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Five Things I Hope My Son Learned On The Blues Highway

Categories: blogging, Blogs Tags: , , , ,
By mckenziem on July 6, 2012

By Eyre Price

I’m a novelist. And a stay-at-home dad.  So when my novel, The Blues Highway Blues, required a research field trip down the titular roadway, I had an eight year old traveling companion.  Fifteen hundred miles of asphalt provided material for a dozen novels and I personally came away profoundly changed, but I’d like to think (hope) he learned something along the way too.

5.  American music didn’t start with Foo Fighters.   My son has grown up with a lot of great music, but “Walk” is the first song that was his own.  How he found it, I can’t say.  But it resonated with him like nothing he’d heard before.  And because of that, it’s also where his musical timeline begins.

There’s a natural tendency to imprint on the music we first discover—and just stay there.  I have friends whose daily playlist still contains the same music we played when we were kids spinning records on portable record players.  And while some of that music was truly great, I hope I’ve shown my son there’s more to the musical universe than what he’s discovering now.  There’s a wealth of music from before he was born and (although he finds it hard to believe) even before I was born.

4.  The past offers building blocks for the future.  It was important to me to show my son the evolutionary path music has taken, how Robert Johnson led to Muddy Waters led to Elmore James led to Dave Grohl.  But I never intended that knowledge to be a simply esoteric acquisition.

Music may be timeless, but it’s also a living thing.   The musical past isn’t simply to be revered for what it was.  It’s there to serve as a foundation for the future.  American music is a jambalaya of musical elements from the past, all mixed together and left to slow cook until they produce something new and original.  Over and over again.  So my greatest satisfaction is hearing my son humming a song he’s just writing…to a Bo Diddley beat.

3.  You’ve got to keep on going.  Even when you think you can’t.   Highway 61 cuts across the Mississippi Delta as one of the longest straightaways in the world, endless miles of macadam stretching to the horizon.  While we were driving, I asked my son to picture walking along the crushed stone shoulder.  Alone.  In the summer.  With nothing but a guitar.

I challenged him to conjure the image not to impress upon him how difficult others have had it, but because sooner or later all of us have to walk our own stretch of endless highway.  And when those times come, I hope my son hears that rhythmic backbeat of the blues and realizes he can keep keepin’ on.

2.  People (like the music they make) are all sorts of different.  But they share a common root.  We’d stopped for a meal one day when my son observed that wherever we went it was always the same scene.  He was just eight, but he’d realized something that still eludes many adults:  People are people.  All most people really want to do is spend time with friends and family, enjoying a meal, and listening to some good music.

1.  Everything else is just a side job.  I’d always dreamt of being a novelist, but now I understand it’s serious business.  There are others counting on me to do my job well and every day I try my damnedest to do just that.  But it’s just my side job.

My son and I made  a pilgrimage to Sun Records, Stax Studios and Graceland, but we saw the Memphis Zoo, too.  We toured the Mississippi Delta and I stood at Robert Johnson’s crossroads, but we got a new 3DS game in Clarksdale.  And when the Rendezvous proved too thick with hickory smoke for a boy to take, we left that legendary establishment and got a pizza instead.

Shortly after I signed my book contract, my son was noticeably contemplative.  Asked what was troubling him, he answered “Now you’ll have more important things to do.”  I smiled and assured him there was nothing to worry about.  If my son learned nothing else on our trip down the Blues Highway, I hope he learned I’m still his dad.  I always will be.  And everything else will always be a side job.

 

 

Robin Gainey, author of a novel written from the canine perspective

Categories: blogging, Blogs Tags: , , ,
By mckenziem on July 5, 2012

By Robin Gainey

As the author of a novel written from the canine perspective, I’ve spent some time speaking as a dog, looking at man.  The role reversal grants an odd union: at once, simplicity of thought and deep introspection into mankind’s psyche.  Thinking like a dog brings the world into clearer focus. At the same time, discoveries about man are made that seem diametrically opposed. Perhaps this is linked to man’s opposable thumb.  Man opposes.  He starts wars; he resists change. Mankind can be a one-word oxymoron.  One descriptive word does not always connote another.

For instance, any dog can tell you that genius and wisdom are not always combined.  Take the advent of the atomic bomb. What other creature even dreams of inventing something that might wipe its species from the planet?

Dogs are different. They live in the moment, not in their dreams. For a dog, “it is what it is” is what it is. For man, it’s what it will be that’s important. He constantly looks forward to the next appointment, the next paycheck or the next deal. Man plans. Things are created because of it. The world moves forward. It’s a good thing, all in all. If dogs ruled the world, cell phones and air travel would probably not exist. The iPod might have turned out to be the iSmell and Starbucks would sell squirrels in tall, grande and venti…whole, of course, not skinny.

It seems that only in the face of his mortality is man granted the true wisdom that dogs live each day. Is it too much to ask that man grasp the fleeting nature of creature-hood; the ridiculous lightness of ego and esteem before realizing that both are little more than self-reflection?

Perhaps, it matters not when he experiences that epiphany but that it is experienced.

I had the pleasure of listening to a commencement address that Steve Jobs gave just a year ago. Jobs granted us all the ability to communicate in ways we never imagined possible just two short decades ago.  He lived half a lifetime.  And, in all his achievement, notoriety and wealth, in the end, it was clear that he understood life’s denominator:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Naked like a dog. Living in the now. Chasing squirrels. This is canine logic.

From a Texas girl with a love of mystery:

Categories: blog, blogging Tags: , , , , , ,
By mckenziem on July 4, 2012

By Julia Heaberlin

Playing Dead was loosely inspired by a stranger’s letter that arrived in my mailbox one day more than 10 years ago. The woman who wrote it wondered whether I could be her daughter, kidnapped years earlier. Her daughter shared my name, Julia, and the same birth date. In fact, the woman was desperately sending the same letter to four other Julias in the United States born on May 14, 1961.

I held that letter in my hand for a stunning few seconds while the intellectual part of my brain took time to react. What if my whole life was a lie? That was the emotional reaction. But I knew quickly that I wasn’t her daughter. I had scientific proof. I carried the gene for a wacky electrical issue with my heart that had traveled through the bloodline of our family since the 1870s.

So the letter was the germ of the idea for Playing Dead, but that’s where real life ends, and fiction begins. I wanted Playing Dead to be a mix of several genres that I like: psychological thriller, mystery and chick lit (i.e., a strong, smart and sometimes funny female heroine). I wanted to defy some of the stereotypes that people have of Texas. And I wanted it to be dark but not leave me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had been a stressed-out working mother most of my life who required sweet dreams.

Because July 4 falls smack in the heart of escapist summertime reading, I decided to share just a few of the books that inspired my writing along the way. These are in no particular order. Most of them are perfect for blowing up a few goose bumps on a hot summer day. Not all of them induce sweet dreams.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.  I first read Rebecca as a young girl, while sitting on the window seat my father built for me. It carried me far from my small Texas town to a world of creepy gothic romance and mystery. It’s one of the few books in my lifetime I’ve read more than once. I might as well admit to a brief and influential period with Harlequin romances as a sixth-grader with terrible perms. Harlequins taught me that a little passion is important in a book. And I learned a lot of Ivy League-caliber vocabulary from the frustrated women’s classics majors churning them out.

Gillian Flynn’s debut novel, Sharp Objects. Don’t just dive straight into Gone Girl if you’ve never read Gillian Flynn. Buy all three of her books and start from the beginning with Sharp Objects, one of the best debuts ever. Dark, intimate, and compressed with an ingenious twist.

Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. The scariest book I’ve ever read. I picked it off a boyfriend’s shelf and a casual relationship with ghosts began (it lasted, the boyfriend didn’t).

61 Hours by Lee Child. Don’t. Let. Too. Many. Words. Or. Long. Sentences. Get. In. The. Way. Of. Your. Storytelling. Jack. Reacher. Is. Hot.

Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Tommie McCloud would like to shoot some tequila with Clarice Starling, who ranks as the smartest, nicest, kick-ass, vulnerable heroine of all time.

In the Woods by Tana French. I’m not sure how to describe this book’s effect on me. It begins intriguingly enough, like a lot of thrillers do: A 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the woods, the same woods where two other children disappeared 20 years ago. But I quickly realized this was something much more than the usual page-turner. Complex plotting, beautiful writing, a protagonist with so much to lose. One of my favorite mysteries ever.

Janet Evanovich’s first Stephanie Plum book, One for the Money. OK, so this is more likely to induce a giggling spit-take of your summer umbrella drink than blow up goose bumps. This is one of the few books in my life besides A Confederacy of Dunces that made me laugh out loud. Tommie McCloud could only hope to do for Texans what Stephanie Plum does for New Jerseyans. You know, make us lovable.

 

WHO OWNS YOUR GENES?

Categories: blogging Tags: , , ,
By mckenziem on June 28, 2012

By Brian Andrews

If you answered this question “I DO” then you’re wrong. According to US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, your genes are owned by whichever corporation or research entity is the first to patent them. For example, a company called Myriad Genetics presently owns patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer marker genes? This means if a woman wants to test if she carries the BRCA1/2 genes, she must pay whatever price Myriad Genetics demands for the gene verification test because Myriad has a monopoly on these genes.

Presently, about 25% of your person is patented. Does this bother you? It bothers me, so I wrote a novel about it.

The topic of my debut thriller, THE CALYPSO DIRECTIVE, is genetic piracy. Genetic piracy is a new phenomenon—a byproduct of our rapid technological advancement over the past two decades in both bioscience and computing. In a nutshell, genetic piracy is obtaining information encoded in another person’s DNA and profiting from this information without that person’s consent. When I first started writing the story in 2003, it required a supercomputer and millions of dollars to sequence a person’s genome. Now, it can be done for thousands of dollars and the price is falling every month. When it costs $50 to sequence a human genome and $5 to upload and store the information in “the cloud” don’t be surprised if your genome is sequenced without your permission. Now, add into the mix that unmodified genes can be patented, and the financial incentive for genetic piracy is born.

THE CALYPSO DIRECTIVE is a thriller about identity loss—except I’m not talking about a stolen credit card or a lost driver’s license. The hero of the novel, Will Foster, has had his genome hijacked and embarks on an adventure to find out why. As he struggles to recover from the ultimate form of human exploitation, he reconnects with the woman he loves, and must find the courage to defend that which he holds most dear.

THE CALYPSO DIRECTIVE is available in Hardcover or eBook at your favorite place to buy books: Amazon, iBookstore, B&N, Books-A-Million, Indiebound, McNally Jackson

Also don’t forget to check out the free companion novella, RING OF FLOWERS, that tells the origin story of Will Foster’s immunity mutation.  Amazon-Kindle,  iBookstore-iPad,  B&N-Nook

 

 

The Queen and I

Categories: blogging, Blogs Tags: , , , , , ,
By mckenziem on

Kathleen Sharp’s Blood Feud was on our book giveaway last week.

By Kathleen Sharp

Ann Rule has been called the reigning queen of True Crime and rightfully so. Over the past four decades she’s written thousands of articles, and 33 non-fiction books—32 of which have been bestsellers (she just handed in the manuscript of her recent tome.) About a dozen of her works have been sold to the movies, and her work has informed a generation of crime fighters. So, imagine how honored I was when, after three years of politely declining my offers, Ann finally agreed to be the True Thriller Master at this summer’s Thriller Fest, sponsored by International Thriller Writers.

I met Ann some 20 years ago, long after the publication of her first book, The Stranger Beside Me—the one that turned Ted Bundy into a household name. At the time, I was a cub reporter in thePacific Northwest, sent to interview The Queen about how she recreates such vividly harrowing tales. She didn’t just rip real stories from the headlines, she explained: She spent weeks sitting through boring trials, pouring through boxes evidence and interviewing witnesses. “But if I pick a fascinating subject, the book almost always writes itself,” she told me.

Of course, Ann was being way too modest. But at the end of our session that rainy day, I confessed that I too wanted to write books someday. “Go for it,” she encouraged me. “But look for the story that no one else is pursuing.”

A few years later, I quit my newspaper job, took her advice, and began writing narrative non-fiction books. I tried to find the big stories that no one else was following, but that was harder than you’d think. Following her pattern, I did the mind-numbing work of recreating scenes and dialogue. For my recent book, Blood Feud (Dutton), I sifted through years of legal transcripts. For an earlier book Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood (Carroll & Graf), I interviewed 450 people. Maybe I went overboard at times, but I’ve never regretted my choice, and now, after thousands of articles, four non-fiction books, a few children, and two film deals, I’ve grown to admire Ann Rule even more.

Let’s go back to the early 1970s days, when Ann was a single mom with four small children to feed and in desperate need of a job. She started freelancing for outlets such as True Detective magazine. When her editor suggested she use a male pen name so she’d be taken “seriously” as a crime writer, she didn’t protest. At some point, she realized that she didn’t know much about forensic science, so she attended night school. Two years later, she had a degree in police science and knew more solving crimes than any male writer.

But that wasn’t enough for ambitious Ann, so she rode along with state police, county sheriff and paramedics. She even answered the hotline at a Seattlecrisis clinic, where she became friends with a handsome co-worker. When Ann landed her first book contract, about a serial killer, she was ecstatic. It was only later that she realized her friend, was the prime suspect in the campus rapes and murders—Ted Bundy. “I couldn’t stop thinking of all those long nights we spent together alone in a four-story building, answering suicide calls.” It took Ann five years to write, but Bundy wound up being the anti-hero in The Stranger Beside Me.

Even after that breakthrough, Ann’s agent told her to write her next three books as “Andy Stack,” again so that she’d be taken “seriously.” But by the time she published Small Sacrifices (1987), she was using her own name and the New York Times was hailing her work as “extraordinary.” In subsequent books, Ann has explored some pretty dark places: Bitter Harvest delved into the psyche of a female murderer, Too Late To Say Goodbye, examined a seemingly perfect marriage. But the ones that haunt her the most are those that involve children.

That’s why Ann is active in support groups for victims of violent crimes, their families, and for children who live in traumatic situations. She often teaches peace officers on subjects such as “Sadistic Sociopaths,” and “High-Profile Offenders.” She was on the U.S. Justice Department Task Force that devised VI-CAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, so the FBI can identify, track and trap serial killers.

Americans have long been fascinated with true crime, beginning with William Bradford’s true account of a Mayflower passenger-turned-killer or Truman Capote’s haunting criminals In Cold Blood. But more than other living author, Ann Rule is responsible for shaping the true-crime genre as it exists today. And I mean that seriously.

Kathleen Sharp is the award-winning journalist and acclaimed author of Blood Feud (Dutton), which New Regency Productions is developing. Be sure to catch her and the 2012 True Thriller Award Recipient Ann Rule at ThrillerFest VII.

 

 

You can also follow Kathleen on Twitter:

Writing Different But The Same

Categories: blogging, Blogs Tags: , , , , , , ,
By mckenziem on June 27, 2012

Since writing my adult suspense book with elements of another world, A Human Element, I wrote a middle grade adventure set on another world. What’s funny is that I didn’t plan for both books to have their foot set on Earth with higher callings to other places. It just sort of happened.

If you are a writer have you challenged yourself to write in a different genre, and then found your fascination with certain themes carry over? I like to imagine intelligent worlds out there. Perhaps some would be hostile, others would not. This is the undercurrent of A Human Element and my middle grade adventure as well. Both worlds I created have a mix of good and bad (and truly horrifying), as we have in our own world. Perhaps another world might not be so different from ours. I like to dream about what’s beyond our world, as the astronomer Carl Sagan inspired us to do. In his novel Contact, his character Dr. Arroway says “The universe is a pretty big place. It’s bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of. So, if it’s just us… seems like an awful waste of space. Right?” I believe it.

In challenging myself to write a middle grade novel, it occurred to me that I had already written young voices in my adult novel as I propelled two characters into adulthood. But I took it a step further. I challenged myself to also write in a different point of view–the first person, rather than my comfortable third person. I found out how difficult it is to stay in the mind and view of one person through an entire book. And that of a twelve year old boy! I then realized I already had found my natural young voice in my adult book, A Human Element, as I had fun “growing up” with the characters in it.

Sometimes we read an author because we know what they’ll give us, but sometimes we read an author because we want to be surprised. I like to be surprised.  Do you like it when authors please their loyal-fans and continue to write in the same vein? Or do you want them to try new voices, new genres, and new points of view? It’s exciting to be an author today as it’s become more acceptable to write across genres and in different points of view. It also gains you a crossover wider audience.

In writing A Human Element I enjoyed finding my young adult voice through my characters that experience life from other worlds. I enjoyed it so much I went on to write a middle grade adventure fantasy where my characters do the same. But now I have a yearning to write a  children’s book grounded in real life here on Earth. I wonder how that will go. I can’t wait to surprise myself–and hopefully, my readers.

 

STARTERS by Lissa Price

Categories: blogging, Blogs Tags: , , ,
By mckenziem on June 26, 2012

My life has changed so much in fifteen months. My debut YA futuristic thriller, STARTERS, is now an international bestseller, published in 24 countries. The book trailer played before the Hunger Games movie in selected cities in the US, the UK and the Philippines. Random House sent me on a national tour where I met remarkable booksellers, librarians, teachers and bloggers. As amazing as all this is, it’s not the best part of being published.

Two years ago, I was caught in the recession like many, hardly able to sleep at night. And then I wrote this book. I was quickly offered representation and I went with an agent that I had met a few years before that, one night during Thrillerfest. We never spoke about writing, but I had a good feeling about her. And then I found out that she had represented a book I admired.

Now readers from many countries email and tweet me, saying they couldn’t put STARTERS down, golden words to a thriller writer. I thought my readership would be teen girls but in fact it’s also been boys, adults and even seniors. Everyone wants to know how I got the idea. It’s pretty simple, really. I couldn’t get a flu shot at Costco. A batch had been spoiled and so the government set up a triage system — only the very young and the very old and the infirm could get the vaccine first. I left without the shot but with an idea — what if this were a killer flu? Then all that would be left would be the vaccinated ones, the most vulnerable members of our society: the very young, and the very old. The idea haunted me and it formed my world for STARTERS. My main character, Callie, came forth quickly, a 16 year-old who had lost her parents and didn’t want to be separated from her sickly brother. They squat in abandoned office buildings until she hears of this mysterious place that will pay a lot of money to rent out your body.

Of course big twists and turns follow. And then I get the emails from readers – from France, Korea, Germany, Holland — where I can practically hear the gasps (love that part) as they tell me how shocked they were and how they can’t wait for the sequel. And even though I sit alone in my room, typing at the computer, I’m able to reach people across the globe and share the visions in my mind. Out of all the wonderful benefits of being a published author, this is one, for me, is truly the best.

 

Carter Wilson: ‘Aren’t imaginations fun?’

Categories: blogging, Blogs Tags: , ,
By mckenziem on June 25, 2012

Most authors, including myself, are asked where we get our ideas from, which has always surprised me, because I assume people have ideas in their head all the time. Authors simply put them to paper. Where does anyone get their ideas from? From those firing synapses in their head, from the chemicals giving their brain sentience. Ideas are from imagination, and I don’t care who you are, everyone has one. I believe the only difference in each person is the willingness to share that imagination.

Because those of us who do share, and do it through fiction, often have some explaining to do. You seem like such a normal guy – why are your stories so dark? Is any of this real? How could you possibly come up with such things? I have learned over the past year, as my book FINAL CROSSING: A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE was sold to a publisher, that nothing is quite as fun as someone asking about my imagination.  There’s something exquisite about the moment after someone asks what my book is about, and I get to reply It’s about a man trying to find personal salvation through a series of horrible crucifixion murders. That look in their eyes. Intrigue, and maybe a little hesitation. Perhaps even an unconscious step backwards. As if they thought they knew me, but now are questioning what it was they think they knew.

But the thing is, I’m no different than anyone else.

That nice woman in your office who arranges the office birthday parties thinks of some pretty messed up things, she just doesn’t tell you about them. And your mechanic, the only one you trust with your import? Who knows what he spends his time thinking about as he’s under the hood. What shadows cross his mind through the din of power tools and air compressors?

In particular, I get asked about Rudiger, the villain (confused individual, I call him) in  FINAL CROSSING. Where did Rudiger come from? How did you create someone so dark?

I was traveling to Jerusalem on business, and I borrowed my co-worker’s Lonely Planet guide. I read a small excerpt about something called Jerusalem Syndrome. In essence, this is a very rare syndrome where seemingly healthy people travel to Jerusalem and then cannot mentally absorb the religious significance of that city. In simple terms, they go crazy, to the point of institutionalization. They are treated for a few weeks and then are sent home, at which point they are fine.

And I thought to myself, what happens if they get home and they aren’t fine?

That’s where Rudiger came from.

Aren’t imaginations fun?

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