Moments In Crime

On The Road With Bruce Springsteen

I'm off on the road for my official Hazy, Hot and Humid book tour for HELL HOLE (the heat seems appropriate for the title, actually) and after having a blast down at Murder On The Beach in Florida (yes I am a glutton for humidity)

I flew off to Atlanta to go my high school reunion in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chattanooga is a beautiful town recently revitalized on the banks of the Tennessee River. On a previous visit to my old home town, I stayed at the Marriott and met a great desk clerk named Shareef Smith. I asked him if I could borrow his name for a book I was working on. I told him he would probably end up dead in it. He was cool with that. Today, after my signing at Rock Point Books, I took him a copy of HELL HOLE. In the inscription, I apologized for killing him in a locked toilet stall on the New Jersey Garden State Parkway.

I love the logo for the minor league baseball team in Chattanooga -- The Lookouts. Named after Lookout Mountain, site of a famous Civil War battle. I think googly peepers are an interesting choice for team.

But I digress.

Why did I fly to Atlanta to go to Chattanooga? Because it was way cheaper to do that and rent a car than to fly to Atlanta and change planes to fly the 100 miles up to Chattanooga. I don't know why Delta wanted about seven hundred more dollars for that last 100 miles. Maybe they're afraid they'll bump into Lookout Mountain or a giant with googly eyes.

Anyway, the rental car had Satellite radio. I have never listened to satellite radio before. There's even an all Bruce all the time channel. It's called E-Street after his band, of course. Here's what you'll hear: E Street Radio brings you up close to E Street Band members and to Bruce Springsteen himself – interviews, guest DJ sessions, studio outtakes, concert recordings, rarities and more. So, I'm in heaven on the drive.

Yes, like Danny and Ceepak, I love my Springsteen music. At last count, there were 513 Springsteen tracks in my iTunes library. When I write the Ceepak books, I strap on my noise reduction head sets and loop a smart Playlist of All Bruce All The Time.

When I was playing around with the notion of creating a mystery series back in 2003, the first kernel of an idea was a line from a Bruce Springsteen song called "4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)":"And you know that tilt-a-whirl down on the south beach drag
I got on it last night and my shirt got caught
And that Joey kept me spinnin' I didn't think I'd ever get off."
A lot of other lines from that song inspired scenes and characters in my first CEEPAK MYSTERY TILT A WHIRL (did I mention it won the Anthony Award for best first mystery? Thanks for the assist, Bruce)

Fortunately, Springsteen is very generous in allowing authors to quote his lyrics. A mutual love of The Boss was the only thing Ceepak and Danny had in common when the series started. The next book in the series, MIND SCRAMBLER, was inspired by the songs in the latest Springsteen album MAGIC.

My own love of Bruce started back in 1975 when the BORN TO RUN album first came out and I was working as disc jockey to pay my way through college. I played the title track and THUNDER ROAD over and over. I worked for a small Album Rock station called w149 in Knoxville, Tennessee and recently, someone sent me an audio file of me on the air back in the day, as they say, because it's nicer than saying "thirty-three freakin' years ago you old fart, you."
Download 01_chris_grabenstein_w149.mp3

Yes, I actually said "Fair today, carnivals tomorrow" in the weather report. I'm sure I cracked myself up.

Recently, the legendary Madame Marie, a fortune teller in Asbury Park New Jersey passed away -- the one mentioned in "Sandy":
Well the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do
This boardwalk life for me is through
You know you ought to quit this scene too

Well, I don't intend on quitting this Boardwalk life anytime soon. Just listening to more Bruce. And seeing if there's a way to work my own Madame Marie into one of the plots...

It's been fun blogging here. My tour continues. Hope to see you down the road. And I just hope all the rental cars have that E Street Satellite Channel.

For more Bruce and images of the Jersey shore, you can check out this WHACK A MOLE YOU TUBE video I cut together for Ceepak #3 last summer.

Thanks!

Chris Grabenstein

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY? Naaaah....

Every summer, I head down the Jersey Shore to do strenuous research. I always take my digital camera along to record people, places and things that might work their way into the story I've started spinning in my head. For instance, when researching HELL HOLE, I went to Wildwood, New Jersey in search of a Gravitron, a ride very similar to the old Hell Hole (the room spins, centrifugal force pins you to the wall, the floor drops, you try not to puke).

While there, I found an attraction called Dante's Inferno -- sort of a Satanic Fun House. It became the model for the boarded up ride in the book.

I usually write the Ceepak stories over the winter so my iPhoto Library becomes very important as I try to remember a time of year when my nose wasn't frozen.

HELL HOLE is a locked toilet stall mystery. A soldier's body is found sitting on top of a toilet in the men's room of a Garden State Parkway rest stop. That meant I had to do some pretty fragrant research.

I also noticed some interesting details. Flowers at the sinks? I put it in the book. I think it's the details that make a story seem real when, truth be told, fiction is all about telling lies for fun and profit.

When I worked in advertising, we'd always Scout Locations when filming a TV commercials. It's what I do when writing a book. Sometimes I see an interesting scene, snap it, and file it away. Sometimes I use it...
...like the man with the enormous belly who had to slide his seat all the way into the back of the car so he wasn't being squished by his steering wheel and the Fried Oreos stands all up and down the Boardwalk.

Sometimes, I don't use the image. This was one I wanted to work in but didn't...I don't know if you can read it but it says: New Jersey where vacations always seem to end to soon. That's basically what happens to Corporal Shareef Smith in HELL HOLE.

For the next Ceepak book, MIND SCRAMBLER (#5 in the series) I headed down to Atlantic City to do my research and play the slots. I find slot machines to be boring. Like feeding a dollar bill into a Coke machine hoping to get every can inside. When nothing comes out at all, you put in another dollar.

Here are some more Down The Shore scenes I might use in future books...Ceepak Books 6,7, 8 or 26.The gizmo is called a Footsie Wootsie. It takes your quarter and shakes your feet. Hot fun in the summer sun. I love this old guy making Cotton Candy. He'll definitely be a witness some day. My wife bought me a T-shirt that says "Be careful or you might end up in my novel." If you're headed down the Jersey Shore this summer. it's definitely true. You might even end up dead. In a book. Not for real. Unless, you know, the Jelly Fish rise up against us.

My Dog Ate My Amazon Number

THE DOG DAYS HAVE STARTED EARLY.

It’s an exciting time in the Publishing World right now.

Yes, HELL HOLE – the fourth installment in my John Ceepak/Jersey shore mystery series just went on sale (the first to be published by St. Martin’s Minotaur, btw) but, more importantly, my dog Fred’s book just launched, too.

Yes, indeedy. It’s very interesting to have your new book out there competing in the dog-eat-dog world of the big box bookstores with your dog’s book.

For instance, if you picked up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, you probably didn’t see anything about HELL HOLE. But there was Fred, on page 49, hanging out with all his Broadway pals.

Yes, the New York Post called HELL HOLE “Required reading -- perhaps the perfect nexus of war, politics and beachside bravado” but did I pose with Bernadette Peters at my launch party?

Did she even show up? No. We had firehouse chili and deep fried Oreos. Fred had champagne and sugar cookies shaped like bones. Champagne paid for by Sarah Jessica Parker who, many years ago, played Little Orphan Annie in that musical about the propensity of the sun to rise in the sky at a fixed time each day. Annie, you might recall, had a dog named Sandy and when they did the show on Broadway thirty years ago, Bill Berloni was Sandy’s trainer.

Since then, Berloni has directed a couple hundred dogs for the stage and screen. Including our guy Fred who appeared in the cast of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He jumped on a character named Lord Scrumptious. He still knows how to jump on people. Just get on the elevator with him one day with pastrami on your breath.

Crime writer trivia: who wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the novel?

Stay tuned.

About a week ago, Fred was invited to the Launch Party for Berloni’s backstage memoir Broadway Tails: Heartfelt Stories of Rescued Dogs Who Became Showbiz Superstars that was held at New York’s Public Theatre downtown near Astor Place.

All the top dog stars were there. A couple Sandies from the road companies of Annie. A few Totos from The Wiz. The chiuhuahua and bulldog currently starring on Broadway in Legally Blonde.

It was fun for Fred to be reunited with Ken Kantor, the actor who played the bad guy Lord Scrumptious in the show (with vest pockets stuffed with snausages).

Rest assured, Danny and Ceepak will never deal with a villain named Scrumptious, unless he runs a Taffy Shop or something down the shore in Sea Haven. However, Scrumptious was originally created by a very famous “crime” writer.

Who?

Ian Fleming.

Yep. The guy who wrote James Bond also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Put that in your tailpipe and fly you car around the parking lot.

Fred’s tale is one of several in Berloni’s backstage memoir Broadway Tails: Heartfelt Stories of Rescued Dogs Who Became Showbiz Superstars.

Bill Berloni was a nineteen-year-old theater apprentice when he was offered his big break: the chance to act professionally if he could find and train a dog to appear in the original production of the Broadway hit Annie. Defying the odds, Bill rescued a dog from a local shelter and, together, they redefined what animal performers could do.

In Broadway Tails, Bill tells the true stories of “throw-away” animals who came back to co-star with some of entertainment’s biggest names, from Richard Burton to Sarah Jessica Parker.

The great thing about all the Broadway dogs is that Berloni rescues strays from shelters and puts them in shows. Fred was abandoned when he was a puppy up in the Bronx. He was sitting on death row when he got his big break and auditioned against dozens of other shelter dogs for one of the two remaining canine roles in the musical.

Excuse me. Fred is nudging my mouse hand. Urging me to check out his Amazon number.
Not bad. 4,847. He beat me tonight. Guess I have to pick up his poop again tomorrow.

You can learn more about Fred at my web site: www.ChrisGrabenstein.com

Quotes about Chris Grabenstein

"Chris Grabenstein has raised the stakes in Hell Hole, the latest offering in the Ceepak mystery series. All the reasons I fell in love with the series are still there: Danny is still the Candide-like character through whom we see the honorable, lie-hating John Ceepak, the writing is still as smooth as glass and as honest as a boy scout, the dialogue still rings as true as a dinner bell. But in Hell Hole, Grabenstein has taken it to a whole new level. Like the boardwalk ride he describes, he drops the bottom out of what we think we know, and gives us a story that's as dark and mesmerizing as the Hell Hole itself. Don't let the sunny weather of Sea Haven fool you, Hell Hole is one spectacular, gripping ride." 
                    -Louise Ure, Shamus Award-winning author of  The Fault Tree

PRAISE FOR CHRIS GRABENSTEIN'S JOHN CEEPAK SERIES:

"...a well-written mystery, complete with humor, humanity, a fast-moving plot, and memorable characters. Highly recommended."  —Library Journal on WHACK-A-MOLE

"With agile humor, neat plotting, unexpected sweetness, and an irresistible duo, Grabenstein offers a hip new form of cozy." —Booklist on MAD MOUSE

"Grabenstein does such a good job evoking the shore, you can practically smell the aroma of fast food wafting from the restaurants and the creosote they use to preserve the planks of the boardwalk. That he does such a great job with his varied cast, and in keeping readers rapidly flipping the pages, is a welcome bonus." —Mystery Scene on MAD MOUSE

"...characters so vivid they practically splash the pages with Technicolor." —Tess Gerritsen

"Chris Grabenstein hits just the right tone, melding a multilayered plot that is equally action-packed and poignant, hard-hitting and funny, sarcastic and serious, sometimes all in the same paragraph." —The Sun-Sentinel (Voted One Of The Best Mysteries of 2005!)

Hell Hole: Chris Grabenstein

Former military PD and current Sea Haven police officer John Ceepak is confronted with his most personal case yet when he must investigate the alleged suicide of a military corporal who recently returned from duty in Iraq. When it turns out that this open-and-shut case is anything but, Ceepak and his partner Danny Boyle must uncover a much larger conspiracy that strikes at the very heart of our involvement in the Middle East, and threatens to anger some very unpleasant people...

Author info

Chris Grabenstein is the author of three mysteries featuring investigator John Ceepak. The first Ceepak mystery, TILT-A-WHIRL won the Anthony Award for Best First Mystery, and the second, MAD MOUSE, was named one of the ten best mysteries of the year by Kirkus.