Brian Drake At Large!

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

2012-02-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-04T20:33:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-29T01:03:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-16T12:54:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-25T16:07:00.000-07:00

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.

The Consummata: A Heck of a Yarn!

2011-10-19T20:16:00.000-07:00

Available now!

The Delta Factor is my favorite Mickey Spillane novel. I like it even more than all of the Mike Hammers combined--seriously. There's something about that book. It's less of a hard-boiled story and more of a swashbuckling adventure that really sucks you in. The hero, modern pirate Morgan the Raider, is coerced into helping the U.S. government rescue a scientist from communists--or something. Anyway the usual Spillane hokum results and it's one hell of a book with a great cliff-hanger ending and if I tell you too much about it I'll ruin the book. I wish Spillane had gone further with Morgan the Raider instead of writing about secret agent Tiger Mann, and I still mourn the trees killed to print that swill. If Spillane had wanted a "Bond like" character, Morgan the Raider was fresh and original and a kick to read about. Tiger Mann was as ridiculous as his name.

I was delighted to learn a few years ago that Spillane had written part of Morgan #2 but never finished it. Until the day he passed I thought, maybe, he'd get around to it, but now his pal Max Allan Collins has completed the work, and The Consummata, published by Hard Case Crime, is the result.

Film tie-in cover

The cliffhanger ending of The Delta Factor really gets your imagination going because you wonder how it might be resolved. I was afraid the genuine article would not match my vision of that resolution, and that I might not enjoy it because there was no way it could live up to the blockbuster in my head. Truthfully, the novel doesn't come close, and I had to jettison any ideas I had at page one.

The Consummata is a fun book and I enjoyed it a lot, finishing it in three days. Many plot lines from The Delta Factor are resolved, and we get another cliffhanger at the end which was a nice touch. What we also have here is yet another blend of the Spillane/Collins style, and it's a kick to try and figure out where one ends and the other begins, and the other way around. Sometimes (just like Hammer in the recent Collins-completed novels) Morgan the Raider sounds a lot like Nate Heller, and that's always fun to catch. There are two other moments where you can tell Collins was doing the typing--just two--but I'll let you find them. One involves a piece of weaponry that had not been invented at the time the original manuscript was typed; the other is a Collins trademark. But never mind all that.

The Consummata is a rip-roaring thriller and I think you'll like it. I really enjoyed being reunited with Morgan and Kim and meeting his new friends and the ending leaves the door open for Morgan #3 should Collins decide to do it, or if The Mick had further Morgan adventures planned than we have been led to believe. If Max doesn't want to do Part Three, my original idea for #2 would work for #3; in other words, Max, I'm available....I'm cheap....and I'm not hard to find.

How Amanda Knox Saved My Story

2011-10-09T13:49:00.000-07:00

If you have been writing for any length of time, I am sure you have a manuscript that stalled and no matter what you did there was no way to get it going again. So you threw it in a drawer and said, Maybe someday....

A couple of years ago I started a manuscript entitled Bullet Alley about an ex-cop and defense attorney racing to clear a woman wrongly accused of murder and up against corrupt city officials doing their best to see she's convicted for reasons of their own. The story stalled when I could not come up with a proper "frame" for the woman; I think the story collapsed around page 50. Those pages remain in a box.

Someday, I thought, I will find a solution to the problem and finish the story.

Flash forward to this week. Like many folks around the world I have kept up with the story of Amanda Knox. It has been quite riveting. Did she do it or not and if she did not will she be cleared and if she did will she spend the rest of her life in prison? And now, as more information of what went on before and after the crime and during the investigation comes out, I see a picture of somebody railroaded into prison by overzealous, incompetent, or even corrupt police and prosecutors using evidence that cannot stand up to scrutiny, violating the rights of the accused, and slandering the accused as well.

And then a light bulb went off.

With a few changes here and there (to protect the innocent, of course--and so I don't have to pay anybody!) the Knox case provides the outline for the frame I need for the woman in Bullet Alley. Woo hoo!

Now the story can be told. I have no idea when, or even, really, if, I will get back to Bullet Alley, but you can bet when I do it will be a much better experience, and a better story, because of what happened to a certain young woman from Seattle. Maybe I should send her a cake.

New Blog Title

2011-10-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

I have never liked the "Explains it All" title of this blog, and it took a long time for me to think of a new one. Finally, I did, thanks, in part, to a British comedy show I used to watch when I was young. Dave Allen, who is no longer with us, did a program called "Dave Allen At Large" which was a mix of stand-up (in his case, he sat down) and sketches. Allen would sit on his tall chair with his whiskey and soda and say funny things in between funny sketches and it was something I looked forward to every Friday night. Recently a friend and I were lamenting the loss of Dave Allen, and while thinking about the show I decided to steal part of the title.

So, BRIAN DRAKE EXPLAINS IT ALL is now BRIAN DRAKE...AT LARGE!

The Indie Scene: Zoe Sharp

2011-08-20T22:48:00.000-07:00

In my effort to do more to promote indie authors, I have been scouring the web looking for prospects to include on this blog. You will be pleased with this little gem from Zoe Sharp, Fox Five, which features short stories about a protection expert named Charlie Fox. Zoe is from the UK, which gives her a ton of credibility in my view as I have stated elsewhere that I think thriller writers from across the pond do it better than us Yanks here in the former colonies and U.S. thriller writers should do more to emulate our cousins' careful craftsmanship.

Ms. Sharp does not let one down on the writing or storytelling front; the word smiting is crisp and plots develop nicely.

Zoe brings us a nice set of adventures that cover several periods of Charlie's life, which gives the character a very fleshed-out feel. These are first-person efforts, so you get that inside-the-character's-head intimacy which I always appreciate, and there are plenty of thrills to be had as well. The extra features at the end, promoting Ms. Sharp's other work, are icing on the cake and make you want more.

So check out Zoe Sharp and Charlie Fox out at the Amazon Kindle store. You'll be glad you did!

Wayne D. Dundee Reviews BULLET FOR ONE!

2011-08-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

If you haven't had the chance to check out the new book yet, here is a terrific review from fellow mystery writer Wayne D. Dundee whose "Joe Hannibal" stories I have admired for many years. Thank you, Wayne! You totally nailed what I was doing with the main character (in this episode) and I promise we'll see more of him in the future--in fact, I'll let you in on a little secret: the subplot involving John Coburn's father.... wait, I better not give too much away....

Here's Wayne:

"John Coburn is a private eye who won't let the law stand in the way of justice!" So reads one of the tag lines for this new mystery thriller by Brian Drake. Another says: "If he fails, can he live with another ghost? ... If he succeeds, can he live with the consequences?"

These are great come-ons and, for me at least, did exactly what they were supposed to do--make me want to read this book. Tag lines for books, however--like movie trailers --are often the best part of what follows. One always needs to keep this in mind and I have to admit that, as I hit the "Buy it with 1-click" tab on Amazon, I was wondering if this might be another such case.

Well, it wasn't. If anything, the tag lines might actually be guilty of soft-peddling the balls-out, full-throttle reading experience that Bullet For One delivers. Drake writes action sequences about as good as any you'll find, and the book is loaded with them. Chases, gun fights, fist fights, knife fights, beatings, escapes ... it's all here and vengeance-seeking PI John Coburn is right in the thick of every minute of it. This is definitely Spillane territory, and I mean that as a compliment. The character of Coburn himself doesn't have a lot of depth in this particular outing (one hopes there will be more in a series) because his focused so keenly set on solving the murder of his partner and making sure punishment is meted out. But several of the secondary characters are well drawn and the plot has plenty of twists and turns and surprises before Coburn wraps things up--to his own satisfaction and also that of the reader.

If you like your tough guys tough and your action fast and furious, you don't want to miss this one!

BULLET FOR ONE Five Star Review

2011-07-31T23:04:00.000-07:00

I thought y'all might like to see the FIVE STAR review Bullet for One received at Amazon over the weekend. Here it is:

Remember the Batman cartoon from the 90s. In that cartoon people carried cell phones and used computers but the cars all had chrome and the thugs wore pinstriped suits. It took place in it's own world which was grounded in several time periods of noir.

Brian Drake's "Bullet for One" takes place in a similar hardboiled world. The action is contemporary but the attitude is pure postwar paperback. PI John Coburn's partner, Felix, has been murdered while protecting a witness and Coburn is gunning for the ones who did it. He's got connections with the local police who help keep the FBI investigation from getting in the way while he also protects witnesses and Felix's family. What Coburn uncovers involves government corruption, mob ties and a stolen videotape full of women who have turned up dead.

This might've read like a men's adventure retread but Drake gives the supporting characters personalities of their own and a plot more complex than any old time paperback.

What the author really excels at is action sequences. Fights with fists, guns and knives are expertly described in a way that really draws the reader into the action and makes these scenes come alive.

This book makes a perfect companion read to Drake's heist/doublecross/massacre novel "Justified Sins."

Click away.

Follow me on Shelfari!

2011-07-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

I am expanding my "exposure" by creating more billboards; come and take a peek at my Shelfari profile.
http://www.shelfari.com/o1515185872

Ebook Format Problems = Free Ebook (x2) Replacement!

2011-07-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

I recently had to re-upload some of my ebooks because of format errors related to the text. Lines were jacked up and out of place, etc. My sincere apologies. If you have purchased one of the books and found that the offensive errors ruined your reading enjoyment, please contact me at briandrake88 at yahoo dot com and I will send you a replacement of the book you bought and a free copy (your choice) of one you haven't bought. All you have to do to prove your purchase is quote the last line of the book in question. Thanks!

New Blog Discovery: Peter Bogdanovich

2011-07-09T01:38:00.000-07:00

Wow, you never know what you're going to find on the internet, and sometimes you strike gold.

Film director Peter Bogdanovich has been a favorite of mine for some time, not only because of his terrific films. I can't name a favorite but The Cat's Meow--about some nastiness aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht--is one of them. Watch it and you'll realize he deserved the shellacking Orson Welles gave him in Citizen Kane--if the whispers are true. Then watch RKO 281--about the making of Kane--for the rest of the "reel" story.

I can listen to Bogdanovich's commentaries on classic films for hours--he has a great insight into movie making, well thought out remarks, and a wonderfully deep voice that demands attention. I have yet to read his book on Orson Welles, another of my favorite filmmakers, but will one day rectify that.

Bogdanovich has his own blog now, the "gold" I mentioned, and if you're into the history of classic films (he has a great write-up on Chaplin's City Lights that hits a home run in describing how amazing that movie is) click away and enjoy.

The Indie Scene: Paul Bishop

2011-07-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

I first noticed author Paul Bishop during a viewing of Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, the documentary by Max Allan Collins, where Bishop stated that if Mike Hammer was a real detective, he, as a bona fide police office, would end up booking him instead of assisting him a la Pat Chambers.

So I Googled Paul Bishop and was impressed with his background as a veteran detective and crime writer; when I began my ebook venture, Paul was kind enough to mention my work on his own blog, Bish's Beat, and has mentioned each of my books upon release. Thanks, Paul!

To repay the favor I wanted to interview Paul about his own ebook effort (reissues plus originals) and an upcoming reality television project which sounds great.

The books include his Calico Jack Walker/Tina Tamiko series, and his Fey Croaker series, both of which feature police protagonists, and an original series called Fight Card, the first story of which features a boxer fighting under the watchful eye of L.A. gangster Mickey Cohen. I have read parts of each book, and Paul has a crisp writing style and a narrative energy that really grabs you.

Here’s Paul….

BD: Who or what inspired Calico Jack Walker and Tina Tamiko from your first books, Hot Pursuit and Deep Water?

PB: When I first joined the L.A.P.D. in 1977, rumors abounded about on-duty cops driving either to Las Vegas or Tijuana in their police cruisers, getting their picture taken in front of a casino, or a moth-eaten donkey with a sombrero, and driving back to L.A. all in one eight hour and forty-five minute Morning Watch shift. I’d already started on my path to become a writer and I knew this legendary jape was the stuff from which cool action novels were born.

To lengthen the odds against my hero, Calico Jack Walker, I gave him a female rookie partner – Tina Tamiko – turned the run into a grudge match race against two other police officers, and put Calico’s pension at risk by having it all go down on his last shift before retirement.

This was wild and wooly stuff and I wanted to anchor it in the realism of a job I knew intimately. I’d read a lot of Wambaugh, and knew the kind of vibe I was trying to achieve, only with my own personal twist.

At the time I wrote Hot Pursuit, I had no idea there would be a sequel. When I first started writing, I had a tendency to put my protagonists through hell. By the end of the book, they were distinctly changed both in personality and circumstances. This made sequels very hard.

However, when I was asked for the sequel to Hot Pursuit, I found I did have another plot specific to L.A.P.D. I wanted to play out. In the late ‘80s, the police department would pile massive quantities of confiscated guns and illegal narcotics onto a barge, point it out into the Pacific, and dump the contents several miles offshore. Eventually, environmental concerns – including beached whales found to have PCP and other drugs in their dissected brains – brought this practice to a halt.

With Calico retired to run a charter fishing business and Tina promoted to detective, it gave me a perfect scenario to play out in Deep Waters – the story of the planned hijacking of the last property barge with guns and narcotics aboard.

BD: Fey Croaker is a great character in her Detective Fey Croaker L.A.P.D. Novels. Was there anyone in particular who inspired her?

PB: All of my long-term partners on the job have been female. I learned a ton from all of them. In my opinion, the average woman in law enforcement is much better than the average man – and yes, I know saying that is sacrilege to many. Women on the job are natural problem solvers and can instinctively deescalate potentially violent situations far quicker and easier than their male counterparts because they are not hung up on their own machismo.

Working for so many years with female partners, I saw firsthand how they were mistreated by bureaucracy, how every time they turned around they were being hit on sexually. It got to the point where I’d heard every pick-up line in the book a hundred times used on my partners. I got really tired of it, so I had some inkling of how they felt.

I also came to understand why female cops have a very hard time sustaining personal relationships outside of the job. And through investigating sexually related crimes for thirty plus years, I came to believe the majority of females have some kind of sexual abuse – almost always unreported – in their background. This was inside knowledge, and I wanted to bring it to the character of Fey Croaker.

Before I had even started writing the first book, I had plotted out a four book story arc for Fey’s personal life. I knew each book would contain a standalone plot, but would also be designed to isolate Fey more and more personally, before forcing her to deal with her demons in the fourth novel.

So, Fey is a combination of many of the great female detectives with whom I’ve had the honor of working. And the best feeling was when I would be approached by female law enforcement officers who had read the book and demanded to be told how I knew this stuff – it meant I’d gotten it right.

I also had a blast creating the crew of detectives who work for Fey. I need them to be a mixed lot so I had plenty of grist to play with while keeping the plots rolling along.

A reviewer labeled the series as Prime Suspect colliding with Ed McBain’s 87^th precinct with a California twist. I really liked the description because it cut to the heart of what the series was about for me.

BD: Please explain a bit about how you chose the traits of your characters, what you wanted them to express to a reader, and if you found those traits in real-life equivalents or not.

PB: I strive to create flawed characters who really try to do the right thing in difficult situations. They don’t always accomplish it, but they always try. I like putting my characters into situations where they are finally pushed to put everything they cherish or think they cherish on the line – and then push them over that line.

I’ve found that type of dedication in many of the detectives with whom I have worked or who have worked for me. Law enforcement in Los Angeles has had its share of violent controversy, like any big city department – or little city, for that matter – but in my experience, those who violate the law under the banner of their badge are the very small minority.

For ten years, I ran a sex crimes unit with 28 detectives – to a man and woman, they felt called to that particular investigative discipline. Every day they did their job to the best of their ability, sometimes under adverse and very dangerous circumstances, and they never flinched. I want to capture that in my characters.

BD: Why did you choose to write about the police?

PB: I chose to use cops and detectives as literary foils because law enforcement excited and still excites me. I felt I could bring to the genre the sort of realism that comes from having done the job. There is nothing like breaking a big case, coming up with the one piece of evidence that makes sense of everything.

In my particular investigative discipline it’s all about interrogation. I get a huge charge going into the ‘box’ and getting a suspect to talk to me, to tell me not only what they did, but why they did it – and I want to capture that feeling on the page.

That said, I’ve also written westerns, sports novels, and documentary films, so my writing is not exclusively cops and robbers.

BD: When I was a radio news reporter and wanted to write about somebody in that line of work, I found there was a ton I didn't know about my own job (!) and I needed to research those blank spots to make my story work. Did you have the same experience with writing about police officers? If so, did that surprise you?

PB: Yes! There is always a surprising amount of questions you come up with about your own career when you start writing about it. You think; how do we do this, or how does this process occur, and you have to start calling people to find out. The good thing is you know who to call and you can get access to them.

BD: Who inspired you to write and how have those authors influenced your writing?

PB: There have been a number of novels and authors, during different decades of my life who have provided inspiration The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham inspired me in my late teens, not only to write, but to live life.

Mr Bishop Comes Up for Air

In my twenties, I discovered Nevil Shute’s Round The Bend and Trustee From The Tool Room, both of which inspired me to create characters with depth.

Also in my twenties and through into my thirties, the novels of Dick Francis further showed me the kinds of characters/heroes I wanted to create. Ian Chapel, the hero of my novel Penalty Shot, was specifically created in the Dick Francis hero mold. I literally took apart a Dick Francis’ paperback, laid all the pages out on the floor, and then charted how his plot was paced and tried to create the same feeling for Penalty Shot.

Authors who have personally inspired me as friends an mentors include Dennis Lynds, Lawrence Block, and Lee Goldberg. All three taught me not just about the art or writing, but also the business of writing.

BD: Does a single novel stand in your memory as the book that made you want to write?

PB: Thoreau’s Walden Pond has stayed with me from the first time I read it in high school, I wanted to be able to articulate those kinds of ideas on paper. If I was shipwrecked on a deserted desert isle, it is the one book I would want to have with me.

BD: Are you going to only do your backlist as ebooks, or will we see more originals, like Felony Fists, from you too?

PB: Felony Fists and the other books in the "Fight Card" series are only the first of a number of planned projects set to come out between now and the middle of next year. E-book publishing has completely changed the paradigm for mid-list or niche authors such as myself. We are now in control of our words, our covers, our blurbs, our marketing, our futures . . . The kings of publishing are dead! Long live the revolution!

BD: Tell us about your publishing background and when your books originally appeared.

PB: I began my writing career freelancing for magazines. I sold my first short story to one of the last pulp magazines, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. I then fell into an opportunity to write westerns under the publishing house pseudonym Pike Bishop.

From there, I wrote my first cop novel, Citadel Run, now published under the new e-book title Hot Pursuit – with a much better cover! Five other novels followed over the next ten years. All were mildly successful, but none really broke out.

I’d been dabbling in writing for television, but it was Lee Goldberg who gave me my first major episodic scriptwriting break on Diagnosis: Murder. Lee is still kind enough to maintain my first Diagnosis: Murder episode, "The Last Resort", as his favorite of all the episodes in the series. He is far too kind, but he opened the door for me to do more scripts for Diagnosis: Murder and then onto such shows as L.A. Dragnet, The New Detectives, and Navy Seals: The Untold Stories. One History Mystery episode, The Magic Bullet, in which I made my screen debut, still seems to show at least once a month on some obscure cable channel at an insomniac hour.

The episodic television work lead to doing the script for an independent feature film, Beat The Drum. The script writing was fun, fast, and paid a lot better than mid-list novel writing, so that’s what I stayed with doing.

All of this was done, of course, while still working full time as a detective with the L.A.P.D. running various sex crimes units around the city. I’m a very lucky guy being able to dual careers I love – putting words on paper and putting bad guys in jail.

Now, however, I’m excited to see my backlist given new e-life, and even more excited be being back writing novels like Felony Fists in a whole new publishing environment.

BD: I know a former Chicago detective who once told me of a case where he knew the suspect, a wealthy individual with political connections, was guilty as hell, but he couldn't prove it. He wants to write a "fictionalized" version of the case and, as he says, "fry the punk on paper." Have your own unsolved cases inspired any of your stories?

PB: I have to tell you, most of the bad guys I’ve chased have been caught and done their time. I chased one guy for two years, even going down to Mexico twice chasing leads on his whereabouts. One day, out of the blue, he walked into the station, looking like Howard Hughes in his hermit days, and gave himself up saying he couldn’t take being pursued anymore.

On the page, I like to incorporate the gallows humor from the life around me in the squad room. On rare occasions, I’ve taken a real life situation and fictionalized it out to the Nth-degree. However, by the time the full fictional plot plays out, there is little of the real life situation left beyond the inspiration for the idea.

When I wrote Sand Against The Tide, now rechristened Deep Water in the new e-version, West L.A. Division, where it was set was the most unknown area in the L.A.P.D. The plot involved a black football player turned sports broadcaster who is accused of a series of murders. I’d almost finished the book when the O. J. Simpson case occurred in West L.A. and busted my plot wide open. It caused the biggest rewrite I’ve ever had to do.

BD: Tell us about your current television effort.

PB: Imagine getting a phone call at work one day from a vice president of a major production company who asks you if you’d come down and see the casting director for a new show for which they think you’d be perfect – and the wild and crazy thing is you are! Life never ceases to amaze.

Take The Money And Run premieres on ABC on August 2, 2011, at 9 PM. It is a reality game show, from the producers of the Amazing Race, Bertram Van Munster and Jerry Bruckheimer, in which average citizens are pitted against law enforcement officers for a prize of $100,000.

My professional partner, nationally recognized prosecutor Mary Hanlon Stone, and I are regulars on the show, using our interrogation skills to try and pry the truth out of the citizen contestants in order for the law enforcement contestants to find the hidden briefcase full of cash.

We’ve filmed six episodes around the country and it was both exhausting and incredibly satisfying. I can’t wait for it to premier. I think the audience is in for some big surprises.

The Indie Scene: Jochem Vandersteen

2011-07-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

I first discovered Dutchman and fellow crime scribe Jochem Vandersteen on the Thrilling Detective Website, which published his short story Stalking Amanda one month before my first short story on the site appeared (under my real name--I challenge you to try and find it!). All this to say that I was impressed with Stalking Amanda and have kept an eye open for Jochem's future efforts ever since.

I'm happy to report that Jochem is taking the indie plunge with a collection of short stories featuring security specialist / private eye Noah Milano, called Tough As Leather. You can buy it on Amazon.

Tough As Leather is not the only book Jochem has available; the other is a novel, White Knight Syndrome. Start with the short stories to get a real feel for what Jochem is doing. Noah Milano is a great character. I think he's the first private eye to be a young buck into the things that young bucks are into. His back story is what grabs me, though. Noah comes from a family hip deep in the Mafia, yet he wants nothing to do with that lifestyle. He's "gone rogue" and the stories drip with the conflict resulting from that break.

But enough... here is my interview with Jochem:

BD: I like the idea of Noah Milano being an outsider. He's not an ex-cop; he's not a bored ex-solider who got into PI work; he's kicking the teeth of his family and going off on his own. What inspired his background? Did you choose it to be different, or do you have plans of making the struggle with his mob-connected relatives, and the promise he made to his mother not to hurt people, a key part of each story?

JVDS: From the get-go I was sure I wanted to write a PI novel. I also knew that I wanted to make my PI just a bit different from the others that came before. Some differences were his age (younger), taste in music (not jazz or blues but metal), profession (security specialist rather than official PI). The main difference was his background. I'd seen too many ex-cops and decided I had to come up with a past that wasn't seen before. So who could be a tough guy with gangster connections and NOT be in law enforcement... A crook of course! I also decided I DID want the character to be a noble one like Marlowe, Spenser and McGee. So I came up with the redemption angle, his wish to be a good man in a bad world. The tv show Xena showed me what you could do with a concept like that, silly as that show could be. Sometimes his background won't be very important, but especially in longer stories and in the future we will see how his struggle with his family evolves.

BD: Why set the stories in the US? Why not your home country?

JVDS: I grew up on US PI stories, so that's what I wanted to write. The LA setting especially fascinates me.

BD: Name a contemporary crime writer you think should be better known and why.

JVDS: There's several. David Levien and David Housewright manage to turn out amazing stories with fantastic tough guy characters and sell okay but not enough. Also, Wayne Dundee has been at this game very long and should get more credit for hanging in there.

BD: What did you do to reach out to the major authros who commented on your stories, and what was your reaction when they responded so positively?

JVDS: Through the blog www.sonsofspade.tk I interviewed a lot of PI writers. I just asked them to take a look at my stories and most were happy to do so, great guys and girls as they are. It was very rewarding to get such positive responses. I don't sell a lot of books but I'm in this business to entertain, and if you can entertain your idols that is great.

BD: Can you give us a glimpse into Noah's future after TOUGH AS LEATHER?

JVDS: I've got several plans. He will be popping up in several e-zines in the future for sure. Also, I'm playing with ebooks more and more. I've got a new Split Novel coming up with another PI writer and I've got plans to release a Kindle magazine featuring several PI stories from several writers. There will be a Noah Milano tale in there as well. A lot of it depends on the sales and interest for Tough As Leather, though.

More Love for Hammett...And Cigars!

2011-06-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

You never know what you're going to learn about your favorite people, be them authors or actors or whatever, but today I learned that Dashiell Hammett enjoyed cigars...maybe as much as I do.

I hope he didn't light it with a Zippo!

Hammett expert and San Francisco resident Don Herron reported the discovery on his wonderful Hammett-related web site. Apparently a shot of Hammett about to light a cigar appears in a film about composer Harold Arlen. You can't tell what kind of cigar it is but to me it looks like a five-inch corona. I bet it was a Clear Havana or another Cuban cigar. The closest I have ever come to a Cuban is what I'm smoking as I type this, a Churchill-sized Havana Blend from the Finck Cigar Company. This cigar is blended, the company says, with Cuban tobacco from the 1959 crop (it's 30% Cuban; the rest of the filler is made up of non-Cuban tobacco). I don't know if that's advertising hype or not, but this is one of the best and one of the smoothest cigars I have ever smoked. It's very mild and creamy and tastes great. I'll be buying more of these, for sure, to go along with my regular supply of Punch and Mr. B. Right now I have two humidors full of stogies; I think a total of 90. That should cover me for the next two weeks! The only downside of the Havana Blend is that eventually they will run out of Cuban tobacco. That will be a sad day indeed. But in the meantime, I shall light up and enjoy!

Call me a geek but this discovery is pretty neat. When I write, there's always a cigar going. I hate when the ash gets on my keyboard, but that's my fault. I wonder if Hammett had the same routine when he wrote (I know he smoked cigarettes based on other pictures). He certainly, as we all know, put away a ton of whiskey, and I can report I in no way can keep up with his consumption (no pun intended), but Dash and I share a love of stogies and that is pretty cool.

Every now and then the question arises of which figure in history would you want to have dinner with. I've never been able to answer the question to my satisfaction, but now I would say Hammett. And after dinner, we would light up a couple of Cubans and kill a few bottles of whiskey and talk writing and politics and hopefully not kill each other in the process. Of course, cigar people are friendly people, so even if we disagree on things we could still be civil.

The Indie Scene: L.J. Sellers

2011-06-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

L.J. Sellers

Since becoming an "indie author" I have not read much from other indies, but I am in the process of correcting this oversight. One of the first indie authors I have tried is L.J. Sellers. She has a book out called The Sex Club, the first in her Detective Jackson series, and it's a winner. The story involves a group of teen girls engaging in less than savory activities, and at first glance you might think it's an exploitative work designed to titillate (a man might write it that way, I'm sorry to say), but that is not the case. Do not let the title or story description fool you. The Sex Club is a solid police thriller with a great opening hook--a real grabber--and Sellers has a way, though the opening dialogue between two characters, of not only drawing you into the story but making you feel sympathetic for the characters, a trick she carries through the entire novel. If she could find a way to bottle that skill, she wouldn't have to get rich selling books.

The best news? Sellers has written more books in the Jackson series and is on her way to having quite an extensive output; she will be on my "must read" list for the foreseeable future.

Give it a try. You can find the book on Amazon and she has both electronic and print editions available.

Anonymous-9 Unmasked

2011-06-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

So, have you heard the news?

Of course you have.

Several years ago a terrific author named Anonymous-9 appeared on the scene with a set of mind-blowing short stories. Who was this person who claimed, in interviews, to spend hours toiling over whether or not to use a comma in the middle of a sentence? In one instance, a bio stated, "I'm anonymous for a reason, jackass." Which, of course, made me love he/she even more.

Well, now we know. Anonymous-9 is unmasked.

Click away.

Meet Anonymous-9: The Wonderful Elaine Ash!

BULLET FOR ONE--Available Now!

2011-06-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce the "publication" of Bullet for One, my new crime novel featuring private eye John Coburn. If you click on the cover seen to the right of your screen, the link will take you to Amazon. Special thanks and acknowledgement to Rebecca Forster for designing the cover.

Here's the description:

JOHN COBURN IS A PRIVATE EYE WHO WON'T LET THE LAW STAND IN THE WAY OF JUSTICE.

Five years ago John Coburn watched as his father was gunned down by a masked man. Tortured by the fact that the killer was never caught, Coburn fights the feelings of failure that haunt his every waking moment.

Now, history has repeated itself. When his best friend Felix is murdered after agreeing to protect a witness, John Coburn dives in to catch the killer before the police and FBI. Battling official law enforcement and his own demons, Coburn turns over every lead, rattles every cage, and stretches his own moral code to the breaking point. As he digs deeper into a mystery that involves a team of thieves, corrupt businessmen, and a mafia kingpin with a price on his head, Coburn realizes that revenge has a cost he cannot calculate.

If he fails, can he live with another ghost?

If he succeeds, can he live with the consequences?

James Bond: Licence Revisited

2011-06-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

When did you fall in love with books? For me it would have been around age 12 or 13. I was in sixth grade, we were preparing for summer, and one of my teachers took us to the library in an effort to get us reading less we spend all summer on the couch watching television (which I'm sure 99% of the kids did anyway).

For me it was a perfect storm. A tradition with me and my father, since 1983, had been to go see the new James Bond film when it came out (Dad always had to see them before me to make sure it wasn't too naughty) and when I found out James Bond had been a book series, I wanted to find an example. This library field trip provided the opportunity.

Well, I found For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy, which happened to be two of the most recent Bond films at the time, and my summer was set. I also began reading every action/adventure and spy book I could get my hands on. Ludlum to Forsyth and so on. Some of the books were out of my range of comprehension and I didn't "get" them; reading some of them as an adult, I smile at my naivete of the time and enjoy the heck out of those novels now.

Also on my reading list that summer were the new James Bond adventures written by John Gardner.

Mr. John Gardner

Over the years I have kept my Fleming books but the Bond continuation novels have not survived, being donated or given away, but recent talk of the Gardner books being reprinted sparked my interest in giving him another go. At a Half Price Books in town I found a pristine first edition hardcover of Gardner's Licence Renewed, his first Bond adventure, and one that occupies a special place in my mind. It was during that aforementioned summer that I read Licence Renewed while laying on the living room couch, trying to block out the noise of MTV which my sister insisted on watching at loud volume in the next room. Well, I was hooked. Licence Renewed was a great book. I am enjoying my second reading, but there is little that I remember about the story. Snippets only, really. Bits of dialogue are familiar. So it's as if this is my first time, and it's great fun.

Gardner updated Bond for the 1980s and we can argue whether or not that was necessary (at least he wasn't "rebooted" as he is in the new Deaver monstrosity--I sure hope the new book was printed on recycled paper as I weep at the thought of good trees being sacrificed for that poor excuse for a Bond novel). Gardner turned out a good story, but one of my biggest criticisms is that the author could not decide on how to arm Bond. In the first four books, he changed guns every time, not settling down with an ASP 9mm pistol until Role of Honour, if my memory is correct.

In Licence Renewed the gun described is a seven-shot 9mm Browning. I am a pistol enthusiast and know of no such gun--for me, the Browning nine-millimeter is the Model 1935 Hi-Power with the 13-shot magazine capacity. With some detective work on Google, based on Gardner's description, I have identified the unknown gun as a Browning Model 1903. While I'm sure it does the job it was designed for it's hardly "cool enough" to be a Bond gun and certainly nothing anybody would want to run out and buy, as was (and remains) the case with the Walther PPK. I believe it is in the second or third Gardner book that Bond is issued with a Heckler & Koch P7, a wonderful pistol, and certainly a gun worthy of replacing the Walther (as is the ASP). But a 1903 Browning antique? Good grief, John, what were you thinking? (Coincidentally, the original British first edition features a painting of the 1903 Browning on the cover, thereby confirming my own investigation. Yes, I get quite bored sometimes.)

Unfortunately Mr. Gardner is no longer alive to explain why he chose the Browning, but he left us with a set of entertaining books to read, even if his Bond series was on life-support after Icebreaker. He wrote a lot of good books outside of Bond, and will hopefully, one day, get the proper respect he deserves. I enjoyed his books as a kid, and fully intend on enjoying them again as an adult, and together he and Ian Fleming, that long ago summer, started me on the path to writing my own stories. Gardner will always be aces with me.

Coming Soon....THE ROGUE GENTLEMAN series!

2011-06-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

Here is a sneak peak at the covers of my new series, The Rogue Gentleman. The series will debut with a "pilot" novel, a full-length adventure, followed by a numbered continuity of novellas that will be stand-alone stories with a common subplot running through each. The novellas will appear once a month and I am currently writing up a storm to meet the schedule.

Who is the Rogue? Throw The Saint and James Bond into a martini shaker, shake until ice cold, and add an American accent and you have it. You won't find any of the bleakness contained in my crime novels; instead, there will be high adventure mixed with humor, lots of guns and things getting blowed up real good, and a few fabulous babes thrown in for flavor.

The Rogue himself is in reality Steve Dane, former US agent and mercenary who now rights wrongs wherever he finds them. Assisting him is sexy former FSB operative Nina Talikova. I've given them a Nick-and-Nora vibe so along with the gun fights there is a lot of alcohol consumption. A lot. Nina loves her vodka... and her nine-millimeter SIG-Sauer... and Steve Dane... but not always in that order. There was the temptation to have Dane mix with a different woman in every story, but I decided I liked the idea of a one-woman man much better. A case of herpes Dane does not need.

Anyway the Rogue is on the way. I hope you enjoy the stories.

Coming Soon....BULLET FOR ONE

2011-06-18T15:19:00.000-07:00

I thought you might like to see the cover for my next ebook, a crime thriller called Bullet for One. Maybe I should post an excerpt. I'll think about that! It's a private eye story in the Spillane mold that I wrote ten years ago but put it in a drawer because there were so many other PI books at the time I didn't think mine would break through. So I wrote other books. After going through it a few months ago, I saw it had some potential now that so much time had gone by, so I cleaned it up and prepared it for electronic publication.

Chasing The Rabbit

2011-06-17T18:25:00.000-07:00

Today I visited a used bookstore the likes of which I haven't seen in ages. Books stacked one atop the other in haphazard fashion, simply because there's no more room. You could smell the old books and the dust they had accumulated and maybe even some mildew from the wooden walls that seemed in dire need or repair. I loved it. I finally found a good copy of The Ipcress File by Len Deighton, the acquisition of which has been like trying to hit a home run with a toothpick.

On my way to the counter I saw a locked cabinet in which sat a goldmine of Gold Medal and other vintage paperbacks. Such names as Peter Rabe and John D. MacDonald and Harry Whittington and Jim Thompson got my attention and oh my gosh I started getting excited. An elderly lady with black curly hair sat behind the counter working a crossword. I asked her, "May I open this?"

"No," said she, setting down the crossword and folding her arms. "Those are MY books. Not for sale for a million dollars."

She smiled and showed me her yellow teeth. She was a cranky old bitch.

Oh, well. I've been burned in ages past spending too much money on an old Gold Medal only to find I couldn't open the pages without the book falling apart. The best of Rabe, Whittington, and John D. is readily available, but it's always a treat to actually hold a real Gold Medal or a real Dell or even the rare Lion in my hand. I think those of us who write in the crime and mystery genre look at those books, and the pulp magazines that came before them, the way an archeologist looks at an ancient ruin. This is where we came from, this is what inspires us.

Those old books are great because not only are they short and to the point unlike the doorstops produced today (I’m looking at you, Ted Bell—600 pages in a paperback???), but the best of those writers were forging new ground in American literature. Today, we don't see any new ground, at least I don’t think we do (and here I go complaining again....). It's almost as if all the pioneering has been done. Somebody else built the airplane, other men landed on the moon, somebody else drove a production car over 200 miles per hour. Those of us that have come after have no more worlds to conquer.

Maybe that's why so much of today's entertainment is nonsense. The new inventions are time-wasters that serve no real purpose other than to make us spend money. Artists are not doing anything new, just trying to outdo somebody else in terms or shock or awe, or copying what somebody else did; it gets tiresome.

Perhaps the public plays a role, too, in gravitating to the simple and the comfortable. They won't accept anything that isn't a carbon copy of what they read or watched last week. In a recent spy novel I picked up, the hero is still called "the best we have". How many "best" agents are there? I thought James Bond was the best. Then Matt Helm was the best. Then Jack Bauer was the best. Somebody needs to make up their mind. How many "hard as nails" cops who “break all the rules” pound a beat? Of course, these days’ heroes are more “flawed”—usually divorced alcoholics "haunted" by the past. Gag me.

How many authors are household names today? When I grew up you had King, Forsythe, Ludlum, Clancy, Grisham, Rice--and I'm probably leaving out a few. If you hadn't read their books, you at least knew who they were. Today? Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling. Stephanie Meyer. Maybe James Patterson. That's it.

The reason I like the old timers is because their stories were mostly fresh and the directions they charted were new and exciting, and I read them because I hope some of that rubs off on me. I'm not sure today's writers have the same effect. Not that there aren't talented people putting pen to paper, there just aren't enough of them, and those that are claiming new territory and charting new directions aren't selling as well as they should--or at all. It boggles my mind how writers like Max Allan Collins or Rebecca Forster aren't read by more people. Everything Collins does is amazing. When he goes for the shocker plot point or the twist ending, you're genuinely shocked and surprised, and not because somebody's head got lopped off and tossed in a duffel bag. The last three books Forster wrote were the best nail-biting legal suspense stories ever. Where is she after three books that were less than successful? Dropped by her agent and publisher. Those three books? Out of print. She’s going the indie route now and doing well. But Dan Brown's drivel flies out the door and Patterson writes more books than humanly possible. It's a crime.

I guess I wasn't looking at a gold mine of old books, I was trying to reach a gold mine of creativity and originality that remains elusive. But that's okay. As long as there's something to chase, there's something to strive for. It's when you catch the rabbit that life loses its purpose and all that's left to do is try and find a way to leave behind a good-looking corpse.

Swimming With the Saint, or: A Halo Ain’t a Life Preserver!

2011-06-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

The Saint Overboard, one of only a handful of full-length Simon Templar novels (the rest being short story collections), is another great thriller from Leslie Charteris. It is hard for me to say the novel has flaws. It does not. The story is carefully crafted. The scenery is carefully detailed. The dialogue and description are carefully written. The characters are carefully developed. The underwater scenes are tense and terrific. The ending is a kicker—Mike Hammer would be proud of how Templar disposes of his nemesis. The Saint is not a wimp. There is nothing about this book that is not 100% up to standard. But it lacks something. What it lacks is the humor of other Saint stories—the short stories in particular, and the hilarious antics of The Saint’s Getaway, another of the novels.

Overboard is a much darker Saint adventure, and a lot like The Saint in New York. In this episode, Templar battles Kurt Vogel, a criminal who searches for sunken ships laden with treasure and steals the treasures before the ships can be properly recovered. Loretta Page, the “Saint Girl” of the piece, who works for a detective agency tracking Vogel, informs the Saint of the plot after Templar rescues her from one of Vogel’s henchmen. The Saint weaves his way into Vogel’s confidence to stop him (he is a dreadful chap, after all, and a murderer, too) and to grab some of the treasure for himself (even the happy highwayman needs a paycheck now and then!). The suspense will make you hold your breath. You will find Vogel one of the best villains ever written. He could have been a great arch enemy for Simon Templar; the book could have alternatively been titled The Saint Meets His Match. He is just plain creepy, guv.

But a serious Saint equals a boring Saint, or at least a less entertaining Saint. For all its seriousness, this could have been a James Bond novel (imagine Bond on holiday when he stumbles onto the plot and either takes it upon himself or gets permission from Her Majesty's Government to pursue…). There are only two funny moments. Both are short.

Mr. Charteris Plots Next Novel

I did not read this one as quickly as I have other Saint books; I also did not read New York very quickly as it is similarly dark and humorless. But both Overboard and New York contain some of the best writing I have ever come across, great sequences you want to frame and study and hope that one day you can write half as well as Charteris. But neither are my favorite Saint novels. He does comedy and adventure so well you want the mix every time, as if it were your favorite highball; when he does not provide that mix, you still enjoy it, but know it could have been better.

The Saint Overboard also suffered from a lack of Templar’s Gal Friday, Patricia Holm. I fell in love with old Pat during The Saint Plays With Fire and The Saint’s Getaway. They are great together, have a wonderful relationship, and share terrific banter. But she is missing from quite a few Saint books, and I wish she were not (there is supposedly a story behind her removal from the series but whether or not it is a canonical story I am not sure so we will not mention it here). Instead, we get a “Saint Girl” and it is not as good. We know Loretta, like every Bond Girl (except Tiffany Case), will be gone by the next story.

My next Saintly reading will be one of the short story sets; I have two more Saint novels to go through and I will save them for later. I do not think Patricia Holm appears in either of them, damn and blast.

Why British Thriller Writers Are Better Than American

2011-05-30T18:48:00.000-07:00

Boy, I'm really fixin' to offend some of y'all with this article, but I have lately been reading a large amount of thrillers from British authors, and I have come to the decision that British practitioners of the thriller are much better at it than their American counterparts and there is much one can learn by studying how they do it.

How can that be, you say. British thrillers are slow and clunky and there isn't any action until the end--if any. Some just, you know, end with a half a whimper and a slow wheeze, like the British Empire itself. Thrillers are supposed to "thrill", you say. Fast pace, mystery, action, and naked ladies! Americans do it better because of those things!

First, let's not insult our British cousins (they have the best dentists on the planet, after all.) Second, British thrillers are slow, yes. But if all you see if a lack of gunfire, explosions, and naked ladies, you're missing out. The four authors I am using as my example do not write "slow" books. They write books that develop in layers, each one more complex than the last, each character element stronger than the last, until you get to a climax that makes you hold your breath and beg for more once you've turned the last page.

Who are these authors? Ian Fleming. Eric Ambler. Frederick Forsyth. Stella Rimington.

They write carefully detailed stories, so detailed that you feel included in the action. You know the characters. We know The Jackal better than we know Jason Bourne. And we don't even know The Jackal's real name.

Stella Rimington, with her female protagonist Liz Carlyle, is the only female author I have read who can make me identify with a feminine point of view. That's a scary thing to this male carbon unit! But Liz is drawn so well that you think she could be your neighbor, girlfriend, wife, sister, or concubine (if you're into that sort of thing). Check out her 2005 debut, At Risk. You will be glued to the page.

Eric Ambler is the expert at using the Everyman hero. Nobody does it better (sorry, Ian). Journey into Fear, my favorite Ambler, has 90% of the story take place in the confines of a boat. The hero is trying to get home. Somebody on the boat wants to kill him. He mixes with the other passengers and the results are just magical. He gives you 200 pages of nail-biting intrigue and suspense without a shot being fired or a bra being undone or something going kaboom. In fact, I think the final battle between the hero and his potential killer takes up two of the final four pages. And what a payoff! It's one of the best climactic battles I have ever read.

Ian Fleming. He wrote James Bond with a much faster pace than some of his contemporaries. There's a little more action. Maybe a little less character building (though I'm sure that's debatable), but he does make you "see" his characters with their interesting physical traits. Each book is carefully plotted and developed. Notice how I keep saying that. The attention to almost every conceivable detail is what sets these British authors above Americans, and when done right, it is an absolute joy to read. Most of the Bond books under-promise and over-deliver in regards to their entertainment value, and if you read nothing else by Fleming pick up Casino Royale, Moonraker, and From Russia, With Love (then read the second chapter of Dr. No to find out how Bond survives the end of From Russia).

Frederick Forsyth. Wow. What do you say about Freddie? My only complaint is that he doesn't rely much on dialog and tends to data-dump for pages and pages, but every loose thread comes together at the end in ways you won't expect. Yes, sometimes he hurries his endings as if he's run out of paper. "Ooops, only got three pages left and I'm too lazy to go buy more so we'll just zip this up. Right! Smashing bit of work! Time for a crisp!" But despite that, his books are like what Donald Westlake described as the best kind of book: a snowball with a rock in it. But which of his books should I recommend? Try Icon. Avenger. The Devil's Alternative. The Dogs of War. The Odessa File. And don't forget one of his short story collections, No Comebacks.

For me, British thrillers are simply more satisfying than American thrillers (and this from somebody who once worshiped at the feet of Robert Ludlum), but there is one exception, an American who belongs with the best of the Brits. I nominate David Morrell as the best American thriller writer. I do not know of any other American author who loads his books with as much action while developing sharp characters and telling a story as layered and complex as he, all of which is backed up with a tight writing style that I envy very much. The Brotherhood of the Rose should be memorized. I challenge you to read it and ever forget Chris and Saul and Erika and Eliot. Or the heartbreaking ending. All you writers out there: study that book for an example of pitch-perfect pacing, plot, and structure and you will get an education you cannot put a price on.

Now, Americans do crime fiction ten times better than the Brits. Any piece of British crime fiction seems like it imitates what the Yanks have done first, just relocated to the UK where the food is bland and everybody talks funny. But that's another article.

So what does this mean for American authors? I think more time should be taken with the development of plot and characters and less time spent on things getting blowed up real good. But I hear from authors who have many thrillers under their belt who say that American editors don't like that sort of thing. If that is true, it's unfortunate, and once again proves the "legacy publishing" doesn't know everything.

Avoiding Work

2011-05-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but lately I seem to find any excuse whatsoever to do anything except read and write. Like today. I'm actually getting laundry done instead of working on the new book--which I need to do. I also have another story to outline, and another after that... I got stuff to get done! So far all I have managed to do is clean the house, which needed it, and do the aforementioned laundry, which also needs doing. When I sat at my computer forty minutes ago to start working, all I did was surf around the internet and argue with pals about politics on Facebook. I thought a post about the slothful activity may get me in the mood to turn off the internet and start working. I think it has. Oh, first I need to check my favorite cigar site for something...

What I Have Learned Through E-Publishing

2011-05-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

You never realize what you have learned until you actually learn it.

I have been publishing ebooks for over a year now, and I am pleased with the results. But I have discovered something that should be mentioned.

Quit reading stuff on the internet.

I do not mean stop surfing or researching or clicking on those pictures you should not be clicking on, but I mean stop reading about e-publishing and what people think about it. Quit clicking on blogs where it is the subject of discussion, or web sites, or forums, or what-have-you. There is nothing to learn there. You will only find three things (and it is always the same three things):

1) The Cheerleaders. These are the folks who are carrying the flaming log against the wall of the castle. They are believers! "There is no God but Konrath, and Hocking is his prophet."

2) The Nay-sayers. This group is usually made up of out-of-print mid-listers, critics, and folks in "the industry" who think self-pubbers should be thrown into a pit of lions, stabbed, and then shot (we're hard to kill) because we are somehow cheapening the Sacred Written Word that only a select few are allowed to write. "There is no God but the Publisher, and the Editor is his prophet." (Where the Agent falls in that chant I leave to your imagination.)

3) The Wait-and-See Gang. This group thinks electronic self-pubbing is interesting but they are not sure it will last and they want to hang out with both sides so they stay on the fence. "There may be a God, but we need more evidence."

The self-publishing debate has been repeating itself since it began. After the first day, the arguments did not change. Nothing more can be said that has not been said already, but that does not stop folks from continuing to scream about it because they think they can change somebody's mind.

If you are trying to learn more about the business of self-publishing, that is a different story. There are plenty of forums where you can pick up information to help you find readers, and those sites are valuable indeed, but eventually it all sounds the same, too, and all you want to do is say fuhgetaboutit and get back to work on your next book. Which is what you should be doing anyway.

So my mid-year new-year resolution (I just made that up!) is to quit reading about self-pubbing and do more self-pubbing. Watch this space for details--three new titles are on the way.

Amen.

Revisions, revisions

2011-05-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

I love revisions, yes I do! I love revision, how ‘bout you?

I think revising material is my favorite part of writing a new manuscript, especially one that has been so well outlined that the basic foundation is solidly in place. When that happens, revisions are a matter of playing in the house you have built from scratch, and seeing what improvements you can make along the way.

The current example of this is The Rogue Gentleman, a story featuring an international adventurer who rights wrongs wherever he finds them, which I will release as an e-book this summer. I am so excited about this story and the characters that I am going to immediately start a sequel. In fact, while planning the sequel, a line about a character inspired yet another sequel, so you can expect many adventures for the Rogue and his band of merry marauders.

Anyway… I have been going over the book and, from my notes, am making various changes. This manuscript needs a lot of work, really. It was written under a cloud of personal turbulence which has, thankfully, settled down. This manuscript is all action and the story, but the detail that makes such stories come alive is missing. What I am doing is fleshing out scenes with descriptions, adding character back story where appropriate, and chipping away the stuff that does not work. And this is where the fun comes in. Further research on a police character, for example, allowed me to include bits of physical detail and family history not present in the original draft, and I am now sorry that this particular policeman is only in the book for a short time. I would certainly love to have him take part in more of the action, but forcing him to do so would not work. So out he goes after the first act. He can always come back in a sequel…or his own book.

I was reading a Frederick Forsyth novel this week called Avenger and it’s a crackling good read if you have not had the pleasure, and one thing Forsyth does very well is give detailed histories of his characters. I have been afraid to do that, because such detail, I always believed, bogs down the narrative and never really, to my mind, made much of a difference. Not so with Forsyth’s style, which means the practitioners who led me to my earlier opinion were not very good at that portion of their craft. I have emulated the Forsyth Way as best as I could, careful to keep it short, and I must say the result is fantastic. The characters feel stronger to me than they had previously, and by keeping the bits spread out, a little here and a little there, I think, at the risk of being redundant, that the information really strengthens the whole show. This is a good thing. If I feel the characters are stronger surely readers will, too.

There are some authors who say they just make up their stories based on a slapdash outline and never have to revise; I think that that is promotional mumbo-jumbo. I wrote that way for 15 years while I was learning, thinking I was a hot shot, only to be told that everything I wrote fell flat. I started outlining, giving characters more attention, adding details and descriptions and arcs, and the resulting improvement showed me that was the way to go. Perhaps you have had a similar experience. If not, give it a try. I think you will like it. I may not be as cool as those other guys, but who cares?

This is not my first experience with the Joy of Revision; I added a substantial portion to my recent effort, Show No Mercy, which had the same effect. At the time I wondered, as I do with every book, if I can pull it off again, but my effort on The Rogue Gentleman says yes indeed. Does every writer think that?

I cannot wait to release this book! Or the next one! I hope you like it, too.

New King Story Shows Why You Should Not Listen to Critics

2011-05-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to my Alligator Skin Required post, check out the latest from Stephen King at The Atlantic. Read the comments at the end of the story, and then convince yourself that you should listen to every critic you hear from. In the end you will know that the only thing you can do is write your story the best you can, and your way.

Alligator Skin Required

2011-05-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

Tough reviews and less-than-stellar reader feedback are par for the course when you're scribbling and making your scribbles available, and you either need a thick skin or you need to keep your scribbles in a drawer. How do I know this? Trust me, I know this.

Take my most recent novel, Show No Mercy. It's a spy story and a departure from my earlier crime novel efforts (all three books are available at the left) and has sold OK--just OK. (So far.) The other two books, my short story set and an action story both of which borrow heavily from the Black Mask school of crime fiction, have sold much better. When I try to specifically promote Show No Mercy, readers buy the other two instead. It makes one want to scream, but at least I have sales.

So where does the thick skin comes in? Example: Some may say the characterizations in Show No Mercy are a little thin; I say, I don't have enough feedback to agree. My editor didn't think there was a problem, so there are two who say there's a problem and one who doesn't. It's not exactly a push, but I have a reason to doubt the second critic because he's my father and he hasn't finished the book yet. I told him to finish the book before he committed to his remarks.

So, thick skin, and stick to your guns. I worked hard on making sure the characters had some life. Perhaps it was too subtle, but I thought it was layered pretty well. This is like the most recent James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, in some ways. There are those who think the movie is unintelligible rubbish and those who cheered at the end and watched it two or three times to enjoy the nuggets of prime storytelling that made us want to try the same thing. Why? Those of us who cheered finally had a James Bond movie that made us think and pay attention to what we were being shown rather than just have everything spoon fed to us. With all due respect to the Bond producers, as I've been a fan for ages, you can check your brain at the door when you turn on a 007 flick. Perhaps that's what the audience wants, but there are those of us who want a little more meat, too. Unfortunatnely the complainers were pretty loud so the next Bond movie will be as brainless as all the others. And I'll go watch that one, too. Maybe that's the case with Show No Mercy; perhaps it is not. I have no trouble sticking to my guns but there's no sense trying to fight an avalanche. Right now we hear rumbles but there is no reason to run.

I flat out refuse to spoon feed my audience. I think readers are smarter than that. Newspapers may be written at a fifth grade reading level, but that doesn't mean I have to do the same thing.

In the end, it's all in a day's work, and nothing is going in a drawer. Don't miss out on the important thing: people are reading my work (or your work) and feel strongly enough about it to make a comment. Mission accomplished!

First Person Singular with Narcissistic Tendencies

2011-04-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

I have been busy lately punching up an old manuscript called Bullet for One, a revenge tale featuring private eye John Coburn going after the killer of a friend. It's an unashamed I, the Jury riff and when you see it, you will know what I mean. The reason the edit has taken so long and has been so time consuming is that I wrote this book back in 1999, and I have learned a ton in the last ten years, so much so that what I am seeing in the script is nothing but overwritten whale vomit. But I think, deep down, underneath all those extra and unnecessary and redundant words (see what I mean?) is a really good story worth exposing.

Another problem I have discovered is the issue writing in the first-person has caused. The narrator is "I" this and "I" that and, boy, it sounds like he sure has narcissistic tendencies. It's all about him! There's too much "I" going on and my next edit will attempt to reshuffle lines so that "I did this, I did that, I did it again" doesn't happen so much. But it has made me wonder... if that how first person books are, just because? If so I have never noticed. I think this requires that I run through some of the more popular private eye books to compare. I will, possibly, learn one way or another, and I think that will be great (see what I mean?).

It has been fun looking at how the younger me, myself, and I used to write, and it's wonderful to see how much I, myself, and me have learned. Perhaps we and me are in the right place after all. Don't you think?

Buy This Anthology or We Start Killing Puppies

2011-04-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a project I am excited to tell you about, a new anthology featuring one of my stories, and the stories of many others who are up-and-coming writers to watch. Let me turn this over to editor Derek J. Canyon, himself a terrific storyteller, for the formal announcement:

I pleased to announce that the science fiction and fantasy short story anthology, Twelve Worlds, is now available for $2.99 on Amazon.com. Buy it here!

TwelveWorlds contains 14 short stories by new and aspiring authors. Genres include my own gritty cyberpunk as well as epic fantasy, romantic fantasy, paranormal detective mystery, star-faring scifi, and more. There’s around 80,000 words total, so that’s a great deal for $2.99.

Author royalties for Twelve Worlds will be donated to Reading is Fundamental, the nation’s largest nonprofit children’s literacy charity.

My own contribution to the anthology is called The Price of Vengeance. It tells the story of Maggie, a woman with nothing to lose who goes after the genetically engineered dwarf who killed her entire gang. Yes, she’s hunting Noose, the protagonist of Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. I think fans of Noose will really like this story, because it provides insight into and points of view of secondary and tertiary characters from my cyberpunk novel. If you want to read this short story, you’ll have to buy Twelve Worlds. It’s the only place you can get The Price of Vengeance!

Here’s a full list of the stories in this anthology:

By a Whisker by Kevin O. McLaughlin (3500 words): Someone is siphoning magical energy from the powerful ley nexus at Northshield University in this urban fantasy. Ryan goes to investigate, and gets help from an unexpected quarter.

The Accidental Muse by Amy Rose Davis (6200 words): A girl with no memory, a grieving widower, and a sweet-natured boy with strange power live a quiet life in their sheltered Keep until the night a traveling musician arrives at the door. The power of the musician's harp threatens to destroy their family unless one of them can stop it. A tale of gods, muses, mysterious spirits, and the power of love.

The Price of Vengeance by Derek J. Canyon (7400 words): In 22nd century Atlanta, Maggie hunts the genetically-engineered dwarf who killed her entire gang.

Insomnomancer by JE Medrick (3400 words): Witness life through the eyes of a predator. Kyle Hall, barely remarkable in a world of gray faces, is targeted by a very specialized hunter. To the target, it is night after sleepless night. To the Insomnomancer - a game of points and hungry satisfaction.

Thump by NB Kelly (4650 words): When a hitchhiker becomes part of an impromptu road trip, peace is the last thing that two young men will get out of it.

Iron in Shadow by Edward L. Cote (14900 words): The best thief in Rithmoor, the City of Dark Water, goes by the name Slip. He takes on a promising job, but it gets more complicated and dangerous the more he learns about what exactly it is he must do. To avoid certain death at the hands of the Great Magus Dibian, he must risk the wrath of the world's hardest people.

Together They Die by Brian Drake (3220 words): A former cop helps a ghost solve her murder.

Incubators by Manley Peterson (3200 words): Lost in space, three astronauts struggle to accept their fate aboard a crippled ship. Could a last-minute rescue be all they hoped for?

Cube by Coral Russell (4150 words): Luke's family isn't perfect, but they're worth saving. How far would you go to save your family?

The Star-Eater by K Gorman (6000 words): Karin wakes up one day on her starship, realizing her sister has been killed--but not before her sister cursed the murderer. Now she's got a man to kill. And her boss is starting to suspect that she's a little more than human...

Man-Maker by BC Woods (8050 words): A young boy in a society based entirely around defending itself against zombie-like demons refuses a sacred rite of passage.

Daddy Issues by John G. Hartness (4200 words): Vampires, voodoo, zombies and gold-diggers, it's all in a day's work for the boys at Black Knight Investigations. Vampire Private Investigators Jimmy Black and Greg Knightwood are called in to dispose of a zombie in the library, but there's always more than meets the eye where these detectives are concerned. Takes place before the events in Hard Day's Knight.

BONUS STORIES!

Weird and Wondeful by Tony Lavely (6000 words): Mailira and Marelsa together bring an old Scottish folk tale to life for a young musician.

The Light Stream by Jaylin Baer (3060 words): The transition between waking and sleeping, dreaded by some and enjoyed by others, becomes something altogether different for a very select few. Discover one woman's journey into the Light Stream.

So, if want to read new stories from 14 talented new authors, you should definitely buy this ebook! Who knows, you might find a new author that you really enjoy!

After reading it, don’t forget to write up a review on Amazon. It really helps sales.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WT7OSQ/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=derjcan-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B004WT7OSQ

Measure Me for a Halo; or, Every Man His Own Simon Templar

2011-04-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

I have just finished reading The Saint and Mr. Teal, three chronicles in the life of Simon Templar written by the amazing Leslie Charteris. Once again Charteris amazes me with his use of the English language. I have never been so delightedly entertained by a writer’s work—the humor, the adventure, the biting satire of the political “mother hens” of the day (in fact, despite this book having been written in the ‘30s, you could easily apply Charteris’s comments to today—in the United States, at least—where they would fit our own “mother hens” perfectly, those dreadful fellows who seem to think that they know how to live our lives better than we do and spend their days trying to protect us from ourselves because they really do know best and if the unwashed and the Godly would just accept their counsel life would be so much better). Ahem. Charteris really does get one going…

To the book! The three adventures featured in The Saint and Mr. Teal are rip-roaring yarns that make you laugh, smile, and, as I said, marvel at how Charteris uses words, like nobody has before or since (though, perhaps, P.G. Wodehouse could challenge the title—stiff upper lip, Jeeves!). I found myself unable to stop reading. In fact, I am glad that I have even more Saintly adventures to read as I recently discovered a gold mine of Charteris novels at a used bookshop in San Jose that I had never visited before. You can bet I will skip over whichever novel I had planned to read next and go straight to the next Saint book.

I do not possess the skill with language or satire that Charteris developed, though perhaps I could given enough time, but I will tell you that when I go back to my own manuscripts I bring a focus and discipline to the writing that seems stronger than before, because I now know how much better I can be.

The last time I wrote about Simon Templar, I was reading The Saint in New York, which has great sequences in it. I did not care for the book overall, because it had less comedy, and the action was more in line with what we American chaps tend to write. This is not to say it was bad, but I was expecting something different. The great revelation at the end, when the Major Villain comes to life, has been repeatedly used by writers of less skill than Charteris that I—and you—have read over the years, so when it finally happened I was not surprised. And that disappointed me. Such is life.

And then there is the character of Simon Templar himself. With Templar, Charteris created a character you want to read about over and over again. He does not get boring. Templar’s moral code and dedication to his cause is so strong that you cannot turn away. You want to be there with him, taking on the ungodly in pursuit of boodle or pure justice. He is such a finely drawn character and you want him to be real. You want him to be out there somewhere with gal pal Patricia Holm and you hope that one day you cross paths and get to take part in an adventure, even if only for a moment, so you can relive your Saintly association during your golden years and know that there is a man out there who will not compromise himself. There is far too much compromise today. There are no more Alpha Males, or good ones, anyway, and Templar is a good one.

Oh, well. It is a silly day dream, really. But there are far worse ways to spend one’s time, and I do not apologize for saying so.

The next question is, which Saint book do I read next? Perhaps I will set the books out on the floor, close my eyes, and pick the first one my hand touches. Regardless of which one I pick, I know I will be entertained.

There is talk about a new television series or a movie featuring The Saint, but I do not hold out much hope. Roger Moore, when he played the character, played it well, but nobody can capture the True Saint (I will not mention the radio show, despite the great Vincent Price who played the role, as it too falls far short of the books). I wish the production well and maybe I will be surprised. I sure hope so. The world needs Simon Templar now more than ever.

Heard Through the Walls of My Apartment....

2011-03-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hi, gang. It's been quiet on the blog the last week or so because I've been relocating--to a whole new town. It's an exciting time as this is the first time I have been able to afford my own apartment. For the last ten years I've been renting rooms from other people. The downside to this is that I have no furniture of my own, so the living room is bare.

For the first month or so I am skipping cable television, so the apartment is not only bare but also quiet, but it is not without built-in entertainment. The walls in this place are decent but even the thickest walls cannot keep the loudest noise from getting through, and tonight I heard a couple of wild hollerings from neighbors that I absolutely must share.

First, on the kitchen side of the apartment, I heard a woman shout (to apparently her male counterpart), "If yo' momma had put her foot in yo' ass when you were young you'd be an entirely different person today." I tried, I strained, I even put a glass to the wall, but I did not hear the gentleman's response.

Then, down the hall on the bedroom side of my place, I heard another woman yell, "Don't you just look at me and go meow meow meow." One assumes she was yelling at her cat, and one also assumes, from having owned many cats, that the poor kitty was hungry and momma hadn't yet realized this. Either that or she indeed fed the animal, and the cat was trying to con more food out of her. That is not outside the realm of possibility.

So, as my second week in this domicile begins, I look forward to more entertaining snippets from the neighbors that I will delightfully share.

Also, coming up in a few days or so, I will share with you a round-up of my appearances around the web promoting my new spy novel, Show No Mercy. The indie community (and other seasoned pros) welcomed my work with open arms, and it's been a great experience. Till then.....

Quit My Day Job? Heck No!

2011-03-08T09:58:00.000-08:00

A friend said to me the other day, "Now that you're a tiger-blooded totally bitchin' big shot author from Mars, I bet you can't wait to quit your day job, right?"

I suppose there are plenty of authors who have quit day jobs in order to write full time, but I'm afraid I won't be joining those ranks. I spent the last three years either unemployed or underemployed. I had a lot of time to write, read, smoke cigars, watch television, and basically live the life of a "full time author" complete with weekly checks that arrived from the pixies at a small government office. You know what? I was bored out of my mind. Bored stiff. So bored I would go outside just to count grass pedals. I mean, seriously, if there is another way to describe how bored I was, I would insert it here, because I don't think I can tell you how totally bonkers I was going. I did some volunteer work with my church, which I was already doing, and that helped, but the days were long. I decided that if that was the life of a full time author, I didn't want it.

I like having something to do and somewhere to go every morning. It doesn't hurt that my current job is cake--I work for a company that sells food to restaurants. Yeah, sales is a tough gig, but I have a good time with it, the people are good, the pay is decent. My living expenses are covered. Income from book sales is gravy.

If I am going to keep working full-time, though, I need more hours in the day to write, so to that end I have found a new apartment a few miles from the office which will greatly reduce my commute time (ten minutes as opposed to the one hour drive I have now) so that frees up some hours. I will be able to devote two hours a night to my manuscripts, and on that schedule I can finish a book in three months.

What's nice about having income from my eBooks is that it will eventually build up and allow me to maybe get a house, a nice sports car, take a Caribbean vacation... who knows. It will also allow me to eventually say, should I ever want to, "forget you" to my boss. Who doesn't want to be able to say "forget you" to anybody and be rich enough to get away with it? You never know, my boss will someday tick me off one too many times, and I'll be too rich to put up with his crap. Or her, really. My boss is a her. Did I not mention that? I've known her all of my life, you know.

My boss is my mother.

Interview with Linda Pendleton, Indie Author Pioneer

2011-02-25T16:01:00.000-08:00

I can’t describe what a treat it is to be able to present to you my next guest, who was kind enough to let me interview her about one of her novels. Linda Pendleton is her name, and she has quite a resume behind her, and is probably one of the first in what we are now calling an "indie" author. More of that in a minute.

You could say that where I am now with my writing career is the fault of her husband, the late Don Pendleton, who wrote a series of books about a fellow named Mack Bolan. Maybe you heard of him. The series was called The Executioner and Pendleton wrote the first 38 books before turning the series over to ghost writers who continue to chronicle Bolan’s adventures.

Back in junior high and high school, the novels in my backpack were always James Bond, Mack Bolan, or some other adventure thriller—but mostly I carried Bolan around with me, because there were so many books in the series. During a camping trip with my Boy Scout troop, one of the scout masters saw me reading a Bolan book and said, “I have a box of those back at the house. You can have them if you want.” Of course I said yes, but I had no idea just what that box contained. A few days later, I learned: all 38 original books, in decent condition, plus a few of the ghosted books. Let’s just say that every spare moment I had I used to read those books and at one point I went through one a day (I had an hour-long bus ride to school, each way, since I lived far from the campus, so that helped). I still have that box of books and go through it from time to time. Along with the work of Fleming and Ludlum, Don’s novels made me want to write my own stories.

Unfortunately I was never able to communicate with Don. I had just finished reading his Joe Copp private eye series when I decided it was probably time to send him a note, but just as I began my search to find an address, I learned that he had passed away.

But Linda has carried on the Pendleton story telling tradition, and it’s a pleasure to be able to present to you this interview about her private eye novel, Shattered Lens. If you like your PI novels with the usual ingredients, this is your cup of tea, as Catherine Winter dives into a case involving the stalking of two models. You get a few twists along the way and a perspective you probably won't expect. It's a refreshing take on a genre that indeed needs refreshing. Read a sample and see for yourself. I enjoyed the book a lot.

As promised, here's more about Linda:

Linda Pendleton has written in a variety of genres: nonfiction, mystery novels, comic book scripting, e-courses, and screenplays. She coauthored nonfiction and fiction with her late husband. Together Don and Linda wrote the popular nonfiction books, To Dance With Angels and Whispers From the Souls, which explored their interest in metaphysics and spirituality.

A native Californian, Linda is a member of The Authors Guild, The Authors League, EPIC Authors, and Sisters in Crime. She was an EPIC Award Finalist in 2001 in the Thriller Category for the Novel, Roulette (previous title, One Dark and Stormy Night); 2002 EPIC Finalist in the Nonfiction Philosophy Category for Three Principles of Angelic Wisdom; and in 2011 is an EPIC Award Finalist in the mystery/suspense category for Shattered Lens: Catherine Winter, Private Investigator, and an EPIC Nonfiction Award Finalist for The Cosmic Breath: Metaphysical Essays of Don Pendleton, Introduction by Linda Pendleton. Her novella, The Masquerading Cowboy received an award.

Although most of her time is devoted to her love of writing, she also enjoys the exploration of her family’s genealogical roots.

Linda’s website: www.lindapendleton.com

And now, the interview:

1) Tell us about Shattered Lens. What inspired the story?

Linda: A few years ago, I had written the crime novel Roulette: The Search for the Sunrise Killer, with my husband, Don Pendleton. I had very much enjoyed our female cop character, Rebecca Storme. I had also enjoyed reading Don’s Joe Copp Private Eye Series while he was writing the six books, and I decided why not a female private investigator and one a little older with lots of experience under her belt. So my Catherine Winter, Private Investigator was born.

2) Authors often put aspects of their personality into their characters. How much of Linda Pendleton is in Catherine Winter?

Linda: Well, Brian, I want to say none but that is probably not so. I believe a little of us always ends up in some way in our stories, even unintentionally or in subtle ways. The things Catherine and I do have in common are we’re both curious and determined women, widows, and in our sixties. I hope we share a sense of humor, too.

3) Your writing style and voice is very good—the opening scene is a real grabber, and the conversational tone of the narrative is a treat to read. How long did you work to perfect your technique?

Linda: Thank you for the compliment, Brian. That’s always very nice to hear. I have no idea how I have been able to achieve that. Some time ago, even while writing nonfiction, I believe I found my “voice” and style and it seems to be reflected in nearly all my writing. I have always considered my style “simple.” I’ve been told that readers have found it easy and conversational.

4) If there was one storytelling technique that you learned from Don that nobody else has ever mentioned or used, what would that be?

Linda: I learned so much about writing from Don. He was a great teacher, not only about writing, but about life. I do recall when he first critiqued one of my manuscripts he told me my writing was good but that I was holding back and needed to surrender and not be afraid to let it flow. I also learned from Don to trust and have confidence in my ability to write. Too often I would doubt myself, and he would tell me to trust that it was good. I still find myself questioning, although much less than I did twenty years ago. I’m proud of my work and I know he looks over my shoulder and still gives me inspiration.

5) Will we see Catherine Winter again?

Linda: Yes, I’ve nearly completed the second Catherine Winter novel. I hope to publish it within the next two months. Her story, again, is set in Southern California. When I had decided to write Shattered Lens in first person as many private eye novels are written, I wasn’t sure how it would go as it can be somewhat more difficult to write than third person viewpoint. But I soon felt comfortable with the format. My friend, the late Richard S. Prather, author of the best selling Shell Scott Mystery series, read my manuscript and gave me a very nice cover quote and encouraged me to consider writing a series with Catherine Winter. I did enjoy working with Catherine so decided to write a second novel. I suppose there could be additional novels in the future but I have no plans to write one for each letter in the alphabet or even the months in a year. :-)

6) Do you enjoy being an “indie” author?

Linda: Yes, I do. I enjoy the freedom of being able to publish without having to ask “permission.” There are numerous authors who write quality works and are unable to find an agent who is enthusiastic about selling their manuscript or a publisher who is willing to take a look at their work. Today, authors have new opportunities to self-publish print on demand and ebooks through Amazon, Createspace, Kindle, and Smashwords, and it is an exciting time.

I’ve been self-publishing, which includes ebooks, for ten years now. The opportunity for me began when the Authors Guild offered a back-in-print program and as a member of the Authors Guild (as Don was, too) I was able to put Don’s Joe Copp Private Eye Series and his Ashton Ford Psychic Detective Series in print as PODs and ebooks. And then along came Kindle. So I put the two series in Kindle as I did several additional books. My web designer, Judy Bullard is my cover designer for POD and ebooks, and I format the books myself. That all takes time away from writing but I feel it is worth it.

I have those novels and other books, fiction and nonfiction, also at Smashwords which distributes to the retailers for the Nook, iPad, Kobo, Diesel and others. I love the up-to-the-minute royalty reports we get from Amazon’s Kindle, and the royalty rates we receive from Amazon and Smashwords. Sure beats what any traditional publisher is paying for ebook rights.

Over the last couple of years I did feel a little disturbed that these new opportunities seemed to be opposed by several author organizations, some successful authors, and apparently by agents and the big 6 NY publishers. Many of those people put-down self-published works, calling them inferior and not of good quality. Many agents are not interested in looking at manuscripts by authors who have self-published, and that is really too bad as they are missing out on some good books. It appears a number of those authors who spoke out in opposition to what some of us were doing, are now very happy to be self-publishing their back lists and/or new books at Kindle and Smashwords.

Now I just smile, as a number of years ago I wrote articles about the pros and cons of self-publishing and ebooks and how it would soon be acceptable and common. Nearly a decade later ebooks have arrived. And they’re not going away, whether they are read on a handheld device or on a computer monitor, and sales seem to be showing ebooks are now out-selling print books.

I don’t believe print books are going away but there are definitely other choices for a reader as well as an author.

7) Do you have one or two other books you’d like to mention?

My historical novel, Corn Silk Days, Iowa, 1862 is my latest novel and is both in print and Kindle. I love the book. It’s based on the Civil War letters of my great-great grandfather, who served as a Union soldier. It is the story of four generations of two families. Other than staying true to his letters written to my great-great grandmother and the historical facts of the time, the story is fiction. I loved writing it and am proud of it.

The Dawning, my novel of mystery and suspense, has been published for some time now but the story of UFOs, government cover-up, and the paranormal, continues to be of interest to readers.

And for a change of pace, I just published at Kindle, Soul Expressions: Poetry Collection of Linda Pendleton and Don Pendleton. I hope to have it in print before too long.

I have a number of non-fiction books and they can all be found on my website or at my Amazon author page.

Brian, I want to thank you for this opportunity to do this interview.

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

my website, http://www.lindapendleton.com

Blog: http://www.mydropsofink.blogspot.com

http://www.todancewithangels.com

http://www.donpendleton.com

Amazon Author Page

http://www.amazon.com/Linda-Pendleton/e/B002LLB2N0/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_2

Bringing Back the Dead, or: Those Old Novels Aren't Really Bad, Are They?

2011-02-23T10:16:00.000-08:00

My friend and fellow author Rebecca Forster is uploading her impressive backlist to the Kindle Store, and is currently going through some of her earliest romance novels to add to the list. She's learned a lot over the last 25 years, so hearing her commentary about her old books has been interesting. She would change a lot, of course, but she's not doing a heavy edit--she wants to respect the writer she was at the time. She inspired me to go back to some of my old books to see if there's anything worth salvaging. I hadn't thought to do so before because I didn't think there was any there there, if you know what I mean, and my apologies to Ms. Stein. Why? I'll get to that in a minute. And if you pay attention, you may learn something.

There are four books I'm looking at, but this article concerns what I'm editing now, Bullet for One, a private eye revenge thriller I wrote and rewrote between 1999-2001. This was a very personal story for me at the time, as it was my first attempt at a crime novel after taking a whirlwind tour through the hard-boiled canon the year prior to starting the book. Never mind the plot. It's simpler to say it's an I, the Jury riff but I tried to do my own thing with it.

Of course, it has flaws. There is a lot of overwriting, and a lot of needless words and description, but that is easily fixed. What I was afraid of, though, was a serious lack of characterization, and one-dimensional characters as a whole. I didn't know much about characterization in 1999-2001. I just wrote stuff. The characters were alive to me, but I was knocked over when another writer friend said the characters did nothing for him and seemed lifeless.

I stopped writing for a bit after that and learned everything I could about how to bring a character to life. I think those lessons have served my recent work very well.

However...

Going back through BfO, I'm noticing a few things. Characters are described. They have set behavior patterns. Outside stories (related to the main plot) and inside stories (their own personal story arcs). It's simple characterization. They're types, they exist to do specific things, but I don't see anything wrong with that. You could make the case that my three novels already on Kindle have the same sort of characterization. But as I'm reading the manuscript I find myself wondering what my friend actually read, because it appears he wasn't reading my book. Either that, or he has a different idea of what characterization is than I do.

I'm not suggesting there isn't room for improvement, and that's what my current edit is for. And I'm not sorry I stopped writing for a few months while I learned the craft a little better. That process didn't hurt, and if I knew then what I know now, I could have raised reasonable doubt about the critique. But what I think you need to learn, as I just have, is that one person's opinion does not mean a work is inferior or unworthy of a reader's time. A manuscript is not a sculpture carved from rock, wherein you must start over with a new rock if you make a mistake. Manuscripts can be fixed--easily--either through editing or a total rewrite. But BfO does not warrant a rewrite. It just needs a little massaging.

I think my friend was wrong. It's a good book, and the characters are not lifeless. And when I'm done, it will be a better book. And you'll get to see just how good it is when I release it in a few months.

If you have somebody read your stuff, have two or three people do it. Don't live or die by the approval of one person.

I think Stephen King made the same point in On Writing, which I read a long time ago when it first came out....

But I must not have paid attention.

Brian Drake Invades the UK!

2011-02-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

I thought I would share some good news with you. It certainly has me excited! Yesterday on my Amazon royalty page I saw that I now have readers in the UK! For months my UK sales have been ZERO (I checked now and then) but yesterday I was stunned to see that copies of Justified Sins and Show No Mercy had been purchased. Back in high school the principal, because I got into trouble so much, used to tell me I was a bad influence on the other students; now I sell books internationally and I get to be a bad influence on people all over the world!

The Adventures of Philip Marlowe on the Air

2011-02-19T17:03:00.000-08:00

Some of you think I was way too harsh on the CBS old time radio series The Adventures of Philip Marlowe when I wrote a week or so ago about the Richard Diamond series. You're right. But I was harsh on the character, not the show.

Gerald Mohr

Marlowe as a fictional character is terrific. I've always seen him as an isolationist who doesn't care for or need other people around him. This is a thematic element that works perfectly in the novels, because Chandler wrote him as a knight in a world of corruption. You'd want to be alone too if you had to wade in and out of that garbage! But that theme did not translate to the radio series. The writers didn't get it, so as a character Marlowe falls a little short. (Marlowe had the same problems in the films--the poor guy has never been fully understood!)

However, I think that The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, from a technical and writing stand point, set a standard of quality that very few OTR private detective shows could reach.

The sound effects, music, actor voices, even the announcer, blended together in such a way that we were given a true "noir" radio show. I think the music is some of the best with that low saxophone-based theme. Gerald Mohr, with his voice of gravel, who played Marlowe, added another element with his weekly introduction:

Get this and get it straight, crime is a suckers road and those who travel it wind up in the gutter, the prison or the grave. There's no other end; but they never learn.

Simply typing those words doesn't give the intro justice. You must hear Mohr's delivery, followed by the musical blast that follows.

Gerald Mohr is, I think, the definitive radio voice of Marlowe. He sounds absolutely wonderful. (Mohr also played Archie Goodwin in the Nero Wolfe show beside Sidney Greenstreet for a few episodes.) He missed a day of work now and then, so in a few episodes you'll hear other guys, including William Conrad, but none of them had Mohr's spark.

It's easy to be so overwhelmed by the production quality of the Marlowe show that you can make the case that saying it's inferior to another show isn't a valid criticism; that's not what I was saying last time when I crowned Richard Diamond the best of the OTR private detectives. From the production quality side, Marlowe beats 'em all; from a character stand point, I still give the tip to Richard Diamond. Diamond is the more satisfying show to listen to. Marlowe is just another thriller. A very well-produced thriller. I'm listening to an episode right now!

Don't worry, Phil, I'll only travel that "sucker's road" in my books!

Of course typing this makes me think of the BBC audio adaptations of the Marlowe novels. Have you heard those? I'll talk about them soon....

Richard Diamond, Private Detective.....Best OTR Private Eye?

2011-02-11T23:04:00.000-08:00

Is there a consensus on the best old time radio private eye shows? How many have you sampled? I've listened to a ton. Some are good. Some are terrible. One of the best, I think, is Richard Diamond, Private Detective, which starred Dick Powell. How do I claim it's one of the best in competition that includes Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, and The Adventures of Sam Spade? Simple, really. Richard Diamond mixes hard-boiled action with comedy, offers a large group of characters you can enjoy, and has a number of recurring gags that never fail to entertain.

Johnny Dollar is at his best near the end of the series in the five-part, 15-minute episodes which star Bob Bailey. Marlowe is way too serious. Spade never makes a lick of sense--the shows are completely incoherent. But Richard Diamond has good stories and makes you laugh. You can't beat it.

Of course, nothing is perfect. Diamond suffers from the same flaw that other private eye dramas of the time share, in that the private eye is always smarter than the cops in such an unrealistic way that it's insulting. Then there is how they describe the discovery of a dead body:

"We found him in the alley. He's been shot, stabbed, clubbed over the head, and poisoned. He's dead."

Cue the dramatic music.

At the end of each episode, Diamond visits his girlfriend. They chat a bit and then he sings a song. I guess Powell was known for his singing at the time, but during his adventures he gets shot at, kicked, and knocked unconscious. Are we really expected to believe that after all of that punishment, he can sing like nothing happened?

Oh, well. It's good clean fun.

I don't dislike the other shows I mentioned, but they lack the community that Diamond has. Richard Diamond feels real because he has friends. Marlowe? Isolated. Lives in a bubble. Spade and Dollar? They mostly mix with clients and thugs and we never see their personal lives. Diamond has the right balance of everything.

Give him a listen if you haven't had the opportunity. Dick Powell is perfect in the role; he even played Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, which is one of the great post-war noir films. And if you want another Dick Powell detective show that's just as good as Richard Diamond, check out Rogue's Gallery. But that's a subject for another time.

Show No Mercy--Available NOW!

2011-02-07T15:54:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to announce the release of Show No Mercy: A Michael Dodge Thriller. This is my third ebook and one I almost didn't want to finish, but that's a story for another time. Here's the story description which is sure to catch your interest:

"Could you kill your father?

Michael Dodge owes Harry Ames, his surrogate father. But his CIA mentor is accused of murdering a comrade and joining forces with an enemy planning to unleash a lethal biological weapon on the United States. Dodge may have to kill Harry, but can he do it?"

You can click the cover photo on the right to see the Amazon page; thank you for looking. I hope you enjoy it! I'll be embarking on an extensive "blog tour" to promote the book so you'll see me pretty much everywhere... you'll get sick of me!

Nero Wolfe on the Air

2011-01-26T09:07:00.000-08:00

I had my first exposure to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe through the 1950s radio program starring Sydney Greenstreet as Wolfe and a bunch of actors as Archie Goodwin. Some don't like Greenstreet's portrayal; I do. The show had enough banter between Wolfe and his partner Archie, who does all the legwork because Wolfe won't leave the house, to make me want to read the books. I started with Wolfe #1, Fer-de-lance, and it's great fun.

But what I've enjoyed most is the Canadian Broadcasting Company's radio adaptation of Wolfe, reportedly based on Stout stories, but, even if they aren't based on Stout's work, they are spot-on and a joy to listen to.

There are 13 episodes, each about an hour long, and the adventures are not only well developed but you also get to enjoy appearances from Stout characters, like junior legman Saul Panzer, who didn't make it into the Greenstreet program.

I think my favorite of the CBC shows--"Before I Die"--concerns a mob boss hiring Wolfe, the gargantuan gourmet who weighs one-seventh of a ton, to fight off a blackmail scheme. Archie tries to convince the boss not to take the case, but the mob boss is in charge of the meat racket, and wartime food rationing is preventing Wolfe from enjoying beef and pork, so he helps the mobster in exchange for a supply of steaks and chops.

Each adventure is narrated, like the books, by Archie, and he's as much the star as Wolfe. Their opposing personalities bring a life to the series that isn't forced, unlike some we can think of. Each character has specific traits that make them come alive, and after spending enough time in their company you feel like you know them.

Mavor Moore played Wolfe; Don Francks played Archie; if you can find the shows, give 'em a listen. You'll enjoy the heck out of them.

Set a Sales Record This Month...And It's Not Over Yet!

2011-01-26T08:50:00.001-08:00

I hope you find some encouragement in this post, whether you are just starting out with an indie book or contemplating publishing one...

After ZERO sales over the final three months of 2010, and only so-so sales prior to that, I have set a personal record with my Kindle books, selling almost 40 when you combine my two titles.

This isn't an experiment anymore. Going the indie route is a viable way of making your work available to an audience providing the work is good and up to standard (as has been discussed many times and will not be repeated here).

So... If you haven't put up your book yet, get it on Kindle; if you're work has been available for awhile, promote some more or tweak it some more. I started my efforts in May 2010 and did OK; now, after some tweaking of my own (covers and descriptions) we're off to the races, and it only gets better from here. I have four more books scheduled for 2011, so expect fireworks.

Is it too soon to place an order for a red Corvette?

Coming Attractions and a Kindle Sales Update

2011-01-20T21:44:00.000-08:00

You can look forward to a ton of great articles coming up on this blog. I'm setting up an interview with my pal Allan Guthrie, who has a new ebook out called Bye Bye Baby that is sure to please (it's a grabber and a shocker); I'm going to start commenting on some of my favorite "hard boiled" OTR shows beginning with the Canadian Broadcasting version of "Nero Wolfe" from the '80s; I have a few other good nuggets up my sleeve, so watch this space.

I also thought I would give you an update on my Kindle sales, as that is a constant topic of discussion on this world wide web of ours. For months now my books have been priced at $2.99 and have been doing okay. I've been happy with the results. However, between October and December of 2010, sales dropped to ZERO. What's an author to do? I redesigned the cover and revised the description of Justified Sins, the best seller of my two books, thinking that would help--it didn't--so I gave it away free on Smashwords, and TWO HUNDRED people took advantage of the free download. That was terrific. Two hundred people who might not otherwise give me a try decided to take the plunge. When that offer ended, I advertised on the Amazon forum that both Justified Sins and Reaper's Dozen were on sale for .99.

Sales have taken off, and my blog traffic is up too. Why folks are paying money for books that were offered for free less than two weeks ago I have no idea, but I'm not arguing about it, either. I wonder if the new cover and description of Justified Sins is now helping. And since I'm on the verge of releasing Show No Mercy, a spy thriller and a departure from the bleak hard-boiled crime novels I had previously been focused on (more on that later), this new attention will be very good for me indeed.

So, my indie author friends, it is possible to make a go of this without having any "name recognition". It's still early yet, but I think by the end of this year, when I'll have a total of six ebooks available, we'll be doing very well indeed.

It's an exciting time. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

New Year's Preservations or, Rebecca Forster Is At It Again!

2011-01-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

Editor's Note: I trust we are all recovered from the holiday juggernaut, and I may be late posting this, but my friend Rebecca Forster wrote a very nice New Year's Day blog and I wanted to share it with you. You can read more of Rebecca's scribblings at www.rebeccaforster.com.

NEW YEAR'S PRESERVATIONS, NOT RESOLUTIONS

After the toasts, kisses and well wishes come the New Year resolutions.

My resolutions usually revolve around weight loss, growing five inches and becoming a blond. The first would be easy if I had an attention span that lasted 12 months rather than twelve minutes. The latter two have been on my list since I was five years old. I will never be taller than I am and the one time I tried to go blond I ended up looking like Jane Fonda in Klute (Google both to satisfy your curiosity).

So, that brings me to today – January 1, 2011. I have resolved to make no more resolutions. Instead, I am embracing New Years Preservation. I have identified the good things I had in 2010 that I want to keep in 2011.

1) My husband and kids. I like them. We think each other are terribly funny. Good laughs and great conversation make any day of the year better.

2) My friends and other family members for the same reason as my husband and kids.

3) My car. It’s like a little black dress – nothing fancy, fits me well and I can take it anywhere without embarrassing myself. It is ten years old (the same age as my LBD). I think it has another ten years to go.

4) My writing jacket. It is an ugly, screaming yellow, fleece jacket that I bought for $10 five years ago. That jacket is the signal that I am working. My husband forbids me to wear it outside. I love that jacket. I want to be buried in that jacket.

5) My father’s fountain pen. He passed away six years ago. My mother gave me his pen. It looks like a skinny watermelon and doesn’t hold much ink. It’s about 60 years old. Great pen.

6) Dinner parties. Cooking and conversation are great together especially when you mix up the guest list. Definitely, I’m preserving the tradition. Your invitation is in the mail.

7) My sewing machine. It’s on its last legs. The buttonholer doesn’t work anymore but it sews backward and forward. We’ve been friends a long time and you don’t throw a friend away just because they can’t do the fancy stitches anymore.

8) My work schedule. I work a lot. I work 7 days a week. Sometimes I don’t have much to show for all those hours but sometimes I end up writing a pretty good book. Working hard, doing my best, that's what every year should be about.

9) Debbie, who has been cutting my hair for a year. It took me a long time to find her. I still like her. (Debbie at Trax Hair design in Torrance if anyone needs a good haircut.)

There should be a number ten but there isn’t. If the car still works, Debbie doesn’t have a meltdown and my family and friends are hanging in there with me by the time 2012 rolls around, I will be a happy clam. I’ll still have brown hair and stand 5’4”. I probably won’t be whippet thin but what the heck. Since I won’t be losing any weight, I won’t have to sew any new clothes nor will I have to worry about my roots showing.

Make resolutions and failure is waiting around the corner. Who needs it? Just gather up, gobble up, stash away all the good stuff you’ve already got and 2011 is going to be happy, successful, fabulous year.

Happy reading. Happy Writing. Happy New Year!

Amazing Response to Justified Sins Giveaway...

2011-01-08T23:08:00.000-08:00

I wanted to jump on very quickly to say thank you for the tremendous response to my giveaway of Justified Sins... yes, I know it's free, so, duh, a ton of people are going to show up, but, seriously, it's nice to see, and some folks have even ponied up money to buy a copy. I guess they liked what they saw. Anyway, it dawned on me that a lot of you do not have a Kindle or another e-reader, so I wanted to extend the offer to you in another way.

If you want to read the book, send me an email at briandrake88@yahoo.com and I will send you the book as a .pdf. You can read a few pages and use the rest to roll your cigarettes or whatever comes to mind.

This offer, like the Smashwords giveaway, is good until January 14.

Justified Sins--FREE

2011-01-07T12:11:00.000-08:00

We're getting ready to kick off SHOW NO MERCY here at the writing ranch and to get things going I'm going to let you have my previous novel, JUSTIFIED SINS, free of charge. This offer is good until January 14th and you have to visit my page at Smashwords.Com and enter this code: TR66G.

Here is the link to my Smashwords site: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/21475

In return, if you could leave a review on Amazon that would be great.

The book has a new cover to match the layout of SHOW NO MERCY, by the way, which is ten times better than the previous drawing I had used.

Have fun with it.

And check out SHOW NO MERCY when it's released later this month. I'm going to do some excerpts here on the blog so you can have a taste...

Show No Mercy: The Cover

2011-01-05T09:22:00.000-08:00

Here's a peek at the cover for my next ebook. I thought y'all would like to see it. I'm still waiting for my editor to return my manuscript--the longer he has it, the more I think he's really marking it up. Is that a good thing? Anyway when it comes back I'll make whatever adjustments are necessary and then we'll be ready to go!

Last Post of 2010

2010-12-31T17:09:00.001-08:00

You don't know how good it feels to have typed the title of this article.

2010 has been a horrible year with, maybe, only four highlights. I'm trying to stay positive by thinking of those highlights often. What would I say to 2010 if it were a living being? Get out. Don't let the door hit you on the ass.

One of the low points of the year was the death this week of my mother's cat, of whom I wrote earlier this month. That article, Babysitting an Old Cat: The Diary, was very popular, with a lot of hits (I'm amazed at how many hits!) so I thought it appropriate to let you know what happened. As I reported, she was getting along in years; after I posted the article and my mother returned from her cruise, Midnight started going downhill in a big way and my mother had to make the gut-wrenching decision to put her to sleep.

All of my childhood pets are now dead. The first to go was Aussie, our Austrian Shepherd, who was a good watch dog. I still feel guilty over not spending as much time with him as I could have, but when I was young my home life was fairly messed up, and I'm afraid just surviving was my primary concern. Aussie loved having his belly scratched and my father treated him to many belly scratches; when my parents split up, Dad wasn't around anymore, so it became my responsibility to do that. I did it as often as I could, I know I did, but memories of those moments do not exist.

Then there was our first cat, Boots, who got hit by a car; then Patches, who died of cancer; now Midnight.

Happy effing new year. Is there anything left in the bottle? Pass it over...

I am much more optimistic about 2011. I'm moving to a new area, have a new job (finally, after nearly three years of unemployment), and have a writing schedule which includes four ebooks this year. Coming sometime in January will be the first of that batch, Show No Mercy, which I hope you all like. It's a spy novel, with a ton of action, but it's focus is also on the characters and their relationships and I can't say I've ever seen a spy novel that focuses on characters as much as this one. Granted, I have never read very widely in the espionage genre, but what I have read has always been a pot-boiler of some kind. I'm sure I'm no pioneer here. But I do hope that Show No Mercy is refreshing.

I certainly wish the best for you and your family this year; good reading (and writing!) to you. If you remember, I'd appreciate it if you could raise a glass tonight to furry friends long gone.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to San Francisco to welcome in a new and better year...

Steve McQueen as Philip Marlowe?

2010-12-26T02:41:00.000-08:00

Was Santa nice to you and yours? I hope so, and as we gear up to kiss 2010 good-bye, and none too soon (what a rough year!), I also hope you plan to make the new year ten times better than the old one. Heaven knows it can't be any worse.

So waiting for me under the tree this morning was a new Steve McQueen biography by Marshall Terrill, which is, in fact, a rewrite of another McQueen bio he wrote back in 1993. This one is better, he says. What the heck, I'll read it, as I'm a sucker for McQueen, who not only inspired me to be an actor myself, but led such a life that, in most cases, is a good example for others (minus the drug use and philandering, of course--but, hey, nobody's perfect).

In one of the indexes Terill lists the movies McQueen didn't make, and one of those was Robert Altman's The Long Good-Bye.

McQueen as Marlowe? Wow.

Just... wow.

McQueen played the world-weary, vulnerable, never-give-up type time and time again, and did it better than anybody before or since.

Bullitt. McQueen against authority. He solved the mystery his way while avoiding interference from the suits who stood in his way.

Papillon. McQueen, trying to escape a French prison over and over again, without success, beaten time and again, buried in a solitary holding cell clinging to whatever sliver of light allowed him to see outside. Best line from the movie: "I'm still here, you bastards."

Junior Bonner. He refused to give up his dreams of rodeo glory despite his age and pressure from his parents and others. He forged his own way.

The Great Escape. Need I say more?

Philip Marlowe never gave up, no matter how many times he was sapped (by crooks and cops alike) and when nobody else would stand up for what was right, or his client, Marlowe stood up. He stood up for Terry Lennox, when he probably shouldn't have. He paid for his choices. But he took the licking and kept going. If he didn't, nobody would.

Marlowe and McQueen are a match made in literary and celluloid heaven.

With his qualities, McQueen would have given us the definitive portrayal of Philip Marlowe no matter how the screenwriters and Altman updated the novel.

Can you imagine the final scene between Marlowe and Terry Lennox with McQueen behind the desk? Oh... My... Gosh...

But it didn't work out, and The Long Good-Bye starred Elliot Gould. Not that there is anything, you know, wrong with that...

Kill Your Darlings, or: Hurry Up and Rescue Me, Muse!

2010-12-24T19:02:00.000-08:00

One of the obstacles facing us indie writers, or any writer, really, is finding people who have the editorial sense to give our manuscripts the review they deserve—not just a read where somebody says something nice about it. I’m talking about a “this works, this doesn’t, this makes no sense” kind of read. In other words, we need somebody who isn’t afraid to tell the emperor that he has no clothes.

I have auditioned several folks in this area with varying degrees of success; the most recent was my friend Beth, who was good at spotting the typos and pesky grammar problems that plague all writers, but she didn’t like my subject matter of heroes and villains and shoot-em-up-bang-bang with a few sexy babes thrown in for color. She preferred mysteries of the cozy variety, where the Old Ladies Knitting Circle solves crimes without ever leaving their knitting circle, and the murderer confesses because one of the old ladies has a cat who stares at him funny. She read my newest manuscript, Show No Mercy, which I want to release in January, but this spy thriller in the James Bond mode wasn’t her thing. She could not get into the story, did not care about the characters, and had no comment as to whether or not the plot and situations made any sense. And that’s fine. She was up front about her prejudices, and I didn’t hold it against her. She found a few mistakes, and those mistakes were corrected. But I needed another reader.

Enter my friend Michael, who once edited his college newspaper, and told me that gave him all the experience necessary for what I needed. Plus, he reads a ton of thrillers and we discuss new books quite often. It wouldn’t hurt, thought I, to let him try. But…

Michael and I had a conversation recently about the book; he’d only just started reading, hadn’t progressed very far. He did say, however, that he thought some of the minor characters the hero meets within the first 30 pages should get their own book.

“Eh?” said I. “You mean the cardboard people who are there only to provide a clue or information for the hero to advance his investigation? Those are the characters you like?”

Calling them cardboard is a mistake as I try to infuse even the minor folks with some bits of characterization, but I wonder if maybe I went too far, and didn’t give the hero enough to catch Michael’s attention. What does he think of the hero?

“Oh, yeah, he’s cool. I like his name.” (They’re both named Michael.)

I guess that’s a decent comment but it didn’t have the enthusiasm he showed for the minor folks.

Further questioning revealed that Michael hasn’t read far enough to form an opinion on the hero or the supporting players (whom he hasn’t met yet). But it made me think: Did I do the job right? Had I properly set up the hero, Michael Dodge, as somebody to root for?

Immediately I went through my notes and the story itself. I think I did all right. The mystery begins as soon as we meet Dodge, a C.I.A. operative, and he’s confronted with the idea that his mentor may have turned against the Agency. Right away he’s eager to learn the truth. We get a little about his background and his habits (he’s a good poker player, drinks rum-and-Coke, and has the usual heroic skill with a pistol and gadgets). What we don’t have as we meet Dodge, but we see in the minor characters, are traits. One fellow eats with his mouth open; the other has a hair cut which leaves some strands dangling over his ears. Are those enough to really make a reader want to see more of them?

I asked myself, “What first grabbed me about James Bond, when we meet him in Casino Royale (the book, not the movie—I’m an Ian Fleming purist and think the movies suck). Why did I find Mack Bolan sympathetic when I read War Against the Mafia? What is it about Matt Helm that made me want to read more about him? Why do I like Mike Hammer? Why is Dirty Harry so exciting? Why do I still read the Dan Track books that I collected ages ago?

Then I thought to myself, It’s too soon to analyze this. He hasn’t even finished the book yet.

I may be over thinking this, of course, but it’s the kind of critical thinking that a writer must do. If something isn’t working, it needs to be fixed, and if Dodge needs something more, I will give him more (perhaps a physical flaw that makes him less than perfect), but I won’t do any altering of the manuscript until Michael finishes the entire book.

This reminds me of a funny story regarding my last book, Justified Sins, which has been my best-seller so far. I wasn’t sure anybody would like the hero, a vigilante named Pierce, but most readers have said that they liked him very much, and took the news that I didn’t think I would do a second Pierce novel very hard (I have since changed my mind because a great idea came to mind). They want to see more of him, learn more of his story. Why? I didn’t give Pierce any more characterization than I have given Dodge. But readers find Pierce compelling. For some reason.

But I need to wait until Michael finishes the book before I do anything rash.

Meanwhile, I think the conversation made me focus a little more. It’s the thought process a writer must go through, time and time again, because to think we “know it all” is, literally, poison. We have to be ready to alter what we think is perfect. The good news is, my muse, if you will, always provides a solution.

Hopefully, when Michael finishes marking up my manuscript, he will be as excited to see more of Michael Dodge as I am to write about him, and will be able to answer more questions. I have four more Dodge books planned, so if this one takes off, more will quickly follow. It will be a few more weeks until my new reader finished the story, but in the end I think he’ll give it the kudos I think it deserves.

If he doesn't, it's back under the hood for some fine tuning.

Free Book!

2010-12-20T14:29:00.000-08:00

My friend Rebecca Forster, who shares this space now and again, has a terrific offer going on right now where you can get a free copy of one of her books. But why should I talk about it? Watch the video! One thing I will say is that the book is "Hostile Witness" and if you think there's nothing new and exciting in legal fiction, you need to give this one a try. It's a hot read that kept me up nights when it was originally published several years ago; you won't be able to put it down.

Babysitting an Old Cat--The Diary

2010-12-09T20:40:00.000-08:00

My mother is off on a weeklong cruise to wherever the hell, and has asked me to not only stay at her house but also take care of her cat, a 21-year-old black Siamese named Midnight. She was a kitten when I was 14, so small that she could lay flat in the palm of my hand. No longer. She is old, cranky, arthritic, and waiting to get into cat heaven now.

I have been keeping a diary of our adventures together in order to keep my sanity, and it has become quite the writing exercise.

Day 1: I spent so much time taking care of the cat, aka The Rodent, this AM that I rushed to get myself ready for work. Result? I was ten minutes late to the office because of traffic (it's only rain people!) and forgot my lunch. I am going to change the cat's name to George Bush so I can blame it for everything and take responsibility for nothing.

Day 2: I thought lighting a fire in the fire place, in front of which the cat likes to lay and is thus quiet, would keep her quiet after a loud meowing spree--she howls like a banshee. But she is ignoring the fire. She is still howling. I think the only way to shut her up would be to throw her into the fire, but that would upset my mother, so we will not do this. We will endure.

Day 3: The rodent is in front of the fire and quiet. There is peace in this house. Once I put the fire out, though, there will be no peace. Woe is me.

Day 4: This morning the cat was outside my door and promptly began meowing for breakfast as soon as my alarm went off. I almost tripped on the rodent because she insists on walking between my feet as I head for her food dish. One of these days, I'll indeed trip over her, bang my head, fall into a coma, and she will starve to death.

Day 5: All the rodent does is follow me around the house and howl until I light the fireplace, and then she lies in front of it and is silent. It's a gas fireplace, so my mother's gas bill will be high. That's what she gets for making me stay with the rodent.

Day 6: Today, like I did back in the day, I placed the rodent on the back of the couch. When she was young she would walk along the edge and jump off. Now she can barely balance. Wow, she is old. I picked her up so she wouldn't fall and she howled at me. I would have howled too.

Day 7: I’m fighting the sniffles so I wasn't in the mood to deal with the rodent’s pissing and moaning about her breakfast. So I dropped a bunch of her food on the plastic plate she used yesterday. She continued to moan and wail and would not eat. I grabbed a clean plate, transferred the food, and then she started eating. She is a spoiled little rodent. I guess I can’t blame her, though. I wouldn't want to eat off a dirty plate, either.

Rebecca Forster Vs. The Hunky Dudes

2010-12-02T06:51:00.001-08:00

Editor's Note: My writer pal Rebecca Forster once again brings a touch of class to this blog with a piece about all the wild and crazy hunky men she meets while doing her--what? Oh, she's only talking about men who read her books. I see. In that case, they probably aren't hunky at all. Except for me, though "hunk of what?" is probably your next question. Learn more about Rebecca at www.rebeccaforster.com.

I have been meeting a lot of men lately online. These men have dangerous and intriguing handles like ‘rebel’ and ‘emystery’ and ‘moses’. These men all want one thing--to talk about books.

Disappointed? Not the pay-off you were expecting? Well, I gotta tell you, this is a new experience for me, too. Actually, I should clarify. Meeting men is not a new experience. I’ve known a couple in my life, I just can’t really remember them very well since I’ve been married for like forever (think Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion and if you haven’t seen it, stop reading this and get thee right now to Netflix).

Since becoming a married woman, I have also met a lot of guys. They repair my car, come over in the middle of the afternoon for a little tryst – usually with my plumbing – or tend to taking my clothes in when I’m on a diet and letting them out again when I fail. Tailors are unsung heroes.

What makes the men I’m meeting lately so intriguing is that they are (get ready) readers of fiction. Before the internet, I didn’t believe they existed. There were always the aberrations, of course. Those were the men who read Tom Clancy or David Morrell but I have been long been suspect of the devotion men have to that fiction. In fact, I have it on good authority that during the printing process the publisher lays down a thin layer of testosterone on the pages which is tantamount to carrying a ham hock in your pocket to make a dog love you.

The men I’m talking about read MY fiction. I think my books are pretty thrilling considering I write about the legal system. What’s not to love there? There’s always a good murder (and I’m talking really good). There are fight-or-flight scenes. There are sex scenes (okay, maybe just the idea of sex. Okay, maybe just the insinuation of sex. My mom, after all, reads my books. She doesn’t mind creative murder but sex? Not so much). There is always the bare-knuckled-intellectual smack d owns men will love in my fictional courtrooms. I too have a dose of testosterone but you have to actually read my books closely to find it and sometimes I sprinkle a little too much on the female characters.

I had always imagined most men to be like my husband: readers of nonfiction, political treatise, history. Lots and lots of history. Magazines. Tons and tons of news magazines. In short, I believed male readers did not want to be drawn into a fictional world and introduced to people who faded away with the turn of the last page.

I was so wrong. I painted fiction readers with a broad brush that did not include men. I profiled, I admit it. Now I’ve seen the light. I am here to tell you that I embrace the fabulous men I have met through the internet because of my books. I am grateful for their counsel because, unlike the more polite woman reader, men say what’s on their mind. Sometimes it’s praise for my work (go ahead, take a look at some of the ‘guy’ reviews of my books) but they also have helped me so much as I focused on the ever-expanding e-publishing marketplace. They read my work on their computers, IPads, Nooks and Kindles and have made suggestions. Sometime, they just ask questions like, “Did you just fall off the turnip truck because your formatting is way off.” Or the ever favorite, “I think you should check your file, either you can’t spell or you have scanning problems.”

The cool thing about all this is that my guys not only point out a problem, they happily help me fix it. I’m assuming they are happy to help since the dialogue between us continues over weeks and months and, in some cases, years. I know about their children and grandchildren, we swap travel stories and suggestions for good reads. I get a little jealous when they don’t add ‘but your work is so much better’ to their recommendations.

I am eternally grateful that these men have picked up my work and picked up on me. They have become friends I cherish even though we will more than likely never meet – which actually is probably a good thing. I never could have imagined that offering up a book for their consideration would, in turn introduce me to a group of men so considerate.

Here’s to all you chivalrous, kind and generous guys who read fiction . Now, when I write I promise to remember you’re out there. In fact, I may swipe a little more testosterone on those pages just to say thanks.

Show No Mercy: The Teaser

2010-11-27T15:40:00.000-08:00

Hi, gang. I'm in the process of working up the story description for my new book, a spy thriller called Show No Mercy, and I wanted to post it for review and comments. Don't be shy! Without any further comment from me, I present to you the teaser for Show No Mercy.

"Could you kill your father?

That is the question C.I.A. agent Michael Dodge faces when he learns that his mentor and surrogate father, Harry Ames, is accused of murdering a fellow agent and helping an unknown enemy acquire a biological weapon.

Dodge teams up with Harry’s daughter, Tracy, but their attempt to learn the truth transforms into a task neither can contemplate: assassinating the man they care about most.

SHOW NO MERCY. A heart-stopping international thrill-ride sure to please even the most jaded connoisseur of high adventure. January 2011."

Cover Me!

2010-11-27T09:35:00.000-08:00

How is your holiday weekend going? I'm staying at my mother's since my sister is in town and I swear I'm getting a hotel next year. I'm sleeping on the living room floor on an air mattress that makes my back hurt and since mom doesn't believe in curtains the sun blasts into said living room and wakes one up at an ungodly hour when one has just gotten to sleep after watching the Spongebob Squarepants marathon.

My new year's resolution is to redo the covers of the ebooks I published this year and prepare some really hot covers for the books coming in January and March. I'm able to do this thanks to awesome web sites like Dreamstime, fotolia, and iStockphoto, which offer professional photographs, at a price, that when assembled properly will make great book covers. I'm talking about men and women with guns in various "action oriented" photos that will go great with books entitled Justified Sins and Show No Mercy. (Thanks for my writer pal Jon Guenther for the tip on these sites!) But what I am coming across, and maybe this is where you can help me, is whether or not to go with the James Bond-style dudes or masked hoodlums with their pistols or only use shots of sexy babes posing with guns. It's tempting to do the kind of GGA pulp covers so prevalent in the glory days but the photos I am finding are a little too racy, but you can't deny that a woman in a bloody slip holding a gun in one hand and a knife in the other wouldn't catch somebody's eye and that's what an author wants but even I have certain standards. Very few standards, but standards nonetheless.

The Writer's Mind

2010-11-23T08:32:00.001-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all, and I certainly hope you have plans that will provide you with needed R&R, because who doesn’t need a break after this particularly trying time? I plan on spending a lot of the holiday weekend with my face down in notebook pages as I write the new novel, The Rogue Gentleman. I feel very strongly that this is going to be a hot book, and I feel it as strongly as a TSA agent feeling up a three-year-old.

Writing a story is probably one of the most rewarding activities I engage in, because of moments like the other day when I was scribbling a scene between the hero—the aforementioned rogue gentleman—and the police detective he interacts with. My outline doesn’t go into characterizations or anything like that, it just gives the facts of a scene, so it’s up to my imagination and other pre-writing activity to fill in the gaps. The hero of the book is a cigar smoker; when it came time to introduce the detective, he became a cigar smoker, too, but because if his daughter’s college tuition, he can only afford the cheap smokes. This shared habit was the turning point in their conversation, which was supposed to end with them forging an alliance against the bad guys. Before that, the dialogue had to carry the day and it didn’t have the impact I wanted; I didn't think mere words would forge the bond these two needed to make the plans they later make. They needed something else.

At one point the detective leans back in his chair, his jacket falls open, and the hero sees the el cheapo cigar sticking out of his shirt pocket. The hero then produces a much more expensive cigar from his own shirt pocket, the kind the detective wishes he could afford. If the detective likes it, the hero promises to buy him a case. The detective doesn’t take it right away; he’s not sure he should, but then he does and BOOM the dynamic between the characters transformed and suddenly their alliance wasn't so hard to swallow.

The other funny thing about this new book is how much material from an old book I’m incorporating. Every writer has “trunk novels”, stuff they and for a variety of reasons put in a drawer. One of my trunk novels has not only provided material for my previous book Justified Sins, but it’s providing a lot of material for The Rogue Gentleman as well. And there will be enough left over for a third book. It’s the manuscript that keeps on giving. You might be asking, If the trunk novel has so much good stuff, why didn't you publish it by itself? I don't know. I think somebody told me they didn't like it. Maybe I worked on it for too long and lost interest. I can't remember the reason anymore.

I hope you enjoyed this peek into a writer’s mind. I assure you all writers have them; now, when you read a book, maybe you can imagine how the author created what seems like an effortless the story, but you'll know better.

Rebecca Forster: A Rocky Road to Inspiration

2010-11-20T23:40:00.000-08:00

Editor's Note: Here's Rebecca again with a post about finding creativity in an unlikely place. One of these days I have to go visit her neighborhood; every time she talks about it, I get jealous. I don't live in a place as cool as hers. Learn more about Rebecca's books at www.rebeccaforster.com. Her latest is a romantic thriller called Wilde's Gamble and it's a winner all the way.

Sometimes I find myself uninspired. Creatively shot. Not a word of dialogue for mute characters or description of a fictional landscape presents themselves. The next turn of phrase, the next analogy, adverb or adjective is on the tip of my tongue but that tongue is tied. The fuel pump’s blocked, the door is closed. I am, so to speak, between a creative rock and a hard place. Giving up is out of the question so I talk a walk to jar my thoughts loose. My destination is the bustling village a mile down the hill from my house.

If I head to the beach, I will walk on white sand that rings the sapphire blue ocean which fills a horseshoe of a bay. I can see Malibu across the water and dolphin in the curl of the waves as they frolic with the surfers. There are skaters, volleyball players, cyclists and a plethora of beautiful California bodies which I would probably appreciate more if I were younger. As it is, all those beautiful people only serve to remind me that I’m not.

If I go the other way, I walk on asphalt, past rows of well-kept, modestly-sized ranch style houses. This is the route I usually take because there is one house that never fails to pique my curiosity. Actually, it isn’t the house but the rock that sits on the lawn in front of the house that I find so curious.

This rock is unimpressively grey, round on top and flat on the bottom. Rather than move it, the owner of the house planted grass around it. The lawn is beautiful; the rock is not. The rock is arm-span wide and a little more than knee-high. There is a stone on top of it that looks like a dinosaur egg. The rock and the stone could be one of those Boy Scout signs my brothers ringed around the backyard pointing the way to our own backdoor. For me, the rock points the way to inspiration. Whoever lives in the house makes the rock and stone his canvas and three times a year it becomes something else entirely.

In October the rock is wrapped in orange paper, the stone in green and it is transformed into a pumpkin.

Come December, the rock becomes a granite snowman with a red and green stripped scarf wrapped around its nonexistent neck.

Ah, spring! Rock as Easter Bunny….

You get the idea.

With a little help, the rock and stone become heralds of good cheer and harbingers of happy times to come. The rock speaks of faithfulness, passing each year with the owner of the house, marking time, submitting to the ‘artists’ vision. The rock, all dressed up, is funny and pleasing to the eye and unexpected. It is a public service and I, as a member of the public, never cease to be delighted by the ever morphing rock and his friend the stone. Here is a story told completely, without need of explanation or overt flourish.

I believe in getting lost in a narrative, in creating fantasy, in telling a good story. I believe that around every corner is a mystery or mayhem or madness or magic if we just keep our eyes open. I believe that someday I will walk by the rock and it will lament that it is too hot to wear a scarf during the California Christmas season. When that happens, I’ll pause and loosen the scarf. Maybe I’ll rest on the lawn and we’ll have a chat. Ah, if only that would happen.

And when my mind is mired, when I feel that I am stone deaf to inspiration and that my creativity is weighed down by real life, I don’t despair. I know I will have to go no further to find either than to walk through a modest neighborhood where I will give a wink and nod to a rock, a stone and whoever is in that house who can teach me a thing or two about creativity.

Finding These Words is Like Digging for Coal

2010-11-19T17:07:00.001-08:00

Who among you is participating in NaNoWriMo? The reports coming from writer pals in the flesh and on-line are impressive; some of you are really pounding out the words and you should be proud about the output.

I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo this year, but I am writing (a new novel called The Rogue Gentleman) and trying for my usual five pages a day. This time, I am making a few changes to my usual routine.

Normally I write first in long-hand in a notebook, then type, either into the computer or on my grandfather's Royal typewriter. In order to get Rogue finished by March, I thought I would type straight into the computer this time. I don't think my brain is used to this because getting any more than two pages done each day has been hard. It's not that the words are not there. I have a detailed outline to follow and plug away accordingly. But, wow, I've never had this much trouble pumping out pages before.

It's okay, though, because at least there are pages being typed, and the story is moving along. I guess I expect more of myself, though.

Anyway, it could be worse. There could be no words at all. Where would I be then?

Can't We All Just Get Along?, or: Why Are They Always Picking On Indies?

2010-11-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

We read today that a bunch of C grade midlist authors have formed a group called Top Suspense and are putting their backlists, and some current offerings, on Kindle and other electronic formats. The spokesman, Dave Zeltserman, said it's part of their effort, as "established" and "proven" authors, to offer "good" ebooks since so much of the ebook market is slush.

But, wait, don't take my word for it! From their press release:

"Electronic books are soon to be a billion dollar business, yet it's more difficult than ever to find a good read, especially via digital download. With more than 700,000 ebooks already on line, with a good number of them self-published, ebook stores are becoming the equivalent of publisher's past 'slush piles'. A newly-formed collaborative site called The Top Suspense Group plans to slash through all the clutter. www.topsuspensegroup.com will be offering readers one central site filled with exciting e-books, covering several genres and all at reasonable prices.

'Readers can count on us,' creator and acclaimed author Dave Zeltserman explains, 'Every member of our group has already made his or her mark on genre fiction, whether it's noir, crime, mystery, thriller, horror or Westerns, and in some cases, several of these genres.'

Authors aboard include Zeltserman, Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Ed Gorman, Vicki Hendricks, and Harry Shannon.

Zeltserman has spoken before about the difficulty readers have in searching for sites that offer seasoned professionals..."

Of course, this begs the question, Who the heck is Dave Zeltserman and what has he written that has been so widely acclaimed as we cannot think of a single title?, and reminds us that "widely acclaimed" also means "out-of-print due to lack of sales" but never mind. The fact that none of these folks, other than, say, Max Allan Collins, has sold enough books to even be somewhat known in the world (and only then because of Road to Perdition), shall not be mentioned or questioned, either, as it would be in bad taste to do so.

(A quick shout down the hall to Miss Zelda informs us that Mr. Zeltserman published his first book In His Shadow with a company called iUniverse, which Miss Zelda further informs us is a self-publishing company. Pot, meet kettle.)

We are inclined to let Top Suspense have their part of the sand box knowing they probably won't sell any more ebooks than they have paper books, which is why a lot of them are either out-of-print or have been working for Z list publishers for the last two decades, with two or three--notable, of course--exceptions, but we won't mention that as, again, it's in bad taste and we need not further muddy the already dirty water.

But seriously, folks, can't we all just get along? The ebook market may indeed have a lot of crap (and it does; Dave is not wrong, just an elitist snob) but to offer blanket statements that it's all garbage when a lot of "independent authors" (oh how we hate that PC feel-good term) are doing our best to release quality work--because we respect our audience--is wrong. It would be better for the Top Suspense team to say they are making their work available to take advantage of this new and exciting market. But, of course, that would be too easy, and these "established" and "proven" authors must, for some reason, attack those of us who are trying to slug it out in a tough market when in reality it is a waste of time and energy that these "established" and "proven" authors could better use, maybe, writing books, but, again, that would be too easy.

But we know how to waste time and energy in response. In fact, we wasted about a half hour writing this.

Good luck, guys.

Guest Post: Rebecca Forster--HEROES ALL

2010-11-15T16:51:00.000-08:00

Editor's Note: Here's my fellow writer and pal Rebecca Forster with another post; and a good one, too. For more go to www.rebeccaforster.com. Enjoy....

Planning a new book begins with conjuring up a victim and a hero. The first must be protected, avenged or rescued; the second must be the protector, the avenger and the one who rides to the rescue.

Today, though, I attended a fundraiser for Ability First, an organization that provides services to help children and adults with physical and developmental disabilities realize their full potential. That's when the old story rule went out the window.

There I was, out of my jeans, dressed in my very lady-like shirtwaist and Jackie-O pearls, ready to lunch and watch a fashion show in support of a worthy cause. But I was early and the behind-the-scenes activity was even more interesting than the afternoon ahead.

The women of the Long Beach Center Guild of Ability First were working feverishly, setting up silent auction baskets and tables for the luncheon, making sure the sound system worked. Young people in brick-red t-shirts identifying them as Ability First staff helped vendors, manned the check-in table and took pictures. They also rehearsed the Ability First clients for the presentation they would make to the audience.

During those early hours, I met Geri. Wheelchair bound and unable to communicate verbally, she nonetheless was able to make it clear she was happy to be at the event and happier still to participate. When the luncheon began, Geri and her friends 'signed' a song for a group of 230 women who had come to celebrate their accomplishments and donate time and money to make sure that the swimming, arts, housing programs and more continue to service these amazingly courageous people.

I realize events like this aren't unusual. Everywhere you look there are ribbons to be worn, walks and runs to participate in and concerts that benefit good causes. But often I find it difficult to connect with these causes and their big events. Ability First, Long Beach is right in my own backyard and I was there, in that ballroom, with people who believed in the work that Ability First is doing. I was caught up in the the personal joy everyone felt and that made me feel great!

Pick a Title, Already; Mr. Pierce Will Return

2010-11-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

Many of you have written to tell me how much you enjoyed my ebook Justified Sins and the hero of that book, Mr. Pierce. Pierce, for those of you just joining us, is a vigilante waging a one-man war on crime because, when he was young, his family was killed by home invaders. In the book, he has to protect his foster sister from the gang that murders her husband. Some pre-readers told me the story didn't work, the concept was tired, Charles Bronson was dead, etc., etc., but I thought the emphasis on character and a general theme would carry the story in ways previous entires in the vigilante genre didn't. From your letters, it appears I was right. You like the book.

You may also recall that I have stated Justified Sins was the end of the mother lode and I didn't anticipate further Pierce adventures; however, yesterday in a very long, and very boring, meeting at work, I thought back to an old manuscript that I never finished that would be a great Pierce story properly rewritten. So expect what I am currently calling Dirty Little Secrets--aka The Return of Mr. Pierce--to appear toward the end of 2011.

And thank you for the wonderful letters.

PICK A TITLE, ALREADY!

I'm busy putting the new spy novel in final form, and it's a ton of fun, and I really think this is going to be a good story. This book was my NaNoWriMo project last year, and I almost didn't finish it because I didn't want to get looped into a spy series, but I have seen the light. I think you'll like it very much.

There will be some confusing when I release the book on Kindle as it's previously been promoted as The Eagle Intercept and Heroes Wear Black. Neither of those titles worked for me; I have now settled on Show No Mercy, which is the title of a book I wrote and rewrote throughout my high school years, which were more years ago than I care to remember.

So in January get ready to meet Michael Dodge and Tracy Ames, a pair of CIA agents who will go anywhere and do anything to get the job done as they face the possibility that Tracy's father, and Michael's mentor, has betrayed the Agency.

I'll release it on Kindle first, with a hot cover (and I'll be redoing the covers for my previous books, too) and while it's racking up ebook sales I'll be submitting it to traditional publishing offices. I like it that much. This could be the start of something nice. And I have three more Dodge books in the pipeline, so if he proves as popular as Mr. Pierce, you will all be very happy.

Hard-Boiled Bogie, or: You Know How to Whistle, Don't You, Steve?

2010-11-08T20:04:00.001-08:00

To Have and Have Not is on the television right now and I think it's one of the best movies, with one of the worst belly-flop endings ever put on film, that Humphrey Bogart starred in. He made a lot of good movies, but there are three that stand out because of their hard-boiled elements, especially with Bogie's character, and I'd like to go over them with you.

To Have and Have Not gives us shades of Casablanca without Bogie crying into his scotch. We get intrigue in occupied territory and Bogie's Captain Morgan (love that name--was Hemingway drinking that wonderful elixir when he wrote the novel?) is the cautious outsider trying to live his life as peacefully as he can without getting into the fight. He does things his own way, looks out for himself, but once he's drawn into the fight for personal reasons he ends up making a sacrifice that changes his destiny for the better. It's a great little war story dampened only by the ending.

Then we have Key Largo, a masterpiece of tension; again, Bogie shines as the tough independent outsider who won't let the bad guys fool him and saves the day. If To Have's ending fell flat, Key Largo ends with one of the best fights ever, where Bogie finally gets even with Edward G. Robinson. If you haven't had the pleasure, check it out right away.

So what's my third favorite hard-boiled Bogie film? The Maltese Falcon, of course, and there's nothing more I can say about that terrific movie that hasn't been said already.

I wish I could put Casablanca on this list. I love the movie. If I could pick a movie world to spend the rest of my days in, that would be the one. It's just right, despite one of the worst plot holes in film history that could have been corrected with a simple line change. But it doesn't even earn Honorable Mention, because in Casablanca, Bogie cries. Over a woman, no less. He even pounds on the bar with his fists! Gak! Sorry. Casablanca is out for that reason. Hard-Boiled Bogie does not cry.

Guest Blogger Rebecca Forster, or: How Can She Not Like Dark Chocolate?

2010-10-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm letting my friend and fellow writer Rebecca Forster do some guest blogs now and then, and here she is with her first. You can look her up, and learn about her amazing books, at www.rebeccaforster.com.

Halloween--How Inspiring!

by Rebecca Forster

Guest Blogger

“I saw Halloween candy at Costco,” I said.

“It’s September,” my husband responded.

“Doesn’t matter. I bought a bag. I ate it. I’ll get more before Halloween,” I say.

Halloween is still a couple of weeks away and yes more bags of candy have disappeared on my watch. Still, there is evidence that those bags existed. Sad little mini bars of dark chocolate are stuffed into a bag in the recesses of my candy closet. They are there because I hate waste almost as much as I hate dark chocolate. I am as ashamed of my overindulgence of Crackle Bars, Three Musketeers and the ever so delicious Mini-Peanut Butter Cups as I am of my rejection of the bitter dark chocolate. Actually, I am probably more ashamed of the latter because I know that I will shamelessly pawn the dark chocolate off on some unsuspecting trick-or-treater.

The poor kid will dump the bag, sift through the booty and come upon my rejects. I imagine the child crying at worst. At best, those little bitty dark chocolates will be ignored or passed over pawned off on a younger kid. Yet, as I torture myself with the idea of ruining a tyke’s Halloween, I have another thought. Hershey wouldn’t make the darn things if there weren’t a whole lot of people out there who love ‘em, would they?

Which brings me to the files on my computer mark New Ideas, Synopsis and Inspiration. In these files are a plethora of Word documents in various stages of crafting: a sentence to remind me of some fleeting idea, full-blown treatments, chapter openings. These folders scare me the same way I fear a group of raging, candy-starved, monstrous teenagers appearing at my door on Halloween. I fear the folders because they represent thinking that went nowhere, ideas that weren’t worth nurturing much less publishing. Here, hidden away, is the dark chocolate of my imagination. The good stuff isn’t there.

Or is it?

Could be I need to take a second look at the ‘dark chocolate ideas’ I have squirreled away on my computer. There might be a character worthy of tweaking, a plot that could be deepened, a story that should be softened. Dress it up, a little lipstick on the pig, change the lighting, rummage around, grab something and come up for air.

Yep, there it is. A little linty, perhaps. The wrapper fallen off. A bit crumbly and stale.

Still, in my bag of rejects, I find that time and taste has turned at least one of my personal rejects into the glimmery, glinty beginnings of a good idea. If I try again, nibble around the edges of it, I come to the conclusion that it might be pretty good after all. In fact, it might even be worth savoring. And, if I keep my eyes open, if I analyze the market, read about the business and listen hard I just might discover that there’s an editor or reader out there who has a passion for the dark chocolate of my imagination.

It’s a sweet thought, isn’t it?

Black Mask Audio--Get This Now!

2010-10-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this? I hope I'm late to the party but I couldn't resist this when I saw it and had to write it up. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Blackstone Audio, the folks behind the most recent Mike Hammer audio plays, produced a audio version of Black Mask Magazine--of sorts. Not all of the stories included were featured in Black Mask, but most of them were, and this is a treat. Here's their own description, which tells the tale better than I:

In the1930s and '40s, Black Mask was the single most important magazine for the modern mystery field. Here, writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Earl Stanley Gardner reshaped the established view of mystery fiction, creating the "hard-boiled" private eye.

Now this series resurrects from those pages the toughest of tough detectives in sonic dramatizations from the award-winning Hollywood Theater of the Ear.

Stories included in this volume are "Lost and Found" by Hugh B. Cave, "Pigeon Blood" by Paul Cain, "Rough Justice" by Frederick Nebel, "Black" by Paul Cain, "The Missing Mr. Lee" by Hugh B. Cave, "Trouble Chaser" by Paul Cain, "Too Many Have Lived" by Dashiell Hammett, "Taking His Time" by Reuben J. Shay, and "Waiting for Rusty" by William Cole.

These programs are great, and it's really nice to see Paul Cain (with three stories!!!) included. These stories come alive like never before and it makes for a wonderful afternoon of entertainment. Purists may note that Hammett's tale came from American Magazine and not Black Mask, but who cares (though a tale of the Continental Op would have been great).

Of course, nowadays we produce noir features with elements we think they contained back in the day instead of what they truly contained, and these recordings are no exception. Whoever wrote the music really liked saxophones, and the instrument somehow feels out of place, like they're trying to force a certain mood--a noir mood, if you will, and it doesn't work. Hard-boiled tales work best when you don't try to dress them up.

It's great to see this because (a) it may bring our favorite material back into vogue and (b) it says this is Volume 1, which leads one to believe that there may be more to follow.... pardon me while I wipe up my drool.

New Projects Gathering Steam....

2010-10-01T19:38:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure if the case with you, I've had quite a busy week... not just with the usual work chores but writing projects as well. I've decided to stop promoting Justified Sins while I work on the next two projects: the revisions of my spy novel, Heroes Wear Black; and the outlining of the book to follow, The Rogue Gentleman. These two books represent a departure for me. Neither are particularly hard-boiled, but they are instead "swashbuckling" adventure stories with a mix of comedy. Heroes features the usual spy story hokum, but with a twist, and I think you'll like it. I'm really excited about The Rogue Gentleman, as it features an international adventurer who never has a problem finding trouble. If there is a little Simon Templar and James Bond in there, I won't complain; the hybrid is exciting. The rogue himself may be the hero I write about for the rest of my life as the outline for his first adventure isn't done yet and already I have ideas for five more books. There doesn't seem to be any story that doesn't fit him.

Like Sean Connery I will never say never, but, for now, I'm done with hard-boiled stories. I think, honestly, I've done everything I can in that department; however, I am cooking up a new take on the private eye hero which I hope to do sometime in 2011, but don't expect him to be Mr. Pierce.

Speaking of Pierce, the vigilante hero of Justified Sins, I don't think I'm going to so a sequel. That's subject to change, of course, but while there seems to be a demand for Justified Sins II, that story isn't begging to be written. I'm not sure it will be written. Like I said, I think I've done everything I can with that particular subject matter, and I don't want to write the same book over and over again.

That doesn't mean I'll stop reading hard-boiled; far from it! If there is a more "American" way of storytelling, I haven't found it, and the amount of literature available is still worth talking about.

Anyway, there's a quick update for you. I hope you will enjoy the upcoming books as much as I am, so far!

A Policeman's Lot by Gary M. Dobbs

2010-09-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure what to think when fellow writer and blogger Gary Dobbs sent me his ebook, A Policeman's Lot, for review, but he did me a favor in allowing me to post an article on his site about my new ebook Justified Sins, so I figured I would give it a look.

One word: Wow. This is a good book.

The story begins slowly, a man's morning routine as he gets ready for duty and faces the possibility of a busy day, but he has no idea how "busy" it's going to get! Throw in Buffalo Bill, a Wild West show, murders that may or may not be connected to Jack The Ripper, and you have a really hot read. I don't want to say too much for fear of giving something away, but it's a well-written yarn and you will get hooked right away. It's also, for me, a nice change of pace from the modern urban hard-boiled junk I've been digesting lately.

Nice job, Gary.

Check it out!

The (Reluctant) Birth of a Series

2010-09-28T08:20:00.000-07:00

Editor’s Note: Rebecca Forster has been a friend of mine for nearly 20 years, in which time she has published almost as many books. She graduated from paperback romances to the exciting world of legal thrillers and, like Grisham, knows the territory. But, typical of midlist writers in the last decade, has had her share of ups and downs. Now that Amazon is letting authors make their work available on the Kindle, she is taking advantage and having a great time with great sales to match. The Witness series, featuring attorney Josie Baylor-Bates, the subject of this article, is a consistent seller, more so than it ever was when originally published in paperback. I recall reading Hostile Witness, the first episode, while working the graveyard shift at KCBS-AM in San Francisco, and it was such a hot read that I’d get really cranky whenever I had to put the book down and open my microphone to actually get some work done. Now Rebecca is continuing the Josie series specifically for the Kindle market, and I cannot wait to see the results. So here is Rebecca, in her own words, sharing a little about how the Witness series came to be, and the challenges of writing about the same characters over and over again.

Hostile Witness was supposed to be a stand-alone book and then the editor fell in love with the characters and a series was born. Silent Witness and Privileged Witness followed.

A few things stand out about this turn of events in my career.

First, I was thrilled that the first book was exciting enough for an editor to ask for more. Then the excitement wore off, and real concerns presented themselves.

Hostile Witness had a solid story and plot. It was inspired by my husband, a superior court judge, who had just sentenced a sixteen-year-old boy to life in prison as an adult. The boy had murdered three people and the question of when a child becomes an adult in the eyes of the law intrigued me. In writing Hostile Witness, I found a drama that proved compelling for readers. Would I be able to follow up with equally dramatic stories?

I also had to ask myself if I liked these characters well enough to continue to write about them. Were their voices unique enough? Did they deserve a long life or would readers tire of them? Had they been created with finite motivations? Those questions created a pressure I had never experienced before. In all honesty, most of that pressure was self-inflicted as I worked to make the second book as good as the first.

Finally, I wondered about the technique of series writing. After writing 20 books I realized I didn’t know anything about writing continuing characters.

Here’s what I discovered as I worked through these concerns.

Stories are compelling because they are inherently good. The next book in my series simply had to be a story I could embrace with as much passion as I had Hostile Witness. If I could do that within the parameters set by my characters, all would be well.

As for the characters, I loved them in the first book so there was no reason I wouldn’t like them even better in the tenth. I had heard that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came to hate Sherlock Holmes. I would never want to feel that way about Josie and Hannah and Archer. Knowing that, I have a final book plotted and put away so that I will end their literary lives gracefully. For now, though, I can’t imagine using that story. I love these people. I want them to live and thrive.

Finally, I tackled the question of technique. Do series characters age? If not, how can they grow? Was it mandatory to have each of the pivotal characters in every book? How often--and with what intensity--do I reiterate descriptions and back story? Not every reader will pick up the first book nor will every reader will want to read the whole series. Where do I draw the line with background information?

I discovered there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to creating a series. I have taken each book as it comes. I let the characters speak to me and the story dictate how those characters will grow and change.

Now, working on book number four--Expert Witness--I continue to feel a bit reluctant about writing a series. With each book it is a challenge to include the subtleties that have come before, the shading of character, of time and place, the tone, and to build upon them. Each book must tie to the ones before it while also being a viable stand-alone read. I have to live with decisions made without thought--the color of a car, the style of a haircut, the indication of a food preference.

Yet, there is also the excitement of stepping back into the lives of these people I have created and come to know so well. Like my readers, I am always curious where they will end up and if they will live to tell another story.

The funny thing is, Josie, Hannah and Archer don’t seem to sense my reluctance at all.

Sand's Game by Ennis Willie--Yeah, It's Good, But....

2010-09-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

I'm almost done reading Sand's Game, the recent collection of stories from author Ennis Willie. Several of today's best writers have endorsed Willie via loving introductions, touting not only his influence on them but his powerful writing style as something to pay attention to. They talk about how he wrote like Mickey Spillane, but with his own personal twist. That's all true. Mr. Willie sure knew how to put a sentence together and tell a good story, but...

I'm sure Willie's work was hot stuff in the 1960s, and I know the writers who contributed notes love his work and want the whole world to know, but...

There have been so many imitators and so much slam-bang-kiss-kiss action novels (one of which I myself am guilty of spawning) that have covered this same ground over and over again that even one of the better masters can't quite rise above the junk. (Even the latter Spillane books paled compared to his original five.) Willie uses similar plot gimmicks as Mickey (with solutions hinging on the "it was right in front of me the whole time!" twist) as well as the "surprise, shocker endings" (which are repeated several times and quickly grow stale just as they did in Spillane's work). Sand easily solves the murders, they're usually the first person you susepct (even the title of one of the short stories gives away the killer's identity), and all you get in between the murder and solution is a lot of slam-bang-kiss-kiss.

Not that there is anything wrong with that!

Anthony Boucher once wrote that Mickey Spillane rose above his imitators because he actually beleived in what he wrote. Boucher intended that as a put-down, I think, but I see it as a compliment; a writer must beleive in what he's writing, otherwise he'll never touch the reader. You cannot go at a project with a "what the hell" attitude; maybe you'll fool me once but never again.

It is obvious that Ennis Willie beleived in what he was writing and had a good time going at it; why wouldn't he? He was young, selling well, had money in his pocket; who wouldn't want that gig? Derivitive and repetitive as the Sand material may be, these stories are turned up to eleven. You'll blast through it in a few days because there is so much action packed into the plots that you won't be able to put it down. You'll see the surprises coming but you'll have a great time getting there.

I really hope that Ramble House, who produced this collection, does another set of Willie's work; maybe some of his stand-alone books, or maybe some more Sand. That would be fun.

Ennis Willie--Sand's Game; Hammett and Hemingway

2010-09-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

I turned another year older this past Monday, and with the usual Amazon gift card I placed an order for Sand's Game, the "Sand" omnibus by Ennis Willie you may have read about elsewhere on the Internet. This hot little pulp story collection sounds very promising. I have read a lot of interesting articles about Willie and his creation, so I'm looking forward to seeing the stories myself. I think Sand, in some ways, based on what I've read so far, has a little bit in common with my character Pierce, so I'm doubly excited to see if Willie will inspire me the way he's apparently inspired other crime writers. If you've read the Sand book, I'd appreciate your comments.

In other news, I visited the local Half Priced Books on my birthday and made a heck of a haul. Back in the 1990s a book company published Ian Fleming's James Bond books in hardcover. For the longest time I've had all but two of the books, and somebody had turned the entire set into Half Price, so I grabbed what I needed. It's too bad the company didn't publish the last two Fleming books, but I guess they couldn't get the rights to them.

I also picked up a neat paperback called "The Essential Hemingway". I've spoken of Ernest before, I believe, but I've never owned any of his work. "Essential" gathers one novel, portions of other novels, and a bunch of short stories, and I must say I'm enjoying Ernest like never before. I may be one of the few who doesn't care for "The Killers"--I think the movies may have ruined it for me, even though it has a hopeless echo at the end which suggests Hemingway would have been a top-notch noir writer had he tried that--but "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" almost made me cry. You don't often see a writer capture raw emotion, and in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" Hemingway did it in spades. You don't get much description, so the writing seems a little thin and hollow in some places, but the characterization and emotion that he communicates through wonderful dialogue carries the story and leaves you stunned. If you haven't read it, go read it, even if you must stand in the bookstore and read it there. I think he tapped into a genuine human fear (that of having nobody to go home to) and it resonated with me very loudly. Hard-boiled? Sure. In the purest, unsentimental sense.

Of course, reading Hemingway makes me think of the old debate about whether or not Hammett influenced Hemingway or was it the other way around? So far I'm not 100% sure, but I would guess the answer is neither. Hammett used descriptions better and really gave you a sense of a story's environment; granted I'm not very far into Hemingway's canon, but I haven't seen much of that in his work. But I will also take this opportunity to add that Hammett's non-crime stories, as printed in his "Lost Stories" collection edited by Vince Emery, shows that while his crime tales are what he's known for, his stories about regular people were better, and when you compare them to Hemingway's stories about regular people, I think I prefer Hammett. I think that if Hammett had been able to keep writing after The Thin Man, he would have eclipsed Hemingway. Bold statement, yes, but one I confidently make.

Two for One

2010-09-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

I thought I would post an interview that appeared Monday where I talk about both Justified Sins and Reaper's Dozen; this is from Kipp Poe's wonderful blog, Closing My Eyes Helps Me To See Clearly, where he chats with many "indie" authors. Check him out and say hey for me. Link and interview below!

http://kippoe.blogspot.com/

Brian Drake Justified Sin Release Party

1:What can you tell us about your new ebook, Justified Sins?

Here’s my back cover copy: When Sheila Webster’s husband is killed a after double-crossing the men who hired him to crack one last safe, she finds herself the next target. What her husband stole, he managed to hide, and now the men who hired him are after her to get the stolen goods back. There’s only one person she can turn to. Her foster brother. A dangerous man named Mr. Pierce.

Justified Sins is my take on the vigilante action novels of the ‘70s, like “The Executioner” series, which I read almost exclusively when I was young. This genre is actually hard to write, I discovered, as there are certain liberties one must take with reality, more so than you would expect, when you have a fellow like Mr. Pierce, the hero. People simply cannot go around shooting bad guys and blowing stuff up real good without somebody asking questions. On the flip side there is a strong emphasis on the characters and their relationships to one another, and I think that helps elevate the story from its genre limitations.

2:What inspired you to write about a vigilante?

I wanted to write about a hero who wasn’t a cop or a private eye; somebody who could wear the white hat but be totally independent from the usual cast of heroes in urban action stories. That meant a vigilante who had his own moral code and reasons for wanting to strike at criminals and help victims who have nowhere else to turn. The hero, a crime victim himself, takes every case personally as he’s trying to prevent the tragedy that happened to him from repeating with somebody else. Thus we have Mr. Pierce. He’s not totally alone, though, he does have two key allies in local law enforcement who are sympathetic to the cause and help clean up whatever messes he makes.

3:How is Justified Sins different from other books in the action genre?

The book is less about action and adventure and more about how wrong decisions, from the hero taking the law into his own hands to the villains and their schemes, seem right when they’re made, but don’t hold up over time. I think we can all identify with that. How often do we make excuses, and lousy excuses, really, for the poor choices we make? How many people have we hurt because of our selfishness? That’s what the book is about.

4:You also have another ebook available, Reaper’s Dozen. What can you say about that one?

Reaper’s Dozen is a collection of twelve short crime and mystery stories. It’s my valentine to the hard-boiled stories from Black Mask magazine, and it’s dedicated to the magazine’s most influential editor, Joe Shaw. Shaw and his stable of writers, which include Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and Paul Cain and other big names, developed the American style of detective story as we know it today.

5: Both Reaper’s Dozen and Justified Sins have strong law enforcement elements. Do you have any connections in your local police department to give you such insight?

I don’t have any personal connections so for details like that I need to use the reporting skills I learned during my newspaper days. In the case of Justified Sins, I interviewed several drug enforcement agents to get the juicy details on the current state of the war on drugs. The war is far from being won, of course, and the agents were able to fill me in on some of the nastier elements which made it into the book, and the book is dedicated to those agents who gave me their time. They’re all hard-working people fighting a war nobody seems to want them to win. As for other details about police procedure and investigation, I have a bunch of books on that stuff so I just look things up.

6: Again both books have lots of different info on a large variety of firearms. Are you a gun enthusiast?

When I think of a gun enthusiast, I see somebody who has guns coming out his ears, and I have friends like that who buy a new gun every week. I like to shoot, but I only have a pair of personal weapons, so I don’t know if I’m in the “enthusiast” category. Is this the part where I mention that “gun control is six in the bull’s-eye”? Great. Got that out of the way, thanks. Next question.

7: Do you have any plans to bring back Pierce from Justified Sin to take part in any other stories? He is a very well developed character.

You’re not the only one to say you want more of Pierce; for now, all I can say is that Pierce appears in two of the short stories featured in Reaper’s Dozen, so that’s where you’ll have to get your fix for now. There was an entire subplot in the book that went deeper into his background, but I chopped it because somebody told me it was a little confusing and might be better as a stand-alone story. Now I’m not so sure that was the best decision because he’s becoming popular; also, I wound up using that material in another book since I didn’t expect I would write about Pierce again. However, since y’all seem to want him around, I will now have to come up with another angle to his character and do more with his story. I think the next obvious adventure is what he does when his identity and activities are discovered by a police detective who isn’t sympathetic to his cause. At the end of Justified Sins he’s in a position where he’ll be forced to grow emotionally, and I think that would be a good story, too.

8: I hear you have a spy thriller in the works. How is that coming along?

It’s almost done. In previous interviews I mentioned the book will be called The Eagle Intercept, but that’s no longer the case. I chose that title because I wanted something that was a throwback to the titles Robert Ludlum used to select for his books, but apparently I’m not the only one doing that, and I don’t want to get lost in the shuffle, so the title is now Heroes Wear Black, which, to me, is more provocative and hints at some of the story’s content. It’s about a pair of C.I.A. agents who have to determine whether or not the man who trained them—the father of one, the mentor of the other—has turned traitor. I didn’t want to churn out another kiss-kiss-bang-bang spy story. I almost didn’t want to do a spy story at all, until the family conflict presented itself. I don’t know any spies so I can’t identify with their world, but in Heroes Wear Black the spies are people with a job, and I have one of those and know other people who have jobs, too, so writing about people going to work made it an easy book to write. It just so happens that their job involves national security and a lot of kiss-kiss-bang-bang. I expect to have Heroes out by November.

9: What I like most about your stories is that you are thrown right into the action from the first paragraph, and the pace does not slow down from there. IfJustified Sins was to be made into a movie, who would you like to direct it?

Gosh, give me the easy question last, why don’t you. I have no idea, except that I hope this question goes from your mouth to God’s ears. I think the guy who has done the recent Batman movies (Christopher Nolan) would be a good choice, as I see Pierce as a Batman-Without-the-Costume. Bryan Singer is an amazing director and he would do a terrific job because I think he would dig into Pierce’s guarded emotional state and really make him a three-dimensional character. I think Singer would be my first choice. Maybe we can get Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote The Usual Suspects for Singer, to write the script. In fact, McQuarrie is a great director, too, so if he’s interested maybe he can do the job.

10:Where can we go to buy your books?

Both are available at the Amazon Kindle store and at Smashwords.Com. You can find direct links on my website, (www.briandrake88.blogspot.com), where I talk about books, writing, and whatever else life brings up.

I've Always Been a Second Story Man

2010-08-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick update to report some news:

I started doing e-books for the Kindle in order to get some attention from real publishers, and it appears my diabolical plan has worked. A new, small, start-up publisher has asked to see a copy of the Justified Sins manuscript with the possibility of bringing it out as a paperback. This is terrific news. Yes, the press is small; yes, it's a start-up; who cares? If we're successful it could be the start of a wonderful long-term relationship that's good for everybody. Who says e-books are bad? Anyway they have the manuscript and we should hear a decision in the usual amount of time.

Justified Sins Receives Four Star Review!

2010-08-27T16:19:00.001-07:00

I woke up this morning to a wonderful four-star review of my new e-book, Justified Sins. Writer Debra Martin read more into the story than I think I intended to be there, but it's made me rethink my opinion that JS was going to be a one-off novel. Mr. Pierce may have further adventures after all! Here is a sneak peek:

With its clipped writing style, this novella sets you on a bullet train of nonstop action and doesn’t let you off until the last word is read. The story centers around Freddie and Sheila Webster and Sheila’s foster brother, Pierce. Freddie is an ex-con who has promised his pregnant wife that he is done with his old life of crime, but with a baby on the way money is tight. When Freddie is confronted with a proposition to make some easy cash, he makes a decision that sets into motion a series of events that he could not have anticipated. The story twists and turns with a full cast of ex-cons, mobsters, cops, politicians and a vigilante who goes about his business with a wink and a nod from the police. On the surface, Pierce is the usual vigilante type—likes to play with guns and explosives and hunts bad guys, but throughout the story the author throws in snippets from his back story. This is what captivated me.

For the rest, click here.

Time is Running Out, or: We Love Coupons!

2010-08-26T19:56:00.001-07:00

Hey, everybody--

Don't forget that I have the new e-book, Justified Sins, on sale for $.99 until September 14th. You'll find it on Smashwords.com which will let you download for other e-readers than Kindle, and Kindle too if you have it.

Go to my page at Smashwords.Com (Brian Drake on Smashwords) and use this code: CG36G

If you like your hard-boiled mixed with shoot-em-up action this is the book for you. Here's a short description:

When Sheila Webster’s husband is killed a after double-crossing the men who hired him to crack one last safe, she finds herself the next target. What her husband stole, he managed to hide, and now the men who hired him are after her to get the stolen goods back. There’s only one person she can turn to. Her foster brother. A dangerous man named Mr. Pierce.

Some have asked where the inspiration for Mr. Pierce came from, other than the men's adventure paperbacks I read growing up, and I'll talk about that soon. In the meantime, thank you for looking!

The Wonderful Saint Templar, or: Can Anybody Spare a Halo?

2010-08-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

Just when you think you have read everything and will no longer find anything interesting (which is fine, you can read The Maltese Falcon once a year and never get bored), you find a gem. In this case, that gem is Leslie Charteris and his terrific creation, Simon Templar, aka The Saint.

It took me a while to get to The Saint. My first exposure to the character was the Vincent Price radio show, where Templar is an American in New York City experiencing various adventures and getting hit over the head....a lot. I didn't like the show, so I had no interest in reading the books.

Then Max Allan Collins writes a coffee table book called The History of Mystery, and The Saint gets a few lines, where Collins says he's more hard-boiled than he's given credit for. Light bulb time! I found a couple of Templar adventures at a used book store, went out on my deck with the accompanying cigar and Coca-Cola, and found a whole new world of adventure that I had no idea existed.

With The Saint you get mystery, comedy, adventure; thrills, chills, cliff-hanger escapes. Great characters who are full of life and humor and great dialogue. Charteris knew how to use the English language better than anybody--he dedicated a book to P.G. Wodehouse, saying P.G. could have written The Saint better than him, and now I think I'll have to track me down some P.G. Wodehouse. The drawback to how Charteris made English talk is that you get lost in some really big words--who cares, a dictionary isn't hard to find and he carries you along so well that you let it go because if you stop to look up a word you won't see how The Saint gets out of trouble.

So far I've read The Saint's Getaway--a laugh-out-loud adventure with a great twist at the end. Right now I'm reading The Saint in New York--and Collins was right! Simon Templar is more hard-boiled than he's given credit for. There's less humor in "New York" so far, but a ton of slam-bang action and hold-your-breath moments, and I can't put it down.

Up next is a paperback collecting two Templar short stories, and I can't wait to get into that one. I bet Charteris is really good in short form.

If you haven't read Simon Templar, give him a try.