It has been an extremely interesting week, one of highs and lows. I had a wonderful professional and personal high that is still playing itself out, a circumstance where I was able to help a kind and decent person at a time when they needed it. You can read about that elsewhere http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2011/02/04/you-and-me-writer-identified.html?sid=101 if you wish. But let’s talk about the “low” here, at length. I have sometimes forgotten in the course of my postings that this blog is called The Kill Zone, so I will get back on track here and now.
I read crime fiction because I am fascinated with the battle between good and evil. I know that the lines are often blurred, but not necessarily to the extent that they are indistinguishable. Yet every bad guy, if you will, represents a failure on some level, perhaps unavoidable, perhaps otherwise, but a failure and a tragedy still. We all know a number of folks who for one reason or another — or for perhaps no discernable reason at all — fall off of the rails.
My younger son, who is now in his late 20s, had a childhood friend who I will call “Todd” for purposes of this discussion. Todd, when he was attending grade school with my son, gave little indication that he would have troubles later in life. He was raised in an intact family with loving parents, and if he occasionally experienced some impulse control problems, they never reached the stage that would portend the disaster his adult life has become. My son and Todd lost touch when we moved to a different school district in the area, even though I kept in contact with Todd’s parents as they intermittently relayed tales of what was turning into a slow-motion train wreck. Todd was barely into his teens when he was arrested for shoplifting. Other troubles followed. He began to have trouble with drug use; his folks placed him a tough rehab program which, to all outward appearances, he successfully completed. They took him to South Carolina over a Christmas weekend to celebrate his success. They had been there for two days when Todd‘s father called me, almost hysterical. Todd had gone out with some friends to walk the beach and within a half-hour had been arrested for armed robbery. Charged as an adult, he spent six months in a jail awaiting trial. By the time Todd finally returned home, his course seemed to be set. Trouble seemed to dip and swirl around him. When Todd’s father died of cancer, Todd could not attend the funeral because he was sitting in an Ohio prison, having been convicted of yet another offense. His mother, a sweet and kind person who devoted her life to her son and husband, had the appearance and demeanor of someone who had been shell-shocked. Just so.
Todd was in the news again this week. The area had been plagued by a period of gas station robberies and Todd was charged as the alleged perpetrator. In his booking photo, wearing a dirty wife beater and a scripted tattoo across his left arm and chest, he bears but a faint resemblance to the little boy who with my younger son played with Transformers and shared respective bedrooms like brothers. In the picture it is Todd who looks shell-shocked this time, vaguely dazed, perhaps by the state of his life at this point, perhaps wondering how and why he wound up on the downhill road he is on. Or perhaps I am projecting my own questions, wondering why him, and not my own son, since they were so alike in so many ways. The chill I have felt since seeing his picture, however, has nothing to do with the weather. And I doubt that there is a book that I could read that would conclusively answer my questions.
By John Gilstrap
I pen this week’s post from Bakersfield, California, where I’m teaching a two-day seminar on safety and health issues in the recycling industry. It’s a great class so far, packed with a lot of motivated and enthusiastic students. The fact that it took me 17 hours to get here, thanks to Mama Nature doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the process, but it does mean that I’m tired. With tired comes cranky.
And nothing spins me up quite like unsolicited recorded phone calls.
I felt my pocket buzzing while I was in the middle of my lecture and of course ignored it because, well, I was in the middle of my lecture. During the break, I looked at my phone and found an 866 number, identified as “unknown.” I remember a friend of mine telling me about online reverse phone lookup websites that can identify unknown and scam callers, and would have saved me a lot of time!
I called the number back and reached a recorded greeting that told me, “be aware that we are a debt collector.” I suspected that it was either a scam or a wrong number, so after a minute or two on hold, I hung up and went back to work.
Then I got to thinking. This has been the year of compromised credit cards for us. It’s happened at least four times. While we’re current on all our bills, was it possible that something slipped through? There’s also the matter of a denied medical claim that we’re still negotiating with the insurance company. Could that be the problem? I really wish I’d just known how to check phone number ownership, it could have saved me such a headache.
They called back when I could actually take the call, and it turns out that a Mr. and Mrs. Ngyuen are behind on their house payments. The call goes like this:
“If this is Mr. or Mrs. Ngyuen, press one. If not, press two.”
I press two.
“If you need a moment to bring them to the phone, press one. If this is the wrong number, press two.”
I press two.
“If you want to stop receiving these phone calls, press one.”
I press one. (Really. Does anyone NOT want to stop receiving these calls?)
“To be removed from the call list, you must talk to a customer service representative. Please hold.”
I hold. For six minutes, being told regularly how important my phone call is.
Finally, a young man answers, “Hello?”
“Hello?” I say. “Really? That’s it? Hello?”
“Who is this?” he asks.
“You called me,” I say.
“Are you looking for the modification department?”
“I don’t know what a modification department is. I’m calling to be taken off your list.”
“What list?”
“The one you called me from.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I think you have the wrong number.”
“It can’t be the wrong number,” I say. “I pressed one.”
“One what?”
“The number one. You called me. Your recording told me to press one to get taken off the list. I can’t have called a wrong number.”
“Oh,” he says. “Let me pass you to someone who can take you off the list.”
“What list?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“I few seconds ago, you didn’t know what the list is. How are you going to take me off of it if you don’t know what it is?”
“I’ll transfer you to someone.”
“Let me talk to your supervisor.”
“I’ll transfer you to someone.”
“You’re not listening. I’m already talking to someone. Another someone doesn’t do me any good. I want to talk to your supervisor.”
“He’s not available.”
“I’ll talk to his supervisor, then.”
“Please hold.”
I endure three more minutes of assurances that my call is important.
“Um, sir? They weren’t available.”
“Your supervisor’s supervisor?”
“No sir. Someone else.”
“So if someone’s not there, that means no one’s there. Are you in a room by yourself?”
“No, sir.”
“Then someone must be there.”
“Sir, if you can just give me your phone number, we can take you off the list.”
“The right list? The one I want to be taken off of?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The list you don’t know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you can guarantee that I’ll be removed.”
“I think so.”
I give him the number. “And what about the Ngyuens?” I ask.
“Excuse me?”
“The Ngyuens. The ones who are behind on their payments. Someone should call them and let them know.”
“Um.”
“They’re not at this number. I think we’ve established that.”
“They must have had that number before you.”
“This is a cell phone. I’ve had this number for over ten years.”
“Sir, I’ll tell the right person, and they’ll take the number off the list.”
“Okay,” I say. “I don’t want to have this conversation again.”
“I understand, sir. Neither do I.”
by Brad Parks
Today TKZ is thrilled to welcome Brad Parks, reformed sportswriter and award winning author, whose second book EYES OF THE INNOCENT was just released. 
I have this weird thing for dates. They stick in my head for no good reason.
Aug. 5, 1998. The day my pet rabbit, Snowflake, died.
Aug. 20, 1994. The day I first kissed the beautiful woman who is now my wife.
Nov. 5, 2004. The day I finished my first novel-length manuscript (a book that, incidentally, will likely never be published, unless I pull a Stieg Larsen and become unexpectedly famous after my untimely passing).
Feb. 3, 2011. The day I put the entire Kill Zone audience to sleep with the boring biographical details of my tedious life because I didn’t move on with the point of my guest blog post…
… So, right, the point of this post is actually to talk about some of the most significant dates in a writer’s life.
Deadline dates.
Now, that word, “deadline,” can inspire a lot of fear in writers. Its origin – and I swear, I’m not making this up – is actually penal in nature. Once upon a time, a deadline referred to a line in a prison that inmates couldn’t cross, or else they’d be shot dead.
But I’m here to say deadline is actually a wonderful thing for writers, something we should embrace rather than loathe. And I have come to discover there is power and freedom in a deadline, in knowing that you don’t have the luxury to get too picky, in understanding that what you’re aiming for is not “good” but “good enough.”
I first learned this as a journalist. I spent twelve years working for daily newspapers, much of it in the sports department, where the deadlines are unforgiving. I can remember covering Yankees playoff games in 1999, when my editor explained to me they were holding the entire paper for my story – and that each minute the story was late would cost $15,000 as presses and trucks sat idle, racking up gas and overtime.
I didn’t know if he was inventing the number, but I did know I was making about $60,000 a year, so my entire annual salary could slip away in four minutes. And I was guessing it would probably be easier to find another $60,000-a-year sportswriter than paying for the ten minutes it took for me to find that perfect word or phrase for my lede. It tended to have a marvelous, focusing effect on my work, one I carried throughout my journalism career.
But I have also learned to love deadlines as a novelist, and it was because of my latest book, EYES OF THE INNOCENT, which just hit the shelves.
Now, the 
aforementioned unpublished manuscript took me three years, writing during the off-season of whatever sport I was covering. The next one? I probably turned that around in a year and a half, writing in dribs and drabs when news was slow.
I knew from the start EYES OF THE INNOCENT needed to be a different animal, thanks to deadline. And here, I return to my thing with dates, and some of the ones my brain attached to this book, starting with:
July 8, 2008. The day I learned I would have to write it. I know because that was the wonderful afternoon my agent called to say my manuscript, the book that would later become FACES OF THE GONE, had sold to St. Martin’s Press. She also told me it was a two-book deal, so FACES better have a sequel.
That leads to:
Jan. 27, 2009. The day, according to my contract, that second book would be due.
Now, six months is not an unreasonable length of time in which to write a novel. Heck, there are romance writers out there who can turn one around in six weeks. Except, of course, there were complicating factors.
The first was that we were in the midst of moving three states away, from New Jersey to Virginia. When I got that call from my agent, we were less than two weeks away from the moving vans arriving (July 21, 2008).
The second was that I still had a full-time job as a daily newspaper reporter.
But those were far less important complications than the real deadline then looming in our house around that time:
Dec. 18, 2008. The day my wife was due with our second child.
I knew, from the experience of the first child, that absolutely no meaningful writing would get done for at least six months after the blessed arrival. I also knew, again from Baby No. 1, that my wife would probably go early.
So I had to get to work. I spent a few weeks going over FACES OF THE GONE (it had been roughly two years since I finished it and I needed to re-familiarize myself). Then came:
Aug. 13, 2008. The day I first opened up the file that would become EYES OF THE INNOCENT. Unlike those first two manuscripts, where there were so many stops and starts, I really had to hammer on this one. Deadline and the impending arrival of a baby had given me no choice. And I discovered, much like the days when dilly-dallying cost $15,000 a minute, the pressure had a way of making me concentrate on getting to The End without worrying quite so much about the little stuff along the way. So it was, three months and twenty days later, I got to:
Dec. 3, 2008. The day I turned in a draft to my agent. (And, it turned out, I was just in time – my wife was, once again, about two weeks early).
Is the book any different for having been turned around so quickly? Yeah, it is: It’s better. The pacing, the plotting, it’s all so much tidier. Everyone has their own speed. But I’ve since discovered three months per book is the right one for me. And I have that one tight deadline to thank for the revelation.
What about you guys? Any good deadline stories out there?
Brad Parks’s debut, FACES OF THE GONE, became the first book ever to win the Nero Award and Shamus Award, two of crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His second book, EYES OF THE INNOCENT, just released from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books. Library Journal gave it a starred review, calling it “as good if not better (than) his acclaimed debut.” For more Brad, sign up for his newsletter, follow him on Twitter, or became a fan of Brad Parks Books on Facebook.
Have you made sacrifices for your career? Lost friends? Not spent as much time with loved ones as you might have liked? Taken less vacations? Become more sedentary than is good for your health?
Writing is a solitary profession. No one understands the cost involved or why we spend hours hunched over the computer. No one warned us about the time we’d spend setting up book events, creating book trailers, preparing workshops, answering fan mail, writing blogs, and updating our websites. Even my maid remarked recently, “You spend a lot of time at home.”
I tried to explain how this is my job. It requires hours of hard work like any other small business. As far as accepting social invitations, I’m guarded of my time because it’s so precious, and I never seem to have enough minutes in the day. I guess this makes me more of an “All work and no play” type of gal, but we writers feel guilty when we’re not at the computer, right? And when I really want to play, I go to Disney World or on a cruise. Every other time is work time, and lunches with friends or an occasional mah jong game become breaks from the daily grind. Other writers understand this compulsion. They’re just as eager to return to work after time away from home, whether it’s writing or marketing their various projects. Or am I the only nutcase out there?
How do you deal with people who figure you’re home all day so you should be available to chat on the phone for a half hour or go out for an impromptu coffee date or pick up their purchase for them at a store twenty minutes away? Do you say yes to everyone, because you’re too nice to refuse, come up with an excuse, or say you’re working? Have you been tempted to retire from writing so you can have a life of leisure and hang out with your friends all day? So you can leave the desk behind and “have fun” instead with your spouse who relies on your companionship? What has your career cost you?
Dinner with girlfriends recently brought up an interesting subject: marketing our books and the Social Media craze. My one friend tapped her fingers as she named the different social media platforms her sixteen year old uses, Twitter, TumblR, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr. She said, “You want your book buzzed about? Give it to my daughter. She’ll have it viral in no time.”
The young ones are the fearless generation with this new technology. They’ve been born into a world with the Internet, where folks my age who just got comfortable emailing, must now warm up to the idea of communicating in 140 characters or less—by telephone!
And to think, fifteen years ago, my second grade son saw a record album turn table in a friend’s house and whispered to me, “Mom, what is that?”
It seems as if every day we open our doors to another new change in world communications. So, I did some research on this exciting buzz about social media. Here’s what I found: Socionomics. This is the new phrase being touted for the Social Media Revolution. I like it. I could go on with facts and figures about how this phenomenon is changing our world (including the political impact it’s having on Egypt these days), but nothing speaks clearer than the video below on what the future holds. The statistics are mind boggling.
Where shall we go from here?
y real writing done but I did get a chance to brainstorm plot options and clear the way for what (I hope) is the answer to my overly complicated plot. The thing is I now have two days to start revving the engines to get back down to writing full time and I feel like a rusty old motor in the scrapyard. James Scott Bell
The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down. The people ride in a hole in the ground. – Betty Comden and Adolph Green, On the Town
John Ramsey Miller
We have all seen movies on television where key scenes are deleted or language altered–often comically when they try to make the word fit the actor’s lip movements, or change “you Mother F*cker!” to “you silly nut” –that we are accustomed to it. The other night I was watching one of the new shows (Harry’s Law maybe)and one character called another an asshole. Did the censors stop working at the networks and go to work on Disney cartoons?
You know I like realism and I’ve got a cast-iron gut, but I was stunned last night watching BONES. This “Gravedigger”, a red-headed female serial killer, ex-prosecuting attorney in an orange jump suit stepped from a paddy wagon and was walking to the courthouse door when her head vaporized in a red wet cloud. Most realistic head blowing up I’ve ever seen and it was so seamless that, had I not known how illegal it is, I would have sworn they killed an actress (you know who was about to die of some dread disease anyway) for the shot. Then they showed closeups of people being washed with gore. It friggin looked like the special effects guy tossed a giant slurpee glass full of blood and brain tissue into the actor’s face and shirt. I was so startled I laughed. That was followed by the slow panning of the corpse, whose head was just not there, a cluttered pool of blood. This wasn’t HBO, this was Fox (I think). I’ve always thought of BONES as a light-weight drama. Those days are over.
I think some things are best shown …well, maybe less graphically. The parts of the exploded head were given a close up as the lab team prepared to reconstruct the skull on a lazy susan. Why the hell put it together? Identification to check what amount of her head actually evaporated? The shot made what was left look like a meat-lovers pizza special where the a drunk chef used half a side of beef on it. I’m talking chunks the size of toddler fists with teeth, with features and some with tufts of red hair. Man-o-man. Actually, woman-o-woman. Then they showed a corpse in a tub of lye. Everything below the waterline was bone sticking through mushy tissue… And then they had a scene with that corpse on a table in the lab. Ugggghhh!
Did I mention that my four-year-old grandson saw it? I’m sure his mind will never be the same. He was at the table behind me, and when I laughed he looked up from his coloring book. “Dotz, I want to see it again.” I changed the channel to Sponge Bob, after pressing the record button, and I had to explain special effects just like I have explained to him that Jurassic Park doesn’t have actual dinosaurs, or that there are no Transformers demolishing buildings and so forth.
So here’s my point. Do you think audiences have become so desensitized as to accept these radical changes involving what is on the tube. Where do we go from here? When is reality too real? Have I finally become as old fuddy duddy? Well, I didn’t think I was. Truth is I know the next steps and how close we are to leaving NOTHING to the imagination. That, I find truly sad.
I feel for kids. We had Roy Rogers and six guns that shot dozens of rounds if the cowboys were in a running fight. Our kids have bullets exploding heads. I’m going to start wearing a raincoat when I watch TV, just in case blood splashes through the screen.