Guest Blogger: ED LYNSKEY

Why I Titled My Latest Noir Lake Charles

Lake Charles, Tennessee, the setting, and title, of my Appalachian noir, doesn’t exist as far as I know. The manmade body of water is a product of my imagination. Later, I discovered there is a Lake Charles in Louisiana while I was reading a title in James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series, either The Tin Roof Blowdown or The Glass Rainbow. But Charles just happens to be my middle name, and it fit nicely when I was looking for the name of my lake. Lake Charles takes place in the Great Smoky Mountains, where I’ve spent a fair amount of time.

Back when those “dirty hippies infested” the mountains (as one of the cranky locals told us) in the early 1970s, I hiked on the Appalachian Trail for 150 miles. We embarked on our long trek from Fontana Dam, a hydroelectric dam actually located in North Carolina. The Appalachian Trail spans the top of the lofty dam built by the TVA during the 1940s to generate cheaper electric power to the region. Anyway, the backed up lake submerged the mountain hamlet of Fontana. Learning this bit of trivia as a kid had a strong tug on my imagination.

The TVA also constructed my Lake Charles. But mine is impounded by an earthen dam that my hero, Brendan Fishback, observes is leaky and growing unstable. So, his regard for Lake Charles further dims. The marina where he puts in his bass boat was a happening spot—a lot of dancing, laughing, and smoking—with the youth of his parent’s generation. Not so much nowadays.

Brendan is freaked to find a putrid green scum covers the once pristine water’s surface. His friend Cobb voices their mutual contempt, declaring only carp can thrive in such a “cesspool,” and their hopes to catch any bass are dashed. A stubborn cuss, Brendan refuses to turn around and leave, as most visitors would do. He persuades Cobb how they should make a day of it. The fun-loving Cobb agrees, and with Brendan’s twin sister Edna racing on her jet ski, they head out to the middle of Lake Charles.

Brendan is besieged by vivid dreams, how he communicates with his girlfriend Ashleigh. She’s dead. He was arrested for her murder and then bailed out of prison. He wanted to forget his legal troubles and escape his disturbing dreams by getting away to Lake Charles. Unfortunately, the polluted body of water is a cursed lagoon where a person’s hard life can only turn harder.

Before the day is finished, Edna has disappeared on her jet ski. So, Brendan and Cobb decide to hunker down for the night and get up at dawn to launch their search for her. Late after they’ve fallen asleep, unseen combatants swarm and bushwhack them. First blood is shed when one bushwhacker is shot dead in the chest. The next morning, they deep six the corpse in the lake’s scummy depths, break camp, and slog along the thicketed shores.

By now, it’s obvious to the reader that only dire things can ensue from spending any time near Lake Charles. In the distance, Brendan sees the gray-black columns to forest blazes pluming the sky. He encounters no wildlife. All the prime hardwood has been lumbered. The sunken foundation to the homes of former residents warns him that they had better also desert Lake Charles while it’s still possible. An enterprising criminal has adopted the remote area to grow the illicit marijuana crop that sells quite well.

Once again, tragedy strikes Brendan. He then calls in Cobb’s father. Mr. Kuzawa, a Korean War vet, knows how to deal with the criminal element. They leave behind Lake Charles and the narratives shifts into an almost detective novel mode as they go track down Edna and pry Brendan off the hook for murder. As the noir’s title suggests, Lake Charles is still not yet done with Brendan. He can’t secure any real peace of mind without his final return despite his fervid vow to remain away from it.

Geography doesn’t usually play such an instrumental role in my novels. Lake Charles is my first book taking its title from a specific place. Whether this was a conscious decision in my writing strategy isn’t clear. The dying lake as a cancerous blight in an otherwise picturesque landscape provided a central theme to hang the narrative on. That’s how Appalachian noir works.



Ed Lynskey is the author of the P.I. Frank Johnson mystery series (including The Zinc Zoo out in 2011) as well as a small town cozy mystery, Quiet Anchorage, also now out.


Read the first chapter Lake Charles to learn more about the book and author.

Lake Charles is up for pre-order sales at Amazon Books.

THRILLERFEST NEWSFLASH

Ken Follett to teach at CraftFest.

Karin Slaughter to be awarded the 2011 Silver Bullet Award for her “Save the Libraries” program.

Joe McGinniss to receive the ITW True Thriller Award.

AgentFest to be the largest event of its kind in the world! Over 55 agents will join us this year!

ThrillerFest VI is less than 4 months away!

Joining us are 2011 ThrillerMaster R. L. Stine, 2010 ThrillerMaster Ken Follett, and Spotlight Authors Diana Gabaldon, John Lescroart, and Robert Crais.

Back at the Grand Hyatt in New York City from July 6-9th, 2011.

Get a terrific room rate at the Grand Hyatt of only $209.00 per night!! This room block is selling out, so make your reservations right away to ensure that you get this fabulous room rate. (You must be registered with the conference to receive this hotel room rate.)

Just call: 1-888-421-1442 to make a room reservation, or click on the link at www.ThrillerFest.com

Time is running out. Register now: www.ThrillerFest.com

Can't wait to see you there!

Sleuthfest!

If you didn't see all my Tweets and Facebook posts about Sleuthfest, why aren't you following me and/or friending me?! I'm here to tell you that Sleuthfest is a blast!

If you're not familiar with it, Sleuthfest is hosted by the Mystery Writers of America, Florida chapter. It is primarily geared towards writers, but I will let you in on a secret: it is a fabulous conference for fans too - but only if you like small, intimate gatherings where you can chat one on one with some of your favorite authors, share lunch and brunch with them, and hang out in the bar with them. Yes, you can do that at other conferences like Bouchercon or Left Coast Crime, but then you are fighting the crowds. Here you are with a much smaller, friendlier crowd.

For me it all started Thursday afternoon with a terrific talk about the importance of genre by two-time Edgar winner S.J. Rozan. She was witty and smart and just plain interesting. Her next stop is Singapore!

Friday was a full day of fun, starting with an early morning panel on the eternal conflict between good & evil, PERFECT PROTAGONISTS & VILE VILLAINS. Jerry Sanford moderated a panel with Michael Palmer, Paul Levine, Julie Compton, and Michael Koryta. It was a full house despite the early hour, with a lot of interesting conversation.

Next was a panel called THE FRACTURED FAMILY. Here authors discussed their characters and their families. This panel featured Hannah Dennison, Deborah Sharp, James Grippando, Sharon Potts, and Lori Roy and was moderated by retired judge Irene Sullivan. Lori Roy is a newcomer, her first novel, Bent Road, comes out at the end of the month to rave reviews. It received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, who said "This Midwestern noir with gothic undertones is sure to make several 2011 must-read lists." I know it's on my list.

The most difficult part of each hour was choosing the panel I wanted to attend, there are usually three or four going on at the same time. I did notice that some people would just hang out in the back for a little while, then they'd move on to another panel.

Next stop was THE PUBLISHING PROCESS: A publisher and an agent give the inside scoop on publishing. Neil Nyren is the Vice President of G.P. Putnam & Sons and he edits some of the biggest names in publishing; W.E.B. Griffin, Clive Cussler, John Sandford, Robert Crais and Patricia Cornwell, to name but a few. The agent on the panel was Meg Ruley, who represents Michael Palmer as well as the moderator, James O. Born. Anytime Jim moderates a panel you can be sure it will be entertaining and this was no exception. They discussed what happens from the time a manuscript is finished until it lands on the bookstore shelf and I found the whole process fascinating.

Lunch on Friday featured Sleuthfest Guest of Honor Meg Gardiner as they keynote speaker. She talked about her publishing process, which was quite unusual. She's an American living in London and her books have been published in England and the rest of the English speaking world, except America - until Stephen King got involved. (see the interview with Meg for more details!)

After lunch I hit the THE POWER OF PUBLICITY: Creating your own brand - packaging, writing and social media with publicist Maryglenn McCombs from Oceanview Publishing, a small press, Joanne Sinchuk, bookseller and manager of Murder on the Beach Bookstore, Oline Cogdill, syndicated mystery reviewer, and the aforementioned editor Neil Nyren. Author Sharon Potts was the moderator, and this was an informative discussion followed by a lively question and answer period. That is another thing about Sleuthfest - every panel I attended took questions at the end, which is really useful and always interesting.

The last panel of the day was so important that it stood on its own with no competition. This was for a new nonfiction book called Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America.

FINDING ADAM WALSH’S KILLER & BRINGING ADAM HOME tells the 27-year-old story - the good, the bad and the ugly - of how one cop accomplished what an entire system of law enforcement could not. The book was written by Les Standiford along with Det. Sgt. Joe Matthews, the cop who finally solved the case.

Les started by reading a bit from the opening chapter, which was the scene when Adam first went missing at Sears. It was heartwrenching, and as a mother it just brought me to tears. Then he skipped ahead a bit and read us some background on Joe Matthews, a very funny story about having his gun stolen during his time in the police academy. All I can say is this book made me laugh and made me cry, and how often can you say that?

Late Friday afternoon found a group of people sitting around a table by the pool, discussing China Lake: An Evan Delaney Novel. The discussion was moderated by Stephanie Levine, a terrific bookseller from Murder on the Beach Bookstore. And best of all, the author, Meg Gardiner sat in too!

There was a "Fiesta Buffet Dinner" for those who wanted to stay at the hotel. After dinner there was a showing of the film Gone Baby Gone, based on the book by Dennis Lehane. After the movie, there was a discussion led by Lehane himself.

Saturday dawned bright and early and I sat in on JUST FOR GIGGLES: Dying is easy, comedy is hard, with authors Elaine Viets, Paul Levine, Toni Kelner, and Steven Forman, moderated by Vincent O’Neil. Despite the early hour there were lots of laughs! After that I was ready for REINVENTING YOURSELF: What to do if your series has run its course or you need a change. This panel featured Lisa Unger, Jonathon King, PJ Parrish (Kris Montee,) and Carol Cope. The moderator was the always entertaining Elaine Viets.

The next panel was called ALTERNATIVES TO PUBLISHING: How ebooks are changing publishing. Paul Levine, Jonathon King, Mike Jastrzebski were moderated by Neil Plakcy. Neil really explained the whole e-book business really well, he was very knowledgeable about it. Levine is also on board with this and told us he has put his backlist of the Jake Lassiter series on Amazon for $2.99 each! His next book, Lassiter, comes out in September so if you don't remember that series or haven't read it, do yourself a favor and get it. I loved that series and I'm really excited about the new book. Start with TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD (The Jake Lassiter Series). And if you don't have a Kindle, reserve Lassiter!

The lunch on Saturday was a lot of fun. First up was the auction! People had the chance to bid on having their manuscript critiqued, drinks with Neil Nyren and a tour of Putnam, a trip to New Orleans for Heather Graham's writer's conference, and to name a character in Lehane's next book. The money raised goes for some good causes and to the MWA. After the auction, featured keynote speaker Dennis Lehane took the stage. He is a terrific speaker, very bright and personable. He spoke about his ten rules of writing, and was really interesting and entertaining.

The afternoon panel with Dennis Lehane, James Hall & S.J. Rozan was standing room only, so I headed over to KEEPING IT REAL: How to make your character’s absurd behavior believable with Sandra Balzo, whose books I adore, Con Lehane, Suzanne Adair, Nancy Cohen, and Michael Palmer. My last panel of the day was MAKING HISTORY: Melding history and storytelling from 1919 Boston to WWII to Miami’s past and present to Kansas in the 1960s. This panel featured Dennis Lehane, James Benn, James W. Hall, and Lori Roy, and was moderated by Bill Hirschman and was just fascinating.

Saturday night was a big night. First there was the poolside book discussion with Dennis Lehane about Gone, Baby, Gone. That was followed by THE AGENTS AND EDITORS COCKTAIL PARTY, also poolside with a complimentary buffet. Then there was musical entertainment by Father Don Bruns and Michael and Daniel Palmer. Finally, at 10:30 p.m. Heather Graham threw a party in the grand ballroom with her band performing. A good time was had by all!

Sunday morning featured a light breakfast but no one got up that early for the food. They were there to see Oline Cogdill interview Neil Nyren and Dennis Lehane. What a perfect ending to a fabulous weekend. Can't wait for the next Sleuthfest!

Florida Book Awards

2010 Florida Book Awards Competition Winners

Children’s Literature
Gold: Jan Godown Annino, She Sang Promise: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader (National Geographic Society)
Silver: Mary GrandPre and Jack Prelutsky, Camille Saint-Saens’s The Carnival of the Animals (Alfred P. Knopf)
Bronze: Henry Cole, A Nest for Celeste: A Story About Art, Inspiration, and the Meaning of Home (Katherine Tegen Books)
Bronze: Brad Meltzer, Heroes for my Son (Harper Collins)
Bronze: Harvey E. Oyer III, The Last Egret: The Adventures of Charlie Pierce (Middle River Press)

Florida Non-Fiction
Gold: Margaret Ross Tolbert, AQUIFERious (Fidelity Press)
Silver: Julian M. Pleasants and Harry A. Kersey, Seminole Voices: Reflections on their Changing Society (University of Nebraska Press)
Bronze: Lu Vickers, Cypress Gardens, America’s Tropical Wonderland (University Press of Florida)
Bronze: Anna Lillios, Crossing the Creek (University Press of Florida)
Bronze: Randy Wayne White and Carlene Fredericka Brennen, Randy Wayne White's Ultimate Tarpon Book (University Press of Florida)

General Fiction
Gold: Mark Mustian, The Gendarme (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
Silver: Patricia Engel, Vida (Black Cat/Grove Atlantic, Inc.)
Bronze: T.M. Shine, Nothing Happens Until it Happens to You (Crown Publishing Group)
Bronze: Mary Jane Ryals, Cookie and Me (Kitsune Books)

Poetry
Gold: Carol Frost, Honeycomb (Northwestern University Press)
Silver: Lola Haskins, Still, the Mountain (Paper Kite Press)
Bronze: Kelle Groom, Five Kingdoms (Anhinga Press)

Popular Fiction
Gold: William Culyer Hall, The Trouble With Panthers (Florida Historical Society Press)
Silver: Randy Wayne White, Deep Shadow (GP Putnam's Sons)
Bronze: Joyce Elson Moore, The Tapestry Shop (Five Star/Gale/Cengage)
Bronze: Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us (Broadway Books)
Bronze: James Grippando, Money to Burn (Harper)

Visual Arts
Gold: Jason Steuber, Laura K. Nemmers and Tracy E. Pfaff, with a foreword by Rebecca Martin Nagy, editors, Samuel P. Harn of Art at Twenty Years: The Collection Catalogue (University Press of Florida)
Silver: Margaret Ross Tolbert, AQUIFERious (Fidelity Press)

Young Adult
Gold: Christina Diaz Gonzalez, The Red Umbrella (Alfred A. Knopf)

Spanish Lanugage
Gold: Jose Alvarez, Los Alamos del Parque (Editoral Voces de Hoy)

Gold medal winners will be honored at the Cultural Heritage Day ceremony in Tallahassee on March 23 and all award winners will be honored at a banquet on May 5 during the FLA Annual Conference in Orlando. For more information about the banquet, contact Sharon Gray at Sharon Gray at aplantomeet@earthlink.net. Additional information about the Florida Book Awards is available at http://floridabookawards.lib.fsu.edu/index.php.

Dennis Lehane, the library, & Sleuthfest!

If you're not going to Sleuthfest and you'd love to meet Dennis Lehane, swing on by the Hagen Ranch Road Library Friday night (3/4/11) at 6:30 p.m. for Wine & Words with Dennis Lehane. It's $30 at the door and you get two glasses of wine, some snacks and best of all, a chance to rub elbows with Dennis Lehane! Murder on the Beach Bookstore will be there selling books and the author will also be speaking and signing those books! For more information: Writers Live!

Dennis Lehane is also the guest of honor at this year's Sleuthfest, and the following is an interview they did with him:

"So much of learning to write involves one step forward and two steps back-but failure's okay."

Dennis Lehane has built a writing career that most writers dream of. He has published nine critically acclaimed novels, including his most recent release, MOONLIGHT MILE, and the New York Times bestsellers GONE, BABY, GONE; MYSTIC RIVER; SHUTTER ISLAND; and THE GIVEN DAY. His novels have been translated into over 30 languages. Three of his novels have already been made into major motion pictures. Two of his short stories are currently being adapted into feature films. He has written for several television programs, including THE WIRE, and is now busy developing an original pilot for F/X and gearing up to both write the screenplay for and executive produce (along with George Pelecanos) a movie for HBO. Somehow, he still finds time to teach creative writing at Eckert College in St. Petersburg, Florida.

It's an understatement to say we're very fortunate to have him as a Guest of Honor for SleuthFest 2011. In the third of our interview series leading up to this year's conference, Joanna Campbell Slan once again put on her interviewer's hat and asked Dennis to share his thoughts about his writing process and career.

Q: You wrote a book in three weeks and tossed it in a box. Then you revised it, and it became A DRINK BEFORE WAR. Tell us about that revision. What had you learned since writing the book that helped you turn it into such a power house of a novel?

A: It went through so many revisions I lost count. The first draft had Patrick's voice and most of the plot structure. That was it, though. In terms of language or depth, it was execrable. First drafts are often like that for me.

Q: You teach writing. What's the one thing you tell your students over and over that no one believes? What do you wish you had heard as a novice writer?

A: If you can't tell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, as well as a clearly established main character who takes an active role in that story, then all the pretty prose and wink-wink allusions and meta playfulness will not save you. The other side of that coin is that if all you have is some high-concept plot but you forgot to attach it to three-dimensional characters, depth of language and depth of insight, all you really have is wrapping paper over an empty box. You don't have a novel, at least not as I define one.

Q: Expand, please, on these sentences from an interview with you: Accident or not, Lehane has kept a firm hand on the professional aspects of his writing as well as the creative, understanding as he does the reverberations that a small thing can have on an entire career. "Where you enter the ladder," says Lehane in relation to a writing career, "I think, indicates how far you're going up it."

A: The key missing word here is "can." Where you enter the ladder can indicate how far you're going up it. And, yes, I feel it's better to enter the game with a strong hand. I wanted my first book to be published by a major New York publisher in hardcover. I felt if I were published by a small press and/or as a paperback original, I'd have that much more ground to cover. Several friends of mine did start with paperback originals and went on to considerable success--Harlan Coben and Laura Lippman spring immediately to mind-so what's good for the goose isn't necessarily good for the gander. It's all relative. My way is just my way, it's not the way.

Q: Do you keep a journal? You've said, "There's the idea that any incident reverberates, anything that happens in your life. The smallest thing. So if the smallest thing reverberates, then the biggest thing has a consequence." How do you track those small incidents?

A: In my head. Journals and I just don't work.

Q: How is the real world the enemy of the writer? What can we do about this?

A: Wordsworth has a phrase, "the world is too much with us," which I think applies as much to our era as it did to his. Which is also to say the world was always thus. Writers always had to fight the intrusion of the real world into their creative life and the intrusion of the creative into their domestic life. It's a balancing act. Those who balance it best, tend to have writing careers. Those who don't, don't. Like most things about the profession, there's no easy fix, no magic pill, no instruction manual. You just have to find your way, knowing that many others have come before you and confronted the same dilemmas. So at the very least, you can find comfort in knowing you're not alone.

Q: Many of us who write mysteries want to see justice prevail. In your books, right does not always win out, or at least enjoy a happy ending. In some ways, you seem to be following in the footsteps of Patricia Highsmith with THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY because your characters do commit murder, and yet we cheer for them. Comment on that.

A: I hope you're not cheering for murder in my books. That would suck. Yikes. Otherwise, at the end of the day, if I have to be pigeon-holed, I'll accept that I'm a noirist. And most people who write noir seem to think justice does not prevail. Or, if it does, it's a very relative thing. We've just had the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and everybody of reasonable intelligence knows exactly who's responsible. And yet not only are those people not in jail, they've gone back to engaging in the same practices which led to the meltdown. Meanwhile, we blather on about taxes, birth certificates, border fences and all sorts of odious sound and fury, fiddling while Rome burns. And I'm to believe that justice, in such a world, prevails? Doesn't mean you stop fighting for justice, though. Which is a paradox, yes, but paradoxes are dramatic gold.

Q: Tell us about depth of language. How can you teach that? How can a writer improve this skill?


A: If you don't have it naturally, read for it. You'll take some missteps of course-so much of learning to write involves one step forward and two steps back-but failure's okay. There are some writers who are well-known for their language. Just off the top of my head, I can think of Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Martin Amis, and Cormac McCarthy. So read those people and emulate them. At some point, your own voice will bubble up.

Q: Tell us about epiphanic moments in your books. Since you don't outline, how do you make sure these happen?

A: I was trained to look for epiphanies. I mean, that was the whole point. A novel is about the moment when a character learns something about himself and/or the world at large that he didn't realize before. The moment when Othello realizes he "threw away a pearl richer than all his tribe" for vanity or when C.W. in THE LAST GOOD KISS realizes his own inability to truly see women has kept him from seeing the truth in front of his face from about the third chapter on-those are the moments I read for. So they're the moments I write for.

Q: You admire Edith Wharton, and her HOUSE OF MIRTH brought destruction to a woman's life through a whisper campaign. As a society we are fixated on physical violence, but you also use emotional violence as a catalyst in your books. What techniques do you employ so that emotional violence seems as real as physical violence?

A: I have no idea. (It should be obvious by now that I don't speak to process well. Sorry. What I find so appealing in Wharton is how she gets at the ways tribes use whatever's at their disposal to eradicate any person or thing they perceive as a threat to the tribe's primacy. That's a pretty noir concept, because in noir the individual who goes against the machine is usually destroyed. Think Harry Fabian in NIGHT AND THE CITY or Eddie Coyle in THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE. What's hopeful in noir and in Edith Wharton novels is that the hero tries to break from the pack. That alone is a life-affirming concept.


______________________________________________________

Our Friday night movie this year is GONE, BABY, GONE, based on the novel of the same name, to be followed by a discussion with our SleuthFest Guest of Honor Dennis Lehane. On Saturday, Dennis will be our Saturday lunch Keynote Speaker, and in the afternoon he will participate on two panels: "Characters Who Withstand the Test of Time" and "Making History." In the afternoon, join him poolside for a discussion of GONE, BABY, GONE, the novel. Finally, in a not-to-be missed session on Sunday morning, reviewer Oline Cogdill will interview Dennis and Neil S. Nyren (Senior VP, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of G.P. Putnam's Sons) about the publishing industry, writing, and the mystery genre.

Michael Palmer, Daniel Palmer, Meg Gardiner, the library, & Sleuthfest!

and did I mention Dennis Lehane?!!

I am just thrilled that these fabulous authors will be visiting our local libraries. They are all in town for Sleuthfest, the annual convention of the Mystery Writers of America. It starts Thursday and runs though the weekend at the Deerfield Beach Hilton. Go to the Sleuthfest page if you'd like to sign up.

If you can't go, then maybe you'd like to stop by one of our Boca Raton libraries to meet these terrific authors. On Wednesday, March 2, at 2:00 p.m. the Glades Road Library will be hosting both Michael Palmer, author of A HEARTBEAT AWAY, which just came out, and his son, Daniel Palmer, whose first novel, DELIRIOUS, came out a couple of weeks ago.

Meg Gardiner has made time out of her busy schedule to swing by the West Boca Branch Library this Thursday, March 3, at 2:00 p.m. This is a rare U.S. appearance for the American living in London.

If you'd like to sign up for either of these events, or for the Dennis Lehane cocktail party/fundraiser on Friday, March 4 at 6:30 pm at the Hagen Ranch Road Library in Delray Beach, it's easy & all online here: Writers Live!

I received this terrific interview with Meg Gardiner, courtesy of Sleuthfest - and if you are not familiar with her work, after reading this you will want to be!

Questions and answers with Guest of Honor Meg Gardiner
February 2011

Time is running out!
Register NOW for SLEUTHFEST 2011!
March 3 - 6
Deerfield Beach, FL

"Writers are troublemakers. It's our job to give readers heartburn."

A common question posed by aspiring writers is: How do I get published? Every published author has a story, but the plot to Meg Gardiner's "big break" story is as twisted and surprising as any you might read in a mystery novel.

In the second of our interview series leading up to SleuthFest 2011, Joanna Campbell Slan interviewed Meg and asked her, among other things, about her publishing journey. It's an interview you won't want to miss, and it's just a small taste of the great information you'll be privy to at SleuthFest. Haven't registered yet? What are you waiting for?

Meg Gardiner was born in Oklahoma and raised in Santa Barbara, California. She graduated from Stanford University and Stanford law school. She practiced law in Los Angeles and taught writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her novel CHINA LAKE won the 2009 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Paperback Original. THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB won the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Procedural Novel of 2008. Meg lives with her husband, Paul Shreve, and their three children near London. LIAR'S LULLABY is her eighth novel.

Q: CHINA LAKE has non-stop action. What's your process? Do you outline or use any format? Since it was your debut book, what did you learn by writing it that you now use regularly?

A: Nonstop action - glad it seems so. The characters actually go to a museum and play soccer on the beach in between being chased by violent religious fanatics. So if the action feels nonstop, I'll fist-pump that the plot succeeds in maintaining suspense. I outline because that's the only way I can keep from becoming hopelessly lost and entangled in a story. Outlining allows me to build a plot, to make it coherent, and to keep it from wallowing or wandering. What did I learn by writing China Lake? I was powerfully determined to get it published, so I wrote and rewrote and turned the plot inside out and, whenever I saw a straight, flat stretch of story, I attacked it again to twist it, layer it, or add surprises and emotional complexity. I threw everything in. I ripped out the kitchen sink and pitched it into the plot, then tore the pipes from the wall and tossed them in too. I don't feel the need to do that anymore. But in CHINA LAKE, it seems to have worked.

As for what I now use regularly: if I find myself writing a scene where a character mulls, reflects, ponders, or muses - while nothing else happens - I cut it. That's not actually a scene. It's place-holding, or self-indulgence. Out it goes. Back to the action.

Q: It's every beginning author's dream to be noticed by a big name. You were singled out by Stephen King. Tell us how that happened so we can fantasize about it more accurately!

A: It was serendipity. Several years back, Stephen King was packing for a book tour to the UK. Looking for a novel to read on his flight, he opened a box of books his British publisher had sent him. He pulled out CHINA LAKE. I wish I could say he read the first paragraph and felt overwhelmed by the prose. But he decided that the print was large enough for comfortable reading on a long flight. So he took the book along. And by the time he landed in London, he'd finished it. He asked our British publisher who published me in America. The answer was nobody. For me, at the time, this was hugely frustrating. After all, I'm a Californian. I happened to be living in London because my husband's job had been transferred there. And I was excited that a British publisher was putting out the Evan Delaney series. But as an American, I keenly wanted to be published in my own country. However, after five books in the series, and translation into a number of foreign languages, American publishers had said no to all of my novels. Over and over. And over.

Mr. King read my entire series, and liked it. Then, because he's extraordinarily generous and supportive of other writers, he posted an article on his website urging readers to seek out my books. And, to my everlasting joy and gratitude, he wrote a column in Entertainment Weekly saying I deserved to be published in the U.S. and telling people to read the Evan Delaney series. Within 48 hours, fourteen American publishers had contacted me. Two weeks later, I had a contract with Dutton. They signed up the Jo Beckett series, which I was just developing, and their Penguin sibling, NAL, published the Evan Delaney novels. CHINA LAKE was finally published in the U.S. in 2008. In 2009 it won the Edgar for Best Paperback Original.

Q: Jesse is the male protagonist in CHINA LAKE. He's in a wheelchair. Unlike Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme, you were very specific about how he could/could not have sex. You also cover how someone in a wheelchair is received in daily life. How did you research this? Why did you decide to make Jesse less mobile? How do you make sure that he isn't a passive character?

A: Jesse Blackburn is a young man who had the world at his feet: He was a world-class athlete, a star student, an All-American with a brilliant career laid out ahead of him. Then he was run down by a hit-and-run driver and left for dead. I did that to put an irreparable crack in the characters' lives, and in the story. I wanted Jesse and Evan to live with the effects of violent crime, in a way that would never disappear. They can't ignore it or forget about it. It's always there. So the story is about how they deal with the physical and emotional consequences. It's about how Jesse rebuilds his life, and they build their relationship, in the aftermath.

But the point is that life does go on. As Evan says, Jesse learns how to navigate the world without walking it. And, physically, he's not completely disabled - he can walk, with difficulty. He gets around. And there's no chance Jesse could be a passive character, because that ain't his personality - he's cocky and sarcastic, a hotshot lawyer who drives too fast and who hates to back down from anything. Plus he's young, strong, and determined to find a way to do whatever he wants. Where'd he come from? From the way I've seen friends and family handle tragedies and challenges in their lives. From the way that, after a heavy blow, people get back up and keep going. I not only did a lot of research and reading, but also talked to people about how using a wheelchair affects their lives (and how able bodied folks sometimes react to them). They were generous enough to share their experiences with me. Bottom line: living an active life is about character, not the ability to jump.

Q: Evan and Jo, your female protagonists, both have gender neutral names. Why? You chose very romantic names for your male protagonists, and the couples have a rich romantic life yet your books are clearly suspense. How do you juggle both the romance and the suspense elements?

A: Evan is a middle name - her first name is Kathleen - and Jo is short for Johanna. I chose gender neutral names partly because frilly names just struck me as silly for thriller heroines. Partly because they're girls next door, with a bit of tomboy and outdoorswoman in them, and I wanted that to come across. As for the guys in their lives - well, these are women who live to the full, and I wanted them to have partners and families. Evan and Jo aren't broken detectives. They're not alcoholic, or abused, or ruining their relationships by devoting themselves obsessively to their jobs. It's more fun that way, for me, and for them.

The novels are suspense, first and last. They aren't boy-meets-girl, or will-they, won't-they. The romance in the stories grows out of the characters' lives. So it's deep, sometimes risky, and worth fighting for. As it is for all of us.

Q: People look at Jo and wonder, "What is she?" Meaning, they wonder about her heritage. In Jo's profession, she looks into peoples' pasts and wonders, "Who were they?" That sense of identity seems to be very important to you. Tell us about it.

A: Jo performs psychological autopsies to find out whether a victim's death is suicide, accident, or murder. Her job is to unearth the victim's history, and to piece together a jigsaw of the victim's life into a whole picture that illuminates the circumstances of their death. She asks: Who was this person? What goes on in the human heart? In her job, this is more important than dry stains on a lab slide. Understanding the victim's identity is crucial to uncovering the truth. Learning "Who were they?" allows her to find out how they died. Jo happily calls herself "pure California mutt." She's got Irish, Japanese, and Egyptian ancestry. She loves all aspects of her heritage, even when her family's arguing during Christmas dinner. But of course she's aware that she doesn't look like a 1950s poster for Susie Wonderbread. And in America we're fascinated, for good and ill, by people's ethnicity and heritage. But Jo is the increasingly typical California girl. She's who I see, more and more, when I look at my own family.

Q: You are an ex-pat. How has that had an influence on your writing? Or has it? How do you balance writing and being a wife and mother? What's your schedule like? How do you keep your writing time sacred? Or do you?

A: Being an ex-pat has taught me that we live in a big world. What we consider to be "the way it is" sometimes turns out to be just a local attitude. When you get out of your own little neighborhood you meet people who see things from a different vantage point. And that's enlightening. In my writing, it's made me careful to explain American terms and customs for an international audience. I can't expect readers in Amsterdam to know that CHP stands for California Highway Patrol, or that "Red or green?" refers to my heroine's choice of salsa. The big thing I learned is that people in Britain consider California to be exotic. I thought Santa Barbara was an ordinary place to grow up, but my English friends pictured it as Baywatch - all bikinis and jet skis and automatic weapons. And hey, I was more than happy to write stories set in a world I love, and that they find fascinating.

As for my schedule, I write every day, come high water, snakebite, or my mother-in-law. Once my kids started school, it got simple: the school bus came at 7:55 a.m., and returned at 3:45 p.m. Those were the hours when I could write. I thought it was perfect. However, once, while under deadline pressure, I opened my office door to find that the kids had taped a note to it: "Warning - she eats her young."

Q: In CHINA LAKE, you captured the voice of religious extremism in a pitch-perfect way. How did you manage it without getting clichéd or too weird to be believable?

A: At the time I thought I was exaggerating for effect. But looking around now, much of what I wrote about the Remnant (the Bring-on-Armageddon sect in the book) could be dropped into a news broadcast without anybody batting an eye.

When I first imagined the story, I had in mind the radical violence of the Oklahoma City bombing. But today, when we hear "terrorist attack," we more or less assume it has been launched in the name of religion. Meanwhile, on the nasty 'n' wacko front, we've got the Westboro Baptist "Church" picketing the funerals of soldiers. There are billboards of a buffed-out Jesus ripping himself off the cross, like a WWF superstar, with the tagline: "You drew first blood, but I'll be back." And last week, a self-proclaimed "bible prophecy expert" joined Glenn Beck on his national television show, on what's ostensibly a news network, to warn America that we may be in the End Times, and that Islam thinks the Antichrist is a good guy. The phrase "wet my pants" was used. Too weird? What's that?

Q: There are a handful of attorneys who write suspense and mystery, including Jeffery Deaver, Jamie Freveletti, and Steve Berry. What is it about being an attorney that prepares someone for writing suspense and mystery?

A: Attorneys have experience writing persuasive documents. It's their job to convince the court, in the teeth of zealous opposition, that their client's case is just. And all legal cases are stories.

Every court case is a narrative. It's a tale of conflict - of something going desperately wrong between people. And it's the attorney's job to frame her client's case in the most compelling way possible, to convince a judge or jury of its merits.

Of course, in a novel, unlike a court case, the author can guarantee that the story ends the way she wants. Or maybe attorneys are natural fibbers. As my son said, aged four: "Lawyer, lawyer, pants on fire."

Q: Gabe has a daughter and Evan is devoted to her young nephew. Someone once told me there's a "rule" against having kids in mysteries because the kids should never be in danger. (I broke that rule, and you have, too.) Any thoughts about how children as characters? They certainly do humanize your other characters. Do you ever worry about putting them in danger?

A: I'm glad I never heard of such a rule. I wrote Luke, Evan's six-year-old nephew, into the heart of the story before I ever dealt with publishing do's and don'ts. And in fact my first editor told me the opposite - she encouraged me to include children in my novels precisely because they humanize the surrounding characters. And I'm a mom of three. With a house full of kids, it seemed completely realistic to include youngsters in my stories.

Sometimes I worry about putting children in trouble in my books - it can be nerve-racking, oppressive, or disturbing. I have never written about abuse or shown children suffering. But writers are troublemakers. It's our job to give readers heartburn, to keep them biting their nails and flipping the pages to see what happens to all these delightful characters who are at such risk. And I don't actually put children in danger. Only on the page.

Friday Guest of Honor Meg Gardiner will speak during lunch on Friday, March 4, in the Grand Ballroom and will be on several panels throughout the weekend. On Friday afternoon at poolside, she'll participate in a book discussion moderated by Stephanie Levine of Murder on the Beach Bookstore about the award-winning China Lake. Don't miss it!

____________________________________________________________
CLICK HERE to register for SleuthFest or, if you've already registered but would like to add Third Degree Thursday to your registration, contact Sharon Potts at sharonrpotts@aol.com.


SLEUTHFEST 2011
March 3 - 6, 2011
Deerfield Beach, Florida at the Hilton Deerfield Beach/Boca Raton


CLICK HERE to go to the SleuthFest website.

Become a SleuthFest fan on Facebook too!


Rap Sheet Editor
Mystery Writers of America Florida Chapter

Best Buy

It seems to me that lots of people use the internet as a way to vent. They take to the blogosphere to complain about bad service, bad products, bad experiences. I want to go the other way.

Last summer we switched cell phone service to another company, but instead of buying the phones directly from the cell phone provider or online, we went to Best Buy. We had T-Mobil but they didn't have a tower near my home or something because we couldn't use our phones in the house and they didn't work at my daughter's school, either. When our contract was up, we switched to Sprint.

We bought our phones at Best Buy. Their prices were better than the cell phone provider store and their staff seemed to know what they were doing more than the staff at the other store. Plus they had live demo models that they just handed us to try out while we shopped. It was a really unusual experience. We went out for dinner and afterwards we went to the Best Buy near the restaurant, signed up for a family plan, bought four phones, took out the Best Buy service plan on mine and my daughter's phones and went home. We were the ones who always had phone problems. I hate to admit it but my husband and my son take much better care of their phones than we do.

My family all got Androids and I decided to try one too. But I have long nails which precludes me from using a touch screen easily. I found it very frustrating, and the phone wouldn't sync with my email. It just wasn't working for me so the next day I went to the Best Buy around the corner from my house and returned my phone. I was a little anxious about it, the return line was always long and slow moving. But I didn't have to get in that line, I just had to take it back to the cell phone department.

While I waited for someone to help me, I noticed that the phones my family had bought the night before were half the price at this store. A few minutes later I was waited on, and with no fuss at all a credit was applied to my account for my family's phones and I swapped my Android for a new Blackberry. All was good.


About 5 weeks later I noticed my battery started running out by midday. It was driving me nuts, I wasn't doing anything different than I ever did with my phone and I couldn't figure it out. I called Sprint and they said it sounded like the battery may be defective. They had me make an appointment at a Sprint service center half an hour away for the next night. Instead, I went back to Best Buy. They showed me how to check and see what programs I had running and it turned out that the UberTwitter app was constantly updating and the bluetooth was seeking and I don't remember what else but they cleared it up for me. I told them what Sprint had said about the battery and they told me that the warranty on batteries was only 30 days, and that had passed. With my service plan I got one free battery but I didn't think that I should have to use it a mere 5 weeks after purchase!

The tech who was helping me talked to the manager. Next thing I knew they opened up a new Blackberry and pulled the battery for me. Then they told me that it never happened and have a nice day.

Over the Christmas holidays my daughter told me her phone kept crashing. We went to Best Buy and a nice young man named Kevin helped us. He took her phone and found that she had over 5000 text messages stored on it. That was causing the crashing. He had to clear off some games, downloaded some apps to help clear it up and literally spent three hours working on her phone. She went off to play video games while I sat and read on my Kindle. He got her phone working and we were on our way. I was impressed with his patience, but especially with his kindness. Plus he explained what he had done and how she should take care of her phone to avoid another problem.

While he was working on her phone, I mentioned that I was having a little problem with my phone, nothing major, just that the "Y" key was a bit sticky. He worked on that for a little bit and it seemed better when we left. But a few weeks later and the "Y" was sticking again and I finally took the phone back in on my day off last weekend.

A nice young girl named Allison helped me. Again I sat reading my Kindle while she worked on my phone. Next thing I knew she was asking me for my drivers' license and home phone number and reams of paper were coming out of the register. I asked her what she was doing and she said I'm giving you a new phone. I was amazed - a new phone because one key was sticky? Really? Brand new. Unbelievable.

The Best Buy service option was about the same price as the plan from Sprint, but it covered so much more. And boy has it paid off.

So hats off to Best Buy in Boca Raton. Your techs are awesome, they are kind and patient and smart. Your service plan really works the way us customers imagine that it would, but usually doesn't.

Bottom line? I wouldn't buy a cell phone anywhere else.

And for the record, I do not work for Best Buy, I don't know anyone at Best Buy, I am not a stockholder and I have absolutely no motive to share my story other than the fact that I can. It makes me feel good to do something nice for a store that has been so good to me.

Boycott HarperCollins

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release

Contact
info@boycottharpercollins.com

Library Users, Librarians, and Libraries Boycott HarperCollins Over Change in Ebook Terms

New York, NY -- Library users, librarians, and libraries have begun to boycott publisher HarperCollins over changes to the terms of service that would limit the ability of library users to borrow ebooks from libraries. A new website, BoycottHarperCollins.com, is helping to organize their efforts to get HarperCollins to return to the previous terms of service.

On February 24, Steve Potash, the Chief Executive Officer of OverDrive, sent an email to the company's customers -- primarily US libraries -- announcing that some of the ebooks they get from OverDrive would be disabled after they had circulated 26 times. Soon after, librarians learned that it was HarperCollins, a subsidiary of News Corporation (NWSA), that intended to impose these limits. Immediately, library users, librarians, and libraries began voicing their opposition to the plan by HarperCollins, with several library users and librarians urging a boycott.

As Joe Atzberger, of Columbus, Ohio, one of the first librarians to address the issue, wrote on his Atzblog: http://atzberger.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-overdrive-drm-terms-this-message.html

"The previous model already forced libraries to pretend a digital 'copy' was a single physical thing. Only one library's user can have it 'checked out' at a time. And only on one device. The clearly misapplied language around this tells you what a terrible idea it is. To be clear, this model eliminates almost all the major advantages of the item's being digital, without restoring the permanence, durability, vendor-independence, technology-neutrality, portability, transferability, and ownership associated with the physical version."

Information on this grassroots campaign can be reached via a website that went online on February 27, 2011, BoycottHarperCollins.com. The boycott will end as soon as HarperCollins agrees not to limit the number of times a library can loan each ebook.

Guest Blogger: NEIL PLAKCY

I’m often asked where I get my ideas, and the answer to that can range from a title to a sentence to an image. This morning, though, as I was walking the dog, a whole book sprung into my head based just on something I saw.

Sam, my golden retriever, and I turned a corner and saw a man approaching us pushing a stroller. Not just any man, though-- a gorgeous one, wearing only nylon running shorts and sneakers. He had short blond hair and a muscular chest and his face had the kind of angular features you see on male models.

He was pushing a pair of little girls in a double stroller as he ran. The sun was shining behind him so I couldn’t get that good a look without staring, but then Sam and I doubled back on our tracks, and so did he, so I was able to see him again more clearly. This time we nodded hellos to each other.

That’s when the book sprang into my head. Suppose he’s not the dad of those two adorable little girls at all, but their uncle. He’s staying with his sister while she’s -- what -- recovering from an illness? Getting over a divorce? What’s going on in his life that he has the time to do this?

And who’s the other guy in this story? Not me. I’m too old and too settled with my own partner. But a younger guy, perhaps, recovering from a broken heart by bonding with his dog. They’d exchange some smoldering glances as they meet, perhaps a couple of times in the mornings. But my hero would be curious and a bit repelled-- is this suburban dad flirting with me? With his daughters right there?

How would the truth come out? Maybe they meet unexpectedly away from kids and dogs. And then… sparks fly, and the book takes off.

This is the kind of question I always wanted to ask when I went to writers’ conferences as an unpublished guy, struggling to write a book. How do you start? How does it all come together? Attending Sleuthfest years ago gave me the chance to ask those questions, and get some answers. And then, as I got published, I kept on attending Sleuthfest, looking for inspiration on how to keep my career going, how to get over those slow spots in my manuscript. I’m still going to Sleuthfest, because I still have so much to learn, and you never know where inspiration will strike you.

Even early in the morning, walking the dog.




Neil Plakcy is the author of the Mahu mystery series, about openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka. They are: Mahu, Mahu Surfer, Mahu Fire, Mahu Vice, Mahu Men, and Mahu Blood (2011).

He also writes Aidan and Liam bodyguard adventure series, Three Wrong Turns in the Desert, Dancing with the Tide and Teach Me Tonight (2011).

His other books are In Dog We Trust, a golden retriever mystery, as well as the novels GayLife.com, Mi Amor, and The Outhouse Gang and the novella The Guardian Angel of South Beach.

Plakcy is a journalist and book reviewer as well as an assistant professor of English at Broward College’s south campus in Pembroke Pines. He is president of the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America and a member of Sisters in Crime.

He edited Paws & Reflect: A Special Bond Between Man and Dog and the gay erotic anthologies Hard Hats, Surfer Boys and Skater Boys (2010). His erotic stories have been collected in three Kindle editions: Tough Guy Erotica, Romantic Erotica, and Pledge Class and Other College Boy Erotica.

Guest Blogger: SHARON POTTS

When’s a Nightmare not a Nightmare?
By Sharon Potts

I once heard a story at a writers’ conference. It seems that an author was on tour. She arrived for her event at a large bookstore, far from home, pleased to see the dozens of chairs arranged in front of the podium. But as time for her talk drew near, only one person showed up and took a seat. The author gave her presentation, disheartened and feeling like a failure. Afterward, the person in the audience went up to her, asked for her to sign her book, and said. “I’m a still-unpublished author. Boy, what I would give to be in your shoes.”

Hmmm. Sometimes things really aren’t as bleak as they appear to be. Of course, I can’t help but remember that story now, as I’m about to embark on the tour of my second thriller, Someone’s Watching, with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that no one will show up. It’s an author’s worst nightmare. But that’s only because we tend to lose sight of our dreams.

Mine began about ten years ago, shortly after I retired from the business world and decided to write a novel. Of course, the fact that I had no training in the craft or any idea of how the publishing world worked was no deterrent. I was certain I could become a successful, published author. I wrote my first novel in record speed—about three months—bought a book that taught me how to query agents, sent out a dozen or so letters, then sat back and waited. The rejections arrived soon after. I realized I needed to try a different tack.

Someone suggested I attend the SleuthFest Writers Conference put on by the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. A three-day conference with workshops and panels on the craft of writing given by experienced, successful authors, SleuthFest also offered the opportunity to meet and pitch to agents and editors. I arrived at the Deerfield Beach Hilton cautiously optimistic. I got to pitch my book to an agent, who rejected it on the spot. What did he know? Then I went to several panels and began to acquire some perspective about things I might be doing wrong. But of course, I told myself, I was writing a different kind of book from the ones those authors were talking about.

On Saturday, one of the highlights of SleuthFest is the author auction. I found myself bidding on and winning a critique by one of my favorite authors, Barbara Parker. Surely, she would see the brilliance in my novel. Guess what? She didn’t. But Barbara gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever received. I learned that there’s much more to writing a novel than simply putting a story down on paper. There’s plotting, pacing, character development, dialogue, creating tension, and on and on. Things I’d been too impatient to master. Barbara also taught me that the key to writing a successful novel was in accepting criticism from knowledgeable sources, and then in rewriting and rewriting, yet again.

I followed Barbara’s advice and became active in the Mystery Writers of America, attending every SleuthFest conference in the nine years since that first one. I met my publisher at SleuthFest, bonded with other aspiring writers and published authors, and connected with my current critique partners. When my debut novel In Their Blood was published a little over a year ago, it received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Mystery/Suspense Novel. I honestly don’t believe that would have happened without SleuthFest and the Mystery Writers of America.

So now, as I head out on tour for Someone’s Watching, I put aside the nightmare that no one will show up at my book signings. And remember that at least I have my dream.


Sharon Potts worked as a CPA, business executive, and entrepreneur before turning to a career of murder and becoming a crime fiction writer. Potts’s Miami-based thrillers are about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Her debut novel, In Their Blood, won top honors in the Mystery/Suspense category of the 2010 Benjamin Franklin Awards. Her latest thriller, Someone's Watching was called "shiver-rich" by Publishers Weekly, and “stunningly well-handled” by Booklist. She is the Vice President of the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America and one of the organizers of the SleuthFest Writers Conference. She lives in Miami Beach.
Visit her website, www.sharonpotts.com


The 2011 SleuthFest Writers Conference will be held from March 3-March 6 2011 at the
Deerfield Beach Hotel. This year’s conference features Dennis Lehane, Meg Gardiner, and SJ Rozan, as well as many other best-selling authors, workshops and panels on the craft of writing, agent and editor appointments, and much more. www.sleuthfest.com.

Best Holiday Gift Ever!

THE ULTIMATE RIDE FOR THE ULTIMATE LITERARY BUFF

Penguin Publishing Selling Author-Autographed Mini Cooper on AutoTrader.com

ATLANTA – December 13, 2010 – Are you or a friend or family member the ultimate literary fan? Then AutoTrader.com has posted for sale the ultimate gift for you or that special someone: a 2010 Mini Cooper SD with a dashboard signed by 18 Penguin authors, including Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame, Pulitzer Prize winning authors William Kennedy and Geraldine Brooks as well as New York Times bestselling authors Michael Pollan, Sue Monk Kidd, Jan Karon, Rosanne Cash and many more!

Penguin Books purchased the Mini Cooper as part of the company’s 75th anniversary celebration, which occurred throughout 2010. The vehicle traveled to literary and book events across the country and Penguin-published authors signed the car’s interior at each stop, making this truly a one-of-a-kind ride.

The vehicle is now for sale on AutoTrader.com with a Private Seller advertisement at www.autotrader.com/penguinmini for $30,000. The price reflects the unique nature of the vehicle, its excellent condition and an additional bonus: the car comes with the top 75 titles published by Penguin Books over the past 75 years, a collection of books worth about $1,200. Proceeds from the sale of the car will be donated to the New York Public Library.

“We wanted to post this vehicle on a site that had the ability to showcase the features of this car – both the features and options you’d find on any Mini Cooper and these unique autographs – and that had millions of car-shopping visitors so we could ensure the right buyer would find it,” said Kathryn Court, President & Publisher of Penguin Books. “With the ability to show detailed photos of the car and write a description that really highlighted the special and unique features, AutoTrader.com’s Private Seller ad was clearly the way to go.”

Penguin Books utilized AutoTrader.com’s Private Seller options to the max to showcase the vehicle. At www.autotrader.com/penguinmini, interested buyers will find multiple photos of the car’s interior and exterior and a description that highlights the car’s features. The vehicle comes with AM/FM/CD, MP3 player jack, air conditioning, automatic transmission, black cloth seats, orange and black exterior paint (freshly painted) and, of course, those 18 autographs in silver pen along the dashboard, doors and steering wheel. The car has about 15,750 miles on it and is currently located in New York City.

“When Penguin approached us to assist them in finding a buyer for this unique vehicle and for this great cause – the New York Public Library – we immediately said ‘yes’,” said AutoTrader.com General Manager of Private Seller Service and Sales Melanie Kovach. “AutoTrader.com is all about using technology tools to connect buyers and sellers efficiently, and this is a special opportunity to do so that we’re really excited about.”

Full details, photos and contact information for Penguin Books to make an offer on the vehicle is included in the advertisement, or you can contact Paul Lamb at 212-366-2277 or Paul.Lamb@us.penguingroup.com.

Penguin Books, like any private seller, will select the buyer with the most attractive offer. Used 2010 Mini Coopers listed for sale on AutoTrader.com range in price from about $24,000 to $30,000, depending on vehicle options and condition.

“We priced the car at the top of the price range you would find for a used 2010 Mini Cooper on AutoTrader.com because of the special and unique nature of the vehicle,” said John Fagan, VP Director of Marketing at Penguin Books. “We’ll consider all offers, but are obviously looking to get as much for the vehicle as possible as all the proceeds benefit the New York Public Library, one of New York City’s most treasured institutions.”

Guest Blogger: S.G. BROWNE

I first came up with the idea for Fated late one night in September 2003. At the time, I didn’t realize the idea would turn into a novel about fate, destiny, and the consumer culture. It was just this kernel of a notion for a possible short story about a main character who knew certain things were going to happen because he was Fate. And that’s where I left it. As an idea waiting to become a story.

The following July, while sitting in a shopping mall and watching people walk past and wondering what their futures held, I wrote down the line:

I look at people and see what they’re going to be like in twenty years.

What followed was a short scene about a handful of people and where they would be in twenty years. While I connected it to the concept of Fate I’d touched on the previous September, I didn’t pursue it any further. Instead, I filed it away until, more than two years later, the scene became part of the opening chapter of Fated.

But even then, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the idea that I had. When I first sat down to start writing Fated, I had no idea I was going to be writing a social satire on the consumer culture and the stupid things that a lot of people do to screw up their lives. But in the same way I wrote my first novel, Breathers, the social commentary just sort of evolved as the story unfolded.

From December 2006 to March 2007, I wrote approximately half of Fated. Forty thousand words, or roughly one-hundred-and-sixty pages. And I had a lot of fun doing it. Scenes with Fate and Destiny. Lunches with Sloth and Gluttony. Awkward moments with Death and Secrecy and Failure. An unexpected romance with a mortal woman. And, of course, meetings with God.

Personifying abstract concepts led me to do a bit of research on the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Contrary Virtues, and the concepts of Karma, Fate, and Destiny. While most people tend to think of these last two as one in the same, I differentiated between them due to their corresponding connotations. Fate tends to be more negative (a fatal disease, a fate worse than death), while destiny implies a more favorable outcome (he was destined for greatness, it was her destiny).

Because my main character has been around for the entire existence of humankind, I wanted to include references to famous people and significant historical moments in the narrative. So I consulted my Handy History Answer Book for events that took place during the Renaissance, the Classical Age, and the Scientific Revolution. I Googled to verify the passenger list of the Titanic and if someone during Henry VIII’s reign would wear a tunic. And I spent a lot of time researching the population of the planet, the evolution of man, and determining how many people God smote (Jezebel, Saul, Lot’s wife, and some guy who made the mistake of picking up sticks on the Sabbath, among others). After all, when you have God as one of your characters you need to try to get these things right.

Also, since Fate has to tend to the futures of people across the planet, I did research on a number of geographic locations, including Paris, Los Angeles, Vienna, Duluth, San Francisco, and Daytona Beach. But the majority of my research on set locations was for Manhattan, as that’s where Fate and most of the rest of the immortals reside.

Although it was some of the most enjoyable writing I’d ever done, I began to wonder where the story was going. Why it mattered. What was the purpose. I like to discover the story as I write it, so plotting everything out has never been my style. I’m kind of like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’m making it up as I go. Problem is, if you’re not sure where you’re going, sometimes it takes a while to figure out how to get there. So I played with some ideas, tossed them out, went back and revised sections for continuity, and scratched my head a lot.

Finally, in December 2007, I figured out what I wanted to do. How everything would tie together. Why the story mattered to me. At that point, after nearly a year working on Fated, I’d only managed to get another twenty thousand words written. Half of what I’d done in just the first three months. It was a humbling and often frustrating process.

But over the next month I poured out the last twenty thousand words and finished the first draft of Fated on February 2, 2008, two weeks after I sold Breathers to Random House. Twenty-one months later, I finally get to share the story with everyone else. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Visit the author's website: S.G. Browne

Guest Blogger: JERI WESTERSON

Day Jobs
By Jeri Westerson

Maybe readers think that authors spring fully formed into the world, all published and everything. But those of us who publish later in life, usually have a slew of experiences prior to getting that call from a publisher.

As for me, my resume reads a little like I couldn’t hold down a job.

That was not the case. I started out life with an entirely different vocational path. While in high school and college, I had decided that I wanted to be an actress. I was a singer, failed dancer, successful comedienne and dramatic thespian, winning acting awards all through high school. I directed and even, briefly, became a puppeteer in college. But then I went to some real world auditions and had my head handed to me. Standing in a bare room with people in suits discussing your various shortcomings amongst themselves while you stood there, suddenly did not have the appeal it once had. But I was lucky. Like many other people with artistic talent, I had few tricks up my sleeve. Little did I know that the skill of designing all those programs and posters I did for years for various theatrical productions had a name: graphic artist.

I switched majors to art and graduated with an art degree and, with portfolio in hand, dove into the advertising world of Los Angeles. Well, not so glamorous at first. I worked in an in-house art department for a commercial lighting company in Huntington Park, CA. Later I got a dream job in Canoga Park designing video boxes, the children’s line. So basically, I got to watch cartoons and design the boxes and collateral. Family Home Entertainment became the best design job I ever had. If they still exist—and I designed some Inspector Gadget boxes, Pound Puppies, Strawberry Shortcake, for them to name a few—if they ever put together a little animated FHE logo of three crayons with arms and Mickey Mouse gloves like they had planned to, that was my design. I invented those guys.

They got bought out by Carolco, owned by the Menendez family. We all thought that meant an influx of cash to the company. What it really meant is that they fired everyone. The art department was closed and we were all laid off, and there were quite a few of us (since their biggest video line was porn, and yes, I designed a few of those, too). The Menendez name should sound familiar to you. It was that murder case in the eighties where the young men killed both their parents and pled that they had been abused for years. I think they’re still in jail. Revenge for the firing? Hey, I’m not saying if you fire me you’re children will murder you, but...

Not long after that I got into freelancing and did work for Epic and CBS Records. This was all before computers, so I knew all the designer tricks (and I was pretty high tech at home with my fax machine and my copier that zoomed! Oooh.) But I made a lot of money in those fat eighties and semi-retired at that point to have a baby.

Fast forward about two years later and circumstances had us moving out of lovely Pasadena so my husband could follow the job to the Inland Empire (that’s southern California speak for deserty, inland counties, kind of far from interesting things like the coast). There was no question about my getting back into design because the entire world had switched to computers and I, alas, had not.

So this was the turning point for me to decide to become a stay at home novelist. And I did eventually learn to use a PC, but with a young, struggling family, I couldn’t end up just staying at home, at least not on the weekends. We also live in an area of southern California where there is a wine country so I thought it would be fun to work at a winery as a tasting host and tour guide. I also starting making bird houses to sell on the side so if you ever bought a birdhouse at a Temecula winery gift shop (Mount Palomar Winery) in the mid nineties, look on the bottom to see if it’s got my signature! Ah, a real collector’s item. I also made some amusing Christmas ornaments for that same winery (again, look for that signature on the backs.)

After three years of that I turned to newspaper reporter for just about all the local daily and the weekly papers. And during all this, I was writing my novels, sending to agents, and finally landing one. After eight years as a reporter I became a soloist and choir director for a local church. And still I wrote. I moved from that to part time secretary. Still writing. Still getting rejected. Until finally hitting on the right agent (number four) and about twenty novels later before that contract showed up at my door.

All smooth sailing and glamorous life of an author from then on, right? Wrong. Still had to keep a part time day job as an office assistant…until quite recently. They say you have to spend at least twice your advance on your first book to promote it properly and I’ve been doing the same for each book since. So far, all of my writing income has gone right back into publicity and promotion, including travel to various conventions, a nifty book trailer you can see on my website, collateral material, and a yearly fabulous book launch party that involves sword-fighting knights. With a son away in college, our household expenses have dropped and I’ve been sans day job since June of this year, using what little money I have to pay off my credit cards. But I’m writing full time. I've heard that it takes till the fifth book to make a profit. I’m hoping I won’t have to be back in the work force before that happens. In the meantime, I’m practicing: “Would you like fries with that?”




Jeri works at home writing the next Crispin Guest Medieval Noir in the series. The new release of THE DEMON’S PARCHMENT has been very exciting and you can share in the excitement by reading the first chapter on her website www.JeriWesterson.com.

Guest Blogger: DEBORAH COONTS

RULES

I’m not in favor of rules. However, free-thinker that I am, I’m willing to admit they have their place. Just don’t let those little buggers into my writing life. Talk about a great way to strangle the muse.

In the interest of true-confessions, I wasn’t always this…liberated. Like every wanna-be novelist, when I sat down to figure out how to write a novel, I wanted to know the rules. Just tell me how to do it, and I’d write a story the paint-by-numbers way. And, of course, this being the good ‘ol U S of A, the land of the ‘How To’ book, I found no shortage of opinions as to the proper approach to writing the next Great American Novel.

In my quest for the literary holy grail, I eagerly absorbed the proffered information. I learned some of the building blocks of craft—varied sentence structure, elimination of backstory and narrative, description only when necessary to set the scene or characters, adjectives and adverbs are not your friends, realistic dialogue (try reading it out loud), well, you get my drift. I’m sure there are plenty of other rules I absorbed so well that they became part of my subconscious. Others were pounded into intuitiveness by members of my critique group. And all of them helped me become a ‘writer.’

But my goal was to be a ‘novelist.’ So, what’s the difference? Well, a story, for starters. Now that I had some basic understanding of HOW to write (although I was far from being proficient—a reality that most beginning novelists find a bitter pill to swallow—I was no exception), WHAT to write became the burning question. I consulted my writing bibles. Thankfully, they provided a blueprint.

The first one suggested I should write what I read. Okay, I could do that. So I slaved over this international intrigue, romantic suspense, mystery/thriller. Suffice it to say, even after a million rewrites, the story was unsalvageable. It was so bad that I spent a great deal of time destroying every copy. I would rather see naked pictures of myself on the internet than have anyone read that first attempt.

Back to the books. The next suggestion was that I should write what I know. At the time I was a tax attorney in Colorado raising my son on my own. Life was a slog, punctuated by sublime moments, but a slog none-the-less. Who would want to read about that? By this point I was smart enough to know that was a rhetorical question. However, lacking any better idea, I set about writing a story with a lawyer who was a single mother as the protagonist. This attempt was better, and it was sufficiently proficient to garner the interest of an agent. But, while he liked my writing, the story was a bit too workman-like, too mid-list, for his liking.
Back to the books. Which, after offering the above suggestions, were curiously short on further specifics. I needed to be unique, but not too. I needed to find my own voice. I needed to write the story I was meant to write. Great. But how, exactly? I had no idea. So, I did what every good writer does…I punted. Actually, I didn’t punt so much as explore. I stretched other writing muscles.

First, I wrote a few feature articles for various publications. One of them was a bit flip, a bit cheeky—a less-than-confident attempt at humor. And, it worked! I had found my niche! And, I was having fun! Unconstrained, I let the stifled sarcasm run wild. After accepting an offer to write a humor column for a small national magazine, I flexed my humor chops. Along the way, I refined what was funny and what wasn’t, I learned to write tight, and I learned to write even when my muse took an extended leave.

After a few years of this, the dream of writing a novel could no longer be ignored. So, what to do? I can remember sitting at the computer, staring at the blank screen, and consciously deciding to throw away the rules, to shrug off the constraints on creativity, to boldly go where I had never gone before.
The resulting story features a sarcastic female protagonist who is the head of customer relations for a major Vegas strip property, a male lead who impersonates Cher for a living, the protagonist’s mother, who runs a whorehouse in Pahrump, NV, porn stars and swingers in town for the weekend, several mysterious men, and a girl taking a header out of a tour helicopter right into the middle of the 8:30 Pirate Show at the Treasure Island Hotel. Yup, I had a blast.

And, after all of this, I sold the story.


Deborah Coonts' mother tells her she was born in Texas a very long time ago, though she's not totally sure—-her mother can’t be trusted. But she was definitely raised in Texas on barbeque, Mexican food and beer. She currently resides in Las Vegas, where her husband, Steve (a bestselling author in his own right) assures her she cannot get into too much trouble -- silly man. She's spent more time in school than any sane person should, acquiring along the way a bachelors and masters degree in business, a law degree and a masters of laws in taxation (can you say ‘geek’?)

In Memoriam: STEPHEN J. CANNELL

The Associated Press reported yesterday that Stephen J. Cannell has passed away:

>>Prolific TV producer Stephen J. Cannell dies
NEW YORK – Stephen J. Cannell, the prolific writer-producer of dozens of TV series that included "The Rockford Files" and "The A-Team," has died at age 69.

Cannell passed away at his home in Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday night from complications associated with melanoma, his publicist said on Friday.

After three decades as an independent producer of TV shows, Cannell in recent years had focused his attention to writing books, and had published 16.

As an actor, he had a recurring role on ABC-TV's series, "Castle.">>


I'd like to add my two cents about Mr. Cannell.

I just met Stephen Cannell in February of this year at Sleuthfest, and I was simply taken with the man. He was the guest of honor and spoke beautifully about his life and family and his work. I blogged about it then and wanted to share it --

>>Lunch was followed by keynote speaker Stephen J. Cannell. He is a man who
>>overcame severe dyslexia to become one of the most successful TV producers
>>ever, then followed up that career by writing bestselling novels. For me, one
>>of the highlights of his talk was the way he spoke about his wife, Marsha, who
>>he has known since the 8th grade. He shared with us that he was constantly on
>>the verge of flunking out of school, but he was "relentlessly positive." And he
>>told us that "you don't have to be the smartest kid in school to get where you
>>want to go." He sure proved that.

I didn't write about how he flew in to Florida with his wife, who suffers from
Alzheimer's disease. He was incredibly solicitous of her, always at her side and
when he couldn't be, he would ask someone else to watch her. He was supposed to take part in a Sunday brunch interview with David Morrell that was to close Sleuthfest,
but his wife wasn't doing well and he ended up canceling that event and taking
her home.

I guess with all the celebrity drama that's always being played out in the media, for me it was rather remarkable to see this Hollywood couple who had been
together for so long.

Rest in peace.