In Fair Shape

I'm back home from sunny London to rainy Minnesota -- talk about an upside-down universe -- after my fifth visit to the London Book Fair.

I still remember walking into the Fair for the first time in 2005.  I didn't know a soul, and I was confronted by a mass of exhibition booths stretching as far as the eye could see.  It was probably one of the most intimidating experiences of my life.  Now it feels like coming home and seeing old friends.

What do I do at the Fair?  First, many of my overseas publishers attend, so I have an opportunity to catch up with them, review materials for upcoming editions, and talk about marketing support I can provide.  This year, among other meetings, I was delighted to find out from my Dutch publisher that they had sold nearly 40,000 copies of STALKED in the Netherlands.  That's tremendous progress in that market.  He also showed me the cover for the Dutch edition of IN THE DARK/THE WATCHER, which will be released as DE VOYEUR on May 25.  And yes, it's quite the cover!  You can see the whole catalog spread, including the cover, by clicking here.

I also visit during the Fair with export reps that sell the English editions of my books in countries around the world.  It's very common both for expats and natives in other countries to buy books in English, rather in the language of that country, so I discuss my books with reps from places like India, Singapore, Scandinavia, Hong Kong, and most of the European countries.  The shelf space for English editions is often limited, so it's a competitive market, and the personal touch helps.

Finally, my UK publisher Headline usually takes advantage of my attendance at the Fair to schedule meetings with UK book buyers, reviewers, and booksellers, in order to raise my profile there.  It seems to be working:  THE WATCHER was #3 on the "Heat Seekers" list of UK book sales last week.

So it's always busy and fun -- and always good to get back home.  Of course, we're not home for long.  This weekend I'll be driving up to Thunder Bay, Canada, for an event at the local Chapters bookstore on Saturday, May 2, at 2:00 pm.

Stride

The hero of my series is a Duluth police lieutenant named Jonathan Stride.

 

When I was creating Stride in my first book IMMORAL, I didn’t want a stereotypical, grizzled, emotionless detective.  I wanted someone who at his heart is a passionate man.  He struggles with his emotions, and sometimes they get the better of him, whether as a detective or as a man.  Sometimes his passions blind him to the truth of a case, and he makes mistakes as a result of it.  He’s not a super-hero.  He’s flawed and human, and I think that’s why readers relate to him.

 

Stride is obviously the glue that holds the series together, but he doesn’t dominate the stage.  Readers will occasionally tell me – approvingly – that Stride is sometimes a supporting character.  He lets other voices carry the book.  In that way, readers get pulled into the psychological suspense, by getting inside the head of the other characters, not just Stride.

 

On  the other hand, I tell people who are new to the series that my fourth book, IN THE DARK, is a great place to start.  That’s because this book, more than any other since IMMORAL, is very much Stride’s book.  I wanted a story that allows the reader to get to know Stride and the influences that shaped him.  So this story takes you deep into Stride’s past and to an unsolved murder from thirty years ago that involved people who were close to Stride’s heart.  That summer of violence was a big part of what made him the man he is.  In this new novel, he must confront those events and finally resolve them – and deal with the loss and grief he never fully accepted.

 

Can a suspense novel make you cry?  This one just might.  By the end, I hope you’ll feel close to Jonathan Stride and his past.

Speedos and Britney Spears

These days, authors sometimes seem to spend as much time talking about their books as they do writing them.  Not that that’s a hardship for us.  After all, how bad can it be to have a profession where people ask you to stand up and talk about yourself?

 

This comes to mind because I’m in Duluth – “Stride Country,” as I call it – for book signings for IN THE DARK, and I spent Friday morning doing radio interviews.  Being in the media sometimes feels like stumbling right into the middle of a Carl Hiaasen novel.  Case in point:  I arrived at the radio station at 7:00 am to find myself surrounded by a man in a swimsuit who was about to get a tattoo live on the air, a man dressed as Britney Spears carrying a Pomeranian (also dressed as Britney Spears), and a college girl who was going to get her hair cut by one of the DJ’s – who was blindfolded at the time.

 

And me.  As I mentioned when I was on the air, I was glad I had already got my hair cut before coming up to Duluth.

 

So book marketing is a time when you feel closer to the entertainment side of the business.  On the other hand, it doesn’t make much to ground you back in the darker side of life – the side that Jonathan Stride deals with every day in my books.  During the morning, I also had a chance to talk to a woman who had dealt with a stalker for more than twenty years.  I could see the tension in her emotionally and physically as she described her experiences.  She was hoping to get the message out in one of my books about the struggles that victims go through in those circumstances.  That’s when the line between fiction and reality tends to blur.  For me, it’s part of the variety of inspirations, many drawn from true crimes, that twist and turn and wind up in my plots.

 

Meanwhile, then it was back to the media.  I had two newspaper interviews on Friday afternoon and a video blog to film.  And then we got around to the real business of the day – signing books.  I visited one of Duluth’s indie bookstores to sign copies of IN THE DARK and chat with readers.  Nothing makes you feel better as an author than to feel the enthusiasm that fans have for your books and how eagerly they await each new novel.  I had a reader in Fargo who wrote to me earlier in the week to say she had braved flood waters to get to a bookstore to buy IN THE DARK – only to find that the store was closed because of the flood!

 

I told her I was flattered she had risked her life to get my book.  But next time, wait until the waters go down…

Read All About It

Newspaper reports keep bemoaning the death of reading in this country.  I’m not so sure.  Maybe I get a distorted impression because the people I meet are almost always readers (!), but I do see some encouraging trends.

First, there has been a wonderful revival of the old-fashioned tradition of book clubs in recent years.  People who love to read are finding each other in the workplace, at the library, at booksellers, at church, and getting together every month to discuss the issues raised by books (and maybe enjoy some guacamole and carne asada, too).  These are people who are passionate about books.  I visit with book clubs regularly and have posted book club discussion questions for each of my books at my web site.  Talking with readers at book clubs is always one of the most entertaining events in which I participate.  They never fail to impress me with the diversity of their opinions and the insights of their questions.  As a writer, I learn a lot about how readers respond to plots and characters, and those are useful lessons as I craft each new novel.

If you’d like me to participate in your club, by the way, just send me an e-mail at brian@bfreemanbooks.com.  I do call-in discussions all the time around the world.  I’ve been known to be up in the middle of the night talking to readers in Australia,so calling to New Jersey or Oregon is no problem!

There are other signs of enthusiasm in the reading community.  People laugh about the silver bullet influence of Oprah’s recommendations on the bestseller list, but I think it shows that people are hungry for good books, and they’re looking for recommendations on which they can rely.  Also, every time I hear that young people don’t read anymore, I look at my Facebook page, where many of my most enthusiastic fans are readers in college or in their 20s.  They’re always pushing me to hurry up on the next book. 

People have responded to great stories for centuries, and I don’t think that’s really changing.  We just need to make sure that we work together to help people of all ages – not just kids – enjoy the power of reading.  Book clubs, librarians, booksellers, schools, authors, publishers, reviewers – we can all help spread the gospel.  If you look at the phenomenon of The Da Vinci Code a few years ago, you can see the book drawing in millions of new readers who may not have cracked a book in years.  That’s an encouraging sign.  We just need to give them a reason to come back.

Ironically, maybe the struggling economy will help.  After all, a book offers pretty good entertainment value for the dollar.

Character-Driven Suspense

New readers will sometimes ask me:  If you could compare your books to those of another author, whom would it be?  Do you write like Michael Connelly?  Harlan Coben?  David Baldacci?

Well, yes.  And no.  My novels revolve around police investigations, so to that extent, they’re reminiscent of Connelly.  The plots are filled with twists and turns that may remind readers of Coben.  And there are pure thrills along the way, too, that you’d expect from a writer like Baldacci.  Maybe that’s why reviewers in publications like the Chicago Tribune and Library Journal point fans of those authors to my books.  On the other hand, in the same way that those authors write very distinctive kinds of books themselves, you’ll get a different experience reading mine.

I’m not a big fan of putting labels on books – mystery, thriller, police procedural, cozy, domestic thriller, etc., etc. – because I think each book should stand on its own, rather than be assigned to a formula that may or may not fit.  But if you tied me down (please don’t do that – I’m having flashbacks of Misery) and forced me to give my books a name, I’d call them “psychological suspense.”

To me, that means building drama that arises out of the emotions and secrets of the characters.  You won’t find forensic minutiae a la Cornwell in my books, and you won’t find intricacies of police procedure and department politics a la Connelly.  Instead – through multiple perspectives – I try to paint a picture of the backgrounds and psychology of the characters, in a way that you understand what drew them across a terrible line.  By the time you reach the final shocking conclusion, it should not only be the last piece in the puzzle, it should also feel like the right emotional resolution for the drama.

I don’t want books where the heroes are all good and the villains are all bad.  Every character in my novels operates in the same moral gray scale that we face in daily life, making the best choices we can based on our backgrounds, biases, prejudices, and beliefs.  Sometimes we make the right choices, and sometimes we don’t, and sometimes we’re not sure which is which.  That’s true of my characters, too – including the detectives.  Their goal is justice, but as in any complex situation, that’s not always easy to achieve.

So when you open up IN THE DARK – or any of my novels – that’s the world you’ll enter.  I hope you enjoy it.  My goal is that the pace will drive you through the book at a rocket rate, because you have to find out what happens next.  But I always tell readers that they should go back after they’re done and read the book more slowly to pick up the nuances of the characters.  That’s what psychological suspense is all about.