You Still At It?

You can't talk about Chicago crime fiction authors without including David Walker. David has published ten mystery/suspense novels. His first novel, FIXED IN HIS FOLLY, was nominated for an Edgar award, and he's just releasing the 5th entry in his "Wild Onion, Ltd" Series. TOO MANY CLIENTS features a husband and wife investigative team not unlike Nick and Nora Charles. Walker is a life-long Chicagoan. He has been a parish priest in Chicago, an investigator with the Chicago Police Department, and an attorney. He's also the anchor of a writing group, to which both Michael Dymmoch and I belong.

So there I am, ready to launch my tenth novel in the last fifteen years, and bragging to Carl, this friend I run into every few years. “It’s called Too Many Clients,” I say, “the latest in my Wild Onion, Ltd. series.” He stares at me over a forkful of pasta. “You remember,” I say, “the series with Kirsten, a Chicago private eye, and her lawyer husband.” He washes the pasta down with a gulp of Chianti and grins. “Jeez,” he says, “you still at it? That’s great. I think I got both your other books.”

Some things don’t change.

And some do. In fifteen years the publishing world, the crime fiction scene, even sweet home Chicago…they’ve all changed dramatically. But on a personal level…

In 1994, as a kid, literarily speaking, I’d attend MWA meetings at Binyon’s in the Loop with forty or so other crime writers, post- and pre-published, and hear Hugh Holton (cop, author, everyone’s hero; gone too soon) announce the “news”— who got an agent, who got a contract, who’s doing signings, who won an award. These days our news flashes to a hundred times the people…without the drinks, the turtle soup, and the handshakes.

Back then I knew “hardware” from “software,” but wasn’t personally acquainted with either. Still, I managed to finish a manuscript. I queried thirty (yes! I went back and counted) publishing houses, and twenty-two agents. Remember driving to the post office? Waiting for mail delivery? Of your SASE?

I made the Holton news with a contract, and in 1995 with a real book. I had a great launch party, then spent the year speaking and signing in every venue—bookstore, library, barroom, church hall—that would have me, hoping to fill at least one row of those chairs…usually the back row. In 1996, while drying the dishes, I got word of my Edgar nomination. Remember that phone thing, hanging on the kitchen wall?

Off to New York, sans tux; home again, sans Edgar. But with book number two on its way. In fact, six books in six years, then four in the next nine. That’s me, leaving the day job and taking twice as long to get a book out. Did I mention a tough market, with… what?…five major publishers?

But yeah, I’m still at it. And the mantra I’m chanting? Not better, not worse; different.

Oh, and those two books Carl mentioned? Ten years ago I found one I’d inscribed to him, and bought it back…at the church rummage sale.

What about you? Seen any changes? Got any mantras to recommend?


David J. Walker will be signing Too Many Clients on October 2nd at 2:30 pm, at The Bookstall at Chestnut Court, 811 Elm Street, Winnetka,
followed by a reception in the courtyard at Avli Estiatorio, 566 Chestnut, Winnetka.

Here's to whatever comes next

By David Heinzmann

I always get annoyed when I have to listen to someone with deep ideological leanings—more often than not they are to the right—harangue the press for its perceived liberal biases. Most of the good political reporters I know have been around long enough, and seen enough of the sausage being made, that they really don’t lean one way or the other. In fact they all lean heavily in the same direction—toward general skepticism.

Along the same lines, in the last weeks of my time covering Chicago’s failed Olympic bid, people kept asking me whether I was for or against the city winning the 2016 Summer Games. I had a hard time persuading some of them that I really felt disinterested in the outcome last Friday in Copenhagen.

When the word came in that Chicago had been knocked out of the competition by International Olympic Committee members in the first round of voting, I was as shocked as anybody. But I didn’t feel disappointed or elated. I merely felt the urgency needed to get our first report ready and posted online.

I was sitting at a keyboard in the Tribune newsroom, playing the role of rewrite guy, taking reporters feeds from Copenhagen and Daley Plaza, cleaning them up and fitting them into our stories going online.

When the smoke cleared after lunch, a colleague and I sat down to rewrite the Sunday “now what?” story we had already prepared. Before the IOC vote, the story had been geared to telling readers what to look for first as Chicago started to build up for the Games. We rewrote it to tell people what little lasting legacy there would be in the wake of the failed bid.

Mostly, the answer to that question is the 37-acre Michael Reese Hospital campus on the near South Side, which the city paid $86 million for in anticipation that developers would snap it up to build the Olympic Village. Now, it will be developed as regular old real estate, and since Chicago didn’t get the Games, the price for the land goes up to $91 million. And real estate experts say that, in this market, no developer is going to want to touch that land for about five years.

Covering the Olympics would have been a roller coaster ride, for sure. But by the same token, seven years is a long time to report about the buildup to anything. One of my first jobs in journalism was working in the Associated Press’ Atlanta bureau two years before the 1996 Olympics there. I covered a lot of Atlanta Committee to Organize the Games press conferences and don’t remember relishing any of them.

My firmest memory of that time is one Saturday morning sitting in a conference room at the ACOG headquarters for a “press conference” with IOC officials. When I got there, it was me, three or four other reporters and a handful of TV cameramen, our attention directed to the speakerphone sitting on top of the polished wood conference table. The IOC members were on the line from Switzerland. I’ll never forget those poor TV guys focusing their cameras in on that speakerphone in an empty room.

In the aftermath of the Chicago bid, there could be some good stories. For instance, what discussions went on between bid chairman Pat Ryan, Mayor Daley and the White House? Did Chicago people promise the White House that it was safe for President Obama to go to Copenhagen because the city had the votes? On Meet the Press yesterday, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post suggested as much. And as he pointed out, boy, were they wrong.

But that’s not likely to be my story. On Friday, I gave a phone interview to BBC radio on the Olympic decision. I had figured I would be asked about the reaction in Chicago, but when the interview started—live—I was thrown into the role of national political analyst. All they wanted to know was how damaging this incident would be to Obama’s efforts to pass health care legislation. I winged it.

Anyway, there are plenty of next stories out there. And I will admit to being a bit relieved to have a normal work schedule back for a bit. My novel, A Word to the Wise, comes out in two months and I really need to spend some of my energy focusing on getting out there and pushing it.

I start in earnest this weekend, heading to Booked for Murder in Madison for an event Friday night, and then to Books & Co. in Oconomowoc on Saturday. And I’m hoping to meet a bunch of you, readers and fellow bloggers, at Bouchercon the following week.

Onward.

Apocalypse Now?

by Libby Hellmann

This is a grim post. So take it accordingly.

A cougar runs through Chicago
s Uptown... and is gunned down.

An earthquake rumbles up from downstate.

Gas is over four dollars a gallon… and climbing. In Chicago 36 people are shot during the first warm weekend of the year, while natural disasters in Asia kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Americans face unprecedented debt, soaring commodity and food prices and sliding home prices.

Something’s happening, and it’s not good. I’m a simple, superstitious soul at heart (I figure I was a sturdy peasant girl in a previous incarnation) and I can’t ignore the signs. Are we on the precipice of the Apocalypse? I’ve always subscribed to the “other shoe theory of life” and I keep wondering when and where it’s going to drop and how bad it will be. Are these apocryphal events a harbinger of disastrous times ahead? The fall of Rome… the coming of the barbarians… you fill in the blanks.

What’s worse, I have the sense that it’s all accelerating. Alvin Toffler warned us about this. I’m almost afraid to check the news these days – a cataclysmic event seems occur every day.

Of course, I could be just a tad paranoid. A real chicken-little. In fact, my sister-in-law asked me not to write about this. Her opinion – very Buddhist, I think – was that giving words to my fears might hasten or lend them credibility. (Now who’s the real paranoid, you ask?)


Kevin Phillips writes that even though more than 80 percent of Americans now say that we are on the wrong track, most of us still believe that the United States is unique, chosen by God.” He goes on to say that “So did all the previous world economic powers: Rome, Spain, the Netherlands (in the maritime glory days of the 17th century, when New York was New Amsterdam) and 19th-century Britain. Their early strength was also their later weakness, not unlike the United States since the 1980s.”

Is that so?

I’m willing to acknowledge that I’m overreacting. And that I’m wrong. In fact, this may be the only blog where I really do want you to tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about.

So, what do you think? Talk me out of this.

Please.

Memorial Day -- Chicago Style

by Libby Hellmann


The Chicago Tribune ran a story a couple of weeks ago on “colorful” Chicago characters, most of them elected officials. Included in their “Colorful Servant Hall of Fame” were


Big Bill Thompson, maybe the most corrupt mayor the city has ever known



John D’Arco, a convicted felon, state senator, and self-proclaimed poet

“Bathhouse” John Coughlin, a 1st Ward alderman and another poet .
(come to think of it, what that says about politicians with literary pretensions is probably best left to posterity) who, along his partner/alderman “Hinky Dink” Kenna, were the kings of graft and protection money at the turn of the last century



Betty Lauren-Maltese, Cicero’s town president who eventually went to jail for fraud. Betty, the wife of mob bookie Frank Maltese (for whom she named the town’s police and fire stations), was quoted (among other outrageous things) as saying the US Constitution didn’t apply to the gangs she wanted to kick out of Cicero.


So, on this Memorial Day, I thought it might be fun to remember a few other characters who didn’t make it into the article but have swaggered their way into Chicago history by their cavalier actions, personalities, and sheer chutzpah. Not all of them were elected officials, but all of them are part of the tradition of “bad boys and girls.”


Ed Vrdolyak: Has Fast Eddie finally had his comeuppance? The once powerful
Alderman (known as “Fast Eddie” because of his speed at rushing through legislation) and one-time head of the Chicago City Council was generally a major thorn in the side of the city’s first black mayor, Harold Washington. But he is also known as a mob lawyer, and is known to be the power behind the throne in Cicero (see Betty above). The one time head of the Cook County Democrats made a fast switch into the Republican Party so he could run – unsuccessfully -- against Mayor Daley. Unfortunately, just a few weeks ago, Fast Eddie was indicted for fraud and bribery related to a kickback scheme involving Gold Coast real estate. Shocking.

Jane Byrne: The first female Mayor of Chicago served only one term: from 1979 to 1983.
I like to call her the “Snow Queen” – her election came after a series of bizzards that paralyzed Chicago and made the current mayor, Michael Bilandic, seem incompetent. She was the one who installed Fast Eddie as the head of the Cook County Democrats (he repaid the favor by becoming a Republican), but, in the long run, she wasn’t able to muster the necessary political clout to survive. After Harold Washington won the Democratic primary, she played the spoiler, waging a write-in campaign, which split the white vote (Richie Daley was the other candidate), and made Washington’s election inevitable.

Richard Bailey: He probably couldn’t be elected dog-catcher, but he’s a creepy guy who’s now in jail for his role in the murder of candy heiress Helen Brach. Bailey, a con-artist who specialized in fleecing wealthy older women out of their savings, was connected to the horsey set. Racing, that is. "His favorite prey were women who were wealthy due to having been widowed, women whose thinking was not as straight as it should be because perhaps they were dying, very sick or acutely lonely," said one investigator. He’d con them out of their money by proposing they invest in horses, then skim most of the money for himself. As it happens, I have a personal note about Bailey. My former babysitter, a very attractive young woman, took a job with him and his girlfriend for three weeks and moved into their North side home. She became convinced she was being drugged, and we had to help her get away from him.

OK -- this post is getting a little long, so it’s time to quit. But don’t forget Commander Jon Burge, the former police commander who, for 20 years, tortured suspects to make them confess.

Or George Ryan, the Republican governor who, despite ending the death penalty in Illinois, was convicted of corruption and racketeering last year.

Or – going back in history – .
the famous and enterprising Everleigh sisters, whose Chicago bordello on South Dearborn at the turn of the century was possibly the most luxurious of its time and counted as their patrons politicians, writers, actors, and even royalty.


Clearly, I’ve just skimmed the surface. Who are some of the other Chicago “characters” you remember? And why do Chicago’s scoundrels and criminals seem so much larger than life than other cities? Although that just might be a subject for another blog.

Teachers

by Libby Hellmann

A good friend of mine left the business world 10 years ago to become a teacher in the Chicago public schools. He went back to school, earned a Masters of Education, and now teaches fourth grade. When I asked him why he gave up the lucrative income of a financial planner for the more modest salary a teacher makes, he said he wanted to be remembered as someone who gave rather than took. He wanted to leave the world a little bit better than he found it.

Over the years, he’s done some terrifically creative things on a shoe-string budget. Things his students will remember for the rest of their lives. Like the murals in these pictures that depict “technology through the ages.” The kids researched, designed, painted the mural all by themselves. They did such a wonderful job, in fact, that the mural hung in the Art Institute of Chicago for a few days. Students brought their families down for a special viewing. They drank punch and cookies and explained what they’d created to parents and friends. Chances are those students will never forget the experience. Or the teacher who made it possible.

Don’t all of us have a teacher who we’ll never forget? Who inspired us to reach just a little farther, and in doing so, changed our lives? For me, it was my high school history teacher, now herself an accomplished author. She taught me how to think, analyze, and most of all, how to write a paper. The secret, she said, was “T.E.C.” (Thesis, Evidence, Conclusion). It always worked. It made college a breeze, graduate school too. I still use it for articles and speeches I write professionally, and I taught it to my children. (For a price I’ll teach it to you). In fact, T.E.C. just might have been what eventually turned me into a writer.

But enough about me. What about you? Graduation time is upon us. Who’s the teacher you’ll never forget?

P.S. For all the mothers out there, you are the most important teachers your children will ever have. Enjoy your day!