Cartoon of the Day: Writer

Eric Wright: R.I.P.

Eric Wright, Canadian Crime Writer, died on October 9 at the age of 86. Eric Wright was born in England but immigrated to Canada as a young man and settled in Toronto. For a number of years he taught English literature, and he wrote for television and magazines.

Eric Wright is known for his Inspector Charlie Salter detective novels. The first, The Night the Gods Smiled, won the John Creasey Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, and the City of Toronto Book Award. His third Charlie Salter Novel, Death in the Old Country, won the Arthur Ellis Award. The Joe Barley Mystery The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn also received the Arthur Ellis Award and the Barry Award and was nominated for an Edgar. In 1998, Eric received the Derrick Murdoch Award for lifetime contributions to Canadian crime writing. He was a past president of the Crime Writers of Canada.

Besides the Inspector Charlie Salter Mystery series, Wright wrote the Lucy Trimble Brenner Mysteries, the Mel Pickett Mysteries, and the Joe Barley Mysteries. His memoir Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man which covers most of Eric’s life from when he was a child growing up poor in working-class London through his immigration to Canada and the beginning of his attendance at University, was nominated for a Charles-Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction. He also wrote two stand-alone novels, Moodie’s Tale and Finding Home, the novella “Dempsey’s Lodge”, and a short story “Twins”.

On October 9, 2015, Eric Wright died of kidney cancer at the age of 86.

Cartoon of the Day: Coffee Shop Writer

The Crime Cafe: Why I Started a Podcast: Guest Post by Debbi Mack

Debbi Mack is the New York Times ebook bestselling author of the Sam McRae mystery series. She’s also published one young adult novel, Invisible Me, and Five Uneasy Pieces, a short story collection that includes her Derringer Award–nominated story “The Right to Remain Silent.” Her short stories have appeared in various other anthologies and publications. Her most recently published short story is “Jasmine”, appearing in Chesapeake Crimes: Homicidal Holidays. Debbi is also a screenwriter and aspiring indie filmmaker. A former attorney, Debbi has also worked as a journalist, librarian, and freelance writer/researcher. She enjoys walking, cats, travel, movies, music, and espresso. 

Debbi Mack:
The Crime Cafe: Why I Started a Podcast 

Thanks, Janet, for the opportunity to post on your blog!

When Janet asked me if I’d like to write about The Crime Cafe, my new podcast, it forced me to think about why I’d decided to undertake such a project. I think it comes down to the idea that there are loads of great crime, suspense, and thriller authors, but not all of them are equally well known.

Many a time, I’ve talked to readers about my mystery series, and they ask me questions like these:

“Who are your favorite authors?”
“What kind of stories do you write?”
“Are your books anything like those of [insert famous author’s name here]?”

These questions are all posed for the same reason. To get a sense of how my writing compares to that of authors they know and probably like.

I recently had a conversation with a woman who enjoys mysteries. And when I mentioned Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, she knew their work. I love when that happens, because strangely enough, not all readers know their names.

This really does happen. There are actual book-loving readers who don’t know these authors. Despite the fact that they are occupying the stratosphere (as it were) of the publishing world.

In any case, when the woman asked what other crime fiction authors I’d recommend, it was difficult to reign it back to a manageable list. I could have spent a whole hour or two talking about the many great authors in the genre that I’ve enjoyed.

The truth is that well-known authors like John Grisham, Stephen King, and Lee Child are all great. As are Robert Crais, Walter Mosley, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton. But for every name on that list, I can give you plenty more crime writers who are also exemplary. They just aren’t as well known.

What I’ve seen over the course of my novel writing career are two significant phenomena: the meteoric rise of self-publishing and the fast-changing world of social media.

As a result, it’s become even harder for authors to gain recognition. However, the answer isn’t to compete with one another.

Way back when, I asked the late Jeremiah Healy to write an endorsement for my first novel. And he agreed to do so, on one condition. That when I was in a position to help other new or aspiring authors, I would lend assistance. I had no problem agreeing to that. The way I see it, other authors are my peers, not my competitors. There are plenty of readers to go around.

This is why I started The Crime Cafe. The whole point is to tell as many people as possible about the great crime, suspense, and thriller authors that win awards, get great reviews, and are held in high regard within the genre, yet manage to slip under the public’s radar. My thought was, “What better way to do this than with a podcast? Perhaps it will reach a few ears and help bring these authors to the fore.”

At the same time, I truly enjoy doing the podcasts. Every time I talk to a new author on The Crime Cafe, it’s like I’ve made a new friend. I learn so much from listening to their stories, and I try to keep the conversation from getting too pedantic or predictable.

I hope you’ll tune in to The Crime Cafe sometime soon. It’s a fun way to spend 20 minutes or so. And you’ll hear the real lowdown from some of the crime genre’s best authors.

You can find The Crime Cafe on iTunes and Google Play. You can also find it on my website, in audio and video form. That page also features my online store, where I carry Crime Cafe merchandise, bearing the distinctive logo. Not to mention the “buy button” for the joint story package comprised of work from all the authors I interview.

***
You can find Debbi online here:  

http://www.debbimack.com

Twitter: @debbimack

YouTube: http://bit.ly/13AZEWT

Facebook (author page): https://www.facebook.com/debbimackwriter

Facebook (The Crime Cafe) https://www.facebook.com/The-Crime-Cafe-383760808486685/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/debbimacktoo/

Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DebbiMack

Cartoon of the Day: James Bond

Inventing the Culinary Thriller: Guest post by Taffy Cannon

Taffy Cannon:
Inventing the Culinary Thriller

The wonder is that nobody ever wrote a culinary thriller before Beat Slay Love. Published under the pseudonym Thalia Filbert, the book was actually written by Lise McClendon, Katy Munger, Kate Flora, Gary Phillips, and me—all members of the Thalia Press Author Coop. 

Yes. Five authors, one book. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Food has long been a popular ingredient of the mystery world, from Miss Marple taking seed cake with her tea to Jack Reacher ordering peach pie with his coffee. Male detectives are believed to be more nuanced when they can whip up a vinaigrette or produce a specialty that isn’t breakfast. Female detectives may ignore cooking altogether, but they can usually recognize a fine meal when one shows up and they always know the best available takeout.

An entire universe of cozy mysteries related to food has been wildly popular for years, offering bakeries and catering and B&Bs and cheese making and confectionary and wineries and pretty much any food-related setting short of the Deep Fried Bug Café (which may be under contract at Berkley).  

Beat Slay Love takes the food-related mystery to an entirely new level.

Structured in classic thriller format, the book features a series of nasty chef-related murders in a range of memorable locations across America. An FBI agent and a food blogger team up first to acknowledge the existence of a serial killer and then to try to stop the killings. And the killer has an intimate acquaintance with the world of celebrity chefs, the Food Network, and all things foodie.

Technically the book adheres to thriller conventions: Multiple points of view, including the killer’s at a fairly early stage. Interesting and occasionally exotic locations. Snappy dialogue. Short paragraphs and fast pacing. An action-packed denouement that both surprises and renders justice.

Beat Slay Love was written in serial fashion by five established mystery writers whose communications were handled almost entirely by email. We literally cover the four corners of the country, from San Diego to Maine and Montana to North Carolina. With some 75 published novels and a century or so of mystery-writing experience, we began writing this group mystery about three years ago.

Little precedent existed for a serial novel, at least not since the 19th century. Multiple authors limited the field even further, basically to two books. Naked Came the Stranger was written by Newsday reporters in 1969 and Naked Came the Manatee was first published in the Miami Herald Tropic magazine in 1995.

I once participated in a convoluted serial novel where a hundred San Diego writers each contributed a couple of pages after seeing only the two pages immediately preceding their own sections. The lead-in pages I got were so incomprehensible that I covered myself by working in the possibility of perceptions being skewed by acid in the drinking water. I never even tried to read the final copy.

And so I opted out of the planning stages of Beat Slay Love. I didn’t see how this book could possibly work, particularly when it was clear from the get-go that there would be no outline, no rules, nothing but a commitment to let ‘er rip and see where matters went.

Amazingly, it did work. When I read the first sections written by the four authors who started down the Beat Slay Love road, I was hooked and signed on immediately. I learned not to worry where a storyline might be headed (or land), to pay reasonable attention to what had preceded what I was now working on, and to have faith that all the disparate threads we spun would eventually come together.

Those threads didn’t need to make a tapestry, either. I knew I’d be quite pleased if we only ended up with an awkwardly embroidered kitchen towel. But we did a whole lot better than that. We came up with a book I’m proud to be a part of.

Beat Slay Love is not a police procedural or a cozy. It contains no recipes, though a great deal of food preparation and gustatory delight takes place in its pages. It is more on the order of a romp with attitude. Did I mention there’s a lot of sex?

Beat Slay Love also displaces my 1975 piece on the Miss Texas Pageant as the most fun I’ve ever had on a single writing project.

Read an excerpt here: https://thaliapress.wordpress.com/beat-slay-love/