Reasons to Believe

By Steve Weddle

Somewhere in this house is a Polaroid of me and Spider-Man. I met him at a mall in Shreveport, Louisiana around the time I was watching him on TV. I don't recall there having been any big crime spree there that he needed to take care of, but perhaps he'd already finished off the bad guys. (I do remember a comic featuring Spidey and the Dallas Cowboys, so perhaps he stopped by Shreveport while he was in the area.) He was nice, didn't talk much, and signed the photo for me. Turns out, I was his best pal.

Batman and Superman might have been SuperFriends, but they didn't hold too much interest for me. I was a Marvel kind of guy.

You could count on a couple of ads in comics back in the late 70s and early 80s. One of them offered prizes if you sold a bunch of crap to people in your neighborhood. Another one was for 1,000 army men. Or maybe a million. And then there was the one from Mile High Comics. One hundred comics for $25. They listed what was available and you could put a mark in the box and mail it in or call them. That's what I wanted for my birthday. One hundred comics. So I had to select which comics I wanted. Spider-Man. Avengers. Every New Defenders they had. Doctor Strange.

Since Mile High Comics was in Denver and we weren't, my dad took the list to work and called it in. A couple of funny things happened. One: They didn't have every comic I wanted. I don't remember the percentage, but I ended up with a handful of Beta Ray Bill Thors, She-Hulks, and West Coast Avengers. The second funny thing: My dad's boss kept walking by his office door wondering why my dad was cupping his hand over the phone and whispering, "How about 'Defenders' number 83? No, OK. 'Avengers' 212? That one? OK. Good."

Spider-Man was the crime fiction I grew up on. The troubled good guy fighting impossible odds, getting in way over his head and getting whupped.

So I got my 100 comic books sent right to my door when I was a kid. I kept them in a box under my bed, worked through a run of 'Defenders,' even those with that dork Namor in them. I found stuff I'd never thought of reading -- hating some, loving some.

I miss those days of surprise, when anything was possible and you'd wait a whole month for the next story, the next issue.

As a grown-up, you get shots at this, though.

Tyrus Books offers a subscription program. Every month or so, you'd be getting a new gem of crime fiction right to your door. Kinda like the Book-of-the-Month Club, only cool.

Dumpy little thrift shops. Sure, used books stores have folks who know their stuff and everything well organized. Sometimes, though, this makes it kinda easy and takes the fun out. I don't know what the Beta Ray Bill version of a crime novel would be, but imagine those shelves back in the corner of the thrift shop, back near the NordicTrack. For a dollar, you walk out with five paperbacks -- a few Elmore Leonards, a Laurie R. King, and some Grisham for your mom.

Pre-Orders online. The anticipation is fantastic, isn't it? Release date. Oh, I'm getting it early. Sweet. My wife loves Mr. N. DeMille's John Corey novels and had her pre-order for Wildfire in six months before she got it. I'd read and enjoyed the character, too, so we were counting down the weeks.

Subscriptions. Surprises. Some synonym for "anticipation" that starts with 's.'

What makes reading cool for you? What is it you like about the world of reading? Series detectives? Author signings? Do you have a Polaroid proving you're Lee Child's best pal?

Splat

I'm writing this as the Tigers and Red Sox go into the 13th inning and as you read this tomorrow Spenser and I will be watching the finale of that series live. This whole week I've been trying to put the thoughts in my head together to write something about why baseball seems to be a more literary sport than any of the others. There's been some great novels, and short stories, and anthologies (and lots of films) about baseball, and much of the best sports non-fiction has the old bats and balls as it's subject. But the thoughts never gelled and its a subject I thought deserved more than my last minute ramblings. Which got me thinking about walking the tightrope as a writer.

You can call it procrastination, and I'll freely admit its' one of my great weaknesses in writing and in life, but man, I've pulled some great stuff out at the last minute and, as tonight, when I try and put something together over time it more often than night dies on the vice. So you're all kind of like the audience at a trapeze show. Sometimes you get death defying antics and last minute flashes of greatness, but once in while you witness a guy choking and hitting the ground.

So let me open it up for comments. What's your tight rope? Is there an area in your writing or in your life where you always seem to be running on the edge of failure but can also pull out some good stuff?

P.S. (Go Brennan Bosch)

Evangelizing

by
Scott D. Parker

In recent months, I've taken to riding my bicycle more and more places. There was some natural foods website that enabled you to locate your address and draw a 2-mile circle around your house. Your pledge was to walk or bike to anything inside that perimeter. Other than major grocery shopping, I've started doing that. It's fun, I get exercise, and the world seems just a tad slower.

One of the things I've noticed is the informal fraternity among bikers and pedestrians. We nod at each other with a knowing nod, kind of like we know we're doing something different and it's our little secret on how fun it is. The world seems different, too. I rarely listen to music when riding, preferring (often for safety's sake) to hear the world as I pedal past it. As such, I hear different things, I focus on different things (not being hit by a car, for example), and take stock of my surroundings in a much more nuanced way. I'm to the point now where I'm considering trading in my mountain bike for a street-worthy bike capable of carrying small amounts of groceries and other things. In short, I'm considering buying the bike I used to laugh at in my younger days.

The thing is, I like being different. I like it that there is a little bike community where I can chat gears and pedals and ergonomic bike seats. It's fantastic. And I like spreading the bike-riding gospel, too. But there's always a little something in me that holds back. I don't want *everyone* to start riding bikes because then, the lanes would be crowded, the products would go up in price, and it wouldn't be as special.

I have the entirely opposite reaction when it comes to our wonderful online reading/writing/genre communities. I had the idea for this post on Wednesday. What I wanted to do was link the pedestrian/bike riding community with our crime/writing community. I love our online community, its size and breadth, and all the folks I've met along the way. Without the internet, frankly, many of us would be mere wandering souls in the vast desert that is writing and reading and books. I enjoy reading other blogs and books by fellow writers and, I hope, they enjoy reading the material I write.

Unlike the bike community, however, I want more and more folks to join our reading community. Naturally, it's because I hope folks will read my stuff and read other blogs I enjoy. Which brings up a question I've been pondering since Wednesday (when I thought of it while, yes, riding my bike): how often do we tell others about the blogs we enjoy? I'm not talking about fellow bloggers (although they do count). I'm talking about folks who may not read blogs on a regular basis.

Let's say you're at a bookstore and you see a person picking up a mystery. If you're a blogger who writes about mysteries (or a reader who enjoys a particular blog on mysteries), do you ever speak up and let the potential customer know about the blogosphere and the resources available? I'm not necessarily referring to self-promotion, although that is part of it. I'm talking about two people who share a common interest just talking. Like the time when I was stopped for a drink at a bike route and asked a couple of gentlemen about their bikes. They gave me a few pointers on what I should look for in in a bike and we went on our way. I took that information to the bike store and used it to talk to the salesman.

That's what I'm talking about with this blog community. We all enjoy interacting with each other. How often do we reach outside our established communities and bring in more folks?

I have to admit, I'm not the best in that category. But it's something I've decided to start doing.