January 10, 2006
I don't ask that question as a reader, but as a writer. What do you get from your reading?

Last night I managed to complete reading the latest Writers Digest. I've been subscribing for years and years, but am considering let it drop when the subscription runs out. I'm not like Lee Goldberg, who is apparently offended by all the POD/vanity publishers who advertise there. And I hope I haven't gotten so "high and mighty professional" that I don't see the value in the articles that are in there. I'm just not always sure that they're valuable. They've always tended to sugarcoat the difficulties in breaking in. There was an article in this issue about breaking into the true crime market that annoyed me because he acted like it was so easy. Yet there was an overview of the publishing industry that, although not particularly new info, was valuable.

I finished reading a copy of Smithsonian. I'm over a year behind, with a huge stack on the shelf waiting to plow through. I was reading an article about how MOMA curators were cleaning and fixing one of Picasso's great works and it was vivid enough to stay in my mind. I particularly liked the part how they use their own saliva as a cleaning reagent and grin and say, "well, we call it a mild enzymatic solution." It was a lovely article that showed detail about how curators go about their work, the strategies involved, how some of these artists, nobably Picasso and a few others, felt about this sort of work, and ultimately about the passion the curators felt about their art and the work they do it upon. There's a lot to be learned about great writing from a good Smithsonian article.

Finished reading "Alone" by Lisa Gardner and reviewed it yesterday. It's a terrific suspense novel, lots of twists and turns, but nasty. The characterizations are so deft, so insightful, but the characters, all vivid, are so complex and damaged. Even the evil villain, Mr. Bosu, is 3-dimensional. We can feel sympathy for him, even if he is a homicidal pedophile, or if not sympathy, we can understand the problems he has with emotions and his own impulses.

I'm reading "Rain Dogs" by Sean Doolittle. I'm reading him to review, but also as a nod to my own past a bit. I reviewed Sean's first novel, "Dirt" for ForeWord Magazine. "Dirt" was published by UglyTown, a small press focusing on hardboiled novels. "Dirt" was fantastic and I said so in my review. The novel ended up entered in ForeWord's yearly book contest and won the gold medal for mystery fiction. Sean moved on to Bantam, though he continues to give a nod to the gents at UglyTown who got him started. I didn't read "Burn," his second novel, but note that it was an Amazon Top 100 Editor's Pick. If anybody's reputation disarms the notion that quality and talent is owned by the big publishers, it's Sean and his fellow UglyTown alumnus, Victor Gischler. But maybe we knew that anyway. Then again, since they both moved to big NY publishers, maybe it's a pyrrhic victory for the small presses at best.


I'm nibbling away at "Widows" by Ed McBain and am noticing how strong and unique his narrative voice was, despite being in the third person. I'm noticing that he breaks all the rules, putting us inside multiple characters' heads in simultaneous scenes, drifting into backstory and flashbacks. Does it hurt the forward momentum of the book? Yeah, I think it does. But McBain was a pro's pro, and to me I see it as him having a little bit different agenda. This novel is about what happens to the people who remain after a violent crime, not just about the solution to the crime, as well as to those who try to solve the crime. I wouldn't try these techniques in my own work--yet--but it's interesting to watch how he does it.

So get out there and read.

Best,
Mark Terry