More Love for Hammett...And Cigars!

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

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

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

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

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

The Indie Scene: L.J. Sellers

L.J. Sellers

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

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

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

Anonymous-9 Unmasked

So, have you heard the news?

Of course you have.

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

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

Click away.

Meet Anonymous-9:  The Wonderful Elaine Ash!

BULLET FOR ONE--Available Now!

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

Here's the description:


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

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

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

If he fails, can he live with another ghost?

If he succeeds, can he live with the consequences?

James Bond: Licence Revisited

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

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

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

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

Mr. John Gardner

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

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

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

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

Coming Soon....THE ROGUE GENTLEMAN series!

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

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

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

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

Coming Soon....BULLET FOR ONE

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