Art Taylor's Blog, page 87

SleuthSayers: The Possibilities Are Endless

The first day of my fiction workshop at George Mason University this semester got me thinking about the pressures to “finish” a piece of writing, and a new book I’ve just been delving into, Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, along with an old anecdote about sculptor Alberto Giacometti, helped offer some different perspectives on the process.

Here’s a sample paragraph from the post I wrote about all this at SleuthSayers:

I’ve written elsewhere before—in other blog posts and interviews (so excuse me if you’ve heard it)—about a lesson I took from the work of sculptor Alberto Giacometti and specifically his Women of Venice series. Back when I worked at the North Carolina Museum of Art, we hosted an exhibition that included one of the sculptures (the series as a whole is pictured to the left), and I was fascinated not just by the artwork itself, the texture of it, the existential starkness of it, but also by the story of how Giacometti created the series. As I understood it, all of them were cast from the same mass of clay, clay which Giacometti worked and shaped and reworked and shaped until eventually it reached a form that he found suitable, at which point he called his brother in to make a cast of the “finished” product.

And then he began working and shaping that same clay again.

The full post can be read here.

Washington Post Review: Supernotes

Supernotes by Agent Kasper and Luigi Carletti treads too uncertain a line between its “Thriller” subtitle and its “Based on True Events” tagline. Here’s an excerpt from my review in the Washington Post:

Supernotes are counterfeit $100 bills, primarily in circulation in Asia and produced so superbly that they thwart even the most advanced detection methods. But the new book Supernotes takes that description even further: “Authentic banknotes, but printed in a place that’s not the U.S. Mint. And therefore false? No. Different. But real.”

The source of these counterfeit c-notes is central to this new thriller. But the story focuses more extensively on the detention, imprisonment and torture of an Italian man in a Cambodian prison. We follow his struggles to escape while his family’s attorney in Rome works to obtain his release. As the story shuttles between the horrors of prison life and the frustrations of legal maneuvering, it also weaves back and forth in time to reveal the prisoner’s history and the events that led to his incarceration.

The full review can be found here.

Criminal Minds: New Year’s Resolutions

I take my New Year’s Resolutions very seriously—as I discuss in my post this week at Criminal Minds.

Here’s the list of my 2016 resolutions:

Write FIRST!
Read War & Peace
Don’t check my iPhone all the time
Let Dash pick a recipe twice a month and help make it.
Do something new each month
Pet the cats each time I come home.

For more context on each of them, read the full post here.

January 13th, Beatley Library, Alexandria VA

I’m pleased to be appearing this week with several local mystery writers—members of the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime—at the Charles E. Beatley, Jr. Central Library at 5005 Duke Street, Alexandria, VA. The panel discussion will explore how we first-time novelists got our start, what’s been surprising about being a published author, and how we cultivate and interact with our readers. The program takes place on Wednesday, January 13, beginning at 7 p.m.

Featured panelists include:

Maya Corrigan, author of the Five-Ingredient Mysteries, featuring a café manager and her grandfather, the Codger Cook, who solve murders in a historic town near the Chesapeake Bay.
Sherry Harris, author of the Sarah Winston Garage Sale series, including Tagged for Death, a finalist for the Agatha Award for Best First Novel.
Claudia LeFeve, author of Destined for Trouble, who draws inspiration for her books from her former career in law enforcement.
Penny Clover Peterson, author of the Daisy & Rose Mystery Series, off-beat cozies including Roses and Daisies and Death, Oh My! and Roses Are Dead, My Love.

I’ll be doing double-duty as a panelist and moderator. Hope to see folks there!

 

January Events: Noir on the Air, Sisters in Crime, and The Big Read

A new year! And a fresh new line-up of events to kick off 2016.

On Monday, January 11, I’ll join an array of writers based in and around the DC area for “Noir on the Air,” hosted by author E.A. Aymar and by Authors on the Air on the Global Radio Network. The event starts at 9 p.m. and featured short readings by Meredith Cole, Dana King, Nik Korpon, Tara Laskowski, Meg Opperman, Alan Orloff, Josh Pachter, and Steve Weddle, plus a q&a session with all the authors. To listen to the show, check out the link here and please feel free to RSVP (for a reminder!) on the Facebook event page here.

Two days later, on Wednesday, January 13, I’ll be live and in person at the Charles E. Beatley, Jr. Central Library in Alexandria, VA, as part of a Sisters in Crime panel with members of SinC’s Chesapeake Chapter, including with Maya Corrigan, Sherry Harris, Claudia LeFeve, and Penny Clover Peterson. The library is located at 5005 Duke Street in Alexandria, and the program begins at 7 p.m.

And finally, I’m so pleased to have the opportunity to speak on Dashiell Hammett and The Maltese Falcon as part of the kick-off to the Wake County Public Libraries’ Big Read program. I’ll give a short talk on Sunday, January 31, at 2 p.m. at the Cameron Village Regional Library, 1930 Clark Avenue, in Raleigh, NC. The event also includes a reception with live music from Sidecar Social Club.

A literary lecture with a cool band? How come we didn’t think about this before?

Hoping friends and fans will turn up for some of these events! And for more events throughout the year, check out my events page here.

 

WIROB: Holiday Traditions

My column this month for the Washington Independent Review of Books turns an eye toward traditions: how they’re made, selected, shaped, reshaped, and more—from what we eat to what we watch to what we read each year when the holidays roll in. (And that image above is from William Joyce’s Santa Calls, not just a holiday tradition in our house but maybe my favorite children’s picture book ever.)

Here’s a sample paragraph from my column that cuts to the core of the matter:

A few years back, Tara and I began to reflect more actively together on our respective traditions — on choosing which ones to follow, making those our own, and also creating new ones. Part of it was that we come from different regional, cultural, and religious backgrounds, and we wanted to respect and fold those together. Part of it was the birth of our son, Dashiell, and a keener focus on the experiences we were curating for him.

Read the full column here—and in the meantime, happy holidays to all and best wishes for a fantastic new year ahead!

Events in Richmond & Bethesda

This weekend—Saturday and Sunday, December 12-13—I’ll be traveling both south and (slightly) north for event in Richmond, VA, and Bethesda, MD.

First up, on Saturday, December 12, I’ll join Ellery Adams, Mary Burton, Maggie King, and LynDee Walker at 2 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble, Chesterfield Town Center, 11500 Midlothian Turnpike, Richmond. Did someone mention that it’s the holiday shopping season? Books make great gifts, of course, and we’re there to sign ours!

Then on Sunday, December 13, I’ll be appearing with John Grady, author of Matthew Fontaine Maury, Father of Oceanography: A Biography, 1806-1873, for a reading at The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda. That events begins at 2 p.m. as well.

In other news this week, I was interviewed by Steve Weddle at Do Some Damage and I also posted a column on reading fiction vs. nonfiction at SleuthSayers. Hope folks will check out both those pieces—and hope to see many friendly faces at the weekend’s two events!

 

High Praise from EQMM & Kirkus

On the Road with Del & Louise: A Novel in Stories has earned two terrific bursts of praise here as the old year looks toward the new one.

In the January 2016 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, critic Steve Steinbock gave the book a four-star review, noting that “The writing, in the voice of Louise, is funny, genuine, and thoughtful, following these conscientious crooks through their ups and downs….”

Meanwhile, Kirkus Reviews crime fiction critic J. Kingston Pierce followed up his top-10 list of 2015 with a second column reflecting on other highlights of his reading year—naming On the Road with Del & Louise among “A Handful of 2015’s Most Promising Debut Novels.”

So grateful for the high praise here—a wonderful way to end what’s already been a magical year.

The Thrill Begins: Interview with EQMM Editor Janet Hutchings

I’m thrilled to have interviewed Janet Hutchings, editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, as part of the “Publishing Panel” series at The Thrill Begins, an online magazine for International Thriller Writers. The interview is timed on the eve of the magazine’s 75th year—and of Hutchings’ own 25th year at the helm of what Stephen King called “the best mystery magazine in the world, bar none.”

Here’s a quick excerpt—a single q&a exchange:

EQMM’s Department of First Stories is a terrific feature—a celebration of fresh talent in each issue. When did this begin, and in what ways has that continued to be such an important part of your work? Are you able to chart how many of your submissions are indeed from new writers?

The Department of First Stories began in 1949.  I’ve always enjoyed this department. I came to EQMM from a book publisher that I guess you’d call a “discovery house.” Two-thirds of my list was composed of first-time novelists. It was a thrill to bring those new authors into print. I experience a little bit of that excitement each time we buy a first story. And I do not feel that the quality of the first stories is much, if at all, behind that of the work of our more seasoned writers. In fact, there’s sometimes more genuineness to the first stories than we might see in later work. Often I get the feeling they’re drawn from intensely personal experience.

Now that we’ve got a submissions server on which to track what comes in, it would be possible, I suppose, to determine what percentage of the work is from new writers. I don’t know offhand,  but it’s a lot.

Read the full interview here.

University Club, SinC Showcase & More December Events

As November turns to December, I’m pleased to have a full line-up of events ahead to wrap up the year right—beginning with two events this week.

The 26th annual Meet the Author Night and Book Fair at the University Club of Washington, DC takes place on Wednesday, December 2 from 5:30 til 8 p.m. (The club’s library is pictured in the image above; the address is 1135 16th Street NW, in Washington, DC.) More than 60 authors will take part in the event—the only time each year that the club is open to the public—and Upshur Street Books will be on hand for book sales.

Then on Saturday, December 5, the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime will host its second author showcase of the season—this time at the Reston Regional Public Library, 11925 Bowman Town Drive, in Reston, VA. The event begins at 1 p.m. and features 20 chapter authors, including Donna Andrews, E.A. Aymar, Maya Corrigan, Ellen Crosby, Maddi Davidson, Barb Goffman, Sherry Harris, Maureen Klovers, Claudia Lefeve, Clyde Linsley, Millie Mack, G.M. Malliet, Sujata Massey, Eileen McIntire, Susan O’Brien, Alan Orloff, Kathryn O’Sullivan, Josh Pachter, Colleen Shogan, and me. Mystery Loves Company will host book sales at this event.

Two other December events are still ahead—and hope to see lots of friendly faces at each!

Saturday, December 12—Mystery Writers Event with Ellery Adams, Mollie Cox Bryan, Mary Burton, Maggie King, and LynDee Walker, Barnes & Noble, Chesterfield Town Center, 11500 Midlothian Turnpike, Richmond, VA • 2 p.m.


Sunday, December 13—Reading: On the Road with Del & Louise, appearing with John Grady, author of Matthew Fontaine Maury, Father of Oceanography: A Biography, 1806-1873, The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD • 2 p.m.

Happy holidays ahead to all!