July 10, 2018

The Crime Lady, Rebooted

THE REAL LOLITA, What I'm Up To Lately, and More

Dear TCL Readers,

I know, I was supposed to send out a newsletter again in January. And then…a whole lot happened, and now it’s July. So I’m going to keep this dispatch, which is now and will be hosted in future by substack because TinyLetter is no longer hospitable, rather singularly focused. I promise I will not go away for so long again — and when I return, there will be a more usual mix of book promotion + recommendations + links.

Just over two months from now, on September 11, 2018, THE REAL LOLITA: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World will be published in the US (Ecco), Canada (Knopf Canada) and the UK (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Those hotlinks are to my publishers’ websites, which will have all the pre-order links you’ll ever need, from Amazon to independent bookstores to everywhere in between. The US & Canadian covers, as you can see, strongly resemble each other, while the UK went in a different direction. I love both concepts, as you can see below:

The pre-publication process over the last few months has been nothing short of surreal. Seeing the book cover on the Javits Center doors during Book Expo America. Signing copies of the ARCs at BEA and ALA and meeting eager booksellers and librarians. A pre-publication cocktail party in May and media & bookseller events in Toronto in June. As of this writing I’ve already lost count how many interviews I’ve given about the book, but here’s one from C-SPAN’s BOOK TV that I taped during BEA week which will air several more times over the summer.

The trades are starting to weigh in, too: Kirkus rather liked THE REAL LOLITA, calling it “a tantalizing, entertaining true-life detective and literary story”, while Publishers Weekly concluded: “Weinman tells Sally [Horner’s] tragic story as it has never been told before, with sensitivity and depth.” And Library Journal senior editor Liz French tipped her review hand early with this blog post where she declared: “I was amazed at Weinman’s tenacity, empathy, and advocacy, not to mention her erudition. The story is sad piled on sad, but it doesn’t wallow, it captivates.” (We’ll see what Booklist has to say soon…)

Book tour plans in the US and Canada are still shaping up, but I can say that I’ll be visiting over a dozen cities this fall, with a launch event planned at Books Are Magic on publication day proper. I know what a normal book publicity push is; this has far exceeded my expectations, and there is so much more to come.

Writing and publishing pieces also kept me busy, including a brand new column — also known as The Crime Lady — over at CrimeReads, where I am a contributing editor. The first three columns are up now; I’m particularly fond of the most recent, on the mysterious drowning of Holly Roth, and the one coming up next, one of the most bizarre true crime stories I’ve ever researched, and one that is quite local to me.

Otherwise, I’ll direct your attention to a feature for Topic on the Depression-Era dognapping of a Boston Terrier named Kid Boots Ace; my Washington Post review of Laura Thompson’s splendid Agatha Christie biography and my New Republic essay on Margalit Fox’s equally splendid Conan Doyle for the Defense; a Q&A with David Mamet for his recent crime novel; an essay for The Paris Review on being a weird teen obsessed with Andrew Cunanan's killing spree; the second in what appears to be a mini-series of personal essays about cancer, this for The Cut; and aVulture tribute to Anthony Bourdain’s crime writing.

I also revamped my website, finally, to make it more of an author-centric one, and there you will find even more information about THE REAL LOLITA. It only took a few years to make the change. But it also meant that my old blog archives have gone to the great Internet void for now. I may bring them back someday, but for now, archive.org has them, as does my hard drive.

So what’s next? On July 16th and 18th, respectively, you can see me in conversation with two of my favorite authors, Megan Abbott and Jonathan Santlofer, about their brand-new books. (Details at the links.) Abbott’s novel GIVE ME YOUR HAND is her best one yet, and Santlofer’s memoir, THE WIDOWER’S NOTEBOOK, is a glorious gut-punch. There’s a gigantic backlog of books I’ve been meaning to recommend (though I’ve been doing so on Twitter and Instagram, which is where I live more regularly online) but those two are certainly standouts.

So, too, are two other books I’m honor-bound to mention: Alice Bolin’s essay collection DEAD GIRLS, for which I moderated a panel with her, Rachel Syme, and Leah Carroll at the Strand Bookstore last month (video here); and BASIC BLACK WITH PEARLS by Helen Weinzweig, a recent NYRB Classics reissue which includes my afterword (republished by The Paris Review):

And in August, I’m doing something a little different, but quite thrilling - the details of which I’ll save for the next newsletter.

Until next time, I remain, as always,

The Crime Lady