CCLaP Weekender: June 27, 2014

CCLaP Weekender

From the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

June 27, 2014

Justin Kramon: The CCLaP Interview Photography by Alessando Passerini Chicago literary events calendar June 27, 2014 | 1

THIS WEEK’S CHICAG

For all events, visit [cclapce FRIDAY, JUNE 27

6pm Daniel Levine

Seminary Co-op Bookstore / 5751 S. Woodlawn / Free semcoop.com The author reads from his new novel Hyde, a modern update of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic.

7pm Oleg Kazantsev

The Book Cellar / 4736 N. Lincoln / Free bookcellarinc.com The author discusses his recent inclusion in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 30.

7pm Glitter!

Uncharted Books / 2630 N. Milwaukee / Free unchartedbooks.com Celebrate the eve of this weekend's Printers Ball with this reading

by Laura Relyea, Marvin Tate, Cassandra Troyan, M. Shelly Conner, Peter Jurmu and James Tadd Adcox.

7pm

Noir Night Women & Children First / 5233 N. Clark / Free womenandchildrenfirst.com Celebrate a night of noir anthologies (from Akashic, Curbside Splendor, and the Asian American Journalists Association), featuring readings by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Joe Meno, Ben Tanzer, and Richard Thomas. Featuring free drinks from Tiger Beer.

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GO LITERARY EVENTS

enter.com/chicagocalendar] SATURDAY, JUNE 28

2pm Richard N. Cote

Edgewater Public Library / 1210 W. Elmdale / Free chipublib.org The nonfiction author discusses his entire career via Skype conversation.

3pm Kathryn Atwood

Centuries & Sleuths / 7419 Madison, Forest Park / Free centuriesandsleuths.com The author discusses her newest book, Women Heroes of World War One. 4pm Zine-Making Workshop

Quimby's Bookstore / 1854 W. North / Free quimbys.com As part of the annual "Learnapalooza" day of free workshops across the city, Quimby's presents a zine-making seminar led by artist Edie Fake.

5pm Kam Oi Lee

Bucket o' Blood / 2307 N. Milwaukee / Free bucketoblood.com The author reads from her newest work.

June 27, 2014 | 3

6pm Printers Ball

Hubbard Street Lofts / 1821 W. Hubbard / Free spudnikpress.org The massive city-wide literary celebration celebrates its tenth anniversary. Featuring dozens of readings, signings, workshops, seminars and more, along with thousands of free books being handed out by dozens of local small presses. Being held all evening until 11pm.

6pm Daniel Levine

57th Street Books / 1301 E. 57th / Free semcoop.com The author reads from his new novel Hyde, a modern update of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic.

10pm Open Mic

Delphic Arts Center / 5340 W. Lawrence / $10 facebook.com/delphicarts The arts center holds their monthly open mic for poetry, comedy, monologues and more.

SUNDAY, JUNE 29 1:30pm Equanimity: Writing and Exile

Victory Gardens / 2433 N. Lincoln guildcomplex.org Join the Guild Complex's John Rich for a dialogue with local writers concerning exile and political activism in their works.

3pm Jonathan Lethem

Logan Square Auditorium / 2539 N. Kedzie / $5 citylitbooks.com The author discusses his newest book, Dissident Gardens, in a conversation with the Chicago Tribune's Jennifer Day. Presented by City Lit Books.

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7pm Sunday Salon Chicago

Black Rock / 3614 N. Damen / Free sundaysalon.com This month's show features Arnie Bernstein, Tessa Mellas, Kate Milliken, and Ben Tanzer.

7pm Asylum

Le Fleur de Lis / 301 E. 43rd / $10

lefleurdelischicago.com Poetry and other literary performances, with live band accompaniment by Verzatile.

7pm Uptown Poetry Slam

The Green Mill / 4802 N. Broadway / $7, 21+ slampapi.com International birthplace of the poetry slam. Hosted by Marc Smith.

MONDAY, JUNE 30 7pm Laydeez Do Comics

The Book Cellar / 4736 N. Lincoln / Free bookcellarinc.com This month's showcase of female comic-book artists features Cathy Hannah and M.K. Czerwiec.

8:30pm Open Mic

Kafein Espresso Bar / 1621 Chicago Ave., Evanston kafeincoffee.com Open mic with hosts chris and Kirill.

TUESDAY, JULY 1 7pm Wit Rabbit Reading Series

Quenchers Saloon / 2401 N. Western / Free, 21+ witrabbitreads.com This month's show features Hannah Brooks-Motl, Adam Fell, Lesley Jenike, Jennifer Perrine, and Snezana Zabic.

June 27, 2014 | 5

7pm Write Now!

Cafe Lutz / 2458 W. Montrose / Free facebook.com/WriteNowStorytellingOpenMic An open mic for comedians and live-lit storytellers, hosted by Danny Black and Anne Victoria LaMonte.

7:30pm Tuesday Funk

Hopleaf / 5148 N. Clark / Free, 21+ tuesdayfunk.org This month's performers include Lisa Kirchner and others.

7:30pm Homolatte

Tweet Let's Eat / 5020 N. Sheridan / Free homolatte.com This month's show features Lexington Lee Lawson and Blue Redder.

Hosted by Scott Free. Enter through Big Chicks at the same address.

9pm

Two Cookie Minimum Hungry Brain / 2319 W. Belmont / Free, 21+ Facebook (search on "Two Cookie Minimum") Stories and cookies, both for free, the latter vegan as well. Hosted by John Wawrzaszek, a.k.a. Johnny Misfit.

7pm PAMELA

The Hideout / 1354 W. Wabansia / $5, 21+ hideoutchicago.com This month the feminist reading series features Bela Shayevich, Jenny Inzerillo, Dan Gleason, and Cassandra Troyen.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2 7pm

Reading Under the Influence Sheffield's / 3258 N. Sheffield / $3, 21+ readingundertheinfluence.com This month's show, "Left To My Own Devices," features Natasha Samreny, Daniel Story, Peter Jurmu, and Cris Mazza. Reading starts at 7:30; doors open at 7:00, and those wishing seats are highly encouraged to arrive early.

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7pm Damien Echols and Lorri Davis

City Lit Books / 2523 N. Kedzie / Free citylitbooks.com The authors discuss their new book, Yours For Eternity: A Love Story on Death Row, in conversation with journalist Selena Fragassi.

7pm The Cafe Gallery Open Mic

The Gallery Cabaret / 2020 N. Oakley / Free chaoticarts.org/thecafe A monthly open mic in which performers in all media have five minutes apiece.

9pm In One Ear

Heartland Cafe / 7000 N. Glenwood / $3, 18+ facebook.com/pages/In-One-Ear Chicago's 3rd longest-running open-mic show, hosted by Pete Wolf and Billy Tuggle.

THURSDAY, JULY 3 7pm Animated

CHI-PRC / 858 N. Ashland / $3 chiprc.org The local arts group celebrates its anniversary with this screening of local animators, including Jay Meyers and Chris Kerr, Pup House, Jenna Caravello, Simon Allen, and Susie Kirkwood and Rachal Duggan. BYOB. 7:30pm Story Club Northside

Holiday Club / 4000 N. Sheridan / $10, 21+ storyclubchicago.com This month's show features Rob Ruiz, Tori Telfer, and Ray Teresi.

To submit your own literary event, or to correct the information on anything you see here, please drop us a line at cclapcenter@gmail.com.

June 27, 2014 | 7

The last time Philadelphia author Justin Kramon spoke with CCLaP several years ago, it was to promote his literary novel Finny, a witty contemporary take on the Dickensian coming-of-age tale. But now the award-winning Iowa Writers Workshop graduate is out with The Preservationist, a traditional contemporary crime novel of all things. Back in April, CCLaP executive director Jason Pettus had a chance to talk with Kramon for the center’s podcast, about what took him in this new direction, the importance of book clubs to his career, and the pleasures of rediscovering Stephen King in adulthood and after an MFA. The Weekender is proud to present a typed version of this talk today.

JUSTIN K 8 | CCLaP Weekender

KRAMON THE CCLAP INTERVIEW June 27, 2014 | 9

CCLaP: Let’s start our talk today by picking up where we left off last time.

Let’s talk about Finny a little bit. How did everything end up going when all is said and done? We had talked to you about a year after the book had come out. When it comes to a contemporary novel, is there a shelf life to that? Or can you just keep going out and promoting a book like that, over and over until you have something new?

Justin Kramon: Those are good questions, and I think it works differently with different books, depending on what you’re doing. I think the thing with readings and other publicity events is that those can have a cycle to them, at least as I’ve seen. There are books, obviously, that break out of that cycle for whatever reason. For me, I did a lot of book club visits, and I think one of the things that helped with Finny was that it was popular with book clubs, so that helped extend [the life of the book] in a different way. I did some readings, you know, a year out from when the book was publishing, but I did a lot of going to book clubs, and it seemed to be a thing where book clubs were recommending it to other book clubs. I think that kept it going in a different way. So it wasn’t like there were any new reviews of the book coming out a year later, but [the clubs] kept it going in a nice way. Could that go on indefinitely? I don’t know. I imagine people would get sick of me at a certain point [laughter], but it did keep it going longer than normal, and that’s one of the reasons I’m embarking on such a large tour for the second [book].

As a working author, do you find it hard to find a balance between going out and promoting what already exists and trying to get something new done and out there?

Yeah, that’s the whole trick. Or, there’s two tricks: one is how you get the time; then once you have the time, what do you do with it? I think those are the things writers are constantly trying to figure out. It took me awhile with that second question—when you have an extra day to just write, how do you organize that day? That was a big trick for me. Most writers seem to come from this having a job or going to school, and you’re just not writing when you’re doing those things. Those are big practical hurdles, I think. The way it’s worked out for me is that I have this phase where I’m just in this room by myself writing, and my life is pretty limited, which is fine. My wife and I go about our routines, and I’m just spending my day by myself in this sort of mental institution [laughter], and then there’s a phase after the book comes out where I’m really trying to go out into the world. It’s a struggle for me, especially when I’m working on something new; I don’t always want to give up that time, of just being alone with my characters and the book. But I’ve just had to get used to it, and get used to [the fact] that this is how it works. I don’t know if it’s always worked like that for writers, but that’s how it works for me.

And if things go well enough with the going out and talking about the book, hopefully I’ll have a chance to go back in and write another one.

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The last time we talked, we went into detail about your past and what brings you to where you are now, so today we’re going to mostly talk about the new book, The Preservationist. Let’s start with this question, and I have to admit that I cheated a little and actually know the answer already, through online research. But tell us a little more about what took you from this literary background that you have, and doing literary fiction, to suddenly writing a genre tale, a crime thriller?

I think that’s something that a lot of readers of the first book have wondered.

It’s a funny thing when you write a thriller, both [from my aspect] of coming from the Iowa Writers Workshop and from the aspect that the first book wasn’t a genre thriller, and of course I was writing these literary short stories before that. I think each thing has been a surprise for the audience who read the previous thing—and of course that audience was small for the short stories, then a little bigger for the first book, and now hopefully a little bigger with this one—but I think one thing for me is that I just enjoy when a new world opens up for me in terms of what I’m reading and writing. I hadn’t read that many thrillers, quite honestly, before I started working on this book. And it’s a funny thing, because I go around now with this thriller—and I’ll be going to a bunch of the crime conventions this summer for the first time—and I think a lot of people just assume that that’s what you do. “Oh, you’re a thriller writer,” or “Oh, you rewrite Dickens books” with the first novel.

Yeah, you can see that a lot with the readers of this book, when they talk about it online at places like Goodreads and Amazon. A lot of them are like, “Oh, I liked this one; I can’t wait to go back and read his first thriller!”

Right, and be totally disappointed that no one gets killed [laughter]. Yeah, going and talking to these groups, I do get some of that thing that you’re talking about. For me, one of the things was that I had this period after the first book, and for different reasons that might have had to do with things in my own life, or just aspects of what I was enjoying reading, I kind of hit a wall with the reading I was doing. I had always quite enjoyed what you might call “literary fiction,” a term I don’t love but I’ll use for lack of a better one. I had also enjoyed what people might call “domestic fiction,” I guess, but just in general books about families, about relationships, character-driven books.

And I kind of hit a wall with that stuff, perhaps for different personal reasons, and I found myself in a period where...I think maybe a lot of people have had this experience, where you know something is good but it’s like you’re seeing it from a distance, and there’s a sort of flatness to it. I just couldn’t get that closeness and liveliness I used to be able to get from this kind of work, and I found myself reading these books that I knew were good but that I just couldn’t seem to derive any pleasure out of reading. So I was going around and talking about Finny, and on one of these trips I ended up randomly picking up Misery

by Stephen King, one of I guess his most straightforward novels, and I just June 27, 2014 | 11

reallly enjoyed the process of reading it. I found that page-turning sensation, of just riding the book, to be really pleasurable.

Was that your first Stephen King novel?

No, I had read him when I was a kid, but I literally hadn’t read him since I had been ten or twelve. I read a bunch of his books really quickly back then, like I think a lot of people do when they first discover him. So I picked him back up and just really enjoyed that experience of wanting to see what’s going to happen next. And I found that I was able to enjoy it in a way where you’re not thinking about every sentence, not thinking about every construction of every character and every line of dialogue. So I ended up moving on to other suspense novels from there, and it sort of brought back that childlike excitement that I think brings a lot of people to reading. So that’s really what started it for me, and then I started looking at some of the classic titles in the genre, and some of the books I guess people might call “literary thrillers.”

People like Patricia Highsmith, The Collector by John Fowles. A lot of times these might have even been literary writers taking a detour into thrillers, in a way that I found really compelling. For me, a lot of times, reading in a certain genre is what opens up a path to me in terms of what I want to write, and that’s what happened with this one too. I just wanted to do something really different than Finny, and I wanted to do something reflective of the things I was reading and thinking and feeling at the time. One of the things I love about thrillers is that they open up possibilities to look at characters that are harder to do in other types of writing. There’s this character in the new book that I had found really difficult to approach in other stories I had done.

Writing this dark, psychological thing just felt like a door that opened up for me.

This relates to a question I was going to ask you a little later, but let me bring it up here. You’ve talked before in other interviews about the importance to you with this book in writing all characters who have deep flaws. Is this what you’re talking about, a new dimension of characterization you can do in a thriller or noir that you’ve found more difficult to do in literary fiction?

Well, like I said, I don’t really like that term “literary fiction...”

Yeah, it’s a complicated subject, isn’t it, when we talk about literature that fits into a very specific type of genre versus literature that doesn’t, that just falls into this really general catch-all phrase of “literary fiction.”

Well, I wanted this book to fit in as a thriller, and in the genre; but there are also lots of thrillers that I consider very literary, whatever that means. I love a lot of Stephen King’s books. I love a lot of Patricia Highsmith’s books. And what happens is that, when you start talking about a book after you write it, 12 | CCLaP Weekender

and there are these interviews and things, you have to start throwing up these walls about genre. But when I’m writing and reading, I really try not to think about any of that stuff. So anyway, that part aside, I think your first question was about what types of characters you can explore in thrillers, these deeply flawed characters.

Right, very dark characters, and even heroes who have this really dark, flawed side to them.

I don’t think I consider the protagonist of my book a “hero” in the traditional sense, but the answer to your question is yes. Even when I was writing Finny, the idea of a novel is that you’re supposed to have a hero. That’s what I thought. You had someone likeable, someone the reader might want to have dinner with, who you want to hang out with and who you hope things go well for. Or even just someone trying to deal with something difficult, and maybe trying to figure out what the right thing is to do. Someone who is setting an example in a way, or is grappling with something that a lot of people grapple with. You’re sort of identifying with them. But many of these thrillers—and this is why I mention Patricia Highsmith, and especially The Talented Mr. Ripley—are told from the point of view of murderers, someone you don’t like, someone you don’t want to spend time with. [Laughter] Or, you know, maybe you’d like to have a dinner with, but certainly not any longer than that. And it let me consider the idea that you don’t have to have likeable people in the center of your stories. That it’s not a necessity for a compelling narrative. And that’s the thing with this book, that I wanted to take people who are limited in certain ways. One of the things that comes up in this book is that they’ve all suffered kinds of losses, and have these dysfunctional ways of dealing with these losses. And it’s dramatized, and I don’t go into too much depth with this stuff, but I wanted to touch on these parts of the human experience and show these people who have dysfuctional but hopefully interesting ways of dealing with this loss, which is a different way than I had approached fiction before.

Not that one or the other is right or wrong; I don’t know if fiction really requires you to do one or the other.

Well, putting aside the conversation about various genres versus non-genres, I think we can definitely say that the specific genre of crime comes with certain expectations and things that you maybe have not dealt with before as a writer. I wanted to bring up a couple of these things and talk about, as someone from your position, who has already done a lot of writing, how difficult or easy it was to add these new things. For example, definitely a hallmark of crime fiction are very solid, convoluted plots. You really have to have your three-act structure down in this really solid way. Was that a big challenge for you, coming up with this interesting, twist-filled plot?

Right, as you say, the two biggest challenges with this book was, A, the plot, June 27, 2014 | 13

and B, pacing the various revelations about the characters.

Oh, well, that was the other thing I wanted to talk about, so let’s talk about both of these at once. Keeping of course this interview spoiler-free, let’s admit that there’s a lot of surprises in this book, and a lot of directions this book goes that are unexpected for the reader.

And those two things are tied together, I think. Both of those aspects were for me the biggest challenges. So I tried to read as much as I could in the genre so I could be faithful to these things, and so I could provide the kinds of thrills that a thriller is supposed to offer [laughter], so that the people who read often in this genre will be satisfied by the story, and hopefully those who don’t often read in that genre, I tried to bring in other things to please them too. So in terms of plot, when it comes to things you’re talking about like surprises and twists, a big thing is just the pacing of information, and that was a thing I really struggled with. There was an approach I sort of came upon, and it’s hard to describe, but even as the book has a three-act structure, overlaid on top of it is what I almost call a two-act structure, where the last half of the book is a much more action-oriented part that relies on a different kind of construction than the first half. There’s an almost kind of whodunit aspect to the first half, where you think you know who done it, but then there’s a revelation that leads you to the second half, where you’re like, “How is this going to play out? Is everyone going to live?” Combining these two structures together was something I learned how to do, to do the book the way I wanted to do it. Plus I had an older, more classic model in mind, that’s maybe a little different from how many thrillers are written now. There’s a more classic kind of Hitchcock structure that I would say I was more trying to go for. But I definitely also tried to read a lot of contemporary work too, so I could offer the kinds of things that contemporary readers are looking for.

And another thing I would think would be a difficult topic to decide what to do with when it comes to these kinds of novels is the issue of modern technology. You chose to embrace it—you’ve got parts of the book that rely on things like cellphones and Google searches—but how difficult was it to bring those things in? Was it tempting to make this a piece of historical fiction so that those inventions simply didn’t exist?

Well, I’m showing you something as we’re talking right now, Jason, that will hopefully enlighten. I’m showing Jason my cellphone, which is a flip phone that probably hasn’t been sold in ten years now. So that’s part of your answer about technology [laughter]. So yes, technology is a struggle both in my writing and in my real life. But it’s tough writing any kind of novel when it comes to these things. My first novel was supposed to draw off a lot of 19th-century conventions, and there are certain things with those books— misunderstandings because of cross-letters is a big one—that you simply can’t 14 | CCLaP Weekender

do in a modern setting. When people get emails instantaneously, you can’t do that old thing of a guy leaving before he gets The Letter. A lot of coincidences and things are removed because of this technology. But you just try to strike a balance. One of the things with my first book is that it was set over the course of twenty years, so you could go back a little bit and not have to deal with modern technology. But with this one, I wanted to write a book that felt very contemporary, but that also drew on these classic thrillers I like. So, like, for the climax, I have one of those classic “cut-off cabin in the middle of the woods” scenes...

That’s why I was asking about this, actually. It seems like so much of what makes crime novels so thrilling Even when I was writing Finny, is the withholding the idea of a novel is that you’re of information, supposed to have a hero. That’s of characters not what I thought. You had someone knowing certain things that we as the readers likeable, someone the reader might do. It seems to me that want to have dinner with, who you it would be difficult want to hang out with and who to plan out a book of you hope things go well for. But that type when you many of these thrillers—and this is have characters who can instantly look up why I mention Patricia Highsmith, things online. and especially The Talented Mr.

Ripley—are told from the point of

Well, and there is some view of murderers, someone you desperate Googling don’t like, someone you don’t want that takes place in my book, and some to spend time with. [Laughter] Or, issues of when people you know, maybe you’d like to have get text messages and a dinner with, but certainly not any things like that. I have longer than that. different characters who have different levels of technology in their lives. Some of them are more Luddites like me, and could get away with having a flip phone in modern society. But, you know, ten years from now everyone will probably just have a data chip in their arm, and you just say into it what you want, make your McDonald’s order then walk down the street and pick it up.

[Laughter] And then there will be no more crime novels!

So it is a big thing. But I don’t know how else to say it besides that you work within the parameters you have. When I decided that it was going to be a June 27, 2014 | 15

contemporary novel for the most part, I then made the decision that I was going to have to include those kinds of scenes. Information is one of the things you bring up, but another important thing with these subjects is simply danger. In the old days you might only have a land line, or not even that, in an isolated cabin or while you’re in a car going somewhere. In those situations, the level of danger is really different than if you just have a cellphone in your pocket and can call the police at any time.

Let’s talk a little about some industry stuff, some business stuff, before we get going. You put this out on a crime imprint—Pegasus Crime, an imprint of W.W. Norton. Was that a deliberate decision on the part of you and I’m assuming the person who is still your agent?

Well, two things. One, yes, I had the same agent for both books, and luckily my agent was happy to go in a new direction with this one. And Pegasus actually publishes a lot of other books as well—the publisher could tell you more about this, but I think their crime wing is fairly new—but essentially what they’re doing is taking all their past crime novels [from their general catalog] and are moving them into this new imprint, and it’s only been a year or two that they’ve been doing this. I may be getting this wrong, but my understanding is that this is how it came about. And as far as your other question, I don’t know if it was a specific decision to publish this at a crime imprint; part of it was simply that my agent pitched it to Pegasus in general, and they were the ones who said, “This would fit really well within our new crime imprint.” I was only on a one-book contract with Finny, so my agent was able to shop the new one around to different places, and Pegasus just really came in really quickly, and everyone there was really nice, so it was an easy decision to go with them.

You may have answered this already, but were there any technical differences to working with a publisher that deals with one specific type of writing?

For example, it was Random House who published Finny, so were there any differences between them and Pegasus about what the publisher wants you to do, the way they want you to work? You mentioned, for example, that you’re hitting a bunch of these crime conventions for the first time this year.

Yeah, the crime-specific promotion of the book is all new to me.

Does that come from the publisher, or is that you seeking out opportunities?

I don’t know a lot about it, so it’s mostly the publisher, especially when it comes to interviews and reviews at certain places. That was a big advantage with going with a crime publisher, in answer to your question, is that they really know how to put out a crime novel. But the process overall is pretty 16 | CCLaP Weekender

similar. The editorial process with this one was really smooth, but one of the big differences between this one and Finny was that my editor and I went over plot stuff a lot more.

Getting the beats right.

Exactly.

And let’s talk about just one more thing, which is what we touched on at the beginning of our talk—these book clubs that you’re going out and hitting. A lot of them, and they seem to be doing really well for you. In fact, we were talking before our interview and you were saying that your default actions when it comes to promoting the book is less about social media— you don’t really have too big a presence at Facebook or Twitter—and much more of your energy and efforts go into these book club appearances. Why is that?

Well, one thing is because of that phone I showed you [laughter].

Yeah, no running Facebook on that thing!

I do some of that stuff; I maintain a Facebook page, for example. But for whatever reason, one of the places where Finny really caught on was at the book clubs. You find these book club notices at bookstores, and lists of book clubs online, and it all just sort of grew from there. So in some ways it was just something that happened. And also, given all your options, I’m simply not a big technological person, and I spend a lot of my life locked in a room by myself writing, so it’s nice to go out and talk with people face-to-face and see what they think of the book. I like doing live events, and I like talking to my readers. I’ve met a lot of interesting people that way. And with writing, you don’t get that sense of how readers are reacting to the book, even after it’s come out. So that’s a nice thing about the book clubs too, is that you get to learn how people are reacting to it. So this was something I was able to bring to Pegasus, and they were the ones who came up with this gimmick of me visiting a hundred book clubs in one year.

What’s that like from a logistical standpoint? I’m assuming that a lot of these book clubs are out in the far suburbs. How do you get out to these?

Do you rent a car? Who pays for that?

There are several types of ways to go about this. The [hundred book club] contest, for example, was all made up of clubs that were fairly easy for me to access, by driving from either Philadelphia where I live or from big cities where I already had events set up. And then what also happened was that there are clubs that had read Finny and wanted me to visit again, so that was June 27, 2014 | 17

something I tacked on to these trips out. Logistically? Yeah, it’s a little difficult for me to visit ones that are far away from major cities; but if a book club is within 90 miles of a major city, it’s usually possible. There’s a lot of stuff I do between DC and New York, since I live in Philadelphia that’s between them; and then I’ll go on some of these trips like this one to Chicago, or last week to North Carolina, where I’ll have a central location and will rent a car for a week, and each day I’ll take a couple of trips out and then return to my central location at the end of the day. All of the groups I’m visiting in Chicago this week, for example, are a half-hour away at most.

Is it your publisher and their marketing department that are setting these things up, or is it literally book clubs themselves who are contacting you out of the blue?

Well, there were a hundred that won the contest.

So that was a specific thing your publisher set up and ran, where they sent out information to any book club that would listen and said, “Look, we’re picking a hundred book clubs to do this with.”

Yeah, and it was done as well through Book Reporter, who regularly help set up these kinds of promotions, and do a wonderful job with it. And then there’s just a little bit of interaction directly between me and the club—“What time do you want to meet up?,” stuff like that. But by the time it’s narrowed down to the people I’m actually going to meet up with, the logistics have generally been set up.

And just one more question, which is yet something else we touched on before. And I hope this doesn’t come across as too critical, because I’m a genre fan myself—science-fiction in my case—but genre fans can be very fickle sometimes. It’s easier to get them interested in a book they’ve never heard of than perhaps a non-genre fan, but they’re looking for very specific stuff in that book and can be very critical if the stuff in that genre they like is not delivered in that book in the way they want. What has your experience been like with readers who have come to your book as existing heavy crime fans, versus when you were out and hitting the book clubs with Finny and people didn’t necessarily have a pre-conceived notion of what the book was going to be about?

Since I visit a lot of different book clubs, a lot of them will read a bunch of different types of things, and not just crime novels. So I think we’ll see what happens when I start going to these crime conventions later this year. But I think—and I may be setting myself up for a fall here [laughter]—I’ve found the community to be very welcoming in this really nice way. I’ve had the pleasure of getting introduced to a lot of writers in the genre and just learning 18 | CCLaP Weekender

a lot about the genre. I think I come to these experiences as someone who is trying to learn, who is excited to learn. The thing with me and writing anything is that a lot of the excitement is merely in discovery. I try to do the best I can with it. I try to put out something that I hope will be entertaining to a lot of different types of readers. And I try to explain to people why I did things the way I did, but obviously there’s a lot of subjectivity when it comes to books and what people think and why they think that. And I think that’s a great thing. I think that’s why books are the most exciting thing. There are so many open spaces with books. It’s a medium that doesn’t engage your senses directly. There’s no visual component besides words. There are no sounds.

There’s nothing you can touch. It’s all your imagination. And every reader’s imagination works a little differently from everyone else. Hopefully if a book is done right, it’s a very clear window into a world that everyone who steps up to it sees a little bit differently. That’s not something that bothers me. So to hear from someone who might actually be more well-read in the thriller genre than I am is really interesting and valuable to me, and is a big reason why I’ve chosen this strange antisocial lifestyle. C

Justin Kramon’s newest novel, The Preservationist, is available at bookstores everywhere. Find him online at justinkramon.com.

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CCLaP Publishing

An official painter for the Lithuanian Communist Party, Martynas Kudirka enjoys a pleasant, unremarkable life with a beautiful wife and all the privileges that come with being a party member. Yet in the summer of 1989, his ordinary world suddenly turns upside down. Political revolt is breaking out across Eastern Europe, and Martynas comes home to find his wife dead on the kitchen floor with a knife in her back. Realizing the police will not investigate, he sets out to find his wife’s killer. Instead, he stumbles upon her secret life. Martynas finds himself drawn into the middle of an independence movement, on a quest to find confidential documents that could free a nation. Cold War betrayals echo down through the years as author Bronwyn Mauldin takes the reader along a modern-day path of discovery to find out Martynas’ true identity. Fans of historical fiction will travel back in time to 1989, the Baltic Way protest and Lithuania’s “singing revolution,” experiencing a nation’s determination for freedom and how far they would fight to regain it.

Download for free at cclapcenter.com/lovesongs

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Alessandro Passerini

PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE Originally run February 2014 June 27, 2014 | 21

Location: Emilia - Romagna - Abruzzo, Italy Born in Ferrara (Italy) in 1975, Alessandro Passerini is a photographer for Art+Commerce/ VOGUE and has been active in the visual arts for more than twenty years. He is the founder of the Collective TM15, which organizes solo and group art expositions; and is the art director for t the Italian Prize for Painting and Photography “B. Cascella” and the Italian Award for Contemporary art, “P. Occhi.”

Since 2007 Alessandro has been one of the artists promoted and sold by the Saatchi Gallery in London. Since 2012 he has been part of the PhotoVogue photographers project for VOGUE Italia, and in 2013 his photos were published by National Geographic in the Your Shots project.

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What do the mountains mean to you?

I’ve been a soldier, rifleman, and assault and platoon commander in the Italian special corps: Alpini, mountain troops.

The training was harder than you can imagine.

However, as we climbed in sun, frost, and storms, never taking the same path, I witnessed spectacles of nature: the peaks of the Alps become pink and “talk” during the night, when the wind passed over them; the largest herd of deer in the Alps, who often came down the mountains with us at arm’s length; wolves and foxes in the snow, who didn’t understand what we were, and fled; incredible silence.

This was what I left with, from that military experience; they never leave me. I love the mountains and all that they are.

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You shoot animals beautifully; where do you find them?

This is a plateau, in Centre Italy, named Campo Imperatore, at 1600 meters high. It reaches 3000 meters at its highest.

Between 1937 and 1948 the mountaineer, photographer and writer Fosco Maraini, together with Giuseppe Tucci, explored Tibet, then pristine and untouched. From his travel notes, he drew “Secret Tibet,” a book that was a huge success and was translated into twelve languages. Back in Italy, he explored his own mountains in more depth. When he found the Campo Imperatore, Maraini described it as Tibet on a small scale, in the valley of Phari Dzong, coining the term ‘Little Tibet,’ which is still in common use.

Here today we see herds of wild horses, shepherds and sheep transhumance, and see some of the mountain hermits return from the forests. I often explore the plateau, and even more often begin to play with the wild horses, for hours and hours.

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Many of your photographs are very grand and breathtaking, but there’s a portion that are lighter and funnier, that have a sense of childhood about them. Is that something you try to capture? Where do you strike the balance, or are those two things related, childhood and grandeur?

I think they’re related, and I admit to not having ever thought clearly about it before.

In taking a picture there is total instinct, similar to that of a child.

I’m not interested in trying for the ‘nice picture.’ And in any case it is virtually impossible to get rid of more than twenty years of Visual Arts, so I think that everything goes in much more fluently.

Zen, applied to photography, would read: “Learn photography, become the photography, forget the photography, start to photograph.”

I think I have just started to photograph...

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When you capture adults, they tend to either be very impersonal—with their backs turned— or very personal, as in two people who are very physically close. Where does that duality come from?

People intrigue me, even though I could basically be described as a ‘misanthrope,’ and in fact I often find myself for days in the mountains. But people make me curious, as they would make curious a child.

When their backs are turned, it is for two reasons: in panoramas they are relating to of nature itself, probably with the same philosophy as in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, a Romantic painter. If there are views taken from behind it is because this way people are entirely themselves, without fictions, in their everyday life. And that fascinates me. When you see the face, then they often are people I know and to whom I am linked. But there are also cases in which they are total strangers, and I try to steal some shots without them noticing, in order not to lose the naturalness of that character.

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passeart.it saatchionline.com/passeart

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Like millions of other only-child Chinese twenty-somethings, Turtle Chen is graduating college and vicariously desperate (via parental pressure) to find a job, though he would probably settle for a girlfriend. He speaks English. He studied abroad in America. Employers, ladies, what’s not to love? With a bit of bravado and some hometown luck, this engineering grad lands himself an entry level position working for the state news agency; not that he particularly cares about politics or journalism, not that they particularly want him to. Through a class assignment, Turtle learns that his grandmother’s village will soon be inundated to make way for a dam construction project. His parents tell him not to worry about it.

His bosses tell him not to worry about it. He would be only too happy to oblige, and yet despite his best efforts not to care he finds himself on the front lines fighting bulldozers, next to what some villagers claim to be the ghost of Chairman Mao. There’s bribery, corruption, computer games, and text messages imbued with uncertainty. Air pollution, censorship, and a job fair where students attack employers with paper basketballs.

And it’s all told through the eyes of a young man with impeccable English (‘impeccable English,’ that’s correct, yes?), who’s right there in the middle of it all. Welcome to the delightful world of “Turtle and Dam,” the literary debut of Washington DC analyst Scott Abrahams.

CCLaP Publishing

Download for free at cclapcenter.com/turtleanddam

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The CCLaP Weekender is published in electronic form only, every Friday for free download at the CCLaP website [cclapcenter.com]. Copyright 2014, Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. All rights revert back to artists upon publication. Editorin-chief: Jason Pettus. Story Editor: Allegra Pusateri. Calendar Editors: Anna Thiakos and Taylor Carlile. To submit your work for possible feature, or to add a calendar item, contact us at cclapcenter@gmail.com.

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