Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Back Again

My second time signing at SMB, and loving it all over again. This place is really something -- I wanted to shop as much as I wanted to sign. So many authors, so many books. I don't think I could ever work here, or I'd never get anything done.

As usual, the people here are so fantastic, Bill and Fran taking time during the lulls to chat with me about any number of things. And the mystery reading customers are naturally fun and interesting to talk to.

So I'm delighted to be able to start my Seattle area tour for the newly released Heaven Preserve Us at SMB. Add in the cool weather (and no rain, so far) and Bumbershoot, along with a few visits to favored restaurants, and I couldn't think of a better way to spend my Labor Day weekend.

Thanks everyone!    Cricket McRae

It's a Blant, not a Blog

     This isn’t a blog—it’s a blant. Upon leaving Seattle Mystery Bookshop Monday afternoon, I promised JB I’d write my blog at home. Itended to, but E-mail and other publishing-related business held me back. Then there was an alleged tornado warning that I dismissed as twaddle from relatives in Wallingford who are easily alarmed by weather reports—until our eldest daughter, who had just returned with our two adorable grandchildren from Falls Church, VA, called on her cell to say they’d gotten home, but the tornado had wiped out the cable to the hardwired phones in her neighborhood. (I know technical communications terms like that because I worked for the phone co. in P.R. and had to learn more than how to order Jack Daniels Black Label—or did I?)

     Yesterday when my husband, Dave, told me he couldn’t get the computer to print. I said I’d take a look. I got the pages printed—backwards, just like a mirror. Very odd. Last night I stayed up until after midnight and spent two more hours on the problem today. Finally I E-mailed the original document to myself and put it in another whatever-you-call-it, and if you think I’m inept with technology (not counting that phone co. stuff...come to think of it, where IS the Jack Daniels???), my husband is even less knowledgeable, yet has a deluded notion that I know what I’m doing. If anyone out there knows why or how you can print BACKWARDS, please tell me.

     Thus, this is more of a rant than a blog, so I’m calling it a BLANT. I’m publicly stating that I hate summer (I’m a native, for God’s sake — why do I need SUN? It only makes me cross, so thank goodness for the rain) and I DESPISE Daylight Savings Time. One of my grandmothers refused to go on it. She lived to be two months short of 100, dying of boredom on an October afternoon (PST). I tried to follow her example (not the dying part) by not changing our clocks, but the teachers at St. Anne’s didn’t understand why our kids were an hour late for school.

     And now I’ll stop. Not that I couldn’t go on and on about lots of things including the elections and the Mariners and the bozo who ran into our car in the Bartells’ parking lot last Saturday and fled the scene — but I won’t. I would, however, like to think that over the years I’ve set the bar quite high for bitching. However, our three daughters and two granddaughters are doing their best to carry on the family tradition.

Mary Daheim

Pure Blood has a day out

Second time here at the SMB..chair is still comfy...books are still begging to come home with me...staff is still awesome.

Yes folks, I'm back signing my second published urban fantasy/mystery, Pure Blood.  I was here six months ago, a shiny new author, scared out of my mind with a pen in my hand. 

This time I feel like I'm an old hand at it--or that could just be the wonderful atmosphere here at the SMB.  They make you comfortable and you sign some books and it's all more like a long lunch with friends than a booksigning.

See you in another six months, when the third time's the charm!

Keep reading!

Caitlin Kittredge

sex & bacon hoyden rocks the mystery bookstore!

I just had the best reading EV-AR at the Seattle Mystery Bookstore!  Oh my gosh!  There was chocolate, wine, and bacon galore, plus a houseful of bawdy women and sympathetic, good-humored men.

Thank you more than I can say, you guys.  Oh yeah, and KEYWORD SEARCH:

ANAL PUSSY BACON HAM HAM ASSFUCK TITS PORK PORKFUCKING BACONLOVER BACONTITS BACONASS BACON BACON BACON ANAL BACON.

That oughtta get us some hits.

I love you guys!  Thank you so much!!!!!

Sarah Katherine Lewis

Hello Hell Hole, Here Come The Brides

The bluest skies I've ever seen are in Seattle.  

If that sounds familiar, you, like me, are old.  You probably remember sitting in your jammies with the footsies in front of the TV and watching Bobby Sherman and some other actors who never had as many teeny bopper fans screaming after them in a TV series about Seattle and the Mail Order Brides. 

I am happy to report that they populated this city with incredible people who love to drink coffee and read books, especially mysteries.

Speaking of coffee, that Pike's Place blend at every Starbucks?  There is a Pikes Place here in Seattle.  And a totem pole.  I am waiting for my first cup of totem pole blend.  It'l have a frothy head.  Maybe several.  All piled on top of each other.

This has been a great stop on my HELL HOLE tour.  Such fun to meet folks who remember more about Danny Boyle and John Ceepak than I do.   I also got to meet a friend from "back in the day" when we both worked for James Patterson at the J.Walter Thompson Agency in New York.  She lives here in Seattle now.  I do not think she changed careers and left advertising to become a mail order bride.  In fact, she has written a Middle Grades book and I was able to tell her how much fun it's been on this trip meeting kids who have read The Crossroads, my middle grades book.

I guess that's why we writers love leaving our caves for a month, meeting those who complete the cirlce and actually read what we spend the other eleven months creating.   So thanks to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop for making it possible for me to meet a few more.

Chris Grabenstein

It's No Mystery Why Salmon Go Home

... or why the Seattle Mystery Bookshop is one of the best mystery-thriller-crime and related fiction and non-fiction stores in the world!

I'm up here in Seattle, having experienced the great thrill of signing Nox Dormienda on my first out-of-town book tour stop! Like a salmon returning home to, er, spawn, (I was born in Tacoma) I fell in love with JB, Fran, and Gretchen on an earlier Seattle stopover, and couldn't wait to come back. Getting published is only an excuse to visit with these guys ... and by the way, Happy Anniversary (21 years!!) to Gretchen and JB, the Nick and Nora Charles of the mystery bookstore world! :)

Thanks so much for having me, guys! It's been wonderful, and I can't wait to get back. :)

Kelli Stanley

Underground with Kat

Once again, I'm driving the staff here insane--they're the best and put up with considerable abuse from me.  I was very excited to see Rick Boetel, the Underground Tour Historian who helped me so much with the research for Underground.  Rick dropped in to the store to say "hi" and wax enthusiastic about the book, but really, it's me who got lucky by meeting Rick here over a year ago.  I would never have got this book together without Rick and a lot of help from Fran and JB and the rest of the crew here in the shop.  Truly great folks.  Now I'm off to terrorize other cities, but SMB will always have a big piece of my heart.

Kat Richardson

Hecklers at my Doggone signing

It's my fault.  All my fault. I said it was okay for Matt Richtel to show up on a day all about ME.  Naturally, he brought his own heckler or "Dad" as we like to call him.  Wonder what that family reunion is like?  Then, to add insult to injury, he managed to draw another in off the street.  Even a drop by from Sara Paretsky couldn't pretty up the place after that.  How cool is it that you can be sitting behind your table, signing your books and one of the originators of kick a** female detectives strolls in off the street?  I was so overwhelmed I forgot to tell her I named my protagonist after her as a nod to V.I. Warshowski's fearless I-can-handle it woman on a mission style.  I am a writer.  Usually, I get more time to edit!  As always, the wonderful Seattle Mystery team took care of everything and nobody died.  Is that a good thing?  What will I write about for Horsewhipped which is coming out next June?  Hmmm, Matt might have to go...

Until the next time.

Gabi Herkert

Doggone and Catnapped

www.gabriellaherkert.com

Get Hooked - At the Seattle Mystery Bookshop (nudity herein)

Nudity. Lust. Spastic monkeys. Death by chocolate.  Trapeze performances. Sexually-charged dragons.

None of these things, not one of them, defined my visit here to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop. And yet. And yet! it was a great visit nonetheless.

Great staff, fine customers, comfortable ambiance -- temperate, really. We sold a few books, hobnobbed, signed, chortled. I humbly and in my typically immodest way gently told visitors about Hooked, my new thriller that USA Today called "Pure Heart Pounding Escapism," the Seattle Post Intelligencer dubbed "A frighteningly current spellbinder," and that hit several key bestseller lists, including that of the San Francisco Chronicle. Am I a writing God? As a very modest person, I resent the question. I am a humble, mere mortal who happened to write a book that you should absolutely buy (preferably at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop) and that, I again humbly add, could lead the the cure of many major illnesses in those who read it.

In any event...while we didn't have any nudity, or spastic monkeys, or trapeze performances, we did have a fine event, marked by humility.

Thanks in advance for reading,

Matt

PS - At one point, Sara Paretsky wandered into the store. In town for a wedding, she stopped by to sign her copious stock. I (true story) accused her of trying to upstage me and used the subequent guilt trip to sell her a signed copy of the extraordinary Hooked. Thanks, Sara.

Our July 2008 Bestsellers

Our July Bestsellers

Here’s what you were buying and reading last month:

Hardcovers

1 - JA Jance, Damage Control, Morrow

2 - Robert Crais, Chasing Darkness, Simon & Schuster

3 - James Lee Burke, Swan Peak, Simon & Schuste

4 - Aaron Elkins, Uneasy Relations, Berkley

5 - tie

       Craig Johnson, Another Man's Moccasins, Viking

       Stella Rimington, Illegal Action, Knopf

7 - tie

       Stephen L. Carter, Palace Council, Knopf

       Brent Ghelfi, Volk's Shadow, Holt

       Lee Child, Nothing to Lose, Bantam

10 -Ridley Pearson, Killer View, Putnam

Trade Paperbacks

1 – Neil Low, Thick as Thieves, Tigress

2 – LR Wright, The Suspect, Felony & Mayhem

3 – tie

      Tana French, In the Woods, Viking

      Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows, Harper

5 – tie

      Susan Hill, The Various Haunts of Men, Overlook

      Christian Jungersen, The Exception, Anchor

7 – tie

      Stella Rimington, Secret Asset, Vintage

      Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full, Flying Dolphin

9 – tie

      Anna Salter, Truth Catcher, Pegasus

      Cricket McRae, Heaven Preserve Us, Midnight Ink

Mass Market Paperback

1 – Michelle Gagnon, Boneyard, Mira

2 – Yasmine Galenorn, Dragon Wytch, Berkley

3 – Simon Wood, We All Fall Down, Leisure

4 – Jo Dereske, Index to Murder, Avon

5 – tie

      Aaron Elkins, Tiny Little Teeth, Berkle

      Stella Rimington, At Risk, Vintage

7 – Mike Lawson, The Inside Ring, Vintage

8 – tie

      Mary Daheim, Scots on the Rocks, Harper

      Ridley Pearson, Killer Weekend, Jove

      Mark Gimenez, The Abduction, Vanguard

      Donna Andrews, The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, St. Martin’s

The Likeness

I've been on tour for just over two weeks and I'm about ninety-five per cent asleep. Here's the weirdest thing that's happened to me on tour so far: I'm touring for the paperback of In the Woods and the hardback of The Likeness, my second book, which is about a detective investigating the murder of her double - lots of stuff about doubles, mirrors, identity. A week or two ago I walked into a bookshop to do a signing, and one of the women working there asked me, 'You were in Philadelphia Airport a couple of weeks ago, right?'

Nope, I said.

She said, 'Because I was walking through the airport and I saw a woman reading In the Woods, and she looked exactly like you. I wonderd why you were reading your own book.'

Tana French

A Dead Cow is Never just a Dead Cow

People who want to become veterinarians often say they love animals. But do they love sick animals, animals in pain... dead animals? Veterinarian Abner Dueck thought he was going to help the people of Indonesia improve their animals' health, but under Suharto's dictatorship, sick and dying animals send lots of messages, and when his friends start getting killed, Ab needs to figure out pretty quickly what those messages are. Reading the messages in the guts of a dead cow is the easy part. Saying what they mean is a whole other story. And in a world where most human diseases come from animals, the vet is always a suspect, as well as a sleuth. As a vet who works with diseases people get from animals, and who travels the world investigating them, I know this territory. Join me in the post mortem room under the trees: a new take on paradise in the spice islands.

See my website at

http://www.ovc.uoguelph.ca/personal/ecosys/

David Waltner-Toews

Barely alive

Once again, I barely made it to Seattle alive.  This had nothing to do with my latest mystery, Yaquina White, but the infernal Seattle  traffic.  But an overturned oil tanker on I-5 and several wrong turns did not deter me from my destination.  As always JB and Fran at Seattle Mystery Bookshop welcomed me and I had great time.  I even sold a few books.

Ron Lovell