These Books Are Not For Burning by Josh Stallings

Q: The building’s on fire, what books do you save?

A: Easy, the books that matter are my signed editions. This year Thomas Pluck gifted me with signed first editions of most of James Crumley’s oeuvre. Tom knows how important Crumley is to me. The Moses McGuire trilogy is a love letter to Crumley’s tarnished drunken knights. Three books were missing, Dancing Bear, luckily my friend Steven Hertzog gave me a signed first edition years ago. That leaves only A Right Madness and The Wrong Case, (weirdly these are his first and last detective novels,) I will find them sooner or later.

So after I make sure Erika, our sons, and the four legged beasties are safe, I will run back in for the Crumleys and that’s it.

Charlie signed this to our son Jared after seeing his punk band play.

Ok that and the books Charlie Huston signed to me and my family. He has been a friend and supporter since I first stumbled onto the crime scene. That’s six Crumleys and seven Hustons. Nothing else.

Except for November Road, a brilliant book, and Lou Berney signed it with a wonderful note to Erika and I. 

Looking on my shelf Bad Boy Boogie screams, “Yo gonna let me fry?” How could I leave signed Thomas Pluck books behind? 

I have signed copies from my oldest best mate, fantasy writer Tad Williams. Young Americans is dedicated to him for good reason. We lived through so much, and more to go.

It’s been said that book are old friends. These are old friends written and signed by dear friends. Picking up Monday’s Lie, I remember Jamie Mason signing it at Bouchercon San Diego. I moderated a panel she was on. I had no idea we would remain good friends over the years. 

Every book here has memories attached of the book and the writer. When Erika couldn't make a conference, Catriona McPherson signed a copy of Scot Free to her.

The first time we met Terry Shames was at Noir Bar Los Angeles, she signed a copy of her first book to Erika. She remains one of my favorite writers and people. So yeah, her books are coming.  

What about Eric Beetner or Gary Phillips’ books? Johnny Shaw? Todd Robinson? Sara J. Henry? Hillary Davidson? All great writers and old friends. Yeah, their books are coming along. 

Stuart Neville added a drawing to his signature. As did Scott Phillips when he signed Ice Harvest. Got to keep those.

I have a copy of Chandler’s “Farewell My Lovely” published in Russia and signed to me from actor Victor Wong. He was in a movie I wrote and edited that was shot in Russia. This book has personal value and the back where it explains english idioms to Russian readers is priceless.

And the books of Ian Ayris, my brother from another world. Ian signed April Skies to me  praising my memoir, “It helped me more than you will ever know.” I feel the same way about his work.  

Ok, tally up time. I count thirty six heavy books that must be saved. Maybe I can drag those out of a fire in one trip… maybe… until Erika chimes in, “What about the children's books we read to the boys?” I look at the covers and remember reading to Dylan and Jared. I read Where the Wild Things Are so many times I could read it with my eyes closed, and I did some nights. 

I just asked Jared if he remembers any particular books he was read. “Yeah, Where the Wild Things Are, Everyone Poops, and Goodnight Moon.” The children's books survived the move to the mountains and the downsizing of our life, they will not burn. Not even hypothetically.

Erika’s beautifully bound with original art work Folio editions? Yep. Those are simply too beautiful to let burn.

Books have been a part of my life since before I was me. They are attached to memories, they are gossamer threads that help me drift back. Winnie the Pooh is a very little me lying on my father playing with a Steiff bear and hearing the words rumble up deep and rich from his chest. 

Peter Pan is my mother reading to us from the very book she was read to as a child. It was faded and magical. My mother was Wendy and we were her wild children.

What books would I save? 

All of them, clearly. Wouldn’t you?

If it’s in there, get it out.

A lot of folks will have resolved that 2023 is THE year when they write the book they have inside them. Any tips for absolute beginners?

by Dietrich

If you feel the urge to write, don’t let anybody tell you different, especially that little voice in the back of the head.

Don’t put it off, and don’t kick the can down the road. Sit down and get started. Be in it for the long-haul and have fun every inch of the way.

You work at home, so there are plenty of distractions. Don’t play with the cat, switch off the phone, and stay away from the internet. I like to crank up the music before I start. I know that’s not going to be for everyone, I get that, but it’s good to find whatever works to help get yourself into that writing zone.

Don’t aim for War and Peace. Do some trial and error, find what works — find your voice. I wrote short stories, quite a few of them, trying to find what worked for me.  

Read the kind of books you want to write — and read a lot of them. Personally, I love to read fiction, non-fiction, biographies and autobiographies. There’s so much inspiration in any great book. And there are some good how-to books too. If you haven’t, check out Stephen King’s On Writing. It’s like the how-to bible for writers. 

And there are classes and courses that are worth checking out, many of them online. 

Refrain from reading the daily noise, and anything else that might distract, depress, or keep you from planting that bum in the chair.

Find a mentor. Meet some published writers. They hang out at writers’ conferences, festivals, writers’ events. They’re generally a fun and helpful bunch and easy to approach — especially in a bar.

Create your own best set-up for writing. A desk, a quiet corner, and if possible, find the best time of day to write. And by all means, jot down those little ideas that come to mind, and keep them handy.

Don’t be in a rush to send your masterpiece off in hopes of finding an agent or publishing house. Get it right first. There’s nothing worse than sending something off that has potential before it’s ready. It’s like self-sabotage and a set-up for hearing, “No thanks.”

If you’ve been out of school for awhile, you may want to brush up on your grammar. 

When you get through a first draft, set it aside for a few days before going back through it again. And don’t have a total number of drafts in mind. Four, five, six, or more — who cares. Rework it until it feels ready. How do you know when it’s ready? When you write enough, the confidence will build, and you’ll know.

Get set to hear, “No thanks.” Then get ready to hear it again. You’re putting yourself out there, and that takes a certain amount of courage. Go for it.

Last thoughts: When you edit, look for anything that doesn’t move the scene forward, and cut it. You want to make them laugh, and you want to make them cry, but mostly, you want to keep them turning pages. 

When you read a chapter over, read it aloud. 

Never worry about what anybody thinks of your writing. Write it bold.

Lastly, I asked fellow author Eric Beetner to weigh in on the topic, and he had some pearls:

“My biggest tip for new or aspiring writers is to lose the notion that writing a book is a monumental task. I think too many people treat it like scaling Everest or circumnavigating the globe alone in a boat. Go into any bookstore or library and look around you. Books everywhere. Millions of new books every year. How can it be that hard and be done so often by so many people?

Now, writing a good book is no easy task, and that should be where the hard work goes in. But if you free yourself with the idea that starting on page one is the beginning of an arduous journey that will bring you to the brink, then you can focus on the real work of writing a good book. The rest is just typing.”

“Can we please stop this nonsense attitude that a first draft is supposed to be crap? Why would you write a terrible first draft? The work of a first draft, to me anyway, is to get it as close to right as you can. Then the rewrite process isn't spent "figuring out the story" as too many people seem to do, it becomes refining, making it better, elevating what you already have. If you need a whole first draft to find the story, then you're doing it backwards. Make notes, outline, keep voice memos on your phone, but know your story when you start so the first draft isn't awful. So your rewrites and revisions aren't torturous. Writing is supposed to be joyful. If it's a slog then that will come across on the page to the reader.

But, you do you. If you like the tortured artist thing, then go ahead and write a terrible first draft. Just please stop complaining about it.” — Eric Beetner

A Guest Post by Eric Beetner

Eric Beetner is that writer you've heard about but never read. Then when you finally do, you wonder why you waited so long. There are over 25 books and more than 100 short stories so you'd better get started. Books like Rumrunners, All The Way Down, Two In The Head and The Devil Doesn’t Want Me. He also hosts the podcast Writer Types and the Noir at the Bar reading series in L.A. He’s been described as the 21st Century’s answer to Jim Thompson, and he’s been nominated for three Anthony’s, an ITW award, Shamus, Derringer and 5 Emmys. 

And we're fortunate to have him here today, answering this week’s question: The buzz of your first novel has long worn off, you’re no longer the hot new thing — now what?

Man, does publishing love a debut author. They’re wide-eyed and innocent, full of hope. Reality has yet to wipe the optimism from their open, eager faces. Not like us grizzled veterans, the also-rans, living life in the remainder bin.

Like myself — author of 27 published works plus over a hundred short stories. I have award nominations, Publishers Weekly reviews, blurbs from NYT #1 best sellers. And here I stand like a beggar on the street corner while the latest, shiniest object is paraded down the street in front of me.

And then what happens? That once-newbie and I are trading war stories at the bar two years from now at a crime writing convention. It happens to all of us. So what do you do when the shine is off your brand new book?

The simple answer is this: keep writing.

Did you begin a new series with your debut? Now is the time to build on that audience and turn in a book two that will satisfy your newfound readers and bring in new ones.

Did you pour your heart and soul into a stand-alone novel that ripped your guts out to write and took everything from you? Dig deeper and find more to give.

Whatever secret sauce publishing thinks comes with a debut, a big breakout book does not a long career make. You need to keep putting out consistently good work over a long period of time. Books that can be found years from now and find you new, dedicated readers who might not have been around for your big, splashy debut.

A writing career is that clichéd “marathon, not a sprint.” In terms more of us can relate to, you might be crowned prom king for your debut, but before long you’ll be hanging out back behind the gym with the weird band kids, but that’s okay because they’re more interesting and talk about more interesting books.

A big thing to remember is not to take it personally. Know that every time you feel inadequate by being lapped by some up-and-comer, you really sound like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard complaining that “It’s the pictures that got small.” We know how well that went for her.

There are days I feel like I can get arrested in the publishing world. Then there are days when I’m reminded that I have built something. I have a body of work. Doesn’t every writer desire to have a body of work? Who wants one book, no matter how great? Harper Lee and then end of list.

Writing is a life of looking forward, always. The next story should be insisting upon it. And what is that next story but an eager debut waiting to happen? Sure you’ve written and published books now, but each new book is the first time that story is being told. It’s a debut again and again. Even if publishing doesn’t treat it that way, you should.

Each time you start on the first blank page of a new book, take a second to remind yourself why you wrote that first book. The one that got you the publishing contract, all that attention, the interviews, the panel slots, the guest blogs. Write from that place when it was all out ahead of you. 

And, yeah, sure, find other writers to commiserate with when it feels like it isn’t going your way. Next, you’ll be the ones looking at the flavor-of-the-month getting the press and the accolades, and you’ll be able to see the fall coming, even when they don’t. So be a good experienced writer and help break that fall. Nobody wants to see anyone fall flat on their face, even if they did siphon off some of your marketing budget.

And that whole time, you’ll be writing and working and making your own brand new story.

It’s so easy to get cynical in this business. It’s unfair, relies on luck, changes with the winds of what is trending. It’s dispassionate and unsentimental. It will treat you like a king when you are up, and a pauper when you are down. But if you wait out the turbulence you can find yourself on the other side. The tails to the heads of a debut: the author that’s been around so long and been so consistently good and reliable that people start coming around to your books thinking, “I’ve seen this name around forever, why haven’t I read them?”

That’s my current career plan. Wait them out. Keep writing. Write what I want to read and never lose sight of why I started doing it in the first place. And once the pressure and the stresses of that debut are behind you, you might find you can actually settle into a nice groove and be in a good place for a long and fruitful career. And those prom kings? Their crown has tarnished by now. The prom queen left him for a band geek. His class ring is all he has to remember the good ol days.

But not you. You kept working. Kept writing. Kept telling stories with the same enthusiasm as that very first book. 

Always appreciate the ride while you’re on it, but understand that a roller coaster is over in a flash, and a lot of the time it kinda makes you nauseous.

Thanks for the pearls of wisdom, Eric, and thanks for being a guest this week. And for anyone who hasn't read his novels, you can get started by visiting his website here and finding out more. I promise you won't be sorry. — Dietrich