John Ramsey Miller

Evidently my wife reads my blogs. After I complained here after Father’s Day about not getting a Kindle, I learned that she ordered me a Kindle 3 for my birthday, and it’s been back ordered for weeks and weeks. It may be late arriving, but that’s okay. I was actually joking because I didn’t actually think I really wanted one, but now that I know it’s coming, I’m intrigued and can’t wait to get in my hands. I was playing with one that belongs to a friend and I must say after ten minutes I had not a clue how it worked, nor was I sure I could learn to use it. I suppose I will and the idea of downloading any book I want in seconds without leaving the house is amazing. Will I be getting first electronic editions? I have a lot of first editions hardcovers that I love having in my shelves, and having my shelves replaced by a Kindle is sort of a weird concept.

I’m also wondering if I’ll buy new releases only or add classics I love like THE GODFATHER, which I try to read yearly. Re-reading a novel from your past that moved you is like listening to music from your youth––touch stones. I just bought hardcovers of the RIPLEY novels by Patricia Highsmith and put them next to my Larry McMurtry collection. I have first editions of MARATHON MAN, SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS, THE MOVIEGOER, Shelby Foote’s Civil War Trilogy, PLAINSONG, SIX MINUTES TO FREEDOM signed by Gilstrap, the Delta Force guys, Radio Free Panama staff, Kurt Muse, and a bunch of other players in the Panama invasion. Those books all I can get on Kindle, but they won’t be the same thing. Plus what if the drive crashes? Is there a drive in the dang things? What if I lose it? A library wiped out in the blink of an eye. Is everything backed up somewhere in the Amazon internet vaults?

Libraries are downloading their books to most e-readers, but not Kindles. You download the book and it stays in your reader for two weeks so you have to read it before it self-destructs or dims to nothing. I’m overwhelmed by the possibilities and I’m sorry Kindle is a closed channel and doesn’t play with others. I’d also like to be able to load my manuscripts to the Kindle to proof read them like my agent can do with MS documents attached to e-mails using her Sony e-reader. Instead of lugging thick printed MS’s on the subway or in cabs, she can carry fifty or more of them in her purse.

I can’t decide on a cover for John R’s new Kindle. There are fake leather ones, tooled real-leather ones in lots of colors, exotic skins, aluminum ones, and ones made of plastic. I want one whose cover flips around out of the way (even though book covers don’t fold back). I don’t like the fact that Kindle books don’t have page numbers on them. I’m worried about going back to where I stopped off, but I’m sure that isn’t a problem. I’ll figure it all out, but at the moment I look at the Kindle and I feel like Andy Rooney looks.

by John Gilstrap

Okay, I’ll confess it up-front. Today’s post started out as a response to Michelle’s provocative essay yesterday about the demise of the mass market paperback. Once it got to about 200 words, though, and I still had to write something for Friday, well, it only made sense to keep the discussion alive.

I personally think that the hardcover and the mass market paperback original (mmpo) are both on their deathbeds. I see trade paperbacks taking over for hardcovers (as they have throughout Europe), and the eBook taking over the slot once held by the mmpo.

The issue is distribution. Back in the day, the attraction of the mmpo was its universal presence. Every newsstand, drug store and grocery counter had a huge selection. The Big Box stores didn’t yet exist, so book stores, per se, were few and far between–at least where I grew up.

Now the Big Box stores grow like weeds, and the mmp distribution has imploded. Newsstands don’t even exist anymore, at least not as they used to. Where drug stores, etc. do stock mmps, they’re just the reprints of last year’s hardcover bestsellers. That in itself is a sound business decision, considering the cost of retail space, and the dismal performance rates of most paperback originals (PBOs).

According to yesterday’s New York Times, “By the end of this year, 10.3 millions people are expected to own e-readers in the United States, buying about 100 million e-books. . . This is up from 3.7 million e-readers and 30 million e-books sold last year.” If I do my math properly, that’s a 330% increase. Take those statistics in context with B&N’s financial troubles and Borders’s virtual collapse, and it’s easy to see the allure of the eBook.

Historically, the marketing strategy behind the PBO was to get it into as many outlets as possible and to count on impulse buyers to carry the day and spread the word. High volume sales would compensate for the low price point. With the collapse of the distribution network, though, comes the collapse of the marketing strategy. To pick up one of my books in paper, you pretty much have to go to a bookstore to get it. To get a book that is more than two years old, you’ll probably have to special order it.

PBOs get lost in commerce. In the Big Box Stores, the casual shopper sees the PBO by Gilstrap as just another spine-out splash of color between the face-out Gerritsens and Grishams. Unless that book is on the front table (paid-for space), then it’s not going to be seen, except by those who are specifically searching for it.

According to a recent article in Publisher’s Weekly, Amazon.com is turning out to be the nemesis of the Big Box stores, and this is even worse news for the mmp, where the shipping cost of a mmp purchase can equal 25-50% of the cost of the book. Who’s going to pay that?

Consider this: My latest novel, Hostage Zero, just finished a 58-day run in the top 100 paid sales in the Kindle Store. As I write this, it’s ranked #123. That means (thankfully) tens of thousands of copies sold in the last two months. The paperback sales, by contrast, have been just-okay, and the book’s current rank on Amazon is #67,479. Over at the B&N site, my eBook rank is #35, while the paperback rank is #40,013. I’m being perfectly honest when I say that I am far more thrilled that so many people are reading my work than I am disappointed that the pages they’re reading aren’t paper.

This brings me to my prediction for trade paper taking over for hardcovers. For me, the principle weakness of mmps in general is the font size. They’re just hard to read sometimes. The converse is the chief attraction of the hardcover; but that advantage has to be balanced against the weight of the book and the outrageous price point of a hardcover.

Enter the trade paperback. It’s a compromise. They’re lighter weight, the print is big and the price is more reasonable.

My crystal ball, then, shows nothing but brightness for the book industry. Back when I was a kid, a paperback was only $4.99 and hardcovers were about $14.00. Now that we’re in the 21st century, I see a future of eBook originals at $4.99, and trade paper at $14.00. And when it all settles out, new star authors will be born.

by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

Well here I am at Tucson airport getting ready to fly to LAX and then on to Melbourne, Australia. After such a long time on the road my family and I are looking forward to being in the one spot for more than a few days but in many ways we all regret the end of such a fabulous journey. While I could blog for hours on the greatness of the national parks I will spare you that and resort instead to a top 5 list…at least for today.

Best family experience

Hands down our wagon train experience was the best. We all got to have a tiny taste of what it must have been like on the wagon trails moving west. My boys also got to ride horses, throw tomahawks and learn how to lasso…great skills for us urbanites don’t you think!

Best camping site

The north rim of the Grand Canyon just created a new-tent only camping site loop, and we got to put up our tent less than a hundred yards away from the rim and one of the best views imaginable. This would be the perfect campervan spot too. If you were to get stuck due to power loss you could always read this guide on the best portable generator at generatorgrid in order to be prepared for the worst. In fact, the only downside, was the ‘mum-fear’ factor as twin five year olds were like “how cool is this”!

Best wildlife viewing experience

Now this is a tricky one…do we go for the bison who calmly strolled through our campground in Yellowstone or the view of the grizzly bear across the river in the Lamar Valley? Or do we go for the view of the two black bears strolling along just past our campsite in Sequoia national park (actually this one was really just another mum fear factor moment). I think I have to go for the unexpected view we had of the alpha male of the Phantom Springs wolf pack as he bounded across willow flat in Grand Teton national park. Shadowed by two lesser wolves he was huge and could easily be seen by the naked eye. It was such an awesome surprise and, for a wolf lover like me, a wonderful moment.

Best ‘Jaw Dropping’ View

The first glimpse of Yosemite valley still cannot be beat…though there were lots of close runners up…

Best Americana moment

Attending the Caribou County fair in Grace, Idaho and watching my sons’ expressions as they watched their first rodeo. It was a classic, non-touristy event that made us all appreciate the real cowboys of the west.

So just an initial taste of some of our travels…apologies for no photos as yet but that is beyond my technical capacity at this time…and we are now onto our next adventure (though we have to endure a long haul flight before then!) I will hopefully be checking in once I arrive so post me a comment and let me know some of your top 5 camping experiences.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

By John Gilstrap

My goodness but it seems like a long time since I’ve played blogger. How’s everyone been? I’ve been typing my fingers bloody trying to meet my fast-approaching deadline for the next Jonathan Grave book. That book has a title now, by the way: Threat Warning. Look for it in 10 months.

A dear friend of mine who also happens to be a fan sent me an email a couple of weeks ago in which she wrote, “One day over some drinks, we’re going to talk about what happened to you when you were thirteen.”

She was mostly teasing, but only mostly. She was referring to the recurrent theme in my books of boys who are coping with significant danger and angst. Many of my books do in fact feature adolescent boys who find themselves in difficult circumstances. In my breakout book, Nathan’s Run, the title character is twelve. Subsequent to that, there have been 13-year-old Travis, 16-year-old Scott, and most recently, 13-year olds Evan and Jeremy in Hostage Zero.

Given such a focus, I see how one might assume that I am using fiction to work through my own childhood issues. Honestly, I don’t think I am. Fiction is fiction, and that means it’s all made up. I’ve never killed anyone, and have only been shot at once, and that happened when I was nearly twenty. To my knowledge, I have no demons to exorcize.

I do, however, have nightmares just about every night, and not infrequently, my dream-screams wake my wife, who mercifully talks me back to the present. In one hundred percent of the dreams that invade my real world like that, I am a child and I am terrified, but I never know what the source of the terror is. It never materializes for me in the dream. Once the adrenaline rush subsides, I just fall back to sleep.

Should I consult a shrink to get to the bottom of the dreams? Probably, but it’s not going to happen. I think I bring these things on myself by writing stories about people in jeopardy. Call it an occupational hazard. Maybe romance writers are constantly ripping bodices in their dreams. If the dreams are more than that—if they are representative of some repressed violence from my youth—then I’ll gratefully listen to the subconscious brain that was courteous enough to blank it from my memory. If I’m a neurotic, at least I’m a functioning neurotic, so why rock the boat?

I write about children because families in peril are a recurring theme in my books. I write about boys because that’s what I was, and our only child is male. Write what you know. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Am I kidding myself here? Am I delusional? As a writer, does your made up world ever pay unwelcome visits to your real world?

After a certain amount of time and a certain number of books, does a novelist give attentive readers an accidental look into his subconscious? Or is it all just, you know, made up?

By John Ramsey Miller

I’ve been reading Patricia Highsmith’s “Ripley” novels of late. They were billed as Psychological Thrillers when they were being published, although I read very little of the element of suspense in them. They are rife with black humor. Tom Ripley’s kills are leisurely affairs, and he is hardly even worthy of being labeled psychopathic when measured against today’s villains. Tom Ripley is the amoral and sociopathic protagonist in the series. He is morally and ethically challenged. He is a murderer. He never kills for pleasure, but he will commit a murder for financial gain, or due to a threat to his self-image or one that could alter his status. To his credit, he doesn’t kill every threat that crosses his path, just the more serious ones and only when circumstances are convenient. And this reader pulls for him to kill those threats and I want him to get away clean and to prosper. Having Tom as the protagonist was quite a feat for a book published in the 1950s, not so much when the last one published in the early 90s. By then ass-bite protagonists and thrillers were becoming a dime a dozen.

When Patricia was writing Strangers on a Train (which became a successful Hitchcock film) and other novels and short stories her work was considered low art–crime fiction in the United States, but she was fully appreciated in Europe and put in the ranks of Conrad, Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Camus. In her lifetime she was appreciated but she had to live in Europe to be so.

I enjoy the pacing in her books, her humor, the sudden violence, its aftermath. Tom Ripley is not so good as the cops are incompetent and evidence is rarely gathered or put together. The books are a great relaxing read and very entertaining. Sometimes I just want to read something in 2/4 time.

By John Gilstrap

At the Midwest Writers Conference a couple of weeks ago, I critiqued ten manuscripts for conference attendees. As is frequently the case when I do these things, I learn new things about writing.

One of the more intriguing manuscripts I looked at was a historical mystery, set aboard a sailing ship crossing the Atlantic from England to the New World. Through beautiful prose, the author introduced his hero out on the deck, wind in his hair, watching the sunset. Then the author went into pages of data dumping. He told us that the ship was owned by so-and-so, and that it was primarily used for the transport of such-and-such. He told us that the ship had cabins for passengers, and that among the passengers were a carpenter with his wife and four children. The data dump section ended with the author telling us that our hero—we’ll call him Edward—had struck up a friendship with a junior member of the ship’s company—we’ll call him Charles—who taught him some of the basics of navigation.

A problem common to many new writers is the tendency to stop the story to reveal backstory. It’s as if the author has compartmentalized character background from character development, and has trouble bridging the gap. It’s entirely unnecessary. By shifting gears mentally, it’s a simple challenge to use front story to propel backstory. Using the example of the historical mystery, consider this:

Open the chapter with Edward learning navigation from Charles. As Edward learns, so do we. Then, in the middle of the lesson, suppose Charles is angered by the sound of children playing on the deck, getting into things that children have no business getting into. He yells at them and sends them on their way back to their father, the carpenter whose passage is partially paid for by performing carpentry on the ship during the voyage.

In this proposed approach, the story continually moves, is continually engaging, and the reader gets to witness events that otherwise would be dumped on them. It’s a win across the board.

I urge every writer (and frequently remind myself) that every scene needs to be about a character. Whatever happens has to happen to someone, and whatever the reader learns should be learned through the filter of the character’s world view. I’ve always believed that it’s the characters’ job to speak to my readers. If I ever find myself doing it directly, I know it’s time to rewrite.

What do y’all think? What are the other ways to subtly reveal backstory?

As my family and I are on a covered wagon trip I won’t be posting today, I will literally be out on the range! Hope to check in next week when we will be in Yellowstone.
Cheers
Clare

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Everyone, it seems, is talking about Stieg Larsson and the girl with the tattoo who plays with fire while kicking the hornet’s nest. I just received an e-mail from a friend in which he reports reading that amazon.com sells a Larsson book in one form or another at the rate of one per second. Can that be true? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if every person who bought a Larsson book bought and read another book by another author as well? But I digress. I was in a used bookstore on Wednesday and was talking to a clerk when the topic of Larsson came up as it will in bookstores these days. I mentioned other Swedish mystery and thriller authors and his eyebrows went up. I wound up making a list for him. Henning Mankell was on it, of course, as was Hakan Nesser. Both of these worthies had books published long before Larsson even thought about writing his worthy novels. I expanded the list to include Jo Nesbo from Norway, and Arnaldur Indridason from nearby Iceland. At this point, the clerk was crying “uncle” and we made our farewells. I remembered one more addition to the list as I was getting into my car, however, and had to come back into the store and tell him, because it was perhaps the most important of all: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.

The names Sjöwall and Wahlöö are probably unknown or forgotten to the majority of crime fiction readers, yet they are best known for writing a series of ten police procedural novels featuring a Swedish homicide detective named Martin Beck who heads up a special homicide division of the Swedish police. The series achieved great critical and (in some cases commercial) acclaim internationally; THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN, the fourth book in the series, found great success in the United States. It won the Edgar Award for Best Novel of 1971, and a film bearing very little resemblance to the novel was made in 1973, with the setting moved from Stockholm to San Francisco. At this point in time arguably more people have heard about the title than have read it, and if they are familiar with it at all it is as the result the film, rather than the book. All of the Beck books, by the way, have been translated to English and remain in print, though only one, THE LOCKED ROOM, is available in e-book form.

The Beck series and Larsson’s Millennium series have some interesting points of commonality. Sjöwall and Wahlöö were in an established common law relationship and openly collaborated on the series; Larsson was in a long-term, committed relationship with Eva Gabrielsson, who may or may not (depending on who you choose to believe, and on what day) have made a substantial contribution to the books as they exist in their published form. Larsson was an avowed Communist whose political beliefs fueled his journalistic endeavors and which in turn were reflected, though somewhat toned down, in the Millennium trilogy. The Martin Beck series is infused with cultural and social commentary from a socialist viewpoint as well, though, interestingly enough, THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN was in its own way critical of the shortcomings of the Swedish welfare state. For anyone who enjoys well-written police procedural novels, however, the Beck series is worth reading, regardless of one’s politics. If you have read Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy and despair of further volumes ever being published (the last chapter on that topic has yet to be written) you have ten books in the Martin Beck series waiting for your attention, approval, and enjoyment.

One more thing: along with each blogpost I am going to mention what I’m currently reading. Right now that would be THE DOUBLE HUMAN by James O’Neal: Mad Max meets Alien Nation, set in Florida twenty-five years in the future.

Hello, Killzoners. Please forgive me for abandoning my post this week, but vacation calls. See you next Friday.

–John