Winners Announced!

I am pleased to announce the winners of the Give A Dog A Home Holiday Sweepstakes. Below is a video clip of me selecting the winners from the official Lost Dog winter hat.

And the winners are:

Prize winners (one copy each of Lost Dog):

• Vicki Wurgler and her dog Jackson
• Charline Stanley and her dog Mr. Jangles
• Elaine Moreau and her dog Killer

Grand prize winner (one copy of Lost Dog and an ARC of the Killer Year anthology):

• Kymberly Bartlo and her dog Argus

Super secret grand prize winner (one copy of Lost Dog and a pre-sale draft copy of Chasing Smoke, my follow-up to Lost Dog:

• Marv Haas and his dog Hawkins

All winners also receive Lost Dog tchotchkes, including pens, buttons and bookmarks.

Thanks again to everyone who entered!



NOTE: If the video isn't available, check back in a little while. YouTube may still be "processing" it, which I presume means running some kind of image recognition software to make sure it doesn't include pictures of naughty bits.

The dogs have found a home.

I'd like to thank the nearly 300 folks who entered the Give A Dog A Home Holiday Sweepstakes. The winners have been selected and I've sent out messages letting them know what they've won. Once I confirm all entries, I'll post the winners names here as well as at the Give A Dog A Home page at my web site.

Thanks again, everyone. And winners, I hope you enjoy the my little lost pup!

Last day to enter

The Give A Dog A Home For The Holidays Sweepstakes is in its final day! But you still have a chance to win one of five copies of Lost Dog, as well as an ARC of the Killer Year anthology and a secret bonus prize.

Tomorrow, I will select the winners randomly from the official Lost Dog winter hat. If all goes well, I will even have a video of me pulling the names from the hat! I'll notify winners first by email, then post the results here and at the Give A Dog A Home page at my web site.

Crazy Sunday! And a little Monday too.

About two weeks ago I started my little Give A Dog A Home For The Holidays Sweepstakes, which might be pushing the definition of "sweepstakes" a bit, but what the hell. It's the holidays!

I'm very pleased to say that response has been quite nice. A trickle of entries has come in over the last ten days or so. On Saturday morning I crossed the 20 entry mark! That makes for some good odds, of course, since I'm giving away 5 full prize packs!

Then Sunday happened and PHWOOM! Over 75 new entries appeared in one day. Gracious!

Don't get me wrong, it's very exciting to get such response, but I'm wondering -- did something get in the water yesterday?

Lost Dog now available through Bookshare.org

Benetech Bookshare.org adds Lost Dog to its huge and growing library of online books for the community of visually impaired and otherwise print disabled individuals. As the Bookshare.org About Us page explains, "This online community enables book scans to be shared, thereby leveraging the collections of thousands of individuals who regularly scan books, eliminating significant duplication of effort. Bookshare.org takes advantage of a special exemption in the U.S. copyright law that permits the reproduction of publications into specialized formats for the disabled."

I've worked with Benetech, the parent of Bookshare.org for many years now as a graphic design and web development contractor. The company does great work, not only with Bookshare.org for the visually impaired, but in the areas of literacy, human rights, and natural resource conservation. I encourage everyone to visit not only Benetech.org, but also Martus.org, Route66Literacy.org and Miradi.org to learn more about their powerful initiatives to, quite simply, make the world a better place.

Um, no, not really...

Interviewed on Fiction Nation

If you're an XM Radio listener, tune in to Fiction Nation this weekend on XM Channel 155. Kim Alexander, host of Fiction Nation, interviews me and Toni McGee Causey in a fun, free-wheeling conversation about our books and the experience of being debut authors and members of Killer Year.

About Lost Dog, Kim says, "Its damaged characters and cold locale make Lost Dog extremely compelling." Even if you're not an XM subscriber, you can read her complete review here.

You can hear Fiction Nation, on Take Five, XM 155 on Saturday August 25th at 6pm, and again on Sunday August 26th at 10:00am. You can also hear Fiction Nation on Sonic Theater, XM 163, on Thursday, August 30th at 3:00pm. All times EDT.

Man the Photon Harpoons, Magical Fava Bean*

Just back from Phoenix and a wild and delightful whirlwind tour of Phoenix area bookstores. Above you'll see my lovely chaperones, from left to right: Sharon Anderson, Angie Johnson-Schmit, and Mindy Tarquini. (I'm the one with the beard.) The four of us visited 21 bookstores in two days. And before they joined me, I visited three others while staying with my cousin Sara and her husband John, as well as their delightful youngun Little John.

24 stores in three days. I'm whupped! But what a great time.

And just by weird luck, at the Poisoned Pen Lee Child happened to be presenting and signing. That was a huge thrill, though I couldn't buy his latest because they sold out -- though Angie got a copy. Fortunately, he'll be in Portland on Wednesday so I'll get to see him again.



Saturday evening featured a lovely dinner prepared by Mindy's husband Ian and tons of hanging out, as well as vigorous strawberry daiquiris which eventually knocked me out in a chair in the living room. Hopefully I wasn't snoring TOO loudly!

I had the great pleasure also of meeting Mindy's wonderful younguns, who were funny and polite and such great hosts. I felt so well-cared for all weekend.

It was just a grand time. I can't wait to get myself back down there.

* What do you get when you mix Mindy, Angie, Moby Dick in Space, Hannibal Lector, and two days of driving to lots and lots of bookstores? You get the title of this blog entry.

Mystery Scene #99, page 79

The newest Mystery Scene includes a wonderful review of Lost Dog. It's not currently available online, but check out the print edition if you can. The issue even includes a picture of me at my friend's cabin in the woods where I often go for long weekend writing retreats. It was so exciting to see when my copy arrived in yesterday's mail!

Lost Dog reviewed in January Magazine

Lost Dog has been reviewed by Jim Winter for January Magazine. You can check out the review here!

Ruby Jane, I've Betrayed You!

I did something terrible. I hurt a friend, and I feel awful about it. Ruby Jane Whittaker runs a small coffee shop here in Portland and makes, by her own declaration the best coffee in Portland.

And on page 69 of Lost Dog, she takes Peter's latte back behind the counter and re-steams it, just to warm it up a bit.

Oh. My. God.

You coffee folk know what happened there. And it's all my fault. Ruby Jane would never do such a thing, but alas, for a brief moment she was in the control of an oafish puppeteer.

And here's what's worse. I know you just don't do that. I could have gotten that right. But way back when I wrote the very first draft of that scene, I didn't know it, and later when I'd learned more it didn't stand out because it's not crucial to the scene development. It's atmosphere, a moment when Ruby Jane is being hospitable. But I shoulda fixed it. She coulda been hospitable in a way that didn't shine a glaring spotlight on my ignorance at her expense.

Ruby Jane, I'm sorry.

Now, I learned about this awful betrayal yesterday afternoon when I read from Lost Dog at Murder by the Book here in Portland. My friend Donovan arrived and had marked the place for me! Then, during the Q&A time, I got a staredown from a couple of baristas in the audience (one of whom was my daughter). I deserved it. Of course, if I was gonna be busted on so egregious an error, I'm glad it was by them!

Naturally, I wish I could fix it, for her sake more than my own. But you know, we all make errors, and I doubt this is the only one in Lost Dog. In the end, it may turn out to be the one I feel the worst about because of my respect for Ruby Jane, but that just means I have to work that much harder next time to not make the same kind of mistake.

I do want to say thank you to Jean and Barb at Murder by the Book for doing such a lovely job hosting the event. I had a wonderful turn out from friends old and new, and I think I did okay. I realize now I never looked up while reading (Doh!) even though I had practiced exactly that ahead of time, and I meandered more than I meant to in my answers. But it was fun, and everyone was so gracious!

Lost Dog Takes the Page 69 Test

I'd like to offer a big thank you for Marshal Zeringue for allowing Lost Dog to take the Page 69 Test! Let me know whatcha think.

Is this a blurb?

"This looks like a great book for my fiancé to read while he's in jail."

—Lady at the Coffee Shop

April Fools!

April 1 marks the official release of Lost Dog, though I saw an actual copy in an actual bookstore yesterday, and I know folks have been receiving copies from Amazon and Powells.com.

We often talk of how writing is a solitary activity, but no one gets to a point like this in their lives without the help and support of others. So I'd like to take a moment to name names, if I may, and to offer a great big thank you.

First, there is agent extraordinaire Janet Reid. She's the first person outside my friends and family to believe in Lost Dog, and without her help and guidance it would still be just a manuscript. Thank you, Janet!

Then there are the folks at Midnight Ink. Barbara Moore believed too. Lisa Novak created the gorgeous cover. Karl Anderson's editorial touch made Lost Dog better and was just great to work with. Brian Farrey noted my ruddiness and worked hard get Lost Dog noticed in the world. I know there are many others at MI whose efforts went into making this real. Thank you all!

I also want to mention my writing critique group, a fine group of fellow writers who meet a couple times a month to discuss work-in-progress. Without these folks, I never could have finished Lost Dog. Thank you, Candace Clark, Andy Fort, Corissa Neufeldt, Claudia Werner, and Yung Yu-Ma.

I also want to thank my friends at the Killer Year. This is an amazing collection of writers. It's both humbling and exciting to be included among them: Brett Battles, J.T. Ellison, Jason Pinter, Robert Gregory Browne, Toni McGee Causey, Sean Chercover, Patry Francis, Marc Lecard, Derek Nikitas, Gregg Olsen, Marcus Sakey, and Dave White. I also want to thank Sandra Ruttan for her support and for sharing her knowledge of the mystery landscape. Thank you as well to Julia Buckley and Alafair Burke for reading and blurbing Lost Dog.

Thank you also to the fine ladies of Arizona, M.G. Tarquini and Angie Johnson-Schmit. Can't wait till May!

And of course there is my Killer Year mentor, the wonderful Anne Frasier. I can't tell you how much the support of a writer of Anne's caliber means to me. I am humbled and deeply grateful for all she's done.

Allow me to end with Lost Dog's dedication:

To my J's, Justin, Jessica, and Jill
(and I can't leave out Jasmine and
the non-J's, Nene and Mr. Glubber)

Thank you, everyone.

Inkspot, The Midnight Writers

Today marks another auspicious occasion: the debut of a new group blog, a grog if you will, by writers from Midnight Ink. It's called Inkspot, and features over 20 talented writers from all over the mystery landscape. It's my honor and privilege to be included among this group. Be sure to check it out. There's be new posts every day, plus a news update on Saturday. I'm very excited about it, and I hope you will be too!

http://midnightwriters.blogspot.com/

Found: LOST DOG

Work on the street is that copies of Lost Dog have been showing up in people's mailboxes, freshly delivered from Amazon. How'd that happen? I thought it was supposed to be April Fool's Day, an auspicious date indeed.

Obviously I'm thrilled and excited. To see that puppy in my hands at last is almost hard to believe. And the cover, which looks great in digital form, truly sings in real life. It's lush and moody and darkly alluring. I love it, and I've heard that many others feel the same. Lisa Novak at Midnight Ink did a wonderful job with it. Thank you, Lisa!

Boo!

Just sticking my nose up before the weekend. In case you're wondering why I took a break . . . day job work got VERY, VERY BUSY. Long days, short nights. I just suddenly went, "Gah! Need. To. Simplify!"

Plus, I am working on a new draft of Whatever It's Called, also known as Oblivion of Hummingbird, Chasing Smoke, or Skin. Depending on my mood that day. This draft includes some structural work that has occupied a lot of my non-day job thought processes. This weekend, I will be heading off to my friends' cabin in the woods for a hard push on the draft out of range of day job distrators! Down, Distractors! Stay!

Meanwhile, a friend sent me a gift, the Official Lost Dog Tour Hat!

In other news, I also hear Lost Dog has begun to ship from Amazon, though it's still a little ways off from brick-and-mortar stores. But I have seen actual books now, and they are so pretty they made me cry. I'm an old softy.

Posting will still be thin until I get through this new draft, but rumors of my demise, etc. etc. Also, very soon I will tell you about my participation in a brand-new group blog!

Nation's Joggers Sick of Finding Dead Bodies

According to The Onion, "a national coalition of fitness enthusiasts called upon government officials Tuesday to impose measures that would reduce the likelihood of runners discovering lifeless bodies." You can read the whole story here.

I have to admit, this is a topic near and dear to the heart of Peter McKrall in Lost Dog. When he goes to the park to look for his niece's missing stuffed dog, he was going as much to put off a jog as he was to find a lost toy pooch. And who needs to be stumbling across corpses anyway?

I'm sure Peter would agree with this statement from The Onion article:

"We joggers have lives outside of finding violent-crime victims," said jogger Elizabeth Riccardi, who recently stumbled upon the remains of a double-pickax homicide while jogging around the Bartlett Reservoir near Scottsdale. "We're willing to cooperate with law enforcement, but we don't all have the time to be consoled with a blanket and a cup of coffee while some cop asks us the same tedious questions."

Now, between you and me, I think Peter should stop his whining, because if he didn't find that dead hooker instead of his niece's little lost dog, then I wouldn't be imagining John Cusack playing him in the movie version.

- - - - - -

Big thanks to my editor at Midnight Ink, Karl Anderson, for alerting to me to this important news story!

I'm Very Shallow and Empty and I Have No Ideas*

Over at Sandra's yesterday, Mindy said something that strikes me as a fairly common feeling among writers (though please let me know if you feel differently):

"Writers have dozens of stories to tell. The problem is deciding which one, not coming up with another one."

I don't know how common, but it seems like a sentiment often shared by writers. I know I've read and heard some variation on it many times.

But I have a confession to make.

Not me.

I don't have ideas. Okay, that's not strictly true. What I don't have is Ideas. I don't have dozens of stories to tell. I don't even have a handful of stories to tell. Right now I have my Work-in-Progress, plus a kinda rough notion of one or two things that might happen in a future novel, and then a vague image or two which might form the basis of a story set in Victoria, B.C. And, um, that's it. Fresh out at that point.

I couldn't tell you what might happen in, say, the novel after my next novel to save my life, and I probably couldn't tell you much about novel three. There are a couple of things I think I want to try, and see what might happen, but that's it.

I don't have ideas, I have images. I have sense impressions. I never think, I am going to write a story about... because I never know what any story is going to be about when I start writing it.

Lost Dog started with with a scene. In fact, it wasn't even going to be a scene in an actual story. It was an assignment for a class, an exercise. Later, I wrote another scene, completely unrelated to the first, with no clear sense of where it might go. I was interested in a room and how it reflected the person who lived there. I wanted to play with images and character and see what I got.

Later I asked myself what would happen if I had the character from the first scene and the character from the second scene collide. They were different kinds of people with different ways of seeing the world, but what if I created an intersection between the two?

I suppose that's an idea, but I don't think of it as an idea in the same sense as a High Concept Idea. I write through a series of what if questions, but they are always built off of these images of place or person. I grow stories on the level of character and theme. The what if questions drive me in directions that interest me or challenge me.

And then, well, shit happens. Stories develop a shape and an arc through the layering of these sense impressions and the answers to what if questions.

A side effect of this is when I get to the "end" of a story, open questions remain. That's not to say that I avoid resolution, but for me, any story I write is going to be a sliver of a larger story. My intent is always to present a coherent section, but a lot of the time when I get to the end of a story, I'm still asking myself questions about what came next, or what might come before. Maybe I'll write more, and maybe I won't. But the story in my mind is almost always bigger than what makes it onto the page.

Having said all this, I have to admit there are times when I actually write from ideas anyway. "A Tall House" was based on an idea. My current WIP started with an idea, a dream my wife had, though I have to admit I have all but abandoned the original concept she gave me as I've chased imagery and sense impressions. There was a point where I inserted an Idea in lost dog, probably around the second draft, though it kinda fizzled and I ended up minimizing to the point that I'm not sure anyone would recognize it.

Now, one of the questions I often ask myself is what I'm doing writing crime fiction, so often built around the Big Idea, when I never have ideas myself? Part of the answer is the kind of crime fiction that most attracts me. Character-driven, theme-based crime fiction is among my most favorite. John Straley, James Lee Burke, the Scudder novels of Lawrence Block. Yes, those books have ideas, as well as Ideas, but it's the stuff around the ideas that makes them particularly effective for me. Who and Why and not just What.

Some may say this is a semantic quibble. What I call imagery and sense impressions may be ideas by another name. I won't argue the point, though inside me they feel different from what I think people mean when they talk about ideas.

And please don't get me wrong. I read and enjoy -- often adore -- novels built around ideas, as well as Ideas. I just don't think that way. My creativity doesn't grow out of ideas. I don't write because I have stories to tell, but because I am exploring questions that interest me.

- - - - -

*Whoever can tell me where the title of this post is from first gets a free ARC of lost dog as soon as I get them, which may be soon since I have heard rumors on the internets that they have arrived in the mailboxes of at least a few readers and reviewers! :D

My head is lopsided

Sandra popped up with this thing this morning, so of course I had to play too.

You Are 25% Left Brained, 75% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Are You Right or Left Brained?

The result doesn't surprise me, I guess. I float in a haze much of the time, reaching out and grabbing something and then figuring out if I need to do anything with it. Work, writing, house and home. I move at random, but eventually things get done. I don't plan well, don't organize well, though every now and then I go berserk and tidy up my world in a frenzy of sweeping and stacking. I vow I will be more organized from here on in. Then a day or so passes and chaos returns. And it's mostly just fine.

This probably helps explain why my fiction is not oriented around The Big Idea so much as the influence of events on character and character on events. "What's your novel about?" is always a difficult question for me to answer, because it's about a million different things. In the run up to the publication of lost dog, the toughest thing for me to do was come up with the so-called elevator pitch, the fifteen-second hook that will make folks want to read the novel.

This is it, by the way:

"Early on a sodden Portland, Oregon morning, Peter McKrall, unemployed smart-ass and kleptomaniac, goes to the park to find his niece's lost toy dog. He doesn't realize his search is being watched by the paranoid killer of the dead hooker he finds instead."

Sometimes I say it differently, of course, but that's basically it. It's not what the novel is about, of course, it's just the beginning boiled down to two sentences. What it's about is all the stuff that happens afterward, about the impact of finding a body on a man ill-equipped to cope with such a discovery. And even that is just the beginning.

And I didn't plan it out. I started at a point and asked and answered questions until I got to another point, the ending. In a way, the end was an arbitrary spot, the place where the arc of the story would change enough going forward that I could reasonbly put it in another novel -- should I decide I want to continue the arc. There are questions answered by the end of lost dog, of course, but there are open questions as well.

I'm sure I would write a different novel if I was more analytical, though how different I don't know. It's interesting to ruminate on, though, while I'm doing other things.