A Writer's Life

Give a hand to the DEAD MAN

 

Matthew Branham's terrific theme song for THE DEAD MAN is now live on Amazon's book page.  But you can listen to it right here.

Deadman

 

I hope you enjoy it!

 

Five Bestselling Authors. Ten Free Kindle Fires. 75 Free Kindle Thrillers.

 

Over 75 free books, yours for the taking.  

And ten free Kindle Fires...

And $500 for your favorite library.

What's the catch?

There is none. You can have as many of the books as you want...and you get a shot at one of the Kindles and money for your library.

Here's the deal: My friends J.A. Konrath, Blake Crouch, J. Carson Black, Scott Nicholson and I really appreciate your readership and support...and to show you how much, we want to give you 10 Kindle Fires and 75 free ebooks!

While the ebooks are only free Feb. 1 & 2, we want to start spreading the word today and allow you to enter the Kindle giveaway now.

There's no purchase necessary and the contest is international.  And there are three easy, FREE ways to enter:

(1) Go to the event blog at http://bigkindleboogie.blogspot.com and enter  using one of the "Rafflecopters" there

(2) email bigkindleboogie@yahoo.com with "Boogie entry" as subject line (Limit once per day)

(3) Tweet: 10 free Kindle Fires. 75 free ebooks. http://bit.ly/xWOoKN #bigkindleboogie RT to enter for a Fire!  The tweets can be entered as often as you like, just don't annoy your friends--tweets are automatically picked up by a software gizmo we have and added to the drawing pool.

And if you're hunting for more ebook deals, be sure to visit our Big Kindle Boogie event partners:  Ereader News Today,Kindle Nation Daily, Ereader Love, and Ireader Review, great places to find fantastic bargain and free Kindle books.  

 

CONTEST RULES: All entries made through Rafflecopters and random selections will be pooled and the 10 Kindle Fire winners will be randomly selected by the Watauga County (NC) Public Library staff on Tuesday, Feb. 7. Winners will be announced on the Big Kindle Boogie blog and the Facebook event page. We will attempt to contact winners directly, but it is winner's responsibility to claim prize by Feb. 10 or alternate winners will be selected. Some Rafflecopters may be replaced during the contest due to technical limitations of entry counters and to update our free book links, but all entries made on all Rafflecopters will be stored and pooled for the prize drawings. Entries will also be randomly collected from Twitter searching the #bigkindleboogie hashtag and added to the prize pool for drawings. The first winner selected will have a $500 donation made to their local library or library support group. No purchase necessary, contest is international.

Rich Reviews for RICHEST HILL

If you're a regular reader of this blog, Richard S. Wheeler is a familiar name. He's a multiple Spur Award winner and undeniably one of the greatest living writers of western novels. I hesistate to say that because that well-deserved, and well-earned, honor tends to ghetto-ize his fiction as cowboy tales when they are far more than that. Which is why it's alawys great when he gets the strong critical praise he deserves. His new novel The Richest Hillon Earth as been winning acclaim everywhere. For instance, Kirkus Reviews says:

Wheeler's work isn't character study, nor is it a shoot-'em-up, hero-centric tale.

It is a mirror to a time and place where copper, for wires, for brass, for war and peace was clawed from the earth by men as disposable as machinery, men left without care or comfort to hide away in the tunnels so they might once more be warm as they cough up their lives.

"The Richest Hill on Earth" is passionate, intelligently written, thoroughly entertaining historical fiction.

 The latest rave comes from Bookgasm's Alan Cranis, who says, in part:

Richard S. Wheeler applies his formidable skill of combining Western historical events with fiction in THE RICHEST HILL ON EARTH, his latest stand-alone novel. Here, the story surrounds the battle for control of the rich copper mines during the early history of Wheeler’s home state of Montana.

THE RICHEST HILL ON EARTH ironically reminds us that corporate greed and control of the government — along with the 99 percent who suffer in its wake — is by no means a contemporary phenomenon. This may not have been Wheeler’s intent, but it nonetheless adds another dimension to this fascinating if somewhat downbeat historical novel. 

If you haven't read Wheeler yet, this would be  fine time to start. 

The Big Box

Coming very soon...

Two big days.

Dozens of free, five-star books from five top-selling authors...including the ultimate Kindle box-set.

And many chances to win Kindle Fires for yourself and money for your favorite library. 

 

 

Big Kindle Boogie

Some of your favorite, bestselling Amazon authors are teaming up for a special event next week. You can be the first to know by visiting  here.

Where Am I?

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately. It's not that I have a shortage of publishing scams, weird mail, gripes, and industry stuff to write about (my "For The Blog" folder is full)...but I've been busy writing (my last MONK book), writing some more (my February novella McGrave), writing even more (an in-development book project with another author), editing (The Dead Man series for Amazon),  having meetings (on that western project I haven't told you much about yet), and prepping for my short film Bumsickle (which I am directing in Kentucky the first weekend in March).

But I'll be back.

TV Main Title of the Week

THE WALK is Outselling Stieg Larsson!

Here's something I never thought I'd see. I still don't believe it.

 

 

THE WALK is Outselling Stephen King!

I certainly never thought I'd see this...THE WALK is now the #1 bestselling horror novel -- paper or ebook -- on Amazon. I am outselling Stephen King. Unbelievable. Undeserved. But wow, what a thrill.  

 

Edgar Nominees Announced

I think this is a great list of nominees. I'm excited to see so many new names as opposed to the usual suspects. Kudos to the judges!

Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce on the 203rd anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, its Nominees for the 2012 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2011.  The Edgar® Awards will be presented to the winners at our 66th Gala Banquet, April 26, 2012 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York, New York.

 
BEST NOVEL

The Ranger by Ace Atkins (Penguin Group USA – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Gone by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press)
The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur Books)
1222 by Anne Holt (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
Field Gray by Philip Kerr (Penguin Group USA - G.P. Putnam’s Sons – Marion Wood Books)
 

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Red on Red by Edward Conlon (Random House Publishing Group – Spiegel & Grau)
Last to Fold by David Duffy (Thomas Dunne Books)
All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen (The Permanent Press)
Bent Road by Lori Roy (Penguin Group USA - Dutton)
Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder (Minotaur Books – Thomas Dunne Books)
 

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett (Hachette Book Group – Orbit Books)
The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle (Felony & Mayhem Press)
The Dog Sox by Russell Hill (Pleasure Boat Studio – Caravel Mystery Books)
Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley (HarperCollins Publishers – Harper Paperbacks)
Vienna Twilight by Frank Tallis (Random House Trade Paperbacks)
 
 
BEST FACT CRIME

The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins (Crown Publishing)
The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge by T.J. English (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard (Random House - Doubleday)
Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender by Steve Miller (Penguin Group USA - Berkley)
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter by Mark Seal (Penguin Group USA - Viking)
 

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The Tattooed Girl: The Enigma of Stieg Larsson and the Secrets Behind the Most Compelling Thrillers of our Time by Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer & John-Henri Holmberg (St. Martin’s Griffin)
Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making by John Curran (HarperCollins)
On Conan Doyle: Or, the Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda (Princeton University Press)
Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film by Philippa Gates (SUNY Press)
Scripting Hitchcock: Psycho, The Birds and Marnie by Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick (University of Illinois Press)


BEST SHORT STORY

"Marley’s Revolution" – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by John C. Boland (Dell Magazines)
"Tomorrow’s Dead" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by David Dean (Dell Magazines)
"The Adakian Eagle" – Down These Strange Streets by Bradley Denton (Penguin Group USA – Ace Books)
"Lord John and the Plague of Zombies" – Down These Strange Streets by Diana Gabaldon (Penguin Group USA – Ace Books)
"The Case of Death and Honey" – A Study in Sherlock by Neil Gaiman (Random House Publishing Group – Bantam Books)
"The Man Who Took His Hat Off to the Driver of the Train" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Peter Turnbull (Dell Magazines)


BEST JUVENILE

Horton Halfpott by Tom Angleberger (Abrams – Amulet Books)
It Happened on a Train by Mac Barnett (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
Vanished by Sheela Chari (Disney Book Group – Disney Hyperion)
Icefall by Matthew J. Kirby (Scholastic Press)
The Wizard of Dark Street by Shawn Thomas Odyssey (Egmont USA)


BEST YOUNG ADULT

Shelter by Harlan Coben (Penguin Young Readers Group – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (Penguin Young Readers Group – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall (Random House Children’s Books – Knopf BFYR)
The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines (Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group – Roaring Creek Press)
Kill You Last by Todd Strasser (Egmont USA)
 
 
BEST PLAY

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club by Jeffrey Hatcher (Arizona Theatre Company, Phoenix, AZ)
The Game’s Afoot by Ken Ludwig (Cleveland Playhouse, Cleveland, OH)
 

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

"Innocence" – Blue Bloods, Teleplay by Siobhan Byrne O’Connor (CBS Productions)
"The Life Inside" – Justified, Teleplay by Benjamin Cavell(FX Productions and Sony Pictures Television)
"Part 1" – Whitechapel, Teleplay by Ben Court & Caroline Ip (BBC America)
"Pilot" – Homeland, Teleplay by Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon & Gideon Raff (Showtime)
"Mask" – Law & Order: SVU, Teleplay by Speed Weed (Wolf Films/Universal Media Studios)
 
 
ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD

"A Good Man of Business" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by David Ingram (Dell Magazines)
 

GRAND MASTER

Martha Grimes
 

RAVEN AWARDS

M is for Mystery Bookstore, San Mateo, CA
Molly Weston, Meritorious Mysteries
 

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD
                                                                                           
Joe Meyers of the Connecticut Post/Hearst Media News Group


THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
(Presented at MWA’s Agents & Editors Party on Wednesday, April 25, 2012)

Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books)
Come and Find Me by Hallie Ephron (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
Death on Tour by Janice Hamrick (Minotaur Books)
Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry (Crown Publishing Group)
Murder Most Persuasive by Tracy Kiely (Minotaur Books – Thomas Dunne Books)

TV Main Title of the Week

TV Main Title of the Week

TV Main Title of the Week

Behind the Music: Mr. Monk On Patrol

Mr. Monk on Patrol, my 13th original Monk novel, is out today in bookstores everywhere...and it's very much a story about change. 

 Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive detective, and his assistant Natalie Teeger travel to New Jersey to help out former SFPD detective Randy Disher, who is now Chief of Police of Summit and living with Sharona Fleming, Monk's previous assistant.  But the story is about much more than that...or the reunion with beloved characters...or the complex murders that Monk eventually solves.

I have always had a lot of  fun writing the Monk books, but most of the time, I was constrained by having to stick to the continuity of the TV series (which I also occasionally wrote for). That changed with the finale of the TV show, which really shook things up and liberated me  to let the characters evolve in new and exciting ways...and to even introduce a few new, regular characters. It also freed me to pay off some of the character arcs that began early the novel series, which started back in 2006 with Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse (which I adapted with William Rabkin into the episode "Mr. Monk Can't See a Thing"). 

I believe that characters in a series become stale if they don’t grow and that readers, and the author, will become bored with them. At the same time, you want to remain true to what makes the characters, the relationships, and the "franchise" so special. 

It's a delicate balance. And here's how I've tried to maintain it.

The Monk books are narrated by Natalie. I chose that approach because I think it humanizes Monk. It gives us a necessary distance. Natalie’s eyes become the replacement for the camera lens that gave us our point of view on the TV version of Adrian Monk. Also, a little Monk goes a long way. You can overdo the joke and all the obsessive/compulsive stuff. By telling the stories from Natalie’s point of view, we aren’t with him all the time. We get some space, a breather from his phobias and ticks, and I think that’s important. 

But there's a side benefit. It’s allowed me to add an emotional resonance to the story-lines that goes beyond just Monk’s eccentricities and the solving of puzzling mysteries. The underlying theme of the books (and yes, there's always one) are often reflected in whatever is happening in Natalie’s life. Her personal story frames the way in which she perceives the mystery and reacts to Monk, so it’s all of a piece. It’s allowed me to make her a deeper, more interesting, and more realistic character. By doing that, I make Monk more dimensional as well, and I can ground the story in what I like to think of as “a necessary reality.”

Without that reality, Monk would just be a caricature and cartoon character. Natalie humanizes Monk and makes the world that the two of them live in believable to the reader. Through her, we are able to invest emotionally in the story. Without that crucial element, I believe the books would have failed.

Since we are in Natalie's head, we get to know her. And the more time you spend with someone, the deeper your relationship should become. So that's what I've tried to do with the reader's relationship with her. With that depth should come growth.

So, as your relationship with her grew and evolved, so did hers with Adrian Monk. I felt if I did it that way, the changes in their characters and the evolution in their relationship would all feel natural and inevitable. 

Natalie is a smart woman and I didn’t think she could stick with Monk, and keep investigating murders, if she didn’t find it fascinating herself. And I doubted she could do it for so long without picking up some skills along the way. It’s an arc I've been developing with her since Mr. Monk and The Dirty Cop, the eighth book in the series, and that pays off in a big way now in Mr. Monk On Patrol.  

The relationship between Monk and Natalie changes dramatically in this book...and yet I believe it's a natural extension of events in both the TV series and the last few books. This change has major consequences that impact all of the other characters in their world and that carries over directly into the next book in the series, Mr. Monk is a Mess, coming in July 2012, and that leads into the finale of the book series. 

Well, at least my involvement in it. I decided while writing Mr. Monk on Patrol that I was going to leave the series at the end of my current contract. My good friend Andy Breckman, the creator of Monk, and my publishers have kindly allowed me to write a finale, one that leaves the door open should they decide to continue the book series someday with another writer. 

I hope you enjoy Mr. Monk on Patrol. I certainly had a great time writing it!