In olden times they had simpler methods. They tied one end of a rope to each of your limbs and then attached the other end to four individual horses pointed in different directions and made the horses giddyup all at once. Today they make you stand in front of a gathering of potential readers and explain why the hell you asked them to show up at their local independent bookshop instead of staying home to watch Jeopardy.

I’ve noticed I am not the only reader who watches Jeopardy.

I have done three readings now (not counting the short spiel I gave during a ‘speed dating’ event to eleven tables filled with mystery lovers during the Bouchercon in Indianapolis). To my great regret and perhaps that of most of those who attended, I don’t think I am improving enough with each ordeal. I have difficulty modulating my voice. My tongue and teeth have arguments over using the same space at the same time. My eyes suddenly lose focus on a line of words. I am self-conscious to a degree that is debilitating.

But this must be done. Many hundreds of new fiction titles have been published this season, and many dozens of those are mysteries. As a first novelist, it is my responsibility to get out there and let people know what I have done. If a writer doesn’t believe it’s worth the trouble, then they are probably right—at least about what they have written.

Of course I would like what I have written to speak for itself. But that voice will be difficult to hear beneath a pile of remainders.

I must remind myself of all the readings I went to through the years and why I went. There is some ineluctable fascination to finally meeting someone with whom you have already spent many hours in bed.

But then, I am a first novelist and very few of those who attend my reading have taken my work to bed with them yet. Perhaps it’s just the prospect then?

Nah.

In fact it is the brave little bookshops that have put my book on their shelves.

River Run Bookshop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the scene of my latest effort at reading, is a fine example. They choose what they buy title by title and not by the season load. They take care. You know right off that you have entered a great bookshop by what they have featured face-out for your eyes to feast upon. The shelves are designed for books, and not just merchandise. The lighting encourages browsing and dipping into the random page. And River Run is in the very middle of a uniquely beautiful city which has made a successful effort to be both livable and cosmopolitan.

My first reading was at the wonderful and justly praised Brookline Booksmith. This shop has survived the onslaught of the biggest of chain stores, the bloodletting of on-line discounting, the burden of high rents and has thrived by pure effort making the best intentions a reality. I lived in Brookline for twenty-five years and went into the Booksmith at least once a week, even though I had my own bookshop, just to see what they were up to and often came away with a book we did not have on our own shelves that I had to read.

Jamaicaway books, in Jamaica Plain, Boston, where my second reading took place, is a neighborhood store fashioned by the owner with the kind of care and attention few businesses ever bother with. Somehow, it still finds the resources to appeal to its community, and the love for books is obvious.

This Sunday I will be reading in New York at the Mysterious Bookshop. This is an honor. The Mysterious Bookshop is iconic not only in its specialty among mystery readers but among fellow booksellers as well. I have not been there since they moved some years ago and look forward to seeing what Mr. Penzler has done—the old shop was a great jewel.

And of course there is that wonderful bunch of booklovers who attend the readings those shops conduct so that writers can find their audience. These are people who are entertained by words and imagination, appreciate the need to keep the book alive, and perhaps even enjoy the old fashioned gnashing of a good horsepull. As I have delivered my short preambles before reading from HOUND each time, I have seen the smile of recognition on the faces of strangers.

I must work harder at my presentation. I want those folks to give HOUND a chance amidst all the glitter, noise and promotion for the next big thing. Besides, I’ve had all the pleasure of writing it. I should have to pay my dues.

Speechify. It might surprise some of you that this is an actual word, well defined in the Webster’s Third International, Random House, and American Heritage dictionaries. It goes back to at least the early 1700’s and has been commonly used in America ever since. My North Carolina mountains grandfather used it more than once in my presence. And looking up this word to confirm its legitimacy is just the kind of thing I will do a hundred times between now and that fateful evening when I have to give a speech of sorts to a small gathering (hopefully not too small, but then again, not too large either) of friends and the merely curious who appear at my first ‘reading’ for the novel HOUND. Looking up words and doing ‘research’ has always been a good ploy to avoid harder work–like practicing aloud before a mirror.

The first and last time I ever gave a speech was as best-man at a friends wedding about 20 years ago. I seldom heard from my friend afterward. This worries me greatly now. The approach of this occasion freezes my innards. (‘Innards’ is also a legitimate and underused word which was frequented by my grandfather).

It must be done. People expect something for their money I suppose. Or is it just a matter of manners. If I am so willing to foist my efforts onto the public stage, I should be willing to hoist it into the light—fluorescent or otherwise. It is my own petard after all. In any case, it is the path I have chosen. I suppose J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon gave readings when they first began. Sorry I wasn’t there.

I expect that the audience will be kind. People are generally kind. I have been known to say rude things myself, but never at someone else’s reading. During the first ten years at Avenue Victor Hugo we used to have readings regularly—mostly poetry—but occasionally a novel or memoir, and once a travel log. I vaguely remember the travelog. That person had gone to India I believe. About fifteen people came to the store that night. We sold one book. I was mortified for the author more than myself. But then, I suppose the fact that I don’t remember clearly where they went might be telling.

My knees rattle. I suppose it could be a loss of cartilage. I have been a big walker all my life. But this worries me. I have a weak voice. My father, who trained his voice for the stage, used to try to get me to speak with the full baritone he could muster at will—especially when I had done something wrong. But I have a shallow tenor. And when I attempt dramatic phrasing, my voice comes off its track and words collide in the air.

I have spent much time searching the text of my novel for the right thing to read. After due consideration I have chosen the first chapter. This could have been predicted by an average child. It’s best to start things at the beginning, don’t you know. But I have decided to add a small preface to that. A bit of speechifying. Mostly because I have been asked more than a few times whether Henry Sullivan, the hero of the HOUND, is me in some small disguise. He is not…much.

In addition, I am surprised to find that even people who have known me for twenty or thirty years are unaware of some basic facts about me. Like how mortifying it is for me to stand in front of an audience, however small. I suppose my too frequent expression of opinion in public has led them to assume otherwise. It is true, I am easily lifted by the flow of emotion to say what is better left unsaid. And then, of course, there is that front counter at the old Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop. It was raised up about a foot above floor level so that the clerk behind the counter—most often myself—could sit and look incoming customers in the eye. This dais left a subconscious impression I am told.

Writing has always been my preferred means of expression. I like the choosing of words and the freedom to edit my own thoughts. My tongue is a poor editor. It stumbles. It mumbles. And it frequently uses words poorly attached to my intended meaning. So I have written my speech to give my tongue guidance and chosen the portion of my novel which might spark some interest in an audience willing to read the rest of the book, and now I must stand in front of the mirror and deliver. Why do I always look back at myself so skeptically?

I can’t go on writing about speechifying. Perhaps there is something else I’ve been meaning to address here as well. Or I can look up ‘necrosis.’ I saw that word listed there beneath ‘mortify’ and I am not yet sure exactly what unpleasant thing it means.

HOUND is at the printer and soon to be shipped! Anyone interested may ask their local bookshop to order copies for them, or you may order it directly from Avenue Victor Hugo Books: $24 (Massachusetts residents must pay 6.25% tax–$1.50) plus $3.25 media mail shipping–no extra shipping charge on additional copies. I will happily sign each copy ordered directly unless forbidden to.  Order from: books@avenuevictorhugobooks.com. Checks or Paypal accepted.

I have been reading mystery and crime fiction since I was twelve and first discovered Mr. Holmes. The contest of good and evil was a fine caution for a teenage mind bent on breaking the rules. I did study the genre briefly in the 1970’s for the purpose of developing a mystery magazine to complement the science fiction monster that was swallowing me then, but that came to naught and in general I do not like to spend my time watching the sausage get made. I just happily eat it. When I made the decision to write a fiction about the death of the book some years ago, I quickly adopted the mystery genre as the right vehicle for the getaway. It was then that I decided to catch up with what had been going on since Travis McGee took permanent retirement.

In short, very few detectives drive Oldsmobiles these days (or an old Rolls-Royce converted to a pick-up truck for that matter). The psychology of the criminal act has taken the place of any moral judgment for a large percentage of mysteries. Social concerns often outweigh catching much less punishing the criminal. Criminality in and of itself is frequently in question, no matter the ultimate nature of the crime. The ‘mystery’ is more often an exposition of a crime and its aftermath.

Something that I have commonly found missing from the mystery genre today is cause, as in ’cause and effect.’ It seems that cause requires judgment and being judgmental has also fallen from favor along with the idea that there is such a thing as ‘crime’ as opposed to (I suppose) bad acts and good acts. And thus, punishment is now relative as well.

There are deep rifts in the mystery genre which have given rise to very specific geologic features. There is the ‘cozy’ and the ‘hard-boiled,’ of course, as well as the ‘noir,’ and the ‘police procedural’–all well established high ground for the writing practitioner and the faithful reader. There is even a sub-sub-genre for the ‘biblio-mystery’ which a few critics have already used to label HOUND. What is unfortunate to my mind is that there is relatively little cross reference. Outside of a few excellent and omnivorous blogs on the subject, few mystery readers play across the rifts.

More interestingly, as male readership has precipitously declined in recent years and female readership in general has declined less, there is a sort of ‘feminization’ of the mystery genre, very much kin to the dominance of fantasy over science fiction in that literary province. Women were always the majority of readers in the mystery field–as they have always been the majority of readers of fiction in general. But there was, from the time of Conan Doyle, a strong male presence. When I was growing up, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane, and Ian Fleming, were offering excellent fare in the wake of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. These and a dozen more gave any male reader the kind of reference he could believe in as he sank beneath the ether of a good story.

This is less the case today for several reasons. One is politics. Another is Freud. But an even more practical reason lies in the mechanics of a reading culture. Boys and girls are no longer taught to read, much less to read fiction. And boys in particular have adopted the easy outlet of a newly digitalized artifice to replace books. Video games are popular with girls, but they are the rage with boys. I have raised a few of these creatures myself and have watched the battle in progress. I won’t truly know who won the war of course until it’s too late, but I have at least maintained the high ground and avoided the rifts as the father figure (I think).

Like a single parent home where the mother is stuck with the kids, the lack of male presence in the mystery novel has evolved into a restructuring of the genre which is stark. Emotional awareness dominates over detection. Female ‘issues’ often outweigh evidence. Strangely, the act of murder has taken on a ‘Peckinpah’ type surrealism. Victims are often female and suffer the most horrible deaths at the hands of men. (The simple fact that most murders are committed by men upon men seems irrelevant). The thriller is now the last dry land for male readers. Men do read some procedurals, but unhappily skipping to avoid the soft fleshy parts.

I have spent hours standing in bookshops close to the mystery section in the past few years–never mind the nearly 30 years previous to that when I sold them daily to the public myself. I cannot remember seeing a man read something as old fashioned as Agatha Christie, but nor do I see men picking up the Julia Spencer Fleming books which are so well written and contain a very believable male protagonist. An excellent mystery writer like Martha Grimes is sadly ignored by male readers in favor of Dennis Lehane, but this is not a good trade. Lehane is an excellent writer with a strong male voice, but he seems caught in a world of twisted psychological excuse rather than moral imperative. I’m afraid he will wear out his welcome sooner than later.

A woman once came into my shop and told me she had just seen a revival of Agatha Christie’s The Mouse Trap and thought it was great fun–but did I know of any other staged mysteries as good as that. I said I knew one that was better–Ayn Rand’s Night of January 16th. The woman’s face fell and then contorted in a way I cannot take time to describe. She finally said, “You’re not a Republican, are you?” I did not inform her that Rand was not a Republican either. It was pointless. There was a world of literature she would not read no matter how well written, because of political as opposed to aesthetic prejudice.

By far the great majority of crime writers and readers are lefties. This is fine. As a libertarian I am no less offended by that political persuasion than I am by righties like Spillane or Buckley. I read for story. I read to be amused. I read to learn. I read to escape. I don’t read to pass judgment on an author’s religion or political persuasion (so often now the same matter). If the story holds the water, I don’t assume I’ll be poisoned. Most authors have better manners than that.

There is a whole twin planet of literary work which is invisible from the earth because it revolves around the sun at the exact opposite moment in space–at least that is the way it is for most readers. Do not try to get them to read a C.S. Lewis or a Dorothy Sayers if they read Hammett and Chandler. Forget Elizabeth Peters if they read Mankell.

P.D. James is accused of being conservative. I did not know this until I was in a Border’s one day and asked a clerk who pretended to be knowledgeable in the field about new mystery titles. She pointed at several books which were face out, skipping the latest James offering. I asked about it. She waved her hand at the cover. “She’s a conservative. You don’t want to read her.” I almost wanted to buy it just to make a statement–but such foolishness is beyond my budget. I generally don’t read James because she can be a bit mean to her characters. Meanness counts for more with me than politics when I’m under the ether.

But I do wonder why mysteries are so popular with readers of a left-leaning persuasion. Aside from the vicarious experience of danger (as with a roller coaster), is the interest a subconscious desire for order in a disorderly world? Is it a relieving of primal fears? A desire for justice? Might it be a humanist search for the terms and limits of right and wrong? I would like to think this last is at least part of the case. It is certainly a key motivation behind my own effort.

Dad no longer teaches us to drive the Olds. One person in ten can handle a stick shift. They do offer driver’s ed at most schools now, but no concept of what is happening as the gears change. Read the signs. Parallel park. You’re through. You are the operator of thousands of pounds of metal hurtling through space, but you have no idea how it works. I wonder if this does not leave its mark on the human brain. To be cognizant of the fact that you have no idea what you are doing, but you are doing it very fast must have an effect on the conscience. We all know someone who lost control. We might even know someone who was killed. In a social milieu where responsibility for our actions is so readily lifted from our shoulders, perhaps the cause and effect of the mystery story offers some grounding.

And then, maybe it is just that the mystery genre–like the western genre of old–is the last refuge of scoundrels. Women always seem to love a scoundrel.

BookExpo America (BEA) is the spring fashion show of the printed word. My publisher, Small Beer Press, has cunningly contrived to have my novel Hound available at this annual convention in the bound proofs (‘advance reading copy’ also known as ARCs) to gain some needed attention before the actual publication date in September.

You fall in love. You get married. Your first child is born. Your second child. Your third. These are the common blessings and the greatest thrills of life. I am not saying that this is in that order of magnitude, but still better than your first kiss, first home, or first car. On a par with your first crop perhaps, after a season of struggle and all that comes before that to make the struggle possible.

I have seen the bound ‘advance uncorrected proof’ of the Hound.

On Saturday morning, after a fitful sleep, I was awake at 4:30 and out the door at 5:30 to catch a 6:30 bus from Boston to New York. Buses have changed little in the last forty years, so I needn’t describe the experience. But it was all of that, though made a bit more acceptable by the hundred times I have survived nearly the same journey. Familiar journeys conjure fine ghosts and generally reclaim more good than bad from the past. The difference now is that I am no longer the flexible and resilient youth of my youth. I ache easily.

Around 10:30 I was on 42nd Street and asking for directions to the Javits Center. I’ve never been there before. It’s not part of the New York I grew up with. I was quickly directed down Eighth Avenue.

My shoulder bag is weighted by my worries–I might need this–and that–and my camera too–What if I spill coffee on my pants–and an extra shirt–etc. Much etc. And a 33.8 oz product of Poland Spring. And some fig newtons. You know the deal. By the time I saw the great and inspiring edifice of the old General Post Office building, I knew I was wrongly sent. One shoulder is sore and I switch my bag strap to the other. Perhaps my first informant had mistaken the Javits Center for Madison Square Garden? A man with a bagel and coffee loitering in a shadow directed me over to Eleventh Street. I found a good coffee shop first and got my own bagel. Fortified, I was in the door of the Javits center by 11:30.

Four city blocks of what was once Hell’s Kitchen have been transformed into a Zeppelin hanger built by a committee. I see room for several professional sports to be played here at great savings and convenience to fans who must now go to the Meadowlands. Multiple soccer matches could be kept to the lower floors where they would not be a bother. Exaggeration is not necessary.

A kind person at the ‘correct’ check-in counter several hundred yards from my point of entry (check-in is mysteriously divided into numerous multi-adjectival tribes) directs me up an escalator and to my left. I should have naturally assumed she meant my other left, but I was tired.

After a circuit of the floor beneath an understandable confusion of banners and signs I ask another likely guide. They direct me out the door I entered to a well placed information booth created just for fools. There are two informants there. I am told I am told where to go. I soon find I find the aisle occupied by Consortium and I consort.

My publishers, Small Beer, are there–both halves, lesser and better–that is Gavin and Kelly. I am suddenly excited and re-energized. Elated. Ecstatic. Other e-words. There it is, face out on a shelf! Lettered in black on white in wraps, just as uncorrected galleys often are, it seems so very small. A premature baby of sorts. But then I thankfully think not to say this because it does not truly fall into that league and might lead someone sensitive to the subject to think I had lost all proportion again, as I can do.

Oh, I must be polite. I will be.

By twelve thirty I am sensate again. I worry about what I might have said in the interim, but bury this like a bone among a flowering of dreads. What was the name of that person whose hand I just shook? Shouldn’t I know this woman? They seem to know me.

They all have name tags, but I cannot read them without changing my glasses. At least then I have a chance of recognizing anyone within a few feet. The others will hopefully not mind my staring at their chests.

I am reassured by Jed, my editor and guide, that all is well. I think him fortunate for not knowing the truth. A delusion of importance is called for, but I have not thought to bring any whiskey.

I have time before my moment to wander the floor. This is a great mistake for an author wanting of self-importance. Of the tens of thousands of newly minted books on display among many hundreds of publishers’ booths, at least ten and a quarter million are mysteries. There is a bumper crop of crime and a surfeit of sleuths. Where did I get the idea that writing a mystery was an idea worth pursuing? More precisely, why is my effort better than any of these others? Any others? How did Gavin and Kelly delude themselves into this project?

I restrict my browse to titles offered by other independent publishers. That narrows my competition by half–over five million at least. Oh joy.

I wander. I stop at the sight of beauty. An ornithologist and artist engages me in the peculiar challenges of bird books. I have the brains for that and relax to a tale of avian woe.

My moment is 3:30 to 4:30–that time assigned for me to sit and sign proof copies for anyone interested at a table which appears to stretch from one end of Manhattan to the other. Bibliomaniacs must stand in lines on this broad field of battle like Wallace’s men, with bags and not bagpipes, pens raised mightier than swords, and choose which author to bother with. What perplexes me–no–worries me, for I am wont to worry about almost anything–is that after I sign several–a few–maybe only two, pre-assigned copies to a non-profit donation–that I must work out my hour sitting at my segment of the endless table and look on longingly at the lines before other authors. Onomatopoeia! I’ll just say I have to go to the toilet–and stay there.

I look for familiar faces to occupy the last hour before my trial. Sadly, the great David Godine has gone for the day. I thankfully use up time admiring his beautifully printed efforts. I thread my way around booths clogged with fans wanting the signatures of favorites authors. Several of my own favorite small presses have closed since I was last at one of these functions, when I played the role of ‘book buyer,’ for my now lost bookshop. The struggling independent outfits which survive are all staffed here with fresh young faces.

I manage to find half a dozen more mysteries published by first-time authors and read a few pages each…How foolish I’ve been. I spent three years writing the first drafts of the three Hound novels, more than another year re-writing the first two, and a good part of another re-writing this first one in the series. I could have spent that time adding another few hundred thousand words to my endless science fiction epic. At least that way I would not have made a public spectacle of myself.

My time has come. Jed escorts me to the gibbet. But there is a mistake. People are waiting. Perhaps they are late arrivals for the author who previously occupied that assigned spot.

Through some magic I am still not aware of, I had been sought out a few weeks before by a writer for Publisher’s Weekly and interviewed. A short article has appeared in the PW Show Daily which is distributed widely throughout the BEA. This seems to have drawn some attention.

Assuming that the fire of interest in a new author may be ‘kindled’ (if I may still use that term) by talking about controversial subjects, I proffered the PW reporter my not so secret but well ignored view that the ‘book’ is being murdered right in front of our eyes and this is as great a cultural loss as it was previously a gain to humanity for some five hundred years. It was my motivation in choosing to write mysteries set within the world of books in the first place–making allegory out of human death. I had offered that to the reporter as well as about an hours’ worth of personal chatter of no possible interest to anyone but a few relatives.

The first person in line is smiling. My spirits rise again like larks in Candleford. Something like that. Another person steps forward. And another. Heads bob sideways to get a look at me from the line. I’m happy to be sitting down on my ego. In short order, I manage to sign all the copies brought for the purpose. I am excited, enthused, euphoric, exultant, and must fall back on d-words to measure the delight and delirium of the moment.

An author’s first signing is certainly as uncertain as a first sexual encounter. Pleasure is not a useful descriptive. You don’t really know these people and they don’t know you. You have taken a risk. They are taking a chance. Your motivation is, at least in part, venal. Theirs is hopefully carnal. No matter your love for the subject, the physical transmutation of emotion is sweaty and sometimes painful. Afterwards I wanted a cigarette but this much is now against the law in New York.

The denouement of the day was better than the inception. A beer or two at the Bean Books book party and conversation with some old friends. Afterward a good dinner where shrimps were sacrificed for the good. More conversation. Advice on the best coffee in New York, the best pizza, and such. And then, after dark, another party, this one appropriately for a book called Geektastic!, edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci, and held at a nightclub cum bowling alley. Sweet. I’ve lived in New England for so long I have forgotten how to hold a bowling ball big enough to have holes in it. Still, I did my duty to the pins.

The weather in New York was fine and bright to the end. In that the bus trip back was after midnight, I shan’t chalk this negative up against the previous day. It was a good beginning and far better than I had hoped for.

The game is afoot!

Now, lets see.

I’m trying to write a series of novels to address some concerns I have, and do so in an entertaining fashion while sharing some intimate awareness of why I think the concerns are very real. Now you’d like me to address some of those key issues outside of those novels.

Hemm.

The quick answer is no.

The almost as quick answer is to tell you to read the Crepuscule, posted elsewhere on this site, and ask you to apply some of your own brain sweat to the issues.

But for the sake of a more catholic awareness, let me draw your attention to a few overarching aspects of these issues that I will probably never get around to specifically writing a book about.

The spirit of a free market in an open society is that capital can be gathered and brought to bear for a purpose determined by a citizen with equal rights under the law to those of every other citizen. There is no guarantee of outcome, only of opportunity.

When taxes are levied unequally, or rights of action are apportioned unequally, or values are determined politically to favor some citizens over others, the free market no longer exists–or exists to a lesser degree on balance. This is as it has been for most of history. The freest markets in many areas are black markets because they exist wholly apart from government.

The publishing industry, and all its associated trades from writing to paper making, broke free, for the most part, from government sanction and restriction in this country with our Revolution. The freedoms of this country subsequently influenced liberty in Europe–primarily England. Competition between America and Europe created a dynamic economy for all. The wealth of nations has increased exponentially as a result. There have been many attempts to restrict that market over the last two hundred years. Most failed along with the totalitarian regimes which promulgated the restrictions. But not until recently, has this resulted in a reduction in the overall freedoms of writers and publishers.

A perfect microcosm of this, yet on a far greater scale than the book business, is the auto industry. The Ford Motor Company, making all the mistakes every over-large corporation makes due to wastefulness, inertia and bureaucracy, but blessed with relatively rational management, attempted to correct some of its more glaring faults by mortgaging a great part of its property to gather the funds to retool and reform its product line to met the competition as well as the demands of the foreseeable future. As a result, when the financial markets collapsed due to the sulfuric admixture of government meddling and private speculation, Ford was in a stronger position than most other auto companies and did not have to beg the government for special dispensations…

In an increasingly unfree economy, this was a huge mistake. Ford is now saddled with an enormous debt and must compete in a market which is being guided by politicians to enhance their own power, and against companies who are funded by the very government which is dictating the terms.

Even so, I would bet on Ford. The auto manufacturer who tries to survive by pleasing bureaucrats will only fail again and again because their priorities are artificial.

By any comparison the book industry is very small–5% or less of the gross value of telephones, or farming, or auto manufacturing alone. Yet it is being influenced by the same tax laws which were designed for the benefit of those larger industries. The modern corporation was designed by government to take advantage of international capital markets and the liability laws of key nations–not to give advantage to a little business like Barnes and Nobel. So I do not blame Barnes and Noble for taking advantage of those same laws and regulations to survive in a regulated market. When edicts on text books are issued from Washington, there is no reason why a larger company should not take advantage of its capital position to lobby for its texts over those of another. And so it goes.

The argument I make–that I am taking pains to make in the Hound–is that it’s up to the individual to alter the equation. I am not writing a polemic, but a vessel of entertainment set on a sea of facts that I believe have a much larger influence on our lives and future than is readily seen.

I am not attacking large publishers for using the advantages that government edicts and permissions have given them. That involves their responsibility to shareholders who don’t care how the money is made so long as the dividend is in the mail. That is the most essential flaw of modern corporate law. Lack of responsibility. And that derives from giving the corporation greater rights under the law than the individual.

It’s up to individuals to drive the extra mile to find a local restaurant instead of the chain eatery. It’s up to each reader to chose how they will spend their money and time. And in the mean time, if they vote to give the government more power over what they read, then that’s exactly what they will get.

Lastly, the internet is not a completely free market, but it is probably as free now as it will ever be, especially given current trends. As the government regulates and taxes the internet into submission for the ‘public good,’ the content of the internet will change. It will happen in your lifetime, and dramatically so.

And there is all of that to consider even before one addresses the unintended consequences of making information, and thus knowledge, dependent on electronic sources.

Perhaps as the political powers gain more editorial control over the information you can and cannot receive, the old dusty book will find a new market value. Unfortunately, I suspect that by then the citizenry will have long since sacrificed the First Amendment on the alter of political correctness and books will be used as poor fuel in a cold world.

Talking to myself and trying to get some answers about the Hound.

Why did you write this book?

I had a story in mind about the death of the book after 500 hundred years and what that meant. This medium has changed everything, more than any other since the invention of fire, and the world it created is dependent on the book in ways which have become subtle through the familiarity of everyday use. It seemed most odd to me that the very people who depended on the book the most are least aware of its demise.

What do you mean? More books are published today than ever before.

That’s illusory. Most books today are not the product of individual minds but of machines. They are manuals. Directions. Instruction. Recipes. Tools for education. Lists. Data. This is all material which can be recorded by machines and reported by machines. In the case of novels, we have the predominance of a few authors over the many out of an artificial economic paradigm. This is not a natural supply and demand created by individual choices. It is an artificial demand imposed by a combination of convenience with business and political interests.

Are you suggesting some sort of conspiracy to eliminate the book.

No. I have no belief in conspiracies beyond the back yard or the office. They make fun dark fantasies because they feed into irrational fear, but they make no sense beyond a limited purpose. Besides that, the very people responsible for this tragic turn in history are you and I and everyone who loves books–and I know I’m not a participant in any conspiracy. I’m simply stupid enough to act in my own short-term interest at the expense of my children. I make excuses for what I do, but any close rational examination will reveal a combination of profound ignorance coupled with expediency. It is the way we all live.

In what way are you and I responsible for this phenomena you imagine?

Well, firstly, the phenomenon is not imagined. That is one reason for this book and those that come after it in the series. I wanted to detail the facts beyond refutation or easy dismissal. I did not want to create any bogeymen. These are all real people–or at least as real as I can make them–drawn from characters I have known. Because I have known an awful lot of people in the book business, it was simple to combine various individuals. The real difficulty I encountered was in making the parts fit. So many book people–authors, agents, publishers, booksellers–are idiosyncratic. I think that comes from spending so much time alone with their own thoughts and a book.

OK. So. Lets say it is real. Why am I responsible?

Because you accept the paradigm. You buy what you are told you should buy. It’s that simple.

But I read quite widely.

Not as widely as you think. As a book reviewer, for instance, you must keep up with the latest thing. But why? There are a hundred excellent books published last year that you never got to. Why read the latest tripe just because its new?

I’m paid to do that.

So you hold THEM responsible. You are just following orders. You have to earn a living. I know about that. But, couldn’t you review other books as well? Think of all the wonderful work that goes unnoticed every year.

I’m here talking with you. Isn’t that enough?

No. It’s good. But not good enough. I take it from your questions that you think my premise is fatuous. In fact, I have refrained from attempting any sort of overly dramatic or polemical creation here. I write essays for that kind of stuff to get it out of my system and put them on my web site. What I am attempting to write in this novel is a recreation of what is actually happening to my beloved world of books, framed within a specific setting using characters you might find interesting. The mystery aspect–the murder aspect–offers an opportunity for dramatic effect conventional enough, because of the popularity of the genre, to be acceptable. Very few of us have been around an actual murder. In fact, until this first time, my protagonist Henry Sullivan has not encountered anything like this. But he has seen life and death and he approaches this incident as I imagine I would in his place. The key there is that I have imagined this. I’ve seen death, but my only contact with murder is from books and movies and television. I have in fact seen crime committed and investigated, so I have attempted to approach this as a concerned human being. The back-drop of the death of the book is the context. I hope to make that phenomena very clear over the time span of a few short novels.

But I still feel a little hurt by your accusation that I am somehow involved in the murder of the book.

I hope so. But I hope that you are not so offended that you turn away. I guess I’ll have failed if you do that. But you are responsible just as I am.

What have you done to kill the book?

I sold crap so that I could pay my rent. Any prostitute will tell you they did it just to survive. They never do it for pleasure. But in fact, though selling crap did not give me any pleasure, it afforded me the opportunity to sell the books I love. That was a great pleasure. And this justified the prostitution in my mind for many years. I am guilty of that.

But you probably would not have survived as a bookseller otherwise.

I don’t know. I don’t believe I tried hard enough to find other means. A small store in a less expensive location. More creative ways of advertising. Etc. Very soon after I opened my own bookshop in 1975, I was selling the very stuff I had vehemently attacked only a short time before. For several years I had been selling books from a pushcart in the street and loving it. I didn’t realize just how much until later. I was free then of the demands of high rent and the tax man.

OK. What if the book does die, what is the consequence?

The end of civilization as we know it. A few thousand years into the whole thing, and we will have blown it up as surely as if we had engaged in a nuclear war. Did you ever read On The Beach? As I am often heard to say, Nevil Shute is a great author. He is under appreciated primarily because he was not a literary stylist. He was an engineer and a pilot. And he imagined what would happen in a nuclear war. And what is so creepy about it is how real he made it. No big explosions. No monsters. No blood. Just the passing of human civilization. I have never been able to get it out of my mind.

So. What can we do about this–I mean, assuming you are correct and the book is dying?

Turn off the TV.

The theme of the Hound is the death of the book. It seemed an obvious concept to me at the beginning: to use the lives of individuals faced with this cataclysm as a means of revealing its true magnitude.

I made several false starts before realizing a problem. The simpler the theme, the more difficult the story.

And certainly, writing a book to present such a theme is inherently ironic. But then irony is a part of the human comedy–as it is in the catching of whales, Ahab might have said at the last. More to the point, the game is afoot. The murder is happening now.

I have already mentioned here, in ‘The Hound and its consequences,’ why I chose the mystery genre. However, there is one thing I did not say before on that subject, because I thought it was too provocative to put forward without explanation: I do believe the book is actually being murdered. It’s a subject I will return to at a later moment.

My original hero was a bookseller. Well, of course! Casting myself in the John Wayne role was only natural. Wasn’t it? Maybe not. Besides, John Dunning and more than a few others had already planted in that field.

I turned then to a natural second choice: an author. But books about struggling authors are a bit common. There is too much real angst there to permit an unbiased view of the larger struggle. So I tried making him the great success–the author who had already achieved fame and fortune and was now faced with the consequence of his ambition. This is something I could imagine very easily, but actually knew nothing about. I am one of those angst-ridden strugglers, after all. It didn’t feel right.

What was I to do?

I tried a few variations. I had cast an author’s agent as a villain in my first go at it. Though she lacked the handlebar mustache, she otherwise fit the caricature quite well. Trouble was, the more I tried to make her human, the more I liked her.

So I asked myself, “Self…What would Nevil Shute do?”

This is a wise maneuver for any author but especially for me. Shute, the simple master, is my real hero. My writing is nothing like his in style, I know, but very much in his shadow (in my own mind at least)…And he’d find that very funny. His modesty was overwhelming. I don’t believe he ever had the pretensions of being a stylist or litterateur or casting a shadow except in the shape of his small plane on a landscape far below. He was a great storyteller who went about his task with the joy of an engineer and with the efficacy of a pilot–both of which he was.

You might say, shouldn’t that be the efficacy of an engineer and the joy of a pilot. And I would say yes, that too. But I know the joy Shute took in crafting his stories and cannot escape the knowledge that to Nevil Shute Norway, engineering was a calling. As an author, he crafted his stories like fine little machines–taking neither ‘little’ nor ‘machine’ in any pejorative sense. For a near perfect example, you must read Trustee from the Toolroom.

So I asked my question.

The answer was given in due time, as it always is in a Shute novel. There is no rushing it.

What I wanted was someone who made their living at the fringes of the book world and might examine all its aspects with a degree of independence–like a pilot above the landscape. I did not want to lay blame as much as discover it. I did not want be unfair with such a great wrong and place the onus on anyone other than the guilty. I wanted the kind of forensics which are not found in a one-hour television show.

My wish is that the Hound will entertain sufficiently for me to tell the whole story of Henry Sullivan and his discoveries, but I came to understand that I could not faithfully tell the tale in one short novel in any case. More than that, I was not about to sacrifice the telling of his adventures on an alter of speed, a key weapon in this heinous deed.

There are plenty of suspects in that mob which is destroying the book. I think it is worthwhile to consider them all in their own place.

And if the pace of Henry Sullivan in his sleuthing does not suit the audience, it will be on my own head, not on Nevil Shute. He is my mentor, but not my accomplice. I am on my own in this.

The predicate for this web site is the publication of a novel, Hound, by Small Beer Press in the fall. I would not have attempted to establish this forum just now if the suggestion had not been made repeatedly that I needed to create some greater context for that book. Who was I after all, and why should anyone read yet another mystery by an unknown author?

The world has changed. Whale oil lamps and buggy whips are sold on eBay. The internet has become a billboard for advertisement. Finding an audience for a book before it is published might be done in a new way.

It is worth noting here that the Hound is the result of unintended consequences. I wanted a story about a bookseller that might offer a glimpse of a world I was familiar with, and in terms that might be interesting to others. I wanted to capture certain aspects of this business before they were lost to memory or had simply lost any relevance at all.

I have been aware for most of my life that the profession of bookselling was doomed. The world of business which was made out of the writing, publishing, and selling of books—a world born in the Sixteenth century, nursed in the Seventeenth, raised in the Eighteenth, which then flourished in the Nineteenth and Twentieth–was about to end. I was born too late to romp and wallow in the lush pages of printed literature with complete abandon.

And I did not intend at first to write a mystery. That came from wanting to reveal secrets in ways that might keep the interest of a reader—to entertain someone who might otherwise be doing their laundry or making love or more likely, something in-between.

With the mystery story, Edgar Allen Poe invented an infernal device for written entertainment that is hard to better. Matters of life and death are universal and offer more than just a flavoring to any story. Once introduced, they are difficult or impossible to ignore.

As we work through our days with the petty ordering and completion of the matters of consequence which occupy our lives, the repetition and detail tend to obscure larger and deeper meaning, like the forest lost in the trees. Introducing a matter of life and death puts an edge on things. It sets the time available. It eliminates the trivial. It focuses the mind, as one great wit has said.

Just like everyone else’s, a bookseller’s life is filled by the mundane detail. I was not about to entertain anyone with hair raising accounts of wily purchases, cunning research, and breathtaking sales. I have had all three but not in the same moment. Mr. Poe’s device was a perfect solution for someone like myself, who sees the waning importance of the book as a matter of the greatest concern.

I have been selling books for all of my adult life. The only thing I have been doing for longer than that is writing. When I attempted my first novel I cannot remember, but I completed one when I was fifteen. This effort was born upon a wave of great hubris brought on by the success of a story I wrote for Mrs. Menelli in my ninth grade English class. If she is still with us, I hope she has some idea of the trouble she caused.

I wrote half a dozen novels after that, and then quit in the great frustration of too many rejections and too little time that engulfs most lives. We do what we need to do. The details of my own experience in this regard are not so different from many others I know of.

When the profession of bookselling, which had supported me and my family for so many years, finally failed to meet the demands of my responsibilities, I took a look back at what I had done. It was not all for the worst, no matter the final result. My own mistakes were only part of a larger fabric. And I was happy with too much of my experience to simply throw it over as a total loss.

Well before the end, I knew what was coming and watched its approach like a farmer at the borderland observes the gathering of an enemy horde. Blame for the catastrophe might be placed on poor businessmen like myself, the mass marketing of publishers, the predatory techniques of the chain store, the short term values of authors, the misplaced priorities of the town librarian, the coming of the internet, or on the failure of a school system no longer competent to teach the importance of literature. There are many possible villains in this story.

I wanted to write about this and set about doing it in the best way I knew how. I borrowed Mr. Poe’s device and against that template I place a few of my own experiences which seemed to complement each other. In fact, I have physically observed the essential part of everything in this novel, or else it has actually happened to me. I have never been personally involved in a murder investigation, but I have witnessed the aftermath of death countless times.

It was in the realization that I had been a small part of so many larger stories, and with the thought that they might serve as the parts of some greater understanding of the death of the book, that I began to gain a measure of control over the story I wanted to tell.

For the protagonist, I chose a character younger than myself but not actually young because I know that when I began I was far too stupid to even observe many of the things I wanted now to describe. I decided to make him a book-hound rather than a book seller to avoid the obvious problem of having him stuck behind a sales counter for a large portion of every day. (That peculiar anti-adventure is still beyond my powers to describe with verve to anyone who has not survived it.)

After finishing the first draft of a novel, I realized that I had conjured a rather detailed back story to the characters, and given them a future that mattered to me. And still, I had not come close to touching on all the issues which seemed of importance. Almost immediately I began writing about what had happened to these people shortly before my first imaginings. The Hound is this earlier story.

If this story meets with some reasonable interest, the second novel may hopefully be published next year. In matter of fact, if my audience for Hound proves too small to support the costs of commercial publishing, I will present the second book in the series on this web site as I am now doing with Habits of the Heart. I would not want to frustrate even a few sympathetic readers.

Habits of the Heart, by contrast, is not a mystery at all, but a fictionalized memoir of my own foolishness which seems to have entertained me more to write than it has the editorial powers who have so far taken the time to read it.

Still, Habits of the Heart is the way I write. If it entertains you, perhaps you will want to buy a copy of the Hound when it appears this fall.