Iced Chai

What is your writing beverage of choice?

by Rebecca Cantrell


Thank you, CJ, for going first! I was sure I was going to be the most boring Criminal Mind here. Now I’m just in the top two.

My beverage of choice: Iced Soy Chai. My favorite chais are Tazo and Stash, plus whatever they use for the vanilla chai up at the Aloha Theater in Kainaliu. Sadly, they’re not open all morning or I’d be up there sucking down vanilla chais with foam all day long. None of these come in chocolate caramel versions, CJ, but maybe they’re better than nothing.

I used to swear by Earl Grey. I even had the London Fog, with vanilla syrup and foamy milk from time to time. But as I descend into the darker and colder years of Nazi-ism, I’ve found I like to be a little cold when I write. Earl Grey doesn’t taste right iced. It’s drinkable, but not the same. And I can’t hear Patrick Stewart’s voice saying “Earl Grey, cold” somehow.

Living in Hawaii it’s not that easy to find some place where you can bundle yourself up in a long sleeved shirt and write without overheating, especially when drinking hot tea (how did the British do it in India?). I know, I know, that’s just my cross to bear and no one scraping ice off their car right now has a lick of sympathy. I’m not expecting any.


This is where I must confess that I write in Starbucks. I know I should feel guilty about this, and I do. In my defense, I have tried to go to every single independent coffee shop within a half hour of my house and none of them but the one Starbucks lets me sit undisturbed and write for hours and hours and hours. Most want me out within thirty minutes, and my pocketbook and bladder can’t afford to buy a new cup of tea every thirty minutes. I’d spend more time in the bathroom than writing.
So, what’s YOUR favorite beverage? And is it seasonal, for those of you with seasons?

Juggling Chainsaws

From CJ

What's your writing beverage of choice?

I've been dreading this question because I just know I'm going to let you all down by busting the stereotype of a hard-boiled thriller writer.

My main drink? Water. I know, I know, boooooring!

Since I usually start my day writing and I can use all the anti-oxidant boost I can get, I also drink a cup of tea brewed with a special recipe given to me by the incredible Margie Lawson when I visited her house in the Rocky Mountains.

It's organic, light, chocolate soy milk with Celestial Seasonings Chocolate Carmel Chai. May not sound like much, but it's a great wake-me-upper and good for me, too!

Unfortunately, Celestial Seasonings have stopped making this flavor, so once I finish my stash....well, I don't know what I'll do. Anyone with a suggestion, please give a holler!

Here's why I don't drink much alcohol. First off, I'm a lightweight—or a cheap date, depending on how you look at it

Second, as a former ER doc, I never mix drinking and driving, which makes me the designated driver for most of my outings with friends.

Third, my tastes in alcoholic beverages are expensive (just ask Shane who has bought me drinks at conferences). If it's Irish, I prefer Black Bush; if it's Scotch, I prefer Oban or Glen Morangie; if it's wine, I like Chateau Neuf de Pape, if it's cognac, Hennessy XO…..

But the last and most important reason why I don't drink and write: I'm juggling four-freakin-story lines in my teeny-tiny brain!!!

Writing four main characters means separating four points of view, four voices, four distinct personalities….there's barely room left over for my own, much less adding a touch of alcohol-induced-fogginess.

And for this upcoming Berkley book, I've also been writing the book BACKWARDS!!!

You see, this book takes place in an abbreviated time line—it should take the average reader the same amount of time to read the book as the events occur. Which means down to the second timing in all four of my plotlines.

Think Die Hard in a hospital.

So, since I knew where everyone ended up, I began at the end and worked my way forward. It's been a fun juggling process—kind of like juggling with chainsaws!

I just finished the draft and am pretty pleased. Maybe I'll go have a drink…..

Oh, and a quick update:

When I announced my Buy a Book, Make a Difference program to raise money for Doctors Without Borders two weeks ago, I never dreamed of the fantastic response I'd get!

I had initially set my fund raising goal at $1,000 but with three more weeks left in the month, we've already surpassed $800!!!

I'll be increasing that goal to $2,000--remember all of my proceeds from four of my Kindle titles (NERVES OF STEEL, BORROWED TIME, CHASING SHADOWS, and LOST IN SHADOWS) sold before Feb 29 will be going to Doctors Without Borders to help in their humanitarian efforts.

Thank you all for your support and for helping to spread the word!!!

For more information, go to http://www.cjlyons.net

As always, thanks for reading!
CJ

About CJ:
As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels. Her debut, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), became a National Bestseller and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller."

The second in the series, WARNING SIGNS, was released January, 2009 and the third, URGENT CARE, October, 2009. Her newest project is as co-author of the first in a new suspense series with Erin Brockovich. To learn more about CJ and her work, go to http://www.cjlyons.net

H.G. and Me

Gabriella Herkert

Catnapped and Doggone

If H.G. Wells had bequeathed me his Time Machine, where would I set the dial? Maybe it’s the lawyer in me but I have to go with it depends. Like choosing which scene to write based on my mood (I write non-sequentially), picking an era depends on where my head is.

If I am feeling like my usual spunky self, I want to go to a time and place where I could make a difference. Could I hang with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War? All around her soldiers were dying far from their English homes and there she was, sleeves rolled up, figuring out a way to make a difference. And that was when she wasn’t writing or statistically analyzing her results so her success could be repeated and ultimately become nursing as we know it today. Every time you seek medical care, think of this woman with the noise and the smoke and no guidebook figuring out what needed to be done and doing it. I’d like to think I could be the Lady who knew and learned from the Lady with the Lamp. Maybe I could have even been a go-between between Flo and Mary Seacole and helped them incorporate Florence’s more traditional approach with Mary’s homeopathic one for an even better result. Heck, health care is still fighting this battle. If these two amazing women had a mutual friend playing the dual role of Devil’s Advocate and Henry Kissinger, today’s health care might be eons more integrated than it actually is. That was a moment I would have liked to be part of.

Now if I’m wearing my adventurous hat, or in this case my Gibson Girl sun shade, I’m in Africa in the 1920s with Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham. It’s colonial Africa with a significant British contingent sharply dressed in their pressed linen uniforms and drinking afternoon tea but I’ve embraced the native people and not only respect their culture, I’m fascinated by the native rituals I see daily. When I’m not at a polo match, or helping at a local tribal school, I’m flying. Literally. In my own plane, defying gender stereotypes, I take to the sky in a 20 horsepower Gull with my cap and goggles, soaring above the lush veldt. At night, I am seducing or being seduced by amazing men of means, power, intellect and imagination. Absolutely this should be a stop on my time travel tour.

If I’m feeling a need to change the world, I would set my sights on 1939. It’s the time of the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has mandated an unprecedented investment in American infrastructure, in its culture, its future, its art. In 1935, the Federal Theater Project is born. Plays are written, stories published. The writers, actors, producers, directors represent every spot on the social and political spectrum. Harry Hopkins, head of the WPA, promised free, adult and uncensored works of art supported by the taxpayers. Four years later, while the WPA continues its mission, the Federal Theater Project is dead. Its funding cut off. The very first victim of fear politics as invented by Joseph McCarthy. It wasn’t just censorship. It was annihilation. The first strangle hold on free speech and expression. A blue print for politically correct artistic pablum. It got worse, of course, for artists with powerful voices and socially challenging ideas. The House on Unamerican Activities called hundreds of witnesses to turn in fellow citizens, friends, who dared to think new ideas or even to listen to people who might whisper softly about them. How many more Oscars would Elia Kazan won (he won three) if HUAC hadn’t tainted his ability to produce his art? Was Dashiell Hammett’s loss of productivity and increased alcoholism tied to the time he spent in jail for refusing to name names? What other works were lost to this madness? Would it have all been different if someone, anyone, had raised their hand during that 1939 committee meeting and said, “It’s art. It’s supposed to challenge you. Is smothering it what we really want to do? Is that who we are as readers, theater goers and cultural guardians?” Yep, my political me chooses 1939 and a quiet moment that lead to a storm.

In rereading this blog, I have had three personal insights. First, my inner control freak thinks the future isn’t written yet so heading in that direction is a waste of a good trip and frequent flier miles. Second, I have no future at the Star Fleet Academy. That prime directive thing is a deal breaker. Third, I’d better keep plugging away so that when this question gets posed to the next generation of writers, at least one of them considers saying they would use their shot at the time machine to blog with me today. Even I didn’t know what to expect. That is a good day in any period of history.

Congratulations to Kelli Stanley on the release of her new book, City of Dragons. She’ll take you on a trip without the luggage restriction.

Thanks for reading.

Gabi

I Could Have Danced All Night

I once had to to pick another time period to live in for a college application essay (many moons ago). I wrote that I would have liked to live during the Renaissance. I thought it would be interesting to see how art, music and philosophy changed during that time. I think I also thought it would impress the admissions people.

But now I’m not so sure if I’d want to live in the Renaissance. They still had the plague, women didn’t exactly have equal rights, and there was definitely no indoor plumbing. There was always the chance that you would be born a servant, and end up breaking your back cooking and cleaning for nobles. No fun.

So what time period would I like to live in? I think the 1920’s in America. Just think of it: Prohibition, speak easies, suffragettes, flappers, political upheaval, a crazy stock market, and great jazz. I would have liked to have a Lulu kind of haircut, drink gin and tonics and dance all night. And they had indoor plumbing. Most places, anyway.

Sure, women didn’t have a lot of career choices then, but writer was definitely one of them. I can picture myself writing my books in long hand, and then pounding them out on an old manual typewriter while juggling a long cigarette (I've never been a smoker, but I think it was required back then). I’m sure I’d miss my laptop, but I wouldn’t really know any better if I lived before they were invented.

I know the 1920’s had gangsters, all the post-traumatic stress from World War I, and the depression was coming soon to a town near you, but if I lived then I wouldn’t know that the fun was going to end. I would just bet that the good times would go on forever, and keep right on dancing.

Sergeant Shane Marches to the Front ...

By Shane

I want to fight in World War Two.

Strange request, I know. But war is honorable when it's for the right cause, and what could be more honorable than saving the entire planet from the armored jackboots and racist ideology of Hitler?

If I could travel back and live in a period, it would be the years from Pearl Harbor to the end of the war. Then I'd tack on the 1950s for good measure. I wouldn't spend the war at home, either. I'd be a combat soldier in Europe, firing artillery, emptying my M1 rifle, running up Omaha Beach in the face of murderous German fire. Saving the world for democracy.

I do not romanticize war. It is hell. I know too many people who've fought in them, including my dad, a front-lines combat engineer in Korea, to think it's anything but awful.

Yet, some things are worth fighting and dying for. Saving the world from Hitler and his ilk is one of them. The freedoms we take for granted as Americans have to be defended, and I would have volunteered to do it if given the chance then.

It was the proverbial Good War. All the rest we've had since--particularly the moral outrage of Iraq and Afghanistan--have been political wars. Not fought for a moral cause, but to fill someone's pockets, or allow us to thump our big hairy chests and proclaim that America is tough, goddammit, ya better not screw with us ya sissies.

Those are crummy and immoral reasons to go to war.

I'd also want to return home in one piece so I could live in the America of the 1940s and 1950s, and see the world transmogrify before me. Think of it: the entire ... damn ... world ... was ... remade. Forever and irrevocably. Wouldn't you want to live through such an incredible upheaval? I would. The invention of the jet plane, of the computer, of the modern telephone system.

Of battlefield medicine brought into civilian hospitals, saving countless lives.

Of the biggest economic expansion in American history, and the introduction of such modern work benefits as health insurance.

Of the world coming together, united, to fight a common enemy that threatened all our ways of life.

Of McCarthyism and, more refreshingly, the kicking of McCarthyism's ass and burying it in the bowels of hell where it richly belonged.

Of the beginnings of the banishment of racism and sexism. Racism was rampant during the war--the Japanese poster above is one of the tame examples of that, and of course we dumped hundreds of thousands of born-here Americans into our very own concentration camps for the "crime" of having Japanese ancestors--and we didn't make huge strides against it in the early postwar years. But the banishment started right there. The seeds were planted by WWII, because Rosie the Riveter proved she could do the job, and black, brown, yellow and red men and women fought and died along the white men who'd ruled their country and enslaved the other colors for so long. Once those men and women tasted their freedom and their power to decide things for themselves, they'd never go back to their shackles, real or symbolic. We are richer for it.

Of the Cold War, which brought the destruction of the other cancer that came with the Hitler and his Fascists: Stalin and his Communists.

Of a bunch of other things.

I love life in the modern era, with instant communications, access to the planet through the Internet, and air-conditioning. Like Josh, I'd never want to give up my flush toilet.

But given the chance to live through the emotion and romance and upheaval of the entire world order and its billions of people?

I could learn to live with an outhouse again.

Not So Sentimental Journey

By Kelli

If you could go back to any period of time, which would it be and why?

Well, as of this writing I'd probably go back to the second before the Amazon finger (and we know which one) pushed the button last Friday and blacklisted all Macmillan authors.

Just kidding ... sort of. ;)

I've spent time in Rome and Greece -- when I served time in the Ivory Tower. Nice place to visit, and I love to write about the period, but I'm like Josh--I also enjoy modern amenities (like bourbon). Besides, anchovy sauce doesn't tickle my taste buds. ;)

The 30s and 40s, however, have always been a time in which I felt like I belonged. It was a passionate generation, people who believed in the power of political action, not just disengagement. Even in the bleakest financial sink hole in the history of our nation, there was still strong optimism in technology and progress and some sort of doctrine to pull us up and out.

Unfortunately, for some people that doctrine was fascism and national socialism--because it's always been easier to blame a group of people you can persecute than it is to blame politicians.

But it was still a time of political and cultural engagement, when opera was on the radio and Toscanini had an orchestra at NBC ... a time of world's fairs and hope for utopia ... a kind of optimism that seemed to die out in '63, with the assassination of JFK.

In 1939, America was still basically either rural and urban, without the encroaching ennui of suburbia that fills many a 50s film noir. New York had the Stork Club, the Cafe Rouge, where Glenn Miller played for NBC radio, and stockings were made of silk. Architecture--and design even in common objects--was beautiful. And you could buy an Action Comics #1 for 10 cents ...

I've spent a lot of time in 1940--February, 1940, for City of Dragons, and now May of 1940 for the sequel, which I have to really focus on as soon as the tour is done (I'm on my way from Seattle to Portland by the time you read this on Thursday). And I'd love to travel back, for a day, for a week ... looking for the lost beauty, braced for the ugliness behind it.

A sentimental journey without the sentiment ... which is what I tried to write in City of Dragons. And, of course, ten cents in my pocket for that Action Comics #1. :)

Thanks for reading!

Gonna go back in time...

I can hear Huey Lewis now.

Seriously though, if given this opportunity, I would be tempted to revist the 90's, invest in the Dot.coms and then sell them all in 1999 and move to my own private island, where I would start buying realestate by the handful and then sell all of that in 2005. But actually - as much as I like money - once I have enough, I'm not really inspired to seek more.

So I'd turn it about and chose to be born in the 20's, ride the rails as a young hobo in the 30's (I see this as fun, more like Sea Biscuit than the Grapes of Wrath), go to war in the 40's (ah yes, thrilling adventure, Force 10 from Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, not the Saving Private Ryan 40's please), and then in the 50's as a thirty year old war hero/adventurer, I would ride a motorcycle, cruise the west, get into the movie business when LA and Southern California were less crowded and more like paradise. I'd surf with the Beach Boys and hang out with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, then in the 60's I start working with NASA.

Hmm... I guess I'm not really chosing one era here. Perhaps I should narrow it down. So if I must - then I'd seek out the decade from 1935-1945, for many reasons. To begin with, I love the whole concept of being present during this cataclysmic change. In 1935 half the country was still relying on horses to get around, byt 1945 we had jet planes. There is also the whole drama of the world waking up from the age of Kings to the age of self determination. there was a battle of ideas. It some places it went well but in others Czars and Kings gave way to the Hitler and Stalin.

But the main reason I would love to visit that time, is for the hip and edgy setting that I expect to find in CITY OF DRAGONS, Kelli Stanley's new novel that hit the stores yesterday. It's got 1940's San Francisco and Chinatown, a tough female PI and the war lingering on the horizon. Sounds like a dangerous world of neon and secrets. How could you not want to go there? And that's the awesome thing about good fiction - it takes you there, in a way even 3-D Imax can't.

Kelli, I ordered my copy today and I hope it takes the slow truck to get here because I have way too much to do right now to have a good book land in my lap. But when I'm ready I expect City of Dragons to be my time machine.
All the best,

Graham Brown, author of Black Rain

www.authorgrahambrown.com

1.21 gigawatts

by Josh

Yes, it's true. I would go back to the 1980s.

I know, I know. I must be insane. I have at my disposal (for this week only) the ability to travel back to 1880s London or 1660s Paris and I choose the decade of "Rock Me Amadeus." Jesus at Gethsemane, you say? Give me Dukakis in an Abrams tank. The building of the Great Wall of China would be nice to witness, I agree, but I think I'd rather witness Witness.

Because I like indoor plumbing. I really do. I don't think I could survive long in a chamberpot society. I like having access to a faucet and I like knowing that the water which will come out of the faucet will have all pollutants artificially removed. I like hot showers. I like ice makers.

But my cell phone is too small. It's a phone. It should have weight to it, because Lord knows I won't be contributing any with my conversation. And it should have an antenna. I can trust an appliance with an antenna. An antenna offers the illusion of control. Better yet: two antennae. Rabbit ears. Why can't my plasma TV have rabbit ears? This is why I want to go back to the 1980s.

And don't even get me started on the internet. Did we really need to build another Tower of Babel? I got along just peachy at my local library. Literature, like a cell phone, should have weight to it. War & Peace should not weigh as much as The Cat in the Hat. That's simple physics, isn't it? Kindle schmindle. I want to be burdened by my books. I want my books to form a Tower of Babel in my arms. Will it topple before I get to the car? Will it? This is the stuff that adventures are made of.

If, in 1989, I really, really yen for a previous age, I can always watch MTV. Thank you for the 1950s, Paula Abdul. Oh, is that the early 18th century? So sweet of you, REM.

I miss you, pastel bandana. I miss you, Savings & Loan Crisis. I miss you, cassette player with AM/FM tuner. I miss you, Mrs. Garrett. I miss you, Intifada. I miss you, Margaret Thatcher. I miss you, Challenger.

I so miss you.

And in other, more contemporary news:

Today marks the street date for our own Kelli Stanley's City of Dragons! Normally I would provide an Amazon link for you to buy it, but when last I checked, Jeff Bezos still hadn't finished his temper tantrum and all of Macmillan's books remained blacklisted. So instead, buy it from Books, Inc., a terrific independent bookstore located in the novel's hometown of San Francisco - so how neat is that?

Today, also, it is my privilege to raise a glass (of Sprite) to another of our Criminal Minds, Ms. Rebecca Cantrell, whose debut novel A Trace of Smoke has just been nominated by Left Coast Crime for The Bruce Alexander Award for Historical Mystery. What novel won last year, you ask? Kelli Stanley's Nox Dormienda.

Don't you just love it when two seemingly disparate plot threads suddenly intertwine like that?

“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley

If I could go back in history, what period would I choose and why… Oy! There are so many interesting time periods. The height of the Roman Empire would be interesting, as would the Renaissance. Although the fashions back then weren’t great, except for the toga. I could totally rock a toga.

Oh, and let’s not forget the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the 1960s. Dodging musket rounds, cannon fire, and drafts aside, I think it would be cool to hang out with the likes of Andy Warhol, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon—I’m noticing a lot of ‘J’ names here. Coincidence? Hmm…

As cool as it would be to hang with those guys, I have to shy away from picking any of those eras. No, my historic period of choice would be the late 1700s and into the 1800s, Europe, and the Romantic Movement. (Not that movement, Shane. Get your mind out of the gutter.) I’d happily, if not gracefully, don bloomers, a corset, and a bustle to spend a week with the likes of Lord Byron, the Shelleys, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats. These guys knew how to party. They saw no boundaries between poetry, prose, art, nature, and themselves.

The Romantics (with a big ‘R’ as opposed to little to distinguish it from the kissy-face romance genre that wouldn’t appear until later) were all about individualism, emotion versus reason, valuing the sense over intellect. They were the original Rebels Without a Cause, although they did have a “cause” in that they opposed the rigid mindset of the Enlightenment and the runaway industrialization of that cities such as London covered in a thick layer of black soot from the coal-burning smokestacks. Romantics vaulted folk art and ancient customs to noble status, reveled in the mysterious, the exotic, the occult, and explored human nature. Read Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein if you doubt this. The entire novel was inspired by her experiences as a young mother wed to a philandering husband and ghost stories spun around a late-night fire that resulted in vivid and horrifying dreams…which then led to the novel and Mary overshadowing her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. (FYI, the Shelleys’ marriage and lives make modern soap operas pale in comparison.)

Modern authors—including myself and my fellow Criminal Minds here—owe a great deal to the Romantics, whether we know it or not. Lord Byron gave us the appropriately named Byronic hero: an often gifted but misunderstood loner following his (or her) own code of ethics rather than the tired and restrictive mores of contemporary society. Examples of this type of character include Spider-Man, X-Men (especially Wolverine), the Incredible Hulk, Batman, Angel (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Lestat (created by Anne Rice), and even Edward Cullen of Twilight fame. (Yes, mutants, vampires, and werewolves make great Byronic heroes as evidenced by the rapid rise and continued success of the urban fantasy and paranormal romance genres.) There are other Byronic heroes who aren’t superhuman who have had profound influences on modern culture such as Rambo, Jack Reacher, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne, and Jack Bauer. (I’m noticing a lot of ‘J’ names again. I think we’re moving into the realm of conspiracy now.)

We only have to look at the recent success of James Cameron’s Avatar to see the latest example of how influential the Romantics have been. Aside from the Pandorans looking like giant Smurfs, Avatar is a Romantic (big ‘R’) film. It deals with the exotic (an alien world). The hero, Jake Sully, is a deeply flawed individual and a near perfect Byronic hero. He doesn’t fit in with the scientists with whom he’s assigned to work and because of his physical limitations (confined to a wheelchair) he’s no longer accepted by his fellow Marines. He does find acceptance among the native “primitive” Pandorans, though he has to fight for that acceptance. The connection between the Pandorans and their world runs deep and is mysterious to the visiting/invading humans. Emotion overrides much of the film’s plot (which I admit is more or less a rehashing of Dances with Wolves…in space) so our senses then override our intellect and reason, and then our imaginations are set free to accept that giant Smurfs live on another planet and ride six-legged horses and non-fire breathing dragons.

If big blue aliens don’t interest you, try a story set in San Francisco in the 1940s and featuring a female private investigator. Preferably one located in the city’s Chinatown district. One like very own Kelli Stanley’s latest noir crime novel, City of Dragons—on sale TOMORROW!

And that’s why I would don my bloomers, squeeze into a corset, and bust-out the bustle to spend a little time with the Romantics. I have a pretty big “thank you” card to deliver.

Tag You're It

Gabriella Herkert

Catnapped and Doggone

Genre or literary. Toh-ma-to, to-mah-to. Sort of. I would love to be able to say that it makes absolutely no difference. Yet it does. Genre or literary matters to the business side of writing far more than it matters to the actual writing itself. The labels determine where you get placed on the shelves of your local bookstore. It affects who stocks your book, who reviews it, which book clubs consider it and whether or not Oprah will give it the magical wand treatment. Literary means you are somehow more “important” and are, therefore, more likely to win a major award. Genre isn’t considered for Pulitzer’s or National Book Awards even if that designation was made by a marketing team trying to figure out the best way to promote a book that could easily fit either category. Genre is code for I know some people who might read it. Yes, it’s important for them. For the reader, it can pull you away from books you might find fascinating. Beware the genre or literary tag. It can deny you a world of pleasures.

My first great review came from the Romantic Times. I love them for it. I do not consider Catnapped a romance but I can’t actually tell you why. Someone with more imagination than me at RT saw my book and thought it was good enough to make their list regardless of the imprint’s backlist or the book’s placement on some arbitrary shelf. My protagonist’s love interest was added after the first draft. Probably after the fifth. That’s how much I considered my book a romance. Yet, that first review brought many readers to my work who couldn’t have found it another way tucked as it was on the mystery shelves.

Look at Tim O’Brien. He’s a National Book Award winner who frequently writes about his experiences, fictionalized, during the Vietnam War. He’s Mr. Literary. He wrote a book called In the Lake of the Woods. In my opinion, it’s a romance. It’s a nuanced examination of a long-term relationship and how our assumptions about another person can become our reality if they are never challenged. It’s as complex a relationship story as any written by Nicholas Sparks yet it’s somehow treated differently. A man reading The Notebook on a commuter train is likely to have it hidden in a book cover while Tim O’Brien’s book can be viewed openly, possibly eliciting engaged conversation with an intellectual co-passenger. Tim O’Brien’s book is also a mystery. I won’t spoil the end for you. If you haven’t read it, or anything by him, I beg you to give him a try. But in Lake of the Woods when you get to the last word, if you’re like me, you’ll double-check to make sure you’re not missing another chapter. The one that answers the questions. How great a mystery is that? It’s got as much heft as Hammett, surprise equal to Christie and a twistier end than the one from The Usual Suspects. I don’t care what the business calls him. I just think he’s great.

There’s a famous quotation I can’t seem to find the attribution for that says (I’m paraphrasing here) that a forgery is still art if that’s the way you see it. Genre is art. Literary is art. Good stories are good stories regardless of their marketing strategy. Seek them out in all their guises. Never judge a book by its cover or library location. Keep in mind that books aren’t pillows. You can go ahead and remove the label.

Thanks for reading.

Gabi

By any other name . . . .

By Michael Wiley

Two plots, one “literary” and one “genre”:

(1) A powerful man has been poisoned, murdered without witnesses while sleeping. The man’s son, a brilliant but unstable loner, sets out to catch the killer. But he faces every obstacle imaginable. The government is protecting the killer. His own girlfriend seems to have betrayed him in favor of the killer’s gang. Most of his friends have betrayed him too. His mother, instead of crying over the death of her husband, is sleeping with a new lover . . . who turns out to be the killer. But along with a sidekick (not so much a Joe Pike to his Elvis Cole as a Watson to his Sherlock), the son investigates the murder, and using a combination of wit (tricking the bad guys into revealing their guilt, Columbo-style) and brute force (killing those who stand in his way), he exposes the killer and brings him to justice.

(2) An old man – once a powerful general but now a shell of his former self – inhabits a realm that now seems too large and lavish for him. Like many other great men, he has lived according to his own moral code, one that often has been at odds with social norms but nonetheless has had an integrity and nobility of its own. But now his daughters are betraying him and the values he has stood for. They too have lived according to their own moral codes but theirs have lacked an honorable guiding principle. Into the life of this family comes a heroic figure who corrects the daughters’ wrongs, saves them from various evils, and restores a semblance of order to the old general’s world.

The first plot, of course, is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the second from Chandler’s The Big Sleep. But the first story is also a variation on any of dozens of “genre” murder mysteries, and the second could be mistaken for a bad summary of King Lear. One can imagine visiting a favorite independent bookstore in Elizabethan England and searching through the shelves for a good bloody thriller by Shakespeare. At least I can imagine it. After all, a lot of “literary” writers started off on the pulp fiction shelves. Look at Joseph Conrad’s early book covers, and you know that readers a hundred years ago were stuffing their copies of his novels into their beach bags alongside their suntan lotion and iPods.

I’m not saying that all mystery writers are the same as great Renaissance or Modern “literary” authors or that all great Renaissance and Modern “literary” authors are mystery writers. I’m just saying that a good story – whether a revenge tragedy or a tale of seafaring or a PI novel – by any other name would smell as sweet. And I’m saying a well-written PI novel has better claims to present and enduring attention than poorly written literary fiction.

If any critics think otherwise, I know a couple hundred mystery writers who would be happy to “beard” them as Hamlet might, or (to borrow a poetic line from Sophie’s blog entry) to pull their ears off their heads.

A distinction without a difference ...

Tell us how you feel about genre vs. literary.

By Shane

I was sitting in a mall in Iowa, drinking stale coffee and hawking my first crime novel. A lady walked up and asked:

"Do you write literary fiction? Or genre?"

I replied:

"Yes."

She blinked confusion.

Then asked me where the bathrooms were.

I wasn't trying to confuse her, or make her want to tinkle. I was quite serious: genre is literary. Good writing is good writing, period. The rest is marketing, PR, fairy dust, and labels created to allow one group of writers to look down on another group of writers and thus feel better about itself. America doesn't have royals, so we insist on creating them ourselves.

It's a particularly silly distinction, anyway, literary vs. genre. Most real people can't tell the difference. Don't believe me? Then take my "Is It Is or Is It Ain't?" quiz and find out!

1. "This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air."

How about this:

2. “The house looked oddly like a skull, with its glassless windows gaping out at the snowscape. Pink fiberglass insulation was everywhere, sticking out of the house, blowing across the snow, hung up in the bare birch branches like obscene fleshy hair.”

Or this:

3. "The sky above us was the color of ever-changing violet, and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns."

Or this:

4. "It was cold, bleak, biting weather. He could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them."

Or, finally, this:

5. "He stood in front of a curtain of pine trees crusted with snow lumps, which steamed in the cold rain. His fur was a mottled brown, turning gray near the rump. White tufts spackled his ears, throat, and snout. His nose was the blue-black of engine oil; his antlers large and airy. Each branched into a chandelier of tips that twinkled amber in the vapor lamp standing lonely sentry over the exit."

THE ANSWERS

1. Literary: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
2. Genre: John Sandford, Rules of Prey
3. Literary: James Joyce, Araby
4. Literary: Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
4. Genre: Hey, that's me, in Torn Apart

But it's all good writing! So the labels are meaningless and silly and we're all better off drinking Scotch and smoking cigarettes in ivory holders and talking about turns of phrase so goddamn brilliant they tingle your skin and catch your hair on fire.

Exclusively Yours

By Kelli

"Tell us how you feel about literary vs. genre."

Short answer? Not much. But I'm blogging, anyway.

Those who know me will tell you I have very little patience for labels. I have very little patience, period, so with boxes and labels and the tags, I run out pretty damn quick.

I know they're necessary for bureaucracy to keep running the world, necessary for bean counters and insurance companies, necessary for DMVs and census takers and every other entity that seeks to bag, tag and file away people into sortable categories ...

And I know they also have their positive uses. Part of me has always enjoyed cataloging stuff, reveling in the organization that labels and such provide. Arranging chaos into an attractive pattern, taking comfort in the order that order provides. I try to embrace the Yin and Yang of it, balancing chaos and category like symbiotic halves, necessary for both brain and soul.

No, what makes me crazy is when labels become more important than what they seek to identify. When labels supersede humanity, let alone books, when "computer says no" becomes a standard reply in so-called customer service.

With books--and other creative endeavors--it's the implicit value judgment that bothers me . The idea that one label--of books, films, art, music--is "better" than another. One is art, one is popular culture. One is worthy of transcending the ages; one is disposable "entertainment" ... as if entertainment is a dirty word. [For the record, it's not--I know them all.]

So where does this come from?

Exclusivity. The root of all snob appeal. If only a few can afford to eat at a restaurant, it must be good. If only the top fifty thousand people can get a new electronic gadget and are willing to wait in line to get it first -- hell, we all need one! And God forbid that someone else wore that Oscar dress.

The few vs. the many, patricians vs. plebians, aristocrats vs. peasants ... the list goes on. And anything that smacks of "popular"--even in 2010--will garner an upturned nose and a stuck-out pinky, and possibly a sniff of disdain. Review *that*? It's -- it's just a mystery. A thriller. A romance. A ... fill in the blank genre.

It's never been about literary vs. genre. It's been cult vs. popular, books that--according to the snobs of the world--supposedly only the intelligentsia are intelligent enough to appreciate versus those that ordinary people read for escape.

Pfah. I've read more than my share of academic nonsense, made up doctoral cant invented to impress each other and justify a too-expensive education, that at the end of the day says nothing and contributes nothing to our understanding of the subject matter or one another. Words designed to keep people out--not to let people in.

I've been published in that arena, presented internationally. And the literary vs. genre divide exists there, too, in what subjects people choose to study and what studies get funding. It exists everywhere, and as writers, we are affected by it.

But here's some news for the exclusive set ... Shakespeare wrote for the groundlings. Euripides, Sophocles? Popular playwrights. And you don't get much more "common" than Aristophanes.

ALL fiction--unless it's a completely narcissistic example of literary onanism--is meant to be shared and hungers to be popular. Some of it entertains, some of it enlightens, some of it makes you think and changes your life. And some of it does all of the above, and does so in high-heeled genre pumps, too.

So, yeah ... I'm a genre writer. And a literary writer. No versus required.

And on that note--next week is City of Dragons!! Thanks for reading!

There's Someone For Everyone

by Sophie

Tell us how you feel about genre vs. literary.

How do I feel about genre vs literary? I feel like there is no way to have that discussion without me ending up wanting to scream and pull people's ears off their heads, so let's talk about something else. (Warning, though...anyone who drags their sorry ass into MY SFARWA meeting while I'm president and exhibits one ounce of genre snobbery will find him- or herself shown the door...)

This is related, and it was on my mind today: writer crushes.

I don't mean that you have a crush on the writer. Well, you sort of do, but only because they write such beautiful prose that you want to marry their book and make it omelettes and take care of it when it's sick and tattoo its name on your hip.

(I am sorry, but I am not going to reveal the identity of my current writer crush because it would be wayyy to embarrassing and also way too easily misconstrued. Kinda like when a certain dear friend of mine, with whom I had shared the identity of the author who I modeled Stella's would-be boyfriend after, figured it out and announced it to the whole bar where he happened to be sitting.)

Anyway it's all subjective, of course, which is nice because just like your mom always reminded you that "There is someone for everybody" it turns out there is also some book for everybody as well.

Me, I love a knock-down turn of phrase. It's language that gets me every time. I went through this Woodrell phase where whole paragraphs were lodged in my head. (Fellow Woodrellites get it; I was in the TallyHo once when the whole table was quoting at each other. I'm sure we sounded deranged...) If it had occured to me I probably would have bought an extra GIVE US A KISS and made a dress out of the pages, or something.

But other people don't care about the language - they love the cliffhangers. Or the worldbuilding. Or the action scenes. Or even, God love 'em, the unapologetic gore or the super-creative were-creature love-fests with fur and fangs 'n stuff. That's cool! Hey, you don't give your best friend a hard time about the fella from the cop bar who started out as a dirty weekend and ended up moving his toothbrush into her bathroom...cause it's really not your business who she chooses. She gets to like who she likes. In guys and also in books.

Oh, my...looky there, in my usual lurching and clumsy circular manner I've managed to address today's subject after all. Just in case you missed it....let me paraphrase: genre or lit? - take your pick; but telling anyone else what to read is like telling your friends who to hook up with at closing time. It ain't cool and it's not your business.