MYSTERIOUS MONDAY: Downton Abbey, Barnes & Noble, and Carola Dunn

by Carola Dunn

A few weeks ago, my editor told me Barnes and Noble had picked my 19th Daisy Dalrymple mystery, Anthem for Doomed Youth, to be part of a nationwide promotion for Downton Abbey. Yes, I was excited!

The third season of the popular series is set in England between the wars--WWI and WWII, that is. Besides books about the period, B&N were looking for novels set at that time. They planned to have 5 or so copies of each chosen book on display near the checkout counter, in every store in the US. St. Martin's was to do a special reprint of the paperback edition for them.

My editor said the four-week promotion was to begin on January 8th. So on the day, I trotted along to the local store. I must have circled the store 3 times before I decided I just wasn't going to find the display. All the booksellers were busy, so I came home disappointed and tried to call them. Impossible to speak to a Real Person, or to leave a message, or even to stay on hold. At last, later that evening I got through.

The person I spoke to had never heard of a Downton Abbey promotion. He looked it up on his computer, and couldn't find anything that mentioned it. :-( 

I emailed my editor. I also asked my Facebook friends to pop into the nearest B&N if they happened to be passing and see what they could see. My editor contacted Macmillan's "B&N person," who promised to get onto it.

The responses I had from FB friends were not encouraging:

"There is a Downton Abbey display here in Naples, FL, but no Anthem for Doomed Youth."

"Checked the store in Fort Gratiot, MI. No Downton display but Anthem is on display in the new Mystery section."

"This was unfortunately the case last night at the W. 82nd location in Manhattan as well. I had called ahead and put Anthem on hold, but before I retrieved it, I sought out the Downton display to check out what else they had out. I found it on the endcap of the aisle that contained Mystery. So when I didn't see Anthem on display, I found it only a few feet away. I feigned ignorance tho just so I could ask an employee to find it for me and then mention I thought it was part of the Downton promo. I doubt it did any good, but I did want to mention it to them. Still glad to have a brand new copy of Anthem, which I hadn't read yet, but it was disappointing."

"I found the Downton Abbey display at the Ithaca Barnes & Noble - it was about 7 books on an endcap (no Anthem!). I caught a fellow and asked where the Anthem books were. He pulled out a paper with the particulars about the display, and it didn't include yours. He checked the computer and they had 5 new Anthems, it said they were supposed to be in a "Cash Wrap" (?) "up front". We found them stacked on a desk; so I don't know where they are going to end up. But I did impress upon him that all your 'Facebook friends' would be looking for the Anthems." 

And have to laugh at this one, I guess: "Went to B&N in Woodland Hills yesterday and they were gone. Had been there just before Christmas. The sign said they closed 12/31/12."

I forwarded all these and more to my editor, at his request. Whether they helped or not I don't know, but I'm very grateful to all those who took the time to check. Three cheers for Facebook friends!

On Sunday, I returned to the local (Eugene) store. There was Anthem, right by the cash registers, with a selection of other books set in the time period! I asked if they'd like me to sign them, which they did, and even dug out some of my other titles for me to sign.

When I got home and turned on the computer, there was an email from my editor--he had found the same in his local B&N.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. Be patient and they'll get around to it? Or persistence pays--keep bugging till they act?

One way or another, I'm happy to announce that if you go into a Barnes and Noble store in the next few weeks, you may--or may not--find a Downton Abbey promotion that includes Anthem for Doomed Youth!

Read about the book here: 
http://caroladunn.weebly.com/1/category/anthem%20for%20doomed%20youth/1.html
  (scroll down a bit)

Or read an excerpt here:
http://historicalfictionexcerpts.blogspot.com/2013/01/anthem-for-doomed-youth-ii.html 

It's also available as an ebook. 
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Istoria Books's "Mysterious Monday" program features posts about mystery writing, reading, bookselling and more by writers from beyond the Istoria stable.  Stop back on Mondays for insightful posts on the mystery genre. 

This post, by Carola Dunn, first appeared at the Murderous Musings blog on January 16, 2013.

Mysterious Monday posts from the past:
Jenny Milchman writes about "Putting the MIST in mystery: obscuring facts"

Coming up: Authors Gary Alexander and Joyce Yarrow talk about favorite characters and favorite character types in mystery.

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No sex, no swearing, no drugs, no alcohol: Istoria Books YA line

by Libby Sternberg

During the Christmas holiday, I received a charming card from a family we know. On it, the twelve-year-old daughter had written her own message to me: "I love your books! When I'm not reading them, I'm thinking about them!"

She was referring to my first two published novels--the Edgar-nominated teen mystery Uncovering Sadie's Secrets, and its sequel, Finding the Forger. There's a third book in the series, Recovering Dad, that I will dispatch to her this week.

Not only did her comments warm my heart, they affirmed for me a commitment I, as an author, made to myself when I first wrote "young adult" fiction. That is, I would write the kind of YA books that I enjoyed reading as a preteen, books that didn't shock or startle or depress but instead invited the reader into a world worth visiting. In this world were people who set good examples, tried their best, loved their families, and didn't try too hard to be part of the cool crowd.

Notice, by the way, that I mention "YA books that I enjoyed reading as a preteen."  Many preteens read YA, while teens themselves have moved on to adult fiction. So, when I write YA, I assume my audience is more likely to be nine- to twelve-year-olds than it is older readers.

In my YA mysteries, the characters don't swear. They don't use drugs or alcohol. They don't have sex or talk about it. And I know--this doesn't reflect reality for all teens. But for a good number of kids, it does; or, at least, it's the life they aspire to. Their parents scold them if they swear. They're expected to abide by their family's rules. They're expected to try to be good, even if they sometimes fail. They're not trying so hard to be cool that they'll fall into trouble easily.

Many teen novels don't follow this pattern. Many YA novelists believe their books would betray the worlds they want to create and a sense of verisimilitude if the characters don't confront coarse situations and use coarse language. Some of these authors, I learned from participating in a YA writers email group years ago, take a perverse pride in being provocative, as if shocking parents of teen readers with dark tales is the goal, rather than telling a good story or even offering a good lesson.

The Wall Street Journal's children's book reviewer shared some thoughts on the dark state of YA fiction in a June 2011 article that generated controversy. Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote in that article:

How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.

Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail. Profanity that would get a song or movie branded with a parental warning is, in young-adult novels, so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

Don't get me wrong--I don't begrudge YA authors success if they happen to tell grittier tales than mine. And I'm not suggesting that YA fiction should be censored or have the real world whitewashed within its pages. (Neither was Gurdon in her article.)  But I do think there's a place--an important place--for YA fiction that does not focus on what's wrong in a teen's world, for stories that make readers feel good about themselves and perhaps even affirm the good choices they are making.

These are the kinds of YAs Istoria Books is looking for.

That kind of "clean" YA fiction doesn't have to be boring. In fact, this spring Istoria Books is proud to release a sweet and fun YA, The Body Electric by Allie Duzett, that doesn't include a single curse or reference to sex or substance abuse. It's a rollicking journey to the "end of the world," an exploration of young love and ancient curses. It's the exact opposite of boring. But it doesn't have a single element in it that would make a parent cringe.

Editing Allie Duzett's debut novel reinforced my belief in this kind of YA fiction. It's the epitome of our mission: we publish "good stories, well told."  Good stories--where you want to keep turning the pages to see what happens. Well told--where you want to keep hearing that author tell the story to you (instead of jumping ahead to the finish). And while our adult fiction does handle adult themes, sometimes explicitly and realistically, our young adult fiction will be a place of refuge for the preteen and teen reader who wants stories where they feel comfortable with the characters and don't mind inviting them into their own lives.

In The Body Electric, an eighteen-year-old Colorado girl meets and falls for an odd new fellow in town. He seems to possess heroic strength, is a gentleman of the old school, dresses as if he stepped off the pages of a menswear ad spread, is cheerful, honest and...has a family of grudge-bearing maniacs. As Lena learns more about Zach, she finds more to admire...and also fear. She learns just as much about herself in the process, about what values she holds dear, about what is most important in life.

I hope young readers will enjoy The Body Electric as much as all of us at Istoria have. Watch these blog pages for an interview with Allie Duzett in the weeks before its spring release!
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Libby Sternberg is an award-winning novelist. She is editor-in-chief of Istoria Books. If you have a young adult novel you'd like to submit to her, send a query to IstoriaBks@gmail.com

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MYSTERIOUS MONDAY: Putting the MIST in Mystery: Obscuring the Facts

by Jenny Milchman

Mysteries are the most challenging genre of all.

 

I can already hear the indignant responses from romance writers (how do you keep boy-meets-girl fresh), the historical writers (all that research!), and the horror ones as well (hey, it’s grisly in there). Not to mention the literary authors. Writing a story that doesn’t rely on plot to pull the reader along is no easy task.

So, all right, perhaps each kind of book has its own unique challenges.

I’d like to go over a few that I’ve found in writing mysteries.

• Knowing when to resist formula and when to make use of it. Should a body appear in the first chapter? A dead one, I mean—presumably most novels have people in them. And should the rest of the novel go on to unravel how the dead body got there? If you don’t keep to this rubric, but your novel is fast-paced and dangerous, is it still a mystery, or some other beast? Suspense, maybe, or thriller? Defining what you’ve written is hard and getting harder all the time, given the new sub-genres out there. Yet agents and editors will want to know your definition.
• Knowing what to reveal to your reader and when. As author, you know everything, at least by the time your book is in publishable form. But if you lay out your cards too soon, you’ll have a boring book that isn’t very mysterious. Too late and your solution will be either anticlimactic or a deus ex machina—a solution delivered from above without the appropriate groundwork being laid. Navigating between these two extremes takes an ability to climb into your reader’s mind—and out of your own.
• Related to the above is the challenge of obscuring the facts throughout your mystery. They have to be there, or else you haven’t played fair with your reader. But you don’t want readers to figure out clues or see plot twists coming like a Mack truck on a narrow road. Instead what you want to do is create a highway…populated by many vehicles…driving on a misty night. Those other lanes are your subplots and dead ends. The different vehicles are your red herrings, your distractions, and characters that fill out a story and make it feel fully realized. While the mist is there for atmosphere and to obscure the one truck barreling down the road…and into your victim’s life.

How do you rise to the above challenges? I imagine that every writer has his or her own tried-and-true methods. Here are three I’ve tried, which may turn out to be true for you:

1. Don’t worry about any of the above while writing your first draft. Let the danger and excitement of the situation your character has gotten himself into carry you along. Because if you’re carried along, it’s a good bet your reader will be, too. Fine-tuning details that are too obvious or too obscure, layering in red herrings, and making sure the solution is fully satisfying are for drafts two, three, and…thirteen.
2. No? Does the thought of writing thirteen drafts scare you like your heroine is scared by the killer? Then consider the five-point structure, brought to you courtesy of film-writing guru Robert McKee, with a few tweaks by me for mystery writers: Know the beginning, middle, and end of your story. By this I mean a key scene or two you can envision. If necessary, write up background material for these, or rough versions of the scenes before you begin. Sketch out their high points, conflict, and who stands to lose or learn what. Then do the same thing for two turning points in your story—one at the 1/3 mark, between the beginning and the middle, and the second at the 2/3 mark between the middle and the end. You now have a road laid out, and should be able to see from point one to five without getting too lost.
3. See your novel as a movie and write down exactly what you’re watching at any point where you feel stuck, or even at the beginning of the process. By visualizing the scenes, you make them that much realer in your mind. Later when you’re writing, you can come back to scenes you’ve already experienced.

The biggest mystery of all to be unraveled may be how a mystery is created. I hope that in this post I’ve given you a few clues.

Jenny Milchman is a suspense novelist from New Jersey whose short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Adirondack Mysteries II, and an e-published volume called Lunch Reads. Her first novel, Cover of Snow, was released by Ballantine this January.  

Istoria Books was proud to publish Jenny's short story "The Very Old Man" in Lunch Reads Volume 1. All four volumes of Lunch Reads shorts are now available in one set digitally at Amazon's Kindle store!

Check out Istoria's mysteries here!

Humor: The Best Nonexistent Books of 2012

by Hannah E. Sternberg

Nonfiction
Soft as a Petal: A History of the World, Told through Handkerchiefs
Jason Smithson

Hannah Sterberg

This elegant little history is an excellent primer for anyone fascinated with the role of textiles in law, love, and literature. Many authors of popular history have hunted for the perfect "frame story" that would inspire general readers to make sense of the long and tangled threads of world civilization. Smithson's Soft as a Petal puts it in your back pocket. From the hankie's humble beginnings as an all-purpose rag and surrender flag for meek craftsmen on ancient trade routes, to its heyday in Victorian parlors, its near-extinction after the disposable tissue revolution, and its triumphant renaissance alongside the return of the handlebar mustache in the 21st century, the common pocket handkerchief has seen virtually every major turning point of history. Smithson weaves the hankie's story in a humorous, readable style that will make this book one to reach for for years to come.

Runners-up
Eating Will Kill You: The definitive diet book of 2012. Don't miss 2013's The "Eating Will Kill You" Cookbook: 415 Recipes That Will Leave You Hungry for Less.

Guiscard's Lists: Famous People Who Aren't Dead Yet: Perhaps the most useful Guiscard list book this year, it will save you from embarrassing mishaps. Sadly, this one only made our runners-up because of our doubts about its enduring relevance.

Continue reading this humorous post at Hannah's own site here.

Holiday Memories: The Gift

by Ellen Holzman

It’s not unusual for Meredith to get up before me, get the dog out, start the coffee and turn on the heat in our home office. What I didn’t know was that she was also checking emails on my computer to make sure I didn’t see any of the order confirmations or shipment notifications that were coming through for a gift. And I was bringing home so many presents for nieces and nephews from the post office, that I didn’t notice an extra one. I just handed them all over to her for repackaging and reshipping. I had no reason to be suspicious. 

 

This year, we had agreed not to buy each other gifts. Since we’re both too close for comfort to age 60, and we generally buy what we want for ourselves anyway, it seemed practical to me. I should have known when she agreed so readily and calmly that something was up. And, looking back on it, there were the questions about where the Menorah was, did we have enough candles for all eight nights of the Festival of Lights, where exactly in the house they should be lit. 

But I was completely surprised when, on the first night of Chanukah this year, Dec. 8, she said, “I can’t wait anymore!” And she handed me a gift-wrapped box. It had odd angles and some soft spots. “Go ahead, feel it,” she said, and the light in her eyes was just as bright as any that would be on the Menorah. “What do you think it is?” 

I rubbed and squeezed and shook it up and down. A nightgown? No. A pair of hiking boots? No. A Scrabble game? No. 

“Open it!” If she had had a tail, it would have been wagging ferociously. So I opened it. 

And we spent hours that night enjoying it. She guided me through starting it up, and trying it out. I will long remember the gift she gave me this year. Not because of what it is — an iPad — but because of how much she enjoyed giving it to me. That’s the gift that will keep on giving.

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Ellen Holzman is the talented author of the short story "Call of the Riled," a hilarious and complex mystery told entirely in letters to the editor of a small-town newspaper. It appears in volume three of Istoria's Lunch Reads series--short stories you can devour on a lunch hour.

Holiday Memory: Lost in the Forest

by Mary Fisherov

When I was fourteen or fifteen years old, and it was still the Soviet Union, and the winters in Russia were very cold, I went to stay with my grandmother in a village for the school winter break. The village was surrounded by dense forests stretching far and wide, its spruces and pine trees covered by a thick layer of snow. If, with your ski pole, you hit a branch of a spruce (branches so thick we called them "paws"), you would be covered by a waterfall of snow descending from it – a pastime that gave a lot of pleasure to us children.

One morning, on January 6^th, I could not find any companions willing to go cross-country skiing with me, so I went alone. I was confident that I knew the nearby part of the forest quite well and that I could never lose sight of the tracks. A small blizzard started blowing, and at first I did not pay much attention to it. Then I noticed that the tracks were now covered with a layer of snow. I still thought I knew my way around, but then it started dawning on me that one clearing in the woods looked exactly like another clearing in the woods. Suddenly I had no idea in what direction my house was anymore. I realized that I was lost.

Panic seized me. I was running in one direction, then in another. It was getting darker, and the pine trees in the wind made a noise that resembled the howling of wolves. I started crying and thought that maybe I should try to spend the night in the forest and then start searching for my way again in the morning once the sun came up. But the fear kept me going.

Several hours later I finally stumbled on a highway. The highway at that time of night was empty, but after a while, to my great luck, a truck was passing. To my even greater luck, the driver stopped at my frantic waving and agreed to take me to the village I came from, although he was very much puzzled how I'd ended up so far away from it. When we arrived at the village, we were greeted by everybody and the local police who were, in turns, congratulating me on my miraculous return or seriously scolding me for taking off alone into the forest.

A week or two later, when I was back in Moscow, I received a letter. It was written by somebody in the village, yet it was unsigned and I never learned the name of the sender. The letter told me that, unbeknownst to me, I had gotten lost on the Eve of the Orthodox Christmas (January 7^th). And that my calamitous disappearance and my miraculous return turned out  to be a reminder of Mary and Joseph’s strenuous and exhausting journey to Bethlehem and the miracle that happened in a manger. 

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Istoria Books is proud to publish in print and digitally Mary Fisherov's historical romance, Love's Destiny Foretold, the sweeping tale of a Russian countess on the run in fin de siecle New York. It is her first work of fiction in English. Enter a Goodreads contest to win a free print copy!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Love's Destiny Foretold

by Mary Fisherov

Giveaway ends December 31, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Where faith isn't preachy; it's just not hidden

by Libby Sternberg

I have to admit that I cringe a bit when I see/hear the word "Inspirational," the name given to a specific genre of fiction. These books include faith elements but leave out any cursing or sex or anything else that might offend a faith-filled reader.

And for this, they're put in a special category, often shelved away from regular fiction, sometimes with religious nonfiction books.

What a shame if readers miss out on finding these novels because of this categorization! And what a shame if readers skip over this category if they think inspirationals are preachy, filled with evangelizing and proselytizing. They're not. They're usually just good stories whose characters don't keep their spiritual sides under wraps. They might talk about their belief in God. They might even quote scriptures or pray. What they don't do is offer up a "Believe or you're going to hell" kind of message. They don't even suggest that their characters' way is the only way.

In fact, I think characters in these books are much closer to the reality of most Americans' lives. Gallup, the well-known polling organization, regularly measures how important religion is in our lives. Its 2010 survey found these numbers holding steady throughout the years, with 54 percent expressing the view that religion was very important in their lives, and 26 percent saying it was "fairly important." While the same poll shows that many Americans see religion losing influence in the country, it still clearly plays a large role in individual lives.

Despite the importance of religion in Americans' lives, faith issues are usually not front and center in most fiction. In fact, if you've ever written a book with faith issues in it, you might find it difficult at times to convince an editor it's not necessarily an "inspirational"--as that genre is understood today-- and you might also find your book reviewed as an "inspirational" when it's not. Both experiences have happened to me.

That said, I am the happy author of two bona fide inspirational novels, books that fall within the genre's parameters. Both are historicals and both deal with the same family. Kit Austen's Journey, the tale of a woman on the Oregon trail running away from secrets and toward a new life, was released through Istoria several years ago, hitting Amazon best seller lists for a time. Mending Ruth's Heart, just released, tells the tale of Kit's granddaughter, on the mend after a tragedy in which her fiance was lost, and finding herself in San Francisco right before the fateful earthquake hits the city in 1906.

In both books, the heroines go to church (or church services, in the case of Kit) and both wrestle with their own behavior and outlook on life in the context of what God expects of them. Kit has to learn to forgive herself for past decisions. Ruth has to learn to set aside a judgmental attitude if she wants others not to unfairly judge her.

In Mending Ruth's Heart, the faith elements are whispers on a breeze, not a dominant part of the story but not hidden. And I think that's what I enjoy about writing inspirationals. You don't need to hide the fact that ordinary people do think about God and their relationships with God. In that way, characters in inspirationals are much more like ordinarily Americans than characters in other books where scant--if any--notice of God or prayer or church is mentioned.

Here's hoping more readers discover the world of inspirationals. No matter what your personal faith level is, these are good stories, well-told about real people confronting moral and spiritual issues in their lives.