Literary Salon: Alexandra Sokoloff & Craig Robertson 6/29

Join Mystery Readers NorCal for an evening Literary Salon in Berkeley, CA, for award winning authors Alexandra Sokoloff and Craig Robertston. 7 p.m. Comment below to RSVP & directions.

During noir author Craig Robertson's 20-year career with a Scottish Sunday newspaper, he interviewed three recent Prime Ministers; attended major stories including 9/11, Dunblane, the Omagh bombing and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann; been pilloried on breakfast television, beaten Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, been among the first to interview Susan Boyle, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India. Craig Robertson has written four novels set on the mean streets of Glasgow and one on the not-so-mean streets of Torshavn in the Faroe Islands.

His debut novel, RANDOM, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger and was a Sunday Times bestseller. The Last Refuge is his latest novel.

Alexandra Sokoloff is the bestselling, Thriller Award-winning and Bram Stoker and Anthony Award-nominated author of eleven supernatural, paranormal and crime thrillers. The New York Times has called her "a daughter of Mary Shelley" and her books "Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre." As a screenwriter she has sold original suspense and horror scripts and written novel adaptations for numerous Hollywood studios (Sony, Fox, Disney, Miramax), for producers such as Michael Bay, David Heyman, Laura Ziskin and Neal Moritz. She is also the workshop leader of the internationally acclaimed Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshops, based on her Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbooks and blog. Bitter Moon, the fourth of the Huntress/FBI Thrillers is now available! The Huntress Moon series is now in development for TV.

Alex will be co-toastmistress at Bouchercon in New Orleans. Craig is the International Rising Star Guest of Honor.

Alex and Craig split their time between Los Angeles and Scotland.

Your Name in a Book: Be careful what you wish for

One of the most popular auction items at mystery conventions is 'your name' in a book by your favorite author. after bidding lots of money for this 'honor', you can only hope that the character with your name is a law abiding citizen..or not, depending on your preferences. Often you have no say in the matter, and your named character turns out to be a prostitute or a  two-bit criminal. Sometimes you can talk with the author to ensure that your character is 'acceptable' to you.  Whatever the outcome, you've paid your money, and you take your chances. Using real names of people (fans/readers/friends) in books or stories as an in-joke is called Tuckerization. I've been tuckerized several times. I haven't paid, but my writer friends have used my name in their books as an in-joke, and luckily always in a good way, and always with a very minor character. Thanks, friends.

But what about an author using a name of a friend or acquaintance either wittingly or not in a book? Doesn't every novel have an "any resemblance" disclaimer?  Obviously Brendan Cody, doesn't see it that way or maybe he didn't read it at the beginning of the book. He has taken Thriller Writer Alexandra Sokoloff to court. He claims she defamed him in her 2009 thriller, The Unseen, creating a character with his name and description, who has "violent, sexually predatory and abusive" tendencies. They met at a writer's conference in 2007, and he claims they became friends, and that he shared things about himself. Sexually predatory and abusive things? Good Luck, Alex, this seems like a frivolous suit. Hope you win.

Read the article here at the Courthouse News Service.