I’m a member of International Thriller Writers, a new group that’s really hit the ground running during the past year. They’re releasing a brand-new anthology called THRILLER: Stories to Keep You up All Night, and it’s going to be a good one.

Edited by James Patterson (Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider and many more), THRILLER is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. There are 32 brand new stories here, from some of the biggest names in the business including David Morrell, Lee Child, and John Lescroart, as well as four of the hottest new voices in the genre.

I’m really looking forward to this one, and if you’d like to check it out (or read a free story), go here: thrillerbook.com. Also make sure to check out the section under tour, to find out which authors are going to be coming to a store near you.

Here’s what a handful of big stars had to say about this one:

“Undoubtedly the greatest gathering of genre authors in one volume, Thriller is an unprecedented, adrenaline-inducing masterwork.”

— Paul Goat Allen - B&N’s Explorations and Ransom Notes Editor

“Outstanding anthology….Lovers of crime fiction in general and well-told action tales in particular will be well rewarded.”

— Publishers Weekly Starred Review

“The best of the best storytellers in the business. Thriller has no equal. Action, intrigue, and entertainment at the highest level. Adventure on a grand scale you won’t forget.”

— Clive Cussler

“Breathless, explosive, exhilarating. The perfect combination of spine-tingling and heart-pounding suspense. Keep your night light on for this one.”

— Sandra Brown

“Thriller is like a box of the best chocolates — bite-sized, delicious, and totally addictive. A collection of stories by some of the best writers in the thriller business — what’s not to love?”

— Joe Finder

“Thriller is entertaining, fast-paced, and just plain fun. It will take you to the most terrifying heights of suspense.”

— Tess Gerritsen

“Intrigue and suspense merge in this electrifying collection from an all-star lineup. Thirty stories at 300 miles-per-hour. Prepare to be thrilled from start to finish.”

— Vince Flynn

“Thriller will be a classic. This first-ever collection of thriller stories, from the best in the business, has it all. The quality blew me away.”

— Greg Iles

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I’m a “24″ fan. When Jack Bauer growls “we’re running out of time!” just before he takes out three guards en route to jacking a slimeball up against the wall by the throat, I stand up and cheer. Think Jack’s too exhausted (after foiling twenty-seven murders, several kidnappings and going hand-to-hand with several very bad men) to take point on a special-ops mission and foil a nerve gas attack? Think again. There he is, sliding out of that chopper in all-black and leading his well-oiled machine into battle. And Jack doesn’t hesitate when there are lives on the line–he’ll make the right call for the greater good, even if it means a few innocent lives will end. Blow up the pipeline so the nerve gas can’t escape into the population? Brilliant. And how did he survive that tremendous explosion, you ask? Don’t be silly. This is Jack Bauer, modern-day Superman. He can do anything.

I’ve read two great articles recently on the allure of “24.” The first is from the New Republic, and it makes the argument (among other things) that the show is a sign of our times, in the same way “All in the Family” was for the 70s, and “Seinfeld” was for the 90s. The turn of the century marked a new dawn in America, one that has been rocked by terrorist attacks and uncertainty about our own safety, which is an unfamiliar feeling indeed. Not since the Cold War (and perhaps not even then) has this country felt so vulnerable. We’re not just concerned with a foreign government launching a nuclear warhead at America, as we were then: we’re concerned with a bunch of faceless lunatics who want to hit the most innocent victims possible in very personal ways. These are not the world leaders you can watch and despise on tv; these are the boogymen from our closet. Kidnappings and beheadings are up on the Internet. It’s all so much more intimate and creepy. It’s a different world, a more dangerous one; or perhaps it’s the same old world, and Americans are finally being made aware of it.

Enter Jack Bauer and “24.” A hero for our times. A man who doesn’t hesitate to “do what’s right,” even if it costs him the people who are most dear to his heart. Bauer is more than a hero, in fact; he’s a superhero, and the argument can be made that this is what Americans want so desperately right now. Having grown up on comic books and Superman cartoons, when faced with such overwhelming evil, we naturally look skyward for the Bat-signal and wonder if there really is someone out there who is more than human.

And in fact, if you carefully analyze “24″ on a number of levels, the analogy works. It is, more than any other show on television, a comic book on screen. This leads me to the second great article I’ve read recently, from The Boston Globe: Like a superhero comic, ‘24′ thrives in a two-dimensional world. And that’s the brilliance of this show: we want larger than life, escapist fiction, we crave it, and “24″ delivers.

But really, when all is said and done, who cares about all that? “24″ is fun. It’s creepy, and tense, and dark, and completely unpredictable. Except, of course, for one thing: Jack Bauer will save the day. That much is written in stone.

The 2-hour season finale starts Monday at 8 pm on Fox. Jack’s got to stop the terrorists from launching warheads from a stolen submarine. This is gonna be good.

“Are you with me?”

24 on Fox

Nicole and I have returned from the World Horror Convention in San Francisco, and now that we’ve had a couple of days to recover, I wanted to post at least briefly about the trip.

I’ve always found conventions to be a wonderful experience, full of great programming and great people, and this one was no different. It started off early when we ran into Chris Golden at the airport, and arranged to sit together for the whole flight out. What a great guy! The time went by much faster with such good conversation.

Once we arrived and checked in, it didn’t take long to get into the flow. Over the course of the next few days, I didn’t catch as many panels or readings as I would have liked (Steve Shrewsbury, Cullen Bunn and Chesya Burke being notable exceptions), but because of this I did get more time to talk with so many fantastic writers, booksellers and editors.

I don’t think Nicole and I ate more than one meal alone; there were tons of fabulous restaurants right around the hotel and we hit a bunch of them, including a great Thai place with John Skipp, Cullen Bunn, Lynn Hansen and Jimmy Johnston, a fantastic Italian place with Kelly Laymon, and a cheap–and VERY good–Chinese place with a whole crew including Chris Golden, Jim Moore, Paul Miller, Monica Kuebler and others. But the find of the trip for me was the little diner called the New Village Cafe, which offered Nicole’s favorite the #4 breakfast special that included 2 huge pancakes, 4 strips of bacon, 2 eggs and hash browns for $5. That’s right, $5.

Can you tell I’m fixated on food?

We also spent a good deal of time in the dealer’s room chatting up folks like Jude Feldman from Borderlands Books, James Beach from Dark Discoveries, William and Deborah Jones from Elder Signs Press/Dark Wisdom, and many others.

And of course, there were the parties. The Red Light District party, Bizarro, Leisure Books, Borderlands, and more. All of them were fantastic–and as an added bonus, Nicole and I won the best prize of the raffle on Saturday night, a complete set of Haunted Memories photos! These things are great–Eddie Allen is a heck of an artist and a great guy to boot. Eddie serenaded the Leisure party with his guitar and harmonica after the raffle from the balcony overlooking the city. He even took requests. What a talented guy!

These cons are all about friendships. I feel like I strengthened some old friendships and made many more. In addition to those already mentioned I got to talk with Jeff Strand, Lynn Hansen, Brian Keene, Alan Clark, Nate Southard, Norman Partridge, Jon Reitan, Nick Kaufmann, Norm Prentiss, Susan Taylor, Dan Fox, Paul Puglisi, Brian Knight, Gary Frank, Minh Nguyen, Gord Rollo, Ray Garton, Mort Castle, Bill Gagliani, Tim Waggoner, Bloody Mary and Horrorwench, Lee Thomas, Cat, Dave Solow, John Little, Simon Wood, Mike Arnzen, Weston Oche, Yvonne Navarro…the list goes on and on, but I’m going to stop here because I’m bound to forget someone.

As usual, it ended too quickly. We found ourselves back on an airplane before we knew it, but not before sharing a shuttle with Brian Knight, Tim Waggoner and others and getting a little impromptu tour of the city when the driver couldn’t find the last pickup location. After a long plane ride we arrive home around midnight on Sunday, exhausted but full of great memories, as always.

Speaking of memories, before I wrap this up I’d like to make special mention of Steve Shrewsbury’s reading. Shrews read a fantastic and gripping passage from his upcoming novel, “Black Ribbon of Josephine.” But what made this event really unusual was his decision to read an essay afterwards by our late friend James Sneddon.

James passed away a few months ago and before his time, and Shrews wanted to honor his memory by reading his essay on horror and religious faith. This was both difficult and very moving for me. James was a fellow Five Star author who I’d corresponded with many times via email, but I met him in person for the first time at last year’s World Horror Convention in New York. James was a remarkable human being, and the horror community suffered a great loss at his passing (I wrote more about him at the time on my blog; go here if you’re interested in reading it).

I thought about James quite a bit during this trip, since I’d seen him last almost exactly one year ago. I was a newbie then, and he didn’t hesitate to welcome me into his group, making sure I didn’t feel lost and alone during the convention. This was very much appreciated, since I’d gone by myself and it was my first con.

I’ll always be grateful for what he did, and for the friend that he became. And I’m grateful now to Shrews for keeping his memory alive. Good work, my friend.

So that’s it for now. To all of you I met out there in San Francisco, thanks for the good times, and I hope to see you again soon!

Nate will be attending the World Horror Convention in San Francisco from May 11-14, 2006. He will be reading and signing copies of Bloodstone at the mass signing event. For more information, see the WHC2006 website:

www.whc2006.org

This is pretty far off the mark from my usual subject matter, but there’s a huge patent law case that’s just been decided, and the subject interests me, not just because I own a lot of stock in little Ariad Pharmaceuticals, but because what’s at stake is so mind-bogglingly huge that it defies decription.

In a nutshell, Ariad has just been awarded (by a unanimous jury decision) a significant payment of about 65 million from drug giant Eli Lilly, based on back royalties due to a patent infringement case they initiated back in 2002. They’ve also been awarded a 2.3% annual royalty of net sales on Lilly’s big drugs Evista and Xigris until the year 2019. The total amount due to Ariad from all of this could be more than 400 million by the time the patent expires.

While the money isn’t incredibly significant to Lilly, which brings in billions every year, it’s a transformative event for tiny Ariad, which has yet to make a profit and has an entire market cap of around 400 million total. This royalty stream will keep Ariad afloat while it continues to develop its own drugs for cancer (which are pretty impressive), one of which will enter pivotal phase 3 trials this year.

What’s REALLY remarkable about this verdict is that it upholds Ariad’s broad patent on methods surrounding the regulation of the NFKB pathway in the body.

NFKB was discovered about 20 years ago by one of the most respected names in science, Dr. David Baltimore. But at the time, the discovery wasn’t a big deal; nobody knew how important this biological pathway really was. Dr. Baltimore, with the help of several friends in the industry, patented a number of different methods of introducing a drug that would inhibit NFKB, and after 15 years or so of tweaking, the US Patent Office granted the patent and all it’s 200+ claims. An exclusive license was given to Ariad Pharmaceuticals by Dr. Baltimore.

Here’s the thing: during those 15 years since its discovery, scientists have found out a lot more about NFKB’s role. It turns out that NFKB is involved in many, many different processes in the body, and manipulation of this pathway could affect everything from arthritis to cancer. Asprin’s mechanism of action is to inhibit NFKB, for example.

With me so far? Great. Now here’s the bombshell: there are hundreds of pharmaceutical and biotech companies working on drugs that regulate NFKB. Some of them already have drugs on the market, like Lilly, Amgen and Millenium. Others are still in development. Immediately after the patent was granted, Ariad initiated the litigation against Lilly, claiming that Evista and Xigris worked by regulating NFKB and therefore Lilly was infringing and owed royalties. They also sent a letter to 50 other companies offering a license.

What this lawsuit does is send notice to those other 50 companies essentially saying, “pay up or you’ll be sorry.” Very rough estimates of the total royalties potentially owed to Ariad by all these companies are in the billions. Needless to say, this is a pretty big deal to a tiny biotech company struggling to keep its head above water. But it’s also a landmark case in patent law.

Lilly (and many others) have framed this case as being about whether or not a company should be able to patent a natural biological pathway in the body. If this is upheld, they argue, many other companies will rush to patent every naturally occuring process they can. This will (hypothetically) stifle innovation, as other companies will not want to pay royalties and so won’t develop drugs that target those pathways.

But this simply isn’t the case. First of all, studies have shown that patents do not stifle drug development at all; in fact, they may encourage it. And most importantly, this is a methods patent, which protects certain ways of interacting with the NFKB pathway. It does NOT patent the pathway itself, nor should it. Sure, Ariad’s methods are broad, and the patent itself covers everything but the kitchen sink. But methods patents are pretty standard things. That’s how you protect inventors, and encourage academic research.

Lilly’s lawyers have said that by granting this patent, Ariad has essentially been allowed to “patent water flowing downhill.” And now, they say, all the owners of hydroelectric power plants along the river will have to pay up to use the water for their own purposes. Not true, I say; using that analogy, Ariad discovered water flowing downhill and then patented the hydroelectric power plants. And that’s a BIG difference, folks. Clearly the jury felt the same way.

So what happens next? Lilly has asked the judge to set aside the verdict, and the patent office to reexamine the patent. They’ve also said they will appeal. While the chances of the judge overturning the verdict are slim, the patent office could invalidate the patent, and the verdict could be overturned during the appeals process.

I’d like to think the little guy wins out here. But there’s a lot of money behind the Lilly side, and the pressure will be intense. Ariad’s taken the first major battle, but there will be more, and more companies will join the fight. Time will tell who comes out on top at the end.

Stay tuned. I know I will.

I was surfing around the Net late last night, and in my bleary-eyed delirium came across a writer’s website. This site supposedly allows published authors a place to promote their work and discuss the business of writing. But in reality, what it does primarily is promote vanity press titles, because those authors are looking for any place that will help them get the word out. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, “vanity press” refers to any company that will produce books for a fee. The author of the book pays for it, literally and figuratively–because anyone with a few bucks can publish there, these books are not taken seriously by the industry and it usually does a writer far more harm than good.

Hypnotized by the descriptions of most of the featured titles, I scrolled down to one of the worst covers and clicked on “Horse of the Dawn” by Pamela Lynn Palmer. I was curious, you see; it was sort of like rubbernecking at the scene of a particularly bad accident. I felt terrible for these writers, who were trying so hard and didn’t realize they already had two strikes against them when they signed up with a place like Author House or Publish America; and I also wanted to know how bad it would get between the sheets.

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the “search inside” feature on Amazon and started reading. Perhaps it was my shock at finding coherent writing and a fairly compelling plot, when I’d expected an unreadable mess; but I don’t think so. Take a look and decide for yourself. Go ahead; I’ll wait.

I was impressed. This was far better than most of the other vanity press titles out there. If you don’t believe me, do a search for fan fiction, or visit the Publish America site to see.

Here’s the real tragedy involved in vanity presses. It destroys the credibility of a writer, so that even if he or she has talent, nobody is going to pay attention. Now, I don’t know how good the rest of “Horse of the Dawn” is; it may well be that the plot doesn’t hold together, the writing wanders, the characters aren’t interesting. But the fact remains that this writer does have talent. I can only guess what brought her to PublishAmerica, but I hope she made her choice for some compelling reason, other than simply being too new to the industry and getting sucked in by the promise of “getting her book in print.”

With a vanity press, authors pay for the honor of bad cover art, little to no editing, no marketing support and the chance to be treated like a pariah by the rest of the “legitimate” publishing industry. And that’s a shame. Because every once in a while, a talented writer gets caught up in this net, and the majority of them will never be able to fight their way out.

I hope Pamela Lynn Palmer gets her chance to fight. For the rest of you aspiring writers out there, please think twice before signing a contract with a press that will publish a laundry list for the right price. Trust me, it’s going to hurt you more in the end than you can imagine. Anything worth having is going to take time and effort; put in the time, learn the craft, make connections and land a legitimate contract. You’ll be glad you did.

I was lurking on Miss Snark’s blog earlier (which is a must-read for aspiring writers, by the way), and came across a reference to the Evil Editor and his posts critiquing query letters. I think this is a fantastic (and funny) way for new writers to learn what editors are looking for in a query–and what not to do. Check it out.

“The ideal vacation destination White Falls would not be, but it is the perfect setting for Nate Kenyon’s Bloodstone, a chilling tale of classic horror in which the portals of the underworld open up in an otherwise unremarkable small town…Kenyon may have been influenced by the greats, but his talent as an individual is unmistakable.”

-Danielle Conklin
NECROPSY: The Review of Horror Fiction
Read full review