Cruel Music: She's Got Me Covered

Cruel Music: She's Got Me Covered

She's Got Me Covered

Don't judge a book by its cover, the old saying goes. But that's just what the publisher wants you to do. A book's cover should beam out from book shop display table or shelf, luring the potential reader to stop and flip through its pages. "Pick me up and buy me," it should scream.

Fans of the delightful British TV comedy As Time Goes By will recognize the phrase. Middle-aged Lionel had written a dull account of his life as a coffee planter in Kenya, which his young tyro of a publisher illustrated with a big game hunter and busty babe on the cover. Well, nobody would buy it if they realized what it was really about, went the thinking.

Being the proud "mama" of five published novels, I would much rather my covers give the reader a hint of what's actually inside. Poisoned Pen Press has accomplished that goal with elegance and artistry. One reason my covers work is that I'm given the opportunity for a great deal of input. As soon as Interrupted Aria, the first book in the Tito Amato/Baroque Mystery series was in the publishing queue, the production manager put me in touch with artist J.J. Smith-Moore.

I'd envisioned a cover with a lush, old-master painting type of look, rather like the front of one of my all-time favorite reads, The Devil in Music by Kate Ross.

But J.J. was an illustrator who excelled at drawing. She suggested a design incorporating a macabre pen-and-ink drawing in the style of Edward Gorey. Intrigued, I sent her a number of photos, paintings and images that I'd used to help me describe Tito's travels around Venice. I also provided a synopsis of the story, and that's where J.J. got her main inspiration.


In Interrupted Aria, several people die from falling or being pushed from great heights. J.J. drew a man in 18th-century dress falling headfirst, and to work in Venice's fascination with masquerade, she topped the drawing with a horizontal strip depicting a masked woman. I was pleased--she had managed to catch the theme of the book in just a few simple artistic touches. There was only one suggestion I made--I liked the idea of the man's shoe flying off to give more of a sense of movement. J.J agreed and made that change for the final design.

For the next Tito book, J.J. went right to one of my images, and it's an outstanding one. The murderer disguises himself in the costume of the old medieval plague doctor. This is probably the most commented on of the four jacket design she's done for my series. I don't know if it screams, "Pick me up and buy me," but when I'm at book signings, it's the book people reach for first. Everyone seems to recognize the figure.
But my very favorite has to be the cover drawing for Tito's latest adventure, Her Deadly Mischief, set for a September 2009 release. Why? J.J. was unavailable, but the entire production team, including me, felt it was important for the cover to fit in with the rest of the series so that Tito's fans would recognize it right away. After several attempts to recreate J.J.'s style failed, I had a brainstorm.

My daughter had just graduated from a master's program where she concentrated on scenic design. She's also an accomplished theatrical painter. I'd seen her work splashed across numerous stages and knew she could turn her talents to portraying everything from Renaissance Italy in Romeo and Juliet to Dicken's London in Oliver to the 1940's in Pump Boys and Dinettes.

Could she draw small, just for once? Sure. Her initial renderings of scene designs were in the range of a book jacket. We had fun pouring over portraits of women in elaborate jewelry, one of the major plot points in the novel, and choosing the right look. And then she came up with just the right air of menace with a man's hands fastening a necklace. Or is he using it to strangle the lady?

Once Nan Beams at Poisoned Pen Press had worked the drawing into a finished design, I couldn't be more pleased with the result. Here's the finished product, with drawing by Megan Myers McKinney. This one will always be special.

The Four Horses of Venice

Mary Reed sent me an intriguing email the other day. Besides facing life as eunuchs, her and Eric Mayer's sleuth John the Lord Chamberlain and my Tito Amato have one other thing in common. The sculptural grouping of the four horses pictured above formed part of the daily landscape of both men. Since about nine centuries and almost 900 miles separate the two detectives, how can this be? Sit back and read the tale of these wandering horses.

Their origin is one of history's mysteries. Based on information from Roman historian Pliny the Elder, the four gilded bronze horses are often attributed to Lysippus, a Greek sculptor of the fourth century B.C.E. Their location in Greece isn't known, but according to this story, an admiring Emperor Nero eventually brought them to Rome. Recent scientific analysis casts doubt on this theory, however. Investigation of the metal and its gilding shows evidence of Roman, not Greek, manufacture.

We do know that the four horses adorned the Hippodrome in Constantinople in time for John to view them during the reign of Justinian. Construction on the Hippodrome began around 203 A.D., but it was the emperor Constantine the Great who enlarged the Hippodrome and made it the city's main venue for athletic competitions, games, and chariot races. For hundreds of years, the horses stood atop the central arch of the stables where the live horses who pulled the chariots were housed. An artist's rendition of what the chariot gates might have looked like is below.


Years pass, and war raged between Christian and Muslims lands. During the fourth crusade in 1204, Venetians under orders from Doge Enrico Dandolo sacked Constaninople. The Hippodrome was destroyed, and the horses ripped from their mountings. They were transported back to Venice, stored at the Arsenale and eventually placed above the main entrance to the Basilica San Marco. They were still there in Tito's time, the mid-18th century. He crossed the piazza almost everyday and would have seen them looking down on the carnival antics that had taken over the great square.

Not for long, though. In 1797, Karma visited Venice in the form of Napoleon Bonaparte. The city that owed many of her magnificent treasures to medieval pillage, was in turn looted by the French general. The horses were crated up and sent to Paris where they found a temporary home on top of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. You can still see a sculpture consisting of horses, chariot and several figures on the monument, but these are not the four horses of Venice. France was forced to return the looted horses by the Congress of Vienna which attempted to impose order on post-Napoleonic Europe. Apparently, nobody gave a thought to pushing them back one additional looting and returning them to Constantinople.

Besides John and Tito, I wondered if there might be another fictional detective who viewed the horses during their French sojourn, 1806-1815. A quick glance through the enormously helpful timeline of mystery series at the Crime Thru Time website came up with only one prospect: Inspector LeBlanc as penned by Bernard St. James. I haven't read these, but as the series is set in early 19th-century Paris, who knows?

If we knew more about the horses' early wanderings across the ancient world, we might be able to come up with a few more sleuths connected to these bronze beasts. Gordianus the Finder? Marcus Didius Falco? Thanks, Mary, for coming up with an observation that let me take a break for some silly, but fun, research.

Vicki Delany

Welcome guest blogger Vicki Delany, one of my favorite authors from the talented Poisoned Pen Press Posse. I haven't had time to read Gold Diggers, Vicki's latest mystery from Rendezvous Crime, but I'm looking forward to it.

The Pleasure of the Historical Novel

I was on a canoeing trip in Ontario's Algonquin Park several years ago with about six other people. It was night and we were relaxing after dinner, enjoying the firelight and the darkness and the sounds of the waves lapping on the shore and the trees moving in the wind. We were reflecting on the hard day of canoeing and portaging we'd had. I mentioned how ironic it was that we were paying good money, and using our valuable vacation time, to do what our ancestors would have considered nothing but hardship. They'd have thought we'd all gone mad!

My initial thought was of the Voyageurs, the legendary French Canadian fur traders who opened up the interior of Canada to Europeans. I also mentioned the Chilkoot trail and the path to the Klondike Gold Rush. Several people on the trip were from Europe and interested in the story, so I told them a bit about it. And as we talked, I thought... what a great setting for a book.

Gold Digger: A Klondike Mystery was published in April by the Canadian publisher Rendezvous Crime. It's the first in a new series featuring Fiona MacGillivray, a dance hall owner with a somewhat nimble-fingered past, her twelve year old son Angus, and Constable Richard Sterling of the North-West Mounted Police.


I am primarily a writer of contemporary police procedurals. Specifically the Smith and Winters series from Poisoned Pen Press, and at first I was a bit unsure about how to go about writing a historical. Would I be able to find out enough about the period to create a realistic background? Instead, I found that once I started doing the research, I might well never stop long enough to actually write the book. The Klondike Gold Rush lasted from 1896 to '99, although its heyday was really only one year, 1898 to '99. But that year created enough stories and legends to fill hundreds of books. And photographs--the pictures are incredible. I'll guarantee you've seen some of them (Think Alaska license plates!)

One of the reasons the Klondike Gold Rush is so well known is that it was the only one of the gold rushes to leave such a rich photographic record. the age of photography was just beginning, and the camera was becoming portable enough to be transported out of a confined studio and stiffly posed portraits to come into the streets (and to the gold fields) and capture scenes and people unaware.

It has been called the Last Great Gold Rush. Once the twentieth century began, industrialization and corporations largely pushed out free-wheeling independent prospectors and gold-seekers.

The Klondike gold Rush really did stand at the beginning of the modern world. The nineteenth century was coming to an end, the twentieth beginning. With so much hope and promise. In Gold Digger, the landlady Mrs. Mann, says to Angus, when he wishes they had a telephone: Many wonderful changes you'll see in your lifetime, dear.

The tragedy of the twentieth century is that all the changes weren't exactly wonderful. Angus is 12 in 1898--in 1914 he'll be 28, just the right age to enlist in World War I. One of the pleasures of reading historical novels is that we, the reader, know things that the characters do not. Such as where their world is heading.

But that's all for the future, and for now I'm just having fun being with Fiona and Angus and Richard in Dawson for the Last Great Gold Rush.

*****

Vicki Delany's newest book is Gold Digger: A Klondike Mystery, the first in a new series from Rendezvous Crime. She is also the author of the Constable Molly Smith series, most recently Valley of the Lost, from Poisoned Pen Press. Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com and http://typem4murder.blogspot.com

*****

Thanks a bunch, Vicki. The gold rush era is new historical territory for me. Sounds interesting. I'll add one more link. The Gold Digger page at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1894917804

Tito Amato--Number Five

Now it feels real. I have a cover.

Her Deadly Mischief has an official pub date of September 2009--just in time for Bouchercon! But as every comma in the galley proof has been vetted two times over, the jacket design is set, and the finished product waits in line at the printer, I have to crow a little.

Tito's fifth adventure puts him back where he belongs. His sad wanderings are over, and he's smack dab in the middle of Venice, his golden voice wowing crowds from the stage of the Teatro San Marco. On the home front, his increasing fame and fat purse allow him to purchase a new home for his unconventional family. He leaves the little house on the Campo dei Polli to Gussie and Annetta and moves to a fine home on the Rio della Misericordia, a stone's throw from the Hebrew ghetto.

Life is wonderful until opening night of Maestro Torani's new opera, Armida. Tito has the entire audience entranced--except for one box with its scarlet curtains stubbornly drawn. Is this a lovers' assignation? A meeeting deep in political intrigue? Annoyed at being ignored, Tito aims the full force of his throat at the fourth-tier box. He is astounded when the curtains part and a woman tumbles over the railing like a life-size doll.

The victim is Zulietta Giardino, an enticing courtesan involved with a young glass maker from the island of Murano. As Tito is the only one to see the man who pushed Zulietta to her death, the chief of Venice's rudimentary police force demands his help. Did a wager over a rival courtesan's jewels lead to murder? Or did the motive involve sinister events concerning the glass industry on Murano?

Preorders are being taken at my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press:
http://www.poisonedpenpress.com

And at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590582330

By the way, I love my cover. It's special for several reasons. More on that and the whole cover issue soon.

Finding an Agent

A writerly topic today. A friend is going through a grueling agent search, which led me to recall my own experience.

Interrupted Aria, the first Tito Amato novel, was complete and polished when I set out on my own agent hunt. This was about 12 years ago. I still lived in Eastern Kentucky and was armed only with advice from internet writing groups. Despite a heavy dose of naivety, I managed to slog my way to success.

First I made a list of about 40 literary agents who represented mysteries and stated they were looking for clients. I found those agents by searching internet discussion groups and writers' conference websites, discovering who represented authors I admired (hint: check their acknowledgment pages), and pouring through Literary Market Place at the library. I was shooting for someone new enough to need clients who had also sold some material to large publishers.

Then came the reputation check--a key step as I'd heard horror stories of eager writers forking over hundreds of dollars to have their MS simply considered. The Association of Authors' Representatives maintains a website listing their members and explaining their canon of ethics regarding professional activities. The points that appealed to me were no charging of reading fees, separate personal and professional accounts, and avoiding conflict of interests with referrals to outside editors or "book doctors."
AAR http://www.aar-online.org

Preditors & Editors, a website hosted by the sci-fi magazine Another Realm, also has an inclusive list of agents. If there's dirt on an individual or agency, you'll find it here.
http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors

Then I divided my handpicked list of 40 into four groups of 10. I used no particular order because I didn't want my top picks to all be in one query volley in case I had inadvertently written a bad letter or transgressed in some way I couldn't even predict. I chose 10 as a good volley number because it fell in the middle of what other authors seemed to be doing. Some queried five at a time. Others more like 20. Forget about one-at-a-time unless you want to make the agent hunt your new career.

My query was basically a personalized business letter introducing myself as a new author searching for representation and giving a short synopsis of Interrupted Aria. No confetti or other creative efforts to stand out. I included a paragraph about why I thought Venice and the early opera would make a good setting, and what I intended to do to market the books (attend mystery fan conventions, give talks at arts groups, etc.) I sent exactly what the agents asked for--some wanted only a query letter, most wanted the letter and a few pages of the MS. Some a synopsis, as well. I fashioned one-page, two-page, and four-page synopses. The precision was important because some agents are measuring your ability to work within a given structure.

In my first volley of queries, 2 agents never replied, 2 turned me down outright (interestingly enough the two I'd actually met at a writing conference), and the others all wanted to see more material. Two eventually asked for the entire MS. I chose Dan Hooker of the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency because he called me, talked to me for an hour, was very enthusiastic about my work, and had a plan to sell it. He asked for several editorial changes--he was right about all of them.

The good thing about Dan was that he ALWAYS returned emails and phone calls. He prided himself that all of his daily emails were answered before midnight, even if it was just, "I got your message, working on it." He also sent the rejection letters and every few months we had an in-depth phone call in which in gave me "the story behind the story" of each rejection, deciphering the editor-speak or adding history that he believed had gone into the editor's decision. He sold the book after two years and didn't bail when we had to go to the smaller presses--which many agents do.

I miss Dan! I'll never forget the day Ashley Grayson called to tell me he had died unexpectedly. I felt like the rug had been jerked out from under my feet. (Ashley is now my agent.)

The best advice to take away from my story is making a careful list of agents to query, following their guidelines to the letter, and being VERY persistent.

I was incredibly lucky to find Dan so quickly. I know many authors--even several who went on to big publishers--who report sending out 30-40 queries before connecting with the right representative for their work. So don't let a couple of rejections get you down. Have faith in your work and keep it circulating.

Tolerance

Tolerance is a 1989 film about an innocent young wife who inherits a hermit in a relative's will. Huh?

Luckily, I knew a little about 18th-century hermits from watching Regency House Party, one of those PBS reality shows that gather a modern group and force them to meet the challenges of living in a historical time period. For a few decades of the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was the fashion to have a picturesque hermitage in your garden or tucked in a corner of your estate. Rather like a faux gothic ruin, only inhabited by a real person.


Potential hermits signed up for a seven year stint. The hermit was to wear a monk-like robe, and the rules prohibited him from leaving the estate or cutting his hair, beard or nails. Bathing was also frowned on. As best as I can tell, this charming custom combined the Romantic movement's fascination with an arcadian ideal and the Christian tradition of a contemplative life. The hermit was paid, however, if he fulfilled his contract.

So, back to the film. Rupert Everett plays the hermit who is at first sickened by his new employer's libertine husband, Marmant. Ugo Tognazzi plays Marmant with great abandon. Food, sex, beautiful clothing--Marmant revels in every earthly delight while his sweet wife repels his caresses and admires the willpower of the stalwart, starving hermit. Things begin to get weird when the hermit decides that he hates the libertine life so much that it would really be more galling for him to live like Marmant than to continue his existence in the garden hut. He has Marmant set up him in style, hating every minute of his new, luxurious life. Or does he?

If this piques your interest, I'll let you watch Tolerance (which happens to be the wife' name) and answer that question for yourself. To me the film goes a bit overboard, but it is well acted, combining seasoned French, English and Italian players to explore a little known corner of history. Given my own fascination with the nearly forgotten castrato singers of the same period, I do have to admire that.

BTW, the painting below is by Peter Paul Rubens. It predates the hermit fad by a century, but since its title is The Hermit and the Sleeping Angelica, I can't help wondering if it didn't inspire the film in some small way.