Last-minute shopping!

Okay, you guys are surely far better people than yours truly and therefore completed all Christmas shopping in April, but in case there are any deadline-pushing junkies like me (it's a newspaper thing, I tell my friends and family, don't blame me, blame the business) I'd offer a few recommendations from my year's reading list. I'm at 98 books so far this year, my annual goal of 100 likely to be conquered again, and then it's on to 2010 and back to zero, which hopefully means a lot of great reading ahead. I've already listed my favorites from the front half of the year, now here are some from the back half.

1) Columbine, by Dave Cullen. Not exactly high on the cheer list for Christmas, but it is a magnificent piece of journalism, painstakingly researched and beautifully written. A story that everyone should understand better.
2) Ravens, by George Dawes Green. Cool concept, great cast, wonderful read.
3) Under the Dome, by Stephen King. If you like his door-stopper epics (and we always do) you're in for a treat.
4) What the Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell. Collection of ingenious pieces from one of our most fascinating writers.
5) The Glister, by John Burnside. Dark, creepy, captivating.
6) The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters. See above, and amplify. This one does Henry James and Shirley Jackson proud.
7) The Signal, by Ron Carlson. Hike-in-the-woods-goes-bad storyline isn't anything special, but the prose and the characters and the beautifully handled emotions are.
8) More Than a Game, by Brian Billick. Not really a coaching memoir, but an extremely insightful insider's account of the NFL, and why we should worry for its future.
9) The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel. Up there with Dexter Filkins and "The Forever War." Powerful on-the-ground war reporting.
10) Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead. This coming-of-age account of black teens in a Long Island summer community was one of the funniest, sharpest novels I read this year.

So Cold the River widget

It took me a while to figure out how to post this little guy, but it was worth the effort because the online marketing folks at Little, Brown and Co. did a wonderful job on this. I'm web-challenged (as anyone who has followed this blog can already tell) so I wasn't familiar with the idea of a "widget" and had no idea what to expect when I was told LB would be creating one. Have to say I'm awfully impressed by the result! You can share this through blogs, e-mails, Facebook, and whatever other social networking services you use. Please give it a look, and many thanks to the talented Miriam Parker for producing it. Hopefully, it sparks your interest in the book and gives you a little more sense of the story and the place behind it.

Kind words from kind people

Early galleys of So Cold The River are floating around out there, and I'm thrilled to report that several excellent writers have already offered up very generous words in support of the book.

We also have an official pub date now: June 9, 2010.

"An icy, terrifying winner. SO COLD THE RIVER puts an October chill in your blood by the end of the first chapter. It's not much longer before you've turned on all the lights and rechecked all the window locks. Few novelists warrant mention alongside Stephen King or Peter Straub. Michael Koryta, however, earns comparison to both."
--Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of The Given Day, Mystic River, and Shutter Island

"Michael Koryta is a gifted storyteller. His writing is eerie, suspenseful, and pleasantly wicked. If you're looking for a dose of Midwestern Gothic at its best, So Cold The River will be just the thing for you."
-- Scott Smith, Oscar-nominated and New York Times bestselling author of A Simple Plan and The Ruins.

"This book builds like a summer storm. Beautiful to watch until it shakes the house and knocks out the lights, leaving you alone in the dark. Another masterful work from Michael Koryta, So Cold The River is guaranteed to put the cold finger down your spine."
-- Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Scarecrow, 9 Dragons, and The Brass Verdict

"With So Cold The River, Michael Koryta's West Baden Springs Hotel has joined Stephen King's Overlook Hotel in the listings of 5-star places to stay in Frommer's, Fodor's, and The Lonely Planet's Guidebook to Hell. Like King's 'Overlook' (based on the real Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado), Koryta's West Baden Springs is a real hotel with real history. But if you stay there . . . for God's sake, don't drink the water! Koryta's So Cold The River is an example of the good-writing equals good-reading equation that makes fright-inducing fiction worthy of our time, attention, and real enjoyment.
-- Dan Simmons, NY Times bestselling author of Drood and The Terror

Looking ahead...

The Silent Hour was released just one month ago, but it's never too early to start looking for the next book, right? Here is a rough draft of the cover for my upcoming Little, Brown release, "So Cold the River." I really love the look of this. There will be much more about this book in the future, but for now I'll just say that I'm extremely excited about it, and it's going to release in June 2010.

Book tour and a big thank-you

Most of my travel for release of The Silent Hour -- with the wonderful Murder By The Book in Houston, Sep. 29, excluded -- has been completed now, and I'd like to thank everyone who came out. I had a great time, and it is always a pleasure to hear from readers, and particularly a lot of fun to see some of the same faces with each new book release. I wrapped up travel by retreating north to Willow Flowage in Wisconsin, a place that should be familiar to those of you who have read Envy the Night. To the right is a picture. Look real hard and you can see Ezra Ballard in the shadows.

One of the things I love about getting up to the Willow -- other than the time with my father and the people and the fishing -- is a chance to do some long stretches of uninterrupted reading. This year I ended up re-reading more than turning to fresh material, and savored my second passes through House of Sand and Fog, by the brilliant Andre Dubus III, and A River Runs Through It (I know, such a cliche reading choice for a fishing trip). That book dazzles me, though, and Maclean never gets enough credit for the laugh-out-loud humor. "You have never really seen an ass until you have seen two sunburned asses on a sandbar in the middle of a river," is one of many lines that come to mind, along with: "Painted on one side of our Sunday school wall were the words, God Is Love. We always assumed that these three words were spoken directly to the four of us in our family and had no reference to the world outside, which my brother and I soon discovered was full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the farther one gets from Missoula, Montana. "

There's so much genius in this short novella, and since I've posted about favorite openings, I'll include an all-time favorite ending, from this work:

"Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fisherman in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades into a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters."

Tough to top that without going directly to Gatsby.

I also discovered a driving tip: if you have a long car trip ahead, and you want it to feel like a short one, you would do well to listen to the Stephen King classic "The Shining" on audio as you travel.

Again, my deepest thanks to everyone who made it out to support the book, and I look forward to seeing you all again next time.