Moments In Crime

author sightings

Here's where I'll be doing what in conjunction with the publication of Prepared for Rage:

February 12
online chat with the Danamaniacs, 5pmAST/9pmEST

February 14
Twice Told Tales, Anchorage
stock signing, 12noon

February 15
Poisoned Pen, Scottsdale
7pm, with Diana Gabaldon

February 21
Seattle Mystery Bookshop, Seattle
10am stock signing

February 21
Title Wave, Anchorage
7pm

March 1
Next Page Bookstore, Kodiak
1pm

And here are a couple of reviews to whet your appetite:

The action of Edgar-winner Stabenow’s stellar second venture into thriller territory, in contrast to 2006’s Blindfold Game, which was set largely in the frozen waters off Alaska, centers on the warm seas of the Florida coast near the Kennedy Space Center, where the latest space shuttle launch is to take place. Stabenow harnesses the strands of her story with consummate skill: the passion that propels a rogue terrorist on a crusade to strike a blow that will shatter American pride; the efforts of U.S. intelligence to thwart a bewildering array of foes; the rising careers of Capt. Cal T. Schuyler, “the golden boy of the U.S. Coast Guard,” and astronaut Kenai Munro, whose life ambition is realized when she’s named to the shuttle crew. Stabenow proves equally adept at portraying the workings of a cutter, the complexities of a shuttle mission or the machinations of a terrorist. The result is entertainment and suspense of a high order.  --Publisher's Weekly, 12/5/07

Brutal tribal injustice motivates a Western-educated Pakistani to compete with Osama bin Laden as a terror theorist, targeting America’s space shuttle.
An incendiary string of U.S. policy failures fuels this frightening, tightly written thriller by Stabenow (A Deeper Sleep, 2007, etc.). Akil, the Muslim villain at the story’s heart, is no Islamic fundamentalist. He is, rather, a smallish man with a very big grudge against the American enablers of Pakistan’s corrupt government. Akil firmly believes that the refusal of Western-backed authorities to rein in tribal leaders was responsible for the revenge killing of his beloved sister. That’s sufficient motivation for him to enlist with the forces of bin Laden’s great rival Musab al-Zarqawi, proving himself so loyal and effective as a terrorist that he becomes Zarqawi’s No. 2 man. When the Americans kill his mentor, Akil elects to operate independently, taking as his nom de guerre Isa, Arabic for Jesus. Using skills acquired in years as an employee of Western banks, he keeps Zarqawi’s fortune out of bin Laden’s hands, using it to build a cadre he will wield personally in his quest to humiliate America. The space shuttle that is his target counts among its crew members Kenai Munro, a sexy and smart Alaskan aviator whose parents will watch the launch from a Coast Guard cutter captained by Kenai’s equally capable lover, Cal Schuyler. Akil is able to elude both the Americans and bin Laden’s lieutenants, who are under orders to render him ineffective. When Akil starts to make errors, dedicated CIA officer Patrick Chisum begins to pick up his scent, and the Coast Guard is very much on the job.
Taut and alarming.  --Kirkus, December

And a Danamaniac weighs in:

I just finished PFR 5 minutes ago.  This is a wonderfully
plotted, scary thriller.  If Blindfold Game made the best seller list,
this one will too.  BFG had "Dana" in it, a dash here a dash there.  PFR is
just crazy wild and other than Kenai and Alaska, this book has it's own
identity. Is that good?  I think so.  But what do I know. This is just hot damn good.
You know how to write.  Keep up the good work!
     --Sandy, one of four 'maniacs managers (and the one who named them)

Today's photos are from last year's book tour, three of what I see, at Elliott Bay Book Company and Powell's and Seattle Mystery Bookshop, and one of what you see.

It's been fun blogging here this week, my thanks to Minotaur for making it happen.  For future news as it happens, subscribe to my newsletter and check out my website which is also in blog format and where you can ask questions and leave comments.

Thanks to everyone for reading and leaving comments!  See you soon, on line or in the bookstore--

Dana

excerpt from Prepared for Rage

Since I spent all week talking about my new book, Prepared for Rage, I figured I'd better give you a little taste.  So just for you, Moments in Crime folks, a tiny excerpt.  Enjoy!

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[Astronaut Kenai Munro is the designated babysitter for a surprise guest on her shuttle mission.]

A week later, the sheik in question arrived for an introductory visit. He looked like Disney’s Aladdin, only older and more arrogant, and from the first he proved to be labor intensive. Kenai was right, he wasn’t happy with a woman as his partner, and he said so. Joel, to his credit, ignored his hints that someone of the sheik’s stature in the Islamic community and his family connections and their immense wealth and political profile and blah blah blah really ought to be taken in tow by the mission’s commander. 

Joel was probably afraid of what Rick would do to him if he did, for good reason. Rick did not suffer fools gladly, and people who inflicted fools upon him had been known to rue the day, if not resign on the spot.

The sheik had various other concerns, usually delivered to Kenai in an imperious voice as he looked down his very long nose. For one thing, he had seen photos of previous crews in space and he’d noticed that often the crew was wearing shorts. He trusted Kenai would not be orbiting the earth half naked.

Kenai exchanged a glance with Laurel, who happened to be loitering within earshot. “I’m sorry, sir, I just assumed...”

“Assumed what?” the sheik said loftily.

“That you had been briefed.” She did her best to look as if she were reluctant to be the one to bring him the bad news. “This mission...”

His brow puckered. “Yes?”

“Well, sir, this mission will be accomplished totally in the nude.”

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There is another, longer excerpt here.

You can pre-order a copy from Amazon here.

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tomorrow:  author sightings, or where you can get your copy of Prepared for Rage signed.

patrick chisum, the CIA and me

I'm pretty rational when it comes to the CIA.  I think everyone who works there ought to be fired and the headquarters at Langley should be burned to the ground. 

And then we sow the ground with salt.

See what I mean?  Rational.

So now you wanna know why, right?  Okay, I'll tell you why, but only because you asked.

I'm a member of the Me Generation, a dyed-in-the-wool Baby Boomer, but because I grew up in Alaska, I missed out on Woodstock, the 1968 Democratic convention, Kent State, all of it.  Sure, I was against the Vietnam War, I was for the right to choose and women's rights in general, I was appalled by Richard Nixon and Watergate--in short, I subscribed to many of the ideas and the ideals of my fellow Boomers (look at that, we're so full of ourselves we're even a proper noun now), but it was all happening so far away.  I mean, I read Gloria Steinem but I don't think I really knew what the word "radicalized" meant.

And then came the Church hearings.  That's Frank Church, D-Idaho, the senator who chaired the 1975-76 congressional look into what the CIA had been doing overseas over the past decades. Trying to kill Castro with exploding cigars?  And getting into bed with the Mafia to do it?  Sponsoring the coup d'etat that resulted in Allende's assassination?  Training Savak for the Shah of Iran, are you kidding me?

I was out of school by then, working and paying taxes.  Now I knew where those tax dollars were going when we sent them overseas, and it wasn't to roads and bridges and hospitals and schools.

Okay, now I knew what radicalized meant. 

And it doesn't help that in the years since the CIA has validated my opinion of them over and over again.  No clue and therefore no warning the Berlin Wall was going to come down, catching Bush I flatfooted and unprepared to accede to the Ukraine's request for the US to remove the Russian nukes there.  WMD in Iraq?  Uh-huh.  Iraq sponsoring al Queda?  Not then, but you can bet money on it now.  I think I'd rather give the US Air Force $900 for another toilet seat than the CIA one more dollar for US  state-sponsored terrorism.  Oh, I'm sorry, did I say that?  You bet I did.

Whew.  Okay, there, I feel better.

So somebody please tell me:  How the hell did Patrick Chisum, the CIA desk man in Prepared for Rage and the guy who finally figures it all out, turn out to be such a likeable character?  He's short, pudgy, balding, he dresses like Willy Loman, he's a by-the-book career bureaucrat, and he can't even muster up enough oomph to make a move on his obviously willing secretary.  And he works for the CIA!  How can I possibly like this guy so much?

It's one of those felicitous mysteries in this writing life, when the character takes on a life of his own, and the outline goes out the window.

Thanks for showing up, Patrick.

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tomorrow: an excerpt from Prepared for Rage

Cal Schuyler, Coastie rock star

In Prepared for Rage, my hero is everything my villain is not.

Cal was born in the West, in a peaceful, prosperous nation.  His father, a wealthy Boston Brahmin, is the US senator from Massachusetts for life (think John Kerry here).

His mother is a movie star who married up and whose looks Cal inherited (think Susan Sarandon here, only more shallow).  Cal is in fact a fortunate son, a golden boy, a child of privilege.  He has never really had to work that hard for anything, good grades came as easily to him as women, and his place at the Coast Guard Academy was guaranteed from the day he trimmed his first jib, as were his promotions, given who his father is.

Akil was born poor in the East, in a country riven by power struggles at the top, sectarian violence, and trouble across every border, not to mention natural forces. 

An average student, Akil went to school in the West on a scholarship he won only because a benevolent American corporation was looking for a tax write off and so endowed a scholarship program for indigent students from third-world nations.  He is socially awkward and sexually backward due to the religious strictures imposed by his culture and by the leftover trauma from his sister's death.

It's kind of hard not to feel a little contemptuous of Cal, isn't it?  And a little sympathetic toward Akil?

Watch and learn, grasshoppers.

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Tomorrow:  Patrick Chisum, the CIA and me.

where Kenai Munro comes from

I grew up without television, in a village in Southcentral Alaska that didn't have roads, either, you had to fly or take a boat to get there.  Still do, actually.

Almost the first live television I saw was the moon landing in July, 1969, when I went to Anchorage to go to college.  It was the first live broadcast in Alaska, come to that.  I fell in love with the space program in that moment and never fell out of it again.

My first novel was science fiction, Second Star, the first in the Star Svensdotter series, followed by A Handful of Stars and Red Planet Run (still my favorite book to date).  I have no background in the hard sciences so before daring to write science fiction I read as much stuff as I could get my hands on about science in general and the space program in particular, among them many firsthand accounts by astronauts.  Two of my favorites are Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins, the astronaut I heard speaking from the Columbia command module during the Apollo 11 moon landing, and Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane, a mission specialist on three shuttle flights.  My astronaut Kenai's experiences were much informed by theirs.

The parts of Prepared for Rage that are set in the NASA world are the parts I'm most nervous about.  I've been on a Coast Guard cutter--in fact, I've been on two.  I've never been on what Gus Grissom referred to as a million different parts all built by the lowest bidder.  At this point all I can do is pray I got it mostly right, and hope NASA doesn't send the entire astronaut corps out to whup my ass for taking so many liberties with their life's work.

As to the name, Kenai Munro.  Kenai is the name of a river on the Kenai Peninsula, derived from a local Alaska Native tribe, the Kenaitze.  It's pronounced KEE-nigh, it's the home stretch for the biggest and best-tasting king salmon in the world, and I've always wanted to name someone after it.  Munro is of course from Munro, named for Douglas Munro, the only member of the US Coast Guard ever to receive the Medal of Honor.  I hope his family isn't unhappy about this new relative of theirs.

My favorite of all Kenai's lines?

"I don't have time to dance."

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tomorrow:  Cal Schuyler, Coastie rock star

my worst day at work since Jack died

I sent the completed manuscript of Prepared for Rage to Captain Lloyd, the CO of Munro, for fact-checking the Coastie scenes. “That first chapter is brutal,” he said.

Yeah, it is. When I finished writing it, I was so unsettled I quit work for the day and called a friend to meet me for a mug-up at Captain’s Coffee. He looked scared when he saw me so I knew it was showing. I asked him why men do these things to women, why? “Why ask me,” he said, “I don’t get it, either!" 

I was heartened by his indignation. I needed reminding that day that all men don’t rape, that in fact most men don’t.

Alaska, alas, has the highest per capita rate of violence against women and children in the US, most of it alcohol or drug related.  The first scene in Prepared for Rage is neither. Instead, it’s fueled by a centuries-old religion whose right wing has made a practice over the last fifty years of extremist teachings that aren’t even in the Koran, their holy book, purported to be the word of their prophet Mohammed himself. I find this horrific in two respects; first, that people are so hungry for power that they’ll say anything to get other people to follow them, and second, that so many people will in fact follow them so blindly.

I’m sorry to report that Adara’s “honor” rape is based on real-life events reported in the media for years now. Can we just contemplate for a moment the qualifier “honor” here? What’s honorable about rape? On what planet does raping a female relative of a male offender restore honor to the offended party?

This one. 

I wish I had to make this stuff up. I don’t.

Adara’s brother is one screwed-up motherfucker, and everything he is and everything he does is born on that terrible night. You don’t have to like him (I sure as hell don’t) but since he is the plot of Prepared for Rage, you can at least understand him.

Welcome to his world.

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Tomorrow:  where Kenai Munro comes from.

Photo is of a painting of the Celtic, the fish tender I grew up on.  It hangs in the Duncan House Diner in downtown Homer, where they serve the best breakfast in town.  When I was a kid, that building was the Rexall Drug Store and the only place on Kachemak Bay other than the store at the Seldovia Post Office where you could buy books.  There was a rotating wire rack at the door filled with paperbacks, and when my mom went to work for Bob Gruber's air taxi, Cook Inlet Aviation, I'd hitch a ride across the bay whenever there was room just so I could go look at the books at Rexall's.

 

have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?

Hey all, Dana Stabenow here, writing from gorgeous Homer, Alaska!  The sun is shining, as I look up from my computer the wind is blowing up whitecaps on lower Cook Inlet, and let me just get up and check the temperature on my deck...12F.  Positively balmy.  When I get done working on Whisper to the Blood, aka the sixteenth ('strewth) Kate Shugak novel, I'm going to strap on my snowshoes and head out.

 

But I'm betting the reason Minotaur started this blog was so we authors would talk about the books we've already written that are about to be published, you know, the ones we all want you to buy.  In my case, that'd be Prepared for Rage (click on the link to read an excerpt), my second Coastie thriller coming to you live from Minotaur on February 5, 2008.  A renegade terrorist strikes at the heart of US power and prestige by attacking the US space shuttle. 

Guess who does offshore security for the space shuttle?  Why, that would be the US Coast Guard.  I spent two months on patrol on board USCG cutter Munro, researching this book and blogging to my website daily, with photos.  You can read the whole blog here, or here are a few of my personal favorites, riding in the helo, my close encounter with the Darwin sorter,

and the day the crew went to the orphanage (photo is of Nate the helo pilot and friend at the orphanage).

FYI, I'll be chatting with the Danamaniacs on February 12th at 5pm Alaska time/9pm East Coast time.  Click on the link to find out where.  There is also an extensive interview, everything you ever wanted to know about marvelous moi but were afraid to ask.  You have to join the Danamaniacs before you can access the website, but it's pretty painless.

Also on February 5th, I'll be sending out a newsletter to what I call the Known Readers Club.  Go here to read past newsletters so you can decide if it's worth it to subscribe to future ones.

Photograph is of the moon setting over Iliamna taken from my office window on Wednesday morning.  Click on the link, find Iliamna on the map and you'll have some idea where my house is.

Tomorrow:  my worst day at work since Jack died.

Later,

Dana

Blogging This Week on MomentsinCrime: Dana Stabenow

Dana Stabenow, author of Prepared for Rage (February 2008), will be blogging the entire week on MomentsinCrime.  Edgar Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of one stand-alone thriller, fifteen Kate Shugak mysteries, four Liam Campbell mysteries, and three science-fiction novels, Dana also occasionally writes for Alaska magazine. She spent two months on board the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Munro researching this novel, blogging daily about her experiences. In 2007, she was awarded the Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities by the governor of Alaska. Dana lives in Alaska, where she was born and raised.  Visit the Official Dana Stabenow Web Site at http://stabenow.com. 

Following A Deeper Sleep, her most successful Kate Shugak novel to date, Dana Stabenow delivers a nail-biting, all-too-real novel of international suspense.

A terrorist with a most personal grudge, an FBI analyst challenged to be three steps ahead of the intelligence, a Coast Guard captain assigned to keep watch on that very American of symbols from the water, an astronaut who takes her job very seriously—the paths of all of these characters converge on one clear morning in Florida. NASA is preparing to launch the space shuttle, this time with a high-paying visitor on board as a guest, and the FBI and the Coast Guard are doing everything they can to help the launch go off without a hitch. But one Pakistani man with a bottomless personal grudge and the commitment of many zealous men behind him is determined to strike back at the most visible target he can find.

Once again Dana Stabenow, who researched this gripping scenario by spending weeks living on board a Coast Guard cutter as it conducted its mission in the eastern Pacific, delivers an action-driven thriller with an ingenious, frightening, straight-from-the-headlines plot, certain to be her next bestseller.