Moments In Crime

Word on the Street

You love books, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this.

So if you love books, you know there's some troubling developments swirling around the book world of late (there ALWAYS is, but it seems a little darker these days). Shrinking book review pages, shrinking mid-list titles, a diminished place for books in the cultural conversation. More worryingly, I see evidence all over the place of younger people not reading books (Harry Potter and private school vampires notwithstanding). On bad days, I wonder what the interest in books will look like twenty years from now.

And then...something happens to cheer me up. Something like Word on the Street.

Word on the Street is a street festival for magazines and books and readers and writers that started on Queen Street in Toronto some years back. It is now an enormously successful event, with dozens of exhibitors, various live reading tents, and tens of thousands of attendees. There are now Word on the Street festivals in Halifax, Calgary, Vancouver and Kitchener. All on the same day. TODAY.

I love Word on the Street, and one of the reasons is because it is such a broad celebration of reading. No hierarchies, no snobbery, no stuffed shirts. Reading as circus. The way it should be.

Got to go now...I'm reading at both the Toronto and Kitchener festivals this year. Want to soak up as much good news about reading as I can in one day.

And it looks like the sun is going to shine for it, too.

Bestselling

I had a happy surprise the night before last.

After driving around all day, giving a couple of readings a hundred miles apart, I arrived home, checked my email...to find that my novel, The Killing Circle, had made its way to a national Bestseller List here in Canada. (Number 5 among the ol' hardcover fiction titles, no less).

I was delighted, of course. Surely seeing your book on a sales list is one measurement of its success. (There are other measurements, naturally: reviews, letters from readers, your mom saying she thought it was okay, etc.) For me, seeing my book there delivered relief, as well as pride: Well, I thought, no matter what happens from here on in, they can't deny THAT.

Now 48 hours later, it's all got me wondering if there ever is a point where you can entirely rest at ease with a book's public life. That is, is there any laurel - bestseller list appearance? award? kind words from a mentor? - that you could ever truly rest on? Or is "success", by its very nature, elusive? Yes, The Killing Circle is at #5 this week. But wouldn't it be really good if it was at #4 next week?

We writers are insatiable beasts, I sometimes think. Or maybe we're only just human.

Public Readings (Pt. II): NOW I Get It

Yesterday, I mused about writers reading publicly from their books, and what both sides get from the exchange. I remembered some of the reasons (asking questions of the authors, putting a voice to a text, hobnobbing). But I forgot the biggie. People. Not readers...just people.

Allow me to explain.

I was invited to give a reading of The Killing Circle last night in Uxbridge, a (very) small town north of Toronto. From experience, I knew that smaller communities are often better places for literary events than big cities - folks get behind the local bookstore hosting the thing, show up, and reveal that they are serious readers, dedicated to both books and their town. But last night in Uxbridge was exceptional. Maybe 130 bums in the seats of a lovely old, red-brick opera house on Main Street, smart readers who asked smart questions and...yes...bought a lot of books.

Which brings me back to the people thing.

For me, what last night reminded me was that readers aren't just these story swallowers, not just fellow practitioners of a refined amusement. They're people before any of that: idiosyncratic, carriers of personal baggage, dream holders, lovely oddballs and jokesters and flirts. And at readings, a writer (if he's lucky) can meet a number of them. They share stories with you (sometimes startlingly intimate, given that these conversations often only comprise 3 minutes by the coffee urn) and make you laugh and (not to sound too mushy about this)...they share.

It was a great night.

So if I ever find myself asking why authors read to readers, I'll remember Uxbridge. I'll remember I'm reading to people first, and readers second.

Public Readings...When a Writer Becomes a Performer

I have to give a reading tonight.

There's nothing unusual about this. I've just published a book, and with this comes invitations (if you're lucky) to open it up and blab from it in front of dozens (half-a-dozen? your mom?). The question is: What section to read from? Should I go "funny," "drily satirical," "suspenseful," "lyrical/pretty"? What do readings do?

Part of my puzzlement on this comes from experience. I've given successful readings before, readings where people audibly responded (gasps, laughs). But I've heard nothing but crickets...reading the same passage to a different audience. Was it them? Was it me?

I also sometimes ask myself an even more fundamental question: What is the point of the literary reading anyway? I mean, we can all read ourselves, right? How is seeing the author sweat through a few pages an enhancement of the "book experience"? Partly, I know, it's just to see the author in person. Get a physical sense of the weirdo who wrote the thing. And partly it's to hear the "voice," give a text an identity. But if these are the motives, there are many times I'd rather take the audience out for beers than read to them. That way, they can get to know me, I can chat about the book, and we can have a proper party.

Ah well. This isn't going to happen soon. Not tonight, anyway. So I'm thinking I'm going to read the section from my book...where the narrator gives a reading! That's one of the advantages of reading from The Killing Circle. Being a novel about writing and publishing, reading from it means that at least you're never far off topic.

Between Books

It's weird.

A story comes to you (usually in bits and pieces accumulated over months, sometimes years - or this is how it works for me), you research it, outline it, write a draft, rip it apart, write again. Finally, after your editors have all had a go (I'm fortunate to work with three - an American, Canadian and British - a friendly, three-headed beast I call my Editorial Hydra) the book is finished. Months later, it's published. You sign this book, read from it, are asked questions about it. It's a pleasant experience, taken together, because...people are finally READING IT.

But here's the weird part: your brain is a thousand miles away. Your heart is in another story. The NEXT story.

The Killing Circle was just published in the US this week, and only a few weeks ago in Canada and the UK. While I'm still close to it, proud of its success and moved every time a reader tells me it kept them up at night (or, once, how a reader had to shower twice in the morning because she forgot to shave her legs the first time, having been distracted by thinking through the ending!), the book feels like a fondly remembered ex-girlfriend: still good friends, but we're no longer intimate. She's got a new boyfriend now. Readers who are coming to it fresh. Maybe you.

So while there's nothing like the excitement that comes with seeing a book in its published form - shiny jacket bearing promise and praise, author photo peering out from the back flap, the crisp, orderly pages within - for me, this excitement is always mixed with nostalgia. The Killing Circle is new to the world, but we've already parted ways, however amicably. I've got a new love now. The next book.

I think of this period I'm in now as the Lost Year. Between books. Committed to the just-published one, but having a torrid affair with the one I'm itching to dive into. (Wait. I keep using versions of this book-as-lover, book-as-mate metaphor. Is this saying something about the writing process...or about me? Or both?)

Anyway, I'm certain The Killing Circle and I will always be close. We've shared so much together. But it needs to move on, to find new relationships. And, eventually, in the story-making part of my soul, so will I.

Between Books

It's weird.

A story comes to you (usually in bits and pieces accumulated over months, sometimes years - or this is how it works for me), you research it, outline it, write a draft, rip it apart, write again. Finally, after your editors have all had a go (I'm fortunate to work with three - an American, Canadian and British - a friendly, three-headed beast I call my Editorial Hydra) the book is finished. Months later, it's published. You sign this book, read from it, are asked questions about it. It's a pleasant experience, taken together, because...people are finally READING IT.

But here's the weird part: your brain is a thousand miles away. Your heart is in another story. The NEXT story.

The Killing Circle was just published in the US this week, and only a few weeks ago in Canada and the UK. While I'm still close to it, proud of its success and moved every time a reader tells me it kept them up at night (or, once, how a reader had to shower twice in the morning because she forgot to shave her legs the first time, having been distracted by thinking through the ending!), the book feels like a fondly remembered ex-girlfriend: still good friends, but we're no longer intimate. She's got a new boyfriend now. Readers who are coming to it fresh. Maybe you.

So while there's nothing like the excitement that comes with seeing a book in its published form - shiny jacket bearing promise and praise, author photo peering out from the back flap, the crisp, orderly pages within - for me, this excitement is always mixed with nostalgia. The Killing Circle is new to the world, but we've already parted ways, however amicably. I've got a new love now. The next book.

I think of this period I'm in now as the Lost Year. Between books. Committed to the just-published one, but having a torrid affair with the one I'm itching to dive into. (Wait. I keep using versions of this book-as-lover, book-as-mate metaphor. Is this saying something about the writing process...or about me? Or both?)

Anyway, I'm certain The Killing Circle and I will always be close. We've shared so much together. But it needs to move on, to find new relationships. And, eventually, in the story-making part of my soul, so will I.

What Frightens You the Most?

I like horror novels, horror movies, horror comics. I even like those cheesy haunted house rides they haul around to fall fairs, the ones where you sit in a cart (the seats always a little sticky) and get wheeled around in the dark and have skeletons and guys in gorilla suits jump out at you.

But why? (That is, why do I like this stuff, not why are there guys in gorilla suits...though this too is a good question). What is it about fear that makes so many of us enjoy it in our reading and moviegoing? On a more personal level, why do I write books that - among other effects - seek to scare the bejesus out of the reader?

I have a theory.

Horror - as a genre, as well as a readerly response - opens our mind to itself, reveals something essential about who we are that we wouldn't necessarily find in a romance or history or memoir. It brings us close to what we fear most without actually putting us in direct contact with it. This simulated meeting between Self and Fear is useful, even cathartic.

Not every reader finds the same things as scary as others. For instance, in my new novel, The Killing Circle, there lives a bogeyman. A figure called the Sandman who may (or may not) be haunting the main character, and may (or may not) have abducted his son, and may (or may not) be the killer/father of a young woman whose personal journal was stolen by the main character and plagiarized as a novel published as his own (entitled The Sandman, coincidentally). Some readers have told me they find the IDEA of the Sandman terrifying, because he can potentially be anything or anyone. In a poem he leaves by the victim he apparently murdered, the Sandman describes himself as the king of the "Kingdom of Not What It Seems." He is the uncanny incarnate.

But other readers find their horror not in ideas, but in the visceral, the verifiable. So when Sam, the protagonist's young son goes missing at the beginning of the novel, they know this is real - and therefore, the abduction is the scary aspect, not who did the abducting, or what shape he might end up taking.

All this to say that fear is part of who we are, because fear reveals what we value most. For some, it is their children's well-being. For others, the health of the planet. For yet others, their own skins...or a night free of bad dreams.

What do you fear most, and why? It sounds like a banal question. But I promise you, if you really think about it, it's a question that often leads to interesting answers. Answers that will surprise even yourself.

THE KILLING CIRCLE - How the Desire to Write is Like the Desire to Murder

Virtually every crime novel or thriller is powered by at least one character's desire to kill. Usually, this desire is rooted in a fundamental vice, a biblical sin: coveting a false idol, another's mate, money. A motive, in other words. A good percentage of mysteries are concerned with little else. We arrive at the who-dunnit? by way of the why-dunnit?

My new novel, The Killing Circle, is an unusual thriller in this regard, as its villain(s) desire to kill is related not to money or sex or status, but writing. My criminals steal stories. Some also (and perhaps at the same time) steal lives.

The protagonist of The Killing Circle, Patrick Rush, is still recovering from his wife’s death when he joins a writers’ circle. His goal: to write the book he’s always felt lived within him. Trouble is, Patrick has no story to tell. But Angela does. Her unsettling readings tell of a shadowy childhood tragedy and an unremitting fear of the Sandman, a “terrible man who does terrible things.” It’s the stuff of nightmares or horror films. Or is it?

Over the weeks that follow, a string of unsolved murders seem increasingly connected to Patrick. And then the circle’s members start to go missing, one by one. Still haunted by loss – and by a crime only those in the circle could know of – Patrick finds himself in a fictional world made horrifically real. But nothing will put him in greater danger than that ancient curse of natural born readers: the need to know how the story ends.

This is the story of The Killing Circle. But what moves the story is desire: for some this is fame, for some family...and for others, it is the desire to steal the stories of lives not your own.

What I'd like to know is: What makes the yearning to write so much more acute and deeply felt than other wants? Why do so many writers describe their work not as a job or a duty, but like air or a drug - something they need? How is storytelling so fundamental to how we understand ourselves that, if someone were to take our story from us, it would be a short step away from taking the breath from our lungs?

Over the week to come, I'd like to explore some of these story = life issues. I'd love to hear from you!

Oh, and here's a couple cool links.

One is a trailer for The Killing Circle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWyVv4DpxRE.

The other is my website: www.andrewpyper.com.

Be seeing you soon!
Andrew

Blogging This Week: Andrew Pyper

Andrew Pyper is the author of the novels Lost Girls (which was a New York Times and Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year), The Killing Circle, and The Trade Mission: A Novel of Psychological Terror, as well as Kiss Me, a collection of stories.  He lives in Toronto, and his Web site is www.andrewpyper.com.

From acclaimed, internationally bestselling author Andrew Pyper, a suspenseful page-turner that explores the repercussions of the most dishonest of thefts: stealing another’s story and calling it your own.When Patrick Rush, journalist, single father, and failed novelist, decides to join a creative writing circle, it seems a fertile time for the imagination. Throughout Toronto, a murderer is striking at random, leaving his victims’ bodies mutilated and dismembered, and taunting the police with cryptic notes.
             Influenced by the atmosphere of menace and fear, the group begins to read each other their own dark, unsettling tales. One, Angela, tells a mesmerizing story about a childstealer called the Sandman. Patrick, though, ?nds fantasy and reality becoming blurred. Is the maniac at large in fact the Sandman? What does Angela really know? And is he himself being stalked by the killer?
            It is only when his son is snatched that Patrick understands what he must do: embark on a horrifying journey into the unknown and track down the elusive ?gure known as the Sandman.
            At once a complex and compulsive read, The Killing Circle explores the side effects of an increasingly fame-mad culture, where even the staid realm of literature can fall prey to ravenous ambition and competition.

"Extraordinary . . . Powered by an ingeniously nonlinear narrative and suffused with a tone thick with dread, this is easily Pyper’s most ambitious—and absorbing—work to date.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The Killing Circle is one great read: darkly lyrical and atmospheric, it’s as haunting as it is gripping. Highly recommended.” —Harlan Coben
“Very smart, very scary, very good: once I started I couldn’t stop. Fans of dark and witty suspense will love The Killing Circle.” —Peter Abrahams, author of Oblivion