Michael Haskins Key West Writer

Jenny Hilborn

2012-01-24T11:01:00.002-05:00

My friend, and fellow writer, Jenny Hilborn just released her latest thriller, Madness & Murder. Here is an excerpt you might enjoy.

Madness & Murder

With the body count at five, and the blade marks left on the latest victim determined to be have been made by an eight-inch blade, Mac Jackson had little doubt in his mind that they had all died at the hands of the same killer. Another serial killer on the streets of San Francisco, but this one left no cryptic clues or taunting letters, made no demands to the police or the general public. He didn’t appear to want attention or recognition. Jackson suspected he had a particular grudge, or some type of personal vendetta, only he hadn’t been able to figure out what.

Exhausted from working through the night–even with a little extra civilian help to which he’d consented–he rubbed at his eyes, and took a slurp of coffee that had already turned cold. He’d been making notes and sifting through the scant evidence left behind since the young woman’s body had been found by a lonesome jogger, during the early hours of Tuesday morning. What the hell is your motive? He set the mug down, sighed, and looked at the photo of the deceased. If he’d been called to the scene half an hour sooner, he might have been able to ask the killer that question. Her body had still been warm.

“She was just a kid,” he said to Red. “Twenty-four. Only two years older than Bryce.”

Red shook his head, no more enlightened than Jackson. “I know. There’s no pattern. He butchers men, women, old, young, but never rapes them or robs them. What’s the motive? What the hell does this bastard want?”

“I wish I knew,” Jackson said, grimacing at another mouthful of cold coffee, “but one thing’s becoming clear; he’s getting careless or cocky. Thirty minutes sooner and we’d have had him.”

“Doubt it. That was deliberate, Jackson. The bastard knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t want to get caught until he’s ready.”

“Well, so far he doesn’t have to worry about that. We’ve got extra cops patrolling the streets, and he still manages to leave us a warm, dead body and no witnesses. There’s something we’re missing.” He pressed his hands and finger-tips together, hooked his thumbs under his weary chin, and closed his eyes, trying to get inside a killer’s head.

“This is his arena, man, his stage,” Red said. “He’s killing right under our noses like there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. And the warm body?…he’s performing. That’s arrogance.”

“Or anger.” Jackson opened his eyes. “Or maybe he’s bored.”

“He’s not bored,” Red said, shaking his head. He strode around his desk to sit on the front edge of it, facing Jackson. “He thinks he’s superior. He stays one step ahead, but barely, he leaves virtually no clues, and he seems to murder at random.”

“And always in a busy location.” Jackson drummed his long fingers impatiently on his desk. “Why do you think he makes no effort to conceal the bodies?”

“He wants them to be found. He wants us to know he’s killed again, and we’ve failed again.”

“Failed?”

“To protect the city. To do our jobs. He’s not just satisfying some sick thrill, you know, he’s making fools of all of us, of law enforcement.”

“So, maybe that’s his message. There’s a reason for the killings, I’m sure of that, but the real anger is against the law. And he wants us to figure out why.”

“I’m going out on a limb here,” Red said. “Call it one of your hunches, but I’d say he’s never done time. He’s not going to be in the database.”

“What makes you say that?” Jackson looked at his partner with interest.

“Something tells me he hasn’t reached his zenith. He’s leading up to something, and until we figure out what it is, he’s not going to get caught. He wants to get caught, but not just yet, not until he’s ready. And another thing…I don’t believe he kills at random. He picks his victims.”

Jackson nodded, thinking, pinched the bridge of his nose while he contemplated. Finally he looked back at Red, still perched on the edge of his desk and looking as beat as Jackson felt.

“You know,” he began, “I can’t stop thinking about the tongue. He’d already slit her throat, so she’d have been dead already, bled out, so why cut it out? And why didn’t we find it?”

A thorough search of the area where the body had been found had not turned up the missing muscle.

“I’d say she pissed him off,” Red suggested. “Maybe she said something he didn’t like.”

“You think he knew her?”

Red shrugged. “Maybe, probably not. But I’d say he’d been in close proximity the night he killed her, maybe listening to her conversation.”

Jackson picked up the report on his desk and reread the notes about the young woman’s last night. “She’d been out with friends,” he read aloud, “celebrating a promotion, according to her friends.” He searched Red’s face. “They work in finance.”

“Jealousy?” Red suggested.

“Possible. Except her friends state they were all doing well.”

“Yeah, well maybe one of them thought she wasn’t deserving, thought she got promoted out of turn. She was considerably younger. They were in their forties. Hell, I’d probably be pissed if I got overtaken by a kid in her twenties.”

“But if they’re all hot shots, I’d say it’s unlikely,” Jackson said. “Anyway, they all checked out. They all left together, without her, and went straight home. She’d had too much to drink, apparently wanted to walk it off.”

“Some friends.”

Jackson shrugged. “It happens. None of the other diners remember anyone suspicious. Nothing we could use.”

“What about credit cards?”

Jackson shook his head. “Slow night, only a few transactions and they checked out.”

“So he paid cash.”

“Maybe. No one remembers a lone diner. No one paid her group any attention.”

“Well, someone did.” Red pursed his lips, removed his legs from the desk, and walked round to the other side to sit down. “If the guy was there, he looked like a regular. He fitted in. No one noticed him.”

“And a regular guy can fly under the radar, mingle easily. That’s how he does it.” Jackson slapped a hand down on his desk. “We’re looking for someone who fits into society. Someone with a job, maybe even a few friends. On the one hand he kills, has an aversion to the law, but he also lives a part of his life normally, like everyone else.”

“Could have been someone she worked with. One of the group. Or a schizophrenic.”

“Not a schizophrenic. I don’t believe there’s any distortion of reality for this guy. I believe he knows exactly what he’s doing.”

Red nodded. “You’re right about him being local.”

Jackson pulled up a fresh sheet in his notepad and began to scribble. “Here’s what we’ve got,” he said to Red, “I think he’s a white male, probably late twenties to early thirties, strong, agile, social to an extent but really a loner.”

“Family?”

“Little or none.”

“Think he killed ‘em?”

“His family? No. If he’s local we’d have gotten something on that. He’s from this area, so they’re either dead already, or they’ve moved away.”

“Why d’you think that?”

“Hunch. Plus, he can go about his business more easily with no one keeping tabs on his hours, his comings and goings. My gut tells me this guy is a loner, not one of her group.”

“Good enough for me.” Red yawned behind his hand, and rubbed his eyes, ran a hand through his hair, and stretched in his seat. “I’m beat.” He laced his fingers together behind his head and leaned back, putting his feet up on his desk. “Still think it’s a thrill killer?”

Jackson sighed. “I don’t know. Yes…and no. There’s an underlying motive, but he’s a sadistic bastard. He enjoys the violence.”

“The tongue?”

“That, the genitals, and the fact he mutilates them after they’re dead. The two back in ninety-five…I believe it’s the same guy.” He locked eyes with Red, saw his furrowed brow, and could almost hear the cogs turning in his partners head. “What is it?”

“The fact her body was still warm.”

“What about it?”

Red unlaced his fingers, removed his feet from his desk, and leaned forward in his seat, his face taut with concentration. “The jogger found her at four-thirty, Tuesday morning.”

“Right.” Jackson watched his expression with interest.

“If he’d been inside the restaurant and followed her out, killing her on her way home, her body would have been cold by the time the jogger found her. We know the jogger didn’t do it because he’d only left the house ten minutes earlier, confirmed by his wife, and he had no blood on his clothes.”

“Ok.” They’d been through this already, but Jackson didn’t mind going over it again. Maybe they’d missed something the first time.

“We know she’d been dead for only about thirty minutes, so, if time of death was four in the morning, we’ve got six hours to account for from the time she left the restaurant to when she died.”

“Well, we know she went for a walk, she was drunk, and she was alone. Maybe she fell asleep somewhere, and maybe he didn’t follow her. He might not have been in the bar at all; no one remembers a lone guy, so maybe it was purely random and he stumbled upon her sleeping it off.”

“It’s possible,” Red said, “but it doesn’t fit with the tongue. That kind of violence had to be provoked. It wasn’t random. She said something to piss him off. He was in that bar, and he followed her out. Know what I think?” He didn’t wait to be asked. “I think he tortured her for a while.”

Jackson sighed. “No marks on her body to suggest it, no ligature on her wrists or feet.”

“Mental torture. I think she felt comfortable with him, trusted him. She went with him willingly.”

“She was drunk,” Jackson reminded him, a headache beginning to kick around at the back of his eyeballs. “She wouldn’t have had the same fear she might have had sober.”

“That’s true, too, but…if he was mad enough to hack off her tongue, he wouldn’t waste six hours idly chatting. Somehow, he gained her trust before he killed her, and he took six hours to do it. There’s a reason for that, and I want to know what it is.”

Jackson scratched his head. “We’ve been over this. I don’t know.”

“Jackson,” Red shot him a dry look, “you’re the master of hunches, and maybe it’s rubbing off. My hunch: he’s testing himself.”

“Red.” Jackson stared at him in astonishment, his headache suddenly vanishing. “That’s it. You’re brilliant.” He punched the air.

“What did I do?” Red stared back in surprise.

“You hit the nail on the head, that’s what you did.” Jackson smacked his hands together triumphantly. “He is testing himself, not us.” He laughed out loud. “Why didn’t I see it before?”

“See what?”

Jackson grinned at Red’s puzzled expression. “You see how the murders have been escalating? Both in frequency and violence?” He didn’t wait for Red to comment. “I figured he’s been working his way up to something.” He pulled open the file on his desk with the old notes from the earlier murders. “The ones in ninety-five…those were homeless, nobodies…their bodies could drift about for days, months, and no one would miss them. He was warming up, getting a taste for murder. He didn’t care if anyone found them.”

“And these latest ones?”

“These victims have families. He knew they’d be missed. He wanted them to be found. He wanted to know he could walk into a crowded area, somewhere like the Embarcadero, choose a victim, and kill them without getting caught, and then watch how the case unraveled. See what he could learn from the moves made by police.”

“If we don’t believe the victims were chosen at random,” Red said, Jackson’s sudden enthusiasm rubbing off on him, “then there’s a common link, something that makes him snap, something that ties them all together.”

“Yes.” Jackson smacked his desk again. “We need to find that link.” He grinned across at Red. “We’re finally making progress.”

Red seemed to be on a roll. “And if the victims were chosen by something they said or did, he upped the stakes each time, increased the violence, let us get closer. He tested himself to see how far he could go before we start closing in.”

“And that tells me something else. Red, when he abducts his final victim, he’s going to do it in a public place. He’s been training for it, building up to it. He’s going to try to snatch him or her from right under our noses.”

“Think he’s following the reports on the news?”

“I don’t doubt it. The vicious bastard has enjoyed destroying those families.”

“That’s it.” Red leapt from his chair, wide-eyed and without a trace of exhaustion.

“What?” Startled, Jackson stared at him as if he’d gone mad.

“Jackson, you’re fucking brilliant.” Red grinned.

“Piss off, Dennis.”

“Don’t you get it?” Red flicked a paperclip that hit Jackson on the nose. “You just figured out the motive.”

MWA Nominees for 2012 Edgar Allen Poe Awards

2012-01-19T11:10:00.000-05:00

Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce on the 203rd anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, its Nominees for the 2012 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2011. The Edgar® Awards will be presented to the winners at our 66th Gala Banquet, April 26, 2012 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York, New York.

BEST NOVEL

The Ranger by Ace Atkins (Penguin Group USA – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Gone by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press)
The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur Books)
1222 by Anne Holt (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
Field Gray by Philip Kerr (Penguin Group USA - G.P. Putnam’s Sons – Marion Wood Books)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Red on Red by Edward Conlon (Random House Publishing Group – Spiegel & Grau)
Last to Fold by David Duffy (Thomas Dunne Books)
All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen (The Permanent Press)
Bent Road by Lori Roy (Penguin Group USA - Dutton)
Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder (Minotaur Books – Thomas Dunne Books)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett (Hachette Book Group – Orbit Books)
The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle (Felony & Mayhem Press)
The Dog Sox by Russell Hill (Pleasure Boat Studio – Caravel Mystery Books)
Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley (HarperCollins Publishers – Harper Paperbacks)
Vienna Twilight by Frank Tallis (Random House Trade Paperbacks)

BEST FACT CRIME

The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins (Crown Publishing)
The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge by T.J. English (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard (Random House - Doubleday)
Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender by Steve Miller (Penguin Group USA - Berkley)
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter by Mark Seal (Penguin Group USA - Viking)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The Tattooed Girl: The Enigma of Stieg Larsson and the Secrets Behind the Most Compelling Thrillers of our Time by Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer & John-Henri Holmberg (St. Martin’s Griffin)
Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making by John Curran (HarperCollins)
On Conan Doyle: Or, the Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda (Princeton University Press)
Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film by Philippa Gates (SUNY Press)
Scripting Hitchcock: Psycho, The Birds and Marnie by Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick (University of Illinois Press)

BEST SHORT STORY

"Marley’s Revolution" – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by John C. Boland (Dell Magazines)
"Tomorrow’s Dead" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by David Dean (Dell Magazines)
"The Adakian Eagle" – Down These Strange Streets by Bradley Denton (Penguin Group USA – Ace Books)
"Lord John and the Plague of Zombies" – Down These Strange Streets by Diana Gabaldon (Penguin Group USA – Ace Books)
"The Case of Death and Honey" – A Study in Sherlock by Neil Gaiman (Random House Publishing Group – Bantam Books)
"The Man Who Took His Hat Off to the Driver of the Train" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Peter Turnbull (Dell Magazines)

BEST JUVENILE

Horton Halfpott by Tom Angleberger (Abrams – Amulet Books)
It Happened on a Train by Mac Barnett (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
Vanished by Sheela Chari (Disney Book Group – Disney Hyperion)
Icefall by Matthew J. Kirby (Scholastic Press)
The Wizard of Dark Street by Shawn Thomas Odyssey (Egmont USA)

BEST YOUNG ADULT

Shelter by Harlan Coben (Penguin Young Readers Group – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (Penguin Young Readers Group – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall (Random House Children’s Books – Knopf BFYR)
The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines (Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group – Roaring Creek Press)
Kill You Last by Todd Strasser (Egmont USA)

BEST PLAY

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club by Jeffrey Hatcher (Arizona Theatre Company, Phoenix, AZ)
The Game’s Afoot by Ken Ludwig (Cleveland Playhouse, Cleveland, OH)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

"Innocence" – Blue Bloods, Teleplay by Siobhan Byrne O’Connor (CBS Productions)
"The Life Inside" – Justified, Teleplay by Benjamin Cavell(FX Productions and Sony Pictures Television)
"Part 1" – Whitechapel, Teleplay by Ben Court & Caroline Ip (BBC America)
"Pilot" – Homeland, Teleplay by Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon & Gideon Raff (Showtime)
"Mask" – Law & Order: SVU, Teleplay by Speed Weed (Wolf Films/Universal Media Studios)

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD

"A Good Man of Business" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by David Ingram (Dell Magazines)

GRAND MASTER

Martha Grimes

RAVEN AWARDS

M is for Mystery Bookstore, San Mateo, CA
Molly Weston, Meritorious Mysteries

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD

Joe Meyers of the Connecticut Post/Hearst Media News Group

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
(Presented at MWA’s Agents & Editors Party on Wednesday, April 25, 2012)

Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books)
Come and Find Me by Hallie Ephron (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
Death on Tour by Janice Hamrick (Minotaur Books)
Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry (Crown Publishing Group)
Murder Most Persuasive by Tracy Kiely (Minotaur Books – Thomas Dunne Books)

2012-01-18T10:59:00.000-05:00

My friend and fellow writer Dellani Oakes, has published "Indian Summer" and agreed to share a little. I thought you'd enjoy this section. If you enjoy it, as I did, buy it and write a review on Amazon.

INDIAN SUMMER

There was a nagging feeling of dread rising in my mind. I felt hot then cold all over as if I were taking sick again. I had the feeling that Manuel needed me, something was horribly, terribly wrong. I couldn't suppress it, for it seared my soul. My dreams nagged my thoughts, causing shivers of dread down my spine.

Without saying a word to anyone, I wended my way as quickly and quietly to the door as I could. It was hardly more than three minutes after Manuel left, and yet he was nowhere in sight. He must have taken his buggy. Having no such vehicle available to me, I ran to the fortress with as much speed as I could muster. I was grateful to Grand-mère for the dress as it provided more mobility than any of my other outfits would have.

The hair rose on my arms as if I were cold, my breath came in shuddering gasps and yet I ran until I thought my lungs would burst. It was then I saw it, a flicker, a flame and suddenly the entire southeast bastion of the fort seemed to be on fire!

Silhouetted against it, I saw a man. My dream came rushing back of an instant and I knew it to be James the spy! I couldn't contain my anger. It drove me onward, compelling me to be hasty, chiding my slowness. Anger burned within me, hot and fierce as the signal fire before me, filling me with a fury driving away my fear.

I finally reached the gate, passing the ladies and the buggy without fully noticing. I saw no sign of Manuel, James or anyone else. In fact, the postern gate was open and unguarded, just as in my dream! I stifled the shriek I felt rising in my throat. Fear gripped me, cold unreasoning fear. Dread of ghosts of dead soldiers floated through my mind, making me shiver again.

For the first time in my life, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't think or make any decision. I stood there stupidly, gaping at the sight in front of me, riveted to the spot. That was my undoing. Stealthily out of the shadows, James was upon me. He grabbed me in his strong arms, holding me to him, using me as a shield, a gun pointed at my head!

An involuntary scream ripped from my throat! James chided me, goaded me on, pulling my hair, waving the gun before me!

"Go ahead and scream, lass. Scream for all you're worth! It will bring him to me. I've waited, plotted, planned for this moment. Before the sun rises, he'll be dead and you, my lass, you will be mine!"

He planted a rough, brutal kiss on my cheek, nipping my ear, causing me to scream again. I writhed away from him, but he held me fast. He shifted his hold upon me, crushing me against his pelvis. I could feel the lust in him. It disgusted and terrified me. He seemed to feed off my fear, growing more bold.

"That's it, that's it! He'll be here any minute that upstart Spanish bastard!"

He was turning around from side to side, holding me in front of him, pulling my hair to keep me on my feet, for I was near to fainting. A shadow moved stealthily toward us. I hoped James had not seen. Perhaps I only hoped so much that it was Manuel, I imagined it. But no, I heard a pistol being cocked and knew James heard it to. From our left, Manuel emerged quietly from the shadows, pistol in hand.

The light from the signal fire threw wavering shadows and highlights over his face, making him look demonic, his handsome face contorted into an unyielding mask of cold rage and hatred. His hand was steady, pointing the gun at James, who tried in vain to keep me in front of him. Manuel lifted his chin standing still.

"Let her go, James, or I shall drop you where you stand."

"If you shoot me, she's dead." He put the gun up against my head.

"Don't be so sure of that, Doctor."

I could hear panic rising in James' voice. His breath coming in fast gulps, hot on my neck. "Drop your gun. I'll let her go if you drop your gun!"

"Do you take me for a complete fool? You drop your gun and I'll give you a head start to the gate to run like the cowardly cur you are. Stand away from her now."

James' hand holding the weapon was beginning to falter. I summoned all my resolve and slammed my elbow into his ribs, stamped on his foot and hit him in his private parts as hard as I could with both my fists together.

He gasped for breath, falling to the ground, dropping his gun. Manuel kept him covered while I jumped out of reach. All I could think of was getting away, returning to the safety of my home, of Manuel's arms. I was in a panic, terrified! Then I saw the man behind Manuel, musket raised like a club, the sailor who had met James.

Manuel couldn't get a shot off in time, but caught the blow of the musket with his pistol stock, forcing the man away from him. They grappled for what seemed hours, but was only a few seconds. Unfortunately, neither of us watched James. He lunged for his pistol, grabbing it before I could warn Manuel. I could do nothing to stop him. I was too far away. I tried to scream, to alert Manuel in some way, but the sound caught in my throat.

Manuel and the sailor turned just as James raised his gun to shoot. James' shot caught the other man in the back, the bullet slamming through him as if he were jelly. The echo in the stone courtyard was deafening. Then they fell!

“Manuel! Dear God, he's been shot!" I screamed to no one.

The other fellow was dead, but Manuel was still moving. I ran to be by his side, but James grabbed my hair again and dragged me away! The last I saw, Manuel was lying in a pool of blood, his life draining from him and I could do nothing!

Paul D Barzill, guest blogger, Grit on the Box

2012-01-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

With the BBC’s latest incarnation of Sherlock back on the small screen it may again seem that America is the home of harboiled crime television such as Breaking Bad and The Wire, while the United Kingdom, is the land of Dame Agatha style cozies and stuck-up, Latin quoting police detectives.

However, for over forty years British television also has looked at the grubby underbelly and produced plenty of gritty crime writing.

While we may think of sixties and seventies British TV cops as sophisticated post James Bonds, for example, Frank Marker, who was played so brilliantly by Alfred Burke in the sixties television series PUBLIC EYE was no Simon Templar, Jason King or John Steed, I can tell you.

The Public Eye ran for 10 years –from 1965 to 1975- with almost 100 episodes and although I haven’t seen it since then I remember it quite well and very fondly. Marker moved from a dingy office in London to another flea pit in Birmingham and eventually to Brighton, and I can still picture him walking along a wind and rain swept sea-front, looking like someone from a Morrissey song.

Marker looked like a soggy mongrel and he was a walking hard luck story, getting knocked about by the police as well as criminals and even being framed and sent to prison.

Not a lot of peace and love there, then.

The seventies was a time when music and film were doing some pretty ground breaking and experimental stuff and, in the UK at least, so was TV.

The BBC’s Play For Today, for example, is looked back upon with dewy eyed reverence these days. And so it should be. There were plays by Dennis Potter –Blue Remembered Hills, Mike Leigh –Abigail’s Party, Alan Bleasdale, John Osborne. Some of them were terrifying to the young mind- I still cringe when I remember the harrowing and brilliant Edna The Inebriated Woman. Others were hilarious –Rumpole Of The Baily, which spawned the television series.

And some were rock hard.

In 1975, Philip Martin’s controversial Gangsters aired and it was great. Gangsters was true Brit Grit television. Set in Birmingham, it was a multicultural crime story about illegal immigrants and corrupt politicians. I was thirteen at the time and I loved it. There was a violence, swearing, nudity! What more could you want?!

The next day at school everyone was talking about it. The subsequent media furore only added to the buzz.

Gangsters was such a success it was made into a series with theme music from the prog rock band Greenslade. It told the story of Kline, played by super-craggy Maurice Colborn, ex SAS, fresh out of prison and trying to go straight. And failing.

Like the Play For Today it came from the series was hardboiled, with maybe only Mike Hodges’ Get Carter as an antecedent.

By season two, the series really took a turn for the mental, though. The title sequence now had blues singer Chris Farlow belting out the theme song and looked like something from a low budget Kung Fu film.

Indeed, it went down such a weird path that it even had writer Philip Martin regularly appearing as himself dictating scenes to a typist. And later he appeared as The White Devil, a hit man dressed as W C Fields(a role originally intended for Les Dawson!) who eventually killed Kline.

Gangsters, which had started off as a hard hitting social realist crime drama , ended fantastically with the characters walking off the set, shots of the writers literally tossing away the script and a ‘That’s All Folks’ caption appearing on screen.

‘Daft!’ said my sister in law, who watched it with me. And she was right, I suppose, but then ‘daft’ isn’t always a bad thing, is it?

In one play and the two seasons of Gangsters, there were drug addicts, hit men, sleazy night clubs, triads, murders, racist comedians, the CIA, strippers and all manner of urban rough and tumble. And W C Fields.

And on to the nineties.

CRACKER was a Granada TV series that was created by the writer Jimmy McGovern which ran from 1993- 1995. A mere two years, yet it made a great impact in that short time.(Okay, there was also a fine Hong Kong set special in 1996 -and another in 2006,which I didn’t see.)

The star of the show was Scottish comedy actor Robbie Coltrane who was previously best known for a cracking- see what I did then? – performance in theBBC’s version of John Byrne’s Tuttie Fruttie and for throwing a chair through a pub window.

Coltrane played Fitz, a brilliant, hard-drinking, heavy – smoking, bad- tempered criminal psychologist who worked as an assistant to the Manchester Police Force. “I drink too much, I smoke too much, I gamble too much. I am too much.” Top man.

Colrane was mesmerising. The stories were gritty and twisty and moving -even when they pushed the boundaries of melodrama. The rest of the actors involved were spot on too, in particular Christopher Ecclestone as the young detective learning more about life’s underbelly than he wanted. And Robert Carlyle was super impressive as the bitter, disillusioned Albie in the amazingly intense story ‘To Be A Somebody.’ But it was all great.

Later, there was a watered-down U.S. version with Robert Pastorelli as Fitz . Pastorelli is a good actor but it really was a decaffeinated version of the original.

But what Brit Grit television have we had since the ‘90s? Has it all been Midsumme rMurders?To be honest, I couldn’t tell you, since I haven’t lived in the UK for over ten years. But if there is none, then surely one of the writers from Brit Grit Too could put Brit Grit back on the box?

Bio: Paul D Brazill is the editor of Brit Grit Too which collects 32 of Britain's best up and coming crime fiction writers to aid the charity Children 1st children1st.org.uk/

‘The BRIT GRIT mob is coming to kick down your door with hobnailed boots. Kitchen-sink noir; petty-thief-louts; lives of quiet desperation; sharp, blood-stained slices of life; booze-sodden brawls from the bottom of the barrel and comedy that's as black as it's bitter--this is BRIT GRIT.’

Bill Crider's Private Eye Truman Smith returns

2012-01-09T12:20:00.000-05:00

My friend and fellow writer Bill Crider has released three of this Truman Smith PI series as eBooks. Check them out for that new Kindle you got during the holidays.

About the books:
Dead on the Island: Private-eye Truman Smith returns to his hometown of Galveston, Texas, to investigate the disappearance of his sister. He runs into people from his past, finds a cat, and gets into a lot of trouble. Publishers Weekly says that Smith is "another well-drawn protagonist, this time a moody, introspective PI in the finest tradition, who works in a seamy city smoldering with old and dangerous secrets. "

Gator Kill: Who'd investigate the killing of an alligator? Private-eye Truman Smith would. Publisher's weekly says: "Soon the brooding gumshoe is stumbling over the bodies of dead humans, is shot at and run down by a souped-up four-by-four as he's embroiled in a plot complete with crooked police, a possible land-grabbing scheme and bad guys who, but for their lack of redeeming good nature, could be Damon Runyon inventions."

When Old Men Die: Does anybody care when old men die? Private-eye Truman Smith does, and he's going to find out who's responsible, even if it kills him.

www.billcrider.com

Dixon Rice's "The Assassins Club"

2011-12-28T12:34:00.000-05:00

My fellow write Dixon Rice’s first book has been published and, believe me, you want to get in on the bottom floor of this guy’s books. There’s more to come and you’ll be able to say, “I read him when . . .”
Here’s a taste of why I believe that.
Michael

The thriller THE ASSASSINS CLUB follows two serial killers in 1970, nearly a decade before the term ‘serial killer’ was invented by FBI profilers. This 1,000 word excerpt includes the end of chapter one, where Tyler (in Montana) ‘accidentally’ becomes a killer, and chapter two, where a second killer (in Baja, Mexico) discovers his identity:
Driving the black Barracuda past stands of lodgepole pines straight as soldiers on review, Tyler Goode noticed the gas gauge needle hovering near E. He pulled into the Express Chest, a dingy beer-and-gas shack squeezed between an acre of peeled logs stacked to the north and a defunct heavy equipment dealership to the south. He usually gassed up in Kalispell to save on a fill-up, but forty-eight cents a gallon would have to do. Ty parked, climbed out and glanced at the attendant approaching him through the mucky snow.

Oh, shit!

Brute carried a two-by-four in one massive hand. Just like last night, he never said a word. He swung the board at Ty’s head with both hands.

Ty managed to duck under it. Meeting no resistance, Brute’s powerful swing took the big man off-balance and he spun half around.

Ty put his left hand on the slushy asphalt and swung his outstretched right leg, sweeping Brute’s feet from beneath him. It would’ve meant a red card in soccer, but Ty didn’t hear a ref’s whistle. He watched the expression on the big man’s face as he fell, and realized Brute was trying to decide whether to let go of the two-by-four and cushion his fall, or keep it so he could kill his prey quicker.

Brute clung to the board, landing hard on shoulder and cheek. He groggily rose to his feet.
Ty stood waiting for him. “Put it down, Brute, and let’s work this out.”

The bully lifted the two-by-four over his head like an axe.

Ty stepped backwards just as he had practiced a thousand times in various martial arts dojos. This time he stumbled on some loose gravel. The club grazed his head as he slipped to the ground. He landed flat on his back, dazed, watching the board arcing up for a final blow. It started its descent toward his skull. Ty rolled awkwardly away through half-melted snow until he bumped into the curb around the pumps.

The stud came down hard on the damp pavement next to Ty’s head and bounced out of Brute’s hands.

Ty grabbed the two-by-four as it bounded past. He jumped up with it firmly in his grip, and clobbered Brute on the temple.

The big man toppled like a redwood in the forest, striking his head on the curb.
He didn’t move.

Still dazed, Ty got down on one knee and felt up and down the groove on the side of Brute’s neck. Then he checked both wrists.
No pulse.

He stood up. No people in sight, no cars.

Was it possible nobody saw? Ty didn’t remember hearing any vehicles pass by during the fight. How long had it lasted – thirty seconds? A minute?

He threw the bloody stud into the trunk of the Barracuda, then splashed through slush into the shack and cleared all the cash from the register. He kicked over a stool and knocked over a display case of candy bars and gum, making it look like a robbery. He pumped a few

gallons of gas into his car, wiped off the pump handle and drove away. He turned onto the deserted street and headed toward the Ruff Rider.

The meanest sonuvabitch in the valley, and Ty had killed him.

“Guess I’ve done my good deed for the year,” he said to himself.

* * *

Twelve hundred miles southwest, a bearded man fights his way through the surf. A giant wave crashes over his back and knocks the air from his lungs. He struggles to stand upright, his arms and legs heavy as lead. He vaguely recalls thrashing around in the cold water and turning around in time to see the stern of a sailing ship as it glides toward the horizon, jaunty carnival tunes in its wake. Other than that, he doesn’t remember much.

Did I fall from that? Or get pushed?

The water tugs at his legs like a needy lover. He finally falls to his knees on hot, white sand. He has a pounding headache and blood on one hand from when he touches the throbbing knot on the back of his scalp.

Where the hell am I?

Who am I?

The voices in his head provide no answers.

A hazy figure appears far up the beach and so he walks in that direction. The sun feels good on his back. Seagulls circle overhead and chatter in their private language. After a few minutes he can make out some details of the approaching person – a tall thirty-something woman with sunflower-gold hair, wearing a flowing white gown. She walks with her head down as if overwhelmed by a great sadness. Or maybe looking for pretty shells.
A terrible fear jolts his heart.

She’s in mortal danger. Something awful is about to befall her.

Close now, she finally looks up and notices him. She laughs. “Jesus, you’re naked!”

So that’s who I am.

A thunderstorm roars in his ears. Lightning flashes behind his eyes. The ground shakes so, Jesus fears it will open up and swallow them both. The woman becomes a blur of color and motion and desire and spite.

When the earth stops shaking, Jesus crouches over her naked, still body. He wonders if she is uncomfortable with her neck bent at such a strange angle.

“I’ve never known a man like you,” she says in a voice that sounds much like his own.

“You are a magnificent lover.”

“Thank you,” he says. Her praise makes him feel awkward.

“The white cloak was meant for you. Please accept it as a love offering.”

“Bless you, my child.”

Jesus washes his hands in the surf and then pulls on the robe. A bit snug under the armpits but otherwise a good fit. He kisses the woman goodbye and then walks in the direction she’d come from. Another premonition strikes him as he climbs a low dune.
This direction is north. This is where my destiny awaits.

The amazon.com link to the $2.99 e-book is http://www.amazon.com/The-Assassins-Club-ebook/dp/B006PTIO1C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325011420&sr=8-1

The Consummate Traitor by Bonnie Toews

2011-12-26T10:09:00.000-05:00

If you're a fan of WWII spy novels, check out my fellow writer Bonnie Toews' newest.

Michael

The Consummate Traitor by Bonnie Toews

A World War II spy novel brings together two women whose destinies cross unlikely paths, yet that fateful moment commits them to a mission that exposes a secret England wants buried forever.

EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE

Monday, April 26^th, 1937

Distant droning roiled across the mountaintops. The engine’s thrum blended with the faint babbling that echoed skyward from the small town tucked in the foothills of the valley below her.

Lee Talbot had chosen this escarpment for its magnificent view of Guernica in northern Spain. Drawing flushed out her helpless rage and horrible memories of the civil war in Madrid.

She held out her sketch at arm’s length and studied it. Everything dissolved as she focused on each line and curve, and squinted. Something was missing. She looked up. Her gaze settled on the highest peak stabbing the sky above the Pyrenees mountains. Ah. A very important detail. She settled the sketch back on her fold-out easel and, with her charcoal pencil, short-stroked puffs of white snow capping the brow of the ancient Mont San Miguel.

There, that’s better. Her attention shifted.

Even this far up the mountainside, she could make out the dim buzz of townspeople bartering over produce and crafts. When she arose at dawn, she had listened from the window of her hotel room to the clip-clop of horses’ hooves over the cobblestone streets and watched farmers from the surrounding hillsides haul their loaded carts to the market square just in front of her hotel. There, they set up stalls. Now, their far-off nattering combined with the surrounding meadow sounds of sheep bleating and birds chirping washed over her like healing springs. She felt safe, for the first time in months.

Wafts of smoke drifted windward from the chimneys of cottages dappling the countryside. She sniffed and imagined bread baking inside their brick ovens. Her stomach gurgled. The thought of fresh bread smothered in creamy butter reminded her she had forgotten to eat. Where’s Quinn? He had promised to bring lunch. She glanced at her wristwatch. Four-thirty. Time to return to the hotel.

Again she examined her sketch before she scribbled on the lower right-hand corner: Monday, April 26, 1937. GUERNICA.

A deep-throated roar sprang from behind her. Startled, Lee jumped to her feet and spun around. She knew that sound. A twin-engine aircraft. Cupping both hands over her eyes, she strained to see against the sun’s glare in search of the intruder.

Vibrating air whipped from above, pinning her feet to the ground. She raised and pressed the palms of her hands upward against the slipstream. Her neck arched backward and her gaze froze on the underbelly of a twin-engine bomber. For a split second, the German Dornier Do 17 hung as if suspended overhead, engines whistling in her ears, before it swept screaming down the valley and veered onto a south-to-north track barely above the trees. The plane cast the shadow of an eerie cross rippling over the Rio Mundaca, which wound along the valley floor toward Guernica and the town’s streets rising from the river’s shore.

The bomber banked and then circled back, its nose aimed at her heart in a game of chicken between the pilot and Lee on the outcrop. She stood mesmerized. At the last moment, she ducked as the Dornier rocketed over her head towards the towering peaks behind her. She turned in time to watch it vanish.

Lee gasped, dumbfounded. Had she imagined it? Did she see darts pinned in racks under the bomber’s wings? Only this morning Quinn had told her about an incendiary bomb the Nazis had developed. It could produce massive fires wherever it landed, but he had no idea what the new bomb looked like. Could the cone-shaped canisters the Dornier carried under its wings be test incendiaries?

The thought chilled her. Maybe the pilot was looking for a place to drop them because the Nazis were forbidden to test such weapons on German soil. Though the Treaty of Versailles banned Germany from ever arming again after World War I, Hitler now manufactured the most advanced weapons in the world. Who would care about his testing bombs in a civil war the League of Nations ignored?

But this was Basque country. As yet, the Basques had not joined the Republican government to quell the Fascists even though the Republicans had finally granted them home rule. There was no reason the German Luftwaffe should be flying over Guernica.

Lee had to find a phone and report long distance about her sighting to Collier’s Weekly, Ohio’s Springfield-based magazine that specialized in investigative journalism. This time she would scoop Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, whose co-authored features stateside were attracting “freedom” lovers, Marxists and anarchists to join the International Brigade in their support of the Republicans in Spain. But it was George Orwell who made her life miserable. He not only filed stories from the front line, he also joined in the fighting against Franco’s Nationalist uprising. How could she beat that kind of real-life writing? It dwarfed her sideline observations in her weekly column. Sighting the German bomber now gave her a chance to show her editor that she was as good an investigator as his star war correspondents.

Lee folded the legs of her easel, jammed it, her sketchpad and charcoal pencil into her shoulder bag, flung its straps over her head and looped the bag behind her back, out of the way. As she scrambled down the steep slope, she tripped and sprawled on all fours. Cursing, she pulled her skirt under herself and slid down the rest of the way to her bicycle waiting by the roadside. No sooner had she yanked the bike upright than she heard the warning rumble again.

She checked the sky behind her. There, the same bomber slipped over the southern ridge further west. Her eyes followed its route. It took the same northern heading above the Mundaca River, but higher. Maybe four thousand feet. Fear knotted her stomach. Something dreadful was about to happen.

Lee ran the bike down the road before mounting it and pedaled off. At the S-turn, she misjudged the sharp angle and almost lost her balance. The bike skidded on the rim of the front wheel before she righted it. For a split second, it wobbled. She regained control and carried on cycling downhill, dangerously careening from side to side at breakneck speed.

Her mind raced in sync with her pedaling. She had met Quinn Bergin in Madrid and immediately liked him, because, unlike most newsmen who continually made passes, he didn’t. Instead, he invited her to join him on a trip to Guernica to study the Basques. She would never have gone alone because her Spanish was too awkward, and the Basques didn’t speak English. So Quinn acted as her Spanish translator. According to him, in Spain’s Civil War, if the rebel Fascists under Francesco Franco were to defeat the Madrid government, they had to beat the Basques first. The question for him was: How vulnerable were they to attack?

This morning, anticipating war strategies was her last concern. When Quinn selected the spot where she could enjoy the best view of the valley for her sketching, she thought he might join her for a picnic and suggested he bring back a boxed lunch from the hotel. He agreed but never returned. What held him up? Where was he? She pedaled faster.

POP! Pop-Pop! The sounds echoed up the hillside like fire crackers exploding one after the other, while green fluorescent flares splintered upward from the valley below. Recklessly jamming on her brakes, Lee locked the wheels and nearly flew over the handlebars. Pop! Pop-pop pop! The strange eruptions continued. She jumped off her bike, using her feet like drags to bring it to a standstill.

In horror, she gazed downward from the roadside at the fires smothering Guernica’s heart. The market! Her fingers squeezed the handlebars, while the steeple bells of the Santa Maria church rang like banshees pitching their strident warnings over the pass.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

As a journalist, Bonnie Toews has covered significant events such as the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Her eyewitness view contributes to the plight of children in war as a recurring theme through her novels. With hundreds of published articles and five business press awards in her portfolio, Bonnie currently advocates for better care and treatment of Canada’s wounded warriors and is a member of the Canadian Veterans Advocacy, Military Writers Society of America, American Authors Association and American Christian Fiction Writers. THE CONSUMMATE TRAITOR is her first novel in a trilogy about treason.

BLOG: http://www.homecomingvets.com

READER NETWORK: http://bonnietoews.wordpress.com

WEBSITE: http://www.bonnietoews.com

AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_11?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+consummate+traitor+by+bonnie+toews&sprefix=The+Consumm

"White Knight Syndrome" now an eBook

2011-12-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

Son of Spade blogger Jochem Steem has put "White Knight Syndrome," a Noah Milano PI novel published earlier as a paperback, out as an eBook for $2.99

Jochem recently told me, Noah Milano is a Los Angeles security specialist with more than a few family problems. Because, in his case, his family is the family. He's the estranged son of a mobster, which creates a big deal of tension and more than a few problems. Fiercely independent, and determined to sever all ties with his past, Noah has to adjust from being a spoiled mobster son to being an independent operator with little money.
When he's hired to bodyguard a beautiful and rich teenage girl he's drawn into a web of family secrets, homicide and the dangers of falling in love.It's not easy to be a White Knight in a world filled with betrayal and mob violence but Noah Milano is going to try anyway... Even if he has to die doing it...

The link is: http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Syndrome-Milano-Mystery-ebook/dp/B006N0MBI0/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1324110413&sr=1-2

I know you'll enjoy this read.

Son of Spade blog can be found at www.sonofspade.blogspot.com.

2011-12-19T16:07:00.000-05:00

If you like short stories, Lia Fairchild's book is one you're going to enjoy. Read on and enjoy my friend Lia's work.

Michael

A Hint of Murder: The Anthology compiles all three A Hint of Murder stories in one book:

A Hint of Murder: The Writer

Alicia Fairfield didn’t plan on being famous. Now a bestselling author with millions of fans, Alicia also has the attention of a killer. Someone has been recreating the murders from her books and the suspects are piling up; her mentally ill son, a disgruntled associate, and possibly even her loyal literary agent. The pressure of public recognition along with the guilt over these senseless killings could be enough to drive Alicia over the edge. Can she hold it together long enough to uncover a killer? (Story length 9,000 words)

A Hint of Murder: The Doctor

Russell Morgan had it all; good looks, the perfect woman and a rewarding career as a well-respected physician. When the doctor’s patients start turning up dead, his world comes crashing down. Second in the “A Hint of Murder” series, this short story brings Detective John Lewis back in action to track down the killer. (Story length: 12,000 words)

A Hint of Murder: The Bouncer

Bobby Crane was tired of being a bouncer and a glorified errand boy. He longed to be a professional singer and was just about to get his big break. Then Allen Schaffer is found murdered and Bobby’s car was spotted at the victim’s home. Third in the A Hint of Murder series, this story has detective John Lewis returning with a new partner to uncover a murderer. (Story length: 10,400 words)

Excerpt from A Hint of Murder: The Writer

Since the first body was discovered, she’d had nothing but heartache, worry and guilt. Alicia Fairfield prayed it was a coincidence; that the murdered young woman had nothing to do with the story she had created. A story that was played out on the big screen just last week. Perhaps making Vegas Vendetta, her tenth bestseller, into a movie had been a mistake. The Las Vegas Showgirl was fatally stabbed the night of the premiere. Alicia and her agent Edward spoke to the police the next day before Alicia returned to her million-dollar home snuggly perched in the rolling hills of Marin County.

Alicia clutched the bottle tightly, closed the medicine cabinet and stared at herself in the mirror. A pair of icy blue eyes gazed back at her as she smoothed down her straight blonde hair. At forty five, she was just beginning to show the signs of aging. For a moment, the stranger in the reflection hypnotized her but she tore herself away from the image and left for the kitchen. She passed through her dining room, decorated to perfection, and her hallway adorned with gorgeous paintings, some of them her own creations. When she reached the sink, she filled a glass with water and took it along with the pill bottle to the other side of the counter. Then she set them down next to her laptop and took a seat at the end barstool.

Alicia glanced down at the morning paper, and reread the headline. “Copy Cat Killer Strikes Again.” The article detailed the killing of the showgirl and linked it to the recent murder of a nurse found dead behind a free clinic in Novato. A source told the paper that a page from A.J. Field’s novel From the Shadows had been left with the nurse’s body. The pen name was Alicia’s attempt to have a private life and keep her family—mainly her mentally ill son—away from public scrutiny.

Alicia set the paper down and turned to her laptop. Mesmerized by the blinking curser, she contemplated what she would write. For the first time, these would be her words. It was possible two lives had been taken because of the words she’d written in her novels. Should these be the last words anyone would ever read from A.J. Field?

The white page grew blurry as tears welled in her eyes. She rested her hands on the keyboard, sighed and began to type the incoherent thoughts that scattered in her mind:

To my dearest David, a beloved son that never found happiness, I am truly sorry. And, my agent Edward, thank you for years of support and friendship. I would never have made it this far without you. To all my faithful fans out there, I’m so grateful I enriched and heightened your love of reading. As I truly believe that our decisions—

A loud pounding at the door startled Alicia and made her jump. She sat frozen wondering what to do. The pounding came again accompanied by a loud grumbling voice. “Alicia! Alicia, open the door! It’s me Edward!”

Fearing the dreadful tone in his voice, Alicia grabbed the pills and stashed the bottle in her purse. She raced to the door and opened it.

“My God, Alicia!” her agent said out of breath and leaning on the door jam. At sixty, he wasn’t in the best of shape. “Why haven’t you answered my calls?” He didn’t wait for an answer and stepped into the foyer. “Are you all right?” He glanced around the area, cast a concerned look upon her, and waited for answers.

“Edward, I’m fine. I just needed some time to think.” Her voice was calm; believable. Alicia grabbed him by the arm and led him to the kitchen. “Let’s get you something to drink, have you rest a bit.” Even though she saw him as a big brother—he was more than ten years her senior—she often felt the need to take care of him.

Alicia went to the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher. “Tea?” she asked as Edward took a seat at the bar.

He nodded with a smile and watched as she poured the tea. Then suddenly, Alicia gasped as she realized she hadn’t closed the keyboard before running to the door. Her hand shook uncontrollably and her calm cover had been blown. Tea splashed over the glass onto the counter causing Edward to go to her.

“Let me help,” Edward said. He removed the pitcher from her hand with care and set it on the counter. Instinctively he took her in his arms and held her close. “You’ve heard the news I take it,” he said in a gentle tone. “It’s okay, Alicia. You don’t have to be afraid. I’m here.”

She barely made a sound, yet Edward’s shirt dampened beneath her cheek. Surprisingly she had never let him see her like that and wasn’t sure how he would react. His gentle voice and strong arms were comforting and different from his routine business demeanor.

Edward walked Alicia into the next room, rubbing her back. “Here…let’s sit and talk.” He had grown expert in dealing with Alicia during difficult writing times. Whenever she had a notion to quit it all and concentrate on her painting, or was conflicted over a storyline or character, he always skillfully talked her down. But this was different. How could he tell her everything would be all right when there were two innocent girls that had been murdered? Killed in almost the exact circumstances of her last two novels.

“Did the police contact you?” he asked.

“Yes, they were here a couple hours ago,” she answered without looking up. She rested her head on his shoulder and explained her visit with the police.

When the two investigators arrived earlier that day, Alicia tried to be as helpful as possible. She offered them both a drink and asked if they’d like to sit. Detective John Lewis declined for both and seemed anxious to get down to business. His partner didn’t provide his name and spoke as little as possible.

“I’m sure you’ve read the paper by now, Ms. Fairfield.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” Alicia said nodding.

Detective Lewis pulled a small pad of paper from his back pocket. He was a tall, solidly built man. His voice was deep and scratchy but was camouflaged by a friendly smile. “We just have a few questions to ask.”

“I understand Detective. I’ll do whatever I can to help. Obviously I’m very concerned,” Alicia said.

“You and your agent were in Las Vegas for the premiere of Vegas Vendetta, correct?”

“Yes, we already spoke to the police there.”

“Yes…and both of you reported that you were in your hotel rooms at the time of the murder.”

“That’s correct,” Alicia answered. She couldn’t help worry where he was going with the questioning.

“And last night, could you tell us where you were?”

“I was here, painting.”

“Oh.” The detective looked up. “I thought you were a writer,” he questioned with a smile.

“I paint for my own pleasure. Writing is my profession.”

“Was anyone here with you?”

“No. I live alone,” Alicia stated defensively. “Detective, I’m assuming you are trying to see if I have an alibi, which I don’t. But let me tell you something, I do feel responsible. Those were my words on the pages left by the killer. Don’t you understand how horrible that makes me feel?” Alicia’s face grew flush and her eyes glazed over as she wrapped her arms around herself.

At that point the silent detective came to Alicia’s side and put a hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, try not to blame yourself. These crazies are going to kill if they want to kill. We’re just trying to get all the information here.”

Alicia stepped away to gain her composure. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Detectives? I’ve got a conference call in a few moments.”

***

Lia Fairchild is a native Californian who loves reading, writing, movies, and anything else related to the arts. Lia says: “Writing is something I’ve thought about all my life, so the completion of my first novel, In Search of Lucy, is truly satisfying. I hold a B.A. degree in Journalism and a Multiple Subject Teaching Credential. My most enjoyable moments are spent with my family, traveling, spending time outdoors, or simply laughing and being together. Look for more on me and my books at http://www.liafairchild.com andhttp://www.ahintofmurder.blogspot.com or follow me on Twitter athttps://www.twitter.com/#!/liafairchild”

The Anthology is available on
Amazon US http://ow.ly/7xiI7
Amazon UK http://ow.ly/7xiKW
B&N http://ow.ly/7yZWo
Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/109113

The Last Refuge by Chris Knopf - an eBook

2011-12-15T12:59:00.000-05:00

Fellow writer Chris Knopf has just released The Last Refuge as an eBook. If you are an eBook reader, or expect to be one after the holidays, check Chris’ book out.

The Last Refuge

Sam Acquillo’s at the end of the line. A middle-aged corporate dropout living in his dead parents’ ramshackle cottage in the Hamptons, Sam has abandoned his friends, family and a big-time career to sit on his porch, drink vodka and stare at the Little Peconic Bay. But when the old lady next door ends up floating dead in her bathtub it seems like Sam is the only one who wonders why. Burned-out, busted up and cynical, the ex-engineer, ex-professional boxer, ex-loving father and husband finds himself uncovering secrets no one could have imagined, least of all Sam himself. Meanwhile, a procession of quirky characters intrudes on Sam’s misanthropic ways. A beautiful banker, pot-smoking lawyer, bug-eyed fisherman and gay billionaire join a full complement of cops, thugs and local luminaries in this tale of money and murder.

About Chris Knopf

Chris has been writing himself out of trouble since he talked a teacher into accepting a short story in lieu of an essay, and an essay in lieu of a multiple choice exam. A college professor wrote a comment on a friend’s paper that would have also applied to him: “You write well, which is good because you have very little command of the subject matter.”

To support his fiction habit he started working for PR firms. That evolved into a career as an advertising copywriter and later a creative director at Mintz & Hoke Communications Group.

His command of subject matter continues to be thin, but now more broadly based, having written technical papers for chemical engineering and bioscience companies, TV commercials for construction products, tire cleaners, banks and hospitals, radio spots for car dealers, yogurt and popsicles, and print ads for jet engines, medical insurance, valves, liquid chromatography, missiles, bicycles and casinos. To name a few.

His preferred environment involves a lot of saltwater, having summered as a youth on the Jersey Shore. He lives with his wife Mary Farrell in Connecticut and Southampton, NY, where he sets sail on the Little Peconic Bay.

“Knopf has mastered the verbal drill for tough guys in tight situations, and like Sam’s nautical know-how, his banter with imperfect strangers is a cut above the norm. This unexpected sail into danger makes for a stimulating story, providing Sam with a lot to tell the gang at the bar when he finally gets home.”
- New York Times Sunday Book Review, May, 2011

http://www.chrisknopfmystery.com/

Stairway to the Bottom review

2011-12-08T20:00:00.000-05:00

'Stairway to the Bottom' Finds Haskins in Top Form
By Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades - December 4, 2011

'Stairway to the Bottom' Finds Haskins in Top Form

By Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Another kickback relaxing weekend and I just finished reading "Stairway to the Bottom," Key West author Michael Haskins' latest (and seventh) entry in his Mad Mick Murphy mystery series. Before I tell you it was a very entertaining book, I should offer full disclosure that I consider Haskins a friend. What's more, he named a passing character in the book after me.

None of that influenced me -- much.

Like with all the Mick Murphy mysteries, our reluctant hero is a red-bearded freelance journalist who found his way to Key West from Boston by way of California. He likes cigars and Jameson whiskey and has a sailboat. He's nothing like Boston-bred journalist Michael Haskins (who smokes cigars and drinks Jameson and likes to sail) in that Haskins isn't a redhead. I'm sure there are other differences if I thought hard about them.

"Murphy's much braver than me," Haskins explained over a café con leche one afternoon.

See?

In this latest adventure, Mick gets a phone call from a guy who runs a local jet -ski rental, then finds a dead woman lying in a pool of blood beside a silenced Beretta in Dick Walsh's house.

Turns out, Walsh is not who he claims to be. In fact, he may be two other people -- a hit man for onetime Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger or a missing spy who's managed to tick off the CIA, the FBI, MI5, Mossad, DCRI and the KGB.

And now all these alphabet agencies (not to mention the U.S. Marshals and Cuban-born Key West Police Detective Luis Morales) are ticked off with Mick, thinking he knows more than he does.

Everybody seems to be chasing Whitey Bulger's hidden millions or the spy's stolen diamonds or some other elusive fortune.

The plot pays homage to Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" -- and Haskins admits that in the book. As Mick puts it, "They're all looking for something that might not exist but they keep searching."

Indeed they do.

"You want the diamonds and expect to beat the others to them with help from me," Mick says to one of the spies. "The truth is I don't know where Walsh has gone and I don't wanna know. Probably most important, or it should be, he's not the guy that conned all those diamonds from the governments. He's a psycho from Boston and I'd bet my life on it that he's never been out of the country."

"You are betting your life," the spy tells him. "The French, the Russians, even the Brits wouldn't hesitate to kill you to get what they want."

"And the Mossad?"

"We kill our enemies," he replies. "We protect our friends, no matter where they are."

"I have to be one or the other?"

"Unfortunately."

Caught in the middle of this clustermuck are Mick Murphy's fiery Puerto Rican girlfriend, Tita, and his guardian angel, Norm Burke, a mysterious government agent and friend. Making for a dangerous situation that doesn't end well.

You will meet other Mick Murphy regulars like Padre Thomas, the priest who gets his inside information from angels (the heavenly kind), and the police chief, Richard Dowley, who finds that being a lawman and Mick's pal a sometimes conflicting position. Pauly the smuggler is here, too, watching Mick's back. Not an easy task.

In addition, the book is sprinkled with the real names of such Key West denizens as Ron Leonard of Harpoon Harry's, Charlie Bauer of Smokin' Tuna, Howard Livingston and his Mile Marker 24 Band, beauteous Carol Tedesco, assorted bar maids and colorful waterfront characters ... even a dead CIA agent named Shirrel Rhoades.

The locales are familiar, from Hog's Breath Saloon to the Green Parrot, from B.O's Fish Wagon to Schooner Wharf, from Garrison Bight to Duval Street after midnight.

Haskins -- uh, I mean Murphy -- leads this conga line of not-so-secret agents on a merry chase out to the reef and back. Taking a battering in the process.

In "Stairway to the Bottom" Murphy -- uh, I mean Haskins -- gives us a mix-'em-and-match-'em who's-on-first adventure that holds your interest from the first page (Dick Walsh's phone calls) to the last (plotting revenge against the Russian mob).

Personally, I enjoy a story where the author is having as much fun as the reader. And Michael Haskins is certainly having a good time in his current incarnation as a popular mystery writer.

He credits his sister for helping him understand that "dreams are part of life." As he says, "I got on with it and she was right."

He also thanks his old drinking buddy Kris Kristofferson whose music "helped me make it through the night and any number of days."

Several locals get a nod for helping with the book, ranging from advisor Jim Linder to editor Nadja Hansen to photographer Rob O'Neal for "taking my photo and running it through PhotoShop enough times to make me appear human." And Mike Dennis, Jessica Argyle and Sarah Goodwin-Nguyen, writers who offered their helpful critiques.

But in the end, "This story is the result of many hours of being locked in a room alone with my imagination and a laptop," he says.

I told you I liked the book. It may be Michael Haskins' best. But, truth be told, I would have liked it better if he hadn't killed off certain characters -- including that CIA agent with a most familiar name.

Key West Island Books will have a signing on Friday, Jan. 13.

Miami Book Fair

2011-11-25T09:44:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday, 11 a.m., I was on a panel at the Miami Book Fair with fellow mystery writer Jack Harney (center in photo). Bob Williamson (left in photo), a friend and MWA member, was the moderator. It was a great opportunity for me but I think the whole set up was a little off. Anyway, it seemed like that for my panel.

The third guest never showed up but the schedule was never fixed. I emailed the fair contact earlier about it, they sent an email back saying Jack and I now had an hour to fill. Never notified Jack or the moderator, I had to tell them.

Also, originally I received an email saying there was another email coming with more information, a contract to sign and lodging information. I’m still waiting for it. So is Jack. Maybe they all went to guy that didn’t show up.

I had to send three copies of my book, a photo and brief bio. I know they kept the books, probably for sale since someone from the fair said I needed to sign the fair’s copy. When I opened it, the book was already signed. It was one I had sent them, I guess.

I didn’t go expecting to be the talk of the show or to sell a truckload of books – though it would’ve been nice. I went for the exposure and expected something a little more from the fair. I noticed that the panel was recorded and I wonder for who. Will the tapes or CDs be sold? Will MWA, which paid a good sponsor fee, get some of that money?

I guess I would’ve liked them to follow through on the things they said were coming. Kind of what I expect from everyone. It was like going to a restaurant, ordering a meal and having something else delivered. The waiter/waitress tells me it’s delicious. But it wasn’t what I’d ordered . . . Oh well, I guess I am spoiled living on a small island where what you see is what you get.

The thing that irks me the most is that the fair doesn’t allow MWA to choose panelists or panel subjects. What was the subject of our panel? If the fair doesn’t tell us, why not allow MWA’s Florida chapter decide on the panel subjects and panelists? It works well at SleuthFest.

Whatever hype they had for mystery writers didn’t help me sell books. At least not at the signing afterward. I know the fair is well run and well attended. It baffles me why our segments were not so well attended. Maybe those readers attending are more interested in cookbooks, or travel books, or . . . Well, there are a lot of books out there to choose from. Maybe it would help if I wrote my mystery about a cookbook author instead of Key West characters. Let me know what you think.

I wonder if other groups had this problem or was it me. I guess I’ll have to wait ‘till the January luncheon or SleuthFest to find out.

Finally, Stairway to the Bottom, my newest Mick Murphy Key West Mystery, is on Kindle and Nook and should be a trade paperback on Amazon right after Thanksgiving. Books make wonderful holiday gifts. Check into it.

www.michaelhaskins.net

Novelette and the eBook revolution

2011-11-24T09:26:00.004-05:00

My friend and fellow writer Jochem Steen is the guest blogger today and he has something to say about the novelette's place in the eBook world.

I’d like to talk about the novelette and why it should be making a return with the rise of eBooks.

According to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula awards for science fiction a novelette has a word count of between 7,500 and 17,499. It’s the ideal word length for a fast-paced thriller. The fact that it has more words than your average short story gives the writer the opportunity to show more character conflict, introduce more twists.

In the old Black Mask days a lot of writers worked within that format, like Erle Stanley Gardner and Dashiell Hammett. It catered perfectly to their spare style. This style was born because they were getting paid by the word and the editors tended to cut away as much unnecesary words as possible. The pulp writers wanted them to mess with their work as little as possible, so they wrote their stories in a very spare style.

For ebooks this style is great because there’s a lot of stuff out there at low prices. Readers want to experience as much fiction as they can. Novelettes give them everything a novel can, just in less time. It’s just what this generation, used to fast-paced movies and TV, needs. Longer novels might not hold the coming generation of readers’ attention, but the novelette has this chance.

So that’s why I wrote my novelette, The Alabaster-Skinned Mule. In an action-packed story Noah Milano, ex-mob fixer and son of LA’s biggest gangster, signs on to protect a beautiful girl that was used as a mule by Mexican druglords. It’s this girl that puts the friendship with his sidekick Tony Hawaii in danger.

Offering both pulp-style action and character conflicts this fast read is available for Kindle at the low price of 99 cents, http://www.amazon.com/Alabaster-Skinned-Mule-Milano-Novelette-ebook/dp/B005T0UC3G/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

2011-11-11T07:42:00.000-05:00

Stairway to the Bottom is now available on Kindle. Be the first in your neighborhood to have a copy! Please let me know what you like or dislike after reading it.
Thanks,
Michael
www.michaelhaskins.net.

Humility

2011-11-08T13:50:00.000-05:00

Writers must have thick skin or the rejection slips and none-returned phone calls will penetrate to the heart, not to mention what negative reviews will do! Writers also need to practice humility. I have these past few days.

Last week was the gathering of Jimmy Buffett fans – ParrotHeads. They’ve been gathering here in Key West for more than 10 years, celebrating Margaretaville. Remember, Buffett has to be in his early 60s now and most of his fans are close to that or have past it by. Kind of strange seeing these people behaving like teens.

Scott Kirby, a Key West singer-songwriter, is popular with this crowd and since I took the title of my latest book – Free Range Institution – from one of his songs, he thought it would be a good idea if I signed the book the nights he performed at the Smokin’ Tuna Saloon.

I thought it was a great idea! Scott’s fans would buy copies of my book like salmon swimming upstream!

Thursday night I showed up, Angela the night manager helped me with a table and chair close to the stage, and I was prepared to sell books. Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared for only three sales. Come on, I thought I had it all going for me. The ParrotHeads are mostly empty nesters, spend like drunken sailors and dress like it’s a costume party – which is really, kind of, is.

Saturday night was a little better, but not much. I remember Dennis Lehane speaking at SleuthFest in March about showing up for signings and only a half dozen people came. It even happens to writers of Lahane’s stature.

While I didn’t make the sales I hoped for, I did meet a dozen or so people who’ve read my work, some on Kindle and we talked about the story lines and characters. Some like Murphy, some Padre Thomas. My bubby Texas Rich took photos for my website and people talking to me or buying books had someone take their photo with me too. One woman said she was happy to meet me but needed the photo of us together so her friends in Ohio would believe she met me. Words like that are good for the ego! If I had walked out early because of no sales, I wouldn’t have met her. Feeling good that meeting me had made her day, made my day – or in this case, my night.

I learned humility because of book signings. I want to be popular and sell more and more books, but it hasn’t happened – yet – and it may never. I like book signings because I enjoy talking to readers. I like finding out what attracts them to the book, or their favorite character or least favorite. I think those that show up at signings are a little envious of writers too. If they only knew how tough a road we travel.

So, when your book is published, and you go to your first signing or your 100^th, go in humbly because those people waiting to meet you and hear what you have to say are the most important people you’ll ever meet. If they see a phony, they’ll tell friends. If they meet someone that impresses them by giving them time and listening to them, they’ll tell friends and they’ll be looking forward to your next signing.

Learn humility, the road to success is paved with humble bricks.

www.michaelhaskins@bellsouth.net

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

Dorothy Parker.

13 Shots of Noir

2011-11-02T16:14:00.000-04:00

My friend and fellow writer Paul Brazill will have a new collection of short stories as a eBook later this week and I suggest you give it a try. 13 short, sharp stories of booze, bullets & bodies. What not to like? Check out his blog and find out more. I am anxiously waiting for my copy!

http://pdbrazill.blogspot.com/

Occupy Wall Street and Main Street - or How We're Losing a Free Press

2011-10-25T10:02:00.000-04:00

This comes from a daily service from a journalism professor at the Utah State University. Anyone interested in journalism today should get on this mailing list. The information of how to follows.

NOTE: Newspaper ownership rewards its failed corporate overlords with huge bonuses (like Gannett Chairman Craig Dubow, whose golden parachute totaled $37M+), while stripping newsrooms and leaving the communities dark and silent. How about occupying newsrooms, starting with Gannett Inc.?

“Never a standout in journalism performance, the company strip-mined its newspapers in search of earnings, leaving many communities with far less original, serious reporting. . . .

“Forget about occupying Wall Street; maybe it’s time to start occupying Main Street, a place Gannett has bled dry by offering less and less news while dumping and furloughing journalists in seemingly every quarter. . . .

“No one, least of all me, is suggesting that running a newspaper company is a piece of cake. But the people in the industry who are content to slide people out of the back of the truck until it runs out of gas not only don’t deserve tens of millions in bonuses, they don’t deserve jobs.

“The optics of the bonuses are far worse than the practical impact. Newspapers are asking their employees for shared sacrifice and their digital readers to begin paying. So, lucrative packages won’t cut it. As newspapers all over the country struggle to divine the meaning of the Occupy protests, some of the companies that own them might want to listen closely to see if there is a message there meant for them.”

—David Carr, media writer, “Why Not Occupy Newsrooms?”

The New York Times, Oct. 23, 2010

Image: I GOT MINE . . .
The chief executive of Gannett Inc., Craig Dubow, second from left,
received a $37.1 million severance package despite presiding over
the loss of some 30,000 jobs. Richard Drew/Associated Press

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free "service" sent weekdays during the school year to 1,800 or so misguided volunteer subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don't want it anymore, send "unsubscribe" to ted.pease@usu.edu. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. WORD archives, commentary and reader discussion at http://tedsword.blogspot.com (Disclaimer: I just quote 'em, I don't necessarily endorse 'em. All, in theory, contain at least a kernel of truth.)

A Sid Chance Thriller - The Good the Bad and the Murderous

2011-10-18T14:22:00.000-04:00

My friend Chester Campbell’s second Sid Chance thriller, The Good, The Bad and The Murderous, finds his protagonist Sid Lanier Chance, taking on one of his toughest cases. A young black man just out of prison after serving thirteen years for a murder he committed at age twelve is charged with a new homicide. Detectives say they have evidence that proves his guilt. His grandmother hires Sid to prove they’re wrong.

Jaz LeMieux, board chair of a large truck stop chain whose curious background includes champion woman boxer, Air Force Security Policewoman, and Metro Nashville cop, assists Sid in the investigation. They turn up evidence of Medicare fraud, drug dealing, and police corruption. In the process, Jaz faces police retaliation and a hired gun appears to have Sid in his sights.

A little backstory for those not familiar with Campbell’s work: After serving with Army Special Forces in Vietnam, Sidney Chance put in nineteen years as a National Park Service ranger. That career tragically ended when marijuana growers using a remote section of a national park nearly killed him. He worked as police chief in a small town not far from Nashville for ten years until an unsavory sheriff falsely charged him with bribing a drug dealer. Disillusioned, he holed up in a cabin in the woods until a former cop turned wealthy businesswoman coaxed him home to Nashville and into the PI business.

The Surest Poison, the first Sid Chance mystery, won the Silver Falchion Award at the 2009 Killer Nashville conference.

Campbell is the author of five Greg McKenzie mysteries.

For more information, go to http://www.chesterdcampbell.com.

The book is available in trade paperback and for the Kindle at http://www.amazon.com/dp/0984604448. It's also at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/79094 for various formats.

“Rogue Island,” by Bruce DeSilva

2011-10-06T14:33:00.001-04:00

My friend Bruce DeSilva just released his book and here is a little about it, if you consider being the winner of these awards as little.

“Rogue Island,” by Bruce DeSilva is one of the most honored crime novels of the year – winner of the prestigious Edgar and Macavity Awards for best debut novel and a finalist for the Anthony, Barry and Shamus awards.

The main character, Liam Mulligan is as old school as a newspaper man gets. His beat is Providence, Rhode Island, and he knows every street and alley. He knows the priests and the prostitutes, the cops and the street thugs. He knows the mobsters and the politicians – who are pretty much one and the same. Now, someone is systematically burning down the working class neighborhood he grew up in, and people he knows and loves are perishing in the flames. With the cops looking for answers in all the wrong places, it’s up to Mulligan to find the hand that strikes the match.

Rogue Island has received rave reviews, with The Dallas Morning News declaring that it “raises the bar for all books of its kind.” And it has drawn praise from a who’s who of best-selling crime novelists including Dennis Lehane, Harlan Coben and Michael Connelly. For example, Joseph Finder says: “With “Rogue Island,” Bruce DeSilva accomplishes something remarkable: he takes everything we love about the classic hardboiled detective novel and turns it into a story that’s fresh, contemporary, yet timeless.”

The book is available in trade paperback and Kindle editions here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_13?field-keywords=bruce+desilva&url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&x=19&y=14&sprefix=bruce+desilva

My friend, mystery writer Mel Talyor

2011-09-28T09:33:00.000-04:00

Deep Trouble

By Mel Taylor.

My friend Mel Taylor and I share more than just writing mysteries. We both have worked for ABC-TV and are members of Mystery Writers of America. And we're news junkies! Mel’s collection of three short stories is available on Kindle. His other books are available on Amazon. If you like a good mystery, from a writer who has covered South Florida for TV and knows what he writes about, these three are for you.

Double Trouble

A fishing trip takes a deadly turn. A murder on a deserted island. And a showdown in a courtroom that takes a twist. Those are the elements in three short stories set in South Florida in the collection from Fort Lauderdale author Mel Taylor. Mel is the author of two mystery novels from Avalon Publishing, Murder by Deadline and Encounter by Deadline.

There is no failure except in no longer trying

2011-09-27T07:36:00.001-04:00

My last personal post included chapter one of “Stairway to the Bottom,” because I am on deadline to finish the book and couldn’t focus on writing a blog piece. The book cover is done and my editor has the first two hundred pages. Does it surprise anyone that I am still behind? When you’re not surviving off your earnings as a writer, then you must answer the phone, or email, when work comes calling.

Last week I received an email from Reuters News Service in Miami and they asked me to cover a story. Since then it has been followed up with other emails, phone calls and Google searches. Not much time left for writing fiction.
Diana Nyad, the long-distance swimmer, was back in Cuba last Friday to try her attempt to swim from Havana to the Florida Keys again. Last time she didn’t make it. This time she was pulled out of the water due to what is thought to be jellyfish stings. Ms. Nyad recently turned 62, so the fact that she made it close to half way a month or so ago, and went from 6 p.m. Friday to late Saturday before being pulled from the water for a doctor’s evaluation is impressive.

I have sailed from Key West to Havana’s Marina Hemingway a few times and only once was the Gulf Stream flat. Every other time, coming and going, the Gulf Stream had four-to-six foot waves and at night, when it would rain, we sometimes had waves as high as ten feet. It makes for a tough ride in a 36-foot sailboat, so I can only imagine what it’s like for a swimmer. And don’t forget the freighters, Coast Guard Cutters and the smugglers, all using the same waterway.

In fact, I can’t imagine it. If I were in the Gulf Stream late at night, it would be because my wife tripped me overboard! Honestly, between the jellyfish and sharks, as inviting as the water looks, I ain’t going in voluntary.
While I have to wonder what drives Ms. Nyad to do such things, it nice to know she is not bothered by her age and willing to be challenged. I once read there is no failure except in no longer trying. I believe this!

Every time I begin a short story or novel, I wonder about my ability to follow it through to the end. I have to make myself stop focusing on the number of things that could lead to failure and go one. Sometimes going on means less than 250 words a day,(a lot less sometimes) other times it’s not writing anything that moves the story and tossing a day or two’s worth of writing; writing so bad that not even rewriting will save it. Failures? No. Challenges. I don’t know about you, but I need to be challenged – even those times I don’t want to be! Challenged to write better, to look at where the story is going.

Like many things in life (to me, anyway) it is not always the finished product that drives my enthusiasm, but the road I have to travel to get to the end. As great as it is to type THE END on the final page, it saddens me because it is the end of a journey. A loss of friends. Maybe that’s why even my short stories continue my series’ characters. They have become friends that I worry about when I am away from the computer and, maybe, that desire to begin another journey with them is what drives me back to this book-filled room, with note cards and sayings and my country music CD selection.

What more could I ask for, a room full of books, music and my laptop, all to stimulate my imagination.

I leave you with this:
Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the entire world – Albert Einstein.

www.michaelhaskins.net

Paul D. Brazill's : Drunk on the Moon

2011-09-14T18:11:00.000-04:00

Spinetingler Award nominee Paul D. Brazill was born in Hartlepool, England- yes, the place where they hung the monkey.

He is currently on the lam in Bydgoszcz, Poland. He's lived in Warsaw, London and - for one scorchio summer - Madrid.

He started writing short stories at the end of 2008 and since then his stuff has appeared in loads of classy print and electronic magazines and anthologies like Noir Nation,A Twist Of Noir, Beat To A Pulp, Crime Factory, Pulp Ink,Dark Valentine, Needle, Powder Burn Flash, Thrillers, Killers n Chillers & Radgepacket Volumes Four & Five.

He writes an irregular column for Pulp Metal Magazine and he has a story included in the 2011 Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime. His short story collection '13 Shots Of Noir' will be out sometime this year, so it looks like he's getting away with something.

Check out his new book: Drunk on the Moon.

The cover makes you want to open the book - in a very bright room!

A World Without Books - Guest Blogger Randy Rawls

2011-09-11T15:28:00.002-04:00

A World without Books

When I visit a site such as Michael's and see all the excellent books reviewed and recommended, I wonder what life would be like without books. Of course, when I say books in this context, I mean fiction, written for the enjoyment of others.

I think back over the years and remember some of the great stories I've read. Just a couple:

To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee's only book has attracted millions of readers around the world. I re-read it every few years, and each time I get more out of it. Such a pleasure to explore with Scout, to worry about "Boo" Radley, to see the respect she has for her father, the love for her brother, and all the other wonderful emotions Ms. Lee captures. And, of course, to learn about the evil of racism through the eyes of a young girl. Who can say what impact her book had on the struggle for equality? I think, much. Without her book, there would have been no movie. And without that movie, Gregory Peck's career would not have been what it was. Maybe he would have won an Oscar for another role, but he DID win for playing Atticus Finch—that's a fact. Four others who participated in the movie won Oscars. Five more were nominated. All this because Harper Lee wrote one book—not even a big book. But it was a book that lives on today, fifty-one years after its first publication.

Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Unlike To Kill a Mockingbird, this book was one of many from its author. Although only a novella, the simple story has stuck around for forty-nine years, picking up a Pulitzer Prize in 1952. In 1958, Spencer Tracy starred in its movie adaptation. The movie won one Oscar and Tracy and the cinematographer were nominated for Oscars. It had a reincarnation as made-for-TV-movie in 1990 starring Anthony Quinn and racked up a stack of Emmy nominations. Without Hemingway's little story, none of the awards would have been possible.

So many great stories written over the generations. Far too many for me to continue to use Michael's blog to discuss. But stop a moment and consider how barren our world would be had there been no authors and, thus, no books. Too sad for me to imagine.

I don't claim to have written anything that will have the longevity of either of the above, but it's one I enjoyed writing. THORNS ON ROSES is a South Florida thriller. Tom Jeffries has good reasons not to trust the justice system. It failed him before, and he believes it will fail again. When the teenage daughter of his best friend is found dead, a victim of gangland rape, Tom vows to avenge her. I hope you'll stop in and take a look. It's available as a paper book and an eBook.

Randy Rawls

THORNS ON ROSES, a South Florida Thriller

SMOKEY AND BANDIT in Cats in a Dreamspell
Ace Edwards, Dallas PI Mysteries
http://www.RandyRawls.com
=============================

Dismal River by Wayne D. Dundee

2011-09-07T08:08:00.002-04:00

Dismal River

by Wayne D. Dundee

The Nebraska Sandhills of the 1880s are a vast, untamed expanse of treeless, rolling hills scoured by harsh wind and blistering sun. Into this rugged landscape former Indian scout Lone McGantry reluctantly agrees to lead an expedition of explorers and adventurers headed by an English lord. The hardships of the environment soon become secondary, however, when other threats—both from within and without—overtake the expedition. Deceit, betrayal, stampeding buffalo, a raging grass fire, and a band of ruthless marauders all must be dealt with. The very survival of the expedition is at stake. Lives will be lost and the banks of the Dismal River will be scorched and stained by blood before the ordeal is finished. --Amazon's Editorial Reviews.

Wayne Dundee lives in the once-notorious old cowtown of Ogallala, on the hinge of Nebraska's panhandle. He relocated there after spending the first fifty years of his life in the state line area of northern Illinois/southern Wisconsin.

A widower, retired from a managerial position in the magnetics industry, Dundee now devotes full time to his writing.

To date, Dundee has had seven novels, three novellas, and over two dozen short stories published. Most of his work, to date, has featured his PI protagonist, Joe Hannibal. He also writes in the fantasy, straight crime, and Western genres. His 2010 Western short story, "This Old Star", won a Peacemaker Award from the Western Fictioneers writers' organization and his first Western novel, Dismal River, came out in June 2011 from Oak Tree Press.

Titles in the Hannibal series have been translated into several languages and nominated for an Edgar, an Anthony, and six Shamus Awards. Dundee is also the founder and original editor of Hardboiled Magazine.

Website: http://wayneddundee.com/

BULLET FOR ONE by Brian Drake

2011-09-03T13:17:00.003-04:00

Mystery writer Brian Drake has just released Bullet for One on Kindle.

Here's a little about the story and, if you are so inclined, chapter one of the Kindle book to whet your appetite.

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

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

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

If he fails, can he live with another ghost?

If he succeeds, can he live with the consequences?

Chapter 1

There wasn’t anybody but me in the hotel hallway and the low hum of the air conditioner the only other sound as I made my way to Suite 1911. The key card in my front shirt pocket fit into the slot above the doorknob and the lock clicked.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside and—

She stood behind the door raising a pistol. She wasn’t going to bash me with her automatic. She wanted to blow my head off and had the trigger back halfway. I grabbed her wrist. The gun fired and the shot smacked into the arm of the couch. I slammed my elbow into her chin. Her head snapped back. I twisted the gun from her hand and shoved her into the wall. She dropped to her knees.

I glanced at the gun. A Colt .45, like mine, with a familiar notch on the slide. Felix’s gun.

A closet door across the room swung open and a big man with a ponytail came out with a revolver. I brought up the .45 and fired twice. He landed on the floor.

What was happening here?

The woman screamed, jumping up, kicking and punching my knees, stomach and face and each hit landed dead on and I fell back on the corner of the coffee table. Felix’s gun flew from my hand; I tried to rise but the woman sent an enraged kick into my face.

The women gave Ponytail a quick glance before she raced out the door.

The room spun for awhile and then I blacked out.

“He’s awake, Captain.”

Two faces looked down at me. I tried to get up, but a flood of dizziness put me right back down again. Then I rolled onto my left side and vomited on the carpet.

“Take it easy, John,” Nick Shepherd said, kneeling beside me.

The other guy, a police doctor I recognized, flashed a penlight in my eyes.

“He’ll be all right,” the doctor said. He shut off the light.

“Thanks, Doctor,” Nick said over his shoulder as the doctor went away.

“What’s going on?” I said, stretching out on my back again.

Nick looked down at me, big as a house with a white crew cut. Captain of the Las Palmas PD Robbery/Homicide Squad. One of those cops who knew you couldn’t always do it by the book and that’s why we were friends. Other things made us friends, too. He’d been in the military same as me, but while I had served as an agent with the Criminal Investigations Division, Nick had spent his days jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.

“Don’t try to talk,” he said. “Bunch of my guys here, some Feds, too. They’re interested in the guy you shot. Have a lot of questions.”

I groaned.

“I have questions for you, too, but they can wait. Just lay there and take it easy. I’ll be right back.”

I stared at the tiled ceiling. My body started to tingle.

Where was Felix?

Nick returned with a tall black man I didn’t know. He wore a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, a gold badge clipped to the pocket of his Tahoe. His hair had a streak of white in it. On the right side of his neck was a short jagged scar.

“John, this is Special Agent Winters, FBI.”

“Hello, Mr. Coburn.”

“Hmmm.”

“What happened tonight? Where’s Felix Tower?”

“He wasn’t here when I arrived.”

“What did he share with you regarding his current assignment?”

“Forget it.”

“Are you going to answer my questions or not?”

“Not.”

“I can make this—”

“No you can’t.”

Nick said: “All right, that’s enough.” He turned to the Fed. “Tomorrow morning. My office. You can ask all the questions you want.” Down at me: “I’m sure John will talk to you then.”

“This is a federal case, Captain Shepherd.”

Nick said: “And your only witness won’t talk until he’s ready. My office tomorrow morning, ten o’clock.”

Winters flipped his notebook closed and gave me a look. I closed my eyes a moment, opened them; Nick stood alone.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Are you ever going to grow up?”

I started to push myself up. Nick gave me a hand. I ached all over.

It began the previous afternoon just after lunch. Coburn & Associates sat on the fifth floor of a downtown building. My only “associate”, with the exception of a few free-lancers I bring on now and then, was my secretary, Leanna Foster.

I’d opened up after my army discharge. Mostly I did background checks for a few corporations, divorce cases, routine stuff.

Leanna was a husky gal who kept her auburn hair tied back and stuck to matching blouses and skirts for work; she had one of those folding picture frames on her desk with her husband Steve on one side, the other left blank for their first child. She and Steve wanted children, but were having trouble. She’d told me once in no uncertain terms: “When I finally get pregnant, I’m out of here,” but I hoped Steve kept shooting blanks. I couldn’t run the shop without her.

I hung up my coat and said: “Did you get the check from Hamilton?”

“Deposited it during my lunch break.”

I went over to the lobby couch and examined the left cushion. The hole that had been there was now covered with a patch of matching fabric. “You have this done while I was gone?”

“Hole was getting too big.”

“How much?”

“You’ll see the bill.”

“It’s amazing I can afford you the way you spend money. You spend your husband’s money like this?”

“My husband doesn’t have any money.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

I crossed the outer room to my private office with the big desk in the center and photographs taken by yours truly on the wall behind. They made for great conversation pieces with nervous clients, and learning about my favorite hobby prior to explaining why they wanted a private investigator helped ease the tension.

I didn’t have any pictures or mementos of the army. Those years had been good to me, but they were part of a past I sometimes did not want to think about.

I settled into my padded leather chair. The springs squeaked.

I’d been working on the reports for the last few jobs when Leanna transferred a call to me.

Felix Tower’s voice boomed from the other end of the line. We’d known each other since we were kids, served in the same military police outfit. It was via the MPs that I made my way into CID; Felix had followed. We were like brothers. When we mustered out and returned home, I opened my agency and Felix started his own company.

Felix ran an executive protection company with offices all over the United States. I had wanted him as my partner in the P.I. office, but he wanted to go his own way. We helped each other from time to time, though.

“Just got back from FBI headquarters,” he said.

“Oh, no.”

“I need you.”

“No.”

“I’m sitting on something really hot. Help me baby-sit. Easy money. Right here in the City. Triple your regular rate if you want.”

“What’s the story?”

“Not on the phone. Meet me at Kottinger Park in twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Don’t sound so excited.”

“Only because it’s you, Felix.”

“See you in twenty.”

Felix’s gray Caddy pulled up behind me. Felix smiled and held a rolled up magazine in his hand. A little shorter than me with a rolly-polly frame, I wouldn’t bet against him in a fight. Under the bulk was plenty of muscle and he knew fighting tricks I had not bothered to learn.

“We could have done this at my office,” I said.

“Let’s go sit down.”

“Can’t be so serious you brought the latest MAD magazine, is it?”

“Just in case you were late,” he said as I grabbed it from him, flipped through a few pages.

“Can’t believe you still read this crap.”

“Keeps me young. Don’t fold the back page! I haven’t looked at it yet.”

We sat at a picnic table under a thick tree. The full branches seemed to block out most of the sky. I tossed the magazine back to him. “So?”

“Witness protection. FBI asked my company to do it.”

“Why you? The Feds have guys who do this.”

“They’re afraid of leaks.”

“Something wrong with the plumbing?” I grinned.

Felix didn’t crack a smile. “You know what I mean,” he said.

“Who’s the witness?”

“Jimmy Wexler. We need to make sure nothing happens to him.”

“Until?”

“Until the Feds move against his gang,” Felix said. “Couple days. Hotel suite, expenses, everything covered.”

I shook my head.

“Come on, Johnny.”

A light wind rustled the leaves above us. A car turned the corner; Felix’s eyes darted toward it, his shoulders tensed, and we reached for guns at the same time. The car continued past, a mother and her little girl in the front. She kept driving up the street and disappeared from view.

I took my hand away from my gun and turned back to Felix. He still watched the street, his own .45 already drawn and resting on his lap.

“It’s like that?”

He nodded.

“Anybody following you?” I said.

Another nod.

“Wexler?”

“He’s sure of it,” Felix said, finally putting his gun away.

“Where is he right now?”

“At the hotel. I check in with him every hour. He says he’s getting a little stir crazy, but nothing’s happened so far. He’s just waiting for us.”

“All right. Five-hundred dollars a day.”

“I’ll swing it.”

“What now?”

“The Hilton on Maddox and Greenwood tonight.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a plastic hotel key card. “You get the night shift. Eight sharp.”

Nick watched me after I finished the story. He said: “What about Wexler?”

“Right now I’m more concerned with Felix.”

An hour later I finally made it home, the house quiet, the microwave clock showing 2:45 a.m.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I took off my shoes, took a breath, tried to organize my thoughts. After three rings the other line picked up; a woman answered. Felix’s wife, Denise.

“Felix is missing.”

“Well—what—I mean—”

“I’m talking to some FBI guys in a few hours. I’ll know more then.”

“But, John—”

“Want me to come over?”

She said nothing for a moment. “No. I’m okay. Call me as soon as you’re done.”

“I will.”

She hung up.

I undressed and climbed into bed. Thought about Felix, the woman, the man I shot. Wexler’s buddies making a play before he could talk? Sure. But how had they known where to go? The leak must have been worse than the Feds had realized. Somebody close to the case knew everything.

Find the leak, find Felix.

If he was still alive.

Hallinan's The Little Elvises

2011-09-02T10:44:00.002-04:00

Here is another popular mystery/thriller writer who has published an eBook. Check it out.

2011 Edgar and Macavity nominee Timothy Hallinan brings back Junior Bender in The Little Elvises, the burglar-hero of CRASHED, in a hilarious Los Angeles thriller about old-time rock-and-roll, missing persons, the world's oldest gangster, and a terrifying if somewhat hapless hit man named Fronts. Fans of Robert B. Parker, Donald E. Westlake, and Lawrence Block will love Junior Bender, whom Brett Battles called “smart and funny, with a penchant for finding himself in situations he'd much rather avoid. Do not miss any of these books.”

In the 1990s he wrote six mysteries featuring the erudite private eye Simeon Grist, beginning with "The Four Last Things," which made several Ten Best lists, including that of The Drood Review. The other books in the series were widely and well reviewed, and several of them were optioned for motion pictures. The series is now regarded as a cult favorite.

In 2007, the first of his Poke Rafferty Bangkok thrillers, "A Nail Through the Heart", was published to unanimously enthusiastic reviews. "Hallinan scores big-time," said Kirkus Reviews, which went on to call the book "dark, often funny, and ultimately enthralling." "Nail" was a Booksense Pick of the Month and was named one of the top mysteries of the year by The Japan Times and several major online review sites.

Rafferty's Bangkok adventures continued with "The Fourth Watcher" (2008) and "Breathing Water" (2009), both of which also appeared on "year's best" lists. New York Times bestselling author John Lescroart said about the 2010 book, "The Queen of Patpong," "You won't read a better thriller this year," and Ken Bruen said, "John Burdett writes about Bangkok. Tim Hallinan is Bangkok. I adore this book."

Hallinan has written full-time since 2006. Since 1982 he has divided his time between Los Angeles and Southeast Asia, the setting for his Poke Rafferty novels.

Welcome to the Dark Side

2011-08-30T07:28:00.000-04:00

I am a stubborn person. It took two friends to drag me, kicking and screaming, away from my typewriter and force an old Apple computer on me. Since spelling is only one of my many weak points, I learned to appreciate what the computer could do and what it allowed me to do.

Things haven’t changed much – with me being stubborn – and my fellow blogger Mike J spent many Saturday afternoons trying to explain to me the benefits of eBooks, after MWA luncheons.

The thought of giving up holding whatever book I was reading, turned my stomach. I want to turn the pages of my book – and my newspaper and magazine – and not read on a computer screen on a book-sized Kindle. I love my home library and had already lost it once, during Hurricane Georges. It has taken me years to rebuild it.

Well, reality can be horrible to a stubborn person. I remember sitting with Mike and Mary, Jerry Healey and Sandy Balzo after a luncheon and listening to Mike talk about his success on Kindle. Both Sandy and I were on the cusp of joining the dark side. Sandy more honestly interested than I. Either Mike or Jerry then said something that shook my stubbornness.

“No one with a Kindle is going to show up at your signing. If they hear about your signing, or your book, they’re going to the Amazon Kindle store to see if it’s available. If it isn’t, they’ll buy someone else’s book.”

I wasn’t convinced, but thought about what was said on the four-hour ride back to Key West. It was as if Mike was Darth Vader and offering me a place on the ‘dark side.” On the other hand, maybe he was Satan tempting Jesus? (I had to compare me to Jesus ‘cause no one else would! (Sorry about comparing you to Satan, Mike)).

I read some of the websites Mike told me about and soon put my short stories on Kindle for ninety-nine cents. I found a company that would convert “Chasin’ the Wind” for Kindle and bit the bullet and had it done. It was pretty much painless but I had to keep repeating the comments about Kindle owners not buying my writings because they were not available. I was slowly making them available.

I now have three novels on Kindle and Nook. My sales on Kindle have been steady at around 200 sales per month. Not up there with Mike and many others, but I see little changes each month. I am almost done with my next Mick Murphy Mystery – Stairway to the Bottom – and have my website woman working on a cover for me and have an editor willing to go through it when she returns from California the middle of September. My wish is to have it on Kindle and as a trade paperback on Amazon before the winter holidays.

I am still a believer in the hard/paperback book – and paper newspaper and magazine. However, reality, no matter how brutal, tells me to check my bank account. Not that, as my father used to say, “may ship has come in,” but each month there is a deposit or two from eBook sales.

I had a signing in Key West a couple of weeks ago featuring my three trade paperback books – Revenge, Tijuana Weekend and Chasin’ the Wind. To my surprise and the store’s, most of the copies available sold out. Scott, from the bookstore said people were buying two books.

Trade paperback, $15 or hardback for $25. In today’s economy, it isn’t a difficult choice.

I’ll talk about CreateSpace soon and, yes, Mike played a role in that too! Mike ain’t no devil, but he has sure proven to be a Godsend to me. Maybe he’s an angle. I’ll have to check with Mary and get her opinion.

I would like to know what you think of Kindle and giving up holding a real book in your hands. It’s the future, I know, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

This week ends with the beginning of September. Welcome to the Fall.

Zoë Sharp

2011-08-26T10:31:00.004-04:00

Enough about me. I thought for a change I would mention writers I share something with, be it Kindle or Nook or mysteries or the Keys. In this case it has to do with short stories on Kindle, but also mystery writing.
Zoë Sharp just released a collection of short stories –Fox Five – on Kindle. She is one of a growing number of authors who have signed onto the e-Book bandwagon. You should check out her website - http://www.zoesharp.com – and you’ll recognize some of the titles if the name doesn’t ring any bells for you. Here is a little bit of information about her character, ‘Charlie’ Fox and look who the character is compared to!

Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox has been described as a female version of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. Like Reacher, Charlie’s background is military. She was a first-class shot who was selected for Special Forces training, but that’s where it all went horribly wrong. Chucked out of the army in disgrace, Charlie drifts through a variety of jobs in the early books, including teaching self-defence, then a chance meeting with Sean Meyer, her old army training instructor (and a big part of the reason she was thrown out of the army in the first place) changes her life yet again.

Introduced into the world of professional close protection, Charlie embarks on a new career as a bodyguard, one that is perfectly suited to someone with her lethal abilities. Whatever the doubts of her family − or her own misgivings − she embraces her new life, even moving to the States to join a prestigious NYC close-protection agency run by Parker Armstrong.

But life is never simple for Charlie − either professionally or in her relationship with Sean. She will be faced with danger from all sides, both connected to the clients she’s sworn to protect with her life, and on a much more personal level.

Back up and then back up again . . .

2011-08-17T16:49:00.003-04:00

(I had a book signing last week at Key West Island Books for the 'lost manuscripts' that went well. On top is a photo of the mayor, Craig Cates, and his wife, Cheryl, at the book signing. If you would like a signed or inscribed copy of either of my books, call and order from the bookstore, 305-294-2904.)

In 1996, I moved for Los Angeles to Key West. My dog Phouka (pooka) in the front seat of my Chevy Celebrity and everything else I owned in the backseat, the trunk or on the roof. We didn't have flash drives or external hard drives then. On my computer were two completed Mick Murphy Mysteries – REVENGE and Tijuana Weekend – and a half-finished story, unnamed and my attempt at thriller writing.

In September 1998, Hurricane Georges blew through the Keys and took my floating home with it, while Phouka and I evacuated Naples, Florida, something I haven’t done since. I lost most everything, my personal library, my computer and most everything I owned. Gone were my novels. One of them, my thriller, There Are No Good Guys Only Terrorists, was told in the third person and dealt with renegade Israeli Mossad officers, posing as Arabs, arranging the training of Palestinians for attacks on hotels in Las Vegas. The Mossad officers believed if the US had a taste of what the people of Israel were going through the American government would let them fight the terrorists the way they wanted.

I recalled all this at Key West Island Books last Friday night at a book signing I called “The Lost Manuscripts.” I have put both books on Kindle and Nook and on Amazon as trade paperbacks. Today, I have two external hard drives and a few flash drives as backups and thought I was safe from ever losing a manuscript again.

Ah, but few of us are as smart as we think! Mid-week I finished a few new chapters on Car Wash Blues, and was ready to put them into my “one document” copy that I consider my finished chapters – ready for a long read and rewrite.

Imagine my surprise when I opened chapter 48 and it was chapter 52. I somehow saved chapter 52 to ALL my backup copies. I couldn't even remember what the chapter was about, I was long past it. I read 47 and 49 and drew a blank. I went into my Norton back up program but it only had copies from the last back up date and by then chapter 48 had the chapter 52 document in it!

Well, it was a hair puller. I tried and tried, but kept coming up with chapter 52. I cussed myself like a drunken sailor for being so stupid as not to look at where I was saving my current work. Too late, to do any good and it didn't make me feel better.

What I eventually thought of doing was restore my computer to an earlier date. I found out I could do that to a document and not my whole C drive. I went back about two weeks and found chapter 48. I wanted to kiss the computer, I was so happy.

However, that didn't mean I wouldn't do something stupid again and all the backups in the world weren't gonna do me any good if they held the wrong document. I have promised myself to look at where I was saving my documents. Have you ever lied to yourself? Yeah, me too.

I have decided the only safe was is to make a hard copy and, if necessary, I can scan it in later.

So, what have I learned for this? Well, yeah, that I can be stupid, but I knew that long before this. I think I’d say I’d learned that you can never be safe enough in saving and protecting your writing. As of right now, the hard copy is my last defense.

If you have a secret that would help me, let me know and I won’t tell a soul, promise.

Oh yeah, if I had “lost manuscripts” how’d I publish the books. Well somehow, God takes care of drunks, fools and Irishmen and I’m batting a thousand. Before leaving for Key West, I gave my sister a floppy disc, just in case I got in an accident in my drive across country. Of course, There Are No Good Guys . . . wasn't one of the stories on the floppy. But, I had three of the four, a moment of sanity in another wise insane life when I made that floppy copy! And, I am thankful that I have a sister that keeps the things I leave behind.

Hemingway Days in Key West

2011-08-02T18:30:00.001-04:00

I am a little behind in my writing this week because of my involvement with Hemingway Days here in Key West. I was one of four guest speakers at last week’s literary event and that was a great honor.

Lorian Hemingway, Ernest’s granddaughter, tracked me down in California earlier in the year and asked me to participate. I agreed but warned her I was no a good reader. She brought that up at last week’s event – after I read – and assured me I had done well and shouldn’t shy away from reading. She also mentioned how I’d first come to Key West because I wanted to see where her grandfather lived and wrote. She thanked me and dedicated a piece she read about her grandfather’s fishing to me. It was some evening for me.

Back to the point, I fell back on my writing and am trying to catch up and have tried to write longer than usual. I am hoping to get Stairway to the Bottom done by mid November and have it available on Kindle and Nook – and as a trade paperback on Amazon – in time for the holidays.

Authors Tom Corcoran, Michael, Lorian Hemingway, Mark Childress

ITW Thriller 2011 Awards

2011-07-10T16:40:00.001-04:00

The 2011 Thriller Awards
During a gala banquet and celebration held on
Saturday, July 9 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City,
the International Thriller Writers announced the winners
of the 2011 Thriller Awards.

They are:

Best Hard Cover Novel:
BAD BLOOD, John Sandford

Best Paperback Original Novel:
THE COLD ROOM, J.T. Ellison

Best First Novel:
STILL MISSING, Chevy Stevens

Best Short Story:
THE GODS FOR VENGEANCE CRY, Richard Helms

Also receiving special recognition during the ThrillerFest VI

Awards Banquet:

R.L. Stine, ThrillerMaster
in recognition of his legendary career and outstanding

contributions to the thriller genre

Joe McGinniss, True Thriller Award

Karin Slaughter, Silver Bullet Award

The board of directors and members of the International

Thriller Writers wish to congratulate all the winners and

nominees of the 2011 Thriller Awards.

Truth is often stranger than our fiction/How the capture of Whitey Bulger changed my novel

2011-07-09T07:39:00.004-04:00

I have been working for almost a year on my next book, Stairway to the Bottom, and a portion of the story is driven by the fact that Boston gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger is still in hiding and has been for 16 years.

Well, that changed last week! I am 200 pages into the story and long past any section on Whitey, accept one segment of the book does deal with US Marshals and FBI agents after a man they think knows where Whitey is hiding.

Come on, Whitey is 81 years old, couldn’t he have kept moving to, say, South America or some Caribbean island? No, he hides in Santa Monica, California with a few million other retirees! I wouldn’t take this personal, but he’s Irish, from Boston and so and I and Mick Murphy!

What to do?

Most of the story is about the hunt for a man, a known associate of Whitey’s, and how Mick Murphy is swept into it even though he doesn’t want to be. The man they are looking for is running from the witness protection program and was a killer working for Bulger – not giving anything way with that info, since it comes out early in the book. The others group looking for him is an eclectic collection of retired spies that think the man on the run is an old Cold War spy who conned European governments out of millions in diamonds with the promise of supplying a list of what western government officials worked with the East Germans – this as the Berlin Wall came down.

I have gone back to the beginning and it hasn’t been too hard to change the search for Whitey’s location to the search for Whitey’s millions.

That’s not strange enough for you? How about this.

The book opens when Murphy finds out a drinking associate has jumped on a Jet Ski and headed south, saying to employees of his Jet Ski company that he’s gotta run because agents are out to get him.

Well, that really happened here in Key Weird a year ago or so and the man and Jet Ski have never been found. Now try making that up. Who’d believe it?

www.michaelhaskins.net

Ego Vs Bank Account

2011-05-30T07:49:00.000-04:00

I closed out my scheduled book signing of “Free Range Institution” Thursday of last week at the North Palm Beach Library. Diana Kirby from the library introduced me to the

small, but enthusiastic gathering.

It has been a long two-month road trip and the turn out was always less than expected, even at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. I spent Thursday & Friday in Deerfield Beach since I had to attend the Saturday board meeting of the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

Friday gave me time to think over the book signings. The crowds were less, but each store had books for me to sign that were sold from its website or to a store regular that couldn’t make it. That was good. Usually about half those in attendance bought books.

I am not going to get rich or even meet costs from book signings. What I hope is that name recognition will build and maybe by book four or five the sales will be better and attendance at signings will grow.

While on the road, I checked my Kindle sales for “Chasin’ the Wind,” “Tijuana Weekend” and short stories. The sales increased after my ad in Kindle Nation in March. In April I had more than $300 due in my back account and the sales are continuing to look good in May.

The $100 ad certainly paid for itself and then some.

My next book, “Car Wash Blues,” is due out in August 2012. I am working on the fourth in my series, “Stairway to the Bottom,” and hope to be finished by the end of the year. I am seriously thinking of publishing it on Kindle.

Having the hardback edition of my book on my bookshelf or held in my hands is certainly a great feeling. It boosts my ego but not my bank account! The last I looked, gas stations and supermarkets didn’t accepted boosted ego in payment for overpriced gas and/or food.

I have two Mick Murphy novels I wrote in Mexico (“Tijuana Weekend” being the third, but is already on Kindle) and I am thinking of beginning to rewrite them soon for Kindle. I also have a short story or two in mind and might write one of them in hopes that The Saturday Evening Post will accept it. Of course, I always hope Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine will be interested in my short stories. The Post wants stories less than 5,000 words, while EQMM lets me write up to 10,000 words.

If my Kindle sales average$250 a month for a year, it doubles what my publisher’s advance was. Also, if I own the book that is on Kindle I can have Amazon’s CreateSpace issue trade paperback copies for sales, so my ego will be somewhat appeased and I will have copies to sign in bookstores.

Mike J (www.writeonthewater.blogspot.com) has said, in writing on thd blog and in talking to me, that the more books available on Kindle improves your chance for more sales. So, if I add the two “lost novels” written in Mexico to my Kindle/CreateSpace lists, my sales should be better than $250 a month. Maybe double?

Before I can do anything, I need to finish “Stairway to the Bottom,” and get back into the daily writing mode. After two months away it is not as easy as it should be.

By the end of this week I will be back to writing in the morning, reading in the early afternoon, and editing what I’ve written before dinner – I hope. My evenings will be set aside for the battle between ego and checking account. Am not sure which one I hope wins, but one of them will.

www.michaelhaskins.net

Prove me wrong, please!

2011-02-27T06:52:00.001-05:00

I had my first signing for “Free Range Institution” at Murder on the Beach bookstore last week and the attendance was better than I thought. I sold 14 copies of “Free Range Institution” and five trade paperback copies of “Chasin’ the Wind,” My first Mick Murphy Key West Mystery.

SleuthFest is only days away and I am on a panel about local in your story and moderate a panel about authors who are published by small presses. My publisher, Five Star, is a small press and it is my opinion that small presses are the only way for new writers to break in. There will be book signings after each panel for those involved and I hope to sell more books.

It is harder and harder to get an agent and/or publisher these days. The big bucks go to the writers on the NY Times bestseller list and with publishing in as much of a financial mess as everyone else, there’s little money left for unproven writers.

I look forward to my book tour that will take me to Houston and Los Angeles. I will be at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival with other MWA writers where I will be signing at the Mysterious Galaxy booth.

Then I have three signing that week. The first one at Book Carnival in Orange, Ca. then at the Flintridge Bookstore and Coffeehouse in La Canada, Ca., and finally at Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks, Ca. If you are in any of these cities, or close by, please come in and say hi.

I look forward to these signings because I have my suspicions that this could be my last book-signing road trip. Not because I don’t want to do it, but book selling is a business now and not so much about the authors. Sales are important, and always have been, but the independent bookstores used to welcome all authors.

In NYC, one bookstore asked me to guarantee 30 book sales before they would host a signing. Hell, I hoped for 50 or 100, but guarantee – give me a break. Without being a draw of some kind, I think many authors will discover it is harder and harder to find stores willing to host signings.

I would love to be proven wrong.

Book Release: FREE RANGE INSTITUTION

2011-02-16T09:49:00.002-05:00

Today, Feb. 16, is the release date of my 2nd book, Free Range Institution, in my Mick Murphy Key West Mystery series. I thought I would share some words from those that got to review the book prior to today. If the reviews pique you interest, please buy the book at an independent bookstore or go to my website - www.michaelhaskins.net - and I list a few of my favorite bookstores and they take internet orders. All bookstores need our support.

EARLY REVIEWES OF

“Free Range Institution.”

Booklist Review (January 1, 2011)

This title will publish in February 2011

****************************************

Free Range Institution. Haskins, Michael (Author)

Feb 2011. 382 p. Five Star, hardcover, $25.95. (9781594149290).

Mick Murphy, the news hawk hero of Haskins’ latest Key West mystery, makes a classic reporter goof. He pretends to be a little closer to the action than he really is. Both good and bad guys take him at his word, and the chase is on. At the heart of it all is a plot to bring a particularly cheap and addictive drug called paco into the U.S. As the good guys assemble behind Mick and check their guns, echoes of Miami Vice reverberate, with both its pastel glitz and its underlying despair. The cartels have more money and guns; the best the rest of us can do is hold together. Things get lively as the confrontation approaches, but this really isn’t a high-concept action novel or even a stripped-down thriller. It’s about adult relationships, and its generous use of the Key West setting will appeal to readers who like local color. Since it’s the Keys, a lot of beer and rum goes down, and there’s much eating of cheeseburgers, dolphin sandwiches, and breakfast eggs with hot sauce.

— Don Crinklaw

Mark Howell

Editor

Solares Hill

It’s a very different book from Haskins’ first Murphy novel. Not simply in length but in range of characterization. I truly like all of these people – Jim, Norm, Tita (when do I get to meet her?) and, naturally, the Padre and Murphy himself. Also the plentiful bad guys and the two top cops . . . they come across as all too real. There’s an almost Felliniesque display of characters here and I think that’s what will keep readers engaged through quite a heavy plot – not just the plotting but the bad guys’ plot in itself.

There’s also a most vivid description going on. Despite the legally required name changes, which I actually enjoy, the scene setting is evocative throughout. It’s one of Haskins trademarks - although not overdone, strangely it’s extremely simple, no overwriting.

Let me tell you this: Like in many compelling novels, the opening scene is perhaps the most compelling in the whole book, driven by a dream-like experience of that falling body, plus the falling hat, and the subsequent reactions and police activity. I was there - and still am.

And if I was a reader who’d never, ever been to Key West, the scenes that follow, especially the one on the hotel roof with its view over the harbor and all the scurrying below, those scenes would have brought me to town on the very next ticket. Totally compelling.

Finnegan’s, the Hog’s Breath, the Schooner Wharf, the rant about the Churchills . . . There’s so much in “Free Range Institution” that it kept me up all night reading.

International Thriller Writers

February Review

Leighton Gage

Free Range Institution

Mick Murphy’s Return – and Michael Haskins’ Secret

Good news! Mick Murphy is back.

I was introduced to Mick back in 2008, (that was in Chasin’ the Wind) and I’ve been chasin’ a sequel ever since.

Now, finally, in February of 2011, author Michael Haskins, is giving us one.

It’s called Free Range Institution.

Mick, for those of you who haven’t met either one of them, bears a striking physical resemblance to his creator.

They both smoke cigars. They both drink Jameson Irish Whiskey. They both have beards – Haskins’ is salt-and-pepper, Murphy’s is red. They both wear Boston Red Sox caps.

Michael is a colorful and interesting character to write about, but he lives in Key West most of the time. And, unlike Mick, he never disappears for three years in succession. So, even though Key West may be off the beaten track for many, it’s still a heck of a lot easier to catch up with Michael than it is to catch up with Mick.

Let me then hold forth, in the first instance, about Mick. Who, I hope, isn’t going to keep us waiting quite so long before he relates his next adventure.

Yeah, that’s right. Mick tells his own stories.

The books are written from the point-of-view of Liam (nicknamed “Mad Mick,” or simply “Mick”) Murphy, a journalist and a sailor.

Hey! Michael Haskins is also a journalist and a sailor. But I’m talking about Mick. Or am I? Sometimes I get confused.

You would, too, if you had the experience I had a few months ago.

It was like this: I was in the ‘States for a short visit. A friend of mine and I decided to drop down to Key West for a day and, while there, visited Michael. He’d just received some ARCs of Free Range Institution – and was kind enough to gift me with one. (Actually, he didn’t have much of a choice. Remember I mentioned Michael is a sailor? Right. Well, as such, he has considerable upper-body strength. But there were two of us, and my friend held him down while I twisted his arm.)

But I digress.

I didn’t get a chance to crack open Free Range Institution while I was in Key West, because even more important things, like drinking, got in the way. But, as we made the rounds of the bars, Michael kept introducing me to his friends, of which he has many. I confess that I remember some of the faces better than others. The ones I met earlier in the evening being the ones less-blurred, but I can still recall most of the names.

And guess what? They’re all right there, in Free Range Institution. Bill, Karen, the lot. They are all right there.

I always wondered how Michael Haskins was able to write with such verisimilitude about Key West and the people who live there. But that was back when I thought he was inventing all of those characters.

Now I know different.

Michael Haskins’ secret is that almost all of those people really exist. They’re friends of his, neighbors of his, people he knows, people he likes, even people he doesn’t like. All he does is string the words together to describe them. (Note to people who aren’t authors: Stringing words together is something you might not find as easy as I make it sound.)

Oh, yeah, every now and then Michael takes some artistic license with his character development (like with a certain priest in Free Range Institution whose persona will haunt you – and I use the word haunt quite judiciously). But he reserves his major firepower for his plots.

And the word firepower is also used judiciously.

Free Range Institution is chockablock with action on the land and on the sea. Colombian drug lords, crooked DEA agents, evil politicians, undercover cops, they’re all there - and all shooting it out with each other.

I doubt there has been more blood spilled in that little town since the days of Commodore David Porter, who back in the early 1820s, ran his anti-pirate squadron out of Key West. (Footnote: Porter, like Michael and Mick, was born in Massachusetts. Isn’t that bizarre?)

Ever heard of the dangerous and highly-addictive drug paco? I hadn’t. You will, if (did I say if? I meant when) you read Free Range Institution. It’s the illicit importation of that paco upon which Michael hangs his engaging plot.

The title? Oh, yeah, that’s from a song written by Scott Kirby. Michael reproduces these lyrics at the beginning of the book:

I’m living in a free-range institution

It’s a three-ring circus with twelve-step programs to choose

from

An open-air asylum at its best

Your shrink says you need a little sun and rest

Baby, check yourself right in to Key West

Rest? Fat chance! You’re going to get precious little of that in Michael Haskins’ Key West. Free Range Institution is non-stop action – and guaranteed to keep you up all night.

Leighton Gage is the author of the Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation series set in Brazil. His fourth in the series, Every Bitter Thing, came out late last year. Gage has his home in Santana do Parnaiba, Brazil, and also travels frequently to the Netherlands and Florid.

THE MYSTERY GAZETTE

TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2011

Free Range Institution-Michael Haskins

Free Range Institution
Michael Haskins
Five Star, Mar 9 2011, $25.95
ISBN 9781594149290

Reporter Liam “Mad Mick” Murphy and attorney Tita Toledo go to lunch on what each hopes will prove a romantic interlude. Instead they watch Murphy's waterfront pal Jay Bruehl dive off the roof of the six-story Hotel Key West. A notorious snitch, the late Bruehl recently informed Murphy about a big drug deal. The Hotel Key West happens to host Colombian traffickers discussing importing deadly low-grade cocaine though the Keys.

After gaining entrance to the drug meeting, undercover cop Rebecca Connelly vanishes. Padre Thomas Collins claims angels informed him where Connelly is being held. They find her battered corpse at the locale the priest said she could be found. The federal, state and local law enforcement officials and the drug cartel target Collins and Murphy. Soon Key West becomes a graveyard as violence turns the Caribbean into a red sea.

The second Mad Mick Key West thriller (see Chasin' the Wind) is a wild over the top of Solares Hill (make that the proposed Miapolis) as once again readers will wonder what is the difference between the good and bad guys as neither seems concerned with collateral damage. The story line is fast-paced with more bullets flying in the Conch Republic than Al Capone ever authorized in Chicago as mad Mick lies to authorities to get the story and obtains reinforcements from a horde of souls even crazier than he is. Fans who ignore plausibility and appreciate that death has become a local growth industry will enjoy the Free Range Institution gunfight at Key West.

Blurbs from the book jacket

“A masterful tropical mystery. Every city has an ugly underbelly populated with bad guys—even touristy Key West. In Michael Haskins’ deft storytelling, this tip-of-Florida isle—literally at the end of the road—is equal parts paradise and murderous mayhem, one made all the more exciting by his hero, Boston Irishman Mad Mick Murphy.”
W.E.B. Griffin & William E. Butterworth IV, Wall Street Journal and New York Times #1 bestselling authors

“I've seen some crazy things in Key West, but Michael Haskins' Free Range Institution beats it all. People leaping from buildings, and hanging from trees...angels who tell the future and enough drugs and corruption to destroy the entire Key. Try to keep up, because things happen at breakneck speed!”

Don Bruns

Award winning author of

Stuff To Spy For, Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, Barbados Heat, Jamaica Heat

“I’ve had the privilege of spending a month during each of three years on Key West. Michael Haskins has lived on the Rock for more than a decade and like most non-natives who become reporters for local newspapers, he’s absorbed more island life and lore than most. FREE RANGE INSTITUTION is a wonderful new entry in his Mick Murphy mystery series. Happily for those who love Key West, FREE RANGE INSTITUTION is both a terrific ride through, and a terrific read about, the people and places personifying America’s beachhead in the ‘North Caribbean.’”

Jeremiah Healy,

author of RESCUE and SPIRAL

“Imagine . . . cocaine cowboys, side street shootouts, big city crimes in small town surroundings, fallen angels, a chain-smoking priest . . . corruption . . . greed . . . murder . . . covert operations . . . with journalist Mad Mick Murphy reporting. Michael Haskins’ narrative makes us comfortable in Key West . . . before he roars through the island like a Tropical Hurricane. It’s a perfect storm.”

Steven M. Forman, author of

Boca Knights and Boca Mournings

“I'm hooked! Mad Mick Murphy is a quixotic character in an exotic setting. Key West offers him crimes to solve, eccentric people to confound his journalistic ambitions, and life-threatening adventures to entertain readers.”
Shirrel Rhoades
Editorial Director
The Saturday Evening Post

MWA/CreateSpace/Kindle

2011-01-28T11:06:00.000-05:00

I travel about 400-miles round trip once a month to attend the Mystery Writers of America, Florida Chapter, luncheon meetings in Deerfield Beach. The first 125-miles is along scenic US1 from Key West to Florida City and then I pick up the Turnpike north to Sample Road, cut across to I-95 and an exit or two later get off. Without delays, it’s an easy four hours.

I do this not because I am on the chapter’s board, but for the camaraderie of other writers. In fact, I accepted the board nomination so it would be one more excuse to attend the meetings. Sometimes it can take an extra kick in the pants to get on the road at 6 a.m. to make the 10:30 board meeting. On the months there is not a board meeting (few) I can leave at 7 a.m. I have my pit stops, but once I am on the Turnpike it’s pretty much keep going. I pick up my coffee – extra espresso shot – at Starbucks just before the Turnpike and I am off.

I mention this because people have the misconception that Key West is a writers’ paradise. It is my paradise, maybe even my muse, but not too many writers hangout. If they do, they keep pretty much to themselves in cliques or quietly avoid people. They may come to Key West to write and need the solitude – kind of like a person needing AA showing up to attend meetings at our Bahama Village AA club house – but to many of us that live here, solitude is not what we came here for.

MWA is a fantastic organization – www.mwaflorida.org – and I became a member in the early ‘80s when I joined the SoCal chapter. I think the thing that stands out to me is that the most successful writers are willing to advise unpublished writers and I would even say they expect to be approached at these luncheons and conferences by struggling writers. They try to answer all the questions, no matter how lame and I know because I am guilty of asking some pretty lame questions in my day. I cannot think of anyone I ever approached that was rude on condescending – encouraging is the word that comes to mind.

If you think about, it is really amazing because as the publishing world shrinks, agents become elitists, and more and more people try to become writers, we are all competitors. When my book – Free Range Institution – comes out later this month, it competes with all the other books on the shelf in stores. I realize I am no real competition to the NY Times bestseller list of writers, but believe me there are a few more published writers out there that never make it onto that list and it’s not because those on the list are better writers.

After these luncheons any number of the guests – writers and fans and friends – can usually be found at the hotel’s bar (surprised?) sitting around and discussing – can you guess what? Yeah, ok, you are smart. We discuss writing in it may various forms.

If you follow this blog, you know that Mike writes a lot about self-publishing and his successes. I had some questions for him because my first book – Chasin’ the Wind – is on Kindle. Sandy Balzo, a writer with two series going (she has no time for Key West!) was there and we peppered Mike with questions.

I think we both came away with something. Sandy kept notes, and I told Mike I’d email him for the links the next day – it seemed the easier thing to do.

What I took away was the need to use Kindle Nation – a blog not related to Amazon – and look into CreateSpace, Amazon’s POD side.

CreateSpace can be free but it also offers services that can cost you. Since the rights to Chasin’ the Wind reverted back to me, I had a well-edited book, ready to go. The thing about CreateSpace that piqued my curiosity, other than being free, is that it offered me copies of my book for less than $5. This is a trade paperback sized book I put a $15 price on.

It took me a few efforts to get my copy into the CreateSpace formatted form that they supply. They actually have a link to their call center and twice I clicked on it for help and within minutes a live person called me and helped me out. You gotta remember, I am technology challenged, so getting onto my documents on the computer is about what I can do without an anxiety attack. But, I was able to complete the formatting and sent the book in. I chose a free cover design because it was the only one that had sailboats.

Chasin’ the Wind is out of hardback copies, but now it’s back on Amazon as a trade paperback and I can order copies to take to signings for my second book. Even with giving the bookstore its 40-percent of the $15 cover price, I make a few extra bucks.

Well, I am not sure I’ll be as successful as Mike but I am trying. He got me so jazzed that I went and found a CD with the first Mick Murphy book that I wrote back in ’95 in Tijuana, Mexico – Tijuana Weekend – and am getting it ready for Kindle and CreateSpace. I have surprised myself because the story still holds, but I have to put a July 1995 date and time on each chapter, because a few things in the story are dated, but I feel they are important enough to keep.

I will keep you apprised of how I do. If you are not a member of MWA, check out the site. The organization is open to writers – published and unpublished – and mystery fans. You join the main organization and automatically become a member of your local chapter. And don’t forget our SleuthFest conference is next month and some of Florida’s best mystery writers attend. Dennis Lehane is one of the special guests and I am sure you’ve seen or heard about the movies made from his many books.

www.michaelhaskins.net

Bouchercon Report

2010-10-25T21:48:00.000-04:00

Among other things that happen at Bouchercon, quite a few awards are announced. Congratulations to all the winners.

Anthony Awards – chosen by Bouchercon participants

Best Novel: Louise Penny, THE BRUTAL TELLING (Minotaur)
Best First Novel: Sophie Littlefield, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY (Minotaur)
Best Paperback Original: Bryan Gruley, STARVATION LAKE (Touchstone)
Best Short Story: Hank Phillippi Ryan, "On the House," from QUARRY: Crime Stories by New England Writers (Level Best Books)
Best Critical Nonfiction: P. D. James, TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION (Alfred A. Knopf)

Barry Awards – chosen by readers of Deadly Pleasures magazine

Best Novel: John Hart, THE LAST CHILD (Minotaur)
Best First Novel: Alan Bradley, THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE (Delacorte)
Best British Novel: Philip Kerr, IF THE DEAD RISE NOT (Quercus)
Best Paperback Original: Bryan Gruley, STARVATION LAKE (Touchstone)
Best Thriller: Jamie Freveletti, RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL
Mystery/Crime Novel of the Decade: Stieg Larsson, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (Knopf)
Best Short Story: Brendan DuBois, "The High House Writer," from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July–August 2009
Don Sandstrom Award for Literary Achievement in Mystery Fandom: Len & June Moffatt; Captain Bob Napier

Crimespree Awards – chosen by readers of Crimespree magazine

Favorite Book of 2009: Charlie Huston, THE MYSTIC ARTS OF ERASING ALL SIGNS OF DEATH (Ballantine)
Favorite First Book of 2009: Andrew Grant, EVEN
Best Book in an Ongoing Series for 2009: Greg Rucka, WALKING DEAD (Bantam)
The Jack Reacher Award, given to "an author who someone we would recommend to everyone we meet and is also great to their fans and gives back to the mystery community": Val McDermid

Shamus Awards – chosen by the Private Eye Writers of America

Best Hardcover P.I. Novel: Marcia Muller, LOCKED IN (Grand Central)
Best First P.I. Novel: Brad Parks, FACES OF THE GONE (Minotaur)
Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel: Ira Berkowitz, SINNER'S BALL (Three Rivers Press)
Best P.I. Short Story: Dave Zeltserman, "Julius Katz," from Ellery Queen' Mystery Magazine, September/October 2009
Best P.I. Character: Sharon McCone
Lifetime Achievement Award: Robert Crais

Editing is less frightening than rewriting, so edit more often . . .

2010-09-14T06:21:00.002-04:00

It seems that last week* most everyone was concerned about rewriting. A necessary evil, I agree, but there are different ways to approach it. I haven’t figured out how to avoid rewriting (other than being perfect and I leave that to those few who are) but I have, over the years, avoided what, I believe, Mike* called a major rewrite.

I am a slow writer. On very good days, I do more than a thousand words, other days two hundred. I average in between those numbers. And then there are days that the blank screen is more than I can stand and write nothing new. Writer’s block? Naw. Laziness, maybe. What it usually proves to be is that I subconsciously have a problem with something I’ve written and don’t know it, yet. My subconscious has concerns I just haven’t caught up with.

Every morning before starting from where I left off, I reread what I wrote the day before. It is amazing how often I find a typo (Spell check you say? I must have fooled it!) or an incomplete thought. Always something. I go about fixing it. That’s my first, short form of rewriting but I like to call it editing.

So, the day arrives and I can not move forward. I go back to the beginning and start to read. Along the way, I often realize what I had in mind when I wrote the early chapter doesn’t happen, or happens differently than I thought later on in the story. Or, something in later chapter happens that needs to be explained or foreshadowed in an earlier chapter. I go back and I correct the problem and, I guess, you’d call it rewriting. I like to think of it as editing.

I am on the fourth book in my Mick Murphy Key West Mystery series. In my third book I began using Saturday morning to reread everything I’ve written that week. There is always something wrong or in need of correction. I rewrite it or edit it, whatever. I am continuing that in the new book.

It is amazing how often I make changes in early chapters because I now know what’s a head! And then . . . well, let me tell you about how the ending of my second book, Free Range Institution, came about.

I am at the end, almost 400 pages, and I realize the killings needed to save Mad Mick can’t happen the way I first thought, the way I planned 400 pages ago. After everything that had happened in the story it wasn’t a realistic ending and I didn’t want an ending that didn’t ring true or at least plausible just to end. I smoked a cigar (outside) and maybe sipped some of God’s nectar (Jameson on the rocks) and came up with nothing. I went back inside and began reading from chapter one. It was a late night and I had better things to do, but I read.

Before I was half way through, I found a chapter where four of my characters talked around a kitchen table and the discussion led to killing. (You know I am not going to tell you the whole story because you’d know the ending and wouldn’t buy my book! Hell, I wouldn’t buy a book I knew the ending to before I’d read it.)

Back to the topic, as soon as I finished reading that chapter (maybe even before, but I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging) I knew what the ending had to be! Somewhere in the dark, deep recesses of my weary brain I had foreshadowed the ending without even knowing it earlier in the story! I went to the last chapter and with an adrenaline rush of pride and satisfaction, I wrote the ending and still made it to the Hog’s Breath to hear the Carter Brother’s band and Schooner Wharf before last call! It was the only way I could think to thank my brain, there ain’t no doggy treats for the brain. There should be.

Anyway, I handle the rewriting and editing together. It saves me from any major rewriting after I’ve finished. It’s been that way so far and I hope it continues. I think of it more as editing because so much of what I correct or add is small – a sentence or paragraph. Rewriting is a scary thought after you’ve put down 90,000 words.

I should end by saying after I’m done the manuscript goes into the draw for a month and then I go through it again and do more editing. I also let a few friends and/or experts read it for corrections and Jim Linder, retired military intelligence, corrects my mistakes with drug smugglers, boats, airplanes and weapons.

I call it editing because if I wanted to be scared I’d read more Steven King novels!

Do you have a trick to make rewriting easier? Share it, please, share it!

*To fully understand this blog, you have to read www.writeonthewater.com. This is a blog by writers who live or have lived on a boat. I am, on occasion, a guest blogger and this blog appeared on writeonthewater.com on Sept. 14, 2010. If you are a writer, a wannabe writer or interested in boating, check the blog out.

Grammar is changing

2010-08-27T09:41:00.003-04:00

Writers, both published and unpublished, continue to learn their craft everyday.

Sometimes we, as writers, overlook the few good books available that explain the rules of how and what we do. I don’t mean the glut of books that tells you how to write the best selling novel. Nope. I am talking about the books that explain the rules and even how to break them and how the rules are changing, being challenged.

I have talked a few times at the college library and other events about writing. I have always brought three books with me. Jack Hart’s “A Writer’s Coach,” Roy Peter Clark’s “Writing Tools,” and Steve King’s “On Writing.”

The first two books explain writing – journalist and novelist – by examining style and rules and the why-and-wherefore of the rules. Both books have been of great value to me as both a journalist and mystery writer.

King’s book, of course, tells the reader the procedures for writing that work for him. Most of them work for me. I suggest, in my talk, that these books will help anyone interested in fiction or journalism.

Clark is a scholar and vice president at the Poytner Institute, one of the most prestigious schools for journalist in the world. He writers a column for the Poytner newsletter called “Writing Tools” and his book by the same name is made up of those columns. I read the column, save them actually, so I can read them again.

God, it is said, loves drunks, fools, and Irishmen and I am batting a thousand. Late last week I emailed Clark and asked if he was going to publish the current columns in book form. He replied that his new book, The Glamour of Grammar, would be out in a week and was reviewed in the coming Sunday New York Time Review of Books. I ordered Clark’s new book before I read the review. My copy of the Time’s book review section usually comes before Sunday, via mail. I got it Friday and the review was outstanding. As I expected.

The book came Monday and I have begun reading it. I was not the best English student in high school – OK, I was lucky to get by with a C- – but if they taught English using Clark’s book as a text I might’ve been an A+ English student!

Get the title of some of his chapters: Enjoy, rather than fear, words that sound alike; Learn seven ways to invent words; Use the period to determine emphasis and space; Use the semicolon as a ‘swinging gate.’ The list goes on.

Just as the publishing world is changing, so is the world of grammar. Some fight the changes and some, like Clark, cherish the challenges the change brings.

I recommend “The Glamour of Grammar” to anyone that wants to write and understand the why and how to use grammar for today. I will be adding it to my traveling book collection, if I am eve asked to speak again.

It is also good to finally realize that while Mr. Carlin may have done his best to flunk me in his high school English class, Mr. Clark might have given me a B, maybe even a B+, if he had been teaching.

Google Poytner Institute and you too can get its almost daily report that runs Roy Peter Clark’s column, "Writing Tools." Catch up with the future.