Art Taylor's Blog, page 76

Heading to ThrillerFest—with Fingers Crossed!

I’m not sure where the summer’s going—it’s flying by!—but I’m excited about one of July’s big events this week: My first visit to ThrillerFest! And I’m still astounded by the news that led to me attending in the first place: my story “Parallel Play” being named a finalist for the Thriller Award for Best Short Story, which will be presented at the awards banquet Saturday night at the Grand Hyatt in New York. The suspense is already killing me, but no matter what happens, I’m grateful to be in such fine company with the other authors on the short story slate: Eric Beetner, Laura Benedict, Brendan DuBois, and Joyce Carol Oates. Couldn’t be happier to have my own work listed alongside theirs.

I’m only able to come in for part of the conference, so I’m unfortunately not on any panels, but looking forward to attending several of the programs as a spectator and to seeing so many author friends throughout the quick trip.

The full list of Thriller Award finalists is below, and many friends throughout the categories as well—sending all of them good wishes. See you in New York!

2017 Thriller Award Finalists

BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL

Megan Abbott — YOU WILL KNOW ME (Little, Brown and Company)

Reed Farrel Coleman — WHERE IT HURTS (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

Noah Hawley — BEFORE THE FALL (Grand Central Publishing)

Laura McHugh — ARROWOOD (Spiegel & Grau)

Ben H. Winters — UNDERGROUND AIRLINES (Mulholland Books)

BEST FIRST NOVEL

Bob Bickford — DEADLY KISS (Black Opal Books)

J.L. Delozier — TYPE AND CROSS (WiDo Publishing)

David McCaleb — RECALL (Lyrical Underground)

Nicholas Petrie — THE DRIFTER (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

E.Z. Rinsky — PALINDROME (Witness Impulse)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL NOVEL

Robert Dugoni — IN THE CLEARING (Thomas & Mercer)

Anne Frasier — THE BODY READER (Thomas & Mercer)

Paul Kemprecos — THE MINOAN CIPHER (Suspense Publishing)

Jonathan Maberry — KILL SWITCH (St. Martin’s Griffin)

Stephen Maher — SALVAGE (Dundurn)

BEST SHORT STORY

Eric Beetner — “The Business of Death” UNLOADED: CRIME WRITERS WRITING WITHOUT GUNS (Down & Out Books)

Laura Benedict — “The Peter Rabbit Killers” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine)

Brendan DuBois — “The Man from Away” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine)

Joyce Carol Oates — “Big Momma” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine)

Art Taylor — “Parallel Play” CHESAPEAKE CRIMES: STORM WARNING (Wildside Press)

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

Pierce Brown — MORNING STAR (Del Rey)

Elle Cosimano — HOLDING SMOKE (Disney-Hyperion)

A.J. Hartley — STEEPLEJACK (TOR Teen)

Billy Taylor — THIEVING WEASELS (Dial Books)

Kara Thomas — THE DARKEST CORNERS (Delacorte Press)

BEST E-BOOK ORIGINAL NOVEL

James Scott Bell — ROMEO’S WAY (Compendium Press)

Sean Black — THE EDGE OF ALONE (Sean Black)

Sibel Hodge — UNTOUCHABLE (Wonder Women Publishing)

J.F. Penn — DESTROYER OF WORLDS (J.F. Penn)

Richard Thomas — BREAKER (Alibi)

SleuthSayers: “The Book as Object”

For my column at SleuthSayers this week, I talked about several small presses (prompted by Michael Dirda’s recent column in the Washington Post) and then about the book as object—books you value not just for the words inside but as physical objects: first editions, special editions, specific editions with some personal significance.

Here’s a sample from my post, elaborating on that central point above:

There are a couple of ways to think about books as objects, of course. A reader may well feel some sentimental attachment to a specific book. I still have, for example, an old “junior deluxe edition” of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which isn’t in terrific shape but which my mother read to/with me when I was a child. My tattered copy of the first volume of The Norton Anthology of American Literature never fails to transport me back into the classroom at my old boarding school, The Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. And I treasure a copy of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies not just because of the joy I take in reading it but also because it was a gift (Christmas? Valentine’s?) from an ex-girlfriend—to whom I gave a copy of another Gorey title as a present on the same day!

The book as object can be a container for memories, I guess that’s what I’m saying.

Interestingly, that ex-girlfriend was the one who first questioned why I enjoyed special editions of books: first editions, for example, or handsome special printings of some kind. Aren’t there the same words in a tattered paperback as in a pricey hardcover? And aren’t the words inside what matter?

Read the whole post here.

“Parallel Play” Named Macavity Award Finalist

It’s such a thrill to learn that my story “Parallel Play” has been named a finalist for this year’s Macavity Award for Best Short Story—yikes!—and alongside such terrific writers as Lawrence Block, Craig Faustus Buck, Greg Herren, Paul D. Marks, and Joyce Carol Oates—double and triple and, well, quintuple yikes!

Thanks to Janet Rudolph and to the members of Mystery Readers International, the subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal and the friends of MRI for helping to nominate this story for this award. And congrats to all my fellow finalists—both in the short story category and throughout this fine list here. Looking forward to toasting all of you in Toronto! (Not individually, I mean—that’s a lot of drinks….)

Best Novel 

• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)

• Dark Fissures, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)

• Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley (UK, Hodder & Stoughton; US, Grand Central Publishing)

• Real Tigers, by Mick Herron (UK, John Murray; US, Soho)

• Wilde Lake, by Laura Lippman (Wm. Morrow)

• A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Best First Novel 

• The Widow, by Fiona Barton (UK, Bantam; US, NAL)

• Under the Harrow, by Flynn Berry (Penguin)

• Dodgers, by Bill Beverly (No Exit Press)

• IQ, by Joe Ide (Mulholland Books)

• Design for Dying, by Renee Patrick (Forge)

Best Short Story 

• “Autumn at the Automat,” by Lawrence Block (In Sunlight or in Shadow, Pegasus Books)

• “Blank Shot,” by Craig Faustus Buck (Black Coffee, Darkhouse Books)

• “Survivor’s Guilt,” by Greg Herren (Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016, Down & Out Books)

• “Ghosts of Bunker Hill,” by Paul D. Marks (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Dec. 2016)

• “The Crawl Space,” by Joyce Carol Oates (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Sep.–Oct. 2016)

• “Parallel Play,” by Art Taylor (Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning, Wildside Press)

Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Novel 

• A Death Along the River Fleet, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur)

• Jane Steele, by Lyndsay Faye (UK: Headline Review; US, G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

• Delivering The Truth, by Edith Maxwell (Midnight Ink)

• The Reek of Red Herrings, by Catriona McPherson (US: Minotaur; UK: Houghton Stodder)

• What Gold Buys, by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Heart of Stone, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street Books)

Best Nonfiction 

• Mastering Suspense, Structure, and Plot: How to Write Gripping Stories that Keep Readers on the Edge of Their Seats, by Jane K. Cleland (Writer’s Digest Books)

• Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin (Liveright Publishing)

• Sara Paretsky: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, Margaret Kinsman (McFarland)

• Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula, by David J. Skal (Liveright Publishing)

• The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer, by Kate Summerscale (Penguin)

June Newsletter Is Out!

I’d hoped to have the latest issue of my quarterly newsletter out in mid-June, but running behind just slightly—and much of the “news” at this point is old news anyway! Still, nice to share a little—with updated events listings, some book recommendations, a story excerpt, and another giveaway in the mix.

Check it out here—and hope you enjoy!

SleuthSayers: “A Bond By Any Other Name”

As a loose follow-up to my article in the Washington Independent Review of Books earlier in the week, I look more closely at one of those unfinished/previously unpublished books coming out for the first time this summer: Donald Westlake’s Forever and a Death, which I brought on vacation with me this past week. In the process, I also reflect briefly on reading James Bond novels at the beach in years past (many years past). Here’s a paragraph from :

Before we get to that Westlake + Bond equation, I want to mention the Bond + beach equation. My family has had a home somewhere along North Carolina’s Crystal Coast for most of my life, and even the anticipation of reading a new Bond novel in this setting brought back several fond memories, since I discovered so many of Fleming’s original books at the beach and then too the subsequent series by John Gardner, who began writing his own Bond novels when I was in my early teens—perfect timing for me as a reader. I distinctly remember being in our house in Emerald Isle one weekend during the school year when I was supposed to be pushing through Homer’s Odyssey (at left is the cover of the W.H.D. Rouse translation we’d been assigned) and yet being drawn instead to Fleming’s Spy Who Loved Me, such an unusual and fascinating book in the series as anyone who’s read it knows. (As I recall, I balanced things out by rewarding myself with a little Bond for each section of Odysseus’s journey I pushed through. And thinking about it now, aren’t there many similarities between Odysseus’s travels and Bond’s own travails? Tempting Circe, the threatening Cyclops, twists and troubles at every turn of an international adventure.)

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And in other news, thanks to the Virginia Center for the Book for including me as its #VAReads Writers of the Week this week! Check out that profile/interview here.

WIROB: “Unfinished Business”

My column this month for the Washington Independent Review of Books looks at the publication of books left unfinished by their authors—though in some cases completed by other authors or editors later. The piece was prompted by three books, including both the fun collection The Greatest Books You’ll Never Read and then two books coming out this summer after their author’s deaths: Forever and a Death by Donald Westlake and The Painted Queen, the final novel from Elizabeth Peters as completed by Joan Hess.

At the same time I’m excited by all these books—and really enjoying the Westlake now that I have it in hand!—my thoughts on this turned from a reader’s perspective to a writer’s as well. Here’s an excerpt from halfway through the post:

But anticipating Westlake’s and Peters’/Hess’ books and browsing through The Greatest Books You’ll Never Read has me thinking in another direction: As a writer, how would I feel about someone reading through or, worse, publishing the manuscripts from my youth or my notes for stories or some partially finished first draft? I certainly don’t anticipate anyone clamoring for stray scraps of my fiction (I have trouble enough selling the stories I do finish!), but at the same time…

Read the full post here at the Washington Independent Review of Books.

Wicked Cozy Authors: On Writing Every Day

Novelist and critic Stephen Hunter made some waves—and earned some criticism—for a recent essay on the need to write every day…or quit calling yourself a writer.

At the great group blog Wicked Cozy Authors, I chat about this seemingly tried-and-true advice—not disagreeing with it, but qualifying the whole idea more than a little. Here’s an excerpt from the post, talking about my often disjointed writing schedule and struggles to stay focused, stay on track:

How bad can my flitting from project to project get? Earlier this year (Friday, January 13, in fact, checking back over the Word doc), I woke up with the idea for a story, wrote a couple of pages, sketched out some key plot points, even figured out the final images, all before 9:03 a.m. (again checking the properties on that Word doc)…and then I immediately, entirely forgot about the whole thing. I cannot emphasize how complete my forgetfulness was here. It was only a couple of months later, looking through my computer, that I found a file I didn’t remember, opened it, and—surprise! Where the heck did that come from?

It’s easy to blame any number of factors for why my focus gets frazzled and why I don’t get more writing done, especially during the semester when my teaching schedule demands priority. Lesson prep for the class tomorrow can’t wait til the day after. Grading needs to be done quickly because the students are waiting for it (and often emailing about it). Meanwhile, since I’m not under contract anywhere, no one—sadly—is waiting so eagerly for my next bit of fiction.

I’m not alone. Many writers struggle to juggle day jobs, family responsibilities, and more. Best ambitions or intentions aside, we often end up writing when we can, even if that’s not every day. Does that mean we should quit?

Read the whole post here—and thanks again to Liz Mugavero for hosting me today!

Graduation Day!

In honor of our son Dash’s graduation today—from the Child Development Center at George Mason University—I wrote a short essay at SleuthSayers about my evolution from looking askance at such celebrations to celebrating them as important milestones. Check out that post here.

Additionally, here are my remarks from the ceremony itself—first time I’ve been a graduation speaker and a real honor to be included in the program:

Whatever our names are in the real world, the kids at the CDC know us differently.

Dash’s Dad, where are you and Dash going this afternoon?
Dash’s Dad, can Dash come over to my house to play?
Dash’s Dad, look at the Lego I built!

It’s a good identity to have, a good place to be.

We were so certain that we wanted Dash to attend the CDC that we filled out the application form a couple of months before he was even born. With both sets of grandparents in the audience, this may be a dangerous thing to admit, but the CDC knew Dash’s name before anyone in our family did. We hesitated, but it’s a sacrifice we’re glad we made because he was still number 7 on the wait list when it came time to enroll him. We feel lucky he ultimately made it into the classroom, and we couldn’t be happier with what these last three and a half years have meant to him—and to us.

A lot of those experiences have related to learning. Dash counted to 100 at dinner last week (with a few hints), but he’s also used to counting in Spanish—and in Chinese. I remember the drive home one afternoon when he started telling me all about the bones in his leg, including the names of those bones, and I asked where he learned all that. “Oh, Ms. Jessica told us,” he explained. “She’s the knowingest person in the world.” Then there was the day Dash held up a dollar bill and explained that George Washington had died of a sort throat. “Oh, buddy, I don’t think so,” I told him. “I mean, a sore throat won’t….” But he was insistent. Then I looked it up.

I think I let him keep that dollar.

But learning isn’t just knowledge.

Ms. Suzanne, Ms. Dixie, and Ms. Sandra and their teams have been more than just teachers to Dash, and I know that the same is true for the kids who’ve gone through Ms. Dorothea’s class and then to Ms. Pleasure and Ms. Rina (before Ms. Courtney stepped in), and now Ms. Jen along with everyone who’s worked in those classrooms. Those folks and Ms. Karen and Ms. Erin, and over these years, Ms. Tina, Ms. Ursula, and now Ms. Shira—on the average weekday, they spend as much or often even more time with our children than we do.

I think about that often.

Ms. Sandra sent us all some pictures a few weeks back, a treasure trove of photos spanning the last year for the Froggies—a chance to see some of the things we might have missed, and I know we’ve got a slide show ahead today as well. Ms. Sandra told me later how amazing it was to watch the transformation, see how much these kids have grown—a real joy.

I agree, but I need to add something to what Ms. Sandra said. It’s also a joy for us parents to see how much all of y’all have encouraged our kids to grow into the amazing little men and women that they have become: curious and confident and kind, well-rounded, warm-hearted, and best of all happy—happy in their worlds, happy with themselves.

Finally, one last, maybe most important thing. Alongside all they’ve learned under the guidance of the teachers and staff, Dash and his friends have also learned from one another. Like most parents here, Tara and I wish that Dash could carry his whole class with him to kindergarten this fall, because these kids have become not just friends but family—and I mean that almost literally, since Dash has apparently been married at least twice over these last few years. One afternoon he matter of factly announced, “I married Caroline today” (a ceremony followed the next week with flowers, as I recall), and then another time—and apologies to Caroline’s family here—“Well, I’m married to Kylie now.”

As these relationships have formed and grown and shifted, the kids have learned the give and take of friendship, how to share, and how to support and celebrate one another.

Needless to say, the best celebrations center on cake, and I understand we’ve got two of them lined up for later this afternoon.

Dash eats his cake icing first—sometimes icing only—but whether you follow his lead or not, I’m gonna ask one thing. As you’re enjoying your cake later—this is for the adults as well as the kids—stop and look around and say thank you.

Icing first or not, today and these last few years—it doesn’t get much sweeter than this.

A Week Away

This past week, my wife Tara, our son Dash, and I took a trip to Oregon—a week that became loosely book-ended by two major news stories out of Portland: We arrived in Portland mere hours after a hate-filled confrontation on a light-rail train that ended up with two people dead, and we flew out of the city the day before a free speech rally met counterprotests amid heavy police presence.

What’s odd: When we started planning this vacation last fall, our original choice was London—and the breaking news from that city popped up on our phones en route from the airport back to our house.

This is not meant, however, to be a post about political turmoil or about what a friend called the “incredibly disheartening” state of the world. It is a post about getting away—about the first full-week vacation we’ve taken since Dash was born (in fact, since our honeymoon, if I’m remember correctly). But sitting down to reflect on the week, it struck me as odd to talk about visiting Portland without any reference to the big news items still coming out of the city. While we followed that news online—through the Washington Post on the other side of the country—during our time there, we heard very little about it from anyone in the city itself: the ignorance, I guess, of vacationers insulated from the realities of a place.

Our trip was intended as a getaway, and it had the feel of one the whole time we were there, and it’s that aspect of our travels that I’m focused on here.

While my wife and I travel lots—both individually and together, our shared calendar often a blur of trips in one direction or another—we realized last year that very little of it was for the sake of travel itself. As writers, we often have conferences or readings out of town, and we’ve frequently built weekend trips around those events. And with our respective parents just over four hours away in opposite directions from one another, we’re often on the road north or south to visit family. But a trip with no obligations related to either family or to our careers? Those are few. And for a full week? We simply haven’t done it in years.

So… Oregon. A place neither of us have been before. A place we’ve heard great things about. A place where we could explore a little city life but also indulge a taste of nature. It sounded perfect—and really, it was.

Maybe the best bit of joy we had was discovering what a great traveler Dash is. At age five, he was equally enthusiastic and easy-going (except when hungry, but that’s likely the case with all of us). We were concerned about jet-lag, but he pushed through the first day—the daylight fooling us all into “forgetting” that it was hours past his bedtime when we landed, and even then he was excited about the hotel, about popping out for a late-night pizza, and then about watching fireworks that (we couldn’t believe our good fortune!) were perfectly framed by our hotel room window. The fireworks ended at 10:30 p.m. (1:30 a.m. “real time” for him), but they made for a great welcome to Oregon and he kept talking about them—we kept talking about them—throughout the week, the momentum building toward more excitement ahead.

We did a lot of touristy things in Portland—including Powell’s Books and Voodoo Doughnuts—and enjoyed “The Art of the Brick” at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry as well as a trip to the Oregon Zoo. As much as we appreciated the LEGO exhibition at OMSI, which was outstanding, it was as much fun watching Dash design a paper airplane for a wind current demonstration, and later at the zoo, he took particular delight in watching the penguins and then mimicking their walk. Seeing the world through a child’s eyes—a cliche maybe, but it really does shift your perspective. Each time he heard one of the MAX trains, Dash raced to catch a glimpse of it, dancing, shouting, pointing. Who knew public transportation could be such fun?

Highpoints from the nature portion of our trip included visiting a line of waterfalls along the Historic Columbia River Highway, a cruise on the Columbia Gorge Sternwheeler, and then a drive toward and then partially up Mt. Hood, which was simply majestic and awe-inspiring. Our destination on our Mt. Hood day trip was the Timberline Lodge, whose exterior was used in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, but even more than that bit of movie trivia, the interior—hand-crafted furniture from the WPA era—was so welcoming that we could’ve stayed there all afternoon, sitting by the fire, staring up at the mountain.

Lunch at the Timberline was extraordinary—enhanced by the views and by indulging in a little Oregon wine—but we had great meals throughout the trip, whether street food at the Alder Street Food Cart Pod in Portland (Bing Mi was a revelation!) or New Haven-style pizza at Double Mountain Brewery in Hood River (great IPAs) or just the spread of hors d’oeuvres in the M Lounge at the Portland Waterfront Marriott, which we popped into before dinner and then shifted plans and made it our entire dinner.

And shout-out to the concierge at the Marriott who introduced herself to Dash and then asked, “Dashiell? As in Hammett?” and told him that she couldn’t wait for him to read Hammett’s works himself—which she called a “life-altering experience.” Needless to say, we all bonded.

I’m only hitting a few highlights from our vacation, of course, and here are a few photos that offer glimpses of the trip too.

Did we get away from writing? Not entirely. Waking up early one morning, I headed downstairs to do some brief revisions on a draft, and in great news, the trip was book-ended in a different way than those news alerts I mentioned: In the airport waiting for our flight to Portland, I learned that Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine had accepted one of my stories, and the day before we flew back, another mystery magazine soon to make its debut had accept another story!

A great week all around.

 

Newsletter Contest Reminder!

The release of the trailer for the new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express reminded me that my newsletter trivia contest deadline is here! Among other things, the giveaway includes a copy of Christie’s novel, and though the deadline was officially Thursday, June 1, I’ve been out of town and forgot to post reminders—oops!

So…. deadline is extended to Sunday, June 10. For last chances to enter, check out my March newsletter here, then subscribe to the newsletter here, and then email me at art@arttaylorwriter.com with the correct answer to the trivia question by Sunday, June 10.

Good luck! And look for my next newsletter—with plenty of news!—about a week later, along with the winner of the contest!