Once again I have enlisted the aid of an impartial judge (Little Bit, who was, like her sister, half asleep) to draw the names of 7 lucky folks who will receive an autographed copy of Timothy Hallinan's The Fourth Watcher. Thanks to all who entered - if you didn't win, you can click on the image under The Chef's Special to the right to purchase your very own copy. And since Tim has started his U.S. tour, perhaps he will be in your neighborhood and you can snag an autograph as well!
Congratulations to the following winners:
Kam Aures
Jan Boyett
J.T. Ellison
Kerry Hammond
Helen Kiker
Melanie King
Carol Swanson
We have a couple more great authors lined up for visits to the Lunch Room, but I'm going to keep their identities a surprise for just a little while longer. You know, I write suspense, so I have to use it on you guys every once in a while ...
At the moment I am in the throes of a horrible upper respiratory infection, so the rest of the world is going to be put on hold for a little while. Enjoy your day, read a book and laugh - all of which are good for you. As for me, I'm going after some seriously good drugs ...
=) JB
Showing posts with label Contest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contest. Show all posts
7.01.2008
6.24.2008
Let's Do Lunch! Interview with Timothy Hallinan
I'm just a little excited - our guest author today is the terrific Timothy Hallinan! Tim has stopped by the Lunch Room today to talk about his new series featuring travel writer Poke Rafferty, and to give away copies of the second book in the series, The Fourth Watcher!
About Tim: Timothy Hallinan has lived, on and off, in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years. He wrote songs and sang in a rock band while in college, and many of his songs were recorded by well-known artists who included the platinum-selling group Bread. He began writing books while enjoying a successful career in the television industry. Over the past fourteen years he has been responsible for a number of well-reviewed novels and a nonfiction book on Charles Dickens. For years he has taught a course on "Finishing the Novel" with remarkable results – more than half his students complete their first novel and go on to a second, and several have been, or are about to be, published. Tim currently maintains a house in Santa Monica, California, and apartments in Bangkok, Thailand; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He is lucky enough (as he puts it) to be married to Munyin Choy-Hallinan.
About the series: A Nail Through the Heart introduces Poke Rafferty, a "rough-travel" writer who has settled in Bangkok with a former go-go dancer named Rose, whom he's trying to marry, and an eight-year-old street child named Miaow, whom he wants to adopt. His Looking for Trouble books (Looking for Trouble in Indonesia, Looking for Trouble in the Philippines, and Looking for Trouble in Thailand) are designed for travelers who want to go beyond the temples and tourist traps and experience life at street level – including the streets no travel guide ever mentions. Writing these books requires skills that come in handy when life in Bangkok gets rough for Poke, as it frequently does.
The Fourth Watcher: Travel writer Poke Rafferty is ready to let go of his "Looking for Trouble" series of travel books and settle down in Bangkok with his fiancee, Rose, and his newly adopted daughter, Miaow. But trouble isn't ready to let go of Poke. Enter the one person Poke least wants to see in the entire world -- a person whose emotional hold over Poke is absolute. And with him comes a box of rubies, a wad of fraudulent identity papers and -- in pursuit of those things -- one of the most dangerous gangsters in China. Add to that Rose's innocent involvement in a North Korean counterfeiting operation and an off-the-tracks agent of the American Secret Service who's dying to put Poke behind bars, and Poke and his family find themselves in a complicated and potentially deadly situation. Getting them all out alive will take every skill Poke has.
JB: First of all, congratulations on the great press for The Fourth Watcher - a nice Kirkus review, a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and it's just been chosen as Mystery of the Month by Bookpage. It really is a terrific book. Of course, now I have to go back and read A Nail Through the Heart so I'll be caught up! So, tell me, Tim - who is Poke Rafferty? Where did he come from, and what makes him tick?
TIM: Poke first came to me on New Year's Eve, 1998. I was in Bangkok, and I essentially walked the city from about ten PM until it was time for coffee, maybe 9 AM. I walked through both the tourist areas and the little back-street villages that make up Bangkok, or used to, and it came to me that I might enjoy writing a character, a travel writer who specializes in the back streets, where the bright lights aren't, and writes about life as it's lived off the tourist itineraries. I sort of parked that in the back of my mind for a few years, and he developed into someone who had made a career of bouncing from culture to culture, sort of in a detached, wise-ass way, who suddenly falls in love with an entire country, as I did when I first went to Thailand. From there it was a small step to his trying to create a Thai family, and the story of that family runs through all the books. For a variety of reasons, the family is brought into especially sharp relief in The Fourth Watcher.
JB: Okay, let's get something cleared up right off the bat - for those of us floundering in ignorance (i.e., me), how do you pronounce Miaow's name? Is it mee-ow like a cat or my-ow (my-oh?) like I hurt my toe?
TIM: Miaow is my spelling of a common Thai nickname for girls that's usually spelled in English translation as Meaw. But it's pronounced exactly like the sound a cat makes. And you're the first person ever to ask that question.
And by the way, for those who haven't read the books, Miaow is the street orphan Poke and his fiancée-and-later-wife, Rose, adopt. She's eight, going on thirty (as one reviewer said) in the first book, nine in the second, and a perilously insecure ten in the third. I love to write her – I never have the slightest doubt what she'd say, feel, or do in any conceivable situation.
JB: Your previous series (featuring LA private eye Simeon Grist) consisted of six novels (with such fabulous titles as Everything but the Squeal and Incinerator) published each year from 1989 to 1994. After you put Simeon to rest, what brought you back to novel writing and the creation of Poke Rafferty 10 years later?
TIM: Well, I didn't actually put Simeon to rest. My publishers did. The books got great reviews, stars, lots of hyperbolic adjectives, predictions of breakthrough, and everything else a writer could want, except for sales. After book six, the people at William Morrow looked at the numbers and pulled the plug. I would have done the same – the series had been given six books to find its audience, and it hadn't. So poor old Simeon went wherever it is that the heroes of discontinued series hang out, probably carping all day long about the injustice of it all. Maybe someday I'll write a book in which three or four of them resolve to team up for a comeback and take over the consciousness of some poor writer. It could be pretty funny.
After the Simeon series went down in flames, I looked at my life and decided that I was devoting too much energy to making money and not enough to writing. So I spent about five years setting things up so I could write full-time, and then I sat down and wrote the first Poke book. And I put it into a drawer and left it there, and went on to write the second. When I wrote the Simeon books, I was given a three-book contract within about six weeks of finishing the first book, and there were aspects of his character and his relationships that I would have changed if I'd written another book about him before the first one was published. So this time I decided to write a book that I wouldn't even try to publish and then move on to one I'd give to an agent. As it happened, I wrote one and a half books before sending the third one to an agent, the one that was eventually titled A Nail Through the Heart. So there are one and a half Poke Rafferty stories that will never see the light of day, although I have to admit that I've cannibalized them pretty extensively.
JB: Bill Cameron recently did a piece on you for the ITW online feature THE BIG THRILL, in which he said you "[look] forward to writing about Poke, Rose and Miaow for the rest of [your] life." Do you have any ideas at this point where Poke, Rose and Miaow might end up in the years to come?
TIM: None whatsoever. In the book I'm writing right now, which is tentatively titled Misdirection, I actually kill a continuing character. I think that in this series, everything should be on the table, just as it is in life. I'd like to think that they'll be celebrating silver anniversaries and going to Miaow's wedding, but I have no idea. There's always the potential for disaster to knock on the door.
And I never have any idea where a story is going as I write it, so it would be extremely out of character for me to know where the series is going. I've always seen plot as what characters do, and I let my characters reveal the story to me one book at a time. I'm sure they'll do the same with the series, if we're lucky enough to go into six and seven books.
JB: I sincerely hope it does. Poke has a sharp wit and a very dry sense of humor. (I've noticed in our correspondence that you do too!) Personality wise, is Poke a lot like you?
TIM: You know how, when you're in front of a mirror, and the light's just right, there's a certain way you can turn your head that makes you look, well, almost okay? I think all thriller writers are writing that guy in the mirror. It's them, edited down to the best bits, with a few admirable traits Photoshopped in. I'm not as brave as Poke or as witty in conversation, although I could be if the people I talked to would let me say, "Wait. Ask that question again," and then I could hit them with a better answer. Unlike Poke, I come from a highly functional family. But he shares my wanderlust and my fascination with different ways of looking at the world, whether it's the material world, the world of human relationships, or the world of spirit. And he's endlessly curious, which I am, too.
JB: The Fourth Watcher implies shades of violence, but it's really very subtle and toned back, which I think adds a lot to the suspense - there's not a lot we actually 'see' on-screen, and you leave a lot to the reader's imagination, which leaves us wondering what's going to happen when we turn the page. I've read others who seem to think the bloodier, the better. Was it an intentional tactic on your part to pull back the on-screen violence and concentrate more on the intrigue (which, by the by, I happen to prefer)?
TIM: It's very important in a thriller that the reader (a) likes the protagonist and (b) hates the villain. Violence is often one way to make the villain more despicable: the sort of boil-the-rabbit scene you come across once in a while. I like to write action but I don't particularly like to write violence. And I reserve a special loathing for the glib, giggling kind of sadism one gets in some serial killer books, especially since most real serial killers would be hard-pressed to hold up their end in a conversation with a toadstool. What I prefer is a kind of generalized dread that's caused by knowing that the protagonist and/or other characters we like are up against people who have absolutely no reservations about using any level of force. I think it's possible to write a villain who's capable of driving a spike through someone's tongue without actually writing the scene in which he or she does it. Colonel Chu, the primary villain in The Fourth Watcher, commits an act of unspeakable psychological violence in the book, and I think we can intuit on our own that anyone who could do what he does in that scene – without ever touching his victim – is capable of doing absolutely anything to anyone at any time. In general, with both heroes and villains, I'm more drawn to those who show me they're capable of violent or explosive behavior, than I am to those who demonstrate it at every opportunity.
JB: You spend half the year in the US and the other half in Southeast Asia, working on your novels. Does your wife travel with you? And how much get-out-and-go research do you actually do when you’re working on a book?
TIM: My wife is Chinese, and Asia doesn't hold a lot of interest for her. Also, since I literally write all day, I'm no fun to travel with on those trips. By and large, I've done my research before I leave, although I did some Cambodian research for one of the backstories in A Nail Through the Heart. Asia is not only the setting of the Poke novels, it's sort of a character, too. I want to write the books where, when I look up from the keyboard, I'm actually there. I can look around and borrow a face, a gesture, body language, the name of a business. (There's a shop in Phnom Penh called The Lovely Hours that sells clocks. How cool is that?) I'm in the climate, I'm dripping from the humidity, I'm eating the chilies in the food. I'm there, and that frees my imagination to work on characters and story instead of frittering away a bunch of energy on making the setting convincing.
JB: What are the biggest cultural differences you have to deal with in living on two continents (e.g., talk a bit about the food, the people, the general ambience, etc.)?
TIM: The things I love best about Southeast Asia are the relative lack of irony and the absence of "cool." I wrote a blog on my website a while back called "Irony-Free Zone" that focuses precisely on that. I hate a cultural attitude that puts air-quotes around emotions. I hate cool because it's based on an assumption of superiority to all that is not-cool. By and large, Southeast Asians say what they believe and do what they say they'll do. I suppose you can credit Buddhism with some of that, but I also think it's because they haven't grown up surrounded by all the greasy bounty of the West; they don't feel entitled yet. This is changing as the place grows more Westernized, but once you get past the moneyed elite and get to know actual people, most of them are – by contrast with some of the people in New York and California, at any rate – real rays of light.
JB: For writers who might be interested, there's a fabulous section on Tim's website called "Writers' Resources", with some very helpful information on finishing your novel. Tim, how did you get started teaching other writers, and where can we get more information on your course?
TIM: I started to teach because it occurred to me one day that I knew something most people didn't – how to finish a book. Anybody can start a book, but not many people ever actually finish one, which is probably good for those of us who attempt to make a living by writing. But finishing a novel is a transformational experience, and I wanted to help people get there. The class was eight three-hour sessions, or twenty-four hours in all, and it was absolutely jammed with information – how to get started, how to test-drive an idea, how to develop a character, how to learn to listen to the characters you've developed (or who have been nice enough to present themselves to you), how to shape a story, how to create a setting, how to rewrite, and, most important of all, HOW NOT TO QUIT. And that means, among other things, how to beat writer's block, how to get out of the corners you paint yourself into, how to revive a book that seems to have lapsed into a coma, and how to deal with the internal critics, the malign imps that tell you you haven't got it, you never had it, you never will have it, you probably wouldn't know it if it bit you on the calf, and all the rest of that.
The information on the site is all practical. The writing experience is woo-woo enough all by itself not to build some sort of metaphysical scaffold of creativity every time you sit down to check your punctuation. Virtually all the material I developed for the class is presented on the site in different form. But if you want to boil the whole thing down, it comes to: Write daily, or at least five days a week; write for a minimum of three hours or 500-1000 words each time (more if you can), trust your characters and don't expect the book you ultimately write to be the book you thought you were going to write. And don't quit, no matter what.
JB: What happened to the Dickens Challenge?
TIM: Ah, well, mea culpa. For those who don't know, the Dickens Challenge came about when I got caught in an online crossfire between planners – writers who work to an outline – and "pantsers," or those who write by the seat of their pants. Some people in the planner camp felt I was dismissive of their approach because I said something like, "Plot is what characters do, not a box you cram them into." I pointed out that Charles Dickens, when he died, was halfway through The Mystery of Edwin Drood and that there wasn't a single sentence or sentence fragment to suggest that he'd plotted out the rest of it. So he was pantsing – and, what's more, he was publishing as he went along. In other words, he had to live with whatever he wrote – there was no going back and tidying it up as we pantsers generally do. So I challenged people to write a novel online, a chapter a week, and to live with whatever came out. A bunch of fine writers accepted – in the States, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, you name it. And I dropped the ball. First, a new novel, not a Poke book, presented itself to me and took over my life for six weeks, at which point I had 95,000 words and the beginning of a new series. Second, I went to Cambodia, where online speeds are slower than the rock cycle, and it became virtually impossible for me to read everybody's story. Third, I got into trouble on Misdirection, and it ate me alive for six weeks. So my Dickens Challenge book, which was called Counterclockwise, went out the window. The Challenge is still ongoing, but with a smaller number of writers, and they're doing it more privately, on a closed site where they can post their new chapters and critique them. They're writing great, and if they'll have me, I'll be starting Counterclockwise again sometime in the next month, once I finish Misdirection.
JB: Thanks so much for stopping by the Lunch Room, Tim. It's been a pleasure having you, and we'll see you in Nashville in September!
Now, as I've mentioned about oh, a thousand times (okay, maybe more like six), Tim has been gracious enough to offer up autographed copies of The Fourth Watcher for 7 lucky winners. So enter today! Just click on the link below to send me an email, and be sure to include your full name in the body text of your message. Deadline to enter is midnight Monday next (June 30, 2008), and we'll draw the 7 winners at random first thing Tuesday morning. I'll contact you for a mailing address if you've won, and we'll post the winners names here.
Keep in mind, even if you've entered one of the drawings here at the Lunch Room before (and even if you won!), that doesn't disqualify you from entering this one - but only one entry per person for each giveaway, please! Good luck!
Click to register: I want to win The Fourth Watcher!
You can learn more about Tim and his books at www.timothyhallinan.com.
About Tim: Timothy Hallinan has lived, on and off, in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years. He wrote songs and sang in a rock band while in college, and many of his songs were recorded by well-known artists who included the platinum-selling group Bread. He began writing books while enjoying a successful career in the television industry. Over the past fourteen years he has been responsible for a number of well-reviewed novels and a nonfiction book on Charles Dickens. For years he has taught a course on "Finishing the Novel" with remarkable results – more than half his students complete their first novel and go on to a second, and several have been, or are about to be, published. Tim currently maintains a house in Santa Monica, California, and apartments in Bangkok, Thailand; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He is lucky enough (as he puts it) to be married to Munyin Choy-Hallinan.About the series: A Nail Through the Heart introduces Poke Rafferty, a "rough-travel" writer who has settled in Bangkok with a former go-go dancer named Rose, whom he's trying to marry, and an eight-year-old street child named Miaow, whom he wants to adopt. His Looking for Trouble books (Looking for Trouble in Indonesia, Looking for Trouble in the Philippines, and Looking for Trouble in Thailand) are designed for travelers who want to go beyond the temples and tourist traps and experience life at street level – including the streets no travel guide ever mentions. Writing these books requires skills that come in handy when life in Bangkok gets rough for Poke, as it frequently does.
The Fourth Watcher: Travel writer Poke Rafferty is ready to let go of his "Looking for Trouble" series of travel books and settle down in Bangkok with his fiancee, Rose, and his newly adopted daughter, Miaow. But trouble isn't ready to let go of Poke. Enter the one person Poke least wants to see in the entire world -- a person whose emotional hold over Poke is absolute. And with him comes a box of rubies, a wad of fraudulent identity papers and -- in pursuit of those things -- one of the most dangerous gangsters in China. Add to that Rose's innocent involvement in a North Korean counterfeiting operation and an off-the-tracks agent of the American Secret Service who's dying to put Poke behind bars, and Poke and his family find themselves in a complicated and potentially deadly situation. Getting them all out alive will take every skill Poke has.JB: First of all, congratulations on the great press for The Fourth Watcher - a nice Kirkus review, a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and it's just been chosen as Mystery of the Month by Bookpage. It really is a terrific book. Of course, now I have to go back and read A Nail Through the Heart so I'll be caught up! So, tell me, Tim - who is Poke Rafferty? Where did he come from, and what makes him tick?
TIM: Poke first came to me on New Year's Eve, 1998. I was in Bangkok, and I essentially walked the city from about ten PM until it was time for coffee, maybe 9 AM. I walked through both the tourist areas and the little back-street villages that make up Bangkok, or used to, and it came to me that I might enjoy writing a character, a travel writer who specializes in the back streets, where the bright lights aren't, and writes about life as it's lived off the tourist itineraries. I sort of parked that in the back of my mind for a few years, and he developed into someone who had made a career of bouncing from culture to culture, sort of in a detached, wise-ass way, who suddenly falls in love with an entire country, as I did when I first went to Thailand. From there it was a small step to his trying to create a Thai family, and the story of that family runs through all the books. For a variety of reasons, the family is brought into especially sharp relief in The Fourth Watcher.
JB: Okay, let's get something cleared up right off the bat - for those of us floundering in ignorance (i.e., me), how do you pronounce Miaow's name? Is it mee-ow like a cat or my-ow (my-oh?) like I hurt my toe?
TIM: Miaow is my spelling of a common Thai nickname for girls that's usually spelled in English translation as Meaw. But it's pronounced exactly like the sound a cat makes. And you're the first person ever to ask that question.
And by the way, for those who haven't read the books, Miaow is the street orphan Poke and his fiancée-and-later-wife, Rose, adopt. She's eight, going on thirty (as one reviewer said) in the first book, nine in the second, and a perilously insecure ten in the third. I love to write her – I never have the slightest doubt what she'd say, feel, or do in any conceivable situation.
JB: Your previous series (featuring LA private eye Simeon Grist) consisted of six novels (with such fabulous titles as Everything but the Squeal and Incinerator) published each year from 1989 to 1994. After you put Simeon to rest, what brought you back to novel writing and the creation of Poke Rafferty 10 years later?
TIM: Well, I didn't actually put Simeon to rest. My publishers did. The books got great reviews, stars, lots of hyperbolic adjectives, predictions of breakthrough, and everything else a writer could want, except for sales. After book six, the people at William Morrow looked at the numbers and pulled the plug. I would have done the same – the series had been given six books to find its audience, and it hadn't. So poor old Simeon went wherever it is that the heroes of discontinued series hang out, probably carping all day long about the injustice of it all. Maybe someday I'll write a book in which three or four of them resolve to team up for a comeback and take over the consciousness of some poor writer. It could be pretty funny.
After the Simeon series went down in flames, I looked at my life and decided that I was devoting too much energy to making money and not enough to writing. So I spent about five years setting things up so I could write full-time, and then I sat down and wrote the first Poke book. And I put it into a drawer and left it there, and went on to write the second. When I wrote the Simeon books, I was given a three-book contract within about six weeks of finishing the first book, and there were aspects of his character and his relationships that I would have changed if I'd written another book about him before the first one was published. So this time I decided to write a book that I wouldn't even try to publish and then move on to one I'd give to an agent. As it happened, I wrote one and a half books before sending the third one to an agent, the one that was eventually titled A Nail Through the Heart. So there are one and a half Poke Rafferty stories that will never see the light of day, although I have to admit that I've cannibalized them pretty extensively.
JB: Bill Cameron recently did a piece on you for the ITW online feature THE BIG THRILL, in which he said you "[look] forward to writing about Poke, Rose and Miaow for the rest of [your] life." Do you have any ideas at this point where Poke, Rose and Miaow might end up in the years to come?
TIM: None whatsoever. In the book I'm writing right now, which is tentatively titled Misdirection, I actually kill a continuing character. I think that in this series, everything should be on the table, just as it is in life. I'd like to think that they'll be celebrating silver anniversaries and going to Miaow's wedding, but I have no idea. There's always the potential for disaster to knock on the door.
And I never have any idea where a story is going as I write it, so it would be extremely out of character for me to know where the series is going. I've always seen plot as what characters do, and I let my characters reveal the story to me one book at a time. I'm sure they'll do the same with the series, if we're lucky enough to go into six and seven books.
JB: I sincerely hope it does. Poke has a sharp wit and a very dry sense of humor. (I've noticed in our correspondence that you do too!) Personality wise, is Poke a lot like you?
TIM: You know how, when you're in front of a mirror, and the light's just right, there's a certain way you can turn your head that makes you look, well, almost okay? I think all thriller writers are writing that guy in the mirror. It's them, edited down to the best bits, with a few admirable traits Photoshopped in. I'm not as brave as Poke or as witty in conversation, although I could be if the people I talked to would let me say, "Wait. Ask that question again," and then I could hit them with a better answer. Unlike Poke, I come from a highly functional family. But he shares my wanderlust and my fascination with different ways of looking at the world, whether it's the material world, the world of human relationships, or the world of spirit. And he's endlessly curious, which I am, too.
JB: The Fourth Watcher implies shades of violence, but it's really very subtle and toned back, which I think adds a lot to the suspense - there's not a lot we actually 'see' on-screen, and you leave a lot to the reader's imagination, which leaves us wondering what's going to happen when we turn the page. I've read others who seem to think the bloodier, the better. Was it an intentional tactic on your part to pull back the on-screen violence and concentrate more on the intrigue (which, by the by, I happen to prefer)?
TIM: It's very important in a thriller that the reader (a) likes the protagonist and (b) hates the villain. Violence is often one way to make the villain more despicable: the sort of boil-the-rabbit scene you come across once in a while. I like to write action but I don't particularly like to write violence. And I reserve a special loathing for the glib, giggling kind of sadism one gets in some serial killer books, especially since most real serial killers would be hard-pressed to hold up their end in a conversation with a toadstool. What I prefer is a kind of generalized dread that's caused by knowing that the protagonist and/or other characters we like are up against people who have absolutely no reservations about using any level of force. I think it's possible to write a villain who's capable of driving a spike through someone's tongue without actually writing the scene in which he or she does it. Colonel Chu, the primary villain in The Fourth Watcher, commits an act of unspeakable psychological violence in the book, and I think we can intuit on our own that anyone who could do what he does in that scene – without ever touching his victim – is capable of doing absolutely anything to anyone at any time. In general, with both heroes and villains, I'm more drawn to those who show me they're capable of violent or explosive behavior, than I am to those who demonstrate it at every opportunity.
JB: You spend half the year in the US and the other half in Southeast Asia, working on your novels. Does your wife travel with you? And how much get-out-and-go research do you actually do when you’re working on a book?
TIM: My wife is Chinese, and Asia doesn't hold a lot of interest for her. Also, since I literally write all day, I'm no fun to travel with on those trips. By and large, I've done my research before I leave, although I did some Cambodian research for one of the backstories in A Nail Through the Heart. Asia is not only the setting of the Poke novels, it's sort of a character, too. I want to write the books where, when I look up from the keyboard, I'm actually there. I can look around and borrow a face, a gesture, body language, the name of a business. (There's a shop in Phnom Penh called The Lovely Hours that sells clocks. How cool is that?) I'm in the climate, I'm dripping from the humidity, I'm eating the chilies in the food. I'm there, and that frees my imagination to work on characters and story instead of frittering away a bunch of energy on making the setting convincing.
JB: What are the biggest cultural differences you have to deal with in living on two continents (e.g., talk a bit about the food, the people, the general ambience, etc.)?
TIM: The things I love best about Southeast Asia are the relative lack of irony and the absence of "cool." I wrote a blog on my website a while back called "Irony-Free Zone" that focuses precisely on that. I hate a cultural attitude that puts air-quotes around emotions. I hate cool because it's based on an assumption of superiority to all that is not-cool. By and large, Southeast Asians say what they believe and do what they say they'll do. I suppose you can credit Buddhism with some of that, but I also think it's because they haven't grown up surrounded by all the greasy bounty of the West; they don't feel entitled yet. This is changing as the place grows more Westernized, but once you get past the moneyed elite and get to know actual people, most of them are – by contrast with some of the people in New York and California, at any rate – real rays of light.
JB: For writers who might be interested, there's a fabulous section on Tim's website called "Writers' Resources", with some very helpful information on finishing your novel. Tim, how did you get started teaching other writers, and where can we get more information on your course?
TIM: I started to teach because it occurred to me one day that I knew something most people didn't – how to finish a book. Anybody can start a book, but not many people ever actually finish one, which is probably good for those of us who attempt to make a living by writing. But finishing a novel is a transformational experience, and I wanted to help people get there. The class was eight three-hour sessions, or twenty-four hours in all, and it was absolutely jammed with information – how to get started, how to test-drive an idea, how to develop a character, how to learn to listen to the characters you've developed (or who have been nice enough to present themselves to you), how to shape a story, how to create a setting, how to rewrite, and, most important of all, HOW NOT TO QUIT. And that means, among other things, how to beat writer's block, how to get out of the corners you paint yourself into, how to revive a book that seems to have lapsed into a coma, and how to deal with the internal critics, the malign imps that tell you you haven't got it, you never had it, you never will have it, you probably wouldn't know it if it bit you on the calf, and all the rest of that.
The information on the site is all practical. The writing experience is woo-woo enough all by itself not to build some sort of metaphysical scaffold of creativity every time you sit down to check your punctuation. Virtually all the material I developed for the class is presented on the site in different form. But if you want to boil the whole thing down, it comes to: Write daily, or at least five days a week; write for a minimum of three hours or 500-1000 words each time (more if you can), trust your characters and don't expect the book you ultimately write to be the book you thought you were going to write. And don't quit, no matter what.
JB: What happened to the Dickens Challenge?
TIM: Ah, well, mea culpa. For those who don't know, the Dickens Challenge came about when I got caught in an online crossfire between planners – writers who work to an outline – and "pantsers," or those who write by the seat of their pants. Some people in the planner camp felt I was dismissive of their approach because I said something like, "Plot is what characters do, not a box you cram them into." I pointed out that Charles Dickens, when he died, was halfway through The Mystery of Edwin Drood and that there wasn't a single sentence or sentence fragment to suggest that he'd plotted out the rest of it. So he was pantsing – and, what's more, he was publishing as he went along. In other words, he had to live with whatever he wrote – there was no going back and tidying it up as we pantsers generally do. So I challenged people to write a novel online, a chapter a week, and to live with whatever came out. A bunch of fine writers accepted – in the States, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, you name it. And I dropped the ball. First, a new novel, not a Poke book, presented itself to me and took over my life for six weeks, at which point I had 95,000 words and the beginning of a new series. Second, I went to Cambodia, where online speeds are slower than the rock cycle, and it became virtually impossible for me to read everybody's story. Third, I got into trouble on Misdirection, and it ate me alive for six weeks. So my Dickens Challenge book, which was called Counterclockwise, went out the window. The Challenge is still ongoing, but with a smaller number of writers, and they're doing it more privately, on a closed site where they can post their new chapters and critique them. They're writing great, and if they'll have me, I'll be starting Counterclockwise again sometime in the next month, once I finish Misdirection.
JB: Thanks so much for stopping by the Lunch Room, Tim. It's been a pleasure having you, and we'll see you in Nashville in September!
Now, as I've mentioned about oh, a thousand times (okay, maybe more like six), Tim has been gracious enough to offer up autographed copies of The Fourth Watcher for 7 lucky winners. So enter today! Just click on the link below to send me an email, and be sure to include your full name in the body text of your message. Deadline to enter is midnight Monday next (June 30, 2008), and we'll draw the 7 winners at random first thing Tuesday morning. I'll contact you for a mailing address if you've won, and we'll post the winners names here.
Keep in mind, even if you've entered one of the drawings here at the Lunch Room before (and even if you won!), that doesn't disqualify you from entering this one - but only one entry per person for each giveaway, please! Good luck!
Click to register: I want to win The Fourth Watcher!
You can learn more about Tim and his books at www.timothyhallinan.com.
5.30.2008
I just love giving things away ...
I am pleased to announce the winners of our BLOOD HARVEST drawing!
Since Little Bit is out of town on a school trip, I enlisted The Tall One to conduct our random drawing this morning - and it was truly random, because she was pretty much still asleep when she grabbed the names out of the bowl! Here are our 10 winners:
Virginia Conn
Kaye Barley
William Devin
Carol Mintz
Penny Tuttle
Sandra Kisner
Terry Canfield
Noel Troike
Greg Bruss
Karen Dyer
Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who entered the drawing. We'll be sending the winners' autographed copies of BLOOD HARVEST soon. If you didn't win this time, you'll have another chance when author Timothy Hallinan drops by next month with a copy of his second Bangkok novel, THE FOURTH WATCHER. Stay tuned!
Today's catch-up day has been rescheduled for tomorrow. While Little Bit is away, The Tall One and I are going to take advantage of the opportunity to go see the new Indiana Jones flick. I feel like I've been waiting 20 years for this. Big fan here. Huge.
For your reading pleasure, Wonder Twin has just returned from Mayhem in the Midlands in Omaha and has posted an author-girl-gets-excited kind of love-fest over at Murderati. I get such a kick out of her getting a kick out of doing what we love to do. Right on, Sister!
Enjoy your Friday. And read a book!
=) JB
"Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world."
-- Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Irish writer
Since Little Bit is out of town on a school trip, I enlisted The Tall One to conduct our random drawing this morning - and it was truly random, because she was pretty much still asleep when she grabbed the names out of the bowl! Here are our 10 winners:
Virginia Conn
Kaye Barley
William Devin
Carol Mintz
Penny Tuttle
Sandra Kisner
Terry Canfield
Noel Troike
Greg Bruss
Karen Dyer
Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who entered the drawing. We'll be sending the winners' autographed copies of BLOOD HARVEST soon. If you didn't win this time, you'll have another chance when author Timothy Hallinan drops by next month with a copy of his second Bangkok novel, THE FOURTH WATCHER. Stay tuned!
Today's catch-up day has been rescheduled for tomorrow. While Little Bit is away, The Tall One and I are going to take advantage of the opportunity to go see the new Indiana Jones flick. I feel like I've been waiting 20 years for this. Big fan here. Huge.
For your reading pleasure, Wonder Twin has just returned from Mayhem in the Midlands in Omaha and has posted an author-girl-gets-excited kind of love-fest over at Murderati. I get such a kick out of her getting a kick out of doing what we love to do. Right on, Sister!
Enjoy your Friday. And read a book!
=) JB
"Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world."
-- Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Irish writer
5.23.2008
Let's Do Lunch! Interview with Bruce Cook (aka Brant Randall)
Welcome to another Lunch Room chat session. We're delighted you're here! Pull up a seat and we'll get you some iced tea, and please be sure to throw your name in the hat for the drawing before you leave - details below.
My guest today is author Bruce Cook, whose first novel, Philippine Fever, is the story of an ATF agent trying to track down a missing cargo container full of terrorist weapons in Manila, smuggling capital of the world, after his main suspect is murdered.
Bruce has adopted the pseudonym Brant Randall and penned an amazing story called Blood Harvest, which we're talking about (and giving away) today. Thanks for stopping by, Bruce.
Bruce: Thanks for inviting me to lunch, JB. I love diners. One of my favorite restaurant books is Diving Out in LA.
JB: A guide to great dives, I get it. Wait, does this qualify as a dive? Okay, never mind. Before we get to the main course, let's talk a little about what else you have on your plate. Will there be more Sam Haine in our futures or are you working on other projects?
Bruce: Sam Haine will return in a story about gun smuggling by the contemporary IRA in Ireland, using treasure recovered from a payroll ship of the Spanish Armada that sank off the coast of Ireland. It was an idea I invented, then researched and now believe to be true. It is probably not the next book.
Currently I am working on two novels. The first is Feral Frankie, a story about the orphaned child of a meth cooker in northern California. At 13 he takes his daddy's car and heads for Los Angeles, where he believes he still has a living grandmother. Sort of like a young Mad Max takes a trip on Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
The second novel is titled Snapshots from Hell, and is a darkly comic look at the moral bloodbath that is Hollywood. Having worked in the film biz for 39 years I have a few crime tales to tell, some skeletons to unearth, gossip to relate, and a few heads to crack.
You may be wondering why I have adopted a pseudonym, having begun a series under the name Bruce Cook. After Philippine Fever was published I discovered four other authors named Bruce Cook, including two who write/wrote mystery series. I have been asked to sign some of those other author's books at signings, which is a little embarrassing for the customer. Since Blood Harvest was meant to be a very different kind of novel from Philippine Fever I decided to devise a pen name - Brant Randall.
However, response has been so positive to Brant's first book I have decided that he is going to collaborate with Bruce on the next book.
JB: Now there's an idea. Let's talk about Blood Harvest - a highly unique story told from the first-person point of view of a number of different characters, with the narratives overlapping each other with respect to time and location. Did you set out from the get-go to write it that way, or was that something that sort of fell into place as you were writing it?
Bruce: Blood Harvest began as a first person short story, the chapter that opens the book, as told by Marshal Lawe. Once it was complete, I realized that I wanted to continue to explore the historical reality of lynchings in New England, and that I wanted to tell the story from multiple points of view.
I decided each chapter would be told by a new first person narrator, sharing his/her version of the events surrounding the lynching of the Italian immigrant, Nick DeCosta. I am a screenwriter and film director, so I was familiar with the Kurasawa classic Rashomon. I knew that each voice needed to have a unique perspective on what life in the town was like, but that it must also add new information about the events for the reader, so it wouldn’t just be a tiresome rehash.
In other words, no character telling his piece of the story actually understands the full extent of what has happened. Only the reader, with knowledge gleaned from all the narrators, knows the full truth.
The challenge was to create voices that were so individual or idiosyncratic that the reader would instantly know that a new character was speaking. I had first seen this done well in Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. After I had finished a draft of the novel I happened to read Wilkie Collins' Woman in White, written in 1859, which also used the same approach. This only goes to show that no writer can invent anything truly new, either in content or technique.
JB: Talk a bit about the research that went into this book. Did you have prior knowledge of the history and activities of the KKK in that period of time, or did you learn way more than you ever wanted to know from doing your research?
Bruce: I knew next to nothing about the history of the KKK before writing this book, other than having seen the 1915 movie Birth of a Nation when I was in film school.
This novel grew from an incident related to me by my grandmother when she was in her nineties. She was a Scotch-Irish girl from rural New England, one of twelve children, though two died in infancy.
I knew she had married young, perhaps at sixteen, though she sometimes claimed she had been eighteen. She said that after her wedding day she had never returned to her home town. I had assumed that she eloped or otherwise angered her parents. At one point I asked if her parents had disliked my grandfather, who I remembered as personable and charming.
She claimed that they liked him very much. He was a perfect example of the immigrant success story. Came to America from Greece at sixteen, without any English. Started working the next day. Within five years he owned his own restaurant, within ten a chain of candy shops and drug stores.
"So why didn't you ever return to your home town?" I asked her.
"It was those dumb clucks." She used this expression only when quite angry. "My brother-in-law didn't think it right for a white girl to marry a non-white European."
This was new territory to me, but when I read my grandfather's immigration papers I found that southern Europeans — the Greeks, Spanish, Italians, and Turks — were classified thus until 1912. But it was her next revelation that stunned me.
It wasn't dumb "clucks." It was dumb "klux." The KKK had driven my grandparents from the town. This wasn't consistent with what I had learned in my history classes, and so I began to research.
The KKK had been moribund for thirty years when it was revived in 1915 as an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic movement, though with plenty of racism left over for blacks. It came to be centered not in the South but in the Northeast, with a large contingent in the Midwest.
Since I still have family alive who recall these incidents and live in the area, I changed the location of my story and the names.
I spent about six months researching the klan's activities during the 1920s, finding great primary sources in local newspapers, photographs, and court records. I found a collection of souvenir postcards of lynchings that is the most troubling thing I have seen in the last decade.
And then I found the present day klan. I discovered that my daughter-in-law's sister cannot visit her husband's home town because his family is still in the KKK and they disapprove of her religion. The family is in Ohio.
At the peak of membership in the mid-1920s the klan had between six and eight million members in 45 states. They swung elections in the mid-West. They controlled several state legislatures. They stalemated the nomination of a presidential slate at the 1924 Democratic convention for 103 ballots, because they opposed the nomination of Al Smith, a Catholic.
If there were that many members in that many states, the odds are that someone in your family was a member ... or a target.
I could go on, but I think you get my drift.
Besides, my salad is wilting.
JB: Yeah, it's the humidity around here. What an incredible story. And an incredible book. Thanks so much for sharing your time with us today!
Bruce (or Brant, if you prefer) has been gracious enough to offer autographed copies of Blood Harvest to 10 lucky Lunch Room visitors. We'll draw the winners at random next Friday, May 30, 2008 - click here to enter, and be sure to include your full name in the body of your email. Winners will be notified for address confirmation.
In the meantime, happy reading!
=) JB
My guest today is author Bruce Cook, whose first novel, Philippine Fever, is the story of an ATF agent trying to track down a missing cargo container full of terrorist weapons in Manila, smuggling capital of the world, after his main suspect is murdered.
Bruce has adopted the pseudonym Brant Randall and penned an amazing story called Blood Harvest, which we're talking about (and giving away) today. Thanks for stopping by, Bruce.Bruce: Thanks for inviting me to lunch, JB. I love diners. One of my favorite restaurant books is Diving Out in LA.
JB: A guide to great dives, I get it. Wait, does this qualify as a dive? Okay, never mind. Before we get to the main course, let's talk a little about what else you have on your plate. Will there be more Sam Haine in our futures or are you working on other projects?
Bruce: Sam Haine will return in a story about gun smuggling by the contemporary IRA in Ireland, using treasure recovered from a payroll ship of the Spanish Armada that sank off the coast of Ireland. It was an idea I invented, then researched and now believe to be true. It is probably not the next book.
Currently I am working on two novels. The first is Feral Frankie, a story about the orphaned child of a meth cooker in northern California. At 13 he takes his daddy's car and heads for Los Angeles, where he believes he still has a living grandmother. Sort of like a young Mad Max takes a trip on Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
The second novel is titled Snapshots from Hell, and is a darkly comic look at the moral bloodbath that is Hollywood. Having worked in the film biz for 39 years I have a few crime tales to tell, some skeletons to unearth, gossip to relate, and a few heads to crack.
You may be wondering why I have adopted a pseudonym, having begun a series under the name Bruce Cook. After Philippine Fever was published I discovered four other authors named Bruce Cook, including two who write/wrote mystery series. I have been asked to sign some of those other author's books at signings, which is a little embarrassing for the customer. Since Blood Harvest was meant to be a very different kind of novel from Philippine Fever I decided to devise a pen name - Brant Randall.
However, response has been so positive to Brant's first book I have decided that he is going to collaborate with Bruce on the next book.
JB: Now there's an idea. Let's talk about Blood Harvest - a highly unique story told from the first-person point of view of a number of different characters, with the narratives overlapping each other with respect to time and location. Did you set out from the get-go to write it that way, or was that something that sort of fell into place as you were writing it?
Bruce: Blood Harvest began as a first person short story, the chapter that opens the book, as told by Marshal Lawe. Once it was complete, I realized that I wanted to continue to explore the historical reality of lynchings in New England, and that I wanted to tell the story from multiple points of view.
I decided each chapter would be told by a new first person narrator, sharing his/her version of the events surrounding the lynching of the Italian immigrant, Nick DeCosta. I am a screenwriter and film director, so I was familiar with the Kurasawa classic Rashomon. I knew that each voice needed to have a unique perspective on what life in the town was like, but that it must also add new information about the events for the reader, so it wouldn’t just be a tiresome rehash.
In other words, no character telling his piece of the story actually understands the full extent of what has happened. Only the reader, with knowledge gleaned from all the narrators, knows the full truth.
The challenge was to create voices that were so individual or idiosyncratic that the reader would instantly know that a new character was speaking. I had first seen this done well in Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. After I had finished a draft of the novel I happened to read Wilkie Collins' Woman in White, written in 1859, which also used the same approach. This only goes to show that no writer can invent anything truly new, either in content or technique.
JB: Talk a bit about the research that went into this book. Did you have prior knowledge of the history and activities of the KKK in that period of time, or did you learn way more than you ever wanted to know from doing your research?
Bruce: I knew next to nothing about the history of the KKK before writing this book, other than having seen the 1915 movie Birth of a Nation when I was in film school.
This novel grew from an incident related to me by my grandmother when she was in her nineties. She was a Scotch-Irish girl from rural New England, one of twelve children, though two died in infancy.
I knew she had married young, perhaps at sixteen, though she sometimes claimed she had been eighteen. She said that after her wedding day she had never returned to her home town. I had assumed that she eloped or otherwise angered her parents. At one point I asked if her parents had disliked my grandfather, who I remembered as personable and charming.
She claimed that they liked him very much. He was a perfect example of the immigrant success story. Came to America from Greece at sixteen, without any English. Started working the next day. Within five years he owned his own restaurant, within ten a chain of candy shops and drug stores.
"So why didn't you ever return to your home town?" I asked her.
"It was those dumb clucks." She used this expression only when quite angry. "My brother-in-law didn't think it right for a white girl to marry a non-white European."
This was new territory to me, but when I read my grandfather's immigration papers I found that southern Europeans — the Greeks, Spanish, Italians, and Turks — were classified thus until 1912. But it was her next revelation that stunned me.
It wasn't dumb "clucks." It was dumb "klux." The KKK had driven my grandparents from the town. This wasn't consistent with what I had learned in my history classes, and so I began to research.
The KKK had been moribund for thirty years when it was revived in 1915 as an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic movement, though with plenty of racism left over for blacks. It came to be centered not in the South but in the Northeast, with a large contingent in the Midwest.
Since I still have family alive who recall these incidents and live in the area, I changed the location of my story and the names.
I spent about six months researching the klan's activities during the 1920s, finding great primary sources in local newspapers, photographs, and court records. I found a collection of souvenir postcards of lynchings that is the most troubling thing I have seen in the last decade.
And then I found the present day klan. I discovered that my daughter-in-law's sister cannot visit her husband's home town because his family is still in the KKK and they disapprove of her religion. The family is in Ohio.
At the peak of membership in the mid-1920s the klan had between six and eight million members in 45 states. They swung elections in the mid-West. They controlled several state legislatures. They stalemated the nomination of a presidential slate at the 1924 Democratic convention for 103 ballots, because they opposed the nomination of Al Smith, a Catholic.
If there were that many members in that many states, the odds are that someone in your family was a member ... or a target.
I could go on, but I think you get my drift.
Besides, my salad is wilting.
JB: Yeah, it's the humidity around here. What an incredible story. And an incredible book. Thanks so much for sharing your time with us today!
Bruce (or Brant, if you prefer) has been gracious enough to offer autographed copies of Blood Harvest to 10 lucky Lunch Room visitors. We'll draw the winners at random next Friday, May 30, 2008 - click here to enter, and be sure to include your full name in the body of your email. Winners will be notified for address confirmation.
In the meantime, happy reading!
=) JB
4.24.2008
Robert Fate Returns to the Lunch Room!
Remember I said I was working on a very special announcement? Well here it is, and I am dizzy with excitement - my dear pal Robert Fate has dropped in for another visit to his favorite online lunch place, and he's brought surprises with him!
I'm very pleased and honored to announce that his newest book in the Baby Shark series, BABY SHARK'S HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION, will be officially released in the next couple of weeks, and Bob has brought a few copies to the Lunch Room, which he will autograph and send to five lucky people - just enter to win! Details are below, but for now, grab a seat, settle in, and enjoy a few minutes of banter with Bob.
JB: We're so excited to have you drop by the Lunch Room again, Bob - welcome back! While we're waiting for your order of fried okra, let's chat about what you've been up to since you were here last (March 9, 2007) ... a new book ready for release, obviously, and Kristin has grown up quite a bit. You hinted at more adventures for our Baby Shark heroine - are those in the works?
ROBERT FATE: Yum, fried okra. Okay, let's see. It is May 1957 at the beginning of book three, Baby Shark's High Plains Redemption. So, yes, Kristin has grown up some. She will be twenty-two in July. She and her boyfriend, Lee, the Dallas Police Detective she met in Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues, are on again, off again. The problem they are having is one of full disclosure. She doesn't want to lie to her lover, but on the other hand how can she be totally honest with him? He has sworn to uphold the law and she and Otis are compelled by circumstances, from time to time, to work just over the line. That is to say, they occasionally bend the law in order to see justice done for their clients. But Lee and Kristin are crazy about each other, so it's a thorny issue that may not get settled for a book or two more.
JB: That's great - I really like Lee and Kristin together. And I do note that there is a fourth Baby Shark book scheduled to be released next year - yay!
I have to ask about HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION - when we talked last, BABY SHARK'S PANHANDLE CARAVAN was the working title. Although I love the one it's actually being published under, when did it change (most of our writer buddies know that happens all the time - but for the benefit of our non-writer members, you might throw in a brief explanation of the 'why')? Please give us a brief rundown of what Kristin's up to this time around.
RF: Titles, huh? My understanding is that different publishers handle the decision in reference to titles differently. At some publishing houses, I hear that authors have little or nothing to say about their titles. At my publisher, Capital Crime Press, the authors do have some say so about their titles. So, I alone was responsible for the confusion surrounding the title for book three in the Baby Shark series.
Here come all my excuses – I thought at first I would call it Sooner Weekend as a tongue in cheek stab at what turns into a weekend from hell. Everyone said it sounded like a travel book. Next, I thought Panhandle Caravan was a good idea because of the locale and the time Kristin spends in her car. Sounds like a musical comedy, I was told. I admit my stories are like cozies with a few brutal murders, but musical comedy? So, finally, I settled on High Plains Redemption. It sounded a little snooty to me, but everyone liked it and it does honestly address the subject of the book. So, as that TV detective used to say, "Dat's da name of dat tune."
And what is Kristin up to? You're really nosy for a lunchroom owner, you know that? I'm going to allow the reviewers to answer that question, but I will say that Kristin has some moments of hard-edged self-reflection about what she is turning into. She begins to question how easy it has become for her to kill. Nuff said.
JB: Yep, Nosy Nellie, that's me. And as I said, I love the title High Plains Redemption. It's perfect for the story. And I think you've given enough of a teaser to get folks interested in reading it - trust me, people, this is his best yet.
Now, what about that standalone you were contemplating?
RF: I am still contemplating a standalone. Here is the look I get on my face when I am contemplating. See? That proves it.
JB: How are things with Fern and Jenny? And who could forget Pharrell the sunbathing turtle. Is he still around?
RF: How kind of you to ask about my wife and daughter. Fern, as you know, is a ceramic artist. She is entering stuck-up shows these days in which you must be "invited" to display your pieces. Uh huh. Her hat size goes up with each invitation, but Jenny and I still love her. Jen is finishing her sophomore year at USC. We live fifteen minutes from her apartment near campus, but we only see her when she runs out of laundry, needs her refrigerator restocked, or comes home to sleep like the dead for a couple of days. She says it's all that studying. Well, I guess it could be all that studying ... "Sure," her father says, "It's because of all that studying."
The turtle? You ask about the turtle? What's the matter with you? He still wants to bite me and only shows his personality to Fern and Jen. I threatened to plaster a turtle soup label on his house, but Fern won't allow it.
JB: Sorry. Forgot that was a touchy subject. ;)
Thank you so much for coming back to visit with us, Bob. I'm thrilled and honored by your generous offer to give away brand spanking-new autographed copies of BABY SHARK'S HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION to five lucky Lunch Room visitors.
RF: Thank you for the invitation (see, Fern, I get invitations, too). It was my pleasure to join you, and the books? I am happy to think they will be read (and hopefully enjoyed) by visitors to your kitchen and stool set up. Finally, my fried okra has arrived. I will say J.B., you’re pleasant enough, but the service around here is really sloooow.
JB: Yeah, I know. I gotta have a chat with the hired help.
Okay, folks, here's the deal. We're giving away five autographed copies of BABY SHARK'S HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION in a random drawing. All you have to do to enter the drawing is click here to send me an email. (Please be sure to include your full name in the body!)
The drawing will be held on Friday, May 9, 2008 here in the Lunch Room. The winners will be notified by email and a list will be posted here. Good luck, and thanks for stopping by - your order will be ready soon ... if I can get the kitchen help off her ... never mind. Have some iced tea ...
=) JB
Robert Fate is the author of the Baby Shark series featuring Kristin Van Dijk, who is one tough little cookie. You can read my reviews of BABY SHARK and BABY SHARK'S BEAUMONT BLUES by following the links to the right under "Periodicals to Peruse". Visit Bob's website at www.robertfate.com.
I'm very pleased and honored to announce that his newest book in the Baby Shark series, BABY SHARK'S HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION, will be officially released in the next couple of weeks, and Bob has brought a few copies to the Lunch Room, which he will autograph and send to five lucky people - just enter to win! Details are below, but for now, grab a seat, settle in, and enjoy a few minutes of banter with Bob.
JB: We're so excited to have you drop by the Lunch Room again, Bob - welcome back! While we're waiting for your order of fried okra, let's chat about what you've been up to since you were here last (March 9, 2007) ... a new book ready for release, obviously, and Kristin has grown up quite a bit. You hinted at more adventures for our Baby Shark heroine - are those in the works?
ROBERT FATE: Yum, fried okra. Okay, let's see. It is May 1957 at the beginning of book three, Baby Shark's High Plains Redemption. So, yes, Kristin has grown up some. She will be twenty-two in July. She and her boyfriend, Lee, the Dallas Police Detective she met in Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues, are on again, off again. The problem they are having is one of full disclosure. She doesn't want to lie to her lover, but on the other hand how can she be totally honest with him? He has sworn to uphold the law and she and Otis are compelled by circumstances, from time to time, to work just over the line. That is to say, they occasionally bend the law in order to see justice done for their clients. But Lee and Kristin are crazy about each other, so it's a thorny issue that may not get settled for a book or two more.JB: That's great - I really like Lee and Kristin together. And I do note that there is a fourth Baby Shark book scheduled to be released next year - yay!
I have to ask about HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION - when we talked last, BABY SHARK'S PANHANDLE CARAVAN was the working title. Although I love the one it's actually being published under, when did it change (most of our writer buddies know that happens all the time - but for the benefit of our non-writer members, you might throw in a brief explanation of the 'why')? Please give us a brief rundown of what Kristin's up to this time around.
RF: Titles, huh? My understanding is that different publishers handle the decision in reference to titles differently. At some publishing houses, I hear that authors have little or nothing to say about their titles. At my publisher, Capital Crime Press, the authors do have some say so about their titles. So, I alone was responsible for the confusion surrounding the title for book three in the Baby Shark series.
Here come all my excuses – I thought at first I would call it Sooner Weekend as a tongue in cheek stab at what turns into a weekend from hell. Everyone said it sounded like a travel book. Next, I thought Panhandle Caravan was a good idea because of the locale and the time Kristin spends in her car. Sounds like a musical comedy, I was told. I admit my stories are like cozies with a few brutal murders, but musical comedy? So, finally, I settled on High Plains Redemption. It sounded a little snooty to me, but everyone liked it and it does honestly address the subject of the book. So, as that TV detective used to say, "Dat's da name of dat tune."
And what is Kristin up to? You're really nosy for a lunchroom owner, you know that? I'm going to allow the reviewers to answer that question, but I will say that Kristin has some moments of hard-edged self-reflection about what she is turning into. She begins to question how easy it has become for her to kill. Nuff said.
JB: Yep, Nosy Nellie, that's me. And as I said, I love the title High Plains Redemption. It's perfect for the story. And I think you've given enough of a teaser to get folks interested in reading it - trust me, people, this is his best yet.
Now, what about that standalone you were contemplating?
RF: I am still contemplating a standalone. Here is the look I get on my face when I am contemplating. See? That proves it.
JB: How are things with Fern and Jenny? And who could forget Pharrell the sunbathing turtle. Is he still around?
RF: How kind of you to ask about my wife and daughter. Fern, as you know, is a ceramic artist. She is entering stuck-up shows these days in which you must be "invited" to display your pieces. Uh huh. Her hat size goes up with each invitation, but Jenny and I still love her. Jen is finishing her sophomore year at USC. We live fifteen minutes from her apartment near campus, but we only see her when she runs out of laundry, needs her refrigerator restocked, or comes home to sleep like the dead for a couple of days. She says it's all that studying. Well, I guess it could be all that studying ... "Sure," her father says, "It's because of all that studying."
The turtle? You ask about the turtle? What's the matter with you? He still wants to bite me and only shows his personality to Fern and Jen. I threatened to plaster a turtle soup label on his house, but Fern won't allow it.
JB: Sorry. Forgot that was a touchy subject. ;)
Thank you so much for coming back to visit with us, Bob. I'm thrilled and honored by your generous offer to give away brand spanking-new autographed copies of BABY SHARK'S HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION to five lucky Lunch Room visitors.
RF: Thank you for the invitation (see, Fern, I get invitations, too). It was my pleasure to join you, and the books? I am happy to think they will be read (and hopefully enjoyed) by visitors to your kitchen and stool set up. Finally, my fried okra has arrived. I will say J.B., you’re pleasant enough, but the service around here is really sloooow.
JB: Yeah, I know. I gotta have a chat with the hired help.
Okay, folks, here's the deal. We're giving away five autographed copies of BABY SHARK'S HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION in a random drawing. All you have to do to enter the drawing is click here to send me an email. (Please be sure to include your full name in the body!)
The drawing will be held on Friday, May 9, 2008 here in the Lunch Room. The winners will be notified by email and a list will be posted here. Good luck, and thanks for stopping by - your order will be ready soon ... if I can get the kitchen help off her ... never mind. Have some iced tea ...
=) JB
Robert Fate is the author of the Baby Shark series featuring Kristin Van Dijk, who is one tough little cookie. You can read my reviews of BABY SHARK and BABY SHARK'S BEAUMONT BLUES by following the links to the right under "Periodicals to Peruse". Visit Bob's website at www.robertfate.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
