Why Is Everything Such A Hassle?

Yesterday I had my hair cut and colored for the first time since early November. I was the two-toned kid, with 4 inches of brown and 5 inches of streaked blond brown with ends that had seen better days. Looking good, now. I did this in prep for Edgar's week in NY. It is bad enough to be the unstylish country cousin, even the pudgy unstylish country cousin without being the bad hair etc. country cousin, and might I add the cousin who hasn't published a book since 2003, etc. etc.?

But my hairdresser is great and he is even reading my book as is one of the other stylists. He liked the "descriptive" passages, which I suspect is damning with faint praise, but anyway. . .
I go back to Wellesley for my hair, and bopped into E.A. Davis to ogle the Lily Pulitzer clothes. So cool. So summery. So very Nantucket. Drool. Prices too high. I debated, and decided not to try anything on in the unlikely event that it fit. E.A. Davis is never a hassle.

We were having lasagne for dinner and I needed parmesan cheese and lettuce, so I stopped at Shaw's. Bought a wee box of black raspberries, so I had three (count 'em) 3 items. Took my understuffed basket into the 10 items or less check-out line. The clerk had already scanned the stuff the woman in front of me purchased, and then she began to pack it up, and I realized about the 3rd grocery bag that this woman must have had AT LEAST 20 items. That Shaws is always a train wreck. So, one might expect that the woman would turn and apologize. Maybe no one was behind her when she unloaded her week's groceries. Nope.

Maybe I had a right to expect that the check-out clerk would apologize for holding up the line endlessly. Paper and plastic and the woman's own bag (just one!) and was that a debit or a credit card yada yada.

Nope. Instead, a cheery, "how are you, today?" Now, how is anyone, especially us type A's who must wait and wait in the quick ten-items-or-less (not fewer) line for endless minutes for the rude feeling-so-priveleged shopper? I said "fine," with a chiliness that must have given her a clue. Still no apology. Not even a breezy apology.

Certainly no abject apology. That would come later.

On to the dry cleaners. Opened the door, and the woman who works there was sitting at her desk. She didn't look up. I did a double take. Hmmm. Her eyes are closed. She is erect, and therefore not dead. This woman never looks exactly healthy, so this was a legitimate consideration. I said, "excuse me."

She woke up with a start and starred at me. Abject apologies. My god, you would think they had lost the cleaning, which has actually happened, but not there. I had two "groups" of cleaning and no cash, so I whipped out ye old charge card, and for some reason she rang the cleaning up in three groups, but she had to key in a lot of numbers and the charge machine was SLOOOOOW, just like the Shaw's checkout line. I didn't understand why she couldn't add 10.00 and 19.65, after all it wasn't a quadratic equation, but this math seemed to be beyond her ken.

In the meantime another customer came in and waited and waited and waited, just like I had at Shaw's, and I was tempted to apologize, but hey, I wasn't the sleepy, slow, abject one.

Finally, with three charge receipts for $29.65, I was out of there. No other hassles. It's a wonder I didn't get rear-ended driving out of the parking lot. This is the center where all the truckers stop at the Dunkin' Donuts because there's a big parking lot. Sometimes you have to wait there indefinitely, but when the wait is long, we will feel virtuous and skip the donut. Never a bad idea, skipping the donut, especially is you are the not-very-stylish country cousin a little pudgy and not recently published.

Alas,

Grapeshot

Bouchercon and I'm Not There

This year I've skipped Thrillerfest, Edgar's Week and now Bouchercon, taking place today and this weekend in Baltimore. O Poe! O Nevermore!

Bouchercon is the biggest mystery and crime writing conference, with many of the big names in mystery writing, and endless panels, some good, some dull, and high times in the bar. Always high times in the bar.

I went to Bouchercon in Chicago a few years ago. At that time, The Shadow Warriors was newly out and the bookstore actually sold copies. Now the rules have changed and it wouldn't be considered legitimately published and so the bookstore wouldn't have it and I wouldn't be listed as an author. How galling is that?

E-publishers are not now and never were "real" publishers, and POD is not a legitimate printing method in the eyes of most writing organizations, with more jumping on the "let's keep ourselves exclusive" bandwagon all the time. Sisters in Crime, formerly the most democratic of organizations has become "exclusive" too. It is hard to have one's nose pressed against the glass of the candy store, or book store or . . .

But that's not why I'm staying home. Instead, I went to The Muse and the Marketplace here locally, and I'm taking a writing course at Brown, and actually trying to improve my writing rather than rub elbows with other writers. I've been rubbing elbows until my sweaters need leather patches, and you know, there are people who really suck at networking and promoting themselves and I am one.

Of course I'll be at the New England Crime Bake which is only 20 miles down the road, and I trekked to Sleuthfest, and heard positive comments from the agent and editor and it came to naught. There's a lot to be said for Florida in late February-early March. Sun. Warmth. Beaches. Crab meals. Relaxation. Friends.

So it's back to writing and writing and writing and trying to write the best book possible, and then make it better, because that's the only thing that's going to count. Not schmoozing and smiling and propping my frayed elbows on the bar no matter how much more fun socializing is that sitting here staring at the screen.

Writing is hard work.

I hope this doesn't come across as a whine. As a kid you expect a level playing field and things to be fair and of course they are not and maybe you rail against unfairness and then you suck it up and become more realistic about life. I'm sure McCain rails at the unfairness of the economy diving into the toilet at this time. Not fair! So he and Caribou Barbie talk dirty about Obama. She is edging toward demagogue. I try to stay above all that.

Rolling in the gutter is for losers.

At Boucheron I would love to corner Dan Fesperman and talk about his Afghan book. So good. Wow, was it good! Should have made the best seller list, but then nothing about publishing is necessarily about quality, or even a good story, it's about what the public finds comfortable to read, those who do read, which are fewer and fewer; the public reads romances, little cozies, fantasies, thrillers with cardboard characters, and sometimes the excellent books that everyone can love. Just because many of the books that are published don't appeal to me doesn't mean they're not eminently readable.

I don't pretend to understand what resonates with the reading public. It ain't fictionalized computer crime, that's for sure. I hope when I use the vernacular, so to speak, that I don't start sounding like Sarah Palin. That's for darn sure.

O.K. off to the drugstore and a walk through town. Walking always puts me in a better frame of mind.

Grrrapeshot

And The Edgar Award Winners Are . . .

Image from http://www.brittanica.com/


At a glitzy party in a NYC hotel ballroom, some of the best and the brightest in the crime writing genre came together to honor the nominees and winners of this year's Edgars: novels, short stories, plays and television programs.


I've been trekking from Bean Town to The Big Apple for years to attend the symposium and the agents and editors parties and some years even to the pricey banquet ("come dressed to kill") , but it's always an expensive undertaking, and this year my heart wasn't in it, so I went to Muse & the Marketplace instead for about the same money.

Earlier in this blog I posted the nominees, and now the charmed (and talented) few who bask in the winner's circle.

BEST NOVEL

Down River by John Hart (St. Martin's Minotaur)


BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

In the Woods by Tana French (Penguin Group – Viking)


BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

Queenpin by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)


BEST FACT CRIME

Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
by Vincent Bugliosi (W.W. Norton and Company


BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (The Penguin Press)


BEST SHORT STORY

"The Golden Gopher ' – Los Angeles Noir by Susan Straight (Akashic Books


BEST JUVENILE

The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh (Hyperion Books for Young Readers)


BEST YOUNG ADULT

Rat Life by Tedd Arnold (Penguin – Dial Books for Young Readers)


BEST PLAY

Panic by Joseph Goodrich (International Mystery Writers' Festival)


BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

"Pilot" – Burn Notice, Teleplay by Matt Nix (USA Network/Fox Television Studios)


BEST MOTION PICTURE SCREENPLAY

Michael Clayton, Screenplay by Tony Gilroy (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Congratulations to all. I read Megan Abbot's first book and thought it was brilliant. Loved Michael Clayton, too.

Link to Galley cat photos and more news of the Edgar's event
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/awards/scene_the_edgars_prebanquet_reception_83875.asp

Grapeshot

Amateur Sleuth - Forsooth!

I've been looking through the entries of the Gather/CourtTV/Borders Crime Fiction Contest. There's some pretty good first chapters, and some mediocre ones, as one would expect. I haven't seen anything that was actually bad, yet, but undoubtedly there are a few of those, too.

What has been instructive, is just how "lame" the amateur sleuth catagory really is. This is a bitch of a realization, because I actually write in that catagory. In case you're a newbie to crime fiction, amateur sleuth is one of the many sub-genres. There's police procedurals, private eye, romantic suspense, true crime, and amateur sleuth, in which the person solving the crime is not a professional crime-fighter. Think Miss Marple. Or Jessica Fletcher in "Murder She Wrote," a series that killed off just about everyone in Cabot Cove, forcing Jessica to travel far an wide solving crimes. Every writer knows what the "Cabot Cove" syndrom is.

Any novel forces a suspension of belief. After all, it is a book, a story, and needs to be larger than life, and certainly with a beginning, middle and end or story arc which life doesn't usually offer. But for a person off the street, so to speak, to be solving murders on her own (amatuer sleuths are usually but not always female), takes a big suspension of belief. And book after book, too, for the knitter, or book store owner or potter or herbalist or (fill in any cutesy occupation) to solve crime after crime requires a mega-suspension of belief.

The other disadvantage is that these stories have to be constructed in a certain way, and it's hard to start off with blood and guts or an explosion or car chase or whatever huge event happens in the small town that stymies the local constabulary but not the amateur, no sireee bob.

Many of these series are dropped by the publisher after half a dozen books, as they fail to build substantial readership. Others remain popular, book after book, but this is the exception.

And the genre gets no respect other than at Malice Domestic and from the women (mostly) who scarft down these books like they're popcorn. Ask Otto Penzler about the genre. He disses it big time. MWA seldom deigns to award the coveted "Edgar" to a woman writing about little villages and cats and nosy neighbors. Doesn't happen.

A sleuth who is a reporter, lawyer, repo man, bounty hunter, or some occupation where one might normally come into contact with bad guys is more realistic.

I have written five of these books, much edgier than the little village with cats, but let's face it, a sleuth solving computer crime isn't really going to come into personal contact with many violent guys. Bad yes, but where are the shoot-outs? The car chases? The explosions, for cryin' out loud? Doesn't one have to have explosions? Serial killers? Torture? Ugggh.

And of the five books, I've only sold one, and that was to an e-publisher who went belly up. First one had stupid plot and I put it on the shelf but it actually generated more interest than the others. Three and four haven't sold. Five I'm still tweaking. It has the best plot, but I don't think the little old ladies in Dubuque are going to go ga-ga over it, nor the guys who want blood and guts and mayhem. Note: I do have one explosion and lots of blood. These aren't cozies but my sleuth is definitely amateur when it comes to solving any crime but computer.

So what happens now? Wish I knew. Back to the Gather contest. The best stuff I've read isn't amateur sleuth and I don't think an A.S. will win. Probably won't win the Amazon contest, either. The prize isn't winning, but getting published, and that's seems to be a hard thing, for anyone without a "name" who isn't writing cozy-cozies or thrillers. Merde.

More sucking it up. Sucking it up really sucks, if you know what I mean.

Grapeshot