Next stop: Watchung (Books)

Now that the snow has - for the most part - stopped, tomorrow's event at Montclair's Watchung Booksellers (above) is still on for 1 p.m. Sat. (2/27). I'll be signing books, giving away CDs and possibly some baked goods. WB is at 54 Fairfield St. in Watchung Plaza, Montclair, N.J. (973) 744-7177.

Words and sounds

A nice review of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER, posted today over at Bookgasm.

Also, the unabridged audio edition, read by actress Karen White, is now available for sale and download.

And for those in N.J., signed copies of GTN are available, while they last, at Barnes & Noble stores at Monmouth Mall (Eatontown), Holmdel, Howell Township, Freehold and - soon - Paramus.

Poetic justice

The folks over at THE LINEUP - that annual roundup of crime-related poetry - are taking pre-orders on Issue #3, which will be out in April. That issue contains my poem "Independence Day, 1976," which l wrote shortly after the death of Jim Carroll. It also features work by James W. Hall, James Sallis, Reed Farrel Coleman, Patti Abbott and others. Details below.

The Lineup #3 (April 2010)

Edited by Gerald So with Sarah Cortez, R. Narvaez, and Anthony Rainone

ISSN 1945-7510
6" x 9", 48 pages, saddle-stitched
$7.00

Poems by Patricia Abbott, Joe Barnes, Henry Chang, Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortez, Michael A. Flanagan, Anne Frasier, James W. Hall, David Hernandez, Amy MacLennan, Carrie McGath, James M. McGowan, Kristine Ong Muslim, David S. Pointer, James Sallis, Jackie Sheeler, Wallace Stroby, Larry D. Thomas, Francine Witte

Pre-orders accepted through March 15, 2010.

The GTN mix: Tracks 14-16

The GTN mix: Tracks 10, 11, 13

The GTN mix: Tracks 7-8

O.V. Wright's "Gone For Good" at Last.fm

The GTN mix: Tracks 4-6

The GTN mix: Tracks 1-3

The GTN mix

I've compulsively made mix tapes and CDs over the years, a practice that seemed to naturally extend itself to writing. With each novel, I've made a personal CD mix collecting songs that roughly fit the tone and content of the work-in-progress. There's a lot of music in GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER, more so than the other books, and the mix that eventually emerged was a mash of styles, but with a certain thematic unity. Some of the songs made it into the book, most didn't. But here's the tracklist of the CD I made while writing it - and went back to when I needed inspiration. This was homemade and strictly for personal use, of course. It exists only in my iTunes playlist:

1: Gone Till November – Wyclef Jean (needless to say, an inspiration for the title)

2: Everybody Always Leaves – Matthew Ryan (off his 2006 CD "From A Late Night High Rise ")

3: I Still Miss Someone – Johnny Cash (title says it all)

4: I Miss You – Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (with the late Teddy Pendergrass on vocals)

5: Regina – Bunny Sigler (a Philly soul classic)

6: Jane, I Still Feel the Same – Matthew Ryan (a simple, yet heartbreakingly beautiful, song)

7: Gone For Good – O.V. Wright (deep soul from a Memphis master)

6: Great Expectations – The Gaslight Anthem (young N.J. band with a lot of heart)

7: Trailer – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (only a b-side, but one of their best songs)

6: Ramblin' Man – Hank Williams (chilling, simple, perfect).

7: Cure For Pain – Morphine (essential track from the too-short-lived Boston band)

8: Nothing Stays The Same Forever – Percy Mayfield (philosophical R&B from the other Mayfield)

9: Keep Movin' On – Sam Cooke (America's greatest pop singer. His voice has healing properties)

10: Streets Of Philadelphia – Bettye LaVette (greatest Springsteen cover ever)

11: People Get Ready – Blind Boys Of Alabama (the Curtis Mayfield classic, further elevated)

12: A Change Is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke (there's nothing else like it. Sounds like church. Sounds like death).

13: (I Won't Be) Leaving – Dave Alvin (a spare, late-night version of a song he wrote for the Blasters, from his "King Of California" album)

14: Everybody Always Leaves – Matthew Ryan (an EP-only alt. acoustic version. An almost painfully intimate song of love and loss).

If I dig up the CD track lists for the first two books, I'll post them at some point as well.

Support an indie

Signed copies of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER are available for online order from the following excellent independent bookstores:

THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP

MURDER BY THE BOOK

THE POISONED PEN

M IS FOR MYSTERY

BOOKPEOPLE

WBGO 88.3 FM features

Here are specific links for the now-archived WBGO-FM interview and features:

The interview as aired: http://www.wbgo.org/realfiles/jrnl2010/100129/article4.ram

The extended interview: http://www.wbgo.org/realfiles/jrnl2010/100129/article5.ram

A web-only reading from GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER: http://www.wbgo.org/realfiles/jrnl2010/100129/article6.ram

A downloadable podcast of the entire WBGO Journal: http://feeds.feedburner.com/WbgoJournal

Note that the reading contains an "adult language" advisory.

Quick updates - Updated!

The Asbury Park Press feature on me is in today's (1/31) edition, on the cover of the Entertainment section, and online.

Over at WBGO's site, my interview with WBGO Journal host Andrew Meyer, the outtakes, and a web-only reading can be found here.

Thanks to everyone in Texas for coming out to the events, especially in Houston. And thanks to two great Florida authors - James W. Hall and Bob Morris - for letting me fly along as wingman.

The definition of bad timing

As some of you may have heard, Amazon has temporarily pulled all Macmillan books - including St. Martins Press books - from its site, due to a dispute over e-book royalties. However, GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER can still be ordered online via Barnesandnoble.com or the Indiebound network of stores.

More reviews, Kindle, Nook, etc. *Update #2*

The Nook e-book of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER is now available. The Kindle version should be by the end of the week as well. The unabridged audio version, read by actress Karen White, is due out Jan. 29.

- An interview I recorded yesterday (1/25) at WBGO-FM in Newark will air in edited broadcast form Friday (1/29) night at 7:30 on 88.3 FM and via the live stream at www.wbgo.org. After that, it'll be archived on the station's website, along with a reading I did from the book.

- Last week saw two more reviews, from January Magazine and BookReporter.com.

- An interview I did with the Asbury Park Press will appear in this Sunday's (1/31) edition, and will also be available online at www.app.com.

- The GTN tour begins this Friday at Book People in Austin, Texas, then moves on to Houston, before circling back for the official East Coast launch party at Manhattan's Mysterious Bookshop Feb. 5, and then Words! in Asbury Park the following day. More dates to come. Hope to see some of you on the road.

Where I've been

GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER, which goes on sale today, is my first new novel in five years, following 2003's THE BARBED-WIRE KISS and 2005's THE HEARTBREAK LOUNGE. Both those books had paperback editions as well, so I wasn't totally absent from bookstores in the interim, but it has been a solid half decade since I had a new hardback out.

What was I doing in the meantime? Well, most of my time and energy was taken up with my other job, as the Sunday Entertainment Editor at the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger. It was a good gig, one I was lucky to have. It was (and is) a great paper, and I worked with some of the smartest and most talented people in the business. It was a wonderful time. I did publish a pair of short stories during that period, especially one close to my heart called "Lovers in the Cold," which appeared in the anthology MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER, a collection of stories inspired by the Springsteen song.

And then there was 188 pages of a standalone third novel, tentatively titled SHADOW LAND, which I worked on for a good part of 2005. I liked the plot (as far as I'd figured it out. I never outline), and I was eager to jump into another book quickly after finishing HEARTBREAK. But something was wrong. After an energetic start, the going got tough. Though it was a standalone, it began to feel too much an echo of the books I'd already written, in both tone and content. And although I liked the main character, a disgraced former U.S. Marshal, he was clearly walking the razor's edge of cliche - troubled man with a past seeking redemption.

In an interview I did with Stephen King once, he described two modes of writing, one in which the story is a speedboat and it carries you along behind it, like a skier. In the other, you're the skier and you're dragging the boat. If it's the right story at the right time, and all your cylinders are firing, you're often in the first mode - it's energizing and invigorating. If you're spending a lot of time in the second, you're in trouble. By the time I got to page 180 of SHADOW LAND, I felt like I was dragging the Queen Mary.

I remember vividly one afternoon sitting down at the desk, about to write a scene I was actually looking forward to - a character gets out of his pickup, goes into a bar and has a confrontation with one of the minor villains. I love those kinds of scenes. They come easy to me and they play to my strengths - terse dialogue, action and ambient detail. But I realized, as I described him getting out of the truck, that I had no interest whatsoever in what happened to him once he got inside. I couldn't have cared less, and I figured a reader wouldn't care much either.

The next morning when I woke up, I knew I'd decided to bag the novel, all 188 hard-fought pages of it. And when I came to that realization, I felt a tremendous sense of relief flooding through me. Not long after that, I started working on a short story about one of the characters who would eventually figure in GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER. And suddenly writing was fun again.

I haven't thought about that novel much since, which I guess is another indication it was never meant to be. I may eventually revisit the plot, but it would be with an entirely different cast of characters, I think. Life's too short to write the same thing twice.

So I hope you enjoy GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER. And if you're wondering about that lost novel in between, trust me - you didn't miss anything.

Ledger review

Writer Vince Cosgrove reviews GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER for the Star-Ledger/Newhouse Newspapers today. And if that link doesn't work directly, The Huffington Post has picked it up as well.

Saturday night in Asbury

Website update

The website has been updated to reflect GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER and the current tour schedule (more dates to come, including a cool multimedia one I'll have more details on later). And over on the OTHER WRITINGS page, I've added the feature obituary I wrote for Mickey Spillane (above) that appeared in the Star-Ledger in July 2006.

For those who've asked about the long-promised Part Two of my James Lee Burke interview, I'm still trying to locate the transcript, and when I do, I'll post it. It's a good one too, with Burke talking at length about writing, drinking, and the hazards of success. I'm hoping it turns up soon.

More words

The inimitable Harriet Klausner weighs in on GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER over at The Mystery Gazette, as does Library Journal and reviewer David Marshall James on Yahoo's "Shine" forum.

Washington Examiner 12/27/09

(Click on photo for larger image)