Rob Hart's Blog, page 17

New ‘Path to Pub’ column at LitReactor: This Thing Is Actually Happening

For my first installment of The Path to Publication 2.0 at LitReactor, I talk about my first failed attempt at writing this column, and explore my thoughts and emotions related to this thing actually happening for real this time.

Check it out!

Party time at AWP

Are you going to AWP? I’m going to AWP. In beautiful, sunny Seattle!

LitReactor is teaming up with Writer.ly and the Booked. Podcast for some super happy fun times for Thursday, Feb. 27.

Mark your calendar. Details here.

Achievement unlocked: Book deal!

It’s official: Exhibit A Books is going to publish my first novel, New Yorked.

I’ve been sitting on this news for a few weeks, so it feels pretty damn good to get it off my chest. And it’s still a little surreal. There’s a part of me that’s waiting to wake up.

There’s a lot to be happy about right now. The folks at Exhibit A are very enthusiastic. They put out awesome books. They’re affiliated with Angry Robot, which also puts out awesome books. They’re open to the idea of turning New Yorked into a series. They’re forward-thinking on issues like DRM-free eBooks and print/digital bundling. They’re distributed by Random House, so they’ve got the guts of an indie and the reach of a monolith. This thing will be in bookstores.

Take all that together, it’s a slam-dunk-home-run-touchdown type situation.

There are a lot of people to thank. Friends and family members and fellow writers who inspired me, or gave me comfort, or offered me counsel. A lot of people. I could spend the next week doing just that. Their time will come. There are a few people I need to thank right now:

My agent, Bree Ogden, who worked extremely hard on this, and is a rockstar superhero, and just that she spent the last 10 months putting up with me probably qualifies her for sainthood.

The acquiring editor at Exhibit A, Bryon Quertermous. We met up before they made the offer, and I left our breakfast meeting convinced this was the kind of person I wanted to work with. I got my wish.

Cheers to the folks at The Cult and LitReactor. Everyone. That’s where I cut my teeth on this writing thing. Without those communities, I wouldn’t be here.

Most importantly, thanks to my wife, Amanda, who is a constant source of love and support, and is also really good at smacking sense into me when I’m glum, which is something I sometimes need.

That’s it for now. More soon. And, save your pennies, because about a year from now, this book that I’ve been hammering away at for a big chunk of my life is finally going to be a thing that you can buy. And I expect you to buy it, so I can keep myself in Whistle Pig rye.

Sláinte.

Noir at the Bar, Baltimore edition

There’s going to be a Noir at the Bar reading in Baltimore next month—and somehow I made it onto this killer lineup!

It’s a bit of a drive, sure, but I’ve driven way more for way less. I once drove three hours for a sandwich. So for something like this, with a bunch of cool people and booze and noir, yeah, I can justify that. Easy.

If you live in or around Baltimore, come to this thing. We’ll read awesome stuff at your face.

Top 5 Reasons You Should Buy Suzy Vitello’s New Book

Today is the official release date for The Moment Before, the debut novel from Suzy Vitello. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy, and I read it in one sitting. Well, two sittings, because I read it on a flight home from Portland and had to change planes in Chicago, but the point remains: I really liked it.  

So, since everything on the internet needs to be written in list format to get people to read it, here’s the top 5 reasons you should buy this book. 

1. Suzy is a fantastic writer. I’m proud to have her on our regular roster of instructors at LitReactor, where her lectures and comments are incredibly enlightening. And as for the book: It’s funny and sad and mature and heartbreaking and beautifully written. 

2. Suzy drinks martinis. Have you ever met a person who drinks martinis and isn’t cool? Seriously, think about that for a moment. 

3. It’s important to read outside your wheelhouse. As someone who reads, writes, and publishes crime fiction, I know how important it is to pick up other genres. If you’re looking to try something a little different, this is perfect: It’s a YA title that’s mature and thoughtful. 

4. The publisher, Diversion Books, looks like they’re doing some very cool stuff. And from their website, it seems they’re very pro-author. Which is great! As readers and writers, that’s the kind of behavior we should support. 

5. Seriously, shut up and go buy it. 

New Thuglit!

I’ve got a story in the latest issue of Thuglit!

“How to Make the Perfect New York Bagel” is a piece I’m incredibly proud of and, obviously, you should go read it, right now. In case I’m not enough of a draw, there are seven (7!) other stories inside. They are all fantastic.

Available digitally, and in print, so really, you have no excuse. Get some.

(more) Top favorite reads of 2013

LitReactor just posted an end-of-the-year roundup, for which I provided my top five favorite books that were released in 2013. Narrowing it down to five was tough. I did my best. Here’s the list I gave them:

The Hard Bounce by Todd Robinson
Graphic the Valley by Peter Brown Hoffmeister
Country Hardball by Steve Weddle
Junkie Love by Joe Clifford
Dare Me by Megan Abbott

You can click over to the site to see why I picked these books. Plus, you’ll see the books my LitReactor cohorts picked, and there are some great reads in there.

But there were a lot of other books I read that I really enjoyed and I want to give them their due. So, here are the rest of my favorite reads among books released this year:

The Twelve-Fingered Boy by John Hornor Jacobs. It’s got an incredible voice and a unique structure and I’m a little desperate for the next installment.
False Memory by Dan Krokos. Swords! Kung-fu! Teen drama! Secrets! Awesomeness from beginning to end.
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss. This book is horrifying. Horrifying.
Blue Blazes by Check Wendig. Irish sandhogs as New York City’s last line of defense against a Lovecraftian hell PLUS kick-ass roller derby girls. How could I not love this book?
The Little Boy Inside and Other Stories by Glenn Gray. I have a bad habit with short story collections—I read a few stories, put the book down, and then don’t pick it up again for months. This one I went straight through. Between the body-building horror stories and medical horror stories I was squirming from start to finish.
The Big Reap by Chris F. Holm. Hardboiled soul collector caught in a conflict between heaven and hell. Love it. This is the third installment of a series and while the first two are really good, Holm steps up his game on this one.
Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. This recount of the 2012 matchup between President Obama and Mitt Romney totally satisfied my political sweet tooth. And there are a lot of fun opportunities for divining the 2016 race.
The Shanghai Factor by Charles McCarry. There are no big action pieces in this spy thriller. It’s mostly people sitting in rooms and talking. And yet it is monstrously gripping the entire way through.
Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman. A snowy landscape and a town’s secrets. A recipe for skullduggery here. Beautiful writing.
Toxic Garbage by Kelby Losack. This is the first book someone has ever asked me to blurb. Luckily I liked it a lot!
Fight Song by Joshua Mohr. Just when you think the “modern male emasculated in suburbia” trope has been done to death, Mohr makes it special.
A Wind of Knives by Ed Kurtz. Dark and challenging. Set in the past, immediate in its exploration of themes like love, and intolerance, and revenge.

And, here are the books I read that were not published this year but I loved the living shit out of anyway:

In the City of Shy Hunters by Tom Spanbauer. I have never read a book that captured New York City so distinctly. Too early to tell but this may end up being my favorite book ever.
They Don’t Dance Much by James Ross. It’s a cheap shot because I publish this one, but still, a lost classic.
Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell. Holy shit Daniel Woodrell.
The Moment Before by Suzy Vitello. This doesn’t come out until January so I had to shuffle it down here. Still. Beautiful. I love Suzy’s writing.
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch. Oh my stars this wonderful thing.
Dead Calm by Charles Williams. I love Charles Williams so much. I feel lucky to publish his backlist. I read half of his books this year but Dead Calm was my favorite, for a few reasons, but mostly for this stunning passage:

He still hadn’t looked up, and she had no intention of venturing farther into his territory until he’d seen her and she could assess his reaction. From here she could still make it back to safety before he could get out from behind the wheel and catch her, but going too far would be like misjudging the length of chain by which some dangerous wild animal was secured. She waited, thinking of this and conscious of the incongruity or even the utter madness of the simile. Dangerous? This nice, well-mannered, unbelievably handsome boy who might have stepped right out of a mother’s dream? That was the horror of it, she thought. Conscious evil or malicious intent you could at least communicate with, but Warriner was capable of destroying her with the pointlessness and the perfect innocence of a falling safe, and with its same imperviousness to argument.

And… that’s all I’ve got, folks! Until next year, happy reading.

Guest post on crime fiction cliches

The nice folks over at Mulholland Books—one of today’s best crime fiction publishers, from my view (you know, outside my imprint)–invited me to do a guest blog post for them. So I wrote about the top 10 cliches in crime fiction.

Here are the top three:

1. The deep and intense relationship with alcohol.

Has there ever been a private investigator or a hard-boiled protagonist who didn’t drown his or her feelings in a bottle? Bonus points if that alcohol is amber and smoky. Vices are fun, but too often, they’re overused as a defining characteristic.

2. The deep and intense relationship with music.

A lot of authors name-check musicians. In crime fiction it’s almost always jazz or the blues. Again, amber and smoky. Where’s the polka? The Norwegian death metal? It would be great to see some characters with a little range.

3. The uptight female character as potential sex toy.

If a prudish but pretty woman meets the male protagonist in the first 50 pages of a story, you know they’ll end up having sex. It’ll be liberating for her, a moment of vulnerability for him—and the author will get to work out some deep-seated sexual fantasy. Everyone wins!

Go here to find the rest!

Someone asked me to blurb a book!

So, this is cool: A few months back some dude asked me to blurb his book. I didn’t know him, but the plot summary was pretty cool, and I was in a good mood when I got the e-mail, so I figured, hell, let’s try this thing.

And I really liked it! Which would have been awkward if I didn’t, no? If the book sucked then I don’t know what I would have done. Written back with a blurb that read: “This is in fact a book.”

Instead, this is the blurb I came up with:

Toxic Garbage is like that perfect punk song: Dirty, propulsive, immediate, infused with anarchist spirt. And it’s carried by a rag-tag central cast that, despite their flaws and scars, clearly care for each other. The balance Losack strikes between light and dark is killer.

And he put it on the cover! Which is awesome. (It’s not on this version of the cover, but it is on the version over at Amazon, where you can buy it.)

Go read Toxic Garbage. If this is Kelby Losack’s debut, I’m excited to see what he has coming up next.

The novella in print!

The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, a thing I wrote that, until now, was only available as an eBook, is not anymore limited to a single format.

Wow, that sentence.

Anyway, The Last Safe Place is available as a paperback! And it’s only $5.69 at Amazon. Not bad. Cheaper than lunch in Manhattan. Cheaper than a life-size replica of the Iron Throne. I don’t go to Starbucks but I imagine it’s cheaper than most of their faux-coffee sugar drinks.

Go get some!