Five on Friday - Jeff Abbott

It's that time of week again! So excited to share with you another great writer. Before I do, just a couple reminders.


Today's the last day you can leave me a comment for a chance to win a copy of Julia Heaberlin's fabulous debut PLAYING DEAD.

You still have until Sunday to enter for that chance to win ALL of Linda Castillo's Amish thriller novels.  And if you're really hot to win this one, Criminal Element is giving a set away as well...another shot at all four books.

And if you tell me what Ellie Hatcher's drink of choice is, you might win a personalized book from Alafair Burke!

If you're a Facebook user, you'll want to check out the Friday Reads page. They have a chance for you to win Julie Hyzy's AFFAIRS OF STEAK or Steven Foreman's BOCA NIGHTS.  

That's it for contests right now, but keep an eye out. I'll have more fun stuff to give away this summer.

Now, on to the fun stuff.

I was fortunate enough to meet Jeff Abbott in person a couple years ago at Murder & Mayhem in Muskego. Then I was able to catch up with him again last year at Bouchercon. He and I traded off interviewing Ridley Pearson - me at M&M, Jeff at B'Con. And Jeff did such a stupendous job. He's smart and funny and a genuinely nice guy.

However, I had "met" Jeff prior to that through social media. He's on both Facebook and Twitter. Jeff is raising a family of Saints fans down in Texas. And it's such a blast to hear him tell the wonderful stories he does.

Jeff also participated in the six word memoir project awhile back and then wrote the best guest post here. If you missed out on those, please take a minute to jump back and check those out because they'll tell you a bit about Jeff the person as well.

Jeff's gearing up for a new release. His second Sam Capra novel, The Last Minute, is due out on Tuesday, so I'm especially thrilled that he made time to put together his responses to Five on Friday. Without further ado...Here are the questions Jeff chose to answer:

1. A place I’ve never visited but would like to is: The town of Brecon, in Wales, where a branch of my father’s family came from back in 1630. It’s not that often that an American family knows their town of origin from that far back, so I’d like to go and see it. I often think this is sentimental, but it would be nice to think I walked the same streets as my first European ancestors who came to America.

2. When I’m reading a book, I absolutely hate it when a writer: Makes the hero too perfect. I have had to put a couple of books aside recently because the hero is so well-loved, so wonderful, so relentlessly competent that they don’t make mistakes or aren’t really facing any difficult decisions or have any real flaws. It’s like a job interview when the applicant gives the pat, insincere answer when asked about their own shortcomings: “My biggest flaw is I work too much.” Please, you got bigger flaws, you’re kidding yourself. It gets tiresome. But you see it a fair amount, and I don’t know why, because characters who make mistakes or are grappling with difficult choices are way more relatable and interesting. Mistakes or difficult choices = drama. Here is a pop culture example, far removed from thrillers: last week my sons and I sat down and watched the entire Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which they had not seen before and I hadn’t seen in ten years. And it is really striking to see the difference in the four main hobbit characters: they are naïve, and innocent, and make many mistakes in the course of the movie, but they learn and grow from them and by the end, they’re different men (or hobbits as it were). They’ve grown into the people they were destined to be. And even in a series, there is room for that growth.

3. The TV show I absolutely can’t miss is: Breaking Bad. I resisted watching it until a producer friend made me watch it, and I think it is the most suspenseful show on television right now, and it is hitting a hard note in our cultural zeitgeist: what is success, what is morality in an immoral world, what would you do for the people you love? The writing is blistering and the acting is terrific. But it is not an easy show, or a show for the squeamish.

4. If I could sit next to anyone (not related to me) on a cross-country flight, it would be: This might surprise some people who know me, but I’d like to talk to JJ Abrams, the director/creator behind LOST, ALIAS, the most recent MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE films, and the STAR TREK reboot. Mostly because I think he’s an interesting storyteller and I’d like to talk shop with him. He wrote a thought-provoking piece for Wired magazine a couple of years ago about the value of mystery in a story, drawing on a box his grandfather had given him that he’d never opened. We’ve forgotten the value of mystery, of leaving something to the imagination these days. I think in a world where we are encouraged to overshare so many details of our lives, that a little mystery might be what keeps us human.


5. The #1 item on my bucket list right now is: Writing a young adult series of books. I’ve got several ideas, it’s just finding the time and developing the right idea. I wrote a young adult version of my novel PANIC just for the UK market, and I had great fun writing for a new audience and my sons were so excited to read a story I’d written more for them. But I’m not going to do it just to do it. It really has to be the right idea.

I am absolutely in agreement with Jeff on the perfect hero syndrome. And it seems that many people dislike this kind of protagonist. So why are people still writing him/her??

Many thanks to Jeff for taking time out to answer my silly questions. JJ Abrams, huh, Jeff? I'll be waiting for that YA series. I have a niece and nephew that will soon be old enough for that level of book.

Hope you're all keeping cool through this heat wave and have plenty of wonderful reading material! Have a great weekend and HAPPY READING!!

The Pokey Little Bouchercon Post

Yes, I'm still blogging about Bouchercon. Yes, it is a little sad on my part. In my defense I had three other planned posts for last week, and the last two posts I have are totally worth waiting for. Why you ask? Well let's take a look at Friday in St. Louis!

The morning started bright and early with a very nice breakfast co-sponsored by the Midwest chapter of Mystery Writers of America and CriminalElement.com. The breakfast was held for librarians, bloggers, booksellers and other related conference attendees. Guests of Honor Charlaine Harris and Colin Cotterill spoke, while additional Minotaur authors hosted individual tables.

Brad Parks and Sabrina Ogden

Charlaine Harris

Colin Cotterill deep in thought about Charlaine's speech?

Ali is tweeting? Or Facebooking maybe?

Once we had full tummies, we could move on to the programming of the day. For me that started with a panel called "Shake and Finger Pop." It's a bit of a misleading title as the panel dealt with fight sports in crime fiction. The panelists included Jamie Freveletti, Tom Schreck, Christa Faust, and Frank Bill all moderated by Eric Beetner. It's fascinating to hear the way each of the panelists views fighting in relation to plotting and their characters. Tom Schreck and Frank Bill have more of a boxing background and Jamie Freveletti is a martial artist with a black belt in aikido. Christa Faust's character is a former porn star, and Christa pointed out parallels between the porn industry and professional fighting.

Jamie Freveletti and Christa Faust

Jamie Freveletti

Christa Faust and Tom Schreck

Tom Shreck and Frank Bill

The next session I attended was Ridley Pearson's interview by Jeff Abbott. I know from my own experiences interviewing Ridley, that he's a wonderful interviewee. Add to that Jeff Abbott is a fabulous interviewer and this session was outstanding! Jeff rocked the house with his self-deprecating sense of humor, his knowledge of his subject and his appreciation for Bouchercon as a fan conference. Sometimes participants forget that. This isn't a writer's conference. The fans come to know the writers more than the writing. The unfortunate part of this interview was its time slot. The charity bowling tournament was going on at the same time. I'm sad more people couldn't have enjoyed this wonderful interview. And sadly, I arrived a few minutes late, so I didn't get to record it. That was my biggest regret of the conference. But here are some pictures from the fun:

Jeff made Ridley really think on this question.

This picture says so much about the entire interview.

 

Ooooh, I think Ridley is telling a secret!

I just love this shot! Doesn't Ridley look like an excited little kid? So much fun!

Following Ridley's interview I opted to see Dark Angel: Morally Challenged Heroes. This was an extra special panel for me because two people I've gotten to know and really like through social media were teamed up here. Chris Holm was the moderator and Bill Cameron was one of the panelists. And I can attest that they are super great people and it was wonderful to get to meet them in person. Also on this panel were Blake Crouch, Theresa Schwegel, Michael Wiley and Leighton Gage. After a little unforeseen informercial, the panel was off and running and quite entertaining. The interesting outcome was that none of the authors really viewed their heroes as morally challenged.

Chris Holm and Bill Cameron

Theresa Schwegel and Michael Wiley

The programming element of the day ended with one of my highlights for the conference: Gregg Hurwitz interviewed Robert Crais. I'm not going to say a lot about this interview because I have it recorded for you to see yourself. If you didn't get to attend, here's your chance to see it. If you did attend and just want to relive it...here you go. What I will say is that Gregg Hurwitz did an exceptional job. He understood the idea of the fan convention and created an environment where the fans could know the man behind the writing. It was fun, humorous and enlightening. Gregg has given me much to aspire to in the realm of interviewing. And that's enough from me. Here's the video:










Finally, I'll wrap with our gift to Robert Crais. The Craisies did a little brainstorming and with the initiative of Naomi Johnson (The Drowning Machine) we got jersey's that said "The Craisies" across the front. Then we each picked an RC character and had the name put on the back. He was gifted the #1 shirt:

Jeff Abbott's Open Doors

With the release of his new thriller TRUST ME, I invited Jeff to stop by and visit. Bless his heart first for agreeing to visit and second for his topic. I always give free reign to guest bloggers and Jeff chose to write about his six-word (or rather five-word - thanks to good editing) memoir. I swear, it was all his idea! No money exchanged hands! In all seriousness, let me quit blabbing and hand those free reigns over to the man who gets paid to write. Friends, please welcome award-winning crime fiction writer, Jeff Abbott!

Writing Opens a Thousand Doors by Jeff Abbott

That was my six-word (actually five) memoir for Jen’s blog, and I thought today I’d expand on what I meant about my thousand doors.

When I started writing, a well-intentioned friend said, “You’re spending all this time alone. You’re shut up in that room by yourself. You’re not living life.”

He could not have been more wrong. Writing forces you to look at life through new glasses: not merely as a flow of events that is happening to you and around you, but as part of a pattern. All fiction—whether a thriller, a mainstream novel, a romance, or a mystery—is sorting life into a pattern that holds meaning and gives a sense of heightened drama.

So, the first door writing opened for me made me a sorter of life. (I should be a magical hat.) I began to look at every aspect of life as a part in a bigger drama. What did my choices really mean for me and the people I care about? How did I spend my time meaningfully—was I taking steps toward a better command of craft or was I wasting time? With my friends and family, did I minimize conflict or did I needlessly amp it up? I felt like a reality show contestant who becomes hyper-aware of the cameras (even if the lenses were of my own making.) At the same time, I think I became quieter and more reflective. I simply thought more: about people, about pain and pleasure, about the values that are worth fighting for in a life. My notebook began to explode with ideas, phrases, thoughts about people I wanted to include in my stories and my books.

Remember that my goal was to write commercial crime fiction, not the next War and Peace. But I believe all fiction, at some level, concerns the human condition. I started to process all the raw fuel of life.

The second door was discipline. As I got more serious about my writing, I had to fit writing in as a greater priority. I could give up all the rest of my life (I had already given up weekends, and I was a guy in my 20s living in one of the most fun and social cities in America) but I decided to sacrifice sleep instead. I got up at 4 AM and wrote for three hours every morning before going to work. That way, the most important task of the day was already done. I didn’t have to work when I got home, tired and stressed and frazzled from slaying the day’s dragons. I got more disciplined about other demands in my life (um, except for grocery shopping). I kept thinking: I don’t have an endless succession of tomorrows for writing. I need to do it today. Now. And so I ordered my life as such.

The final door was acceptance. I could write thousands of pages that might never find a reader. And I didn’t care. This will sound strange or even contradictory, but the need to write was like a calm fire. The obsession was there, I had to write, but the need wasn’t insane or destructive. Writing was positive, even if the words were junk and I tossed them at the end of the session. I would keep writing even if no one ever read my words. It was a jarring realization, that it was okay to write solely for myself.
I sold my first novel before I was thirty. That has brought me a great and rewarding stream of professional opportunities (and a few disappointing setbacks), it has brought me relationships to last a lifetime, it has brought me the great privilege of being allowed to entertain others—to help them forget a lousy day at work, or the pain of hospitalization, or to make a dull flight pass faster.

Every day, ever since, has been a new door to open.

Thank you so much, Jeff. I hope that when you are in your times of reflection and thinking about people you realize that you open doors for us, your fans, with your writing. We are very grateful that you have made sacrifices and worked hard to walk through those doors writing has opened for you.

Jeff's new book is called TRUST ME. It centers around Luke Dantry who works tracking extremists online. Dantry believes the majority of the people he encounters online are simply all talk. That is until the day he is kidnapped and left for dead. TRUST ME was released in hardcover (ISBN: 978-0-525-95121-6) by Dutton this summer, and you can read more about it on Jeff's website here or in this review I found very helpful.

Happy Friday everyone and Happy Reading!

You Have the Right to Six Words - Better Hold on to Your Hats!

I have a loaded post for you this week - Week 9 of YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SIX WORDS! - so folks, hold on to your hats and away we go...


We'll start with our recap memoir. Beth Groundwater is the author of the Gift Basket Designer mystery series. Beth spent the first part of her career working in the computer science field where her writing talent was put to use in the technical arena. She wrote manuals and proposals and reports. But good planning and goal-setting allowed Beth to retire from the computer software world early and put her writing skills to work in the fiction arena. When she's not writing, you can probably find Beth in her garden or in the setting for her second Gift Basket Designer mystery series novel, on the ski slopes. Beth's first novel, A REAL BASKET CASE was a nominee for the "Best First Novel" Agatha Award in 2007. Earlier this year, Beth followed that up with the sequel TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET accompanied by an ambitious blog tour. Beth certainly knows the value of hard work:

Networked and persisted until surprise - published!

New on our list of memoirists this week is a man who is far from new to the world of crime fiction writing. He's a New York Times best selling author many times over and he leaves us on the edges of our seats with thrillers such as THE MILLIONAIRES, THE ZERO GAME, THE BOOK OF FATE, and of course his newest hit THE BOOK OF LIES, which was released this year in paperback. Of course you know I'm talking about Brad Meltzer. Brad wrote his first New York Times best seller THE TENTH JUSTICE while a student at Columbia Law School. As a matter of fact, Columbia gave him credit for writing this book! Brad's books have been translated into over 25 languages. But not only do we know Brad for his crime fiction novels, he's also a comic book writer. Last year he won an Eisner Award for his JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. And he was also one of the co-creators of the television show JACK & BOBBY. It seem contradictory to the genre Brad writes in but by golly:

I'm a Meltzer, not a fighter.

Lisa Lutz has been a bit of a nomad for the first part of her life. She attended UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, the University of Leeds in England and San Francisco State University. After those college adventures, and no college degree, Lisa set to work on trying to be a screenwriter. And she succeeded in writing and optioning a screenplay called PLAN B. However, she also learned that screenwriting was not where she would stay in her career. So, she packed herself up and headed out to - Westernville, New York? Yep! And that is where she wrote the bulk of THE SPELLMAN FILES. Since then, Lisa had found her way to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and most recently she's made her way back to San Francisco. She's also found her way to two more Spellman publications: CURSE OF THE SPELLMANS and REVENGE OF THE SPELLMANS. And she's found herself nominated for both a "Best Novel" Edgar Award and a "Best Mystery Novel" Macavity Award. Her fourth book in the Spellman series, THE SPELLMANS STRIKE AGAIN, is due out at the beginning of 2010. And Lisa thought she didn't get around near enough, so her books are extending her reach. The Spellmans are published in over 20 languages around the world. For Lisa:

Six words is WAY too long.

The final hitter in this powerhouse line-up is also a writer who is no stranger to successful books. His ten mystery and suspense novels have won him nominations for Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Agatha and Macavity awards. Jeff Abbott is the international best-selling author of two highly acclaimed series: the first being his Jordan Poteet mystery series about a librarian and then his Whit Mosley series about a justice of the peace and a detective. He has also penned three standalone thrillers and tomorrow he will release TRUST ME, his fourth standalone and eleventh novel. In his new novel, Jeff will introduce Luke Dantry who works tracking extremists on the Internet. However, the safety of his computer job will soon be shattered.

The novel is not Jeff's only writing format, however. He has also written short stories included in such anthologies as BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES and THE WORLD'S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES. So what is a successful thriller writer's favorite book? Why it's WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, of course!

Jeff says, "writing brought me my wife, a career I never dreamed I’d have, tons of opportunities, getting to meet the most interesting people in the world . . .you get the idea." So it is not hard at all to understand why his memoir would be:

Writing opens a thousand doors.

This week I think we loaded the bases and hit a grand slam! Many thanks to Beth, Brad, Lisa, and Jeff for being great sports. Are you groaning from my baseball analogies yet? This was a fun week of memoirs. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and I hope to see you back here again, same time next week! Happy Reading!


Bouchercon countdown: 85 days!