Jeff Miller's Blog, page 14

Bouchercon in the news. This is what I’ve been doing...

Bouchercon in the news.  This is what I’ve been doing these last few days.

I’m headed to Bouchercon this week. It’s a giant...

I’m headed to Bouchercon this week.  It’s a giant mystery convention that lets authors and fans meet and mingle.  Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Karin Slaughter, and others will slum it with the likes of me.  It’s crazy.

I’m embarrassed to say that I had no idea what Bouchercon was when I signed up for it last spring.  I spent so much time working on my writing that I was largely ignorant of what happened after the book was done.  Once I signed the contract to sell The Bubble Gum Thief, I started to think that I ought to at least try to attend a thriller convention somewhere, and Bouchercon was only a half-day’s drive away, so I signed up.  I’m glad I did.

My publisher, Thomas & Mercer, is sponsoring the Bouchercon Opening Ceremonies at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  It’s also taking me out to lunch, and throwing a dinner for all of its authors.  I think I might be signing ARCs of The Bubble Gum Thief in the book room from 12-12:30 on Thursday.  I can’t say enough about how supportive Thomas & Mercer is.  They, as demonstrated literally by the venue of the opening ceremonies, but also figuratively by their other actions, rock.  (Note to potential readers of BGT … don’t worry, I don’t really write like that).

Once again, this whole thing feels like fantasy baseball camp. 

Mistakes That Aren't Mistakes

When the book finally comes out, readers are going catch mistakes in the book.  At least some of those mistakes were intentional, and here’s why:

In a 1999 study, Iowa State researchers Gary Wells and Amy Bradford showed participants grainy video footage of a real case in which a man shot and killed a security guard while robbing a convenience store. They were then given a spread of five pictures, and told that the culprit was included in the photo set. Every one of the participants claimed they could positively identify the culprit. They were all wrong. The researchers had deliberately excluded his photo from the lineup. More troubling still, when one group of participants was given positive feedback from the researchers, that group became more confident in their identifications. Half said they were now “certain” of their identification. Those participants also said they would be more willing to testify against the suspect. They were more likely to describe the security footage as “clear” than other participants and, notably, also denied that the positive feedback had any effect on their identification.

Misidentification by witnesses has been a factor in 72 percent of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases.  People make mistakes all of the time—mistakes that they are absolutely certain about.  Mistakes that juries believe.  Like this mistake:

What makes eyewitness identifications especially mischievous is that they are not only often inaccurate, but usually they can be quite convincing to juries, regardless of their veracity. One of the most powerful forms of evidence a prosecutor can deploy is a person who was at the scene of the crime, who will point to the defendant in court and say, “That’s the man who did it.” Juries often believe such witnesses even when loud alarm bells are warning them away. After a woman was raped in her New Jersey apartment in 1992, the victim couldn’t find her assailant in police photos. But eight months later, she saw McKinley Cromedy on the street and implicated him—even though she had passed him over in the original photo lineup. Fingerprints from her apartment didn’t match his; neither did hairs or blood samples recovered by police. He was convicted anyway and sentenced to 60 years in prison, five of which he served before a DNA analysis cleared him.

In every thriller I write, eyewitnesses are going to make identification errors.  They’ll do this because real witnesses do this, and I want my books to take place in the real world.   That makes the fiction better.  And if it makes people think about the problem of eyewitness testimony, maybe it helps make the real world better too.

ARC giveaway: I received a box full of Advance Reader Copies...

ARC giveaway:   I received a box full of Advance Reader Copies of The Bubble Gum Thief a few days ago.  I’m sending some of them to my agent, and taking some more to Bouchercon, but I figured I’d offer up three copies to my fellow Tumblrs. 

The photo above is a draft of the back cover.  If it sounds like the kind of book you would like, leave me a message asking for a copy.  If you’re one of the first three to respond, I’ll write back and ask for your address so I can send it to you.  All I ask in return is that you consider writing an Amazon or Goodreads review if you happen to like it.  (And if you hate it, maybe just pass the copy along to someone you think might like it.)

UPDATE:  All three are claimed, but if you’re still interested, let me know in case I get some more copies down the line.  Thanks everyone!

So, after many drafts and iterations, this is the cover for the...

So, after many drafts and iterations, this is the cover for the book.  Here’s the reasoning behind it:

The book is about Special Agent Dagny Gray’s hunt for a criminal who starts with the smallest crime possible, but builds towards the biggest crime imaginable.  His first crime is the theft of a pack of gum, but he works his way up to murder.  Even after he has killed people, the press refers to his as The Bubble Gum Thief, because it’s catchy, and because that’s the kind of thing the press does.  And part of the book is about what the press does in cases like this.  So that’s why I named the book The Bubble Gum Thief.  

My first agent wanted to change the name of the book, and so did a lot of other people, and they had good reasons for this.  The Bubble Gum Thief sounds like the title of a children’s book.  It’s not a children’s book.  In fact, although there are some comic and satiric elements, it’s a dark thriller.  Bad things happen to people in this book.  

My publisher, Thomas & Mercer, didn’t ask me to change the name of the book, which is surprising, except that their core mission is to trust their authors and defer to their judgment.  When they asked me for my ideas about cover, I told them that it ought to convey the darkness of the subject matter, and present a stark contrast to the title.  I suggested several ideas based on scenes from the book, and that there ought to be blood.  They came up with some concepts, and I submitted my thoughts on them, and we went back and forth a few times until we came up with the cover above.

I don’t think anyone who sees this cover is going to think it’s an Encyclopedia Brown book.  I hope people will look at the cover, wonder how it could relate to the title, and want to read the description to see what it’s about.  That’s the secret to this whole writing game—everything you do should make a reader want to read more.  The cover should make them want to read the description; the description should make them want to read the first page; the first page should make them want to read the second, etc., … and the last page should make them want to read the next book.  If you can pull all of that off, you’ve got a career.

I don’t have a writing career yet, but I have a cover, and it’s a pretty cool start.

Now I have a whole box of them.

Now I have a whole box of them.

This is new too.

This is new too.

A pleasant surprise came in the mail today.

A pleasant surprise came in the mail today.

(via Twitter / JenniferHillier: Me. Front page. The Philippine...

(via Twitter / JenniferHillier: Me. Front page. The Philippine …)

My friend Jennifer Hillier’s book is on the front page of the Philippine Star, right below an awesome headline about a domestic dispute.

"It’s possible to read 99,000 words and love every minute of the experience, but if those last 1000..."

“It’s possible to read 99,000 words and love every minute of the experience, but if those last 1000 disappoint, the whole experience is degraded. How can that be? A puny final hill on a roller coaster doesn’t detract from the thrills of bigger, spectacular ones that come before it. I guess we expect books to be more than an enjoyable ride—we expect them to stay with us after we’ve read them. You don’t just step off a book like you do a roller coaster. The best books become part of us, defining who we are, but only if they live up to our standards, and that’s something that’s determined at the very end of a book. Lots of people can tell an interesting story, but to make a book resonate with someone, you have to build a world and make it complete. If you don’t close it up, it sputters off like an untied balloon.”

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Me, writing about “Words,” at NewWaveAuthors Blog

If you click the link, you’ll find that most of the rest of the post is about Jason Bateman.