Wilda Williams

BookExpo in La La Land: Authors! Authors!
June 6, 2008

Fancy swag may have been scarce as rain at this year's BookExpo but authors were plentiful. Greeting fans at  the D.C. Comics Booth was Brad Meltzer, who not only pens thrillers but acclaimed graphic novels. And at the Random House booth, Ethan Canin signed galleys of his Watergate-era novel, America, America. Look for LJ's review in the July print issue.

And I spotted  Robert Fate asking passersby if they liked mysteries and handing out copies not only of his own gritty Baby Shark mystery series (Baby Shark, Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues, Baby Shark High Plains Redemption) but also the works of his fellow Capital Crime authors like Bruce Cook (Philippine Fever).When I introduced myself, he told me how thrilled he had been by the strong LJ reviews, which he credited for the recent emails he had received from new fans who had discovered his books in their local libraries. Fate was also excited because Brad Wyman, the producer of the movie  Monster starring Oscar winner Charlize Theron, had optioned the film rights to Baby Shark. The road to the screen is long and winding and sometimes ends up nowhere, but Fate was optimistic. Did he have an actress in mind who could play the tough title role of a 17-year-old female pool hustler who goes looking for the men who murdered her father and raped her?   No, said Fate, but the chosen candidate should be someone in her twenties who can play 17. In the meantime Fate is busy writing the fourth novel in the series, due in spring 2009,  as he has a daughter who plans to go to medical school and his wife has urged him to sell a lot of copies to pay for her tuition.

Posted by Wilda Williams on June 6, 2008 | Comments (1)