News
According to Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews has gotten a new lease on life:
In an email to colleagues today, Kirkus Reviews managing editor and nonfiction editor Eric Liebetrau said the publication, which last month was said to be closing with staff leaving by the end of 2009, is working toward an arrangement with an acquiring company to continue publication.
I enjoyed the conceit of having a starred review in Kirkus' final issue, but I'm glad that the magazine will survive.
I haven't blogged about this before, but I'm utterly humbled that The Poacher's Son received a ★ starred review in the final issue of Kirkus Reviews:
A Maine Game Warden fights to clear his no-account father of murder charges in this deeply felt actioner...His decision leads to a series of disastrously self-destructive actions that Doiron makes perfectly credible, all interspersed with a series of flashbacks to Mike [Bowditch]'s childhood that are both tender and chilling. C.J. Box goes East. Like Box, Doiron will have his hands full trying to top his accomplished debut.
Last month, Nielsen Business Media made the decision to shut Kirkus down when it couldn't find a buyer for the seventy-six year-old publication. The January 1, 2010 was the magazine's very last issue, and I can't believe I'm in it. Thank God it was a glowing review.
On my pre-sell tour for The Poacher's Son, I picked up an interesting tidbit from a woman who owns a mystery bookstore. She told me that Agatha Christie's novels no longer sell very well. Buyers continued to pick up the used books, she said, but sales of the new edition trade paperbacks had fallen off precipitously in recent years, at least in her store. I found this report fascinating given that the Poirot TV adaptations continue to air regularly on PBS and cable networks.
It's interesting how authors fall in and out of fashion. I remember when the late Jim Thompson suddenly became a hot property after Black Lizard reissued his sensationally disturbing novels in the 1980s. Nobody would have been more surprised by that turn of events than Thompson himself, I bet.
It would be shame if a new generation of readers is missing out on the fun of solving Christie's puzzles. Never having read a biography of Dame Agatha, I realize that all I know about the woman comes from her fiction. I know she "disappeared" for a few days in 1926 and later married an archeologist whose work took them to the Middle East, but that's about it. Most authors would probably prefer to be known for their books rather than their lives, I'm guessing. But that sentiment may also be a thing of the past.
PS. I've never seen Agatha, the 1979 film starring Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman, but I know it offers a fictional explanation to Christie's disappearance. Maybe I should add it to my Netflix queue for the next time Maine gets a blizzard like the one howling out my window.
I just received the February issue of Writers Digest, and there's a profile on me in the Breaking In column titled "Debut Author Spotlight." It basically tells the tale of how I started writing and found my agent. I'm flattered to be included, and editor Chuck Sambuchino did a great job compacting a thousand words into a hundred plus.
When I was a young aspiring writer, working at Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, I pored over these sorts of how-to articles in the hope that I would discover a cantrip that would—poof!—magically make me a best-selling author. I have subsequently learned that success is mostly a matter of hard work, persistence, and luck. Then again, I have also come to believe that in life one tends to make one's own luck (by taking risks and being open to new people), so maybe we really are the masters of our fate and the captains of our souls.
The Writer's Digest feature isn't online yet, but if they upload it at some point, I'll post a link.
Library Journal has posted the full review for The Poacher's Son. And yes, I am humbled and grateful to have received a ★ starred notice right off the bat.
