Bookstores: past present and future!

 

HALLIE EPHRON: If you open my kitchen cabinet in search of a coffee mug, here’s what you’ll find, front and center.

Every time I see that mug from Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, PA, I think of Mary Alice Gorman and the wonderful bookstore she and her husband Richard Gorman made into a required pilgrimage for mystery writers. They hosted a ton of author events and local Sisters in Crime chapter meetings. And an annual event that drew scores of mystery authors on their way home from Malice Domestic and hundreds of crime fiction shoppers.

Watching Mary Alice hand sell books was like watching a virtuoso violinist. She knew just which strings to pluck. Her customers came in empty-handed and left with armloads of books.

What booksellers have a special place in your heart, and do you have any keepsakes from your visits that you treasure?

RHYS BOWEN: I have memories and memorabilia from so many bookstores. When I first started writing mysteries John had just retired and we drove coast to coast several times visiting bookstores along the way.

I have particularly fond memories of Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Mary Alice and Richard and their wonderful festivals of mystery. As a new mystery author I sat at my table at my first festival and saw a long line waiting to get books signed by me. Wow! Amazing!

I remember so many dear friends and stores that are no more. M is for Mystery in San Mateo and dear Ed Kaufman, Robin and Aunt Agatha’s, the store in Thousand Oaks plus several others around LA, Kate’s in Cambridge, Joanne Sinchuk’s Murder on the Beach in Del Ray Beach Florida. 

I have a mug from Kansas City, a little box from Orange County, and I remember the store in Denver where they made a cake to look like the book cover. What a loss these little stores are to our community–they’d hand sell newcomers like me, make us welcome, put on spreads, have a friendly cat…

Thank heavens a few favorites have managed to thrive: Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale is always a favorite, as is Murder by the Book in Houston. Most of the other stores I visit on Book Tour these days are big indies, not specialty mystery bookstores, but I miss those cozy nooks and store pets. 

HALLIE: Reminds me of the potbellied pig who hung out in the mystery bookstore in Tucson. She was a heavy-breather with a gristled snout. 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I’ve been to every one of those bookstores you mention, Rhys, and their loss is keenly felt. We do have fewer mystery-only bookstores around than when I debuted as an author 20 year ago.

On the plus side, there are actually more independent bookstores opening, as more and more readers come to value what good booksellers can do for your TBR pile and for the community! Over 300 have opened in the past few years, according to the New York Times, and the average bookseller is getting younger and younger - good news, because hauling those boxes from the publishers around isn’t easy.

In that vein, I’d nominate PRINT: A Bookstore, right here in Portland, ME, as my special place.

Founded just six years ago by veteran booksellers Josh Christie and Emily Russo (yep, her dad is Richard Russo,) PRINT has made a big splash in our already great indy bookstore scene. I’ve taken part in several great events with them, including interviewing Michael Koryta and taking part in a lively Sisters in Crime panel presentation. 

Josh and Emily were one of the first booksellers to pivot when everything shut down in early 2020 - we went from canceling my live appearance to streaming to several hundred viewers in a matter of ten days. I don’t have any merch from them, but I do have a stack of books… 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The very first such a store I remember visiting, with great– well I almost said joy, but it was really more like terror–was Kate‘s Mystery Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Remember, Hallie? 

In a ramshackle Victorian house, with a crazy front lawn and all kinds of decorations on the porch, and then you would open the door to this bookstore and there were stacks and piles and overflowing tables of mystery novels in some order that no one could ever figure out, no one but Kate Mattes at least, with the entire store ringed with a all kinds of ceramic cats. 

Cats everywhere. It was nutty and wacky, and Kate never got a computer or a cash register, she would just write out a sales slips by hand and make change from an envelope in a drawer, if I remember. Buying a book from her was incredible, absolutely everyone in mystery world came to Kate’s, but I also remember how long it took to buy a book! The paperwork was so complicated!

She told lots of stories about when she opened the store, most memorably, Robert B. Parker helping her build the bookshelves. Her Christmas parties were famous, everyone came. She’s long gone, (not too long, I guess), but still such a presence in mystery world. (And talk about a gift from her–she hooked me up with RBP, who gave me a wonderful blurb for Drive Time, on his personal stationery, which I have framed in my office.

And of course the incredible Aunt Agatha‘s in Ann Arbor Michigan. Where Robin Agnew, queen of the universe, knew every single mystery novel and every single mystery author, and talk about a virtuoso, could match every reader with the perfect book. 

When their store closed, after 25 years, Robin sent me a framed note from Mary Higgins Clark note that she’d sent as congratulations. I look at that every day.

Two more? Continuing the standing ovation for the indomitable and brilliant Barbara Peters at Poisoned Pen, what would we do without her and her amazing team? And I point you to Page 158 Books in Wake Forest North Carolina, where the Dave and Sue Lucey have taken care of me gorgeously since the beginning of the pandemic. I cannot wait to go visit in person.

JENN McKINLAY: Since I live in the same neighborhood as the Poisoned Pen Bookstore, it’s small wonder that I have a longstanding relationship with Barbara Peters, the owner, and her employees - Patrick, PK, Susan, Tracy, and John - to name just a few. 

Barbara and her crew aren’t just booksellers to me. They’re friends and mentors and their shop is a sanctuary when the writing gets hard and I need to get out of the house and visit with book people. 

Also, Barbara and her husband Rob have taken to Tik Tok, which impresses to no end and is forcing me to raise my game. LOL. 

Another favorite is Murder by the Book in Houston. My friend Dean James (Miranda James) worked there the first time I signed in Houston and it’s become a favorite stop of mine ever since. And I can’t forget Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego. I love this quirky little shop and the staff who work there are the nicest booksellers in the biz.

And here’s some happy news from the NYT: “But there has also been a sharp and sustained rise in new bookshops, and more than 200 additional stores are preparing to open in the next year or two, Ms. Hill said.”

Read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/10/books/bookstores-diversity-pandemic.html

YAY!!!

LUCY BURDETTE: Can you believe I’ve never been to either Poisoned Pen or Murder by the Book? Maybe this year… I adore indie bookstores and I feel so lucky to have them in both my hometowns.

RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison CT has been an amazing supporter, starting with my very first book launch when SIX STROKES UNDER came out in 2002! I love having book parties there–I always bring cake. And I’ve spent a truckload of $$ buying books in that gorgeous space. 

In Key West, we have two wonderful but very different indie bookstores. 

Suzanne Orchard runs Keywest Island Bookshop, a little shop on Fleming St with tons of local, used, and some new books. She handsells the Key West mysteries like nobody’s business. 

Books and Books on Eaton Street was founded by George Cooper and Judy Blume. It’s a gorgeous little store with a great collection and sometimes the bookseller is Judy herself!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm not much of a keepsake keeper, but if I were, I'd have mugs from Murder By the Book in Houston, and from The Poisoned Pen. I've been to many wonderful bookstores, but these two began as, and remain, my favorites. I've never missed a book launch signing at either store, and they were so kind and supportive when I was a newbie author and not sure of the ropes. Barbara Peters at the Pen is a force of nature in the mystery world!

HALLIE: Bookstores are the glue that connects authors to readers, and we've all been privileged to be invited into their worlds. 

What are the bookstores that have connected you with the writers of the books you love?

Nancy Martin: Just sayin'

JUST KEEP READING AND NOBODY GETS HURT!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It was great fun, but it was just one of those...no, it wasn't. It was a ground-breaking mind-altering , consciousness-raising fabulous chaos of sisterhood, togetherness, empowerment and fabulousness.

Who didn't love the Lipstick Chronicles? The mother of all blog was so much a part of our lives for so long--its storied beginnings and its thriving and vital years of "Just saying" and "INCHFTS" and "Just keep reading and nobody gets hurt" and a no-holds-barred look at the mysteries of the world (and the world of mysteries.)

And then, one day recently...the tarts packed their belongings and emptied the supply room and with one last glass of champagne, went our separate ways. Leaving many memories and much nostalgia..and, because we are all who we are, some questions.

Now, we welcome the Lipstick alumns here to Jungle Red with a raised glass and a cozy quilt and some fish-net stockings and painted fingernails and a love of life and reading and each other.

Today, we also welcome one of the brains of the operation, Nancy Martin.


Who--no matter what she insists--still has more than a few things to say. And she's here to share and spill..and reveal the latest.

Surrender, Dorothy!
By Nancy Martin

Is blogging over? That’s the question we began asking ourselves at The Lipstick Chronicles water cooler about a year ago.

Can I admit this to you, trusted friends? The amount of time it takes to manage a blog finally overwhelmed me. Sure, most of it was fun. Some days, the blogs were hysterical. And my blog sisters had become almost as close to my heart than—well, anybody I’d ever slept in the same bed with. (I only wish we could have published some of the email threads we went to each other, but too many computer monitors would have been ruined by splurted coffee.)

Plus the backbloggers became my friends! And over six years together we’d built something big, something to be proud of—one of the first clearly successful blogs in the publishing biz that produced quality reading every darn day. In my 30-year publishing career, building TLC was one of the accomplishments I feel great about. But . . . running it was a marathon.

My blunt, practical, Yankee mother said, “Remember the lifeguard rule. Save yourself first.”

Another friend said, “Surrender, Dorothy.”


Would I be better off spending the same hours every day working on something for—dare I admit this, being as how I flinch from avid self-promoters?-- for me?

Most of my equally drained blog sisters said, “Yes.” Which cinched it. It was time to turn off the lights in the TLC office.

Let me tell you what happened as soon as we stopped blogging:

Nothing.

You know that guy who doing the Amish project? Turning off his technology for a while? That’s just about what happened to me. I climbed out of bed every morning to check the blog (oops! No need for that!) and I opened my email box to find it empty. Empty! The usual hour I’d spend answering emails was suddenly available for something else! And checking the blog three times a day to comment and delete the spam? No need for that anymore. No schedule to fill. No traffic-driving FB posts to make, no emails to write begging for attention.

Running a blog had become a small business for me, I realized.

“If I’d put all this time into selling Avon,” I said to a friend, “I could have retired by now.”

I’d been threatening to put old romances up on e-book market, so I’ve started working on that project. While I pound toward my deadline for a standalone. And while I rev up the Blackbird Sisters mysteries with a few more books.

Because, really? Do readers want another blog post from me? I don’t think so. They want more books. (What’s your opinion on this? Would you rather have more books from your favorite authors? Or more author newsletters in your in-box?)

So that’s what I’m working on now. Books. And I love the total immersion in my own writing again. It’s what I love to do. I’d allowed myself to be distracted.

Is blogging over? Of course not. Readers love blogs. I love reading blogs! The communities fostered by blogs are full of wonderful, fun, thoughtful people whom I will always consider friends. But for me? Yes, it’s over. Except when lovely pals ask me to guest blog when I have a book coming out. Which I do.

Plus something totally new, so keep scrolling down.

The paperback of STICKY FINGERS comes out next week, on Valentine’s Day. And the terrific people at Mystery Lovers Bookshop are offering autographed copies (and free shipping!) if you feel like giving a book to a sweetheart in your life. Here's the link: http://www.mysterylovers.com/index.php?target=products&product_id=60115 It’s a rip-snorting, sometimes steamy comic mystery.

In August, my new Blackbird hardcover will hit bookstores, too. NO WAY TO KILL A LADY. Isn’t the cover fabulous? Perfect for tucking into your summer vacation suitcase.

(HANK: OOH, yes, I LOVE the Blackbirds!)

NANCY: Plus, if you’re a Blackbird reader, I’m e-pubbing a short story/novella that’s a prequel to the series. It’s called MICK ABRUZZO’S STORY, and it should be available online next week through all e-book vendors. It’s priced right—just $1.99. Let me know what you think. Because in the time I used to spend writing blogs, I’ll be writing novellas about more secondary characters in the series.

HANK: Yes indeedy. It sounds like Nancy is REALLY taking it easy, huh? Did you read Lipstick Chronicles? What did you think of it? What do you remember from it? Let's do some Lipstick nostalgia..and if you never met Me, Margie or the cousins...well, there's still the archives. Or--maybe we can get Me, Margie to make a visit here!

And a free copy of Sticky Fingers (with love from Jungle Red) to one lucky commenter!

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Nancy Martin is the author of nearly 50 popular fiction books, including mystery, suspense, romance and historical novels. She lives in Pittsburgh. Every February her husband moves into her office to work on their tax returns, and it drives her crazy. Visit her website at http://www.nancymartinmysteries.com/

On the Late Great American Road Trip

Because Blogger problems interrupted Thursday's terrific post by Ellen Byerrum, I've reposted it today.

JAN: I met Ellen Byerrum at the wonderful Festival of Mystery (MysteryLovers Bookshop) in Oakmont, PA, where I think the seating was alphabetical. On another "road trip" we had dinner in the LAX airport. (at least I think that was the airport.) She is as a former Washington, D.C., news reporter, and a playwright, and she also holds a Virginia private investigator's registration. Her Crime of Fashion mysteries star Lacey Smithsonian, is a reluctant fashion reporter in Washington D.C., "The City Fashion Forgot." The latest in the series, Shot Through Velvet, won a starred review by Publisher's Weekly.

Today, Ellen has agreed to talk a little about road trips -- and the one that brought her inspiration in her new book.

The Late Great American Road Trip

by Ellen Byerrum

With the price of gasoline soaring out of sight, I fear that the Great American Road Trip may be endangered. It makes me nostalgic, even as I hit the highway to Pittsburgh for a mystery gig. I have no guilt, but I wonder how many more road trips lie ahead, or are even possible in the future. But the summer is close at hand and the road calls to me.

The road trip has long been celebrated by writers. Walt Whitman was one of the earliest Americans to wax glowingly of the open road. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer took their version of a road trip—on a raft. Jack Kerouac kept journals from his road trips which were compressed into On the Road, that valentine to the Beat Generation and the open highway. Simon and Garfunkel sang about hitting the road by bus in “America.”

Now, a road trip is not the hateful daily commute on streets designed by a committee of deranged monkeys. A road trip must be taken beyond the Beltway, out of the city, far from the overwhelming traffic. And I-95, the Devil’s Highway, doesn’t even count in this equation.

On one road trip I discovered a town I’ll call “Black Martin,” where I toured the last velvet factory in Virginia during its last week in operation. Black Martin, Virginia, was the kind of small town, far off the main drag, that you might never notice. The town had an air of past glory that mirrored the past-its-prime factory where a hundred workers had just lost their jobs. It was there that I learned how velvet was woven and cut and dyed. No other fabric is so luxurious, or compels you to touch it and sink your fingers into its deep soft nap the way velvet does. Velvet is the fabric of royalty, of wealth, of Christmas dresses, of evening gowns, of tufted sofas, and even of theater curtains. Velvet lines jewelry boxes, earring cards, and also—coffins. The dying factory and the town inspired me to write my most recent Crime of Fashion mystery, Shot Through Velvet, in which my reporter heroine Lacey Smithsonian witnesses the demise of a velvet factory and the discovery of a dead body in a dye vat. All she wanted was an interview and a road trip. She got much more. But road trips are like that. They bring you surprises that often linger long after you’ve parked the car back in your own driveway,

The desire for a road trip can strike at any time, most often when you’re working. On deadline. You just want to jump out of your office and into a car and drive. I remember clearly that itchy feeling grabbing me one day when I was working as a reporter, covering hearings in Washington, D.C., at the Labor Department on an OSHA ergonomics regulation. I was risking a hind-end sprain from sitting on their non-ergonomic chairs and a mind sprain from listening to business attorneys who were turning intellectual cartwheels trying to prove there were no such things as work-related musculoskeletal disorders. At lunchtime, I escaped a few blocks away to the National Building Museum, where there was a mesmerizing exhibit on the American Road Trip.

The exhibit began with an old commercial (from the era when Dinah Shore roamed the earth) exhorting you to “see the USA in a Chevrolet.” There were maps and photos and the full-size interior of a funky old motel room. My mind was pumping the words, Road Trip, Road Trip, Road Trip. Needless to say, I was fantasizing about hotwiring the nearest car and hitting the highway, getting as far away as I could get from the OSHA hearings. Sadly, my skill set does not extend to hotwiring cars. I returned to the hearing with only one thing on my mind, and it wasn’t ergonomics. I dreamed of escape! In a car! The open road, my foot on the accelerator, my troubles squashed flat beneath the wheels, and the wind in my hair. When the opportunity for travel comes, I don’t take it for granted. I seize the moment, and the wheel.

The miles go by with the radio on. I sing along to the music; my husband doesn’t mind.

The miles go by, and my thoughts are quiet, story ideas rumbling around in the back of my mind, complete with plots, characters, action and new settings, perhaps near the hot springs I just passed.

The miles go by and I wonder what people do in these small towns. Who lives in that house? What do they do out here? What about that abandoned house? Where does that side road go?

The miles go by, and with each green mile I feel a deeper satisfaction, a deeper sense of quiet, a deeper exhale.

The miles go by. If you see me on the road, be sure to wave.

To learn more about Ellen or check out her books, go to her Website at http://www.ellenbyerrum.com.

Nancy Martin Explains It All: Including Chickaboomboom

"In this stellar first in a new series, Martin introduces Roxy Abruzzo, ultra-sexy Pittsburgh sleuth and owner of Bada Bling Architectural Salvage... "
STARRED REVIEW Publishers Weekly



HANK: Nancy Martin's an amazing mixture of Grace Kelly and Rosalind Russell and Dorothy Parker. That's what I think at least. With a little--hmmm...Glinda the Good Witch thrown in. (Since wonderful things seem to happen whenever she's around.) She's also none of the hardest working and most generous people in the biz.



So when Nancy Martin decided to put her hilariously best-selling Blackbird sisters on hold and go for something completely different--many of us thought--of COURSE. Genius. How did she decide to do it? (And--should we?) As always, Nancy knows all. And is here to dish.



HANK: So, Nancy. You have taken the exciting step of creating a brand new series heroine--where did Roxy (the main character in Our Lady of Immaculate Deception) come from, and why? (Set in Pittsburgh, the series stars Roxy Abruzzo, a tough girl from the Rust Belt “with a heart of black and gold.”)

NANCY: I don't know about you, Hank, but I most enjoy reading books that surprise me. And recently I decided I might scream if I read one more mystery about a sweet woman sleuth with a cat and a cop boyfriend and a meddling mother.





Sure, Agatha Christie mysteries always seemed to feature a vicar and the lady of the manor and the attractive young couple, but when do those stock characters become boring cliches?

Television was turned on its ear by the likes of Tony Soprano, Nancy Botwin and Nurse Jackie. But when I thought about our genre, I wondered: Where are our ground-breaking characters? The bad girls, for instance? The characters who take chances, make wrong choices and surprise readers? Are writers limited to only writing about nice girls? I wanted something new to read, and I figured I'd better try writing it.

About the same time I was stewing about all this, my husband and I bought a very old house which is lovely and full of character, but there's always a disaster looming. (Ex: Two weeks ago, our copper gutters fell down. Ack!) During our repairs and renovations, we have met every kind of contractor known to suckers like ourselv----er, I mean typical homeowners.

The crew we hired to fix the porch, for instance, actually included a couple of guys wearing Lojack ankle bracelets, which the contractor tried to convince me were the "latest thing" for engaged couples. The girl gets a diamond, and the guy gets an electronic locator. Needless to say, we decided to hire a different crew when our kitchen renovation became unavoidable. The woman contractor who took charge of that job got me thinking about tough women in non-traditional careers. Roxy started to grow in my imagination--a woman who considers herself an expert in architectural salvage, but actually runs a junk yard and has to be *really* tough to deal with the people she encounters. Roxy's definitely full of surprises.

HANK: The Roxy books have been described as Chickaboomboom. That is--wonderful.
Um, what does that mean?

NANCY: If you figure it out, please tell me! Publisher's Weekly came up with "chickaboomboom" for OUR LADY OF IMMACULATE DECEPTION, not me. I think it means a girl thriller--a hybrid between a mystery and a suspense novel, but with a woman driving the action--lots of action--and, yeah, there's sex, too. But any other writer who wants to try writing "chickaboomboom" should make her own story choices. Labels can force writers to pigeonhole and limit ourselves.

HANK: You've been such a fixture in the mystery world--and by that I mean a pillar, a goddess, a paragon. How do you think things have changed since you started writing? In fact, how have *you* changed?

NANCY: How have *I* changed after thirty years of keeping my butt in the chair to write books? My butt has changed, that's for sure! Otherwise, I hope I've become more generous to other writers, because we're all in this together.

How has our world changed? The publishing biz definitely ebbs and flows. I rode the big wave of the romance genre in the 80s and jumped ship just as the tide receded. I think we've experienced a similar high tide for mysteries in recent years, and now things are beginning to recede again. The marketplace gets flooded. Readers tire of us or get lost. Technology changes the game, etc, etc.

But one big factor that always drives change in publishing is . . . us.
Writers have the power to make things different. We have more control of our fates than we sometimes think. We need to push the limits, come up with new ideas, stretch the boundaries of the wonderfully flexible literary form that is the mystery novel. Take chances--that's my motto these days.

HANK: Check out Nancy's website--where Roxy even has a playlist!


It includes, of course, Naughty Girl, Bad Girl, and of course, um, Respect. (Any ideas for what she should add?) Nancy will stop by to say hi--so questions for Nancy--or Roxy? Bring it on, sistahs. (And bruthas.) As Roxy says--just keep reading, and nobody gets hurt.

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Cool stuff:
Winner of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement award for mystery writing from Romantic Times magazine, Nancy Martin is the author of 48 pop fiction novels in mystery, suspense, historical and romance genres. Nancy created The Blackbird Sisters in 2002--- mysteries about three impoverished Main Line heiresses who adventure in couture and crime --as if“Agatha Christie had wandered onto the set of Sex and The City.” Nominated for the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery of 2002, HOW TO MURDER A MILLIONAIRE won the RT award for Best First Mystery and was a finalist for the Daphne DuMaurier Award. Nancy lives in Pittsburgh, serves on the board of Sisters in Crime and is a founding member of Pennwriters. She blogs at the popular and trend-setting The Lipstick Chronicles.

PRIZES! We are delighted to offer a free personally signed copy of OUR LADY OF THE IMMACULATE DECEPTION to one lucky lucky commenter! Winner announced tomorrow...
(if you don't win, sigh, check out Mystery Lovers Bookshop, which will send you a signed copy!)

and also tomorrow...short stuff. (Clue: If you'll be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal...)