I read Cross Road Blues a while back so I could give it a blurb. Now it's available for everybody to read, and I recommend it highly. I love the setting (Nashville, 1957), and the characters are the kid that jump right off the page. As my blub says, it has "drugs, murder, a little voodoo, and the blues." How can you go wrong?
Her death was confirmed by her daughter Cynthia Wygal, The Orange County Register said.
Ms. Dinning’s younger brother Mark performed “Teen Angel,” which is about an untimely death. A couple’s car stalls on railroad tracks and they safely get out, but the girl runs back to get the boy’s high school class ring and a train hits the car. The song was released in October 1959 and became an instant hit.
[. . . .}
In the 1930s and ’40s, Ms. Dinning performed with her sisters as The Dinning Sisters, making records and appearing on the radio and in the movies. Their biggest hit was the song “Buttons and Bows” from the film “The Paleface,” starring Bob Hope and Jane Russell.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
This short story was originally published in an anthology titled Where Legends Ride, and now Duane Spurlock has made it available for Kindle. It's a humorous western story with the style and tone of a tall tale, and Spurlock pulls it off with verve. Check it out.
Goodis is hardly forgotten these days, and this is one of his better-known books, but what the heck. I'm talking about it, anyway. 
I can't remember where I first met Stina Leicht, but it was probably at an Aggiecon some years ago. Maybe she even came to a panel where I talked about writing. I hope so because if she did, I can claim I was a big influence on her. I wouldn't want to claim that, of course, if I hadn't really liked her first novel, but I liked it a lot.
'Bigfoot' Sues New Hampshire: Filmmaker Jonathan Doyle Fights for Free Speech Rights: "An amateur filmmaker who donned a hairy Bigfoot costume and scared hikers on New Hampshire's Mount Monadnock is now suing the state for not allowing him back on the mountain without a permit."
Designated Runner: "Charley Finley was a Major League Baseball team owner -- the Kansas City (and after he moved them, Oakland) A's, specifically -- from 1960 to 1981. An innovator with a flair for gimmicky brilliance, Finley was a driving force behind night baseball (now the norm) and employing the designated hitter. But one of his innovative ideas -- a failure, at that -- yielded an odd result: the Major League Baseball career of Herb Washington."
BURBANK, CALIF., March 8, 2011 – Warner Bros. Digital Distribution (WBDD), a market leader in video-on-demand and electronic sell-through, today announced it will begin testing an offering of selected movies for purchase or rental through Warner Bros. Entertainment’s Facebook movie Pages. Consumers will be able to use Facebook Credits to easily buy or rent a title, all while staying connected to Facebook.
Starting today, millions of fans who “Liked” Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film “The Dark Knight” can rent the title through its official Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/
The power of Crider compels you.
Back in 2009 I did a "Forgotten Movies" post about The Good Humor Man. That wasn't the first time I'd written about it. I first posted about it back in 2005. To save me the trouble of writing a new post, I'll just repeat part of that one: 
Myron Bolitar is back and Win is with him. That sentence alone is probably enough to guarantee Harlan Coben another muli-million seller. He's sold 47 million books now and is a bestseller in just about every country in the world. But what the heck. I'll take pity on him and mention his new book here, anyway.
It's the 16th century, and Henry VIII is dissolving the monasteries in England. At one of them, his emissary is murdered, and Thomas Cromwell sends Matthew Sharlake, a lawyer, to investigate. Shardlake takes along his young assistant, Mark Poer, who's a source of trouble because he's not as convinced as Shardlake about many things. Shardlake wants to believe that what he's doing is right, the Cromwell is right, that a better world will result, and Poer causes him to doubt. 
The post about the Alamo Gift Shop reminded me of my coonskin cap. Here's a photo of my mother wearing it as my sister looks on. This was taken in the back yard of the house we lived in on Hunt Street in Mexia, Texas, several years before the TV series aired. I was always ahead of the curve.
