From the driver's seat

Want to know what it's like to race a sports car? Here, split into two segments, is in-car footage shot from my Honda S2000 at a Sports Car Club of America race held at my favorite track - Connecticut's Lime Rock Park.

The lion's share of the image is devoted to a camera aimed straight out the windshield. The inset window shows me in the driver's seat. At my company, Flatout Motorsports, we've also got our dashboard data integrated into the image. This is fun because it definitively answers the number one question for any racer: How fast do you go? (At Lime Rock, in my car, the answer is 122 mph.)

This was a good news/bad news race. I started on the pole (good!) and finished fourth (bad!), but it was a tight battle all the way, with an insanely close finish (very good). Enjoy!

Release day roundup

Well hell.

This is the official release day for my first novel, Purgatory Chasm.

I'm grateful to so many, for so much, that I can't go into it without getting all I-love-you-man. And if I wanted to get all I-love-you-man, I'd still be drinking.

Instead: one long, heartfelt thank-you to everybody who helped in any way with the book. And that includes the millions of men and women who've graced the halls of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And now (claps hands twice, briskly): links!

• First, commerce: Buy the book at Amazon (hardcover or Kindle)! At Barnes & Noble! At Tatnuck Bookseller, my irreplaceable local indie! Or find a great independent bookseller near you!
• More commerce: Looking for a signed copy? Try "M" is for Mystery or the Poisoned Pen, two bulwarks of the crime-fiction community.
• You want reviews? We got reviews. Associated Press, Publishers Weekly (starred!), RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!), Working Stiffs.
  
• For a strong, well-written take on me and the book, check out this feature article in the Metrowest [MA] Daily News. I've also enjoyed some smart Q&A sessions, such as this one with the aptly named Best Damn Creative Writing Blog.
  
• Finally, in case you've stumbled across the blog and want to meet via social media, please find me on Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks! I love you, man.

Oops.

The kindness of strangers

If, as some would have you believe, there are squadrons of snarky, bitter writers out there - leaning right this minute on hipster-cocktail-party walls, sniping at their peers, believing themselves too smart and complex to succeed in a Jersey Shore world - I am one lucky son of a gun, as I have completely avoided them.

Quite the contrary: As the publication of my debut novel, Purgatory Chasm, nears, I meet only generosity and warm wishes from my fellow writers, whether they're veterans with 20 fine books under their belts or still grinding away seeking an agent.

This generosity takes many forms: Facebook messages from long-ago writing group pals, attaboys from published novelists who only know my name because they made a point of learning it, email congrats from folks who spotted my name at a blog somewhere.

Exhibit A: Bruce DeSilva.

Several months ago I read Bruce's novel Rogue Island. I'd heard good things about the book, and it was a debut mystery set in New England written by a former journalist - how could I not read it? The book was excellent, as you would expect a mystery raved about by Dennis Lehane and Joseph Finder to be. I wasn't surprised when it was nominated as Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America.

Fast-forward to last Saturday night, at MWA's Edgars award banquet. A gent dropped by my table and asked which ne'er-do-well was Steve Ulfelder. Relatively certain the man wasn't a bill collector (they seldom wear tuxedos anymore), I raised a hand.

The dapper gent was none other than Bruce DeSilva, dropping by to compliment me on Purgatory Chasm. It turned out he'd written a kind blog post on the book.

I was bowled over. This was Bruce's night, after all: he'd written a great novel, battled his way up the ladder the way we all struggle to (agent, contract, rewrites ...), succeeded brilliantly, earned an evening in the spotlight - and he was taking time to meet me, a fresh-fish newbie whose book hadn't yet hit stores.

That's a stellar example of the generosity I'm talking about.

This story has a perfect ending: Amid stiff competition, Rogue Island won the Best First Novel Edgar. Couldn't have happened to a classier or more deserving guy.

Hakuna matata

I'm a big fan of Nissan's new Juke. If I were shopping for a cute-ute, it would be a contender. But from the first time I saw one, it reminded me of something ...

You tell me.

AA procedural: Lawrence Block's A Drop of the Hard Stuff

A Drop of the Hard Stuff
By Lawrence Block
Mulholland Books

How's this for daunting? May 10, I fulfill a lifelong dream by publishing my first novel. Purgatory Chasm introduces amateur sleuth Conway Sax. He's a recovering alcoholic, and AA is tightly woven into (indeed, inseparable from) the story.

Two days later, there's another novel coming. Its protagonist is an amateur sleuth. He's a recovering alcoholic, and AA is tightly woven into (indeed, inseparable from) the story.

Who is this copycat? Hell, it's only Lawrence Block. And the novel, A Drop of the Hard Stuff, is only the much-anticipated 17th book in the Matthew Scudder series.

Gulp.

Longtime Scudder fan that I am, I twisted a few arms and scored an advance copy of Hard Stuff. The book is outstanding.

Block sets up his story as a reminiscence, as Scudder and a friend idly wonder whether they could have taken different paths through life. The friend asks if Scudder - a former NYPD cop who now functions as an unlicensed private investigator - could have been a criminal instead. In pondering the question, Scudder recalls the story of Jack Ellery, a boy he grew up with in the Bronx who became first a criminal, then a murdered criminal.

Here's the nice thing about this framework: it pulls Scudder back to his first year of sobriety. Indeed, his first anniversary approaches as he investigates the murder of the small-time crook. Because Ellery had sobered up and joined Alcoholics Anonymous before being killed, AA is everywhere in this book. I hereby declare a new subgenre: the AA procedural. Scudder sits in his rented room. He selects a meeting. He makes his way to the meeting. Afterward, he drinks coffee or dines with AA friends. At every step, he learns a bit more about the suspects.

The intensity of that first year of AA shows on every page. Scudder often hits two or more meetings a day; things with his girlfriend Jan get bumpy as he approaches his AA anniversary, a notoriously rough time for relationships; he ponders AA's Twelve Steps; he calls his sponsor frequently.

At the perfect time (two-thirds of the way through the story, nearly to the page - hey, you don't become a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master without knowing how to construct one of these things), Block bumps up the stakes and the urgency, and then it's hell-bent-for-leather to the finish.

For me, two things stand out about Hard Stuff. The first is its pacing, which is deceptive. At a glance, some might say that not a lot happens until the story hits its crisis point. Scudder walks to an AA meeting. Scudder eats with Jan. Scudder has a passive-aggressive non-argument with Jan. Scudder walks home and calls his sponsor.

But.

As I thought it through, I realized Block's pace was actually the effortless gait of the natural athlete, the guy who looks like he's jogging at a 10-minute-mile pace but turns out to be running 6:30s. The master storyteller makes everything count. Every arc and every thread pays off, every Act 1 gun-on-the-wall is fired in Act 3.

The other thing I love about the book - and I believe, with no evidence whatsoever, this explains why Block set the story early in Scudder's sobriety - is the protagonist's subtle but unmistakable growth as he examines, for the first time in his life, the behavior and thought patterns that brought him to AA. In particular, Scudder's self-sabotaging attitudes toward Jan nearly form a running gag in the novel: he often thinks they're having a big fight, or are on the verge of one, but we can see that from Jan's point of view there's no problem whatsoever - other than her moody boyfriend. This is subtle stuff, difficult to pull off with a first-person narrator/protagonist.

It's good to have Scudder and Block back. Here's hoping we don't have to wait another six years for the next one.

Notebook dump!

It's been way too long since I did one of these. I jot things down in my Blackberry (yes, I am the Last Man in America with a Blackberry), and I need to capture the ideas here (hell, anywhere) before said phone gets lost or croaks.

So here are the phrases, names, and images that rattle around in my walnut-sized brain occasionally. If you have trouble figuring out what they mean, imagine how I feel.

• Serious as an Amarillo barfight.
• Actual name: LeRoy Hoikkala, childhood friend of Bob Dylan.
• Fair-weather optimist.
• Like the Tin Man at a limbo contest (how Conway Sax feels in a suit).
• Forgive me all my anger; forgive me all my faults/There's no need to forgive me for thinkin' what I thought. - Guy Clark, "Dublin Blues"
• German male name: Nico.
• Women make up "bar names" to tell dudes.
• Lockstep nonconformist.
• Smells like a barbershop in a barbecue joint - not bad, but not right.
• Create a character who used to work for the NSA reconstructing shredded documents.
• Name: Oskar.
• Saddest color: burnt orange.
• Carmelina (Matisse).
• Surname: Kilroy.
• Tahoe conscience.
• Copperhead.
• Framingham Housing Authority projects off Concord Ave., near Mass. Bay Community College.
• Hollis St, Framingham. Great run of Brazilian businesses: moneygram/fax/check-cashing place, salon, restaurant, convenience store. All signage in Portuguese.
• "Just As I Am, Without One Plea" (hymn).
• A cloud of witnesses (scripture).
• Moline Blues/Moline Hustle.
• Actual name: Robert Hoxie.
• Create a Barnburner who owns and operates a car wash.
• Hey bartender - I think I'll hit the throttle (Dwight Yoakam).
• Torque shear.
• Create a character who watched twin drown in a pool at age 4 or 5.
• "Tennessee Plates" (Commander Cody song).
• Iron Lords (actual hotrod club, Concord, NC).
• Surname: Dent.
• New Hampshire: a state without lips.
• Like reasoning with a pack mule.
• Name: Brixton Bragg (British sports-car guy).
• Square Del: nickname for a politician named Delbert.
• Sophie riding her bike down the steep embankment that backs the reservoir at Hopkinton State Park.
• Civil War names: Patrick Cleburne, Emory Upton.
• Rebel River Blues.
• Urban Moody.
• Civil War note: some men in Sherman's Army of the Tennessee marched 7,000 miles.
• William D. "Pig Iron" Kelley.
• Surname: Hartline.
• Strip Mall Hero.
• Echo Bravo (East Boston).
• 8-Ball Deluxe (pinball game).
• Parnell.
• Suicide Serenade.
• Create a Barnburner who's a mall cop at the Natick Collection. Retired, unselfconscious, loves his job.
• Two junkies bust into a car and find a filled-out form for an X-ray at the local hospital. One of them takes the form and gets an X-ray. Just for something to do.
• Conway line: Show me somebody working harder than a Brazilian and I'll show you another Brazilian.
• Weathermen and stock analysts: they're good at predicting what happened this morning.
• Wide Open Throttle.
• Foul I fly.
• Wild blue yonder.
• Konrad Zuse: German inventor.
• Kotikov: Russian surname.
• Hotshoe.
• Whip City Shakedown.
• LeMay Coal & Feed Co.: stenciled on Berlin Airlift planes.
  

What it looks like out there

LRP NARRC Runoffs 2 Oct 2010 (ITR-ITS-ITB) from Glenn Lawton on Vimeo.

I just found the in-car video above, shot by Glenn Lawton, a longtime friend and competitor. It's pretty cool, and it turns out I'm prominently featured; I start just ahead of Glenn (the red-and-white Honda S2000, number 05) and, for the most part, stay there until I spin off into the drink on lap 23 (oops!).

The race in question was run at Connecticut's Lime Rock Park, my favorite track, and was a championship event - the North Atlantic Road Racing Championships Runoffs. Late in the race, you'll see me grappling for several laps for the lead with a black BMW (number 21). That's when I spin out following two days of heavy rains, which explains to still photo. Bummer.

Slow-blogging: an explanation and a teaser

Yeesh, have I really not posted in six weeks? Sorry. My excuse, er, reason: I'm writing another Conway Sax novel, and this one's on a fairly tight deadline. I should come up for air in April.

At times like these -punching away at a first draft, working hard through the holidays - any ray of sunshine helps, and yesterday I got a doozy via the friendly FedEx man. Above you see advance copies of my debut, Purgatory Chasm! I'm not sure this cover art is the final, signed-off version, but I like it a lot - there's something desperate and lonely about it that suits protagonist Conway Sax and the story.

Deep breath. Back to the grind. Merry Christmas.

Memo to Hollywood: If you’ve lost Ulfelder … (Part 1)

The last movie I saw was Jackass 3D, more than two weeks ago. Two weeks before that I saw The Social Network, and two weeks before that I went to Scott Pilgrim Saves the World. For most folks, I know, three movies in six weeks is a brisk pace. My wife, to take one example, doesn’t visit our local UltraPlex three times a year.

But I’m not most folks. I’m a movie junkie. I’m easy money for moviemakers: a loyalty-card-toting, popcorn-buying (no sneaking in of the snacks for me!), not-at-all-demanding consumer of cinematic slush.

The point being: If Hollywood can’t make pictures that lure me to the UltraPlex, it’s an industry in deep trouble.

Roots
Ten years ago, when I traded the cozy staff-writer life for freelancing, I understood the tradeoffs: while my raw income would grow, expenses would too (hello, health insurance), and I would wave goodbye to virtually all benefits. In a bid to remind myself why I’d gone freelance to begin with, I decided to create my own benefits – or, put a different way, quantify some of the things I could now enjoy that had been impossible when I worked for somebody else.

High on the list was my newfound ability to see movies the way I like to see ’em: at 12:30 or 1:00 pm in a near-empty weekday theater. Love movies, hate crowds.

(Side note: four or five times a year, I sit in a movie theater absolutely alone, the sole viewer in a 400-seat auditorium. I consider this a treat. My wife thinks I should be locked up. What say you?)

To track this new benny, I began listing the movies I saw and the dates on which I saw them. And so I can state with confidence that since 2001, I’ve visited the movie theater almost exactly once a week on average, and often more (in ’08, I saw 72 flicks).

Both the bar and my brow are low
Here’s something else about my moviegoing habits: I’ll see damn near anything.

Let’s qualify that: no torture porn, no slashers. Rom-coms are a last resort, as is anything with subtitles.

With those exceptions, I am Homer Simpson at the Springfield 14. Give me car crashes. Give me high-school kids on a quest to get laid. Give me superheroes, tired remakes, over-the-hill action ensembles, fart jokes, plucky rescue-pets, plucky sports underdogs, plucky misfit teens, helicopter-to-rooftop-pool stunts, Justin Long, Judd Apatow, Jason Statham, Jason Bourne (especially once his annoying girlfriend drowned – what a relief). Yes, you may even give me Adam Sandler and the many wisecracking (yet unfunny) buddies who rely on him for their annuity.

I’ll see any of ’em. And I’ll pay $10.75 for a popcorn and a lemonade every single time. (I won’t upsize to a Medium, but on the other hand I won’t get annoyed when the counter-kid asks; I realize her boss makes her do that.)

We’ve established, then, that I’m a sucker for movies. And yet very recently, my moviegoing has tailed off by half. What happened?

I'll answer that in Part 2. Which is, I guess, the sequel.

Even in the victory lap, pratfalls lurk

Hey, I won one! OK, I won three - had a good weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, put the new S2000 on the pole, and checked out in all three of my sprint races.

When you win, you're entitled to a victory lap. You cruise down pit lane, a volunteer worker hands you the checkered flag, and around you go. This lap is cherished (Lord knows amateur racers like me get little return on the blood, sweat, tears and cubic money we pour into the ridiculous hobby), but it's also fraught with peril.

In the photo, note that I've enlisted a crew member to hop in the car's passenger door and hold the flag. This is partly to thank the crew (who put in more hours than the drivers for even less reward), but it's partly to avoid embarrassment.

What embarrassment? Check out that flag. It's big. It whips around quite a bit during the lap of honor. Now imagine yourself trying to hold the flag, steer, change gears, and somehow wave to the spectators. The racing world is rife with stories about dropped flags, stalled cars, and even humiliating spinouts during what is supposed to be a glorious moment.

There you have it: the backstory on victory laps. Wish I had more of 'em under my belt.