Archive for the ‘All Things Literary’ Category
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
…except it hasn’t changed at all, has it?
Can it really be a change when everyone is watching for it? Waiting for it? If everyone – and I mean everyone except the absolute Luddites who have their heads buried in the sand – knows it’s coming…can it really be a huge change?
Yeah.
The Associated Press ran this two or three days ago, a story by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg:
Weeks after Amazon.com said that it is now selling more electronic books than hardcovers, a leading book publisher said one of its prominent new titles is generating greater e-book unit sales than hardcover unit sales during its first week on sale.
Laura Lippman’s thriller, “I’d Know You Anywhere,” went on sale Aug. 17, and in its first five days sold 4,739 e-books and 4,000 physical hardcovers, said News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers.
“This is the first book of ours of any consequence that has sold more e-books than hardcovers in the first week,” said Frank Albanese, a senior vice president at HarperCollins. “What we’re seeing now is that if a book gets a good review, it gets a faster lift on the digital side than it does on the physical side because people who have e-readers can buy and read it immediately.”
In recent weeks, a number of leading publishers have indicated that e-books today account for about 8% of total revenue, up from 3% to 5% in the same period a year ago. Some expect that e-books will account for as much as 20-25% by the end of 2012.
***
Okay, first of all, let’s talk about this dumbass at HarperCollins. Read his quote again. The first book of any consequence. In other words, there were other books they published that sold more ebooks than print books but they didn’t matter…they weren’t of consequence.
What in the hell does that mean? They’ve published books they don’t think were of any consequence? Then why the hell publish them? And what if you’re one of those writers? The Great HarperCollins has published your book and the world is looking peaches and cream and then one of the senior cheeses publicly – extremely publicly – denigrates you to the world.
And I do mean to the world. This story has gotten a ton of coverage in the last few days. See, for those of you who aren’t total book geeks, this battle (much like the internal civil war in the Republican party between the moderates and the whacked out Tea Partiers…who want government to be juuuuusssst small enough to cut their Medicare and Social Security checks) is about the future of publishing.
There are those who believe traditional publishers (big operations that print bound books that then have to be warehoused and sold and that use lots and lots of trees) are going the way of the Edsel. What they think is that the digital book revolution is going to put them out of business. If anyone can create their own digital book (and anyone can, by the way), then why do we need big publishers?
Then there are others who believe traditional publishers have been smart enough in the last few years to see the digital retrenchment coming and have invested wisely and therefore have already put their train wrecks on another set of tracks and it’ll be smooth sailing…to completely mangle metaphors.
I fall squarely…in the middle. First of all, there will always be traditional publishers. The methods they use to print the books will absolutely change, but there will always be people who want to hold a physical paper book. Second of all, none of the big publishers has ever spent a dollar wisely in their miserable corporate lives. They completely missed the ebook revolution and, in fact, are still missing it.
How many of you guys have read an ebook lately? What did you see? You saw pages on a digital screen. You saw exactly the same thing you see in a book.
Exactly the same thing.
WTF?
It’s digital. It’s connected to the Internet or you wouldn’t be able to buy the books. If it’s connected, use the damned Internet. Give me value-enhanced content. Don’t make the ebook the exact same thing as a paper book. Utilize the new format and give me added value. Use the ability to glean information from all over the Internet and add it to what I’m reading.
But this is not my overall point. My overall point is this: remember where you were when you read that a major, major writer sold more ebooks than regular books because that’s the tipping point.
That’s when regular people – like the fucking AP who’s never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity and jump on the bandwagon months after it left town – realized something new and different was going on.
Eight percent of total revenue this year? They can’t count. When the cookies are all added up at the end of the year, ebook revenue will turn out to be closer to 15 percent and we’ll hit 25 percent of the market by Christmas, 2011. By the next presidential election, we’ll be hitting 35 percent, maybe higher. And that’s without any decent value added content. That’s with just quick and dirty paper to digital conversions.
It’s a brave new world and if publishers do it right, this is gonna be fun!
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Monday, August 23rd, 2010
I expected writers, discussion of books and the philosophy of literature….
I got bottles of whiskey, reproductions of ancient Greek temples, and Japanese World War II rifles.
Welcome to Nashville, baby!
I’ve been to 24 or 25 convention and yet had never been to Killer Nashville. Seeing as how we have friends in Nashville who I hadn’t seen in ten years, we decided to go. After all, it would be a nice, easy seven hour drive through beautiful country.
Uh…no.
The drive down was a disaster. First of all, I have back problems and as I get older, they get worse. So the fabulous little Mustang with bucket seats…that rides like a fabulous little Mustang with bucket seats…kills me worse every long trip I take in it.
And then, along a particular stretch of interstate in southern Illinois, the Illinois State Police had gone berserk. In a twenty or thirty mile stretch, they were stopping everything. Hmmm, we were close to Kentucky, the capital of the meth world? Uh…yeah.
Once we got through that, we hit the worst construction in the history of man. We were stopped more than not and crawling when not. It was the worst I’d ever been in and I lived in Denver for ten years so that’s quite a feat.
But…we also got to see the cross.
I’m not really sure what it is, or why it’s there, but it’s big. You can see it for miles. We didn’t have a place to pull over so I could get my gear out so I snapped a few with the phone.
Eventually, we made it to the hotel, got checked in, and realized we were starving. When we went food-trolling, we immediately came across a Famous Dave’s. Yes, it’s a chain, but it’s not bad and I had no clue where there might be any nearby Mom and Pop barbeque.
So we did that. But during the weekend we also had some great Mexican, Sonic burgers, and Schlotski’s sandwiches. Food-wise, the weekend rocked my black little heart.
Friday afternoon I gave my cold case presentation and it went swimmingly well. The audience, made up of writers, wannabe writers, and cops, were mostly three steps ahead of me the entire afternoon. Lots of questions, lots of interaction. It was great.
But we did have to start late so I filled the time with cop jokes. The writers tittered nervously while the cops laughed their asses off.
Friday night we went to see some dear friends, Randy and Stephanie Fox. Randy is one of the greatest writers in the history of…well, certainly Nashville, maybe all of Tennessee…(who doesn’t write enough fiction!) and we hadn’t seen them in ten years.
And, fabulously, it started as a meeting of whiskey. Randy works for Jack Daniel’s and I’d asked him to pick up a bottle of something for a friend’s birthday, and another pint of something for a friend who drinks Jameson’s because ‘merican hooch is too rough.
He’d brought those but also brought me a bottle of high-dollar Woodford Reserve.
Ahh…writers, barbeque, and lots of whiskey. So far so good.
After dinner, we went to Casa Fox to hang. During the hanging, Randy showed me his collection of World War II rifles. It was sort of odd to sight in a Japanese rifle that still had the chrysanthemum stamped on the barrel, but sort of cool, too.
Late Friday night I spent hanging in the hotel bar where a ton of people who’d seen the presentation bought me drinks and gave me their theories. And a bunch of people who hadn’t seen the presentation bought me drinks, asked me about it, and then gave me their theories.
But I also drank with young writers who believed I knew something about everything because I know people. It’s great to be a bit older and have met just about everyone in the industry. See, the young kids who don’t know any better think I actually know these people. That I call them and hang out and eat at their million dollar houses. Shhhh…don’t tell them otherwise….
Saturday dawned as a day of no panels and no requirements. Good thing, too, because LuAnn ended up quite ill. She wouldn’t have been able to make it through any panels. (though how hilarious would it have been for me to make a statement and LuAnn vomit at exactly that moment…sort of metaphoric and gastric all at the same time!)
Saturday afternoon I spent with Bill and Lisa Garramone’s house. Bill I’ve known since the 5th grade and his wife Lisa for about five weeks. My dear friend Brad was there from Atlanta, too. Sadly, my schedule had changed at the convention so I didn’t get as much time for them as I’d wanted.
But the time we did have was great. I walked in the damned door and Bill – who’d played for the opposing high school’s drum line when we were in school – cranked up two videos of their line at contests from 1983 and 1984. And yeah, both were tapes of contests THEY won, not us so that was nice for the old ego. Thanks, Bill!
And while I watched, his wife tried to get me drunk on vodka punch. She’s a beautiful woman no doubt, and normally I’d love a big, Amazonian blonde getting me drunk, but I just kept thinking about how to get my current high school line to play like the Midland High School line circa 1983.
Hehehe…how’s that for priorities?
After the video, Bill said, “Let’s go to the Parthenon.”
Seeing as how he’s a professional musician who’s played everywhere and knows everyone, I figured it was a recording studio or a club.
No, it’s the Parthenon.
You know…Greece? Big building, mostly fallen over? Foundation of western civilization blah blah blah?
Yeah, Nashville has one.
Why? Who the hell knows. It was built in 1893 or some shit, out of chicken wire and plaster of Paris for some low-rent World’s Fair or something, alongside a reproduction of a pyramid. For whatever reason, Nashville decided to rebuild it in stone. But they let the pyramid go because that would have been to gauche or something.
But this thing is absolutely incredible!
The scale is 1:1. That is, it is exactly the size of the broken-down old one in Greece. Let me tell you, standing next to the outside columns was delightfully humbling.
Much like my ego, this thing is gynormous! And when you walk in, you come around a corner and see a 41 foot tall statue of Athena. And doors that weigh about 3.75 tons each.
But the experience was marred, as so many of my experiences are, by the cops. There was a moment when I thought we’d get arrested (and how come I always assume I’m going to get arrested when I’m hanging with Brad?).
There’s no photography or cell phone usage in one particular part of the museum, see, and Brad yanked his phone out. Lisa had called him, see, to talk to Bill…who’d left his phone at home. I assume he did that so he wouldn’t have to talk to Lisa. But see, she was smart enough to call Brad and demand he give the phone to Bill.
At which point a security guard strolled by. I think she was swinging her baton like an old beat cop and she might have growled deep in her throat once or twice. Brad’s eyes swelled up like he’d been punched and we all started digging through our pockets for bail money.
But rather than hauling us in, she snapped a finger toward the exit. While we didn’t speed out, we certainly moved quickly.
Though the building was amazing, every once in a while I’d laugh because come on…in Nashville? Just randomly? There is one exact replica of this thing in the world and it’s Nashville? The absurdity of that just makes me laugh.
After, we went back to their place and I don’t think Bill or Lisa were particularly pleased with my instructions to their 2-year old daughter on how – exactly – to best dance a pole…you know, should she ever need to.
I had to leave to go check on LuAnn and her condition made it such that I couldn’t get back to them, which left me sad. But for the few hours I had, they were great fun, which is exactly how I remember Bill.
Sunday morning was my panel with other cops. It was great, except for one little problem that needed tweaking. And no, I won’t mention that tweak publicly, but if you buy me a beer or a shot in San Francisco, I’ll tell you all about it.
Great questions and the audience seemed very hip to learning about law enforcement. It was a great panel, too, because the other guys were retired and had worked different areas of large departments. I was active duty and with a small department so the audience go a great breadth of experience.
Overall, it was a great convention. Sold a few books, met a few fans, made a few more. And met some very hip writers and people. Gina Shade and Matthew Funk, Jessica and Lee Verday. Gary Jones. Ernie Lancaster. It was a good weekend, just what I needed.
Oh, wait, I almost forgot. I also saw a lady who’s fast becoming one of my dearest friends. Margery Flax, the biggest of the big wheels with MWA. It was great seeing her. And while she did kiss my cheek at one point, she also knocked me up for a hundred bucks.
Man, with friends like these….
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Sunday, March 28th, 2010
So…here’s something…I guess.
My new book is here.
The Cancer Chronicles brings together every single cancerous blog post that ever there was into a single book.
It’s all here: the whining, the crying, the teeth-gnashing. The anger, the depression, the inability to eat for days at a time.
But wait, there’s more: the shots and throwing up, the stumbling through the streets, the sleeping 31 hours out of every 24.
But wait, there’s still more: the coffin salesman, the treatment room where everyone wore too much make-up, the five nude nurses!
My biological father’s death.
And, as a value-added bonus: a piece I wrote after and about my heart attack originally published in Cemetery Dance.
Wow, that’s a helluva an advertisement, isn’t it? Depression, anger, rage, cancer, AND heart attacks, and all for only $14.95.
Seriously, there is some humor in it…I think it’s funny anyway…so it won’t send you screaming into your kitchen looking for a cleaver with which to cleave me.
Somewhere on this website, there is a buy button. Press that button (hehehehe…eight or ten times preferably) and the book will be on its way to you.
Actually, it’s a beautiful book. Chad Brokaw, of Brokaw Imagination, designed a cover that has exactly the kind of shocking, slightly-too-raw feel I dig. My wife, LuAnn Salz, did the interior design and I’m lucky they were in on it. They kept it from looking like something published in a basement on a mimeograph machine.
For those of you who’ve been asking for this, thanks for pushing me to get off my lazy butt and get it done. I hope it is what you expect.
And – obviously – I hope you buy lots and lots of copies for all your friends. Maybe you know someone who’s fighting cancer right now and maybe this will make them laugh hard enough to spit chemo outta their nose.
That’d be cool.
Stay tuned because throughout the year, I’ll have a pile of signings and readings scheduled. Hopefully, we can get some cancer patients there and make them laugh hard enough to do that whole chemo/nose thing.
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Saturday, November 7th, 2009
Okay, so a couple weeks ago, I made fun of a security guard at the Indianapolis Speedway. I wrote about how he was unable to think outside the box (read: letting Jim Born and I bend the rules a tiny bit) and how his single tooth was a monster that scared me and maybe chased me in a dream or two.
Well…now I have proof:
Yeah, he took that picture. It was a digital, point-and-shoot.
It was automatic focus.
How in the hell….
That’s all I have to say.
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Saturday, October 24th, 2009
Just back – okay, a week ago – from Bouchercon and it was fabulous.
Bouchercon, the largest mystery/crime convention in the world, is always a great time. It’s a chance to catch up with old friends, some of whom I only get to see once a year. But also, there are always new people to meet.
This year was no exception. I renewed my friendship with Neil Smith and Sean Doolittle, with Craig and Judy Johnson, Alison Gaylin and Karn Olson, the Jordons, with William Kent Krueger, with Jared Case and Dan ‘Tim’ Wagoner, with Sergeant Michael Black and Lt. Dave Case and Investigator Jim O. Born, with Keiren Shea, John Purcell, Sandy Loper-Herzog (who’s day gig is dealing with juveniles in the kind of job I simply could never do…my hat’s off to her in a huge way). I’m sure I’m forgetting someone and they’ll beat my ass next year but when you get old, the memory is the first thing…okay, second thing…to go.
But this convention, more than any other I’d been to, was to make a decision; to hit the re-set button or not. I took a lot of time and listened to some very wise counsel. These people, who were all supportive and who wanted to see a broader horizon, all confirmed what my gut had been saying for a few months. I could not have slept as well as night without them so to all of them, thanks.
Okay, now the fun stuff. This weekend was also about security guards. I’m not sure why it happened that way, but sometimes the planets line up and there ain’t dick you can do about it.
Friday afternoon, Jim Born and I decided to make a run to the Indianapolis Speedway. Jim’s more into races than I am, but hey, American Institution and all that, right? So we head out and we are just about the biggest cop geeks on the planet. All the way there, it was sort of like the scene in Lethal Weapon with Gibson and Rene Russo (ooooo she’s so purty) compare scars.
Jim: I had a case once where….
Trey: Yeah? That’s nothing, I once had….
Jim: Minor league, pal. Listen to this….
Trey: Hah, my dead grandmother could’a done better, but I once had….
So we get to the track and there’s a giant sign that says “NO PUBLIC ADMITTANCE” or the like. So naturally Jim and I take a step past that sign to get a better picture. The security guard absolutely jumps, all frothy and frenzied, from his patrol vehicle (read: personal truck used on the job) and comes to us.
“We’re just wondering if we could get a good picture?”
“No.”
“Yeah, but – ”
“No.”
But we manage to convince him to take a picture of us. While we doing that, Jim leans over and says, “How come I hear the ‘Deliverance’ music?”
See, the guy only had one tooth.
He might have been a great guy, but he had a vibe, baby, and I wasn’t completely sure we weren’t going to disappear, get turned into Soylent Green (I know, mixing my movies up, what can I say) and get served as crackers at the convention dinner.
Ultimately, somehow – I’m sure due to our incredible wits and survival skills and physical prowess – we managed to survive. We got back to the hotel, Jim promised me copies of the pictures (which he still hasn’t provided) and we promptly drank.
Next day, I’m out doing some photography. I find a factory, the kind of fetching, grimy, dirt-covered, ‘built America’ kind of factory that I’d never seen where I grew up. I snapped some pix, lined up a few ‘arty’ shots, and then discovered what would make a beautiful commentary on the state of American manufacturing today. But the shot was fucked by a slow-moving train.
No problem, I’ll wait. I’ve got some time. So I waited and waited and at least a good thirty minutes later was still waiting. Long and slow, this train.
Now, while I’m waiting, I pace back and forth on the sidewalk.
And I talk to myself.
I told you, I had some decisions to make and in that time and place was the perfect opportunity to debate myself about what I was contemplating.
But the convention center right behind me was none too comfortable with a man talking to himself, pacing the same twenty feet, and carrying a camera.
A security guard comes out, stands defensively on the other side of the chain link fence, and says, “Wha’choo doing?”
I held up the camera, figuring that was answer enough.
“Wha’choo doing?”
“Taking pictures.”
He stared at me and my coat. I was wearing a winter coat that said ‘Sheriff’s Office.’ Not my duty coat, but a cool jacket the sheriff gave everyone a few years ago for Christmas. After a few truly uncomfortable seconds, he frowns.
“You da poh-poh?”
“Yeah.”
A few more REALLY uncomfortable seconds pass. Then he shrugs.
“A’ight. I don’t care.”
And leaves.
No funny upshot to that story. It was just odd.
I thought about going for the trifecta later with a security guard who was watching over the Catholic flock at some sort of one day Catholic fest in the same hotel. I thought it might be cool to get molested by one of God’s own security guards but ultimately I thought better of it.
It would have been bad indeed if I had had to call the Sheriff’s Office for bail money.
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Saturday, June 6th, 2009
Tom Piccirilli, whose books you should be reading voraciously, sent me this link. It is the greatest thing ever and you should check it out. As Tom said, “At 100K, it’s a steal.”
SELLING MY RIGHTS to my finished MANUSCRIPT “PROMISES” – eBay (item 110388914313 end time Jun-10-09 13:18:31 PDT)
Damnit, I hate computer stuff. The above is a link but I don’t know how to copy links so cut and paste or whatever and go check this thing out. Be sure you read the chapter she has posted, it’s brilliant. Brilliant, I say!
UPDATE – Here is the link to the ebay auction:
SELLING MY RIGHTS to my finished MANUSCRIPT “PROMISES”
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Friday, December 5th, 2008
And it’s getting even uglier for books. The last two days, for those of you don’t obsessively watch the trades like I do, have seen reorgs, layoffs at the biggest publishers, backpedaling by HMH on the whether or not they’re buying books (and regardless of what they say, they’re pretty much not).
Today’s news is a salary freeze at Penguin of anyone making more than $50,000 a year. But in a situation where people, including senior editors, are losing jobs, it’s hard for me to feel anything for employees simply not getting a raise. The Penguin CEO said he hopes that will be enough to get Penguin through the next couple of years.
Let me pause for a moment and mention how petty all this must seem to the man or woman putting radios in new Fords who’re watching their CEO drive to Washington in a hybrid (and for my money, symbolism doesn’t work quite as well when someone has to point it out to you…it’s like a forced apology) to beg for money so you can keep your job and buy shoes for the kids.
I realize whining about books and lack of books is petty. I realize this particular Bushian-driven recession is entirely too deep to cry about the arts, but the arts are what I do, they are what affect me so their slow death by strangulation is what I see.
But it is the way of the near term. If basic security is in question, luxuries are doomed. Keeping a job is a basic security. And as basic as books are, they are definitely a luxury right now.
So if you’re buying Christmas for someone, think about books. Think about Tom Picirrilli’s new one, or Sean Doolittle or Ed Gorman’s. Or Craig Johnson’s newest Walt Longmire tale which is fabulous. Johnson has really stretched and taken some literary chances that pay-off brilliantly.
So buy some books. Please?
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Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
You’re paranoid, they said.
You’re gloomy about the entire industry because you got boned by an editor, they said.
But mostly, you’re wrong. So said a couple of my writer friends who were put off by my pronouncement on the state of the book industry a few days ago.
What I wrote was, “…over the next couple years, I fervently believe there will be no vibrant market. There will be, in fact, damned few books deals going ’round. It’s been ugly for a while, it’s getting uglier, and there will be lots and lots of great writers whose voices you won’t hear for a few years when it comes to novels published by a major house.”
Trey, don’t be such a wet noodle.
Uh-huh.
Here’s a bit of an email I got yesterday, it’s from the PW (Publisher’s Weekly) Daily Alert.
“It’s been clear for months that it will be a not-so-merry holiday season for publishers, but at least one house has gone so far as to halt acquisitions. PW has learned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books.”
There is other verbiage, that’s it’s “not a permanent change,” that the right projects could still be greenlighted, etc., etc. But what else do you need to know? One of the largest book publishers in the world is no longer buying books.
Yeah, that Trey is so gloomy.
I mean, okay, yeah, I am, but that’s not the point in this particular case.
One of HMH’s head muckety mucks, in the press release, said, “In this case, it’s a symbol of doing things smarter; it’s not an indicator of the end of literature. We have turned off the spigot, but we have a very robust pipeline.”
First of all, they didn’t turn off the spigot. The spigot is the user end of the pipe, where water pours into a cup and where the books pour into the hands of the readers. What HMH did is close the valve at the water plant, where all the water is collected and sifted and filtered and made palatable and put into the pipeline. So when he says there is a robust pipeline, how long does he think that will last when the very thing it is filled with – literature – is no longer being put into the pipeline?
But believe it or not, there is one tiny, little, micrscopic bit in the release that actually got to me maybe more than the lack of acquisitions. This guy who doesn’t know one end of a pipe from another said that HRH’s decision “is less about taking drastic measures than conducting good business.”
Therefore, by his definition, conducting good business for a book publisher is to not buy any books. Huh? Seems to me, then, that the obvious and logical inverse is that the bad business model for a book publisher is to buy books to publish.
And this is one of the people charged with care and feeding of the industry. There are two things I’ve done my entire life, two things that are absolutely essential to how I view and how I define myself. One is music and the other is writing. And this mope is in charge of the writing side of things.
Man, oh, man, does that blow industrial chunk.
And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the last sentence in the PW story. “But perhaps an editor at the house put it best; in an e-mail, the editor mentioned the policy and added, ‘Who knows what’s next.’”
Great…it might get worse than not buying books. I don’t even want to think about what that actually means.
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Friday, October 17th, 2008
So I write a post that’s about 414,983 words long bemoaning the ups and downs of Bouchercon. A writer friend of mine sends me a note saying, “Jesus. Bouchercon. It’s like golf: emotional torture for hours on end, then you meet David Simon. It takes a sick person to keep at it.”
That’s…like…414,957 fewer words than I used and it gets to the point much faster.
Damn you, SD, you and your talent! Damn you damn you damn you!
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Sunday, October 12th, 2008
I love Baltimore.
I love its dirt and grime, its tourists with big old baggy shorts and cameras hanging from around their necks. I love the horrible drivers who get hired as cab drivers. I love the smell of rotten fish down at the Inner Harbor. I love the Edgar Allan Poe grave site.
I especially love that Baltimore was the setting for two of my three or four favorite TV shows of all time, “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and “The Wire,” both created and written and produced and whatnot by David Simon.
Spent the weekend at Bouchercon, the annual mystery convention, wherein we gather all kinds of writers and editors and agents and publishers and fans and sycophants and various whoevers, and have a ball.
I always find myself, when surrounded by writers I admire, getting inspired. They make me think about things more deeply and work the craft more seriously and read more assiduously. In short, seeing these people and catching up with their projects makes me better.
There’s a great line in Metallica’s “Some Kind Of Monster,” documentary where the band has just offered Robert Trujillo the bass spot. Hetfield looks at Trujillo and says, “You make me play better.”
The writers of Bouchercon make me play better.
But they also make me crazy. See, I’m predisposed to jealously. Hate to admit it, but there it is. When someone gets a great deal or gets included in a Year’s Best anthology or wins a prize or whatever, I get jealous. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them. No, really. I want to see my friends and acquaintances do well. I want to see them get rich and get awarded and get good.
I just don’t want to be left behind.
The same jealousy happened to me when I wrote and published lots of horror, too. Went to those conventions and had all the same petty and ugly bullshit. I had hoped it would all lessen as I got older but I was wrong, it’s still there. And understanding they’re there has done nothing for my control of them.
First of all, even before we got there, things were rocking. On the plane, LuAnn and I had to sit separately. She ends up sitting next to Dennis Lehane and I didn’t realize it until half way through the flight. Lehane wrote “Mystic River,” and “Gone, Baby, Gone,” both of which became great movies. He is an incredible writer and one of those I consider waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy up the food chain from my perch. We ended up talking with him while waiting on bags at Balto airport and it was sweet.
So Thursday night, I hung out with friends and caught up and it was wonderful. Lori Armstrong’s new book just came out and it looks to be great. Sean Doolittle’s next book is scheduled for February and it’ll be fabulous, I’m sure. Karen Olson and Alison Gaylin have new books just out or on the way out and they’re rocking and rolling. Libby Fischer Hellman’s new one – ‘Easy Innocence’ – is just out and doing well. Michael Black and David Case, both Chicago PD members and writers, are doing well.
Everyone was doing great and sitting around just chillin’ out and it was fabulous.
Friday, same story. Some panels, wandering around Inner Harbor and taking a tour of the U.S.S. Constellation and the U.S.S. Tursk submarine and those were extremely cool. Then Friday night we went to Lee Child’s annual bash (he picks up the tab on an open bar for two solid hours and any attendees of the convention can drink…his way of saying thanks to some of the people who’ve put millions of dollars in his pocket…it’s a cool gesture).
And it was at the bash that the first great moment happened. I went to see F. Paul Wilson (author of ‘The Keep’ that became the movie…as well as tons of other great books), who I hadn’t seen in a few years. We’re talking, catching up, and some drunk guy bumped into me.
Turns out it was freaking Thomas Monteleone. “Trey,” he slurs. “Great to meet you!”
I almost shit a brick. This guy is one of the foremost writers in horror, one of the top editors, too. Back in the day, I had tried and tried and tried to sell something to him and just never cracked him. The fact that he was there at all, and that he remembered my work, blew me away. We had a fabulous conversation about all things writing.
Saturday was good, though things slowed down. And then I went to a shitty dinner at a shitty bar that played shitty music and had shitty-shitty food. Other than that, it was great. Ended up at the hotel bar on a panicked mission to find and schmooze an editor who has a book of mine. I’d been looking for her for the weekend and just hadn’t found her yet. Now the hours were ticking away and I was getting panicked.
No doubt the panic played into the bipolarness.
Remember, too, the building jealousy over the contracts and great reviews and all the rest. It wasn’t on display, but it was there…it always is.
So then I get introduced to two – FUCKING TWO – writers I’ve never heard of. Nor have I ever seen a byline with their name. Why? ‘Cause they’ve never written anything. Except the novels they just sold.
To the publisher I desperately want to be with.
Huh? Been working my ass off for 14 years and have no deal and these guys woke up one morning, wrote novels, and got contracts in the space of…like…37 minutes? Fuck that shit.
Oooohhhh, did I become Grampy McCrankypants. Jealous bipolar in full drama queen mode. I mean, I didn’t throw anything or yell at anyone or anything demonstrative like that. But I did have my glary face going and my monosyllabic grunt answers and flaring nostrils. And yeah, that’s all pretty hard to miss. I’m pretty obvious when I’m annoyed at something.
So, knowing I was channeling John McCain’s Grampy McCrankypants, I blew that popstand and went to bed. I figure if you’re looking for an editor to suck up to, best not have an attitude about her house offering hacks contracts but not you. See…ain’t so stupid.
Then Sunday, I was pretty much back to normal. In fact, Dennis Lehane saw me and asked after me by name…and then introduced me to? That’s right…David Simon. Couldn’t believe it. This man who wrote the book ‘Homicide,’ and then worked on the TV show, this man who showed the world it’s not just about car chases and shootouts.
And we end up having a long conversation because he’s been to Midland to cover stories. My hometown. We ate at some of the same places, we covered some of the same stories – me as a college journalist, him as a real one for the Baltimore ‘Sun.’ It was amazing. The man’s also been to Wink, Texas, home of Roy Orbison.
Then it was over and I said goodbye to some dear friends: John Purcell and Sandy Loper Herzog and Jared Case and the Jordans. And some new ones: Jim Born and Keiran Shea and it couldn’t have been a nicer weekend.
So out of the entire weekend, my bipolar/jealous/petty/ugly time, happened over about four hours. That’s a pretty good ratio of bad hours to good hours. And as horrible as all this sounds, I’m actually getting better about it. In a few more years, say around the end of President Obama’s second term, I’ll be all better.
Now that it’s all over and my bipolar has passed, I get to go work on a new short story, wherein I’ll play two different people; a situation that’s less bipolar than multiple personality disorder.
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