Another Thought About E-readers

I live in New York City. New Yorkers spend inordinate amounts of time on buses and trains and whether we are lucky enough to have a seat or are standing, squashed among a crowd of commuters and leaning precariously against a narrow aluminum pole, most of us spend our commuter time reading.

A few months back, I was at the Festival Book Club in North Fort Myers, Florida, which is a community where people rarely ride on public transportation of any description. When the topic of the kindle and other e-readers came up, I mentioned that one of the downsides of e-readers is that it lacks the free advertising of having the cover of an anthology containing one of my stories in full view of a captive audience of forty or fifty (or more) people in a subway car.

The other day, Melanie Benjamin wrote an article in the Huffington Post called To Judge A Nook By Its Cover.

Melanie focused on the communal aspect of public reading on mass transit. The nod of the head to someone who is reading a book you found fascinating or the exchange of smiles between two people reading the same book.

I enjoyed Melanie’s article and thought you would too. You can find it here.

Terrie

10 Common Errors Spell Check Misses

There's always one or another of these lists appearing, but because this one caught the errors I see and especially detest, I'm re-posting it from Shine.

Its about marshalling you're apostrophes and possessives, people! : )

I'm only re-posting the image Yahoo Shine used, but editorially, isn't it odd to illustrate a list of computer spell-check misses with a hand-written error, also corrected by human hand, which doesn't match any of the offending items on the list? Happy to regurgitate it, but I'm just sayin'.

Whatever Number It Is For the Money

Opening caveat: I begrudge no one as sweet a living from their honest efforts as they can manage. Not Ever. Having said that, though, we're all pals here, right? We can chat and kvetch about other writers' mammoth deals? I thought so. Let me refill my coffee.

Janet Evanovich, as you may have read in Julie Bosman's NYT blog, is jumping ship from St. Martin's publishing house after sixteen Stephanie Plum novels. She's heading over to Random House for four new novels: 2 Plums and 2 in her 'Unmentionable' series. The rumblings have been covered for the past couple of weeks at Deadline.com and reported that Evanovich was asking $50 million for that bundle of work. St. Martin's bowed out and Random House came to the table.

Concurrently, the first movie based on the Trenton bounty hunter's adventures, One For the Money, is being filmed in Pittsburgh (not New Jersey?-- outrage!) with Katherine Heigl playing the lead. Above and left is her in character as Plum. Info and image via Flynet via Jezebel.

Easiest topic first: What do you think of the casting and location?

Deeper Dish: If you're St. Martins, and this movie drives new readers to the Plum series, how great is it that you already own the whole dang backlist starting with the novel titled to match the movie? Letting the production company $pend for marketing and OFTM name recognition, in the best case, your backlist is suddenly en fuego and you didn't spend an extra dime. (Okay, WoM Laura suggested St. Martin's might opt to run off some movie tie-in jackets, but only if sales were really cooking.)

Crystal Ball Time: Plums sell very well, despite a swelling tide of disgruntlement in the reviews, mostly to do with the author's choice not to let the character change much. Evanovich prioritizes her audience that wants more, more, more of the same thing they love. After 16 novels already, some readers craving character transformation and conflict resolution have dropped the series. But Evanovich has promised in appearances that the hamster will never die of old age, and Stephanie will never finally choose between Morelli and Ranger. Do you think this puts Random House in a good position having her next 2 Plums, or will they feel interchangeable with the previous 16? How do you drum up fresh excitement when the only difference is the publisher's name on the spine?

If you're paying $12.5 million in advance per title-- 2 for a series unknown to me--how many unit sales do you need to recoup that? A LOT, I'd think. And given Evanovich's lengthy time on bestseller lists already, how many brand new eyeballs can you expect to reach as prospective new sales when so many readers already know what Plum's about? Especially if readers have already dropped her or made a decision of NO, and there's no subsequent change in the series arc, how do you lure them into re-sampling?

My Personal Prognostication: The only way this can be financially worthwhile for Random House is if Janet Evanovich launches a new, hugely successful, entirely different brand with this Unmentionable series. RH can own that from scratch, but it'll have to be HUGE!

Next or First, she has to revise her philosophy, and terminate the Plum series with something long-time readers, and even series droppers, will be categorically UNABLE TO RESIST. I'm talking a Plum elopement/shotgun wedding/Mazur funeral with return as zombie/sex threesome-type thing over the last 2 books. Big events with juicy payoffs and no take backs. The Unmentionable series then becomes the only way to get Evanovich's inimitable voice, you can at least make some Plum series hay out of the movie cross-promotion, and you cannibalize everyone who's every read Plum for a blowout sales finale. Everything Must Go!

Sure, the resolution of long-standing, essential series tensions might squelch movie arcs, but knowing the ending hasn't hurt in Twilight's case. (Of course, blockbusters are black swans, usually sell to kids and adults, and lawyers may already have walled off that avenue.) However, with 50 million budgeted in red, if I were Random House, I'd let the film people worry about their own foolish investments.

I don't know if this is RH's plan, because gi-normous advances that can never earn out seem, from my lowly perspective, to be part of their operational raison d'etre. Even my proposal would be audacious, requiring luck, timing, and fantastic, new series content to succeed. But if manufacturing some dramatic new opportunity isn't what RH envisioned when negotiating, and they plan to let the sales play out while trending as they are, St. Martin's can pat their own backs all the way to the royalty bank. They will benefit most, and RH will have vastly overpaid for Rocky 7. Again.

Hint Fiction Anthology Update

Robert Swartwood, the editor of W.W. Norton's Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, has announced book signing dates on the west and east coasts after the release of the anthology this November.

Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California, will be the site of a book signing on Wednesday, November 3, 2010, and McNally Jackson in New York City will hold a book signing on Wednesday, November 10, 2010.

In addition to the blurb provided by Jodi Picoult, two more blurbs have been obtained for the anthology:

“Some of these stories suggest entire novels in just few words. So, in this small book, you have a whole library. It’s reading at the speed of light.” — Robert Shapard, editor of Sudden Fiction and Flash Fiction.

“The stories in Robert Swartwood’s Hint Fiction have some serious velocity. Some explode, some needle, some bleed, and some give the reader room to dream. They’re fun and addictive, like puzzles or haiku or candy. I’ve finished mine but I want more.” — Stewart O’Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster and Songs for the Missing.

I will be attending the signing on November 10 in New York City ~ I'm still pinching myself!

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Two Sentence Tuesday

In typical fashion, I am scraping together my contest entries this week and getting them in at the last possible moment. One, I had to send Express Mail because I didn't realize it was a "due by" date and not a "postmarked by" date. Yikes!

Two sentences from the short story I finished about an hour ago that I will be dropping off tomorrow since I am leaving town on Wednesday: It was not only Sam I killed. I betrayed Consuela as well, and the children.

Two sentences I read come from a blog called "Are You Gonna Eat That?" by a woman named Julie Sumerell. The post--Collagen Shmollagen (Or a Big Ol' "Screw It")--is worth reading, especially for women. I often agree with her posts, but rarely more so than with this particular sentiment:

At this point I’m convinced that a Hell Mouth has opened, and the humidity is the souls of the damned walking among us. I can think of no worse punishment for sins than spending eternity in a state of sogginess. I’ll bet they smell like onions.

And you? What's going on in your reading/writing world? Let us know and we'll update the blog as the day goes along.

Be sure to check the comments for Dorte's lines
Terri also has lines in the comments this week
Crystal Phares is back, with two lines and a beautiful personal post on her blog
Terry Odell's lines are in the comments, and she has a guest on her blog.

My Town Monday: Can't Get There From Here, SC

On the 4th Mondays of the month, WoM hosts My Town Monday!

I just got back from one of my favorite kinds of vacations, a road trip. There was lots of time for exploring and plenty of lazing around, but we went through seven states and covered almost two thousand miles when we were done. The truck has a swell GPS, and not simply for roads, but hot dog restaurants and ATMs. I've even had it know enough fine detail to route me through the windy paths of a sprawling cemetery. However, there are always municipal plans that don't happen and happenings that don't get properly reported. Time nibbles away at the currency of your data. While tooling around northwest of the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina, here's what we encountered:

Nope. According to the GPS screen, we are NOT on a road. No way, no how.

Someone should tell that to the rest of the traffic on this not-very-newly blacktopped stretch. Of course, that's not such a strange occurrence, especially in recently developed areas, but this next reality/GPS conflict was weirder.

My, what a well-marked intersection of roadways. Look at the specificity of angles, offshoots, and extensions. Well, perhaps it's down to state budget problems, but rather than vistas of handy throughways, here's what you really see from that point at that intersection.

Real dead. Like ending in a pile of see-ment blocks and litter dead.

In this direction, the wallflower's been beautifully striped, but she's still got no future prospects. Glorified driveway.

By this point, they might have run out of Dead End signs and had to go with the No Outlet model. They'd certainly run out of asphalt.

UPDATE: Barrie Summy shares the trifecta of tea, old books, and delicious baked goods from Julian, CA

Evil J Winter takes us back in time to the mysterious Hopewell mounds at Ft. Ancient, OH

The founder of My Town Mondays, Travis Erwin, shows the only thing more classic than Cadillacs is his post about them from Amarillo, TX

Gabriele Goldstone takes her faithful Buddy through Assiniboine Park, Winnipeg

Barbara Martin's post about Kicking Horse Pass also has a lot to do with Canadian Pacific trains

Feel free to share your wanderings at the official My Town Monday blog or the comments here and let me know where to link!

The suspense is killing me!

The “Killer Thrillers” contest over at the NPR website is in full swing. Last month, they asked their audience to submit suggestions for the 100 most suspenseful novels ever written.

The response was overwhelming with over 600 nominations being pared down to 182. Now it’s time to vote. Check it out here and make your mark for your favorites. So many choices.So hard to decide. Authors like Elmore Leonard, Laura Lippman and Stieg Larsson, plus spine-tingling classics such as The Boys From Brazil, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Dracula. But you only get 10 votes, so make them count!

O. Henry

William Sydney Porter, also known as O. Henry, was released from prison on this date in 1901, after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank in Austin, Texas.

Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. As a young man, he moved to Austin, Texas, hoping to avoid tuberculosis in a drier environment. He worked as a pharmacist, a draftsman, a journalist, and a bank teller. After marrying Athol Estes, he started The Rolling Stone, a weekly devoted to cartoons and humorous stories.

After facing charges of embezzlement, Porter fled to Honduras. After he learned his wife was dying of tuberculosis, he returned to Austin. He was sent to a federal penitentiary in Ohio. He began writing stories in prison to support his young daughter, but he created an alias of O. Henry so his readers wouldn't know he was in prison. He completed twelve stories that were all eventually published in national magazines.

After his release from prison, he moved to New York City. The Saturday Evening Post published "The Ransom of Red Chief."

He worked for New York World, where he wrote a short story a week from 1903 through 1906 (how impressive is that?). His stories specialized in everyday people, usually ending with a surprise twist ("the O. Henry ending"). In writing a story, he said, "the unusual is the ordinary rather than the unexpected."

O. Henry remarried in 1907, but the marriage ended by 1909, due to his alcoholism. He died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1910.

Several O. Henry short stories, as well as varied explanations of how Porter might have chosen his alias, can be found here.

The O. Henry Prize Stories is an annual collection of the year's twenty best stories published in American and Canadian magazines, written in English. The 2010 issue was edited by Laura Furman.

My favorite O. Henry story is "The Gift of the Magi." How about you ~ what's yours?

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

FBF: Mongoose R.I.P.

William F. Buckley, Jr. was widely known as the erudite conservative commentator whose public affairs television show, Firing Line, ran for more than thirty years. He was also the founder and editor of the National Review. Odd as it sounds for a wild-eyed liberal like me, I adored Bill Buckley. I felt a terrible loss at his death in 2008. Not one of today’s conservative talk show hosts can hold a candle to him in either presentation or factual reference.

When he ran for Mayor of New York City I followed along like a groupie from speaking engagement to speaking engagement, just to hear him talk. I disagreed with him on basically everything but I loved the way he spoke. He made his ideas sound reasonable even if they were different from my own. He put words together as though classical music was playing softly in the background.

Buckley did do a two year stint in the CIA in the early fifties, so it is not surprising that when he decided to write fiction he wrote spy novels with a hero named Blackford Oakes who is a CIA agent.

Mongoose R.I.P. is one of the best of the Blackford Oakes novels.

It weaves a story around the Kennedys, the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the fictional inevitability of Dallas.

If you like reading about the spy world, you will enjoy Bill Buckley’s view of it.

For more Forgotten Books click on over to visit Patti Abbott, keeper of the list.

Terrie

Short Fiction Contest

Jason Evans has announced another short fiction contest on his Clarity of Night blog, this one is called, "Uncovered."

The theme and contest photo (left, taken by Jason Evans) is inspired by Stephen Parrish's novel,The Tavernier Stones. Using this photo as inspiration, compose a short fiction (or poetry) piece of no more than 250 words in any genre or style.

The deadline is Wednesday, July 28th, 10 p.m. Eastern Time.

Jason and Stephen will conduct the final judging. Several prizes will be awarded:

1st Place: $100 Amazon gift certificate and a signed copy of THE TAVERNIER STONES
2nd Place: $50 Amazon gift certificate
3rd Place: $35 Amazon gift certificate
4th Place: $30 Amazon gift certificate
5th Place: $20 Amazon gift certificate
Readers' Choice Award: $40 Amazon Gift certificate and a signed copy of the THE TAVERNIER STONES
$15 Night Owl Prize (chosen at random from the entries not posted)

If you go for it, good luck!

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Point of View

I recently read a novel that shall remain nameless, by an author who shall also remain nameless. It was a different type of mystery for me, a genre that revolved around the RV camping life

The jacket copy and blurbs on the back suggested that the author was well known and that the story would be interesting and entertaining. I started reading with enthusiasm and ended with despair.

I’d read a paragraph or two and have to go back. At first, I thought that it was just me, that my mind was wandering and I was losing concentration. But after a few chapters, I realized that the problem was point of view. I just couldn’t figure out which character—there were seven main characters and over ten minor ones—was telling the story at any specific point.

One of the first things we discussed when I began novel writing classes was point of view. In general, each chapter should be from the perspective of a specific character’s POV. At the very least, there should be a break if another POV is needed. When you are in a character’s POV, it’s important for the reader to know whose thoughts or voice it is. This character can’t know what other characters are thinking, or feeling or planning, unless it’s stated through dialogue.

The author of the novel, who has written several books, did not seem to think this distinction was necessary. To the contrary, this author mixed everyone’s POV together in nearly every chapter. It was a mish-mash that made the story hard to follow and ultimately, not very interesting.

I did finish the book although it was pretty obvious right from the beginning who the guilty party was. There were no real surprises, at least from my point of view.

Anne Zouroudi Winners!

The punch bowl has spoken! The five winners of fresh new copies of The Messenger of Athens are:

Kari Wainright
DarcyO
Cindy Kershner
Terri
skkorman

Congratulations! Look for email in your inbox and if you don't see it, drop me a line!

Two Sentence Tuesday

Here it is, Tuesday again. I wish I could tell you I'd been productive, but I hate to lie! I've been busy trying to get organized, among other things, for the RWA conference coming up next week. Any of our other readers going?

This week, I've been reading Barry Eisler's Inside Out. It's excellent, as is most of his stuff. Here are a couple sentences to give you some flavor:

There were people of all ages, mostly Filipino but a few foreigners, too, convicted murderers serving life sentences alonside ordinary people who couldn't afford bail and were just waiting for their day in court. It was so hot the concrete walls caused second-degree burns, so crowded the prisoners had to sleep side by side on the ground in shifts, and stank so badly from the accreted decades of piss and nonstop sweat and endemic diarrhea that you could feel the miasma on your skin like something moving and alive, something trying to worm its way into your pores so it could dissolve you from the inside out.

My own sentences this week are not nearly so eloquent. They come from a short story which is due alarmingly soon, so I have to finish it!

Notebook man has in on a radio, and after a minute, his slouching posture straightens and he waves Ginger over. "Fuck me, Mike, you aren’t going to believe it, but that gun belongs to a murder victim. Guy was shot to death last night up in Harlem. More ’n likely, same weapon."
"Dumbass," opines Ginger Mike. "Another civvie who shouldn’t have a gun."

And you? Have you been productive this week? Is your writing going well, going badly, not going at all? Have you read anything? Let us know and we'll link to you!

• Leah J Utas has a bit of truth on her site this week.
  

MTM: Volunteers in a Small Town

After we'd been living in our town a couple of months, we heard a noise one day we'd been hearing with some frequency and my husband said to me "what on earth is that thing? At first I thought it was the train, but it's not."

No, I explained, the town has strategically set air horns for when the volunteer fire department is needed for a call. My husband, who'd spent his entire life in cities, couldn't believe that in our new home our lives were in the hands of a volunteer force. Of course, he signed up as soon as he could.

Once a year, we celebrate that force, and that celebration is joined by the surrounding townships in the annual Mount Kisco Fire Parade. This year, I believe there were about 25 companies represented. Something like 60 trucks all told. Plus marching bands, ambulance corps, fife and drum...you name it. It had a bigger turnout than the Memorial Day parade, partially because it was deadly hot on Memorial Day. The street vendors were out in force, selling balloon Dora The Explorers, balloon Spongebobs, bubble makers, caps, plastic guns, all the junk a kid could possibly want. And some of the kids did want that stuff. But many simply watched, wide-eyed, as the trucks rolled by, lights flashing.

Our town is not small, as such things go. At the last census, its population was approximately 10,000, and I am sure it's grown in the past ten years. We have four fire "houses." Two engine/pump companies, one ladder company, and one that does mostly traffic control and safety for emergency scenes. We also have volunteer ambulance corps.

So if you live in my town--or in any of the towns around me--and something goes wrong, it's volunteers who will be taking care of you. They'll save your life, save your house, save your pets, save your belongings. They'll pry you out of your car wreck, stop the engine from burning, patch you up, and get you to the hospital. And they don't get paid to do it. They have regular jobs.

Different townships maintain their volunteer forces in different ways. Some places, members work regular "shifts." That's not the case in Mount Kisco, where they're always desperate for volunteers. Every member of our volunteer fire department has a pager, and when it goes off, they respond. A couple of weeks ago, my husband's pager went off at 4:10 in the morning. He'd gotten home from the previous call at 1:30.

My husband's house averages slightly more than one call a day. I believe last year they went on 385 or so. Most of these are not, thank goodness, actual structure fires. They're automatic alarms, downed electrical lines the FD has to babysit until Con Ed shows up, reports of gas leaks, even--and the first time my husband went on one of these I stared in blank amazement at the call--flooded basements. They also handle a fair number of brush fires and car accidents.

But it's not all hard work at the fire house. In fact, since no one lives there, the way they have to in a paid department (two days on, three days off or whatever), fire houses in volunteer departments can serve a much more social function. Work hard, play hard, seems to be the motto of the department, and that's never truer than on parade day, when they set up a "bullpen" in the parking lot along with a tiki bar, and serve up food and drinks to all the other firemen and EMTs who've come to help celebrate.

Wives, kids, sisters, brothers, everyone who's in any way related to a fireman shows up, and things can get just a little out of hand. It's a night when, if you live in northern Westchester County or parts of Fairfield County in Connecticut, you really don't want to have a fire.

Inevitably, though, there is one. This year, the fire was in Bedford Village--the next town north up the parkway from us. So first the Bedford pump trucks went, along with their emergency personnel. Then, when it became apparent that they weren't going to knock the fire down immediately, the rest of their guys left the party along with one of our trucks. Because, you see, someone has to babysit the Bedford Hills FD in case another call comes in while all the Bedford Hills trucks are out at the fire in Bedford Village. And since we're the next town on the list, our guys go. Party or no.

My husband got home at about 1:45 in the morning. The pager went off again at 7:20.


For more My Town Monday posts, check out the My Town Monday blog!

Our Love-Hate Relationship with Dead People

Image via Bettman, Corbis.

Michael Sims of The Chronicle of Higher Education opines that "All the Dead are Vampires" by exploring the natural history of death for an anthology of Victorian vampire stories.

The article's got interesting facts that help recall the genuine horror of Nosferatu, based on real experiences, before bloodsuckers were merely the latest fashionable boyfriend with lower body temperature and occasional teenaged outbreaks of glitter.

Too Hot?

So far, 2010 is on track to be the hottest year on record. It's humid, it's disgusting, and there's nothing better to do that sit around and...

eat ice cream!

Yesterday, I guest blogged over at Dying for Chocolate. If you don't know about Dying for Chocolate, it's a delicious blog maintained by Janet Rudolph, who is--in her own words--"all about Mysteries, Chocolate and TeamBuilding." What could be better? I follow her mystery blog, as well, but in this case I was on a chocolate kick, not a writing one.

My post includes a recipe for Low Fat Chocolate-Cherry Frozen Yogurt, so if you're in the mood for a sweet treat, pop on over there and grab it. Then pick up a book and a spoon and cool yourself off!

FBF: Gorky Park

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith was released in 1981. It was the first in a series of novels that feature Moscow police investigator Arkady Renko.

The plot of Gorky Park centers on a triple murder. Three corpses are found frozen in the snow in an amusement park, their faces and fingers missing. The story takes place during the days of the Soviet Union, so we follow Arkady through international intrigue and his interactions with the KGB, the FBI and the NYPD.

Arkady also becomes involved in a compelling love affair that has an effect on how he considers things.

The Soviet Union may be far behind us, but Gorky Park stands the test of time.

For more forgotten books, please click on over to Patti Abbott’s blog.

Terrie

The Messenger of Athens: Review and Giveaway!

It's that time again, time for us to give away five copies of a book donated by the fabulous folks over at Hachette Book Group.

This time up, the book is The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi. When this book was offered to us, I eagerly volunteered to do the review. After all, I went to Greece last year and found the islands beautiful. The tides were gentle, the beaches pretty, the flowers and olive trees abundant, and even the rocky outcroppings had a certain harsh charm to them.

I grew up in a fishing and tourist town, myself, and I'm familiar with what can lurk behind such pretty, manicured façades. But the picture Ms. Zouroudi paints of the islands goes a step further than that. Poverty, despair and destruction are the order of the day for most of the characters in this novel.

In the grocers' shops, women scavenged the emptying shelves for tinned milk and pasta, which they boiled up on gas stoves and served slathered with margarine and a scraping of hard cheese. The wind shook the houses so mortar dust dropped on every surface, falling into the food as it was cooking, seasoning the food with grit as it stood on the table.

In this incongruously forbidding landscape, a woman dies. Irini Asimakopoulos' death is declared a suicide by the local police, but some time after her death a stranger arrives. He is an odd little man, a fat man with white shoes named Hermes Diaktoros.

Hermes is intent on his own investigation, and while he calls himself a messenger, it is never clear precisely who has sent him if, indeed, anyone sent him at all. Hermes' methods are unorthodox to say the least, for whatever else he may be, Hermes is not an officer of the law. (What is he? Well, he's a messenger. His name, after all, is Hermes.)

This is far from a traditional mystery, though it includes some elements of traditional mysteries: small town, limited suspect pool, a sleuth who is not a professional...perhaps. There are even a couple of quirky characters, like the victim's uncle, owner of the café where the men of the town hang around when they're busy not working:

I sought out and installed in my café the most uncomfortable chairs I could find. It was not difficult; we Greeks are very good at producing uncomfortable chairs. And you'll find none of these hand-picked chairs has four legs the same length. They throw you slightly off balance, so you can never quite relax. Always, within half an hour, your backside is numb. You stand up to relieve it, and whilst you're standing up, you might as well go about your business. It is a carefully thought-out strategy which has never so far failed me.

And yet, despite these aspects, The Messenger of Athens is as much literary fiction as it is mystery. And it has a flavor that is far more present in British novels and mysteries than in American ones. What is revealed is not so much the lives of the suspects--though those come to light as well--as that of the victim. And since we know how she ends up, there is a mournful quality to sections of the book that flash back to her life.

Walking the road home, she held her share of the kill at arm's length. The sharp spike of a roughly sawn rib had punched a hole in the plastic bag; through the hole, blood dripped, marking her trail downhill, showing exactly the route she'd taken: where she had veered to the left, where she had stepped onto the verge to let a motorbike pass.

Because I went into this expecting a more traditional mystery, I found the resolution somewhat unsatisfactory. If you like straight fiction, with a mysterious bent and a hint of the paranormal, however, this might be just the ticket for you!

So, here are the giveaway rules: Just post a comment letting me know the genre of the last book you read. Romance? Mystery? Biography? History? Sci-Fi? Be sure to include contact information! On Sunday, I will pull five winners, each of whom will receive one copy of this book directly from the publisher.

Gizmos and the Smell of Ink on Paper

Awesome booksmelling photo via Nancy Duarte's slide:ology blog.

I find Paul Levine tremendously entertaining on panels and in print, so when I saw that he'd weighed in on the e-book revolution, I clicked right over to the Huffington Post to read:

"I was standing in a circle of Chardonnay sippers at an art show in Santa Monica when the conversation turned to the future of reading. As a novelist, I had skin in the game, so I grabbed a canape, sidled over, and eavesdropped..."

Move Over Gutenberg.

Two Sentence Tuesday

The weeks are flying by! I polished off my re-consideration of my mystery this week, and didn't have to do too much rewriting. In the meantime, however, a woman on one of my lists asked for help with a cover/query letter. We got to discussing hooks, and how they show up in your letters. I thought for this week I'd give you the one I've developed for the mystery since I had to revise that this past week while working on the submission.

A criminal investigation destroyed Tessa Silver's high tech, high stress life, so she turned her hobby into a career and became a glass bead maker. She cannot shake her history so easily, however, and when a competing glassworker is found dead with a copy of one of Tessa’s signature beads in her pocket, she finds herself once again under police scrutiny.

Determined to solve the mystery before she has to reinvent herself yet again, Tessa enlists an unlikely group of investigators including two elderly customers, her own irrepressible brother, a flirtatious friend, and an off-duty cop hot enough to give her a whole new appreciation for law enforcement. Together, they plumb the darker currents beneath the sparkling world of beads and jewelry-making.

There you have it. My mystery in a nutshell.

This week, I read Dee Davis' Dangerous Desires. (Try saying that three times fast!) It's the second book in her latest trilogy of paramilitary romantic suspense. I just love her books, even if I hate the fact that she told us at an RWA meeting how quickly she writes. Here are a few sentences:

There was no sense in arguing. And besides, it was perfectly clear that he didn't want to talk. So with a pointed sigh, she made a lay of exploring the upper terrace, trying to ignore the man behind her. But after about fifteen minutes, she couldn't stand the silence.

How about you? Anything fun and interesting in your reading life? How's the writing going? Let us know where to find your answers and we'll keep the post updated throughout the day.

• David Cranmer gets both his reading and writing in by interviewing author Timothy Hallinan. Good stuff!
• Leah J. Utas has more of her quirky characters up on her blog.
  

MTM: Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Flushing Meadow Corona Park is one of the flagship parks of New York City. At more than twelve hundred acres, it is the largest park in the Borough of Queens. Although the area was once labeled "a valley of ashes" by F. Scott Fitzgerald in “The Great Gatsby,” the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs were held in this park, moving it to the international stage. There it has remained, hosting the United Nations General Assembly for five years, three baseball World Series at Shea Stadium, and the U.S. Tennis Open annually.

Buildings that remained in the park from the 1939-1940 World's Fair were used to house the fledgling United Nations from 1946 until 1951. They forgot to invite me. However I have attended the Tennis Open several times and I was thrilled in 2000 to be at Shea Stadium for the third World Series game in the first subway series since 1956. That night the Mets trounced the Yankees by a score of 4-2. Never mind who won the series.

The centerpiece of the park is the Unisphere, a monumental stainless steel globe, standing 140 feet high. It was presented to the 1964 World's Fair by United States Steel. When I was a kid meeting friends at the Fair, we’d pick a continent. “Meet me at the tip of Africa.” Or “Meet me by Australia.” People still meet that way to this very day.

The original New York City Building from the 1939 World’s Fair was used as the site of the UN General Assembly and than languished once again until it was refurbished and reopened as the New York City Pavilion in the 1964 World’s Fair.


Today that building is the Queens Museum of Art, which houses an extensive collection of Tiffany Glass, as well as the Relief Map of the New York Watershed System, a topographic map reaching far north, and west and just a bit to the east of the City limits. The map is gorgeous and fills an entire room. The most famous exhibit is the New York City Panorama, which is viewed from a cat walk. The panorama replicates every block and body of water in New York City, and is updated periodically. In 2001 a decision was made to keep the Twin Towers in place with a ribbon around them and when the memorial is completed and dedicated, the panorama will reflect that change. This picture shows the part of Manhattan that encircles Central Park.




Recently I visited the museum with two of my grandchildren and their favorite exhibit was this sculpture of an elephant lying on its side. All the logs and branches are from trees in the park and the sculptor, Hiroshi Sunairi, uses this piece to exhibit the artful engineering of a bird’s nest or a beaver dam. To be honest, my daughter and I had no idea what it was, but the kids both recognized the elephant right away.

Then there was this. The former New York State pavilion from the 1964 World’s Fair. The lower level now houses the Queens Theatre in the Park. And what about those two towers? Well, I remember them as the observatory and café of the New York State Pavilion in 1964, but you may remember them as the alien space ship in the original Men in Black movie.

For more My Town Monday posts, click on over to the My Town Monday blog and see what’s available this week.

Terrie

To Kill a Mockingbird - 50th Anniversary

Celebrations are being held throughout the country to honor the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, the Harper Lee Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It is her only major work.

Join the Facebook page celebrating the July 11th anniversary.

A 50th anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and by most book sellers.

In 1999, in a poll conducted by the Library Journal, To Kill a Mockingbird was chosen as the best novel of the century. It has been translated into nearly 50 languages, and it was turned into a 1962 Oscar-winning film, starring Gregory Peck.

Harper Lee has remained a recluse, and rarely grants interviews. However, she recently spoke with a British newspaper reporter.

Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper Lee was born in 1926, has been hosting a weekend-long celebration of the novel.

Harper Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, America's highest civilian honor, for her outstanding contribution to literature (photo from George W. Bush White House archives, taken by Eric Draper).

I found the recent article by Maria Puente in USA Today to be very inspirational, especially the following quote:

"Although it may read as if it just spooled out of the storyteller, Lee actually struggled with the novel for years in the 1950s while working at menial jobs (airline reservation clerk) in New York. Then some Alabama friends in town gave her a Christmas gift of enough money to quit her job and work full time on the book for a year. A skilled editor helped her turn a series of stories and vignettes into a seamless whole."

Jesse Kornbluth at Huffington Post has an outstanding article about To Kill a Mockingbird and it contains some awesome video clips.

In today's edition of Read Street, the Baltimore Sun's blog, they are offering a giveaway of a special edition of To Kill A Mockingbird, as well as Scout, Atticus and Boo, a collection of essays, to a commenter (either write about your fave character in TKAM or why the book has remained so important a half-century later). Two pairs of the books will be given away; the winners will be chosen on Monday.

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Saturday Smash-and Dash

Will the dour author of Crime and Punishment cause his honorary metro station to occasion suicides? Concerned Muscovite authorities are delaying the unveiling of the new station's walls, cocooned with black and white murals from Fyodor's Dostoevsky's less-than-effervescent work.

From the Boston Globe, "The Bright Side of Wrong" by Kathryn Schulz examines how the ingrained shorthand of inductive reasoning can hurt us while being wrong makes us smarter. Whew!

John Tierney from the NYT Science section writes about the virtues of a wandering mind, and mine's wandering so much, I can't remember if I already posted this.

Jezebel's Sadie Stein has a nifty captioned pictorial about the real people behind famous fictional characters. Our number one above is Alice Liddell.

Love is Murder - Short Story Contest & Conference

Love is Murder 2011 has announced a short story contest for unpublished authors of fiction to get a story in a major crime fiction magazine. The issue of Crimespree magazine will be the one available concurrently at the Love is Murder Conference being held February 4-6, 2011.

The story must be in the crime, suspense, thriller or horror genres. The maximum word count is 5,000.

Submissions must be postmarked no later than September 1, 2010.

Read the rules here.

For information concerning registration of the midwestern mystery conference, including early bird rates, check here. The conference will be held at the Intercontinental Chicago O'Hare.

The list of featured authors includes Rhys Bowen, Joseph Finder, Carolyn Haines, Joan Johnston, Jon Land, and F. Paul Wilson. Michael Dymmoch will be the Local Guest of Honor. The attending agents list is here. One of the many features of the Love is Murder 2011 conference is the Pitch-a-Palooza.

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

eReaders, eBooks and "Changing the Face of Publishing"

There's been a whole lot of chatter, it seems like forever now, about how eBooks will "change the face of publishing." Everyone seems to agree that things will change, but no one seems to know precisely how. One thing I see bandied about frequently is the term "democratization." In the words of Inigo Montoya: "I do not think it means what you think it means", but what its users seem to be forecasting--usually with glee--is the end of publishing houses. "When anyone can publish their books for Kindle and other e-platforms," they say, "the gatekeepers will disappear."

Frankly, this idea makes me shudder with horror. Enough drek gets through even with gatekeepers. I don't want a world without them.

It will probably not surprise you when I say that the place I see the joyful rubbing of hands over the proposed doom of agents and publishers is on various writing forums. It's not, after all, readers who are frustrated by these industry pros, for the most part, it's writers who feel that their own works are not being given their due. (Readers have other frustrations with the publishing industry--pricing, timing of releases, format of releases....)

In the new eWorld eOrder, that will change. Jane Author will sit right next to Jane Austen on the eBookshelf, and have just as much legitimacy.

But that means Jane Author is going to have to take her lumps as well, and what I haven't seen mentioned often is one of the great advantages I see to eBooks, and one of the things I believe really will help publishing in the long run: sample chapters.

If a book is available in Kindle format, you can download sample chapters. You can try it before you buy it. No more guessing from reviews or a single page you find somewhere, or the most tantalizing excerpt the author has been able to find that she's posted on her website.

This means, as far as I can see, that publishers should be able to get a far more accurate view of who actually likes a book. Until now, with mysteries--particularly cozies--I've basically gone on premise alone. "Yeah, that looks good. I'll give it a shot." This has about fifty-percent accuracy. Half the time, I like the series. The other, I give up after one book. But publishers see the sale of that book as validation. That doesn't have to happen. Now, they can see sales for only the books I am actually interested in reading.

This is true in romances, too. Particularly romantic suspense, where I need some mystery to keep me going. I can't tell you how often I've into a romantic suspense thinking it's going to be great, but by the end of the first or second chapter I'm bored out of my skull.

And all those books by the Jane Authors who can't spell, can't put together a sentence, can't write a paragraph more than three sentences long? I don't have to put up with those, either. I can download my chapters, gasp with horror, and move on.

Instead, I can spend my time and money on things I'll want to finish.

That's one of the things that most excites me about eReaders these days, and something I hope more people will take advantage of.