Rodger Recommends: Take Time To Attend A Writing Conference

Until 20 years ago, I thought I was too busy to invest several days at a reader and writer’s conference. I was building companies and doing business and political consulting all over the world. It turns out that not attending was a mistake. 

Recently Carmen and I spent a week in Nashville at Bouchercon. The conference is a lot like COMIC-CON but for book writers and readers. It was a great opportunity to listen to and mingle with creators and consumers to see how close the industry is to what readers really want. My observation is that the publishing industry’s current model to keep on publishing what worked in the past is getting stale. We sat in on discussions where much of the excitement came from self-published or indie authors.  We added new books from new writers to our own library.

There were more great writers there than we had time to meet. Two who did stand out were A.M. Adair and A.C. Frieden. Adair is an amazing woman who recently retired after a long career in Naval Intelligence. Her real-world experience gives her work a realism and yet she doesn’t write the stereotypical thriller. Frieden is an attorney with experience all over the world, experience with the elites of business and government. He brings the perspective of dual citizenship and a critical examination of issues to stories that can launch you from Ukraine to North Korea. Both of these authors create entertaining adventures, but also challenge you to think. That’s something I hear about in my writing. I love to hear things like, “I was ripping through the book prepared to finish it in one night, and then in chapter X you took me some place and into a situation that I didn’t expect. I put the book down just to think about it for a day before I jumped back on the thrill ride.”

So, if you’re a reader, take time to attend a reading and writing conference, even a local one. You may well find a writer you have never heard about who takes you on an adventure you never expected, set someplace you might never visit. For me, that is what drives my writing. And, being from Alaska, a place twice the size of Texas with fewer roads than New York, you can count on visiting a place you probably have never heard of. I’m fortunate that I can climb into a plane, fly somewhere, strap a .44 magnum on my hip because of bears, and head out across lands that, even today, humankind might have never visited. 

Come with me in my writing. And someday I would like to meet you at a conference like Bouchercon. And, if I’m not in attendance, you will meet another author who offers you a lift into their adventure world.

PS: While in Nashville, we attended The Grand Old Opry. While there, we were introduced to singer-songwriter Drew Baldridge whose decade long path to success mimics today’s most common road to writing success. Drew toiled, played, and wrote, for a dozen years, spending the COVID years playing gigs in people’s backyards. He married the girl of his dreams, and wrote She’s Somebody’s Daughter. It reached number one on the country play charts the week we saw him perform. Like so many great books today, it was self-produced and funded, the first chart topping song ever that wasn’t backed by a record label. Looks like publishing history is beginning to repeat itself in the music world. 

Thank you Drew for the amazing song and for your persistence.

Rodger That: Bouchercon 2024 - New And Imaginative Ideas

I recently returned from Bouchercon, a premier conference of writers and readers.

One remarkable thing about being a writer is the people you meet. Unlike most professions, among writers there is almost universal commitment to helping each other. It is a marvelous experience to have readers work their way through hundreds of participants at a conference to find you, shake your hand and ask that you autograph a book for them.

Another understanding came from a week of interaction with the community of readers and writers, and that is that the dominance of the “big” publishing houses is fading. At Bouchercon, the smaller publishers were the ones with new and imaginative ideas. I sat in on at least a dozen panel discussions where the vast majority of the participants were either self-published or represented by Indie publishers. They were writing stories that didn’t fit the cookie cutter models of the past, and they were both refreshing and fun. 

Both Indie published and self-published writers depend on their readers to share their experiences and reviews online with their friends. Comments about a good book posted on a reader’s email or Facebook or X account introduce fellow readers to writers and books that they otherwise might never know existed. One reader’s review personally posted and then passed on can now reach thousands of people in days.

Writing a really good book has always been the best tool for success as a writer. We all thank everyone who buys one of our books. We write for you, for your entertainment and to take you places you might never go. We write to introduce you to times and situations that you aren’t going to know about from everyday life. Readers who come up and make comments like, “I didn’t know that Abraham Lincoln was meddling in the Mexican Civil War at the same time he was fighting the War Between the States,” or “Thanks for introducing me to Iranians who are furious with their government and committed to regime change.” Those comments make the hours of research on and writing of a book meaningful.

Thank you for your feedback, and thank you for passing on your comments and reviews to your social media feed. Your posts are critical to introducing Rodger Carlyle Books to the world. 

Rodger's Top 5: Military Heroes

I recently returned from Bouchercon in Nashville. This month I am honoring five of my favorite military heroes, partly because one of my favorites is from Tennessee. 

Those who follow my writing know that I struggle with the superhero image that permeates thriller books and movies. At Bouchercon, an editor and I discussed a story about a ten year-old boy who endangers his life to protect his mother, who is then accused of murder, and hides, surviving on his own for months. Her comment about this powerful character was to “write another book where the boy grows up and becomes a new Jack Reacher.” I love Lee Childs’ books, but if faced with a crisis, I don’t believe someone is going to come charging in on a white horse to save me.

AUDIE MURPHY was born into poverty in Texas. His plan of escape was to join the military. He was so scrawny that the armed forces didn’t want him until he finally talked his way into the infantry. Murphy, whose commitment to those around him turned him into a fighting fury became America’s most decorated combat soldier of World War II. He was always afraid, but his commitment led to promotions, finally retiring with the rank of Major at the end of the war. He led by example and paid an emotional price for the rest of his life.

WOODY WILLIAMS, born into poverty in West Virginia, joined the Marines because he liked the uniform. He was small and had to fight to get in. He was trained in demolition and flame thrower technology but had little training in their use. At the battle of Iwo Jima, Woody watched as American tanks and troops were destroyed by concrete Japanese positions. For hours, supported by four riflemen, he destroyed bunker after bunker. A squad of enemy soldiers tried to bayonet him. He killed the entire squad. He died in 2022, the last surviving World War II medal of honor winner.

ALVIN YORK, uneducated, raised on a farm in Tennessee. He was very religious and the thought of killing another man troubled him deeply. He learned to shoot by hunting game for the family table. Forced into World War I, he found himself in France. One day in 1918 he and seven others found themselves trapped behind enemy lines. With his buddies pinned down, Alvin systematically killed dozens of Germans and freeing his men. The eight of them continued the fight capturing 132 enemy soldiers. He devoted his later life to educating others.

EDDIE RICKENBACKER was the son of poor Swiss immigrants. A grade school dropout, he somehow overcame the requirement of a college degree to begin pilot training. He became the top scoring American pilot in World War I, taking down 26 enemy planes,  and commander of his air squadron. At home he founded a car company and Eastern Airlines. In World War II, he survived three weeks on a raft in the Pacific with a handful of others, a remarkable story of survival.

HIROSHI MIYAMURA, emerged from fear of Japanese Americans in New Mexico to join the famous 442 Regimental Combat Team of World War II. He was a machine gunner in the Korean War, facing thousands of attacking Chinese soldiers. Over several hours he fought from position to position, each time allowing his squad members to retreat. He killed over 50 Chinese soldiers before he ran out of ammunition and was captured. He was held as a POW for 28 months under brutal conditions. After the war, Hiroshi returned to New Mexico and ran a gas station but remained devoted to veteran causes. His granddaughter is an Air Force officer. 

Rodger’s Two Cents: Deciding

I was asked repeatedly at Bouchercon, “what do you write?” While my writing colleagues and established fans know that I write in the two genres of historical adventure and global crisis thrillers, the general theme of the Bouchercon conference is mystery writing.  So, I attended as an outlier, to meet a new audience and to learn more about mystery and crime writing. 

What I found was surprising. The overlap of mystery and thriller writing is amazing. There are some differences however. While mystery tends to be confined to narrow settings, thrillers more often include multiple wide settings. (My Team Walker series may take a reader to four or five settings spread over thousands of miles.) Mystery writers tend to have fewer characters, and those characters often have more developed quirky traits than thriller protagonists and antagonists. Mystery writers do a more thorough job of explaining why the bad guys are bad than most thriller writers; they want the reader to connect with, if not sympathize somewhat with them. I do the same in both genres because my personal experience is that in the real world both sides can be fighting for something they believe in.

It occurred to me on the long flight back to Alaska that the reason new potential Rodger Carlyle readers wanted to know about my writing is to provide them an idea of whether they should invest their hard-earned dollars in my books. I can’t expect them, especially those whose focus was on mysteries, to open one of my books unless they know where I’m coming from and how that might affect the joy that should come from a good book. I shared who I am, what I believe, and what I write, and the reception was great. (One of my books, Two Civil Wars, sold more books at Bouchercon than at all other sales platforms in the last three months.)

Both readers and fellow writers were intrigued by the complex good guy-bad guy relationships in The Shadow Game, which pits Iranian expats against both the USA and Iran. While I could not reveal much about the upcoming Team Walker book, the fact that it takes on the complex USA-Mexico-China relationships led to several new readers offering to read Advanced Reader Copies when they come out next month. Readers want to know what they are buying. Many, like Carmen and I, have a strong connection to Mexico and worry about the cartels and about Chinese influence on the drug trade.

Which leads me to one more thought while sitting on this Alaska Airlines jet. There was a time in American politics when the voters demanded to know what candidates stood for, what their real goals and policy initiatives would be if elected. Many voters today are like the book buyers who only look at a book’s cover before deciding to buy or pass. They remind me of the “reader” I met at Bouchercon who commented, “I only read the first two or three chapters of the last few books I bought. They were terrible.” Perhaps that’s why our country is struggling. American political elites have relegated our election process to producing book covers.

Rodger’s Two Cents: Change

The more I write, the more I appreciate other writers. I’ve never been one to settle into a beach chair with a cozy mystery, but last winter I took time to buy several traditional mysteries and loved the genre. Those of you who follow my blog posts know that I thrive on thrillers, especially political or military thrillers. You probably have read one of my Gritt Family historical adventures, a series that follows one family for eight generations of American and world thrills. You also may have heard my diatribe against the current superhero genre, stories about one man or woman with superhuman skills defeating horrendous bands of bad guys without any help.

With this as a backdrop, I want to thank mystery writers. They write stories that draw a reader into the quest for solutions, even for salvation rather than just allowing the reader to follow a hero who somehow always knows how to win, usually with a big body count and overcoming injury that would bury most of us.

So this month, I will step away from the thriller writer and historical fiction community, at least for a few days to attend Bouchercon, The World Mystery Convention. I’m looking forward to learning from writing professionals who, unlike the grand settings across the world of Rodger Carlyle, move us into one city, even one neighborhood to challenge a reader to put together clues along with a protagonist, to solve the puzzle found in crime.

I’m not ready to embrace the life of a city dweller. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time in cities from Phoenix to Seattle, from New York to Miami, from Moscow to Auckland. But for a few days, I will be in Nashville with talented authors who paint primarily on that canvas. In Rodger’s Top-5 List this month, I list five authors who I will learn from in Nashville. I plan on walking away from Bouchercon with new story ideas, strategies and relationships. I hope to put them to work on the next rewrite of my upcoming Team Walker series, where much of the drama is set in one of my favorite places to visit, Mexico City. I suspect that rewrite may delay the release of the book a few weeks, but only if what I learn will make it a better story.

Rodger Recommends: Do Some Homework Of Your Own On The Border Crisis

The US southern border is constantly in the news. Illegal immigrant crossings have exceeded one million people a year for the last four years, with total crossings for that period, in the six million range. At the same time, the movement of illegal drugs across the border has skyrocketed, especially cross border shipment of fentanyl. Much has been made of the current administration's failures to secure the border, and much of the criticism is valid.

How can amateur criminal cartels possibly be orchestrating an onslaught that allows non-citizens to illegally cross our border, an onslaught over the last three years that exceeds the population of our ten smallest states? How can the same amateur criminal network move deadly drugs that kill more than 100,000 Americans each year? They can’t.

The cartels are highly sophisticated with technology advantages over the Mexican government and a willingness to use intimidation and murder to further their business ventures. Mexico’s current president reached out to the cartels in his first days in office, asking them to be more civilized, and less violent in their operations. What he didn’t do is use the power of his government to reign in illegal operations that now represent as much as seven percent of Mexico’s GNP. The current president has been able to travel throughout Mexico without the risk of assassination, but the violence he wanted to curtail is rising again, and the number of Mexican lives torn apart by illegal drugs is exploding.

Do the cartels really want to kill off their fellow citizens? Perhaps not, but are they really calling the shots anymore? The billions of dollars in illegal drugs are almost all coming from China. Chinese institutions now launder illegal drug money for the cartels. Chinese citizens, many men of military age, now make up a significant percentage of people crossing the border illegally, with no effort to halt their way to the border by Mexican authorities. Chinese weapons, including sophisticated communications technology has given the cartels a leg up over the Mexican police and military. Corrupt authorities who used to flaunt their newfound wealth in Mexico, now have help moving income from bribes and payoffs out of the country.

In my book, The Shadow Game, I examine how new technology can allow powerful non-governmental groups to literally stir up a war. In The Eel and the Angel, I look at the technology advantages of both China and the USA and how those differences can lead to miscalculations by governments. (Since that book came out, US-China relations have become even more strained.)

In my next Team Walker book, I look at the relationships between illegal groups in Mexico and those in China and the effects on both countries and the US. The conflict with Mexican authorities is heating up, while along the border American authorities are battling an opponent that is more sophisticated than most military groups. Among the questions I explore in writing the book is: IS THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT BEHIND THE PROBLEM? I encourage you to do your own homework and then compare it to the story line of the next Team Walker thriller. The subject and book are a great read and may just scare the hell out of you.

Rodger's Top 5: Authors I Will Meet This Month

Instead of ranking issues, people, places, or things, I’d like to introduce five authors who I will meet for the first time this month. All are new to me, and maybe to you.

As a writer of political, military thrillers and historical adventure, most of my professional life consists of research and discussions with readers and authors who write in these genres. Thrillerfest, held each July in New York, has been my conference of choice. It brings together authors, readers, agents and industry professionals with a passion for thrillers. The trip is long, expensive and worth every dime. However, one cost I find especially difficult is its timing. The first couple of weeks in July are premium days of our very short Alaskan summers.

So this year, I switched conferences. I’ll be at Bouchercon, in Nashville in August. As the odd man out at the World Mystery Convention, instead of sitting on a panel I am looking forward to moderating an amazing discussion of mystery around academia. Here are the panelists.

Frankie Bailey
Frankie is a “crime professor” in the School of Criminal Justice University at Albany, New York. What a background for someone who writes criminal mysteries. Her Mantra, “dig deeper” would work for a political thriller/historical adventure author, and based on her success, for her as well. Like me, her purpose for writing is to entertain and to act as a catalyst for social issues. Frankie personally recommended I read her book,  A Dead Man’s Honor. I’m on it!

Nova Jacobs
Based in Los Angeles, Nova’s MFA is from the USC School of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her passion is crime fiction, with a focus on science. Her debut novel, The Last Equation Of Isaac Severy, a story set among a family of mathematicians was highly rewarded. Her second book was just released. I’m looking forward to reading her first one.

Lauren Nossett
A former professor who parlayed her academic credentials into a career as a novelist, Lauren lives in Nashville. Like myself, she has a stack of unpublished novels, all part of learning this business. She describes herself as a storyteller, and I love that. She recommended that I start reading her work with the book, The Resemblance, and I just did.

Julia Dahl
This former freelance reporter’s credits include the New York Post, and crime and justice reporting for CBSNews.com. She currently teaches journalism and advises students at NYU, teaches online courses for fiction writers and does freelance manuscript editing. Her fifth novel, I Dreamed Of Falling is due for release September 2024. I look forward to her recommended reading.

Christopher Swann
As Georgia’s author of the year and with a Ph.D. in creative writing, Swann teaches in Atlanta. His setting of choice is academia which, with his day job makes him a perfect panelist for a panel on mystery in academia. His work is highly recognized, and he is deeply entrenched among southern authors. At his recommendation, I just started reading Shadow Of The Lions.

Rodger That: The Value Of The Ability To Be Alone

I love sharing a wilderness experience with someone new. For some, especially the young or people whose idea of wild places is Central Park, it takes a little time to appreciate. Being truly alone, or with two or three others, miles away from civilization is uncomfortable for many. Looking up to find a Grizzly Bear on the same sandbar you’re having lunch on gets your attention. Watching a seal raise its head and shake a salmon apart so that it can have breakfast is not an urban experience.

My grandson caught his first salmon at three years old. It was great until he watched us filet it for dinner. Over the next few years, he has taken great pride in being an amazingly knowledgeable geek. Being an outdoors person was not on his list of needed descriptions.

That is until this year. Now thirteen years old, his father and I were able to spend a few days with him at our fly-in log cabin on Lake Iliamna in Alaska. Most of our equipment is older, the kind that you can work on without a computer. He pitched in on repairs and improvements. Bears, which used to bring the hair up on the back of his neck, now brought thoughtful discussions and smiles. Hauling water from the cistern or a spring fed stream were a delight where before it was just work.

Our time out in an open boat on a lake about the same size as the state of Rhode Island, used to be scary. On our third day out, we took him on a planned three-hour fishing trip on the lake, which stretched to almost six as we worked to find comfortable places to fish as the wind raised white caps around us. At the end, he pitched in fileting the few sockeye salmon we kept, and kept his hollow leg appetite at bay until we finally plopped a fish he caught on the grill at eleven that night. Dinner on the screened porch overlooking the river under the midnight sun was a highlight for all three of us.

Perhaps it was the constraints coming from the COVID experience, cooped up at home, learning online, isolated from friends, but he struggled over the last couple of years. When I was his age, my relief from life’s stresses was always the outdoors. There is no substitute for having friends around you. But for some, spending time alone in nature helps us sort out what is important and what is real. I’m proud and happy that my grandson seems to be discovering that same remedy to life’s challenges.

You never know whether a conversation with a young teen connects or not. But I think he got it when we discussed the ever-increasing intensity of society. The cabin is held in trust. I set that up years ago when I realized that in the future, THERE MAY BE NOTHING MORE VALUABLE IN THE WORLD, THAN THE ABILITY TO BE ALONE. 

He heard that and smiled before tipping his head back and closing his eyes for a few minutes. I think that, even with his father and I only feet away, he was ALONE AND HAPPY.

Rodger That: Loving Something To Death

There is a lot of negative commentary on the wealthy. My family knows where our next meal is coming from, but we would never be considered wealthy. 

As one who researches historical fiction novels, I’ve concluded that by and large people of great wealth do a lot for society, more than government would do if they stripped away that wealth through taxation. They fund arts and culture, libraries, medical research, education, and endow non-profit organizations that make this country a better place. The funds they provide are not eroded by the endless bureaucracy that government red tape demands.

There is one place that I could challenge the use of great wealth is in conspicuous consumption. It amazes me that some can invest literally tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in yachts and other “prizes” that they seldom use. But even in that case, the construction and staffing of such trophies creates jobs.

In Alaska, there is one example of the use of wealth that is damaging. Wealthy sportsmen love to come to Alaska to fish. They come and find trophy trout that, in other areas of the country, seem amazing. Years ago, several friends who lived in Georgia used to come to Alaska as my guests. They would get off the plane marveling that one or another had joined the “teen” club fishing at home. That meant that they had landed a trout that was thirteen inches or longer. In Alaska we generally don’t even take a picture of a fish unless it is twice that size. Which gets me to my beef with wealthy sportsmen.

Over and over, I’ve seen them marvel at our fishery and after a couple of years decide that they should be able to “write-off” their trips. They buy the lodges that they love and then, manage them as they would a growing business. If the lodge was built for eight guests, expanding to twelve allowed a return on the investment. The problem is that to make them pay, the number of tourist fishermen doubled and then doubled again. The result has been incredible overfishing. Even catch and release fishing kills as many as five percent of all fish hooked, so it didn’t take long for the additional fishing pressure to begin destroying the very resource that the wealthy love. 

Alaska is a cold, beautiful, difficult place where living things struggle to survive and grow slowly. Overfishing first hits the spawning fish populations, then the slightly smaller fish that would be spawners in a few years. In the case of the river I love best, the Illiamna, the fishery went from world class to a disaster in less than a decade as new owners took over lodges and increased the pressure. I’ve worked with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, encouraging them to close the river to all fishing to allow it to revive. But my efforts are bogged down in the bureaucracy.

Today, my effort to pursue ADF&G’s closure of the Iliamna River seems irrelevant. The fishery has collapsed to the point where neither Alaska citizens nor the lodges are even fishing it, or any other rivers in what once was, the Alaska Trophy Fish Area. It has been loved to death. 

Rodger Recommends: Re-Embrace The Values That Launched This Nation

I was away doing the endless annual maintenance that a decades old log cabin in the wilderness demands. I missed the recent Presidential debate. I hadn’t been back in town an hour when the radio in my truck informed me that the debate had been combative and revealing. The next day, I took the time to view it and came away saddened. It wasn’t the bravado of one candidate or the frailness of the other. The messages from each seemed to originate in different universes.

The political divide in the USA appears almost as great as it was in the mid 1800s which led to The Civil War. But today we are not battling over something as obscene or pervasive as slavery. There have always been areas in our society and culture that divide us. In most cases they revolve around some perceiving inequity or injustice where others see problems that have been with us a long time but are improving. 

Those who see improvement believe that the economy and society are the engines of that improvement. Those who only see problems believe that the economy and society are the causes of the problems. In a world of smartphones, and laptops, many have come to expect instant gratification. I come down on the side of progress.

The inequity and injustice today are crumbs compared to just a few decades ago. No person in America is owned by others. The grinding poverty of the 1930s and 40s has been replaced by arguments over the inequity of the quality of housing and the diet of people. That isn’t to say that there aren’t problems, there are. But today, many of society’s crises are driven by a collapse in personal responsibility and a belief that somehow the government must fix everything. A democracy is poorly designed to fix major societal ills. Unlike autocratic government models, a democracy cannot dictate and then enforce solutions. What it can do is provide data and exposure.

My recommendation is that we re-embrace the values that launched this nation. That we recognize that success is progress, and that perfection is a moving target. It might also serve us to accept that we have different views and that is a good thing. As the son of a struggling single mom, I can and have embraced the push for more equity in pay between men and women. But to some today, embracing more traditional women’s values, women whose focus is directed at home and family is not a bad thing. Making scholarships available to those in need is a good thing. The US has been working to overcome the use of race as a factor for employment or educational opportunities for more than a century. It is a lot better today. It will be better tomorrow if we don’t succumb to the mistaken belief that the economy and society are the cause. They offer us the tools to continue progress.

In my new book, Tempest North, the story takes the reader through early 1800’s Spanish, Russian, Native American, North American, and revolutionary cultures and economies. Perhaps you will marvel as I do, that as we mixed all that together, we survived at all. It worked because the earlier struggles just to provide food, clothing and shelter were largely common and we learned to work together. Most of our divide today is a function of becoming a wealthy society. Let’s embrace that. Wealth forces us to discuss the difference between equity and equality. We are a society based on equity.