On How to Be Lovely

"I love your funny face...." Fred Astaire

RO: Someone is standing in a bookstore. She's holding your book in her hot little hands, reading the flap copy. She smiles, good! She likes it, or at least something in the description has struck a chord. Then she turns to the inside back cover, reads for a minute and puts the book back on the shelf. Agony. What the hell happened?

Okay, does this scene really take place in bookstores and malls all over the country? Can it? Do readers make buying decisions based on a bio and/or a picture of the author? Did you ever buy a book based on either of those things?

JAN: Yikes, I don't think I've ever bought or not bought a book based on the author bio, or worse, what the author looked like in his/her photo, but I don't know, I suppose I could have been influenced without realizing it. Especially if the person had a really bad haircut. I'm kidding. Everyone knows bad haircuts make you look literary.
Anyway, I expect it's the back cover that influences most decisions -- the price of the book. But I suppose I could be turned off by a truly pretentious or overly poltical bio. Or if, say, the book was about how to nurse an infant, and I flipped open the back page to see the author was a man and perhaps not the expert I wanted in this field.
But I don't know, this is stuff I can't worry about. The real reason people don't buy your book, I suspect, is that they've never heard of you. Sigh....And that's what I worry about...

HANK: Confession. I ALWAYS look for the photo. If there isn't one, I wonder why. If the photo is poor quality, I wonder why. I'm not only interested in what the author looks like, although that's intriguing, but I'm fascinated by why they chose the photo they chose. I always envisioned my author photo (and ok, we'll skip the rest of the discussion on that phrase. I have also envisioned the dress I'll wear on the red carpet at the Oscars, it's just something some people do...)

But anyway, I'd always envisioned my author photo in a chunky black turtleneck and maybe pearls. With an expression like: Oh, yeah, this is great and I love my book and I'm pretty happy and confident but not TOO happy and confident, just in a realistic enough way that the potential reader knows I'm a good person and pretty serious but not TOO serious. And that the photo is probably pretty much what I actually look like. In good lighting. Then the person who took my photo said if I wore a black turtleneck, I'd look like a floating head. So much for that idea.

I actually saved a photo of one author--which, of course, I tossed last week in my latest "Some of this stuff has got to go" cleanup and now I forget who it was---and she had the look down perfectly. She was sitting on a stairway, inside what you had to imagine was her cozy house, and she has her wrists resting on her knees, back leaning against the wall. Just casual, in jeans. Like she was just sitting there, and someone said, you look nice, let me take a photo. In reality, there were probably a zillion lights, but it didn't look staged at all. (I shouldn't have tossed the photo.)

And looking through some books, Suzanne Brockmann has a photo somewhat like that. And her's looks great, too. I'm definitely going to swipe the idea.

Now: Cornelia Read? That's a terrific author photo. MJ Rose, love it. Lee Child. You know the good ones when you see em. Who do you think has an especially effective one? (And anyone you wish you could tell--hey, get a new one)

(Not that this is that important. We know. It's about the writing.)
Do I buy the books--or not--because of cover photos and bios? Um, I don't think so...

RO: I think the Lee Child photo is a hoot. He's definitely an attractive guy, but don't you think he was having a little fun with that collar thing? The photographers shot about 800 pix for my jacket, and I think if they'd just taken a few more...

(Hank: Yeah, I think the collar thing would be--off--if he weren't such a fabulous writer. But there's another photo, the one on Bad Luck and Trouble, that's the one I was talking about.)

HALLIE: I do look at author photos. Sometimes just to find out if the androgynously named author is a he or a she. And I do get turned off. First by an obviously amateurish photo - if you're an author, you should invest in a professional quality photo because it's your professional face to the world. I also get turned off by too much glitz. I warm to a photo of someone who looks like a PERSON not a movie star. And it's great when the photo has got something cool about it that echoes what the book is about. My sister Nora's jacket photo is brilliant for I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK...she's peering out over the collar of a black turtleneck that's pulled up to her nose.

RO: Love that picture, too...and the book. Great...now I'm worried about my neck. We could always go the JT Leroy route....mmm, maybe not. Know who that is in the picture? Any guesses?? Hint, it's not JT Leroy.

PS Oddly enough, I saw Lee Child walking down the street yesterday after I wrote this; I almost ran over and asked him about the collar thing.

Gender Quiz Part Deux: the Results Show

Jerry (as Daphne): "You don't understand, Osgood! Aaah... I'm a man!"
Osgood: "Well, nobody's perfect."

**the closing lines of Some Like It Hot

Okay, so we have no winners. Of the valuable prizes we offered, at least.

And yet aren't we all winners? Getting to share our thoughts in this cyber village?

NO, huh? Okay. So lets raise a glass to the beautiful-and-talented Nancy Pickard, who got 4 out of 5 right, and that's pretty terrific. (And goodness knows, she certainly wins her share of prizes when the stakes are higher and the decisions more meaningful.)

Anonymous--and you know who you are--got three right. And Alias Mo got two. Had I guessed, which I would have been to terrified to do, I would have gotten one right. Lisa, you let them win, right?

So what can we learn from this? Besides that the Jungle Red sisters (and their sister in crime Mo Walsh who offered two of her favorites as #2 and #3) are devious and tricky?

You tell us!

Meanwhile, we'll tell you the answers.

Considering that we all did our best to fool you, congratulations to all.

#1

"I want you to kiss me. I want you to hold me. I want you to take me upstairs and make love to me. I want you to do it with no expectations because I don't have any. I could dump you tomorrow and you could dump me. It doesn't matter. But I'm not fragile.....This is a no-obligation offer....All I want tonight is you."


Male! Harlan Coben's Promise Me.


#2"He looked much as usual: bulging piggy eyes, gargoyle face, unfashionably long hair. The pallor was a change from his usual boozy redness, though, and the stain on his shirt was definitely not Chivas Regal. Louis Warren kept staring at the body, idly wondering if he had two more wishes coming."

Female! Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun



#3"Nothing had prepared me for the shock of seeing death on the face of someone I loved. I looked at him and I realized what a great power, what a great presence, what a great life had ended. I kissed my fingertips and ran them over his hard cheek and walked outside.Tears swelled from my heart, and a cold passion for revenge rose up with them."

Male! T. Jefferson Parker's Silent Joe



#4 Peter collected souvenir copies of the wannabe A-bomber flyer as he walked back to his car on Dunster Street. The damned things were posted everywhere. Peter unlocked his car. Despite his detours for coffee and encounter with Harvard Harry, he had plenty of time to get back to the Pearce for his final appointment with Rudy Ravitch before discharging him. He got into his car. Her know he should have called the police the minute he spotted Harry. MacRae and Needleman had every right to be pissed at him. No, he wasn't a detective, as MacRae so helpfully pointed out.

Female! Our own Hallie Ephron's Guilt



#5 It wasn’t raining at the moment, but an on-again off-again drizzle was expected to rev up into a torrent. Eldridge had left a message on my cell phone that he was running late, but now it was seven thirty and he hadn’t shown up yet. I told myself that it was probably a moot point. This was no night to stage an accident. How could anyone predict the physics of a rash with a downpour lubricating the streets.

Female! Our own Jan Brogan's Yesterday's Fatal.

On Vive Le Difference (Part Deux)

"Things are seldom what they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream."

**W. S. Gilbert

You asked for it. You get it from Jungle Red. Gender Quiz 2!


All of you who were too, um, chicken, to post your guesses to the last gender quiz? "Bawk bawk bawk," as my brother Chip used to say.


But you can redeem yourself from chickendom, and perhaps even wrest the crown from the oh so perceptive Lisa who pranced away with the honors last week. Or was it the week before? Blogs come and go so quickly around here.




Anyway. We promise these are toughies. One from Ro--and you know how tough she is. And two from Mo--Walsh, that is. Mo is a stalwart of Sisters in Crime, and Miss June on the SINC NE calendar.

(And one from me. And one from Jan. Sorry our names don't rhyme with Mo and Ro.)

And thinking about Miss June actually gives me good idea. The first person to correctly guess the genders of these snippets will get their very own collector's item 2007 SINC calendar. With photos galore. And lots of time left to use it. And, that's not all. The winner will also get a coupon (good at any bookstore) for 20 percent off the new Charlotte McNally mystery, Face Time, and a signed copy of Jan's impossible to find first mystery, Final Copy.



When was the last time you heard an offer that irresistible?



So here you go. Male author? Or female?





#1

"I want you to kiss me. I want you to hold me. I want you to take me upstairs and make love to me. I want you to do it with no expectations because I don't have any. I could dump you tomorrow and you could dump me. It doesn't matter. But I'm not fragile.....This is a no-obligation offer....All I want tonight is you."


#2
"He looked much as usual: bulging piggy eyes, gargoyle face, unfashionably long hair. The pallor was a change from his usual boozy redness, though, and the stain on his shirt was definitely not Chivas Regal. Louis Warren kept staring at the body, idly wondering if he had two more wishes coming."


#3
"Nothing had prepared me for the shock of seeing death on the face of someone I loved. I looked at him and I realized what a great power, what a great presence, what a great life had ended. I kissed my fingertips and ran them over his hard cheek and walked outside.
Tears swelled from my heart, and a cold passion for revenge rose up with them."



#4
"Peter collected souvenir copies of the wannabe A-bomber flyer as he walked back to his car on Dunster Street. The damned things were posted everywhere. Peter unlocked his car. Despite his detours for coffee and encounter with Harvard Harry, he had plenty of time to get back to the Pearce for his final appointment with Rudy Ravitch before discharging him. He got into his car. Her know he should have called the police the minute he spotted Harry. MacRae and Needleman had every right to be pissed at him. No, he wasn't a detective, as MacRae so helpfully pointed out.

#5
It wasn’t raining at the moment, but an on-again off-again drizzle was expected to rev up into a torrent. Eldridge had left a message on my cell phone that he was running late, but now it was seven thirty and he hadn’t shown up yet. I told myself that it was probably a moot point. This was no night to stage an accident. How could anyone predict the physics of a rash with a downpour lubricating the streets.