Having Fun, Raising Money for Charities, and Naming Names by Chris Grabenstein

Chris Grabenstein’s 4th book in his Anthony & Agatha award-winning Haunted Mystery series for middle grades readers, THE BLACK HEART CRYPT, was published this week by Random House. The third book in the series, THE SMOKY CORRIDOR, was recently released in paperback. His new caper series for young readers RILEY MACK AND THE OTHER KNOWN TROUBLEMAKERS will be published by HarperCollins this coming April. He also completed writing THE GREAT ESCAPE FROM MR. LEMONCELLO’S RIDICULOUSLY BRILLIANT LIBRARY for Random House Children’s Books, which is scheduled for a Fall 2012 publication.

His seventh mystery for adults in the Anthony Award-winning John Ceepak series, FUN HOUSE, will be published this May. To keep summer going into the fall and winter, he recently reduced the Kindle and Nook price of the first book in that series, TILT A WHIRL, to 99 cents for the month of August only.

His website is www.ChrisGrabenstein.com

 

Having Fun, Raising Money for Charities,

and Naming Names

by 

Chris Grabenstein

When THE BLACK HEART CRYPT came out earlier this week readers got to meet a crypt full of thirteen evil-doers known as the Icklebys.


The book also features three cats named Pyewacket, Mystic, and Mister Cookiepants plus a cameo appearance by our hero’s classmate Sammie Smith.

And of course, the stars from the first three books in the Haunted Mystery series, Judy Magruder and Zack Jennings, are back for another spooky, funny, action-packed adventure. 

But where did they all get their names?

It’s one of the questions I get asked all the time, especially when I go on author visits to schools.

Which is exactly where the Icklebys got their name.

In those school visits, I have fun improvising a ghost story based on suggestions from the assembled students to teach about story structure, protagonists, and antagonists.   During one of those exercises, in front of an auditorium packed with 300 fifth and sixth graders, when I asked for a good name for a villain, one of the students shouted out, “Ickleby!”

I made up a fun ghost story featuring the evil Mr. Ickleby and made a mental note.  What a great name for a bad guy.  It has the rhythm of Nicholas Nickleby plus the ghoulish “Ick” factor!   The fifth grader who shouted out the suggestion, whose name I don’t know, is thanked in the book’s acknowledgments.

(BTW: For information about arranging a school visit, please check out this page of my website: http://www.chrisgrabenstein.com/ya/schools.php)

And the evilest Ickleby of them all is Barnabus Ickleby.  Because, as a kid, I watched a lot of Dark Shadows episodes on TV.

Sammie Smith?

She’s one of my loyal readers.  Her dad sent me this photo of her devouring THE SMOKY CORRIDOR, finishing it in one sitting on a flight from Seattle to Michigan.

Another source of names, especially for the minor characters and walk-ons, is my e-mailing list!

My hero, Zack Jennings, was named after two people.  One was a guy I knew at Notre Dame High School in Chattanooga, Tennessee -- Jack Jennings.  The other was a fellow editor on my college newspaper -- Zack Binkley.

I always thought Zack was the coolest name.  It was like Jack but just a bit edgier.  So I put the two together and came up with my young protagonist.  Recently, I was thrilled to learn that my nephew and his wife named their son Zach Grabenstein.   Even though they spelled the name wrong, I’m looking forward to Zach being old enough to read about Zack.

Which brings us to Judy Magruder.  She is based on my wife, J.J. Myers.  (Get it?  J.M.) In fact, for you adults, the story in THE CROSSROADS, the first book in this series, is, in a way, a love song for my second wife, J.J. 

She came into my life after my first wife had passed away from a four-year bout with cancer.  J.J. showed me that there might be a happy new life further up the road, if I had someone fun to share the next part of the ride.   That’s really what the book is all about; coming to a crossroads and, instead of calling it quits, moving ahead.  So now you all know our little secret.

This makes having J.J., who is a terrific voice-over performer, be the narrator on the audio books even more fun.  She’s reading a story about a character named Judy Magruder who is, actually, her!

Pyewacket, Mystic, and Mister Cookiepants came to the book via one of my favorite ways to find names: a charity auction.  J.J. volunteers with a local animal rescue group here in New York City called The Artemis Project.   When I realized that Zack’s three weird aunts needed cats, we held an on-line raffle to raise money for the charity. 

We charged ten dollars a virtual-ticket and then had our own rescued cats, Parker and Tiger Lilly, nudge names out of a big bowl.   We raised one thousand dollars and Pyewacket, Mystic, and Mister Cookiepants won eternal fame in the pages of the book!

Every once in a while, names are added and then changed to protect the guilty. 

The bully who beats up Zack in the first book, Kyle Snertz, was originally named something else: the name of the bully who, in sixth grade, used to beat me up in a very similar fashion.

The author when he was Zack's age and being picked on by bullies.

I was all set to finally, forty years later, have my revenge, a dish best served cold, or after forty years, frozen.

But then my mother called.

And told me that the real bully’s mother loved my books.  Read them all, two or three times.

I could not give this now elderly woman a heart attack by revealing her son’s wicked past.

And so, Kyle Snertz was born.

His name, I just made up because it sounded like a noise a pig might make rooting in the trough.  Snertz.

Ceepak and Danny Rise From The Ashes Aboard The Rolling Thunder by Chris Grabenstein

Chris Grabenstein is an award-winning mystery writer and children’s book author, and a former advertising executive and improvisational comedian.

He performed in the same Greenwich Village comedy troupe as Bruce Willis back in the early 1980s.

Chris spent almost twenty years writing commercials for America’s top advertising agencies, representing clients such as Seven Up, Miller Lite, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dr. Pepper, and many others. He was, perhaps most famously, the copy writer who created Trojan Man, a radio campaign that still rides the airwaves today.

He went on to become an Executive Vice President/Group Creative Director at Young & Rubicam in New York.

Chris’s writing talent was first discovered by international bestselling author James Patterson, his Creative Director at J. Walter Thompson Advertising. Patterson had come up with a Writing Aptitude Test, which ran as a full-page as in the New York Times under the headline “Write If You Want Work.” Over 2,000 applicants responded. Chris was the first writer hired.

Chris has written screenplays, made-for-TV movies, Muppet scripts, and the occasional grocery list. In fact, he’s been writing since he moved to New York from Chattanooga, Tennessee—bringing along seven suitcases and the Smith-Corona typewriter he got as a high school graduation gift.

He won the Anthony Award for "Best First Mystery" (given at Bouchercon 2006) for his debut TILT A WHIRL—the first in a series of John Ceepak stories to be set "Down The Shore" in a New Jersey tourist town called Sea Haven. The second book, MAD MOUSE, was called one of the "Ten Best Mysteries of 2006" by Kirkus. WHACK A MOLE came out to great critical acclaim in 2007. The New York Daily News called the fourth Ceepak book, HELL HOLE, a "must-read." The fifth book in the series MIND SCRAMBLER was published by St. Martin's Minotaur in 2009. ROLLING THUNDER available in 2010, rounds out the first Ceepak six pack.
Chris’s fast-paced Christopher Miller holiday thrillers include Slay Ride and Hell for the Holidays.
On May 27, 2008, Random House will publish The Crossroads, the first installment in Chris’s ghost series for middle school children.

Chris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. He lives in Manhattan with his beautiful, beloved wife J.J., along with their dog Fred and three cats, Jeanette, Parker and Tiger Lilly.

CEEPAK AND DANNY RISE FROM THE ASHES ABOARD THE ROLLING THUNDER

by Chris Grabenstein

www.ChrisGrabenstein.com

It was about this time last year that I was making plans for John Ceepak’s funeral. Danny Boyle’s too.

MIND SCRAMBLER, book five in my Jersey Shore mystery series that started with TILT A WHIRL (winner of the 2006 Anthony Award for best first mystery) had just come out. We were holding our annual launch party at Partners & Crime, a terrific indie bookstore down in Greenwich Village. The wine, beer, and saltwater taffy were flowing. Mark the Magician was prestidigitating, because the murder in MIND SCRAMBLER takes place backstage at an Atlantic City casino during an illusionist’s act.

I glanced around the room. Friends and fans had assembled. My agent, the fantastic editor of my YA books at Random House, and the narrator of the Ceepak books for Audible were all in the house. So, of course, was my amazing wife who has been on this roller coaster ride with Ceepak and me since the start.

However, nobody from Ceepak’s second home, the folks publishing MIND SCRAMBLER, attended the event. Scheduling conflicts, I suppose. Not even an assistant to the assistant publicist’s assistant was there. Trust me -- this is never a good sign.

Anyway, I thanked everybody for coming, did a short reading, and then asked if anybody had any questions.


“So what’s the next book going to be called?”

Yep. It was the very first question out of the box

“Well, uh, um, I don’t know,” I had to reply, because Ceepak’s code won’t allow me to lie or fudge or prevaricate. “This may be the last book.”

To say the life was sucked out of the room would be an understatement.

You see, the Ceepak series had started at Carroll & Graf, a fantastic fiction and mystery imprint, which published TILT A WHIRL, MAD MOUSE, and, the purple one, WHACK A MOLE. Unfortunately, C&G was wiped off the face of the earth when its holding company was swallowed up by a bigger holding company that only held on to non-fiction imprints.

As luck would have it an editor who had been a fan of the Ceepak series soon acquired two new books for a Major Mystery House. But then, as often happens, Ceepak’s champion left that Major Mystery House to go off and write some Major Mysteries of his own.

And so Ceepak was orphaned. After HELL HOLE and MIND SCRAMBLER, we didn’t hear much about “future plans” for the series.

Crickets started to chirp. Carrion birds to circle. The verdict was clear: There would be no more Ceepak stories from publisher number two.

So, to keep the character alive, I decided to write a Ceepak short story, RING TOSS, and was thrilled when Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine agreed to run it in their June issue.

But then, the mystery fans started to speak up. I was moved to find e-mails like these in my in-box and on DorothyL:

“Please say you weren't serious when you said that Ceepak #5 was the last! I love this series and can't wait for each new one to come out. Now you're saying there won't be any more? It's just too cruel...!”

“I have to know, Chris, is there anything we can do? Would letters from librarians work? This is just too, too awful to contemplate.”

Yeah. Mystery lovers are amazingly fantastic.

On July 5, 2009, Oline Cogdill, one of the top critics in our field, IMHO, blogged that “Chris Grabenstein’s novels deserve to find a home”
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/features/arts/offthepage/blog/chris_grabenstein/):

I was quite dismayed when I heard recently that Grabenstein's series had been dropped. With the abundance of dreadful nonfiction "written" by celebrities and commanding big bucks, it doesn't seem fair that someone with talent such as Chris Grabenstein should be dropped.

Of course, Grabenstein isn't alone in being dropped. Many talented mystery writers with loyal followings also have been dropped. Many have found homes with other publishers. Others haven't.

I am not alone in my admiration for Chris Grabenstein's work. On the message board DorothyL, several readers have weighed in about his work.

Sheila Simonson, author of Buffalo Bill's Defunct and An Old Chaos (Perseverance Press), had this to say "Ceepak is a different kind of protagonist altogether. Under the surface simplicity, he is an ethically complex person in a world made for villains. . . Without being a boring superhero, Ceepak manages to come out on top, using his courage, intelligence, and honesty, and that is a very special kind of comedy indeed. When I finished reading the first Ceepak book, I turned back to page one and reread it. Surely Chris will find another home for Ceepak."

Sheila is so right.....and I hope there is a home for Ceepak.

And so, I said to my agent, Eric R. Myers, let’s see if we can find Ceepak and Danny yet another home.

Somehow, he did.

Folks, for a mystery series to live in two, let alone three, different publishing houses during its lifetime is nigh on impossible.

Miraculously, Pegasus Books picked up the series and published ROLLING THUNDER in May, 2010. They even brought back Michael Fusco, the original cover designer.
http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2010/05/13/the-return-of-chris-grabensteins-day-glo-covers/

And, I am pleased to report, that this week Pegasus Books sent ROLLING THUNDER back to the presses for a second printing -- two weeks after its intitial publication date.

There’s a very reason Ceepak #6 is dedicated to Eric R. Myers.

My agent is a very good house hunter.