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By:
Fleur Bradley,
on 11/3/2016
Blog:
YA Sleuth
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November is all about writing for me—partly because of NaNoWriMo (that’s National Novel Writing Month, in case you’re unfamiliar). I normally don’t join, because writing 50,000 words in one month is a bit much for me, especially since November includes Thanksgiving.
This year, I decided to unofficially quasi-join: I’m aiming to finish the first draft of a crime novel for adults I’ve been working on, plus a few chapters of a middle-grade, and maybe a short story or two. So not quite following the rules, but then I rarely do. I think I’ll get about half of that 50k in words—not bad for this writer.
Also, this November I’m hoping to start a new format for the blog. I considered packing up for a little while; blogging is sort of on the way out, and I sometimes feel like I’ve said everything I wanted to say.
But for now, I still like blogging. So I thought I might try posting the first Thursday (or so) of each month, and talk about more about mysteries in general—books, TV, movies—and about writing and other stuff. And maybe I’ll share a recipe or two. I hope you’ll stick around, guys!
Mystery books and TV
This month, TV and books intersect for me. I’m reading Michael Connelly’s latest novel, The Wrong Side Of Goodbye, and I’m also watching Bosch, the series based on his books. I’m a big fan of the books, so I was reluctant to watch the series. The old cliché is usually true: the books are always better than the movie.
But in this case, I was pleasantly surprised. The Bosch series is doing the character and the books justice, with a solid mystery and good attention given to police procedure accuracy (most of the time anyway).
I’m just starting season two; I’ll keep you posted.
One of my favorite crime writers, Greg Bardsley, has a new book out this month called The Bob Watson.
He told me about the concept of it a few years ago, and I've been awaiting the publication of this novel ever since. Go buy this book now!
Greg Bardsley is a brilliant writer; if you haven't read his first novel, Cash Out, you can start there if you like. Funny, sharp, and great. One of those writers whose books should all be made into movies...
For writers
I picked up a copy of Matt Bird The Secrets of Story, just in time for November’s go-go writing activities. So far, I’m loving it: he focuses on character, and gives lots of clear, practical and down-to earth advice. I recommend you get yourself a copy if you’re looking for inspiration.
On the web
I’ve been off the grid a little bit, since we’re remodeling the house and I’m still trying to keep the writing going. But I did find some newsworthy tidbits to share:
Favorite kid author R.L. Stine is writing the story for a Marvel comic; get the story here at GalleyCat Jessica Haight and Stephanie Robinson, the authors of the great middle-grade mystery The Secret Files of Ms. Fairday Morrow, ran a drawing contest where kids sent in some amazing artwork. Check out these drawings and their great blog over here; they always have something fun going on.
Tip from me this November: unsubscribe from all unwanted emails, especially ones trying to get you to buy stuff (especially as the holiday season nears...). I did that just this week, and my inbox is already much quieter. Less (stuff) is more (time to write).
In the meantime, I hope you have a great November, full of writing, hot cocoa, and a little fall weather!
What are you up to this month..?
Ever wanted to be the subject of a book? Author Michael Connelly is letting one lucky bidder star in his next novel “The Crossing!”
Readers can bid for the chance to enter the book’s pages on eBay. The money raised from the auction will benefit Trinity Cafe, a restaurant that serves homeless people in Tampa, Florida. Bidding is live for another 8 days and the bidding is already up to $9,900. Here is more from the eBay listing:
Your character will be of Michael’s choosing and he promises a tasteful portrayal!
Michael will send you a signed and personally inscribed hardcover copy of the book when it is in print in November.
The Harry Bosch novel, which will also feature the character Mickey Haller, comes out this fall.
I'm back from Bouchercon 2014! For those of you unfamiliar, Bouchercon is an annual mystery fan conference, a big one. This year it was in Long Beach, CA. So I got to escape the snow for just a few days (this was my deck, with sub-zero temps...).
The organizers were kind enough to connect me to a local school librarian, who invited me for a school visit at Dooley Elementary. School visits are my favorite part of the job, because I get to talk to the kids--this time, the entire cafeteria was packed. I told them all about my books, and about how George Washington was a master spy during the Revolutionary War. That particular talk is always fun.
And another favorite part of my job is meeting school librarians. This is Sharon Dudka, librarian extraordinaire. Like most librarians I meet, she is smart, has a great positive attitude, and knows how to get kids reading on a shoestring budget. If you happen to be in a giving mood, donate a book to your local school library.
Afterward, I had a good talk about how amazing teachers are with my cab driver David. We agreed they should get more respect and get paid better.
After my morning school visit, I was on a very cool panel on YA Dystopian, where (thankfully) we also talked about middle-grade. The best part: listening to Michelle Gagnon, Joelle Charbonneau, Sophie Littlefield, and Alexandra Monir talk about YA, and how cool their fans are. Jess Lourey moderated awesomely, and we got interesting questions too. Good stuff. But I forgot to take pictures...
I saw Michael Connelly in the lobby, but was too shy to tell him I love his books. And then I met author friends, reviewers, booksellers, and other great people over fancy appetizers and desserts.
So that's my Bouchercon report. Next week, I'll report on my book bag, which was full of books I plan to read during the Thankfully Reading Thanksgiving weekend...
The latest installment of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series, The Burning Room, has joined Apple’s Top Paid iBooks in the U.S. The book came in at No. 1.
Apple has released its top selling books list for paid books from iBooks in the U.S. for week ending November 10, 2014. Gray Mountain by John Grisham and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn are occupying the second and third spots on the list this week.
We’ve included Apple’s entire list after the jump.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending November 09, 2014–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.
(Debuted at #1 in Children’s Fiction Series) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney: “A family road trip is supposed to be a lot of fun…unless, of course, you’re the Heffleys. The journey starts off full of promise, then quickly takes several wrong turns. Gas station bathrooms, crazed seagulls, a fender bender, and a runaway pig—not exactly Greg Heffley’s idea of a good time. But even the worst road trip can turn into an adventure—and this is one the Heffleys won’t soon forget.” (November 2014)
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch book series will be adapted into an Amazon Original web series called Bosch.
Thus far, Connelly has published sixteen books in this mystery series with the latest installment, The Burning Room, due out in November 2014. He will work with Law & Order writer Eric Overmyer to pen the scripts.
According to the press release, the cast includes Titus Welliver, Annie Wersching and Jamie Hector. Welliver will star as Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Saw an interesting comment by Michael Connelly, writer of the Harry Bosch series. On being asked about his Irish roots, he replied:
“ Yeah, I have complete Irish roots, and I went to Catholic schools and all of that ….But, you know, I don’t consider myself an Irish crime writer or an American crime writer, I consider myself a storyteller. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that if a character is interesting to the reader, it doesn’t really matter where that character is or where the writer is. That kind of story crosses all oceans and all boundaries.”
It gets to the nub of writing – it is what we should all be, just story tellers with good characters. Characters that readers are interested in and who they care about. The genre is secondary – it is why good crime fiction does so well (in my view) it is because the stories are so good. Your attention is held. And you have characters in them that you care about (even more so in series where you have a central recurring character – think Jo Nesbo and Harry Hole.)
I am reminding myself here as much as others – I have a tendency to wander off from the story. Sometimes this is good as it leads the story to new places – other times it is just bad (like the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead .. when she was good she was very very good, when she was bad she was horrid!). Note – I am not suggesting here that when I am good I am very very good … it just brought the nursery rhyme into my head. The ‘horrid’ still stands.
Wandering off in the middle of a story can lose you your reader – which is why I try to keep my reader in my head. They change shape depending on what I am writing – but sometimes they are a very specific person. I read aloud a piece I have written and wonder what they would think of it. It is not to say that I do not write for myself, I do, but that is not enough – I write so others can read – and if I don’t think about them I do them a disservice.
Anyway that came into my mind as I was talking to a lovely writers group during the week and it made me, once again, think about writing. The why, the what and the wherefore.
PS It is also about the words and how they are strung together – the last line of this little poem bears that out. Apart from rhyming with forehead, the use of the word horrid is just so perfect!
Amazon Studios has ordered a two-hour long pilot for Bosch, a TV series based on Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch book series. The Wire writer Eric Overmyer will work on the project with Connelly.
Here’s more about the project, from the release:
Bosch follows a relentless LAPD homicide detective as he pursues the killer of a 13-year-old boy while standing trial in federal court on accusations that he murdered a suspected serial killer in cold blood. Bosch will be played by Titus Welliver (Argo, The Good Wife) and the pilot will also star Annie Wersching, Amy Price-Francis and Jamie Hector.Henrik Bastin of Fabrik Entertainment (The Killing) is producing and Jim McKay will direct.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
What kind of music do your characters listen to? Novelist Michael Connelly has created a dark and inspiring soundtrack over the course of his career.
At a Sony Readers Book Club event in Los Angeles, Connelly explained that he was inspired by musicians “who had a difficult time making music.” As an example, he mentioned how his long-time character Harry Bosch listened to Art Pepper, a great jazz saxophonist who struggled with drug addiction and a troubled family history.
If you want to sample his writing music playlist, we’ve included a free Spotify playlist below of Connelly’s literary soundtrack. Connelly concluded: “Music is one of the things that helps me. If there is music playing in my book, that music was playing when I wrote it.”
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Scholar Leslie S. Klinger has filed a civil suit in federal court against the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate, hoping to prove that “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson are no longer protected by federal copyright laws.”
The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Along with Laurie R. King, Klinger edited A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. He was working on a new collection called In the Company of Sherlock Holmes with stories by Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly, Lev Grossman and more. He made his case, in the release:
The Conan Doyle Estate contacted our publisher … and implied that if the Estate wasn’t paid a license fee, they’d convince the major distributors not to sell the book. Our publisher was, understandably, concerned, and told us that the book couldn’t come out unless this was resolved … It is true that some of Conan Doyle’s stories about Holmes are still protected by the U.S. copyright laws. However, the vast majority of the stories that Conan Doyle wrote are not. The characters of Holmes, Watson, and others are fully established in those fifty ‘public-domain’ stories. Under U.S. law, this should mean that anyone is free to create new stories about Holmes and Watson.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
By: Dianna Dilworth,
on 8/16/2011
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Authors Janet Evanovich and Kathryn Stockett have each sold more than a million Kindle books, joining what Amazon has termed the “Kindle Million Club.”
The authors join the likes of Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins, Michael Connelly and John Locke, who have also passed the million mark in sales of their eBooks in the Kindle Store. According to the release, Stockett is the first debut novelist to reach this milestone.
Evanovich’s latest novel Smokin’ Seventeen has spent more than 100 days on the Kindle Best Seller list. Stockett’s novel, The Help, has been No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list and was just adapted into a film.
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By: Maryann Yin,
on 6/20/2011
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John Locke has become the first self-published author to join the Kindle Million Club–the eighth author to sell one million eBooks through Amazon.
Locke has sold 1,010,370 Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). The club also counts Suzanne Collins, Michael Connelly, and James Patterson as members.
Locke had this statement in the release: “Kindle Direct Publishing has provided an opportunity for independent authors to compete on a level playing field with the giants of the book selling industry. Not only did KDP give me a chance, they helped at every turn. Quite simply, KDP is the greatest friend an author can have.”
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Do blurbs matter when you buy a book?
Over at The Awl, six authors shared vastly different opinions about blurbs. They also offered some practical advice about getting blurbs for your own work–add your thoughts and advice in the comments.
Mystery novelist Stefanie Pintoff (pictured, via) defended blurbs: “I believe they can be very helpful to debut novels, for which of course there are no reviews in place. The best blurbs come from an author writing within the same genre, since they will take advantage of a shared audience. For example, for a thriller debut, a blurb from Michael Connelly or Lee Child is an instant attention-getter and lends an air of credibility to the book. Authors can be very busy, so connections matter (sharing an agent or editor for example).”
Novelist Kate Christensen shared her blurb memories: “Two close friends blurbed my first novel. I am forever in their debt, and I found the whole process a bit humiliating. No strangers were willing to blurb me on the strength of the book itself, and my editor asked many people, far and wide … My later books were beautifully blurbed by a several generous fellow writers I barely knew—people I now adore and feel indebted to, although I still barely know them.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
I picked up a copy of Matt Bird The Secrets of Story, just in time for November’s go-go writing activities. So far, I’m loving it: he focuses on character, and gives lots of clear, practical and down-to earth advice. 
