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About Me
- Jon Loomis
- I'm the author of the Frank Coffin mystery series, HIGH SEASON (2007) and MATING SEASON (2009) from St. Martin's/Minotaur. The third book in the series, FIRE SEASON, should be ready for publication late next year. I've also published two books of poems (VANITAS MOTEL and THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE, both from Oberlin College Press). I'm currently at work on a memoir (KING OF HEARTS), and a new book of poems (WHISKEY AND DYNAMITE). When I'm not writing I'm a college professor, a completely talentless blues guitar player, a guitar gear junkie, and a husband and father in progress.
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7 comments:
Hi Jon. Sorry that mess over at Crimespace made you decide to leave. As both an artist and a writer, I try not to get into those discussions because I have things to say about what's considered 'art' that doesn't fit with what most people consider art. Saves a lot of aggravation.
So how's your book doing?
Hey Pepper! It's really just the proud-to-be-ignorant anti-intellectualism of a couple of very outspoken members that drove me out. I've taken long breaks in the past and been able to come back, but I think I'm done for now. Maybe I'll sign up again in May, when the new book comes out. It's going really well--just got copy-edits back, but haven't had a chance to get into them yet. How about you?
Oh, just waiting to hear back on submissions. The one I'm currently working on isn't getting the attention it needs due to having to pack everything up in our house (we're hoping to pull it down and build new, but we'll see how it goes). Still, gives me time to think out a few things about the plot, so it's not such a bad thing, I guess.
Copy-edits can be fun, depending on how much needs doing. Hopefully they don't have you doing too much.
Wow, I just found out you quit Crimespace. "... the proud-to-be-ignorant anti-intellectualism of a couple of very outspoken members."
Hope I wasn't one of them. I was actually on your side, though I was probably clumsy in my trying to use the conversation to get to an understanding. I agree with what you were saying but I was looking for the words. Once we got to art being cultural that was good enough for me.
I read HIGH SEASON and I enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to your next one, good luck with it.
Hey John! No, not you--sorry you felt that was even out there. I definitely thought we were close to agreement, too, and I've enjoyed our on-line conversations a lot, on every subject. To the extent that I felt there was a hostile, anti-academic, anti-intellectual atmosphere at crimespace at times, I never thought you wwere part of it.
Very glad to hear you liked HS. The new one's pretty wacky, but my editor's very enthusiastic and SM/M seems inclined to give it a bit of a push, so we'll see what happnes.
Glad to hear the new one's wackier. To be totally honest, I thought you stuck a little too closely to the conventions of the genre on HS (okay, I'm almost completely kidding - still hard to get jokes across online - but I am looking forward to more wacky).
I actually thought I was writing literary fiction till the publisher put 'a mystery' on the front (I kind of thought it was Roddy Doyle in the underworld and he won a Booker). Now what am I going to do, my publisher is Harcourt and they announced a "temporary halt" to acquisitions yesterday.
More genre, I guess.... ;)
All kidding aside, I think HS is a little too faithful, too, but I really wanted it to work and sell as genre. It almost didn't sell: editors kept rejecting it because the climax scene confounded their expectations a bit too much (he doesn't rescue the girl!). I think books that deal in the underworld as such, as opposed to having an underworld character or two, are almost always going to be branded as genre. That's actually probably a good thing in terms of potential sales, the literary market being what it is. Harcourt's halting acquisitions? Holy crap. How ominous is that?
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