Sonnets, Sardines and Community

Welcome back to Word Nerd, Brad Parks. Brad's covers in his post how he came to be here and all about the Sardine-y award Word Nerd bestowed on him in 2010. What he doesn't mention is that his first book, Faces of the Gone, won both a Shamus award and a Nero award, a feat never-before accomplished in the mystery book world. His second novel, Eyes of the Innocent, released yesterday so find it at your local bookstore.  

By Brad Parks

            There have been sonnets written about the night I met Bethany and Stacie, and with good reason.

As I recall, it was a flawless autumn evening on the Great Plains, when gossamer strands of moonlight illuminated the gently waiving wheat, when lowing cattle sang out to grazing sheep, when all of nature achieved a harmony that…

Yeah, okay, it was actually a stinky, crowded dive bar in Indianapolis. (Not that I have a problem with stinky dive bars).

And maybe there weren’t sonnets written, just a previous post on Word Nerd  (I don’t particularly like sonnets anyway).

            We were half-deaf from the too-loud cover band, desperately trying to get a drink, crammed up against each other in a mash of elbows and shoulders. I think at one point Stacie even copped a feel of my ass without meaning to. (Not that I have a problem with that, either).

            But, the point is, we made a connection. Bethany e-mailed me a few days later and we’ve been corresponding buddies ever since. I’m not sure what Bethany’s gotten out of the deal, but I know I’ve enjoyed the back-and-forth. I suspect it may have even given me a leg up on the competition in being award the prestigious Sardine-y Award for Best Newly Discovered Author of 2010.

            And it never would have happened if not for Bouchercon 2009. Which brings me around to the whole point of this post: Community, and its importance for writers of all levels.

            In some ways, I’m probably the last guy who should be lecturing on this topic. As an author, I’m just about the biggest lone wolf this side of Jack Reacher. I don’t have a critique group. I don’t share chapters with other writers as I go. I don’t get line edits from my agent. I have a few early readers – none of whom are writers – and as long as they tell me everything makes sense, I send in the manuscript.

So what does a guy like me need community for? Everything else. Encouragement on the down days. Camaraderie on the good days. Perspective on all the days in between. Knowing there are other people in the world who sits around and dreams up creative ways to kill people.

            And, man, was it a revelation to learn I wasn’t the only one. Before I signed my book deal, I actually had no clue there was such thing as mystery conventions, or writers’ organizations, or blogs, or any of it.

I wrote my debut, FACES OF THE GONE, in total isolation. It sold to St. Martin’s/Minotaur in July 2008 and in September of that year, my editor, Toni Plummer, told me about this thing called Bouchercon. I registered and sent an e-mail to this woman named Ruth Jordan – who the heck was she, anyway? – to make sure I did everything right. (Little did I know, I could have just stopped right there, put my entire life in Ruth’s hands, and ended up quite well off).

I went to Bouchercon in Baltimore and it was like the world opened up to me. I met readers, writers, bookstore owners, community legends, reviewers, publicists, bloggers, even my fabulous future website designer (hello Maddee James of xuni.com!). If I even tried to catalogue the wonderful things that have sprung from that one Bouchercon – not to mention the two that have followed it – I would totally blow the 700-word limit Bethany imposed on this guest post.

And it’s not just Bouchercon. The same applies to Thrillerfest, Left Coast Crime, Sleuthfest, and on, and on. Point is, if you’re sitting on the sidelines, wondering if you’re really “ready” for a conference, questioning if it’s worth the time and expense, my advice is quite simple: Go. Mix. Mingle. Shake a few hands. Take a few business cards.

No matter where you are in the process – slaving over that forever-imperfect first manuscript, lining your trash can with agent rejection letters, or counting all the zeros in your royalty statement – I guarantee you’ll get something out of it.

Oh, and make sure you find Bethany, Stacie and me at St. Louis Bouchercon this year. We’ll be happy to chat. We’ll try not to grab your ass.

Varied Voices -- Sean Munger

Say hello today to Sean Munger and stick around after his blog to find out about how you can snag some copies of his Giamotti books.

Why I Will Never Have A Life Without Giamotti

By Sean Munger

One of the great—and terrible—things about writing is that what you write never really goes away. Just this month (June 2010) the new ebook version of my science fiction novel Life Without Giamotti has been released, marking another milestone on what I can hardly believe has been a twenty year odyssey with these stories and their eponymous main character.

Life Without Giamotti was first published in paperback form by Buffalo Fetus Productions in 2006, but the story and the character of Giamotti have been around for much longer than that. In high school I had the curious idea for a character, a sort of darkly intelligent and devious biker who becomes sentient, realizes he is a fictional character and sets about trying to bring himself out of his novel and into reality. From the beginning the character of Steven Giamotti seemed different than any other character I’d created. He is not just devious; he has a total lack of human emotions and the capacity for empathy, making him capable of true evil. He isn’t just arrogant and ambitious, he’s megalomaniacal. And I quickly learned over the various early drafts throughout the 1990s that he had his sights set a lot higher than I appreciated at first. Becoming a real person in the real world was only a first step. Ultimately he wanted to become God: omniscient, immortal, and all-powerful.

The story of how Giamotti sets out to do exactly that finally jelled in Life Without Giamotti, but there are so many facets to his journey that the leftovers from the sixteen years of labor on the first book quickly became the two sequels, All Giamotti’s Children (published in 2008) and Giamotti in Winter (published in 2009). Now, after three novels, twenty years, and Giamotti’s adventures across time and space ranging from the American Revolution to the swanky nightclubs of Manhattan in the 1950s, it feels like the whole thing is starting over again with the publication of the ebooks. The first ebook is already out, available from Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/life-without-giamotti/11179131) and the others will be released in digital format soon.

Buffalo Fetus Productions, working through the web-based printer Lulu, has proven to be a terrific option for the publication of the Giamotti books. The publishing business has changed radically in the last ten years, with traditional brick-and-mortar publishing houses struggling to adapt to a new environment largely defined by technology and with multiple new ways to access books. Life Without Giamotti is a very unusual book with a non-linear narrative, complex characters that drift in and out of the plot at unpredictable times, and deals with a lot of mind-bending metaphysical concepts that go pretty far beyond traditional science fiction tropes—not the kind of stuff traditional publishers are likely to take a chance on. The rise of technology-based book presses like Lulu have suddenly made it possible for tiny publishers to capture niche markets, and that makes all the difference with non-traditional books like the Giamotti trilogy. I never set out to be on the New York Times’ bestseller list, but I’m amazed that the story of Life Without Giamotti has found its way from my laptop in suburban Oregon to bookshelves across the Americas, in Norway, in Germany and all places in between. The books have been read at both poles of the Earth: I once got an email from someone reading Life Without Giamotti at a research outpost in Greenland, and a copy of All Giamotti’s Children can be found in the library at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. All in all, that’s pretty satisfying.

I proclaimed myself “done” with Giamotti when I finished All Giamotti’s Children in 2009. A year later I wonder who I was kidding. Even as I move on to other projects—my new book, The Valley of Forever, which is not part of the Giamotti saga, will be released sometime later this year—I know that Giamotti, being omniscient and all-powerful as he is, will never leave me. I wrote him to be immortal, and for better or for worse, he probably is. With the ebook versions giving him another lease on life, I’m sure he’ll be around for quite some time to come.

So -- now it's your turn. Sean talked about how he hasn't been able to let go of the character of Giamotti. What character from your reading has stuck with you over the years?

Post a comment and you could win! We've got two prizes this week -- first, the whole Giamotti trilogy in print for the grand prize winner and second, a e-book copy of Life Without Giamotti for the runner-up. The contest is open to everyone, even if you've won something here from Word Nerd before. Contest ends on Tuesday, June 29.

Varied Voices: Susan Arnout Smith

This week's guest blogger is Susan Arnout Smith, whose new book Out at Night just recently hit shelves. In her column today, she talks about the genesis for this new book.

(Un)comforting Food by Susan Arnout Smith

When I was growing up, often eating dinner was an anxious affair.

It’s what we did as a family at the end of a long day being apart. It’s where tempers flared, wars were fought. There were snipings, direct attacks, curve balls. And then we lunged at the butter, scooped extra servings of mashed potatoes and hunkered down for round two.

The food, always, was excellent, (my mother was a home economics teacher), but because of the uncertainty, because safety was never a given, meals were eaten hurriedly, and under stress.

We never knew if this was the meal where everything would be relaxed and cheerful, or the meal where something unexpected and fearful would come for us out of a dark place, galloping toward us with metal hooves and snapping teeth.

I know this wasn’t my parents’ intention. But it was the truth of our lives.

The table is where I learned to lie well for my own protection, to cover my feelings, and yes, to eat, even if I’d stopped long ago tasting the food or feeling hunger. It’s where I learned to hang on until dessert.

Some days I was lucky. Some days I was supremely not.

When I was thinking about writing Out at Night, my second thriller, (after writing The Timer Game, Minotaur, 2008), I thought about food and how this source of comfort and nurturing—much like a family—can be twisted into something dark and anxiety-provoking.

Perfect country for bad things. Perfect metaphor for genetically modified crops. Once an element has been added, it’s impossible to ever take it back. Not completely.

Now hunger is a terrible thing with a terrible human cost and face. It’s true that good has come from genetically modified crops: in the lab, scientists have created seeds that are drought resistant, weed resistant and even some—like Golden Rice genetically modified to carry Vitamin A, (funded by Bill and Melinda Gates)—will significantly improve the lives of children in Third World countries and prevent blindness.

It’s also true that scientists are combining genes from different organisms (translation: taking genes from humans and adding them to plants), to produce crops that will produce vaccines for AIDs and Hep B, or create insulin or help clot blood or inhibit diarrhea.

But what if you don’t want to eat a plant that produces a human gene to help clot blood? What if your blood works just fine, thank you very much, and actually you need a little aspirin every once in awhile to thin things out. What then?

Michael Fernandez, in a PEW initiative on Food and Biotechnology, makes the point that there’s no worldwide uniform standard about what constitutes seed purity. In the US, producers are required only to reveal how much of something not-seed is mixed in with that labeled seed. I take that to mean they’re not required, from the sounds of it, to disclose what that not-seed actually is. In all fairness to the producers, they might not know.

In 2005 in the UK, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs released a study that GM crops contaminate the countryside for up to fifteen years after being harvested. The study examined five locations across England and Scotland, sites not currently growing GM oilseed rape. They found ‘significant amounts’ of GM crops still there, growing willy-nilly mixed in with the new non-GM crops.

And there’s wind drift. When I was signing Out at Night on the island of Kona, I met wonderful organic coffee growers worried about this very thing. The organic papaya crops recently had been contaminated with pollen from GM papaya crops.

And the entire organic papaya crop had to be destroyed. Can you imagine, if that was your family’s harvest, your family’s work and sweat in the sun and dreaming hope of a payday, what that seemingly innocuous GM pollen drift had cost?

Sometimes even hungry countries turn back our non GM food, (we’re the world’s leading producer of GM crops), fearing contamination. That happened in 2002 when Zimbabwe refused an aid shipment of grain from the US. From where I sit, things have to be pretty serious before a starving country turns back food because it fears what it holds.

And we haven’t even begun to talk about what happens when you eat it.

In 2008, the Austrian government released results of a 20-week study. Results that confirmed that GM corn directly affected reproductive health in mice. The results were so startling (things died), that now there’s a serious and vocal push in Austria to immediately ban all GM goods and crops to protect the fertility of women around the world.

The Russians just completed a similar study at the Russian Academy. With similar results. Over half the off-spring of lab rats fed GM crops died within the first three weeks of life. And all the GM off-spring in the preliminary results were sterile.

The UK’s been worried about the cost of GM to health ever since one of their leading scientists, Arpad Puztai, went on British television in 1998 with word that biotech food stunted the growth of rats.

There’s rats. And then there’s us.

Inventive, creative problem solvers, working to eliminate drought and poverty and famine. Hopeful. Anxious.

Hungry.

William Neuman, in The New York Times, writes in an article August 29th about a move in the US to test and label products to identify them as being mostly biotech free. They do this already in the UK and have for some time. In order to get a ‘butterfly checkmark’ of approval, processed foods here will have to contain no more than 0.9 percent genetically modified material.

And so we live with percentages. In our food. In our lives.

The question is and always has been, at every meal, every moment, what dark thing is waiting to come inside?

Varied Voices/Author Answers with Gordon Zuckerman

Returning to an old format, Word Nerd's dishing up a Q&A today with Gordon Zuckerman who'se first novel recently hit shelves.

WN: What is the "Sentinels, Fortunes of War" all about?
ZUCKERMAN: The story line of the book deals with how six, advantaged and talented young people, having learned about the intent of the same German industrialist, who helped bring Hitler to power, to smuggle their Fortunes of War in 1943 out of Germany while there is still time oppose their effort. Concerned that the wealth could be used to fund a future Reich, the Six Sentinels develop and plsan to steal part of the money and use the appropriated funds to insure that the 2 billion dollars can never be used ireesponsibly to create another facist military dictatorship. Told through the evolving lives of each of the six principal characters, the story unfolds over two continents. Their counter-plot discovered, they are forced to evade the threat of the ever present and ruthless private security company, code named Samson.

WN: Where did the idea for the book come from?
ZUCKERMAN: Although, my education and business background have been in unrelated fields, I have remained a lifelong student of history. Having been exposed, by friends of mine in government, to the influence that cantcentrated wealth and power can exercise over our government, I wanted to write about what might have been the stories behind the stories of some of contemporary history's more significant events.

WN: What was the transition from business writing to fictional writing like?
ZUCKERMAN: As a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the founder and chief executive officer of a resort hotel company, I worked hard to develop what I considered to be good business written communication skills. When the time arrived for me to attempt the writing of th early drafts of the Sentinels, Fortunes of War, I was total unprepared for the rigors of what I quickly learned was an entirely new discipline. with the passage of time (7 years), many drafts, writing research, the assistance of several editors, I finally managed to writel my story in a form that passed the minimum threshold standards of publishers' editorial staffs. Having reached that point, I became fascinated in working with the Greenleaf staff to make my story a better book. What was the best advice I received? Early on, I was advised by an experienced editors to describe what I see as if I were telling the story out loud. since that time, I think of myself like a court room stenographer, who is recording what she sees. That's the easy part. Transitioning the early drafts into something that hopefully reads like an entertaining story is the real art form. The discipline and tenacity required to complete the process can really test the dedication and tenacity of a writer.

WN: What is the research process like?
ZUCKERMAN: This part of the writing process may be my favorite. Given my general knowledge of contemporary history, I try to outline at an early stage what I want to write about and develop a general story line.Once that is complete, I begin to search for some of the best historical works that have been written on the same subject. Fortunately, we are blessed with plethora of great historians that have gone to considerable length to brilliantly chronicle what ever subject about which I am interested in writing. Having identified three separate author's works that deal with the same subject, as seen through separate lens, I read each of the books concurrently. In so doing, I am attempting to develop a feel for what may be really happening. Using the power of logical surmise, I am always trying to develop the story by the story, hence the use of the fictional licence. I find the bibliographies of these books a treasure box of other pertinent works and with the aid of Amazon and Barnes and Noble, I feel I have access to the world's great library. Newspaper archives, Google, and recommendations of critical acclaimed reports are and will always remain a treasure source of information.

WN: What has been the most influential book you've read and why?
ZUCKERMAN: There is no single author that has impressed me over all others. The works of William Manchester, Herman Wouk, Fredrick Forsythe, Flecther Knebel, Nevil Shute, Leon Uris, Tom Clancy, Ron Chernow, standout in my mind. but it is the obscure, less well distributed book that continues to gush the fresh idea, that important piece of information that can make such an important contribution to the telling of a story.

WN: What are you working on next?
ZUCKERMAN: I have just finished a second book that identifies the desire of seven major oil companies, following the completion of World War II, to control 90% of the world's future oil production. Concerned that their efforts could result in a dangerous concentration of economic and political power, the Sentinels return to oppose this manifestation of unbridled greed in its early stages.

Varied Voices -- Simon Wood

Word Nerd had the opportunity to get to know Simon Wood during Bouchercon. He's quick-witted, and was one of the best moderators she saw during the convention. He was also gracious (after Word Nerd "lost" his first email in her inbox) to do a guest blog.

Scaredy Cat, by Simon Wood

People ask me what scares me, what my deepest fears are, and what sends me into a panic. Austin Powers says he fears only two things: nuclear weapons and carnies. I’m different. Pretty much everything frightens me. I think people are usually looking for a man-of-steel kind of an answer. But I have to disappoint. I’m scared of my own shadow. Literally. It’s always there, behind me, creeping up on me. There it is. Arrrrhh!!!

I’ll go into a cold sweat at a Starbucks. The choice dazzles me and I can’t make up my mind what I want. Suddenly that long line looks real short. Now the choice isn’t the scary thing, but what happens when the green aproned personage asks for what I want and my answer is er, I need some more time. I know the people behind me are going to start gnashing their teeth and all because I don’t know what fancy coffee I want. Eek!


Everyday things scare me. I lived in an apartment where the shower curtain had a habit of clinging to me when I got within a foot of it. The material had an odd texture that felt like skin when wet, which was a distinctly unpleasant sensation. I got to fear that damn shower curtain and avoided using it (and my wife got to hate that I didn’t shower). But that was enough to spur a story about a haunted shower curtain…


A while back, my Sisters in Crime chapter volunteered to man (or woman) the phones during the local PBS pledge drive. I feared my phone would ring, because I might get someone with a weird name I couldn’t spell. I thought, if I screw up the donation, PBS won’t get their money and Yanni won’t get his funding and he’ll hunt me down like a dog.


So yes, I can make anything scary. It’s a talent. Don’t applaud me all at once. You can’t all be like me.


I made author fears a topic at a World Horror Convention panel. It was a really interesting panel. A number of the authors discussed their darkest fears. Some were parents were frightened by the potential loss of their children. Several had had incidents that led them to write stories.

Fear makes for great storytelling. It’s a fossil fuel with an inexhaustible supply. It drives stories. It forces the reader, the writer and the characters to face what frightens them full on. Stories thrive on conflict and facing your fears is the greatest conflict. No one is fearless, so everyone can relate.


The best scary writing explores our archetypal “core” fears. People fear the unknown, the loss of a loved one, loss of liberty, loss of control, their position in the world. The point is that to write scary stories, you have to be fearful. The adage goes you write what you know and fears are very real and accessible. Horror stories just don’t explore someone’s fear of vampires, werewolves and Freddy Krueger. They explore a power stronger than the individual and that overwhelming power has the ability to rob you of what you hold most dear or thrust you into an environment you desire least. No one fears Freddy Krueger. Everyone fears what someone like that can do to them.

So my myriad of fears are good for my writing. They keep it real (scary). It’s easy to see what I, the writer, you, the reader, and they, the characters have to fear. For me it’s easy to slip into a fictional situation. My second thriller, Paying the Piper, was about child abduction. Now, I’m not a parent, but I can imagine myself in the parent’s position and the terrible state I would be in if my child was snatched from me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m next in line at Starbucks and I don’t know what I want.


Yours cowering under the bedclothes,
Simon Wood

Varied Voices -- Guest Bloggers Kas and Effie Valentine

Just because Bouchercon is over doesn't mean Word Nerd's giving guest bloggers the boot.

Nope, welcome to Varied Voices, a semi-regular feature of guest posts from a variety of authors and writers. This week, welcome Kas and Effie Valentine. Word Nerd has no idea who the Masked Fedora really is. (All she knows is it's not her...)

Recently, The Masked Fedora had a chance to sit down with writing duo and darlings of the crime fiction set, Kas and Effie Valentine. Many rumors surround these jazz musicians, turned PIs, turned authors––that they are a brother and sister team masquerading as husband and wife (or vice versa), or that they’re just some idle rich folks using hired guns to pen their tales, or that “The Valentines” is a pseudonym for a well-known script-doctor who pays out-of-work actors to “play” the pair at signings.
Determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, Masked Fedora met the pair at their quaint park side apartment for coffee…bringing a half dozen Tim Hortons maple-dip donuts (as instructed).
Masked Fedora: Let’s start with the question on everybody’s mind. Are you two brother and sister or husband and wife?
Effie and Kas Valentine (in unison): Yes.
MF: Can you give our readers any insight into your process?
EV: Writing is the easy part—that is if you don’t count all the dishes thrown. It’s living the writer’s life that’s difficult. Especially adding in the music and the investigation.
MF: Is your work based on your actual cases?
KV: Heaven’s no. Too boring.
EV: Kas did have this actor friend who worked on one of those police shows. We had him over dinner one night, and I joked that he should try a real case. Rayelee Flynn, our crime-solving background actress was born on the spot.
KV: Yes, but that’s fiction. All real PI’s ever work are divorce cases.
EF: That’s how we met, in fact. Mr. Valentine’s services had been retained by a woman who suspected her husband of stepping out. And the husband thought the same, and hired me.
MF: Were they?
EF: You know, I can’t recall. I think––
KV: Are you sure that’s how we met? I could swear it was at the Slippery Noodle.
MF: The Slippery…
EF: Slippery Noodle. It’s a jazz and blues club in Indianapolis.
KV: Yes, I was playing string bass with the Sidney Zweibel trio and this lovely gal hops up on stage and demands that we let her sing “Lullaby of Birdland.” Which, of course, we did…she had the voice of a whiskey soaked angel. Which reminds me… (At this point Mr. Valentine produces a tumbler and a few martini glasses.) Care for a cocktail?
MF: Ummm…it’s nine AM.
KV: It’s okay, these are virgin.
EV: By that he means vodka instead of gin.
MF: So which it?
KV: It’s vodka.
MF: I mean which story. Which is true?
KV: I’m not sure. You pick.
EV: Honestly, darling. You can’t play jazz without being able to improv on the fly.
KV: Or tell if someone’s lying without being a liar yourself.
EV: Or hope to write good fiction unless you yourself are completely made up.
MF: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
KV: (after a pause) Yes…I’d like to add a little more ice to this glass.