Tracy Howell

The big news last week came from my agent at the Gernert Company, and was later posted by Sarah over at Galleycat, that Tracy Howell, the Gernert foreign rights director, had died at 42. Her ordeal began with a visit to the hospital for pneumonia the Friday before last, which led to complications. She seemed to have stabilized, but then suffered a stroke and passed away the following Wednesday.



As happens in life, I received news of her death in the middle of a dinner party, and wasn’t sure what to do. So I announced it to our guests, and a bleak cloud formed over the festivities.



I can’t say I knew Tracy well. We conversed via email many times, concerning foreign sales of my books, and we met in the office when I’d occasionally make it to New York. What I remember is that she was always enthusiastic; when we met, she was full of—as I interpreted it—happiness, and a satisfaction that could never approach smugness. She seemed to be exactly where she wanted to be. And I liked that. A lot.



I do know she was excellent at her job, and I have a stack of hardly deserved foreign editions to prove it.



My agent knew her far better, and he said, “She was truly the kindest and most thoughtful person I’ve known both in and out of publishing.”



She’s survived by a husband and two children.

(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)

Belle & Sebastian

Over the past few days I’ve been listening a lot to the latest release by the greatest band in the world. (I once got in trouble with some folks from MIT by referring to The Velvet Underground as the greatest band of all time, but I’m willing to suffer some jibes in the defense of Belle & Sebastian.)



I ran across them a few years ago via a friend, their magnificent Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant. With sharp, funny lyrics and retro cover art—both of which reminded me of The Smiths—mixed with a full sound that mixes pop, folk and classical orchestration, I very quickly became obsessed.



I’m stunned most of all by how few people seems to know about them, which is why I’m writing this now. From their first record, their sound was utterly unique and fully formed, and over the years they’ve evolved with various personnel changes, moving into a more self-conscious, but no less brilliant, pop sound.



Listen out for the first single from The Life Pursuit, “Funny Little Frog”, as well as the fantastic tracks, “Act of the Apostle” and “To Be Myself Completely”.

(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)

Get Ye Some Church

Not my usual order, but in this case I’m talking about a certain James Church, writer of a particularly excellent first-thriller called A Corpse in the Koryo. (It doesn’t come out until October, and if the title changes between now and then—as I well know, these things happen—I’ll let you know.) I recently read it in manuscript, sent by my publisher, and I was damned well impressed.



So what’s a Koryo? Well, it’s the Hotel Koryo in Pyongyang. That’s right, North Korea. Which as you can guess is right up my alley. And the cop in this mystery (the genre’s somewhere between police procedural—light on the procedure—and espionage) is the brilliantly named Inspector O.



O is an endearing character, with a mix of necessary pragmatism and romanticism (in particular concerning wood), as well as authentic complexity. I don’t know if Koryo is the start of a series, but I hope it is.



It’s not just the milieu that appeals—though that certainly does, taking the reader to a place few know at all. More, it’s the writing—a beautifully honed minimalism that nonetheless evokes its scenes with great detail. I love it when writers are able to leave room for the reader’s imagination. It takes talent to know where to leave those spaces, and James Church has plenty of such talent.



The question I had now and then was: Who is James Church? That’s a bit of a mystery. The bio only says he worked a long time for “a Western intelligence service.” (I quote this from memory, the bio’s on my desk at home.) Now, that leaves the field open. But he’s certainly familiar with North Korea, and so my imagination starts running. The only other clue is in the manuscript itself, its final words:

January 2003, Prague

So it’s someone stationed—or relaxing—in Prague, who finished at least the first draft a month before my own first book came out. Maybe Church is still there in his false beard and Chairman Mao jacket. It’ll be interesting when this final mystery is exposed.

Koryo

You Are American, You Can’t Understand

Waking up this morning in Novi Sad, we learned that my girlfriend’s father’s car was empty of gas. Someone had pried off the gas cap and siphoned the tank empty. His wasn’t the only car hit last night—half the parking lot was filled with empty cars.



I’ve seen this before on previous trips. Last time, it was after we’d been out for the night and parked just outside the ring of a streetlamp’s illumination. That time, the father had complained when we arrived home that we’d parked badly. He’s generally fond of complaining, but by the morning, faced with a destroyed gas cap and air where petrol should’ve been, he was proved right. This time, however, he parked in a well-lit space, but it did no good.



We had an interesting talk around the kitchen table about this. The father isn’t really angry about what happened (though he’ll have to replace the broken cap), and is in fact a little pleased—there wasn’t much gas in the tank, so in a way he thwarted the thieves.



What was strange for me was that he expressed no outrage. These thieves attack off and on every week or two, and they do it all over the city. But they’ve been doing it for a decade—so while it’s annoying, it’s just part of the landscape of life in Serbia, as are Kafkaesque visits to bureaucratic police stations. It’s something you just accept. If you don’t, you’re likely to go mad.



My girlfriend then told me a story from around eight years ago. She and a friend’s daughter were watching Lethal Weapon on TV, the sound up so that the apartment was filled with the noise of gunfire. Then the daughter said she thought she heard gunfire outside. My girlfriend told her it was just the TV. But it wasn’t. Out on the main street there was a gangster car chase. The lead car had made a u-turn, and as it passed their building, the second car (in the opposite lane) opened up with machine-gun fire.

Notes from Kafka's Backyard

As mentioned before, I’m visiting Serbia-Montenegro, in particular the town of Novi Sad, capital of the semi-autonomous (don’t ask for clarification) region of Vojvodina. I’ve been here a lot, and always enjoy my stay, despite—and sometimes because of—the Kafkaesque confusions that inevitably take place.



An example:



Whenever a foreigner enters the country, 24 hours after arriving at his destination he must register with the local police, or milicija. Every time I visit I do this, traveling with my girlfriend to the after-hours desk of the main militia station, pay a couple bucks, and get a stamped card that will be taken from me at the border when I leave again. Simple.



This time it was different. The desk-officer sent us to another office, next door down, where the information officer told us “the guy” (his boss) who takes care of it had left work early. We should come back tomorrow. We did, and a little earlier too. But, alas, the boss had again gone home early, despite the fact he was supposed to be at his desk until 7. “Tomorrow,” said the officer. “Try to come in the morning.”



So today we arrived under full daylight, and took our IDs to a clerk’s window. The clerk pointed out that we were 3 days late; she was unimpressed. So she sent us upstairs to an office, where the boss would give us a stern talking-to in Room #16. He’d give us the stamp we needed. And so…



We trudged the steps and knocked on #16, but there was no answer, and it was locked. We waited a while, then went to #14 (which, by the sign taped to the frame, also dealt with strana, foreigners); they told us to go to #15. The man in #15 said we should go to #21. The secretary in #21 told us to wait for the guy in #16. So we waited in the hall until the guy from #15 came out and asked what was going on. We told him. He told us to go back to #21. The secretary, while laughing, wasn’t entirely pleased—the boss in #16 was supposed to take care of these things, not her. But we insisted, and she used a key to infiltrate his office and stamp my card.



Total time of this visit: about an hour.



Very Kafka, but, unlike Kafka, not oppressive at all. At no point was I worried or even depressed. Everyone was extremely nice and good-humored—such is the way in a country where these things happen every day. You have to joke the inconvenience away. My girlfriend even got the sense that it was an extended joke, them using us to get at their coworkers (yeah, go see Zorica, she’ll know what to do…heh…). I don’t know. All I know is that one hour gave me ideas for about 5 more stories.

(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)

The Ultimate Online Pharmaceutical

Just a question as I head out of the country: Why is this the subject header of 50% of all the spam I get?

(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)

"For a Train"

Things move quick in cyberspace, at least faster than I can make it out of the country. I sent a piece over to Tribe for Flashing in the Gutters, and before I could call the Hungarian train company to find out their schedule, the piece was up.



I wrote “For a Train” years ago, and it originally saw publication in Paragraph Magazine back in the day. Not crime, not espionage, but death—the death of Leo Tolstoy to be specific. Check it out.

(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)

To the Balkans

Keeping in line with the name of this blog, tomorrow I’ll be stepping out of town—and in fact out of the country—for the next ten or so days, so you’ll hear nary a whimper from me. Where to? Well, a place I’m plenty familiar with, Serbia—or Serbia and Montenegro, or “Yugoslavia” (as some still call it).



I’ll actually be in the northern half, an area called Vojvodina, visiting with my girlfriend’s family. Like a lot of regions over here, it has a complex history that everyone seems to remember, but always in slightly different ways. Thus, arguments follow. One version I heard the other night was this:



Vojvodina used to be an Austro-Hungarian region just north of Serbia. The Ottoman Empire started pushing into Europe and got through Serbia to the Vojvodina border, where the Habsburg troops stopped them. Vienna and Budapest, in their wisdom, gave Serbs who crossed the border, escaping the Turks, the right to populate that region, on the condition that they defend it. Thus, some strain was let off of the Austro-Hungarian troops, and they gained a particularly adamant defence force on their southern border—because who else would be more enthusiastic about killing Turkish invaders than a group of people who’d lost their country to them?



So now that it’s under Serbian control, there’s quite a mix of Hungarians and Serbs there. It would be nice if that meant a large degree of multi-ethnic harmony, but it doesn’t. Hungarians note any instance of an ethnic Hungarian being abused by Serbs there, and Serbs note the same things whenever they happen to Serbs in southern Hungary.



History is so ingrained in this region, something I find both inspiring and incredibly annoying. Americans forget history as soon as it’s happened, but over here people remember everything with such intensity that, for instance, some people become more irate over travesties that happened sixty years ago during World War Two than they do about travesties that occurred during their own lifetimes in the Yugoslav Wars. (That’s partly about the pervasiveness of history, partly about whether or not someone wants to face up to their own lives, to things they might have helped or hindered—about regret.)



Serbs living in Budapest grew up in Yugoslavia hearing family stories about grandparents rounded up by fascist-leaning Hungarians or Croatians and taken off to concentration camps. And it’s hard for them to shake these stories, no matter how hard they try.



Anyway, the point of this is just to say I’m heading down to the Balkans, where history is everywhere. So are lots of hospitable Serbs, good laughs, roast meats, too many cigarettes, and Serbia’s particular kind of brandy, rakija. I always enjoy these trips.

(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)

Flashing in the Gutters

Another Tribe reference:



The man, clearly dissatisfied with life as it is, has burdened himself with a flash-fiction enterprise.



Flashing in the Gutters is a fresh & new online rag of “flash”—that is, really short, shorter than 700 words—fiction. That is, “flash fiction for the 21st-century.” Guidelines here.



Why not?

(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)

Marketing with Moving Pictures

Tribe points to a video marketing piece for Anne Frasier’s upcoming novel, Pale Immortal. He says:

Author Anne Frasier (who also writes romantic suspense under the name Theresa Weir) has a compelling bad-ass trailer for her upcoming book Pale Immortal. [… ] It has a industrial-goth soundtrack with dark, moody visuals that really create a nasty little atmosphere around her new book. I think most of you would agree that this spooky little video is pretty damn effective.

Martha Weirhere.



36 Yalta Boulevard



separate bio page on my website



earlier I did about reviews