A Day in the Life of Houston's Murder by the Book

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Last summer I had the honor of appearing at beloved mystery book shop, Murder by the Book, in Houston, Texas, to promote THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT and talk about historical mysteries. I appeared alongside fabulous New York Times-bestselling authors Lauren Willig and Beatriz Williams. The evening was facilitated by Murder by the Book's publicity manager John Kwiatkowsky and Sally Woods.

Readers, it was heaven. 

What was so wonderful? The books, of course (my credit card took a serious dent), meeting Lauren and Beatriz (I've been a huge fan of their novels for years and it was lovely to meet them in person), and most of all, the staff, who were knowledgeable and professional and fun and funny. Do you ever meet people and just know that you're going to be fast friends? Well, that's what happened to me when I met John and Sally.

We all read mysteries and thrillers, but I thought it would be fun to take a peek "backstage" at a particularly fantastic mystery bookshop — and what happens behind the scenes. John and Sally, take it away!

JOHN and SALLY: Working in a bookstore comes with all the usual challenges of working retail, and throws in challenges of its own. Those challenges can be trying to figure out which blue book a customer saw on the new release table at another bookstore, trying to remember the name of a long out print book, or explaining for the 5th time why you don’t know if a book is available for the Kindle.

It also comes with some pretty special rewards. We have a lot of customers that have moved away from Houston, but always include a trip to the store when they’re back for a visit. We get to meet authors that we love, hand-sell books that we’re excited about, and spend our days surrounded by books.

Each bookstore is different. Working at a Barnes and Noble is different from working at a specialized indie bookstore. (If you want to know what working at big box store like B&N or Borders is like, read Elaine Viets's Murder Between The Covers, she nails it!)

One of the comments we hear all the time is, "I'd love to work in a bookstore and spend all day reading." We laugh, but know that reading is the last thing we get to do when we’re at work. Here’s what a typical day behind the counter looks like...

9:30 a.m. - Get to the store. If last night's event ran long, start the day by putting the store back together. That includes putting away event chairs, picking up stray books that wandered off the shelf, and picking up empty wine glasses left on bookcases. (If it's Tuesday, put out this week's new releases).

9:45 a.m. - Sort books from last night's event and get them ready to mail out.

10:00 a.m. - Open the store.

10:15 p.m. - Answer email, and update the store’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. Add any newly scheduled events to the website, while still helping customers and answering the phone.

11:00 a.m. - Dave, our UPS driver, shows up with 45 boxes of new books. Each book has to be checked in, sorted, and shelved, while still helping customers and answering the phone. If there are any damaged or missing books, they have to be called into the publisher for credit or replacement.

11:45 a.m.: Answer the phone:

Employee: Hello, Murder By The Book!

Customer: Is this homicide?

Employee: No, we're a bookstore.

Customer: I need homicide.

Employee: I think you should hang up and dial 911.

11:52 a.m. - A customer comes in asking for Victoria Holt’s series about a midwife. You realize she’s looking for the series by Victoria Thompson and give her the first in the series.

12:30 p.m. Thirty minutes for lunch

1:15 p.m. - Patrick, our mailman, brings an advanced reading copy that that’s been eagerly awaited. A happy dance ensues.

2:05 p.m. - Check for online and email orders.

Tracy Carlson

3:00 p.m. - Archie, our FedEx driver, shows up with 3 boxes full of special orders. Each book has to be checked in, sorted, and customers need to be contacted to know their books have arrived.

4:00 p.m. - Meet a teenager in town for a lung transplant. His family is in Houston temporarily, and he loves mysteries. Show him some staff favorites, and recommend some great places to visit while in town.

4:45 p.m. - A customer from Shreveport stops by the store on one of her quarterly trips to Houston. After spending 45 minutes helping her pick out titles, she asks for a hug when you carry her bags out to the car for her. Your bookseller heart skips a beat.

5:00 p.m. - If there's an event that evening, put out chairs, set up the signing table, put out wine.

5:45 p.m. - Take Jack Reacher, the store dog, out for a potty break.

6:00 p.m. - Close for the day, unless there’s an event.

If there is an event:

6:10 p.m. - Author arrives. Take them to the back to sign presales (books ordered by people who couldn’t make it to the signing).

6:30 p.m. - Introduce the author to the crowd.  Double check for last minute orders for signed books while trying to pay attention to the author’s talk.

7:15 p.m. - Author talk is winding down, tell the crowd we have time for one more question. When the talk finishes, line customers up so they can get their books signed.

8:00 p.m. - Signing line is finished, take the author to the back to sign books for people that couldn’t make it, and the rest of the store stock. Once the stock is signed, thank the author for coming and put the store back together.

8:30 p.m. - Head home (11 hours after the day started). This is where we actually get our reading done.

As you’ll see, there wasn’t any time for reading. We might get a few minutes to read while we’re on our 30 minute lunch break, but any reading is done once we get home and finally put up our feet at the end of a long day. That book we just recommended? We read it while we were off the clock.

At the end of the day, we all love what we do. No one ever worked at a bookstore to become rich. We do it because we love books, and we love finding the right book for the right reader. And that’s the best perk of this job, having someone come back and tell you they have found a new favorite book or author.


SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Thank you John and Sally, for taking the time to drop by today and all that you do. (Also — Jack Reacher! He's adorable!) Reds and lovely readers, have you ever been to Murder by the Book? Have you ever worked in a bookstore or wanted to? What does your ideal bookstore have? (Mine has a few cats.... No offense, Jack Reacher.) 

John and Sally will be dropping by to answer all of your questions, even "what's the name of that book, you know — the blue one...."

John Kwiatkowski, Publicity Manager at Murder By The Book since 2010

In previous career incarnations, John has sold model and toy trains, and been a barista.  Prior to joining the Murder By The Book team he managed one of the local chain bookstores.  When his nose isn't in a book he loves going to concerts, seeing musicals, going to Las Vegas, and spending afternoons in Hermann Park.

John's favorite authors include: Arturo Perez-Reverte, Tasha Alexander, Kelley Armstrong, Melissa Marr, Daphne Du Maurier, Wilkie Collins, Jacqueline Sussan, Victoria Laurie, and Louise Penny.

Sally Woods at Murder By The Book since 2011

Sally has been in the bookselling biz for almost 20 years.  She comes to MBTB via various Houston indie bookstores.  She did have a life prior to bookstores, but that seems long ago.  She is also somewhat new to the mystery genre and is learning about new authors all the time.

Some her favorite authors include: Stephen King, John Sandford, Dean Koontz, Sue Grafton, Kevin Brockmeier, Dan Chaon, Gillian Flynn, Joyce Carol Oates (especially the short stories), Margaret Atwood, and newly discovered Peter James.  

Christina Dodd, Culture Shock, and VIRTUE FALLS

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Delighted to introduce Christina Dodd, New York Times-bestselling author of the newly released VIRTUE FALLS, her—get this—fiftieth novel! 

Here's the description:

Twenty-three years ago, in the isolated coastal town of Virtue Falls, Washington, four year old Elizabeth Banner witnessed her mother’s brutal murder. Elizabeth’s father was convicted of killing Misty and sentenced to prison. Elizabeth was sent to live with relatives, and grew from a solitary child to a beautiful woman with a cool scientific mind and an instinctive distrust of love. Now Elizabeth is back in Virtue Falls, a geologist like her father, living cautiously, her life guided by logic and facts. But nothing can help her through the emotional chaos that follows the return of her ex-husband, Garik Jacobsen, an FBI agent on probation and tortured by the guilt of his past deeds. Nor can it help her deal with her father, now stricken with Alzheimer’s and haunted by Misty’s ghost. When a massive earthquake reveals long-concealed secrets, Elizabeth soon discovers her father is innocent. Is the killer still at large, stalking ever closer to the one witness to Misty’s murder? To Elizabeth herself? Elizabeth and Garik investigate, stirring old dark and deadly resentments that could provoke another bloody murder— Elizabeth’s own.

Happy (50th) pub week, Christina!

CHRISTINA DODD: Ten years ago, my husband and I moved from Houston, Texas — conservative, cosmopolitan, friendly, high temperatures — to a small town in NW Washington state — liberal, wild and wooded, peopled with eccentrics. And there's this white stuff … it falls from the sky … it's cold…

We have five and a half acres on a mountain side. Our view includes the town, a lake, a mountain range and, if we walk to the end of the road, the Pacific Ocean. I literally can see Canada from my front door. We're surrounded by forest, fight herds of deer for the right to let our roses bloom, and our dogs treed a bobcat in the backyard. From the very top of the bookshelves in my office, I have a view of a volcano. (We built me a spot up there to write. Yes, I am spoiled.)

I love Houston, but it is so flat you can stand on a box in the middle of downtown and see for fifty miles in any direction. Here, in this corner of Western Washington, the mountains leap out of Puget Sound and everywhere you look, it is beyond belief gorgeous.

You get it, right? Those two parts of the US could not be more different, and moving here involved some culture shock.

But when you're a writer, dealing with culture shock consists of saying to yourself, "What is going on here, and how can I use this in a book?" It took a challenge from my editor before I could put it together.

She said, "Create a town that is in itself a character."

I said, "I'll build Virtue Falls, a small town on the isolated Olympic Peninsula where the investigation of an old unsolved murder raises the specter of a serial killer!"

She said, "Great idea!"

And I said, "I'll start the book with an earthquake!"

To say my editor was dismayed is an understatement. She was horrified.

But the first thing my husband and I realized when we moved to Washington was that the scale of possible disasters changed. Not that Houston doesn't have disasters. In the twenty-one years we lived there, we survived a hurricane, a tornado and far too many tropical storms. 

But in Washington, what lurks the breathtaking beauty is the seething possible of major disaster. In 1980, Mt. St. Helens blew its top. In 2001, the largest earthquake in Washington history registered 6.8 on the Richter Scale. When you drive the coastal highway, low areas have tsunami warning signs. We watched with fascination the footage of the Japanese earthquake and resulting tsunami (think deer in the headlights.) I have actually said to my husband, "If I'm ever in Pike Place Market (in Seattle) and an earthquake occurs, I'm running uphill as fast as I can."

It sounds dramatic, but the Washington population (and on the whole west coast) live with the knowledge earthquakes could happen at any time, tsunamis could quickly follow, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time could be fatal. We don't brood about it (at least, I don't), but we're aware.

After I presented my ideas for the town of Virtue Falls, peopled with eccentrics, tourists and long-buried secrets, my editor agreed an earthquake and tsunami could work, plot-wise, as long as I didn't get too technical. Which is a good thing, because I'm at best an armchair geologist.

You're probably wondering how, after ten years in Washington, we're fitting into this land of grand landscapes where proud eccentrics live off the grid? Turns out we fit in here pretty well. One day about six years ago I looked out our bedroom window at our side yard and suggested we build a stone circle. And…

CHRISTINA DODD: I was born and raised in California. I've lived in Idaho, Oregon, Minnesota (for a summer), Texas and now Washington. Reds and readers, where have you lived?

ABOUT CHRISTINA DODD:

Readers become writers, and Christina Dodd has always been a reader. She reads everything, but because she loves humor, she likes romance best.

A woman wants things like world peace, a clean house, and a deep and meaningful relationship based on mutual understanding and love. A man wants things like a Craftsman router with attachments, undisputed control of the TV remote, and a red Corvette which will miraculously make his bald spot disappear. So when Christina’s first daughter was born, she told her husband she was going to quit work and write a book. It was a good time to start a new career, because how much trouble could one little infant be?

Ha! It took ten years, two children and three completed manuscripts before her first novel, CANDLE IN THE WINDOW, was published. In the twenty-two years since, her novels have been translated into 25 languages, won Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Golden Heart and RITA Awards and been called the year’s best by Library Journal. Christina Dodd herself has been a clue in the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle (11/18/05, # 13 Down: Romance Novelist named Christina.) With more than 15 million of her books in print, Publishers Weekly praises her style that ‘showcases Dodd’s easy, addictive charm and steamy storytelling.’

Christina’s most recent releases in e-book include four full-length romantic suspenses, the Lost Hearts series:
— JUST THE WAY YOU ARE Enhanced
— ALMOST LIKE BEING IN LOVE Enhanced
— CLOSE TO YOU Enhancedand a stand-alone romantic suspense,
— LADY IN BLACK.

In July, Christina and her publisher, St. Martins Press, launched her all-new suspense series, Virtue Falls, with an e-short story, THE LISTENER. On September 9, a full-length novel, VIRTUE FALLS follows. In September 2015, a second full-length Virtue Falls novel will continue the story of this small tourist town on the wild Washington coast.

Christina is currently working on Caitlin MacLean’s story, a full-length original historical which will be a new book in her beloved series, The Governess Brides, coming late 2014.  Please join her free mailing list for book sales, book news, and entertainment brought right to your inbox! Simply fill out the form in the upper right corner with your name and email (Christina pledges to keep your information private), and you’ll always know about the best in romance and suspense. Join now!

Christina Dodd is married to a man with all his hair and no Corvette, but many Craftsman tools.