An Interview with Katherine Hall Page

Posted on June 24, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

Katherine, you’re currently out and about touring your 20th Faith Fairchild mystery, The Body in the Boudoir. This book is actually a “prequel” to the ones we’ve been reading all these years. Can you tell us a little bit about the story?

The 10th book in the series, The Body in the Big Apple was set in 1989 when Faith Sibley was just starting her catering firm in her native Manhattan. Over the years, readers have asked the “what next?” question that we writers ask ourselves all the time and The Body in the Boudoir is the result. It picks up exactly where the other book left off, January 1990. Faith has no intention of getting involved with anyone after an unhappy end to what she thought might be Mr. Right in the previous book. But then she meets Tom Fairchild at a wedding she’s catering. She doesn’t realize the New Englander is in town to perform the ceremony. He’s changed his clothes for the reception. Coup de Foudre and the book rollicks along a very bumpy path to the altar with subplots involving a young Italian student with a big secret working for Faith and Faith’s financial bigwig sister who is unaccountably losing clients. Manhattan is a major player in the story.

We’re in awe of your ability to keep coming up with new plots for these books. So please tell us, where did the idea for this particular story come from?

The readers, as I mentioned, but also because I’m fascinated with New York City, then and now. I grew up in northern New Jersey, a 30-minute bus ride from Port Authority and making the city Faith’s hometown from the start was important to me. The link between character and setting defines a book for me. As for the love story, which is essentially what Boudoir is, I thought it was time to provide the background for the rest of the series. It also seemed necessary to talk about the difficult decision she had to make that so many people do when plighting their troth—moving to a completely different place and giving up a career.

Sometimes we hear that authors get tired of their series characters. It seems like Faith’s character, and her relationship with her family and her friends, just gets richer and deeper with each book. What are your strategies for keeping the characters fresh?

Thank you for that. I think it’s true that as the books went on, I was able to explore each character, especially Faith, in greater depth. What I like about writing a series is that I have a kind of theatrical ensemble cast that appears in each book, but then I add cameo appearances by others. This adds fresh aspects to each book in introducing one-time appearances, but also expands our knowledge of the characters that appear in each book through their interactions with the walk-ons. I also use place, alternating the fictitious town of Aleford, Massachusetts with other locales—Sanpere Island, Maine for example—as a way to keep the series from getting stale.

Do your characters feel like old friends to you? Do you feel like you’re rejoining people you know well when you start a new book?

Absolutely. This is a perfect way to express it and not at all twee. They do feel like people I know and what’s more important, they seem real to my readers.

How do you handle the fact that some readers will be discovering Faith for the first time twenty books in, while others have been reading all along? How much of the backstory do you feel you have to include in a new book?

In a series, each book has to function as a stand alone, so yes, it’s extremely important to include the backstory. The challenge is to word it slightly differently in each. I always include the salient details—displaced Manhattan native, minister’s wife chafing at fishbowl existence, caterer, kids—in the first chapter.

I know that you, like many mystery authors, have a special affection for libraries and librarians. Why is that? What role have libraries played in your life or your writing that makes them so special?

I dedicated The Body in the Sleigh (set in Maine) to librarians in general and some specific ones, starting with the first—Ruth Rockwood—at the library in my hometown. Every week my mother took us to the library to check out books. I’ve gravitated towards libraries ever since and became especially aware of the unique access we have to books and information when I was living in France. Librarians there acted as gatekeepers, not matchmakers. I have tremendous admiration for the role librarians play in guarding our civil liberties. I’ve also depended on uber librarians like Jeanne Bracken, the Lincoln Library’s reference librarian for help with research. On average reference librarians answer more than 8 million questions a week! And there are more public libraries in the US than McDonalds!

In your more recent books, you’ve started including some recipes. Where do your recipes come from? Do you make them up? And what kind of testing goes into ensuring that the recipes will work for your readers?

The recipes are the hardest part of each book as yes, they must be original. Cannot just grab Julia and copy. I want them to be relatively easy, inexpensive, and not require exotic ingredients. And of course, most of all, tasty. I’ve included them in 14 books now, accompanied by an Author’s Note about all sorts of things—my chance to step from behind the curtain. They are at the end of the books as I don’t want them to interrupt the narrative (Faith stumbles across a badly bludgeoned body followed by a brownie recipe). Also some people are not interested in them, which is fine. I include five or more—an appetizer or soup, main dish, usually some kind of bread, and dessert. I test them by making them over and over! Readers were writing to me for recipes, so my editor, Ruth Cavin, suggested I add them. I was afraid I was copying Virginia Rich, but there were several other authors including them and soon the whole culinary crime genre took off.

Have you ever experimented with a recipe that turned out to be a disaster?

I’ve never had a disaster, but I did have a fun experience with one—Aunt Susie’s Cake. I donated the chance to include a recipe in one of my books and the high bidder sent me this family favorite, which Aunt Susie always brought to a Southern Pig Pickin’. I looked at the ingredients—a cake mix, canned fruit, Cool Whip— and wondered how it would taste. It has been one of the most popular recipes I’ve ever put in the books. Try it for yourself!

Aunt Susie’s Cake

1 box good quality yellow cake mix

4 eggs

3/4 cup canola or other vegetable oil

1 (11 ounce) can Mandarin oranges packed in juice

For the frosting:

1 small package instant vanilla pudding

1 large (20 ounce) can crushed pineapple packed in juice

1 large container Cool Whip or other whipped topping

Combine the cake mix, eggs, oil, and oranges (including juice) in a bowl. Mix according to the directions on the box. Pour into 3 round cake pans and bake at 350° for approximately 25 minutes. Remove from the pans and cool on cake racks while you make the frosting.

Drain the pineapple, reserving the juice. Mix the juice and the instant pudding together. Add the Cool Whip and drained pineapple. Mix. Spread some of the frosting between the layers and use the rest on the top and sides of the cake.

Speaking of recipes, along with your mysteries, you also have a cookbook, Have Faith in Your Kitchen. What was it like putting that together? Have your readers been excited about the book? And please, would you be willing to share a recipe with us?

Doing the cookbook was a joy as the publisher, Roger Lathbury of Orchises Press, has been a friend since high school. Besides the paperback for kitchen use, Roger published a collectors hard cover edition, hand sewn in a beautiful slip case (Orchises mostly does this sort of book). There are only a few left! We consulted about fonts, the illustrations—not the ordinary publishing experience. Readers have loved it and now they have all the recipes in one place plus some essays I wrote in between. One reader wrote that all my books in her local library had the recipe sections cut out, so she was thrilled.  This is coals to Newcastle, but here’s my family’s cherished fish chowder recipe:

6-7 1/4” thick slices bacon

3 cups diced yellow onions

5-6 medium potatoes, peeled

1 lb. haddock

1 lb. cod

2 cans (3 cups) evaporated milk

1 cup whole milk

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

 

Fry the bacon, removed from the pan, and place on a paper towel. Sauté the onions in the bacon fat and set the pan aside.

Cut the potatoes in half the long way, then in 1/4” slices. Put them in a nonreactive pot large enough for the chowder. Cover the potatoes with water and boil until tender. Be careful not to put in too much water or the chowder will be soupy. While the potatoes are cooking, cut the fish into generous bite-sized pieces. When the potatoes are ready, add the fish to the pot, cover and simmer until the fish flakes.

When the fish is done, crumble the bacon and add it to the pot along with the onions and any grease in the pan, the evaporated and whole milks. Bring the mixture to a boil, cover, and turn the heat down. Simmer for 5 minutes and add salt and pepper to taste.

Chowder invariably tastes better when made a day ahead.

You may also use salt pork instead of bacon. Two kinds of fish make for a more interesting chowder, but these can be any combination of the following: haddock, cod, Pollack, monkfish, and hake. Finally, there is the question of garnishes: dill, chopped parsley, oyster crackers, butter are all good. My family goes for butter.

One of the reasons we’re excited to have you as one of our interviewees is that you spend a big chunk of every year in Maine yourself. What part of Maine do you call home?

I don’t just call Deer Isle home—it is home. We started going there in 1958 to a nature lodge run by a U Maine retired botanist. My parents bought a small piece of land in 1967 and built a cottage, which my sister now has and we bought the one next door. We are on a beautiful cove. My parents are buried on the island and there’s room for the rest of us. My son has grown up there and if my husband hadn’t loved it when I first took him there in 1974, all bets would have been off. I’m now on the island about 3 months a year and hope to stretch it out in the future.

We love to share our special parts of Maine with our readers. Could you tell us about some of your favorite haunts down your way? Are there great places to eat, to explore, to take a great walk?

Well, we used to love the old Mardens in Ellsworth, but the new one isn’t as good. However, that’s not what you mean. We spend a great deal of time on the water and love the run from Deer Isle to Swan’s Island. On land, I like to go to Cherryfield once a summer and stay at the Englishman’s Bed and Breakfast, continuing on to Schoodic Point. Lily’s Café was the best food on Deer Isle, but Kyra Alex is taking a break. Nothing comes close to the Friday Night Fry at the Harbor Café in Stonington, and their breakfasts, though. Almost forgot Riverside Café in Ellsworth. I also like to go to Northeast Harbor to the gardens there and out to Isle Au Haut for a glimpse of the way Maine used to be. There’s a great guy, Steve Johnson, the Stonington Harbormaster, who is running excursions also—Bert & I Charters—a perfect way to see the area and affordable. And then there’s the Blue Hill Fair (best fries at the King and Queen’s, formerly Thelma the Fry Queen’s but sadly she is gone—same family though). We go every year. And also all the wonderful artists and craftspeople in the area—particularly Blossom Studio and Eggemoggin Textile Studio. Oh, and Haystack Mountain School on Deer Isle and…

What is a question that you’d like to be asked in an interview, and rarely are?

It’s a question I often ask others: “What’s your earliest memory?” Often the answer ties in to what’s significant in a person’s life. For example, my mother, who was an artist, could clearly recall a beaded, multi-colored curtain hanging in a doorway at a cottage on a lake-she would have been two. My first memory is of our car pulling up and my parents getting out with my new baby sister-I was just three. I can even remember the dress my mother was wearing (and no, there isn’t a photo). My family has always been extremely important-immediate one and later husband and son. I’ve also always been interested in other people’s families—especially Faith Fairchild’s.

P.S.

The books set in Maine are: The Body in the Kelp, The Body in the Basement, The Body in the Lighthouse, and The Body in the Sleigh.

Also the Edgar nominated juvenile: Christie & Company Down Eastand several short stories.

Katherine Hall Page’s series features amateur sleuth/caterer, Faith Fairchild. The Body in the Belfry (1991) won an Agatha for Best First; “The Would-Be Widower” (2001) won Best SS ; and The Body in the Snowdrift (2005) won Best Novel when Katherine was Malice XVIII’s Guest of Honor . She has also written for young adults, bringing the total of her books at present to twenty-six.

 

 

 

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A Book Begins; Commence the Wandering

Posted on June 23, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

Hey all. Gerry Boyle here. And I’m reporting in after spending much of the day in my favorite part of the writing trade: the wandering.

I love the writing itself. I love the long hours in the study with the story. I like seeing the finished book and I like going around talking the book up. But there is something special about the research stage of  a book, when ideas are forming but nothing is decided and anything is possible. This is what I call “the wandering stage” when I set out with notebooks and camera and Gazeteer and go where intuition takes me.

With a book in the hopper and the next one a vague notion, this morning I set out early, taking an SUV just in case. I’m doing research in Jack McMorrow’s backyard, and even after all these years on Jack’s turf in the willwags of Waldo County Maine, I keep the Gazeteer beside me. I drive back roads and then I drive roads that are just dashes on the map. I eased my way down one this morning that had signs directing drivers (of ATVs). I bumped along, glad it hadn’t just rained because the road was clearly the stream bed. I drove and mulled and pulled into logging roads and pondered.

The plot is emerging, like people walking out of a haze.  I sit in the woods, get out and walk. I drive back to paved roads and park. Pickups drive by and everyone waves. They figure anyone out here must be someone they know. If it isn’t, they need a good hard look. I’ll bet I’ll come up in somebody’s dinner conversation tonight:

“Saw this guy in a grey Toyota? Way back in the woods.”

“What was he doing?”

“Hell if I know. Just kinda sitting there.”

“Wasn’t some pervert was he?”

“Waved.”

“Yeah, well.”

Drove a road named somebody’s gulch. Jack will go there. Met a young woman along the way, in a store. She told me her dad makes furniture. Sweet smile. She’ll make the book. Saw a kid on a bike, flailing his way down a big hill. Put the brakes on so he could give me a wave. Norman Rockwell come to life. Got the dead stare from two guys in a Toyota pickup. How can so much be said by no expression at all?

I get asked sometimes where I get my ideas. Now you know. Fifty miles from the study. From a glance. A smile. A back road that ends in a washed out gully. A couple of guys who could be loggers. Or could be coming from a meth lab in the woods. A hundred bucks says there was a firearm in the truck. Fifty says it was loaded.

So is this how all writers start a book? I don’t know. I’ll ask my compatriots in MCW. Hey, guys. How do you set out to write a book?

I just know how these things form for me. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, do it any other way.

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Beyond For Better or For Worse, But NOT for Lunch . . .

Posted on June 22, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

Hi, it’s Kate Flora here, musing on a topic of great concern to me, and perhaps to some of you, as we celebrate another summer. It’s all about how our favorite summer clothes have morphed into mysteriously tiny garments while in storage over the winter. I’d blame the heat, but it was a pretty warm winter.

While some might embrace with great delight the necessity to go shopping and acquire a nifty new wardrobe, while in our hearts secretly wishing that clothes sizing was like a countdown, with the the little gals starting at size 18, and the biggest sizes down there around 1 and 0. Or perhaps blast off? I’m trying to shop on what a writer makes, which means second-hand stores, and I’m a thrifty Yankee who believes that yes, we have our hats and we’re supposed to be “making do.” But making do in too-tight tee-shirts, sausage-casing dresses, and shorts and capris that won’t zip doesn’t do. And for this sad state of affairs, along with confessing to a sorry lack of will-power about getting to the gym, I blame my husband, Ken.

Don’t get me wrong. Ken is a lovely man. He’s attractive and generous and he makes me laugh. My life

Ken at Lake Louise

would be much poorer without him. But I would also be thinner. Because my office is on a balcony that is open to the rest of the house, he is a semi-retired gentleman, and he needs to eat as often as a newborn. (He likes to compare himself to a bird, claiming that birds need to eat their own weight daily. Unless it’s a vole.) But whatever creature it is that the good man resembles, it involves many, many visits to the kitchen every day.

Thus, while I sit, disciplined and hungry, at my keyboard, the house is filled, early in the day, with the devastatingly scrumptious smell of cooking toast and the clink of spoon against cereal bowl. Midmorning, it’s coffee cake and grape juice. Perhaps, then, his head of silvery hair will appear around the edge of my door to inquire if there is anything for lunch. (I don’t fix it. I just give guidance.) Midafternoon will involve a lot of clatter and bang and refrigerator doors opening and closing, as second lunch takes place. Then there will be late afternoon snack and the query, “When is dinner?”

If I’m at home, it will be something healthy–broiled bluefish, low-carb noodles with roasted vegetables, and a salad. Baked chicken with a salad of couscous and roasted squash from Chloe’s Kitchen. If I’m going to be out at fine libraries and bookstores everywhere, it’s meatloaf and Martha Stewart’s mac and cheese, or oven-fried chicken and potato salad. But then, a few hours later, he needs another snack.

Have you ever tried to ignore the person beside you eating pretzels and raisins? At least it’s not cookies, which I cannot resist.

It’s not just the crunching of chips or pretzels, either. It’s the availability. He claims that when he met me, there were two things in my refrigerator: yogurt and lettuce. If I lived alone, it might well still be that way, supplemented by the ingredients of my favorite dinner–bourbon and popcorn. But instead, there are chips and pretzels, coffee cake and ice cream. Several different kinds of bread for the bread-loving man. Mango juice. Grape juice. Bagels and cream cheese. He’s afraid of the vegetable drawer, but the rest of the fridge could feed a family of five for a week.

We talk about diets. He says I need more exercise. I say I need to finish a book. He says exercise. I say that my best diet would be to send him away for a few weeks. He understands that this is not hostility. He goes on eating. He offers me a shopping spree when the ten pounds are lost.

When he contemplated retirement, I thought that I needed to fear for my writing rituals. I had had years of long hours of solitude, and now they were going to be shared by the person who reads the paper and says, “Listen to this?” Who wonders aloud whether its dry enough to mow the lawn. Who would like company on a walk. Who can’t find the spare batteries, lightbulbs, toilet paper, Tums, paper towels or toothpaste. Who thinks it would be a great idea to clean some closets. Right now. Or rearrange the garage, which is full of my books. Or who wants me to look at my calendar, so we can schedule some dinners with our friends.

Dinners? Friends? Walk? My head is full of the scene I am writing, or I’m just working out the careful balance of arranging where 250 pages of interviews will go and trying to learn to use Scrivener. I’m crafting the perfect dialogue. I am giving a hopeful writer advice on a new novel. I have not had breakfast and I’m resisting going downstairs where there is food.

And then I am undone by toast.

I can put on my Bose “husband-canceling” headphones. But what do I do for my nose?

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Do You Fool Yourself? a guest blog by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Posted on June 21, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

Julia Spencer-Fleming: I’ve known Hank Phillippi Ryan for mumbledy-some years now, and for as long as I’ve known her, I’ve been amazed at the sheer volume of stuff she manages to get done. She’s an investigative reporter for WHDH Boston. She writes mysteries. She has her own blog and contributes to two more. She tweets. She Facebooks. Somewhere in there, she must get her nails done and work out, because she always looks fabulous. And the really amazing part? She does it all well. She’s won 27 Emmys, ten Edward R. Murrow awards, and the Anthony, Agatha and Macavitiy awards.

I figured her secret was cloning, but it turns out it’s something more subtle than making multiple copies of herself. It turns out she’s living in her own time zone. Hank time. Here she is to tell you about it:

 

Television is all about time. Getting breaking news on in time. How much time there is until the next deadline. How much time they’ve allotted for your story.  How much time there is until someone is going to tell you you’re late. There is no late in TV.

But if you want to know what time it is, don’t ask me. I only know what time it is for me.

I see you looking baffled. But here’s what I mean. I don’t know what time it really is—because I’m fooling myself about it. And somehow, it works. How can we fool ourselves? I mean, we should know, right?

For instance. The alarm clock-radio on my nightstand is set nine minutes fast. So when it rings at 7:30, the time I usually have to get up, I creak open my eyes, try to focus on the green numerals, and my brain yells: GET UP! It’s 7:30.

Then there’s a pause, while the other half of my brain happily reminds me that it’s really 7:21, and I delightedly hit the snooze.

Why? Why not just set the clock for the real time? Then set the alarm for, say 7:21, then hit the snooze for nine minutes and get up at  the real 7:30?

Because then I don’t get the precious nine “extra” minutes of sleep.

There’s a clock in the bathroom where I do my hair and makeup—I set that one about 12 minutes fast. Here I’m fooling myself to get me to hurry up. I look at the clock, mid-mascara: it’s 8 o’clock already! I panic. Hurry! Then I  realize it’s actually just  twelve minutes until 8 o’clock, and I have plenty of time, and I can relax a bit. I’m no longer behind—I’m ahead.

Does that make any sense? Do you do that?

I do it with the clock on my wall at the TV station where I work as a reporter—I set that fast, too, but it makes sense in the world of unmissable deadlines. I suppose. I can’t be late, so if the clock is fast, it’s less likely that’ll happen.

My husband says: why don’t you just set the clocks to the REAL TIME?  And I see his point. Kind of. But faking myself out works for me.

I also fool myself with money. On payday, I enter the income into my not-so-perfect checkbook register—but I put the deposit amount as less than it really is. So I have a little pad.

My husband says—why don’t you just write down the real amount? So you know how much money is actually there? Not some theoretical amount? Yeah, I see his point. But that doesn’t work for me.

I also hide money from myself in my wallet. The other day, I unzipped a little pouch on the side and there was the secret 20 dollars I had tucked there for emergencies. But I had forgotten it was there! So much for the emergency idea. But  see—I’ve done that several times. And I always forget it’s there. Then I’m always delighted to find it.

Is reality so complicated and unmanageable that we have to fool ourselves into making it all work? My little self-trickery makes me happy, and it makes my life work very nicely.

Do you face reality? Or do you have your secret ways?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the investigative reporter for Boston’s NBC affiliate. A television journalist since 1975, she has won 27 Emmys and ten Edward R. Murrow awards for her work. Her work has resulted in new laws, people sent to prison, homes removed from foreclosure, and millions of dollars in restitution.

A best-selling author of four mystery novels–the newest is DRIVE TIME–Ryan has won the Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards for her crime fiction. Her newest thriller, THE OTHER WOMAN, is coming in hardcover from Forge in 2012. (Lee Child says: “I knew Ryan was good, but I had no idea she was this good!” Lisa Gardner says: “A rocket ride of a thriller! Brava!” )

Hank is on the national board of directors of Mystery Writers of America (and an instructor at MWA-U) and will be president of national Sisters in Crime in 2013.  

She’s been a radio reporter, a political campaign staffer, a legislative aide in the United States Senate, and in a two-year stint in Rolling Stone Magazine’s Washington Bureau, worked on the political column “Capitol Chatter” and organized presidential campaign coverage for Hunter S. Thompson. She began her TV career anchoring and reporting the news for TV stations in her home town of Indianapolis and then Atlanta.

She and her husband, a nationally renowned criminal defense and civil rights attorney, live just outside Boston, Massachusetts.

 

 

 

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Should You Self Publish?

Posted on June 20, 2012 by mcwarchives

Paul Doiron here—

Earlier this week an author named Jessica Park wrote an essay on IndieReader recounting the trouble she’d experienced finding a publisher for a young adult novel she had written. She had previously published five YA books with traditional print publishers, but her new book, titled Flat-Out Love, made the rounds in New York without success. Park says she received rejection letter after rejection letter (fourteen in all), and she began to grow increasingly resentful:

And then one day I got yet another rejection letter and instead of blaming myself and my clear lack of creativity, I got angry. Really, really furious. It clicked for me that I was not the idiot here. Publishing houses were. The silly reasons that they gave me for why my book was useless made me see very clearly how completely out of touch these houses were with readers. I knew, I just knew, that I’d written a book with humor, heart, and meaning. I’d written something that had potential to connect with an audience. As much as I despise having to run around announcing how brilliant I supposedly am and whatnot, I also deeply believed in Flat-Out Love. I knew that editors were wrong.

And I finally understood that I wanted nothing to do with these people.

In her essay, “How Amazon Saved My Life,” Park unloads on an industry that she feels is misguided, inefficient, and deserving of scorn:

Publishers pay terribly and infrequently. They are shockingly dumb when it comes to pricing, and if I see one more friend’s NY-pubbed ebook priced at $12.99, I’m going to scream. They do minimal marketing and leave the vast majority of work up to the author. Unless, of course, you are already a big name author. Then they fly you around the country for signings and treat you like the precious moneymaking gem that you are. The rest of us get next to nothing in terms of promotion. If your book takes off, they get the credit. If it tanks, you get the blame.

Rather than suffer the indignity of additional rejections, Park decided to self-publish her novel as an eBook with Amazon and promote it through a number of book blogs. The results exceeded her wildest expectations:

Because of Amazon and other sites, I’m making enough money that I can continue writing. I’m averaging sales of 3,500 books a month, not including the month that Amazon featured Flat-Out Love in a list of books for $3.99 and under. That month I sold 45,000 Kindle copies, and sold over 10,000 the next month. Those numbers are insane to me. Absolutely insane.

Furthermore, she claims to know writers who are making even more from their eBook sales, so much that they have no interest in ever being published again by a Knopf or Harpercollins:

I know more than one author who is making $50-150,000 a month (yes, a month) who are getting the most stupidly low offers from big publishers to take over that author’s book. Why would my friends take a $250,000 advance (if even offered that much), take a puny royalty rate, see their sales hurt by higher pricing, and completely give that book up for life? They can and will earn more themselves and continue to reap the benefits of a 70% royalty while maintaining all the rights to their work.

Under those circumstances, Park wonders why any author would choose to publish with a traditional print publisher. It’s a good question—especially when you consider the postscript to this story. Amazon saw Park’s essay as such a great PR opportunity that its CEO Jeff Bezos himself wrote a letter plugging the book and placed it on the Amazon homepage. For the past few days, every single visitor to Amazon has read about Jessica Park’s Cinderella story, making the book a bestseller on the site, leading to additional riches for her and excellent publicity for Amazon’s Kindle Direct self-publishing program.

I haven’t read Flat-Out Love, so I have no insight into either the wisdom of the publishers who originally rejected the book or the taste of the many readers who have enthusiastically recommended it. I have no clue whether Park’s quoted sales numbers are true (although Bezos certainly gave them a boost, whatever they were). Nor do I know how many writers are pulling in tens of thousands of dollars a month hawking their wares via Amazon (such creatures might exist, but they are shy and elusive, like the cougars one occasionally hears about stalking the backwoods of Maine). For all I know, authors like myself who continue to sign contracts with “legacy publishers” (as the self-published community derisively refers to them) are backward-looking dupes whose folly will become increasingly apparent over the coming years.

But I don’t think so. It’s tempting to view book publishers today as the equivalent of the record companies in the era before Napster: as ineffectual, money-grubbing hucksters. In the eyes of writers like Jessica Park and Barry Eisler and J.A. Konrath, publishers advertise themselves as necessary gatekeepers, when really all they do is prevent thousands of deserving works from ever being discovered by readers (while screwing authors out of considerable sums in the process). Amazon, of course, has a vested interest in convincing a great number of writers to see the publishing world this way, since Jeff Bezos wants to sell Kindles, and he needs an enormous electronic inventory of eBooks to persuade his buyers that they are better off buying his product than that of the late Steve Jobs.

As a writer, it’s reassuring to think that a Brave New World is dawning in which I can make a fortune by cutting out the editorial and marketing middlemen and by connecting (almost) directly with a waiting host of eager readers. But here’s the thing: unlike Jessica Park, I don’t loathe publishers. As an author who also happens to work for a company that publishes books, I have seen the hundreds of manuscripts that come in over the Down East transom, and I will tell you frankly that most of them are half-baked at best. Even the best of them benefit from rigorous editing by a disinterested professional (and this is leaving aside the contributions photographers, illustrators, and designers can bring to turning a manuscript into a fully realized book).

In my own case, I have several regular readers who vet my work before I submit it to my publisher. These are some of the smartest people—and best writers—I know. And yet even with their expert criticism to guide me, I can confidently say that my books have all gotten better because of the work both my agent and my editor have done to help improve them. I might not be making $50,000 a month, but my publisher has negotiated foreign rights so that readers in nine languages around the world are now discovering my books. They have hired talented actors to create audio versions of my stories so my novels can be enjoyed by the visually impaired (or just long-haul truckers and drivers with interminable commutes). My publisher has marketed my Mike Bowditch series to libraries and bookstores with real enthusiasm because they believe in my ability and potential. In short they have given me validation that is meaningful in its own right, apart from the support I’ve received from my wonderful readers.

Do I have frustrations? Of course, I do. Like all authors I wish I were paid more and more often. I chafe against the long delay between the date a book is accepted and the date it lands on bookstore tables. But I am sure my publisher has frustrations with me, too, and I try to remind myself that this  corporation—and not yours truly—is the one investing its significant dollars in editing, designing, printing, binding, marketing, and shipping my books. In short, I try to keep some perspective and humility.

None of us knows what the future holds for publishing. I will confess to being scared of a book world dominated by a single retailer of Amazon’s size. I say that not just as an author and reader but as someone who views the dissemination of ideas as central to our basic freedoms. If conventional publishers were all to vanish tomorrow—and I don’t think they will—editorial power will shift elsewhere, to corporations like Amazon  and Google and Apple for instance. It’s helpful to remember this chilling anecdote as we marvel at all our new publishing possibilities as writers.

I’m glad that Jessica Park has found fulfillment and fortune by self-publishing her work, although I hope success softens her anger. In answer to the question I posed in the title of this post, I think that anyone who shares her frustrations and specific ambitions should create a Kindle Direct account this minute and see what happens. Someday, I might join you myself. But if I ever do add my name to the ranks of the self-published, it will be with the well-founded suspicion that, without a wise and unsentimental editor to push me past my comfort zone, my books won’t be as good as they could be. In my heart I will always know I can do better.

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A Wedding in Portland, Maine

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Barbara Ross

Briana and Nick

Hi. Barb here. On May 19, a group of people gathered on a hill with a stunning view of Portland Head Light for a very special wedding ceremony.The weather was perfect–not always a given for Maine in mid-May, and if ever there were two people who deserved a beautiful day, it was this bride and groom–Briana and Nick.

Briana and Kate in first grade

Briana and my daughter Kate have been best friends since childhood. Who knows what magic chemistry draws one person to another, especially when we’re very young? From the first week of nursery school Kate and Briana played together. They went to daycare and dancing school together, bopped in and out of each others’ houses, were harassed by each others’ big brothers, and vacationed at each others’ grandparents’. Throughout elementary school, they had plenty of other friends, but it was understood by everyone that they shared a special bond.

Middle school and high school are so often the time when these early friendships grow distant. Kate and Briana travelled on the periphery of each other’s crowds, but somehow, defying the odds I think, stayed close friends. They toured colleges together, but in the end made different choices. Kate went off to UNH and Briana to UMass Amherst.

Briana and Kate at their senior prom

I still remember, vividly, the day Kate, home from college, stood at the top of the stairs in our house and told me Briana’s mother, Michele, had ovarian cancer. “Oh, Mom,” she wept, “Michele is so sick.” Over the next few years, Michele continued to pursue life with the openness to people and experiences that were always a part of her character, but both the disease and its treatment took their toll. Briana left college to care for her.

Kate graduated in 2006 and moved home. It was time for her to go out into the world, and yet, she didn’t. Normally, I would have been worried and nagging, but I, too, could tell it wasn’t time for Kate to go. That summer, Kate moved into Michele’s house for the last three weeks of her life, and stayed with Briana while she and a dedicated group of family, friends and professionals cared for her mother. During Michele’s illness, I’d watched Briana mature beyond her years, but sometimes you don’t know what your own kid has in her.

Briana and Kate at Briana's wedding

In the last days of her life, Michele and I had a conversation. I talked about how she’d always raised her kids to be independent, self-reliant and resilient, and how well that was going to serve them now. She agreed. She said she knew things had been tough for them during her illness and would be tougher after she was gone, but Michele truly believed her kids were going to be okay.

Briana returned to school and both she and her new husband Nick are in the healthcare field. I believe their career choices are fitting because they both have a special capacity for caring. And by one of those weird coincidences in life, Nick is a very distant relative of my husband’s-so Briana and Kate are thrilled that they’re at last related.

Nick's father Alfredo and Briana's mother Michele

Both Michele and Nick’s late father, Alfredo, who also died too young, were a palpable presence at the wedding. It was impossible not to think about how proud Michele would have been of the fine young men her sons have become, and of her daughter, the beautiful bride.  My husband and I sat at a table with Michele’s friends where we talked about how, just like Michele, Briana fills her life with interesting people and remains fiercely loyal to them. There were people at the reception from every part of Briana’s life.

It was an honor and a privilege to be with Briana and Nick on their special day. I think they know that Bill and I, and every person there, wish for them nothing but the best.

Whoopie pies instead of wedding cake--what else would you serve in Maine?

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My Weekend With Madmen, the season finale.

Posted on June 18, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

James Hayman:  During the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s I worked at some of Madison Avenue’s largest and most prestigious advertising agencies. Most notably, I spent nearly twenty years at Y&R New York which at the time was considered one of the best of the best.

I started as a lowly junior copywriter struggling away in a tiny interior office (we didn’t have cubicles in those days) and rose to become an executive creative director assigned to some of Y&R’s biggest and best accounts. For a time, I even got to sit in an oversized corner office (admittedly on one of the agency’s less prestigious floors) where I got to choose my own furniture and knick-knacks with the help of our on-staff interior decorator.

In other words, I spent my Madison Avenue years kind of like a mini-Don Draper albeit with glasses and curly, instead of slicked back, black hair.  Unlike Draper, after my first seven or eight years on the job, I got to wear jeans and turtleneck sweaters to the office instead of Brooks Brothers suits and skinny ties. At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, wearing jeans to the office became a sign that one possessed greater creative powers. As did sporting facial hair, though only for men.   After that, suits only came out of the closet when one had to go to meetings with senior clients. I assume that was because most of our senior clients had yet to be informed of the creative powers of blue denim.

Anyway, when Madmen came on the air six seasons ago, I watched one or two episodes and then stopped.  I didn’t find the ones I saw all that interesting and except for news and NY Giant football games I don’t watch a whole lot of television anyway. Obviously, the show turned out to be a big hit and for the last six years whenever I meet someone new at some kind of social function, they inevitably exclaim, ”Oh, you were in advertising. You must watch Madmen.” Up until this weekend, I inevitably disappointed them when I responded “No.”

I had the sense they wanted to question me about the show’s accuracy depicting life in a big New York ad agency back in the day. I suppose, if I had been a Mafia hitman instead of a copywriter, they would have been equally disappointed at my inability to comment on Tony Soprano’s methods of bumping off the other wiseguys.

Since I still practice copywriting when I’m not writing my Mike McCabe thrillers, last Thursday I attended a party thrown by the Advertising Club of Maine to celebrate this year’s season finale of Madmen.  After chatting about the show for most of the two or three hours I was there I decided it was time I got up to speed with what all the hoopla was about.  So Saturday morning I hit the Netflix “Watch Instantly” button on my computer and, in something of a Madmen marathon, spent the next two days arbitrarily watching nine episodes of Season Three.

So now I can finally stop disappointing all those people who have been asking for the inside skinny for last six years and provide the definitive answer.  Yes, I will tell them, the show is fairly accurate though more than a little exaggerated.

Yes, we worked hard.  “If you don’t come in Saturday, don’t bother coming in Sunday,” was a quip one often heard in the halls of Y&R on Friday afternoons.

Yes, the politics could be gruesome. But politics anywhere are always gruesome.

Yes, we drank and smoked a lot. The creative head of the agency, my boss for most of my twenty years at Y&R, swilled down at least two and usually three vodka martinis and smoked about ten cigarettes during the course of each and every two hour lunch I ever had with him. Even so he worked till nine or ten practically every night and showed no signs of diminished judgment. In fact, even after three martinis, he was one of the smartest guys I ever worked with.

And yes, as in Madmen, people had more than a few illicit office affairs often with other people’s spouses.  I remember one young female copywriter who worked for me complaining bitterly about another young female copywriter who received what copywriter #1 considered an undeserved promotion by the time-tested tactic of sleeping with her boss. “That bitch,”  copywriter #1 snarled after the event, “She’s the only woman I know who actually f****d her way to the middle.”

What Madmen misses, at least in the nine episodes of the show I watched, was the fun we all had. Being in advertising in those days of big budget commercials and business class travel, especially at a great agency like Y&R, was a ball.  Sitting around with a bunch of smart, funny creative people and dreaming up whacky ideas for new TV campaigns, then selling them to the client and then going out to shoot them in Hollywood or on some exotic location somehow made all the hard work and political baloney worthwhile.  For me and for most of my friends from those days (many of whom I still see), it was a great way to make a damned good living.

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Favorite Copy Editor Stories

Posted on June 17, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

What memorable experiences have you had with copy editors?

Kate Flora: Most of my stories tend to be cranky ones–like the copy editor who suddenly started “correcting” a character’s name halfway through the manuscript, and I had to come along behind her, make sure I caught all of her erroneous corrections, and write STET all over the margins. Or the copy editor who made corrections, and then saved both my version and hers, resulting in some totally weird and redundant sentences. I did once have one who got very into the spirit of a character who liked to quote Shakespeare, and suggested some other great lines I didn’t know for the character to use. I’ve been saved from having everyone in the story eating too much steak, and rescued from an excess of redheads.

They absolutely do seem bent on fixing the grammar of ungrammatical characters, though, which sometimes makes me wonder how much attention they’re paying. (Though I must add that when I was teaching legal writing and research to law students, I had a highly educated student who wrote “could of.”) And I’ve had at least one who must have been firmly bound in New York City and without reference books, because she put a bunch of characteristic Maine names on the unknown word list. And Kaitlyn, I wish I’d had the editor who spotted the penguins instead of pelicans, because once, writing the book in the spring but setting it in the fall, I had a garden full of blooming rhododendrons, which my copy editor didn’t catch. Luckily, I decided to make one last pass through the book, and found my mistake, one that would have been mortifying for a garden writer’s daughter.

In an upcoming novel, I got very useful comments about having inadvertently changed a character’s name halfway through.

Lea Wait: I think the most embarrassing error I was saved from was having a murdered character somehow reappear 100 pages later and join a conversation …. thank goodness the copy editor caught that one! More frustrating have been comments on historical novels like, “this character is always wearing a blue dress. change.”  (I wrote back – “she’s poor. she only HAS one dress.”) Or “If you need an island, why not find a real one? Monhegan is a strange name anyway. Monhegans lived in New York.” (I referred her to an atlas, and bit my tongue about Mohegans.) One of my favorites was a comment on my book Finest Kind, where a crucial scene is set in a blizzard in December of 1838. I wrote of the drifts being so high after the storm that the younger students going to school were hidden. My (it seemed almost as young) editor wrote in the margin, “snow doesn’t get this high.” I told that to children at a school in Aroostook County once, when the school was surrounded by 96 inches of snow (without measuring the drifts). I brought down the house. My solution? I wrote carefully and politically, “In Maine in 1838 snow did get this deep.” And, of course, it still does, in many places, in many years. But arguing with an editor isn’t a great idea – and that wasn’t important to the manuscript!

Barb Ross: One of my hobby horses is the dumbing down of language and the loss of words and expressions. I hate the idea of taking a word out of a manuscript just because it may be unfamiliar to some people. I get that a word that’s too fussy or writerly or inappropriate to the character can pull you right out of the story. But just the right word used in context shouldn’t cause a blip. A few years ago in the manuscript for Judy Green’s Edgar-nominated short story “A Good, Safe Place” Judy’s elderly main character referred to “a dight of milk.”  My co-editor Kat Fast, who does all our production work and thus has a very busy summer, went a little nuts trying to find the word “dight” in any dictionary. There is a verb which means something else, but no noun. She and Judy were going back and forth and finally Kat suggested changing the word. I loved the word and was determined to save it. After Googling everything I could think of, I finally found “dite” a British expression meaning “a bit.” (Which was just the right definition in context.) Judy said that was probably it. Dite was a word she’d heard her great-grandmother speak regularly, but that Judy had never seen in writing. Thus, archaic expression saved to be printed a least one more time in 2011.

Kate: An important point, Barb. My grandmother used lots of words and expressions that most people aren’t familiar with today, and yet it’s being attuned to those particularities that gives our characters their voice.

And on the subject of “politely disagreeing” with editors, in my stand-alone suspense, Steal Away, written as Katharine Clark, I had a baby that was dying of a genetic disease, and I had written that the baby wasn’t sick, but it was dying. And my editor found that unbelievable. I actually had to go back to my genetics experts and ask them the question, and then send some scholarly stuff, before she would agree that I could leave it my way. But those dialogues have certainly been helpful. In that same book, the marvelous Leona Nevler made me work very hard on making a male character I didn’t like more fully dimensioned, so that even if the reader didn’t like him, either, they would at least understand his motivations. It was a very important lesson in being careful not to write cartoons or cardboard, but credible. (no doubt a good editor would ask me whether I intended alliteration here.)

 

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Twelve Simple June Pleasures

Posted on June 16, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

Lea Wait, admitting that, even though I spend a lot of time writing, or thinking about writing, other parts of life are important, too. The changing seasons, for example. In Maine, June marks the official change to summer. It’s a month when I especially savor  

1. Reading on the porch overlooking the river with a glass of wine or frosty lemonade with fresh-picked mint.

2. Watching the sun set over the river.

3. Seeing lupine blooming in fields and along roadsides.

4. Cheering on chipmunk races. (Two chipmunks fuel up at our bird feeder, then run up the ramp to our porch, race the length of the porch – often finding short-cuts under occupied chairs – and soar off the three or more foot drop at the other end. Why? I have no idea. Maybe because it’s June.)

5. Keeping the windows wide open at night, but sleeping under a blanket.

6. Grilling dinner. (Technically – watching my husband grill dinner.)

7. Smelling freshly mown grass and mud flats and salt water.

8. Seeing rainbows after thunder storms.

9. Luxuriating in long, long days of sunlight.

10.Waving at neighbors seldom seen during winter months who in June stop in for a word or libation on their way to their home or from their boat.                                                                                       

11. Hearing children playing, lobster boats on the river, tractors mowing lawns, baby birds squabbling at the feeder, and train whistles echoing across the river. Someone used to played his bagpipes in the late afternoon on an island nearby. No one plays now. I miss that.   

12. Tasting fresh greens and vegetables and cheeses from the farmer’s market.

 And, most of all, knowing summer is just beginning.

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A View From the Library-By John R. Clark

Posted on June 15, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

 

The past month has been a great time for juvenile and young adult fiction. Despite reading well into the wee hours of several nights, I’ve found all the literary input has been great for my own writing. Herewith are some new titles for your consideration.

Tell Me A Secret by Holly Cupala. After reading Holly’s second book which I reviewed last month, I simply had to read the first one to see if it was as good. The answer is yes, possibly even a bit better. Do you recall the old Chinese proverb, “He who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it?” This book is an interesting variation on that. It has been five years since Miranda Matheson’s older sister basically told their parents to go to hell and stormed out on a cold December night with her boyfriend Andre while her skirt burning in the family fireplace. Rand, as she now calls herself, never saw her sister alive again. She’s still pretty fuzzy on what happened that night and all she can get from her control freak mom and emotionally absent dad is that Andre killed Xanda that night and somehow got away with it.

At the beginning of the book, Rand is one lost, hurting unit and pregnant. The first part of the book weaves back and forth between events leading up to the conception and Rand’s attempts to figure out what she’s going to do and who, among her friends, she can still trust. She makes plenty of poor choices, most fueled by her blind quest to figure out exactly where she really does fit in. In the process, she tosses aside her long time friend Essence in part because she thinks she spread word about the pregnancy and instead becomes friends with Delaney who has her own set of secrets. As part of her need to connect and find people to share her feelings with after pretty much all her friends and Kamran, the baby’s father, have shunned her, Rand creates a false persona in an online internet chat room for first-time moms, telling the other participants that she is a happily-married college student. One of the women she connects with suffers a second miscarriage and leaves the group. That same person comes to play a big part later on in Rand’s journey back to wholeness. Factor in family secrets, some real soul-searching after Rand realizes just how shabbily she’s come to treat others, a huge crisis during the pregnancy and finally the truth not only about Xanda’s death, but a secret her mother kept from both daughters and you have what could have deteriorated into an unholy plot mess. Instead, it becomes a can’t-put-down page turner that left me amazed at the author’s ability to get inside her characters’ heads. I sure hope she continues to write in the young adult genre as she’s pretty darn good at it.

 

Librarians love to share. At the Libraries United Conference on the UMO campus last month, we had a horse trading session in the parking lot, using the bed of my Chevy S-10. We had arranged it via email and were primarily planning on swapping DVDs, but people brought audio books and print items as well. Several librarians, thinking the idea was a hoot, simply stopped by to drop off stuff that they wanted to find new homes.

One of the books offered by a school librarian looked really intriguing, so I brought it home with the intention of adding it to the collection. I started reading it and couldn’t put it down. Torn to Pieces by Margot McDonnell, is one of those YA books that blends plot twist after plot twist in a most skilled way. As each one reaches a solution, the answer builds your anticipation as well as the suspense. 17 year old Anne is used to her mother’s quirky and unpredictable ways. Mom is often absent, supposedly off on an assignment, interviewing someone famous so she can ghost write their biography. Anne, her mom and her grandparents who live down the street, have also moved numerous times, sometimes with almost no notice. This town, small as it might be, is more like home than any place Anne has ever known. She’s got a close friend, she’s in the band and some of the boys are finally starting to notice her. The hot new guy in school seems extremely interested in her and she’s trying to figure out the quiet, loner boy, Evan who watches her, but never speaks.

Then everything starts to change. Mom should have been home weeks ago, the hot guy starts acting funny, strange things begin happening while Anne is alone, Evan starts talking to her. Before long, Anne starts finding clues in a long letter her mom left for her to read. I really liked the way one page from the letter is read by Anne after each chapter to help explain what’s happening. Is her mother the person who she is called to identify in the morgue? Who is the blonde her friend Bianca keeps seeing the hot guy meeting at the mall? What isn’t Evan telling her more about his abusive dad? What is the secret her grandparents are hiding from her? Why is the big estate her mom left her suddenly frozen and by whom? Who were the two guys who assaulted her when she caught them ransacking her house and what, exactly were they looking for?

By the end of the book, the author has done one heck of a nice job answering these and a bunch more questions, leaving the reader wrung out, but oh, so satisfied.

The Aviary by Kathleen O’Dell was a serendipity. My wife, Beth and I review a lot of YA books for a program offered by the Central Maine Library District through the Maine State Library. We pay a minimal amount, review the book, send the review to the Maine State Library and add the book to the Hartland Public Library. Beth made the comment that this one was particularly good, so I read it before adding it to our collection. She was absolutely correct.

This historical mystery, set on the seacoast, begins with young Clara wondering about many things. Why does her mother keep her isolated and unable to attend school? What happened to her father and why won’t her mother even tell her his name? Why is the aging owner of the decaying mansion they live in so sad all the time? What really happened to her six children and why are there only five childrens’ names in the mausoleum where Mrs. Glendoveer’s husband is buried? What’s the story behind the five screeching birds in the ornate outdoor aviary?

It doesn’t take Clara long to start finding answers; some on her own and others once she makes friends with Daphne, a new girl in town who spots her at an upstairs window. O’Dell uses some very unusual plot devices to pull the reader into the varied strands of mystery that include a mass kidnapping, hypnotism, the truth about Clara’s father and some dandy ghosts. This is aimed at the juvenile market, but adults will enjoy it as well.

 

I’m exercising librarian’s privilege on three non-mystery YA books because we’re at the time of year when kids have more recreational reading time and it’s always good to get word out there about immersive and engrossing books. First up is Dreamless the sequel to Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini. I absolutely loved the first book and pre-ordered this one as soon as it was announced. Both books are modern re-tellings of the Helen of Troy story. Set on Nantucket Island, this one begins with Helen Hamilton descending to the underworld night after night in a frantic effort to find and eliminate the furies before they destroy the Scions, powerful super mortals who threaten the gods return from exile. Helen is terribly torn by her attraction to Lucas who is her cousin. She didn’t know this when she first fell for him, but giving in to their mutual passion would create a huge war among the four scion families , particularly if children were born.

 

The bulk of the story involves Helen trying to get along with the rest of Luke’s family, dealing with the deadly effects of ongoing sleep deprivation because of her nightly descent into the underworld and the unexpected complication created when she meets Orion, another black sheep of the scions who has been on his own since age ten. How the author handles the romantic tension, all the evil players intent upon doing in the main characters and her blending of mythology into the plot elements make for one terrific read. If you missed book one, get both and plan to be out of circulation for several very pleasurable days.

 

 

Shadow and Bone, a first novel by Leigh Bradugo reminds me of Tamora Pierce at the top of her writing game. The story is influenced by Russian folklore, but set in the fantasy world of Ravka where a forbidding rift of darkness known as the Fold was created by a powerful wizard-like creature known as the Darkling hundreds of years ago. The main characters, Alina and Mal who were orphaned during the endless war that was sparked by the Fold, were taken in by one of the more compassionate nobility. When the story begins, they are in the military and approaching the Fold to cross in sand-skimming boars powered by wind mages. Alina is an apprentice map maker while Mal is a skilled tracker. When they are attacked by Volcras, fierce bird-like creatures spawned by the Fold, Mal is badly wounded and when Alina sees this, she hurls herself over him to protect his life. As she does, a sudden blinding light explodes outward, driving off all the attackers.

When informed of this, the current Darkling a supposedly good guy descendent of the one who created the Fold, has her hustled to the king’s palace because he believes she is the long sought Sun Summoner. Once Alina reaches the palace, she is involved in intense training to make her newly discovered power greater and more focused in order that she can burn away the Fold. Much of the story involves her growing realization that her childhood friendship with Mal was more important than she ever realized, particularly as she is pulled into the society of the king’s court and has to compare the clothing, the food and the pettiness of most of the nobility to her simple life before the advent of her powers. The old woman who trains her mercilessly keeps hinting at something that only becomes clear when it is almost too late. In the process Alana realizes that the Darkling isn’t so nice after all and escapes from the palace, intent upon finding the magical stag that is her only hope. How the tricky situation at the end of the book is solved makes for a great AHA moment. This is the first in a proposed trilogy, but doesn’t leave you nearly as hungry at the end as many such series books do.

 

 

Last up is a vampire story with some fresh twists. The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda, again a first novel and part of a proposed series, centers around Gene. He’s hiding in plain sight, a heper (human) in a society overwhelmingly dominated by vampires. His mother and sister were caught and eaten a long time ago, while his dad recently disappeared, Gene goes to school and as long as his fake teeth stay in place, he eats the bloody half-raw food served in the cafeteria, makes sure he controls body odor and hair while avoiding any situation where he might sweat, he’s OK. Shortly after the book begins, the president announces a heper hunt to be done by lottery and televised for all to enjoy. Everyone gets a set of numbers and ten winners will go to the Heper Institute to be trained for the hunt. As luck would have it, Gene and another student at his school, Ashley June are selected.

The tension builds as Gene is forced to be in close proximity to the other nine contestants minus deodorant, water or a razor. The way the author ramps up the tension during training, tossing in some odd romantic interaction between Gene and Ashley and then a friendship with one of the female hepers who is going to be the prey, make you hate to put this one down. There are a few things that don’t seem to make sense early on in the book, but turn out to be great hints/red herrings later on. How Gene manages to find a solution to his dilemma and the wild chase at the end of the book made me wish the next one in the series was at hand now and not a year from now. It will remind some readers of the Hunger Games series, but is a fresh twist and stands alone quite nicely.

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