Dot Dead Diary

On the Road with Libby

Drove down to LA last Friday morning.  Swung by the house of Libby Fischer Hellmann's brother and picked her up.  She was just in from Arizona.  Headed to South Pasadena to say hi at Book 'Em Mysteries Bookstore where we signed stock.  Then on to the Redondo Beach Library where the audience was small, but the conversation, moderated by the witty A.H. Ream, was terrific.  The talented Eric Stone, author of Shanghaied, was there to wave the flag, too.  Afterwards we repaired to a nearby drinking establishment to lie, gossip, and brag.  Below from l-r, me, Bobby McCue of the Mystery Bookstore, A.H., Eric, and Libby.

After a drink, Libby and I drove back to Santa Monica for dinner with my godson Couper, my goddaughter-in-law Julia, and old Siebel pal Andy at the Border Grill. 

Saturday morning I walked down to the beach in Santa Monica and watched the mobs of runners sprint, lope, jog, and stagger by.

Then I picked Libby up at her brother's, and we headed out to Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks where we were greeted by an enthusaistic crowd of crime fiction fans.  We shmoozed a little with Barry the proprietor, spoke, and then signed.  What a terrific store!  

 

Libby and I then raced to the wonderful Mystery Bookstore in LA where we sat around a table and yakked about our books and everything else with more friends, family, and fans.  The store's Linda Brown tweeted during our conversation (you can see her tweets here).  Did I really say writing was a drug?  Anyway we got questions from friends including fellow MI writer Alan Orloff.  
  

We got back to my place in Palo Alto around 10.  My 10-year old graciously gave up his bedroom for Libby.  When my wife and I got up Sunday morning, we found a vandalized car in front.  As crime fiction writers, Libby and I inspected the evidence.  Verdict?  Stolen by joyriding teenagers.  Police agreed.

We left the crime scene to head up to the Oakland Library.  A good time there with fans and friends.  A professor-friend brought her 2-month old along and a colleague of my wife's who came with her mother-in-law is 4 months from having a 2-month old herself. 

Afterwards, I couldn't head across the Bay Bridge to drop Libby off at Cara Black's where she'll be staying the rest of the week.  The confounded structure was closed!  Took a 30-mile detour and got her there.  Always great to see Cara.  Great writer, great friend.

Put a thousand miles on the odometer in three days.  A real road trip.  Got a chance to listen to Michael Connelly's Nine Dragons which made the time whiz by.

Libby and I have a busy week.  (See below.)  Hope you'll come see us if you're in the neighborhood.  We've been having a blast; the people showing up at the events might even have enjoyed themselves too.  

Monday, November 2 | 7 PM
Discussion hosted by Janet Rudolph of Mystery Readers International
Berkeley, CA

Tuesday, November 3 | 7 PM
Book Passage
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA 94925
415-927-0960

Wednesday, November 4 | 7:30 PM
Books Inc
301 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
650-428-1234

Thursday, November 5 | 7 PM
M is for Mystery*
86 East Third Avenue
San Mateo, CA 94401
650-401-8077

Book Tour: 40 Hours of Insanity Begin

I was at Orinda Books for a presentation today.  (See above.)  Great store.  Very civilized crowd of 20 or so (including my sister, my sister, her friend Scott, and the Sorenson sisters from my high school days) listened to me drone on.  The average person bought 1.25 books.

Tomorrow at 6AM, 40 hours of insanity begin.  I drive the 350 miles down to LA and pick up book tour partner Libby Fischer Hellmann in Santa Monica.  From there we head to Book 'Em in South Pasadena for a drop by and then on to the Redondo Beach Library where at 5PM we will be at the mercy of the charming yet diabolical A.H. Ream who will interview us.  Back to Santa Monica for an 8.30PM dinner with godson, wife, and colleague.  The next morning we have another drop by, then Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks at 11AM, and back to the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood by 1.30PM.  Maybe a quick coffee with friends and then I-5 for the 350 miles back to Palo Alto.  Sunday at 3 we're back on stage at the Oakland Library.

I love tests like this.  I'm a stubborn cuss and will not plead fatigue or old age!

Yin and Yang: How Can Two Reviews Be So Different?

Smasher has at least three intertwining plot elements.  It made the book a challenge to write and satisfying to finish.  Two reviews this weekend commented on that aspect of the book. 

Joe Hartlaub wrote in Bookreporter.com that: "Keith Raffel is a master storyteller, bringing strong, parallel plot lines and sharp characterization in equal measure to the printed page...."  That almost made me blush.

 
But in the yin and yang of life, Hallie Ephron offered a diametrically opposed opinion in The Boston Globe:  "Too bad, because with so much going on, this novel desperately needs a main character with an emotional core that can hold it all together."  Ah well, it was great to be reviewed in The Globe which was my hometown paper for the seven years I lived in Cambridge.

BTW, I'm interviewed this morning in The Kill Zone by Clare Langley-Hawthorne, author of the Ursula Marlow mysteries.  Drop by and leave a comment.  I'd love to hear from you.

A Week in the Life

Returned from the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention Sunday night to find myself on the cusp of launch week for Smasher.  So that evening I had to come up with a posting for the marvelous Criminal Minds blog where I'm a guest this week.

 

Monday morning I spoke to Therese Poletti of MarketWatch who was working on a story about a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-thriller-author. (Story here.)

Then came the big event -- the launch of Smasher at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park on Tuesday. I had no clue how many people would show, but in a fit of bravado two months ago I'd taken the over on an over/under wager of 100. Of course, by mid-afternoon, I was wringing my hands with concern about attendance. I did manage to win the bet when 105 friends and readers showed up to listen to me drone on about where the ideas for Smasher came from and why I love being a novelist. (Below is the view from the lectern.)

I worked with Abigail Johnson, one of Silicon Valley's top PR people, to put out a press release (click here) on how being an entrepreneur prepared me for life as a writer.

Yesterday I drove the 100 miles to Davis for a "sign and greet." The manager said she would order 20 books. I showed a false sense of confidence when I told her I could sell more. We bet $1 on my selling 30. Thanks to my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and his boss, I won that bet, too. Whew. The $1 didn't exactly offset the $40 parking ticket I got, though.  (The drive up there went quickly; both ways I listened to the great Michael Connelly's newest, Nine Dragons.)

Tonight I'm going to be at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland. Two dozen more events in the next month. What an endurance test! I'm excited!

A version of this post appeared on the Inkspot blog.

Land of Linkin'

Therese Poletti writes a fun column in this morning's MarketWatch about the way Smasher uses Silicon Valley as a setting.  Click here.

This week over at Criminal Minds I'm answering questions posed by the diabolical septet of CJ Lyons, Rebecca Cantrell, Sophie Littlefield, Kelli Stanley, Shane Gericke, Tim Maleeny, and Gabrella Herkert.  Click here.

And finally, the book launch for Smasher is tonight at Kepler's in Menlo Park at 7.30 (details here), just one day after Richard Castle had his launch of Heat Wave on the ABC TV show.  Come if you can. 

 

Back from Bouchercon, Ready to Boogie

Back from Bouchercon, the world's largest crime fiction conference, in Indianapolis.  Met fans, pushed books, hung with friends.  The conference ended with a real free-for-all.  Author J.A. Konrath came up with the idea of authors giving away their back-list titles in order to introduce themselves to new fans.  Well, the idea was a huge hit.  The line to get the books snaked back and forth through the lobby of the Indianapolis Hyatt.  People were wedged tightly as they tried to run from author to author.  My publisher, Midnight Ink sent along 50 copies of Dot Dead which were snapped up in no time.  But, I promise, no swelled head because I signed next to the sensational Hank Phillippi Ryan.  I think her fans were going to cry when she gave away her last book.  OTOH, she's so gracious and charming that when they left with a special Hank lip balm and a few words from the author, they were all smiling.

The fabulous Marcus Sakey, the classy and uber-talented Hank Phillippi Ryan, me, and the novelist cum marketing genius J.A. Konrath (aka Jack Kilborn) just after we ran out of books at Bouchercon.

Now one day R&R before the official launch of Smasher at Kepler's Tuesday night at 7.30.

BTW, am blogging this week at Criminal Minds.  Come by, say hi, leave a comment.  Also, here's a link to what Mystery Scene Mag had to say about Smasher.  I'm pleased especially since the review is by Oline Cogdill, one of the most respected in her field.

The Tour So Far in Pictures -- From Columbus to Bouchercon

 
Here I am Wednesday night talking about Smasher to the book club at Foul Play Mystery Books.

 
 And here I am expounding again about Smasher in my brother and sister-in-law's filled living room.

On the bus (!) from Columbus,Ohio to the Bouchercon World Mystery Conference in Indianapolis.

At Indianapolis's (dark) Weber Grill for dinner with fellow Midnight Ink authors.  (Rear: me, Beth Groundwater, Deb Sharp.  Front: Jess Lourey, Cricket McRae, Lisa Bork.)

 
My lunchtime companions at Subway!   It was cheap and we kept putting tables together as more writers joined us.

 
Spent much of the afternoon in the bar drinking iced tea with a rotating cast of old and new friends. Future tour partner Libby Fischer Hellmann snapped this photo of me with forensic scientist and top-flight novelist Lisa Black.  I spilled that glass of iced tea on the table all over my pants only seconds after the picture was taken.  No one else was hit.

Writing As Alternate Reality

Regular readers of this blog know I have something like career ADD. I’ve been a carpenter, a history teacher, a U.S. Senate counsel, a candidate for political office, a horseplayer, and an Internet entrepreneur. Now that I have a second novel out, can I add writer to the list?

It’s a cliché that the hardest thing about being a writer is not getting published, it’s staying published. Last Friday, the terrific mystery writer Lora Roberts wrote in The Palo Alto Weekly, “If the proof of the author is in the second novel, Raffel delivers with his new mystery, Smasher, set in the convoluted corridors of Silicon Valley power.” Looks like I passed the test. So I think I will add writer to the list of my careers. Do I like being a writer? Maybe too much. Let me explain.

Oftentimes, people ask if the main character in my two books is me – whether Ian Michaels, the protagonist of both Dot Dead and the just-released Smasher, is a lightly fictionalized version of Keith Raffel. Once I went to someone’s house and the host said she was sorry for not having Fortnum and Mason’s Queen Anne's Tea. I’m a green tea drinker and so that black tea is not my favorite. I wondered for a moment why she was apologizing. Then, bingo, I got it. “No, no, that’s Ian’s favorite tea, not mine,” I told her. “Ian is not me.”

In fact, things run the other way around. It’s not that Ian is me. It’s that in writing I become Ian. I enter an alternative universe and adopt someone else’s identity. I see what’s happening through another person’s eyes. (Something like that must happen to kids who pick an avatar and control it in a video game.) Well, anyway what do you call someone like me who spends his days living in an alternative universe and hearing voices talking to him? E.L. Doctorow offers a hint. He says, “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” Yeah. So now that I’m a full-fledged writer, do I like it? Yeah, maybe too much. Why not live in the skin of someone who’s smarter, better-looking, richer, and more attractive to women than I am?

Look at the alternative to living in a fictional world. Reality? Bah. Who wants to live in a world where dangerous countries are closing in on getting nuclear weapons, where world economy teeters on the brink of depression, and where Congress refuses to do right by the American people because of entrenched interests?

In Smasher, as CEO Ian Michaels battles a take-no-prisoners billionaire for control of his company, a black car runs down his wife Rowena, a deputy D.A. The police figure it a hit-and-run accident, so it is Ian who races to track down the assailant before he can strike again. As his wife lies near death, he rushes to an atom smasher at Stanford to fulfill what may be her last wish – that he prove an unsung female physicist was cheated out of a Nobel Prize. This world Ian lives gives him the chance to resolve knotty, dangerous problems. I hope you’ll like living there with him as much as I did.

Take a look at the book trailer below to get a taste of Ian’s world.

(A version of this posting ran on the blog for Kepler's Books, The Well-Read Donkey.)

Missing Links

 ٭I had a secret goal in mind with the publication of Smasher -- to be on the San Francisco Chronicle's Bay Area bestseller list.  Now Publishers Weekly writes that the Chron is going to use the list from the Northern California Independent Bookseller Association rather than compiling its own.  Nothing wrong with NCIBA list, but the more bestseller lists, the more targets for us writers.  Despite what PW wrote, this week's Chron list looks just the same.  Does someone out there know what's going on?  Anyway, I guess I'll just have to get going and hustle and sell in any case.

٭ Thriller writer Mark Terry wrote up an interview of me in The Big Thrill, the online magazine of International Thriller Writers. 

 ٭I expound on "the story behind the story of Smasher" over at The Rap Sheet.

 ٭And finally, the superb Palo Alto mystery writer, Lora Roberts, gives her take on Smasher in a comprehensive review in The Palo Alto Weekly.  She writes, "If the proof of the author is in the second novel, Raffel delivers with his new mystery, Smasher, set in the convoluted corridors of Silicon Valley."  Thanks, Lora!  [Click here to see the PDF of the issue; the review starts on p. 32]

Ann Patchett on Book Touring

I have 27 appearances to make between October 14 and November 21.  The prospect is both exhilarating (meeting the readers!) and daunting (27!).  Just read an article by Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto, on the highs (a mom drove her teenager 4 hours on a school night so she could hear her favorite writer speak) and lows (changing clothes in a McDonald's bathroom).  Click here to read the article.  And click here to see the events on my tour schedule where I'm talking.