My Weblog

Independence Rocks

by Kris

I was saddened to learn of the September closing of the Creatures & Crooks Bookshoppe in Richmond, Virginia. As an author, I regret the passing of any bookstore, but I signed at Creatures & Crooks, so I know firsthand what a terrific store it is. And as a bookseller (I own The Well Red Coyote bookstore in Sedona, Arizona), I know how tough it is to toil in the independent bookstore trenches.

I suppose there’s something to be said for every form of bookselling, since they all reach readers. But I genuinely believe that we all lose something when there’s one less indie store out there filling the reading landscape. Independent booksellers, more than most other kinds, hand-sell books, creating new markets for authors, and they’re more likely to host events for new, unknown authors. Independent stores also contain independent selections. Without independent stores of all kinds, we move ever closer to the homogeneous threat of Sameville, USA. In book terms, that means a warehouse store-type choice of what we should all be reading. Great prices, maybe — better retail prices than my wholesale prices in some cases — but a punitively limited selection.

I know not everyone agrees with me. Some people clearly find no value in independent stores. From behind my retail counter, I see those folks occasionally. I live in a town with few chain stores of any kind, and apart from a couple of fast-food places, absolutely no chain restaurants.

Some tourists act as if they’ve been told they’ll have to starve on their vacations, if they can’t eat in the same places they always go to at home, when Sedona offers a large variety of high caliber restaurants of every food variety and price range. I guess when some people get away from it all, they’re not happy unless they can take it with them.

I see a bookstore version of that behavior, too. Those people walk into our store and ask if there’s a Barnes & Noble in town. I always respond by asking conversationally, “Do you think anyone ever asks a Barnes & Noble clerk if there’s an independent store nearby?” They either react to that with confusion or anger, and tell me they just want to find a bookstore that they can browse — and that’s when they’re in a bookstore, and a pretty great one according to most who visit it and the locals who vote on it. One woman recently marched up to my husband and said, “My husband forgot to bring along something to read on his vacation. Is there a Barnes & Noble here where he can buy something?” Some people, while standing in a store filled with books, don’t recognize it as a bookstore if it isn’t patterned along the lines of a chain store.

But too many other people say they love independent bookstores, when they can’t remember the last time they entered one. They love the idea of independent stores. They talk the talk. But when it comes to walking the walk, they seem to regard indie stores like some quaint, old-fashioned piece of an Americana long gone.

Nope, they’re out there, everywhere — mavericks on the road to Sameville.

If you don’t think independent stores serve any useful function, then keep on doing what you’re doing. But if you want them to continue to thrive, start walking the walk.

Drop into that bookstore in your neighborhood that you always drive past, instead of complaining about the limits of the online shopping or that chain store clerks don’t know books. You might be surprised by how good their selection is, how knowledgeable they are about books, and how fast they can get in a special order for you. You won’t pay for shipping, either, and you don’t have to buy extra books you don’t want to get that free shipping. You might find it’s a place you’ll want to visit again. And, at a time when funding for local services are at an all-time low, you’ll be contributing to your local community, something online sales don’t do. When you shop locally, over 60% of your money stays in your community. Even when you shop in the local branch of a national chain, a significant portion of that money goes back to their corporate headquarters.

Or reach across the miles to help the stores that you know support lots of your favorite authors. Even if you can only do it occasionally, order a signed copy of your favorite author’s book from one of the stores supporting that author, instead of getting it from a used seller online, which you know doesn’t help that author one bit.

Authors, you might also consider buying something from the stores that host your signings. I’ve blogged before about the surprises I’ve encountered in author behavior, from my unusual duel vantage point of author and bookseller. That authors almost never support the stores that host them has come as another surprise to me. I’ve almost always bought something from the stores where I’ve appeared, and I assumed everyone else did as well. Wrong! Maybe 3-4% do. About the same number that send a thank-you note.

If you want that store to be there for your next signing, considering dropping a few pennies before you leave. Won’t you need a paperback to read during those lonely nights in your hotel room while you tour? Many stores also offer gift items, some under $5. Our lowest price gift item — a souvenir Sedona bookmark — costs $1. Wait — we even have postcards for a quarter.

Sure, money is tight for everyone today. But we vote with our dollars. We determine the shape of our world with every penny we spend.

If you don’t see any value in independent stores, then just keep doing what you’re doing.  But if you do, don’t wait until they’re all gone to lament their passing. Help them thrive now, while you still can.

Farewell, Creatures & Crooks. Thanks for fighting the good fight. 

A Convenient Truth

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

It seemed like such a good idea. My husband and I were in New York, and instead of driving straight home to Boston, devoted book-promo me decided to create a drive-by book signing. We figured out eight or nine bookstores between here and there, and planned to stop by and say hello and give them advance copies of PRIME TIME. 

I entered the first address in the GPS, and we were sailing.

But when we got just past New Haven, the GPS conked out.  "Oh no!" I wailed. My plans were ruined. How, how, how were we going to find the next town we needed? I unplugged the gizmo, poked a few buttons, jiggled things, tried all the frantic adjustments you do when a gadget is on the fritz. (Don't ask if I looked in the instruction book. I have no idea where that even is. Or ever was.)

But alas, I had one dead GPS. As the Monty Python gang would say--it was pushing up daisies. It was an ex-gps.

Well, I sighed. We'll just have to go straight back to Boston. My husband looked at me, skeptical. He pointed to the glove compartment. "Why don't you look at the map?" he asked.

Ah. The MAP. Exactly what we would have done before we had the GPS. But I had been convenienced into submission. And had forgotten the real thing.

It happened in the office recently, too. I was so tired of emailing back and forth with someone the other day. We weren't communicating, somehow, and our exchage of ever-lengthening notes seemed to be making things worse and even more complicated. Then I thought--why don't I just CALL her?

Ah. The PHONE. It was such a revelation--I could just pick up the phone and  the whole thing would be decided in two seconds. I burst out laughing, it was such a shocking thought. But five years ago? It would have my first one.

There was the time I lost my ATM card, and was waiting for a replacement. "Oh no," I wailed to my producer. "How am I going to deposit all my checks? And I need cash!"

She--who is in her mid-thirties--was equally baffled. "Problem," she agreed. "Maybe you can get money from Jonathan. Or get him to put the checks in his account."

That seemed like a reasonable idea, so I called my husband. Explained the dilemma. There was a silence on his end, then he said: "Why don't you just go into the bank? To a teller?"

Ah. The BANK. Exactly what I would have done before the whole ATM thing.

Can you add without a calculator anymore? Spell without spellcheck? Do you know anyone's phone number? They're all in your phone, right?  So who needs to  remember them--until you need to remember them, of course. And then...good luck.

Have we been convenienced into being incapable? Spoiled by technology? Has it happened to you?

The Meaning of Life

by Toni L.P. Kelner

In Douglas Adams's book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a vastly intelligent computer named Deep Thought is asked for the answer to life, the universe, and everything. After a considerable time, he gives his answer: 42. Which is meaningless, but pretty darned funny.

I think there's an innate need for life to mean something, for day to day events to have some significance. Take last night. Our doorbell rang at 11 o'clock, and when Steve and I answered, a young woman asked, "Is that your car?" She pointed to our red Camry, which was parked in front of the house. "Somebody broke your window." Steve zoomed down the steps to the street, and sure enough, the rear driver's side window was thoroughly broken. Fragments of glass are all over the back seat, and scattered on the street.

While he thanked the woman for noticing and stopping on a rainy night to tell us, I call 911 and explain the situation. A few minutes later, an officer arrives, makes a brief examination, and gives us a case number. Since nothing was stolen, that's pretty much all the investigation we're going to get. We cleaned up most of the glass, taped a plastic bag over the gap, and moved the car off the street. Today we dealt with the insurance company, dropped the car off to be repaired, and arranged for a rental car. We'll get out repaired car back tomorrow.

You're probably wondering what the point of this story is. Unfortunately, there isn't one.

We tried to find one. We looked at other cars parked on the street to see if somebody had been vandalizing vehicles en masse. We tried to remember if we'd had any conflicts that would cause somebody to take petty vengeance. We wondered about neighborhood kids whose ball could have hit the window, and then been too afraid to own up to it. Any of those explanations would explained the event, but we have no reason to pick one explanation over the other. In short, it was a meaningless event.

That's why I like fiction, particularly mysteries. The events mean something. If we'd been in an episode of Monk, the pattern of glass breakage would have told Adrian that somebody was trying to ensure that we no longer parked in that section of the street so it leave a getaway route for a murderer. Sherlock Holmes would have determined the unique shape of the projectile that caused the damage, and deduced that the vandal was from an obscure town in Norway whose inhabitants bear a grudge against Steve's ancestors. Sookie Stackhouse would have sensed the vandal watching us, and known that supernatural powers were at work. A broken car window would have meant something, because in good fiction, the seemingly unimportant details mean something.

All our broken window means is annoyance and expense, which isn't particularly satisfying. Of course, the up side is that we're not particularly worried about murderers laying plans, vengeful Norwegians, or dark supernatural power. Random destruction has some advantages.

So what's the answer to our mystery of the broken car window? 42.

I Love Odd

It's true. I confess. I am an Odd lover.

I thought it might be love the very first time. The experience left me teary-eyed, and my heart broke when it was all over. Now, at the end of our second encounter, I can tell you there's no doubt. I am truly, deeply, madly, crazy wild about Odd.

 

Funny, I don't usually go for younger men. He's only a kid, in his early twenties.  But my, oh, my, what a great character. Dean Koontz has created a hero who is a regular guy and who is completely good. Even so young, Odd Thomas knows what he has to do with his life. He has to use the ability/curse he was born with to help others. Those others happen to be dead folks who, for various reasons, can't or won't cross over to the next world. Some want their killers caught, which puts Odd in bad situations sometimes. Others just need a friend and a little encouragement.

Odd is humble. He loves deeply. He's not perfect, but unlike many protagonists who survive childhoods of abuse, he does not allow that abuse to contort his personality, make him drink or use drugs, or take over his life. He has a mission for this life, but his real goal is to get to the next one, where he will reunite with his one true love.

Meanwhile, there's weirdness and evil to fight. Along the way, Koontz delivers great humor, his usual masterful suspense, deep thoughts and observations about the world, and of course, two or three words he wants you to go look up.

Sometimes I hear writers talking about how to reach the new generation of readers. Koontz has done two great things to promote this series to that group. He has a new graphic novel just out called In Odd We Trust.

   

It's a prequel to the series, so any new readers who find him this way haven't missed out on anything, and would, I hope, then go on to buy the first book in the series.

He has also made four 'webisodes' of a new Odd short story. The story events happen between the last book, Brother Odd, and the one just coming out, Odd Hours. Another great idea that should encourage viewers of the webisodes to go out and buy the new book. 

I'm sure there are other mystery/thriller heroes out there who, like Odd, are regular good guys rather than tortured kinda good/kinda bad good guys. All I can think of right now though is Ceepak, Chris Grabenstein's hero, the cop with a code. Who am I forgetting? 

Check out the Dean Koontz website to read more about Odd and view the webisodes here. I think you'll fall in love with Odd too.  

THE GOOSE AND I

When is a duck not a duck? When it turns out to be a goose. When is a goose not a goose? When it imprints on humans.

A few weeks ago, a neighbor who works for the city brought us a bundle of yellow fluff. He believed it was a lost baby duck, and since all our ducks had died, he hoped we wanted a new one for our pond. We are suckers for a hard luck story, and we agreed to take the duck and raise it. It's very peaceful to watch a duck gliding around our small pond. On a practical note, a duck keeps the surface moving so pond scum doesn't build up.

So we took in the ball of fluff, despite the fact that we have three dogs who think eating a duck is a very desirable pastime. We had a pen within our dog fence already, due to past events, and we put chicken wire around the bottom of this pen since the duck was so small it could stick its head out of the apertures in the wire fencing. A beheaded duck would be no fun at all.

Of course, you've guessed that the duck was not a duck at all. In fact, it was a Canadian goose. They're very large. Now there's no trace of the yellow fluffy adorability. We have a very opinionated large bird, and she seems to have no intention of leaving our yard to fly away with the goose flocks that honk overhead on their way to somewhere cooler. We still have to keep her separated from the dogs, though now we're more worried about the dogs than the goose.

She'll go down to our pond if one of us goes. But she comes back to the fenced-in area when her escort returns. She's fully grown, but still quite young, and we're hoping she'll hear the call of the wild very soon. We have no intention of being permanent hosts to Goose. (We tried different names, but in the interests of brevity, we settled on Goose.)

Goose is a case of mistaken identity. I'm sure I can use this in a book somehow. Now, she's a case of nature gone awry. Goose has no idea how to be a goose, and we are not the people who can teach her that. We are still hoping instinct will kick in and save her from her saviors. There's a certain irony in the knowledge that unless she overcomes what she's been taught , she can never fulfill her goose destiny.

I know there are parallels to be drawn, here. How often have you accepted a gift, only to find out it was no gift at all, but rather a burden? How often (shall we say) have you accepted a goose in duck's feathers?

On a more serious note, how often have you reacted contrary to instinct, and that reaction served you poorly? Does civilization curb our instincts and blunt our survival skills, or is that very element what makes us more than beasts?

On the other hand, that's a lot to get out of Goose.

Of writing and gardening

by Donna

I like gardening.  Most of the time.  I can't claim to be a very expert gardener, or a very dedicated one.  But I like it.  Gardening's an excellent way to replenish the creative well. Rest the brain when it's overloaded from too much mental effort.  Occupy the surface of the mind while the subconscious works more deeply on the writing.

In other words, it's a nifty way to procrastinate from writing.  If you look around my garden and find that everything's pruned, weeded, planted, deadheaded, staked, picked, fertilized, and generally in good shape, you can bet that I've been deep in writing avoidance.  At the moment, none of that can be said about my garden, because I'm in the throes of a manuscript.  It's lush and fragrant, with lilies, roses, nicotiana, and heliotrope in bloom, and the tomatoes that aren't in cages are running wild.  The weeds are tall and lush too, and one of these days, when I finish my quota early, I'll do something about them. 

In more philosophical moments, I have been known to commit fairly high-falutin' metaphors involving gardening and writing.  For example, I'm very fond of planting bulbs.  They're both reliable and mysterious.  You stick a bulb in the ground in the fall, you forget about it for three to six months, and come spring, shoots break through the ground—or sometimes the snow, in the case of daffodils—and eventually those unprepossessing bulbs produce wonderful blooms.  I find this wonderfully like my method of coming up with an idea for a book or story, chewing on it for a while, and then putting it away in the back of my mind to marinate.  I've had ideas that marinated as long as six or seven years before I finally turned them into books.

I'm not quite sure how the chipmunks fit into this metaphor.  To chipmunks, tulip bulbs are better than candy. They dig them up and chow down.  I've given up even trying to plant tulips.  (I stick to daffodils, which the chipmunks avoid because the bulbs are poisonous.) Do the chipmunks, perhaps, represent that evil internal editor, the one that's always telling you an idea is stupid—devouring the idea before it even has a chance to sprout?

Then again, maybe not all ideas were meant to grow into books.  Maybe the internal chipmunks are doing me a favor.

This spring, I was inspired to try something I hadn't done much of before—grow plants from seed. Usually I stick to bulbs and plants in pots and the occasional bare root plant.  But then I saw how successful my sister-in-law was with her tomato seeds.

She and my five-year-old nephews were doing a learning project with seeds.  She wanted the boys to observe the life cycle of the plant, from seeds to sprouts to plants that would bear tomatoes containing more seeds.  So she filled four small pots with dirt and sprinkled the contents of a packet of tomato seeds over the top of the dirt.

Do you have any idea how many seeds are in the average packet of tomato seeds?  I don't think she realized they would all sprout into individual plants, all demanding their share of water and sunlight and growing room.  She called me in a panic one day, wondering what to do with them all.  I came over, helped her plant many of them in their yard and in larger pots, and hauled away two of the four flowerpots, promising her I'd do something productive with them.

I wasn't quite sure what.  My own garden is located in a series of pots and planters on the deck, not because I don't have a yard, but because the only sunny spots in my yard are on the deck and over the croquet field, which is what we hereabouts call the septic field when we want to be genteel.  I planted a few of the seedlings, but there was no way I had room for the rest. 

So I offered them on Freecycle.  I wasn't sure whether anyone would want them—"several dozen one-inch tomato seedlings."  Within fifteen minutes I had twenty potential takers.  I contacted the first two, gave them each a pot full of seedlings, and made a mental note that if I wanted to win goodwill on the Freecycle list next spring, I could plant a bunch of tomato seeds and offer the resulting seedlings.  Might try that.

At any rate, my sister-in-law's success with the tomato seedlings inspired me. I'd never done much with seeds, quite possibly because I have never been able to tell the difference between the seedlings I'd planted and the weeds that were trying to overrun them.

But it dawned on me that if I started the seeds indoors, I could get to know the seedlings before I put them out into the mean, weed-infested out-of-doors, and I might be able to avoid mistaking them for weeds. So I hunted out my seed collection.  Over the last few years, I had collected quite a few packets of seeds—seeds I'd meant to plant and never got around to, things I planted a few of but had more left over, seeds that came as freebies from who knows where.  And I had a lot of little peat pots from cleaning some of my father's gardening supplies out of the garage.  I decided to plant a few of each of the seeds in little peat pots—if they grew, I'd have plants.  If they were too old to germinate, then I'd be rid of them.

After a couple of evenings of sowing, my whole kitchen table was covered with a small forest of little peat pots. Some of the seeds sprouted.  So far the morning glory plants haven't survived being planted outdoors.  I'm about to harden off the catnip, in the hopes of doing better with that.  The chipmunks ate the melon plants.  But I have cucumber, loofah, and snake gourd plants cheerfully vining all over the deck.  And possibly some melon plants that the chipmunks missed, though they might be more snake gourds or cucumbers.  My family came over in the middle of one of my planting binges and some of the peat pots got moved before I'd had a chance to mark them.  These mystery plants are thriving, and sooner or later they'll get big enough for me to tell what they are.

And, of course, I have any number of little tomato plants, both from my sister-in-law's efforts and my own.  Some of them are getting to be medium sized tomato plants.

Now I'm agonizing over what to do with the peat pots whose seeds have not sprouted.  Unless the damned things have two to three month germination times, they're not going to sprout. Either they were too old, or perhaps too finicky for the conditions I gave them.   I should empty the dirt out, pack the peat pots away, and resolve to get an earlier start next year.

I'm not sure how my massive seed-sprouting project fits into the whole gardening/writing metaphor.  Maybe the seeds represent all the  ideas that pop into the writer's brain, only a few of them destined to grow into real books and stories.  Maybe this is a sign that after I clean out those sproutless peat pots, I should go through the back files and weed out all the false starts and ideas that I am now experienced enough as a writer to identify as lousy.

Nah. I'll clean up the peat pots all right, but the back files can stay for now.  After all, I have a book to write.  And I'm probably straining too hard for the metaphor anyway.

At least that's what the internal chipmunks are saying.

Red Letter Days

by Kris

June 10th was a special day for me. Nope, not my birthday. Nor my anniversary. But June 10th will always be one of the red letter days on my calendar. July 10th will be just as great. Those are the re-pub dates for the first two books in my Tracy Eaton mystery series, Revenge of the Gypsy Queen (6/10) and Dem Bones’ Revenge (7/10), they days in which they have and will return to print. And with fabulous new covers! I'll post those covers, but you can read more about them here and here.

As great as a new publication is — and it’s the best — there’s a unique satisfaction that comes when books that have been out of print return to the marketplace.

There are real practical reasons for wanting to keep the availability of stock flowing. I was lucky; my books weren’t gone for long. But the frustration I began to feel wasn’t merely marketing-related. Just as I kinda want my physical body to be whole, with all its various parts — I want my body of work to be complete and available as well.

Making this return extra special is that the reprinting of these books is paving the way for the publication of the next book in the series, Revenge for Old Times’ Sake. You can read about it here, and even email us to join the wait list for a signed copy. Revenge for Old Times’ Sake is due out in Spring 2010, and that date will also become a red letter date on the ’10 calendar. While I’m also giddy with excitement about the forthcoming publication of my new series, High Crimes on the Magical Plane — I also feel indescribable delight that, at a time when too many good series are disappearing, I’ve managed, with the help of a promising new publisher, made my missing parts reappear.

When my author copies arrived, when I held my old-new babies for the first time, it was happy jig time. It’s infinitely satisfying, dizzying even…well, I'll resist saying "priceless" here, since that's burdening the experience with overused, stolen advertising copy, but it does apply.

For the writers among you who’ve had books go out of print and return, what was it like for you when your old babies became new again?