Guest Blogger: Kelley Armstrong, author of Spellbound (Savannah Levine/Otherworld series)

Today I have the honor of once again welcoming author Kelley Armstrong to the pages of Somebody Dies. (Regular readers may remember her interview with author Marjorie M. Liu back in July 2010.) Armstrong's latest book in her Otherworld series is Spell Bound, the second to feature Savannah Levine as narrator. This time, Kelley comes to us to talk about something close to the hearts of all writers: getting published.

Luck, Talent & Timing

Last month I did my annual stint teaching dark-fantasy writing at the University of Toronto. Now I’m in Melbourne, getting ready to speak to aspiring writers at the Romance Writers of Australia conference. And despite the fact that I’m halfway around the globe, there is one question that will remain the same, one question I cannot answer. “Why am I not getting published?”

If it’s a new writer, there’s an easy response: Just give it time. Writing is like any other craft. It takes practice, and you can’t expect success on your first book.

But often the question isn’t coming from new writers. It’s from people who have been practicing—for years, writing book after book, getting feedback, doing everything they can to improve. They win contests. They get positive rejection from agents and editors (yes, there is such a thing as a positive rejection!). They are so close. And yet the offers—of representation or, better yet, publication—elude them. Family and friends, once encouraging and supportive, begin to quietly suggest they take up a new hobby. Their dreams teeter on the cliff, one small nudge from falling and shattering. And all they want is for someone—an agent, an editor, an author—to tell them what they’re doing wrong. Just tell them, and they’ll fix it.

If only it was that easy.

I’ve been there. I’ve teetered on that edge. I’ve raged that my writing is horrible and I’ll never be published and I should just stop trying. I’ve even thrown a manuscript into a fireplace…a grand gesture somewhat weakened by having backups on my computer. So how did I finally get published? Did I practice until I wrote the perfect book that agents and editors just couldn’t refuse? No. I broke in the way most writers do—by keeping at it until I floundered onto the perfect intersection of luck, talent and timing.

For me, talent equals craft. Craft, as I said, is about practice. Write, write, write some more, and eventually it doesn’t suck. My luck came when an instructor offered to recommend my work to an agent who turned out to be a perfect match for it. As for timing, that was also luck—I wrote a book that I thought was unmarketable, and the market just happened to be ready for it, primed by a resurging interest in paranormal fiction.

If asked how I got published, I’ll say, “I just got lucky.” But that’s a lie. I didn’t just happen to sit down and write a book and sell it. I had a lifelong dream, and I gave it everything I had. I wrote as often as I could. I joined writing groups. I took courses. I read voraciously. I experimented with genre and form. And you can bet I wouldn’t have thrown that manuscript in the fire if I didn’t know I had backups. So how did I get published? The same way I’m trying to stay published: perseverance.

If you’re trying to get published, keep trying. Keep writing. And keep trying to get published—it’s the only way you’re going to hit the luck and timing parts of the equation.

If you know someone who’s trying to get published, this blog is for you, too. Support them. Encourage them. Understand that it’s not all about talent. If they’re in for the long haul, be there for them. They’ll need it.

Thanks to Kelley Armstrong for sharing her experience and knowledge. Spell Bound is out now and is available in hardcover and for the Kindle.

Hard Case Crime signs with Titan Publishing -- also, Gabriel Hunt's future and other news from founder Charles Ardai

We've got some big news to announce today: After a year's hiatus, Hard Case Crime will be returning to bookstores with new titles in 2011.

As you know, our relationship with Dorchester Publishing (Hard Case Crime's publisher since the line's launch in 2004) came to an end a few months ago when Dorchester announced it was getting out of the business of publishing mass-market paperback books. This left Hard Case Crime without a home. I've spent the past six weeks in meetings with other publishers interested in giving us a new home, and I was gratified to receive offers from five of the firms we met with. They were all firms I respect greatly and would have enjoyed working with, but in the end, one stood out as clearly the best match, and that was UK-based Titan Publishing.

Based in London, Titan is a publisher both of fiction and of gorgeous art books focusing on pop culture such as movie poster art, pin-ups, newspaper comic strips, and Golden Age comic books. They have worked with filmmakers such as J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, and George Lucas. Titan has been around for 30 years, has more than 200 employees, and in addition to publishing books also has a magazine division, a retail division (Titan owns the famous Forbidden Planet bookstore in London, and until recently co-owned the Murder One mystery bookstore with Maxim Jakubowski), and a merchandise division that produces items such as T-shirts, sculptures, and accessories. It's fun to imagine what sorts of cool Hard Case Crime products we might create with them!

But first things first: books.

Titan plans to acquire all existing stock of Hard Case Crime's backlist from Dorchester Publishing and to resume shipping these titles to booksellers immediately. Hard Case Crime will relaunch in September/October 2011 with four new books, including two you've heard about before — Choke Hold by Christa Faust (sequel to her Edgar Award-nominated Money Shot) and Quarry's Ex by Max Allan Collins (the latest in the popular series of hit man novels by the author of Road to Perdition), both of which were in the works at Dorchester but never got published — and two you haven't heard about, never-before-published novels by major writers in the field (MWA Grand Masters, names to be announced shortly).

You'll be hearing more about all four books over the coming months, I promise. In the meantime, if you'd like a little taste of Quarry's Ex and Choke Hold, you can see their cover art and read a sample chapter from each at our Web site.

(Why so long a wait? It has to do with the sales cycle in the book publishing business. Titan's sales force is already selling July/August 2011 titles to stores now; September/October 2011 is the soonest we can get new books out if we want to have enough time for booksellers to consider and order them, and then for Titan to print and ship them, etc.)

We will also still be going ahead with our special hardcover "double" volume with Subterranean Press, featuring two long-lost Lawrence Block novels [69 Barrow Street and Strange Embrace — Ed.] bound back-to-back. More info on that one as soon as we have a firm publication date and cover art to to show you!

In other news, Haven, the SyFy television series inspired by one of our books (The Colorado Kid by Stephen King), just completed its first season and has been renewed for a second. If you haven't seen the show or only caught the first few episodes, I'd encourage you to give it a(nother) try — it got really good by the end of the season (and no, I'm not just saying that because I wrote the penultimate episode and came up with the story for one before that...). It's a little different from what you see in our books, since every story contains elements of the supernatural — but it's still a show about a FBI agent, a cop, and a criminal, and features some awfully hard cases....

Also: Universal Pictures acquired the rights to two other Hard Case Crime books — Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence by my close personal friend Richard Aleas — and has attached a director (Jonathan Levine, The Wackness) and screenwriter (Michael Bacall, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) to the project. No guarantee that a movie will actually get made, of course, but it's a very exciting first step.

What else is new? Well, Hard Case Crime's sister line, The Adventures of Gabriel Hunt, is staying with Dorchester for the time being, and they have plans to reissue all of those books — including the sixth, which never came out in mass-market paperback — in the larger "trade paperback" format (as well as e-book format). If everything goes as planned, those should start coming next year. If you poke around online, you can also find an audiobook edition of one book in the series, Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear, produced by AudioRealms. If there's ever been a genre suited to audiobook adaptation, it's tales of adventure! (If you don't feel like hunting for it — pun intended — here's a link.)

That's all the news this time around. There will be more, probably fairly soon -- you'll certainly be hearing from me well before this time next year, when the new books come out. But in the meantime, I want to thank you for all your patience and your support. It's great to know you're out there, as passionate about our books as ever. I promise: We'll give you some good scratching for your itch just as soon as we can.

New books will be published in paperback (possibly some in hardcover as well!); ebook editions will also be released across multiple platforms. Titan is distributed in the U.S. and Canada by Random House.

We're very excited about working with Titan (indeed, we had offers from five publishers and chose Titan over several that were much larger and better-known) -- they love pulp fiction as much as we do and appreciate that in books like ours the visual dimension is just as important as the storytelling. It's hard to imagine a better home for Hard Case Crime.

Best,
Charles

Official press release:

Hard Case Crime Returns!

Titan Books to Relaunch Acclaimed Pulp Paperback Series

New York, NY; London, UK (October 19, 2010) — Titan Books and series creator Charles Ardai announced today that they are teaming up to relaunch the popular Hard Case Crime series of paperback crime novels. Nominated five times in five years for the Edgar Allan Poe award, the mystery genre’s highest honor, Hard Case Crime has published such luminaries as Stephen King (the book that was the basis for the new TV series Haven), Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Pete Hamill, Max Allan Collins, Madison Smartt Bell and Roger Zelazny, to name just a few. Each book features new cover art in the classic pulp style, including covers painted by Robert McGinnis, the legendary illustrator who painted the original James Bond movie posters.

Hard Case Crime has won praise from dozens of major publications ranging from Time, Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly to Entertainment Weekly, Playboy, and Reader’s Digest, and has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s Fresh Air, and in every major newspaper in America (including repeated coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and USA Today).

First launched in 2004, Hard Case Crime published 66 titles through August 2010, at which time its long-time publisher, Dorchester Publishing, announced it was exiting the mass market paperback publishing business after nearly 40 years. After receiving offers from five other publishers (including two of the largest in the world) to continue the line, Charles Ardai selected UK-based Titan Publishing as Hard Case Crime’s new home.

“Titan has an extraordinary record of creating beautiful, exciting books with exactly the pop culture sensibility that Hard Case Crime exists to celebrate,” said Charles Ardai, founder and editor of Hard Case Crime and an Edgar Award-winning mystery writer himself. “Titan is one of the few publishers that loves pulp fiction as much as we do.”

Titan’s first new Hard Case Crime titles, scheduled to come out in September and October 2011, include Quarry's Ex, a new installment in the popular series of hit man novels by Road to Perdition creator Max Allan Collins; Choke Hold, Christa Faust’s sequel to her Edgar Award-nominated Hard Case Crime novel Money Shot; and two never-before-published novels by major authors in the crime genre (both recipients of the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America).

Additionally, Titan plans to acquire all existing stock of Hard Case Crime’s backlist titles from Dorchester Publishing and resume shipping those titles to stores immediately.

“Hard Case Crime has done a remarkable job in a very short time of building a brand known for outstanding crime fiction and stunning artwork,” said Nick Landau, Publisher of Titan Books and CEO of the Titan Publishing Group. “We are thrilled to partner with Charles and look forward to bringing Hard Case Crime to a wider audience around the world, not only through the novels themselves but also through an innovative merchandise program.”

For more information, call Hard Case Crime on 646-205-2181 or e-mail media@hardcasecrime.com; call Titan (US media) on 914-788-1005 or email ktc2000@aol.com; or call Titan (UK media) on +44 (0)20 7803 1906 or email sophie.calder@titanemail.com.

About Hard Case Crime

Charles Ardai founded Hard Case Crime in 2004 through Winterfall LLC, a privately owned media company responsible for a variety of print, film, and television projects. The series has been nominated for and/or won numerous awards since its inception including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Anthony, the Barry, and the Spinetingler Award. The series’ bestselling title of all time, The Colorado Kid by Stephen King, was the basis for the current SyFy television series Haven, on which Charles Ardai works as a writer and producer. There have also been a number of feature film deals involving Hard Case Crime books, including The Last Lullaby, based on The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins and starring Tom Sizemore as the titular hit man, and more recently Universal Pictures’ purchase of the film rights to Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence by Richard Aleas.

About Titan Publishing Group

Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. The company is based at offices in London, but operates worldwide, with sales and distribution in the US & Canada being handled by Random House. Titan Publishing Group has three divisions: Titan Books, Titan Magazines/Comics and Titan Merchandise. In addition to fiction, including novelizations of films such as Terminator Salvation, original novels based on TV shows such as Primeval and Supernatural and the popular computer game Runescape, and the celebrated Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series of novels launched in 2009, Titan Books also publishes an extensive line of media- and pop culture-related non-fiction, graphic novels, art and music books.

Guest Blogger: Paul Levine, author of the Jake Lassiter and Solomon vs. Lord series

Today, I have the honor of welcoming author Paul Levine to the pages of Somebody Dies. He has written over a dozen novels, primarily in the legal-thriller genre, including the popular Jake Lassiter and Solomon vs. Lord series. His latest venture is the 20th-anniversary edition of his first novel, To Speak for the Dead, now available for the Amazon Kindle.

Levine tells about the experience — and what's special about this new edition:

JAKE LASSITER IS BACK: 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION NOW AN E-BOOK

“When is Jake Lassiter coming back?”

I get the question at bookstores and Bouchercon, at Thrillerfest and Sleuthfest, at Left Coast Crime, and even my dentist’s office. I might be promoting one of the Solomon vs. Lord books, or Illegal, but the questions always come back to this: “Where the heck is Jake?”

I wrote seven Lassiter novels between 1990 and 1997. Since then, I’ve written two stand-alone thrillers, a four-book series, and a bunch of episodes for two CBS-TV dramas. But what everyone wants to talk about is that linebacker-turned-lawyer, a tough guy with a tender heart.

“Jake’s not in jail, is he?”

I don’t think so, but given his conduct in court, maybe he should be.

Truth is, Jake Lassiter lives!

In Fall 2011, Lassiter will be out in hardcover from Bantam as Jake searches for a missing woman from his past and becomes entangled in the intertwined worlds of politics and porn. But wait, there’s more:

Jake Lassiter is back in print now!

Or rather, in bytes.

Online.

Just a click away.

I’m talking about e-books. You can start reading the 20th Anniversary edition of To Speak for the Dead in about 90 seconds.  An international bestseller, the first Lassiter novel was named one of the best mysteries of the year by the Los Angeles Times and became an NBC World Premiere Movie.

For a limited time, e-book sellers are offering To Speak for the Dead at the astonishing price of $2.99. Right, less than your double mocha latte, which by the way, Jake Lassiter would never drink. (That price may surprise the collector who e-mailed recently that he paid $325.00 for a signed first edition of To Speak for the Dead. Wow. I have a couple cartons in the garage if he wants more).

Now, here’s the best part: all author royalties — 100 percent — will go to the Four Diamonds Fund, which supports cancer research and treatment at Hershey Children’s Hospital. It’s a cause dear to my heart.

The facility, part of Penn State’s College of Medicine, is one of the premier institutions of its kind. Thanks to the Fund, children whose families lack the financial wherewithal receive top-notch medical care.

There’s even more news about Jake. The second book of the Lassiter series, Night Vision, is also available as an e-book, as is 9 Scorpions, a stand-alone legal thriller set at the Supreme Court.

In the next several months, all seven Lassiter books will be on Amazon Kindle and the other e-bookselling platforms. So, even if you’re new to the series, there’s time to catch up before the new one hits the stores next year. If you’ve already read the books in the dead-trees format, try them again on your e-reader or right on your desktop or laptop. Here’s a quick look at what’s available now.

To Speak for the Dead — Defending a surgeon in a malpractice case, Jake begins to suspect that his client is innocent of negligence...but guilty of murder. A sexy widow, a robbed grave, and another murder follow. “Move over Scott Turow. To Speak for the Dead is courtroom drama at its very best.” —Larry King, USA Today

Night Vision — Jake is appointed a special prosecutor when a serial killer begins stalking women on a sexually oriented Internet chat site. Enlisting a brilliant woman psychiatrist, Jake wades into a maze of lies and corruption to uncover the murderer. “Sparkles with wit and subtlety.” —Toronto Star

9 Scorpions — Sam Truitt, the newest and youngest justice on the Supreme Court, hires a brilliant and stunning female law clerk, unaware she has a personal stake in a huge case before the court. It’s a story of passion and violence, justice and revenge, in and out of court. “A relentlessly entertaining summer read.” —New York Daily News

For more info and to purchase, please visit http://www.paul-levine.com/content/jake-lassiter.asp.

Guest Blogger: Scott Nicholson, author of The Skull Ring

Today, I have the honor of welcoming author Scott Nicholson to the pages of Somebody Dies. He has written over half a dozen horror novels, including The Farm and They Hunger. His latest is The Skull Ring, published by his own Haunted Computer Books.

I asked Scott about his recent decision to embrace electronic publishing.

I’m one of those writers teetering between two worlds. I was inducted into this writing game with the typical professional mantras: Write what you know; never pay an agent to represent your work; never self-publish.

About 700 rejection slips later, I sold six mid-list mass-market paperbacks. Some sold well, got award notice, and earned fans; others faded with barely a trace. Somewhere along the way, my career lost its momentum. I am captain of the ship, so it all starts with my lax hand on the rudder.

After parting ways with my agent and going several years without a book sale, I was at a crossroads. Giving up wasn’t an option, since I’d been writing new novels, screenplays, comic books, and short stories and had a mountain of material. I queried a few agents and publishers and found the industry had changed a lot since I broke in — now not only did industry professionals take six months or more to respond, but they often didn’t bother to reply at all.

I’d followed the developments of the Kindle, but I was still too doped from my industry indoctrination to seriously consider self-publishing. Every professional writing organization I’d ever been in had a list of “approved publishers,” and you couldn’t call yourself a “professional” unless you sold a book to someone on the list. It didn’t matter that some of the publishers on the list might only pay a $500 advance, and that you might earn $20,000 from selling the book yourself — it’s shunned within the tribe.

After I got the rights back to my first and best-selling novel, the supernatural thriller The Red Church, I kicked around ways to get it back out to the public. All of them looked difficult or costly, and I knew I didn’t want to print a garage full of books and drive around servicing commission accounts of two or three books per store.

Luckily, the e-book phenomenon was taking off, mostly in the underground, where independent authors could release books with little overhead. Amazon also made it very easy to publish e-books, and even set up paper books through its print-on-demand press.

After a little research, I put out a couple of e-books on Amazon, including The Red Church and some older story collections. To my utter delight, the novel quickly reached a new audience and sold steadily. It sold so well that I predict I will earn more from it this year than I did from its original advance paid by the print publisher.

After a couple of months, I released The Skull Ring, a psychological thriller in which a flawed heroine is targeted by a sinister cult. The novel always seemed to slip between the cracks and had been around for a while, but never got shopped. Today, with the click of a few buttons, I can send it on its merry way to e-book audiences in multiple platforms and formats.

I never dreamed I’d self-publish, much less release an original novel. I had to step out on the tightrope and realize no one — agent, publisher, or another writer — was going to save me. If I wanted a career, I’d have to risk it.

The mere act of taking action rejuvenated my writing, put control and outcome back in my hands, and opened an entire new world. The only limit to my growth is my ability to connect with an audience and please it. If readers like the work, they buy it, and I write more books. Shortly after that second novel was released, I was contacted by an agent, and hopefully I will be releasing paper books through New York again. In the meantime, I am preparing two more original novels [Drummer Boy and Disintegration] for release while working to get back rights to my older novels.

It’s a new era, and the old-school phrase “Money flows to the writer” can now be absolute — it doesn’t have to detour through agents, publishers, corporations, distributors, or bookstores. The successful writers of this new era will move in both worlds and take more responsibility for their careers, and they will choose their industry allies carefully.

In this new era, you can actually say “No” to a book offer — something nearly unthinkable a decade ago — because you know what your books are really worth. The audience tells you.

That sounds like a sustainable career move to me.

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Scott Nicholson is publishing books and comics through Haunted Computer Books. Check out their titles. He has signed copies of The Skull Ring for $9.95 plus $2 shipping, as well as other books available through his website. His e-books The Red Church, The Skull Ring, Burial to Follow, Ashes, The First, and Flowers are available through Amazon and Smashwords.com. Digital comic books, including the Dirt and Grave Conditions series, are available through his Web site and DriveThru Comics. The novels Drummer Boy and Disintegration will be released in April and May 2010. For writers, he operates the freebie download manual Write Good or Die.