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John Grisham is one of those authors who is indeed a household name. Beginning with The Firm, Grisham gave the legal thriller a much needed vitamin shot. And while not all of his novels have kept those high standards, he is indeed a most readable author.
Grisham's first baseball novel Calico Jack is now No. 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List.
Grisham also is high on another list—he's No. 8 on Forbes’s annual ranking of the world’s top-earning authors. His estimated earnings are $18 million. The list comes out each April.
But Grisham's $18 million pales next to the No. 1 author, James Patterson at $84 million. No. 2 is Danielle Steel at $35 million. No. 3: Stephen King, $28 million. No. 4: Janet Evanovich, $25 million. No. 5: Stephanie Meyer, $21 million. No. 6: Rick Riordan, $21 million. No. 7: Dean Koontz, $19 million. No. 8: Grisham. No. 9: Jeff Kinney, $17 million. No. 10: Nicholas Sparks, $16 million. No. 11: Ken Follett, $14 million. No. 12: Suzanne Collins, $10 million. No. 13: JK Rowling, $5 million.
I find it interesting that mystery/thriller writers dominate the list. Patterson, Grisham, Evanovich, King, Koontz and Follett are mainstays in the genre. We can even count Rick Riordan in the mix because he started out writing superb private detective novels before switching to the most lucrative Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles novels for young adults.
Grisham and Patterson also write novels for both adults and young adults.
Naturally, each of these authors spent years taking small advances and, during those years, the closest they would come to a bestsellers list is reading one in the newspaper.
That certainly happened to John Grisham, which he discussed in a recent Newsweek interview titled "My Favorite Mistake."
Back in the 1980s, Grisham was trying to sell his first novel, A Time to Kill. Only 5,000 first-editon copies of the novel had been printed and Grisham had 1,500 copies that he stored in his small law office in Southaven, Mississippi.
That's a lot of books. So why does Grisham call this his "favorite mistake?"
Here's why:
“We stacked them in the reception area, around my secretary’s desk, in the hallways, in my office. We couldn’t move but for all the copies of A Time to Kill,” Grisham said in the Newsweek interview.
“The boxes were everywhere, and I would just give them away. If one of my clients wanted a book, I’d try to sell it. If not, I’d give it away. I’d sell them for 10 bucks, 5 bucks. I used them for doorstops. I couldn’t get rid of these books.”
Today, on the used-book website AbeBooks.com, a signed first edition of A Time to Kill might fetch as much as $4,000, according to Newsweek.
“That’s about $6 million, the way I do the math,” Grisham told Newsweek. “We had no way of knowing then, but I sure wish I had some of those books back. I blew it.”
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I am never sure how effective book trailers are in selling books.
But some book trailers are so sophisticated, so involving that they do entice me to at least read the first couple of chapters. And this is book trailer I couldn't refuse.
The Family Corleone is author Ed Falco's prequel to Mario Puzo's The Godfather, which was published in 1969. It just hit the bookstores and ereaders this week. The Family Corleone is being billed as an "all-new prequel," based on an unproduced screenplay written by Puzo, who died of a heart attack at age 78 in 1999.
Previously, the Puzo family authorized two sequels to The Godfather—The Godfather Returns in 2004 and The Godfather's Revenge in 2006. Both novels were written by Mark Winegardner, director of the creative writing program at Florida State University. Falco is a novelist, short-story writer and playwright who runs the creative writing program at Virginia Tech.
The Family Corleone is set in New York during 1933. Vito Corleone's business has thrived but he has tried to keep his children out of his organization. While Vito pushes his eldest child, Sonny, to be a businessman, Sonny desperately wants to join his father's real business. And, of course, we know how that turns out.
And here is the book trailer.
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Get your motors running Saturday, July 9, in Sharon, Connecticut, with Darren Winston Bookseller, Lime Rock Park racetrack, and Mystery Scene for a reading and signing to celebrate the launch of Tammy Kaehler's Dead Man's Switch, the first in a new American Le Mans Mystery series set at Connecticut's real Lime Rock Park raceway.
Readers can pick up an advance copy of this debut mystery due out later this August from Poisoned Pen Press, which features the competitive female Corvette racer Kate Reilly who takes pole position on a list of murder suspects when she gets a dead driver's place in the big race. The first 100 visitors will also receive gift bags including a free issue of Mystery Scene's Summer #120 Issue just out.
"I tell people I'm genetically predisposed to be a sports fan (thanks, dad)," says Kaehler on her site. "By marriage, I'm disposed to like cars. And then I fell into the racing world because I was interested in learning something new. Then I met a woman who used to race cars. It all clicked."
Mystery Scene publishers Kate Stine and Brian Skupin will be on hand, as will Skip Barber, the owner of Lime Rock Park, along with several Corvettes, which will be parked up and down Sharon's Main Street.
See you at the races!
Dead Man's Switch Official Book Launch
5:30-7:30 pm, Saturday, July 9, 2011
Darren Winston Bookseller
81 Main Street
Sharon, Connecticut 06069
Tel: 860-364-1890 | MAP
Dead Man's Switch
by Tammy Kaehler
Poisoned Pen Press, August 2011, $22.95
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THE TRUE STORY OF THE WORST STORY EVER WRITTEN
Before I close this saga of my days at The Scott Meredith Literary Agency, I need to offer a correction. Some months ago I attributed "Rattlesnake Cave," the error-ridden story created as a test for job applicants at Scott Meredith, to the late science fiction writer Lester Del Rey. The byline, transparent enough it would seem, was "Ray D. Lester," and it was common knowledge in the office that Del Rey, an agency client and former employee, had written the piece.
Kate Stine was good enough to point me to an interview Ed Gorman had done with Stephen Marlowe, shortly before Marlowe's death; in it, Marlowe claimed authorship of "Rattlesnake Cave." Did I want to amend my column accordingly?
No, I said. I was sure it was Del Rey, everyone had always known it was Del Rey, and I'd had enough experience with people misremembering the remote past to believe Marlowe had done just that.
So the piece stayed as I wrote it, and when it appeared my friend Barry Malzberg (who knows more about the workings and history of that agency than anyone else ever did, not excepting Scott) put me straight. Steve Marlowe did indeed write it, and the byline was his way of giving Del Rey one in the eye.
-- excerpted from "The Murders in Memory Lane: Those Scott Meredith Days, Part III," in Mystery Scene 2012 Winter Issue #123.
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For personal reasons, I've been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between fathers and daughters. Sure, expand it to fathers and sons and even to parents and their children. For the record, I was lucky in that I was close to both of my parents and not a
In The Reversal, Connelly's series hero Harry Bosch is dealing with the daily challenges of fatherhood for the first time. And to make the "challenge" even harder, Bosch's daughter is a young teenager. During the course of The Reversal, Bosch tries to find evidence that will prove a convicted murderer who was recently exonerated truly is guilty.
