Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Happy Holidays

With the insanity of Christmas behind us - the shopping, the crowds, the unceasing cheerful music, the adds on TV and the papers, the pressure to be with friends and family, the budgetary nightmares and the need for half of us to work so that the other half has something to do on their time off - we got a late holiday card from Sean Chercover and it struck just the right note:

On the front, over the icon of a smoking automatic, was this quote:

THE DAILY PAPERS WERE BEGINNING TO SCREAM ABOUT HOW TERRIBLE IT WOULD BE IF YOU DIDN'T GET YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING DONE EARLY. IT WOULD BE TERRIBLE ANYWAY: IT ALWAYS IS.

- RAYMOND CHANDLER

Now that it IS over, and we have just the New Year to get to and get into, maybe we can all relax, kick back in our favorite chair or on the couch and try to catch up on some of 2007's books that we missed or just didn't quite get to, before we get buried by the releases of 2008!

Thanks Sean, wonderful card.

And Happy Holidays to ALL

Ho-Ho-Holy Cow, Seattle Mystery Bookshop Rules!

Happy Holidays, Folks! 

This is Kevin O'Brien, pushing my new pulse-pounding thriller, ONE LAST SCREAM, at SEATTLE MYSTERY BOOKSHOP.  It's been Christmas Craziness here at my favorite bookstore.  The fans have gotten a little rowdy.  Thank God for the tasers those security people are using.  Everyone wants ONE LAST SCREAM for the holidays.  Check it out, and come on down to SEATTLE MYSTERY BOOKSHOP.  It's really hopping here!

Have a wonderful holiday season! 

All My Best,

Kevin O'Brien

What Fun!

I adore Seattle! The rain and gloom ... what better environment for murder? Kidding about the gloom! The rain is usually a given but, hey, I live on the West Coast so I'm very used to it.

It is such a privilege and a thrill to be signing The Remains of the Dead at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop. The shelves are lined with all the greats and Fran has introduced me to some new favourites. I couldn't resist buying a small pile of books while I was here.

While I'm in town I'll be doing some research for the next book in my Ghost Dusters series. This research involves consuming large amounts of coffee at various independent coffee shops and then driving into some of the seedier areas of town. What fun!! I wish I had a week but, unfortunately, I only have the day.

Seattle has a vibrant energy that I just LOVE and that's why I set most of my stories here. That same energy permeates this book store. If JB and Fran allow me a small room in the back, I will never leave!

Wendy Roberts

Slipknot

Hello, I'm the author of Slipknot, a mystery set in SW Washington State. It features Gavin Pruitt, Sheriff of Willapa County and a Deadhead. There are 1,000 acres of privately-held old-growth forest whose sale is dependent on an environmental impact statement. But the world-renown ecologist preparing that statement has been murdered, hung dead from a steel spar pole at a logging operation in Pruitt's jurisdiction. The plot is riveting and the action fast, but I don't spare the characterization--that of a person once anti-establishment now part of the establishment. Pruitt is smart and kind, but equally strong and tough as a cop sometimes needs to be. Dennis McNally (author of the definitive Grateful Dead biography, A Long Strange Trip) has said that Slipknot's "...Dead stuff is central and real."

I'm a Deadhead myself, having first seen them in 1968 at Springer's Inn (a big grange hall, really, in Portland, Oregon) with about 400 other "premie" Deadheads. I saw the Dead many times after, some shows utterly transcendent, others bordering on the horribly bad. But then that's one of the different things about Deadheads: we appreciate the fact that the band was always ready to risk their dignity in order to attempt to produce for us a transcendental moment.

I'd been itching to write a book that brings the ethos and "vibe" of the 60's era I grew up in to contemporary times. Somehow this idea of Deadhead sheriff came to me (possibly in a "flashback"--LOL), and I knew I had the right vehicle to write about issues and concerns that I hope are important to people. I know they are to me.

I'll check in with this blog and try to get back to any of you who have questions about Slipknot or have something to share with me.

Thanks so much!

--Gary McKinney

A warren of intrigue

When you are in the novel writing business you long, not for an out-of-body

experience but an out-of-house experience.  And a trip to Seattle, one of my

favourite cities.   The store itself is a candy shop, a warren of intrigue, where

browsing becomes addictive.   A place for people who like novels in which

something happens.   Unlike Art novels in which everything has already happened

and people are a)trying to get over it, or b) trying to keep someone else from

finding it out, or c)trying to transcend it.   There is an energy to the staff inspired,

I believe, from the buzz of the events around them, between covers.  Great

to be here.

John MacLachlan Gray

http:\\www\johnmaclachlangray.com

Jane Ross Potter

How thrilling to contribute to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop blog: my first writing prize was for drafting a legal blog using assigned topics, under severe time constraint. My prize? “24 Hours” DVD’s which I promptly gave away as I was too busy writing to watch. More recently, a story I wrote placed second in a competition for book openings: does the opening grab the readers and make them want to read more? Apparently, yes, a bizarre shark attack leaving a hero bleeding on a Hawaiian beach and a heroine’s heart breaking makes people want to read more. That book, “Thresholds” (subtitled “Jaws Meets Global Warming: An Inconvenient Tooth”), is near completion.

Romance and Sharks? In this spirit of mixing genres, it seemed fitting to visit the Mystery Bookshop and sign my novel about mountain climbing, Because it’s There. At least, it makes sense in Seattle, where a disproportionate number of people choose mountains over malls for their weekend pleasure. To set the mood, we hung colorful prayer flags next to the bright yellow crime scene tape, which also made sense because both feature in the novel.

My inspiration for the novel grew from my fascination with Mount Everest, especially the early climbs. As a lawyer, I pondered the ethical dilemma faced by the first person to summit a mountain. In the case of Everest, we may never know if George Mallory reached the summit before he perished in 1923. When Hillary (Edmund that is, not the presidential candidate) and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit in May of 1953, what if they found evidence that Mallory had summitted? Would the rest of the world have to be told? (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting for a minute that evidence would have been suppressed back then!)

I moved the fact pattern up by fifty years and added a new element: climbing for financial gain versus climbing for sport and personal satisfaction. Throw in a very twenty-first century lawsuit and a few people hungry to escape their jobs and venture forth to Kathmandu to seek a vanished climber, and you have what I hope is a story that will appeal to readers who enjoy at least one of courtroom dramas, mountain stories, and romances. And if none of that appeals to you, consider this: buy the book, and you help put a lawyer out of business. (With no disrespect to my fellow professionals!)

Jane Ross Potter