How Successful is Success?

 

Terry here, answering the elusive questions: How do you measure “business success”? How “successful” have you been in terms of “business” this year? 

 If I want a good laugh I remember when I was VERY young and asked my husband how he’d feel if I became a published author and made more money than him. Hahahahaha. 

Ahem. My last royalty check, with nine books published, was enough to take the two of us to dinner at a reasonably expensive restaurant (read: not MacDonald’s). 

I think most people measure business success in terms of money, but that one is not on the table. I’ve had some nice advances, but nothing that would mean I could buy that 3-bedroom place in Santa Monica that I’d really like. Or even a dollhouse that was built to scale on that place. 

Although I have been “successful” in terms of having a continuous line of books published since 2013—number ten just came out—none of them has ever hit the big time.

Oddly, that doesn’t jibe with the reviews. I always get terrific reviews, but again, that doesn’t seem to translate to sales. 

 So what other success is there? Having your brand known. Okay, I do have a pretty good brand recognition. Fans write to me and come up to me at conferences and ask me to sign my books. And I’m grateful. It always feels great to have someone offer my book for my signature, holding the book as if it’s something precious. Is that enough? It should be. 

 But I look with envy at the long lines of adoring fans for the high echelon in crime-writing—William Kent Krueger, Catriona McPherson, Deborah Crombie, Thomas Perry, Craig Johnson, Rhys Bowen, Laurie King…I could go on and on. Not that I wish them ill; I just would like to have some of their magic dust. 

 My books have been nominated for numerous awards and have a won a few.

That’s success—and yet, it doesn’t seem to move to needle on sales. I wonder if it’s necessary to do big publicity to get sales. I don’t see some of the big time authors’ names splashed all over. It’s a puzzle to me how their books become big sellers. 

This year I think I should feel “successful.” The tenth book in the Samuel Craddock series, Guilt Strikes at Granger’s Store, came out in October. The debut book in my new Jessie Madison series, Perilous Waters, comes out next April, and I will have another Craddock out in fall of 2024. I also have a standalone out on submission. Shouldn’t that feel like success? And yet, I bemoan the fact that none of my books has been picked up for audible, despite people frequently asking why and when. I constantly get told that my books would make a terrific TV series, but again…nada. 

 So I try to adjust my assessment of success and be satisfied with what I’ve achieved. I try to remember the time before I was published and how often I thought, “I don’t really care if it’s a best-seller, I just want to be published.”

Well, honey, you have that. Be happy. That’s success!

The Writing Business

How do you measure “business success”? How “successful” have you been in terms of “business” this year?

Brenda here.

I suppose I measure business success by sales and a growing audience. As most authors in this business know, it takes a lot of time and energy to build a readership because word of mouth is one of the best ways to have someone pick up your book. I can't count how many times I've heard or read in a review, "I have no idea how I never heard of you before."

It's easy enough to be overlooked in this business with thousands of new books out each year (or is it day?) A lot anyway. It's amazing, therefore, to have someone decide to give your book a read.

With this as the yardstick, I've had a good year. I threw a book launch in April at a pub that was well attended, many of the people new readers, some friends who brought friends. It was a great boost to my spirits :-)

This last half of the year, I've been invited to seven book clubs (mainly strangers), and the ones I've attended thus far, have been enthusiastic and engaged with my stories and characters. This feels like a marvellous break through. These readers also reinvigorate me.

Discussing When Last Seen at recent book clubs

The number of emails and messages I've received through my social media sites has also risen this year, another indicator of the books' growing reach. I believe a writing career is a long game, built reader by reader, book by book.                                       

The majority of my books are published traditionally, but I'm self-publishing the Hunter and Tate series, and this opens an entirely new level of business awareness. Sales numbers and renumeration are more top of mind. In this regard, I'm seeing a steady increase from one book to the next as booksellers and libraries find the books. My traditionally published books continue to do well, the Stonechild and Rouleau series recently reissued with the last five books released as audiobooks.

That said, this is a difficult business. We have some best-selling authors, but these are the minority by far. Most authors who keep producing new work are mid-listers who develop a loyal following. It may be a cliche, but I believe that the journey is more important and satisfying than the destination. While I keep an eye on the business side of writing, I'm happy where I am, celebrating every interaction with readers, enjoying good reviews, and jumping back into the world of my characters. I couldn't imagine a better way to spend my time.

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

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Typing as the Nights Grow Longer By Josh Stallings

Q: The days are growing shorter: do the seasons affect your writing schedule, or ability/preferences, in other ways?

A: This question stumped me. I was born and raised in California where we have less seasons and more differing levels of good weather. Maybe that answer is trite and not entirely true. We have seasons they are just subtle, the quality of light shifts from gold to blue, temperatures shift from hot to warm to fresh. Maybe the reason the question stopped me goes deeper. 

Proof we do have seasons in California

More proof. Idyllwild today.

I have been lucky enough to spend my entire working life in creative fields. With the silly way my brain is wired it was that or become the world’s tallest sherpa. I am built to lug rocks up steep hills or solve creative problems, not much else.     

Lugging rocks pays surprisingly little so when a chance arrived to work in film editing I leapt. I was young and in love. My wife and our two sons depended on me to knock out the bills. As Henry Hill in Good Fellas said, “The guy’s gotta come up with the money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.”

In trailer editor speak is sounds like this, “Been up all night cutting on a trailer for Fox, cool. Now Sony needs their’s cut by noon, so, fuck you, cut it.”

Getting back to seasons… Christmas and Chanukah, Hollywood slows down unless you’re on a big xmas picture, or you’re on a class project that is up for awards. Neither my wife nor I are Judeo-Christians so I always worked through the break. Don’t get me wrong, we enjoy seasonal holidays. We decorate a tree and burn a yule log, though those are appropriated pagan rituals. We read Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales. We kept the tradition of stockings from my childhood. But the over abundance and gluttony of the season made our kids nuts so we intentionally dialed it all way down to a four. Net result was I was always the editor working over the Holiday break. I actually loved when the town got quiet. So many fewer nervous clients to soothe. Just me, my assistant, some footage, and an editing system. Bliss.

Since I have been writing full time I find my days are a little more dictated by the seasons. I live in a small mountain town and when it snows I lose days to digging us out and making trails in the drifts for the pups. In Fall I lose days doing leaf and tree debris collecting and other fire abatement work. So ask me in another decade and I may have discovered seasonal changes affect my writing output. 

Back when I was still editing my favorite time to write was after ten PM. The family was asleep, the world was quiet. I loved the feeling that time stretched endlessly out before me. I’d often write until the sky went grey then sleep for a few hours and get up and go to my day job. I wrote the Moses McGuire trilogy and Young Americans at night and over lunch breaks. I recognize now that it left my wife picking up a lot of our family administrivia (her word.) I am trying to rectify that now by being more physically there to help keep our complicated life on the rails. 

I don’t remember the last time I wrote all night. But I do notice as the days become shorter I spend more time typing and less looking out the window.

What does this all mean? It reminds me how I was unrelenting with my work as a younger man. I had shit to prove, shit to say. I believed full heartedly in my vision no matter how misguided it might have been. I have learned to be kinder with my self, maybe too kind. 

“Hey, yeah you, writer guy with his fingers on the keyboard… You got a headache? Fuck you write a page. Your arms hurt from chopping wood? Fuck you write a page. You’re having an existential crisis over your work in progress? Fuck you write a page. And you dare take a day off? You owe. The vig is always running, so fuck you, write two pages.”

There is a season to plant ideas, a season to nurture them, a season to harvest them. That may or may not be true, but there sure as hell ain’t no season called “season to not write.” 

I am not suggesting any of this to other writers. I’m writing this for me to read. Shouting it into the night hoping when the echo comes back I’ll think it is a divine voice and take it seriously. 

Reading this back I see this could sound like I don’t love writing. It is the greatest job this guy could ever do. I love the act of creating worlds with words. It keeps me sane, or maybe saner would be more accurate. 

Last night I was talking to my long time friend Tad Williams. We got on the subject of jobs in the post apocalypse, “What do you think we’ll do?” I asked, “I mean we can’t all be Mad Max or Lord Humungus, and dude with a flame guitar seems like an odd gig.”

“I was just thinking about this,” Tad answered, “I’d do what I do now, keep making up stories. Humans have always needed art to put their lives into context.” 

I have to agree with Tad, I’m too old to learn how to play a flame guitar. So regardless of the season I’ll keep making shit up and telling it around what ever we’re using for  camp fires this year. 

May your long nights be productive and may your dreams nurture your creative soul.

As The World (Still) Turns, by Catriona

As the days grow shorter, do you find yourself writing more, or less, because of the difference in the season? Do the seasons affect your writing schedule, or ability, in other ways?

If only. Man, if I could be guided by the tilt of the earth toward and away from the sun, and write like a true Celt, Solstice to Equinox to Solstice again, that would be fantastic.

Because I am a Celt and I love the turn of the earth and the shape of the year, not just the Solstices and Equinoxes, but the Beltane and Samhain too (May Day and Halloween, roughly). The two worst things about moving from Scotland to California were:

• Losing the long summer days and even longer winter nights. It still feels very strange to be in warm darkness at ten o'clock in June, instead squinting into a low sun, and it's a pure swizz to be able to see outside at five o'clock on a winter's afternoon night, with all the expectation of more work, some exercise and salad. I like winters where the wind can blow the fire out right down the chimney and you get cravings for mutton and barley. On the other hand, when the sun goes down here in June, we can see the moon Every. Single. Night. as it waxes and wanes.

• Also the first few years I lived so far from that wee grey rock where I belong(ed), there were no other cues that the seasons were changing, to make up for the light staying much the same. I didn't know what spring smelled like, nor autumn, and I missed that ineffable change that makes your heart leap. Okay, it makes my heart leap. Then, after five years, I stepped outside one day and smelled the eucalyptus-inflected petrichor that meant summer was over. (In Scotland, it rarely stops raining long enough for the ground to dry out properly.) Likewise, a few months later, there was an earthy smell in the garden that I had encountered enough times to let my brain make the connection with spring.  

This was taken after nine pm in August

There are some great things about the shape of the year here too, besides recognition and the moon. Here are my top three:

• The holiday season lasts from Thanksgiving all the way through to Burn's Night - two whole months in a good year like this one - because my friends have generously added me to Turkey Day and Hannukah and even more generously submitted to the haggis on the 25th of January.

• There are three-day weekends ten minutes after the Christmas tree comes down! Instead of slogging through to Easter to get the first public holiday, here you only have to work for a fortnight after New Year and it's MLK Day. Then it's Presidents' Day quick as a flash. Big fan.

• Low-stakes downtime. Holidays you really care about can bring pressure no matter how laidback you are, and definitely bring expecations. But for me, Independence Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Indigenous People's Day, Cesar Chavez Day . . . I have no idea what any of them are supposed to make me feel so I just crack on. One of them has to do wirth cherries, right? Beyond that, search me. 

Guess which holiday this was? (Correct. Could be any.)

So, in conclusion- Wait, what was the question? Hmmm. Well, you see, it's not the season that affects my writing, it's the deadlines and right now it's the self-imposed Nanowrimo deadline. I'm banging out a first draft and the pantsing seems to have spread to the blog.

But here are links to the Samhain, the Beltane and Burns' Night - far more interesting than my writing schedule anyway. 

 

California mid-winter or Caledonia mid-summer?
Both pretty lovely. 

Cx

Escaping the season... by Cathy Ace

As the days grow shorter, do you find yourself writing more, or less, because of the difference in the season? Do the seasons affect your writing schedule, or ability, in other ways?

The short answer to this question is “Yes”, but maybe not in the way most would think.

In case you haven’t noticed, I travel. A lot. Which means that certain times of the year are better for me to be writing, because I’m at home, at my desk, and able to do the whole plotting, researching, writing, and editing thing. Yes, I have edited books when I’m not at home, and I’ve even done some plotting and lots of research when I'm away (of course!), but I have never – to date – written a book while I am anywhere but at home. So my travel times give my writing a seasonal pattern, though I enjoy time at home.

July evening, at home. Lovely.

And my travel times are tied to various elements: visiting Wales for my birthday, which usually neatly dovetails with attending CrimeFest in Bristol, each year; visiting Wales for Mum’s birthday each year; attending various conventions like Left Coast Crime or Bouchercon; seasonally-sensitive trips like the one I just took from Vancouver to Sydney, via Hawaii, Tahiti, and New Zealand, which depend upon cruising timetables. 

In Papeete, Tahiti October, 2022
(honestly, this was for research purposes!)

I also try to be away in sunny climes to be able to miss at least a part of the winter here in Vancouver.

So my schedule tends to be dictated by my travel plans, rather than the seasons, though the two are connected. Yes, I know I am lucky!

Recently, I was fortunate enough to be in Sydney, Australia on the day that the celebrations were held to mark the 50^th anniversary of the opening of the city’s iconic opera house. 

Passing the Sydney Opera House on October 20th 2023 -
which was its 50th birthday!

This was the latest in half a dozen visits to the city, which features in my forthcoming 13^th Cait Morgan Mystery, The Corpse with the Opal Fingers, which will be published NEXT WEEK on the 13^th November. If you haven’t pre-ordered the book you can still do so, then get stuck into it as soon as possible: https://www.cathyace.com/cait-morgan-mysteries 

A Time to Every Purpose by Gabriel Valjan

 

The days are growing shorter: do the seasons affect your writing schedule, or ability/preferences, in other ways?

 

To associate the seasons with the stages of life is as old as Ecclesiastes. They mark time. Winter is devastation, spring is potential, summer is fruition, and fall is harvest. Light is life, and the gradual retreat of sunlight is correlated to decay, disease, and inevitable death.

 

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”

 

The creative life is no different, but it is individual to every author and artist.

 

Perhaps, I’m weird because my relationship to the seasons has changed. Life experiences have altered my perception of them, along with my understanding of my own creativity. I’ve grown in self-knowledge and awareness of myself: creativity, included. The one constant for me is the cyclical nature of feelings, and the circadian rhythm of my creativity is a meeting of opposites that are reflections of each other: lightness and darkness; the ebb and flow.

 

That and I love autumn: the slow but beautiful striptease of trees losing their leaves. Like Proust’s madeleine, wood smoke evokes powerful memories. We all have an olfactory arsenal of scents that hurl us across the continuum of space and time, to places, events, and people. It could be a perfume or the distinctive fragrance of Play-Doh.

 

Back to metaphysics…I came late to the artistic life, meaning I was creative but without any sense of craft. I drew and painted for fun, and not because I had ‘something to say or explore.’ As a child, I was not aware of Time, of mortality. I created on Impulse, with little regard of any clock. Don’t get me wrong, I write for fun now; it makes me happy, and I feel most alive when I’m writing, but I’m older, know better, and have some understanding (however perverse) of craft.

 

I’m moderate by disposition. I dislike extremes. I don’t like too hot, too cold, or too bright and too dark. I do have, however, a quarrel with summer. For medical reasons, I’ve become intolerant to heat. When the thermometer reaches 84 degrees (29 Celsius) and beyond, my personality changes. I become irritable and anxious, unable to focus. I’ve concluded that when you’re cold, it’s easier to get warm, but when you’re too hot, it is Hell (figuratively and literally). I can’t write during the summer, unless I have an AC on.

 

Whether I have talent or not, I don’t know, but one thing is evident: what I don’t lack is discipline. I write throughout the year.

 

If I had to choose, I’d say that I am a winter person. The seeds long dormant from decades of reading and experiences have been activated. Perhaps, it’s the awareness of my own mortality or, to quote Dylan Thomas, my “rage against the dying of the light.” I don’t mind the winter doldrums—unrelenting days of gray and drizzle can weigh me down—and those days between Christmas and New Year are the most godawful time of year for me for personal reasons, a wasteland, but I write nonetheless. To put the metaphor in a more positive light (pun intended), I am an iceberg in movement. I float in water as a different manifestation of liquid, but still water. Though it appears I move slowly, I melt and I shed what has been frozen inside. Writing to me is what Kafka said about books: “the axe for the frozen sea within us.” I’ll write out all that is within me, in the time I have left to me.

 

A suggestion for you, dear reader. Music is a sonic tableaux—one way to access your thoughts about creativity. Listen to each of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, or individual meditations on each season, such as Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Sibelius’ Tapiola, Schubert’s Die Winterreise, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

 

What emotions do they provoke in you about your relationship to your creativity?

Doom of Darkness Time

 Q: The days are growing shorter: do the seasons affect your writing schedule, or ability/preferences, in other ways?

-from Susan

The question is complicated by the fact that several major holidays fall within the Doom of Darkness Time, which for sure affect my writing schedule. It’s hard to keep an eye on the turkey while batting out the daily word count. Buying and decorating the tree is a two-day total loss, and since I host Christmas Day for my extended family, most of the week before is shot. Then there are the holiday lunches that, honestly, suck up most of a day each. Not that I’m complaining. Anything to distract me from the fact that it gets dark too damn early!

My rough schedule is to write 500 to 1,000 words in the afternoon, but wait! If the afternoon is now only a few hours, I feel like the daylight’s already fading at 4, which is when I might be getting into the zone. 

Then, setting aside the discombobulations to my professional life, there’s the damper it puts on my interior mental state. Now that the kids are grown and scattered, the rush from mid-November to present-opening Christmas morning is not filled with holiday music and twinkling lights so much as twinges of regret and what could be a wee bit of self-pity if I didn’t consciously bat it away. Finding non-plastic, beautiful, creative presents for sons and grandchildren was a challenge I loved. With the youngest grandson now in college, cash is definitely the preferred gift. After all, how could I possibly know which electronic thing is the coolest, fits with their other electronic equipment? And no one wants slippers.

So, yes, you could say I am affected by this season. The best part is that, even if imperceptibly, more light trickles in starting the day after the Winter Solstice. Oddly, that day is the beginning of the defined winter season, which sounds ominous to light-lovers, but it also denotes the darkest day of the year. It will get better, a promise we have to take on faith for awhile, but by the end of January, yes! More light.

 

Please, if you’re still building your Christmas list, add books. And, ahem, please note my first château mystery is out in the more affordable paperback later this month and can be pre-ordered, and all three of the re-released Dani O’Rourke books are handsome paperbacks too. I have cats to feed.

 

We Can Be Heroes

  

by Abir

 

Whom do you consider the greatest hero you’ve read, and why?

 

This is an interesting question. Are we talking fiction or non-fiction? And how do we define hero? The great thing about a blog like this is that I’m free to interpret the question in any way I want. So let’s go with fiction.

 

Heroes. Meh. I can take ‘em or leave ‘em, at least in the sense of the guy who swoops in and saves the day or the damsel or the whatever else it might be. Anti-heroes, now they’re much more my cup of tea. Give me a flawed protagonist, or even better, a failing protagonist, and now you’ve got my attention.

 

We like character because of their flaws. We relate to them because of their failings. It’s what makes them human. And for me, generally the more flawed the better.

 

That doesn’t necessarily mean a cop with a drinking problem or a drug problem or a loner or a corrupt officer (though it can be any of these). For me, the ideal hero is an everyman or everywoman, just trying to get by, who’s thrown into an extraordinary situation, and sometime failing.

 

Other than flaws, what do I want in a hero? 

·      A sense of humour would be nice. The darker the better. 

 

·      Intelligence – I want a hero who uses brains over brawn.

 

·      A love interest – ideally the love is unrequited, but it has to be complicated, otherwise what’s the point?

 

·      A person whose conscience is compromised, but who, despite everything will make a stand (if only partial) for the truth – I admit, I’m a sucker for a morally compromised or uncertain hero, mainly because I fear anyone who is too sure of anything, be it religion or ideology. I’m always on the side of the doubters, the ones who don’t believe they have all the answers or a monopoly on truth.

 

·      I don’t know what else. I guess it depends on the character and the situation.

 

 

So where does that leave me? Who is my favourite hero in fiction? There are a couple of runners-up: Bernie Gunther, the hero of Philip Kerr’s series set in Nazi era and then post-war Germany; and Arkady Renko, Martin Cruz-Smith’s detective working in first Communist, then post-Communist Russia. They are similar characters, and they tick off so many of the requirements on my list. Bernie is probably too well built to be my perfect hero – he’s too good with his fists. Arkady though, I picture as borderline consumptive, which is much more up my street. 

 

But what about my favourite character?

 

That would have to be, the one and only Winston Smith from George Orwell’s 1984. He ticks pretty much all of the boxes, save maybe the sense of humour, but the world he’s living in does not much allow for humour. But there are flashes of it, and what little there is tends to be as black as pitch.

So why do I like him?  He is an everyman. There is absolutely nothing special about him, other than he is a non-conformist. He has a brain, and he questions things where others accept them. Physically he’s just a middle-aged man in poor shape, the very antithesis of the model of masculinity the society he lives in venerates. As for love interest – his relationship with Julia is, in my opinion, tragic on even a Shakespearian level. Any finally, there is failure. Total and utter failure. Winston rebels against the Party. Right from the start he knows it’s futile, but he does it anyway, because his conscience compels him, and the result is tragic. 

 

I’m not sure what it says about me, that I should place such a character as my favourite hero in all of fiction. Nothing good, I’m sure, but there you go. 

 

Heroes, the best heroes, I think are those who could be us. Who embody our values and who can fail just as we fail. But they can also succeed, sometimes against the odds, and that too, because it is unexpected, is wonderful.

 

So here’s to the ordinary heroes, the flawed human beings who sometimes triumph and sometimes fail, but who always try. Because they are the best of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heroes and Writing Goals from James W. Ziskin

Whom do you consider the greatest hero you’ve read, and why?

 

I’m going to interpret the word “hero” literally as a person of strong character who performs marvels and is possessed of noble qualities. And you know what? That kind of character in a book is usually boring. I had a professor long ago who asked her students who was a more interesting character, Melanie Wilkes or Scarlett O’Hara. Melanie was a kind, wonderful, upstanding, decent person. And she was strong. Who wouldn’t want to know her, be friends with her, love her? But, as a character? I vote for Scarlett. I find her more interesting.

 

The heroes I prefer in books and films are more of the quiet variety. They are heroic in subtler ways. Maybe it’s simply being decent or wanting justice to prevail. Or maybe just overcoming fear. They don’t have to wear capes and they don’t have to sacrifice their lives to save strangers. Not that I would object to that kind of heroism in real life; it would be inspiring. I simply don’t see that kind of book very often. 

 

Wait a minute. Now that I think of it, there was a powerful book five years ago with a beautiful, moving example of this kind of hero. A pretty bad guy sacrifices himself to save others. The book received lots of attention and took home several awards. But if I name it, I’m giving away spoilers. Message me if you really want to know, though I’ll bet many of you have read it and enjoyed it as much as I did.

 

So let’s put that to one side, shall we?

 

This week I’m taking a different road because it’s November. And November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.

 

For those not in the know, NaNoWriMo is that lovely time of the year when writers challenge themselves to get at least 50,000 words of a novel done. Whoever decided November was a good month to do that must have had no family or friends. The month only has thirty days to begin with, and Thanksgiving week is essentially lost to the holiday.

 

As for me, when I’m not staring off into space, thinking of something to write, I teach high school French. And I love doing that. But it means I don’t have much time from September to July to concentrate on much else. Teaching swallows up more time than just the hours in school. There’s curriculum planning, correcting, grading, meetings, professional development, and administrative duties as well. All that takes a toll on the writing stuff. Which leaves me little more than the summer for my writing. So, this year, July and August were my NaNoWriMo.

 

Over the course of thirty-nine days, I wrote an 85,035-word first draft of a new standalone, tentatively entitled The Prank. That came to 2,180 words per day. I spent hours at the library six days a week, toiling away on my novel, then many more at home and on Sundays doing the same. At first it seemed an impossible task, but as the days—then the weeks—piled up, the end of the journey appeared somewhere off in the distance. Far away, for sure, but it was in sight. So I wrote faster and, encouraged by my progress, I committed to crossing the finish line before September came. And I did. That’s how you write a book. One word after the other. One day after the last. Even when you don’t want to do it. Even when you’re tired and doubting yourself. When you don’t feel like it. When you’d rather watch TV.

 

I’m just now putting the finishing touches on the fifth revision of the book, and I’m sending it to my agent in hopes that she might sell it. I’ll keep you apprised of any news.

 

The Prank

 

Set in December 1968, The Prank is the story of two mismatched souls who forge an odd friendship over the Christmas break in the fictional Central New York town of Hephaestus. One is a thirteen-year-old sociopath named Jimmy. The other is his seventh-grade English teacher, twenty-four-year-old Patti Finch. They’re both reeling in the aftermath of the accidental deaths of Jimmy’s favorite teacher, Rick Voohrees, and Jimmy’s close friend Artie Lionel. Patti was involved in a secret love affair with Rick and is devastated by his death. As the new year approaches, the unlikely pair grow closer, even as their “forbidden” friendship is a scandal waiting to be discovered by investigating police and nosy reporters. But what Patti doesn’t know is that Jimmy was responsible for the fatal accident that killed Rick Voohrees and Jimmy’s best friend. And Jimmy’s not done causing chaos yet.

 

 

 

 

Go ahead, make my day

Whom do you consider the greatest hero you’ve read, and why?

by Dietrich

The answer to that has changed over the years. Early in my reading life I would have named Robin Hood, Zoro, Tarzan, Shane, and Hawkeye. As I got a little older, it became True Grit’s Rooster Cogburn. I think I liked that he had an extra dimension that my previous heroes — he wasn’t all good, in fact he had some pretty rough edges — like real people.

Harper Lee’s Atticus Finch was wise and a straight shooter. He didn’t lose his head while all around him others did. And I admired that. And Steinbeck’s Tom Joad — a man with an inner toughness who rose to whatever life handed him, or didn’t hand him.

I first met Harry Callahan on the screen in Dirty Harry, ’71 I think. I instantly liked his way of standing for right, and going against the rules to get things done. I had an African Grey parrot at the time who I taught to say “Go ahead, make my day.” Like Dirty Harry, the parrot was pretty tough too — bit a Doberman on the nose when it got too close, giving him some of his own big dog attitude. Anyway, there were novelizations of the four films, Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, and Sudden Impact, all published between 1971 and 1983. Afterwards Warner Books published twelve additional novels between 1981 and 1983, all by author Dane Hartman, a pen name attributed to several authors.

Marge Gunderson from Fargo was another one of my film hero favorites. So down to earth, an expectant mother with a badge, making short work of a buffet and all the while solving crime.

You can’t have a great hero without having an equally great villain. Someone that gets under the reader’s skin enough to make them want the writer to send in the hero and take care of business. Again, through the years, I might have come up with Batman and the Joker, Darth and Luke, Harry and Lord Voldemort, Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, Dr. Frankenstein and his creation in Mary Shelly’s masterpiece. Among my favorite heroes and villains from books I’ve enjoyed since adulthood: Randle Patrick McMurphy and Nurse Ratched from Ken Kesey’s wonderful One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Clarice and Hannibal from Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs. And there’s Martin Brody and the Shark from Peter Benchley’s Jaws. And there’s Cormac McCarthy’s The Road which is one of the best examples of man vs. nature that comes to mind.