RHYS BOWEN: I first met Susan Shea at the Book Passage Mystery conference where I mentored her first novel. She remembers that I took one look and said "Your book begins on page 19". She took that advice and sold the book, and the series. They were great stories involving the high stakes art world but never got the exposure they deserved. Then they went out of print. However there is good news. Tell us, Susan.
SUSAN SHEA: Hello Reds, and thanks, Rhys, for inviting me back. Not sure how many Reds have entered the brave new world of hybrid publishing, but I just stepped into it with three books in a short series, the Dani O’Rourke Mysteries. Why would I do it? Well, different books in the series were published traditionally in so many editions and versions, and by more than one publisher: hard cover, trade paperback, mass paperback, book club, audio, large print. They got lovely critical reviews and my writer friends and those readers who contacted me loved them. Hank and Rhys blurbed them. But there was one issue that frustrated me and may well have hurt sales and a wider readership: Not one cover in any edition gave potential readers a clue about the contents. Nada. And none of the editions bore any graphic relationship to the others! In fact, at times Amazon showed varying editions of the same book at different prices and with different covers on the same screen!
My first piece of good fortune was in getting the rights for all three back without cost and, after sitting for a year of should-I-shouldn’t I, I dove in. Many readers had only been able to find one or two, wanted to re-read them, or wanted to give them to friends and couldn’t find them. Even more tempting were the readers who kept asking for a new Dani story. More good fortune, my son is a freelance book designer who has lots of indie clients and can help navigate the indie publishing universe. With him as my (paid) producer, we were off. With his help I chose an illustrator who understood my goal of having covers that, finally, said something specific about each novel. She imagined Dani into a visual character who enlivened the new covers.
All three came out last week and I’m just beginning the business of promotion, another hill to climb. But I feel I’ve finally done Dani justice, and my hope is these covers and some promotion may lure new groups of readers into her crime and romance adventures. Who knows, another Dani might come next.
RHYS:And for those of you who never met Dani or need reminding: she is a modern, successful career woman in the high stakes art world. Sometimes glamorous, sometimes dangerous. A world that Susan herself knew well, although she never stumbled upon a dead body!
And to whet your appetite here is the opening scene of Murder in the Abstract:
I could already hear a change in the tone of conversation outside the restroom door. As gregarious as an open bar and the presence of their peers rendered San Francisco’s social butterflies at a party like this, the anxious quality of this particular hum set it apart.
“Get down here. Peter needs you.”
“I’m on my way.” Peter Lindsey is my boss. He’s also the director of the Devor Museum. I may be a senior executive, too, but when he says jump, I do.
Snapping the phone shut, I quick-checked my reflection. The new green eye shadow did nice things for my hazel eyes but the flame lipstick had to go. On my large mouth, it looked like clown makeup. I swiped it off and settled for lip gloss.
Nudging the door open with my shoulder, I reached for the pager. The display showed Peter’s cell phone number. I speed-dialed while easing my way past guests, a few of whom were looking over the railings of the central staircase that ran up the spine of the handsome old Edwardian building to the glassed roof atrium.
Something was wrong, but I couldn’t see what it was when I peered over the heads of the shifting, murmuring crowd. Was there a fire? I sniffed, but didn’t smell smoke.
Squeezing past the outstretched arms of the two Museum guards standing at the third floor landing after getting a nod of recognition from one of them, I hurried down the carpeted stairs. It looked as though the guards’ orders were to keep people from coming down, which surely meant it wasn’t a fire. But what the hell was it?
The bar had been set up in the large first floor lobby for tonight’s preview of Matthew Barney’s multimedia installation, so, naturally, that’s where the biggest crowd was. I paused at the second floor landing and looked toward the two-story, glass entrance doors installed a few years ago over the howls of architectural purists. Strangely, because our liquor license from the city forbids Devor Museum guests from loitering outside the entrance, there seemed to be as big a crowd on the sidewalk as inside the building.
An elevator opened into the lobby as I peered down, disgorging a score of black-clad, dot com types and a security guard, a temp brought in for the evening by the look of him. They merely added to the crush. I made it down to the first floor, maneuvering past a flock of twenty-somethings in Prada and Jimmy Choos who were chattering about guys with cute butts, while craning their pretty necks and sniffing the tension in the room.
Even though I’m tall, I couldn’t spot Peter over the heads of the crowd. Len is short, a matter of some sensitivity to him. I worried he’d need one of those bicyclers’ flags to stand out right now.
“What happened?” I asked a portly man blocking my path to the information desk, where I guessed staff might be gathering.
“Someone said a body just landed outside,” he replied without taking his eyes off the glass doors.
SUSAN: What about you, Reds? Have you gone the indie / hybrid route with any of your novels? Are you thinking about it if you can get rights back to books that are lingering out of sight of readers? Or, do you read this and say, “Never! Not for me!”
