Welcome Guest Blogger Dave White!!!

Mystery Writer Awesome

Back in
March, Sarah Weinman and I were strolling through New York City on our way to a
Laura Lippman signing. Another Thing to Fall had just been
released and Sarah and I were talking about how much Laura’s career had changed
in the past year. It was the first time
I’d seen her since she’d hit “The List” and I was excited to see if anything
had changed. (For the record, it hadn’t…
in a good way.)

As Sarah and
I talked, we became more and more aware of a certain level of celebrity in the
Mystery writer world. Let’s call it
reaching the level of “Mystery Writer Awesome.” What that is, specifically, is being a writer that your mystery writer colleagues’
love, but you haven’t broken out, haven’t hit the list. You haven’t become a household name.

It kind of
became a fun game to name names. Duane
Swierczynski, my mentor and favorite writer is Mystery Writer Awesome. My agent Al Guthrie is Mystery Writer
Awesome. I think Ken Bruen is Mystery
Writer Awesome. Jason Pinter is Mystery
Writer Awesome. Sarah said… and I quote,
“William Kent Krueger is a fan favorite, multiple
winner and nominee of Anthony Awards (including this year) but is almost
totally unknown outside of the Midwest mystery community.”

These
guys are fantastic writers. Their
stories are compelling as hell, page turners, and a ton of fun to read. And they’re willing to help out the mystery
community. They answer emails, are
willing to read your own work, and do anything they can to get you to be a
better writer as well. And if you’re a
fan, you have a secret. You’ve found a
fantastic writer and no one else knows about them. They’re yours. And yeah, you’ll tell your friends and family
about them, but you know you were a fan
of them first.

There
are, however, Mystery Writer Awesome Alumni like Laura. Writers who’ve since backed out of the
internet Mystery Community a bit. (Laura
still blogs, but her blog mentions her break-up with the internet.) Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, great writers
who’ve also hit it big. They’re not as
accessible, not always there to answer emails and serve up advice. Their books are great, but they are not there
for the reader anymore.

Mystery
Writer Awesome writers are writers who most of us who follow the blogs love and
love to push on the blogs. But, let’s
face it, the blogs only push writers to other writers (and the few die hard
fans who actually follow the blogs). They don’t reach as much of a mainstream community of readers. And I think we as bloggers know this. By blogging, we’re only talking to a small
community. It’s almost incestuous.

So what
happens when one of our Mystery Writer Awesome writers does break out? Do we get happy for them? (Of course, you say.) Or do we somehow become jealous and
annoyed?

Kind of like
when Metallica hit it big with the black album. The writers we love are no longer ours. They’ve sold out, they’re not as accessible anymore. They’re not ours. They’re everyone’s.

I hope Al,
Duane, Jason, Kent, and Ken break out and hit the Times list. Each one of them
have had some huge successes already, from other bestseller lists, to award
nominations, to comic book writing, and movie options. But they’re still accessible. They still blog and are still out there. They still feel accessible.

What happens
if they go away? All of a sudden, they
break out. What happens if your favorite
author becomes just a book and no longer a real person?

I, for one,
think I’ll still follow them. I’ll
probably still email and get less responses. And I won’t know all the cool writer details that are going on in their
lives as their careers go. But I’ll
still read them and anxiously and enjoy every word.

But will
there be that little tinge of “I found them first.” And, part of me for sure, will still wish
they were Mystery Writer Awesome.

Come on,
admit it. You will too.

So, what do
you think? Can you name anyone else who
is “Mystery Writer Awesome?” Or any
Alumni?

DAVE
WHITE, born in 1979, is among the youngest winners of the Derringer Award. He
has contributed to many anthologies and collections, including The Adventure of the Missing Detective
and Damn Near Dead. His first novel, When One Man Dies, was published in
2007. His second, The Evil That Men Do will be released on June 17. Dave lives in New Jersey, where he teaches
middle-school English.

Editor’s
Note:

Toni
couldn’t be with us today, but asked that we mention that Max was the winner of
last week’s contest. Max, Toni will be in touch.

Why people don’t get published

by Alex

Well, okay, there are a lot of reasons. Some people simply don’t have the skill, talent, passion, will, guts it takes to be a professional writer. Almost everyone can write, and I am always the first to say that everyone SHOULD write, for their own pleasure, and sanity, and self-illumination. But a pro writing career is something only for the truly insane. I mean, driven.

And yet… I think we all know people who have the talent and the drive and still are not published. This is one of the most heartbreaking things I can think of. It is not just uncomfortable, it is literally painful for me to see talented friends and acquaintances who I know have the goods and are still struggling to find agents, publishing deals, screenwriting sales.

Now, this is very, very often self-sabotage. I certainly see people who refuse to “play the game”, even though the game is part of the job. I see people who are crippled by the thought of any kind of rejection, or stopped by the very first or first few rejections, even though rejection is part of the job. I see people who submit directly to editors because they think they don’t need an agent, or are too impatient to go through the process of acquiring an agent, even though having a good agent is a vital part of the job. I see people who jump at the first offer of representation they get, even though they know nothing about that agent, who can then burn that writer’s chances with that book by submitting to the wrong people, or pretending to submit, or by just being such an obvious fraud that no one will read his or her submissions anyway. I see people who just give up and turn bitter and bilious. I see people who simply don’t think that anything good is ever going to happen to them, consequently it never does. We all have our demons, and some more than others.

But after last week at Pen to Press in New Orleans, teaching a dozen amazing writers, I now know that there are phenomenally talented writers out there who do have the goods, and the drive, and the faith in themselves, and they still need help – not on their writing, because that’s there in spades – but on all that OTHER part of the job. I guess it just finally dawned on me how much marketing is involved in getting a book deal to begin with.

This may seem like a stupid and obvious revelation to some of you – I’m certainly not above being stupid and obvious! My excuse is that I’ve been doing the sales part of writing for so long that it doesn’t even occur to me how much of a salesperson I am. For a screenwriter, pitching is the only way to get a job – even if you write and sell an original script all on your own, you still have to pitch to get to a point of writing the next draft with the producers/studio who bought it. So coming as I do from screenwriting, writing a synopsis, writing a query letter, pitching my next project to my agent and editor, doing radio and TV interviews – all of those are just variations on sales pitches. We say “pitch” but really, we’re leaving out that critical word, aren’t we? What we’re talking about is a sales pitch.

I’ve said this before but one of the most amazing things to me about the publishing world, as opposed to Hollywood, is that agents and editors actually come to conferences LOOKING for new authors, and an aspiring author can sign up for pitches with really great agents and move herself to the top of the submissions pile at various agencies. It’s a miraculous process and we’re lucky to have it.

But after the Pen to Press workshop I understand better why some talented people don’t get published: they can write like crazy, but they have no idea how to tell someone what’s actually IN their fabulous book once they’re finished with it.

Really. It’s weird. Like seeing people struggle with a foreign language.

The emphasis of this particular conference was to get authors ready to pitch and submit their completed manuscripts, and now I know how enormously necessary that kind of coaching is. Because I couldn’t tell my students a thing about HOW to write. I could be taking classes from THEM on that. But it took a good four very full days for me and my fantastic co-instructor, Scott Nicholson, to coax the actual storylines out of most of our students and show them how to put those storylines into synopsis and pitch form. When they started, we were getting vague descriptions of books that were “A young man’s journey from adolescence to adulthood” and “A multigenerational family saga about the ravages of racism”. (Hint: that’s not your story, that’s a subgenre). We had to get them to tell their stories to us, character by character, conflict by conflict, revelation by revelation, climax by climax, just as if they were sitting around a campfire, so that they could go tell those stories to agents. But once they got it, they really got it – we were blown away by the power of their pitches, and apparently so were the agents, who made multiple requests for material.

It was so very enlightening to me to see how people who can write rings around me could be so clueless (and I say that with love…) about the next step in the publishing process.

So I guess my point is this. We are very lucky to have such phenomenal resources in the book world – conferences like Pen to Press and the Southern California Writers’ Conference (which I know is also a particularly good one for workshopping), and websites like Backspace where you can get instant and intensive feedback on query letters, synopses, first chapters – and online critique groups like Sisters in Crime’s celebrated Guppies. If you’re not published yet, or if you are but you have talented friends who don’t seem to be getting to the pro level, then please consider that you or your friends might have no idea to SELL what you or they write, and as much as you might think you know, a good professional workshop or online group could be the thing that breaks you through the concrete ceiling.

My PSA for the day.

(It is going to be 100 degrees in Raleigh today. Yike. Good thing I’m doing nothing but writing today, right?)

So can others recommend great workshops, sites, resources on selling, pitching, querying?

And I think it’s my month for the signed book giveaways, so if you’re looking for something spooky to take to the beach, all commenters are automatically eligible to win a signed hardcover of THE PRICE.

Where Do We Go From Here?

by J.T. Ellison

"Grandma, what’s this?" Our grandson, precocious and brilliant, hands me a hardcover copy of Lee Child’s NOTHING TO LOSE, published June 3, 2008. The pages are yellowing, the spine is cracked. The book is well-read.

"That’s what your granddaddy and I used to call a book, sweetheart," I say with a smile.

"A book? That’s not right. Books aren’t hard like this. This is so thick, and heavy. I like my way better."

His way. All-digital, no paper, no binding. Free for download — every "book" ever written at the touch of a button. The terabyte readers, the size of my thumb, are obsolete. Holographic images make reading more like watching a movie — a device the size of a hearing aid allows the brain to process the words into scenes which act themselves out before your eyes. There are no publishing houses. Everything is accessible online, and the online world is very different from what we had when I was writing books.

Sigh. Yes, I’ve done something I don’t normally do — look to the future to anticipate what might happen to our industry. This is obviously a sci-fi version of events (including the virtual grandson.) With the glut of blogs this week decrying Book Expo, Borders laying off 274 employees, Harper Collins announcing by Summer 2009 all of their sales catalog will be 100% electronic, the huge spike in book trailers, my own publisher, Mira, making every front-list title automatically available as e-books, agents using Kindles to plow through their submissions so they don’t have to lug manuscripts back and forth… I think we need to start facing facts.

The future of the book industry is happening, right now.

Book Expo was less well attended this year, understandable for three reasons — one, it’s damn expensive to travel now. Two, the American Library Association meeting is later this month in California as well — a big travel cost to expect the librarians to undertake. And three — the simple fact that so much of our work is done electronically, it’s not cost-effective for publishers to travel to trade shows. Thomas Nelson, always a major force at BEA, pulled out entirely. If you think of the cost of flying your entire sales staff across country, hotel and food costs, parties to be thrown, renting booth space, putting together a slick and user-friendly booth, having your booth staffed with sales folks and authors, oh, and let’s not forget — GIVING AWAY THOUSANDS OF BOOKS — you can imagine just how much that costs a publisher.

Has the trade show gone the way of the dinosaur? Is it obsolete? There’s certainly no lack of criticism, but I see that every year. I went to Book Expo last year, signed in my publisher’s booth, then spent hours wandering around, overwhelmed with the choices, watching sales folks take meetings with bookstore reps, collecting more free books than I could legitimately carry, and in general had a good time. But outside of handing free books to potential readers (who, remember, must PAY for the privilege of being handed said "free" book by registering for the conference) and holding meetings with booksellers, how effective is the trade show? What purpose does it serve, when in reality, the vast majority of connections are done electronically?

Back in the day when we didn’t have the Internet to access and meet our customers, the trade show was a vital aspect of business. I used to be a staffer at our trade shows for Lockheed Martin, and trust me, many, many deals were made, for billions of dollars. Companies were able to meet the people who were submitting proposals, shake hands and look into the eye of the guy you may be awarding a multi-million dollar contract to. That was very, very important. Now, will the faux-closeness of the Internet, we don’t need to worry about it. We can get to know someone very well through their online dealings. You don’t NEED to meet in person, video conferencing takes care of that.

When Harper Collins announced they were going all electronic, I wasn’t especially surprised. Think about it, most of our major organizations have e-newsletters available instead of mailing hard copies. Emails correspondence from several of my "places" have a tag line at the bottom reminding me not to print the email unless it’s absolutely necessary. The greening of our culture is definitely translating to the book industry. And you know there are more changes to follow. If our next President is of a certain ilk, he’s bound to address the environmental concerns with actual green legislation — it might become illegal waste paper, and then where will we be?

Don’t get me wrong — I did a whole blog about the importance of meeting your "people" face to face. I still believe that knowing your editor and agent is vital. That
meeting the upper management and sales staff of your house is very,
very helpful. But the old way of doing business is just that, the old way. You can have a full and successful career without ever leaving your house now. Scary, but true.

We hear admonishments that we need to embrace the new age, but really, haven’t we already started? Look at what happened here at Murderati this week — we as a "web log" AKA a "blog," were nominated for one of the most prestigious crime fiction awards. This is the first time the Anthony Awards have included a website category. Two years ago, blogging in the mystery community was relatively nascent, with only a few major blogs underway. Now there are thousands, and we tell new writers, "You must have a platform — a website or a blog — to get your name out there." It’s become de rigeur to have a blog.

And let’s take a hard look at what a blog is. Remember the great concept from Stephen King in ON WRITING, where he postulates that a writer and a reader are having a telepathic connection? Right now, we’re communication, you and I. You’re reading my words and getting a window into my mind. If you’ve been a reader for long enough, you’ve watched me grow from an unpublished newbie to an author with six books under contract. I’ve changed and grown over the past two years, right before your eyes. And this blog, the instant communication, let’s me do that. Pretty cool, you know?

We’re giving away the content, too. We don’t charge for you to come read our thoughts. We’re grateful that you care enough to stop by on a regular basis, to engage in the comments, to interact with us. Can you imagine if we’d had this kind of unprecedented access to authors one hundred years ago? Heck, five years ago?

This is another important point in this brave new world. Free content. We’re giving away writing tips, giving away marketing tips — seriously, a new writer can spend a day reading through our incredible archives and learn just about everything they need to know about getting published. When will it come to be that we’re giving our books away for free? I mean, let’s be real — my ebook sales aren’t going to be buying my Lamborghini Gallardo anytime soon, but they’re steadily rising as the Kindle becomes more and more popular. Look at Project Gutenberg. This is going to be the norm sooner than you think.

I’m lately come to text messaging and instant messaging — more because I find it a time suck than a value — but it’s the immediacy of communication that’s sweeping our culture. Heck, I don’t get a lot of email from friends anymore — we’re communicating on Facebook and Aim. I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into this new age, but as media/geek blogger Rex Hammock points out, no one under 24 emails anymore.

This is what we need to be paying attention to — the Echo Boomers (approx. aged 13-27) expect free digital content, easily accessible and downloadable to their portable phones. Can you imagine what their kids are going to expect?

Demand drives the consumer marketplace, and reaching consumers is our goal as writers. The word to pay attention to is instant. I’m not one to extol the virtues of instant gratification for the younger set — I still stick to the parochial belief that perhaps talking to a kid is better than just showing him a movie — but the market is trending younger, and the Echo Boomers will be making the decisions soon. A Gen Xer just took over Random House. The guy is my age, and he’s running one of the most storied publishing houses in history. I know that may sound really depressing, but for me, it’s terribly exciting. So there you go. Time, unfortunately, marches on.

As bad as I feel for the folks who had a hard time at BEA, I’m glad that everyone is starting to pay attention. Changes are sweeping through our industry, many of them for the better. Will the newer generations eradicate the physical book? Quite possibly. We never though vinyl would go the way of the dinosaur. So my earlier semi-joke about my virtual grandson reading through a mental holographic system? Maybe not so far fetched after all.

Sara Lloyd, from Pan Macmillan, published "A Book Publisher’s Manifesto for the 21st Century" in full this week, and it is an absolute must read for everyone, readers and writers alike.

So, go. Let me have it. Am I nuts?

Wine of the Week: 2006 Fuedo Arancio Nero D’Avola — Fruity and young, but tasty!

The Pardox of Choice

Life is a Highway

Though I do write a lot at home, much of the time I prefer to be out in public. Give me a crowded coffee shop and a table and I’m happy. Put that table near an outlet and you might have to get a court order to get me out.

I grab my cup of non-fat hot chocolate (yeah, I know…I’m deluding myself), fire up the iPod and laptop, and get writing. Somehow I get lost in the crowd. Everything around me disappears for a while.

There are times, though, when I hit a point where I need to reflect for a second, or even take a quick break. This is when my perch at the coffee shop becomes even more interesting…time for a little people watching.

There’s a table at this coffee shop I frequent (okay, it’s a Starbucks) where I’ve seen all sorts of things happen: people on a first date, people breaking up, odd sounding business proposals, an art student working on his portfolio, a couple going over the terms of their divorce, old friends talking about nothing. All this at the very same table.

But my favorite place for people watching is in Hollywood only about a 10 minute drive away. Yeah, it’s another Starbucks, but it is well positioned for the weird and wacky. It’s located at the corner of La Brea Avenue. and Sunset Boulevard. For those not from around L.A., that’s about two blocks south of Hollywood Boulevard. and maybe a ¼ mile from the Kodak theater where they hold the Academy Awards these days.

A window seat will get you ringside to Sunset Boulevard. It’s crazy. You’ll see street kids, families, working girls, police officers, regular L.A. types, wide-eyed tourists, women who didn’t start life as women, and backpacking Europeans. There are women and men dressed up for a night of clubbing, there are people who look like they’ve just rolled out of bed, and then there are the ones who dress weird.

A bus once pulled up and dropped off a load of sailors. Several ended up in Starbucks watching the weirdness outside. I overheard that they had just come in on a ship and this was their hour in Hollywood. The Chinese theater was only two blocks away on Hollywood Boulevard, but by then it was too late for them to walk up and check it out.

I once saw Death crossing La Brea. He was wearing a black robe and carrying a scythe. He didn’t seem to be too interested in anyone, so I guess that was good.

Sometimes they even come inside the coffee shop, too…well, Death didn’t. Guess he wasn’t thirsty.

I always get back to writing, though. But I love those visual interludes, love the spying on life. For me, it’s my ideal writing environment.

So what about you? What’s your ideal situation?

Who’s The Boss?

"Uhhhh…yeah, Dusty, we’re gonna need that rewrite by Monday, not next month. And if you could make the hero a Canadian Mountie with a talking cat, that would be great."

by J.D. Rhoades

Not long ago, I was having a discussion with another writer about hardbacks vs. paperback originals. My friend was of the opinion that unless you were first publishing in hardback, eventually readers would start to think of you as a "smaller" writer. They’d start wondering why their favorite writer wasn’t getting that shiny new hardback on the front table of the bookstore.

I had a different take on it. I told my friend that I really don’t think readers care very much if their favorite author’s new one was in paperback original or hardcover, and to the extent they do, they’d most likely prefer the cheaper format. However, I went on to say, reviewers care, and editors care, and they, in a sense, are our customers too.

Which led me to ponder a larger question: who are we actually working for? Those of us lucky enough to be writing full time refer to themselves as "self-employed." But is anyone, really? Don’t we all have someone we have to answer to to get our paychecks? In this profession of writing for pay, who really are our clients, or, to be more crass about it, who are our customers? Is it the publishers? The booksellers? The readers?

I recall when I was studying mass media back in college, a rather pompous professor asked the class, "when it comes to television, who are the consumers, and what is the product?" The answer seemed obvious to most of us. The product, we answered, was the programming, and the customer was the audience.

No, he informed us with a smirk. The customer, he asserted, is the advertiser. The audience is the product. The programming is merely a means to deliver the human product to the corporate customer. If that delivery fails, if the audience of consumers isn’t "shipped" to the advertisers in sufficient numbers, the advertisers look to another network, station, or what have you.

I thought at the time that was a pretty cynical and condescending way to look at the audience, but then I worked in local TV for a while and heard the higher ups talking about "delivering eyeballs" (yes, some of them did talk that way, at least in the 80’s) and I began to see that that really was the mindset.

This also may explain why I don’t watch a lot of TV.

But I wonder sometimes. Is that the way publishers see our role? In their eyes, are we there to deliver the product–the reader–to them? Are we working for them, or for the reader?

I’ve read some book-centric blogs in which the posters and commenters take the attitude that the writer is working for them. This is fine with me, because I really love readers. Hell, I AM a reader. But some of these bloggers, quite frankly, act as if writers are "the help," and woe betide the poor ink-stained wretch who acts a little uppity. On the whole, though, I’m comfortable with the idea that the reader is our true customer.

On the other hand, we first have to get the book published, and our editors are the first people we have to please. And sometimes our ideas of what the reader wants can be different. I’ve been lucky enough to have editors with whom the editorial process is a discussion, a give and take:

"We want you to try this,"
"Ah, no, that doesn’t work. But how about this?"
"Perfect!"

But I’ve also heard horror stories about editors whose attitude was "my way or the highway," much to the chagrin of the author, who has the stomach-knotting choice between giving in or trying to face down someone who can and will get the book canned.

And then there’s the question of marketing. I think it was Joe Konrath who explained that part of the point of one of his grueling self-funded book tours was that it impressed the publisher with how hard he was willing to work, so they put more of their own resources behind him.

So maybe we’re working for the publishers?

The problem with both of these answers–working for the reader to working for the publisher–is that it leads to endless second guessing. Will this scene work for the little old lady from Pasadena who doesn’t like it when characters, even bad guys, use the ‘F-Word"? How about my buddies who like the noir stuff? Will my editor like this one? What’s the marketing department going to do? And first, I’ve got to get my agent on board! Will he/she like it!? OMFG!

Keep that up for long, and you can end up like the centipede in the old poem, who, asked how she managed all those legs, started thinking so much about the process she could no longer move. After a while, having that imaginary crowd looking over your shoulder as you’re trying to write can drive you nuts. Or worse, it can make for bad, stilted writing.

So the only thing I can do is follow the age-old advice "write the book you’d like to read." In other words, as Rick Nelson once sang, "you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself."

Then pray.

So who’s YOUR boss?

(And since I mentioned paperbacks, this may be a good time to mention that the third Jack Keller novel, SAFE AND SOUND, came out in mass market paperback yesterday. If you haven’t gotten it yet, now’s a good time! Check http://www. booksense. com/ for an independent bookseller near you…
Or it’s at Barnes and Noble, Borders or Amazon .)

Stand by Me: How We Can Help Each Other

Pari Noskin Taichert

(Hi all,
In all the excitement of the nomination, I think we may have gotten our wires crossed about a guest blogger for today. Next Tues. will be Louise Ure and then Tess Gerritsen will alternate with her beginning on June 17.

For today, since I couldn’t find our guest’s post, I’m putting up an article I wrote during the first few months of Murderati’s existence. I think the underlying concepts still ring true.
I hope you enjoy it . . . pari )

A few years ago, I was presenting at a retreat sponsored by A Room of Her Own Foundation. Lisa Tucker, a novelist who’d just made a bundle on her first book, was the featured speaker. In an engaging, but absolutely adamant, way — she exhorted the writers there to buy each other’s books rather than always complaining about how little money they had.

Since then, I’ve thought often about her words. During the last two months in particular — I’ve been to three mystery conventions and the L.A. Times Festival of Books. At each event, I’ve met so many authors and seen so many old friends. There’s no way I could begin to buy all their works.

So, how do I put my money and actions where my mouth is? How do I support my fellow authors, my friends in this industry? How can I encourage new authors/writers? How to do all of this while still plugging away at my own craft and the marketing thereof?

I’m not sure where the balance tips into martyrdom or a lack of generosity. Though Lisa suggested buying books as a sign of support, I simply can’t do that as much as I’d like. Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to read everyone’s works — my life is far too scattered and too full to take hours for that pleasure right now . . . alas.

But I think it’s important to consider how we can tangibly help each other in this odd profession we’ve chosen.

Here are a few ways I’ve found to do it.

I hope some of you respond to this blog with the most satisfying methods you’ve found to support your fellow authors.

1. Post formal reviews and positive comments about someone else’s books on DorothyL, 4MA and other listservs. Do the same for review sites such as Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble etc.
Here, it’s important to be honest; I think readers of these electronic missives can smell backscratching as opposed to sincerity.

2. Cross-sell at joint booksignings. One of the most enjoyable hours I ever spent was at the LATFOB when THE CLOVIS INCIDENT first came out in ’04. I sat next to Laura Levine. We cross-sold each other’s books and had a blast. We also became fast friends that day.

3. Take your friends’ promo pieces to the conferences/conventions you attend. I try to do this as often as I can. Their bookmarks/postcards don’t weigh much and, hey, someone might find a new author to read.

4. Ask your library to carry the books of authors you care about. Though the Albuquerque Public Library system is wonderful, I often can’t find books by friends from smaller publishers — or who don’t have major name recognition.

4.a. Ask your favorite bookstore to carry the books of authors you care about. ‘Nuff said.

5. Offer marketing suggestions. Often we can’t see our own best asssets. A fresh pair of eyes might come up with a great idea that can help a friend get the word out. I’ve done this for other people and it’s been wonderful to see that click — the epiphany — when the idea is hot.

6. Talk-up authors you like. If you do, they might get invited to present at conventions/conferences/civic groups/signings. Your good word might land them an interview on television or radio. I do this frequently.
I know it’s tempting to save all our leads for ourselves, but it also feels marvelous to share. At the very least, tell other readers you know about works you enjoy.

7. Find ways to cross-promote. Celebrate friends’ successes. We’re doing it right here on this blog. It’s wonderful not to feel like you’re alone on the publishing path.

8. Show newer authors the ropes (if they want the info). I try to be accessible to newer authors. If they want the benefit of my meager experience, I’m glad to help them avoid the mistakes I’ve made — and gain from my smarter efforts.

9. Use your websites to promote others. Yep. This gets into link exchanges and that kind o’ thing. I think these are moderately useful. One problem, though, is that strangers ask you to link as well. Personally, I don’t do that. If I don’t know the author or his/her work, I won’t exchange links because it doesn’t feel honest to recommend someone in that way.
Related to this is posting on other authors’ blogs. It’s a good way to converse and help them attract more posters.

10. Commiserate. There are times when all another author needs is someone who understands and who can keep what’s said — or written in an email — confidential. I know this has been one of the biggest ways I’ve been able to support friends in the business. They’ve shown me the same kindness.

The ways I’ve found to support other authors abound. The ones I mention above are those that came to mind while writing this piece.

To me, it’s important to try to see beyond our own careers and to be positive citizens in our mystery community. If we do, we’ll strengthen our genre and create goodwill every step of the way.

Please, if you have other ideas about how we can support each other, post it here. We can all learn from your experience. I know I’m ready for more ideas.

cheers,

Pari

We’re honored

by Pari

Saturday Afternoon, May 31, 1:33 pm:
I’m trying to get one of my children dressed for a cello recital. I, of course, have just stepped out of the shower. It’s hot in Albuquerque. Our family is one of two in the entire city that still hasn’t turned on the air conditioning, so the front door is wide open. The doorbell rings. Wrapped in a curtain, I peek out of the window in my office and don’t recognize the car parked in the driveway. DON’T ANSWER IT! DON’TANSWERIT! I screech.

An adult calls my name, pronouncing it correctly which means the person knows me. I put on an oversized Tee, my hair still dripping.
"Do you have the invitation to Sean’s birthday party?" a parent of one of my kid’s friends asks.
"What birthday party?"
"The one tonight."
"Oh, crap."
We search and can’t find the invite. We call another parent who threw hers away last week.

(Did I mention that my husband is at work? Yes, he’s at work on a Saturday.)

Our uninvited guest begins to back out of the front door, horror on her face, as she registers the condition of our house. We plan to make pillows out of all the dog hair on the floors and I think we could feed several homeless people with the crud on our kitchen counters . . .

Welcome to my world.

With three minutes to spare before leaving the house at 1:42, I turn to the Inbox. This is usually a stupid impulse, akin to gambling at a casino or using that penny to scrape a Scratcher. Most of the time I DON’t win.

But every once in a while . . .

There it was: The note from John Purcell, the Anthony Chair, telling me that Murderati had been nominated for an Anthony Award for Best Mystery Website for 2007. We’re in astounding company:
* Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind — Sarah Weinman
* Rap sheet/January Magazine — J. Kingston Pierce
* Murderati — a Writer’s Blog
* Stop You’re Killing Me — Stan Ulrich & Lucinda Surber
* Crime Fiction Dossier — David Montgomery

Do you notice ours is the only one that doesn’t have a single name associated with it? We’re almost a democracy here.

More than two years ago when Naomi Hirahara and I spoke about starting a blog, I had no idea it would morph into this living creature that creates and nurtures community in the mystery world. I simply wanted the blog to be different, to offer fresh content daily and to provide real fodder for thought and discussion. I hoped it would help market our books ( and J.T.’s writing enough to get her first contract). We hit the ether publicly on April 3, 2006.

J.T. is the one to credit for the look of the site. She taught herself how to design the blog and did/does an astounding job. She’s the one to credit for the name, too, though we batted around some great ones (I was pushing for Murderama).

Blogging isn’t for everyone. It takes tremendous commitment and time. We worry when people don’t comment, when our numbers aren’t growing as fast as we’d like.

In two years, we’ve had 17 regular contributors (no particular order here).
Zoe Sharp Louise Ure Alex Sokoloff JT Ellison JD Rhoades Brett Battles (congrats on the Barry nomination!!!) Robert Gregory Browne Toni McGee Causey Michael Maclean Naomi Hirahara Simon Wood Ken Bruen (congrats for the Anthony nod for Best Paperback Original) Elaine Flinn Deni Dietz Jeffrey Cohen Paul Guyot et moi.

Yeah, that’s a lot. Believe me, it hasn’t always been easy. There have been flare-ups, ego conflicts, disagreements, emails flying back and forth, friendships threatened with dissolution. I’ve had to play Mama Bear when all I really wanted to do is run away screaming.

BUT
More often, there has been a wonderful camaraderie among the very different writers/personalities on this blog.

I think we’ve got something special here, a true and honest exchange. The crew we have now — including Tess Gerritsen who joins us on June 17 — gets along well. We’ve found our groove.

Thank you to everyone who nominated us. Thank you to everyone who visits this site.

We are truly honored.

P.S. I hadn’t planned on going to Bouchercon this year; my hubby is tired of all my travel. Now I’m trying to talk him into letting me fly out for a day or two. If anyone wants a tired New Mexican to sleep on her hotel room floor for a night, let me know. I want to bask in this joy.

oh, the things they don’t teach in school

by Toni McGee Causey

I broke my brain this week. So for lighter fare, here are

random observations on the little things that might save y’all
some trouble:

1) Nothing
good will ever come from someone saying, “Hey, I think this has gone bad. Taste
it and see.”

2) “I
couldn’t even do this if I was sober,” is probably not a great thing to say to an
officer.

a. Or
on your first date.

3) If
you have to check off, “Have been recently committed for mental instability” on
the form, they’re probably not going to let you buy the gun.

a. Unfortunately,
that’s not true of you asking, “Now which way do the bullets go?”

4) The
very toddler who rarely speaks to tell you when he needs to go to the restroom
will be the child who will shout at the top of his voice that, “MOMMY I HAVE TO
GO POOOPOOO NOW.”

a. While
in a department store.

b. During
Christmas rush.

c. When
you’ve finally made it to the cash register.

5) This
is the same child who’ll be mortified by your clothes when you go to his sporting
events.

a. You
will be tempted to wear the ugliest shirt known to man.

b. Go
for it.

6) The
likelihood of you hearing the words “Mom! I can’t find the snake!” is greatly
increased when you’re on the toilet.

7) “The
bridge is out” sign is probably not a suggestion.

8) The
person who tells you up front that he or she is an asshole is probably in the
best position to know. Listen.

9) Someone
is going to notice when you try to steal a pool table if you strap that sucker
to the top of your car.

10) Those
wacky IRS agents might take exception to you addressing your return to: Ha ha,
you bastards.

Okay, your turn: random observations of something dumb that people
do.

~*~

WINNER FROM LAST WEEK — Julie P. !!

Like last week, I put the names in a hat and
my neighbor chose. So Julie, please email me at toni [dot] causey [at]
gmail [dot] com with your
address and I’ll get your signed copies mailed out to you this week!

(A SEPARATE CONTEST running on my personal BLOG today — for a $15 B & N certificate, plus a "shuck me, suck me, eat me raw" t-shirt – through tomorrow, only. Check it out here.)

Guest blogger – Megan Abbott

While Alex is teaching at the Pen to Press Writers’ Retreat in New Orleans and then racing back to BEA today, Murderati is proud and thrilled to host the amazing Megan Abbott.

Megan Abbott has taught literature, writing and film at New York University and the State University of New York at Oswego. Born in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English Literature. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University in 2000, and in 2002 Palgrave Macmillan published her nonfiction study, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. She lives in New York City. Die a Little is her first novel and has been nominated for a 2006 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America and a 2006 Barry Award and Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

Her second novel, The Song Is You, arrived in bookstores in January 2007 and centers around a true-life missing persons case in 1940s Hollywood. Her third novel, Queenpin, came out in June 2007 and won the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.

———————————————————————————————————————

Megan Abbott

I’m a weekend writer. Well, that’s not entirely true. I write all week at my day job as a grantwriter at Union Settlement, a 113-year-old nonprofit agency in East Harlem. But the writing I do there is so different. It’s about constructing an argument. It’s about rationality, logic, supporting one’s argument. It comes from a completely different part of my brain than the fevery stuff that sometimes stutters onto the page during my weekend writing. I write in an entirely different voice and a different part of my head gets activated at work. All week I write about the need for more after-school programs or senior nutrition services in Spanish Harlem. And on the weekend, I write about 1950s Hollywood, or after-hours gambling clubs or b-girls in trouble. Mostly, it’s a split life, the life of so many novelists I know who, in the daylight hours, write as lawyers, journalists, professors, etc. and, vampire-like, transform when they turn on their home computer every evening.

The common ground, I guess, is that most kinds of writing are about persuasion. Trying to stir up the reader. Follow me down this dark alley. Give our agency money. Kind of the same thing. This week, I had a moment when I realized how fundamental that connection is, the foundation of maybe all writing, even the writing we only write for our own eyes (don’t we, in our diaries, try to persuade ourselves of things?).

Each year, our Adult Education Program holds a student reading at the 92nd Street Y. In a beautifully restored auditorium, our literacy, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), GED and Citizenship students fill the space and take turns at the microphone. Students from Mexico, Colombia, Yemen, Morocco, Senegal. There’s the 52-year-old New York native with five daughters who decided to finally get that GED. There’s the group of women who speak three languages but can read or write in none of them, having never been permitted to go to school in their native country. The cabbie who writes lovely poems about his childhood home in Chile. It’s a little bit of memoir, a little personal essay, a lot of warm gratitude between teachers and students. It’s always a poignant experience for everyone involved.

This year, it just hit me more. Among the many students who took his turn at the microphone was an older man, very dignified, from Uruguay. He read a short piece of his own, in tones so delicate, about his family coming together for his beloved sister’s funeral in his hometown. “She was so beautiful,” he read (and I paraphrase), “hair so black and eyes deepest blue. The most beautiful of all my sisters. And I loved her. We all looked at her, we looked together. Looked at the black hair and those bluest of all eyes. The most beloved of all of us.”

His pronunciation was so unusual, the way the words moved in his mouth, the way he cradled them, speaking so movingly. It felt like he was tucking the whole audience under long robes. I guess I was only half-surprised when the Program Director leaned across and whispered to me excitedly, “He’s an undercover priest!” She went on to tell me he was a priest in Uruguay and speaks several languages and of course knows Latin but had never before written in English. “He’s been waiting for this,” she said. “In class, everyone always wants him to read.” He carried the whole audience with him, and it was not just the content or the melodic quality of his voice. The writing itself was so delicate, musical, with artful repetitions that, like a good sermon or a perfect poem, engage you in the writing, make you feel a part of it, make you feel connected. I was envious and mesmerized.

It all reminded me of another work event, a year ago. Novelist Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections) visited our students. He read a piece about his own awkward adolescence, about the way he used to escape into books and into his own first attempts at writing. During the Q&A, the eight- or nine-year-old son of a student rose to ask, “When you write, do you feel powerful?” Franzen laughed admiringly, paused, then said, with all gravity, “Sometimes.”

Thanks so much for having me!