Kwei Quartey's Blog, page 15

Quick Book Review

From time to time I'll post a book review:

The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was an enjoyable read, with a lot of action. No wonder this is a popular series on which the PBS Kurt Wallander adventures are based. Author Henning Mankell uses an intimate style that makes you feel like you're inside Kurt's head, rather than the omniscient voice, and Kurt's insecurities really come to life. Incidentally I lost count of how many cups of coffee the characters in the story drink.

Briefly the appearance of two bodies in a raft that washes up on the Swedish coast leads Kurt Wallander to Riga, Latvia, as he tries to solve the mystery. Riga is endlessly grim, clod and grey at the same time that Mankell paints a vivid picture of it. There's a nice twist toward the end that I didn't see coming.

I'm now reading another Mankell's novels, Faceless Killers.





View all my reviews

Bankrupt Borders

Here's an interesting, informative article by author Karen Dionne about the ripple effect of Borders Books' bankruptcy and how it can especially affect mid-list authors.

Truth in fiction

Have you ever closed the covers of a novel after reading the final paragraph and wondered how much of it could be true, or have you come away from a movie wondering if the events could have really taken place? Sometimes the preamble or blurb to a work of fiction will say something like, "Based on true events." Then we're left to wonder, is it strongly or loosely based on "true events?" The whole thing, or just some parts?

In the Los Angeles Times Calendar section of Feb 6, 2011, Reed Johnson asked a question about documentaries in his article, Documented, but is it real? Noting the unusual number of Oscar contenders for best picture this year that are "based on true events," like The Social Network and The King's Speech, Johnson observed that there's a parallel question regarding documentary filmmaking. New technology allows the filmmakers to embellish in such a way that the line between real and not-real becomes blurred. For instance – and this is my example, not Johnson's – I was dismayed years ago when I found out that those fabulous nature films on PBS are sometimes computer-graphic enhanced, (e.g. flocks of birds – some of the birds are real and some are computer generated) or audio-enhanced. The spine-tingling sound of the poor zebra's bones being crushed between the lions jaws are added post-production from a sound library. There's just no way you're getting close enough to that pride of lions with your microphone to get that quality of sound!

In fiction, you're given more leeway in how much you can make up, and you're certainly forgiven a lot more willingly (I'm still miffed about that whole CGI flock of birds thing) than in nonfiction. But not so fast, my novelist friend. Before you make up anything too wild in your story, remember that readers expect some level of accuracy even in the midst of "non-truth."

Why is that? I'm sure it has to do with the information age and people caring a lot more about knowing stuff (even if worthless) than perhaps they used to. People can look things up a lot faster and they won't hesitate to let you know if you're "off." Some are more persnickety than others. I'm told by the German publishers of WIFE OF THE GODS, called Trokosi in Germany, that German readers are particularly fond of pointing out errors authors have made in fiction. In fact, I was floored when my German editor asked me why at one point in my novel an assault victim was taken to a particular hospital "when there is another one 5 km closer?" This they had found out on Google Earth. Amazing. A friend of mine suggested my snappy answer should have been, "because the closer one isn't open on Sundays." Unfortunately I wasn't that quick on the draw.

It's a lot more embarrassing to be wrong these days. My 1993 novel Kamila, now a Kindle ebook, was set in warring 1954 Algeria, but unable to visit Algeria in the 1990's because of the dangerous place it was at the time (and perhaps again in 2011 for different reasons), I went to Morocco and used that as a model. For real locations, I referred to precious old maps of 1950's Algiers and its Casbah, but I did not visit the physical place. I doubt I could get away with that now.

Modern indigenous people are unforgiving if you write unfavorably about them or get them all mixed up, and the Internet means that people in Indonesia or Johannesburg will read what you said about them in your American-published book. A few details of WIFE OF THE GODS (WOTG) were vehemently castigated by some Ghanaians who found specific details inaccurate concerning the Ewe people, the subject of much of the novel. Points taken! Fortunately I did have a few come to my defense and in effect tell my opponents to "give the guy a break."

Don't think this humbling experience didn't have some effect on how I approached research on my second novel CHILDREN OF THE STREET (COTS). Here, there was much more emphasis on the real. While there was a fictional town in WOTG, the Accra locations in COTS are carefully and realistically mapped out, including the streets. Why is that challenging? Because while detailed maps of Accra are widely available, many, many streets are not physically signed. Directions are, "turn right when you see the post office near Barclays Bank." Naming streets in COTS came as a result of my trudging doggedly up and down Accra's streets, perspiring miserably in the relentless sun, map in hand – sorry, no GPS, if that's what you're thinking – while being the object of people's puzzled stares. I once asked a group of attendants at a gas station what their cross-street was, and a furious debate about it broke out, the oldest among them claiming that the youngsters didn't know what they were talking about. Interestingly, a nonagenarian relative of ours has an intimate recollection of Accra's street names, particularly in the old town, suggesting that a previous knowledge of street names has slowly died out over the century along with those who were in the know.

In the end though, some of the fun in film and written fiction is pointing out the errors. Who doesn't love spotting a continuity blunder in a movie? We fiction writers must accept that we will make mistakes and not get too bent out of shape about it, and readers must do the same. Okay, so in real life there is no market day in the town on Wednesday, but more importantly, did you enjoy the way the story unfolded and the characters that you met on that market day? That's what really matters.

A Mystery Bookstore Murdered: Your feedback

In response to my post, here are your responses and observations so far

(1)

This is a thoughtful post. Mystery Bookstores are indeed struggling, as are all bookstores, but I think the thing you pointed out that had the most resonance was the difference between sending a text and meeting at a coffee shop for a chat. Both communication, just different types. I hope there will be room for both print & electronic books, though like vinyl records, the print version may become a "collectible". As you also astutely point out, some of the hardest hit will be midlist authors, and the breadth of publishing in general. Our books that are handsell successes come from us, putting the book in people's hands (as I've done with yours, actually) and saying "this is great, you HAVE to read it." That won't happen online. The quirky and original may get lost.

Robin Agnew

Aunt Agatha's Books, Ann Arbor, Mich.

(2)

Kwei,

Your essay about the demise of bookstores et al. is very interesting, and I sent it to two bookstore owner friends. Thank you.

(3)

What a well done article! I have a vested interest in the survival of my own independent bookstore(Laguna Beach Books),where you did an author signing for your terrific book "Wife of the Gods",but the entire issue of electronic reading seems to me to at least hint at a world where there no gathering places—no book shops in Paris,no serendipitous discovery in a small store in Austin–if a delivery system is created for coffee and pastries through a computer screen I guess most of us can stay home by ourselves-I hope if you are working on your next book that you will come and see us, best regards,

Jane Hanauer

Laguna Beach Books

(4)

Oh, the questions you raise!

When my children were young, we had a Friday night routine. We would go out for pizza and then go to the local B&N and we all would browse for a couple of hours. My children would cheat a bit; they were fast readers so if they found a short book they liked, they would read it on the spot. Long books were worth purchasing.

Even when my children were young, they are adults now, there weren't any independent bookstores in our area. They discovered those when they were able to travel by public transportation to Boston and to Cambridge. Harvard Square was/is a mecca for independents.

I am rapidly heading to senior citizen class and I confess that I do most of my book shopping on Amazon because it is convenient and they have everything. They get the bulk of my business at Christmas because my kids don't read a lot of fiction (except Stephen King). What they do read are books that are esoteric and usually fall into the history/cultural/ social science gendre. But, they do read. All three are appalled by the Kindle and Nook, especially the Kindle because it doesn't allow borrowing books from the library.

The library was even more important than bookstores because the choices were vast. Our system allows kids to get their own cards when they can print their names. It was a big "rite of passage"moment for my kids.

That being said, I think that published paper books are always going to be in demand, at least until we baby boomers die off. We are the biggest group of readers in the country, probably because as we retire we have more time. It is very sad that on the other end of the spectrum, fewer children's books are being sold. This maybe because kids have more entertainment choices and are not being read to as often as they once were. Reading to kids makes them early readers. I was always pleased to see that mine were reading under the blankets with the trusty flashlights when they were supposed to be sleeping. Watching a DVD of THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE doesn't come close to having it read chapter by chapter, doling out the joy of the book, not quite wanting the book to end.

Another downside to e-readers is the initial cost of the device and then the cost of the books. I could not afford to buy all the books I read nor do I have room for the paper editions. I buy books to support authors I really appreciate (such as yourself, the bloggers on Murder Is Everywhere, and a few others like Charles Todd and Donna Leon). I read four or five books a week, all mysteries, most taken out from the library. Many of those baby boomer readers are on fixed incomes; the library is their lifeline, socially and intellectually. Libraries need the same level of support as public schools, the two things that even out the playing field for kids in this country.

I started a blog at the end of June. It came about, in large part, because of an Amazon discussion group. Leighton Gage began posting about the difficulties mid-list writers have promoting their books since the publishers only push James Patterson and his kind (I have not read any of his books, they don't appeal to me). My daughter heard me talking about this problem ad infinitum so she presented me with the a blog, told me to name it, and start reviewing the authors who needed some attention. I posted the first review on June 26. WIFE OF THE GODS was reviewed on June 30. I posted it again on January 28 as part of a series of books set in warm countries while we in New England were dealing with five feet of snow.

The number of people who read the blog was been steadily increasing. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to know how many people who read it purchase the books or seek them out in libraries.

As to publishing e-books, I guess that is a decision for each writer. I know Tim Hallinan put his out of print Simeon Grist series on Amazon as e-books and he is finishing a new book in the series that will only be be an e-book. I know that e-books put more money in the pockets of the authors. I am a long way from buying a Kindle. The only thing that might tip me in that direction is the ability to increase font size and that may become a necessity down the road. But, although I read and enjoyed the Simeon Grist books as they were published, I did purchase the e-books because I could download them to the PC. Maybe more people are doing that than buying the Kindle.

Right now, in my house, there a 72 library books, some mine, some my husbands. I place books on hold from other towns in our library system (we are allowed 20) and I troll through the lists of books available at the main branch. He goes every Saturday and returns 12 or so books to add to the pile. Being able to renew books allows us to read just about everything we take out and if it is not something to our taste it goes into the return pile with no regrets because we have plenty more to choose from. Throughout January we had a blizzard with over twelve inches of snow every week. There were also some storms with a little less snow but the aggregate was 5 feet; we added another foot the first week in February. As long as we had coffee and books we were all set to ride out the storms. We also have a book closet full of non-fiction that we have been acquiring over the years. We are both interested in history.

If you have any articles or interviews that you wish to send on, I can put them on the blog as the new book heads to the shelves.

Beth

www.murderbytype.wordpress.com

Thanks to the above contributors. Other comments welcomed!

The MLK-Ghana-Egypt Connection

Some of you might have noticed that on the occasion of the historic resignation today of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, President Obama made a curious reference to Martin Luther King hailing Ghana's independence from Britain on March 6, 1957.

Quite honestly I did not know this, but at the invitation of Ghana's then new Prime Minister elect Kwame Nkrumah, Dr. King traveled to Ghana (called the Gold Coast before independence) with his wife Coretta Scott King to attend the independence ceremony. Turns out VP Nixon was there too – who knew! What strange bedfellows ending up in a new West African nation. About a month later, Dr. King delivered a sermon called Birth of a New Nation.

While we're on this "Egypt-generated" subject, here's another six-degrees-of-separation phenomenon: Nkrumah and Egypt's Gamel Abdul Nasser were friends and admired each other, and Nkrumah married an Egyptian, Fathia Rizk.

The MLK-Ghana Connection

Some of you might have noticed that on the occasion of the historic resignation today of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, President Obama made a curious reference to Martin Luther King hailing Ghana's independence from Britain on March 6, 1957.

Quite honestly I did not know this, but at the invitation of Ghana's then new Prime Minister elect Kwame Nkrumah, Dr. King traveled to Ghana (called the Gold Coast before independence) with his wife Coretta Scott King to attend the independence ceremony. Turns out VP Nixon was there too – who knew! What strange bedfellows ending up in a new West African nation. About a month later, Dr. King delivered a sermon called Birth of a New Nation.

While we're on this "Egypt-generated" subject, here's another six-degrees-of-separation phenomenon: Nkrumah and Egypt's Gamel Abdul Nasser were friends and admired each other, and Nkrumah married an Egyptian, Fathia Rizk.

A Mystery Bookstore Murdered: Who done it?

On Jan 31, 2011, The Mystery Bookstore closed its doors after 23 years with a final goodbye to its faithful customers and readers alike. The huge soiree was hosted by Linda Brown, Bobby McCue and other staff in what must have been an emotionally wrenching, and in many ways bittersweet, event for them. The place was packed, with the likes of writers Michael Connelly, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Lee Goldberg, Dianne Emley, and Naomi Hirahara in attendance. I talked about The Mystery Bookstore in one of my previous posts. In a message to its patrons and authors on January 11, 2011, The Mystery Bookstore said,

Unfortunately, we, too, are going the way of too many independent bookstores. We simply cannot compete with the Amazons of the world and the impact of the economy.

So what happens to other brick-and-mortar indie bookstores, particularly the ones I care most about, the mystery bookstores? I don't dare breathe. There are the wider questions too: where is publishing going? What happens to the publishers, bookstores, readers and writers in this age of e-books? How should each of those elements change?

Print publishers: do they start to vanish over the decades to come? Some people think so, but many don't see how it's even possible. It can be a clunky process, this taking a book from its first draft to a polished printed product, but then so is movie-making. No one suggests abolishing the film making process, even though film delivery is changing. So maybe that's the key: publishing should remain an art form (maybe tweaked here and there the way filming and cameras have evolved) as the delivery of the book morphs. How fast can or should publishers adjust, and in which direction exactly?

Bookstores: if we can get books delivered to us electronically, should we care about these brick-and-mortar structures? Indies are in peril, and even giants like Borders and B&N are staggering like creatures in the throes. Are we so busy these days checking our emails, tweets, texts, IM's on our smart phones, tablets and other multi-function devices that we can no longer spend an hour or so on a Saturday afternoon browsing at a bookstore? Will we soon no longer see airport bookshops where we can quickly dive in and grab a book of just the perfect length to read on the plane? Oh, I forgot, there's always on-board entertainment.

Readers: is it unimportant how you get the reading product as long as you can get it? If bookstores die and you still get your books, is that all that really matters in the end? Maybe so, I don't know. It's a similar philosophical question to what human contact is. If I can get my message to someone by texting him or her, then why do I need the silly sidewalk cafe meeting place? We don't need to meet at all. Another convenient shortcut. Or is it?

And writers? What should we do? Quite frankly, I'm not really sure. The bottom line is we want readers to read our creations. Does it matter in what form or format they do that? Authors here and there have been talking about the success they have had with self-pubbing their works electronically, but those are the standout stories, the exceptions. Just because there's e-publishing now doesn't guarantee some kind of raging hit that didn't occur with a writer's printed book. Mid-list authors and below are the ones who have the biggest dilemma. Highly paid authors – James Patterson and his ilk – are quite comfortable, thank you very much, with the 80-20 rule (or whatever it is) – 80% of the money going to 20% of the authors who have blockbuster print books. Some writers like to think that e-publishing is a way to get back at "imperialist" print publishers, but I don't think it will work that way for a sizable majority of authors.

So what do you all think? I'd love to hear your ideas and opinions about reading, writing, and publishing in the 21st century. Respond to this post simply by answering the email, and I'll anonymously post your responses on a separate blog, or you can tweet a response or FB it. Ciao till next time

Website revamp

Coming up in the next several weeks, there'll be a revamp of the website kweiquartey.com. It will be streamlined, simpler and more logical to navigate, and will feature easily accessible sections devoted to the separate Darko Dawson mysteries, Wife of the Gods, Children of the Street, Men of the Rig, and so on.

You'll also find a dynamic panel of quotes for the different novels and a way you can easily order e-books from your favorite indie bookstore and not just from Amazon, B&N, etc.

Meanwhile, as I work on developing the third Darko novel Men of the Rig, there will be a drop in the frequency of my blogs. Unfortunately there aren't 56 hours in a day! Not to worry, the blogs will start up again as I make another visit to Ghana in a few months' time.

Welcome to the Oil Club, Ghana

In the third Darko Dawson novel, working title MEN OF THE RIG, we get introduced to Ghana's brave new world of petroleum. On December 15, 2010, the country officially began pumping light sweet crude from an area in the video suggests. Unless those media questions posed were prearranged plants so Tullow would look good. Okay, was that too cynical?

Advance Praise for COTS

Every once in a while something takes place that makes you really very happy. I won't argue the definition of "happiness," but I'm talking about that feeling that makes your heart seem to jump with a thrill and a skip of elation, or a thought that comes to you the moment you wake up and makes you feel pleased as liberally spiked Christmas punch.

In the past week, this has happened to me. If you scroll down the CHILDREN OF THE STREET page on either Random House or Amazon, you will find a quote about the novel by none other than Michael Connelly. To have the very first and earliest advance praise for my novel from this master author of mysteries and thrillers is really marvelous, and I mean it. My sincere thanks to Mr. Connelly. What a terrific way to end 2010!