Psycho-Noir

Announcement regarding TP

2012-02-01T05:53:00.000-08:00

Many of you, no doubt, already know this, but it deserves a general announcement.
As of last night, I've requested that Trestle Press pull from sale the titles I've published through them. That would be "That Damned Coyote Hill" and the two "Deadland USA" episodes.

I'm not going to make a big deal out of this here at the blog, but in anticipation of the inevitable questions, I'll give you the short answer: there has been a general storm of controversy regarding the covers Trestle Press uses, and whether or not they've been obtained in an above-board manner. Here's the link to the Deviant Art site where all this first began spilling out.

In solidarity with my fellow writers (and in sympathy with graphic artists who, it seems, have had their work used for profit without permission) I'm cutting ties with Trestle Press.

I'll make another announcement when those stories find a new home.

Religion and Politics Free-for-All

2012-01-31T08:44:00.000-08:00

There was a time, I’ve been told, when people didn’t discuss religion or politics in polite circles. Propriety forbad it, because it led to uncomfortable situations and bad tempers and, frankly, resolved nothing, ever.

It STILL resolves nothing, but the guardedness we used to have about those subjects seems to have evaporated. I’m not saying that’s good or bad or indifferent, it’s just a fact. But the main stage it all plays out on seems to have become social media, and as it turns out, that particular stage is the most useless of all.

Every single day, without fail, you’ll find tons of posts on FB reflecting the poster’s political or spiritual beliefs, sometimes pretty aggressively. Just yesterday, I came across:

An atheist friend of mine posting a meme calling out religious faith as being childish and nonsensical.

A Christian friend of mine posting a dramatic montage of Jesus and some American soldiers, insisting that the Lord was protecting them.

A liberal I know bashing Newt Gingrich for being a hypocrite.

A right-winger I know posting a pic of Obama, calling him The Great Divider.

Oh, so many opinions. Which, as we know, are just like assholes… we all got ‘em.

Here’s the thing. I think I’ve had enough, thanks. Whether I agree with you or not, I’ve decided that I’m not interested in your opinion about these things anymore. If I agree with you, then you’re preaching to the choir. If I don’t agree with you, you’re just annoying me with your half-ass, ill-informed rants.

Now before you call me out as a hypocrite, I will concede that I have, on occasion, voiced my own political or religious views on FB. Guilty. But in my defense, I haven’t done it often. And over the last year or so, I’ve gotten better at censoring myself. Not out of fear that I’ll offend someone, but out of the realization that honestly, no one gives a shit about my opinion. And there’s no reason they should. I’ve never studied political science, so my insight into the subject is practically worthless. I don’t have a degree in theology or philosophy, so my theories about those things are irrelevant. Yes, you can be an informed citizen without those qualifications, but the people you’re spouting off to would have no way of knowing you’re anything other than a half-informed zealot picking and choosing whatever information best suits the positions you’re most comfortable with.

Also in my defense, there is a difference between religion/politics and causes. I don’t talk about religion much, but I DO occasionally spout off against anti-evolutionists. Some folks have mistakenly seen that as anti-religion. I will also occasionally speak out in support of the “Occupy” movement and protesters—and that is sometimes viewed as being a liberal position. I’m reconciled to the fact that those things will sometimes be misinterpreted. But it’s not the same thing.

If you’re a non-believer trying to convince believers that faith in the supernatural is idiotic, posting insulting memes on FB isn’t going to do the trick. Ditto if you’re a Christian trying to save the souls of us poor deluded atheists. Posting scandalous insults about commie pinko liberals serves no purpose other than pleasing the people who already agree with you for a minute, and ranting about America-hating right-wing dickheads is equally pointless.

None of this qualifies as conversation. It’s just grand-standing. Trying, trying, trying so hard to prove that you’re right and those who don’t agree are wrong.

If all of this eventually led to actual intelligent conversation, I wouldn’t be so annoyed by it. But it almost never goes that way.

I for one intend to refrain from spouting off about those things on FB from now on. I also intend to skim right over anything others post espousing a political or religious point of view, whether I agree with it or not.

I’m there to interact with friends, that’s all, and there's no reason FB has to be an annoying minefield of aggressive opinion-spouting.

Good Decisions

2012-01-26T17:42:00.000-08:00

So the first full day after temporarily abandoning the story that was giving me grief for two goddamn months made me very glad I made the decision.

If you care, the post about deciding to let a story go when it's not working is right here. I agonized over it, but finally decided that the second Hawthorne story just wasn't ready to come out of the metaphorical man-womb yet, and I had other things that were going cold in the meantime. I dropped Hawthorne, promising myself to get back to it later.

And yeah, it was a good call. Today I pumped out the first five pages of a new novella that will be done by the end of February, and it all came so easy and clean it reminded me of why I love to write-- a feeling I'd lost touch with the last two miserable unproductive months.
I also wrote a three page outline for another novella. Over all, an excellent day of work.

On those occasions when it comes easy, when it feels like the whole story was already right there in your skull just waiting for you to spill it out onto the page... that's a great feeling. It feels almost like you're tapping into some weird realm, some alternate dimension where the characters and situations already exist and it's all just too eager to allow you to pull it over to this side and give it life here.

So anyway, enough rambling and half-ass metaphorical imagery. I'm shutting it down for the day, but I'm actually EXCITED to get back to it tomorrow.

Sabotaged by My Own Story

2012-01-25T09:39:00.000-08:00

One of the more annoying things that can happen to you as a writer is this: realizing that the thing you’ve been working on for two months is utter crap.

Yeah, it happens sometimes.

In the best circumstances, you’ll have an idea for a story and you’ll sit down to write it and everything just clicks and it comes out pretty damn good.

In the worst circumstances, you’ll have an idea but you just can’t get it to come together right. Very frustrating, that.

I’ve just spent almost two months trying to hammer out this particular story—the second Hawthorne adventure. And two months is a LONG time to write a short piece. It shouldn’t have taken more than a few days, tops. I kept going back to it every morning, trying to make it do what I needed it to do, but the characters just kept mulling around pointlessly, the prose absolutely refused to be anything other than listless and boring. And yet I kept at it, trying to revive what was becoming increasingly more apparent as a corpse.

You notice how I'm refraining from strong language right now? Refraining, because if I start cursing and spouting obscenities I'm likely to keep doing it all day.

It was a decent idea, one that I would be loath to toss away entirely. But my execution of it was just a giant fumble from the get-go. Maybe I over-thought it. Maybe the various elements clashed too much. Or maybe it just wasn’t ready to be born yet. I don’t know. Whatever the case, it was a total disaster.

Some writers (including me, I like to think) have a sort of built-in sensor that tells them when a story isn’t working. Sometimes you won’t even know why, exactly; you’ll just feel it. And once that intuition sets in, it’s almost as if the story is DELIBERATELY keeping you from moving forward. Like it knows better and is trying to sabotage you for your own good.

So what do you do when your intuition finally has enough of you fumbling around in the dark and comes to the surface long enough to tell you to put on the brakes?

Accept it, I guess.

Put it down, move on to something else. Maybe let the idea foment for a while and come back to it later.

So that’s what I’m doing with this particular story. I’m turning it loose, letting it get its shit together. Hopefully we’ll hook up later and work things out.

If you’re one of the four or five readers anxious for the next Hawthorne adventure, don’t worry, another one is on the horizon. Just not the one I’d originally intended.

In the meantime, I have some other projects I need to get to, projects that my frustrating struggle with an obstinate story had been holding up.

Writers: what do YOU do when a story stabs you in the back and refuses to cooperate?

Dead Men, Compulsive Gamblers, Lousy P.I.s, and Corrupt Deputies

2012-01-23T09:13:00.000-08:00

DEAD MAN: BLOOD MESA- James Reasoner
This is the fifth book in the very exciting Dead Man series created by Lee Goldberg. I’ve enjoyed the previous volumes, but this time out is a must-read due to the presence of writer’s writer James Reasoner. If Reasoner’s name is on the cover, I’ll read it; it’s just that simple. Blood Mesa finds our hero Matt Cahill (on a quest to find and destroy the evil Mr. Dark) in the middle of an archeological dig on a sinister mesa in Arizona. But the archeology students have no idea they’re about to uncover an ancient evil, tied mysteriously to Mr. Dark, that will bring out the corruption in their souls and force Matt to take extreme action to contain the situation. Reasoner really ratchets up the action in this novella—by the time you’re twenty or so pages in, things heat up and don’t cool down again until the staggering end.

THE GAMBLERS- Martin Stanley
Kandinsky is a hardcore gambling addict and loser who owes far more than he can repay to loan shark. He’s a guy who’s screwed from the get-go. But when he overhears a plan to rob a drug dealer, he convinces himself and his friends—who are even bigger losers than him—that they can pull off a miracle. THE GAMBLERS is a sprawling, complicated novel with lots of intriguing characters, a great sense of humor, and a beautifully constructed sense of impending doom. The large cast are all tied together in really clever ways that you wouldn’t suspect, and as each of their personal sagas play out, and wind closer together, you’re left slightly amazed that Stanley is able to pull it off. It’s a very well-structured novel, but Stanley’s real strength is the depth and believability of his characters.

TO THE DEVIL, MY REGARDS- Victor Gischler & Anthony Neil Smith
Two of the best crime fiction writers of this generation, Gischler and Smith deliver a solid, fast-paced novella that mostly lives up to everything you’d expect from such a pairing. Z.Z. DelPresto is a P.I. who is, frankly, not very good at his job—hired to keep tabs on a wealthy wife, he almost immediately falls into bed with the wife’s sexy but under-age daughter, and when the girl winds up murdered DelPresto is the prime suspect. In a mad scramble to clear his name and find the real killer, DelPresto gets the crap beat out of him a few times, almost accidentally uncovers deeper secrets, and generally explodes whatever expectations you might have about the P.I. hero. This is a re-release on Kindle of a novella Gischler and Smith wrote back in ’01, and you can see inklings of the things both writers would later use to greater effect—which is to say: as good as this novella is, both writers are far, far better now than they were then. Still, this is a very solid piece of work, with a breakneck pace, some real laugh-out-loud moments, and great characters.

YELLOW MEDICINE- Anthony Neil Smith
And speaking of Anthony Neil Smith… YELLOW MEDICINE is the first book in the story of self-destructive, corrupt-but-complex, loser-hero Deputy Billy Lafitte. After irrevocably messing up his life in Louisiana, Billy is now a cop in a back-water burg in Minnesota. In a short period of time, he’s managed to establish himself as King of the Hill, controlling the county’s criminal element by force, intimidation, and shady dealings. But it’s a precarious perch he’s on, and when sexy Drew (bass player in a psycho-billy band) needs his help pulling her boyfriend out of a bad situation, Billy’s position starts to crumble. His past begins to catch up to him, and next thing he knows, he’s caught up in an epic struggle against backwoods meth cookers, a government agent who wants desperately to bring him down, and… wait for it… Islamic terrorists. Billy is an absolute gem of a character, so real you want to punch him in the face with every crap decision he makes, and yet still hope against hope that he can somehow prevail as his situation gets steadily worse and worse. This is vintage Smith, right here.

The Rise and Fall (and Rise?) of the Bad-Ass

2012-01-20T08:56:00.000-08:00

To a modern movie watcher, the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s seem like the nadir and the end, at the same time, of the cinematic bad-ass. The era of the tough-minded, ass-kicking protagonist in movies reached a high point, and then tapered off almost right away before almost disappearing entirely. I was born in 1966, and so was too young to understand the subtleties and charms of the movie bad-ass until much later. But I’ve often wondered why that sort of character fell out of favor.

I’m talking about actors like Lee Marvin, or James Coburn. Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson. Guys who generally played quiet, intense men of action who faced whatever challenges arose with a sort of stoic directness. You know… the sort of men you secretly wish you could emulate. Their characters didn’t take any guff. They didn’t engage in pettiness or double-speak. Their directness of action overlaid what you couldn’t help but feel was a complicated interior.

They had precedents, actors like Robert Mitchum (in some films), or Bogart, or Gary Cooper. But against the backdrop of the Peace and Love movement of the ‘60’s, this new breed of tough, stoic characters emerged. Was it in direct response to the hippies? Certainly there’s an underlying conservatism in characters like Dirty Harry, or Bronson’s vigilante hero in Death Wish. But could it really be that simple? Many of them also appear to be a response to an encroaching distrust of authority—Steve McQueen in Tom Horn, for instance, is clearly playing a man rebelling against the gradual erosion of his liberties. And Lee Marvin in Point Blank is certainly not on the side of law and order.

I think it has less to do with politics and more to do with the fact that America (and the world) at the time was in the process of devaluing masculine qualities.

I have no bad feelings about the hippy movement of the time, nor do I dislike the surge toward feminism and equal rights that came with it. Those were all things the world needed, desperately. But I can’t help but think we threw the baby out with the bathwater. In our zeal to make amends to the people in our culture we had marginalized, we couldn’t help but dismiss anything that was thought of as purely masculine.

Although the cinematic bad-ass held on for a while in Blaxploitation movies (you don’t get much more bad-ass than Jim Brown in Slaughter or Richard Roundtree in Shaft), in mainstream culture the tough guy died a slow, ignoble death. Guys like Alan Alda in M*A*S*H became the standard-bearers. Women, maybe tired and bored with decades of tough, stoic (and non-communicative!) men grew infatuated with “sensitive” men.

When I was ten or twelve, an even newer type of male hero became the rage—the smirking, wise-cracking rogue. I and all my friends didn’t give a shit about the whiny and annoying Luke Skywalker; we all wanted to be Han Solo. The easy grin, the snappy comebacks, the charm with the ladies. Han Solo spawned Starbuck, on Battlestar Galactica, and Gil Gerard’s take on Buck Rogers. In cop shows, we had Jim Rockford filling that role. The only “old-school” tough guy I can remember at all from that era is Robert Blake as Baretta.

These were the only heroes, male role models, we had when I was growing up. Basically, female fantasies as much as male ones. Like Tyler Durden says in Fight Club, we were a generation of men raised by women… and we sort of lost something.

But I get a sense that popular culture is beginning to miss that stoic, tough-minded male protagonist. You can see a glimmer of it in the way Daniel Craig plays James Bond—a refreshing return to bad-ass form after decades of smirking, wise-cracking Bonds. Liam Neeson in Taken. And, most recently, Timothy Oliphant as Marshall Raylan Givens in Justified.

And it’s not really about being able to kick-ass and chew bubble-gum, by the way. It’s about characters who have such a sense of single-minded purpose that nothing can stop them. They are committed and stoic (there’s that word again) and willing to see it through to the end.
And that’s not such a bad quality to have, is it?

Accident People, Delusional Heroes, Bad-Ass Chevys & the Devil's Daughter

2012-01-12T07:36:00.000-08:00

FUN & GAMES, Duane Swierczynski
Another high-octane actioner from the guy who brought us The Wheelman, Severance Package and The Blonde, among others. This one finds former cop “consultant” and high-end house sitter Charlie Hardie in a fight for his life against The Accident People—a shady crew with unlimited resources who set up tragic deaths. Along with a washed-up young actress, Charlie struggles to stay one step ahead of the bad guys. Basically, FUN & GAMES is one amazingly suspenseful set piece after another. The thrills just keep coming and the fights, escapes, and close calls are relentless. It’s the literary equivalent a big-budget action movie.

GRAVEN IMAGE
A brutal but funny MF of a novella from Charlie Williams, GRAVEN IMAGE seems designed to keep the reader always a little off-kilter. The protagonist, Leon, tears across the pages in a mad search for his daughter, and he won’t allow anything to stand in his way. The real strength of this story is the slowly creeping realization that there is something… wrong… with Leon and his perception of events. About three-fourths of the way through, you start to get some ideas about what’s really happening, but that doesn’t lessen the horrible blow that comes when Leon finally realizes it himself. A different tone from Charlie’s Mangel novels, but equally compelling.

RAISE A HOLLER, Jason Stuart
This mad-cap romp through the backwoods of Colleden County is an amazingly fun page-turner. Redneck teens Hank and Billy, on a half-ass quest to find a cache of hidden bootleg booze, wind up on a—really, there’s no other way to put it—journey of self-discovery, encountering a family of vile females looking for a baby-daddy, a gaggle of drugged-out hippies, an escape by hot-air balloon, corrupt law, an insane swamp man, a bad-ass Chevy and a pampered tiger among other things. It’s a nicely episodic novel, one that makes it impossible to guess what madness the boys will stumble into next.

The Devil’s Music: When You’re a Stranger, Julia Madeleine
Julia Madeleine’s latest story of Sadie, the Devil’s daughter, claims another rock icon into the 27 Club. It’s Paris, 1971, and Sadie has come to claim her mad poet Jim this time. But WHEN YOU’RE A STRANGER is not just a simple appreciation of Jim Morrison, because that would be too easy. It’s a heartfelt meditation on the nature of love, beauty and loss that somehow still manages to avoid being maudlin or sentimental.

Hawthorne

2012-01-11T14:00:00.000-08:00

"His sharp gray eyes took in everything relevant in a split second—there were four men, two of them armed. One was leveling his gun at Hawthorne, aiming when he should have been firing already, and Hawthorne shot him in the neck.

The other one was just slapping leather, and as the first gunman fell back into a jail cell, Hawthorne swung the Schofield around in the gun smoke and put a bullet into his chest. The force of it slammed the second man back into a set of metal bars, but he didn’t drop his gun. Hawthorne gave him a second to realize he was dead, but when the realization didn’t come fast enough he gave him another bullet in the gut to put a finer point on it."

Coming soon from Trestle Press, HAWTHORNE: THE LONG BLACK TRAIN

DIG TEN GRAVES for .99 cents

2012-01-09T15:26:00.000-08:00

I didn't have anything to do with MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE being free for a couple days-- that was all David Cranmer's doing. But I'm glad he did it. Apparently, there were almost 7,000 downloads of the story in those two days, which is insane-but-cool, and it affected sales of some of my other work a bit as well. It's back at .99 cents today, and has been holding on to the #5 spot in Westerns on Amazon. A happy experiment, I'd say.

DIG TEN GRAVES, which is normally 2.99, went on sale for 99 cents that same day. Sales have bumped, but nothing drastic. It'll be on sale until January 15, if you're interested...

DIG TEN GRAVES .99 cents, MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE FREE

2012-01-06T10:09:00.000-08:00

From now until my birthday, January 15, my short story collection DIG TEN GRAVES will be on sale for .99 cents. So if you haven't picked it up yet, now's the time. I recently found out that the lead-off story, "It Will All Be Carried Away", was an honorable mention for Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror Stories last year. I'd like to pump up some sales on it, so, you know... come on.

Also, and totally by coincidence, Mr. Edward A. Grainger has temporarily placed my Gideon Miles story MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE in Amazon's FREE DOWNLOADS. As we speak, it's the number one selling free Western download, with over 1,000 of those babies moved just in the last few hours. Saddle up, if you haven't already, or spread the word.

Books of the Week

2012-01-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to end 2011 with two great reads, and to start 2012 with a couple more, equally good.

Just a couple days before the New Year, I got SOUTHERN GODS, by John Hornor Jacobs, in the mail. Dug right into it, as it was one I’d been looking forward to for a while. It did not disappoint. An inspired cross-pollinization of hard-boiled detective with creepy Lovecraftian horror, SOUTHERN GODS is pacey, structured beautifully, and just barrels along like mad toward a genuinely scary climax. There were several scenes in this book that actually creeped me right the hell out, which is a rare occurrence.

On the last day of the year, I dug into Andrew Bergin’s TOBACCO-STAINED MOUNTAIN GOAT, which was probably the oddest book I read all year. I had a few books in front of it on the TBR cue, but a terrific cover and an intriguing first page caused this one to jump the cue and become the last book of the year for me. Again, there’s some remarkable genre cross-over going on here, a sort of noir-ish flair rubbing up against a dystopian, Philip K. Dick bleakness. I was worried that Bergen, as a writer entirely new to me, wouldn’t be able to sustain the charm and solid writing in TSMG’s earliest pages, but I needn’t have worried. The man’s imagination is vivid and consistent, and his love of old films (woven so nicely throughout the story) will appeal to anyone who grew up watching Bogart flicks.

Went with a known quantity as my first book of ’12. Victor Gischler has never let me down, so I pulled up THE DEPUTY to ring in the new year. Gotta tell you, I think this is my favorite Gischler so far. The novel takes place over the course of one long, blood-soaked night as our young hero—a part-time deputy sheriff with no experience and no skills to speak of—must stay one step ahead of a wily group of professional killers. There’s lots of balls-out action in this one, great characters, and dead-on pacing.

Finally, last night, Tom Piccirilli’s FUCKIN’ LIE DOWN ALREADY has got to win some sort of award for Most Grueling Novella ever. Mortally wounded, and with his dead wife and son in tow, Clay sets out on a road trip to Hell, bent on revenge. His life seeping away with every second, he keeps holding on, holding on, until his bloody job is done. This is a gruesome, violent ride, horrific and heartfelt.

And that’ll do it this time.

By the way, this will probably be my new approach to talking about books here at Psycho-Noir. Just a round-up, sort of, every Thursday or Friday, of all the noteworthy things I’ve read over the week. Hope that works for all of you.

Damaged

2012-01-04T07:49:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, friends. Let’s talk for a minute about damaged people, our fascination with them, and why emotionally-scarred protagonists move us so much.

What was it, a couple of years ago now, when the actor Owen Wilson tried to kill himself? I don’t know all the particulars, nor do I really care that much, but I do recall a brief flurry of media attention about it that died away as quickly as it started. Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky character actor, seemingly without a care in the world, gets depressed over a girlfriend or some-such and tries to top himself… well, I’m not without compassion, even though I never gave Owen Wilson much thought before that. I silently wished him well and went on with things.

But I learned something interesting about my wife then. Like me, she’d never been particularly interested in Owen Wilson. But after his failed attempt at suicide, he was suddenly… intriguing. We watched a flurry of his movies, some good, some bad, and I got a sense that Kim was searching for something inside the actor, some indication of the turbulent waters that roiled under the surface of his easy grin.

Her fascination with him came and went pretty quickly, but I found it all quite telling. She, like almost all of us, is compassionate about the emotional pain that other people carry. But more than that, she—and we—find it… interesting.

While Wilson’s personal anguish was well-disguised until then, the writers we tend to deify wore their pain and discontent on their sleeves. I doubt anyone was surprised that day in ’61 when Hemingway topped himself. And who can say they were thrown for a loop when Hunter Thompson did the same thing? Edgar Allan Poe, Robert E. Howard, David Goodis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Patricia Highsmith, Dashiell Hammett, Kurt Vonnegut… our personal pantheons are crowded with writers who seemed driven by pain. Even the Patron Saint of American Writers, Mark Twain himself, was, in his later years, fueled by misery.

And the stories they wrote reflected it. The protagonists of their stories were, usually, not heroic in the traditional sense—they were desperate for… something. A sense of accomplishment, or closure, or self-worth. And more often than not, none of those things came by the end of the story.

There’s a looming sense of unresolved, open-endedness to the best stories from those writers, an absolute refusal to sugar-coat their fictional worlds. They were bitter reflections of the universe in the writer’s minds. Dark, unforgiving places where nothing pure could really take root and flourish.

Why do so many of us respond to that? Why do we find it so… satisfying?

Do we recognize that world?

Granted, there are many readers (maybe even the majority of them) who don’t want to linger there. They want real heroes to identify with, they want healthy relationships played out on the page, they want resolution, and to see the bad guys lose and the universe set right. Who can blame them for wanting that? And maybe those readers are mentally healthier than the rest of us.

Or maybe, just maybe, those readers are afraid of something. I don’t know.

As for me, I’ll take the damaged protagonist, and the ambiguous ending and the universe askew. I know that place and am comfortable there.

My Choices for Most Notable Books of the Year

2011-12-31T16:44:00.000-08:00

I wasn’t going to do this. You know, post a list of my favorite reads of the year. There were just so many, is the thing. But seeing all the other “Best of” lists got me thinking, and I even posted a brief thing on Facebook about a couple of my favorites, so… what the hell.

Most of my reading this year was divided between Westerns (old and new) and a bunch of small-press indie releases, mostly on e-book. In fact, I don’t think I read a single new book all year that was put out by one of the major publishers. That wasn’t by design; it just worked out that way. But you know what? I didn’t miss the Big Boy Releases at all.

Anyway, sticking solely to novels, novellas and short story collections released in 2011, and in no particular order, here’s what I consider the cream of the crop:

THE LAST DEEP BREATH, Tom Piccirilli
GUN, by Ray Banks
CHOKE ON YOUR LIES, Anthony Neil Smith
MONKEY JUSTICE, Patti Abbott
SMOKE, Nigel Bird
BRIT GRIT, Paul D. Brazill
TOXIC REALITY, Katherine Tomlinson
THE END OF EVERYTHING, Megan Abbott
THE ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE & GIDEON MILES, VOL. 2, Edward A. Grainger
ONE DEAD HEN, Charlie Williams
PULP INK, edited by Bird & Rhatigan
THE CHAOS WE KNOW, Keith Rawson

… and I’m going to add two more last-minute choices—last minute because one of them I only finished this morning, and the other I’m likely to finish before the night is over and unless it takes some sudden weird turn into shitsville it belongs here. They are:

SOUTHERN GODS, John Horner Jacobs
and
TOBACCO-STAINED MOUNTAIN GOAT, Andrew Bergen

That’s 14 books out of almost 200 I read this year, so please don’t feel too bad if your book isn’t on this list. You can be sure that, if I featured it here at this blog, I loved it.

Happy New Year.

A Self-Indulgent Look Back at 2011

2011-12-31T08:54:00.000-08:00

We all know that the only real closure happens only once in our lives, right at the end. And it’s inevitably pretty anti-climactic. So we fill our days with any excuse possible to imagine a fresh start ahead of us and an end to all the tribulations behind. Nothin’ wrong with that.

That’s why we like these year-end retrospectives and “best of/worst of” lists. They give us a nice sense of having accomplished something, even if that something is nothing more than having survived another 365 days.

Again, nothin’ wrong with that. I like them too. We have to grab up closure wherever we find it, I reckon.

Having said that, 2011 was, writing-wise, a solid year for me. My goals were hazy and ill-defined, but I managed to achieve many of them despite that.

Be warned, the following bit is very self-indulgent, and no one would blame you for not giving a shit. It’s all about me, my own personal bit of looking back and puffing out my chest in self-satisfaction.

My first novel, THE BASTARD HAND, came out in March, and over the course of the year continued to garner good notices if not terrific sales. In the last couple weeks of the year, it kept popping up on those afore-mentioned “Best of” lists, which, no lie, is immensely gratifying. Sales spiked on it because of that, bringing promises of coffee and cig money in the future.

About half-way through the year, almost on a whim, I put out myself a story collection called DIG TEN GRAVES. About half the stories were previously published, the other half new to the collection, and again I was relieved to see it received enthusiastically by readers. Two of the stories in particular, “It Will All Be Carried Away” and “Incident on a Rain-Soaked Corner”, seemed to have struck a chord. “Carried Away” was even nominated for storySouth’s Millions Writers Award.

I made a deal in October to do a series of weird Western e-stories for Trestle Press, the first of them being “That Damned Coyote Hill”. Oddly enough, this story wound up being the most successful of my projects for the year (sales-wise) and it’s still doing pretty well, 2 ½ months later.

I also did two chapters of something called “Deadland USA” for Trestle, but, despite them getting fairly good notices, they were pretty much D.O.A. and their future is uncertain.

Over the course of the year, I managed to place short stories in several e-zines and print mags that I’d long wished to be associated with. Necrotic Tissue, Chi-Zine, Crime Factory, Shotgun Honey, and Pulp Metal, among a couple others.

I was invited to contribute a story to Luca Veste’s anthology OFF THE RECORD.

I was given the opportunity to write a Gideon Miles story for Edward A. Grainger, called “Miles to Little Ridge”, which met with more success than I could have imagined.
And finally, the brilliant Snubnose Press agreed to put out my second full-length novel, CITY OF HERETICS, in 2012.

Two or three more great opportunities presented themselves just in the last month or so, but they are stories for this time next year, as they’re still in the early stages.

So that’s it. Not a bad showing for a guy who, this time last year, had next to nothing to show for himself, eh?

And please don’t get me wrong. I know that, as self-indulgent and self-congratulatory as this post has been, I’m perfectly aware that none of it means anything, really. But every little worldly success we encounter provides a little bit of solace, a little bit of self-esteem to cling to while the world goes about its usual business of kicking our asses.

Progress might be an illusion, but I’m well-pleased with this particular fantasy.

My goal for this time next year: Make some fuckin’ money at this.

Why I don't consider myself a book reviewer

2011-12-29T04:45:00.000-08:00

I talk about books a lot here at Psycho-Noir, but I’m not a book reviewer, despite appearances. And this is not a book review blog. Honestly, I don’t know what this blog is. Aside from the roster of guest posts featured recently, the bulk of posts have been either self-promotional, rants vaguely related to writing or reading, and fan-boyish chatter about books I enjoyed.

But that’s the thing: it’s only ever books I enjoyed. Like most of you, I read a great deal, and if I like a book I’ll mention it here. But for every five books I read, two or three don’t do much for me. If I was an actual book reviewer, I’d include them here, dissect them, point out all their flaws. But I’m not interested in doing that.

No, if a book doesn’t work for me, I ignore it. I have no desire to tear down other people’s work in a public forum, especially if the writer in question is struggling to be read, to be noticed. That just seems cruel, like making fun of someone struggling to walk again after being in a wheelchair for years.

Yes, you might say, but what if the writer in question really does suck and would be well-served to know that and stop vomiting his crappy prose all over the publishing world? Good point, sure, but you know what? Not my job. I’m not judging actual critics and reviewers who do that, I’m just saying I have no interest in it (with a few exceptions; fuck you, James Patterson and Lee Child, you suck).

So in the coming year, I intend to stop referring to my book chatter as “reviews”. They’re “recommendations”, that’s what that are. And you’ll see lots of recommendations in the coming months.

Kindle Review: DEADLY HONEYMOON, by Lawrence Block

2011-12-28T08:35:00.000-08:00

One of the happiest events in publishing this last year was the flood of re-releases on e-book of Lawrence Block titles. His fans finally got to grab up inexpensive editions of some of the Master’s earliest work, and see an entirely different aspect of his vast talents.

One of the earliest of these new e-book releases was DEADLY HONEYMOON, a novel Block wrote in 1967 and which has been in and out of print over the years ever since. I was particularly excited about this one, since I’d been buying and reading the Hard Case Crime reprints and enjoying the hell out of them. According to Block’s essay at the back of the book, DEADLY HONEYMOON was inspired by his friend Donald Westlake, and was his very first hardcover release.

In essence, this is a simple, relentless revenge tale. Dave and Jill are young newlyweds on their honeymoon, bright-eyed and eager for the future, until they witness a murder and become victims themselves—the bad guys beat Dave senseless, and, almost on a whim, brutally rape Jill. Thankfully, Block doesn’t go into detail on this (after all, who wants to read a rape scene?) but in his clinical, almost detached vagueness, Block succeeds in horrifying you. It’s the sudden shift that does it, the juxtaposition of a young couple so happy and naïve just pages earlier, confronted with a sort of violence they never could have conceived of.

Instead of going to the police, Dave and Jill decide to take matters into their own hands. Something has been taken away from them, they feel; something that can only be paid for in blood.

The two of them go to New York on the trail of the enemy, and over the course of tracking them down discover how deep the darkness in their own hearts goes. They still love each other, still want each other, but their desire for vengeance tests everything they think they know about themselves.

DEADLY HONEYMOON is an immensely satisfying novel, moving along at a breakneck pace, lingering only briefly on their fumbling and bittersweet attempts to hold onto each other. A lot of the anxiety in reading it comes from your fear that, after all this, will they ever be able to return to any sort of normalcy. And Lawrence Block keeps you on edge about that until the final pages.

An absolutely top-notch, brilliant novel.

Kindle Review: CALIFORNIA by Ray Banks

2011-12-28T06:56:00.000-08:00

You need long-term goals in order to make something of your life. That’s what they told Shug while he was in prison, advice that Shug ponders on and takes to heart. Now that he’s out, he’s singularly focused on that goal, trying to keep a handle on his short-fuse temper and keep his eyes on the prize.

But it’s harder to do than he could have guessed. When he shows up in his old stomping grounds in order to pick up the cash he had hidden before heading out to follow his dream, it leads to several run-ins with his old girl and his old crew, and Shug’s long-term goal begins to look longer and longer term.

CALIFORNIA, the latest novella from Ray Banks, is another expertly drawn character study, disguised as a violent, bleakly funny crime story. In some ways, it’s a bit of a heart-breaker. Banks is terrific at letting the reader know, in very subtle ways, that the whole venture is doomed from the start, that our man Shug is locked into a pattern and no amount of dreaming can change it.

Shug has come out of prison a different man, yes. He actually has a plan for his life now, some dream to cling to. But in CALIFORNIA, Banks questions the whole notion that a dream is a good thing to have. Does a long-term goal make Shug a better person? Does it guarantee his happiness? No, not at all. In fact, the great dream just might be the young man’s undoing.

It’s a very unsettling proposition, this idea that desire leads to ruin. And I don’t know, really, that that was Banks intention. But it resonates. And the inevitable disaster that follows on Shug’s heels is devastating to read. CALIFORNIA could very well be the most intensely compelling thing Ray Banks has yet written, and that’s saying a lot.

Kindle Review: THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR#1 BY DANI AMORE

2011-12-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

Dani Amore’s got mad style. She’s been very prolific this year, and if you haven’t read her yet you have a lot of options on where to start. THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR #1 might be the place for you to dig in, as it’s short and sharp and gives readers a nice taste of what Amore is capable of.

The narrative voice is straight-forward and stream-lined—our unnamed hero takes a job from a coven of sleazy lawyers to track down their renegade partner and… deal with him. The assignment takes the Collector from Detroit to Florida, where he gets down to brass tacks and discovers that, unsurprisingly, the bad lawyers weren’t playing straight with him.

What follows is some tightly-written action, wry humor, and a refreshing lack of moral scruples.
THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR #1 is fast, furious and wholly entertaining.

Kindle Review: MONKEY JUSTICE, BY PATTI ABBOTT

2011-12-27T05:34:00.000-08:00

In crime fiction, we see a lot of variations on staple characters. Grifters, killers, professional thieves, gamblers, corrupt cops, losers. And that’s all well and good, but…
Those aren’t, generally, the characters Patti Abbott gives us. Instead, the central players in Abbott’s stories are: your next door neighbor. The girl you work with at the office. Your mother. The clerk at your supermarket. Patti Abbott’s characters, in other words, are you and me.

The stories in MONKEY JUSTICE are intricate sometimes, multi-layered, and psychologically profound. They are character-driven pieces with central themes in common, most notably the idea of family and the hurt that comes with it.
Secrets. Lies. Melancholy. Betrayal. Those four Cardinal Virtues of Noir slither through each tale in MONKEY JUSTICE just like the fabled Biblical serpent, linking them together with dry scales.

These stories manage to be deeply emotional and devastating without ever resorting to sentimentality or predictable shlock. They are mature and stoic in the face of loss and bitter disappointment.

On a more practical note, Abbott fills this e-book to the brim. She could just as easily, for the price, split the volume into two separate collections and no one would have complained. Instead, she chooses to give the reader MORE than their money’s worth. I’m grateful for that, because after I’d read the last story I found myself in the unusual position of wanting another one. Reading Pati Abbott could very well become an addiction.

MONKEY JUSTICE is a collection of truly original, literary glimpses into the lives of ordinary, messed-up people, and one of the strongest collections of the year.

Writers to Fill Up Your New Kindle

2011-12-26T05:48:00.000-08:00

So maybe you got a brand new Kindle for Christmas. Congrats, man. Those things are pretty cool. Fortunately for you, there is no shortage of books you can buy relatively cheap to fill that bad boy up. No doubt, if you're like most new Kindle owners, you're going to spend a lot of time perusing titles that are absolutely free-- stuff in the public domain mostly, or stuff by writers who aren't sure themselves if they are worth money and so are giving their work away to test the waters. The public domain stuff is mostly tried-and-true, so no worries there. But you'll find the latter is mostly crap. Granted, some exceptions exist, but mostly...

Anyway, point being: when you're done downloading your selection of free stuff, may I point you in the direction of the ever-evolving, excitingly unpredictable underground of genre fiction now making its mark on the e-book market? There's a Noir Underground here, but it crosses over and bleeds into the Horror Underground, the Speculative Fiction Underground, and even the Western Underground. These are writers from all over the world, connected only by their commitment to writing great stories that pull no punches.

Here are some writers I very strongly urge you to check out, download, and enjoy:

Patricia Abbott
Edward A. Grainger
Anthony Neil Smith
Katherine Tomlinson
Paul D. Brazill
Nigel Bird
Jason Michel
Matthew C. Funk
Aaron Philip Clark
Dani Amore
Julia Madeleine
James Reasoner
Christian Klaver
Icy Sedgwick
Charlie Williams
R. Thomas Brown
Thomas Pluck
Keith Rawson
Pete Risley
Lynn Kostoff
Allan Leverone
Ray Banks
Charlie Stella
Tom Piccirilli
Mike Dennis
Matthew McBride

And I'm probably forgetting a few, sorry to say. I'll expand on this list as they occur to me, so check back.

But regardless, these are all writers I more-or-less discovered this past year or so. Some of the names are "bigger" or more well-established than others, naturally, but what they all have in common is unflinching sensibilities and mind-boggling talent. Download anything by any of them and you won't be disappointed.

And while you're at it, look, man, I have a few things out my-own-self that you'd probably enjoy. They're listed over there to the right. I do solid work, honest; I wouldn't lie to you.

Happy New Year, and Happy Reading, friends.

THE BASTARD HAND, lost chapter

2011-12-22T10:35:00.000-08:00

The month or so before my first novel, THE BASTARD HAND, came out saw me editing the hell out of it. A lot of the editing had to do with quality control, but some of it was purely for length. All told, I chopped out almost 170 pages from the original manuscript, and I think it's a better novel for it.

But there was one scene I hated to see go, because I thought it was fun and displayed all the Reverend's dubious charms quite nicely. I chopped it because, technically, it didn't move the story forward at all and was a bit superfluous. But it was the only cut scene that I lamented over a little.

So here it is. If you've already read THE BASTARD HAND, this happens when Charlie and the Reverend first leave Memphis and are on their way to Cuba Landing. If you haven't read the book yet, well, consider this a brief diversion into debauchery.

I GET IRRITABLE

Before we got on the freeway the Reverend pulled a fifth of Canadian whiskey out of the trunk and we started passing the bottle back and forth before we’d crossed the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. He listened, enthralled, while I told him about getting my money back, and he laughed at all the right places and glanced at me with wide eyes and said, “No shit!” and “I’ll be doggoned!” and “Well, cut off my legs and call me Shorty!”
A good audience, the old Reverend.
The miles on I-55 flashed by, taking us away from Memphis. For a long stretch the road seemed to drop steadily and he said, “We’re coming down off the Bluff now. Can you feel the difference?”
I noticed that the signs of city life stopped almost all at once and the scenery got rural. We passed over the hills, through green and clay-colored patches of deep forest, past sagging willow trees. Kudzu grew in ditches and up the stout trunks of every tree, thick and dense.
Only a few short miles west, the land flattened abruptly into the fertile expanse of the Delta, and whenever we’d reach a high point on the road we could look in that direction and see cotton fields stretching away from us.
I’d never seen Mississippi before, and I sort of fell in love. Every few minutes one of us would make a comment about how pretty it was. The rest of the time we spent laughing, drinking, singing songs, like a couple of teenage boys on their first road trip.
Just north of Holly Springs he decided to get off the freeway and find someplace to eat. He steered the car off the next exit we came to, and we found ourselves on a long lonely stretch of two-lane road heading west.
Very nice, but not exactly what we had in mind. The land flattened out and the road curved through the heart of the woods, great giant trees looming on either side. Not a diner or a gas station or any sign of humankind anywhere.
The woods around us began thinning out, until we came to a straight stretch on the road and the cotton fields we’d seen from a distance were all around us. The first sign of civilization, but not a particularly happy one. Still no sign of humans—no one working in the fields, no houses in the distance, nothing. They were around somewhere, we knew that, but damned if we knew where.
“Cotton fields,” he said vaguely. “I used to work in the cotton fields.”
“Did you?”
He sighed. “No. Not really. My daddy owned the pharmacy in town and I worked there. But if you tell folks you’re from Mississippi they like to think you picked cotton, so that’s what I’ve always told them. I don’t know the first damn thing about picking cotton.”
I laughed, started to say something about living near Seattle and not working in a coffee shop, when the left front tire went boosh! and the car lurched across the dividing line and toward the ditch.

He wrestled with the steering wheel, pulling the Malibu back on the right side of the road and pumping the brake. He steered the car off the road, rolled to a noisy stop on the gravel. He craned his neck, looked out his window, then drew his head back in. He said, “Well, damn. We lost the front left tire.”
We sat there for a minute, getting our heartbeats back under control.
Then I said, “You have a spare?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s a relief. Let’s get this thing taken care of.”
We climbed out of the car and the heat hit us hard. The sky was huge and white and the sun beat down. We went around to the trunk and Preacher had to try three different keys before he found the right one. He said, “One of these days I’m gonna mark these dang keys. I can never keep track.”
He opened it up. His suitcase and a small carry case were on top, and under them the spare tire, all shiny and new and black as pitch. I pulled it out with a heave and set it against the bumper, then searched the rest of the trunk for tools.
There weren’t any.
“Reverend,” I said. “You do have a jack, don’t you? And a tire iron?”
He looked puzzled. “Don’t I?” He shouldered in next to me, eyed the trunk, then straightened and put his hands on his hips. “Well, I gotta say, it sure looks like I don’t.”
“You have a spare tire but no tools to put it on.”
“Sure does look that way, don’t it?”
We stood there staring at each other for a minute. I sighed and rubbed a hand across my face. Already, sweat was coursing down the back of my neck and beading on my scalp.
“Well,” I said. “Well. We’re screwed.”
“Now, don’t jump to conclusions, Charlie.”
“Reverend,” I said. “I’m not jumping to conclusions. We’ve got a blown tire, no tools to fix it with, and we’re stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere. In my book, that means we’re screwed.”
“Well, now,” he said. He wiped sweat from his wide forehead and gazed off to the west. Nothing but cotton fields, but he said, “There’s bound to be some human beings ‘round here somewheres. Maybe if we drive real slow we can get up the road a-ways and find someone.”
“We can’t. Drive on that rim and it’ll get so bent up we won’t be able to take the lug nuts off. Besides, we’ve already driven miles on this road and haven’t seen a single soul.”
“All that means is that we’re closer to finding someone than we were before. And the rim can take a mile or so.”
“I don’t think so.”
“C’ mon, Charlie! Let’s go before we melt out here.”
He clapped his hands together, grinning, then got back in the car.
“C’ mon, Charlie,” he called. “Chop chop!”
I rubbed my face again, muttered a line of expletives under my breath, and hoisted the spare tire back in the trunk.

We drove another mile on the blown tire, inching along at five miles an hour. The ragged rubber flop-flop-flopped along the road until I thought the noise of it would drive me insane. The endless fields of cotton and the intense heat were like a fever-dream, a mind-numbing rendition of a mundane Hell. I couldn’t believe that only an hour ago I thought the goddamn place was beautiful.
The Reverend seemed totally unperturbed. He hummed as he drove, taking an occasional swig from the bottle. He said a few words to me at first, but my responses were irritable so he decided to leave me alone.
Then we saw what we’d been hoping for—a patch of trees up ahead, at the far end of the field, and beyond them a barn.
We both sat up hopefully, and he said, “Hot damn!” He capped the bottle, handed it to me, and I shoved it under the seat. The blown tire flopped faster, and he pointed ahead. “See there? What’d I tell ya?”
Just on the other side of the barn, a huge old farmhouse stood like a sun-battered oasis in the desert. Preacher laughed. “God will provide, won’t he?”
I smiled. “Sure looks that way. Unless this is the Ed Gein residence.”
The Reverend asked me who the hell Ed Gein was, and I told him Gein was someone even crazier than him and the Reverend said he sounded like a decent fellow. At the side of the farmhouse a woman was hanging laundry on a sagging line and she looked up as we coasted to a stop right in front of her house.
The Reverend squinted his eyes and examined her. It was a huge front yard and she was some distance away, but I could tell she was one of those hard-boned southern women who worked like a dog and never said much. She stared back, all the while pulling damp clothes out of a hamper and hanging them on the line.
“Handsome woman,” he said.
“You ever see a woman you didn’t like?”
“Not yet I ain’t. God created women to be admired, Charlie, and I ain’t one to sneer at His plan.”
“She looks a little rough to me.”
“Damn straight she does. I bet she ain’t had a good hambone put to her in decades. Can you imagine what that woman would be like in the sack? Old thing would probably tear your ass apart.”
A lavacious gleam in his eye. I shook my head, sighed. “Maybe we can tend to your needs once we get to Cuba Landing. Right now we have a small problem with the car. Why don’t you go on up to the house there and see if she has a jack and a tire iron?”
I climbed out, went around to the driver’s side, and got down on my haunches to check out the rim. Sure enough, it was bent at a slight angle, straining against the bolts. Burping whiskey, the Reverend got out of the car and walked around back to open the trunk. I followed him, said, “Get a hammer too, if she has one. I’m probably gonna have to pound the rim out a bit to pull it off.”
He looked at the woman, hardly paying attention to me. “Okey-doke. If I ain’t back in an hour, call the army.”
I pulled the tire out and bounced it on the road. “No way, Rev. You’re not gonna leave me standing around in this heat while you go off gallivanting. Just see if she has what we need.”
“Damn if you ain’t the bossiest travel partner I ever met.”
Grinning, he straightened his white collar, pushed a hand through his hair, and started up the huge yard towards the woman. As he approached, she began smoothing her shabby dress and touching at her hair self-consciously. He stuck his hand out at her and she took it, smiled at him. The smile softened her features dramatically, touching her eyes and every part of her face. She was quite pretty after all-- the Reverend apparently had some uncanny knack about finding qualities in people that were just below the surface.
They stood there by the clothesline for a few minutes, talking. The Reverend swept his arm in my direction, and the woman glanced over at me, nodding about something he was saying. She looked for all the world like a wallflower being asked to dance at the senior prom. I would’ve given anything to know what he was telling her.
After a moment she nodded vigorously and led him around back of the house. He glanced back at me, gave the “okay” sign with thumb and forefinger, and they disappeared from view.
Immediately I had a bad feeling about it, and after a minute I’d just about made up my mind to go and get him. But right as I took a step in that direction they reappeared. He carried a red plastic toolbox in one hand and a rusty old jack in the other. The woman walked beside him, talking enthusiastically.
He left her at the washing line and made his way back to the car. The woman waved at me, and went back to hanging up her clothes.
“Well, here ya go,” he said, handing me the jack. “And lookee here. She had a whole box full of brand new tools in the shed. Pretty box too, ain’t it?”
He set the box on the hood of the car and opened it. A shiny black tire iron rested on top, so new it still had the thin coat of manufactor’s grease on it.
I picked it up, looked at him. He looked back at me, a half-grin on his pleasant face.
I said, “Listen, I’m sorry for jumping on you like that. S’ the heat, you know?”
He waved a hand at me in dismissal. “Paw! Don’t think nothing of it. I do tend to have a one-track mind, I reckon.”
He wiggled his eyebrows at me, and I laughed, shaking my head.
“You do beat all, Rev.”
I took off my shirt—the same bowling shirt I’d worn the day before—and started to work.
He hung around beside me, glancing at my progress occasionally, making “hmm,” noises under his breath. But I could tell he was distracted. The woman hanging up clothes still watched us, and without even looking at the Reverend I knew he was watching her.
Finally he said, “Y’know, Charlie... if it’s all the same to you, I think I might go on up there and get better acquainted with the lady.”
I stopped working at the rusted lug nuts long enough to arch an eyebrow at him. “Don’t you figure she’s married or something?”
“I asked her ‘bout that. Husband’s off in the fields.”
“Rev, I’m gonna be done with this pretty soon.”
“How soon, you reckon?”
“Well... twenty minutes or so. Maybe half an hour, depending.”
He grinned, rubbed his hands together, gazed at the woman. Appetite showed in his eyes. “Twenty minutes or so, huh? I tell you what...”
I looked at him, waiting, while he calculated in his head.
He clapped his hands together and said, “Yeah. I tell you what, Charlie, since you got yourself a little money now. I bet you that I can go on up the house there, chat that lady up, have myself a nice little ole’ romp, and be back here before you’re done changing that tire.”
I stared at him.
“What do you say, Charlie? If I can’t do it, then supper’s on me tonight. If I can, then you gotta buy.”
“This ain’t Bridges Of Madison County, Rev.”
“Bridges of what?”
“Never mind. You’re crazy, you know that?”
He grinned. “Damn straight. Craziest motherfucker this side of Ole’ Man River.”
I twirled the tire iron in my hand, said, “Okay. You’re on. I know you’re good, but you’re not that good. In fact, if you’re able to reduce that woman to a mere object for your sexual gratification before I finish, then supper’ll be on me for the next week. And I’m talking steak and lobster.”
“Well all right!” he said.
He headed back toward the house, striding purposefully, and the woman put down her work and waited for him.
I watched as they exchanged a few words and the woman actually blushed visibly. They talked for several minutes, laughing and carrying on, while I stood there watching like an idiot.
And then she was walking back to the house, the Reverend following her.
I started working. Fast. Somehow I knew they weren’t going inside for lemonade.

Exactly twenty-three minutes later my hands were covered with grease and I was tightening up the last nut on the new tire. The sun beat down on me relentlessly, and the back of my neck was raw and irritable. The whole time I worked, not a single car passed on the road, not a single sound disturbed me. Less than an hour from Memphis, but it may as well have been the moon.
I would’ve had the damn thing done ten minutes earlier, but my greasy hands—all signs of amber light gone for now—kept slipping on the tire iron and after that I kept dropping lug nuts and would have to crawl around retrieving them. The rim wasn’t bent too badly so it didn’t take long to hammer it out, but the bolts were rusted on and Samson would’ve had a hard time with them.
The problem was, my mind kept wandering, calculating down to the minute how long the Reverend would take to chat the woman up, seduce her, have his way with her, and then be back. It couldn’t possibly be done in twenty minutes.
But that didn’t stop me from hurrying. I’d known the Reverend only a short while, but I knew that if anyone could do it, he could.
I dropped the not-so-new-looking-anymore tire iron into the toolbox, wiped my greasy hands on my jeans, and stood up, my lower back aching.
I was just heaving the blown-out tire in the trunk when the front door of the house slammed. The Reverend came skipping down the porch steps, whistling a happy tune, buttoning his collar. A curtain moved in an upstairs window, and I saw the woman peeking out-- her hair mussed and her shoulders bare.
He stopped, glanced up at her and waved. She waved back, smiling an embarrassed smile, and the curtain fell in front of her.
“Howdy, Charlie,” the Reverend said, approaching the car. “I’m mighty hungry, how ‘bout you? What say we have filet mignon for supper?”
I slammed the trunk shut. “Filet mignon,” I said. “Son of a bitch.”

No Rules: VINCENT ZANDRI

2011-12-21T07:21:00.000-08:00

The very last No Rules guest post is written by one of the very first friends I made in the Hardboiled/Noir community, none other than VINCENT ZANDRI. If you don't already know, Vin is the Amazon best-selling author of many, many fast-paced and crowd-pleasing thrillers like THE INNOCENT, GODCHILD, THE REMAINS, MOONLIGHT FALLS, CONCRETE PEARL, MOONLIGHT RISES and SCREAM CATCHER. He's diverse as hell and one of the tightest plotters around.

A little affection always comes into it when I talk about Vin; sorry, can't help it. Because as well as being a great writer he's also a truly great guy. Back before my own first novel came out, he took the time to lend his insight and sharp ear to this novice, and has remained a steadfast friend ever since.

I'm proud to give you VINCENT ZANDRI, with an essay that couldn't be more timely...

It’s a Wonderful Noir Life

Like a whole bunch of us saps, we grew up watching It's a Wonderful Life, thinking, "Hey, it must be Christmas." Like everyone else, I cried when Mr. Gower punched George in the head, cheered when George packed his bags to leave for some big trip overseas, cried again when his "tired" old man died and he couldn't go.

"Wonderful Life" was filmed and released in 1946 during a special time in US history. The big war to end the first big was over. Lots of soldiers were coming home from Europe and Japan. Many of them had never been away from their hometowns until the war began. Most of them had known what it was to suffer during the depression. Some were wounded and maimed. All were affected one way or another. The trauma of the war became indelibly painted on the faces of these soldiers as they were suddenly thrust into what would soon become Eisenhower "normalcy." Nuclear war was now as real as Christmas snow.

If some of these guys and gals were anything like my 44 year old grandfather, a Captain who walked away from the army after a 20 year career in Panama, Africa, Europe, and other exotic locales only to be forced to make the mad march through the Hurtgen forest while at the same time, suffering 150% casualties to his company, they were disillusioned at best. From what my mother tells me, he went from sipping red wine in France and marching the Champs Elysees to working at a Buster Brown shoe store in Upstate, New York, within thirty days of getting off the big boat. Talk about a life change. The two time purple heart and bronze star recipient probably cashed his first civilian paycheck in twenty years just before heading to the bijou to catch the new "feel good" flick starring Jimmy Stewart, himself a decorated war vet.

I think Frank Capra and the rest of the writers of "It's a Wonderful Life" knew damn well that despite winning the war, another war would have to be fought on US soil. And that one wasn't about a dire economic survival like everyone had realized a few years earlier. You know, like do we eat today or heat the fucking house? But a different kind of survival. Keeping up with the Jones's kind of survival. That kid Petey ain't belting out "Hey dad, did you see the new car next door" for no reason when George barks back, "Isn't our car good enough for you!" Okay, I might have the dialogue slightly wrong but it's a nonetheless discriminate attempt on Capra's part to show the American public what's in store for them for the coming decades as the trees get cut down and the suburbs ariseth out of the ashes of fallen heroes. Such is the price of war, and the fight for freedom.

George Bailey is an everyman who is full of heart and at the same time a selfish individual. He wants to do what he wants to do. He wants to be an existentialist with a big heart. He wants to be an Indiana Jones long before Spielberg's comic book concept of the adventurer is born. He wants to build bridges like Picasso paints paintings. He wants to conquer the world and be his own man. But a gross loyalty to family, job, God, and duty get in his way, and he's forced to give up his dreams for a life of wife, children, a house he can't afford, a broken down old car, and a future that is so bankrupt and dismal, he wants to kill himself. Merry Christmas.

But in 1946, this is precisely the type of man America would come to count on to create a thriving nuclear powerhouse. Existentialists and thinkers need not apply. The US government was out to influence a whole bunch of suburban newcomers by guilting the crap out of them into giving up their dreams now that they had survived the war with their lives. In the end, they succeeded. We beat the Soviets after all. Sort of.

But politics aside, George's character resounds to this day for those young men and women who have harbored huge dreams throughout childhood and adolescence only to see them squandered on a big wedding and a honeymoon that doesn't last longer than the time it takes for the checks to clear. One is only young once, and then suddenly the hopes and dreams turn into a heavy drinking bout at the local and getting kicked out on your ass in the snow. Only then do some of the darkest thoughts you never dreamed you'd be capable of conjuring enter into your head. Usually they are accompanied by violence. Whether it's to yourself or to others or both.

George Bailey stood on a bridge in the falling snow on Christmas eve during WWII and considered severe violence to himself. The scrunched, bulging eyed, black and white agony on Jimmy Stewart's face resonates with all of us who have ever contemplated abandoning home and job for a better (more wonderful) life, even if for a fleeting moment. Despair drips from his eye sockets and his blood radiates with hopelessness. Over a few hours time, George has been handed a tricky gift. The gift of having never existed. The tricky part is that he gets to see what it's like when his mother rejects him and an angel named Clarence thrusts the responsibility of every life of every man on a navy transport being killed because "George wasn't there to save his little brother from falling through the ice" back when they were kids. As if Hitler and Tojo had nothing to do with it. Poor George: manipulated in life, and even more manipulated during his brief tenure as a suicide. This fucker just cannot get a break.

George Bailey, the concept, makes me want to run.

When I see George Bailey, the man and character, holding his ZuZu and her petals in his arms, and his neighbors filling baskets with cash so he can pay off the debt some evil banker has thrust upon him through illegal activity, I stand up and shout for him to leave home. Don't spend another night in Bedford Falls, George. Fuck Christmas. First, go stick a knife in the evil banker fucker's neck, then go pack up the family and move south. Or move to Europe. Or just leave the family altogether and forget the cancers that eat away at you in the form of the American Dream. Live, George, Live!

At the end of the movie, Clarence the guardian angel sends George a copy of “Tom Sawyer”, with the penned inscription. "Dear George, remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings, Love Clarence." Fuck you Clarence! Apparently you had an agenda too. Tom Sawyer was an everyman. A young man who lived on his own terms. Something George Bailey and so many American men will never get the chance to do, simply because they fall into the trap of suburban responsibility, unbearable debt (beginning with college student loans), physical unfitness, family responsibility, guilt, and loneliness beyond compare. Have I mentioned the emasculation of political correctness?

There are dark elements in "It's a Wonderful Life" to be sure. So dark, I rank it up there under certain circumstances with "Seven" and "Angel Heart." In each of these noir films exists a common thread: one man forced to realize his worst, most horrid fears in a hellish, unforgiving world shrouded with false hope, blatantly false advertising, God inspired guilt trips, indifference, and greed.

Happy New Year.

Kindle Review: TOXIC REALITY by Katherine Tomlinson

2011-12-19T11:34:00.000-08:00

Katherine Tomlinson has done something really remarkable with TOXIC REALITY, gathering together a set of stories that are as varied and wide-ranging as any I’ve ever come across. Her diversity as a story-teller really amazes me. It’s kind of a cheat, I know, for me to compare her to other writers, but I honestly can’t think of a better way to illustrate her power as a story-teller.

There are some tales in TOXIC REALITY that make me think a little of Patricia Highsmith. Others are in the same tenuous category as James Morrow or George Saunders—uneasy fables and parables. Others still are entirely undefinable.

There’s a real love of language in Tomlinson’s stories, and on top of that a deep understanding of human nature. You get the sense that the writer loves humanity, but with the sort of love you might have for a brother or sister who’s stolen from you, or an alcoholic spouse: reluctant affection, tempered with bitter disappointment.

TOXIC REALITY is a top-notch collection, through and through. I recommend it very strongly.

Kindle Review: FELONY FISTS, by Jack Tunney

2011-12-19T11:29:00.000-08:00

Patrick “Felony” O’Flynn is a cop in the ever-vacillating Los Angeles of the 1950’s, but his consuming passion is boxing—and he’s damn good at it. So good in fact, that his boss gives him an unusual assignment: get in the ring with crime boss Mickey Cohen’s contender and make sure he doesn’t get a shot at the title.

Simple in theory, but stopping Cohen and his fighter is going to take every bit of skill and fortitude Patrick has, and test his commitment to justice. Especially when Cohen kidnaps the 14-year-old daughter of Patrick’s trainer.

FELONY FISTS is a tight, streamlined brawler of a novel, heavy on ring action and spare jabbing prose. It’s hard not to use boxing analogies when talking about it. Series co-creator Paul Bishop is Jack Tunney this time out, and he sets a high standard for the Jack Tunneys to follow. His invocation of L.A. in the ‘50’s is vivid and well-researched without being overwhelming, and his grasp on the strange, sometimes seedy world of boxing is spot-on.

FELONY FISTS is a hugely enjoyable bout. I’m looking forward to the next round.

No Rules: JASON MICHEL

2011-12-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

JASON MICHEL is a Pushcart Prize nominee, published author and the Head Honcho over at PULP METAL MAGAZINE and PULP METAL FICTION, where he has recently released an anthology of the best of PMM entitled Laughing At The Death Grin! and his newest novella And The Streets Screamed Blue Murder!
He has hopes one day of becoming a James Bond villain as he thinks he'd be good at it.

Jason, you mad man, welcome to Psycho-Noir...

THE PULP METAL MANIFESTO

“I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?" -Chuang Tzu

1: PULP METAL is imaginary.

PULP METAL is a figment of our imagination posing as a literary Gomorrah and downright fun place to read some of the most talented writers in cyberspace. It is a flight of disastrous fancy. An idea.
An ode to the imagination.

2: Imagination is the mind at play.

It is as amoral and as serious as child's play.

3: The only true freedom; the only true oppression is in the mind.

The only limits are the ones that we set ourselves in believing that we are a solid unchanging individual. Science is beginning to show us that the Self, as Buddhists have been saying for millennia, is a crock. We are a thousand people in a thousand moments and situations, even if we pretend not to be. The ego is a jealous god and deserves a smacked bottom.
So, make peace with your inner-fascist.
Crack open a beer with the serial killer inside.
Go for a date with the flirty secretary of the soul.
Is this not what we do as writers?
Manifesting these personalities into the world through our imaginary filter.

4: All concepts, art and language derive from the imagination of somebody.

Words may have evolved from birdsong, but it was imagination that connected them to objects. Those very same objects that are all around you as you read this. Those very same objects that you are made of.
Holy Shit, Batman!

5: Imagination is both individual and collective. The flow can go both ways. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Stan Lee, Ian Fleming, Homer, Shakespeare, Bob Kane, Karl Marx, Coca-Cola, Rowling, Dostoevesky and any other creator of art, ideology, image and ideas have left their mark on us, whether we like it or not.
Why let them have all the fun?

6: Your imagination is your most precious resource. Your wittiest joke. Your deadliest weapon.

"Imagination is intelligence with an erection." - Victor Hugo

7: Revel in your imagination. Tickle its feet. Jitterbug with it. Slap it around a bit. Make love to it. Revere it.
Reclaim it.

For too long our imagination has been denigrated to an almost worthless state that is not "real".
"It's just her imagination."
"It's all in your head!"
"Stop daydreaming and get back to work!"
We live in interesting times, as the ancient Chinese curse has it. There is the Faustian whiff of a hundred Revolutions carried on the breeze. History shows that in the cold light of the aftermath, all that is left is another dull shower of cunts at the top of the shit pile. Left or right, the story has the same final scene.
All in the name of ideas.
Don't you dare imagine something that doesn't contribute to productivity!
That is the death rattle of our epoch.
Unless it is for entertainment purposes, of course. Entertainment brought to us from a collective, safe and turgid imagination born in a boardroom and designed to pacify us before the commercial breaks and political campaigning comes on. Until it is time to shop, materially, politically and spiritually.
This is the world we live in.
No matter that imagination may just be our way to slow the downward plummet of this rotting smorgasbord of tired old ideologies, creaky economics and environmental angst.
Reclaim your imagination.
Do you know what this is, my fellow daydreamers?
This is fighting talk.

*

Some practical exercises of the imagination:

I have personally had experience of all of these exercises and found that some of them have contributed greatly to my writing and others are just cracking good fun.
*Disclaimer! Practice these exercises at your own risk as some people have gone batshit crazy because of some of these techniques. Don't forget to ground yourself back to the world with a nice cup of tea. Then again, what is life without a smidgeon of danger. Take responsibility for your actions and if caught, remember, deny everything!*

i. Learn the loci system of mnemonics and create your own memory palaces à la Hannibal Lecter.

ii. Read The Diceman then have a party according to the laws of the die. Watch the chaos ensue and observe your reactions.

iii. Be a creative prankster. Go to a book shop and sneak dirty poetry in self-help books. Confuse your boss: Once I was asked why I was wearing jeans at work which is not officially allowed (I was, but to my credit, they were black). I told the man that they weren't "jeans but just looked like jeans in the way that sometimes summer looks like autumn". The poor sap just turned around and walked out of the room. He has never said a word about my attire since.

iv: Read all you about Jung's Creative Imagination or Dali's Paranoiac-Critical Method, then create an imaginary world of your own and go walking through it, interacting with the characters of your own creation.
Write about your experiences.
A good way to start is:
1. Sit or lie down comfortably. Close your eyes. Tense every muscle in your face and body and then relax them telling yourself that "as my limbs get heavy I can go deeper and deeper into an imaginary state".
2. Visualize a staircase and count from one to ten with each step you take going down it, telling yourself that it'll take you "deeper and deeper into the state".
3. When you have counted to ten see a grand old door in front of you. Tell yourself to open the door and enter into your world.
4. As you enter your world utilise all your senses: touch, smell, taste, hearing as well as sight.
5. Off you go!
6. When you wish to come back just see the door again and exit. Go back up the stairs (counting back from ten to zero), then slowly open your eyes and slowly get up.
7. Write.

v. Here's a good one for atheists and agnostics (I, myself, am a radical agnostic. To paraphrase Husserl and RAW, all perception is gamble).
Learn all you can about the way of altering your state of consciousness, otherwise known as Ritual Magick. Read that old bastard Crowley, A O Spare etc (although the Victorian waffle is unbelievable and Grant Morrison's Pop Magic! is far more fun), then create your own ritual and invoke a famous character that everyone knows is imaginary and have a chat.
I once did this with The Silver Surfer and he told me that "The way of knowledge is the loneliest path of all".
Not exactly known for his fart jokes though, eh?

vi. Print out the IMAGINE! poster at the top of this rambling of a mad man and cover the world in an advertising campaign for the imagination.

Just IMAGINE what that would be like ...

No Rules: CHRIS RHATIGAN

2011-12-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

CHRIS RHATIGAN is a prolific writer of short stories, with work appearing at A Twist of Noir, Pulp Metal, Beat to a Pulp, Shotgun Honey and lots of other places besides. Along with Nigel Bird, he’s the editor of the fantastic collection PULP INK. He also blogs at Death By Killing.

I’m very pleased to give you Mr. CHRIS RHATIGAN…

Back when I was reporter, I had the opportunity to interview Curtis Sittenfeld, author of novels like Prep, Man of My Dreams and American Wife.

She’s a ridiculously smart writer and was nice enough to take some time out of her day to talk with a small-town reporter.

Anyways, she told me that if she was going to write, she needed about a four-hour block to really get going.

I wasn’t writing fiction at the time, so I took down her answer and plowed ahead. Now that I’ve been writing for a few years, my response would be, What?!

Let’s just say my writing process is not like that at all. Part of it is how my life works – I’m a freelance proofreader, so I check email 70,000 times a day for projects, as the first one who responds gets the project. I’m also a student, so homework, class, blah blah blah gets in the way.

Four-hour blocks of time just don’t exist.

But even if they did, I still don’t think I would write that way. I tend more toward the random burst school of writing – fifteen minutes here, maybe an hour there.

Here’s how one of my stories typically evolves:

I get an idea in shower or overhear a conversation at auto mechanic or some other mundane shit.

If the idea has some staying power, I write most of the story in my head on my walk to school. I get a good idea of who the characters are, how the story will evolve, how most of the dialogue will go – this is where most of my real writing is done.

Then I brew a lot of coffee and put words on the page. This is followed by random stabs at editing and the inevitable days of intense self-doubt/hatred.

Even at this point, fifty percent of my stories never move beyond the hard drive. But, if I still think the story might be worthwhile, I fire it off to the writing group.

They give me brilliant feedback. I do more editing and I send the story out.

Then I drink a beer or twelve.

So, as much as I’d like to be Curtis Sittenfeld, banging out page after page four hours at a time, I’ve realized that’s simply not who I am. Maybe I would need to be more disciplined if I were writing a novel, but for now, my cobble-shit-together style is working just fine.

THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA, Mike Dennis

2011-12-15T09:07:00.000-08:00

When a woman is murdered at his nightclub, Robbie makes it his mission to find out who and why-- he's a bit of a shady character himself, but a feeling of responsibility drives him on. Teaming with the victim's reporter sister, he finds himself caught up in the dark, sinister underworld of Key West, and uncovers a mind-boggling conspiracy that dates back decades. Robbie is no stranger to violence, but now it seems he may have bitten off more than he can chew...

The Ghosts of Havana is a relentlessly fast-paced conspiracy thriller, the sort of book that keeps you reading all through the night. I devoured it in two sittings, on the edge of my seat the whole time to see what unexpected turn of events would occur next. Mike Dennis does a terrific job of revealing the seamy side of Key West, with the sort of intimate touches that only a native of that place would be capable of. And his protagonist, Robbie, moves through this dark world as if he's right at home.

And the secret behind the conspiracy, once it's revealed, will blow your mind. Top-notch suspense here.

No Rules: AARON PHILIP CLARK

2011-12-14T07:17:00.000-08:00

AARON PHILIP CLARK’s debut novel, THE SCIENCE OF PAUL, was published January 2011 by New Pulp Press, and was hands-down one of the best novels I've read all year. It came out right before my own debut novel from the same publisher, which caused me no end of anxiety-- THE SCIENCE OF PAUL was a hard act to follow. Set in Philadelphia, it introduced the crime fiction world to Paul Little, an ex-con battling his demons. Little has been called the “antithesis to the classic noir tough guy”.

Clark is currently putting the finishing touches on A HEALTHY FEAR OF MAN, the second novel in the Paul Little series. To learn more about Aaron, visit his website here, or better yet, join his Facebook page.

I suppose I should have known better. After all, I read Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City. And it did make the publishing industry seem strikingly similar to Hollywood; the fast talking Tad Allgash-like schmucks, the models, and the book parties, the cocktails and the coke. Of course, that was the 80s, the decade of excess—Regan and Gordon Gekko. There was no Internet, no mobile porn, no text messaging, no social networks, and face it, people read a lot more. Writers were actually hip, not in the way of disposable celebrities like Paris Hilton or the Kardashians, but their cool factor was in direct correlation with their intelligence and wittiness. People valued their opinions and they were culturally relevant. It was simply a different time; charging admission to a book signing was unheard of and Oprah Winfrey couldn’t make or break an author’s career. But things have changed; it’s an Amazon planet. Numbers and rankings, 99 cent downloads, free e-books (for today only), book trailers and short films, self-publishers and small houses, Facebook ads, contests and giveaways, and commercials with James Patterson hocking Nooks. Anything goes. And this is a good thing, right?

The film industry wasn’t always the Wall Street of the West, or the cesspool so many thespians and screenwriters are now forced to wade through. Once upon a time, there was Bogart and Bacall—there was art inTinsel Town. But Hollywoodland lost its luster a long time ago. The boulevards are no longer shiny and electric; they smell of urine and defecation. Drunken girls pleasure fellas in the front seats of cars, as they sit parked in the deck of the Kodak Theater, once the clubs let out. Street hustlers outfitted as Batman, Spider-man, and Pee-wee Herman shuck and jive for spare change in front of Mann’s Chinese, and what used to be a town of glitz and glamour is now a freak show. In an interview with Tavis Smiley, L.A.’s own James Ellroy bucked at the idea of driving down Sunset Boulevard; instead, opting for the dark surface streets because the billboards along Sunset made him cringe.

And maybe I cringe just a little when I see Patterson pimping a device that is likely to put book printing out of business one day. I’m not naïve; I realize writers have to be business savvy. I spent enough time in Hollywoodto know art is secondary to revenue, and in the case of the film industry, it’s a word that’s only used on Oscar night. And with the onslaught of social networking, budding and established authors are connecting with fans and other like-minded folks because it’s good business. But like Ellroy, don’t most authors just want to drive in the dark? Isn’t that why we became writers in the first place? Sure, it’s probably bad for sales not to have some kind of online presence. I just miss the good ole’ days when authors like Fran Lebowitz made appearances on David Letterman to promote their books, cracked a few jokes, and then returned to anonymity. When Cormac McCarthy was interviewed by Oprah, he was probably her most difficult nut to crack. He seemed uninterested; he answered her questions, which had less to do with his craft and more to do with his personal life, but never really dipped into the platitudes—and it only made me respect him even more. After all, we’re not celebrities; we’re authors. We’re the last vestige of intellectual sheik—in our world being smart is still cool. We’re the children of “The Vicious Circle”—the Algonquin Round Table. We write, we devour books and soak up knowledge—we blog and post, and we maintain discourse. We’re the original outsiders; the ones who weren’t invited to the party, only to peak in from a window while the “cool kids” got hammered and high. And it made us tough—it made us one of the most important fixtures in popular culture—the observers and commentators. We asked questions, we tried to make sense out of the chaos; we processed that chaos and then fed it back to the people in a more digestible form, and we mattered.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against wild success. I’m a capitalist—American through and through. It’s why I don’t give away free books because it implies that what we do as writers is somehow less than, and not worthy of payment. But writers as celebrities, as rock stars, as spokes models seems to be oxymoronic. Or maybe Patterson is just ahead of the curve? One day maintaining a book library might be the equivalent of owning a stamp collection; it’ll be a hobby of sorts, and the digital reader will be the standard. And though I’m tragically prone to nostalgia, the only option is to adapt and hope the book industry doesn’t go from half-classy dame to Sunset skeez—a three-ring circus where authors will do anything to turn a buck.

Reading (and writing) Westerns

2011-12-13T07:49:00.000-08:00

About six months ago, I decided that my next novel would, by necessity, be a Western. I’d never really had an itch before to experiment in that genre, but as the ideas and characters for it took form in my mind, I began to realize that it would only work as a Western.

I’d long been a fan of Western films, but when it came to reading Western fiction I was a total novice. If I was going to write one, I felt, I’d better damn sure make certain that I understood the genre better. And so, like a settler setting out on the long dangerous trail through Indian Territory, I saddled up and started off.

Here’s what I found along the way.

I read about eight or ten non-fiction books on the subject, the best of them being Dee Brown’s terrific and informative THE AMERICAN WEST. I highly recommend this book: it serves as a terrific launching point for further reading and gives you a clear understanding of chronology and themes that were central to the Western experience, from the perspectives of whites and Indians alike. And it was an absolute joy to read.

Exploring fiction, I read about 60 books total, from about 25 different writers, in that six month period. Here’s a round-up of the best of them—

Elmore Leonard. He’s a good place to start for the modern reader. Try VALDEZ IS COMING or THE LAW AT RANDADO.

Lewis B. Patten. His book DEATH OF A GUNFIGHTER came recommended by Cullen Gallagher and Mike Dennis, two fellas who know what they’re talking about. And they were right.

Elmer Kelton. AFTER THE BUGLES and TEXAS VENDETTA were tightly written and compulsively readable.

Luke Short. VENGEANCE VALLEY knocked my socks off, and GUNMAN’S CHANCE was just as good.

James Reasoner. THE HUNTED and THE HAWTHORNE LEGACY were my introductions to Reasoner, who quickly became one of my favorites. Simply one of the best writers around in any genre.

Ed Gorman. Again, thanks to Cullen Gallagher. He sent me Gorman’s novel DEATH GROUND, a bit of hardboiled Western bravado that proved Gorman can do anything.

Loren Estleman. BLACK POWDER, WHITE SMOKE and THE BOOK OF MURDOCK are tight and fast Westerns that move as relentlessly as a steam engine.

…and a few things you should know:

I’ve never been a big fan of Robert Parker’s detective novels about Spencer, but at a friend’s recommendation I read APPALOOSA and was pleasantly surprised.

Edward A. Grainger’s two story collections about Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles were terrific, fast-paced actioners with heart and conscience.

SMONK, by Tom Franklin, was by no means a traditional Western, but I can’t remember the last time I had such bloody disgusting fun with a novel.

And—listen now, because this is important—if you haven’t read TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis yet, stop reading this and go get a copy and do it. Honestly, one of the best books I’ve ever read in my life.

And a bit of an addendum: Robert E. Howard's Western story collection, END OF THE TRAIL, is flat-out must-reading.

So the Western novel I started writing has taken a backseat in the meantime while I finish up some other projects. But I WILL get back to it within the next month or so, and it will be informed by a closer knowledge of the genre—which can only help.

In the meantime, I wrote my first straight Western short story a couple months ago, called “Blood Relations”. It appeared at Crime Factory.

“That Damned Coyote Hill” was a weird Western featuring a vengeful gunman called Hawthorne, up against bizarre creatures in the remote Arizona desert. There are more Hawthorne stories coming.

And, most recently, I wrote “Miles to Little Ridge”, a longish short story featuring Edward A. Grainger’s character Gideon Miles.

Am I forsaking crime fiction/noir/hardboiled? No, not at all. It’s just that circumstances have led to me putting on the Stetson and mounting up for a while. And I’ve found that writing crime fiction and writing Westerns (weird or otherwise) are not much different. It’s the exact same approach.

Except that Westerns require a bit more research…

No Rules: DANI AMORE

2011-12-12T06:55:00.000-08:00

DANI AMORE has been prolific this year. Spearheaded by a terrifically witty and fun mystery novel called DEATH BY SARCASM, she's launched a full-on assault on the world of crime fiction, turning out one compelling read after another. Both DEATH BY SARCASM and DEADWOOD are Amazon best-sellers. Her most recent is a WWII drama called TO FIND A MOUNTAIN, so make no mistake: Dani is as versatile as she is driven.

For a complete list of all Dani's work, see here, or visit her webpage.

So to start off the week with some blood and thunder, here's is DANI AMORE...

For The Love Of Guns

I’m a bit of a gun nut.

In fact, Heath and I have chatted about our favorite weapons, which sort of prompted me to write this post.

For me, my love of “shooting irons” all started with a left-handed six shooter with a fast-draw holster including the leather braids to tie the holster to your leg – gunfighter style.

It looked a lot like this (though mine was a left-handed version…).

The gun and gunbelt had been my grandfather’s. He had been the black sheep of his family – the son of a university president, a dropout, and an NCAA Division II champion tennis player. (He won his title even though he wasn’t enrolled in college.)

My grandfather went on to play jazz trumpet in bands in Chicago, and develop a massive drinking problem that he never kicked.

But when my great-grandfather sent his juvenile delinquent son to Oklahoma, where a rancher friend was going to help “break” my grandfather, it only accomplished two things. One, the return of my grandfather with a message from the rancher that he never wanted to see this young man again. And two, it fostered within my grandfather a love of the Old West, cowboys, and guns.

That passion was passed down to my father, and then to me.

When I was around nine or ten years old, I convinced my father to let me practice my quick draw. (Of course, the gun was unloaded and my father swore he didn’t even have any ammo for it.) By then, I’d read every Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey novel ever written.

When my left hand got tired, I’d slide the belt around, with the holster backward, and practice my right-handed quick draw.

I got pretty good at it. I even worked on my border switch – exchanging an empty gun in your right hand with a loaded gun in your left by simultaneously flipping them to the opposite hand. A lot of time, too, went to the art of spinning the gun on your finger and timing the barrel spin to go back into the holster in one fluid motion.

Eventually, though, I went to college and moved on with my life. One of my siblings inherited the gun and gunbelt when my father died, so when it came time to buy my own gun, I decided to go modern.

I bought a Para Ordnance .45 hi-cap, just like the one Mary Cooper uses in my novel DEATH BY SARCASM.

I love it. It’s a lot of gun.

It holds 14 rounds of .45 ACP in the magazine, and one in the chamber. It’s heavy when it’s fully loaded. My favorite thing about it? When I’m at the range, and the brass is flying and an ejected shell bounces off the wall and drops between my neck and the collar of my shirt, burning my skin. Badges of honor.

I know there are a lot of issues with guns and gun control, none of which I’m going to get into here. I will tell you, though, that target shooting is my passion. I don’t hunt, and don’t think I could shoot anything like a deer (it would remind me of my panty stealing dog Vinnie).

But go out into the woods, line up a dozen empty beer bottles and blast away?

I’m there, baby.

You bring the beer, I’ll bring the guns.

Deal?

You can follow Dani on Twitter: @authordaniamore
Or send her an email: dani@daniamore.com

"I've never read a Western before..."

2011-12-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

"I've never read a Western before, but after reading this I plan on reading LOTS more..."

Man, I love hearing that.

Some of you may already know that I wrote a novella (or long short story or whatever you want to call it) for Edward A. Grainger, author of the terrific series of stories about U.S. Marshals Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles. It's out today.

It's called "Miles to Little Ridge", and focuses tight on Gideon Miles. Here's the product description from Amazon:

"Edward A.Grainger's Gideon Miles hits the trail in this fast-clip western novella written by Heath Lowrance. The U.S. Marshal finds himself in the sleepy town of Little Ridge, Montana, on the search for a wanted man. But just as Miles enters town, he's spotted by a hard case who recognizes Miles as the lawman that killed his friend. Now Miles must face the wanted man, who claims his innocence and is raising a daughter on his own, while the hard case and a ne'er-do-well partner are gunning for him."

When I first read the stories of Cash and Miles, I never thought I'd be writing one myself. I was fairly new to Westerns myself at the time. But Grainger's sure hand with the Western genre was part of my inspiration for writing "That Damned Coyote Hill", the first Hawthorne adventure. Granted, Hawthorne exists in a different version of the Old West than Grainger's intrepid lawmen (one where there are were-coyotes and swamp witches and ghouls) but most of the basics remain the same-- an emphasis on action and wry humor.

I loved the experience of writing about Gideon Miles, and I'm pretty satisfied with the results. Hopefully, you'll dig it too. And if you're new to Westerns, maybe this will inspire you to read more of them!

No Rules: R. THOMAS BROWN

2011-12-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

R. THOMAS BROWN exploded on to e-book scene this year with several very strong releases, among them the seriously creepy novella "Merciless Pact", two short story collections, and two e-shorts from Trestle Press (you can find them all on Amazon, right here).

He's a great writer who, bit by bit, is gaining the audience he deserves. That audience is only likely to get bigger still early next year, when Snubnose Press releases his first full-length novel, HILL COUNTRY.

He's also a voracious reader, and when he's not writing fiction (or working the ole' day job), R. Thomas Brown keeps a terrific blog, Criminal Thoughts, devoted primarily to reviewing new releases from other writers.

Which leads us quite nicely into his topic for this "No Rules". I'm very pleased to give you.. R. THOMAS BROWN...

Why am I here?
So, when Heath asked me to do this I was flattered that he asked, but also had no idea what to write about. I thought about something about reviews, or short fiction, or my writing. None of it felt right. Probably because I still wonder why someone might care what I have to say.
Not that I feel I don’t have worthwhile opinions. I’m actually a pompous blowhard who pontificates on a variety of subjects to any family member or friend who hasn’t left the room yet to avoid the verbal onslaught. (That’s not entirely true. I follow them if they leave.) But it’s different in a world where I don’t personally know the people.
I’m also fine giving lectures, teaching (did for years at community colleges) or other defined public speaking. This didn’t feel like that either.
I shrink in public gathering of a less formal nature. I have to force myself to speak in any social gathering. This felt like a social gathering. People I don’t know, coming around to see if there was interesting conversation. Not my best setting.
So, what is this all about, then? Other than two hundred words about me not knowing what it’s about. Well, I think the discomfort I felt about this is the same I feel when I submit a story, or self-pub something, or write a review. I worry, constantly, that someone won’t like it. That they’ll think ill of me for having written it.
When I don’t love a book I review, I cringe at the thought of the author reading it. I don’t want to hurt their feelings. Of course, I also believe that my opinion means nothing (we covered that earlier about my arrogance with friends, and sheepishness with strangers, remember, It’s just like four paragraphs ago. Are you paying attention? Have I already bored you? Oh, no. There I go again.)
The thing is, of course someone will. I don’t like everything I read or hear. So, some people will hate my review, story, book, blog post, whatever it is. I should accept that, and just hope that people care enough to hate it or love it. Just as long as it’s not ignored, right?
Right? Yes, dammit!
(Oh, I hope I didn’t offend anyone there. Crap, did it again.)

No Rules: JENNIFER THOMSON

2011-12-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

JENNIFER THOMSON'S first novella HOW KIRSTY GETS HER KICKS, will be published by Pulp Press in the UK in March 2012. It’s about, according to Jennifer, "a gutsy Glasgow barmaid who goes on the run with a safe load of gangster’s cash and a hot gun after embedding her stiletto heel in the head of one of his goons who has the crass eejitery to touch her up."

Jennifer says, "I love the ethos and energy of Pulp Press and their tales of violent comeuppance without the meandering pish where some flouncy author takes ten bloody pages to describe a bloody tree. The covers are fantastic too."

Yep, well said, Ms. Thomson.

She's currently writing DEID BASTARDS: a zombie novel with a Scottish twist where bagpipes and midges play an important part and VILE CITY, her first detective novel featuring DI Waddell and his comatose sidekick.

Jennifer blogs at Ramblings of a Frustrated Crime Writer where she insists she is normally much more polite.

I'm very pleased to introduce you to the immensely talented JENNIFER THOMSON...

Literary Snobbery Be Damned

To me the most important thing about any book is that it entertains. It doesn’t have to be a piece of great literature or be up for one of the major prizes that always go to someone hardly anybody reads until the book wins it and every person up for a bit of fakery, who wants to appear well read goes out and buys it then leaves it on their art deco coffee table for visitors to see. (Do you notice how these books are always in pristine, unread condition?)

Sadly, there are people who don’t see it that way. Hey you literary snobs, you know who you are.

I have done one writing course in my entire life. After two decades of working as a freelance writer (okay plodding away) and living on porridge and stale bread in my freezing garret (you try living on a windy Scottish island with a leaky window) I finally did an online course with Strathclyde University where over 6 weeks you critiqued each others work.

On the first week we were asked to introduce ourselves, say what authors we liked to read. When I said I was a big fan of Stephen King (if The Stand was a man I’d marry him and that’s more than I can say for my partner of eleven years), out came the wee digs.

‘I used to like him when I was younger,’ said one person.

‘His stuff’s a bit childish,’ said another.

The general consensus amongst my fellow students was that Stephen King was for weans. Why because his books weren’t entertaining enough? Nah, because they weren’t considered literary enough.

And, what exactly is literary fiction? To my mind its writing that take ages to get to the bloody point. Often its flowery and laden with unnecessary metaphors with bugger all happening.

Literary fiction is an arrogant beast that thinks it’s too good to be read by you and me and make you feel stupid because you can’t concentrate on them for longer than five minutes. Then there’s those words you’re convinced the author has made up that you need to look up because you haven’t the foggiest idea what it means.

Me? When I come across a word like that ‘I say screw this, the author’s up his own backside’ and go off and read something else.

Hey, my time’s precious. I don’t have time to indulge some author’s ego because he or she’s trying to show how smart they are and what a dumb eejit I am.

Worst of all, ‘literary fiction’ puts folk off reading anything at all and that is the most damning indictment of all. Because reading takes you to places you’ve never been, introduces you to people you’ll never meet yet who seem so alive they might as well be in the same room as you.

In my loneliest hours when I have battled depression, desperation and agoraphobia that has crippled me, books have made sure I have never felt alone. I have yet to come across a drug that does that.

The thing that really pisses me off most about these literary works that win all the major prizes where glum faced judges parade themselves on the TV making reading seem like such a bloody chore when it should be a pleasure, is that crime the biggest selling genre, doesn’t even get a look in.

I suspect that if Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle were up for prizes they’d lose out too.

Crime is considered too common, apparently because it’s read by the masses. What a crime that would be to give books that masses of people actually read the big awards.

Christ, you’d need to start giving the literary awards to books people actually read.

No Rules: MATTHEW C. FUNK

2011-12-05T07:07:00.000-08:00

MATTHEW C. FUNK writes some of the tightest, most colorful stories in crime fiction these days, and a great deal of that is due to the very intimate sense of place in his work. Yes, he's a great plotter, and his characters are all vivid and memorable, but if you had to cite just one aspect of his body of work that stands above the rest, it would be his ability to make the setting seem as vital to the story as everything else. Like Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, Funk's Desire is a living breathing character in and of itself, informing all the events and shaping the characters.

Here's Matthew C. Funk, then, with a few words on his relationship with Desire...

I have to write about Desire.

Not just because of the name. There’s a lot of fertile ground there, though. Could grow a lot of layers of meaning from that name.

And I don’t mean that I have to write about New Orleans.

I’ve already written plenty on that subject. About how New Orleans is America’s loveliest, ugliest, kindest, cruelest, proudest place. About how that means I can’t imagine writing elsewhere.

No, this is about me being unable to escape Desire.

My stories roam other areas. I dropped by Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop in the French Quarter to give the Beat Generation a send-off in Black Heart Noir. I got a glimpse of the high-rise lifestyle of the Port Authority in I Ain’t Gonna. I mix plenty of places together, from the famous like Tipitina’s and Mother’s, to the not-so-famous like Verti Marte and Cosimo’s.

I always end up back home in Desire, though.

I’ve got to, there’s no getting out. There’s too much pain and pride there for the stories ever to end. The human extremes stretch across the whole spectrum, raw as a rainbow, and I have to draw attention to them.

They are right next door, after all.

The soaring crime. The abysmal poverty. The art, dance, song and religion. Desire has the most churches, per capita, next to the worst homelessness.

And that is just a short plane flight away, if you’re in America. Not even a full day.

Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are right now, in a few hours, you could be in a place where the gangs can hardly afford colors, the church volunteers are everywhere and the graffiti can’t be beat for surreal beauty.

And it may feel like a dream when you’re there, but there is no wall separating it from the strip malls across the freeway, or from New Orleans, or from your life.

It is as beautiful as a dream, though.

I’ve been from Bel Air to the Bronx, and I’ve never seen so much ruin decorated so beautifully.

A place like that has to be written about just like it has to be named Desire.

That’s crime writing for me: Taking something broken and showing how it’s beautiful.

It began with Jari. I was smitten with Jari Jurgis, with her infected fractures and glorious strength, from first we met. I had to place her in Desire.

Where better for a bad cop with butterflies on her jeans and an endless bad attitude to do her best work off the clock?

Clean Hands and Tipped Scales in ThugLit was the seed, but Desire had already been well tilled by my imagination. I explored it in Ava, my horror manuscript.

Ava’s desire is to help people. She cares so much. So, so much. As much as we all should care.

And yes, Ava wants to be wanted. She has her own selfish desires—for love, recognition, companionship. Who doesn’t? But above all, she wants to help everyone. She wants to make their pain stop.

All of it. Everywhere. Starting in Desire.

I often wonder whether y’all will ever meet Ava, or whether she’ll just spend eternity roaming Desire like the ghost she is, while the lives of my other characters form and fight and make love in her shadow.

The cast of Desire is getting considerable: The red-Irish embodiment of all things bad about cops, the Mahoney family, first seen in Good Night Durham. The she-wolf survivor of stories I get fevered with and write about the 2000-2003 gang war, Bebe. The kid growing up pained and hard, Rabid, Desire’s Tom Sawyer. The role of fatherhood, heated and distilled down to explosive compound, Parnell.

They all have anti-hero followings. I like that my readership is divided between loving and hating them. I am too.

Everybody loves Stagger Lee, though.

He’s my Dixieland Hercules. I’ve got big plans for Stagger, as he’s big enough to wander wherever he needs to and make some myths happen.

Desire is myth and reality, so as much as I may ramble with Stagger, I’ll always be coming home to that place in the Upper Ninth. That place that reaches right up to the Interstate, huddled forgotten between the Lower Ninth Ward and Bywater, that has so little and so has so much life.

Ask Buddha, ask Freud, ask me—ask anybody who knows—life is about appetite. Suffering. Desire.

Desire’s where my writing has to live.

No Rules: MIKE DENNIS

2011-12-01T09:19:00.000-08:00

The first thing I ever read by MIKE DENNIS was a sort of love letter to rockabilly and blues called CADILLAC'S COMING. It was a solid piece of work, full of the sort of understanding of popular music that only a musician is capable of (and Mike IS a musician; he tickles the ivories, natch).

I've never heard Mike play, so I can't tell you if he's any good. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he was, though. I can tell you this much with certainty: he's a Killer when it comes to writing fiction. Aside from CADILLAC'S COMING, his other books include THE TAKE, BLOODSTAINS ON THE WALL, and the first two volumes of his Key West noirs, SET-UP ON FRONT STREET and THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA.

And apparently, writing and music aren't all there is to the man. Here's MIKE DENNIS, with a great piece on the leading men of film noir.

THE MEN OF FILM NOIR

A few months back, Heath put out a list of his favorite films noir. After reading it, I was inspired to do the same. Then he suggested we do a "Who's The King Of Noir?" post. Since I'm not really sure any one actor could hold down the top spot, I'm going to throw a few of them at you and see what you think.
ROBERT MITCHUM: Even if no one actor can be number 1, Mitchum would certainly come very close. His performance in The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (1973) was, without a doubt, the finest of his career and perhaps the greatest single performance of any film noir actor ever. He crawls inside Coyle's skin and drags the viewer with him to all the seedy bars and parking lots where he reveals his desperation through dialogue. His hand gestures, body language, voice inflections—all pitch-perfect in his portrayal of this world-weary street criminal.
You can't talk about Mitchum and noir without mentioning Out Of The Past (1947), a classic directed by Jacques Tourneur. True to the traditions of noir, Mitchum's Jeff Bailey is all trenchcoat and cigarettes, the everyman drawn into a situation he can't control. And of course, his downward spiral is greased by a smokin' hot babe, in this case, the deadly Jane Greer.
ROBERT RYAN: Part average Joe and part psychopath, Robert Ryan always makes you nervous everytime he walks onscreen. You never know if (or more likely, when) he's going to come unhinged. In An Act Of Violence (1948), he's terrific as the creepy ex-POW thirsting for revenge against his former commanding officer. His Oscar-nominated turn as a violent anti-Semite in Crossfire (1947) is probably his greatest role. Over and over, throughout his career, Ryan shows you how long he can dance on the very lip of the abyss before plunging in. You just have to be careful you're not too close to him when he jumps. He might take you with him.
RICHARD WIDMARK: Two words: Harry Fabian. Night And The City (1950) is one of my top three personal film noir favorites, maybe even number one. Fabian is without question the quintessential film noir character, a dreamer whose reach far exceeded his grasp. Widmark's complex performance in director Jules Dassin's masterpiece far outweighs anything he ever did at any other point in his long career, but few actors get the chance to play a character like Fabian. Widmark never got such an opportunity again, often being relegated to standard leading man roles and later, ordinary character parts. The excellent Road House (1948) was his only other film noir performance worth mentioning. I deliberately omit Kiss Of Death (1947), where he played the snickering Tommy Udo, because I consider it a cops-vs-gangsters movie, not film noir.
DAN DURYEA: Anyone who can be as consistently slimy as Duryea was throughout his career deserves inclusion in this list. From Criss Cross (1949) to Woman In The Window (1944) to Too Late For Tears (1949), he's there to remind you that film noir is not for sissies. They play for keeps in these movies and you know from the moment he walks onto the screen that someone's going to wind up at the bottom of the river.
Duryea and Hollywood endings weren't really meant for each other, and his turn as pimp Johnny Prince in Scarlet Street (1945) drove that point home. The little-known and very underrated Too Late For Tears (1949) is another great example. Black Angel (1946), One Way Street (1950), even Anthony Mann's noirish western, Winchester 73 (1950)...I could go on and on with Duryea. He was one of a kind.
ELISHA COOK JR: Whenever you saw Elisha Cook Jr's name in the credits of a film noir, you knew things were going to fall apart for the central character. Cook could do that to you. Come on with those raised eyebrows and his diminutive (but compelling) presence, and presto! You're in deep shit. A lot of noir characters paid the price for associating with Cook. Sterling Hayden in The Killing (1956) comes to mind, not to mention Marie Windsor, Cook's "creamy dish" in the same movie. Gene Raymond learned the hard way in the superb Plunder Road (1957) and Lawrence Tierney certainly could have done without him in Born To Kill (1947). Cook had his mojo working at all times. One of the greatest character actors in movie history.
Which reminds me, LAWRENCE TIERNEY: If ever there was an actor whose personal life played out like a film noir, it was Tierney. Way better-looking and a far better actor than his brother Scott Brady, it rankled him that Brady was more successful. After setting the screen on fire in Dillinger (1945), and in the aforementioned Born To Kill (1947), he was on his way to major stardom. The New York Times even said that Born To Kill was "not only morally disgusting but is an offense to a normal intellect." That alone should've cemented Tierney's place in film noir history. Unfortunately, however, his hard-drinking lifestyle prevented him from fulfilling his potential. A true, real-life tough guy, he got into plenty of barroom brawls, got thrown in jail numerous times, saw his career take a southward dive, and wound up in the 1960s in New York City, tending bar and driving horse carriages for Central Park tourists. His career never recovered, although he made a slight comeback in the 1990s, topping out with Quentin Tarantino's great film noir, Reservoir Dogs (1992).
RICHARD CONTE: Probably the most exciting news I heard in 1971 was that Richard Conte was tapped to play Don Barzini in The Godfather (1972). Although that movie was more opera than film noir, Conte oozed noir every time he stepped in front of the camera. He made you realize they were making a real gangster movie. And I mean a real gangster movie like The Big Combo (1955), where he's the gangland subject of a police investigation that is going nowhere. As the ice-cold Mr Brown, he lets you know in no uncertain terms that he doesn't like being investigated. Thieves Highway (1949), directed by the great Jules Dassin, while not exactly noir, is close enough, and Conte makes his way through this tale of revenge in his usual top form. Cry Of The City (1948) shows him in tangled relationships as an accused cop-killer on the run.
CHARLES McGRAW: You can't say "trenchcoat" without thinking of Charles McGraw. He should've gotten a piece of the action for every one sold in this country because God knows he helped to sell a shitload of them. Nobody could wear one with more authority. Brutal films like The Killers, The Narrow Margin, and Border Incident helped solidify McGraw's hold on the cinematic realism that was film noir. You knew guys like him in your own town, real hardasses, and you didn't fuck with them. Even when McGraw was on the right side of the law, you still were never sure he wouldn't break your face if you didn't tell him what he wanted to know.
≈≈≈
McGraw, like the rest of these guys, had the presence, the look, the swagger, that was meant to be photographed in black and white. You know, at night against a backdrop of wet city streets. Sultry alto sax lines slithering through the soundtrack as guns slide in and out of oiled shoulder rigs.
Gimme a cigarette and pour me some whiskey, then bring in the femme fatale and let my world collapse around me. You know what? I don't give a shit.
It's noir, baby.

No Rules: TROY LAMBERT

2011-11-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

TROY LAMBERT is a writer I suggest keeping an eye on. He's got a very good collection of short stories under his belt, called BROKEN BONES (which I reviewed here) and is currently working to bring the world more. He has a solid, professional work ethic, which I admire, and is a genuinely kind person. Those qualities, along with his constantly improving skills as a writer, will eventually take him far.

Rumor has it Troy is working on his first novel as we speak, tentatively titled THE VALLEY OF DEATH.

I give you TROY LAMBERT...

Broken Bones

Under an “s” shaped scar on my right hand is what used to be broken bones. Actually they were shattered as a result of a motorcycle accident in 2000. After three surgeries and a great deal of physical therapy, I have about 90% use of my right thumb. Most people don’t notice the scar or any lack of ability with that hand.

Not all broken bones leave a scar that you can see. Most never puncture your skin and there is no visible wound. But there are scars on your bones. You don’t truly feel them until you get older. Then changes in temperature and humidity cause those scars to ache. In Some cases the joints around those scars will develop arthritis. You may not see the scar and you may push the memory far from your mind, but you will never forget a broken bone. It won’t let you. Every change of season and every time I overuse my right hand, it swells, it aches, and it lets me know that once it was shattered.

Throughout life we get emotional broken bones and scars as well. People hurt us and often that hurt is hidden far below our skin. Our hearts are often shattered and require emotional surgery. Sometimes this leaves a visible scar but most of the time it does not. People do not see the scar and don’t even notice any emotional lack of ability. But you never truly forget. It makes you more cautious and changes your reactions and who you are. As we endure changes in our lives the pain becomes more real to us and we remember.

Sometimes the way to sooth those broken bones and those scars is to write about them. I did that with my collection of short stories aptly named Broken Bones and I do it with my blog (I am just saying. . . .) fairly often. It sometimes offends those close to me, but it almost always evokes a reaction from a reader. It touches something inside them: a broken bone, a scar, an emotion they have buried deep within.

So if you dare to face your scars and your broken bones take a journey with me. Read, heal, and if it sooths your soul, write your own stories. Share your scars and your broken bones. You will be amazed how much it helps you heal.

NO RULES: Nigel Bird

2011-11-28T06:44:00.000-08:00

It's been a banner year for NIGEL BIRD. He started it with the critically lauded story collection DIRTY OLD TOWN, followed it about mid-year with his next set of tales, BEAT ON THE BRAT, and wraps the year up with a third collection called WITH LOVE AND SQUALOR. As if three volumes of short stories wasn't enough, he also released several e-shorts, a book of poetry for children, and a remarkable novella called SMOKE.

When he's not writing fiction, he puts himself at the service of other writers and readers with the excellent blog, Sea Minor.

No matter how awful or violent the events become in a Nigel Bird story (and they can get pretty grim sometimes) the characteristic that really defines them is the strong sense of compassion and decency. Bird can show you the worst traits humans are capable of, and at the same time make you sympathetic to the whole human race. I don't know how he does it, man.

But I've said all this about Nigel Bird before and I don't need to say it again. He's one of my favorite people in this strange and cool Noir Underground, a good friend and a good human being. I'm proud to give you NIGEL BIRD.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

In my teaching recently, I’ve been working with a group of children who struggle with literacy on their mind-mapping. In essence, that’s about recording information in visual form rather than in words.

Our first lesson was on emotions, based upon the range of ‘smileys’ out there. It’s amazing what a difference the repositioning of a line can make, or an adjustment to its position. At its simplest, take the smile and the frown – draw the curve one way there’s sadness, turn it upside down it’s happy. A straight line will give a serious face and a couple of wavy lines over the eyes and you have anxiety.

Easily done.

Then take the idea of shading a picture in places to suggest a whole – not every brick on a building needs to be sketched in to make it look like it’s made of stone.

Hints, well-handled impressions, can lead the eye to create an altogether bigger picture.
The same can be said of writing.

Scene setting isn’t one of my strengths; I go to great lengths to avoid it when I’m being lazy.
With ‘Smoke’ though, I was looking at making the story as good as I could. It was this weakness that I began with during the edits.

Thing is, I happen to work in the town where the story is set.

Tranent is a town just outside of Edinburgh. Founded on the mining industry, it has less of a clear identity now that the coal is no longer economical to dig.

There are council estates where things can be very tough indeed for those who live there, and there are the new houses which home the professionals who work in the city, only a short drive away.

It gave me a problem I manage to get away from on the whole – the need to paint an accurate picture without making it one of replication. Apart from anything, some of the residents would be up in arms if they thought I was suggesting their home is as rough as the place I’ve painted, even though another section of the community would wave such a story with pride or even claim things had been diluted.

My first approach on setting came through the characters. The families I have created have difficult lives. Things tend not to go right for them. Leaving town rarely happens. They stick closely together. School is an inconvenience, literacy derided as it has nothing to do with football, fighting or beer.

Next I put in the things I know:

the High Street and all the little alleyways leading from it, perfect for hit and runs or stealthy attacks.

the Firth Of Forth, a strip of water that separates the Lothians from the Kingdom of Fife.

the power station, chimneys pointing high and proud.

one of the many pubs.

a High School.

council estates.

newly built houses.

the weather.

decay.

an old statue.

a hill.

a couple of historical points.

So far so good.

I remember hearing a writer recommending the keeping of a weather diary as a tip so that at any point in time the weather can be described in detail. I mentioned that I’m lazy, so I didn’t have such a diary to check on (you might want to try it, though, as you do always need weather). My solution was to mention it as little as possible. I think when I do describe it, it’s either through the actions of the characters or I use fog (fog’s a great type of weather in which to hide a town’s features).

I guess the final aspect of the setting is the dialogue. I’ve made it close to local in some ways, yet to do so accurately would mean it would be virtually unreadable. I’d like to think I’ve captured some of that essence without making it difficult. Think of it as an impressionistic attempt at Tranent Scottish.

Would a Belter (Tranent resident) recognise their town through my novella? I think they could.
Would a guided tour based on the novel get you round an easily planned route? No way. There’ll be no ‘Smoke tours’ after this one.

In the end, it’s a story about three groups of people whose lives intertwine. As is often the case, when people interact there are misunderstandings and when there are misunderstandings there are stories to tell. It’s a caricature of people and place, but the whiffs of truth should hit the reader strongly from time to time, otherwise I haven’t written the novella I think I have – don’t be shy to let me know.

Final shot.

The same children went to see Kes at the theatre recently, a play based upon ‘A Kestrel For A Knave’. Featuring heavily in the story is a bird of prey (Kes). I wondered how they’d deal with this in an enclosed space. Answer: A leather glove and a lure and a lot left to the imagination. And they loved it.

OFF THE RECORD is here

2011-11-27T07:52:00.000-08:00

I imagine you're already seeing this all over the interwebs this morning, but I want to mention it anyway. The new anthology, OFF THE RECORD, is finally here, available at Amazon for us Yanks and at Amazon UK for the rest of the civilized world.

I've read about half the stories so far, and I can tell you without hesitation, this is one kick-ass compilation. Put together by Luca Veste, it's a set of stories based on song titles, and it's all over the board as far as musical taste is concerned-- everything from Micheal Jackson (Benoit Lelievre's "Blood on the Dance Floor" to Velvet Underground (Matthew Funk's "Venus in Furs" to ABBA (Nigel Bird's "Super Trouper") to the Stooges (my own "I Wanna Be Your Dog").

Oh, and there's tons more. But here's the best part: it's for charity, dig. All proceeds (after the money-eyes take their cut) go to children's literacy charities on either side of the Atlantic.

You really should buy this, honestly. A ton of great stories here, in a wide variety of genres, and all for a really excellent cause.

Gelati's Scoop blog-radio

2011-11-23T08:57:00.000-08:00

I'm doing another blog-radio interview today at Gelati's Scoop, at four o'clock, talking about Hawthorne, Deadland USA, and who knows what else. If you don't have any other pressing plans, why not tune in? You can also call in with questions or comments if you like.

City of Heretics at Snubnose Press

2011-11-22T07:01:00.000-08:00

It's been officially announced now at their website and on the ever-present social networks, so I reckon I can say it here, at last:

My second novel, CITY OF HERETICS, has been adopted and given a comfy home by the terrific SNUBNOSE PRESS, and should see the light of day come 2012.

Snubnose is a relatively new publisher, an off-shoot of Spinetingler Magazine, and has been putting out some really class stuff these last few months by the likes of Keith Rawson, Patricia Abbott and Sandra Ruttan. Coming very soon will be books by Helen Fitzgerald, Nik Korpon, and Vern E. Smith. Oh, and now me.

They're a small press with big goals, committed to publishing edgy, original crime fiction. They have so far proven to be absolutely fearless... and that more than anything really appeals to me as a writer and as a reader.

Naturally, I have a great deal of work to do in the meantime-- re-writes, editing, all that glamorous writer stuff. So after the series of "No Rules" guest posts are wrapped up (sometime in mid-December, I think) you'll see less activity here at Psycho-Noir for a bit, probably only one or two posts a week.

But I promise to make it worth it in the long run. City of Heretics is a much different novel than The Bastard Hand, leaner and considerably more hardboiled, and working with Brian Lindenmuth will, no doubt, make it even more so.

Thanks, friends, for all your support...

No Rules: BENOIT LELIEVRE

2011-11-22T06:11:00.000-08:00

Back in March, BENOIT LELIEVRE did a guest post here, and this is what I said about him at the time: "Benoit Lelievre is one of the most talented young unpublished writers I know. He has a keen mind, and a unique perspective on the world and knows how to verbalize it. His blog, Dead End Follies, is one of the few that I check on a regular basis, because it never fails to be relevant and entertaining."

All of that is still true, except for one key point-- Ben is no longer unpublished. Recent months have seen his work appearing at Shotgun Honey, the Lost Children anthology, and the upcoming OFF THE RECORD. He's also taken on the mantle of film reviewer for Spinetingler, doing exactly what he does at his blog, but to a wider audience.

Kid's come a long way in a short period of time. Do I need to remind you that I predicted as much?

I'm pleased to present, once again, BENOIT LELIEVRE...

I was thirteen when the Backstreet Boys released their first single “We’ve Got It Going On”. Looking back, it was a defining event in my life because it was the first time I caught on to a sales pattern. Six or seven years before, I had bought into the New Kids On The Block mania pretty hard and after their lame ending I refused to buy into repackaged bullshit. Unfortunately I was pretty much alone in understanding this, so I didn’t get laid for most of my high school days.

But point is, I’m twenty-eight years old now, about to turn twenty-nine. If I could tell something to my thirteen year old self today it would be “You’re smart kid. Don’t listen to anybody, because you can figure things out on your own”. But I didn’t do that. I went to school for way too long, got way too many useless diplomas and all that, because I kept putting my destiny in other people’s hands because I didn’t have the courage and the confidence in myself to make my own way.

But I see the way now. I think.

Everybody will try and tell you what to do. It’s very flattering for the self to think your own wisdom is a wanted commodity. “Study under me and I will show you everything”, “Put your savings in my hands, I will make you rich”, “Work for me and accomplish your dreams”. You know what I mean? Don’t think, just work, pay and be productive, leave the rest to us.

We live in a world like this now.

Trusting has taken the place of thinking and it’s not because the world is a safer place. It’s not because we’re lazy either. OK, maybe we have gotten a little bit, but think back to the days of our parents and our grandparents and let’s play a comparison game. They didn’t have any money and most of them didn’t go to school very long. They have learned to survive, doing odd jobs, managing money, planning, trying to be smart about the very little they had. The past generations had learned to learn. We were given learning 101 in the face from the time we’re six years old and what have we learned?

Fuck all.

We are a generation of people with one area of expertise and who defer the responsibility of everything outside of work (and often at work too) to other people. We’re not responsible for ourselves anymore. We are afraid to think because we don’t trust ourselves. I’m not saying we should all be lone wolves, vowing for our own interest only. No, what I’m talking about here is what Ralph Waldo Emerson called self-reliance.

You don’t know something? It’s up to you to learn it. Don’t depend on somebody else. You’re poor? Do something. Get a second job, spend less, trust yourself to ensure you get by. Maybe if you put your shoulder into it you can have a promotion or even start your own business. If you limit your contribution to the world to a forty hours a week schedule, the world is going to give you back what you put in it.

I have never learned anything in school but what my martial arts teacher (you might know him) resumed in one sentence about ten years ago: “Be your own coach”. Go after what you want, take responsibility for it. Don’t wait for people to feed you off opportunities, because you will die alone unless you are Michael Jordan, Celine Dion or somebody that can make them a lot of money. When I moved in to Montreal ten years ago, I was desperately looking for a young driven martial arts teacher who would help me turn my life around and I found him because I was looking. The most important thing he taught me is those four words: “Be your own coach”.

I’m going to turn thirty soon and every people I went to school with and had dreams of being professional athletes, television personalities or to have any form of fulfilling career have all buried their dreams because they preferred debts and comfort. They are the prime audience for Jersey Shore and they go to U2 concerts, thinking it’s a spiritual moment. I discussed the issue with several of them and you know what they told me? “When I clock off work, I turn my brain off. I don’t want to think anymore”.

I’m sad that thinking has become something so frowned upon. I love thinking and when I go home, I just want to build things, master patterns and get the exhilarating flow of dopamine from understanding things. I’m not trying to say I’m better than anybody here. I’m saying we all have the capacity to do this and enjoy it. You just have to take responsibility for who you are, have a little faith in your abilities and don’t buy Backstreet Boys records.

No Rules: DAVID CRANMER

2011-11-21T07:49:00.000-08:00

If you don't know who DAVID CRANMER is by now, I don't know what to do with you. You are clearly someone who doesn't pay attention. Listen this time, okay? Cranmer is the editor and publisher of one of the most consistent and entertaining crime zines around these days, BEAT TO A PULP. He's also a writer of tight and clever crime fiction that's appeared all over the webs and in print. And-- most importantly for our purposes today-- he is the alter-ego of one EDWARD A. GRAINGER, author of the best-selling ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE & GIDEON MILES, VOLUME ONE and VOLUME TWO.

I wrote reviews of both volumes when they came out, you can find them here and here, and I don't have much to add except that, having read a whole lotta Westerns since then, the stories of Laramie and Miles STILL stand up as some of the most fun short stories I've read in a long time, regardless of genre.

I'm please to have Cranmer here at Psycho-Noir today, talking about the genesis of his Grainger pseudonym.

The Original Edward A. Grainger and His Influence

This picture is of the original Edward A. Grainger. He died twenty-eight years before I was born and what little I know of him comes from fragmented stories from my mom. He owned an import/export business in Georgetown, Guyana. He wrote two religious books, Wither Are We Drifting and Messages of Love and Light. He died in Trinidad at the age of 40 from alcoholism.

He wrote two books. My grandfather, the author.

My mom has told me many times of when she was a little girl, she wrote a story, Tula of the Jungle, and my grandfather took it to work with him one day, typed it out on the typewriter, and brought it back to her. Typing out that story was probably an insignificant moment to Grandpa Grainger, but it was an act of love that made his daughter very happy one afternoon, one that paid forward through the years and down the line as she passed along her joy to me.

My mom never mentioned writing anything again, but it was all I needed to spark the fire in me. I tried my hand at it in my teen years and then again more seriously in my mid-thirties. And here I am now, writing noir westerns and crime fiction, editing and publishing a webzine, and enjoying every minute of it.

Thanks, Grandpa.

"The Horror of the Eye!!"

2011-11-18T09:50:00.000-08:00

When I was about three years old, I had an accident that destroyed the vision in my right eye. I don’t really remember any of it, but from what I’ve been able to figure out from my mom and other sources, I’d found a broken Coke bottle in the front yard (we lived off a dirt road where teenagers would often speed by and toss things out their windows) and decided for some reason that playing with a broken bottle was JUST the thing to do. The teen-age girl who was baby-sitting me at the time freaked out when she saw what I had. She moved to knock the bottle out of my hand, and wound up hitting it directly into my face.
The result was a cut iris and a severed muscle on the left side of the eye. I was rushed to the hospital, where, because my mom was poor and didn’t have insurance, I was left waiting in the emergency room for over an hour—in shock.
They didn’t bother to try to fix the damage. For a couple months after that, I wore an eye-patch, and oddly enough, had to learn how to walk all over again. My balance was shot, so it was a challenge. I remember, vaguely, walking down the hall and veering off, running into the wall. I also remember laughing about it, until looking up to see my mom in tears. Weird memory.
Since then, I’ve had some small amount of peripheral vision in that eye, but just barely. Cover up my left eye and I can’t see shit, really. And since the muscle was severed, the right eye drifts to the right.
Believe it or not, this messed-up eye never had much effect on my life. When I was a kid, the drifting effect was hardly noticeable. As a teen, when it started drifting more, it still wasn’t too bad—this was the post-punk ‘80’s, remember, and wonky eyes (a la David Bowie) could actually work in your favor when it came to girls (which was more or less my sole concern in those days).
In the last ten years or so, though, the drifting has grown continuously worse, to the point where I get occasional head-aches from it, and it’s more immediately apparent to people I meet. Honestly, I’ve gotten a bit self-conscious about it, for the first time in my life. Whenever I see photos of myself, I’m always startled and a bit mortified by it. It sorta makes me look like a sleazy psychopath. And I am NOT sleazy.
…which is my long-winded way of explaining why I hate having my picture taken. A couple days ago, my friend, the photographer Ron Warren, took a series of shots of me (he needed an excuse to use his new studio, which is pretty rad, by the way) and I was the test subject. He got some really good photos. But I vetoed many of them, because of that damn eye. It just looks… weird.
So I’m thinking of getting surgery, just to pull the eye back to the goddamn center where it belongs.
Or who knows? Maybe sleazy psychopath is a look that works for me.

No Rules: PETE RISLEY

2011-11-18T08:01:00.000-08:00

PETE RISLEY is the author of RABID CHILD, one of the most disturbing but compulsively readable books written in the last couple of years. We started getting to know each other because of our mutual connection through New Pulp Press, and it didn't take long before I realized we had an awful lot of interests in common-- Crime fiction, of course, but also exploitation movies and garage rock.
The difference being, Pete's knowledge of these subjects dwarfs my own. Honestly, I thought I knew a thing or two, but Pete is a treasure trove of fascinating information about obscure stuff...
Following is a great example. Pete latches on to a writer I'd never heard of, a sort of rival of Mickey Spillane, and turns it into an amazingly interesting essay.
Here's PETE RISLEY.

David Karp’s HARDMAN And The Spillane Scare of the 1950’s

I’m certainly no spring chicken at this point, but I wasn’t around reading crime fiction in the 1950’s. Like a fair number of present-day devotees of what we now call noir, I first learned about writers like Jim Thompson, David Goodis and Harry Whittington mainly from critical works like Geoffrey O'Brien’s HARDBOILED AMERICA : THE LURID YEARS OF PAPERBACKS (1981) and from the eye-opening mid-'80's reprints offered by Black Lizard Books in the US and Zomba Books' Black Box Thrillers series in the UK. Thus, like many other readers, in the 1980’s I took up part-time residence on the wrong side of the tracks in mid-century America, doting over the work of writers of that era who were not well-known to the general public during their productive years.
Even so, for those of us who were around even as kids in the later 1950's or '60's, an earlier taste of something like noir fiction, though never identified under that term, came courtesy of mega-popular novelist Mickey Spillane. Unlike Thompson or Goodis, everyone had heard of him. For myself as a pre-teen in the mid-'60's, Spillane was one of the few authors whose books I'd be attracted to because the cover bore a familiar name, along with the sexy unclothed girl pictured there; otherwise, that type of cover art was usually the thing that would inspire me to leaf-through a paperback book, and sometimes actually try to read one, in hopes of finding the girl inside the book as well.
Of course, Spillane’s work was ultra-hardboiled for its time, and often for our time too. His protagonists, mainly P.I. Mike Hammer, were unrepentantly brutal in the way they dealt with miscreants – and frequently, in dealings with women, trod a dangerously alluring crossroads between violence and sex. His novels proved to be wildly popular in the ‘50’s, selling extraordinarily well in mass market paperback editions, especially in the US but also abroad. Indeed, Spillane's phenomenal popularity, beginning with his first novel I, THE JURY in 1949, though initially published in hardcover as were all his early works, virtually created the mass-market paperback-original crime fiction field, inspiring the launch of now-esteemed publishing ventures like Gold Medal and Lion Books, that gave us so much great noir back in the day.

Lion Books has a special place in the history of the noir fiction category. Founded in 1949 and edited by a man named Arnold Hano, and operated on a lower budget than some of its competitors, Lion published works by Jim Thompson, David Goodis and Day Keene that are now key titles in the noir canon. Thompson especially was associated with Lion, publishing ten of his paperback originals there, including his best-known novel, THE KILLER INSIDE ME (1953). Many noir enthusiasts today are inclined to dig deeper into Lion’s old ‘50’s list, finding great and/or fascinating stuff like Richard Prather’s THE PEDDLER, Fletcher Flora’s STRANGE SISTERS, THE LUSTFUL APE by Russell Gray (Bruno Fischer) and Curtis Lucas’ SO LOW, SO LONELY.

Another Lion author, who published four novels with them in the early ‘50’s, was David Karp. Karp’s name often turns up in surveys of the noir field, though to my knowledge, none of his novels in the category have been reprinted since the 1960’s. Karp, in fact, is most associated with a novel titled ONE, also published in 1953, which is said to be about a near-future dystopian society rather similar to what’s found in George Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR. That novel, which has been returned to print in recent years, was first published not as genre Science Fiction, but in hardcover from a mainstream press. An article about an interview with Lion Books editor Arnold Hano, by George Tuttle and included in THE BIG BOOK OF NOIR (1998, ed. By Ed Gorman, Lee Server and Martin H. Greenburg), quotes Hano as saying that, in contrast to the alienated and idiosyncratic Thompson, “Karp was more of a traditional writer and knew he could make it elsewhere and really wanted out from our publishing logo.” In a section about Karp in Paul Duncan’s study NOIR FICTION: DARK HIGHWAYS (2003), the author is quoted as saying in 1972, long after he’d gone mainstream, “if there’s such a thing as a moralist novelist, I am in that class or genre. I am a didactic writer.” Both these comments suggest that Karp is a very different deal than Thompson or Goodis.

Which brings me to the focus of my essay here, David Karp's Lion original HARDMAN (1953). The central character of the novel is himself a novelist, named Jack Hardman, who’s depicted as a very tough, mean, thuggish guy with no respect whatsoever for social niceties. He takes what he wants, and gives you a shove on the beezer for good measure. He grew up hard in urban backstreets, and began writing under the advice of a well-meaning judge after getting in serious trouble with the law as a young man. Hardman’s published works soon prove phenomenally popular and make him a celebrity, despite great disdain for his work among some, especially the supposed literati. Much guilty soul-searching is done by the agent who brings Hardman’s works to the public, as he frets over their baleful influence on society. An encounter with a flirtatious and neurotic heiress leads eventually to the unsurprising revelation that Hardman’s brutal attitudes are rooted in an aberrant and violent sexuality, and that proves his undoing.

It doesn’t take great insight to see the character Jack Hardman as an altered version of Mickey Spillane – and a quite unfair portrayal, if taken as that. As is well known, Spillane's work was very controversial and widely condemned in its ‘50’s heyday. Revered literary critic Malcolm Cowley, for one, denounced Spillane as a “homicidal paranoic.” Lee Server, in the entry for Spillane in his ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PULP WRITERS (2002), says “some of these attacks made it seem as though Spillane was the architect of the nation’s destruction.” In keeping with this judgment, near the end of HARDMAN, taglined in its original edition as “a novel of the evil workings of sadism,” the repentant agent says:

“This evil Hardman’s turned loose in the world is going to be hurting us for a long, long time. You can’t take the printed word and dirty it. You can’t take a thing as holy as a book and use it for your own illness and not expect to do something evil and mean and crippling to every person who’s ever written or dreamed or found the printed dreams of others something precious and valuable.”

While this passage reads like it could be a laughing-up-his-sleeve parody of earnest do-gooder claptrap, my impression overall is that Karp did have a beef with Spillane’s work, and with some other social trends reflected in his portrayal of Jack Hardman that don’t have to do directly with Spillane. One of these may have been with the rise of popular fiction about Juvenile Delinquency, at the same time as Spillane’s heyday. Jack Hardman, unlike Spillane to my knowledge, gets in bad trouble with the law in his youth, and his writing efforts begin with that sympathetic judge who thinks self-expression may somehow bring insight that would reform him. I find this a little reminiscent of Dr. Fredric Wertheim’s introduction to the first paperback edition (1950) of Hall Elson’s TOMBOY, a key work in the J.D. fiction category, and also a best-seller. Wertheim, notorious today for his influential stuffed-shirt-egghead attack on the vile social influence of comic books in a tome titled THE SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT (1954), says of Elson’s work:

“Ask the average reader what is the central theme of this novel and he will speak of complexes, psychopathic personalities and aggressive instincts. But the underlying theme of this book is fear. Not naked fear, but fear disguised as bravado, cruelty, brutality, hate and sadism. Even the daring exploits of Tomboy, the adolescent who sometimes seems to be afraid of nothing and is tougher than the rest of the boys and girls in the gang, are only a veneer.”

As for a popular or noted novelist having a criminal background, I don’t think there really was anyone fitting the bill in the U.S at the time of HARDMAN’S publication. I doubt that Karp was thinking of Jean Genet over in France, whom he surely knew about, but that’s a rather different deal. Chester Himes was around, but his work wasn’t on the best-seller list by any means. There were convict and ex-convict novelists to come years later in the crime fiction field, including E. Richard Johnson, Malcolm Braly and Edward Bunker, but they weren’t publishing in 1953, and anyway, while their works are valued today by noir enthusiasts, none of them were ever widely popular. Also, Norman Mailer didn’t stab his wife until 1960.

It appears to me that with HARDMAN, Lion Books and author Karp were rather hypocritically and ungratefully jumping onto the Spillane-bashing bandwagon, when it was Spillane and his work that had put down the ground beneath their feet. Thus, circa 1953, even a publishing venture generally seen as offering fare cheaper and sleazier than Spillane’s work sought to make hay out of the strait-laced fervor. Doing so is a standard ‘exploiteer’ move, as with the work of a number of culturally-incorrect writers and filmmakers whom I admire, so I won’t condemn it. Beyond that, I found HARDMAN to be an enjoyable and intriguing novel, in part for what I see as its faint but persistent ambiguities about the author’s own attitudes, despite his later claim of didacticism. After all, this is a work of fiction, and none of the characters can assuredly be said to speak for the author.

In fact, I think that at some points in his narrative Karp seems to sympathize perversely with his twisted bad-boy creation. An impressive passage comes late in the novel, after the psycho-sexual debacle in which Hardman has wrecked his own life and career, in which he vents his noirish spleen at shelves of presumably respectable books in the stacks of a public library:

“Hardman yanked books out, spilling them unto the floor. “What goes on behind the calm, reasoning brains? What goes on behind the buttery talk about honor and pride and justice and tenderness? The worm, gentlemen,” Hardman laughed and lurched down an aisle, his finger, crooked, swooping up and down past the title faces of the books, “the worm that works inside your heads – the worm that makes you want to rape your sister, kill your father, rob your brother, and spit in God’s eye. The worm you hide, you pious, pompous frauds!” … “The worm! Did you tell them about the worm? Did you turn him loose so that he could grow into a full-sized snake? Brother snake,” Hardman murmured, “dear brother snake, shake yourself loose and come out into the sun, and turn those yellow eyes up, the world’s yours. It’s his world, you bastards!” Hardman wheeled in a complete circle. “His world, you lily-white cruds!”

Pete Risley is the author of the novel RABID CHILD, published in 2010 by New Pulp Press.

DEADLAND USA vol 2: Ballroom Blitz

2011-11-17T08:30:00.000-08:00

Goth girls, punk rock, and under-age drinking. That's what punk slacker Sammy Lynch has in mind for his nineteenth birthday. Too bad for him that his special night coincides with the end of the world.

When the Meaties crash the club, Sammy is caught in the middle of a nightmare, and it'll take more than some interesting drugs to get him through this one...
Deadland USA Volume Two: Ballroom Blitz goes back to the beginning for Sammy and Rondo in one horrifying night of blood and carnage.

Welcome to how it all started... or ended. Welcome to Deadland USA.

Volume 2: Ballroom Blitz is now available at Amazon.com, and for my friends in the U.K., at Amazon.co.uk, here.

No Rules: LUCA VESTE

2011-11-17T08:03:00.000-08:00

In just a few short months, LUCA VESTE has garnered a very solid rep as a writer worth watching. His collection LIVERPOOL 5 got enough well-deserved good press that Veste followed it up almost immediately with, yes, MORE LIVERPOOL 5.
He runs the always-fun blog Guilty Conscience, where he's become quite the champion of independent writers. In the last couple of months, Luca has gathered together almost forty different writers for a new charity project called OFF THE RECORD-- an anthology of genre fiction, with all proceeds going to children's literacy charities on both sides of the Atlantic. It's due out in December.
I'm quite pleased to have this fresh voice here at Psycho-Noir.
Meet Luca Veste.

Death. It’s not the most light of topics, but it’s a subject which fascinates me. An inordinate amount of my time is spent thinking about my mortality, and not just my own, but everyone I care about also. It can get in the way of things to be honest. If you spend most of your time worrying about dying, you end up forgetting about the living part.

I turned 28 this year, not a milestone really, but this year did mark the first funeral I’ve been too, for someone I knew. My wife’s Nan passed away in June, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease. Before this, a few people I kind of knew had died, people I knew from work etc. but I hadn’t gone to their funerals. My own grandfather, Salvatore Veste, died when I was 10, too young to go to his funeral.

Sat in the church, surrounded by grief, it was a humbling experience. When a member of the family gave a eulogy, it suddenly struck me what I’d been doing with my life up to that point. Reading from a piece of paper, she gave the life story of my wife’s nan. From birth to her final years, I listened as every major event was covered. And it was all contained on one side of a piece of paper. Just an A4 sized piece of paper.

And it hit me. That’s all life is. A long (or if you’re unlucky, unfortunately short) journey, which leads to a loved one telling some people about your life from a piece of paper. It’s up to you how you fill it.

Now, anyone who’s already read my collection of short stories ‘Liverpool 5’ will recognise those paper related thoughts from the story ‘Dreams’. Also members of my family will recognise the man who relates this bit of pseudo philosophy. Because that’s what I do. I take real life people and situations, and make them kind of interesting, I hope. Another writer once said to me, ‘don’t write what you know, write what you can imagine…because what you know is probably pretty boring.’ And I heed that advice. Liverpool is a great city, with so much character. A lot more to it than just The Beatles, it’s steeped in history. Every street, every building, has its own story to tell. Every person you pass in town has their own story. I just try to tell a few of them.

I’ve been extremely lucky in my life. Hit by a car at six years old, I probably shouldn’t even be here right now. Yet, I’m married to a wonderfully complicated woman, with two beautiful daughters. I’m studying two subjects in Criminology and Psychology at University which fascinate me, and I also write in my spare time as well. I’m a lucky man.

I’ve been described by the writer and now my friend Darren Sant as exploding onto the writing scene like a ‘Scouse Gazelle’ these past few months. He’s right in a way. I was always on the periphery, bothering Steve Mosby or Neil White with inane questions about writing. But that funeral changed my outlook. To be that close to grief and death caused me to create a blog reviewing books. Reviewing books led me into a conversation with the excellent writer Charlie Williams, which ended with him kind of daring me to write a story entitled ‘Jeff: The Uninspired Vampire’. Writing that story, and making Charlie laugh, made me write another story. Col Burypublishing that second story on the fantastic website ‘Thrillers, Killers ‘n’ Chillers’ gave me the confidence to go on. Talking to writers of the calibre of Nick Quantrill and Julie Morrigan, giving up their time to give me advice and guidance, led me to approaching the publishers Trestle Press with five stories, and asking if they were interested.

In four short months, I have had one Ebook released, a follow-up written and ready for release, a story being published in Paul D. Brazill’s Brit Grit 2, and a project called Off The Record coming shortly, involving 37 of the best short story writers out there.
And it all came from death. My fear and fascination of it. It comes from being a staunch atheist (the need for evidence, of any sort, being of importance to me) and the knowing that this is it. Like the Eminem “song”, you got one shot, one chance, that’s all you got. So, even if you believe there’s more than just this life, that there’s something on the other side, why not give this life the best shot you can. That’s my goal now.

I’m just filling my piece of paper.

No Rules: Thomas Pluck

2011-11-15T06:10:00.000-08:00

THOMAS PLUCK is one of our newer shining stars in the field of short, hard fiction, a writer who's passion and anger at injustice pulse like hot blood in every word he writes. His work has appeared at Plots With Guns, Beat to a Pulp, Crimespree, Shotgun Honey, and other notable places.

Nowhere is Tommy's anger at social injustice and cruelty more evident than in the new anthology, LOST CHILDREN. But I'll let him tell you about it himself...

I want to talk to you about the most boring question in the world, which is Why Do You Write?

I write because I'm pissed off, that's why. I'm angry. The abuse of power drives me to a frothing, violent rage, and because I'd rather walk freely on the earth and not be caged among the marijuana smokers and scofflaws who can't buy their way out of prison like our aristocratic betters, I write about it instead of hammering railroad spikes through the skulls of my targets.

The abuse of power takes many forms. In crime fiction it's most often a crooked cop, or a shady politician or power broker, but politics is merely behavior writ large. The weakest among us are children, and the abuse of power over them is our vilest crime. To quote my friend Fiona Johnson, "Some children are lost before they have even started living. Some children are a throw-away commodity like a burger box that’s left to blow down the street in the wind and rain."

That's the cue she gave for her guest post at Flash Fiction Friday, and she ponied up £5 per tale to her favorite charity, Children 1st. I joined in and donated $5 per entry to PROTECT.org, and 44 writers answered the challenge. We donated over $600, but knew we could do more. So we took 30 of the best stories and collected them in an e-book called Lost Children: A Charity Anthology, now available on Amazon for Kindle, Barnes & Noble for Nook, and at Smashwords in epub, PDF, mobi, Sony e-Reader, Kobo, and viewable online.

All the proceeds- after the retailers take their cut- go to PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children, which advocates political reform for children in the U.S., and Children 1st Scotland, who help vulnerable children and families in Scotland. PROTECT was co-founded by author Andrew Vachss, which is how I first learned of it. They've done a lot of good in the States. So if you're angry at the latest abuse- whether it's shower rapes at Penn State, that Texas judge whipping his handicapped daughter on camera, the 5,000 cases of abuse covered up by the Boy Scouts of America... this is something you can do about it. PROTECT fights to fund the laws that let these bastards get away with it.

If you're angry like me, you can write. But you can also donate and make a difference, and get thirty powerful tales from the likes of Ron Earl Phillips, Paul D. Brazill. David Barber, Luca Veste, Benoit Lelievre, Erin Zulkoski, J.F. Juzwik, Susan Tepper, and many more including Fiona "McDroll" Johnson and myself.
You can follow the donations at the book's blog, Lost Children: A Charity Anthology.

Stay angry,
Thomas Pluck

No Rules: EVA DOLAN

2011-11-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

EVA DOLAN just sort of popped onto my radar a couple months ago, I'm not even sure how. She has this blog, see, called Loitering With Intent (which is a great name) and she mostly reviews books there.
But that's not really putting it as well as I could. She doesn't just review books-- she reviews the HELL out of them. She writes the sort of reviews you want to read. Fact is, Eva Dolan's writing has incredible style and flair and wit.
This extends to her fiction writing as well-- I was pleased to see that she is able to tackle short fiction just as skillfully as reviews, like this story of hers in Shotgun Honey.
How does she pull it off? Easy.
She gambles.
But I'll let her explain it herself... here's Eva Dolan.

As some of you may have already noticed I’m liberal hippy spawn; my mum rolled me my first joint when I was fourteen and we smoked it listening to Underworld. I had no rules and no constraints, the house was full of books, the vinyl collection was amazing, and if I didn’t feel like going to school I didn't go.
The only thing which was strictly verboten was gambling.
Naturally me and my brother Sean both gravitated towards it.
Sean’s had a regular home game going the last few years, mainly recruited from his builder mates, with me the perennial short stack among blokes who earn my yearly wage in a month and aren’t shy about mentioning it.
The first game I sat in on was just after I left uni. I was skint, waitressing in a hotel, not making great tips - can’t imagine why – and Sean said he’d cover my stake since I was getting arsy about not playing anymore.
Sean’s place looked like a drug dealer convention when I turned up, a grey Maserati sandwiched between two Range Rovers with blacked out windows and every extra the garage could fit on them.
Inside they crowded Sean’s little kitchen, three bulldozer built men in jeans and Ted Baker shirts, watches like steering wheels and uniform number one cuts, not a rough palm between them.
They were sweet and welcoming though, exactly the kind of mouthy guys it’s fun to be at a table with.
We talked boxing and football – I was the only Gooner among rabid Spurs fans – and it turned out they’d been hitting the spread betting pretty hard over the weekend.
Within an hour I knew the price of everyones cars, villas and golf club memberships. As well as the result of Bob’s wife’s vaginoplasty.
He held his index finger up in the air – “It’s fucking like that now.”
All three were the classic loose-aggressive types, they earned their money too easy to be anything else, but Bob made Tony G look like Dan Harrington. He brought every hand in with a raise, regardless of position or his holding, shoved almost every three-bet that was thrown at him.
I’d got the bum seat too, stuck on his right, which meant any speculative move I made got stamped on hard. I barely played a pot in the first hour, spent most of it keeping the drinks flowing, my tiny stack slowly shrinking.
The blokes got rowdy and even looser, trash talking like they’d seen the big boys do it on Late Night Poker.
Sean was up, I was down.
A tight range doesn’t play well against maniacs, so I thought ‘Fuck it, it’s Sean’s money’ and started throwing in some under the gun raises with high cards and suited connectors.
It got respect for a couple of rounds but the drink was kicking in and Bob turned bluff-catcher on me, forcing me to fold for a big chunk of my stack.
I sat tight for awhile, sulking.
Bob hit a two-outer to bust his mate, then launched into a protracted story about a Hamburg brothel and a red-headed dwarf with skills most regular size girls could only dream of.
He was distracted enough with the telling to check into a wet board and when he realised his mistake he overcompensated with his final bet. I snap called and turned over a full house.
Bob had – fucking inevitably – quads.
So, what did I learn from this?
About poker, not much, but I got a great character out of Bob and a story about a German prostitute I wouldn’t have heard from anyone but a pissed up, loose-tongued builder.
And that is the moral of my story. As writers we need tonnes of raw data if we’re going to spit out something decent, but cannibalising your early years can only carry you so far, unless you’re from circus people – in which case disregard this, you don’t need any help.
The rest of us grow up and start editing the crazy out of our lives. We slip away from the mates who are always borrowing money or getting arrested for some shit or other, start drinking in quieter pubs and having people round for dinner.
We still need the crazy though and where are we going to get it? From our nice, new friends who read The Guardian and think Kirsty Allsopp is just marvellous?
No.
Proper on-the-page crazy has to be worked at; talk to the people your gut instinct tells you to avoid, the ones your eyes glide over like they’re furniture, because if you listen I guarantee they will talk. People want to spill, it’s perhaps the only good thing to come out of our culture’s confession-driven media, this widespread inability to keep it shut.
It is writer heaven.
Okay, I’ll admit there are risks involved in going slumming – especially for girls – but hey, that’s what knuckledusters were invented for.

Metal and Shotguns

2011-11-12T09:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes being a writer and trying to get your work out there feels very much like the above photo. You know, putting your pecker in a hole and allowing a rooster to do unmentionable things to it. Lately, though, I find my wang in a sling far less often, much to my relief.

The new issue of Pulp Metal Magazine came out today, and the line-up is pretty spectacular. There's an interview with the gorgeous and brilliant Julia Madeleine for starters, and an essay from the equally gorgeous and brilliant Paul Brazill, before getting to the stories. There's Benoit Lelievre, B.r. Stateham, Kent Gowran, and several others, including yours truly. My story is called "The World is Made of Candy", because, you know, it is.

And I wanted to mention that, a few days ago, my story "No-Account Sonofabitch" appeared at Shotgun Honey. That made me happy. I'm getting a lot more stories placed as of late, and many more are on the immediate horizon. So stick around.

And yes, that first paragraph up there was written solely as an excuse to use a photo of a kid with his pecker in a hole and a rooster doing awful things to it.

No Rules: ALLAN LEVERONE

2011-11-11T07:37:00.000-08:00

ALLAN LEVERONE is the author of the thrillers THE LONELY MILE, THE FINAL VECTOR, POSTCARDS FROM THE APOCALYPSE and DARKNESS FALLS. In a very short period of time, he has carved out a place for himself in the crowded world of thriller writers. How has he done this? By being DAMN GOOD, that's how. Reviewers have compared him to the likes of Michael Crichton or Robert Ludlum, and there's some validity to those statements-- but frankly, I think Leverone is a more solid writer than either of them. If there was any justice in the world (and there's not, I checked) the name Allan Leverone would be just as huge as the icons of thriller writing he's compared to.

I am proud to introduce you to my friend, the terrifically talented ALLAN LEVERONE, addressing a tricky issue that every writer struggles with these days...

We’ve established what you are, now we’re just haggling over the price

I want you to buy my book. Let’s get that out in the open right off the bat. And not to generalize, but I think that’s the case for most authors, too. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they just keep a journal?

If you can accept that I want you to buy my book, just as Heath Lowrance wants you to buy his (and you really should; it’s unbelievably good), and Charlie Stella wants you to buys his, and so on, the question becomes, “What’s the right way to try to convince you to do it?”

Here’s where it gets sticky. One of the many many MANY things I’ve learned since publication of my first book is that there are almost as many opinions regarding authors marketing and promoting their work as there are authors. Some look upon any attempt by an author to market his work with a disdain bordering on contempt; others seem to believe a strategy of promotional carpet-bombing is something worth attempting.

So, what’s the proper course of action? How much promoting should I do? Should I remain virginally pure? Or should I strut my stuff on the nearest street corner, decked out in hot pants and fishnets? And don’t worry, I’m not speaking literally; it’s too late for the first option and I wouldn’t inflict the second on my worst enemy.

I wish I knew the answer.

I can tell you this, and if I had to hazard a guess—based entirely on unscientific observation—I would say the vast majority of authors would agree with me: Promoting myself is not something that’s comfortable for me or that I enjoy doing in any significant way.

Don’t misunderstand. This is not to imply I don’t enjoy social media (I do), or that I don’t enjoy interacting with readers, especially readers of genre fiction, and other authors (I do). What I mean is I didn’t begin writing fiction seriously five years ago with the goal of pimping out myself or my work.

I’ve never been an attention-seeker, either in my second job (also known as The One That Pays The Bills) as an air traffic controller, or in my personal life. In virtually every case, I’m more than happy to stay in the background and let others enjoy the spotlight. I take to photographs like vampires take to sunlight (traditional vampires, that is, not vampires of the more recent sparkly vintage).

The problem, of course, is that for a largely unknown author to stand in the background means his work will be relegated to the background as well. And as I’ve already mentioned, I want you to buy my book. So I’ve tried a number of different strategies to bring a little attention to my work.

I’ve asked (okay, begged, I’m not too proud to admit it) more well-known authors to blurb my work. To my astonishment, some did, for which I will be forever grateful. I believe their quotes have helped give my work some legitimacy, but as far as affecting sales, I’m not convinced there has been any correlation.

I’ve done blog tours. They were a lot of work, but also a lot of fun, and I’ll probably continue to do them to promote my work. But did they affect sales? I don’t believe they did in any significant way, although if an author believes in his work, he also believes that readers introduced to that work through a blog tour will be more likely to check out his next book when the time comes.

I’ve sent my books out for review, devoting hours upon hours to giving away copy after copy in an attempt to generate some buzz. The resulting reviews have been almost unanimously good, but how many readers buy a book based on reviews? You’re not sure? Me neither.

I’ve joined Twitter and have been Facebooking for quite a while now, and I try not to overwhelm people with news about my books via those outlets because, let’s face it, constant promotion gets old after a while, especially when it’s the same people reading the same promotional messages over and over.

I’ve tried buying Facebook ads, I’ve tried promoting through various sites for various amounts of money, with varying levels of success. A Kindle Nation Daily sponsorship was very effective, but also very expensive, and the bump it provided for my sales didn’t last long.

All these efforts come at a price, though, and not just a monetary one. If I’m working on promotion, I’m not writing, which is what I really love to do. The “experts” say the best thing to do is write the best book you can, then follow that up with something better, and then do it again. And when you come right down to it, the quality of the work is the only thing any author can really control, anyway.

So what’s the verdict? Stay virginally pure or get down and dirty? I guess in the end I’m just like everyone else: I’ll end up somewhere in between the two extremes. We’re all stumbling around in the dark anyway, hoping to hit on a formula for developing readership that Einstein probably couldn’t chart.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go tweet about my Goodreads book giveaway…

A Good Day

2011-11-09T09:25:00.000-08:00

It's been a good day today, so far. Slept in late, and woke up to find that my story "No Account Sonofabitch" was up at the excellent SHOTGUN HONEY. That alone would've qualified this as a good day, but then I saw that James Reasoner (one of my favorite western writers) had favorably reviewed both "That Damned Coyote Hill" and the first episode of "Deadland USA" over at his blog.

So I'm feeling the strut today.

In other news...

My great pal and designer extraordinare Ron Warren has designed a brand new cover for "That Damned Coyote Hill"-- see image above-- that I am just in love with. Yes, I'm going to marry it. It will be the new look for all future Hawthorne stories, since the original image probably breaks at least twenty copyright laws. And besides, I like this one better. What do you think?

If you've already bought "That Damned Coyote Hill", and you want this image, just let me know and I'll e-mail you a jpeg of it. Or I reckon you could just help yourself to the one posted here.

No Rules: CHARLIE WILLIAMS

2011-11-09T08:13:00.000-08:00

CHARLIE WILLIAMS pens the black-as-pitch but funny-as-hell adventures of Royston Blake, the maniacal bouncer/half-baked tough guy/ne'er-do-well of the town of Mangel. These books are amazing fun, and unique in that Royston narrates in his hypnotic lower-class Brit dialect. I always find myself reading them out-loud.

But as fun as the Blake novels are, there's more to Mr. Williams than that, as evidenced by his new book, GRAVEN IMAGE, now available on e-readers everywhere and also as a traditional, you know, book.

I'm very pleased to have CHARLIE WILLIAMS here at Psycho-Noir today...

Cutting the brush

I've got a thing about genre. Or rather, I haven't. My thing is that I always thought I was in one genre, then somehow engineered a move into a different one. Then I found it hard to stay in that genre, and kept slipping back into the former one. Then a third genre reared its pretty head and beckoned me.

Fact is, I don't really give much of a shit what genre my stuff is. Genre is for publishers and readers, not authors. As far as I am concerned, all I have to do is get the stories down in the best way possible, making them as good as they can be. Who cares what genre they are? Maybe I should. Maybe, if I had made more of an effort to keep my novella GRAVEN IMAGE in the crime camp, it might reach more readers. But that would make it a different book, and probably not as good a one.

I have tried writing straight crime. I even tried to write some sort of generic thriller once, with a detective and some bad guys and a single-parent damsel in distress who the 'tec doesn't know whether to protect or sweep off her feet. But I couldn't stay interested in the po-faced-ness of it all. Whenever a serious moment cropped up where the narrator had to do some moralising, he would get an insatiable urge to drink massive amounts of rough cider and go on a spontaneous killing spree - using a random item of garden machinery.

And I knew why this was: he was making up for all those pages of playing the good boy, toeing the line and being the problem-solving hero. That is not what I'm interested in. I like main characters who are fucked up, whether they know it or not. I want to show how fallible we are, and how laughable our self-images are. If that detective of mine had just been a bit more laid back and honest with himself in the first half of the book - if he had tortured that witness just a little instead of reasoning with him, or hopped into the sack with Ms Damsel at the first opportunity instead of sticking to some code - the killing spree might have been avoided. Brush-cutters would have remained un-primed, lives would have been saved.

(Shit, why didn't I finish that book?)

So yeah, Graven Image, which is what I intended to write about here. It's crime, but it doesn't really stick to the tropes. The hero is a bouncer, but he is also something else, something you will have to read the thing to find out. And maybe you won't do that, knowing now that this is a book that is likely to veer away from crime. But I'm also hedging that you will, seeing as this here blog is concerned with a sub-genre called "Psycho Noir". And if I had to nail my stuff to a genre, psycho noir is pretty much what I would choose. But I can't do that, because it would be tempting fate. I would be damning myself to a subconscious struggle to break free from the confines of the psycho noir genre.

So if you should read a historical romance in a year or so featuring a brush-cutter death scene, that'll be me (under a pen name).

No Rules: RAY BANKS

2011-11-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

It took me a long time to write this introduction for RAY BANKS. I kept writing stuff that sounded really gushing, or really fawning, and frankly I was making myself a little nauseous. The thing is, I really admire Banks a great deal and found it really hard to write an intro about him that sounded level-headed and cool.

Let's just stick to the facts, then. He hails from Scotland. He's one of the best, period.

RAY BANK's novels about Cal Innes are required reading if you want a sense of what can be done with the modern P.I., and for those who find Ian Rankin a bit long-winded (which I do), Bank's concise voice and relentlessly tight plotting are a welcome antidote.

His new (well, kind of new) book is called DEAD MONEY, and it's one of the first releases (along with Anthony Neil Smith's ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS) to be put out by the brand-spanking-new BLASTED HEATH.

I'm very pleased to introduce... RAY BANKS.

Back to the Drawing Board

Here's the thing, as much as I believe that you should reread books as often as you can, that belief doesn't extend to my own. Don't get me wrong, if you fancy poring over the Innes novels, looking for all manner of non-existent intellectual subtext (or - the more likely scenario - barely-concealed dick jokes), you be my guest and God love you for it. But as far as I'm concerned, once a book of mine staggers out there like a pisshead on dole day, it's on its own. I don't pick the bugger up again until I'm forced (and I do have to be forced) to do a reading, and even then I'll try to pick something from near the start, so I don't have to read too much of my own book.

It's not that I don't have confidence in the finished product, you understand. It's just that going over old stuff tends to be a rather frustrating exercise in what-ifs and could-have-beens - for all you manage to smother some of the book's problems, there are always others prancing in the wings, and they don't make their unfettered, moronic presence known until it's too late.

And tinkering with a "finished" book is a dangerous game. Unless you keep a cautious eye on proceedings you can end up compounding the old flaws with new ones, and then you're right up the creek. There's a reason, after all, why most director's cuts rarely work better than their theatrical counterparts - in the rush to fix things, a lot of creative types fix things that didn't need to be fixed.

So it may come as a surprise to those few of you who bought my debut The Big Blind to read the following blurb for my new one, Dead Money:

Double-glazing salesman Alan Slater is in trouble. He hasn't had a good sales lead in months. His wife rightly suspects him of playing around. His best mate Les Beale has turned into a bigoted, boozed-up headcase. And that's the least of it.

When a rigged poker game has fatal consequences, Alan finds himself not only responsible for the clean-up, but also for Beale's escalating debt to a man who won't take "broke" for an answer. As Beale's life spirals out of control, he becomes ever more desperately reliant on Alan to save his skin.

But Alan isn't about to be dragged into the gutter by anyone, least of all his bad-beat, dead money former mate.

After all, there's no such thing as a compassionate double-glazing salesman.

Now, unless you're already drunk - and it's after ten in the morning, so who isn't? - you could be forgiven for thinking I've just rebadged The Big Blind and foisted it upon the general public as a means to extract money for old rope. But you'd be (mostly) wrong. I'll admit, yes, my original aim was to re-release The Big Blind as an ebook earlier this year, but when I came to format the fucker (ah, the joys of formatting), I came to the clammy realisation that The Big Blind was sorely lacking in the old quality department.

I don't mean to have a pop at either the original publishers or the people who bought and liked The Big Blind. Indeed, my editor on that book has just had the misfortune to edit it again this time around - he's a glutton for punishment, obviously. As are those of you who buy it again. But things change, and The Big Blind is very much a novel of its time, reflective of the kind of deeply inexperienced yet admittedly passionate writer I was seven-eight years ago. So I couldn't in good conscience allow it out in public just in case someone thought it was brand new, hated it, and then went on to tell everyone they knew that this Banks fella was a fuckin' joke.

Hey, it happens. The Internet is dangerous and dark, and no place for a dewy-eyed, wandering ego.

And so I did the one thing I always said I wouldn't do - I tinkered. That tinkering turned into revision, which then turned into me rewriting the whole bloody thing from scratch. The book became wider in scope and, perversely, shorter in length. I took some of the less flattering comments people made about The Big Blind under advisement. I sorted out some of the plot elements that continued to bug me years later. I tried to think of The Big Blind as a first draft - some good stuff in there, but plenty of work still to do - and one of the reasons I changed the title was because it became a different book. Alan Slater is a couple of years older and now married, Les Beale's casual racism is now more than a character tic, and one of the main characters is of a different ethnicity. On a technical level, I got rid of most of the musical references and - a relatively new obsession of mine - most of the dialogue tags. And what I ended up with (and subsequently dumped on Blasted Heath's doorstep) was less a director's cut than another draft.

Or, as my fellow Blasted Heathen Anthony Neil Smith put it, Dead Money is the Desperado to The Big Blind's El Mariachi. Except, of course, that The Big Blind is now out of print, so if you're one of the dozens who own a copy, congratulations - you now have the only "rare" Ray Banks book. As for the rest of you filthy degenerates, I can only promise you what I promise everyone who buys one of my books - it may not be good, but at least it's short.

No Rules: RON WARREN

2011-11-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

photo by Dawn Sketch

RON WARREN and I have been best pals since our high school days, which, trust me, was a damn long time ago now. He's an award-winning photographer who is as skilled at shooting weddings as he is at artsier work. The covers of THE BASTARD HAND and DIG TEN GRAVES were both designed and put together by him and his wife Dawn Sketch. For the last couple years, he's been the editor of the online speculative fiction mag, The Nautilus Engine, (which you really should check out) and more recently he's started, along with his wife, Aspiring Author Book Covers.

May I present Mr. RON WARREN...

It’s an honor to be invited to guest-blog here at Psycho-Noir, especially since Heath’s premiere novel publication (the cult fave, The Bastard Hand) spurred my leap into designing book covers.

Where do book covers come from? The big publishing houses have in-house art departments, or, more frequently, contract out the design in a piecemeal fashion to freelance artists. Many authors have very little input into the look of their book. Small presses and e-publishers, however, often appreciate having this little bit of extra work taken off of their plate. Writing a check is far easier than dealing with those temperamental artists, right? (I feel that I would be doing all artists a disservice if I didn’t go a little bit Charlie Sheen right about now, so…. “WINNING!”)

In regards to The Bastard Hand…the book was picked up by Jon Bassoff at New Pulp Press and Heath dove into the back-and-forth process of editing the book for publication – tightening things that needed tightening, and lassoing any loose ends. Somewhere in the process he came to realize that he had some say in the design of the cover. A lot of say, it turns out. So Heath called me up and said, “How’d you like to design the cover for my book?”

Now, although I did a bit of design, the reason he called me is that I am a photographer and probably the only person he knows that can pummel a graphic file into some semblance of submission. I’ve been shooting professionally for over five years now, primarily in the world of event photography, but I’m always trying to expand my repertoire (hence, macro, real estate, portraiture, fashion, headshots, sports, fine art, products, landscapes, etc.). In other words, I’m kind of handy with the camera and the Photoshop. Tempted to quote Ron Burgundy, here, with: “I’m kind of a big deal.” But I shall refrain, because my namesake, while hilarious, has a much bigger ego than me.

The gears did begin to turn, however. I was very excited by the prospect of an organized, commissioned project, especially for a book I had read and eagerly wanted others to buy and then love it as much as I had.

Whenever possible, I like to work from my own original files (rather than stock photography) so the search began for churches that screamed classic simple southern Baptist or similar. Done. Shoot it. Check. Model shoot to bring Charlie to life. Roger that. And let the compositing work begin. After some tweaks, variations and options, we had something that fulfilled Heath’s vision. But Jon at New Pulp Press had the last word. He called me out on a small problem or two, I fixed ‘em, and the cover was finalized in no time.

The process and results were so satisfying creatively and professionally, that I decided I wanted to design more book covers, and, voila! Aspiring Author Book Covers was born! We’ve created covers for just about every kind of book from fiction to nonfiction. Some of the samples at the web site are for books that are currently available, others for upcoming books, and some are spec. work to show off, basically.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve all heard it, and, although we should heed it, let’s face it, we don’t always. When a book is recommended, the cover becomes unimportant. However, when you are lurking in a cozy bookstore, scanning the shelves and stacks to discover a treasure for yourself, the initial draw, that impetus to actually put the book in your hand and learn more, can only be a compelling title or an eye-catching book cover. This truth is compounded when scanning those tiny thumbnail images on an Amazon or Barnes and Noble website page. So I’m proud to do my little part to use the book’s wrapping paper, as it were, to draw attention to the real gift that lies inside.

Although I think the print book is not much longer for this world (bittersweet as I am both a book lover and a tree hugger) the evolution of the e-book will sustain the essence of books and book covers, writers and artists. I look forward to seeing where the mediums will go, and how I can travel with them.

No Rules: KIMMY DEE

2011-11-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

You know what's hot? Funny chicks.
Madeleine Kahn. Sarah Silverman. Anna Faris. Something about a woman with a raunchy sense of humor, man, it just makes you glad to be alive. And you can add KIMMY DEE to that list.
I first became aware of Kimmy not long ago, through a piece she did for Cracked.com called 5 Scientific Reasons Your Idea of Happiness is Wrong. Insanely funny, and more insightful than it even needed to be. Needless to say, I'm now stalking her (part-time) on line.
Fortunately, Kimmy has a blog, called Turd Mountain, which makes stalking her pretty easy. You should do it, too. It's her personal platform for railing against bad spellers, vapid fashion statements, John Mayer and all other manner of inane popular culture. Oh yeah, there's lots of poop jokes too.
I'm very happy to introduce you to KIMMY DEE...

An early autumn storm crackles feverishly, as the shutters drum against the house. The lights inside flicker, creating a dancing scene of shadowy monsters before darkness swallows the room completely.
I paw at the walls as I slowly make my way to the study. I fumble clumsily at the roll top desk until my hand lands on the book of matches religiously kept in the top drawer.
It takes two strikes, but the match roars to life; its orange orb of light glowing against my hand as I shield it from the breath of the ghost I know is hovering over my shoulder.
Trembling, I light the two candles atop the desk and shake out the match. As the flame takes hold, the dull light melts away my jitters. I carry one candle to the other side of the cozy room and set it on the end table beside my faithful rocker. This corner is my sanctuary.
I wrap myself in the serenity of my favorite quilt, and settle in to begin the latest suspense novel that called out to me. I pull my blanket a little tighter, ready to be swept off to an exciting new world, and…….
The low battery light is flashing on my Kindle.
FUCK.

Pseudo-Noir: Kimmy on Kindle
Modern technology has taken a massive dump on literature, people; and it wiped its stanky ass with elegant prose.
No I don’t actually own a Kindle, or a Nook, E-Reader, or any other version of the contraption. (I’m also not nearly wealthy enough to label a room a study, but I digress.) I choose to read while I exercise, and by that I mean I engage in the strenuous activity of turning pages-not clipping my Kindle to a treadmill or anything pretentious like that.
When the hell did flipping pages become too hard? How lazy has society gotten, that we need a touch-screen, computerized reading machine so that we don’t have to bend our knuckles to get to the next page? What’s next, electronic nose-picker? Automated ass itcher?
And these nefarious little gizmos can read to you now. Yes, you push a button and it reads your selected text aloud. I guess that’s designed for the countless number of people who really enjoy reading, but hate holding a book and looking at a series of letters while conceptualizing them into words.
Don’t give me any of that “saving the environment” crap either. All these deficient devices become toxic waste once they exceed their planned obsolescence period. I’m sure Mother Earth would rather give up a few trees worth of paper than be littered with heaps of radioactive rubbish.
I love how the Kindle advertises its lack of backlighting, stating that it reads more “like a book” than competing needless novelties. You know what else reads like a book? Sheets of printed paper bound together in succession. And they never need charging, downloading, updating, debugging, or any other fancy terms for maintenance—aside from the occasional dust-blowing.
There’s always that awkward moment on the airplane, where a person holding a book is stuck next to someone with a Kindle. They might both be reading the exact same novel, but they exchange smug glances and chuckle to themselves about the ridiculousness of the individual they are stuck sharing stale ass air with for the next four hours.
“Pompous asshole,” mumbles the page-flipper.
“Dirty hippie,” scowls the Kindle connoisseur.
In reality, both people are dysfunctional douchebags because they’re reading Justin Bieber’s First Step 2 Forever. At least Kindle-guy can hide his horrible life decisions from the rest of the world.
And now my worst fears are being realized: many works aren’t even being released in paperback form anymore. I must either put aside my contempt for computerization or miss out completely on some great literature.
So there’s just one thing I have to ask before my soul descends to the dark side….. Can I get one in purple? Because that would be fabulous.

Why a Zombie story?

2011-10-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

photo by Ron Warren

Everybody likes zombies. This is a true-ism if ever there was one. Why? Because they are the multi-purpose monster, the Big Blank that can represent almost anything that scares us.

A long time ago, Clive Barker said something like, “Zombies are the liberal’s worst nightmare,” because, to him they were the symbol of mindless Right Wing conformity. Maybe there’s some truth to that, but then why do conservatives also enjoy a good zombie story? What do the undead mean to the G.O.P.? The loss of individualism, maybe?

For me, zombies work best as a commentary on single-minded consumerism. We live in a world that is increasingly obsessed with a selfish desire to own, to have what the neighbors have or what the television insists we wouldn’t be complete without. And the fact that so many of our celebrities now are nothing more than walking billboards for excess and greed confirms that. Rappers put out new songs celebrating a lifestyle devoted to nothing more than making money. The Kardashians have replaced Paris Hilton as the new benchmarks of hip conformity and bland mediocrity. And what about poor ole’ Paris Hilton? Like all commodities, she was eventually tossed away when a shinier model emerged.

I used to have nightmares about zombies. Whenever I found myself in a stressful period, or depressed, the undead would shuffle into my bad dreams. And here’s the weird part: these dreams always seemed to be part of the same big, over-arching scenario. They seemed to be actually moving forward, from one mind-searing encounter to the next.

So I wanted to write about them, to translate some of the nightmares into a manageable story.
For a long time, I resisted the urge. The world really didn’t need another zombie story, I figured. I decided that, if I could ever think of a new twist on zombie mythology, maybe then I would do it.

But after a few years I had sort of an epiphany—a new twist wasn’t what I needed.
Every single good zombie story has the exact same plot: zombies invade, group of survivors interact and try to stay alive. Bam. That’s it. That’s the formula. Oh, sure, someone may occasionally tweak the zombies a bit (in their origins and in their behavior) but the formula remains the same.

So why do we continue to watch/read them? Because we are interested in the characters. If we don’t care about the protagonists, then the whole story is a wash.

And so… with DEADLAND USA, I shifted focus away from trying to add a new element to the mythology, and focused instead on presenting a narrator and a set of characters the reader could care about, or be interested in. Maybe some human-types that you haven’t seen in a zombie scenario before.

The narrator, Sam Lynch, is a young punk—a kid who was lazy and shiftless before the zombies came. He suffers from depression (has to take pills to keep himself going), is haunted by bad decisions before and after the world ended, and is constantly close to suicide. But he has to keep all that to himself, because the small band of survivors he’s with have taken to looking to him for leadership. It’s a role he isn’t suited for, but… he’ll have to grow into it.
DEADLAND USA is a coming-of-age story. A story about sacrifice, and suppressing one’s own fears and doubts to serve the greater good.

And it’s also a story about massive zombie carnage. And punk rock.

I hope you check it out.

No Rules: ANTHONY NEIL SMITH

2011-10-31T07:52:00.000-07:00

In the last few years, Anthony Neil Smith has emerged as one of the most unique and unpredictable voices in dark, twisted crime fiction. His books include PSYCHOSOMATIC, HOGDOGGIN', CHOKE ON YOUR LIES, YELLOW MEDICINE, and THE DRUMMER. His newest, ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS, will be one of the first releases from the brand-new publisher, Blasted Heath.

His books are beautifully sleazy sometimes, with expertly constructed, labyrinthine plots, and I can tell you without hesitation that he is one of the finest writers on the scene these days. I'm very honored to have him here at Psycho-Noir.

Please welcome ANTHONY NEIL SMITH, with a few choice words about the boob tube...

TV IS GOOD. SO SHUT UP, YOU SNOBS.

Here’s the thing: I get bored with movies. While I love good, stylish, over-the-top directors and such, I get so bored with the stuff I’m “supposed” to like as a crime fan. I don’t know why. I just...get so bored.

But not so much with good TV. I love TV. Not just crime stuff, but nearly all of it. I really cringe whenever I hear some snob from the literary set sniff and say, “I neh-vah watch TV. We don’t even oooown one.” Fuck you, you disconnected, self-congratulatory fuck.

I watch crap reality shows. I watch all the good stuff like Louie and Archer and The Wire. I watch cooking shows. I watch sitcoms like The Middle and Modern Family (you’re supposed to like Family, but the other is off-limits, apparently). And I watch some crime shows. But the deal is that the best crime shows are few, far between, and the most popular ones suck.

I actually thought Criminal Minds was not-half-bad the three or four times I watched it, but I don’t need to see every episode. There’s no need to follow the character arcs. There’s no real cohesive story, just cases of the week. Same with CSINCISLAL&O.

And while I really loved The Wire (another snob fave), I actually preferred The Shield, which was thrilling, pulpy, and when it was all done, it felt like a real fucking novel. The last ep was perhaps the finest ending to a series I’ve ever, ever, ever seen. Perfectly pitched.

Also, let’s just say The Wire had two really amazing seasons (Three and Four), but, well...man I loved those two seasons.

(You know what else I love to watch that’s not “crimey”? The Amazing Race.)

Some other shows that never worked for me: Torchwood, Terriers, Chicago Code, NYPD Blue, on and on and on...

The best crime television series of all time: Cracker. And let’s all forget that they tried an American version of that, please. Robbie Coltrane’s portrayal of “Fitz” is one of the best things ever put on TV, bar none. A far genius like Nero Wolfe (hey, sounds familiar), Fitz has a bad marriage (cheats a lot), bad habits (smokes, gambles, drinks, lies) and is smart enough to know he’s in the wrong but still justify his behavior in infuriatingly complex yet logical ways. He can make his wife feel like she’s the one responsible for his awfulness. He can talk a timid policewoman into bed because, well, he knows how to push the right mental buttons. He only takes police work to make some extra dough, but then becomes an animal. He loves the chase. He loves baiting the cops. He’s the real modern Sherlock Holmes (not that prissy high-tech new BBC series)—smarter than everyone around him, and still a huge mess. I’ve never seen a better TV show. And it’s a tough one to re-watch because of that. I like the memories I have of it. No need to go back and mess around with them by having another run.

Really, as a guy who loves novels—reading and writing them—more than any other form of entertainment, it seems to me the closest equivalent to that experience is a really good TV series. Why the hell do people think a feature film can do justice to all those fucking pages? The pacing is all wrong. The characters are never deep enough. The story has to be hacked to the lowest common denominator. Why not adapt more novels as TV series and leave the features to screenwriters who understand that they’re kind of going for the feel of a short story or novella instead? At least, that’s my two cents.

Other shows you won’t believe I like: Kitchen Nightmares, Hoarders, Work of Art (The Search for the Next Great Artist), Good Morning America, Top Gear (UK), Teen Mom, Judge Judy...

Don’t judge me.

DEADLAND USA ONE: MINDLESS CONSUMERISM now available

2011-10-30T17:29:00.000-07:00

The first installment in my ongoing zombie saga, DEADLAND USA, is out now on the Kindle machine. Meet Sam Lynch, the messed-up nineteen-year-old punk rocker who finds himself thrust into a leadership role when the zombie plague happens. But does having seen hundreds of zombie flicks prepare one to survive them?

Ehh, probably not.

In "Mindless Consumerism", you'll be thrown headfirst into this Grave New World, right in the middle of the action. Bring shotguns, samurai swords, and your i-pod (if the battery hasn't already died).

Zombies and Punks for Halloween

2011-10-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

Just got the good word that the first episode of my punk rock/zombie saga, DEADLAND, USA, will be out just in time for Halloween. Which is the timing I was hoping for. Like "That Damned Coyote Hill", the first Hawthorne story, DEADLAND USA is from the remarkably scrappy Trestle Press.

I'm grateful to Giovanni Gelati for taking the time to put it all together so well, considering all the other great stuff coming from Trestle these last few weeks. Col Bury, Angel Zapata, Darren Sant, Luca Veste, McDroll, and well, lots of others have brand new releases from Trestle right now, and Giovanni juggles them all with admirable skill.

Anyway, Happy Halloween, everyone. And, in the words of the vegetarian zombie... "GRAAIIINNNSSS!"

(Hollow-nosed) Bullet Points

2011-10-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

Just some things I wanted to mention before we go into the weekend, since I don’t do much internet-related stuff on Saturdays or Sundays.

1. The “No Rules” guest posts are coming in steadily now, so starting on Monday I’ll be ramping them up to three a week. Next week, it'll be the one and only ANTHONY NEIL SMITH, book cover/photographer RON WARREN, and the funny-as-hell KIMMY DEE. And we’re only getting started…

2. In other news, I have a new e-short series starting soon from Trestle Press called DEADLAND USA. It’s a zombie serial. Yeah, that’s right. Because the world needs more zombie stories, wouldn’t you agree? I haven’t re-invented the wheel with DEADLAND (the zombie story formula works just fine as it is, I believe), but I think you’ll like the characters. They add a fresh perspective to the formula, and I also happen to think it’s some of my best writing to date.

3. Another HAWTHORNE tale is on the horizon, also, from Trestle. David Cranmer, a.k.a. Edward A. Grainger, made my day when he said, “Hawthorne with his "dull white scar in the shape of a cross cut across his forehead" may just be the most exciting antihero of the year.” Coming from the author of the critically-acclaimed Cash Laramie stories, I find that very, very pleasing.

4. If you weren’t already aware, I have a story in the brand-new issue of Crime Factory, called
“Blood Relations”. It’s surrounded by a bunch of great stuff from some brilliant writers, so I mention it in case it gets over-looked amidst all that coolness.

5. In early November, I’ll have a story at Shotgun Honey. And in December, Luca Veste’s OFF THE RECORD will be released—again, a bunch of excellent writers involved. My story is called “I Wanna Be Your Dog”.

6. I was also happy to see a handful of new reviews of my work. Mike Dennis gave a very kind review of “That Damned Coyote Hill”. Seth Lynch, Michelle Peden Vasquez and Benoit Lelievre all reviewed DIG TEN GRAVES and had nice things to say, and Katie Moore at The Legendary shared some thoughts about THE BASTARD HAND. Thanks, friends.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Stop by Monday for a very interesting post by the hugely talented Anthony Neil Smith!

No Rules: KATY O'DOWD

2011-10-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

I made the acquaintance of Katy O'Dowd just recently, and was impressed with her wit and style. A visit to her webpage, A IS FOR..., confirmed my suspicions that she was an up-and-comer and also cemented for me the fact that she is one to watch. She has TWO books coming out next year, and I for one will be all over them. She (along with Danny Bowman) helped come up with the title of one of my stories, and so was forever memorialized in it as a very strange child...

May I introduce to you-- Ms. Katy O'Dowd, with an introductory piece that has me frantic to see where it goes.

Let us imagine a man, a well-dressed, polite man, at the theatre with his sweetheart. He pulls her chair out for her, provides her with candied violets during the interlude, and hands her his handkerchief, washed and pressed, naturally, when she becomes upset at the sad part of the play. He takes her hand, to comfort her, and then lets it go – this is only their tenth date, and mores of the time dictate that it is too early for hand-holding.

After a late supper, the man gets his driver to take them to the young lady’s home, where she resides with her parents. On arrival at said destination he opens the door of the carriage, takes her gloved hand in his and helps her to alight. Standing behind her, he settles her cape more snugly around her shoulders, whispers a sweet nothing into her ear, and then takes his length of piano wire, and garrottes her, watching as her velvet slippered feet leave the ground, kicking at first with great force, as mewling sounds issue from her throat. Then feebly, and the kittenish cries cease.

Her body comes to rest and he lets it fall, gently, softly to the leaf-strewn ground, steps around her, climbs into the carriage, closes the door and raps on the roof to let the thug/driver know that he has said his goodbyes. As they turn the corner and out of sight, cries rent the otherwise silent night asunder – her parents have found her broken body.
He then goes home and takes tea with his mother and sister, settling aforementioned snowy white napkin ‘pon his spotlessly trousered lap.

If we were to mark our polished psycho out of ten, what would we give him? Being strict, he would certainly have to lose points for taking his sweetheart’s hand at the theatre.
What about the bit where he leaves his sweetheart’s head nearly sliced clean from her creamy shoulders, wound gaping and glistening with gore?

Oh, you silly! This is Etiquette for Eviscerators, Manners for Murderers if you will, not a chapter from Sense and Sensibility or some other worthy tome.
You can meet our Dapper Dispatcher, currently starring in a novella which is swiftly being turned into a series, in 2012.

For more about Katy O’Dowd, please read Heath Lowrance’s rather marvellous ‘That Damned Coyote Hill’. Her evil twin has two other books out in 2012, ‘The Scarlet Ribbon’ a medical historical sort of bodice ripper (as Derry O’Dowd) and ‘The Lady Astronomer’ a steampunky YA tale of adventure and derring-do.
www.katyodowd.com

Deadland USA

2011-10-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

It's all over now. The world as we knew it is gone forever and there will be no future generations to read this. One ugly day in March the undead came and none of us were ready. How could we be? Within months, the entire planet was one writhing, bloody infestation, and all the governments, all the churches, all the great men of power and insight and wisdom, became as meaningless as the tinny tune of a broken music box.

So why do I bother to keep this journal? Good question. If there is no hope for tomorrow, why chronicle these events as I see them? Well, I'll tell you why.

It's the only thing that keeps me from going completely ape-shit insane.

So to you, welcome. To my Fictional Future Generation, my scores of happy safe delusions, welcome. Welcome to Deadland, USA.

Coming soon, from Trestle Press.

No Rules: CHARLIE STELLA

2011-10-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

Charlie Stella has opinions. That's pretty damn refreshing in this day and age, when everyone is scared to death to upset anyone else's delicate sensibilities. Stella is a honey badger (you know, the animal that 'don't give a shit')in a world of sloths. That he's able to pull that off while still being such a friendly and approachable guy is pretty remarkable-- but make no mistake, we're talking about a serious bad-ass here. He's an amazing writer with a dead-on ear for dialogue, screwed-up criminal protagonists, and break-neck pacing. There's never a single wasted word, let alone wasted scene, in a Charlie Stella novel. Check his Amazon page for titles, and for more information about his fascinating life. Also, swing by Stella's blog, Temporary Knucksline, for his great opinion pieces.

For our very first "No Rules" guest post, Mr. Stella graces us with some opinion-- but also (wait for it...) an exclusive peek at his upcoming novel ROUGH RIDERS.

So, without further bullshit from me, please welcome... Charlie Stella.

Rough Riders, SNHU’s MFA and some other stuff ...

Last year I began my MFA work at Southern New Hampshire University and that has been an absolute blast. Aside from the good people in the program and the staff, I’ve come to read so many authors I hadn’t read before (appalling on one hand, but better late than never on the other). The readings have directly influenced my writing. Not that I’m getting any better at it, but my interests have been refocused.

I have a new crime novel coming out next year that takes place (mostly) where I went to school in Minot, North Dakota. Rough Riders will be a 10 year sequel to Eddie’s World (my first crime novel). I’ve been going through the rewrites the last few months, among several other projects. Stark House Press will be publishing RR. It was originally written almost 9 years ago and updating the thing was mostly fun. I sure hope it makes sense come July ... but I did get to rift on a few issues of our current day (up to 2010--I had to stop somewhere), the revisionism of the tea party, the more than disappointing Obama, and the never ending plight of American Natives who’ve been forever fucked by this government.

Rough Riders features my good and bad guys from Eddie’s World, a few North Dakota law enforcement people and a former Miss North Dakota. It’s another big cast with a lot of subplots (i.e., Johnny Porno). Basically the bad guy from EW was given a new name (Washington Stewart) and relocated by the feds to help with a drug bust. Here’s an unedited scene from Rough Riders (it’s being edited as we speak).

Steward looked out the clubhouse window across the golf course. “That’s a beautiful view,” he said, finally acknowledging the bald man. “It’s hard to figure how a place like this didn’t make it, but I know another one right near here didn’t when it first opened. The Links at Red Mike. I know they were looking for investors there for a while.”

They were sitting in the clubhouse of a recently built golf course that hadn’t survived the bad economy. Stewart told the bald man a lie about how he was considering buying shares in the golf course with some of the money he’d make from their deal that morning.

“But no more than twenty percent,” he said. “A friend of mine told me never take more than twenty percent of a partnership unless you can afford the fifty-one percent gives you control. The problem here, I was told, was the traffic. Rich Canadians come down to play, but not enough of them. Farmers in state here haven’t taken to it yet. Or they scared off when Tiger used to win. Before he got caught with all that white pussy, I mean. You see what I’m saying? They didn’t want to play a game made popular by some brother back then.”

The bald man stretched his skinny arms up and out as he yawned. “I could see how that’d be a problem,” he said through the end of his yawn. “I’ll sink mine in blue chips over time. I already got some real estate down south along the river, but they quit adding casinos. Your guy needs to step to and get people back to work already. Enough with the vacations on Martha’s Vineyard and all the speeches. Two years in and no change anybody can believe in yet. He needs to yes we can it already or step aside and let someone knows what to do take over.”

“Cut the brother some slack,” Stewart said. “Good old boys aren’t used to it yet, black man in the oval office. Even some in his own party sabotaging the man. Plus he still catching flack for Bush. Ain’t his fault the way things are.”

“Well, I’ll stick with the blue chips in the meantime, until he figures it out, what he’s doing in the White House besides having parties. Although I did find me a few guys I’m involved with from Vegas, investment bankers. They have some investment ideas, you’re interested.”

Stewart said, “There’s nothing like clean money.”

“Besides,” the bald man said. “You sure they’d even let you in on a place like this? Being a minority and all, I mean. They don’t much care for Indians up here, that goes without saying, but I’m not too sure they’d be thrilled sharing ownership of some private club with an African American. No offense intended, but you should check that out before you make an offer, get turned down, get yourself upset for something you could’ve avoided.”

Stewart smirked. “African American, huh?” he said before lighting a cigarette. Ofay motherfucker, he was thinking.

The bald man yawned into a fist. “That’s the problem with today, you ask me. All the political correctness. Be a lot less tension between people, they dropped the bullshit and called a spade a spade.”

“Kind of what the tea party doing, right? Calling Obama a spade.”

“Hey, you can’t blame them for wanting their country back.”

Stewart had had enough. He leaned forward, both elbows on the table. “You talking about Native Americans or the white man want they country back?” he said, laying on the street lingo this time. “Tea baggers get that confused all the time, about whose country this is. Native Americans, the ones you still calling Indians like John fucking Wayne, they the ones fucked over from the get go.”

“Shit,” the bald man said. “I didn’t take you for a radical. Indians seem to be doing okay to me. Free land, casinos, all the wampum they want, they way I hear it. Don’t even pay taxes, some of them.”

Stewart shook his head.

“What?” the bald man said.

“No, offense, but you one ignorant motherfucker,” Stewart said. “Wampum. That like watermelon?”

The bald man looked confused. “Hey, all I’m saying is the tea party wants to return to what the founding fathers originally set up. That’s all. Got nothing to do with the Indians.”

Stewart was shaking his head again. He said, “Got nothing to do—the white man took it from Native Americans in the first place, you dumbass. They want it back now? From who? They the ones made the mess it is now. Never bothered paying the bill either. Native dude I listened to on some reservation here said the federal government never honored a single goddamn treaty since day one. Not a single one. If they wanted land, they pushed natives out the way. Natives put up a fight, government went genocide on them and gave out blankets with small pox. Killed off most the natives without blinking an eye, then pushed them onto reservations, fed them booze and whatnot to keep them in a stupor, same way drugs were let loose in the ghettos, and what land the government didn’t build on wasn’t there’s in the first place they stripped the natural resources from. Now they got natives bottled up and shit, they find themselves in trouble, natives get the same treatment niggers do. Government throws their asses into jail and for longer stretches than the average white boy. Or the ones can’t handle it, they off themselves. Suicide rate just like the prison population. Same as for blacks in most states, way higher for natives than whites. Take our country back my ass. That tea party crowd got some American history to research before they spout that shit. Shame is, nobody calls them on it. All those cable news programs, all the so-called liberals out there on the networks, not a one has the balls to tell it like it is.”

The bald man put both hands up. “Hey, sorry I brought it up, the tea party.”

“You didn’t,” Stewart said. “You were taking shots at Obama. I brought them up, the tea party.”

“Then I’m sorry for Obama. That help?”

Stewart shrugged. “It just a little hard to take these tea bagging, peckerwood motherfuckers with their take our country back signs serious is all.”

The bald man forced a smile. “Tea baggers,” he said. “Good one. What’s a peckerwood?”

Stewart winked at the ofay. He was about to explain it to him when someone behind them yelled, “Counts good.”

I also wrote a crime novel around the MFA program; a guy in witness protection is discovered in an MFA program on Star Island (it’s where SNHU’s program has its summer residency--where I got the idea, of course) ... that one will also be a sequel; this time to my second crime novel (Jimmy Bench Press). I’m currently flirting with the title: Jimmy Mangino. Hopefully, Stark House Press will stick with me and that can’t be my third crime novel with them. We shall see. Jimmy (Bench Press) Mangino was arrested for murder at the end of the original book and now he’s done his time, he’s out and he wants what he’s owed from the mob for being a stand up guy.

I have to admit I’m spending much more time and having much more fun attempting to write short stories without any crime or elements of crime in them. It’s been a cathartic journey since I dumped the literary novel I was trying (for years) and focused on the shorts. My mentor in the program, Mitch Wieland, has been a wonderful find himself. He founded the MFA program at Boise State in Idaho 15 years ago. Mitch is also a terrific novelist (with starred reviews and very positive NY Times reviews). I’ve read both his books and they are wonderful (although his second, God’s Dogs, completely blew me away). I can’t tell you how helpful he’s been in guiding my naturally unliterary ass in a better direction (for me). His reading suggestions alone have turned my head ... Richard Bausch’s short stories, especially. Other writers I really enjoy reading this semester include Richard Yates, Frederick Busch and Andre Dubus.

On the employment front, it appears I’ll be working full-time again. I’ve been offered a position at a firm I’ve been temping at the last few months. A four day week will be a nice break in the current pattern. I’ve been up at 3:30 a.m. in the morning (some mornings 3:00 a.m.) to do the writing work and 3 weeks ago I secretly began to train for one last power meet (although it’s been a hush-hush deal from the spouse--by the time she reads this it’ll be too late, the entree fee check will have cleared). I expect to get my ass whipped as usual, but this meet will serve as a last attempt to see if I can ever break the 4 bills mark on the bench again (it’s been a very long time since I did that--27 years. I just missed on my 50th birthday when I tore my shoulder up). Last year I did my best to try all three lifts again, but really screwed up both my knees and my back (first the knees, got them somewhat back to normal, then blew out my back during warm-up squats). I can’t afford to be sidelined for 2-3 months at a time anymore so I’m going to have to live with ignoring those lifts ... although I have been flirting with squats again.

Exactly, I’ve never been accused of being the sharpest knife in any drawer.

And it’s not that I was any good at squats. Frankly, my 3rd attempts at most meets in the squat were warm-ups for the guys who won the totals. I’m like the kid who sits the bench at most weight lifting meets when it comes to squats and totals ... I just wanna play.

The blogging continues to act as some form of cathartic release for me, as well as a great break from the other writing I do. I’m sure I bore the living daylights out of some with some of my political rants, but that’ll have to continue so long as the only choices people have are Republicans and Democrats. I do get to do some fun reviews on the blog, as well, and I really enjoy watching foreign films and briefly reviewing them. This morning I just watched for the 4th or 5th time, a great German-Turkish film called Head-On (Gegen die Wand). It’s now one of my top 10’s of all time.

Then there are the book reviews where I get to help spread the word on reads I enjoy. If I review it, I like it. I’ve only featured one or two bad reviews on my blog and those were books I gave 2 or 3 reads to and just didn’t like them ... and both authors were deceased. I’m not concerned about author backlash (who’d know me anyway?). I just figure this business is tough enough for authors without knocking a book. If I don’t like a book, I won’t review it. I have a tremendous backlog of reads but that has more to do with the MFA program (I read whatever my mentor suggests plus another one or two of the same authors’ works--I am an anal MF’er that way).

I occasionally torture two blogs pretty consistently. J.D. Rhoades (What Fresh Hell Is This) with attacks on the defense of Obama and the Democrats and then there’s the other side of the scam, Stand Up For America, a conservative site where I’m known as the Sage of Wisdom (sarcasm intended). I despise both parties and will never understand how the people of this country continue to play this back and forth game while the money that owns both parties heart and soul continues to laugh at us all.

My beloved New York State Buffalo Bills are now good enough to give me stomach cramps ... it was so much easier when they completely sucked. I hope it’s growing pains I’ll soon get over.

It’s back to school early January for our low residency at a neat place in the mountains of New Hampshire. I look very forward to that, plus my wife is tagging along for a semi-vacation.

And then there’s the opera ... February 3rd in Princeton ... Tosca ... the wife and I look very forward to that.

Like we used to say on the street when somebody came across some good fortune. “Who’s got it better’n you (me)?”

NO RULES

2011-10-24T05:13:00.001-07:00

I’m very happy to tell you that, over the next few weeks, Psycho-Noir is going to be the most interesting place on the inter-webs. Why? Because I’m going to shut up for the most part and allow a bunch of far more fascinating people to take over.

I’ve extended invitations to a whole slew of my favorite writers and/or bloggers to swing by and just… do what they do. It’s “No Rules”, which means I haven’t prompted anyone, I haven’t specified subject matter or word count or anything like that. These guest posts aren’t meant to conform to what I do here at this blog—they’re meant only to showcase the guests. They can promote their work, or they can go off on a rant, or… whatever they want.

A lot of them, you already know. Some of them will be completely new to you, probably. The thing they have in common is that they are uniformly cool. I’ve gotten the first few in my in-box already, and will do my best to parcel them out two or three a week, depending on how quickly the rest come in.

And to kick things off, tomorrow, will be none other than CHARLIE STELLA. Yeah, that’s right. Charlie-fucking-Stella. Why? ‘cause we don’t do things half-ass here at Psycho-Noir.

If you’re a writer and/or blogger and I haven’t contacted you yet, please don’t hesitate to get with me, okay? Because honestly, if you’re a friend of mine I want you here. Don’t be shy. I’d like to see this continue on until the end of the year.

The Strange Facts Concerning Memphis

2011-10-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

I lived in Memphis for about five years.

Five of the strangest years of my life, and believe me, that’s saying something.

Most of that strangeness came from the city itself, the way it operated, the odd position it held somewhere between worlds. On one hand, it was completely modern, a hub of industry and commerce and so on. It had street gangs. Modern architecture. One of the best zoos in the country. Insane crime rate.

On the other hand, there were ghosts on every street corner, ghosts of rockabilly wannabes and blues warblers, even less substantial phantoms of slavery in the old cotton warehouses, lingering around the now-invisible blood-and-tear-stains of Front Street. On the Bluff, over-looking the Mississippi River, you could still pretend that the shimmering glass Pyramid wasn’t there and see instead the steam-boats, the sweating black bodies unloading crates, the finely-dressed landlords and cotton barons walking the promenade before retiring back to their massive homes on Adams Street.

It was a city that wore sins and accomplishments on its sleeve and didn’t bother to distinguish between the two. What would be the point, after all?

The Tennessee-Mississippi border is only minutes away, so close that Memphis is often referred to as the capitol of North Mississippi. And while that might be a lie geographically, it’s the gospel truth culturally. My time in Memphis included countless visits to the outskirts of Holly Springs, where Junior Kimbrough or R.L. Burnside would play raw, sinister N. Mississippi blues (and don’t mistake it for Delta blues, cuz that ain’t what it is) and if you and yours were the only white faces in the joint no one cared, man. Not the guy in the parking lot selling vicious little bottles of moonshine or the fat black woman doing a bump-and-grind against your leg or the pool-player stopping long enough to straighten the velvet painting of Oprah Winfrey on the wall.

We’d also head down to Oxford sometimes, see the home of William Faulkner, visit the alley he used to throw up in just outside the bar on his way back home.

Something about this bizarre place-- one part David Lynch, one part John Waters-- struck me somewhere deep in my guts. I fell in love with Memphis for a while, this place that I would never fully understand, where I met so many strange and wonderful people, where I almost got killed at least twice (those are other stories…), where past and present did a dirty little voodoo, and I knew that this would be the place where my first novel would be set. If I could capture some small fragment of Memphis and North Mississippi I would have something unique.

That’s how The Bastard Hand started. With a place.

As it happened, around the same time I was discovering Memphis, I was reading a lot of three different writers: Charles Willeford, William Faulkner (since I lived in Memphis, I felt it my duty) and Shelby Foote (a writer most associated with his brilliant three-part Civil War narrative, but also for a stunning crime novel about kidnapping and race relations in Memphis called September, September).

Oh, yeah, and I was also reading the Old Testament, for various reasons that are too complicated to go into here… maybe another time.

Regardless, all these ingredients went into the sorcery, along with heavy quantities of beer, crawfish, mean blues and raucous rockabilly.

What came out was The Bastard Hand.

I left Memphis a long time ago, made my way back to Detroit.

Do I miss Memphis?

Yeah, sometimes.

Hell, I miss it all the time.

They say it’s changed a lot in the thirteen years since I lived there. Maybe it’s for the best.

All the Robert E. Howard you can stand

2011-10-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

This year marked what would have been the 105th birthday of Robert E. Howard, arguably the single most important literary figure in the evolution of heroic fantasy. He took his own life on June 11, 1936, leaving behind a staggeringly huge body of work, published and unpublished.

In a span of ten years, Howard wrote something like 800 stories, in every market conceivable, and in almost every story he wore his own darkest dreams and desires on his sleeve.

He was a man half in love with death, and completely under the thrall of entropy. Civilization teetering on the brink, rotting from within, seemed to be a recurring theme in his work. The corrupted Hyborian world of the Conan tales, the decayed lost cities encountered by Solomon Kane, the vanished kingdom of Atlantis that Kull once called home… these images of dying empire were a backdrop and a commentary on how Howard viewed the so-called march of progress.

His work has gone in and out of print countless times over the years, but ’06 saw the first attempts to catalogue and organize his writings in various projects from a variety of publishers. Following is a sort of guide to the available volumes; read these, and you will have read just about everything you need to read from REH. Fantasy, horror, Westerns, and historical adventure… it’s all here.

Dell Rey Ballantine Books

--THE COMING OF CONAN THE CIMMERIAN
The first of three volumes that make up the complete stories of everyone’s favorite barbarian. The publishers wisely chose to present them not in chronological order but in the order in which Howard wrote them. There’s plenty of bloodshed and swordplay; just look to some of the highlights here for evidence of that. “The Phoenix on the Sword”, “Queen of the Black Coast” and “Black Colossus” are stories set at different periods in Conan’s life, but all are creepy and action-packed.

--THE BLOODY CROWN OF CONAN
This second volume finds Howard truly hitting his stride as a storyteller and expanding on the strange world Conan occupies. It includes three longish stories, novellas really: “People of the Black Circle”, “Hour of the Dragon”, and “A Witch Shall Be Born”.

--THE CONQUERING SWORD OF CONAN
Wrapping up the complete stories of Conan with a bang, not a whimper, this volume, like the others, also includes fragments and summaries for the tales that Howard sadly never wrote. It includes the classic stories “Red Nails”, “The Black Stranger”, and “Beyond the Black River”.

--THE SAVAGE TALES OF SOLOMON KANE
Before he ever wrote a Conan tale, Howard honed his craft for this series of stories featuring Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane. Kane is a grim, dour man who views himself as a sort of ‘sword of God’, meting out justice and retribution wherever he goes… and he goes everywhere. The bulk of the stories, however, take place in darkest Africa, and are still some of the most exciting stories ever written. Some of the best: “Red Shadows”, “The Moon of Skulls”, and “The Hills of the Dead”.

--BRAN MAK MORN: THE LAST KING
Every story, published and unpublished, about Howard’s warrior Pict hero, fighting to rescue his heritage from Roman and Celtic invaders. Great battle sequences and bloody action. Highlights: “Kings of the Night”, and “Worms of the Earth”.

--KULL: EXILE OF ATLANTIS
King Kull is seen as a sort of proto-Conan, but these fast-paced stories reveal that he is a unique character, quite apart from the traits he would share with the Cimmerian later in Howard’s career. Best stories? The only two that were actually published during Howard’s lifetime: “The Shadow Kingdom” and “The Mirrors of Tuzun”.

University of Nebraska Press
(This publisher has performed the great service of putting out a wealth of Howard material, much of it out of print for decades, that is unrelated for the most part to his more famous series characters. Thanks, U of N!)

--LORD OF SAMARCAND & OTHER ADVENTURE TALES OF THE OLD ORIENT
These are some of the best and most memorable of Howard’s stories. He was a tremendous reader of history, and it shows in this collection of adventures that take place in “the Orient”—the Near East, really, in the time of the Crusades. Christians battle Saracens in a series of wars that no one can win, and Howard’s cynicism about civilization is readily apparent here. Also, as in the Bran Mak Morn tales, he displays very admirably a gift for huge, vivid battle sequences. Favorites: the title story, “Lords of Samarcand”, as well as “Red Blades of Black Cathay” and “Shadow of the Vulture”.

--THE BLACK STRANGER & OTHER AMERICAN TALES
Terrific stories, tied together by the American setting they all have in common. Atmospheric horror is the main theme here, something that Howard did every bit as well—perhaps better—than Lovecraft. Stand-out stories: “Pigeons From Hell”, “Black Canaan” and “The Horror from the Mound”.

--END OF THE TRAIL: WESTERN STORIES
Howard wrote some of his darkest, grimmest work for Western pulps like Cowboy Stories. This volume collects the very best of them, and a bleaker collection of stories would be harder to find. Some of the more outstanding tales: “The Vultures of Whapeton”, “The Man on the Ground” and “Judgment of the Desert”.

--THE RIOT AT BUCKSNORT & OTHER WESTERN TALES
And the flip side of those grim Western stories: Howard displays his sense of humor. The stories in this volume are tall tales in the tradition of Pecos Bill, the majority of them featuring the tank-like Breckinridge Elkins, a hero who isn’t very bright but doesn’t really need to be. Funny, violent, and over-the-top. Most hysterical: “A Gent From Bear Creek”.

--BOXING STORIES
Aside from history, Howard’s one other great passion was boxing, and he made a point of writing as much as he could for the sports pulps. These were adventure stories with many different ports of call, but the boxing theme ran through all of them. Sailor Steve Costigan is the central character in most of the stories, a rowdy roughneck who never finds himself in any jam that his fists can’t get him out of. Manliest stories: “Fists of the Desert”, “The Bull Dog Breed”, and “Iron Man” (that last being a pretty somber little story).

Wildside Press
THE WEIRD WORKS OF ROBERT E. HOWARD
(Probably the most ambitious Howard-related project ever, Wildside Press is in the process of publishing every single story Howard ever wrote for Weird Tales magazine, and a few for some related mags as well. Ten volumes when all is said and done. As of this writing, seven are available in very handsome hardcover editions, and the first three are out in affordable trade paperback.

There is some overlap from the collections described above, but not as much as you might think).
The available volumes are as follows:
--Shadow Kingdoms
--Moon of Skulls
--People of the Dark
--Wings in the Night
--Valley of the Worm
--The Garden of Fear
--Beyond the Black River

And that’s probably enough REH to keep even the most die-hard fans busy for quite some time, don’t you think? So until our civilization begins to crumble and decay (or am I too late?), enjoy this nearly comprehensive selection of stories by the great Robert E. Howard.

Hawthorne

2011-10-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve been really surprised and pleased by the response to “That Damned Coyote Hill”. In its first week, it got as high as #23 (very briefly!) over at Amazon.UK’s short horror story sub-category, and in the States made it up to #44. And the reviews have been positive right across the board. Not bad for something that was put together on the fly, huh?

I didn’t have a master plan about Hawthorne, the anti-hero of the story, when I started. I just wanted to do a mysterious, taciturn and bad-ass protagonist, an uncomplicated character that exists solely to dole out brutal punishment to wrong-doers. I gave him the ugly cross-shaped scar on his forehead without knowing how he got it (I know NOW, though, no worries). I decided he wasn’t a lawman or a bounty hunter or a gunfighter. He was instead a force of nature.

I borrowed his name from another character I tried to make a go of as a series hero, Grey Hawthorne (wrote two stories about THAT Hawthorne, both published at The Nautilus Engine). No, it’s not the same guy. Maybe this new Hawthorne is the other one’s uncle or something. Or maybe they just exist in two different worlds. It doesn’t matter.

But anyway, in the week since “That Damned Coyote Hill”, I’ve had occasion to think about his future. He has an origin of sorts now, although it’ll be a long time before I tell that one, I think, as it really isn’t important. I’m about half-way through his next adventure, tentatively titled “Long Black Train”, and have another two or three taking shape in my head. What will the readers learn about the mysterious avenger Hawthorne in these new stories? Very little, actually. But the bad guys, victimizers, killers, rapists… they’ll learn what it feels like to be on the other side of the equation.

And there will be no shortage of bizarre creatures and supernatural evil.

Thanks, everyone, for giving me the chance to write this stuff. And if you really dig Hawthorne, tell a friend.

SEEING BLUE, an exclusive story by Paul D. Brazill!

2011-10-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

Quite some time ago, back when THE BASTARD HAND first came out, I did a guest post over at Paul Brazill's blog, You Would Say That, Wouldn't You? and I managed to coerce him into doing an all-original story here at Psycho-Noir whenever he had the time.

Well, time is scarce for Mr. Brazill. He's a hard-work drivin' man. We waited a while for this story from Paul, but damn... I'll think you'll find it was worth the wait.

It's my pleasure to give to you an all-new, never-before seen short story from Paul Brazill...

SEEING BLUE
by
Paul D Brazill

First, it all turns red. And then it goes black for a very long time. After that, everything is a searing white. Until I see Blue.

Then everything hurts. Everything.

Blue reaches into a rusty tool box. Takes out a hammer. Snorts some Charlie from the window ledge. Pops a duck egg. And walks toward me.

Black, again.

***

Now, the room is a muddy brown. Early evening or late morning. An old transistor radio on the mantelpiece leaks out hits of the ‘80s.

I can make out Blue Dobson’s massive frame in the corner of the room. He is naked. His jigsaw of tattoos exposed. His long red hair tied back in a ponytail.

He’s doing press ups. And repeating a mantra, ‘Fuckemall, Fucke em all, Fuckemall, Fuck em all.’

And then I start to panic. I try to drag myself free from the rocking chair but I’m still strapped in. A pool of piss below me, splashed with blood. I scream but my jaw is broken and the movement hurts so much that once again it all fades to black.

***

Some people never learn from their mistakes. And I suppose I’m one of those people.

Just over a year ago, Natalie, my girlfriend, got a job as a receptionist at the Health Centre. After a few drinks she liked to unburden herself. Tell me all the sob stories she heard all day. It was the old dears she usually felt the most sorry for. Living alone. Abandoned by their family.

I usually zoned out; I never had a thing for other people’s problems. But when she mentioned that Mrs. Barker had just died, I had an idea. Later that night, I sneaked into Mrs. Barker’s house and looked for whatever loot I could find. I got a decent wad of cash and jewelry, too.
I paid more attention to Natalie after that.

But about a fortnight ago, I was almost caught by a neighbor who’d stopped crying crocodile tears and obviously had the same idea as me. I saw him rummaging under the bed, fat arse in the air. I scarpered pretty sharpish.

So, I thought I’d leave it a bit.

And then Natalie mentioned that Mrs. Dobson had snuffed it. She was the grandmother of Blue Dobson, who had once committed a string of post office robberies and killed three people while he was on the run. Blue was eventually caught and given two life sentences but the loot from the robberies was never recovered. This seemed like a window of opportunity well worth jumping through.

I wasn’t to know that Blue had escaped from prison when he’d been notified of his nan’s death. That he’d go back to her home.

***

Sunlight peeks through the lace curtains. Blue is in the corner of the room, gurgling, puking, grasping his heart with his baseball mitt of a hand. After some time, he stops moving. As the day becomes brighter, it becomes clear that he’s croaked. Brown bread. Heart attack, maybe. Overdose. Whatever.

I wriggle around enough to topple the rocking chair over. It hurts. It hurts so much that I black out again. When I come to, I struggle free from the shattered chair. Crawl over to Blue.

And the suitcase full of money. My jaw hurts as I grin. I untie my ankles. Get to my feet.

The sun has risen over the tower blocks. The day is bright. The skies are blue. And the copper on the balcony, pointing a gun at me, smiles.

The end.

© Paul D Brazill 2011

Kindle Review: LIVERPOOL FIVE, by Luca Veste

2011-10-16T00:14:00.000-07:00

Luca Veste has been a long-time supporter of other writers with his remarkable blog Guilty Conscience, but LIVERPOOL FIVE is his first outing as a writer of fiction himself. I gotta say, he acquits himself quite nicely.

This is a brief collection, five short, sharp tales seeped in heavy irony and a sort of wry dark humor.

The first story, “Dreams”, is maybe the hardest to define, as it’s basically a simple set-up: a young man enjoying daily conversations with an old man, until the little knife twist of remorse at the end.

“Model Behavior” also has a nice twist; the narrator strikes up a renewed friendship with a girl he knew in school who is now trying to break into modeling, but doesn’t really pursue the friendship—much to his later horror. The end of this one actually gave me a bit of a chill…

In “Heavy Sleeper”, a man’s tendency to sleep through anything turns out to be his undoing. Clever little piece.

“Peeling Spuds” is a mean little story about a much-abused wifey finally snapping. It’s my favorite in this collection.

And Veste leaves us with “He Ain’t Heavy”, a dark tale about family, and the possibility that we don’t really know our loved ones as well as we think.

Over-all, the stories in LIVERPOOL FIVE are solid and compelling, and Veste’s voice as a writer is remarkably self-assured, considering that he only just started doing this stuff. I have every confidence that he’s going to get better and better. LIVERPOOL FIVE is recommended.

Kindle Review: ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE & GIDEON MILES V. 2, by Edward A. Grainger

2011-10-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

The Western is alive and well, as evidenced by the work of Edward A. Grainger, better known ‘round these parts as one Mister David Cranmer. A few months back, he released THE ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE & GIDEON MILES, a short story collection of remarkably thrilling tales—see my review here. Almost instantly, we readers were harassing him for more, and he’s delivered, in spades. THE ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE & GIDEON MILES VOLUME II is, believe it or not, far, far better than the first volume. The action scenes are cleaner and there’s more emotional depth. It’s clear that Grainger-Cranmer has evolved as a writer, gotten closer to perfecting his craft. Maybe this comes from the deep understanding he seems to have of his hero, Cash Laramie.

The collection starts with “The Origin of White Deer”, the almost novella-length story of young Cash (before he was Cash), his last good-byes to the Arapahoe family who raised him, and his first violent encounter with the white world that set him on his path as a seeker of justice.

The very short “Maggie’s Promise” is a scathing, heartfelt indictment of racism—a theme that runs through a lot of the Cash Laramie stories.

“Miles In Between” shifts the focus to Cash’s sometime partner, Gideon Miles, and it’s the only story in the collection this time to feature him (aside from a very brief cameo later on). Gideon hasn’t been nearly as fully developed as Cash, and I hope in the next volume we get more about him.

“Cash Laramie and the Painted Ladies” is a very clever mystery story in which our man Cash displays some knowledge of Lepidopterology that comes in remarkably handy.

“Gun Justice” is probably my favorite this time out—Cash is out for vengeance against the lowlife who killed a beloved friend of his, and the fact that the killer has retreated to a town where everyone is on his side doesn’t change a thing. Cash faces off against the lot of them in a brilliantly crafted action scene.

“Cash Laramie & the Masked Devil” is also a bit of a mystery tale, with a satisfyingly Scooby-Doo-like ending.

And finally, the somber “Reflections in a Glass of Maryland Rye” finds Cash drunk and lamenting a horrible mistake in a story that examines the high cost of violence, and how the quest for justice can sometimes lead to monstrous tragedy.

THE ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE & GIDEON MILES VOL. II is a top-notch collection, not just for Western fans, but anyone who appreciates solid stories told with emotional resonance and total conviction. I hope Grainger never stops writing them.

Kindle Review: SMOKE, by Nigel Bird

2011-10-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

If you’ve read BEAT ON THE BRAT or DIRTY OLD TOWN, you know already that Nigel Bird is one of our most skillful and insightful short story writers. He’s able to flesh out a character and make him seem real in a few short paragraphs, and no matter how awful or violent the events of the story, Bird always maintains a strong sense of compassion and humanity.

This is all doubly true in his new novella from Trestle Press, SMOKE. It’s Bird’s longest published work to date (that I know of) at about 53 pages. It’s a beaut.

A duel narrative fuels this tale—in the first, a teenager named Jimmy gets himself involved with a bunch of bad sorts planning to rip off a load of cash gathered from illegal dog fighting. In the parallel thread, wheelchair-bound Carlos tries desperately to win back his girlfriend (Jimmy’s sister) from the thug she’s involved with, going to extreme measures to do so. The two stories intertwine through supporting characters and it all comes to a brutal head that not everyone will survive.

I was surprised at Bird’s willingness to go to some very nasty places in SMOKE. He doesn’t flinch from ugly violence. But really, the violence isn’t what his stories are about. SMOKE, like all of Bird’s work, is really about the strength of the human will.

"That Damned Coyote Hill" now on KIndle

2011-10-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

My e-short from Trestle Press, "That Damned Coyote Hill", is now available on Kindle. It's .99 cents for a story jam-packed with Western action and weird horror, featuring a mysterious protagonist called Hawthorne.

Let me know if you enjoy it, okay? And the standard leaving of reviews is always appreciated. If enough of you dig Hawthorne, I have a few more of his tales to tell...

A Kindle Explosion

2011-10-12T08:37:00.000-07:00

Hoo-boy, there’s lots of good short story collections and novellas just out at the moment, aren’t there? It seems that we’ll have a dry spell of a month or so when nothing of note comes out, and then—whammo—all the stuff we want to read hits at once and next thing you know you’ve fallen waaay behind.

Here are some superior collections that have seen the light of day just in the last few weeks. I’ve tried to be very selective here about the ones that are absolute must-reads. Let me know if I’m missing any gems, okay?

A few weeks ago, Keith Rawson released his collection THE CHAOS WE KNOW. Brilliant and brutal stuff. My review for it is here.

Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan edited the comprehensive PULP INK, which I only just reviewed a couple days ago. That’s here.

And speaking of Nigel Bird, his new one is called SMOKE. Haven’t read it yet, but looking forward to it. Nigel is one of my favorites.

Luca Veste, the fella putting together the upcoming anthology OFF THE RECORD, has just released LIVERPOOL FIVE.

The long-awaited collection from Patricia Abbott, MONKEY JUSTICE, is out as of today.

Edward Grainger (David Cramner) has just released the second volume of killer Western tales featuring Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles in, appropriately enough, THE ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE AND GIDEON MILES, VOLUME TWO.

The always concise and remarkable Katherine Tomlinson hits us with her new collection JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE.

The latest in Paul D. Brazill’s DRUNK ON THE MOON series comes from Richard Godwin, and it’s called GETTING HIGH ON DAISY.

And Jason Michel of PULP METAL has put together a “best of” from that twisted e-zine, called LAUGHING AT THE DEATH GRIN.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Anybody else? Regardless, I can tell you that each one of these is bound to be well worth reading. Enough good stuff to see you right through the Halloween season, at least…

Kindle Review: PULP INK, ed. by Nigel Bird & Chris Rhatigan

2011-10-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

PULP INK is probably the short story bargain of the year so far, if you consider sheer volume of stories as well as the quality of those stories. It’s jam-packed, and every entry is AT LEAST very good. More than three-fourths are downright brilliant.
But you know, it was bound to be great, wasn’t it? Look at the editors: Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan. Two fellas who know a thing or two about what makes good stories work, yeah?
The connecting theme to PULP INK has something to do with the film “Pulp Fiction”—there are allusions to the movie here and there, and several story titles are tied directly to it. But you get the sense that PULP INK quickly outgrew its inspiration. These are all writers who aren’t going to be constrained by the likes of Tarantino, man. Don’t get me wrong; I like “Pulp Fiction” as well as anyone does, but if you wanna compare Tarantino’s vision with the visions conjured by the writers in this anthology, well… Tarantino is left in the dust.
I was ready to do a little bit on each story in this collection that impressed me, but honestly, man, it was damn near every one of them. You’ve got Reed Farrell Coleman. Hilary Davidson. Allan Guthrie. Patricia Abbott, Paul D. Brazill. You’ve got Kate Horsley and Jimmy Calloway and David Cranmer. Matthew C. Funk. Honestly, it’s pointless for me to list each writer in PULP INK who turns in a killer story, because what it comes down to is a sort of “who’s who” of immense genre talents.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t dig Tarantino. If you want the low-down on what noir/dark fiction/hard-boiled writers are shaking things up these days, PULP INK is the collection to get.

THAT DAMNED COYOTE HILL

2011-10-09T17:54:00.000-07:00

The cover for my new e-short from Trestle Press, "That Damned Coyote Hill". As usual, put together with the mad skills of Ron Warren. At my request, he took an existing image and combined it with an original photograph of his own to produce a very evocative cover. I think it turned out pretty goddamn good.

Me and My Puritan Streak

2011-10-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

I have a very pronounced Puritan streak. Talking about “taboo” subjects like sex makes me uncomfortable, as do people who air their personal issues in public. Watching Jerry Springer or any of his imitators makes me blush and get so fidgety I have to turn it off.
I don’t like garish clothing (most of my wardrobe is in black and grays and blues) and I won’t wear a tie unless it’s a solid color—no hula girls or palm trees for me, thanks. When I see a guy walking around without a shirt on, even if he’s buff and can pull it off, I want desperately to tell him to get some damn clothes on, fer Christ’s. People who feel the need to be the center of attention all the time baffle me.
Have a sense of propriety, please, I’m begging you. Before I die of embarrassment.
Yes, deep in the core of this extremely liberal exterior is a stitched-up Puritan.
I don’t know where it came from. Maybe the Southern Baptist faith I experienced growing up? Maybe from my step-dad, who frowned upon any display of genuine emotion? I don’t know. But it’s there and I can’t pretend otherwise.
This is doubly odd considering the nature of what I write, and of what I like to read.
My stories and novels tend to be intensely personal, and they don’t shy away from sex, religion, or any other taboo subject. The characters are often bombastic and colorful. And once I start into a subject through a story, I believe strongly in not flinching, in taking the truth of the matter as far as possible, often into extremely uncomfortably emotional places.
I’m come to realize in the last couple years that’s the only way I have of talking about that stuff. By writing it down, putting it all into the head of a fictional character, I’m able to address it. And I recognize it in other people’s work as well. The unwavering commitment to telling the hardest emotional truths is a beautiful characteristic that our best writers share.
That’s all I got on that subject. Now put a shirt on, will you, please?

Writers from the Dank, Dark Underbelly

2011-10-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

Some stuff worth noting:

Jason Michel, the mad genius behind PULP METAL, has put together a 'best of' from that twisted magazine, and it's now available at Smashwords. It's called LAUGHING AT THE DEATH GRIN!, a title that really sums up Pulp Metal's attitude quite nicely. I have a story in it; so does Paul Brazill, Danny Hogan, Ian Ayris, Chris Rhatigan, B.R. Stateham, and seven other messed-up individuals from the dank underbelly of genre fiction. For the first few weeks, it's gonna be a measly .99 cents.

And coming soon, look for OFF THE RECORD, the new anthology of all-original material being put together by Luca Veste. The premise is stories inspired by rock/pop song titles, and the line-up is a who's who of talent from the Noir and Horror Undergrounds. Some of them: Me, Ray Banks (yeah, I said Ray Banks!), Patti Abbott, Court Merrigan, R. Thomas Brown, Nigel Bird, Paul Brazill, Thomas Pluck, Matthew C. Funk, Helen Fitzgerald, and man, the talent just keeps on coming... all proceeds from OFF THE RECORD will be going to charities on both sides of the Atlantic, so keep your eyes open for it.

Aside from the two anthology appearances, I have a couple short stories coming down the pike very soon, if you're interested. More info about them later...

Audio Story done, Voice also done

2011-10-03T21:05:00.000-07:00

I'm so naive. I really thought it would be as easy as recording my audio and... I dunno... just sort of POPPING it up here on Psycho-Noir. Bing-o, bang-o. But no, Blogger makes a big production out of it.

But I pulled it off, at long last. My friend Nat Pike (the amazingly talented fella who did the music in my book trailer for THE BASTARD HAND) gave me the low-down on Soundcloud, and that's what I wound up using.

I decided to go with "Incident on a Rain-Soaked Corner", because halfway through reading "It Will All Be Carried Away", my voice started giving out. "Incident" is much shorter.

Granted, my recording isn't exactly pro quality-- you'll here the occasional clicky sound as I navigate through the story-- but over-all it's not too bad.

Here is is:Incident on a Rain-Soaked Corner, read by Heath Lowrance

The above photo, which as usual has nothing to do with anything, is by the award-winning photographer Dawn Sketch.

READING FOR THE SICK MIND

2011-10-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

If you like sharp fiction about bad, bad people doing bad, bad things, man.. there is much to look forward to in the next month or so.

Luca Veste is putting together a new anthology called OFF THE RECORD, a collection of stories inspired by favorite rock'n'roll songs and penned by some of the best underground writers currently working... and me, too.

And Jason Michel, the mad-with-power dictator behind Pulp Metal, has a "best of" in the works called LAUGHING AT THE DEATH GRIN, which will include Paul Brazill, Chris Rhatigan, Ian Ayris, Danny Hogan, and yours truly.

Promises to Keep

2011-10-02T13:56:00.000-07:00

Man, you folks really rose to the occasion! My goal was to hit 100 followers total (that would've soothed my fragile writer's ego) but in the last couple of days we got to 103! I'm very grateful for the turn-out; it's like throwing a party and having all your favorite people show up.

So, as promised, this coming week I'll post an audio file of me reading one of my stories. Probably "It Will All Be Carried Away", unless ya'll indicate you'd like to hear a different one.

Until then, comrades, cheers.

Kindle-fied Review 9: GUNS OF RETRIBUTION, by Icy Sedgwick

2011-09-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

Icy Sedgwick is late of London, now back in Newcastle (not Liverpool, as previously noted). She’s been writing critically-acclaimed steampunk for a while now, but in her latest novel from the always-fearless Pulp Press, she treads new ground. And she comes up aces.
THE GUNS OF RETRIBUTION is a strong Western full of action, honor, betrayal, and fast guns. Our hero, Gray O’Donnell, is a bounty hunter with a strong sense of justice, on the trail of a criminal named Blackjack Bud Hudson. But his quest takes him a little too close to his old home in the town of Retribution, where some unfinished business in the form of Jasper Roberts awaits. Jasper is a scumbag who’s only lately become sheriff of Retribution, and he plans on using his newfound power to make life miserable for Gray—miserable enough that it can only end in a hanging.
Sedgwick has clearly done her research—the short novel is laced through with convincing bits of regional and historical asides. But to her credit, she doesn’t get bogged down in it. The story moves swiftly through a lot of very playful dialogue and action. There’s very little exposition, and that’s as it should be.
Gray is a very likeable hero; I couldn’t help but think he’d get along well with Edward Grainger’s Cash Laramie. Over-all, THE GUNS OF RETRIBUTION feels like a single episode in a longer saga, which I hope is an indication of more Gray O’Donnell to come.

The Over 100 Club

2011-09-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

I already mentioned this on them there social media sites, like The Facebook and The Twitter, but I should say it here as well: this "less than 100 followers" thing is getting downright embarrassing. All the other bloggers are mocking me behind my back. So here's my offer...

If I can get to 100 followers... and beyond!!... I'll post an audio of me reading one of my stories here. You can close your eyes and listen to my dulcet tones and imagine James Earl Jones, Barry White, and Tommy Lee Jones all rolled up snug, reading a non-award-winning tale to chill yer hackles.

If you already follow, hey, thanks. If not, just click on that button somewhere over on the right. Or spread it around. I want them perks that come with more followers.

Kindle-fied Review 8: BROKEN BONES, by Troy Lambert

2011-09-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

BROKEN BONES is the debut collection of up-and-comer Troy Lambert, and a fine collection it is. 19 stories total, most of them involving men at a sort of crisis point in their lives, events ranging from loss of identity to impending death. The drama in Lambert’s stories unfolds as we witness the true depth—or lack thereof—of the protagonists. Most of his protagonists rise to the occasion, and that’s the inherent optimism of the author. He has a good opinion of humanity, and that’s rather refreshing.
Lambert has included even his earliest, roughest work. The plus side of this is that you can see how much he’s improved as a story-teller. And he’s not afraid to take stylistic risks, most of which really pay off quite nicely.

Kindle-fied Review 7: CADILLAC'S COMIN', by Mike Dennis

2011-09-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

CADILLAC'S COMIN' is Mike Dennis’ love letter to rock’n’roll, that’s what it is.
Memphis, 1958, and rockabilly piano stomper Ike Thacker is on the verge of the big-time. A sort of cross between Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent, Ike has just released his hit single “Cadillac’s Comin’” and the world is opening up to him. Until a horrible and tragic accident derails everything…
The story picks up in the eighties, with a wanna-be musician whose life spirals out of control when he gets involved with the wrong people and finds himself immersed in the world of the Dixie Mafia. Ike Thacker, now an old, largely forgotten has-been, appears in a peripheral role.
I found the second part of CADILLAC’S COMIN' just a little bit weaker than the first, even though the actual crime story happens there—I just got so wrapped up in Ike’s career, and the wonderful atmosphere Dennis created. It felt very historically accurate, with appearances by real-life characters like Sam Phillips and Gene Vincent. Still, Dennis does a great job of weaving the two stories together so that by the end everything comes together nicely. I’d recommend this one, especially if, like me, you have a soft spot for roots music.

OFF THE RECORD and other stuff

2011-09-28T07:58:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note-- I'd planned on starting a new series of weekly posts today on the great writers of hard-boiled and nor lit from the '50's and early '60's. But I'm putting that off for another couple of weeks, at least. I've wound up unexpectedly busy these last few weeks with writing stuff, and to be honest, as much as I love posting here at Psycho-Noir, fiction writing takes priority.

The good news (good news if you like reading my fiction, that is) is that over the remainder of the year you'll be seeing three or four stories from me at various places. One that I can mention right now is a new anthology being put together by Luca Veste, called OFF THE RECORD. About 30 writers are coming together for it, and the proceeds will go to children's literacy charities. So... well-done, Luca, and I'm happy to be part of it.

Information on the other projects as they roll out.

I WILL get to the series on hard-boiled/noir writers as soon as time permits.

And just one more quick thing, while I'm thinking of it-- a thank you. The warm responses I've received to THE BASTARD HAND and DIG TEN GRAVES has been a real antidote to that crippling self-doubt that plagues most writers at one time or another. The positive reviews and kind words have left me feeling that maybe I'm doing something right. I feel very, very good about my work these days. Again, thank you.

...and that's as sentimental as you're gonna see me get, so don't get used to it, fuckers.

Kindle-fied Review 6: RAISED IN HELL(THE DEVIL'S MUSIC), by Julia Madeleine

2011-09-27T03:38:00.000-07:00

I was so impressed with Julia Madeleine’s Roman Dalton story FEAR THE NIGHT, that I immediately bought RAISED IN HELL, the first in a series of demonically-influenced peeks at the dark, secret history of rock’n’roll. And I was very, very glad I did.
First of all, it’s very clear that Madeleine knows her roots music. I know a thing or two about the subject myself, and can spot a fake ten miles away—Julia Madeleine is the real deal.
And the story? Sweet. It’s Depression-era America—Memphis, to be exact—and Sadie, the Devil’s very own daughter, is in town to collect a very particular soul. The soul is question belongs to a legendary bluesman (come on, you know the one—sold his soul at the crossroads?) but it seems he’s not quite ready to part with it yet.
Sadie is surprisingly likeable… okay, I know she’s the Devil’s daughter, but I still like her. Madeleine doesn’t go the easy predictable route by making Sadie dangerously seductive and evil--I mean, she IS dangerously seductive and sexy and all that… but she’s MORE than that, too. She’s sympathetic. She LOVES music. And she LOVES the souls she takes. Her motivation isn’t exactly evil.
To say any more about RAISED IN HELL would spoil it for you. Just take my word for it and read this one. Can’t wait to see where Madeleine takes Sadie next.