GOOD NEWS FROM THE CRITICS
LAFAYETTE, CALIFORNIA:
AFTER BEING 'EDITED TO DEATH' AUTHOR SHAMELESSLY HAWKS BOOK
If you don't really know Linda Lee Peterson, the word "perky" might come to mind.
That is, until the 5-foot-3 brunette opens her mouth.
"I'm the whore of Babylon," says Peterson, cracking a gamine smile. "And I'm having a good time."
Ever since her first mystery, EDITED TO DEATH, premiered earlier this year, the Lafayette writer has dispensed with the subtle strategies perfected by her San Francisco Bay Area marketing communications firm and succumbed to the realities of modern book selling.
"Now, it's me, me, me all the livelong day, as I ruthlessly figure out new ways to exploit my friends, family, and every human being I've ever known, and boost those sales figures," she writes on her Web site, www.lindaleepeterson.com.
Taking a breather from a crazed spring and summer, Peterson, 56, is already at work on a sequel, which will reprise her brave, if blithely arrogant character Maggie Fiori, a 30-something Oakland writer/know-it-all sleuth/Volvo-driving wife and mom who solves the murder of her boss, the urbane editor of a chichi regional magazine, Small Town. In other words, San Francisco.
"Two hundred people in the entire city, a friend once insisted to me, and everything else is done with mirrors," Fiori muses in the book.
It's a world she knows well. Peterson Skolnick & Dodge, the marketing communications firm she co-founded 26 years ago, counts as it clients such icons as the de Young Museum, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Nature Conservancy, not to mention a plethora of Bay Area corporate elites.
"Everybody knows everybody," says Peterson, relaxing in the elegantly appointed Tudor she shares with husband, Ken Peterson, presiding judge of the Workers Compensation Appeals Court in Oakland, and their cream puff of a Dalmatian, Sam. A son, Ben, 27, and daughter-in-law, Katie, live in Portland.
If Peterson's got the city down pat, she is also at home in the rest of the Bay Area, too, which makes it fun for locals to read: the Clift Hotel's dark-paneled Redwood Room, "just the place for a pre-assignation cocktail," Friday night pasta dinners at Ratto's in Oakland, and the biker hangouts, converted lofts and gay bars of SOMA.
"It adds to the book's charm and interest," says Ed Kaufman, owner of San Mateo's "M" is for Mystery, the Bay Area's largest mystery specialty store and mothership for mystery fans, which tagged Peterson's book as a recommended first-time novel. "I thought it was a very, very good debut. Linda has a splendid personality, which comes through in her character."
Peterson's also drawn fans at such legendary mystery bookstores as the Poisoned Pen in Phoenix and Greenwich Village's Partners & Crime.
"We had a standing-room-only crowd at Poisoned Pen," Peterson says. "Of course, it may simply have been because it was June in Phoenix."
Being the "anti-Christ of a shy person," Peterson doesn't spend time wondering about it.
"I love doing this stuff," she says, even brainstorming a Maggie trivia quiz on her Web site. As prizes, she gives away "I'm a know-it-all" T-shirts.
"I hit an all-time high (or low) in shameless hussydom when I proposed to my client at the San Francisco Botanical Garden that since my sleuth's name is Maggie Fiori (flowers, in Italian), and ... there are a couple of garden- related clues in the mystery, that it might be fun to invite me to be the lagniappe (New Orleans lingo for "a little extra") at one of their major donor events," she writes on her Web site. "Tasteless, huh? Well, he's thinking about it."
So how does a Stanford-educated marketing executive who was cited by Inc. Magazine as one of the West's "new breed of entrepreneurs" turn into a mystery maven? Blame Peterson's 81-year-old father, Murray Winthrop, of Walnut Creek — a fan of Dashiell Hammett who instilled the love of mysteries in his daughter — and her deceased mother, Vauneta Winthrop, who taught her to love books.
"In our families, bookishness was next to godliness," Peterson says. "So my father's getting a big kick of this."
It did, however, take 15 years for Peterson's book to see the light of day.
"I stole time in between everything else," she says.
"Everything else" is a lot. In addition to her marketing business, she's a board member of the Friends of the Lafayette Library, where she co-founded the popular Sweet Thursday literary salons and is now raising money for a new library learning center. Recently, she helped organize a multi-family garage sale on her street — get this — Read Drive.
"Everybody who lives on Read Drive really IS a reader," she gushes in a recap of the sale.
Peterson's also written a garden column for Diablo Magazine, penned a couple of titles, including Chronicle Books' On Flowers and HarperCollins' Linens and Candles and interviewed writers such as Amy Tan and Gus Lee for on-stage author events.
But the idea of writing a mystery was always in the back of her mind.
"I hauled it back out six years ago, thinking I'm not getting any younger, " Peterson says.
Book agent Amy Rennert got on board, and her longtime writing group, including local writer Suzy Parker, offered up advice and even the title of the book.
"One of them asked about how the book was coming and told me, 'You must feel like you've been edited to death,"' said Peterson. "I said, that's it."
Peterson's character, Maggie, moves in the same Bay Area culture her creator inhabits, with its bridge traffic, Scandinavian au pairs, and foodie obsession.
Noting an unremarkable lunch at a restaurant, Fiori pans it as "the usual assortment of Chinese chicken salad, grilled veggies, thresher shark and ahi, and lots of kiwi-raspberry embroidery on the desserts."
But Peterson isn't Maggie.
"She's not me — she's much younger, and braver," Peterson says.
In some ways, Maggie is a composite of the young women who were casual carpoolers that Peterson met when she used to drive over the bridge before her company went virtual.
"They're so buttoned up — they have a great job in the city, they've dropped off their kids and done their tai chi, and it's only 7:30 a.m.," she says. "But women talk to each other, and what I've learned is that everybody has something they're struggling with. I wanted Maggie to be vulnerable in that way ... a flawed sleuth."
Maggie's also married, with kids, which is something unusual for a sleuth. But it's what Peterson's used to.
"I've been married for 35 years," she says. "I don't even know what single life is like."
And being a bit more mature than Maggie helps in other ways.
"There's an advantage to being old — I've got a really good Rolodex," she says.
—Annie Nakao
San Francisco Chronicle
August 12, 2005
Get this: Jack London sinks, "smashed under by the great San Pablo whitecaps, and strangled by the hollow tide-rip waves" as "the strange sucks" nearly drown him in Tales of the Fish Patrol ($11.95), an early adventure-memoir newly reissued by Berkeley's Heyday Books. ... A plucky Oakland mom discovers a corpse in EDITED TO DEATH (21st Century, $23), a new mystery by Lafayette's Linda Lee Peterson. ... And the protesters who vowed to boycott Cal State East Bay's commencement because Richard Rodriguez was to be its keynote speaker changed their plans and attended anyway after Rodriguez withdrew. Quoted in the Sacramento Bee, the Hunger of Memory author explained his withdrawal by saying that all grads "deserved a sunnyand happy event, without the Chicanistas turning the day into a witch-burning."
— Anneli Rufus
East Bay Express
July 27, 2005
Sometimes an author can’t rush a book. Consider Linda Peterson, who took 15 years to get EDITED TO DEATH, her recently published mystery novel, into reader’s hands. The ideas for the book and its know-it-all, witty domestic sleuth, Maggie, came when Peterson lived in Oakland with her husband and young son in the late 1980s.
“Great cities inspire great mysteries,” says Peterson, whose engaging, fun-loving and into-everything personality is very much like that of her central character.
The novel is a Bay Area mystery through and through, but Peterson also tackles heavy issues — bisexuality, AIDS and a complex web of interpersonal relationships. Her boldness may have turned off some prospective publisher, but Peterson wasn’t willing to change her story.
A self-described “old lefty Democrat,” Peterson holds a special place for Oakland, where she lived for 14 years and bought her first house. Her family eventually moved to Lafayette.
Peterson’s go-getter personality is typical of a woman who takes on more than one person can comfortably handle: She runs her own marketing firm, with an East Coast partner, is heavily involved in the Lafayette Friends of the Library, which is mounting impressive fundraising events to build a new library for the city; and she’s been on a multicity book tour with countless book readings.
“I’m a total ham,” she laughs. “A friend once told me that I never saw a podium I didn’t like.”
Peterson did some rewriting on her book to bring her story up-to-date and consulted with some younger friends “to make sure that my insights were still valid.” She credits her success to what she learned from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird – set aside small amounts of time and accept little accomplishments.
Yes, there is a follow-up book in the works, Peterson says, adding, “Let’s just hope it doesn’t take me another 15 years.”
—Brooke Warner
Oakland Magazine
July 2005
"Smart-alecky Maggie Fiori just can't stop herself from playing Nancy Drew when her magazine-editor boss and former lover is murdered. The trouble is, the perpetrator is closer than she thinks and won't stop at menacing her kids, cutting her brake cable or threatening her life to keep her off his trail. The Bay Area is the backdrop for this debut mystery."
—Stanford Magazine
March/April 2005
"I am addicted to mysteries, which is why I only read them when I am on a vacation during which I have no work responsibilities. However, I am happy that I made an exception for EDITED TO DEATH, a mystery set in San Francisco.
Linda Lee Peterson has written a novel that will delight San Franciscans — and those who love San Francisco — with its multiple scenes in the city, by its sharply delineated characters, and by the complex tale of why an urbane, well-connected editor of a city magazine was killed — a mystery solved by a charming housewife, who is also a free-lance writer for the magazine.
Maggie Fiori is a Jew married to an Italian-American lawyer, and has two children in grammar school. She represents the lifestyle diversity prevalent in the Bay Area, as well as the increasing ambivalence of a life straddling two worlds — that of a busy housewife and mother, and someone seeking a career and expression as a literary figure.
She leads a gaggle of helpers in trying to solve the murder of Quentin Hart, a group that includes a preppy African-American photographer, much against the wishes of her husband and a Korean-American homicide detective.
Maggie solves the mystery, despite those who want to stop her from unraveling their secrets, and those who fear for her safety as she comes closer to the solution of Hart's murder.
Anyone who loves both mysteries and San Francisco should investigate this exciting read for yourself."
—Charles Fracchia
PANORAMA
Quarterly publication, Museum of the City of San Francisco/San Francisco Historical Society
March, 2005
"...Around the corner at the Lafayette Library, it's standing-room-only because it's one of the monthly "Sweet Thursdays," when an author comes to read. Tonight it's Lafayette author Linda Lee Peterson reading to a rapt audience of about 80 people from her book, EDITED TO DEATH."
—Lynn Carey
Contra Costa Times
February 5, 2005
"Happily married housewife Maggie, who writes articles part-time for a chic little San Francisco magazine, finds her much-admired boss murdered at home. They were supposed to have lunch and discuss her exciting new breakthrough article, but now she's in the dark about the topic and she's a suspect, besides. Surprisingly, she and the bisexual Quentin were one-time lovers, so that makes Maggie's broker-husband is a suspect as well. Appointed acting editor, Maggie attempts to hold the magazine together while investigating the murder herself. Strong focus, admirable prose, and a nifty story line recommend this first novel. Peterson lives in northern California."
Library Journal
January 2005
"Lafayette resident — and former Diablo gardening columnist — Linda Lee Peterson digs into the murder mystery genre in her debut novel, EDITED TO DEATH (21st Century Publishing, $23). Peterson's protagonist, a working mom, writes for a city magazine not unlike Diablo. When the magazine's editor is murdered, she takes the case — and takes over as editor. Yikes!"
Diablo Magazine
Book Bites
January 2005
IN THE MEDIA
NEWS FROM THE GLOBAL PROVINCE
The marketplace of business ideas — a site for investors, business executives, journalists, and elitists everywhere. To learn more about William Dunk Partners, click here.
What Can YOU Do to Help Sell My Mystery?
Or, What One Shameless Hussy Learned About the Wonderful World of Publishing and Promotion.
Dear Friends of Global Province:
For more than 25 years our firm has helped companies and institutions around America broadcast their values and enlarge their reputations with the vox populi. Now The Global Province has asked me to confess all, telling how I have flogged myself and my new book to America. Here’s what I’ve learned about making the transition from tastefully marketing other institutions’ ideas and products by understatement to shamelessly self-promoting my own with sheer hyperbole. That’s the difference, I guess, between marketing and sales. By the way, I am counting on you to buy my book and serve it up to several of your friends.
Obviously, all that store of wisdom and good taste from years past went right out the window when my first mystery novel, Edited to Death, was published on January 12, 2005. Now, it’s me, me, me all the livelong day, as I ruthlessly figure out new ways to exploit my friends, family, and every human being I’ve ever known, and boost those sales figures.
After getting counsel from my fashionista sister on what to wear to readings & signings (black, of course, unless there’s something darker hanging in the closet), I’ve been hitting the road: Every mystery bookstore that would have me up and down the West Coast (Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and the Greater Bay Area), New York, Texas, and more. The next wave is figuring out where I’m going to be anyway, for business or pleasure, and finding the local bookstore target in that city. Barnes & Noble has been particularly welcoming, both on the website and for readings in key stores, which simply proves that a good mix of feisty independents and Big Players can’t hurt.
Behind all those appearances are some interesting numbers:
Initial press run: 2,000
Number of books sold and/or on order two weeks after publication: 1139
Number of advance readers sent out: 50
Number of review copies/press materials sent out: 100
Number of hours spent obsessing, following up, working the book into every conversation, other varieties of sales, sales, sales: Countless.
I knew I had hit an all-time high (or low) in shameless hussydom when I proposed to my client at the San Francisco Botanical Garden that since my sleuth’s name is Maggie Fiori (flowers, in Italian), and that there are a couple of garden-related clues in the mystery, that it might be fun to invite me to be the lagniappe at one of their major donor events. Tasteless, huh? Well, he’s thinking about it.
It’s Multiple Dates to the Prom. Here’s the first thing I learned about writing a novel: It’s exactly like trying to get three dates to the prom. First, you’ve got to write it, then you’ve got to get an agent (mine is the high-energy, focused, and persevering Amy Rennert), then the agent has to find a publisher. Then, you’ve got to help move that merchandise. Oh, wait, that’s four dates, isn’t it?
And the last date may be the most important. Unless you’re Norman Mailer (or better still, John Grisham or the ever-frightening Danielle Steele), the publisher is going to do precious little to get you noticed.
Fortunately, in our small town, we’re blessed with some highly over-qualified temporarily stay-at-home moms. One of them was a “time-out” marketing director at a major publishing house. She signed on to book my readings and signings, and hooked me up with a high-energy publicist who had abandoned the Bay Area for a small town in Massachusetts. Thanks to email, phone, and psychic communication, Team Me, Me, Me was born. And, my bicoastal team members are high-producers; through a mix of charm, enthusiasm about the book, and knowing the right things to say to the right people, I’ve ended up with a calendar full of rea dings and signings, and supporting publicity.
The Generosity of the Genre. Unlike the more mainstream literary world — which has a rep for a certain amount of jealousy, backbiting, and gossip — mystery writers seem to overflow with the milk (or blood) of human kindness. Thanks to my agent, several high-profile mystery authors cheerfully read and provided “advance praise” blurbs. A few fellow mystery-writing acquaintances did the same. Many mystery writers shared their own marketing strategies, and helped identify mystery conferences to attend. (Just in case you find yourself in El Paso in late February, I’m appearing on a Left Coast Crime panel entitled: Sing a Song of Murder: What Music Adds to Mysteries. See? It’s all about Me, Me, Me.) Sisters in Crime, the national mystery book professionals and enthusiasts organization, publishes three very helpful guidebooks: Breaking and Entering, A Guide to Selling your Manuscript; Finding an Agent, and Other Mysteries of Publishing; Shameless Promotions for Brazen Hussies II — Practical Publicity Tips; and So You’re Going to Do an Author Signing. One Vermont mystery writer I’d met only after I visited her website and told her how much I liked her book is sending her parents to my publication party in New York.
Substance is Okay, Swag is Better. Thanks to a generous and gifted designer friend (Jacqueline Jones), I’ve got a great website: www.lindaleepeterson.com. Even if you gulp at being self-promotional, the website can do it for you — plus, it can be linked to your publisher, bn.com and amazon.com for direct sales. It’s also an efficient way to offer updated information. And, I’m running a little contest on my website — a concept I stole from some other nice mystery writer. Maggie Fiori, my sleuth, fills her head with useless information, so the website offers a Match Wits with Maggie Minutia contest, and each month, winners who answer all the questions (info available — where else? — in the book), get entered in a drawing for a handsome, commemorative T-shirt. The shirt s, which read Maggie Fiori says: I’m a Know-it-All on the front, and carries a red-penciled, edited first graf of the book plus the website address on the back, also serve as giveaways during readings and signings. Vulgar promotion? You bet, and it makes people laugh at events. Bookstore owners like people to be in good moods in their store. It makes shopping more fun.
Every Connection Counts. My hometown library, where I serve on the Friends board, hosted a literary salon for me (75 people, sold lots of books), complete with a cake that bore a rice-paper reproduction of the cover on the frosting. One of my fellow trustees at a seminary that’s part of Cal-Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union turned up at a bookstore event, won a T-shirt, and proudly wore it — under his suit coat — to our board of trustees meeting. More sales ensued. Friends threw book parties, with sales benefiting causes we all care about.
My beloved alma mater included an item in the Stanford Magazine and is hosting me at a signing event at the campus bookstore, and I’m the featured author at the annual Women’s Club Books on Review event. And, my sister, who thinks of herself as my full-time promotional agent, is hosting a pre-reception for the publication party in New York later this month. (Partners & Crime, Greenwich Village, Feb. 24, 7 pm, come have a glass of wine if you’re in the neighborhood.)
Or, as one of my heartless chums said to me, “See, it’s good to have your first novel come out relatively late in life. You’ve got a really good rolodex by now.”
That’s what I’ve learned in the first two weeks since my book made its official debut in mid-January. Some good news: In two weeks, we’ve sold out a little more than half the first run. Being shameless pays off. Oh, and don’t forget to visit my website: www.lindaleepeterson.com. Sorry, couldn’t resist just one more plug.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR EDITED TO DEATH
“If you are a Susan Isaacs fan, you will love Linda Peterson's journalist cum sleuth, Maggie Fiori. This is a San Francisco and Oakland story with sparks flying as wisecracking Fiori, with her razor-sharp wit and rampant curiosity, sets out to find out who killed her editor boss. I couldn't put the book down. A very satisfying read for mystery lovers.”
— Jacqueline Winspear, author of MAISIE DOBBS and BIRDS OF A FEATHER, and Edgar finalist for best mystery novel in 2003 for MAISIE DOBBS, and winner of the Agatha for best mystery.
“EDITED TO DEATH is laugh-out-loud funny, poignant, and gripping. Maggie Fiori is a wonderful new character in detective fiction.”
—Robert Heilbrun, Edgar-nominated author of OFFER OF PROOF
“EDITED TO DEATH is a page-turner. The heroine is complex and thoroughly likeable. The characters are a provocative cross-section of San Francisco. And the plot is compelling, with more twists and turns than Lombard Street.”
—Michael Castleman, author of THE LOST GOLD OF SAN FRANCISCO
“EDITED TO DEATH is an entertaining debut that crackles with snappy dialogue, a rich and textured sense of San Francisco, and an appealing heroine who is as witty as she is resourceful. Sit back and enjoy the ride."
—Jonnie Jacobs, author of INTENT TO HARM and MURDER AMONG STRANGERS
"Heroine Maggie Fiori's love of trivia makes for a great detective. As any crime buff knows, it's the little things that count. This book is smart, fast, and funny — a mystery to remember long after the last page."
—Terry Ryan, author of THE PRIZEWINNER OF DEFIANCE, OHIO
“EDITED TO DEATH is an exceptional debut. With an engaging protagonist and a likeable cast, Linda Peterson brings a fresh new voice to a crowded field. It makes you hope that she can pry herself away from her marketing career long enough to write a couple of sequels.”
—Sheldon Siegel, New York Times best-selling author of THE CONFESSION and FINAL VERDICT
ENTHUSIASM & SUPPORT FROM LEADING BOOKSTORES
ON THIN ICE / EDITED TO DEATH
An introduction poem by Jerry Thompson,
Barnes & Noble Booksellers,
Jack London Square, Oakland, on the occasion of
the author's appearance, February 17, 2005
There is life in the mystery of comfortable things
Carpools shopping and fingers full of rings
There are bells that sing across the San Francisco bay
Harmony and chill of spines making their way
Add to that a sleuth who knows the comfort of lies
Falling into love with a lover who dies
But not of a broken heart, not put to rest
Oh, you've gotta read the book, folks...EDITED TO DEATH
Ladies & Gentlemen, I present
Linda Lee Peterson
—Jerry Thompson, Community Relations Manager,
Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Oakland, California
FROM THE KING'S ENGLISH, ONE OF THE COUNTRY'S BEST INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES:
EDITED TO DEATH, Linda Peterson, 21st Century Publishing, $23
"Maggie Fiori has a lunch date (well, lunch and perhaps a little something else) with her boss, the editor of Small Town magazine, a wonderfully ironic title given that the town in question is San Francisco. When she arrives at his posh Pacific Heights apartment for their tète à tète, she finds him hunched over his desk with the back of his head bashed in, a fact that doesn't bode well for her promised atternoon in the city. Maggie, promoted from part-time writer to pro-tem editor of the magazine, pursues clues about the murder almost as aggressively as she does her new job. Never a shrinking violet, she forces John Moon, the SFPD inspector assigned to the case, to trade information, the only way he can get her to share her often revelatory tidbits. This very funny and fast-paced whodunnit would make a great way to brighten up a gray January day."
—Kathy Ashton, The King's English, Salt Lake City, Utah
M IS FOR MYSTERY NAMES EDITED TO DEATH SIGNED & SELECTED III PICK FOR JANUARY
One of California's leading mystery bookstores, M is for Mystery, has named EDITED TO DEATH a "Signed & Selected" pick for January.
For more news on the selection, go to www.mformystery.com.
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