One Night in the City

It was supposed to be a quiet evening of dinner and dancing as my friend Corinne celebrated her 33rd birthday.

It was supposed to be fun. Aren't birthday parties supposed to be fun?

Ugh.

We met at a nice Mexican place off the Embarcadero where I paid too much for a vodka martini that wasn't even filled to the top, the cheap bastards, and paid way too much for a platter of beef tacos. These were mini tacos, the kind you might get off a corner roach coach, and $12.50 to boot. What arrived on my plate, looking like something you might find in the gutter, I would have paid $2 for at one of those street-corner establishments, and I would have enjoyed it more too.

One of Corinne's coworkers was supposed to be there and she is an attractive lass with whom I wanted to get more acquainted, but she didn't show. However, Corinne's roommate did attend. Her name was Renee and she was very nice and we had a lovely chat. Things were going so well that I decided I wanted to get her phone number and continue our conversation at a later time.

But as Jack Benny might say, Well....

Things didn't exactly go as planned.

Renee had a "friend" with her. They had similar hair cuts, which should have been a clue. Straight black hair down to the shoulders with thick bangs across the forehead. Like a helmet. I should have known....

So the night ends and I decide to walk the girls to the MUNI station where they can catch their train back home; as I'm preparing to ask Renee for her home telephone number, she says, "Wow, I'm cold," and snakes her arm through that of her friend and pulls her close. They walked that way all the way to the station.

Call this "The Night I Almost Hit On a Lesbian"

Not that, you know, there's anything wrong with that.

The Rogue Gentleman #2: Moving Target....Available NOW!

I apologize for the lack of updates in recent weeks. Real life has been crazy! But out of the craziness has come a couple of stories that are doozies indeed and I will post them soon. One of the anecdotes involves me and a partner starting a new radio talk show, so very soon you may not only be able to READ Brian Drake but LISTEN to him as well!

Anyway, we are gathered here today to announce the release of the second episode in the Rogue Gentleman series, Moving Target, which picks up a day or two after Private Vendetta ended. Thanks for looking!

Now Available--THE ROGUE GENTLEMAN #1

Happy New Year, my friends. We are kicking things off with the release of the first episode in my new series, The Rogue Gentleman. There will be a new episode each month. Thrills, chills, comedy, suspense, action, romance, cliff-hanger endings... it's all here. If you like James Bond or The Saint, this is your stuff.


Steve Dane, The Rogue Gentleman, an international adventurer who rights wrongs wherever he finds them, fails to prevent a young woman’s abduction. But that does not stop him from finding her.

Gotta love a chick with two guns!

Officially hired by the girl’s father, Dane battles gunman and evades police as he discovers the decades-old vendetta behind the kidnapping; he soon learns that the grudge is just the beginning and peels back the layers of a more fiendish plan that goes beyond a desire for vengeance.

Assisted by his lover, the luscious Nina Talikova, Steve Dane dives head first, the only way he knows how, into a conspiracy of terror the likes of which the world has never seen, orchestrated by a powerful and mysterious woman known only as “The Duchess”.

When Dane finds The Duchess he will sacrifice anything, including his life, to destroy her.

Private Vendetta will be followed by Moving Target and The Zeta Connection; we have a long career planned for Dane & Company and we hope you all enjoy the ride.

Paul Cain's FAST ONE--Again

I was happy to find a UK No Exit Press edition of Paul Cain's FAST ONE the other day. I had no intention of reading it. I thought it would be neat to have and the introduction and facsimile of Cain's original book jacket bio was neat too. But over the holiday weekend I needed something to read so I grabbed it. And then it grabbed me. Like never before. This is probably the third or fourth time I've read the book, and while I've previously written on the topic of Cain and his work, this time I want to amend that article and say that, yes, Paul Cain's FAST ONE is the hardest hard-boiled novel ever written and deserves all the praise and wonder it has received since the original publication date. (It also deserves the complaints.)

I don't know what has happened this time, but I can't put this book down and I'm more entertained by the "plot" than ever before. It rockets along like an express train. The characters are thin, yes, but they work well together. How can you not like Kells and Granquist and especially Shep and Borg? They reveal themselves through dialogue and behavior, even erratic behavior. Cain knew how to characterize, he wasn't being lazy, I just think he was doing something different and critics yesterday and today couldn't keep up. I just wish he would have ended it differently.

The fact that FAST ONE moves so fast--ha ha!--and works so well as a whole is amazing to see and I don't know if it has ever been duplicated. Chandler came close in one of the middle sequences of The Big Sleep, but then tapered off. I can't think of anybody else who has done anything close.

I suppose there are some of you that have never read Cain; if that is the case, stop reading this and go acquire a copy of FAST ONE post haste.

The Indie Scene: Paul Bishop's FELONY FISTS

Here is what is great about indie publishing, authors are able to create properties that couldn't be done by legacy publishing, and Paul Bishop's wonderful Felony Fists series is one such example.

Paul and a team of authors are cranking out these books.  According to Paul, "These books are inspired by the sports pulps of the '30s and '40s, such as Fight Stories Magazine and Knockout Magazine, as well as the Sailor Steve Costigan fight stories by Robert E. Howard from the same time period."

The first book, Fight Card, is already out, as is Felony Fists #2: The Cutman, written by the wonderful Mel Odom, who entertained me in my youth with his contributions to The Executioner series (and I'm sure he's glad to be reminded of those!).

Paul gave me a sneak-peak at Fight Card and it's terrific. The plotting is great and Paul brings his usual crisp writing style to the party. Best of luck with the series, Paul!

FELONY FISTS

Los Angeles 1954

Patrick “Felony” Flynn has been fighting all his life. Learning the “sweet science” from Father Tim the fighting priest at St. Vincent’s, the Chicago orphanage where Pat and his older brother Mickey were raised, Pat has battled his way around the world – first with the Navy and now with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Legendary LAPD chief William Parker is on a rampage to clean up both the department and the city. His elite crew of detectives known as The Hat Squad is his blunt instrument – dedicated, honest, and fearless. Promotion from patrol to detective is Pat’s goal, but he also yearns to be one of the elite.

And his fists are going to give him the chance.

Gangster Mickey Cohen runs LA’s rackets, and murderous heavyweight Solomon King is Cohen’s key to taking over the fight game. Chief Parker wants wants Patrick “Felony” Flynn to stop him – a tall order for middleweight ship’s champion with no professional record.

Leading with his chin, and with his partner, LA’s first black detective Tombstone Jones, covering his back, Patrick Flynn and his Felony Fists are about to fight for his future, the future of the department, and the future of Los Angeles.

We Need to Laugh a Little

The other day I found myself in a conversation with a writer pal about the change in subject matter I have been going through lately, as in turning away from the hard-boiled noir writing I started with and switching to more light-hearted adventure fare. My friend, a terrific hard-boiled writer himself, does not understand why I have decided to change gears. Hard-boiled is alive and vibrant and more important than ever, he says. We have the opportunity, he says, to write the history of our time the same way the hard-boiled pioneers wrote about theirs.

That's all well and good and I assure you (and him) that my decision to forego hard-boiled/noir work is not permanent--I have two such novels planned, one that I'm doing next year--but I have had it up to my eyeballs with the bleakness that goes with hard-boiled stories, especially because of our current "turbulent time". We need to laugh a little. We can't face a grim reality and then escape into a grim fictional world--that's no escape at all. So I'm writing stories that are thrilling and exciting but contain elements of humor so if you are looking for an escape, you can read these stories and not be reminded of what just frightened you on the news. I'm also reading similar books for the exact same reasons.

You'll be seeing the first of my new stories soon, when The Rogue Gentleman #1 debuts, and there will be a new episode each month. Adventure, humor, romance, cliff-hanger endings....I hope you'll enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

And then in 2012 we'll have Kill Fever, where I return to the hard-boiled school with the story of a war vet who returns to the U.S. to find out why his sister stopped writing letters to him. Of course, what he finds isn't good.....

Anonymous-9 Visits Your Humble Correspondant

Well we are delighted to welcome Anonymous-9 to our abode where she agreed to talk to us about her new ebook, HARD BITE AND OTHER SHORT STORIES, which is currently masticating its way up the Amazon sales charts. Ten stories in all, HARD BITE won Spinetingler's Best Short Story on the Web 2009 and 4 others got nominations, including a first-round Thriller Award nomination. 99 cents at Smashwords and Amazon Kindle.


But this is not your average interview; in my conversation with Anonymous-9, we talked about elements in her stories that raise them above the average blood-and-thunder short stories. Read on:


Brian: I was surprised to hear you suggest an interview based on spirituality and morality in your short stories, because one might be hard-pressed to find any moral center in stories about killer monkeys and women who poison the wives of men they want to sleep with. Please explain.

Anonymous-9: Thanks for inviting me to your blog, Brian. Glad to be here. Let's leave killer monkeys for the moment and talk about a woman who kills for the man she wants. Who hasn't seen an attractive person and thought, "Wow, if his or her fiance were out of the way, I could go for some of that!" Everybody has had that thought at one time or another, so I ran further with it. KILLER ORGASM is the story where my main character (spoiler alert!!!!) kills the wives of men she wants to marry. For a short time it works wonderfully. But eventually she dies by her own sordid hand. She gets done in by this thinking, she doesn't get away with it. The story shows where our ordinary, selfish thinking will lead if it runs amok. That's a morality tale, don't you think?

B: Do you start each story with a theme or "moral" in mind, or do these elements come later during your editing process?

A9: No, these elements come as I develop the story. For example, in my story CLAW MARKS, I wanted to tell a classic noir tale of a man and a woman--man rescues woman from bad husband, husband comes and takes revenge. Simple, huh? We've all read that story a thousand times. The question in my mind was, "How can I make this different? What element can I change in this classic storyline so it feels fresh at the same time that it feels familiar?" The element I changed was the point of view of the storyteller. The storyteller (spoiler alert!!!!) is a cat. Cats are killers and they feel very little compassion for living beings not directly associated with their own welfare. Even then, cats are iffy. So the cat was the perfect, psychopathic narrator for the story, emotionally unaffected by the human behavior he observes. He forces the reader to fill in the morality and ethics part on their own.

B: So are there a list of themes you want to write about, or does the theme of a story emerge as you're writing? Would you reuse certain themes if you had more to say about the subject or try to find something new each time?

A9: Themes emerge. I can't imagine a more turgid way to write than something designed to lecture people about morality. I guess my most common theme would have to be how murderers and extreme criminals are not that far off from the ordinary person. We all have crime in us, including killing. A few of my stories show how the wrong place, right time, will turn Rebecca of Sunnybrook into Rebecca of Donnybrook. Some people don't want to admit they have a dark side, or the potential for a dark side. I find it frightening and dangerous, that lack of self-awareness.

B: Why do you think people deny their darker nature? Do you think we read crime fiction to find some way of exorcising that nature?

A9: Whether you believe that humans evolved or were created by God, both schools of thought pay tribute to our animal natures. The evolutionary school of thought admits we are carbon-based organisms with a brain cortex similar to the lizard with all the attendent animal impulses. Theology states that although we are made in the image of God, we're also half animal--super-intelligent primates. It's a constant battle to overcome our animal nature. Some crime fiction is just a walk on the wild side, crime for entertainment, a pleasurable roll in the gutter that allows us to be voyeurs watching how "bad" people do it with no personal responsibility. I don't think crime fiction exorcises that nature. There's no exorcising who we are. I think crime fiction can put us in touch with it, for better or worse. It's the responsibility of the reader.

B: So who are two or three other authors who you think best handle the type of theme you write about? They don't have to be crime writers, either.

A-9: John Burdett rocked publishing with Bankok 8 and Bankok Noir, has a series based on a Buddhist detective in Thailand. The character who does a beautiful job of passing along Zen philosophy without moralizing or his clumsy asides. In my view, Burdett is one of the freshest, most original crimewriters of today.
Tom Robbins doesn't write crime, but he evokes a surreal atmosphere that seems acquainted with meditation, or kabbalistic philosophy or Buddhist teachings. A certain spiritual cosmology  backdrops Robbins' writing. Keep in mind that these philosophical roads of thought all come with warnings that they can drive the student crazy. That's my disclaimer.

There is a great site for clerical detectives. www.detecs.org Christians, a few Jews and Buddhists are represented. I think Christianity is under-represented in modern crime fiction. Many law enforcers depend on their faith to guide them and keep them sane while dealing with the worst of humanity. But they're rarely represented in prayer or evoking God. I think there might be an eager market waiting for something along this line. Myself, I love mocking the Devil. I wrote about the bureaucracy of Hell in a story called M-N-S. Anthony Neil Smith edited it. We pulled out all the stops with that one.

Brian: What have you got in the pipeline and what's coming up?

A-9:  HARD BITE is in rewrite as a novel. I'm trying to get it ready by the new year.

B: How has the audience reaction been to the short stories so far?

Anonymous-9!

A-9: It's always great. Yes, I may be a little extreme for some, but those that like my stuff like it a lot. I do well with critics, and for that I'm very grateful. Readers are the ultimate critics, though. That's why Amazon Kindle and Smashwords are so empowering. Agents and editors based in New York with their geographic filters, political filters, racial filters in place about "what fiction should be and say" no longer have a stranglehold on publishing. E-books are the free-est, most unregulated, unencumbered market in the world right now. It's the writer's time to howl.

Bloggers are the new Town Criers and advertising outlets. They find new writers, new works, and tell the world. They're the ones who help books "go viral." It's all free. But I better have a great story and give good blog. I'd also like to say that my experience has been, regarding awards and nominations, at least, it doesn't matter who you know or where you live. Story trumps all. I was completely anonymous when I got my nominations, nor was I a member of the International Thriller Writers. They didn't know me from dirt. But they liked my story. That's all there is to it in the end really, the story.