Thank you so very much for following my work on this blog for so many years. What started in 2010 as an effort to build a following for my novels has paid off in so many unexpected ways, I cannot begin to list them; suffice it to say, you all played a part, and I'm grateful.
Blogging and Updates continue on my NEW WEBSITE:
BrianDrakeBooks.Com
Come on over and let's keep the party going!
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Thursday, December 19, 2019
THE CONTACT by Rossa McPhillips. Don't Miss This One!
Here's one you don't want to miss. Rossa McPhillips is the real deal, as you'll see in a moment, and he's written a terrific thriller called THE CONTACT (click here to buy). The story deals with British Intelligence and the IRA, and it's thrilling and heartbreaking at the same time.
I met Rossa at a pub in Lancashire and we talked over several pints....
Brian Drake: You've written a very compelling novel of the Irish conflict, and as somebody who has family on the Irish side and friends on the British side, I thought you handled the issue well. What inspired this story?
Rossa McPhillips: 1) Thank you. My dad is Irish and my mum is English (but had an Irish father). I grew up in London but there was always a feeling about being 'London Irish'. You grew up with tales of Irish freedom, the rebel songs and we always went to Ireland in the summer to see relatives. It was a weird feeling though, as you felt English in Ireland and Irish in England. I was also a huge James Bond fan, who stands for everything that Irish nationalism is against. I wanted to join British Intelligence from an early age but it probably wouldn't have gone down well with my Dad or our Irish relatives. But I watched a great documentary by the journalist Peter Taylor, and he interviewed an ex-MI6 officer, Michael Oatley, who had been secretly negotiating with the IRA during the Troubles, when the UK government's official line was very much 'we don't talk to terrorists'.Oatley was an impressive figure, in the James Bond mould and I met him myself once. Very charming. His position as peacemaker between the sides appealed to me - maybe if I joined MI6 and could be a peacemaker both the Irish and British side of my family could get behind that? However, by the time I left university, the Troubles were well over, and 9/11 had happened.
BD: Did you continue looking for a government service job, or consider the private sector?
RM: I joined British Army Intelligence and concentrated on fighting Islamic terrorism. I never got to be a peacemaker, but Oatley and his role still fascinated me. Whilst in Army Intelligence, I got to liaise with MI6 all the time, and at an 'introduction day' at MI6 HQ, parallel diplomacy was touted as one of their key tasks. This is what they do - but we never hear about it [for good reason] and there's no books or films on it. Now, it's not just secretly negotiating with terrorists, it's speaking to regimes beyond the pale like in Syria, or if a world leader just wants to say something to the UK that he can't say in public; if he says it to the MI6 representative it will be graded 'Top Secret', handled with sensitivity and not turned into diplomatic gossip. So, a lot of avenues for stories there, but as someone who counted himself as 'London Irish' I had to tell the MI6-IRA backchannel story first.
BD: Can you tell us a little of your actual work for British Intelligence without putting a target on your back?
RM: In my career I was posted as an intelligence analyst to the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), part of UK Special Forces, and they had a long history in the Troubles. They continue to carry out surveillance in Northern Ireland on dissident republicans; it's their main area of work. I remember once there was an emergency when a dissident republican was going to put his car into a mechanic. The SRR had to scramble one night to remove the bug from the republican's car - in case the mechanic found it! I never worked on the Irish desk myself - I was looking into other parts of the world. Some of the old guys at SRR would talk of their time in Northern Ireland, and be wistful of the things they could get away with during the Troubles that they can't do now. SRR - who used to be called 14th Intelligence Company - and other special forces were given carte blanche to do as they pleased. That's reflected in the book. They could literally shoot IRA members and never expect to be questioned about it.
BD: What are one or two errors you see writers make who do not have your experience? What makes you roll your eyes and put a book down if it's too ridiculous?
RM: I've given talks about mistakes writers make about spying. The huge one is thinking MI6 or MI5 do what James Bond does. As above, MI6 run agents or do parallel diplomacy. They DO NOT kill people. Haven't done so since 1918. If the British government want someone killed - that's the job of UK Special Forces. If James Bond was real, he would be SAS or SBS, not MI6.
BD: When did you start writing? Who are some of your favorite authors?
RM: I've been writing since I was a kid. Not sure why, but I had an imagination and it just took off at school, and I won competitions which was great. My Mum encouraged me too, and she's not a bad writer herself! However, my parents were very much, 'We can't afford to support you as a writer, so you'll have to get a day job". My dad was an Irish builder, and my Mum an admin assistant at a school, so I had to do well at school. I'm still not a full-time writer, but that is the goal. My writing is primarily in the screenwriting sphere, and that's my first love. I will do more books though. Once writing pays the bills, and it's my day job, I know I've 'arrived'. I enjoy spy writers like Frederick Forsyth, and thriller writers like Lee Child. I was blown away by Don Winslow's 'The Border'...just wow. Have you read it? Go read it. Now.
BD: It's hard to put into words (and without giving away spoilers) exactly how well you seemed to capture the Irish situation, the mixed compromises, the dashed hopes, the near misses. Have we finally, in this day and age, reached a balance between England and Ireland where perhaps Republican violence is a thing of the past, or will it always simmer beneath the surface no matter how many votes (instead of bullets) are cast?
RM: I genuinely feel that there's been crimes committed by both sides in the conflict - by the British Army AND the paramilitaries. It was a dirty, murky, mucky war and no one has come out smelling of roses. The IRA murdered women and children which I'll never understand. But the killing of unarmed civilians by the Army? That's awful. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that the events of Bloody Sunday in 1972 was a war crime, and all involved should be put to trial at the Hague. And thats as an ex-soldier myself. Peace has been hard won, but I think we need closure.
BD: How might that closure be acheived?
RM: We need inquiries set up to discover the truth of other atrocities, so we can learn and move on. 3,000 people were killed, but it's not reducible to that - times that number by 2, and you get a mother or husband affected by it, maybe times that number by 4 regarding brothers, sisters, friends affected. Part of the reason I was told that regular publishers turned this book down was that the Troubles is still raw, and people don't want to focus on that - as they know fault is on all sides. But that intolerance has led to ignorance over Northern Ireland regarding Brexit, which could bring about new violence (although not on the scale of the Troubles). I think more films and fiction books about the Troubles could help with closure. Although, even without Brexit, I think you will always have a small number of people who will resort to terrorism there, as long as there is no United Ireland. And if a United Ireland does happen, you'll have a small number of loyalist terrorists carrying out attacks. But 90% of people in Northern Ireland from both sides don't want violence, so there's hope that any terrorism over there can be contained. Simmer yes, boil - hopefully not.
BD: Can we expect more thrillers from you soon?
RM: Oh yes - more thrillers are on the way. I'm concentrating on my screenwriting career, for which I do have an agent, so it's just a case of hammering out lots of TV pilots and hope that one gets made, or, (more likely), it gets you a job on an existing show. Something like 'Deep State' would be up my street! In terms of prose, I'm thinking of carrying on the backchannel theme of secret talks and writing a thriller set in the modern day and focusing on al Qaeda or ISIS. I'm also looking at writing a thriller about the secret talks between the British and Hitler over a peace plan at the start of WW2. So watch this space!
You can buy THE CONTACT here.
I met Rossa at a pub in Lancashire and we talked over several pints....
Brian Drake: You've written a very compelling novel of the Irish conflict, and as somebody who has family on the Irish side and friends on the British side, I thought you handled the issue well. What inspired this story?
Rossa McPhillips: 1) Thank you. My dad is Irish and my mum is English (but had an Irish father). I grew up in London but there was always a feeling about being 'London Irish'. You grew up with tales of Irish freedom, the rebel songs and we always went to Ireland in the summer to see relatives. It was a weird feeling though, as you felt English in Ireland and Irish in England. I was also a huge James Bond fan, who stands for everything that Irish nationalism is against. I wanted to join British Intelligence from an early age but it probably wouldn't have gone down well with my Dad or our Irish relatives. But I watched a great documentary by the journalist Peter Taylor, and he interviewed an ex-MI6 officer, Michael Oatley, who had been secretly negotiating with the IRA during the Troubles, when the UK government's official line was very much 'we don't talk to terrorists'.Oatley was an impressive figure, in the James Bond mould and I met him myself once. Very charming. His position as peacemaker between the sides appealed to me - maybe if I joined MI6 and could be a peacemaker both the Irish and British side of my family could get behind that? However, by the time I left university, the Troubles were well over, and 9/11 had happened.BD: Did you continue looking for a government service job, or consider the private sector?
RM: I joined British Army Intelligence and concentrated on fighting Islamic terrorism. I never got to be a peacemaker, but Oatley and his role still fascinated me. Whilst in Army Intelligence, I got to liaise with MI6 all the time, and at an 'introduction day' at MI6 HQ, parallel diplomacy was touted as one of their key tasks. This is what they do - but we never hear about it [for good reason] and there's no books or films on it. Now, it's not just secretly negotiating with terrorists, it's speaking to regimes beyond the pale like in Syria, or if a world leader just wants to say something to the UK that he can't say in public; if he says it to the MI6 representative it will be graded 'Top Secret', handled with sensitivity and not turned into diplomatic gossip. So, a lot of avenues for stories there, but as someone who counted himself as 'London Irish' I had to tell the MI6-IRA backchannel story first.
BD: Can you tell us a little of your actual work for British Intelligence without putting a target on your back?
RM: In my career I was posted as an intelligence analyst to the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), part of UK Special Forces, and they had a long history in the Troubles. They continue to carry out surveillance in Northern Ireland on dissident republicans; it's their main area of work. I remember once there was an emergency when a dissident republican was going to put his car into a mechanic. The SRR had to scramble one night to remove the bug from the republican's car - in case the mechanic found it! I never worked on the Irish desk myself - I was looking into other parts of the world. Some of the old guys at SRR would talk of their time in Northern Ireland, and be wistful of the things they could get away with during the Troubles that they can't do now. SRR - who used to be called 14th Intelligence Company - and other special forces were given carte blanche to do as they pleased. That's reflected in the book. They could literally shoot IRA members and never expect to be questioned about it.
 |
| Author McPhillips at an undisclosed location probably doing very exciting things |
BD: What are one or two errors you see writers make who do not have your experience? What makes you roll your eyes and put a book down if it's too ridiculous?
RM: I've given talks about mistakes writers make about spying. The huge one is thinking MI6 or MI5 do what James Bond does. As above, MI6 run agents or do parallel diplomacy. They DO NOT kill people. Haven't done so since 1918. If the British government want someone killed - that's the job of UK Special Forces. If James Bond was real, he would be SAS or SBS, not MI6.
BD: When did you start writing? Who are some of your favorite authors?
RM: I've been writing since I was a kid. Not sure why, but I had an imagination and it just took off at school, and I won competitions which was great. My Mum encouraged me too, and she's not a bad writer herself! However, my parents were very much, 'We can't afford to support you as a writer, so you'll have to get a day job". My dad was an Irish builder, and my Mum an admin assistant at a school, so I had to do well at school. I'm still not a full-time writer, but that is the goal. My writing is primarily in the screenwriting sphere, and that's my first love. I will do more books though. Once writing pays the bills, and it's my day job, I know I've 'arrived'. I enjoy spy writers like Frederick Forsyth, and thriller writers like Lee Child. I was blown away by Don Winslow's 'The Border'...just wow. Have you read it? Go read it. Now.
BD: It's hard to put into words (and without giving away spoilers) exactly how well you seemed to capture the Irish situation, the mixed compromises, the dashed hopes, the near misses. Have we finally, in this day and age, reached a balance between England and Ireland where perhaps Republican violence is a thing of the past, or will it always simmer beneath the surface no matter how many votes (instead of bullets) are cast?
RM: I genuinely feel that there's been crimes committed by both sides in the conflict - by the British Army AND the paramilitaries. It was a dirty, murky, mucky war and no one has come out smelling of roses. The IRA murdered women and children which I'll never understand. But the killing of unarmed civilians by the Army? That's awful. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that the events of Bloody Sunday in 1972 was a war crime, and all involved should be put to trial at the Hague. And thats as an ex-soldier myself. Peace has been hard won, but I think we need closure.
BD: How might that closure be acheived?
RM: We need inquiries set up to discover the truth of other atrocities, so we can learn and move on. 3,000 people were killed, but it's not reducible to that - times that number by 2, and you get a mother or husband affected by it, maybe times that number by 4 regarding brothers, sisters, friends affected. Part of the reason I was told that regular publishers turned this book down was that the Troubles is still raw, and people don't want to focus on that - as they know fault is on all sides. But that intolerance has led to ignorance over Northern Ireland regarding Brexit, which could bring about new violence (although not on the scale of the Troubles). I think more films and fiction books about the Troubles could help with closure. Although, even without Brexit, I think you will always have a small number of people who will resort to terrorism there, as long as there is no United Ireland. And if a United Ireland does happen, you'll have a small number of loyalist terrorists carrying out attacks. But 90% of people in Northern Ireland from both sides don't want violence, so there's hope that any terrorism over there can be contained. Simmer yes, boil - hopefully not.
BD: Can we expect more thrillers from you soon?
RM: Oh yes - more thrillers are on the way. I'm concentrating on my screenwriting career, for which I do have an agent, so it's just a case of hammering out lots of TV pilots and hope that one gets made, or, (more likely), it gets you a job on an existing show. Something like 'Deep State' would be up my street! In terms of prose, I'm thinking of carrying on the backchannel theme of secret talks and writing a thriller set in the modern day and focusing on al Qaeda or ISIS. I'm also looking at writing a thriller about the secret talks between the British and Hitler over a peace plan at the start of WW2. So watch this space!
You can buy THE CONTACT here.
Monday, July 1, 2019
Guns + Tacos: New Anthology Series from Down & Out Books
I've known Michael Bracken for several years now, ever since he bought and published the first short story I ever (a) had published and (b) received payment for. We've kept in touch since (check out his blog at CrimeFictionWriter.Com), and it's been great watching Michael achieve steady sales with short fiction, and you should for sure check out his work. Michael knows how to spin a crime tale like nobody else, and I'm really hoping he finds the audience he deserves with a new effort from Down & Out Books called Guns + Tacos.
Guns + Tacos has a terrific concept. It's a series of novellas that take place in Chicago, and all feature a taco truck that sells more than tacos. If you've guess the truck also sells guns, you're right. Michael and some of today's hottest crime fiction writers contributed to the first "season" and you can buy the books individually, or subscribe to the set. It's great to see Down & Out Books, a terrific publisher, by the way, try new and exciting ways to get crime fiction to the public.
Michael agreed to sit down at our favorite hole in the wall Mexican place in Waco, TX (which, he once joked, stands for We Ain't Comin' Out) and share a few words on the project.
You're going to like this one....
BRIAN DRAKE: Guns + Tacos has an interesting concept. Tell us how the idea of a series of books linked by a taco truck came about.
MICHAEL BRACKEN: Trey R. Barker wrote a story for The Eyes of Texas, an anthology of private eye stories set in Texas that I edited for Down & Out Books (due out this fall). While corresponding about it, we learned that we had several friends in common.
So, my wife Temple and I met Trey and his wife Kathy for lunch at Bouchercon in St. Petersburg, Florida, last year. Trey is a native Texan living and working as a peace officer in Illinois while Temple and I are long-time Texas residents. I ordered tacos for lunch and the conversation, as it does for Texans daring to eat tacos anywhere outside of Texas, the conversation turned to my food choice. And, somehow, guns. At some point during our conversation, Trey said his two favorite things were guns and tacos.
A little later, the subject came up again and my wife suggested that guns and tacos sounded like a good premise for an anthology. Over the course of the day, Trey and I batted around the idea, and what started as an offhand comment grew into a concept we thought we could have fun with.
That evening Trey and I found ourselves on the veranda of the Vinoy with Down & Out Books publisher Eric Campbell and a revolving group of editors and writers associated in one way or another with D&O, and we pitched the idea. As everyone else chimed it, the idea morphed a bit, becoming a series of novellas rather than a traditional anthology, and this is how we ultimately described the series:
“There’s a taco truck in Chicago known among a certain segment of the population for its daily specials. Late at night and during the wee hours of the morning, it isn’t the food selection that attracts customers, it’s the illegal weapons available with the special order. Each episode of Guns + Tacos features the story of one Chicagoland resident who visits the taco truck seeking a solution to life’s problems, a solution that always comes in a to-go bag.”
We gave contributors a few specific instructions: The stories must be set in Chicago and its suburbs, protagonists of the stories must acquire a weapon from the taco truck, and the weapon must play an important role in their stories. Beyond that, any crime fiction sub-genre was acceptable, and the six stories in the first season cover a variety of crime fiction sub-genres.
BD: What inspired the sales plan of a subscription, both print and digital?
MB:One of the most important contributors to our discussion on the Vanoy’s veranda was Frank Zafiro. The first season of his novella anthology series A Grifter’s Song was scheduled for release the first six months of this year, and Eric asked if Guns + Tacos could be turned into a novella anthology series (rather than a traditional anthology) to plug into the last six months of 2019. Of course, we said it could, and during the rest of Bouchercon, Trey and I refined the idea and made a list of potential contributors. Frank sent us a copy of his original proposal for A Grifter’s Song and we modeled our formal proposal for Guns + Tacos on Frank’s proposal.
A novella anthology series is the literary equivalent of a Netflix series, with a new episode dropping once a month during the six month-season. Readers can purchase individual episodes, but subscribers get the entire season, which is released initially as ebooks. At the end of the season, all of the stories are compiled into a pair of paperback books, which the subscribers also get. Subscribers also receive a bonus story.
So, the first season of Guns + Tacos launched July 1 with a story from Gary Phillips, and new episodes will be released each month through December.
One key difference between Guns + Tacos is that A Grifter’s Song has a two-season series arc, but Guns + Tacos is open-ended, could last several seasons if readership interest is strong, and we’ve already been renewed for, and are hard at work on putting together, the second season.
BD: What can you tell us about some of the stories included in the set?
MB: The first season includes:
Tacos de Cazuela con Smith & Wesson by Gary Phillips,
Three Brisket Tacos and a Sig Sauer by Michael Bracken,
A Gyro and a Glock by Frank Zafiro,
Three Chalupas, Rice, Soda and a Kimber .45 by Trey R. Barker,
Some Churros and El Burro by William Dylan Powell, and
A Beretta, Burritos and Bears by James A. Hearn
Phillips’s story has a light science-fictiony feel, involving an ER doctor used to dealing with the physical and psychological trauma of gunshot wounds who obtains a handgun. Mine is a femme fatale story involving bank robbery and an ex-con torn between two women. Zafiro’s story deals with the choices a drug addict is forced to make, while Barker’s dives into the dark side of the internet. Powell’s story involves a drug cartel and Hearn’s is about a man framed for a crime and how he seeks revenge.
BD: What inspired your own story, “Three Brisket Tacos & a SIG-Sauer”?
MB: I went a little over the top, telling the story of an ex-con who falls back in with the woman who initially enticed him into a life of crime and who bailed on him when he was caught. He finds himself torn between continuing a life of crime with her or going straight with the neighbor he’s fallen for after his release.
BD: It's exciting to see publishers experimenting with stories and distribution plans. What challenges did you meet trying to get the series out in the chosen fashion?
MB: Our biggest challenge as editors was turning everything around quickly enough to have the series ready to launch in July. Bouchercon was in September, and Trey and I had to find six writers who liked the concept and could write novellas within a few months. I faced an additional challenge, as one of the writers, because novellas are two to three times longer than my usual short story lengths, and I didn’t know, when I wrote the first few words of my story, if my idea had enough meat to justify the length. Luckily, most of the other challenges fell to the publisher.
BD: You've said many times, in many venues, that you despise the word "got" and encourage writers to use a word that isn't so lazy. (Full disclosure: I caught myself using "got" in my intro, and quickly found a better word. You taught me well!) Did any of the series contributors dare to use the word "got" in their story? And if so, how did you dispose of the bodies?
MB: A few did, and I excised what I could without too much bloodletting.
BD: I'm really excited about this project, and really hope it brings you a wider audience, Michael. How do we find Guns + Tacos?
MB: Subscribe to the first season at https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/guns-tacos-s1-subscription.
To purchase the first story:
At Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TJKCX5Q
At Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tacos-de-cazuela-con-smith-wesson-gary-phillips/1132245301
At Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/946248
Guns + Tacos has a terrific concept. It's a series of novellas that take place in Chicago, and all feature a taco truck that sells more than tacos. If you've guess the truck also sells guns, you're right. Michael and some of today's hottest crime fiction writers contributed to the first "season" and you can buy the books individually, or subscribe to the set. It's great to see Down & Out Books, a terrific publisher, by the way, try new and exciting ways to get crime fiction to the public.
Michael agreed to sit down at our favorite hole in the wall Mexican place in Waco, TX (which, he once joked, stands for We Ain't Comin' Out) and share a few words on the project.
You're going to like this one....
BRIAN DRAKE: Guns + Tacos has an interesting concept. Tell us how the idea of a series of books linked by a taco truck came about.
MICHAEL BRACKEN: Trey R. Barker wrote a story for The Eyes of Texas, an anthology of private eye stories set in Texas that I edited for Down & Out Books (due out this fall). While corresponding about it, we learned that we had several friends in common.
So, my wife Temple and I met Trey and his wife Kathy for lunch at Bouchercon in St. Petersburg, Florida, last year. Trey is a native Texan living and working as a peace officer in Illinois while Temple and I are long-time Texas residents. I ordered tacos for lunch and the conversation, as it does for Texans daring to eat tacos anywhere outside of Texas, the conversation turned to my food choice. And, somehow, guns. At some point during our conversation, Trey said his two favorite things were guns and tacos.
A little later, the subject came up again and my wife suggested that guns and tacos sounded like a good premise for an anthology. Over the course of the day, Trey and I batted around the idea, and what started as an offhand comment grew into a concept we thought we could have fun with.
That evening Trey and I found ourselves on the veranda of the Vinoy with Down & Out Books publisher Eric Campbell and a revolving group of editors and writers associated in one way or another with D&O, and we pitched the idea. As everyone else chimed it, the idea morphed a bit, becoming a series of novellas rather than a traditional anthology, and this is how we ultimately described the series:
“There’s a taco truck in Chicago known among a certain segment of the population for its daily specials. Late at night and during the wee hours of the morning, it isn’t the food selection that attracts customers, it’s the illegal weapons available with the special order. Each episode of Guns + Tacos features the story of one Chicagoland resident who visits the taco truck seeking a solution to life’s problems, a solution that always comes in a to-go bag.”
We gave contributors a few specific instructions: The stories must be set in Chicago and its suburbs, protagonists of the stories must acquire a weapon from the taco truck, and the weapon must play an important role in their stories. Beyond that, any crime fiction sub-genre was acceptable, and the six stories in the first season cover a variety of crime fiction sub-genres.
BD: What inspired the sales plan of a subscription, both print and digital?
MB:One of the most important contributors to our discussion on the Vanoy’s veranda was Frank Zafiro. The first season of his novella anthology series A Grifter’s Song was scheduled for release the first six months of this year, and Eric asked if Guns + Tacos could be turned into a novella anthology series (rather than a traditional anthology) to plug into the last six months of 2019. Of course, we said it could, and during the rest of Bouchercon, Trey and I refined the idea and made a list of potential contributors. Frank sent us a copy of his original proposal for A Grifter’s Song and we modeled our formal proposal for Guns + Tacos on Frank’s proposal.
A novella anthology series is the literary equivalent of a Netflix series, with a new episode dropping once a month during the six month-season. Readers can purchase individual episodes, but subscribers get the entire season, which is released initially as ebooks. At the end of the season, all of the stories are compiled into a pair of paperback books, which the subscribers also get. Subscribers also receive a bonus story.
So, the first season of Guns + Tacos launched July 1 with a story from Gary Phillips, and new episodes will be released each month through December.
One key difference between Guns + Tacos is that A Grifter’s Song has a two-season series arc, but Guns + Tacos is open-ended, could last several seasons if readership interest is strong, and we’ve already been renewed for, and are hard at work on putting together, the second season.
BD: What can you tell us about some of the stories included in the set?
MB: The first season includes:
Tacos de Cazuela con Smith & Wesson by Gary Phillips,
Three Brisket Tacos and a Sig Sauer by Michael Bracken,
A Gyro and a Glock by Frank Zafiro,
Three Chalupas, Rice, Soda and a Kimber .45 by Trey R. Barker,
Some Churros and El Burro by William Dylan Powell, and
A Beretta, Burritos and Bears by James A. Hearn
Phillips’s story has a light science-fictiony feel, involving an ER doctor used to dealing with the physical and psychological trauma of gunshot wounds who obtains a handgun. Mine is a femme fatale story involving bank robbery and an ex-con torn between two women. Zafiro’s story deals with the choices a drug addict is forced to make, while Barker’s dives into the dark side of the internet. Powell’s story involves a drug cartel and Hearn’s is about a man framed for a crime and how he seeks revenge.
BD: What inspired your own story, “Three Brisket Tacos & a SIG-Sauer”?
MB: I went a little over the top, telling the story of an ex-con who falls back in with the woman who initially enticed him into a life of crime and who bailed on him when he was caught. He finds himself torn between continuing a life of crime with her or going straight with the neighbor he’s fallen for after his release.
BD: It's exciting to see publishers experimenting with stories and distribution plans. What challenges did you meet trying to get the series out in the chosen fashion?
MB: Our biggest challenge as editors was turning everything around quickly enough to have the series ready to launch in July. Bouchercon was in September, and Trey and I had to find six writers who liked the concept and could write novellas within a few months. I faced an additional challenge, as one of the writers, because novellas are two to three times longer than my usual short story lengths, and I didn’t know, when I wrote the first few words of my story, if my idea had enough meat to justify the length. Luckily, most of the other challenges fell to the publisher.
BD: You've said many times, in many venues, that you despise the word "got" and encourage writers to use a word that isn't so lazy. (Full disclosure: I caught myself using "got" in my intro, and quickly found a better word. You taught me well!) Did any of the series contributors dare to use the word "got" in their story? And if so, how did you dispose of the bodies?
MB: A few did, and I excised what I could without too much bloodletting.
BD: I'm really excited about this project, and really hope it brings you a wider audience, Michael. How do we find Guns + Tacos?
MB: Subscribe to the first season at https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/guns-tacos-s1-subscription.
To purchase the first story:
At Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TJKCX5Q
At Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tacos-de-cazuela-con-smith-wesson-gary-phillips/1132245301
At Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/946248
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
The Promised Big Announcement, Or: Look, Mom, A Real Publisher!
I'm late telling you about this, but now that the book is coming out, it seems like the best time to explain my tease from a few months ago.
I recently joined Wolfpack Publishing to co-write some action series (Team Reaper), and they liked my work so much they decided to take on my Stiletto series, too, the previously self-published action series featuring the exploits of a tough CIA agent who later goes freelance.
The first book, The Termination Protocol, drops tomorrow. You can pre-order it now, ebook or very handsome paperback. The second book, The Fairmont Maneuver, is also up for pre-order for release later in May.
The text has not changed from my original editions, so unless you like the snazzy new cover, there's no reason to buy this again.
But, Wolfpack also contracted for FOUR MORE Stiletto titles, so once Book Four hits, you can start adding to the collection.
Many thanks to Mike Bray at Wolfpack for taking me -- and Stiletto -- on board.
I recently joined Wolfpack Publishing to co-write some action series (Team Reaper), and they liked my work so much they decided to take on my Stiletto series, too, the previously self-published action series featuring the exploits of a tough CIA agent who later goes freelance.The first book, The Termination Protocol, drops tomorrow. You can pre-order it now, ebook or very handsome paperback. The second book, The Fairmont Maneuver, is also up for pre-order for release later in May.
The text has not changed from my original editions, so unless you like the snazzy new cover, there's no reason to buy this again.
But, Wolfpack also contracted for FOUR MORE Stiletto titles, so once Book Four hits, you can start adding to the collection.
Many thanks to Mike Bray at Wolfpack for taking me -- and Stiletto -- on board.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Robert J. Randisi and the Nashville PI Series
The first time I read a Robert J. Randisi story was in The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction. It's probably the best anthology the late and very much missed Ed Gorman assembled, and should be part of your collection. Gorman included Randisi's "A Matter of Ethics", and the first line grabs you by the neck:
"I got mugged on the way to meet a potential client."
If you have the power to stop reading after that, you're stronger than I will ever be. It's just one example of Randisi's straight-to-the-point writing style that has earned him so many fans and made The Gunsmith, which he writes under the name of J.R. Roberts, the longest-running adult western series in the history of the genre.
And the good news is, he has another book out!
The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie takes place in Nashville, in the heart of music city, where session player Auggie Valez gets in over his head by taking a job that seems harmless at first, but, of course, quickly turns deadly....
How's this for an opening: Corkey Barnes told everyone who would listen that he was a "Major Country Music Producer." It wasn't a lie. He was, and he liked everybody to know it as soon as possible.
I don't know about you, but I need to keep reading.... Corkey has snake written all over him....
Robert agreed to a sit down at the pool hall and we chatted while sipping some very good bourbon while we chatted about his career and The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie.
Brian Drake: You've attained legendary status in the mystery and western community. 670 books--and counting! 30 anthologies. Mystery Scene. American Crime Writers League, the Private Eye Writers of America, the Shamus Award. Incredible--when do you sleep? When did the writing bug bite, and is telling stories still as exciting today as it was when you began?
Robert J. Randisi: I got bit when I was 15. Started by writing a Man From UNCLE manuscript (Man meets Girl from UNCLE). Put it in a drawer, wrote a private eye novel, put it in a drawer. Then started writing short stories. Also saw Paul Newman in HARPER, which convinced me that I wanted to write for a living. By the time I was 30. And I did it.
BD: Let's talk about The Gunsmith, your adult western series that's still going strong. [The history of The Gunsmith is well-documented elsewhere, so we aren't going into that here.] Has continuing the series series since leaving Berkeley been a challenge? I see Gunsmith titles from Piccadilly, Pro Se, etc.--has that made it difficult to remain consistently available to readers?
RJR: I was able to continue The Gunsmith after all the other series died because I made sure I owned it. The others were house owned. And yes, it’s been difficult making it consistently available. Piccadilly would only do ebook editions, but going with them was the only way I could be sure there was no lag between Book 399 and Book 400. I wanted to keep it coming out monthly. Then I had to find somebody to do hard copies of the books. Pro Se stepped up, but it was too difficult. I finally placed it with Speaking Volumes, who is doing both hard and ebook editions. But we’re still trying to find all those readers who lost us when we left Berkley.
BD: You've recently spun off Lady Gunsmith from the series. How did that come about?
RJR: LADY GUNSMITH was going to be done 35 years ago by Charter Books before Berkley bought them. Berkley canned the idea. I uncannily—cannily?--waited for the time to be right to bring the idea back.
BD: What is it about the western genre that keeps it relevant? Where do you see the genre heading over the next ten years?
RJR: It’s history. History is always relevant. The fact that we can elaborate on it, exaggerate it doesn’t change the basics of it. Private eye, Spy, even Science Fiction genres have to change with the times. Westerns don’t. Westerns are Westerns—basically. But everybody has to put their own twist on it, and for the future we’ll all keep trying to find ways to do that.
BD: Miles Jacoby, one of your private detective characters, is back in print from Wolfpack. Tell us a little about him.
RJR: Jacoby was a middleweight boxer who worked part time for a private eye. When he had enough time in, he applied for his own license and quit fighting. Throughout the course of the 6 books, he’s learning to run his own business. I’m toying with the idea of continuing the series for Wolfpack, jumping ahead the 20 or so years that have gone by since the last one.
BD: You've written about other PI characters, too, including Nick Delvecchio. If Nick and Mike Hammer got the same lead on a case, who would solve it first?
RJR: Hammer. He’s tougher, smarter, older and more experienced. And if I said Nick, my friend Max Collins would tear me a new one.
BD: Hahaha ... Max Allan Collins has visited this blog many times and even leaves a comment once in a blue moon, so I'm sure he'll get a chuckle out of that. How has the private eye genre changed during your tenure, and where do you see it going in the future? Is there even still a place for the private eye?
RJR: There will always be a place for the private eye—in my heart, if nowhere else. As with the Western genre, writers have been putting their own stamp on the genre since my first book came out in 1980. He—and she—have changed with the times. Methods change, laws change, new laws are passed. All that has to be taken into consideration, unless you’re going to write period pieces. At the moment I’m getting back into the P.I. field, doing a new series for Wolfpack and a new series for Down & Out Books. The locales are different, the experience level and ages of the protagonists are different, but the devotion to the conventions—not cliches—of the genre are the same.
BD: Along with The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie, you also have some other titles coming up.
RJR: One is The Headstone Detective Agency, set in New York, about a 50 year old P.I. who gets his license back after serving time and has to start over. The other is set in Nashville and features a P.I. who is also a guitar player and song writer. The first book—THE BIG HOSS HONKY TONK BOOGIE--came out several years ago, was nominated for a Shamus for Best Paperback, then the publisher folded. Now I’m getting a chance to bring it back with Wolfpack. The second book is called THE LAST SWEET SONG OF HAMMER DYLAN.
I’m still writing Gunsmith and Lady Gunsmith. A few years ago I wrote what I think is my best book, MCKENNA’S HOUSE, for Crossroads Publishing. I’d like to do more. I’m also going to do more traditional westerns.
BD: Thanks for the chat, Robert.
Click here to find Robert's Amazon page. He has so many titles available, you will never lack for a good read.
Monday, January 21, 2019
Big Announcement ... Soon
We've tidied up the blog a little as far as the sidebars go where I normally post my available titles. Steve Dane is there; three books out from Liberty Island, with two more forthcoming, hopefully this summer.
If you can remember what was there before, and isn't there now, you might have an idea of my upcoming announcement.
Details soon, I promise....
If you can remember what was there before, and isn't there now, you might have an idea of my upcoming announcement.
Details soon, I promise....
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Alaskan Storm Incoming!
We have a new kid on the block who is worth checking out. Kronos Ananthsimha has written a terrific action yarn called Alaskan Storm, and it hits all the right buttons, starting from page one.
Let me quote one of the Amazon reviews to give you a taste of the story: "The premise is unique and original, centering around a secretive DARPA special ops unit called the Hounds, comprised of an eclectic cast of characters (and a St. Bernard) and tasked with countering scientific threats."
What you get with Alaskan Storm is a bit more than the usual action thriller, and it's a treat in this age of bearded anti-terrorist dude bros tactically dude bro-ing as they fight the same bad guys everybody else is writing about.
Kronos hails from Bangalore, India, and I think you'll be very interested in seeing what he has up his sleeve now and in the future. I won't try and tell you about the book because Kronos is better at it than I am, so here it is in his own words.....
BD: When did you start writing?
K: I started writing when I was 16 years old, around five years ago. For a few years, I just tried to write and I’m still learning. After publishing a short story anthology with a small press which went badly, I started learning to write. I read books on the writing craft, read online articles and watched a wide array of videos from professionals in the field. Each time that I write is an experiment with my mind’s wildness. I’ve been keen on making a career in writing since I started reading books in Primary school.
BD: What is it about adventure fiction that particularly inspires you?
K: The three books which redefined my view on storytelling are Matthew Reilly’s Temple, Clive Cussler’s Inca Gold, and James Rollins’ Bloodline. I discovered them accidentally and they expanded my perception of the sheer fun, excitement, craziness and the learning ability one can have with books. As I read more books in this action-adventure genre, I wanted to create my own epic roller coaster ride that would be brutal, detailed, fun and informative. This came into reality in the trilogy of novellas called Blood Stone Impact, the first of which is Alaskan Storm. I’ll compile the trilogy into one book when I’m done writing them and put it out in the print format.
BD: Which authors have influenced you most?
K: My earliest taste of thrillers was through Robert Ludlum’s classic masterpieces of complex plots with brilliant protagonists who had deep characterization. Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Brad Taylor, Ben Coes, and Mark Greaney are some of the legends of modern spy-action thrillers who’ve shown me the impact that this genre has on the world. Two new authors, Andrew Warren, and Aiden L. Bailey write uniquely brilliant books which have got me hooked recently. I’m lucky and fortunate enough to have them as my mentors, friends, and guides for every aspect of the literary industry. They’d make great creative writing professors if they wanted to.
BD: You're studying to be a journalist. How has that helped, or hindered, your fiction writing?
K: Studying journalism has helped me to collect, verify and research data which I need for writing. I’ve learned about networking and made helpful contacts while studying media and through the activities that I’ve done for building my portfolio. Unfortunately, news writing is completely different from creative writing. So, it’s not very helpful.
BD: Indeed. I spent my early career as a newspaper reporter because I thought it would help. And you're right--the writing is totally different, but it did teach me how to research, how to interview and ask the right questions, and even get people who didn't want to talk to me to share their thoughts anyway.
Please describe your protagonist. What makes him interesting to you?
K: In Blood Stone Impact, there are three equally important protagonists. But the first part focuses on Damian Blood and Nick Park who are very different from each other and yet have certain similarities. Blood is a tall, hulking operator who leads a strike team for Taskforce COBALT, a covert unit of DIA and DARPA which handles scientific threats. The other side to him is that he’s a genius level mechanic and yet he’s immature, rash and wild. Park is an Army Ranger turned microbiologist who has given up his military career after a tragedy. He has spent five years curing cancer in an isolated lab only to have his research stolen and weaponized. Nick Park is drawn back into the action which he wanted to forget and has to face off against the men he had once trained and commanded. These characters make the elements of a conflicting plot. As an author, I take pleasure in putting my characters through hell and enjoy the ride that their lives are.
BD: How is the villain going to challenge your characters?
K: The main villains of Blood Stone Impact aren’t revealed yet in the Alaskan Storm. A few of the major antagonists play a major role in the next two novellas of the series. The villains here are a union of the most powerful groups that the world ever had. It’s an unholy alliance between the Templars, Ottomans and a few other groups who are thrown into a complex chess game with the Russians, Americans, and a few billionaires. Each novella in this trilogy focuses on one long sequence with an epic battle in an exotic location.
BD: What are you working on next?
K: I have to start working on the sequel to Alaskan Storm, but I’m still researching for it. Currently, I’m focused on completing a short story that will introduce a couple of protagonists for two different Geo-political action-thriller series that I’ve planned to start. These books will be much more realistic and serious than the Taskforce COBALT adventures, though they’re set in the same world.
BD: Alaskan Storm is a great start to a great series and marks the debut of an author to watch. Thanks for taking the time to talk, Kronos, and good luck with the series. Buy Alaskan Storm at Amazon!
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
SKILLS TO KILL is Here!
I am proud to announce the release of SKILLS TO KILL, aka The Rogue Gentleman, aka Steve Dane #1. What started as a self-publishing project got noticed by a small press in New York called Liberty Island, and we made a deal, and now those old books are new-and-improved and retitled. I hope you'll take the time to give it a look. Our pal and fellow writer James Reasoner reviewed the book on his Rough Edges blog and was quite enthusiastic.
Steve Dane should never have set foot in Italy. After witnessing a young woman’s kidnapping, the former agent turned rogue mercenary is hired to get her back by the girl's father and soon finds himself drawn in to the decades-old vendetta behind the crime.
Thanks, James!
SKILLS TO KILL is the first of five (Another Way to Kill is already up for pre-order, and Live to Kill will follow shortly--so three books out in November, two more to follow next year), and hopefully more. If you've read them before, and liked them, you'll like them even more now. We've cleaned up the text, added a few things here and there, and overall made them much better than the previous incarnations.
The story:
Steve Dane should never have set foot in Italy. After witnessing a young woman’s kidnapping, the former agent turned rogue mercenary is hired to get her back by the girl's father and soon finds himself drawn in to the decades-old vendetta behind the crime.
Racing against time as her life hangs in the balance, Steve battles the mafia who want him dead and the police and international agents who want him out of the way. With the help of his lover, former Russian spy Nina Talikova, he rushes down a path that leads into an ever-more complex world of deception ruled by a powerful and mysterious woman known as The Duchess.
Life, it seems, is getting cheaper by the minute. And The Duchess has put a price on the ultimate weapon that will make it all but worthless. Only Steve and Nina have the power to stop a clock that is ticking away the life of the missing girl—and the world.
SKILLS TO KILL is available on Amazon. Ebook now; paperback to follow.
Monday, October 22, 2018
Jerry Ahern on Mack Bolan's Weapons
I've never made a secret about being a Jerry Ahern fanboy. I loved his books when I was a teenager.
Back in 2015, I became Facebook pals with author Stephen Mertz, who, I need not say, is a legend in men's adventure writing himself, having turned out titles for the Bolan series, as well as many others. In 1980, probably not long after Gold Eagle/Harlequin acquired the Mack Bolan series from Don Pendleton, the editors at GE asked Jerry Ahern for his opinions on which weapons Bolan, Phoenix Force, and several others, might use in the books. Ahern replied with two pages of well thought-out reasoning for this weapon or that, and a copy of the letter was forward to Mr. Mertz, who sent it along to me thinking I might like to add it to my Ahern collection. It was actually quite fascinated to read, and I've been meaning to post it on this blog ever since. I've included pictures of the actual letter, but transcribed it for the blog for easy-reading.
I'm not sure what to add, but I think it's safe to say Ahern's remarks were what made Gold Eagle replace the Pendleton-era Bolan weapons with the updated Beretta 93R and Desert Eagle the Executioner has used throughout the Gold eagle era. While Ahern suggested a different .44 Magnum (S&W, as you'll see), we know he approved of the Desert Eagle since he included it in THE DEFENDER series. I wish he'd have recommended the 93R over the 92, but for whatever reason the 93R wasn't on his radar at the time.
Here is Jerry's commentary:
Back in 2015, I became Facebook pals with author Stephen Mertz, who, I need not say, is a legend in men's adventure writing himself, having turned out titles for the Bolan series, as well as many others. In 1980, probably not long after Gold Eagle/Harlequin acquired the Mack Bolan series from Don Pendleton, the editors at GE asked Jerry Ahern for his opinions on which weapons Bolan, Phoenix Force, and several others, might use in the books. Ahern replied with two pages of well thought-out reasoning for this weapon or that, and a copy of the letter was forward to Mr. Mertz, who sent it along to me thinking I might like to add it to my Ahern collection. It was actually quite fascinated to read, and I've been meaning to post it on this blog ever since. I've included pictures of the actual letter, but transcribed it for the blog for easy-reading.
I'm not sure what to add, but I think it's safe to say Ahern's remarks were what made Gold Eagle replace the Pendleton-era Bolan weapons with the updated Beretta 93R and Desert Eagle the Executioner has used throughout the Gold eagle era. While Ahern suggested a different .44 Magnum (S&W, as you'll see), we know he approved of the Desert Eagle since he included it in THE DEFENDER series. I wish he'd have recommended the 93R over the 92, but for whatever reason the 93R wasn't on his radar at the time.
Here is Jerry's commentary:
September 2,
1980
Dear Andy:
The weapons
suggested by your man from The Stony Man Farm team for Bolan to use do not make
a heck of a lot of sense, as we discussed by phone. The guy’s plot ideas sound
terrific, and no offense to the fella, but although he may have a Federal
Firearms License and be some sort of gun dealer, he apparently does not know
the technical side of things terribly well.
First of
all—the reason the Auto Mag has always been a ridiculous choice for Mack Bolan
is that commercial ammunition is usually available only from one
manufacturer—Norma—and is terribly hard to find. It may not be available at all
anymore. The Auto Mag, aside from a reputation for power in the game fields and
on metallic silhouette ranges, has also earned a reputation for poor
reliability over the years. The guns tend easily toward jamming. Aside from the
fact that they are huge, unreliable and generate such heavy recoil that
shot-to-shot recovery time is greatly protracted, the gun almost invariably
requires that both hands be free to hold it, certainly for repeated shots.
No real
adventurer or agent would be caught dead with one—simply because he might be
caught dead if he used one. A fine gun for handgun hunting, perhaps, but not
for any type of defensive or police use. It may have a lot of pizazz but anyone
with an ounce of firearms sophistication realizes it is a stupid choice for
Bolan or anyone like him.
The Wildey
Magnum which your writer suggests does not truly exist at this point in time,
although prototype models do exist and the gun is still—as I gather—intended
for production. The ammo has been generally available for some time, simply
because Winchester, a major manufacturer, decided to offer it. But currently,
anyone who wishes to shoot the ammo must do so in a single-shot T/C Contender
pistol. Even if the first production guns were to appear tomorrow, there would
still be problems. The recoil would be on the high side, though supposedly not
as bad as the Auto Mag. The ammunition would not be available everywhere,
though more available than fodder for the Auto Mag. But, most importantly, the
gun has never been proven. What may prove acceptable in eventually game field
and silhouette shooting use will likely not prove acceptable for combat. And,
the gun may never actually exist—it has yet to be offered for the first time
commercially.
If Mack
Bolan must use a huge, non-combat type gun with a flashy appearance—which would
be poor logic in the real world, of course—then the best bet to replace the
Auto Mag would be the new Smith & Wesson Model 629. Simply a stainless
steel version of the Dirty Harry Model 29 .44 Magnum, the gun actually does
exist, has manageable recoil for a strong man, enjoys wide ammunition
availability and is thoroughly reliable. I have recently tested one for GUN
WEEK, THE AMERICAN HANDGUNNER, and SAGA. Aside from the fact that it is already
one of the most sought after guns in the world, it is a good one.
Now, no
really weapons-wise person would use a .44 Magnum for combat, but the 629 is
perhaps the best compromise with pizazz and common sense with a super-powerful load.
Many vice cops, narcs and others do use the .44 Magnum, so at least its use by
Bolan would be within the vicinity of good sense.
The Beretta
Model 1951 Brigadier 9mm Bolan carries, though somewhat odd a choice, is a
rational one. Yet, if you wish to update Bolan’s weapons a bit, he could switch
to the newer Beretta Model 92S. This gun uses a fifteen-round double column
magazine, has double action first round capability and features a fine
decocking lever safety. Aside from a bit of additional girth at the grips over
the older model (to accommodate the wider magazine with increased capacity) the
guns are identical in appearance and Bolan’s holsters would work with the new
gun just as well as with the old one.
That .460
Weatherby Magnum Bolan uses for sniping people is the ultimate absurdity. A
good, solid .308 or .30-06 would be far better, capable of being silenced when
necessary, etc. The .460 caliber is fine for Rhino, overkill for people. Each
time Bolan uses the gun, any gun-wise reader realizes the writer just picked
the most powerful caliber he’d read about and really knows nothing about how
the gun is really used. I would suggest a Steyr-Mannlicher SSG with synthetic
stock and Kahles sniper scope, or just a much-worked-over Remington 700 BDL, either
gun in .308. With either of these, he might even get into using a Leatherwood
ART scope mount—the kind used extensively in Viet Nam by snipers—something we
are given to understand Mack Bolan is intimately familiar with.
The Phoenix
Force people should all be armed with handguns of the same caliber for ammo
interchange when necessary. Most professional soldier types reportedly use a
9mm Parabellum (Luger) since ammo can be found all over the world and this is
the handgun caliber of most European armies. Many 9mm pistols will also with the
Soviet pistol cartridge which is similar to the 9mm. Recommendation for a
specific gun would be the Browning P-35 High Power. If all the Phoenix Force
guys carried these, scenes of pitched battles could include swapping magazines
when one man runs out of ammo, etc. That was always very effectively done in
the old “Man From Uncle Series” and professional people working together always
try for ammo compatibility.
Grimaldi,
for a nice twist, might use a gun that is a carryover from his Mafia flying
days, as well as any clandestine flight experience for the government. This
could be any one of a number of silenced .22 pistols, most likely and old High
Standard HD Military or a Colt Woodsman, although if you can check that Sturm-Ruger
wouldn’t sue, the current (Viet Nam era) Special Forces/CIA assassination
pistol is, by all reports, a Ruger MkI .22 automatic with integral
silencer—these still being made about sixty miles from my house, as a matter of
fact.
If Dagger is
quite Continental and sophisticated, he’d probably go for a .380 ACP pistol
like the Walther PPK/S or Beretta Model 84 when concealment is critical and a
9mm Parabellum when serious trouble is expected—probably a Browning High Power
here too, but perhaps something with a little more in the exotic looks
department, like a Walther P-38K (the old UNCLE gun), or the new Heckler &
Koch PSP, a 9mm small enough to be carried for concealment as well, as would be
the P-38K.
I’m not
trying to sound presumptuous, but I am a weapons “expert” and you did ask.
Personally, I carry a Detonics .45 automatic most of the time, in the warmer
months when concealment is more difficult sometimes dropping down to a little
snubby .38 Special Smith & Wesson. Sometimes, too, I use a six-inch Colt
Python .357 Magnum. If I were in a situation of constant danger, like the
fellas under discussion, I stick with the .45 or .357. If you want further
information or amplification, let me know and I’ll help as best as possible.
Hear from
you soon, I hope.
Sincerely,
Jerry Ahern
Friday, September 21, 2018
More Wolf on Tuesday!
Many thanks to all of you who have downloaded The Kill Fever, or Wolf #1. I'm re-releasing the short stories, as I've said before, leading up to the big Wolf novel, Justified Sins.Anyway, the next two short stories are dropping on Tuesday, the 25th, The Dark, and The Fixer.
However, a slight error is releasing The Fixer before The Red Ruby Kill. Since I couldn't change the pre-order dates, this is the way it is. But with the short stories, you can read them in any order.
If you haven't ordered yet, you can buy the stories here.
Thanks for looking!
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Guess Who Is Making a Comeback?
Remember Wolf?
Probably not, it's been a long time.
Once, when we were all young and beautiful, I wrote a set of short stories under a different name, featuring a hard-boiled vigilante/private eye named Wolf. The stories did well for me, but the pen name was a mistake. They'd have done a whole lot better for me if they were out under my own name.
Like before, the first story is The Kill Fever. It will be followed by The Dark, The Red Ruby Kill, and The Fixer. After that, Justified Sins, the first Wolf novel. After that, the second Wolf novel, and more short stories. I've big plans for Mr. Wolf.
Since I have a book from a real publisher coming out soon (The Skills to Kill, re: Steve Dane #1, which used to be The Rogue Gentleman), I'm putting out as much as I can on Kindle as a way of advertising.
The Wolf stories are the same as before, however, the upcoming novel, Justified Sins, has, again, finally (finally!) been restored to its original version, ie: before I took some bad advice and cut the entire subplot.
Thanks for looking. If you're read them before, tell your friends!
Probably not, it's been a long time.
Once, when we were all young and beautiful, I wrote a set of short stories under a different name, featuring a hard-boiled vigilante/private eye named Wolf. The stories did well for me, but the pen name was a mistake. They'd have done a whole lot better for me if they were out under my own name.Like before, the first story is The Kill Fever. It will be followed by The Dark, The Red Ruby Kill, and The Fixer. After that, Justified Sins, the first Wolf novel. After that, the second Wolf novel, and more short stories. I've big plans for Mr. Wolf.
Since I have a book from a real publisher coming out soon (The Skills to Kill, re: Steve Dane #1, which used to be The Rogue Gentleman), I'm putting out as much as I can on Kindle as a way of advertising.
The Wolf stories are the same as before, however, the upcoming novel, Justified Sins, has, again, finally (finally!) been restored to its original version, ie: before I took some bad advice and cut the entire subplot.
Thanks for looking. If you're read them before, tell your friends!
Monday, September 10, 2018
Espionage in Africa with Aiden L. Bailey
Aiden L. Bailey is an up-and-comer to watch, although he's been around, in one form or fashion, for a number of years in short story anthologies. His latest efforts concern the adventures of military contractor Simon Ashcroft, and his adventures on the Africa continent. The first book, The Benevolent Deception, is very good indeed.
You can find his books on Amazon (where else?) by clicking here.
I caught up with Aiden at a South Africa wildlife preserve and we chatted about writing while taking pictures of the wild animals who happened to pass by.
Brian Drake: You write thrillers featuring the adventures of Simon Ashcroft in Africa. It's not an area that shows up a lot in fiction. Do you have personal experience there that you used to model Simon Ashcroft?
Aiden Bailey: I backpacked through Africa when I was in my twenties and had a fantastic time there. It was the first continent I traveled to as an adult. I found myself in some reckless situations and soon saw the world from a completely different perspective. I gained a better understanding how the world works, and when it doesn’t work, why it fails. The good and the bad, it was all there in Africa and up in my face so I couldn’t avoid it.
Many of my story ideas seem to work best in an African setting. I’m obviously drawn to the location. The continent of Africa has many vibrant cultures, with wild landscapes and incredible people that are juxtaposed against militants, corrupt governments, extremes of poverty and a variety of amazing megafauna.
Simon Ashcroft features in three of my espionage thriller novels and novellas, and yes, all of them are predominately set in Africa. The Benevolent Deception is set in Kenya and Nigeria, The Assyrian Contraband in the Comoros Islands and Blood Ivory in Tanzania. Some of the locations Simon visits were places I visited and some of his experiences are my own. Many other descriptions are drawn from friends who’ve also been to Africa, based on stories they told me.
BD: When did you start writing? Who has been your biggest influence and why?
AB: I’ve been writing for most of my adult life. I’ve had over fifty short stories published in magazines and anthologies, many of which have won awards or appeared in ‘Year’s Best’ collections. I’ve been an editor with a fiction magazine and edited several anthologies. My day job is marketing communications copy-writing and technical writing for a variety of big industries including construction, defense, oil and gas, information technology and mining. It’s rare that I’m not writing something.
About three years ago I decided that what I really wanted to write was espionage thriller fiction. In my early days I was a big fan of authors like Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, Len Deighton, Martin Cruz Smith, Desmond Bagley, Wilbur Smith, Gerald Seymour and others. I wanted to write the same kind of books.
About three years ago I started writing under the pen name Aiden L Bailey, putting out my first thriller novel The Benevolent Deception. It’s an espionage technothriller about cyberterrorists who assassinate the U.S. President, then fool the world that the President is still alive by impersonating him online through a variety of hacked digital news sources. This prompts all kinds of dangerous alterations to the world’s political, security and economic climate. The hero of the story, Simon Ashcroft who is a former spy turned military contractor, finds himself framed for many of the cyberthreats now facing the world. He goes on the run in Africa with a woman who might just know what is really happening, trying to stay one step ahead of the various shadowy forces trying to kill them.
BD: What is it about the thriller genre that attracted you?
AB: As a kid I was a big fan of the James Bond and Indiana Jones films. I liked the relentless action, the sense of constant danger and thrilling chase sequences. But there was also something really appealing about hero characters who travels the world and ends up in some rather exotic locations.
In my early days I wrote in many genres. After a while I noticed that all my stories had the same structure: action thriller fiction. I read far more action thriller fiction than anything else. I decided this was what I really needed to write and to focus on that.
I’ve discovered that I’ve never had this much fun writing as I do in creating espionage thriller novels. I can’t see that I will ever write anything else now.
BD: Do you outline or make up the story as you go? Why?
AB: In the early days I used to prepare detailed notes and outlines, but not anymore. These days I outline stories only in my head finding that is enough giving me the fluidity for stories to evolve as I tell them. But a structure is important, an overall plot is required because I need to know what is going on in every scene. Much of what is going on is not always at first obvious or apparent, only being revealed later. Mystery is important.
BD: The African continent is a great source of adventure, but also a land of tragedy. What is the overall theme of Ashcroft's adventures that take place there, and are you trying to teach readers anything about that area of the world?
AB: In The Benevolent Deception Ashcroft is confronted with the environmental degradation of the Niger Delta caused by oil companies operating in Nigeria, and terrorism in Kenya. Blood Ivory is about the mass slaughter of elephants in Tanzania and their near extinction in the wild because of the ivory trade into Asia. The Assyrian Contraband is set on an African Island in the Indian Ocean and features Islamic State terrorists smuggling archaeological artifact to fund their insurgency. You can read The Assyrian Contraband for free by joining my mailing list here.
I try to make my story locations as real as possible. Readers have commented that my stories bring these setting alive, particularly when I write about Africa. I guess I want to share what I find amazing about the African setting in my books. It is truly an amazing part of the world.
BD: You've mentioned on Facebook that you're planning a new series, and put up a poll to see which character name readers preferred. Which name won the poll, and what can we expect to see from this new character?
AB: My next series will be more traditional espionage thriller fiction in the same vein as Mark Greaney, Rob Sinclair, Mark Dawson, Tom Woods and Andrew Warren. It will feature an American CIA field operative who is incarcerated in a black prison for reasons he doesn’t at first understand. Eventually he escapes, only to discover he has been framed as a terrorist by a large, nefarious organization that is planning a rather nasty takeover of a major world commodity.
I have the first three books in this open-ended series plotted out. The first book is predominately set in Central Asia and Central Africa.
I haven’t settled on a name for the character yet, but the two popular options are either Travis North or Scott Pierce. One might end up as his real name and the other an alias. Not sure yet but I do like both names. Further feedback from readers is most welcomed.
BD: You've worked on some books with Andrew Warren, who has appeared on this blog twice. What was it like working with somebody else's characters, and do you plan to continue?
AB: Andrew Warren was looking for an author to help him write early stories in his Thomas Caine CIA assassin series. After Andrew read The Benevolent Deception and particularly The Assyrian Contraband, he approached me to co-write an early adventure in Caine’s career. He figured we write in a very similar style and tell the same kinds of stories. We’d been corresponding for some time already and it didn’t take me long to say yes.
The outcome was Sandfire, an espionage action thriller set predominately in Yemen. Thomas Caine teams up with a feisty Australian UN aid worker and a Bedouin mother seeking her kidnapped children. Together they enter the world’s largest sand desert, The Empty Quarter, searching for a missing CIA plane hiding a secret that if exposed, could start a war in the Middle East.
The success of the first book led us to writing the next one, Depth Charge, currently in the works. Caine travels from China to South America to secure the defection of a Chinese military software programmer working on the People Liberation Army’s submarine program. While Sandfire was predominately set in the desert, the action in Depth Charge will occur predominately at sea, both above and below the water. Andrew and I should have this one out later in 2018.
Working with Andrew has been great fun, and as long as our collaborations remain well received, we could have a few more books in the works after Depth Charge.
BD: Thanks, Aiden. Great chatting with you. For more of Aiden's work, his website is www.aidenlbailey.com.
You can find his books on Amazon (where else?) by clicking here.
I caught up with Aiden at a South Africa wildlife preserve and we chatted about writing while taking pictures of the wild animals who happened to pass by.
Brian Drake: You write thrillers featuring the adventures of Simon Ashcroft in Africa. It's not an area that shows up a lot in fiction. Do you have personal experience there that you used to model Simon Ashcroft?
Aiden Bailey: I backpacked through Africa when I was in my twenties and had a fantastic time there. It was the first continent I traveled to as an adult. I found myself in some reckless situations and soon saw the world from a completely different perspective. I gained a better understanding how the world works, and when it doesn’t work, why it fails. The good and the bad, it was all there in Africa and up in my face so I couldn’t avoid it.Many of my story ideas seem to work best in an African setting. I’m obviously drawn to the location. The continent of Africa has many vibrant cultures, with wild landscapes and incredible people that are juxtaposed against militants, corrupt governments, extremes of poverty and a variety of amazing megafauna.
Simon Ashcroft features in three of my espionage thriller novels and novellas, and yes, all of them are predominately set in Africa. The Benevolent Deception is set in Kenya and Nigeria, The Assyrian Contraband in the Comoros Islands and Blood Ivory in Tanzania. Some of the locations Simon visits were places I visited and some of his experiences are my own. Many other descriptions are drawn from friends who’ve also been to Africa, based on stories they told me.
BD: When did you start writing? Who has been your biggest influence and why?
AB: I’ve been writing for most of my adult life. I’ve had over fifty short stories published in magazines and anthologies, many of which have won awards or appeared in ‘Year’s Best’ collections. I’ve been an editor with a fiction magazine and edited several anthologies. My day job is marketing communications copy-writing and technical writing for a variety of big industries including construction, defense, oil and gas, information technology and mining. It’s rare that I’m not writing something.
About three years ago I decided that what I really wanted to write was espionage thriller fiction. In my early days I was a big fan of authors like Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, Len Deighton, Martin Cruz Smith, Desmond Bagley, Wilbur Smith, Gerald Seymour and others. I wanted to write the same kind of books.
About three years ago I started writing under the pen name Aiden L Bailey, putting out my first thriller novel The Benevolent Deception. It’s an espionage technothriller about cyberterrorists who assassinate the U.S. President, then fool the world that the President is still alive by impersonating him online through a variety of hacked digital news sources. This prompts all kinds of dangerous alterations to the world’s political, security and economic climate. The hero of the story, Simon Ashcroft who is a former spy turned military contractor, finds himself framed for many of the cyberthreats now facing the world. He goes on the run in Africa with a woman who might just know what is really happening, trying to stay one step ahead of the various shadowy forces trying to kill them.
BD: What is it about the thriller genre that attracted you?
AB: As a kid I was a big fan of the James Bond and Indiana Jones films. I liked the relentless action, the sense of constant danger and thrilling chase sequences. But there was also something really appealing about hero characters who travels the world and ends up in some rather exotic locations.
In my early days I wrote in many genres. After a while I noticed that all my stories had the same structure: action thriller fiction. I read far more action thriller fiction than anything else. I decided this was what I really needed to write and to focus on that.
I’ve discovered that I’ve never had this much fun writing as I do in creating espionage thriller novels. I can’t see that I will ever write anything else now.
BD: Do you outline or make up the story as you go? Why?
AB: In the early days I used to prepare detailed notes and outlines, but not anymore. These days I outline stories only in my head finding that is enough giving me the fluidity for stories to evolve as I tell them. But a structure is important, an overall plot is required because I need to know what is going on in every scene. Much of what is going on is not always at first obvious or apparent, only being revealed later. Mystery is important.
BD: The African continent is a great source of adventure, but also a land of tragedy. What is the overall theme of Ashcroft's adventures that take place there, and are you trying to teach readers anything about that area of the world?
AB: In The Benevolent Deception Ashcroft is confronted with the environmental degradation of the Niger Delta caused by oil companies operating in Nigeria, and terrorism in Kenya. Blood Ivory is about the mass slaughter of elephants in Tanzania and their near extinction in the wild because of the ivory trade into Asia. The Assyrian Contraband is set on an African Island in the Indian Ocean and features Islamic State terrorists smuggling archaeological artifact to fund their insurgency. You can read The Assyrian Contraband for free by joining my mailing list here.
I try to make my story locations as real as possible. Readers have commented that my stories bring these setting alive, particularly when I write about Africa. I guess I want to share what I find amazing about the African setting in my books. It is truly an amazing part of the world.
BD: You've mentioned on Facebook that you're planning a new series, and put up a poll to see which character name readers preferred. Which name won the poll, and what can we expect to see from this new character?
AB: My next series will be more traditional espionage thriller fiction in the same vein as Mark Greaney, Rob Sinclair, Mark Dawson, Tom Woods and Andrew Warren. It will feature an American CIA field operative who is incarcerated in a black prison for reasons he doesn’t at first understand. Eventually he escapes, only to discover he has been framed as a terrorist by a large, nefarious organization that is planning a rather nasty takeover of a major world commodity.
I have the first three books in this open-ended series plotted out. The first book is predominately set in Central Asia and Central Africa.
I haven’t settled on a name for the character yet, but the two popular options are either Travis North or Scott Pierce. One might end up as his real name and the other an alias. Not sure yet but I do like both names. Further feedback from readers is most welcomed.
BD: You've worked on some books with Andrew Warren, who has appeared on this blog twice. What was it like working with somebody else's characters, and do you plan to continue?
AB: Andrew Warren was looking for an author to help him write early stories in his Thomas Caine CIA assassin series. After Andrew read The Benevolent Deception and particularly The Assyrian Contraband, he approached me to co-write an early adventure in Caine’s career. He figured we write in a very similar style and tell the same kinds of stories. We’d been corresponding for some time already and it didn’t take me long to say yes.
The outcome was Sandfire, an espionage action thriller set predominately in Yemen. Thomas Caine teams up with a feisty Australian UN aid worker and a Bedouin mother seeking her kidnapped children. Together they enter the world’s largest sand desert, The Empty Quarter, searching for a missing CIA plane hiding a secret that if exposed, could start a war in the Middle East.
The success of the first book led us to writing the next one, Depth Charge, currently in the works. Caine travels from China to South America to secure the defection of a Chinese military software programmer working on the People Liberation Army’s submarine program. While Sandfire was predominately set in the desert, the action in Depth Charge will occur predominately at sea, both above and below the water. Andrew and I should have this one out later in 2018.
Working with Andrew has been great fun, and as long as our collaborations remain well received, we could have a few more books in the works after Depth Charge.
BD: Thanks, Aiden. Great chatting with you. For more of Aiden's work, his website is www.aidenlbailey.com.
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Reuniting with PHOENIX FORCE in Harvest Hell!
I haven't done a book review in a long time, so why not get back to reviews with a book that really entertained me.
PHOENIX FORCE #13: HARVEST HELL is a book I found at a thrift store, and it had William Fieldhouse's name on the copyright page as the credited writer, despite "Gar Wilson" on the cover. Terrific! Sold! Fieldhouse was my favorite Phoenix Force writer. He wrote most of the series, a gargantuan feat considering the rest of his output at the same time; and Harvest Hell proves why Gold Eagle gave him most of the Phoenix assignments. The man simply wrote a team action story better than anybody.
Katz and the gang are in Greece this time, raiding an island where a dude is housing a bunch of terrorists in a conspiracy with Moscow to distribute a deadly virus that starves people to death. It's beautifully pulpy and outrageous--all in a good way. You want realism? Drama? Fuhgeddaboutit! You want a battle for the fate of the free world where five men will stop at nothing to defeat the dastardly villain even though sometimes the cheese gets a little thick but you don't care because this is the best Gouda ever? This is your book!
Of course the action scenes are terrific, so there's no reason to delve into one Fieldhouse's stand-out elements. What really zings in this later volume is that it reads like an introduction to the cast. Each member of the Force is introduced and highlighted with an action scene, background details, stuff somebody like me, coming back to the books after so many years, really needs in order to become reacquainted with these old friends. By the time the team got into their mission, they felt like real folks in real danger. It's the way a pulp story ought to be written. When you believe the characters, it doesn't matter how crazy the rest of the story becomes. You're fully invested, and nothing can break their hold on you.
As you might expect, I went back to that thrift store and raided their remaining Phoenix Force titles, most of them by Fieldhouse, but one of them, Down Under Thunder, written by Paul Glen Neuman, who wrote a great deal of PF titles himself, which I also had to buy, because it was the very first Phoenix title I read when I was 14 years old and sitting in Ms. McCoy's history class wishing it was my name on the cover.
It's going to be a lot of fun hanging out with Katz and the gang again.
Fieldhouse is an author I've love to interview, if any of you know how I might reach him, because I want to dig into how he worked and managed so many titles over a 20 year period. Just looking at what little of his bibliography is available on-line, it's hard to imagine he didn't pass out from exhaustion. It's all I can do to write four books a year; he, apparently, doubled and tripled that output without blinking an eye.
But if nothing else, he provided many hours and delightful reading in my youth, and he will do so again ... now that I'm significantly older, but still act like I'm 14.
PHOENIX FORCE #13: HARVEST HELL is a book I found at a thrift store, and it had William Fieldhouse's name on the copyright page as the credited writer, despite "Gar Wilson" on the cover. Terrific! Sold! Fieldhouse was my favorite Phoenix Force writer. He wrote most of the series, a gargantuan feat considering the rest of his output at the same time; and Harvest Hell proves why Gold Eagle gave him most of the Phoenix assignments. The man simply wrote a team action story better than anybody.
Katz and the gang are in Greece this time, raiding an island where a dude is housing a bunch of terrorists in a conspiracy with Moscow to distribute a deadly virus that starves people to death. It's beautifully pulpy and outrageous--all in a good way. You want realism? Drama? Fuhgeddaboutit! You want a battle for the fate of the free world where five men will stop at nothing to defeat the dastardly villain even though sometimes the cheese gets a little thick but you don't care because this is the best Gouda ever? This is your book!
Of course the action scenes are terrific, so there's no reason to delve into one Fieldhouse's stand-out elements. What really zings in this later volume is that it reads like an introduction to the cast. Each member of the Force is introduced and highlighted with an action scene, background details, stuff somebody like me, coming back to the books after so many years, really needs in order to become reacquainted with these old friends. By the time the team got into their mission, they felt like real folks in real danger. It's the way a pulp story ought to be written. When you believe the characters, it doesn't matter how crazy the rest of the story becomes. You're fully invested, and nothing can break their hold on you.
As you might expect, I went back to that thrift store and raided their remaining Phoenix Force titles, most of them by Fieldhouse, but one of them, Down Under Thunder, written by Paul Glen Neuman, who wrote a great deal of PF titles himself, which I also had to buy, because it was the very first Phoenix title I read when I was 14 years old and sitting in Ms. McCoy's history class wishing it was my name on the cover.
It's going to be a lot of fun hanging out with Katz and the gang again.
Fieldhouse is an author I've love to interview, if any of you know how I might reach him, because I want to dig into how he worked and managed so many titles over a 20 year period. Just looking at what little of his bibliography is available on-line, it's hard to imagine he didn't pass out from exhaustion. It's all I can do to write four books a year; he, apparently, doubled and tripled that output without blinking an eye.
But if nothing else, he provided many hours and delightful reading in my youth, and he will do so again ... now that I'm significantly older, but still act like I'm 14.
A New Kind of Spy with Author Mark Parragh
When I first discovered the John Crane adventures by Mark Parragh, I was struck hard. As always, I look for crisp writing, nothing bloated--check. Fun adventure with lots of stuff going boom--check. It just kept getting better. And, look, he has more books to read!
And when I reached out to Mark for a chat, I found a kindred spirit. Mark and I are working along the same lines, trying to make spy and adventure fiction fun again, which has been sorely missing over the last two or three or maybe four decades.
If you like rip-snorting adventures, the kind to read on the porch on a Saturday afternoon with some iced tea, the Crane books are what you're looking for.
Mark and I met in a dark alley in Vienna to pass the microfilm back and forth.
Brian Drake: When did you start writing?
Mark Parragh: Well, I grew up in a very isolated setting and I was by myself a lot as a child, so stories and imagination had always been a big part of my life. But I can tell you exactly when, for better or worse, I became a “writer.” It was seventh grade English class. The teacher gave us each some object or line of dialog or whatever that we drew at random, and we had to use it in a story. I wrote a very cliched accidental time travel story about a guy who finds himself in the past and discovers that he himself is the mysterious ancestor who shows up out of nowhere in his family’s legends.
BD: And your teacher proclaimed you a future best-seller, right?
MP: It wasn’t prize-winning stuff, but I guess it wasn’t bad for a seventh grader. I got an A+, and a note from my teacher saying he’d read worse stories in magazines where people were paid to write them. Ka-ching! It was like, wait, I can do this for a living? Yeah, I’m up for that. And I was off to the races. It’s been a long, twisty path since then, but that one event probably did more than almost anything else to shape my life.
BD: What is it about spy and adventure fiction that you find so endearing? Why do you think it's a genre that keeps on going despite when other genres come and go?
MP: The world changes, right? Audiences and tastes change. When Fleming was writing James Bond back in the 50s, thrillers and mysteries were big. Westerns were big. Romance was big. Gothics were big. Some of those genres are still around and others have faded out. I think the genres that have lasted are the ones that speak broadly to universal human experiences.
Romance is a great example. When Fleming was writing the Bond books, the romance genre was very different. It used to be about the pretty nurse who lands the handsome doctor and bang, she has won at life. We’ve moved beyond that. But love is universal. Mystery is universal. Wondering about the future is universal. So genres like mystery, romance, and science fiction last because they can change with the times and present those universal themes in different forms. The genres that are mostly about their external trappings, like westerns or gothics, rise and fall with the audience’s interest in those things.
Spy adventures are still around. But that doesn’t mean they’re quite what they were in Fleming’s day. It’s not the cold war anymore with suave secret agents sneaking into East Berlin and matching wits with devious Soviets over martinis. Today, it’s more about heavily armed commandos fighting terrorists. But at its core the genre is about human conflict, about huge geopolitical issues distilled down to one hero’s struggles. I don’t think that’s ever going to go away.
BD: Who inspired John Crane?
MP: I’m sure it’s no surprise to hear that Crane was basically inspired by James Bond. Specifically, I was thinking about the way Bond always seems to be going rogue these days. I mean, in Spectre, all of MI-6 ends up going rogue with him! I started to wonder why that was happening, and I decided it has to do with, again, the way the world has changed since Bond was born. Like the genre itself, Bond has changed a lot over the years to keep up with social mores. And there are a lot of changes you can get away with. Take away the cold war, take away his cigarettes, make him less of a “misogynist dinosaur.” He’s still Bond. But there’s one thing that’s absolutely central to who Bond is. He’s a British agent. Change that and he’s no longer James Bond.
BD: How have you updated Crane, then, to the modern world?
MP: [T]he idea of government agent as hero has fallen out of favor since Fleming’s day. I think Vietnam and Watergate had a lot to do with it, but the idea of a government agent as a stalwart hero protecting us from foreign enemies really went out of vogue. By the 1970s you had all these paranoid conspiracy thrillers like Three Days of the Condor where a government agent was more likely to be the bad guy. By the time we got to X-Files, if the hero was a government agent, he was always a lone rogue trying to do good despite the system, and there was always somebody rotten in his own agency waiting to betray him. That idea has really gotten baked into the genre now until it’s a standard trope.
So how could I get around that? I thought, okay, then just take the government out of the picture. But if my spy wasn’t working for the government, who was he working for? Who else has spies? And the obvious answer seemed to be some ridiculously wealthy tech billionaire who can marshal the kind of resources that puts him on the same level as a government. That led to Josh Sulenski, and it all kind of fell into place from there. Crane is basically Bond, except now M is an idealistic 25-year-old tech nerd with enough money to do literally anything he wants. And he wants to save the world because he thinks that’s really cool. It’s a simple enough idea, but the more I played with the premise, the more fun I could see in it.
BD: Did you find it gave you more flexibility with Crane's stories?
MP: It just made the series feel more modern. We’re in a new gilded age now. There was a time when - maybe this is naïve of me, but in theory at least – we as a people concentrated our wealth and power collectively in our government and used it to provide for ourselves and build our nation. Now we’re back to basically handing it to powerful individuals and hoping they’ll use it for something that does us some good. The last time, we had men like Carnegie and Vanderbilt and Rockefeller endowing universities and libraries with their names on them. And those aren’t bad things, but maybe the people back then would have chosen to do something different with that money. And you also saw a lot of pointless grandiosity like the Biltmore Estate or the mansions in Newport.
The same thing’s happening now. As Josh notes in the first book, Bill Gates is trying to wipe out Malaria, and Elon Musk has his own space program. But Larry Ellison bought one of the Hawaiian islands, and a boat so big that he can’t actually dock it at his personal island. He apparently docks it at Honolulu, right next to a homeless camp.
In the last gilded age, government simply couldn’t match the power of these ultra-rich industrialists, and that’s kind of happening again. So if we’re going to be essentially ruled by plutocrats, then at least Josh is the fantasy of the “good billionaire,” the one who’s trying to use his money to make things better for everyone instead of running roughshod over you to get whatever he wants.
BD: You've brought up your Bond comparison, but one of your reviews also compares your work to John D. MacDonald, which is quite a comparison, considering they're two different sphere of the writing world. How has John D.'s work influenced you, and how have you used that influence to create Crane's adventures?
MP: I had to think about MacDonald, especially when I started hearing it from more readers. I think what they’re picking up on is the tone of the books. There’s a certain romanticism in MacDonald’s books, at least the Travis McGee series, that I think has passed down to some other authors I really admire like Carl Hiassen and Thomas Perry. And I think it’s there in the Crane books. The books can be intense and dangerous, but they’re not grim or depressing. Crane’s not jaded and broken by all the things he’s seen and done. He and Josh are out there saving the world and having a good time doing it. And even though Crane’s just one guy – granted, with a whole lot of Josh’s money backing him up - he can make a difference.
And it’s a world full of good people along with the bad. Whatever country or culture Crane finds himself in, he runs into decent people. I think there are a lot of heroes in the action genre who are ultimately about striking down horrible, irredeemable villains in self-righteous vengeful rage. And I didn’t want to write that book. I wanted the books to be more fun, but also to present a more hopeful world, a world where people want to do right, and where they can do the right thing, and where that can matter. That’s ultimately a very romantic concept and I think it owes a lot to MacDonald.
BD: What's coming up next for John Crane?
MP: Well, with Shot Clock, I’ve finished the first “arc” of the Crane series. My original idea was that the books would all stand alone. And I think they do, but I was building the world through these first books, so when I introduce a supporting character or a recurring villain, that’s the first time they’ve shown up. They’re not there in the earlier books. So I think the books work alone, but they work better if you read them in order, with the two novellas that kind of bridge the gap between book one and two and between book two and three.
Now that the world is basically there, I think it will be easier to have the books truly stand alone so you can read them in whatever order you find them. I’ve got the relationship between Crane and Josh. I’ve got Swift, who is sort of Crane’s Catwoman. They have this attraction and a connection that they can’t quite walk away from. They’re on opposite sides, but they each think they could be great together if only the other one would come over to their side. I’ve got a lot of the supporting players in place, and a sort of civil war going on behind the scenes. In a movie, they say that the first part of act two is where the really cool stuff gets going. That’s where the scenes on the movie poster happen. That’s where we are now with Crane. Everything is set up, and now we get to play with it.
BD: Thank you for a wonderful interview, Mark. How can readers contact you?
MP: I love hearing from readers! Getting feedback, and just sharing the fun I’m having with Crane and Josh is a big part of what makes this worthwhile. Readers can reach me through my web site at markparragh.com. And I have a Facebook page at facebook.com/MarkParragh. I’m not always the best at keeping them updated because I’m busy working on new books! But you can always reach me through them, and my email at inbox@markparragh.com. I hope to hear from you there!
BD: You can check out John Crane #1: Rope on Fire, here.
And when I reached out to Mark for a chat, I found a kindred spirit. Mark and I are working along the same lines, trying to make spy and adventure fiction fun again, which has been sorely missing over the last two or three or maybe four decades.
If you like rip-snorting adventures, the kind to read on the porch on a Saturday afternoon with some iced tea, the Crane books are what you're looking for.
Mark and I met in a dark alley in Vienna to pass the microfilm back and forth.
Brian Drake: When did you start writing?
Mark Parragh: Well, I grew up in a very isolated setting and I was by myself a lot as a child, so stories and imagination had always been a big part of my life. But I can tell you exactly when, for better or worse, I became a “writer.” It was seventh grade English class. The teacher gave us each some object or line of dialog or whatever that we drew at random, and we had to use it in a story. I wrote a very cliched accidental time travel story about a guy who finds himself in the past and discovers that he himself is the mysterious ancestor who shows up out of nowhere in his family’s legends.
BD: And your teacher proclaimed you a future best-seller, right?
MP: It wasn’t prize-winning stuff, but I guess it wasn’t bad for a seventh grader. I got an A+, and a note from my teacher saying he’d read worse stories in magazines where people were paid to write them. Ka-ching! It was like, wait, I can do this for a living? Yeah, I’m up for that. And I was off to the races. It’s been a long, twisty path since then, but that one event probably did more than almost anything else to shape my life.
BD: What is it about spy and adventure fiction that you find so endearing? Why do you think it's a genre that keeps on going despite when other genres come and go?
MP: The world changes, right? Audiences and tastes change. When Fleming was writing James Bond back in the 50s, thrillers and mysteries were big. Westerns were big. Romance was big. Gothics were big. Some of those genres are still around and others have faded out. I think the genres that have lasted are the ones that speak broadly to universal human experiences.
Romance is a great example. When Fleming was writing the Bond books, the romance genre was very different. It used to be about the pretty nurse who lands the handsome doctor and bang, she has won at life. We’ve moved beyond that. But love is universal. Mystery is universal. Wondering about the future is universal. So genres like mystery, romance, and science fiction last because they can change with the times and present those universal themes in different forms. The genres that are mostly about their external trappings, like westerns or gothics, rise and fall with the audience’s interest in those things.
Spy adventures are still around. But that doesn’t mean they’re quite what they were in Fleming’s day. It’s not the cold war anymore with suave secret agents sneaking into East Berlin and matching wits with devious Soviets over martinis. Today, it’s more about heavily armed commandos fighting terrorists. But at its core the genre is about human conflict, about huge geopolitical issues distilled down to one hero’s struggles. I don’t think that’s ever going to go away.
BD: Who inspired John Crane?
MP: I’m sure it’s no surprise to hear that Crane was basically inspired by James Bond. Specifically, I was thinking about the way Bond always seems to be going rogue these days. I mean, in Spectre, all of MI-6 ends up going rogue with him! I started to wonder why that was happening, and I decided it has to do with, again, the way the world has changed since Bond was born. Like the genre itself, Bond has changed a lot over the years to keep up with social mores. And there are a lot of changes you can get away with. Take away the cold war, take away his cigarettes, make him less of a “misogynist dinosaur.” He’s still Bond. But there’s one thing that’s absolutely central to who Bond is. He’s a British agent. Change that and he’s no longer James Bond.
BD: How have you updated Crane, then, to the modern world?
MP: [T]he idea of government agent as hero has fallen out of favor since Fleming’s day. I think Vietnam and Watergate had a lot to do with it, but the idea of a government agent as a stalwart hero protecting us from foreign enemies really went out of vogue. By the 1970s you had all these paranoid conspiracy thrillers like Three Days of the Condor where a government agent was more likely to be the bad guy. By the time we got to X-Files, if the hero was a government agent, he was always a lone rogue trying to do good despite the system, and there was always somebody rotten in his own agency waiting to betray him. That idea has really gotten baked into the genre now until it’s a standard trope.
So how could I get around that? I thought, okay, then just take the government out of the picture. But if my spy wasn’t working for the government, who was he working for? Who else has spies? And the obvious answer seemed to be some ridiculously wealthy tech billionaire who can marshal the kind of resources that puts him on the same level as a government. That led to Josh Sulenski, and it all kind of fell into place from there. Crane is basically Bond, except now M is an idealistic 25-year-old tech nerd with enough money to do literally anything he wants. And he wants to save the world because he thinks that’s really cool. It’s a simple enough idea, but the more I played with the premise, the more fun I could see in it.
BD: Did you find it gave you more flexibility with Crane's stories?
MP: It just made the series feel more modern. We’re in a new gilded age now. There was a time when - maybe this is naïve of me, but in theory at least – we as a people concentrated our wealth and power collectively in our government and used it to provide for ourselves and build our nation. Now we’re back to basically handing it to powerful individuals and hoping they’ll use it for something that does us some good. The last time, we had men like Carnegie and Vanderbilt and Rockefeller endowing universities and libraries with their names on them. And those aren’t bad things, but maybe the people back then would have chosen to do something different with that money. And you also saw a lot of pointless grandiosity like the Biltmore Estate or the mansions in Newport.
The same thing’s happening now. As Josh notes in the first book, Bill Gates is trying to wipe out Malaria, and Elon Musk has his own space program. But Larry Ellison bought one of the Hawaiian islands, and a boat so big that he can’t actually dock it at his personal island. He apparently docks it at Honolulu, right next to a homeless camp.
In the last gilded age, government simply couldn’t match the power of these ultra-rich industrialists, and that’s kind of happening again. So if we’re going to be essentially ruled by plutocrats, then at least Josh is the fantasy of the “good billionaire,” the one who’s trying to use his money to make things better for everyone instead of running roughshod over you to get whatever he wants.
BD: You've brought up your Bond comparison, but one of your reviews also compares your work to John D. MacDonald, which is quite a comparison, considering they're two different sphere of the writing world. How has John D.'s work influenced you, and how have you used that influence to create Crane's adventures?
MP: I had to think about MacDonald, especially when I started hearing it from more readers. I think what they’re picking up on is the tone of the books. There’s a certain romanticism in MacDonald’s books, at least the Travis McGee series, that I think has passed down to some other authors I really admire like Carl Hiassen and Thomas Perry. And I think it’s there in the Crane books. The books can be intense and dangerous, but they’re not grim or depressing. Crane’s not jaded and broken by all the things he’s seen and done. He and Josh are out there saving the world and having a good time doing it. And even though Crane’s just one guy – granted, with a whole lot of Josh’s money backing him up - he can make a difference.
And it’s a world full of good people along with the bad. Whatever country or culture Crane finds himself in, he runs into decent people. I think there are a lot of heroes in the action genre who are ultimately about striking down horrible, irredeemable villains in self-righteous vengeful rage. And I didn’t want to write that book. I wanted the books to be more fun, but also to present a more hopeful world, a world where people want to do right, and where they can do the right thing, and where that can matter. That’s ultimately a very romantic concept and I think it owes a lot to MacDonald.
BD: What's coming up next for John Crane?
MP: Well, with Shot Clock, I’ve finished the first “arc” of the Crane series. My original idea was that the books would all stand alone. And I think they do, but I was building the world through these first books, so when I introduce a supporting character or a recurring villain, that’s the first time they’ve shown up. They’re not there in the earlier books. So I think the books work alone, but they work better if you read them in order, with the two novellas that kind of bridge the gap between book one and two and between book two and three.
Now that the world is basically there, I think it will be easier to have the books truly stand alone so you can read them in whatever order you find them. I’ve got the relationship between Crane and Josh. I’ve got Swift, who is sort of Crane’s Catwoman. They have this attraction and a connection that they can’t quite walk away from. They’re on opposite sides, but they each think they could be great together if only the other one would come over to their side. I’ve got a lot of the supporting players in place, and a sort of civil war going on behind the scenes. In a movie, they say that the first part of act two is where the really cool stuff gets going. That’s where the scenes on the movie poster happen. That’s where we are now with Crane. Everything is set up, and now we get to play with it.
BD: Thank you for a wonderful interview, Mark. How can readers contact you?
MP: I love hearing from readers! Getting feedback, and just sharing the fun I’m having with Crane and Josh is a big part of what makes this worthwhile. Readers can reach me through my web site at markparragh.com. And I have a Facebook page at facebook.com/MarkParragh. I’m not always the best at keeping them updated because I’m busy working on new books! But you can always reach me through them, and my email at inbox@markparragh.com. I hope to hear from you there!
BD: You can check out John Crane #1: Rope on Fire, here.
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