The Lady Killers

From Mary Anna--Publication day!

Well, today's the official pub date for Findings.  Eek.  Friends are starting to tell me that their copies have arrived from Amazon, although the Amazon site says they don't have it yet.  Libraries are starting to show it in their catalogs.  And I'm starting my book touring, which is a bit more slow-motion than the tour Rhys is entertaining us with.

This weekend I'll be signing in Gainesville and Orlando, Florida--Urban Think in Orlando on July 11 at 7 pm, and Goering's Book Store in Gainesville on July 13 at 2 pm.  Then I'll be doing "short-burst" tours in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida.  As always, a schedule is posted on my site:  http://www.maryannaevans.com

Because we writers can't get away with doing one thing at a time, I'll be working on the next Faye Longchamp mystery, Floodgates, in the interstices of that busy schedule.  It's set in New Orleans, and I've had some fascinating conversations this week with a man who coordinated locating many Katrina victims with technology that included satellite photos, aerial photos, GIS, GPS, cell phones, satellite phones, flatboats, airboats, high-axle rescue vehicles, and airplanes that ferried in data that couldn't be sent through the crippled internet service.  Absolutely engrossing stuff.

And I've also spoken with a woman who did archaeology at the site of Andrew Jackson's Battle of New Orleans, documented the historic significance of the city's (doomed) drainage system, and dug up both the Hotel Rising Sun and the station for the Streetcar Named Desire. 

Will this stuff go in the book?  Absolutely.  How?  I have no idea.  Yet.  But I figure that if it's interesting to me, I can make it interesting for you.  And it's all about the readers...we love you guys.

Ifi it's Wednesday, it must be Denver

To anybody who thinks that book tours might be glamorous.... my day began with a 6 a.m. flight, checked into hotel, spoke to a retirement community, had lunch with them, signed at 2 Barnes and Nobles, went to hotel to change then two proper events at a mystery bookstore and Tattered Cover in Denver. Tomorrow another early flight.
I'm staying at lovely hotels but have no time to enjoy pools,health clubs, spas or even room service.
I do get occasional treats: yesterday I spoke at a store called Cheesecake and Crime. It sells cheesecakes to die for and mystery books. What a fabulous combination. I had to sample extensively. How about cheesecake truffles or strawberries with cheesecake inside them, dipped in chocolate?
So far I've been lucky enough to have had great turn out at all my events, which makes it all worthwhile. And I've met so many nice people.
Four more days before I get to sleep in my own bed again. When I left the Vegas hotel this morning I met other guests just going to bed.

One very tired Rhys

Publishers Weekly review

It's too hot to think today (90 degrees, and I wilt at 80), so I'm going to take the easy way and post Publishers Weekly's review of Black Ship (due in Sept):

Black Ship: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery Carola Dunn. St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-36307-9 At the start of Dunn's diverting 17th Daisy Dalrymple 1920s mystery (after 2007's The Bloody Tower), Daisy and her Scotland Yard detective husband, Alec Fletcher, have inherited a large house from Alec's great-uncle near London's Hampstead Heath. While the couple are delighted with the extra space for their growing family, they have doubts about their new neighbors. Then the maid discovers a dead body in the garden one morning, and Daisy and Alec become entangled in a case involving bootleggers, American gangsters and black ships (e.g., rum-running vessels). Meanwhile, the nanny can't get used to the idea that Daisy as a modern mother actually wants to play with her babies. Dunn provides an intriguing view of the Prohibition era from the English perspective, besides casting a witty light on the social changes of the day.

It's the first review, cheering to have a good one whatever the next few say! What's more, it gets everything right (except using e.g. in place of i.e). I hate it when reviewer get the names wrong--or anything else for that matter. And I find it really irritating when the "review" is just a capsule precis of the story. I had a starred review in Kirkus once of which the star was the only bit worth quoting.

I just found out that the UK edition from Constable and Robinson is also coming out in September--Daisy makes it to England at last!

Carola www.geocities.com/CarolaDunn/

Tours virtual and such

Rhys's posts on touring are so much fun to read! I don't want to take up much bandwidth, so I'll just put in a short plug here for a friend who has put up a clever guide to touring of a different sort, i.e., "blog book touring," at the following location: http://quickest.blogbooktourguide.ever.com
My pal Dani has pulled together a whole lot of info in a nice, easy to read package. So, if you're wondering what blog book tours are and why folks might be interested in  such, please check this out.

Travels with my Hat

Rhys butting into Ann's day on Monday but I'm trying to send a small daily post from my booktour.
Day 2 in the LA area where the weather is gorgeous and the beach calls and instead I had a day of bookstores and freeways. I forgot to mention that my husband persuaded me to bring my fabulous English hat with me on the tour. It is too large to get into a suitcase so it has its own carrier bag, making one more difficulty at airports. But it is stunning. I'll have a picture taken tonight and post it.
Yesterday was all chain stores. I was greeted graciously at each of them and the first thing they did was to take me to their cafe and offer me a beverage. After 2 lattes, I switched to water, but after several stores the trips to the rest room became important.
In Huntington Beach my old next door neighbors came to surprise me. And in Brea a delightful highschooler who LOVES historical novels and is becoming a writer herself.
And it was a thrill to see a tower of my books near the front of the store (having been on former tours where the clerk literally had to crawl along the floor to locate one copy).
Today it will be Vroman's--one of the grand old independents, still thriving in these difficult times. I'm hosting a champagne party. I hope people show up for it. It's always a worry at stores I've never been to before. At most mystery bookstores I can guarantee a good audience, but the big indies--well, they get Al Gore and the like. I'm small potatoes to them.
I'll report on it tomorrow.
Rhys

More thoughts on plots

Jane here, and Sharan’s post yesterday about plots has made me ponder. It’s received wisdom, isn’t it, that in plot terms there’s “nothing new under the sun.” Certainly plays and books and poems from long ago, as Sharan illustrated, have plots that resonate with us today. The trappings are different – the settings, the societies in which the characters lived and acted, the gods they worshipped, the food they ate…But human nature itself hasn’t changed that much.

There are supposed to be only seven basic plots – but when it comes to defining which these are, opinions vary. A modern list, in Christopher Booker’s book “The Seven Basic Plots: Why we tell Stories” goes like this:

Overcoming the Monster
Rags to Riches
The Quest
Voyage and Return
Comedy
Tragedy
Rebirth

Hmmm…I’m not sure I agree. For a start, where does that leave mysteries, I wonder? Overcoming the monster? Or Quest? I haven’t read the book yet – it looks interesting, so I probably will – and I presume the author explains how the various different genres of our literary and dramatic world fit into his seven categories. But all the same, I’d like to suggest an eighth item for his list – something like Right versus Wrong, or maybe even Puzzle and Solution. They seem to me at least as valid as Rags to Riches.

Well, possibly arguing about exactly how many plots there are is as fruitless as debating, (like mediaeval philosophers,) how many angels could dance upon the point of a needle. We can all agree that there are a finite number of human emotions and relationships, so there must be a finite number of stories about them.

And anyway – does it matter?

Plots are important, but not as important as characters. That’s even true in mysteries, which are stories that need (as my English teacher used to say) a beginning, a middle, and an end. You’ve got to have a well-constructed tale, clues that are fair to the reader, and a satisfying outcome with not too many loose ends. I never mind one or two minor ones, actually, as long as the basic puzzle is unravelled; after all real life is full of loose ends! But it’s good characterisation that makes a good book. If the people acting out the plot aren’t believable, with plausible motives, and actions that make sense in the light of their personalities, then the best-crafted plot in the world isn’t enough to transform a competent mystery into a real page-turning corker.

That’s my view, but it obviously isn’t everyone’s belief. There are plenty of best-selling mysteries, particularly at the thriller end of our genre’s spectrum, whose characters are little more than cardboard cut-outs, yet the plots are fast and furious and that’s what gives enjoyment. No names, no pack-drill – I daresay you can all think of examples. I don’t go for such books myself; I can’t help the feeling that however popular they are, their writers have missed a golden opportunity by not enhancing their brilliant puzzles with believable people. But they sell; bookshops and libraries are full of them.

Time will tell whether I’ll ever reach the exalted status of a best-seller. But if I do, it’ll be by sticking to my view that a mystery without good characterisation is like roast beef without Yorkshire pudding.

 

 

Roadtrip Day 1

Rhys, checking in on the first day of my book tour to launch A Royal Pain. I decided at the last minute to take my fabulous new English hat with me, but it requires its own carrier bag so I was slightly laden as I went through security. I'm flying American and guess what, they charge $15 to check a bag now. But as I wasn't about to heft mine above my head, I had to bite the bullet. I find this a most discriminatory charge as it is the elderly, those with shoulder and neck problems and those traveling with small children who are most affected. Healthy young adults can throw great weights above their heads!
So far so good. Flew into LAX on time, only saw a hint of haze from the fires in Big Sur and Goleta as we flew past. I'm being whisked around LA by a really nice minder and I'm staying at the Beverly Hilton (I know, it's a hard life but someone has to do it!) Since it's 4th of July weekend, I wasn't expecting much of a turn out anywhere, but I was pleasantly surprised in Thousand Oaks to find a  full store waiting for me. And a reasonable turn out in Westwood. Then had a lovely dinner with my daughter who lives in LA. She's been laid off from her movie job so I was able to cheer her up a bit. Tomorrow it's still LA area but various chain stores. This will be interesting....

thoughts on plots

Sharan here.  But where is here?  This weekend I'm in Ashland, OR for the Shakespeare festival.  Tonight is a very different version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", or so I'm told.  Last night I saw a production of a play written in India over 2000 years ago.  "The Clay Cart" is about an honorable man unjustly accused of murder.  It's also about overthrowing an evil king, a box of jewelry that is stolen, returned and stolen again.  There are a lot of lovely bits with minor characters.  A sub theme is India's caste system. Several times different people announce, "Character is more important than caste." 

As a writer, two things struck me about this play.  The first is that there really are no new plots.  It's all in what we do with the archetypal stories. The second, I note somewhat sadly, is that no one seems to listen to writers.  All those centuries ago it was pointed out that the content of one's character is more important than the circumstances of one's birth.  But India still has a caste system, in fact if not in law, and the rest of us aren't that far ahead.  It was an interesting play to watch on the Fourth of July. 

As mystery writers we still struggle with these issues.  How do we present universal themes in fresh ways?  And, for some of us, how do we show the class, racial and religious prejudices of the past (and present) without seeming to be anachronistic or preachy?  In Rhys' new series, and Carola's Daisy books, even though they are delightfully light and fun, there is the underlying problem of caste.  In 1920's England, there were things that upper-class people couldn't do and marriage across class lines was just as frowned upon as across castes in India.  In America we are not immune; money and education are our dividers.  Perhaps it's human nature to create levels in society.  If so, we can both reflect this and try to shatter the stereotypes.  As "The Clay Cart" proves,  it seems to have been the job of writers for a long, long time.

Sharan, www.sharannewman.com

From Mary Anna--It never gets old...

Well, it's the fourth time that a bunch of books with my name on the front landed on my doorstep.  You'd think it would start to feel...ordinary or something, but no.  Like any self-respecting reader, I like the simple feel of a book in my hand--especially a hardcover, because of its heft and the way it balances across my palm.  And the cover of FINDINGS is just so pretty.  I know I've shown it to you before, but I can't help myself.  Don't you love the way the artist used the emeralds in the design?

So now it's time for me to get out in the world and promote it.  I have my first signing Friday, July 11, at Urban Think! in Orlando at 7 pm.  I'll be on the radio earlier that day, at 1 pm, on Conner Calling, a program on WUFT-FM.  Then I'll be in Gainesville on Sunday, signing at Goering's Book Store at 2 pm.  This is just the beginning of a whole slew of appearances that will take me to North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Baltimore.  And probably points still unknown.

I post my schedule on my website, so if you think you might be near any of my book tour stops, check http://www.maryannaevans.com now and then for my itinerary.

In the peculiar double-vision world of a novelist, I'll be writing the next Faye Longchamp mystery, FLOODGATES, while I'm promoting FINDINGS.  So when people ask me questions, they can probably see me stop, do a mental rewind, and try to recall the tiny details of the previous book or, heaven help me, the one before or the one before that.  I can usually come up with the answer, though, after I dredge through the memory banks for a while.

Come see me if you're so inclined, and tell me that you're a Lady Killer reader!

Rhys's Tour de Force

A very jittery Rhys checking in on Wednesday morning: this is a big month for me, a busy month but a very exciting one. My new book A ROYAL PAIN was released on July 1st and my publisher is sending me on a fabulous tour. For the first time I'm being treated like a mini-celeb, and now I'm worrying that this book won't sell as well as the last one and they will think the tour was a waste of money. Ah, the insecurities of the writer.

I held my first event last night. Since the story is about royals and aristocrats in the 1930s, I am holding a series of royal tea parties and soirees with champagne and strawberries, and inviting ladies to wear hats, as befits a royal occasion. I am awarding a prize for the best hat on each occasion.

Well, the first event was not a disappointment. Almost every lady wore a hat, and indeed one over which they had taken considerable trouble: one was from the sixties, one was tartan decorated to honor Lady Georgie, and the winning hat was awarded to a couple who came in complete 1940s costume, with some 1930s adornments, like the gentleman's watch chain. They looked absolutely spiffing, as my heroine might say. Apart from the champagne blowing its cork and drenching the meringues, all went well.

Next event tonight, big launch party tomorrow and then I set out on tour, bright and early on Saturday morning. 9 days of bookstore appearances, interviews, flights, taking off my shoes and jacket, taking out my laptop and all the other little things that make flying fun these days. Since nobody discovered that I had a 12 oz bottle of water in my carry one when I went through JFK last week, I am a little suspicious about their security (accidentally, I must add. It was given to me as a freebie at London airport and I simply stuffed it into my bag and forgot it.)

I love book tours in many ways. How often in one's profession does one have a chance to be told over and over that one's work is appreciated and that one has actually made a difference in lives? I love meeting the fans. I love making new fans. But it's the standing in airport lines, the sitting on the tarmac waiting for a thunder cell to pass that I really hate. I wish I'd reached the level of the private jet, the way the super stars travel. maybe some day.

Until then, if you read this and would like to come and say hello at a bookstore and hear my tales of family secrets and royal scandals, then do check my itinerary on my website. It's www.rhysbowen.com, and the page is called Rhys on the Road.

I'll try to give a short blog update every day, so you can keep up with my progress. And somewhere during the week, I think I might have time to eat a meal.

Rhys