Celebrating a NEW HOliday!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Know what today is? It’s Gabriel Valjan appreciation day! YAAAYYYY! 

Gabe is already a part of your life–you may know it, you may not. He’s a terrific and thoughtful writer–and more about that in a minute. He's a dear and revered friend in the book and writing community. And Reds and Readers, he is the most generous person I have ever met!

You know how some of us (ahem) gripe about all the social media we have to do, I mean,  get to do, and whine about how difficult and time consuming it is to make the graphics that WHY did we have to learn how to make, anyway?

Well.

Gabriel Valjan not only does his own, but he does graphics and promotions for others! UNASKED.

This just popped up for Sara Divello’s new book.

And THIS for my interview as  guest of honor at Malice Domestic.

Gabriel made these! He just–DOES that! And for The Back Room and A Mighty Blaze and Bouchercon and so many others and there is absolutely no way that a mortal human being could possibly do it–it’s hard enough for us to remember and organize our own schedules, right? He remembers and organizes  ALL of them! 

STANDING OVATION.

And in addition to that, he’s an amazing writer. And his newest book, Liar’s Dice. And what powers it forward is not just the terrific plot, but the brilliant dialogue. And we asked him to tell us a bit about that.

And the Sinner Speaks

     By Gabriel Valjan

Ask writers what they find most challenging to write, and the universal answer—regardless of genre—is dialogue, with a capital D for DIFFICULT. 

Dialogue is hard to write, and dialogue with subtext, harder. If you don’t know what subtext is, then think of the title of the Raymond Carver short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”

In real life people talk; few listen. It’s either talk that takes up air and accomplishes nothing OR it advances an agenda. Shane Cleary in LIAR’S DICE is a man who listens, and isn’t quick to react because he maintains an ethos not to judge others. When he does act, it is with purpose. 

A job offer he can’t refuse comes to Shane, along with his morning newspaper. When Shane answers the door with a revolver, he finds Tony Two-Times there, who says, “You gonna invite me in, or what?” A man of the streets, Tony knows Shane is armed. “Relax, Cleary, and saddle the Colt you’re hiding behind you.”

Talk can contain subtext. We seldom say what we mean because either we don’t know what we want or because we know our listener won’t like what we want. We hedge—feel the other person out before the ask. This is not the case between Shane and Tony. Stakes are established fast, though their talk is indirect, filled with innuendo beneath the surface. Shane is tasked to find someone. Their conversation is parry, pause, and response. What seems humorous to the reader isn’t; it belies something sinister.

“He’s missing, and he’s not.” Tony didn’t even blink when he said it.

“What does that mean in English or in any other language?”

“The kid took off with the girl.”

“Are you telling me you want me to cross our northern border and poach him?”

“Nah, we have people who can do that.”

“Then what is it?”

Shane and Tony know who they are and what they are capable of. Shane, like myself, accepts that bad people do good things, and good people do bad things. People are complex, neither saint nor sinner.

The most dangerous act in life is answering the door. It’s my metaphor for the inevitable call to action. In life, you either answer the knock or you don’t. One way or another, the knock will come to each of us.

I’ll end here with two scenes. The first is cinéma vérité, a comical snapshot of mobsters, paranoid about surveillance, on the move; it’s something I witnessed as a kid.

I imagined this conversation…spread out over twelve different payphones in Montreal and Boston. Mr. B was insistent that the Feds couldn’t bug a pay phone or any phone that fast. I could picture the surveillance footage: Mr. B and Tony Two-Times, umbrella in hand, the two of them fast-walking from one payphone to another in the North End. Meanwhile, bodies were dropping in Canada, New York, and New Jersey.

Item two is Shane’s response to Tony Two-Times who has realized (again) that Shane is someone to respect.

“You’re all kinds of secrets, aren’t you, Cleary?”

“Thought I was an open book if anybody bothered to read me.”

Which author do you think does dialogue best?

HANK: Oh, so great!  Dialogue….Michael Connolly? Lisa Jewell. Edith Wharton. How about you, reds and readers?

(And have you seen Gabriel's fabulous graphics?)

Happy Gabriel Day! And thank you thank you thank you!

And a copy of Liar's Dice to one lucky commenter–this week's winners will be published tomorrow! 

Gabriel Valjan is the author of the Shane Cleary Mysteries from Level Best Books. He has been nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Silver Falchion Awards, and received the 2021 Macavity Award for Best Short Story. Gabriel is a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime. He lives in Boston and answers to a tuxedo cat named Munchkin.