Fifty Shades of Distraction

Posted on May 23, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

Kate Flora here, just back from eight days in London and Amsterdam, and scrambling to catch up, get the laundry done, and sink back into a novel that needs major tweaking before it can go to the agent who has expressed interest. There’s nothing like pressure to keep me in the chair.

But on vacation, I took the time to do some reading that was not work-related, or so I thought. I started with Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife, because it had been suggested by Donald Maass in the all-day seminar on “Selling the breakout novel” that Lea Wait, Vicki Doudera and I recently attended. Maass wanted us to focus on how, despite being nothing but an internal narration in the mind of the man waiting on the station platform for the arrival of the wife he’s advertised for, it is, nonetheless, riveting. Riveting, indeed. It’s definitely one of those books that you keep reading to see what will happen. Yet it also ought to come with a small warning: this book is seriously laden with sex, as well as other undercurrents of violence and madness. So much sex, indeed, that I started skipping those long meditations on the sordid prior lives of the central characters to get on and see if they would work things out.

That put me in mind, of course, of the essay I always use to end each class I teach, a wonderful list of advice for writers from Elmore Leonard, from the New York Times WRITERS ON WRITING, called Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle. One of Leonard’s ten pieces of advice: Leave out the parts people skip. Of course, other readers may not skip all these parts. But I bring this up because, as I was reading Goolrick’s book, I kept finding myself drifting off to a book I am writing, and wondering: Could I use this idea? This slant on story-telling. Then I wanted to put his book down and go finish my own. There is plenty of sex in my own book, parts that I hope my readers won’t skip. But I was in a London hotel room; my computer, and my work-in-progress were at home on my desk.

I finished A Reliable Wife, and moved on to the “improving” book I’d brought along, improving, like the Donald Maass seminar, from a professional standpoint, James W. Hall’s new book about writing a bestseller, Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century’s Biggest Bestsellers. (You will think that I am trying to write a bestseller, but this is not the case. I was merely curious, after listening to Mr. Maass, about what Hall might have to say.) Hall’s twelve examples are: Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Peyton Place, Jaws, Valley of the Dolls, The Exorcist, The Godfather, The Hunt for Red October, The Dead Zone, The Firm, The Bridges of Madison County, and The DaVinci Code.

Of course, it happened again. I would read his conclusions about what made these books bestsellers: fast pacing, emotionally charged, filled with familiar character types, written with little backstory or introspection, and I’d wander off into an analysis of what I want to write. Books with introspection, books with characters informed by their backstories. Then I’d put Hall’s book down and began to think about where I want to go in the new book. Then I’d pick it up again, and be reminded that I want to reread To Kill a Mocking Bird, and that I also wanted to read The Dead Zone. I gave up on Stephen King’s books at around his fifth, but I have deep admiration for the man, for his discipline and persistence. I agree with so much in his book about writing, and I’ve always felt a bond with another poor Maine kid who grew up with a passionate desire to write.

Somewhere in Amsterdam, my concentration shot by the terror of going out among the cyclists (they’re mad, insane, follow no rules, ignore one-way streets and all traffic signals, and can come at your from any direction), I put the book down and picked up the one I’d been saving for last, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Good Squad. There’s nothing that I love better than a book I can’t put down, so even though I used to hate metafiction, I was happy to stay with this book to see if I could follow the threads, and then to see where they would lead me in the end. I believe it was in the penultimate chapter, the one that isn’t writing so much as lists and drawings, that almost got taken away again. But this time, I stayed to finish, and just held onto the thought.

It was a thought about something I’ve known for a while, but sometimes tend to forget, such is my Luddite nature: That what makes writing special, never boring, endlessly fascinating and so worth doing, is what happens when you take chances on doing something scary and different. She got a Pulitzer prize. I got confirmation that the chances I want to take in my new book may well be the right chances to take.

There’s nothing like a little reading on vacation to send me back to my chair, energized, curious, bolder, inspired, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit competitive. I don’t know about that last. I just know that today was a great day in the writer’s chair, and I owe it all to a wee vacation, and a lot of input from other fine writers.

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Upstairs Vacancy

Posted on May 22, 2012 by mcwarchives

In my head, I mean, and on that note a distracted hello again from Sarah Graves, who is thinking today about…

Well, that’s the trouble. Too often lately my personal upstairs contains only cobwebs. I write a few words, then find myself staring vacantly. It is, when you are finishing up rewrites while scheduling the next book’s efficient (one hopes) production, what’s known in the business as Not Good. ™

A walk might help, in winter. Brisk exercise, bracing temperatures…but not now, when everything in Eastport conspires to bring on spring fever. The leaves are a heartbreakingly tender shade of green, the lilacs like tight purple fists full of the promise of any-day-now perfume. Even the bay, so icily dark-blue until recently, has paled to watery indigo, the color of your favorite old jeans.

So: no walk. And no reading, either: all I can manage are the free samples I download onto my e-reader. That’s why I’m postponing Hilary Mantel’s long-awaited Bring Up the Bodies and Robert Caro’s illuminating new volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography, Passage to Power. I have high hopes for Drew Magary’s The Postmortal, though, since a zombie novel that doesn’t make me feel like I’m being poked in the ear with a sharp stick is a treat not to be missed.

Music helps: old Steely Dan tunes, especially. Great songs, unstinting perfectionism in the arrangements and production, and I happen to know that Donald Fagen turned a voice he was scared to sing with into a cultural — well, can a sound be an icon? Which (aside from the guy just naturally cheering me up more than somewhat) gives me the courage to bust out there with my own writing voice, too, scraggly and atonal as it may be. There there’s the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes, which I sang as a teen and are still so soaringly, unashamedly romantic that they make my old sourpuss heart lift every time I hear them.

And movies help. Because movies, especially the thrilling kind, are constructed; they have their plot bones so close to the surface you can practically outline the films while you’re watching them. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a perfect example of this; for instance, remember at the beginning when Indy escapes in the little two seater plane, and the pilot’s pet snake is in it? “I hate snakes,” Indy says, so that later when he peers down into the tomb where Marion is trapped and sees…well, I’ll let you remind yourself by watching again. But it gets me back in the groove, is what I’m saying, to see the plot-rifle placed firmly on the mantelpiece and then later hear it shot off so satisfyingly.

Right now I’m watching another kind of plot construction: via collage, in Catch-22. No straight shot of a plot arc, here, and yet it all hangs together; more than one way to skin a story, yes? And that’s another hope-giving thing, that such books can be written and such films can be made of them and that I live in a world where people do.

So: brain blahs, followed by…what? Is that inspiration I hear, clomp-clomping up the stairs inside my head? Could be, and if it is, instead of just sampling I’ll be reading a new book, tonight.

And after that, who knows? Tomorrow I might — yet again — sit down and actually write one.

 

 

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To Collinsport, With Love

Posted on May 21, 2012 by mcwarchives

Vicki Doudera here.

Last weekend, I gave my mother what some might consider a strange mother’s day gift: a trip to the Flagship Cinema in Thomaston to see the newly released movie Dark Shadows.

It’s not that Mom is a huge Johnny Depp fan (although what woman doesn’t find him sexy?) or that she especially enjoys campy horror movies, but Dark Shadows – I’m talking of course about the original show – was a big part of our early years together, and I thought commemorating that time could be fun.

Although I was only five when the series started, I was no stranger to scary TV programs. Mom and I watched “The Outer Limits,” “Twilight Zone,” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” and I loved them all. She’d let me stay up past my bedtime (if I even had a bedtime in those days) to watch them and keep her company, and because my father was in art school and frequently busy, it was often just the two of us.

Dark Shadows didn’t require my staying up late because it came on right after school. I remember racing home from kindergarten, my sneakers pounding the pavement so I wouldn’t miss one morbid moment. Mom and I were terrified by the creepy Collins family – the vampires, werewolves, and witches – and mesmerized by the foreboding castle with its terrifyingly dark rooms, eerie secret passages, and super sinister basement where Barnabas Collins stayed out of the sun. Who knew that years later we would both live in Maine, site of the fictional Collinsport? Or that I would still remember the haunting music of Quentin’s Theme?

The original series ran from 1966 to 1971, and we watched it fairly faithfully for most of those years. Mom recalls a visit from my Wisconsin grandmother and her reaction to the program.  “How can you let Vicki see that?” she chastised Mom. The show rattled Grandma Rose, so much so that she vowed never to watch it again. And yet, the next day she was perched on the tweed easy chair, ready to watch Dark Shadows. Like us, she was hooked.

My brother’s birth, shortly after the show debuted, didn’t alter our ritual of watching afternoon horror. Thinking back, I suppose it was somewhat unusual, even in the lax parenting days of the 1960’s.  I was, after all, a youngster and those were my formative years. And yet, it wasn’t like my mother just parked me in front of the TV — she was sitting there with me. We were enjoying an activity together, just like our hours of cookie baking or trips to the beach. Did Mom worry whether watching vampires suck blood from innocent young women would give me bad dreams? I don’t think so.  It was all pretend, after all, just like the fairy tales she read to me each night. Unlike some modern parents who fret over such things, Mom’s attitude was simple: scary was fun.

And so I grew up to be a girl who read Daphne du Maurier’s novels and watched Bela Lugosi’s films, played “Clue” and Hide & Seek. Little wonder that I love mystery and suspense, that I write crime fiction and still enjoy a good scare.

It all started back then, and taking my mom to the movie was one way to say “Thanks.”

P.S. The film itself is mediocre, filmed in Devon instead of Maine. Better to rent some of the original episodes.

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An Interview with Kieran Shields

Posted on May 20, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

Kieran Shields

Kieran, like a couple of us here at MCW, you’re a lawyer in your day job, so can you tell us what drew you to mystery writing? Is it a life-long dream?

I’m happy to say I’ve been writing as my day job for a couple of years now and  haven’t practiced law in about a decade. In hindsight, writing was something of a life long dream, it just took me a long time to realize it. I decided to write an historical mystery because that’s one of my favorite types of books to read. But the truth is that mystery writing wasn’t my original goal.

I first thought of writing a novel when I was in college after coming across some interesting events from colonial Maine history. I was convinced there was a long neglected story there that deserved to be told.  The idea remained in the hypothetical stages for years as I went on to law school and a career.  Since my day job didn’t provide much of a creative outlet, I returned to those historical subjects.  I still didn’t want to be a “writer,” I just wanted to write that one specific story. Only after I spent years working on that first story, which is still gathering digital dust on my hard drive, did I realize that the act of writing had gotten into my veins and I felt compelled to keep going.

The Truth of All Things is your debut novel. Can you tell us a little bit about the book?

The Truth of All Things is an historical mystery set in Portland Maine in the summer of 1892.  A bizarre murder involving a mutilated victim who’s laid out in a pentagram and pinned to the ground with a pitchfork leaves Deputy Archie Lean baffled. He’s forced to seek help from a Perceval Grey, a brilliant, half Abenaki Indian criminalist and historian Helen Prescott. As the murders continue, the detectives realize the killer is being driven by a fascination with the occult and in particular a pattern hidden in the disturbing events of the Salem Witch trial two hundred years earlier.

You have two very distinct and different investigators in the book. Can you tell us about discovering their characters, and how you went about shaping them in the story? Do their names, Grey and Lean, have special significance?

The characters of Perceval Grey and Archie Lean and how they inhabit the story in relation to each other was an evolving process.  At the outset I envisioned the story coming almost entirely from Lean’s point of view. As the book progressed, Grey forced his way forward to the point where I actually contemplated whether Lean was even necessary to the story. Of course he was necessary, as was Helen Prescott who also insisted on injecting herself further into the book. In the end, I think they all settled into place nicely and it’s the interactions among them that I enjoyed writing the most.

Grey’s name has some obvious connotations in terms of his attitudes and ancestry.  He often views things in stark black-and-white terms but he also has a cloudy, ambiguous perspective on society’s rules and shortcomings.  In addition, he’s of mixed parentage.  His mother came from a blood-blood family while his father was an Abenaki Indian.   As mentioned in the book, early puritan colonists had a severe distrust of Native Americans, whom they sometimes described as “black.” Testimony from the Salem witch trials includes descriptions of the devil or his servant as “the black man” and resembling a Native American.  And of course Perceval is a nod toward the Arthurian legends of the knight seeking the mystery of the grail, failing or succeeding in his quest based on whether he asks the right questions.  It seemed a perfect fit for this detective.

Lean was actually a family name on my wife’s side, although I misspelled it.   And I added Archie for a first name because it struck me as having an old-fashioned and trustworthy ring to it.   Only after writing the book did it strike me that both ‘arch’ and ‘lean’ can have meanings related to supporting a structure or a person. So maybe I’m subconsciously more clever than I thought.

Your story is a complicated plot set in one historical period (Portland, Maine in the 1890’s), which requires your characters to research the time of the Salem Witch Trials. This must have involved a great deal of research. Can you tell us why you chose these periods, and how complicated the research involved was?

I wanted to write a mystery with dark, occult overtones.  Having already done research on colonial Maine for an earlier project, I’d learned of some little known links between Maine and the Salem trials.  I liked the trials as an historical back story  because most people have some familiarity, or at least spooky associations, with Salem.  But not many readers would have an in-depth knowledge of all the weird details and elements of those tragic events.  I chose 1892 since my original plot outline was tied to the anniversary of the 1692 witch trials, so I looked at the bicentennial year. That period had a lot of appeal in terms of the gothic feel of the age, being a period when gruesome murders  (e.g., Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, and H.H. Holmes at the Chicago World’s Fair) were coming into the public consciousness, the lack of forensic science,  and also the strong interest in spiritualism and the occult that existed in the second half of the 19th century.

The amount of research required was pretty intense. I had to train myself to put research questions aside, for the moment, while I was writing. Otherwise I found it hard to get through even a couple of pages without getting sidetracked onto issues about whether a certain phrase was used in 1892, how did gas lighting work,  what brands of cigarettes did people smoke, or how long did it take to travel somewhere by train.

You also have a kind of DaVinci Code religious theme running through the book, with forbidden books and secret codes. Another complex research task which our readers would love to hear about.

I’d say the inspiration for the black book in the novel owes itself to a few cryptic references in the real Salem witch trial transcripts along with the works of H.P. Lovecraft much more than Dan Brown. Although I did research the magical or hermetic societies of the 19th century and some of the more famous personalities,such as Aleister Crowley, this aspect of the book was more imagination than hard research. I created the framework of the riddle in the black book that Grey and Lean are trying to decipher with a few specific  historical events in mind and then it really didn’t take much research to find other events that would fit into that framework and make the puzzle all fit together.

And on yet another research front, you are teaching your readers a lot about Portland in that period—it’s culture, it’s geography, and the ways in which Portland, and the whole country, is still recovering from the effects of the Civil War. Why Portland? Why this historical time period, and can you give us a feel for what this research task was like?

I set the novel in Portland, basically because it’s my hometown and I love the feel and atmosphere of the place.  Its geography, a hilly sloping peninsula, crisscrossed by a maze of often crooked streets (still lined with paving stones in some spots) and its 19th century architecture allow for a wonderful gothic ambience. I touched on the selection and research of the 1890’s time period above. I think the post Civil War era was important as well.  Maine sent more soldiers, per capita, than any other state in the Union. Everyone in Portland would have been touched by the losses of the war.  So sounding those echoes felt right in the book.  It fit into one of the underlying themes of the story, which is the difficulty in ever fully escaping the past.  Whether it’s the scars of the Civil War, or the almost forgotten links between Portland and tragedy of the Salem witch trials, or the personal traumas of a character’s own history, the past plays a hand in forging present identity.  Grey and Lean have to come to grips with that and uncover those lingering connections to reveal the mystery in The Truth of All Things.

You leave us at the end of the book with some characters: Lean, Grey, and Helen, who have become important to us as readers. Are we going to see them in a future book?

Yes, they will be back for another rousing and puzzling adventure in A Study in Revenge, which is due out from Crown Publishing in January, 2013.

What is your next book, and when will it burst upon the Maine reading scene?

“Burst” may be a rather generous term.  Apart from the above mentioned sequel to The Truth of All Things, I am working on another book. Although it’s historically based with a suspicious death or two in it, it’s not a mystery. It seems to take place everywhere in the world except for Maine. I’ll leave the details sketchy for the moment since it’s actually a collaboration and still in the early stages. Hopefully there’ll be more to say about it in a month or two.

Readers of our blog are particularly interested in learning about some of our Maine favorites. So, do you have any special places and special restaurants, you could share with our readers?

There are so many great places to visit or dine in Portland that I feel guilty singling out just a couple, but I do have a particular fondness for the Front Room up on Munjoy Hill.  Also, Bintliff’s does an amazing brunch.

It doesn’t seem like you have any free time, but when you’re not writing or practicing law, what else are you involved in?

Luckily for me, writing is my full time job. However, I do have two school age kids that I get on and off the bus each day and the time in between those events is often fleeting.   Living in Maine, I try to take advantage of outdoor activities with family and friends. In general, given that time is limited, I don’t seek out many other structured extracurricular activities.  Time spent doing other things is time not spent writing.

What is one question, about you as a writer, or about your work, that we haven’t asked, and you’d like to answer?

Truthfully, I can’t think of any aspect of my experience of writing that I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me about.   I’m happy to answer questions  and am glad others might find the subject of me and my writing interesting, but I’m not sure I agree with them. After all, there’s a reason I’ve chosen to write fiction instead of a memoir.

Kieran Shields grew up in Portland, Maine. He graduated from Dartmouth College and the University of Maine School of Law.  He lives on the coast of Maine with his wife and two children.  The Truth of All Things is his first novel.

 

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Re-energized at The Stable Gallery

Posted on May 19, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

 

Stable Gallery, Damariscotta, Maine

Lea Wait here. I’ve just gotten home from one of the major Signs of Summer in my family: the first official opening at the Stable Gallery in Damariscotta, where my husband, Bob Thomas, shows his work.

A household containing both a writer and an artist (“two ways to starve,”) one of my friends once drily put it, does have its challenges. But it’s also a lot of fun. We both work at home. Bob’s studio is downstairs, in our ell; my study is upstairs. Many days we only see each other for meals and sleeping, or when one of us needs a little encouragement or emotional support. I give him feedback on his paintings (“Really? Another orange one?”) and he’s my first reader. (“Don’t you think that character should slug somebody in Chapter 5?”) We share champagne when a manuscript or painting sells. Bob comes to as many of my talks and signings as he can. I go to his openings. We even have buttons to show our pride in each other’s work.

In the summer Bob spends a lot of time at the Stable Gallery and the Gallery becomes one of the centers of our life. It’s a special place. Officially a co-op gallery, it’s run by ten artists, of whom Bob is one. But it doesn’t just show their work, as some co-op galleries do. Each spring it also juries in the work of about 30 other artists and high-end craftspeople, making it a destination for customers looking for Maine-made furniture, painted silk scarves,

Altered Grounds, one of Bob's paintings

rugs, jewelry, pottery, wooden wares, or stone decorations, as well as paintings and sculptures. Located in a real Victorian stable on Water Street in Damariscotta, the inventory is changed out once a month, and each changeover is celebrated by a Friday night opening with home-made food, libations, and live music. 

Tonight was the first opening:  the theme was “Re-energize.” Kevin James (who’s also one of the artists who shows there – Maine people are versatile!) and Wally Warren provided the music (rhythm, guitar, dulcimer and vocals,) and Bob and my contribution to the food table was my salmon mousse.

The artists have been at the gallery for the past couple of weeks, chasing out winter spider webs,

Sculpture outside the Stable Gallery

painting stands for the new season, inventorying work from the artists and craftspeople as it came in, and readying the gallery for the summer. One of the artists (thank you, Mary!) takes care of the gardens around the Gallery, which become showcases for sculptures. Tonight it all came together. The weather cooperated, more than 150 friends and customers, old and new, appeared and bought paintings, jewelry, and home decorations and promised to come again and bring their friends, and suddenly it really felt like summer.

If you get to Damariscotta this summer, stop in. The Gallery’s open from 10-5 seven days a week until mid-October. Openings are Friday nights, June 15, July 13, August 17, and September 14. And they’re wicked fun.

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What Are You Working On?

Posted on May 18, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

Hey, all. Gerry Boyle here. Taking a break from work on my next novel. It’s called 50 Shades of Green and it’s set in Ireland. It’s about this young guy, a graduate student, who goes to interview this beautiful  and seductive heiress on her estate in County Wicklow. Well, she’s a little older and very beautiful and in a matter of hours he falls under her spell… (It’s pretty racy but I’m told that racy really sells).

Just kidding. I guess that idea (or a variation of it) is taken. What I’m really working on is–well, I can’t tell you.

Have you noticed that most novelists (mystery and otherwise) are very reluctant to talk about works in progress? This seems to be more true of fiction writers than nonfiction. I know historians who are more than glad to tell you what their next book is about, even share chapters long before the book is finished. Not so novelists. I’m willing to bet that, like me, the esteemed writers on this blog would have to be coerced, bribed, and threatened with bodily harm before they would outline the plot of the book they’re working on.

How come?

Well, maybe they’ll tell you, at least that much. And if there are any armchair psychologists out there in blog reader land, maybe you can offer your own theories. I can tell you that I hate having to pitch a book, either in writing or in person. I recall being asked by my agent and then-editor, at a fancy restaurant in Manhattan, what I was planning for the next Jack McMorrow novel. I had a good idea, I thought, but I worried that in the restaurant, with the linen tablecloths and clatter and chatter, it would sound lame. They listened as I summarized the plot, me thinking the whole time that I wasn’t doing the idea justice at all. I can write the book; I just hate to boil it down to a few spoken sentences. In my mind, you can’t.

So it’s with some trepidation that I first give voice to an idea for a new book. My first sounding board is almost always my wife Mary. We sit at the dining room table (after clearing the dishes and small talk) and I take a deep breath and then spit it out. Jack McMorrow is doing a story on … and then he meets this guy … and Roxanne is worried because …

While I’m talking I’m studying her expression for any reaction. I ponder her first comment, the follow-up question. I ask myself, is this as good an idea as it seemed when it was swirling around in my head? When I was sketching in the solitude of my study?

Usually it all turns out fine and after that conversation I launch myself into actually writing the book. But  in the writing process this is the step—the first utterance about a book—that I like least. RIght up there with summing up a book plot at a reading or book talk. Or reading my own jacket copy. What do my MCW colleagues think about that? Does anyone actually like their jacket copy?

I remember reading that Robert B. Parker, when asked what one of his books was about, would answer in a word or two or three. “It’s about love.” Or “It’s about honor.” And that was it. No walking people through the plot. The book would speak for itself. If you were interested, you’d read it.

So what am I working on? I have three projects underway, actually. One Brandon Blake. One Jack McMorrow. One book that is a collaboration (my first) with a fun and interesting writer I know. I’m excited about all three and I hope readers will be, too.

One of these days I’ll have to tell you more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Librarian’s Viewpoint

Posted on May 15, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

 I was particularly pleased to see that I handicapped the YA and juvenile Edgar awards pretty well. In fact, I picked both winners which was quite satisfying.

This month, I’m back with the third installment of Travis Thrasher’s Solitary series. I discovered them when I was offered a chance to review the first installment, Solitary, for the soon to vanish Canadian review site TCM-CA.com. I had never heard of the author, but was so impressed after reading the first book, I bought the rest of his adult books for the library. Travis is billed as a Christian writer, something that turns off a lot of potential readers. That, quite frankly is their loss. His writing has a grit and edginess that combines with spiritual beauty and a sense of hope/redemption. Everything I’ve read thus far has had an edge that makes it anything but sappy. Solitary hit the ground running and this third installment certainly holds the reader’s attention extremely well. I watched a podcast interview where Travis went into great detail about how the series was laid out, how his having attended four different high schools had influenced the plot and how his choices of music as a child of the ’80s continues to influence his writing
Temptation is a rocket of a book. I devoured it in about four hours, ignoring a beautiful sunny Sunday and flower gardens begging for my attention. The time wasn’t wasted. For reference purposes, I had gone to see the Hunger Games the night before and couldn’t help comparing the action in that film to the movie scrolling through my mind while I was reading this. Don’t bother reading it unless you have read Solitary and Gravestone because nothing, well almost nothing, will make sense. In Solitary, Chris Buckley fell in love with Jocelyn, beautiful, but wounded in ways she couldn’t or wouldn’t share with him. She was ritually murdered by a group of hooded men on New Year’s Eve at the end of the book, leaving Chris both angry and devastated.
Gravestone found Chris trying to figure out why she was murdered and a hell of a lot more: What was driving his mom to drink? What made the strange noises he heard beneath the cabin? Who could he trust? Why did every girl he cared about disappear? Why couldn’t others in Solitary see the overarching evil enveloping the town? Was the mysterious guy claiming to be his cousin for real? By the end of the second book, Chris still had loads of questions and very few answers. One thing was for certain, every time he started to reach out and trust someone, they were hurt or they betrayed him. Kelsey, the only normal girl Chris has met, scares him for that exact reason, forcing him to back away and leave her hurt and confused.

 Temptation begins with a quick peek from near the end of the book that sets the reader up nicely to wonder what in heck happened to get Chris to this point and place, but it’s a deceptive vignette as readers will discover. Chris is trying to stop feeling and just get by. He’s going to the first of two summer school sessions in order to catch up and be able to graduate. There are references to the Breakfast Club that will resonate with folks who grew up in that era. The other kids in this session are pretty odd and interesting; an Asian girl with big glasses who says little, a skinhead, a doper and a preppie among others. Then Lily walks in and Chris is smitten all over again. Blonde, sexy, and possibly attracted to him, she’s the perfect antidote to all the demons rumbling through his soul. Still, Chris can’t forget what happened to Jocelyn and then Poe. If he falls for another girl, will the evil forces lurking in the shadows destroy his latest chance for happiness? As the dance of romance progresses, Pastor Marsh starts coming around, teasing Chris with tidbits of information that start to clarify some of the odd happenings, but one mystery that refuses to be solved is what happened to Iris and her inn that burned near the end of Gravestone. No matter how often or how hard Chris searches, he can’t find the road leading to it.
By the end of Temptation, Chris has discovered why Pastor Marsh didn’t die when he stabbed him, he’s rekindled a relationship with the only truly good girl he’s met, he’s started to discover the parts of his family history that created all the sinister stuff smothering Solitary, NC., his mom and dad have started communicating again, Lily has confessed to things Chris certainly doesn’t want to hear and he has reached a huge turning point in his quandary about faith and evil. To say more about the plot would spoil some of the suspense and action, of which there is plenty of both. All 17 reviews on Amazon give this one 5 stars for very good reasons. It’s one scary ride and sets up what should be a fantastic toe-curling final installment due in January 2013.

Holly Cupala’s Don’t Breathe A Word is a story about suffocation and family preconceptions. Joy has suffered from severe asthma since early childhood. In fact, she almost died at one point. Her family has fallen into the mindset of her being the perpetual family invalid, with them hovering on the sidelines waiting for her next bad attack. When her older brother, the designated caretaker goes away to college, the family is more than happy to let suave, rich Asher, son of Joy’s dad’s employer, take over as both her boyfriend and caretaker. Unfortunately, everyone misses the growing signs of a controlling and very abusive relationship. When Asher forces Joy to do something that shocks and horrifies her, she decides to take a most desperate action, she fakes her own kidnapping and runs away to find a street kid she once saw in Seattle. Asher was verbally berating her at the time and the boy conveyed a cryptic message as he watched the event; “If you ever need me, I’ll protect you.” Joy hasn’t forgotten and plans her disappearance as carefully as someone with no street smarts can.
Her first few nights on the streets of Seattle are really scary and she loses much of her belongings and money when an older pedophile tries to attack her. When she does find Creed, the boy she’s looking for, he takes her in, introducing her to May and Santos, two other runaway teens who share the moldy, leaky and abandoned house that they call home. Joy learns many things the hard way: how awful things can be before kids do take to living on the street, what prior abuse can do to kids’ behavior in order to survive, how totally scary life with no safety net becomes when you have run out of inhalers, learning to dumpster dive for food and break into a YMCA in order to take a shower. The major mystery is why Creed and the others ran away from home and Joy has a very hard time getting that information while learning her street smarts. There are some really gritty scenes, bordering on awful in this book, but they make the reality of street life for kids as authentic as any book I’ve read. The ending will make you feel better and have a bit of hope that things will turn out as well as possible for Joy, Creed, May and Santos. The author has another book called Tell Me a secret which I have not read yet that I suspect is equally as good and would resonate with teen girls experiencing precarious living situations. That one is called Tell Me A Secret.

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How to Judge a Book Cover

Posted on May 14, 2012 by mcwarchives

David Rotstein, the art director for Minotaur Books, recently launched a Web site devoted to a discussion of the fine art of designing book covers. It’s a pretty interesting peek behind the curtains at a process that is widely misunderstood by writers and readers alike.

People often ask me how much input I have into the covers of my books. The answer is “not much.” I can weigh in on the photograph or illustration the designer would like to use, and I can suggest that the type be bigger or smaller. But I don’t have a veto in my contract. And that arrangement is fine by me. If I wanted that level of control over every aspect of the book, I could always self-publish. But I prefer to avail myself of the expertise of a publishing house with thousands of titles in its catalogues. Authors don’t always like to hear it, but publishers are the one spending tens of thousands of dollars to design, print, and market our novels (after having already paid healthy advances, we should all hope). My name may be on the book, in other words, but their money is on the line.

Still, it’s natural that writers grouse when they feel a design fails to fully capture their stories. The essence of good marketing is delivering on a promise. That’s why most of us do judge books by their covers—in the expectation that what’s outside somehow represents what’s inside.

Here, for instance, is the design for the hardcover version of The Poacher’s Son. Minotaur wanted to market the book as a work of “literary suspense.” When they used this term, they had two audiences in mind: fans of traditional mysteries, of course, but also readers who wouldn’t normally pick up a whodunit, but would relish the father-son relationship at the book’s center. Most of the action takes place in the vanishing Maine North Woods, and so there was also a desire to capture the majesty of the setting.

When the time came for the trade paperback, Minotaur decided to switch out the design for something that emphasized the suspense. The book was going to be sold in airports to harried travelers who wanted to relax their brains for the lengths of their flights. Notice how the new design angles and fractures the font to suggest a fast-moving plot. The letters seem to hide behind the trees like a character on the run in the forest. I prefer this design to the hardcover. It’s closer to my own sense of the story—and it continues to sell well!

With the sequel came a new challenge. Minotaur wanted to brand my series so that the second book connected with the first book visually. But Trespasser was set during a different month (March) in a different place (the stormy coast). It was also more of an out-and-out thriller than The Poacher’s Son. Here is the solution David Rotstein’s team devised.The gray and orange are dramatic. They definitely leap out at you from across the bookstore.

The Trespasser paperback saw a few minor tweaks, aimed primarily at marrying the design with that of the The Poacher’s Son paperback since the two books would end up side by side on store shelves. The softcover gives you a chance to add blurbs from positive reviews, which we did.

My name also got smaller.

Not that authors care about such things.

Bad Little Falls was a combination of the title and the design clicking at the same time. We’d been debating two alternative titles (I’ll share that story in a future post) until David came up with his ominous illustration. Suddenly, the right choice seemed self-evident.

Will book buyers agree? We’ll know on August 7 when the novel arrives in stores.

Postscript: All three of my books will be coming out in the United Kingdom in 2013 from Constable & Robinson (the original publisher of Dracula, I always add). Recently, I got a look at the covers. You can see right away the totally different approach C&R has decided to go with. They have the advantage of bringing all three completed novels out together, so branding the books becomes an easier task. But it’s also a bigger gamble since choosing one design scheme for the series means it had better work, since the success of the entire enterprise is riding on the one template.

When you think about how the right cover can make or break a good book, it makes me glad all I have to do is write!

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Kaitlyn Dunnett Interviews Steve Steinbock

Posted on May 13, 2012 by kaitlynkathy

Please welcome a special guest to MaineCrimeWriters.com. Steve Steinbock is a mystery writer and reviewer who lives in Yarmouth, Maine. Currently he writes a regular review column, “The Jury Box,” for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and is working on a mystery series featuring a young rabbi living in a Maine college town. He regularly attends the mystery fan conventions Malice Domestic and Bouchercon, which is where I usually run into him. I think we’ve only met once when we were both in Maine, and that was at the Portland Jetport.

Kaitlyn: When we first met, at the Seattle Bouchercon in 1994, I had written a couple of mysteries for young people but was really there as a fan. Where were you in your mystery career?

Steve: At that time I was a fan and a budding scholar. I had aspirations to write mystery fiction, but I was really there because I loved the genre and wanted to know more about it. I grew up in Seattle and still had family there, so it gave me a good excuse. That Bouchercon in 1994 was my first mystery-fan experience ever.

Kaitlyn: Since you’re originally from Seattle, how did you end up in Maine?

Steve: I’d been making my way counter-clockwise around the country. After college (in Seattle) I went to grad school and worked for a couple years in California. Then a job offer took me to Norfolk, Virginia, where I met my wife. She was originally from New England. We had no desire to be in Greater Boston, but Maine was the best of all worlds.

Kaitlyn: Since 1994, you’ve written reviews for at least two significant mystery journals. Before Ellery Queen, you were review editor for The Strand Magazine. How did you get into that end of the business?

Steve: As I said, I saw myself as a budding mystery-scholar. I had been reading a lot within the genre, and a lot of classical criticism about the genre. One night I was having dinner with a friend who, at the time, was the restaurant critic for the Portland Press Herald. We were talking about literature, and I mentioned how much I’d love to review books. One thing led to another, and I found myself doing mystery and horror reviews for the Maine Sunday Telegram. I did that for several years, and at the same time began working with AudioFile Magazine (reviewing audiobooks and doing interviews and feature stories) and The Armchair Detective (which folded two issues after I began writing for it; I swear it wasn’t my fault). Since that time I’ve written for most of the mystery magazines: Crime Time (in the UK), Mystery Scene, Mystery Reader’s Journal, etc. I’ve been very lucky as far as my writing gigs have gone.

I had been friends with Professor Douglas Greene (a mutual friend with Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson). He introduced me to some great writers. I became friends with the editorial crew at Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. When the film “Secret Window” (based on a short novel by Stephen King involving Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine) was being released, Ellery Queen hired me to do a series of articles and interviews with Stephen King, director David Koepp, and several of the actors. About a year later, Columbia University was celebrating the 100th anniversary of Ellery Queen, and I wrote a couple of articles and spoke at the centenary symposium at Columbia.

When book critic Jon Breen decided to step down after thirty-five years with the magazine, I got a call.

Kaitlyn: You’re published in non-mystery nonfiction and in short mystery fiction, but you review primarily mystery novels. When you sat down to write your first mystery, did you find it helpful to have read so many works of fiction with a critical eye or did knowing all the pitfalls just make it that much harder?

Steve: Yes. All of the above. I knew what made a good mystery work. I knew the nitty-gritty of plotting. But throughout the process I found myself comparing my writing to that of the authors whose work I admire. I have to say that my background was more of a blessing than it was a curse, but then again, my novel is still in the shopping stage, and my only published fiction is a story in Ellery Queen.

Kaitlyn: Can you talk a bit about how you approach a novel you’re going to review?

Steve: Every book is a promise. Whenever a reader picks up a novel, they expect it to be good, whether it’s a thriller, a psychological suspense novel, a noir private eye novel, or a mystery about food or cats. I approach each book on its own merit. I’d much rather read a well-written cozy about a crime-solving pastry chef with a talking cat than a half-hearted international thriller. What I look for is whether the book kept its promise to the reader.

Kaitlyn: With the rise of the ebook and ereaders, do you see the ARCs now sent to reviewers being replaced with electronic copies? Or is this already happening?

Steve: When I began reviewing, I got a thrill every time the UPS man drove up to deliver a batch of review books. I love books, and love adding books to my library. Publishers would send finished books as well as ARCs (“advanced readers copies,” also known as “bound galleys”), and sometimes even unbound manuscripts. I love them all. But after almost twenty years, my house is only so big. “Electronic ARCs” take less shelf-space, and make my job as a reviewer easier. It’s been a slow change, but bit by bit publishers are getting on board and sending me links to electronic editions rather than physical copies. As a book lover and antique book collector, I still love physical books. But as a critic, I appreciate being able to read ARCs on my eReader.

Kaitlyn: When you aren’t reading mystery novels, what do you read and why?

Steve: I review upwards of a hundred books a year. That’s a lot of reading. Whenever I’m caught up,  I reward myself by reading a classic detective novel, usually by some obscure writer from before I was born.

Ironically, since I began reviewing for Ellery Queen, in spite of the increase in the number of new novels I read each month, I’ve found myself reading more non-fiction than ever before. I love linguistics, and am now reading The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker and Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher. Ironically, these two books take opposite views of the role of language in thought. I also read a good amount about religious history and philosophy.

Kaitlyn: What are you working on now?

Steve: Other than this interview? I’m planning my next Ellery Queen column, as well as beginning the long process of trying to sell my novel to agents and starting on a second novel. I’m also editing a collection of non-mystery short stories by the prolific mystery short story writer Edward Hoch. I am teaching a class on Kabbalah, and I have a great idea for another non-fiction book I’d like to write.

Kaitlyn: And finally, one of our favorite interview questions here at Maine Crime Writers: What question have you always wanted to be asked in an interview? And, of course, go on to answer it.

Steve: What’s on your bookshelf?

Let me see. Currently reading Brownies and Broomsticks by Bailey Cates (Cricket McRae). It’s a mystery about a pair of café/bakery owners who happen to have spells up their sleeves. Total fluff, but I’m smiling all the way through. (When a book reviewer doesn’t start skimming pages, it’s a really good sign). Then there’s Driven by James Sallis, November Hunt by Jess Lourey, Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris. Pulse by John Lutz, Broken Harbor by Tana French, and Bagpipes, Brides, and Homicides by . . . wait a minute, is that you? Kaitlyn Dunnett!

As I said several questions ago, I like to read oldies whenever a window opens up. The last one I treated myself to was Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight by R. Austin Freeman, a wonderful book by a contemporary of Christie who is sadly forgotten today. Freeman is a favorite of mine. Waiting in the wings right now are League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout, The Scarab Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine, and some Christie. My all time favorite mystery by a no-longer-living American author is Night of the Jabberwock by Fredric Brown.

Kaitlyn, thank you for inviting me to chat with you. I do hope we run into each other somewhere soon, without having to go to the airport!

Kaitlyn: And thank you for sharing your insights and experiences. And for the unsolicited plug for Bagpipes, Brides, and Homicides (in stores in August).

 

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In London, on the Beach

Posted on May 12, 2012 by mainecrimewriters

Greetings friends. Gerry Boyle here after a week away from Maine. I spent a few days in London–South Kensington, Mayfair, even some time in the Old Bailey, that venerable court where so many murderers have met their fate.

And every once in a while, I looked up to take in the view in the photo below.

Okay,  I wasn’t actually in London. I was on a beach on Florida’s east coast, just south of St. Augustine. We spent some time there with friends, and the four of us swam, biked, ate good food, went for long walks. And read books. A lot.

Mine was A Certain Justice by P.D. James. It’s a classic whodunit, set in London’s legal world, with barristers, solicitors (I had to look up the difference), a killing in “Chambers,” and a fine portrayal of a sociopathic murderer. The writing was precise and graceful, the plot unwrapped with that elegant confidence that marks James’s books. This was an Adam Dalgliesh mystery, though it was interesting to me as a mystery writer that the inspector didn’t appear until Chapter 12. (I’d never try that delayed entrance with Jack McMorrow or Brandon Blake).

But the other thing that I found fascinating about my engrossing visit to London–and the reason you’re reading this here– was the phenomenon of beach books, and the way we can lose ourselves in a book when the rest of life’s distractions and obligations are removed.

There were no televisions, laptops, iPads, or iPhones on the beach. No talk about work or the to-do list for coming days. Our distractions were sparkling green ocean, the rumble of the surf, and passing squadrons of gliding pelicans, whose shadows flickered across the page—momentary interruptions from our enjoyment of the work of Ms. James, Carl Hiassen and Clive Cussler, among others.

For me, this was a welcome and needed reminder of the power of the written word. Sometimes it seems books are getting lost in the din, and I find myself worrying that books have lost their power to hold readers and transport them to other worlds.

I came home tanned, refreshed, and optimistic. I just hope people remember that “beach reading” can happen anywhere. Just shut off the stuff and let the book take you away.

 

 

 

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