still breathing, and shows us everything he doesn’t want to see about himself: the twin arteries of masculine neurosis and sexual panic that drive his crimes. It turns out that Hughes is up to much more than telling a killer’s tale. Through her dissection, In A Lonely Place says more about gender trouble and sexual paranoia in post-World War II America than perhaps any other American novel.

Two of my favorite entries were written by my fellow Murderateros Martyn Waites and Gar Anthony Haywood.

Martyn selected Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, a book he routinely recommended to the inmates he tutored at one of Her Majesty’s prisons. It’s the first Socrates Fortlow novel from Walter Mosley, a series often overshadowed by the Easy Rawlins monolith. When my late wife read this book, she forced it on me with the same enthusiasm Martyn does, saying, “This isn’t like a crime novel. It’s like a myth.” Here’s how Martyn puts it:

It’s no accident that this lead character has been given the name of Socrates, the father of Western philosophy. Written in the aftermath of the L.A. riots and the Rodney King beating, this hulking ex-con becomes a contemporary inquisitor, asking difficult moral questions of a society that has retained a dogmatic grip on the letter of the law but has lost purchase of its fair and compassionate spirit.

Gar selected Richard Price’s Clockers, a book I often go back and re-read. Gar’s entry brings in his father, and I always enjoy reading Gar discuss his dad. It turns out that Gar lent his father a number of top-tier crime novels, but only one “blew him completely away.”

“This guy’s the real deal,” he told me when I asked him what he thought. And coming from my father—a man of few words if ever there was one—this was high praise, indeed…. Reading it from a writer’s perspective, you’re immediately struck by the vast array of skills Price has on display: plotting that moves at optimum speed, characters that live and breathe, dialogue devoid of a single false note. And this last is no exaggeration: every word of every line Price’s people speak in Clockers rings true. Every one.

My own pick was James Crumley’s The Wrong Case, and it pairs with Dennis Lehane’s appreciation of The Last Good Kiss. Of Crumley’s ability to make even the absurd seem not just believable but necessary, I wrote:

He set a tone that kept you off-balance, a tone that blended a kind of sly irony with heartsick desperation, an understanding that the battle for the good is fought by ingeniously flawed men doing the ridiculous in the service of some angry, inscrutable truth.

The anthology is full of gems, each only a few pages long, so it’s easy to wrap one up in a brief sitting and move on to the next, or wait to savor it later.

Speaking of savoring it later: I haven’t tried the whiskey yet, saving it for some special occasion over the holidays. But it’s from County Cork, where William Augustus Corbett and his bride, Katie, spent their lives before sailing to America in 1882. That alone bears promise.

So, Murderateros: If asked to name just one book in the genre that had an overwhelming impact on you, which one would you choose—more importantly, why? (Feel free to add your remarks to those of others on the book’s website.)

Final Note: John will be touring to promote the book, and a select group of booksellers will have copies signed by various contributors. For where to find John or one of those copies, go here.

* * * * *

Jukebox Hero of the Week: In one of my very first author appearances (with Laurie King and Michael Connelly), I was asked a question similar to the one asked of me by John and Dec for Books to Die For. But I didn’t name a book or a writer. I admitted that I was probably far more influenced by this man than anyone I’d ever read, specifically this song:

The Confidence Trick

By Tania Carver

was talking to a writer friend recently, a famous, bestselling writer friend, and the question of confidence came up. ‘I love it when a reader tells me how much they’ve enjoyed my book,’ my friend said, ‘because until I hear that I think they’re all rubbish.’

I know I shouldn’t have been surprised at this but I was. It reminded me of another conversation I’d had with a writer friend – again famous and bestselling – who said after handing their new book in, ‘This is the one. This is the one where I’m going to be found out.’ It wasn’t. The book was another bestseller.

I don’t know why I was surprised by what they said, really. Because I don’t think it matters what level you’re operating at, sales-wise, as a writer, you’re always prey to the same doubts and fears. Last week was the publication of J K Rowling’s first novel since her Harry Potter series. Some of you may be aware of this, it didn’t happen without notice. I would say its had mixed reviews but I don’t think that’s the right word. Polarised would be a more accurate one. Some people loved it, some hated it. The ones who hated it did so mainly because Rowling had written the novel she wanted to write and not the one they had expected her to. Fair enough. There was a fantastically angry review by Jan Moir in the Daily Mail – which I’m not going to link to as I don’t believe in giving that rag any more publicity – which slated the novel as a socialist tract and left wing propaganda. Considering the Daily Mail is the British newspaper to have supported Hitler and old habits die hard, I would think Rowling would be massively pleased by that. I would be. Some reviews on Amazon complained because characters, just like people in real life, swore.

But other more fair and balanced reviews appeared in other papers. By and large, her book would be judged a success. Despite all the numpties and their negative reviews, others were more positive and sales were, of course, huge. Well done her.

We were talking about Rowling the other night at home. We’ve been doing that quite a lot recently since she now has the same publisher as the Tania books (In fact the release date for Choked was moved so as not to coincide with hers). Linda is firmly of the opinion that she doesn’t know why Rowling has bothered. ‘If I’d been that successful and made that much money,’ she said, ‘why would I want to open myself up to that kind of scrutiny? Why would I put my head above the parapet just to have people take a pot shot at me?’ She’s got a good point. But my response was, ‘What else is she going to do? She’s a writer. Why write and not be published?’ Both valid viewpoints but over the last few days I’ve been thinking more about what Linda said. And this reminded me of the two conversations at the start of this piece.

The three of us were all together recently, talking about the same thing. Confidence in our work. I confessed that I was still waiting for the tap on the shoulder and someone to say, ‘Come on son, you’ve had your fun. But now it’s time to let the real writers in. There’s the door.’ My friends said they felt exactly the same. One of my friends even admitted that they thought they had a double whose place they had taken and who should have been getting all the acclaim. And yet, we still keep doing it.

It’s hard enough to write in the first place. To put your work out there, fearing – and often expecting – the worst, work that you could well have spent at least a year of your life working on, work that’s become precious to you. To let it go and have people hurl whatever they want at it. I’m always amazed when I get a good review. Or rather relieved. I always think about what my friend said earlier: They haven’t found me out yet. Phew. I’ve dodged a bullet this time. But next time . . .

I know, when you examine it, it’s a stupid way to think, behave and conduct a career. But I honestly believe that writers have to do it. You’re driven to write. Compelled to do it. And when you have written you want to be read. You need to be read. Because without a reader a book is just a lump of paper. So you have to do it. And to tell you the truth, if I know any writers who think differently to what I’ve outlined above I doubt I would want to read their books. Feeling that your work is terrible is, I think, a necessary part of the process. It’s what drives you on, keeps you going. Makes you strive to improve, to stretch yourself. To go deeper into that character, further with that situation, make that dialogue better, that description more succinct. You have to. And that’s why I think J K Rowling is no different, despite the slight disparity in earnings with the rest of us. She’s a writer with a writer’s heart and a writer’s drive. And a writer’s willingness to put her work out there and be judged by it when she doesn’t need to. And I love her for that.

So how do we keep the balance? Well, there’s something I always tell creative writing students. It refers to an old interview with Martin Amis when his (some would say last good) novel The Information was about to be published. The book concerns two writers, one who is successful, one who isn’t. The interviewer asked which one he was. ‘Both,’ he said. ‘Usually at the same time.’ When I read that I thought, ‘What a load of pretentious bollocks.’ But the more I thought about that, the more I thought he was right. As a writer when you’re working you have to be both. At the same time. It’s a balancing act, a seesaw, with the brilliantly successful writer at one end and the abject failure at the other. You have to be able to write stuff that you think is absolutely sparkling deathless prose yet at the same time the worst piece of dross ever written and you’ve got to strive to improve on that. It’s an odd way to think but it works. For me, at least. It’s a confidence trick. It keeps me in check while simultaneously making me work harder.

It stops the book I’m currently working on being the one where I’m found out.

Hopefully.

Techno-tweeners in the age of self-disclosure

by Pari

Baby Boomers, as a group, are becoming the passing generation. We’re not quite ancient yet but, other than ED and osteoporosis ads (and all those cut-ten-years-off-of-your-face/neck commercials), marketers have turned much of their attention to the next population waves.

I feel obsolescence tapping my shoulder. For now, I’m giving it a swift backward kick in the groin . . . but its presence still shadows me.

The first few decades of my life, only humans filled the roles of Confessor, Therapist and Persuader. The means for standing on soapboxes and pushing political agendas — for most of us — rested in letters to the editor, op-eds and the tiny number of talk radio programs that existed at the time. A single, regular guy’s reach back then — if he had PR in his toolkit — spanned at most a few thousand.

For better or worse, the ubiquitous nature of 24-7 television (plus cable, Youtube, etc), the internet and other easy-access electronic means of communication have changed all that. A message written in a private email can be resent endlessly. Tweets are retweeted, videos/blogs reposted. People of my era bemoan the demise of privacy even as we flush our own down the drain in a million small ways each day.

There just isn’t a useful instruction manual for us Techno-tweeners to help us navigate this new age of communication. The scary thing for me right now is: With the advent of no-taking-anything-back, caution must be top-of-mind even as someone experiences powerful life-changes.

So I sit wondering how much to share and how much to withhold . . .

And here’s why I’ve been thinking about all of this: It’s been just a few days since my husband got a lawyer. After more than a year, he is finally ready to move on. As a matter of fact, he’s hot to trot on ending this marriage once and for all. Me? I’m shaky. My discomfort, grief and fear, my hope for a happy end to a difficult process, all are bound to squirt out in the coming months as I move through this next phase. Do I disclose and risk an eternal artifact of this time in my life? Do I keep my blogs and other electronic communications purely professional and risk living a half-truth at best?

I haven’t figured any of this out yet . . . but I’m sure struggling with trying to be wise.

How about you?

Have you faced similar dilemmas?
Do you share important parts of your life with potential millions of unknown readers/viewers?
Do you feel compelled to keep much more “close to your chest?”
How the hell do you manage it?