Sam Wiebe's Blog, page 5

Reviews and Interviews

The response to Invisible Dead so far has been amazing. I wanted to share two things that I thought were especially cool.

Naben Ruthnum interviewed me for Hazlitt. In his review of the novel he compares it to the work of Richard Price and David Simon, which doesn't happen every day. I'm really proud of how this turned out.

And from Margaret Cannon's review of Invisible Dead in the Globe and Mail: "Haven't heard yet of Sam Wiebe? You will soon."



It's incredibly gratifying.

August Events and Book Tour

What a month. July saw me tour Invisible Dead from Vancouver to Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa...it was exhausting, but a lot of fun. Thanks to all the writers, book store owners, and everyone else who helped facilitate this trip.



Here's my schedule of events for August, most in Vancouver or its surrounding area:

August 1st: CBC Radio interview, the Stephen Quinn Show

August 2nd: Harmony Arts Festival, West Vancouver, Crime Fiction panel with Ian Hamilton and William Deverell, moderated by Robin Spano

August 6th: Black Bond Books in Maple Ridge, BC with Cathy Ace, Allan Emerson and others

August 13th: Black Bond Books in Central City, Surrey, BC with Cathy Ace, Allan Emerson and others

August 20th: Kamloops Library

 

Here's a book recommendation: John McFetridge's One or the Other is officially released today. It's a great procedural set in Montreal at the tail end of the seventies. I can also recommend Viet Than Nguyen's The Sympathizer, which was a really interesting spy novel that's won a boatload of awards. Both books are interested in the ways that the victimized become victimizers. 

Thanks for reading this,

 

Sam

Book Launch, Upcoming Tour

To everyone who came to the book launch at Pulp Fiction--thank you! I had a terrific time connecting and re-connecting with people...and the after-launch drinks at Main Street Brewing and The Whip were pretty great, too.

Invisible Dead has been out for about a week now. The reviews have been pretty stellar--check out the write-up in the Vancouver Sun, and on the Dead End Follies Blog. 

In July I'll be embarking on a cross-Canada tour that will take me from Vancouver to Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. I'm hoping to add some more cities to that list, but we'll see. I've heard "July isn't a good time for book events..." though those are the same people who've also said "nobody comes out to events in the sunshine" and "if it rains no one will come out." As David Milch says, the 'smart money' usually misses its bus in the morning.

 

Two Weeks and Counting

INVISIBLE DEAD comes out June 14th, two weeks from today. The book launch is at Pulp Fiction Books on Main Street, in Vancouver. Here's the link to the Facebook event.



Hope to see you there! 







 

New Events Added; Authors for Indies and Noir at the Bar

Authors for Indies was yesterday. I was at three stores--Black Bond Books in Central City, Dead Write/White Dwarf in the West End, and Pulp Fiction on Main. Busy day, but great to connect with so many booksellers. Janie Chang organizes AFI, and has made it into a rewarding ceebration of independent bookstores.



This Wednesday is Noir at the Bar Vancouver, which will be at the Shebeen Whisk(e)y Room, inside the Irish Heather Bar in Gastown. [All of these are greater Vancouver locations, by the way.] NATB is consistently my favorite literary events, probably due to the alcohol, but also the cozy atmosphere. Come out, have a drink and a pretzel, and hear some crime writers read from their newest work.



Invisible Dead comes out in a month and a half, and I'm already organizing a barrage of new bookings, including Kelowna, Kamloops, Nelson, Surrey, and Maple Ridge. June and August I'll be doing Vancouver and B.C. events, but in July I'm arranging a road trip. I'm hoping to include Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, at the very least. It'll be a lot of fun. 



And then in the fall...I have some VERY cool announcements to make about what I'll be doing in the fall. Stay tuned!

2016 Spring/Summer Events

My new book INVISIBLE DEAD comes out this June, and I'll be doing a ton of events around Vancouver, as well as road trips to Kelowna and Nelson, to Seattle, and (I'm hoping), the rest of Canada. Here's what I've lined up so far:



April 9th: Booked for Crime -  Capilano Library, with Dietrich Kalteis, Owen Laukkanen, and Jackie Bateman

April 30th: Authors For Indies -I'll be at Black Bond Books at Surrey Central in the morning, followed by Dead Write  Books from 1-3, and Pulp Fiction (Main Street location) 4-6. 

May 4th: Noir at the Bar Vancouver - The Shebeen Whisky Room (212 Carrall Street, Vancouver)

May 18th: Kelowna and Nelson trip--details to come

May 26: Christianne's Lyceum - Last of the Independents book chat



June 14 - Publication date for INVISIBLE DEAD



August 2: Harmony Arts Festival, West Vancouver, Crime Fiction panel with Ian Hamilton and William Deverell, moderated by Robin Spano



More events to come!

Couple of Brief Announcements

I'm taking over blogging duty for Robin Spano on 7 Criminal Minds, a wonderful blog run by a great group of writers. My first post is up already, on motivation.

Tomorrow night is Noir at the Bar Vancouver, the event I look forward to the most. It's at the Shebeen Whisky Room in Gastown, and starts at seven. Then the day after is a library event with Dietrich Kalteis and ER Brown

My other semi-regular blog, Off The Cuff, has a new post up about our road trip to Bouchercon with John McFetridge, John Jantunen, and ECW Press publisher Jack David. It was a hell of a trip. 

Other than that...I've been working on edits for Invisible Dead, I have a cool short story announcement to make pretty soon, and I'm finally caught up on my midterm marking. Books I've read recently which I'd recommend:



Patricia Highsmith, Talented Mr. Ripley

Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Roseanna

Les Edgerton, The Bitch

Josephine Tey, The Franchise Affair

John McFetridge, Dirty Sweet

and I'm still working through the Ross MacDonald Lew Archer series. 



 

Bouchercon, Shamus Awards, and Advice for New Writers

The last two weeks have been busy as hell. I've been in Edmonds, Washington for the Write on the Sound conference, then a week in Toronto and Raleigh for Bouchercon, and then down to Seattle for their first Noir at the Bar. Add to that the panel I was on at Word Vancouver, and the discussion I was a part of at the West Vancouver Library, and it's already been a crazy fall.

Last year at Bouchercon Long Beach, I was a new writer, there for the first time, not knowing anybody. I was shown a lot of kindness by writers like Elaine Ash, John McFetridge, David Swinson, Tanis Mallow, and Brian Thornton. This year I was able to hang out with writers like Michael Pool, Danny Gardner and John Jantunen, who were at Bouchcercon for THEIR first time.

All writers deal with feelings of insecurity and fraudulence. I definitely felt that last year at Bouchercon, less so this year. But in these last weeks I've seen a lot of writers covering for those feelings by exaggerating their own accomplishments, hard-selling their books, or, like I did last year, waiting on the edge of the group for someone to talk to them.

All of them secretly wondering what they can do to earn admission into the group.

This is what I've realized: those feelings of fraudulence and insecurity ARE your ticket in.

When I was starting out I went to an Ian Rankin reading, and afterwards asked him for advice. He said to me, "Just remember, we've all been where you are."

Hopefully realizing that will make those things easier.

One last illustration: Last of the Independents was up for a Shamus award, which are given out at Bouchercon. The awards dinner was nice, and I got to hang with Corky and Dana King and meet Lawrence Block. I didn't win. My next stop was the bar, for obvious reasons. When I walked in the first person I saw was Peter Rozovsky. Peter is the godfather of Noir at the Bar, a critic and crime fiction champion, and overall a very nice and knowledgeable guy. 

As I got my drink, Peter walked up to me, pointed at me, and said loudly:



"LOSER!"



And I laughed, and felt really happy to be amongst my own tribe.

The Hugo Awards

(This is a response to Amy Wallace's article in Wired, Who Who Won Science Fiction's Hugo Awards, And Why it Matters: http://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/ )



Ok. I know four-fifths of fuck-all about SFF, (other than a borderline-unhealthy obsession with Blade Runner and a broken heart from the shitty ending to Mass Effect 3). But as a writer I've found the Hugo awards an interesting debacle to follow.

You have two pretty worthy causes at stake here--the championing of good writing, and the championing of diverse voices in a genre. Anyone who thinks those are incompatible, or even competing values, is deluded.

I'd like to think the Crime/Mystery genre is more advanced than SFF when it comes to representation, but I have nothing to back that up other than anecdotal evidence. It could be that this kind of revolution/revolt has already happened, is happening, has yet to happen.

In my own career I've been nominated for two Arthur Ellis awards, won one, won the Kobo Emerging thing, and been nominated for a Shamus. I've been way more fortunate than most.

Now, I'd like to think I received those accolades because I'm the unheard voice of my generation (or A voice of A generation, as Lena Dunham said on Girls.) You know the part in Casino where Joe Pesci says about Kevin Pollack, "He'd like to think the Teamsters gave him all that money because he's so fuckin' smart"?

The Shamus nom was really meaningful, because it's the category that Walter Mosely won for Devil In a Blue Dress and Dennis Lehane for A Drink Before the War. I grew up idolozing those guys. And I assume this year's award is a lock for Julia Dahl's Invisible City, because I've heard nothing but raves about it so far. (It currently sits at around base camp of the gloomy Eiger that is my to-read list).

But here's the rub--would a writer of color or an LGBT writer have those same awards? Would they have the same access to those awards?

And that's the thing--if the playing field isn't level, than awards are even more meaningless than they really are. 

And these are (in my mind) legit, judged awards, not really capable of the manipulation that the Hugos are. If the Hugos had a judging panel, they'd definitely be less susceptible to gaming the system. But maybe it's BECAUSE of how shitty they're set up that we can look at the system a little bit more objectively.

There are some interesting counter-arguments mentioned in that Wired piece. Of course quality should trump identity. Of course self-published and small-press authors face a harder struggle. But that's been twisted into some competition between 'blue-collar' and 'diverse' writers--one claim doesn't--shouldn't--can't--discount the others.

To me the real hero is Annie Bellet, the person who gets what the better parts of the Puppies group was trying to do, but refused her nomination because they sided with a racist/misogynistic-troll-'performance-artist' over people fighting to have their voices heard. The best quote from that article: "I want these awards to be about the fiction, and that was important enough to me to give one up."

Anyway, that Wired piece is worth a read.

Toronto, Kobo Emerging Authors

7/9/2015: Just got back from Toronto for the 2015 Kobo Emerging Writer Awards. And I have some very good news...

Last of the Independents won in the Mystery category!

The books were shortlisted by a jury and then judged by Ian Hamilton, author of the Ava Lee series. I'm going to shamelessly retype Ian's comments: "a well-crafted homage to the age of crime noir combined with a thoroughly modern sensibility. Sam's characters were engaging and tightly drawn."

It's a tremendous honour, and the list of people who need to be thanked would be very long. If you've supported the book, your name should be on that list. I'll briefly thank everyone at Kobo for arranging this. Thank you, I'm honoured, and hopefully the next one will be even better!

Links to the story on CBC and Quill & Quire.