Wednesday, 16 March 2011 10:24
Think of Erin Brockovich and the first image that most people have is Julia Roberts’ Oscar-winning performance in the 2000 movie.
In the film Erin Brockovich, Roberts showed how her character grew into an environmental activist. Although she lacked a formal law school education, Brockovich’s confidence and her sense of right and wrong set her on a new path in life.
Brockovich now can add fiction author to her resume. She’s teamed up with novelist C.J. Lyons to produce her first novel Rock Bottom from Vanguard Press.
Rock Bottom continues Brockovich’s good fight as the plot revolves around industrial pollution.
Rock Bottom revolves around Angela Joy Palladino, who was dubbed “The People’s Champion” for her work as an environmental activist. She returns to her hometown to work for a lawyer who is fighting to stop mountain-top removal mining. Of course, that job doesn’t go too smoothly.
This is the first novel from Brockovich and most likely will not be her last, judging from the reviews. (Mystery Scene reviewer Verna Suit looks at Rock Bottom in the latest issue, No. 118.) Lyons has won the Golden Gateway and Daphne du Maurier awards and has been a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart.
Although this is Brockovich’s first foray into fiction, she also has written Take It From Me: Life's a Struggle But You Can Win. That nonfiction book was published in October 2001, and was on the New York Times Business Bestseller's List.
Wednesday, 09 March 2011 00:58
We all know that libraries – along with the arts and social services – are in trouble. City and county budgets are being slashed around the country.
Desperate times require action and some authors are taking matters into their own hands with the Save the Libraries event.
Honorary chair Karin Slaughter (Broken) along with Mary Kay Andrews (Hissy Fit) and Kathryn Stockett (The Help) are teaming up with businesses and donors to offer an array of items to be auctioned off. All proceeds will go directly to the DeKalb County Public Library Foundation in Georgia.
For more information, visit http://savethelibraries.com/.
A cross-section of authors is offering up for bidding character names along with signed books. You can have your name – or even your pet’s name – in an upcoming novel by, among others, Lee Child, Lisa Unger, Mark Billingham, Alafair Burke, Mary Jane Clark and Mo Hayder. There is also a nice selection of signed books and the chance to get an advanced copy of your favorite author’s work before it is released. More items are being added.
You can also bid on a trip to New York City to have lunch with an editor at Bantam and a literary agent; a chance to have Kate Elton, publisher and editorial director at Random House U.K ., read your manuscript and offer an editorial letter; an evaluation of your work by a professional screenwriter. You can even bid on having lunch with Karin Slaughter in Amsterdam – you have to get there on your own but she promises to pick up the lunch tab.
These items will be up for auction through March 12.
The website is at www.savethelibraries.com and the Facebook page is at
www.facebook.com/savethelibraries.
www.facebook.com/savethelibraries.
Join these authors, open up your wallets, and help save the libraries. Even if all you can afford is a T-shirt, every dollar counts.
Sunday, 06 March 2011 10:04
Back in 1991, Paul Levine's novel Night Vision followed attorney Jake Lassiter who was caught up in the murder investigation of three women who belonged to Compu-Mate, an electronic network whose members talk dirty to one another.
Back in 1994, Julie Smith wrote about a loosely connected group who had an active virtual life on TOWN, a computer bulletin board. That novel, New Orleans Beat, followed Smith's New Orleans detective Skip Langdon investigating what seems to be the accidental death of a man who fell off a ladder at home. The investigation takes a turn when Skip learns that members of TOWN suspect their friend was murdered because he had recently posted about flashbacks to his father's death 25 years before.
Back then, when I reviewed these two novels, the idea of an online community seemed as remote to me as, well, the idea that everyone would carry cell phones.
The internet was a tool I barely was aware of. I didn't even have my own computer then. I would never have thought my work, my friends, my spare time would be consumed by the Internet. I didn't have any idea of the power the Internet would have.
But mystery writers certainly were aware of the Internet's power. Now, so many authors are using the Internet as a major part of their plots.
Here's just a few I've come across recently:
J.A. Jance's latest Ali Reynolds mystery, Fatal Error, concerns man who meets and proposes to women over the Internet. The problem is that he's juggling several women at a time, one of whom may have snapped and killed him. Jance has said that Fatal Error was inspired by one of her friends, who thought she had a serious relationship with a man she “met” online, but then found out he was carrying on in a similar fashion with countless other women.
Daniel Palmer's Delirious revolves around Charlie Giles, the inventor of a new digital-entertainment system for automobiles. Charlie's life unravels when compromising emails and web sites are found on his company computer. A sophisticated hacker is out to destroy him.
In April, Hallie Ephron will publish Come and Find Me in which a young woman retreats to her virtual life following the death of her husband. Unable to cope with the world, she lives in her own world online.
