This is a brief post, since I can do no better than to point you to another writer’s comments on Murderati (Mysteries, Murder and Marketing) online:

http://murderati.typepad.com/murderati/2008/11/fatigue-failure-and-faith.html

I haven’t read any of Toni McGee Causey’s work, but I shall be correcting that omission very soon.

Cheers,

Jim

Book signings and appearances are winding down, after a busy first three months since the release of BLOOD ALONE.  On Saturday, November 22nd, I was at the Barnes and Noble store at Blue Back Square in West Hartford, Connecticut.  I had been invited to sign books there as part of an elementary school book fair which was held at the store.  This was one of the few confluences between my day job as head of information technology for the West Hartford Public Schools, and my mystery-writing self.   Both roles have such a firm and separate set of demands on my time and mental energies that it is not difficult to keep them compartmentalized.  But on Saturday, for a change, each combined for a happy outcome.  The B&N store sold out of the BILLY BOYLE paperbacks, and there were only of couple of THE FIRST WAVE trade paperbacks left after my two-hour signing stint.  BLOOD ALONE sold well also, but perhaps in a sign of the times, there were a dozen or so hardcovers left.  Overall, it was a great afternoon; a solid fundraiser for the Morley Elementary School, and a great signing event to draw the promotions season to a close!

One more event is left on my calendar.  Friday, December 5th is the annual holiday party at Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  This evening is a not-to-be-missed event for mystery fans.   Kate brings in mystery authors by the boatload to chat, eat and drink (not to mention selling and signing books)with her customers.  Yours truly will be there, rubbing shoulders (it’s a small store) with Robert Parker, Dennis Lehane and many others.  Check it out at the website below.  For anyone in the area, it is a fantastic evening, and a chance to support a fabulous independent mystery bookstore. 

http://www.katesmysterybooks.com/

Cheers,

Jim

There comes a point in the writing process when you are really done with a manuscript.  You’ve revised so many times you have every page memorized.  Your editor has red-penciled it and you’ve dealt with all those changes, heart-breaking as they are.  You breath deeply when you send the final version off, and hope never to see the thing again until it’s between covers.

But then the copyeditor does her work (I always imagine it’s a her, but I have no idea).  More questions.  Some sound inane, others reasonable, but I hate them all.  Don’t they know I’m done with all this? 

But bless them.  Bless the kind of mind they possess (I did not say warped) which leads them to question everything.  I imagine they have authority issues.   They certainly don’t assume anything.  Case in point; in the book that has (thankfully) recently completed this process-Evil For Evil-I had my main character, circa 1943, use the phrase “Stop and smell the roses.”  Why not?  It’s one of those phrases that has always been around, right?  (Note: If you know who first said that, without peeking at the end of this post, well, maybe you have a promising career as a copyeditor.)

Copyeditors don’t think that way.  Maybe they don’t have authority issues, perhaps they are more like corporate lawyers, who want everything properly footnoted.  Maybe I have authority issues.  Of course, my copyeditor questioned the use of that phrase.  I couldn’t wait to find the origin of that time-worn quotation, I was going to show her.  Was it Emily Dickinson?  She spent a lot of time in the garden.  But no, she didn’t need to stop and smell the roses.  She never went anywhere.  How about that old reliable, Anonymous?  Nope.  Give up?

Ringo Starr.  Really.  No one in recorded history said “Stop and smell the roses” until Ringo released an album of that name in 1981.  Ringo Starr.  The copyeditor was right.  How do they know these things?  Bless them all.

Jim

Anna Shapiro’s third novel and fourth book, Living on Air, was published in May 2006 by Soho Press; the paperback came out in 2007. Kirkus Reviews said, “Shapiro’s portrait of Maude is knife-sharp; she completely inhabits the consuming inner world of a painfully intelligent adolescent girl, showing Maude’s every mood, thought and desire with piercing clarity” and called it “Bracing and raw.” The New York Times Book Review said that “Because it’s a story about art, it’s also a story about ego–the selfish monstrosity that can turn colleagues into competitors and family members into foes, the touchy cornerstone of identity, the inner force that helps us come to an awareness of who we really are.” Bust magazine says, “everything feels real . . . Despite everyone beating up on her, we want to be elegant, sophisticated Maude.” Newsday described it as “witty” and “elegant,” “among the genre’s best, a dazzling exposition of ambition and disdain, envy and insularity . . . Shapiro can bring even the inconsequential into telling relief . . . Always, it is Anna Shapiro’s perfect balance, the knowledge and sharp sympathy that pervade her dialogue and description, that makes Living on Air such a piercing joy.”

The Crocker Art Museum Store and Book Club chose Living on Air to read and to discuss with me in a conference call. It was a rare pleasure to be asked questions about the relations between art, life, and my book by 15 or so intelligent, cultivated, careful readers. I wish I could have met them in person (they were in California; I was in New York). You send words out into the void. Lo and behold: an answer comes. It’s very nice to get a good review, even better to get a great one, but most wonderful to know your words have moved someone.

I’ve been working for a while on a new novel, now nearing its finish. I don’t think I am the best synopsizer (how’s that for a word) of my own work, but here’s a shot:

YOUR OWN PEOPLE

When mid-forties-ish Tansy Gold connects with a bounding, handsome, successful widowed Englishman, it seems like everybody’s fairy tale come true. The trouble is, Tansy isn’t sure if it’s her happy ending, particularly when she has to move from her beloved if ramshackle Vermont farm to London to be with him—and live with his very young children, traumatized by their mother’s death. She doesn’t just have to struggle with them and their ill-wishing relatives, but a whole culture and terrain seemingly engineered to isolate and thwart her. She is clearsightedly ironic about it all, as she has come to be about her own painful early life—in which she nevertheless found a beauty that remains what matters most to her. But her childhood mistreatment leads her to distrust her own desires: is she finding married life hard because she’s damaged—or because this marriage would be hard for anybody? Is she a masochist if she stays—or if she goes? Is she there to prove herself to friends back home? Or is it just that she can’t admit failure? Meanwhile, there are the claims of those around her, a mourning father and children clamoring for emotional rescue. Trying to get through to them is a daily tangle of strategy and explosions as she ponders bailing out—possibly for a lifetime of regret— or staying, possibly for a lifetime of regret.

Cambridge Blue Teaser

This is my first blog entry - anywhere ever I think… I’m really thrilled to be part of the Soho Press story, and also to know that Cambridge Blue and my detective Gary Goodhew will be introduced to readers on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time.

Cambridge Blue is Goodhew’s first murder case; I liked the idea of meeting a detective at the start of his career.

I’m very excited about the launch, it’s something I’ve visualized from time to time but I have to admit my favourite book-related day-dream is the one where I get on a crowded bus or train and look up to see a complete stranger reading my book - wow!  But it’s that kind of wild and crazy imagination that made me become a writer in the first place!

Alison x

PS In case you missed the trailer at the start here it is again… Cambridge Blue Teaser

I recently came across this poster, distributed at the start of the Second World War in 1939 by the British government, specifically the Ministry of Information.  It struck me as an example of calm determination, topped off with the authoritative Crown of King George VI.  As the Blitz began in 1940, these posters were put up in London, but apparently it was never officially released, and did not receive wide distribution.  Here’s a picture of an original poster discovered during renovations to a London building:

It’s still good advice, as we face an economic Blitz and other world-wide challenges.  So thanks to an unknown graphic artist and ministry official.  Your words and design live on!

Calmly carrying on,

Jim

My sister - who is a fiction editor for a large UK publishing house and therefore can’t be dismissed as knowing nothing about titles - told me the other day that she ‘wasn’t sure about’ the title of the novel I’m about to start writing.  I always think of my titles well in advance, because they’re usually integral to the concept of the book, and the one I’m about to start is called A Room Swept White.  Or rather, that’s what I think it’s going to be called, depending on whether my sister succeeds in talking me out of it or not.  It’s a quote from a poem by a British poet called Fiona Sampson, a poem that is all about women in cells, shut away from the world.  The phrase ‘a room swept white’ in particular is a metaphor for ‘the empty self’, the self that has emptied itself of, and freed itself from, the outside world.  As soon as I read it, I knew I wanted it as a title - indeed, it seemed meant to be.  The novel is a psychological thriller about three women who have been released from prison after having their convictions overturned - the women all face a new start, free of guilt and blame (one way in which the title is relevant).  All three women have had their lives shattered and everything they care about taken away from them by prison (another way in which the title is relevant), and then, after their release, somebody starts killing them, one by one (a third way in which the title is relevant - a room swept white could be a metaphor for death.  Oh, okay, I know that’s stretching it, but I’m the author, and if I say that’s a hidden layer of meaning then it jolly well is!)  Anyway, you get the idea - this novel and the title A Room Swept White are destined to be together.  And then along comes my sister and says she doesn’t like it.  Or rather, she likes it, but it sounds, she says, like the title of a literary novel.  It sounds like a slim volume that might be shortlisted for a prize.  I don’t write that sort of book - I write commercial crime novels.  She tells me I need to think about my middle-England average reader, who might find the title confusing.  I believe the word ‘pretentious’ was also mentioned.  What, after all, is ‘a room swept white’?  Does it correspond with anything recognisable from the real world?  Everyone knows what a white room is, but what about the ’swept’ - isn’t that just too weird?  Can one really sweep a room white?

I defended my title vigorously.  No, one can’t sweep a room white (unless one has white paint on the bristles of one’s broom) but who ever said metaphor wasn’t allowed?  Plus, I believe those words conjur up a strong visual image - of a stark, empty white room, yes, but more than that - of a room that has had its former contents violently swept away.  The fact that it’s a slightly unusual, intriguing phrase is, I argued, a good thing.  I’m hoping the book will be an unusual, intriguing psychological thriller.  I remembered, while my sister and I were doggedly contradicting one another, having similar arguments with all sorts of people about the title of my second crime novel, Hurting Distance, the one Soho Press has just published.  ‘But what is hurting distance?’ people asked.  ‘Read the book,’ I said.  ‘It’s all in there - a full and frank explanation of the title’s relevance.’  That novel is all about the worst kinds of danger and betrayal being close to home - only the people you really care about can hurt you really badly, because they’re within…you’ve guessed it: hurting distance.  Now, three years after I wrote the book, I’m so glad I stuck to my guns and called it Hurting Distance rather than something more obvious.

I don’t think you necessarily need to understand a title in order for it to work.  It merely needs to attract readers to the book, and sometimes something slightly mysterious can act like a magnet.  I remember when I first came across An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears; I thought ‘I must read that - I have to know what an instance of the fingerpost is’.  The mystery of the title drew me to the book.  Also, how many crime novels are called something that is so obvious, it’s really boring?  ‘Kill Murder Death Dead’, etc?  I made a vow early in my crime-writing career that I would avoid any obvious death words in my titles.  I think there are people who would see ‘Kill Murder Death Dead’ and think ‘That’s just a  cliched thriller’, but they wouldn’t think that about A Dark-adapted Eye (by Barbara Vine - one of my all-time favourite crime novels) or about An Instance of the Fingerpost - or, I would argue, about A Room Swept White.

A lot of my readers who email me say that they don’t usually read crime, that they didn’t think they liked mystery fiction until they discovered my books.  Titles that aren’t quite so obviously crime-ish are more likely to draw in readers who imagine that genre fiction is not for them.  Good crime fiction is for everyone, of course - it’s the best kind of fiction there is, and surely there’s nobody who wouldn’t think so if they read the right crime masterpiece, but because people have prejudices and preconceived ideas, it’s important for some crime writers not to give their books titles that will make a whole lot of potential readers think, ‘oh, it’s just another cliched crime novel - I needn’t bother with it.’

My third psychological thriller is called The Point of Rescue - it starts with the bodies of a mother and a daughter being found in two bathtubs full of water.  Should I have called it Bloodbath?  That’s a question I’m certainly not going to ask my sister, for fear of what she might say!

It’s been a great start for BLOOD ALONE since the September 1st release of this third in the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries.  It was selected as the “Mystery of the Month” in the September issue of Bookpage, and as an Indie Next Pick for October.   The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association named it as a Killer Book for October, and it popped up as number 4 of their bestseller list for the same month.

With the Billy Boyle mysteries coming out in September, autumn brings a strange, disjointed sensation. I’m promoting the current book, doing final edits on the next, and starting the one to follow.  It’s mildy schizophrenic, and I sometimes have to remind myself which book I’m talking about to readers.  A saving grace is that many are interesting in what’s up next, and like hearing that there are more mysteries and adventures to come.

The 2009 release is titled EVIL FOR EVIL, from a biblical quotation, “Recompense to no man evil for evil.”  It’s set in Northern Ireland, where Billy Boyle is sent to investigate links between the Irish Republican Army and the Germans.  Of course, that sets him up for conflict between his pro-IRA upbringing, the call of duty, and of course Uncle Ike.  As an Irish-American myself, I found it fascinating to write from that prespective, if not somewhat disheartening.  I was brought up myself on the mystique of the “old” IRA, and it saddened me to find even more tragedy than seems fair in the research I did for this book.

EVIL FOR EVIL has gone through its last edits (I hope!) and work is proceeding on the next title.  As for that…well, let’s leave something for the next blog, eh?

Cheers,

Jim

http://www.jamesrbenn.com

That’s how Entertainment Weekly describes Henry Chang’s latest, Year of the Dog. (Are you listening, pay cable development execs? I mean, EW knows whereof they speak, right?)

Meanwhile, the New York Times sits down for a fascinating chat with Mr. Chang about the real-world underpinnings of his novels:

“Chinatown Beat” is the first book in a trilogy that takes place within a period of eight months in Jack Yu’s life. The story revolves around him coming back to the neighborhood because his dad is dying. He would rather not be here. He knows that everything Chinese, in terms of crime, will come his way.

I didn’t have to make much of this up. In “Chinatown Beat,” there’s a scene where Jack’s best friend gets knifed and dies. Something similar happened to me and a friend many years ago. We were hanging out, he was playing guitar, Neil Young or something, and these gang kids had an issue with it and pulled their blades. My friend was cut and spent time in the hospital. The big shootout at the end of “Year of the Dog” is based on a real incident.

Somebody said, “Henry Chang is the Dashiell Hammett of Chinatown.” I got a kick out of that. But the books are less conventional mysteries than studies in Chinese-American culture.