The First Two Pages (guest post)

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Make sure to check out Art Taylor’s the First Two Pages blog.  Today, I’m pleased and honored to have my piece about Dark Network included:

The First Two Pages: Dark Network by James McCrone

First2Pages-McCroneB. K. Stevens began the blog in 2015, and Taylor has taken it over.  It’s great reading for anyone interested in writing craft.

 

 

 

 

James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thriller series Faithless Elector and Dark Network.  The third and final book in the series, working title Who Governs, will be out next year.

JMc-author2.2017

Find them through Indybound.org.  They are also available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell’s Books.

Link to REVIEWS

If you live in Philadelphia, pick up a copy at Head House Books -or- Penn Book Center or in Princeton at Cloak & Dagger Books.

For a full list of appearances and links to reviews, check out:
JamesMcCrone.com

Parties and the Presidency

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The convictions and confessions of an ever-shrinking circle of advisors and fixers around Donald Trump has led many people to look at the legitimacy of this presidency again, with some holding out dismal hope for a do-over or to remove him from office.

cohen-nyt

Att’y Michael Cohen (NYTimes)

The Constitution provides for some guidelines, but once the Electoral College has had its say, the matter is largely over. It has always been the case that the president is cloaked in power and immunity, his only check being a watchful, attentive Congress.  If they choose to be neither there is a little that can be done.

It’s no exaggeration to say the Framers didn’t contemplate party loyalty and partisanship as obstacles to good governance. Indeed, it took only one contested election (1800) to force the 12th Amendment in response to changing conditions and to clean up the errors. It is the only such amendment to address the presidency directly.  In a non-partisan, non-party dominated milieu it made sense (as it 12thAmendwas originally construed in the Constitution) that the candidate with the majority of Electoral College votes should be president and the candidate with the second best showing be vice-president. But, as the nation realized in the 1800 election, that meant that president and vice-president were from different parties.

We find ourselves now in a situation that Five Thirty-Eight describes as radically different from that which the Framers knew:

“The structures established by the Constitution assumed a world in which the presidency and the Electoral College were not fully absorbed into a contentious national party system. That vision has long since been replaced by one in which presidential elections are national contests over policy agendas and ideas.”

And a president with a majority in both houses might be altogether immune from scrutiny or constraint.

The first Imogen Trager novel, Faithless Elector was published in the Spring of 2016, before Donald Trump was even his party’s nominee. The story was conceived after the debacle of the 2000 Bush-Gore election, but it imagined just this world. It’s a taut thriller about people in way over their heads trying to stop the theft of the presidency. Its setting—clear to anyone who cared to look as far back as the 2000 election—is hyper-partisanship and the weaknesses of our rules governing the highest office….weaknesses, it should be noted, that remain latent and could still be exploited…if they haven’t been already.

James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thriller series Faithless Elector and Dark Network.  The third and final book in the series, working title Who Governs, will be out next year.

JMc-author2.2017

Find them through Indybound.org.  They are also available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell’s Books.

Link to REVIEWS

If you live in Philadelphia, pick up a copy at Head House Books -or- Penn Book Center or in Princeton at Cloak & Dagger Books.

For a full list of appearances and links to reviews, check out:
JamesMcCrone.com

 

Finding out more about the authors and books you enjoy

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I’ve had the good fortune to be interviewed by a number of people about my books, my writing work habits, how I create characters, and about insights regarding publishing and self-publishing.  The latest such interview came out this week, from author David Allen Binder for his blog, and it’s definitely worth a look!

binder-interview-picInterviews are a great way to get to know the person behind the stories, and maybe even learn a bit about how characters were created.

You can check out all my author interviews on the Author/About page of my site (Binder’s included):

http://jamesmccrone.com/about.html

Screen Shot 2018-08-17 at 2.26.39 PMI love readings and book fairs for their chance to connect one-on-one with readers (and potential readers!); and interviews, like those on my Author Page are one more way to connect.

Since we’re talking about it, in addition to the interviews, you can also check out the links to two of my readings, also on the Author/About page.

 

James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thriller series Faithless Elector and Dark Network.  The third and final book in the series, working title Who Governs, will be out next year.

JMc-author2.2017

Find them through Indybound.org.  They are also available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell’s Books.

Link to REVIEWS

If you live in Philadelphia, pick up a copy at Head House Books -or- Penn Book Center or in Princeton at Cloak & Dagger Books.

For a full list of appearances and links to reviews, check out:
JamesMcCrone.com

There are also a couple of Youtube clips of readings on the about author page.

 

Connecting with Readers

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I had a fabulous Twitter note from a reader last night, and it made my week. While it’s easy to feel that social media is the answer to getting out in front of readers, I’m finding Nell Frazier-Bravothat it’s more useful as a means of connecting (or reconnecting) with readers after the fact than getting them in the first place.

The writing world is certainly more digitized, decentralized, atomized; and that has created numerous openings and opportunities…and also headaches.  You can drive yourself crazy chasing “likes” and retweets, but will the number of followers actually translate into anything?

book deal metricsBecause for writers, it’s all still decidedly analog. Whether a reader buys a physical book or an eReader isn’t the point: how s/he hears about it and makes a decision about reading it is.  The personal appearance at a reading, a conference or at a book fair remains the crucial component for connection because those are the moments when the conversation is most focused on the work.  Readers have insightful, sometimes difficult, questions. It’s harrowing, and incredibly rewarding.

I’ve had a busy July—and it continues through August and September!—first with a reading from Dark Network at Shade Bar in New York City (7/15) for their Noir at the BarShade2018 series, followed by an appearance at the Mystery Writers of America booth at the Harlem Book Fair (7/21) and then another reading as part of MWA Crime Fiction Reading Series at KGB Bar (8/2). At each of them I had at least two or three great conversations, and I’ve seen posts about the books.

I’ve been available to follow-up with each of them online when they reached out.

Stories are written to be read, and there’s no substitute for standing up and representing your work in front of people, talking about it and hearing back from readers. I have a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and I interact with readers on Goodreads but their value as “advertising” is suspect, expensive and generally disappointing. It’s as a means of communication and follow-up connection with people I’ve met or interacted with face-to-face, or who have read my books that’s the most gratifying use.

FE-Firstline Monday Vic Weisfield

I even got a “First Line Monday” post from someone who’d been at Shade the previous night!

I suppose I wish it were as simple as finding some metric of followers:sales.  That would make things easier, but it would remove the real interaction and the serendipity from the equation.  I’ll continue to put reach out this month, and into the fall.
You can catch up with me at:

August 11 – Deadly Ink (Woodbridge, NJ) Panelist
September 6 through 9 – Boucheron, St. Petersburg
September 16 – Brooklyn Book Festival
September 29 & 30 – Baltimore Book Festival
October 6 – Collingswood Book Festival (suburban Philadelphia)
October 14 – Bucks County BookFest (Doylestown)

James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thriller series Faithless Elector and Dark Network.  The third and final book in the series, working title Who Governs, will be out next year.

JMc-author2.2017

Find them through Indybound.org.  They are also available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell’s Books.  Link to REVIEWS

If you live in Philadelphia, pick up a copy at Head House Books -or- Penn Book Center or in Princeton at Cloak & Dagger Books.

For a full list of appearances and links to reviews, check out:
JamesMcCrone.com

There are also a couple of Youtube clips of readings on the about author page.