Guest Blogger: JEFF ABBOTT

Which Comes First?
By Jeff Abbott

It is the literary version of egg and chicken.

One of the questions I get asked the most as a writer is “which comes first, plot or character”? And I have to say I admire those writers who are so consistent in their answers that it’s always one or the other. I love their certainty how one element must pop the neurons of the brain first. My brain doesn’t work that way, though. I’ve had books grow from a seed of either: a character I can’t shake or a plot that promises to intrigue.

With Panic, I thought of the book while in the shower (no laughs as to why I might be “panicking” in the shower), and its plot could be summed up in one sentence: what if everything in your life was a lie? It’s not exactly a plot, it’s a premise, but that is the first step. I thought first, well, that’s an interesting question, what would the ramifications be? And for the next day or so I doodled, thinking out what the emotional ramifications, at a most basic human level, would be of a lifetime of deception. But at that point, it’s just brainstorming with no spine: the next question toward a book is saying who would be in this situation, and how does he or she get into this mess? To whom does this horror happen? And I decided the hero of this story would be a younger-than-typical suspense protagonist, a documentary filmmaker, someone dedicated to telling the truth about difficult subjects—until he must face the truth of a lifetime of lies. At that point, character begins to drive plot: a hero like Evan Casher is going to react to situations in his own way, guided by his own personality and his limited life experience as a 24-year old film maker who has been cocooned by his family. His choices as a hero drive the plot.

An opposite effect occurred with my next book, Fear. The character of Miles Kendrick came into my head full-blown: a good, decent man who blamed himself for the death of his closest friend, and was beset by the demons of post-traumatic stress disorder, to the point that his dead friend haunts most of his waking moments. I wrote down a lot of notes about Miles, unsure how to use him in a story. He would not let me go. Then asking myself a simple dramatic question opened the doors to a plot: what would be Miles’s greatest wish? To be mentally whole again. What if a new medicine offered this wish, but said medicine was worth billions to a pharmaceutical—and people were willing to kill to get the formula? From there, I knew the kind of action that Miles—haunted by his friend, hunted by killers—would have to take, and the book’s plot, born from the heart of Miles’s character, drove forward.

With my latest book, Trust Me, plot and character nearly arrived together. I thought first of writing a book where a young character, his father murdered in a random bombing, tries to answer the unanswerable: why do people commit evil acts? At the same time, I thought of a new kind of character for suspense fiction: a psychological profiler of extremists. (There have been so many profilers in books and film who solve serial killings, but I wanted to drive onto new ground.) Luke Dantry is determined to find a way to identify and stop the next Timothy McVeigh, the next Unabomber, the next suicide bomber. So he would come into conflict, somehow, with people on the verge of turning to terrorism and violence.

The avenue for him came from research. Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only sites having explosive growth: there are now over 50,000 sites tied to extremist and terrorist content. 50,000 videos—showing everything from indoctrination speeches to how to forge documents to how to build a bomb—have been uploaded to the web. These sites provide a place for the socialization that is so critical to extremism to blossom. McVeigh wandered the country for three years, talking with fellow extremists, hardening his positions, until he parked the Ryder truck in front of the Murrah building. Now extremist groups need not worry about establishing cells in distant cities—they only need the web site to reach those who feel marginalized and powerless.

Luke, working undercover, goes after these groups. He thinks he’s safe: until he’s kidnapped and it’s clear that the people he has targeted have now targeted him. Every element of the plot is driven by Luke’s character: he’s a quiet academic, ill-equipped for a violent world, but driven by a burning need to stop the kind of pointless violence that killed his dad. Every choice in the book is influenced by who he is.

I don’t think it matters if plot or character arrive first in a writer’s brain; I think it matters far more that they arrive together at the end of the story, seamlessly joined, walking (or preferably running) in lockstep.

Jeff Abbott’s eleven suspense novels include the national bestsellers Panic, Fear, and Collision. He is a three-time nominee for the Edgar Award and a two-time nominee for the Anthony Award. Two of his novels are in development at major film studios. Abbott lives in Austin , Texas , with his family.

POPE JOAN

POPE JOAN is one of my favorite books, so I am delighted to share some info about the upcoming movie, along with a contest to walk the red carpet at the opening.

Walk the Pope Joan Red Carpet with Donna Woolfolk Cross!

Join the author of Pope Joan and her family as they walk the red carpet on the night of the Pope Joan movie premiere!

Includes two tickets to the movie premiere, plus round trip airfare for two from any location in the continental United States or Canada, and one night hotel accommodation for you to share with your guest.

Simply buy a new, Three Rivers Press/Crown Publishing paperback edition of Pope Joan by August 9 and send the author the original receipt. In August, she'll pick randomly from the pile of receipts to select someone and their guest to join her at the U.S. movie premiere in the fall (exact date still to be determined). All the details are here --

Take advantage of this offer by August 9th!

Here's the link to the movie info from Imdb

THE DEFECTOR by Daniel Silva

Silva's latest is out! Here is an excerpt to get you in the mood for the rest --

AN EXCERPT FROM
THE DEFECTOR
BY DANIEL SILVA

*************

PART ONE

VLADIMIRSKAYA OBLAST, RUSSIA

Pyotr Luzhkov was about to be killed, and for that he was grateful.

It was late October, but autumn was already a memory. It had been brief and unsightly, an old babushka hurriedly removing a threadbare frock. Now this: leaden skies, arctic cold, windblown snow. The opening shot of Russia’s winter without end.

Pyotr Luzhkov, shirtless, barefoot, hands bound behind his back, was scarcely aware of the cold. In fact, at that moment he would have been hard-pressed to recall his name. He believed he was being led by two men through a birch forest but could not be certain. It made sense they were in a forest. That was the place Russians liked to do their blood work. Kurapaty, Bykivnia, Katyn, Butovo . . . Always in the forests. Luzhkov was about to join a great Russian tradition. Luzhkov was about to be granted a death in the trees.

There was another Russian custom when it came to killing: the intentional infliction of pain. Pyotr Luzhkov had been forced to scale mountains of pain. They had broken his fingers and his thumbs. They had broken his arms and his ribs. They had broken his nose and his jaw. They had beaten him even when he was unconscious. They had beaten him because they had been told to. They had beaten him because they were Russians. The only time they had stopped was when they were drinking vodka. When the vodka was gone, they had beaten him even harder.

Now he was on the final leg of his journey, the long walk to a grave with no marker. Russians had a term for it: vyshaya mera, the highest form of punishment. Usually, it was reserved for traitors, but Pyotr Luzhkov had betrayed no one. He had been duped by his master’s wife, and his master had lost everything because of it. Someone had to pay. Eventually, everyone would pay.

He could see his master now, standing alone amid the matchstick trunks of the birch trees. Black leather coat, silver hair, head like a tank turret. He was looking down at the large-caliber pistol in his hand. Luzhkov had to give him credit. There weren’t many oligarchs who had the stomach to do their own killing. But then there weren’t many oligarchs like him.

The grave had already been dug. Luzhkov’s master was inspecting it carefully, as if calculating whether it was big enough to hold a body. As Luzhkov was forced to kneel, he could smell the distinctive cologne. Sandalwood and smoke. The smell of power. The smell of the devil.

The devil gave him one more blow to the side of his face. Luzhkov didn’t feel it. Then the devil placed the gun to the back of Luzhkov’s head and bade him a pleasant evening. Luzhkov saw a pink flash of his own blood. Then darkness. He was finally dead. And for that he was grateful.

*************

PART TWO

LONDON: JANUARY

The murder of Pyotr Luzhkov went largely unnoticed. No one mourned him; no women wore black for him. No Russian police officers investigated his death, and no Russian newspapers bothered to report it. Not in Moscow. Not in St. Petersburg. And surely not in the Russian city sometimes referred to as London. Had word of Luzhkov’s demise reached Bristol Mews, home of Colonel Grigori Bulganov, the Russian defector and dissident, he would not have been surprised, though he would have felt a pang of guilt. If Grigori hadn’t locked poor Pyotr in Ivan Kharkov’s personal safe, the bodyguard might still be alive.

Among the lords of Thames House and Vauxhall Cross, the riverfront headquarters of MI5 and MI6, Grigori Bulganov had always been a source of much fascination and considerable debate. Opinion was diverse, but then it usually was when the two services were forced to take positions on the same issue. He was a gift from the gods, sang his backers. He was a mixed bag at best, muttered his detractors. One wit from the top floor of Thames House famously described him as the defector Downing Street needed like a leaky roof—as if London, now home to more than a quarter million Russian citizens, had a spare room for another malcontent bent on making trouble for the Kremlin. The MI5 man had gone on the record with his prophecy that one day they would all regret the decision to grant Grigori Bulganov asylum and a British passport. But even he was surprised by the speed with which that day came.

A former colonel in the counterintelligence division of the Russian Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB, Grigori Bulganov had washed ashore late the previous summer, the unexpected by-product of a multinational intelligence operation against one Ivan Kharkov, Russian oligarch and international arms dealer. Only a handful of British officials were told the true extent of Grigori’s involvement in the case. Fewer still knew that, if not for his actions, an entire team of Israeli operatives might have been killed on Russian soil. Like the KGB defectors who came before him, Grigori vanished for a time into a world of safe houses and isolated country estates. A joint Anglo-American team hammered at him day and night, first on the structure of Ivan’s arms-trafficking network, for which Grigori had shamefully worked as a paid agent, then on the tradecraft of his former service. The British interrogators found him charming; the Americans less so. They insisted on fl uttering him, which in Agencyspeak meant subjecting him to a lie-detector test. He passed with flying colors.

When the debriefers had had their fill, and it came time to decide just what to do with him, the bloodhounds of internal security conducted highly secret reviews and issued their recommendations, also in secret. In the end, it was deemed that Grigori, though reviled by his former comrades, faced no serious threat. Even the once-feared Ivan Kharkov, who was licking his wounds in Russia, was deemed incapable of concerted action. The defector made three requests: he wanted to keep his name, to reside in London, and to have no overt security. Hiding in plain sight, he argued, would give him the most protection from his enemies. MI5 readily agreed to his demands, especially the third. Security details required money, and the human resources could be put to better use elsewhere, namely against Britain’s homegrown jihadist extremists. They bought him a lovely mews cottage in a backwater of Maida Vale, arranged a generous monthly stipend, and made a onetime deposit in a City bank that would surely have caused a scandal if the amount ever became public. An MI5 lawyer quietly negotiated a book deal with a respected London publisher. The size of the advance raised eyebrows among the senior staff of both services, most of whom were working on books of their own—in secret, of course.

For a time it seemed Grigori would turn out to be the rarest of birds in the intelligence world: a case without complications. Fluent in English, he took to life in London like a freed prisoner trying to make up for lost time. He frequented the theater and toured the museums. Poetry readings, ballet, chamber music: he did them all. He settled into work on his book and once a week lunched with his editor, who happened to be a porcelain-skinned beauty of thirty-two. The only thing missing in his life was chess. His MI5 minder suggested he join the Central London Chess Club, a venerable institution founded by a group of civil servants during the First World War. His application form was a masterpiece of ambiguity. It supplied no address, no home telephone, no mobile, and no e-mail. His occupation was described as “translation services,” his employer as “self.” Asked to list any hobbies or outside interests, he had written “chess.”

But no high-profile case is ever entirely free of controversy— and the old hands warned they had never met a defector, especially a Russian defector, who didn’t lose a wheel from time to time. Grigori’s came off the day the British prime minister announced a major terrorist plot had been disrupted. It seemed al-Qaeda had planned to simultaneously shoot down several jetliners using Russian-made antiaircraft missiles—missiles they had acquired from Grigori’s former patron, Ivan Kharkov. Within twenty-four hours, Grigori was seated before the cameras of the BBC, claiming he had played a major role in the affair. In the days and weeks that followed, he would remain a fixture on television, in Britain and elsewhere. His celebrity status now cemented, he began to move in Russian émigré circles and cavort with Russian dissidents of every stripe. Seduced by the sudden attention, he used his newfound fame as a platform to make wild accusations against his old service and against the Russian president, whom he characterized as a Hitler in the making. When the Kremlin responded with uncomfortable noises about Russians plotting a coup on British soil, Grigori’s minder suggested he tone things down. So, too, did his editor, who wanted to save something for the book.

Grudgingly, the defector lowered his profile, but only by a little. Rather than pick fights with the Kremlin, he focused his considerable energy on his forthcoming book and on his chess. That winter he entered the annual club tournament and moved effortlessly through his bracket—like a Russian tank through the streets of Prague, grumbled one of his victims. In the semifinals, he defeated the defending champion without breaking a sweat. Victory in the finals appeared inevitable.

On the afternoon of the championship, he lunched in Soho with a reporter from Vanity Fair magazine. Returning to Maida Vale, he purchased a house plant from the Clifton Nurseries and collected a parcel of shirts from his laundry in Elgin Avenue. After a brief nap, a prematch ritual, he showered and dressed for battle, departing his mews cottage a few minutes before six.

All of which explains why Grigori Bulganov, defector and dissident, was walking along London’s Harrow Road at 6:12 p.m., on the second Tuesday of January. For reasons that would be made clear later, he was moving at a faster pace than normal. As for chess, it was by then the last thing on his mind.

THE MATCH was scheduled for half past six at the club’s usual venue, the Lower Vestry House of St. George’s Church in Bloomsbury. Simon Finch, Grigori’s opponent, arrived at a quarter past. Shaking the rainwater from his oilskin coat, he squinted at a trio of notices tacked to the bulletin board in the foyer. One forbade smoking, another warned against blocking the corridor in case of fire, and a third, hung by Finch himself, pleaded with all those who used the premises to recycle their rubbish. In the words of George Mercer, club captain and six-time club champion, Finch was “a Camden Town crusty,” bedecked with all the required political convictions of his tribe. Free Palestine. Free Tibet. Stop the Genocide in Darfur. End the War in Iraq. Recycle or Die. The only cause Finch didn’t seem to believe in was work. He described himself as “a social activist and freelance journalist,” which Clive Atherton, the club’s reactionary treasurer, accurately translated as “layabout and sponge.” But even Clive was the first to admit that Finch possessed the loveliest of games: fl owing, artistic, instinctive, and ruthless as a snake. “Simon’s costly education wasn’t a total waste,” Clive was fond of saying. “Just misapplied.”

His surname was a misnomer, for Finch was long and languid, with limp brown hair that hung nearly to his shoulders and wirerimmed spectacles that magnified the resolute gaze of a revolutionary. To the bulletin board he added a fourth item now—a fawning letter from the Regent Hall Church thanking the club for hosting the first annual Salvation Army chess tournament for the homeless—then he drifted down the narrow corridor to the makeshift cloakroom, where he hung his coat on the rollaway rack. In the kitchenette, he deposited twenty pence in a giant piggy bank and drew a cup of tepid coffee from a silver canister marked CHESS CLUB. Young Tom Blakemore—a misnomer as well, for Young Tom was eighty-five in the shade—bumped into him as he was coming out. Finch seemed not to notice. Interviewed later by a man from MI5, Young Tom said he had taken no offense. After all, not a single member of the club gave Finch even an outside chance of winning the cup. “He looked like a man being led to the gallows,” said Young Tom. “The only thing missing was the black hood.”

Finch entered the storage cabinet and from a row of sagging shelves collected a board, a box of pieces, an analog tournament clock, and a score sheet. Coffee in one hand, match supplies carefully balanced in the other, he entered the vestry’s main room. It had walls the color of mustard and four grimy windows: three peering onto the pavements of Little Russell Street and a fourth squinting into the courtyard. On one wall, below a small crucifix, was the tournament bracket. One match remained to be played: S. FINCH VS. G. BULGANOV.

Finch turned and surveyed the room. Six trestle tables had been erected for the evening’s play, one reserved for the championship, the rest for ordinary matches—“friendlies,” in the parlance of the club. A devout atheist, Finch chose the spot farthest from the crucifix and methodically prepared for the contest. He checked the tip of his pencil and wrote the date and the board number on the score sheet. He closed his eyes and saw the match as he hoped it would unfold. Then, fifteen minutes after taking his seat, he looked up at the clock: 6:42. Grigori was late. Odd, thought Finch. The Russian was never late.

Finch began moving pieces in his mind—saw a king lying on its side in resignation, saw Grigori hanging his head in shame—and he watched the relentless march of the clock.

6:45 . . . 6:51 . . . 6:58 . . .

Where are you, Grigori? he thought. Where the hell are you?

ULTIMATELY, Finch’s role would be minor and, in the opinion of all involved, mercifully brief. There were some who wanted to have a closer look at a few of his more deplorable political associations. There were others who refused to touch him, having rightly judged Finch to be a man who would relish nothing more than a good public spat with the security services. In the end, however, it would be determined his only crime was one of sportsmanship. Because at precisely 7:05 p.m.—the time recorded in his own hand on the official score sheet—he exercised his right to claim victory by forfeiture, thus becoming the first player in club story to win the championship without moving a single piece. It was a dubious honor, one the chess players of British intelligence would never quite forgive.

Ari Shamron, the legendary Israeli spymaster, would later say that never before had so much blood fl owed from so humble a beginning. But even Shamron, who was guilty of the occasional rhetorical flourish, knew the remark was far from accurate. For the events that followed had their true origins not in Grigori’s disappearance but in a feud of Shamron’s own making. Grigori, he would confide to his most devoted acolytes, was but a shot over our complacent bow. A signal fire on a distant watchtower. And the bait used to lure Gabriel into the open.

By the following evening, the score sheet was in the possession of MI5, along with the entire tournament logbook. The Americans were informed of Grigori’s disappearance twenty-four hours later, but, for reasons never fully explained, British intelligence waited four long days before getting around to telling the Israelis. Shamron, who had fought in Israel’s war of independence and loathed the British to this day, found the delay predictable. Within minutes he was on the phone to Uzi Navot giving him marching orders. Navot reluctantly obeyed. It was what Navot did best.

KILLER SUMMER giveaway

Sun Valley, Idaho - playground of the wealthy and politically connected - is home to an annual wine auction that attracts high rollers from across the country, and Blaine County sheriff Walt Fleming must ensure it goes on without a hitch. The world's most elite wine connoisseurs have descended on Sun Valley to taste and bid on the world's best wines, including three bottles said to have been a gift from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams. With sky-high prices all but guaranteed for these historic items, it's no wonder a group of thieves is out to steal them. Walt is responsible for all the security for the glitzy event, the safety of the dignitaries, the auction site, and the wines themselves.

Walt is enjoying a rare afternoon of freedom, fly-fishing with his nephew Kevin, when a passing truck catches his eye - and his suspicions throw him headlong into the discovery of a complicated plan to steal the rare wine.
When a bomb explodes just as the auction revs up, the investigation explodes as well, pulling Walt in a dozen different directions. He is caught in the middle of a heist of epic proportions - and not the heist he had prepared for - orchestrated by the ingenious mind of Christopher Cantell, a man who seems to have prepared for everything, including the way Walt's own sheriff's office will react.


"In Sheriff Fleming, Pearson has created a likable, sympathetic protagonist, forever challenged by ferocious weather, a feisty citizenry, and feral criminal minds." - Booklist (starred review) on Killer View

To win a Penguin tote bag with one signed copy of Ridley Pearson's KILLER SUMMER and two unsigned paperback editions of the previous two books in the series, KILLER WEEKEND and KILLER VIEW, please send an email to contest@gmail.com with "KILLER SUMMER" as the subject. You must include your snail mail address in your email. All entries must be received by July 31, 2009. Three (3) names will be drawn from all qualified entries and notified via email. Each name drawn will receive the free Penguin tote bag with a signed copy of KILLER SUMMER, two unsigned paperback editions of the previous two books in the series, KILLER WEEKEND and KILLER VIEW, all by Ridley Pearson, courtesy of Penguin. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age in the United States and Canada. One entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone. All entries, including names, e-mail addresses, and mailing addresses, will be purged after winners are notified.

ITW Announces the 2009 Thriller Awards Winners!

ITW Announces the 2009 Thriller Awards Winners!
By Joe Moore

On the evening of Saturday, July 11th, 2009, the International Thriller Writers announced the winners of their literary awards at a gala celebration in New York City.

ThrillerMaster Award: David Morrell
In recognition of his vast body of work and influence in the field of literature

Silver Bullet Award: Brad Meltzer
For contributions to the advancement of literacy

Silver Bullet Corporate Award: Dollar General Literacy Foundation
For longstanding support of literacy and education

Best Thriller of the Year:
THE BODIES LEFT BEHIND by Jeffery Deaver (Simon & Schuster)

Best First Novel:
CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central Publishing)

Best Short Story:
THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN by Alexandra Sokoloff (in Darker Mask)

Congratulations to the winners and all the nominees. For a complete list of the nominated authors including previous year's winners and nominees, click here.

2009 National Book Festival

The Library of Congress announced yesterday the list of authors who will be attending this year’s National Book Festival on September 26, 2009.

Bestselling authors David Baldacci, John Grisham, John Irving, Lois Lowry, Jodi Picoult, Judy Blume, Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, Julia Alvarez, Ken Burns, Gwen Ifill – and even celebrity chef Paula Deen – will be among scores of authors presenting at the 2009 National Book Festival, which is organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress. A complete listing of the authors by pavilion below.

Now in its ninth year, this popular event celebrating the joys of reading and lifelong literacy will be held on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th Streets from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (rain or shine). The event, for which the Honorary Chairs are President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, is free and open to the public.

What: 2009 National Book Festival: www.loc.gov/bookfest

Where: National Mall (between 7th and 14th Streets), Washington, DC

When: Saturday, September 26, 2009 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. (rain or shine)


Authors slated to make presentations at the 2009 National Book Festival include:

Children’s authors

Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, Kate DiCamillo, Shannon Hale, Craig Hatkoff, Lois Lowry, Megan McDonald, Sharon Robinson and Kadir Nelson, Charles Santore, Jon Scieszka, David Shannon and Mo Willems

Teens & Children authors

Judy Blume, Pat Carman, Paula Deen, Carmen Agra Deedy, Liz Kessler, Jeff Kinney, Rick Riordan, James L. Swanson and Jacqueline Woodson

History & Biography authors

Douglas Brinkley and David A. Taylor, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, Kirstin Downey, Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz, Gwen Ifill, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Taylor Kidd, Mark Kurlansky, Jon Meacham, Rickey Minor, Asar Nafisi, Annette Gordon-Reed, Simon Schama and Patricia Sullivan

Fiction & Fantasy authors

Sabiha Al Khemir, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, John Grisham, John Irving, Katherine Neville, Jodi Picoult, Nicholas Sparks, Jeannette Walls, Colson Whitehead and David Wroblewski

Mysteries & Thrillers authors

David Baldacci, Lee Child, Mary Jane Clark, Michael Connelly, Craig Johnson and Walter Mosley

Poetry & Prose authors

Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, student winners in the Poetry Out Loud competition and Kay Ryan, Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress

Book Club Hustlers

Interesting piece from the Daily Beast --

"Enterprising fiction writers are marketing themselves to book groups in person, by phone, and over Skype to boost sales. Meet the new breed of literary types on the make..."

Daily Beast

For Jane Green fans!

The Penguin Group would like to invite you to join bestselling author Jane Green for a chat about her newest novel, Dune Road, on Monday, July 6th at 2 PM EST. You can join the chat by visiting The Water Cooler at the scheduled time.

Dune Road is the story of life in an exclusive beach town after the tourists have left for the summer and the eccentric (and moneyed) community sticks around—from the bestselling author of The Beach House. Warm, witty and gloriously observed, Dune Road is Jane Green at her best, full of brilliant insights into challenges that come with forging a new life.

The chat, which is the first in what will be a monthly feature in the newly launched “From the Publisher’s Office” network on the Penguin website, will allow readers to ask questions of the author, after having had the first three chapters of the book serialized on the site. The reading experience will be rounded out with a complete Readers Group Guide once the chat has been completed. If you can’t take part, all chats will be archived on the site, so check back at any time.

We’ll also be letting participants in on a special offer to express our thanks for taking part in the chat.

I can make it, I'm at work then but I'd love to hear about it if you do go!

Win a copy of BAD MOTHER!

BAD MOTHER: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman

In the tradition of recent hits like The Bitch in the House and Perfect Madness comes a hilarious and controversial book that every woman will have an opinion about, written by America’s most outrageous writer.

In our mothers’ day there were good mothers, neglectful mothers, and occasionally great mothers.

Today we have only Bad Mothers.

If you work, you’re neglectful; if you stay home, you’re smothering. If you discipline, you’re buying them a spot on the shrink’s couch; if you let them run wild, they will be into drugs by seventh grade. If you buy organic, you’re spending their college fund; if you don’t, you’re risking all sorts of allergies and illnesses.

Is it any wonder so many women refer to themselves at one time or another as “a bad mother”? Ayelet Waldman says it’s time for women to get over it and get on with it, in a book that is sure to spark the same level of controversy as her now legendary “Modern Love” piece, in which she confessed to loving her husband more than her children.

Covering topics as diverse as the hysteria of competitive parenting (Whose toddler can recite the planets in order from the sun?), the relentless pursuits of the Bad Mother police, balancing the work-family dynamic, and the bane of every mother’s existence (homework, that is), Bad Mother illuminates the anxieties that riddle motherhood today, while providing women with the encouragement they need to give themselves a break.

READ AN EXCERPT

To win your own copy of BAD MOTHER, please send an email to contest@gmail.com with "BAD MOTHER" as the subject. You must include your snail mail address in your email. All entries must be received by June 18, 2009. Five (5) names will be drawn from all qualified entries and notified via email. Each name drawn will receive a free copy of BAD MOTHER by Ayelet Waldman, courtesy of Doubleday. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age in the United States. One entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone. All entries, including names, e-mail addresses, and mailing addresses, will be purged after winners are notified.


Ayelet Waldman is the author of Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace , Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, Daughter's Keeper and the Mommy-Track Mysteries. Her personal essays have been published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazine, including The New York Times, the Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, Elle Magazine, Vogue, Allure, Cookie, Child, Parenting, Real Simple, Health and Salon.com. Her radio commentaries have appeared on "All Things Considered" and "The California Report."

Ayelet's missives also appear on Facebook and Twitter.

Her books are published throughout the world, in countries as disparate as England and Thailand, the Netherlands and China, Russia and Israel.

The film version of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits is now in post-production, with Don Roos as screenwriter and director, Natalie Portman in the lead role, and Lisa Kudrow and Scott Cohen also starring.

HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND

In case you missed Janice Lieberman on THE TODAY SHOW talking about her new book, HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND, you can see it here:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30727287/

"After years of dating misery, I finally took matters in hand. After all, this was the most important shopping trip of my life, wasn't it? And shopping was certainly a topic I knew a lot about. So I decided to approach dating in a smart, systematic way, as if I were making the purchase of a lifetime. Slowly but surely, and almost before I even realized it, I began to apply the rules I had learned as a consumer reporter - caveat emptor, don't get scammed, learn where to shop, and know how to close a favorable deal - to shopping for a husband."

Now is the time to learn… HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND
By Janice Lieberman with Bonnie Teller

Janice Lieberman, the "Today Show" Consumer Smarts correspondent, brings her shopping expertise and her personal knowledge of the dating marketplace together to tell you how to shop for the most important "purchase" of your life - your spouse. In HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND (St. Martin's Press; May 12, 2009; $22.95) Janice uses shopping principles to formulate rules that will help women select a spouse and "close the deal".

And Janice really knows what she's talking about - the tips she shares in HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND are the same ones she implemented in meeting and eventually marrying her own husband!

This savvy shopper's guide provides a shopping list all women can use in their hunt for the ultimate bargain - highlights potential pitfalls and outlining the ever important Rules of the dating (and marriage) game.

Rules such as:
#5) Let Him Think He's Doing the Shopping
#9) Sorry, but…You May Need to Repackage (Yourself, That Is!)
#10) Know a Guy's History - Is He a Marrier or a Player or, Worst of All, Both?

And personal shopping tips like:
" Get online, now! It's all in the numbers. The internet is a man-shopping mecca, so learn how to master it and you will in-deed be a dating diva.
" Forget the old adage that opposites attract and look for common ground. If you find it, you'll be enjoying your purchase for years to come!
Lieberman opens women's eyes in HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND to demonstrate how they typically shop for the wrong things in a mate (forget about what his shoes look like, and try to figure out the content of his character) and sabotage their own happiness with a long "must-have" list instead of seeing the value of the men who are right in front of them.

It's time to go shopping!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Janice Lieberman has been the featured Consumer Smarts correspondent on NBC's "Today Show" for ten years and was previously the consumer correspondent on "Good Morning America". Lieberman also anchored "Steals and Deals", which appeared nightly on CNBC. She is also the author of Tricks of the Trade: A Consumer Survival Guide with Jason Raff. Janice is a contributing editor to Reader's Digest for their "Here's the Deal" column. Janice currently lives in New Jersey with her husband - who she shopped very, very, wisely for.

MAYHEM IN THE MIDLANDS

Beth Groundwater’s Report on the Mayhem in the Midlands Conference

After a weather delay at the Denver airport, I’m finally home from a wonderful weekend in Omaha, Nebraska spent hobnobbing with fellow mystery authors, readers, and lovers of all things mysterious. The conference, known for being intimate because of its cap on attendees set at 200, was even more intimate this year due to the economy, but those intrepid souls who came all had a great time, as far as I could tell.

I arrived late morning on Thursday, checked into the room at the Embassy Suites hotel (the conference site) I was to share with mystery short story author Kaye George, and walked into the Old Market area to eat lunch. After a refreshing swim in the hotel pool, I checked my consignment books into the booksellers, Tom & Enid Schantz at Rue Morgue and Kathy Magruder at Lee Booksellers, all lovely people. I highly recommend you patronize both of these independent booksellers.

Kaye found me at the hotel’s afternoon guest reception, where we drank our share of the free alcoholic beverages offered to hotel guests. This daily ritual was a big hit with the mystery convention crowd! Hearty munchies (enough to be considered dinner) and drinks followed at the conference’s cocktail party and 10th anniversary celebration. The speeches were short and sweet and the distinguished guests were welcomed: Guest of Honor Dana Stabenow, Toastmaster Jan Burke, and International Guest of Honor Zoe Sharp.

The Embassy Suites offered a breakfast to hotel guests the next morning that included made-to-order omelets and pancakes. Conference goers raved about the complimentary breakfasts almost as much as the complimentary cocktail receptions. The conference swung into full gear at 9 am with three tracks of panels, and I was on stage right off that bat as a member of the humor panel: “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Crime”. Pat Dennis, stand-up comedian and publisher of the humorous anthology of bathroom mysteries titled Who Died in Here, among others, soon had the audience in stitches, while the rest of us authors limped along trying to keep up. At the end of the panel, Margaret Grace, author of the miniature mysteries series, presented me with a commissioned outdoor scene including a sleeping bag, campfire, books (including my own), flashlight, woodland animals and trees, and a gift basket complete with wine, glasses, and a gun. I was thrilled with it!

Next, I sat in on the panel, “Putting the Ms. in Mysteries, Tough Female Protagonists,” consisting of Kate Flora, Ann Parker, and Dana Stabenow, three tough broads themselves. Kate said her character Thea has made her learn how to shoot a gun, defend herself, go through a police citizen’s academy, and more. Dana said that growing up in Alaska automatically makes a woman tough, and that her mother was one of the first female deck hands on a fish tender. This was followed by a fascinating presentation by scientific illustrator and forensic artist Sue Senden, who described how skull shape and texture can be used to determine the sex, rough age, and race of the victim and how facial reconstructive sculpture is done using tissue depth markers.

In the afternoon, I attended the “What Difference Does Age Make? Senior vs Younger Sleuths” panel, where Radine Trees Nehring elicited laughs by remarking, after Claire Langley-Hawthorne said she found writing love scenes difficult, that “I love all the parts, and especially the research.” At the end, I presented panelist Margaret Grace with her payment for my miniature scene, signed copies of both of my books, A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket. Then I and a standing room only crowd had the pleasure of watching Zoe Sharp and Dana Stabenow pretend to beat each other up in a Self-Defense Demonstration. Zoe gave us the handy tip that when organizing a bar fight, you should have a designated sniper—someone who stands back while the others pile on, then administers pokes and punches to those on the other side while they’re occupied.

That evening was the Sisters in Crime light supper reception, followed by a live auction of items donated by authors and others to benefit the Omaha Public Library’s children’s books collection. Talented and humorous auctioneer Donna Andrews got everyone to loosen their pocketbook strings as well as their funny bones. Afterward, David Housewright organized a pub crawl for a group that included me, Kaye George, Kate Flora, Michael Mallory, Kent Kruger, and others into the Old Market area.

The Guinness Ale that went down so smoothly Friday night made it hard to look bright-eyed and bushy tailed Saturday morning, but I soldiered on and moderated a panel at 9 am on “The Art of Brevity: Writing Short Stories.” We learned that Kaye George has a “short mind” and that Pat Dennis finishes diets, jobs, men, and short stories all within a three-month time period. When the talk turned to rejections, an audience member shared his worst: “I’m returning these pages. Someone seems to have written all over them.”

Next, I sat in on the “What Would Your Characters Do” panel with Carl Brookins, Donna Andrews and David Walker. Donna said she usually tries to start with a short-term situation that generates a lot of stress and characters enter into a gentile pastime with an extreme passion. David suggested “competitive Buddhism” to audience guffaws. Then came lunch at a Persian restaurant with my fellow panelists on the “Shake Well and See What Happens: The Writer’s Life” panel. We decided the title had to refer to martinis, and brought suitable props, including martini glasses, olives, and cocktail shaker. Gary Bush started the discussion with a demonstration of the proper way to make a dry martini.

After chatting with the booksellers and others in the book room, I snuck in late to a late afternoon writing game session led by Ann Parker and Margaret Grace, with much-appreciated chocolate prizes for opening and closing lines that best mimicked the style of varoious mystery authors. After fortifying ourselves with free drinks from the hotel bar, a well-lubricated group stumbled to the downtown library for a murder mystery dinner. The setting was a twenty-year class reunion that also commemorated the mysterious death of Jean Harlow, and audience members were recruited to play the parts of movie stars from the 1940s. Kate Flora portrayed an alluring Veronica Lake, but David Housewright won a standing ovation for his amazing and gut-splittingly funny portrayal of Peter Lorre.

Sunday morning came too soon, with an interesting and wide-ranging interview of Dana Stabenow by Toastmaster Jan Burke, a fitting end to a wonderful conference. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole gathering, renewed connections with old friends, made lots of new friends, and was so thrilled to find out that two people were fighting over my character name in the silent auction that I offered to name characters after both of them if they each made a donation. I’ll definitely return to Mayhem in the Midlands in the future! And I’ll upload photos soon to my blog, http://bethgroundwater.blogspot.com/. If you comment there or here on my report, the photos, or your own Mayhem experiences, you’ll will be entered into a drawing for an autographed set of both books in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series: A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket. Good luck!

Many thanks to Beth Groundwater for this very special report.


Beth Groundwater’s first mystery novel, A REAL BASKET CASE, was published in March, 2007 and was nominated for a Best First Novel Agatha Award. The second in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer series, TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, was released May 15th. It is set in Breckenridge, CO and opens with a death on the ski slope. As Kirkus Review said, "Groundwater's second leaves the bunny slope behind, offering some genuine black-diamond thrills." Between writing spurts, Beth defends her garden from marauding mule deer and wild rabbits and tries to avoid getting black-and-blue on the black and blue ski slopes of Colorado.
Please visit her website at http://bethgroundwater.com/

Q & A with JOHN HART

I was thrilled when my editor at Library Journal asked me to do a short Q&A with Edgar-award winning author, John Hart, as his latest book, THE LAST CHILD, hits the stands. An abbreviated version of this interview appeared in the March 15, 2009 edition of Library Journal. Here is the interview in full.

In 2007, North Carolina lawyer-turned-novelist John Hart burst upon the literary thriller scene with his acclaimed debut, The King of Lies, which garnered several award nominations, including the Edgar and Anthony Awards. His second book, Down River, won the 2008 Edgar, and now his forthcoming third novel, The Last Child (LJ 3/1/09), is being billed as his best work to date.

BookBitch: The Last Child joins a rich Southern tradition of fine literature and will undoubtedly draw comparisons with Harper Lee's masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird. Your hero is a very smart, rather unusual 13-year-old boy with a powerful story. Why did you choose to use his voice to tell this story, and what were some of the challenges that created?

John Hart: The idea for Johnny Merrimon came from the opening scene of Down River, my last novel. In that scene, the protagonist, Adam Chase, returns home after a long, self-imposed exile. He stops at the river that defines the county’s northern border. While there, he meets a young boy who is there to fish. Writing the scene, I fell in love with the idea of this kid. He was about ten, happy on his old bike and in his blown-out shoes, wearing a fishing knife in a cracked leather scabbard. I never named the boy, but he had what, in my mind, was this perfect childhood. A home and security, the simple pleasures of his small world. In fact, I describe him as, “a dusty boy in a soft yellow world,” and that’s exactly how I saw him. He never reappears in the book, but I thought of this kid as I wrote the rest of Down River, and I found myself asking two questions: 1) what could happen to take such a wonderful life away from a boy like that, and 2) how would he react to the brutality of his changed circumstances. The Last Child takes place in a different county, so I can’t say that it is exactly the same boy, but that’s where the idea of Johnny Merrimon originated: I just loved the idea of this kid.

Writing any kind of thriller with a child as its protagonist presents a huge challenge. Specifically, it was tough building sufficient danger and action around one so young while still making the novel work as a thriller. There were other challenges, too: finding a convincing voice for a traumatized thirteen year old kid; believable dialogue between boys that age; the relationship between parent and child when their world has fallen apart; the way that Johnny was forced to perceive the world; thinking of ways that a powerless kid might seek some kind of control, then making that quest even remotely credible… In the end, however, I could not be happier with how it turned out.


BookBitch: I've read that you gave up working as an attorney when it came down to defending a child molester shortly after the birth of your own child. Here it is several years later and The Last Child centers around a missing child and all that implies. Has this been a difficult process for you? And did that experience contribute to this book?

John Hart: The story you mention is, in fact, true. I’d always aspired to write, and that moment seemed like the perfect occasion to make a choice: carry on with a career I’d never loved or take a real stab at a different life. So, I quit. Honestly, I was so ready to take the time to write, that I might have found some other excuse; but that case seemed like a perfect signal for change.

As for any influence that case may have had on The Last Child, I’m sure it was a factor, but only a small one. A more significant influence came from the news we all see every day, the unbelievable proliferation of crimes against children. I tried to keep the reality of those crimes “off the page” in this book; but I took great satisfaction in writing the scene where one of the young victims manages to shoot her abductor in the face. That was poetry.


BookBitch: Your previous books, the multi-award nominated The King of Lies and the Edgar-award winning Down River were both set in Rowan County, North Carolina, which one can find on a map. The Last Child is set in a similar yet fictitious place, Raven County, NC. Why did you feel it necessary to fictionalize the location this time out?

John Hart: There are dangers inherent in setting novels in real places, especially when it’s your hometown. A few people got upset because they thought they were in the books (they weren’t). Others got upset because they weren’t in the books. In the end, I needed geography that was simply lacking in Rowan County. I also found a sense of sweet freedom when I made the change. Perhaps, I was more concerned about how the people of Rowan felt about my portrayal of that place than I ought to have been. Perhaps, I was censoring myself because of that. Whatever the case, those who wish to see elements of Rowan County in the new book will be able to do so. Rowan County, Raven County … the similarity was purposeful.


BookBitch: Your writing has been compared with some of the greats of the genre, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and James Lee Burke, yet I've read that you haven't read any of them. Your undergraduate degree is in French Literature, is that where your reading interests lie? What are some of your favorite books, and some of your most influential?

John Hart: Entertainment Weekly said that my prose “…was like Raymond Chandler’s, angular and hard.” I thought that sounded great, but I had no idea what they meant. So, yes, it’s true that I am woefully under-read in the genre. I have since read one James Lee Burke novel, and find myself flattered by the comparison. As for the French literature in my background, I think my writing has been impacted by the entirety of the French existentialist movement. Most of my protagonists face some crisis of self-definition where they address their place in the world. How they got there and why? Where to next? It’s fun to wrap that kind of self-discovery in the robes of a thriller.

As for my favorites … Man, there are so many. To Kill a Mockingbird, of course. The Great Gatsby. The Prince of Tides. The Cider House Rules. Gates of Fire. Most things by Michael Chabon. In the genre, I’m a fan of Grisham and Turow, also of Michael Connelly, Dennis LeHane, Lee Child, Jeff Deaver, John Sandford, Charlie Huston and many others.

As for the “influential” question, I would have to say John Grisham had the largest impact - not so much on how I write, but he was the one that made me think I wanted this job.


BookBitch: You seem to use great care in your choice of words, and your writing is often lyrical, something not always found in thrillers or mysteries, yet you are still able to propel your stories forward and keep the pages turning. Do you work from an outline? Do you work at home? What is your writing process like?

John Hart: Authors who outline are probably the smart ones. I grope and hope. That being said, I think that my way is the most fun. Every day is an adventure, an exercise in joy and fear. I do treat this as a job, though. I work from an office downtown and try to set daily page goals. The downside of the grope and hope school of novel writing, however, is that steady production schedules don’t really exist. I deal with a fair number of blind alleys and false starts.

I break my writing day into two parts. In the morning, I let myself run unchecked. This is what “drives the bus” for me – the part of my brain that lets the story form. Then, in the afternoon, I tighten whatever page count I manage to write in the morning. This is the analytical part of the process. At the end of the day, I hope to have a thousand decent words, but that’s a loose target. The process is quasi-mystical in that I am never quite sure how ideas form and combine into a novel that works. Where the book ends up is more or less a surprise. That’s the real beauty of grope and hope.

Copyright © 2009 Cahners Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. Reprinted with permission.

Free eBook!

J.A. Konrath, author of the Jack Daniels series (Whiskey Sour, Fuzzy Navel, etc) has written a horror novel, Afraid, under the pseudonym Jack Kilborn. My daughter read it in one sitting and absolutely loved it. If you want a taste of Kilborn, I'm thrilled to be able to offer you a downloadable eBook.

It’s called SERIAL, a terrifying tale of hitchhiking gone terribly wrong by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch. SERIAL is a horror novella. Like a deeply twisted version of an “After School Special,” it is the single most persuasive public service announcement on the hazards of free car rides.

[I believe it was Wanda Sykes who recently said that if two cars pull up and one has a stranger in it and the other has Dick Cheney, she would tell her children to go with the stranger. She obviously hasn't read SERIAL...]

The SERIAL eBook also contains a Q&A with Kilborn and Crouch, author bibliographies, and excerpts from their most recent and forthcoming works: Kilborn’s Afraid and Crouch’s Abandon.

Here's the link:

http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780446535939.htm

SERIAL is located under "Book Extras" in the bottom right-hand corner. Readers can download it either as a PDF file or there's also an ePub version of the book (the Sony eBook Reader format).

Enjoy!

Guest Blogger: TOM FOLSOM

The Mad Ones, Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld (Weinstein Books) tells the story of Crazy Joe Gallo, a charismatic beatnik gangster who was celebrated in the Bob Dylan ballad “Joey.” Dylan hailed Joey as “King of the Streets.” Like Dylan, Joey lived in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. After becoming immersed in the counterculture, reading cigarette-burned copies of Camus and Sartre in Village cafes, Joey was inspired to revolt against the Mafia. The stories of his revolution inspired the most infamous scenes in The Godfather—“sleeps with the fishes,” “going to the mattresses”—as the Gallo brothers holed up in a tenement on the Red Hook, Brooklyn waterfront with shotguns and grenades in an all-out street war.

The epitome of gangster chic, Joey modeled himself after B-movie gangsters in film noir classics, Jimmy Cagney and his favorite, Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. The Gallo brothers invited Life magazine into headquarters for a photo shoot and were regularly featured on the covers of the New York City tabloids, dressed nattily in cheap black suits, skinny black ties and dark Raybans, a “gangster chic” look that agnès b. dressed Harvey Keitel accordingly for in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.


Crazy Joe Gallo Takes The Fifth (AP Images)


During the heyday of The Godfather, Crazy Joe befriended actor Jerry Orbach, of Law and Order fame, who played Joey in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. With Jerry in tow, Joey made the rounds of high society before being gunned down midbite at Umberto’s Clam House on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. Coinciding with this year’s 40th anniversary of the publication of The Godfather, The Mad Ones: tells the true stories that inspired Puzo's masterpiece. Watch the book trailer (make sure your volume is on) at http://www.tomfolsom.com








Tom Folsom author photo credit (Mark Seliger)

David Rosenfelt & The Tara Foundation

In case you were dying to know where and how Andy Carpenter really lives...Edgar-award nominated author David Rosenfelt shares his home and his heart with dogs he and his wife give a second chance to through their Tara Foundation. David's next book is NEW TRICKS.