Crime Fiction Dossier

Poll: Authors and social networking sites

Win This Book reminder

Don't forget, CFD is currently running a contest to win 1 of 3 copies of Brad Meltzer's new thriller, The Book of Lies.

Find out the details.

Interview with literary agent Molly Friedrich

Poets & Writers magazine has an excellent, in-depth interview with literary agent Molly Friedrich. Friedrich has been in publishing for three decades and is one of the top reps in the business.

This piece is long, but it's full of important information. (As a colleague, a bestselling author, put it: "This should be required reading at all writers conferences.")

Here's just a sample:

Q. How has technology changed the business from your perspective?

A. I'll tell you, what is hard about being an agent now is the Internet. The Internet is both the joy and the bane of everybody's existence. The bane part of it for me, for an agent, is that it used to be that authors were in isolation. Which was partly bad, obviously, but it was also a good thing because they really got to focus on their work and confront what was on the page. They weren't distracted and hyped up by too much information. Today, if you are a writer of a certain genre, you feel that you've got to get blurbs, you've got to cultivate all these people, you've got to go to this or that event, and on and on. So you have writers who aren't really being given enough time to write the best book they can write. And meanwhile they have become a kind of awful consumer. There are a lot of conversations about who has what. Like, "Well, Joe Blow has shelf talkers. Why don't I have shelf talkers?" No! I don't want to hear about Joe Blow's shelf talkers. You don't have shelf talkers because your career is set within an entirely different context than the person you just mentioned. They all compare notes. They compare advances. Part of it is that they have been told it's no longer enough to just write a good book. They are told that they have to get out there, press the flesh, have blogs, have Web pages, and get advance quotes from everybody and their dogs. Then they're told, "By the way, don't you think it would be a good idea to do two books this year?" This is insane! It is altogether too fast. Everything in this business is too fast.

I recommend reading the whole thing.

 

Book of the Week: John Scalzi's "Zoe's Tale"

John Scalzi returns to the world he first introduced in the excellent Old Man's War with Zoe's Tale, a science fiction adventure that tells the story of teenage Zoe and her experiences as a colonist on a distant planet. Zoe faces the usual teenage issues -- boys, making friends, clueless parents -- along with some unique ones, like being an idol to an entire species and living with the constant threat of annihilation. Scalzi does a nice job of capturing the sarcastic, witty voice of the wise-beyond-her-years Zoe. (The characters are the best part of the book.) Zoe's Tale is an imaginative, touching story that makes a nice introduction to Scalzi's work.

Win This Book: Brad Meltzer's "The Book of Lies"

Brad Meltzer has a new thriller coming out and CFD is giving it away for free. We've got three copies of The Book of Lies and one of them could be yours.

To enter, just send an email with "Contest" in the subject line and your name in the body of the email.

Good luck! If you don't win, please consider buying the book anyway. I haven't read it yet, but the book trailer is cool.

Contest ends on 9/2. Only one entry per person. Only U.S. residents are eligible to win. All decisions are final. Your name and email address will never be used for any purpose other than the contest. Crime Fiction Dossier is not responsible for anything.

A book trailer that works

As I've written before, I'm generally not a fan of book trailers. I tend to find them amateurish, and for most authors (who aren't bestsellers), they're very difficult to bring to the attention of potential readers.

However, every once in a while, one will actually impress with its creativity and unique vision. The best one I've seen in quite a while is for Brad Meltzer's upcoming thriller, The Book of Lies.

I've never gotten into Meltzer's work before, but this video is intriguing enough to at least make me want to pick it up.

A webcomic worth checking out

I'm not really a comics fan, but a reader sent this in and I found it interesting. Zuda Comics (a division of DC Comics) is holding a competition to select a new comic writer, and one of the entrants (Shawn Aldridge) has created a pulp detective/science fiction mash-up called Vic Boone.

Check it out -- the kid's got talent.

Book of the Week: Ellen Crosby's "The Bordeaux Betrayal"

The delightfully named Lucie Montgomery returns for her third oenophilic mystery in Ellen Crosby's The Bordeaux Betrayal. Montgomery is hosting a charity auction featuring a rare and valuable bottle of wine that Thomas Jefferson supposedly bought for George Washington. When a wine expert casts doubt on the bottle's authenticity, Montgomery uncorks a hotbed of mystery, murder and deceit in Virginia's wine country. As is the case with a lot of traditional mysteries, the plot of The Bordeaux Betrayal is somewhat improbable, but it's the author's deft use of the story's small-town setting and the charms of its heroine that make it a winner.

Latest Chicago Sun-Times round-up column

I know you've been waiting for it...and here it is: my latest round-up column in the Chicago Sun-Times.

It contains brief reviews of:

Robert Crais - Chasing Darkness
Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye
Lisa Black - Takeover
Brent Ghelfi - Volk's Shadow
Victor Gischler - Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

(If it seems like those books have been out for a while...Well, they have. Long story. Not interesting.)

Book of the Week: Lisa Gardner's "Say Goodbye"

Lisa Gardner returns with another entertaining thriller featuring Kimberly Quincy, a special agent with the FBI and one of the author’s most likable characters. Say Goodbye is a haunting story that might challenge readers with its dark subject matter, but pays off in its fine execution. Quincy investigates the case of a murdered prostitute, which leads her onto the trail of a serial killer who preys on children. Gardner has consistently delivered in recent years, but she’s gone one better with Say Goodbye.