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     James W. Hall, author of the Thorn series of thrillers, kicked off his tour for the newest in the series, Dead Last, at Murder on the Beach on the evening of Nov. 22nd. Before introducing Mr. Hall, a staff member announced the results of a recent study that found for every one hundred dollars spent an independently owned store, sixty-eight went back into the local community, compared to forty-three from a chain store and zero from an online retailer. Appropriate in the week leading up to Small Business Saturday.
     Mr. Hall started the event, complete with a delicious carrot cake decorated with the cover image of Dead Last, by talking about the many ways he’s tormented Thorn, who Hall described as “Henry David Thoreau with a .357 Magnum.” His parents were killed in a car accident while bringing Thorn home from the hospital. Then, in the first book in the series Hall—well , not Hall himself, he reminded the crowd, but a character of his creating—killed Thorn’s adopted mother. Over the course of the novels since the first Hall has also, among other things, paralyzed Thorn, had a primate defecate on him, peppered him with a pellet gun, and left him to die in a sink hole (this was done in angry response to an email Hall received in which the sender proclaimed that Thorn, at age sixty four, which the sender had taken the time to deduce from the timeline of the novels, couldn’t possibly do the things he does).
     Creatively, the problem with each book, Hall said, is getting someone who leads such an isolated life involved in the action. The solution is to kill someone close to him. So many women who get involved with Thorn end up dead that Hall is astonished when the character manages to get dates. There are similarities between Hall and his character. Both are reclusive, with Thorn spending his time handcrafting fly lures, Hall crafting sentences. Thorn is only drawn from his world when someone calls with a problem he must solve. Hall’s call comes from publishers asking him to go on tour and sell books.
     As much as he has put Thorn through “an endless series of permutations of violence” over the years, none is as bad as what Thorn endures in Dead Last, says Hall. Inspired by a brief obsession with obituaries and television production, Dead Last features a “life-changing event” for Thorn, involving his family. Although this event occurs in Dead Last, it will lead to Thorn paying a heavy price in the next in the series, which Hall is working on now.
               —Ed Irvin

Ed Irvin blogged Christopher Paolini's appearance to kick off our coverage of Miami Book Fair International.  Check out Ed's report from the session, and from the long signing line, on our 2011 Book Fair Live-Blog page. And come back through the week for more coverage of the Evenings With, and then our full-team live-blog from the Street Fair and Festival of Authors this weekend.

               —Lynne Barrett

    Tim Dorsey was at Murder on the Beach in Delray Beach on Monday evening to discuss his holiday Serge book, When Elves Attack. The reading/signing was the fifteenth appearance for Dorsey at Murder on the Beach, one for each of his fourteen Serge novels and one for an anniversary event held when the niche bookstore moved to Delray’s Arts district.
    Dorsey, as unconventional as his enigmatic protagonist, broke from the norm and started the event with Q&A. The first question he fielded was an obvious one: why a holiday novel? Dorsey said that he’d been considering a holiday-centered Serge novel for a few years, but when his publisher consented to a Christmas novel that included Serge and Coleman in all their sociopathic glory, he went to work. Given that, for many, the holidays revolve around a dysfunctional family dynamic, Dorsey said the story wasn’t difficult to concoct. He wanted When Elves Attack to resemble a Christmas dinner table made up of an ensemble cast of readers’ favorite characters.
    When asked about his writing routine, Dorsey said that he writes every day, when the house is completely empty. He blocks out months of the year in which he doesn’t tour and declines requests for public appearances. Instead of daily word quotas, Dorsey reviews his outlines and notes each night and sets his mind to write a scene.
    One audience member asked Dorsey, “How long are you going to ride the Serge horse?” The question seemingly took Dorsey, and a few members of the audience, including myself, by surprise, as it was tough to determine if the question was good-natured.  The author reminded the audience that Serge often appears on a minimal amount of pages within his novels, and that the antagonists and sideline characters dominate.  Dorsey said he considers each book a departure from Serge.
    Without prompting, Dorsey answered a question that had been nagging me since reading Electric Barracuda, released earlier this year. Those who have read it know that author Brad Meltzer was the antagonist of the novel. Knowing the ongoing gag Dorsey has with Randy Wayne White, in which the authors write each other as unflattering characters in each novel, I wondered what Meltzer had done to get himself drawn into the goof. Turns out it was the result of a good deed. Meltzer won a charity auction for which Dorsey offered a character naming. When contacted by Meltzer’s representative regarding his ideas for Meltzer’s character, Dorsey joked that he would be a chronic masturbator.
    The event, like this book tour, was a short one, which is understandable considering that Dorsey’s next Serge novel, Pineapple Grenade, comes out in January. There will be a another full tour for that book, culminating with Sergestock, a seven-day cruise for Serge-ophiles that includes stops at Grand Cayman, Belize, and Cozumel. The cruise is a fundraiser for the St. Petersburg Beach Library. Dorsey will also be appearing at the Miami Book Fair.
            —Ed Irvin

    An intimate crowd of mystery fans showed up at Murder on the Beach in the Delray Beach arts district Friday night to see Kris Montee—one-half of the sister duo that writes as P.J. Parrish. Montee was there to discuss The Killing Song, Parrish’s new thriller and first standalone novel.
    Murder on the Beach founder Joanne Sinchuk introduced Montee, describing her as “the Susan Lucci of the mystery world,” because, early in their career, P.J. Parrish was frequently nominated for literary awards yet never took home the statue. That all changed when Parrish won the Anthony Award in 2003. The author(s) have since added a Shamus to their mantle, too.
    Once at the podium, Montee detailed the inspiration for The Killing Song, which came to her while vacationing in Paris, where the book is partly set. Once she had the idea for the story, the problem for Montee became the lack of a character to tell it through. Louis Kincaid, the recurring protagonist of all their other books, is not the Parisian type. Via Skype, which is how the sisters do their writing, Montee discussed her ideas with the other half of P.J .Parrish, Kelly Nichols. Together, they came up with a new protagonist and The Killing Song was born.
    The novel revolves around a man’s search for his sister’s killer.  The sister disappeared from a South Beach club while visiting. Her body is found, along with some personal possessions, among them her iPod, on which her brother discovers a song outside of her musical tastes: "Too Much Blood" by The Rolling Stones. Forensic investigators eventually determine that the song was downloaded at or near her time of death. Described by Montee as “a Peter Pan man,” someone who is 35 and refusing to grow up, the brother follows the clue to Paris, where similar murders have occurred. There he essentially becomes an amateur sleuth, as the Parisian police have zero interest in helping a man with no credentials investigate a crime that occurred in America.
    During the Q&A, Montee seemed content that this new character has told his story and wasn’t likely to appear in a sequel or launch his own series. When asked how she and her sister decided to write as one author, a question I’m sure she’s answered before, Montee said that she began her career writing romance. Dropped by her original publisher, she was encouraged to try mystery by her new one. Meanwhile, her sister was working in Vegas, aspiring to write romance herself. While working on her romance novel, Nichols discussed with Montee a character she’d thought of who was lingering in her mind, refusing to go away. That character evolved into Louis Kincaid and the rest, as they say, is history.
    —Ed Irvin