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December 04, 2015

The Incurables by Jon Bassoff

Faith and delusion aren’t that far apart, when you really think about it.

The setup of The Incurables, the latest offering from Jon Bassoff, is both incredibly straightforward and wonderfully disturbing.

In the early 1950s, after decades of treating patients and pioneering the transorbital lobotomy, aka the “icepick lobotomy,” Dr. Walter Freeman is put out to pasture by the board of directors of the facility where he works.

Seems they’ve finally realized Freeman’s method of “curing” patients suffering from mental illness—inserting an icepick into the corner of each eye socket, hammering it through the orbital bone with a small hammer, then moving it around in order to sever the connections of the prefrontal cortex— isn’t the most humane.

Crushed that his work is being cast aside for newfangled measures and meds, Freeman decides to take his show on the road, and absconds with his last patient in the process. Going from town to town, Freeman “preaches” the power of the transorbital lobotomy to cure what ails you, or a loved one. He uses his patient, Edgar, as living proof of the miraculous power of the pick. →

December 01, 2015

Short-Changing the Noir by Andrez Bergen

As always, it’s an immense pleasure to welcome Andrez Bergen back to the blog. There’s not much I can say about Andrez that I haven’t already, many times. Bottom line: he’s one of my all-time favorite authors, and someone who I believe consistently produces some of the most creative, complex, and challenging fiction around—the man has crazy skills.

Andrez Bergen Short-Changing the Noir

The writing of my fifth novel, Small Change: A Casebook of Scherer and Miller, Investigators of the Paranormal and Supermundane (out December 11 through Roundfire Fiction), has meant a rediscovery of roots plundered in the very first novel I did, Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.

And not just regarding long-winded titles.

No, I’m talking up the hardboiled stuff.

Not that I forgot – or set aside – my love for all things Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but with subsequent books I found myself determined to also push the envelope and explore other terrains.

The genre I prefer to call ‘noir’ – since it can then relate to film as well – lends itself nicely to being coaxed into a corner with a fistful of ulterior styles. I mixed it with dystopia and sci-fi in TSMG, decanted the brew into more surreal bents – verging on, dare I say, magical realism – with One Hundred Years of Vicissitude and Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth, while Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? matched noir up in a ring with pulp and the silver age of comics.

But I always did have a hankering for softer horror and a relatively offbeat sense of humour as well as budding detectives, and got to combine all three with Small Change. →

November 25, 2015

Reading as a Writer by Mark Richardson

Today I welcome Mark Richardson to the blog in conjunction with his recently released novel Hunt for the Troll. The book hasn’t quite made it to the top of my TBR yet, but I’ve heard great buzz about it and wanted to go ahead and give Mark a chance to introduce himself. I love what he chose to write about—how his love of books as a reader has affected him as an author—because I’m a firm believer that it is damn near impossible to be a great writer unless you’re also a great consumer of books as a reader.

Reading as a Writer

The first book I have a conscious memory of is Make Way For Ducklings. I can distinctly remember as a Pre-K being pressed against my mother’s side as she read it to me. We sat on a yellow sofa in our family’s living room, the sun streaming in a window. Or maybe that sofa was robin’s egg blue? That tidbit is a bit unclear, but no matter. Thus began a lifelong love of books.

Reading brings me joy. When it comes to books, I’m down for just about anything—biographies, detective novels, literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy—you name it. Practically every day of my life, one book or another has occupied a spot on my nightstand.

Like a lot of book lovers, I always had a vague notion that one day I would write something myself. And by something, I mean fiction. But I never got around to it, at least not until I hit middle age. That’s when I was working in the corporate communications department at a tech company in Silicon Valley. Each week I would go to lunch with two of my co-workers. Like me, they both wrote for work—webpage articles, speeches, press releases, video scripts—that sort of thing. But unlike me, they were also writing fiction on the side (novels and short stories). One day, one of them asked me, “Dude, when are you going to write something?”

The gauntlet had been dropped. →

November 20, 2015

“Glitter Faggots from Space” (or Why I Wrote Young Americans) by Josh Stallings

My love of everything Josh Stallings writes is no secret, as I have given glowing reviews to everything of his I’ve had the pleasure of reading. I’ve also had the honor of working with Josh as his editor, first on the Moses McGuire book One More Body, and most recently on his newest release, Young Americans, which drops today. Given my involvement with the book it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to review it, but I’m more than happy to turn the floor over to Josh himself to talk a little about how a man known for bone-crunching, pitch-black noir came to write a heist story set in the thick of the 1970s glitter/glam/disco era.

Glitter Faggots from Space (or Why I Wrote Young Americans)

“Who was the original Bond?” my son Dylan asked me Saturday driving home from our weekly date.

“Sean Connery.” I was confident I had this one.

“Wrong, Dad. Pierce Brosnan.” I started to argue, but realized he was correct. Dylan was using original to mean best, truest. The best Bond is who played him when you became old enough to discover cool. Cool is personal and generational. Same is true for music.

In the mid 1970s I discovered musical cool, Glitter Rock (or Glam – the predominant label outside of a few of us NorCal kids.) The four years between the ages of 13 to 17 were wild flashing stoned drunk dancing fucking fighting four-wheel-drifting in a Bonneville heartbreaking transforming years. We, to paraphrase Bowie, balled and played and moved like tigers on Vaseline. A magical time of sexual exploration and fluid gender boundaries. Punk’s anger was tame compared to Glitter’s mantra of we fuck anyone. It never occurred to me that Freddie Mercury was gay, because it didn’t matter. We experimented with everything—drugs, sure, but also 8mm filmmaking, storytelling, writing, theater, music. We were young, hung and way too bright for our own good. These were the beguiling years before AIDs, heroin overdoses and that killer of so many of our best minds: household bills and the jobs we took to knock them out. →

November 19, 2015

The Unmeaning of Life by Jon Bassoff

Jon Bassoff is well-known in the crime fiction/noir community, both as the founder of publisher New Pulp Press, as well as being the author of disturbing, thought-provoking, critically acclaimed noir. I’m pleased to welcome Jon to the blog today in conjunction with his latest release, The Incurables.

The Unmeaning of Life

There’s a telling moment in Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon where Sam Spade learns of his partner’s death and proceeds to very calmly roll a cigarette. It is clear that there is no love lost between the two—hell, Spade was sleeping with his partner’s wife—and yet Spade feels compelled to avenge his death. As Spade says, “When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it.” There’s no compelling reason for Spade to redress his partner’s death other than his own seemingly arbitrary moral code.

Or take Flannery O’Connor’s southern gothic novel Wise Blood. Hazel Motes, angered by the hypocrisies and failings of Christianity, begins preaching a new nihilistic gospel, calling it The Church Without Christ. But no matter how hard he tries to separate himself from Christianity and those who preach it, he is unable to fully escape (even the suit he purchases causes people to mistake him for a Christian preacher). He finds himself falling further and further into despair, and by the time the novel ends, perhaps in a desperate attempt at redemption, he has blinded himself with lime, placed broken glass in his shoes, and wrapped barbed wire around his chest. Hazel essentially martyrs himself for his intense faith in nothing. →

November 17, 2015

The Station Sergeant / Barlow by the Book by John McAllister

Potential Spoiler Warning: As this review is a double dip of both Barlow books, the second part of the review necessarily mentions a certain event that occurs in the first book. I’ve tried to be as vague as possible, but a little “spoiling” is impossible to avoid in order to properly discuss the second book.

When readers first meet Station Sergeant John Barlow in The Station Sergeant, he’s peddling his bike through the countryside of Northern Ireland in a raging downpour on the way to visit one of the farms in his Ballymena constituency. It’s a wonderful image, and one that sets the tone for what’s to come.

Barlow is a man not easily deterred, by nature or his fellow man. As a wily veteran of both the military (World War II) and the local constabulary, his hardheaded nature is a quality that serves him well and sets his direct supervisors—who are not quite comfortable with Barlow’s rough edges and rule-skirting approach to policing—on edge.

As The Station Sergeant opens, Barlow rides into a storm both literally and figuratively.

Mixed in amongst the crashing thunder, Barlow hears the distinctive sound of gunfire. Pushing on to the farm the shots appear to be coming from, Barlow happens upon the body of farmer Stoop Taylor. Given that Stoop was not the most popular man, the list of suspects is initially somewhat daunting.

The case would be challenging enough in itself, but adding to the uphill battle is the fact Barlow’s recently been saddled with a new District Inspector, one who appears ready to stop at nothing to see Barlow busted down in rank and transferred, if not outright booted from the force. Add into the mix the Dunlops, a local family of ne’er-do-wells and aspiring criminals, and Barlow has his work cut out for him. And that’s just on the professional front. →

November 16, 2015

Nine Toes in the Grave by Eric Beetner

You ever feel like the biggest fucking idiot in the world? Well, you’re not. I am. — Reese

Despite being trapped in a dead-end job at a greasy-spoon diner in the middle of nowhere (Miles away from anything interesting and too far to make a run for it. Boredom was our chief export and business was good.), Reese has been content to just grind out a life and keep his nose clean.

Well, mostly clean.

He’s recently started sleeping with fellow diner employee, Moira, who also happens to be the wife of the joint’s owner. Not the most upstanding behavior, but still nothing to call the cops over. That call is coming, however, because Reese happens to have the worst luck, and the worst decision-making skills, in history.

Moira, you see, has a scheme in the works, one she wants Reese to help her pull the trigger on. When Reese refuses to assist, Moira takes matters into her own hands in a way that points the finger at Reese. Instead of sticking around to try and clear his name, Reese does the first thing that comes to mind: run.

Of course, having no money to speak of and being in the aforementioned middle of nowhere, he doesn’t get far—barely an hour down the road, in fact. As he rolls into a strange town and heads to a dive bar to take stock of his miserable situation, Reese is about to experience firsthand the concept that no matter how bad you think things are, they can always get worse. →

November 10, 2015

Ten Things I Learned Writing My First Novel by Trace Conger

It’s a pleasure to welcome Shamus Award-winning author Trace Conger to the blog. You’d think after winning a Shamus for your debut novel things would be easy street, but as Trace is here to talk about today, writing is a tough business no matter which way you slice it.

Ten Things I Learned Writing My First Novel

I published my first novel, The Shadow Broker, in October of 2014. It was a fascinating experience, and after releasing my second novel, Scar Tissue, last month I took some time to reflect on the process.

Your mileage may vary, but here’s what I learned along the way.

1. Writing a novel is only as intimidating as you make it. Starting a novel is like holding your newborn for the first time. You’re ready to crap yourself thinking about your newfound responsibilities of raising a living, breathing human being. Taking on a novel can feel the same way, but it’s only as bad as you make it out to be. Take it one word or one page at a time and one day you’ll wake up with an 80,000-word novel.

2. Outlines make the process easier. Other writers will debate this, but for me creating an outline kept me on track. I create a brief outline for each chapter, including no more detail than can fit on one side of an index card. After I have the story fleshed out, I sit down with my stack of cards and write each scene or chapter. Yes, the story changes. Yes, you’ll throw away some of your ideas or characters, but having a road map will help you get to your destination, even if you take a few detours along the way.

3. It takes a long time. If you want to unleash quality work into the world, put on your patient pants. If you work with a traditional publisher, it can take a year or more to bring your novel to market. But even if you self publish, it takes time to write, edit, solicit beta reader feedback, rewrite, edit again, create a cover, layout the novel, and more. →

November 03, 2015

I Have A New Book Out. I’m Sorry. by Eric Beetner

It’s a pleasure to welcome Eric Beetner back to the blog. You can check out all of Eric’s previous guest posts, as well as my reviews of his work, in the Eric Beetner archive. Eric’s most recent book, Nine Toes In The Grave (All Due Respect Books), was published two days ago. Today, Eric’s here to talk about the double-edged sword that results when an author publishes five books in one year.

I Have A New Book Out. I’m Sorry.

I’ve just released my fifth book this year, Nine Toes In The Grave. Much of this unusually prolific year is cheating since Nine Toes is a novella so it’s fairly short. Two of the novels, The Backlist and Over Their Heads were cowritten so I only had to write half a book. My novel Rumrunners was written four years ago and rescued from the slush pile. And The Year I Died Seven Times was serialized last year but compiled into an omnibus this year.

But I did still write them all and I should feel proud, but mostly what I’ve felt is apologetic. I don’t want to plaster people every two months with a new round of, “Buy my book!” interactions. I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to dominate the conversation or take attention away from anyone else who is rightly proud of their book.

Well, screw that. I need to learn to embrace being a prolific author. I enjoy writing, so I do a lot of it. The idea that someone would publish my work is a privilege many authors are still seeking. I work hard at it. I support other authors as best I can. I host reading events for people to get their work out there. I tell people about books I love and try to spread the word. I need to just get over it. Right?

Lurking underneath is the fear that being prolific has the appearance of tossing out any old thing whether it’s fully baked or not. This accusation has been leveled at every prolific author from Stephen King on down. Although I will mention that one of our least prolific authors, Harper Lee, has many in agreement she should have stuck to only the one book so it cuts both ways. →

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