Author R&R with Diana Renn

Diana Renn is the Fiction Editor at YARN (Young Adult Review Network), an award-winning online magazine featuring short-form writing for teens. She's also the author of a new YA mystery called Blue Voyage, which School Library Journal called "witty and engaging, this book hearkens back to works by Agatha Christie. A great addition to any library that has a teen fan base for thrilling mysteries." 

Blue Voyage centers on Zan, a politician’s daughter and an adrenaline junkie who loves to live on the edge. But she gets more of a rush than she bargained for on a forced mother–daughter bonding trip to Turkey, where she finds herself in the crosshairs of an antiquities smuggling ring. These criminals believe that Zan can lead them to an ancient treasure that’s both priceless and cursed. Zan’s quest to save the treasure—and the lives of people she cares about—leads her from the sparkling Mediterranean, to the bustle of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, to the eerie and crumbling caves of Cappadocia.

Diana Renn stopped by In Reference to Murder today to talk about the book and her writing and researching process:

 

Blue Voyage: The Short Story that Wanted to Be a Book

Once upon a time there was a short story that really, really wanted to be a novel. It was called “Blue Voyage.”

It was long – nearly thirty pages, and therefore unmarketable to most literary journals or commercial magazines. It was set on a boat off the coast of Turkey, and that boat contained a cast so large it nearly sunk the ship: two families, each with three similarly-aged children (and thus great potential for confusion of characters), six older passengers of various nationalities, and a crew of three: a captain, a cook, and a first mate.

In this story, very little happened. The children squabbled. The adults in the two families talked in hushed voices about things the kids could only guess at. A shore expedition resulted in somebody going missing for awhile. A vendor pulled up to the boat and sold them some baklava. A British mystery writer on board seemed to be plotting a new novel based on the characters, and added a vague air of menace to the setting. And through it all, the main character, a teenage girl with a chip on her shoulder, resolved that she was not going to travel with these people anymore as soon as she turned eighteen.

This story was unmarketable not only because of its length, but also because it was supremely boring. After years of revising it, I set it aside in resignation.

It haunted me, though. I had become inspired to write it after a “Blue Voyage” cruise I took with my husband off the coast of Turkey. We had booked last-minute tickets on a boat that happened to have – this will shock you, I know – two traveling families with three children each, six older passengers of various nationalities, and yes, a crew of three. I thought I was clever in changing those nationalities and fictionalizing the real families we met on the cruise (who were actually perfectly nice, and never squabbled). I had loved writing about Turkey most of all. And maybe that was the problem. Was it possible I had the right setting but the wrong characters? Was it possible too that the story wanted to ramble and explore a terrain far bigger than a short story?

Years after that first draft, I looked at the story again in the cold light of day. I poked at it with a stick. I still liked parts of that story. The parts about Turkey. The boat. The baklava vendor who pulled up on a boat. The teenaged girl with a chip on her shoulder. But it didn’t feel like a story.

I began to experiment, writing some false starts in new directions. I cut the big families and pared down to a mother-daughter duo. I attempted a sibling, but cut her out too. Then I added an aunt. Suddenly the tensions and dynamics felt sharper, without all those extra people clamoring for attention. Still, I kept the boat so I did need some passengers, and some eventual suspects for a crime. So the older passengers of various nationalities packed their bags and trotted over from the long short story to what was now, quite clearly, becoming a novel. And that British mystery writer from the story? That, I realized was me (though not British) just trying to make sense of the characters. I didn’t need to be a character. I would stay behind the scenes.

I did keep the baklava vendor, a minor yet important character. When I realized he wasn’t just selling baklava, my page count started to rise and rise. I had the crux of my mystery.

Sometimes a story is just a story. The character arcs may be smaller, the plot points fewer or even scarce if one is writing a slice of life or flash fiction. Maybe the story is building toward a shift in a character’s perception, or a deeper understanding of something, and that is satisfying in itself.

But sometimes a story wants to be a novel if it is resisting the structure and word count imposed on it. A character prone to reflection about the past might be happier in a novel with more room to ruminate – if those reflections or flashbacks do in fact serve a purpose. Complex families and multi-generational issues can, in general, be more fully explored in a novel. Complex mystery plots almost always belong in a novel—and that, I realized, is what my story really wanted to have. That missing person story line turned out to be a key ingredient of the novel Blue Voyage, as well as a missing object.

My short story that wanted to be a novel now has a publication date, a pretty cover, and a rather hefty page count, clocking in at over 400 pages – a far cry from its original 30. I’m glad I didn’t give up on that story, and maybe it required an embryonic stage of several years so that I could figure it out. For me, that’s a happy ending.

 

You can learn more about Diana Renn and her books via her website, Facebook page, and you can follow her on Twitter. For more about where you can purchase Blue Voyage, check out this link.

Author R&R with Robert Masello

The prolific Robert Masello is an award-winning journalist, television writer (for such projects as Charmed, Sliders, and Poltergeist), and the bestselling author of many books, most recently the historical thriller, The Romanov Cross, which Kirkus praised for its "delicious sense of creeping dread."

His new thriller, The Einstein Prophecy, beings around the end of World War II, when an Egyptian sarcophagus is brought to Princeton University for study by army lieutenant and professor Lucas Athan. Assisted by archaeologist Simone Rashid, Lucas soon discovers the box's contents could hold the key to victory in the war and and possibly the downfall of mankind. As they uncover a connection between the mysterious relic and the work of Albert Einstein (then living in Princeton), Lucas and Simone must turn to science and the supernatural to save the world from potential destruction.


Robert Masello stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R:

Now that I think about it, I started researching my new novel, The Einstein Prophecy, about forty years ago.  I just didn’t know it at the time.

I was a freshman at Princeton University, and I was walking past a charming, two-story, white house with black shutters, tucked behind a fence and a small but tidy front garden, on Mercer Street in town.  112 Mercer Street, to be exact.

The house that Albert Einstein bought, and lived in, after fleeing the Nazi tide on the European continent once and for all.  

He had taken up a position at the relatively new Institute for Advanced Study, where he was the brightest star in a firmament that included such other luminaries as the topologist Oswald Veblen, the mathematician Hermann Weyl, and the quantum physics pioneer Wolfgang Pauli.  Although he wasn’t thrilled with the provincial attitudes of many Americans, there and elsewhere in the country, he liked the quiet, arboreal feel of the college town, along with its campus dotted with Gothic spires and cloistered walkways, its extensive libraries and massive chapel.  (Although he was Jewish, he had attended Catholic schools in his youth, and harbored a lasting affection and respect for many of the moral lessons and stories that were an integral part of the Christian tradition.)

Anyway, I think those impressions I had of the man, who had walked the same streets I was walking, and possibly under some of the very same ancient trees, stuck with me, and provided a nucleus for the novel I was to write decades later.

As with most of my recent books, this one was to be a dark fantasy steeped in real history and fact.  In Blood and Ice, I had written about the Crimean War.  In The Medusa Amulet, the Italian Renaissance and French Revolution.  In The Romanov Cross, the end of the Russian dynasty and the pandemic of the Spanish Flu.  Most of the time spent writing my books is spent not on writing the story itself, but on the reading and research necessary to make sure that the story, when I do get around to concocting it, feels authentic and convincing.  I don’t ever want to jolt the reader out of the story with some anachronism, or obviously counter-factual element.  I usually tell people that 90 percent of the history, whether it be about art or science or politics, is right, but that that last ten percent is pure conjecture.  In other words, don’t write a term paper based solely on the history you have read in one of my novels.

In the olden days, back when I lived in New York, I would haunt the main library on Fifth Avenue, where there were actually people – live human beings – who would go down into the subterranean stacks and retrieve any arcane text or long out-of-print book you asked for.  And get this – there was a phone line, too, that you could call and ask any question – “When was the Great Wall of China built?” “How many soldiers are there in a platoon?” “How much was a doubloon worth?” – and someone would go off and find the answer for you.  To those hard-working and information-bearing moles, I offer my most heartfelt thanks.

These days, researching is so much easier it’s a joke.  There’s this thing called Google, and I can look up anything, at any time of the day or night (and I tend to write into the wee hours), and nearly always find an immediate answer.  For this Einstein book, I was able to discover everything from a map of the Princeton University campus in 1944 (which is where and when the bulk of the book takes place) to a quick tutorial (and I needed several) on the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.  I also wanted to get a sense of who Einstein was as a man, and not simply as the great genius of his age.  I learned that he hated to wear socks, loved to smoke (against his doctor’s orders), played violin to relax, flirted like crazy with the ladies, enjoyed a good joke.

There is a danger, however, to the Google era of research.  It’s easy to get lost, forever, in the endless supply of information, in the countless links to other sources.  There’s the temptation not only to research something endlessly, but to slip all of those gems that you uncover into the book itself.  Yes, readers want a sense of verisimilitude, but that’s not the main reason they’re there – they want a story first and foremost. Otherwise, they’d be reading a biography or a history textbook.

And if you do make a mistake, including some fact that’s just plain wrong, you will most definitely hear from some reader out there - usually in the form of a flame – who is an expert on that particular subject. Trust me on that.

 

Find out more about Robert Masello and his books via his website or you can follow him on Facebook. The Einstein Prophecy is available via all major ebook and print book retailers.

Author R&R with Sean Chercover

Before Sean Chercover turned his hand to writing fiction, he was a TV writer, video editor, support diver, and private investigator in Chicago and New Orleans. His novel Big City, Bad Blood, won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel, and Sean's books have since been nominated for other major crime fiction awards.


His Game Trilogy features Daniel Byrne, an investigator for the Vatican’s secretive Office of the Devil’s Advocate. In the first book, The Trinity Game, Daniel Byrne was searching for a miracle, which led him to his uncle and childhood guardian, the Reverend Tim Trinity, a con man and possible prophet.

In the follow-up novel, The Devil's Game, Daniel teams up with disgraced physician Kara Singh and delves further into the Trinity Phenomenon — the "gift" of prophecy that's spreading like a plague — and infiltrates a covert government facility to expose a conspiracy with potentially devastating global consequences.


Sean is currently on a blog tour promoting The Devil's Game and stopped by In Reference to Murder to discuss his writing, research, and the new book:

 

The plot was inspired by conversations I used to have with a good friend named Sasha Neyfakh. He was a prominent microbiologist who spent his life fighting in the human race's existential struggle against anthrax and other deadly pathogens, which aim to displace humans as top predator on the planet. We talked about the coming pandemic (yes, there will be one) and about how large the depopulation might be when it arrives. And how our criminally negligent overuse of antibiotics is dramatically decreasing our chances of winning this war, and bringing it about sooner. Cheery stuff like that.

 

We shared a love of crime fiction and conspiracy theories, traded clippings and links about various theories that seemed fun. One that caught our attention was the statistically unlikely rash of deaths at the time, among prominent microbiologists around the world. There were some very entertaining conspiracy theories based on the premise that these deaths were actually disguised assassinations, speculating about who could be behind it, and why. We both thought the deaths coincidental, but we also thought the dead microbiologists conspiracy would be a terrific premise for a thriller, and for me, it fit beautifully with the geopolitics of the threat of pandemic.

 

The research was a total blast and also sobering. Some of it involved learning more about what life is like and how power and influence works in Nigeria and Liberia and other places big media chooses to ignore. Learning more about our misuse of antibiotics and how that damages the bacterial biome that keeps us healthy and alive, and about our fight for survival against microscopic pathogens.

 

And then there's the rollicking insane asylum that is the world of conspiracy theorists. There's no shortage of mental illness on the Internet (thank you, Captain Obvious) but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And mental illness aside, at least these people are willing to admit that "History is a set of lies, agreed upon," (Napoleon Bonaparte) and "History is written by the victors," (Winston S. Churchill). Or official histories have to be amended so often now, as we learn of former misdeeds, now leaked or declassified, previously scorned as "wing-nut conspiracy theories."

 

Incorporating both "round-the-bend-crazy" and "maybe-not-so-crazy" conspiracy theories into THE DEVIL'S GAME was so much fun, and I love that people are questioning which is which.

 

 

You can learn more about Sean and his books via his website or follow him in Facebook and Twitter. The Devil's Game is available as an ebook via Amazon, and the print versions are available via all book retailers.

11 Facts About Crime Fiction To Impress Your Friends

Next time you're at a dinner party or need some quickie facts to show how cool crime fiction really is (as if you really needed an excuse), maybe these will come in handy:

 

1. Agatha Christie (1890–1976) is the world’s best-selling fiction writer, according to the Guinness Book of Records. Her seventy some-odd crime novels and short story collections have sold an estimated 2 billion copies (although some estimates peg it at up to 4 billion).
   
   
2. Agatha Christie is also the most-translated individual author – having been translated into at least 103 languages. (Source: Index Translationum)
   
   
3. The most prolific mystery author was John Creasey, who wrote over 600 books under 28 different pseudonyms. Coming in a close second is Georges Simenon, with 500+ books. (Brazilian author Ryoki Inoue created Portuguese-language pulp fiction to the tune of nearly 1,100 books, but many of those were romances.) (Source: Guinness book of World Records)
   
   
4. The first literary detective is widely considered to be C. Auguste Dupin, who first appeared in "The Murders In the Rue Morgue" in 1841, written by Edgar Allan Poe.
   
   
5. The earliest known crime novel is The Rector of Veilbye by the Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher, published in 1829. Although one could make the argument that the earliest known example of a crime story was "The Three Apples," one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade from Arabian Nights.
   
   
6. The earliest locked-room mystery may well be from the 5th century BC, when Herodotus told the tale of the robber whose headless body was found in a sealed stone chamber with only one guarded exit. But the first of the true modern example of that genre is generally said to be Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."
   
   
7. The first detective film is often cited as Sherlock Holmes Baffled, a very short Mutoscope reel created between 1900 and 1903 by Arthur Marvin.
   
   
8. The highest circulating crime fiction subgenre titles in 2013 in the U.S. were police procedurals at 29%, according to the Library Journal Mystery Survey. Cozies were a close second place at 24%, with Amateur Detectives third at 19%.  
   
   
9. In that same Library Journal survey, crime fiction was the most-frequently borrowed genre, at a whopping 78% (mysteries, 55%, thrillers, 23%).
   
   
10. The very first Edgar Awards Grand Master honor was given in 1955 to Agatha Christie - but most people probably don't know Alfred Hitchcock was given that title in 1978 (the only non-mystery-author to be so honored).
    
    
11. Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake hold the record for total Edgar Award honors, with 11 nominations and 5 wins (including the Grand Master Award) for Block and 11 nominations and 4 wins for Westlake. Westlake was also one of only three writers (along with Joe Gores and William L. DeAndrea) to win Edgars in three different categories (Best Novel, Best Short Story, Best Motion Picture Screenplay). (Source: Edgar Awards database)

Author R&R with Kate White

Kate White is the New York Times bestselling author of ten works of fiction—six Bailey Weggins mysteries and four suspense novels. For fourteen years she was the editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, and though she loved the job (and the Cosmo beauty closet!), she decided to leave in late 2013 to concentrate full time on being an author.

Her books have received starred reviews from a variety of publications and she has been covered everyplace from The Today Show to The New York Times. Her first Bailey Weggins mystery, If Looks Could Kill, was named as the premier Reading with Rippa selection. Kate is also the editor of the recently-released Mystery Writers of America cookbook.

Her new novel The Wrong Man follows the mild-mannered owner of a Manhattan boutique interior design, Kit Finn. While on vacation in the Florida Keys, Kit resolves to do something risky for once, and when she literally bumps into a charming stranger at her hotel, makes good on her promise and acts on her attraction. But back in New York, when Kit arrives at his luxury apartment ready to pick up where they left off in the Keys, she doesn’t recognize the man standing on the other side of the door. She soon realizes she’s been thrown into a treacherous plot, deeper and deadlier than she could have ever imagined.

Kate stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about writing her new book:

 

What I Learned at the Morgue One Morning

There are probably very few people who have sat in the viewing room of a morgue and realized that it was the perfect place for them to be at the moment, but I guess I’m one of them. It happened last October when I was doing research for my new book, The Wrong Man. I’d arranged to stop by the Miami morgue and not only check out the viewing room but also interview a couple of people who worked there, who, by the way, turned out to be incredibly helpful. The end result: I was able to write a scene for my book far more accurately than I would have otherwise.

I know there are some mystery and suspense writers who don’t believe in doing a lot of research and I can understand that. There’s a certain purity (and fun) to letting your imagination run wild and just making it up--based, of course, on a certain amount of knowledge from years spent living on the planet. Plus, writers are aware that readers generally (and generously) allow them some poetic license. When I interviewed Lee Child recently at the 92nd Y in New York City, he said that he doesn’t research but relies on all the data he’s collected in his brain over the years. And what a brain that is!

And of course research can sometimes get in your way. While talking to Harlan Coben for same series, he pointed out that research is often an excuse for not plopping your butt in the desk chair and just writing. So true.

But I have a confession: I absolutely love researching. There’s something about the process that I find both fascinating and also relaxing. Maybe because it’s methodical, and there never seems to be a lot of pressure when I’m doing it. My pulse rate goes down when I research and I find myself in almost a Zen state.  Plus, on more than a few occasions, it’s spared me from making a big mistake in my writing.

Take the morgue visit. When you view a body in some cities (like New York), you stand on the other side of a window. (You’ve probably seen that on old Law and Order episodes.) That’s how I originally planned to set the scene in The Wrong Man. But I wanted to be on the safe side so I scheduled a trip south and that’s where I learned that in Miami, family members of the deceased are shown photos instead. I was so glad I discovered that piece of info.

But to me what’s most exhilarating about research is that it sometimes provides details that can turn into fabulous plot points, stuff you might not have discovered if you hadn’t set off exploring. Lately I did some research on twins for a future book, and four or five Google pages down I discovered the most intriguing piece of information, something I’d never heard of. It has the potential to be an incredible plot twist.

Oh, I’d tell you what it is but then I’d have to shoot you—because I intend to use it in one of my next books!

 

To learn more about Kate White and her latest novel, visit her website where you'll also find purchase links and her tour schedule.

Author R&R with Patti Abbott

Blogger Patricia "Patti" Abbott is the creator and host of the regular Friday's Forgotten Books feature, but she's also a prolific author of crime short stories (with over 100 published!) and received a 2008 Derringer Award for her story “My Hero.” Her debut novel Concrete Angel from Polis Books has been a long time coming, but it's worth the wait for both Patti and crime fiction fans.

For the book, Patti drew upon her experiences of growing up in Philadelphia and was inspired by a news report of a mother and daughter charged with credit-card theft, where the daughter told the court her mother made her do it. Concrete Angel takes that concept and runs with it, delving into a family torn apart by a murderous mother straight out of "Mommy Dearest" and her children, especially her daughter Christine, who are victims until they learn that fighting back is the only way to survive.

Patti is currently on a blog tour and stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R and discuss researching and writing the book:

 

CONCRETE ANGEL takes place in Philadelphia and its suburbs in the sixties and seventies. I grew up in Philadelphia, a decade after the mother in the book, Eve Moran, and a decade and a half before her daughter, Christine. Not coinciding exactly in age with either character allowed me to take a step back from recreating myself too much. I wanted their reactions to come from my imagination rather than my experiences.

Getting Philadelphia and Bucks Country right was very important to me although I mostly used my memories of the city in that era to do that. Downtown Philly features prominently in several sections so I spent a lot of time reviewing maps of the downtown in that era. Online research is a god send. Of course, the town of Shelterville only exists in my mind as do various schools I mentioned. Very real though was the four department stores of my youth: John Wanamakers, Gimbels, Strawbridge and Clothier, and Lit Brothers.  It is hard to get across how much those stores defined Philadelphia in the fifties and sixties. So too the extravagantly gorgeous movie theaters and restaurants.

Mental illness plays a large part in this story. I relied on two books for help with the treatment of mental illness at the time. WOMAN AND MADNESS by Phyllis Chesler was the first to ask questions about women and mental health. It combined patient interviews with a history of women's roles in history, society, and myth. Chesler writes that there is a terrible double standard when it comes to women's psychology. Some of the treatment women received at the hands of their therapists was abusive if not felonious. The second book I read was MADWOMAN IN THE ATTIC. Now this book looks at the treatment of women in 19th Century literature and was not relevant to this era, but it helped me to form the character if not her treatment.

Although I read a news story about a mother and daughter arrested for various crimes they committed together, I deviated from their tale pretty quickly. I didn't relate much to the crimes themselves but more to the personalities of the women who would commit them, and what kind of relationship would lend itself to such crimes. And it was then that I remembered a childhood friend and her mother. Their relationship had the twisty, complicated nature of Eve and Christine's. Here was a mother who exerted exactly this type of control over her daughter even if it didn't lead to crimes.

Finding the humanity in Eve was important to me. She is a villain but why. I tried inject enough sympathy into her portrait to make her feel human. Is someone suffering from a undiagnosed disorder responsible for their crimes? If the era couldn't define her issues or treat them, should we hate her? I'll leave it to you to judge.

 

Pick up a digital or paperback copy of Concrete Angel today via all major online and brick-and-mortar stores - just follow the "buy" links on the Polis Books website.

A Database on European Crime Fiction, You Say?

Crime fiction is growing in popularity around the world, and the recent burst of Scandinavian crime fiction on the bestseller lists is yet another marker of that growth. So it only makes sense that the academic world is taking notice, spearheaded in Europe by the International Crime Fiction Group based at Queen’s University of Belfast. The group brings together scholars from disciplines such as literature, film studies and cultural history in a series of initiatives to study various aspect of the genre.

Recently, they sponsored a symposium at the British Library titled "Towards a Digital Atlas of European Crime Fiction?", investigating how to harvest the catalogs of the 48 European national libraries to analyze the transnational spread of crime fiction (including books, covers, authors, films, etc.)  with the help of maps and graphs. Hopefully, this will not only help the libraries involved create virtual as well as physical exhibitions based on their collections, including book covers and illustrations, it will benefit crime fiction authors, too, thanks to online resources coming soon.

There's already a strong scholarly crime fiction presence in Europe, including such institutions as the Library of Crime Literature (Bilipo) a Parisian public library exclusively concerned with crime-themed publications (which journalist Brad Spurgeon discusses in this blog post). And, if you happen to be in London early this summer, check out the London exhibition "Forensics: The anatomy of crime" at the Wellcome Collection through June 21.

Author R&R with Roger Herst

Roger Herst stops by In Reference to Murder today for some Author R&R. He's an ordained Reform Rabbi with a doctorate in Middle Eastern History who developed a passion for stories while delivering sermons from the pulpit. He's now written nine novels, including the latest, Nunavut: An Arctic Thriller, a David and Goliath story of the Inuit people’s fight to protect their native land and waterways from a Russian conspiracy to steal its resources and wealth for themselves.

Herst talks more about his approach to researching and writing the novel:

 

As a rabbi I have always been swimming in stories. Jewish tradition is largely about telling and retelling stories, first of our ancestors, then of our brethren and finally about ourselves. My first blush with writing stories was an attempt to flush out the narratives of Genesis, much like Thomas Mann and Leon Feutwanger. I thought I knew these mythological characters, but the Bible only provided skeletons. Yes, it was pure temerity (chutzpah) to tamper with the sacred text. But I was young and bold. When I started delivering these stories in place of normal sermons, the attention of my congregants grew. Some of these stories stuck to their bones for years! They let me know that people learn about themselves through stories about other people.

But I never wanted to be a Jewish novelist, so my first book published by Doubleday was about the crew of a nuclear submarine buried under the polar icepack. Since I had never been on a submarine I needed to rely upon my imagination, which during the creation of this work I learned to respect. Most of the data for the story was then classified by the Navy, thus I had imagine what might be true rather than what I knew to be so. Naval friends read the manuscript and kept me on track. Miraculously, it worked.

Yet my Jewish roots tugged upon me. It is often admonished to write about what you know. But I felt I knew too much about the Jewish community and didn’t want to wash dirty laundry in public. I avoided the subject until my scruples dissipated and I wrote “Rabbi Gabrielle’s Scandal,” about a young, vibrant, ambitious professional who defends a rapist in court and alienates her female friends and imperils her profession. I never started to write a series about Rabbi Gabrielle, but she grew into another story about the illicit gun trade in Washington DC. And that followed by another about an arson and then a robbery, a confrontation with the Vatican over a Dead Sea fragment and finally about launching a peace plan between the Palestinians and Israelis. Having her engaged in romances was tricky because I knew I never really wanted her to get married off, in a situation where the readers would know who she was sleeping with. Nor did I want her to be a goody-goody professional, always on the right side of every issue and always sacrificing her own interests for other. No, Gabrielle had to be a real full-blooded womanin the trenches, giving blows as well as receiving them.

After six such novels, it was time to return to non-Jewish books. “Destiny’s Children” told a tale of an immigrant Chinese laborer who arrives in California to build track for the intercontinental railroad. Far from his home and speaking no English he must make a new life in California and succeeds in a generational saga of two utterly different families who bond during the difficult years of the 1860s.

My soon to be published novel, “Nunavut, an Arctic Thriller,” reflects on the Inuit people who in 1999 were granted by the Canadian government the largest parcel of land and water ever bestowed upon an indigenous population. At the time, who understood the implications of Global Warming on the prospects of extracting Nunavut’s vast mineral resources?  The heroine is a female veterinarian who follows the mythic path of Sedna the Inuit goddess of the sea and ministers to sick creatures of the ocean. And in so doing she becomes involved in an international intrigue to challenge this young and inexperienced nation’s survival.

One tale seems to engender another.  A new character begs for more space, so my journey continues bringing this author much joy.

 

Read more about Roger Herst and his books on his website: http://rogerherst.com/. Nunvaut: An Artic Thriller is available now on Amazon.com.

The Golden Age of Murder

Regular readers of this blog may know Martin Edwards as a fellow contributor to the weekly Friday's Forgotten Books feature, but he's best known as an award-winning crime novelist whose Lake District Mysteries have been optioned by ITV.  Elected to the Detection Club in 2008, he became the first Archivist of the Club, and serves as Archivist of the Crime Writers’ Association. He's also the consulting editor for the vintage mystery reprints being published by the British Library.

Renowned as the leading expert on the history of Golden Age detective fiction, he won the Crimefest Mastermind Quiz three times, and possesses one of Britain’s finest collections of Golden Age novels, including unique inscribed books and manuscripts. So it's not surprising his new book is The Golden Age of Murder, which investigates how Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and fellow colleagues in a mysterious literary group called the Detection Club transformed crime fiction, writing books that cast new light on unsolved murders while hiding clues to their authors’ darkest secrets.

As part of his blog tour celebrating the publication of the book, he's stopping by the blog today to talk about how he got interested in books that delve into the backstory of crime fiction:

 

I first became fascinated by books that fall, more or less, within the term “crime reference” when I was still a teenager. This was when I came across the recently published first edition of Bloody Murder by Julian Symons. His history of the crime fiction genre fascinated me, and it’s still one of my favourite, and most-read, books.

Symons was a crime novelist of distinction – if you don’t know his work, it really is worth checking out, especially The Man Who Killed Himself, The Man Whose Dreams Came True, and Sweet Adelaide – and this gave him a real understanding into the nature of writing detective fiction. His arguments were cogent, and he highlighted many interesting books that I enjoyed immensely once I’d tracked them down.

That isn’t to say that I agreed with everything he wrote. I was even cheeky enough to write him a fan letter which told him how much I liked his book, but questioned something he’d said. Oh, the impudence of youth! He responded with a very interesting and generous letter, something for which I’ll always be grateful.

Symons admired, as I do, Agatha Christie and Anthony Berkeley, but I feel he was rather harsh about Dorothy L. Sayers, and too dismissive of Henry Wade. He also under-estimated the range of Golden Age detective fiction, in my opinion, perhaps because he was more interested in novels of psychological suspense. His book has – rightly – been highly influential, but perhaps it has contributed to a feeling that Golden Age mysteries were, for the most part, lacking in quality.

Well, I’m also a contemporary crime novelist, but I think it’s a mistake to under-estimate the writers of the past, and I’ve tried to make that case in The Golden Age of Murder. The book is the product of decades of reading, and years of planning and research (not to mention endless re-writing...) In fact, the more I’ve investigated the people who wrote Golden Age fiction, the more I’ve become intrigued. They really were a remarkable bunch of people.

My book is very different from Bloody Murder. For a start, it covers a much shorter time span – the emphasis is on the authors and books of the Thirties, although I’ve managed to sneak in plenty of material from before and after that remarkable decade in the world’s history. But one thing’s for sure. If readers enjoy my book half as much as I’ve loved reading and re-reading Bloody Murder, I’ll be very well satisfied.

 

The Golden Age of Murder is available via in both print and digital formats via all the major brick-and-mortar and online retailers. To get you started, here are the Indiebound and Amazon Kindle global links, so you can grab your copy today!

"Lost" Golden Age Nuggets

I received a heads-up from Dean Street Press that they are reissuing two lost golden age crime classics by Ianthe Jerrold from 1929-30, both out of print for over eighty years. Jerrold only wrote these two novels in the crime field before moving on to other genres, but her writing nonetheless influenced Dorothy L Sayers, John Dickson Carr and Ngaio Marsh.

The Studio Crime is a London mystery and begins as a fog-bound soiree is about to begin at artist Laurence Newtree's studio. But when his upstairs neighbor is murdered in a seemingly impossible crime, Scotland Yard and the unofficial but resourceful private sleuth John Christmas are called in to solve a baffling and eerie case.

Dead Man's Quarry moves the action to the beautiful border countryside between Herefordshire and Wales where a cycling holiday turns deadly when one of the party is found—shot—at the bottom of a local quarry. John Christmas is once again put into action (along with his forensic assistant, Sydenham Rampson), using his unique sleuthing insights in an ingenious, well-plotted mystery.

FYI, if you enjoy both books and want to get "closer" to the writer and her world, her Elizabethan house Cwmmau in Herefordshire is owned by the National Trust today and available for vacation rentals.

Riding into the Sunset

This past weekend, we lost Ron Scheer, writer, blogger, and long-time contributor to Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books. His Buddies in the Saddle blog focused on Westerns, crime fiction, videos, and anything else that struck his fancy. He also documented his fight with brain cancer over the past couple of years, a battle he ultimately couldn't win.

On his one-year anniversary of brain surgery in February of this year, he posted the following poignant note:

Today marks an anniversary of sorts. A year ago I was just out of surgery, most of a malignant tumor removed from my brain, I was yet to meet the oncologists who would get me started on chemo and radiation. Mostly I was amazed that I felt few effects from having my cranium cracked open, my gray matter invaded by a team of neurosurgeons I hardly knew, then stapled back together, soon to be sent back home.

 

My memories of that time are marked by the sound of cactus wrens outside my bedroom, chattering away each morning as I welcomed the new day, sometimes after an endless night of dreadful dreams and sleeplessness. I read Anne Lamott’s little book about three kinds of prayer (thanks, help, wow), which made me both laugh and cry. And I marveled at the flowering plants sent by a family friend. Here we were alive together.

 

Ron supported the Behrhorst Clinic in Guatemala, where he spent a college summer volunteering. The family has asked that if you want to make a donation, you can do so via the foundation's website.

Author R&R with Adam Mitzner

 

Adam Mitzner graduated from Brandeis University with a B.A. and M.A. in politics and went on from there to study law at the University of Virginia. He's currently the head of the litigation department of Pavia & Harcourt LLP, which received some fame because it's the law firm where Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor practiced before she was appointed to the bench. Mitzner is the author of A Case of Redemption, a finalist for the ABA's Silver Gavel Award, and A Conflict of Interest, one of Suspense Magazine's Best Books of 2011.


Losing Faith is his latest novel, which centers on Aaron Littmann, the chairman of one of the country's most prestigious law firms. But Aaron's orderly world is turned upside down when he's offered an opportunity he can't refuse: to represent a Russian businessman accused of terrorism or else the Russian will go public with evidence the attorney had a torrid affair with Faith Nichols, a high-profile judge. Now Aaron and Faith must navigate a psychological game of power, ethics, lies, and justice if they are to salvage their reputations and their careers.

Adam Mitzner stopped by In Reference to Murder as part of his blog tour to take some "Author R&R" about how he approaches reference and research for his novels:

 

Author Reference and Research
by Adam Mitzner,
Author of Losing Faith

The research I do for my books falls into two categories: (1) legal issues; (2) everything else.

The legal issues are actually the easiest to research. As a practicing lawyer, I research the legal issues in my books the same way I would if I was representing a client with those issues. First, I hit the books, which these days means computerized research on the Westlaw database, looking for precedent to support the position that my fictional lawyers are going to cite to the fictional judge. If I'm uncertain about a particular area of the law, I reach out to lawyers with greater expertise – again, just as I do for my clients.

The legal issues that arise in my books usually come from putting myself in the role of defense lawyer and prosecutor and thinking through the strategies that I'd pursue if it were a real case. Sometimes the issues that come up are ones that I've actually litigated. For example, in A Case of Redemption, I dealt with a witness asserting his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. This happened in a case I was handling years ago, and I remember being surprised that the witness' invocation is made outside the presence of the jury. The result at first seems unfair: a defendant who believes that someone else committed the crime for which he stands accused wants to question that person ala Perry Mason, and get him to admit his guilt. However, if the witness asserts his Fifth Amendment privilege because he fears that his testimony will likely incriminate him, the jury never knows about it! But then when you study the reasoning behind the rule, you see the injustice that results if the invocation of the Fifth Amendment is made in front of the jury.

Then there's the research about everything else. That's where I rely on friends and family for their particular expertise. My wife helps me with everything, but I particularly rely on her knowledge of scotch, which for some reason I like my characters to drink, but with I don't personally have any familiarity. My children fill me in on what the slang is among high schoolers, and my doctor friends correct my medical jargon. I reached out to my own doctor during my annual physical regarding an issue and he referred me to a friend of his who is a coroner in the Midwest. The question was whether the coroner's report concerning a woman killed by blunt force trauma to the head would note if the victim had pubic hair. To my surprise, I was told that it varies from medical examiner to medical examiner.

My books are set in New York City, and I try to be as accurate as possible regarding the places depicted. That usually means visiting the restaurants to get the décor right, and even studying menus to make sure that the prices are correct. It has the side benefit of allowing me to have some very nice meals in the name of research.

Finally, I rely extensively on Google. It's a running joke I have with my wife that she has to be extra careful not to become a victim of a violent crime because our computer is filled with searches about ways to kill your spouse or dispose of bodies.

© 2015 Adam Mitzner, author of Losing Faith

 

For more on Adam and his books, check out his website and Facebook page.

Author R&R with Jon Land

 

Jon Land is the bestselling author of over 25 novels. He graduated from Brown University in 1979 Phi Beta Kappa and Magna cum Laude and continues his association with Brown as an alumni advisor. Jon often bases his novels and scripts on extensive travel and research as well as a twenty-five year career in martial arts. He is an associate member of the US Special Forces and frequently volunteers in schools to help young people learn to enjoy the process of writing.


Land teamed up with Fabrizio Boccardi for the thriller The Seven Sins, featuring Michael Tiranno (a/k/a "The Tyrant"), who saved the city of Las Vegas from a terrorist attack. The sequel, Black Scorpion, is set five years later, where a new enemy has surfaced in Eastern Europe in the form of an all-powerful organization called Black Scorpion. Once a victim of human trafficking himself, the shadowy group’s crazed leader, Vladimir Dracu, has become the mastermind behind the scourge’s infestation on a global scale. And now he’s set his sights on Michael Tiranno for reasons birthed in a painful secret past that have scarred both men.

Land is hitting the blogosphere for a virtual tour this week in association with the publication of Black Scorpion, and had some interesting things to say about his research and writing process:


Did you have to do any special research to write this book?

Yes, a ton. It’s always that way with thrillers that involve as much cutting edge technology as this one does. But so much of it is speculative, based not on what exists now but will eventually, that I’m essentially forced to go back to school on subjects I had very little knowledge of to start out. And not just pertaining to the villain’s world-threatening plot either. I had to figure out how to construct Black Scorpion’s lair inside a mountain, needed to concoct a away for a commando team to access from beneath a manmade lake in the climax. It’s all very James Bond-like and, as with Bond, with every challenge comes up a wonderful opportunity to do something no one’s ever done before.

How do you approach writing a book like Black Scorpion?

It all starts with the hero, Michael Tiranno. I started Black Scorpion with the premise that in the five years since the events depicted in The Seven Sins, Michael hasn’t changed very much. He’s still pretty much the same man we left at the end of the first book, a tyrant consumed by his desire to expand his empire and holdings. The whole essence of Black Scorpion is watching him evolve into something entirely different - still a tyrant, yes, but a tyrant for good. A superhero without a mask or cape. We watch his view of his entire place in the world change, forced upon him by the shattering truths and tragedy he encounters along the way. And in that respect his quest changes from the pursuit of riches and power to selffulfillment and self-actualization.

So now, above everything else, Michael Tiranno’s character is defined by his obsession for standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Bullies aren’t confined to the schoolyard and he won’t tolerate them under any circumstances. He’s spent his life trying to find the security he lost that day his parents were murdered and once there he uses the power that comes with it to defend those who need him the most. My point is your hero defines the very nature of a book with the sprawl and ambition of Black Scorpion. The book will rise or fall based on how the audience responds to him and you have to approach a book like this with that in mind.

You have written a number of series; is this one of your favorite to write?

Frankly, no, that would be my Caitlin Strong Texas Ranger series. I’m not saying the books in that series are better than Black Scorpion because I think in many ways Black Scorpion is the most ambitious and best realized book in terms of vision I’ve ever written. I’m talking about the process. Black Scorpion is work for hire and I have an obligation to serve the needs of the Tyrant character’s creator, Fabrizio Boccardi. That robs this series, and me, of the spontaneity that defines me as a writer, since I don’t outline.

Writing with someone looking over your shoulder isn’t nearly as fun or gratifying. But, that said, the end result of both this book and its prequel, The Seven Sins, proves I’m capable of adapting. Fabrizio isn’t a writer or a storyteller and he doesn’t grasp all the intricacies of structure. But he has wonderful instincts that are right more often than not and form the perfect complement to my experience and talents. Look, Michael Tiranno is his baby. He turned him over to me to build but he could never be expected to let him go altogether. Ultimately, I think we work so well together because our passion is balanced by our willingness to compromise toward telling the best story we possibly can. It may drive me crazy at times, but the ends justify the means.

Check out Land and his books via his website or via Facebook or Twitter. And look for the feature film in active development based on the franchised character of The Tyrant, a blended adaptation of Black Scorpion and its predecessor, The Seven Sins, both of which have also been licensed to DC Comics for graphic novels publications worldwide.

Poetry is a Crime

April means National Poetry Month here in the States, and it also means it's time for the fifth annual Five-Two Crime Poem Blog Tour, hosted by Gerald So. I'm honored to take part again this year by focusing on some of the fine works showcased in the Five-Two's roster.

When I was first drawn to poetry as a young child, it was the fascination with the interplay of the words that lured me in. A turn of phrase here, a short passage there, nothing big in terms of space on the page, but that's all it takes to communicate a universe of ideas. Then, too, coming from a music background, I loved how poems are often musical in form, which is why so many nineteenth-century chanson and lieder composers based their songs on poems of the day.

So instead of focusing on just one poem from the Five-Two archives, I thought I'd point out some of the more lovely, musical, and poignant phrases from various poems to help illustrate why I love the form so much. Here's a case in point from R.A. Allen's poem "On Car Theft":

Truant, shoplifter, creature of the night,
your calling was low-slung and German.
Like a cheetah prowling the Kenyan plains
the road was your antelope to chase.

Or these lines from Tom Brzezina's "Lew Archer Writes a Poem":

The sun goes down
like a shot of cheap whiskey
and the whole city blacks out.
The moon is a toenail clipping.
And the stars drown in garish neon.

In both cases, the wildness and darker side of nature is used synonymously for the wild, dark side of the human subjects. This technique has probably been used as long as the first poet put quill (or charcoal) to paper or stone, but it's as effective now as then. Humans, the animals, the heavens, we're all born of the same violent universe that also feeds and nurtures us.

Then, there are more contemporaneous nuances in poems, like this from "Just Ice" by Thomas Pluck:

The ultimate in disrespect
Is a so-called man who leaves his son
A useless gun in pocket,
A heart with no justice, just ice.

And this from "Take a Bite Out of Crime" by Catherine Wald:

Admit it: you're starting
to savor the
whiff of danger
frisson of desire
crunch of crisp guilt
between your teeth.

Both of these poems hint of danger, guilt, abandonment, and betrayal. I love the play on words "no justice, just ice," and the visceral punch of the "crunch of crisp guilt between your teeth."

The concept of the air we breathe, the very substance required of all life as we know it, takes front stage in these lines from Peter Swanson in "The Survivor of a Slasher Flick in Middle Age":

A poacher with a bag of fallen birds.
She still can feel the whistle of his breath,
The swish of boning knife through gummy air.

As well as these lines from C.J. Edwards' "Nothing to See Here":

Gawkers and young kids skulk
to peek, and whisper behind
their hands to each other.
Sirens scream
and choked cries
clot the air.

You can practically feel the "gummy air" and "choked cries" that "clot the air." That's another of the aspects of poetry that I think appeal to all poetry fans - the way different words are paired together in unusual ways to create a new, more powerful image.

These are just some of the many powerful and beautiful ways that words become paintings on their own, with the ability to draw us in as deeply and as clearly as an image or sound. And that is why poet Paul Engle said "Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words."

For the entire schedule of the Five-Two's crime poetry lineup, check out this calendar link.

Author R&R with Peter Swanson & a Giveaway!

 

It's time once again for some Author R&R (Reference and Research), today featuring Peter Swanson. Plus at the bottom of this post, look for details on how to win a free book!

Peter Swanson is the author of two novels, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, and his latest, The Kind Worth Killing. Swanson's poems, stories and reviews have appeared in such journals as The Atlantic, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Epoch, Measure, Notre Dame Review, Soundings East, and The Vocabula Review. He has won awards in poetry from The Lyric and Yankee Magazine and is currently completing a sonnet sequence on all 53 of Alfred Hitchcock’s films.

I enjoy hearing how different authors approach researching their novels, be it through job shadowing, being buried in library stacks, going online, interviews, news reports, or whatever techniques and methods they use in getting the details just right. Or whether they feel too much research and over-planning can be deadly to a manuscript. Swanson probably falls into the latter category, as you will see from his unique take on research:

 

Truth is, I do very little research. And it’s not because I don’t have to, it’s because I don’t really want to—it’s because I’m lazy. There’s nothing worse, for me, than being in the middle of writing a scene in which a search warrant is presented, and then I suddenly realize that I have no idea what a search warrant would even look like.

 

But here’s the good news. I can just go ahead and Google it, which is pretty much what I do these days. Voila. An image of a search warrant on the web that I can describe in my book. Here’s the rub, though. That image is probably attached to some interesting story, and suddenly I’m reading the story instead of working on my book. It’s a double-edge sword, the internet—great for research, and equally great for time wasting.

 

I did do one solid research trip for my last book, The Kind Worth Killing. There’s a crucial scene set in an old cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. I could picture the cemetery, perched on a steep hill that overlooks the town center. I live very close to Concord so I went on a quick research trip one cold and blustery weekday, and spent the afternoon alone in The Old Hill Burying Ground, taking some pictures, but mostly just reading gravestones, and soaking up some atmosphere.

 

Afterwards, I went to the lovely old tavern in the Colonial Inn and had a drink. Both the graveyard and the tavern wound up in my book. I might not have described them perfectly, but it helped that I was there. I think this is the best kind of research. Just going somewhere and walking around. Getting away from your computer for a little bit. So much more rewarding than looking up what a search warrant looks like.

 

 

The Kind Worth Killing was called "Chilling and hypnotically suspenseful … could be an instant classic," by Lee Child (of the Jack Reacher novels). Entertainment Weekly added, "Is The Kind Worth Killing the next Gone Girl? This homage to Patricia Highsmith’s classic Strangers on a Train shares a lot of Gone Girl’s hallmarks but cranks up the volume on each. There aren’t just two unreliable narrators, there are four. There isn’t just one enormous, game-changing twist. Try three, including one at the end that will take your breath away. You’ll also lose count of all the sociopaths. Or are they psychopaths? It doesn’t matter—just know that they’re each deranged but oh-so-compelling."

For your chance to win a copy of Swanson's novel The Kind Worth Killing, just send along an e-mail to bv@bvlawson.com with Contest Entry in the subject line, and you'll be entered into the random drawing. And if you want to be added to my newsletter list for occasional news updates, you can mention that in your e-mail (you won't be added without your consent and can unsubscribe at any time). Good luck!

Crime Time in India

This week, India joins the list of countries with their own crime writing festival. The inaugural two-day Crime Writers Festival in Delhi grew out of the Jaipur Literature Festival, where one of the new festival's directors, Namita Gokhale, conducted a session on "Crime and Punishment."  Gokhale added, "It’s an important subset of literature and also serves as a barometer for the society . . . something that’s definitely worth exploring."

The event brings together crime reporters and journalists, authors, film directors, publishers, agents, and curators and collectors of crime stories. Ashwin Sanghi, another of the festival advisors and speakers, said, "Commercial writing in general did not take off (in India) primarily because of our snobbish attitude towards it. Most Indian authors were busy churning out literary fiction and publishers continued actively searching for the next Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, or Jhumpa Lahiri. They could hardly be bothered with finding the Indian equivalent of Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsyth, Jack Higgins, or Tom Clancy."

Featured guests include international crime authors such as Håkan Nesser, Caryl Ferey, and David Stuart Davies, who will join Indian authors Amrita Chowdhary, Amrita Tripathi, Aroon Raman, Ashwin Sanghi, Hussain Zaidi, Jerry Pinto, Lady Kishwar Desai, Mahendra Jakhar, and many more. Film directors Dibakar Banerjee and Piyush Jha will also be on hand, representing the crime-on-film section.

Best of all, if you happen to be in the area and can take advantage of the festival's many programs, they are all free and open to the public.