The Tao of Doo


In his kind and generous review of my first mystery, DEATH NOTICE, author James Reasoner said the plot was vaguely reminiscent of something found in Scooby-Doo, only played seriously. He meant it as a compliment and I took it Read more

BAD MOON Rises


Another October, another release date. Since BAD MOON is my second book, you would think I'd be used to it. But nope, I'm not. BAD MOON's publication date feels as surreal as DEATH NOTICE's did last year. For readers, the Read more

Writing With ... Louise Penny


I am thrilled beyond words to welcome one of my favorite writers, Louise Penny, whose Armand Gamache mysteries have appeared on bestseller lists worldwide.  Her last book, BURY YOUR DEAD, won the Ellis for best mystery in Canada, and Read more

Is Browsing Dead?


I'll be the first to admit that I was a nerdy teenager. Not pocket protector nerdy, but no sports star, either. I was bookish, I guess you could say. I read A LOT back then, and nothing pleased me Read more

Why We Left Earth


Outer space has always been a mystery. Even before mankind fully grasped its vastness, they wanted to go there. Early astronomers, fascinated by the stars, invented ways to get a closer view. Think Copernicus, Galileo, Cassini. Writers not content Read more

Musings

Favorite Movie Posters

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Movie posters, just like book covers, have one simple purpose: Sell a product. That’s all they need to do. That’s all they’re expected to do.

Occasionally, though, something strange happens. The poster or book cover artist captures the imagination and creates something wonderful and unique. In the process of trying to sell a certain product, art is accidentally made.

Below are ten examples of movie poster work at its finest and why I love them.

THE IDES OF MARCH: Haven’t seen this poster before? That’s probably because it was just revealed yesterday. But, wow, what an image! The story of a campaign aide and a presidential candidate gets everything right, from the eerie split images of stars Ryan Gosling and George Clooney to the headline of the Time magazine cover also serving as the film’s tagline. An instant classic.

THE GOONIES: I admit, I picked this one for sentimental reasons. I loved this movie as a kid and the image of that ragtag group of friends hanging from a cave ceiling sparked my imagination big time. But it’s also a great example of the de facto movie poster style of the late seventies and early eighties. Gorgeously illustrated. Over the top. Completely indelible.


GONE WITH THE WIND:
Speaking of illustrated movie posters, this is the one that defined Hollywood epics for the rest of time. This is big, bold, brash — just like the film itself. And that image of Vivien Leigh bursting out of her scarlet (get it?) dress while preparing to be kissed by Clark Gable against the orange sky of a burning Atlanta is still scorching more than 70 years later.

HALLOWEEN: Sometimes, simple is better. And you can’t get anymore simple than this sharp knife/jack-o-lantern mashup. In one spare image, the view learns everything he needs to know about the movie — Halloween. Big knife. ‘Nuff said.

ANATOMY OF A MURDER: Saul Bass was probably the greatest designer of opening credits that Hollywood will ever see. He was also a damn fine movie poster artist. Let’s review the evidence: Crude, but effective, silhouette? Check. Masterful use of typography? Check. Off-kilter blocks of bold color that bisect the poster? Check. The verdict: A masterpiece.

JAWS: My only complaint about this original one-sheet is that you don’t need all that text telling you who’s in it and what it’s based on. The image of that gargantuan shark hurtling toward our unsuspecting swimmer is enough. It helped turn Jaws into a smash hit, spawned more imitators than any other poster in film history and will forever make people swimming in the ocean wonder what’s lurking just beneath the surface.

VERTIGO: Saul Bass again, this time illustrating Hitchcock’s fever dream/confessional of psychosis and obsession. The doomed couple plummeting into that vortex would be enough for any poster. Yet Bass layers on his trademark typefaces and puts it all against an orange background that’s as unusual as it is perfect.

FUNNY GAMES: I have no idea why director Michael Haneke remade his 1997 thriller about a family tortured by two teenagers. I haven’t seen the movie and I probably never will. But it gave us this poster, a heart-stopping close-up of tear-streaked Naomi Watts. It gets extra props for putting the type near the center of the poster, letting the brutal, beautiful image fill the frame. Unforgettable.

FARGO: Leave it to the Coen brothers to take all the innocence out of needlepoint. This wholly original movie about crime and punishment in the frozen north needed an equally original poster. It leaves the viewer both stunned and amused. Did they really just reproduce a brutal crime scene in needlepoint? Yes. Yes, they did.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: This poster is so well-known that it’s easy to forget just how revolutionary it was at the time of the film’s release. The Oscar-winning star’s face is hazy and barely recognizable. Her eyes feel like they’re staring right into your soul. Her mouth is covered by a moth with a skull on its back. And there’s something strange about that skull that might warrant a much closer look. The result is startling, electric, hypnotic. Pure movie poster perfection.

Why We Left Earth

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Outer space has always been a mystery. Even before mankind fully grasped its vastness, they wanted to go there. Early astronomers, fascinated by the stars, invented ways to get a closer view. Think Copernicus, Galileo, Cassini. Writers not content with being earthbound blasted off in their books. Jules Verne. H. G. Wells. Even Edgar Allan Poe took a literary trip to the moon. Then film came along, allowing a new breed of artists to visualize space travel. (Georges Méliès, anyone?)

By the time the 1950s rolled around, technology was advanced enough to shoot satellites into orbit. Monkeys, then man, followed. Launches were common. Astronauts became rock stars. And a clean-cut test pilot named Neil Armstrong took that first small step on the moon. Science fiction had been replaced by science fact, fantasy had suddenly become reality.

It was fun while it lasted.

In a sad coincidence, NASA’s space shuttle program is scheduled to come to a close near the anniversary of Armstrong’s historic steps. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility. On July 21, 2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis will touch down on an apathetic Earth. The missions — NASA’s brash yelp of victory in the space race and its wistful final breath — will bookend forty-two years of U.S. space exploration.

Some will say it was all worth it. Others will call it a waste of time, money and, tragically, American lives.

There has always been a debate about the merits of space exploration. In the July 21, 1969, edition of The New York Times, Pablo Picasso is quoted as saying, “It means nothing to me.” Charles Lindbergh, in that same edition, said, “It is of tremendous importance.” Similar statements will no doubt be uttered as NASA, other nations and even for-profit entities plan for the future. But whether one is for or against exploring the stars, it’s easy to understand why man has always been interested in going to space.

The answer is a simple one. Because it is there.

Space has been and will always be a tantalizing mystery, mostly because it’s close enough to see, but perpetually out of reach. We can watch stars wink into view on summer evenings. We can chart the moon’s glide across the sky from our bedroom windows. We can notice how the night cedes power to daylight on wintry morning commutes. Nothing makes humans more curious than letting them see something they can’t touch. In fact, it only makes them want it more. Human nature dictates it.

It doesn’t hurt that the view is pretty spectacular. Gazing up at the night sky, one is confronted with infinite possibilities — and infinite questions. Billions and billions of them, to paraphrase Carl Sagan. How many stars are there? How close are they? What’s beyond them? More stars? More galaxies? Life other than our own? What is out there?

At one time or another, Galileo, Verne and Méliès probably all asked themselves those same questions. Their progeny, armed with the luxury of advances in science and technology, sought the answers. So we got Edwin Hubble, Isaac Asimov and George Lucas, marching beyond their forebears. We got Star Trek and Spielberg. We got E.T. and Tomorrowland.

And we got NASA, of course, that group of guys in short-sleeved shirts and Buddy Holly glasses sending modern-day cowboys into space on bucking broncos fueled by fire. Once they got there, whether by Apollo lunar module or space shuttle, those brave men and women discovered more space, more questions, more possibilities. Just when one milestone was reached, we saw more that could be achieved. That needed to be achieved. Which begs the question, why continue to explore space when we know we can’t possibly see it all?

Again, because it is there. Or, put more poetically by President John F. Kennedy during his famous 1962 speech at Rice University, “There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again.”

And that’s the ultimate allure of outer space. It’s what has fascinated all those astronomers and writers and artists since the beginning of time. The mystery isn’t what we’ll discover out there among the stars. It’s how we’ll react when we find it. Space travel isn’t really about space. It’s about mankind, more vast and unknowable than any galaxy. To explore the heavens is to explore the hopes and the dreams of those of us on earth.

Rod McKuen put it best in the same edition of The New York Times in which Lindbergh and Picasso sounded off. “If we can reach other worlds so easily,” he wrote, “we might soon come to understand our own.”

Notes on Thrillerfest

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I returned yesterday from Thrillerfest, a multi-day extravaganza of books, writers, panels and sleep deprivation held every year at the Grand Hyatt in New York City.

If you’re a fan of mysteries and thrillers, I recommend you go at least once. You’ll get the chance to meet many of your favorite authors, hear them talk about the writing process, have them sign books and even be crammed into an elevator with some of them.

If you’ve written a mystery or thriller, then you absolutely must go. Not only will you learn things from the pros, but you’ll get to meet fellow authors, both legendary and just starting out. Writing is a very solitary act — full of frustration, disappointment and much beating of foreheads against battered keyboards — so it’s extremely fun to spend a few days chatting with people who know what you’re going through.

Since Thrillerfest lasts several days and has so much going on, it’s impossible for two people to have the same experience. So I’m not even going to try to write about my two days there and pretend it’s indicative of the entire Thrillerfest experience. It’s not. These are simply brief snapshots about my time there.

WAKE-UP CALL: I wasn’t going to stay at the Grand Hyatt. I live in New Jersey, an hour or so train ride from Manhattan. My goal was to get up at 5 a.m. both mornings, catch the 6:30 a.m. train and return the same way once my Thrillerfest day was done. That lasted until about 5:45 the first morning, when I realized I’d never be able to function that early two days in a row. So I booked a room by 6 a.m., packed by 6:30 and was on the road at 6:45.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW: My room had an amazing view of the statues that grace the entrance to Grand Central Terminal. Had I been smart enough to bring my camera, I would have taken a picture.

FREE BOOKS: The perks of going to a writing conference is that they give you a tote bag that contains free books. It’s a sad fact that you can’t keep all of them. (Nothing weighs your suitcase down more than free books.) But there are always a few keepers in the bunch. This year, I was lucky enough to get a hardcover copy of ADRENALINE by Jeff Abbott. I’ve heard great things about this book. Can’t wait to read it.

NO SLEEP TONIGHT: The Grand Hyatt is a lovely hotel. In addition to the view, my room was recently renovated, funky and comfortable. Unfortunately, the doors at the hotel are incapable of closing without making a massive slamming sound. Making matters worse, the interior walls are as thin as wax paper, allowing you to hear EVERY SINGLE SOUND coming from the hallway. This is not a good combination when the large tour group of teenagers in matching blue shirts staying on your floor insist on room-hopping in the middle of the night. Nor when there’s a toddler shrieking in the hallway at 2:30 a.m. Why any parent in their right mind would let a toddler emit siren-like wails in a hotel hallway at that hour is a mystery that not even the pros at Thrillerfest could explain.

AUTHOR, AUTHOR: I got to meet/chat/hang out with so many great writers. Some of them — Brad Parks, Lynn Sheene, Sophie Littlefield — have been kind enough to answer the Writing With … questionnaire on this blog. I hope to convince others — Hilary Davidson, Carla Buckley, Alma Katsu, Jennifer Hillier, Emily Winslow, Meg Gardiner, Rochelle Staab, Taylor Stevens — to do the same in the near future. (A special shout-out to Chevy Stevens, Wednesday’s featured author, who won the Thriller Award for her debut, STILL MISSING.)

DEBUT BREAKFAST: One of the things that makes Thrillerfest special is that it takes time out each year to celebrate authors who have recently made their debuts. I was lucky enough to be among this year’s “class” being honored at the annual Debut Author’s Breakfast. This means getting up insanely early to sit on a raised platform and have a ballroom full of people watch you eat while you talk about your book. Because I was nervous (and because I chew like a cow) I skipped the food and just had coffee. But my presentation went off without a hitch, I didn’t make an ass out of myself and the audience response was great. A big thanks goes out to author Avery Aames for her great tip about holding the microphone. It helped. A lot.

SHE SLAYED THEM: The keynote speaker during the debut author breakfast was Karin Slaughter. She was gracious, insightful and funny as hell. It was a pleasure to hear her speak about her journey from unpublished writer to international bestseller.

THE FUTURE: It’s impossible to go to a writing conference and not get sucked into a conversation about the future of publishing. It’s a scary/exciting time of endless possibilities. Most writers just want our books to be read. We’re not very concerned about the particulars. And since e-books are on everyone’s mind, it was interesting to see demonstrations of two new ways to “sign” e-books. On is Autography. The other is iDoLVine. Both were fascinating to see and have great potential.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Speaking of iDoLVine, one of the people heavily involved in the program is literary legend Margaret Atwood. The author of THE HANDMAID’S TALE, CAT’S EYE, THE BLIND ASSASSIN and dozens more demonstrated the technology. Afterward, I had the pleasure of meeting her in the hallway outside the conference room where the demonstration took place. It was a brief chat — a few minutes at most — and something she has likely already forgotten. But I’ve been reading her for two decades now, and being able to tell her how much her work means to me was the biggest thrill of this year’s Thrillerfest.

Were any of you at this year’s Thrillerfest? If so, I encourage you to share some of your stories from this year’s fest in the comments section below.