You Have the Right to Six Words - The Countdown Begins

It is that time of the week again. I've been going non-stop since last Friday and I'm bound to run out of energy here pretty soon, but the memoirs always give me a little pep. But, this week we're going to start the countdown. December 9th with be the final memoir date for this season. I've decided that I will continue to collect memoirs and have a Season Two start somewhere close to summer in 2010. In the interim, I have a couple projects I'd like to try out, gads of reviews to share, and many interviews that are in the works. Hopefully you'll keep visiting to share all this fun with me.

However, we still have four weeks of memoirs to present, and to think when this started I worried if I would even have enough to make four weeks of posts! This week we have a little bonus, so let's get started.

My first memoirist this week is a crime fiction writer in the making! Jonathan Quist is a life-long native of the Chicago-area. He spent much of his childhood running home at lunch time to watch WGN TV's storied version of the Bozo franchise, neither understanding nor caring that he was audience to one of the last incarnations of Vaudeville theater.

He made that connection years later, while researching his first novel, "Break a Neck", which is set in the world of American Vaudeville in 1919 Chicago. Frustrated by attempts to categorize a comical mystery featuring a Vaudevillian amateur sleuth into ever-changing genre definitions,he settled on "Humorous Historical Traditional Mystery".

On the verge of empty nesthood, Jonathan remains in the Chicago area with his wife of 21 years, Karin, also a Chicago native. After his day job in IT and work on the mystery, his remaining time is juggled between a second, non-mystery novel, old-time radio reenactments, and all the usual suburban suspects in the death of spare time.

I have to tell you that I absolutely love Jonathan's memoir because I think it connects to the crime fiction community so well. He explains that "very few of the things we accomplish in life are truly solo accomplishments. Whether literally baking pies, writing, or expending effort in any other worthwhile endeavor, I don't mind sharing the credit...but I'm not giving it all away," so...

Making pie; I expect my piece.

L.J. Sellers was born in California but was raised in Oregon. She still resides in Oregon today, after a short stint in Arizona following college graduation. While she earned her degree in journalism from the University of Oregon, she initially didn't have aspirations of writing fiction. She worked in her chosen field until encountering a less than stellar novel one day. L.J. felt she could write better than that and set off to do so. While her first couple attempts at the novel didn't make the publication presses, her writing did cause Al Zuckerman to take notice. Zuckerman's interest was the impetus L.J. needed to persevere. During her time persevering, she took a job as an editor for PHARMACEUTICAL EXECUTIVE magazine where she learned about the other end of the writing table, the editor's role. When the magazine closed and L.J. was job searching, she was also working on the beginning of her series that WOULD see the publication presses. This was the time that L.J. wrote the first Detective Jackson series book, THE SEX CLUB.

While L.J. still juggles several jobs, including freelance work and working part-time at her local newspaper, she puts her fiction writing first every day. That work ethic has thus produced SECRETS TO DIE FOR that came out this past September and two more novels in the pipeline.

So, with all this dogged perseverance, I think her memoir is especially fitting:

Against the odds, never gave up.

Next up is a writing team. Alice and Roy keep their work all in the family. This husband and wife writing team is better known as Allyson Roy. Roy graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia where he studied acting. Roy also spent time doing stand-up routines and in comedy and nightclubs. He says his inspiration stems from his contact with a wide range of people set against offbeat locations within Manhattan, Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

Alice earned her philosophy and dance degrees from the State University of New York. She says that this degree combination is reflective of her attraction to the romantic suspense genre, "The genre blends elements of each, combining problem-solving questions and logic puzzles with a desire for physical action, sensuality and the creative possibilities that can happen when individuals meet."

Together Alice and Roy have written two acclaimed novels featuring sex therapist Saylor Oz. The first book in this series is titled APHRODISIAC and it was followed up this year by BABYDOLL.

So what do they each have to say for their memoirs? Alice asks,

Why walk when you can dance?

And Roy says,

I could have been a contender.

And rounding out this week we have the "CEO of Suspense," best selling thriller writer Joseph Finder. The recipient of the Barry and Gumshoe awards for Best Thriller and the Thriller Writers of America award for Best Novel, Joe's career actually stems from a non-fiction work he published in 1983 at the age of 24, RED CARPET: THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE KREMLIN AND AMERICA'S MOST POWERFUL BUSINESSMEN. His book revealed that the CEO of Occidental Petroleum had worked for Soviet Intelligence in the 20s and 30s. This controversial book resulted in threats of a libel suit. When Joe couldn't legally tell the "whole story" in this non-fiction work, he opted to turn to fiction and his first thriller was born, THE MOSCOW CLUB.

Joe continued to write thrillers, including HIGH CRIMES that would be made into a major motion picture, but his 2004 publication of PARANOIA parked Joe squarely on the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Publisher's Weekly best seller lists. This past April a movie deal for PARANOIA was also announced.

In addition, Joe published VANISHED this year, which is the kick-off to a four-part series featuring corporate security specialist Nick Heller. In addition to his fiction thrillers, Joe has also written on espionage and international affairs for publications such as Forbes, The New York Times and The New Republic.

Joe Finder could have gone in many different career directions. While in college at Yale he sang with the legendary Whiffenpoofs; he was recruited to the C.I.A.; and he spent time teaching on the Harvard faculty. But instead he chose fiction writing and he

Asked dangerous questions, got amazing answers.

The genre hasn't been the same since.

Once again, I am extremely honored to have this group of authors join us and share their six-word memoirs. Thanks to Jonathan, L.J., Roy and Alice, and Joe. I'm so glad you wanted to play along!

And thanks to everyone who's continued to stop by week after week. We'll do this again next week. I will be on hiatus until Friday when I post again for the Buy Books for the Holidays blog. This week I'll be talking about books I've read this year that I would recommend as holiday gifts. Hope you'll stop by to check that out and offer some suggestions of your own.

Until then...Happy Reading!

Madcap Noir

Guest blogging today I have the husband (Roy) and wife (Alice) writing team of Allyson Roy. They have written two books now in a series that centers around sex therapist/amateur sleuth Saylor Oz. The first book in the series is called APHRODISIAC, followed by BABYDOLL which was released this summer. Roy has worked in stand-up comedy and Alice as a professional dancer. Today they are going to talk about their unique genre blend that they call:

Madcap Noir

In music it’s called a fusion genre -- the blending of two or more genres and not fitting squarely into any. Having spent years crossing over several areas of the arts, we like the idea of inclusion, of not being bound to rigid ideas of what a particular kind of book has to be. Of course this creates the risk factor of not meeting the expectations of certain readers -- and the challenge of branding our series without a traditional label.

So in trying to come up with a way to define our Saylor Oz crime adventures, we chose to name our style Madcap Noir.

Madcap because of the over-the-top comedy that dominates our storylines. For us it also conjures up images of reckless mishaps. And it seems to suit our protagonist, whose name, Oz, was chosen for its connection to the bizarre.

Yes we push the envelope. We like to. Our goal is to offer a fun ride, even if it means giving a little ground in the hard realism department. An exciting movie we really liked was Taken, starring Liam Neeson. Throughout, the hero always seemed to have just the right tools on hand at just the right time, no limit of funds, and within minutes he managed to single-handedly exterminate a building full of ruthless, Uzi-toting Albanian thugs without getting a scratch. And we loved it. Not that our female sleuth accomplishes anything that dynamic. In fact, she’s a warmhearted, game bumbler.

DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), where our protagonist lives, has a beautiful noir atmosphere that makes it an ideal setting for a crime novel. Subway trains rumbling overhead along the underbelly of the bridge. The lights reflecting off the East River at night. The canyon-like feel of narrow, Belgian brick cobbled streets surrounded by giant, industrial-era warehouses. Yet this vintage waterfront setting is also a hybrid, where upscale art galleries and boutiques co-exist with one of the toughest boxing gyms in the world and housing projects only blocks away.

And what would a classic noir movie like Gilda be without the sexy elements? We mix a healthy dose of heat, hip characters and fun female perspective into the soup along with the darker ingredients of gritty, urban crime.

Fusion, hybrid, cross-genre, literary mutt . . . call it what you will. We like to call it Madcap Noir.

Thanks, Jen, for having us as guests today.

Alice & Roy / Allyson Roy

And thank you Alice and Roy for joining us today and taking the reigns here. There you have it folks, the birth of a hybrid genre - Madcap Noir.

You can read more about Alice and Roy - Allyson Roy at their website. You can also learn more about their virtual book tour at TLC Book Tours where they will be touring through September 10th. AND, Alice and Roy may just show up again here at Jen's Book Thoughts in the near future; you never can tell! ;)

Have a great weekend and Happy Reading!

BABYDOLL - Allyson Roy

Saylor Oz is extremely content in her job as a sex therapist. But when her best friend/roommate's brother, Angel, is wrongly convicted of murdering three fashion models and it appears as though no one is going to look further into the case, Saylor decides to don not only an investigator's hat but also a fashion model's.

Saylor is familiar with "adult" videos through her day job, and she recalls one such video, Bad, Bad Babydoll, where the plot is eerily similar to Angel's case. Saylor takes her theory that someone is re-enacting this movie to the private investigator from Angel's original defense investigation. When he dismisses Saylor, Saylor and her roommate, Benita, begin plotting to investigate the lead on their own. But to do that, four-foot eleven Saylor finds herself on the model catwalk and other foreign environments.

BABYDOLL is the follow-up to the first Saylor Oz mystery, APHRODISIAC. Susan Elizabeth Phillips compares Saylor Oz to Stephanie Plum. I don't think I could make a better comparison than that one. Fans of Janet Evanovich's series will undoubtedly enjoy this series as well. Like Stephanie, Saylor bumbles her way through lead after lead that law enforcement has either overlooked or ignored. Along the way her roommate Benita, a former boxer; Eldridge, an on-again/off-again lover; Johnny Lavender, the PI from Angel's case; and Sydney Chen, a fashion clothing designer, help keep Saylor from the fatal danger she manages to wiggle her way into.

With Saylor being a sex therapist there is also a great deal of focus on...yes, sex. And the element of sex is most often approached with humor. There are quite a few elements of the romance genre intermingled into this book, so fans of romance may also be interested in this novel.

BABYDOLL requires the reader to accept a number of convenient situations to further the plot. So, readers looking for humor and entertainment will be in for a treat. Those looking for crime fiction a little closer to realism may not find BABYDOLL as intriguing.

The husband and wife writing team of Allyson Roy are presently on their virtual blog tour through TLC Blog Tours. You can learn more about Allyson Roy and their Saylor Oz series at their website. Find additional reviews at their other tour stops listed here at TLC Blog Tours. You can also stop back on Friday when they will be guest blogging here at Jen's Book Thoughts!

BABYDOLL (ISBN: 978-0-425-22550-9) is available now through Berkley Books.