This week I’m welcoming back author, Carl Bookins.
Before he became a mystery writer and reviewer, Carl Brookins was a counselor and faculty member at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Brookins and his wife are avid recreational sailors. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Private Eye Writers of America. He can frequently be found touring bookstores and libraries with his companions-in-crime, The Minnesota Crime Wave.
He writes the sailing adventure series featuring Michael Tanner and Mary Whitney. The third novel is Old Silver. His new private investigator series features Sean NMI Sean, a short P.I. The first is titled The Case of the Greedy Lawyers. Brookins received a liberal arts degree from the University of Minnesota and studied for a MA in Communications at Michigan State University.
You are doing what?
OK. So I’m old, or aging, or however you want to phrase it. But I still have all my faculties. At least most of them. In some form.
So why, at 84, when I should probably go sit by the pool and read a good book, am I trying to establish a small publishing firm? That’s a very good question. I’ll try to answer it in a way that brings up numerous other questions I won’t try to answer.
I write stories, mostly crime fiction novels. You can find them at bookstores and on line under my name. I’ve been writing in one guise or another for about sixty years. My wife is a retired editor and publisher. You can see we’ve been pretty close observers of the writing field and we started when most writers used mechanical typewriters.
Back in the day, a writer wrote, submitted to an editor or agent who found a publisher and the work was eventually published. hard cover, paperback, trade editions, they all came out of professional publishing houses. It was not an inexpensive process.
There was something else, called Vanity Press, in which a writer could pay for the production of his or her book, usually without benefit of any professional editing. Most of those books seemed to fulfill the author’s needs but no one else’s.
Fast forward to the Twenty-first Century and new technology has made it possible to produce relatively inexpensive books in short order. But for them to stay out of the vanity publishing group, they still need rewrites, good book and cover designs, printing and distributing expertise. If you can provide all that, you can be a bone fide publisher. And it all costs money , to be paid for, hopefully, by future sales of the books you produce.
I’ve always believed that the authors ought to have more influence over publishing decisions, so I envision the formation of some kind of co-op to make most of the decisions about publishing books by this house, called Brookins Books, LLC. That’s what I am doing, very slowly and cautiously because all the functions of the publishing house cost money up front.. We’ll see how it goes.
The Case of the Stolen Case
Short private eye Sean NMI Sean grabs his gat and gets on his high horse to battle a roving gang of thieves and murderers. The gang has come to town after an unsolved pharmacy murder and robbery. A mysterious silver-colored case of unknown contents appears and disappears as Sean sorts a tangled web. When the gang targets Sean’s lady love, he mounts his high horse and like a house afire rides to retribution.
Website: http://www.carlbrookins.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carl.brookins?fref=ts
Twitter: @carlbrookins
Buy links:
The Case of the Yellow Diamond http://www.amazon.com/Case-Yellow-Diamond-Sean-Mystery/dp/0878398163/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448218939&sr=8-1&keywords=the+case+of+the+yellow+diamond
The Case of the Stolen Case https://www.amazon.com/Case-Stolen-Carl-Brookins/dp/0985390689/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483908318&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Case+of+the+Stolen+Case+Brookins
Come and enjoy a time of conversation with author Carl Brookins as he talks about translating his sailing adventures to fiction and creating fictional characters that feel like old friends. Brookins is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Private Eye Writers of America. He can frequently be found touring bookstores and libraries with his companions-in-crime, The Minnesota Crime Wave.
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