I ran across this today and was surprised I hadn't seen it on my friend Bill Crider's website. Now I'm not going to provide link information because I don't like what this guy is doing. But given that revenge is a dish best served cold this is one chilly way to get back at the girl who dumped you. This may sound sexist but I'm told that a woman did this to her cheating ex revealing in the pics that he suffered from shrinkage even though he hadn't been in water recently.
"As I was about to walk up to her they both started walking towards the door and left the bar. I followed them from a distance. I saw her get into his car which was parked in a small dark road. I waited for a minute or two but the car didn't move. I walked up to the car and caught them having sex inside. My heart was broken and I immediately broke up with her.
"When we were going out she let me take dirty pics of her with my camera. To get revenge I decided to share those pics with everyone on the internet right here on this site. I'm hoping that lots of people will get to see her pics and know that she is a cheater."
To help me out please take the following link (its your link) and share it with your friends (through instant messenger or email) and the more people that click your link the more pics you'll be able to see. There are 59 pics, each click will reveal an additional pic at the bottom of this page. If 100 people click your link, a dirty video of her will also appear.
UPDATE: I've now gotten eight (eight!) off-line emails demanding that I print the link. I agree with Todd mason, she is indeed a babe. http://ihateliz.com/?id=d51zzouiqbncxj7fwp9ci6ueytndit
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Don Westlake by Robert Byrne
A busy portable typewriter falls silent
Don Westlake, author of 100 novels, dies of a heart attack
BY ROBERT BYRNE
(A photo accopmanies the article-I'll try to run it tomorrow night. If somebody will show me how. Here's the cast: Suspects in a Murder Mystery Weekend staged at the Mohonk Mountain House in New York in 1987.¤ Left to right: David Morrell, creator of Rambo, prolific novelist Don Westlake, novelist Justin Scott, Playboy fiction editor Alice Turner, crime writer Chris Newman, writer Robert Byrne (with flask), and Death Wish author Brian Garfield.¤ In front is Caroline Penzler, then wife of Otto Penzler of The Mysterious Press.)
A friend of mine was on his way with his wife to a New Year's Eve dinner. He never made it. He was felled by a heart attack at the age of 75.
Don Westlake was a writing machine, turning out 100 novels under 10 pseudonyms. He's best known for the comic novels written under his own name featuring an unintentionally funny criminal named John Dortmunder and for the hard-boiled Parker crime novels written by "Richard Stark." He also wrote screenplays for one of my favorite fright-flicks, "The Stepfather," and for "The Grifters," for which he was nominated for an Oscar.
In one room of his four-story home on Blecker Street in Manhattan are floor-to-ceiling racks of books. I was amazed when he told me that every one was written by him: he had every edition of his works in hardback and paperback, sometimes multiple copies, as well as copies in scores of foreign languages.
All of his books were written on a small portable typewriter, which went out of production in the early years of his career. To keep it supplied with spare parts, he never
Advertisement
missed a chance to buy the same model in antique stores and junk shops.
I knew him because we shared a couple of friends, novelist Martin Cruz Smith and mystery writer Joe Gores. Westlake and Gores once published novels that contained an identical chapter, and they did it without their publishers' awareness. That sense of fun made them both wonderful company.
For several years, Westlake wrote scripts for back-to-back "murder mystery weekends" at a rambling old hotel 80 miles north of Manhattan called The Mohonk Mountain House. Amateur actors, most of them writers he knew, put on playlets about a murder. Teams of hotel guests questioned the actors in an attempt to solve the crime. Actors had to stick to facts provided by Westlake and avoid saying anything that contradicted the stories of the other characters.
At the end of the weekend, the teams of sleuths dramatized the crime as they imagined it, and Westlake revealed his own solution. Prizes were given for accuracy and imagination. For the second weekend, the facts were altered enough to provide a new murderer.
In 1987, I was one of the actors. Between the two weekends my wife and I stayed with the Westlakes in Manhattan, it was one of the most enjoyable 10 days of my life. Don and Abby were amusing and upbeat people and perfect hosts. Abby has lost a husband like no other, a man who was loved by his many friends and admired by hundreds of thousands of fans.
The year we were at Mohonk, the murder was set in 1872 at the fictional Western town of Turnip Gulch. (The previous year, the scene was an ocean liner in 1923.) I played a drunken doctor named Homer Payne-Whitney, a good role because whenever I was asked a question that was tricky to answer, I could pretend to be in an alcoholic fog. The guests had been told that my character's parents had been killed by Indians. When I was asked, "What Indians?" I was able to safely answer, "The Cleveland Indians."
During the first weekend, Westlake, playing circuit-court judge Orner E. Plugge, questioned me in court. Before I could divulge crucial information, shots rang out from the balcony -- I was hit! I staggered around, clutching my chest, then dropped to the floor and died after a few violent twitches. It was the pinnacle of my acting career.
While staying with the Westlakes in New York, I heard Don say that he never knew if the dishes in the dishwasher were dirty or clean. Weeks later, I found a magnetic dial in a gift shop with an arrow that pointed to "Clean" or "Dirty" and mailed it to him. He replied that it helped a lot because every morning Abby pinned it to her blouse so he would know how she was feeling.
Byrne is the author of 23 books, including two novels about growing up in Dubuque. His Web site is www.byrne.org, and his e-mail address is bob@byrne.org.
Don Westlake, author of 100 novels, dies of a heart attack
BY ROBERT BYRNE
(A photo accopmanies the article-I'll try to run it tomorrow night. If somebody will show me how. Here's the cast: Suspects in a Murder Mystery Weekend staged at the Mohonk Mountain House in New York in 1987.¤ Left to right: David Morrell, creator of Rambo, prolific novelist Don Westlake, novelist Justin Scott, Playboy fiction editor Alice Turner, crime writer Chris Newman, writer Robert Byrne (with flask), and Death Wish author Brian Garfield.¤ In front is Caroline Penzler, then wife of Otto Penzler of The Mysterious Press.)
A friend of mine was on his way with his wife to a New Year's Eve dinner. He never made it. He was felled by a heart attack at the age of 75.
Don Westlake was a writing machine, turning out 100 novels under 10 pseudonyms. He's best known for the comic novels written under his own name featuring an unintentionally funny criminal named John Dortmunder and for the hard-boiled Parker crime novels written by "Richard Stark." He also wrote screenplays for one of my favorite fright-flicks, "The Stepfather," and for "The Grifters," for which he was nominated for an Oscar.
In one room of his four-story home on Blecker Street in Manhattan are floor-to-ceiling racks of books. I was amazed when he told me that every one was written by him: he had every edition of his works in hardback and paperback, sometimes multiple copies, as well as copies in scores of foreign languages.
All of his books were written on a small portable typewriter, which went out of production in the early years of his career. To keep it supplied with spare parts, he never
Advertisement
missed a chance to buy the same model in antique stores and junk shops.
I knew him because we shared a couple of friends, novelist Martin Cruz Smith and mystery writer Joe Gores. Westlake and Gores once published novels that contained an identical chapter, and they did it without their publishers' awareness. That sense of fun made them both wonderful company.
For several years, Westlake wrote scripts for back-to-back "murder mystery weekends" at a rambling old hotel 80 miles north of Manhattan called The Mohonk Mountain House. Amateur actors, most of them writers he knew, put on playlets about a murder. Teams of hotel guests questioned the actors in an attempt to solve the crime. Actors had to stick to facts provided by Westlake and avoid saying anything that contradicted the stories of the other characters.
At the end of the weekend, the teams of sleuths dramatized the crime as they imagined it, and Westlake revealed his own solution. Prizes were given for accuracy and imagination. For the second weekend, the facts were altered enough to provide a new murderer.
In 1987, I was one of the actors. Between the two weekends my wife and I stayed with the Westlakes in Manhattan, it was one of the most enjoyable 10 days of my life. Don and Abby were amusing and upbeat people and perfect hosts. Abby has lost a husband like no other, a man who was loved by his many friends and admired by hundreds of thousands of fans.
The year we were at Mohonk, the murder was set in 1872 at the fictional Western town of Turnip Gulch. (The previous year, the scene was an ocean liner in 1923.) I played a drunken doctor named Homer Payne-Whitney, a good role because whenever I was asked a question that was tricky to answer, I could pretend to be in an alcoholic fog. The guests had been told that my character's parents had been killed by Indians. When I was asked, "What Indians?" I was able to safely answer, "The Cleveland Indians."
During the first weekend, Westlake, playing circuit-court judge Orner E. Plugge, questioned me in court. Before I could divulge crucial information, shots rang out from the balcony -- I was hit! I staggered around, clutching my chest, then dropped to the floor and died after a few violent twitches. It was the pinnacle of my acting career.
While staying with the Westlakes in New York, I heard Don say that he never knew if the dishes in the dishwasher were dirty or clean. Weeks later, I found a magnetic dial in a gift shop with an arrow that pointed to "Clean" or "Dirty" and mailed it to him. He replied that it helped a lot because every morning Abby pinned it to her blouse so he would know how she was feeling.
Byrne is the author of 23 books, including two novels about growing up in Dubuque. His Web site is www.byrne.org, and his e-mail address is bob@byrne.org.
Don Westlake #3
A bit over seven years ago I had two surgeries for thyroid cancer. I posted some larky comments about it on my blog. A number of people thought I was in denial, thus my humor. I don't think so. I'd been afraid of getting cancer all my life that when I got it I was relieved that it was the kind people survive. 90% survival five years out (the type I had). Five weeks later, due to a strange pain in the right side of my lower,I went back to my oncologist. The next diagnosis wasn't so good. I had mutliple myeloma. Incurable. 70% dead in the first three and a half years. No larky posts about that. Made a living will. Made a deal with Kate Stine for Mystery Scene. Gave away more than 2000 books. Hunkered down. The kindness and concern of people I knew (and many I didn't) was truly moving. A week after my first post on the blog I got a letter from Don Westlake. I figured he'd be sending good wishes. He did. And he accompanied those wishes with a check for a thousand dollars. "Figured you might need this." Turned out we didn't so I sent the check back. But that was Don Westlake.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Sarah Weinman on reading
The LA Times interviews Sarah Weinman today about her ability to read 462 books in one year without losing her mind. Very interesting piece. Here's a sample.
JC: Do you retain plot or characters best? Or something else?
SW: I retain characters more often than plot, but what seems to happen is that I latch on to specific moments, turns of phrase and dialogue as touchstones for me to recall what happened in the book. Kind of like freeze-frame. I've often wondered if the passage of time will make me forget what happened in a book, but more often than not, I'll pick up a book to reread and remember almost exactly what happened, the mood of the book, and how I felt at the time when I read it. If a book is great, there's an electric charge as I read the text and "hear" the voices in my head. But honestly, a lot of the books I read in 2008 were mediocre or forgettable, and if I hadn't been on a subway or captive on a plane or a train, I might not have finished them.
For the entire piece go here:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/01/how-to-read-462.html
JC: Do you retain plot or characters best? Or something else?
SW: I retain characters more often than plot, but what seems to happen is that I latch on to specific moments, turns of phrase and dialogue as touchstones for me to recall what happened in the book. Kind of like freeze-frame. I've often wondered if the passage of time will make me forget what happened in a book, but more often than not, I'll pick up a book to reread and remember almost exactly what happened, the mood of the book, and how I felt at the time when I read it. If a book is great, there's an electric charge as I read the text and "hear" the voices in my head. But honestly, a lot of the books I read in 2008 were mediocre or forgettable, and if I hadn't been on a subway or captive on a plane or a train, I might not have finished them.
For the entire piece go here:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/01/how-to-read-462.html
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Donald E. Westlake interview
You'll find this along ith a great photograph of Don Westlake on the Mystery Scene website. I'm adding it here for people who missed it the first time around. Thanks to Kate Stine for letting me reprint it.
In Mystery Scene’s 2008 Fall Issue #106, Ed Gorman interviewed the author about his work.
DONALD WESTLAKE: THE STARK TRUTH
by Ed Gorman
Levi Stahl, the publicity manager of the University of Chicago Press, has exciting news for Richard Stark fans. “While we don’t reprint many mysteries, we explained to the editorial board that these weren’t just any crime novels, these were regarded as masterpieces…. great novels that have influenced writers around the world. We’re starting with The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit but we’re already negotiating for more books in the series.” This means, the Press hopes, that the initial three will be followed in chronological order by the next thirteen Parker novels, ending with Butcher’s Moon, originally published in 1974.
Ed Gorman for Mystery Scene: For all the ferocity of the criminals in the Stark novels, you present a hierarchy based on competence. Strictly Darwinian. There are times when I almost feel sorry for a few of the more feckless ones.
Donald Westlake: Okay, let’s see what we got here. You begin by suggesting the Parker novels are about competence, an idea I like very much. I’ve always said Parker is basically a workman, with the professional workman’s goal of getting the job done ably, efficiently and without interruption. It’s true his job is a dramatic one, but it’s still a job. The only way somebody’s going to be interested in watching a guy take the hinges off a door is if there’s a hundred thousand dollars on the other side.
Gorman: Brian Garfield wrote that you once described Parker as a 1930s Depression character. Then as more European than American. Were you trying to avoid the various hardboiled clichés of the early sixties by thinking of him in these terms?
Westlake: It’s true that Parker comes out of the 30s bank robbers, and I knew in the 60s he was already from another era. The fact is, for a guy in the Midwest in the 30s who had brains and daring but no education and no contacts, crime was one of the very few open career paths. Later on, as other career paths opened up, fewer competent people went in that direction. In that way, he’s an anachronism, but anachronisms have their uses, like chiaroscuro, to highlight the contrasts. Every once in a while in the books, somebody living in our world finds himself in confrontation with this unreconstructed guy from a much harder age. I always like to watch those meetings.
Let me tell you a story about my father. He was a low-pay traveling salesman for much of his life. When I was a kid in Albany, NY, his territory for the various things he sold—you don’t make a living from one item—was eastern Pennsylvania through all of New England except Maine. He’d had a couple of heart attacks and one Friday, in Harrisburg, he felt another one coming on. (There’s no health insurance in this story.) He told the desk clerk he’d stay for the weekend, then bought a bottle of rye and went to bed. Every time he woke up he’d sip a little rye, and Monday morning he woke up hungry and alive. He never told the family until, a few years later, when he was hospitalized with another one, the doctors found the evidence and he admitted to it. That unblinking attitude of just-keep-moving is much of Parker.
Early on, I made a couple mistakes with Parker—socializing him in one way or another—but it was like a cook putting just the wrong thing in a recipe; you could taste it right away. So, as I got to know him better, I stopped making those mistakes. He’s already there; just let him be himself and everything will be fine.
Gorman: Is the story true that you showed a portion of The Hunter to some of your writer friends for their input before you finished it? Did your group back then do that often?
Westlake: I didn’t show The Hunter to anybody for input. I’ve rarely done that with any book. In fact, the only time I can remember doing that was with my first mystery, The Mercenaries, when I wasn’t at all sure what I was doing and I showed the first draft to a writer friend of mine, Larry Harris (who later, for some reason, became Larry Janifer), because I knew he was a good writer and a good editor and far better attuned to the market than I was. He called and said he wanted to come over and talk. When he got to the apartment he had the manuscript box in one hand and a six pack of beer in the other, and he said, “We’re in trouble.” We went through the manuscript, and if there was a beginner’s mistake I hadn’t made I can’t think what it might be. It was a terrific learning experience, and the next draft sold to Lee Wright at Random House, who later became Larry’s editor as well. Otherwise, my first three readers, only when the book is done, are, in order, my wife, my agent and my editor.
Gorman: One critic noted “Westlake has been the mad scientist of crime fiction for nearly 40 years now, and the Stark books showcase some of his more daring experiments with style and structure.” Do you make a conscious decision about approach before you write or do you let the story make the decisions?
Westlake: Story defines the books for two reasons, both because story is what fiction is about and because, since I don’t outline or prepare in any other way, the story is forced to emerge or die. “Narrative push,” as I know you know. Once we have the fuel on board—and then, and then, and then—it’s nice to be able to try different things. Not to get digressive, but to give the story little extras. For instance, in one book I saw I had an opportunity, if I wanted, to tell one section in first person from Parker’s point of view. Since he isn’t someone who tends to want to tell other people anything, particularly anything unnecessary, I wondered if I could do it, what he would sound like, and would it turn out to be one of those false notes. In the event, it was fine. (And no, I can’t right now remember which book.) More recently, in Ask the Parrot, I suddenly realized I could do one chapter from the parrot’s point of view, and that made me very, very happy.
Gorman: You’ve written that you didn’t know how editors let alone readers would react to a hero like Parker. Were you surprised when your editor asked for more?
Westlake: When I wrote The Hunter it was supposed to be a one-off. A difficult unpleasant guy without redeeming qualities bent on revenge. Then Bucklyn Moon, an editor at Pocket Books, said he liked the book and wondered if Parker could escape at the end and me write “three more books a year about him.” (I actually did, the first two years.) I really had to concentrate on that, because Parker was everything a main character in a novel was supposed to not be. The big question was, could I go back to him, knowing he was going to be a series character, meeting the readers again and again, and not soften him. No sidekick or girlfriend to have conversations with, no quirks or hobbies. That was the goal. Somebody who, in a western, would be a lone traveler in the dimness on the other side of the campfire from the hero. Now that menacing but unimportant minor character would be asking for everybody’s attention. No, not asking, assuming.
Gorman: Do you still hear from prisoners commenting on Parker’s skills and offering suggestions for taking care of business?
Westlake: Prisoners used to be readers, but now they’re weightlifters. I used to get letters from guys because they thought they could shoptalk with me, that I wouldn’t moralize or condescend. Techniques and stuff weren’t part of it, but they did have some very nice stories to tell, none of which got directly into any book, though the attitudes show through.
Gorman: There have been so many editions of the Stark books around the world that you might be forgiven for not getting excited each time you see a new one. But given the breadth of the University of Chicago publishing program for the Parkers, you must feel pretty damned proud.
Westlake: I know I should get over being astonished by Parker’s longevity and success, and pretty soon I will. The University of Chicago Press was not a scalp I ever expected to see on my belt. Just to get that 3-D effect, later this month at a comics convention in San Diego, a small outfit is announcing the launch (some day) of Parker graphic novels. (They’ve promised me a T-shirt.) The illustrator, Darwyn Cooke, is hard at work in Canada. When you’ve got the University of Chicago Press and a graphic novel publisher both looking at the same material, the only thing to do is just keep moving on.
Gorman: Finally, the late Bill DeAndrea once quoted you as saying `You don’t know what it’s like to have a pen name who’s doing better than you are.” How do you feel about that today?
Westlake: The issue of being one-upped by your pen name—it isn’t quite the same thing as Evan Hunter, who was just about drowned out completely by Ed McBain, but Stark does tend to outperform Westlake whenever they start even. It happened the first time around, when Point Blank became one of the seminal movies of the twentieth century and Stark was earning more than Westlake, and it’s happened again this time around. I am very glad I don’t have to figure that out.
Ed Gorman’s latest novel is Sleeping Dogs (St. Martin’s Minotaur). Visit his website at.
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In Mystery Scene’s 2008 Fall Issue #106, Ed Gorman interviewed the author about his work.
DONALD WESTLAKE: THE STARK TRUTH
by Ed Gorman
Levi Stahl, the publicity manager of the University of Chicago Press, has exciting news for Richard Stark fans. “While we don’t reprint many mysteries, we explained to the editorial board that these weren’t just any crime novels, these were regarded as masterpieces…. great novels that have influenced writers around the world. We’re starting with The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit but we’re already negotiating for more books in the series.” This means, the Press hopes, that the initial three will be followed in chronological order by the next thirteen Parker novels, ending with Butcher’s Moon, originally published in 1974.
Ed Gorman for Mystery Scene: For all the ferocity of the criminals in the Stark novels, you present a hierarchy based on competence. Strictly Darwinian. There are times when I almost feel sorry for a few of the more feckless ones.
Donald Westlake: Okay, let’s see what we got here. You begin by suggesting the Parker novels are about competence, an idea I like very much. I’ve always said Parker is basically a workman, with the professional workman’s goal of getting the job done ably, efficiently and without interruption. It’s true his job is a dramatic one, but it’s still a job. The only way somebody’s going to be interested in watching a guy take the hinges off a door is if there’s a hundred thousand dollars on the other side.
Gorman: Brian Garfield wrote that you once described Parker as a 1930s Depression character. Then as more European than American. Were you trying to avoid the various hardboiled clichés of the early sixties by thinking of him in these terms?
Westlake: It’s true that Parker comes out of the 30s bank robbers, and I knew in the 60s he was already from another era. The fact is, for a guy in the Midwest in the 30s who had brains and daring but no education and no contacts, crime was one of the very few open career paths. Later on, as other career paths opened up, fewer competent people went in that direction. In that way, he’s an anachronism, but anachronisms have their uses, like chiaroscuro, to highlight the contrasts. Every once in a while in the books, somebody living in our world finds himself in confrontation with this unreconstructed guy from a much harder age. I always like to watch those meetings.
Let me tell you a story about my father. He was a low-pay traveling salesman for much of his life. When I was a kid in Albany, NY, his territory for the various things he sold—you don’t make a living from one item—was eastern Pennsylvania through all of New England except Maine. He’d had a couple of heart attacks and one Friday, in Harrisburg, he felt another one coming on. (There’s no health insurance in this story.) He told the desk clerk he’d stay for the weekend, then bought a bottle of rye and went to bed. Every time he woke up he’d sip a little rye, and Monday morning he woke up hungry and alive. He never told the family until, a few years later, when he was hospitalized with another one, the doctors found the evidence and he admitted to it. That unblinking attitude of just-keep-moving is much of Parker.
Early on, I made a couple mistakes with Parker—socializing him in one way or another—but it was like a cook putting just the wrong thing in a recipe; you could taste it right away. So, as I got to know him better, I stopped making those mistakes. He’s already there; just let him be himself and everything will be fine.
Gorman: Is the story true that you showed a portion of The Hunter to some of your writer friends for their input before you finished it? Did your group back then do that often?
Westlake: I didn’t show The Hunter to anybody for input. I’ve rarely done that with any book. In fact, the only time I can remember doing that was with my first mystery, The Mercenaries, when I wasn’t at all sure what I was doing and I showed the first draft to a writer friend of mine, Larry Harris (who later, for some reason, became Larry Janifer), because I knew he was a good writer and a good editor and far better attuned to the market than I was. He called and said he wanted to come over and talk. When he got to the apartment he had the manuscript box in one hand and a six pack of beer in the other, and he said, “We’re in trouble.” We went through the manuscript, and if there was a beginner’s mistake I hadn’t made I can’t think what it might be. It was a terrific learning experience, and the next draft sold to Lee Wright at Random House, who later became Larry’s editor as well. Otherwise, my first three readers, only when the book is done, are, in order, my wife, my agent and my editor.
Gorman: One critic noted “Westlake has been the mad scientist of crime fiction for nearly 40 years now, and the Stark books showcase some of his more daring experiments with style and structure.” Do you make a conscious decision about approach before you write or do you let the story make the decisions?
Westlake: Story defines the books for two reasons, both because story is what fiction is about and because, since I don’t outline or prepare in any other way, the story is forced to emerge or die. “Narrative push,” as I know you know. Once we have the fuel on board—and then, and then, and then—it’s nice to be able to try different things. Not to get digressive, but to give the story little extras. For instance, in one book I saw I had an opportunity, if I wanted, to tell one section in first person from Parker’s point of view. Since he isn’t someone who tends to want to tell other people anything, particularly anything unnecessary, I wondered if I could do it, what he would sound like, and would it turn out to be one of those false notes. In the event, it was fine. (And no, I can’t right now remember which book.) More recently, in Ask the Parrot, I suddenly realized I could do one chapter from the parrot’s point of view, and that made me very, very happy.
Gorman: You’ve written that you didn’t know how editors let alone readers would react to a hero like Parker. Were you surprised when your editor asked for more?
Westlake: When I wrote The Hunter it was supposed to be a one-off. A difficult unpleasant guy without redeeming qualities bent on revenge. Then Bucklyn Moon, an editor at Pocket Books, said he liked the book and wondered if Parker could escape at the end and me write “three more books a year about him.” (I actually did, the first two years.) I really had to concentrate on that, because Parker was everything a main character in a novel was supposed to not be. The big question was, could I go back to him, knowing he was going to be a series character, meeting the readers again and again, and not soften him. No sidekick or girlfriend to have conversations with, no quirks or hobbies. That was the goal. Somebody who, in a western, would be a lone traveler in the dimness on the other side of the campfire from the hero. Now that menacing but unimportant minor character would be asking for everybody’s attention. No, not asking, assuming.
Gorman: Do you still hear from prisoners commenting on Parker’s skills and offering suggestions for taking care of business?
Westlake: Prisoners used to be readers, but now they’re weightlifters. I used to get letters from guys because they thought they could shoptalk with me, that I wouldn’t moralize or condescend. Techniques and stuff weren’t part of it, but they did have some very nice stories to tell, none of which got directly into any book, though the attitudes show through.
Gorman: There have been so many editions of the Stark books around the world that you might be forgiven for not getting excited each time you see a new one. But given the breadth of the University of Chicago publishing program for the Parkers, you must feel pretty damned proud.
Westlake: I know I should get over being astonished by Parker’s longevity and success, and pretty soon I will. The University of Chicago Press was not a scalp I ever expected to see on my belt. Just to get that 3-D effect, later this month at a comics convention in San Diego, a small outfit is announcing the launch (some day) of Parker graphic novels. (They’ve promised me a T-shirt.) The illustrator, Darwyn Cooke, is hard at work in Canada. When you’ve got the University of Chicago Press and a graphic novel publisher both looking at the same material, the only thing to do is just keep moving on.
Gorman: Finally, the late Bill DeAndrea once quoted you as saying `You don’t know what it’s like to have a pen name who’s doing better than you are.” How do you feel about that today?
Westlake: The issue of being one-upped by your pen name—it isn’t quite the same thing as Evan Hunter, who was just about drowned out completely by Ed McBain, but Stark does tend to outperform Westlake whenever they start even. It happened the first time around, when Point Blank became one of the seminal movies of the twentieth century and Stark was earning more than Westlake, and it’s happened again this time around. I am very glad I don’t have to figure that out.
Ed Gorman’s latest novel is Sleeping Dogs (St. Martin’s Minotaur). Visit his website at
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Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Great news-The Prisoner returns
The Prisoner Returns To Television, But Where's the Novel?
From Galleycat today:
Today AMC resurrected all 17 episodes of the classic British television show, The Prisoner, and GalleyCat has one simple question: Who will bring back Thomas M. Disch's novel based on the surreal spy show?
Disch died last year, but among his many writing credits was the first novelization of The Prisoner--a spy thriller miniseries seemingly scripted by Franz Kafka and shot by Federico Fellini.
The free web video versions of the original series will prepare uninitiated viewers (and fans who couldn't afford the expensive DVD set) for the AMC remake of The Prisoner, scheduled for release this year. It's the perfect time to resurrect Disch's novel as a digital book or paperback.
And that's not the only Prisoner tie-in material we'd like to see resurface...
Go here for the rest including some mighy fine Jack Kirby artwork:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/adaptation/the_prisoner_returns_to_television_but_wheres_the_novel_105108.asp#more
From Galleycat today:
Today AMC resurrected all 17 episodes of the classic British television show, The Prisoner, and GalleyCat has one simple question: Who will bring back Thomas M. Disch's novel based on the surreal spy show?
Disch died last year, but among his many writing credits was the first novelization of The Prisoner--a spy thriller miniseries seemingly scripted by Franz Kafka and shot by Federico Fellini.
The free web video versions of the original series will prepare uninitiated viewers (and fans who couldn't afford the expensive DVD set) for the AMC remake of The Prisoner, scheduled for release this year. It's the perfect time to resurrect Disch's novel as a digital book or paperback.
And that's not the only Prisoner tie-in material we'd like to see resurface...
Go here for the rest including some mighy fine Jack Kirby artwork:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/adaptation/the_prisoner_returns_to_television_but_wheres_the_novel_105108.asp#more
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Pity Him Afterward
Friday, May 25, 2007
Pity Him Afterward*
Every once in awhile I get stoned just watching a literary master do his work. The last two nights I was flat out dazzled from beginning to end with Donald Westlake's 1964 novels PITY HIM AFTERWARD.
The story concerns an escaped madman who takes the identity of a man who is headed to a theater that does summer stock. While we see the story several times from the madman's point of view, we're never sure who he is. This is a fair clue mystery.
In quick succession, a young woman who works summer stock is found murdered in the house where the young, struggling actors stay. A part-time chief of police appears to find the killer.
Two points: writers owe their readers original takes on familiar tropes as often as possible. The madman here is no slobbering beast but rather a deranged and sometimes pitiful lunatic (the opening three thousand words are among the most accomplished Westlake pieces I've ever read). And the police chief Eric Songard is one of the most unique cops I've come across in mystery fiction. He works nine months of the year as a professor and summers as a police chief. The small town he oversees usually offers nothing worse than drunks and the occasional fight. Murder is another matter. Westake gives us a cop whose self-confidence is so bad all he can do is try and hasten the appearance of the regular cops from a nearby district. Meanwhile he has to pretend he knows what's going on. He could easily have gone to series. He's a great character.
As the story is told, we get a beleivable look at summer stock with its low pay, brutal hours, frequent rivalries. The payoff is that some of the actors will get their Equity card at the end of the nine week run and thereby become professional actors.
Then there is the telling. The craft is impeccable. Precise and concise and yet evocative because of the images Westlake constantly presents us. You also have to marvel at the rhythm of his language, watching how'll he'll shave an anticpated word here for a certain effect, add a word there for the sake of cadence. These sentences are CRAFTED.
There are so many great Westlake novel it's impossble to rank them. But given what he accomplished, I'd have to say this is one of his early best.
Pity Him Afterward*
Every once in awhile I get stoned just watching a literary master do his work. The last two nights I was flat out dazzled from beginning to end with Donald Westlake's 1964 novels PITY HIM AFTERWARD.
The story concerns an escaped madman who takes the identity of a man who is headed to a theater that does summer stock. While we see the story several times from the madman's point of view, we're never sure who he is. This is a fair clue mystery.
In quick succession, a young woman who works summer stock is found murdered in the house where the young, struggling actors stay. A part-time chief of police appears to find the killer.
Two points: writers owe their readers original takes on familiar tropes as often as possible. The madman here is no slobbering beast but rather a deranged and sometimes pitiful lunatic (the opening three thousand words are among the most accomplished Westlake pieces I've ever read). And the police chief Eric Songard is one of the most unique cops I've come across in mystery fiction. He works nine months of the year as a professor and summers as a police chief. The small town he oversees usually offers nothing worse than drunks and the occasional fight. Murder is another matter. Westake gives us a cop whose self-confidence is so bad all he can do is try and hasten the appearance of the regular cops from a nearby district. Meanwhile he has to pretend he knows what's going on. He could easily have gone to series. He's a great character.
As the story is told, we get a beleivable look at summer stock with its low pay, brutal hours, frequent rivalries. The payoff is that some of the actors will get their Equity card at the end of the nine week run and thereby become professional actors.
Then there is the telling. The craft is impeccable. Precise and concise and yet evocative because of the images Westlake constantly presents us. You also have to marvel at the rhythm of his language, watching how'll he'll shave an anticpated word here for a certain effect, add a word there for the sake of cadence. These sentences are CRAFTED.
There are so many great Westlake novel it's impossble to rank them. But given what he accomplished, I'd have to say this is one of his early best.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Commentary from Crime Writer Dave Zeltserman
Commentary from Crime Writer Dave Zeltserman
Everyone who's been paying attention knows that many, if not all, of the large publishing houses are struggling badly right now. The numbers show that there has been a gradual decline in readers, and the explanation usually given is blaming things like shifts in technology (people spending their reading time surfing the web as instead of reading books) and more entertainment choices; such as video games and more TV and film options.
You can't argue with numbers, but I don't believe these reasons cited is why readership is down. J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books show that readers will flock to compelling books. Instead I'm blaming it on several seismic changes that I've witnessed to the publishing landscape since the early 90s when I started writing, and I believe these events have more to do with the current state of publishing than anything else.
My next few columns here on DaRK PaRTY will be looking at these seismic events and how they affected publishing.
Major seismic event: The Cheap PC.
When I finished my first novel “Fast Lane” in 1992, personal computers (PCs) had been around for a while but they weren't cheap, and most families didn't have them. They were mostly for hobbyists and computer professionals. So back in 1992 when I sent query to editors at many of the major New York publishing houses, most of them responded, with around 10 of them requesting the manuscript.
When I finished my next novel “Bad Thoughts” in 1997, one editor at Warner Books responded to my query letter. The difference: PCs had become cheap, and as a result publishing houses were being flooded with manuscripts and these houses responded by slamming the doors shut and making literary agents the gatekeepers. Writing a book in longhand or pecking away with a typewriter takes work and serious commitment. Using a PC makes it ridiculously easier, and really makes it so that anyone can write 300 pages, and a lot of people were doing exactly that.
Publishers shutting their doors to first-time writers was a big event, as was making literary agents the de-facto gatekeepers. It removes the editors from one step in the process, and puts more emphasis on commercial feasibility as opposed to literary merit and developing talent. But that was only one effect of cheap PCs and the sea of manuscripts, which they had unleashed.
Of course, another obvious one was that it made it a lot easier for serious writers to get lost in this unrelenting tidal wave of manuscripts. If an agency was now getting hundreds of manuscripts sent to them each week instead of tens, less time was going to be spent evaluating any of them, making it harder for these better books to surface.
Then you had new technologies and businesses that needed to be developed to sop up the demand that these new writers had to be published. Publishing on Demand (POD) technology and quick, easy self-publishing businesses came out of this. iUniverse alone has more than 20,000 mystery novels that have been self-published. Let me repeat that. 20,000 mystery novels from just one of these self-publishing outfits.
With POD technology, anyone can become a publisher with little investment. This may make publishing a more democratic endeavor, but it's not a good thing.
But let's go back to maybe the most critical effect this had on the more legitimate publishing houses. As literary agents were wading through manuscripts it was only natural for them to spend less time with any one manuscript and to quicker toss a submission, as well as looking for patterns to spot the more formulaic books that have higher perceived "commercial viability".
But again, this was only one of the major seismic events that have led houses to care more about "relentlessly commercial" writing than the value of the book, and I'll be discussing more of these in future weeks.
(Dave Zeltserman lives and writes in Massachusetts. His crime novel “Small Crimes” was called a “thing of beauty” by the Washington Post and National Public Radio named “Small Crimes” one of its five best mystery novels of 2008. Dave also publishes his own blog, Small Crimes. He publishes the column Thoughts from the Shadows for DaRK PaRTY.)
Everyone who's been paying attention knows that many, if not all, of the large publishing houses are struggling badly right now. The numbers show that there has been a gradual decline in readers, and the explanation usually given is blaming things like shifts in technology (people spending their reading time surfing the web as instead of reading books) and more entertainment choices; such as video games and more TV and film options.
You can't argue with numbers, but I don't believe these reasons cited is why readership is down. J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books show that readers will flock to compelling books. Instead I'm blaming it on several seismic changes that I've witnessed to the publishing landscape since the early 90s when I started writing, and I believe these events have more to do with the current state of publishing than anything else.
My next few columns here on DaRK PaRTY will be looking at these seismic events and how they affected publishing.
Major seismic event: The Cheap PC.
When I finished my first novel “Fast Lane” in 1992, personal computers (PCs) had been around for a while but they weren't cheap, and most families didn't have them. They were mostly for hobbyists and computer professionals. So back in 1992 when I sent query to editors at many of the major New York publishing houses, most of them responded, with around 10 of them requesting the manuscript.
When I finished my next novel “Bad Thoughts” in 1997, one editor at Warner Books responded to my query letter. The difference: PCs had become cheap, and as a result publishing houses were being flooded with manuscripts and these houses responded by slamming the doors shut and making literary agents the gatekeepers. Writing a book in longhand or pecking away with a typewriter takes work and serious commitment. Using a PC makes it ridiculously easier, and really makes it so that anyone can write 300 pages, and a lot of people were doing exactly that.
Publishers shutting their doors to first-time writers was a big event, as was making literary agents the de-facto gatekeepers. It removes the editors from one step in the process, and puts more emphasis on commercial feasibility as opposed to literary merit and developing talent. But that was only one effect of cheap PCs and the sea of manuscripts, which they had unleashed.
Of course, another obvious one was that it made it a lot easier for serious writers to get lost in this unrelenting tidal wave of manuscripts. If an agency was now getting hundreds of manuscripts sent to them each week instead of tens, less time was going to be spent evaluating any of them, making it harder for these better books to surface.
Then you had new technologies and businesses that needed to be developed to sop up the demand that these new writers had to be published. Publishing on Demand (POD) technology and quick, easy self-publishing businesses came out of this. iUniverse alone has more than 20,000 mystery novels that have been self-published. Let me repeat that. 20,000 mystery novels from just one of these self-publishing outfits.
With POD technology, anyone can become a publisher with little investment. This may make publishing a more democratic endeavor, but it's not a good thing.
But let's go back to maybe the most critical effect this had on the more legitimate publishing houses. As literary agents were wading through manuscripts it was only natural for them to spend less time with any one manuscript and to quicker toss a submission, as well as looking for patterns to spot the more formulaic books that have higher perceived "commercial viability".
But again, this was only one of the major seismic events that have led houses to care more about "relentlessly commercial" writing than the value of the book, and I'll be discussing more of these in future weeks.
(Dave Zeltserman lives and writes in Massachusetts. His crime novel “Small Crimes” was called a “thing of beauty” by the Washington Post and National Public Radio named “Small Crimes” one of its five best mystery novels of 2008. Dave also publishes his own blog, Small Crimes. He publishes the column Thoughts from the Shadows for DaRK PaRTY.)
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Don Westlake-John D. MacDonald; Signings; Blockbusters
Elizabeth Foxwell has a photo of Don Westlake and John D. MacDonald together. John D. looks like a delighted child.
http://elizabethfoxwell.blogspot.com/
----------------------------THE ETERNAL QUESTION
From Tor.com
Who Are These Fools, and Why Should You Care?
Jon Evans
"A couple of the responses to my Greg Egan post theorized, to my surprise, that Egan’s relative lack of commercial success is due largely to his reclusivity—“no book tours, no signings, even his website has no blog or reader feedback area, nor any email address.” This started me wondering: how much of a personal connection to authors do most readers nowadays want and/or expect?
"I suppose I’m surprised because I’ve long been on the other extreme. I’ve never even considered sending fan mail to a writer whose books I like, much less searching online for a picture. Except for those years during which I accidentally stalked William Gibson1, and that time I was sternly scolded by Michael Ondaatje1, I don’t think I’ve ever attended a reading or signing2. I care about authors’ work—a lot—but I don’t really care about them."
Ed here: In more than a quarter century I don't think I've done more than a dozen signings. This may be why only a tiny fraction of the reading public has ever heard of me let alone read any of my books. But I'm not sure of that. In twenty-five years I've seen dozens of writers spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars packing themselves off to innumerable signings, meetings, workshops and remain solidly mid-list for their trouble.
I admit that I'm not especially sociable in groups of any kind. I tend to head for the corner. I just never know what to say. So I've never thought I was doing anybody any favors by inflicting myself on them. Easier just to stay home and write.
But my sense now is that (and I may be full of beans of course) with indy bookstores dying signings will become even less valuable for mid-listers. The indies know the books and the writers and know how to sell them. The other types of stores aren't very good at it.
Now, as with any truism, there are many exceptions. There are mid-list writers who can move a fair share of books at signings. And promotion of some kind--especially media promo--is vital. But I know there are writers who spend more money on travel and promo than they receive as advances. I'm not sure that makes any sense.
I'd like to hear what you writers think.
-------------------------More Mid-List Blues
Interesting article posted on the PW online. The topic is why in these dire economic times publishers will throw even bigger money at certain titles. The ones most of us groan about when they make the news.
"Yes, that's right -- amid the worst economic crisis to hit the United States in decades, publishing executives are still making what many see as outrageous gambles on new manuscripts."
(more)
"The move by HarperCollins is only one of the latest in a string of big bets by companies employing a blockbuster strategy -- a common approach among movie studios, television-production companies and music labels. A spokeswoman for the publishing house says it doesn't disclose author advances. (HarperCollins Publishers is a unit of News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)"
(more)
"In the past, the strategy seemed to work wonders. For example, Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group USA, generated roughly 80% of its sales and an even larger share of its profits from just 20% of its titles in 2006. In 2007, Grand Central purportedly shelled out $1.25 million for the rights to Vicki Myron's "Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World," a nonfiction book about a fluffy orange kitten found abandoned in the returned-book slot of an Iowa public library."
(more)
Dewey
Vicki Myron's book about her adopted orange tabby cat, Dewey Readmore Books, briefly occupied the No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list and now sits at No. 2. The feline inhabitant of the Spencer Public Library in Spencer, Iowa has passed away, but a sequel might be in the works -- last month Ms. Myron reportedly adopted a cat named Page."
(more)
"A prudent manager in any other industry might be left scratching his head: Why would Grand Central put itself in the position of having to outsell all cat books released in recent memory to earn back its seven-figure advance? Rather than putting all its eggs in one basket, wouldn't it be smarter for a publisher to place a larger number of smaller bets -- particularly in today's harsh economic climate?
"Hardly. Despite its double-or-nothing daring, the blockbuster strategy remains the most sensible approach to lasting success."
(for the rest go here)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123093737793850127.html
http://elizabethfoxwell.blogspot.com/
----------------------------THE ETERNAL QUESTION
From Tor.com
Who Are These Fools, and Why Should You Care?
Jon Evans
"A couple of the responses to my Greg Egan post theorized, to my surprise, that Egan’s relative lack of commercial success is due largely to his reclusivity—“no book tours, no signings, even his website has no blog or reader feedback area, nor any email address.” This started me wondering: how much of a personal connection to authors do most readers nowadays want and/or expect?
"I suppose I’m surprised because I’ve long been on the other extreme. I’ve never even considered sending fan mail to a writer whose books I like, much less searching online for a picture. Except for those years during which I accidentally stalked William Gibson1, and that time I was sternly scolded by Michael Ondaatje1, I don’t think I’ve ever attended a reading or signing2. I care about authors’ work—a lot—but I don’t really care about them."
Ed here: In more than a quarter century I don't think I've done more than a dozen signings. This may be why only a tiny fraction of the reading public has ever heard of me let alone read any of my books. But I'm not sure of that. In twenty-five years I've seen dozens of writers spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars packing themselves off to innumerable signings, meetings, workshops and remain solidly mid-list for their trouble.
I admit that I'm not especially sociable in groups of any kind. I tend to head for the corner. I just never know what to say. So I've never thought I was doing anybody any favors by inflicting myself on them. Easier just to stay home and write.
But my sense now is that (and I may be full of beans of course) with indy bookstores dying signings will become even less valuable for mid-listers. The indies know the books and the writers and know how to sell them. The other types of stores aren't very good at it.
Now, as with any truism, there are many exceptions. There are mid-list writers who can move a fair share of books at signings. And promotion of some kind--especially media promo--is vital. But I know there are writers who spend more money on travel and promo than they receive as advances. I'm not sure that makes any sense.
I'd like to hear what you writers think.
-------------------------More Mid-List Blues
Interesting article posted on the PW online. The topic is why in these dire economic times publishers will throw even bigger money at certain titles. The ones most of us groan about when they make the news.
"Yes, that's right -- amid the worst economic crisis to hit the United States in decades, publishing executives are still making what many see as outrageous gambles on new manuscripts."
(more)
"The move by HarperCollins is only one of the latest in a string of big bets by companies employing a blockbuster strategy -- a common approach among movie studios, television-production companies and music labels. A spokeswoman for the publishing house says it doesn't disclose author advances. (HarperCollins Publishers is a unit of News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)"
(more)
"In the past, the strategy seemed to work wonders. For example, Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group USA, generated roughly 80% of its sales and an even larger share of its profits from just 20% of its titles in 2006. In 2007, Grand Central purportedly shelled out $1.25 million for the rights to Vicki Myron's "Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World," a nonfiction book about a fluffy orange kitten found abandoned in the returned-book slot of an Iowa public library."
(more)
Dewey
Vicki Myron's book about her adopted orange tabby cat, Dewey Readmore Books, briefly occupied the No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list and now sits at No. 2. The feline inhabitant of the Spencer Public Library in Spencer, Iowa has passed away, but a sequel might be in the works -- last month Ms. Myron reportedly adopted a cat named Page."
(more)
"A prudent manager in any other industry might be left scratching his head: Why would Grand Central put itself in the position of having to outsell all cat books released in recent memory to earn back its seven-figure advance? Rather than putting all its eggs in one basket, wouldn't it be smarter for a publisher to place a larger number of smaller bets -- particularly in today's harsh economic climate?
"Hardly. Despite its double-or-nothing daring, the blockbuster strategy remains the most sensible approach to lasting success."
(for the rest go here)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123093737793850127.html
Saturday, January 03, 2009
The following piece is being previewed here. It will appear in the Private Eye Writers of American newsletter.
A Mourner for Don Westlake
Max Allan Collins
Don Westlake would not approve of this piece, or would at least
pretend he didn't, because he abhorred sentimentality, and even distrusted sentiment. I will leave career recaps to others, and apologize for the personal nature of this, which is a reflection on how this fine writer and fine man changed my life.
In 1967, I saw the movie "Point Blank" at a drive-in, and that very
evening went to an all-night supermarket to pick up the movie edition of the source novel by a writer called Richard Stark. I soon discovered that the anti-hero played in the film by Lee Marvin (as "Walker," not "Parker") was the star of a paperback series that had been around for several years.
I began to scour used bookstores for them, and on my honeymoon risked my life (and my new wife's) going through every trash-heap used bookshop in the city until I located the one Parker I was missing - The Mourner.
I became so enthralled with Richard Stark and his stingy third-person approach that for a time I had trouble reading anybody else, so I turned to a very different kind of book by a very different kind of writer - Donald E. Westlake. These chatty, first-person crime comedies caught my imagination in a way that rivaled my Stark obsession, and I kept my Stark and Westlake collections side by side, a divider between them, on a bookshelf of honor.
Don liked the next part of the story: when Anthony Boucher revealed in his New York Times column that Westlake and Stark were one writer, I picked myself up and promptly removed the bookshelf divider. Then I went looking for another byline of Westlake's revealed by Boucher, Tucker Coe. (Coe's brief but wonderful Mitch Tobin series is Westlake's major
contribution to the private eye form.)
In high school, I wrote imitative Mickey Spillane novels; but in college I tried to be Richard Stark. At the University of Iowa, the great mainstream writer Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road) helped shape me into a real writer and my Parker pastiche, Bait Money, got an agent in Knox Burger, legendary former Gold Medal editor.
During this same period I had somehow tracked Westlake down, and a long correspondence began. For 15 or 20 years, we exchanged lengthy letters - five to fifteen pages, his double-spaced and often typed on stolen hotel stationery - in which Don encouraged me and schooled me and was a genuine mentor to me. He knew Burger (who had edited the Parker novels at Gold Medal) and called Knox and advised him to take Bait Money on.
When that novel finally sold (in 1973), I had a dilemma - the publisher wanted a series. My Parker-ish lead, Nolan, died at the end - I figured one Parker imitation was homage, but a series would be highway
robbery. I wrote Don. He wrote back and generously said to write as many of 'em as I wanted. He said the father and surrogate son relationship at the core of Bait Money was something quite apart from Parker. I wound up doing eight of those, and launching my career.
In 1977, when I landed the DICK TRACY comic strip scripting job, Don invited my wife Barb and me to New York, put us up in his apartment, and threw us a party, at which this Iowa boy met Lawrence Block, Justin Scott
and Otto Penzler, among other luminaries. Once, Don and his talented, gracious wife Abby traveled through Iowa and stayed overnight in Muscatine.
In letters and occasional phone calls, we talked comics and he loaned me his rare Harvey Kurtzman Trump magazines and I sent him various underground comics; he introduced me to the work of Brit TV genius Dennis Potter, loanedme unproduced screenplays and unpublished novels of his, and we talked and sometimes argued about movies. On New York trips, we always saw Don and Abby, sometimes staying with them.
In the '70s and into the '80s, we remained close, and Don did me the honor of making me the villain at one of his Mohonk Mountain Lodge mystery events (I wrote a novel around it, Nice Weekend for a Murder, basing characters on both the Westlake and Stark personas). On a two-man panel we did at a Bouchercon, Don said my Nolan novels were the methadone to his Parker heroin (at Mohonk, he'd introduced me as the Jayne Mansfield to his Marilyn Monroe, and I pretended to take offense, saying I preferred to think of myself as Mamie Van Doren).
The relationship took on a strain when Don attempted to convince me that my novel True Detective should be re-written in the third person and the private eye narrator changed to a reporter or a cop. Don, though a master of the form, was not really a fan of the private eye genre. Burger rejected the book, too, and that was a low point. Fortunately, my other mentor/idol, Mickey Spillane, read the book and loved it, and Bob Randisi connected me with top agent Dominick Abel; the book sold and led to a long-running series. Eventually Don provided a blurb for it.
There comes a time when a mentor and pupil reach a crossroads - where the pupil comes into his own, and the mentor has trouble dealing with that pupil in this new way. Don and I stayed in touch with occasional letters, saw each other at Bouchercons and Edgar dinners, and he generously gave me any number of blurbs - his Road to Perdition blurb was particularly generous - and I like to think he was proud of what I accomplished.
The last time I spent quality time with him was a couple years ago at an event in London at the National Film Theater, where a number of films from his books were shown. I was able to witness the first ever meeting between John Boorman, director of the now classic Point Blank, and "Richard Stark" - and, in the midst of their warm meeting, I got them both to sign a laser disc jacket, with Don's inscription saying, "Hey Al - we all started here." He meant Stark/Westlake and Boorman...and Collins. He knew very well that the film Point Blank had led me to the Parker novels, and that my Parker imitation was my first professional sale, with my biggest success, Road to Perdition, a frankly Stark-influenced work.
In 1991, a Heller collection was reviewed by Publisher's Weekly, who somehow got the idea I had recently died. The review - a bad one! - got the word around that I had passed away. In my office, my phone rang and it was Don.
"Al!" he said. "You're not dead?"
"No."
"Good," he said, and hung up.
How I wish I could reverse that call right now.
A Mourner for Don Westlake
Max Allan Collins
Don Westlake would not approve of this piece, or would at least
pretend he didn't, because he abhorred sentimentality, and even distrusted sentiment. I will leave career recaps to others, and apologize for the personal nature of this, which is a reflection on how this fine writer and fine man changed my life.
In 1967, I saw the movie "Point Blank" at a drive-in, and that very
evening went to an all-night supermarket to pick up the movie edition of the source novel by a writer called Richard Stark. I soon discovered that the anti-hero played in the film by Lee Marvin (as "Walker," not "Parker") was the star of a paperback series that had been around for several years.
I began to scour used bookstores for them, and on my honeymoon risked my life (and my new wife's) going through every trash-heap used bookshop in the city until I located the one Parker I was missing - The Mourner.
I became so enthralled with Richard Stark and his stingy third-person approach that for a time I had trouble reading anybody else, so I turned to a very different kind of book by a very different kind of writer - Donald E. Westlake. These chatty, first-person crime comedies caught my imagination in a way that rivaled my Stark obsession, and I kept my Stark and Westlake collections side by side, a divider between them, on a bookshelf of honor.
Don liked the next part of the story: when Anthony Boucher revealed in his New York Times column that Westlake and Stark were one writer, I picked myself up and promptly removed the bookshelf divider. Then I went looking for another byline of Westlake's revealed by Boucher, Tucker Coe. (Coe's brief but wonderful Mitch Tobin series is Westlake's major
contribution to the private eye form.)
In high school, I wrote imitative Mickey Spillane novels; but in college I tried to be Richard Stark. At the University of Iowa, the great mainstream writer Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road) helped shape me into a real writer and my Parker pastiche, Bait Money, got an agent in Knox Burger, legendary former Gold Medal editor.
During this same period I had somehow tracked Westlake down, and a long correspondence began. For 15 or 20 years, we exchanged lengthy letters - five to fifteen pages, his double-spaced and often typed on stolen hotel stationery - in which Don encouraged me and schooled me and was a genuine mentor to me. He knew Burger (who had edited the Parker novels at Gold Medal) and called Knox and advised him to take Bait Money on.
When that novel finally sold (in 1973), I had a dilemma - the publisher wanted a series. My Parker-ish lead, Nolan, died at the end - I figured one Parker imitation was homage, but a series would be highway
robbery. I wrote Don. He wrote back and generously said to write as many of 'em as I wanted. He said the father and surrogate son relationship at the core of Bait Money was something quite apart from Parker. I wound up doing eight of those, and launching my career.
In 1977, when I landed the DICK TRACY comic strip scripting job, Don invited my wife Barb and me to New York, put us up in his apartment, and threw us a party, at which this Iowa boy met Lawrence Block, Justin Scott
and Otto Penzler, among other luminaries. Once, Don and his talented, gracious wife Abby traveled through Iowa and stayed overnight in Muscatine.
In letters and occasional phone calls, we talked comics and he loaned me his rare Harvey Kurtzman Trump magazines and I sent him various underground comics; he introduced me to the work of Brit TV genius Dennis Potter, loanedme unproduced screenplays and unpublished novels of his, and we talked and sometimes argued about movies. On New York trips, we always saw Don and Abby, sometimes staying with them.
In the '70s and into the '80s, we remained close, and Don did me the honor of making me the villain at one of his Mohonk Mountain Lodge mystery events (I wrote a novel around it, Nice Weekend for a Murder, basing characters on both the Westlake and Stark personas). On a two-man panel we did at a Bouchercon, Don said my Nolan novels were the methadone to his Parker heroin (at Mohonk, he'd introduced me as the Jayne Mansfield to his Marilyn Monroe, and I pretended to take offense, saying I preferred to think of myself as Mamie Van Doren).
The relationship took on a strain when Don attempted to convince me that my novel True Detective should be re-written in the third person and the private eye narrator changed to a reporter or a cop. Don, though a master of the form, was not really a fan of the private eye genre. Burger rejected the book, too, and that was a low point. Fortunately, my other mentor/idol, Mickey Spillane, read the book and loved it, and Bob Randisi connected me with top agent Dominick Abel; the book sold and led to a long-running series. Eventually Don provided a blurb for it.
There comes a time when a mentor and pupil reach a crossroads - where the pupil comes into his own, and the mentor has trouble dealing with that pupil in this new way. Don and I stayed in touch with occasional letters, saw each other at Bouchercons and Edgar dinners, and he generously gave me any number of blurbs - his Road to Perdition blurb was particularly generous - and I like to think he was proud of what I accomplished.
The last time I spent quality time with him was a couple years ago at an event in London at the National Film Theater, where a number of films from his books were shown. I was able to witness the first ever meeting between John Boorman, director of the now classic Point Blank, and "Richard Stark" - and, in the midst of their warm meeting, I got them both to sign a laser disc jacket, with Don's inscription saying, "Hey Al - we all started here." He meant Stark/Westlake and Boorman...and Collins. He knew very well that the film Point Blank had led me to the Parker novels, and that my Parker imitation was my first professional sale, with my biggest success, Road to Perdition, a frankly Stark-influenced work.
In 1991, a Heller collection was reviewed by Publisher's Weekly, who somehow got the idea I had recently died. The review - a bad one! - got the word around that I had passed away. In my office, my phone rang and it was Don.
"Al!" he said. "You're not dead?"
"No."
"Good," he said, and hung up.
How I wish I could reverse that call right now.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Don Westlake #2
Six letter writers asked me to recommend three or four novels by Don Westlake. Hard as it is to believe (and it is) there are still readers of crime fiction unfamiliar with DW.
Tonight I'm going to talk about three of his lesser known works, though be no means are they lesser in accomplishment. I'm doing this because other blogs have covered most of his prominent material.
I was especially happy to see several bloggers talk about the private eye novels Don wrote as Tucker Coe in the early sixties. I consider athem masterpieces. In fact when Marty Greenberg and I started Five Star (and were doing reprints) we did all five of them in hardcover. The problem was we couldn't get trade publications to review them because they were reprints, even though this was the first time they appeared under Don's own name. Don wrote a very interesting essay about how the Tucker Coe's came to be. Until last night's blogs I was under the impression that the only three people who knew about these novels were James Reasoner, Kevin Burton Smith and I.
Levine: This is a collection of novelettes with an aging Jewish detective in the lead. He has a serious heart condition and is constantly afraid he's going to die. The stories are imbued with deathand not only of the victims but of the man investigating their demise. This is early but solid work. It also shows how DW could make any sub-genre his own. There is no other police procedural series like this one.
Pity Him Afterward: Some of DW's finest writing can be found in the early pages of this book. Really bravura prose in his descriptions of an angry disoriented escapee from a mental hospital who murders his way into a job in a theater group performing shows for the summer. The police chief here is unique in every aspect and DW's background as an actor in stock takes readers through the struggles of would-be thespians. An excellent novel.
Anarchaos: A nifty hardboiled science fiction novel that first appeared under the byline Curt Clark. "Anarchaos is a planet, inhabited by humans, where anarchy is the only law; where each man protects himself as best he can; and where the weak are soon dead. Malone's brother had dies that way, and Malone has come to Anarchaos, carrying a small arsenal of weapons, to find the man who killed him, knowing that he is facing an entire planet of enemies." Malone and Parker could be brothers. Grim and cunning.
Tonight I'm going to talk about three of his lesser known works, though be no means are they lesser in accomplishment. I'm doing this because other blogs have covered most of his prominent material.
I was especially happy to see several bloggers talk about the private eye novels Don wrote as Tucker Coe in the early sixties. I consider athem masterpieces. In fact when Marty Greenberg and I started Five Star (and were doing reprints) we did all five of them in hardcover. The problem was we couldn't get trade publications to review them because they were reprints, even though this was the first time they appeared under Don's own name. Don wrote a very interesting essay about how the Tucker Coe's came to be. Until last night's blogs I was under the impression that the only three people who knew about these novels were James Reasoner, Kevin Burton Smith and I.
Levine: This is a collection of novelettes with an aging Jewish detective in the lead. He has a serious heart condition and is constantly afraid he's going to die. The stories are imbued with deathand not only of the victims but of the man investigating their demise. This is early but solid work. It also shows how DW could make any sub-genre his own. There is no other police procedural series like this one.
Pity Him Afterward: Some of DW's finest writing can be found in the early pages of this book. Really bravura prose in his descriptions of an angry disoriented escapee from a mental hospital who murders his way into a job in a theater group performing shows for the summer. The police chief here is unique in every aspect and DW's background as an actor in stock takes readers through the struggles of would-be thespians. An excellent novel.
Anarchaos: A nifty hardboiled science fiction novel that first appeared under the byline Curt Clark. "Anarchaos is a planet, inhabited by humans, where anarchy is the only law; where each man protects himself as best he can; and where the weak are soon dead. Malone's brother had dies that way, and Malone has come to Anarchaos, carrying a small arsenal of weapons, to find the man who killed him, knowing that he is facing an entire planet of enemies." Malone and Parker could be brothers. Grim and cunning.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
A Don Westlake Pro-File from 2006
Gormania
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Pro-File: Donald E. Westlake
Donald E. Westlake
DONALD E. WESTLAKE has written numerous novels over the past thirty-five years under his own name and pseudonyms, including Richard Stark. Many of his books have been made into movies, including The Hunter, which became the brilliant film noir Point Blank, and the 1999 smash hit Payback. He penned the Hollywood scripts for The Stepfather and The Grifters, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. The winner of three Edgar awards and a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, Donald E. Westlake was presented with The Eye, the Private Eye Writers of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, at the Shamus Awards. He lives with his wife, Abby Adams, in rural New York State.
Ed here: As I've said before, I believe that Don Westlake is flat out the best crime ficton writer of our time--the most skilled, the most daring and the most accomplished. I think he's wrtten a number of masterpieces but of them all I'd have to say that The Ax is probably his best for sheer brilliance of craft and relevance to our time. Here are a few review quotes to remind you of just how fine that book is:
Charles Taylor has this to say about Westlake's The AX:
"The murderous characters that unnerve us the most are the ones we can feel close to, the ones who make us feel protective of them, make us realize what human traits we share with them. No one has ever captured those qualities better than Anthony Perkins playing Norman Bates in Psycho. And though he's a very different character, the middle-aged businessman in Donald E. Westlake's devastating novel The Ax who, after he's laid off, resorts to killing the competitors for the job he desperately needs, makes us feel the horror of seeing murder as necessity (talk about a thriller that really represents our contemporary dark side; nothing Harris has written can touch The Ax.)
"If there were a different set of values at work in our glum society, Westlake would have won National Book Awards and Pulitzers...[and] there would be statues of him in every municipal park."
-Washington Post Book World
"No one can turn a phrase like Westlake."
-Detroit News and Free Press
"Westlake is one of the best crime writers in the business...inventive, suspenseful, muscular, angry, horrific."
-Los Angeles Times
The Ax
Pro-File: Donald E. Westlake
Tell us about your current novel.
1. I'm breaking my own rule again. For 25 years or more, my rule has been
to limit myself to 1 Dortmunder in every 3 Westlake novels, in an effort to
keep the series from growing flat or thin or anything else bad -- which
I've seen with people sometimes who go to the well too often. So, when I
finished THE ROAD TO RUIN I was supposed to write 2 non-Dortmunders, but for
a couple of months the only story I could think of was another damn
Dortmunder, so I finally gave up and wrote it, and that was WATCH YOUR BACK!
So now I'm supposed to do 2 from column B again, and hit me with a brick if
I'm not hanging out with John, three times in a row. It's 284 pages so far
and does not yet have a title, not even YOU AGAIN?
Can you give us a sense of what you're working on?
2. Right now I'm working on page 285, with very little success so far,
except I think one of them -- or maybe both of them -- will go out that
window onto the roof next door. Which will give me an even bigger problem
on page 286.
What is the greatest pleasure in your writing career?
3. At the party after the New York premiere of THE GRIFTERS, I went over to
say congratulations to Stephen Frears, but before I could speak he grabbed
my elbow and leaned in close and said, "Wull, we got away with it." That's
the greatest pleasure, not in writing, which is its own greatest pleasure,
but in the writing career. Year after year, we get away with it.
What is the greatest DIS-pleasure?
4. The greatest displeasure in my writing career used to be my occasional
indentured servitude in Hollywood, but now it is the ramshackle mess that
has become of New York publishing. Doesn't anybody here know how to play
this game?
Do you have any advice for the publishing business?
5. Pay attention.
Are there two or three writers you'd like to see in print again?
6. There are specific books from uneven writers, but I don't want to do a
list, so I'll make one stand for them all. I believe Joel Townsley Rogers'
THE RED RIGHT HAND should be reissued every 5 years forever.
Tell us about writing your first novel. Most writers never forget that moment.
7. Well, I wrote a mystery I called THE CUTIE, a title which died along the
way, which would have been better if it had died for a better title, instead
of for THE MERCENARIES. I was represented by Scott Meredith then, which was
very much like being a cow on a dairy farm, and Henry Morrison was his
assistant. He wanted to send my cutie to a paperback house, but I said I
wanted it in hardcover. He told me there were only 2 hardcover houses at
that time worth thinking about, Simon & Schuster and Random House, neither
of which would want it. I insisted, and he said, okay, we'd waste the time
and then sell it paperback.
So it went to Clayton Rawson at S&S, who was personally insulted that
anyone would send him such trash (s'truth). Then it went to Lee Wright at
Random, who called Henry and said it was a near miss, she was sending it
back but wished I lived in New York so she could talk with me. "He lives in
New York! He lives in New York!" It was arranged I'd meet with her and
pick up the manuscript. Henry said to me, "LISTEN to her!" So I spent two
hours listening to her and she made me see the bad pulp habits that had led
me astray, and it was agreed I'd rewrite and she'd look at it again. I did,
she did, and she bought it. She was the best editor I ever had, very smart
and very funny, and she knew her business. She once told me she was such a
sucker for story that she had to read a manuscript 3 times before she could
get objective about it and be of use. Look for an editor like that, eh?
The suits were always oafish, of course; they made her also be the cookbook
editor, though she'd never cooked anything in her life. She once said, "I
walk into the kitchen and my thumb starts to bleed, and I haven't even
picked up the can opener yet."
posted by Gormania at 3:10 PM
4 Comments:
Duane Swierczynski said...
Not to turn all fanboy here... but let's face it; I am a fanboy. For some, Clapton is god. For me, it's all about Donald Westlake. Couldn't agree with you more about THE AX. That was the book that, in 1997, set me searching for everything else with his name on it. And then I learned about this Richard Stark guy...
6:36 PM
Rob Gregory Browne said...
Duane, you and I are in the same club. I read my first Westlake novel, SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY, serialized in Playboy when I was twelve years old.
Westlake is the guy who made me want to be a novelist. The guy I always thought about when I spent the next several decades NOT being a novelist and got sucked into Hollywood instead.
The Richard Stark books have always been favorites as well. I turned my son onto them and he loves them all.
I'm proudly labled a fanboy when it comes to Westlake. He taught me to write.
And now that I'm finally that novelist I've always promised to be, it's all Westlake's fault.
11:37 AM
Rob Gregory Browne said...
P.S. He didn't teach me to spell.
11:39 AM
Maintenance Man said...
I have only read one book by Westlake. Lucky for me, it was The Ax. Recently I wanted to reread the book because it was so good. To my dismay, I had lost the copy I had purchased 10 years ago. All I remember is that this book rocked, so I just went out and got the book again. Now I plan to read my second book by Westlake. Any suggestions fans?
10:12 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home
About Me
Gormania
“The 15 stories span more than 25 years of superb storytelling by International Fiction Award-winning Gorman." Library Journal on DIFFERENT KINDS OF DEAD
View my complete profile
Previous Posts
Pro-File: Doug Clegg
Pro-File: Nancy Holder
Pro-File Jon L. Breen
Pro-File: Carolyn G. Hart
Pro-File:Michael Connelly
Pro-File : Carole Nelson Douglas
Pro-File: Kris Rusch -Gorman
Pro-File: Richard S. Wheeler
Pro-File: Susan Oleksiw
Pro-File: Tom Piccirilli
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Pro-File: Donald E. Westlake
Donald E. Westlake
DONALD E. WESTLAKE has written numerous novels over the past thirty-five years under his own name and pseudonyms, including Richard Stark. Many of his books have been made into movies, including The Hunter, which became the brilliant film noir Point Blank, and the 1999 smash hit Payback. He penned the Hollywood scripts for The Stepfather and The Grifters, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. The winner of three Edgar awards and a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, Donald E. Westlake was presented with The Eye, the Private Eye Writers of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, at the Shamus Awards. He lives with his wife, Abby Adams, in rural New York State.
Ed here: As I've said before, I believe that Don Westlake is flat out the best crime ficton writer of our time--the most skilled, the most daring and the most accomplished. I think he's wrtten a number of masterpieces but of them all I'd have to say that The Ax is probably his best for sheer brilliance of craft and relevance to our time. Here are a few review quotes to remind you of just how fine that book is:
Charles Taylor has this to say about Westlake's The AX:
"The murderous characters that unnerve us the most are the ones we can feel close to, the ones who make us feel protective of them, make us realize what human traits we share with them. No one has ever captured those qualities better than Anthony Perkins playing Norman Bates in Psycho. And though he's a very different character, the middle-aged businessman in Donald E. Westlake's devastating novel The Ax who, after he's laid off, resorts to killing the competitors for the job he desperately needs, makes us feel the horror of seeing murder as necessity (talk about a thriller that really represents our contemporary dark side; nothing Harris has written can touch The Ax.)
"If there were a different set of values at work in our glum society, Westlake would have won National Book Awards and Pulitzers...[and] there would be statues of him in every municipal park."
-Washington Post Book World
"No one can turn a phrase like Westlake."
-Detroit News and Free Press
"Westlake is one of the best crime writers in the business...inventive, suspenseful, muscular, angry, horrific."
-Los Angeles Times
The Ax
Pro-File: Donald E. Westlake
Tell us about your current novel.
1. I'm breaking my own rule again. For 25 years or more, my rule has been
to limit myself to 1 Dortmunder in every 3 Westlake novels, in an effort to
keep the series from growing flat or thin or anything else bad -- which
I've seen with people sometimes who go to the well too often. So, when I
finished THE ROAD TO RUIN I was supposed to write 2 non-Dortmunders, but for
a couple of months the only story I could think of was another damn
Dortmunder, so I finally gave up and wrote it, and that was WATCH YOUR BACK!
So now I'm supposed to do 2 from column B again, and hit me with a brick if
I'm not hanging out with John, three times in a row. It's 284 pages so far
and does not yet have a title, not even YOU AGAIN?
Can you give us a sense of what you're working on?
2. Right now I'm working on page 285, with very little success so far,
except I think one of them -- or maybe both of them -- will go out that
window onto the roof next door. Which will give me an even bigger problem
on page 286.
What is the greatest pleasure in your writing career?
3. At the party after the New York premiere of THE GRIFTERS, I went over to
say congratulations to Stephen Frears, but before I could speak he grabbed
my elbow and leaned in close and said, "Wull, we got away with it." That's
the greatest pleasure, not in writing, which is its own greatest pleasure,
but in the writing career. Year after year, we get away with it.
What is the greatest DIS-pleasure?
4. The greatest displeasure in my writing career used to be my occasional
indentured servitude in Hollywood, but now it is the ramshackle mess that
has become of New York publishing. Doesn't anybody here know how to play
this game?
Do you have any advice for the publishing business?
5. Pay attention.
Are there two or three writers you'd like to see in print again?
6. There are specific books from uneven writers, but I don't want to do a
list, so I'll make one stand for them all. I believe Joel Townsley Rogers'
THE RED RIGHT HAND should be reissued every 5 years forever.
Tell us about writing your first novel. Most writers never forget that moment.
7. Well, I wrote a mystery I called THE CUTIE, a title which died along the
way, which would have been better if it had died for a better title, instead
of for THE MERCENARIES. I was represented by Scott Meredith then, which was
very much like being a cow on a dairy farm, and Henry Morrison was his
assistant. He wanted to send my cutie to a paperback house, but I said I
wanted it in hardcover. He told me there were only 2 hardcover houses at
that time worth thinking about, Simon & Schuster and Random House, neither
of which would want it. I insisted, and he said, okay, we'd waste the time
and then sell it paperback.
So it went to Clayton Rawson at S&S, who was personally insulted that
anyone would send him such trash (s'truth). Then it went to Lee Wright at
Random, who called Henry and said it was a near miss, she was sending it
back but wished I lived in New York so she could talk with me. "He lives in
New York! He lives in New York!" It was arranged I'd meet with her and
pick up the manuscript. Henry said to me, "LISTEN to her!" So I spent two
hours listening to her and she made me see the bad pulp habits that had led
me astray, and it was agreed I'd rewrite and she'd look at it again. I did,
she did, and she bought it. She was the best editor I ever had, very smart
and very funny, and she knew her business. She once told me she was such a
sucker for story that she had to read a manuscript 3 times before she could
get objective about it and be of use. Look for an editor like that, eh?
The suits were always oafish, of course; they made her also be the cookbook
editor, though she'd never cooked anything in her life. She once said, "I
walk into the kitchen and my thumb starts to bleed, and I haven't even
picked up the can opener yet."
posted by Gormania at 3:10 PM
4 Comments:
Duane Swierczynski said...
Not to turn all fanboy here... but let's face it; I am a fanboy. For some, Clapton is god. For me, it's all about Donald Westlake. Couldn't agree with you more about THE AX. That was the book that, in 1997, set me searching for everything else with his name on it. And then I learned about this Richard Stark guy...
6:36 PM
Rob Gregory Browne said...
Duane, you and I are in the same club. I read my first Westlake novel, SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY, serialized in Playboy when I was twelve years old.
Westlake is the guy who made me want to be a novelist. The guy I always thought about when I spent the next several decades NOT being a novelist and got sucked into Hollywood instead.
The Richard Stark books have always been favorites as well. I turned my son onto them and he loves them all.
I'm proudly labled a fanboy when it comes to Westlake. He taught me to write.
And now that I'm finally that novelist I've always promised to be, it's all Westlake's fault.
11:37 AM
Rob Gregory Browne said...
P.S. He didn't teach me to spell.
11:39 AM
Maintenance Man said...
I have only read one book by Westlake. Lucky for me, it was The Ax. Recently I wanted to reread the book because it was so good. To my dismay, I had lost the copy I had purchased 10 years ago. All I remember is that this book rocked, so I just went out and got the book again. Now I plan to read my second book by Westlake. Any suggestions fans?
10:12 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home
About Me
Gormania
“The 15 stories span more than 25 years of superb storytelling by International Fiction Award-winning Gorman." Library Journal on DIFFERENT KINDS OF DEAD
View my complete profile
Previous Posts
Pro-File: Doug Clegg
Pro-File: Nancy Holder
Pro-File Jon L. Breen
Pro-File: Carolyn G. Hart
Pro-File:Michael Connelly
Pro-File : Carole Nelson Douglas
Pro-File: Kris Rusch -Gorman
Pro-File: Richard S. Wheeler
Pro-File: Susan Oleksiw
Pro-File: Tom Piccirilli
From The NY Times--Donald E. Westlake
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
Published: January 1, 2009
Donald E. Westlake, a prolific, award-winning mystery novelist who pounded out more than 100 books and five screenplays on manual typewriters during his half-century career, died Wednesday night. He was 75.
Enlarge This Image
David Jennings for The New York Times
Donald E. Westlake in 2001.
Mr. Westlake collapsed, apparently from a heart attack, as he headed out to New Year’s Eve dinner while on vacation in San Tancho, Mexico, said his wife, Abigail Westlake.
Mr. Westlake, considered one of the most successful and versatile mystery writers in the United States, has earned three Edgar Awards, an Academy Award nomination for screenplay writing, and the elite title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America in 1993.
Since his first novel, “The Mercenaries,” was published by Random House in 1960, Mr. Westlake has written under his own name and several pseudonyms, including Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West. Despite the diversity of names, one shared feature was that almost all his books were set in New York City, where he was born.
He used many names in part to combat skepticism over his rapid rate of writing books, which at some points reached four a year.
“In the beginning, people didn’t want to publish more than one book a year by the same author,” said Susan Richman, his publicist at Grand Central Publishing, his current publisher. In the later half of his career, Mr. Westlake had narrowed himself to his own name and Richard Stark, author of a dark series about a one-name criminal named Parker.
The full panoply of all his books was a spectacle to behold, his friends said. “We were in his library, this beautiful library surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of titles, and I realize that every single book was written by Donald Westlake, English language and foreign language editions,” said Laurence Kirschbaum, his agent.
Mr. Westlake’s cinematic style of storytelling, along with his carefully crafted plots and crisp dialogue, translated well to the screen. More than 15 of his books were made into movies, some multiple times. In addition, he himself wrote a number of screenplays, including “The Grifters,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991.
Donald Edwin Westlake was born to Lillian and Albert Westlake on July 12, 1933, in Brooklyn, but raised in Yonkers and Albany. He attended a number of colleges in New York State, but did not graduate from any of them. He married his current wife, Abigail, in 1979, and the couple made their home in Gallatin, N.Y. He was previously married to Nedra Henderson and Sandra Kalb. He is survived by his wife; his four sons by his previous marriage, Sean Westlake, Steven Westlake, Paul Westlake, Tod Westlake; two step-daughters, Adrienne Adams and Katherine Adams; a step-son, Patrick Adams; his sister, Virginia; and four grandchildren.
He was writing all the way till he passed away. His next novel, “Get Real,” is scheduled to be released in April 2009.
Published: January 1, 2009
Donald E. Westlake, a prolific, award-winning mystery novelist who pounded out more than 100 books and five screenplays on manual typewriters during his half-century career, died Wednesday night. He was 75.
Enlarge This Image
David Jennings for The New York Times
Donald E. Westlake in 2001.
Mr. Westlake collapsed, apparently from a heart attack, as he headed out to New Year’s Eve dinner while on vacation in San Tancho, Mexico, said his wife, Abigail Westlake.
Mr. Westlake, considered one of the most successful and versatile mystery writers in the United States, has earned three Edgar Awards, an Academy Award nomination for screenplay writing, and the elite title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America in 1993.
Since his first novel, “The Mercenaries,” was published by Random House in 1960, Mr. Westlake has written under his own name and several pseudonyms, including Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West. Despite the diversity of names, one shared feature was that almost all his books were set in New York City, where he was born.
He used many names in part to combat skepticism over his rapid rate of writing books, which at some points reached four a year.
“In the beginning, people didn’t want to publish more than one book a year by the same author,” said Susan Richman, his publicist at Grand Central Publishing, his current publisher. In the later half of his career, Mr. Westlake had narrowed himself to his own name and Richard Stark, author of a dark series about a one-name criminal named Parker.
The full panoply of all his books was a spectacle to behold, his friends said. “We were in his library, this beautiful library surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of titles, and I realize that every single book was written by Donald Westlake, English language and foreign language editions,” said Laurence Kirschbaum, his agent.
Mr. Westlake’s cinematic style of storytelling, along with his carefully crafted plots and crisp dialogue, translated well to the screen. More than 15 of his books were made into movies, some multiple times. In addition, he himself wrote a number of screenplays, including “The Grifters,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991.
Donald Edwin Westlake was born to Lillian and Albert Westlake on July 12, 1933, in Brooklyn, but raised in Yonkers and Albany. He attended a number of colleges in New York State, but did not graduate from any of them. He married his current wife, Abigail, in 1979, and the couple made their home in Gallatin, N.Y. He was previously married to Nedra Henderson and Sandra Kalb. He is survived by his wife; his four sons by his previous marriage, Sean Westlake, Steven Westlake, Paul Westlake, Tod Westlake; two step-daughters, Adrienne Adams and Katherine Adams; a step-son, Patrick Adams; his sister, Virginia; and four grandchildren.
He was writing all the way till he passed away. His next novel, “Get Real,” is scheduled to be released in April 2009.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Movies; Mystery Scenes Free
Sarah Weinman linked to this interesting storyin The Boston Globe:
Waiting for Scorsese
Or Spielberg. Or Soderbergh. Or anyone to make the movie based on their book.
Will Smith starred in the 2004 movie "I, Robot," which was written 54 years before the film's release. (20th Century Fox)
By David Mehegan
Jonathan Kirsch, a Los Angeles author, agent, and publishing lawyer, is blunt about the odds against any one novel making it: "Infinitesimal," he said. "If it were one out of a thousand, I'd be shocked." Of the 500 to 600 movies, counting art-house films, that are made yearly, only a fraction of those are based on novels, Kirsch said. And there are more than 50,000 works of fiction published each year, according to W.W. Bowker, publisher of "Books in Print."
Said Boston literary agent John Taylor Williams: "An author shouldn't be surprised if, after a movie option is sold, the movie is never made."
Ed here: I was reminded of this today because I got a call about a pen-name book I wrote in 1983. The guy has a great idea for adapting it. Etc and etc. Long long ago I used to get excited about Hwood calls. The higlight was when the woman who produced The Shawshank Redemption won the Oscar and annouced at her press conference that her next project was Moonchasers by Ed Gorman. How could this miss? Well as my friend director Nathaniel Gutman has said many times (we worked on the screenplay together) we could have written a movie about all the things that got in the way of getting the damned thing made. I believe that Moonchasers has now been optioned nine times since 1993. I've made more money on the options than I have on any book I've written. Two months ago I got a frantic call--please tell me it isn't optioned--from a guy who sounded as if we'd start shooting the ext day. I never heard from him again.
Right now I have three books under option but I know better than to get excited. I'm waititing to see how The Poker Club, the film based on my novel, has turned out. I've seen clips and they look good.
But as far as getting my hopes up about any other movie project...
Waiting for Scorsese
Or Spielberg. Or Soderbergh. Or anyone to make the movie based on their book.
Will Smith starred in the 2004 movie "I, Robot," which was written 54 years before the film's release. (20th Century Fox)
By David Mehegan
Jonathan Kirsch, a Los Angeles author, agent, and publishing lawyer, is blunt about the odds against any one novel making it: "Infinitesimal," he said. "If it were one out of a thousand, I'd be shocked." Of the 500 to 600 movies, counting art-house films, that are made yearly, only a fraction of those are based on novels, Kirsch said. And there are more than 50,000 works of fiction published each year, according to W.W. Bowker, publisher of "Books in Print."
Said Boston literary agent John Taylor Williams: "An author shouldn't be surprised if, after a movie option is sold, the movie is never made."
Ed here: I was reminded of this today because I got a call about a pen-name book I wrote in 1983. The guy has a great idea for adapting it. Etc and etc. Long long ago I used to get excited about Hwood calls. The higlight was when the woman who produced The Shawshank Redemption won the Oscar and annouced at her press conference that her next project was Moonchasers by Ed Gorman. How could this miss? Well as my friend director Nathaniel Gutman has said many times (we worked on the screenplay together) we could have written a movie about all the things that got in the way of getting the damned thing made. I believe that Moonchasers has now been optioned nine times since 1993. I've made more money on the options than I have on any book I've written. Two months ago I got a frantic call--please tell me it isn't optioned--from a guy who sounded as if we'd start shooting the ext day. I never heard from him again.
Right now I have three books under option but I know better than to get excited. I'm waititing to see how The Poker Club, the film based on my novel, has turned out. I've seen clips and they look good.
But as far as getting my hopes up about any other movie project...
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Dick Lochte
Dick Lochte
Born in New Orleans in 1944, Dick Lochte worked several years as a magazine writer, film critic and theater reviewer in Los Angeles before publishing his first mystery novel, "Sleeping Dog," in 1986. It was nominated for an Edgar Award, and won the Nero Wolfe Award; and, in 2000, "Sleeping Dog" - which featured the innovative teaming of a veteran gumshoe named Leo Bloodworth with the smart if obstreperous 13-year-old Serendipity Dahlquist - was named "one of the best 100 mysteries of the twentieth century" by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.
The book's successor, "Laughing Dog," followed in 1988. Since then, Lochte has written several more novels, including four in collaboration with attorney Christopher Darden.
Readers and reviewers have praised Lochte's deft combination of humor and serious detection. Critic Sharon A. Russell cited the author's ability to "combine interesting technical innovations in the genre with a careful exploration of some of its more traditional elements." Lochte, she said, writes "with a style that acknowledges the past. At the same time he develops his own voice, combining wit and insight in his depiction of the present."
Modern hard-boiled, with a wry sense of humor: a mixture even the hard-to-please Raymond Chandler could admire.
1 Tell us about your current novel.
My current novel, Croaked!, which is actually over a year old now, is a semi-autobiographical comedy-thriller set in a men's magazine in the mid-1960s. I spent a good portion of my youth working at Playboy during its go-go years. It was part goofy fun and part serious business and sex was a key element in both. I tried to put all that into the book, along with several murders and what I think is a tricky, but very fair play who-done-it finale.
2. Can you give us a sense of what you're working on now?
I can't say too much about it, not merely because I'm paranoid. I can say it's a comedy-thriller and the start of a new series, written in collaboration with a very entertaining gent (who shall be temporarily nameless). He knows considerably more about the locale and the milieu than I. But I think I probably know more about the villain, a world class assassin, than he.
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?
In the two decades or so since I wrote my first book there have been many changes in publishing that have undercut the pleasures of the writing life. One pleasure that remains is the joy I get from putting words on paper (or more precisely on the monitor) that say exactly what I wanted them to. Maybe it's dialogue that has the right ring, or a description that does the job in a unique way. Or a chapter that ends on precisely the right note.
4. The greatest DIS-pleasure?
I'm not comfortable with the non-writing aspects. I have a great agent, which means I don't have to deal with the peddling of the manuscripts. But it's some of the post-publication chores that get me down. I like to appear on panels and to show up for events like book fairs. Store visits are hit-and-miss. If readers show up, great. If they don't, it's downright painful. Most painful of all for me is self-promotion. I'm not lacking in self-confidence, but doing a sales pitch for your book, and consequently, yourself, seems cheesy. I've friends who are better salespeople than they are writers. More power to them. I'd rather put my efforts into the writing. It's one of the things that makes collaboration so appealing.
5. If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?
Considering the recent spate of consolidations and firings, it seems as if current business practices aren't working. Maybe it's time to return to the grand old days when quality trumped quantity and a strong editorial staff was held in higher regard than bottom line accountants.
6. Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd like to see in
print again?
At least three. Craig Rice would be at the top of my list with her fast and funny adventures of Jake and Helane Justice and John J. Malone. The books were popular enough for Rice to have been the first mystery writer to appear on the cover of Time. (Have there been any since?) Frank Gruber's tales of book salesmen and con artists Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg are clever mixtures of fast patter, fair play detection and unique backgrounds. Each novel involves a specific enterprise, from Las Vegas casino operation to comic strip syndication to shoe manufacturing. Of the endless number of private eyes following in Philip Marlowe's footsteps, none comes closer to filling them than Howard Browne's Paul Pine. Browne wrote the first three Pines under the pen name John Evans, but for the forth and last he used his own name. That should tell you that it was the best of an excellent quartet, all of which deserve to be back in print.
7. Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget that
moment.
I was very, very lucky. I'd quit Playboy and traveled west in search of movie gold. While panning for those elusive nuggets, I fended off starvation by writing freelance reviews -- a theater column in Los Angeles magazine, films in the L.A. Free Press and books in the L.A. Times. The Times liked to identify writers with a one-line description. "Just say I'm working on a screenplay," I suggested to the then-editor of The Book Review, Digby Diehl. He replied that everybody was writing a screenplay. This was The Book Review. Wasn't I working on a book. "Sure," I lied, and because the scripts I'd been struggling with were all crime-based, I added, "I'm writing a mystery novel." That misinformation ran almost every week in the paper. A few months later, I received a phone call from Ashbel Green, Ross Macdonald's editor at Knopf. He was in town meeting with Macdonald and wanted to see my novel. I told him it still needed a little work. I replaced the phone and began writing my first book, Sleeping Dog. Six months later, I sent the ms. to Mr. Green. He sent it back, saying it was too talky. Three days later, my agent sold the book to the first publisher on his list.
8. What do you consider the highlight of your career thus far?
I suppose it had to be the success of that first book. Sleeping Dog went into three printings in hardcover, two in paperback. The reviews were absurdly good. Publisher's Weekly said it surpassed the California novels of Chandler and Macdonald. I wasn't delusional enough to believe that, but it was lovely to see. The book was nominated for all of the awards and won the Nero Wolfe. It was picked up by publishers throughout the world. And now, twenty-three years later, it's still in print, here and in Japan.
9. How about the low point?
That involved Sleeping Dog, too. The movie. When the film companies came calling, against the advice of agent, editor, just about everybody, I signed on to adapt the screenplay. Five versions and fifteen months later, the movie hadn't come together. And I was way, way past the deadline for the literary sequel. By the time I'd finished the ms for Laughing Dog my original publisher had been gobbled up by Morrow. New publisher. New editor. New publicists. New attitude. Because of the three-year interval, the good will and positive reaction to Sleeping Dog had dissipated. I was back at square one. Laughing Dog received good notices and, because its initial print run was larger, sold more copies in hardcover than Sleeping Dog. But the script-writing diversion, in spite of its financial rewards, took its toll on my literary career.
10. Which book or short story would you recommend to readers unfamiliar with your work?
Sleeping Dog should be the pick, especially since it's still in print. But The Neon Smile is my most ambitious book and my best, I think. It contrasts the New Orleans of the turbulent 1960s with the city in 1995, when the novel was published. I liked the idea of seeing how the city and a set of characters changed over a thirty-year period, with the link being the detective, Terry Manion, re-examining a series of murders that took place when he was a little boy. Every now and then I wonder what happened to Manion when Katrina struck. Maybe I'll find out some day.
Born in New Orleans in 1944, Dick Lochte worked several years as a magazine writer, film critic and theater reviewer in Los Angeles before publishing his first mystery novel, "Sleeping Dog," in 1986. It was nominated for an Edgar Award, and won the Nero Wolfe Award; and, in 2000, "Sleeping Dog" - which featured the innovative teaming of a veteran gumshoe named Leo Bloodworth with the smart if obstreperous 13-year-old Serendipity Dahlquist - was named "one of the best 100 mysteries of the twentieth century" by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.
The book's successor, "Laughing Dog," followed in 1988. Since then, Lochte has written several more novels, including four in collaboration with attorney Christopher Darden.
Readers and reviewers have praised Lochte's deft combination of humor and serious detection. Critic Sharon A. Russell cited the author's ability to "combine interesting technical innovations in the genre with a careful exploration of some of its more traditional elements." Lochte, she said, writes "with a style that acknowledges the past. At the same time he develops his own voice, combining wit and insight in his depiction of the present."
Modern hard-boiled, with a wry sense of humor: a mixture even the hard-to-please Raymond Chandler could admire.
1 Tell us about your current novel.
My current novel, Croaked!, which is actually over a year old now, is a semi-autobiographical comedy-thriller set in a men's magazine in the mid-1960s. I spent a good portion of my youth working at Playboy during its go-go years. It was part goofy fun and part serious business and sex was a key element in both. I tried to put all that into the book, along with several murders and what I think is a tricky, but very fair play who-done-it finale.
2. Can you give us a sense of what you're working on now?
I can't say too much about it, not merely because I'm paranoid. I can say it's a comedy-thriller and the start of a new series, written in collaboration with a very entertaining gent (who shall be temporarily nameless). He knows considerably more about the locale and the milieu than I. But I think I probably know more about the villain, a world class assassin, than he.
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?
In the two decades or so since I wrote my first book there have been many changes in publishing that have undercut the pleasures of the writing life. One pleasure that remains is the joy I get from putting words on paper (or more precisely on the monitor) that say exactly what I wanted them to. Maybe it's dialogue that has the right ring, or a description that does the job in a unique way. Or a chapter that ends on precisely the right note.
4. The greatest DIS-pleasure?
I'm not comfortable with the non-writing aspects. I have a great agent, which means I don't have to deal with the peddling of the manuscripts. But it's some of the post-publication chores that get me down. I like to appear on panels and to show up for events like book fairs. Store visits are hit-and-miss. If readers show up, great. If they don't, it's downright painful. Most painful of all for me is self-promotion. I'm not lacking in self-confidence, but doing a sales pitch for your book, and consequently, yourself, seems cheesy. I've friends who are better salespeople than they are writers. More power to them. I'd rather put my efforts into the writing. It's one of the things that makes collaboration so appealing.
5. If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?
Considering the recent spate of consolidations and firings, it seems as if current business practices aren't working. Maybe it's time to return to the grand old days when quality trumped quantity and a strong editorial staff was held in higher regard than bottom line accountants.
6. Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd like to see in
print again?
At least three. Craig Rice would be at the top of my list with her fast and funny adventures of Jake and Helane Justice and John J. Malone. The books were popular enough for Rice to have been the first mystery writer to appear on the cover of Time. (Have there been any since?) Frank Gruber's tales of book salesmen and con artists Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg are clever mixtures of fast patter, fair play detection and unique backgrounds. Each novel involves a specific enterprise, from Las Vegas casino operation to comic strip syndication to shoe manufacturing. Of the endless number of private eyes following in Philip Marlowe's footsteps, none comes closer to filling them than Howard Browne's Paul Pine. Browne wrote the first three Pines under the pen name John Evans, but for the forth and last he used his own name. That should tell you that it was the best of an excellent quartet, all of which deserve to be back in print.
7. Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget that
moment.
I was very, very lucky. I'd quit Playboy and traveled west in search of movie gold. While panning for those elusive nuggets, I fended off starvation by writing freelance reviews -- a theater column in Los Angeles magazine, films in the L.A. Free Press and books in the L.A. Times. The Times liked to identify writers with a one-line description. "Just say I'm working on a screenplay," I suggested to the then-editor of The Book Review, Digby Diehl. He replied that everybody was writing a screenplay. This was The Book Review. Wasn't I working on a book. "Sure," I lied, and because the scripts I'd been struggling with were all crime-based, I added, "I'm writing a mystery novel." That misinformation ran almost every week in the paper. A few months later, I received a phone call from Ashbel Green, Ross Macdonald's editor at Knopf. He was in town meeting with Macdonald and wanted to see my novel. I told him it still needed a little work. I replaced the phone and began writing my first book, Sleeping Dog. Six months later, I sent the ms. to Mr. Green. He sent it back, saying it was too talky. Three days later, my agent sold the book to the first publisher on his list.
8. What do you consider the highlight of your career thus far?
I suppose it had to be the success of that first book. Sleeping Dog went into three printings in hardcover, two in paperback. The reviews were absurdly good. Publisher's Weekly said it surpassed the California novels of Chandler and Macdonald. I wasn't delusional enough to believe that, but it was lovely to see. The book was nominated for all of the awards and won the Nero Wolfe. It was picked up by publishers throughout the world. And now, twenty-three years later, it's still in print, here and in Japan.
9. How about the low point?
That involved Sleeping Dog, too. The movie. When the film companies came calling, against the advice of agent, editor, just about everybody, I signed on to adapt the screenplay. Five versions and fifteen months later, the movie hadn't come together. And I was way, way past the deadline for the literary sequel. By the time I'd finished the ms for Laughing Dog my original publisher had been gobbled up by Morrow. New publisher. New editor. New publicists. New attitude. Because of the three-year interval, the good will and positive reaction to Sleeping Dog had dissipated. I was back at square one. Laughing Dog received good notices and, because its initial print run was larger, sold more copies in hardcover than Sleeping Dog. But the script-writing diversion, in spite of its financial rewards, took its toll on my literary career.
10. Which book or short story would you recommend to readers unfamiliar with your work?
Sleeping Dog should be the pick, especially since it's still in print. But The Neon Smile is my most ambitious book and my best, I think. It contrasts the New Orleans of the turbulent 1960s with the city in 1995, when the novel was published. I liked the idea of seeing how the city and a set of characters changed over a thirty-year period, with the link being the detective, Terry Manion, re-examining a series of murders that took place when he was a little boy. Every now and then I wonder what happened to Manion when Katrina struck. Maybe I'll find out some day.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Stuff
JUDY CRIDER
Check out the beautiful photo of beautiful Judy Crider on Bill’s website tonight. Bill himself looks like the kind of young man every parent would want for a son-in-law. Seriously.
WHY DOES HE HAVE TO BE IRISH?
In a private text message obtained by The Daily Beast, Mickey Rourke bashes Sean Penn--his chief rival in the Oscar race--as a "homophobe" and an "average" actor.
Whistleblower has learned from several entertainment industry sources, that Mickey Rourke--whose extraordinary comeback performance in The Wrestler is garnering him early praise as a shoo-in for a best actor Oscar nomination--is trash talking his likely toughest competitor, Sean Penn, whose acting in Milk has earned rave reviews.
After his December 23 appearance on David Letterman, Rourke told someone backstage that he was surprised that so many people seemed to think that Penn was his Oscar competition since "I'm not even sure he'll get a nomination."
NEW WEBSITE
Longtime fan and writer George Kelly has started his own website. His first post takes up the case for E.C. Tubb’s long running Dumarest series. While it was never as innovative or influential as anything by Leigh Brackett or Edmond Hamilton, I somehow managed to read every one of the twenty-some books. He took basic pulp sf tropes and gave them new life by making his protagonist both forlorn and humane.
http://georgekelley.org/?p=8
Check out the beautiful photo of beautiful Judy Crider on Bill’s website tonight. Bill himself looks like the kind of young man every parent would want for a son-in-law. Seriously.
WHY DOES HE HAVE TO BE IRISH?
In a private text message obtained by The Daily Beast, Mickey Rourke bashes Sean Penn--his chief rival in the Oscar race--as a "homophobe" and an "average" actor.
Whistleblower has learned from several entertainment industry sources, that Mickey Rourke--whose extraordinary comeback performance in The Wrestler is garnering him early praise as a shoo-in for a best actor Oscar nomination--is trash talking his likely toughest competitor, Sean Penn, whose acting in Milk has earned rave reviews.
After his December 23 appearance on David Letterman, Rourke told someone backstage that he was surprised that so many people seemed to think that Penn was his Oscar competition since "I'm not even sure he'll get a nomination."
NEW WEBSITE
Longtime fan and writer George Kelly has started his own website. His first post takes up the case for E.C. Tubb’s long running Dumarest series. While it was never as innovative or influential as anything by Leigh Brackett or Edmond Hamilton, I somehow managed to read every one of the twenty-some books. He took basic pulp sf tropes and gave them new life by making his protagonist both forlorn and humane.
http://georgekelley.org/?p=8
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Dave Zeltserman
"I a lot of hours as a kid watching old movies with Hitchcock, the Marx Brothers, and film noir being my favorite, especially The Roaring Twenties, The Third Man and The Maltese Falcon. I also always read a lot, everything from comic books, Mad Magazine, pulps (Robert E. Howard was my favorite), and science fiction. When I was 15 and spending a few weeks during the summer at my uncle's house in Maine, I picked up a dog-eared copy of I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane, and from that point on was hooked on crime fiction. From Spillane, I moved on to Hammett, Chandler, Rex Stout, Ross Macdonald, and lots of other crime writers before eventually discovering Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford in the early 90s. Thompson, in particular, had a big impact on my writing, not only in the way he got into the heads of broken psychopaths and had you rooting for them, but in the way he took chances in his writing. For years before I read my first Jim Thompson novel, Hell of a Woman, I was trying to write what amounted to bad Ross Macdonald. Once I started reading Thompson, it opened my eyes to how I could break every rule I wanted to as long as I could make it work, and this led me to finding my own voice. My first book, Fast Lane, was probably equally inspired by Macdonald and Thompson--it had the sins of the father theme that Macdonald did so well, but written from the unreliable narrator and mind of the killer that Thompson excelled at. Years after writing Fast Lane, I read about Macdonald's last unfinished Lew Archer novel, and was amazed to find that it had a major plot-point in common with Fast Lane.
"A kind of crazy creative fever took over while I was working on Fast Lane, and when I was done I had something that I knew could be published someday, as well as a book that crime noir readers would enjoy. It turned out that day was 12 years after I wrote it, and I first sold the Italian rights to Meridiano Zero before Point Blank Press published it. During those 12 years I had a lot of ups and downs, mostly downs where I'd quit writing to focus on my software engineering career. It's been a long road but things are now looking up. I've had stories published in a lot of places, including Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock, as well as a 3-book 'man just out of prison' noir series that is being published by the prestigious UK publisher, Serpent's Tail (Small Crimes, Pariah, Killer), as well as books Fast Lane, Bad Thoughts and Bad Karma (Five Star Mysteries). And while it took a while, I know from the letters I get from noir fans who discover Fast Lane that I was right about it. These days I'm spending my time writing crime fiction and studying martial arts (I hold a black belt in Tiger-Crane style of Kung Fu), and enjoying every minute of it."
Ed here: I just finished reading Dave's new novel Pariah. It is one of the most crazed, hilarious, bitter, brutal novels this side of those composed on violent wards. The relationship between the brothers is one of the most powerful in all of noir. The attack on our media world, which shouldn't fit in here at all, works with devastating truth. I have never read its likes before and I have to say that at certain moments I doubted I ever wanted to read its likes again. The sociopathic narrator is almost too beleivable at points. He is people like OJ Simpson writ large--what is good for him is good for the world. That's how he sees things and nothing is going to change his mind. I literally winced at several points. And frequently wanted to kill the bastard telling the story. He is that richly detailed. This fusion of hardboiled and bitter satire is brand new territory for noir and I suspect that it will be one of the most talked about novels of 2009. As Ken Bruen said of Pariah "If every writer has one great book in them, then Dave Zeltserman can rest easy."
1 Tell us about your current novel.
My second “man out of prison” crime novel, Pariah, is being published by Serpent’s Tail in the UK in the next couple of weeks, and will probably be in the States sometime around June. Pariah is on one level a fierce crime novel about a top guy from the South Boston mob out for revenge and to reclaim his former glory, and on another level, a satirical look at the celebrity culture in our country. This is a book I’m very excited about, as is my publisher.
2. Can you give us a sense of what you're working on now?
I’m trying something different for me, and I’m writing a high-concept commercial thriller, tentatively titled “Dying Memories”. It’s basically a “breathless” thriller, where a guy finds himself caught up in the middle of a nasty government conspiracy, and things just keep getting worse for this guy. While I’m going commercial here, I’m trying to keep the book smart and strike a balance between “relentlessly commercial” writing and something I’m not embarassed to have my name attached to.
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?
The creative process. It’s really quite a high when the book takes shape and starts approaching your original vision for it.
4. The greatest DIS-pleasure?
The rejections. There are so many, and they can be so unrelenting, and the worst are when editors tell you how much they like your book but give you some bullshit excuse, like they’re afraid it’s too dark or not formulaic enough for their readers.
5. If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?
They need to start respecting their readers more, and they need to go back to publishing what they feel are the best books they can find instead of worrying whether the books are formulaic and mainstream enough or are written enough in a dumb-downed “relentlessly commercial” style.
6. Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd like to see in
print again? James. M. Cain, Charles Williams and Jeremiah Healy’s “John Cuddy” series.
7. Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget that
moment.
My first novel sale was the Italian rights of Fast Lane to Meridiano Zero. They’re a good house, translating people like Harry Crews and Derek Raymond, and one of their translators got his hands on the manuscript and talked the publisher into reading it. The publisher, while surprised no US house had published it yet, liked it enough to want to publish it even though it was unknown. So there you have it, my first sale was to an Italian publisher.
8. What do you consider the highlight of your career thus far?
Having NPR select Small Crimes as one of the 5 best crime and mystery novels of 2008.
9. How about the low point?
Having just about every NY house reject Small Crimes. I had reached a point where I was going to quit writing when Serpent’s Tail called to tell me they wanted to publish Small Crimes.
10. Which book or short story would you recommend to readers unfamiliar with your work?
For a novel, Small Crimes. For short crime fiction, I’m offering a free PDF collection, titled Seven, which readers can download from my web-site:
http://www.davezeltserman.com/Seven.pdf
"A kind of crazy creative fever took over while I was working on Fast Lane, and when I was done I had something that I knew could be published someday, as well as a book that crime noir readers would enjoy. It turned out that day was 12 years after I wrote it, and I first sold the Italian rights to Meridiano Zero before Point Blank Press published it. During those 12 years I had a lot of ups and downs, mostly downs where I'd quit writing to focus on my software engineering career. It's been a long road but things are now looking up. I've had stories published in a lot of places, including Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock, as well as a 3-book 'man just out of prison' noir series that is being published by the prestigious UK publisher, Serpent's Tail (Small Crimes, Pariah, Killer), as well as books Fast Lane, Bad Thoughts and Bad Karma (Five Star Mysteries). And while it took a while, I know from the letters I get from noir fans who discover Fast Lane that I was right about it. These days I'm spending my time writing crime fiction and studying martial arts (I hold a black belt in Tiger-Crane style of Kung Fu), and enjoying every minute of it."
Ed here: I just finished reading Dave's new novel Pariah. It is one of the most crazed, hilarious, bitter, brutal novels this side of those composed on violent wards. The relationship between the brothers is one of the most powerful in all of noir. The attack on our media world, which shouldn't fit in here at all, works with devastating truth. I have never read its likes before and I have to say that at certain moments I doubted I ever wanted to read its likes again. The sociopathic narrator is almost too beleivable at points. He is people like OJ Simpson writ large--what is good for him is good for the world. That's how he sees things and nothing is going to change his mind. I literally winced at several points. And frequently wanted to kill the bastard telling the story. He is that richly detailed. This fusion of hardboiled and bitter satire is brand new territory for noir and I suspect that it will be one of the most talked about novels of 2009. As Ken Bruen said of Pariah "If every writer has one great book in them, then Dave Zeltserman can rest easy."
1 Tell us about your current novel.
My second “man out of prison” crime novel, Pariah, is being published by Serpent’s Tail in the UK in the next couple of weeks, and will probably be in the States sometime around June. Pariah is on one level a fierce crime novel about a top guy from the South Boston mob out for revenge and to reclaim his former glory, and on another level, a satirical look at the celebrity culture in our country. This is a book I’m very excited about, as is my publisher.
2. Can you give us a sense of what you're working on now?
I’m trying something different for me, and I’m writing a high-concept commercial thriller, tentatively titled “Dying Memories”. It’s basically a “breathless” thriller, where a guy finds himself caught up in the middle of a nasty government conspiracy, and things just keep getting worse for this guy. While I’m going commercial here, I’m trying to keep the book smart and strike a balance between “relentlessly commercial” writing and something I’m not embarassed to have my name attached to.
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?
The creative process. It’s really quite a high when the book takes shape and starts approaching your original vision for it.
4. The greatest DIS-pleasure?
The rejections. There are so many, and they can be so unrelenting, and the worst are when editors tell you how much they like your book but give you some bullshit excuse, like they’re afraid it’s too dark or not formulaic enough for their readers.
5. If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?
They need to start respecting their readers more, and they need to go back to publishing what they feel are the best books they can find instead of worrying whether the books are formulaic and mainstream enough or are written enough in a dumb-downed “relentlessly commercial” style.
6. Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd like to see in
print again? James. M. Cain, Charles Williams and Jeremiah Healy’s “John Cuddy” series.
7. Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget that
moment.
My first novel sale was the Italian rights of Fast Lane to Meridiano Zero. They’re a good house, translating people like Harry Crews and Derek Raymond, and one of their translators got his hands on the manuscript and talked the publisher into reading it. The publisher, while surprised no US house had published it yet, liked it enough to want to publish it even though it was unknown. So there you have it, my first sale was to an Italian publisher.
8. What do you consider the highlight of your career thus far?
Having NPR select Small Crimes as one of the 5 best crime and mystery novels of 2008.
9. How about the low point?
Having just about every NY house reject Small Crimes. I had reached a point where I was going to quit writing when Serpent’s Tail called to tell me they wanted to publish Small Crimes.
10. Which book or short story would you recommend to readers unfamiliar with your work?
For a novel, Small Crimes. For short crime fiction, I’m offering a free PDF collection, titled Seven, which readers can download from my web-site:
http://www.davezeltserman.com/Seven.pdf
Friday, December 26, 2008
Anne Frasier
Anne Frasier's novels have spanned the genres of mystery, thriller, romantic suspense, paranormal, science fiction, and horror. Garden of Darkness continues a dark tale started in Pale Immortal of a spooky Wisconsin town. In Before I Wake, a secret government medical experiment goes wrong. Play Dead plays out amid the voodoo scene in Savannah, Georgia. Sleep Tight, a traditional police procedural, is set in Minneapolis. Publishers Weekly says Frasier "has perfected the art of making a reader's skin crawl." The Minneapolis Star Tribune calls her a "master."
Frasier is a USA Today bestselling author of nineteen novels. Her books have been printed in both hardcover and paperback, translated into twenty languages, and featured in Mystery Guild, Literary Guild, and Book of the Month Club. She won the RITA for romantic suspense, and the Daphne du Maurier for paranormal romance. She was a best hardcover judge for the Thriller presented by International Thriller Writers. This summer she was the guest of honor at the Diversicon 16 conference held in Minneapolis. Anne spent twenty years living on a working apple farm, and now divides her time between St. Paul, Minnesota, and a century-old Gothic church in rural Wisconsin.
Anne Frasier----------
2. Can you give us a sense of what you're working on now?
It's being described REBECCA meets VERTIGO. Much of it is based on a specific period of my own life, and oddly enough it has kind of a REBECCA feel to it. I've taken real events and added some fiction to bump up the plot. A totally new thing for me, and definitely more literary. My new agent plans to submit a partial in January, so I'm full of anxiety right now! This is something I'd planned to write when I was semi-retired since it's such a long shot, but because of the way certain things played out in my life I decided to go for it now. And I'm sweating bullets.
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?
I think the highlight has been all of the great people I've met. That's something that never entered my mind when I started writing, but it's a bonus that has definitely enriched my life.
4. The greatest DIS-pleasure? Not really a displeasure, but it's incredibly hard to accept that we have no control over our books once they're written. I've tried all of the things suggested by publishers and editors in order to boost sales. Now I'm trying to focus on the one thing a writer can control – the story.
5. If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?
Please don't expect the writer to market her own book. I know you're in trouble, but self-promotion doesn't work for so many reasons.
7. Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget that
moment.
I got that call in 1986. Pocket Books published a book that sparked a small cult following. The book had a tiny print run and zero backing, but people started talking about it, especially editors. No internet then, so I had no idea anybody was even reading it because family and friends across the country couldn't find it. I would go to bookstores expecting to see it on the shelf, but it was nowhere. That was my introduction to the strange world of publishing.
8. What do you consider the highlight of your career thus far.
Wow, that's tough. I haven't had one big highlight, but instead a lot of small ones.
9. How about the low point?
Low points come again and again, because unfortunately if you stay in the business long enough you will fail over and over. Sometimes you can see the crash coming years in advance, but you still have contracts to fulfill, and you still have to keep going and act like everything is fine. The periods of unemployment that follow are devastating and they crush the creative spirit at the very time we need to be producing our best stuff.
10. Which book or short story would you recommend to readers unfamiliar with your
work? I would probably suggest PLAY DEAD. Not as well written as HUSH, but more fun.
Frasier is a USA Today bestselling author of nineteen novels. Her books have been printed in both hardcover and paperback, translated into twenty languages, and featured in Mystery Guild, Literary Guild, and Book of the Month Club. She won the RITA for romantic suspense, and the Daphne du Maurier for paranormal romance. She was a best hardcover judge for the Thriller presented by International Thriller Writers. This summer she was the guest of honor at the Diversicon 16 conference held in Minneapolis. Anne spent twenty years living on a working apple farm, and now divides her time between St. Paul, Minnesota, and a century-old Gothic church in rural Wisconsin.
Anne Frasier----------
2. Can you give us a sense of what you're working on now?
It's being described REBECCA meets VERTIGO. Much of it is based on a specific period of my own life, and oddly enough it has kind of a REBECCA feel to it. I've taken real events and added some fiction to bump up the plot. A totally new thing for me, and definitely more literary. My new agent plans to submit a partial in January, so I'm full of anxiety right now! This is something I'd planned to write when I was semi-retired since it's such a long shot, but because of the way certain things played out in my life I decided to go for it now. And I'm sweating bullets.
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?
I think the highlight has been all of the great people I've met. That's something that never entered my mind when I started writing, but it's a bonus that has definitely enriched my life.
4. The greatest DIS-pleasure? Not really a displeasure, but it's incredibly hard to accept that we have no control over our books once they're written. I've tried all of the things suggested by publishers and editors in order to boost sales. Now I'm trying to focus on the one thing a writer can control – the story.
5. If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?
Please don't expect the writer to market her own book. I know you're in trouble, but self-promotion doesn't work for so many reasons.
7. Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget that
moment.
I got that call in 1986. Pocket Books published a book that sparked a small cult following. The book had a tiny print run and zero backing, but people started talking about it, especially editors. No internet then, so I had no idea anybody was even reading it because family and friends across the country couldn't find it. I would go to bookstores expecting to see it on the shelf, but it was nowhere. That was my introduction to the strange world of publishing.
8. What do you consider the highlight of your career thus far.
Wow, that's tough. I haven't had one big highlight, but instead a lot of small ones.
9. How about the low point?
Low points come again and again, because unfortunately if you stay in the business long enough you will fail over and over. Sometimes you can see the crash coming years in advance, but you still have contracts to fulfill, and you still have to keep going and act like everything is fine. The periods of unemployment that follow are devastating and they crush the creative spirit at the very time we need to be producing our best stuff.
10. Which book or short story would you recommend to readers unfamiliar with your
work? I would probably suggest PLAY DEAD. Not as well written as HUSH, but more fun.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Dave Stevens
A really fine portrait of the late Dave Stevens, who died last year of leukemia. I still remember my first glimpse of The Rocketeer. Stunned. I was ten again and in a theater watching some wobbly old Blackhawk serial from Republic Pictures. Here's Arnie Fenner, who co-edited Brush With Passion, The Life and Art of Dave Stevens. Read the whole thing. Stevens was a fascinating if sometimes frustrating guy.
"While extremely popular with comics fans and followers of pin-up art, Dave Stevens was hardly a household name and mentioning him in a casual conversation would usually be answered with silence or a blank stare. And yet literally millions have enjoyed Dave’s work in one form or another through the years without ever knowing he was the visionary behind those wonderful entertainments. Perhaps best known as the creator of short-lived Rocketeer comic—which Disney adapted into the film starring Billy Campbell and Jennifer Connelly—Stevens also was a storyboard artist for Raiders of the Lost Ark, concepted the cryogenics chamber Mel Gibson was awakened from in Forever Young, updated the costume of The Flash for a TV series, and was responsible for the look of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller“ video and Victory concert tour.
"He drew 1950s model Bettie Page as the Rocketeer’s girlfriend in his comic and as a result was largely responsible for the renewed interest in Bettie—which prompted her reemergence after 40 years of seclusion. Dave became her close friend and protector and saw to it that she benefited financially from the plethora of products various entrepreneurs had been producing without her permission for decades.
for the rest go here:
http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=10776#more
"While extremely popular with comics fans and followers of pin-up art, Dave Stevens was hardly a household name and mentioning him in a casual conversation would usually be answered with silence or a blank stare. And yet literally millions have enjoyed Dave’s work in one form or another through the years without ever knowing he was the visionary behind those wonderful entertainments. Perhaps best known as the creator of short-lived Rocketeer comic—which Disney adapted into the film starring Billy Campbell and Jennifer Connelly—Stevens also was a storyboard artist for Raiders of the Lost Ark, concepted the cryogenics chamber Mel Gibson was awakened from in Forever Young, updated the costume of The Flash for a TV series, and was responsible for the look of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller“ video and Victory concert tour.
"He drew 1950s model Bettie Page as the Rocketeer’s girlfriend in his comic and as a result was largely responsible for the renewed interest in Bettie—which prompted her reemergence after 40 years of seclusion. Dave became her close friend and protector and saw to it that she benefited financially from the plethora of products various entrepreneurs had been producing without her permission for decades.
for the rest go here:
http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=10776#more
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Gatsby
(First of all belated congratulations to Dave Zeltserman for having his novel Small Crimes selected by both the Washing Post and NPR as being one of the ten best crime novels this year.)
There's been some discussion lately about backstory in fiction. In the age of streaming it's gotten a bad name in some quarters. A few sentences, nothing more, anything more is excess.
I'm influenced by the trend myself. In most cases two pages of densely packed type discussing the arc of a character's life makes me leery. Or even flip ahead a few pages.
But there are writers such as Elmore Leonard who make backstory as lively as the frontstory.
I thought of this today as I was rereading The Great Gatsby for probably the twenty-fifth time in my life. Nick has just escaped the living room where Gatsby and Daisy come together for the first time in five years. The whole situation is awkard, almost physically painful and Nick wants to be away from it. So he stands on the lawn and stares at Gatsby's house and gives us a little gem of local history.
"A brewer had built it early in the `period' craze a decade before, and there was a story that he'd agreed to pay five years' taxes on all the neigboring cottages if the owners would would have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the heart out of his plan to Found a Family--he went into immediate decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on the door. Americans, while willing, even eager, to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry."
Gatsby's house has a backstory. And a weird wonderful one.
Also I was struck by Nick's last remark. I can't believe it's wisdom escaped me all these years.
I frequently quote H.L. Mencken's remark that "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." I always feel a bit uneasy about saying it because it's arrogant. The hell of it is I agreee with it. Yes, Mencken was a prosperous snob but he was right about masses of people--not just Americans. We all want certainty in our lives and so we willingly hand ourselves over to tyrants and buffoons wth alarming frequency. Look how long it took most Americans to catch on to George W. Bush. If Katrina hadn't happened one of his daughters might be running for president today.
But I like Fitzgerald's ironic distinction between serfdom and peasantry. I think he brought our lemming-like attraction to bullshit artists into much sharper focus than Mencken did.
There's been some discussion lately about backstory in fiction. In the age of streaming it's gotten a bad name in some quarters. A few sentences, nothing more, anything more is excess.
I'm influenced by the trend myself. In most cases two pages of densely packed type discussing the arc of a character's life makes me leery. Or even flip ahead a few pages.
But there are writers such as Elmore Leonard who make backstory as lively as the frontstory.
I thought of this today as I was rereading The Great Gatsby for probably the twenty-fifth time in my life. Nick has just escaped the living room where Gatsby and Daisy come together for the first time in five years. The whole situation is awkard, almost physically painful and Nick wants to be away from it. So he stands on the lawn and stares at Gatsby's house and gives us a little gem of local history.
"A brewer had built it early in the `period' craze a decade before, and there was a story that he'd agreed to pay five years' taxes on all the neigboring cottages if the owners would would have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the heart out of his plan to Found a Family--he went into immediate decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on the door. Americans, while willing, even eager, to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry."
Gatsby's house has a backstory. And a weird wonderful one.
Also I was struck by Nick's last remark. I can't believe it's wisdom escaped me all these years.
I frequently quote H.L. Mencken's remark that "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." I always feel a bit uneasy about saying it because it's arrogant. The hell of it is I agreee with it. Yes, Mencken was a prosperous snob but he was right about masses of people--not just Americans. We all want certainty in our lives and so we willingly hand ourselves over to tyrants and buffoons wth alarming frequency. Look how long it took most Americans to catch on to George W. Bush. If Katrina hadn't happened one of his daughters might be running for president today.
But I like Fitzgerald's ironic distinction between serfdom and peasantry. I think he brought our lemming-like attraction to bullshit artists into much sharper focus than Mencken did.
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