Cabbages and Kings

Day 15: Intermission!

2008-06-09T17:00:00.004-04:00

This was a good day. Got a chapter finished and so did Kelly. In honor of that, we deserve a break. Let's have some fun. I saw this little quiz on one of my fave blogs and I have to admit, I had trouble figuring out my answers.

So I thought I'd ask you guys. Go get some Sno-caps and fill in the blanks:

1) Worst well-regarded film
2) Most overhyped film (note that this is slightly different from above; the first measures the absolute badness level, while the second measures the delta between reputation and actual quality)
3) Worst film to win a best picture Oscar
4) Most disappointing film (ie should have been good but wasn't)
5) Worst movie, full stop. (Must have been a major motion picture release--no direct-to-video, or film festival torture tactics, please)
6) Worst movie with good direction (ie terrible script, awful acting, producer interference, etc)
7) Biggest unknown treasure

Here's my picks:
1. "Unforgiven" (sorry, Clint)
2. "Cleopatra" (Even Richard Burton couldn't save this toga dog)
3. Vintage: "The Greatest Show on Earth" (Jimmy Stewart as a murdering clown!) Modern: "Crash" (a total wreck)
4. "Godfather III"
5. "Staying Alive" (John Travolta as a loincloth-clad Broadway gypsy; a crass sequel attempt to cash in on "Saturday Night Fever")
6. "2001"
7. "Cinema Paradiso" (okay, it won best foreign film but it's still my fave "little" movie. I also have a soft spot for "Downhill Racer" (Robert Redford going against type as a bastard Olympic skiier)

What say you?

Day 14: Is there such a thing as GOOD procrastination?

2008-06-05T15:08:00.005-04:00

It has been a rough two weeks. Kelly and I are having real problems getting traction on this new book. And when things aren't going well, it's pretty easy to find excuses. When the going gets tough, the tough...

Fold laundry.
Do the Times crossword puzzle.
Read blogs.
Write blogs.
Watch soap operas.

I've never been a soaps fan and even after I quit the day job to work at home, I never gravitated to daytime TV. Until this year. This year, I found the greatest time-killer, the best reason not to work, the most riveting soap opera in our times. Yup, you got it...

Kelly and I have been completely mesmerized by this historic battle. I have to say, rather shamefully, that I am 57 years old and although I have voted in every election since I was 25, I never really followed politics very closely. It tells you how issue-savvy I was in my youth that I voted for Gerald Ford only because he was from my home state. But this year...this year, I think this campaign has been a good distraction for me. I have learned more in the last six months about how this government works than I had in all my decades before. It has been enthralling. Some, however, say it has been ugly. To paraphrase Otto von Bismarck's famous quote: "Politics are like sausages, it is better not to see it being made."

I disagree. If I have learned only one thing from watching this campaign it is that we need to pay close attention to the sausage making.

Allow me a different metaphor. I'm left thinking that politics is a little like baseball. Both are best appreciated if you know the strategy, the rules, the history, the personalities behind the game. What does it say about me that now, in the fall of my life, I can explain the in-field fly rule and the Texas caucas system? I'm hoping it says I am maybe a better voter than I was in my Gerald Ford days.

The epic Democratic primary campaign is over now. Kelly and I are, like the candidates, decompressing and trying to get back to our work. Yesterday, I finally finished a chapter I had been agonizing on for two full weeks. Is it a coincidence that I finished it on the day the Democrats finally declared they had a "presumptive nominee?"

I can't go back to mere laundry-folding after this. So I signed up.

The book will get done. But so will other things. I guess this is just procrastination I can believe in.

Day 3: What's that smell?

2008-05-11T13:40:00.012-04:00

Okay, here we are, Day 3 of the New Book Diary, and I am still struggling with my opening paragraph. What do you think of this one?

The deep waters, black as ink, began to swell and recede into an uncertain distance. A gray ominous mist obscured the horizon. The ocean expanse seemed to darken in disapproval. Crashing tides sounded groans of agonized discontent. The ocean pulsed with a frightening, vital force. Although hard to imagine, life existed beneath. It's infinite underbelly was teeming with life, a monstrous collection of finned, tentacled, toxic, and slimy parts. Below its surface lay the wreckage of countless souls. But we had dared to journey across it. Some had even been brave enough to explore its sable velveteen depths, and have yet to come up for precious air...."

Yeah, that's what I thought. Whee, doggies! What's that smell?

But I didn't write it, thank god. It is the opening of a project created by Penguin and wiki called "A Million Penquins." Maybe you heard about it when it was announced a couple months back. The idea was to write a novel with a million collaborators.

And Kelly and I thought we had it tough with just two.

This is what the Penguin folks said on their website: "We've created a space where anyone can contribute to the writing of a novel and anyone can edit anyone else's writing....we want to see whether a community can really get together, put creative differences aside (or sort them out through discussion) and produce a novel."

Turns out there were only 1,500 contributors. But that was 1,499 too many from the looks of things. But I guess this at least proves that the Infinite Monkey Theorum just might be true after all.

If you want to read the whole Penguin novel, here's the link. As for me, I think I better get back to work. I hear the footsteps of a million monkeys on my ass...

Day 2: Hook, lines and stinkers

2008-05-06T15:55:00.004-04:00

The opening line of a book is the single hardest line you write.

Many writers would disagree with that. But for my money, they are: A. those lucky devils for whom all things come easy; B. those diligent do-bees who can scribble down anything just to get started and then go back and rewrite or C. those types who aren't really very good at what they do or maybe are just phoning it in.

I know, that sounds a little harsh. But I truly believe this. I have great respect and envy for writers who create great openings and little regard for those who never even try. And can't you tell the difference?

I am not talking about "hooks." I'm talking about those rare and glorious opening moments in great stories that are telling us, "OOheee, something special is about to happen here!" Hooks? That's easy. I am firmly of the mind that anyone can write a decent hook. You've seen them, those clever one-liners tossed out by wise-ass PIs, those archly ironic first-person soliloquies, those purple-prose weather reports that substitute for mood.

We crime writers talk alot about great hooks -- getting the reader engaged in the first couple pages. We worry about whether we should throw out a corpse in the first chapter, whether one-liners are best, if readers attention spans are too short for a slow burn beginning. This is especially true if you are writing what we categorize as "thrillers."

But I'm tired of hooks. I'm thinking that the importance of a great opening goes beyond its ability to keep the reader just turning the pages. A great opening is a book's soul in miniature. Within those first few paragraphs -- sometimes buried, sometimes artfully disguised, sometimes signposted -- are all the seeds of theme, style and most powerfully, the very voice of the writer herself.

It's like you whispering in the reader's ear as he cracks the spine and turns to that pristine Page 1: "This is the world I am taking you into. This is what I want to tell you. You won't understand it all until you are done but this is a hint, a flavor, of what I have in store for you."

Which is why, today on Day 2, I am still staring at the blank page. Nothing has come to me yet and I know that I can't move forward until I find just the right key to unlock what is to come. I sit here, staring at my blank Wordperfect page, thinking that if I can only make good on my beginning's promise, everything else will follow. Because that is what a great opening is to me: a promise to my reader that what I am about to give them is worth their time, is something they haven't seen before, something that is...uniquely me.

Oh hell, I'll let Joan Didion explain it. I have a feeling she's given this a lot more thought than I have:

Q: You have said that once you have your first sentence you’ve got your piece. That’s what Hemingway said. All he needed was his first sentence and he had his short story.

Didion: What’s so hard about that first sentence is that you’re stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you’ve laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone.

Q: The first is the gesture, the second is the commitment.

Didion: Yes, and the last sentence in a piece is another adventure. It should open the piece up. It should make you go back and start reading from page one. That’s how it should be, but it doesn’t always work. I think of writing anything at all as a kind of high-wire act. The minute you start putting words on paper you’re eliminating possibilities.

Didion gave this interview around the time she published her great memoir after her husband's death "The Year of Magical Thinking," the first line of which is: "Life changes fast."

Maybe I am more hung up than usual on openings because I have read some really good books lately.

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

Wonderful opening, that one, from Jeffrey Eugenides's "Middlesex." Because there in that one deceivingly simple declarative sentence lies the all tenderness, irony and roiling epic scope of his story.

And then there was this one:

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there."

That one is from Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood." This is the first line of a long paragraph of description that opens the book, yet look at what it accomplishes -- sets us down immediately in his setting, conveys the book's bleak mood and hints with those two words "out there" that he is taking us to an alien place where nothing makes sense (the criminal mind).

And here is the one I just started last night. I think you will recognize it:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta..

I don't know whether to laugh or cry (out of envy) when I read that one.

What is so terrifying about openings, I suppose, is that you only have so much space to work with: the first line, the first paragraph, that's it. Because once you've moved deeper into that first chapter, that golden moment of anticipation is gone and then you the writer are busily engaging all the gears to move the reader onward. The opening is the moment before the kiss; the rest is relationship. And you only have precious seconds to make a good impression.

I read a lot of crime novels. I do this to keep up with what's going on in our business but I also do it out of pleasure. But it seems to me that lately I am reading too many genre books that just aren't trying hard enough, and you really can see it in the openings. Maybe this has something to do with the pressure to put out a book a year. Maybe I am reading the wrong people. But I do find myself wishing for less "hook" and more artfulness.

But that said, I pulled a couple books from my crime shelf and found some "oldies" that I liked.

We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped a girl off the bridge. -- John D. MacDonald, "Darker Than Amber"

They threw me off the hay truck about noon. -- James M. McCain, "The Postman Always Rings Twice"

The girl was saying goodbye to her life. And it was no easy farewell. -- Val McDermid, "A Place of Execution."

Not bad for one-liners. Then there are the more measured openings:

Death is my beat. I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it. I treat it with the passion and precision of an undertaker - somber and sympathetic about it when I'm with the bereaved, a skilled craftsman with it when I'm alone. I've always thought the secret of dealing with death was to keep it at arm's length. That's the rule. Don't let it breathe in your face.
But my rule didn't protect me.

That's one of my favorites from Mike Connelly. It's from "The Poet" and it works because it succinctly captures his protagonist's voice and the theme of the story.

There is a bullet in my chest, less an a centimeter from my heart. I don't think about it much anymore. It's just a part of me now. But every once in a while, one a certain kind of night, I remember that bullet. I can feel the weight of it inside me. I can feel its metallic hardness. And even though that bullet has been warming inside my body for fourteen years, on a night like this when it is dark enough and the wind is blowing, that bullet feels as cold as the night.

Lovely writing from Steve Hamilton and see how the bullet, the setting and the key point of Alex McKnight's backstory coalese around theme?

These are some of the few who know the difference between a hook and an opening. These are the writers among us. These are the folks who understand that sometimes you have to write the opening last, like Picasso signing his painting. Because the great opening is the writer's true signature.

Diary Day 1: On with the show!

2008-04-17T15:13:00.007-04:00

Overture, curtains, lights,
This is it, the night of nights!
No more rehearsing and nursing a part
We know every part by heart
Overture, curtains, lights
This is it, you'll hit the heights
And oh what heights we'll hit
On with the show this is it!

Well, the curtain is about to go up on Book No. 10. And though that makes me a veteran on this crime writing stage, I still have first night jitters.

Writing that first paragraph never gets easier, folks. You'd think it would be rote by now. But starting a new book, confronting that awful field of white on the NEW Wordperfect document -- it is painful for me. Not just psychicly painful. Physically painful. Like stomach-knotting, heart-palpatating painful. (I've been telling myself it's just the diverticulosis but it's not). I have been putting this off for weeks now, procrastinating with every conceivable excuse. First there was SleuthFest. Then there was a friend's visit. Then I had to prepare for the Edgar symposium. And there was that critique I had been putting off. And all that laundry to be folded...

Of course, the longer you wait, the worse it gets. Because writing is exactly like exercising. If you stop doing it, your energy flags, your muscles atrophy, your mind grows cobwebs. You get fat and lazy. Then get you depressed because you've gotten fat and lazy.

Why is this so difficult? It's a confidence thing. Every time Kelly and I start a new book, I am scared shitless that this is the one that will reek. I'm terrified that we have run out of gas; that our ambivilence is showing and we will become one of those pathetic writers who phone it in. I'm worried that we don't have the energy to do it again. I'm thinking that this is the plot that is pallid, that this story is shapeless. I am certain that this is when it will all fall apart and everyone will see me for the fraud I am.

But...

Then I remind myself that once things get going -- oh, around chapter 20 or so -- it will come together. It will become fun again. I remind myself that I have been here before and come out the other end okay. I remind myself that every book feels like you are pushing a mamoth boulder up a hill until that beautiful moment when you crest and then you race downhill in an exhilarating rush. I remind myself that I am so damn lucky to have a contract in these tough times, to have the support of a fine editor and publisher, to get paid to think stuff up, to have readers who buy our books and write us emails of thanks. I remind myself about all of this and try to stop whining and do my job.

The good thing is, there is redemption even for scofflaws. There is always another day, a new chance. Another Monday....

Today is Monday. Today, I typed out CHAPTER ONE. (hey, it's a start, man!) But then I made a short detour here. Because I am going to try something new with this book. I am going to begin each day's writing with a short diary entry here about my progress. Yes, yes....I KNOW that is procrastination of sorts. Blogging, as we all know, is a huge time suck. As one of my favorite editor types Neil Nyren put it recently over at Murderati: "Blogs – I probably shouldn’t be saying this -- but sometimes I wonder if all the time and energy spent on writing a blog might not be better spent on…well, you know what I’m going to say."

But for me, in the past, this blog has also been like a quick set of jumping jacks. See, I figure just the fact that I have to come here and move my fingers over the keyboard might get my lard ass in gear again for the heavy lifting of fiction.

So, this is my first entry in a diary that will chronicle my trip on this curious winding road called writing. Destination: Untitled Book No. 10. Length of journey: as long as it takes. ETA: It's in the contract. What we'll see along the way: God only knows.

Every journey starts with one keystroke.

Ask not what you can do for your cell phone...

2008-03-23T14:50:00.003-04:00

I was going to wax philosophic about book stuff today but when I started reading over what I had written -- three different entries! -- it was all self-important gas. I mean, do we really need my opinion on Border's decision to stock all their books face out? Methinks not.

So while I wrestle with getting the concept for the next book in and free up my brain cells for fresh material, I offer you some really useful advice. Now, bear in mind I am a techno-phobe, a true Luddite as my friend Jerry Healy keeps telling me. (he should talk; the man is still using cans with string.) But even I have to admit some of this is cool. So print this out and keep it in your wallet.

FIVE THINGS YOUR CELL PHONE CAN DO FOR YOU

1. EMERGENCY HELP: The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112. The mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly, this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.

2. LOCKED OUT? Okay numbnuts, you locked your keys in the car. Does your car have remote keyless entry? Is there someone at home with spare remote? Call their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other 'remote' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

3. HIDDEN BATTERY POWER. Imagine your cell battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370#. Your cell phone will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell phone next time.

4. CELL PHONE STOLEN OR MISSING? You can disable it. To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: *#06#. A 15-digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep itsomewhere safe. When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

5. FREE 411: Directory Service for cell phone companies are charging us $1.00 to $1.75 or more for411 information calls when they don't have to. Most of us do not carry a telephone directory in our vehicle, which makes this situation even more of a problem. When you need to use the 411 information option, simply dial: (800)FREE411, or (800) 373-3411 without incurring any charge at all. Program this into your cell phone now.

You're welcome! Back tomorrow with something sage and salient about writing, I hope.

Now let's talk about the bird

2008-02-11T11:37:00.008-05:00

I'm back. Sorry for the absence. Did your heart grow fonder?

Probably not. I know how annoyed I get when I click over to my favorite bloggers and find they haven't posted anything fresh. (Where have you gone, Barry Eisler?... a nation turns its lonely eyes to you...woo woo woo. And let's start a petition to get Miss Snark back while we're at it. )

Blogging is like flossing. If you don't do it every day, your gums bleed, your teeth go bad and start falling out, bacteria enters your bloodstream, you get a horrible debilitating disease and you die alone and in great agony. Probably without a will.

Okay, that's just what my dental hygenist tells me to scare me. But it works for blogging, too. If you don't do it with regularity and conviction, you die.

So I am back, if you'll have me. And today, I want to talk about the black bird.

You know which one I mean. Literature's most famous MacGuffin. The "fairly interesting statuette." The stuff dreams are made of. *

This year is the 75th anniversary of the publication of Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon." This deceptively simple detective story first saw the light of day as a serial in the old pulp magazine "Black Mask." But here we are decades later, still talking about the bird. Today, I was on a panel as part of our library system's "Big Read" program, talking about Hammett's book with three talented crime writers: Jonathon King, Anthony Gagliano and Christine Kling. And while we had great fun yakking about such tangential topics as femme fatales, the Depression and Humphrey Bogart, we kept coming back to the same thing: What is it about this book that still pulls at us?

Jonathon started things off by saying he appreciates the book mainly through his writer's prism. "To me, it's all about the writing," he said. Jon is a splendid writer (James Lee Burke no less said of his stuff: "He captures the intrigue, lyrical beauty, and darkness of the Florida Everglades better than any other writer I know of.") But it was kind of cool to hear Jon say he wishes he could get away with using words like "heater" in his books.

Anthony made an interesting point that Sam Spade was a new type of hero on the American landscape, a guy who can trace his lineage back to the Shanesque saviors of the American western. To which I had to respond that Spade reminded me most of Palladin -- a black knight who drank good whiskey, frequented the best San Francisco hotels and meted out justice according to his own moral code.

Chris had many points to offer -- there was a lively discussion of Spade's treatment of women -- but she was at her best in interpreting for us the famous Flitcraft parable , the theme that throbs at the dark heart of Hammett's story. It takes an English teacher to make stuff like that clear.

And what a great audience. One gentleman was so knowledgable about Hammett's life that he could have written a credible biography. A woman argued passionately that Lillian Hellman had written much of Hammett's best stuff -- and vice versa. But my favorite was the little elderly lady in the front who had read "The Maltese Falcon" as a girl during the Depression and reminded us it was "good entertainment, something to make us forget about things."

And that it is. Still. Critics and scholars will continue to dissect this book. Here's one essay in January Magazine I particularly liked written by Richard Layman, author of "Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett." And experts will continue to praise it: E.D. Hirsch, author of "New Dictionary of Cultural Literary" lists it as one of the 102 significant writers. (Hammett is only one of four crime writers listed, the others being Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Raymond Chandler).

But the bottom line? I have to side with the elderly lady in the front row. "The Maltese Falcon" is just a helluva good yarn.

* This line never appears in the book. Just the movie.

The real story on the fume-addled thriller writer

2008-02-06T11:26:00.000-05:00

It was hard not to be pissed if you read this past week about Whitbread award-winner Joan Brady. The American-born author sued a shoe factory in her English village claiming that toxic fumes wafting into her neighboring home had caused so much damage to her health that she had been "reduced to writing thrillers."

There was much gnashing of teeth in the crime writers world, of course, because here was yet another literary type taking cheap shots at genre fiction. This after Brady's thriller Bleedout" became an international bestseller. Harumph! How dare she slum, snark then take the money and run!

Well, come to find out, Brady never said any of this. The fumes thing came from a London Times headline, which also juxtaposed two extracts - one from her award-winning "Theory of War," the other ostensibly the opening paragraph of Bleedout (it is actually from later in the book) under the headline "Dumbing Down."

Here's an excerpt from a more recent article, quoting Brady on the brouhaha:

"I haven't dumbed down. I never said it. That's the pure invention of the Times. They have decided that this effete literary woman has become so stupid that she can no longer write boring literary fiction and writes poorly selling thrillers instead. My mental faculties haven't deteriorated. And anyway, what an insult it would be to thriller writers to suggest that you need to be stupid to write them. It seems to me so irritating that you would denigrate a remarkable genre where much of the best writing is done. I'm a great admirer of writers like John Grisham and Scott Turow."

The idea for the thriller "Bleedout" came only because she was mad as hell after battling for years for justice: "I wanted to line these people up against the wall and machine gun them. Magistrates, environmental health officers, lawyers, shoemakers, everybody. It's amazing how violent your imagination gets. I'd never been that angry before. At least you can kill people in a [thriller]."

Kind of makes me want to go out and buy her book now.

You can read the whole article HERE.

I'll take Brady and Barack and the points

2008-02-01T16:19:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm stoked. Two days to Super Bowl Sunday! As with political affiliation, it's not wise to disclose which side I'm rooting for. Let's just say I'm in a New York state of mind. (And I ain't talking about senators here).

But speaking of politics, I was watching Hill and Barack go at it last night and I got to thinking that maybe these debates could use a couple guys in the booth to tell us what is going on down there on the dias. You know, like football guys. Bring in Al Michaels to do the play-by-play and John Madden to do color commentary. The same cliches they use in football would work really well for debates:

Al: This game is going to be won in the trenches.
John: Obama needs to play smash-mouth football.
Al: Clinton should stick with her original game plan.
John: Oh man, Obama was just blindsided! That's gonna hurt come Monday morning.
Al: Yeah he bends but he doesn't break.

I love football cliches. I have been collecting them in a little book for years now. You can't watch football -- or politics -- without a good supply of them. So in honor of Super Tuesday and Super Bowl Sunday, I am going to share my best ones with you.

Feel free to steal these as need be. I promise, even if you don't know what the hell is going on, if you toss a few of these out there, you'll impress your friends. I know I will be using them when I go to my friend Doug Delp's house to watch The Game:

GENERAL PRE-GAME CHATTER
They have to play ball-control offense. (well, it IS hard to score without the ball...)
They have to establish their running game. (tell that to Tom Brady)
They have to stop the big play. (as opposed to the little ones)
They have to pound it out on the ground. (or in the case of Arizona Stadium on a giant grass-filled retractable tray)
They have to take care of the football. ("nice ball..." )
They should just go out and execute. (preferably not the refs)
They have to make plays on both sides of the ball. (it's a spheroid; it doesn't have sides)

QUARTERBACK MUMBO-JUMBO
Brady has happy feet (he's worried about getting slammed on his ass so he's jumping around alot)
That pass looked like a wounded duck. (no spiral)
He'd like to have that one back. (incomplete but easy pass)
He threw up a prayer. (Ah, the stink desperation!)
Manning is trying to force the ball. (usually to the opposite team)
Brady has all day back there. (Or an eternity.)
Great touch on that pass. (this one HAD a spiral)
Brady hit him right on the numbers. (the guy should've caught it)
Manning threw a strike. (He DID catch this one)
That pass was right on the money. (Even I could have caught that!)
They flushed Manning from the pocket. (But he ran out on very happy feet)

RUNNING BACK BANALITIES
They can't cough it up here. (fumble the pigskin)
He bulls his way for extra yardage (defense sucks)
They're running it right up the gut. (defense really sucks)
He's a bruising running back. (steroid user)
He's overdue to break one. (he's been sucky til now)
He couldn't turn the corner. (defense ran him down before he could reach the gut)
He needs to run more north and south. (and thus turn the corner)
You could have driven a truck through that hole. (fat guys up front are doing their job well)
He'll be buying dinner for the whole offensive line after this game.
(Which is partly why the guys up front are fat)

WIDE RECEIVER NONSENSE

He's got alligator arms (weanie didn't extend out for the catch)
That was a circus catch. (probably of a wounded duck)
That was a timing pattern. (no one really knows what this is but it sounds sweet)
He heard footsteps. (was afraid of getting his head torn off so he missed the catch)
He ran out of real estate (couldn't keep both feet in bounds)
They pay him to make those catches. (Randy Moss)
That looked like a blown coverage. (Randy Moss)
He had him covered like a blanket. (What Sam Madison probably won't do to Randy Moss)

KICKER CLICHES
They're going to call a timeout to ice the kicker. (Nah nah nah nah nah!)
This should be a chip shot for him. (tell that to the Buffalo Bills)
That kick splits the uprights. (goes right down the middle)
That missed extra point will come back to haunt them. (my favorite!)

DEFENSE DRIVEL
That was a game saving tackle. (which it never turns out to be)
That was a shoestring tackle. (the bugger almost got away)
The defense had that play sniffed out. (offensive coordinator caught napping)
The defensive line is quick off the ball. (they aren't as fat as most linemen)
The defense is starting to assert itself. (thus winning the battle of the trenches)
They're going to tee-off on Brady. (and try to dirty up his purty uniform)
That hit really cleaned his clock. (don't you love American idioms?)
He really got his bell rung there. (concussion)
He put the lumber on him. (Hard hit but beats me what it really means!)
That front line is 1000 pounds of beef. (and if you are playing a 3-4 that means really big lard-butts!)

THINGS TO OPINE ABOUT THE GAME'S MOOD
You can see the frustration starting to set in. (one side is losing badly)
Looks like we've got some extra-curricular activity on the field. (a fight!)
We hope that cooler heads prevail. (who are they kidding!)
They have a few choice words for each other. (some helmet-butting going on)
They're just exchanging pleasantries. (if you listen hard, the mikes pick up the obscenities)

INANITIES ABOUT INJURIES
Welcome to the NFL. (Said after a rookie is tackled or hit during his first game)
He was really clothes-lined there. (a forearm to the neck. Ouch...)
He ran into a brick wall. (a guy bigger than him)
He's slow getting up. (because he got his clock cleaned or bell rung)
Looks like we've got a player shaken up. (you try getting hit by a 280-lb mad man)
We hate to speculate on the injury...(but we will anyway).
They can ill-afford to lose him. (especially if he's named Brady)
Their locker room must look like a MASH unit. (and that's just the refs)
He left the field under his own power. (unless it's a cart)

AND SAVE THESE FOR THE FOURTH QUARTER
They're trying to milk the clock (they're ahead and trying to stall)
They're looking at third down and forever. (they're behind and desperate)
They're in four down territory. (they're behind, desperate and down to their last bullet)
It all depends on where they spot the ball. (and wherever it is, someone will be pissed)
They're marching down the field. (defense is sucking air)
This is their deepest penetration. (finally, they are inside the 20!)
They're knocking on the door. (near the goal line)
They've got to punch it in here. (you can only knock so long...)
You really want to come away with some points when you're this close (Hello, Chargers!)
They've got to take it to the big house. (get a touchdown BECAUSE....)

THE BEST CLICHE OF THEM ALL
There is no tomorrow.

Have a good Sunday!

On Books, Ballerinas and Offensive Tackles

2008-01-31T12:28:00.000-05:00

My head is preoccupied with revisions today so if you are looking for a coherent essay, let me direct you to Barry Eisler's blog about Clinton fatigue. It's not about books, but I like the way Barry's mind works so it's worth a read.

As for me, I need to clean out the lint trap:

The Art of Storytelling

My sister and I are going to be teaching a workshop at SleuthFest this year called "You Are Not a Writer, You're a Storyteller." We decided to focus on this because after years of judging contests, doing manuscript critics, sitting on panels and most recently, being involved in the MWA-St. Martins first novel competition, we think many writers are missing one major point:

If you can't tell an engaging, coherent compelling story, no amount of pretty writing is going to get you published. I can't tell you how many manuscripts fall apart on this simpliest of points. Yes, the writing is lovely at times. The similes sing, the description dazzles, the turn-of-phrase delights. But the story? It's too often anemic, stale, dull or wayward. Now I am not the biggest John Grisham fan in the world. God knows (and I think even Grisham does) that he's not the greatest wordsmith. But he's enormously successful because he knows how to tell a terrific yarn. But don't take my word for it:

Building a remarkable degree of suspense into the all too familiar ploys described here, Mr. Grisham delivers his savviest book in years. His extended vacation from hard-hitting fiction is over. However passionately he cared about the nonfiction events he described in “An Innocent Man,” his strong suit remains bluntly manipulative, no-frills storytelling, the kind that brings out his great skill as a puppeteer. It barely matters that the characters in “The Appeal” are essentially stick figures. What works for Mr. Grisham is his patient, lawyerly, inexorable way of dramatizing urgent moral issues.
-- Janet Maslin, New York Times.

Word of Mouth

Considering what happened up in New Hampshire with polling, you might take this next item with a grain of salt. But it just confirms something my instincts and anecdotal experience in the book business has long told me: According to a 2005 Gallop poll, 75 percent of readers rely on word of mouth recommendations from friends, family, librarians, and booksellers when deciding what to read. Only 13 percent relied on reviews. The trick, of course, is how do you get word of mouth going?

On Tutus And Tackles

Was perusing the New York Times this morning, lingering at my two favorite stops: sports and arts. In Sports, I read about the New York Giants offensive line (for you non-sports types, that's the big fellows up front who form a pocket around the QB). In Arts, I was reading about those dancers who labor in the corps de ballet (that's the tutu group in the back that forms a circle around the ballerina).

Strange how similar these two pictures look, huh? But then it struck me how similar their jobs really are when it comes down to it:

1. They both depend on teamwork and complete unity.

“Sometimes I’m blocking with a blind side and one of the other linemen literally has my back. We must rely on each other. We have to know each other’s personalities to coexist out there, and we have to know each other’s tendencies. -- right tackle Kareem McKenzie.

“Sometimes you feel like you are just part of the scenery...the military aspect — the discipline, the straight lines, doing everything at the same time, the lack of individuality.”-- Cécile Sciaux, Paris Opera Ballet.

2. They will never be the stars but without them, the show doesn't go on.

“When you first get into the company, you don’t think you’re going to spend your life in the corps. Your dream is to be the lead, and at one level that never goes away." -- Dena Abergel, New York City Ballet.

“As kids, we all started out as quarterbacks or receivers, but then we got fat and slow so we became offensive linemen. We might try harder now, but who is going to notice a bunch of big guys blocking? -- Center Shaun O’Hara.

Well, you don't really notice them -- until they screw up. If a Giants lineman misses a block, Eli Manning gets sacked. If a corps girl's leg goes too high in arabesque during the Shades entrance of "La Bayadere," she shatters the whole lovely illusion.

So, if you watch the Super Bowl this Sunday, pay attention to the fat guys up front. And next time you go to the ballet, watch the skinny girls in the back. There's artistry in their obscurity.

Which I guess can be said of many authors. The ones who may in fact have told a great story but didn't have good word of mouth, that is.

Pulp diction

2007-12-27T11:41:00.000-05:00

Now pay attention, kittens and bo's, there's a quiz at the end of this one.

I was an art major in college. This was before I figured out I couldn't make a living at this. Unless I planned to teach, but I was scared of kids. (Not a good character trait in teachers).

I was always pretty good at art. I can draw and paint and was cruising through my art classes with a B average. Then I hit a class called Three Dimensional Design. I was terrible. Evidence of my ineptitude was my "final exam" sculpture, which I called Nude With A Paper Cup Head. So titled because I couldn't get my figure's face right so I finally just filled a Dixie cup with wet plaster and stuck it on top. I got a D.

I just didn't get it. Ask me to paint on canvas, I was Rembrandt. Ask me to sculpt, I might as well have been Rambo. I couldn't think outside the two-dimensional box. Finally, my instructor told me I had to stop seeing the world in POSITIVES and start seeing it in NEGATIVES. In other words, I was so hung up on adding things, I was missing the beauty of subtracting. "Learn how to leave things out," he told me.

Lightning bolt! Paradigm shift! Well, doh!

I ended up abandoning art for writing. But I think that little piece of advice must have lodged deep in my brain cells because it is something subconsciously I have always tried to apply to my fiction writing.

Subconsciously I say because until recently, I hadn't even thought about that quote. Maybe I am thinking about it now because of the book I am reading. No, not Elmore Leonard, though he's the one who coined the famous writers axoim "Leave out the parts that no one wants to read."

My bedside reading is The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, which I got for Christmas.

Handsome book...a compiliation of the best crime stories from the "golden age" of pulp crime fiction -- the 20s through the 40s. It's about the size of the Fort Lauderdale phone book. And to be really honest, parts of it read about as well.

Many of these guys were dismissed as the hacks of their day, churning out their stories for cheaply printed magazines like "Black Mask" and "Dime Detective." Yeah, they were lurid, the syntax cringe-worthy, the plots thin or nonsensical. But they tapped into a popular need for a new kind of human hero. The most memorable of the heroes became the prototypes for much of what we are seeing in our crime fiction today -- lone wolves fighting for justice against all odds but always on their own different-beat terms. Would we have Harry Bosch without the Continental Op? Jack Reacher without Simon Templar? Doubtful...

To be sure, not all the stories have aged well. The slang sounds vaguely silly now, the sexism and racism we can explain away as anachronistic attitudes. But the armature these writers created is still sturdy.

Especially in pure writing style. That is the biggest thing I am getting out of these stories, an appreciation for that streamlined locomotive style that propells these stories along their tracks. I read these stories now -- discovering most of these writers for the first time -- with a smile on my face and a highligher in my fist. There are lessons to be learned for us all, and you can almost hear James M. Cain whispering: "I'm not going to dazzle you with my writing. I'm going to tell you a helluva story."

These guys sure knew what to leave out.

Let me give you one little passage from Paul Cain's "One Two Three":

I said: "Sure -- we'll both go.
Gard didn't go for that very big, but I told him that my having been such a pal of Healy's made it all right.
We went.

Not: And then we left the apartment and got in my roadster and set out. We took Mulholland Drive out of the canyon and arrived just before dusk.

Just: We went.

How can you read that and not smile?

I heartily recommend the Big Book of Pulps. And speaking of art, check out some of the best pulp cover artists of the day at Rex Parker's terrific vintage paperback blog Pop Sensation. (I lifted that great Henry Kane cover at the top of this blog entry from his site.)

And now, in honor of our pulp forefathers, I am offering up this little quiz of pulp diction slang for your amusement. Answers at the end. And don't chance the chisel for a cheap bulge, bo. We Jake?

DEFINITIONS.
1. Ameche
2. Kicking the gong around
3. Wooden kimono
4. cheaters
5. Gasper
6. Hammer and saws
7. Orphan papers
8. Wikiup
9. Bangtails
10. Can-opener

TRANSLATIONS
11. I had been ranking the Loogan for an hour and could see he was a right gee. It was all silk so far.

12. I stared down at the stiff. The bim hadn't been chilled off. Definitely a pro skirt who had pulled the Dutch act.

13. I got a croaker ribbed up to get the wire.

14. By the time we got to the drum the droppers had lammed off. Another trip for biscuits...

Answers:
1. telephone
2. taking opium
3. coffin
4. sunglasses
5. cigarette
6. Police
7. Bad checks
8. Home
9. Horses
10. Safecracker
11. I had been watching the man with the gun for an hour and could tell he was an okay guy. Everything was cool so far.
12. I stared at the body. The woman hadn't been murdered. She was definitely a prostitute who had committed suicide.
13. I have arranged for a doctor to get the information.
14. By the time we got to the speakeasy, the hired killers had left. Just another trip for nothing...

A gift for you, dear weary writer

2007-12-18T18:31:00.000-05:00

See that silly picture at left? That is my dog Bailey. The antlers are photoshopped on but believe me when I say my dog is very phlegmatic about letting me dress her up, letting me make a fool of her, letting me...have fun.

Bailey has a lesson for all us writers in this holiday season. We need to lighten up. We need to be good to ourselves.

We beat ourselves up so much. We toss and turn in our sheets (See Tess Gerritsen's blog). We fret over the Writers Strike and our own personal writers strikes (See Lee Goldberg's blog). We pledge to work ever harder at our craft even though we've aleady driven ourselves to hell and back (see Joe Konrath's blog). We agonize over deadlines (see Alexandra Sokoloff over at Murderati)

Whew. I'm seeing that creepy Albino monk in the movie version of "The Da Vinci Code" (yeah, I watched it the other night on cable to cure my insomnia.) This guy was screwing barbed-wire anklets to his legs and beating himself bloody with cat o nine tails. It's a religious zealot thing, I know, but as I watched it I kept thinking of the pain we writers inflict on ourselves. Self-doubt, exhausting promotion tours, crippling envy, three-books-a-year contracts, flop-sweat fear. Hell, we don't need Kirkus. We're killing ourselves.

So here is my Christmas gift to you all. I hope you'll all take a deep breath (me included) and give yourself a break. My gifts to you are the exact things you probably won't give to yourself. But you need them.

This year, dear writer, give yourself:

1. Permission to write badly. This is the one I try to give myself every year because I am one of those "perfectionist" nuts who gets paralyzed trying to make every word sing. It has taken me a decade to understand that to get to the good stuff, you have to well, poop out a lot of crap.

2. The ability to know when you are brilliant. And you are. Even if it is just for one page, one paragraph, one sentence. You know when you've hit that sweet spot. You can feel it. Cherish it. You're not going to do it every time, but you don't need to. Brilliance, like diamonds, shines best when you think quality not quantity.

2. A good night's sleep. No obsessing about the wayward plot. No agonizing over recalcitrant characters. No worrying that they are going to find out you're really a no-talent fake. Because you aren't. Sleep. Take an Ambien if you have to.

3. A friend to celebrate the good news. Even if it's as small as you finished chapter two. Even if it's as big as a five-figure book deal and Clint Eastwood on your speed dial. Success is nothing without someone to share it.

4. An honest critic. Ah yes, that sacred cold eye, that invaluable reader, that one true editor who can tell you when you have lost your way. Your mother loves you too much to tell you the truth about your book. Treasure the one who can look you in the eye and say, "this sucks, you can do better."

5. The courage to question your agent or editor. Blind loyalty is dangerous. In politics, love...and publishing. A great agent or editor can be your biggest ally. But it is YOUR responsibility to steer your career.

6. A week off. Leave the laptop. Abandon the Blackberry. The cell can go to hell. Find someplace to which you can truly retreat, where the world cannot intrude. St. Barts is great if you can afford it. But your backyard deck will do. Drink good wine. Read trash. Eat too much. Make love. Dance in the snow. Breathe in pink...breathe out blue.

7. The courage to talk to a writer "bigger" than you and know you have something to offer them. The first time I found myself standing next to Lee Child I turned into the third verse of Janis Ian's song "At Seventeen." Years later, I still cringe. But now whenever I see Lee, I just picture him naked....

8. A few extra bucks to attend a conference so you know you're not alone. You need to get periodic infusions and if you approach cons right, you come away replenished and eager to work.
9. A long drive to nowhere or a walk in the woods to clear your head. You've got to quiet those shouting voices of doubt in your brain. This happens only in quietude. Or maybe driving down I-75 with "Bohemian Rapsody" blaring.

10. The clarity to recognize the seed of inspiration in the smallest things. You're stuck. You've painted yourself into a corner with the plot. Take a step back and look for small things. Open your brain and all your senses. You never know where the answer will come from.

11. Time to appreciate your family for appreciating how hard you work. Your people are important. Tell them. Often.

12. Kindness to reach down to someone who admires you. No matter where you believe you are on the writer food chain, no matter how low you think you are, someone is looking up to you.
Karma, baby, karma...

13. Permission to spend some of that advance money or royalty check on yourself. Buy a great bottle of Meursault. Rent a red convertible. Get botox. Splurge on Celtic tickets. My friend Rhonda Pollero just got a new agent, signed a fabulous six-book contract with a new publisher -- this after years of bad luck. She bought herself a diamond ring.

14. Courage to venture out of your comfort zone. This is a tough one because sometimes you can get slapped on the wrist or wacked alongside the head for your trouble. But there is no growth without chances taken. You just have to believe you are right. Even when everyone else -- and maybe even the sales -- are telling you otherwise.

15. And lastly, we give you the gift of Faith. Faith that....someone will love your book enough to buy it. That you have another good story still inside you. That no matter how tangled your book might feel, you will find the way home. That you are....brilliant.

Peace, dear friends.

My spine is all atingle

2007-12-05T16:49:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the writer is the last person to know. But in this case, I don't mind. I just found out our latest book A THOUSAND BONES is a nominee for the first annual Spinetingler Award. The awards will be given out by the online magazine Spinetingler.

If you don't know about ST, you should. It is devoted to spotlighting writers you won't find in the usual mainstream venues. Or as editor Sandra Ruttan puts it: "We want to entertain our audience while we promote and enhance the profile of talented emerging writers using the forum of electronic publishing. We know there are a lot of great stories out there that should have a place where they can be told, so we are providing that venue for them."

The nominees were selected by the magazine's editors but readers are the ones who will now determine the winners. Anyone can email their vote in by the deadline Dec. 30. (The rules are at the end of this post or you can go to Spinetingler.)

Just take a look at the list of nominees and you'll see why we feel honored to be included. At first, I was a little gobsmacked that we are considered "an emerging talent" -- but only because we just turned in book No. 9 and I always thought that puts us square in the midlist purgatory.

Which brings up the issue of perspective. It's hard to keep a good one in this business. You keep churning out books, doing your best to make each one better than the last. You have some success, you get some breaks, but you still feel sometimes that you're just frantically treading water hoping you won't get sweep away in the next downsizing wave.

It's all about perspective...

I heard Mike Connelly speaking at Killer Nashville a couple months back. He said that it took him a good ten years to make it to the bestseller lists. My jaw dropped because I had always assumed Mike's trajectory had been comet-like. But then he went on to say he completed three manuscripts before his agent shopped one around. He said he realized all three of those manuscripts weren't good enough to go out into the world. His agent sent out manuscript No. 4 -- The Black Echo. Which of course won the Edgar for Best First Novel.

Perspective.

I've heard similar stories from people like Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, Laura Lippman and many others. Folks we all assume have had an easy accension but in reality, worked a good decade before they got their big break and starting appearing on lists.

So yeah, I am pretty stoked to be called a "rising star" by Spinetingler magazine. And the next time I feel like I'm just sitting here on a plateau, I am going to try very hard to shift around and get a different perspective.

Here are the Spinetingler nominees. And if you're so inclined, we would be eternally grateful for your vote.

Best Novel – Legend
Ken Bruen, Cross
Ken Bruen, Priest
James Lee Burke, Tin Roof Blowdown
Laura Lippman, What The Dead Know
Ian Rankin, The Naming of the Dead
James Reasoner, Dust Devils

Best Novel – Rising Star
Sean Doolittle, The Cleanup
Charlie Huston, The Shotgun Rule
Larry Karp, The Ragtime Kid
Rick Mofina, A Perfect Grave
PJ Parrish, A Thousand Bones
Steven Torres, Concrete Maze

Best Novel – New Voice
Megan Abbott, Queenpin
Declan Burke, The Big O
Allan Guthrie, Hard Man
Steve Mosby, The 50/50 Killer
JD Rhoades, Safe and Sound
Duane Swierczynski, The Blonde

Best Publisher
Bitter Lemon Press
Europa Editions
Hard Case Crime
Poisoned Pen Press

Best Cover
Robert Terrall - Kill Now, Pay Later Cover painted by Robert McGinnis
Gil Brewer - The Vengeful Virgin Cover painted by Greg Manchess
George Axelrod - Blackmailer Cover painted by Glen Orbik
Allan Guthrie - Hard Man Design: Vaughn Andrews. Photo: (c) Corbis.
Nick Stone - Mr. Clarinet Designed by Emily Cavett Taff

Best Editor
Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime
Stacia Decker, Harcourt
Alison Janssen, Bleak House
Barbara Peters, Poisoned Pen Press
Dave Thompson, Busted Flush

Special Services to the Industry
Daniel Hatadi - Crimespace
Ali Karim – Shots, The Rap Sheet
Graham Powell - Crimespot
J. Kingston Pierce – The Rap Sheet
Maddy Van Hertburger – 4MA
Sarah Weinman – Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

Best Short Story On The Web
The Leap by Charles Ardai - Hardluck Stories
Breaking in the New Guy by Stephen Blackmoore - Demolition
Amphetamine Logic by Nathan Cain - Thuglit
The Switch by Lyman Feero -Thuglit
Seven Days of Rain by Chris F. Holm - Demolition
Shared Losses by Gerri Leen - Shred of Evidence
The Living Dead by Amra Pajalic - Spinetingler
Convivum by Kelli Stanley - Hardluck Stories

Here's how to vote:
ONE E-MAIL PER PERSON ONLY. You cannot send another vote in, even for a different category – multiple votes from the same sender will not be counted. Take the time to consider your votes carefully. E-mails must be received by December 30, 2007.

You may vote for one winner in each category as long as all votes are submitted in one e-mail. Simply state the category and your chosen winner for each of the eight categories. Any votes that contain more than one selection per category may be removed from consideration completely. No ties.

Send your e-mail to sandra.ruttan@spinetinglermag.com with AWARD NOMINATIONS in the subject line.

YES! YES! YES! It's the Bad Sex Awards

2007-11-29T13:33:00.000-05:00

Ho, boy. I timed my return to the blog just right. Yes, folks...that can mean only one thing. It's BAD SEX AWARDS TIME!

Forget about the Edgar. Who cares about the Booker? Every year, I tremble with anticipation for the Ignoble Prize -- the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Awards.

The award was founded in 1993 "draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it." And to assure a level playing field, the award is open ONLY to modern literary fiction. No earnest romance, cheesy international thrillers or Henry Miller allowed.

This year's winner? Well, he's won the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once, but now Norman Mailer, who died last month at the age of 84, fought off a formible list of finalists to take home top prize for his book The Castle in the Forest.

But as they say, it's always an honor just to be nominated. So, for the record, here were your finalists:

Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods
Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach
Richard Milward's Apples
Ali Smith's Girl Meets Boy
Maria Peura's At the Edge of Light
James Delingpole's Coward on the Beach
David Thewlis's The Late Hector Kipling
Quim Monzo's The Enormity of the Tragedy
Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan
Christopher Rush's Will
Claire Clark's The Nature of Monsters

Because I know how hard it is to write about sex without sounding like a fifteen-year-old boy, I've been following these awards pretty closely for years now and there is always a trend or two. Last year it was odd little nicknames for the female privates. This year there seems to be an obsession with pubic hair. (Hey, I am just the reporter here...)

So, without further delay -- because I know this is the only reason you are reading this -- let's get right to the excerpts:

Pubic Display of Affection
From Will by Christopher Rush

O glorious pubes! The ultimate triangle, whose angles delve to hell but point to paradise. Let me sing the black banner, the blackbird’s wing, the chink, the cleft, the keyhole in the door. The fig, the fanny, the cranny, the quim – I’d come close to it now, this sudden blush, this ancient avenue, the end of all odysseys and epic aim of life, pulling at my prick now, pulling like a lodestone.

Anne Hathaway’s cow-milking fingers, cradling my balls in her almond palm, now took pity on the poor anguished erection, and in the infinite agony of her desire, guided it to the quick of the wound. At the same time I searched wildly with the fingers of my left hand, groping blind as Cyclops, found the pulpy furred wetness, parted the old lips of time and slipped my middle finger into the sancta sanctorum. It welcomed me with soft sucking sounds, syllables older than language, solace lovelier than words. She pulled my hand away, positioned the prick, slid her buttocks deep into the grass, raised her thighs back high, crossed her legs behind my back, dug her heels into my spine and hauled at me savagely and hard. I fell into her.

You are the wind beneath my hand-job
From Boy Meets Girl by Ali Smith

Her hand opened me. Then her hand became a wing. Then everything about me became a wing, a single wing, and she was the other wing, we were a bird. We were a bird that could sing Mozart. … I was a she was a he was a we were a girl and a girl and a boy and a boy, we were blades, were a knife that could cut through myth, were two knives thrown by a magician, were arrows fired by a god, we hit heart, we hit home, we were the tail of a fish were the reek of a cat were the beak of a bird were the feather that mastered gravity were high above every landscape then down deep in the purple haze of the heather were roamin in a gloamin in a brash unending Scottish piece of perfect jigging reeling reel can we really keep this up?

Or maybe it's just acid reflux
From Clare Clark’s The Nature of Monsters

When at last he reached in to touch me, there was nothing else left, nothing in the world but his fingers and the delirious incoherent frenzy of pure sensation they sent spiralling through me, as though I were an instrument vibrating with the exquisite hymns of the angels. Did that make him an angel? My toes clenched in my boots and my belly held itself aloft in a moment of stillness as the flame quivered, perfectly bright. I held my breath. In the explosion I lost sight of myself. I was a million brilliant fragments, the darkness of my belly alive with stars. When at last I opened my eyes to look at him, my lashes shone with tears. He raised a finger to his lips and smiled.

Kinky...with a dash of chervil
From Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

Her vagina was all that, as they say in the urban media – a powerful ethnic muscle scented by bitter melon, the breezes of the local sea, and the sweaty needs of a tiny nation trying to breed itself into a future. Was it especially hairy? Good Lord, yes it was. Mountains of kinkiness black as the night above the Serengeti with paprika shoots at the edges – the pubic hair alone must have clocked in at half a kilo, while providing the inspiration for two discernible trails of hair, one running up to the navel, the other to the base of the spine.

Do you fancy a shag? How about a cheap berber?
From Richard Milward’s Fantastic Apples

She had on no knickers, and my heart went crash-bang-wallop and my eyes popped out. She hadn’t shaved, and her fanny looked like a tropical fish or a bit of old carpet.

"So, you just gonna sit there?" Abi asked, and I laughed nervously. I was hardening up, but it was all a bit of a shock really. All I’d planned that night was listening to a selection of records and maybe some homework. I tried to go down on her, thinking back to the Razzle and how the boys did it in that. But my heart wasn’t into it – her cunt smelt a bit like an armpit, and when I pulled the lips open I knew I’d have to shut them numerous times or else I’ll die of Aids or I’d fall into it.

Klaatu barada niktu, baby...
From Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods:

Why am I embarrassed about taking off my clothes in front of a robot? I pull the dress over my head like a schoolgirl, untie my hair, and sit down. She is smiling, just a little bit, as though she knows her effect.

To calm myself down and appear in control I reverse the problem. "Spike, you’re a robot, but why are you such a drop-dead gorgeous robot? I mean, is it necessary to be the most sophisticated machine ever built and to look like a movie star?"

She answers simply: "They thought I would be good for the boys on the mission."

"So you had sex with spacemen for three years?"

"Yes. I used up three silicon-lined vaginas."

Bad sex on the beach
From Quim Monzo’s The Enormity of the Tragedy

She felt the cylinder rod of his plunger. Tried to work up a precise rhythm. Felt the sand sticking to her knees through her trousers. She and Luis-Albert were all there was in the world; she swallowed him centimetre by centimetre (whenever a wave hit the beach) and then immediately let it go centimetre by centimetre (as each wave retreated).

With apologies to 'Bartholomew and the Oobleck'
From Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach.

Had she pulled on the wrong thing? Had she gripped too tight? He gave out a wail, a complicated series of agonised, rising vowels, the sort of sound she had heard once in a comedy film when a waiter, weaving this way and that, appeared to be about to drop a pile of towering soup plates.

In horror she let go, as Edward, rising up with a bewildered look, his muscular back arching in spasms, emptied himself over her in gouts, in vigorous but diminishing quantities, filling her navel, coating her belly, thighs, and even a portion of her chin and kneecap in tepid, viscous fluid.

And last but not least, our winner:

Norman...ooooooooooooh. Norman, my love
From Norman Mailer's The Castle in the Forest

"Are you all right?" she cried out as he lay beside her, his breath going in and out with a rasp that sounded as terrible as the last winds of their lost children.

"All right. Yes. No," he said. Then she was on him. She did not know if this would resuscitate him or end him, but the same spite, sharp as a needle, that had come to her after Fanni's death was in her again. Fanni had told her once what to do. So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from the Evil One - that she knew. From there, the impulse had come. So now they both had their heads at the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close before.

The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. It surprised her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again! His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety.

Fresh pulp

2007-11-17T14:51:00.001-05:00

I am still trying to push the baby out, so I all my words are being funneled into things for which they are paying me (ie a book that was due two weeks ago).

In the meantime, I have to alert you to my newest favorite website, Pop Sensation, where you find the best covers of vintage paperback crime novels this side of Ray Walsh's store in E. Lansing. And the commentary is priceless.

The fellow who does this site also has a great site called Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle, where every day he gives cheaters like me the answers.

Check it out and see you here Monday with a fresh post!

Halloweenie

2007-10-29T15:07:00.001-04:00

Scariest book I ever read: "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson

Scariest short story I ever read: "Turn of the Screw" by Henry James

Scariest movie I saw as an adult: "The Exorcist"

Scariest movie I saw as a kid: "The Blob"

Scariest moment I've ever had: sharing a panel with Charlotte Curtis, op-ed editor of the New York Times when I was only 21 years old.

Scariest thing I've ever done: Chairing the Edgars last year.

Scariest thing I ever saw: a shark while I was snorkling.

Scariest thing I want to do before I die: go skydiving.

And finally, the scariest thing you will see today:

That's me with my husband Daniel and dog Bailey going out to trick or treat. What's your scariest list? Happy halloween!

How to write a thriller

2007-10-29T12:42:00.001-04:00

Bond: Do you expect me to talk?
Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.

Isn't that the best two lines of dialogue you've ever read?

I have been thinking about James Bond -- and his creator Ian Fleming -- quite a bit lately. Part of this springs from the fact that I am supposed to be a "thriller" writer yet I don't really know what that is supposed to mean. Especially today when the genres are criss-crossing each other faster than panicked chickens.

Two years ago, I was a judge for the International Thriller Writers first contest and I confess that our First Novel committee had some trouble figuring out which books qualified as thrillers and which did not. The old rules don't really apply anymore what with the rich ingredients many writers are throwing into the pot these days.

You just can't limit the definition (as some still insist on doing) to the hoary formula: A common man thrust into extraordinary circumstances in (insert exotic locale here) faces down a (insert monster or menace here) with the help of the beautiful and mysterious (insert female stereotype here) to save (insert organization, country or world here) before the clock ticks down to the final second.

So what IS a thriller?

Beats me. And we won the ITW Thriller Award this past summer. But since I am still trying to wrap my brain around this question, I thought I'd go back to one of the originals -- Ian Fleming.

I had heard about an article Fleming wrote about thrillers and had been trying to find it for some time. Damned if I didn't finally stumble on it today as I was searching the web for something else. Kind of like finding your glasses when you're looking for your wallet.

So, I am going to go back to writing my chapter now, since the book is due in three days. But I hope you'll enjoy this article as much as I did. Fleming wrote it in 1962. There's some really good advice in here that still makes sense to me today.

HOW TO WRITE A THRILLER
By Ian Fleming

People often ask me, "How do you manage to think of that? What an extraordinary (or sometimes extraordinarily dirty) mind you must have." I certainly have got vivid powers of imagination, but I don't think there is anything very odd about that.

We are all fed fairy stories and adventure stories and ghost stories for the first 20 years of our lives, and the only difference between me and perhaps you is that my imagination earns me money. But, to revert to my first book, Casino Royale, there are strong incidents in the book which are all based on fact. I extracted them
from my wartime memories of the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, dolled them up, attached a hero, a villain and a heroine, and there was the book.

The first was the attempt on Bond's life outside the Hotel Splendide. SMERSH had given two Bulgarian assassins box camera cases to hang over their shoulders. One was of red leather and the other one blue. SMERSH told the Bulgarians that the red one con-tained a bomb and the blue one a powerful smoke screen, under cover of which they could escape.

One was to throw the red bomb and the other was then to press the button on the blue case. But the Bulgars mistrusted the plan and decided to press the button on the blue case and envelop themselves in the smoke screen before throwing the bomb. In fact, the blue case also contained a bomb powerful enough to blow both the Bulgars to fragments and remove all evidence which might point to SMERSH.

Farfetched, you might say. In fact, this was the method used in the Russian attempt on Von Papen's life in Ankara in the middle of the war. On that occasion the assassins were also Bulgarians and they were blown to nothing while Von Papen and his wife, walking from their house to the embassy; were only bruised by the blast.

So you see the line between fact and fantasy is a very narrow one. I think I could trace most of the central incidents in my books to some real happenings.

We thus come to the final and supreme hurdle in the writing of a thriller. You must know thrilling things before you can write about them. Imagination alone isn't enough, but stories you hear from friends or read in the papers can be built up by a fertile imagination and a certain amount of research and documentation into incidents that will also ring true in fiction.

Having assimilated all this encouraging advice, your heart will nevertheless quail at the physical effort involved in writing even a thriller. I warmly sympathise with you. I too, am lazy My heart sinks when I contemplate the two or three hundred virgin sheets of foolscap I have to besmirch with more or less well chosen words in order to produce a 60,000 word book.

One of the essentials is to create a vacuum in my life which can only be satisfactorily filled by some form of creative work - whether it be writing, painting, sculpting, composing or just building a boat - I was about to get married - a prospect which filled me with terror and mental fidget. To give my hands something to do, and as an antibody to my qualms about the marriage state after 43 years as a bachelor, I decided one day to damned well sit down and write a book.

The therapy was successful. And while I still do a certain amount of writing in the midst of my London Life, it is on my annual visits to Jamaica that all my books have been written.

But, failing a hideaway such as I possess, I can recommend hotel bedrooms as far removed from your usual "life" as possible. Your anonymity in these drab surroundings and your lack of friends and distractions will create a vacuum which should force you into a writing mood and, if your pocket is shallow, into a mood which will also make you write fast and with application. I do it all on the
typewriter, using six fingers. The act of typing is far less exhausting than the act of writing, and you end up with a more or less clean manuscript The next essential is to keep strictly to a routine.

I write for about three hours in the morning - from about 9:30 till 12:30and I do another hour's work between six and seven in the evening. At the end of this I reward myself by numbering the pages and putting them away in a spring-back folder. The whole of this four hours of daily work is devoted to writing narrative.

I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to. If you once look back, you are lost. How could you have written this drivel? How could you have used "terrible" six times on one page? And so forth. If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500
words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain. By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren't disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks.

I don't even pause from writing to choose the right word or to verify spelling or a fact. All this can be done when your book is finished.

When my book is completed I spend about a week going through it and correcting the most glaring errors and rewriting passages. I then have it properly typed with chapter headings and all the rest of the trimmings. I then go through it again, have the worst pages retyped and send it off to my publisher.

They are a sharp-eyed bunch at Jonathan Cape and, apart from commenting on the book as a whole, they make detailed suggestions which I either embody or discard. Then the final typescript goes to the printer and in due course the galley or page proofs are there and you can go over them with a fresh eye. Then the book is published and you start getting letters from people saying that Vent Vert is made by Balmain and not by Dior, that the Orient Express has vacuum and not hydraulic brakes, and that you have mousseline sauce and not Bearnaise with asparagus.

Such mistakes are really nobody's fault except the author's, and they make him blush furiously when he sees them in print. But the majority of the public does not mind them or, worse, does not even notice them, and it is a dig at the author's vanity to realise how quickly the reader's eye skips across the words which it has taken him so many months to try to arrange in the right sequence.

But what, after all these labours, are the rewards of writing and, in my case, of writing thrillers?

First of all, they are financial. You don't make a great deal of money from royalties and translation rights and so forth and, unless you are very industrious and successful, you could only just about live on these profits, but if you sell the serial rights and the film rights, you do very well. Above all, being a successful writer is a good life. You don't have to work at it all the time and you carry your office around in your head. And you are far more aware of the world around
you.

Writing makes you more alive to your surroundings and, since the main ingredient of living, though you might not think so to look at most human beings, is to be alive, this is quite a worthwhile by-product of writing.

The case of the missing bestseller

2007-10-22T11:59:00.000-04:00

This bestseller list thing just gets curiouser and curiouser. Recently, I blogged about how weird this business of compiling bestseller lists has become.

Folks, it just got stranger than fiction.

Seems the "public editor" (aka ombudsman or in-house maiden aunt scolder) of the New York Times Clark Hoyt has some issues with the way his newspaper compiles its vaunted bestseller lists. (I will recount the salient points here in case you can't access the Times online. And heads up to Galley Cat, where I found this link.)

First, Hoyt tells us that the NYT list is "powerful and mysterious" and quotes Larry Kirshbaum of Time-Warner as saying it is "the gold standard." Then, rather disingenuously, he goes on to say the list is "not a completely accurate barometer of what the reading public is buying, and it has generated controversy from time to time." This is common info in the publishing world -- even among authors. A Times' columnist is just now finding this out?

The latest brush-up is over Elie Wiesel's memoir "Night." The book has always sold well, and due to a new recent translation, it was enjoying a revival. At one point last year, it was simultaneously No. 1 on the nonfiction paperback list, No. 3 on the same list in its original edition and No. 7 on the hardcover list.

But last month, when the the Times introduced its expanded bestseller lists (breaking paperback into Trade and Mass Market) “Night” disappeared. This, after after a run of 80 weeks, after hitting No. 9 on the paperback list the week before.

“People called me to ask what happened, and I really couldn’t explain it,” Wiesel is quoted as saying. He said he still can’t, even after an explanation from The Times.

What happened? PE Clark Hoyt (as opposed to PI?) got on the case.

He unearthed lots of interesting side stuff:

The Book Review editor, Sam Tanenhaus, has nothing to do with compiling the list that appears in his section. It is done by the Times news surveys department.

The list isn’t tabulated from paper questionnaires sent to booksellers; it’s entirely computerized. The roster of outlets surveyed is not adjusted only once every five years; it changes constantly.

And it's a misconception that the Times surveys booksellers only about titles determined by publishers’ shipments thereby giving "sleeper" books no chance. Instead, some companies dump all of their book sales to The Times, while others fill out an online form based on the previous week’s best sellers and including space for unlisted books that have sold well.

And: The Wall Street Journal and USA Today name the booksellers they survey. The Times keeps its reporting booksellers secret.

Re: that last one, Hoyt tries to get an explanation from Deborah Hofmann, who is named as the "editor of the bestseller list." Sez Hofmann: "We are aware of certain publishers and certain authors, and we watch those publishers and authors for certain trends. People do try to game the list.”

Hoyt seems mildly perturbed by this, but again, the idea that someone might try to get on the list by bulk-buying at certain stores is pretty common knowledge in our business. I have heard my fellow authors admit their strategy is to do signings only at bookstores they know report to the Times. Such is the deseperation behind needing to get on that "gold standard" list.

But readers don't know any of this. Many of them depend (rightly or wrongly) on the NYT list to cull their book purchases. I've seen enough readers in B&Ns holding the NYT list to know this. The lists are posted at B&N, for heaven's sake. And readers are supposed to KNOW the lists aren't really reflective of what's actually selling?

Oh, but they would. If only they paid attention.

See, if you look hard on the NYT list, you'll see these little dagger symbols next to some titles. This dagger means, the small type below the list tell us, that "some bookstores report receiving bulk orders." Which means, someone might be "gaming" the book but it's on the list anyway so you readers figure it out on your own whether it's really a bestseller or not.

But back to Wiesel's book "Night." What DID happen to his disappearing bestseller?

Well, again, let's go to the fine print below the list, where next to the dagger clause, we find this phrase: "Perennial bestsellers are not actively tracked."

That means, acording to PE Hoyt, that someone arbitrarily decides a book is a "classic" -- or in the words of a Times editor "evergreen." And that book is taken off the list. No matter how many copies it is selling in relation to "The Kite Runner." You can add "evergreens" like "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- which also doesn't appear on the NYT list, even though it regularly outsells most the books that appear each week.

Why banish a book just because it has, ahem, such great legs? Hoyt quotes NYT editor Hofman again: "The Times wants a list that’s lively and churns and affords new authors the opportunity to be recorded.”

Or, to look at things more crassly: The Times wants its slots open to books that can generate advertising revenue. It's a lot easier to tap Viking for an ad in support of Garrison Keillor's "Pontoon" than it is to hit on Back Bay Books to tout "Catcher In the Rye." Even though the latter was recently No. 19 on the USA Today bestseller list, which reflects actual sales and doesn't ban "evergreens."

In a message to Wiesel’s publisher, Hofmann called “Night” a modern classic and said most of its sales are now driven by student reading lists. Said Hofman: “The editorial spirit of the list is to track the sales of new books. We simply cannot track such books [as Wiesel's] indefinitely.”

So, is Elie Wiesel a "bestselling author" or not?

According to USA Today he is. "Night" is at No. 129 this week, nine spots below “The Official SAT Study Guide.” (the USA Today list lumps all books, regardless of format or content, into one giant list).

Wiesel is nowhere to be seen on the New York Times list.

But hey, he's still got a chance. Hofman says the Times is considering adding YET ANOTHER bestseller list. It will be called the "Classics List."