New York, Yew Nork, You Gotta Choose One

by J.D. Rhoades

Yeah, New York…

It was an
adult portion. It was an adult dose. So it took a couple of trips to get into
it. You just go in the first time and you get your ass kicked and you take off.
As soon as it heals up, you come back and you try it again. Eventually, you
fall right in love with it.

-Levon Helm, The Last
Waltz

Well, maybe I’m just lucky. Or I’m a fast learner, although
there are quite a few people, including my wife, who’d dispute that. But I did
not get my ass kicked by New York at Thrillerfest. Nor did I fall right in love with it. What it was more like
was a really awesome first date, and you know you’re going to call for another
one, but there’s a little hesitation because this girl is different from anyone you’ve dated before.

I’ve been to a number of cities promoting my books: Boston, Chicago, Houston, Omaha, even Boise, and they’ve all
surprised me each in their own way. I’d
never made it to New York,
though. Odd, because that’s where my agent and publisher are. But I confess, I
had engaged in a bit of snobbery regarding the Big Apple. I tended to roll my
eyes whenever someone started waxing lyrical about the place (See “City, Sex in
the”). Oh, please, I thought. It’s too
crowded. It’s dirty. It’s hellishly expensive, and the people are all jerks.

Well, yes. But then again, no. Crowded? Yep. Expensive? Oh
God, yes. Dirty? Well, I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to walking past
garbage bags stacked higher than my head in a pile that runs for twenty
feet down the sidewalk, a sight which I saw many times. But other than that, the place was clean
enough. I’ve seen worse in South Carolina. And the people were very cool, beginning with the guy at the airport
who stopped ranting about his late ride long enough to chat about his
restaurant in Long Island, right through to the people who didn’t bat an eye
when a crowd of laughing lunatics took over half of their tiny karaoke bar at 2
o’clock in the morning.

Plus, there’s
something about the place that sucks you in, that draws you out into the street
to see what’s going on. And there’s
always something going on. I spent a goodly portion of the trip just "gone
walkabout," ambling through the streets, from the historic Flatiron Building to
the Empire State, to the Temple of the Book (aka the amazing New York Public
Library) to the capital of deliriously tacky sensory overload, namely Times
Square. And that wasn’t half of the stuff I wanted to see.

And let me tell you…if I wasn’t careful, I could
ruin my health in New York in pretty short order. City that doesn’t sleep? It barely slows down. We’re
talking maybe eight hours of sleep total over three days.

So yeah. An adult portion indeed. (And thanks to Chris
Everheart for the quote). I’ll definitely be back. Because the last time I had
a first date that awesome, I married her.

So, Murderati, Hellions, Thrillerfest Attendees, Friends,
Romans, countrymen…what’s your take on the Big Apple?

The Happy Post

By Ken Bruen

I did promise a happy post and by god, this is it ……….. so get ready

I’ve just returned from LA ………… great line that ….. as if I kinda hopped over there every week

I know you believe that

Long flight, eleven hours and change and that’s from Dublin, I’d already flown from Galway in the wee hours but ………. ok, this is a happy post and there will be no bad vibes

Finally get through all the security and immigration, take me seat and the woman sitting next to me, gives me the look

“Uh oh”

She goes

“I asked for the aisle seat”

She’s in the window, as if you haven’t guessed, and I offer her my seat, the obviously coveted aisle job and she goes

“And have you resenting me for 11 hours ………… no thank you Mister.”

We didn’t talk a whole lot after that save when they didn’t bring her Vegetarian meal and I wisely keep me mouth shut, let the airline deal with it

The devil is in me to tell her……….it’s AIRLINE FOOD……….it all tastes the same, and when people tell me they reserved their special meal three months before, I’m going to fess up and say

“Jesus wept”

I watch Zodiac purely for Robert Downey Jnr………..God, what a talent

Here’s the really happy bit………..we get to LAX………….my veggie friend doesn’t say goodbye or such but you know, fookit

A limo waiting……………is there a writer on God’s earth doesn’t want to arrive in LA and have a stretch limo waiting…………….just once

I’m both delighted and mortified, I ask the driver if I can sit up front and he gives me the look

The back it is

I try to sneak in, I know it’s LA……like anyone gives a toss

I’m staying in Beverly Hills and yes, for me……….add Hillbilly

Huge room with a balcony

I’m but a bad book review from Rodeo Drive

First night, I go to a party in Laurel Canyon and no shite but everybody is

Scriptwriter

Actor

Director

Nobody is a mere book writer

And everybody is gorgeous……….honest to God, I dunno if it’s all NIP AND TUCK or

whatever but Jesus, it worked

A stunning young girl tells me

“I just like, love your accent.”

See, looks aren’t everything

Next day

I meet with Brad, the producer for Blitz. I’ve waited a lot of years to use that sentence.

We have lunch outside on Sunset Boulevard and my jaw drops every few minutes as some star strolls by. I have shades on…….see, I’d gone Hollywood in 24 hours and speaking of……..Keifer stops by as Brad cast him in Freeway, I’m introduced and cool, I say

“Good to see you.”

Fook, did I really say that

Alas

Brad produced Monster and I’ve a million things to ask about that but I pick up the menu, ask

“What’s good here?”

I so badly want to name drop others who stopped by but how awful would that be

Skip to the chase and the show, we tape at 4.30 and it’s all done and wrapped in jig time,

I can’t get me head around the fact I’m wearing a tie

I did remove the shades

Briefly

In the car, am……….limo…….after, I try to recall a single word I said and all I can remember is Craig Ferguson giving me a hug

Saturday, we hit the bookshops and the Independents as usual are just so welcoming and friendly

I’m signing books and realize, I love this, this is the icing on the cake

Sunday, drove up the Pacific Coast Highway and for once, I’m lost for words, I briefly wonder what it would be like to live here, would I produce work full of sunshine and light

I doubt it

But the wind and the rain and the dark, it’s what I know, it never once occurred to me to ask

“Do you like it?”

It’s my terrain

All too soon, I’m back on a plane, aisle seat of course and guess what’s showing

Zodiac

I watch the completely hilarious Will Ferrell’s “Blades of Glory”

I’m laughing out loud and this might be the nearest to happy I get

I’m not complaining

Back in Dublin, you guessed it, it’s raining and cold and what the hell, I slip my shades on, live the dream another little while

K.B.

Jock_Hutchinson

Dear Murderati readers:

I am so pleased to have Michelle Gagnon as my guest today. If you haven’t had a chance to meet this engaging new author, I suggest stopping by one of her signings or making a special trip to a conference where she’s appearing. Not only is her work magnificent, her enthusiasm and energy is like a double shot of espresso injected directly into a vein. Michelle is a fellow Mira author, one of the new breed of young thriller writers that make up this year’s list. Her debut, THE TUNNELS, is available now. Without further ado, may I present… Michelle Gagnon!

MISADVENTURES OF A DRIVE-BY SIGNER

MY KINGDOM FOR A GPS

“What
are you doing?”

“Signing.”
I said, raising my pen from the title page.

The
clerk yanked the book away from me, incensed. “Is this a store copy? You’re,
like, going to have to buy this now, you know.”

I
tried not to get defensive, maintaining a sweet tone as I answered, “But I
wrote it. I already have a copy. Several, in fact.”

It was my fifth bookstore of the
day, and in all fairness to the young man standing before me, I probably should
have waited before whipping out my pen. But I was fried. Navigating through a
sea of Massachusetts drivers in ninety degree heat had shot my nerves, and
honestly, not a single store out of the twenty-odd ones I’d visited so far had
said No thank you, we don’t want you to
sign your book. Initially, in fact, it was an extremely pleasant experience.
I got a glimpse of life if not as an A-list, then certainly a C- or D-list
celebrity, the temporary queen of whichever mall I happened to be standing in.
Particularly in my home state, Rhode Island, I was almost always the first
author any of the staff had ever met in person. Some of them bought my book on
the spot so that I could personalize it for them, which was tremendously
validating.

But here, in a suburb of Boston
that shall remain nameless, I was forced by a surly teenager to shell out seven
bucks for my own “defaced” book , then slink back to my sweltering car under
the watchful eyes of mall security.

So goes the “Drive-by Signing
Tour.” It sounds far more glamorous than it is, the words “drive-by” adding a
hint of danger to an otherwise mundane experience. On a drive-by signing tour
you hit as many bookstores as possible in one day, signing every copy of your
book in range. Feeling inspired by J.A. Konrath’s marketing tips blog (which is
chock full of good advice,) I outlined a fairly ambitious schedule for myself.
On the East Coast, I’d hit all the bookstores in Manhattan and Rhode Island, and
as many as possible in Boston and its environs. Then once I returned to
California, I’d divide a regional map into sectors, and would target a sector a
day until I’d covered a swath of several hundred miles in each direction.
Sounds easy, right?

I’m just over three weeks in, and
I’m losing my mind. There were a few things I never factored into my
calculations:

Thing 1: I
have absolutely no sense of direction. Seriously, it’s embarrassing. I get
hopelessly lost in cities I’ve lived in for years. When I read the story of
that poor family that turned down the wrong road in Oregon and almost all
perished, I decided to never, ever drive in Oregon, because if I could manage
to get lost on a weekly basis in Manhattan (the upper section, where it’s a
grid—I don’t honestly know how anyone finds their way around lower Manhattan),
I’m a goner in anything approaching wilderness. The last time I went camping, I
took a wrong turn out of the restroom twenty feet from my tent, wandered off
into the woods, and had to be rescued by park rangers. Sad, but true. So you
can imagine how well I’m doing now, driving all over god’s green earth trying
to find a bookstore in a haystack. Even with the GPS system we borrowed from a
friend to navigate around Boston, my husband and I got lost and ended up in South
Boston when we meant to go downtown. And I’m not talking about the Good-Will-Hunting-blue-collar-South
Boston, either; this South Boston was far more reminiscent of Boyz in the Hood, with angry looking
young men glaring from porches as we drove past, windows rolled up, my husband
gritting his teeth as he said, “God Damn it, I told you we should have brought
a map.”

Thing 2:
J.A. Konrath apparently hits something like a hundred stores a day. I might be
exaggerating that number slightly, but seriously, the man must be a machine.
The most I ever managed was eight, and that’s counting the one where I was
forced to slink away. Lately I’ve limited myself to a far more manageable three
or four stores a day. It means I’ve had to scale back my plans considerably,
but I’ve become convinced it’s worth it to salvage my remaining shreds of
sanity. Because here’s how the day generally goes:

After a
considerable amount of driving, terrifying/angering those sharing the road with
me while I berate the gods of Yahoo and Google Maps, who snidely tell you to
“proceed from the parking lot 3.5 miles toward Avenue X” without giving you any
clear indication of whether you should take a right or a left out of said
parking lot, (Seriously, has anyone else tried to use these directions? Half
the time you’re sent 3 miles out of the way, and you realize in the end all you
had to do was take a right and drive 100 yards. Maddening…) I arrive at the
store. The next goal is to find every copy of my book, which also sounds much,
much easier than it is in actuality. At one store I had four staff members
searching high and low for forty minutes before ten copies were found in the
Cooking Section. Another time I found them filed under “M,” as in “Michelle,”
apparently because someone decided they’d be just as easy to locate under my
first name as my last. Once I’ve found the books, which can take anywhere from
five minutes to an hour, I bring the copies to the information desk if there is
one, or to the register is it isn’t.

Then begins the exciting game I like to
refer to as, “Find the ‘autographed copy’ stickers.” This involves an
increasingly irritated staff member digging through bales of stickers ten deep,
so many stickers that you wonder why they’re not smothering the covers of ever
book in the store. Attempts to offer my own stickers are generally summarily
rejected. After the books are signed and stickered, I offer to replace them in
the shelves…if I’m lucky, they say yes, and then I proceed to re-stock them in
more visible locations throughout the store. And then it’s back on the road, where
I dig through a sea of shredded power bar wrappers, muttering angrily that Lee
Child probably doesn’t have to go through this, before giving up and tearing
across three lanes of traffic to the Taco Bell drive-thru.

Yes, it’s glamorous indeed.
The next time you happen to notice a “Autographed Copy” sticker gracing the
cover of a book on a shelf, take a moment to pause and reflect on how that
signature arrived there, and feel a moment of compassion for the crazed writer
who at that very moment is probably weaving away from an 18 wheeler, clenching
a crushed map over the steering wheel, praying for a GPS system to materialize
on her dashboard.

———————————–

After graduating with honors from Wesleyan University, Michelle
Gagnon spent five years performing as a modern dancer, modeling,
tending bar, working in a Russian supper club, and walking dogs in
Manhattan. Lured to the West Coast by the promise of halcyon days, she
composed web content during the fleeting dotcom boom. In the aftermath
she survived by founding Infinity Personal Training, specializing in
prenatal and postpartum exercise. She also found a niche writing
health, lifestyle, and travel articles for a variety of publications
such as Glamour, CondeNast Traveler, San Francisco Magazine, and Yoga
Journal.

Michelle is a member of Sisters In Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers.

Bones

by Pari Noskin Taichert

I spent most of my elementary school education in the cloak room — a dark space at the back of the classroom — where free thinkers and rule mockers sulked until the final bell jangled each day. That, combined with ditching two weeks in fifth grade, landed me in a private school located in the middle of nowhere.

Actually, it was Albuquerque’s north side. But in 1969, especially for a hostile 11-year-old kid, it could have been Mars — without the possibility of water. (If anyone has seen or read HOLES, think Camp Green Lake.)

Set on ungenerous, dusty land, where tumbleweeds grew and cacti pricked, Sandia School was my version of hell. When the winds came up, grit coated our teeth — no matter how tightly we clamped our lips together. Playing field hockey (remember that, girls?) on the patchy grass usually netted more thorns in our white bobby socks than goals through the holey nets.

Sandia School also stank because it admitted only girls. The student body was so small that people noticed when I didn’t show up for class. And, the teachers made me work. Damn them!

Unwilling to succumb to these horrors without a fight, I’d hang out with another rabble rouser during free periods. Our preferred locations for rebellion were an underused bathroom where we could smoke, um, something . . . and at the edges of the undeveloped, and prohibited, acreage surrounding the school. There, we’d find the most amazing things. Turning over trash and complaining about how miserable EVERYONE ELSE was making us, we discovered a true desert centipede that was orange and about four inches long. We spotted coiled bullsnakes, round and plump horney toads, too many lizards to count, stink bugs with their butts pointed skyward, and, once, a $5 bill.

After a particularly irritating class my first fall at the school, my friend and I sought the refuge of our open space haven. Near a chain link fence — one we felt was designed to imprison us forever — a white stick caught our attention. We searched further and discovered another, curvy with holes, and then, yet another, as straight as an ice pick. Sun-bleached clean, these treasures reminded us of the fake skeleton that hung in our science lab, but we both surmised that our finds came from a cow or other wild animal; we’d seen carcasses out there before.

Still, we couldn’t keep our glee to ourselves. This booty deserved a wider audience. Though knowing we’d get into trouble, we brought the bones back to our favorite — or least detested — teacher.

Mrs. Gustafson, the 6th grade science maven, took one look at them. Her pink, cherubic face blanched. "Where did you find these?"

Shuffle. Shift foot-to-foot. Look at that crack in the floor . . . study it. "On the field."

"Where, exactly?" she said, taking our hands and leading us to the headmaster’s office.

That was it. We were going to be expelled. Our parents would kill us. Our bright futures would be snuffed out right there. It just went to show that NO ONE over 15 could be trusted.

Instead, the headmaster picked up the telephone and called the police.

Great. We’d be arrested.

Not quite.

During the next few hours, we got to skip all kinds of annoying classes. A wonderful reward. We spoke to uniformed officers and anthropologists from the University of New Mexico. I had more excitement educationally than I’d ever experienced before that day. In light of Louise’s beautiful post last Tuesday, this week I went back emotionally to that moment, the realization that these bones had been a person, to see what I felt. No nobility of spirit there. I wish I could say that those bones inspired me to become a mystery writer, but it’d be a stretch. Frankly, at 11, it just seemed incredibly cool–a Nancy Drew moment of sheer luck and adventure.

Hummm. On second thought, it may have influenced me more than I realize . . .

It turned out that the femur, pelvic bone, and humerus were from a female Pueblo Indian who’d died about 100 years before. Apparently a small portion of my school’s property unintentionally had been built on a burial ground.

Fast forward more than 30 years. In an odd twist of fate, one of my children will be attending a local private school here this fall. For this kid, it’s a joyous and wonderful proposition. Unlike Mommy-dearest, this child loves academics, lives for homework and thinks teachers are gods incarnate.

Guess what? An ancient pueblo was discovered on the new school’s land this year. My child will have the experience of working on a real archeological site. That just astounds me.

I often contend that New Mexico is wondrous and that being raised here is part of the reason I’ve chosen this literary path. When you live in a place where human influence is dwarfed by untouched land, where ancient history abuts contemporary life, where daily you’re astonished by the natural world . . . sensing mystery in each moment becomes a way of life.

How to Piss Off a Fan

Mike MacLean

I zombie-walked through Wal-Mart Friday afternoon, pushing a baby carriage and looking for a deal on formula. No, I’m not proud of it. I know Wal-Mart is the evil empire. But when you have a little one and your wife is going back to school, you’ve got to save a few bucks. That’s right, I sold my soul for low, low everyday prices.

Little Chloe started crying, prompting my wife to give me a worried look. "Don’t worry," I told her. "This is Wal-Mart. If you can’t bring a crying baby here, where can you bring one? In fact, the other customers look at you funny if you DON’T have a crying baby."

But I digress.

Among all the cheap crap I don’t need, I spotted a movie on the DVD rack. Not just any movie, but a movie that haunts my dreams. A movie that answers the question, "How can I piss off a fan?"

X-Men: The Last Stand.

If you’ve read my posts you might know by now that I’m a comic book nerd. And while I haven’t read the X-Men in almost 10 years, the mutants still hold a special place in my heart. They are the heroes of my childhood.

If I divorce myself from the comic book, the third installment of the X-Men films wasn’t bad. It’s a summer, popcorn movie that delivers decent action sequences, cheesy one-liners, and cool special effects. Though bloated as sequels tend to be, the film brims with conflict, and even makes a social statement or two between super-powered beat downs. So as a casual viewer, I dug it.

But as a fan, X-Men: The Last Stand left me feeling… pissed on.

It’s not that director Bryan Singer’s first two X-Men movies were perfect recreations of the mutant myths. He and screenwriter David Hayter played fast and loose with a few of the characters and with the comic’s chronology. But while they deviated, they always gave the impression that they respected the story and the story’s fans. I didn’t get the same feeling about director Brett Ratner and the other creators of Last Stand.

The most glaring disregard for the comic nerds everywhere was the treatment of Cyclops.

(A quick spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen it).

I could’ve forgiven the filmmakers for murdering this character if it was done in dramatic fashion. But instead, they reduced him to little more than a minor plot-point, a Star Trek red shirt if you will.

Wait. Don’t roll your eyes at me.

What you don’t understand is that Cyclops is a major character in the Marvel Comics world, one that has been around for more than 40 years. Imagine one of your favorite mystery sidekicks being knocked-off like that with barely a word mentioned about his death.

Now, I understand and respect artists who take chances. If you always second-guess yourself wondering what others will think, you won’t create anything worth a crap. When dealing with long beloved characters, however, you should tread lightly. This holds true even when the characters are of your own creation.

What if Dave Robicheaux and his best bud Clete Purcel physically expressed their love for one another in a drunken night of passion?

What if Jack Reacher, having an epiphany, decided to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence?

What if Harry Potter got strung out on meth and ended up living in a ramshackle trailer with some muggle prostitute?

What if… You get the picture.

Which brings me to the part of the post where I ask questions.

I’ve been given the advice that you can’t write for an audience, you must first write for yourself–write what pleases you. But does this hold true for authors who’ve created popular series characters? Do these writers give up some of their ownership of the characters to the fans who have supported them for years?

Madwomen

NAOMI HIRAHARA

I had a nice and proper post all ready for today, the day that many are dancing away at ThrillerFest. It was about my attempt to lengthen a short story into a novel, with all sorts of references and tips. But then something got in the way. Dorothy Hughes.

I had heard about Hughes from Denise Hamilton, whose upcoming standalone is set in the post-World War II era. She told me how Hughes’ IN A LONELY PLACE, published in 1947, holds up so well over time. She was absolutely right. I picked up IN A LONELY PLACE earlier this week and I devoured it in huge delicious bites. (Who needs chocolate cake when you have good books!)

It has a pulp fiction plot with a subtle yet mesmerizing sociopathic voice. The lead character is Dix Steele, an educated drifter, a former serviceman who makes his way to Southern California. IN A LONELY PLACE, which was very loosely adapted into a movie starring Humphery Bogart and Gloria Grahame, was apparently one of the earlier works of psychological noir in the 20th century, predating Jim Thompson and others.

Then I discovered that this reprint of IN A LONELY PLACE is part of a Femme Fatales series published by Feminist Press. I can’t wait to get my hands on GIRLS IN 3-B by Valerie Taylor, and BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING by Evelyn Piper. Take a look at the titles, covers and descriptions of the books in the series and you might get hooked as well.

I haven’t felt this excited about discovering voices from the past since I stumbled across TO LIVE AND TO WRITE: SELECTIONS BY JAPANESE WOMEN WRITERS 1913-1938, edited by Yukiko Tanaka. Although I knew that Japanese women, both past and present, could not be classified as exotic geisha, I was still surprised by the raw and political nature of these stories. Nothing seemed taboo—adultery, female sexual domination, Marxism. Many of the writers were either active anarchists or communists. They created a Bluestocking Journal (Seito-sha) way back in 1911 (!) to tackle various feminist issues. (As an interesting aside, I just learned that 11 Edgar Allan Poe stories were translated in the first and second volumes of the Bluestocking Journal. A scholar, Tamaki Horie, explains that these translations “show the enthusiasm of the women who got together for the journal to seek freedom.” Poe and women’s liberation—who would have thunk it?)

CAPTION Noe Ito, who was the last editor of the Bluestocking Journal. She, her lover, and her lover’s 6-year-old nephew were arrested for anarchism, beaten to death and thrown in a well by military police in 1923. Called the Amakasu Incident, the killings sparked outrage in Japan and was the basis of a movie, “Eros Plus Massacre” [1969].

These works, both the Feminist Press series and the Bluestocking stories, have all caused me rethink of how we often depict “The Past” with “That 70’s Show” external gloss. Yes, the hairstyles and clothing are right, but how about the rest? For instance, were all the American women in the Fifties as passive, restrained and compliant as is popularly depicted in our present-day interpretation of that time period? Or was something a little more subversive going on?

The writings also highlight that creativity abounded among these women authors, but at a cost. Sometimes the work could not be sustained because of domestic demands. (At the height of her career, Dorothy Hughes had to abandon novel writing to help care for her grandchildren and sick mother. She developed an impressive body of critical reviews and biographical books and was honored as an MWA Grand Master.)

This past week I got together with three other high school girlfriends for our annual get-together. As the night progressed, we became more honest about the struggles in our lives. As I walked home, I thought that while we’ve all had fruitful careers that our female predecessors could have only dreamed of, the balancing of the domestic life with the “outside” life still remains very tenuous.

Dorothy Hughes and the contributors to the Bluestockings Journal are reminders that women of different times and places managed to be vibrant, active and sometimes even wild despite the repressive confines of the society they lived in. They were all madwomen in specific ways, and I’m absolutely mad about them.

Who Reads This Stuff Anyway?

I read lots of different books. Some even have words in them instead of pictures. That Clifford. What will that big red dog get mixed up in next?

So it’s easy to see what I like by looking at my bookshelves, but I can’t see what you like. More importantly, I can’t see if you like me—and if you do like me, where I fit in your literary rainbow. Now I sort of can, thanks to Amazon.com. Yes, I know, don’t all groan at once. Amazon has started listing all the titles bought by other people who buy a particular book. This is obviously a marketing move to prompt people to buy books, but for me, this is a way to identify my reader(s).

I’m a bit of a fan boy, so I hope the people buying my books are buying books by people I either know or admire. This is where guilt by association is a good thing. I’m hoping that I’m rubbing shoulders with some neat books or authors. It does wonders for my fragile ego.

So when it comes to Amazon, who are my peeps and who are my peers? Let’s have a look…

Well, me. People who bought Accidents Waiting to Happen also bought Working Stiffs. Nice. Repeat readers. Phew! The publisher will be pleased. But who else? Wow, I’m certainly among the hardboiled gang. I’m not seeing much in the way of cozy readers. Hmm, that’s unfortunate. I think they’d like me. I’m dark, but I’m not that dark. A number of the Hard Case Crime titles make the list. Good, I like their stuff. I’m among friends I admire. There are books by Sean Doolittle and Tim Maleeny. It’s nice to be among friends. There’s a dash of romantic suspense in the form of JoAnn Ross, not to mention a touch of the cosmopolitan in the form of Andrea Camilleri. There’s a little bit of humor in the form of Janet Evanovich and Troy Cook. Ooh, look at that. I’m in some prestigious company in the form of Lee Child, Michael Connelly, James Patterson, Joseph Finder, James W. Hall, Greg Olsen, Randy Wayne White, and Michael Chabon. Let’s hope some of their good fortune rubs off on me. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes. There’s Peter Abrahams. A friend gave me a book of his a little while ago and told me to read it as we have similar storytelling styles. People’s buying tastes aren’t geographically challenged. The books bought bounce all over the US and the globe. We’ve got Craig Johnson whose stories stake place in Wyoming, Christine Kling with her Florida-set tales and David Corbett who whisks the reader off to Latin America. But here’s the part I’ve been looking forward to. It’s fan boy time. I’m happy to say that people who bought me have bought Lawrence Block, Ian Rankin, Reginald Hill, Robert Crais, Jeffery Deaver, David Goodis, and Dean Koontz. These people sit at the back of my mind telling me how to tell stories. I don’t talk to myself without them there, ever present. I think I’ve just grown an inch in height. I’m clocking in at 5’-5” right now…

So from all this data, who is my ideal reader? From the above, I’d say it’s someone with a hardboiled heart and a little bit of a traveler’s soul, who isn’t apposed to bit of romance or a joke and likes a big book from someone who knows how to tell a story. Oh, and yes, they might have a small affection for someone called Simon… J

Yours on the shelf,
Simon Wood

A Man With a Gun

by Robert Gregory Browne

I was talking to a friend recently who loves language, writes
poetry and short stories and wants very much to be a novelist. She has,
in fact, started a novel, but somewhere around the middle point she
ground to a halt.

“I’m stuck,” she told me.

Welcome to the wonderful world of writing, I almost said. Instead, I
gave her the advice that I’ve often heard attributed to Raymond
Chandler:

When you’re stuck, bring in a man with a gun.

Now, since Chandler wrote mysteries featuring private eye Philip Marlowe (the most brilliant of which is The Long Goodbye),
he was probably literally suggesting that you bring in a man with a
gun. But Chandler was a smart guy and an incredible talent, so I have a
feeling he also meant much more than that.

Your Man with a Gun doesn’t necessarily have to be armed
and dangerous. If we think figuratively, he can be anything, from a
plot point to a sudden change in weather. The point is to bring in some
new element — possibly from left field — something unexpected that gets
the story rolling again and, more importantly, gets your creative
juices flowing.

Several months ago, as I was working on my new book, I found I’d gotten stuck as well, and was desperately searching for my own Man
with a Gun. It took me awhile to remember a particular plot point that
I had thought up before I even started writing the book, but once I
did, the story once again blossomed and I was on the move.

The notes for my own Man with a Gun read something like this:

Bag of clothes
Meeting of Brass
Blackburn reassigned
Carrots

Now, I know, none of these sound even remotely like a man with a gun
but, trust me, for the purposes of my story they were. These four things collectively created a plot point that propelled me forward,
probably for a good thirty pages or so.

THE WHAMMY CHART

In Hollywood, there’s a producer named Larry Gordon who supposedly
created (and I have no real verification of this) what’s known as a
Whammy Chart.

The idea of a Whammy Chart is that about every ten
minutes or so in an action movie, you need a Whammy event. Something
big happening that shifts the story and keeps the audience
interested. It could be an action beat, a sex beat, a relationship beat
— whatever. Just something that kicks up the stakes and keeps things
moving.

Some laugh at the Whammy Chart, calling it ridiculously formulaic — and they’re probably right. But in terms of keeping things moving — at least in the plotting stages — I think it’s a pretty good idea.

Of course, in novels, those ten minutes would likely translate to forty or fifty pages, but you get the drift. And we’re just talking ballpark.

Every novel, every story is
different, but I think it’s important to continually keep things
hopping, moving forward, progressing toward the hero’s goal. Give your
readers unexpected twists.

Or you may want to finally fulfill a
promise you’ve made in your earlier pages and give them an event
they’ve been anticipating or dreading, like the death of a character or
that first kiss in a budding relationship.

The real beauty of the Man with a Gun/Whammy Chart idea is that it helps
you keep from getting stuck. Even if you don’t specifically plot out
what those Whammy events are, when you do get stuck, you know it’s time for one.

It certainly works for me.

Raymond Chandler and Larry Gordon. Very smart guys.

But there are a lot of smart people here on Murderati, as well. What do you do when you’re hopelessly stuck?

Christians And Anxiety Attacks

by Alex

No, I don’t mean THAT secret – the one that you would never ever in a million years spill on a public blog. That one I’ll buy you a few drinks sometime and try to get it out of you that way.

But I was thinking about this as I’m realizing after JT’s post that Thrillerfest is THIS week, good grief, and am now frantically trying to remember the things that I need to do to get ready for this conference, at which I will be performing in the Killer Thriller Band with a dozen other authors who also happen to be outstanding musicians and singers.

Which really isn’t all that surprising. Very few authors just write.

I know authors who are doctors (F. Paul Wilson, Michael Palmer, Tess Gerritsen, Phil Hawley), musicians (John Lescroart, Tess Gerritsen, Michael Palmer, Blake Crouch, Scott Nicholson, David Morrell, Ridley Pearson), martial artists (Pari Noskin Taichert, Barry Eisler), dancers (Pari again, Heather Graham, Harley Jane Kozak, Toni Causey) and even debutantes. 😉

We’ve all had a bunch of professions. We all seem to have any number of surprising talents. I don’t know if that’s a balance to writing, or part of the basic training of a writing career, or simple financial necessity – or if in fact it’s true of every human being – that every single one of us has surprising hobbies and talents.

This is obviously a useful character exercise for authors: to ask yourself what avocations and secret pleasures each of your characters has – to design these revealing characteristics and plot where and how in your story to reveal them. Some of the best characters have a wide range of conflicting interests – take my favorite example, Hannibal Lecter (before the onslaught of too much information), with his cannibalism AND exquisite taste, his acute sense of smell, his eidetic memory, his penchant for collecting news articles about natural disasters.

There are also characters with supposedly character-revealing hobbies that for whatever reason just don’t work for me… I won’t be specific, but often the reveal of a musical talent in a hard boiled detective just falls flat for me, for example.

There’s an art to finding the right avocations for your characters, and an art to depicting them, and I think part of it is practice – we need to be constantly probing people we meet for their secret talents and passions, to see how these details fit into the whole of a soul.

All of which is to say I’m not just being nosy when I ask you this:

What’s your secret?

Here at Murderati, we know a lot of interesting and surprising details about each other by now. We know JT is an oenophile, we know Simon’s an engineer, we know Pari’s a belly dancer, we know Dusty is a lawyer, we know Ken has a PhD, we know Mike teaches high school (”Oh, Mr. MacLean!!!”), we know Toni has a construction company, we know Louise was an ad exec, we know Rob knows his way around a camera, we know Naomi did volunteer work in West Africa, we know Billie’s a Jungian therapist, we know Stacey’s a professor…

But I’m talking about something that no one here knows about you – something really surprising.

Here’s something you don’t know about me.

I’m a minister.

Yeah, really. Church of Mick Jagger. No, actually, Church of Universal Life, which you too can join – details in the back classifieds of any issue of Rolling Stone.

I got my minister’s license about six years ago when all of my friends started getting married, and heathens that we were, no one was all that comfortable with a traditional marriage ceremony, or a male officiant. That is, the women were not comfortable with a male officiant, and the men weren’t all that opposed to having TWO women up there on that dais with them. One set of my friends asked me if I’d perform their ceremony for them, which pretty much shocked the hell out of me, but they were serious, and so I got the license, and we all wrote the ceremony, and it came off surprisingly well, so well that another couple asked me to do theirs, and then people I didn’t know who saw me officiate asked me to do theirs, and I ended up doing half a dozen (all couples still happily married, thanks for asking). When the father of one of the brides asked me if I would do his funeral I decided I needed to evaluate my ministerial calling, because it was getting confusing. It’s also an incredible amount of preparation, quite a demanding avocation when my vocation is already stretching me to the limit.

So, my children, watch your drinking at these cons, because I might just sneak up behind you and marry you off when you’re not looking. I have the power, vested in me by the state of California.

No, really – what’s my point?

My point is, I – the horror writer, Berkeley radical, actress dancer singer slut who wouldn’t be allowed burial in hallowed ground in some cultures, make a pretty damn good minister, and I bet NO ONE here would have guessed that about me.

My point is – it’s our job to know these quirky things about people and about our characters. The more we know about other people’s secrets, the more capable we are of designing complex and unforgettable characters.

So it’s your turn.

What’s your secret?

And what are some of the best – and worst – character secrets/avocations you’ve read?

(Hope to see so many of you at Thrillerfest! – I”m on a panel Sunday morning at 9 am: "CLOAK OF DARKNESS – Is Horror the Original Thriller?", and of course performing at the banquet Saturday night with the Killer Thriller Band.)

Life Insurance Policy

This week’s intended Murderati entry didn’t make it. I required third party approval before it could go out and I didn’t get it in time, so please accept this blog in its place. Also, life is getting busy and I need to take care of a few things, so I’m going to be popping in and out over the next few weeks. The weeks I’m not around, my slot will be covered by some very capable guests. Please be kind to them, but don’t get too attached to them… I now return you to your regular viewing.

A fascination for the odd and the obscure drives my writing. I’m always on the lookout for strange but real occurrences that would make for a really interesting story. When I discovered the unusual business world of viatical settlements, lightning struck and I knew I had the basis for Accidents Waiting to Happen.

So what are viatical settlements and what makes them so special? In a sense, they’re a reverse insurance arrangement. If you own a life insurance policy and you want to cash it in, you go to a viatical settlement agent who will find someone to buy it. The buyer will give you pennies on the dollar for your policy and take over the monthly dues on your life insurance. In return, they will become the beneficiary when you die. The closer you are to the grave, the bigger the payout.

Viatical settlements were aimed at the elderly and the terminally ill to cover final expenses and make their last days comfortable, but the industry really took off in the late 80’s and 90’s when HMOs weren’t covering AIDS and HIV patients. Patients needed money for treatment and viatical settlements provided the perfect vehicle for that. The industry hit the skids in the late 90’s when breakthroughs in AIDS drugs extended life expectancies and the payout times increased.

I saw the beauty and the beast in this arrangement. Viaticals give people a second shot at life, or at least a comfortable end, allowing them to live out their life worry free. On the other hand, viatical settlements are a truly ghoulish proposal. Some companies ran late-night advertisements telling people how they could make money quick. See a 25% return on your money in 12 months or less. To the investor, that sounds great. But to achieve that return, someone has to die. There is no way to ignore the fact that the policy buyer is profiteering off the dead.

I came across viatical settlements on a TV news magazine show. The feature was well done. The story covered all the parties involved in one of these arrangements. They interviewed a person with HIV who had sold their life insurance as well as a retired couple who had purchased several policies through a middleman who arranged the sales. It was great to see a person who’d had one foot over the threshold of death’s door come back from the brink after selling his policy. It was shocking watching the retired couple that had sunk their retirement fund into viatical settlements. They displayed vehement disgust for the people they’d paid good money to who hadn’t had the good graces to die as predicted.

The news clip ended with a kicker and it was that kicker that really grabbed my attention. The middleman is supposed to keep the identities of the buyer and seller confidential. The man with HIV who’d sold his life insurance produced a birthday card. It had arrived unsigned on his last birthday. The message was simple and to the point. It said: Why aren’t you dead yet?

I couldn’t let this go. There was a book here. Viatical settlements presented a very interesting concept. Criminals aren’t the only ones with a price on their heads. Everyone is worth more dead than alive, thanks to their life insurance. And what if the beneficiaries can’t afford to wait to inherit? A murder would lead someone to the beneficiary, but an accidental death wouldn’t.

For Accidents Waiting to Happen, I stretched the rules concerning viatical settlements a bit to create a cat and mouse thriller. I made rules surrounding viaticals much more far ranging. Essentially, anyone could qualify. In the book, Josh Michaels takes a bribe to pay for his newborn child’s medical expenses. His secretary blackmails him when she learns of the bribe. To pay her off, Josh sells his life insurance policy. Years later, when the bribe, the blackmail and the policy sale are long forgotten, he’s driving home when he’s forced off the road by another vehicle into a river. Instead of helping Josh, the driver gives him the thumbs-down gesture and drives off. Josh survives the accident and learns he’s not the only person having "accidents." The one thing these people have in common is that they’ve all made a viatical settlement in the past.

Usually, truth is stranger than fiction, and I love that, but if I can get a hold of it, I’ll make that fiction a little stranger.

Yours with one eye on the strange,
Simon Wood
PS: On Tuesday, I passed my civics exam and my US citizenship application was approved. I become a new American on July 24th.