On Chris Grabenstein

Our guest today is Chris Grabenstein (shown here with his dog Fred) soon to be president of Mystery Writers of America's New York Chapter and the author of two mystery series, one for adults and the other for middle graders (that's Chris, not Fred.)

JRW: Welcome Chris. Tell us a little bit about your journey to publication.

CG: Well, I guess it started back in 1984 when I was hired by James Patterson to write advertising copy at the J. Walter Thompson agency. Seventeen years later, when I was an Executive Vice President and Group Creative Director at Young & Rubicam but getting bored with selling beer and toothpaste, I wondered if I could have a decent second career like Patterson did. Okay, his has been more than decent. Dangerously close to indecent (every tenth book sold in America is one of his!) So, I quit advertising in 2001 and went to work in the second bedroom of our apartment. I spent the first year writing screenplays, winning contests, chasing agents, going to seminars, studying the screen writing craft. Sometime in 2002, I decided I was a) too old and b) on the wrong side of the continent to seriously consider a career as a screenwriter. So, inspired by Stephen King's ON WRITING, I set out to try to write a novel. Six months later, I had a book! I sent out hundreds of letters (with return post cards) to agents, finally found one, and came THIS close to selling that first book to Time Warner. I think we tried to sell that first book for over a year. I have some very lovely rejection letters to go with it. At this point, I read a very good (if, at the time, disheartening) article by an agent in Writer's Digest. The gist was: do you want to be a writer or write one book?
So, I started the second manuscript. When it didn't sell, I started another. When it didn't sell, I did the fourth. It was called TILT A WHIRL and, after four years, I was an overnight success.

JRW: So persistence played a role in your success.

CG: Major. Four years with nothing to show for your efforts but encouraging rejection letters? All alone in that room typing up stories that no one might ever read? I'm feeling vaguely suicidal just remembering it now. But, it was the "butt-in-seat, fingers-on-keyboard" work ethic that kept me going until I threw something against the wall that finally stuck. Not that you should toss my books against the wall. Come on. That TILT A WHIRL won an award and everything. Take it easy.

JRW: Was there a time you felt like giving up?

CG: Yep. And, there still are times. Usually when I'm 3/4s of the way through my first draft and I have just jogged past the statue of Shakespeare in Central Park I ask myself: who do I think I'm kidding? I am convinced I am the worst writer to ever sit down and try to tell a story. This depression bout is usually followed by a manic phase or a breakthrough. Hmmm. Maybe I should see a therapist. But, if I did, I might become mentally stable, quit writing, and get a job at Kinkos making sure all the copy machines were fed their toner.

JRW: I'm sure that would make Kinko's a less stressful place for the rest of us, but you'd leave a lot of disappointed fans! What advice can you give to aspiring authors?

CG: Keep going! If you love the writing, the craft, that's really all that matters. I learned this years ago in advertising when the client would constantly kill our favorite scripts or, sometimes, fun commercials that we actually filmed never made it to TV for some reason. I had to love the actual writing. It was the only thing I had total control over.

JRW: New Jersey is such a character in the Ceepak books...what's Joisey really like?

CG: It's like Canada. The humbler neighbor to this big hulking egomaniac. For Jersey, you've got Philadelphia to be envious of on one end, New York at the other. When I lived there, we were the bridge and tunnel people -- daring to enter the Emerald City, escaping to our humble homes in suburbia. NJ is also the most densely populated state in the nation. No elbow room. Leads to a lot of edge and attitude.

JRW: John Ceepak is the protagonist in your adult series. Is he based on anyone you know?

CG: Ceepak is modeled on several people. My nephew who fought in the first gulf war. An FDNY captain who is a close friend of mine. Some former MPs I met at a wedding. I wanted to create the polar opposite of the bitter, divorced, cynical, I-have-my-own-code sleuth since the world already seemed to have enough of those.

JRW: You also write middle grade books. How did that happen? And how does that feel - switching gears?

CG: I think of myself as someone who writes fast paced stories – in all sorts of genres. It’s why I liked advertising. One day, you’d write a funny spot for a beer or soft drink, the next day a tear jerker for heartwarming greetings cards or soup. I also wanted to write a book without dirty words so all the kids I knew could read something I wrote.
I am loving writing for a younger audience. They come to readings and signings hugging the book close to their hearts!

JRW (RO): I can vouch for that, I was at The Crossroads book party and Chris had a packed house! And the cupcakes were phenomenal. I understand Crossroads has been optioned to Hollywood. Do you wake up in the morning and pinch yourself about what's happened? And who do you see starring?

CG: Well, let's remember: many books are optioned, few actually become movies. That said, this particular producer is known for actually making movies out of books he options. In fact, he is very close to filming one of Ken Bruen's novels. It's hard to think about who might star in the movie...since Zack is an eleven year old boy...the lead will probably be some kid who is in the fourth grade right now. I'd love for Tina Fey to play Judy Magruder, the step-mom. And Glenn Close would make an eery and creepy Gerda Spratling, the villainess in the book.

JRW (RO): She was pretty creepy. I got scared at some of the things in that book! What's your next book? And when can we expect it?

CG: MIND SCRAMBLER, where Ceepak and Danny go to Atlantic City and end up investigating the murder of a friend we met in an earlier book, will come out from St. Martin’s Minotaur in June, 2009. The sequel to THE CROSSROADS is called THE HANGING HILL and will be published by Random House in August, 2009.

JRW: Thanks, Chris. Any JR readers who have a question for Chris can reach him here or at his website http://www.chrisgrabenstein.com/

This is a Work of Fiction

fic*tion (fik'shun) n. - an imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented.
-American Heritage College Dictionary


RO: I am about to write an Author's note for my second mystery novel, The Big Dirt Nap. I didn't do it for the first because it didn't seem necessary. After all, I was writing fiction. Did I really need to explain that these characters didn't exist? This town didn't exist? Apparently so.


My editor thinks I need to explain that there is really no native American tribe called the Quepochas, a fictional group that is referenced in the book. While I think this is amusing, she's probably right. One online reviewer complained that my debut novel, Pushing Up Daisies, wasn't accurate because there was no UConn campus where I had one in the book. It didn't seem to bother her that there was no TOWN, no diner and no people there, only that there was no campus. Go figure.


Is it that readers nowadays assume everything is ripped from the headlines, and they are looking for what they believe to be mistakes? Have the lines between fiction and non-fiction become so blurred that people can't tell one from the other?What the hell..I should probably just call it a memoir. Then no one would expect it to be accurate.


Author's NoteThe Big Dirt Nap is a work of fiction. While there is a state of Connecticut and a University of Connecticut, pretty much everything else in the book just exists between my ears. Any other descriptions, laws, people, places or events that are accurate are purely accidental.



ROBERTA: Interesting Ro! There is an automatic disclaimer on the copyright page of all my books, mostly there to protect the publisher from lawsuits I imagine. Do you think some angry fan would assault you (legally) for making up an Indian tribe? I do kind of like the idea of an author's note providing info for READERS, not just for protection. I would put it at the back of the book if you had a choice. And by the way, do you prefer acknowledgments at the front or the back? And how many other obsessive people even look at those pages? (Aside from the aspiring writers who are instructed to look there for agent mentions as a matter of course...and that's not bad advice.)


HANK: I think it's kind of--funny, actually. Maybe it's because you made up such a believable and clever name for the tribe. But I agree--if it's fiction, it's um, made up.

And yes, Roberta, I always read those pages. It's a kind of--six degreees of separation game. I love to see if I know who they know. Or whether the info is illuminating or revealing in any way. Front of the book or back? Hmmm. Put them in the front and there's the problem of: I'd like to thank Dr. Joe Shmo for all his help in learing about how to recognize fake fingerprints.... So much for THAT plot!

In Prime Time and Face Time, I kind of tweaked the geography of Swampscott, Massachusetts and the highway to the Cape. And I just said so in the author's page. And I make up the names of streets in Boston if bad things happen. In DRIVE TIME, I have to make up names of cars! And so far, I've created a problem car called a Calera. Would you pronounce that Ka-LEHR-a?

HALLIE: Interesting, isn't it, how we write those disclaimers--and yet most characters and situations in a novel (or in MY novels, at any rate) are sparked by something real. In my new book, there's a character who vacuums her front walk...I had a neighbor who did that. And there's a Victorian ark of a house on which my husband and I were (fortunately) overbid; the people who bought it found a hidden room. That house, with its leather wallpaper and stained glass, is in "Never Tell a Lie."
I love reading acknowledgments, too. Aren't they kind of a Rorschach? I'm always curious to discover whether writing the book took "a village" as mine do. And what does it mean, I wonder, when there are NO acknowledgments?


RO: Ugh, there was a typo in my acks. After going over my manuscript so carefully, apparently no one looked at the acks, which by the way were PERFECT when I sent them in.

PS.....Don't forget to come back for Wednesday's post when our guest blogger will be Jane Cleland, president of MWA/NY Chapter and author of the Agatha-nominated Josie Prescott series.

The Edgar Awards

And the winners are...
Fresh from last night's MWA Edgars awards...

Best Novel Down River by John Hart
Best First Novel In the Woods by Tana French
Best Paperback Original Queenpin by Megan Abbott
Best Fact Crime Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
Best Critical/Biographical Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Dan Stashower, Jon Lellenberg and Charles Foley
Best Short Story The Golden Gopher by Susan Straight
Best Juvenile The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh
Best Young Adult Rat Life by Tedd Arnold
Best Play Panic by Joseph Goodrich
Best Television episode Pilot for Burn Notice
Best Motion Picture Screenplay Michael Clayton
Grand Master Bill Pronzini
Robert L. Fish Memorial Award The Catch by Mark Ammons
Raven Awards Center for the Book in the Library of Congress
Kate's Mystery Books

Congrats to all the winners and nominees.
...I know, you're all really dying to know what I wore, right? I went with the Givenchy tuxedo, an off-white silk shirt, and pointy ankle strap shoes with a little bit of fishnet toe cleavage. I thought I looked pretty good. Then I got there and felt like a total frump! We're talking major taffeta, bows, wraps, and a killer short white dress covered with passementerie (on a blond, of course.)

Ruth McCarty looked spectacular in a black two piece outfit with a long skirt that she called "wearable art'..and it was. I want it.
Maybe next year I'll be more adventurous..
Rosemary

Rosemary

Wasn't that a party!

..still reeling from the wonderful evening. About 100 friends packed Partners & Crime and gave me a great sendoff. Yes, the lovely Clare did make it, as did Jane Cleland, Chris Grabenstein, Liz Zelvin, Meredith Cole, Ken Isaacson and a number of other MWANY pals. And P&C sold out of the book...close to 100 copies(yeah!) I'm going to head to the airport in a few hours with a lot of confidence and a happy idiot grin on my face.

The evening went so fast I forgot to ask someoen to take pictures so if anyone out there has pix, please let me know. Snapped this one at the end of the night as I was leaving for a late dinner. It's Liz, Clare, Meredith, the back of Ken's head, and Greg from the New York Times.

Thanks to everyone for sending the good vibes and to my blog sisters for the lovely flowers!