As I’ve been considering titles for my next book (The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You lacks a certain market-friendly brevity), I’ve been looking at some of the music references in it. Like in The Tourist, songs appear here and there, and while poking around I came across this lovely bit from what has become one of my top-5 albums of all time, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (which, shamefully, only reached #75 on the US charts when it was released in 1972). Enjoy.

I recently received an email from the esteemed Otto Penzler, and he described a project he’d been trying to get off the ground for a few years now. It kept getting stalled for various reasons, but he was happy to say that it was back on track. Agents of Treachery: an anthology of espionage stories. He already had stories in hand from, among others:

Charles McCarry
Joseph Finder
Dan Fesperman
David Morrell
James Grady
Stephen Hunter
Lee Child
Robert Wilson

Then he said, “Would you like to be a contributor?”

Some of the best espionage and thriller writers–and me–in a collection?

My answer was immediate and breathless: How much should I write the check for? No, no. I was going to get paid for my contribution. What? Certainly Otto was pulling my leg.

Apparently not.

There’s something funny about looking at a list and realizing you’re connected in some way to most of them. I’ve met and liked Joe Finder, James Grady, Lee Child (who also kindly blurbed me), and Rob Wilson (who’s become a great friend). The wonderful Dan Fesperman blurbed my first book, and by some kind of serendipity I received the email just as I was starting to listen to the audiobook of The Miernik Dossier (which is, I have to say, an astoundingly good book), by the great Charles McCarry.

Now all I have to do is write a story that’ll measure up to these heavyweights. So far I’ve written three thousand words. Three times. Hopefully next time they’ll stick.

Shortly after my first novel came out, I received a very kind email from Bill Rosemann, an editor at Marvel Comics, who expressed an interest in having me write some scripts for Marvel. Something about my fiction suggested to him that I might have something to contribute to comics, and he compared Benjamin Weaver, the protagonist in A Conspiracy of Paper, to the superhero Luke Cage. At the time, I had no idea who Luke Cage was, but now, as a fan of Brian Michael Bendis’s New Avengers, I get and appreciate the comparison.

In any case, the offer was left open and unspecific. I grew up reading comic books and remained a fan into my 20s. Eventually I gave them up as a lot of the titles I liked lost steam, and as I ran out of time for leisure reading because of the demands of grad school. The cancellation of Keith Giffen’s brilliant and absurd series, The Heckler, about a superhero with no power but irony, was really the last straw for me.

As enticing as Marvel’s offer was, I simply didn’t have time to reacquaint myself with the Marvel universe in order to propose something that I hoped would be accepted. More importantly, I had just published my first novel, and I was deep in a terrible case of 2nd-novelitis, trying to figure out just how the hell these book things were written. Trying to figure how to write a comic book script on top of that was more than I was willing to take on.

Then, last fall, Bill Rosemann contacted me out of the blue. To commemorate their 70th anniversary, Marvel was putting together a series of single-issue books, each focusing on a minor character from their first decade, and each having been revived for the terrific (and sadly unfinished) miniseries The Twelve. I was offered my shot at The Phantom Reporter – cub reporter by day, scourge of the underworld by night. The timing was perfect, and so was the character, since there was no lengthy back story (very little was ever established about him), and no worries about the Marvel continuity. I could either do something with the character in his contemporary setting (see The Twelve #1, faithful reader, to find out what he is doing in a contemporary setting), or his native milieu of the late 1930s. I went with the latter, and chose to write the heretofore untold origins of the Phantom Reporter.  I love origin stories.

The issue, Daring Mystery Comics Annual #1, with art fantastically rendered by Jason Armstrong, comes out on September 2nd.  In the meantime, you can read previews at Newsarama and Comic Book Resources.

Just been given a new copy of this. The “family” edition is far too rare to ever be seen in a kitchen. Thought perhaps I’d post a few recipe reviews once I’ve got going. Are there any other good spy/cookbook crossovers I wonder?

Picture of Leipzig ©2002 by James Martin

Though I first learned this last year, I’ve kept mum until the official papers arrived verifying that I’d been granted a Guest Professorship at Leipzig University. That’s the Leipzig in Germany, with a university founded in 1409 no less, and it’s the Picador Guest Professorship for Literature in the university’s American Studies department. The papers arrived on Friday.

It’s a wonderful program which will give us four months (we’ll be there for the winter October-February semester) in a city known for its history, music, and art. If that sounds like a dry description of any of a hundred European cities, it is–but from what I can tell “dry” doesn’t apply to Leipzig at all. Check out this piece from Conde Nast Traveler.

And while today neo-Nazi rowdies plague much of the former German Democratic Republic, Leipzig seems a bulwark of the values of a democratic society. Three times a year, neo-Nazis arrive by train to march through town. “They never get farther than the railroad station,” Mark Hamilton, a Scottish artist and adopted Leipziger, assured me. Families come out and block the street, and what is peculiarly called “the radical Left”—a prominent faction among the city’s nearly forty thousand students—has been known to stand among them bearing American and Israeli flags.

Now, while the flags are a bit confusing, that sounds like a pretty cool scene to me. The flags just go to show that the definition of “radical Left” is a truly flexible thing.

But Leipzig is known for its art in a major way. It has a thriving art school, a plethora of galleries, an impressive underground music scene, and a cooperative city government that nurtures it:

Nowadays, Leipzig spends about $135 million a year on cultural affairs, the equivalent of what Frankfurt, a city with three times its 500,000 population, budgets. The person in charge of culture in this city is Georg Girardet, a Bavarian of Huguenot descent. Girardet is the deputy mayor for cultural affairs. No other German city has a deputy mayor specifically for culture, and the importance of the post is underlined by the fact that you have to run for office to get it. Girardet has been elected three times since he arrived in 1991.

The more I read about it, the more excited I get. Admittedly, a few people have said to me, “Oh, I’ve been to Leipzig. It’s a dump.” But as I learn more, it becomes clear that those people never made it much further than the train station.

The receipt of this position, besides being an honor, came as a complete surprise. I hadn’t applied for it, hadn’t even heard of it. (I suspect my German publisher might have whispered in an ear or two.)

And what do I have to do to enjoy this city of culture? Not much. Just teach two classes. A literature class and a creative writing workshop. Not bad work if you can get it.

At this point I’m just establishing my plans, but I think the literature course will be a survey of English language spy novels. I’ll probably post a tentative reading list here at some point to request suggestions. I’ll also be stealing an idea from David Liss–the writing course may very well be a collaborative novel. The class would jointly come up with story ideas, a loose outline, then write individual chapters. I’m currently running that idea by the administration to get their opinion.

Anyway, it’s both exciting and daunting (I’ve, er, never actually taught a course before), but should be a terrific experience for the whole family (which makes it sound like Disney World). Maybe I’ll even get back some of my high school German. Hell, the place sounds so good that maybe we’ll decide to just stay there.

"Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lyman, Polish tobacco farmers near Windsor Locks, Connecticut" (Jack Delano, 1940)

The article came out a week or two ago, but I forgot to mention it here. Over at Publishers Weekly is an interesting article on my esteemed publisher, called “Minotaur Moves Beyond Genre,” and it features Yours Truly.

But the article is interesting beyond my presence, as it shows the attempts by a major mystery imprint to redefine itself in the book world:

[Minotaur publisher Andrew] Martin’s goal is to drive home the message that Minotaur, while it is about genre fiction, is also about big fiction.

It’s an interesting distinction, because the writer in me wonders, “What is big fiction?” Does it refer to big sales figures, physical heft, or big “concept”? I think the former.

Noting that his outlook on publishing was changed by the years he spent working at Sterling, owned by Barnes & Noble, Martin has devised a schedule in which Minotaur publishes one big book a month that is backed by a major marketing push and a 75,000-copy to 200,000-copy first printing.

Happily, I’m now part of that “big book” schedule.

During my earlier sequence, however, I’d sometimes wonder why I couldn’t pull a major coup with one of the Cold War books. After all, I tried to craft each one differently, and particularly with Liberation Movements (aka Istanbul Variations), I though I’d hit the sweet spot of market viability (while maintaining my indelible artistic credibility!). But reading this article, I’m able to see what was going on behind the scenes at that point:

The other route involves cherry-picking writers from Minotaur’s backlist (aka the farm team)—many of them accomplished genre authors the imprint has steadily done 5,000-copy print runs for. Olen Steinhauer is one such writer. Steinhauer’s The Tourist, published in March, is his sixth book, but the first in a new trilogy, which Martin said was key to giving the Edgar-winning author a higher profile. “[Steinhauer] had great literary chops,” Martin elaborated, “but I can’t make him great on book four or five of a five-book series.” (The Tourist, which has sold 51,000 copies to date, was also acquired for film by George Clooney.)

“I can’t make him great on book four or five of a five-book series” stands out in that paragraph. It’s a good point, which I hadn’t considered before. It might be possible to make a hit out of book 4, but it’s certainly going to be more of an uphill battle.

Of course, the fact that I’m now an Edgar winner stands out too (take that David Liss!).

It’s an interesting article. Check it out.

I am heading out for a week of family vacation, but I leave you all with a review I have out this weekend in The Washington Post.  The book, Methland by Nick Reding, is pretty terrific. 

Methland is a social history of methamphetamine in American culture, but Reding looks at this history through the lens of one small rural town: Oelwein, Iowa.  There are some amazing anecdotes here, my personal favorite being the story of how, while Reding is hanging out in a bar popular with the meth set, this couple walks in, obviously high.  The guy goes to the bar, and the girl goes over to play the Keno machine.  Within seconds, the guy is accusing Reding of sleeping with his girlfriend – not in some abstract way, but at that very moment.  He believes the two of them are having sex, right there in front of him, and he seems genuinely hurt by this betrayal.  Then there is the story of the guy who, high on meth, sets his mother’s house on fire, but continues to go in and out of the burning building.  By the time the paramedics show up, the skin is literally melting off his body, and he is begging the cops to kill him.  It’s harrowing stuff.

The book is a fast and furious read, but it is also a compelling economic analysis of how meth gained ground in American society.  Reding has a light touch, and he never hammers the reader with his politics, but it is clear he links the depth and breadth of meth in America to the concentration of wealth and the decline of social services beginning in the 1980s.  It’s kind of hard to argue that he’s wrong.  Dig it.