Hardboiled vs Cozies vs Everybody

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Novelist James Reasoner is wondering when did the mystery field become so balkanized?

I read just about everything there was in the mystery field . . . and it seemed perfectly normal to me. Now you got your hardboiled readers laughing at cozies and your cozy readers sneering at the hardboiled stuff, and for all I know people who read cat mysteries can’t understand why anybody would want to read a dog mystery, and vice versa. I don’t understand it. Give me a good story and some reasonably interesting characters, and I’m fine
with it, no matter what the trappings might be.

You notice this a lot on many of the mystery lists (like DorothyL, etc.) and among the writing blogs.  What’s interesting to me is that the balkanization doesn’t just exist among mystery fans, but among mystery writers as well with, for example, the hardboiled writers all but sneering at authors who write cozies, as if they aren’t real writers because their heroes don’t fuck, or take a beating,  or go to a murder scenes and see the brain matter on the wall and the dead man who has shit himself in his last spasm of life.

Hardboiled detective books and police procedurals have no more literary
merit than any other books in the field because they are grittier.  I don’t much like cozies myself, but I certainly respect the writers who write them. It’s just as hard to write a cozy as it is to write a tough noir tale. Who knows, maybe it’s even harder.

A close cousin to balkanization are the insular attitudes of certain cliques of writers… scribes who love everything their group does, good or bad, and sneers at the work of outsiders. You aren’t "in" if you aren’t in their tight little group.  These smug back-slappers exist in all the different genres of mystery fiction and, if you go to conventions or hang out in discussions on -line,  you know exactly who they are and what writers are on their approved reading lists. 

I like to think I’m not in one of those insular groups and that I treat cozy, historical, hard-boiled, whodunit, and all other mystery writers with friendliess and respect, whether I am a fan of their particular genre or not.   

To Outline or Not To Outline

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Prolific novelist Sandra Scoppettone has hit a wall in her new book.

I think I’m in big trouble.  This novel is a mess. I’m on page 142
and not only don’t I know what’s going on, I can’t imagine writing at
least another 250 pages of this.

Nothing makes sense.  I’ve written myself into so many corners I can’t see how to ever write out of them.

If
it wasn’t so depressing, and if I didn’t have a deadline, I think I’d
junk this novel and start again.  I honestly don’t know what I’m going
to do.  I should be working right now but instead I’m doing this.

I
feel I’ve been fooling myself, thinking it would work itself out.  I
don’t see how it can.  I’ve never been in quite this position so early
in a book.

I don’t know whether she writes with an outline or not, but I’m guessing she doesn’t. Novelist Ed Gorman wishes he could outline…but can’t.

The few times I’ve managed to fix an outline on both the page and in my
mind, I was more relaxed with the writing itself. I didn’t wake up in
the middle of the night depressed because I couldn’t figure out what
next day at the machine would bring.

Novelist James Reasoner always has a vague sketch of where he is going.

Although taking off and winging it with no outline can be fun . . . if
everything works out right. These days I like a nice six to eight page
outline so that the basic structure of the book has already been
figured out before I start. I usually write these even for books where
the publisher doesn’t require an outline, just for my own benefit.

All
that said, I don’t think I’ve ever written a book that turned out
exactly like the outline. Some unexpected plot twist or character
always pops up during the writing of the book itself.

That’s the way it goes for me, too. I find the security blanket of an outline, even if I deviate from it along the way (and I do), always helps me. At least I can look at it and say, "Okay, I had an idea of where I should be going, why am I not heading in that direction? What changed? And did it change for the better?" My outlines tend to evolve as my novels do…I call them "living outlines," because I am constantly rewriting them as I write the book and usually don’t finish my outline until a week or so before I finish my book.

Sometimes it’s fun for me to go back and look at the original outline and then the one I ended up with and see at what points I went in new directions… and why. I always learn from it.

UPDATE: Sandra Scoppettone reports on her blog that she doesn’t use an outline…and here’s why:

I
couldn’t stand to have an outline.  The idea of knowing where I’m going
is hideous to me.  Anyway, I couldn’t write an outline when I never
know who did it until I’m at about page 100.  I don’t want to know who
did it when I start.  It would spoil everything for me just as if I was
reading a book and knew who did it from the beginning.  Before I start
I know who my protagonist is (in this case I know a lot about her
because it’s the second in a series) and who has been killed.  That has
always worked for me before.  And now it’s failed me.  I still won’t do
an outline.

Frankly, I can’t imagine writing a mystery, and planting clues, without knowing whodunit ahead of time.

I’m curious, fellow writers… how do you feel about outlines?

A&E’s Check Book

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A&E couldn’t afford to continue making the series NERO WOLFE, which cost them less than a million per episode…nor have they had the bucks to produce  a single,  original, weekly dramatic series since then…

…but they can lay out $2.5 million per episode for edited reruns of THE SOPRANOS. 

Is LOS ANGELES Magazine in trouble?

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Los Angeles Magazine must be desperate too boost their anemic circulation numbers. We’ve been getting subscription offers from them for years. Today we got a letter from them offering us a two years subscription, 24 issues, for $9.95, which is more than 90% off their cover price. I’m tempted to subscribe,  but I figure if I ignore them long enough, pretty soon they’ll offer to send me the magazine for nothing. That’s what Weekly Variety did.

Self Publishing = Bad Idea

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Book critic David Montgomery weighs in on the self-publishing debate.  His bottom line? Save your money.

The problem with self-publishing is that the resulting product will
have no credibility and no exposure — and very little chance of ever
obtaining either. Everyone will know that the only way you were able to
get your book published was to pay someone to do it, and they will
judge your work accordingly. (In that sense, I think it’s even worse
than having no book at all.)

Conflict of Interest

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Bernard Weinraub is retiring from the NY Times. For ten years, he was their  LA correspondent covering the entertainment industry beat. Along the way, he  married Sony Pictures chief Amy Pascal…but kept on reporting about the biz as if nothing had changed.

In his parting shot, he finally acknowledges what everybody, even those without any journalism experience, already knew and what he strenuously denied…that it was a conflict of interest for him to be reporting about the industry, and impossible for him to be truly impartial, once he married a major player in the movie business.

Clearly, I stayed too long on my beat, clinging to a notion that I
could sidestep conflicts of interest by avoiding direct coverage of
Sony, and learning too late why wiser heads counsel against even the
appearance of conflict.

Well, duh, Bernie.  If a reporter covering the U.S. Senate married a Senator, he would be yanked off the beat in an instant. If  a reporter covering the automobile business married the top exec at Ford, she would be reassigned to something else. But it’s okay for a reporter covering the entertainment industry to marry a studio chief and keep covering the business? C’mon. A kid in a high school journalism class would know better than that.

But my marriage, and some of the events that
tumbled out of it, also taught me something about the ferocity of a
culture in which the players can be best friends one day and savage you
the next.

It took marrying a studio exec for Weinraub to figure that out?  Most people discover that the first week they are in L.A. Doesn’t say much for Weinraub’s keen observational skills, does it?  But the true nature of Weinraub’s naivete and lack of journalistic ethics is betrayed by this stunning admission:

I’d written about Jeffrey Katzenberg, then president of the Walt Disney
Company. He returned every call quickly and often phoned me; he dished
over pasta at Locanda Veneta about all the studios in town and became
such a pal that I once showed him off-the-record comments made about
him by Michael Eisner.
That was wrong and foolish, and years later I still regret it. As soon
as I stopped covering movies, Mr. Katzenberg stopped responding to
phone calls. I was surprised but shouldn’t have been.

Weinraub revealed off-the-record comments to the person the comments were made about? That’s an outrageous breach of ethics. It wasn’t just foolish and wrong, it was reprehensible and shameful.

Weinraub asked to be taken off the movie beat in 2000. The fact is, the New York Times should have reassigned him themselves the day he acknowledged he was dating Pascal…but then again, this is the newspaper that gave us Jayson Blair.

What Weinraub’s article reveals is that the Blair’s behavior wasn’t really an isolated incident, but rather a by-product of  a reporting cultures at the New York Times that, casually disregards basic  journalistic ethics.

How sad for the Times. How sad for its readers. Shame on you, Bernie.

Self-Publishing

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In a comment to a previous post, someone mentioned they had a good experience self-publishing their non-fiction work.

Let me make it clear, I’m not knocking self-publishing, except for people who think it’s
going to get them into "brick and mortar" bookstores, reviewed in tne
New York Times, and onto the bestseller lists… or that it makes them "published authors." (That’s a seperate rant for another post).Mygunpbk

When my book UNSOLD
TELEVISION PILOTS went out-of-print after ten years, I reprinted it for
free through the Authors Guild’s "Back in Print" iUniverse program (in
a cheaper, two-volume set) and have been very happy with the results. I
get a few hundred dollars in royalties every year… it doesn’t sound
like much, but it’s more than I’d get if the book remained
out-of-print.

I also reprinted for free MY GUN HAS BULLETS, through the now-aborted Mystery Writers of America/iUniverse program, and I’m happier with the way it turned out than I was with the original, hardcover, St. Martin’s release… and I’m getting some royalties every now and then.

My experience with iUniverse has been terrific. I have no
complaints at all about the service, the quality of the books, or the
timely payment of royalties. Then again, iUniverse doesn’t pretend to
be anything it isn’t.

Translation please?

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I got this email tonight.

In fact , It’s a great pleasure to me to send this letter especially for you
because I admired with your fantastic series which one of them like (( Martial law )) — please : contact with mbc tv and tell them to show your series (( martial law )) , call for me on number : XXXXXXXXXXXX  in kuwait country – or send me on this e-email XXXXXX@hotmail.com as soon as possible          thank you

I wonder if it’s too late to call Kuwait?

Wasserman Remaindered?

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Publisher’s Weekly is reporting that LA Times Book Review editor Steve Wasserman may be on the way out,  seeking job opportunities elsewhere. Let’s hope so. 

Wasserman came to the LAT eight years
ago after a career at Times Books and NY publishing, bringing a flash of
intellectualism to the paper. But he has also reportedly had a number of
run-ins with supervisors who saw the section he ran as being overly
highbrow.

Not to mention exceedingly dull, irrelevant and out-of-date. But mostly dull.

It’s not unusual for the Book Review to finally get around to reviewing some major hardcover mysteries  around the time they are about to come out in paperback  (not that you’d call what mystery critic  Eugen Weber  writes  "reviews," more like senseless ramblings).

I had lunch with Wasserman when I was president of the SoCal chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. I came armed with months worth of local and national bestseller lists. I wanted to convince him that they should run more reviews of mysteries and thrillers  because those were the books his readers were actually reading. But he told me that he felt the mission of the Book Review was to educate people about what they should be reading…  which wasn’t mysteries and thrillers.

His smug superiority might have been easier to take if he didn’t spend most of our lunch drooling over the fact that Brian Grazer was at the next table.

Whether they review more mysteries or not, it sure would be nice if the LA Times Book Review  was interesting and entertaining to read again…

UPDATE:  My wise and witty brother Tod, who recently talked about shooting his life force out his ass, now offers his view of the Wasserman era.  He, too, has reasons to be encouraged by the prospect for change at the Book Review.