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Alafair to Remember: Alafair Burke at Murder on the Beach

3/8/2016

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     I arrived at the Murder on the Beach bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida, fifteen minutes early for mystery writer Alafair Burke’s speaking engagement. I sat in my car. February 15th was a Monday, after all, and I didn’t want to be nerd-early, pretending to browse as I waited for the event to begin. At ten minutes to seven, I walked in to find the place nearly full.
     Murder on the Beach is a small mystery bookstore with blood red walls and strategically ripped crime scene tape strewn around the doorways. On Monday night, many of the floating bookshelves had been pushed into corners to make room. It was a packed house. Nearly thirty people showed up, and extra chairs had to be brought out from the back room.
     Alafair Burke is the author of two mystery book series. She is currently on a publicity tour for her latest novel, The Ex, a stand alone mystery centering around a prosecutor, Olivia Randall, whose ex-boyfriend, Jack, calls her from the police station asking for legal help. Jack is a chronically sweet man, and Olivia expects his legal trouble to be some trivial mix-up. But no, Jack stands accused of triple homicide. The novel asks the question, did Olivia ever know Jack at all?
     Many members of the audience seemed familiar with Burke’s previous novels, but some did not. Burke began the event by introducing herself and sharing her background. She was a prosecutor in Portland, Oregon, and an avid reader of mysteries. She found herself skimming any scene featuring a prosecutor. She found them to be cardboard cutouts who never contributed to the mystery. This didn’t line up with how Burke experienced prosecutorial work. Being a prosecutor was fascinating, and so she decided to try her hand at writing a mystery novel of her own. (She has some advantages here. Her father is none other than crime novelist James Lee Burke.)
     She opened with a joke. “I used to be a prosecutor, but now I’m a law professor and novelist,” Burke said. “I’ve gotten very good at enunciating when I say that. I once told a man at a dinner party that I used to be a prosti.... Needless to say, he misunderstood my background and found me a lot less interesting when I turned out to be a lawyer.” This much is certain, Burke is comfortable in front of a crowd, and she spent a solid twenty minutes talking about her background, both with the law and with writing. She then opened the floor for thirty minutes of Q & A, and everybody’s hands shot up. Some had questions about her writing process, and about her family.
“Would you ever collaborate with your father?” one man asked. “Not if we wanted to stay friends after,” she quipped.
     After half an hour, she brought the Q & A to a close, though it felt as if one or two people might have had more questions. To me, this is a testament to her ability to work a room. There is nothing more painful than when somebody stands in front of a room and asks two, three, even four times, if anybody has any more questions. She left the audience wanting more.
     I was in the minority last night, because I went into the event unfamiliar with Burke’s writing. This will not be the case for long. She was charming, and her description of The Ex had me headed to the register where I bought a copy for her to sign.

         —Jaimie Eubanks
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Tim Dorsey at Murder on the Beach, February 11, 2016

2/11/2016

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     Murder on the Beach welcomed Tim Dorsey to Delray Beach’s artsy Pineapple Grove district on Tuesday night. The author is currently touring to promote his 19th Serge Storms novel, Coconut Cowboy (see my review on our Crime Fiction page). Dorsey began by saying that Murder on the Beach is one of the few stores at which he has stopped on all nineteen of his book tours.
     I’ve probably attended at least a dozen Dorsey appearances, and he’s never been one to read from his books. Very fan friendly, Dorsey prefers more of a roundtable-like vibe and opens the floor to questions right off the bat. The very first question, which came as news to me, an obviously slacking Tim Dorsey fan, was in regards to the progress of the TV show.
     WHAT?
     Yes, the author confirmed, Florida Roadkill, Dorsey’s first novel, which has been optioned for film countless times, is coming to the small screen in the form of a series. (Please be HBO or FX! Please please please!) No casting has been announced yet, but the show will be produced by Sonar Entertainment, which also produces MTV’s The Shannara Chronicles and the upcoming FX miniseries Taboo, starring Tom Hardy.
     Dorsey said he had to keep the news under wraps for about seven months. It wasn’t until he was greeted by hundreds of congratulatory emails and social media posts one morning that he knew how serious things had become. Sonar had released news of the show to industry trade magazines. Still, after seeing his novel optioned for film numerous times, Dorsey isn’t allowing his expectations to soar too high.
     “Next year I’ll be coming around telling you what went wrong,” he said.
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Tim Dorsey at Murder on the Beach with Coconut Cowboy and Serge regalia.
     The tone got serious for a bit, as one audience member asked Dorsey at what age he started writing, which presented the author with an opportunity to rage against the public education machine.
     “Boys are at a higher risk of becoming non-readers,” he said, “because schools make every effort to turn them off to reading with horrible curriculum. They make boys read stuff like Beowulf. It’s no wonder kids are like ‘This is what reading is? No thanks.’”
     He added that he was lucky enough to start reading authors like Vonnegut, which made him want to write.
     Dorsey was asked how, in a state known for odd news (In the last few days a guy threw an alligator at a fast food worker), he decides which stories to use and which to let go.
     “It really is an embarrassment of riches,” he said.
      Dorsey related an experience his daughter, a fast food worker herself, shared with him last year. A customer approached her counter, and he was the kind of guy we’ve all bumped into at least once in our lives, who makes every effort to let any and every person near him know exactly how important he is. Dressed head-to-toe in designer clothes and dangling a pair of $300 sunglasses from his mouth, the man loudly asked of the manager, “How much would it be for me to reserve the next franchise in this market?” Essentially saying to all around, “You may be buying the food, but I can but the restaurant.”
     After eating his meal, Daddy Warbucks approached the counter and ordered a cookie, which he paid for by removing two dollars and change from Dorsey’s daughter’s tip jar.
     Dorsey mentioned that was finishing a novel when heard this, and had to stop to make a note for his next one. Needless to say, Coconut Cowboy features an encounter eerily similar to that, only Serge and Coleman are there to witness it. Naturally, Serge refuses to let the deed go unpunished.
     That’s where he differs from his character, Dorsey says. “I have the impulse control Serge lacks,” he said. “But I still have to think these things that Serge does.”
     Dorsey calls Serge a vessel through which all of those who take the high road when faced with the rudeness Dorsey believes is pervasive in modern society can live.
     “Through Serge they are able to live out the things they would like to do.”

          —Ed Irvin

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MDC's First Draft Combines Writing Workshop & Happy Hour

4/22/2015

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Nick Garnett leads First Draft writers at The Butcher Shop. (Photo, Miami Center for Writing and Literature)
     By the time I finished writing my first prompt presented by First Draft’s host, Nicholas Garnett, I was more confident by the end of the night I would have at least a rough sketch for a short story.
    Even better, the theme of the night was murder & mayhem, most appropriately taking place at The Butcher Shop, a restaurant and beer garden in Wynwood.
    Spearheaded by The Center for Writing and Literature at Miami Dade College, First Draft was begun last summer by The Center’s program coordinator Nicole Swift as a way to reach out to Miami’s writing community. Swift said, “The idea of First Draft is community. And we thought about how can we make writing fun?”
    And why wouldn’t First Draft be fun? Imagine your favorite creative writing class taking place at a restaurant that serves great sangria.
    In between laughing because you’re having a great time, you discuss Alfred Hitchcock and the best techniques for creating suspense with local authors like Nicholas Garnett.  
    Sure, prompts and exercises are given throughout the workshop. But the whole point of First Draft is to gain better writing skills while being entertained.
    “We wanted to create an event that takes the anxiety away from writing workshops,” said Swift. 
    Every month First Draft has a larger attendance with a new themed workshop, with many regulars returning. To celebrate National Poetry Month, First Draft’s workshop on April 9th was dedicated to poetry.
    In early May, First Draft’s will have two workshops, each at the new Books & Books Bookstore and Cafe at Arsht Center. On May 5th, 7-9 PM,  there will be First Draft ¡en español! with a theme of Obsesiones. May 7th, 6:30 - 8:30 PM novelist Anjanette Delgado will  theme is “changes.” Check out The Center’s website for more information and to RSVP.

        —Jeffrey Fernandez


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Sleuthfest Live-blog, Saturday, Part 3: James O. Born

2/28/2015

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Saturday, February 28, 2015 4:47 PM

    Author James O. Born, fresh out of his "Facts About Firearms" panel, sat and spoke with me about some of the laughable things books, movies, and television do with guns. Born, who has been an officer with the FDLE for 25 years, said the example he likes to use is Tommy Lee Jones' character in The Fugitive, who stops to rack the slide of his pistol to put a round in the chamber. "He's basically a professional law enforcement officer carrying a boat anchor disguised as a gun," Born said. "In the real world he should've been fired on the spot."
     Born's next novel, Scent of Murder, due on April 7th from Tor, features a K-9 protagonist. I asked the author, whose previous novels--Walking Money, Shock Wave and Escape Clause—feature rugged cop Bill Tasker, what inspired the shift. Born said that the idea is based on a drug case he had at the Palm Beach International Airport 20 years ago. He was in a foot chase with a suspect when a Palm Beach sheriff's deputy, who was not involved in the case, screamed for everyone to stop because he was releasing his dog. Knowing the dog couldn't discern him from the bad guy, Born stopped his pursuit. When the dog caught up with the suspect, Born said he could feel the impact from a distance. He thought the suspect might have been killed by the impact.
     While working with K-9 units for research Born had the brilliant idea to have the dog bite his padded groin. One bite on his hand—through heavy padding—made him rethink that decision.
     I asked Born how he balances his work with the FDLE and writing, and if his work ever crossed over into his novels. "It does afford me an opportunity no other writer has," he said. "I can go to any police unit and ask how things work and receive full cooperation."
     Scent of Murder is rather tame compared to his Bill Tasker series, Born said. While it is a police procedural like the Tasker novels, it's light on the brutality of novels such as Walking Money, which Born says his children, as old as 25, are still not allowed to read.
     On April 23 Born will be appearing at the West Boynton library as part of the Palm Beach County Library system's Writers Live series. He will also appear at Murder on the Beach in Delray on a date yet to be determined.
          —Ed Irvin
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Sleuthfest Live-blog, Saturday, Part 2: James W. Hall

2/28/2015

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Saturday, February 28, 2015, 2:30 PM
   
    After entertaining the lunch crowd in the grand ballroom, author James W. Hall was kind enough to sit with me and discuss the reasoning behind shelving his popular protagonist, Thorn, and starting a new series.
     I asked Mr. Hall why an established author such as himself would start a new series rather than write standalone novels. I’ve spoken with numerous authors who started as series writers because that's what the industry demands of unestablished authors. Michael Koryta come to mind. Surely Mr. Hall has a large enough following to allow him to write standalones.
     “The publishing industry tracks numbers ruthlessly through Neilson Bookscan, which didn't exist in the 1980s,” he said. "The result is a downward pressure on all sales. There is no great incentive to produce more books than the previous book sold."
     "In the old days," Hall continued, "when you moved to a new publisher they had no idea of sales. They only knew what was in the public sphere and would often overpay."
     "The only way to change the trajectory of sales is to do something new, to convince the publisher that a new set of characters would rejuvenate sales,” Hall said.
     On shelving Thorn, about whom Hall has written 14 novels over the course of 30 years, the author said "I wanted to see if changing characters would change my numbers."
     Sales aren't the only motivation Hall has for shifting gears, though. There are creative considerations, too. "Thorn is easy," he said. "I know his voice. I wanted a new challenge."
     Hall, who never intended Thorn to be a recurring character, has the knowledge going into this new series that it will be a recurring character, which will allow him to develop the character in ways he never did with Thorn.
     Another thing new—or unfamiliar because of how long he has been under contract for Thorn novels—to Hall, now that he is trying to sell a non-Thorn novel, is pitching to  a publisher. He is about to submit the first third of his newest novel to his agent.
    I'm sure he'll do just fine.
        —Ed Irvin
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Live-blog from Sleuthfest, Saturday, Part 1

2/28/2015

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Saturday, February 28, 2015, 2:00 PM
    ”I'm supposed to have drinks with Jim Patterson later on. I'll let him know how that went.” James W. Hall, who leaves the stage to a raucous standing ovation.
        —Ed Irvin
Saturday, February 28, 2015, 1:55 PM
    A few years ago I took my wife to a Madonna concert for our anniversary. The Material Girl took the stage at 11:30 for a show that was scheduled to begin at 8:00. Patterson has reached one hour.
        —Ed Irvin
Saturday, February 28, 2015, 1:49 PM
    ”I actually like James Patterson. I think he's terrific. And all of his permutations.” James W. Hall
        —Ed Irvin
Saturday, February 28, 2015, 1:24 PM
    Still no Patterson, but James W. Hall has taken to the stage to amuse the crowd with stories of absentee orangutans in a novel about orangutans.
        —Ed Irvin
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Press getting fed like royalty. —Ed Irvin
Saturday, February 28, 2015, 12:59 PM

    The character naming sold for $975. I hope they didn't just drop a grand on a character who gets killed on page one.
        —Ed Irvin
Saturday, February 28, 2015, 12:55 PM

    A 50 page manuscript reading by bestselling author Jeffrey Deaver just sold for $650 during the luncheon auction. Next up on the block is a character naming in an upcoming James Patterson novel.
        —Ed Irvin
Saturday, February 28, 2015, 12:30 PM

    Author and Sleuthfest featured speaker James W. Hall with Pam Stack, host of Authors on the Air.
        —Ed Irvin
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Saturday, February 28, 2015, 12:17 PM

    The guest of honor is fashionably late. He is scheduled for the press room from 12-1:00 before giving his keynote speech from 1-2:00.
         —Ed Irvin
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Saturday, February 28, 2015, 11:28 AM

SRO crowd waiting for James Patterson.

     —Ed Irvin
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FBR's Ed Irvin Live-blogs from Sleuthfest, Feb. 27, 2015

2/27/2015

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Friday, February 27, 2015 10:43 AM

    Setting up in the press room has its advantages. After interviewing Lucy Burdette, author of the Key West Food Critic series, who was the only scheduled interview I had, a number of authors approached my table, sat down and spoke with me. The problem? I had only prepared questions for Burdette and am not the fastest at thinking on my feet, especially when unfamiliar with the author's work.
         --Ed Irvin

Friday, February 27, 2015 10:30 AM

    Lucy Burdette, author of the Key West Food Critic mysteries was kind enough to grant me half an hour following her morning panel "Ready, Set...," which provided attendees with an opportunity to "learn planning strategies, character motivations, and how to shape your story." The panel offered me the perfect segue into our conversation, which I started by asking how it was she makes Haley Snow, her protagonist, such an endearing character in whom readers can become invested.
    "I think some of it has to be coming from my psychology background," Burdette said.
    She mentioned that one of the authors she shared the stage with in her panel was a meticulous plotter who brought a storyboard complete with notes and Post-its for her presentation.
    "I just don't work that way," Burdette said. "I think about who this character is, what matters to her? I think about even the crime in terms of what her stake would be, what would really draw her in?"
     Burdette admitted that, like many cozy protagonists, Haley has "no business sleuthing. It's a stupid idea."             "You really have to have some reason why it would matter enough to overcome that. It's the stakes."
    The author discussed the evolution of her character from the first book, An Appetite for Murder, and the interpersonal relationships among her characters, particularly Haley and her mother. "In the first book she is kind of ditsy, but she's grown a lot, I think, and that's what makes it fun for me. In the second book I really had no idea that her mother would become such an interesting character. But I know mother and daughter relationships and my mother died early so I never got to the stage that Haley is, where she's almost grown up but her mother is still her mother and how do they negotiate that? It's the relationships that are the most interesting to me."
    Burdette, who has written previous books under her given name, Roberta Isleib, said that she was asked by an editor if she could "write light" for a cozy series. Burdette told the editor "I think I can write light but I can't write the murder as though it doesn't matter, as though it isn't a really serious horrible thing with terrible consequences. I don't know if that makes me different from other cozy writers, but it's always in my head," she said. "Who was this person, and who was the person who was driven so far as to take someone else's life?"
     I moved on to the romance that is so often teased yet remains unrequited in many cozy series and asked Burdette if she enjoyed teasing her readers. Laughing, Burdette said, "It's so funny because I say that I am a psychologist, so I should know how to make relationships work. But none of my main characters have ever been in a happy relationship, including Haley."
     The author said that she received feedback from one reader regarding Haley's budding relationship with Wally, her boss. The reader was very disappointed by the abrupt introduction of romantic tension between two characters who'd never showed any interest in each other beyond professional. "I love hearing from people," Burdette said, "because it makes me think a little bit harder about what's going on. The truth is it really isn't going anywhere. There's not a lot of spark there so—" The author caught herself, then added "Well,you'll see in the one that comes out in July that things are headed for a change."
    "You have to figure out as a writer, if you put the characters together happily, does that leech out a lot of tension or does it just annoy people that you have them undecided or trying to choose between two people over a long period of time?"
      Speaking of the future of the series, the sixth Key West Food Critic mystery, Fatal Reservations, comes out in July. Burdette has just started on the seventh--and last that she is under contract for--which will come out in Spring of 2016. A common theme at Sleuthfest has been the keen eye with which publishers monitor sales. If a series isn't earning its share of the pie, a pie that is sliced very thinly in a heavily saturated cozy market, they won't hesitate to stop buying them.
      Burdette hopes to continue with Haley, though, saying "There will definitely be seven and after that we'll see," before adding "I'd love to write more."
     I'm sure there are plenty of people who would love to read more, too. 
         —Ed Irvin
Friday, February 27, 2015, 9:13 AM

     As I am setting up in the press room I meet author Susan Klaus, whose Secretariat Reborn was reviewed by FBR in 2013. Klaus does an internet radio show and is preparing to interview attendees. She is unfamiliar with our review, but immediately gives me a copy of the sequel, Shark Fin Soup, which she says was received even better than Secretariat Reborn.
        —Ed Irvin



Sleuthfest 2015
, presented by the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, is taking place Feb. 26-March 1 in Deerfield Beach.  Our Contributing Editor Ed Irvin is blogging from the conference, which this year has the title "Along Came A Murder."
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James W. Hall at Murder on the Beach 1/15/15

1/16/2015

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    James W. Hall is working on a new recurring character and he asked a small crowd of fans at Murder on the Beach what characteristics they are drawn to in a character. Character-wise I've got no idea but, if he's looking for a name, perhaps it should be Storm, because one has followed Hall to Delray Beach for the last two years.
 
    A monsoon kept the crowds at bay for Hall's appearance to promote last year's Going Dark. There were four people, including me, that night, for what turned into more of a fireside chat than a reading. While it was stormy last night, the wind and rain weren't at monsoon levels, so the audience was a little bigger. Keep in mind, the previous times I've seen Hall at Murder on the Beach the store was SRO. Still, the author's discussion of his newest, and possibly last, Thorn novel, The Big Finish, was just as intimate as last year's.
    Hall started by talking about the pitfalls of book touring itself, saying that by the end of a book tour he wants to talk about any book other than his own. The disjointed path his tour has taken him on surely isn't helping maters. He flew into Jacksonville for an event earlier this week, then came south to Vero Beach. Makes sense. Then his itinerary took him to northwest to St. Petersburg, then back east to Murder on the Beach. From Delray he will head back to Tampa, before driving cross-state to Jacksonville to fly out. Maybe publicists should be required to minor in geography. (That's my own opinion, not the author's.)
     As far as The Big Finish goes, Hall said he started with the title, something he never does. Thorn was never intended to be a recurring character, Hall said, adding that "publishers over the years have bullied me into continuing with Thorn."
     "If I would have known that he was going to be around for thirty years I would've done him differently," the author said.
      The Big Finish takes Thorn out of his comfort zone in Key Largo and into the mountains of North Carolina in search of his son, Flynn Moss, who Hall says is "Thorn to the tenth power." Thorn is what might be called an old-school environmentalist. He loves being on the water and realizes the symbiotic relationship man has with nature, but he isn't in any hurry to join a protest. Flynn, a member of an eco-activist group called the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, "has that DNA, but he takes it to another level."
     Of The Big Finish and its theme of the damage concentrated industrial farming can do to the environment Hall said "This book isn't my soapbox," before jokingly saying that "I just thought it was high time that someone wrote a thriller set on a pig farm."
     Is this really the end of Thorn, though? "At the very least," Hall said, "I need a break from Thorn; Although I'm not sure if this is The Big Finish."
            —Ed Irvin
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