Shaved Meats, Piled High: June 2021
How To Talk to an Author*
Yes, I'm back, eight days before my next novel goes on sale. How convenient! Look, baby needs new shoes and by "baby," I mean "me."
DREAM GIRL -- my 23rd or 24th novel, depending on how one counts such things, my 27th book overall -- will be published in the U.S. on June 22, the UK on July 1. I started it in January 2019, but it was unfinished when the pandemic hit in late winter 2020 and I was grateful that I was forced to focus on it for the first four months of Maryland's stay-at-home advisory. So far, it has garnered three starred reviews in what we call the pre-pubs, some glorious word-of-mouth from early readers and novelist peers, and attracted the attention of CBS This Morning: Saturday, where I am scheduled to be featured on June 19. (I say "scheduled" because feature pieces can be scuttled if something huge happens.)
The CBS crew at work, lovely gentlemen all
The central character in DREAM GIRL is a novelist, and not a very nice one. The inside of his head, which is where the entire book takes place, jumping between the past and the present, is a dark, depressive chamber. Someone helpfully shared with me the other day that some "amateur reviewers" have expressed reservations about the character and the structure. "I'm sure you seen online -- " the person began.
But I hadn't. I don't Google myself. I don't check my Amazon rankings or reviews. I belong to Goodreads, but I have decided that is an area where, to paraphrase Auden, writers should never try to tamper. (Talk about your raw towns and ranches of isolation! But my apologies if you have sent a friend request or followed my nonexistent reviews.) I don't seek out good news or bad news about myself. I do, however, pay attention to who brings me what.
How does one talk to an author about a bad review? One doesn't. Trust me, the writer doesn't want to hash it out, doesn't even need to hear you trash the source. Just ignore it. Consider a bad review the equivalent of toilet paper that was stuck to your friend's shoe yesterday. What's the point in bringing it up now?
I promote my novels because I want people to find them, read them. That's how I get to keep doing my dream job. But I don't try to control how people feel about them. I figure that there are as many versions of my novels as there are readers and that every reaction is valid. I've had people straight up tell me things about my books that I know to be false, but -- important but -- on a textual level, their readings are absolutely justified.
True story: I was in the middle of writing this newsletter when someone jumped into a Twitter thread about ally-ship to add an unrelated comment, which I then shared via screenshot.
Anyway, I'm back and the Mystery Box should follow soon. (This school year was pretty hard on me and the Unsinkable Molli, my assistant and the Mystery Box's official photographer. Ask her anything about fifth grade math, absolutely anything. I did social studies and science; dad was in charge of English.) Obviously, I can't list everything I read and re-read in 2021 so far. And this newsletter has been all Me, Me, Me, so no need for a Me, Me, Me section this month. Below, I have info for the DREAM GIRLl tour and, yes, a link to pre-order. Obviously, it's a very different kind of tour this summer, but there is a tour, including events with Dan Fesperman and Megan Abbott for which I do not yet have links. Hope to "see" you around. And I've committed to attending Bouchercon in my beloved New Orleans in late August, but I'll probably be hiding out in the Garden District for most of my time there. Re-entry has been surprisingly challenging for me. How are you doing? Not a rhetorical question as I like to write on student manuscripts. How have you handled the world's reopening? Have you considered that a darkly comic novel about a man trapped in his own apartment might be just the thing you need? Kidding. Maybe. Baby needs new shows.**
Pre-Order DREAM GIRL from your favorite bookstore
In conversation with Terry Teachout -- ticketed event at the Ivy Bookshop on June 22.
An IN-PERSON event at A Likely Story in Sykesville, MD, on June 28.
*The title of this newsletter was inspired by Jean Kerr's How to Talk to a Man, but it owes its attitude to her piece "How to Cope With Bad Notices," which includes the timeless advice that the best response to a friend citing a less-than-stellar review is to say: "Frankly, I was relieved."
**Baby, in fact, does not need new shoes.