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"The plot of an Alafair Burke thriller doesn't just rip from the headlines. She's one step ahead of them. 212 scares you and keeps you turning the pages into the wee hours."
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Clue: It's Smaller Than a BreadboxSaturday, March 6, 2010
To thank my web friends for their early support, I will send you a mystery gift for every hardback copy of 212 that you purchase prior to midnight on March 22. You can find many of your favorite booksellers here to order and also at any of the stores on the tour, which can take your orders for personalized or signed copies. Just e-mail a copy of your receipt to offer@alafairburke.com.
posted by Alafair Burke at 5:53 PM
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Muskego!Sunday, February 21, 2010Last weekend, the good folks at the Muskego public library invited me to serve as Guest of Honor at the Felonious February festival. Fabulous book blogger Jen Forbus did the honors of interviewing. Because I need to justify that tax deduction of our mini-recorder, video of the 48-minute chat is on You Tube if you have a whole lot of time to kill. Here are the links to Parts one, two, three, four, and five.
posted by Alafair Burke at 5:59 AM
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I Don't Want to Grow Up...So Why Must My Characters?Tuesday, February 16, 2010
A pop psychologist coined the phrase Peter Pan Syndrome to describe men who want to remain boys. If there's a female version of the syndrome, I suppose I probably suffer from it. Don't get me wrong. I like to think I've matured in the ways that matter. I confront my problems. I deal with people directly. I don't lie to my parents even when the truth is uncomfortable. And when I want to lose weight, I do it sensibly - not like that popcorn and pickle diet I tried my sophomore year. There are perks that have come with age as well. I have a real car instead of that oxidized baby-blue Chevy Chevette POS I used to share with my sisters. I no longer work at Benetton. I can stay up late whenever I want. But, deep down, inside, where it really counts? I don't want to grow up. I still dance in my living room, stomp in snow piles, and break out into the occasional handstand. Last Thursday, I ate pudding for lunch an hour before teaching the search incident to arrest doctrine to my crim pro students. The world changes around me, but I'm still the same oddball interacting with it. I used to be a choir geek obssessed with
These days, my inner choir geek watches America Idol and Glee, and, although I no longer tape posters to my walls -- honestly? I'd love for just one day (maybe week) to be
Am I alone in feeling that external time passes far more quickly than our internal clocks can possibly register? I don't think so. My mother told me when I turned thirty that she still looks in the mirror and expects to see her thirty-year-old self. These guys? I know they don't define themselves through biological age. So what's my point? If, at heart, most of us don't want to grow up -- and don't really acknowledge that we have -- why must our fictional characters age on the same clock as those of us stuck in the real world? My husband always tell me to face the music: the only alternative to aging is death. But why must that be true for the characters who live through our words? One of my favorite writers once told me that his biggest writing regret was that he'd given his beloved series character a year of birth. By doing so, he forever locked his character in the continuum of time, and inevitably that character will face the realities of grey hair and back pain. And we've all experienced that as readers, haven't we? We watch as our favorite protagonists reach their seventh and eighth decades but suspend disbelief as they continue to kick in doors, crack heads, and score with the ladies. My good pal Kinsey Millhone, on the other hand, gets to stay in her thirties. But to keep Kinsey from aging in real time, author Sue Grafton created a time capsule, freezing the alphabet series forever in the 1980's. With no computers or cell phones, Kinsey's world falls further into the distance from the present with each new book. But why must a writer have to choose between youth and the present? Having celebrated its twentieth anniversary, The Simpsons is now the longest-running prime time show in TV history. But Bart's not a middle manager in an office park, Lisa's not contemplating her biological clock, Homer and Marge are still ambiguously middle aged, and Maggie's still working on her pacifier. But the world around the family changes. For example, in an early flashback, Homer was into Steve Miller's The Joker. More recently, we learned that Homer spent college in a 1990's Kurt Cobain-like state. My Ellie Hatcher series is (hopefully) still in its inchoate stages at the third novel.* Although I could always change my mind, my plan is to pull a Simpsons,** always setting the books in the present, but having only a short period of time supposedly pass between books. The year will change. So will the cultural references. But the people in Ellie Hatcher's world get to stay young. If I'm lucky enough to enjoy a long-running series, I fully expect to receive emails complaining about "continuity problems," but I plan to find a polite way to tell the haters to suck it. If it's intentional, it's not a problem. I pride myself on the authenticity of my work, but who says fictional characters have to age like the rest of us? I'd love to hear comments: What have other series authors done to tackle the age issue? And would you think less of a series if the protaganist got to experience a changing external world without having to age like the rest of us? *B-ish (because it's a footnote) SP: 212, the third novel in the series, is out March 23. Read awesome reviews here and here. Watch my low-budget, home-made video trailer, set to one of the aforementioned pop idols, here. ** A lesson on knowing your audience: I unleashed my the-Simpsons-don't-age observation at a book event, and it turned out that no one in the audience -- I mean no one -- had ever seen a single episode of the Simpsons. They looked at me like a child who ate pudding for lunch. If you enjoyed this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter.
posted by Alafair Burke at 5:33 AM
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More Good NewsTuesday, February 9, 2010
posted by Alafair Burke at 7:11 AM
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Literary Look-Alikes: Who are the Doppelgangers?Monday, February 1, 2010
In honor of Doppelganger Week, I blog today over at Murderati about Literary Look-Alikes. Harlan Coben, Laura Lippman, Barry Eisler, Andrew Gross, and more... who are their doppelgangers? I hope you'll stop by Murderati and add your comments.
posted by Alafair Burke at 7:17 AM
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First Reviews of 212! So far, so good...Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Even when I'm finished writing a book, it doesn't immediately feel "real." The story has a beginning, middle, and that all-important end, but I've lived with the ideas and characters so long in my head that those pages still feel like they belong only to me. Even as the edits are made, the title is finalized, and blurbs are landed, the book is like a house still under construction - exciting, full of potential, but still a figment of the imagination.
posted by Alafair Burke at 5:26 AM
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Author Bios: What's Missing from the Back Inside Flap?Tuesday, January 19, 2010
I promise this next sentence is an honest intro to today's post, not just BSP: This weekend I officially joined the board of directors of Mystery Writers of America and became President of the New York chapter. (Pause for applause.) In preparation for the annual MWA board funfest (aka orientation day), the unparalleled Margery Flax requested a biography to distribute to fellow board members. I sent her the usual jacket copy: A formal deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, Alafair Burke now teaches criminal law at Hofstra Law School and lives in New York City. A graduate of Stanford Law School, she is the author of the Samantha Kincaid series, which includes the novels Judgment Calls, Missing Justice, and Close Case. Most recently, she published Angel's Tip, her second thriller featuring Ellie Hatcher. Her response was polite, quick, and resoundingly clear, something like, "Are you sure that's all you want to include? This is usually a longer fun one, only for internal board distribution." In other words, Yawn, Snore, Zzzz....
I can take a hint, so I gave it another try. Borrowing in part from my website, I allowed myself thirty minutes to hammer out something that would give those who hadn't met me yet some sense of who I am and where I've been. Margery's assurance that this was purely internal was freeing. After I submitted my specially-designated "MWA board bio," I couldn't stop thinking about the sterileness of those book jacket author bios, scrubbed clean of all personality. As writers, we're committed to exploring the human stories that lurk beneath the superficial, but when asked to describe ourselves: Yawn, snore, zzzz..... I've spoken a few times during author appearances about a hypothetical world in which books (like the law school exams I grade as a professor) would be published anonymously, their authors known only by a randomly assigned number that readers could use to "identify" the authors they consistently enjoyed. After all, what separates reading from television and film is the active role of our mind's eye. To read books without knowing an author's age, gender, race, religion, region, education, attractiveness, or work experience might truly unleash our imaginations. Despite my musings about a utopia of anonymous publishing, I've come to realize why publishers emphasize (and readers desire) personal information about authors. The most delightful unexpected benefit of writing has been meeting some of my favorite authors. I already read these folks religiously before I met them, but I'll admit that I read them differently -- and more richly -- now. I recognize the wry winks in Laura Lippman's most leisurely paragraphs. I hear Michael Connelly's quiet voice in Bosch. I think I really know what Lisa Unger means when she writes on Ridley Jones's behalf that she's a "dork." And those short, little, maddeningly frustrating sentences from Lee Child are now sexy as hell. But I didn't get any of that from the book jackets. As the traditional print media and personal appearance opportunities for authors to introduce themselves to readers continue to dry up, many of us have taken to the Web. We do that not only to get our names out there, but also because we recognize that readers are more likely to experience our written work as intended if they come to it with a sense of who we are. (For example, an online reviewer once dissed a line of Ellie Hatcher's, something like "kicking it old school." The fact that it's corny to talk that way is of course precisely why she'd say such a thing. And if the reader "got" Ellie or anything about my work, he'd know that's -- ahem -- just how we roll.)
So as we're knocking ourselves out to convey our souls to readers, maybe we should take another look at book jacket bios. The publishers are going to type something beneath that favorite photo: It may as well be interesting. And so, even though Margery promised to keep this unsanitized bio a secret, I've decided to blast it out to the world: Alafair Burke is the author of six novels in two series, one featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, the other with Portland prosecutor Samantha Kincaid. Although reviewers have described both characters as “feisty,” Alafair might accidentally spill a drink on anyone who invokes that word to describe her or anyone she cares about. Alafair grew up in Wichita, Kansas, whose greatest contribution to her childhood was a serial killer called BTK. Nothing warps a young mind quite like daily reports involving the word, bind, torture, and kill. From Kansas, Alafair dreamed of fleeing west. Fearing their daughter might fall prey to a 1980’s version of the Manson Family (um, Nelson?), her parents prohibited her from attending school in California. Ironically, she ended up at Reed College, where the bookstore sold shirts that read "Atheism, Communism, Free Love," and Alafair found herself (lovingly) nicknamed Nancy Reagan and The Cheerleader. From Reed, Alafair went to the decidedly less hippy-ish Stanford Law School. Although she went with dreams of becoming an entertainment lawyer so she could make deals at the Palm and score seats at the Oscars, she eventually realized she had watched "The Player" one too many times, and instead decided to pursue criminal law because she was obsessed with the Unabomber. Most of Alafair’s legal practice was as a prosecutor in Portland, Oregon, where she infamously managed to tally up a net loss on prison time imposed during her prosecutorial career. (Help spring two exonerated people from prison to put a guy called the Happy Face Killer behind bars, and it really ruins your numbers.) As hard as it is for her to believe, she is now a professor at Hofstra Law School. When Alafair is not teaching classes or writing, she enjoys rotting her brain. She runs to an iPod playlist with three continuous hours of spaz music (think "It Takes Two" by DJ Rob Bass, "Smooth Criminal" by Alien Art Farm, and "Planet Claire" by the B-52's). She insists that Duran Duran, the Psychedelic Furs, and the Cure hold up just as well as the so-called classics. She watches way too much television, usually on cable. She wants Tina Fey to be her BFF. She likes to drink wine and cook. She discloses TMI on the Interwebs, blogging regularly at Murderati and logging teenage-territory hours on Facebook. She will golf at the drop of a hat even though she’s bad at it. Most importantly, Alafair loves her husband, Sean, and their French bulldog, The Duffer. She also loves her parents, but if you ask her about them, she’ll ask you about yours. What do you think? Should all authors let loose on their jacket flaps? Would it affect that crucial decision of whether to purchase? Would it change how we read? If you're a writer, what should your author bio REALLY say? And if you're a reader, what would you like to know about some of your favorite writers?
posted by Alafair Burke at 6:22 AM
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