Celebrating Aunt Agatha's.

RHYS BOWEN: I first visited Aunt Agatha's bookstore in Ann Arbor, MI when I was touring for my second book. Touring was actually a grand word for driving around with my husband, from Motel 6 to Red Roof Inn. The audience at Aunt Agatha's was 2 --Robin and a Welsh woman who had stumbled upon my books. Robin was so warm and welcoming then that I've kept going back.

And when Her Royal Spyness came out Robin emailed me to say there was a "Harry Potter like frenzy" which made me feel terrific. We've had dinners before my events. We borrow space to fit everyone in and I am not the only writer for whom Robin has built up an audience.

Today they celebrate their 20th anniversary with a big booksigning party/orgy featuring Steve Hamilton (who is in the picture with Robin), Loren Estleman, Kent Kruger, Louise Penny, Julia Spencer-Fleming, myself and many more. So I'm delighted to host Robin as our guest on Jungle Red Writers.

RHYS: Welcome Robin and let me ask you some questions about the store and the state of the industry in general:

I suppose the first question that comes to mind is how can a small and specialist store like yours keep going in times that are so unfriendly to bookstores?

ROBIN;  We've found that since the demise of the superstore - Border's mothership was a few blocks away - that we have been busier.  I think having a niche helps, definitely.  We are the only bookstore in our downtown area that sells popular fiction, which helps (the other new bookstores downtown are more new age type stores) and used books are a big part of our business.  The markup is better and the out the door volume is higher.  A $3.50 paperback is still a bargain.  And I think people still want some kind of community gathering place.  Our book club attendance has grown, and our author events can be lively.

RHYS.What made you decide to start a mystery bookstore in the first place?

ROBIN; Two things:  one, my husband worked at Borders and was unhappy with "corporate" life - Borders had been acquired by K-Mart.  Two, I loved mysteries.  It seemed like a good fit, and we had previously lived in Minneapolis where there's a wonderful store called Uncle Edgar's.  That really gave me the idea, down to the fact that he used to have his kid in a playpen in the front (we had a baby swing),

RHYS. Have e-books had a big impact on your sales? Are there any plans to incorporate them into retail stores somehow so that you get a share of this revenue? (I know Google was trying something once but that it didn't work).

ROBIN; E-books have certainly had an impact.  It's part of the market share - everyone wants a slice of the reading pie.  Our slice just won't be electronic.  We see that we have to feature and discount hardcovers we believe in - and it's worth it to us to help support authors we love.  That's what we're good at, anyway.  It may be a skill that's rapidly becoming antique, but we're clinging to it.  One thing we do see is that mass markets - which we LOVE! - are taking a big hit.  Thank heavens for Berkley Prime Crime.

RHYS. What trends do you notice in mystery buying. What's hot and what's not?

ROBIN; My husband and I were just talking about this.  Since we are selling more hardcovers by big names as there's nowhere else to get them downtown, we were trying to figure out the sweet spot.  A hot book will sell fast and furious for two weeks and then fall off the table.  It's figuring out when the edge of the table is coming up that's tricky!   We do well with mass market cozies, selling them 4 or 5 at a time to cozy readers.  We do well with (for us) established authors in hardcover, i.e. authors we've worked with to establish with our customers.  (A short list for us would be Loren Estleman, Steve Hamilton, Kent Krueger, Louise Penny, Rhys Bowen, Julia Spencer-Fleming.  We will sometimes sell a case of those author's book the first week of release.) Maybe the hot book of the summer was GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn, with a general tendency to psychological writing - Tana French, Sophie Hannah, S.J. Bolton - all do well for us.  So does international fiction though that's not as hot as it was even last year.

RHYS. Okay, give us some predictions. Which new or unknown authors should be be watching? 

ROBIN: Hmm.  So far this year I think Julia Keller's first crime novel, A KILLING IN THE HILLS, is a knockout.  My husband is a huge fan of Elizabeth Hand, who had her second crime novel, AVAILABLE DARK, out this past spring.  And we saw a breakout last season with G.M. Malliett's WICKED AUTUMN.  We're looking forward to the second book.  Cornelia Read - though she has several books out she's not as well known as she might be.  I loved VALLEY OF ASHES.  I was also a fan of Eleanor Kuhn's A SIMPLE MURDER, about a Shaker community after the revolutionary war.  And again, though she has several books out, both of us are HUGE fans of S.J, Bolton.  She is now writing a series rather than standalones.

RHYS:. Do you think that real paper books have a future or will we all be electronic in a few years?

ROBIN: I don't think ALL electronic, though I think as readers brought up on e-books age it will trend that way.  I hope at that point to be either dead or retired!  But I have hope when I see my children, who are young adults, and my nieces and nephews (all under 14) reading actual books.   I still think there will be collectors who will want a paper book.  They are beautiful objects that have been with us for hundreds and hundreds of years.  I don't see books going away completely.

RHYS. What book do you wish someone would write?

ROBIN:Now, that is why I am a bookseller and not a writer!  I did read an exquisite book this year, THE THING ABOUT THUGS by Tabish Khair, that was a combination of lots of things I love.  It's set in Victorian England and is really gorgeously written and put together.  But I wouldn't have thought of it myself!

RHYS. and lastly... you were president of the IMBA recently. What happened to the best seller list? Those writers who would never make the NYT got a terrific boost from seeing their names on the list. I know I did when I saw my first Evan book there and I still have the list on my board where I was number 1 over James Lee Burke, Janet Evaonvich and Daniel Silva!

ROBIN: Well, exhaustion!  I was president of IMBA but more onerously I was in charge of the bestseller list, which, because we are all pretty busy, mostly involved hounding people for their lists.  So a combination of laziness and busy-ness, I guess.  If there was a way to cajole everyone into participating we would still be doing it, and I may take another whack at it at some point.

RHYS: Robin, thank you so much for coming to visit. We hope the party today is a rip-roaring success and we hope that you continue to flourish (at least as long as we keep writing books!)
And I'll be posting pix of tonight's event on my Facebook page tomorrow (www.facebook.com/RhysBowenAuthor).
And the Jungle Red sisters are heading off to Bouchercon tomorrow morning. I'll try to get some candid pix of us too! More to follow.....

I Wish I'd Written That!

RHYS BOWEN: At the end of August I was crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2. On the second day out we awoke to high seas and gale force winds. Rain peppered the windows and we had to hold on to walk anywhere. (Luckily it was the one rough day. The rest were smooth, bright and beautiful). But the first thing that came into my head when I saw those waves were the words "None of them knew the color of the sky."

They are, of course, from the opening line of Stephen Crane's The Open Boat, a story of surviving a shipwreck. It made a big impression on me when I first read it. The rest of the first paragraph goes like this: None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.

Immediately afterward I was plunged into gloom because I had never written anything memorable like that--a style, an instantly identifying work that would make a reader say "that's Rhys Bowen."  So I started thinking about what pieces of literature I wished I had written.

Jane Austen, of course. I'd love to be known for Pride and Prejudice.
Walt Whitman's poetry. I'd like to sing the body electric.
Robert Frost's poetry. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood sums up my life.
More recently Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, A. S. Byatt's Possession,
and in our field Tony Hillerman's Southwest, Reginald Hill's On Beulah Height.

So how about you: What do you wish you had written?

HALLIE EPHRON: Oh, Rhys - great choices!

I just finished GONE GIRL and I wish I'd written it -- I've been a Gillian Flynn fan since her debut with "Sharp Objects." She writes completely riveting novels with nary a likeable characters. That's writing.

Also wish I'd written: Olive Kitteridge (Elizabth Strout); The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)... and The Da Vinci Code, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and all the Harry Potter novels.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Wish I'd written? Oh, what a question...I wish I'd written Bonfire of the Vanities. And Custom of the Country--there's no one like Edith Wharton. I wish I'd written Linwood Barclays new TRUST YOUR EYES--have you read it? Wow. Mo Hayder's GONE. Well, Stephen Kings THE STAND. But it's almost blasphemy to say so...it's so out of the ballpark.

And I'm with ya, Hallie, on The DaVinci Code. That would have been fun. Oh! Presumed Innocent. Mos def. A really good and fair surprise ending beats all.

JAN BROGAN - I wish I'd written The Remains of the Day.  And I really wish I'd written Lonesome Dove.
I'd also be happy if I wrote The Big Short, but only if I could have done as good a job as Michael Lewis.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, tough one, Rhys. Like you, A.S. Byatt's Possession. Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night. Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. Lord of the Rings and all the Harry Potter books:-) Non-fiction? Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa. Such a simple opening line: "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of Ngong Hills." Once read, never forgotten. Crime novels; Reginald Hill's On Beulah Height is brilliant.  There are so many more....

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Look, I'd naturally be proud to have written any of the books mentioned, but I'm much more likely to think - I wish I'd written that sentence or paragraph - not an entire book. It's not ego, just the way my brain works.

RHYS: Okay, I confess. I wish I'd written Harry Potter. Not just because of the money it has made but because of the way Rowling created a universe and the warm, terrific characters she put in it.
So let's hear from you. Is there one work of literature that you wish you had written?. 

Thou Shalt Not Kill

RHYS: As a writer I've never had any problem killing in wicked and devious ways. I've shot, stabbed, poisoned people. Hit them over the head with blunt objects, pushed them off cliffs and out of boats. I've even shut someone in a steam room and turned up the heat to maximum.

But for some reason when it comes to real life I have a complete aversion to killing. I don't mean people. Most of us have that aversion. I mean things that others kill without a second thought. Insects, for one thing. I am terrified of spiders but I can't kill one. I have to drop a glass over it, slip in a sheet of paper and then carry it safely to the garden. This is sometimes a stupid thing to do. When I was up in Sedona I inadvertently carried a Brown Recluse carefully out of the house with only a sheet of paper between me and eternity.

Now I know all the other Jungle Reds are fabulous gardeners. Their gardens look like show places with banks of color, appropriate to the season. Mine looks neat and tidy with no color for most of the year. Of course things are harder to grow in California with all the deer and the lack of rain, but another reason is that I can't dig things out when they need to be replaced. I simply can't kill a living plant. I've read all those articles on plants sending out distress signals to each other. Take a look at the pathetic specimen in the pot that should have been replaced ages ago. I keep hoping it will revive. It probably won't because it lives on my hot deck and I'm away so much. But I'm too soft hearted.

How about you, Reds. Do you find it easy to kill? (In real life, I mean.)

LUCY BURDETTE: You STEAMED someone to death Rhys? That's rich! I'm pretty soft-hearted but I do have my limits. One of them is the house centipede or Scutigera, as I learned it's called. I just finished Googling to find the name and learned that they feed on other insects, including bedbugs. Even so, they give me the creeps so bad that I have no trouble pounding them with whatever shoe is handy. Ditto, anything eating my indoor lime tree. I don't like to use pesticides so one summer I talked my stepson into helping me hand squash hundreds of little green aphids. By God, we won too!

And I do have a plant that I have asked my hub to remove to the trash. It's been in decline for years (maybe because I haven't watered it:), and now's the time....

HALLIE EPHRON: Ooooh, that is one creepy centipede that lurks in Roberta's pipes. It's something out of a Stephen King novel. I do carry spiders carefully out of the house. Ours are pretty harmless but fierce insect eaters and lovely web builders, and invariably we get a raft of baby spiders each spring. Charlotte I, Charlotte II...

I squash flies and clap fruit flies to death. Mash pantry moths, should they dare to appear, to a black paste. Boil live lobsters and clams.

You can't kill a PLANT, Rhys? What do you eat??? Our garden would be a jungle in about ten minutes if I didn't weed and transplant. Meanwhile, our compost heap is busy turning all that lovely plant matter into lovely rich soil.

In my books, people die but I rarely kill them off.

RHYS: Okay, Hallie, I know I'm a hypocrite. I know someone else harvests everything I eat. Just as I know someone else kills the adorable little lambs for the chops I love so much. But the plant looks at me and I decide to give it another chance.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: One little word. Earwigs. Oh, my gosh, I hate them. Let me just say first that when an ant comes into the house, I scoot it onto a piece of cardboard and carry it outside. (Parenthetically, I always think about the ant lore that could come out of that--as the ant tells the story of how he was swooped up on a big white magic carpet, and carried through the air by a giant..well, anyway.)

Those pantry moths? I delightedly crush into powder. (What're they made of, anyway? Nothing?)  Moths? Inside? Sorry, hate 'em and will mercilessly kill. Spiders, I ignore and hope they go away. 

But earwigs? I am homicidal. They get into my gorgeous dahlias and then creep out when you bring the flowers inside. It's horrible, but the only way to kill them is to drown them in soapy water, and then throw them into the spinning garbage disposal. Hey. They shouldn't have gotten into my flowers.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: First the axilotyl, then the scutigera. Lucy is helping me make up for all of those bio classes I cut in high school!

I have a hard time tossing plants on the compost pile. I always think I can save them. Shrubs and understory trees I inherited from the previous owner sometimes have to go. But I've lived in my house for 20 years so I'm taking my time. I've got two sick trees which i've been trying to nurse back to health all year.

Interestingly enough, I've taken a break from killing people in my novels, but slugs? I used to be squeamish about them but now - SQUISH! And I go outside after it rains to look for them. Is that weird?

JAN BROGAN: Like Ro, I've taken a break from killing people in novels. Or at least murdering them. But after having a beam of a porch destroyed by carpenter ants, I squish the first one I see each spring and immediately have the house treated. I figure if I actually hire someone to do the killing, I'm still killing.

I also used to save spiders, until I heard an NPR story about someone who got bit in her bedroom by a "brown spider" and spent a lifetime with MS-like symptoms. Since I don't know what a brown spider is, I kill all spiders except Daddy Long Legs, which I kindly eject.

And those pantry moths - I don't know what they are made of Hank - but I hate them. I see one and I got on a serial killing spree, opening every cabinet and wapping everything in sight.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: One word. COCKROACHES!!!! I HATE them. Will smash them with anything and enjoy the crunchy splat. Lucy, you must have them in Florida? Not even Wall-E softened my heart towards roaches. Mosquitos, if I'm faster than they are. Spiders I admit I will kill in the house, because they bite me, and I had a friend die from a brown recluse bite years ago.

Outside, we don't kill anything. Totally organic garden for seventeen years. One year, we had an orb spider spin a web on our front porch window. We left it all summer and into the fall, even though our house looked like a haunted house. The web was so beautiful, and the spider so fascinating to watch.

We have loads of birds, bees, butterflies, moths, and quite a few frogs and toads, of which I am very proud, as they are so threatened in today's environment.

RHYS: So do tell, dear readers, can you kill without a second thought?

JUNGLE REDS HEAD TO CLEVELAND TO ATTEND BOUCHERCON THE WORLD MYSTERY CONVENTION. STAY TUNED FROM ON THE SPOT REPORTS.
AND COMING THIS WEEK ON JUNGLE REDS:
Tuesday: I wish I'd written that.
Wednesday: An interview with Aunt Agatha's bookstore on their 20th anniversary
Thursday: Thoughts on Halloween, costume parties and celebrating the birth of my new e-story called MASKED BALL AT BROXLEY MANOR.
Friday: Do you believe in love at first sight?
ALSO ON FRIDAY THE FAMOUS JUNGLE REDS PANEL AT BOUCHERCON--ACTUALLY IT'S OUR VERSION OF FAMILY FEUD. IF YOU'RE ATTENDING BOUCHERCON DON'T YOU DARE MISS IT!
Saturday will be our report from the convention
and Sunday our beloved Kaye Barley makes her monthly appearance.