Prince

We went to the same junior high school in north Minneapolis, although separated by about four years. Later, I went to high school with his future bass player, Mark Brown, who played in a band called Fantasy that wowed at Washburn High's talent show.

When I was in college, I made a lot of the party tapes for my fraternity. At one point, one of my fellow Phi Psis ripped a cassette of Prince's "Dirty Mind" from the tape deck and threw it under the refrigerator. I was funk and R&B, he was San Francisco alt rock in the days before Prince found a way to fit his music in to anywhere.

Later I was an extra in his first move, Purple Rain. The girl I'd taken to the premiere shouted out, "That's you!" at a point where the camera had me full screen dancing to the music of The Time, guys that really were my favorite (I played basketball with some of them), but at the time I wasn't sure (we were too far back in a sold out Skyway Theater).

I met Apollonia there, introduced myself and brought her over to a friend who was involved in a touchathon, one of those things where the last person touching the car got to take it home. (He won eventually, a yellow Le Car if I remember right, and I'm sure it was due partially to the fact that I brought over a celebrity at two in the morning during a break in filming and introduced them).

Even before that, I'd see Prince out at the local clubs usually with his then girlfriend, Vanity, who also recently passed away. The last time I saw both of them, together or separately, was at an Alexander O'Neal show at an upstairs club whose name I no longer remember, a club where I saw a girl I'd once crushed on in high school. At this point though, I'd become too cool to ask for her number.

I could go on, but this isn't about me or the memories and stories I have of the time or the movie or the music. Prince died and although truthfully I wasn't a fan of much of his music, he picked up Minneapolis and put it on the national music scene, borne by the strength of his innovation and incredible guitar skills.

I'm reading this morning he may have had an issue with prescription opiates that may have had something to do with his death. This would just make it sadder, like Robin Williams' suicide (or anyone else's). In other words, if someone were around these talented people that recognized that they needed help outside themselves, perhaps they could have gotten it, and perhaps they'd still be with us.

Rest in peace, Prince. You made a mark on my early life and I will never forget.

Book Review - "The Travelers" by Chris Pavone

I really need to dig out from beneath every damn thing since last week's trip for a signing to Minneapolis but I'm not there yet. I am trying, though, very hard. In the meantime, I agreed to do a book review and as a way of clearing that off my plate, here it is:

"The Travelers" by Chris Pavone

The good news is, I enjoyed the book itself a lot. The bad news is, I didn't enjoy reading it as much as I'd hoped. This is the first book I've read by Chris Pavone, and I'll probably try another, but what got me was that the present tense scenes are all very choppy, like it was targeted for readers with short attention spans. The sections can be quite short and usually end abruptly in places like, "Then the door opened." A new section is started and we have to wait to see who opened the door.

This in itself is not a bad thing. The problem here is the frequency in which it happens, which is just about through the entire book. It's a bit like watching a network TV show where more than a third of the show's time is allocated for commercials. As soon as my mind gets into the show, it's jerked out of the story by a commercial break. The show resumes, my mind is jerked out again.

The writing is okay; there's not a lot of flair in the language though there are a few witty metaphors. The dialogue is nothing special. It's the plot that keeps you interested, even though you'll probably figure out most of it in advance of the story. There are two cases where the manner in which the characters figures things out strain credulity--just thinking about something for a few seconds probably isn't enough--but the rest of the book worked much better.

So if you can put up with the short, very chopped up sections of the book, what you'll find is a mostly very enjoyable though slightly difficult to believe story that despite its faults, you'll often find difficult to put down.

New Book Signing

Before I take the time and get my thoughts down on losing the former owner of the wonderful Once Upon a Crime Mystery Bookstore in Minneapolis--there are a lot of feelings there--I wanted to at least announce a new signing in Florida.

I will be at another nationally recognized independent crime fiction specific bookstore, Murder on the Beach, in June on the 4th, a Saturday, at 1:00. They're located in Delray Beach, north of Boca Raton, and a nice link is here.

And yes, I know I need a new picture.

Please support your local independent bookstore. They've had a tough go over the past few years, with rising leasing costs pushing many owners out, Amazon doing a lot of damage, but they are making a comeback. There are more new independent bookstores than there were a year ago. Even if you're out of the area, they'll ship wherever.

All you need to do is look at a place like Once Upon a Crime's Annex and see all the treasures that are there--among other things, I just picked up a signed Ross Thomas, a signed Walter Mosley, a signed Eric Ambler, etc.--and know that these stores need our support.

You could try what I like to do when I find a new bookstore: just ask them for a recommendation. Take advantage of their knowledge and experience and let them discover something for you. I've never been disappointed doing this, and I hope you won't, either.

I used to have a lot of friends in that area of Florida. I know it was long ago, but really, guys, I haven't changed. Show up in June, clutch claws and let's catch up. It'll be fun.

MAD DOG BARKED is (mostly) finished

When Truth Always Kills was published, ostensibly in December but it didn't seem to be widely shipping until January, the professional reviews were very good. But with the late shipping and the Christmas holiday in there, the book seemed to take off a bit slowly. Finally it's been gathering a bit of steam and some user reviews are coming in that are really quite nice, readers have been e-mailing me, which is always a treat, and hopefully things will keep trending upward. Bill Crider told me the book deserves to be read, but sometimes it takes luck. Which, apparently, can be slow to come by around Christmas time.

A lot of people are asking for a sequel. All my books have been standalones to this point, and while Mad Dog Barked, which I just typed "THE END" to three days ago,  is also a standalone, to me it leaves even more room for a sequel. I've kind of toyed with the idea of writing a sequel that brings characters from all four books together but that might just be silly. We'll see. I started a new one the other night, but it's already taking on its own life.

Now I have to edit Mad Dog before I turn it in to Stark House Press, and that's the really scary part. You find all the typos that your fingers give you as they mis-translate the words in your mind onto the page. And there will be the usual one or two utterly incomprehensible sentences, I'm sure. Mostly, you trim, tighten, sometimes expand, clarify, but it's all a sentence by sentence proposition, and it's tough sledding for me. Some writers claim their favorite part of the process is editing, the getting to polish the story they've written.

That's not me. The trick now is to make two to three passes--four, if I can swing it--and get it to the publisher so they have time for all the pre-publication stuff: book and cover design, the printing and mailing of ARCs for reviewers, etc.

Next up is a true crime novel with a woman that suffered a horrendous though not unique experience with our justice system, all in the name of protecting her family. There'll be a rare short story in the NoirCon program book though I probably won't be able to attend this year (I've never gone, and I feel bad about it). And the short story I wrote for the Replacements themed anthology Waiting to be Forgotten should be out in time for Bouchercon. Editor Jay Stringer says he may try to organize some themed events so if you're going to be in New Orleans for the conference, you might want to look in on a few of these.

Let's see, what else: signing in Minneapolis on April 9th, at noon, at the legendary Once Upon a Crime bookstore, and everyone should come, and I mean everyone. Truth was dedicated to Pat Frovarp and Gary Shulze, the owners of the store until this past Friday, and absolute treasures of the crime fiction community. They're still around as the store transitions to the new owners and it should be a fun time.

There's more, you can see the events on the Schedule page at the website and as always, drop a line if you have a question or comment.