Toby Ball's Blog

I haven’t posted to my blog in a very long time. I’ve been in a kind of limbo, waiting to see what would happen with Invisible Streets, the final book in the City Series and also working on an as-yet untitled manuscript. Since Scorch City was released, I’ve been in a strange (to me) situation where I’ve been writing without a contract and experiencing the doubt/anxiety of wondering if Invisible Streets would be published. I spent very little time blogging or doing other social media because I felt like I needed to be focusing on the actual writing and didn’t feel like I had much to say until I had validated what I’d been doing with a new contract.

Anyway, the good news is that my agent sent Invisible Streets to an editor named Mark Krotov at Overlook Press who was/is really excited about it. I’ve had a number of great conversations with him about the book and what needs to be done to get it into shape. We are being pretty aggressive time-wise and it is slated to come out in July 2014. I’ll post the exact date once I know. I’m really psyched to be with Overlook and to be working with Mark. I think it’s a great situation for me and for Invisible Streets.

In other publishing news, the French edition of The Vaults, titled Les Catacombs, will be out in late November from 10/18. That would mean that all the foreign editions of The Vaults will have been published with the exception of the Romanian edition, about which I know absolutely nothing.

I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things in social media. I have a new twitter account here. My previous account was hacked and I deleted it, so I’m starting from scratch. At the time of this writing I think I have three followers.

Finally, the NBA starts on Wednesday. Playoffs or bust for the Wizards. Welcome to the team Marcin Gortat!

Here is the fifth and final part of my book recommendations:

Martin Cruz Smith  

Gorky Park (all of the Arkady Renko books are really good)

Ralph Steadman  

Ralph Steadman’s Jelly Book

Peter Straub  

Ghost Story

Donna Tartt  

The Secret History

Ross Thomas  

Chinaman’s Chance

Scott Turow  

Presumed Innocent

David Foster Wallace  

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

Jess Walters  

Citizen Vince

Jess Walters  

Financial Lives of the Poets

Minette Walters  

The Breaker

Financial Lives of the Poets

I really think that Jess Walter is the best of the writers who attempt to “get” America. Financial Lives manages to get at things with humor and seeming ease that more hyped books unable to reach, despite obvious labor. Therewere a few moments that seemed to perfectly capture things that I’ve thought or felt during the past decade.

I could easily have included The Zero in the list above, but I decided that I didn’t want to put more than two books from any author in the list. I haven’t read Beautiful Ruins yet, either, though I’m looking forward to it.

Here’s part four of my book recommendations:

Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel

Bring Up the Bodies

George R.R. Martin

Game of Thrones

Val McDermid

A Place of Execution

China Mieville

The City and the City

David Mitchell

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

Tim O’Brien

In the Lake of the Woods

Edgar Allen Poe

The Complete Works

Richard Russo

Straight Man

Mark Singer

Citizen K

A Place of Execution

There are a lot of great books in the list above, including the two Thomas Cromwell novels by Hilary Mantel, which are both probably in my top five. But I wanted to mention A Place of Execution, because you are more likely to read Mantel without my urging. A Place of Execution is, in my opinion, a nearly perfect combination of atmosphere and mystery. It is the story of the investigation into the disappearance of a girl who lived in a small, insular, fairly hostile little hamlet in 1960s England. I think it is far better than most mystery/thrillers and when you are finished you may think differently about another, more celebrated book.

Here’s part three of my book recommendations:

Tony Horwitz

A Voyage Long and Strange

Jeffrey Household

Rogue Male

Bill James

Panicking Ralph

John Krakauer

Under the Banner of Heaven

John LeCarre

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Smiley’s People

Elmore Leonard

Split Images (he is incredibly consistent – it’s hard to go wrong)

Michael Lewis

The Big Short

Janet Malcolm

The Journalist and the Murderer

Henning Mankell

The Return of the Dancing Master

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I get the “who’s your favorite author” question quite a bit and it’s a tough one to answer because there are so many great authors and great books that it’s not that easy to pin it down, and also because even the writers I like the most have their great books and their not-so-great books (Elmore Leonard may be the exception to this — his not-so-great books are still pretty damn good).  But if I was really forced to come up with something, I’d probably say that the John LeCarre of the Karla trilogy is my favorite. I’ve included the first and third of the trilogy. The second, The Honorable Schoolboy, isn’t of the same caliber. The other two, though, are just about perfect, in my opinion. George Smiley is a great character, embodying the weariness and moral compromise of the Cold Warriors.

If I had a dime for every uninspiring spy novel I’ve started because somebody compared it to “the best of John LeCarre,” I’d probably have like $2.80.

Here is the second installment of my list of book recommendations:

James Ellroy  

L.A. Confidential

Justin Evans  

A Good and Happy Child

F. Scott Fitzgerald  

The Great Gatsby

Gillian Flynn  

Gone Girl

Frederick Forsythe  

The Day of the Jackal

Robert Graves  

I, Claudius

Michael Gruber  

Tropic of Night (all of the Jimmy Paz novels are good)

Patricia Highsmith  

Strangers on a Train

The Tremor of Forgery

Peter Hoeg  

Smilla’s Sense of Snow

A Good and Happy Child

I honestly wouldn’t have picked this up except for the fact that he blurbed The Vaults and I thought I should check out everyone who was generous enough to do so. I’m not a big reader of horror, but I thought this was excellent. It’s not violent for the most part or gory, it just sort of leaves you in a constant state of apprehension about the main character, a boy who may be mentally ill or may be possessed. My only caveat is for people who have a hard time with child-in-distress types of books. Justin Evans handles it very thoughtfully and I didn’t find it at all exploitative, but it is there nonetheless.

My friend Liberty contributed a list of 50 book recommendations to a book called Read This!, which contains book recommendations from a number of indie bookstore folks. It’s pretty cool. I’ve gone through and checked off books that I’ve read and marked some that I want to read or at least learn more about.

With that in mind, I thought I’d compile a list of 50 book recommendations myself.

I think there’s a temptation to make yourself look really well-read by including books that are supposed to be great, but which you haven’t actually cracked. I thought that I would probably be better off only listing books that I actually have read. So if your favorite book is Finnegan’s Wake or Anna Karenina or something like that, I’m sure I would have loved it if I’d read it. . .

A few authors have written a lot of books that I would recommend and in these cases I just recommend one, but I’ll put a note that it is a stand in for the larger body of work (Elmore Leonard is one of these). I’m going to do these ten at a time and each time I’ll pick one title to talk a little bit more about.

So. . .here we go, in alphabetical order:

T.C Boyle   Drop City

Bill Bryson    A Brief History of Everything

Albert Camus   The Stranger

Truman Capote   In Cold Blood

Arthur Conan Doyle   The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Joseph Conrad   Heart of Darkness

Len Deighton   The Ipcress File (or many others)

Nelson DeMille   Up River

Patrick deWitt   The Sisters Brothers

David Eggers   Zeitoun

The Sisters Brothers

I think there is a higher probability of a book getting on this list if I’ve read it recently. I know I’ve read plenty of great books that I’m either not remembering or not remembering them as being as great as they really were (like, say, The Martian Chronicles, which I remember really liking about 35 years ago, but don’t remember well enough to recommend). I say this because I just finished The Sisters Brothers and it is great, but who knows if I will remember it being this great in ten years. Anyway, it’s a western about two brothers who are essentially contract killers, but in the case of at least one of them, nice contract killers. The narrative voice is really strong, sounding cowboy-ish without devolving into camp (Hilary Mantel does the same thing in her Thomas Cromwell books). It’s a little bit like The Vaults in that it takes a genre — the Western, in this case — and inserts some weird elements.

It’s been a long since I’ve posted. I’ve really been focused on writing my next book, which is not part of the City trilogy, but something more contemporary. The third book in the City trilogy has been written, but I’m not sure about when it will be published. Anyway, I’ll keep the blog up to date with everything that happens on the new book front.

Since I last blogged, the foreign editions of The Vaults have started to appear. It is currently available in both Chinese and Italian, and I’ve got the cover for the Russian edition. The French edition is coming out in the spring of 2013 and there will also be a Romanian edition, but I don’t know anything about the publishing schedule there.

As you can see, both the Chinese and Italian covers are takes on the American cover, while the Russian cover opts for a more period look.

Foreign editions are cool for a number of reasons, including learning how to spell my name in Cyrillic and Chinese, seeing how publishers in other countries approach the cover design, and the fact that I don’t have to do much other than sign a contract. Everything else is taken care of by other people. The foreign rights process is  yet another reason why an agent is so indispensable. I have no idea how you would go about selling foreign rights on your own.

No invites to the Milan Book Festival yet. . .

Scorch City has received two great reviews recently, pasted below.

Library Journal:

When they accept the midnight request to move the body of an emaciated blonde from the riverbank near the Uhuru Community, journeyman reporter Frank Frings and analytical police lieutenant Piet Westermann put themselves in the middle of a tense clash between violent racists and the residents of the utopian black shantytown. Their investigation escalates as more bodies are found and a showdown looms between two charismatic religious leaders, each backed by political powers and dangerous enforcers. In terse, suspenseful chapters, the narration alternates among Frings, Westermann, a cop named Grip who moonlights as an anti-Communist enforcer, and slide guitarist Moses Winston.

Verdict Setting his second period dystopian thriller in the same unnamed city, 15 years after the events of The Vaults, Ball shows he is a master at creating hallucinatory noir atmosphere, developing morally complex characters, and treating contemporary issues in a smart retro-setting (the 1950s). Fans of writers like Caleb Carr, James Ellroy, and E.L. Doctorow need to give Ball a try.—Neil Hollands, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA

Portsmouth Herald:

Durham author Ball's second novel takes place in 1950, 15 years after his first, "The Vaults" (reviewed below). While the two share a setting — Ball's unnamed dystopian City and a protagonist, newspaper columnist Frank Frings — it is not necessary to have read the first, as Ball barely references the events from the first novel.

The City, despite its pulsing music scene, remains a hard-bitten place, although the gangland-style mayor is long gone and the current mayor is a decent guy in a tough race for re-election against a rabid anti-communist rabble-rouser. Frings is the voice of reason in a crumbling metropolis filled with anger and willful ignorance.

One night Frings is called upon to help the leaders of a black shantytown community to move the body of a white girl from the riverbank outside their walls. The leaders — avowed communists — fear the mob violence a murdered white girl could bring them and Frings concurs. He calls in a big marker from police lieutenant Piet Westermann and gets it done.

The plan here is that the police will investigate the death while keeping the Uhuru Community out of it. But one of Westermann's detectives, Grip, eyeing the river currents and the location of the body, is suspicious from the start. Though uneducated Grip is smart and fiercely anti-Red.

Then two more dead girls show up on the riverbank outside the Community. All three of them, in addition to having been murdered, are emaciated and covered with sores, autopsies showing some strange, scary disease.

Ball draws his City and characters in bold, broad strokes to start, filling in details and nuance as the story grows more complex. While the Uhuru Community emerges as a loose-knit group encompassing voodoo, militancy, poverty and family, the murder investigation pushes tentacles into prostitution, a cultish church, redbaiting and long-buried secrets.

Ball gives us a fresh take on stylish noir.

The Herald website also had a review (also by Lynn Harnett) of The Vaults that I had not seen before:

Ball's first novel, set in 1935, grabs the reader with its opening image: the Vaults, a quiet, cavernous dim repository of files. Rows of shelves stretch into the gloom, each holding meticulously organized and cross-referenced files that date back 70 years into the City's criminal past.

All of it presided over by one man, hermet-like, skeletal Arthur Puskis, whose idea of hell is a week off. Which is what he gets when he finds a duplicate file — a murderer's file with notes in different-colored ink, and a different man's picture in it, and no indication of any prison term — and brings the file to his chief's attention. The chief assumes it's a simple error and eyes Puskis' agitation with concern, insisting he take a week off.

Naturally Puskis is unable to leave this mystery alone and finds the scary break in his routine leading him in unexpected directions.

Meanwhile, above the musty Vaults, the City teems with crime and corruption, led by the most corrupt administration in its history. Frank Frings, investigative journalist and columnist, is collecting dangerous inside information to try and bring the mayor down. And Ethan Poole, union organizer, socialist and private eye is more than willing to twist arms — or resort to blackmail — to get what he wants for the union. But then an odd, sad woman asks him to find her missing boy and Poole takes a turn into a different dark chapter of his City's history.

All three men converge on the ugly truth separately and sometimes at cross-purposes. Ball captures the feel of a dystopian 30s as he follows his flawed and dogged characters through a minefield of dangerous secrets and betrayals.

An outstanding debut.

Scorch City will be released on August 30 and I will be doing a reading at RiverRun Books in Portsmouth at 7 pm. The even will be webcast live at http://www.livestream.com/riverrunbookstore. Check out my events page for other upcoming events!

I was going to write a post along the lines of "the soundtrack for Scorch City," meaning, I guess, music that would make a good accompaniment to reading the book. I gave this a little bit of thought and eventually asked myself why the hell would you want accompanying music for a book? This started a thought process that I will spare you but which ended in my remembering something I'd read (or possibly heard) recently about a question asked about dreams. The researchers asked people if they dreamed in color or black and white. As you would expect, just about everybody responded that they dreamed in color. But when this question was asked back in the 40s (I think), people answered that they dreamed in black and white. The point was that people needed some kind of analog to describe their dreams and in the 40s television and movies were in black and white, so when people thought about their dreams, they thought about them being in black and white.

So, what is my point? I think that, to an extent, televisions and, to a greater extent, movies influence what we expect from books. The music plays into this because there is a general expectation that things that happen are accompanied by specific audio elements. For instance, I know that when a Southeast Asian forest in napalmed, the sound will be that of The Doors. Coppolla seems to realize this experience/sound relationship when he has Robert Duval's helicopter group provide their own soundtrack — The Ride of the Valkyries — during their raid on a local village.

Moving away from the sound thing for a moment, how does film influence how I write? If you've read The Vaults or Scorch City, you'll have noticed that my chapters tend to be pretty short.  I've been asked about this in the past and it's always been a bit of a mystery to me because I didn't set out to write short chapters. It's just how it worked out. I had a theory that because I write for about two hours at a time, maybe the chapter length was basically a product of how much I could write in that period of time. But another possibility, I guess, is that I've internalized the pacing of movies and that  my chapters — "scenes" – reflect what seems like the amount of time they would be given on screen. I'm not sure if this is right, but it's a theory.

Anyway, about the soundtrack, I can't really say much after what I've written above, right? But I will give this plug: when I wrote the scenes in Fort Deposit (and the Freeman's Gap scenes in The Vaults), I did have in mind the album In Sacred Trust – The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes by Hobart Smith.  Listen to the preview for Coo-coo Bird or Buck Creek Girls for a taste.