tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-362718242024-03-09T18:46:40.130-08:00Ed Gorman's blogEd Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.comBlogger3540125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-13165671637270929992016-07-01T15:08:00.001-07:002016-07-01T15:08:39.016-07:00Catching up with Max Allan Collins<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJrTA8_XFqDsaujBeVQp0P9PWIB1hsVIVAJFye8HF85QXRoQbmQU260KV3Jv6chmJqqia4aDalJy01S986vR5klghEvSJS_4vWp3wBcbgH3AlBu4bH2b8ozPD-X3FqAJeFHbCn/s1600/51Udu4yVclL._SX311_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJrTA8_XFqDsaujBeVQp0P9PWIB1hsVIVAJFye8HF85QXRoQbmQU260KV3Jv6chmJqqia4aDalJy01S986vR5klghEvSJS_4vWp3wBcbgH3AlBu4bH2b8ozPD-X3FqAJeFHbCn/s320/51Udu4yVclL._SX311_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<b>1. Tell us about your current novel. </b></div>
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There are a couple of things that will become available
soon. One is the complete version of the ROAD TO PERDITION novel. It was
written in 2002 to accompany the release of the film, but DreamWorks licensing
made me do a drastic cutting/rewrite, eliminating 30,000 words and any dialogue
or action that wasn't included in the book. I am very grateful to <a href="http://www.brash-books.com/" target="_blank">Brash Books</a>
for negotiating with DreamWorks for the real, complete novel to finally be
published. </div>
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About the same time, <a href="http://www.hardcasecrime.com/" target="_blank">Hard Case Crime</a> will be bringing out
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Quarry-Black-Max-Allan-Collins/dp/1783298146/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467409072&sr=1-1&keywords=quarry+in+the+black" target="_blank">QUARRY IN THE BLACK</a>, obviously a new Quarry novel with what I think or hope is
an interesting setting -- George McGovern's presidential campaign and a black
leader in St. Louis who is supporting that ticket with public appearances. If
you ever wanted to see how Quarry would behave at a Ku Klux Klan meeting, now
is your chance. </div>
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And Otto Penzler is bringing out <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Time-Dead-Hammer-Casebook/dp/1504036093/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467409105&sr=1-1&keywords=a+long+time+dead" target="_blank">A LONG TIME DEAD</a>,
collecting eight Mike Hammer short stories that I developed from Spillane
fragments. That's exciting in part because there's never been a Hammer short
story collection before.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9m91wohs75B87vnNZJOjPTYHdw-l8MdrwMfYiwAGjncth4THBCVQpV3UqAAmcG9lmfAcGL6cRZStdCpwOTCDfhHoJJoGEFVdpaC-_Kx7DsxTn56hG5051FytkV9rSSmLk4Inl/s1600/Mike+Hammer+A+Long+Time+Dead+Collins+Spillane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9m91wohs75B87vnNZJOjPTYHdw-l8MdrwMfYiwAGjncth4THBCVQpV3UqAAmcG9lmfAcGL6cRZStdCpwOTCDfhHoJJoGEFVdpaC-_Kx7DsxTn56hG5051FytkV9rSSmLk4Inl/s320/Mike+Hammer+A+Long+Time+Dead+Collins+Spillane.jpg" width="204" /></a></div>
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<b>2. Can you give a sense of what you're working on now?</b></div>
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I just finished a Mike Hammer novel, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mike-Hammer-Will-Mickey-Spillane/dp/1783291427/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467409308&sr=1-1&keywords=the+will+to+kill+spillane" target="_blank">THE WILL TO KILL</a>,
working from a few chapters in Mickey Spillane's files. It's very unusual for a
Hammer, because the mystery is right out of Agatha Christie, with greedy
children fighting over the proceeds of a murdered patriarch's estate.</div>
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Not too long before that, I did my pass on the new <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Allan/e/B001HMN8R2/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1467409340&sr=1-2-ent" target="_blank">Barbara Allan</a> mystery, ANTIQUES FRAME, co-written with my wife Barb. That was my first
project after open-heart surgery and a minor stroke, and it was very gratifying
to be able to get back up on the horse and ride so quickly. just weeks after
the surgery.</div>
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Next up is EXECUTIVE ORDER, the third <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fate-Union-Reeder-Rogers-Thriller-ebook/dp/B00VF4B4D2?ie=UTF8&qid=1467408973&ref_=la_B000APBJZK_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1#navbar" target="_blank">Reeder and Rogers</a> political
thriller, in collaboration with Matt Clemens.</div>
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<b>3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?</b></div>
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The greatest pleasure of a writing career is having one. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The notion that I could ever hold down a
normal job is highly suspect.</div>
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<b>4. What is the greatest DISpleasure?</b></div>
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I don't know if there's a dis-pleasure for me. I really love
this life. The things that frustrate me are minor in the bigger picture. For
example, I despise having copy editors rewrite me, and have spent way too much
time in my life putting various Humpty Dumptys back together. It's always
disappointing when a novel is critically ignored or particularly when the
public ignores it. When a publisher drops a series, it can be crushing—I had
to wait ten years before I felt I could re-launch <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=nathan+heller" target="_blank">Nathan Heller</a>, and a lot of
time was lost there.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoSKvbp3OvCIuxnwMx9tMI-2Dc5boZ3yegIKwXNf7GuY-_XY_VWlHoVYGlQNLx_6kYjQkWoWFdL9XYtOiPjmtNZ3cU5Y2tUar4i0L41CtLvBrqqKFALKbyRNFp4014N8nwxyjG/s1600/Ask+Not+Max+Allan+Collins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoSKvbp3OvCIuxnwMx9tMI-2Dc5boZ3yegIKwXNf7GuY-_XY_VWlHoVYGlQNLx_6kYjQkWoWFdL9XYtOiPjmtNZ3cU5Y2tUar4i0L41CtLvBrqqKFALKbyRNFp4014N8nwxyjG/s320/Ask+Not+Max+Allan+Collins.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
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<b>5. If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world,
what is it?</b></div>
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For the publishing world itself? Don't judge an author by
how well his or her last book sold. Judge each book on its own merits, and that
includes proposed novels from authors whose professionalism isn't in
question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<b>6. Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd
like to see in print again?</b></div>
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So many of my favorites are back in print again in the POD
and e-book fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it would be nice
to see <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=horace+mccoy&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Ahorace+mccoy" target="_blank">Horace McCoy</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&text=Mike+Roscoe&search-alias=books&field-author=Mike+Roscoe&sort=relevancerank" target="_blank">Mike Roscoe</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Double-Take-Roy-Huggins/dp/1627553681/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467409659&sr=1-1&keywords=roy+huggins" target="_blank">Roy Huggins</a> out there in a more major
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was pleased to see <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sands-War-Ennis-Willie/dp/1605435961/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467409697&sr=1-1&keywords=ennis+willie" target="_blank">Ennis Willie</a>
finally get some attention, but unfortunately it's faded somewhat.</div>
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<b>7. Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers
never forget that moment.</b></div>
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Mine is easy to remember. I got the letter (my agent at the
time never called me) on Dec. 24, 1971—<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nolan-Money-Max-Allan-Collins/dp/0523411596/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467409746&sr=1-1&keywords=bait+money+collins" target="_blank">BAIT MONEY</a>, the first Nolan novel, had
sold on Christmas Eve! When I told Donald E. Westlake about it—he'd been a
mentor to me—he said, "Sometimes God behaves like O. Henry, and there's
nothing you can do about it."</div>
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Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-28126304212505568112016-06-11T16:51:00.004-07:002016-06-11T16:52:50.358-07:00Book Review: ZIGZAG by Bill Pronzini<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO0AAWGy-6nIIfd4ceHnLCCOcw89DVHLduDsfAjkysvDTDHfuDa3p1F8tznLYTyASYizU2GyCn7YVSkqVxX6qGKFMEwD3LfTuyeIbk5VGAmHNWI0McEJdgXJR37jJ_FjhFY68x/s1600/7b36169180bc9811687f0a44a8c14634-w204%25401x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO0AAWGy-6nIIfd4ceHnLCCOcw89DVHLduDsfAjkysvDTDHfuDa3p1F8tznLYTyASYizU2GyCn7YVSkqVxX6qGKFMEwD3LfTuyeIbk5VGAmHNWI0McEJdgXJR37jJ_FjhFY68x/s1600/7b36169180bc9811687f0a44a8c14634-w204%25401x.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">ZIGZAG </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> You can’t fake it, the kind of mastery Bill Pronzini shows in all his writing, whatever the genre, whatever the length. And his years of writing Grand Master-level material inform every single line and scene in this new collection. Included are two new novellas and two short stories well worth reprinting. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> The novellas are equally strong. “Zigzag” demonstrates that the simplest of mishaps—a minor accident investigation—can take you places you may not want to go. Nameless really earns his private eye money on this one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> The melancholy truths of “Grapplin’” shows us the emotional power that underpins so much of Pronzini’s most celebrated work over the years even though it also manages to be filled with kind and gentle truths. On this one Nameless shares the spotlight with his new business partner Tamara. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> The two short stories are strong and fresh. They illustrate that no matter what form Pronzini uses, he makes it his own. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> My favorite here is “Revenant.” Pronzini has always done well by the supernatural even though he is certainly a skeptic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> What we have a here is a spin on road rage. A strange man named Antanas Vok piled his car into an embankment, blaming Peter Erskine and his wife Marian for the crash. Witnesses say otherwise. Vok’s wife dies in the accident and Vok stands there screaming threats at the Erskines. He will make sure that they will be dead, too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> A year later, Vok is still stalking them and they are scared. The police have been no help. Lately the harassment has taken a turn into the occult.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> The black host is the Satanic version of the Roman Catholic host. When you touch it the residue sticks to both your fingers and your clothes. Vok has sent them a black host to show them his power over them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> Supernatural power? Erskine doesn’t believe it and neither does Nameless. Marian Erskine can’t decide what she believes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> Oh, and there’s one other small problem. How can Vok be sending them black hosts when he’s been dead for some time? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> Nameless is surprised when he meets Marian who spends a good deal of her time in a gazebo-like creation that could only be found in the type of posh gated community the Erskines live in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> Marian turns out to be substantially older than her husband and very frail. Namesless notes that in today’s one percent culture it’s all right for older women to have trophy husbands. Peter isn’t exactly a pretty boy but close. Marian’s obvious drinking problem adds just one more confusing psychological layer to the meeting. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> The Erskines beg Nameless to take the case and ultimately he chooses to because the fee they offer him is so good and he’s just so damned curious about what’s really going on here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> This is the way to tell a supernatural story—sardonically. Pronzini show us that no matter how bizarre the world of the supernatural is, the human world is always stranger.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> A five star collection. Perfect for a wide range of readers. </span></div>
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Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-27633597625697244312016-06-06T12:00:00.001-07:002016-06-06T12:00:20.973-07:00Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-89196760328673414482016-05-29T13:42:00.003-07:002016-05-29T13:42:43.127-07:00Now Available: Branded - Ed Gorman<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="color: #1b0431; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<a href="http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2016/05/now-available-branded-ed-gorman.html" style="color: #1b0431;">Now Available: Branded - Ed Gorman</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyYZt4ysGBMPxLvlzohrnPS8ldDF7ptwuxhUGyWz56qGUzbw4FttBRHdFjvh9Lt0RGkCI6xkTki7OEPQcBZKUmb5gZwmgvQcZEbT1Gkhs0wYupDI723uCINR57izR8xB5Ni4IU/s1600/Branded_Gorman+Web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #956839; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyYZt4ysGBMPxLvlzohrnPS8ldDF7ptwuxhUGyWz56qGUzbw4FttBRHdFjvh9Lt0RGkCI6xkTki7OEPQcBZKUmb5gZwmgvQcZEbT1Gkhs0wYupDI723uCINR57izR8xB5Ni4IU/s400/Branded_Gorman+Web.jpg" style="border: 0px;" width="266" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Young Andy Malloy is surrounded by tragedy and trouble. His stepmother is dead. His father, accused of her murder, is on the run from a posse led by a brutal sheriff with demons of his own. Andy’s investigation into the crime is about to put him in deadly danger. And the truth, not to mention Andy’s own life, may rest in the hands of a pathetic town drunk and a freckle-faced redhead . . .<br /><br />BRANDED is a classic novel by the master of Western noir, Ed Gorman. Filled with compelling characters, breathtaking suspense, and stunning plot twists, it’s a yarn guaranteed to please Western and mystery readers and a novel not soon to be forgotten.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>(This is one of Ed's best books. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and grab it.)</i></span></div>
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<span class="post-author vcard">Posted by <span class="fn" itemprop="author" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a class="g-profile" data-gapiattached="true" data-gapiscan="true" data-onload="true" href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/18049917964433932612" rel="author" style="color: #956839; margin-right: 6px;" title="author profile"><span itemprop="name">James Reasoner</span> </a></span></span><span class="post-timestamp">at <a class="timestamp-link" href="http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2016/05/now-available-branded-ed-gorman.html" rel="bookmark" style="color: #956839; margin-right: 6px;" title="permanent link"><abbr class="published" itemprop="datePublished" style="border: none; cursor: help;" title="2016-05-28T13:58:00-05:00">1:58 PM</abbr></a> </span><span class="reaction-buttons"></span><span class="post-comment-link"><a class="comment-link" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7527967&postID=4998531319839503590" style="color: #956839; margin-right: 6px; white-space: nowrap;">1 comment: </a></span><span class="post-backlinks post-comment-link"></span><span class="post-icons"><span class="item-action"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=7527967&postID=4998531319839503590" style="color: #956839; margin-right: 6px; text-decoration: none !important;" title="Email Post"><img alt="" class="icon-action" height="13" src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif" style="border: 0px none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.5em !important; vertical-align: middle;" width="18" /></a></span></span></div>
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Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-55141907958820947822016-05-26T08:09:00.005-07:002016-05-26T08:11:11.023-07:00BETTER ED - Max Allan Collins and Friends<br />
<small style="color: #663300; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 1.5em; text-align: justify;">May 24th, 2016 by Max Allan Collins</small><span style="background-color: #fce8ca; color: #663300; font-family: "lucida grande" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;"></span><br />
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Normally I would just provide a link, but this <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/books/better-dead/" style="color: black;">BETTER DEAD</a> review from Ed Gorman’s blog is so smart and trenchant (not a word you hear much these days), I just had to share it with you here. By way of full disclosure, Ed and I are friends, but we are also genuine fans of each other’s work.<br />
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BETTER DEAD<br />
In 1983, Max Allan Collins created a brand new sub-genre, something very few writers have ever done. In TRUE DETECTIVE, his first Nathan Heller novel, he wedded the street-wise private detective novel with the historical novel.<br />
The advantages to this approach were enormous. The big blockbuster historical novels were all too often stagey and wooden. Heller not only brought a sense of humor to the dance, he treated the historical figures he dealt with as human beings who farted, told dirty jokes and had the kind of mundane personal problems the big blockbusters never dealt with. In other words, he brought reality to the table.<br />
In BETTER DEAD Heller is hired by Senator Joseph McCarthy to prove that all the victims Tail Gunner Joe is pursuing are actually “Commies.” His particular interest is Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who sit in prison awaiting their execution. This is just how I imagined McCarthy, a drunken, ignorant Mick rummy bent on achieving massive power. He is assisted in this by none other than Roy Cohn, a vile and treacherous figure who just happened to be (half a decade later) one of Donald Trump’s mentors.<br />
But Heller also signs on to help an ailing Dashiell Hammett find evidence that the Rosenbergs have been set up and are innocent.<br />
Collins recreates the Zeitgeist of the era very well. Yes, there were a lot of Communist sympathizers back then, mostly older men and women, intellectuals often, who saw the suffering during the Depression and thought—mistakenly—that Communism was the solution. (I started college in 1962 and took a history class from an elderly professor who was still a Stalinist, despite the fact that we now knew that Uncle Joe Stalin had slaughtered millions and millions of his own people.)<br />
But these weren’t “Communist agents,” just disillusioned intellectuals (the Coen Bros. wittily address this in their latest film “Hail Caesar”).<br />
Collins’ sociological eye never fails. Here’s a description I’ve now read three or four times just because I enjoy it so much. Heller is in the Bohemian heart of Greenwich Village.<br />
“The clientele this time of time of night was mostly drinking coffee, and a good number were drunk, some extravagantly so as artists and poets and musicians sang their own praises and bemoaned the shortcomings of their lessers. These were self-defined outcasts, their attire at once striking and shabby, drab and outlandish.”<br />
Bravado writing on every single page.<br />
Max Allan Collins not only created a new sub-genre—he is its undisputed master.</div>
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Speaking of BETTER DEAD, we are sitting at five reviews on Amazon. We sure could use some more (same for <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/books/big-showdown/" style="color: black;">THE BIG SHOWDOWN</a>and <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/books/murder-never-knocks/" style="color: black;">MURDER NEVER KNOCKS</a>). <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/books/antiques-fate/" style="color: black;">ANTIQUES FATE</a> is doing better at twelve reviews.<br />
For those who have not written reviews at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble before, you don’t have to be Anthony Boucher – just a couple of lines expressing your opinion is all that’s necessary. But more is welcome.<br />
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Here’s a movie you need to go to: THE NICE GUYS.<br />
If you, like me, consider Shane Black’s KISS KISS BANG BANG (2005) the best private eye movie of recent years, you will be a porker in excrement at this one. Set in 1977, the script co-written by Black nails the era to perfection, paving the way for outstanding art direction.<br />
But you won’t go home whistling the sets. The plot, which has to do with the murder of a porn star, is a twisty thing where the detectives mostly stumble onto the clues, but you’ll only be amused. The dialogue has a witty, naturalistic bounce that stands apart from the story, reminiscent of my favorite TV show, ARCHER. And it’s rare that a crime film can be this funny and yet be so tough. There’s a lot of Spillane in this one, particularly by way of Russell Crowe, heavy-set and menacing and rather sweet.<br />
Crowe and his co-star Ryan Gosling are the surprises here. I thought Gosling was an empty pretty boy until I saw him on SNL a while back and he was funnier than the cast. Here he is hilarious without shortchanging the character. I knew I liked this movie, but I loved it when Gosling found a corpse and did a tribute to Lou Costello by way of his “Hey Abbott!”-type reaction.<br />
Warning: it contains lots of nudity and blood splattery violence, and by “warning” I mean “recommendation.”<br />
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<a href="http://www.mysterymavenblog.com/american-mysteries/murder-never-knocks-by-mickey-spillane-and-max-allan-collins" style="color: black;">Here’s</a> a really nice and very smart review of MURDER NEVER KNOCKS.<br />
Check out <a href="http://eyesandearsblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/review-of-deadly-beloved.html" style="color: black;">this terrific review</a> of the Ms. Tree novel, <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/books/deadly-beloved/" style="color: black;">DEADLY BELOVED</a>.<br />
Finally, you may get a kick out of <a href="http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2016/05/the-bradbury-building-screen-star.html" style="color: black;">this look at the Bradbury Building</a>, home of Nate Heller’s LA office. I participate in the comments section.<br />
M.A.C.<br />
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Tags: <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/tag/better-dead/" rel="tag" style="color: black;">Better Dead</a>, <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/tag/mike-hammer/" rel="tag" style="color: black;">Mike Hammer</a>, <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/tag/murder-never-knocks/" rel="tag" style="color: black;">Murder Never Knocks</a>, <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/tag/nate-heller/" rel="tag" style="color: black;">Nate Heller</a>, <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/tag/nathan-heller/" rel="tag" style="color: black;">Nathan Heller</a>, <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/tag/reviews/" rel="tag" style="color: black;">Reviews</a>, <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/tag/spillane/" rel="tag" style="color: black;">Spillane</a><br />
Posted in <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/category/message-from-m-a-c/" rel="category tag" style="color: black;">Message from M.A.C.</a> | <a href="http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/2016/05/24/better-ed/#comments" style="color: black;">5 Comments »</a></div>
Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-26349615132467503492016-05-24T10:28:00.003-07:002016-05-24T10:28:36.098-07:00Stark House Mystery Classics - Ed Gorman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg213oLmg3MhOopdWvOmsULty64U0pNqY0qmmgXy2y4La3ZjXHEb8g7oagnAuhwqlldPisTHIOKv9aiMfvMJ0L1IH-4qf9TSZPDYiwyW61QIl2gRvHSGpjCYzsaiNoFZJE6q30M/s1600/Ed+Gorman+Autumn+Dead+Night+Remembers+ad.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg213oLmg3MhOopdWvOmsULty64U0pNqY0qmmgXy2y4La3ZjXHEb8g7oagnAuhwqlldPisTHIOKv9aiMfvMJ0L1IH-4qf9TSZPDYiwyW61QIl2gRvHSGpjCYzsaiNoFZJE6q30M/s400/Ed+Gorman+Autumn+Dead+Night+Remembers+ad.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Pick up a copy of Stark House's beautiful <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Autumn-Dead-Night-Remembers/dp/1933586605/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1464110787&sr=8-3&keywords=Night+Remembers+Ed+Gorman" target="_blank">The Autumn Dead / The Night Remembers</a> volume from Amazon today!Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-74682283627017654712016-05-23T12:10:00.006-07:002016-05-24T09:49:33.574-07:00Forgotten Books: The Plastic Nightmare by Richard Neely<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="color: #cc6600; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 4px;">
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The Plastic Nightmare</h3>
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I've written here before about Richard Neely. He wrote non-series crime novels that pretty much covered the entire range of dark suspense. I mentioned that in the best of them the weapon of choice is not poison, bullets or garrote. He always prefered sexual betrayl.<br />
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Plastic is a good example. Using amnesia as the central device Dan Mariotte must reconstruct his life. Learning that the beautiful woman at his bedside all these months in the hospital--his wife--may have tried to kill him in a car accident is only the first of many surprises shared by Mariotte and the reader alike.<br />
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What gives the novel grit is Neely's take on the privileged class. He frequently wrote about very successful men (he was a very successful adverts man himself) and their women. The time was the Seventies. Private clubs, privte planes, private lives. But for all the sparkle of their lives there was in Neely's people a despair that could only be assauged (briefly) by sex. Preferably illicit sex. Betrayl sex. Men betrayed women and women betrayed men. It was Jackie Collins only for real.<br />
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Plastic is a snapshot of a certain period, the Seventies when the Fortune 500 dudes wore sideburns and faux hippie clothes and flashed the peace sign almost as often as they flashed their American Express Gold cards. Johny Carson hipsters. The counter culture co-opted by the pigs.<br />
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The end is a stunner, which is why I can say little about the plot. Neely knew what he was doing and I'm glad to see his book back in print. Watching Neeely work was always a pleasure.</div>
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Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-51554979646096150162016-05-20T14:49:00.001-07:002016-05-20T14:49:50.272-07:00Review of my book LAWLESS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo4p3oQ0Bi8yidz3WLtskS5nnLKB8LcIw79ckUJiQiC7_lT2gIbA7CfVf1TjvNdwIB3WzZ69vqsy1buNWCPur_K7Fshko52qlf28mdkp3HJ7YyQF4C0x0zWtKHsyhDlh62vDJR/s1600/Ed+Gorman+Lawless+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo4p3oQ0Bi8yidz3WLtskS5nnLKB8LcIw79ckUJiQiC7_lT2gIbA7CfVf1TjvNdwIB3WzZ69vqsy1buNWCPur_K7Fshko52qlf28mdkp3HJ7YyQF4C0x0zWtKHsyhDlh62vDJR/s320/Ed+Gorman+Lawless+cover.jpg" width="193" /></a></div>
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At Thomas McNulty's blog, <a href="http://tommcnulty.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Dispatches From the Last Outlaw</a>, he writes a very kind review of my novel LAWLESS. Here's a sample:<br />
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'I am long overdue in discussing
an Ed Gorman novel on this blog. There was a time when he had books coming out
from Leisure and Berkley
and I bought whatever I could afford. If any of you are ever fortunate to meet
my wife, she enjoys telling a story about giving me “lunch money” when we were
first married (over thirty years ago) and then discovering I wasn’t eating
lunch. You’ve already guessed what I did with the money. That’s right – the
paperbacks piled up. They continue to pile up. Gorman is one of my favorites. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lawless</i> dates from 2000, published by Berkley, a tough western.
Gorman writes with an economy of style that still fully realizes the scenes,
dialogue and characterization.'<br />
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<a href="http://tommcnulty.blogspot.com/2016/05/lawless-by-ed-gorman.html" target="_blank">Read the rest of the review here</a>. Amazon has a few <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lawless-Ed-Gorman/dp/0425174328/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463780830&sr=1-1&keywords=Ed+Gorman+Lawless" target="_blank">used copies available</a>.<br />
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<br />Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-8962537406668103492016-05-19T06:14:00.006-07:002016-05-19T06:17:10.200-07:00Review--BETTER DEAD by Max Allan Collins<div class="MsoNormal">
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BETTER DEAD<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1983, Max Allan Collins created a brand new
sub-genre, something very few writers have ever done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In TRUE DETECTIVE, his first Nathan Heller
novel, he wedded the street-wise private detective novel with the historical
novel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The advantages to
this approach were enormous. The big blockbuster historical novels were all too
often stagey and wooden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heller not only
brought a sense of humor to the dance, he treated the historical figures he dealt
with as human beings who farted, told dirty jokes and had the kind of mundane
personal problems the big blockbusters never dealt with. In other words, he
brought reality to the table.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In BETTER DEAD
Heller is hired by Senator Joseph McCarthy to prove that all the victims Tail
Gunner Joe is pursuing are actually “Commies.” His particular interest is
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who sit in prisons awaiting their execution. This
is just how I imagined McCarthy, a drunken, ignorant Mick rummy bent on
achieving massive power. He is assisted in this by none other than Roy Cohn, a
vile and treacherous figure who just happened to be (half a decade later) one
of Donald Trump’s mentors.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Heller also
signs on to help an ailing Dashiell Hammett find evidence that the Rosenbergs
have been set up and are innocent.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Collins recreates the zeitgeist of the era
very well. Yes, there were a lot of Communist sympathizers back then, mostly
older men and women, intellectuals often, who saw the suffering during the
Depression and thought—mistakenly—that Communism was the solution. (I started
college in 1962 and took a history class from an elderly professor who was
still a Stalinist, despite the fact that we now knew that Uncle Joe Stalin had
slaughtered millions and millions of his own people.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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But these weren’t “Communist agents,” just disillusioned intellectuals
(The Coen Bros. wittily address this in their latest film “Hail Caesar”).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Collins’
sociological eye never fails. Here’s a description I’ve now read three or four
times just because I enjoy it so much. Heller is in the Bohemian heart of
Greenwich Village.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The clientele
this time of time of night was mostly drinking coffee, and a good number were
drunk, some extravagantly so as artists and poets and musicians sang their own
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<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Max
Allan Collins not only created a new sub-genre--he is its undisputed master.</span><!--EndFragment-->Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-29087489815297696812016-05-17T08:28:00.000-07:002016-05-17T08:28:09.891-07:00Lawrence Block on Four Lives at the Crossroads
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJrnmg4jzUhS1PwjjW7Oz8fCjkAmmqm3hUkAODEj111MQDubgzzMApzXbzWyUFIse0U0wMyfCLDdaO61dORD3hjQ2m_UCyTLcGqcnGZs1cYuxS1MV9Y34O5WY_C6LILL45jxn2/s1600/Ebook-Cover-Four+Lives+at+the+Crossroads+by+Lawrence+Block.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJrnmg4jzUhS1PwjjW7Oz8fCjkAmmqm3hUkAODEj111MQDubgzzMApzXbzWyUFIse0U0wMyfCLDdaO61dORD3hjQ2m_UCyTLcGqcnGZs1cYuxS1MV9Y34O5WY_C6LILL45jxn2/s320/Ebook-Cover-Four+Lives+at+the+Crossroads+by+Lawrence+Block.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">It seems only appropriate that I write something about FOUR
LIVES AT THE CROSSROADS for Ed Gorman. He’s in part responsible for my decision
to foist it upon all of y’all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Bill Hamling’s operation (soft-core erotica while-u-wait)
published the book as a Midnight Reader in 1962, so I must have written it
sometime that year or the year before. (Manuscripts did not spend much time
incubating in Evanston, Illinois. The fledglings lingered only long enough to
be outfitted with a cover and title before being nudged out of the nest and
into the world.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">This one flew off as <i>Crossroads
of Lust</i>, which may or may not have been the title I hung on it. (<i>Lust</i> was so much a Hamling catchword
that I’ve wondered if he ever made the effort to trademark it. I turned in one
novel with the anagrammatically appealing title of <i>Lust Slut, </i>but someone in Evanston changed it to something else.
And, after an all-night poker game had somehow failed to produce a viable
collaborative novel, we who had written it referred to the resultant mess as <i>Lust Fuck.</i>)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">But I digress…and probably not for the last time. That was
this book’s title, <i>Crossroads of Lust.</i>
As for its cover, it had nothing much to do with the book, and showed a young
woman on her knees, with her hindquarters elevated. (We’ve been using the
original cover art on our reissues of the Collection of Classic Erotica titles,
but drew the line here; my Goddess of Design and Production said it cried out
for the caption, “Doctor, I’m ready for my enema!”)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Anyway, off it went, <i>Crossroads
of Lust,</i> launched into the world, and set to waste its fragrance on the
desert air. By the time it appeared on shelves wherever bad books were sold,
I’d probably written three or four others. I was at the time doing a book a
month for Bill Hamling (even as a ghostwriter of mine was doing another under
my Andrew Shaw name), and I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about my
manuscripts once they were out of the house. I was also writing other books,
more ambitious work in the more demanding world of crime fiction, and those
were the ones I thought about. The Andrew Shaw books took up space in my head
only during the time I spent writing them.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">Now <i>Crossroads of Lust
</i>was in fact a little of both, its plot centered upon the armed robbery of
an armored car, the doublecross that ensues, and the two star-crossed lovers
racing to the Mexican border. </span></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">This wasn’t the first time Andrew Shaw had straddled genre
lines. Early on, I started writing a book with a counterfeiting background,
with the hope it would wind up as a Gold Medal crime novel. Five or six
chapters in I lost confidence in it, felt it was missing the mark, and sexed it
up enough to make it that month’s entry for Nightstand. I don’t know what I
called it, but the boys in Illinois called it <i>$20 Lust</i>—there’s that word again—and I forgot about it.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">But others remembered. Somehow the book came to the
attention of both Ed Gorman and Bill Schafer, both of whom thought far more
highly of it than did its author. They urged me to bring the book out again,
and that was about the last thing I wanted to hear. I went through an enduring
phase when I maintained the sort of non-recognition policy toward my
pseudonymous early work as did United States for so long toward Mainland China,
but with what struck me as better prospects for long-term success; China wasn’t
going away, but Andrew Shaw’s work, printed on non-acid-free paper, very well
might.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">God speed the acid, said I.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span></span>It took a while, but
eventually Ed and Bill got through to me, and lit a fire under Ego and Avarice,
the matched steeds that haul my chariot. Bill’s Subterranean Press published
the book, now yclept <i>Cinderella Sims, </i>in
hardcover trade and limited editions. When the eRevolution broke out, I brought
it out as an ebook via Open Road, and when my deal with that firm ran its
course, I published it myself as both an ebook and a paperback, including it in
my Classic Crime Library.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">Meanwhile, my agent sold it in France, where they published
it purely and simply as a crime novel, and where it did quite well. I dunno,
maybe something was gained in translation.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">Never mind. Over the years, Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime
was mining my store of early books, rescuing titles like <i>A Diet of Treacle </i>and <i>Lucky
at Cards</i> and <i>Borderline</i><b> </b>from the
oblivion I’d always thought they deserved. I entered into the spirit of things
and suggested a few others as Hard Case candidates, and <i>Crossroads</i> was one of them. Charles read it, weighed its merits
against its deficiencies, and after due consideration decided against it. Part
of his problem with the book was that he felt it was misogynistic, and perhaps
it is, or at least several of its characters are.</span></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">A few months ago, pleased by the reception which greeted the
16 titles in my Classic Crime Library, I decided what the world needed was a
Collection of Classic Erotica—i.e., the better examples of my work as Sheldon
Lord and Andrew Shaw. Encouraged by the example of my friend Robert Silverberg,
whose view on the subject struck me as far more honest and balanced than my
own, I decided it was time not only to recognize Red China but to establish a
profitable trade deal. (And to help keep the record straight in the bargain;
there are many books out there bearing my pen names that were in fact written
by other hands than mine, and republishing my own work is a way of granting it
an imprimatur and establishing my personal authorship.)</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">So I took another look at <i>Crossroads of Lust. </i>And pondered where to include it—Classic Crime
Library or Collection of Classic Erotica? Unlike <i>$20 Lust/Cinderella Sims</i>, it didn’t start out trying to be a crime
novel. It was from the first page destined to be that month’s effort for
Evanston, and that it had a crime plot was essentially coincidental. Andrew
Shaw’s books, you should understand, benefited from belonging to an extremely
forgiving genre. They had to be long enough, and they had to have a sex scene
in every chapter, and they had to be written in some form of American English.
Aside from that, they could be whatever they wanted to be, and might include
whatever fermented in the author’s psyche and came out through his typewriter.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">Did it occur to me, while I was writing <i>Crossroads,</i> that I might better steer it in an unsullied crime
fiction direction, with a goal of publishing it with Gold Medal or someone
similar? I’m fairly certain I never entertained such a thought. I wanted merely
to be done with it and move on to whatever came next.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
And now, all those years later, I began reading the book. I was surprised to
note that I’d dedicated it—to the woman who’d run the Fourth Street Grill in
Newport, Kentucky, an operation described quite faithfully in <i>Crossroads.</i> (You walked into a room with
a lunch counter along the wall. “The counter’s closed, boys,” Madge would
announce. “Would you like to go upstairs and see a girl?” I went there a couple
of times—Newport was across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, which in turn was
an hour’s drive from Yellow Springs, where I went to school—and I never got a
sandwich or a cup of coffee, but I did go upstairs. I wish I’d thought to get a
receipt, that I might write off such visits as tax-deductible research.)</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">I’ve digressed again, haven’t I? Never mind. I read the
book, and saw why the Sage of Cedar Rapids had lobbied for its republication,
and saw too why Charles Ardai had decided against it. But maybe a little
editing would help.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">If nothing else, I could undo some assistance I’d received
from someone in Evanston. The epithet of choice throughout the book was <i>louse, </i>and somehow it didn’t ring true.
We can stand it when James Cagney snarls “You dirty rat!” when what he would
have said was more along the lines of “You fucking cocksucker!”—but he had the
Breen office to contend with, and while Nightstand may have avoided all those
words George Carlin couldn’t say on TV, I would think something like, say, <i>bastard</i> might do the job better than <i>louse.</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">So I pruned here and tweaked there and rewrote a few
terrible sentences, some of which I may have had the bad judgment to write some
45 years ago. And I began to suspect that what I was doing was putting lipstick
on a pig.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">Because the book was an erotic quickie at heart, and my
efforts wouldn’t be enough to change that. Nor did I see much point in yanking
the armored car holdup out of the book and writing a new book around it. It was
what it was, and people would enjoy it or not, and if it didn’t really qualify
for a slot in the Classic Crime Library, it could certainly hold its own in the
Collection of Classic Erotica, where the crime element would only enhance it. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">Having reached this conclusion, I went on applying Lady
Danger to those porcine lips, probably giving the process more time than it
needed. And the Goddess and I decided against gracing the result with its
original cover. The Sheldon Lord books for Midwood were blessed with wonderful
cover art, more often than not the work of the remarkable Paul Rader; Hamling’s
books were less well served, and while Harold W. McCauley provided a superb
cover painting for <i>Campus Tramp, </i>as
time passed the covers got progressively shorter shrift. With all that
lipstick, well, <i>Crossroads</i> deserved a
better cover.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">And a better title. <i>Four
Lives at the Crossroads</i> struck me as an improvement, and I cobbled up a
cover to fit, and the Goddess took a look at what I’d done and <span></span>improved it hugely.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">And that’s the story, Maurie—as a young fellow named TJ
would tell you. The ebook’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Crossroads-Collection-Classic-Erotica-ebook/dp/B01FHYK7M4?ie=UTF8&keywords=Lawrence%20Block%20Four%20Lives%20at%20the%20Crossroads&qid=1463498228&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1" target="_blank">available exclusively for Kindle</a>, while the
paperback should be on sale in a matter of weeks—at the CreateSpace store, from
Amazon, and through other online booksellers as well.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">Ed here: You can pick up the very entertaining <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Crossroads-Collection-Classic-Erotica-ebook/dp/B01FHYK7M4?ie=UTF8&keywords=Lawrence%20Block%20Four%20Lives%20at%20the%20Crossroads&qid=1463498228&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Four Lives at the Crossroads</a></i> by following the link. Visit the <a href="http://lawrenceblock.com/" target="_blank">Lawrence Block website</a> for more information.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-70004307418869195342016-05-16T07:47:00.000-07:002016-05-16T07:47:17.132-07:00SHADOW GAMES review at Gravetapping<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ben Boulden at Gravetapping has a great review of the new edition of my novel <i>Shadow Games</i>. Here's a small taste: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"I have a particular fondness for <i>Shadow Games</i>. It is not only a terrific novel, but it was my
introduction to the work of Ed Gorman. The year was 2000. I made a habit of
studying and writing in a library not far from where I worked as a pizza
delivery driver; a job I won’t recommend, but a job that treated me well just
the same. My usual table was tucked at the back of the fiction stacks. I sat,
my back to the wall, facing a bookshelf packed with the latest genre titles
making study nearly impossible since the stories beckoned me. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"There was one title that, day after day, caught my attention.
It was a mass market paperback, black background with orange-red print and the
large white Leisure Books logo—a publisher I miss badly—at the top of its spine.
Its title, <i>Shadow Games</i>. When I
finally relented and read <i>Shadow Games</i>,
sitting right there in the library, its tale of Hollywood ambition, perversion,
and lost potential, all told in a darkly humorous tone, made me a lifetime fan of
Ed Gorman’s work."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Read more at <a href="http://gravetapping.blogspot.com/2016/05/shadow-games-by-ed-gorman.html" target="_blank">Gravetapping</a>!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Games-Sinister-Stories-Business-ebook/dp/B01DNH2C5C/ref=sr_1_14?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1463409819&sr=1-14" target="_blank">Shadow Games and Other Sinister Stories of Show Business</a> is available from Amazon and direct from the publisher, <a href="https://www.sstpublications.co.uk/Shadow-Games.php" target="_blank">Short, Scary Tales</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZS4SVLYdVD27b5Cjsk4yUJ5dLvuZwVU6IjCV_SrMcULZpIcvsJ-6bxgHlNuoopS1xDqJCOFR_2_x2BZezzlCsK9LHjL27ojtKt_wj8yRsXhBeLvChz_cPMYLl2REf6ROjPBIw/s1600/Shadow+Games+cover+Gorman+Lindroos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZS4SVLYdVD27b5Cjsk4yUJ5dLvuZwVU6IjCV_SrMcULZpIcvsJ-6bxgHlNuoopS1xDqJCOFR_2_x2BZezzlCsK9LHjL27ojtKt_wj8yRsXhBeLvChz_cPMYLl2REf6ROjPBIw/s320/Shadow+Games+cover+Gorman+Lindroos.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-81202069335348358972016-05-15T07:56:00.001-07:002016-05-15T07:56:55.739-07:00Gravetapping at 10: An Anniversary Thing<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;">
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">From <i><a href="http://gravetapping.blogspot.com/2016/05/gravetapping-at-10-anniversary-thing.html" target="_blank">Gravetapping</a></i>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;">
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">This post has been a long time coming. Every year when it gets close to <i>Gravetapping</i>’s anniversary – May 14, if you care – I go through the following thought process:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">I should write an anniversary post extolling the virtues of<i>Gravetapping </i>and all my hard work to keep it going, which is immediately followed by—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">That sounds like work and my 1.57 regular readers will think I’m a pompous jackass with nothing better to do than talk about myself, which is followed shortly by—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">Maybe next year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">Well, this is the year. Why this year and not last year, or next year? The reason is because this is <i>Gravetapping</i>’s tenth year of operation and if I’m going to tell you how awesome I am it seems more forgivable on a big anniversary than a small one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">When I started <i>Gravetapping</i>, a poorly devised Sunday afternoon activity in 2006, it was going to be a place where I reviewed mostly horror fiction, which explains the blog’s creepy name. But as it turned out my fancy for horror faded, without disappearing, and I started reviewing nearly everything genre—crime, mystery, suspense, western, horror, science fiction. At the time I thought it was a passing fancy with a built in excuse to read and study other writers’ work to improve my own. As it turned out I’ve kept at it pretty consistently over the years with only one significant hiatus—okay, it was all of 2011—and an ill-advised move from <i>Gravetapping</i> to a blog no one, not even my 1.57 regular readers, visited called <i>Dark City Underground </i>in 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">My blogging experience has been a good one. Sure, there have been moments when I wondered what I was doing, and others when I felt pretty good about what I was doing. I’ve kept blogging because I want to blog, write reviews, think about books, and in my own small way help the literary community as best I can. And believe me, any help I’ve provided has been immeasurably tiny. The emails I’ve received from readers and writers over the years, every one of them positive, have helped me gear up for one more post more times than I can count.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">My first post was published May 14, 2006—titled simply “Grave Tapping”—and the most recent, this one, May 14, 2016. Ten years that have been good to me, my family, and I hope yours. Ten years that have seen an unknown number of posts at <i>Gravetapping</i>; unknown because I have a habit of deleting older posts I don’t like, or have been replaced by newer better posts, or are no longer relevant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">I do have a count of the reviews I’ve written expressly for <i>Gravetapping</i>, which is 240 and counting. It has also led me to new opportunities and venues for my writing. I regularly write reviews for <i>Mystery Scene Magazine</i>. I have written a couple introductions for <i>Stark House Press</i>, and I have a project brewing that I dare not speak of since it may jinx the whole deal. And it is all due to <i>Gravetapping</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">Happy birthday <i>Gravetapping</i>! Thanks for the good times and, while I can’t guarantee another ten years, here is to the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">Thanks for reading.</span></div>
Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-78517397910659891552016-05-11T16:27:00.000-07:002016-05-11T16:27:10.607-07:00Gravetapping: No Comment: "Overhead"<div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><i><a href="http://gravetapping.blogspot.com/2016/05/no-comment-overhead.html" target="_blank">From Gravetapping</a></i>:<i> </i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgezXNtm3Iy43Caa1yKjDiPRHjimDTtbSBDClXK6wwO7jaoMJ0i2ERwzfu45lEr0orbpQ6oX1aMMdof6gbDJnmY10J0k6ErHlAmRkojWE59YHmPkm3kGBlmxEQ12nPTO7k_7H4/s1600/Overhead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgezXNtm3Iy43Caa1yKjDiPRHjimDTtbSBDClXK6wwO7jaoMJ0i2ERwzfu45lEr0orbpQ6oX1aMMdof6gbDJnmY10J0k6ErHlAmRkojWE59YHmPkm3kGBlmxEQ12nPTO7k_7H4/s200/Overhead.jpg" width="118" /></a><i><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">Hemingway liked to talk about how life sometimes bent people, sometimes in such a way that they healed and went on, stronger because of the hurt. He said life sometimes broke people, too. But he never really came to terms with that. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe at the very end Hemingway understood being truly broken, beyond healing, and that was why he went down to the hallway that fine sunny morning outside of Ketchum and put both barrels of the shotgun to his forehead, just above the eyes, and pulled both triggers.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">—Jack M. Bickham, <i>Overhead</i>. Tor, 1993 (© 1991) page 279. </span></div>
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Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-43546241645018548792016-05-08T14:02:00.004-07:002016-05-08T18:13:59.156-07:00New Books: The Stardom Affair by Robert S. Levinson<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--></span></b><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">More than ten years ago—The first crime novel I sold, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Elvis and Marilyn Affair</b>, featured
a Los Angeles newspaper columnist, Neil Gulliver, and his ex-wife, “Sex Queen
of the Soaps” Stevie Marriner. They were enthusiastically adopted by readers
who relished their showbiz-based adventure and wanted more. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Consequently, Neil and Stevie starred in my next three
novels, trading loving, lighthearted banter and sharing danger and tight
brushes with murder and mayhem that involved marquee names such as James Dean,
John Lennon and even Andy Warhol.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Poof!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">They disappeared from view, apart from the occasional short
story appearance in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ellery Queen</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alfred Hitchcock </i>and other publications
over the years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Gone, but certainly not forgotten, and definitely not because
readers had tired of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Au contraire</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As much as I loved treating their fans to the adventures of
Neil and Stevie, I felt trapped. I had never intended to lock myself into a
series. There were other characters and other stories I had in me that were
anxious to bust loose. So, off I went, in time turning out nine standalones
that, happily, kept my readers coming back for more. But—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Their desire for more Neil and Stevie never went away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At store and library appearances, conferences and
conventions, even in social media exchanges, I was asked, “When are you
bringing Neil and Stevie back?” “Are you ever going to bring Neil and Stevie
back?” “What do you have against Neil and Stevie? What’d they ever do to you?”
“The new stuff is fine, but another Neil and Stevie would be finer for me and
your other longtime readers, sir.” “It’s more Neil and Stevie or no more me,
you get my meaning?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I always answered by expressing my own affection for Neil and
Stevie and leaving open the window of possibility. It arrived one day, about a
year and a half ago, when I plopped down in front of my computer and stared at
a blank screen, wondering what to follow <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The
Evil Deeds We Do</b> with. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil and Stevie?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Okay, yes, sure, why not, if I could figure out how to
overcome a major obstacle. By the last of those four early mystery-thrillers,
Neil and Stevie had aged substantially and she had moved on from the soaps to
stage and movie stardom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moving forward
was certainly possible, but moving backward in time might be closer to what
their persistent fans wanted and more fun for me to write.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And that’s how <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The
Stardom Affair</b> came to pass, like a prequel that’s not exactly a prequel:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It's decades ago, when the internet was in its infancy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 8.0pt;"><br />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil is summoned to the apartment of actor Roddy Donaldson,
leader of the "Diapered Dozen" gang of teenage movie stars, by condo
manager Sharon Glenn. Roddy is in bed clinging to life alongside two dead
girls, no memory of who they are or how they got there. Evidence points to him
as their killer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 8.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the urging of Roddy's mother, a prominent casting
director, Neil chases after the truth, encountering a motley cast of suspects:
among them nasty Nicky Edmunds, co-starring with pal Roddy in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tough Times Two</i>, and glamorous Jayne
Madrigal, a high-powered press agent with whom Neil is smitten when Stevie
introduces them at a lavish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stardom
Magazine</i> gala.<span class="apple-converted-space"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 8.0pt;"><br />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Also: rap superstar Maxie Trotter and his manager, Roscoe Del
Ruth; Gene Coburn and Knox Lundigan, millionaire partners in Stardom House
companies revolutionizing the internet; model-songstress Aleta Haworth, who
knows more than she's telling; fading film star Brian Armstrong, who harbors
dark truths; and Stevie's mother, Juliet, and her fiancé, Bernie Flame, a
computer whiz who may be able to find answers for Neil in the secret
underground world of the Web. More bodies fall and Neil faces an ugly death
before the killer of the two girls is revealed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The comments from early readers, fellow authors whose work I
admire, have been extremely generous:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“The author has delivered
a fast-paced, surprisingly dark, not-surprisingly witty thriller that
includes a scene of movieland sex and violence more nightmarish than anything
devised by Nathanael West or David Lynch”—Dick Lochte, award-winning author of <i>Sleeping
Dog<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When one of Hollywood's hottest young stars
finds himself in a tangle with two dead bodies and almost dead of a drug
overdose himself, Neil Gulliver's reporter's instincts are aroused, and he's
plunged into an ever darker world of sex, drugs, and murder. The patter is
snappy, the writing is sharp, and the observations are pointed as a dagger in
another winner from Levinson.”—Bill Crider, award-winning author of the Sheriff
Dan Rhodes mysteries<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“From big box office
powerbrokers to L.A.'s seething underworld of designer drugs and porn movies,
you're in for the roller-coaster ride of your reading life. But then, it's
no surprise –Robert S. Levinson is a master of style and suspense. Buy
this book and enjoy!”—Gayle Lynds, <i>New York Times</i> best-selling author of
<i>The Assassins<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Robert S. Levinson handles the hardboiled style of storytelling with
soft, sure hands. Neil Gulliver continues to be one of the most reliable
main characters in the genre. And, along with his ex-wife, Stevie Marriner,
they continue to channel Nick & Nora Charles. Reading <i>The Stardom
Affair</i> is time well spent.”—Robert J. Randisi, best-</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">selling author of the Rat Pack mysteries. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m hopeful (of course) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Stardom Affair</b> will also score
positively with Neil and Stevie’s longtime fans and readers unfamiliar with the
darling duo. Whichever category you fall into—be advised <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Stardom Affair</b> is available now, on line and off, from your
favorite bookseller.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Cheers! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-32722159648312363742016-05-04T09:27:00.000-07:002016-05-04T09:59:05.518-07:00Survivors Will Be Shot Again by Bill Crider<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga1D_r5yEgaWrXYI9Llq0Onh2B58VfgxQeoFLCL9pv2OoAYpBgPgP5s5qgB03YxYi-XfypCeBHJ4X5szEpv730t1fCVuHIojzoTZi6jlFoqi2ZaaLbYSIEhGRgX4sjkOuSV-Tr/s1600/51YOgZzf2LL._SX328_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga1D_r5yEgaWrXYI9Llq0Onh2B58VfgxQeoFLCL9pv2OoAYpBgPgP5s5qgB03YxYi-XfypCeBHJ4X5szEpv730t1fCVuHIojzoTZi6jlFoqi2ZaaLbYSIEhGRgX4sjkOuSV-Tr/s320/51YOgZzf2LL._SX328_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="211" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial";">Bill Crider's new Survivors Will Be Shot Again may be my favorite of all the Sheriff Dan Rhodes novels for two reasons.</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial";"></span><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> 1 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> If you think Crider was funny before wait until you read the scene where Rhodes walks into a convenience store and goes into a mental rage about how Dr. Pepper refuses to sell the original sugar DP on line. He is obessed at the moment. Good thing he comes to notice that he has walked into a robbery. Ultimately he has to take the gunman's weapon away by throwing a loaf of bread at him. That's the first chapter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> The regulars are at their best and or worst.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> The enterprising young woman who got laid off as reporter on the local weekly is back again with her very successful online newspaper of newissh kinds of stories that she sometimes "enhanced" for the sake of excitement. She has turned the mild mannered Rhodes into a local bad ass of heroic stature.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Hawk and Lawton, the two elderly deputies who who make Rhodes' day miserable by trying to force information out of him by withholding other information ("in the loop") from him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Seepy Benton, erstwhile community college professor and very very amateur crime solver, is pushing what was originally a ghost repellent spray but will also work if nudists are invading your domicile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Wal Mart-- there are so many references you get the feeling that Wal Mart is the official church of the small Texas town.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> And lest I forget...the discovery of several illegal marijuana patches...guarded by junior sized alligators. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Then there is the A storyline. There have been breakins on ranch and farm buildings. Curiously one of the men whose outbuilding had been broken into and robbed is found murdered in a building owned by another man who had been robbed earlier. Given the material that gets taken the robberies are peculiar indeed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Bill Crider writes some the finest traditional mysteries around. He is a first rate plotter who also knows how to pace his material. Such a mixture of <span style="font-family: "arial";">mystery, humor and even an occasional horrific moment give his work its unique mastery.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> 2</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> I grew up reading the now mostly forgotten Sinclair Lewis He frequently wrote about small towns and their social ways in the 1920s and 1940s especially. He was both brutal and hilarious. His one novel that is still taught in college (several famous workshops won't teach him because he was allegedly a bad writer line by line) is Babbitt. The story line paints a portrait of boorish "booster" who extols those American virtues that are actually <span style="font-family: "arial";">American</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"> vices. But there are three scenes in which Lewis forces you to at least understand Babbitt to some degree and after you read them you can't quite find him </span>as repellent as you once did. <span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial";"> Bill Crider does the same thing here with his supsects. They are not </span>likable<span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial";">. But as Crider reveals their back stories you see that in some way they are broken men.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Perfecto.</span></span></div>
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Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-13442024471128097952016-04-20T12:58:00.003-07:002016-04-20T13:03:10.766-07:00NEW From WMG Publishing<div class="et_pb_text et_pb_module et_pb_bg_layout_light et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_text_1" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 27.6875px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
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<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fiction River: Sparks</em></h1>
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Edited by Rebecca Moesta</h3>
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Everyone faces dark times. Everyone looks for a light to get through. These fifteen stories show teen heroes/heroines using creativity and heart to find their inner “spark” to overcome adversity, evil, or ignorance. In this anthology for all ages, join a girl who struggles to accept the zombie working at her school, a second-rate superhero who might just have what it takes after all, and a young magic-user who must decide whether to break the rules to save the day. These compelling young heroes/heroines prove sometimes it simply takes a spark to light a fire in the darkness.<br />
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<a href="http://www.wmgpublishinginc.com/fiction-river-anthologies/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #af7239; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fiction River</a><br />
<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Anthology</em></div>
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Available in:<br />
<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ebook, $5.99<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Trade paperback, $12.99</em>ISBN 978-1-56146-640-5</div>
<div style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="http://www.powells.com/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #af7239; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Powell’s</a><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-River-Sparks-17/dp/1561467553" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #af7239; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Amazon</a><br />
<a href="https://store.kobobooks.com/en-ca/ebook/fiction-river-sparks" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #af7239; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kobo</a><br />
and others</div>
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Smith's Monthly #27</h1>
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By <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DeanWesleySmith" itemprop="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4181c3; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; white-space: nowrap;">Dean Wesley Smith</span></a></div>
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<div class="well" itemprop="description" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0470588) 0px 1px 1px inset; background-color: #fcfcfc; border-bottom-left-radius: 4px; border-bottom-right-radius: 4px; border-top-left-radius: 4px; border-top-right-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(234, 234, 234); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0470588) 0px 1px 1px inset; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 20px; min-height: 20px; padding: 19px;">
Over sixty-five thousand words of original fiction from USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith.<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
In this twenty-seventh monthly volume the full novel Grapevine Springs: A Thunder Mountain Novel, plus four short stories, and half of a nonfiction writing book. <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/626007#longDescription" id="showLongDescription" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4181c3; text-decoration: none;">Less</a></div>
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Over sixty-five thousand words of original fiction from USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith.<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
In this twenty-seventh monthly volume the full novel Grapevine Springs: A Thunder Mountain Novel, plus four short stories, and half of a nonfiction writing book.<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
Short Stories<br />
The Smoke That Doesn’t Bark: A Poker Boy Story<br />
The Call of the Track Ahead<br />
Growing Pains of the Dead<br />
The Case of the Dead Lady Blues: A Pilgrim Hugh Incident<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
Full Novel<br />
Grapevine Springs: A Thunder Mountain Novel<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
Serial Nonfiction<br />
Writing into the Dark (Part 2 of 2)<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
Nonfiction<br />
Introduction: Another Thunder Mountain Novel </div>
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Available formats: <abbr style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: help;" title="Nook, Kobo, Sony Reader, and tablets">epub</abbr><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/category/3" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4181c3; text-decoration: none;">Fiction</a> » <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/category/1213" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4181c3; text-decoration: none;">Science fiction</a> » <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/category/1214" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4181c3; text-decoration: none;">General</a></div>
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Published by <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/WMGPUBLISHING" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4181c3; text-decoration: none;">WMG Publishing</a></div>
<div content="2016-03-28" itemprop="datePublished" style="box-sizing: border-box;">
Published: March 28, 2016 </div>
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Words: 69,180</div>
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Language: English</div>
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ISBN: <span class="" itemprop="isbn" style="box-sizing: border-box;">9781311206824</span></div>
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Tags:<span itemprop="keywords" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> <a class="btn btn-default btn-xs" href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/tags/writing" role="button" style="-webkit-user-select: none; background-color: white; background-image: none; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 1px 5px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: middle; white-space: nowrap;">writing</a> <a class="btn btn-default btn-xs" href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/tags/urban_fantasy" role="button" style="-webkit-user-select: none; background-color: white; background-image: none; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 1px 5px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: middle; white-space: nowrap;">urban fantasy</a> <a class="btn btn-default btn-xs" href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/tags/short_stories" role="button" style="-webkit-user-select: none; background-color: white; background-image: none; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 1px 5px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: middle; white-space: nowrap;">short stories</a><a class="btn btn-default btn-xs" href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/tags/time_travel" role="button" style="-webkit-user-select: none; background-color: white; background-image: none; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 1px 5px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: middle; white-space: nowrap;">time travel</a> <a class="btn btn-default btn-xs" href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/tags/western" role="button" style="-webkit-user-select: none; background-color: white; background-image: none; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 1px 5px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: middle; white-space: nowrap;">western</a></span></div>
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About Dean Wesley Smith</div>
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USA Today bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith published more than a hundred novels in thirty years and hundreds and hundreds of short stories across many genres.<br />
He wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, they wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.<br />
He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown.<br />
He now writes his own original fiction under just the one name, Dean Wesley Smith. In addition to his upcoming novel releases, his monthly magazine called Smith’s Monthly premiered October 1, 2013, filled entirely with his original novels and stories.<br />
Dean also worked as an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He now plays a role as an executive editor for the original anthology series Fiction River.<br />
For more information go to www.deanwesleysmith.com, www.smithsmonthly.com or www.fictionriver.com.</div>
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Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-69416422507580978522016-04-12T17:52:00.002-07:002016-04-12T17:53:18.214-07:00MayoGot some new test results so my trip to Mayo (tomorrow) will be extended so I won't be posting for some time. I know you support me with good thoughts and prayer. I certainly need them. There's no reason to write. I'll report back after we're home again. Thank you for all your good wishes over the years.<br />
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Best EdEd Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-64784288548572844032016-04-11T07:42:00.004-07:002016-04-11T07:45:09.538-07:00NEW-The Holcroft Covenant Blu-ray review<style>
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BY FRED BLOSSER</div>
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Kino-Lorber has released John Frankenheimer’s “The Holcroft
Covenant” (1985) in new Blu-ray and DVD editions, superseding a previous DVD
release on the MGM label in 1999. Frankenheimer fans will be pleased to see
this relatively obscure title available in remastered Hi-Def. Privately, even
they may have to admit that it’s deservedly obscure because it’s a clunker,
marking a sad decline from the excellence of “The Manchurian Candidate” two
decades before. With that 1962 masterpiece, Frankenheimer and scenarist George
Axelrod benefited from superlative source material, Richard Condon’s
razor-sharp Cold War political thriller. “The Holcroft Covenant” was adapted
from lesser stuff, a bestselling but stumble-footed 1972 suspense novel by
Robert Ludlum. Multiple screenwriters are credited: George Axelrod, Edward
Anhalt, and John Hawkins. The problems with the movie suggest a combination of
Ludlum’s lame storytelling to begin with, additional troubles in trying to turn
the rambling, 528-page potboiler into a leaner, 100-minute-long movie, and
questionable choices by Frankenheimer himself.</div>
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Noel Holcroft, a German-born New York architect, learns that
he is the main trustee of a covenant drawn up 40 years before, in the last
hours of the Third Reich, by three officers of the Nazi High Command. One of
the officers, General Clausen, was Holcroft’s father. Once it’s signed by
Holcroft and the children of the other two officers, the covenant will release
$4.5 billion from a secret Swiss account, a fortune accrued over four decades
from Nazi funds diverted by the three officers during the war. Clausen’s
posthumous directive specifies that the trustees are to spend the fund for
beneficent purposes, to atone for Hitler’s atrocities. Holcroft must locate the
other trustees -- the son and daughter of General Tiebolt and the son of
General Kessler -- so that the covenant can be activated. His mother Athene
(Lilli Palmer), who had fled Clausen and Germany early in the war, cautions
Holcroft to walk away from the arrangement because his father couldn’t be
trusted and neither can the directive: “He was a Nazi through and through.” But
Holcroft idealistically proceeds anyway, joining in Berlin with the Tiebolt
brother and sister, who have taken the name Tennyson, and the Kessler son, a symphony
conductor now calling himself Maas. Mysterious characters enter the story in
Zurich, New York, London, Berlin, and finally Zurich again, seemingly intent on
derailing the covenant, as bodies begin to pile up around Holcroft.</div>
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Did I mention that Holcroft is played by Michael Caine,
because, well, if you need an actor to play a German-born New Yorker, you want
Michael Caine? As Frankenheimer notes in a director’s commentary track repeated
from the 1999 DVD, the “New York” scenes in the film were actually shot in
London, so why not simply transfer the phony U.S. setting to the U.K., ignore
the character’s New York upbringing from the novel, and make him a German-born
Londoner to match Caine’s accent? Reportedly, Caine was a last-minute
replacement for James Caan, who walked off the movie, so Frankenheimer may not
have had time even for minor script adjustments. A good trouper, Caine honestly
appears to invest a lot of energy in the part, accent aside. But it hardly
matters because Holcroft is a dolt who does anything he’s asked to do without a
second thought, no matter how inconvenient, nonsensical, or dangerous. Drop
everything and fly to Zurich at the behest of a total stranger who claims to be
a representative from an international bank? Wouldn’t you? Hop over to London
at the request of another total stranger and agree to meet yet a third stranger
in Trafalgar Square at 5 p.m. tomorrow? (“And don’t look for him. He’ll find
you.”) Sure, why not. Rendezvous at a church with a mysterious woman in a bad disguise,
and then hide out with her in a sleazy Berlin brothel to avoid the bad guys?
I’m on it.</div>
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Read more at <a href="http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/9128-REVIEW-THE-HOLCROFT-COVENANT-1985,-STARRING-MICHAEL-CAINE,-VICTORIA-TENNANT,-AND-ANTHONY-ANDREWS;-DIRECTED-BY-JOHN-FRANKENHEIMER;-KINO-LORBER-BLU-RAY-AND-DVD..html" target="_blank">Cinema Retro</a>. </div>
Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-56114795869644009312016-04-10T10:25:00.012-07:002016-04-10T10:28:47.082-07:00Cullen Gallagher,Pulp Serenade -Good Day For A Hanging<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0.75em 0px 0px; position: relative;">
<a href="http://www.pulpserenade.com/2016/04/good-day-for-hanging-1959.html" style="color: white; text-decoration: none;">Good Day for a Hanging (1959)</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikwJZkBpijQlb1SMYp2D9QAWw_ExUCAiJ6QH2WANFdkFq2XLDflNCagcdxYi8VDvIu3fmfkG1ySCiwBNfjEVSxWOq7x84Vlrvz4dLFb0KjkAgz_uMJvZA9TfE8IVjqPtIHoWT7/s1600/Good_Day_for_a_Hanging_-_1959-_Poster.png" imageanchor="1" style="color: white; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikwJZkBpijQlb1SMYp2D9QAWw_ExUCAiJ6QH2WANFdkFq2XLDflNCagcdxYi8VDvIu3fmfkG1ySCiwBNfjEVSxWOq7x84Vlrvz4dLFb0KjkAgz_uMJvZA9TfE8IVjqPtIHoWT7/s320/Good_Day_for_a_Hanging_-_1959-_Poster.png" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: #111111; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(17, 17, 17); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 1px; position: relative;" width="206" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red;">Ed here: This is one of my favorite B westerns. McMurray is especially good. So is the script.</span><span style="color: #cccccc;">.</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: red;">Cullen Gallagher:</span></b></div>
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<b>Anyone who thinks westerns are as simple as "good guy vs. bad guy" hasn't seen <i>Good Day for a Hanging</i> (1959), a grim western in which the evils of mob-justice gets turned on its head. this time, the town tries to overturn a death sentence and depose the new lawman. A pair of exciting, outdoor chases bookend what is mostly a somber chamber drama, gripping and understated, in which a widower (Fred MacMurray) puts on a badge and loses his daughter (Joan Blackman), his fiance (Margaret Hayes), and the town itself. </b></div>
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<b>Fred MacMurray plays a reluctant lawman and the only member of a posse who will testify that young bank robber Robert Vaughn killed the Marshal while trying to escape. MacMuarry's testimony, however, only fuels the town's bloodlust—they would rather see the kid go free. Even MacMurray's daughter (who carries a torch for childhood sweetheart Vaughn) and fiance won't stand by his side.</b></div>
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<b>Seemingly in the tradition of <i>High Noon</i>, <i>Good Day for a Hanging </i>is different because it does not uphold the myth of the lone man with a gun. Unlike Gary Cooper, MacMurray's lawman tries to do things by the book; it is the social pressures of family and friends that push him to cave in and acquiesce to their demands. </b></div>
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<b>A deep sadness runs through <i>Good Day For a Hanging</i>. MacMurray, Hayes, and Kathryn Card (who plays the widow of the recently-murdered sheriff) have all outlived their spouses. The children, too, are longing for a more complete family—Joan Blackman looks for it in Robert Vaughn (a symbol of childhood when things were better), and Hayes' little boy longs for a father and says he will grow up to be just like MacMurray, a double-edged sentiment that grieves the lawman.</b></div>
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<b>Superb ensemble cast with a strong script by Daniel B. Ullman and Maurice Zimm (Zimm also provided the story for <i>Creature from the Black Lagoon</i>), and is based on the short story "The Reluctant Hangman" by John Jo Carpenter (<i>Texas Rangers,</i> v62 #1, March 1956). Excellently directed by Nathan Juran (better known for fantastic fare such as T<i>he 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, 20 Million Miles to Earth</i>, and <i>The Deadly Mantis</i>, and who also won an Oscar for Art Direction on <i>How Green Was My Valley</i>) and photographed by Henry Freulich (whose career spanned 1929-1969 and over 200 credits).</b></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Day-Hanging-Fred-MacMurray/dp/B00C6F617S/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1460240845&sr=1-1&keywords=good+day+for+a+hanging" style="text-decoration: none;"><b><span style="color: black;">Below are screenshots from the Columbia DVD. Nice colors and anamorphic widescreen. Highly recommended.</span></b></a></div>
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<br />Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-5951931827562583372016-04-08T08:04:00.003-07:002016-04-09T13:44:11.321-07:00Gravetapping: Interview: Stephen Mertz<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; margin-top: 6pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">From Ben Boulden and <a href="http://gravetapping.blogspot.com/2016/04/interview-stephen-mertz.html" target="_blank"><i>Gravetapping</i></a>:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9O-Jz_swWnwMgUy7R9JkAt5X4QdrIC_TCx1cJIdgzo2yrm2b0Bco8OPNJXpjpOwPhWgVrAlURRohNDkQlNcWU8kEePCSbb4eNQpOZ-rQMq-LfWKeyj3pE03IgH64hcRYjaCL/s1600/Steve+Author+photo+2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9O-Jz_swWnwMgUy7R9JkAt5X4QdrIC_TCx1cJIdgzo2yrm2b0Bco8OPNJXpjpOwPhWgVrAlURRohNDkQlNcWU8kEePCSbb4eNQpOZ-rQMq-LfWKeyj3pE03IgH64hcRYjaCL/s320/Steve+Author+photo+2016.jpg" width="239" /></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Stephen Mertz has written under various pseudonyms, including Don Pendleton,<i>The Executioner</i>, Jack Buchanan, <i>M.I.A. Hunter</i>, Jim Case, <i>Cody’s Army</i>, Stephen Brett, Jon Sharpe, <i>The Trailsman</i>, and Cliff Banks, <i>Tunnel Rats</i>. His early work, as the pseudonyms suggest, was in the high flying men’s adventure genre of the 1980s, but his work has steadily moved from the formulaic action novels to an impressive, and varied, body of work stretching from historical to adventure to paranormal horror.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mr. Mertz’s first published novel, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1Xi8aja" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Some Die Hard</a></i>, was published as by Stephen Brett by the long ago Manor Books in 1979, and his most recent is an installment in his pulp western series<i><a href="http://amzn.to/1UXyOAK" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Blaze!</a> </i>published earlier this year. In between, he created and wrote a few successful men’s adventure series: <i>M.I.A. Hunter</i> and<i>Cody’s Army </i>come to mind. He wrote twelve Mack Bolan books, including the pivotal, and still popular, <i>Day of Mourning</i>, and over the last 15 years he has hit his stride as a novelist writing about a fictional meeting between Hank Williams and Muddy Waters,<i><a href="http://amzn.to/1UXyT7g" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Hank & Muddy</a></i>, and an international thriller set in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics,<i><a href="http://amzn.to/1Xi8gr5" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Dragon Games</a></i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mr. Mertz was kind enough to answer a few questions, and patient enough to keep answering when a few grew into more than twenty. The questions are in italics. The personal photographs are used courtesy of Stephen Mertz.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Your first professional sale was a short story, “The Busy Corpse,” to </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Executioner Mystery Magazine<i>. Would you tell us a little about that experience?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Well, I guess every writer remembers the glorious day he sold his first story or she sold her novel and it’s a red letter day for sure. I was living in Denver at the time. I was running a second-hand record store. I was playing in a blues band, and I’d been writing unpublished (make that unpublishable) stories for years. In 1975, the magazine you mentioned bought that story. The funny thing about it is that I went on to become fairly well associated with the name of Mack Bolan, The Executioner, because about seven years later I ended up writing books for the Mack Bolan series. Actually, it was a coincidence that <i>The Executioner Mystery Magazine</i> bought that story. The editorial staff was out in LA and had nothing to do with Don [Pendleton] other than to use his name on the cover and he had nothing to do with them. The Table of Contents are interesting because it’s a mix of people that I never heard of again and then there are a few old hands like Talmage Powell who are placing some of their final work and there are a handful of new names like me and John Lutz and Margaret Maron who are just breaking in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Your early career was spent writing men’s adventure fiction; </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Executioner<i>, and your own </i><a href="http://amzn.to/1oDrnA7" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;"><i>M.I.A. Hunter</i></a><i> and </i>Cody’s Army<i>. Were there any particular pleasures or displeasures of writing these types of books?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">And let’s not forget <i>The Tunnel Rats</i>! The greatest pleasure was being able to practice the writing craft in anonymity while making money doing it. Because of course my name wasn’t on the Mack Bolan books; that was Don’s series. The other action/adventure books that I wrote were originally written under pen names. There are a variety of reasons that writers use pen names. You don’t want to be labeled in the popular or the editorial mind as a writer who only writes a certain type of novel, especially when you are as restless creatively as I am. It keeps you from being typecast. In a field like that, frankly, you are judged by the company you keep. There was Don Pendleton and one or two others but when I first broke into that field, even the established writers weren’t getting much respect. Not like today. So I thought it best to stay anonymous for that period of time. At the same time you’re delivering four to six books per year so you are honing your skills as a writer. It was a wonderful way to learn how to write. For instance, I wrote each of my first six action novels as a conscious nod to some writer who I felt influenced me and in that way I got it out of my system, to purge my writing of the sound of any other writer’s voice. I guess you could say that I arrived at my writing style through a process of exclusion. What was the <i>dis</i>pleasure? Having to meet deadlines. Having to constantly work variations on the same formula. That generally applies to any sort of genre fiction. But all-in-all it was a good way to get started in the business.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Speaking of Don Pendleton, I know you are a great admirer of both him, as a person, and his work. You have said his work was a direct descendent of what Mickey Spillane did with his hardboiled Mike Hammer novels and the pulp writer Carroll John Daly. Would you expand on this idea?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I would refer anyone who’s interested in this subject to a book that came out back in the 1970’s called <i>The Great American Detective,</i> edited by William Kittredge and Steven M. Krauzer. It’s a collection of stories that trace the development of the fictional American Detective from the days of the dime novels and Carroll John Daly and it ends with the only Bolan short story that Don ever wrote. My point: the editors certainly saw Don in that tradition. The Introduction those guys wrote for that book presents the case more effectively than I could in an interview.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Are there any of Don Pendleton’s books you particularly admire?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Don’s major contribution is in creating the action adventure genre. Probably the most important lesson that I learned from Don was to consider yourself a serious novelist even if you are slanting your work for a genre market. I have tried to adhere to that and Don very much adhered to that in the sense that <i>his</i> Mack Bolan saga is character-driven, as in “serious” fiction. It’s character driven in the sense that Bolan is not the same person in the first book as he is in the last of Don’s original novels. It’s like one gigantic novel that came to us in a bunch of volumes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Then there’s one of Don’s last books, <i>Copp in Shock</i>; not his best, but one of my favorites. It’s a detective novel narrated by a private eye suffering from amnesia. Well, Don was enduring some challenging health issues at the time he wrote that one and in fact was suffering from severe memory loss. His wife, Linda, heroically assisted him. Of all the thrillers written about characters with amnesia, this is the only one I’m aware of that was written by an author recovering from amnesia while he wrote it!</span></div>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmu9493FhCyhcTxQNio2wjs01ayPVGN7WobgVC0FiQ_LDfCkOXFNNWCBGlsqKEDBt6nxGTfnp1btI7HfIbSvUeq4jihg2cx_miZOvgBL4b1vHnWpoPJSYQTfHr2lmwrmEMRr9G2Q/s1600/Mertz+-+Pendleton+-+Prather.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #771100; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmu9493FhCyhcTxQNio2wjs01ayPVGN7WobgVC0FiQ_LDfCkOXFNNWCBGlsqKEDBt6nxGTfnp1btI7HfIbSvUeq4jihg2cx_miZOvgBL4b1vHnWpoPJSYQTfHr2lmwrmEMRr9G2Q/s400/Mertz+-+Pendleton+-+Prather.jpg" style="border: none; position: relative;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11.88px;">Stephen Mertz (right) with Don Pendleton (left) and Richard S. Prather</td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I know you are a fan of the early pulp stories – your terrific short story “The Lizard Men of Blood River,” featured in </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1TCU2SC" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;"><i>The King of Horrors and Other Tales</i></a><i> is an homage to the work of Lester Dent. Are there any other pulp writers you particularly like?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">There are writers who wrote for the pulps but aspired to greater things. There I am talking about Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and, for my money, Mickey Spillane. But then there were writers who only stayed in the pulp field. That’s all they wanted to do. That is what they did do. Those guys are mostly fun. That is the word you have to go with. If you measured them up against people I just named, most of them aren’t going to cut the mark…but then, who does? We’re in a Golden Age of pulp reprints so I don’t know what’s kept them from rediscovering Cleve F. Adams, a very funny hardboiled PI writer who wrote for the detective magazines in the 1930’s and ‘40’s. Of course, pulp writing is always with us. When the magazines faded away, pulp fiction just moved over to paperback novels. I’d have to go to the 1950s-60s for my second favorite unknown and that is Ennis Willie. I helped edit a collection of his work that Stark House published. It’s great hardboiled tough guy stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Your later work, starting with </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1TCU25e" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Blood Red Sun</a><i> (1989), is more ambitious than your earlier work. What, as you see it, is the major difference between writing the more formulaic adventure novels of your past, and these bigger and more robust novels you have been producing over the past few decades?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Well, they’re more fun to write for one thing and I hope that translates into the fact that they are more fun to read. I am not reinventing the wheel. I am falling back on things I learned writing pulp fiction when I write the more ambitious novels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1UXKP94" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Blood Red Sun</a></span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> was published by Diamond Books, which was a publishing house started by Warren Murphy. Did you work directly with Mr. Murphy during its publication, and if so, what was the experience like?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">No, I never had any contact with <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Warren</st1:place></st1:city>. He was sort of the money guy there. We did cross paths a couple of times years later. I worked with some editor. I forget his name. What I was trying to do with <i>Blood Red Sun</i>: that was my first book where I really stretched out and tried to say something and tell a tale that hadn’t been told before. I mentioned earlier, Hammett and <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chandler</st1:place></st1:city>. I was trying to do what they did and that was to take genre fiction and lift it into something that had broader scope and appeal. That is what I was trying to do with <i>Blood Red Sun</i>: take the tropes of action/adventure and honestly tell a story that could really have happened. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1UXKP94" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Blood Red Sun</a>,</span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1Xi8COq" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">The Korean Intercept</a></span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (2005), and</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1Xi8Hlo" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Dragon Games</a></span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (2010) are set in Asia; World War II Japan, North Korea, and China, respectively. Does the Asian continent hold any special interest for you?</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Well yes, but no more so than, say, the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place>. The primary engine for fiction has got to be conflict and normally that is personal conflict, but you take entire <i>cultures</i> in conflict and, man, you are really working with something there. If you look at the history of those regions you just named and the culture of those countries and you stack that up side by side with the American way of looking at things, rarely if ever will they connect or even brush into each other. So in terms of being a novelist, there’s a lot to work with. And plus, let's face it, Asian chicks are hot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">You have written two novels, </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1UXzFBg" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Fade to Tomorrow</a><i> (2004) and </i><a href="http://amzn.to/1UXzB4F" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Hank & Muddy</a><i> (2011), which are set in the music world. In the Afterword of </i>The King of Horror & Other Stories<i>, you wrote that you performed as a professional musician – vocals and harp (harmonica) – for seven years: Do these titles hold any special meaning for you since they are centered around music and musicians?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Oh, very much so. I think <i>Hank & Muddy</i> is the best novel I’ve written thus far, although it is certainly not cool to admire one of your children more than another. But still, music just flows through me. In fact, most of the years I was writing my early pulp fiction I didn’t write with any photograph or icon of any writer near me for inspiration; I had a picture over my desk of Chuck Berry doing the duck walk. The music we listen to says so much about us. Just like the food we eat and the movies we watch and the clothes we buy.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hank & Muddy<i> is a fictional imagining of Hank Williams and Muddy Waters meeting in Louisiana in 1952. The narrative is loaded with biographical information of both men. What type of research did you do?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">This one pretty much ties into the last question. I’ve been listening to what they today call roots music since I was in high school. The Rolling Stones opened the door to a lot of us kids to what the blues was and soul music and everything else. So really the research for that book, I never really sat down and researched that one. I seem to remember almost every liner note and every musician’s biography that I’ve ever read. It was my long suffering mother who once observed that if I could only remember my multiplication tables as well as I remembered who played bass on Chuck Berry records, I’d be a brilliant mathematician. Mom, rest her soul, was right. I’ve been living music and writing since the day I found out about either one. I guess it’s inevitable that each would influence the other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The title story in </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1oDsdwv" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">The King of Horror & Other Stories</a><i> features a bitter writer who is no longer able to sell his work. In your Afterword you wrote it was an “open letter” to your friend Michael Avallone who had similar difficulties at the end of his writing career. Mr. Avallone had a wild reputation of self-promotion and an uncanny ability to bring others to anger. Do you have a story or two about Michael Avallone you would be willing to share?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I not only loved Michael Avallone but I also loved his wife, Fran, who was a great woman. She was everything that someone who loves a writer should be. I’ll always remember visiting them at 80 Hilltop Boulevard in East Brunswick, NJ. Fran cooked up a fantastic Italian dinner; this would have been 1983. Mike was pretty much in the state that you just mentioned. He and I were sitting in his office which was within easy earshot although not within view of the kitchen where Fran was slaving over a hot stove. Mike went on about his travails, the challenges that were facing him and any number of complaints. He went on and he went on and he went on. I loved every word and I loved every minute of it. But I have a clear memory of Fran periodically calling up to us, “Michael, shut up and <i>listen!</i>” I am happy to report that Michael did not, could not, heed her advice. I walked away the richer for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-q2LBDYH3VtpWhxWz3d2yFNj3FMv2XPfagwWe_YnugFLm-xCbtBFKgOxNs79dTBEUbrW1i6wCthxUKBY2tJwhnFRSe5JhZlu_Dp3GsUIeOG0O8To0Skw3NCWESTBawjRui8OuOg/s1600/Steve+%2526+Michael+Avallone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #771100; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-q2LBDYH3VtpWhxWz3d2yFNj3FMv2XPfagwWe_YnugFLm-xCbtBFKgOxNs79dTBEUbrW1i6wCthxUKBY2tJwhnFRSe5JhZlu_Dp3GsUIeOG0O8To0Skw3NCWESTBawjRui8OuOg/s400/Steve+%2526+Michael+Avallone.jpg" style="border: none; position: relative;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11.88px;">Stephen Mertz (left) and Michael Avallone</td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Your more recent work has a quiet humor to it. An example is Kim Jong-II using terrified prisoners as personal barbers in </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Korean Intercept<i>. Was this imaginary on your part, or is there some truth to it?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">No, that was my sick imagination running rampant through my fingertips. By all accounts, the guy was totally bugfuck. You have two ways to look at that when you’re portraying it: you can either shake your head and let it happen or you can try to pull something out of it. It seems that if the guy was going to be crazy, he would be crazy in every department, not just in what he was doing to his own people but also getting a haircut. He was probably no fun to go shopping with. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">You wrote two dark suspense novels, </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1oDslMI" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Night Wind</a><i> (2002) and </i><a href="http://amzn.to/1TCUxfI" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Devil Creek</a><i> (2004), which are different from anything else you’ve written. They both have significant elements of horror, suspense, and even a touch of romance. These novels, to me, showcase your range as a writer. Would you tell us a little about these books?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Actually, when we get to the novels and stories published under my own name, nearly every one is different from anything else I’ve written. That’s my restless nature. I bore easily. I develop a story about people when I feel compelled to do so and when I’m finished writing that novel or story, I’m ready to move on; meet new people and write new stories. I think that is probably the overriding aspect of my work over the past fifteen years. Most of the novels are different from each other. The main similarity is that I wrote them. The idea for <i>Night Wind</i> had been in me since I moved to a remote rural area in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Arizona</st1:place></st1:state>. There’s no convenience store, no stop lights. The old joke is that Welcome and Come Again are on the same sign. When I first moved here thirty years ago, I was keenly aware that I was an outsider. Now I can spot an outsider right off. But feeling the way I first did, that if terrible crimes were suddenly committed right after I’d just moved here, good people would be well within the realm of reason to suspect that I, the unknown newcomer, had something to do with it . . . that’s the plot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Funny story about <i>Night Wind</i>. One evening I had dinner with Joe Lansdale and a friend of his, Dean Koontz. Dean had just written a book, <i>How to Write Best Selling Fiction</i>. I had never read any Dean Koontz but after meeting him, I bought that book. It’s probably the best book about commercial writing that I’ve ever read. I perused that book meticulously. Then, still without reading any of Dean’s novels, I wrote <i>Night Wind</i>. People still come up to me after reading that one and say, “Hey, that reminds me of reading a Dean Koontz novel!" Considering Dean’s enormous success, I’ve decided to interpret that as a compliment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Do you have plans to write any other dark tales?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I will let you know when I get there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">You have been very prolific in the past few years. You have published a handful of novels, including creating a new adult western series called </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Blaze!<i> Would you tell us a little about the series, and its genesis?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Now we’re back to the latest medium for pulp fiction. I created that series to establish a presence in the digital reading world; a series was the best way to go, so I worked a twist on the western genre that I’d never encountered before. Its genesis is a short story I wrote called “Last Stand,” which introduces a pair of gunfighters who are the two fastest guns in the West…who just happen to be married to each other. Kate and J.D. Blaze. I couldn't get away from the idea that those two deserved more than one story. I am happy to say that <i>Rough Edges Press</i> felt the same way and, in fact, wanted to amp up with a bi-monthly publication schedule. I’m too slow a writer to accommodate that, so a handful of topnotch writers stepped in to maintain consistent scheduling. They’ve just published Book #10 and presently there are enough books in the pipeline to get us through the year. J.D. and Kate. She’s a little smarter than he is but dog-gone-it, J.D. is a standup gent. They banter back and forth in between shooting the bad guys and sorting out various marital issues. These are western tall tales for today’s audience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">J.D. stands for Jehoram Delfonso. Where did you come up with such an awkwardly intriguing name?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Well, it’s method writing. You try to be the guy, y’know? Would <i>you</i> want to be called Jehoram Delfonso, or J.D.? I know I'd prefer J.D. Jehoram is a warrior king in the Old Testament. At least once per book, Kate gets so mad at J.D. about something that she’ll call him by his given name in public. She’s the only person alive who has ever called him that besides his mother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Many of your early works have appeared in eBook format over the past few years and you have several new titles that are primarily available as eBooks – </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1TCUxfI" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Sherlock Holmes: Zombies Over London</a><i>, the </i><a href="http://amzn.to/1oDsAaq" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Blaze!</a><i> series. EBooks have seemingly opened new markets for many writers. What are your thoughts about eBooks, and how have they impacted your career?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">It doesn’t make sense not to write for the digital market. Writers write to be read and these days that’s where the action is. It’s an exciting time to be a writer. I’m reminded of the 1950s. From what I know of the history of those years in popular writing, between the invention of the paperback novel, the advent of television, and comic books, all of a sudden there were all of these new ways to make money writing but everyone was still trying to figure out just how. It was a wild frontier. That’s the way it is now. The <i>M.I.A. Hunter</i> series has gotten a second life. The new novels like<i>Dragon Games</i> and <i>Hank & Muddy</i> are doing well as eBooks. It’s a mixed blessing. As a reader, I prefer to sit under a light with a real book in my hands but as a writer, I’d have to say that much of my writing income today comes from eBook sales. So, it’s hard to be less than happy about success.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Speaking of eBooks, you did an interview with the blog </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Glorious Trash<i> in 2013 and hinted there may be new </i><a href="http://amzn.to/1TCUK2n" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">M.I.A. Hunter</a><i> novels appearing as eBooks. Is this still a possibility, or have you moved away from the idea?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">No, it’s actually already happening. I’ve written a new Mark Stone, a reboot set in the present. Also, years ago when we were both hungry young lads, Joe Lansdale and I collaborated on three <i>M.I.A. Hunter</i> books. They’ve just sold out a<i>Subterranean Press</i> hardcover omnibus of those so they’re now available in eBook format <i>and</i> trade paperback. Bonus material is included in the new editions to take readers behind the scenes of the development of the novels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I heard this question in an interview on a <st1:stockticker w:st="on">BBC</st1:stockticker> program a few years ago. If you were stranded on an island and you had only one book, what would it be?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Well, of course, we all have our favorite novels but once read, the great ones are remembered. I’d have to cheat. I snuck in two. If I was looking at eternity all by myself on a deserted island and wanted entertainment, wisdom, and to stay in touch with the universe beyond the end of my nose, reckon I’d pack along a Bible and The Collected Plays of Mr. Shakespeare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The opposite side of the coin. If you were allowed only to recommend one of your novels, or stories, which one would you want people to read?</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://amzn.to/1TCUPmA" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Hank & Muddy</a></span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">. That one just has a life of its own. I love that book and I hope I write a few more that are as good.</span></div>
Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-12038064683985467792016-04-07T06:04:00.006-07:002016-04-07T06:07:10.021-07:00Forgotten Books: MURDER AMONG OWLS by Bill Crider<h3 class="post-title" style="background-image: url(http://www.blogblog.com/rounders2/icon_arrow.gif); background-position: 10px 0.5em; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The only series I read regularly are those that offer worlds I want to visit. This may be because before I began reading mysteries reguarly I read science fiction. World building is critical in sf and fantasy.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">And it is in mystery fiction, too. Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie. John Dickson Carr. Indelible worlds. Or Mr. and Mrs. North. Craig Rice's various detectives working out of Chicago. Hammett, Chandler, Chester Himes' Harlem novels.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">And Bill Crider's small town Texas series, the latest of which is MURDER AMONG OWLS. This time Sheriff Dan Rhodes has to decide whether Helen Harris' death was accidental or criminal. At certain points in his investigation his deputies are his biggest hindrance to solving what is now clearly a crime. Wizards they're not.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Any novel that references the Warner Bros. cartoon icon Pepe Le Pew on the third page is a can't miss reading exprience for me. And Crider does this as he does everything else--nice and easy. The sentences and the scenes flow so gracefully you might overlook the difficulty of keeping the writing so spot-on.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">If you think Andy Griffith of Mayberry with an edge and a tart tongue you'll have a good sense of of the world Crider creates in these fine books. He's admirably unsentimental about his town and its people, seeing them for what they are. The good ones are good without being saints, the bad ones are bad without being Hannibal Lechter. Real people doing real people things.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Two highlights--the dog who's scared of the cat and a hilarious chain saw chase between a lunatic and his seventy-something would-be prey. I've never read this scene in any form anywhere else before. It is pure Crider and the essence of his best work.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">You'll like Rhodes and his town. And for sure you'll want to come back for more.</span></div>
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Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-17083388553698494542016-04-06T13:19:00.003-07:002016-04-06T13:22:04.219-07:00Bill Pronzini on Elliott Chaze<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqCZiBtE8U0iqwGF7a2YQVn6kM8BZb3YFBp-0HuY5cf3qpQVH4RjC3c9-q0wf5lV-ir7Qc9Bn-OYV-kMvWHrjeDht8USYG9DgSogfr3K4cKc67QOaXs7X6w_flM30oOmmu87hP/s1600/BlackWings2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684918892433815522" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqCZiBtE8U0iqwGF7a2YQVn6kM8BZb3YFBp-0HuY5cf3qpQVH4RjC3c9-q0wf5lV-ir7Qc9Bn-OYV-kMvWHrjeDht8USYG9DgSogfr3K4cKc67QOaXs7X6w_flM30oOmmu87hP/s400/BlackWings2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 280px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 167px;" /></a><br />
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Ed here: Bill Pronzini's contributions to the genre of crime fiction have been enormous. First he created the groundbreaking Nameless series (stronger than ever) second he wrote numerous stand-alones and stories that have won praise and awards world-wide and third he has compiled a body of excellent literary biography and criticism that needs to be collected and published. Here is an example from Mystery*File.<br />
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ON ELLIOTT CHAZE<br />
by Bill Pronzini<br />
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Elliott Chaze (1915-1990) was an old-school newspaperman who began his journalism career with the New Orleans Bureau of the Associated Press shortly before Pearl Harbor, worked for a time for AP’s Denver office after paratrooper service in WW II, and then migrated south to Mississippi where he spent twenty years as reporter and award-winning columnist and ten years as city editor with the Hattiesburg American.<br />
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In his spare time he wrote articles and short stories for The New Yorker, Redbook, Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, and other magazines, and all too infrequently, a novel. In an interview he once stated that his motivation in writing fiction, “if there is any discernible, is probably ego and fear of mathematics, with overtones of money. Primarily I have a simple desire to shine my ass — to show off a bit in print.”<br />
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His first two novels were literary mainstream. The Stainless Steel Kimono (Simon & Schuster, 1947), a post-war tale about a group of American paratroopers in Japan, was a modest bestseller and an avowed favorite of Ernest Hemingway.<br />
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The Golden Tag (Simon & Schuster, 1950), like most of his long works, has a newspaper background, contains a good deal of autobiography, and is both funny and poignant; it concerns a young wire service reporter and would-be novelist in New Orleans who becomes involved with two women, one of them married, while reporting on a sensational murder case.<br />
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His third novel was the one for which he is best remembered today, Black Wings Has My Angel (Gold Medal, 1953; also published as One for My Money, Berkley, 1962 and as One for the Money, Robert Hale, 1985).<br />
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for the rest go here:http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=142Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-11904813400161553812016-04-05T14:44:00.003-07:002016-04-05T14:46:23.865-07:00Gravetapping: Reading Ed Gorman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>"The Autumn Dead, </i>with its depth, its heartbreak, and its melancholy hope, is</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dorothy B. Hughes</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ben Boulden:</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">This is an introduction I wrote for the <a href="http://amzn.to/1MJKcNf" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Stark House omnibus edition</a> of Ed Gorman’s fine novels, </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Autumn Dead <i>and </i>The Night Remembers<i>, published in December 2014. </i>The Autumn Dead <i>features private eye Jack Dwyer and </i>The Night Remembers <i>features private eye Jack Walsh. The Stark House edition is still available, and all of the novels—both Jack Dwyer and Jack Walsh—are available as bargain priced ebooks. There are links to each novel</i></span><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">’</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>s Amazon page at the bottom of this essay. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ed Gorman is an unheralded writer of uncommon ability. He is a writer with a conscience—his characters reflect the world and he has an uncanny ability to make them sympathetic—but he is also an immensely entertaining storyteller. Mr. Gorman’s work has ranged wide, but he is particularly good at the first person detective story and two of his best are collected in this omnibus: <i>The Autumn Dead</i> and <i>The Night Remembers</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">In 1985 Ed Gorman, in his second published novel, introduced his first private detective, Jack Dwyer. Dwyer is a former cop who got the acting bug after being cast in a local public safety commercial. He started acting lessons, quit his job, applied for his private investigator’s license, and took a security job to keep the wolves away. Jack Dwyer appeared in five novels and <i>The Autumn Dead </i>is the fourth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Autumn Dead</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> is the definitive Jack Dwyer novel. It fulfills the potential and promise of both </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 20.79px;">Dwyer as a character and Ed Gorman as a writer. It is a richly detailed detective novel strong on story and scored with a thought provoking working class commentary. Jack Dwyer is the principal instigator of the novel’s action, but he is also a spectator of the melancholy and hard world he inhabits. He is not a saint, and is unable to right many, if any, wrongs, but he notices the humanity around him. More importantly, he understands humanity in all its beauty, frailty and brutality. In an early scene from</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 20.79px;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 20.79px;">The Autumn Dead,</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 20.79px;">Dwyer describes a housing development built in the 1950’s.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“They’d built the houses in the mid-fifties and though they weren’t much bigger than garages, the contractors had been smart enough to paint them in pastels—yellow and lime and pink and puce, the colors of impossible flowers, the colors of high hard national hope—and they were where you strived to live in 1956 if you worked in a factory and wanted the good life promised by the Democrats and practiced by the Republicans.” <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is a neighborhood forgotten by time and left to crumble and tarnish new generations with a hard scrabble existence. It is a place where dreams die, girls become hard and old before they reach maturity, and a place where the lowest rung of humanity struggles to survive. In the novel this hopelessness and poverty is juxtaposed with the comparatively well off. The professional classes and the downright wealthy. Dwyer is unable to claim membership in either class—he was raised in one and has never been able to fully gain access to the other. The conflict of class is personified by an old classmate and friend named Karen Lane.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Karen seemingly escaped her childhood poverty, but she gave herself away in the attempt. She is described much like Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly. She is a woman-girl desperately trying to erase her own bitter world with her sex, and while her surroundings changed, for a time at least, she was never able to completely overcome the poverty of her childhood. A passage describing Karen’s borrowed room in the home of a friend captures the rub between the dream of something more and reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“The clothes—fawns and pinks and soft blues and yellows, silk and linen and organza and lame and velvet—did not belong in the chill rough basement of a working-class family. There was a sense of violation here, a beast holding trapped a fragile beauty.” <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">There is a bitter melancholy in much of Ed Gorman’s work and </span><i style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Autumn Dead</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> is no different. It is a narrative of loss and disappointment; the loss of time, the slow crawl to death, and the disappointment of failure.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“‘You know what his problem is?’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“‘What?’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“‘He isn’t a boy anymore.’” <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">In 1991, Ed Gorman introduced his second private eye, Jack Walsh, in <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1ZTIk6X" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">The Night Remembers</a></i>. Jack appeared in only one novel, and while he would have made a wonderful serial character, his story is seemingly complete in a single volume. Jack is 62, a World War II veteran who fought at Salerno, a retired cop—Linn County Sheriff’s Department headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa—and a live-in manager of a rundown apartment building in a decaying neighborhood. Jack operates a one man private investigation shop, smokes six cigarettes a day and has an on again off again relationship with a woman nearly half his age named Faith Hallahan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Faith is a major player in both the novel and Jack’s life. She is the mother of an 18-month old boy named Hoyt—she claims Jack is the father—and Faith is nearly certain she has breast cancer. Faith, like many of Mr. Gorman’s female characters, has a gentle sadness, an almost broken quality, about her. She is described with an intimate fondness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“[R]egal, imposing, and, even at times such as these, a little arrogant. The hell of it is—for her sake anyway—she’d had one of those terrible childhoods that robbed her of any self-confidence her looks might have given her. ‘I’m only beautiful on the outside,’ she’s fond of saying in her dramatic way.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Amazingly Jack takes Faith’s indecision about their relationship in stride. He truly loves Faith and Hoyt. There are several tender scenes between the three, which develops a visceral intimacy. Jack has an indistinct role in Faith’s life. He is a mixture of father, priest and lover, which summarily describes his outsider role in society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Jack’s personal strife is a backdrop to the mystery, but it is an important and rewarding element because it focuses an understanding of his viewpoint, and it is Jack’s view of the world that shimmers in the narrative. It is offhand references to real world people like Lyndon LaRouche, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter—“…Carter I never could stand. Maybe it was that psychotic smile.”—and the sympathetic brush Mr. Gorman paints his characters with that pushes the novel beyond. He is particularly good at capturing a mood, a sorrow, an ill, in a few simple, sparse sentences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“The little girl watched me as I started down the stairs. She looked sadder than any child her age ever should.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">In another scene, a rambling bigot who justifies his hate with religion, is described with a keen sense of understanding—or maybe pity—without allowing for credibility or justification of the hate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“In his plaid work shirt and baggy jeans and house slippers, he looked like the sort of melancholy psychotic you saw roaming the halls of state mental institutions just after electroshock treatment, the pain and sorrow only briefly dulled by riding the lightning.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Jack, like Dwyer, is an observer of a world he doesn’t quite understand, but a world he has a wistful empathy for. A world filled with desperate, scared people behaving in ugly and malicious ways, but allowances are nearly always provided. Small understandings, if not always completely satisfactory, are conveyed in the narrative explaining the ugliness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“She enjoyed making you despise her. I suppose she hoped that somebody would despise her almost as much as she despised herself.” </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Night Remembers</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> and <i>The Autumn Dead </i>are similar—first person narrative with a sentimental, intelligent, and watchman-like protagonist—but beneath the surface both are very different novels. <i>The Night Remembers </i>is a wistful, sentimental novel filled with betrayal and an exhausted weariness while <i>The Autumn Dead</i> is very near angry. The novels are both dark, but there is humor. Jack Dwyer is a self-deprecating wise-ass. There is a Jim Rockford moment in <i>The Autumn Dead</i> when a bartender wants five dollars to tell Dwyer where he can find a man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“‘It worth five bucks to you?’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“‘That’s only in the movies. Just call Chuck.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“‘I need some grease to do it because I got to walk all the way down the basement stairs. The intercom is on the blink.’”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Jack Walsh is less smart-alecky than Dwyer, but the humor pops up unexpectedly—the reference to Jimmy Carter’s “psychotic smile” and an exchange between Walsh and the owner of the building he manages. A man he refers to as “young Mr. Banister.” His description of Banister is one of the highlights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“He was approximately thirty-five with a short earnest haircut, black earnest horn-rim glasses, an earnest white button-down shirt, an earnest blue five-button cardigan sweater, and a pair of earnest chinos that complemented his very earnest black and white saddle shoes. It was the wrong sissy touch, those shoes on a man his age, and told me more than I wanted to know about young Mr. Banister.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">Jack Walsh also appeared in the 1990 short story “Friends,” but he was disguised under the name Parnell. The primary backup players were there—Faith and Hoyt—and the story is worth finding. Jack Dwyer appeared in five novels, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1qdwVTx" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">New, Improved Murder</a> </i>(1985)<i>,<a href="http://amzn.to/1qdx8Go" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Murder in the Wings</a></i> (1986)<i>, <a href="http://amzn.to/1ZTHXsW" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">Murder Straight Up</a> </i>(1986)<i>, <a href="http://amzn.to/1VjJisg" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">The Autumn Dead</a> </i>(1987)<i>, </i>and <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1MJKwvB" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">A Cry of Shadows</a></i> (1990), and three short stories, “Failed Prayers” (1987), “The Reason Why” (1988), which is the basis of <i>The Autumn Dead</i>, and “Eye of the Beholder” (1996).</span>Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-87474610551325071902016-04-04T17:56:00.004-07:002016-04-04T17:57:11.949-07:00Antiques Fate by Barbara Allan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgncex8ow-AP1Bzu4y8eT-vdFgeuxUNhL1QoT9Zm6iasjPVN0Dpquc4h-jQ7WHR0BmtQsFE9DcOAKNM3eDb5LC5_Tn17DqyVCSdqvR8SaWtQUg72YP0xQzhrDyM0XlkBTmqu5vO/s1600/51IQaHJUfOL._SX327_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgncex8ow-AP1Bzu4y8eT-vdFgeuxUNhL1QoT9Zm6iasjPVN0Dpquc4h-jQ7WHR0BmtQsFE9DcOAKNM3eDb5LC5_Tn17DqyVCSdqvR8SaWtQUg72YP0xQzhrDyM0XlkBTmqu5vO/s320/51IQaHJUfOL._SX327_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> "In my rendition, I play all the parts in a sixty minute condensation of my own creation. Shakespeare was a good writer, but he runs to the long-winded and needs occasional editing."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> The speaker here could only be Vivian Borne aging bi-polar diva (and antiques expert) and mother of Brandy Borne (co-owner of the family antique store back in Serenity, Iowa), long suffering thirty-two year old daughter who must follow her mother around to keep her out of amateur theater trouble but also murder trouble. Vivian does love a mystery.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Antiques Fate is, for me, the funniest yet in the series. As usual Brandy narrates and spends a fair share of the time directly addressing the reader:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> "Yes, we were a pill-happy little group--lithium for Mother's bi-polar disorder, Prozac for my depression, and insulin for (shih tzu) Sushi's diabetes."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> When a New York troupe has to cancel because performing "Macbeth" at a weekend festival at town that celebrates its its carefully crafted resemblance to a quaint English village, Vivian steps in as a substitute. She will perform all the roles herself, changing hats each time she changes character. Simply by changing hats the audience will be able to identify who each character. Is Vivian ever wrong?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> The village of Olde York is having problems. Some of its citizens want to modernize it and some want to leave it as it is. Feelings run deep and dangerous as Vivian and Brandy discover when people start to die.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> I really like the writing here. For all the humor Barbara Allan (husband and wife Barbara and Max Allan Collins) are able to create not just suspense but numerous ominous scenes especially inside the theater. The past here has rotted; there is an almost decadent gloom among those work operate it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Vivian remains the star of course as she bulldozes her way into disinterring old secrets that ultimately lead to the true murderer (several enticing suspects.)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Five star fun. I can't wait for Vivian to drive all of us crazy again.</span>Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-28359911941567787912016-04-03T09:15:00.002-07:002016-04-03T09:16:56.238-07:00Shadow Games and Other Sinister Stories of Show Business available for pre-order!<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="color: #cc6600; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 4px;">
<a href="http://newimprovedgorman.blogspot.com/2016/03/shadow-games-and-other-sinister-stories.html" style="color: #cc6600; display: block; text-decoration: none;">Shadow Games and Other Sinister Stories of Show Business available for pre-order!</a></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><b>"<i>Shadow Games</i> is a page-turning, gut-wrenching barnburner of a book."—Robert Bloch</b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7s8gE6L13sx99xI8Ouc-46bLMAiUl1s-Vbz7asYK7q-eOYgp-YHCewthy0oorj3TGGPSLiH-JePBpc4JE4Zyg7Pxla4QzCSYqzQlJNlNFp7_XUjSlyhvW_GIKRfTo4ishvr4v/s1600/Shadow+Games+cover+Gorman+Lindroos.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 4px;" /></div>
<b style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><br /><span style="color: white;"></span></span></b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;">Ed here: My first cousin Bobby Driscoll was a major child star of the late 1940s and early 1950s. He died at thirty of drugs. While I don't use any of Bobby's life in this novel I do look at child stardom here. Theses a slightly revised edition of Shadow Games (1992) which I wrote at the time I was writing scripts for two different directors and learning a little about the ways of Hwood. </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;">Cover art © by JT Lindroos<br /><br />"<i>Shadow Games</i> unflinchingly examines the dark side of humanity and reaches a finale that is both moving and terrifying."<br />—<b>Ramsey Campbell</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"What keeps you reading is not the traditional question of whodunit but the slick and artful ease with which Gorman portrays the alienated, uncaring world of his creation."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;">Cobey Daniels had it all. He was rich, he was young and he was the hottest star in the country. Then there was all that messy business with the teenage girl . . . and it all went to hell for Cobey.<br /><br />But that was a few years ago. Now Cobey's pulled his life together again they're letting him out of the mental hospital and he's ready for his big comeback, but the past is still out there, waiting for him. Waiting to show Cobey a hell much more terrible than he could ever have imagined.<br /><br />The American 90s come brutally alive: "Gorman knows how to shunt electricity into the raw nerve endings buried far below the reader's already clammy skin."<br />—<b><i>Locus</i></b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;">© Ed Gorman</span><br /><br /><br />PRAISE FOR SHADOW GAMES<br /><br />"Ed Gorman's is a strong and unique voice."<br />—<b>Richard Matheson</b><br /><br />"(Gorman) should be required reading for anyone who wants to experience the art of the short story as practiced by a master craftsman."<br />—<b><i>Mystery News</i></b><br /><br />"Gorman is the poet of dark suspense."<br />—<b><i>The Bloomsbury Review</i></b><br /><br />"John D. MacDonald meets Jim Thompson in a maelstrom of malicious evil and perverse maipulation that doesn't let up until the final few pages...thoughtful, tightly knit and elegantly structured."<br />—<b><i>Million</i> (UK)</b><br /><br />"This is a bleak moral tale but written with such hot feeling and such cool style that it entertains even as it keens."<br />—<b><i>Morning Star</i> (UK)</b><br /><br /><br /><b>Title Details:</b><br /><br />RRP Price: £11.95<br />Publisher: Short, Scary Tales Publications<br />Release Date: May 1, 2016<br />ISBN: 978-1-909640-52-8 (6" x 9" Trade Paperback)<br />First Edition<br />Pages: 354</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;">This brand new edition is available for pre-order from the <a href="https://www.sstpublications.co.uk/Shadow-Games.php" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Short, Scary Tales website</a>. The first 100 copies sold direct from the site will be signed by me and the cover artist, <a href="https://www.behance.net/jtlindroos" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">JT Lindroos</a>!</span><b style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></b><br />
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Ed Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.com0