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Doing what was once unthinkable . . .

In books on April 19, 2013 at 9:22 am

Time—as we all know—is a precious commodity, what with deadlines, family commitments, long commutes, and other things life throws one’s way. Hence, when you have an hour to kill, you want to make sure it doesn’t go to waste. This line of thinking recently prompted me to do something I’ve always tried to avoid. I gave up on a book.

The other night, having finished my round of manuscript edits for the evening, I thought I’d try and catch up on some recreational reading. I poured myself a drink, picked up a book, and crashed on the sofa. Now, this particular book is one I’ve been trying to get through since January. It’s a recent history on the Mutiny of the Bounty, a subject I’ve always found fascinating.

The book’s opening chapters were brilliant and had me hooked—but halfway through the tome, the narrative became unbelievably sluggish. The author is a good writer and a brilliant researcher, who obviously felt compelled to unload every fact she uncovered into the book. The result was an information overload of seemingly irrelevant details. It got to the point where I just couldn’t keep track of things anymore—and I consider myself a pretty sharp reader.

I officially gave up on page 264 but had been struggling since the 150-page mark (the book has 410 pages). With a massive stack of books on my bedside table, I admitted defeat and tossed the book in a pile that’s destined for the local used bookstore. In the past, I would have hated doing such a thing—but now, I don’t have time to waste on a read I find dull.

Alas, I hope the next book I sit down with meets a kinder fate.

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You can never have too many books

In books on February 5, 2013 at 9:14 am

library

“You ordered more books?”

So asked my wife when the package from Amazon hit the doorstep on Saturday. My response: “Indeed, I did.” In the box were three titles I’m very much looking forward to reading once I’m done with my current manuscript: Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard, and A Daughter’s Tale: The Memoir of Winston Churchill’s Youngest Child by Mary Soames.

Admittedly, I do have more than a few books in my library I purchased a while back and have not yet read—but that doesn’t stop me from ordering other books I want. My wife, bless her, doesn’t understand this. Surely, she muses, I should read every book I have before adding to my already considerable collection. “Nonsense,” I say.

I love being surrounded by books. I love pulling a random title from one of my bookshelves and flipping through its pages. I love the weight of a book in my hand and the sound of a page turning—none of which you can enjoy on your Kindle or Nook. Old books have a certain scent—a blending of dust and age—that I find strangely pleasing.

This evening, I pulled a copy of Winston Churchill’s Thoughts and Adventures from my shelf. It’s a 1949 reprint that belonged to my grandfather. The book is a collection of newspaper and magazine articles Churchill published between 1924 and 1931. One essay, titled “Hobbies,” tackles the very subject of having more books than one can possibly read. I feel obliged to share Mr. Churchill’s take on the matter with you now:

‘What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question; and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking sounds of unchartered seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.

Churchill acknowledges we will never read all the books we want to:

Think of all the wonderful tales that have been told, and well told, which you will never know. Think of all the searching inquiries into matters of great consequence which you will never pursue. Think of all the delighting or disturbing ideas that you will never share. Think of the mighty labours which have been accomplished for your service, but of which you will never reap the harvest. But from this melancholy there also comes a calm. The bitter sweets of a pious despair melt into an agreeable sense of compulsory resignation from which we return with renewed zest to the light vanities of life.

And so forgive me for being a book hoarder.

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Another Hollywood tale

In books, Random thoughts on January 31, 2013 at 2:39 pm

Inglourious_Basterds_poster

Since the publication of my first book in 2005, I’ve had several run-ins with Hollywood that I suppose one could call “interesting”—or, perhaps more truthfully, “frustrating.” You can read about one such Tinsel Town adventure here. Today, something happened I feel compelled to share. My film agent is currently pitching my latest book, Human Game: The True Story of the ‘Great Escape’ Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen. Regular visitors to this site know the book picks up where the 1963 Steve McQueen film “The Great Escape” ends. It details the British manhunt for a Gestapo murder squad in post-war Germany.

The story is dark, tragic, and—of course—true. Today, however, a Hollywood producer turned the book down because he felt the subject of hunting Nazi war criminals had been adequately covered in the Quentin Tarentino flick “Inglourious Basterds.” Seriously. Now, I realize producers are under tremendous pressure to produce hits—and I realize the odds of having a book turned into a film are slim . . . but “Inglourious Basterds”?!

The film, in short, highlights the adventures of a team of Nazi hunters who scalp their prey. I enjoyed the movie—but I find it odd one would think it seriously addresses the issue of retribution for Nazi war atrocities! As far as I can tell, the similarities between Human Game and Tarantino’s film are:

• Both take place in Europe.
• Both are set against the backdrop of World War II.
• Both feature Nazis as bad guys.
• Both feature Hitler.
• Both involve good guys hunting aforementioned Nazi bad guys.

That’s about it. In all honesty, I’m not bitter about the producer’s rejection—I just find his reasoning to be strange. Oh, well . . .

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Kirkus Reviews gives thumbs-up to Human Game

In books on September 3, 2012 at 8:43 am

Happy to report Kirkus Reviews has given Human Game a good write-up. The review, which I’ve included below, will appear on the Kirkus website September 3; it will run in the Kirkus print edition September 12. I consider the following review a nice complement, considering the slogan for Kirkus Reviews is “The World’s Toughest Book Critics Since 1933.”

Human Game: The True Story of the ‘Great Escape’ Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen

The truth about the murders of 50 airmen who escaped from a top-security World War II prison camp and how the Third Reich’s killers were brought to justice.

Read (War of Words: A True Tale of Newsprint and Murder, 2009, etc.) draws heavily on the British Royal Air Force Special Investigation Bureau (SIB) case files to put together the story of what happened after the events portrayed in the 1963 movie The Great Escape. Supposedly escape-proof in design and construction, Stalag Luft III became the holding pen for a multinational contingent of repeat escapees. Six hundred were involved in organizing the plot intended to free 250 from confinement. Read shows how the escape shocked Hitler and the Nazi security services high command, resulting in a nationwide manhunt for the escapees. The men were summarily executed upon capture and cremated anonymously. The SIB detailed a task force of 21 investigators and 16 translators to track down the killers. They identified 72 members of the Gestapo, SS and Kripo chains of command who played an active part in the murders; of them, 21 were sentenced to death by hanging, 17 to prison terms. (Others had died during the war or committed suicide.) The guilty included fanatics like Wilhelm Scharpwinkel, head of the Breslau Gestapo, and Johannes Post, the deputy Gestapo chief and executioner in Kiel.

Read provides an admirable record of the meticulous police work involved in accumulating proof sufficient for prosecution and conviction. The RAF detail started from scratch and had to use many different methods to reconstruct personnel and their units and to identify the 72 found responsible. A fast-paced, clearly written account of how justice was served in a difficult wartime case.

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Hope and Nerves: ‘Human Game’ publication date fast approaching

In books, publishing, Writing on August 16, 2012 at 9:24 am

There’s about six weeks to go before Human Game is thrust upon the reading public—whether said public takes notice is now the issue at hand. My publicist at Penguin has started pitching long-lead publications (primarily magazines), hoping to score hits in issues that come out near the time of the book’s October 2 release. Wired Magazine, which is doing an escaped-theme issue in October, has already confirmed they’ll include a write-up on the book. I’m hoping other publications take the bait. Near the time of the book’s release, newspapers will be pitched. Scoring book reviews in papers like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times is no easy task. To date, the San Francisco Chronicle is the largest publication to feature a review of one of my books. Fortunately, it was a positive piece!

This, to me, is one of the real nail-biting phases of the publication process. You can spend three years researching and writing a book, anguishing over every sentence—but that effort doesn’t guarantee you an audience. It’s been seven years since the publication of my first book. With subsequent books, I always wondered, “Will this be the one?” With Human Game, however, I’ve taken a more grounded approach. I’m incredibly proud of the book; I think it’s an important book—but I’m not approaching the publication date with overblown hopes that it will suddenly takeoff and score massive sales. I learned with my last work, which my publisher at the time said was going to be huge, that fostering such hope can bring you crashing painfully down to earth. That’s not to say one shouldn’t dream of success; it’s just important to hold firm to a healthy dose of realism.

I walked into a Barnes and Noble in the Bay Area last week and took a look at the “New Releases” table(s). It’s almost overwhelming when one considers how many new books are released on a weekly basis. Then, of course, there are e-books and the countless self-published works one can find on Amazon these days. The market is utterly swamped. It makes you wonder how any book can rise above the din and distinguish itself in the crowd.

As Human Game’s publication date draws ever closer, I do find myself falling off the wagon and surrendering to an old addiction: Sales Rank Checking. This is a syndrome defined by the chronic checking of one’s sales rank on Amazon. At the time of this writing, Human Game is hovering around the 300,000 mark. The highest I’ve ever had a book reach is 1,000. The Amazon sales rank is an albatross around many an author’s neck, for it’s the one real indication we have—albeit, a vague one—of how a book is doing. While maintaining realistic hopes about the book’s success, I’d love it if it cracked Amazon’s top 100.

I can only wait and see what happens. In the meantime, here’s the jacket copy to Human Game.

In March and April of 1944, Gestapo gunmen killed fifty POWs—a brutal act in defiance of international law and the Geneva Convention.

This is the true story of the men who hunted them down.

The mass breakout of seventy-six Allied airmen from the infamous Stalag Luft III became one of the greatest tales of World War II, immortalized in the film “The Great Escape.” But where Hollywood’s depiction fades to black, another incredible story begins . . .

Not long after the escape, fifty of the recaptured airmen were taken to desolate killing fields throughout Germany and shot on the direct orders of Hitler. When the nature of these killings came to light, Churchill’s government swore to pursue justice at any cost. A revolving team of military police, led by squadron leader Francis P. McKenna, was dispatched to Germany seventeen months after the killings to pick up a trail long gone cold.

Amid the chaos of postwar Germany, divided between American, British, French, and Russian occupiers, McKenna and his men brought twenty-one Gestapo killers to justice in a hunt that spanned three years and took them into the darkest realms of Nazi fanaticism.

In Human Game, Simon Read tells this harrowing story as never before. Beginning inside Stalag Luft III and the Nazi High Command, through the grueling three-year manhunt, and into the final close of the case more than two decades later, Read delivers a clear-eyed and meticulously researched account of this often-overlooked saga of hard-won justice.

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Review: ‘The Grievers’ by Marc Schuster

In books on July 20, 2012 at 7:25 am

To simply call The Grievers by Marc Schuster a comic novel is to dismiss the book’s emotional depth. At its core, the story is a touching—and somewhat dark—meditation on friendship, death, and missed opportunities. Charley Schwartz is a mess. The promise of his younger years has fizzled out, leaving him with an incomplete dissertation moldering in his desk drawer and a humiliating job prancing around in a large dollar sign costume (complete with green tights and large Mickey Mouse-type gloves) outside the local bank. His off-kilter existence is thrown more askew when he learns an old childhood friend, Billy Chin, has leapt to his death off Philadelphia’s Henry Avenue Bridge.

For Charley, Billy’s suicide is a brutal wake-up call, forcing him to take stock of who he is and what his life has become. Why has he failed to live up to his potential? Was he really as good a friend to Billy as he should have been? And is it ever too late to steer your life back on its intended course? In Billy’s death, Charley sees an opportunity to not only prove his worth as a human being by organizing a memorial service for his friend, but also a way to acknowledge what he has long tried to ignore: He’s an adult.

In an interview with Life Magazine shortly before his death, Ian Fleming said he had gone through life with one foot “never wanting to leave the cradle.” It made, he said, “a rather painful split of one’s life.” Charley has spent his adult life clinging desperately to the carefree attitudes of childhood. His failure to take anything seriously is a constant annoyance to his best friend, Neil, a Marx Brothers fanatic who wants Charley to join him in the grown-up world of responsibilities. The yearning to turn back the clock is a theme that runs through The Grievers and is something almost everyone can relate to. In Charley’s case, it’s a defense mechanism to ward off the sense of failure that attaches itself to nearly everything he does. Fortunately, he has a pretty amazing wife who still believes in his inner potential.

Needless to say, Charley’s attempt to organize Billy’s memorial service turns into a fiasco when his alma mater—a slowly decaying boy’s academy—seizes the event as a fund-raising opportunity. For Charley, it’s an opportunity to abandon his sense of worthlessness and finally do something right.

In writing The Grievers, Schuster has done everything right, giving us a story that–at its conclusion–delivers a hefty, emotional punch.

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Early praise for ‘Human Game’

In books on June 1, 2012 at 9:06 am

Here’s some advance praise of Human Game: The True Story of the ‘Great Escape’ Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen. Penguin will release the book in the U.S. on October 2.

Examining the issues of retribution, morality, and justice in wartime, Simon Read’s Human Game manages to show that even in the darkest times, mankind clings stubbornly to a sense of right and wrong.

In the summer of 1945, British investigator Francis McKenna and his team began a trek across post-war Europe to pursue the men who murdered British POWs in cold blood following the famous “Great Escape” from Stalag Luft III in March 1944. Simon Read details the hunt in a book that is one part detective story and one part morality play, striking themes that will resonate in the present day. Remarkably, many of the Germans who witnessed or were tangentially involved in the atrocity retained an active sense of guilt and helped the investigators, even when it put them at risk for retribution from both sides.

Simon Read has done an impressive job stitching together a highly readable and informative story from various sources, and making it live again.

–Jim DeFelice, New York Times bestselling author of American Sniper.

A gut-wrenching account of World War II’s Great Escape and its brutal aftermath. Simon Read’s riveting tale of the Royal Air Force’s manhunt for the Gestapo perpetrators of the cold-blooded murder of fifty unarmed Allied escapees will touch your soul and increase your admiration for the “Greatest Generation.” Whether justice ultimately triumphed over evil can be found in Read’s engrossing narrative.

–Cole Kingseed, New York Times bestselling author of Beyond Band of Brothers.

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Experiences beyond the page

In books, Writing on April 24, 2012 at 7:01 am

A small relic associated with one of New York's most bizarre crimes.

An article filed from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Monday featured a great story from Scottish crime novelist Philip Kerr, who had a strange run-in with a Russian cop while researching a novel in the former Soviet Union. Without giving too much away, it involves bottle of vodka, a naked man, a frightened translator, and a frozen lake. Working on my own books over the years, I’ve had several interesting experiences. The most memorable ones are associated with the writing of my first published effort, On the House. The book details the murder of Michael Malloy in Prohibition-era New York by a gang of bumbling killers nicknamed the “Murder Trust.” Malloy survived multiple attempts on his life—each one more outrageous than the last—without realizing anyone was trying to kill him.

I spent quite a bit of time in New York researching the book. Many hours were spent in the basement of the Bronx courthouse, reviewing trial transcripts and other official papers. One afternoon, while I was going through a stack of folders, a rather large gentleman with his own pile of documents took a seat opposite me at the same table. He wore an ill-fitting suit that looked two sizes too small for him. His shirt, buttoned no more than midway up his chest, revealed a large gold pendant on a clunky chain. Nearly every finger boasted a thick glittery ring. He immediately struck me as a character out of “Goodfellas,” a sort of walking cliché. When I looked up at him, he smiled by way of greeting. I did likewise and returned to my research materials.

It's out of print now. Bummer.

“What are you working on?” he asked in a New York accent that seemed totally appropriate to the way he was dressed.

When I filled him in, he told me he was familiar with the Malloy story. Most people who grew up in the Bronx, he said, knew it. To be polite, I asked him what he was doing at the courthouse—and, with great enthusiasm, he told me.

“I’m researching a case, too,” he said. “Mine!”

It turned out that some years back this gentleman was accused of breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and stealing a number of valuable jewels (I immediately stole another glance at his fingers). He was eventually picked up by the cops, charged, and convicted. He claimed to be innocent of said crime and hoped to find something in the case files with which he could overturn his conviction.

“Sounds to me like you need a good alibi,” I said, entertained by the story.

“Oh, I got a great alibi,” he said. At the same time some “loser was tossing my ex’s panty drawer” (his words), he was on the other side of town having sex with the victim’s sister. He did not phrase this in a g-rated manner—and, to this day, I have no idea what it means to have “porked the dog legs” off someone. But this guy had apparently done it and was proud of the achievement. The sister had refused to testify on his behalf because she didn’t want her sibling to know of the tryst. Having shared this rather sordid episode with me, the gentleman fished a business card from his pocket and passed it my way. His name was Pete, and he worked for what appeared to be a loan agency.

“You’re a loan officer?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Let’s just say I work in collections.”

I immediately got the hint and stopped asking questions. Pete, however, kept up his friendly banter and wanted to know how long I’d be in town. When I told him a couple of days, he volunteered to be a tour guide of sorts and promised to show me a New York most people don’t get to see. This, he said, would entail visits to a high-end brothel, a member-only club, and suppliers of whatever commodity I desired. When I told him my girlfriend would most likely disapprove, he said, “I ain’t gonna tell her.” This would be the point in a movie where an angel appears on one shoulder and a devil on the other, each urging me to follow their respective moral path. In the event, my sense of decency got the better of me. I thanked Pete for his kind offer but ultimately declined.

When I returned home to the Bay Area, I finished writing the book and shipped it off to my editor at Penguin. It hit stores in October 2005. One of the would-be killers in the story was a Bronx taxi driver named Harry Green who was paid a small fee to run a drunken Malloy over one frosty evening. For various reasons, Green failed in his objective. Subsequently, he was the only member of the Murder Trust not to meet their end in Sing-Sing’s electric chair. Shortly after the book’s publication, I received a very nice email from an elderly woman in Berkeley who had read the book and enjoyed it. Would I care, she asked, to meet in person? This woman was non-other than Harry Green’s widow. I was quite flabbergasted by the whole thing and naturally agreed to see her. Mrs. Green (I don’t want to reveal her first name for privacy’s sake) invited my girlfriend (future wife) and I to dinner at her daughter’s house.

Having spent more than a year writing a book about a gang who plots a fiendish murder, I wondered jokingly if I wasn’t being lured into a trap. Would the Green family tarnish my food with anti-freeze (as the Murder Trust had done to poor Malloy)? Or, would an aggrieved member of the clan try to run me over as I approached the house? In the event, it was a lovely evening. The dinner was a backyard barbecue. A long table had been set; the centerpiece was a diorama featuring a toy taxi running over an action figure. The Greens were wonderful people. Harry’s widow, then in her eighties, was a real firecracker with a great sense of humor. She met Harry after he had served ten years for his involvement in the Malloy case. She described him as a good man who had made a very bad choice. Upon his release from prison, he spent the remainder of his life on the right side of the law, working in various professions. I wish now I could remember all the details, but my notes from the evening are packed away somewhere!

At the end of the evening, as Katie and I got up to leave, the Greens gave me the toy taxi cab from the table’s centerpiece. It still sits on my writing desk today.

On the House unfortunately went out of print several years ago, but I hope that someday it makes a return. If it does, I’ll add an “Afterword” and detail the man Harry Green became.

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What’s the best way for an author to be remembered?

In books, writers, Writing on April 10, 2012 at 9:18 am

This past weekend, I checked the Amazon listing for Human Game and was pleased to see the sales ranking had jumped from the million-mark to the neighborhood of 200,000. Someone had obviously pre-ordered a copy. To that kind-hearted and anonymous individual, I send my sincere thanks. The book isn’t due out until October 2—indeed, the Amazon listing does not yet feature the cover image—so it’s great to know that someone is eager enough to order the book seven months before its release.

I once read somewhere that for a book to be a bestseller, heavy promotion has to begin about six months before it hits stores. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea—but, certainly, an aim of this blog is to get the word out. I realize blogging alone won’t sell books, but I’m hoping it helps. At this stage, it’s too early to tell. I do find it interesting, however, that several visitors to my blog have got here by entering the book’s title as their search-engine query.

While discussing all this with my wife over the weekend, I said, “What I’d give for just one major seller!” I feel no shame in admitting this. Yes, I want to sell out—I want to sell out an entire print run! I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a writer, musician, or any artist, for that matter, wanting to make money from their toils. Of course, I don’t write solely for cash. I enjoy the process and take great satisfaction in receiving the final product from the publisher prior to publication. I’m just saying one bestseller would be nice!

This all leads to a question: As an author, is it better to be remembered as a prolific scribe who turned out high quality books that never sold in large quantities, or remembered solely for one big-selling book in particular? Pondering this question, I drummed up a short list of authors who only ever produced one book—but, of course, they’re works have the stuff of immortality.

Margaret Mitchell – Gone with the Wind
Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
Ralph Ellison – The Invisible Man
John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces
Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights

As for authors who produced numerous works but are remembered primarily for one book, I came up with the following (this, of course, is open to debate):

Hunter S. Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Joseph Heller – Catch-22
J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye
Ken Kesey – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer
D.H. Lawrence – Lady Chatterley’s Lover
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

Honestly, if I were to be remembered at all, I’d be happy to be remembered either way, for it means the work–whether multiple books, or just one–has touched a considerable audience.

The Guardian approached this from a different angle last year and composed a list of authors “famous for the wrong book.” Among them are Kurt Vonnegut for Slaughterhouse-Five and Evelyn Waugh for Brideshead Revisited.

Are there any authors you’d add to the above lists?

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Putting the smackdown on young, aspiring authors . . .

In books, e-books, publishing, Writing on April 3, 2012 at 9:02 am

Saturday’s New York Times featured an article on teens who self-publish their books with financial help from Mom and Dad. The parents of the young scribes interviewed say it’s a great way to encourage their kids to keep writing and to reward the months of work their children put into their manuscripts. Some in the publishing industry, however, see this as a negative thing. They argue it doesn’t teach children anything about perseverance or the real struggles involved in getting published.

The article quotes novelist Tom Robbins, who sounds somewhat bitter:

“What’s next Kiddie architects, juvenile dentists, 11-year-old rocket scientists? Any parent who thinks that the crafting of engrossing, meaningful, publishable fiction requires less talent and experience than designing a house, extracting a wisdom tooth, or supervising a lunar probe is, frankly, delusional. There are no prodigies in literature. Literature requires experience, in a way that mathematics and music do not.”

The article doesn’t actually assert that the parents interviewed think anything of the sort. But while we’re on the subject: Why compare writing to dental work and architecture? It is, resorting to cliché, comparing apples to oranges. One can’t say that writing a novel requires as much talent as designing and launching a lunar probe. They require two completely different skill sets. I’d say successfully sending a rocket to the moon requires an incredible amount of specialized talent. Or, maybe I’m being delusional.

I’ve stated my thoughts on self-published works before. While I’m not opposed to people publishing their books themselves, I think too many self-published authors rush to get their work out there and inundate the market with sloppy material. Then again, traditional publishing houses hit the public with a fair amount of garbage, too—so give these kids a break. Are they really causing any bestselling authors and powerful editors grief by putting their work out there? No. But what about the argument that “literature requires experience”?

The kids profiled in the article range from a 12 year old to a high school junior. While adults may stay clear of books written by teens, we can assume other teens may show interest in stories crafted by their contemporaries. I would venture to say these young authors have channeled teenage experiences into their fiction–experiences other teens would more likely identify with than someone who graduated from high school 20-plus years ago.

Not every piece of writing that’s published has to be a deeply moving experience for the reader (look at James Patterson). It can be something lightweight, written with the sole intent to entertain. Authors can think that what they do is deeply profound—but, in the end, their main job is to entertain. So let these kids self publish their books and enjoy the moment. Life only gets more stressful as one grows older, so let them enjoy the fulfillment of a dream . . . even if it’s only for a short while.

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