Thomas Perry’s books have been a supportive reality for me for many years. I think we all have short lists of the writers we keep around until their ears are dogged because we can read them over and over, because they’re what we want when we’re too sick to get out of bed for a couple of days, or snowed in, or desperately in need of stepping out of the hell of our own world into one that’s been perfectly crafted and seeks nothing but to pleasure us. He’s one of my personal elite. And seems to step into that role for anybody exposed to his work. Continue reading “Tips From the Masters: Thomas Perry”
Barry Eisler has two different claims to fame. To readers, he is the best-selling author of two exciting thriller series: the guy who doesn’t just write about heroes who are ex CIA covert ops specialists, Judo experts, international players, and start-up lawyer/operators but actually IS all those things himself. Or was at some point before coming in out of the cold to do boring things like collect awards for his work.
To indie authors, he’s a hero of another kind: one of the handful of writers like Konrath and Doctorow and Hocking and Locke who have become icons, living totems that not only testify to seismic changes in publishing, but have had a major hand in making those changes happen.
It would be hard to identify a single action that did more to light up new potential and realities for independent writers and publishers than Eisler’s decision last March to snub a half-million dollar advance from St. Martins in order to go his own way. The answer to the sneering, “Yeah, but if they offered you a big advance, you’d take it, wouldn’t you?” officially changed from “Damn straight” to “Maybe”, and that small shift put a very major crack in the monolith. Continue reading “Tips from the Masters: Barry Eisler”
John Gilstrap has an unusual characteristic for a multi NYT best-selling author: he’s known online as very approachable and forthcoming individual, open and willing to connect. Maybe that has something to do with his kind of thriller, the kind that are less about whizbang, agency name-dropping, and international scare-shows, and more about human beings coping with hairy situations.
He’s always shown up heavily in the audio book market, with major sales to listeners and bling like The Copper Bracelet being #1 at Audible.com, with Audiobook Of They Year and Audie Award honors for The Chopin Manuscript.
But my personal favorites of his books is an early one, Nathan’s Run, a excellent example of what I mean by his human scale. There’s no huge world-shaking threat, no blazing action sequences; just a 12 year-old boy on the run from death with nobody to protect or care for him. In fact, a scan of his work shows that many show similar themes, as much so as his more typical investigators and assassin thrillers: church camp teens held hostage, a son lost in a frozen wilderness, a couple protect a hunted waif, criminal parents fleeing capture with their teen-aged son. It’s suspense in the real world, the world you know and depend on–fear and action in your own size and idiom. Continue reading “Tips from the Masters: John Gilstrap”
Those who’ve followed my series on writing advice are in for a treat, because starting this month, it won’t be “tips from some dude on the web”, but favorite advice from some major professional writers, some best-sellers, some cult figures, some in my personal pantheon of admiration. Some of these might not seem like earth-shaking angles, but all are worth thinking over because these are people who’ve succeeded at the Master level.
It’s my great pleasure to start out with remarks from Laurence Shames, one of my handful of favorites, the kind of work I can read over and over. There doesn’t seem to be any normal route to writing success, but Larry’s “strategy” is more checkered than most. He was a hotshot magazine writer in New York, contributing editor to Esquire among other glittering credits. Unlike most blue-chip writers, he also did–and still does–ghostwriting, leading to two major flags on his career. He wrote a pseudonymously titled book called “Bad Twin”, which is significant to viewers of the “Lost” TV show, a story within the story that among other things created the fictional Hanso corporation that ran ads in newspapers denouncing it’s “defamation”. Yes, that’s damned weird. His big score was writing the 1991 NYT best-seller “Boss of Bosses” with two FBI agents. The score from that one enabled him to buy a house in Key West and get out of New York. He has ghosted best-sellers since, but it was the move to Key West that, as it has for others, started the magic. You owe it to yourself to read his series of eight luminous novels set there, starting with “Florida Straits”. Joey, scion of a New York mafia family, chucks it and drives down the Keys in search of himself. He strikes out trying to start his own mob in paradise, but comes out on his feet despite incursions of the Family From Hell. A core of a half-dozen characters keep the series linked, even if Joey and his girl aren’t present. Bert the Shirt, his “consigliere” for island ways is a main thread, along with his aging Chihuahua. Continue reading “Tips from the Masters: Laurence Shames”
