The Electron Pencil

Read Koryta

I wonder how many people in this town know about the Bloom magazine book club.

Yeah, it’s a thing. Here’s the deal: Bloom, being bi-monthly, will announce a new book choice each issue with a get-together of all participants approximately two months down the road. The current selection is Michael Koryta‘s Those Who Wish Me Dead.

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Koryta, of course, is the local big-time novelist whose mysteries and suspenses have flitted onto the New York Times bestseller list now and again. He hangs out with bestselling author Michael Connelly and has garnered kudos from the likes of Stephen King, Dennis Lehane, and George Pellicanos. Here’s Koryta’s bibliography:

• Tonight I Said Goodbye (he was 21 when this came out)
• Sorrow’s Anthem
• A Welcome Grave
• Envy the Night
• The Silent Hour
• So Cold the River 
• The Cypress House (optioned for film with Chris Columbus as screenwriter)
• The Ridge
• The Prophet
• Those Who Wish Me Dead

Believe it or not, Koryta worked a bit as a private dick, interning with a licensed snoop a few years back. That’s how serious he is about his art. He began dreaming of becoming a novelist when he was 8 years old. He narrowed his ambition at 16 when he decided he’d write about crime. He sent a fan letter to Connelly, who later became his neighbor and pal. (Koryta also keeps a home in St. Petersburg, Florida.) Even after he became an honest-to-gosh author, he studied in a writing workshop run by Lehane down in Florida. He eventually worked his way up to teaching classes for Lehane.

Serious Man

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By and by, Koryta branched off on a sort of supernatural tangent in his books. The detour’s success has been mixed at best: acc’d’g to services that measure such things, two of his paranormal books, Envy the Night and Silent Hour couldn’t even crack five figures in sales combined. No matter. “He’s a courageous writer,” Connelly told Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Mechling for a 2010 profile on Koryta. Koryta insisted on trying his hand at ghostly stuff. “He was having a growing reputation and charting an upward trajectory [yet] he chose to take this risk,” Connelly said.

Koryta eventually became good enough in the woo racket to earn an initial press run of 35,000 for So Cold the River.

Thus far, five of Koryta books are in development for TV and/or film production and three of them have been tabbed among New York Times notable books of the year.

The first meeting of the Bloom mag book club will be Monday, February 9, 5:30pm, at Oliver Winery on the west side of Courthouse Square. That means you have two weeks to cop Those… and gobble it up.

Get reading.

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Loan Sharking

The Herald Times reports this morning (paywall) that Mayor Mark Kruzan has some $32,000 in his campaign war chest and he’s not even running in this year’s beauty pageant.

Neher: Hat In Hand?

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Betcha Darryl Neher’s pleased the mayor has endorsed him for the Democratic primary in May. “Say Boss,” Neher’s bound to whisper one of these days, “can you spare a grand or two? Y’know, just for expenses?”

Meanwhile, John Hamilton and Dawn Johnsen have been hosted powwows at their home, putting up coffee and tea for supporters and listening to them talk about local issues. And make no mistake: the power couple looked under the sofa cushions for spare change after the get-togethers as well.

Bloomington’s Future First Couple?

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Just wondering, will we ever see the day when election campaigns will be completely publicly financed? In fact, the feds first started pretending in 1971 that the body politic could foot the bill for those running for Prez. You know, the Q at the top of your annual tax form that asks, “Do you want $3 of your federal tax to go to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund?“

Let’s see, that was 44 years ago. Y’think my yearly three bucks counterbalances the hundreds of millions the likes of Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Boys pitch at the candidates?

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