The Secret Sarah

Jungle Reds: Let's just say we're in awe of Sarah Weinman. We are trying to be cool, but it is not working. (It is working for one of us, but we're not telling which one...)

Anyway. Yesterday Sarah gave us a bit of the scoop on her new book, TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES: Stories From the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense. 

Say it with us:

Fourteen chilling tales from the pioneering women who created the domestic suspense genre…

In case you missed yesterday--where were you? --in Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives Weinman brings together fourteen hair-raising tales by women who — from the 1940s through the mid-1970s—took a scalpel to contemporary society and sliced away to reveal its dark essence. Lovers of crime fiction from any era will welcome this deliciously dark tribute to a largely forgotten generation of women writers.

She's the News Editor for Publishers Marketplace, where she works on Publishers Lunch, the industry’s essential daily read. She also writes the more-or-less monthly “Crimewave” column for the National Post.

A whole lot more about Sarah below...

but today, the Reds decided to explore the secret Sarah. By asking her cleverly posed questions (Hank, ever the researcher, got some of them out of the Neiman Marcus catalog. Do you believe that?) we will try to plumb the depths of the...we mean, well, here they are. 

Her answers are quite wonderful!  And at the end? You answer some of them--and we'll give away Sarah's new new book to a lucky commenter!

**You're penning an autobiography. What's the title?

The possibility of an autobiography is pretty remote at this point, but if that changes, the title would be NORMAL FEMALE, because when my mother was five months pregnant with me and got back the results of her amniocentesis -- it was the 1970s, and 36 was considered "older" for pregnant women then, no longer so much now -- and told her mother, she exclaimed, "A Normal Female!".

**Your idea of perfection?

78 degrees, sunny with a few clouds, a book in my hand, an iced coffee and a chocolate chip scone on a plate next to me. Rinse and repeat.

**What was the moment you got the inspiration for your new book?

I'm not sure there was a moment, but once I began writing the essay for the literary magazine Tin House that was the impetus for Troubled Daughters, I knew this whole idea of overlooked female suspense writers of a certain generation was one I needed to pursue for a very long time.

**What talent do you wish you had?

 Woodworking/carpentry. Would make so many things so much easier.

**What's your greatest fear?

Dying alone, my body undiscovered for weeks. I've seen the effects of that, literally, and it is horrifying. (Also: a fairly common New York City-based fear, I've learned.)

**If not your current occupation, what would you like to be?

Investigator/policy advocate for missing persons and long term unidentified individuals. But truth be told, I don't see myself leaving writing and journalism behind.

**Cat/Bird/Dog/Fish?

Dog.

**What puts you in a creative mood?

A state of relaxation. Barring that, tenacity.

**What is your most treasured possession?

First edition of Shel Silverstein's LAFCADIO: THE LION WHO SHOT BACK. Which is not actually among my possessions at the moment, it's elsewhere.

**What is something about you that no one would guess?

I cannot wink. Don't have the right eye muscles to do it. Believe me, I have tried, and practiced, but it doesn't work.

**Favorite indulgence?

Chocolate chip scones. Sigh.

**If you could rewrite your history, what one thing would you change?

Sometimes I think my entire life is about rewriting past history.

**Which artist do you most admire?

Shel Silverstein. A career like his is impossible now.

**What would you do with one extra hour in your day?

Work, sadly. Or read.

**What is the first musical/concert you attended?

I have my mother's word for this, but again, when she was pregnant with me, she knew I was going to be a musical child because I kicked very hard in the womb while she attended a Mozart recital.

**Which single piece of art do you wish you'd created?

Sticking to crime fiction: Dorothy B. Hughes' IN A LONELY PLACE.

**How would you like to be remembered?

Kind, but fair.

**Secret junk food vice?

Seeing as I've already mentioned chocolate chip scones twice in this Q&A, I guess it isn't so secret....

**If you had to pick your theme song, what would it be?

"I Can't Touch the Sun", as sung by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show.

Ed note--here's the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2PkbOG-Rn4

**What are you going to do next--right now?

After answering these questions? Updating the Domestic Suspense website, and then reading a few more pages of a forthcoming Sholem Aleichem biography.

Thank you, Sarah! Amazing.
Hank's three answers: The Juggler, Franz Marc's Deer in the Forest or Joni Mitchell's Carey, and Twizzlers.
How about yours? 
Remember, Sara's book to one lucky commenter!


More about Sarah Weinman:

Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in many print and web publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Observer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Tin House, The Daily Beast, Maclean’s, The Daily, The Guardian, The New York Post, The Atlantic.com, the New Yorker’sPage-Turner blog, Quill & Quire, Tablet, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Word of Mouth”. She’s also appeared on C-SPAN’s BookTV, Minnesota Public Radio’s “Midmorning” and NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered to speak about crime fiction and the publishing industry.

Weinman’s short fiction has appeared in DUBLIN NOIR (Akashic Books), BALTIMORE NOIR (Akashic Books), DAMN NEAR DEAD (Busted Flush Press), EXPLETIVE DELETED (Bleak House Books), A HELL OF A WOMAN: An Anthology of Female Noir (Busted Flush Press), LONG ISLAND NOIR (Akashic Books) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Previously she reported on the publishing industry for DailyFinance and wrote “Dark Passages,” a monthly online mystery & suspense column for the Los Angeles Times, and “The Criminalist”, a monthly online column for the Barnes & Noble Review. Earlier in her career she was the Baltimore Sun’s crime fiction columnist and an editor for mediabistro.com’s publishing industry news blog GalleyCat.

In a parallel life, she completed her M.S. in Forensic Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of New York in February 2004 and still harbors faint hopes of actually making use of her degree someday.

From October 2003 through January 2011, Weinman created and maintained the popular blogConfessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind,  which USA Today hailed as “a respected resource for commentary on crime and mystery fiction”. The blog has been mentioned in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Ottawa Citizen, Library Journal and the India Times Business-Standard.

Sarah Weinman on Twitter

ROBERTA: Today JRW welcomes Sarah Weinman, currently News Editor for Publishers Marketplace, but well known in the business of crime fiction for her blog, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. She also writes fiction, with stories EQMM, AHMM, and anthologies such as Baltimore Noir, A Hell of a Woman and Damn Near Dead and is a devotee of Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter, last time I checked you had over 90,000 followers. 90 thousand. Good god, woman, how did this happen and what do you do with them?

SARAH: How did it happen? Beats me. I swear most of them are spambots I'm too lazy to kill, but if I lose the flippancy, I think it's that I treat my Twitter feed much the same way I blogged when I first started Confessions in 2003: find interesting stories and links and share them. And on Twitter I don't limit myself to crime fiction, and only crime fiction, the way I did most of the time with the blog. Publishing and bookish stories still dominate, but I'll talk about world events, crime, media, science and other things that strike my fancy. And break news every now and then.


ROBERTA: Better late than never, I stumbled across your article in Poets and Writers about writers using Twitter. You said: "Just as setting up a page on other major networking sites does not guarantee success, joining Twitter doesn't mean automatic recognition. It helps to have a game plan in advance: a specific reason to follow specific users' updates and an incentive for them to follow yours."

What constitutes a good game plan, in your opinion?

SARAH: Well first and foremost every author should ask: will I enjoy this, or will it be a timesuck? Because believe me, it shows when an author's heart is not into social media. And if all he or she does is promote the book, well, we're going to turn off, fast. A little BSP every now and then is prudent, but being wall-to-wall is frankly, annoying. Instead, be human. If being 100% yourself makes you nervous, then be a considered version of yourself. And listen. Follow people you think you'll find interesting and see what they say and how they say it. Engage people in conversation (but do not, under any circumstances, at-reply to promote your book. Or direct message. Those are strictly verboten and will cause me to block you.) Be on Twitter as much or as little as you like, but if you're stressing out, the writing still must come first. Twitter isn't for everyone, and if it isn't for you, that's okay. I love it, but I'm not on Facebook. Some people work that way or they are the opposite. Mostly I advocate doing one thing very well instead of a bunch of things in a tepid fashion.
ROBERTA: Do you have examples of writers you think have used Twitter to seriously support their work and their careers?

SARAH: Off the top of my head: in crime fiction, Ian Rankin is on because he enjoys it and it shows. Gregg Hurwitz, Joe Finder, Harlan Coben, Christopher Rice and Alafair Burke all mix work and personal tweets pretty well to my mind. For general fiction, authors I think navigate Twitter outstandingly well include Jennifer Weiner, Neil Gaiman, Emma Straub, Robin Black, Julie Klam and Joe Wallace, whose personalities and real-ness shine through. And there are lots of authors whom I haven't mentioned. But more and more, it seems to suit authors so long as they find a way to make Twitter fit.

ROBERTA: In 2009, you weren't sure that Twitter was a necessary promotional tool. Has your opinion changed on that?

SARAH: It's only more necessary as more of the world joins Twitter: at last count there were 200 million accounts, of which 70% were outside the US. My feeling is that Twitter still works better for industry types and those who are in the media and news business -- the death of Osama bin Laden and all the major world events of 2011 proves that over and over again - but so long as it's done well with one's heart in it, Twitter is a valuable tool that does work. But it's not everything, and it's not the only thing.

ROBERTA: Thanks so much Sarah! Sarah is tweeting this week from BEA, but has promised to try to stop over to answer your comments and questions. You can find her at www.sarahweinman.com or on Twitter: @sarahw