Underworld Available in October

 The seventh Nick Forte novel, Underworld, drops on or about October 1. In this story, Forte’s ex-wife believe she’s being followed by persons unknown, including when their daughter, Caroline, is in the car. This is unacceptable.

 

Below is an excerpt:

 

We ate an early supper to leave time for a drive to Arlington Heights for the high school football game. Caroline would change into her marching band uniform at school and we’d meet up after the game.

She didn’t say much on the drive north. I got a glimpse of why when she asked if I had a girlfriend.

“Nope.”

“How come? You’re smart and funny.”

Apparently I wasn’t all that good-looking. I guess two out of three ain’t bad. “You have to go out to find a girlfriend.”

“So?”

“I don’t go out much.”

“Why not?”

“You go out, you come across a lot of people you don’t know.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

“Yeah, but I hate people I don’t know.”

So ended a conversation I didn’t want to have.

We were early to the game, as usual. Diane sometimes referred to me as  “pathologically punctual,” and not as a compliment. Caroline never complained. Fourteen years in and never tired of seeing how parts of me combined with parts of Diane to create a young woman who fascinated me every day. When people asked what my favorite age was for Caroline, I always said, “Now,” and meant it.

I said hello to her friends Tyler and Joanna, reminded Caroline where I’d be after the game, and went to find a good seat. Arlington Heights – Hersey High School, actually – won 26 – 13 in a game that was closer than the score indicated, thanks to the dumbest coaching decision I have ever seen in a sporting event at any level.

Hersey was up 20 – 13 with 56 seconds to play. The visitor – I think it was Schaumberg, but the scoreboard said only VISITOR and I couldn’t hear the PA worth a damn – had the ball on its own 19-yard line. A run and two passes later brought them to fourth down and three yards to go.

They punted. With eleven seconds left in the game. Down seven points.

I have no idea what the coach was thinking, unless he had some secret play to force a fumble on the return. If he did, the play needed work, as Hersey ran the kick back for a touchdown as time expired.

I met up with Caroline and her buds outside the band room. The plan was for me to drive her friends home before Caroline and I made the 45-minute trek to Bolingbrook.

Caroline had a better idea. Even I thought so.

“Can we get ice cream?”

We’d made this improvisation before. “You girls know the drill,” I said to her friends. “Send your mom or dad a text to ask, then show me they said it was okay.”

Apparently they have me pegged as a soft touch; the requests were already approved. Both girls nearly broke my nose shoving cell phones in my face

Sundae School was busy, not packed. I bought sundaes for all three girls – typical, and a primary reason I’m so popular when it comes to giving rides – and a milkshake for myself. I always got milkshakes when I drove, on the off chance we’d have to leave before I was ready. It’s hell to eat a sundae and drive at the same time.

I took my shake far enough away for them to be sure no eavesdropping took place. Tyler’s father got himself busted six months earlier and had yet to redeem his reputation. I maintained a line of sight so they wouldn’t have to find me when it was time to go.

Twenty minutes later two boys/young men I’d noticed sitting in a far corner made a detour on their way out to pass near my charges. No big deal. The boys looked like high school seniors or college freshmen. For all I knew they were friends or relatives of one of the girls.

A couple of minutes later Tyler’s and Joanna’s body language stiffened. Caroline was still cool, but she knew I was close and would handle anything too uncomfortable. The other girls had no such assurance.

These were always awkward situations. My first impulse was to go over and sort these boys out, but the girls needed to learn how to deal with social dilemmas; my best role was safety net. I finished my shake and was watching the situation play out when Caroline peeked over her shoulder in my direction.

I moved with an unhurried stride. Tossed my empty cup in a trash bin on the way over. Took each boy by an elbow to steer them past the girls’ table and toward the door.

This produced the expected reaction.

“Hey! What the fuck, man?”

“Who the hell are you?”

I didn’t speak until we cleared the door. Kept my voice in the register Caroline calls menacing. “I’m conducting a survey and want to ask you a couple of questions.”

These were Arlington Heights toughs, which meant South Side ten-year-olds would steal their lunch money before pantsing them. The taller one said, “You’re not going to like the answers if you don’t turn us loose, asshole.”

“First question: do either of you know what it’s like to eat soup through a straw for…I don’t know. Six to eight weeks? However long it takes a broken jaw to heal.”?”

Not the question they’d expected. “Uh…no.”

“Second and last question: would you like to find out?”

For sure not what they expected. All I got were head shakes.

“Then fuck off.”

And off they fucked.

 

Chapter 44

 The seventh Nick Forte novel, Underworld, is all but complete. The only thing left to do is the proofread, which can wait until after Bouchercon and C3 next month.

 

Except for Chapter 44, which is breaking my balls like a bastard.

 

Here’s the deal: Chapter 44 takes place right after a major plot development. Forte needs a break, and readers probably won’t mind taking a breath while they absorb what just happened. Forte stops by his favorite sports bar to unwind a little with the barmaid. It’s a light, entertaining scene that lays the groundwork for a relationship that unfolds in the next book. There’s no plot development; the book will make sense without it.

 

And it’s too long. It was half again as long as it is now, and it’s still too long. Lots of writers I respect would say to cut the chapter. Nothing truly important happens and it will streamline the entire book. This option is still on the table.

 

The thing is, the book is already just shy of 48,000 words. It’s already as streamlined a book as I have written.

 

And it’s a good chapter. It’s funny, and the dynamic between Nick and Wendy is exactly what I wanted. I’ve already killed about 33% of the darlings in this chapter. How many more can die before the chapters no longer worth keeping is a reasonable question.

 

I finished the other 63 chapters four days ago. Chapter 44 won’t let me go. I’ll take a look today to see what else I can cut without damaging the context of the parts I want to keep. Among the legion of benefits of not having to deal with publishers is I can take as long as I feel I need to fix this.

 

I have for years believed that if a sentence refuses to be edited into something better, the problem may well be it’s a shitty sentence; cut the whole thing and see if I miss it. I may apply that principle to Chapter 44 if it’s still vexing me in a few days.

 

Just when I think I have a book under control, I get Roseannadanna’d.

 

It’s always something.

Spring's Favorite Reads

 

Assassins Anonymous, Rob Hart. Who would figure a twelve-step program for professional killers would make for an entertaining book? Rob Hart did, then proved it. AA is violent, funny, and thought-provoking as Mark tries to stay on the path when everyone he meets seems to want to kill him. Rarely are high-concept stories this well executed.

 

Real Bad, Real Soon, Eric Beetner. This worthy successor to last year’s The Last Few Miles of Road shows what happens to Carter McCoy after he establishes himself as the go-to guy for off the record justice. Beetner has a gift for lending a familiar tone to a story that’s very much different from its predecessor while remaining just as engaging. I blew through this one and am already waiting for a third helping.

 

Survivor's Guilt, Robyn Gigl. With more ins and outs than the stitches in a quilt, Survivor’s Guilt tells the story of a millionaire’s murder. The cops pick up a suspect, who confesses right away. Attorney Erin McCabe has to be talked into taking the case, but when she does she finds things don’t add up any better than Forrest Gump’s algebra homework. There are elements of Ross McDonald in the buried family secrets. A riveting story with a taut, exciting ending.

 

Once You Go This Far, Kristen Lepionka. An experienced hiker has a tragic fall. Or does she? Her daughter engages PI Roxane Weary, who ranges from western Ohio, thorough Michigan, and into Canada to unravel this increasingly complex story. Weary is a realistic PI: a little unsure, and worried she’s in over her head. Her greatest virtue is a stick-to-it nature that can work for and against her. Lepionka has a Shamus to her credit (The Stories You Tell) and this book will only fortify her reputation.

 

Butcher's Moon, Richard Stark. Number 16 in the Parker series has several callbacks to earlier novels, but you won’t be lost if you haven’t read them. On the other hand, it will make you want to read them. Someone stole the stash from an earlier job and Parker wants his money back. As he’s shown before, this is unacceptable, and he takes on an entire corrupt town to get what he’s owed. Compelling from Page One.

 

Spade & Archer, Joe Gores. I’d heard about this prequel to The Maltese Falcon for years; finally got around to reading it. The anticipation did not lead to disappointment. Gores is Hammett-like enough to be entertaining for a devotee such as myself while not letting the book become a pale copy. Three stories strung together with a common thread, Spade and Archer should be on the menu of any Hammett fan.

Lynn Kostoff, Author of The Length of Days

 I tend to think of Lynn Kostoff as a ‘writer’s writer’ because of his superior craftsmanship, though I realize that’s damning with faint praise. Lynn should be a ‘reader’s writer,’ as his books incorporate the aforementioned craftsmanship to create multi-dimensional characters, layered storylines, and twists that leave you shaking your head for a few seconds before you realize their inevitability. I call it ‘The Fiction Trifecta.’.

 

Lynn’s new book The Length of Days, includes all the elements that have made me a fan for years. It surprised me when I realized he’d never been on the blog. Today we take care of that.

 

One Bite at a Time: Welcome to the blog, Lynn. I’ve been a fan for a long time and was shocked – shocked! – to see this is your first interview here. Whether that shows you have lowered your standards or I have raised mine remains to be seen. Either way, welcome aboard.

 

It’s been eleven years since your most recent book, Words to Die For. What the hell?

 

Lynn Kostoff: Time and Chance happen to us all.

 

OBAAT: The Length of Days weaves together several plots that end up related to various degrees. How did the planning go? Outline? Several independent stories you wove together? In your head with going back to make things work out?

 

LK:  Weave is probably the operative term here. I drafted the first chapter which contained the primary plot hook: the death of the twelve young women. I liked the idea of an ensemble novel with multiple protagonists who, on the face of it, seemingly had no connection to or with each other.

 

Next, I spent a lot of time doing what I call “character auditions,” in essence creating a series of character sketches and trying to tease out a central problem each was struggling with.

 

Once I had the protagonists established, I began drafting the novel proper. I still did not know for sure how the characters were connected to each other at that point, but I trusted that the writing process would enable me to discover what I needed to know and help me recognize how the characters related to each other and the death of the young women.

 

Along the way, I began envisioning the novel as a spider’s web with the dead women and the killer nesting in its center, and that metaphor helped with structuring its events and character arcs.

 

OBAAT: The Length of Days reminded me a little of a Ross Macdonald novel, as hidden family secrets create or complicate problems in the present day. How prominent were the family angles when you were devising the story?

 

LK: While I admire Ross Macdonald’s works, I did not see the dark family secrets and their repercussions in Days until I drafted them. They came as a happy and welcome surprise and felt “right” on both the micro and macro level of plotting.

 

OBAAT: There is a Magnolia Beach in South Carolina, but no city with that name. (I checked.) Is the Magnolia Beach in the book based on a real place or wholly fictional? If fictional, did you create a map for yourself? I’ve read few novels that established the location as well as you did here, even when they were set in real places.

 

LK: My wife and I live a little less than two hours from the South Carolina coast and spend a lot of time there. Magnolia Beach is basically an amalgam of the beach towns comprising the Grand Strand (the towns and beaches running between Little River, SC and Georgetown, with Myrtle Beach at its center).

 

Researching the Low Country’s history, I discovered there was an actual Magnolia Beach at one time, but it had been destroyed by Hurricane Hazel in 1954. In the 1930’s Magnolia Beach was exclusively African-American and housed the Magnolia Beach Club which was listed in the famous (or perhaps infamous is the more appropriate term) Green Book. Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Ray Charles among others often performed there.

 

OBAAT: Every character is well-developed and well-defined. While there are several places where I thought “I did not see that coming,” none of them seem out of character in retrospect. How much of each character did you have laid out in advance, or did they develop in your head as you wrote them?

 

LK: Robert Frost once said “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” While I spend a lot of time planning and sketching and setting up rough working outlines, ultimately I trust the characters to take me where the plot and I need to go. Orchestrating those “I didn’t see that coming” moments comes from brutal revision and line-editing sessions. In The Length of Days, I ended up cutting over 175 pages to help sharpen the dramatic focus and placement for those moments.

 

OBAAT: Keith Rawson asked you in an interview for LitReactor, “Which fictional character would you most like to have a drink with, and why?” Your answer: “I would probably enjoy having a couple beers with John Yossarian from Catch 22 or Marlow from Heart of Darkness; they’re two characters who are close to my everyday temperament.”

 

It’s been ten years. Is your answer still the same?

 

LK: Given the current political and cultural reality, I would still invite Yossarian and Marlow for a beer because Yossarian saw through lies and Marlow hated them.

 

However, I’d like to add a few more for a couple rounds. One being Ben Doc Dougherty from your novel Grind Joint and Eddie Senta from Charlie Stella’s Eddie’s World. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t include Mario Balzic from K.C. Constantine’s Rocksburg novels. They’d all make fine drinking companions.

The Length of Days drops on July 4. 

 

 

 

 

Scheduling Announcement

 I first posted to this blog on August 17, 2008. George W. Bush was president. The Sole Heir was a rising high school senior. The number one film at the box office was Tropic Thunder. The Los Angeles Angels, led by Vladimir Guerrero Sr. and managed by Mike Scioscia, had the best record in baseball.

This is the 1,175^th post. There have been over one million views and 1600 comments; I am grateful for each and every one. In all that time I have only had to delete a small handful of comments (not including spam) because they were disrespectful of another commenter or wholly off topic.

I’ve kept it going because I enjoy writing the posts. I made a conscious decision several years ago to limit all posts to the traditional newspaper column length of 600 – 800 words out of respect for my readers’ time. (Interviews often run longer, as I do not limit what my guests say. The blog is a great way for me to work things out in my head by writing them down. The self-imposed word limit is helpful to my editing skills in general. There is no downside to this blog for me.

Hold that thought.

I retired from my day job on December 31, 2020. The time retirement made available to me to do whatever I wanted bumped into how tightly organized my days had to be when I was working 40 or more hours a week until I realized a while back that I didn’t have much more ‘free’ time now than I did five years ago. Sure, I got to pick how the day was filled, but the day was filled. I found myself fighting for time to do what I wanted to do for fun amid the time spent doing the things I felt I should be doing or needed to do.

That’s not the point of retirement.

I dedicated myself to drop a post every Friday come hell or high water. I wrote post in advance to cover weeks I’d be away. I worked ahead in general in case I became busier than expected. As an example, I’m drafting this post on April 7 for posting April 18. This is the least lead time I’ve had in weeks.

There are two problems with that. Keeping to such a strict schedule allows me to guarantee the most recent post – especially interviews – will live at the top of the page for a full week. That’s nice, but it also means there are topics that come up on social media or at a conference that I don’t get to until the iron has cooled considerably and the world has moved on.

The other problem with that kind of schedule is that it places the cart before the horse. The blog drives my schedule when I should be driving its. In short, it’s become like a job. True, it’s a job I enjoy, and it’s not like I’m spending forty hours a week doing it, but the whole point of retirement is to do what I want to do when I want to do it.

Something had to give.

So this will be the last regularly scheduled weekly post. I can’t say yet whether I’ll post more or less often, only that I’ll post when I feel I have something worthwhile to say. Any writer friends who’d like to do an interview or guest post, you’re always welcome; you know where to find me. I’ll still do the conference summaries and quarterly roundups of my favorite reads. The only thing that will change is the regularity of posting every Friday.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed, commented, or read this page over the past seventeen years. I’d probably write it if no one read it, but the validation I receive here when I see people do read it, and the comments left here and in other social media are more than gratifying. I’m a better writer because of it, and probably a better person for making myself look at things in more detail. I hope some of what I’ve said here about writing has had a positive effect, maybe taught a newer writer a thing or two.

I’ll be back soon. Just probably not next Friday. I’ll be at the Malice Domestic conference and don’t intend to queue anything in advance.

Capitalization and Italics

 Publishers’ style guides are like grammar in that they should aid the reader’s comprehension. The problem is, like with grammar, too often these guides become ends unto themselves and get in the way of the reader’s comprehension and enjoyment.

There are a couple of things that prompted me to write about this. First is the relatively recent move toward not capitalizing certain proper nouns. Let’s look at a couple of examples:

·       A building may have seven floors, but the one on top should be the Seventh Floor, as it refers to a specific floor.

·       You can put a car in gear, but if you’re going to be specific about which gear, it should be Park or Drive or Reverse.

A noun refers to a person, place, or thing. A proper noun refers to a specific person, place, or thing. Proper nouns are capitalized. To do other is incorrect. Not because it’s a rule. Because it’s confusing.

A more recent development is in the use of italics to replace quotation marks in places other than dialog. For example:

Will said, “John told them he was an expert. The fact is, he doesn’t know his ass from his elbow about it.”

This makes the reader think Will emphasized “expert” when he did not. The traditional way, which is also easier to understand on first reading is

Will said, “John told them he was an ‘expert.’ The fact is, he doesn’t know his ass from his elbow about it.”

Readers expect italics to indicate one of four things:

·       Emphasis of a word or phrase.

·       Internal monolog.

·       The title of a book, movie, magazine, or newspaper.

·       A section of a book that is set apart from the rest of the text, such as a flashback scene or chapter.

Using italics in lieu of quotation marks puts the reader in mind of one of these four things and requires her to re-read the section to get the proper interpretation. People should only read a passage twice because they want to savor it, not because it confuses them.

The purpose of everything that goes on the printed page is to convey what the author intended as directly as possible to the reader’s mind. Anything that aids that is fine. Anything that works against that is wrong.

I’ll have more to say on the grammar front next week.

Left Coast Crime 2025

 Travel and prior commitments prevented me from writing about march’s left Coast Crime conference in Denver. I’ll correct that today.

A quick note: I’ve been to over twenty conferences since my first, 2008’s Baltimore Bouchercon. I don’t take as many notes as I used to because each year there are fewer things I haven’t heard. The list below is by no means a comprehensive listing of all the interesting things I heard over that weekend, just those that were new, or of special interest to me.

PIs: Historical & Modern

SJ Rozan: The PI is the embodiment of having to make a difficult decision in an area of moral ambiguity.

Matt Coyle: PIs are the equivalent of the Western gunslinger. Once he’s done the job, he’s not so useful.

SJ Rozan: Short stories are like a liquor story robbery: in and out. Novels are long cons.

Noir: How Dark Can We go?

Christa Faust: Dark humor is a great way to help readers bridge the gap to an unlikeable protagonist.

CF: Hard boiled + Down these mean streets goes a man who is not himself mean. Noir = He’s mean, too.

CF: As an author, it can be hard to stick with a series. “I’m married to this series and I love it. but look at the ass on that idea.”

CF: There’s no level of “how far,” but how you handle it. If a scene can be cut and not hurt the story, cut it. Be as dark as you want, but not just the sake of darkness.

Conversation notes (Christa?):

Let the queer characters be messy. Too many cis writers make them perfect for fear of giving offense, which makes them two dimensional.

Humor can be a protective coating for the queer characters.

Medicine and Forensics:

DP Lyle: DNA is involved in less than 1% of cases.

The Craft of Writing:

Duane Swierczynski: A scene that comes to you right away is likely a cliché.

Rob Hart: Doesn’t want ‘sensitivity readers;’ he wants ‘accuracy readers.’

RH: Does one draft backward so he’s not running out of energy by the end.

Noir: Examining the Dark Side

Jon Bassoff: The reader doesn’t have to like the protagonist; he just has to be interested in him.

David Boop: In noir, the pro is the con.

DB: the reader can only spend so much time in the dark before you lose him. Comedy not only gives the reader a break, it intensifies the next bad thing to happen.

Mark Bacon: Car dealers put GPS and kill switches in cars for people with poor credit so they can keep them from driving the car and find it without bothering with a repo man, This can cause serious problems when a car dies on a busy highway.

Audience member: Postwar noir dealt with PTSD, though it wasn’t called that then. Now (neo)noir is nihilism.

#  #  #

This was my second Left Coast Crime. Both were as well run as any conference I have attended, and I’ve been to more than twenty. If you get a chance to catch one – next year’s is in San Francisco -  you should go. You won’t be sorry.