I am a better writer today than I was in 1999 when I started my first book, Judgment Calls.

I make that observation neither to apologize for my debut novel nor to boast about my current abilities.  In my humble and biased opinion, Judgment Calls is a good book.  I’d say PW and Booklist were probably about right in describing it “a solid first effort” and a “promising debut,” respectively.  (Proving that reviews can be scattered, The Rocky Mountain News may have been overly generous in comparing it to the “best of the genre,” while The UK’s Guardian was undoubtedly harsh in dubbing it their “Turkey of the Year.”)  And though I say I’m a better writer now than I was when I wrote that book, I know I can still develop further in my craft.

But the objective fact remains that I am better today than I was then.  So, therefore, are my books.  In fact, after just finishing my seventh novel, I can say (and I think my readers would agree) that each novel — without exception — has improved upon its predecessors.  I chalk the advancements up to hard work and confidence.  I try to write every single day, challenging myself to be better with each session.  And with each book, I have been more willing to trust my instincts, experiment with form, and follow my characters on their journey.

It turns out I am not the only writer who believes she has improved with age.

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a Q&A with Lisa Unger at The Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan about her new book, Fragile.  I asked her whether she viewed her earlier books, published before she was married under her maiden name Lisa Miscione, as part of the same body of work, or whether she preferred the later Lisa Unger novels to be treated as works by a different author.

I found her response to be such a wonderful description of how many of us might feel about our development as artists.  She expressed a sincere pride in her early books and made clear that she was not one of those writers who seek to distance themselves from certain books through the use of another name.  But she also noted that she started her first book, Angel Fire, when she was nineteen years old.  She tries to become a better writer everyday (I obviously liked that part).  And, interestingly, she said that readers who picked up Angel Fire and Fragile would not recognize them as having been written by the same person because she was not the same as she was as a nineteen-year-old.

Harlan Coben recently found a different way of expressing a similar observation about his own work.  When his first novel, Play Dead, was re-released, he wrote the following note for the front of the book:

If you ever doubted Harlan’s ability to be humble and funny, you probably don’t anymore.

The writers I most admire aren’t the ones who shoot out of the gate with a shattering debut that subsequent books just never quite measure up to.  They’re the ones — like Lisa and Harlan and Laura Lippman and Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane and Lee Child and Karin Slaughter– who keep rolling out bigger and better books, delving deeping into their own souls to find fresh material year after year after year.

But there’s one question that I’m asked multiple times a week that must give pause to any writer who believes she’s improved with every book:  Which of your books should I read first?

In some ways, there’s really no better question to find waiting in your e-mail or on your Facebook page.  It means a new reader has found you.  Someone has heard about you from a friend or has finally seen your name enough times to be interested in your work.  Woot!

The downside to the question is you’ve got to answer it.  And what’s the right answer, particularly if you write a series?  No matter how hard you’ve tried (as I do) to make each book work as a standalone, most genre readers like to proceed in order.  On the other hand, if you’ve become a better writer with each book, you might know (as I do) that, as proud as you are of that first novel, it’s not as good as the last.  So, for me at least, there is no short answer.

What I want to tell people is to read in order, but to expect each book to get better and better, and to stick with me through the end.  But that sounds simultaneously boastful and apologetic.  It also assumes a new reader is going to devote herself to your entire oeuvre.  So instead I say each book can be read alone, referring readers to the chronological list on my website.

I have to admit that when asked that impossible question, I wonder whether it would be better to be one of those people who torpedoed out of the gate only to come to a slow limp in later books.  And when I say “better,” obviously I don’t mean better.  I guess I mean something like luckier.  No, I mean easier.

To explain what I mean, let me invoke some television shows as examples, since I love me some TV.  I absolutely loved Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty at the get-go.  Great characters.  Great hook.  Pulled me right in.  And then, you know, stuff happened.  Silly stuff.  Lame stuff.  But I was already invested, so I didn’t stop watching.  Other shows — shows like Friday Night Lights and, as I’ve been told at least, True Blood and Mad Men — had impressive enough starts but then blossomed into some of the best series on the tube.

Creatively, of course you’d rather be the creator of the higher quality material.  But commercially?  An early peak can be pretty sticky as far as an audience is concerned.  If my first book had been my best, it would be so easy to tell new readers to start there.  Start with that first, awesome book, fall in love with the characters, and then stick with me even as I phone it in.  See how easy that would be?

But I don’t want writing to be easy.  I don’t want to phone it in.  I’m incredibly proud of the fact — yes, fact — that I’ve written seven books in about a decade, each being better than the previous.  I hope to write twenty more in the next two decades and be able to say I’m still a better writer every day.

But, my God, that trajectory sure does make it difficult to answer that damn question:  Which of your books should I read first?

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When I say that, I don’t refer to the desires most of us have for actual things or states of being that exist in reality but which we will likely never enjoy: a mansion in Maui, a loft in Tribeca, waking up in bed with James Franco.

In other words, when I say I want what I can’t have, I don’t mean it the same way Morrisey meant when he sang “I Want the One I Can’t Have.”  (Yes, that was just an excuse to include a Smiths video in this post.)

With all due respect, Morrisey, the more precise language to describe that state of desire would be, “I want what I am highly unlikely to have in the foreseeable future.”  No.  When I say that I want what I can’t have, what I mean is that I want what I literally cannot have.  And by literally, I mean literally, not figuratively, the way people nowadays inexplicably (and literally) say things such as, “My head literally exploded.”

Here’s what I mean: Yes, I want that beach house in Maui, and I want that loft in Tribeca.  I’m not likely to have either one in the foreseeable future, but my real problem is that I want them at the same time.  I want to wake up to the sounds of waves crashing on the beach outside my window, then step outside onto cobblestone streets to eat pasta cooked by some employee of Robert DeNiro.  I want to take a surfing lesson in my backyard then walk down the street for dinner at Nobu.

And, yep, I got a mad crush on James Franco.  I sort of like the idea of being Mrs. James Franco.  (Oh, who are we kidding?  He’d be Mr. Alafair Burke, but whatevs.)  Now, am I likely ever to meet James Franco?  No.  Would he love me if he met me?  Well, yeah, of course, but he might not want to marry me.  All of those considerations are irrelevant, however, because I want to be married to my husband.  Forever.  Exclusively.  Indubutably.  For reals.  But, ahem, as bride to James Franco. I want what I can’t have.

As I write this, I find myself extremely sad because I am packing a suitcase.  Tomorrow morning, I will board an airplane, and I won’t come home for 14 days, 2 hours, and 11 minutes.  The husband will be joining me for the first five days on Burke-a-pa-looza, an all-Burke vacation up in Canada.  There will be golf, parental units, and nieces and nephews who think I’m the coolest aunt in the world.  I have every confidence that said vacation shall rock.

From there, I will head solo to a hotel room on the west coast, away from the humidity that ruins my summers and my hair, closer to dear friends whom I still miss everyday, and shielded from the many distractions at home that keep me from writing with the intensity I need right now.  I asked for ten days, by myself, in a hotel room, so I could finish my next book before classes start.

I got what I asked for.

But now I’m sad.

Why?  Because fourteen days away from home means fourteen mornings when I won’t wake up to find this face licking mine:

It means fourteen days when I won’t have lunch at my office away from home:

Notice the name of the guest on the check. I’m a regular!

It means fourteen days without my gym, my park, my croissant place, or that amazing collection of health and beauty aids crammed into my medicine cabinet.

It means ten days without my husband.

The thing I want that I can’t have is all the comforts of home, all the familiar rhythms of family, the constant companionship of my closest friends, and all the time and solitude I need to write the best possible book I can.

In this case, I really can’t get what I want.

I just might, however, find I get what I need: a few days with my family, a few dinners with my west coast friends, a hell of a lot of writing time, and a very happy husband and Duffer waiting to greet me and my completed manuscript at home.  Wish me luck!  (I may be a bit quiet while I’m bunkered down.)

So what are the things you want that you CAN’T have?

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There’s no shortage of commentary about good first sentences: examples, why they’re important, how to make them good. I won’t try to add to those lessons.

Instead, I want to talk about the bad first sentences.  No, not sad, pathetic bad.  Funny bad.  Intentionally bad.  Hilariously bad.

"I have had it with these m-f'n' snakes on this m-f'n plane! Everybody strap in! I'm about to open some f'in' windows. "

Turns out there’s an award for worst imaginary first sentences.  Named for the author of Paul Clifford (as in “It was a dark and stormy night”), the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest promises that its www stands for “Wretched Writers Welcome.”  And wretched are the submissions indeed.

In the genre of detective fiction, the winner, from Steve Lynch (San Marcos, CA): “She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad checks, but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so.”

I also enjoyed this “dishonorable mention” for purple prose: “Elaine was a big woman, and in her tiny Smart car, stakeouts were always hard for her, especially in the August sun where the humidity made her massive thighs, under her lightweight cotton dress, stick together like two walruses in heat.” -Derek Renfro (Ringgold, GA).

Like these guys

And the overall winner, from writer Molly Ringle: “For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”

Pretty good (meaning bad) stuff, right?  But as atrocious as those first sentences are, I suspect we can reach even higher (lower?) levels of literary abomination.

I’ll get this party started.

The first sentence of my next novel (NOT!):  “Harlow felt oddly detached from the sight of her own fat, rumbling inside the lipo hose like tapioca and cherry slurpee, as she wondered if her newly flat abdomen might bring Trevor back home.”

Can’t wait to see what y’all come up with.  Go for it!

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As its title indicates, Entertainment Weekly concerns itself with entertainment generally: movies, television, music, the interwebs, theater, and, yep, books.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the bulk of their hundred greatest characters were known from movies and TV.  Omar Little, Cosmo Kramer, Buffy Summers, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, Homer Simpson.  Hard to argue with most of the choices.

Omar Little

The list did acknowledge a few literary characters, but most of those were discussed in terms of their dual identities, existing both on the page and in film, such as Dexter Morgan, Bridget Jones, and Harry Potter.

But as I perused the article, I was struck by how many of the TV and movie characters actually originated in novels and short stories.  My first instinct was critical.  Why, I asked, did the magazine make only brief mention of the original works while reserving celebration for the filmed or televised version of the character?  Why didn’t EW discuss both the literary and films versions, as the article did, for example, with Bridget Jones?

I realized, however, that as much as we readers like to say that adaptations “destroy” our favorite books, sometimes actors, directors, and screenwriters create something entirely new from literary inspiration, or at least sufficiently unique to take on new life.  When I think of Red from the Shawshank Redemption and Annie Wilkes from Misery (who both made the list), I think of Morgan Freeman and Kathy Bates, not the works of Stephen King in which they first appeared.

I confess that I had forgotten that some of my favorite characters had literary predecessors.  I can’t imagine Tracy Flick, for example, apart from Reese Witherspoon’s interpretation of her.

Forrest Gump, in my mind, looks and sounds forever like Tom Hanks.

And, with all due respect to Candace Bushnell, when most of us hear Carrie Bradshaw, we think (for better or worse) of TV Carrie, not book Carrie.

Better

Way Worse

Some adaptations stray so far from their source material as to be unrecognizable.  I’m told, for example, that the novel upon which Up in the Air was based did not have either of the two female characters who taught George Clooney so much about life.  Many people did not realize that the film O Brother, Where Art Though? was based on Homer’s Odyssey until the Academy nominated the screenplay for best adaptation.  In our own genre, I can’t be the only Michael Connelly reader who was, shall we say, surprised at filmmaker Clint Eastwood’s take on the character Buddy.

Two questions for discussion, one with subparts:

1) Who are your favorite literary characters of the last twenty years?

2) And which translations of literary characters to TV or film have been most horrific, accurate, or even improvements on the originals?

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We are going to raffle off signed copies of JLB’s upcoming THE GLASS RAINBOW and Alafair’s 212. Entering is easy. Just visit their joint Facebook page and post your favorite quote from any James Lee Burke or Alafair Burke novel. We will randomly choose 5 lucky winners to receive signed copies of both 212 and THE GLASS RAINBOW.

Advance praise for The Glass Rainbow: “…Burke kicks into another gear: superb suspense leading to a gripping, set-piece finale that is a masterpiece of texture and mood,
with the high energy climax in the foreground both contrasted against and supported by the intensely lyrical, heavily melancholic prose that swells and recedes underneath the action. Not to be missed by any follower of the landmark series.” —Booklist starred review

Praise for 212: “White-knuckle thriller. . . . Burke expertly weaves real-life headlines into her plot-particularly the Craig’s List Killer and the  slew of recent political scandals-without ever sacrificing  originality.” – Publishers Weekly

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Turns out they might both be as dangerous as we crime junkies first suspected.

Joran Van der Sloot, you’ll recall, was one of the initial suspects in the disappearance and presumed murder of Natalee Holloway, an American high school student who went missing after leaving an Aruba hangout with Van der Sloot and his pals.  Although the men insisted they dropped Natalee off at her hotel, they were arrested multiple times as part of the investigation.  And although they were never charged, a Dutch journalist captured Van der Sloot on film in 2008 claiming that he had Natalee’s body dumped at sea after she collapsed on the beach.  That evidence was deemed insufficient to justify another detention.  Still later, the same journalist unearthed footage of Van der Sloot, then still only 21 years old, boasting of his involvement in sex trafficking.  The family’s lawyer wrote it off as fanciful talk.  Van der Sloot also told Greta van Susteren, only to recant his statement later, that he sold Natalee into slavery.

John Mark Karr’s previous appearance in the headlines was shorter lived than Joran’s, but no less freaky.  He shocked the world four years ago when he falsely confessed to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.  The only thing the public could understand less than a child’s murder was a voluntary confession to one that the person didn’t actually commit. And the public learned more about Karr than the fact of his confession: his seeming obsession with access to grade schools and day cares, his two prior marriages to thirteen and sixteen year old girls, a prior arrest for child pornography, and his time spent in Thailand, with ready access to young girls in the sex trade.  But then the police debunked Karr’s confession and he, like Van der Sloot, faded from public — and apparently police — view.

Some will question why we ever obsessed over these cases in the first place.  The questioners raise a valid point.  The sad truth is that JonBenet and Natalee are only two among a sea of murder victims whose cases have never been solved.  The fact that they were both blonde, female, and attractive from white, upper-middle-class families is no doubt part (or all) of the answer.

But a separate question is why, once we decided to care about these cases, we ever stopped obsessing over Joran Van der Sloot and John Mark Karr.

Back at the D.A.’s Office, I’d hear cops say they just knew someone was up to no good.  With certain suspects, we’d joke (sorry, folks) that if the defendant didn’t do what we charged him with, he was certainly guilty of something.  The assumption was that our super-honed spidey senses could determine when someone was a dangerous recidivist.

Of course, the empirical research suggests otherwise.  Turns out human beings, even experts, are horribly inaccurate at predicting future dangerousness.  Regardless, we continue to allow testimony about such predictions in court, allowing it to affect, for example, continued detention of sexual predators after they have served their sentences, parole determinations, and the life and death decisions of jurors in capital cases.

Part of the reason we probably continue to allow such evidence into court is because, despite the empirical data, we just cannot set aside our intuitive instinct that sometimes you just know.  And guys like John Mark Karr and Joran Van der Sloot reinforce those intuitions.

Van der Sloot was arrested last week on suspicion of murdering another young woman in Peru, exactly five years to the day that Natalee Holloway was last seen in his presence. Karr finds himself at the center of an investigation into bizarre allegations that he was attempting to start a “sex cult” of young girls resembling JonBenet.  The cult was to be called The Invincibles.

The allegations, by the way, come from Karr’s former sixteen-year-old fiance, whom he met while serving as a teacher’s aide in her fourth grade class.  The former fiance also claims that Karr has been living as a woman under the name Alexis Reich to obtain greater access to young girls.  (Note to self: Has someone already used the gender-transition-but-only-to-be-a-mommy-to-little-girls twist for a book?  Because that’s some deliciously wicked stuff if contained to the fictional world.)

New York Magazine recently observed, with the requisite snark, that the “resurgence of these two scary clowns makes us feel like it’s 2006 all over again.”  The same article also asked more provocatively whether our initial obsession with the men is what made them reoffend, as if we created “the same kind of invincible-feeling, serial attention-seekers that we do with reality stars who continue to appear on show after show and perform stunt after stunt. Were you the best character in your last murder investigation? People are going to love you in this new one! But you’re really going to have to step up your game this time around.”

The notion that serial predators act out for further attention isn’t lost on me.  See, e.g., the Wichita police department’s reason for not immediately reporting the existence of the attention-starved BTK.  But given that neither Van der Sloot nor Karr seemed eager to have their latest deeds known, the magazine’s concerns seem misplaced.

Instead, I’m left wondering how many other nutjobs are wandering around as law enforcement waits for the inevitable phone call.  I just had the pleasure of reading Michael Connelly’s forthcoming book, The Reversal.  I don’t think I’ll spoil too much by saying that the book involves a suspected murderer who is released pending re-trial after his conviction is reversed.  The LAPD assigns an entire team to watch the defendant, knowing he’ll eventually cross a line that will get his release revoked.

But a suspect under a court’s jurisdiction can have limited rights, and a trial has a natural end date.  In most cases, law enforcement can’t track the folks who set their spider senses atingle, either because of concerns about harassment complaints, a lack of resources, or both.  They eventually let the suspect go, despite the bad feeling in their stomachs, and move on to the next case.  Until five years later, when he kills a woman in Peru.  Or four years later, when one of his young girlfriends realizes he’s a monster and runs to the police for protection.  Or never, because the spidey senses were wrong, or because the suspect never reoffended, or because he never got caught.

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Reading: Finished Michael Connelly’s The Reversal; back onto Lee Child’s 61 Hours (I’m a happy reader!)

Watching: Get Him to the Greek; The Good Wife

Listening to: Psychedelic Furs

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Perhaps because I’m typing this as a crazy-ass homeless dude in a multi-colored wig and butterfly-patterned skirt harangues me about the carry-out lunch that awaits my attention on the bench next to me,* I’ve decided that dog watching is a safer park habit than people watching.** But it’s nearly as interesting.

No day in Washington Square would be complete without the dogs. The big ones. Little ones. Happy ones. Neurotic ones.

And my afternoon of dog watching got me thinking about my relationships with pets. As some of you know, I have a special relationship with my French Bulldog, The Duffer. My tremendous respect for him is reflected even in his name. I wanted to call him Stacy Keach. My reasons should be self-evident.

Stacy Keach and the Duffer (which is which?)

My  husband, however, was perplexed by the choice. “People will think a dog called Stacy is a girl.”

Um… so?  And, more importantly, we would not call him Stacy.  We would call him Stacy Keach. Every single time. Because that would be his name.  My husband put his foot down, but that didn’t mean I was going to cave for some stupid dog name. No Fidos or Fluffies here. But Duffer? Yeah, that might work. But only he had to be THE Duffer. All regal and stuff.

The Duffer’s my first dog, and I have to admit I’m still surprised by the love, affection, and empathy I have for my little friend — and which, yes, I believe he has for me. I truly believe he has moods and feelings and expressions that leap from that one-of-a-kind mug of his. I talk to him constantly and imagine what he would say back to me if only he could.

Does this make me insane? Maybe. Or more optimistically, maybe my internal (and sometimes external) running dialogue with the Duff is just a sign of my overactive imagination. Or it could be a recognition that animals, although lacking our ability for language, opposable thumbs, and fire making, have attributes that we chalk up to feelings and emotions in humans, but to our own imaginations in our pets.

I mean, is it not obvious that the dog in this photograph

was in a different mood, and yet the very same silly beast at his core, as in this video? (Warning: NSFW)

Dogs are not alone in their unique personalities. My agent and his wife recently welcomed two new kittens into their home. One is named Ellie Hatcher, and her brother is called Mickey Haller. In light of her namesake (my series protagonist NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher), I was rooting for Ellie to be one playful yet take-charge, bad-ass mo-fo of a cat. But guess what? It’s her twin brother Mickey (named for Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller) who’s the rapscallion. If he were a human being, he’d wear overalls, carrying a peanut butter sandwich in one pocket, a slingshot in the other. Mickey’s the feline equivalent of Dennis the Menace.

Ellie? She’s earnest. Tentative. Watchful. The kind of girl who’d tell on herself if she ever broke the rules. Sigh.

I’m not the only writer with pets on her mind these days. The wonderful Laura Lippman recently blogged about once helping out Reba, “a hang-dog dog, shy and mopy.”  (She’s following it up with a contest. Just post a memory about your favorite pet or pet name, and be entered for an advanced copy of her eagerly anticipated novel, I’d Know You Anywhere.)

Perhaps because we recognize that our pets have personalities, it’s no surprise that writers have looked to pets for fictional characters.  It’s fashionable these days to diss cozy mysteries where cats solve crimes, but some pretty damn good books occasionally make room for the non-human animals.  (Have you read Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain? The entire novel is narrated by a dog, and it’s actually good.  I kid you not.)

Sometimes the addition of a pet tells the reader something about its person.  Leave it to Stephanie Plum to find a best friend in Rex the hamster.  Readers also become attached to literary pets in their own right.  I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been asked whether James Lee Burke’s daughter actually owned a three-legged racoon named Tripod.  (The answer, for the record, is no.)

I like to think I’ve created a true character in Vinnie, French bulldog pal to Samantha Kincaid.  I conjured Vinnie well before I was a dog owner myself. He’s a little lazy, likes his people, and makes loud, fast snorting noises like an old fat man when he eats. He’d sound like Buddy Hackett if he could talk.  And he finds endearing but frustrating ways of expressing his displeasure when Portland cop Chuck Forbes moves in.  (I’m not alone in my frenchie obsession.  The Kellerman family has a beautiful dog named Hugo, and Jonathon Kellerman’s Alex Deleware has a frenchie as well.)

Who are your favorite literary non-human animals?  What do they add to their books, either vis-a-vis the human characters or in their own right?  Which pets do you wish could talk, and what would they sound like and say?

*A further aside about the aforementioned homeless guy.  He wanted to know what I was going to use to eat my lunch.  “A fork,” I said.  His response?  “Well go fork yourself!”  Jesus, I love this city.

** In addition to dog-watching, I also got in some simultaneous people-walking. Random things that have happened at the park while I’ve been typing: A three-year-old banged his drumsticks on the bench next to me; two hand-to-hand drug deals (that I noticed, at least, though I haven’t been going out of my way to look for them); an orange-haired Asian kid nearly knocked a mohawk dude over with his hoola-hoop; and the little girl on the Razor scooter proudly declared, “I’m super really stinky.”  I swear, I’m not making this stuff up.  Today’s officially a great day.

Watching: Modern Family

Listening To: Sade

Reading: Lee Child’s 61 Hours

Surfing: LOST re-enacted by cats (you’re welcome)

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