by Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

Part 3 of a talk I gave at the Cameron Village Library on April 26, adapted for this blog.

What does the future hold for books? I don’t mean the construction, I mean the contents—whether print or ebook. In a few decade’s time, will there even be room in our world for writing that requires attention for longer than a few moments?

My answers to both questions are simple in concept, but complex in execution. Yes, there will be room for books in the future. In fact, we will need books more than ever. Only books can illuminate the most important aspects of being human, put those aspects in context, unite people around them, and overcome the polarizing effect that 30-second messages have. Only books have the power to promote deeper thought and combat the oversimplification of issues and advice flooding our world today. But the real truth of the matter is that the future of books may depend on what we, as the readers of today, start doing now. As readers, we must find a way to:

• Keep good books alive, books that go beyond the limited bestseller list selections forced on us by publishers and large book store chains that focus solely on profits.
• Filter out poorly written books, especially when it comes to ebooks.
• Keep small publishers afloat: they are a critically needed break-through option for authors whose voices are not yet recognized.
• Support local bookstores attempting to survive financially while giving books beyond the bestseller list a place on their shelves.
• Use libraries as a way to promote emerging authors.

So how do we, as readers make that happen? For a start:

• Review, share, discuss, have an opinion, weigh in, keep the flame alive, pledge allegiance not just to your favorite authors but to the world of reading itself. Become an active reader and, by that, I mean an engaged citizen of the reading world. One who shuts a book and asks the question: “How can I tell more people about this book? How can I be this book’s voice?”
• Seek out authors, don’t wait to be told who to read by big publishers or the bestseller lists. The internet is full of advice and recommendations. Pinpoint what you enjoy—fiction, nonfiction, humor, learning, inspirational, self-help—and then go out and uncover the hidden gems in your genre.
• If you follow a big name author and they phone in it—let them know. Don’t rave about a book just because you love the author or everyone else is talking about it. Your opinion counts. Give the author and publisher feedback. Let other readers know. Life is too short and there are too many good books out there for anyone to waste time on a poorly written or derivative one.
• Use your discretion in evaluating online reviews: are they real reviews, written by real readers? Is the review by someone who bothered to actually read the entire book or are they passing judgment after only a handful of pages. Is a rave review a plant or a for-pay review? It’s not hard to pick up the patterns and learn to spot the real ones. Join an online readers site, like Good Reads, for guidance from other readers.
• Support efforts to bring taste to the world of ebooks. Leave reviews on ebooks. Support filtering services. I dream of a Good Housekeeping style reviewing service for eBooks, where writers pay a small fee for an objective organization to read and rate their book. Authors and publishers submit their books for review and readers look for this seal before they buy. Some websites are doing this on a smaller scale, but we need an industry-wide rating system devoid of commercial influences. If you know of a good ebook screening service, or have a better idea on how we can screen the millions of ebooks flooding the market, post it in the comments below. We need to find a way to elevate the good books lost in the ebook avalanche or we risk killing the benefits that ebooks could give to tomorrow’s authors.
• Demand the benefits of technology:  buy your hard copy books online from small publishers, small bookstores, or even the authors themselves… insist your local book store order print-on-demand books that you want… lobby for the big chains to pioneer print-on-demand machines in their stores so that consumers can choose from thousands of titles and have a book custom-made while they wait. In short, don’t settle for what stores carry on their shelves. Demand they listen to readers and not just sales reps.
• Work with your local bookstore or library to sponsor exhibits and events that celebrate new authors, feature local authors, honor overlooked authors, or publicize small publisher offerings.
• Attend readings, even those by lesser known writers, and publicize their events and books on your social media feeds. They need you to help spread the word about their writing and the power of books. Help them keep the flame alive.

Do you have other ideas for promoting the future of books or getting the word out on worthy authors? I’d love to hear your thoughts below. With enough good ideas, we can create a Reader’s Pledge and start a campaign to get people to sign it. Let’s keep the future of books alive.

by Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

Part 2 in a series of blog posts adapted from a talk I gave at the Cameron Village Library in April of 2016.

Today’s library has become, quite literally, the only great equalizer in our society. It is a place where economic status, race, gender and citizenship are irrelevant, a place where everyone is welcome and can get equal access to knowledge that can help them better their lives and the lives of their children.

In a world where people bunker down and socialize and shop only with people exactly like themselves, in many communities, libraries have also become the only place where we run into people different from us, the only place where we have a chance to see and hear other voices.

In many ways, what libraries give communities today is the living embodiment of what you will find on the shelves of these libraries: respect for all voices, an acknowledgement that we all have something to say, and a reminder that we are better as a species when we listen to and learn from one another.

In the future, libraries will be only be called on to play this vital role even more. They are the connectors of our towns and cities and communities. They are the third place that Ray Oldenburg wrote about in 1989 as so vital to our survival as a society: a neutral place in between work and home that is:

• Free or inexpensive
• Highly accessible
• Welcoming and comfortable
• A place where both old and new friends can be found

How then can we protect them? It’s simple. We must be like the NRA: no compromise. Ever.

No compromise in the level of funding our libraries receive.

No compromise when it comes to proposals to shut down library access in neighborhoods.

No compromise when reactionary nitwits who are afraid of knowledge turn on libraries and try to destroy them because they fear them.

Fight back if this happens. Be like the people of Kansas, who paid attention when their state lawmakers tried to shut down over 100 libraries. Within a week, the people of Kansas had risen up as one and forced their state lawmakers to drop their attack on public libraries. We must be prepared to do the same, if necessary.

Remember: the library is the vanguard of civilization, a temple of knowledge that connects us to the past and the future — but most of all, to each other.

by Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

Whenever I see people frantically trying to stop change in the world (you know who you are, folks), I have to shake my head even if I can’t quite bring myself to laugh. What a futile fight they engage in! Because the one thing we know for sure about our world is that it changes. Always. And constantly. And that’s okay with me. I love change. It energizes me. It fascinates me. It keeps me from being bored. It keeps me engaged in life.

But for some writers, change can be a tricky proposition. Especially those of us who write series. When you write a series centered around recurring characters and locales, you enter into an unspoken covenant with your readers: you promise to deliver the familiar in every book. This is not as easy as it sounds. As human beings, most writers are in a constant state of flux. What we care about changes. What angers, motivates, and fascinates us changes. Who we are at our very core changes. And sitting down to write about the familiar when the new in you is shouting to be heard? That can be a tough task to take on and, in the end, can lead to one of the toughest balancing acts a writer can pull off: changing a series enough to enjoy the process, and staying fresh with your ideas, yet still giving your loyal readers what they have come to expect from you and want. I’m convinced that this duel between the old and the new is what causes many genre writers to end a series and begin a new one. It was certainly a factor in my own evolution as a writer.

When I first started out as a writer, I was a Southern transplant living in the teeming, foreign world of New York City. I was fascinated by how vibrant the city was and even more intrigued by its brash, relentlessly honest citizens. It was a whole new world, so far as I was concerned, and I had to write about it. The result was my Hubbert & Lil series, writing as Gallagher Gray, which is essentially my love song to the Big Apple. It was a genteel series that poked fun at the absurdity of people, celebrated the stubbornness of some, and reveled in the uniqueness of New York’s varied neighborhoods. These were all fascinating concepts to me at the time.

Fast forward a decade and I had started to long for the South, even though I was living and writing in a great apartment overlooking gardens on the Upper Westside. I missed the South and its people, not to mention its more gentle ways. I was willing to settle for a veneer of politeness, if not the real thing. I needed grass and trees and ocean waters without hypodermic needles and toilet paper floating in it. I needed a lot more personal space. My writing shifted with me. A hardboiled Southern belle named Casey Jones popped up in one of my Hubbert & Lil books and, before I knew it, I was writing a whole new series around her, one set in the South that featured a tough female P.I. whose sense of humor was strong enough to get her through any situation. My Casey Jones series was, I think, a reaction to all the preconceptions about the South I had encountered in New York City. I knew the South was far more complex than it was being given credit for – and that few writers had yet captured its modern essence, with all of its contradictions and still unsettled dreams. I wanted to be a part of painting the new South. I wanted to be a part of its change. So I ended up locating both my new series and my life back here in the Triangle. Once home, I celebrated all that I had loved and missed about North Carolina in my Casey Jones books: the people, the food, its love for the past, the incredible diversity of its locations. The Casey Jones series is a love song to my homeland.

But everyone ages, at least if we are lucky. I began to realize that my fabled good nature had its limits. That some things in life were just plain sad and that it was okay to feel that sadness. I began to notice how some people I loved had never quite found their footing in life and had fallen by the wayside. I became fascinated by the idea of redemption, karma and second chances. Enter yet another series: The Dead Detective, written as both Chaz McGee and Katy Munger. This series is definitely a more mature me, one that sees both the good and the bad in a far wider range of people. It is a more nuanced love story to my own ability to acknowledge the fact that, while life is never perfect, the human spirit is capable of breathtaking strength. That’s a lesson that, once learned, can get you through anything. My writing changed with these realizations. It deepened and grew more thoughtful. I worked harder at it and it shows.

Now I am at the juncture of another era of change. I am less driven. More content. And absolutely determined to put more of myself into the next book I write. Thus it is that I find myself circling three half-written books, staring each one in the eyes, trying to decide which one is calling to me the most. I have an inkling which one it will be – I have happily discovered that talking to other people as part of my Piedmont Laureate duties leaves me thirsty for working on my own books again and have lately been ripping up, rooting out, and generally re-arranging the plot to one of these projects. It’s starting to look mighty good to me, though it is my most ambitious book to date. I suspect I will one day soon dare to finish it. Because the changes in me are compelling changes in my writing and feeding a deep need for my new voice to be heard. What is this book about? You guessed it: change, of the most profound sort, and the power we all have within us to lead new lives if we embrace it.

If you are a writer, I urge you to join me in giving your muse permission to change with your life. Listen to her… seek her out…. give her time to coalesce in her incarnation… let her be heard as who she has become today. Because there’s no greater reward than marking the changes in your life with changes in your own writing: it’s permanent and lasting proof that you are resilient enough to celebrate the changes life inevitably brings you, rather than fearing and fighting them.

by Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

Any mystery writer who claims they don’t put real people into their books is either lying or missing out on a great opportunity to improve their mental health. Because, let me tell you: I put real people into my books all the time and it’s the best reward (or revenge) on the planet. It’s just one of the perks of being a crime fiction writer — if someone impresses you with their sense of morality, you can make them a hero. If someone angers you and goes unpunished for an unworthy deed in real life, then you can hold them accountable in their book by making them a villain. And if others intrigue you or charm you with their unique personalities, why there’s plenty of supporting characters you can fashion in their image. And you can do this with impunity because people never recognize themselves in your books. Ever. Apparently, we see ourselves so differently from the way other people see us that it’s pretty hard to spot a character actually based on ourselves. I’m glad for this. I like having my own secret world. Call it one of the perks of being a writerly wallflower.

In fact, as I reflect back on my three series, I realize that every single one of my major protagonists was built on a real person. T.S. Hubbert and Auntie Lil were both real-life New Yorkers whom I met early on in my life in the Big Apple and they embodied the best of the New York spirit to me. T.S. was a cultured, Broadway-loving, upper Eastsider who was a meticulous, lovely man as well as my first boss on Wall Street and my mentor.  He became T.S. Hubbert in my Hubbert & Lil series and while I invented 95% of his character, he once said to me, “Katy — your ability to guess at the secret corners of other people’s lives, and get it right, is downright scary.” (I try to use this super power for good….) Meanwhile, his real-life aunt Lil was a little old lady with such grit and directness that I often stared open-mouthed at her in astonishment. She, of course, became my fictional Auntie Lil Hubbert and I learned so much from her, both in real life and in writing about her across four books. I treasure the time I last saw her, sadly at her nephew’s funeral. She came tottering over to me and gripped my arm with a steellike vise and announced that she knew I had put her into a book. “That’s all fine and good,” she said in her trademark gravelly voice. “But just don’t push it.” !!!  I still want to be her when I grow up. They are both gone now, and I love that they live on in my fictional characters.

Casey Jones was based, in part, on a dear friend of mine whose indomitable spirit and ability to withstand the slings and arrows of misfortune has always impressed and astonished me. She never, for a moment, let a hard childhood get in the way of having one of the most open, generous hearts I have ever met. Making her my Casey was a love song to her spirit. I can only hope that writing about her made me a little bit more like her — and a little bit more like Casey.

Kevin Fahey, the protagonist of my Dead Detective Series, was also based on a real person, a man I met who had the potential to be so much more than he was — but who could never find his way out of depression and the bottle. I have a soft spot for the unrealized dreamers of the world and I am also a deep believer in redemption. I took my belief in redemption, added in the love and affection I had for my floundering friend, and the hero to a new series was born. Unlike Kevin Fahey, my friend never made it out of his dark and unfulfilled life — but I like to think that, somewhere, he, too, is getting his shot at redemption in the after-world.

Other characters who play supporting roles have been based on real-life people, too. Probably too many to count. For example, I took my frustration at a control freak I was forced to work with in New York City by making him into an overbearing member of the fictional Metropolitan Ballet in my fourth Hubbert & Lil. I had him fall offstage and break an ankle while trying to show the head ballerina how to pirouette. Not only did I enjoy this fictional revenge, I can assure you that there is an entire creative team at an ad agency deep in the heart of the Big Apple who are still laughing at this portrait of a man they knew all too well. Then there was the time I took my cheery–faced, apple–cheeked friend Risa Foster and made her into a notorious killer with the same name in the sixth Casey Jones, Bad Moon on the Rise. In that case, Risa had won an auction to be a character in my book and good-naturedly agreed to be the most famous inmate in my fictional women’s prison. The same book featured a secretive leader of a survivalist cult who was named after my friend, Chuck Grubb, also the winner of a character auction. I took a cue from the real Chuck and gave my fictional Chuck more heart, and a little more perspective, than your typical survivalist — a nuance that the real-life Chuck deeply appreciated. Chuck is gone now in real life, too, but he got a great deal of enjoyment out of being in one of my books. I’m glad that I could give him that gift.

My other character inspirations will have to remain secret, mostly because, as an author, I get to enjoy the greatest passive aggressive stunt of them all, one perhaps enhanced by my Southern upbringing. Yes, like all good Southerners, I can smile at you and you will walk away feeling like you’re my best friend when, all the while, the truth is that I’d like to slap you six ways to Sunday. But being a Southern writer, I can take this kind of behavior one step further: I absolutely assure you that if I meet someone I dislike enough, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will end up as either a victim or a reprehensible character in one of my books. In fact, right now, I’ve got a waiting list of at least three people who deserve a little light literary flogging — and one of them is perfect for my work-in-progress.

How healthy is it to make your enemies into victims and knock them off in your books? Is it mentally wise to take people who get away with evil deeds in real life and elevate them to a fictional villain so that you can bring them down and give them the punishment they deserve within the pages of your book? I don’t know the answer to those questions. If you’re a shrink, by all means tell me. But I can say this — it’s one of the best things about being a crime fiction writer and it sure as hell feels good. Unlike real life, it gives you resolution.

Does that mean *you* could end up in one of my books by making me mad enough? Maybe. But if I were you, I wouldn’t risk it. Like I said, I’ve learned a lot from my characters….

Are you a writer in the Piedmont area?