We all love underdogs

Note: Great minds think alike! Just by coincidence, both Toni and I blogged about the very same subject — the Susan Boyle phenomenon. And we both posted our entries into the Murderati queue on Saturday. So no, you’re not reading a repeat entry, just a different spin on a woman who’s captured everyone’s attention.

by Tess Gerritsen

The whole world is agog about a new musical star, an unknown singer who stunned the audience at an audition for the UK equivalent of “American Idol”. In case you’ve been sans TV and computer for the past week, the singer’s name is Susan Boyle and she’s a 47-year-old Scotswoman who’s “never been married, never even been kissed.” Up till recently, she devoted her life to caring for her aged mum, who has since died. Now Susan shares her home with a cat, goes to church every Sunday, and lives the quiet life of a spinster in her Scottish village. By now, you’re getting a mental image of this woman, right? A bit dowdy, perhaps overweight, and certainly no glamor puss.

And you’d be right, because that’s exactly what Susan looks like.

Yet Susan had dreams of singing before a large audience, so she plucked up the courage to perform for a packed auditorium and a panel of judges, one of them the oftentimes smirkingly cruel Simon Cowell. As Susan walked onstage in her matronly dress, you could hear the audience giggling, could see the the male judges roll their eyes in disdain. (The female judge, I have to say, looked genuinely respectful the whole time. Good for her.) But everyone else was expecting this chubby woman with the double chin and a head of frizzy gray hair to completely embarrass herself. In fact, the audience seemed to lean forward in anticipation of the spectacle, some of them wincing at the cruelty of it all, others poised to start jeering.

Then Susan opened her mouth and began to sing. And suddenly, everything changed. If you haven’t seen the video yet, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

I have watched this video about five times, and every single time I get a lump in my throat. My reaction isn’t unique; if you check the comments for the video, you’ll find many other people saying the same thing. The video has already been viewed 25 million times and counting — and Susan’s been invited onto Larry King and Oprah, and everyone is clamoring for a CD.

What makes this performance so powerful, to the point of inspiring tears in viewers? Yes, Susan’s voice is impressive. And her choice of music “I Dreamed a Dream” was especially poignant, given her own lonely circumstances of having grown up as a bullied and homely girl. But I think the real reason this performance has touched so many of us was the simple fact that we did not expect that voice to come out of such an ordinary looking woman. We’ve been conditioned to expect singers to be young and slim and sexy. If they’re gray-haired and dowdy, well, how good can they possibly be? We expect our idols to look like idols, to be flawless in every way. Which is why, when an idol’s photos turn up in National Enquirer revealing protruding guts and cellulite, they become such juicy targets for ridicule.

But Susan — ah, Susan! When she walked onstage, it didn’t cross anyone’s mind that she could ever be a winner. She was considered a hopeless underdog from the word go — and that’s why the world now adores her. Most of us know what it’s like to feel like the underdog, so Susan’s triumph became our triumph as well.

Our almost universal identification with underdogs can be turned to powerful use in a novelist’s hands. As a reader, I find it hard to care much about characters who start off having everything going for them. A hero who’s gorgeous, a crack shot, a martial arts expert, and a snazzy dresser may look good onscreen, but in the end, James Bond is just James Bond. Iconic, yes, and someone we’d like to emulate. But he’s not really human. He’s not us. He has no journey to make to become a hero, because he’s already arrived.

I think back to the stories I loved best, and most of them are about seemingly ordinary schmoes who are forced to discover their hidden strengths and talents. Consider poor little Harry Potter, orphaned and despised by his relatives. Or Luke Skywalker, a simple farm boy on Tatooine. Or that hobbit homebody Frodo Baggins, who never wanted to go on any adventures to begin with. These are three of the most compelling characters ever created, and they all started off seemingly ordinary. But like Susan Boyle, they walked (or were forced) onstage, plucked up their courage to perform … and revealed that they were in truth extraordinary beings.

I think back, as well, to a film that most of you probably don’t remember. It was “Target,” starring Gene Hackman as just a regular guy with a wife and a rebellious teenage son. The son thinks his dad’s a total loser, content to be stuck in a nowhere town. Hackman looks the part, too –a little bald, a little chubby, a boringly law-abiding hardware salesman who always drives under the speed limit, much to his son’s disdain. This guy is not any son’s idea of a hero.

Then Hackman’s wife gets kidnapped while in Paris, and father and son go searching for her. Within moments of their arrival in France, the son is shocked when Hackman starts transforming into someone he doesn’t know. Suddenly dad can speak fluent French! Dad pistol whips an attacker! Dad gets behind the wheel and turns into a race-car driver! The great fun of this movie is watching the shocked son reevaluate what he knew — or thought he knew — about his own father. Gene Hackman is, in fact, a former CIA agent who must now call on his past skills to save his family. Before the son’s amazed eyes, this ordinary dad proves to be an extraordinary man.

By the end of the film, I had a giant crush on Gene Hackman. Because heroes are always sexy — no matter what they look like.

And if you doubt that, go check out the comments on the Youtube video. Men around the world are now clamoring to meet Susan Boyle, and give her what she’s missed all her life:

Her very first kiss.

Cultivate your writing style

by Chester Campbell

(Welcome to my wonderful guest blogger for today Chester Campbell. His book, The Surest Poison, has just been released. Chester is a well known and well-respected mystery writer in the Nashville area. He’s currently Secretary of the Southeast Chapter of MWA and President of the Middle Tennessee Chapter of SinC. Perhaps we should ask him when he finds time to write?)

In her book How To Write Killer Fiction, Carolyn Wheat wrote: “Sentences are composed of words; the choice of the right words in the best arrangement is what we call style.” Barbara Norville said in Writing the Modern Mystery, “Style may be consciously contrived or may flow out of you from who knows what nether regions of your mind.”

I’m not sure what nether region it came from, but I think the process of writing Private Eye novels caused me to develop the style I’ve become comfortable with. I started my career as a novelist after retiring from 42 years of writing in various fields, from newspaper reporter to non-fiction freelancer to political speechwriter to magazine editor to creator of advertising and public relations copy. I began with spy stories just as the Cold War ended. It was the genre I had loved to read for years.

I won’t go into my agent horror stories. It’s enough to say the manuscripts remain stacked in a corner of my office. The message I got from one agent was that my greatest sin was overwriting. I’d never heard the term. The dictionary defined it: “To write about in an artificial or an excessively elaborate, wordy style.” You need to trim the 600-page manuscript by a third, the agent wrote. I slashed and cut and trimmed until I got it to a manageable size and the agency took it.

I finished a few more books before realizing I tended to write descriptions that were excessively elaborate and wordy. Meanwhile, the post-Cold War spy story market had about dried up, and I turned to reading more conventional mysteries. I particularly enjoyed Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series. It was also the heyday of James Patterson’s Alex Cross stories. Parker’s snappy dialogue and Patterson’s short chapters resonated with me.

After a trip to the Holy Land in 1998, I came up with the idea for a book about the discovery of an ancient scroll. It involved a retired Air Force investigator whose wife became a hostage to the return of the scroll. As I worked on the book, I found myself toning down the descriptions and using short, snappy dialogue for the most part. It quickened the pace of the story, enhanced movement of the plot.

When the book found a publisher and garnered reviews with comments like “a classic page-turner,” I knew I had found my style. I continued to hone it, using the characters to develop a series. I followed the pattern of shorter chapters and cultivated the spare writing style that is now my hallmark. Too much detail will slow the pace. When describing a scene, I give only enough to let the reader see where she is and stir her imagination to create the rest of the picture.

And I’m wary of explaining things too deeply. “Don’t underestimate your readers,” my first editor told me. “They know a lot more than you think they do.”

The bookshelves are filled with lots of different writing styles. Which do you prefer?

How Do You Know When To Quit?

By Toni McGee Causey

Unless you’ve been under a rock this last week, you’ve probably either watched the video about Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent, or you’ve heard about the Internet phenomenon she’s become. For those of you who haven’t seen the version with the interview prior to her singing, I give you this link and I want you to pay particular attention to what she says at 38 seconds into the interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY&feature=related

Go, now, and watch. You won’t regret it, I promise.

At 38 seconds, Susan Boyle says to the camera that she’s going to “make that audience rock.” Now, if you haven’t just gone to see that video, and you hadn’t seen it before, here’s what the fuss is about: Susan is a 47-year-old woman who tells the judges (including Simon Cowell) that she wants to sing like Elaine Paige, whom some sites refer to as the “first lady of British Musical Theater.”

But even before that point, the audience has already written her off. She tells Simon she’s 47 when he asks, and when he rolls his eyes, she jokes and does a sort-of hip-waggle, saying, “And that’s only one side of me.” It’s nerves, probably, that has her acting a big dingy there, but it’s hard to tell for sure, and she comes across as clownish. Everyone in that audience, at that point, has written her off. Tell the truth—when you see her at that point, you’ve written her off. After all, she’s this frumpy, middle-aged, gray-haired woman. She’s not dressed in the latest fashion (though she is wearing a nice dress), she’s not slim, she’s not blonde, she’s not what you think of as a winner of these types of shows. She sure as hell doesn’t “look” like someone who could sing as beautifully as Elaine Paige. And in that moment, I think most people would agree with Simon’s eye-roll.

When Simon questions her, asking her what is her dream, she answers, “To become a professional singer.” He asks her why she hasn’t, and she simply says, “I’ve never been given the chance before, but here’s hoping that’ll change.” While she’s talking, the camera cuts to the audience where a young woman rolls her eyes. When Susan mentions Paige’s name as a singer she’d aspire to sing as well as, there is obvious snickering in the audience, and shots of women arching their eyebrows in disbelief. Some are obviously waiting for the train wreck this poor Susan Boyle is going to be, and some look as if they’re cringing for her, hating that she’s about to go through the public flogging of a failure.

She explains she’s going to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables.

The music starts, everyone waits for the disaster, and she hits that first note and bam, she has you. By the second or third word, the audience is applauding and the judges are floored. Utterly floored. Not half-way through the song, not two stanzas… by the second line of the song. The audience gets to its feet on that second line, and she does indeed make that audience rock. In the middle of the song, when she sings the rising lyric and her voice soars, the entire place goes nuts. 4000 people in that audience, and they are blown away.

Here was a woman who had gotten one small shot ten years earlier, who’d participated in a charity CD (singing Cry Me A River), where her talent was obvious to anyone with ears, but she hadn’t “made it” yet. She’d been taking care of elderly parents, she lived in a very small community, and she is (or was) unemployed. That singing on that charity CD shows she had talent, but talent, alone, won’t always win out. Timing, opportunity, are the other key ingredients. And you don’t get opportunities if you don’t keep trying.

She stood in front of that audience, hearing their skepticism, seeing the giggles, and then rocked the song anyway.

I want to tell you about another person who did something quieter, who stunned me and made such a huge impact, I’ll never forget it. It was one of the very best motivational moments in any conference I’d ever attended, and I asked her permission to relay it here.

You may already know Christie Craig. She is incredibly funny (and giving) and she and Faye Hughes are practically a stand-up comedy duo. Christie writes funny mysteries that are a hoot, and I’ve always only known her as “that successful author,” the one who has something like five novels out as well as non-fiction. She’s one of those warm people that sees someone like me (who tends to freeze up in crowds until someone else breaks the ice) and she makes them feel welcome. And at ease. A terrific person.

At our PASIC conference, Christie was to give the very last session on the second day, and her talk was going to be on, “How to Know When To Quit.” I saw a roll-on (carry-on sized) piece of luggage on the floor at her feet, and I was curious. While she introduced her subject, she opened the suitcase at her feet and pulled out a rather large UPS-type envelope. Not the normal letter-sized—the next size up. She started explaining how she became a writer, and what she’d gone through to get to where she is now—and she explained she’d been dyslexic, and how every single solitary step had been a challenge. She talked about how writing and telling stories was her dream, and she had to teach herself how to do everything, every single step of the way. It was hard—and I have a son and husband with dyslexia—I know a little bit about what she went through.

Then Christie asked, “When do you quit? Is it after the first fifty rejections?” and she pulled a stack of papers from that UPS envelope and let them rain down around her feet. “Or the next fifty?” and she pulled another stack out and let those rain down. I could see the letterhead of the pages as they fell, and I thought my throat would close up on her behalf. “Or how about the next hundred?” she asked, and pulled another wad of pages out and let those rain down. “Three hundred? Is that when you quit?” And she emptied that envelope and reached into the suitcase and pulled out another one, and asked, “Or is it the first 500? Do you quit then?” Those papers kept raining down, “Or how about the next 500?” and more envelopes, more pages. “How about a 1000? Is that when you stop?” And at this point, I couldn’t have spoken if someone had held a gun on me, I was so choked up. “Or how about the second thousand?” More pages. “Or three? Is three thousand the point where you stop?”

I was gobsmacked. Truly and thoroughly. And impressed as hell. She didn’t stop–she didn’t let the obstacles in her life define her. Christie became the definition… of tenacity. Determination. She has talent, and the skill to put it to good use.

We dream the dream, and we want it to be easy. We live in a society where pop stars get millions to show up and act badly and behave worse, and while we mock that, we’d all secretly like the trip to success to be just that simple: show up. But it’s not that simple. It’s not always easy. It’s hard work, it’s perseverance, it’s making sure you’ve got the goods when the opportunity comes along.

That last part? Yeah, that’s the hard part. It bears repeating: it’s making sure you’ve got the goods when the opportunity comes along. That means hard work, when it comes to writing. Telling a compelling story for an entire novel isn’t like making Ritz crackers and cheese and calling it a four-course meal. There’s a bit more to it than just sitting in front of the computer and spilling out a story. For some people, it may come naturally. For the rest of us, it’s a constant process of learning, improving, getting feedback, listening to it, learning from it, discarding what doesn’t work, and then trying again.

If you’re getting the opportunities to be read—and it’s not selling, it may be a matter of you having more work to do. We all hit that point. It’s just part of the process. But if you’re getting amazing feedback (consistently, from everyone), then it may simply be a matter of timing—you just haven’t had your manuscript hit the right person at the right time. There’s not a lot you can do about that but keep trying, because you never know when the next opportunity will open up because you handed it to the right person. In my case, I’d published a lot of non-fiction, edited a regional magazine, switched into screenwriting (where I wrote probably 15 scripts) and then switched back to fiction. I’d finished the script version of Bobbie Faye when a friend happened to be here and happened to want to read it and happened to want to hand it to a friend (just for fun, not for any particular thought of the friend helping) and then the friend happened to know this editor and was willing to pitch it… and when I got that phone call about the offer, it was a soaring feeling, like the audience suddenly coming to its feet on that second line of Susan Boyle’s performance. Almost twenty years to the day after I’d first sent out my first non-fiction piece. It wasn’t overnight. I’d worked two jobs, gone back to school, was mom to two boys, helped run a construction company, and wrote in the wee hours of the night when everyone was asleep, because I dreamed a dream. I wanted it. I wanted it enough to not sleep that extra hour, to take the notebook with me to the kids’ practice, to skip out on movies or TV shows.

I’d still be doing that now, without the sale. I can’t let go of the dream. It’s changed for me over the years—what I wanted, and how I wanted to do it, but the ultimate dream was to sell what I wrote, with the hope that it brought some pleasure to the reader.

So when do you quit?

If you think you quit when it’s hard, then stop now, because I assure you, it will get hard. Even if you’ve got a book or two or ten out, it’s gonna be hard. If you think you quit when it’s bleak news, then stop now, because there’s no way to have a career in any field that is all sunshine and roses up your ass. It’s gonna get bleak sometimes. Markets change, people change, culture changes, and with change comes growing pains. If you think you quit when people don’t see your talent, then quit now, because not everyone is going to agree you have talent and even when they do, they might not be able to do anything about it. If you think you quit when people say no, then stop now, because I guarantee you, people are gonna say no to you. The day before I sent the query to the agent who repped me for the deal, I’d found out my friend had handed the manuscript to her agent, who said to me that he could see that Bobbie Faye was a very funny woman who was incredibly strong-willed and yet he hated her and wouldn’t want to spend another single minute in her head. This cracked me up because (one) he was about 65 and not exactly my target audience and (two), I have always wanted to write a character who is a love-em or hate-em kind of person. I didn’t want a lukewarm response. I wanted her to be memorable. So, as negative as that note might have come across to most authors, I loved it. And I put the next query in the mail. Signed with that agent. Had a three-book deal. Was the first guy wrong? Not for him. That was his taste and I respect that. But everyone doesn’t have the same taste, and that’s why you keep trying.

So, when do you quit?

You quit when you want something else, more. You quit when you have another dream that means more to you.

I kept writing. There were days when the economy here was so bad, there was very little work, and we dug the change out of the sofa to get enough money to put enough gas in the truck for my husband to get to work, and he had to get paid before he left, or he wouldn’t have had enough gas to make it home. I understand hardships and heartbreak, depression and frustration. But “no” is not an option. It is only an obstacle.

I’m sitting down to my fourth book now. It’s scary as hell, to start something new. I emailed a friend and asked, “How do you write a book again? I’m thinking it involves words… probably in some sort of order… maybe spelled correctly? Something like that?” It’s like having to learn how to do it all over again, and it gets harder, because you’ve set a bar of quality for yourself and you want to beat it. It’s intimidating to think you can, that people expect you to.

But I will keep trying. I dream the dream.

How about you?

Marshall Karp Flips Out

By Cornelia Read

9780312378219

It was a gorgeous day—hot—and a bunch of pals and I had just snagged the very last table-with-an-umbrella outside last summer’s Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference in fashionable Corte Madera, California.

All cotton-mouthed and fading, I threw my book-bag into a chair and did the whole, “hey, anybody want anything from the snack bar?” routine, suddenly hell-bent on getting myself an iced coffee.

IcedCoffee

The line inside was long and slow, so I’m standing there spacing out, trying not to think about how thirsty I am and how many people are between me and my sublime potential beverage, when this tall blue-eyed silvery guy walks up, points a finger at my name-badge and goes, “You!”

A bit startled, I respond, “um. Yeah.”

“Cornelia Read!” he says, still pointing.

Other Blue Meanies

I say “um” again, and he breaks into this huge grin and says, “Marshall Karp,” holding up his own badge, “Our books got published the same month and I’m thinking we need to hang out. Bond. This whole ‘publishing virgins’ thing, right?”

He grins again. I never make it back out to that umbrella table.

My buddies wander inside one by one over the course of the next half hour or so and they don’t leave either. Pretty soon, we’ve taken over the entire damn snack bar—a dozen-plus people trading life stories and cracking up and having the best time anyone’s had since Arlo Guthrie sat down on the Group W bench back in ‘Sixty-whatever. Seriously.

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By the third hour Marshall is introducing himself to strangers as “the Jewish father Cornelia’s been looking for her whole entire life,” while I just keep toasting him with my ninety-bazillionth iced coffee, and there’s like thirty of us jammed into the place now, dragging more chairs in from outside and totally laughing our asses off to the point of outright choking.

And I swear the same thing happens every time I run into him. The man is the social equivalent of catnip-for-humans-scented electro-magnets or something… like if they shoved a tank-truck-load of nitrous oxide and the entire history of Vaudeville into one half of that teleportation machine in The Fly and got Groucho Marx and Bob Newhart and Gene Wilder to simultaneously push the Big Red Button, I guarantee you’d get a flash of blue lightning and a sudden whiff of ozone and—hey presto—Marshall would saunter out the other end of the thing, cackling magnificently.

Gene-wilder

Plus he writes like he’s on fire. In a good way.

The Rabbit Factory, his first novel, rocked my world, and his second, Bloodthirsty, was a TKO of a sequel. Now he’s released the third novel in his fabulous Lomax and Biggs series, Flipping Out, and it’s so good I may go back to school to become a certified public accountant.

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In honor of that, I want to repost an interview the two of us did for Spinetingler on the first anniversary of our original debut-novel pub dates.

Cornelia: So your professional history was pretty amazing even before you turned to novel writing… You spent years in advertising creating campaigns like “Thank you, Paine Weber,” then you did a successful play and landed in LA writing for TV, not to mention the screenplay with Jason Alexander. How does the whole publishing gig compare to that?

Marshall: I’ve been marketing a product or putting on a show for years, and now suddenly, I AM the product, I AM the show… and I have to tell you, it’s totally weird to be pimping myself.

Pimp Gobleet

When I go to a bookstore, I bring my salad chopper to attract people to the signing table. I’m resigned to the big picture of the business… you show up and try to present yourself. If you like my style or just me and you’ve got $25, maybe you’ll try the book.

Cornelia: What’s the best part?

Marshall: It’s fun to go out there and be with the readers, getting to listen to what they have to say about your work… the stuff I’ve learned from that interaction has been a true education….

When I was in Miami for an MWA conference, I got asked about “the language” in my first book. Now I think we all know that cops in real life tend to say fuck fuck fuck fuck on the job, and you want to be true to that…

Cornelia: Sure, instead of having them yell “Shucky Darn” when somebody pulls a gun or whatever…

Marshall: Exactly… But one woman said to me, “You know, it’s fine in the book, but it’s hard when it’s on the audio in my convertible and I’m driving down Biscayne Blvd. and have to stop at a light.”

2006-Bentley-Azure-Convertible-F-1280x960

I would never have thought of that, if I hadn’t had the opportunity to be out there face-to-face with readers. So in the second book, I ended up taking out 85 F-bombs. Not just for the lady at the stoplight but because when you write and you’re in a hurry, it’s too easy to say “fuck…” sometimes there are better ways to express that emotion.

And cutting out 85 fucks is hard when you’re writing about cops… In Bloodthirsty I went from 115 fucks to 30. It’s hard to get the ring of truth without that language. I made a minor character into a Brit so he could say “bloody” instead. Maybe that’s cheating.

Fuck_yeah

Cornelia: Do you think winding up as a novelist was inevitable, for you?

Marshall: I could always write… I wound up in advertising by accident, literally because when my father made me look for a job after college, I looked at the classifieds I went alphabetically, and I couldn’t do accounting.

I got a job as a direct-mail copywriter at Prentice Hall. A year-and-a-half later I went into Madison Avenue, started doing print ads and television. I got awards and got attention…. But of course the punishment for being a good writer in that business is you get promoted and get put in charge of the writers, so I’m the creative director and supervising instead of writing… same thing as when the head surgeon ends up running the hospital and not operating.

It was good, but I started to miss writing. That’s what drove me to write outside of work in the ad business. The first thing I did was a play, Squabbles. Twenty-five years later, it’s still put on all over the world.

TV people saw that, so I started writing pilots and then movies, which is where I met some of the people I’m killing in Bloodthirsty… met them and worked for them.

I couldn’t spend too much time in Hollywood because my wife and kids were in New York, and I came back and wound up using both skills—my marketing background and my show-biz background—by opening my own Internet ad agency.

This was right when everyone wanted to get into the internet, so I ended up being the gray-haired guy who could go into Chase or Royal Caribbean or drug companies—whoever the big clients were—and all of a sudden it took off, because everybody wanted websites.

I had the long-form skills from the TV business, and I ended up hiring the kids with the blue hair and the nose-rings who the clients were afraid of. The kid with the blue hair can say to the President of Chase, “I can make your logo spin,” and I walk in and ask, “who’s your target audience?”

CamdenBlueHair

That’s what helped me get where I am now… within four years I turned that company into something I could sell, and once I sold it I said, “now I can do what I always wanted to do, which is go to my country house and write a book…”

After my movie got produced, a woman in my town came up to me and said, “I like your movie, when are you going to make another?”

I told her it feels like everyone in Hollywood is twelve years old, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life pitching American Pie Five, so what I really wanted to do was write a mystery novel. She looks at me and she says, “I’m an editor…” So…

Mildred

One other piece of the puzzle was that I’d worked with James Patterson in advertising. I bounced the idea of The Rabbit Factory off him during a lunch,. He was incredibly encouraging, so I decided try it.

Cornelia: So what drew you to mysteries?

Marshall: That’s what I’ve always wanted to read, so that’s what I wanted to write. It inherently had to be character-based, it couldn’t be about the plot… my play, my movie, they’re always about character.

The character of Mike Lomax came to me years ago: this cop who’d lost his wife and still has to do his job while he’s grieving. He was a three-dimensional character to me long before he was cop… first I made him a MAN.

And then I said, okay, a guy going through this much pain can’t be carrying a book on his own… He needs a counterpoint, and Terry Biggs became the wiseass New York cop’s best friend, who, as they say in the TV biz can “cut the treacle.”

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Mike has the heart, but I don’t want people to go oooooooooo for the entire book on his behalf. Terry helps Mike be funny, once they get going. Terry’s the friend I would want if, God forbid, I ever had to go through that kind of pain… a real good guy who knows just the right boundaries.

I think I also wrote enough beer commercials to know what buddies are… I wrote Stroh’s commercials, and sometimes you see a guy screwing his best friend out of a beer…. I don’t believe in buddy-fucking, I believe your buddy’s your buddy. I needed to create someone where there’s that loyalty.

SgtRock-Loyalty

I think I’m quoting William Goldman on this, that “the essence of loyalty is reciprocity.”

Cornelia: I really see that in your writing. In both your books it comes across as the core of what’s happening on the page.

Marshall: My fan mail is always about the relationships, the characters. They want the characters back, they want it to go on….

Cornelia: Character matters. That’s certainly what I want to read about.

Character

Marshall: It’s always about character. I knew I had a good plot, but my focus is always on character… even the minor characters who appear for one scene, I try to give them as much as I can. I try to make them real, or if they’re surreal, as some murderers are, at least to have the ring of truth.

Cornelia: Do you think your other gigs in life have helped inform your writing?

Marshall: Janet Maslin accused me of being a marketing expert when she reviewed The Rabbit Factory for The New York Times, but I’m not trying to sell to you, I’m trying to write it this way because… look, you don’t want to know some guy’s height and weight in a story, you want to get inside his head….

Whenever I wrote a commercial, I didn’t think, “what does the client want to say about his product?” I wanted to be the conscience of the consumer. My job was to understand what the consumer needs and wants.

I don’t market to people when I write a book, I feel what it’s like to be a reader. But I’ve never ever written for the critics. For me, it was always like, “do you want to be avante-garde or do you want to be real?”

Cornelia: Ach, avant-garde. Don’t get me started.

Marshall: I come from real. I spent too many years in New Jersey to have anything avant-garde about me… I’m country.

Postcard

I like to think that I have a basic sincerity, and I think my characters have it too, even the ones with a little guile like Mike Lomax’s father, Big Jim. He’s Big Jim Lomaxstein. He’s me when I’m trying to manipulate my kids.

Cornelia: Now we’ve both got a year of this under our belts. What would you tell someone starting out with writing?

Marshall: Well, as I said in the acknowledgements, it really helps to write a mystery if you know James Patterson. But in every business I’ve been in, I encouraged the younger people to write. It’s all about giving back.

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Cornelia: What do you think is the hardest part of breaking into writing?

Marshall: A British reporter sent me an email asking that very question — what I consider to be the biggest obstacles for new writers. I sent him the glowing points from my rejection letters… you know, “Oh, Marshall is so good, but we want to get into forensics and be CSI clones too…”

Just keep writing. You will find a publisher. You will find an audience—even though there are a lot more MBAs acquiring books these days, and it’s a tough business.

Type-writer Girl

When you write your first book, you can’t imagine that this is ever going to be your day job. Everybody’s got to keep going with it to make it.

I watched the DVD of Da Vinci Code a while ago, and there was an interview with Dan Brown on it.

He said that he’d first realized he had something when he went to a bookstore in Washington for a signing, and there were all these people hanging around outside the store. He asked if they’d had a fire or a bomb scare, and was told no, they’re here for you…

Have no expectations, just those from yourself. I was happy having been a writer in various careers all my life, happy to have finished a book. When I got to the end of that first draft, that was, to me, monumental. When I found a publisher, that was just an unbelievable added benefit that turned the personal goal into something I could do—what a lot of writers want to do—which is to share what I’ve written.

Writers don’t get into it for the money. Writers write because that’s what they want to do…

Cornelia: …I heard Robert Crais speak the other day. He said if you want to get into writing for the money, you should go sell BMWs instead.

Marshall: Selling BMWs. Exactly… I was going to say sell cocaine. “Buy enough cocaine, we’ll throw in a BMW!”

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Cornelia: I’d end up buying all of anything you had to sell. Stick with the books… I can almost afford books. Any other business, you’d bankrupt me without even trying.

Marshall: I’m still learning this business, and I find it fascinating, but it’s a process. I find it really interesting that the readers know so much more about the business I’m in now than I do.

When I was in TV, I knew a lot more about how it all worked than the average viewer… The audience doesn’t know what goes on behind the scenes.

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But the fans in this business? The real fans who are at the conventions and signings? They know more than I do. I find that fascinating, and to some degree intimidating… They may not do what I do, but they know more than I do. I’ve been to book events where somebody raises a hand and says, “didn’t Carl Hiaasen do something like that in his fourth book?“

And I say, “I’ve only read two of his books, I don’t know enough! I don’t know as much as you do!”

The readership raises the bar for you. The only thing that’s ever came close to this for me is when I started doing my play.

The first eight weeks we were doing it, I’d come in and sit with the audience, listening to what they said about it. I made changes because of audience feedback that they didn’t know I was hearing.

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Cornelia: What’s the best part of it, for you? How does this compare to the other kinds of writing you’ve done over the years?

Marshall: Of my many writing incarnations, this is the final frontier, because I really enjoy the ability to create without a committee. In advertising—TV and movies even more so—it’s about the committee.

These days, the only committee I have is when I get up and think I’m going to write something and the characters want to do it differently… it’s almost like an actress saying, “my character wouldn’t say that!” She’s pissed off. When you’re “the actor” as a writer and that happens, it’s fascinating.

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But the best cool thing is you get to meet a lot of really fascinating, three-dimensional, fun people and you’re way at the top of their list. This is a really fascinating genre, and how great that there’s something this interesting that brings us all together.

I found it really refreshing that the first fan I talked to at LCC was a pediatric cardiologist, and I wanted to say, “You’re saving lives every day, let’s talk about you!”

Cornelia: Speaking of saving lives, I want to know more about the charity you’re involved with, Vitamin Angels…

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Marshall: There’s great information at http://www.vitaminangels.org. Working with them started out as my reaction to 9/11.

My daughter was at Ground Zero, and that left me with a visceral understanding that I had to make a difference in the world. There are a great many worthy charities out there, but I had to know I was doing something real. Something that mattered. I didn’t want to just buy tickets to a charity dinner, or bid on something at an auction for a good cause…

When I found out about the Vitamin Angel Alliance, I realized I could use my marketing abilities and my writing skills to raise awareness and money for an organization where you can literally have the accountability that what you’ve done matters–to specific people, specific kids around the world. It’s quantifiable.

Cornelia: Tell me about what they do.

Marshall: They get vitamins and supplements to kids and families around the world. Vitamins can prevent a tremendous amount of suffering. We KNOW this. We KNOW how it works, but there are so many people who don’t have access to basic, essential nutrition.

Five cents’ worth of Vitamin A can keep a child from going blind. Pre-natal vitamin deficiencies kill upwards of 585,000 women and four million newborns every year. When people ask me, “what’s the best thing you’ve written?” I tell them it’s what I’ve written for Vitamin Angels.

***

Now that Marshall’s got three books out, I think we’re going to need a bigger coffee shop for the next time we get together… possibly a circus tent.

I guarantee you won’t find a better way to spend an afternoon than in this guy’s company, whether on the page or in real life.

So, ‘Ratis, what makes you flip out? Best answer gets a free copy of Marshall’s latest book (which is AWESOME!)

Neil Nyren on the State of the Industry

Interviewed by J.T. Ellison

For the past two years, we’ve been lucky enough to have publishing guru Neil Nyren join us for an annual glimpse into the inner working of the publishing industry. I was so happy when Neil agreed to come back again, for his third annual State of the Industry interview! Especially now, with publishing in flux, it’s important to get the real skinny on the industry. Links to the past two interviews can be found here (2007) and here (2008). They’re well worth a read.

Neil Nyren is the senior vice president, publisher and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons. He’s been involved in the careers of many of today’s leading authors, including Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Jack Higgins, W.E.B. Griffin, John Sandford, Dave Barry, Daniel Silva, Ken Follett, Alex Berenson, Randy Wayne White, Carol O’Connell, James O. Born, Patricia Cornwell and Frederick Forsyth. His non-fiction list reads like a who’s who as well: Bob Schieffer, Maureen Dowd, John McEnroe, Linda Ellerbee, Jeff Greenfield, Charles Kuralt, Secretary of State James Baker III, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Sara Nelson, and Generals Fred Franks, Chuck Horner, Carl Stiner, Tony Zinni and Wendy Merrill. And if that’s not enough of an endorsement, he’s just been nominated as Best Editor by Spinetingler Magazine. (You can vote for Neil here.)

I’m always thrilled when Neil comes for a visit, so without further ado, here we go!

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The state of the industry is in flux, and we’re all looking for answers. What can you tell us to calm the incipient waves?

Not surprisingly, because of the economy, I’ve gotten asked this a lot the last few months, because everybody’s read all the bad news: layoffs, restructurings, pay freezes, wobbly sales, etc. And, yup, that’s bad. But I point out a few things.

First, it’s bad for everybody right now – we’re in a recession. Much as we like to think we’re the center of the world, God has not struck publishing and passed over everybody else (you can see I have the season on my mind). I’ve also been around long enough to see several cycles come and go – the lean years and the fat years, when we all staff up and buy books like mad.

And it isn’t as if we aren’t buying books now, because we are. We’re being careful, sure (mostly, though some of the buys recently – well, I’m not going to comment), but a publisher’s got to have books. That’s our business. And it’s not all the tried-and-true or big celebrities (though the latter is what tends to get the ink). I’ve just taken a quick look and at Putnam we bought four first novels in March. Other first novels from four different publishers, including us – The Help, Beat the Reaper, The Piano Teacher, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – have made the NYT hardcover list in the first months of this year. That’s pretty encouraging, isn’t it?

All we’re looking for, when it comes to fiction, is a good story. That hasn’t changed, and never will. No matter what happens, the best advice I can give to anybody reading this blog: Just write the best damn book you can.

I know many editors and agents are using Kindles to read submissions. Do you have a Kindle? Outside of the convenience factor, is it the death of the bound book?

Here you start getting into other “in flux” questions, of course. Because we’re not just talking about the Kindle or the Sony Reader, but, all e-reading devices, including smartphones, PDAs, and Dick Tracy’s wrist TV. But I don’t think e-readers are the death of the bound book. It’s still early in the game, and most people aren’t reading e-books yet – Penguin’s income from e-books increased several hundredfold last year from the year before, but that’s still just a teensy-tiny part of our income. However, it is going to keep growing as the apps spread and the physical e-readers improve, and then they’ll simply be one more way to enjoy a book, for those who prefer it (the same way some people like audio books now). But the printed book will always endure. A piece of plastic will never replace the look and feel and smell of paper.

And, no, I don’t have an e-reader, but many of our editors do, not only for books, but, as you say, for submissions. It’s much easier to download a submitted ms and read it that way than to stuff a 500-page ms in your bag. And as I noted on Murderati a while ago, all our sales reps have them, too, so that they’re not afflicted with massive towers of paper teetering around their homes. We have public network folders they can access, and download any ms they want – it gives them a lot more flexibility, and they end up reading more before they sell it than they might have otherwise.

Electronic galleys and catalogs are all the rage – as a cost-saving measure and as an environmental issue. Do you think this is a good trend? Will all publishers move to this model in the near future?

In line with the above, you’ve asked about electronic galleys and catalogues. Harper’s moved to the latter, as have some smaller publishers, and I’m sure there aren’t many publishers who aren’t studying it in some way. I think you’re going to see a lot of it. Printed catalogues are outdated as soon as they roll off the press. Jackets change, publicity and promo details change, plots change, new books are suddenly dropped in – digital catalogues can be constantly refreshed and updated. For me, they just make sense. And they’re short enough so that they’re easy to download for anybody who needs a physical copy.

The future’s a little hazier for electronic galleys, though I think their use will increase. These galleys are meant for reviewers, booksellers, media – a whole host of people – and until all of them have an e-reader, their use is bound to be limited. And even then, a lot of people are likely to want that individual ARC. But – time will tell.

What do you think of the new policy at Thomas Nelson, where they’re making a book, e-book and audio book available for one price? Is this the future of publishing?

I’m not going to comment on Nelson. But here’s one thing I do want to say. There’s a chorus out there that claims publishers should charge next to nothing for e-books, because it cost us next to nothing to produce them. But – and I know I’m going to rile them, but too bad – that’s nonsense. The physical manufacturing of a book is only one small part of a publisher’s costs. It makes no difference if a book is printed or formatted for download, most of the costs are apart from that: the advance (and later royalties), the editing, the copyediting, the proofreading, the design, the marketing, the publicity, all the staff involved in each of those stages. The actual ppb – paper, printing and binding – is not a very big piece. And even when discussing the costs of producing an e-book, there are still plenty involved in formatting for all the different platforms out there, warehousing, and the staff involved in all that.

E-books don’t cost much? Please.

The rate of change in technology is becoming quicker every day. In most cases, readers will get to the next new technology before we do. Can we adapt fast enough and what are publishers doing to adapt to the changes?

Unfortunately, tech is not really my area of expertise, and I am eternally grateful that there are phalanxes of people around here whose responsibility it is to think about it every single day. So I can’t answer this in any intelligible way. I’m fascinated, though, by the bits and pieces I do see: the aforementioned apps for any conceivable device, for instance. The experiments in selling – I’ve just read about one test in some stores to get them more involved in e-book selling. They’re selling cards with a book cover on one side and a code on the other – the customer buys the card, has it activated at the register, and downloads the e-book there or at home. Interesting, right?

Then there are the evolving e-book formats – there’s a new one that allows for two-minute videos, and I’ve just read about a thriller on offer containing “two dozen short videos with actors that augment the book’s main mystery.” It’s called a Vook. I know, not exactly mellifluous, but hey.

Everybody’s Twittering – publishers, authors, bookstores. The bookstore use interests me most, because they’re using it to drive people into signings and events. Publishers are doing a lot with e-cards and videos for accounts – I have a new book for which the author created his own video ad, and we’ve made it available for any account who wants it, and we’re also using it as a paid web advertisement on a number of blogs.

And here’s a cool thing that Penguin UK has done – “We Tell Stories,” a site on which six authors wrote six stories over six weeks, with a mysterious “secret” seventh story involved – it recently won a web award from SXSW. (Editor’s Note: SXSW is South by Southwest, an annual music, movie and technology exposition in Austin, Texas.)

In all industries, businesses are looking for the next great market. Are you looking at opportunities in new emerging markets overseas or among new target audiences within existing markets?

Well, I think the next great market might in fact be e-books, once everything’s sorted out – that some of the customers will be people who aren’t regular readers. We’re also always looking for opportunities in non-book venues – for The Friday Night Knitting Club novel, for instance, we held events in yarn stores. We have whole departments dedicated to special sales and gift sales and college adoptions. Overseas, there are offices – even whole divisions – opening in places like China and India, even Dubai!

In every recession, new businesses and firms rise from the ashes. With all of the layoffs in publishing, what type of business would you suggest they start?

I’ve seen a number of people, not surprisingly, become agents and packagers. I think there’ll be a host of digital opportunities, though – just the other week, I saw an item about a former Doubleday editor and a friend who develops mobile phone games teaming up to launch an imprint for new books to be published on mobile platforms. Another editor left on his own accord to start a recipe website from great chefs and cookbooks authors. I’m sure we’re going to see a lot more of that kind of thing (cellphone novels, incidentally, are all the rage in Japan, so much so that traditional publishers are even taking the most successful and putting them into print!).

What do new authors need to know about how to break in to publishing? Has anything changed?

It depends what kind of publishing they want to break into, I suppose. For traditional publishing, very little has changed. Most (though not all) of us still want agented manuscripts, but editors have been reaching out and finding books through blogs, websites, Twitter (and maybe even cellphones!). Some self-published books have done well and then got picked up by mainstream publishers. And as far as really non-traditional publishing goes, well, we’ve been discussing a little bit of that above. I can’t give much advice on that – I’ve no idea! – but, really, who knows?

Finally, for new authors – and for any authors – here’s something I want to say. I was asked at a conference a few months ago what advice I’d give to writers and – boom or recession, print or e-books, fiction or nonfiction – here’s my best shot:

One, if you’re a writer, write. Write every day. Put your butt in that chair. I don’t care how many pages you turn out, just produce something every day. I know one writer who sometimes speaks at writers’ conferences and begins by asking, “How many here are serious about being writers?” Most, of course, raise their hands. “Then what are you doing here? Go back to your rooms, go back to your homes, go write!”

Two, learn the business. As a writer, you are the CEO of your own business. Nobody will care as much as you do. You should make it your job to learn that business. Don’t assume your publisher knows everything. Do you know what one of the most common answers in publishing is, no matter who asks the question? “I don’t know.” The other is, “It depends.” How many copies will the book sell? I don’t know. Will there be a paperback edition? It depends. Will the NYT review it? Gee, I don’t know. Will you spell my name right on the jacket? It depends.

Learn the business. Observe, listen, question. Be flexible. And don’t get hung up on the trivia that sidetracks so many people. Which leads to:

Three, be happy (I’m indebted to Joe Konrath, on whose site I first saw this advice, and which I’ve adapted a little). Do you know what I’m talking about here? Look, you all know people who think like this. I’ll be happy…when I finish my book. I’ll be happy…when I land an agent. I’ll be happy…when I sell that book. I’ll be happy…when I sell three books…when I make 100K a book…when I hit the NYT bestseller list…when I hit #1 on the NYT bestseller list…when I hit #1 for 5 weeks on the NYT bestseller list…when the movie from my book, starring George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep makes $400 million at the box office and wins best picture….

These people are never happy. Be happy now. Of course, set goals for yourself, then set new goals, move yourself forward. You may never be at perfect peace with this business. All you can do is try your best, learn from failures, and celebrate successes no matter how small. Be happy now.

And for the fun stuff:

You must have more books than you know what to do with. How do you arrange your books on your book shelves – alphabetical, format, subject???

Hahahaha. Arrange, you say? Come, meet my friends, “helter” and “skelter.” Where shall we begin? With the overstuffed bookshelves? The piles on the floor? The stacks on my bedroom window sill and night table?

Best movie you’ve seen in the past six months?

Impossible task #1, but here are three: Tell No One, Happy Go Lucky, Slumdog Millionaire.

Best book you’ve read?

Impossible task #2, but here are two: The Lost City of Z by David Grann. This is nonfiction, about the explorations deep into the Amazon over the last century-plus to find a supposed lost advanced civilization in the jungle. Many men went, and a lot of them never came out again. Grann, a very good journalist, became fascinated with all this, and during the course of his researches, decided…to try it himself. Understand, he describes himself as a guy who lives on the second floor of his building in Brooklyn and, when given the choice, always takes the elevator. But off he went into the jungle himself, and his adventures are intertwined with that of the historical explorers. Good stuff.

And the second is Charlie Huston’s latest The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. Very dark and funny as hell. There’s no one writing like him.

Thank you so much for joining us today!

Wine of the Week: Here’s a wine tip in Neil’s honor: Chateau de la Negly Coteaux du Lanuedoc. It’s a mature wine, dark and inky, and very rich. Excellent stuff.

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Neil S. Nyren is senior vice president, publisher and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons. He came to Putnam in 1984 from Atheneum, where he was Executive Editor. Before that he held editorial positions at Random House and Arbor House. Someof the author’s he’s edited are Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Jack Higgins, W.E.B. Griffin, John Sandford, Dave Barry, Daniel Silva, Ken Follett, Alex Berenson, Randy Wayne White, Carol O’Connell, James O. Born, Patricia Cornwell and Frederick Forsyth; and non-fiction by Bob Schieffer, Maureen Dowd, John McEnroe, Linda Ellerbee, Jeff Greenfield, Charles Kuralt, Secretary of State James Baker III, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Sara Nelson, and Generals Fred Franks, Chuck Horner, Carl Stiner, Tony Zinni and Wendy Merrill.

Late news

This will teach me to read my email more thoroughly.

Just read an email from Rhian over at It’s A Crime! (Or a Mystery…) She writes:

“Do you blog about books? If yes, then please participate in a survey of book bloggers. Some of the questions have come from publishers. I intend to review the results and write an article that will hopefully lead to abetter understanding of the book blogging world and promote more dialogue between publishers and bloggers.

“I’d also be grateful if you could promote the survey on your blog. Many thanks, in advance, to those who complete it. It’s open for a few days, (closes on 19 April), but please reply soon.”

Hope you can take part!

Whose Voice is it Anyway?

by Zoë Sharp

Something Louise said in her blog this week made me stop and pause for thought:

‘I … have actually opened up the Work-in-Progress document on my desktop. (My God, it’s written in third person. What was I thinking? I’ve never been able to write in third person!)’

Like Louise, all my published novels to date have been written in first person, but this was not how I originally tried to go about it. For some reason I had it in mind that a mystery novel, by its nature, was a complex interweaving of different layers that would be far easier told from multiple viewpoints if necessary, and therefore in third person.

When the idea of my main protagonist, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox came along, I distinctly remember making several false starts in third person. I can even remember one of those scenes. A woman, alone, walking quickly at night, high heels tapping out a nervous tattoo as she hurries through the muted cone of a streetlamp. Suddenly, a guy looms out of the darkness, snakes an arm around her throat, pins her arms to her body, and starts to drag her backwards into the shadows. But just when you think you’re observing the first victim, the woman begins to fight back, disabling her attacker. And after she puts him on the ground, the lights come back up to reveal a gymnasium, and there’s applause from the evening class of students who’ve come to learn the gentle art of self-defence from our heroine.

And, I have to admit, as an opening section I quite liked it. It did what it was supposed to do – kicked off with a little misdirection, and introduced my main character as someone very capable of looking after herself. But she just didn’t speak to me, and I was equally convinced that she sure as hell didn’t speak to the reader, either.

The only way I could get around that was to get deeper inside her head, and find out what made her tick. To speak with her voice. So I gave it a whirl, not with an opening, but with a disconnected scene. It had Charlie at a bodyguard training school, forced by her ever-so-slightly misogynist instructors to go into a darkened room and deal with what lay inside. That turned out to be an apparently mortally wounded body, and an ambush, to which she instinctively, viscerally, overreacts, laying out her attacker with an old-fashioned desk telephone, then covers up her fear with dark humour.

Ah, now I was getting somewhere.

In fact, I liked that scene so much that it eventually found its way into the third book, HARD KNOCKS, which happened to be set in a close protection training school in Germany, and so perfectly fitted the bill.

Having written my first series book in first person, I felt compelled to continue that way. And there are certain advantages in only being able to reveal information to the reader as it arrives with the main character. The knowledge could be held by other people, but if they don’t or won’t tell her what’s going on, she has to find things out for herself. I can’t show the villain scheming in his lair, nor the good guys working out that she’s in danger and rushing to the rescue. (Not that Charlie needs much rescuing, thank you very much. Her philosophy has always been to break legs now and ask questions later.)

There’s nothing written in stone that says I had to continue in first person for the entire series. Lee Child started off with Reacher in first person for KILLING FLOOR, then swapped to third person until a return to first for one of my favourites in the series, PERSUADER. And now Reacher’s back in first person again in GONE TOMORROW. And it’s a belter.

Of course, some other authors quite happily write in first person, and add in third person scenes where they feel it’s appropriate, or required by the plot. In fact, that device was suggested to me for the latest book. Some people manage it very successfully. Stuart Pawson is one, with his Detective Inspector Charlie Priest police procedurals. In one, he even manages to have his detective go undercover in passages in third person, with his identity hidden from the reader entirely, while the rest of the book is in first person. And it works, but I’m not sure I could pull that one off.

I’ve even read something – although so long ago I can’t remember the details – where the book was told by two first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Now, that’s a tricky one to pull off. SJ Rozan, in her Bill Smith and Lydia Chin series, uses first person but with one book told from Bill’s perspective, and the next from Lydia’s. What a great way to keep a series fresh for the author, as well as the reader.

One of my favourite narration styles was always Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, told in first person, but not from the main character’s viewpoint, thus allowing Holmes to baffle the reader on the way to the conclusion as much as his sidekick, the stalwart Dr Watson. Will Thomas has taken up this literary device with his tales of Victorian enquiry agent, Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, writing from Llewelyn’s POV.

And that’s quite before we get into second person, which I heard Elizabeth Rigbey talk about for the prologue of one of her books. I’m writing from memory here, because I’ve been unable to track down the actual passage concerned, but it went something like this:

‘You are driving through a deserted forest and you knock down a cyclist and kill him. There is no damage to your car and no witnesses. What do you do?’

Not only is that second person, of course, but present tense as well. And that brings us onto a whole different ball game. Writing successfully in present tense is another skill altogether. Patricia Cornwell has written some of her Dr Kay Scarpetta series not only in first person, past tense with THE BODY FARM, but in third person, present tense with BLOW FLY. A fascinating mixture of styles. Theresa Schwegel’s debut, OFFICER DOWN, was first person, present tense and duly won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

But there’s no doubt that present tense is difficult to pull off. One of the best exponents for me is Don Winslow, with books like CALIFORNIA FIRE AND LIFE, and THE WINTER OF FRANKIE MACHINE, particularly as both these books involve quite a lot of flashbacks. Tackling flashbacks and sticking to present tense is enough to make a poor writer’s head implode, but he manages it with style.

Of course, the reason Louise’s comment resonated is because I’m looking beyond the end of the current rewrites – and I keep telling myself there will BE an end to them – to what comes next. Another Charlie Fox book, yes, in first person, past tense, almost certainly. But what then? I’ve always had a fancy to try third person, present tense, just to see if I can …

So, my question is, what’s your preference, both as a reader and a writer?

What is your current preferred style, and what made you settle on it?

Have you ever hankered to try and different narrative device and, if so, what?

This week’s Phrase of the Week is to win hands down, meaning a comfortable victory. It comes from horse racing, where a jockey who has no need to urge his horse forwards down the finish straight because he has a clear lead, and so can canter over the line with no need for the whip, and with both hands on more or less on the horse’s neck, to win with his hands down.

When There Is No More Room In Hell…

by J.D. Rhoades

Spring again. The time when the warm southern wind blows away the chill of winter (and blows in enough pollen to turn a newly washed car yellow in two minutes). A time when I shake off the gloom of the winter months. A time when I decide to put aside the serious post I meant to do about the Amazonfail flap, try to forget about tax day, and talk about something fun.

Like zombies.

Are zombies the new vampires?

We do seem to be experiencing a sort of Zombie Renaissance these days. First, there was the sudden smash success of Max Brooks’ World War Z.

Subtitled “An Oral History of the Zombie War”, WWZ is smartly written, slyly satirical, and scary as hell all at the same time. I’d love to see it as a miniseries.

More recently, there’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a “re-imagining” of the Jane Austen classic that opens with the deathless (heh) line:”It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” As my friend Tasha says, that is just so wrong.

While I’m at it, I have to mention my current fave: Jonathan Maberry’s excellent Patient Zero, which puts a whole new spin on the zombie legend by casting them as a terrorist bioweapon. Facing the legions of the undead (and they are many) is Maberry’s kick-ass action hero, Joe Ledger, a guy who could give Jack Reacher a run for his money. I’ll nominate PZ’s opening lines (“When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there’s nothing wrong with my skills.”) as one of the best openings of 2009.

As you can see, I love a good zombie story as much as the next guy. I’ve probably seen Night of the Living Dead a couple of dozen times, and I can quote you whole scenes of Shaun of the Dead verbatim. But even I have trouble explaining this.

I mean, I can almost see the the vampire thing. There’s a certain sexiness about vampires, or so they tell me. They’re beautiful, their hunger equates with great passion, they bite your neck…hey, it’s not my kink, but whatever floats your boat.

But it’s hard to envision a bestselling YA series about a forbidden romance between a beautiful but awkward teenage girl and a mindless, shambling flesh-eating ghoul. And, even as I bow down to the sheer audacious awesomeness of Marvel Zombies,

I have trouble explaining exactly why I love it so.

So what’s the deal, ‘Rati? Do you love zombies like I love zombies, and if so, why? What’s the attraction? And what’s your favorite tale of the walking dead? And what book do you think could only be made better if you just threw in some zombies?

Bonus

A late night offering from Louise

Here’s a bonus, my ‘Rati friends. The brand new video trailer for Liars Anonymous, hot off the presses. Take a look. And if you like what you see, send it along to a few friends. It will help me get the word out!

The Liars Are Coming

By Louise Ure

I only get to do this once a year, so you have to bear with me. I’m going full-frontal, tongue-wagging, no-holds-barred, blatant self-promotion today.

My third novel, Liars Anonymous, hits the bookstores today.

And this time it’s being ushered in with a grand slam of starred reviews from all four of the big trade reviewers!

* Booklist (2/1/09)
“A powerful, masterfully constructed, action-packed novel with fiercely moral underpinnings and strong protagonist, this cements Ure’s position alongside such psychological thriller masters as Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters.”

* Kirkus Reviews (1/15/09)
“Ure (The Fault Tree, 2008, etc.) provides a meaty, twisty puzzle. But the real prize here is Jessie, a tough, conflicted heroine you won’t soon forget.”

* Publishers Weekly (2/2/09)
“Taut…. As Ure slowly peels back the layers of scar tissue to reveal [protagonist] Jessie’s past crimes, the investigation … takes on even more depth as readers come to realize just how damaged the feisty heroine truly is.”

* Library Journal (February 2009)
“Shamus Award–winning Ure’s third mystery (after Forcing Amaryllis and The Fault Tree) is perhaps her finest effort to date.”

Read the first chapter here, if those honey-sweet words above have piqued your interest.

And if that’s not enough crowing, how about the online reviewers, like “Mrs. Peacock” over at Crime Critics who just had me jiggling and giggling all day long.

“This is a book that feels real. It is dark, gritty and beautifully written. Jessie may not be a woman we can all relate to, but she is a woman many of us probably fantasize about being. She is morally-driven, determined to do right even if the cost is her life – or someone else’s. The heart of this book is the remarkable depth Ure captures in her characters … Here we find a protagonist believably hardened by her experiences. She is tough, street smart and competent. Her need to understand the crimes she finds herself tied up in, and a stubborn steak a mile long, leave readers understanding her actions even as they are wishing for a different path for her…

Ure writes us a tale not only strong in character development and story–but also in prose. The writing is beautiful but not distracting. I probably missed much of it as the story compelled me forward, but every now and again I would set the book down and just sigh. My husband would say, “What is it?” I’d read him the line. He would sigh. “I know,” I would say and pick the book up to read on…

The landscape, both physical and emotional, are described here in such sensory-driven detail that readers will find themselves reaching for a cool glass of water and a Glock nine millimeter…

In the end, LIARS ANONYMOUS is a hard-hitting, unapologetic look at the female survivor–in her glory and in her suffering.”

(I don’t know who you are, Mrs. Peacock, but I think I love you. Want a bottle of Cristal? Want the first puppy from the litter?)

In other good news, I took all your ‘Rati advice to heart this last two weeks, and have actually opened up the Work-in-Progress document on my desktop. ( My God, it’s written in third person. What was I thinking? I’ve never been able to write in third person!) I can’t say I’m over my Been Down So Long This Looks Like Up To Me doldrums, but as Obama says, “I see glimmers of hope.”

I’ll be signing at bookstores and reader gatherings beginning April 18 and would love to see you at one of the following events.

Saturday, April 18, 10:45 a.m.
The Bay Area Bluestocking Festival of Authors/Literary Women
PLEASANT HILL COMMUNITY CENTER
320 Civic Dr.
Pleasant Hill, CA 94523
Call 925-626-5200 for tickets

Saturday, April 18, 2:00 p.m.
With Cara Black
BELMONT LIBRARY
1110 Alameda de las Pulgas
Belmont, CA 94002

Sunday, April 19, 4:00 p.m.
BOOK PASSAGE
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Tuesday, April 21, 7:30 p.m.
BOOKS INC. IN THE MARINA
2251 Chestnut St.
San Francisco, CA 94123

Friday, April 24, 12 noon
MYSTERIES TO DIE FOR
2940 Thousand Oaks Blvd.
Thousand Oaks, CA 91362

Friday April 24, 5:00 p.m.
THE MYSTERY BOOKSTORE
1036C Broxton Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90024

Saturday, April 25
LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS
Signing at the Mysterious Galaxy (Booth #614) at 10:00 a.m.
Signing at the L.A. Mystery Bookstore (Booth #411) at 11:00 a.m.
Los Angeles, CA

Thursday, April 30
THE EDGAR AWARDS
The Grand Hyatt Hotel
New York, NY

Wednesday, May 6, noon
SEATTLE MYSTERY BOOKSTORE
117 Cherry Street
Seattle WA 98104

Friday, May 8, 7:00 p.m.
CLUES UNLIMITED
123 S. Eastbourne
Tucson, AZ 85716

Saturday, May 9, 2:00 p.m.
POISONED PEN
With Laurie King
4014 N. Goldwater #101
Scottsdale, AZ 85251

Saturday, June 13, 10:00 a.m.
SF ROMANCE WRITERS OF AMERICA
Pyramid Alehouse
901 Gilman Street
Berkeley, CA 94710

July 16-19
BOOK PASSAGE MYSTERY CONFERENCE
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA 94925

October 15-18
BOUCHERCON
Indianapolis, IN

I hope to see you somewhere along the road.