lying for a living

I love it when the doorbell rings and it’s not religious proselytizers hawking salvation, or a neighbor holding a box of puppies sired by my dog, or the National Guard warning me that the toxic cloud is ninety seconds away. It’s the FedEx driver, bearing books.

My books. After close to two years of brainstorming, outlining, writing, erasing, rewriting, editing, talking with editors, rewriting again, proofreading, and copyediting, here’s The Dirty Secrets Club, so fresh off the printing press that I can still smell the ink. Call it proof, validation, vanity, reward, or joy — whatever it is, I’m going to go wallow in it.

(And yes, Mom: One of these copies is for you.)

Here’s the cover of the U.S. edition of China Lake. 

It’ll be published in July. 

The German edition of Crosscut has been spotted in the wild for the first time. Here’s Schmerzlos at the Stuttgart airport. There, while the Husband the nature photographer watched, the novel climbed up the book display to a spot where readers would notice it before any other book it could see the glorious view of the airport concourse. The photographer reports that a few sticklers were concerned at seeing him touch the hatchling, but he couldn’t resist helping it hop up to eye level and turn face out.

“Entertainment is a sacred pursuit when done well,” he says. “When done well, it raises the quality of human life.”

The Pulitzer-winning, Nebula-winning author of The Yiddish Policeman’s Union explains to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch why writing an alt-history detective novel doesn’t make him a hack.

(Via Sarah Weinman.)

One tip I give people who are writing chapter one of their first novel: If you find yourself imagining how your jacket photo will look — or, God forbid, if you dress up and pose in front of the mirror practicing your coolest authorial look — it’s a rock-solid sign that you’re getting ahead of yourself.

Now Jessica Schneider takes it a step further, posing for deadly awful author pics so that we don’t have to: Bad Published Writer Photos.

There’s a punchline at the end, too.

In a Times essay on crime writing, Jeanette Winterson says she’s gotten over an early prejudice against genre fiction. But she still manages to sound cynical and weary about both writing and life.

Let’s say there are only three endings to any story, discounting happy endings as too Hollywood: Revenge, Tragedy, and Forgiveness. Crime writing feeds our feelings for tragedy and revenge, and we can fool ourselves that there is also such a thing as justice - that the end is just or that justice has been done, or that justice has been avoided, but we know what it is.

Ah, yes — all those Shakespeare comedies and Mozart operas: the endings are just too Hollywood.

I spent the day at the London Book Fair, meeting with some of my editors and agents — the people who get the books from my desk to your hands (Markus Naegele of Random House Germany; scout Anne Louise Fisher; and my Finnish editor, Minna Castren of Otava. Last night I also got together with the delightful Eileen Hutton of Brilliance Audio).

The photo (and apologies — I can’t get it to post any larger than this) shows about one tenth of the fair. Earls Court exhibition centre was completely taken over by publishers from around the world. And everywhere I turned were BOOKS. It was a madhouse, but it was heaven.

A soap character’s novel makes the New York Times best seller list.

The Book Is Real Enough. It’s the Author That’s Fake.

Barely two months after Kendall, who is played by the actress Alicia Minshew, set down those first few deathless words, “It was one of those brutally hot, muggy days in August,” her first novel “Charm” was released in the fictional small town of Pine Valley, Pa., as part of the soap’s story line. Concurrently, “Charm” — an actual hardback with a list price of $21.95 — became available in real-life bookstores around the country.

Pine Valley. Yes, the show is All My Children, which I watched maniacally in high school and college, until I realized that I absolutely had to quit. Soaps were like crack to me. Once I started watching, I had to watch some more. All My Children was the gateway show; from there I started tuning in to Santa Barbara. Eventually, spring break became one long daytime TV binge. Going cold turkey was the only way to save myself.

But even in my darkest days (I sank to watching General Hospital) I wouldn’t have bought a novel “written” by one of the characters. Fake! Fake! I would have screamed. However, while sitting riveted in front of the screen, waiting for the next shocking revelation like an addict craving a hit from the pipe, I would never have doubted Kendall’s prodigious creativity.

That Kendall Hart could whip up a novel and get it published with such dispatch raises no credibility issues with viewers, said Ms. Leahey of Soap Opera Digest. “Soap opera characters come back from the dead and have evil twins,” she noted, “so in that world, it would make sense for someone to write a book in a few weeks.”

Of course it would make sense. Kendall Hart “is a very aspirational character for women,” says the head of Disney-ABC’s daytime division. “She’d come from a trailer park and had built up a cosmetics company, and we felt that was the stuff of good female fiction.”

Sure. You go, girl.

By the way, “Kendall’s” perfume, also called Charm, will go on sale at Sears next week.

Here’s Dutton’s cover for The Dirty Secrets Club. Yes, it’s arresting. That’s the point.

And Amazon is now taking pre-orders for the book, which will be published in the U.S. on June 12th. Woo!

(Hey, it’s Friday. I’m allowed a “Woo!”)

The 100 best last lines from novels.

My favorite is Catch-22.

(Via Books, Inq.)