Festival Season

While summer is the season for so many things, one of the summer activities many booklovers enjoy are the literary festivals taking place in parks, libraries and rec centers across North America even while you read this.

This summer, I’m delighted to be taking part in two. Both of them have adventure travel aspects, so I feel especially lucky.

This coming weekend, July 11th and 12th, I’ll be at Write On Bowen on Bowen Island, B.C. While there, I’ll be moderating a panel on writing crime fiction. Don MacLean, Nick Faragher and Barbara Murray are the panelists. On Sunday, I’ll be giving a workshop called Writing Killer Fiction: Exploring Mystery, Thriller and Crime Fiction. Write On Bowen is a fairly new festival but, by all accounts, it’s a vital and growing one. I’m looking forward to being part of it.

In late August, I’m jetting off to Thunder Bay, Ontario for the Sleeping Giant Writers Festival. This will be a real adventure for me as I’ve never been to Thunder Bay. However, festival organizers were kind enough to send me brochures from previous years and it looks really beautiful. This is also a very vibrant young festival. This year, I’ll be joining Peter Mansbridge, Lynn Coady, Leilah Nadir and others. This should be another wonderful festival.

Remembering the Icons

Though I wrote this piece for January Magazine, and it ran there several hours ago, it seemed appropriate to share it with you here, as well. Especially since I’ve been ignoring this blog horribly over the last month or so. I don’t feel guilty though. I can’t. I’ve been writing: working on a brace of books, including the third in the Kitty Pangborn series. Since those books are set in the 1930s, that means I’ve been traveling back in time. Those trips exhaust me. They don’t leave much space for a great deal else.

And then, occasionally, we get days like yesterday, when two 1970s pop culture icons passed away within hours of each other.

Former Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett, 62, died of complications resulting from the cancer she had been publicly battling for some time, while 1970s child star -- and publicly off-kilter adult -- Michael Jackson, 50, died of cardiac arrest, possibly the direct result of what might have been an intentionally lethal drug overdose.

You don’t need to go far to find news stories on either icon. Or both. Of all the ones we saw, though, the most relevant to January’s readership (aside, of course, from J. Kingston Pierce’s delicate send off of Fawcett, “An Angel Gets Her Wings,” was Amy Wallace’s piece on Fawcett for The Daily Beast. Wallace’s piece illustrates Fawcett’s little known “brainy side” as well as the star’s friendship with the writer Ayn Rand.

A recent email exchange with the late Farrah Fawcett reveals the unlikely friendship between the Charlie's Angels star and the novelist Ayn Rand, who helped the actress understand her place in culture -- and longed to cast her in a TV version of Atlas Shrugged.

Wallace tells us several things “almost no one knew about Fawcett”:

1) Fawcett and the writer Ayn Rand shared a birthday, February 2.

2) Rand, the inventor of the philosophical system called Objectivism, never missed an episode of Charlie’s Angels. She was such a Fawcett fan, in fact, that she sought to cast the actress as the lead in a planned TV miniseries version of her best-known work, the gargantuan novel Atlas Shrugged. (NBC later scrapped the project).

3) Rand, perhaps better than anyone else, helped Fawcett understand her place in American culture.

PETA Pissed About President’s Lethal Ways

In case you missed it, U.S. flyswatter-in-chief, President Barack Obama, dispatched an irritating fly with stylish ease the other day. On national television. With cameras rolling. From the first, a backlash seemed inevitable. Here it is, from MSNBC:

The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter in chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he's bedeviled by a fly in the White House.

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

The piece is kinda nutty, sorta super funny and it’s here.

The Rough Week That Was: KoKo Taylor and David Carradine

Though neither was particularly young, both were sharply talented, and so a week that takes both actor David Carradine and “Queen of the Blues” KoKo Taylor seems especially ugly.

When I heard Taylor had died, my mind went to a single song, though she performed many. Still, “Wang Dang Doodle” was somewhat anthemic in Taylor’s hands, a call to good times and living well and the sexual overtones never seemed accidental.

Born Cora Walton in 1928, Taylor was a sharecropper’s daughter from Shelby County, Tennessee. Her final public performance was just days ago at the Blues Music Awards on May 7th.

The Daily Telegraph offers up a royal obituary:

Famously capable of standing up for herself, and tolerating no nonsense from any of her male colleagues, she recently declared: "It's tough being out there doing what I'm doing in what they call a man's world." With her big, raw "blues shouter" of a voice, she took her cues from the likes of Bessie Smith, Big Mamma Thornton and Memphis Minnie, later influencing an entire generation of younger female blues artists.

Déjà Vu Who?

Super review of Death Was in the Picture today in Mystery Book News. In his review M. Wayne Cunningham writes:

After her successful Los Angeles debut in Linda L. Richards Death Was The Other Woman, Kitty Pangborn, gal Friday to shamus Dexter Theroux, is back for an encore. Like Kitty’s first adventure, this one’s another fun-filled romp complete with bizarre but rounded characters slinging Depression-era slang … and acknowledging 1930’s icons (Irving Thalberg) and historical landmarks (Hollywood and Vine). It’s “déjà vu all over again” for lovers of the hard-boiled detective genre, but this time with a tinge of noir at the end.

The full review is here.

Change? It’s Hard!

Too long since I posted in this space. So much to share with you... but I’m busy putting out fires. (Not real ones, though.)

Meanwhile -- and just for fun -- here’s what I’m listening to.

“I See History Everywhere”

Today at the McNally Robinson Web site, Chadwick Ginther interviews me:

CG: Your first series of books had a more contemporary setting. Why the change?

LLR: I didn't really see it as a change as much as I always tell the story that's most of interest to me in that moment. In a way, too, I see history everywhere. We got here because we were there first. Yet we couldn't understand there properly without experiencing here. It's all connected, in a way. Do you see?

The interview is here.

The Author/Reader Contract

For various reasons, today I’m thinking about the tacit agreement between an author and her readers. I’m thinking about that contract and what it means to both parties, and how important it is. It’s not even something either party is always aware of. But it exists -- it always exists. Though nothing is actually signed or written down, in some ways it’s as tangible as if it were.

The contract looks like this: a reader shells out dollars, sure. But even in a world where ten, 20 or even 30 bucks for a book is an investment worthy of note, there’s another investment being made that’s much more dear: that being time and, to a certain degree, heart. And that investment is one that’s expected to pay an emotional return.

See: I’m trusting you, as an author, to not shred my investment. And I expect to be entertained, sure. But that’s only a small part. I don’t need you just for entertainment: there’s television, video games. Social media. What I want is beyond entertainment. From you, the author, I expect an emotional return. I expect that you’ll take the precious six (or four or eight or ten...) hours I give you and you’ll treat them not only with respect, but you’ll make an effort to reach me on a level other forms of entertainment can not. And while you’re doing that, and you have me rapt and in a way, semi-conscious, you will take care not to abuse that trust.

I'm giving you honest attention -- I’m giving you my heart -- you must give me a story that has cost you emotionally, as well. I trust you won’t cheat or shortchange me. I trust you to treat me honestly, to not manipulate me but rather to create a world where things make the kind of sense you’ve promised in the early pages of your book (another contract, just as important).

Now clearly, there are good contracts in this world and there are not so good ones. That is to say that agreements don’t always work and they don’t always work for everyone. For this one to work on any level, though, it must be entered into with an open heart. We’re exchanging a piece of ourselves with this reader/author agreement. And when all things are right, everybody wins.

Giving Away the Cow?

Today on January Magazine I tackle the topic of Google’s Book Search Settlement.

Up until now, we’ve stayed out of the fray over the proposed Google Book Search Settlement. For me, this has in part been due the fact that I’ve had a gnawing sense of unease that can border on panic whenever I contemplate what they’re proposing. The sheer audacity of what Google wants to undertake with this knocked the wind out of a lot of people’s sails. Certainly, the whole time this has been going on I’ve been sort of shaking my head, not quite believing what I was seeing and hearing.

That piece is here.

Well Tingle My Spine!

So happy to see two great guys sharing Spinetingler Magazine’s Special Services Award.

J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet and Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders will, I guess, have to scrap out who gets to keep the giant diamond-encrusted trophy that comes with the award.

What’s that? There is no diamond-encrusted trophy involved? That’s even better then. No fisticuffs need be involved. (Not that I have even a hint that either of these guys are especially partial to diamond-encrusted trophies. It’s just that, well times are tough, right? We all need all the diamond-encrustment we can get!)

The cover of Death Was the Other Woman was nominated in the best cover category, but that was won by Toby Barlow’s Sharp Teeth. That’s just a gorgeous cover. It’s even prettier in person than you get when you see it on the Web.

Congratulations to both Pierce and Rozovsky as well as to all the winners in the other terrific categories. And, of course, to Spinetingler for putting this great awards program together.

Oprah’s Chicken Club

This just makes me sad. From The National Post:

Remember when Oprah used to announce a new book club selection, and it would immediately become a bestseller?

Now she's using that power to promote chicken. But not any chicken. KFC chicken.

I think Oprah’s book club was a better idea. Even if it is grilled chicken, books are still better for every part of you. If a moment on the lips is not of concern, however, you still have time to scurry over and get your free chicken snack. The Post tells you how here.

Buy Indie Day Today and Every Day!

The genesis is lost in the mists of April. The best stories, though, lay the idea at the feet of American thriller writer Joseph Finder (Killer Instinct, Power Play) who started the ball rolling with a tweet on Twitter. And, once that roll had begun, there was no holding it back. By early this week, the call had reached a strident, high pitched command: “Buy Indie” came the shouts and, by all accounts and as I write this, they did. They are. And they will.

The idea, of course, is that no one understands booklovers the way independent booksellers do. From the outset, this seems only logical. It’s not possible for a huge chain to respond to the needs of individual clients the way an indie can. And a big, faceless online bookseller? Clearly, they can’t give customers the level of caring and service that your neighborhood bookseller can.

And here’s the thing: the power? It’s all with us. Here’s what I mean:

These days it seems as though we’re losing to many and too much of our newspapers. Cutbacks. Layoffs. Even, in some cases, closed doors. And why? In part, the fault is ours: we’re simply not reading -- and paying for -- them enough. Advertisers have noticed and they’re staying home. The result? A bloodbath that’s making those of us who love newspapers weep every time we hear of another cutback, another stilled press.

It’s not surprising that a lot of the same people who love news and newspapers also value independent booksellers. A lot of us even have our own special, favorite stores. Vendors with whom we have a relationship: who order in new books they figure we’ll like. Who say our name when we walk in the door.

Today then becomes the day we symbolically rescue our favorite bookseller. And if everyone makes the same wish, and walks through those doors, that wish will come true.

Times are difficult. We all know that. And a lot of us are making sacrifices. All the numbers, though, point to the fact that books are not among the sacrifices we’re making. We might skip a vacation this year, but our souls and hearts still need to travel. Books will take you there.

We have learned -- perhaps are learning -- that our actions as individuals really do have impact. We’re learning, as a generation and in so many ways, to walk the walk. So buy indie today: as with all the best deals and decisions, everybody wins.

Glimpsing the Future of Publishing

This is what micropublishers have been dreaming about for decades, really. One machine that does it all and makes it possible to have books printed and delivered, a single copy at a time. Is this what Print On Demand technology will look like in the not-so-distant future? From The Telegraph:

Crime and Punishment may take the average reader several months to complete, but Britain’s first “book vending machine” can print you a copy in just nine minutes.

A freshly-bound edition of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic -- ordered by The Daily Telegraph -- was one of the first tomes to drop out of the Espresso Book Machine when it opened for business for the first time yesterday.

The novel is one of more than 400,000 titles including many rare and out-of-print books that can be printed on demand at Blackwell bookshop on Charing Cross Road in central London.

The bookstore of the future, then, might look very different, indeed. Not shelf upon shelf of books, but row upon row of machines churning out custom copies for waiting customers. Between that and the electronic streams of the e-books whizzing by, it’s possible that, a few years hence, bookstores will be very different places, indeed.

While that idea makes me a little sad, it has a hopeful edge. Back at Blackwell, The Telegraph’s copy of Crime and Punishment was better than all right:

The hefty work that skidded out of the chute, while slightly sticky to the touch, looked and felt like a standard edition, even down to the correct ISBN number on the back.

The paper and ink are the same quality used in larger presses, and the binding appeared flawless.

Phill Jamieson, head of marketing at Blackwell, said that the firm was uncertain how the £68,000 machine -- one of only three such printers in the world -- would be used during its three-month trial period.

And the moral of the story? It seems entirely possible that the death of the book so many have been forceasting will never come. We love our books. Witness the many thousands of readers that pass through January Magazine every day, not to mention other online magazines and blogs and discussion groups and book groups and all of this without even leaving the online world.

At their core and at heart, books themselves will not change. However, how the publishing industry delivers our books, how they sell and market and get them to the consumer, all of that might change quite a bit.

Consider a world without remainders. Now that doesn’t sound so bad.

Coastal Crime Wave

If you’re in Vancouver on April 23rd -- this coming Thursday night -- stop by the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Elllis Awards shortlist release event at the Vancouver Public Library. It’s going to be a great evening!

We’ll all be together when the shortlisted authors for the 2008 Arthur Ellis Awards are announced. With luck and a tailwind, some British Columbian authors will make that list. (And some great books were submitted, so it will be a surprise if no one from the West Coast is included!) That alone would be exciting enough, right? But there will also be a panel discussion that will cover contemporary issues in crime writing.

The panel will be comprised of longlisted authors Jane Hall, Dan Kalla, Debra Purdy Kong, Sharon Rowse and Gwen Southin. I’ll be moderating the panel and mc’ing the evening.

As well, I have it on good authority that some top B.C. crime writers not on the panel will be in attendence, as well, including Lou Allin and Kay Stewart.

The event is on April 23rd at 7:30 pm in the Library Square Conference Centre, which is on the lower level of the Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver.

Admission is free and I’m told refreshments will be served.

So please come by for what should prove to be an entertaining evening with some of the top crime writers in the country.

Quote of the Week: JG Ballard

“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.” -- J.G. Ballard from his 2008 autobiography Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography.

Ballard -- author Crash and Super-Cannes, among many others -- died early this morning at age 78. He’d been ill for a long time. I wrote about it for January Magazine here.

Kitty Wins the Irish Sweepstake?

Today on the Mystery Scene blog, Oline Cogdill writes more about Death Was in the Picture and how the early 1930s setting of the book reflects on the current economy:

Hopefully, “in this economy….” will not stop you from buying books, preferably mysteries, and mystery-oriented magazines.

So it should come as no surprise how Linda L. Richards’s newest Kitty Pangborn novel Death Was in the Picture feels so contemporary, even though the novel is set in 1930.

You know, it’s funny, when I wrote both this book and 2008’s Death Was the Other Woman, all of the financial aspects of writing books set during the Great Depression were so much more like fiction. Writing and researching both books was really entering a very foreign world for me. What a shock to see so many of the things I’d been writing about come true, in a way. Oh not the details of reality, of course. But the matters of spirit that touch us when things are difficult. I got a lot of that right though, to be honest, I wish I didn't know that for sure. Sometimes it feels too much as though I had a crystal ball while I wrote. Scary!

Here’s one thing I know: I wish Kitty’s financial woes in a world of economic uncertainty were still as novel to readers as when I wrote the books. For the next one, should I mix things up and have her win the Irish Sweepstake?

Cogdill’s piece is here.

The Sun Smiles

Today on Off the Page, the book blog of The South-Florida Sun Sentinel, mystery maven Oline H. Cogdill looks at Death Was in the Picture:

In the second novel of this series, Richards skillfully mixes the tenets of a traditional mystery with a hard-boiled novel for a snappy tale drenched in the atmosphere of 1930s Los Angeles.

The full review is here.

The Recession Diet

This NY Magazine piece on Depression-era “health regimes” as -- more or less -- the new black in self-improvement is so ridiculous and so stylish, I can’t stop myself from pointing you there.

It would be safe to assume that there’s nothing much left to be said about Gwyneth Paltrow’s self-appointed role as America’s holistic adviser. After all, what’s not to trash about a glamorous actress who fixates on having the cleanest GI tract south of 14th Street? We’ve entered a moment in which it’s perfectly acceptable to talk, if not boast, about the purity of one’s digestive functions, as Diddy did when he recently Twittered minute-by-minute details of his “spiritual” 48-hour juice fast. But while it’s easy, and cathartic, to laugh at skinny, wealthy celebrities who preach the benefits of dietary deprivation, we may be overlooking something amid all the cackling: They could be the perfect food-advice purveyors for our less than bountiful economic times.

The Mark Adams piece is here, and quite good for a guffaw.

Sticks n’ Stones

I’ve gotten more angry letters about Death Was in the Picture than I did about my first four novels combined. People have accused me of… well, of all kinds of things. Chief among them has been the idea that I distorted the truth around the way the Motion Picture Production Code -- the Hays Code -- came first to be written and then to finally be applied and, more or less related to this, some readers have been upset that I seemed to have smeared perfectly innocent religious types along the way.

The letters, while sometimes hurtful, have caused me to think about story. That is, it’s made me muse on the creation of fiction and the choices we make. One reader wrote and asked if I had some ax to grind with the church. I told her that I do not. I don’t even have an ax or anything with which to grin it. She said it had ruined the story for her. I told her I was sorry she felt the story had been ruined, but that I couldn’t apologize for that story itself because, well, the part of the story she hated was part of the story I was telling. From my perspective, you couldn’t have one without the other: they’re part of the same whole.

Here’s another thing: even though Death Was in the Picture is fiction, the back-story she had trouble with is the truth as I believe it to be. Not necessarily the truth as found in the history books, but the stuff you find between the lines if you do enough research and immerse yourself deeply enough into bringing some aspect of the past to life. And that’s the license you get when you write fiction. Some of it I get to make it up as I go along.

That said, the type of fiction I write is closely tied into history so sometimes there is overlap. The edges of everything are true. I’ve filled in some of the stuff in the middle. If I’ve done it well, it will be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. But, when I’m writing historical fiction, I don’t see it as part of my job to educate you. I do see it as part of my job to enflame you if I can. If you write to me and tell me that, after you read my book, you jumped off the couch (or out of the tub or off the subway) and ran to the library to find out more about the period or the topic or something in the book, I’ll have done what I do as well as I can. Because in my fondest wish, you leave one of my novels feeling the journey was a good one for you. And maybe you leave feeling slightly richer than when you entered. That’s what I hope.

I know that, for this particular book, the more research I did, the more I realized that the stories being told around the topics at hand weren’t complete. Perhaps because, as history goes, this is fairly recent. But there seemed to me to be a lot of inconsistencies in the written history and, in some cases, a lot has been left unsaid. More: sometimes you’d add up two and two and come up with five.

The deeper I got with the story, the more I realized that I was tackling a really important topic, one that had never been fully probed before. And, truly, it still hasn’t been. The scope of a story told from Kitty Pangborn’s perspective doesn’t allow it because we see the world through her eyes and from her experience.

The result is -- must be -- that you see shadows around corners. You see things lurking that you never really come to understand. You are given hints of things; pieces. Then you’re left to draw your own conclusions, in a way. The mystery is locked down in the end, but, in this case, some of the things that contribute to it simply can not be: not if it’s to stay true to Kitty’s perspective and what we can reasonably expect her to see and understand.

I guess I’m still musing on all of this and I’m still thinking about story. Your input sends me there. And whether you’ve sent me literary rocks or flowers with your letters, I thank you very much for writing. Making books can be a lonely business. It’s gratifying to see how much you care.

Be Still My Tingling Spine!

Spinetingler Magazine has announced their second annual awards program. (That can’t be right, can it? It feels like they’ve been doing it longer than that.) Among all the good and worthy books and people nominated for stuff, Death Was the Other Woman was shortlisted for best cover.

The winners in each category will be chosen by public vote. If you’d like to vote, as well as see all of the covers, follow this link. Voting ends April 25th. If you’re related to me, or if you think the cover of Death Was the Other Woman is, in fact, the best of those on offer, please add your vote. (Notice how you get a choice if you’re not related to me? If you are, well... you know the drill!)

Vote here.

Tempura Fried Cheesecake?

No, seriously.

The Porkgasm? The Meat Cake.

With pictures. Bring your own antacids here.

(Now back to work I go. You too. Or, after that, is a siesta what’s required?)

The Book as Art

The artist part of me appreciates the creativity of these. The author and booklover is shocked and appalled.

Personal reaction is never a bad thing in art and, in some ways, there can be no wrong reaction. How does this art make you feel?

Marlowe & Movies

Raymond Chandler died 50 years ago today. J. Kingston Pierce at The Rap Sheet did something massively cool to remark the day. Go see.

Pizza Machine!

I want this. Seriously. I really want this.

Quote of the Week: John Hope Franklin

“The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation. This means that at the present time there is an urgent need to re-examine our past in terms of our present outlook.” -- John Hope Franklin, January 2, 1915 - March 25, 2009

We cover Dr. Franklin’s passing on January Magazine, here.