If you’re me, it’s your nineteenth. Nineteen! You’d think the daily task of writing would get easier. Nope. Now come on, on this one you had a co-writer. He handed you a complete plot, beats, highs, lows… Okay, that part was much better. But the actual day-by-day, word-by-word writing? Nope. The editing process? What? Changes? Are you mad? Yeah, yeah, okay, actually, the editor’s right when you look at it her way… So you make the changes.
Then you’re done, the publisher takes over, and there’s very little until you start waiting for the reviews. Arrggh.
But the reviews are good, or better than good, and you begin to relax, and then the LA Times, talking about the fight scenes, invokes Chow Yun Fat! Wheeee!
And then the launch. Worry, worry, worry. Will people come? Will the books come? Will the bookseller (P&T Knitwear) come? Are there enough books (for all those people who might not come)? Is the place (The Granddaddy Cafe) too small (for all those people who…)? Will the rain stop?
And then.
It looked kinda like this:
That’s John Shen Yen Nee (my writing partner), me, Master Paul Koh (our kung fu consultant), and Kristen Rosenfeld, Master Koh’s assistant.
Thank you everyone! For working on the book, for being there for me and John while we worked on the book, for coming, for lion dancing — it takes a village and this is a mighty one!
You can buy THE MURDER OF MR. MA at your local indie, at that big giant online store, or here.
I’ll be leading a two-week fiction writing workshop from the tail end of June into early July at Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy. I’ve been doing this for many years. Assisi is beautiful, the hotel is beautiful, and you’ll hang around with writers and artists making beautiful work.
We’ll get you started, or keep you going, unknot the mess and straighten things out. You’ll critique and be critiqued by others in the workshop and, not entirely incidentally, eat wonderful food. You’ll sit on the terrace and watch the sun go down.
Also: There’s no free lunch, but this is a free Substack.
Some of you know this, some of you don’t — is that not true of just about everything? — but every year I take some of the gabazillions of photos I’ve shot over the year and make calendars for your gift-giving and schedule-keeping pleasure. This year I’ve put together five. They retail for $18.00. All profits go to charity; this year’s choice is the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
Click on the calendar’s name — not the photo — and there you are. Buy one for every room in the house, why not? It’s gonna be a busy year.
And about the subtitle of this Substack: a lot of writers have both free and paid versions of their Substacks, to try to make a living, not so easy for writers. Mostly those writers are experts on the thing they want you to pay for their thoughts about, and often it’s a good idea. In fact I subscribe to a couple of those. But me, I’m not an expert on anything. I’m just talking here. I’m honored enough you want to read what I have to say. No way am I going to charge you for it. SJ’s Substack, free as a boid.
To answer that last one first, it’s orange because I found where the colors are. Be warned I’m likely to keep changing colors until I hit on the right one. Or as my mood takes me. Or maybe I’ll just go back to white, or straight to black…
What I’m doing is, sending out a newsletter to subscribers, plus posting it on my website and my social media. Broad-spectrum newsletters, like broad-spectrum antibiotics, have the unfortunate effect of hitting things besides the things you aimed them at. Antibiotics can give you a stomach ache if they hit the wrong bacteria. Newsletters can give readers a headache if they fill up mailboxes of people who didn’t ask for them. Okay, it’s a weak analogy, but you get it because you’re all so smart. Which is why I don’t want to give you a headache. So hit the SUBSCRIBE NOW button and this thing will come into your mailbox more or less once a week.
I’ve posted for a long time on social media. I’ve written, more and less dependably, a blog. For the blog you needed to go to my website. On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Mastodon, my reach is large, but random. Lots of people can see what I have to say, but do they? Social media’s like a river, and each post like a piece of driftwood. You blink, it’s gone already. That wasn’t a great analogy either, was it? What happened to my mental analogy generator, I wonder? Also, I’m watching that little hairball Elon destroy Twitter (stick your X, Elon) and thinking, the s.o.b. is like a landlord closing everyone’s favorite bar. If I could I’d open a new hangout for us all, but I can’t do that (though if anyone has a great post-Twitter site I’d be glad to hear about it). So I thought I’d try this Substack thing. After all, if Barbara Shoup, Peter Blauner, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar do it, it must be a good idea, right? I know there’s a way I can link to those Substacks for you but that’s for next time. It was enough today that I found the colors.
Hey, folks: CRIME HITS HOME, the anthology I edited for Mystery Writers of American, won the Anthony Award at Bouchercon last night! I’d show you a photo of the award but I’m in NY and it’s in San Diego. But here’s a photo of the book, and my fabulous agent, Josh Getzler, holding the award. And if you hit the link above you can buy it. The book, not the award. I’m keeping that. But you will want the book for sure, because it holds 20 super stories! Thanks to all the invited writers who stepped up so beautifully, all the writers who submitted in the contest, all the judges for the contest, and the Anthony voters!
CRIME HITS HOME, the anthology I edited for the MWA, has been nominated for an Anthony Award!
As you crime people know, that’s given at Bouchercon, which this year will be in San Diego over Labor Day weekend. It’s the editor who gets listed on the nomination; but an anthology editor is like a choreographer, and no matter the concept of the piece, it’s the dancers — and the behind the scenes people — who make the thing work.
So, a huge congrats and thank you to the MWA, who asked me to take this on; to Hanover Square Press, who published it; to the well-known writers who agreed to send stories so the contest winners would be sharing a book with established names; to the judges, who read all the contest entries, discussed, debated, and sent me the ones they rated the best, to make the final choice; and of course, to the writers who took a chance and entered the contest.
Everyone now needs to read all the Anthony nominated works in all categories before September, so you’d better get to work.
Yes, folks, the 2023 SJ Rozan Calendars are now available for your date-keeping pleasure. This year we have four: Bella the Cat, Colors, Plants, and New York City. All money raised goes to The Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Get one for your home, one for your office (even if they’re the same), one for a friend, and one to put above your cat’s water dish!
As some of you might know, I’m working on a new project, something different.* It’s not top secret but it’s hard to explain. You’ll hear about it soon enough. But right now, what you need to know is it’s a novel, set in 1924, in London, with a Chinese narrator — and it contains a lot of kung fu. What do I know about kung fu? Zee-ro. But luckily I found, through a friend, a fabulous consultant. Sifu Paul Koh, of Bo Law Kung Fu here in NYC, is working with me. He’s great, and he invited me to his studio to see their Chinese New Year show. These are highlights. Sifu Koh is the one in the red scarf.
*Lydia and Bill fans, don’t panic, I’m not abandoning them. This is in addition, not instead.
Novelist Karen Odden writes seriously thrilling historical thrillers. She also keeps up a monthly newsletter, and this month she features me! Why? Who can say? But check it out, to see her cacti and my cowboy boots. And, you could win a signed copy of FAMILY BUSINESS! Thanks, Karen!
Hey, FAMILY BUSINESS has been nominated for the Sue Grafton Award!
“The Sue Grafton Memorial Award honors the Best Novel in a Series featuring a female protagonist who also has the hallmarks of Sue’s writing and Kinsey’s character: a woman with quirks but also with a sense of herself, with empathy but also with savvy, intelligence, and wit.”
While you’re here check out the rest of the Edgar Nominees.
If you’re me, it’s your nineteenth. Nineteen! You’d think the daily task of writing would get easier. Nope. Now come on, on this one you had a co-writer. He handed you a complete plot, beats, highs, lows… Okay, that part was much better. But the actual day-by-day, word-by-word writing? Nope. The editing process? What? Changes? Are you mad? Yeah, yeah, okay, actually, the editor’s right when you look at it her way… So you make the changes.
