Dot Dead Diary

Stop Me Before I Strike Again

I brought along nine books on my trip to Israel and read 5-and-a-half.  Not bad.  So I have 3-and-a-half to go.  That should stop me from buying more, right?  I should finish what I've started.  I wish.  In the week I've been home, I couldn't resist stopping in at M is for Mystery, Kepler's, and Bob & Bob which is kinda like an alcoholic visiting his three favorite bars.  I've come away with Denise Hamilton's Last Embrace, Michelle Gagnon's Boneyard, Jim Rollins' Last Oracle, Jennifer Haigh's The Condition, Benny Morris' 1948, Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases, and Bernad Avishai's Hebrew Republic.  I haven't started one of them yet.  So I can look forward to a lazy few weeks and finishing them before going on another serial book-buying spree?  No.

Tomorrow morning I'm hopping on JetBlue to go to NYC for ThrillerFest.  I know that I'll be buying heaps of friends' books and books they recommend and books from impressive panelists and books that look good on the table.  Help!

BTW, I'll be on a panel called "Pathology on the Page: The Mind of The Character" at ThrillerFest Saturday morning.  The moderater is Andrew Gross and other panelists are fellow Northern Californian Matt Richtel, debut author Steve Forman, and fantasy/mystery writer Mitchell Graham.  Katherine Ramsland is going to be there to psychoanalyze unbalanced us and our even more pathological characters.  Should be a kick.

Sexiest Movie Scene Ever?

#4 and I went to see "Singin' in the Rain" this evening at the Stanford Theatre in downtown Palo Alto.  He'd never seen it.  He loved it save for the part glommed in there where Gene Kelly describes his vision for a scene in an upcoming movie.  The screen dissolves into the "Gotta Dance" segment.  I agree with my son that that long scene is just pasted in and moves the story forward not one step.  But here's why I would never cut it -- it contains the sexiest dance scene ever.  You know, where Cyd Charisse plays the moll who curls around lucky Gene like a sinuous snake.  Ms. Charisse died last month.  Here's what Tony Parsons wrote about that scene in an appreciation that ran in the (London) Mirror:

Without saying a word, Cyd Charisse dances for the sexiest 15 minutes Hollywood ever produced. She is seduction made flesh, blood and silk stockings. It is shocking to read that she was only 5ft 6ins tall, because most of that must have been leg.

Sigh.

Back Home

It only took #4, my 9-year old boy, and I 28 hours to make it home from Israel.  Thanks to the 10 hour time difference all our traveling was on Monday.

 

Never been to Israel before. So much to draw from in my next book. We were on the frontlines at the Lebanese border where a Hezbollah observation site squatted a few hundred yards away. We floated in the Dead Sea, danced in the mystical city of Safed, rafted down the "mighty" Jordan River (little more than a dribble of a stream), dug up 2000-year old pottery, teared up at the gallows where the British hung Jews who fought for independence, and prayed at the Western Wall.
 

In an uncharacteristic burst of optimism, I brought nine books with me. I did manage to read five-and-a-half of them. Before leaving, I'd found the tattered copy of Leon Uris's novel on Israel's fight for independence, Exodus, that I read when I was 11. It held up better than expected. Of course, reading about the break from the Acre jail after having just visited it made the book that much more compelling. Also, Steve Berry's charming wife Liz convinced me that The Alexandria Link was perfect reading for a Holy Land trip. She was right, but having checked out the Israel Museum and its Dead Sea Scrolls, count me skeptical about its premise that the First Temple was located on the Arabian Coast. But a terrific story nonetheless.

One thing the visit brought home to me was the terrible job Israel does on PR. I toured the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem where the Israeli Government allows Muslim authorities to protect the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of Omar. The ruins of the Jewish first and second temples are below the Moslem sites and Israel does no excavation there lest these Muslim holy sites be disturbed. By way of contrast, when Jordan controlled the Old City, all synagogues in the Jewish Quarter were destroyed, Jewish cemeteries were desecrated, all Jews were expelled, and Jews were not allowed to visit its holy sites even though Jordan had agreed in the 1949 armistice agreement to allow them to do so. And what credit does Israel for its policy of accommodation to other religions? Zero. Of course, Israel's treatment of West Bank Arabs is far from perfect, but there are advocacy groups and aggressive media coverage that hold the government accountable. (Can you think of an equivalent in neighboring countries to Israel's Rabbis for Human Rights, a modern analogue to the prophets of the Bible?) Two days after we left Jerusalem, right where we'd been, an Arab terrorist rammed a piece of equipment into a bus, killed three people, hurt 40 more, and was shot dead. The BBC headline? Nothing about the attack. Instead: "Israel Bulldozer Driver Shot Dead." Yes, Israel has a PR problem.

Enough ranting. On the airplane Jim Rollins' Sandstorm helped while away the hours. Then yesterday afternoon the talented, fun-loving, and caprine obsessive Michelle Gagnon emailed me that Jim would be at M is for Mystery along with Denise Hamilton in just a few hours. Jim discussed his latest Sigma Force thriller, The Last Oracle, and his novelization of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Denise's latest is a standalone set in Chandleresque post-war LA. Inspiration for her book was the disappearance of starlet Jean Spangler, a case that also provided inspiration for Megan Abbott's terrific The Song Is You. Can't wait to read Denise's take. After the talking and signing were done, I repaired to an Indian restaurant with Jim, Denise, Michelle (who signed two copies of her just-out Boneyard for me), old friend and Macavity nominee Tim Maleeny, the wonderful and charming Cara Black, and more. All of us save Cara will be at ThrillerFest in NYC next week.

One more thing: I had a great time interviewing the insightful David Hewson about The Garden of Evil, the "best yet" in his critically acclaimed Nic Costa series. You can read the interview here.

Tomorrow is the birthday of our country, which is turning 232, and of my #2, who is turning 16. Much celebrating to do, much to be thankful for! Enjoy the weekend.

 

 

A version of this post also appeared on Inkspot.

Up on the Golan Heights

#4 and I have been in Israel four days.  Our luggage has been here one.

 

We’ve been biking along the Mediterranean, checked out a Crusader castle in Acre, done rafting in the Jordan (which was anything but “deep and wide”), and fed #4 what he swears is the best falafel he ever ate.

Today we went up to the Golan Heights and hung out with Israeli soldiers right on the border with Lebanon.  We brought them chocolates and wished them a good Sabbath.  (I wonder if visitors used to stop by American outposts along the East German border during the Cold War.)  Scary stuff.  We slipped into a hardened bunker and inspected an unexploded Katyusha rocket the friendly Hezbollah folks across the border sent over.  We could see a Hezbollah outpost a couple hundred yards away and a white UN truck on the border road even closer.  Then after leaving the outpost, we stopped by an orchard right on the border where an Israeli kibbutznik invited us to taste sun-kissed nectarines.  One of the women on the trip passed out buttons for World Peace Day, which is tomorrow.  Here’s hoping for more fruit-growing and less need for armed defense.

 

(All great stuff for a novel.  Just got to figure out how to use it.)

 

 

 

 

 

The Israel-Lebanon border as of this afternoon.

Packing/Picking Books

#4 and I are off to Israel on Monday for two weeks.  He's busy worrying about what shorts and shoes to pack.  I'm worrying about what books to bring.  I'll be able to read for a maximum of 20 hours from takeoff in San Francisco to landing at Ben Gurion Airport and of course it'll be another 20 hours back.  Plus I'll have an hour or so of reading time before sleep for 13 nights.

My requirements are that the books be mass market paperbacks that I can pass along or leave behind.  The space taken up by the discarded books should be filled with souvenirs and presents on my return.  So to get to the bottom line: what books to bring?  (I'm not the only person with this problem.  See here.)

Here's what I have:

The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry  -- It's set in the Middle East and guaranteed by the author's wife.

Sandstorm by James Rollins -- Am embarrassed to admit never read any Rollins and I want to remedy that before ThrillerFest next month.

Exodus by Leon Uris -- The quintessential American novel about the founding of the State of Israel was a favorite of mine in 7th grade.  I wonder if it holds up.

Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas -- This one has been on my must-read list for too long.

High Crimes by Joe Finder -- Can't go wrong reading Joe at 38,000 feet.

Celebrating Life by Jonathan Sacks -- A book about finding happiness in unexpected places by Britain's Chief Rabbi.  A spiritual fillip can't hurt on a trip to the Holy Land.

Burr by Gore Vidal -- Deemed a great political novel by many.  I want to do my own evaluation.

The Perfect Crime by Peter Abrahams -- A book of Peter's is as sure a thing as exists in crime fiction.

First Drop by Zoe Sharp -- Gotta find out what everyone's talking about.

Comments anyone beyond the fact that I am being overly ambitious?

I'm bringing my PC with me, so I may be blogging from an internet cafe in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem in the next fortnight.  We'll see.

Crying Over What Happened 40 Years Ago

I was driving to a school meeting tonight listening to Fresh Air on NPR.  Speakers on the show were reminiscing about Bobby Kennedy who was killed on June 5, 1968.  His son Max told the story of how in April of that year, his father went into the poorest area of Indianapolis and broke the news of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  The police had refused to follow him.  He stood up and spoke with no notes.  In over a hundred cities across the country, riots broke out that night.  Not in Indianapolis.  Take a look and see why they didn't and what we lost those four decades ago.

An Alternative to Blowing Up Your Neighborhood Library Branch

When I checked the online catalog of the Palo Alto Library soon after publication of Dot Dead, I saw that 80 or so people had reserved it. Here's what I said to myself about that: "Go without a few lattes, you pennypinchers, and buy the damn thing – it’s only $13.95."

I lost the argument with my wife, so I did abandon any notion of blowing up the local branch. Still, as supportive as I am of reading, it does strike me as unfair to authors that libraries buy one copy of their book and thereby enable dozens to read it.

Legislators in 40 other countries have figured out the answer – something called Public Lending Rights. In the UK each time a book is checked out of the library, the author receives a little more than a dime (no, it doesn’t apply to Americans). You’d think that might bankrupt Her Majesty’s Treasury? No, the PLR are not designed to make sure that J.K. Rowling gets even richer. Authors are limited to payments of 6,600 pounds per year. Not a lot, but that $13,000 (at current exchange rates) could really make a difference to authors just starting out. I'm not suggesting a subsidy here.  It's payment for services provided. Writers should be paid when their books are read.  That's fairness, not a subsidy.

Now the U.S. runs a huge deficit and adding billions to it would make little sense. No fear. Guess how much our cousins across the Atlantic spend on their program? In 2006 the entire shebang cost 7.6M pounds. What would we spend here? $50M? $75M?

So let’s get this straight. Libraries buy. The national government pays writers a small sum each time a book is checked out. Writers make a little extra money from people reading their books. (Writers making money? Call the police!) A literary terrorist is discouraged from throwing a Molotov cocktail through an open window of their local lending library. A great idea? I think so. And not that expensive either, especially considering the benefits.

Why not write your senators and representatives about it? I’m going to. And crazy as it seems, I think I’ll bring it up with the boards of the author organizations I belong to: MWA, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers.

 

A version of this posting also ran on the Inkspot blog.

Not Alone: A Fellow Novelist & Tea Addict

In four or five hours of writing, I might drink a dozen cups of tea.  Today's Times introduced me to a kindred spirit -- Therese Rebeck, the author of Three Girls and Their Brothers.  She says, "I just reread The Count of Monte Cristo, and there's this scene where he imbibes hashish....  And to me a really good cup of tea has a certain hashlike quality, where my mind is open to the universe." 

I've tried all the brands of tea she's tried from PG Tips to Harrods.  I guess it's time to try her book and see just what all that tea does for her writing.

 

 

Photo by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Self-Absorbed Writers of the Silver Screen

I watched Starting Out in the Evening on DVD downstairs last night while my wife, #3, and #4 watched No Reservations upstairs.  Any serious flick about a novelist gets bonus points from me.  Funnily enough, the film starred Frank Langella as a mostly-forgotten, self-absorbed writer living in an apartment on the Upper West Side.  (Of course, the place looks great.  Real estate porn.)  Into his life waltzes a grad student who wants to resuscitate his reputation as a way to make hers.  Why funnily enough?  Because the first movie I remember Mr. Langella in was Diary of a Mad Housewife where he again played a self-absorbed writer.  Somewhere in the 37 years between the two films he moved from dashing to decrepit.  Anyway the verdict on the movie?  Intelligent and thought-provoking.  See it for what it has to say about aging and the writer's compulsion.  I'm going to track down the novel by Brian Morton that the movie's based on.

As a sidelight, I laughed when Langella's character approached an editor he had known.  The editor tells him that no one prints literary fiction anymore.  In real life, my manuscript was turned down by an editor at a very large publisher who told my agent I'd written "a gripping book that kept me turning pages from the very start," but that what I'd written was "too firmly rooted in the genre world" for her house.  Can't win nowadays.

 

Kick-off of the Thelma and Louise Tour

A few weeks ago the 21st century's version of Thelma and Louise hijacked my blog.  Last night I hightailed it over to to see Jess Lourey and Dana Fredsti in the flesh.  Introduced by store owner, mystery maven, and all-around great guy Ed Kaufman, they proved to be witty and charming.  (According to their anecdotes, not all my fellow male crime fiction authors are gentlemen.  Shocking news.)  After the session, we repaired across the street where Jess even sprung for a beer.  (Thanks, Jess!)  Even in these days of $4 gas, they are hitting the road tomorrow with Seattle as their final destination. Sounds like fun.