We've been in touch with Mr. Sallis a bit about coming to sign at the store. It won't be for several months, but Jim has asked if he can bring his band to entertain attendees...stay tuned!
Mystery writer on bad reviews and the fate of characters
by Randy Cordova - May. 5, 2011 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic
Earlene Fowler was working a regular nine-to-five job when she decided to take a class in writing at a California communitycollege. Next thing you know, she is a published author with a popular mystery series featuring museum curator Benni Harper.
The series' latest offering, "Spider Web," is out this month, and Fowler will visit the Poisoned Pen to sign autographs and meet with her fans. She called from her home in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Question: This is the 15th book in this series. Does that surprise you?
Answer: When I wrote the first book, I didn't even know it was going to get published. I never thought about writing a second, third or fourth one, much less a 15th.
Q: And you got published in an unusual way.
A: I walked into a junior-college classroom, and the teacher read it. She took it to her agent, and within three weeks I had a book contract. I hit the ground runningback in 1992.
Q: How many people come up to you and say, "I want your life"?
A: (Laughing) I do get, "You're a writer. How exciting!" I've often wished somebody would do a reality show on writers, because you would be so bored. I have a laptop, then I sit on the sofa, then I go to the bathroom, then I look in the refrigerator. If it's really exciting, the mail comes. I'm not complaining, but that's basically your life.
Q: How did your husband respond to the change in your life?
A: He's used to it, but I think it was hard that all of a sudden I had somewhat of a public persona. He's an engineer and lives this normal life, so it's different.
Q: He must hate it if you get bad reviews.
A: Oh, he doesn't read them. And you're so tempted when you're up late at night to get on Amazon and read what they're saying. But it's best not to give (negative) people energy. And when you work with the public, you know that people get upset about something else and take it out on you.
Q: Some of the critiques get so personal.
A: I have this one lady, and she read my second book and she absolutely hated it. OK, that's fine. But I have 15 books in the series, and she has continued to read each one and leave negative comments. (Laughing) I want to e-mail her: "You hated the books back in 1994; now please stop reading."
Q: Is there an outline of where the books are going?
A: I don't outline; that's one of those things with writers: Either you outline or you don't. I don't think it has anything to do with the quality of the book. I think the disadvantage is there is a lot to keep track off, and if you have an outline, that would be easier. But it also leaves it more spontaneous.
Q: So you don't know where Benni is going to end up?
A: Well, I did something very unusual. Back on my sixth book, my sales were not doing very well. My publisher didn't say they were going to drop me, but they weren't answering my phone calls, either. There's so many series where you read the books, then they're dropped and you never know what happens to the people. So in "Mariner's Compass," I put a prologue where the narrator is 75 and she talks about what has happened in her life. I wanted to tell readers everything ends up OK with these characters.
Q: What did your editor think?
A: I really had to fight with my editor about it. I thought it belonged in there, but nobody had ever done that before. And that ended up being the book I won the Agatha Award (for mystery and crime writers) for.
Q: When you write, do you have an actress in mind for Benni?
A: I did early on. When I started, my character was 34 and I was 37. She's now 38, and I'm 56. I would have thought Holly Hunter, but just like me, Holly Hunter's now too old.
Earlene will be signing at The Poisoned Pen this coming Sunday, May 8 at 1pm with author Carolyn Hart. To find out more about it, visit the event page at www.poisonedpen.com
Hap Collins and Leonard Pine return in a red-hot, mayhem-fueled thriller to face a vampire cult, the Dixie Mafia, and the deadliest assassin they’ve ever encountered—Devil Red.
When their friend Marvin asks Hap and Leonard to look into a cold-case double homicide, they’re more than happy to play private investigators: they like trouble, and they especially like getting paid to find it. It turns out that both of the victims were set to inherit serious money, and one of them ran with a vampire cult. The more closely Hap and Leonard look over the crime-scene photos, the more they see, including the image of a red devil’s head painted on a tree. A little research turns up a slew of murders with that same fiendish signature. And if that’s not enough, Leonard has taken to wearing a deerstalker cap . . . Will this be the case that finally sends Hap over the edge?
Full up with Lansdale’s trademark—whip-smart dialogue, relentless pacing, and unorthodox-to-say-the-least characters—Devil Red is one rambunctious thrill ride by one hell of a writer.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Vanilla Ride, Leather Maiden, Sunset and Sawdust, and Lost Echoes. He has received the British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Edgar Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, and seven Bram Stoker Awards. He lives with his family in Nacogdoc
Last November, Jerkins, a first time writer with a paper-back original flew in under the radar. Published by Berkley and carried by the Poisoned Pen I bought it and was rewarded with a terrific read. Since James Crumley fathered the "Neo-noir" movement I find it remarkable how many writers have emerged with odd and novel twists to the genre. Grant Jerkins now joins the ranks of Megan Abbott, Lynn Kostoff, Dave Zeltserman and others in breathing new life into crime fiction.
Author Grant Jerkins
For those of you who have reaped endless hours of pleasure from Hollywood's old noir and crime films this book is a godsend. Jerkins has crafted a finely honed and taut thriller that evokes some of films finest moments. He cleverly mines the riches to be found in such gems as "Double Indemnity", "Witness for the Prosecution", Alfred Hitchcock, and the films made from Patricia Highsmith's novels. To name anymore cinematic references and allusions would only diminish the joy of finding them yourself. However I must point out that Jerkins very cleverly creates in prose the equivalent of many film devices while giving his characters subtle traits that make casting the film version an extra bonus in enjoyment. This story of two brothers, of their love for each other, and the events that illuminate the relationship unfold like a masterful 1940's screenplay. The writing is crisp, the characterisations are sharp and crystal clear. The plot is as complex as an algorithm and as elegant in its inevitability as the best of noir film and fiction. The metaphors, subtext, and dialogue all sparkle as they leap off the page. Please enjoy this gem and let the Poisoned Pen Blog know what you think.
-Steve Shadow Schwartz
To order a copy of A Very Simple Crime from The Poisoned Pen, click here. To find out more about Grant Jerkins, visit his website at http://www.grantjerkins.com/ For further reading in a similar vein , try the following:
Jason Goodwin's road trip: Perpetual motion and freeway madness
Jason Goodwin, the novelist, ponders the perpertual motion of Americans in the third of his exclusive online columns from the road.
The cities grow here like mould in a petrie dish: Phoenix is like a speckled rash between the desert bluffs, LA a cat’s cradle of freeways woven between the wooded hills, and even San Francisco, at night, sparkles feverishly around the silent depths of its glorious bay. Apocalypse is a tremor away. Get Ready to Roll say the lamp-post banners In Beverley Hills, reminding you that April is Earthquake Preparedness Month. For the Bay Area, earthquake is not an if, but a when.
You’re not human tonight, Marlowe.
In his superb introduction to an anthology called Phoenix Noir, Patrick Millikin writes that Phoenix “is a city founded on shady development deals, good ol' boy politics, police corruption, organized crime and exploitation of natural resources.” He also points out that “the city recently overtook Philadelphia to become the fifth largest in the country, and the Phoenix metro area now rivals Los Angeles County in size.”
The speed and scale of Phoenix's growth is stupefying: this is, after all, the desert. And the stories Patrick has selected for the anthology are all, in their way, commentaries on that phenomenal explosion, which only occurred after the invention of refrigerated air.
Air conditioning, introduced in the 1950s, made the desert liveable. Before that, Phoenix was a farm town for ranchers, and citrus trees.
It seems awfully precarious. I can't help noticing that there are some unusual ways to die in Phoenix: you can be felled by a gum-tree (they were brought in from Australia, and spread like weeds; but they have very shallow roots). You can die climbing an itty-bitty mountain like Camel Hump. It should take 45 minutes but it's hot up there. You can be swept away in a flash flood – believe me, it happens: the subsoil here is a natural concrete called caliche, and when it rains there's nowhere for the water to run.
You can die in some of the ways explored by the authors in Phoenix Noir, too.
