David Thayer

If you enjoy courtroom dramas you might want to fly to London for the copyright infringment case being heard at the High Court. Three UK authors of Holy Blood Holy Grail are suing Dan Brown’s publisher for stealing the central idea of their book for the Davinci Code. The Irish Times points out that the publisher of HBHG is now part of Random House UK; the suit is against Randon House UK. I think that means that Random House is suing itself.

Lewis Purdue, author of Daughter of God, sued Dan Brown and RH in this country without success. Purdue alleged plagiarism in his case although I suppose copyright infringement is a polite term for the same offense. The UK authors are chasing the core idea approach, that is, alleging their idea was stolen rather than passages of prose.

It strikes me as a weak argument since Christ and Mary Magdalene are not characters created by any of these guys. The issues of dogma that underly the premise of all these books are fully developed by centuries of custom and use, not to mention faith. The core idea is a twist on traditional interpretations of the life and death of Christ, so it is not a shock when more than one author turns the dial for effect by developing a variation on the theme.

Rumpole for the defense? That would be fun.

We don’t like the wind at our back. The entire staff at the Druidical & Literary has assembled in the canteen to protest the sale of the D&L to billionaire Oliver Castinstone. Oliver worked as an investigative reporter for the D&L before revealing his true identity to the Earl. The Earl was reading Sara Gran’s novel Dope over the weekend carrying the book around the estate while Depew attended to the prize winning rhododendrons. Intern Heather DeMedici reports that the Earl was distracted when he agreed to sell this blog to the conniving Castinstone.

The Dowager Princess had Oilver in a headlock before DCI Borchardt intervened. The unfortunate incident compounds her legal issues; the Princess faces charges in Detroit after claiming to be JT Leroy’s Aunt Phyllis, a shadowy figure who loathes Tuesdays with Morry.

The D&L ran a review of Dope before the news of the sale leaked to the staff. “We’re moving to Los Angeles,” said Mr. Castinstone. “Judith is there. Maury Povich is too.”

Editor at large Olivia Earthwindandfire remains at Belvedere Castle although she too faces a move west. “There was a time when the D&L lingered over a book,” she said. “Now it’s deadlines and pressure.” She will remain in the weather tower until she finishes Dope. “Oliver Castinstone can kiss my…”

The Earl thinks Dope compares favorably to Voltaire’s Miasma his self-published sensation that captured last year’s Snooker Prize. “No kidding,” observed embittered dogsbody U.U. Depew. “Sara Gran rocks.”

There is a discussion on Sarah Weinman’s site about the PI novel. Where is the genre going? It’s hard for fans and experts to judge what constitutes a PI novel. Publishers seem convinced that gimmicks are required to attract readers; I’m convinced that readers of PI hate the gimmicks. Talking dogs? Crime solving cats? It was bad enough when men who aren’t afraid to cry became a fixture in back-stories. Enough already. Let’s dump the issue into Michael Koryta’s lap.

Sorrow’s Anthem is a traditional PI novel. Set in Cleveland it tells the story of Lincoln Perry, an ex-cop from the neighborhood where a murder and arson case leads the cops to an old friend. Lincoln wants to help Ed Gradduck clear his name. Ed is killed, run down by cops surveilling him. Lincoln has an older partner and a semi-professional relationship with a reporter named Amy. Without revealing plot points of his complex tale, the story goes where expected, into the maw of crime and law enforcement on Cleveland’s gritty streets.

Think of Sorrow’s Anthem this way: take a muscle car from the Sixties, remove the flames from the hood, take the dice from the rear view mirror. Now you’ve got a fast car that growls through traffic, draws glances from cops, frightens accountants at stop lights. A stripped down ride that will blow the doors off dad’s SUV. Go ahead, give the other guy the finger.

This is a PI novel. Michael Koryta isn’t selling it any other way. His prose is as clear as his purpose, he lays the story down without apology. His bad guys emerge the way they should; innocent people are victimized, and the heroes put things straight. Lincoln grinds through the lies and the cover-ups to discover what killed his friend, what killed his neighborhood. The story is personal; it is told in the first person, with the trade-off of limited point of view for the emotional jolt the technique delivers. Koryta keeps a tight rein on the pacing, which is slower than a thriller, more layered. The ending is over written and seems to drag once the focus shifts away from the action, but, overall, this is the kind of book that makes the tattered old PI look fresh and honest.

Welcome to the Wellington Leg podcasting contest. Your host and master of ceremonies is the Earl of Watership Down captain of the green team, author, if you consider a disreputable Isle of Mann vanity house a publisher, and friend of hogs. The Earl is approaching the stage, a floating stage, surrounded by papier mache nymphs and a frieze of gastropods in mid bite, the crowd is engaged in pre-ceremonial hubbub as the cameras pan the once red now orange carpet, a carpet whose neglect reflects the zeitgeist, malaise, scadenfreude, and weltschmerzen so redolent this evening.

Oh the first pod has been cast, ladies and gentlemen, a vicious throw that seems to have left an elderly gentleman stunned…no, he’s okay, and he fires his pod from beneath that plaid blanket of uncertain yet blinding hue…pods are flying from the Huffington balcony. It’s all the Earl can do to hold his position…he’s re-enacting his encounter with the killer gastropod…this is incredible, for the first time anywhere The Earl is gastropod casting…A Sea Snail, an Abalone, these creatures with bipectinated gills, so dangerous when roused! This reporter is fleeing the scene, well, pausing on the orange carpet, a rumor of Maureen Dowd my only hesitation, a great pink abalone is casting pods of its own. Somebody, call the cops.

Robert Ferrigno will be at the Seattle Mystery Bookstore today at noon. The entire staff of the NYT book review will be there as well as Stan the Money Man. Robert will read from Prayers for  the Assassin.  Hope to see all of you  there.

Jenny Davidson at Light Reading gave a mention to Hard Case Crime’s duet from Ken Bruen and Jason Starr called Bust to be released in May. I haven’t read Jason but I have read Ken Bruen, and love his style.

As you know my blog is for sale. Blog broker Stan the Money Man of Moshulu Parkway whose office is leased by a Panamanian Corporation under Bermuda Law, is softening up some Wall Street firms to represent us. Stan took the subway from Penn Station ( it’s faster than a limo) down to a coffee shop near Hanover Square ( history buffs: that’s where the old Third Avenue Elevated terminated.) Anyway, Stan is a licensed blog broker. His strategy is to pounce on Rupert Murdoch when RM stops by for coffee. We’re thinking ten million for the blog. if you have ten million and want to buy the blog you can reach Stan in care of Lou or Tony on Moshulu Parkway in the Bronx, Just don’t street park, okay?

Thanks to James Marcus at the House of Mirth for alerting me to the New York magazine cover story about bloggers. Few periodicals have their finger on the pulse of current culture like New York Magazine; when no pulse is detected New York Magazine becomes the ER doctor reviving the zeitgeist with thunder bolts of wit. Here’s the bottom line on blogging: sell now, little blogger, before your property drops like a condo in a mudslide. Some guy named Jason collected 25 million bucks for his collection of blogs; it’s an American success story, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wish you were Arianna Huffington.

Tips on selling your blog: be sure it has several thousand incoming links. Time Warner or whomever may want to kick the tires before purchasing your blog outright; have close relatives visit your page over and over. There is an A list, a B list, and a C list. Power lines and charts are a plus; have many charts made showing your progress over time. Go back weeks if you have to; chart everything, though. No chart, no sale.

Calculate the value of your blog: don’t assign a dollar value, leave that to the media experts. Be clear about why you started your blog, what demographic you’re gunning for. Use words like exponential, but wait until the financial analysts have examined your charts. If the chart looks bad, turn it upside down; those arrows need to be pointed up. Okay go ahead and say exponential before boxes of donuts arrive. Donuts are deal killers. Donuts flatten yield curves, subvert monetary policy, dull the senses; if your blog is about donuts rub your stomach in a circular motion and say yum. That’s a sale, my friend.

Literary agent Donald Maass ran his breakout novel seminar in San Jose Costa Rica, no San Jose California this weekend. My sister attended, telephoning this reporter before the Saturday night mixer.

San Jose is in the heart of Silicon Valley and I wondered what genre dominated among the attendees. So close to Google HQ in Mountain View, so close to the Roman garrison at Monterey, yet distant from Hollywoodland, what are forty writers in the Valley likely to work on? When I attended Don’s class in Seattle it broke down this way: 21 fantasy, 12 traditional romance, 8 traditional sci-fi, 3 romantic sci-fi, 3 historical fantasy, and one noir thriller.

Terri has written a mystery that centers around a quilt show. She’s a quilter, so that makes sense. Her classmates are probably venture capital specialists or software engineers so I’d speculate the manuscripts breakdown like this: 1 quilter mystery, 4 venture capital thrillers, 11 vc romantic suspense, 7 fantasy Google Rules the World, 9 paranormal venture capital thrillers, 2 books about traffic, and 1 burning Angles, ruddy cheeks adventure about the sacking of York.

Donald Maass is an excellent teacher and the class is worthwhile if you fit one of the following categories: a working novelist, close to publication, or have two or three training novels under your belt. His focus is on writing novels that will perform well in the marketplace; if you’re at the beginner level, try reading The Career Novelist or the Breakout Novel Workbook before investing in the class.

They are greedy, these books that are not books, manuscripts, publishing’s dirty little secret, the incubation of the finished product, the handheld novel bound between two covers because as long as humans have thumbs they might as well use them. Novels in manuscript form are unruly, wilfull, hard to wrangle; individuals who shall remain nameless enjoy making notes on manuscripts, or putting blue ink through harmless paragraphs. Strangled by rubber bands they are sent on long journeys in shoe boxes.

Now we have the e-manuscript. With the press of a button hundreds of pages slip through the ozone. That’s not progress, not really. There are rubber bands lying around with little or nothing to do; they talk among themselves, rejoicing when emails go astray. They know their days are numbered. As for shoe boxes, well, those so inclined can always put their shoes in shoe boxes, although I don’t know why anyone would. Shoes are passive. They just sit and wait.

No more trips to the “lucky” post office, the one where manuscripts are flung into large sacks organized by zip code. Sure the rubber band might break or the buff colored envelope might get scrunched. These are acceptable risks. Sending your novel via email is more fraught with peril, especially when Mrs. Enid Braithewaite of the Outer Hebrides deletes you as spam. Don’t trust this new technology. Enid doesn’t. The American Rubber Band Society doesn’t either.

If you’re a fan of Richard Price you’re probably excited to the see the trailers for Freedomland on the tube. The novel is one of my favorite books even though the narrative has more stops than the number seven train from the Bronx, Price manages to whip the reader through long after the ending was a foregone conclusion. He’s written the screenplay which bodes well for the movie. Or does it?
Two of the more difficult topics a writer can tackle are race and child abuse. Freedomland has elements that make your hair stand on end as Lorenzo Council, a black detective, sets out to locate a missing child, taken by force during a car jacking. Because the action is set in the projects of North Jersey the assumption is the doers are bangers from the hood. The set up becomes a story about the world Lorenzo inhabits, a state within a state, the world of the Armstrong projects, black, violent and dismal.

My reaction to Freedomland was complicated by remembering ads for the old theme park, ads as cheezy and weird in memory as Murray the K claiming to be the Fifth Beatle, as disjointed as an afternoon in the Shea Stadium parking lot with a friend who sold hot dogs. The wind never stops off Jamaica Bay and we dodged flying objects dealing out the franks, which is how I felt reading the book. If that make any sense to you  go to the head of the line.

Amazing blogger tricks: they read, they write, they may be on the same subway car or freeway that you’re on right now. Who are they? Bloggers, my friends. They confound everyone with their ability to assimilate into society at large. “They look like us,” Professor Dagesham Moriarity of Think Tanks Ltd. “Bloggers may one day learn to reproduce.”

Blogger offspring will know how to add links to their sites before they develop other skills such as speech. “They may never speak as their tongues will become vestigial. These future children will never taste a lollipop.” Others are not so sure. “Professor Moriarity is a crackpot,” ventured Stanford Professor Emeritus Evita Dontcryforme. “Although bloggers are wired differently they are not a separate species.”

Tests performed on volunteer subjects revealed that bloggers can succeed at other endeavors although it is not clear how this is accomplished. Professor Moriarity believes that one day in the not very distant future a blogger will go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. “Humans did it in the 1930s and 1940s. Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel may be a rite of passage for all upright creatures.”

In a controlled experiment a blogger and a human were placed next to a water feature in the professor’s back yard. The human slid down the side of the four foot cataract while the blogger dozed. “Curiosity is the key,” Professor Moriarity said. “Large mammals often doze near waterfalls.”

“This is huge for Madison Avenue,” he said. “What if bloggers start buying things?” His work is being funded by private donations; going over Niagara Falls in a barrel violates several city, county, and provincial ordnances. Oliver Castinstone reporting.