murder.booklocker.com

A friend called today to tell me about some folks she had dinner with the other night. The daughter is a freshman in college, majoring in English. When my friend asked what her plans for the future were, she replied that she wanted to be “a successful author.” Using that comment as an opening, My friend went on to brag about her friend, the author (me).

Somehow in our conversation, we wandered off to whether or not I would find a publisher for the second book (the first was self-published). Along the way she mentioned that if someone else did publish it, then it would show up on amazon.com. I quickly assured her that my first novel would be appearing there any day now. It would just take a while.

“But you self-published it!”

“Doesn’t matter,” I replied. “It’s a real book, you know.” Unconvinced (I think), she plugged my name into amazon. Voila! There was PARK RIDGE in all its glory.

As we talked, she kept trying other booksellers. “Oh, look! Barnes and Noble has the picture.” While she kept searching, I squeezed the phone between cheek and shoulder and typed in amazon.com to see for myself.

I’m pleased, of course. But a little bit concerned that it takes someone else or a website (whether booklocker.com or amazon or barnes and noble) or whatever to give my writing a semblance of respectability. I’m reminded of the old saw about whether a tree falling in the woods makes a sound if there’s no one to hear it.

I’m reading Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter by Blaize Clement. We were headed out of the library and there it was — propped on the end of one of the shelves. On impulse, my partner picked it up and I’m not a bit sorry.

However, it strikes me strange that the book is large print (I’m not in need of that yet!) but is printed on really thin paper. I’m assuming, maybe incorrectly, that the larger print targets older readers. The curious thing is that I have a touch of neuropathy in my fingers (not unusual in older folks either) and I’m having trouble turning the pages easily. So while the large print solves one problem, the thin pages create another.

Another thing which struck me was the way the book handled emphasis. I scanned a bit so you can see what I’m talking about:

In the line “He can’t do that many bypasses” the word THAT is in a larger, italic, sans-serif face. Notice that in typing that line, I put the word that I wanted to emphasize in all caps. I’m thinking that what I felt I should do had some influence on what the publishers/author thought they had to do. Normally, one might expect boldface for emphasis. But speaking as someone who used boldface to set off the “Murder” and the “Videotape” sections, boldface doesn’t always turn out like you think it will. Within a sentence, boldface in a book, jumps right off the page at you.

Given that in these days of text messaging, email, etc. folks put words in all caps, or italic or even bold italic with abandon, it’s hard to remember the days when sentence construction and word choice alone controlled the emphasis that the author felt should be there.

Still, the choice to interrupt the text with a different font — sans-serif, larger and italic — is intriguing.

The large print edition is published by Thorndike Press, Waterville, Maine.

Just finished two more book by Nadia Gordon: Death by the Glass and Murder Alfresco. We weren’t very impressed by her first book, Sharpshooter. A bit too contrived. But the others were much better.

My real gripe is that Gordon rushed through to the end in a blur. As an author I understand that the action needs to pick up, but even after I finished, I wasn’t sure that I had the sequence and the actual facts down.

This book also had more humor to lighten what it surely her darkest book so far. It made for a good balance.

Yesterday I discovered a reference to John Hagedorn, Associate Professor, Deparment of Criminal Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago. I had to chuckle at the coincidence — the detective in PARK RIDGE has a BA and MA from UIC — in criminal justice!

I sent email to John, assuring him that we were not related, remarking on the coincidence. He responded with, “Of course you know of Jessica Hagedorn (Dogeaters, no relation. I am a dog lover) and Ann Hagedorn who has just done a book on the Underground Railroad. Hagedorns Rule!!!

Ann Hagedorn Auerbach’s book, Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Other books include: Savage Peace: America in 1919, Ransom: The Untold Story of International Kidnapping, Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Calumet Farm Inc., America’s Premier Racing Dynasty.

Jessica Hagedorn is known as a novelist, poet, multimedia and performance artist. Her books include Dogeaters (which John mentioned), Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction, Dream Jungle, The Gangster of Love, Burning Heart: A Portrait of the Philippines, and Danger and Beauty.

“John M. Hagedorn is the author of People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City, and Forsaking Our Children: Bureaucracy and Reform in the Child Welfare System. He has studied gangs in Milwaukee for 15 years, most recently as principal investigator in the Posse and Homegirl Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Urban Research Center. He is now investigating the business of drugs and the underground economy.”  MORE