WANDERINGS IN THE LAND OF WOLVERINES

Been making these regular runs to Ann Arbor going on sixteen years. The past two years, however, it's been much harder to squeeze in a run up north.

This past Saturday, I visited Aunt Agatha's in that city up there — a bookstore I've visited countless times as a patron — but this time as a signing author.

More than a bit surreal, that experience. Had similar feelings at Westerville's Foul Play a few weeks back: another bookstore I've visited for, well, decades, but as a reader/collector.

Very pleased to say that Aunt Agatha's is in fine shape and I'm very grateful to Robin and Jamie for hosting a great event. Also heartfelt thanks to those who came, and to co-signer Mark Terry whose new novel is THE FALLEN. Do check it out.

Apart from below's HEAD GAMES-style display at Aunt Agatha's, behold this shot of Robin with the store's vintage Pocket Books display...the stuff collectors' dreams are made of.






I've always enjoyed my sorties to Ann Arbor: a good walking town...a great bookstore town.

Apart from the wonderful Aunt Agatha's, Dawn Treader and the West Side Book Shop were right were I left them. Books from their shelves line my shelves. A couple of other frequent bookstore haunts are still there, but have moved to new environs.

On the other hand, Shaman Drum's passing has left a big empty downtown there in the smile of State Street.

I knew before I headed up, of course, that bookstore had closed, but it was still depressing to see that Big Empty across from The Red Hawk — a favorite dining destination on each run to the Kindom of the Wolverines.

It was Shaman Drum that hosted James Ellroy on the two occasions I drove north to see/interview him — the last time for THE COLD SIX THOUSAND interview that appears in my book, ART IN THE BLOOD. It was at Shaman, in an upstairs office space, I also interviewed the great Alistair MacLeod.

Now the store is gone, gone, gone....

I've pretty much reconciled myself to the closings of a lot of favorite dining and entertainment venues in the throes of this so-called "Great Recession," but bookstore closings still go down hard and thick.

This weekend was, also, the theoretical wind-down of the road-heavy PRINT THE LEGEND tour, although I am in talks to add one or two more weekend events before the end of April. Stay tuned: having worked the west, it seems time to head at least a bit easterly....

In the meantime, if you're looking for signed copies of PRINT THE LEGEND, you might still find a few in Houston at Murder by the Book, in Austin at BookPeople, in Arizona at Poisoned Pen, and in Michigan at Aunt Agatha's. (The latter also has signed copies of HEAD GAMES, TOROS & TORSOS and ROGUE MALES).

They may even have a few copies left of the now nearly depleted limited edition chapbook containing the short story "COLT" in which Hector Lassiter crosses paths with a famous, Ohio-born writer whose larger-than-life legend ended in mystery somewhere in the Borderlands early last century.

Next Saturday I'll be stopping back by Foul Play in Westerville, Ohio to sign more editions of PRINT THE LEGEND for those who didn't get copies when supplies ran out.



Signing off with an image of a Terry/McDonald cake. More on this craaazzzy confection here.

ROGUE MALES: SUBJECT #5, ALISTAIR MACLEOD

(Author’s note: Rogue Males: Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life, is a collection of author interviews. It includes Pete Dexter, James Ellroy, Daniel Woodrell, Elmore Leonard and James Crumley. Rogue Males also features an account of a trip to the desert to interview crime fiction greats Ken Bruen and James Sallis about the craft of writing. During the next few weeks, I’m sharing a little background about each writer and interview featured in Rogue Males.)

At first flush, Alistair MacLeod’s inclusion in a collection such as Rogue Males might strike some as odd. But the overarching theme of Rogue Males is the idiosyncratic, highly independent approach the profiled authors have taken in shaping their own writing careers.

Alistair MacLeod put himself through college working in the mines of Cape Breton.

As a college professor, he began writing short stories that were immediately acclaimed as brilliant, even classic works of the form. He published two excellent, pitch-perfect short story collections: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, and As Birds Bring Forth the Son.

With their rich characterization, evocative description and attention to (mostly) working-class people yoked to their land and their cultural traditions, the shorts stories appealed to the part of me that admired similar elements in the finest of Ernest Hemingway’s short fiction.

In 1999, MacLeod published his first novel — a work decades in the making — titled No Great Mischief. The American edition of that novel followed in 2000 and was a critical and commercial smash. In June 2001, the novel received the Impac Award.

One month after making the same journey to Ann Arbor, MI, to interview James Ellroy who was appearing at Shaman Drum Bookshop, I returned to Shaman in the throes of a wicked case of kidney stones to interview Prof. MacLeod a week after he accepted the Irish literary prize.

In the interview, MacLeod discusses the craft of short story and novel writing, and examines the art of the word from the perspective of reader, distinguished literary professor and superb fiction writer.

He also considers his remarkable success in the commercial fiction market, despite never having many of the infrastructural elements most consider necessary for launching even a modest literary career.

The interview with Alistair MacLeod that now appears in Rogue Males was originally posted to a Web site of author interviews I offered for a few years. Based on site traffic reports, with the exception of an interview that I conducted with Dan Brown that was later collected in Secrets of the Code and featured in expanded form in my first interview collection, Art in the Blood, the MacLeod interview drew more online readers — many times over — than all my other interviews then-available, combined.

Alistair MacLeod interview excerpt: “I have never had an agent. So when I got the big write up in The New York Times I had people saying, ‘You don’t have an agent — how’d you get in The New York Times?’ But I think for young writers, particularly, there is this feeling that you’ll never get anywhere unless you’re sleeping with the father of the editor, or that kind of feeling that talent is not quite enough and that you have to have some backroom, high-powered agent or something. I think when this happens, it leaves people thinking, ‘Well, maybe you don’t have to do these kind of things at all. Maybe you just have to write good stories.’”

NEXT UP: ELMORE LEONARD