Headlines that shouldn't be true but are

William Lopez Spends 2 Decades In Prison On Wrongful Conviction, Dies
After Release


NYC mailman hoarded 40,000 pieces of undelivered mail...
(Newman!)

Postal Service wants to deliver -- groceries...

UPS worker steals $160K diamond, trades for $20 of pot...

Six billionaires who moved to a neighborhood and ruined it

AP History: CO school board member proposing 'patriotic' curriculum was
following TX example

PA police officers burst into home, arrest woman for filming them with
cellphone

NM cop threatened to shoot ‘f*cking lunatic’ in the penis 2 hours
before killing him

John Oliver presents: The enduring influence of Ayn Rand, ‘selfish
*sshole’

Ingraham loses it after Bush aide says Reagan’s attorney general worse
than Holder

Louisiana church fears gay wedding ceremonies so it boots AA just to be
safe

Man shot through neighbor's window because he didn't know another way
to unload gun

11-month old killed by foster mother was taken away from parents
because of pot use

Semi driver admits he was 'distracted' before Oklahoma crash killed 4
softball players

Instagram reportedly blocked in China and Hong Kong amid protests




Maher blasts GOP anger over coffee salute: 'You know that Bush did it
with a dog, right?'

Bill Maher : A cop’s job isn’t that dangerous — police need to stop
‘going mental for no reason’

The grim story of the Snowy Mountains’ cannibal horses

The same week the US goes to war with one, NYT’s Douthat asks, where
are the cults?

‘Wire’ creator David Simon: Corporations ‘the cancer’ that are slowly
killing American middle-class

SNL mocks NFL’s response to domestic violence scandals: ‘We fight
women!’

Rick Santorum slams Muslims: ‘You don’t see Baptist ministers going on
jihad’

Tucker Carlson rants about poor people who litter : Death penalty
‘probably’ too harsh

Fox host tells Ben Carson: You as president is like a lawmaker doing
brain surgery

Cons only miss one point in 'American Psycho' author's 'Generation
Wuss' essay -- the crucial one

Five ways the superintelligence revolution might happen

Watch: FL County Commissioner walks out to avoid hearing pagan’s
‘satanic’ invocation

Arrested Catholic Archbishop’s computer contained over 100,000 images
of children

The quiet Great Train Robber reveals identity of the gang’s mystery
insider

 Neil deGrasse Tyson to play super-intelligent pig on Disney’s ‘Gravity
Falls’

Rochester researchers’ ‘invisibility cloak’ cost just $1,000 to make

O politician loves hip-hop and weed — combining both in ad ‘The Trap’
feat. Wyclef Jean

Bill Maher mocks Fox and Ted Cruz for complaining about ‘badass’ Eric
Holder

Sarah Palin: Christian conservatives are ‘the most slandered group in
America’

Pamphlet shows parents how to teach kids about homosexuality without
turning them gay

John Fugelsang Twitter trolls Limbaugh fans by strafing them with
Rush’s racist quotes

10,121-foot Mount Ontake volcano erupts in central Japan — eight
injured, hikers stranded

‘Daily Show’ Native guest says Washington football fans threatened him
at game

Chelsea Clinton gives birth to daughter Charlotte

SNAP: Woman Mysteriously Dies After Ripping Clothes Off, Running Wild
In Liquor Store...

Man dies after crashing stolen car into church...
(that'll learn im)

Man Fires Into Neighbor's Home, Says He Was Just Unloading His Gun: Cops
Comments

House Sitter Accused Of Stealing $100,000 Of Jewelry From Co-worker

Student Passes Out Pot-Laced Lollipops To Classmates: Cops

Police Officer Believes Ghost Is Haunting Station (VIDEO)

Cops: Lazy Suspect Tooled Around Store On Scooter Before Robbery

Hey, Wanna Buy An Amputated Leg In A Lamp?

Man Found With 51 Turtles Beneath Clothing: Cops

Donkeys Reunited At Polish Zoo After Sex Scandal

Man Hits Literal Jackpot To Pay Fine Moments Before Cops Set To Arrest
Him

This Woman Drove 12 Blocks With A Cop On Her Car

Women Find Python In Trunk Of Rental Car

Restaurant Selling Sex Toys With Burgers

Pre-Order: Wind River (Large Print) - James Reasoner and L.J. Washburn

Now Available for Pre-Order: Wind River (Large Print) - 

James Reasoner and L.J. Washburn

Ed here: James and Livia have excelled in every genre they've worked in. This is one of my favorites because in addition to a fine twisty storyline there's a fascinating look at railroad towns--how they suddenly appeared with the march of railroads and how they were soon bursting with people good and bad. Real bad. Peckinpah could have made a hell of a good movie out WIND RIVER. This is part of an excellent series.

In a couple of weeks Thorndike will be publishing a large print edition of WIND RIVER, the first book in the Western series that Livia and I wrote back in the Nineties. We just got our author copies, and it's a beautiful book. We have e-book editions of the entire series available, but this is the first print edition since the original paperbacks many years ago, and you can pre-order it now from Amazon.

PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker Gravetapping Ben Boulden

Gravetapping by Ben Boulden

---

PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker Posted: 26 Sep 2014 11:36 AM PDT In July 2009 Hard Case Crime reissued a cold war era thriller titled Passport to Peril, which at face value isn’t unusual, but what is unusual is the name of its author: Robert B. Parker. Unusual because it is a shared name with the creator of the Spenser novels, but very definitely not the same man or writer. Passport to Peril is an early example of the cold war thriller. It was originally published by Rinehart & Co. in 1951, which predated the earliest James Bond novel,Casino Royale, by two years. John Stodder is an American journalist traveling to communist Budapest on a false Swiss passport purchased in Vienna. Stodder assumed the name, Marcel Blaye, was a figment of the forger’s imagination, but the passport is no forgery. It belonged to a man murdered in Vienna. A man with ties to both Soviet-bloc agents and the remnants of fascist Germany. When Stodder realizes he is traveling on the passport of a dead man he jumps the train just inside the Hungarian border, which sets off a series of events that includes pursuit by communist Russians, fascist Germans, and eccentric American secret agents. He also finds a love interest in Marcel Blaye’s traveling secretary. Passport to Peril is a well-paced, exciting and, unfortunately, flawed novel. The plot is complex and executed with brevity and a crisp, exciting (and almost believable) style. The opening pages are overly dependent on dialogue, but around page 50 everything changes. The dialogue is clipped, and the story is shown rather than explained. The pacing is nearly perfect for the majority of the novel, which allows the reader to forgive the novel’s excesses—the early reliance on dialogue, awe inspiring coincidences, the clockwork timing of the American secret agents, and the suspiciously intermingled resolution of Stodder’s private reason for traveling to Budapest and the complex intrigue Marcel Blaye’s passport unwittingly dragged him into.  The cover art is by Hard Case Crime regular Gregory Manchess, and it is one of my favorite. The cold colors give atmosphere to a really cool (pun intended) scene. The cover has more than just a passing resemblance to the Robert Maguire cover of the Ace edition of Harry Whittington's 1960 A Night for Screaming.

Great Dana King interview with Rick Ollerman

Twenty Questions With Rick Ollerman

for the entire interview go here:

http://danaking.blogspot.com/2014/09/twenty-questions-with-rick-ollerman.html

Rick Ollerman was born in Minneapolis but moved to more humid pastures in Florida when he got out of school. He made his first dollar from writing when he sent a question into a crossword magazine as a very young boy. Later he went on to hold world records for various large skydives, has appeared in a photo spread in Life magazine, another in The National Enquirer, can be seen on an inspirational poster shown during the opening credits of a popular TV show, and has been interviewed on CNN. He was also an extra in the film Purple Rain where he had a full screen shot a little more than nine minutes in. His writing has appeared in technical and sporting magazines and he has edited, proofread, and written numerous introductions for many books. He's never found a crossword magazine that pays more than that first dollar and in the meantime lives in northern New Hampshire with his wife, two children and two Golden Retrievers.

Rick was also the editor at Stark House when Grind Joint was published, providing good advice and patience with a newbie above and beyond what anyone could expect. Not too many editors would pack their families in the van and drive from New Hampshire to Pittsburgh to be there when an author broke his launch cherry, as Rick did for me, and for that I will always be grateful.

He has a twofer coming out from Stark House: Turnabout and Shallow Secrets, and agreed to sit for Twenty Questions. (I thought about making him answer Forty Questions, but he’s a friend.)

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about Turnabout and Shallow Secrets.

Rick Ollerman:  Turnabout is a revised incarnation of the first novel I ever wrote, some years ago. I wanted to create a book that could only take place in Florida, where the Everglades played a central role, and where structurally the book leads to moving not just from scene to scene, but location to location. I think the conclusion is one of those serendipitous things where not only is it perfectly logical but also completely unexpected–without cheating. Shallow Secrets was the second book I wrote and it was done in large part much differently than Turnabout. I wanted to write in a different style that addressed any of the issues I myself had with the first book.

OBAAT: Where did you get this idea, and what made it worth developing for you? (Notice I didn’t ask “Where do you get your ideas?” I was careful to ask where you got this idea.)

RO: I actually sort of like the “Where do you get your ideas?” question because I think I’ve been coming up with an answer. A writer observes everything, and then, being creative, they ask themselves, “What if?” For instance, in my third book (which comes out next year), I had read FBI documentation that stalking is the only real predictor we have of murder. That’s the observation. The “what if” is, what if you’re a person qualified to recognize the signs, and the target is someone you care about? What do you do? (More “what if.”) If you go to the cops, you make yourself known to them and it likely escalates the problem. If something happens to the stalker, the victim’s co-workers already know something strange is up. In other words, once you raise that flag trying to protect your loved one, there’s no hiding. But you can’t take it down again, either. The rest grows deeper from there.

Turnabout’s “what if” had to do with the early days of the Internet, and the question is, how do you track crooked money when the transactions occur over the Internet? Turn the computer off and the evidence is gone. Today, of course, we have tools that let us do this much better, but back then….

Shallow Secrets was a cop, implicated by a killer who he had let crash in his house. He hadn’t known he was a killer at the time, and when evidence is found in his home later, he’s stigmatized by the wrong color brush. What can he do to redeem himself in light of the fact that not all the murders had been solved? Nothing. He walks away. So years later, when a killing takes place up north, he gets pulled into it by the accused by way of a female reporter. The question is if these later crimes can exonerate him from the earlier ones.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write Turnabout and Shallow Secrets, start to finish?

RO: Turnabout took about ten months, and then later the first third was rewritten. Shallow Secrets was about the same, excluding the computer problem that ate the ending and required the last half to be rewritten. Gee, that was fun.

Headlines that shouldn't be true but are

Neuroscientist Carl Hart: Everything you think you know about drugs and
addiction is wrong

Jon Stewart: U.S. air attacks against Islamic State are ‘the iPhone 6
of wars’

Colorado students walk out to protest conservative ‘censorship’ of AP
history

NYPD slams visibly pregnant woman on pavement, uses stun gun on her
belly

Robbery Suspect John Fecteau Tells Police Stabbing People 'Better Than
Doing Meth'
(and man i thought meth was fun!)

11-year-old political prodigy sets St. Louis officials straight

Cops pummel man in traffic stop in video that contradicts official story

Louisiana 14-year-old shot dead by police after altercation

Costco worker broke man's leg with martial arts kick for refusing to
show receipt: suit

Reza Aslan: Most Christians are clueless about Jesus — who wanted the
rich to be poor

George Takei: Young straight couples should vote to save 'gay babies of
tomorrow'

The rise and fall of Russia’s ‘flesh-eating zombie drug’ krokodil

 Twitter users mock Colorado school district's attempt to rewrite US
history

Grand jury declines to charge two officers involved in fatal Walmart
shooting

Pennsylvania police chief’s daughter among suspects charged in Philly
gay-bashing

Stephen Hawking comes out: ‘I’m an atheist’ because science is ‘more
convincing’ than God

Chemtrail ‘truthers’ mobilizing global rally against ‘genocide’ from
the sky

ISIS-affiliated Algerian jihadists claim to be have beheaded captured
Frenchman

Fox ‘fair and balanced’ debate: Global warming happens in ‘fantasy
world’ of scientists

Louisiana deputy fatally shot 14-year-old ‘four or five times in the
back’: family

Conservatives try to woo female voters with ad calling Obama their
stalker boyfriend

BOOM: Manhattan Condo to Be Listed at $130 Million!

Contemporary art market smashes through $2 billion mark...

London ranked as world's costliest city...

WASHPOST: White House demands changes to press pool reports...

TWITTER PLOT TO DESTROY LIMBAUGH REVEALED AS SMALL AND AUTOMATED...

Airline slammed over flight attendants in lingerie

“Beaver Attacks Man and Pulls Him from Kayak”

“Attempt at Smuggling Lobster Tails in Pants Leads to Arrest”

COPS: Drunken man took bath in holy water at church...

DALLAS: Accuser says Jerry Jones paid her to keep silent...

CHOKE POINT: Credit Card Reader Blocks Payments for Guns, Ammunition...

YORK: Romney '16 for real...

ELECTION DRAMA: Republicans set sights on Dems in solid-blue states...

Senate Control Down to 5 States...

Scott Brown: 'This race is about immigration'...

Secret GOP Records Reveal Corporate Donors Paying for Access to
Governors...

Campaign manager charged with buying school board votes with cocaine...

Seattle to fine residents, businesses for wasting food...

BRANSON: VIRGIN GALACTIC Into Space by Christmas!
(hope he's on board)

-------------------------------- 
The scary pseudoscience I was taught at a Christian fundamentalist
creationist school

Anchor’s anti-poor rant on hot mic: Get off ‘government assistance’ and
‘do your f*cking job’

Armed fugitive sought in brutal videotaped rape of 16-year-old girl
posted on Snapchat

New GOP ad insists Republicans drive hybrids, shop at Trader Joe’s,
have feelings
(nuh-huh)

Mo. family faces cancer, sickness after waste company refuses to clean
up ‘toxic soup’ leak

Attorney General Eric Holder will announce today he's stepping down

Were monarch butterflies responsible for unusual weather radar readings?

'Young Turks' Kasparian rips Fox 'f*ckers' for trumped-up anger over
Obama's coffee

Now Available- Outlaw Ranger by James Reasoner

G.W. Braddock was raised to be a Texas Ranger and never wanted anything else. But when he's stripped of his badge through no fault of his own and a corrupt system turns the vicious killer Tull Coleman loose on the people of the Lone Star State, Braddock has to decide if he's going to follow the law—or carry out the job he was born to do, even if it means becoming an outlaw himself! 


Never before published, OUTLAW RANGER is the first book in an exciting new Western series by best-selling author and legendary storyteller James Reasoner. Based on actual incidents, this action-packed novel is the stirring tale of a little-known era in Old West history. Rough Edges Press is proud to present this compelling saga of a man haunted by the past and fighting to make a place for himself in the violent world of the Texas frontier.


(Not only is the first book in this series now available, I can announce that the second book, HANGMAN'S KNOT, will be out later this year.)

Outlaw Ranger

Shop now

Lev Levinson

Ed here:

The survivors in writing are often more interesting to me than the stars who flame out and disappear.

William R. Cox the pulp writer died at ninety two at his typewriter. He'd never been a big star but he'd written pulps and paperback novels for sixty-some years. Ryerson Johnson graduated from the pulps into paperback originals and worked for almost fifty years. Margret Millar had never been a big seller but she finished two novels in the last four years of her life after beating lung cancer and being declared legally blind. Survivors.

Last year or so I became aware of a writer named Len Levinson. I'd seen his name on various blogs but not until I discovered Joe Kenny's truly unique and amazing blog Glorious Trash did I begin to learn about Len. Talk about a survivor. He's been working steadily since 1971 without getting either the promotion or recognition he deserves. Joe convinced Len to write about some of his books and in so doing Len has given us a finest record of the free lance fiction writer I've ever read. And not just because of the ups and downs of his writing career but also the ups and downs of his personal life. 

First I should provide context. I quit my PR job in 1971 to become a writer. I then wrote a novel which took about a year, and got rejected everywhere. I was running out of money and needed a part-time job that would permit me to continue writing.

So I became a cabdriver on the cruel streets of New York City back when cabdrivers were murdered fairly regularly. Some drove during the day because they couldn’t handle the dangers of the night. Others drove during the night because they couldn’t handle daytime traffic. I drove on the night shift for the Metropolitan Garage located in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, a ten minute walk from my apartment.

All sorts of people sat in the back seat of my taxicabs, from Wall Street brokers to prostitutes, movie stars, working people, cops, criminals, alcoholics, drug addicts, even my former PR boss Lee Solters got into my cab one night, astonished to see me behind the wheel. While driving them around, I felt inspired to write a novel about a cabdriver who didn’t have all his marbles, and who in many (but not all) ways was me.

I drove on Thursday, Friday and Saturdays nights. My shifts began at 4pm and ended at 4am. When I wasn’t driving, I was home writing the novel that became Cabby. I had virtually no social life during this period and sank into a very strange, isolated frame of mind which became reflected in the novel.

When Joe Kenney asked me to write something about Cabby, I thought I should reread it, because I hadn’t read it for around 42 years, and still remembered it as The Great American Taxicab Novel.

Q. Tell us about your PR job. I worked in advertising and PR for ten years after I graduated from college, Michigan State University, class of 1961.  First I wrote direct mail letters and brochures for Prentice-Hall, a publishing company in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.  Then I was pressbook editor for Paramount Pictures, which involved writing articles and feature stories based on information supplied by publicists assigned to movies being filmed.  Next I was pressbook editor for 20th Century-Fox, but soon was promoted to trade press contact, which involved writing daily press releases and dealing with reporters and editors who worked for publications like VARIETY, BOXOFFICE, MOTION PICTURE DAILY, FILM DAILY, and others that I don’t remember.  Finally I was a press agent with Solters and Sabinson, an agency that had many clients in the entertainment industry such as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Flip Wilson, Bob Hope, Benny Goodman, the Playboy Organization, all the David Merrick Shows, numerous movie clients, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, Holiday on Ice, Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, and others that I don’t remember.  I resigned my position at Solters and Sabinson to become a novelist. Q.  Did you give any thought to having an agent before you quit your job? Did you have any publishing contacts? I had no literary agent or literary contacts before I quit my job.  But I had a friend with a literary agent.  My friend was William Kotzwinkle, who had been published in the NEW YORKER and other magazines.  He introduced me to his agent, Elaine Markson, who became my agent.  Bill went on to write THE FAN MAN, which many consider the best novel about the Sixties, and then E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTIAL, said to be the best-selling novel internationally of the Eighties. Q .Were there moments when you thought you’d made a mistake quitting your job? Many times I thought I was crazy for quitting my job.  But I always hated jobs because they became boring and repetitious after the first three months.  Writing novels was my only chance to break free.  I had no alternatives. Q.  Given the violence visited on so many cabbies, were you ever afraid? I was the kind of cabbie who picked up everyone and drove them wherever they wanted.  So I often was in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and other high crime neighborhoods, which could be scary.  No one ever robbed me but occasionally people got out of the cab without paying, and I didn’t feel like chasing them through high crime neighborhoods.  When I was a cabbie, around two cabdrivers were murdered every month.  I drove on the night shift, the most dangerous time, and wrote during the day. Q.  In your recent notes you dismiss CABBIE as a failure. That surprised me and I disagree. It’s a picaresque and finally detailed book about a certain rather dark occupation lived out in a time of social turmoil.  Stephen Crane did similar pieces of work in his sadly brief career.  Care to disagree? Everyone’s taste is different.  I’m glad you liked CABBIE.  I don’t think I achieved my ambitions for the novel, but maybe I did.  Writing novels is not science or math.  It’s very nebulous with no absolute standards, and sometimes a writer cannot be objective about his own work. Q. When CABBIE didn’t sell you say you turned to soft core, selling a book to Midwood and in so doing meeting Peter McCurtin. You say he taught you how to be a professional writer.  What did you learn from him? Peter taught me the importance of narrative tension, or in other words, no slack sequences.  He also taught me the importance of writing believable characters based on life.  He was very encouraging, and since he’d written so many outstanding novels himself, he inspired confidence.  I believed he knew what he was talking about, and considered him a great man.  He’s gone now, and I miss him very much.