That's the question I explore today at MaineCrimeWriters.com. We're all living in a brave new world where cultural conversation is increasingly shifting to online venues like Twitter and Facebook. But writers are under additional pressure from publishers to use these social media platforms as marketing tools, and many of the novelists I know are secretly wondering whether the time spent tweeting is a misplacement of priorities. As I write in my post, "If an author tweets in cyberspace and no one is around to read it, does it actually sell a book?"
A Recommendation from Nevada Barr
I had the pleasure of meeting New York Times bestselling author Nevada Barr at the BookMania festival last month in Stuart, Florida. It was a long time coming. Readers have been comparing our outdoors mysteries for the past couple of years (which is flattering to me, since she was one of the real trailblazers in our little sub-genre). Fittingly, we really hit it off, and she agreed to write a blurb for Bad Little Falls, after I sent her an advance copy to read.
But Nevada was actually much more generous than that. In this week's edition of The Week she gives my career another much-appreciated push:
Nevada Barr's 6 favorite books
The best-selling author and former park ranger recommends adventure stories by Victor Hugo, L.A. Meyer, and Neil Gaiman
The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron (Minotaur, $14). Paul Doiron's sleuth, Mike Bowditch, is a 24-year-old Maine Fisheries and Wildlife man, and most definitely not hard-boiled. Using Bowditch's youth and vulnerability, Doiron gives us a fresh sense of the harsh realities of crime and law enforcement that years of tough guys have allowed us to forget.
Nevada current best seller, The Rope, is her seventeeth novel featuring National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. I think it's one of her best yet. You should run out and buy a copy. I'd say that even if she hadn't been so nice to me.
Sherlock Season 2
Watch Sherlock Season 2: A Scene from Ep. 1 on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.
If ever I create a list of my favorite crime television shows, the modern update of Sherlock Holmes is bound to land somewhere near the top. I'm one of the many Americans who can't wait for the second season of the BBC series to begin on PBS. May 6 can't come soon enough.
Top 15 Crime Movies of All Time
I made a list today at MaineCrimeWriters, and as I said in my post, I had a hard time stopping at fifteen. Looking at it in the cold light of day, I'm struck that I left off any of the films of David Fincher. Zodiac was a near miss. Maybe if I could bring myself to watch Se7en again, I would put it onthe list. I remember seeing Se7en alone at a theater in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, not knowing what to expect, and being disturbed in a way that almost never happens to me at the movies, not just grossed out, but sent emotionally and psychologically reeling. Anyway, go check out my fifteen. I'm curious to hear what you think. It probably won't come as a surprise to anyone who has read my novels to discover that I'm a big fan of the Coen brothers.
Serial Box
Over at Maine Crime Writers today I have a post about one of the challenges of writing a mystery series: using the books to tell an on-going story in which readers learn more about the characters with each volume, without making each new novel impenetrable to prospective readers who stumble into the action after the curtain has gone up. It's a difficult balance, and as I say in the post, I envy writers of fantasy novels who seem to have an indulgence from readers to tell true serials.