tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96378742024-03-07T13:13:46.701-06:00Central Crime ZoneTHE CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE BLOGJon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.comBlogger736125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-20873371736290687692012-12-08T16:11:00.001-06:002012-12-08T16:11:27.420-06:00Happy Holidays - Lets smoke<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-57152220549505090102012-11-05T10:31:00.000-06:002012-11-05T10:36:09.423-06:00Post voting....So tomorrow pretty much everyone I'm friends with will be hitting their local polling place and voting if they haven't already voted early. I've always felt that if you have a political view you need to express it with a vote. If you don't vote I don't want to hear your opinion.<br />
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I've got friends on both sides, Republican and Democrat. Almost all of them can discuss this stuff rationally without getting angry at each other. They can avoid name calling and rudeness. Of course if they couldn't I probably wouldn't be friends with them.<br />
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I get it, I understand why people get passionate about this stuff. It's important and the outcome will impact everyone. So regardless of what you believe, back it up with a vote. And then lets see if we can't move forward from that and do something crazy. Lets all work together to make this country better. Talk to your congressmen and senators. Talks to your Alderman, send a letter top the President if you disagree with something.<br />
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But can we please stop acting like assholes? People disagreeing is what helps us find the best solution for everyone if we can move past the disagreement and work together. Washington needs to stop playing politics and lead. meaning what's best for the American people and not just your party.<br />
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We have common goals, we want to be safe, we want to be free and we want to be able to make ourselves happy.<br />
Let's try to do it together.<br />
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So as of Wednesday just maybe we can stop the name calling and the rhetoric and actually use that energy in a positive way?<br />
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I love my Republican friends, they are smart and bring up things I might not have thought about. My Democrat friends are passionate good people. They are all smart people that make me think and make me smile. And I trust my friends no matter how they vote. So maybe after the voting is done we can all start to trust each other and work together to make Washington does what best for us, the American people and not just best for their parties?<br />
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I do care who wins the election, but no matter who it is, and what office they are in, I want the politicians to stop playing politics and start governing<br />
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We can get it if we really want it.<br />
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<br />Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-22539322364592277342012-08-10T11:28:00.001-05:002012-08-10T11:28:07.233-05:00We Love Sean Chercover Subscription Incentive<a href="http://www.chercover.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/the-trinity-game-sean-chercover1-199x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.chercover.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/the-trinity-game-sean-chercover1-199x300.jpg" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><b>To celebrate Sean Chercover's new book THE TRINITY GAME, we are going to have a contest.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://nozama.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ed05fc28833017743c87b9c970d-320wi" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://nozama.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ed05fc28833017743c87b9c970d-320wi" width="230" /></a>Any one subscribing to Crimespree or renewing by August 20th will be entered to win signed copies of all three of Sean's books. A signed copy of BIG CITY BAD BLOOD, TRIGGER CITY and THE TRINITY GAME will be sent to a person picked at random from all subscriptions coming in. We'll even throw in a Crimespree hat!</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">To subscribe, go to this page and hook up! <b><a href="http://crimespreemag.com/blog/subscribe">SUBSCRIBE</a></b></span>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-27316457046885554682012-04-06T09:58:00.000-05:002012-04-06T09:58:09.434-05:00John Connolly Interview - from 2002<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal">John Connolly </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If human existence were a heavily wooded forest, John Connolly would be writing about the very center of it. That place among the tallest trees that has you looking around wondering how to get out and forgetting how you got in. Very little light reaches this place and every sound will have your heart pumping as the unknown creeps up behind you. His Bad Men are the shadows you see out of the corner of your eye and that snap of a twig in the midnight hour. What your mind conjures up doesn't live up to the reality of this forests beasts. His Charlie Parker is the guide that stands back to back with you, fending off the evil that men do as his own internal struggle darkens his eyes. As the night turns to dawn, and the dappled light finally reaches you again, you look down and see what the darkness has done to you. And you know you'll never be the same. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- Jennifer Jordan</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right off, I need to ask, as an Irish author - why an American protagonist?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Short question, but a very long answer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Firstly, it was very much a reaction against what I felt Irish writers were expected to write about: famine, religion, sexual repression, Britain, terrorism, how<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>often it rains in Limerick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was growing up, Irish fiction - although sometimes superbly crafted - was pretty miserable stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In school, I once had to read 'Men Withering', in which an old man dies, and dies long and hard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm sure it's a fine book, but it put me off reading for six months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, we didn't really do crime writing in Ireland, crime writers tending to be the exception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's not a tradition we've really had, and a number of writers who might be considered to be writing crime have ended up using some of its structures to write about terrorism, which was our worst form of crime for so long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, that wasn't an area I was interested in exploring.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Secondly, I was curious both about the United States - a place about</div><div class="MsoNormal">which I have mixed feelings, finding it both welcoming and threatening -and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>American crime fiction, which seemed more concerned with empathy and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>compassion than its British counterparts. (I was particularly influenced by Ross Macdonald.) I didn't feel like those structures necessarily transferred terribly well to other cultures or societies, so I decided to work with them in their original setting.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And, as an Irishman, I thought I could bring something slightly different to the US crime novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, there was no point in simply slavishly imitating, since American writers do crime rather well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose I bring an outsider's point of view, as well as the influence of a slightly different European tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My writing style isn't really similar to what would be considered "classic" American crime writing - the prose isn't stripped down at all; the opposite in fact - and there are strong elements of the Gothic, which is something Irish writers (Bram Stoker, Sheridan Le Fanu) did very well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your books are a bit dark. Does it have an effect on you, or does it stay with the book?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bit dark!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are those who might regard that as understatement. I suppose they are dark, but it's balanced throughout with a promise, if not the actuality, of hope and redemption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there's a certain amount of humor, too.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But, yes, it does affect me at time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>DARK HOLLOW was particularly difficult.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm not sure why, to be honest: I suppose it deals with a man teetering on the brink of hope or salvation, and uncertain of which way he's going to fall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I feel that if, as a writer, you're dealing with dark material, with death and suffering, then it should affect you, otherwise you're just a dabbler and there's no truth to what you're writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think it should affect the reader too: I'm not sure that crime fiction should always be an "easy read" for the reader; otherwise it becomes voyeuristic, almost pornographic.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The books have a real feeling for the locations. Have you been to these places or is it just damn good writing?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I go to a lot of trouble to get the locations right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stay in the places I use, talk to local people, find out about their history and the history of the area, take notes when I eat, walk the streets, drive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's like scouting locations for a movie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose there are probably easier ways to do it, but this is the only way I know how to work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's very time-consuming, but worth it at the end if the reader feels he or she inhabits a real world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because I don't write "realist" crime fiction, insofar as any crime writing is truly realist, it is important that the world of the novels is as real and believable as possible, so that when the strange or supernatural begins to infect it the reader is prepared to go along with it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The British covers are beautiful, and even the American covers are pretty cool. Do you have any input on the art?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have very little input on the American covers, although I hope that's going to change with the third book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Britain, it's been very collaborative, particularly for THE KILLING KIND and the forthcoming WHITE ROAD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hodder allows me to go off and find the illustrations that I like and then suggest the color schemes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After that, it's up to Hodder's art department, who has been brilliant right from the beginning.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The name Charlie "Bird" Parker is an obvious jazz reference. Are you a big jazz fan? What other kinds of music do you enjoy?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's funny, I chose the name mainly for the nickname, since I liked the idea of a character so mired in mortality having a name associated with flight and freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It irritates some people, but it's too late now. Also, it's kind of a small joke, since Parker hates jazz and his parents named him without realizing that he would be sharing his name with a jazz musician.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He listens to a lot of the music that I listen to: alternative country, indie rock, classic eighties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, he's only a year or two older than I am, although one of my friends was very distressed to think of a former policeman turned potentially violent private eye listening to The Blue Nile, who my friend regarded as kind of weedy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I prefer sensitive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the first book, one of the killers is getting ideas from anatomy drawings? Do these really exist?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Absolutely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That whole tradition of anatomical drawing and modeling, of the obsession with the workings of the human body and the intimations of mortality that could be drawn from it, is factual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I make up very little of what is in the books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In THE KILLING KIND, the strange history of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>religious obsession in the state of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maine that forms the novel's backdrop is all true.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I tend to be a bit prickly about EVERY DEAD THING, at times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never really set out to write a standard serial killer novel, much as I've enjoyed some of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted the Traveling Man to be one part of a larger web of corruption, from the level of city government right down to the individual human soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe I didn't succeed, but I tried. That whole anatomical tradition is linked to something much stranger: the idea that this world is merely a passing thing, something to be endured, while the next world will provide the reward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea crops up again in THE KILLING KIND: that idea of suffering being an integral part of the human experience.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do write you novels full time, or are you still doing some journalism work?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still do occasional journalism: author interviews, mainly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remain a fan of good writing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think Angel and Louis are great characters, are they going to stay a feature of the books?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've been working toward something with Angel and Louis, and it kind of comes to fruition in the fourth book, THE WHITE ROAD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They become far more ambiguous characters, colder, more violent, and estranged from both Parker and each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the beginning, I used them to show aspects of Parker that might otherwise have been hidden: his sense of humor, his capacity to inspire love and loyalty in others, and also his first faltering steps toward redemption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as he has progressed, I think Louis and Angel have begun to find that his struggle with morality is different from their own, that he is genuinely, deeply tormented by the choices that he is forced to make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In THE WHITE ROAD, some of the consequences of that struggle become<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>clearer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also learn a bit more about Angel and Louis, and why they are the way they are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Louis's story does, I think, have a blackly comic element to it, while Angel's does not.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People being the strange creatures that they are, do you get any flak about having gay characters in your books?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: No, I'm sure that there are some complete rednecks that won't read a book with gay characters in it, but they're in the minority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that they are gay is largely incidental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn't define them, any more than Parker's heterosexuality defines him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Love is love.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some gay readers have written to me to say how much they like them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, one confessed that he was a bit in love with both of them: not sure that you could actually love both of them, since they are, in some ways, polar opposites.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: Any thoughts on having Parker travel out of the US?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: I suppose it's a possibility, but only as part of a larger plot set within the US.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm not a huge fan of blockbuster globetrotting thrillers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I think one of the stand-alones may be set almost entirely in a very isolated, self-contained community, which is the exact opposite of the globetrotter model, really.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is there anything happening with film or television options?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: I'm very cautious when it comes to film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just think a lot of film adaptations of thrillers tend to be average at best, and generally poor.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Also, I get depressed when I see writers obsessively chasing the movie dollar or, worse, tailoring novels for film. I write books, not movie treatments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I was kind of perversely proud that EVERY DEAD THING is probably unfilmable. I would have fewer difficulties with the later books, but it's still something I'm cautious about.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: With the new trend in publishing for authors to do stand-alone books, do you have any plans in that direction? And also, would you want to keep the series going in addition to stand-alones?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: Mystery readers are very loyal, but also very demanding. I know, for myself, how much I look forward to the next Robicheaux or the new Kenzie and Gennaro, so I sympathize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's nice to get a kind of "fix" of your favorite characters, to keep up with what's happening in their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that can be a kind of trap for writers, and can lead them to be unambitious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes, what readers, editors, publishers or agents might want may not be best for you as a writer.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I think, after THE WHITE ROAD, there may be a non-crime novel: still genre, and still quite dark, but probably not what people would expect. Then, probably one or two out of the next three may be Parkers, but there will be a stand-alone somewhere along the line: either very traditional crime, or a book that takes the supernatural/ crime hybrid as far as it can go, from my point of view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love doing the Parker books, but I'm very anxious not to short-change readers or myself.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It's why I don't take an advance for books any more: an advance means that you commit to a date of publication, possibly for a novel that isn't ready yet but which you may have to give up, or to a novel that you may not want to write, but now you've taken the money and have to accede.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each Parker novel has been quite different from the next, and has tried to push the envelope a little.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'd like to continue to do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will always return to him, I think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'll be curious to see what he's like when he's sixty.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: Who are some of your favorite authors, and who would you consider influences?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: Macdonald, because of his compassion; Burke, for the quality of his writing; Lehane, because he's just so good and Mystic River is a superb novel; Harlan Coben, for being damn funny; Julia Wallis Martin, for the darkness and beauty of the novels; and Paul Johnston, for trying to do something a little different in creating futuristic, satirical crime novels. Oh, and Colin Batemen, who is Ireland's Carl Hiaasen.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: You have a wonderful website. Do you feel that the internet plays an important role for authors?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted the website so that people could contact me if they chose, could get to read other things I'd done (the BBC ghost stories, for example, or the author interviews) for free, could feel that I was as interested in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>them as, I hope, they are in me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's really a way of staying in touch with people.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What are some of your favorite movies?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, that varies from day to day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've just been taking my videos out of boxes to shelve in my house, so let's see:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pretty much the whole Laurel & Hardy collection is there, early Steve Martin, Carpenter's 'The Thing', 'Southern Comfort' (a great action movie), Michael Mann's 'Last of the Mohicans', 'Chinatown', 'Annie Hall', 'Manhattan', 'Love and Death'.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surprisingly, maybe, a lot of comedy, but very few crime movies.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: As a fairly new author, how do you like doing store appearances? Is it a weird feeling to become a celebrity?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love doing them. Well, I do as long as people show up, otherwise it gets a bit sad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm always flattered when people show up, and I try to talk to them individually if they want to chat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be honest, I put quite a bit of effort into the store appearances: I hate writers who feel that it's enough just to read some chunk of their latest opus to a captive audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most aren't good enough at reading their own work to hold an audience. I tend to just talk - about the books, about crime fiction, about whatever comes to mind at the time. I love what I do, and realize I'm very lucky to be doing it, but that's down to readers and booksellers. I owe them a lot, and when I do bookstore appearances I try to pay it back in some small way.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: So, is there anything about you that would surprise people to know?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Er, I'm not tormented, at least, not all the time. And I have a Bob Wilson drawing in my kitchen, depicting a bunch of teddy bears loaded down with food and lemonade with the lead bear saying: "This looks like a nice spot..."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you write, do you have the book laid out in advance, or do you let the book show you where it needs to go?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: Half and half, really.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've never plotted a book out in advance, but I tend to have an idea of where it's going to go. That usually changes, though: characters assume greater importance, plot lines assume more significance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's an interesting experience, both at once within and outside your control.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How important are is an editor to the writing process?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: Hmmmm. I think I'm pretty open to editorial suggestions, but so far I haven't had any that were terribly controversial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think American editors are more hands-on: they tend to give detailed notes, while my British editor adopts a more softly, softly approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of the editorial stuff I've received has been very minor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Funnily enough, I tend to be much harsher on my books than my editors, and keep making changes right up to the wire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, my agent saw one ending to DARK HOLLOW my editor a second, and the readers a third.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: Would you care to give an insight to the other two endings for DARK HOLLOW?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: Um, one was just a complete misfire, so I'll let it lie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other just involved a slightly brighter ray of happiness for Parker at the end, with Rachel arriving on his doorstep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a nice scene (actually, someone who read it in proof burst into tears, but I think she may have been oversensitive) but just felt a bit premature.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: Does your reading audience seem to be more male or female?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:I think I have a nice balance but, by and large, I think it's probably more women than men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that reflects the patterns within mystery fiction as a whole, I think, and readers in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Women read more than men.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you put any of yourself in to your books? Are you at all like Bird?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There's a lot of me in Parker: I share his sense of humor, his view of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm interested in the ideas of morality and compassion that infuse the books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think, like a great many people, I wish I was a better person than I am.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Parker, I get to explore how one might apply that wish to life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What other things occupy your time besides writing?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cook.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I go to the gym.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I travel a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I read.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you could go back in time and speak to a younger John Connolly, what would you tell him?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don't take yourself so seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Be nicer to people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when you have the opportunity to have a pint with your dad, take it, because when you'll want to do it later, he won't be there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You do some relentless touring, almost non stop it seems. Does it take its toll on you?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think it was Henry Rollins who said that you're only 75 per cent as interesting as you think you are. After eight or nine weeks of non-stop touring, you begin to feel that 75 percent is a vast overestimation of your capacity to interest other people.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like touring. It's deeply flattering when people come along to a store and let you know that they enjoy your books, because writing is such a solitary pursuit for much of the time. The downside, apart from being a bit tiring, is that it's really hard for me to write when I'm on the road. I need to be at home, with a certain routine in place. In the end, there are only a limited number of outcomes to the that situation: either you curtail touring so you can write, or you begin rushing the books to fit the time available to you, or the books simply start to take longer to produce. I'm going for a combination of the first and third options. That, or death.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: I really enjoyed BAD MEN. Are you going to be writing more in this<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>direction?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: I'm a genre writer, but I'm curious about experimenting in a number of genres. I've always been interested in supernatural fiction, and there's a strong element of that in the Parker novels. In part, it's because I have a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pretty flexible definition of what "mystery" means to me, stretching from<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>its use to describe crime novels right back to a much older definition of the word, which has religious/ supernatural origins. A mystery, as the word was originally understood, is a revelation - usually divine in origin - which cannot be understood by human reasoning alone. So I suppose that I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>don't see any conflict between crime and the supernatural. Rather, one<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>seems to me to be a natural from the other.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What are you working on right now?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: I've more or less finished a collection of ghost stories, the centerpiece<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of which is a long Parker novella currently entitled THE REFLECTING EYE, although that may change. That book will be followed pretty soon after by the next full-length Parker novel, if I'm spared.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon: What's the last book you read and what did you think of it?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: The last book I read was Louise Welsh's THE CUTTING ROOM. I liked it a lot, although it told me a little more about certain types of sexual activity than I really needed to know.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Steve Martin. Why does he make you laugh?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C: Happy Feet. Bunny rabbit ears. "The Absent-Minded Waiter." Attempting to seduce Kathleen Turner in "The Man With Two Brains" while seated with his hat on his lap, then being rebuffed and, massively frustrated, walking<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>toward the window, his hat still dangling from his groin. The camera<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>focuses on his face as, from below, we hear glass breaking...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jon:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What's the one thing that's always in your refrigerator ?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Skimmed milk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm a healthy boy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This interview along with others is available in</div><div class="MsoNormal">INTERROGATIONS now on Ebooks:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=centalcrimezo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0071F4IU0&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></div>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-91011008503083403912012-03-21T13:03:00.000-05:002012-03-21T13:03:40.931-05:00Author Gene DeWeese passes away.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span> Author Gene </span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span>DeWeese has passed away. Born in 1934 Gene wrote in all genres, but in particular Science Fiction.</span></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;">DeWeese was an active member of science fiction fandom, and his first stories were published in science fiction fanzines. </span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;">DeWeese's first professionally published fiction, the novels <i>The Invisibility Affair</i> and <i>The Mind-Twisters Affair</i> (both 1967), were part of the series of <i>Man from U.N.C.L.E.</i> books written with fellow science fiction fan "Buck" Coulson under the pseudonym <b>Thomas Stratton. </b> DeWeese since has written over forty books, including novels in the Star Trek, Ravenloft, Dinotopia, and Amazing Stories series. His best-known young adult novel is <i>The Adventures of a Two-Minute Werewolf</i>, which was made into a television movie of the same name.</span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;">Gene DeWeese is survived by his wife Bev whom he married in 1955. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span> </span>Interview with Gene DeWeese</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Summer 2003</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: Before writing fiction you were a technical writer for the Apollo program. Was that interesting work or mind numbing?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.mysteryone.com/images/interviews/deweese_trek001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.mysteryone.com/images/interviews/deweese_trek001.JPG" width="186" /></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Actually, except for pressing pants in a clothing factory one summer many years ago, I don't think I've ever had a job that could be classified "mind numbing" -- unless it numbed my mind so much I've forgotten it altogether. As for Apollo, it was mostly fun, particularly when I was doing a series of programmed instruction texts that were supposed to be an "intuitive" approach to orbital mechanics and another series about the LEM and CM guidance computers. In fact, most of the tech writing I did was more fun than not, since a lot of what I did was try to explain how the equipment worked, which meant I had to find out myself how it worked, which usually meant reading lots of specs and then endlessly bugging the engineers to fill in the gaps and "clarify" the jargon. In a way, the "high" you get when you suddenly realize, "Oh, _that's_ how that works!" isn't all that different from the "high" you get in writing fiction when a plot problem suddenly resolves itself with an "Oh, _that's_ why Character X did that!" And with Apollo there was the fringe benefit of a couple trips to Cape Kennedy and Houston with enough spare time to do touristy things like take a ride to the top of the VAB. Jon: Among your work you have written some franchise books, Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Star Trek, is it a bit limiting to work with in an existing structure like that, or is it kind of fun to see if you can stretch the boundaries a bit?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: The U.N.C.L.E. books were the first sales Buck and I had made, in fact the first things either of us had written longer than a short story, so we considered them a great "earn-while-you-learn" program. And for the Trek books I mostly adapted ideas I'd originally had for sf novels. Even the Lost In Space novel was from an idea that had been laying around for a couple decades and a variation of which I'd used in a Hi-Lo book in the eighties.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: You’ve written in a lot of different genres. Do you have a favorite to write in?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Juvenile sf, probably, since the informal "voice" in those is the closest to my "normal" style.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: Do you have a favorite to read?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: I've always read both sf and mysteries -- PLANET STORIES and Clarke and Erle Stanley Gardner in grade and high school, Priest and Clarke, Gorman and Pronzini, etc., now.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: Does your wife Bev read your work, and is she honest with you about it?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Not much of the shared-world stuff, especially the Ravenloft fantasies, but, then, while they were fun and challenging to write and turned out pretty well, I probably wouldn't have found them, let alone read them, if I hadn't known the author.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: You’ve used a few pseudonyms over the years, why?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: It's generally been the publisher's choice. With the first U.N.C.L.E. book, for instance, they accepted the manuscript but rejected the title, our names, and the dedication. INVISIBLE DIRIGIBLE AFFAIR was too long for the cover format, so it became INVISIBILITY AFFAIR. Our names were likewise too long, so we took my unused first name and Buck's unused middle name and became "Thomas Stratton". (We'd already done dozens of pseudo-Will-Cuppy articles for YANDRO under that name.) And then, with only one author's name on the cover, they decided the original dedication, "To my wives and child," was too racy for the intended pre-teen audience, so that was gone, too, replaced by "To Serendipity," which was actually pretty appropriate since the only reason we sold it in the first place was that Juanita had already sold a couple of novels to Ace and the editor (Terry Carr) was also the editor of the U.N.C.L.E. series. As it turned out, Terry was looking for U.N.C.L.E. books with a bit more humor, so he offered Juanita a chance to try out, but she turned it down. Buck and I, being less choosy, decided "what the hell, it's worth a shot," and put together a fast three chapters and outline, which Terry shocked the hell out of us by buying -- and giving us a deadline of less than three months.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">As for the other names: The editor who was buying my gothics insisted that I use a female name, so I just changed "Gene" to "Jean". (And later met the real "Jean DeWeese", who turned out to be a retired [male] hardware store owner in Ohio.) And for the one romance(GINGER'S WISH), it was again a combination of unused names of the two authors, "Thomas" again for me and "Victoria" for my collaborator, another one-time tech writer who, incidentally, was the model for one of my gothic heroines, a tech writer/instructor working at Elmendorf(sp?) Air Force base in Alaska. (One reader objected to the heroine as being "too competent," which always struck me as one of the weirder reasons for not liking a character.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: Your latest book, Murder In The Blood, set in Farrell County introduces some really great characters. Is this the first of a series?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Only if I can sell a paperback edition and find someone willing to contract for a sequel or two. As it is, I have ideas for a couple more, and I've saved one subplot that was originally in MURDER but was taken out when I had to shorten it. Although, come to think of it, I've already used one of those ideas in a Sherlock Holmes story that ended up in EQMM a few years ago.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: How do you approach your writing? Do you outline in advance or do you see where the story leads you?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Always an outline, for a couple reasons. First, I once tried taking a "see where it goes" approach, and it didn't go anywhere. Second, you have to have an outline in order to sell the book. MURDER is, so far, the only one I've ever written without a contract, but it more or less made up for all the others, in that it's been written and rewritten so often that it would have to be a real bestseller before I'd even make minimum wage on it. And even it started with a fairly detailed outline. Actually, though, there is an element of "see where it goes," even when you're working from an outline. Unforeseen things pop up all the time, and the route you take to get to the end isn't always precisely the route taken in the outline. In WANTING FACTOR, for instance, I found myself killing off one of the characters I hadn't intended to kill, but it just "felt right," and it took me another week to figure out why he needed to be killed. And in MURDER, a couple of the final twists only showed up in the final manuscript -- or somewhere along the line in one of the half dozen or more "final manuscripts" I eventually did.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: What inspired you to write fiction?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: No idea. Probably just the fact that I started reading a couple years before starting grade school and was into pulp detective magazines (like Phantom and Black Book) by second grade and science fiction (mostly Planet and Startling) a year or so later. (Didn't find Astounding/Analog and Erle Stanley Gardner till around 6th.) First thing I ever tried writing was a "sequel" to a Mickey Mouse serial in Walt Disney Comics. (I don't remember what the sequel was, but the Disney serial was a variation on/steal from one or more of Ray Cummings' Girl in the Golden Atom type stories.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: How much time do you spend writing?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: To paraphrase what Mickey Spillane said at the first Milwaukee Bouchercon (and probably many other places), it depends on how soon the editor needs it. Lately, with no contracts outstanding, not a lot. One time, when the editor needed the last couple chapters of PROBE by Monday, I only got three or four hours sleep the whole weekend and transmitted the last section to his home computer (this was before email and internet) around midnight Sunday night and a batch of changes to the same computer, which he'd taken to the office with him, Monday forenoon. Strange as it may sound, though, that weekend was the most fun I've ever had writing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: You’ve been using computers a pretty long time. Does it surprise you to see how far computers have come and the way they are a part of everyday life?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Actually, I was something of a latecomer to personal computers. Didn't get one until '84, which was the year after I'd done a juvenile non-fiction book about them. (COMPUTERS IN ENTERTAINMENT AND THE ARTS) As for being surprised about their ubiquity, not really, except maybe in retrospect. It all happened so gradually, and I'd been writing about the innards of computers since the early sixties, starting with analog, not digital. In fact, the first thing I worked on when I transferred to Milwaukee and what was then AC Spark Plug was the B-52 bombing/navigation computer, several hundred pounds of metal rods and gears. ("Clean the ball bearings with a cloth-covered finger" was one of the boilerplate sentences I came across early on. No one ever told me where they stored the cloth-covered fingers.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: How many miles a year do you think you put on your bike?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: 1,825 miles the last Bical Year (July 4 to July 4). Most miles in a single year was approximately 3,700 when I was pedaling to and from work all days the weather permitted.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: I found an older copy of Mike Shayne’s mystery digest magazine with a short story of yours in it recently. Have you written a lot of short stories?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Not a lot, maybe 15 or 20. There's a complete list of them and the novels on the ACWL.ORG website. Which, by the way, is the only complete and accurate listing I know of, since it's the only one I did myself.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: What is the main difference in writing short fiction compared to novels, as far as pros and cons for the author?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Never really thought about it, aside from the obvious stuff. Like, it takes a lot longer to write twenty 5,000-word short stories than it does to write one 100,000-word novel. And except for the few exceptions that prove the rule -- like Bradbury or Ed Hoch -- it's almost impossible to make a decent living writing only short stories.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: What was the last book you read and what did you think of it?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: I'll fudge a little and say that the last one that made a real impression on me was The Prestige by Christopher Priest. It's Victorian-style sf about a magician who was able to transport himself instantaneously from one side of the stage to the other, and it's the only thing I've seen in decades that has a truly spine-chilling concluding scene.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mysteryone.com/images/interviews/deweese_mikeshayne_magazine.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.mysteryone.com/images/interviews/deweese_mikeshayne_magazine.JPG" width="218" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: What are some of your favorite movies?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Here I'll save time by quoting from an article I did for The Milwaukee Journal back in the late 70's. It's still true, the parenthetical insert in the first paragraph even more so since cable and the dozens of movie channels.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">"There are only three movies I've purposely gone to theaters to see more than twice. (Watching movies time and again on tv late shows doesn't count; that's laziness, not enthusiasm.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">"Back in the fifties there was The Day the Earth Stood Still, the best of a huge spate of science fiction movies, most of which were mediocre or worse. It has the distinction of being the only sf movie I know of in which Hollywood actually improved on -- rather than destroyed -- the original story. "Then, about a decade later, there was 2001: A Space Odyssey, written by Arthur C. Clarke. Despite director Kubrick's tendency to be obscure, it was the most beautiful and most mind-jolting movie I've ever seen, and it will probably remain so until someone does a faithful version of Childhood's End...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">"Then there's No. 3: The Rocky Horror Picture Show..."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In the original article, I went on about Rocky for a thousand words or so, but here I'll limit myself to saying that I first saw it at MidAmericon, the '76 World SF Con, and four more times at the Oriental before the Rocky "fans" (nowhere near as clever as the movie they were drowning out) started getting out of hand. And I'll finish with the one line the Journal censored: "I hesitate to say that it's all in good taste, but, then, taste is in the mouth of the beholder." (A reference to Meatloaf being on the castle menu. The editor/censor changed the last eight words to: "... taste is a pretty subjective business.")</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Write!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: What’s harder, the original writing or the re-writing?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Usually the original writing. I certainly enjoy the rewriting more, which probably explains why I generated at least 8 manuscript boxes full of notes and drafts of Murder in the Blood in the 20+ years between the first draft and the sale last year. Of course there are always exceptions, like Jeremy Case, which I did for Laser in the mid-seventies. That turned out to be one of best things I've ever done -- won Best Novel of '76 from the Council for Wisconsin Writers -- and it was virtually effortless. Went from idea/contract to finished manuscript in roughly one month. And it's just been reissued in trade pb in the MWA Presents series, complete with the original Kelly Freas cover. (Hour of the Cat, a mystery starring one of our cats, was also reissued in the MWA Presents series. All available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, of course.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: The University of Southern Mississippi has a collection of your papers. http://avatar.lib.usm.edu/~degrum/html/research/findaids/DG0267f.html?DG0267b.html~mainFrame How does this come about? Did they ask you? And who tracks down all the papers? Can anyone view them?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: I honestly don't remember. I think Tom Aylesworth touted me onto it, which prompts a sidetrack regarding a question you never asked, something along the lines of: "Have you ever felt like your life was one big coincidence?" Answer: Yes, especially the year I accidentally ran into the "real" Jean DeWeese in downtown Milwaukee, which was by itself a ridiculous coincidence, but only one of many. That was when a new book had just come out, I don't remember which one, and my hometown newspaper, the Rochester (IN) News Sentinel, did a small article about it, ending with the sentence, "Another Rochester native, Tom Aylesworth, just had his 14th book published." Which, at the time, was half a dozen more than I'd done. (He eventually did a hundred or so.) Anyway, I'd never heard of him, so I looked him up in the reference books and found that, not only had he written 14 books, he was a senior editor at Doubleday, who had been publishing my books at the time. So I wrote to the editor I'd been working with and asked if she knew Aylesworth. She wrote back that, yes, he was one floor up, "and he has the cutest picture of you in his high school yearbook." Turns out he had been student teaching my freshman year, and he had the yearbooks to prove it. (To appreciate the magnitude of the coincidence, you should know that Rochester had a population of under 4,000 and the whole high school was less than 400 students) Not only that, he was juvenile fiction editor at Doubleday, so he asked if I had anything along those lines. And that's how I got into writing juvenile sf.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">As for the original question again: The university has a huge juvenile literature research collection, the deGrummond collection, and they solicit material from any and everyone who's ever published in juvenile or YA. And my 25 cubic feet pales beside other donations. The champ in that category has donated well over 100 cubic feet. And it's not a case of anyone "tracking down" the papers, etc. In my case, anyway, I just mailed them everything I could find in the attic closets where I'd been packratting rough drafts, notes, correspondence, etc., and they mailed back the paperwork needed to get me a bunch of neat little tax deductions. And they're remarkably well organized. At one point Margaret Wander Bonanno and I wanted to see just what one set of Paramount's comments on Probe had been. I emailed them the specifics, and they located and faxed us exactly what we were looking for within 48 hours. And yes, anyone can view them if they go to the university. What they have on the web is just a sampling and description, done with the money they got from a federal grant a couple years ago. I was just lucky they picked mine as one of the several collections they used the grant for.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: What your favorite way to spend free time?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Probably play table tennis, despite a lack of depth perception, so if anyone wants a game sometime, feel free to contact me. I got a table and a robot in the basement just last year and haven't gotten nearly enough use out of them yet.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Jon: What’s the one thing always in your refrigerator?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gene: Coke. And lactose-free milk for one of our one-eyed cats, who apparently is lactose intolerant.</span></div>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-79594851567773646912012-03-05T16:26:00.000-06:002012-03-05T16:26:03.838-06:00Flashback interview Ian Rankin<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiijvlbixmHPok3lvDpPAOkbRdWOkU7LdgalZj55jYO7yezqJxV9P0GzYrKfpIqguBqBYJI4hrJLZUPh4lP5xvfhLp5A6xqJr6QNgj39l5KgpPY49DMr8lzih4qnmJtuIXAtYYRiQ/s1600/P9110023.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiijvlbixmHPok3lvDpPAOkbRdWOkU7LdgalZj55jYO7yezqJxV9P0GzYrKfpIqguBqBYJI4hrJLZUPh4lP5xvfhLp5A6xqJr6QNgj39l5KgpPY49DMr8lzih4qnmJtuIXAtYYRiQ/s320/P9110023.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Rankin File</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b> </b></i>This originally ran in the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0061HGVTA/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0061HGVTA%22%3ECrimespree%20Magazine%20#5%20and%206%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0061HGVTA%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20%21important;%20margin:0px%20%21important;%22%20/%3E">Mar/Apr 2005</a> edition of Crimespree</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>Crime Denial or Happy Landing</b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><b><span style="font-size: large;">Ruth Jordan </span></b></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">“You know, I’d never really read Crime Fiction until my first book was put in the “Crime Fiction” section of all the book shops. I decided if this was the section I was going to be in, perhaps I should know a bit about it. That’s not saying I’d never read a “crime fiction book.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It starts when you’re young, really. Movies that are being talked about that your parents won’t let you go and see. A Clockwork Orange and The Godfather. Mum and Dad wouldn’t let me go, but I went to the library and there they were, free for the reading. So it started there. Adolescent strategy. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Of course, there was the odd Holmes and even an Agatha, but I was writing poetry then and trying to hide it from everyone. Then University… </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Right, well, so I see KNOTS AND CROSSES in the Crime Fiction section and I’m a bit put off. After all, I’ve just tried to write the contemporary Scot’s novel and I’m in this “genre” section. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Happy to say I landed there. I picked up a few books. P.D. James. Different politics, but a very good writer. It was the Americans I took an immediate shine to, though. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Born in the U.S.A.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">James Lee Burke, there’s a writer for you. James Ellroy was a big influence. Some of his stuff comes off as works in progress, copious footnotes. Still, brilliant. Lawrence Block, the Scudder books. Add Ruth Rendell. So that was my beginning. As a writer, you have to read a fair amount; you’d be letting your own writing down if you didn’t.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Good vs. Bad</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I love this genre when it’s done well. Crime Fiction lends itself to telling a story through and with interpretation. It’s not fair that “Crime Writers” are often measured by plot, setting and character. I say this having spent seven years deconstructing novels through the sum of their parts. The great crime novel, like any novel is a summation of itself. You don’t pick it apart as your reading it, not if it’s good. And who really has the time for the bad?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">There’s bad, too, and I’m willing to name names. Patricia Cornwell, there’s one. Exciting first books. New kind of protagonist. Great science, forward plotting. And then, …, s@#*. Why’d she do it to herself, why did she do it to the readers? Well enough alone, Patsy.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">That was the beginning, those first books. At the same time, you’re getting your own career going. Those first years, putting food on the table, I was writing a lot. So much I published under a pseudonym for a time, Jack Harvey. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Meeting of the Minds</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I received the Raymond Chandler fellowship one year and my wife and I went about the States, soaking it up with our infant son, Jack. Our first Bouchercon (the annual convention for mystery fans, publishers, editors, writers, agents, and dealers) was in Toronto. I got my first American editor on chance there. My son Jack, all of nine months, was crawling along the floor when an attractive woman in one of the stalls picked him up off the floor. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“What a cute baby!” lead to me introducing myself. To my surprise she said, “My husband is your biggest fan.” Well, since she was quite obviously American my reaction was, “But I’m not even published in the states”. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The lady’s husband was Otto Penzler and by the end of the convention he had become my first American publisher. Someone willing to give a young Scotsman a shot at an American readership.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Sharing Shelf Space</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I kept reading. I’ve come into this all at a very good time. “Grandfather of Tartan Noir”, I’m a bit tired of that. I’m not old enough to be a grandfather! Still, there’s an awful lot of superb writing coming from my countrymen right now. Val McDermid, Sandy McCall Smith, Denise Mina, Louise Welch. Chris Brookmyre is another writer for Americans who like our stuff to find a home for on their shelves. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">And for young authors with a lot of promise, I’ll mention Allan Guthrie. TWO-WAY SPLIT is his first novel and in March 2005, he releases KISS HER GOOD-BYE.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Twenty years on and I’m still amazed, but feel I’ve paid the dues. I’ve been at the signings where nobody came, the conventions where no one knew who I was. There are always the moments though. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Full Circle</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Last year, I was at the Las Vegas Bouchercon. “British Guest of Honor”. James Lee Burke was the American guest of honor, Ruth Rendell the international guest. Full circle really. I’ve worked hard. They have too. And in opening ceremonies, Lee Child proclaims he was my first reader and fuck all, I believe he must have been. For he’d read my work in Hi-Fi magazine, made up reviews of stereo components I couldn’t afford.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">A Different Game</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">There are differences for a Brit and an American. It’s kind of ironic, when I first signed on with Little Brown they flew me over, there was a breakfast to meet all the staffers and such, Pelecanos, Connelly, Lehane and me. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Clint’s going to do Mystic River,” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Hey yeah he’s doing my movie as well.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">And I’m sitting here going, “Fuck, these American writers, they just get these film deals.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">There’s nothing like that in the U.K. No high-end, back-end. If we’re lucky, we might have a new kit paid for by B.B.C. or SKY. But Eastwood? Fuck. It’s a different game. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Birds of a Feather</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I’ve my mates you know, Val McDermid, Peter Robinson, Mark Billingham, Simon Kernick. And there’s George Pelecanos, I toured with him last winter. It’ makes a difference, knowing there’s someone with you on the trail whose been through it before. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">And the American ladies! Karin Slaughter, Laura Lippman, S.J Rozan: friends and compatriots all. There’s a bar and it’s risen fairly high, but with the talent available in the genre now it can only rise higher. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Crime-writers make a really good community. Crime readers are fair critics for the most part. And Crime Fiction? Well, it’s been very good to me.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Shortly after completing this interview I heard of a rumor. Could it be? Sean Connery? In a post script I felt I had to ask the man who’s perhaps the biggest movie fan outside of my husband I know…</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">In June of 2004 I was on a promotional tour of South Africa, and got a call saying Sean Connery would be in Edinburgh in August and would like to meet with me, as he is a big fan of my Rebus novels. So... August arrived and with it a call from Sir Sean. He was staying at a friend's place. I drove there, we sat down together and chatted for a couple of hours. It was a wide-ranging conversation, taking in his childhood in Edinburgh, some of his films, my views of Scotland,. his take on politics and the new Scottish parliament, my inability to play golf, and so forth. He told me he passes the Rebus novels along to friends and recommends them to acquaintances. He also said that had I been writing about Rebus twenty years ago, he would have liked a stab at portraying the detective onscreen. (Of course, I WAS writing about Rebus twenty years ago... but maybe below Sir Sean's radar.) Anyhoo, eventually I was asked to write about Sir Sean for the UK edition of Esquire magazine, so more of our conversation can be found there.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">No doubt Crime Fiction’s been very good to Ian Rankin, and assuredly he’s reciprocated.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>REBUS: A NEW AGENDA?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>by Richard Flannery</b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Rankin has always insisted that Edinburgh is the hero of his novels. Fair enough, but this long-time reader has always had a soft spot for the central character, John Rebus. I admit Rebus is difficult, often as gloomy and cheerless as the Scots climate, but there’s a certain charm in a character who doesn’t try to be likeable. Besides, Rebus needs to be tough. I suppose the novels count as police procedurals in some cataloging sense, but Rebus is definitely not a team player. He holds back information, distrusts most of his fellow officers as well as his bosses. Rebus is about getting the case solved in spite of the police organization. Author Rankin has written Rebus as a person with very little personal baggage. The (divorced) wife and daughter are mostly off in London.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">There are no neighbors, dogs, buddies. Rebus has a favorite bar, the Ox, where no one bothers him unless he wants to talk. Rebus observes the city for us and the cases are mostly revealed through his (third person) eyes, but the Detective Inspector plays his cards closely even with the readers. We’re often not sure what his motives are or exactly what he’s thinking (unless it’s about his musical preferences) and we know little about his history. Rankin has been clever enough to write a mystery series in which the detective is a mystery, something certain to appeal to many mystery readers. We have to do our own Watson work.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The recent novels, RESURRECTION MEN, A QUESTION OF BLOOD , and FLESHMARKET CLOSE (FLESHMARKET ALLEY in the U.S.) tell the story of the emergence of a John Rebus who needs and wants things from other people. It’s about time for the detective to make some changes. His police career is rapidly sliding down the far side of the slope and —just as in real life— his bosses are glad to give this longstanding troublemaker as much pain as they can on his way out. For a long time Farmer Watson, his boss at St. Leonard’s, protected Rebus because Rebus got results none of his other detectives were going to get. By the opening of RESURRECTION MEN Farmer Watson is retired, St. Leonard’s is in the process of closing, and Rebus, always a man alone from our first meeting with him in KNOTS AND CROSSES is even more isolated from most of his fellow officers. Thus, the novel’s plot: Rebus is undercover ( investigating police corruption) at a police re-training course designed to give aging officers a chance to rescue what’s left of their careers before they get fired. Rebus gets there by throwing a cup of coffee at his onetime colleague and sort-of girlfriend, Gill Templar, now his boss, in front of everyone at St. Leonard’s. This little bit of theater works because Rebus’ fall from grace comes as no surprise to his fellow officers. He’s just the man for a bit of attitude adjustment.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">A QUESTION OF BLOOD is author Rankin’s commentary on the current fascination with forensic sciences on the bestseller list and TV mysteries. Rebus knows pretty well what the lab reports are going to reveal about the killing, but the real question is why the murderer suddenly turned to violence, a question of motivation. Those answers may come from a study of people’s tangled family history’s, their ‘blood’ background. During the novel Rebus has to confront what his own casual neglect of a family member long ago has contributed to the mystery he’s solving. The mystery of sudden criminal violence is not going to be “solved” by blood spatter patterns OR by gun control legislation. That’s one of the many reasons to love these novels, no quick and easy explanations here.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">As FLESHMARKET CLOSE opens St. Leonard’s has closed—hail and farewell-- and Rebus doesn’t even have a desk at his new police station. He hardly seems to be part of organized policing in Scotland at all. Rebus is ‘superfluous to requirements’ except when it comes to breaking the case. During the case he’s less interested in getting a result–in fact the cops get the ‘wrong’ result– than he is in doing something for the victims of the crime. He’s willing to trade a chance to skewer a cop he dislikes for some favors for a hapless refugee family even though the cop has been manipulated by his long-time nemesis “Big Ger” Cafferty.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The Rankin novels, sixteen of them now, have grown both bigger and deeper in the years since KNOTS AND CROSSES. The writing remains superb, probably the best combination of dialog and observation of any mystery series written today. The portrait of Scotland and Edinburgh is now a lavish one reaching well back into the city’s history and encompassing 21st Century developments. The themes of the novels have become more serious moving from fairly conventional crime plots to political change in Scotland, gun violence, immigration. A critical change in the books has been the emergence of Siobhan Clarke (she hates “Shiv”), a younger, female Rebus. Clarke is not exactly a clone of Rebus, she’s more outgoing (at least on the surface) and far more interested in a successful police career than Rebus ever was. But she’s just as single-minded, secretive and determined and has emerged in recent books as pretty much Rebus’ equal as a detective.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Clarke and Rebus have an intriguing relationship. They have each other’s back against the rest of the cops, share information they keep from others, and are complicit in each others’ lies. The two of them, inevitably, rely on their non-communication skills to deal with each other, frequently keeping things from each other to avoid wounding the other’s pride or dignity. Rebus and Clarke are two people for whom non-disclosure is a way of life. There are signs that things are coming to a head for this doughty couple. In FLESHMARKET they are openly jealous of each other’s dates and the question is raised what kind of ‘pals’ or ‘mates’ they are. Can two stiff-necked loners work out a relationship? I haven’t a clue, but at his age Rebus is lucky to have that kind of problem.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Crimespree #5 and 6 are bundled together for ebooks:</span><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=centalcrimezo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0061HGVTA&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-87337765686297502942012-02-24T12:24:00.000-06:002012-02-24T12:24:19.798-06:00Behind the Book with Val McDermid<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:TargetScreenSize>800x600</o:TargetScreenSize> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0292-1/%7BDD7683E5-F762-4E51-B4AF-458FCBFF3EE3%7DImg100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0292-1/%7BDD7683E5-F762-4E51-B4AF-458FCBFF3EE3%7DImg100.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THE MERMAIDS SINGING</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The first novel to feature psychological profiler Tony Hill and police detective Carol Jordan was not meant to be that. By which I mean it was meant to be a standalone. But by the time I got to the end, I knew there was so much more I could do with these characters and so many more stories they could tell. This book is probably unique in my output in that the whole story popped into my head more or less fully formed, complete with twists and turns. I was driving at the time and I was so shocked I had to pull over and write down the key elements. I was totally convinced I would lose it otherwise. It was so different from anything I’d ever done before, but its success gave me confidence that whatever story I wanted to tell, I’d be able to find a voice for it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mysteryone.com/images/interviews/McDermid_WireInTheBlood_British_PB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.mysteryone.com/images/interviews/McDermid_WireInTheBlood_British_PB.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THE WIRE IN THE BLOOD</span></b></div><div> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The second Tony & Carol book had its genesis in the US. I was researching a non-fiction book on women private eyes (A SUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poisoned Pen Press</i>) and one of the PIs i interviewed had been involved in investigating the first paedophile allegations against Michael Jackson. She was convinced of his guilt. And while I was in the US, the OJ Simpson trial began, amid a sea of publicity. It seemed to me that celebrity had become the new shield against having to pay the price for your crimes. And I began to wonder if it would be possible to nail a TV star for serial murder...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://covers.openlibrary.org/w/id/1440-M.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://covers.openlibrary.org/w/id/1440-M.jpg" /></a><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THE LAST TEMPTATION</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It was my birthday. I was in Cologne, in Germany, and I had an afternoon off. I went for a little cruise on the Rhine and became engrossed in the river traffic – those huge Rhine barges which were clearly family homes as well as commercial shipping enterprises. I knew from sailing that life on the water is often a closed world and this seemed to me to offer a great occupation for a serial killer – always on the move, nobody knows where you are but you’ve got your car on board so you can move around on the land just as easily... The last piece of the jigsaw was when a German film maker told me about the appalling medical experiments that the Nazis had carried out against German children. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THE TORMENT OF OTHERS</span></b></div><div style="text-align: right;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s hard to say much about the back story to this book without giving away crucial plot points. Except that one of the things I explicitly wanted to do with this book was to show how a woman can find a way forward in her life and her career after the worst of experiences. That we don’t always have to be defined by our victimhood. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.eurocrime.co.uk/reviews/BtBleeding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.eurocrime.co.uk/reviews/BtBleeding.jpg" width="200" /></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">BENEATH THE BLEEDING</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Two plots wrapped round each other, both touching on the beautiful game... This is the book where I blow up a soccer stadium. At the time, Gordon Brown was Prime Minister. Gordon and I support the same football club, Raith Rovers. That summer, the club had been under siege from the security services, making sure Gordon would be safe when he came to watch a game. And one of the secret service guys came up to the General Manager, waving my book under his nose. ‘This book is about blowing up a football stadium,’ he said, sounding very cross. ‘And you’re telling me this is the woman who sits next to the Prime Minister in the Director’s Box?’ Oops.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0061986488.01.LZZZZZZZ.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0061986488.01.LZZZZZZZ.JPG" width="208" /></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FEVER OF THE BONE</span></b></div><div> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I try to stay abreast of what one might pretentiously call the zeitgeist. So I’d had an idea for a Tony & Carol story (which I can’t tell you because it would give away the plot) and it occurred to me that the perfect way for the killer to stalk victims was via the kind of social networking site that was becoming so popular. I invented a site called RigMarole, then my inventive UK publishers created it for real when the book came out. All fun and games...</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><a href="http://www.eurocrime.co.uk/reviews/TRetribution.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.eurocrime.co.uk/reviews/TRetribution.jpg" width="209" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THE RETRIBUTION</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The latest Tony & Carol book, out in the UK in September, features the return of arch-villain Jacko Vance, who first appeared in THE WIRE IN THE BLOOD. Yup, Jacko’s back. And this time it’s personal. Anybody who thought the last book seemed to promise the prospect of happiness will have to revise that position...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">And be sure to check out the contest for a free book over on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/FridayReads">Friday Read facebook page </a>Click the giveaway button on the left side.</span></div>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-54574084318970046962012-02-21T17:20:00.001-06:002012-02-21T17:21:20.032-06:00End of February Advertising Sale!<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">We're about to layout the next issue of Crimespree for Mar/April and I decided to have a 1 day sale on advertising.</span></b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Got something you want to spread the word about?</span></b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">for 1 day only Half Price on ads in Crimespree</span></b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://crimespreemag.com/advertise.html">http://crimespreemag.com/advertise.html</a></span></b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"> I'll need to have confirmation on the ad by 7:00 PM on Wednesday February 22nd in order for the discount to be applied.</span></b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Drop a line to Jon@crimespreemag.com if you are interested</span></b></div>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-63318013589122219322011-10-30T16:20:00.000-05:002011-10-30T16:20:11.059-05:00Black Friday and the srewing of retail employees<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://myblack-friday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/black_friday_2011_sales_crowds_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="http://myblack-friday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/black_friday_2011_sales_crowds_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;">Black Friday is the a horrible day, the day after Thanksgiving when Americans go crazy and shop like the Apocalypse is coming. Shoppers on this day are traditionally cheap and rude, I know, I worked a number of them and I've watched people shop on this day. Shoppers in large stores seem to be getting ruder as it is already, on this day they lose their minds. Just look at these assholes in the picture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I love the holidays, and I love getting gifts. I also really love giving gifts and shopping for them. As a result I am one of those taking part in the annual shopping frenzy. But I do so during normal hours.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Over the last few years the stores are opening earlier and staying open later. The latest is now Thanksgiving night at midnight stores will open their doors to people rushing out to get bargains.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And to the people making these decisions I say shame on you. You are effectively destroying a family holiday for your employees. To be at work at midnight is outrageous. The people working these hours have to go to bed early and forgo the holiday normally spent with their family. And with times the way they are, who is going to make a stink about it and risk losing their job?</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.plasticjungle.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/black-friday.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://www.plasticjungle.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/black-friday.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">Among the stores opening at midnight are, Kohls Department store, Macy’s and Target among others. Employees will be getting out of bed at 10 or 11 pm Thanksgiving night to go to work and wait on people who line up at these stores. The corporations behind this justify it by saying that they open early because people show up to shop. You know what? If you wait until 7:00 am, they will wait until then to shop, greedy bastards.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And if you are one of the weirdos getting up early to shop at these places and perpetuating this problem, shame on you as well. People who work retail work hard and have to put up with a lot of crap. They deserve to have family holidays too. By being one of the people showing up when the doors open you are part of the problem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My answer to this for 2011 is that I will not be partaking in this mistreatment of employees and I will be boycotting stores that open at ridiculous hours. I’ll shop local at locally owned stores that keep more human hours where the people deciding the hours are actually working the hours along side employees.</span>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-57597403366697420992011-10-05T19:51:00.003-05:002011-10-05T20:23:09.613-05:00today in history<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Apple-logo.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 501px; height: 480px;" src="http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Apple-logo.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">In the minute to minute world that owes much of the immediate release of information to Steve Jobs, it is right and just that the news is flooding all aspects of print, televised and social media. There was a magic to the man who believed in cohesive design with functionality. A genius who introduced the world to products that many of us cannot live without, I often wonder if from time to time he didn't see a down side as well. </span> <span style="font-family:arial;">I could not live without my I-pod, but radio has become poorer for it. I covet an I-pad but to add the additional wi-fi charges to the desk top wi-fi, the two cell phones and the land line we continue to have, seems quite silly. Still, just two weeks ago I was at the apple store, looking at the Mac Air, the Apple TV, and the aforementioned I pad. The merchandise was flying off the shelves, the customer service was, as always, amazing.</span> <span style="font-family:arial;">A son of counter culture who's death is stealing the news cycle from the happenings on Wall Street, a look at justice served with definite caste bias, and an upcoming election that may very well kill the middle class... the history of Pixar just doesn't seem quite as important to me. Even if the end of Toy Story Three made everyone cry.</span> <span style="font-family:arial;">And yet in the end there's that first product, the Mac. How many brilliant books have been written with this machine. How many troglodytes have managed to find a way to just type it and keep going? Returning to parts of the free flow and tightening them up to say things that others should be reading?<br /><br /> </span><span style=" font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >I pity the folks so tied to their phones they text during concerts rather than watch them, I pity everyone under the age of twenty who talk to their friends perhaps once a week but text at them when they are in the same room. For in this age of instant communication, it seems we are losing the ability to communicate in meaningful ways. </span> <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />So "Stay hungry, stay foolish" and make the world a better place. Steve Jobs was a one of a kind genius. Known to 1/2 the planet and yet a private person. Let's use the tools he's given us to make our dreams happen.</span></span> <span style="font-family:arial;">Ruth</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-79150471597881250892011-09-25T09:04:00.011-05:002011-09-25T10:01:20.716-05:00Bouchercon St. Louis<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEqg6KVYr3VFVmeV_qsSEKTSj5SXPbONHIM2g0dFgHkxgMO6NGztSF_WO1sWRWVReD46RPM4z7rVGzcrXNtIoaR1QFuKuKPPYZtHoo0uq_OnR4qW5QeEvxhwp2HV5N0yKz4jjIWg/s1600/P1050620.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEqg6KVYr3VFVmeV_qsSEKTSj5SXPbONHIM2g0dFgHkxgMO6NGztSF_WO1sWRWVReD46RPM4z7rVGzcrXNtIoaR1QFuKuKPPYZtHoo0uq_OnR4qW5QeEvxhwp2HV5N0yKz4jjIWg/s320/P1050620.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656304501885366722" border="0" /></a><br />Bouchercon, that mad beast that cannot really be described to those who weren't there. Does one even try?<br /><br />Quite simply, Bouchercon is a mystery lover's OZ minus the wicked witch. Four days of walking down paths you've never trod before and enjoying food,wine, coffee, dancing,singing, bowling and conversation with friends you may have never even met. If you had pulled back the curtain this year you'd have found Jon Jordan and a staff of volunteers who made every little thing work as seamlessly as possible.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Nas3Y_dDaDjo9oFaUt_BKQz0MZuP-Y0B3NtywReFk24fdG8yUFM4DxueXr7YYoKDUM8AK9DeFXThFOr0p2cG7oGucVrcaZ9Shyphenhyphenvs4su_nri-RjxEAuBJMCycT8tx_BzzccrXYg/s1600/299660_10150320472528879_10037548878_8029859_251637716_n.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 175px; height: 131px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Nas3Y_dDaDjo9oFaUt_BKQz0MZuP-Y0B3NtywReFk24fdG8yUFM4DxueXr7YYoKDUM8AK9DeFXThFOr0p2cG7oGucVrcaZ9Shyphenhyphenvs4su_nri-RjxEAuBJMCycT8tx_BzzccrXYg/s320/299660_10150320472528879_10037548878_8029859_251637716_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656306648514439922" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOpDtVbQIGtm9vsjEAPFgDGM-7W3oxkSXetWpT4UyzzJ5q-25BGylQPEAOcwgDEOisc07_zkq9FOL75Faf-bGhMMiflWyB81E9HWsVNrp1zVJZ4uUR9MwHRmLqG00HIywWIiqrrg/s1600/299164_10150324459078879_10037548878_8056086_616176953_n.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 255px; height: 191px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOpDtVbQIGtm9vsjEAPFgDGM-7W3oxkSXetWpT4UyzzJ5q-25BGylQPEAOcwgDEOisc07_zkq9FOL75Faf-bGhMMiflWyB81E9HWsVNrp1zVJZ4uUR9MwHRmLqG00HIywWIiqrrg/s320/299164_10150324459078879_10037548878_8056086_616176953_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656307308250059138" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW78VbOacUviA5qZTeM8DDOz2MplYGY88IUsgETfprGVkiPeLsblAoQaeioSt4DvR55vAmYcYMWL-ObQ_ZNYsldmotr0ZuQUXdnNM_012DJ317i2RC8vLC4jk98z20s4wnpPZAbQ/s1600/IMG_8015.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 169px; height: 129px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW78VbOacUviA5qZTeM8DDOz2MplYGY88IUsgETfprGVkiPeLsblAoQaeioSt4DvR55vAmYcYMWL-ObQ_ZNYsldmotr0ZuQUXdnNM_012DJ317i2RC8vLC4jk98z20s4wnpPZAbQ/s320/IMG_8015.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656307938580002674" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />From our very first exploratory trip, the committee knew that St. Louis would be a great place to have a Bouchercon. It was up to us to lay the groundwork. We had no doubt that everyone would be able to make their own fun.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsj6p136lq5dN9iPM71ZS6SI7rW5cujP3vy_mwIMhzw2SG78Kdzgd8M9DGnqVsYbkl0Xs3_qKWjlrdsg-sDtPDjnDaHudAWGM7HdsW5Oi6sdznMl-HSSLDrHhgpHzw7VxZBmOuEg/s1600/Bcon2011+%252835%2529.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsj6p136lq5dN9iPM71ZS6SI7rW5cujP3vy_mwIMhzw2SG78Kdzgd8M9DGnqVsYbkl0Xs3_qKWjlrdsg-sDtPDjnDaHudAWGM7HdsW5Oi6sdznMl-HSSLDrHhgpHzw7VxZBmOuEg/s320/Bcon2011+%252835%2529.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656308951567073090" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu6LvEmmw95OGxb2Nm-3T5rbMfG4zlDPZF-p5k-RaFyIxQuBEfX3aLB41xrhla6BPd6aWy9O7gk6E-h0oRqq6Iwd6LBqJxff1eoZF3fJqb63xI0jtCtRyHA480XXur2enaiRwbOQ/s1600/Bcon2011+%252841%2529.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu6LvEmmw95OGxb2Nm-3T5rbMfG4zlDPZF-p5k-RaFyIxQuBEfX3aLB41xrhla6BPd6aWy9O7gk6E-h0oRqq6Iwd6LBqJxff1eoZF3fJqb63xI0jtCtRyHA480XXur2enaiRwbOQ/s320/Bcon2011+%252841%2529.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656309362388039170" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />That the Guest of Honors made everyone welcome was a given. There is not a better group of writers in our community.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLU_3sf5tyPLHYV3E4cdPKvDiwFOQvL0OYIKHcWTjRmsyV4aUowfdsg_W5VPhY5WauRtltYncHd9PkxsJ4ZcVvVPUq8qV5mUJVO28FYNQc4SJbdQtwNr0Wa2g-kLy99bmM-kFPAQ/s1600/IMG_8007.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 246px; height: 185px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLU_3sf5tyPLHYV3E4cdPKvDiwFOQvL0OYIKHcWTjRmsyV4aUowfdsg_W5VPhY5WauRtltYncHd9PkxsJ4ZcVvVPUq8qV5mUJVO28FYNQc4SJbdQtwNr0Wa2g-kLy99bmM-kFPAQ/s320/IMG_8007.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656310437276845074" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Here's to Cleveland!!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-50518911231455559162011-08-30T08:44:00.000-05:002011-08-30T08:44:38.620-05:00Crimespree issue 43 ready to ship<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/319660_227043144013909_114047308646827_695308_8020455_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/319660_227043144013909_114047308646827_695308_8020455_n.jpg" width="244" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Crimespree Magazine issue 43</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Editorial by Jon Jordan</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Newsbites </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Hanging with Ayo </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A Slice of Mystery with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Long-Quiche-Goodbye-CHEESE-MYSTERY/dp/0425235521?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Avery Aames </a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0425235521" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Perils of Writing a History Mystery with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beloved-Dead-Arthurian-Mystery/dp/0765326280?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Tony Hays</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0765326280" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">COVER STORY: Get Closer to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Claire-DeWitt-City-Dead-Sara/dp/0547428499?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Sara Gran</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0547428499" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> w/ Scott Phillips </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Sunset Boulevard by Sara Gran </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Behind the Books with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darkness-My-Old-Friend-Novel/dp/0307464997?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Lisa Unger</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0307464997" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Crime & Idiocy by Jen4 Jordan </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">FICTION: Old Friends by Anthony R . Pezzula </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Morphing Into Mystery by Martin Shepard </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Long and the Short of It Darrel Janes Interviewed by Alan Orloff </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In the Court of Public Opinion by Denise Hamilton </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">FICTION: The People I Help Out by Kenneth Nicols </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">NEW CONTRIBUTER Mystery Town with Linda Brown </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Reed Farrel Coleman </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Craig’s Joint by Craig McDonald </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">5 Favorite Films with Dan Krokos </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">5 Favorite Films with Todd Ritter </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Dialogue with Declan Burke featuring Dennis Lehane </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Towering Non Inferno by Douglas Lindsay </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">FICTION: Rain Dog by Thomas Pluck</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">DVD Reviews and Eye on Hollywood with Jeremy Lynch </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Buzz Bin and book reviews</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Cooking with Crimespree <span> </span>by Avery Aames</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">This one is heading out the door on Wednesday the 31.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Need to renew?</span></div><a href="http://www.crimespreemag.com/subscribe.html"><span style="font-size: x-large;">http://www.crimespreemag.com/subscribe.html</span></a>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-82917698118589582872011-08-29T23:06:00.004-05:002011-08-29T23:13:34.270-05:00bouchercon redux<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrKjBiPRq7WhsRyGKQqdDWaPjbe_ioVmuBnaKJdk1z2FOTBquThvtcj2UlHwLMLcyfhShey2KPViiNVgwd-yl4m6oXSmPIfkm7y5i22yBQANbNG9RT67e4ZTa0u5CYmZ9Ws6c51Q/s1600/blogg001.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrKjBiPRq7WhsRyGKQqdDWaPjbe_ioVmuBnaKJdk1z2FOTBquThvtcj2UlHwLMLcyfhShey2KPViiNVgwd-yl4m6oXSmPIfkm7y5i22yBQANbNG9RT67e4ZTa0u5CYmZ9Ws6c51Q/s320/blogg001.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646496079460093154" border="0" /></a>
<br />Mrs, Crimespree has sent off mail today. She has composed a to-do list that Lewis and Clark themselves would be proud of. She realizes this is the last time she has for a truly chatty blog before Bouchercon 2011. Indulge me folks, for this is yet another how much do I love my life post.
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<br />I love my life a lot. Last week on Monday, at the Laura Lippman Pizza party there was a lot of synergy for me. Laura introduced me to someone I’ve “known” for two decades. Jacquelynn Bost Morris is not a name you all will be familiar with, but Jackie from the AOL Hardboiled board certainly is a name known to some. Jackie with Kathy Bartlett made a world for me. A world where I could reach out and talk to writers I admired, share their experiences. Somewhere along the blurred lines these folks began to share mine. Charlaine Harris made me laugh out loud again when my family had given up. Sara Paretsky made me question why one death could be so hard. Val McDermid showed me life’s possibilities. Then Bob Crais told me to go to Bouchercon (rather emphatically), you know, my good friend from the innernets. Sexiest author alive that year too (we gave him hell).
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<br />The mystery community has always been inclusive. The inclusion is why Bouchercon started, a group of Anthony Boucher’s friends decided they needed to celebrate this genre he loved so much. Anthony, I have to tell you, you’d be proud sir as would your widow. Thanks to a wonderful group of volunteers over these 4 decades, your name may be mispronounced but it is never forgotten.
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<br />So, I was “The Girl Who Went to Bouchercon”. I met Val McDermid. I met Ian Rankin. I met George Pelecanos. I met Dennis Lehane. I smoked with Lee Child and M.J. Lake. C.J. Songer was an all-star that year. I met Otto Penzler and Steve Stillwell. I met Richard Katz and the gang from Sleuths of Bakerstreet. I met Kate Flora and a guy named Jon Jordan.
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<br />I’ve reached out over the years and have met Robert Randisi as a result (thanks Bob). I’ve met new writers and writers back on the scene; One of my favorite moments ever is with Gayle Lynds, another with Michael Koryta. An interview with Sean Chercover in ’08 left me giddy.
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<br />I’ve come a long way, always fan first. The most important person in my life outside of my husband may well be Judy Bobalik. Judy is the bomb, y’all. If you come to Bouchercon 2011 without meeting her, you’ve made a mistake. For like “Jackie” of the hard-boiled board she has the passion to make this a community. She is what Anthony Boucher thought this place in fiction and community is all about.
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<br />Now, I go to Bouchercon with an expectation to meet friends I never have and celebrate with friends I love. Some will be there this year. Some will be missing. Elaine, Barbara, David. I also know I’ll have a hug with Alafair & Hillary, finally meet Erin and by Joseph, that laptop is ours Duane Swierczsynki!
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-13515516737485133742011-08-25T19:45:00.003-05:002011-08-25T20:30:38.128-05:00An Afternoon in Brigadoon<a href="http://imganuncios.mitula.net/dickeyville_schoolhouse_circa_1830_home_for_sale_for_sale_annapolis_93949703244628021.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://imganuncios.mitula.net/dickeyville_schoolhouse_circa_1830_home_for_sale_for_sale_annapolis_93949703244628021.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 257px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 300px;" /></a> <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">On Tuesday afternoon a 5.8 earthquake hit the city of Baltimore. I happened to be in Baltimore but I didn’t feel it. In fact, I think the author Laura Lippman and I may have been the only two people in Maryland to not feel it. As the lady in Louise’s Bakery said, “Well, you were in a car, you wouldn’t feel it in a moving car.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Why were we in a car? The cookies at the bakery were a factor. A beautiful day was the other. The day was so lovely the thought of going to a gym to get on a machine for cardio was uninspiring. Ms. Lippman offered an alternative. Would I like to hike her childhood neighborhood with her instead? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Laura has been one of my strongest fitness inspirations for a decade now. The last two years I’ve even been paying attention. A hike with one of my facebook cheerleaders on a beautiful day in a part of Bal’mor I didn’t know? (Yeah) We set out on a nice path; my tour included parts of Woodlawn, the babbling stream & the pond above (where Laura learned to skate), The Crimea Estate, a set of steps that led to a trail, a trail that had an incline that kicked my ass by the way. The house Ms. Lippman grew up in and the elementary school she had attended were part of our hike. The highlight was the beautiful and out of time Dickeysville. An old mill town surrounded by Leakin Park, it has a sense of isolation and promise. There’s a peace in this community. A feeling that the world can be anything you’d like it to be. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Somewhere after the incline that kicked my ass and before the playground …. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My perspective of the afternoon shifted. I was still walking with my friend Laura, but everything became slightly surreal. It was launch day for Laura Lippman’s newest novel , <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Most-Dangerous-Thing-Laura-Lippman/dp/0061706515?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">THE MOST DANGEROUS THING</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0061706515" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> and I was on a walking tour of the novel’s inspiration. A community the writer said later that evening, “I’ve been circling for years in the books, and finally got there.” I looked at my host and admitted to her there would probably never be a bigger fan moment for me. She laughed and retorted, “Well, I won’t be doing it for anyone else today.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have a lot of joy in my life. I have family, I have friends, I have reading and I have a group of authors I admire and have had the opportunity to spend time with. Tuesday afternoon they all melded into one. I understand why Laura thinks of Dickeysville as Brigadoon. There was an instant on Tuesday when it became mine. <a href="http://nbbb.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/gywflls1009.jpg?w=375&h=500"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://nbbb.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/gywflls1009.jpg?w=375&h=500" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 500px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 375px;" /></a></span> <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Saturday Jon and I left Milwaukee to visit with friends in Baltimore. Saturday Crimespree Magazine went to Baltimore to attend the Laura Lippman Pizza Party celebrating the release of her novel, THE MOST DANGEROUS THING. The magazine was also present at the Tuesday night launch for the book. Ruth and Jon took their friend Laura out to dinner afterwards. It’s a wonderful life (giggle,giggle,giggle). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">For more on the Baltimore trip and reviews of the book THE MOST DANGEROUS THING, see the print edition of Crimespree. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-83666711471914254462011-08-18T21:36:00.002-05:002011-08-18T22:04:45.322-05:00Smallville<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.popcritics.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/michael_rosenbaum.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 273px; height: 400px;" src="http://www.popcritics.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/michael_rosenbaum.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://quienmemandaria.files.wordpress.com/2006/09/smallville.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 300px;" src="http://quienmemandaria.files.wordpress.com/2006/09/smallville.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a> Thank you Smallville. I wasn't sure how I would react to your end. Being able to see and yes, preview the last episodes months before viewing could have been a bad thing. Years ago a friend declared, "Smallville will end when Clark becomes Superman and Lex becomes Lex Luther. The finale gave us that and so much more.
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<br />How happy am I that Chloe had a happy ending and Tess has become a hero? Thank you writers for not putting every guest star ever in the church for the wedding scene.
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<br />That's the thing about Smallville, whether you watched the TV series with Steve Reeves, saw the Christopher Reeves movies, or simply have read the Comics over the years ... Smallville is accessible, in the way few television shows are. It tells a story we've all known from the beginning. It entertains and at times has exceptional writing. Tom Welling take a bow. You were born to play this character. the finale episode is isolated and yet true to a story arc as only a comic can be. I will not spoil it here. I simply hale the series in its entirety. For every misstep and overwrought scene there is a "pencil line" that brings us back to the legend of Superman.http://youtu.be/QHPHT5SbAEM
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<br />The last season featured "the darkness" and even affects some of our heroes. It's almost an anti-the watchmen. There's history in a series this long and some are rescued. Some fall. Destiny is pure in a comic world and you guys have pulled it off. Thank You for making me understand just how pure my concept of Superman is. Thank you for letting me follow the story of Clark Kent, his family and his friends. I'll miss you and have no idea what I'll do Labor Day weekend from now on. Maybe the U.S. Open ???? Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-10913654248798518592011-08-07T13:14:00.004-05:002011-08-07T13:55:34.384-05:00Duane Swierczynski : Serial Thriller<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RoSb1dCsL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RoSb1dCsL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 300px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 300px;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Serialization – Publication in serial form.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">When I was a little girl in Burlington Vt. I was introduced to Buck Rodgers on our black and white T.V. The 60s version Batman could be heard every afternoon, “Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel.” The summer between 7th and 8th grade I sat in a movie theater and with millions of others read the words, “Long Ago, In a Galaxy Far, Far away.” The Star Wars movies and George Lucas have defined “serial” for three generations now.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Certain forms of “publication” have used this format for a very long time. Both Dickens and Doyle were serialized in Magazines. I remember reading Agatha Christie in my Grandmother’s Ladies Home Journal. Play Boy was the first glimpse we had of many talented authors. There’s panache and a history to the very idea. There’s Star Wars.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">In the last decade of the last century Stephen King released <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Green-Mile-Complete-Serial-Novel/dp/0743210891?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">GREEN MILE</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0743210891" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> through every outlet that ever sold a book. I was all in. It was a glorious experiment. Green Mile was a great but not all together successful work of Serialization. It’s a fine work and King talked frankly about the Death Penalty, mortality and morality within the parameters of the form. I wasn’t sharing my views at the water cooler though. I think mainly we were just waiting to figure out the deal with the mouse. No one peels back a story better than King but like many I didn’t get over the King part of it all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A few years back, when the NYT had a better budget they serialized works by some of my favorite writers including <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Complaints-Ian-Rankin/dp/0316039748?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Ian Rankin</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0316039748" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Most-Dangerous-Thing-Laura-Lippman/dp/0061706515?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Laura Lippman</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0061706515" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />. Great stories and bound together, really good books. Waiting in the wings with a story of his own was a young writer by the name of Duane Swierczynski. The Times concept didn’t pan out as they’d hoped and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Expiration-Date-Duane-Swierczynski/dp/B004R96TLY?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">EXPIRATION DATE</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B004R96TLY" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> was released as a novel. A fan of the book, I wondered how would this experience have been, waiting week to week to see what would happen next?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Swierczynski is younger than me. Star Wars has always been a part of his life. He’s a true scholar of not just popular fiction but pop culture. All of it. Movies? I suspect he can quote dialog from just about any movie, ever. Music? Try to stump him.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">When Little, Brown & Company announced a new imprint called Mulholland Books in 2010 they released a mission statement.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">“The goal of Little, Brown’s Mulholland Books is simple: to publish books you can’t stop reading. Whatever their form—crime novels, thrillers, police procedurals, spy stories, even supernatural suspense—the promise of a Mulholland Book is that you’ll read it leaning forward, hungry for the next word. With a focus on online community building, internet marketing and authentic connections between authors, readers and publisher, Mulholland Books will be at the center of a web of suspense.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Duane Swierczynski is just one of the terrific writers published under this imprint.His is a special story.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fun-Games-Duane-Swierczynski/dp/0316133280?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">FUN &GAMES</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0316133280" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> was released earlier this year. A good book demands you read it. FUN & GAMES left me frothing for the next book. In the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers ….</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The story of a man with a past and a young actress thrown together… The author pulled out all stops creating an Entertainment for the reader that had me buzzing like nothing in any form since those words scrolled down the movie screen. My expectations for the sequel to FUN & GAMES was so high I quite wondered if HELL & GONE would be able to further enamor me or if it would be a Phantom Menace in book form.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">I am so very happy to report that in the middle of a too busy week I opened this book and once again dove into Swierczynski’s world with abandon. The author accelerated in FUN & GAMES . He floors it in HELL & GONE. Charlie Hardie and the Accident People are destined to entertain for a long time to come. Swiercyski’s series defines serialization for the book world like Lucas has for the movies. Now, where the hell is book three?</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-3990933129778924502011-07-21T23:47:00.002-05:002011-07-22T00:16:57.177-05:00Charlaine Harris<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://img.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/charlaine-harris-ends-true__oPt.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 409px; height: 273px;" src="http://img.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/charlaine-harris-ends-true__oPt.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Charlaine Harris made headlines last week with the news that book thirteen is it. Sookie and the rest of her cast of characters from The Southern Vampire Series are wrapping up their story lines. The news spread like wild fire throughout both the internet and print press. It was mainly met with sadness. I’m excited. I cannot wait to see what one of my favorite writers has rattling around in that magnificent mind and what group of characters she’s going to introduce us to next. I’m also intrigued. What is her end game? Who will Sookie choose? Or will she just Walk away?<br /><br />A strange thing happens when a favorite book series hits the TV. It’s even a little stranger when Alan Ball is backing the production. The two and a half seasons of the TV show True Blood have been glorious. Ball has certainly hit upon a lot of the themes Charlaine drives home in the books. If you read this series first as opposed to watching you’re dealing with an altered time-line. It’s all well and good, but different. Looking at sales numbers for the novels, I have to believe that most of the viewers have caught up to the readers. I cannot help but think they’re nodding their heads and thinking to themselves, “I know why she’s special, it’s in her blood.”Those of us who read the books all remember the betrayal and the joy, washing over us all at once. Whether you read first or watched first there is something very special here. A traditional setting, a small town girl with a great heart who believes, sincerely, that all are created equal and have the right to live a happy life. A young woman goes above and beyond to make her world a better place. Sookie makes mistakes, but not many. The most memorable scene from the books is yet to hit your T.V. In this scene Charlaine Harris manages to encompass Sookie’s humanity, heroism and horror with such compassion for where we are as a world today it will break your heart. I hope Ball captures that scene.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUhGxglHZpGtofwAnrlBfPL5s5RMLZWRe8dyZCNwB0KQ5sCwjSo5cFVHiPnjjxHFPs2gaqVg4ruWI1LVtWij0LePI9-MxHUgwPwx8TKwR7BT2G4LsQI3y7OPX2idp0QHGwscBp/s320/IMG_0722.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUhGxglHZpGtofwAnrlBfPL5s5RMLZWRe8dyZCNwB0KQ5sCwjSo5cFVHiPnjjxHFPs2gaqVg4ruWI1LVtWij0LePI9-MxHUgwPwx8TKwR7BT2G4LsQI3y7OPX2idp0QHGwscBp/s320/IMG_0722.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Charlaine Harris has afforded me many memorable scenes over the years. I started with Aurora Teagarden. Charlaine’s small town librarian who ends up married to a man of the world. I’m not even sure how I got there. Was it a blurb on the back? Was it a recommendation from a friend? I don’t remember but I do remember I immediately read a Lily Bard. Shakespeare’s Landing came to me at a time in my life where I’d lost control of my own environment. Here was a young woman who’d lived through something much worse than anything I’d ever been through, and was reclaiming her life. Lily did this in the gentle confines of a traditional mystery flooded with contemporary pathos. Even while I was absorbed in the mystery, I was taking strength from this fictional heroine. <br /><br />Meanwhile Aurora had a list of titles for me. Classic mysteries that I’d never heard of. Reading I began to tackle. I often wonder if I ever would have read Tey or Allingham if not for Harris and Teagarden. I often think I owe Charlaine a lot of effusive thank-yous for this alone. And then she made me laugh. LOL in a way I’d not done in two years. DEAD OVER HEELS was the book. The opening scene has perhaps the most unique body discovery of all time. It’s so entirely ridiculous I couldn’t help myself. I learned a lesson about my reading habits that day. I am a reader who escapes into a book. I’ll never be able to truly deconstruct any novel no matter how many times I read it. That’s okay, I can live with that. It means I’ll always have something I want to read. <br /><br />Over the years I’ve gotten to know this wonderful belle with a beautiful brain. Charlaine is the southern woman with a story of her own. I’ve seen her give back to fellow scribes. I’ve seen her giggle with fans over any number of things. She’s given me a recipe for Sweet Tea. I’ve been able to share her work with a number of people who don’t read much and discuss how very good and subtle this work is with folks who read a lot.<br /><br />How I’ve enjoyed her ascent from low mid-list to the upper echelons of sales. 1,000,000 downloads anyone?<br />How about every book being in print? I remember a night almost three years ago. I was on the phone passing along information to a friend. “Ruth, have you seen the bestseller list?” “No I’m really swamped with Bouchercon but I know you hit # 1.” “No, look at the list, you have to see it.” Through sheer happenstance a fan got to share a moment with one of her favorite authors. A moment that doesn’t come very often. We giggled. A lot.<br /><br />So I’ll miss Sookie. Sure I will. But baby I cannot wait to see what Charlaine Harris has up her sleeve for us next. I know it will be special.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-49669373019434299142011-07-20T00:07:00.002-05:002011-07-20T00:09:45.303-05:00I Am a Cult - Guest blog by Colin Cotterill<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Exposed brickwork is all the rage in Surrey. My Uncle John has an entire bathroom that looks like it was carted over directly from Berlin. But I get the feeling the naked bricks here at the Zuela Guesthouse in Luang Nam Tha, Laos, are more a homage to the cost of plastering. My room’s like a cell. No fridge. No TV. No modern arty pictures of men on buffalos. No closet safe. No closet. No feeling in my limbs after a night on the compressed bread mattress. Outside, the rains are crashing down on the banana plants and the roads are flowing red with mud. The power goes off half-a-dozen times a day. But, believe this if you will… they’ve got Wi Fi. Not even the Hilton gives away the internet for nothing. I just finished a tour of twelve cities in the ‘civilized’ side of the planet and not once did I get free wireless. But here in the hills of the north I can sit at my wonky desk and surf the world. I love this country. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">How can I not have extreme feelings for a place that made me what I am today? A cult. Yes, I did spell that correctly. It’s written there in black and white on my laptop. <i><span style="color: black;">‘Colin Cotterill is one of the most highly regarded "cult favorite" crime writers today’</span></i>. One of my two fans sent me the link. I was overwhelmed. I was elated. I didn’t know what it meant. I looked it up. Was I really a quasi-religion? I don’t think so. That only left definition 2. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>a</i> : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); <i>especially</i> : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad <i>b</i> : the object of such devotion </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">So that was it. Like the hula-hoop and the slinky, I was a fad. The people in the next room at the Zuela obviously did not realize that I was the object of devotion or I wouldn’t have had to bang on the bricks with my flip flop last night to get them to shut up. And how would this cult following change me? Obviously not financially, because I believe devotees of a cult are generally reluctant to stick their hands in their pockets in fear that it might spoil me. Commercial success is the death knell for cults like me.</span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: x-large;">And how did it come about, this cultdom? Just ten years ago I was staying in guest houses like this because it was all I could afford. Now I’m here on research. I can wash off the red street mud in a four-star hotel when I get back to Thailand. How did I begin along this path? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">(cue harp music played by a tall slim woman with long dark hair and glasses)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It all started in 2000 when I wrote the first of my Lao books, The Coroner’s Lunch. I guess I knew then I wouldn’t be jabbing my nib into the mainstream artery of crime fiction. In fact, I didn’t even consider myself a crime writer. I thought I was just writing stories. (Eight of them last count). Only moderate and playful gratuitous violence. Absolutely no obscenity unless you’re really easily offended. Just a bunch of nice quirky characters doing quirky things. Comparable to other writers only with regard to the exotic location. . I hadn’t set out to make depressed people write rude things about me on Amazon or be disgraced by my books. I wanted my readers to have fun. Colin the Entertainer, that’s what I was.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> I argued myself blue in the face that I wasn’t a crime writer and what happened? They handed me a Crime Writer’s Association Dagger award. You try to argue you’re not a crime writer once that’s happened. So I guess, subconsciously, all the while I was pulling away from the norm. I didn’t want to be in someone else’s genre. I wanted a genre all my own. I briefly considered vampire whodunits. Toyed with Noir fairy stories. But I’m not the serious type. If I weren’t so painfully shy and didn’t need several hours to be spontaneous, I would have been a stand-up comedian. So my new series, my truly cult adventure, would have to be funny. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Four years ago I moved to the south of Thailand to a quiet fishing village on the Gulf. Monkeys collected coconuts. Jelly fish bobbed. Dogs scratched. Some might have considered it boring. I found it utterly charming. There was so little crime that the local jail didn’t even have a lock-up. So what better premise to launch a cult series than to turn this peaceful haven of innocent squid fishing into the hub of sin and iniquity of the Eastern Seaboard? I needed characters who were not clichés nor Thai stereotypes. What better way to achieve that than to take those same stereotypes and turn them upside down? What happens when the beautiful Thai transsexual ages twenty years? What happens to the traffic cop who refuses to take bribes? What happens to the body builder who is a cowardly lion? The tough female investigative journalist who has no crime to report? The organized matriarch whose mind is slowly being turned by dementia? Throw a few mysteries into this mix and a dollop of the ridiculous and what do you have? <i>Killed at the Whim of a Hat</i>, and its follow up, <i>Granddad, There’s a Head on the Beach. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I don’t mind being a cult. In fact I’m quite proud about it. What would I do with all that money, anyway? And look where it’s got me. I’m at the wonky desk at the Zuela reading emails from the organizers of September’s Bouchercon to which I am being sent as the token overseas fad. I’m being emailed reviews from German magazines and south African newspapers. My British publisher is hounding me for a new book. My Swedish translator tells me that ‘wanker’ isn’t in the dictionary. All this and I am a mere cult. You wait and see what happens when I get the Nobel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> Colin's new book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Killed-Whim-Hat-Colin-Cotterill/dp/0312564538?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0312564538" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> and is on sale now!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">He is also one of the guests of honor at<a href="http://bouchercon2011.com/"> Bouchercon in St. Louis</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Want to be entered to win a copy of the new book?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">shoot an email to</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Jon@crimespreemag.com</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">We'll be sending out at least two!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></div>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-79176517659580803872011-07-14T10:39:00.004-05:002011-07-14T12:33:21.980-05:00BLOODLINE<a href="http://fridayreads.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BLOODLINE-by-Mark-Billingham-e1310056141719.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://fridayreads.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BLOODLINE-by-Mark-Billingham-e1310056141719.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 188px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 120px;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">A funny thing happened at Casa Crimespree when we watched the THORNE mini-series. I fell in love with Mark Billingham's character Tom Thorne all over again. So great to see him back at the beginning of this journey, before the support system and Thorne himself were battered, beaten, left for dead. It was a wake up call to all Billingham has managed to do in the eight books that have been published in the U.S. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Today number nine officially hits bookshops and on-line vendors throughout the U.S.A. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bloodline-Mark-Billingham/dp/0316126667?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">BLOODLINE</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0316126667" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> is a remarkable book. A twisty, terrible ride into the mind of two killers and the man looking at the cases they're involved in. What happens when the children of a Serial Killer's victims begin to die? From the epilogue at the very beginning of the book you'll know the stakes are high.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Did I turn you off with the words "serial killer"? Don't let it be so.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">For this is a book about choices and history. The characters both heroic and cowardly. The puzzle is truly remarkable. Bloodlines is the kind of book you lose yourself in until you're done..</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Once again I've got to go back to the mini-series. When you love an author's work from the beginning you often lose prespective of everything he has managed to accomplish. In Billingham's case he has dealt effectively and compassionately with Alzheimer's, Gay rights, the Iraq War, the socio-economic system, inner-office politics, homelessness. And you forget because you are so caught up in the character of Thorne. Simply one of the best Police to ever grace the page. His books are big. Think McDermid, Robinson, Rankin if you like Brit. Think Harry Bosch and Cork O'Connor if you're a fan of American police procedural. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Back to the mini series though. In watching the TV adaptation I found flaws. All faithful readers do. What I saw was eye opening. Tom Thorne is an over the top every man cop with layers and baggage. He is Jimmy Smit's Simone from NYPD Blues. He is Timothy Olyphant in Justified. He is Rudy Carazzo from the 57th Precinct series. He is Lucas Davenport without the cash. He is Harry Bosch with all the bad political savy. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Mark Billingham and Tom Thorne are the best of reads. There's a depth of character and plot written with the pacing of an airport best seller. It's time to join the party. Out today from Mulholland Books don't miss BLOODLINE.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-33035752774740688712011-06-22T14:49:00.000-05:002011-06-22T14:49:35.277-05:00Three Crime Fiction writers - 1 character- THE PUNISHER Volume 6<a href="http://haircomics.com/store/images/P/image-proc-306.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://haircomics.com/store/images/P/image-proc-306.jpg" width="222" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>In the last few years a number of our favorite crime fiction writing dudes have been branching out into comics.</b></span><br />
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>One book that a number of them have worked on is THE PUNISHER from marvel comics.</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>They have collected the various issues all into one lovely and large hardcover edition <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Punisher-Max-6-Gregg-Hurwitz/dp/0785156569?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">THE PUNISHER VOLUME 6.</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0785156569" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> (Amazon has it at a wonderfully<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Punisher-Max-6-Gregg-Hurwitz/dp/0785156569?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank"> affordable price of $24.26</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0785156569" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" />)</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Hurwitz, Gischler and Sweirczynski aside from having hard to spell names each have a different take on the character and they were able to inject their own writing sensibilities into the runs they did on the comic.</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Hurwitz does a tale that is similar to the actual Juarez Murders, set in Mexico the Punisher stands up for the little guys and gets some payback for people who can't on their own</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Victor Gischler take ol' Frank Castle down the the Bayou in a twisted Punisher version of Deliverance. Good Ol' boys getting their asses handed to them in a swamp, FUN STUFF!</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>And Duane Does a wonderful race the clock story which bring Frank to Duane's stomping grounds in Philadelphia.Another classic crime fiction spin to a Punisher tale.</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>If you dig crime fiction and or/dig the Punisher you need this book.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Go get yourself some <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Punisher-Max-6-Gregg-Hurwitz/dp/0785156569?ie=UTF8&tag=centalcrimezo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Here!</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=centalcrimezo-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0785156569" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" /></span>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-73081104557873633522011-06-03T06:15:00.003-05:002011-06-03T07:11:50.801-05:00Michael Koryta , THE RIDGE & More<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/188031_161966944243_7864325_n.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 303px;" src="http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/188031_161966944243_7864325_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I'm not afraid of the dark<br />When the sun goes down<br />And the dreams grow teeth<br />And the beasts come out<br />Cast their long shadows<br />Every time that they start<br />I'll be right here with you<br />I'm not afraid of the dark<br />Josh Ritter</span><br /><br /><br /><br />Michael Koyta’s strength as a story teller is well known. From TONIGHT I SAID GOODBYE to THE CYPRESS HOUSE his words have spoken to the readers with a distinct voice that continues to whisper at you long after the book is done.THE RIDGE is a journey into the impossible made real by one of today’s best writers. <br /><br />“What would you prefer, Murder or Suicide?” A challenging question uttered to Chief Deputy Kevin Kimble by Wyatt French .<br /><br />“It will be very important to keep the light on after I’m gone.” Wyatt’s words for reporter Roy Darmus.<br /><br />As one Sentinel closes for good another is about to become necessary in Sawyer County. There’s something happening out at Blade Ridge. The stakes are high. The past and the future stalking the present like a lion upon his prey. <br /><br />Wyatt French lives on the edge of town. For years he’s been the town eccentric; living in a lighthouse in the middle of the woods, drinking by day and holing up in his abode by night. When Roy arrives at Wyatt’s to check up on him, the lights are about to go out and the narrative to begin in earnest.<br /><br />Koryta pulls you into a story that will unlock a deeper part of your imagination with every page. This writer’s well known sense of place is finely honed. Blade Ridge is a little slice of Kentucky. A failed mining hub of the 19th century that has become a sleepy hollow of the 21st, Blade Ridge is pulsing with an evil that is timeless. Wyatt’s closest neighbor is a big cat rescue center. Audrey Clark and her team rescue abused cats, feed them and give them a life. <br />Photographs and memories aren’t all that Wyatt leaves behind. Kimble, Darmus and Clark will have to solve the puzzle of the Ridge soon. It’s a matter of life & death. <br />Koryta’s abilities as a writer have grown since that first book. THE RIDGE is a brilliant piece of craftsmanship that will captivate both crime fiction and horror readers. THE RIDGE is a place as real as King’s Derry, as singular as Jackson’s Haunted House and a puzzle as honed as McDermid’s A GRAVE TATTOO.<br />Read it & keep the light on..<br /><br />I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I'm in fact quite fond of the author's entire body of work. He recently said to Alafair Burke in a q&a that he really hoped all of his readers would enjoy the novel but he knew he was writing a different kind of book. That it was important to continue to evolve as a writer. You done good Michael.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.crimespreemag.com/cover25.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 389px;" src="http://www.crimespreemag.com/cover25.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>I was fortunate to be introduced to Michael Koryta at a convention in 2003. He was attending because his "first" novel, TONIGHT I SAID GOOD-BYE had won the coveted St. Martin's/PWA First Novel contest. A wonderful mix of a PI partnership, an introduction to side characters we'd come to love and a case guaranteed to break the heart, TONIGHT I SAID GOOD-BYE also had a glimpse of the Koryta we'd see in later books. On a deserted beach three people fight for their lives. The scene is vivid, the chill from the ocean feels real and the backdrop of a deserted amusement park adds to the eeriness. The bullets fly. <br /><br />So yes I'm a fan. I would declare myself to be a protective fan even. When Koryta took a year off from the Joe Pritchard/Lincoln Perry series to write his first stand-a-lone I was a little leery. ENVY THE NIGHT set my mind forever at rest. A story about fathers and their children, sins of the past catching up to the now, ENVY THE NIGHT was not only a great read, it was so structurally sound my high school English teacher would have loved this book for the symbolism and themes. she'd have found passages of "succinct character development". <br /><br />In 2009 at the Indy Bouchercon we found out that Michael was going to release his next three books in One calendar year. Write every day. Koryta is a firm believer in this mantra. Three books in one year? <br /><br />SO COLD THE RIVER, winner of the LA Times Best Mystery of the Year contest last year blew me away. The story of a film maker shortchanged by temper and his chance to get back not only his career but his wife stepped into the world of the unknown. The base of the story steps into the past, to a time when the Rockefellers vacationed in West Baden and everyone drank the water. The Pluto Water. The book has had a remarkable staying power with me. Just last month when the horror of Joplin hit, I could not help but think to myself, "They needed Annie.". If you've read the novel you'll understand. If you haven't put it on your reading list.<br /><br />CYPRESS HOUSE arrived just a few months ago it seems. Set in Florida during the great depression. It is the story of a man who sees death coming, the boy he's taken under his wing and a woman with a whole lot of trouble on her hands. As good as I believe SO COLD THE RIVER to be, CYPRESS HOUSE is probably better. The atmosphere surrounding the novel is like the low pressure front before a hurricane and you are about to be blown away. It is a book so visually exciting that I'm entirely jazzed by the news from Hollywood that Christopher Columbus and 1492 films has acquired the rights to interpret the book for the screen. Koryta has given them a storyboard as clear as any graphic novel but with atmosphere only a seasoned veteran with talent to spare could possibly manage.<br /><br />It's been quite a year for Koryta. It's been an even better year for his readers.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-91213472413207071642011-06-02T06:16:00.003-05:002011-06-02T07:19:37.341-05:00THE TWO DEATHS OF DANIEL HAYES<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.spinetinglermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Marcus-Sakey-The-Two-Deaths-of-Daniel-Hayes_1-148x225.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 148px; height: 225px;" src="http://www.spinetinglermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Marcus-Sakey-The-Two-Deaths-of-Daniel-Hayes_1-148x225.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Marcus Sakey. Not too many years ago this author took a leap of faith and sat down to write his first novel , THE BLADE ITSELF. One of the last decade's most well received debuts, Sakey immediately found a place on the shelves of Crime Fiction fans. Well crafted thriller plots set with the back-drop of his hometown, Chicago and the soul of the traditional mystery have quickly expanded this writer's fan base.<br /><br />This weekend he'll be debuting his new novel at Printer's Row in Chicago. If you're in the area and don't have plans stop by the main stage and pick up a copy. There's a rumor he's buying the beer. Do you live elsewhere? Put this book on your list.<br /><br />None other than Lee Child declares Marcus Sakey to be one of the "New Voices quickly becoming an old favorite." Michael Connelly declares the book to be, " A tight, intuitive and terriffic read"<br /><br />With a drop date of June 9, Sakey is about to expand his audience. THE TWO DEATHS OF DANIEL HAYES opens on a beach in Maine. Our Protagonist doesn't remember why he's there or who he is. He's naked and close to freezing. The first clues to his identity are a car and a gun.<br /><br />Inexplicably drawn to L.A. ,the man heads to California with the police on his tail. The trouble is just beginning. Who is this man with no memory? Will he have a chance to answer the question of why he was on that beach to begin with before he loses his freedom?<br /><br />Sakey parses out snippets of this story as bits of memory return to his hero's past. It is a story of one man and an all to public personal life. The story of a marriage that reached for the stars. Did it crash to earth? Are we reading into the mind of a killer or the heart of a victim?<br /><br />Every note of cadence in this novel is hard rock, the sound that reverberates to the reader drawn out like a Slash solo. There is no good place to stop for a breath during this read. That is a testament to story.<br /><br />On a cold day in January I sat down to Sakey's latest, THE TWO DEATHS OF DANIEL HAYES and I had a moment. This is a young writer who owns his words, every one of them. Kudos Mr. Sakey, your dream has arrived and readers everywhere will be better for it.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7k3ovXLzoBy9uhqNdC7erE0af1xEwOPgtVZgoe3S9iDhj9RpaJLwOv2QdtERmEELaik5zY-euPJBGCnR0Fj0PTD1DARGaz1p57KxS6aIr-ssR2VMwHfpEDDA1yx-UEOaF-Ltj0A/s400/marcus+sakey+headshot.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 262px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7k3ovXLzoBy9uhqNdC7erE0af1xEwOPgtVZgoe3S9iDhj9RpaJLwOv2QdtERmEELaik5zY-euPJBGCnR0Fj0PTD1DARGaz1p57KxS6aIr-ssR2VMwHfpEDDA1yx-UEOaF-Ltj0A/s400/marcus+sakey+headshot.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">For the next few weeks, I'll be highlighting some of this summer's books. I need to begin with a disclaimer. The books I'll be talking about are books that I have enjoyed, books that have made me marvel at the author's talent. The wonder of Crimespree is that there really are too many books in the sense that I haven't read nearly everything I intend to read this summer. Forgive me if I come late to the party on a few. I also have a huge advantage over the average reader in that I am gifted of many books. My book budget is nicely supplemented by kind hearted publishers who hope to gain exposure for their product in our Magazine. So once again, I'll suggest that anyone who read's this blog or any "best of"list use it as a guideline and not an absolute. A trip to a well stocked bookstore, just you and the flap copy is always the best way to find the perfect fit between you and a book.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-75899291404725255482011-05-20T11:06:00.000-05:002011-05-20T11:06:27.628-05:002011 MWA University Schedule - Registration is Open<div style="text-align: center;"> <img align="none" alt="MWA LogoHoriz" border="0" height="77" hspace="0" src="http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/media/8/c/3/8c3bf9e80a/3bb808db5d/9af4ce2062/library/MWA%20LogoHoriz.GIF?__nocache__=1" style="height: 77px; width: 500px;" title="MWA LogoHoriz" vspace="0" width="500" /></div><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We are pleased to announce additions to our 2011 MWA University Schedule - Registration is now open.<br />
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For details about MWA University, visit this <strong><a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/9eaef8ba26/q=MWA-University">link</a></strong><br />
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<strong>MWA University - Waukesha, Wisconsin - Friday, June 17, 2011<br />
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Location: </strong></span></span>University of Wisconsin Waukesha<br />
Northview Hall – Room N133 – Main Level<br />
1500 N University Dr<br />
Waukesha, WI 53188<br />
<br />
Class/Instructor: After the Idea - Jess Lourey<br />
Dramatic Structure & Plot - Hallie Ephron<br />
Setting & Description - John Galligan<br />
Character & Dialogue - Megan Abbott<br />
Writing as Re-Writing - Reed Farrel Coleman<br />
The Writing Life - Hank Phillippi Ryan<br />
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><strong>Campus Map: </strong></span><a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/223c6d3c75">www.waukesha.uwc.edu/About-UWW/Directions-Maps.aspx</a><br />
We have arranged for a discount at the Marriott Milwaukee West - $95/per night. Reservations must be made via the link below. The heavily discounted rate will only be available until June 6, 2011:<br />
<a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/cd7b5e0532/groupCode=sewsewa&app=resvlink&fromDate=6/16/11&toDate=6/20/11"><strong><span class="ext">http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/mkemw?groupCode=sewsewa&app=resvlink&fromDate=6/16/11&toDate=6/20/11</span></strong></a><br />
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<strong><a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/08139a5edb">Registration Form</a></strong><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>MWA University - New York - Saturday, August 13, 2011</strong></span><br />
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<strong>Location:</strong> Fordham University School of Law<br />
McNally Auditorium – Atrium Level<br />
140 W 62nd St (between Columbus & Amsterdam Avenues)<br />
New York, NY 10023<br />
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Class/Instructor: After the Idea - Jess Lourey<br />
Dramatic Structure & Plot - Hallie Ephron<br />
Setting & Description - Daniel Stashower<br />
Character & Dialogue - Cordelia Frances Biddle<br />
Writing as Re-Writing - Reed Farrel Coleman<br />
The Writing Life - Hank Phillippi Ryan<br />
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<strong>Map of Area:</strong> <a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/95a6c1b8f9">http://tinyurl.com/6f2d3t2</a><br />
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<strong><a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/31c8f608df">Registration Form</a></strong><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>MWA University - St. Louis - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 </strong></span>(the day before Bouchercon begins)<br />
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<strong>Location</strong>: Holiday Inn Select – Downtown St. Louis<br />
Washington & Broadway Rooms<br />
811 N 9th St<br />
St. Louis, MO 63101<br />
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Class/Instructor: After the Idea - Jess Lourey<br />
Dramatic Structure & Plot - Hallie Ephron<br />
Setting & Description - John Desjarlais<br />
Character & Dialogue - Vicki Stiefel<br />
Writing as Re-Writing - Reed Farrel Coleman<br />
The Writing Life - Hank Phillippi Ryan<br />
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<strong>Map of Area: </strong><a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/b6738e19d1">http://tinyurl.com/3b79f3m</a><br />
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<strong><a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/8c96fe9715">Registration Form</a></strong><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>MWA University - New Orleans - Saturday, October 1, 2011</strong></span><br />
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<strong>Location: </strong>Hotel Monteleone<br />
Vieux Carre Room<br />
214 Royal St<br />
New Orleans, LA 70130<br />
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Class/Instructor: After the Idea - Jess Lourey<br />
Dramatic Structure & Plot - Hallie Ephron<br />
Setting & Description - David Morrell<br />
Character & Dialogue - Julie Smith<br />
Writing as Re-Writing - Reed Farrel Coleman<br />
The Writing Life - Hank Phillippi Ryan<br />
<br />
<strong>Map of Area:</strong> <a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/87b962fd6f"> http://tinyurl.com/64tcoxr </a><br />
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We have arranged for a rate of $159/per night at the hotel (includes a continental breakfast). The rate will cover the following date range: September 29 - October 2, 2011. Reservations must be made by September 23, 2011. Reservation link to hotel will be available soon.<br />
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<a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?MysteryWritersOfAmer/3bb808db5d/71b37c6615/af6355f064"><strong>Registration Form</strong></a>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-6846085159958519432011-05-04T12:25:00.002-05:002011-05-04T12:25:53.547-05:00The Boxer by Sean Monaghan<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:TargetScreenSize>800x600</o:TargetScreenSize> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Due to a production error, the short story in the latest issue got cut off. We are posting it here so you can read the WHOLE story.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jon</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Boxer By Sean Monaghan</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony bounced on his toes, grazed knuckles still in front of his bruised eyes.<span> </span>Rodriguez lay on the mat.<span> </span>The referee grabbed Tony's hand, holding it aloft.<span> </span>Tony hadn't even heard the count.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">There were some muttered cheers, but Tony just went to the corner and let Perry damp him down.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Mr Armitage is here," Perry said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony glanced around, saw Armitage and Drexler.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"You did good tonight," Armitage said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Fifteen hundred," Tony said.<span> </span>A few more fights and he'd be clear.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"You do win quite often,” Armitage said as they walked to the locker room.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"I guess,” Tony said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"I’d pay you well to take a fall."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"You’ve told me that before."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage laughed.<span> </span>"Yes I have.<span> </span>Well then, how would you like to resolve your situation, tonight?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"I don't understand."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Repay the debt.<span> </span>In full."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"He shouldn't fight any more," Perry said.<span> </span>"Not tonight."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage waved his cigar.<span> </span>"No, not fighting.<span> </span>Another little job for me."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony nodded.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">He got cleaned up and Drexler drove them out of the city, down towards the Cape.<span> </span>A small town Tony had never visited.<span> </span>Since fleeing Oregon, he'd hardly been out of central Boston.<span> </span>Drexler parked the Limo in front of one of the clapboard villas on a street filled with similar colonials.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage put out his cigar.<span> </span>"Two houses along," he said, handing Tony a key and a small flashlight.<span> </span>"Number thirteen sixty eight."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony took the things.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"This requires discretion," Armitage said.<span> </span>"Can I count on you for that?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Discretion?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"I gave her some expensive jewelry and I want it back."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"You can't ask her?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Ah, Tony, there's my problem.<span> </span>She ended our relationship, fearing for her child and marriage, I suspect."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Couldn't you-"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Tony, this is a delicate situation.<span> </span>The jewels are in her top drawer.<span> </span>The dresser is obvious, her room - their room - is the second door past the top of the stairs.<span> </span>You'll be in and out in a couple of moments."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"I don't know, Mr Armitage."<span> </span>Breaking and entering sounded risky.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"A few minutes.<span> </span>They aren't home.<span> </span>You understand why I can't go in."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"I ..."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"And your debt will be erased."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony nodded.<span> </span>Wiping eighty thousand was taking a long time.<span> </span>For a while the fights had barely made interest.<span> </span>Now he was getting close, but the sense of ending it buoyed him.<span> </span>He looked at the key.<span> </span>"Front door?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage nodded.<span> </span>"Dresser drawer.<span> </span>Second door.<span> </span>Top of the stairs.<span> </span>No one home."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Alarms?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"None.<span> </span>It’s a quiet, sleepy town.<span> </span>See you in a few minutes."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony stepped out onto the sidewalk and went along to the house.<span> </span>There was a twin seat swing on the front porch, beside an aluminum table with an empty coffee cup.<span> </span>The key turned in the lock.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony went across the threshold, clicked the flashlight on.<span> </span>Stairs with a rodded mat.<span> </span>On the wall there were photos of scuba divers and fish and whales.<span> </span>A toddler in a bathing suit running across sand.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">He jogged up the stairs, went to the second door.<span> </span>There were more photos, but Tony didn't look.<span> </span>He darted the flashlight around the room.<span> </span>Closet, bedside tables with lamps, rumpled bed, dresser.<span> </span>He hauled the drawer out, wondering how Armitage knew exactly where the jewels were.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Rifling through smalls Tony didn't find anything.<span> </span>Growling he emptied the drawer onto the floor, shining the flashlight through the woman's underwear.<span> </span>Nothing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Something wasn't right.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony opened the next drawer.<span> </span>Socks.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A toilet flushed in the en suite.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony yanked out the drawer and tipped it over.<span> </span>Something clunked to the floor amongst the spilling socks.<span> </span>The jewels.<span> </span>Reaching to pick them up, he felt a pistol.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The light flicked on and someone screamed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony put the gun up on the dresser and backed away from her.<span> </span>The jewels weren't here anyway.<span> </span>Armitage had been wrong.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The woman hurled a book at him, then the bedside lamp.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Hey," Tony said.<span> </span>"I'm just collecting the jewels."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Get out," she was holding up a pillow as if ready to smack him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Her eyes flicked to the gun and Tony almost picked it up again.<span> </span>"Sorry," he said.<span> </span>"I didn't mean any trouble."<span> </span>He would have to keep on with the fighting to clear the debt.<span> </span>He had a feeling that Armitage wasn't going to make it easy for him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Wide-eyed, the woman clutched the pillow.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Mom," someone called out from the hallway, and a light glowed on behind Tony.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Go back to bed honey," the woman said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony saw that she was shaking.<span> </span>He could tell why Armitage had taken up with her, full blond hair, light eyes, trim figure.<span> </span>She looked at the gun again and he knew he couldn't leave it behind.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As he reached out, another hand slipped over the pistol.<span> </span>Tony looked up to see Armitage.<span> </span>"Hello Tony," he said.<span> </span>"No jewels?<span> </span>Oh well.<span> </span>Hello Claire."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage had gloves on.<span> </span>Tony knew his own prints were on the gun.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The woman's face narrowed to a scowl.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Where is it, Claire?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony realized that Armitage hadn't known where the jewels were, but must have known about the gun.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Spent," the woman said.<span> </span>"You knew it would be spent."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Someone raced along the hallway and crashed into Armitage.<span> </span>He staggered.<span> </span>Twisting, he fired.<span> </span>The sound made Tony jerk.<span> </span>The woman screamed again.<span> </span>A girl, perhaps fifteen, collapsed to the floor.<span> </span>Blood blackened the carpet under her in a growing stain.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Daphne."<span> </span>The woman dove, shoving Tony aside.<span> </span>She scooped the dying girl up, clutching her close.<span> </span>"Bastard, you bastard."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Claire," Armitage said softly.<span> </span>"You know how this works.<span> </span>I own you."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"I made a mistake.<span> </span>My husband will be-"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage shot her in the shoulder.<span> </span>She fell back, the girl's body sprawling.<span> </span>"Your husband is lucky he's not home.<span> </span>But I will, eventually, be collecting from him."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The woman's face shifted from agony to sadness and then Armitage gave her a kill shot.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"What the hell?" Tony said.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage removed the clip and clicked the bullets out into his palm, replaced the empty clip, then tossed the gun at Tony.<span> </span>He caught it reflexively.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage pocketed the bullets and turned to the stairs.<span> </span>"Your debt is cleared," he said.<span> </span>"You're free to go."<span> </span>He glanced over his shoulder.<span> </span>"But I have a feeling that your problems are just beginning."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony looked at the two bodies.<span> </span>A set-up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">He jumped at Armitage, already halfway down the stairs.<span> </span>Armitage buckled under him and they tumbled to the front door, the gun clattering away.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"Idiot," Armitage said, clutching a bleeding cheek.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony punched him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Drexler appeared at the doorway.<span> </span>"What the ...?"<span> </span>He bent for the gun.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony jumped up, but Drexler was fast, had the gun in his hand, leveled at Tony.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">"I'm being set up," Tony said.<span> </span>He realized that Drexler had gloves, but hanging from his pocket, not on his hands.<span> </span>Drexler was part of the set-up, but now his prints would be on the gun too.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Drexler tipped his hand and glanced at the empty gun.<span> </span>He knew, Tony realized, from the weight.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony sprang and knocked Drexler down across the steps.<span> </span>Armitage's man was tough, but no match for Tony's fists.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony stood up.<span> </span>Sirens in the distance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage had lawyers.<span> </span>No matter what Tony said, Armitage would walk, find himself another drudge boy, find someone else to take those falls.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">And Tony would be in jail.<span> </span>He wasn't going back there.<span> </span>Ever.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Taking the keys from Drexler, Tony dragged Armitage over to the car.<span> </span>He tossed the boss in the front seat, then sat behind the wheel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It wasn’t going to work.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony leapt back out of the car, ran to Drexler and wiped the gun down.<span> </span>He took the gloves and stuffed the gun into Drexler’s belt.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Back in the car, Tony edged into the access alley and crept across a few streets, letting the cops pass.<span> </span>Once he felt clear, he fled to the freeway, then on across the bridge to the Cape.<span> </span>Near Provincetown he found a seaward beach access.<span> </span>He crossed the packed sand and stopped close to the water.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Armitage was still groggy, not quite conscious.<span> </span>Tony climbed out and hauled him into the driver seat.<span> </span>Then he went around behind the car and began pushing.<span> </span>With the slope and the backwash he got it down.<span> </span>Waves broke over the hood as the car drifted off, settling, then sinking.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tony walked back across the beach, feeling light.<span> </span>Whatever happened the debt was clear.<span> </span>No more fighting, no more trying to avoid Drexler.<span> </span>He watched the waves for a few moments, then turned to the dunes.<span> </span>He had a long walk back home.<span> </span>Wherever that was.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Jon The Crime Spree Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09516077426733561884noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637874.post-2854725014985490312011-04-30T08:38:00.002-05:002011-04-30T09:56:38.179-05:00Mystery Week<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/alternatethumbnails/story/2011-01/58897473-19160556-400225.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/alternatethumbnails/story/2011-01/58897473-19160556-400225.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Everyone who knows Crimespree, knows that we spent this past week in New York City. What a week it was. I came to the party late. Trailing two days behind Jon, Paul, Jen and Judy.<br /> <br />Here are the bullet points.<br /><br />Great meetings with many of New York's top publishers. We were there to talk Bouchercon involvement. The enthusiasm was gratifying. Jon has developed a good and quick presentation over the past three years. I'm a proud wife.<br /><br />Big News for two of Mystery's champions. <br /><br />Agent extraordinaire David Hale Smith has joined Inkwell Management in a move that I believe to be brilliant for both sides. The incredible talent the two are merging promises great reading ahead for readers everywhere.<br /><br />Good Friend Ben Leroy of Tyrus Books had some <a href="http://www.writenews.com/blog/429111">news</a> of his own. I am very excited both by the launch of F&W Crime, and the future of Tyrus Books. Ben has an eye for fiction that thinks outside the box and adds to the world of books.<br /><br />Tremendous Launch for THE RICH & THE DEAD at The Mysterious Bookshop: When hundreds of people descend upon an independent bookstore on a Tuesday evening, it reaffirms my belief in the book itself. The bookstore on Warren Street was pulsating with life and overflowing with both authors and the folks who buy their books. If you are a reader be sure to visit this store on any New York visit.<br /><br />The 65th Edgar Awards<br />And the <a href="http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html">Edgar</a> goes to.....<br />A night of glitz, glamour, and celebration. A banquet with edible food. New memories created with old friends and new acquaintances. Long live mystery.<br /><br /><br />The Raven Winners: To see Augie (Centuries & Sleuths) Pat & Gary (Once Upon a Crime) outside of their natural milieu was worth a trip to New York. These three people have championed the book and the people who write them for many years. Owning a bookstore would be a thankless task except for their love of the written word. This one time "Payback is a Blessing". I cannot over-emphasize what it meant for me to see them receive this honor in person. <br /><br />The 2011 Grand Master: Sara Paretsky is one of the world's most amazing women. Three decades ago now she began to write a series about a PI named V.I. Warshawski. This series breathed a fresh breath into the life of the Private Eye Novel, proving it could sell. Her sales encouraged many of the writers I know, male and female to begin writing what was in their gut. The sales allowed publishing houses to take a chance on talented new writers in the field of Crime.One of the founding members of Sisters in Crime, Paretsky has influenced an entire industry, from the people who publish it to the folks who report it. She has done it with a quiet elegance that has required the raising of her voice on occasion. <br />The champion of many social issues, Sara has lent her name and reputation to homelessness, womens' shelters and the list goes on. Her series has explored issues ranging from abortion to the quiet death of print newspaper. She does this with one of mystery's most enduring characters. V.I. is the go to chick for many of us who read and write.<br /><br />That she receives this honor in a year when the presidency of the MWA is passed from Laura Lippman to Lisa Scotteline only makes it more special.<br /><br />Typing from Wisconsin with two cats at her feet...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0