The List I Said I Wouldn’t be Doing

I said I wasn’t going to do any year end lists, but I really like David Montgomery’s 3 Best Books feature and I realized this was a nice was for me to think about what I’ve read over the year. I’m one of those people who can read a book multiple times and still forget who the killer is, which makes for enjoyable repeat readings, but maybe isn’t the best for my own analysis as a crime writer. Now I’ve done the top three books like at David’s site, but I’ve also added three honorable mentions because, in the end, I think the purpose of these lists is to spread the word about good books and the more books I can do that for the better. Right?

1) GO GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE by Victor Gischler – This was the best book I read last year. I’ve read all of his crime novels and enjoyed them, but this was the book he seemed born to write. Its part social satire, part fantasy, and part madcap romp. I found myself totally immersed in the world he creates and it was just a great all around reading experience. And he announced on his blog yesterday that the book has now gone into a second printing so I’m glad to hear other people feel as great about this book as I do.

2) ENVY THE NIGHT by Michael Koryta – I think I wrote here before that this was a huge step forward for an already excellent writer and that if he graduated from some fancy MFA program it would have been touted as a “literary thriller.” But this character driven revenge story is just an amazing book that does the slow burn suspense better than almost anyone I can think of. I’ll be interested to see how he uses these skills in his next book that has a supernatural twist to it.

3) HIT AND RUN by Lawrence Block – One of the true masters of slow burn suspense does his best work currently in the Keller series. I was very skeptical of this one when I heard it was about a hitman framed for the assassination of a politician. I figured Block had gone over to the dark side and would put Keller in one of those ridiculous, over the top “on the run” thrillers. But he kept to the same sort of slow burn and concentration on the minutia of life that has made this series one of my favorites, maybe even more than the Scudder series (gasp of sacrilegious breath).

Now, the honorable mentions:

THE BRASS VERDICT by Michael Connelly – This one almost made it into the top three, but since I just finished it last night, I don’t think I’ve ruminated on it long enough to consider it one of the best of the year. But it’s a damn fine book. I forgot how much I like Mickey Haller’s first person narration. I’m not normally a legal thriller fan, but this had more of the PI novel feel of something from David Rosenfelt’s Andy Carpenter series. The plot is great and twisty, but the true genius of this book is the characters and the commentary on the justice system. I also like getting a view of Connelly’s main series detective, Harry Bosch, through someone else’s eyes. Connelly is one of the best at inside jokes for longtime fans and this one is no different. Can’t wait to see what’s next from him

CHASING DARKNESS by Robert Crais – This book was great because it harkened back to the older Elvis Cole style before LA REQUIEM. After a brief third person opening, the rest of the book is in Elvis’s first person voice and it’s just a riot to be back with him. It only takes a casual reading of one of Robert Parker’s current Spenser novels to see that the student has truly surpassed the master. Crais may not always hit the mark with his latest books, but I always get the sense that he’s experimenting and trying to stretch which you gotta give the man credit for.

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO by Dave White – I think it was a bad idea releasing the first two books in the Jackson Donne series in trade paperback first because that’s not what readers of PI fiction expect. These should have been hard covers or better yet, mass market pbs that could have given this series the much greater audience it deserved. After starting off strong with his first book, Dave moved to third person and adopted more of a thriller style for this book that goes back and forth between the present and the past. Again, I’m not really a thriller fan, but this sucker moved fast and did a great job of developing Donne’s past and setting the stage for some nasty family payback. If Ross Macdonald had ever tried a third person PI thriller style with Archer, he may have written something like EVIL.

That Mysterious Red Envelope

I’ve written here before about how much I dislike most network television these days, and it’s only gotten worse now that I’m spending so much time at home with Spenser and Becky. We rent some movies On Demand because we’re never able to get them back in a timely fashion when we get them from the video store, but I know there are TV shows out there I’d like to be watching. So I briefly considered subscribing to Showtime and HBO for movies and TV shows, but it would be more than $30 a month for both and that seems a bit ridiculous.

Around this same time I was fooling around with the Netflix website and decided to give it a try for the 2-week trial. It seemed like a good enough deal and convenient. After my first experience though I wasn’t too impressed. The website seemed complex and unwieldy and I wasn’t able to find many new releases. But after we received our first movie so quickly, I started thinking about it some more and went back to explore the site again. This time was much better and I was able to find some new releases that weren’t even out to On Demand yet. I was also able to find some great TV shows like Dexter, Weeds, and the final season of The Wire that I missed. I’d really like to watch True Blood, but I’m sure if I wait long enough it will show up as well. I was also happy to discover I could number the movies in my queue by priority so I could sort of know what I would be receiving next. Now I sent back my movie and I’ll be receiving two more because I switched to the 2 at a time plan instead of the 1. I’m excited about the possibilities.

Anybody else here use Netflix? Any stories you’d like to share? Tips, etc.

Fararararah

It seems odd to be writing a Christmas update when it’s 50 degrees outside and rainy, but it was cold and snowy for Christmas day and I guess that’s all that matters, right? So let’s start where we should for Christmas, at church.

I’ve always thought the idea of Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve was pretty cool, but my family stuck with the traditional baptist service at 6pm. This year I found out the church Becky and I attend had an 11pm service so we did that. Even though Spenser was on the evil side for his first trip to church, I was glad we went. When we got home Becky had the great idea to just stay up and open the presents between us because it was already Christmas Day and Spenser was being moderately good. So we did and I totally made out. I sort of blew it with Becky though. I got her some nice perfume and we had her ring repaired after it had to be cut off during pregnancy, but I sort of botched it with her surprise gift. I got her this pair of dinosaur footie pajamas that she’d mentioned way back when that she wanted, but they ended up being too small for her and that made her feel bad. It didn’t help that her surprise gift to me was SO much better. But I’m making up for it now by getting her a mother’s pendant with Spenser’s birthstone. My haul from that night was the collector’s edition DVD of Taxi Driver, the first season of Californication on DVD, a cashmere sweater, some undershirts, a Tom Brady Patriots jersey and a collector’s set of Johnny Walker Black with some cool glasses.

So since we did our own little Christmas that night, we were able to sleep in until 10am the next morning and that was a grand Christmas present. We spent the morning then over at Becky’s parents where Spenser opened a lot of cool stuff and Becky and I got a digital video camera and a pile of restaurant gift cards. We stayed there for a while and I took a nap, then we went back to our house and did a whirlwind cleanup before my parents and sister showed up. When they arrived we opened presents again and Spenser got more stuff, Becky and I got more restaurant cards, and we got some knives! Then everybody else from her family started showing up and we ended up with a ton of people in our house and a great ham. I eventually had to go hide in the bedroom for a while because I can only handle so much socializing. Later that night my dad and I went to see The Spirit and I enjoyed it. It was a blatant visual ripoff from Sin City and that didn’t seem necessary, but the story was good pulpy over the top fun.

I had to go back to work the day after Christmas, but it was pretty dead and I was able to leave early.

So there you have it in rather pedestrian prose with little commentary. But I found I like having these blog posts in the archives so I can go back later in the year or whenever and get a fun little burst of memory. So it’s for me, not for you. So there. Monday I’ll be back with a more substantial post and such as we lead up to the new year. And don’t worry, I won’t post any year end lists. I promise

Power Balls

I’m writing this after a long morning of snow blowing a hundred feet or so of snow from my driveway. Have I mentioned how much I hate being a home owning adult? The only way it would be very cool is if I had a bunch of money.

Which brings me to today’s topic. A few weeks ago I started buying a lotto ticket for the Mega Millions lottery. I started because the jackpot was almost $200 million dollars and that’s a good deal of money. I didn’t win. The reason I bought the second one is because I loved the sense of dreaming having that ticket gave me. It was fun thinking about how I would spend the money and I figured that was worth the $1. I come from a family background that discourages gambling, but I’ve spent more than a dollar on things that haven’t given me nearly as much enjoyment as the few days of dreaming that one lottery ticket did.

What I ended up deciding is that my life as far as my possessions go would change very little. I’d spend some money to fix up the stuff in my current house that need fixing, but I wouldn’t buy a new house. I’d pay off both my cars, but I wouldn’t buy new ones. I’d probably buy a big new TV and BluRay player, but nothing too out there. And then I’d give a bunch of it away. And travel a lot. The biggest thing that would change for me is that I would quit my job and write full-time. I don’t get these people who win a ton of money and then keep their jobs.

There’s more I’d like to write about this, but I need to go out and finish the driveway and then maybe get back to work on the revisions for my book which are going much better than I expected they would.

So how about you all talk about what you would do if you won the lottery.

The Revision Wall

As much as I think it is a cop out, and I think it tarnishes their legacies, I can totally relate to bestselling authors who give up on their work too soon and send it out to be published as is.

I’m working on my third novel right now—the one I abandoned as recently as two weeks ago— and realize I have no perspective on it. Sure, my eyes are fresher than they were right after I finished, but I think I’ve lost perspective on my novel writing as a whole. I think that’s why I was so eager to jump into a new kind of novel and not try to fix the novel I’ve already got sitting in front of me. Luckily I’ve got a wife with little tolerance for my crap. She couldn’t understand why I would waste five months writing a novel, during which she could barely see me, and tell her I though this was The One, and then just give up on it. She had a point, but see, I always think the one I’m working on is the best thing I’ve ever written (with the exception of one book I knew was wrong right from the start). And then when I’m done with it, I’m immediately convinced it’s the worst thing I’ve ever written.

So I took some time away from it. People suggested having someone else read it which, in theory is a good idea, but of little help. I’ve had people read my stuff in the past and I know the ones I can send it to who will tell me it’s good and I know the ones I can send it to who will tell me it’s bad. But I don’t want to send it to anyone right after I’ve finished it because I write VERY rough drafts and wouldn’t want to subject anyone to that. This weekend though, I jumped back into the book and finished doing what I’ve always done before. I read through the rough draft and write up an outline of all of the chapters I have. This helps me not only remember things I wrote in the beginning and then forgot about, but helps me see holes in my plot. It’s also a great way to carry the entire plot of the book around in my head while I think things through. During the first draft of a book I’m very wild and free but once that draft is done, I turn into a hardcore outline junky.

After I did my outline, I was convinced I could fix it and had all sorts of great ideas for new plot twists and character development and all of that. But this is the same feeling I had three months ago when I was writing the stuff that I’m now cutting from the book. And this is the same feeling I had a year ago when I was outlining and revising my second book. And people read that book and said it was good and agents read it and said it was good and then nothing happened. I think this is a good book and I think it’s better than the previous two but I’m starting to think I don’t have a friggin’ clue what I’m talking about. But all I can do is trudge forward and try my best to do what I know how to do to make this as good as I think it can be. From the outline I compiled and the three pages of notes I took on things to work on some common weaknesses have started to appear.

First, I have too many characters that go off on threads that serve no purpose to the main story. Second, some characters have little or no motivation for doing what they do. And third, my detective is handed key pieces of information instead of finding them himself. I think realizing this is a good sign and I’m pretty sure I know how to fix them. I just hope it’s all enough because I don’t know how much more energy I have left in me for this.

Let me start with a sad realization this morning. I think I’m losing my ability to read on the move. I lost my ability to read in the car a while ago and that was a sad, crushing blow, but this morning I was reading GO GO GIRLS OF THE APOCOLYPSE on the bus to work this morning and started getting sick. This has happened a few times before but I’ve been trying to ignore the inevitable.

Now onto the meat of today’s comments. I called Bleak House Books the other night to take care of the shipping details for their generous holiday offer and wouldn’t you know I got publisher Ben LeRoy on the phone. You’ve got to love a publishing house where even the publisher gets in on the grunt work. We chatted for a while about the promotion and how we thought it was working. I think it’s a great idea and told him so. We’ve seen occasional bursts of experimentation on this front with individual authors, particularly in the science fiction/fantasy field, and it almost always works out well. But this is the first time I can recall seeing something like this from a publisher.

With the dwindling print news base, and the sketchy success rates of print advertising in general, I think free books are the best advertising available for the money. And I don’t buy the argument that it results in lost sales. For the most part, if somebody takes part in a free book promotion they are going to get something they wouldn’t have bought otherwise.

Case in point, my Bleak House purchase. I’ve already got Anthony Neil Smith’s YELLOW MEDICINE in paperback, but I took this opportunity to get one of the fine hardcover editions available. That wasn’t a lost sale because I wasn’t going to buy the hardcover anyway. This is another inventive scheme of Bleak House’s that I think should be standard practice. They release a limited number of hardcover editions of a book to get the review attention, library attention, and collector attention, and AT THE SAME TIME they release a less expensive trade paperback that the everyday book buyer can afford. Genius.

So I’m asking everyone who reads this today to do a couple of things for me. First, spread the word about Bleak House. Not just this special offer, but word about the house itself. They do great work and are great people. But also, if you take advantage of their holiday special, maybe give back a little and buy a book at full price too. It’s Christmas and let’s be honest, if you’re reading this blog you could probably use the karma.

The Language Barrier

I got in trouble over the weekend for swearing on Facebook. It wasn’t from the fine folks at Facebook, they’re pretty cool about that stuff, and this isn’t another one of those horrid discussions about why swearing is vilified in crime fiction while horrible violence is not, rather it was from my mom and sister. This got me thinking about how conflicted I am over my online presence.

For a long time there, I was the only person in real life I knew who was online with any sort of regular presence. The only people I knew who blogged were other people I had met online. And then it all started to unravel when my mom started reading my blog. Other than cutting out most of the swearing though, I don’t think the content of my blog changed all that much. After I came back from my two month hiatus, my mom didn’t know my blog was back but I kept the content pretty much the same.

What this really reminds me of is that episode of Seinfeld where George feels like his two worlds are colliding and it makes him very uncomfortable. I’ve always been a very compartmentalized person and kind of like it that way. I have church friends, online friends, writing friends, family, real life friends, etc. It’s not that I’m a totally different person in each group, but they all tackle different sides of my personality and I don’t like all of that mixing. I don’t have the brain capacity to handle it.

There’s also the very toddler-like fact that I don’t like these new technology up and comers to be playing in the sandbox that I was in way before they were, I’m one of those people that will stop doing something or stop going somewhere if it becomes too trendy. But I don’t think that’s going to happen with Facebook or blogging so I have to figure out how to cope with it all. There are certainly good things to come from it. And as my writing career progresses it was bound to happen for all of this to start blending together, but it’s still a bit weird. I also realize that there were many people who were using both of these things loooooooooong before I came along so I should probably shut up.

But what I really want to know is how you all feel. Do you find your real life intruding on your online life or vice versa?

Short and Sweet

I think it’s safe to announce my latest short story sale since it was confirmed on a Facebook wall posting and Facebook is never wrong. My story WORD GAMES will be appearing this Spring in UNCAGED, Jen Jordan’s sequel to the nastily popular anthology EXPLETIVE DELETED. This is cool for many reasons, but here are a few of my favorites:

1) The contributor list. In addition to such luminaries of vileness like Al Guthrie, Victor Gischler, Christa Faust, and Scott Phillips, there are some hot up and comers like Patrick Shawn Bagley, Stephen Blackmoore, and Greg Bardsley (the last two of which I had the pleasure of publishing in DEMOLITION)

2) This proves that my two anthology publications this year are not a fluke. I came to short stories later, but it seems to have worked out well for me and I think I’ve developed a nice solid voice. Which bring me to the biggest reason I’m happy about this story…

3) This validates my decision to abandon the PI novel I was working on for the new project based on one of my previous anthology stories. The voice I’ve developed and think works best with my natural skills, and that’s given me the most success so far, is a mix of dark humor, twisted characters, and non-linear plotting. That’s the sort of story I’m working with on the new novel and I’m very excited for its potential.

Of course at some point I’m going to have to start stretching myself but when an author is starting off in such a volatile publishing atmosphere I think it’s best to go with the strengths and then start stretching when an audience is established. I’m already starting to stretch my short stories into more mainstream stories along with the dirty little bits I’ve got on the burner so that’s good and should hopefully lead to some sales to one of the mainstream markets like EQMM or AHMM. I’m also still waiting to be invited to contribute to an anthology which would be very cool, but hey, I can’t get greedy, right?