Free download from Honorary Red, Tim Hallinan

ROSEMARY HARRIS: If you don't already know and love Tim Hallinan's writing - shame on you (just kidding!) - but here's a chance to get one of his best books for free.

This Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, (March 10-12) THE BONE POLISHER can be downloaded for free on Amazon. The book got great reviews, Booklist concluding theirs with "Do yourself a favor and read it!"

Here's the (edited for space) Amazon blurb:

"2011 Edgar and Macavity nominee Timothy Hallinan's novel featuring erudite Los Angeles private eye Simeon Grist takes place in the West Hollywood of 1995, where the community is shaken by the brutal killing of an older man widely loved for his generosity and kindness. In a time when the police were largely indifferent to crimes against gay people, Simeon is hired to catch the murderer—and finds himself up against the most dangerous adversary of his career, a man who kills his victims one once, but twice: once physically and once in spirit. The story's climax takes place at a memorable Halloween-themed wake, but there's a big plot twist yet to come."

Here's a shortened version of the Amazon URL: http://amzn.to/A6K9kj

Enjoy!! And thanks, Tim!!

Visit Tim at www.timothyhallinan.com

Is "Funny" the new "F" word?

ROSEMARY: Yesterday Tim Hallinan mentioned that both his agent and a few editors had told him "no one wants to read funny thrillers." And just this past weekend at Crimebake I was on a humor panel (I get put on them a lot) and the moderator asked whether I thought writing funny in any way held me back. It was an interesting question and one that no one else had ever asked me in three years of humor panels. (Way to go, Toni Kelner.)

I think it does. Not writing funny or being funny, saying you write funny mysteries seems to be the kiss of death. Maybe it's like saying "I'm sexy" or "I'm handsome." You may be but it's never cool to say it. It's daring them to say "You're no Carl Hiaasen or Janet Evanovich." Who is? And if you're not already a bestseller saying you write funny can instantly ghetto-ize you into the lightweight category.

No less a literary giant than Howard Jacobson, winner of this year's Booker Prize for his comic novel The Finkler Question has said "There is a fear of comedy in the novel today – when did you last see the word "funny" on the jacket of a serious novel?" He's right. (And when was the last time a funny movie won an Oscar for Best Picture?)

I've found "quirky" a suitable substitute for "funny."

Plus, it doesn't scream "I'm the next Janet E!!" Someone at the show asked about "eccentric" but I thought that skewed older, like "dotty." "Offbeat" could also work in lieu of the dreaded "F" word. What do you think?

Tim Hallinan on E-Books

ROSEMARY: I met Tim Hallinan online through Dorothy L. Although we've yet to meet in person, I've gotten very fond of his posts and have asked him to stop by for a visit today. Timothy's first published book, THE FOUR LAST THINGS, came out in 1990. He's written ten published novels since then, six in the Simeon Grist series and four in his current series of thrillers, set in Bangkok and featuring rough-travel writer Poke Rafferty. (Just one of the reasons I love his writing!) The most recent of the highly-praised Rafferty books is this year's THE QUEEN OF PATPONG. Later this month, CRASHED, the first novel in a third series, will debut as an e-book - Hallinan's first e-book "first edition" and his timing couldn't be better.

TH: In a few short words the New York Times, that Olympian temple of condescension, has just announced that it's expanding its Bestsellers List to include e-books.

Whoa! Stop the car. The Times? The paper that once declined to review Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh because they thought it was “regional writing?” The paper that insists on segregating “genre” books in their own little corner to prevent their infecting – you know, real literature? That paper?

Hoo-hooo-hooo. Taken to its logical extreme, that means there's a chance a self-published book will find itself listed in the Times. I can imagine elitists all over Manhattan spilling their morning cup of Oolong into their laps. And it's about XXXking time.

In my long and spotty career, I've had excellent relationships with publishers. They've paid me for, and published, ten novels I made up all by myself. I've found publishing people to be, on the whole, well-intentioned and sincere in their desire to publish good work. (I exempt from this statement whatever idiot at Simon & Schuster decided a couple of weeks ago to publish an upcoming novel called A Shore Thing by the decade's most depressing celebrity, Snooki.)

Nevertheless, the Times announcement is important to me for two reasons, one sort of national and the other sort of selfish. Nationally, this might ultimately mean the end of New York as the publishing center of America. Whenever I see one of those disaster movies that shows 1000-foot waves breaking over the Statue of Liberty and the Chrysler Building, my first thought is, “There goes the publishing industry.” And not entirely a bad thing, either. New York is fine, but it's not America, and there's no reason for a few blocks of Manhattan to maintain a stranglehold on what we read.

On the selfish level, I'm just about to self-publish for the first time. A few months back I started to put my old Dutton and Morrow books online as e-books. Much to my surprise, they sold (and are selling) pretty well – high three-figures to low four-figures every month, and climbing. In the meantime, I'd written the first two books in a new series and was being told by my agent and, later, two publishers, that no one wants to read funny thrillers these days.

Okay, maybe so. These are not cozies or slapstick – they're hard-edged books that derive most of their humor from character and an inversion of the usual moral standard. Looking around a while back, I realized that we're absolutely surrounded by crooks – crooks in dark suits and power ties and Jimmy Choo heels, and that they're pretty much getting their way no matter who's president.

So I invented a series that's essentially all crooks. Junior Bender, is an unhappily divorced man who still loves his wife and worships his daughter. In his night job, he's a burglar, and he's good at it. In his day job, he's a private eye whose clients are all crooks. So Junior busts crooks on behalf of crooks.

The first in the series is called CRASHED, and it's coming out on Amazon and iBooks right after Thanksgiving. In it, when one crook gets ripped off by another, Junior is the guy who gets hired. In the book, Junior finds himself on the wrong side of his own already paper-thin moral code, being forced to prevent sabotage against a multi-million dollar porn film starring exactly the kind of person he'd normally want to protect. At the age of 23, Thistle Downing is broke, strung-out, hopeless, and on the edge of obscurity. But between the ages of eight and fifteen, she was the biggest television star in the world, a brilliant natural comedian until her talent slowly began to desert her. Now desperate, she's facing the ultimate humiliation . . . and she's so wasted she doesn't even know that someone's been trying to kill her.

So the challenge for Junior is to thread his way between his dangerous clients and their dangerous enemies while at the same time trying to find a way to save Thistle from self-destruction. Oh, and it's funny.

So, thanks to the e-books revolution, I can write Crashed and the rest of this series with or without a publisher's blessing, and make it available globally, let it sink or swim. Capitalism at its most carnivorous. If it sells enough, the Times will have to notice it. And New York has nothing to do with getting it published.

We live in interesting times, don't we?

ROSEMARY: We do, indeed. Good luck with Queen (which I loved) and keep us posted on Crashed. Visit Tim at http://www.timothyhallinan.com/

Tim's mention of humor in mysteries reminded me of the highly entertaining - Wickedly Funny - Crimebake panel that Toni Kelner moderated a few days ago. Stop back later this week for more adventures in book publishing and a look at whether or not Funny is the new "F" bomb which should be dropped carefully.

Into Thin Air? AUBREY SACCO, age 23,is MISSING in NEPAL

Search in Nepal Heats Up for Missing US Hiker Aubrey Sacco
(May 20) -- A massive search has been launched in Nepal for a 23-year-old Colorado woman who disappeared during a remote nature hike late last month.

ROSEMARY: Following is all the information available from news reports and the website set up by Aubrey Sacco's parents.

It's been months and there's still been no further word on the disappearance of Aubrey Sacco, a young American who left some of her things at a hotel, took a bus from Kathmandu to SYABRUBESI on April 19th, and began the 7/8 day LANGTANG trek in the Himalayas on April 20th. She planned to follow the Lonely Planet guide. She should have returned to Kathmandu between April 30th - May 1st.
We have not heard from her since she began the trek. She is trekking ALONE. Nepali agencies are working on this, including the US Embassy.
If you have any contacts or information to help with our search please eMail both:csacco2700@gmail.comfindaubreyglitter@gmail.com

I learned about Aubrey's disappearance while researching my own trip. (We went to different parks, in different directions.) It's my fervent hope that this young woman has gone totally native and is living in a tea house sharing nak cheese with a handsome Sherpa, but I fear that's not the case. Not to blame Sacco, but having just returned from trekking in Nepal, I can't imagine anyone going off on her own, even on a well-traveled trail. One lazy step can send you over the edge - maybe not into thin air or a dramatic crevasse atop Everest - but perhaps down a grassy slope or off one of the swinging bridges where it's possible that unseen, even a minor injury can turn deadly.

I saw one poster about Aubrey at the airport in Katmandu and mentioned her to our contact at the local trekking company. He told me her body had been found, which was NOT confirmed by anything I've read online since I returned. It would not be the only piece of misinformation the man gave us, so I assumed, like many people, he was pretending to know more than he did. Perhaps he said it to make sure my husband and I stayed on the trail and didn't explore on our own.

There are, of course, theories that she's been kidnapped (where's the ransom request?) or sold into slavery (I may be naive, but does this really happen much? And wouldn't be easier to find a young girl at a bar in Manhattan than on a mountainside in Nepal?) I prefer to think she's drinking a Fanta or Everest beer in one of the plywood "guesthouses" sprinkled along the trails. Or perhaps she's joined one of the monasteries and is making butter candles. I hope so.

Namaste, Aubrey.

Come back tomorrow when we feature guest blogger and fellow adventurer Tim Hallinan, author of The Queen of Patpong, a Poke Rafferty thriller.

Into Thin Air

ROSEMARY: Well, I am back from my trip to Everest Base Camp (and went straight to Crimebake where there waas more yakkking than yaks.) More than once over the course of the last few weeks I've sworn my next trip will be to Rome where I can sit in a piazza enjoying a cafe macciato and watching the handsome, long-haired boys go by instead of clinging to a mountainside waiting for the long-haired yaks to go by.

It's all S.J. Rozan's fault. I really wanted to go to Mongolia with her last summer but I flip-flopped so many times it got too late and I whined to my husband that I was never going to have any adventures anymore. (I must be careful what I say to him.) Before I knew it I had signed on for a trip to Nepal.

The gear which had served us so well when we climbed Kilimanjaro a few years back would not be good for 0 degrees and we would be limited to thirty pounds of luggage each which meant investing in some newer lightweight sleeping bags, pads, etc. The salespeople at Paragon and EMS must have salivated when they saw us coming with out three page gear lists. ("You really should go for the down booties, too.")

Like Mark Twain said "beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." And as Dorothy Gale says at the end of The Wizard of Oz "some of it wasn't very nice, but most of it was beautiful."

If I thought I'd be thin and tan by the end of the trip, not a chance. Despite walking uphill for 4-8 hours a day the way you are plied with rice, potatoes and other carbs to keep you going negates any calorie deficit, and the food is so bland I found myself fantasizing about Snickers bars and Lay's potato chips, two foods which are available even in the back of beyond. And can someone please explain the appeal of Fanta to me? It's revolting, yet it too is available everywhere. And the goggles I wore over my glasses, combined with the buff - a neckpiece that most sherpas and trekkers wear - gave me a ridiculous windburn on my face - pink and white horizontal stripes. And as for my trip mates - let's just say a fair number of them will be victims in my next book. But most of it was good and neither Bruce and I were injured nor sufered from altitude sickness. And the pictures are killer.

So what adventures or trips have you embarked on that started with certain expectations and wound up differently?

More exotic posts later this week - Are you going to eat that?, the very exotic Tim Hallinan whose Poke Rafferty series is set in Bangkok, bizarre bazaar shopping, Teamwork: How not to kill your teammates whether you are on a mountain or in a writing group (this is where visits to all those temples and monasteries helped out..) and tomorrow a tragic true ..maybe crime that happened earlier this year in Nepal.
Namaste.

ROBERTA: Well Ro, I just don't have the nerve for a trip like that. But I will love to see your pictures and hear the stories. And we did very much enjoy a trip to Rome this fall--would love to go back there. This is me sampling some local pizza...in a piazza.)

One interesting note though--we had a friend who'd been to Rome last spring and absolutely adored it. I had lunch with her and borrowed all her guidebooks and maps and she totally pumped me up. They're crazy about Paris and this was almost, almost, almost as good. So I think all her enthusiasm set us up for a fabulous experience.

JAN: Probably the most adventurous thing I do -- aside from actually having flown in my husband's old plane - which can best be described as a Volkswagen with wings - is sail. Sailing in the British Virgin islands, with my husband as the captain and me as first and only mate still isn't exactly dangerous. The islands are pretty close together. And that's as dangerous as I get these days. But once we sailed from Cuttyhunk to Newport right after a tornado and it was so rough I threw up seven times -- and I'm immune to seasickness. And once coming into Westport Harbor we hit a sandbar just as an huge wave came up and swamped us -- that means the entire boat tips completely on its side (think Titanic movie right before it drops). The boat righted itself and another wave came and it happened again. Still, I would have been a better sport about if my daughter -- then 15 months old - hadnt been strapped into a car seat on the cockpit (to this day she has nightmares about tidal waves). We survived and I made my husband sell the boat. I think the line I used was "I am not risking my child's life for leisure."

Which, Ro, can be adapted to "Hey Bruce, I'm not risking my life for leisure," if you want to get out of climbing the next mountain.....

RO: See...that's one of my worst nightmares. Ever see The Perfect Storm?

HALLIE: I'm with Roberta, Paris and Rome are much more my speed. But I so admire that you did it, Rosemary! You are the queen of adventure travel.

The most adventurous my travel has gotten is a trip to an eco-lodge in Costa Rica. My husband, who hates small planes, found a driver to take us on the 6-hour drive across the mountains from the west coast to the east and dropped us at the edge of a rickety bridge that said CARS PROHIBITED...for obvious reasons. We carried our luggage (quickly) to the other side where there was an rotting wooden dock where we waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally a white motor boat chugged by, picked us up, took us out the mouth of the river and into the ocean (VERY choppy) and around the other side of a peninsula to the beach where we climbed a steep hill in 90+ degree weather and about 90% humidity to the lodge and our tent platform -- no hot water, plenty of ants, and a wild middle-of-the-night visit from a bat. Check your shoes for scorpions in the morning.

The wildlife was spectacular.

RHYS: The most adventurous thing we ever did was to attempt to be one of the first foreigners allowed into Ladakh( I've even forgotten how to spell it). The jeep ride up the side of a 15,000 foot pass, on a narrow strip of gravel across which small torrents streamed certainly kept me awake and alert--especially as the driver thought he could save gas by switching off the engine every time we went downhil. Not wishing to plunge to my death I sat next to him and slapped his hand every time it went near the keys.

These days our adventures are tamer--although we did do the Australian Outback last fall and hiked among the crocodiles and snakes in Kakadu. But my ideal vacation these days is spending some time somewhere nice--like NICE. I loved my two weeks there this summer, going out for croissants in the morning, shopping the markets, taking local buses. Perfect. Plan to house swap in the Dordogne next summer. Any suggestions?

HANK: My riskiest trip? A blog for another day. Welcome home, Dear RO!