Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

The Disappeared: Joseph Koenig

It’s odd that it’s taken me so long to get around to writing about him as he was one of the very first authors I had in mind when I inaugurated this feature last summer. But at that time, all I really knew of Koenig was what John Williams had written about him in his classic crime fiction travelogue INTO THE BADLANDS (1991):

Joseph Koenig, the man standing next to me on the pier, is a wiry, six-footish guy with shortish black hair and a moustache, wearing Levi’s, a black leather jacket and a T-shirt, His biography puts him somewhere in early-to-mid-forties but he, as they say, genuinely looks younger. At the moment he’s living with his mother on the east side of Manhattan, and he hates everything.

He hates his publishers (Viking) for putting such an ugly jacket on his new book and not pushing him enough; he hates crime fiction; he hates New York; he hates the subway we came here on, and he really hates Brighton Beach where I suggested we should go today…

…The only thing Koenig seems to be happy about is the amount of money he’s been making from his second novel, LITTLE ODESSA…Koenig, in contrast to virtually everyone else I’ve met, reckons making money from writing is a cinch. He tells me that James Ellroy had called him, mentioned that I’d be interviewing him soon. I ask Koenig how he gets along with Ellroy, and he says, ‘Oh, we just sit round and laugh about how much money we’re making.’ The implication is that if you can write, and have a reasonably pragmatic attitude towards the matter of giving the people what they want, then your financial worries are at an end. After this reverie, however, Koenig is rapidly back to remembering how much he hates everything: ‘Goddamn Ellroy,’ he says, ‘he’s always calling me up. He wants to be friends; I don’t need friends.’

This excerpted passage is ironic on so many levels; first, that a writer is so gleeful about his hatred for, well, everything; second, his both-sides-of-mouth demeanor concerning Ellroy; third, his up-front opinions on how he’s in it pretty much for the money; and most importantly, because Koenig had all the swagger, all the attitude, and now no one knows where he’s disappeared to.

The Disappeared: James Preston Girard

In a perfect world, all talented writers would be around forever, writing books at their own pace and making bestseller lists and acquiring a devoted coterie of fans to worship at their feet. But of course, this world ain’t perfect, and wonderful writers fade into the collective conscious with shocking ease. Which is probably why most of you haven’t heard of Kansas writer James Preston Girard, and that’s a shame, because more people should.

Some of this lack of recognition is due to Girard’s sparse output. He’s written three novels to date, and one of them – A KILLING IN KANSAS (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1991) – was published under the pseudonym Jeffrey Tharp. The two under his own name are separated by a nine-year gap, and SOME SURVIVE (2002) was put out as a paperback original. There’s been nothing since; no wonder his name has fallen off the radar somewhat.

The Disappeared: A Tale of Two Jens

Back in 1998, it seemed like female crime novelists were everywhere, and more were just around the corner. Laura Lippman had just begun, while SJ Rozan was just about to hit her stride. Val McDermid was breaking out, and Carol O’Connell hadn’t gone on hiatus yet. Janet Evanovich had just topped the bestseller list, while Katy Munger showed early on how humor and mystery should really be combined. Sparkle Hayter was examining manly men, while Lauren Henderson was eating them—fictionally—for breakfast.

That year also ushered in several intriguing debut efforts, voices so different from each other—and different from what had been seen before—that they seemed destined to stick around. Interestingly, all shared the same name, but didn’t share the same fate.

Alison Gordon updates her whereabouts

This is exactly the kind of thing we were hoping for when "The Disappeared" was launched. Alison Gordon was alerted to my post about her by a reader and posted in the comments section, which I'll repeat on the main page:

Eek, what a shock! I was directed to your site by a reader just recently. I feel as if I'm reading my own obituary.

But really, I haven't disappeared. I am simply living happily ever after.

The series was curtailed because I felt I had gone as far as I could go with Kate, not because of lack of interest by my publisher. (On the contrary, as a matter of fact.)

Ocassionally, a bunch of my Presbyterian ancesters show up in the middle of the night to inform me, in heavy Scots accents, that I am wasting my God-given talent. So far, I have managed to drive them off.

Will I write another book? Possibly.

Best,

Alison Gordon

PS For the baseball fans, let me recommend one of my favourite baseball novels, which has not received the recognition it deserves. The Greatest Slump of All Time, by David Carkeet, ranks among the best -- among which I certainly include The Universal Baseball Association (etc). Don't know how available it is, but it is a real gem.

How cool is that. Thanks, Alison!

The Disappeared: Ira Genberg

A few months ago, I spent a couple hours too many perusing the MWA’s database of former Edgar winners and nominees, and spent even more hours compiling a list of those authors I’d never heard of. After a couple of Googling sessions and further-information gathering, I figured out which ones still had careers, and which ones had been banished to the deep freeze. But one name intrigued me in particular; he’d been granted a healthy six-figure advance for his novel, which was greeted to the kind of rave reviews hardly bestowed upon veterans of the genre. His book was nominated for the Edgar for Best First novel. It didn’t win that year—another worthy author did--but these things happen. What doesn’t happen is that the author disappears off the face of the earth. Six years have gone by and there’s no trace of a followup. What happened to Ira Genberg?

The Disappeared: Alison Gordon

As promised, the first installment of what may prove to be an occasional series highlighting authors who have, for whatever reasons, not been heard from in several years. Meet Alison Gordon and her Kate Henry novels after the jump.

The Disappeared: an introduction

Lord knows I spend enough time on this blog talking about what many other literary blogs, websites, and books also discuss ad nauseum--the path to publication. I also talk a lot about writers who have been in the game for a while, who sustain long careers.

But what truly fascinates me are those who drop off, never to be heard from again. Because I am not sure what’s a bigger fear: to never be published, or to have some degree of success and then see all of your works in the out-of-print rack, the publishing equivalent of deep storage.

I'm a curious person by nature, and my favorite question is "why?", followed closely by "what happened?" And in some ways, there's no greater mystery (to my mind, anyway) than a writer who appears on the horizon for one, two, maybe more books, then disappears. Because such instances demonstrate that the struggle to get published is only the beginning, that there's still a hell of a lot of hard work to be had afterwards. That a flashy advance only goes so far, because if it doesn't earn out, then a book or two later and you're firmly ensconced on the remainder shelves--if you're lucky. That perhaps a writer's really only capable of writing a book or two, and moves on to other things. Or that personal matters get in the way. In all the rush to bring aboard fresh faces, debut novelists, others have to be shunted aside. There's simply not enough room for everyone.

Crime fiction, especially, is a genre filled with names that appear on the horizon briefly, maybe even make a big splash, only to taper off. What happens when such a writer is in the middle of a series that has a cult following, and disappears? Was he or she dropped by his publisher, the contract cancelled because the books didn't sell? Or was there another reason? Or maybe the writer's still out there, working under a new name, even a completely different genre.

A few months ago, I was perusing the MWA’s Edgar nominee database to see if there was any correlation between being nominated and career longevity. And as I went back further in time, I recognized fewer and fewer names. Especially interesting to me were those nominated in the Best First category; one would think that if a book was considered amongst the best of that year, that the writer in question might have some talent, or some following. But even in that category, there were many, many names that simply aren’t being published anymore.

Where are the out-of-print, the dispossessed, the disappeared? Where did they go? What happened to them?

Those are the things I want to find out. And so, I'm launching a new feature, to appear every couple of weeks or so. I have a few people in mind that I'd like to discuss in depth, to put their short-lived careers in perspective, and highlight some names that are, perhaps, unjustly neglected. But I'm more than happy to take outside suggestions as well, both in the comments and directly to me.