A couple of caveats on the title of the this list though. First, you’ll notice I’m listing my favorite books I read this year, not necessarily the best. I realize my tastes are more crass and low brow than many of my peers, and I’m fine with that, but readers of this list looking for the best of the best may want to look elsewhere. Secondly, the year. These are all books I read in 2011, but they may not have all been published in 2011. Again, I’ve come to terms with my reading habits, so should you. Enjoy.

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman
This was probably my favorite read of the year. It was about a writer, which of course scores it a million points in my book, but it was also a great study of family and dreams and marriage and a writer’s expectations of himself. It had a lot of shades of Wonder Boys and had one of the most perfect endings I’ve ever read. As the ending approached I was worried that it might devolve into sappiness or unrealistic wish fulfillment, but kudos to Mr. Norman for a great book.

Getting Off by Lawrence Block writing as Jill Emerson
This was one of those books that was so much better than it had any business being. It met all of the pulpy thrill expectations it sets with kinky sex, gory violence, and a potboiler story. But it also has some nice ruminations and the characters are quite well developed. I would rank this high on my list of favorite Block novels.

Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski
This book blew me away. It started off strong with some great actions scenes and a neat hook, then I started to get worried. I began to think the book would be nothing but action scene after action scene which would get quite tedious. But I should have known better. Just i was about to give up on the book, Duane started digging more into the characters and tapped into some amazing emotions for what is really quite a ridiculous plot. The most amazing thing though is that I never failed to suspend my disbelief. A true master and balancing the ridiculous with the emotional.

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell
Holy crap. What can I say about this book that hasn’t been said better by all of the people smart enough to read this book sooner than I. This capped off my reading of (almost) all of Woodrell’s books this year and I couldn’t imagine a better capstone. The other books were all of a type and very well done, but they were quite light on plot. Anyone who knows me though knows that’s not a problem. But man, Winter’s Bone does everything right his other books did with language and characters, but packs just a perfectly executed crime story into a small book. I know it’s probably sacrilegious to say, but I want to read a sequel were Ree becomes a bounty hunter.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
This is another one I was way too late coming to but glad I finally did. Another one about a writer and family secrets that I loved. The world created was well worn and lived in and the characters were just fabulous. This is one of those books where I just wanted to crawl into it and stay in the world long after the book was done.

The Cypress House by Michael Koryta
My favorite Koryta book is still Envy the Night, but this one came very, very close to supplanting it. I enjoyed So Cold The River as the ghost novel it was intended to be and it reminded me of summers spent reading Stephen King books. But The Cypress House excited me more because it was more in line with his crime novels. It’s a sweaty, gothic, gooey doozy of a book that’s perfectly creepy but has a slam bang story to go with. I don’t generally care for historical novels but the history in this book was put to good use and it really couldn’t have happened at any other time in history. This book did what I think Lehane’s Shutter Island tried to do but failed.

Galveston by Nic Pizolatto
Every year there’s a literary crime novel that grabs a hold of my attention and this year it was Galveston. This one was much more in the slower story telling vein but it did some neat things with atmosphere and language that I enjoyed. Again, I think I’ve said this about every one of the favorite’s here, the characters were what set it apart from the other books I read and forgot. This was one of the first books I read this year and the fact that it still sticks in my rather porous mind says quite a lot.

The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman
This was by far my favorite book and the best book I read this year. I’ve always been a fan of Laura’s books and think she does great things with characters, but her style has always been very straightforward and workman like. It does what it needs to do to get the story done. Now her short stories are another thing all together. I think she is one of the most under appreciated noir short story writers working now. She has some dazzling feats of character and story telling in her short work but that has never been the case in her novels until this book. She not only stretches her characters to darker shades of gray, she also does some very nifty things with the plot and with how she tells the story. I love to see great writers stretch themselves and this is a great example of that.

Books I Most Regret Not Reading This Year

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
I’m a fan in general of Megan and have loved all of her other books so i was excited to read this one which seemed to be more in a modern Laura Lippman vein. I think I was in the wrong mood though when I started it because I couldn’t get into the voice and put it aside after a few pages and moved on to something else. Now that it’s starting to appear on almost every year end best of list I think it’s about time to give it another crack.

A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block
This is another one I was very excited about. I love the idea of digging back into Scudder’s past back when he was newly sober. But again, I was probably in the wrong mood and found the story not going much of anywhere for quite a while. I had a conversation with another writer about this and he agreed with my assessment so I put it aside and moved on to something else. Again as this has appeared on some best of lists as well, I think I’m ready to give it another crack.

My reading was right about in line with what it was last year and I suppose I’ll just have to deal with the fact that I don’t have as much time to read as I used to. Right now my lunch breaks are where I do most of my reading, with the occasional long Saturday read or wait for an oil change or some such thing. I’ll be interested to see how owning a Kindle affects this, if at all. I still got the bulk of my books from the library, and I don’t see this changing in the coming year. Even at my diminished purchasing capacity, I still bought more hardcover books than the average American, and I bought almost all of them from independent booksellers.

One area that is going on hold is my whole ebook thing. Sure, I’ll still read them because I have the new doodad, and I’ll follow the conversation at large as much as is needed to stay up on the big issues, but I lost too much time and energy this year trying to format my own stuff, and contribute in any substantial way to the discussion. So I’m out on that front. Just going to keep my head down and get the words on the page then make ‘em so that don’t stink so bad. I also suspect I’ll blog more. It will probably be more quite blogging for myself, no announcements of new posts on Twitter or such, but I have seen a modest link between regular blogging here and my own writing productivity. I also suspect I’ll blog very little about publishing, maybe even wriing. Who knows.

But mostly I want to write prose fiction. I want to finish MURDER BOY, however many drafts that may take. After I finish the draft I’m working on I want to write at least two, maybe three short stories and possibly a novella. I’d also like to get a rough draft done of that cozy book I mentioned. No, really.

I have no idea what I’ll publish this year, but that’s what I want to write. And in the end, that’s all I really have control over. Have a Happy New Year.

And let’s be straight about this, for everything these guys mention to come to pass you have to set up shop properly. You have to have great writing, great cover design, great access, and a lot of time. In a perfect world, When I had my first novel as good as I could make it I would send it off to a freelance editor. I’m the sort of writer who needs a good content and structure editor, not just a copy editor. To get what I would get at a New York publisher would cost me about $1500. Once the book was edited, I would need to hire a good cover artist ($250-$500), and a good ebook formatter ($250-$500). I would probably have to spend toward the higher end with the formatter because I would also need formatting for POD paper books as well. So that’s roughly $2500 right off the bat that’s had to come out of my own pocket. It makes even a $1000 advance from an independent publisher seem like a great deal. 

But wait, there’s more. 

To truly take advantage of the ebook marketplace, you can’t have just one book in your online book store. You need to take up a lot of virtual shelf-space. So in this perfect scenario we’re discussing where I have unlimited funds, I’d publish each of my ten best short stories individually along with a longer collection of them all with a full forward and an introduction to each story. I’d also publish a collection of my flash fiction stories, and I’d write an publish a novella I’ve been thinking about. Each of those project will have it’s own cover and formatting cost. Even taking into account any discounts I’d be able to negotiate for multiple projects, I’d expect each of these projects to cost at minimum $250 to publish for a total of about $3000. That puts us at around $5500 just to get my virtual presence up and running in a way to make the most of the opportunity. 

But wait, there’s more.

You can’t just tweet and send Facebook blasts to advertise your book, you need to targeting marketing. Did you know that ebooks have co-op advertising just like print bookstores? All of those Daily Kindle Deals and such have costs associated with them? And it cost money to get good placement on the various ebook sites. I don’t have enough of an understanding of this area to generate a fully accurate cost for this, but let’s assume it’s like everything else in the $250 range. But of course the best advertising is having another book available. In the digital world you don’t have to wait a year or more to publish your next book. So let’s say six months later (before any real income is available from the ebooks Id’ already have available) I release another book. That’s another $3000 bringing us to a grand total of over $8000 in less than a year. And another year later, or less, I’d need to release another book. By then I’m sure I wouldn’t need the total $1500 editing package, but I’d still need something so let’s say $1500 instead of $3000. And how much do you think I would have made in the first year? Over the long haul, and probably within even a few years, I’m sure I’d be making great money going this route. Unfortunately I don’t have a spare $10,000 to do it this way.

Let’s say instead I took a print deal with an advance of $5,000. My first book and ebook will be produced at no cost to me, and in the 12-18 months it will take for the print book to hit the shelves, I could be using some of that advance to build my virtual presence publishing the short stories and novella projects. These will help advertise the print book and the print advance will have staked the funds for the beginning of my virtual bookstore. Sure I’d be giving up better royalties on the ebook of that first novel, but I’d have full control over the e-books I published. And in a realistic scenerio, I’d only publish two or three books with a print publisher before being dropped which would leave me to publish the remainder of my books on my own without the prohibitive initial investment. Plus I’d have the prestige that comes with having been published traditionally which, believe it or not, still matters to a lot of buyers.

Since book deals only come in 2-3 book increments I’d be able to assess my digital options every few years to see if publishing traditionally was still a good enough deal as stake funds or if I was making enough publishing on my own where I’d lose money signing another traditional deal. Why do I think this plan would work? Because this is exactly the path Joe Konrath, Lee Goldberg, and Barry Eisler took to ebook sucess, they just didn’t know that’s what they were doing when they started. This is also the method a lot of directors have used over the years. they sell scripts for money and give up control, but use the money to fund their own projects where they end up making the bulk of the money over their careers. 

Many times when I get those thoughts it’s easier to head to Twitter or Facebook to scratch the itch. But every once in a while a bigger idea takes hold (like my thoughts on the demise of Borders or my thoughts on superhero movies) and the only way to expel it from my system is a longer form post here. I’ve never really taken to this place as a day-to-day diary of my thoughts and activities, rather I saw it as an outlet for the journalism career I really always wanted: columnist. But as I’ve grown older, wiser, busier, and less focused, I’ve lost that desire to be a regular columnist here, but wasn’t really sure what other form my activity here would take. So I continued posting at will when those longer thoughts took root and demanded an outlet.

Recently though, I think I’ve nailed down what it is I’m looking for. As a writer and person, I’ve always been one to consistently self-reflect to put my life, my thoughts, my activities and everything else swirling around me in some sort of context and structure. I can’t just post about what I’m having for lunch, I need to put it in the context of what else I’ve had for lunch my entire life, my general thoughts on lunch as a whole, and why this particular lunch deserves long-form documentation. So it was only natural that I would look to categorize what it was that I was doing here. And I think I found it in Jonathan Ames.

I started with BORED TO DEATH and then went to WAKE UP, SIR and then spiraled into a gluttonous frenzy of Ames reading. I see a lot of myself in him and his style, though I’m less focused on sex and boxing than he, and more focused on aspects of being a writer. But after reading the fiction in THE DOUBLE LIFE IS TWICE AS GOOD, I moved on to the non-fiction. I didn’t care to read most of his long-form journalism, and the stories were neat but nothing extrodinary, but what really got me was his essay section. Now, I’d always had a rather limited view of what an essay was.

In my mind an essay had to be the equivalent of a good, long, short story. A lot of depth, very structured, and long. But these Ames essays were on the short side, probably 1000 words if I had to guess, and more in an off-the-cuff style that I enjoyed. That’s when it hit me, I’m not a columnist anymore, I’m an essayist. My posts lately have run between 700 and 1000 words and tend to be more developed (relatively of course) than my other posts. An essay is nice because it doesn’t have to conform to a time frame like a column does. An essay just brews and sizzles until it’s ready to explode. This also helped me solve the riddle of how to turn this blog into an e-book.

I’ve long felt that this blog, rather than any of my unpublished novels, provided a good long form offering for e-books, but could never really figure out how to curate it. Now, with this whole essay idea, I can go back through my archives and just pull the longer, more essay-like posts and collect them. I tend to stick to the same sorts of themes on a regular basis which will make organizing the collection easier.

So there you have it. Nearly 700 words of what to expect from me in this spot for the foreseeable future. I’m sure you will all rest easier now. You’re welcome.

I’m sure the glut of superhero movies will end soon, but there will still be room for the well-written spectacles. It’s the CGI slopfests that will soon disappear. Unfortunately, DC seems to be the source of most of the slop. On the surface this seems to be because DC has worse characters than Marvel. And that’s sort of true, once you get away from Batman and Superman, but a movie like the Green Lantern was not a failure because of a poor character, it was failure because it was a good character poorly developed (though I did enjoy the movie, but I also enjoyed Daredevil and Jonah Hex). I think the Vertigo imprint offers more chances for better movies, though they don’t seem to be ripe for the tentpole type summer movie like the Marvel characters.

But here’s my DC superhero movie wish list for the immediate future, which I think will go a long way to reviving their good name:

1. I would like to see a really good Flash movie. I could give or take whatever they do next with Superman, but I think Flash offers the best mix of tentpole action, witty self-referential narration, and deep character to compete with the best Marvel has to offer.

2. I would like to see a good Preacher movie made. I know John August has a script out there, but I don’t care who writes, it’s something I’d like to see. Maybe even on HBO. They did good work with Angels in America.

3. I’d like to see Quentin Tarantino do a superhero movie. I tell you what I’d really love, is Quentin Tarantino to do a Super Friends movie. He could nail the funky 70s vibe to make it more like the cartoon I remember.

4. After Christopher Nolan is done with his run on the Batman series, I’d like to see them dig into the Gotham Central series for material.

5. I want to see a Scalped movie.

6. I want to see a Damage Control movie. I know that’s Marvel. But I really want to see it. Wait, no, I really want to WRITE a Damage Control movie. Or better yet, a new Damage Control mini arc for Marvel.

Okay, now I’m just getting greedy. What’s your DC Comics Movie Wishlist?

Insert Shocked Faces.

I know the impression of Borders is that of the villain, and for many they may well be. But for me Borders was always the good guy. I am not a fan of Barnes and Noble. I dislike their selection, their design, the culture, and just about everything else. But Borders always felt like more of a community book store. They had a good selection of books from small presses and they were always welcoming to local authors, even little know local authors. When I was first coming of age as a book buyer, the closest book stores were in Ann Arbor. There were lots of used book stores, and of course there was Aunt Agatha’s, but there was also Borders. Up in Flint, where I grew up, there was no local bookstore other than the mall Walden books which didn’t do much for me and always seemed overpriced.

The Borders in Flint opened during my early college years and brought a little bit of Ann Arbor to Flint. This was before Amazon and really even the Internet and Borders let me browse and find new authors just by wandering I never would have found otherwise. I spent so many Friday nights browsing that store, and drinking coffee there, and writing, and buying great books that it came to define me at an important time in my life. Everyone knew that a Borders gift card was always a good choice for any holiday.

Borders was the only place I ever felt confident approaching and talking to girls I didn’t know, something I never did at bars or anywhere else. Anytime I started feeling close to a new friend, I talked them into visiting Borders so we could stroll the aisles and see where we stood on the important issues of literature and society (like should Chicklit be its own section or should it be under romance, or why some crime books were housed under literature and some under Mystery). Again, so much of that impressionable time in my life can be traced back to Borders and now it’s going to be gone.

Even as I’ve aged and grown up, Borders has played a big role in my life. After Spenser was born, he screamed A LOT and on Saturdays one of the things that would calm him down was walking around the mall. When he would finally fall asleep I’d roll through the Borders Express and when Spenser would eventually wake up, those were the only times he wouldn’t wake up screaming. I think the whole environment of the place calmed him down.

And then there’s the writing memories. I’ve written chunks of every novel I’ve completed in a Borders at some point. There were Borders in New York, Chicago, Flint, Ann Arbor, Toledo, Cleveland, and many other places where I left pieces of my creative self and absorbed pieces of the city. For the longest time, Borders was where I went to finish stories because they were the only place without free wi-fi access. So most of my favorite stories were completed at a Borders, including the story (Murder Boy from Thuglit) that would finally see my own name in a printed book on a Borders shelf thanks to Todd Robinson and the marketing muscle of Kensington Books.

I’m sad my own novels won’t ever be on a Borders shelf. I really sad that I’ll never get to take Spenser or Holly to story times there or buy them books there. I’m sad that the Borders just around the corner from me that opened the week I moved to Canton and made me feel like home will be abandoned. Other memories will replace these I’m sure. The independent stores (including Aunt Agatha’s where Spenser and Holly have both spent significant time since they were born) are still alive and will hopefully thrive in the new environment, but I’m a sentimental twit and don’t deal with change well.

RIP Borders. Thanks for everything.

I’ve been reading a lot of Jonathan Ames lately and it’s been good for me. Had I not married and had children I can see myself ending up writing the sort of non-fiction pieces he’s famous for relying mostly on ridiculous honesty and putting ones self in situations for no other purpose than to write about it. I still try to do that, but as a married father of two little kids, the opportunity to put myself in any situations other than work or sleep are rare enough, let alone selfish situations to fill my writing urn. And with all of these new family members depending on me and having expectations of privacy that don’t always fall in line with my own, the honesty has also taken a hit. But I soldier on with an increasingly melancholy voice, looking for any crack in the status quo to exploit.

My thoughts lately, framed in an Amesian context have been on publishing. I contemplated a post that served the dual purpose of congratulating Greg Bardsley for his fantastic book deal and serving as a memorial for Borders, but I couldn’t find the right way into that piece, so here we here. I shouldn’t be writing any of this seeing as my open manuscript in progress is still 190 words shy of meeting my anemic writing goal for today, but this is the way my muse was leaning so I followed the old broad to see what could come of it. I can already see this post devolving into a rambling mess, so I should probably pull out to avoid impregnating the internet with my scatterbrained seed.

Before I go though, one more thing my thoughts have been needling is social networking. I’ve been to Google+ and invested more time looking around there than any other place since Facebook, but still, I don’t hate Facebook enough to really look for a replacement yet. I love Twitter and that still serves as my social media HQ, but my blog was my original social network. Before both places, I communicated with my friends through blog posts, comments, and such. Actually, even before the blog there was the Mystery Writers Forum bulletin board, but good lord that dates me so.

Sometimes I wish I could muster more of the energy I had eight years or so ago when I first started sniffing around the online mystery community but I had the opportunity to go back and read a healthy selection of my writing from back then and my did I want to smack myself upside my head. There was certainly energy but there was also a grating amount of ego and forced personality that I hope has dissipated over the years.

Nowadays my style is more depressing, and less funny than I’d like. I’m always comparing myself to other bloggers and writers, but I think I’m more readable now and I think I have a more mature style as a result. I’m less apt to blow off on petty rages and more likely to present thoughtful analysis of the minutia of my life. While it remains to be seen what that means for the ultimate future and success of this blog, I think it works splendidly for novel prose which is where my focus needs to be these days so all of these other questions of social networking, and deals, and publishing futurcasting can take on a more practical edge.

Note to self: you just wrote almost 700 words in this post while you remain 190 words shy of the 400 word goal you set for the novel that is supposed to be the priority.

UPDATE: I did in fact meet my anemic 400 word goal. Go me. Now I have to go home and clean the house so as not to scare away my mother from further adventures in babysitting my children.

I want writers as characters.

I want characters who swear, not because it’s realistic, but because I like how it sounds.

I want to write scenes that have no bearing on the plot but are interesting in their own right.

I want to comment on the narrative. I know it’s a novel, you know it’s a novel, why shouldn’t the characters?

I want to fiddle with style and structure. I bore easily and like to amuse myself.

I want to write violence but not action scenes.

I don’t care about proper grammar. Especially commas. I hate commas.

I want to write about Detroit. It’s a seedy, depressed, post-apocalyptic city full of corruption at every level and people with little opportunity and a lot of consequences.

I also want to write characters who are strippers, and preachers, and mechanics, and shop rats, and bounty hunters, and students, and drug dealers, and bar tenders, and crooked cops, and honest cops, and retail clerks, and motel clerks, and food service workers, and janitors.

I want to write about baseball. I like football more, but baseball seems more literary.

I want to write short. Under 75,000 words.

I want to write dialogue that always gets cut off.

I want to write 1000 words every day because I write awful early drafts and the quicker I get them out of the way the better.

It’s all going to be drawn from my real life. A hyper-stylized, greatly exaggerated version of my real life. But yeah, we’re talking full-on autobiographical. Don’t take it personally.

I want a lot of readers and critical respect. I can’t have it all but I want it anyway.

I want to be read by old ladies, and old men, people my age and people your parents’ age. I want to be read by people wearing wire framed glasses, black plastic framed glasses, out of date glasses, and sunglasses. Indoors.

I want some people to really hate what I write. For really stupid reasons.

I think that’s it. For now. Until the next meltdown.

Some news, notes, and generally updatery here today. I know I say this, but I really want to start blogging more. I miss it when I’m away from it and I don’t care if I don’t get any comments or any hits (well, I mostly don’t care). I need to get back to writing this for me and if others want to peek in, well go ahead. Just keep your pants up you perverts.

I think my new favorite writer is Amanda Hocking. I haven’t read a single word of her novels, but her blog is a fantastic collection of writing advice, slice of life observations, and puppet fandom. She is witty and smart and engaging and I really hope only good(er) things happen to her in the future. If you have any opinions of her, good or bad, based only on what you’ve read about her, go check out her blog for the full picture. It’s great. Really.

The other big news you all may have heard about is the resurrection of DEMOLITION from the zombie depth of the internet. Yay me. I’m getting everything in order right now, but go check out the site to sign up for updates and go over to Facebook and friend us so you can be one of the cool kids.

Some have asked why I’ve decided to revive the old beast and I’m sure there’s a longer post about that in me somewhere, but for right now it’s mostly because I feel left out of the current crop of writers and publishers online. There are a ton of crime fic mags out there, some good, some less than so, but there’s nothing out there that does what we were doing at DEMOLITION.

If you want a quick summary of what we’re looking for, it’s: literary crime fiction. I know that term is nebulous as all hell, but one thing we offered at DEMOLITION that some of the other joints didn’t was slower, deeper, and sometimes even quiet crime stories. I’m also looking to feature more writers from outside of the crime fiction family. Lastly, I’m also looking at featuring darker crime stories from people known better for lighter stuff. So spread the word. Submissions can be sent here

I still think the best way to promote ebooks is the best way to promote paper books. Make yourself known and available on blogs and webboards and conferences and other places in an interesting and interactive way. If you include a way for readers to get more information on you and your books (links to your website or Amazon links or whatever) they’ll followup if they find your comments interesting. This is an area I need to work on more. I think I’m pretty good about getting the initial post, comment, or review out there, but I suck at the follow-up. I have to try to remember to go back into the original post, comment, or review and follow-up and keep the conversation going. When I was at Do Some Damage this was one of my major weaknesses. Other bloggers were great about going into the comments and following up with the individual commenters. I want to be more like that here.

If the theme of my last post was Excitement, the theme of this one has to be Exhaustion. It’s not that online promotion is hard work, it’s just mentally draining and frustrating because you never know what the right thing to do is. With traditional publishing I know the best game plans. I’ve seen what’s worked for other writers similar to myself and can try to replicate that. Not so in ebooks. The other frustration that comes with all of this do it yourself stuff is what a time suck it is. I’ve spent almost a month now designing covers, tweaking descriptions, and formatting manuscripts for three books. During that time I haven’t written a single word on my novel in progress. I get cranky when I don’t write every day. I think it takes a very special person to make a successful go of it solely as a self-published e-book author and I’m not that kind of person. I want to link my resources with a publishing house and I’m willing to forego some of the royalties in exchange for that.

One thing that I don’t think gets says enough about traditional publishing is it’s strengths. When someone does mention traditional publishing’s strengths, it’s usually in reference to bestsellers. But do you what is almost as good as being a bestseller, and for certain things, even better than being a bestseller? Being a debut author. There’s excitement, and promise, and no baggage.

Right now at least, ebook only seems to be great for midlist writers who have been dropped or are making so much money on ebooks that any new traditional deal. But for debut authors, there’s still a lot to be offered by a traditional publishing house and that’s still where I have my eyes. I also know that if I sign a deal now, it may be a year or more before that book hits the shelf. That’s where ebooks can come into play. I can keep feeding the machine, getting my name out there, and getting people excited about the upcoming new book, much like radio play gets people excited about an upcoming album.