Road Trip

It's shaping up to be a busy summer. Here's where you can catch up with me:


June 7-13
Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop, Hollins University, Roanoke, VA

June 10
Hollins Branch Public Library, Roanoke, VA
Reading, 7 pm (the book club meeting begins at 6:30, public reading at 7)


June 16
Private Book Club Appearance, Cincinnati, OH

June 19
Southern Illinois Writers Guild Meeting, John A. Logan Community College, Carterville,IL
Reading, 7 pm

July 9-13
Thrillerfest, Grand Hyatt, NYC


July 10
Quick Thrills from Out-of-Towners

Reading with Alexandra Sokoloff,
Shane Gericke, Michelle Gagnon, JT Ellison, Tim Maleeny, Mario Acevedo,
Laura Caldwell, introduction by Lee Child

Prizes, including an 8ft Plush Snake! Signing afterwards.
One hour reading--we promise!

Borders Manhattan Park Ave., Park @ 57th, 8 pm


When I return from New York, I'll be sticking close to home for the following few months, writing, writing, writing....

P.S. Quick Thrills postcard design done by Pinckney and me. Well, with a little help from Comic Life!

Meet Katie Estill, Extraordinary Writer-Chick and Hammett Nominee

My husband, Pinckney, and I are such fans of Katie Estill's work that we knew our 2007 Surreal South anthology wouldn't be complete without one of her stories. She very kindly let us publish The Drinking Gourd, an historical haint which formed itself out of the house in which she lives. This year, Katie's heart-wrenching crime novel, Dahlia's Gone, caught the attention of the North American branch of the International Association of Crime Writers. They selected it as a finalist for 2008's Hammett Prize, which will be awarded at the Bloody Words Mystery Conference in June. I'm so pleased she's taken the time to answer a few getting-to-know-you questions here at The Handbasket because I think you should know her too!

LB: Dahlia’s Gone could be described as a literary crime novel. Did you set out to specifically write a crime novel, or did the story evolve into one?

KE: I wrote Dahlia’s Gone because I wanted to write that story, and it was about a murder, but the novel also came from the context of my life. At the time, I was head of a county task force, and our mission was to reduce violence against women, so I was interacting with all sorts of people I’d never known before. Law enforcement officers, for one. I came to empathize with their experience as human beings, who, for the most part, are basically doing social work, but the kind that’s sometimes very dangerous. So these things were made real to me, not just as ideas. And also, in the small town atmosphere in which I live, if a young woman is murdered, it’s quite possible that you’ve brushed shoulders with at least one of the parents, and so you are more affected by these incidents. I became emotionally engaged.

LB: Your first novel, Evening Would Find Me, is set in Greece and is different in tone from Dahlia’s Gone, which is set in the Ozarks. But both books seem very rooted in their locations, their characters heavily influenced by their physical environment. Does that attachment to place translate into your own life? What does "home" mean to you?
KE:
I do have an attachment to my environment. We’ve got a funky old house that’s just so riddled with personality and odd touches that we can’t seem to leave, even if sometimes it seems inadequate. Daniel’s office was built by a previous owner, the Reverend Mock, and he carved crosses atop all the bookcases in the office, a strange touch we enjoyed immediately. The basement was full of several hundred bottles of water, all of them dated, supplies set aside for Armageddon. We’ve heard that our house was built over a cave and was a station on the underground railway during the Civil War. A neighbor told me that as a child he used to play in the cave (before it was closed by the city) and he found arrowheads. So we know the Osage spent a lot of time on these grounds, around the springs and caves, and that human beings have used and loved this ground for a long, long time.

That feeling is somehow infused into the place. I look out our large, wavy glass windows to the most beautiful century oak. We’ve written five books in this little house, and that also makes us fond of it. Our cats don’t ever want to leave. I think "home" is where you can overlook any number of little eyesores. We’re still walking through a couple of doors that we’ve somehow never gotten around to putting doorknobs on.




LB: I was tickled to see that Amazon has Dahlia’s Gone paired with Winter’s Bone, written by your husband, Daniel Woodrell. Tell me about the trajectories of your writing careers and the ways you influence each other’s writing.

KE: I’m wondering if this Amazon pairing has something to do with the Hammett nomination. I don’t think many people knew we were married before. Daniel’s been telling writer acquaintances that I’m up for the Hammett, and one of them said, "That’s your wife? What are they putting in the water down there?"

Before I began publishing, I had seen close up some of the realities of publishing and the challenges. In fact, the business is in such a state of flux that by the time I started publishing, publishing had changed from the way it was when Daniel began. When he started, a writer would not dream of contacting newspaper editors and, so on, in hopes of generating reviews. My experience with Dahlia’s Gone revealed that if I didn’t do those things, there would be no coverage at all.

We are big influences on each other’s writing. We have different processes when we write, but we talk about writing every day; we bounce ideas around and serve as each other’s first editor. Daniel has a short story I really like a lot in the June Esquire, and when he first started the story, it was in the first person, and he felt something was off. So we talked, passed the ball back and forth, and I said, "Hey, why don’t you change it to third person?" And boom. As is so often the case, that simple change in approach made all the difference. That’s how we live.

LB: Would you talk a bit about your relationship with the late Raymond Smith, publisher (with wife Joyce Carol Oates) of Ontario Review Press, which published Evening Would Find Me? You must have worked closely with him on Evening Would Find Me.

KE: Raymond Smith was a great editor and man of letters, but what first comes to mind is what a kind and gentle man he was. I did work closely with Ray. He was my editor, and we discussed and made decisions about every aspect of bringing Evening Would Find Me into print–from manuscript revisions, to line by line copy editing, to finding a cover image and designing the cover–I mean everything down to the type set. We frequently spoke on the phone, and the impression he gave me was that he and Joyce Carol Oates would sit at the dinner table in the evening and discuss, among other things, the questions that he and I were talking about, and then he would give me her feedback.

Ray must have seen everything, when it came to literary types. When we met for lunch in Princeton, he saw the liter bottle I was toting and very calmly asked if it was vodka. I said, "No, Ray, it’s water!" I thought, oh, god, am I acting impaired? But, you know, the real alcoholic writers don’t act impaired; they just don’t ever want to be in the position of running out. And good thing I had the water, because it was rush hour when I got back to New York, and I had to walk from Penn Station to the Soho Grand.

I often wondered what it was like sharing life with one of the most prolific and celebrated writers in America. Ray always kept his private life private. But once, when Joyce Carol Oates’ novel about Marilyn was coming out, he said, "Yes, our lives are in a whirlwind right now, but I’m usually in the calm at the center of the storm."

He never gossiped. He never dropped names. Ray Smith was a true gentleman.

LB: Will you share a bit about what you’re working on now?

KE: I don’t want to break the mojo here. But I can say the idea came to me while I was finishing Dahlia’s Gone. An inner voice started talking, and it was so strong, so imperative that I had to put aside my manuscript and furiously write it all down.

LB: Finally, if your life were written as a graphic novel, what would you call it?

KE: This one is tough, because, to be honest, I’ve never read a graphic novel. I couldn’t even get through a whole comic book when I was a kid, and the two forms may not even be similar. But if I ever did attempt one, it would undoubtedly be "The History of the Third Nipple".

Meet Me In New York!

I find name-dropping incredibly embarrassing. I’ve never felt the undying need that some folks have to rub elbows with the rich and famous. Money and fame don’t make people nice or generous or good or bad. Seriously, everybody puts their shoes and/or stockings on the same way—sometimes those shoes just happen to cost over $600.

So it’s a little weird for me to find myself hanging out with people who are well-known in the book business. And what have I found? These folks are actually nice, actually generous to fans, actually supportive of emerging and beginning writers.

Last year’s Thrillerfest, a confab of writers, fans, and industry people sponsored by International Thriller Writers (ITW), in New York was a real eye-opener for me. I’ll get the name-dropping over with first. Minutes after registering at The Grand Hyatt I was introduced to Tess Gerritsen and Lisa Gardner. I also finally met Lisa Unger, who had kindly given me an advance quote for ISABELLA MOON. I chatted with the extraordinary writer/gentleman Lee Child in the bar…ditto for Joseph Finder. Steve Berry was awfully nice, as were Barry Eisler and Heather Graham. I was on a panel moderated by a goddess of dark fiction, Deborah LeBlanc, and sat beside Jonathan Santlofer. I even had the chance to provide Clive Cussler with my personal stash of tissues (okay, that was through an assistant!).

But the really cool thing was that I got to learn from many of these people—and many more. Thrillerfest is like a kind of glamorous boot camp for writers and fans. There’s plenty of face-time with the well-published. One gets to ask questions, learn how they do it (and what not to do), find out how to deal with agents, hear personal stories. I found myself so energized and motivated that I couldn’t wait to get home and start my next novel!

This year’s Thrillerfest is in NYC as well, July 9-12. NYC in July? you ask. Yes. There are only tourists in town, so you can get dinner reservations and cheap show tickets if you feel the need to wander. And it is NYC after all. Does one really need an excuse? Though there’s so much going on at the conference, one doesn’t want to leave for long and miss something. One of those events is Craftfest, the event that precedes Thrillerfest by a day. At Craftfest, the big-time guys and gals do workshops, talking about their specific areas of interest: Heather Graham on using atmosphere and dialogue, Joe Finder discussing the biggest mistakes all writers make—then there’s Agentfest, which is like speed-dating for writers and agents.

Here’s my moment of full disclosure: I got so much out of last year’s Thrillerfest that I find myself volunteering to direct volunteers, which means that if you sign up I will get you pitching in behind-the-scenes for an easy hour or two so you can have some real fun meeting lots of writers and readers, agents and fans. Also, this year I’ll even be the panel master for BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS: THE FIRST YEAR AS A PUBLISHED AUTHOR. I can’t wait!

So, name-dropping is over for now. Class dismissed. See you in New York!

Big Chaos, Little Package

I was all set to write about entropy today, but the subject suddenly feels rather depressing to me. Entropy isn't much fun at all, is it? Entropy is creeping chaos. Ew. I prefer my chaos to be more straightforward than that!

So, meet Scout.

Scout is a ten week-old black and tan rat terrier mix adopted from a shopping cart at a local grocery store. We didn't know we were going to bring home a puppy on Sunday, but there he was. There were apparently seven puppies in the litter. All but Scout and one of his brothers had been given away by the time we got there. And I must say that the five that went first must have been extraordinarily cute, because, as you can see, Scout was hardly homely!

Rat terriers grow to be between ten and twenty-three pounds. But since Scout's a mix--and we don't know what he's mixed with--we have no idea how large he'll be. He's a bit bow-legged, front and back, and stands a lot like a boxer. And he has a whip-like tail that others would probably bob, but we will not. His tiny needle teeth are sharp, but he's none to fierce, though he has a pert little bark when he's attacking his red rubber toy.

Suddenly we find ourselves on constant potty patrol. But the rugs are all rolled up, so we're prepared. The hardest part about having him around is his propensity for being underfoot. We're all afraid of stepping on him! He's also turned our three year-old lab, Hrothgar, into a kind of elder statesman. Or Hrothgar would be, if elder statesmen couldn't help but obsessively lick people on the face, the hands, the feet.

I didn't know how strong my desire for chaos was until I heard myself tell the kids, "Sure, we can take him home as long as Daddy says it's okay." We're just winding up a three-month remodeling project, I'm editing CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS, starting the next novel and I have lots of other writing projects and appearances on the horizon.

But a writer doesn't just pull words out of chaos and manipulate them. Writing comes from life. I've never understood writers who are able to write and write and not have much contact with the visceral. Certainly we draw deeply on our past, our childhoods. But how can we imbue our characters with life if we're not living it?

Ah, living it I am. And right now it's curled against my back, its damp nose resting on its paws, sighing mightily. I'm kind of afraid to move because, when I do, I'm going to have to take it outside. Again.


While I'm away, here's a link to an interview with my husband, Pinckney, who talks a bit about The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, a story he's just published in Image Magazine. He has some rather revealing things to say about our darling Hrothgar....

Catching Up With CJ Lyons

CJ Lyons is one very busy thriller-writer chick. Her cross-genre novel (thriller, medical suspense, steamy romance) LIFELINES debuted back in early March, and she's been in constant motion ever since. Once upon a time she was a pediatric ER doc. Now, she spends her time writing, traveling, teaching other folks how to write and being one of the nicest people on the planet. When I first met her in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt in NYC at Thrillerfest (2007) she was literally dashing through the lobby on the way to her next speaking engagement!


Serendipity, Kismet, and All that Jazz…by CJ Lyons

Thanks, Laura for inviting me to come join the fun here on Handbasket! I just got home after visiting 13 cities in 8 weeks to launch my debut novel, LIFELINES, so if I seem a little random and wandering, it's not your imagination, lol!

My little tour seemed to have a life and a theme of it's own: "fortuitous" was the word I found myself using most often.

The fact that I'd been asked to speak at several major meetings this spring and teach workshops at others and that all this paid-for-by-others travel coincided with the release of LIFELINES was the first piece of fortune. (And no, publishers rarely pay for book tours for anyone these days, much less a debut author—it all comes out of our pocket unless you've been lucky enough to be an invited speaker)

Then, Berkley moved LIFELINES' release up a month to March and I was able to launch at Left Coast Crime in Denver with so many of my friends—and how convenient that Left Coast Crime wasn't on any coast this year, but in the middle of the mountains!

Add to that an unexpected invitation to the VA Festival of the Book (a most totally awesome week-long celebration of books and reading in Charlottesville, VA) and I was starting to get goose-bumps…what would happen next?

Nothing much, except little things like a schedule mix-up leading to my first ever signing being with the wonderful and delightful (I'll let you decide which is which) Rhys Bowen and Steve Hockensmith; being in the right place at the wrong time and thus giving several TV and other media interviews; helping the marvelous and most generous Heather Graham and her band of Slushpile Players perform for the kids at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, my own alma mater….not to mention the huge coincidence that RT Book Convention was in Pittsburgh this year where LIFELINES is set!!!

The list goes on and on and on….like my aunt needing surgery in Pittsburgh (she's not from Pittsburgh) the same week as RT, so I could commute from the conference to the ICU at Presby to see her (she's doing fine, thanks so much to all the kind thoughts everyone at RT sent!); or the fact that while I was rushing from hospital to hotel and back again, every time I needed transportation either a bus or taxi (unheard of in Pittsburgh) would miraculously appear…..

Wait, it gets better! My second book (revisions done while on the road promoting the first, yikes!) is also set in Pittsburgh and had a scene involving the River Rescue guys. So, on the final day of RT, I hop off a bus from the hospital, and am walking back to the hotel when who do I meet but Hank Phillippi Ryan (more on Hank in a sec) and she wants to go for a walk.

We head over the Clemente Bridge to the river walk only to find the River Rescue guys out with their boat—Hank brazenly talks our way on board and voila! These guys spent an hour with us, answering all my questions, taking me on the boat, and just being the nicest, most fun research ever!!!


Then Hank and I meet up again the next week at Malice Domestic. And how is she rewarded for her random act of kindness? She wins a freaking Agatha!!!! How's that for Karma? Yeah!!

Well, that only scratches the surface of the Wonderful Mystery Tour for LIFELINES, but I think you can see that official book tour or not, there's just nothing like throwing yourself out into the universe and seeing who or what catches you….trust me, it's all good!

Thanks for reading!
CJ

No, Not That Cinderella

Cinderella is my new favorite horror movie. Scary as all get-out, yet oddly beautiful. The actors are visually perfect, and completely committed to the story so that even when the film dips into the occasional horror-film cliche, it works. It's a riff on the 1960 Georges Franju film, Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face). Now that I think about it, they would be the perfect Saturday night double feature. Boo!

Big News. I Mean Really Big News!

I received some amazing news a couple of weeks ago and have been dying to share it. Now I can!

I've been invited to the 29th annual Kentucky Women's Writers Conference in Lexington. It happens in September and I'll be teaching a workshop, which I always enjoy. But the really exciting news is that I'll be doing a reading with Joyce Carol Oates!

Joyce has chosen me to appear with her at the conference's Hardwick/Jones reading, a reading that, according to the press release, "honors the roles of influence, mentoring and friendship in women writers’ lives." We'll be conversing onstage--or at least she will be conversing. I'll be the one looking stunned! Joyce has a brilliant mind and I could listen to her talk for hours.

The invitation is such a blessing, and an honor. I still can't believe it. If you'll be anywhere near the University of Kentucky on September 12th, I hope you'll come to see us. Really, if you haven't heard Joyce speak, you don't want to miss it!

In other news--Kelli Stanley tagged me. Since I just did one here last week, I thought I'd answer directly on her blog. I love hanging out there. She always has incredible stories to tell.

Also, did I mention that I'm the volunteer maven for Thrillerfest 2008? If you don't know about this remarkable gathering of thriller writers and their fans, you should! I'll have more details next blog.