How to Survive a Book Launch

Rebecca Cantrell suggested I post this (mostly) tongue-in-cheek list I made for her, so here you go:


1. Imagine your audience naked. Or, if that fails, at least in underoos.
2. Autograph with a comfortable pen. Bic does not make a comfortable pen.
3. Come up with memorable witticisms to inscribe above your autograph, such as "You Made the Write Choice" or "It's Been a Thrill." Note: memorable is often mistaken for good. This, obviously, is a fallacy.
4. Be prepared for many photographs. Practice by making evil faces in the mirror. The more evil the face, the more likely it will end up on someone's blog. There is no such thing as bad publicity.
5. When you are asked where you get your ideas, tell them it's a secret. And act very, very serious when you say this. They will stop asking. As a bonus, this also reduces the number of photographs taken.
6. Some readers will point out grammatical and/or typographical errors in your novel. Smile at them and kindly ask them how many grammatical and/or typographical errors are in their published novel.
7. Have gifts for your audience, such as food and cash. Bribery can go a long, long way.
8. When giving your public reading, make sure to have a beverage handy, preferably something fermented.
9. People you have not seen in years will come up to you and ask for your signature and will expect you to remember their name. Be prepared to act so overwhelmed by all the excitement that you can't remember anything.
10. Writers are, by nature, loners, and the book launches are, by nature, maelstroms of social interaction. Overcome this obstacle by carrying a notepad with you. When the social interaction proves too cumbersome, retreat to your notepad. This can occur mid-conversation, and people will simply deem you quirky or eccentric.

Web 2.0 to Book Deal in 3 Minutes

Re: posting this from Open Culture with thanks to Dan Colman.

After Seth Harwood got his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he began publishing in traditional magazines and journals, as most young writers do. But those publications were slow to launch his career. Things changed, however, once he started publishing online. And they really changed when he released his crime novel Jack Wakes Up as a free podcast (via iTunes, RSS Feed, & MP3) and distributed it through social networks. Web 2.0 broadened the reach of his work, attracted fans worldwide, and ultimately landed Harwood a nice book deal with Random House. (RH will be publishing Jack Wakes Up in print early next month). In the short video above, Harwood gives you a quick look inside the making of his podcast, and how it brings exposure to his work. If you’re an up-and-coming writer, there’s certainly something here to think about. You can find out more about Seth’s work at SethHarwood.com.

Yankees Revenge Fantasy: Hyperlocals and the Boston Globe

Print media is suffering.  The New York Times ran an article yesterday entitled, In Boston, Paper's Peril Hits a Nerve.  In order to survive, the Boston Globe needs to re-tool.  The paper is projected to lose $85 million this year.

Right next to the Globe article, the Times printed News Without Newspapers.  The story profiled the rise of "hyperlocals."  These websites publish "news near you," articles about the neighborhood.  Problems at the local diner.  Items of interest if you're in the area.

Hyperlocal reporting can be spotty as bloggers move from one coffee shop to the next, laptops and digital cameras in tow.  There's no quality control over the writing or content.  Do we really care if somebody unearths an old cow bell in their basement?  Hyperbolic I know, but you get the point.  Niche sites, some venture capitalists believe, may be the next wave for garnering ad revenues.

The placement of these two articles—I measured half an inch between them—strikes me as darkly ironic.  Twelve days ago the Times threatened to sell its stake in the Globe.  It may shutter the Boston operation if no buyers show.  Is the hyperlocal article a warning to Globe executives who, no doubt, read what their owners report?

See what happens if you're not profitable.

It's spring.  We're a few games into the start of baseball season.  The two articles conjure up the ultimate revenge fantasy.  Yankees fans are still smarting from the 2004 playoffs, still feeling a dull ache from that unlikely rally by the Red Sox.  Perhaps the layout in yesterday's Times was retribution. 

Hey, Red Sox fans.  Get your box scores from drunk bloggers camped out in the Fenway bleachers.

The potential failure of venerable publications, from the Boston Globe to the struggling Seattle Post-Intelligencer, is no laughing matter.  We depend on seasoned reporters to ferret out information.  They break stories, I like to think, in a responsible and professional manner.  

How can we transfer knowledge if we can't pay people to unearth it? 

The Internet is the most powerful delivery system in the history of mankind.  It accelerates the flow of information into our homes.  Never before has there been such a powerful carriage of knowledge.

The impact on reliability, however, has been less spectacular.  It's still expensive to research and write stories.  One school of Internet thought argues we are all reporters.  We watch events around us.  We break stories that keep the world honest and informed—Twitter style.  I don't buy it.  You know what they say.

You get what you pay for.

Consider our financial news.  I've been following Bernie Madoff, Swiss Banks, and financial scandals on my blog:  www.acrimoney.com.  I appreciate reporters.  They spend their days on the front lines, researching and writing as only they can.  The last I checked, for example, it's a career-limiting gesture to blog about your employers.  In the absence of professionals, I fear the Internet will become the world's most powerful vehicle for delivering...well...garbage.

Last I checked, we pay to haul rubbish away.

“Make it real.”

That’s what thriller author David Morrell once advised me about writing novels. At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant. After all, a novel is by definition fiction, a carefully contrived blend of plot, setting, and characters. How can it be real?

But after thinking about it, I realized what David was telling me was that for a reader to be able to suspend belief and get swept up in the story enough to care about the outcome, the story has to feel real.

This is always a risk for a novelist who uses an actual setting. All well and good if the reader has never been to the location where a novel is set, but what if it’s a place they know well? I’m currently reading a mystery that takes place in an area where I lived for 30 years. As I’m reading, I keep getting pulled out of the story. Even though I don't want to, I can't help weighing the details I'm reading against what I know.

In another instance, I read a book set in Dallas, Texas in which the author obviously knew the area like the back of their hand - and proved it by naming so many streets and landmarks, the story started to read like a travel guide.

Some authors don’t concern themselves overmuch about reality. I’ve always loved what Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child wrote in their authors’ notes for Reliquary: “It should be noted that in certain important instances the authors have altered, moved, or embellished what exists under Manhattan for purposes of the story.”

I find their hubris incredibly freeing. While I write science thrillers, my novels are not a scientific treatise, they’re fiction; meant not to educate, but to entertain. If the truth works, terrific. If not, like Preston & Child, I’ll twist my science until it does what the story wants.

Setting, however, can be tricky. I've never been to Antarctica, the location of my first novel, and while I read the online journals of people who spent time there, and I have plenty of personal experience with snow and cold, the cold truth is, I made much of it up.

That’s why I’m so excited to be able to travel to the location of my next novel. There's nothing like hands-on research. It elevates an author’s prose, so that the reader absolutely knows the author knows what they're talking about.

Plus, seeing things first-hand, hearing small comments made by the people who live there -- just getting from point A to point B -- will generate so many details and ideas I never could have dreamed up on my own, I know I'll have no problem following David’s advice.

Karen Dionne is the author of Freezing Point, a thriller Douglas Preston called "a ripper of a story," with other rave endorsements from David Morrell, John Lescroart, and many others. Her novel published October 2008 from Berkley Books.

Damn Yankees

Okay, so this is going to get a lot of play among the thriller community. As reported in UK trade publication, The Bookseller, three British thriller writers have formed The Curzon Group to “end the reign of the production-line American thriller writers” and return the focus to domestic British authors.

Here's a link to the story: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/83107-curzon-group-attacks-us-thrillers.html

And here's a link to their website: www.greatbritishthriller.com Note the jingoistic quote from Jeffrey Archer on the first page. Hmmm, Jeffrey Archer accusing others of churning out cookie cutter bestsellers....

They name-check James Patterson, John Grisham and Dan Brown as three of the main culprits when it comes to adhering to a rigid formula. By the way, if anyone actually has that secret formula, please email me.

I'll come clean and confess that I find the intellectual snobbery which surrounds the work of these writers, well, boring. As I do the snobbery towards the genre from 'literary' writers. Brown, Grisham and Patterson are consummate storytellers. Reaching a mass audience as they do is a rare ability. Archer has it too incidentally.

I'll also confess to the fact that while there are a number of British thriller writers I absolutely love, such as Simon Kernick, Zoe Sharp, and of course the Godfather himself, Lee Child, I read way more American writers than I do Brits.

Debate is healthy, this is a great bit of publicity for the three writers involved, but to suggest that there is some kind of cultural discrimination going on...gimme a freakin' break.

Sean Black's debut novel Lockdown is published on July 30th, 2009.

When A Good Thing Goes Bad

I can remember using a typewriter on one of my many unpublished novels back in the mid ‘80s. Soon afterward, two friends pulled me kicking and screaming into the computer generation. I finally welcomed the scary process because of spell checker.

Today, of course, spell checker is only a little of what writers get from writing programs. There is auto correct, a favorite of mine, since my mind often works far ahead of my fingers, and I am always transposing letters. I have many words, like because, in auto correct. For whatever reason, when I am going along at a good pace, I spell because “becuase.” No rhyme or reason, it usually comes out that way, but with auto correct, the computer fixes it. That’s a major saver when I click on spell check.

Good things in life have a tendency to turn bad and it’s usually because of the involvement of humans. Take nuclear power. If that were all it was, our power bills would be low, our skies would be clean, and maybe global warming would never have happened. However, some genius figured a way to make a world-destroying weapon using nuclear waste . . .

I am not sure which came first, the weapon idea or the power idea, but you get my point. Now, you want to know how this connects to computers, right?

Following the computer came the Internet. Wow! Research at your fingertips. I was a reporter in Boston and when you needed information, if it wasn’t in the paper’s morgue, you went to the library or the source. Image that, walking the streets of Boston in rain or cold or summer humidity to work on a story.

Not today, all any reporter has to do is Google and all that research is there for them, in the air-conditioned comfort of the city room.

That’s a bad thing. It has taken the human contact I had as a reporter out of the process and in journalism, the human contact is very important. In addition, it makes journalists lazy.

Nevertheless, I do admit, for research as a mystery writer, Google is a benefit. I am fortunate to have friends and contacts in military intelligence, and the local police force, as well as the national weather service. These personal contacts have been of more concrete help in my writing than if I only had Google.

Now we enter the millennium and humans are still at work screwing up good things.

To a writer, time is everything. Time to write, edit, think, read. I would guess that most writers would argue in favor of a 30-hour day, not a 24-hour day. And, of course, 30-hours wouldn’t be enough.

Writing can be lonely. You open the day by staring at blank computer screen and you have to get what’s in your head onto it. Sounds easy, but ask anyone that has tried it. Writers, and I am generalizing here, are great procrastinators. We don’t need to be offered more ways to put off writing. We need more incentives to sit down and write.

A little more than a year ago, a writer friend knew I was promoting my book, Chasin’ the Wind, and suggested I get on FaceBook. I did and it was great for my procrastination process. Then another writer friend sent me another site and soon I had a list of sites and blogs I HAD TO READ.

Here is where a good thing has gone bad.

My usually schedule was to get up at 6 a.m., make my café con leche and write until 9 a.m., or, on a good day, until noon. Then I would have lunch and read into the early afternoon and somewhere, if possible, I would watch the taped edition Morning Joe.

Now, I have never sat from six to nine or noon without getting up. I get another café con leche, I listen to CNN while pondering some dialogue I want to get right, or try to figure out how to get my character out of a situation, realistically, that I have put him or her in. Sometime I face the blank page and panic because I fear writer’s block.

But, eventually, I get my time in. My word count (I note it each day) maybe only a couple of hundred words, or a thousand. I also edit as I write. So, if stuck on something, I will often go back and reread and edit.

What I found myself doing, after my friend turned me onto FaceBook, was checking my emails at 6 a.m., answering my FaceBook friends and then going to the blogs I HAD TO READ. It is amazing how fast three-hours can fly by when you are on the Internet. Also, I find those three-hours are mentally exhausting and that hurts my writing.

I cannot change the Internet, but I can control that section on my computer. I do check my emails at 6 a.m. because I have family around the country and it is how we communicate (though I would rather use the phone). However, I do not answer emails from FaceBook until late afternoon or early evening, and I have cut many of the blogs out that I HAD TO READ. I must admit to enjoying Crime Always Pays and Criminal Brief daily. I also check other writers’ blogs, but no longer daily.

You cannot afford to waste time and the clutter on the Internet steals your time, especially if you are a writer. The computer is a great thing and the Internet is amazing, just don’t let it takeover your life.

www.michaelhaskins.net

Buy Indie!

As some of you may know by now, May 1st is International Buy Indie Day. Artists, musicians, and writers are teaming up to support local independent retailers. Numerous authors, from John Scalzi to Jason Pinter, are offering swag in exchange for a May 1st receipt from a local independent bookstore.

As much as I love amazon.com (with the exception of this past weekend), Borders, and Barnes & Noble, independent bookstores remain the premier forum for independent publishers (such as Nuclear Winter Wonderland's publisher Kunati) and need our support, now more than ever given the current economic morass.

My favorite bookstore when I was growing up was a small shop called A Novel Place. The owners had incredible taste and introduced me to authors I would never have found on my own wandering Barnes & Noble. The owners (a father and son) truly loved books, and I owe much of my adolescent reading list to them.

And then they closed.

Don't take your local independent retailer for granted. Buy indie on May 1st. Buy indie as often as you can. And if the book you buy at that independent bookstore happens to be mine...well, there's nothing wrong with that, is there?

Everybody's talking about Susan Boyle, but why are we crying?

People love an underdog. The reaction around the world to British singer Susan Boyle’s recent audition on Britain’s Got Talent makes that clear. Back in 2007, opera singer Paul Potts wowed us with his rags to riches story when he eventually took the top prize on that show after a similarly auspicious beginning.

The reason why we love to cheer the underdog isn't hard to figure out. 99% of us live our lives in unremarkable mediocrity. Sure, with food on the table, a loving family, and a roof over our heads we count ourselves blessed, but that doesn’t mean we’re satisfied. We look at our comfortable, middle of the road existences, and in our hearts, we want more. Many of us try. We start businesses, take online classes, get a second degree, take up oil painting, write a novel. Many of us succeed, albeit most often at a mediocre level. Many fail, then comfort themselves by saying that at least they tried.

And then there are those few like Susan and Paul who challenge the stereotypes and take the risks that break them free of the ordinary at a level that's positively inspiring.

The desire to live life on a larger scale is a big part of why readers are drawn to thrillers. In a thriller, typically, the hero or heroine is, well - heroic. Often attractive, always intelligent and multi-talented - the kind of people we want to be. Not necessarily on a James Bond scale, but certainly a Jack Reacher. Flawed, but still able to take down a bar full of baddies without breaking a sweat.

Paul and Susan's larger than life stories are incredibly appealing. Every time I watch their audition videos, I get misty-eyed. As a thriller author who didn’t cry at her own daughter’s wedding, I wonder why.

Then I start thinking about how I can pack some of that underdog emotional magic into my next novel. Freezing Point has been called "fascinating," "nail-biting," and "terrifying." I'd love to see if I can also make my readers cry.

Karen Dionne is the author of Freezing Point, a thriller Douglas Preston called "a ripper of a story," with other rave endorsements from David Morrell, John Lescroart, and many others. Her novel published October 2008 from Berkley Books.

Shadows: Rich and Beautiful Writing

I’ve always enjoyed reading journalist Don Graves’ column CANADIAN MYSTERIES in The Hamilton Spectator. So I was thrilled when he gave LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU a nod last week. Here’s an excerpt:

Let the Shadows Fall Behind You by Kathy-Diane Leveille peels away the layers behind a murder, the need to deceive, to hide the past and cover it up with a pattern of respectability despite a trail of ruined lives and festering questions that could destroy the future.

A young woman returns to a small East Coast town to attend a reunion. Her instincts warn her against it as her lover has disappeared without a trace…

A gentle pace with compassionately descriptive writing is the right vehicle for author, Leveille, to tell a story of relationships that unravel as old, uncertain conflicts surface and begin to agonizingly make sense to the young woman.

A murder, a past still preying upon the souls of those involved, is always an unwelcome and intrusive guest. Let the Shadows Fall Behind You tells that chronicle with poignancy, wistful descriptions of small town life and punchy characterizations that expose hard truths.

Sadly rich and beautiful writing.

Kathy-Diane Leveille
Author of LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU (Kunati Books)
ISBN-978-1601641670

Moments of Terror

Running on a few hours sleep, I slung on a Kevlar vest over my shirt, checked the charge on my radio, and walked down the corridor to the door that led out onto the parade ground.

No sooner had I turned the handle than the door burst inwards. Two men sporting ski masks, and 9mm pistols, bundled me back inside.

A hand clamped down hard on my shoulder, forcing me to the floor. The business end of a Glock pressed into the back of my neck.

It was exactly what I’d been told to expect.

Hours of boredom.

Moments of terror.

Two years before I finished what became my debut novel, LOCKDOWN, I had an idea for a TV drama about the burgeoning high-end private security sector. I sat down to write the pilot episode, but halfway through had a rather depressing realisation. I had no idea who my characters really were. I mean, they had names, they walked in and out of scenes, they said stuff to each other, but, somehow, they lay dead on the page.

Dejected, I put the script aside and went back to my paid TV work. But, my fascination with this world, wouldn’t leave me alone.

Six months later, I bit the bullet, and enrolled on a twenty-four day close protection course. The first two weeks would be spent in a dilapidated army camp in Wales. Then we’d fly to the Czech Republic for firearms training before returning to the UK for final assessment.

The candidates were a motley crew. They included, among others, an ex-German Special Forces sniper whose only words of English referenced performing a sexual act outlawed in several southern states on the members of the Taliban. There was also an American who bore a startling resemblance to Harry Potter (long after the films have dried up), a Portugese helicopter pilot who did something very nasty to himself during a live exercise, and a Canadian who claimed to be a member of La Cosa Nostra. Oh yeah, and a rather nervous screenwriter.

Thankfully, our instructors were the real deal. Both former members of the British Royal Military Police’s specialist close protection unit, Andy and Cliff had served all over the world, making sure that the great and the good stayed in one piece.

Over a three-week period, they gave me an unparalleled insight into their world. In addition to scaring the hell out of me on numerous occasions (see the opening to this post), they taught me many of the technical aspects of their job. But, far more importantly, they gave me a handle on my characters.

I came away with so much material, and what I felt was such a fresh take, that I jettisoned the TV script and wrote a novel instead. I also had the most enjoyable three weeks of my life running around Europe pretending to be Jack Bauer. Or, rather, Ryan Lock.

LOCKDOWN by Sean Black is published in hardcover on July 30^th by Bantam/Transworld. He is currently at work on the second book in the series, LOCKUP.