Brad Parks on the Couch

By Brad Parks

Phew, am I glad Sandy asked me to be here on Poe’s Deadly Daughters today, not just because it’s a home to some lovely writers and great readers, but because I know Liz Zelvin is a therapist.

And, well, I’ve got something I need to get off my chest.

So excuse me while I get my feet up on the couch and relax for a second – this is confidential, right? – and, okay, here goes…

See, doc, I write mysteries for a living, and you would think that would make me good at sussing out the killer in other writers’ mysteries, because I know all the tricks and sleight of hand that goes into keeping folks off balance, but… well, doc… I’m just gonna come straight out with it:

I may be the dumbest mystery reader you’ve ever met.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where I’ve successfully guessed whodunit. The ending is always a big surprise to me.

This is true when I read, where at least I’m the only one in the room who knows just how dumb I am. But it’s also true when I watch movies, television shows, YouTube videos… pretty much any media. Even when everyone in the living room is crowing “The butler did it!” I’m that guy in the corner going, “Gee, I don’t know, are you sure it’s not the professor? Because he looked pretty sinister in the first scene…”

I’ve even read books for a second or third time and – because of a sieve-like brain that forgets the plots of books roughly four seconds after I finish them – I’ve been fooled all over again. I’ve probably devoured John D. MacDonald’s entire canon two or three times, yet he always stumps me like it’s all brand new.

And as long as I’m confessing, doc, can I tell you this? Most of the time, I don’t even try to guess the killer. I just get it wrong anyway. But I also I think it diminishes my enjoyment of the book when I dedicate too much energy to the whodunit part. I’d rather dive into the characters, the setting, the plot twists, the writing. Figuring out the red herring ranks just about dead last on my list of things to do.

(As a matter of fact, I’m so hopeless with this stuff, the first time my editor at St. Martin’s Press used the phrase “red herring” I had to ask her what that was. I told you I’m dumb.)

(And, hey doc, as long as I’m in parenthetical mode, I might as well confess that the first time a reader asked me if I “played fair,” I had to ask what that meant, too. It had never occurred to me to play any other way as a writer.)

I guess this has all been on my mind because of an exchange I had recently with Jeff Pierce over at The Rap Sheet. Now, mind you, Jeff is a guy who reads a lot of mysteries – he’s probably in the 99th percentile when it comes to readers who are tough to fool. But he told me he figured out the “whodunit” about halfway through my latest book, The Girl Next Door.

I was impressed, mostly because I don’t plot out my books – I go seat-of-the-pants, seldom knowing more than one or two scenes ahead of time what’s going to happen. I guarantee you that when I was halfway through writing The Girl Next Door, I didn’t know who the killer was going to be. But Jeff did! Is that guy good or what, doc?

Then it occurred to me: Wow, I’m not only dumb when I’m reading mysteries, I’m stupid writing them, too.

But then I started wondering, does it matter? How much do readers really care? As long as it’s not blindingly obvious, does it ruin the experience of reading if you’re, say, 75 percent sure who the bad guy is?

Does it, doc?

Yeah, I know that a lot of readers really enjoy the puzzle aspect of mysteries. But if all they wanted was the puzzle, wouldn’t they just do Sudoku instead? And don’t they have to read to the end to at least see if they’re right?
 
Anyhow, doc, I’m eager to hear what you have to say about this. Am I the only one? Is there anyone else out there as dumb as I am?
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Brad Parks is a winner of the Nero Award and the Shamus Award. His latest book, The Girl Next Door, releases from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books on March 13. For more Brad, sign up for his newsletter, like him on Facebook, or follow @Brad_Parks on Twitter.

From Malice to Oakmont

Sandra Parshall

The Malice Domestic conference is big, noisy, and exhausting. You’d think everyone would be happy to head home afterward, but every year as soon as Malice concludes, a lot of mystery writers pile into cars or board planes to attend another big, noisy, exhausting event in Oakmont, PA, outside Pittsburgh. The Oakmont Festival of Mystery is organized every year by Richard Goldman (below, with Heather Webber in foreground) and Mary Alice Gorman of the Mystery Lovers Bookshop, and it’s an event so consistently successful that writers clamor to get in.


This year I attended the festival for the first time since 2007, and while I enjoyed it and sold a nice number of books, my ears are still ringing from the din and my throat is sore from hours of shouting to be heard. When the writers arrived at the church social hall where the author interviews and book sales took place, a long line of eager readers awaited us outside the building. Inside, as we found our seats at the tables, the place was fairly quiet. Lots of anticipation – everybody has good sales at Oakmont – but not a lot of racket. Then the doors were flung open and the crowd surged in, and the decibel level rose until my normally soft voice forced me to yell in people’s faces when I told them about my books.

Only four male authors attended, and I got to sit between two of them, Jason Pinter and Brad Parks. On the whole, the book buyers at Oakmont tend to be middle aged and older, and I found it instructive to watch white-haired women check out Jason’s thrillers and decide to buy them – or tell him they’d already bought and read his books. I wish the people who run New York publishing houses would realize that women love thrillers and probably buy more of them than men do. Brad Parks, who is funny and outgoing, charmed female readers of all ages, and most of the female writers. Men were buying his first mystery, The Faces of the Gone, too, and he sold out of the store’s hardcovers and had to bring in a box of his own copies from the trunk of his car to meet demand. Give him your ear for two minutes, and he will sell you a book. Brad (below, with Kevin O'Brien) is well on his way to being a new mystery star.


Another rising star, Hank Phillipi Ryan (below with Jason Pinter), won her second Agatha Award at Malice Domestic before she headed up to Oakmont. She won two years ago for Best First Novel, was nominated for Best Novel as well as Best Short Story this year, and won for her story, “On the House.” Hank is one of those people who are so gracious and generous that any other writer would have to be a true grinch to resent her success.


Before the book sales, writers gathered at a nearby library for coffee and pastries at a reception with librarians. I am terrible at this sort of event, where authors are expected to pitch their books to all these nice librarians, and I know I’ll never become the expert that Donna Andrews (below, right) is.


Afterward, the tired, hungry writers were treated to pizza at the Mystery Lovers Bookstore, where we enjoyed the relative quiet, newcomers signed the restroom wall, and we all collected mugs with a special logo celebrating the store’s Raven Award from Mystery Writers of America.


Our volunteer driver, Annette Dashofy (President of the Pittsburgh chapter of Sisters in Crime), finally shepherded Shirley Damsgaard, Jenny White, and me back to her car and delivered us to our hotels for the night. All three of us were feeling like the character in L’il Abner who had a perpetual thundercloud over his head – Shirley’s blouse had dried fingernail polish on it following an accident in her luggage, Jenny lost her glasses at the book sale, and I was about to discover, for the third time that day, that I had yet another key card that wouldn’t open the door to my room. But the company was great, I loved getting to know Shirley and Jenny (both animal lovers) and seeing Annette again.

On the plane coming back to National Airport, it was time to collapse and recover and enjoy the view from the window. One amazing cloud formation looked like a long, thick line of whipped cream, complete with pretty ridges, extruded from a cake decorating tool and suspended over the earth. Another looked like icebergs rising from a flat, frozen sea. But what made me smile was my first glimpse of the Potomac in the distance. Soon the plane was flying in low over the water and there was the Capitol dome on the right, and the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial. It was good to be home.

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More photos from Malice Domestic and Oakmont on my Facebook page and Flickr photostream.

The Day My Characters Started Talking to Me

By Brad Parks, guest blogger

Once upon a time, when I was a newspaper reporter living a just-the-facts-ma’am kind of writing existence, I would happen across an interview with an author. Since I harbored this wild dream of someday becoming an author, I would always stop and listen (or read) to see if I could learn anything.

Usually, there was a point in the interview where the esteemed author would be asked how she figured out what happened next in her books, and she would say something along the lines of: “Well, my characters talk to me. They tell me where the story ought to go.”

And I’d always think to myself, “Yeah, lady? Do your characters also tell you you’re a nut bag? Because that’s what you sound like right now.”

I mean, what an absurd idea. Characters – fictional creations – dictating the direction of a story? As if they had some kind of free will? Ridiculous.

Then I started writing fiction.

And suddenly one day my characters… they, uh… they started talking to me.

It didn’t happen during my first manuscript. (Then again, that manuscript is still sitting in a drawer somewhere – and maybe now I know why.)

No, it happened while I was writing Faces of the Gone, my debut novel from St. Martin’s/Minotaur. The protagonist is this investigative newspaper reporter named Carter Ross. Part of his deal is that while he works in Newark, New Jersey – a gritty city which is approximately 95 percent
minority – Carter is this clean-cut WASP from the white bread suburbs.

And while I enjoyed the juxtaposition of character and setting for the first two chapters, Carter didn’t start talking to me – really talking to me – until the beginning of Chapter 3. In this scene, Carter has scored an interview with members of the Brick City Browns, a Newark street gang who might have information about a quadruple homicide Carter is covering. But first, Carter has to prove to them he’s not a cop – by smoking marijuana with them.

So there I had Carter in this room with these gang members, and they’re passing the joint, having a good old time. And I figured everyone would get mellow enough that the Brick City Browns would eventually spill what they knew, and Carter would go on his merry way.

But then Carter started talking to me.

“Psst, Brad, I can’t handle my weed,” he said.

“You can’t?” I asked (in my head).

“Not even a little,” he replied. “C’mon, I’m the whitest man in Newark. I wear pleated pants and drive a Chevy Malibu. Look at how I cut my hair, for God’s sake! I tried pot once or twice in college – just to say I’d done it – and haven’t touched the stuff since.”

“So… uh, what do I do now?” I asked.

“I don’t care what you do,” Carter explained. “I’m baked out of my mind. Just let me chill out for a while.”

But, of course, I couldn’t – the scene would get way too dull. So I had him stand up, and, sure enough, he went toppling over into a wall full of boxes, spilling their contents all over him – to the amusement of the gang members smoking with him. Then I had Carter go back to the newsroom, still stoned, bumping into his executive editor, who gets suspicious when one of his reporters smells like he just came from a Grateful Dead concert. Then Carter bumps into his sometime love interest.

The result is that I got some of the more amusing scenes in my book, scenes I never planned but happened more or less spontaneously simply because I was listening to what my characters had to say. Do your characters talk to you? Come on, don’t be shy. I promise I won’t call you a nut bag.

To learn more about Brad Parks or Faces of the Gone, visit www.BradParksBooks.com. To be pelted with monthly fits of nonsense from his small army of underpaid interns, sign up for his newsletter. To be subjected to such drivel on a more regular basis, become a fan of the Brad Parks Books on Facebook or follow him on Twitter (www.twitter.com/Brad_Parks).