Robert Fate: Making His Own Luck, Part 2

Robert Fate’s photo from his web site.




By Pat Browning


BABY SHARK’S JUGGLERS AT THE BORDER by Robert Fate, fourth in the series, is now in bookstores.


This time we get into Otis’s story, when his estranged wife, Dixie, is murdered. Despite gunfire and body count, an underlying theme in the Baby Shark books is love and loss. Dixie is a major character in JUGGLERS, even though we only know her through others. I can’t say more without giving away the plot, but this book has the best last line since “Nobody’s perfect,” Joe E. Brown’s famous parting shot in the movie “Some Like It Hot.”


In a letter to his “buds from the old days in Oklahoma,” Robert Fate (Bealmear) talks about his career, and the realities of publishing and promotion.


***
QUOTE
I have had some questions asked about the crime series that I write, how did I get the writing thing started? How hard was it to get published? How does it all work? ––that sort of stuff. So, here are some answers to some of the questions about what happened after I turned 70 and wrote a novel. Hit delete when you get bored.


I chose to use my middle name as a pen name, since (admit it) most can’t spell my last name and were never sure how to pronounce it. So, Robert Fate writes the books.


What were the odds that if I wrote a book I would ever get it published? Here is what Colin Cotterill, a writer I admire, had to say about getting published: “Go into a bookshop, any bookshop, and count the number of writers you've heard of. Subtract this from the estimated number of books in the store. Then multiply that number by 100,000, because that's the number of people out there who are trying to get published.

Granted, there's a large percentage that can't write to save their lives, but there are many thousands of great writers who can't get their work in front of a publisher.

So, not getting published isn't such a big deal. Write for yourself. Write for your friends. Put stuff on the Internet. But don't shoot yourself if you can't get published.”


BABY SHARK by Robert Fate
Book one in the Baby Shark series was published in September 2006. It was an Anthony Award finalist at Bouchercon 2007, and was optioned by the producer Brad Wyman in the spring of 2008 to become a motion picture. A screenplay adapted from the book is scheduled to be in production by mid-2010.


Book one took eighteen months to write. It got over sixty rejections before a small publishing house in Colorado picked it up. That publisher is Capital Crime Press. The way that happened was I met the senior editor at a social event in L.A., we hit if off, and he agreed to read the manuscript. He liked it. We struck a deal.


Some who rejected the book told me to give up writing, since I wasn’t going anywhere. It may have been good advice––the jury is still out.


My publisher told me recently that book one would go into a second edition by next spring. To give you some perspective. The largest number of books I have ever sold at a single bookstore signing is 84. I did that once. At a number of signings over the years, I’ve sold 50 to 60 books. However, it is also not uncommon for me to sell only 5 or 6 at a signing. I followed the author Michael Connelly at a bookstore where I was delighted to have sold 20 books.

A couple of hours before I got there, Michael signed 150. He signed at two other stores that day and sold an equal number of books at those venues, as well. The thriller writer Lee Child told me he sold a book every six minutes somewhere in the world. So, these are numbers to shoot for, but a lot of books have to get written and a lot of readers have to like reading you before that can happen. That is one reason it would have made more sense to start this effort at a younger age––ah, hindsight.


Baby Shark’s BEAUMONT BLUES --
Book two in the series was published May 2007. It was an Anthony Award finalist at Bouchercon 2008, and was given a Starred Review in Library Journal.

Here’s the scoop on the Anthony Award – it is given out yearly at Bouchercon, the largest fan-based mystery convention in the U.S. – several thousand mystery readers and a hundred or so mystery writers (some big names, too) attend these happy events. It is scary how seriously these readers take their mysteries. They can make or break a crime writer.

The convention moves from city to city, i.e., Indianapolis, Baltimore, Madison, Chicago, etc. Hundreds of titles are nominated, five are chosen as finalists in each of the different categories. Because I was totally a new guy, it was a stunner to even be considered, and an honor to be a finalist.


Here is what a starred review means – librarians and bookstore managers and owners are buried in book reviews, hundreds a month come at them––nonstop, month after month, so stars are a way for the reviewers to help the buyers choose the reviews to read.

The four big reviewers are Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal. They have reputations, cannot be bought, and are careful when they award stars because they know they influence purchases. This doesn’t mean other reviews are chopped liver––all reviews are important, but these four are the big kahunas. So, a starred review from Library Journal for book two was huge. Just to prove the point, Baby Shark’s library sales jumped after the review was released.

Here is that review –

Library Journal - Starred Review
“P.I. Kristin Van Dijk charges through her second entry (after Baby Shark) in this tremendously satisfying glimpse into the underside of 1950s Dallas/Ft. Worth. She and mentor-partner Otis Millett have been hired to find kidnapped teen oil-heiress Sherry Beasley, who needs to be kept safe until her upcoming 18th birthday. They retrieve her once, along with lots of cash, but free-spirit Sherry escapes almost immediately.

Unfortunately, crime boss Vahaska and his entourage of unsavory characters desperately want to find Sherry since she witnessed a double murder. Moving adeptly from pool halls into the ritziest hotel in Dallas, Otis and Kristin keep asking themselves whose money is in their safe and how it ended up in a remote farmhouse.

Mix in a few dead bodies and an attractive detective from the Dallas PD, and you've got one hot little crime story. Fate's witty dialog, colorful characters, and nonstop action make this pulp-style piece sparkle. Let's hope for more in this series. Highly recommended.”
—Teresa L. Jacobsen, Solano Co. Library, CA

It took less than a year to write Beaumont Blues (It got written while I was waiting for something to happen with book one) and by the time I was finished with it, book one was appearing on many top ten lists, real reviews were appearing on Amazon that hadn’t been written by my friends and relatives, and my publisher was happy with me.

A writer’s first book can often be a fluke, so the second book is important in establishing a readership. I was fortunate––it passed the test.


Now readers of the series were waiting for book three. It was tiny, tiny, tiny, but I had a readership. The names Baby Shark and Robert Fate were starting to be recognized among the fans of crime fiction. I had been writing novels for about four years at this point, and had been published for two years.


Baby Shark’s HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION --
Book three in the series took a year to write, was published in May 2008, and received a Starred Review from Kirkus (a tough reviewer) – here’s how that went: The publisher phoned me from Colorado and said that Kirkus had reviewed High Plains. I was surprised the reviewer knew my books. I said I didn’t want to hear it, because Kirkus is often so hard on authors, especially new guys.

My publisher said, No, wait. It’s a starred review. Sure, I said, and since he is not above pulling a writer’s tail, I remained unconvinced. But he finally got me to listen and it was close to walking on air. A good Kirkus review is major news, especially for a nobody writer with a small readership.

A review from Kirkus with a star next to it is golden. It was after Kirkus that publishers in Japan and France got in touch concerning foreign sales possibilities. Nothing yet, but maybe, one of these days…

KIRKUS – Starred Review
“Baby Shark's in a sea of troubles involving bootleggers, racketeers, crooked politicians, a wounded partner, a cooling romance and hordes of hit men out to do her in.

Kristin Van Dijk and Otis Millett, partners in a Fort Worth private investigation agency, don't much like the gig because neither of them much likes their client Travis Horner. But when big Otis indicates that he has a reason for taking it on, Kristin, aka Baby Shark-a renowned pool hustler from a young age-stifles her protests.

Otis's reason, she soon learns, is gorgeous Savannah Smike, who might not be all there mentally but is fully present from the neck down. She hasn't exactly been kidnapped, Horner tells Otis while handing him a bag of ransom money, but the bad guys are keeping her in her underwear. It turns out, of course, that Horner is a lying scalawag and that Otis and Baby Shark have been set up. After Otis goes down with bullets in his chest, Baby Shark's outnumbered by a whole mess of murderers.

Not that there's ever any real doubt that this smart, tough, endlessly cool platinum blonde will be able to cope. Love her or hate her, everyone knows Baby Shark is lethal. A lively addition to a highly diverting series.”

The first two books in the series had garnered reviews from two of the four big reviewers.
So far so good.


And then Baby Shark got a boost up from an unexpected quarter. A well-known, award-winning, mid-level writer with a big time NY publisher surprised me by writing a letter of recommendation for book three to the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

She and her husband had read my books, and were fans. That author was Julia Spencer-Fleming. The complete letter is at robertfate.com if you’re crazy to see it all. Here’s a taste of it:

“High Plains Redemption is a hugely entertaining pulp-style masterpiece for today's reader. With bootlegging, billiards, Buicks and babes, this unique series is a blue-ribbon trip down memory lane. Fate is a unique storyteller. Who else would have penned a young, blonde, female protagonist in post-WWII Texas? Fate's style is modern, spare, propulsive, almost a screenplay. I loved the tough, oh-so-human heroine. My husband loved the twangy Badlands sensibility.”

A couple of other writers weighed in, so now the series was getting praise from other authors, my contemporaries –– well, maybe they aren’t as ancient as I am, but from a new direction anyway ––check your hat size, my wife wisely cautioned me.

And the truth was, I was still an invisible writer with a small (but growing) readership. “Who?” They say at Barnes & Noble. “We can order that for you.” Ah, to just be on the shelves––is that too much to ask?

Actually, they do show up now and again––a fellow in New Zealand who had read the series said the library in his town had put stars on the covers to signify the staff recommended them. Holy smokes! New Zealand!

Baby Shark’s JUGGLERS AT THE BORDER –
Book four in the series was published in October 2009. It took a year to write, and has gotten early reviews from the two remaining ‘big four’ reviewers:

Publishers Weekly - Starred Review
“At the start of Fate's masterful fourth 1950s PI novel (after 2008's Baby Shark's High Plains Redemption)¸ Kristin Van Dijk, who's been tied up in a farmhouse by two silver thieves she was tracking, manages to free herself and take out a killer, later identified as a sociopathic felon, who a little earlier showed up and gunned down the two thieves, unaware of her presence. Meanwhile, word reaches Kristin's partner, Otis Millett, that his ex-wife, Dixie Logan, a former stripper known as the Dallas Firecracker, has been murdered.

Dixie's last job was at a bank in Mesquite, Texas that had been held up a few weeks before and her body was found with that of a man who may have been one of the robbers. Kristin, a hard-as-nails heroine who's completely credible, and Otis dedicate themselves to solving Dixie's murder and sorting out whether she colluded in the bank theft. The pages will speed by for readers who enjoy gritty crime tales with plenty of flying bullets.”


Booklist – Starred Review
“With her pool-hustling career gathering dust like the parched Texas border towns where she was raised, Baby Shark, aka Kristin Van Dijk, is now a full-time private eye. The year is 1958, and the case is personal. The estranged, ex-stripper wife of Baby Shark's partner, Otis Millett, has been murdered. But her’s will not be the only bullet-riddled corpse to dot these pages. The violence seems to be centered on a series of successful big money bank robberies and a lunatic mastermind with little interest in splitting the take.

Cutting a deal with Fort Worth police detective Carl Lynch, Baby Shark and Otis talk their way into participating in the investigation—as bait. But Baby Shark Van Dijk is bait that bites back, while Otis covers her play with guns blazing. Fate fills his novels with verisimilitude; we smell the unfiltered smokes while jukeboxes play old songs that somehow feel brand new.

With book four in this gritty series (following Baby Shark’s High Plains Redemption, 2008), Fate again jacks pulp fiction up a notch or three beyond the old Black Mask formulas. Hard-boiled just doesn’t get much better than Baby Shark spinning another .38-caliber tale. — Elliott Swanson”

So now I’m writing book five, a stand-alone (not in the Baby Shark series). It’s a contemporary noir, 3rd person with a male protagonist. I call it Kill The Gigolo. It will be published in the fall of 2010. I will be 75 (won’t we all) and wondering why I didn’t start this particular adventure much earlier. Well, anyway.


In the fall of 2011, book six (five in the BShark series) will be published unless my readership has gone from tiny to miniscule and my publisher no longer likes me. We’ll see.

So far, from year to year, the readership for the series has grown. Maybe, when the movie Baby Shark comes out, that will encourage sales even more.
END QUOTE
***


Special Note: The first 3 of Robert Fate’s books are available on Kindle. And speaking of Kindle -- Amazon has announced that in November it will offer free software so that Kindle books can be downloaded as pdf files and read on PCs. One disadvantage is that you have to sit at your PC to read a book, but I’ve read several books recently as downloads. I’m surprised by how easy it is. – Pat Browning

Robert Fate: Making His Own Luck, Part 1

2007 photo of Robert (Fate) Bealmear, Pat Browning and Fern Bealmear at Full Circle Books, Oklahoma City.

By Pat Browning


Robert Fate published BABY SHARK when he was 70. Got more than 60 rejections before Capital Crime Press picked it up in 2006. Characters: unforgettable. Writing: superb. It knocked my socks off.

BABY SHARK was an Anthony Award finalist at Bouchercon 2007, and was optioned by the producer Brad Wyman in the spring of 2008 to become a motion picture. A screenplay adapted from the book is scheduled to be in production by mid-2010. So much for those 60+ rejections.


Here’s a copy of the review I posted to DorothyL:
***
BABY SHARK is set in 1952 and begins with a massacre in a Texas pool hall.


Teen-aged Kristen sees her father murdered. She herself is beaten, gang raped and left for dead. The only other survivor is the pool hall owner, Henry Chinn, whose son is among the victims.


When Kristen is well enough to leave the hospital, Henry takes her to his farm to recuperate, and to keep her safely out of sight if the killers go looking for witnesses.


Henry's a gem, generous, shrewd and practical. He gives her a pistol to put under her pillow with instructions: "Point, pull trigger." He also knows some interesting people. When Kristen decides to avenge her father's death Henry hires a PI and calls in two trained killers as her teachers.


There's Sarge, a construction foreman who had parachuted into France on D-Day. His job is to teach Kristen fight strategy and body movement and the use of concealed hand weapons. His advice: "Look vulnerable.Never let them see your confidence."


There's Albert, a part-Comanche Marine who lost a leg in Korea and came home with medals. He's fast with a pistol. He says: "Tell lies with your eyes, Little Sister. ... give them a smile when they don't expect it, anything so they don't watch your hands."


Finally Harlan, her father's pool-hustling buddy, arrives to turn Kristen into Baby Shark. He tells her: "Show nothing. A poker face is the best face in a pool hall."


How they plan for and carry out their revenge, aided by a handful of trusted associates, kept me turning the pages. It's a cracking good story about the dish best served cold, but it seems to me that there's a secondary theme as well.


Kristen realizes that she's being trained to "kill without conscience." It's a case of kill or be killed, or walk away and live with it, which she will not do.


Sarge says, "It's just a job, Little Miss, and whoever does the best job gets to go home. Going home. That's the incentive."


I closed the book wondering if Sarge and Albert represent those who are called to war and learn the art of killing without pity, or if they represent everyone, with survival instincts built in at the start of human history and always lying close to the surface.
***


Fate grew up in Oklahoma City. When he and his wife Fern came to OKC’s Full Circle Bookstore in 2007 to launch his second book, BABY SHARK’S BEAUMONT BLUES, he was greeted by a hometown crowd.


Since then he has written three more books in the series, with tentative plans for a sixth to be published in 2011. His stand-alone, KILL THE GIGOLO, a contemporary noir novel, will be published in 2010.


Fate just e-mailed a letter to his “Oklahoma buds” in response to questions about his series, how he got started, how he’s progressing, and the realities of publishing, awards and marketing.


Some of the revelations surprised me, honest comments, for example, that sometimes he sells only 5 or 6 books at a signing. In contrast, a best-selling author like Lee Child sells a book somewhere in the world every 6 minutes. There are 49 glowing reviews on Fate’s web site, but he is still working toward a backlist. With his permission, I am posting his letter tomorrow (Sunday) as Part 2.


In back and forth e-mails, Fate added this about Lee Child and marketing:


“I was at an event where he spoke to an audience of 200+ mystery readers. He asked them to be honest about how many had ever read one of his books and maybe two dozen hands went up. He said he wasn't surprised and that's when he mentioned how his books were selling around the world. He said the lesson to any writer of mystery was that the marketing never stops … If you want to disappear as an author, quit marketing, quit contacting people, be too busy to go out and meet bookstore owners or go to conventions, and you'll get your wish.”


Fate’s crime writing career is just the latest chapter in a colorful life. Here’s his bio from his web site:
***
I'm a Marine Corps veteran who lived in Paris, studied at the Sorbonne, and can mangle the French language with the best of them. In my murky past, I have worked as an oilfield rough neck on a Texaco rig in Northeastern Oklahoma and a TV cameraman in Oklahoma City.


I was a fashion model in New York City for a few years to earn a living while I co-authored a stage play with my buddy Don Chastain. We never sold it. I was a project manager and later a sales exec in Las Vegas after working as a chef in a Los Angeles restaurant, where Gourmet Magazine asked for my Gingerbread recipe -- actually, it was my grandmother's recipe.


Along the way, I owned a company that airbrushed flowers on silk for the garment industry, and then I wrote scripts for the soap opera Search for Tomorrow. With the support and encouragement of Bruce Cook, a good friend, I produced an independent feature film. As a Hollywood special effects technician, I won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement.


I live in Los Angeles with my wife Fern, a yoga enthusiast and ceramic artist. Our fabulous daughter Jenny is a senior at USC. We have a dog, four cats, and a turtle named Pharrell.


The books in my crime series are: BABY SHARK; Baby Shark's BEAUMONT BLUES; Baby Shark's HIGH PLAINS REDEMPTION; and Baby Shark's JUGGLERS AT THE BORDER. Some think of my writing as hard-boiled. Personally, I believe I write cozies with a few brutal murders. It's all point of view, isn't it?
***


You can download a free copy of BABY SHARK’S BEAUMONT BLUES at Fate’s web site: http://robertfate.com/.

Tomorrow: Robert Fate: Making His Own Luck, Part 2.

The Lucky Break

By Mark W. Danielson

Last weekend, Ben Small and I were privileged to be two of fifty authors who were invited to participate in Irvine, California’s Men of Mystery event. Approximately five hundred people who love mysteries pay good money to have lunch with an author. Over the past six years, I have listened to such impressive key speakers as Dean Koontz, Vince Flynn, James Patterson, and this year, Andrew Gross.

Andrew is best known for co-authoring the first four of James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club series. On his first book, Andrew received zero billing. On the next, his name made the cover. The third gave him equal billing and made him a household name. His dubious partnership with James Patterson began with a phone call where James told Andrew he “did women well.” Wearing a smirk, Andrew quickly explained that James was referring to his writing skills before admitting that this phone call was his lucky break. We should all be so lucky, but the fact is, a break of this magnitude is merely a foot in the door, and what kept Andrew employed was his quality writing. Without it, his partnership with James would have ended before it began.

After the event, I spoke with Robert Fate Bealmear. Robert drops his last name, using just his first and middle names, and I must say it suits his outlook on writing. Robert agrees that more often than not, fate determines a writer’s success. Having authored over sixty books, many of which have been made into films and television, Robert is truly an acclaimed author, yet he’s still amazed that at 73 years old, Hollywood is still buying his work. I replied that the great thing about writing is whether you are twenty or ninety, good writing is always greeted with enthusiasm.

That evening at dinner, someone asked whether I could make a living at writing. My answer was yes, but probably not by writing novels. I do quite well at selling freelance magazine articles, and unlike novels that pay royalties based on sales, magazine publishers always pay up front. Given this, one might wonder why I bother writing novels. Simply put, it’s because fiction allows me to express and resolve whatever it is that’s bubbling inside me. Whether writing fiction or non-fiction, I will always write, so long as there is a topic worth writing about.

Little Cat Feet

Gutenberg Memorial Sculpture, Berlin - photo from Wikipedia

=============

By Pat Browning

Change, like Sandburg’s fog, comes in on little cat feet.

Modern publishing started with Gutenberg. Almost 600 years later came offset printing, and then print-on-demand. Mercy, where will it end?

The signs are that there is no end, thanks to the Internet, but you can follow the changes like an Indian looking for broken twigs and crushed leaves on a forest trail.

Here’s a big broken twig for you, snapped on TV during the Democrat convention in Denver. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada said, “The population center in this country has come west. It’s now west of the Mississippi.”

That’s good news for writers and fans of the western regional mystery. Tony Hillerman in New Mexico, J.A. Jance in Seattle, Joseph Wambaugh in Los Angeles, are the contemporary pioneers. Robert Fate, with his Baby Shark series set in Texas and Oklahoma, and Craig Johnson, with his Walt Longmire series set in Wyoming, are coming on strong.

Got me to thinking about the books I read during the past couple of weeks, all set in the West.

*BLOOD MEMORY by Margaret Coel, set in Colorado, a tale of skullduggery and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. This is a standalone. Her Wind River mystery series is set among the Arapahos of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.
*SUMMER OF THE BIG BACHI by Naomi Hirahara, first of a series featuring a Japanese gardener in Southern California.
*KINDRED SPIRITS by Marilyn Meredith, latest in her Deputy Tempe Crabtree series set in the foothills of Central California.
*LOCATION LOCATION, latest in Kit Sloane’s Margot and Max series. Technically speaking, Margot and Max are in Panama for this one, but only to make a movie. Sloane may eventually do for the Hollywood movie industry what Wambaugh did for the LAPD.

Another twig snapped, this one on a different front, but also from coverage of the Democrat convention. Frank Rich, a New York Times columnist, writes in an Op-Ed piece:

“We, too, are made anxious and fearful by hard economic times and the prospect of wrenching change. YouTube, the medium that has transformed our culture and politics, didn’t exist four years ago. Four years from now, it’s entirely possible that some, even many, of the newspapers and magazines covering this campaign won’t exist in their current form, if they exist at all. The Big Three network evening newscasts, and network news divisions as we now know them, may also be extinct by then. … The Web, in its infinite iterations, is eroding all 20th-century media.”

Speaking of the Internet, here’s something posted to DorothyL by Carola Dunn, an author with a long list of Daisy Dalrymple mysteries to her credit. I repeat it here with her permission:

“All my regencies (previously published on paper) except a few novellas are available as e-books. I can’t say I’m making a fortune but it’s a very nice bit of change. Two Daisy short stories are available free online. I understand St. Martin’s is trying to figure out the best way to go electronic with their backlists, so one of these days, with any luck, all Daisy will be out there.”

Oh, but you ain’t heard nuthin’ yet.

Here’s a sci-fi novel with a difference. Try wrapping your mind around a Quillr, on Nicola Furlong’s page at www.hereendsthebeginning.com

The teaser (abbreviated):

“John the Apostle is a reclusive and temperamental rock star struggling to balance the pressure of celebrity with the burden of protecting an astounding secret. His charisma and stigmata attract global attention and curiosity yet he desperately wants to be left alone with his family.

“But when three unwelcome strangers infiltrate his secluded west-coast compound, all hell breaks loose… Scroll down and click the video… but beware… a Quillr is NOT a book. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED”

So what is a Quillr?

Quoting : “Quillr is the exciting new platform for multimedia storytelling combining text, audio and video. Part movie, part soundtrack, part graphic novel; with Quillrs, stories will no longer be read ... they'll be experienced.”

Gutenberg would be dumbfounded. Then again, maybe not.