About Books | Mark Rubinstein Blog

What Will Santa Put In Your Cyber-Stocking?

December 8, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

For anyone who ever celebrated Christmas, one of the great pleasures on Christmas morning was emptying the stocking. Though the racy bicycle or beautiful dollhouse beneath the tree was a cause for celebration, there was nothing quite as enjoyable as dumping the stocking’s contents and reveling in all the trinkets Santa had left. Pouring forth might have been a Duncan yo-yo, or a Smurf, a set of jacks, a pink Spalding ball, an egg of Silly Putty, and other unexpected delights.

That was then; this is now.

Today, we have Cyber-Stockings, and you’re never too old to download gifts on Christmas morning. This year, Amazon will sell to Santa, its e-books, which can be delivered as gifts for a Kindle owner to enjoy. So, your cyber-stocking can be filled with good books to read throughout the year.

I wonder if Santa will put a virtual candy cane in the cyber-stocking, too.

Mark Rubinstein,
Author, “Mad Dog House”

Please share...

R.J. Julia: A Magical Place in Madison

December 5, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

I was dropping off a poster to promote a December 10th appearance at R.J. Julia bookstore. I’d never been to Madison, Connecticut, and was looking forward to exploring the town and seeing the store.

Madison is a charming, shoreline town on Long Island Sound. It’s main street, Boston Post Road, is reminiscent of the time main streets of long ago. The store, housed in an early 20th Century building, has an old-fashioned cast iron façade, and a window festooned with books and gifts for the holidays. From the street, the store seems to call for you to enter.

And enter, I did.

Once inside, I felt transported back to the 19th Century, circa Charles Dickens. The two-story store has many curved nooks, and floor to ceiling mahogany shelves holding thousands of books. The predominantly youthful staff exuded interest, enthusiasm, and an obvious joy in working there.

The enticing aromas of freshly brewed coffee and fragrant pastries drew me to the rear of the store, where a charming tea room was located. The entire experience was simply magical. I wish every bookstore was this way.

I feel privileged to have been invited to talk there on Monday, December 10th at 7:00 PM and to have “Mad Dog House” on sale in such a lovely setting.

Mark Rubinstein
Author, Mad Dog House

Please share...

I Used To Change A Ribbon

December 3, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

How things have changed. Writing on a computer or some other technological tool is de rigeur these days.

In the old days (like 15 years ago) I wrote on a typewriter, or legal pad. If I needed to communicate with someone, I wrote a letter or made a phone call.

But now, the computer is the center of this writer’s life. E-mail communication with the editor, copy editor, art department, publicity people and others is crucial. If there’s an e-mail glitch, most communication stops. Or I must revert to the telephone, which is a jangling intruder in other people’s lives. How effortless is the e-mail, while the telephone call is cumbersome.

Sometimes, the computer freezes, or some insane gremlin seems to have invaded the machine. Files get locked, a manuscript is inaccessible, words and sentences get distorted, and I have to suspend writing until my computer guru straightens things out. Now, I’m at the mercy of technology beyond my comprehension.

In the old days, I simply would have changed a ribbon.

Mark Rubinstein,
Author, Mad Dog House

Please share...

About a Sequel

December 1, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

“Mad Dog House” has many favorable reviews, even though it’s been out for only one month. I find that very gratifying. Many reviewers have commented that it should become a film, while others ask for a sequel. I never wrote the story with either a sequel or series in mind; rather, it was written as a stand-alone novel.

But while it has its own power, the novel, leaves plenty of room for a sequel. My concern is that I’ve read many suspense/thriller novels that were followed by poorly written sequels. They were obviously rushed so the novelist could ride the seductive wave of demand. The second book suffers as a result.

I’ve decided to write a sequel to “Mad Dog House.”

But I’ll do it only when there’s been enough time for the creative juices to flow. I find that reading reviews and listening to readers’ comments help cement the undercurrents in the novel. They also provide insights about the characters I never willfully thought about. The novel and its characters need time to marinate in my mind. It will all evolve into a new and perilous situation from which Roddy and Danny must extricate themselves, if they can.

The last thing I want is for “sequel fever” to take hold, resulting in a formulaic novel. I want Roddy Dolan and Danny Burns to ride a perilous, fear-filled rollercoaster just as they did in “Mad Dog House.” That will satisfy readers far more than a rushed sequel.

After all, a good story takes time to tell.

Mark Rubinstein,
Author, “Mad Dog House”

Please share...

Psychiatry, Fantasy and Fiction

September 4, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein

I’m often asked how I made a transition from psychiatry to writing fiction. As residents in training, we had to present case histories. To me, each case seemed like a mini-biography or short story. Some were stranger than fiction, and it struck me that psychiatry–of all medical specialties– emphasized the human dimension of living life. Each patient has a compelling story. It’s unique, but taps into a shared commonality. Really, we’re all different and we’re all somewhat the same, aren’t we?

Above all, psychiatry appealed to me because it aligned itself with creativity and the arts.

When I co-authored nonfiction medical books, we illustrated issues with case histories. This took some creativity, whether a story was about a man who broke down because he’d had a heart attack, or a woman was struggling with breast cancer, or a young girl was jealous of her newborn brother.

But once I began writing fiction, I could use imagination.

So, in a sense, I was always telling stories, whether they were psychiatric, medical or pure fiction. (Is there any pure fiction?)

The freedom to make stuff up provides a strange feeling of pleasure. There’s little to match the exhiliration when a patient suddenly “gets it” (that ah ha moment) or the incredible sensation you get when a novel’s plot twist suddenly falls into place, and the story assumes a life of its own.

It’s really an exploration followed by discovery and may mean finding the hidden clues within one’s self. Some psychiatrists would say it’s the revelation of the unconscious or the getting of wisdom.

When all is said and done, the very process of writing fiction is really a bit of a mystery to me. But the transition to fiction came easily.

Please share...

Fiction and non-fiction

August 29, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein

Over the years, I’ve co-authored five non-fiction medical books for the lay reader. Now that I’m writing fiction, I’ve been asked to compare fiction and non-fiction.

I’ve been lucky in a very real way. When writing non-fiction as a physician, I often had to write case histories of patients (without revealing their identities, of course). These were always fun to do because each person is unique, and in dealing with psychologic issues, each has a unique story to tell. So, there was some inventive license in describing case histories to illustrate various points.

But one thing was certain in non-fiction: its purpose was to convey information about a specific topic (heart disease, breast cancer, psychotherapy, or child-rearing) in an informative, readable and reasonably entertaining way. So, the creative freedom was limited.

Fiction, on the other hand, involves a synthesis of experience with what the author knows of life, along with wholesale flights of imagination.

You just know when reading a novel that the author knows a great deal about certain subjects ( For instance, in Peter Heller’s “The Dog Stars,” he obviously knows plenty about flying an airplane, fishing, hunting and hiking, among other things). But he engages in wholesale flights of imagination that take the reading to another level of knowledge and beauty.

It’s that soaring imagination that propels the novel, and it’s much more difficult to capture those chimerical flights of ideas and fantasy on paper than it is to write effectively about a non-fiction topic.

Writing fiction is far more satisfying to me that non-fiction, after all, making stuff up is pure fun. Kids do it all the time.

To paraphrase what Saul Bellow once said, “When I was a child I was called a liar. Now, I’m called a writer.”

Please share...

The genesis of a novel

August 28, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein

Readers often ask how an idea for a novel comes to an author. I’ve been asked how MAD DOG HOUSE (due October 23rd) came into being. It’s a very strange—almost dreamlike—process for me. I’ve found it the same way for the other three novels I’ve written which will be published over the next two years).

It’s as though my mind went through some semi-conscious period where things from the past and present seemed to coalesce and began building on themselves. In all honesty, once the story was on paper, I was unable to reconstruct its genesis. It seemed very strange, almost the way you feel when you wake up some mornings knowing you’ve dreamed, but the dream dissolves before you’re completely resurrected from a sleeping state.

Read more on the Huffington Post >>

Please share...

“The Caller” by Karin Fossum

August 25, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein

Okay, this is a Norwegian mystery…one of the many Scandinavian novels flooding the market since the success of the Millenium trilogy.

The premise is interesting: A 17 year old boy with a deprived homelife sets about playing malicious pranks on people in and around his village. Some of them have dreadful consequences. Kids can be really vicious, for sure.

The novel’s problem is simple: there is very little suspense or tension. Much of it is written from the POV of the boy and you know his motivation and his objective. After a while, the only question is whether or not his pranks will escalate to something more serious.

I found the writing to be simplistic and naive, and have trouble understanding Marilyn Stasio’s good review in the NY Times. There was little to sustain my interest, and I think this novel proves the old saying that sometimes, less is more.

There is far more tension (at least for me) when the true culprit is unknown or unknowable, which is not the case here. This novel suffers from what is often called these days TMI (too much information). Two stars.

Please share...

“And When She Was Good” by Laura Lippman

August 21, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein

Heloise runs a prostitution ring in suburban Baltimore. She comes from a deprived background with a verbally abusive father and a passive mother. Having escaped her beginnings, she has, by virtue of grit, brains and determination, made herself into a sophisticated woman who has a young son and who lives quite well. Unfortunately, her son’s father is in prison and is Heloise’s former pimp and ringmaster. He doesn’t know Heloise is the mother of his child.

Heloise (formerly known as Helen) leads an intricately mapped double life, not only because she’s in the business she’s in, but because she visits Val (the father of her son) in prison, and still pays him a substantial percentage of her earnings, because she must. He has connections on the outside, and peril awaits Heloise if she should meander from her incredibly successful business model, some of which she’s garnered from her former work for Val, and from businesses like Amazon and eBay.

Heloise is quite clever, is self- educated, (intelligent beyond her formal education) knows the ropes, and can read people very well. When a madame in another county is discovered dead (murdered) things become dangerous for Heloise, and the life she has so painstakingly constructed comes under threat of exposure. Or worse: she’s afraid that she may become a target as well. At 37, she must cope with a threat to her life and to the secrets she holds–from Val, from her son (who thinks his father died before he was even born) and secrets she holds from the entire community.

Heloise’s situation becomes more tenuous when another prostitute (and former worker for Val) is found dead. Heloise must decide what (if anything) to do, especially when a former employee attempts to blackmail her. The tension mounts and Heloise’s dilemma reaches frightening proportions.

The story, told in a hip, contemporary style, moves toward a harrowing conclusion and the reader comes to the conclusion that this is not so much a story about prostitution as it is about a bright, self-sufficient woman who rises above her humble and degrading origins and is a master at finding creative solutions to seemingly insoluble problems. Heloise is a true entrepreneur and at heart, a person with a conscience and a soul. Four and a half stars.

Please share...

“One Breath Away” by Heather Gudenkauf

August 16, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein

Given the spate of school shootings over the past few years, you would assume a novel about a gunman taking children hostage at a school in a small town would be as suspenseful as it is timely. Unfortunately, I found the suspense lacking and the tension watered down by the novel’s construction which was skillfully done, but slowed the novel’s narrative drive.

The story is told through the eyes of five narrators, all experiencing the horror and processing it in different ways. They are a mother of two student hostages, their grandfather, a teacher (also held hostage), a police officer,and the mother’s 13 year old daughter who is in the school when the gunman appears.

The different perspectives offered by each narrator (either in the first person or third person, in the present or past tense) are interesting, though the first part of the novel can be a bit confusing until the reader sorts them out. Once things fall into place, the story should flow to a furious and compelling conclusion. But the author delves into far too many cul de sacs about each narrator, and bogs down the story’s natural flow, which waters down the tension.

Some people would call this a “thriller” because of the subject matter. I think it’s more a portrait of a small town, and the dynamics of people involved in a terrifying situation, but the read itself is neither terrifying nor thrilling.

While character development in a novel is very important, it should not feel to the reader like some sticky adhesive holding back the story. After all, when you get down to it, the story is what counts. Three and a half stars.

Please share...