Linda Rodriguez Writes

Literary Mystery Novelists—Richard Godwin

2012-02-10T14:57:00.000-06:00

Richard Godwin is a British poet, fictionwriter, and playwright. His dark crimeshort stories and poetry have appeared in many magazines, such as A Twist of Noir, Crime Factory, and NeedleMagazine of Noir, and anthologies, such as Back in 5 Minutes and Lyrotica.His play The Cure-All has beenproduced on the London stage. His first crime novel, Apostle Rising, was published in 2011, and this extremely dark psychologicalthriller has been lauded for its tight, complex plot, vivid characterization,and disturbing yet lyrical prose. A compelling police procedural and psychologicalthriller about a psychopathic serial killer who crucifies politicians andprostitutes, Apostle Rising pitspolice detectives Frank Castle and Jacki Stone against this evil while theirown lives unravel around them—and in Castle’s case, his sanity perhaps.

Godwinis a writer with great promise, and readers of his first novel will eagerlyawait his second, Mr. Glamour, dueout from Black Jackal Books in April. Here are links to purchase his book.

Black Jackal Books Amazon Barnes & Noble

Richard Godwin is the author ofcrime novel Apostle Rising, in which a serial killer is crucifying politiciansand recreating the murder scenes of an original case. The novel has receivedgreat reviews http://www.richardgodwin.net/mediaIt has just sold foreign rights to the largest publisher in Hungary. He is widely published in many magazines and anthologies and also writes horrorand Bizarro as well as literary fiction and poetry. You can find out more abouthim here http://richardgodwin.net. HisChin Wags At The Slaughterhouse are popular and penetrating interviews heconducts with other authors at his Blog http://www.richardgodwin.net/blog.His second crime novel Mr. Glamour will be published in April of 2012 by BlackJackal Books as a paperback. It can be pre ordered from Black Jackal Books andAmazon in March.

What was your inspiration for Apostle Rising? Had you always wanted tobe a writer?

Apostle Rising was born out of my interest with theintersection between crime and horror. I believe that real horror exists in thethings humans do to one another. I was also interested in identity and whatthat means. I wrote it in a style that alternates between what has been calledmy dark poetry and crime, which reviewers quickly said was unusual andeffective. It received excellent reviews. It is also about the corrosive effectof evil on those who come into contact with it. It has just sold foreign rightsto one of the largest publishers in Europe.

I wanted to be a writer since I was a teenager.

How would you describe Apostle Rising to someone who has notread it?

A beautifully written, layered novel about why humans do the things theydo. It has the biggest surprise in it; no one guessed the ending.

What's your writing process? Whatis a typical writing day like for you? Do you keep to a set schedule? What areyour writing habits?

I write every day. I see it like practicing my tennis serve.

What projects, literary orotherwise, are occupying you at the moment?

My second novel, Mr. Glamour,is being published by Black Jackal Books as a paperback this April. It is a mysterynovel about a dark intruder in a Glamorous world. I also have many storiesgoing into anthologies, among them “Tales of the Mustard Man” with Pulp Metal Magazine as an E Book. TheMustard Man is a character with a series of stores based on him. There are somenew ones in this, and it will be out in the next few weeks.

Who were your literary influencesgrowing up? Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name asinfluences?

The main two would be Dostoyevsky and Dickens. There are many others, toomany to mention.

Do you belong to a critique groupof other authors. Do you find it helpful? In what ways?

No.

What is your advice to aspiringwriters? How important is it for a young writer to be a reader? What would yourecommend they read?

Write every day and read. When you are reading, try to see how writersachieve their effects.

What is the most surprising thingyou’ve learned in your writing career? What has been the hardest part aboutbeing a writer?

I am rarely surprised. I love writing, so it is not hard. It is a process,and the beautiful thing about it is you keep learning—there is no ceiling.

Books of Interest by Writers of Color—Tony Diaz and Librotraficantes

2012-02-08T17:33:00.000-06:00

Tucson School District, predominantly Mexican American, has been forced by conservative politicians to get rid of its highly successful and lauded Mexican American studies program—and the books used in it. After a long list of books banned by the school district was released, district employees boxed them up and carted them out of the classroom mid-lesson while teachers were teaching from them and students were reading them and doing projects using them. And teachers have been told they face termination if they’re caught using these books or teaching anything else about “race, ethnicity or oppression.”

The books banned to high school students in Tucson read like an honor roll of the books by writers of color I’ve talked about in this series—or have on my list to cover in the future. American Book Award-winners, PEN/Faulkner-award winners, Pulitzer Prize finalists, and many other award-winning and classic books fill this list.

And it’s not just Latino authors who’ve been banned—Rudolfo Anaya, Sandra Cisneros, Luis J. Rodriguez, Dagoberto Gilb, Luis Alberto Urrea, Gloria Anzaldúa, Junot Diaz, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Isabel Allende. It’s also James Baldwin and bell hooks, Sherman Alexie and Leslie Marmon Silko, Thoreau, Shakespeare, and … Jane Yolen. Jane Yolen?

Out of Houston has come the answer to this blatant censorship, guided by novelist, editor, radio host, and activist Tony Diaz—Librotraficantes. A caravan will take banned books and authors from Houston to Tucson, stopping to give readings and pick up new authors and volunteers along the way. Learn more about Librotraficantes, watch a fun video about the project, and donate or volunteer at this website. http://www.librotraficante.com/

Today, on Books of Interest by Writers of Color, we’re talking to Tony Diaz about this terrible situation and about Librotraficantes.

Originally from Chicago, novelist Tony Diaz is the author of novel THE AZTEC LOVE GOD, which Ishmael Reed selected as the 1998 Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction. Reed called Diaz “Relentlessly brilliant.” Diaz is also included in major anthologies such as HECHO EN TEJAS: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Writers edited by Dagoberto Gilb, and LITERARY HOUSTON edited by David Theis. His essays has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times and Houston Chronicle. He has just completed his second novel CHILDREN OF THE LOCUST TREE which is in the hands of his agent.

Diaz moved to Houston to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program. He became only the 3rd Latino to complete an MFA from that program. While in graduate school, he began conducting workshops and seminars for different community organizations such as the then-Chicano Family Center and Talento Bilingue de Houston. That work inspired him to remain in Houston after completing his studies. He went on to create Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, which just celebrated its 13th Anniversary. Nuestra Palabra promotes Latino literature and literacy. This consists of workshops, readings, and book fairs. He is also the host of the Nuestra Palabra Radio Show on 90.1 FM, KPFT.

Nuestra Palabra has organized the largest book events in Houston, ranging from book signings for the likes of Sandra Cisneros, and Pulitzer Prize Winner Junot Diaz, to stars such as Cheech Marin, Oscar De la Hoya, and Edward James Olmos.

Tony, we all felt outrage at the announcement of what Tucson School District did. How did you so quickly move from outrage to this great concept?
The radio show I work with, Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, is 13 years old. We have 156 months of working with new writers, legendary writers, and folks who just plain love literature and cultura.

How many authors are standing with Librotraficantes now?
There are many. I ask anyone that I overlook at this second to forgive me. Some writers who are on board: Luis Urrea will meet us in San Antonio and ride the caravan into Tucson. He is writing a magazine feature on the trip. Sandra Cisneros is hosting us in San Antonio. She also made a large donation to subsidize the caravan and will also be with us as we cross the border into Tucson, on Friday, March 16. Carmen Tafolla will read in San Antonio. Wings Press will republish her book CURANDERA, which was banned in Tucson. They are donating copies for us to take to Arizona. Dagoberto Gilb has been a huge supporter, as well, and has been promoting the Librotraficante Caravan all over Texas and the U.S. Beloved writer Denise Chavez, who also organizes the Border Book Festival, will host us in Mesilla, New Mexico. Rudolfo Anaya author of the seminal novel BLESS ME ULTIMA-which was banned in Tucson-endorsed the caravan, donated, and also will receive us when we arrive in Alburquerque. He will give us the bendicion before we cross into Tucson. Manuel Munoz is helping us organize in Tucson. There are many, many others.

I know you’re the guiding hand behind this movement, but one man can’t do something like this by himself. Who are your partners in crime?
We have a huge base of talent in Houston that we have been working with, cultivating in Houston for 13 years. Many of these folks did their first readings at our Monthly Showcases when we first started 13 years ago. Again, I apologize for those who I will overlook at this particular moment. Librotraficante LiLo, AKA Liana Lopez is the producer for our radio show. She is also a 9 year veteran of Nuestra Palabra and helped us organize our huge Houston Book and Family Festival, which drew over 30,000 people. She is in charge of media and reaching out to our national network of allies for the caravan route. Librotraficante HighTechAztec aka Bryan Parras is our board operator for our radio show. He too is a 10 year Nuestra Palabra Veterano. He is also in charge of networking with social activists organizations and has organized caravans before with SWOP-Southwest Organizing Project.Two other groups that were also intrumental with the USSF Caravan were Southwest Workers Union (SWU) in San Antonio and Southern Echo in Mississippi. They are part of a larger coalition working on Black/Brown unity and have been incredibly supportive of our work here in the South and Southwest. Bryan also shot the original Librotraficante video. Librotraficante Lips Mendez AKA Lupe Mendez is in charge of our slam poetry presentations and also teacher outreach. He has 12 years of experience with Nuestra Palabra. Librotraficante La Laura, AKA Laura Acosta is in charge of working with universities and colleges and networking with Chambers of Commerce. She is president of the Baytown Chamber of Commerce, and a 10 year veteran of Nuestra Palabra. There are many, many more.

What do you most need to have Librotraficantes be successful?
We need thousands of people to unite with our brothers and sisters in Tucson to celebrate diversity, to celebrate Freedom of Speech. We need thousands of people to join us at each stop. The full schedule is at www.librotraficante.com

How can readers help with this project?
There is a volunteer pyramid on the Caravan Schedule section of our website. I would ask folks to please download it. We need volunteers at each stop of the caravan. We need volunteers to spread the word, especially via blogs, Facebook, Twitter and websites. If Arizona had banned our literature ten years ago, we would not have heard about it. But because of new media, we have, and we can respond with the time-honored tradition of the caravan. New media is saving classic media--books!

We also need help raising funds to rent buses that hold 55 people at once, for a full week, which requires 2 drivers. We would ask folks to please donate to our Kickstarter program, or via the Pay Pal donation button on our website or to organize fundraisers. We also ask folks to donate copies of the banned books so that we can give them away in Tucson, as well as other points along the itinerary. We thank everyone for their support. It means a lot.

This is the cause of our generation. When your grandkids ask you where you were during the Librotraficante Tour of 2012, tell them how you stood up for the students of Tucson, tell them how you stood up for culture, tell them how you stood up for their Right to Freedom of Speech!!!

"V" for Victory, Vat@s.

Librotraficante Tony Diaz

Thanks for answering, Tony, and for coming up with Librotraficantes, which gives us a creative outlet for all that anger this has stirred up inside of all of us.

The Librotraficantes caravan is intended to:

1. Raise awareness of the issue. Some peoplestill do not know that Latino Studies is being banned in Arizona.

2. Promote the books of banned Latinoauthors: Hispanic writers are not promoted well enough. This is a chance tobring attention to their work.

3. Celebrate many cultures: Children of theAmerican Dream must unite to preserve the civil rights of all Americans

Literary Mystery Novelists—Charles Dickens at 200

2012-02-07T14:44:00.000-06:00

February 7, 2012, is the 200^thbirthday of the great social activist writer and the Shakespeare of the novel, CharlesDickens. Like novelist John Irving, I must say, "I became a writer becauseI read Charles Dickens." I first picked up A Tale of Two Cities in a library right after I’d turned nine yearsold. I ran back the next week to load my arms with Dickens’s other novels, andI’ve been reading them again and again ever since. At one time when I wasweighing an offer of a fellowship to do a Ph.D. in English, I knew, if I tookit, that I would write my dissertation on Dickens and Bleak House or perhaps OurMutual Friend.

How has this writer remained sopopular, revered, and read for almost 200 years? And why am I listing him amongliterary mystery novelists?

In answer to the second question,many of Dickens’s books were built around a mystery and/or crime—Oliver Twist (full of criminals, a nastymurder, and a mystery), Nicholas Nickleby(riddled with crimes and mysteries), BarnabyRudge (a murder mystery with an insurrection), Martin Chuzzlewit (multiple murders), Bleak House (murder and the first police detective!), A Tale of Two Cities (crammed withcrimes and mysteries), Great Expectations(begins with a jailbreak, loaded with crimes & mysteries), Our Mutual Friend (identity theft andmurder), and of course, the unfinished TheMystery of Edwin Drood (plotting for murder, drug addiction, possible murder).Also, Dickens is an author the academic and literary elites have, at times,named too popular to be of literary worth, much as they do with modern mysterywriters.

As for the first question, I study Dickensto this day, trying to learn the answer to that. If I knew it, I could perhapsbe as great and greatly loved a writer myself. Failing that, I can best answerit with quotes from other writers about Dickens.

"The reason I love him sodeeply is that, having experienced the lower depths, he never ceased, till theday he died, to commit himself, both in his work and in his life, to trying toright the wrongs inflicted by society, above all, perhaps by giving thedispossessed a voice. From the moment he started to write, he spoke for thepeople, and the people loved him for it, as do I." — Simon Callow

"I cannot lose the opportunityof saying how much I love and esteem him for what he has taught me through hiswritings -- and for the genial influence that these writings spread around themwherever they go. Never having seen Boz in the body, we have yet had many a tête-à-tête." — Walt Whitman

"For all his faults, there isstill no one to touch him -- for breadth, for depth (especially in the laternovels), for moral seriousness, hilarious comedy, social criticism and forfilling a room with characters you suddenly know better than some of yourclosest friends." — KatherineAshenburg

"Books such as ‘GreatExpectations’ were part of the great moral revolution which made [GreatBritain] prosperous, ordered and civilised. They are crucial to ourcivilisation. Like all great moral books, it makes the reader envy thegood characters their goodness, and want to emulate them. It made us recognisethe good and the bad in ourselves -- in fact Dickens ceaselessly did this,probably because he was himself struggling all the time against his own crueltyand selfishness, and loathed these things in others." — Peter Hitchens

“The art of Dickens was the mostexquisite of arts: it was the art of enjoying everybody. Dickens, being a veryhuman writer, had to be a very human being; he had his faults and sensibilitiesin a strong degree; and I do not for a moment maintain that he enjoyedeverybody in his daily life. But he enjoyed everybody in his books: andeverybody has enjoyed everybody in those books even till to-day.” — G.K. Chesterton

“Dickens is huge—like the sky. Pickany page of Dickens and it’s immediately recognisable as him, yet he might bedoing social satire, or farce, or horror, or a psychological study of amurderer—or any combination of these. He’s always much more than you remember—moreplayful, more surreal, more campaigning, more sentimental, more Victorian, moregood and more bad." — SusannahClarke

Thomas Carlyle upon hearing of hisdeath said: “The good, the gentle,high-gifted, ever-friendly, noble Dickens—every inch of him an honest man.”

Happy 200^th birthday, Charlie! You’re still the Inimitable!

Literary Mystery Novelists--John Lescroart (Update)

2012-01-31T11:55:00.002-06:00

Since he has an important new book out that debuted at #15 on the New York Times bestseller list, I'm updating the Literary Mystery Novelists post featuring John Lescroart. Lescroart's new book in hardcover is The Hunter, the third in his books about San Francisco PI, Wyatt Hunt. Lescroart is one of the finest writers on the scene today, and The Hunter is another gem for his fans. (Damage is now out in paperback.)

Publishers Weekly gave The Hunter a starred review, saying, "This book succeeds on every level--as a mystery, as a thriller, and as an exploration of its appealing hero." Protagonist Hunt always knew he was adopted and never cared to find his adopted parents, happy and secure with those who raised him. A disturbing text message --"How did your mother die?"-- changes all that and sends him on a quest into his birth family's dark secrets.As Hunt investigates his parents' past, he puts himself in danger because someone will kill to keep these secrets hidden.

In The Hunter, Lescroart's signature abilities to bring his characters to life and to weave complicated plots reward the reader again. Here is the link to buy The Hunter.

Original Post

Lescroart has been called a national treasure for his writing skills, and his latest novel, Damage, offers evidence for that claim. As he does in many of his novels, Lescroart examines serious societal issues in this book. In Damage, those include the power and wealth that allows a segment of the population to flout laws and escape punishment for their crimes and the legal system that caters to this powerful elite at the expense of ordinary citizens.This stand-alone novel offers the sharp humor, rich characterization, and complex storyline that fans have come to expect from Lescroart. His novels are beautifully crafted, and he's reaped the rewards of his artistic labors with multiple stays on the New York Times bestseller list.
Damage will be out in paperback at the end of December, and Lescroart's newest book, The Hunter, will launch in January. Here is the link to buy Damage.

John Lescroart Bio

John Lescroart is the NY Times Bestselling author of twenty-two novels, including most recently DAMAGE (January, 2011), the latest in the San Francisco based Dismas Hardy/Abe Glitsky series. Libraries Unlimited has included him in its publication “The 100 Most Popular Thriller and Suspense Authors,” his books have been translated into twenty languages in more than seventy-five countries, and his short stories appear in many anthologies.

John’s first novel, SUNBURN, won the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Award for best as yet unpublished novel by a California author, and DEAD IRISH and THE 13^TH JUROR were nominees for the Shamus and Anthony Best Mystery Novel, respectively; additionally THE 13^TH JUROR is included in the International Thriller Writers publication “100 Must-Read Thrillers Of All Time.” HARD EVIDENCE is named in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Ultimate Reading List.” GUILT was a Readers Digest Select Edition choice. THE MERCY RULE, NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, and THE SUSPECT have been major market Book Club selections. THE SUSPECT was also the 2007 One Book Sacramento choice of the Sacramento Library Foundation, and was chosen by the American Author’s Association as its 2007 Book of the Year. Each of the last several of John’s books have been Main Selections of one or more of the Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, and Book of the Month Club, and DAMAGE made Entertainment Weekly’s “Must List.”

Outside of the book world, John loves to cook. His original recipes have appeared in Gourmet Magazine and in the cookbook “A Taste of Murder.” (He also wrote the forward to Francine Brevetti’s paean to the famous San Francisco eatery Fior d’Italia entitled The Fabulous Fior: 100 Years in an Italian Kitchen.)

John and his wife, Lisa Sawyer, live in Northern California.

For those new to your series, can you describe the Dismas Hardy mysteries? Since you hadn’t originally intended this to be a series, how did you develop the series once you knew you wanted to do more Dismas Hardy books?

Dismas Hardy was a character who would not leave me alone. I first used the name in my very first (still deservedly unpublished) novel, which I wrote in college – I loved the combination of the name of the Good Thief on the cross next to Jesus somehow connected to The Hardy Boys. As I began my career, such as it was, I came out first with a literary novel, SUNBURN, and followed that with two Sherlock Holmes pastiches. When I finally decided to write about a modern hero, a largely still undeveloped, but well-named Dismas Hardy was there waiting for me. In the first of the Hardy books, DEAD IRISH, I thought I had a good character arc for a stand-alone novel, but never dreamed that Dismas would still be in my life twenty-some years later.

The initial impetus to continue the character as a series came from my publisher, Donald Fine, who liked DEAD IRISH and Hardy a lot, and who wanted a sequel. For a young writer hoping to keep getting published, this was a godsend moment. I knew Hardy and liked him, and I figured he could have another adventure, so I wrote THE VIG.

Then life intervened. I got spinal meningitis and spent eleven days in a coma. In the wake of that, and my survival, my day job as a legal word processor became unbearable for many reasons. I wound up moving to Northern California from LA and didn’t write a word for perhaps sixteen months – a very long dry spell for me. But by the time I started writing again, I knew what I wanted to do, which was move Dismas Hardy into the professional law business with a big, perhaps important book. This was, of course, a huge challenge since I wasn’t a lawyer, but I did a lot of research and wrote HARD EVIDENCE, the first of the Hardy “legal thrillers.” That book did poorly in the US, but sold for six figures in Germany and Japan and gave me the impetus to start another Hardy book in the same vein, and that book, THE 13^TH JUROR, turned out to be my first bestseller.

Ironically, because of the lag time in publishing, I didn’t know that THE 13^TH JUROR was going to be a hit, so I abandoned Hardy for the next two books and concentrated instead on Hardy’s cop pal Abe Glitsky. So by the time the next true Dismas Hardy book, THE MERCY RULE, appeared, I had a much larger San Francisco cast of characters and was beginning to see the possibilities of the universe that all of my characters inhabited together, and I’ve been expanding those possibilities ever since.

How would you describe Damage to someone who has not read any of your previous stand-alone novels?

Damage has some legal elements, but they are decidedly in the background of the story. I purposely created it as a more or less stand-alone novel. Every now and then, when I’ve got a franchise character such as Dismas Hardy, I find it refreshing to let him rest somewhere off the page while life goes on in his greater universe. So Damage features some of Hardy’s colleagues, notably Abe Glitsky and Wes Farrell, who get caught up in the release of convicted murderer Ro Curtlee through a technicality. Ro is a very bad person. His parents are rich and manipulative, and horrible stuff starts happening again within a day or two of Ro’s release from prison. Glitsky and Farrell are constrained by their jobs and their consciences, while Ro just begins to run amuck. And because of these elements, and also the creation of the character Sheila “Heinous” Marrenas, the novel has a tremendous propulsive force, or narrative drive, which was a blast to work with. And as a stand-alone, it’s a great way to introduce new readers to the general neighborhood.

What's your writing process? What is a typical writing day like for you? What are your writing habits?

I’ve been extremely fortunate to have been writing under multi-book contracts now for at least fifteen years, so my life is about as “organized” as those of people who work steady jobs. I get up at around 7:30 (when my two children still lived at home, it was 6:00), then read the paper and have my coffee. Next I’m off to my workout club where I sweat for about an hour and a half. I’m usually at work at my office – I don’t write at home – and answer emails and real mail and generally put off writing as long as I can – I call it “sorting my socks” -- until around 1:00, when I start writing pages. I don’t have a daily limit until I get to January or so (my books are always due to the publishers by June 1), but after January I write usually about seven to ten pages a day, finishing my first draft by about mid-April. Then I do my own personal revisions and rewrites, work with my own personal editors, and hand in the finished book, after which I do another set of revisions based on the comments of my agent, the genius Barney Karpfinger and my real editor Ben Sevier, one of the very best. Then I incorporate Ben’s suggestions, edit the galleys and start the process for the next book, the outline for which I hand in on September 1.

You turned to full-time writing after a near-death experience, and that led to your great success. Do you regret not having made that transition earlier?

Well, it wasn’t as though I was sitting there before the spinal meningitis hit me thinking that I was just passing the time writing mid-list books. All the while, I was trying to write the kind of books that would give me a living in literature, but somehow had not discovered the “voice,” or the formula, or the techniques, to reach a big audience. I’ve thought a lot about the question you’ve asked, above, and I’ve come to believe that though it seemed to take a very long time before I had any real success (I was forty-six when THE 13^TH JUROR hit the bestseller list), it’s been for the best. I learned a lot in the early days, gained real confidence in my abilities, and was able to handle the “trappings” of success without becoming too weird – although of course my friends would tell you that I’ve always been weird. So while it might have been nice to have had a breakout book in my twenties or thirties, I don’t spend any time worrying about that.

Who were your literary influences growing up? Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name as influences?

My main influence – the person who just knocked me out from the very first – was Hemingway. This is not, of course, to say that my work reflects his in any meaningful way, but I was deeply affected by his style and basic approach to life and literature right from the git-go. From there, the list of influences goes on, since I was by any standard a reading geek. I adored Albert Camus and Mark Twain in high school. In college, I essentially majored in Lawrence Durrell and the Alexandrian Quartet -- still highly recommended! After college, I drifted into what I’d call pleasurable, as opposed to “English major” reading – Rex Stout, Arthur Conan Doyle, John D. MacDonald – and found that I loved it! Finally, in my thirties, I became enamored of the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian, phenomenal stuff. And all along the way, I tried to remain sensitive to “new” voices, no matter if they were already well-established or even dead, as they presented themselves to me – Agatha Christie, PD James, Elmore Leonard, Nelson DeMille, T. Jefferson Parker.

You wrote your first novel in college. What inspired you to write that first book? Had you always wanted to be a writer?

I guess the short answer to this question is “Yes.” I was a voracious reader from an early age, and just could never quite envision doing anything else for a living that would be meaningful. This is really funny considering the dozens of jobs I wound up doing until I could get my writing to support me, but that’s the way I always felt. As for that first college book, which I presciently entitled “No Promise,” I had already started telling friends and family that I was going to be a novelist, and I figured that meant I had to actually write a novel, or maybe even more. (Although in my youth, my fantasy was that I would just write a few novels, maybe three or four, and then after that I would just be a “famous novelist.”) So I sat down and started writing and pretty soon had a pretty bad novel. But you know, a pretty bad novel is still a novel, and it was someplace to start.

Do you (or have you) belong(ed) to a critique group of other authors. Do you find it helpful? In what ways?

The only critique group I’ve ever been a part of was a creative writing class at UC Berkeley back in 1969. Jackson Burgess was our teacher and he told our class of about twenty students that only one of us was going to make a living as a professional novelist. Then he told us who that student was and it wasn’t me. So after that, I decided I would let the market, and neither my peers nor my instructors, decide who was good enough to be published. I knew that I was going to be published because I wasn’t going to quit until that happened, and I didn’t stop learning and trying until it did. (And I like to think I’m still learning.)

What is your advice to aspiring writers? How important is it for a young writer to be a reader? What would you recommend they read?

My advice to young writers is simple: read all you can and write all you can. There is something to be learned in almost everything you read – whether it’s a fluency or felicity of language or something you know that you’ve got to avoid at all costs. Read, read, read, every day, and write, write, write, every day. There is no substitute – okay, you can take a few days off sometimes, but make reading and writing part of your everyday life. It’s okay to read what you like, of course, but it’s also a good idea to push yourself to read something that doesn’t appeal at first encounter. Only then will you be able to define what you like and don’t like, what you want to emulate, what you want to avoid. And eventually your own personal voice will begin showing up and you’ll recognize it and then, eventually, hopefully, be able to control it.

What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your writing career? What has been the hardest part about being a writer?

The most surprising thing to me is that writing is a full-time lifelong commitment as well as a career. When I was young, I really thought that I’d write one book that everyone would read (think STONE MOUNTAIN or THE DA VINCI CODE), and then I’d be a famous writer and that would be really cool. In reality, of course, most working writers write books, and then we write other books. It’s a continuing process, and we’re always learning, trying to get better, recommitting, because sometimes it’s very, very difficult – not just the writing itself, but the search for the next great idea, the frustrations of the business side, the obstinacy of your characters, the search for the mot juste. It doesn’t really get much easier in a day-to-day sense, though to real writers this very difficulty makes it an enthralling, challenging adventure.

The hardest part about it all? In the face of criticism, cynicism, jealousy, ignorance, and apathy, it is incredibly hard to remain brave enough to create your own worlds and characters, and to believe in them absolutely. And the way to conquer this hardest part? Make your worlds and characters so real that they cannot be denied by the critics, the cynics, the jealous and the ignorant and the apathetic. Or by yourself.

Literary Mystery Novelists—Patricia Highsmith

2012-01-23T23:31:00.001-06:00

(I'm featured on the crime writers blog, Sea Minor, in the interview series, Dancing With Myself... Check it out!)

Patricia Highsmith was the writer of powerful, compressed narratives of psychological complexity and transgressive violence. Her short fiction and novels are gems of tight, spare narrative that carries an outsized emotional impact. Her reputation was often injured because she wrote almost exclusively crime fiction of one kind or another.

When a biographer of Patricia Highsmith interviewed Norman Mailer about Highsmith, Mailer said, “Remind me? Who was Highsmith? A high-class detective novelist?” Well, not really. She rarely created detectives and when she did, they were failures at solving crimes. All of Highsmith’s authorial sympathies were with the performers of the criminal acts.In Highsmith’s works, the suspense is usually whether or not the protagonist will be able to get away with one or more violent acts.

Highsmith wrote 22 novels, a number of which have been made into successful movies. Her protagonists were usually outsiders—neurotic or even psychotic—and they usually carried out criminal acts, for which most often they were never caught or punished. She records extraordinary characters acting out bizarre fantasies and strange intimacies in precise, flat, simple prose.

There is little resolution in a Highsmith novel. Her characters succeed or fail in their (mostly criminal) endeavors, but they almost never work anything through or develop. Her books and stories are usually explorations of morbid psychology. Her psychological thrillers, however, are often loaded with satire and black humor. Many European critics see her as an “existential” writer.

Disturbing violence was one of her trademarks. Murderous impulses lurking behind facades of normal lives was another element of the Highsmith brand of chilling psychological suspense novels. A third element was always her emotionally and morally ambiguous young men of uncertain sexuality who served as her protagonists. Told in stark language, her startling and ironic books have long been admired for their daring themes and uncompromising vision.

Filmmakers have always been drawn to her work, and a number of successful movies have been made from her books, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, made from the novel of the same title. The Talented Mr. Ripley was made into three different movies, and Ripley novels, Ripley’s Game and Ripley Underground, were also filmed.

In later years, her misanthropic and misogynistic tendencies, not to mention her racism and anti-Semitism, became more and more prominent and pronounced. This and her choice to live abroad helped to keep her reputation in the United States lower than it should have been. Highsmith had spent a great deal of time at the writer’s colony, Yaddo, during her early career, and though she became an expatriate in Europe for the last half of her life, she left her $3 million estate to Yaddo when she died.

Highsmith books that I particularly recommend are Strangers on a Train, The Blunderers, The Talented Mr.. Ripley, This Sweet Sickness, Edith's Diary, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, The Snail-Watcher and Other Stories, Little Tales of Misogyny, The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder, and Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories. That last book was published posthumously. Highsmith also wrote an excellent book on writing, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction.I think you'll find that Highsmith stands the test of time.

Shocking College Crimes On and Off Campus

2012-01-17T19:27:00.000-06:00

One of my blog followers is involved with the website Online Colleges. This is not as strange as it sounds because my forthcoming novel, Every Last Secret, is set on a college campus with a campus police chief, Skeet Bannion, as the protagonist. Anyway, this blog follower wanted to alert me to their post, “The 10 Most Shocking College Crimes of All Time.” She thought, rightly, that I’d be interested and that readers of my blog might be interested also. You can find it here.

The crew at Online Colleges has done a good job in sorting through the crimes on college campuses, but I’m not sure I agree with all their selections. I think there are a couple of more shocking crimes that I’d substitute for some on their list. You’ll find these shocking enough, though, I’m sure.

One place where they really went right was in including Ted Bundy on the list, even though the bulk of his crimes took place off-campus. Most of Bundy’s killings were never included in any campus crime report because they didn’t happen on campus, but he cruised campuses to pick out his victims and make contact with them. Bundy, like other sexual predators, looked on campuses the way a weasel might look on a hen house, as a convenient larder happily stocked with his favorite prey.

This is a problem that haunts the nightmares of campus police and others responsible for controlling crime on campus—the concentration of nubile young people of all genders, newly independent of parental control and anxious to assert that independence in every way they can. It too often leads to heavy drinking, date rape, and more violent forms of sexual assault among students. It also makes easy pickings for sexual predators.

Campuses have to walk a fine line between going overboard with warnings to the point that students no longer listen—if they ever did in the first place—and being so laissez-faire that students are unaware of any dangers. And ultimately, when students leave the campus, the campus police can no longer protect them. They have no jurisdiction off campus.

With the exception of a few episodes that hit the media big-time, such as the Sandusky affair at Penn State or the Virginia Tech shootings, most people are unaware of crime on college campuses, but it’s been going on for a long time and is only likely to continue. Especially the campus crimes that don’t happen on campus itself but started there, like Bundy’s.

What do you think? Are campuses too lax? Or do they go overboard with the warnings? Is there ultimately any way in a free society to protect students, faculty, and staff against the kinds of crimes in the "10 Most Shocking College Crimes" list--the sexual predators and the arbitrary shooters of many?

Great First Crime Novel Contests--No Fee

2012-01-09T15:28:00.000-06:00

Beginning next week, I'll return to my usual schedule of Books of Interest by Writers of Color posts on Mondays and Literary Mystery Writers posts on Fridays.

Today, though, I want to draw the attention of all the writers out there who've never published a novel before to the quartet of free competitions offered by St. Martin's Minotaur in collaboration with various mystery organizations. These contests are not only fabulous to win, but they are also a good way to get your manuscript before the editors at one of most important publishers out there--if you're good enough to make the finals.

These competitions are open to anyone who hasn't published a novel before and whose novel fits the guidelines for that particular contest. There is no fee to enter, and the prize for each of the four competitions is $10,000 and a standard publishing contract with St. Martin's Press.

All that is pretty enticing right there, but also if you win, you get to work with some of the top professionals in the field located in the historic Flatiron Building in New York City. That's important when you're starting out as a novelist. It's even more important now while publishing is going through such major changes.

I know entering the St. Martin's/Malice Domestic Competition changed my life. So I encourage all my writer friends out there to consider these competitions. Especially all my writer friends of color.

The four competitions--St. Martin's/Tony Hillerman, St. Martin's/Private Eye Writers of America, St. Martin's/Malice Domestic, and St. Martin's/Mystery Writers of America--have different guidelines and deadlines--June, July, October, and December. Check them out!

And good luck! I'm looking forward to reading the next award-winners.

Look Back to the Future

2012-01-08T21:55:00.000-06:00

We’re starting off 2012 on a lovely note here in Kansas City. Beautiful dry, sunny days that haven’t gone below 25 degrees for weeks. For the last several years, the Christmas-Chanukah-Solstice season and the year’s changeover have been buried in terrible blizzards, but this year, we’ve been spared the below-zero temps, ice, and 1 ½-2 foot snowfalls with blinding winds. And I am so, so grateful.

Like so many of you, I’m looking ahead, planning, setting goals, and hoping for certain successes. Most of us do this every year. But when I look back to see what I planned and hoped for in 2011 (easy to do since I’m an inveterate journal-keeper), I find that almost all of the wonderful things that happened to me in 2011 were unforeseen at the beginning of that year. And I wonder if that isn’t pretty much always the case.

In January of 2011, I wanted to lose weight, de-clutter and organize my house, and find a way to get my finances under control. I had been making most of my money through poetry—a miracle to make any at all, in that case—and that probably explains why I wanted to improve and regularize my finances.

By January of 2012, I had won a national novel competition, signed a book contract with a major New York trade publisher, received an advance, found a great agent, acquired terrific blurbs and a beautiful book cover, and finished the second novel in the series while the first book started going out for reviews. None of these exciting things were listed in my hopes and plans for the year—and I still need to lose weight, de-clutter my house, and find a way to bring my finances under control. (More money came in with the book, but the year was still very feast or famine in the money department—just a little more than feast than usual.)

I’m sitting down now with my journal to look ahead, plan, set goals and dream about the successes I want this year to bring—and I do believe 2012 will bring me some wonderful successes and good fortune. I'm looking forward to the launch of Every Last Secret at the Central Library in Kansas City, Missouri, on Tuesday, April 24, and a whole slew of other appearances and book signings after that. (Just check the News/Events tab of this website to see the current calendar. New events are being added each week.) I'm looking forward to attending several big mystery conferences this year, beginning with Malice Domestic in late April. These things I know are going to take place. But I suspect that the best things to happen in 2012 will all, or mostly, be things that aren’t really on my chart yet, but will sideswipe me once again.

What about you? Do you plan and achieve your yearly plans in detail like clockwork? Do you send your boats out over and over, only to have a jet come in sometimes instead of a ship?

Happy 2012: Jacket copy for EVERY LAST SECRET and EVERY BROKEN TRUST finished

2012-01-05T12:12:00.002-06:00

I hope the holidays were splendid for all of you. I was able to spend them with all of my grown kids back in town, and then all of us trekked to Topeka, Kansas, to my sister's for for a warm, lovely Christmas with extended family. I'm so grateful as we start a new year for my wonderful husband, Ben, and my great kids, Crystal, Niles, and Joseph--and my terrific foster-son Gustavo, his partner Erika, and their sweet baby Becquer. And for my sister and her two sons and my brother. That's one of the glories of the season is that it brings us back together with far-flung family.

2012 is making a strong beginning for me. Later this month, review copies of Every Last Secret: A Mystery will be sent to reviewers and other promotional outlets. If you had offered to review the book, please email me your mailing address, so I can make sure you receive your review copy.

It's interesting to look at who is publishing my book. This book is being published by St. Martin's Press/ Minotaur Books and also Thomas Dunne Books. Thomas Dunne Books and Minotaur Books are both imprints of St. Martin's Press, which is, in turn, a part of Macmillan. A little confusing, I admit. But the nice thing is that all of these publishing entities have such a reputation for quality.

I had promised to post the jacket copy for my forthcoming book, Every Last Secret: A Mystery, in late December, but I was so engrossed in finishing the next book in the series, Every Broken Trust, that I forgot to post it. I did finish the draft of Every Broken Trust shortly before Christmas and am now in the throes of the revision process. I hope to have the finished manuscript off to my agent and editor later this month. So here belatedly is the copy that will appear on the dust jacket of the hardcover Every Last Secret: A Mystery.

JACKET COPY FOR EVERY LAST SECRET

Flap:

"Rodriguez’s debut is an action-packed ride featuring an intriguing heroine you won’t quickly forget."--Sally Goldenbaum, author of The Wedding Shawl

Half-Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion thought she was leaving her troubles behind when she fled the stress of being the highest ranking woman on the Kansas City Police Department, a jealous cop ex-husband who didn’t want to let go, and a disgraced alcoholic ex-cop father. Moving to a small town to be chief of the campus police force, she builds a life outside of police work. She might even begin a new relationship with the amiable Brewster police chief.

All of this is threatened when the student editor of the college newspaper is found murdered on campus. Skeet must track down the killer, following trails that lead to some of the most powerful people in the university. In the midst of her investigation, Skeet takes up responsibility for a vulnerable teenager as her ex-husband and seriously ailing father wind up back on her hands. Time is running out and college administrators demand she conceal all college involvement in the murder, but Skeet will not stop until she's unraveled every last secret.

Linda Rodriguez’s debut novel introduces a unique and capable heroine. With its intriguing cast of characters and complex mystery, Every Last Secret is sure to delight traditional mystery fans.

Bio:

Linda Rodriguez is a winner of the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. As a poet, she has won the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence, the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, and the Midwest Voices and Visions Award.

Linda enjoys knitting lace shawls, spinning alpaca wool, weaving tapestries, and gardening with herbs and native plants. She is currently working on a book of poetry based on teachings from her Cherokee grandmother and another mystery novel about Skeet Bannion. Linda lives in Kansas City, Missouri, with her husband, a Plott Hound, and a domineering cat.

Visit her Web site at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Back cover:

Advance Praise for Every Last Secret

"There's a new cop in town and she has smarts, courage, and a good heart. Mystery readers will find a new favorite in Chief Skeet Bannion."--Nancy Pickard, author of The Scent of Rain and Lightning

“Every Last Secret offers that rare and startling thing in the universe of thrillers: a truly fresh voice. Rodriguez's tale spares nothing. Skeet is an all-too-human heroine, and we just want more, more, more.”--Jacquelyn Mitchard, #1 national bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Second Nature: A Love Story

“Linda Rodriguez has created a captivating female detective with a mind for justice and a heart for those who’ve been unfairly treated. Skeet navigates university politics and a nest of deadly secrets to find the truth, even when it means investigating people she cares about.”--Carolyn Haines, author of Bones of a Feather

“Murder on a college campus, plenty of bad people, and all kinds of puzzles to solve. Linda Rodriguez has written a highly enjoyable procedural introducing a rough and tender heroine, Skeet Bannion.”--Kathleen George, author of The Odds and Hideout

I'm very excited about the prospect of holding an advance copy of Every Last Secret in my hands soon. I'm also thrilled and relieved that my beta reader thinks the second book in the series is as strong as the first. Any time you're writing a book after the earlier one received an award or won a competition, you're always fighting the fear that this book won't measure up to the last one. So hearing that Every Broken Trust is up to the task is a great relief.

How is your 2012 beginning? What are you excited about seeing or doing in the early months of the new year?

Books of Interest by Writers of Color—Cornelius Eady, Brenda Cardenas, Kimberly Becker

2011-12-19T20:38:00.000-06:00

Cornelius Eady Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (Putnam) Eady is an acclaimed poet and dramatist. His book of poetry, Brutal Imagination, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001. His libretto for the opera, Running Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999. His six other books of poetry and three other works of drama have also received various major awards. His work is full of the music of the blues and jazz riffs, as well as clear-eyed, large-hearted consideration of his family and the African American community within which he grew up. He uses simple, deceptively clear language to deal with complex concepts and multiple stories simultaneously. His work contains layers and layers of clarity, truth, and paradox.

Another major writer of color who has given back extensively to his community, Eady also made a name for himself as a teacher and mentor of young writers. In 1996, he and poet Toi Derricote co-founded Cave Canem, a writing community for African American writers with a first book prize, an anthology, a summer retreat, and workshops and events throughout the year and throughout the country. Eady is the Miller Professor of English and drama at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Normally, for a writer as successful and well-known as Eady, I’d link you to his website, but his is undergoing work right now. So, here is the link to Eady’s publisher—Putnam, one of the big guys, but show support for our authors and maybe we’ll see more of them at these big publishers soon.

Brenda Cárdenas Boomerang (Bilingual Review Press) Cárdenas is an activist/poet of the borders, the margins, the justapositions of languages, cultures, and forms. Yet underneath her fascination and experimentation with style, stories are her substance. She tells the stories of family, friends, herself growing up and adjusting or not to modern America. She tells the stories of who and what gets lost in translation and border-crossing. She shows how the multiplicity these give the culture and language of the country she loves and rails against enrich and enliven it beyond compare. Her two collections of poetry are just the beginning of what will be, I’m sure, a rich and acclaimed career. If you have a chance to hear this poet read in person, grasp it with both hands. She is an electric performer of her own work.

Here is the link to her book. As usual, I encourage you to patronize the small presses who make the work of so many writers of color available.

Kimberly Becker Words Facing East: Poems (WordTech Editions) Cherokee/Celtic/Teutonic, Becker has published her first book in 2011. This is a book of the difficulties and joys of homecoming after searching and wandering. Full of delicate and truthful observation of the natural world and the emotional world alike, her poems are full of rivers, stones, feathers, and tears “bumping up against the stories.” Becker has already been awarded several grants and fellowships and seems to be at the beginning of a significant career. This is a poet to keep an eye on as she further develops her art.

Here is the link to her book.

Tomorrow I will post the jacket copy that I just received for my new book, Every Last Secret. I'm very excited about it. Many, many thanks to those of you who already pre-ordered it. You are all wonderful friends and supporters!

Literary Mystery Novelists—Sandra Parshall

2011-12-16T21:58:00.001-06:00

If you're looking for a good holiday gift for a friend or family member who is a reader, I heartily recommend one of Sandra Parshall's novels. They are complex, suspenseful mysteries with characters who come alive on the page and a setting so richly realized that it becomes another character. Now seems a perfect time to remind holiday shoppers about this fine writer.

I first found Sandra Parshall’s books when I read her second book in the Rachel Goddard series, Disturbing the Dead, a book dealing with the Melungeons, their isolation, and the discrimination they have faced and still do. It was beautifully written, and I was sucked into the world Parshall created. Her books have received much critical praise, and I believe in an earlier day when books were not so pigeonholed, they would have been shelved as literature (and probably wouldn’t have sold as well). Her newest book in the series, Under the Dog Star, is another finely crafted book that stresses rich characterization and deals with complex social issues.

Sandra Parshall bio

I was born and raised in South Carolina, and the first job that paid me for writing was that of weekend obituary columnist on my hometown paper, The Spartanburg Herald. Eventually I became a reporter -- after putting together a feature on my own initiative and giving it to the editor to prove I could do it. From there I went to jobs on newspapers in West Virginia and The Baltimore Evening Sun. I covered everything from school board meetings to a mining disaster, health care in prisons, poverty in Appalachia, and the experiences of Native Americans living in the city.

I've written fiction since childhood, but I didn't find the genre I feel comfortable in -- mystery/suspense -- until a few years ago. The Heat of the Moon was my first attempt at psychological suspense. My friend Babs calls it "Sandy's pecan pie dream book" because the entire story came to me during a fitful night after I had overindulged in holiday dessert. With its publication, I'm setting off on a new phase of life, and I hope to make a lot of new friends along the way.

I've lived for many years in the Washington, DC, area, and currently share a house in McLean, Virginia, with my husband, a long-time Washington journalist, and two unbelievably spoiled cats.

For those new to your series, can you describe the Rachel Goddard mysteries? What was your inspiration for this series? How would you describe Under the Dog Star to someone who has not read any of your previous novels?

When I wrote the first book, The Heat of the Moon, I didn’t intend to turn it into a series. That decision came about after I sold the book. Rachel is a veterinarian with a troubled personal past, and the events of the first novel cast a shadow over her life in subsequent books. The original idea came to me in a dream: two little girls outside in a rain storm, crying for their mother. The image stayed in my mind until I discovered who the girls were – Rachel and her younger sister, Michelle – and what happened to them. In book two, Disturbing the Dead, I moved Rachel from urban Northern Virginia to the mountains of southwestern Virginia, because I felt that would provide a stronger setting for a mystery series.

Under the Dog Star stands on its own as a mystery, although I believe the story will be richer for those who have read the previous books. Rachel races to save a pack of feral dogs wrongly accused of mauling a prominent doctor to death, and at the same time she becomes involved in the lives of the doctor’s mistreated adopted children. Deputy Sheriff Tom Bridger, the man Rachel loves, believes the doctor was killed by a trained dog used as a weapon, and he suspects a link to illegal dogfighting. This is a fast-paced mystery/suspense novel, but it’s also a story about the meaning of family and the power of compassion.

What's your writing process? What is a typical writing day like for you? Do you keep to a set schedule? What are your writing habits?

My “process” when I begin a new book consists of sitting down at the computer, saying a prayer, and plunging in. I write a fast, very messy first draft that I would never show anyone. This is the period when I’m almost overwhelmed by doubts about what I’m doing, my choice of plot elements and characters, the possibility that I can’t make a book our of this mess I’m creating. I enjoy the second and third drafts much more, because the story is there and all I have to do is shape it. I try to write in the morning and early afternoon at least five days a week. Toward the end of a book, I will write six days a week. But I’ll go crazy if I don’t get away from it for at least one day out of seven.

What projects, literary or otherwise, are occupying you at the moment?

I’m writing a fifth Rachel book and bringing back Michelle, who doesn’t appear in Disturbing the Dead, Broken Places, or Under the Dog Star. Someone is stalking Michelle, and when Rachel tries to help her sister deal with the harassment, she becomes a target too. At the same time, Tom Bridger investigates the killing of a young woman who was working with an Innocence Project to free a man she believed was wrongly convicted of murder.

Who were your literary influences growing up? Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name as influences?

I didn’t grow up reading Nancy Drew – I still haven’t read a single Nancy Drew book – and didn’t open an Agatha Christie novel until I was in my early thirties. I was one of those weird kids who read Russian novels and literary fiction. Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor were strong influences. Other authors who have influenced me are the ones I began reading in my twenties and thirties, and those books aren’t always similar to one another. I love Edith Wharton’s portrayal of desperate hearts and minds imprisoned by society’s expectations. I love Edna O’Brien’s lush prose, but I also love Ruth Rendell’s economical, razor-sharp writing. Rendell is the author who made me want to write psychological suspense. Thomas H. Cook is another favorite I’ve been reading for a long time. I love his style, but I’m most impressed by the depth he achieves in characterization.

What inspired you to write your first novel? Had you always wanted to be a writer?

Yes, I wanted to be a writer since childhood, and I made many false starts on novels during my teens and twenties. I completed several books that weren’t published before I wrote The Heat of the Moon. I was trying to write literary or mainstream fiction and never imagined writing a mystery, so I discovered fairly late that I have a gift for suspense.

Do you belong to a critique group of other authors? Do you find it helpful? In what ways?

My critique partnerships have all been online, and I’ve found them enormously helpful. Writers can never see our own writing as clearly as others do, because we can’t set aside the personal emotions attached to it and look at the words on the page and nothing else. A good critiquer can assess what you’ve written and also tell you what seems to be missing. It’s essential to find critique partners who understand what you’re doing and share your sensibilities. If you write thrillers and don’t even read cozies, you might not get much benefit from a critiquer who writes and loves cozies.

What is your advice to aspiring writers? How important is it for a young writer to be a reader? What would you recommend they read?

I don’t see how anyone can be a writer without being a voracious reader. We can absorb a certain amount of technique through reading, and even a clumsily written piece of fiction can teach us something if we take the time to study it. My advice to aspiring writers is to read everything, not simply the novels and stories they enjoy most. Don’t sneer at bestselling authors of genre fiction; read their books, find out what makes them appealing to so many people. You may be able to apply what you’ve learned to your own writing, without sacrificing your own special voice. Don’t restrict yourself to one genre, or to fiction, for that matter. Read about the world and the history of human society. Read psychology popular science. The more you know about the world and about human nature, the richer your writing will be.

What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your writing career? What has been the hardest part about being a writer?

I think most writers are surprised by the amount of time and effort – not to mention money – they have to spend on promotion. I enjoy talking to readers and have gradually lost my terror of public speaking, but even the things I enjoy will take time away from writing. The hardest part of being a writer, though, is simply doing it, plowing ahead in spite of an interior voice that’s always whining, “This is too hard! I can’t do it!” At a conscious level, I know I can do it, but sometimes I have to hold my published books in my hands to give myself confidence to try again.

Books of Interest by Writers of Color—Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas

2011-12-12T23:02:00.000-06:00

When this post was originally written, Sing was only available for pre-order. It is now available for immediate delivery. With the holiday madness and impending deadlines, I have been reposting blog entries of special importance and relevance. If you are looking for a Christmas present, Sing would make an excellent choice.

This is the second post in the Writers of color series concerning Allison Adelle Hedge Coke and the groundbreaking new anthology of Indigenous poetry from all the Americas that she's labored for years to bring to fruition.

I have in my hands an advance copy of Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas, edited by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke (University of Arizona Press) scheduled for publication on October 27, 2011. This means the book is already available for pre-order, and soon you can have the immense pleasure of holding it in your own hands to read.

The first anthology of Indigenous poetry from all the Americas, Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas offers the multilingual work of 81 poets from Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central and South America, used twelve translators (poets and writers themselves), and took eight years to become a reality. It will be difficult to do justice to this phenomenal achievement in this limited space, but I will try.

Sing was the cherished brainchild of editor Hedge Coke, who spent eight years tracking down poets, making connections, gathering poems, writing an introduction, formatting, and organizing the work with substantial assistance from her son, poet Travis Hedge Coke. Since all the travel and work of those years was at her own expense, Hedge Coke laments in her introduction her inability to include as wide a variety of poetry from all the Indigenous traditions in the Americas as she desired. What she has brought together, however, is more inclusive and more diverse than any previous anthology and is a flood of riches for the reader.

Those who teach Indigenous Literature or Native Studies courses will find this book a necessity. Nowhere else can you find such a plethora of Indigenous voices speaking to their contemporary truths and to their heritage and cultural traditions. It will make a wonderful introduction to studies of culture, literature, and song.

As you turn the pages in Sing, you repeatedly encounter sharp blasts of truth, songs of celebration and of mourning, warnings of danger, hauntings, memorials, invocations, and paeans from such a cultural variety that it becomes difficult to stop reading, to tear yourself from the lives and hearts shared in this book.

This anthology includes highly acclaimed, well-known (in the United States) Indigenous poets, such as Sherwin Bitsui, Joseph Bruchac, Heid and Louise Erdrich, Santee Frazier, Diane Glancy, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Simon Ortiz, and Hedge Coke herself. It also includes emerging poets we may not all know and poets who are highly acclaimed and well-known in other parts of the Americas—Hilario Chacin (Colombia), Rosa Chávez (Guatemala), Fredy Romiero Campo Chicanga (Colombia), Hugo Jamioy (Colombia), Ariruma Kowii (Ecuador), Leonel Lienlaf (Chile), Lee Maracle (Canada), Jorge Miguel Cocom Pech (Mexico), and Morela Del Valle Maeiro Poyo (Venezuela). Known in U.S. literary circles or not, the poets in Sing uniformly offer high-quality work.

Sherwin Bitsui’s opening poem, “Calyx,” protects, presents, and prepares to open the bud that will become this book’s bloom. Bitsui submerges us in vibrant images that evoke the sacred within the everyday—“at zero hour/ the poem spilling its seeds into your mouth”—in an effort to give a hint of the power behind a childhood memory—“How do I describe her daubing my face with cornhusk?”

Duane Niatum’s poem, “Riding the Wake of the Paddle Journey,” ends the volume with the deepest return to the beginning, to the home from which we sprang, whether we have known it before or not, as Niatum sings us “… to this path to be servants of our ghosts,/ the family keeping the storytelling stone// that shows our flesh’s formed by tide and stump…,”closing the circle of flight, escape, and migration with the deepest state of belonging.

Along the journey, you will find stepping stones of words and image, and depending on the direction you follow, you will have two or three or more journeys before your circle closes in the song of home, of place, of the land and the people that sing within your blood. Below is one short, quick trip through the beauties of this book.

“My brother’s shadow flutters from his shoulders, a magician’s cape.” Natalie Diaz (U.S. in English)

“The child-sun skitters adolescent/ It desires to touch the moon…” Hugo Jamioy (Colombia in Kamsa, Spanish, and English)

“I’m coming home leaving home finding home…” Tenille Campbell (Canada in English)

“Glow-worm, you whisper into the moon’s ear.” Morela Del Valle Maeiro Poyo (Venezuela in Karíña, Spanish, and English)

“… dark feathers of the old way’s pride/ mixed in with blessed Kateri’s/ pale dreams of sacred water.” Joseph Bruchac (U.S. in English)

“With our arms of volcanic warmth…” Ariruma Kowii (Ecuador in Quechua, Spanish, and English)

“Finally, reaching across feather-light and closing the distance/ Your face gently cupped in wings…” Al Hunter (Canada in English)

“The ripe fruit/ is the sweet eye of the tree.” Jorge Miguel Cocom Pech (Mexico in Mayan, Spanish, and English)

In the end, the abundant treasures of Sing defeat me. This review offers such a tiny taste of its bounty that the reality of its riches evades capture. You will have to pick up the book and open it for yourself. When you do, be sure you have plenty of time to wander lost in its many worlds.

Here is the link to order the book. As usual, I suggest you patronize University of Arizona Press who brought this book to the world.

Literary Mystery Novelists—Paul Doiron

2011-12-09T21:39:00.001-06:00

One of the most important things to know about Paul Doiron is that he is a Maine native. Maine plays a big role in his life. He is editor-in-chief of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, Down East Books, and DownEast.com. He blogs at www.mainecrimewriters.com. He is even a Registered Maine Guide. All of these ties to Maine come to fruition in his books, The Poacher's Son and Trespasser, which feature a Maine game warden, Mike Bowditch. The forests and countryside of Maine are as much a character in Doiron’s books as his troubled, but engaging protagonist, and Doiron’s evocative descriptions of the rough terrain bring it to life.

Doiron is noted for his multifaceted characters and his realistic depictions of their lives, relationships, and choices. He is a writer who pays close attention to language without losing the suspense and complicated plotting that are valued in mysteries. His first book, The Poacher's Son, was nominated for most of the awards in the mystery field and won several. Look for Trespasser, his second novel released in June 2011, to make a similar splash. Doiron is definitely a writer to follow.

Here is the link for Doiron’s new book.

BIO

Paul Doiron is the author of the Mike Bowditch series of crime novels, including The Poacher's Son, which won the Barry Award for Best First Novel and the Strand Critics Award for Best First Novel and has been nominated for an Edgar Award, an Anthony Award, a Macavity Award, and a Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and the Maine Literary Award for "Best Fiction of 2010." His second book in the Mike Bowditch series, Trespasser, has been called a "masterpiece of high-octane narrative" by Booklist. The Poacher's Son received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal, and Trespasser received starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal. Doiron is the editor in chief of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, Down East Books, and DownEast.com. A native of Maine, he attended Yale University, where he graduated with a degree in English, and he holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. Paul is a Registered Maine Guide specializing in fly fishing and outdoor recreation and lives on a trout stream in coastal Maine.

For those new to your series, can you describe the Mike Bowditch mysteries?

I write a series of a literary suspense novels featuring a young Maine game warden named Mike Bowditch. I hope what sets them apart from similar books is my devotion to describing the environment in which Bowditch works and the psychological complexity (and I hope reality) of the characters.

What was your inspiration for this series?

Years ago, I wrote a series of magazine features about some offbeat wildlife encounters for Down East: the Magazine of Maine, and I realized I was quoting game wardens for all of these stories. In Maine, game wardens are full police officers (they perform the duties of cops wherever there isn't a road, which is pretty much everywhere since Maine is the most heavily forested state in the nation). I realized that a game warden encounters every conceivable form of crime in Maine, and that a warden would make an excellent protagonist in a series of suspense novels.

How would you describe Trespasser to someone who has not read your previous novel?

It began when a young woman I knew hit and killed a deer with a car on a remote rural road, and she didn't know what to do. The guys who stopped to "help" her before an actual police officer arrived terrified her more than the accident, and I began to think about a fictional scenario where my game warden shows up at a crash scene belatedly and finds both the woman and the deer missing. Trespasser is truly the sequel to The Poacher's Son in that Mike is trying to get his life together eight months after the events in that book, especially repairing his relationship with his live-in girlfriend, Sarah, but he's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and his guilt drives him to commit a series of reckless, self-sabotaging actions. He inserts himself into a decade-old murder case that resembles the circumstances of the young woman's disappearance and he begins to wonder if the man originally imprisoned for that crime was a scapegoat and a real sexual predator is still on the loose.

You’re the editor-in-chief of a major regional magazine and a registered Maine Guide. How do you fit your own writing into such a busy life?

By sacrificing my personal relationships. I mean that as a joke, but I am lucky to have a patient wife who understands what these books mean to me. I have met few people who are capable at multitasking (and even with them there's a cost), but I have learned to shift my attention quickly from project to project. I always say that I'd prefer to spend my days staring at a trout stream than a computer screen, but for the moment the novels and my work at Down East are preoccupying my attention. That won't be forever.

What's your writing process? What is a typical writing day like for you?

You often hear the advice, "Write everyday," which is smart. My day job certainly requires me to write every day on something or other, but I don't always work on my fiction. I typically devote my weeks to Down East and my weekends focused on the novels. It's not ideal, but I have to say that Mike Bowditch is always lurking in the back of my mind. Hemingway used to recommend letting stories brew in your subconscious between writing sessions, and there's a lot to be said for that approach.

What are your writing habits?

One advantage to being a professional journalist is that you learn you can't sit around and wait for the muse to arrive. You have to sit down and do the work. I try to set quotas for the amount of words I need to write each week, and I am good at meeting self-imposed deadlines. There are so many potential distractions just living your life, and the only person who will make your novel a priority is you.

What projects, literary or otherwise, are occupying you at the moment?

I've been the editor in chief of Down East Magazine for more than six years, and it's been a great ride. Down East is one of the largest and most successful regional magazines in the nation. Two years ago, I was also given editorial charge of our book division (we publish about 30 new titles a year), so I've had to learn the other side of the publishing business. It's given me a unique perspective. By day I am a hard-ass editor complaining about late and difficult authors, aware of the business pressures of selling books in the year 2011. By night I am that selfsame neurotic writer complaining about my own book editor and worrying about what my agent isn't telling me about my career.

Who were your literary influences growing up? Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name as influences?

Hemingway, first and foremost. (So many male authors say that, I feel sheepish to admit it.) But my very first inspiration was actually J.R.R. Tolkien. I remember finishing The Lord of the Rings and immediately sitting down and beginning to write. Prior to that, I'd always been a reader, but Tolkien inspired me to begin creating something of my own. Later I found other writers who fired my imagination. It's a diverse list to say the least: Poe, Conan Doyle, Stevenson, Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, Chandler, Hammett, Tony Hillerman, Mailer, P.D. James, Austen, James Lee Burke, Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver, Henning Mankell, Tim O'Brien.

What inspired you to write your first novel, The Poacher’s Son? Had you always wanted to be a writer?

For the longest time I thought I was going to be a cartoonist and then I read the Lord of the Rings, as I said, and my sights changed. When I told people that I wanted to write for a living, they would always nod and say, "Yes, but what are you going to do for a job?" That's an excellent question! Every young writer should be asked it. I wrote a lot of stories when I was in my twenties, but honestly I had nothing to say: I was too callow. It was only after my life began to settle down and I rediscovered my deep interest in the Maine outdoors—which is so rarely rendered with accuracy—that I realized I need to write a story about the North Woods and perhaps my own experience of being an impetuous, callow young guy could fuel the story if I made him a Maine game warden.

The Poacher’s Son won immense critical praise. Did that make writing the second novel harder or easier?

My agent encouraged me to begin writing my second novel before the first had even sold. That made the composition of Trespasser so much easier, since I mostly wrote it before The Poacher's Son had even been published, let alone before the first reviews started coming in. The greater danger to me beyond the awards I've won—for which I am undeserving but extremely grateful—is actually the expectation of readers now. When you write a series, your fans get invested in your characters, and they want you to shift in very specific directions. There's a fine line between acknowledging the validity of their responses and beginning to pander.

Do you belong to a critique group of other authors. Do you find it helpful? In what ways?

I have a few author friends whom I share my drafts with. I've been part of writers groups in the past, and they can be great if you have the right chemistry and similar habits and expectations. There are many occasions when I've wanted to bring a troublesome chapter to a group. Instead I have had to puzzle it out on my own since I don't like to use my editor as a constant sounding board.

What is your advice to aspiring writers? How important is it for a young writer to be a reader? What would you recommend they read?

Persevere. There are almost no overnight successes. You have to read, you have to write. Open yourself to criticism because you're going to hear it eventually. Better to hear it from your writing group than from an agent who won't explain why they won't take you on or a book editor who is too busy to give you feedback. Worse, you might even get your book published and then watch it be eviscerated by reviewers. That's why it's so important to work hard on making the manuscript as solid as you can up front.

What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your writing career? What has been the hardest part about being a writer?

The most surprising thing? No one knows anything. That's William Goldman's famous line about the screen trade but it applies to the publishing industry now, too. The digital revolution has publishers scrambling. And there are increasingly few certainties about what will sell. What this means for writers is that the pressure to create great books is being multiplied by new demands: create a Web site; tweet several times a day; do as many public appearances as you can; blog, blog, blog. Being an author today isn't the same as it used to be—you're now a brand that you yourself must market—and you need to be comfortable with change. But it's an exciting time, too. Revolutionary periods always are.

Books of Interest From Writers of Color--Marjorie Agosin, Lise Erdrich, Phyllis Becker

2011-12-04T18:11:00.001-06:00

This was the initial post in my series on Books of Interest by Writers of Color series way back when. I haven't come close to running out of good writers yet, but I'm running low on energy and time right now, and I have lots of new followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook who've not seen these posts and may not know about these wonderful writers. If you're looking for Christmas presents, books by these authors or any of others I've profiled on my blog would make a great gift!

Books of Interest From Writers of Color-Part 1

Well, I'm later starting this series of posts than I'd hoped, but here goes. These will not be reviews since I'll be talking about three writers at a time in each post and that doesn't leave enough space for a real review. (Though I may post some of my reviews that have run in other places along the way.) What I'm trying to do here is to bring some attention to writers of color who might otherwise not receive it. Some of them may be well-known in their field of poetry or whatever, but probably aren't outside of that. I will probably look at someone highly regarded within their field but not well-known by the general reader each time, along with a couple of emerging or new writers. I want to give a brief overview of their work and info on where it can be found for teachers or those interested in learning more or purchasing it.

Caveat: The world of writers of color is fairly small. Most of the writers I will mention in this series are friends or acquaintances of mine or friends of friends. Not always, of course—of the three Erdrich sisters mentioned below, I’ve only met Heid once very briefly. However, since I’m trying to get people to read writers of color and make a resource for teachers and librarians here, I will not post about anyone, friend or not, whose work is not good. It would defeat the purpose. Fortunately, I know a lot of wonderful writers of color.

Marjorie Agosín, La luz del deseo/The Light of Desire (Swan Isle Press) This is the latest of many wonderful books by this gifted poet and activist. (See October 2010 of this blog for a fuller account of her many awards and books.) This book is a gorgeously produced bilingual edition of an unusual effort on the author’s part. Usually, her poetry deals with injustice and oppression, often against women, or what she calls, “memory activism,” in which she imaginatively recreates her own ancestors and the oppression they faced—the poet is the child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors who settled in Chile. La luz del deseo, however, is a poetic love song in the tradition of the Bible’s Song of Solomon that celebrates not only a passionate human love affair but the poet’s love of Israel and her calling of that country back to the ideals on which it was originally formed. For La luz del deseo, I will give the link to the small press which published it since I believe in supporting these small presses without which we wouldn’t have many writers of color published, at all. Buy it from them. But if you want to see a wide selection of all the many books of Agosín, click on this Amazon link, as well.

Lise Erdrich, Night Train (Coffee House Press). This collection of extremely short pieces of fiction is the first by Lise Erdrich, sister of well-known novelist Louise Erdrich and highly regarded poet Heid Erdrich. Played out in the towns and reservations of Indian country, Erdrich’s brief stories put us into the hearts and minds of a dizzying array of characters with skill and love. Here’s a link to Coffee House Press for the book. Also, check out the sisters. I’ll be dealing with each of them later. This is a multi-talented family of Native writers.

Phyllis Becker, How I Came to Love Jazz (Helicon Nine Editions). In this first book, Becker writes of an African American woman’s life in the heart of the country with an emphasis on both identities. Jazz plays a major part in her family history and in her poetry, which echoes to the rhythms of America’s greatest music form. Becker isn’t well known outside of the two-state area of Missouri and Kansas, but she really should be, and I think she will be as more and more people discover her work. Here is the link for her book.

Coming Up on the Holidays

2011-12-02T23:03:00.002-06:00

This was taken at my reading at the Alliance of American Artists national conference in Chicago at the end of October. I can't imagine for which of the three poems I read I would make this kind of gesture, but I am nonetheless. Ben calls this "Let My People Go!" I may need some of that energy now.

It's the beginning of December as I write. I have no Solstice, Christmas or Chanukah shopping/baking/decorating done (and we're a family that celebrates all three holidays--and expects handknitted or handsewn presents from me). I have page proofs of Every Last Secret to go through with a fine-toothed comb, looking for typos and other errors. I have three reviews, two essays, and two guest blogs to write (speaking of which, I was guestblogger on Jungle Red Writers yesterday--check it out), plus five short chapters left to write on Every Broken Trust. After a lot of traveling to sing for my supper, my house is a disaster area, and I'm expecting guests for the holidays, including one from Germany. My 19th wedding anniversary is coming up two days after Christmas, and I haven't even a thought of what to do for it or what to give my sweet husband.

My first impulse is to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head, but I don't think that would work for an entire month. So it's time to roll up my sleeves. To facilitate my futile efforts to get all this done in time, I intend this month to post some of the earlier posts in the Writers of Color series and in the Literary Mystery Novelists series, interspersed with occasional online bursts of current panic. This will give new followers and readers a chance to see these posts and learn about these writers, and it will give me a chance to get through the month without committing hara-kiri.

To remind myself to calm down and that I can get a lot of work done when I am in a good, healthy state of mind I will return to this photo. This was the view out my studio window when sitting at my desk while I was at Ragdale on a terrifically creative and productive residency. The last patch of virgin prairie east of the Mississippi.

And here's a poem I wrote while at Ragdale about something that happened while I was there.

HORNED GOD

Walking the narrow path

through mounds of snow,

cold air stinging my nostrils,

waking up my lungs,

walking with the contentment

of a good day’s work swallowed whole,

heading in the dark frosty air

toward a bright-lighted room

with warm supper and companions,

movement on the periphery of vision

startles, something large.

I stop, turn slightly to my right,

eye to eye with a three-point stag.

One long, long half-second’s stare,

then strong legs gathering and leaping,

bounding four feet each time,

five amazing leaps across my path

vanishing behind a large tree, supporting shrubs,

probably running straight out now

back to his home on the prairie.

I stand, paralyzed, mute,

breathless laugh, wide smile,

breathing deep of the wild night.

That's the frame of mind I want to get into. What are you doing to be less frantic for the holidays? How will you keep your sanity during these busy times?

Books of Interest by Writers of Color--Rudolfo Anaya

2011-11-30T00:13:00.000-06:00

Rudolfo Anaya needs no introduction, since if a person knows only one Latino writer, Anaya will probably be that writer. He is justly famous for his first book, the seminal Bless Me, Ultima, but that was just the beginning of a long series of novels, plays, poetry, short fiction, essays, children's books, and anthologies that Anaya has published. He may be defined by that classic first book, but only because people forget that his second novel, The Heart of Aztlàn, won the American Book Award, that his third novel, Tortuga, was acclaimed as even finer than the first two, and that much of his other work is as lyrical and mystical as Bless Me, Ultima was.

In addition to the mystical, spiritual elements which are always important in his work, Anaya also has written some of the best description and analysis of the difficulties that face Chicano and Mexican families when they move into American cities and face the poverty, discrimination, and crime they find there. More than any other author, he brings these two disparate elements together--the indigenous mysticism and the realistic portrayal of urban life--successfully melding them in his work.

Order Randy Lopez here

In Randy Lopez Goes Home: A Novel (University of Oklahoma Press), Anaya reverses that progression his characters take from the rural to the urban. Randy Lopez long ago left his hometown village in northern New Mexico to seek and find success in the urban Anglo world. Along the way, though, he's lost something intangible, and he returns to Agua Bendita to try to find what's missing in his life. Like all of Anaya's heroes, Randy is on a spiritual quest.

Anaya is considered one of the principal founders of the Chicano literature movement. Not only the author of

30+ books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s and 10+ anthologies, he is the recipient of a long list of awards, including two NEA Fellowships, a W. K. Kellogg Fellowship, The Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award, the Mexican Medal of Friendship, Award for Achievement in Chicano Literature, the National Medal of Arts, and five honorary doctorates. He won the PEN Center USA West Award for Alburquerque.

In addition, he has worked from his earliest days to open doors for other Chicano/Latino authors. He has edited a number of anthologies showcasing the work of younger Chicano authors and founded Rio Grande Writers Association, an organization to support and encourage Chicano writers and those who publish and teach their work. Anaya has mentored many newer writers to this day and continues to do so.

In all of Anaya's work, he is concerned with Chicano mysticism and mythology, which combines pre-Christian beliefs with elements of traditional Catholicism, and with the relationship of humans to nature. He also focuses on the clash of cultures that occurs in New Mexico between the dominant Anglo society and the Mexican and Indian peoples the Anglos found when they took possession of this land.

Once again, Anaya brings his lush and lyrical style and his characteristic myth-making and mysticism and concern with the sacredness of nature to bear on a story of a man seeking the spiritual connection he's lost with the help of a female curandera figure and of spirits and naguals. Anaya is a cultural and literary treasure, and we are lucky to have him telling us stories of the heart and of the spirit.

Literary Mystery Novelists--Rebecca Cantrell

2011-11-26T13:31:00.000-06:00

Rebecca Cantrell's A Game of Lies is the third book in her series about German reporter/sometime spy Hannah Vogel in the days of Nazi power leading up to World War II. In it, Hannah must return to Berlin from her exile in Switzerland to cover the 1936 Olympics and smuggle out dangerous information her former mentor has discovered about the Nazis. Cantrell brings the paranoid streets of Berlin to life during the Olympics, temporarily whitewashed of their antisemitic graffiti to fool the international press but still immensely dangerous for anyone who was not a solid Nazi. In Hannah, Cantrell has a protagonist who is not a professional spy but instead has to fumble her way through frightening circumstances where even old friends can turn against her with only her innate courage and her contacts in Berlin's underworld to help her.

Cantrell's fourth book in the series, A City of Broken Glass (set during Kristallnacht), will be published in July 2012 and is highly anticipated by all who have read her first three books. Here is the link for A Game of Lies, and here is the link to pre-order A City of Broken Glass.

Rebecca Cantrell Bio

A few years ago Rebecca Cantrell quit her job, sold her house, and moved to Hawaii to write a novel because, at seven, she decided that she would be a writer. Now she writes the Hannah Vogel mystery series set in Berlin in the 1930s, including “A Trace of Smoke and “A Night of Long Knives.” “A Trace of Smoke” was considered by major cable networks as a television series.

A faded pink triangle pasted on the wall of Dachau Concentration Camp and time in Berlin, Germany in the 1980s inspired “A Trace of Smoke.” Fluent in German, she received her high school diploma from the John F. Kennedy Schule in Berlin and studied at the Freie Universität in Berlin and the Georg August Universität in Göttingen before graduating from Carnegie Mellon University.

When she visited Berlin in the summer of 2006, she was astounded to discover that many locations in her novel have been rebuilt and reopened in the last few years, including the gay bar El Dorado and the Mosse House publishing house.

Her short story “Coffee” appear in the “Missing” anthology, and her short story “On the Train” will be in the “First Thrills” anthology in June 2010.

Her screenplay “The Humanitarian” was a finalist at Shriekfest 2008: The Los Angeles Horror/Sci-fi Film Festival. Her screenplay “A Taste For Blood” was a finalist at the Shriekfest 2007: The Los Angeles Horror/Sci-fi Film Festival.

As of this writing, she lives in Hawaii with her Ironman husband and son.

For those new to your series, can you describe the Hannah Vogel mysteries? What was your inspiration for this series? How would you describe A Game of Lies to someone who has not read any of your previous novels?

The Hannah Vogel mysteries explore the world of 1930s Berlin through the eyes of a crime reporter trying to bring out the stories of those trapped there.

My inspiration was Berlin. I lived in Berlin in the 1980s and one thing the 80s in Berlin had in common with the 30s was that everything was going to change. The Wall was going to come down. The two halves of Germany were going to be reunited for the first time in forty years. But, like Hannah in the 1930s, I didn’t know it. History and history in the making were right there. History was in the brand new buildings plunked in the heart of an old European city because the last buildings there got leveled by Allied air strikes in World War II. History was in the Wall that separated my West German side with free elections and democracy and McDonalds and Radio Free Europe and discos playing American music from the East German side with Communism and aluminum money and Russian TV shows. The future was in the Wall coming down and what came after.

Everything was there. Who wouldn’t want to be become a novelist after that?

What’s “A Game of Lies” about? Berlin in 1936, of course! For the duration of the Olympic Games, the Nazis are pretending that Berlin is not the cruel and oppressive city they have made it. They have taken down anti-Semitic posters, re-opened gay bars, and stopped beating up their citizens in public. But it’s a thin veneer of tolerance.

Hannah travels to this newly festive Berlin to write a story on the games and to smuggle out secret documents. At the stadium, soon after she is reunited with the famous reporter Peter Weill, her mentor and ersatz father, he dies in her arms. The next day his beloved sister is found dead too. When the Nazis cover up both murders, Hannah determines to reveal the story they died for.

What's your writing process? What is a typical writing day like for you? Do you keep to a set schedule? What are your writing habits?

I have a complicated writing process I don’t really recommend to anyone. I wrote about it on Timothy Hallinan’s blog (http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/?p=1018). The short answer is that I write 50 pages, outline, write 50 more pages, rewrite the outline (back to the beginning and forward to the end), write 50 pages…repeat.

On a typical day, I drop my son off at school and get to my local coffee shop by 8. I order tea and sit down and write until I’ve hit my page count. If I’m lucky, that’s by lunch. If I’m not, I don’t get to eat until after I get my son at 2. Most days, I get lucky.

What projects, literary or otherwise, are occupying you at the moment?

I just finished “A City of Broken Glass,” the fourth Hannah Vogel novel. It’s set in Berlin in 1938, where Hannah has been transported against her will shortly before the pogrom that would come to be known as Kristallnacht. I have some ideas for #5, which I’m tentatively calling “A Time of Night and Fog” and hope to set in Palestine in 1940 or so. Plus I’m working on something I’m not allowed to talk about (tease!).

Who were your literary influences growing up? Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name as influences?

I read all the time and I read everything. I think the sheer volume of what I read precludes me from listing any one particular author. I loved different writers at different times. For the Hannah books, I’ve read a lot of Philip Kerr, Christopher Isherwood, Joseph Roth, William Shirer, and Victor Klemperer. I just finished “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larsen and loved it.

What inspired you to write your first novel?

I think my first novel was about a set of identical twins living in Arizona who hated each other. It was 60 pages long hand and I wrote it when I was 12. I was living in Alaska at the time and think I wanted to spend some time someplace warm and Arizona was a good as anywhere.

My first published novel, “A Trace of Smoke,” was inspired by a fading pink triangle I saw on the wall of the Dachau Concentration Camp. My German host brother was gay, and seeing that triangle there brought home the reality of those who were imprisoned and died for being who they were. Fifty years earlier, he would have been in that camp. Scary stuff for a teenager to think about, and it never really let go of me. “A Trace of Smoke” was a way of showing that.

Do you belong to a critique group of other authors. Do you find it helpful? In what ways?

I belong to a critique group called Kona Ink. The members are Kathryn Wadsworth and David Deardorff (know for their award-winning garden book “What’s Wrong with my Plant?”), Judith Heath (soon to be known for her terrific YA fantasy novel “Scarstone”) and Karen Hollinger (who just gave birth to twins so is known right now as “Mommy”). It’s a terrific group of intelligent, dedicated writers who don’t let me settle for anything but the absolute best in my work and theirs. Their insights and critiques have been an invaluable part of my work and life as a writer.

What is your advice to aspiring writers? How important is it for a young writer to be a reader? What would you recommend they read?

Read. Read. Read. Reading is where you learn about story, and where you learn to love story. Turns out it’s not daydreaming. It’s research.

Write. Write. Write. Put words down on the page as often as you can. Written words are better than spoken words. Don’t talk about the piece. Write it down.

Have fun. That whole tortured writer myth? Way overworked. I know a lot of happy and well adjusted writers. You don’t need to drink, do drugs, engage in complicated sexual dramas or perform other high risk acts to become a writer. You can simply enjoy doing it. You don’t have to act like every edit is a cut that wounds your soul. You can view them as ways to help your work read better, clearer, and more true. I love to write. I love to edit. I love to cut and add and re-vision. It’s not always easy, but I have a really great time. And so should you. Otherwise, why bother?

What has been the hardest part about being a writer? What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your writing career?

Promotion is the hardest part. It takes me out of the room where I’m all alone with my characters and my words. This leads right into the biggest lesson, the one that keeps coming back to me again and again. What matters most is you and the page. You alone in your head with your characters. You dreaming the world into existence.

Monday in the series, Books of Interest by Writers of Color, I'll take a look at the iconic Chicano writer, Rudolfo Anaya. and while you're here, check out the website I've added on and let me know what you think of it.

Don't forget to shop at an independent bookstore in person or online today on Small-Business Saturday. They are the lifeblood of literature today. Let's keep them around! Have a terrific end to November!

EVERY LAST SECRET Available for Pre-Order

2011-11-10T20:31:00.003-06:00

Here are links for pre-ordering Every Last Secret, if you're so inclined. I would truly appreciate it if you did pre-order and tell your friends about the book since the pre-orders and early buzz will help determine the future of the book.

Indiebound

Powell's

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Every Last Secret got some great blurbs from wonderful writers.

“There's a new cop in town and she has smarts, courage, and a good heart. Mystery readers will find a new favorite in Chief Skeet Bannion.” --Nancy Pickard, bestselling author of The Scent of Rain and Lightning

“Linda Rodriguez has created a captivating female detective with a mind for justice and a heart for those who’ve been unfairly treated. Skeet navigates university politics and a nest of deadly secrets to find the truth, even when it means investigating people she cares about.”--Carolyn Haines, bestselling author of Bones of a Feather

"Rodriguez’s debut is an action-packed ride featuring an intriguing heroine you won’t quickly forget."—Sally Goldenbaum, bestselling author of The Wedding Shawl

Another Books Status Report

2011-11-09T18:44:00.002-06:00

I'm recently back from a period of traveling interspersed with too-short times at home trying to dig out from under the email avalanche and other chores. This was my last bout of traveling until next spring, so I will be able to bring this blog back to its normal schedule with the Writers of Color series on Mondays and the Literary Mystery Novelists series on Fridays, supplemented by occasional posts on my life and books. I'll start with an update on the three books my mind is most concerned with right now.

I'm returning to the second Skeet Bannion book, Every Broken Trust, which only needs the last few chapters written to finish the first draft. Then, a short break and revisions before I turn it in to my agent and editor. As usual, there have been some interesting surprises pop up along the way, changes to plots, characters who become more or less important than planned, relationships morphing in ways I'd not expected. I'm excited to get back to work on it.

The first Skeet Bannion novel, Every Last Secret: A Mystery, will be published on April 24, 2012. For those in Kansas City, save that date. The book launch, co-sponsored by the Kansas City Public Library and Rainy Day Books, will take place 6:30 pm, Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th Street.

For those friends of mine elsewhere who are attending the Malice Domestic national conference two days later, I'll be signing the book there, so I'll see you in Bethesda.

Here are links for pre-ordering Every Last Secret, if you're so inclined. I would truly appreciate it if you did pre-order and tell your friends about the book since the pre-orders and early buzz will help determine the future of the book.

Indiebound

Powell's

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Every Last Secret got some great blurbs from wonderful writers.

“There's a new cop in town and she has smarts, courage, and a good heart. Mystery readers will find a new favorite in Chief Skeet Bannion.” --Nancy Pickard, author of The Scent of Rain and Lightning

"Rodriguez’s debut is an action-packed ride featuring an intriguing heroine you won’t quickly forget."—Sally Goldenbaum, author of The Seaside Knitters Mystery Series

I have been so impressed with my editor and and the other staff at St. Martin's Press. They worked hard to give the book its beautiful cover. My editor's suggested revisions have all been on-target and helped to make it a stronger book. So far, this has been an excellent experience.

The third book I mentioned at the top of this post is Dark Sister, my next book of poems. Dark Sister is based on teachings and memories of my Cherokee grandmother and a look at history through the prism of my family. I wrote the first draft of this book during a wonderful stay at Ragdale. During the editing process, I was able to go on a research trip back to Tahlequah, OK, where I'd not been since I was thirteen, courtesy of a research grant from KC ArtsFund. I'm now finished with it, pleased with the individual poems and with the book, so I will be sending out individual poems to journals for publication before submitting the book manuscript for publication.

With all three books in various stages of "completion," life is pretty exciting--busy--around here. After a time of travel that has included warm receptive audiences and the making of new friends, I'm looking forward to settling back into the harness of daily writing. So here's to health and happiness and high daily page totals for all of us!

Books of Interest by Writers of Color--Luis Alberto Urrea

2011-11-02T13:15:00.000-05:00

I started this blog series as a service to all the people, many of them librarians and teachers, who wanted to know about talented writers of color beyond the ubiquitous ultra-famous writers, such as Sandra Cisneros and Toni Morrison, the established writers that everyone knows about. In recent months, however, I have come to realize that, with the exception of those two fabulous and famous writers and a few others, such as Alice Walker, even the established writers of color, those with big publishers and major awards, are too often unknown to literate, educated people who aren't in the literary game. This came as a shock to me, but of course, books and literature have been my life for most of my life.

Consequently, I'll be stopping now and then to look at a writer everyone should know but may not. Since I recently did a "creative conversation" with Luis Alberto Urrea at the 20th annual Alliance of Artists Communities national conference, I decided to start with him--because we had such fun together and such a wonderful reception, because he has a major new book coming out this month, and because Urrea is definitely one of the writers everyone should know.

Urrea writes with the lyrical language of a poet, even when he writes hard-hitting investigative nonfiction about the broken immigration system and the tug-of-war that is modern border policy. His impeccably researched historical novels about Teresita Urrea, the Saint of Cabora and Mexican Joan of Arc, have been described by critics as magic realism as a convenient classification, but it is really the lyricism of the poet applied to the novel that leads them to this label--and his obsession with transformation, which can be found in all of his writing. I find myself wondering what label they will give the novel he is currently working on about his white East Coast ancestors.

Here is the link to pre-order Queen of America, the second of those books about Teresita, one of Urrea's own ancestors. I've linked to Indiebound so you can pre-order from independent bookstores.

Luis Alberto Urrea, born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, is the author of 15 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Urrea has been named to the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won the American Book Award, the Lannan Literary Award, the Kiriyama Prize, the Christopher Award, the Colorado Book Award in Poetry, and even the mystery field's highest award, the Edgar. The Devil's Highway has been optioned for a movie.

Urrea grew up in San Diego and graduated from the University of California-San Diego with an undergraduate degree in writing. He served as a relief worker in Tijuana, a film extra, and columnist and cartoonist before teaching expository writing and fiction workshops at Harvard. After graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, he taught at Massachusetts Bay College and was writer in residence at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.He is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
WORKS
Poetry
The Fever of Being (West End Press)
Ghost Sickness (Cinco Puntos Press)
Vatos (Cinco Puntos Press)

Short Stories
Six Kinds of Sky (Cinco Puntos Press)

Novels
In Search of Snow (University of Arizona Press)
The Hummingbird's Daughter (Little, Brown, and Company)
Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush (Cinco Puntos Press) graphic novel
Into the Beautiful North (Little, Brown, and Company)
Queen of America (Little, Brown, and Company)

Nonfiction
Across the wire: life and hard times on the Mexican border (Anchor Books)
By the Lake of Sleeping Children (Anchor Books)
The Devil's Highway (Little, Brown, and Company)

Memoir
Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (University of Arizona Press)
Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life (University of Arizona Press)

Literary Mystery Novelists--John Lescroart

2011-10-28T21:35:00.004-05:00

After much traveling and then a couple of days chauffeuring my friend Sherwin Bitsui around Kansas City before and after his remarkable poetry reading at The Writers Place, I'm getting back on my regular schedule with this blog. Today, we have a real treat in the Literary Mystery Novelists series with John Lescroart.

John Lescroart Bio

John and his wife, Lisa Sawyer, live in Northern California.

How would you describe Damage to someone who has not read any of your previous stand-alone novels?

What's your writing process? What is a typical writing day like for you? What are your writing habits?

You turned to full-time writing after a near-death experience, and that led to your great success. Do you regret not having made that transition earlier?

Who were your literary influences growing up? Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name as influences?

You wrote your first novel in college. What inspired you to write that first book? Had you always wanted to be a writer?

I guess the short answer to this question is “Yes.” I was a voracious reader from an early age, and just could never quite envision doing anything else for a living that would be meaningful. This is really funny considering the dozens of jobs I wound up doing until I could get my writing to support me, but that’s the way I always felt. As for that first college book, which I presciently entitled “No Promise,” I had already started telling friends and family that I was going to be a novelist, and I figured that meant I had to actually write a novel, or maybe even more. (Although in my youth, my fantasy was that I would just write a few novels, maybe three or four, and then after that I would just be a “famous novelist.”) So I sat down and started writing and pretty soon had a pretty bad novel. But you know, a pretty bad novel is still a novel, and it was someplace to start.

Do you (or have you) belong(ed) to a critique group of other authors. Do you find it helpful? In what ways?

What is your advice to aspiring writers? How important is it for a young writer to be a reader? What would you recommend they read?

What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your writing career? What has been the hardest part about being a writer?

Monday, we'll return to the Writers of Color series with an in-depth look at Luis Alberto Urrea, and we'll be back to our usual schedule. Have a happy weekend with lots of reading pleasure!