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At the crossroads of America

The crossroads of America is right outside my Super 8 room in Ticonderoga. The Walmart in the rear is in full view of the window. Catty-corner across the intersection are the remains of a grocery store the Walmart must have cratered. McDonald’s, at Walmart’s entrance, advertises the kinds of job America is being built on these days. “Closing shifts, 8p – 1a, $6 an hour.”

There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts in a faux Colonial house-type building with faux chimney. Subway, the great bottom feeder of American retail, is in a building that definitely looks like it was something else before. Nearby are boarded up, run down and creepy, Pyscho looking motels of the old school. You know, the kind with an office at one end and a line of rooms—each with door, window, small bit of porch. At one of these, the weeds and vines grow up and around the motel section as two kids play in the grass in front. Looks like a family is living in the office part.

My favorite place is the 24/7 massive mini—so not really mini—mart and gas station across the street from the Super 8. I get all the candy, beef jerky, iced tea and other provisions I need to work. What work am I doing here?

In the mornings, I’m writing work-in-progress DROP DEAD PUNK, the second in the Coleridge Taylor Mystery series. In the afternoons, I shuttle the Boy Scouts of mighty Pelham Troop 1 to activities the troop does away from the camp. They need the dads to provide transport for some 40 or so scouts, so I turned this into a one-week writer’s retreat. Things are pretty productive here at the crossroads of America. I complete four chapters in one week, an all-time writing record for me. I get real motivation from having to finish a certain amount if I want to participate in the scout activities.

The second day I didn’t get to kayak, sitting instead at a picnic table at base camp banging away at the word count. That was motivation the following two days. I really wanted to attend the rodeo and go white water rafting.

This crossroads, symbolic as it seems of the recession the country’s been through, is appropriate to one of the themes in the book, which is set during the October and November days of 1975 when New York City almost went bankrupt and nearly dragged the country—and perhaps the world—into something far worse than what was already a bad recession. The only difference is other trusted institutions dragged us into this one.

LAST WORDS available for pre-order at Amazon

I thought seeing the cover for LAST WORDS was the most exciting thing to happen to me since starting my novel writing journey. But… seeing that cover on the Amazon pre-order page that popped up yesterday topped everything. You can visit the pre-order page by clicking this link. Right now, you can order the trade paperback. I will post when the page for Kindle orders goes up.

Here’s the news release Camel Press is putting out this week:

Camel Press Announces the October Release of Last Words: New York City on the Brink in 1975

Seattle, WA—On October 1, 2014, Camel Press will release Last Words ($13.95, 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1-60381-207-8), by debut author Rich Zahradnik, book one of a new hardboiled detective series featuring newsman Coleridge Taylor. In Last Words Taylor struggles to keep his job and repair his tarnished reputation as he pursues a story about a dead teenager. The series is set on the mean streets of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs in 1975.

In March of 1975, as New York City hurtles toward bankruptcy and the Bronx burns, newsman Coleridge Taylor roams police precincts and ERs. He is looking for the story that will deliver him from obits, his place of exile at the Messenger-Telegram. Ever since he was demoted from the police beat for inventing sources, the 34-year-old has been a lost soul.

A break comes at Bellevue, where Taylor views the body of a homeless teen picked up in the Meatpacking District. Taylor smells a rat: the dead boy looks too clean, and he’s wearing a distinctive Army field jacket. A little digging reveals that the jacket belonged to a hobo named Mark Voichek and that the teen was a spoiled society kid up to no good, the son of a city official.

Taylor’s efforts to protect Voichek put him on the hit list of three goons who are willing to kill any number of street people to cover tracks that just might lead to City Hall. Taylor has only one ally in the newsroom, young and lovely reporter Laura Wheeler. Time is not on his side. If he doesn’t wrap this story up soon, he’ll be back on the obits page—as a headline, not a byline.

Says Zahradnik, “The year 1975 and the city of New York intrigued me because of the very striking parallels to America today. Then as now, an unpopular war was finally coming to its sad end. A major institution, the city itself, tumbled toward bankruptcy, threatening a cataclysm on the entire financial system. This as banks and ratings agencies ignored the warning signs or willfully misled the public. I chose this time period for the differences as well as the similarities. Solving a mystery in 1975 required good old fashioned legwork and serious brainwork, rather than science fiction-like instant DNA typing and surveillance video available from any and every angle. Taylor has to find a pay phone when he needs to call someone. There’s something satisfying in that for me.”

Rich Zahradnik has been a journalist for 30-plus years, working as a reporter and editor in all major news media, including online, newspaper, broadcast, magazine, and wire services. He lives with his wife, Sheri, and son, Patrick, in Pelham, New York, where he teaches elementary school kids how to publish online and print newspapers. For more information, go to www.richzahradnik.com.

Last Words is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com. After October 1, it will also be for sale in both eBook and 5×8 trade paperback editions on BN.com, the European Amazons, Amazon Japan and select independent bookstores. Bookstores and libraries will be able to order wholesale through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Partners West, or by contacting info@camelpress.com. Libraries can also order from Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Service. Other electronic versions will be available on Smashwords, BN.com, or at any of the major online eBook stores.

ABOUT Camel Press—Based in Seattle Washington, Camel Press is a new imprint owned by Coffeetown Press. Camel Press publishes genre fiction: romance, mystery/suspense, science fiction, horror … or any combination thereof. We publish the books that grab you and hold you in their grip long into the night.

CONTACT:

Catherine Treadgold

Publisher

Camel Press

P.O. Box 70515

Seattle, WA 98127

www.camelpress.com

LAST WORDS cover reveal

Here’s the cover for my crime novel LAST WORDS, which Camel Press will publish Oct. 1. It was great fun seeing the different design options for the cover last week and having my say. What do you think of it? All comments welcome below.

This is my first cover reveal. My first novel to be published, for that matter. I’ve got a lot of firsts going on. This week I was reviewing the edits to the manuscript from my publisher. That was also fun, believe it or not. I’ve traveled a long road to get to the point where someone else is editing my work for publication.

LAST WORDS is now available for pre-order at Amazon by clicking this link.

Here’s the official blurb from Camel:

“In March of 1975, as New York City hurtles toward bankruptcy and the Bronx burns, newsman Coleridge Taylor roams police precincts and ERs. He is looking for the story that will deliver him from obits, his place of exile at the Messenger-Telegram. Ever since he was demoted from the police beat for inventing sources, the 34-year-old has been a lost soul.

Deal for Last Words, three more Taylor novels

I’ve been offered a four-book deal by Camel Press in Seattle for my mystery series, beginning with the completed novel Last Words. The other three will also be based on the protagonist Coleridge Taylor and will be part of what the publisher is calling The Taylor Chronicles. I don’t have a pub date for the first one, but it will be a long way off. Think November at least. The books will come out in trade paperback and e-book. Huge thanks to my agent Dawn Dowdle of Blue Ridge Literary. Also big thanks to the many MANY people who critiqued, edited, read, taught, encouraged, asked after or just didn’t suggest I was bonkers. There are many fingerprints on this little tale of murder.

In other news, I’ve just finished the first draft of Timers, the YA science fiction novel I started after sending off Last Words. I need to work on revisions before turning the manuscript over to Dawn, while writing the next book in The Taylor Chronicles, Drop Dead Punk. What is Timers about? I’m glad you asked. Fifteen-year-old Samuel Tripp fights a time war to save himself, his friends and the universe alongside Rip Van Winkle, the Connecticut Yankee and Ebenezer Scrooge.

More news on that project when I have it.

Cover reveal for ‘Chronicles of Kerrigan’

Fellow writer W.J. May is taking the great leap into the wild world of independent publishing. I’m pleased to be part of her cover reveal this weekend. Blogs across our great nation are publishing the new covers for the novels in her YA fantasy series “Chronicles of Kerrigan.” You’ll see here the covers for the first two, “Rae of Hope” and “Dark Nebula.”

“Rae of Hope” was put out by a traditional publishing house, but W.J. decided the best bet for her would be to “republish” the first book herself and then self-publish the next three in the series. I’m excited to see what will happen. Indie publishing couldn’t be hotter right now. Think Kindles. Think ebooks. Think you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a media reference to “Fifty Shades of Gray.”

“Rae of Hope” and “Dark Nebula” are coming out right now in ebook and soon in print.

Here’s W.J.’s description of “Rae of Hope:”

“How hard do you have to shake the family tree to find the truth about the past?

Fifteen year-old Rae Kerrigan never really knew her family’s history. Her mother and father died when she was young and it is only when she accepts a scholarship to the prestigious Guilder Boarding School in England that a mysterious family secret is revealed.

Will the sins of the father be the sins of the daughter?

As Rae struggles with new friends, a new school and a star-struck forbidden love, she must also face the ultimate challenge: receive a tattoo on her sixteenth birthday with specific powers that may bind her to an unspeakable darkness. It’s up to Rae to undo the dark evil in her family’s past and have a ray of hope for her future.”

You can reach W.J. on her website, Facebook, Twitter: @wanitajump and her blog.

Max Headroom and Ray Bradbury

The tagline for the TV series “Max Headroom” was, famously, “20 minutes into the future…” This future was cyberpunk, gritty and a battleground dystopia where TV networks would do anything to win ratings. Made in 1987, it lasted just 14 episodes.

Any science fiction writer will tell you the most dangerous story to attempt is the one that depicts the near future. No one’s going to call you on getting the year 3535 wrong. But they will when you predict next week. That’s what makes “Max Headroom” so excellent. The show peered just around the corner in 1987, and still stands up 25 years later. My son and I just finished watching the DVD set. This is one of those SF shows—Firefly is another—that barely lasted a season but is still worth getting and watching.

Everything about “Max Headroom” is 20 minutes into the future. New subliminal ads called blipverts are so dangerous they make viewers blow up. Literally explode. Rakers play a deadly underground sport. Dreams are stolen to create ratings-winning TV shows, killing the dreamers in the process. Thugs kill to harvest organs. So-called “Blanks” use their status as the only people with out computer ID numbers to attack the central computer system. A news package broker sells exclusive access to terrorist attacks. Great ratings to follow. That’s a sample, and all the episodes feature stories that could happen any day now.

“Max Headroom” keeps the medium of TV right in its dark satirical cross-hairs, an achievement for a network show. My favorite episode is the second to last (and the last to air in the U.S. after the show was cancelled). “Lessons” follows the efforts of the network censors to shut down pirated feeds of pay-TV education channels. Schooling is delivered by TV in this future, and if you can’t pay, you don’t get an education. Investigative reporter Edison Carter, the show’s hero along with his computer doppelgänger Max Headroom, discovers the pirating is cover for another plot. Blanks are printing actual paper books for the poor kids to learn from. Edison and Max help them, of course.

Max Headroom, who is an AI version of the ultimate anchorman talking head, tells the audience: “Now, I’m no librarian, in fact, I don’t know what star sign I am. But, as a famous person once said, ‘You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.’ And as I – another more famous person – once said, ‘If you don’t teach them to read, you can fool them whenever you like.'”

I’m certain the episode is homage to the late master Ray Bradbury and his Fahrenheit 451. The show ends with the censors defeated and a little girl reading the opening to “A Tale of Two Cities.” I love a cautionary tale about censors and censorship, particularly one that features an old-fashioned flatbed printing press.

Concludes Max, “Have you any idea how successful censorship is on TV? Don’t know the answer? Hmm. Successful, isn’t it?”

Here in our present, last week was Banned Books Week, the effort by libraries, teachers and writers to call attention to attempts at censoring what we read. It’s still happening now, and will be 20 minutes into the future.

Crime fiction and literary punishment

Finishing “The Paris Review Interviews, Volume II” this week got me thinking about the separation—chasm really—that grew between literary and pop fiction in the middle of the last century. The thoughts bubbled up, in fact, after reading the interview with the late Philip Larkin, giant of 20th Century poetry.

Larkin was asked what he read. “Books I’m sent to review. Otherwise novels I’ve read before. Detective stories: Gladys Mitchell, Michael Innes, Dick Francis.”

Detective stories? So this literary giant—the author of my favorite modern poem, “This Be The Verse”—picked up one of Dick Francis’s racetrack whodunits when he kicked back. He wasn’t the only one from the literary big leagues who liked a mystery. I read once William Faulkner usually had a crime novel on his nightstand.

Aren’t these the kinds of things we crime writers want (need?) to hear? We want to be taken seriously by the literary establishment folks. I’ve heard many a genre writer call for a healing of the rift between literary and popular, so we all can be Dickens. Let’s face it, that’s not going to happen.

You write what you imagine. It’s starts there, always and everywhere, not with a theory or a psychology or an ideology. You don’t chose to be Faulkner or Francis. You can try, of course. And that way lies awful writing.

I went Interneting this afternoon to confirm that Faulkner nightstand anecdote. I couldn’t find it. Instead, I came on something even better in the web archive of the J.D. Williams Library at Ole Miss. Faulkner actually wrote detective fiction, something I didn’t know but probably should have. In 1946, his story “An Error in Chemistry” took second place in a short-story competition run by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The story was then included in “Knight’s Gambit,” a collection of six mysteries featuring lawyer Gavin Stevens published in 1949. That was the very same year Faulkner won another prize—the Nobel for Literature. Can you imagine a Nobel winner ever again putting out a bunch of detective stories right as she or he were jetting off to Stockholm? The gulf between the popular, the accessible, the commercial and the literary, the difficult, the art grows wider every year. (Faulkner also slummed in Hollywood, writing the screenplay for the film of Raymond Chandler’s novel “The Big Sleep.” When do think Thomas Pynchon will be taking a writing gig with Spielberg’s company?)

The Ole Miss library is a little treasure drove on Faulkner and crime. It has on loan from the late author’s own library vintage paperbacks he collected, including books by Erle Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout, Eric Ambler and Agatha Christie. I imagine Faulkner and Larkin arguing the merits of Rex Stout and Dick Francis. And Chandler barging into the room—with a gun, to follow his own prescription—to tell them in blunt terms how wrong they both are. And why. Would we learn more from that than the deconstructions of the college profs? I don’t know. It would certainly be more fun.

Maybe, that’s my problem. I just want to have fun. No, that’s too glib. I stand by what I said above. I can only write what I imagine. Imagination comes before everything else. It is what produces the stories, and the language I use. It was the same for Larkin and Faulkner and Francis and Stout. It would have been nice to have been born with Faulkner’s imagination. Alas, I was not. I’ll just have to hope one of my stories ends up on the nightstand of Doris Lessing or Tomas Tranströmer.

Yeah, I know. In my dreams. But that’s what it’s about after all. Dreams.

‘…book paper catches fire, and burns’

I failed to do my job that night. Didn’t even try. I was supposed to be chasing scraps of gossip and bits of deal news that HBO executives might dole out to a neophyte reporter from a C-list trade publication. That was not my excuse for not trying. No, mine was three amazing hours spent talking to the late Ray Bradbury.

I was at something called the television critics tour, an odd little meeting where TV critics from the nation’s newspapers assemble in one place to interview network executives and the stars of upcoming series. The acceleration in coverage of entertainment news, even back in July 1984, meant that beat reporters like me were along in the hopes of the scoops and tidbits that might leak (or be planted).

HBO hosted that warm night in Phoenix. The A-list critics and columnists sat with HBO chief Michael Fuchs and his court of executive vice presidents. This was at a time when Fuchs was being called “The Man Who Ate Hollywood” by Esquire magazine because of his company’s massive spending on movie rights.

A junior publicist led me to a table far from that crowd and sat me next to Bradbury. He was supposed to tub-thump for his new HBO series “Ray Bradbury Theater.” As you know, I was supposed to find a way to track down the scoops being given out several tables away.

Instead, Bradbury and I talked. And talked. We had several glasses of white wine. I fawned. And he was generous, so generous that I didn’t feel like I was fawning, but chatting about something we both loved—story. I don’t remember exact dialogue, but under that clear desert sky we covered Martians and things wicked this way coming and a house destroying itself after its family is itself obliterated by nuclear fire. We talked about his great short story “A Sound of Thunder,” a tale that presages every other change-the-past, change-the-future time travel story. Step on a butterfly hunting dinosaurs and your own present is altered completely.

And, of course, we talked about “Fahrenheit 451.” We had to, for the dystopian novel of firemen burning books was and is my favorite Bradbury story. Read it again. It holds up far better than the bad futures dreamed up by the so-called literary writers—George Orwell’s “1984,” Adolous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Government doesn’t take away books from people; people give up on books as they immerse themselves in interactive soap operas that play on the four walls of their living rooms. (In 2009, Amazon deleted “1984” from thousands of Kindles because of a rights dispute, so really, we’re almost there.)

The setting that night was even perfect. The Arizona Biltmore was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and could easily have been a building on Bradbury’s Mars. His Martians, like Wright, created structures that fit into their arid world by making use of landscape and light.

Bradbury was wonderful company. That too should have been no surprise to me. The Times quoted him in its obituary: “I have fun with ideas; I play with them. I’m not a serious person, and I don’t like serious people. I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring. My goal is to entertain myself and others.”

Entertain me he did. That assignment—ignoring the real assignment—was the best of my varied but not-so-storied journalism career. Some interviews came close. But only close. And many events I reported on would be considered bigger, more important, even more interesting by most anyone else. They are welcome to them. A three-hour conversation in the desert with the master tops them all.

As postscript, I’ll leave you with a link to the obituary the Economist did on Bradbury. It’s great for the form they chose and the stories they touch on.

Cutting 20,000 words, the easy way

Here’s an observation on revising a manuscript. I finished a rewrite last week of my crime novel, cutting 20,000 words in the course of a two month front-to-back revision. This was so I could hand the draft—it’s either the fifth, or maybe the seventh; I’ve lost track—off to my agent Dawn Dowdle for her edit. My work on the rewrite was informed by Dawn’s editing guidelines and everything I learned as a student in the Crime Fiction Academy this year.

I next went back to edit my two-page synopsis to see that I needed to change because the book had gone from 91,000 words to 71,000. The answer: nothing. In other words, when I wrote the synopsis six months ago, none of the material I ended up cutting, including one long flashback and an even longer scene in the final third of the book, was worth including in the synopsis. All those words had no impact on the movement of the story. And some part of me already knew it back then.

Next time, I will listen to my synopsis. I could have saved a bunch of work, and the painful banging of my head into my desk.

Bad blogger! Bad!

I have not been a good blogger. Here’s my fiction update.

Writing is like erosion. It takes a really long time before it looks like you’ve made any progress. Two weeks ago, I finished a second-draft on the first third of my work-in-progress so I could set that aside and do the fifth (or is it sixth?) draft on my completed crime novel “Last Words.” I need to hand off the manuscript to agent Dawn Dowdle by July 1. Last week, I worked in the critiques and edits from my teacher and fellow students at Crime Fiction Academy—all great suggestions from the past five weeks for improving the first 15 pages

This week, I began my own edit, that is, erosion.

I need to do 300 pages by July 1, so this is going to be the more sudden, violent, landslide sort of erosion.

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