NEW BOOKS: SLAMMIN' by FRED BLOSSER

NEW BOOKS: SLAMMIN' PULP HERO STORIES by Fred Blosser KINDLE $2.99

The seven tales in SLAMMIN’ PULP HERO STORIES cover a range of settings and

characters.  In all of them, I wanted to replicate the energy of old-style pulp adventure, stripped down to the basic formula of the modern action film: Keep things moving and keep it noisy.  Did I succeed?  I’ll leave the final judgment to the reader.

“Gunpoint,” in a slightly different form, first appeared in BEAT TO A PULP.  The

setting is a West Virginia coal camp in the early 1900s, where fact and fiction

converge.  Five characters are based on historical figures, and there really was a saloon war involving two sons of the feuding Hatfield family.  The two lead characters, gunslingers-for-hire Ringo & Horn, are fictitious.  In

“Bulletpoint,” the grandsons of Ringo & Horn operate in modern-day West

Virginia, in the area where I grew up along the Kanawha Valley.  I have to give credit to my friend Bill Davis, who pointed me in this direction years ago; any sins of execution are mine.

“Trail of the Curly Wolf” and “Skirmish at Cattail Creek” feature the Tomahawk

Men, the frontier traders who extended the westernmost borders of English

America in 1710.  I had in mind Louis L’Amour’s historical Western adventures of the early Sackett and Chantry families.  These two short tales, which perhaps more properly should be called vignettes, originally appeared in somewhat different form in OWLHOOT, the quarterly APA-zine of the Old West Literary Heritage Organization of Old Timers, ramrodded by Cap’n Bob Napier.  I have a novel about the Tomahawk Men in the wings.

“The City of Nightmare Fear,” featuring a masked vigilante, Commander Manta, and “Hero’s Helper,” with G-Man Gila, are patterned on 1930s hero pulp.  “The Night of Satan’s Murder Syndicate” unites the modern-day Ringo & Horn and the descendants of the Tomahawk Men, Manta, and Gila to foil a terrorist plot.  My model here was Jack Higgins with a touch of old-school pulp and the Transporter.

I hadn’t seriously considered self-publishing until my friend John Whalen

ventured into Amazon’s CreateSpace to publish his novella SAMURAI BLADE, one of a series of Weird Westerns featuring his monster-hunter character Mordecai

Slate.  When John did that, I started thinking: I’ve got these stories sitting in my computer, collecting dust or whatever you collect inside a Mac hard drive. 

Why not throw ‘em out on Kindle and see if anyone is interested.  The book

concludes with three short articles about Lester Dent, John D. MacDonald, and Dashiell Hammett, preserving material that I’d previously published in small-circulation journals in somewhat different form years ago.

By the time I started reading genre fiction as a kid in the early 1960s, the real pulp era had ended.  Nevertheless, the spinning racks of paperbacks in every drug store, newsstand, and bus station were filled with titles that either reprinted classic pulp fiction or updated the formula for a modern generation of

(mostly male) readers.  Today, to find this style of stripped-down, bullet-fast fiction, you mostly have to go to e-books and POD publishers.   I hope readers like SLAMMIN‘ PULP HERO STORIES. 

From the great Ken Levine My favorite schocky movie

My favorite schocky movie

Ed here: I love this movie, too. I've seen it numerous times and it's always great for an affectionate laugh. Roger Corman was born to make this one.


Ken Levine:
A number of you have asked what is my favorite schlocky movie? That would have to be the Roger Corman 1975 masterpiece, DEATH RACE 2000. It's your typical low budget exploitation science fictionapocalyptic violent cross country auto race romp. The tagline:

IN THE YEAR 2000 HIT AND RUN DRIVING IS NO LONGER A FELONY. IT'S A NATIONAL SPORT!

I have to love a movie where the Real Don Steele's name is on the one-sheet but Sylvester Stallone's is not. (The above poster hangs in my office.)

The delightful confection of a story is that there is a cross country race in modified Batmobiles and the drivers get additional points for running down pedestrians. (Hey, don't laugh. It's still a better premise than GROWN UPS 2.)

Here is a sample.

Warning: Not for the squeamish -- and by that I mean anyone who can't bear to watch really bad cheesy special effects.

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-favorite-schocky-movie.html

Ross Thomas, The Procane Chronicle

Ross Thomas, The Procane Chronicle

    One of life’s true pleasures is reading a Ross Thomas novel.  He never lets you down when you re-read him, either. 

    I’ve now read The Procane Chronicle for the third or fourth time, and even though I now know all the amazing surprises Thomas blesses his readers with, the prose alone is as much fun as the story.  The only writer living today who can even come close to the grace and nimbleness of Thomas is Lawrence Block.  Block knows from sentences.

    In this one, Phillip St. Ives is dragooned by poverty as usual to act as a go-between when a blackmailer sets a price.  St. Ives is hired to make sure that both sides keep their promise.  The stake this time is a possible Mafia war.

    As always, Thomas gives us a radiantly cynical take on Washington, D. C. and all who do business there.  Though thirty years have past since original publication, Procane depicts a nation’s capitol no different from the one we know today.  St. Ives is lied to and betrayed by everything on two legs, even – or especially – those fine looking female legs.

    For me, Thomas was one of the two or three best crime writers of the last century.  He brought to each book a witty and brutal intelligence that exposed all of us as less than we’d want to be. 

    http://mysteriouspress.com/products/espionage-and-thriller/the-procane-chronicle-by-ross-thomas.asp  Get it at Mysterious Press on line books or try ABE etc.

           ——

Forgotten Books: THE HIDDEN by Bill Pronzini

Forgotten Books: THE HIDDEN by Bill Pronzini

I know, I know, since this was published not long ago, it's hardly forgotten. But it is one of those books that deserved much more promotion and notice than it received. Bill Pronzini the master of mixing shattered lives and violence and The Hidden is almost claustrophobic in its shadowy Woolrichian power.

Bill Pronzini is not only a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, he's a Grand Master of the dark and sinister noir novel. He demonstrates this again in one of his finest (perhaps the finest) books in his long career.

Jay Macklin is a failed man. A career as a baseball player was ended early by injury. As were other attempts at establishing himself. His decade-plus marriage to Shelby was so solid and good for a long time but unemployment and heart trouble (the latter something she doesn't know about) have taken their toll. Shelby finds herself attracted to a doctor at the hospital where she works as a paramedic.

The novel brings Jay and Shelby together in an anxious attempt to find their old love and respect. They travel to a cottage in rugged Northern California only to meet Brian and Claire Lomax, a married couple who has even more problems than they do. They also become aware of a serial killer who has been traveling this same area. A power failure seems symbolic of their marriage's final days.

Pronzini has always been at his best dealing with smashed lives. HIs descriptions of violent weather and pitiless nature only enhance the emotional turbulence that make the drama so rich. Gripping, sinister, unpredictable, The Hidden is a sinewy novel of treachery and terror by a true master of the form.

New Books UNSPEAKABLE by Kevin O' Brien

For seventeen years, before his thrillers landed him on The New York  Times Bestseller list, Kevin O'Brien made his living as a railroad  inspector and did all his writing at night. His second novel, ONLY SON  (1996), was optioned for film rights, thanks to interest from David  Seltzer (THE OMEN)and Tom Hanks. It was also chosen by Readers Digest  for its Select Editions--along with John Grisham's THE PARTNER. "Seeing  my photo on the back cover--alongside John Grisham--really made me feel  as if I'd 'arrived' as an author," Kevin admits. Kevin has been writing full time ever since. But he hasn't forgotten  his railroad "ties." So--if on occassion, you find a scene in a Kevin  O'Brien thriller in which a dead body is discovered in a railroad yard,  well, now you know why. THE NEXT TO DIE (2001), his first thriller, was a USA Today Bestseller.  More bestsellers followed with MAKE THEM CRY, WATCH THEM DIE and LEFT  FOR DEAD. His 2005 spellbinder, THE LAST VICTIM won the Spotted Owl  Award for Best Pacific Northwest Mystery/Thriller, and became a New  York Times Bestseller. Kevin O'Brien continued his New York Times  Bestseller streak with KILLING SPREE, ONE LAST SCREAM and FINAL BREATH.    Kevin O'Brien has produced six more best-selling thrillers--published in a dozen    different languages.  His latest nail-biter is UNSPEAKABLE, released last month. Kevin lives in Seattle, where he's involved with the Seattle 7 Writers,  along with Garth Stein, Jennie Shortridge, Erica Baeumeister, Carol  Cassella and several other award-winning, bestselling authors  (www.seattle7writers.org). Among the S7W projects is THE HOTEL  ANGELINE: A NOVEL IN 36 VOICES, a collaborative book with 36  authors--including Erik Larson, Jamie Ford, Elizabeth George, Robert  Dugoni, Susan Wiggs and several others. In Kevin's chapter, someone  meets a violent end...naturally. Library Lady, Nancy Pearl, furnishes  the Introduction. All sales for this forthcoming ebook will go to  promote literacy and writing in schools. Kevin loves Hitchcock movies,  and is hard at work on a new thriller. You can visit his website: www.kevinobrienbooks.com UNSPEAKABLE Child star, Collin Cox, is washed up at sixteen. When his train-wreck  of a mother is brutally slain, he moves in with his grandparents on the  Kitsap Peninsula. Under a different name, he starts at a new high  school where no one knows him. But one night, when two friends  hypnotize him, Collin begins to talk in a different voice and he takes  on a strange, new persona—that of a serial killer who has been dead  since 1962. As people around him start dying, Collin turns for help to  Olivia Barker, a Seattle hypnotherapist, recovering from a horrible  tragedy and a collapsed marriage. Is Collin responsible for these  recent deaths? Has someone from the past taken control of him? Olivia  and Collin delve deep into the unsolved murders from fifty years  before. But the truth may be the last thing they ever know…. 1 – To me, UNSPEAKABLE is your most unique and exciting novel.  You introduced me to characters I don’t often see in crime fiction.   For instance, your protagonist is a hypnotherapist who: a.) worries she might not be up to the job; b.) wonders if she should be trying to help overweight people and smokers when she is struggling with nine pounds she needs to lose and still smokes half a pack of Virginia Slims a day.  Olivia Barker is one of your finest creations.  How did she come about? When I realized my young hero, Collin would need help from a hypnotherapist, the first thing I did was look up Hypnotists in the Yellow Pages.  Nearly all the hypnotists listed were to help people quit smoking or lose weight.  So right then, my twisted thinking was that my hypnotherapist-heroine will be a closet smoker struggling to lose a few pounds.  Her marriage recently went kaput, and she has moved in with her widower dad.  She’s back in her old bedroom, which is exactly as she’d left it after college—with a Titanic movie poster above her bed, and walls full of photos of friends with whom she has long since lost touch.  So it’s like Olivia is in limbo when the book starts.  2 – The same can be said for the twentyish young man who calls himself Russ Leander, but is really Collin Cox.  His Granddaddy may be Anthony Perkins in “Psycho,” but you make him entirely unique.  Did you research both hypnosis and psychology for making his background believable? Thank you, Ed, and yes!  My neighbor across the street is a psychologist, and he’s always so helpful when I’m trying to figure out the motivations and behavior patterns for my warped villains.  In this case, he gave me several printouts on hypnosis and multiple personality disorder.  Plus I did my own research about the Bridey Murphy “reincarnation” case in the 1950’s, which heavily influenced the plot in UNSPEAKABLE. 3 – Child stars such as Lindsey Lohan and Amanda Bynes are constantly in the news.  Do you have them in mind when you created him? Yes, I was thinking about the child stars in The Sixth Sense, The Shining and Poltergeist.  Like them, Collin is known for his role in a hit horror movie, and he had a line that everyone remembers (like “I see dead people,” or “Redrum, redrum!” or “They’re here!”).  Collin’s oft-quoted line in “The Night Whisperer” is: “The killing’s about to start!”   What I’ve read about Lindsey Lohan’s mother (and other stage mothers) helped influence the creation of Collin’s screwed up mom.  I had a fun time creating Collin and his back-story.   4 – How long did you work on UNSPEAKABLE before you were satisfied with it? One of the advantages—and disadvantages—to putting out a book a year (it’s in my contract with the publisher to deliver one every year) is that I don’t have a lot of time to tinker and tweak my writing.  There’s always a deadline looming—or I’m running way behind schedule.  After my book outline is accepted, I usually have about six to seven months to get a book written and polished.  I’m never totally satisfied with it.  But then, even if I had six or seven years for each book, I probably wouldn’t be totally satisfied with it either.  So I do my best with the limited time I have. 5 – How do you feel when you finish a novel?  I know some who exult and others who sulk, thinking they’ve just completed a bad one.  How do you feel when you finish? Can I answer “All of the above?”  I have such mixed emotions of relief and exhaustion and postpartum depression.  Plus I’m both optimistic and pessimistic about how it will go over with my editor and early readers.  So—I’m always a bit of a mess for a couple of weeks after I finish a book.  But at the same time, it feels great catching up on stuff I’ve neglected.  There’s only a brief period of feeling aimless—then my editor starts tapping his foot, waiting for the outline for my next book! 6 – Do you have people other than your editor read and comment on your manuscript? My dear friend since college, Cate Goethals (who is a writer, journalist and professor), has read at least the first 100 pages of each one of my books before I’ve handed it in.  She has little patience for phony or silly women.  So it’s great to have her sizing up my heroines.  Her approval on those first few chapters has become a good luck charm for each book.  Cate is also in my writers group, which includes authors, David Massengill and Garth Stein (I told him not to write a “dog book,” good thing he didn’t listen to me).  They see early versions of several chapters and give me wonderful feedback.  I’m a big advocate for writers joining writers groups.  It’s a lonely profession—and you need a support group. 7 – What’s your next novel about? My next thriller, TELL ME YOU’RE SORRY, is a little bit of Black Widow and a little bit of The Stepfather.  A woman pilot and a teenage boy team up after their respective families are murdered.  They begin to see a pattern in which several widowers—recently remarried—are killed along with their families and new spouses.  That’s all I’ll say about it for now.  I don’t want to give any more of it away!

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New from Centipede Press - WILLIAM PETER BLATTY

SYNOPSIS

A scathing modern fable that chronicles the descent of an acclaimed auteur and a Hollywood screenwriter caught in his own private hell. This novel draws on Blatty’s own experiences in Hollywood during the writing and filming of such acclaimed movies as The Exorcist. Blatty takes no prisoners in this fable of towering ambition, cross and doublecross.
      Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing is here published with the preferred text by Blatty, incorporating dozens of revisions and amendments. Jacob McMurray designed the dustjacket.



SYNOPSIS


William Peter Blatty has thrilled generations of readers with his iconic international bestsellerThe Exorcist.Now Blatty gives usDimiter, a riveting story of murder, revenge, and suspense. Laced with themes of faith and love, sin and forgiveness, vengeance and compassion, it is a novel in the grand tradition of Morris West’sThe Devil’s Advocate, and the Catholic novels of Graham Greene.
      Dimiter opens in the world’s most oppressive and isolated totalitarian state: Albania in the 1970s. A prisoner suspected of being an enemy agent is held by state security. An unsettling presence, he maintains an eerie silence though subjected to unimaginable torture. He escapes, and, on the way to freedom, completes a mysterious mission. The prisoner is Dimiter, the American agent from hell. The scene shifts to Jerusalem, focusing on Hadassah Hospital and a cast of unusual characters. All become enmeshed in a series of baffling, inexplicable deaths, until events explode in a surprising climax.
      Told with unrelenting pace, Dimiter’s compelling, page-turning narrative is haunted by the search for faith and the truths of the human condition.
      William Peter Blatty, the writer of numerous novels and screenplays, is best known for his internationally bestselling novel The Exorcist, deemed by the New York Times Book Reviewto be as superior to most books of its kind as an Einstein equation is to an accountant’s column of figures. An Academy Award winner for his screenplay for The Exorcist, Blatty is not only the author of one of the most terrifying novels ever written, but, paradoxically, also co-wrote the screenplay for the hilarious Inspector Clouseau film, A Shot in the Dark. New York Times reviewers of his early comic novels noted, Nobody can write funnier lines than William Peter Blatty, describing him as a gifted virtuoso who writes like S. J. Perelman. Blatty lives with his wife and a son in Maryland.

NEW PWA WEBSITE

PWA Update from Robert J. Randisi

      YES, IT'S FINALLY HAPPENED.

 

       PWA has a website. We've been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century thanks to member and web guru Kevin Burton Smith. It's still under construction, but it already rocks. Take a look here http://www.privateeyewriters.com/ and make sure you read the news portion about the PWA banquet! If you're a PWA member you'll get an invitation.   If you're not, then email me at RRandisi@aol.com for information.

 

RJR

Crime Square; Joel Goldman

     CRIME SQUARE IS OUT--again.

     Originally published last year by Vantage Books, edited by Bob Randisi, that company quickly went belly up, leaving the book an orphan. My thanks to John Boland at PERFECT CRIME BOOKS for picking the book up and bringing it out anew.

     The stories in the book describe Times Square throughout its history, and are by the best in the business. Max Collins, John Lutz, Reed Farrel Coleman, Christine Matthews, Brad Parks, Gary Phillips, Parnell Hall and more. It's available know as a Trade Paperback and an ebook.

--Bob Randisi

-----------------------------------

GREAT INTERVIEW WITH BESTSELLING CRIME WRITER JOEL GOLDMAN

http://www.npr.org/2013/07/15/201177814/g-man-f

ights-crime-and-a-medical-disorder-in-kansas-city

Someone is Bleeding/Icy Breasts Richard Matheson

Ed here: This is from Movie Morlocks by Kimberly Lindberg. Someone is Bleeding is one of my favorite bitter noir love stories. As is suggested here it would have been better done by the great French director Claude Chabrol. He owns this turf.

Before Richard Matheson etched out a name for himself as a popular writer of horror and science fiction he dabbled in crime fiction and mysteries. His very first novel was a pulpy noir titled Someone is Bleeding (aka The Frigid Flame or The Untouchable Divorcee) and it features many of the genre’s typical tropes. But Matheson was anything but a typical writer and this psychosexual thriller contains some surprising twists and turns including an ending that would have been right at home in an Edgar Allen Poe story or an EC Comic book from the ‘50s. In fact, after enjoying all the brash and snappy dialogue exchanges in Matheson’s 1953 literary debut you half expect the Crypt Keeper to appear at the end with some kind of funny anecdote to lessen the horror of the book’s final chapter but there’s no simple escape from this grim story. Like many of Matheson’s best tales,Someone is Bleeding leaves readers with an unshakable sense of dread and despair. In Matheson’s imperfect world everyone and everything is suspect. No one is safe and nothing is sacred.

In 1974 French director and screenwriter Georges Lautner adapted Someone is Bleeding for the screen under the title LES SEINS DE GLACE aka ICY BREASTS. His script made many changes to Matheson’s original story but some elements remained the same. Lautner’s film moves the action out of Los Angeles and onto the French Riviera where a free-spirited and rather naïve writer named François Rollin (Claude Brasseur) becomes obsessed with an aloof blond called Peggy (Mireille Darc). At first Peggy forcefully rebuffs his aggressive come-ons but François manages to win her over with his childlike sense of humor and naivety. Their budding relationship is interrupted by Peggy’s overbearing lawyer, Marc Rilson (Alain Delon) who begins questioning François’ intentions and insists on having a gorilla-like doorman (Michel Peyrelon) and chauffeur (Emilio Messina) keep track of the couple’s every move. Complicating matters are the lawyer’s wife (Nicoletta Maschiavelli) and brother (Fiore Altoviti) who claim that Marc is having an affair with Peggy and wants François out of the picture so he can have her all to himself. When a scissor wielding killer starts leaving a trail of dead bodies behind everyone becomes a suspect. François and Peggy eventually flee to the French Alps but just as the carefree François begins to think that he’s capable of breaking through Peggy’s icy façade, his romantic delusions are shattered by a life-threatening revelation.

http://moviemorlocks.com/2013/07/11/someone-is-bleeding-
les-seins-de-glace-1974/#more-66208

Room to Swing - Ed Lacy

Ed here: I'm getting addicted to the site Pretty Sinister Books. Though I'm not interested in

some of the books reviewed generally the range of material covered (and covered intelligently)

is amazing. Here's one of my all-time favorite crime novels covered in Pretty Sinister.

  

FFB: Room to Swing - Ed Lacy

I have a thing about the Edgar Awards. I happen to think a lot of the award winners didn't deserve that little statue of Poe. Only occasionally do I come across a truly worthy Edgar winning mystery novel. Room to Swing (1958) won the Edgar for Best Novel. It's most definitely one of the deserving winners. Not only that - it's a little known, little discussed, hardly reviewed at all, landmark novel in the history of crime fiction by a writer who deserves a lot more attention.

Toussaint Marcus Moore is a private detective hired by Kay Robbens, a TV executive, to shadow the subject of a soon to be aired reality TV show that sounds exactly like a 1950s version of "America's Most Wanted." The man, Robert Thomas, is wanted by Ohio police for a rape and assault of a teenage girl and Kay know he is currently living under an assumed name in Manhattan. Moore is to keep an eye on Thomas and make sure he doesn't leave New York until the show is aired. Then Kay hopes some TV viewer will spot Thomas, notify police, and he'll be arrested thus validating the purpose of the TV show and insuring it has a long run. But Thomas ends up dead, Moore is framed for the murder, and he flees the city. Moore is determined to clear his name, but in order to do that he needs to uncover who killed Thomas and why. He figures it's all linked to the rape case.

for the rest go here:

http://prettysinister.blogspot.com/search?q=room+to+swing

BUCHANAN’S GUN by JONAS WARD (BRIAN GARFIELD); Gorman health news

BUCHANAN’S GUN by JONAS WARD (BRIAN GARFIELD)

by Fred Blosser

I remember the glory days of Westerns:  They ran on TV every night.  Paperback racks and comic books were crammed with cowboys and gunfighters.  Every big movie star made at least one film where he or she wore a six-shooter and rode a horse.  

Now, the genre increasingly seems to be an e-book niche for diehard fans, and when a Western movie on rare occasions gets a big studio release, it’s more likely to dash hopes of a cowboy comeback than to revive them.  The debacle of THE LONE RANGER is the latest nail in the coffin.  The only question is, how long before Hollywood decide it’s time to plant the stiff in the ground and shovel it under.

In the 1960s, when the genre flourished in paperback form and the only CGI you needed were the CGI your imagination supplied, a writer could make a modest living in the trade.  If he were a young writer like Brian Garfield, he could establish himself in print, hone his talents, and eventually move on to more lucrative crime and thriller fields if he wished.

Many of Garfield’s early paperback Westerns from Ace, Monarch, and Dell appeared under a variety of pen-names, generally variations on his real name.  Brian Wynne, Frank Wynne, Frank O’Brien, and Bennett Garland were all Brian Garfield, before he became famous for DEATH WISH and HOPSCOTCH.

Garfield also wore the “Jonas Ward” house name at Gold Medal Books in a one-shot contribution to the long-running Buchanan series begun by William Ard and then continued by others after Ard’s death.  In BUCHANAN’S GUN (1968), series hero Tom Buchanan wanders into a feud between Arizona cattleman Mike Warrenrode and Apache chief Sentos.

When the Army captures Sentos for rustling, Warrenrode and his hired guns stop the paddywagon and try to seize the Apache.  Warrenrode’s men start a shootout.  Buchanan, an old friend of the chief’s, helps him to escape, but Sentos loses two sons to the gunslingers’ bullets.

In revenge, the Apache circles back to Warrenrode’s spread and kidnaps the rancher’s daughter.  Buchanan and his tagalong partner, Johnny Reo, ride into the mountains to rescue the daughter from the Indian camp.  In the meantime, literally back at the ranch, Warrenrode’s devious foreman Steve Quick hatches his own plot to take charge.

If you’re looking for top-drawer Garfield and have a choice, go first to THE LAWBRINGERS, SEVEN BRAVE MEN, VULTURES IN THE SUN, and THE VANQUISHED.  BUCHANAN’S GUN isn’t in that league, but nevertheless, it’s smooth, fast-action Western formula served up expertly, and if you see it on the second-hand racks, don’t pass it by.  I suspect that the Burt Kennedy/Budd Boetticher movies of the late '50s were a deliberate or unconscious model, including Boetticher’s BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE (1958), starring Randolph Scott as the title character, based on one of the Ard novels.  

Easy to see Scott playing Buchanan again if they'd made a movie of BUCHANAN'S GUN --although as described by Ard and Garfield, the character is closer in appearance to Clint Walker in his TV days.  Easy too to picture stalwarts like Henry Silva as Quick, Emile Meyer as Warrenrode, and Skip Homeier or Richard Jaeckel as Reo, charming but hardly more trustworthy than Quick and his murderous crew.  Garfield’s prose is lean and sharp, and the interplay between his characters shows a more thoughtful approach to characterization than the package would suggest.   Best of all, none of the Apaches wears a dead bird on his head.

NEW FROM FRED BLOSSER  KINDLE  $2.99

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 2013

A collection of fast-action stories in the modern pulp tradition, featuring Ringo & Horn, the Tomahawk Men, Commander Manta, the Gila, and Heroes United. Plus . . . spotlight on three classic pulp masters from the pages of Black Mask and Dime Detective magazines.

GORMAN HEALTH NEWS

The news is in from my stem cell transplant and it's very good indeed.
There is no evidence of cancer and that is amazing. It will come back
of course someday  multiple myeloma being incurable, but this is
absolutely the best outcome I could have had--100%.

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers (and one threat--get better
or else!).

What great friends I have.

Best Ed