Burning Down The House

I thought it worth sharing an article from today's Guardian that seems to be sparking fierce debate in rainy old London. In the midst of the larger debate over the fate of the publishing industry, the book market in general, and, at least over here, the looming Christmas war on book prices, writer Stuart Jeffries has written a well-articulated observational piece on his country's biggest bookstore, titled no less than "How Waterstone's Killed Bookselling."

You can read, debate and twitter about the piece to your own heart's content, but I thought it was worth passing along if for no other reason than this quote by literary agent Bill Hamilton about one my own favorite writers, Ian Rankin.

"Rankin was selling nothing at all for the first few novels he wrote, but publishers knew he would take off and so they kept with him. The opportunity isn't there to do that any more because sales are so low that you lose too much money initially, even if you make money later. That old, very successful business model doesn't make sense any more. Thanks to the prevailing way in which books are sold there would be no new Rankin."

Welcome to Rome. Now where's my fiddle?

House of Cards

One more, while it's crossing my mind. This past Sunday, The Denver Post published my review of Cowboys Full by James McManus. You can get the full lowdown in the review but it's my humble opinion that this thing is the definitive history of poker up to this point.

I interviewed McManus by email, briefly, a few months ago and anybody who has even the slightest interest in the guy's work ought to chase him down for a longer interview. I have a feeling he pours most of his effort into his work but I'll bet he tells a great bar story.

He wouldn't tell me what attracts him to poker in the first place, and a lot of that angle is covered in Positively Fifth Street anyway. But I did get an answer to what turns him off about a game: "What repels me," he said, "Is how easy it is for a person to play his hand perfectly and lose all his money to an idiot who gets lucky on the final card."

And that's life, in a nutshell.

You can also set alternate takes on the book from Jack Broom at The Seattle Times, and even more intriguingly from Rick Kogan at The Chicago Tribune, who opines, "Now that this book is on the shelves and what should be a number of best-seller lists, perhaps he will have the time and the inclination to finish his long brewing novel about Las Vegas."

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The good: the newest issue of Bookslut is up, right on time. Inside you'll find my preview of some books due out next year, and a few that seem not to exist at all. Go forth, and read, "Things That Are Good" to get the lowdown on new titles by Don Winslow, Charlie Huston, John Burdett, Walter Mosley, Duane Swierczynski and Dennis Lehane, among others, that should be out within the next year.

The (not-so) Bad: I gave some good-natured ribbing to Winslow's publisher for not releasing the eagerly awaited (by me) sequel to The Dawn Patrol, called The Gentlemen's Hour, this year, even though it's already been published in the UK. As happens, I'm not the only one who's been giving that absence some thought. I got to chatting with the unassailable publishing industry overseer and crime writer extraordinaire Sarah Weinman about the subject over the past few days.

Not only did Sarah dig up her own scoop - that Winslow is getting beaucoup bucks to write Satori, a sequel to the Trevanian thriller Shibumi, for Grand Central Publishing - but she managed to find the lowdown on the missing sequel. Don Winslow is jumping ship.

The Ugly? Publisher's Marketplace reports that (tragedy!) The Gentlemen's Hour will be published in the United States...in July of 2011...by Simon and Schuster, and not Alfred A. Knopf. Apparently, there are more books in the deal, too. S&S will first publish Winslow's standalone thriller, Savages, plugged as "a gritty, humorous, and drug-fueled ransom thriller set amidst the Baja Cartel in Laguna Beach, CA."

So, good news and bad news in the mix. Does it balance out? We'll see when the ink hits the paper next year. I think the lesson here is always ask Sarah first. She knows all.

Yes, It Is Rocket Science

Oh, and while we're at it, I did do a little interview with the fella in the picture there, one of only 12 men to walk on the moon.

Buzz Aldrin was a great interview subject: funny, smart, and truthful. If you wander over to Airport Journals, you can read my very long and ambitious profile of the Gemini 12 and Apollo 11 astronaut, "Buzz Aldrin: Venturing Forward."

My favorite moment in the interview came when I mentioned reading in the NASA transcripts that when Mission Control cleared the Eagle for takeoff, Buzz replied, "Roger. Understood. We're number one on the runway."

"You know, the definition of humor is to take a normal situation, throw in an absurdity and then act as if it's normal," Aldrin told me. "When you're able to do that twice in the same sentence, you've really accomplished something. To say that we were number one on the runway ... Well, there wasn't anybody else up there and there sure as hell was no runway."

You can find out more about the mission and life after NASA in Buzz Aldrin's memoir, Magnificent Desolation or by visiting his official website.

People Who Write For Money

I'm a bit late in putting this out there in the wider world, but the new column is up at Bookslut. The latest examination of books far and wide, "American Psychos," gets down on the latest titles from Sara Paretsky, Andrew Vachss, and the always entertaining James Ellroy, who finishes up the Underworld USA trilogy with Blood's A Rover.

I haven't decided yet whether to go take another hit of Ellroy's performance art when he comes to town to sign books next week, but I've been following the latest news. The most interesting interview so far comes on video from the eagle eyes of Mediabistro's Galleycat, who interviewed Ellroy last week. In it, he offers some questions for working writers to ponder.

"It's survival of the fittest," Ellroy said. "Who wants to write? How bad do you want it? Will you write, even if you're poorly paid? I will. That gives you a leg up on people who write for money. I got 3500 bucks for my first novel, 3500 bucks for my second novel. Five K for my third, five K for my fourth. Six K for my fifth, ten K for my sixth. Then big jumps to twenty. All of which was realistic renumeration at the time."

Just to give you some perspective, Ellroy's first novel, Brown's Requiem, was published in 1981. In relative terms, the author's renumeration would be somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 dollars in present-day value depending on the economic indicator you use. $20,000 for his seventh novel, 1987's The Black Dahlia, would equate to nearly $40,000 today.

Things to think about.

Max Brooks Talks Zombies

Well, it's finally out. I was out of town for the big release myself, but I'm told that while I was away, The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks has landed with a splat on bookstore shelves, comfortably on the heels of Zombieland's surprising opening (it's a killer flick, by the way).

What seems like a million years ago, I got the very cool opportunity to ask its author, Max Brooks (the author of the deeply creepy World War Z, producer of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, and son of Mel Brooks, to boot) about his new graphic adaptation of a slim chapter from his now-famous Zombie Survival Guide. The project is illustrated by Brazilian artist Imbraim Roberson, and depicts, as advertised, various zombie encounters throughout history. Like World War Z, it's a unique perspective on zombie lore and one that makes for a much better Halloween read than all those terrible vampire books out there.

"I've always written my fiction as a fan, not an artist," Brooks said, when the project was still in production. "I always start from a place of answering the questions I wanted answered in other movies, or writing the stories that I wanted to read. The only reason I wrote The Zombie Survival Guide was because I couldn't find one already out there."

Most fanboys already know that World War Z is slated for a film production after Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment snapped up the rights. J. Michael Straczynski has taken a first pass at the script and it's now in the hands of screenwriter Matt Carnahan (State of Play, etc). But Recorded Attacks seems to lend itself even better to a graphic adapation rather than film.

"I'd wanted to do The Zombie Survival Guide as a graphic novel for a long time, actually before I even wrote World War Z, " Brooks said. "There were a lot of rejections along the way, and one potential deal ended up with the comic book company folding before we could start. I'd always wanted to 'flesh out' the recorded attacks, not just for their 'zombieness,' but because I'm a huge lover of history and I'm always trying to find ways to inject it into my work."

It turns out that more than a little of Brooks' dramatically visual writing style is rooted not in literature, but in comic books.

"I've always loved the concept of visual storytelling," Brooks said. "I am very, very dislexic, and as a kid, sometimes comics were the only way I could process information. The graphic novel that first inspired me was Sam Glanzman's A Sailor's Story. I'd grown up hearing my uncle's stories about Navy life during World War II, but actually seeing it in Glanzman's artwork suddenly gave it life. Graphic novels still continue to inspire me, works like Andrew Helfer and Randy DuBurke's biography of Malcolm X or Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe."

While the "zombieness" of Recorded Attacks is inherently terrifying, there's also a lot of hardcore research at play in the book.

"I wanted these stories to be as realistic as possible, right down to the fashion, architecture, technology, even the facial hair of the period," Brooks said. "I gave myself a mountain of extra work trying to find accurate historical representations of each period to pass on to the artist. Every hour I spent writing the actual script, I must have spent three trying to find some picture of correct Roman armor, or the hold of a slave ship, or a North African fort of the French Foreign Legion."

The process must have made an impression on him. These days, Max says he's working on a "top secret" writing project in addition to a gig writing G.I. Joe comics over at IDW Publishing.

"To be honest, it's the hardest work I've ever done," Brooks said. "I never realized how much description I had to put into each story, each page, each panel. And I'm not just talking about the artist's subjects. I had to be very specific what angle we were looking at, how close the shot was, where the light was coming from, etc. I've heard this from friends who write for cartoons or animated movies and now I have a whole new respect for both them and the comic book industry as a whole. I guess I'm making up for all that homework I never did in college."

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks is in bookstores now. You can also download a free chapter at the book's official website and dig the book's animated trailer below.

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks from Crown Books on Vimeo.

And Justice For All

I also had to share a piece that I'm really quite proud to have written. In the most recent books section of The Denver Post, you'll find my first feature for the paper, "Schooled in strength: LaNier's lessons from the Little Rock Nine."

I expected my recent interview with Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin to be the highlight of my summer, although that story seems to have been mercilessly delayed by production problems. But a few weeks ago, I was tasked do an interview with Carlotta Walls LaNier, who quietly lives here in Denver. She's an incredible person and one I consider to be just as historic a figure as anybody in the Civil Rights Movement.

Most people know that in 1957, Little Rock's Central High School was forced to integrate - very nearly at gunpoint - by President Eisenhower, who federalized the Arkansas National Guard and stared down the state's intractable Governor Orval Faubus. But let me tell you, hearing that story from someone who was there is a moving experience.

Just before my own interview with her in late August, I attended a packed house at The Tattered Cover in Denver, where an enthusiastic audience came to see Carlotta Walls LaNier, the youngest member of the Little Rock Nine. There were maybe 300 people in this room, and Mrs. LaNier shook every single hand and gave a moving tribute to her mother, husband and children, all of whom were there to support her.

Today, LaNier is arguably the Little Rock Nine's most vocal and public member but for years, she was understably reticent to talk to anybody about her experiences. Yet after reuniting with her classmates in 1987 for the 30th anniversary of the Little Rock action, she began to feel that her side of the story ought to be told.

She recounts her experiences in A Mighty Long Way, her memoir, co-authored by Washington Post journalist Lisa Frazier Page and forwarded by President Bill Clinton, a longtime admirer. In it, she tells not only of growing up during these turbulent times in Little Rock but also about the cost inflicted on her family and friends, her willpower to succeed when so many people were rooting for her to break down so many barriers, and her journey to make peace with her incredible past. You can read more about it in the review/interview but trust me that this book is going to outlive all of us. History is better for her sharing this story.

The most important parts of our short conversation made it into the article, but I'll share a couple of supplementary stories I found fascinating. One of my favorites was about the day that Carlotta Walls invented passive resistance all by herself.

"I might have been angry at times – and I was angry at times, " she said. "Especially at this one redhead who used to walk on the back of my heels. But I knew I could not retaliate, not that I was a fighter in that manner anyway, a physical fighter. Anyway, I knew I could not fight back so I had to come up with defensive mechanisms. After a while of dealing with her, I thought of something. So I stopped dead one time. I walked real fast during my younger days. This time, she was keeping up with me and walking on the back of my heels and I figured I’ll stop this, today. I just stopped immediately and she slammed right into me. I just had to learn to use the defensive abilities I had."

Another amazing aspect to interviewing people is getting to see other people through their eyes. When I interviewed George McGovern, you could see the delight in his eyes when he talked about going toe-to-toe with Hunter S. Thompson. In interviewing Mrs. LaNier, you could see the whole of the Civil Rights Movement, people she had known and seen with her own eyes, whether it was the amazing NAACP president Daisy Bates organizing the defense of the Little Rock Nine or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sitting in his shirtsleeves over a plate of barbecue and a beer, mapping out the future of America in a Little Rock basement somewhere. One of her most memorable connections was the great Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown V. Board of Education in the very Supreme Court where he would later serve as Justice. She remembered being worried that the movement was losing one of its greatest assets when Lydon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as Solicitor General in 1965, but she has since changed her view.

"I thought that we were losing someone that was needed to get things changed," she remembered. "I’m now 66 myself and I look back and understand that he did the right thing. It was time for younger people to start moving on, and giving them the opportunity to take what he had done and move it to a higher level. I think that’s what we all need to do each day. I see organizations today that have always had the same public face. Teach the younger ones. Help them to take on some of this responsibility, because they have good ideas too. Get the best out of the old experience too, of course, but those things you feel were not effective, leave them behind."

The last third of A Mighty Long Way may be its most dramatic segment, as LaNier describes the devastating events of February, 1960, when her house was bombed, her father arrested, and two young black men jailed for years for a crime they didn't commit. But true to LaNier's positive nature, the book ends on a high note, as she remembers the night that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. I have to note, too, that Carlotta Walls LaNier puts her money where her mouth is. She made phone calls from Obama's Denver headquarters for more than 10 hours that day, not as any kind of celebrity but as a private citizen working hard to make things better for everybody.

"It’s not over just because Barack Obama was elected President," she said. "We all have to help him. If you notice in each one of his speeches, he brings up service all the time. I think if people got back to that, giving service to someone else, that they will feel better about themselves and aspire to do better in their daily lives whether they are getting to know other people or just being an honest citizen. I really do think positive change is coming. It's not just hot air."

I strongly encourage anyone with an interest in American history to read A Mighty Long Way and to visit and support The Little Rock Nine Foundation in its efforts to promote the ideals of education and equality for all.